** Seymour is not in anyway associated with the book promoted at the end of the video above.

 

“Suddenly you notice that there aren’t these separations, that we’re not on a separate island shouting across to somebody else and trying to hear what they’re saying and misunderstanding. You know ‘empathy; the things flowing underneath. We’re part of a single continent. It meets underneath the water. And with that comes such delight- the sober certainty of waking bliss.”

– Gerald Heard

* The psychedelic drug/entheogen LSD was first synthesized by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in the Sandoz  laboratories in Basel, Switzerland on November 16, 1938. It was not until five years later on April 16, 1943, that the psychedelic properties were found.

LSD was brought to the attention of the United States in 1949 by Sandoz Laboratories because they believed LSD might have clinical applications. Throughout the 1950s, mainstream media reported on research into LSD, undergraduate psychology students taking LSD as part of their education, described the effects of the drug, and its growing use in psychiatry. Time Magazine published 6 positive reports on LSD between 1954 and 1959.

By the mid-sixties the backlash against the use of LSD and its perceived corrosive effects on the values of the Western middle class resulted in governmental action to restrict the availability of the drug by making any use of it illegal. Despite a history of positive results of judicious use under controlled circumstances, LSD was declared a “Schedule 1”, entailing that the drug has a “high potential for abuse” and is without any “currently accepted medical use in treatment”. LSD was removed from legal circulation.

LSD made a comeback in the 1980s accompanying the advent of recreational MDMA use, first in the punk and gothic subcultures through dance clubs, then in the 1990s through the acid house scene and raver subculture. LSD use and availability declined sharply following a raid of a large scale LSD lab in 2000.

Since the late 1980s, there has also been a revival of hallucinogen research more broadly, which, in recent years, has included preclinical and clinical studies involving LSD and other compounds such as members of the 2C family compounds and psilocybin.

What do you think about LSD and other psychoactive substances?

Do you feel that they have potential positive applications?

Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences in the ‘Leave a reply’ section below.

 

 

 

* source: wikipedia