LIT Text Oliver X Photo of James Penner by Shirley Mori
James Penner
TIMOTHY LEARY – THE HARVARD YEARS: EARLY WRITINGS ON LSD AND PSILOCYBIN WITH RICHARD ALPERT, HUSTON SMITH, RALPH METZNER, AND OTHERS Park Street Press Edited and Introduced by James Penner The Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman – who first synthesized LSD in 1938—accidentally absorbed a trace amount of it under his fingernails in 1943, while synthesizing it for a second time in his laboratory. Hoffman noted that he felt “a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition.” In the coming days Hoffman, taking what he then thought was a reasonable 250 microgram dose, tripped “out of his mind,” an experience that would lead he and researchers at Sandoz Laboratories to begin animal testing to investigate potential medical uses of the substance. In 1947, Hoffman published the first research paper on psychiatric LSD use, igniting world wide interest by the scientific community. In 1955 Time magazine called LSD “an invaluable weapon to psychiatrists.” LSD would be tested internationally on over 40,000 people between 1950 and 1963. [1]
In the six months since we first printed Dr. James Penner's groundbreaking look at Dr. Timothy Leary's early scholarly writings in our Lit column, much has happened in scientific communities researching the therapeutic benefits of hallucinogenic drugs as treatments. We are pleased to reprint the original interview here with Dr. Penner, and speak with him as he prepares for his book tour stop and reading at Reno's Sundance Books on May 28 for Timothy Leary The Harvard Years.
In 1963 the Harvard Drug Scandal would rock the scientific and academic community to its core. By the time Richard Nixon signed the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, making an entire class of psychedelics illegal Schedule 1 drugs, further scientific research on mescaline, LSD, DMT and psilocybin would prove to be a career killer for many, even though the Act never explicitly prohibited scientific research using these substances. The chilling effect was overwhelming, until very recently.
James Penner: I think there have been several interesting trends. One trend is that the mainstream media is becoming more open to publishing articles about psychedelics. There have been several articles about psychedelics in the mainstream media in the last six months. Michael Pollan’s article in The New Yorker about the therapeutic uses of magic mushrooms (psilocybin) was certainly a breakthrough (www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment). Another food critic, Eugenia Boon, also had a piece about magic
78 Reno Tahoe Tonight
Oliver X: As the national dialogue heats up regarding research on psychedelics, talk about the growing acceptance, mounting empirical evidence and new clinical studies being undertaken, illustrating the medicinal and pyschopharmecological benefits of hallucinogenic drugs.