How to Change Your Mind

of course meant taking the drug themselves, which seems odd, even
scandalous, to us today. But in the years before 1962, when Congress
passed a law giving the FDA authority to regulate new “investigational”
drugs, this was in fact common practice. Indeed, it was considered the
ethical thing to do, for to not take the drug yourself was tantamount to
treating your patients as guinea pigs. Humphry Osmond wrote that the
extraordinary promise of LSD was to allow the therapist who took it to
“enter the illness and see with a madman’s eyes, hear with his ears, and
feel with his skin.”
Born in Surrey, England, in 1917, Osmond is a little-known but pivotal
figure in the history of psychedelic research,* probably contributing more
to our understanding of these compounds and their therapeutic potential
than any other single researcher. In the years following World War II,
Osmond, a tall reed of a man with raucous teeth, was practicing
psychiatry at St. George’s Hospital in London when a colleague named
John Smythies introduced him to an obscure body of medical literature
about mescaline. After learning that mescaline induced hallucinations
much like those reported by schizophrenics, the two researchers began to
explore the idea that the disease was caused by a chemical imbalance in
the brain. At a time when the role of brain chemistry in mental illness had
not yet been established, this was a radical hypothesis. The two
psychiatrists had observed that the molecular structure of mescaline
closely resembled that of adrenaline. Could schizophrenia result from
some kind of dysfunction in the metabolism of adrenaline, transforming
it into a compound that produced the schizophrenic rupture with reality?
No, as it would turn out. But it was a productive hypothesis even so,
and Osmond’s research into the biochemical basis of mental illness
contributed to the rise of neurochemistry in the 1950s. LSD research
would eventually give an important boost to the nascent field. The fact
that such a vanishingly small number of LSD molecules could exert such
a profound effect on the mind was an important clue that a system of
neurotransmitters with dedicated receptors might play a role in
organizing our mental experience. This insight eventually led to the
discovery of serotonin and the class of antidepressants known as SSRIs.
But the powers that be at St. George’s Hospital were unsupportive of
Osmond’s research on mescaline. In frustration, the young doctor went
looking for a more hospitable institution in which to conduct it. This he