that comes out of the primary mystical experience that it can be
threatening to existing hierarchical structures.”
• • •
BY THE MID-1970S, the LSD work at Spring Grove, much of which was state
funded, had become a political hot potato in Annapolis. In 1975, the
Rockefeller Commission investigating the CIA disclosed that the agency
had also been running LSD experiments in Maryland, at Fort Detrick, as
part of a mind-control project called MK-Ultra. (An internal memo the
commission released concisely set forth the agency’s objective: “Can we
get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding
against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-
preservation?”) It was revealed that the CIA was dosing both government
employees and civilians without their knowledge; at least one person had
died. The news that Maryland taxpayers were also supporting research
with LSD promptly blew up into a scandal, and pressure to close down
psychedelic research at Spring Grove became irresistible.
“Pretty soon it was just me and two secretaries,” Richards recalls. “And
then it was over.”
Today Roland Griffiths, who would pick up the thread of research that
was dropped when the work at Spring Grove ended, marvels at the fact
that the first wave of psychedelic research, promising as it was, would end
for reasons having nothing to do with science. “We ended up demonizing
these compounds. Can you think of another area of science thought to be
so dangerous and taboo that all research gets shut down for decades? It’s
unprecedented in modern science.” So too, perhaps, is the sheer amount
of scientific knowledge that was simply erased.
In 1998, Griffiths, Jesse, and Richards began designing a pilot study
loosely based on the Good Friday Experiment. “It wasn’t a psychotherapy
study,” Richards points out. “It was a study designed to determine
whether psilocybin can elicit a transcendental experience. That we were
able to obtain permission to give it to healthy normals is a tribute to
Roland’s long history of commanding respect both at Hopkins and in
Washington.” In 1999, the protocol was approved, but only after wending
its way through five layers of review at Hopkins as well as the FDA and