LSD - a Treatment for Psychiatric Disorders?

I´ve been listening to a few more BBC Radio documentaries. A particularly interesting one was a review of the now dead British comic, Frankie Howerd.

It described how Howerd was prescribed LSD which led him to recollect his father´s physical abuse as a child – a claim that was hotly disputed by Frankie´s sister.

LJ (´coz he knows) informs me that LSD was a fairly common prescription for a myriad of psychological disorders. He points me in the direction of Hollywood legend, Bristol born Archibald Alexander Leach aka Cary Grant.

Cary Grant, who took LSD more than sixty times under the therapeutic auspices of Dr. Mortimer Hartmann and then Dr. Oscar Janiger, had this to say about his treatment in 1959:

"All my life, I've been searching for peace of mind. I'd explored yoga and hypnotism and made several attempts at mysticism. Nothing really seemed to give me what I wanted until this treatment."

"I have been born again. I have been through a psychiatric experience which has completely changed me. I was horrendous. I had to face things about myself which I never admitted, which I didn't know were there. Now I know that I hurt every woman I ever loved. I was an utter fake, a self-opinionated bore, a know-all who knew very little.

I found I was hiding behind all kinds of defenses, hypocrisies and vanities. I had to get rid of them layer by layer. The moment when your conscious meets your subconscious is a hell of a wrench. With me there came a day when I saw the light."

Respect!