Step into The World of the Insane | 1954's Classic and Forgotten Article on LSD
With a new drug to unlock the door, scientists are entering at will the benighted land where the insane dwell, experience the sights, sounds and emotions that plague schizophrenia's victims.
By Robert M. Goldenson, Ph.D.
Psychology Professor at Hunter College
Produced by Leo Rosten
Photographed by James Hansen
Glass of water containing trace of lysergic acid is volunteer’s ticket for seven-hour trip into insanity. This, and other photographs on the following pages, simulate the sensations that a volunteer would experience on such a mad journey.
Today, scientists have a key to insanity. In their hands is a powerful drug that can admit them to the hidden world of the insane. In the laboratories of famous hospital, this drug is providing evidence that certain mental illnesses may have a biochemical basis, and may respond to chemical treatment.
At 8:15 a.m., two doctors were sitting in a laboratory, chatting. A white-coated young attendant walked in, looked around at the older doctors and smiled cheerfully. One of the doctors dropped a carefully measured quantity of a chemical into a glass of water and handed it to the attendant to drink. The young man put it to his lips, then remarked that it did’t taste like anything except water. As he drank, the other doctor flicked the switch of a tape recorder, saying, “Now tell us every thought, every sensation you experience. Speak freely, talk as much as you like.
In a few minutes, the attendant began speaking: “It’s sort of chilly in here - my feet especially. I’d close the window, only my knees are shaking. Guess it’s because I didn’t get my morning coffee.” One of the doctors, holding a pad, jotted down: “8:38. Coldness of extremities. Subjective tremor, no outward evidence.”
The attendant stared vacantly for a few moments, and when he spoke again, his voice had lost its cheerful tone: “What is this, Madam Tussauds waxworks? The way you sit there staring at me - you don’t look human.” The doctors looked at each other knowingly; the one with the pad wrote: “8:47. Emotional flatness. Distorted vision.” The powerful drug was taking effect.
The substance that had been dropped into the glass of water was lysergic acid diethylamide, known as LSD for short. Tasteless, colorless, odorless, this chemical produces symptoms of “mental disease” and, for the first time, enables doctors to examine. these symptoms from the inside. Unlike other drugs that produce temporary insanity, LSD does not cloud the subject’s consciousness or impair hi memory. He not only enters the world of the mentally ill - he is able to return and report everything he finds in it.
At 9:05 a.m., the attendant’s voice had a droning quality: “You know, I think all this is a trick. You just gave me plain water to see if I was suggestible.” One of the doctors reminded him that he saw the drug dropped into the glass. Immediately, the attendant responded, “Then the drug company must have tricked all of us.” The doctor insisted this could not be. The young man looked at him with the utmost annoyance and said, “Don’t scowl at me like that. And don’t come so close. Your head looks enormous - a … a leering gargoyle. And you don’t need to shout. I can hear you, I’m not deaf.”
The doctor had not moved an inch, nor had he changed his expression or the quiet tone of his voice. His colleague noted: “Suspiciousness. Feelings of persecution. Perpetual distortion.”
Soon the young man developed morbid feelings, breaking “like waves” over the mind. For a while, he felt that his feet were missing; though he looked at them, he could not believe they were there. When he closed his eyes, a phantasmagoria of colors “like the Fourth of July” flared up before him. At one point, he had sensations of floating off into space: “I feel that I am separated from my body.” Some time later, on being questioned, the attendant remarked that his actions were not his own - they all stemmed from the powers of others.
“Cause of insanity may be a body-produced chemical”
The subject of the experiment was a completely normal man. For several days, he had submitted to a battery of tests, psychological tests. Yet this man, within minutes, had developed the major symptoms of one of the severest mental diseases afflicting mankind - schizophrenia.
Strange as this phenomenon may seem, it becomes even more startling considering that the dose was 50 micrograms of LSD-50 millionths of a gram. To get some idea of the minuteness of the dose, break an aspirin into the tiniest pieces possible, then pick out the smallest speck you can find. This will still be far too much. In fact, put one thousandth of this amount of LSD - a mere trace - into an ordinary glass of water, drink it and for seven or eight hours you will experience what the schizophrenic experiences throughout his illness. You will then gradually return to normal, with no aftereffects.
Many of the hundred-odd volunteers for these experiments have been doctors and their associates - men and women trained in careful observation. They found themselves in the uncontrollable grip of feelings they had never experienced before, and reacted to psychological tests just as a schizophrenic would.
A serious man suddenly realized he was giggling “without funny or happy thoughts.” A particularly well-spoken nurse found herself at a complete loss for words and could answer questions only by gestures. An ordinarily lively and responsive physician became utterly indifferent and apathetic, saying “I sit here seemingly absorbed, but I cannot see that I am absorbed in anything but nothing.” A noted artist saw-and drew-one of the doctors as “a hideous old monster",” and two hours later pictured the same man as “young, flower-like, cherubic.”
“Arms and legs grew away from me; my head seemed heavy. Everything was off balance.”
“These are the nation’s most pitiful people”
Populating 700 mental hospitals throughout the country are 300,000 victims of schizophrenia-men, women and children. Some sit silently, staring vacantly into space; others, filled with nameless terrors, pace ceaselessly. At times, they boast irresistible powers; again, they shrink from imagined persecutors, prying eyes. They are tragic inhabitants of a shadowy, nightmare land.
“It was confusing; each idea I had became mixed with another”
Each of thee reactions is characteristic of schizophrenia. In fact, so instructive is the experience that some psychiatrists say it might be a good idea to give tiny, harmless doses of LSD to those who deal with the mentally ill. By actually entering the lonely world of schizophrenia, they would come to realize that when a patient says the walls are closing in on him, he actually sees and feels this happening; and when he remains mute for months on end, he may be struggling pitifully to express himself but finds words completely elude him.
The startling effects of lysergic acid were discovered accidentally in 1943 by a Swiss chemist who was working on the synthesis of the drug, a derivative of ergot. One day, he turned in a laboratory report which read in part: “Last Friday, April 16th, in the midst of my afternoon research in the laboratory, I had to give up working. At home, I went to bed and got into a not unpleasant state of drunkenness which was characterized by an extremely stimulating fantasy. When I closed my eyes, I experienced fantastic images of extraordinary plasticity. They were associated with an intense kaleidoscopic play of colors. After about two hours, this condition disappeared.
The chemist had experienced these queer sensations merely from inhaling LSD. The following day, he took a small quantity by mouth and the effects were even more intense. Through the international network of science, Dr. Max Rinkel, a leading researcher in psychiatry. He brought the drug to this country and initiated experiments with LSD at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital. In New York City, Dr. Paul Hoch and his associates are carrying on independent investigations at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital.
“One usually knows if he is happy; this is a vague, senseless sort of feeling.”
“I was terrified; strange objects came hurtling at me out of nowhere.”
One effect of the drug is to intensify the reactions of “borderline” cases and to bring schizophrenic tendencies to the surface. With further research, this compound may be used as a barometer of mental health, enabling psychiatrists to uncover incipient cases at a time when treatment is most effective.
The great promise of LSD lies not only in the field of diagnosis but also in its possible contribution to treatment. Researchers believe that by producing schizophrenia, under controlled conditions, they will find out how the body itself produces it-and thereby learn to prevent or at least control it.
This is the way the experimental psychiatrists put their argument: “For many years, we assumed that most mental illnesses were ‘functional’ disorders brought on by emotional stresses and strains and the way the patient was treated in childhood. But after fifty years of this approach, the hospitals are as full of mental patients as they ever were. They occupy as many beds as all physical patients combined, and cost the country a billion dollars a year.
“Lately, however, we have been changing our minds about the most prevalent mental disease, schizophrenia. New evidence is bringing us back to the discarded theory that it is primarily an organic, physical condition. For if it were simply a functional illness, like neurosis, how could we account for the fact that as some child psychiatrists point out, it sometimes crops up full-blown in the first months of life-that it may descend suddenly upon a victim who has led a model life-that shock treatments sometimes help-and that it may also clear up spontaneously, lie a fog lifting from a meadow? Emotional pressures may be partially responsible, but it now appears that they may only put an extra burden on the organism, and aggravate (or possibly produce) the physical weakness that is really at the basis of the mental illness.”
What goes on behind the haunted eyes of the schizophrenic? For years, doctors sought in vain to probe this mystery. Now, having entered this world themselves with LSD, doctors can truly understand the plight of the insane.
Furtively, the schizophrenic seeks refuge from imagined, prying eyes.
Bedizened in finery to fit a changing mood, the schizophrenic enjoys acting out the role of “grand lady”.
Haunted by fears of persecution, she listens for steps that follow her in the night.
The LSD experiments lend strong support to this argument, for they leave no doubt that mental illness can be produced by biochemical means. In a paper that was recently presented by Drs. Max Rinkel, Robert W. Hyde and Harry C. Solomon at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, it was suggested that evidence of many sorts points to an interference with the chemistry of one of the adrenal hormones which control our emotions. This substance, which is primarily produced by the adrenal gland, goes through several chemical stages, and somewhere along this line LSD may interfere with its normal decomposition. The chemical that is then produced-possibly “adrenoxine”-may be responsible for the drastic symptoms of mental disease which we know as schizophrenia.
At this moment, every effort is being made to locate the missing chemical link and to synthesize adrenoxine. At the same time, scientists are working night and day to produce a drug that will neutralize the dramatic effects of LSD-a drug that will counteract the poisonous effect of that mysterious chemical which originates in the body and may cause schizophrenia. If that compound works with the volunteers who take LSD, it may work with genuine schizophrenics.
The present status of this search for an antidote is aptly put b Drs. Rinkel, Hyde and Solomon in this way: “Our studies have placed mental illness again in the realm of the disease of disturbed chemical metabolism. More studies will help further to pinpoint the noxious agent, until its final discovery will lead to the development of successful pharmacological [drug] prevention and treatment of mankind’s greatest plague, insanity.”
It is too early to predict the final outcome of the biochemical approach to mental illness. But of one thing we may be certain at this moment: Science has at least progressed in its effort to break through the barrier that has separated us from the private world of schizophrenia. We have reason to hope that it will go on to conquer that dark realm.