Psychedelic Revolutionaries: Three Medical Pioneers, the Fall of Hallucinogenic Research and the Rise of Big Pharma

The post-World War II era was a tumultuous period in the world of psychiatry.Medical history has cast it as a clash between biology and psychoanalysis or as a time that lacked objectivism, that is until the introduction of psychotropic drugs such as chlorpromazine which triggered a change in our treatment of mental health as profound and far-reaching in its consequences as the war itself.In the early years of this psychopharmacological revolution, hallucinogens such as mescaline and LSD played as much of a role as other psychotropics.In fact, psychedelics constituted a scientific revolution in their own right, one that does not however fit the narrative of twentieth century scientific history. Looking beyond the countercultural manifestations and references that have for decades obfuscated the psychedelic story, historian P.W.Barber delves into a serious examination of both the science and the people behind the research.Showing why and how this experimentation unfolded, what its findin