In 1954, Dr Oscar Janiger, a Los Angeles
psychiatrist, began to experiment with a new and little-known chemical
called LSD-25. Eight years later, when the experiments were abruptly
(and probably illegally) halted by the U.S. government, he had given
LSD, in oral doses based on body weight (generally 2 micrograms per
kilogram) to over 930 men and women. His subjects, who were all
described as “psychologically ordinary”, ranged in age from 18 to 81.
They included doctors, factory workers, lawyers, accountants, college
professors, housewives, scientists, and ministers of religion. And one
nun. In an important sub-study, 60 professional artists also took LSD
under Janiger’s guidance.
Janiger’s aim was to investigate the therapeutic value of LSD. But his
work fell victim to a hostile political and social climate, stoked by
negative, highly exaggerated and inaccurate reports of LSD’s effects.
Although not “lost”, Janiger’s findings never reached a wider audience.
In LSD Spirituality and the Creative Process, medical anthropologist
Marlene Dobkin de Rios provides a long-overdue popular account of
Janiger’s pioneering research. Dr de Rios, who has studied the use of
hallucinogens in tribal and third-world societies, was a long-time
friend of Oscar Janiger. She has used Janiger’s records and information
gathered in a series of interviews shortly before his death to
reconstruct the Janiger Experiment. In a just tribute, when the book
was published in 2003 Janiger shared a co-author credit with de Rios.
Dr de Rios describes Janiger’s experimental design briefly and lucidly.
The meat of her text is a comprehensive summary of the outcomes of the
Experiment, and of subsequent follow-up research, some of it conducted
40 years later. Overwhelmingly, participants’ reactions seem to have
been positive, with many reporting beneficial transformations in their
personal lives and world views. Many even of the very small number of
participants who initially reported negative reactions later admitted to
more positive longer-term effects. As de Rios makes clear, the majority
of Janiger’s subjects recorded improvements in creativity and
therapeutic processes. Significantly, they also reported that LSD
instigated or deepened spiritual connectedness and awareness, shifts
that generally seem to have been permanent. 40 years later, those few
participants still living and contactable told researchers that their
recall of their experience was clear and sharp, It was obvious that for
most the surviving test subjects, their LSD experience had been an
important life-time event.
Dr Janiger’s work, and that of his colleagues who studied both LSD and
other hallucinogens, has not fallen into a vacuum. In a recent (and
fairly timid) denial of 40 years of U.S. government policy, the Food and
Drug Administration has approved a proposal by Dr Charles Grob, a
psychiatrist, to undertake a pilot study of the safety and efficacy of
psilocybin in the treatment of anxiety, depression and pain associated
with end-stage cancer. Although the focus on the medical model is
probably inevitable, the legacy of Janiger’s works is far broader than
this. Summing up his achievements, Marlene de Rios thanked her friend
and colleague for showing “…the universality of the human condition, the
psychic unity of mankind…” We haven’t heard the last of Oscar Janiger.
Roadside
(A poem inspired by The Janiger Experiment)
I sat by the roadside,
By the side of the road
In the cool of the shade.
In the sun I watched
One who walked in the dust
Of the open road.
I looked upon him
And saw ugliness,
The narrow, shifty eye,
The mouth warped
In sour distaste.
I looked upon his face
And loved him not.
In the cool of the shade
By the side of the road
The child sat beside me.
The child sat,
Looking upon the passing one
With clear and candid eyes.
When ugliness had passed,
The child said,
“He had sad feet.
“His shoes were broken,
“and I saw blood.
“I loved him
“for his sad and weary feet.”
I said nothing,
Sitting in the cool shade,
By the sun-drenched road.
But night possessed my heart.
For I had not love.
I had not understanding.
I had not seen
The feet that bled. |
