Quote Originally Posted by Breukelen advocaat
I remember reading about the prisoners who participated in the experiments. One guy, a longtime junkie who had never done psychedelics, seemed incredibly calm the whole time to the people performing the test -which was unusual even under the best of circumstances when you first take large doses of psychedelics. This was because, as best as I can remember, his mindset was, ??Hey, I??m in jail, totally stoned out of my head, and it??s completely legal.? That was funny.

The psychedelic movement, in the opinion of some people such as Albert Hofmann, was sidetracked by , Leary, et al, and began to appear dangerous and irresponsible. I don't know if this is accurate, but it's at least partially true. Things went really fast in the 60's - from small underground drug and freedom movements, to a full-blown culture shock. The Vietnam war, social changes, and various other upheavals, probably hurt the chances of drug acceptance.

Well, we're back to square one with the plants and chemicals - but it's better than zero. Back in the day I thought that by the 21st Century, AT LEAST marijuana would be legalized.
I recall hearing Dr. Hoffman speaking about Leary.
His bottom line was that the introducton of LSD and psilocybes to the society and general use could have been handled better and with better results. However he didn't claim Leary was either wrong or scien tifically uninformed, just that he got overexcited and tried to get too much done too soon.
I'm not a Leary apologist but it does admittedly bother me a bit when the only thing surviving of his work seems to be the part where he went a bit over the edge with his enthusiams. It's sad when one recalls that he was a well respected member of Harvard Uni. Sic transit... I guess.

The reasons shrooms and LSD were viewed as dangerous have more to do with the political environment and the effect of the substances had in terms of being able to view the propaganda at the time with some detachment. They quite literally seemed to free people's minds fromm the war hysteria and civil rights debate an d allowed people to make up their own minds about what's what. That didn't sit well with the authorities, in my opinion.