A new generation of scientists calls them antactogens, empathogens and entheogens -- "fantastic" drugs that could help us learn more about the mind's mysteries, cure psychological problems and stop drug abuse. To others, however, these are rightfully banned substances newly cloaked in clinical names.
Most people know them simply as psychedelic drugs -- LSD, ecstasy and hallucinogenic mushrooms, to name a few.
Almost 25 years after the federal government all but shut down psychedelic drug research involving human subjects, these academics are testing the illicit, mind-bending drugs on people -- with the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. These researchers say the government shutdown left major questions unanswered -- and that America may be overlooking the wonder drugs of the future.
"We're like early man who says fire's too dangerous," says Rick Doblin, 40, a Harvard-trained social scientist who has become the self-appointed spokesman for the new wave of research. "We're not even at the stage where we figured out fire keeps you warm in the winter."
Most of these academics were only teen-agers when Timothy Leary's '60s-era pro-drug proselytizing helped prompt the government to finally shut the door on such research in 1970. Now they sport ties and cropped hair, have new names for the drugs, and say they play by the rules.
But while this group of researchers is diverse, serious and seems to have more degrees than a protractor, the politics of this kind of study is again at issue.
"It's the same old thing in disguise," says Wayne J. Roques, a Drug Enforcement Administration official based in Miami. "They believe they can open the door to legalization."
Mr. Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, a nonprofit lobby tied to new psychedelic research projects involving humans, acknowledges that legalization is his ultimate end. His strategy is to support science that would prove psychedelic drugs have "therapeutic potential."
Not all the researchers like being affiliated with this kind of talk, though.
"I think hallucinogenic drugs are potentially quite dangerous and should remain tightly restricted," says Dr. Rick Strassman, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico's School of Medicine.
Charles S. Grob, director of child psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles and lead researcher in a study of MDMA ("ecstasy"), says, "I want to be distanced as far as possible" from the politics.
Most of the new studies involve university and private funding, some of which has been secured by Mr. Doblin's group.
In 1989, the FDA reopened the door to studies of the potential of psychedelic drugs. The result is that "aboveboard research with psychedelics is becoming viable, respected," Dr. Grob says.
The first wave of research started that way. LSD, for example, was happened upon in 1943 as Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann was trying to synthesize a substance that would aid blood circulation. He ended up with a hallucinogenic drug he hoped could be used in psychotherapy.
Oscar Janiger, a retired Santa Monica, Calif., psychiatrist, researched the effects of LSD by giving it to more than 1,000 people between 1954 and 1962. His subjects included more than a few stars -- Cary Grant and Rita Moreno to name two. Then the government shut down his lab. "Nobody gave us a good answer," says Dr. Janiger, 77.
Then people like Leary and Ken Kesey ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") preached about drugs they had discovered -- and LSD escaped from academia.
The specter of drug abuse and AIDS in the '80s created a climate friendlier to new drug testing of all sorts. In 1989, the FDA established a Pilot Drug Evaluation staff "to do a better job of responding to the needs of the research community with a minimum of bureaucracy," says an FDA official who did not want to be named. The point was to smooth the way for drugs such as AZT, a treatment for AIDS, and substances that might help reduce drug abuse, the official says.
But the result was also that psychedelic drug research got approved, as long as it is done "real carefully and with a lot of people watching to make sure no one gets hurt," the FDA official says.
Some researchers say psychedelic drugs can be used for
psychotherapy-aided attempts to end drug dependence, for example, or help a criminal turn over a new leaf.