Aired 07/22/12

Did you know that LSD is being tested as a treatment for alcoholism? Or that psilocybin is being taken to ease the anxiety of late stage cancer patients? In government-sanctioned studies.

Psychedelic substances have been used for ceremony and as medicine for millennia. Such properties were being cultivated and studied in the US in the 60s and early 70s until widespread and careless use of psychedelics and sensational media reports produced a backlash. I will talk with CHARLES GROB MD about the latest scientific research, including his own ground-breaking studies. And with JAMES FADIMAN about the vision, ideas and advice in his book, PSYCHEDELIC EXPLORERS: Safe, Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys.

CHARLES S. GROB, M.D, Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine, conducted the first government approved psychobiological research study of MDMA, was the principal investigator on a research project in the Amazon studying the visionary plant brew, ayahuasca, and investigated the efficacy of psilocybin to treat anxiety in terminally ill patients. A founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute, devoted to fostering research on psychedelics, he is the editor of Hallucinogens: A Reader and co-editor with Roger Walsh of Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics.

JAMES FADIMAN did his undergraduate work at Harvard and his graduate work at Stanford, doing pioneering research with the Harvard Group, the West Coast Research Group in Menlo Park, and Ken Kesey. A former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a professor of psychology, he currently teaches at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA, which he helped found in 1975. He is the author of PSYCHEDELIC EXPLORERS: Safe, Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys.