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01/11/2006:

"Psychiatrist calls for end to 30-year taboo over use of LSD as a medical treatment"

British psychiatrists are beginning to debate the highly sensitive issue of using LSD for therapeutic purposes to unlock secrets buried in the unconscious which may underlie the anxious or obsessional behaviour of some of their patients.

The UK pioneered this use of LSD in the 1950s. But psychiatrists found their research proposals rejected and their work dismissed once "acid" hit the streets in the mid-60s and uncontrolled use of the hallucinogenic drug became a social phenomenon.

Today, on the 100th birthday of Albert Hofmann, the scientist who discovered the mind-expanding properties of lysergic acid diethylamide in Switzerland, one consultant psychiatrist is openly risking controversy to urge that the debate on the therapeutic potential of LSD be reopened. Ben Sessa has been invited to give a presentation on psychedelic drugs to the Royal College of Psychiatrists in March - the first time the subject will have been discussed by the institution in 30 years.

"I really want to present a dispassionate medical, scientific evidence-based argument," says Dr Sessa. "I do not condone recreational drug use. None of this is tinged by any personal experience.

"Scientists, psychiatrists and psychologists were forced to give up their studies for socio-political reasons. That's what really drives me."
guardian.co,uk