Recounting this shady history of abuse and exploitation in a new paper, Andrew Jones from the University of Toronto says the use of LSD as a “correctional tool” in Canadian facilities should serve as an example of how not to use psychedelic substances. Beginning in the late 50s, he says that “enthusiasm about the drug’s potential led several experienced and knowledgeable psychedelic therapists to use it on vulnerable populations in diverse institutional settings, such as correctional facilities.”
The misuse of acid took off after psychiatrists Duncan Blewett and Nicholas Chwelos – who worked for Saskatchewan’s Department of Psychiatric Research – recommended LSD-assisted psychotherapy to treat a group of young, repeat offenders in a prison in the city of Regina in 1958. Shortly afterwards, the pair received permission to dose approximately 30 inmates, though results were far less positive than the authorities had hoped for.
Rather than helping the prisoners rehabilitate, the drug left many of them “confused, tense and suspicious”, ultimately leading Blewett to conclude that LSD “offers less to prisoners” than it does to other populations.
Yet the failure of this experiment didn’t dampen the hopes of Mark Eveson, who was appointed chief psychologist at the Kingston Prison for Women in Ontario in 1961. “LSD therapy, he proposed, presented the ‘possibility of ending criminal involvement’ in ‘approximately eight hours,’ a fact that should ‘arouse intense interest in all concerned in rehabilitation’,” writes Jones.
After giving high doses of the drug – sometimes in combination with Ritalin – to 23 women at the prison, Eveson and the Canadian government were later sued by inmate Dorothy Proctor, who claimed she had not consented to taking LSD and was made to take the drug in solitary confinement.
The case was eventually settled out of court, although this would not be the end of the legal problems faced by unscrupulous psychedelic therapists. In 1967, psychiatrist Elliot Barker introduced what he called the “Total Encounter Capsule” as a form of treatment at the Oakridge maximum-security psychiatric hospital for the “criminally insane” in Ontario.
Essentially just a steel room where inmates would spend days at a time, the “capsule” became a laboratory for some of Barker’s wildly unethical experiments. For instance, Jones recounts how, “On some occasions, to promote ‘genuine encounter between persons,’ the inmates would sit in the capsule while naked or after taking LSD.”
The program was later taken over by Gary Maier, who used to give acid to pairs of inmates inside the capsule, allowing them to “trip sit” for each other with no professional supervision. As nuts as all this sounds, an official report into the goings-on at Oakridge later concluded that “psychopaths are being treated with success.”
Unfortunately for Barker, Maier, and the Canadian government, however, times eventually changed and all three were sued by the Oakridge inmates for “inhumane treatment” in 2001. The victims eventually won their case in 2021, more than 50 years after the abuse had taken place.
Underlining the extent of this malpractice, Jones says “the Oakridge experiment remains one of the most morally shocking examples of LSD therapy.”
“Those working with psychedelics today should keep LSD’s history as a correctional tool in mind when championing the use of these drugs,” he concludes.
The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
https://www.iflscience.com/canadas-dark-history-of-giving-lsd-to-prisoners-69821
Keywords: psychedelic history, LSD, prisons, Canada, mad scientists
Citation: Jones A (2023) Confronting the figure of the “mad scientist” in psychedelic history: LSD’s use as a correctional tool in the postwar period. Front. Psychol. 14:1129428. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1129428
Edited by:
Erika Dyck, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Reviewed by:
Michael Pettit, York University, Canada
Copyright © 2023 Jones. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Andrew Jones, [email protected]
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1129428/full
