Effects of mescaline and lysergic acid (d-LSD-25)

Introduction

Earlier clinical and experimental work had shown that mescaline produces an acute, reversible psychosis with diverse psychopathological phenomena that typically occur in a preserved setting of consciousness. Previous studies had described mescaline responses in normal subjects and in psychiatric patients, and investigators had reported overlaps and distinctions between drug-induced experiences and endogenous psychotic symptomatology. Lysergic acid diethylamide (d-LSD-25) had also been studied in normals, but less systematically in patients with schizophrenia. P. and colleagues set out to extend their earlier investigations by studying the effects of synthetic mescaline sulfate and lysergic acid in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. The principal aims were to document the phenomenology produced by these drugs in different clinical subtypes and degrees of deterioration, to compare mescaline and lysergic acid responses within the same patients when possible, and to consider the potential diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic implications of these drug-provoked states.