'Behind the Shrooms Part 2': The Future of LSD

Ready for round two? Last week, Research Radio, a podcast series from The New School in New York, released Behind the Shrooms, a first installment in a two-part series that details the last half-century of psychedelic research. In this second episode, we sit down once again with New School for Social Research anthropologist Nick Langlitz to talk about how '60s counterculture colored popular perception of psychedelics, and what a therapeutic future for drugs like MDMA and LSD would look like.  

“Not all students interested in psychedelics back then ‘turned on, tuned in, and dropped out’ like Timothy Leary asked them to,” says Langlitz, who foresees a growing future for the study of psychedelics.

Many finished their dissertations, got their Ph.Ds, and — with federal restrictions on the drugs lifted in recent years — are now continuing research in the field that initially sparked so much controversy. Combine that with wealthy individuals in the tech industry (the late Steve Jobs was but one of many to publicly endorse LSD experimentation) to support the research and now is a moment of opportunity.

However, whether the future holds a prescription remedy housed in a therapeutic setting for maladies like Post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as counseling sessions to ease the fears of end-stage cancer patients, is still up in the air.

To listen to part two of “Behind the Shrooms,” click here. Don’t forget to subscribe to Research Radio through iTunes.