Civil rights. Feminism. Gay rights. Environmentalism. Meditation. Yoga. Natural childbirth. Much of the politics and culture of the 1960s has been absorbed into mainstream America. Not psychedelic drugs — not yet, anyway. That will soon change if David Bronner, the CEO of family-owned soap-maker Dr. Bronner’s, has his way. “Psychedelic medicine is the last and arguably the …
MDMA, the man-made drug often called ecstasy or molly, has a colorful history. It was patented in 1914 by the German drug company Merck, and set aside for decades. The US Army studied it during the Cold War, perhaps seeking a chemical weapon or interrogation tool. Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, an iconoclastic chemist, rediscovered MDMA during …
This is a remarkable moment for psychedelics. Elite universities, including Johns Hopkins and Imperial College in London, have opened centers to research the medical benefits of such drugs as psilocybin, a hallucinogen found in certain mushrooms. The nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Research (MAPS) is recruiting people suffering from PTSD to participate in FDA-approved clinical trials using MDMA, better known as …
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