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Chapter 17 1. It may be a lack of just these considerations that underlies recent reports of adverse reactions in human ketamine research—see Anna Nidecker, "Alleged Abuses Acceler- ate Reform," Clinical Psychiatry News 26 (1998): 1. That is, did the scientists know what they were doing? Had they taken ketamine themselves? How carefully did they control the setting in which their subjects received ketamine? What were their attitudes and responses toward the ketamine-induced state? Of course, it is just these variables that one must think about in reading reports of adverse effects from the first wave of human psychedelic drug research in the 1950s and 1960s. 2. F. Kajtor and Stephen Szara, "Electroencephalographic Changes Induced by Dimethyl- tryptamine in Normal Adults," Confinia Neurologica 19 (1959): 52-61. 4. More recently, Doblin brought to light a highly stressful negative reaction to psilocybin in the famous Good Friday study. The original 1966 article (Walter N. Pahnke and William A. Richards, "Implications of LSD and Experimental Mysticism," Journal of Religion and Health 5 (1966): 175-208) described mystical experiences brought on by psilocybin in Harvard Divinity School students. However, we heard nothing about the inebriated fellow whom research team members chased through campus, pinned against a door, and tranquilized with an injection of antipsychotic medication! See Rick Doblin, "The Good Friday Experiment: A Twenty-Five Year Follow-Up and Methodological Critique," Jour- nal of Transpersonal Psychology 23 (1991): 1-28. Chapter 19 1. The dose of psilocybin that Swiss and German research groups generally use, 0.2 mg/kg, is less than one-half the dose we found would bring on an unmistakable psychedelic response; that is, 0.45 mg/kg. While these groups have published their data as indicating "psychedelic effects of psilocybin," I don't think what they are studying is a typical syn- drome. See E. Gouzoulis-Mayfrank, B. Thelen, E. Habermeyer, H. J. Kunert, K.-A. Kovar, H. Lindenblatt, L. Hermle, M. Spitzer, and H. Sass, "Psychopathological, Neuroendo- crine and Autonomic Effects of 3,4-Methylenedioxyethylamphetamine (MDE), Psilocy- bin and cJ-Methamphetamine in Healthy Volunteers," Psychopharmacology 142 (1999): 41—S0; and F. X. Vollenweider, K. L. Leenders, C. Scharfetter, P. Maguire, 0. Stadelmann, and J. Angst, "Positron Emission Tomography and Fluorodeoxyglucose Studies of Meta- bolic Hyperfrontality and Psychopathology in the Psilocybin Model of Psychosis," Neuropsychopharmacology 16(1997):357—72. We continued escalating the dose up until 1.1 mg/kg, at which point the two volun- teers receiving that quantity felt it was "too much." One became briefly disoriented, and the other experienced a sense of nearly overwhelming "mental pressure." We were going to use 0.9 mg/kg as our high-end dose of psilocybin, more than four times the European "psychedelic dose," before additional circumstances led to my leaving the university. Chapter 20 1. Rick J. Strassman and Marc Galanter, "The Abhidharma: A Cross-Cultural Application of Meditation," International Journal Social Psychiatry 26 (1980): 283-90. 356 * NOTES 3. Sai-Halasz et al. (1958). 5. See endnote #1, chapter 11.