Erika Dyck Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD on the Canadian Prairies

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Erika Dyck Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD on the Canadian Prairies (Winnipeg: The University of Manitoba Press, 2012).

Erika Dyck provides the reader and interesting view of early historical psychological research on LSD, lysergic acid diethyl-amide. This book is composed of Dyck’s scientific interpretation and dissection of earlier psychedelic psychiatry research by Humphry Osmond, and Abraham Hoffer. A Swiss biochemist named Albert Hofmann dissolved a minimal amount of d-lysergic acid diethyl-amide in a glass of water and digested this new synthetic drug in April 1943. Three hours later he begins to feel dizzy and his vision was distorted. Hofmann recollects this as a surreal journey as if what he saw was created by the famous paintings of Salvador Dali unexplained carnivalesque or at some moments even nightmarish hallucinations. The drug began gaining support from pharmaceutical companies as something that can possibly be beneficial for future scientific study. Saskatchewan soon became one of the epicenters harvesting break through biochemical innovation and experimentation with LSD from the 1950s to 1960s.
In the year 1944 Saskatchewan was the first province to elect the first social democratic, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) the party remained as the leaders for four consecutive four-year terms. The government had an interest in science, medicine, agriculture, and technology. This provincial power was one of the first to offer a funded health care system, in 1966 the Canadian federal government used the system created by the CCF. This is important to note because without the support, and accessible funding for research it allowed psychologist like Osmond, and Hoffer to investigate psychedelic psychiatr...

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...ibility with a wide range of experts and primary sources that the reader identifies as believable. As the reader Dyck compiled her knowledge and that of others that I was easily able to identify as key points to stress. She uses proper flow to organize a well balanced and exciting amount of sources that interest the reader and capture their attention to spread Dyck’s claims. She writes her historical novel based on solidifying themes and arguments with extensive sources that makes her claims hard to dismiss. Already I’ve researched other medical therapies using other sensitive illegal substances marijuana, MDMA, and cocaine that may be on breakthroughs of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and cancer related diseases. Maybe more funding should be invested in this research to better gain understanding and awareness of the possible valuable advances that these drugs may offer.

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