In the twilight of his life, as storm clouds gathered over Europe, Sigmund Freud began the most ambitious and controversial analysis of his career. With Civilisation and its Discontents, Freud put all humankind on the couch, and the neurosis he sought to expel was religion. Psychiatry’s relationship with God has been fractious ever since.
The plot of many thrillers is a vital secret from the past hidden in plain sight, a twist that upends everything we thought we knew. Now imagine that there is such a thing lurking in every human cell, something alien, billions of years old, and dictating our survival and evolution ever since. That curious something …
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For the first time in 20 years, the United States FDA has approved a new drug for Alzheimer\’s disease, news that brought both celebration and dismay. While patients and families suddenly glimpse hope, many researchers dismiss that hope as illusory.
Ketamine was once used mainly as an anaesthetic on battlefields and for horses. Later it became a party drug, the notorious ‘Special K’. Now it’s being used for depression and even to prevent suicide. Drugs have taken on new roles before, but ketamine’s career change is one of the most surprising.
Is there a mainstream role for the drugs of the counterculture? Psilocybin (the active element of magic mushrooms) and LSD (also known as acid) were research darlings in the 1950s with hopes that they could cure depression, drug addiction and even the fear of mortality. Sandoz Laboratories had introduced LSD as a psychiatric drug in 1947 and hailed it \”as a cure for everything from schizophrenia to criminal behaviour, sexual perversions, and alcoholism.\”
