Harvard Psychedelic Club Research Paper

Esther Park

REL 301

Unit One – Entheogens

The Harvard Psychedelic Club

The Harvard experiment was about finding a state of yourself through psychedelic drugs that could open your mind for the better. This process was taken very seriously by a couple of professors and students from Harvard. The idea was to unlock a part of your mind through these drugs to ultimately make you find a better version of you. This project was created to help criminals and substance abusers not revert back to bad habits. They would open up their minds to the changes and find something better for themselves instead of the patterns that they were stuck in. This was the whole point to the Harvard Psilocybin Project. It was started from good intentions to something that

These four catapulted us into the psychedelic realm of life. The drugs that they distributed was not illegal nor was it against anything at the time. They were just trying to research a drug that could open up their mind. Alpert and Leary were psychologist of Harvard and sine they knew the relationship of the brain reacted with your body they had to know what these “mushrooms” from Mexico did. Leary headlined this project by starting with the mushrooms from Mexico. He had volunteers at his house and allowed them to go on their high/trip in the comfort of his living room. He wanted to control the environment and truly get the notes he wanted to see what it did to the human brain. Richard Alpert or Dass was a closeted gay who a professor for Stanford. He was the second major player for this project since he headlined it with Leary. He was a very intelligent man who live bicoastal living two separate lives in California and Massachusettes. He ultimately stayed with Harvard so that he could be on the forefront of this project with

They thought outside of the box and yes they did that by experimenting with drugs but they changed how we look at these substances. The connection inside of our heads is connected to our outer selves as well. American culture got to see what life is like unhinged. They did not bring American culture down they revolutionized it. They allowed us to see what it would be like to see a world differently through psychedelic drugs. It was about expanding our minds to something different and unique. Ultimately, Weil did not bring the foundation of this project down but gave it the light it needed to be understood. We got to understand the true connection between our “body and mind as well as changing the way we look at sickness and diseases, health and wellbeing” (p 3235). This book was probably one of the most interesting books that I have every read especially for a religious class. I was enriched with thought and could not believe this had all happened at Harvard not too many years ago. How we look at psychedelic drugs and how it treats our minds is completely skewed after reading about the research. The knowledge that I have gained from this book was amazing and it was a very great book to have read for