ipl-logo

Harvard Psychedelic Club Research Paper

1166 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Paper on psychedelic drugs

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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

Show More
Related
1172 Words | 5 Pages

The book Memoirs of an Addicted Brain follows Marc Lewis and his adventures in doing different types of drugs. Marc goes to boarding school in Boston, Tabor, where he was homesick and being bullied by the other children. Marc starts doing drugs to fit in. He started using legal drugs like cough medicine and alcohol but progressed to doing more illegal drugs like marijuana, heroin, methamphetamine, and LSD. The more illegal drugs were accessible at the Berkeley university since there was a large hippie movement.

Read More
1939 Words | 8 Pages

In Marc Lewis’s novel Memoirs of an Addicted Brain (2012), his experience with marijuana was notably a rollercoaster ride. His first ordeal with the drug occurred when he was a teenager and decided to purchase marijuana from a friend. He began to use it at a period of stress induced by his friends, school and his parents. The first time he decided to take the drug, he dealt with coughing fits until he finally started to feel its effects. His description of his “high”, included the the drug placing him in a more imaginative, creative and happier state.

Read More
1206 Words | 5 Pages

LSD’s ability to incapacitate its victim made it the mind-controlling drug that the CIA was searching for. Bulger’s experience highlights the utter lack of supervision that led MK-Ultra to conduct these inhumane experiments. Ken Kesey, the author of the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, actually volunteered for the MK-Ultra experiments while in college at Stanford University. Kesey became a sensational promoter of LSD, going on to host LSD parties he called “Acid Tests”. These parties influenced, “the early development of hippie culture and kick-started the 1960s psychedelic drug scene” (History.com Editors).

Read More
905 Words | 4 Pages

He points out that many of those who experimented with drugs in the 1960s developed addictions or other problems, which continue to have an impact on American society

Read More
391 Words | 2 Pages

he EyesKube addiction simulation showed me that it's extremely hard to live life as an addict. They constantly have to be aware of their surroundings every time they feel a craving for a drug so that when they use it no one can notice. I felt that I needed to be aware of my surroundings every time I was thirsty and had to find a way to add my EyesKubes into my drink without anyone noticing. I was anxious and stressed simply trying to add EyesKubes into my drink so I can only imagine what I would feel if I was trying to do drugs everyday. It showed me that there is an added negative to drugs.

Read More
1179 Words | 5 Pages

He was very motivated. In high school, he decided he wanted to go to Dartmouth, and was determined to make it

Read More
931 Words | 4 Pages

Soldiers receiving a draft letter for war is typically a very hard and stressful time in their lives, especially the draft for Vietnam, the only draft America has had so far. Most of the men being drafted were young and unexperienced in war, making them hate it even more. They were taken and dropped into some of the worst circumstances the U.S. military has ever seen and expected to fight alongside people they had never even met before. As the war went on, the platoon members would bond, and have to watch their new friends get injured or die right in front of them, and wonder why they didn’t die as well. The harshness of the war made the soldiers look for any kind of escape from reality or way to make war easier, and they found drugs to be

Read More
947 Words | 4 Pages

Before graduation time came around, he dropped out of Harvard and went

Read More
2002 Words | 9 Pages

These drugs were there for multiple purposes in the Vietnam war with both positive and negative side effects for soldiers. These drugs affected these soldiers in the war both mentally and physically. These drugs did help the soldiers by numbing their mind and helping them get through each day and to keep moving forward even when the unimaginable happened. But these drugs would also have negative side effects to the mind and this would mean that the soldiers would feel maybe even more depressed and unhappy once they came down off their high which would mean that they would become more addicted to the drugs because they keep wanting to be on that high. There was also a very high number of drugs in the war as well and they were relatively easy to come by.

Read More
1956 Words | 8 Pages

He does a commendable job of avoiding prejudicial tropes of the era and does not demonize the drugs themselves, noting that the drug “was neither diabolical nor divine” (63). By outlining the physical, psychological, and social effects of addiction, Stevenson presents a realistic portrayal of this problem without demonizing the person suffering from addiction, and in couching as a metaphor he successfully avoids exploiting addicts as well. The narrative, especially at the time of its publication, was suspenseful, terrifying, and enthralling, and though these elements may not have aged well as the work seems rather tame by today’s standards, the story of addiction has only increased in

Read More
777 Words | 4 Pages

I never forced it on anybody. I never tried to talk somebody into using drugs so I could make a buck.” (Hinton 147). Mark had very good motives for selling the drugs. He just wanted to get money for him and Mark.

Read More
1820 Words | 8 Pages

We also get to read what kinds of regulations have been placed upon the drugs. These three parts give a bunch of new information that we have never thought about before and it clearly is shown as being something globally historical. Being a major part of history that has now continued into today, there are several parts of the drug history that we already may know about

Read More
338 Words | 2 Pages

He made new friends with others that introduced him to other drugs and furthered his

Read More
1864 Words | 8 Pages

Drugs are substances that trigger temporary changes in the body which may result in such a pleasurable and relaxing effect. Some of the types can slow down the nervous system’s action, while other types can have the exact opposite effect; spurring the nervous system into rapid action. Drugs are connected to cravings or addiction since a person’s body starts yearning for drugs after he or she has taken it for a while. Drugs affect consciousness significantly! They may cause people to hear or see things that aren’t real (hallucinations), experiencing mood swings, or may even distort people’s perceptions.

Read More
516 Words | 3 Pages

Additionally, psychedelic drugs were extremely popular for recreational activities during the 1960’s and 1970’s. In recent years, there has been a lot of research carried out to understand what kind of effects that psychedelic drugs have on humans. It has been proven that this group of drug can cause both physical and psychological effects on humans. This type of psychoactive drug can cause a person to see, hear, and feel things that seem real to them, but do not actually exist.

Read More

More about Harvard Psychedelic Club Research Paper

Related Topics

Open Document