The God Chemical: Brain Chemistry And Mysticism

Barbara Bradley Hagerty writes for All Things Considered (NPR), May 18, 2009:

"In a study at Johns Hopkins, a majority of test subjects given a psychedelic drug reported having full-blown mystical experiences. Such research is shedding light on the chemical reactions that take place in the brain when people feel they're encountering God....

"At 9 p.m., 32 of us crawled into the teepee; for the next 11 hours, the young men drummed, the roadman prayed, and everyone but me ingested a lot of peyote...

"The first major rigorous study of psychedelics and spirituality occurred on Good Friday in 1962. In the basement of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, researchers from Harvard gave 10 divinity students LSD to see if the sacred setting, combined with drugs, would spark a mystical experience. It did. Soon afterward, researchers at other prominent universities began administering psychedelic drugs to volunteers in controlled settings.

"By the end of the 1960s, the U.S. government had had enough of Timothy Leary's call to "turn on, tune in, drop out" and were concerned that a generation was conducting its own uncontrolled experiments with drugs and spirituality. In the early '70s, the experiments ended.

"Until now..."

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