Osmond and the early researchers stressed the importance of aesthetics and the divine to LSD therapy. Are those elements sorely lacking down at your local ketamine clinic?

During the Q&A session after Vital’s first lecture I asked Dr Dyck what she learned about human nature from her research, that we can apply to the present.

”There’s a risk of reducing history to a cliché to push against,” she responded “or seeing history as ‘they had it wrong and in the past and we’re better now’.”

The early days of LSD research are easily vilified. Spirituality is a dirty word in scientific circles right now: let alone reincarnation or astrology, both of which Stanislav Grof is quick to mention. It’s even considered unprofessional for the healer to develop a connection with the patient. 20th century Western scientists are easily cast cast as distant, privileged figures electro-shocking schizophrenics behind the asylum gates, collaborating with the CIA in return for research permits. And now the spectre of ‘corporadelics’ hangs over LSD’s renaissance.

“We see lots of competing, profit-seeking ways of turning psychedelics into something that, I would argue, are going to be less accessible”

“However there’s still something that we can take from the spirit, the optimism, the motivation, the intentions of these early Western researchers,” says Dyck, “for example, a lot of people who went into these trials were designated as patients – but came through feeling they were collaborators. It pushes back against the competing model of engaging in scientific rigour, where methodology overwhelmed the need for investigating human behaviour in a more diverse way.”

Osmond, Hoffer and their in-house architect Kyoshi Yazumi (more of whom below) were revamping Canada’s mental health system as part of an ambitious pledge by Canada’s new socialist government. Innovations included day trips outside the famously foreboding asylum for inpatients, art and music therapy, and family visits, plus more autonomy for the nurses… who took LSD to ‘empathise better with the patient experience’.

“The early researchers definitely were trying to align a health access point within a publicly funded system,” she responded, “That is certainly not on the horizon today. We see lots of competing, profit-seeking ways of turning psychedelics into something that, I would argue, are going to be less accessible.”