Psychotherapy with the aid of LSD

Abstract

Psychotherapeutic treatment with hallucinogens, usually called psycholytic treatment, was used at Modum Bads Nervesanatorium (MBN) on inpatients from 1961 to 1976. The hallucinogens used were LSD, psilocybin, and CZ 74. The indications and the treatment procedure at MBN are described. From 1961 to 1976, 379 patients received 2205 psycholytic treatments, mostly with LSD. From 1970 to 1976, only nine patients had their first hospitalization with psycholytic treatment. Sociodemographic data, diagnoses, length of hospitalizations, and number and kind of treatments were registered. Of the treated patients, 40% were women and 60% were men. The diagnostic distribution (ICD 7) was psychoses, 4.5%; obsessive neurosis, 11.1%; other psychoneuroses, 26.3%; sexual deviation, 6.3%; other disorders of character, 46.2%; alcoholism, 5.0%; and drug addiction, 0.5%. In 1961 it was especially obsessive neurosis (35.7%) that was treated, and in the last 7 years it was again the same diagnosis (75.6%). The mean length of hospitalization for the psycholytically treated patients was 132 days, nearly double the average of 68 days for all hospitalized patients at MBN.

□Hallucinogens, Inpatients, LSD, Psycholytic treatment, Psychotherapy.