Rick Doblin had a vision. The Chicago-born Jew had grown up under the shadow of World War II, and came of age feeling that the capacities of the human brain had been undernourished and overlooked. The mind, Doblin thought, was a powerful tool that often fell short of its full potential and, as a result, a profound cultural insanity had emerged.
He arrived at these conclusions in 1982, 10 years after dropping out of New College as a freshman. His first LSD trip, just months after he enrolled in the school, had cracked open the idea that emotional transformation could be achieved through psychedelic drug use. By bringing the unconsciousness to the surface through psychedelics, Doblin felt the future of humanity could change. Everyone from seekers to those with a variety of physical and mental struggles — including Obsessive Compulsive Disorder — could benefit.
"It seemed like a totally right way and it still makes sense," said Doblin, 51. He returned to New College in 1982, wrote his thesis on transpersonal psychology and psychedelic research, got a doctorate from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and went on to found the Sarasota-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Since 1985, the nonprofit MAPS has poured nearly $3 million into research and education concerning the chemicals behind psychedelics, such as mushroom-derived psilocybins, and methylenedioxymethamphetamines (or MDMA), first patented by the Germany company Merck in 1914.
After years of fact-finding and fighting against federal groups like the Drug Enforcement Agency, Doblin's association has seen small victories in recent years. Recently, MAPS launched a five-year, $5-million campaign to support research in the field of psychedelics. The aid is expected to fuel studies like that being undertaken by Francisco Moreno, a University of Arizona College of Medicine psychology professor, who asks whether psilocybin could be used as a therapeutic agent for those with OCD who fail to respond to standard treatments. Behind the study is whether psilocybin, and the activity caused by serotonin on some receptor sites, safely decreases the symptoms of OCD.
"We hope that they will have treatments available to them not currently available," Doblin said by phone from his office in Massachusetts. "There are people who have tried treatments but that did not work. This means more options for people."
Doblin, meanwhile, makes note of the leaps that were made in psychedelic research up until 1963, when federal amendments were passed that circumscribed psychedelic-centered study. The act essentially limited psychedelic research to federal and state agencies, or permitted it only with direct and hard-to-obtain approvals by those agencies. The government's new position followed the famed "Good Friday Experiment," in which a student of Harvard professor Timothy Leary performed a study with 20 divinity students on Good Friday, 1962, in Boston University's Marsh Chapel. The Harvard team gave psilocybin to half the divinity students as part of a double-blind study, and gave the other half a placebo. As explained by Doblin and noted in his Harvard doctoral thesis, the Good Friday Experiment was seen at the time to have created a mystical effect in the psilocybin-swallowing students, and one that had "lasting benefits."
Back at MAPS' home base in Sarasota off Beneva Road, the nonprofit touts a 1,500-person worldwide membership, with a large number of psychiatrists and doctors backing its plan for expanded research. Locally, there are more than 30 members, said Valerie Mojeiko, director of membership and sales and a New College alum. Membership ranges from $20 to more than $250 annually and provides access to bulletins and MAPS-published books.
allyson.gonzalez@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Dec 8-14, 2004.