In 1957, a new word that would define a generation entered the British vocabulary. That word was psychedelic.
The brainchild of a long-running, cerebral love affair between two public intellectuals – psychiatrist Humphry Osmond and writer Aldous Huxley – the word has become a symbol beyond drugs, encapsulating a broad cultural landscape.
Against the backdrop of the Cold War, technological innovations and the “Golden Age” of medicine, Osmond and Huxley spent a decade corresponding through letters, exploring radical approaches to healthcare and society.
These letters delved into the state of psychiatry during the mid-20th Century – a time when institutional asylums were coming to an end and the demonisation of mental illness was much less commonplace.
Osmond, at the time a Director of the Weyburn Mental Hospital in Saskatchewan, Canada, was working at the cutting edge of psychiatry, taking part in research looking at the use of LSD for alcoholism, and years earlier having researched mescaline and schizophrenia in London.
Osmond believed that psychedelics may be invaluable tools for understanding mental illness, providing potential insights into what patients were experiencing in their minds and opening up new avenues for research.
Coining the term psychedelic
Over the course of their friendship, Osmond and Huxley experimented frequently with mescaline and LSD, often using their sessions to reflect on mental health care or understand mental health better.
It was Osmond who first introduced Huxley – a British writer and philosopher – to Mescaline, leading to the creation of Huxley’s infamous book The Doors of Perception, describing this now-historical psychedelic experience.
Osmond and Huxley’s concerns on mental health were many, from the permeation of Freudian analysis and the architectural state of mental hospitals to how different mental states were pathologized and defined as “sick” – believing that psychedelics could transform how we view such mental conditions within the frames of our culture.
Osmond wanted a name for these drugs to present at a New York Academy of Sciences event that was easy to say and understand, which did not have other associations, and which was more inclusive of the pleasant qualities of the psychedelic experience.
At the time, these molecules were called psychotomimetics.
Psychotomimetics: “[1] (pharmacology) That induces a temporary state of altered perception and symptoms similar to those of psychosis (such as hallucinations).
They discarded a number of suggestions including phanerothyme, psychophrenics, psychoplastics, psychorhexics, psychohormics and euleutheropsychics.
Osmond suggested “psychodelics-mind manifestors” – a word made up of the Greek terms Psyche, meaning ‘mind/soul’ and Delos, meaning to ‘make visible’.
To fathom hell or go angelic
Just take a pinch of psychedelic
“Euleutheropsychics, though accurate and euphoniousis too much of a mouthful. Psychodelics seems unambiguous, not loaded with old associations and clear,” wrote Osmond.
In Huxley’s response, he enthusiastically agrees with the word, penning a phonetic rhyme:
“To plumb the depths or soar angelic,
Just take a pinch of psychedelic.”
To Osmond and Huxley, this word better described the effects of these drugs and stripped away the pathological baggage associated with psychotomimetics.
“To fathom hell or go angelic,
Just take a pinch of psychedelic,” responded Osmond.
Psychedelic was more than a term for a select group of drugs – it was a unit of cultural transmission – a meme.
And so mote it be. Psychedelic was released into the wild – a symbol that cast a spell, carving out an entire generation of anti-establishment, anti-war “hippies”, musicians who took five seconds to decide that they weren’t to be the problem but they were going to be the solution, artists who were tuning in and dropping out, writers and poets opening their own doors of perception. Today, the word is bandied around, flashing on stock indexes, pharma portfolios, academic institutions and therapy centres.
The importance of the consideration that Osmond and Huxley gave to their final choice of word is not to be underestimated.
Psychedelic was more than a term for a select group of drugs – it was a unit of cultural transmission – a meme.
The worm that had wriggled into the collective consciousness in the late ’50s birthed the ‘60s era of psychedelia, drawing backlash from the establishment. Psychedelics were declared as Public Enemy Number One and banned in 1971.
This brought scientific research screeching to a halt, but psychedelia was still alive and well and living in the hivemind.
Much like Osmond and Huxley then, today, a new generation of scientists are pushing psychedelics forward in the area of mental health, addiction and palliative care – many areas that Osmond and Huxley themselves believed these compounds could be useful for.
Now, multiple countries have increased legal access to molecules such as psilocybin and MDMA for the treatment of mental health conditions or end-of-life care.
In the letters, Osmond suggests that the future would hold a psychology that would bear some relationship to our intuitive knowledge of human beings, and hoped that psychedelics would allow psychiatrists and scientists to pay closer attention to the inner mind and the mind-body-soul relationship.
With today’s rapid expansion of access to psychedelic therapies, Osmond’s prediction is not far from reality.
Ambitions to transform humanity
Osmond and Huxley’s suggested utility for psychedelics went well beyond healthcare. When these two astute minds were exposed to these compounds, they perceived them as new technologies or tools to better humanity.
Enamoured with Eastern philosophy, Huxley believed that psychedelics could in fact help humanity attain transcendence or “moksha” – oneness with Brahman – in a society that has sold itself for a comfortable life and where individualism prevents humanity’s ability to achieve this oneness.
These tools could prevent human beings, in the face of rapid advances in technology, from becoming mere “cybernetic machines” and could give people a way to connect with the “other world” they felt humans are conditioned to lose touch with from childhood.
With the psychedelic experience often providing a direct route to experiencing feelings of oneness with the universe and life within it, these molecules offered hope in a world that was increasingly driven by individual motives and mechanical apparatus.
Today, we face rapid advancements in technology and medicine – from quantum computing, artificial intelligence and virtual reality to gene editing, 3D printing and brain implants – along with rising individualism in an age of social media and identity politics.
So, it may be no surprise that we see psychedelics and some of the radical approaches Osmond and Huxley discussed now rising back into the public eye – but this time, with more open arms.
“Nowadays, we like our answers to metaphysical questions in scientific language. It doesn’t make the answer any truer but it may receive a better hearing if it is given in the fashionable lingo.” Humphry Osmond, letter to Aldous Huxley, 13 April, 1953, The Psychedelic Prophets.
