Effects of mescaline and lysergic acid (d-LSD-25)

This early clinical study (1952) investigated the effects of mescaline (0.4 – 0.6g) and LSD (10-120μg) in patients with schizophrenia (n=59 & 21) and found that it aggravated their symptoms and made their psychic integration even more disorganized compared to healthy individuals.

Abstract

Methods: The effects of mescaline and lysergic acid were studied in schizophrenic patients.

Results: It was found that physiological changes were produced in these patients and that their mental symptomatology was markedly aggravated.

Discussion: The observations made with the above-mentioned drugs on normal individuals were compared with those seen in schizophrenic patients. Mescaline and lysergic acid are drugs that disorganize the psychic integration of a person. This disorganization is much more apparent in schizophrenics than in normals. The diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic use of these drugs is also discussed.

Authors: Paul H. Hoch, James P. Cattell & Harry H. Pennes

Summary

Mescaline produces an acute reversible psychosis in normal subjects and has also been studied in mental patients. The present study follows our earlier investigations, which were recently reported, and discusses further observations made on patients suffering from schizophrenia.

The reactions of schizophrenics to mescaline may be classified under the following headings: physiological symptoms, disturbances of perceptual activity, mental content, and emotional alterations.

Hallucinations occurred quite regularly in schizophrenic patients. The predominance of visual hallucinations corresponds to the same observations made on normal subjects.

Anxiety increase, hostility, depression, concern with pre-existent symptomatology, evasiveness, vagueness, and denial were observed in schizophrenic patients under the influence of the drug. Paranoid manifestations were also observed in some patients.

Some patients verbalized their mental content more openly than before, and some relived actual traumatic experiences. However, not too many patients released material not previously verbalized, and sometimes a patient refused to speak, blocked, or inability to describe the strange experiences.

Mescaline causes sexual hallucinations in schizophrenic patients, who usually do not verhalize much sexual material. Some patients talk about having breasts like little girls, being raped, and becoming a man.

Normal subjects and schizophrenic patients under the drug showed similarities and dissimilarities in their reactions. The vegetative changes, visual hallucinations, illusions, and distortions of body image occur in both groups.

Nevertheless, there are differences between the reactions of normals and schizophrenics to the drug, such as euphoria occurring in normals, sexual content and behavior being frequently encountered in schizophrenics under the drug, and anxiety being more marked and disorganization of thought and emotional patterns being very probably more common and intense.

There is a difference in reaction between patients who have a schizophrenic illness and normal individuals and schizophrenic individuals under the influence of mescaline.

Lysergic acid, a chemical similar to mescaline, produces similar symptoms when taken orally. The symptoms usually peak after 2 hours and then begin to decline after 4 to 6 hours.

d-LSD-25 produces vegetative symptoms in normals, such as nausea, malaise, headaches, dizziness, palpitation, dilated pupils, sweating, and diuresis. Perceptual changes are in the foreground, and a number of patients show ataxia, and at times bradycardia.

21 patients suffering from schizophrenia were studied with lysergic acid. The mental changes occurred mainly if 6o gamma or more were used, and sometimes even over 6o gamma the symptoms produced were unreliable.

Lysergic acid caused deterioration in the patients’ vegetative, autonomic, motor, and sensory systems, including chilliness, headache, trembling, flushing, pupillary dilatation, numbness of hands, sense of heat, nausea, vomiting, unsteadiness, and hyperacusis.

Visual hallucinations occurred with a significantly lower frequency with lysergic acid than with mescaline, and the other perceptual disturbances occurred with about the same frequency. Somatic disturbances were more diffuse and intense with mescaline than with lysergic acid, and unreality feelings were experienced by the majority of patients. Lysergic acid intoxication is associated with impaired concentration and thinking ability. Some patients report a therapeutic aspect of the sedative-like effect. Patients with pseudoneurotic schizophrenia showed no frank schizophrenic thinking disorder with lysergic acid or mescaline, but some patients became quite anxious and showed increased verbal productivity. Emotional disturbances were common under lysergic acid, and were mixed with increased anxiety in some patients. Frank paranoid delusional constellations were quite infrequent as compared with the responses to mescaline, and were associated with irritability, resentment, and a suspicious attitude.

In all 3 groups of schizophrenic patients, the well-preserved first group showed the most intense overt emotional reactions to mescaline or lysergic acid, while the second group showed more intense physiological and perceptual alterations.

The response of a given person to mescaline is complex and depends on many physiological and psychological factors at a given time. In most patients, however, the response to mescaline is the same as before, with the exception of decreased anxiety, tension, and unreality feelings.

We have used mescaline and lysergic essentially for investigative purposes, and we believe that valuable contributions can be made to the understanding of the organic and functional psychoses through the use of these drugs. We do not believe that the evidence available today would permit their reliable use for diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic purposes.

Mescaline has been used by some investigators to accelerate psychotherapy or to obtain psychodynamic material not otherwise available prior to the drug treatment. However, in many patients whose psychodynamic structures had been well investigated prior to the drug experiment, nothing new was learned.

Mescaline and lysergic acid produce physiological changes in schizophrenic patients and aggravate their mental symptomatology. These drugs are used in the diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic treatment of schizophrenia.

Study details

Compounds studied
LSD Mescaline

Participants
80

Compound Details

The psychedelics given at which dose and how many times

Mescaline 0.2 - 0.4
g | 1x LSD 10 - 120
μg | 1x