Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research since the Decade of the Brain

335 Pages·2012·1.95 MB·English

by  Nicolas Langlitz

Neuropsychedelia

Neuropsychedelia
The Revival of Hallucinogen Research
since the Decade of the Brain
Nicolas Langlitz
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley • Los Angeles • London
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© 2013 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Langlitz, Nicolas, 1975–.
Neuropsychedelia : the revival of hallucinogen
research since the decade of the brain / Nicolas
Langlitz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-27481-5 (cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-520-27482-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Hallucinogenic drugs—Research.
2. Neuropsychopharmacology. 3. Hallucinogenic
drugs and religious experience. I. Title.
BF209.H34L36 2013
154.4—dc23
2012022916
Manufactured in the United States of America
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
In keeping with a commitment to support
environmentally responsible and sustainable printing
practices, UC Press has printed this book on 50-pound
Enterprise, a 30% post-consumer-waste, recycled,
deinked fi ber that is processed chlorine-free.
It is acid-free and meets all ansi/niso (z 39.48)
requirements.
Cover image and design: Thomas Ng
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Neuropsychopharmacology
as Spiritual Technology 1
1. Psychedelic Revival 24
2. Swiss Psilocybin and US Dollars 53
3. The Varieties of Psychedelic Lab Experience 83
4. Enacting Experimental Psychoses 132
5. Between Animality and Divinity 166
6. Mystic Materialism 204
Conclusion: Fieldwork in Perennial Philosophy 243
Notes 267
Bibliography 275
Index 307
Figure section follows p. 131.

Acknowledgments
Although I happen to be an anthropologist not primarily interested in
cultural differences, let me point one out: in Germany, we keep acknowl-
edgments short or omit them altogether (somewhat in the spirit of the
proverb Nix gesagt ist genug gelobt: nothing said is praise enough). In
American academic publishing, by contrast, this peculiar genre has come
to blossom and sprawl exuberantly since the late twentieth century.
A critical and refl exive ethnographic gaze has unmasked these public
expressions of gratitude and confessions of intellectual debt as a form of
gift giving that promotes the cohesion of a scientifi c community as well
as the author’s career by repaying elders for their guidance and protec-
tion through displays of reliance, esteem, and loyalty (Ben-Ari 1987).
However, following the ethos of the ongoing revival of psychedelic
research, which has given up the countercultural rebellion against social
conventions and the power of science, this book aspires to be refl exive
but not critical. Thus, its German author will do his best to be a good
participant observer and join in the ritual of acknowledgments, if not
as lavishly as might be expected in an American publication these days.
“ ‘Gratitude is heaven itself,’ says Blake—and I know now exactly
what he was talking about,” wrote Aldous Huxley after his experiences
with mescaline and LSD. The drugs had helped him understand many of
the more obscure utterances to be found in the writings of the mystics,
he claimed, for example, the unspeakable sense of thankfulness for the
privilege of being born into this universe. Being more Kantian than
vii
viii | Acknowledgments
Swedenborgian in temperament, I will not chime in with this lyric enthu-
siasm, but I believe I also have an inkling of what Blake and Huxley
meant (and, to the extent that a person rather than a molecule could
claim credit for this insight on my part, it would be Mügül Andrews
whose Sufi c spirituality strangely infused my persistent materialism).
However, what seems to make the mere fact of existence a privilege
rather than a curse is the company of family, friends, colleagues, and
students whom I would like to thank.
Among these numerous people, I am particularly grateful to Franz
Vollenweider and Mark Geyer, who were kind and trustful enough to
host this anthropologist in their laboratories and endure his nagging
questions; my dear friends Boris Quednow and Felix Hasler, who shared
so much more with me than juicy stories (better to be published in a
later edition) and their offi ce; and all their most generous and forth-
coming coworkers populating the pages of this book. I would also like
to express my heartfelt gratitude to Paul Rabinow for his intellectually
fostering and fondly caring mentorship in the trenches of the Anthro-
pology Department at Berkeley. Lorraine Daston’s Department II and
especially Fernando Vidal’s Cerebral Subject research group at the Max
Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin provided an atmo-
sphere of scholarly leisure, academic rigor, and intellectual stimulation
that facilitated postdoctoral rumination of my ethnographic fi ndings. In
the course of this, the Volkswagen Foundation’s European Platform for
Life Sciences, Mind Sciences and the Humanities provided an experien-
tially rich opportunity to rethink the relationship between ethnography,
philosophy, and neuroscience in ways that I can only begin to articulate
in this book. My colleagues and students at the New School for Social
Research in New York must take credit for creating and sustaining
a warm and vibrant milieu, in which I feel at home as in no other
institution before. I could go on and on and there would at least be an
anecdote to tell in appreciation of every single person. But since this will
either happen in the chapters to come or is really between me and the
wonderful people who have helped this book see the light of the day,
I will not even try to clear my debts. Instead I sincerely apologize for
the formalist brevity and list the remaining benefactors in alphabetical
order: Daniel Allemann, David Andel, Peter Andrews, Matthew Baggott,
Oliver Bosch, Philippe Bourgois, Rudolf Brenneisen, Scott Brown, Carlo
Caduff, Rael Cahn, Suparna Choudhury, Adele Clarke, Lawrence Cohen,
Philipp Csomor, Talia Dan-Cohen, Jörg Daumann, Rick Doblin, Richard
Doyle, Paul Dietschy, Hubert Dreyfus, Alex Gamma, Gantt Galloway,
Acknowledgments | ix
John Gilmore, Euphrosyne Gouzoulis-Mayfrank, Jeffrey Guss, Michael
Hagner, Anne Hermann, Lawrence Hirschfeld, Dominique Holstein,
Amelie Ulrika Magdalena Hoshor, Randi Irwin, Reed Malcolm, Emily
Martin, Maja Maurer, Valdas Noreika, Thomas Metzinger, Hamilton
Morris, Michael Kometer, Bia Labate, Dave Nichols, Francisco Ortega,
Torsten Passie, Susan Powell, Margarete Pratschke, Vincent Quinn,
Hugh Raffl es, Vyjayanthi Rao, James Redfi eld, Tobias Rees, Victoria
Risbrough, Janet Roitman, Nikolas Rose, Stephen Ross, Gary Bruno
Schmid, Pete Sharp, Ann and Alexander Shulgin, Renée Stadler, Meg
Stalcup, Jakob Tanner, Sharika Thiranagama, Miriam Ticktin, Ann
Stoler, Erich Studerus, Julie Van Pelt, Gabriel Vignoli, Scott Vrecko,
Anthony Wallace, Daniel Wetzel, Charles Whitcroft, Kelly Whitmer,
Jennifer Windt, Allan Young, and Jared Young (no relation). Finally,
I also want to thank my parents for, well, the privilege of being born
(a fundamental precondition for the authoring of any book). Donya
Ravasani not only challenged me as an intellectual interlocutor but also
served as such an invaluable source of inspiration, care, and love that
mentioning her in an acknowledgment must appear to be a preposter-
ously scanty gesture. But what else can I do here?
To conclude this acknowledgments section (by now of American
proportions), I also wish to thank the publishers of the following
articles for allowing me to use these previously printed materials in
revised and expanded form in this book: “Ceci n’est pas une psychose:
Toward a historical epistemology of model psychosis,” BioSocieties 1
(2) (2006):158–180; “The persistence of the subjective in neuropsycho-
pharmacology: Observations of contemporary hallucinogen research,”
History of the Human Sciences 23 (1) (2010):37–57; “Political neurothe-
ology: Emergence and revival of a psychedelic alternative to cosmetic
psychopharmacology,” in Neurocultures: Glimpses into an Expanding
Universe, edited by Francisco Ortega and Fernando Vidal, 141–165
(Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 2011); “Delirious brain chemistry and con-
trolled culture: Exploring the contextual mediation of drug effects,” in
Critical Neuroscience: A Handbook of the Social and Cultural Contexts
of Neuroscience, edited by Suparna Choudhury and Jan Slaby, 253–262
(London: Wiley, 2012).