(Rothman 1991). Being situated within the research institutions themselves, these bodies were—at least in part—composed of fellow researchers. The underlying idea was to enable scientists to check up on themselves by assigning each other the roles of auditors and auditees (Strathern 2000). Such an autonomous self-regulating apparatus was meant to guarantee, but also to shape and delimit, the freedom of science. In his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2001), Strassman provided a detailed account of how the precautionary measures demanded by the ethics committee came to affect the experience of his test subjects. Thus the regulatory apparatus not only constituted the external conditions of research but also entered into the outcome of the experiments by transforming the subjects’ experiences.
Strassman also had to gain approval from the FDA to use an investigational drug and from the DEA because DMT was a controlled substance. This process was greatly complicated by the fact that DMT was not readily available. He contacted various pharmaceutical companies. But they were either unwilling to provide all the information about the manufacturing process required by the FDA, arguing that it was a trade secret, or refused the liability for human use of their product, fearing lawsuits. Others demanded outrageous sums (up to $50,000) to cover their insurance as well as the uneconomical production of small quantities of an obscure drug. Finally, Dave Nichols offered to synthesize the necessary amount of DMT for $300 and the FDA agreed. In November 1990, two years after the application process had begun, Strassman received the go-ahead for what he presented as the first hallucinogen study in more than two decades (Strassman 2001: xv, 108–118).
When Strassman got approval to giving a psychedelic as powerful as DMT to humans, it seemed as if there could be no fundamental obstacles to administering other hallucinogens as well. Thus, Nichols, Strassman, Geyer, Charles Grob, Dennis McKenna, and George Greer founded the Heffter Research Institute in 1993. In contrast to MAPS’ focus on clinical applications of MDMA, Heffter concentrated on psilocybin and, at least initially, emphasized basic research rather than medical applications. Like MAPS, the institute tried to spread a spirit of optimism to attract private funding: “We are at a historic moment. Old social orders are rapidly changing. Economic powers are restructuring for the future. There is widespread popular interest in the brain and the mind as never before. Interest in research with psychedelics seems to be growing, and yet organized financial support for this work is on the wane. The Heffter Research Institute is uniquely poised to be the key player in the revival of psychedelic research” (Heffter Research Institute n.d.: 1).
It is no coincidence that the reinvigoration of hallucinogen research coincided with US president George H.W. Bush’s (1990) announcement of the Decade of the Brain. As in the sixties, the biology of the mind was presented as the last great frontier (Crick 1990: 17; Farber 2002: 29). Psychonautic self-exploration had been replaced (or, as we will see, supplemented) by brain scanners and other new technologies, but drugs continued to serve as probes of the neurochemistry of consciousness. The Heffter members used this opportunity to promote their pet molecules. “Research with psychedelic substances offers an unparalleled opportunity for understanding the relationship of mind to brain in ways not possible using other methods,” they claimed (Heffter Research Institute n.d.: 1). Heffter used the neuroscience hype of the 1990s strategically to relegitimize human research with hallucinogenic drugs (Grob 2002: 280).
Even though MAPS and Heffter were pursuing different scientific and political agendas, one of the things both organizations agreed on was that hallucinogen research should not lapse back into the antagonism between “culture” and “counterculture.” As the consequences of sixties radicalism continued to unfold and resurge in civil society (O’Donnell and Jones 2010), their common objective was to return this class of drugs to mainstream science and society. In this respect, the psychedelic revivalists managed to break out of the Huxleyan framework, which has shaped so much public debate around psychopharmacology. For them, the choice was not between societal repression and lulling (Brave New World) on the one hand and a freedom that could only be found faraway from modern society (Island) on the other. They wanted to transform Western culture with its own means, bringing psychedelic perennialism into the twenty-first century.5
THE POLITICS OF DISENCHANTMENT AND SPIRITUALIZATION
The Heffter Research Institute was working toward this goal by pursuing what Mark Geyer, in a conversation with me, called “the dispassionate approach of mainstream science.” The Heffter researchers presented themselves as free of religious and political fervor. Founder Dave Nichols (2004: 168) emphasized the disenchantment of hallucinogenic drugs through neuropsychopharmacological research: “The tools of today’s neuroscience, including in vivo brain imaging technologies, have put a modern face on the hallucinogens. Scientists can no longer see them as ‘magic’ drugs but rather as 5-HT2A receptor-specific molecules that affect membrane potentials, neuronal firing frequencies, and neurotransmitter release in particular areas of the brain.” The message was that psychedelics were ready to inconspicuously join the modern psychotropic pharmacopoeia.
In its mission statement, the Heffter Research Institute (2001: iv) declared that it would “neither condemn psychedelic drugs nor advocate their uncontrolled use. The sole position of the Institute in this regard will be that psychedelic agents, utilized in thoughtfully designed and carefully conducted scientific experiments, can be used to further the understanding of the mind” (Heffter Research Institute 2001). Dare to know! This sense of value neutrality was incompatible with the religious zeal that had dominated the public perception of psychedelia in the 1960s. A pharmacologist from the Heffter lab in Zurich told me that his generation differed from Leary’s in that they had lost a sense of mission. They had given up the hope that mind-altering drugs would revolutionize society. The psychedelic experience was no longer presented as a catalyst of nonconformism and rebelliousness. If, as anthropologists have shown, the ritual use of hallucinogens in tribal societies could also serve to “validate and reify the culture” (Furst 1976: 16), then, another Heffter member argued, Westerners should also be able to use them to reinforce “cultural cohesion and commitment” (Grob 2002: 283). Following these cues, it was the neuroscientific disenchantment and depoliticization of hallucinogen research that rendered its revival possible. Such a narrative of the psychedelic revival—from the idealistic and revolutionary 1960s to the pragmatic and civil 1990s—would affirm historian of science Michael Hagner’s (2009) diagnosis of a “neuroscientific Biedermeier.”6
But the moral terrain of contemporary hallucinogen research is too rugged to fit into any epochal zeitgeist diagnosis. First of all, like Leary’s withdrawal from politics into the spiritual realm, the alleged depoliticization qua scientification was itself a political maneuver. In an ideologically charged field like hallucinogen research, professions of soberness and the display of dispassionate objectivity were used rhetorically to reinstate the legitimacy of scientific and therapeutic uses of psychedelics. The intended rapprochement between these ostracized drugs, biomedicine, and the authorities was supposed to change the legal status and the social acceptability of hallucinogen use. Thus, instead of abandoning the psychedelic revolution for good, it was rather transformed into a reform movement, in which Heffter was playing a cautious role as well.
MAPS, on the other hand, presented itself as avowedly political but aimed at translating its enthusiasm not into another cultural civil war but into civic engagement. In a special issue of the MAPS Bulletin dedicated to the organization’s vision, Rick Doblin (2002a) first laid out a five-year, five-million-dollar plan for developing MDMA into a prescription medicine to assist the psychotherapeutic treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. MAPS was particularly interested in the treatment of soldiers and police officers: “We want to show that MDMA can be helpful for people in the heart of the power structure, in the mainstream,” Doblin (2007) explained their strategy in an interview. A second article of the special issue represented MAPS’ politicospiritual vision. Significantly, the latter was not written by Doblin or any other member of the psychedelic community. To emphasize the reconciliation of psychedelia with “the Establishment,” MAPS reprinted a speech delivered by a member of the US House of Representatives. “Though definitely
