Mindbending experiments: how drugs shaped modern science
HistoryExtra podcast
00:00
The Effects of Drugs on the Mind
The Society for Psychical Research believes that drugs might help people access the spirit world. Freud was experimenting with how drugs might be able to access new parts of the mind, other people were also interested in how they might allow us to access other worlds or other planes. There were many drugs intoxicants, some emerging from anesthesia because of course when people were anesthetized for surgery, quite often they would have out of body experiences and wake up having had cosmic revelations. And there were also drugs like hashish which had been used in other cultures in the Arab world particularly which produced intense visionary experiences.
Play episode from 21:17
Transcript
