by Robert B. Millman and Ann Bordwine Beeder

About the authors: Robert B. Millman is chairman of the Department of Public Health and Ann Bordwine Beeder is an instructor in psychiatry and public health at Cornell University Medical Center in New York City.

Psychedelics have been used since ancient times in diverse cultures as an integral part of religious or recreational ceremony and ritual. The relationship of LSD and other psychedelics to Western culture dates from the development of the drug in 1938 by the chemist Albert Hoffman. LSD and naturally occurring psychedelics such as mescaline and psilocybin have been associated in modern times with a society that rejected conventional values and sought transcendent meaning and spirituality in the use of drugs and the association with other users. During the 1960s the psychedelics were most often...