1973 by the AmericaD Psychological Association, Inc. LONG-TERM PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF LSD

The literature reporting lasting adverse psychological reactions to LSD is re-viewed, along with other relevant reports where LSD users were followed. The danger of long-lasting psychological damage is low when the drug is used by emotionally stable individuals in secure, controlled settings, but persons with psychiatric disturbance, unstable personalities, and current crisis situations have experienced pathological behavior temporally related to drug ingestion. Ad-verse reactions were not reported in well-controlled studies with normal sub-jects, indicating the drug's relative safety for continued research. Although lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was discovered to have hallucinogenic powers in 1943, drugs with similar makeup and phar-macological effects have been used for many years, especially by American Indians in their religious rituals (Pelner, 1967). Since the syn-thesis of LSD, these drugs have become a subject of empirical study among behavioral scientists studying the effects of such agents, their purported ability to induce schizophrenic states, and their use in psychotherapy. During the 1950s a number of research projects in-vestigating the clinical effects of LSD wer