Comments: Interviews with Timothy Leary interview from 1983, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) interview from 1990 and Michael Pollan interview from 2018 about their work with psychedelic drugs.
This is FRESH AIR. I’m David Bianculli, in for Terry Gross. Today, we’re marking the centennial of the birth of psychologist Timothy Leary, who led influential research in the 1960s into psychedelic drugs, using himself as a subject, as well as volunteers. That research eventually was shut down in the 1970s over concerns about the recreational use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs. We’re going to hear about how psychedelic drugs are having a surprising renaissance, being used experimentally in therapeutic settings to treat depression, addiction and the existential fear of death in people with cancer.
