LSD Has Been Used Successfully In Psychiatric Therapy

   Given the demonization of the psychedelic drug LSD, it may seem inconceivable that mainstream psychiatrists were giving it to patients during sessions. Yet for at least 20 years, that's exactly what happened.
   Created in 1938, LSD was first suggested as a tool in psychotherapy in 1949. The following year saw the studies in medical/psychiatric journals. By 1970, hundreds of articles on the uses of LSD in therapy had appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Journal of Psychology, the Archives of General Psychiatry, the Quarterly Journal of Studies of Alcoholism, many non-English-language journals, and elsewhere.
   Psychiatric and psychotherapeutic conferences had segments devoted to LSD, and two professional organizations were formed for this specialty, one in Europe and the other in North America. International symposia were held in Princeton, London, Amsterdam, and other locations. From 1950 to 1965, LSD was given in conjunction with therapy to an estimated 40,000 people worldwide.
   In his definitive book on the subject, LSD Psychotherapy, transpersonal psychotherapist Stanislav Grof, MD, explains what makes LSD such a good aid to headshrinking:
...LSD and other psychedelics function more or less nonspecific catalysts and amplifiers of the psyche... in the dosages used in human experimentation, the classical psychedelics, such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, do not have any specific pharmacological effects. They increase the energetic niveau in the psyche and the body which leads to manifestation of otherwise latent psychological processes.
   The content and nature of the experiences that these substances induce are thus not artificial products of their pharmacological interaction with the brain ("toxic psychoses"), but authentic expressions of the psyche revealing its functioning on levels not ordinarily available for observation and study. A person a who has taken LSD does not have an "LSD experience," but takes a journey into deep recesses of his or her own psyche.
   When used as a tool during full-scale therapy, Grof says, "the potential of LSD seems to be extraordinary and unique. The ability of LSD to deepen, intensify and accelerate the psychotherapeutic process is incomparably greater than that of any other drug used as an adjunct to psychotherapy, with the exception perhaps of some other members of the psychedelic group."
   Due to bad trips experienced by casual users, not to mention anti-drug hysteria in general, LSD was outlawed in the US in 1970. The Drug Enforcement Agency declares: "Scientific study of LSD ceased circa 1980 as research funding declined."
   What the DEA fails to mention is that medical and psychiatric research is currently happening, albeit quietly. Few researchers have the resources and patience to jump through the umpteen hoops required to test psychedelics on people, but a few using LSD, ecstasy, DMT, ketamine, peyote, and other such substances are happening in North America and Europe. Universities engaged in this research include Harvard, Duke, Johns Hopkins, University College London, and the University of Zurich.
   We're presently in the dark ages of such research, but at least the light hasn't gone out entirely.
  

The Auschwitz Tattoo Was Originally An IBM Code Number

   The tattooed numbers on the forearms of people held and killed in Nazi concentration camps have become a chilling symbol of hatred. Victims were stamped with the indelible number in a dehumanizing effort to keep track of them like widgets in the supply chain.
   These numbers weren't chosen at random. They were part of a coded system , with each number tracked as the unlucky person who bore it was moved through the system.
   Edwin Black made headlines in 2001 when his painstakingly researched book, IBM and the jackbooted takeover of Europe. Worse, he showed that the top levels of the company either knew or willfully turned a blind eye.
   A year and a half after that book gave Big Blue a black eye, the author made more startling discoveries. IBM equipment was on-site at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Furthermore:
Thanks to the discoveries, researchers can now trace how Hollerith numbers assigned to inmates evolved into the horrific tattooed numbers so symbolic of the Nazi era. (Herman Hollerith was the German American who first automated US census information in the late 19th century and founded the company that became IBM. Hollerith's name became synonymous with the machines and the Nazi "departments" that operated them.) In one case, records show, a timber merchant from Bendzin, Poland, arrived at Auschwitz in August 1943 and was assigned a characteristic five-digit IBM Hollerith number, 44673. The number was part of a custom punch-card system devised by IBM to track prisoners in all Nazi concentration camps, including the slave labor at Auschwitz. Later in the summer of 1943, the Polish timber merchant's same five-digit Hollerith number, 44673, was tattooed on his forearm. Eventually during the summer of 1943, all non-Germans at Auschwitz were similarly tattooed.
   The Hollerith numbering system was soon scrapped at Auschwitz because so many inmates died. Eventually, the Nazis developed their own haphazard system.