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01.02.94 Concord State Prison Psilocybin Experiment |
Concord State Prison
psilocybin Exp.
From: the ticktockman)
Newsgroups: alt.drugs
Subject: Concord Prison Psilocybin Rehabilitation Project
Date: 2 Jan 94 20:17:26 GMT
[quoted articles deleted -cak]
Here's the original citation, FWIW:
Leary, T., Metzner, R., Presnell, M., Weil, G., Schwitzgebel,
R., & Kinne, S. A change program for adult offenders using
psilocybin. Psychotherapy,1965.
Although I don't have this article handy, here's a pretty good
(although brief) summary, reproduced without permission, from
"Psychedelics Encylopedia", pp. 241-242:
"Three Psilocybin projects were set up in line with Leary and
Alpert's specialty, the psychology of 'game-playing.' In early
1961, after initial psilocybin investigations, the Leary group
began working in nearby Concord with convicts in the
Massachusetts Correctional Institution, a maximum-security
prison for young offenders. It was hoped that psilocybin could
help prisoners 'see through' the self-defeating
'cops-and-robbers game' and become less destructive citizens ...
The six volunteers
grew in number to thirty-five over the next two years. Each
underwent two psilocybin experiences during six weeks of
bi-weekly meetings. Although the subjects were not very well
educated, they were able to detach themselves from their
everyday roles and 'confront themselves,' recognizing
constructive alternatives to their formerly violent and
self-destructive behavior patterns. The question was what would
happen to these prisoners upon release. Would the insights
gained from two fairly heavy doses of psilocybin help them to
lead useful and rewarding lives? Or would they soon be headed
back to prison? Dr. Stanley Krippner, who also was given
psilocybin at Harvard, ... summed up the results:
Records at Concord State Prison suggested that 64 per cent of
the 32 subjects would return to prison within six months after
parole. However, after six months, 25 per cent of those on
parole had returned, six for technical parole violations and two
for new offenses. These results are all the more dramatic when
the correctional literature is surveyed; few short-term projects
with prisoners have been effective to even a minor degree. In
addition, the personality test scores indicated a measurable
positive change when pre-psilocybin and post-psilocybin results
were compared.
Although this psilocybin experiment included a lot of
'tender,loving care' and ** no control subjects ** [emphasis
mine], it established a sound basis for hope. The results
warrant at least one controlled study."
Also from _PE_, p. 243: "Second Annual Report; Psilocybin
Rehabilitation Project: All the professional work on this
project was volunteer. The expenses for clerical assistance and
salaries for ex-inmate workers were covered by generous
donations from The Uris Brothers Foundation, New York, and the
Parapsychology Foundation, Eileen Garrett, President ...
Applications to three offices of the U. S. Public Health Service
requesting support for continuing this project were refused ...
The project was designed as a pilot study -- necessarily
exploratory -- since little was known about the long- range
application of the substances."
And here (again, reproduced without permission) is an article
from the MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Studies) newsletter of Winter 1992 (vol 3, #4):
"A Long-Term Follow-Up to Dr. Timothy Leary's 1961-1962 Concord
State
Reformatory
Rehabilitation Study
by Michael Forcier, Ph.D., Social Science Research & Evaluation,
Inc. and Rick Doblin, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Two follow-ups were conducted with the inmate participants. A
short- term follow-up occurred a mean period of 18 months after
the first treatment. Twenty-four subjects who participated in
the program were paroled within 10 months of first treatment. Of
these 19 (77%) showed evidence of good adjustment while five
were returned to prison during that time. The recidivism rate
was 23% compared to an expected 65%. A second, longer-term
follow-up occurred roughly 3 years after the first treatment and
all 32 inmates participated in the project. Of these 32, 27 had
been released while 5 were still confined at Concord. As of
January 27, 1964, 11 (41%) of the 27 released inmates were still
out of prison, 13 (48%) had been returned as parole violators,
and 3 (11%) were reincarcerated for new crimes. At this
follow-up, the actual rate of recidivism was 59% as compared
with an expected rate of 56% for the Concord inmate population
as a whole. However, it was also expected that recidivists would
be equally divided between parole violators and those committing
new crimes where in actuality, those returned to prison were
predominantly parole violators."
MAPS currently has a project underway to conduct a 30-year
follow-up study with all 32 inmates (if possible); my
understanding is that it currently lacks the funds to do this.
the ticktockman
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Psilocybin: Concord Prison
Follow-up
A unique psilocybin experiment was conducted in the early 1960's
under the direction of Timothy Leary, Ph.D. Dr. Leary had
obtained permission from the Massachusetts Department of
Corrections to administer psilocybin to volunteers in Concord
Prison who were nearing the time of their release. The
experimental hypothesis was that psilocybin could catalyze a
peak experience that would help the prisoner to break out of the
cycle of antisocial behavior, thereby reducing recidivism. This
behavior change was supposed to take place as a result of the
action of psilocybin to open the prisoners' eyes to the
consequences of their past behavior and to connect them to an
inner source of spiritual strength that would empower them to
rewrite the scripts of their lives and resist the temptations to
commit additional crimes.
Over the course of the last several years, Michael Forcier,
Ph.D. and I have been conducting a long-term follow-up to that
experiment. We obtained permission from the Massachusetts
Department of Corrections and the Governor's Office to review
the criminal history records of the original participants in the
study. Our review of the records was completed in 1995. We
learned that the experimental subjects had a long-term
recidivism rate no better than the average base rate for
recidivism for inmates at Concord Prison. This meant that the
psilocybin experiences alone were not sufficient to reduce
recidivism. We noted that Dr. Leary acknowledged the limitations
of the psilocybin experience in an early paper he wrote about
the experiment and recommended that the psilocybin experiences
be supplemented with post-release group support meetings and
halfway house living arrangements. After Dr. Leary was dismissed
from Harvard, support for these arrangements dissipated.
Ex-Prisoners and the Ex-Professor
MAPS budgeted roughly $2,500 to support the long-term follow-up
study to the Concord Prison experiment. MAPS covered the
expenses for a meeting that took place on January 20 at Dr.
Leary's home in Beverly Hills. Present were Dr. Leary, Gunther
Weil, Ph.D. (one of the primary researchers in the original
study), myself, and two of the original subjects. The purpose of
the meeting was to tape record the comments of the subjects
concerning the impact of the psilocybin experiences on their
lives along with the reflections of Dr. Leary and Dr. Weil on
the lessons that can be learned from the experiment. These
personal statements will be used to supplement the empirical
data of the subjects' overall recidivism rates.
Good Friday Experiment
Longtime readers of the MAPS newsletter may recall that I
conducted a twenty-five+ year follow-up study to the Good Friday
experiment, a study conducted in 1962 by Walter Pahnke, M.D.
under the direction of Dr. Leary. That study experimentally
tested the hypothesis that psilocybin could catalyze genuine
spiritual experiences in people who were religiously inclined
and who took the psilocybin within a religious context. The
results of the Good Friday experiment confirmed its experimental
hypothesis while the results of the Concord Prison experiment
did not. This difference illustrates the distance between a
religious experience, which can be catalyzed by a drug, and a
religious (moral) life, which requires much more than just a
drug experience.
Coincidentally, I was invited to participate in a panel
discussion about the Good Friday experiment in Berkeley the
night before the meeting of the subjects from the Concord Prison
experiment. Also on the panel were Rev. Mike Young, one of the
original subjects in the Good Friday experiment who contributed
an article to the last issue of the MAPS Bulletin, Bob Jesse,
founder of the Council on Spiritual Practices, and Rev. Karla
Hansen, a Unitarian minister.
Need for New Research
As many of the MAPS readers may have heard, Dr. Leary is
suffering from cancer and is quite close to the end of his life.
I imagine it must be somewhat reassuring for him to know that
two experiments that he conducted over 30 years ago are still of
interest to people after all this time. What makes me sad is to
realize that the two experiments he supervised, each a classic
in its field, have never been replicated or refined despite the
promising results of the Good Friday experiment and the
suggestions about ways to improve the results of the Concord
Prison experiment.
To the extent that it is able, MAPS will work in 1996 to expand
the field of psychedelic research beyond the investigation of
the medical uses of psychedelics to include studies that will
focus on the role that psychedelics can play in religious
experience and behavior change.
Bottom of Form MAPS
2105 Robinson Avenue
Sarasota, FL 34232
USA
E-mail: info@maps.org Rick Doblin, President
Nicole Tavernier, Director of Operations
Mercedes Paulino, Director of Electronic Media
Brandy Doyle, Director of Special Projects
Vanessa Vaudo, Membership and Sales Coordinator
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