Part leading edge medical research part utopian idealism. Three gifted psychiatrists, in communication with an extraordinarily powerful hallucinogen, resulted in one of the most fascinating and controversial periods in Canadian history. In the ’60s, professors Humphry Osmond, Abram Hoffer and Duncan Blewett used LSD therapy on both themselves and their patients to produce groundbreaking research and discoveries into the nature of mental illness and addiction before the drug was criminalized in 1969.
Before LSD burst on the scene as fuel for wild psychedelic trips, it had an amazing, yet little known history. A surprising part of that history was written in a remote corner of the Canadian Prairies. Over a span of fifteen years, from when the drug was first administered in 1952 until it was banned and made illegal in 1967, the use of LSD ranged from leading edge psychiatric research into schizophrenia and alcoholism to volunteer testing on the general public.
As word of LSD’s amazing properties began to seep out of the laboratory, artists and intellectuals such as writer Aldous Huxley, filmmaker Paul Saltzman, architect Kyo Izumi and painter Ted Godwin began to experiment and travel to Saskatchewan to have their first experiences with LSD. THE PSYCHEDELIC PIONEERS takes us through these fascinating and controversial times through the eyes of the three lead doctors involved in the LSD Saskatchewan project.