This is the Reason interview with Nicholas.

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Today's episode is sponsored by Better Help online therapy.

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Over the last few episodes, I've been talking with people involved with what we at Reason

are calling a psychedelic renaissance or a rebirth of interest in substances long associated with the hippies of the 60s and the 60s counterculture.

Today's interest in these same substances is, I think, mostly motivated by a desire to help veterans and victims of sexual violence

who suffer from PTSD and related conditions, including people who have substance abuse issues.

The psychedelic renaissance, whether you care for these substances or not, may well

sound the death knell for the war on drugs, at least in its current form. I think that's

really interesting. It's fascinating. I'm hopeful, you know, for whatever reason, the war on drugs is

ending. And I do think that the current vogue for psychedelics may well help turn the corner on all that.

In any case, it makes sense, you know, after talking about the psychedelic renaissance for,

you know, several weeks, really, that I talked to a historian who studies the man who coined

the term psychedelic. Erica Dick is a professor at the University of Saskatchewan. She studies

the history of psychedelics with a special interest in the legacy of Humphrey

Osmond.

Osmond is the British-born psychiatrist who coined the term psychedelic, and he ended up moving

to Saskatchewan, Canada, and doing path-breaking work there in all sorts of ways.

Osmond also gave the Brave New World author, Aldous Huxley, his first dose of mescaline,

an experience that prompted Huxley's famous work, The Doors of Perception, which really legitimize

...