Writing the histories of psychedelic research: Wirtschaftswoche on German LSD-Researcher Hanscarl Leuner

German journalist Marlene Halser on the LSD-researcher Hanscarl Leuner

“Psychedelic mushrooms are in demand on the stock market – this man paved the way for them” (Wirtschaftswoche)

For almost 30 years, Hanscarl Leuner treated people with LSD and psilocybin at the University Hospital in Göttingen. Substances in which highly valued start-ups are currently investing – while the German researcher has been relegated to the sidelines of society.”

From Halser’s article:

“Unclear moral standards”
Henrik Jungaberle, who now runs the Mind Foundation in Berlin, an organization that promotes legal scientific research into psychedelic substances, attended the 1996 ECBS congress as a student. He says he perceived the association at the time as a group with “unclear moral standards” in its stance on underground therapies. Samuel Widmer was particularly polarizing, he says.
The so-called Kirschblütengemeinschaft emerged around the Swiss psychotherapist, who died in 2017: Widmer allegedly administered mescaline and MDMA in group sessions without authorization. Jungaberle says that “a system of mutual dependencies” developed within the underground scene at the time, in which “one could not speak out critically to colleagues, because otherwise one would have run the risk of being exposed oneself.
That alone argues for legal research rather than a ban. In fact, the chances of this happening are as good as they were last in the sixties. Jungaberle’s Mind Foundation is involved in one of the two psilocybin studies recently granted research approval by the drug regulator.