Addiction Research Foundation

The Addiction Research Foundation was Canada’s leading institute of its kind and a prominent arbiter of evidence about LSD treatment for alcoholism. Its early-1960s effort to replicate Saskatchewan trials did not simply test whether the drug worked: by deliberately changing the conditions of treatment, it brought the influence of clinical setting into the dispute over what counted as a successful result.

Identity and Research Context

By the end of the 1950s, LSD was widely regarded in North America as a promising treatment for alcohol addiction, and the Government of Saskatchewan had helped make LSD therapy a standard treatment option for alcoholics in the province. The Addiction Research Foundation, based in Toronto, regarded the reported results as difficult to accept without further testing. As Canada’s leading institute of its kind, it set out to examine whether those outcomes could be reproduced with stronger controls.

The Toronto Replication

In the early 1960s, Foundation clinicians administered LSD to alcohol-dependent volunteers in neutral rooms. They were instructed not to engage with participants during their sessions except to administer an extensive questionnaire. Some volunteers were restrained or blindfolded, and some experienced both conditions. The design sought to isolate the drug’s effects from other variables, but it also removed the attentive therapeutic presence that had characterized the Saskatchewan approach.

The replication’s results did not match those reported by Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer. More than a few volunteers endured terrifying experiences, later commonly called bad trips. The contrast therefore involved not only different treatment outcomes but also sharply different circumstances: a controlled, impersonal session in Toronto versus the more supportive therapeutic conditions associated with the Saskatchewan work.

Results and Significance

Critics took the replication as evidence that LSD treatment for alcoholism performed less well under rigorous controls. Supporters drew a different, compatible lesson: attention to set and setting was essential to the therapy’s success. The Foundation’s findings thus challenged the treatment’s apparent efficacy without settling whether LSD itself was ineffective. They showed that the experimental conditions were part of the question being tested: an attempt to isolate the drug could also remove features of the treatment that might help make it work.