By Janelle Faignant
Arts Correspondent
On Monday, April 19, the Brattleboro arts organization Epsilon Spires will begin a two-week virtual screening of the film “The Substance: Albert Hofmann’s LSD” in honor of the chemist’s first experience with and accidental discovery of the hallucinogen while riding his bicycle home from the lab in 1943.
An irrepressible desire to laugh, and warped vision, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror were the effects Hofmann felt. At the time, he was a young chemist at Sandoz, a pharmaceutical company based in Basel, Switzerland. He ingested 250 micrograms of the new compound found in ergot, a fungus that occurs on rye, called diethylamide of d-lysergic acid, also known as LSD.
Hofmann’s discovery sparked a movement beyond the scientific community, but not all reactions to the drug were positive. “The Substance” is a deep look into society’s troubled history with LSD, its potential future, and the debate about recreational versus controlled usage.
“The films I pick tend to be things I think as a curator have value and will provoke conversation about important topics,” said Epsilon Spires Creative Director Jamie Mohr in a recent interview.
LSD was legal until the 1964, and now that medicinal and recreational cannabis are being legalized in more places, Mohr says the film prompts “a timely conversation.”
The film considers the ways that LSD has been used and abused during the past 80 years, from a medicinal tool in psychiatry to a potential chemical weapon tested by the United States military on its own personnel.
But when Timothy Leary started promoting the drug for widespread recreational use in the 1960s, Hofmann argued it needed further study. LSD was outlawed in 1968, largely as a result of Leary’s campaign to “turn on, tune in, drop out.”
“The Substance” makes an argument for the medicinal legalization of psychedelics as an instrument of psychiatry and modern brain research through poignant interviews with doctors and terminal patients using guided LSD trips to process their feelings about death.
“It sheds new light on its subjects and on the inventor’s intentions,” Mohr said.
In 2019, Epsilon Spires screened the documentary “From Shock to Awe,” which looked at the therapeutic uses of psychedelics as well, in this case to treat PTSD in soldiers returning from war.
“Therapeutic ayahuasca ceremonies helped them move through (emotions) and it’s really radical the change you see in the subjects,” Mohr said. “They go from feeling helpless to getting their life back in a direction they can feel good about, and a lot of the burden of their trauma is lifted. It doesn’t sugar-coat it, but you can see a radical change.”
In light of the country’s opioid epidemic and its impact locally, Mohr is curious about “more research into areas of treatment that don’t involve trading one addiction for another, prescribing other addictive pharmaceuticals where there’s profit and could be abuse. This film makes a great case for expanding those studies.”
Encouraging discussion is Mohr’s hope with the virtual film festival and an online discussion will follow the film on April 19.
“I love having these online discussions after the films,” she said, “so people have a chance to connect and talk about their insights.”
janellefaignant @gmail.com
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