2026-03-28
48 分钟The Economist.
I want to start with a line from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,
a late 18th century book by William Blake.
Indulge me.
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.
That phrase, "doors of perception", inspired the title of a 1954 book by Aldous Huxley,
an author and famous experimenter with psychedelic drugs.
That, in turn, inspired the name of the band led by Jim Morrison,
a rock god and famous experimenter with psychedelic drugs.
In Morrison's heady days, mescaline and magic mushrooms and LSD
weren't just ways to tune in and drop out.
There was a recognition that cleansing the doors of perception might be therapeutic.
Proving it, though, has turned out to be a long, strange and halting trip.
Clinical research into the curative properties of psychotropic drugs has faced all kinds of hurdles,
not least a persistent association with those damn hippies.
But the tide seems to be turning.
In America, trials on drugs including psilocybin and MDMA are under way
to treat disorders like depression and PTSD.
In some of the country's most conservative areas,