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In the East, Manhattan's Dr. Harold A. Abramson has pioneered with LSD in group experiments. In Saskatoon, Sask. and at New Westminster, B.C., Dr. Abram Hoffer has used it determinedly on alcoholics, has found that while it is no chemical cure, the heightened insight that it gives enables patients to see the emotional basis of their problem drinking. Whereas Alcoholics Anonymous usually claims success in only 50%-60% of run-of-the-still cases, Dr. Hoffer has dried out 50% of the 100-proof cases who had been failures in A.A.
In Hollywood, word of LSD's powers inevitably circulated with the martinis, led to a fad to try it. An osteopathic psychiatrist gave it experimentally to a number of the curious, including famed Novelist-Mystic Aldous (The Doors of Perception) Huxley. Among the Chandler-Hartman patients were several movie no tables, whom the doctors refused, because of professional ethics, to name. But some named themselves. One of these was dura ble Actor Grant, 56, who emerged from therapy to give a confused account of what had ailed him during a long and successful career, but he was convinced that he had at last found "a tough inner core of strength."
* Paradoxically , notes Boston's Dr. Max Rinkel, in mice (and presumably in man) LSD concentrates less in the brain than in any other major organ, and is far below its highest brain concentration when the psychological effects are greatest. So how it works is a mystery.