Psychedelics and dying care: A historical look at the relationship between psychedelics and palliative care

The paper situates mid-twentieth century interest in psychedelics within debates about how to care for the dying, noting that early thinkers and clinicians saw psychoactive substances as promising tools for addressing existential and spiritual distress at end of life. Dyck recounts how figures such as Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond framed mescaline and LSD experiences as ways of opening perception, confronting questions of meaning, and potentially easing the psychological burden of dying, and how these ideas drew on Indigenous ritual uses as well as humanist and philosophical concerns. This historical review aims to trace that relationship between psychedelics and dying care, show how early clinical and philosophical discussions coalesced around palliative concerns, and explain why some of those conversations were interrupted by the criminalisation of psychedelics. Dyck sets out to recover the lost or under-examined strands of mid-century thinking about LSD and related compounds and to consider how those antecedents inform contemporary interest in psychedelics for palliative contexts.

The extracted text does not present a formal methods section or a clearly described search strategy. Instead, the paper reads as a historical overview that draws on primary and secondary historical sources, published letters and personal accounts (for example, correspondence between Huxley and Osmond), and the historical literature on clinical research programmes and prominent investigators. Dyck constructs a narrative by interweaving biographical material (Aldous Huxley's experiences and writings), accounts of mid-century clinical work (Spring Grove Hospital, Eric Kast, Walter Pahnke, Stanislav Grof and others), and summaries of later scientific and medical re-engagement with psychedelics (including contemporary researchers such as Roland Griffiths, Bill Richards and Franz Vollenweider). The extracted text does not specify inclusion/exclusion criteria, databases searched, or a systematic protocol, and therefore should be read as interpretive historical scholarship rather than a systematic review.

Dyck recounts several historical strands linking psychedelics and dying care. Aldous Huxley’s mescaline and later LSD experiences, beginning in the 1950s, and his caregiving for his wife Maria informed his belief that psychedelics could facilitate a more spiritual, less physiological dying process. Correspondence between Huxley and Humphry Osmond is used to illustrate early thinking about psychedelics as tools to ease anxiety, encourage "letting go," and provide a ritual or spiritual framework that might improve the experience of dying. The paper outlines how early clinical and philosophical interest in psychedelics emerged alongside a broader mid-century scepticism about the mechanisation of medicine. Clinical explorations of LSD and mescaline included attempts to address anxiety and pain associated with dying; Eric Kast’s work on LSD’s analgesic and anxiolytic effects is highlighted as an early effort that later twenty-first century oncology trials would reference. Research groups at Spring Grove Hospital (including Pahnke, Grof, Yensen and Richards) continued pharmacological and phenomenological investigations after some university programmes curtailed work in the late 1960s. Dyck further reports that criminalisation and social and political pressures toward the end of the 1960s slowed or halted much research, causing some early conversations to be lost. The recent ‘‘psychedelic renaissance’’ is described as reconnecting with those antecedents: contemporary investigators such as Roland Griffiths and Bill Richards have operationalised and measured mystical-type or spiritual experiences induced by psilocybin; Franz Vollenweider has applied brain imaging to compare psychedelic states and meditative practice; and modern clinical trials have returned to oncology and palliative settings. Dyck notes that psychedelics continue to be framed at the intersection of biomedical, spiritual, and Indigenous healing traditions, with practitioners such as Gabor Maté exemplifying integrative approaches. The paper also situates these developments within demographic and health-system pressures: global death projections cited in the text rise from approximately 13 million deaths per year to 70 million by 2030, and researchers predict a 40% increase in demand for specialised palliative services. Palliative care itself is described as a relatively new hospital-based specialty (the palliative care unit dating to the 1970s), and Dyck emphasises that spirituality and holistic approaches have been central to both historical and current discussions about improving dying care.