Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

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179 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115

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This talk analyzes the impact of the 1968 Lipman LSD murder trial in the U.K. Thirty-six-year-old Robert Lipman was a wealthy New York estate agent who, after a night of heavy drug use including LSD, accidentally killed 18-year-old Claudie Delbarre, also on LSD. The "LSD trip Death" as one newspaper called it, captivated readers, in part because Lipman, during a hallucination, had no memory of committing the crime. The case had all the makings of a great Hollywood murder mystery: a wealthy white American, the first to be extradited to the UK on murder charges, a beautiful French girl swept up in the swinging Chelsea scene. Despite the therapeutic potential of LSD in the clinic, the inability to translate or interpret a hallucination in the courtroom created a new boundary between psychedelic medicine and the law. While other forces contributed to the downfall of LSD research, this case and the role of LSD researchers as expert witnesses signified that LSD was no longer a gateway to cosmic consciousness or spiritual healing but simply a gateway drug.

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