Psychedelics-assisted psychotherapy in Estonia
Surprisingly, at the end of the 1960s, numerous articles appeared in the Soviet-occupied Estonian newspapers, documenting the downfall of Western youth due to the effects of a terrible new drug. In 1968, the headline in the newspaper Edasi: “LSD – a door to Insanity or Paradise?”
It should be remembered that in the Soviet Union, LSD was a very unusual substance. The fact that LSD was developed as a drug, entirely legally and with the help of a neighboring country’s Communist government, is perplexing. A small number of experts had access to the substance, which they used for experiments or therapy. The general public was unaware of psychedelics at the time.
In 1964, psychiatrist Stanislaf Grof, nicknamed “the godfather of LSD,” participated in a university exchange program that took him from Prague to Leningrad. He arrived with 300 ampoules of acid. For a month, Grof remembered, they had a séance every day. This had to have been groundbreaking, and not in the scientific sense. After Grof’s visit, it is said that the university’s entire academic climate changed dramatically. People became involved in Zen Buddhism, yoga, and Hermann Hesse all of a sudden.
Psychedelics-assisted psychotherapy is not legal in Estonia.