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WASHINGTON, March 29--A University of California psychiatrist revealed today that at least two students who took a single dose of LSD with no immediately apparent aftereffects suddenly suffered severe hallucinations several months later.
Dr. Duke D.Fisher reported the cases at a session of the American College Health Association's annual meeting in the Mayflower Hotel here, in which 13 Harvard doctors and four Harvard nurses are presenting 13 papers. The four-day conference ends Friday.
Dr.Fisher said that one student caused a near-fatal car accident a few months after his "trip," when a pair of on-coming headlights seemed to become a hundred headlights. In the other case, a girl suddenly saw all the buildings. around her melt into the sidewalk.
Dr. Dana L. Farnsworth, director of Harvard University Health Services, said after Dr. Fisher's speech that a delayed effect of LSD would make the drug even more dangerous than previously believed, since almost all tests of the drug's effects ignore the possibility of anything happening more than a few days after the trip.
"We need more findings like this one," Dr. Farnsworth said in an interview, "so that we can present them to the student and let him decide for himself that taking hallucinogenic drugs is too risky. Instead of predicting their doom, we should hand them evidence like this."
In another meeting conducted at the same time, Dr. Paul Walters, a UHSpsychiatrist, equated the psychedelic cult with narcissism. Sexual satisfaction is derived from turning inward to fantasy, Dr. Walters suggested. As a result, "Consciousness-restricting is a more appropriate term than consciousness-expanding," he said.
Unfulfilled Dreams
After Dr. Walters read his paper, a bearded psychiatrist from Berkeley chatted informally ("I don't write papers," he said) about the California hipp and suggested that Western man's trouble is that he cannot fulfill his dreams. He concluded by playing for the doctors two sections from a recent Rolling Stones album.
Earlier in the day, a Health, Education and Welfare official said at a general meeting that the Federal government was doing its share to promote the kind of community health programs first suggested by Dr. Farnsworth six years ago. Dr. Phillip R. Lee, assistant secretary of HEW for Health and Scientific Affairs, quoted extensively from a speech in which Dr. Farnsworth had suggested using college health services as model for community efforts
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