LSD pioneer Oscar Janiger died Tuesday at age 83
Fri, 17 Aug 2001
TORRANCE, Calif. (AP) - Psychiatrist Oscar Janiger, an early advocate of
psychedelic drugs who was credited with turning on Cary Grant and numerous
other celebrities to LSD, died Tuesday of kidney and heart failure. Janiger
was 83.
Between 1954 and 1962, ``Oz,'' as he was known to friends, administered
almost 3,000 doses of LSD to 1,000 volunteers. Among them were Grant, fellow
actors Jack Nicholson and Rita Moreno, author Aldous Huxley and musician
Andre Previn.
Janiger bought the drug, then legal, from Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer
Sandoz Laboratories and administered it at his Los Angeles office.
Although his work predated that of LSD guru Timothy Leary, he never gained
widespread recognition for it.
Janiger, who took the drug 13 times himself, said he was interested in LSD's
link to creativity and what he called the ability to access a state of crazy
consciousness without losing control of one's surroundings.
In 1986, he formed the Albert Hofmann Foundation for psychedelic research,
named after the chemist who first synthesized the drug.
He had abandoned his own LSD studies in 1962, however, after the federal
government began investigating researchers. The drug was outlawed in the
United States in 1966.
Born in New York City, Janiger, who was a cousin of poet Allen Ginsburg,
moved to Los Angeles in 1950, setting up a private practice and later
teaching at the University of California, Irvine.
While an associate professor of psychiatry at Irvine, he studied the
connection between hormones and premenstrual depression in women.
Most recently, he was involved with a group studying dolphins in their
natural environment.
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