The Marsh Chapel Experiment, also called the "Good Friday Experiment", was an experiment conducted on

Good Friday Good Friday, also known as Holy Friday, Great Friday, Great and Holy Friday, or Friday of the Passion of the Lord, is a solemn Christian holy day commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus and his death at Calvary (Golgotha). It is observed during ...

, April 20, 1962 at

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...

Marsh Chapel Marsh Chapel is a building on the campus of Boston University used as the official place of worship of the school. It was named for Daniel L. Marsh, a former president of BU and a Methodist minister. The building is Gothic in style. While Met ...

. Walter N. Pahnke, a graduate student in theology at

Harvard Divinity School Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the religious studies, academic study of religion or for leadership role ...

, designed the experiment under the supervision of

Timothy Leary Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from "bold oracle" to "publicity hound". Accordin ...

Richard Alpert Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert; April 6, 1931 – December 22, 2019), also known as Baba Ram Dass, was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and writer. His best-selling 1971 book '' Be Here Now'', which has been d ...

, and the

Harvard Psilocybin Project The Harvard Psilocybin Project was a series of experiments aimed at exploring the effects of psilocybin intake on the human mind conducted by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. The founding board of the project consisted of Leary, Aldous Huxley, ...

. Pahnke's experiment investigated whether

psilocybin Psilocybin, also known as 4-phosphoryloxy-''N'',''N''-dimethyltryptamine (4-PO-DMT), is a natural product, naturally occurring tryptamine alkaloid and Investigational New Drug, investigational drug found in more than List of psilocybin mushroom ...

would act as a reliable

entheogen Entheogens are psychoactive substances used in spiritual and religious contexts to induce altered states of consciousness. Hallucinogens such as the psilocybin found in so-called "magic" mushrooms have been used in sacred contexts since ancie ...

in religiously predisposed subjects.

Experiment

Prior to the Good Friday service, twenty graduate degree divinity student volunteers from the

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

area were randomly divided into two groups. In a

double-blind In a blind or blinded experiment, information which may influence the participants of the experiment is withheld until after the experiment is complete. Good blinding can reduce or eliminate experimental biases that arise from a participants' expec ...

experiment, half of the students received

, while a

control group In the design of experiments, hypotheses are applied to experimental units in a treatment group. In comparative experiments, members of a control group receive a standard treatment, a placebo, or no treatment at all. There may be more than one tr ...

received a large dose of

niacin Nicotinic acid, or niacin, is an organic compound and a vitamer of vitamin B3, an essential human nutrient. It is produced by plants and animals from the amino acid tryptophan. Nicotinic acid is also a prescription medication. Amounts f ...

. Niacin produces clear physiological changes and thus was used as an

active placebo An active placebo is a placebo that produces noticeable side effects that may convince the person being treated that they are receiving a legitimate treatment, rather than an inert placebo. Nomenclature According to a 1965 paper, the term "conceal ...

. In at least some cases, those who received the niacin initially believed they had received the psychoactive drug. However, the feeling of face flushing (turning red, feeling hot and tingly) produced by niacin subsided about an hour after receiving the dose, whereas the effects of the psilocybin intensified over the first few hours. Almost all of the members of the experimental group reported experiencing profound religious experiences, providing empirical support for the notion that

psychedelic drug Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary mental states (known as psychedelic experiences or "trips") and a perceived "expansion of consciousness". Also referred to as classic halluc ...

s can facilitate religious experiences. One of the participants in the experiment was religious scholar

Huston Smith Huston Cummings Smith (May 31, 1919 – December 30, 2016) was a scholar of religious studies in the United States, He authored at least thirteen books on world's religions and philosophy, and his book about comparative religion, ''The World's R ...

, who would become an author of several textbooks on

comparative religion Comparative religion is the branch of the study of religions with the systematic comparison of the doctrines and practices, themes and impacts (including human migration, migration) of the world's religions. In general the comparative study ...

. He later described his experience as "the most powerful cosmic homecoming I have ever experienced". Another participant was Paul Lee, who was

Paul Tillich Paul Johannes Tillich (; ; August 20, 1886 – October 22, 1965) was a German and American Christian existentialist philosopher, religious socialist, and Lutheran theologian who was one of the most influential theologians of the twenti ...

's teaching assistant at

and one of the founding editors of the Psychedelic Review (along with much of the original cast of the Psilocybin Project). Lee was given the niacin, at least for these sessions. Amidst other intriguing journal observations, in the entry titled "The Mushroom" Lee recounted, Timothy Leary, who had supervised the experiment without institutional approval, was dismissed from Harvard in 1963.

Doblin's follow-up

In a 25-year follow-up to the experiment in 1986, all of the subjects given psilocybin except for one described their experience as having elements of "a genuine mystical nature and characterized it as one of the high points of their spiritual life". Psychedelic researcher

Rick Doblin Richard Elliot Doblin (born November 30, 1953) is an American psychedelic drug advocate who is the founder and president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Early life and education Rick Doblin grew up in Skokie ...

considered Pahnke's original study partially flawed due to incorrect implementation of the

procedure, and several imprecise questions in the mystical experience questionnaire. Pahnke had failed to mention that several subjects had struggled with

acute anxiety Panic attacks are sudden periods of intense fear and discomfort that may include palpitations, otherwise defined as a rapid, irregular heartbeat, sweating, chest pain or discomfort, shortness of breath, trembling, dizziness, numbness, confusi ...

during their experience. One had to be restrained and injected with

Thorazine Chlorpromazine (CPZ), marketed under the brand names Thorazine and Largactil among others, is an antipsychotic medication. It is primarily used to treat psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. Other uses include the treatment of bipolar dis ...

(chlorpromazine) after he had fled the chapel convinced he was chosen to announce the return of the

Messiah In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; , ; , ; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of '' mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach ...

. Nevertheless, Doblin said that Pahnke's study cast "a considerable doubt on the assertion that mystical experiences catalyzed by drugs are in any way inferior to non-drug mystical experiences in both their immediate content and long-term effects". A similar sentiment was expressed by clinical psychologist

William A. Richards William Alford Richards (March 9, 1849July 25, 1912) was an American surveyor, rancher, and politician who served as the fourth governor of Wyoming from 1895 to 1899 and as the 30th commissioner of the General Land Office from 1903 to 1907. ...

, who in 2007 stated " sychedelicmushroom use may constitute one technology for evoking revelatory experiences that are similar, if not identical, to those that occur through so-called spontaneous alterations of brain chemistry."

Griffiths' study

In 2002 (published in 2006), a study was conducted at

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

by Roland R. Griffiths that assessed mystical experience after psilocybin. In a 14-month follow-up to this study, over half of the participants rated the experience among the top five most meaningful spiritual experiences in their lives, and considered the experience to have increased their personal well-being and life satisfaction.

Notes

References

*Roberts, T. B. (editor) (2001). ''Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion.'' San Francisco: Council on Spiritual Practices. * *Roberts, T. B. "Chemical Input—Religious Output: Entheogens." Chapter 10 in ''Where God and Science Meet: Vol. 3: The Psychology of Religious Experience'' Robert McNamara (editor)(2006). Westport, CT: Praeger/Greenwood.

External links