Time Contraction and Psychomotor Performance produced by ‘Psilocybin’

Abstract

IT is particularly rewarding to investigate the experience of chronosystole, or time contraction during sympathetic excitation, as this state, which is connected with an increase in metabolic rate, can be elicited at will through psychotomimetic, pyretogenic drugs such as mescaline, marihuana, D-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), ‘Psilocybin’^1,2. We may define time contraction in terms of an alteration in the signal per noise ratio of the sensor, or in an adaptation of Stroud's³ terminology, an increase in data content. In short, if more events are happening within a chronological time unit, the phenomenon of time contraction is experienced. Hofmann's self-observation, in what may be called the first description of time contraction after a dose of 0.25 mg of LSD (ref. 4), relates “the impression of being unable to move from the spot” on his way horne from the laboratory on a bicycle. Delay's⁵ systematic description of the psychic effects elicited by ‘Psilocybin’ also refers to experiences which may be considered phenomena of time contraction: “J'ai l'impression que le temps passe plus lentement, qu'il a plus de densité”. “Tout est d'une longuer indéfinissable.”