Abram Hoffer - Research

Research

Working in Saskatchewan with Humphry Osmond (who coined the term "psychedelic"), Hoffer and other scientists sought to find medicinal uses for hallucinogenic drugs. Part of the research involved Hoffer, Osmond and their wives consuming LSD in an effort to become better acquainted with, and better understand its effects, later joined by other experimenters and their wives. Their work began attracting the notoriety within professional, provincial and federal and political circles, and they were courted by the emerging movement to restrict peyote as well as Native American groups that used the substance in religious ceremonies. Hoffer, Osmond and others treated alcoholics with LSD. Canadian scientists reported a fifty percent success rate in one study, although Hoffer speculated that it was more likely the psychedelic experience of LSD, rather than simulated delirium tremens, that convinced the alcoholics to stop drinking.

While working at the Regina General Hospital in the 1950s, Hoffer and James Stephen examined the effects of large doses of niacin on various diseases, including schizophrenia; Hoffer theorized that adrenalin, when oxidized to adrenochrome was an endogenous neurotoxin that could cause schizophrenia. At the same time, another Canadian working in Saskatoon, pathologist Rudolf Altschul, was exploring the use of high doses of niacin to lower cholesterol in rabbits and patients with degenerative vascular disease. The three combined their work, and in 1955 produced a paper entitled "Influence of nicotinic acid on serum cholesterol in man." The paper summarized their research showing high-dose niacin significantly lowered cholesterol in both high cholesterol patients as well as low cholesterol control subjects. The results were replicated by researchers at the Mayo Clinic and in Germany the following year. High dose niacin has since become a treatment option for individuals with high blood cholesterol and related blood lipid abnormalities.

At such high doses niacin acts like a drug rather than a vitamin and may have side effects of intense flushing of the face and torso and, rarely, liver toxicity. Hoffer continued to promote niacin as a treatment for schizophrenia, though this approach was not accepted by mainstream medicine. Subsequent research suggested that Hoffer's adrenochrome theory had merit as people with schizophrenia have defects in the genes that produce glutathione S-transferase, which eliminates the byproducts of catecholamines from the brain. Though Hoffer and Osmond reported nicotinic acid could help with the treatment of schizophrenia, these results could not be replicated by others. Despite the apparent face validity of Hoffer's "transmethylation hypothesis" (in which it was thought that the production of catecholamines could sometimes go awry and produce a hallucinogenic neurotoxin), it was ultimately rejected for two reasons: the alleged neurotoxins could never been identified and the cause of schizophrenia became attributed to dysfunctions in neurotransmitters.