[RationalDino]

The experiment in question happened over 60 years ago. This was before the War on Drugs, before the hippies, and before most people had any familiarity with these drugs.

Public attitudes were very different. And the attitudes of Christians today are largely shaped by political battles that had not yet happened. Thus your current experience is not a good predictor of how easy it was to find Christians back then who would have been willing.

In fact I used to know some very conservative people who were exposed to LSD back in that early era. (They were old back when I knew them, and are dead now.) And based on what they told me, I would predict no resistance to such an experiment in 1962.

[pixl97]

Currently Christianity is associated with conservatism, hence more anti-drug behavior. And this isn't exactly incorrect these days either. As the population of self identifying Christians in the US shrinks, those that remain are apt to be those with a very strong ideological base.

[RationalDino]

That is true. But in the early 60s, before the rise of the Religious Right, no such association existed. For example https://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/journey_4/p_2.html shows the strong Christian support for the Civil Rights Movement.

Also it wouldn't have mattered back then. In the early 60s, drugs were associated with neither conservativism or liberalism.

Anecdote time. My ex's grandfather was a very conservative, very Christian lawyer. He happened to also be a lawyer for some people who were involved with LSD in the early days, and hence actually tried LSD in the time frame of the research article in question. He used to laugh about how he was someone that nobody would think had taken LSD.

It was a different time.