Controversial B.C. psychiatrist `gave hope' to thousands

Hoffer, who died in Victoria Wednesday at the age of 91, was a controversial figure in psychiatry and medicine throughout his life. He pioneered the use of LSD for treating alcoholism, discovered the ability of the vitamin niacin to lower cholesterol levels and developed a megavitamin therapy for treating schizophrenia - a therapy largely rejected by the psychiatric profession.

But patients and their families were always at the centre of his work, and they remain among his staunchest defenders.

``When patients came to him with schizophrenia, they quite often had failed other treatments and other psychiatrists and were often left with diagnoses such as, `You will never get better, you will never recover,' '' Hoffer's son, Dr. L. John Hoffer, recalled. ``They would come to him, and he would say to them . . . `You have a disease like diabetes. It's a disease of the chemicals in your brain. We have a treatment for it, and I will do everything in my power to make you better.'

.....snip........

Hoffer, who authored more than 500 peer-reviewed articles and more than 30 academic monographs and books, remained frustrated to the end that his work was never embraced by the mainstream psychiatric community, his son said. ``He was disappointed that the treatment wasn't adopted widely, that it continued to be rejected, and he was upset and angry that, in fact, it was never even investigated as it should have been.''

...........

``I've been getting floods of e-mails from people who say it was Hoffer's work that saved their son or daughter or husband or wife,'' he said. ``Really, there's no area of the world that's been untouched by his work.''