The Addiction Research Foundation (ARF) was an Ontario agency for research and treatment. Its 1986–87 annual report says the province created it as the Alcoholism Research Foundation in 1949, added other drugs to its mandate in 1961 and renamed it the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation (ARF annual report).
In 1962 a Toronto psychiatrist asked it to test claims from Saskatchewan that LSD helped alcoholism. Its trial put 30 patients into three groups of ten: LSD, ephedrine as an active placebo, or no drug. All three groups drank less over six months, with no significant difference between them (Smart et al., 1967); the main paper appeared in 1966 (Smart et al., 1966). Historian Erika Dyck writes that the ARF disputed the Saskatchewan findings and challenged their advocates to run controlled trials (Dyck, 2006).
Later meta-analyses that pool several 1960s trials lean toward a modest LSD benefit, with the Toronto trial carrying the least weight (Keighley et al., 2025). In 1998 the ARF merged with three other institutions to form the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).
Sources
- Addiction Research Foundation annual report 1986–87
- Smart et al., 1967, Brookside Monograph No. 6
- Keighley et al., 2025
- CAMH Turns 25
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