The Hollywood Hospital was founded in 1919 in New Westminster, B.C. as the Hollywood Sanitarium. It was a private hospital for the treatment of alcoholics and patients with other addictions. Hollywood became well-known in British Columbia as a facility that treated prominent and wealthy members of society, including a number of celebrities. The Hollywood Sanitarium changed its name to the Hollywood Hospital in 1959. In 1957, the Medical Director, Dr. J. Ross MacLean, began experimenting with the use of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs in the treatment of alcoholism and a variety of personality disorders. He and his colleagues reported good results. However, the LSD treatments were viewed suspiciously by the wider medical community and the provincial government, and by 1975 MacLean had been pressured into closing the hospital.
1957 - [1975?]