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Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, more commonly known as LSD, acid, or blotter is a

Schedule I psychedelic drug. LSD alters the feelings and perceptions of those who consume it.

LSD is known to produce hallucinogenic visions and is used for spiritual reasons, psychiatric

gain, or recreational fun. LSD is known to be psychologically addictive as it often gives users a

euphoric feeling, however LSD is not physically addictive and will not produce withdrawal

effects due to physical dependence. LSD is typically taken orally and can last many hours.

In 1938 Albert Hofmann was working in the pharmaceutical department of Swedish

Sandoz Laboratories. While conducting research in lysergic acid products and derivatives,

Hoffman became the first person to ever synthesize LSD on November 16, 1938. When he

created LSD, he was intending to create a stimulant that would have no effects on a womans

uterus. When studying his new creation, he deduced that LSD would not work as intended, and

such decided to set aside his work.

Four and a half years later, Hofmann decided to reexamine his work. When re-

synthesizing LSD, he accidentally got some LSD on his fingertips and either through absorption

through his hands or accidentally touching his eyes or mouth, and became the first person to ever

ingest LSD. After experiencing what he described as an uninterrupted stream of fantastic

pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors, Hoffmann decided to

try what he believed to be a true dose of LSD. On April 19th, 1943, Hoffmann intentionally

ingested 250 (micrograms) of self synthesized LSD. He believed that 250 would be a good

threshold dose, however a LSD threshold dose is about 20-30. Albert Hofmann and his assistant

traveled home that day on bicycles. On the ride home, Hoffman become engulfed in the drug and

his condition worsened. He was convinced that the LSD had poisoned him beyond healing.

When his doctor arrived at his home and found nothing physically wrong with Hoffmann except
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for dilated pupils, after that reassurance Hoffmanns anxiety subsided and he began to enjoy the

experience. He documented his experience calling the visuals that he saw, fantastic

kaleidoscoping images. This day is known as bicycle day, and is celebrated by lsd users as a

holiday.

Sandoz Laboratories, which Albert Hofmann worked at, began research into clinical

applications of LSD. Throughout the 1950s, LSD became mainstream due to the medias

attention to the psychiatric uses of LSD. In the early 50s, studies had began to show that LSD

was capable of producing psychosis. This lead to LSD being used to simulate mental illnesses

and helped the evolution of antipsychotic medications for use on illnesses such as schizophrenia.

In the late 1950s, a study was published in which LSD was given to members of Alcoholics

Anonymous who had previously failed to quit drinking. After one year, about 50 percent of those

who had taken the LSD to quit, had been successful in remaining sober, a success rate that has

never been replicated by any other treatment. From 1950 to 1965, LSD was prescribed to over

40,000 individuals across the United States and abroad. In 1965 much of the LSD that was

psychiatrically proscribed was still being produced at the Sandoz Laboratories, but due to

growing governmental resistance in Switzerland, they halted production of LSD.

This didnt stop research into the benefits and drawbacks of LSD. One of the most

famous pro-LSD researchers was Dr. Timothy Leary. Dr. Leary was a medical researcher at

Harvard who is famously responsible for the Harvard Psilocybin Project. In 1960 Leary began

studying the synthetic version of the psilocybin mushroom, LSD. Leary was one of the first to

argue that LSD, in the right environment, in the right dose, and with the right people could

provide bigger benefits to people with mental illness than regular therapy alone. One of the

applications of LSD that Leary researched was its effect on criminals. Dr. Leary was one of the
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heads of the Concord Prison Experiment. In this experiment Leary gave LSD to criminals in

prison in the hope that a psychedelic experience would rehabilitate criminals and they would

denounce crime for good. At the time, the rate of return over one year for criminals in the United

States was 60 percent. In the study group, Dr. Leary found that only 20 percent of the criminals

we rearrested, well below the standard rate. Leary and his associates continued to study LSD in

laboratories at Harvard. In 1963 Leary was fired as a result of him failing to keep his classroom

appointments, while his partner was fired for providing psychedelics to undergraduate students.

Evidence suggests that Harvard was pressured to fire Leary by parents of his students claiming

that he too gave LSD and other substances to undergrad students.

After being fired from Harvard, Dr. Leary still maintained his activism for LSD. He

wrote in his 1964 book,A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness.

The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the

transcendence of verbal concepts, of spacetime dimensions, and of the ego or identity. Such

experiences of enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory deprivation, yoga

exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or aesthetic ecstasies, or spontaneously (The

Psychedelic Experience). Leary, always trying to prove that LSD was a great substance, claimed

in 1966 that LSD could be used to cure homosexuality. He later gave in interview where he

explained that homosexualtiy is not an illness in need of a cure. Leary was sentenced to 30 years

in prison in 1969 by a judge who expressed dislike for Leary and his books when a small amount

of marijuana was found in his car.. The decision was later overturned in the supreme court in the

Leary v. United States case. In Remembering Dr. Timothy Leary by Mel Seesholtz, Dr. Learys

legacy is mentioned, Dr. Leary always managed to be at the forefront of the latest cutting edge.

For some, he was a pop culture and counterculture hero, for others, a drug-soaked Pied Piper
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leading the youth of America astray. For Richard Nixon, he was the Most Dangerous Man in

America Dr. Leary goes down as one of the most influential men in LSD history.

Perhaps the most influential figure in LSDs history is Ken Kesey. Keesey was a part of

the not so secret CIA project named MKULTRA. The project was created to test drugs to see if

any could be used for mind control, interrogation, or torture. MKULTRA wanted to test LSD to

see if the substance could be used to make Soviet spies defect against their will and weather the

Soviets could do the same. In 1953 the CIA began testing LSD on subjects. Reports from

Dr. Harris Isbell, a drug researcher on the MKULTRA project, state that some subjects were

given doses up to 600 for months on end. This being one of the first studies of high doses for a

prolonged time. Ken Kesey was working as a night aid at the hospital where MKULTRA was ran

when he volunteered to take part in the project. Keseys rolle in the project as well as his job as

the night aid at the mental hospital inspired him to write One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest which

he published in 1962. The book went on to become a bestseller and was later turned into an

Academy Award winning film.

The success of the book allowed Kesey to move to southern California, where he

frequently held large parties where the guests were given LSD. These parties were called Acid

Tests. In 1964 when Ken Kesey was publishing his second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, he

needed to travel to New York to attend the publishing party. Ken Kesey and a group of his

friends, which he called the Merry Pranksters, decided to travel across the country in a

psychedelically painted school bus which they nicknamed Further. The journey, documented in

The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test involved the group taking copious amounts of LSD, speed, and

marijuana. The group consumed LSD constantly mostly in the form of spiked Kool Aid. Along

their journey, they provided free LSD to whomever they met along the way. When back home,

the further bus provided Kesey a portable location to run Acid Tests. When Kesey hosted one of
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these parties, he hung up posters in nearby areas asking,Can you pass the acid test? Bands

often followed Kesey to his Acid Tests and provided music. One of these bands was the Grateful

Dead, which have gone on to be one of the most successful touring bands of all time. At these

parties, Kesey handed out LSD kool aid out of his bus in the attempt to give as many people as

possible the chance to experience LSD. Kesey has been said to have once done LSD with Ringo

Starr of the Beatles.

In October of 1966 California passed a bill prohibiting the use of LSD, in response The

Human Be-In festival was arranged. At this gathering of over 30,000 hippies, Dr. Timothy Leary

uttered the famous words Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out. This event gained large media attention

and many people in the midwestern United States became exposed to LSD for the first time. The

hippie counterculture movement was on full display as the speakers pushed the radical liberal

views of the counterculture movement of the time.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon announced that he was moving forward with

comprehensive measures more effectively handle the dangerous drug problems by combining all

existing drug and narcotic laws into a single law. On October 27, 1970, The Controlled

Substances Act (CSA) was enacted which created the five Schedule classifications that are now

used. Contained in the Schedule I classification, which have no supposed medical uses and high

potential for abuse, was LSD. This law made the production, possession, and consumption of

LSD strictly illegal. LSD use began to decline in the 1970s and 1980s due to the illegal nature of

the drug, as well as production of the drug declined dramatically. In 2000 a large scale LSD

production lab was raided by the DEA who claimed a 95% decline in the availability of LSD

after.
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In November of 2015, the Rolling Stone magazine published an article detailing the

increasing number of individuals microdosing LSD. Microdosing is when an individual

consumes around 10 of LSD in an effort to become more productive and innovative. This trend

is especially popular amongst those in Silicon valley. In The Expanding Utility of Microdosing

by Notre Dame chemistry professor Graham Lappin, the physical effects of Microdosing are

discussed, Microdosing remains a tool in drug developers' toolbox, although in the opinion of

the author, the industry does not appear to be taking full advantage. Questions of

pharmacokinetic scalability remain, but the question is equally relevant to any of the current

methods. Lappin discusses how the drug is absorbed in the body and if microdosing produces

enough of an affect on the body.

LSD has had an impact far greater than Albert Hofmann had anticipated when he

sanitized way back in the 1950s. The drug has been a centerpoint of the whole hippie

counterculture movement which drastically changed American History. Many say that the

effectiveness of LSD as a global source for inspiration lead to the scheduling of itself and many

other substances in 1970. Today, LSD is still used and yet again is inspiring a new trend,

microdosing. Only time will tell how LSD changes the world again.

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Mar. 2017.
2. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Mar. 2017,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide. Accessed 6 Mar. 2017.
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3. Seesholtz, Mel. Remembering Dr. Timothy Leary. The Journal of Popular

Culture, vol. 38, no. 1, Aug. 2004, pp. 106128. Academic Search Premier [EBSCO],
Accessed 6 Mar. 2017.
4. LEARY, TIMOTHY. PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE: a Manual Based on the
Tibetan Book of the Dead. CITADEL PR, 1964.
5. The Expanding Utility of Microdosing. Clinical Pharmacology in Drug
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Accessed 6 Mar. 2017.
6. Ken Kesey. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Mar. 2017,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Kesey. Accessed 6 Mar. 2017.
7. W. Henry Wall, Jr. / NewSouth Books. How the CIA's LSD Mind-Control
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my-healthy-high-functioning-fathers-brilliant. Accessed 6 Mar. 2017.
8. Acid Tests. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Mar. 2017,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Tests. Accessed 6 Mar. 2017.