The 1950s and 60s were a time when a wide range of human experimentation took place. Perhaps the CIA-funded MK-Ultra is the first name that comes to mind when pondering such topic. The following tests, though, do not involve horrific torture or chemical sleep. The subjects in those experiments were given LSD — Lysergic Acid Diethylamide — among other psychedelics and were interviewed and monitored, first for the sake of research then for therapy.
Since there is a full chapter about psychedelics in my upcoming book, I find this a neat opportunity to share a few things.
The word ‘psychedelic’ is derived from Ancient Greek; literally meaning “mind-manifesting”. From ψυχή (psukhḗ, “mind, breath, life, soul”) + δῆλος (dêlos, “manifest, clear, visible”) + English -ic. It was first suggested by
British-born Canadian psychiatrist Humphry Osmond (1917-2004) in a
letter to Aldous Huxley. Osmond is in one of the interesting experiments featured in the below videos, where in 1955 he administered mescaline to
Christopher Mayhew, a British member of parliament.
EDIT:
*This exposé was quoted and cited in the 2017 academic book Drugs and Society — 13th Edition by Annette E. Fleckenstein, Glen R. Hanson, and Peter J. Venturelli.
The Birth of LSD
We know that
Albert Hofmann synthesised
LSD-25 for the first time in 1938 in Basel, Switzerland where he was working as a chemist for Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. LSD is a naturally occurring psychoactive hallucinogenic substance found in ergot; it can also be
synthesised as a chemical produced by
a specific type of fungus, which grows on grains like rye and wheat.
However, the hallucinogenic effects of LSD remained unknown
until April 19th 1943 — now dubbed Bicycle Day — when Hofmann accidentally ingested a tiny dose of the drug.
Soon after, a
research project under W. A. Stoll, a psychiatrist and nephew of one of the
Sandoz directors, was set up. Interestingly, the directors of Sandoz Pharmaceuticals tried LSD themselves. More
than 40 subjects participated; the majority of which were busy, corporate people. Some of us would have loved to be an observing fly on the wall then.
Next, psychologists began experimenting with LSD as a ‘psychotomimetic’ drug — one that causes the user to temporarily mime the
condition of psychosis. After some tests on animals, it had quickly become recognised for its potential therapeutic effects on humans, as a possible treatment for schizophrenia, as well as a research tool in studying mental illness.
Patented and marketed as
Delysid in 1947, Sandoz gave out those
brown-glass vials to research institutes and doctors to use in psychiatric experiments on both healthy and mentally ill subjects. Between the late 1950s and the early 1970s, LSD was legally distributed to practitioners of
psychiatry mainly across the U.S, the UK, and Canada to experiment with. Psychiatrists, therapists and
researchers administered ‘acid’ to thousands of people — the number publicised is about 40,000 subjects. Though I believe this figure must exclude the countless MK-Ultra victims.
Psychiatric students were also encouraged to use LSD as a teaching device to help
understand schizophrenia.
![LSD sheet depicting Bicycle Day on April 19th - The LSD Experiments of the 1950s and 60s [Videos & Documentaries], One Lucky Soul](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf525WelQHrJLM-05xS_awakYUYj6FPlBChcrMOvGRlNmMK3ckThZ8kJ9cJfZiL7e4I_11YhaklnAQaJctvoh5btxq-8FjubKy4nZhR1NVLotyN4_ccsFlotDyKm0nbXAAuYLN7oqF-gBr/w526-h522/bicycle-day.jpg "The LSD Experiments of the 1950s and 60s [Videos & Documentaries] by Omar Cherif, One Lucky Soul") |
Humanity’s first LSD trip on Bicycle Day (April 19th)
commemorated as blotter art |
Most of the subjects were given the new medication as a treatment for
alcoholism and drug addiction; as well as for mental illnesses like
anxiety and depression. Schizophrenics, obsessive-compulsives,
depressives and autistic people were all dozed with LSD in hope to cure
them. It was also administered to people [then] considered mentally ill with
sexual perversions, such as homosexuality.
One of the famous subjects of said experiments was Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, who became an avid supporter of the use of LSD to treat alcoholism. Another famous first experimenter was Ken Kesey, who played a major role in getting the drug from the lab to the streets of America.
![The LSD Experiments of the 1950s and 60s [Videos & Documentaries] by Omar Cherif, One Lucky Soul](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjoSkQF-KXrCa_OY6RZutcUjz3T6eX6cIdSWyMS3H1Ex4evON8PAeP5j7OQCP-oUA8psmgUFMd3EG_uVHuDxaOsqWyqBaf3fepgxNGIzLB-pDaC_d7aqFHaUXQKp3GowP5yQ5up2XPdzKw/w484-h640/10517643_677550615666049_7420246730461748756_o.jpg "Cary Grant about LSD - The LSD Experiments of the 1950s and 60s [Videos & Documentaries], One Lucky Soul") |
Cary Grant devoted an entire chapter in his Autobiography to
talk about the benefits of LSD |
Excerpted from chapter 14 of the Autobiography, Grants insightfully writes:
“
I learned many things in the quiet of that small room. I learned to accept the responsibility for my own actions, and to blame myself and no one else for circumstances of my own creating. I learned that no one else was keeping me unhappy but me; that I could whip myself better than any other guy in the joint.
I learned that all clichés prove true; which is, of course, the reason for their repetition, even when the meaning has been forgotten by the constant usage.
I learned that everything is, or becomes, its own opposite. A theory I can sometimes apply, but would find difficult to convey.
I learned that my dear parents, products of their parents, could know no better than they knew, and began to remember them only for the most useful, the best, the wisest of their teachings. They gave me my life and body, the promising combination of the two, and my initial strength; they endowed me with an inquisitive mind. They taught me to feed myself, to walk, to bathe myself and to clothe myself; and I shall think of them always with love now, not only for what they did know but, even, for what they didn’t know.”
Reportedly, Cary Grant survived over 100 trips. It is always invigorating to find out about other soul-sailors who went through the 3-digit threshold. Winky Wink.
It is worth noting that LSD was not the only psychedelic that was tested in the 50s and 60s. Mescaline and
psilocybin — the main psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms — were also administered to subjects.
From 1960 to 1962, experiments were conducted by psychologist Timothy Leary at Harvard University under the
Harvard Psilocybin Project. Unlike MK-Ultra, his subjects willingly chose to partake in those tests,
while the doses and frequency were carefully and humanly regulated.
According to Leary’s autobiography
Flashbacks,
the results were that out of the 300 professors, graduate students, writers and philosophers who had
taken LSD, 75 percent reported the experience as one of the most educational
and revealing ones of their lives.
Leary also directed the
Concord Prison Experiment,
which
was conducted by a team of Harvard University researchers between 1961
and 1963. Along with psychotherapy, psilocybin was administered to young
prisoners in attempt to inspire them to leave their antisocial
lifestyles behind once they were released. Results were positive here as
well.
You can find out about my wackiest experience with shrooms on
Out-of-Body Experience and Ego Death on a “Heroic Dose” of Mushrooms.
On a more sinister note, psychedelics tests were not always as peaceful. Because of their magnanimous potency, there were also used in attempt to behaviourally engineer individuals and control them. In a series of secret MK-Ultra experiments that lasted through two decades, LSD was given to CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, and members of the general public in order to study their reactions, often without their knowledge. A wicked and horrible thing to do, I tell you.
It was likewise given to
mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts and prostitutes; “people who
could not fight back” — as one officer put it. In one particular case, a
mental
patient in Kentucky was dosed with LSD continuously for 174 days. Aouch! Most of those vile experiments ended with considerable amount of damage.
A total of 44 American colleges and universities, 15 research
foundations or chemical or pharmaceutical companies and the like
including Sandoz (now Novartis) and Eli Lilly and Company, 12 hospitals
or clinics (in addition to those associated with universities), and
three prisons have participated in MK-Ultra.
Many years later, 127 victims sued both the United States and Canadian governments for unwillingly taking part in the MK-Ultra experiments. Eventually the case was settled out of court for $100,000 each. But, is there really a
price for messing with someone’s brain and life so barbarically?
You can learn more about this dark chapter in history from an earlier two-part research exposé of mine,
MK-Ultra Then and Now — A Thorough Analysis of Mind Control.
There is also a docudrama miniseries called
Wormwood about an army bacteriologist and CIA employee,
Frank Olson, who in 1953 mysteriously took a fatal plunge from a New York hotel window after being unwittingly dosed LSD by his superior few days prior. He was part of secret cold war programs and for some reason ended up losing his life by becoming one of the many MK-Ultra subjects and certainly victims.
On a parallel note, psychedelics can indeed mess with the minds and lives of certain people, particularly those with mental health issues. One notable example is Syd Barrett the creative founder of Pink Floyd who apparently overdid it and who is often considered an Acid casualty. Another may be Charles Manson who seem to have used LSD as a tool to psychopathically brainwash his followers in the late 60s.
The Outbreak
When in the early 60s LSD escaped the controlled settings of the labs and reached the population, it eventually lead to a large-scale revolution of consciousness. Everything changed then. The music, the lifestyles, and the whole culture were affected by this happening. The world was Turned On. And all
Heaven and Hell broke loose. A kaleidoscopic expansion of consciousness took place, shifting paradigms and forever changing the lives of millions of souls.
Initially, LSD began to be popularised through the acid tests of
Ken Kesey and his
Merry Pranksters in the American West coast. And in a more academical fashion in the East coast, through
Timothy Leary and
Richard Alpert (
Ram Dass) and their own experimentation.
Psychedelics had already been epitomised in art by pioneers such as
Aldous Huxley, who wrote The Doors Of Perception after taking mescaline. A few years later, more famous figures hopped on the wagon of Love.
The Grateful Dead,
Hunter S. Thompson and
Stephen Gaskin, along with
Jack Kerouac,
William S. Burroughs, and
Allen Ginsberg — the leading figures of the Beat Generation — were a great influence behind the whole counter-culture phenomena of the ‘younger’ Hippies.
Learn
Why Hippies Are Sometimes Called Bohemians on this other article.
LSD also gave birth to psychedelic rock. From Jefferson Airplane, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, the Doors and Pink Floyd, to the Beatles, Bob Dylan and the Beach Boys. Huge musical festivals like the Fillmore East and West and Woodstock were a natural
Furthur expansion to the whole psychedelic movement.
Another more recent advocate of LSD was Apple’s Guru, the late
Steve Jobs, who once said:
“
Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important
things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin,
and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It
reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead
of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of
human consciousness as much as I could.”
Note that Jobs wasn’t another psychonaut like, say,
Leary or
Terence McKenna. Nevertheless, just like them, his visions did change
the world.
Here are some of my colourfully inspired philosophical poems:
The Mystic and the Tripper, The Womb,
When The Sky Spoke Back,
Moon Magnoon,
Phree Phlow, and
Intention Connection & Reflective Introspection.
Also, here is a vibrant selection of LSD quotes by some brilliant minds on
Goodreads.
Early Trippers
We know from history that pursuing the natural yearning for altering consciousness has been known to mankind for aeons. From kids spinning in circles, drinking coffee and tea
to meditations, dancing, drugs and alcohol, the yearning appears to be
instinctive — possibly out of curiosity or boredom, or a certain degree
of both.
In fact, humans are not alone to yearn for altered states. A wide variety of species in the animal kingdom are known to willingly ingest natural psychoactive substances to alter their consciousness — or less formerly, to get high. A compelling book discussing this topic in length is Giorgio Samorini’s 2002 Animals and Psychedelics: The Natural World and the Instinct to Alter Consciousness.
That said, before the discovery of LSD, hallucinogens or drugs in general have existed since the beginning of time. Most ancient cultures had some plant they used for ceremonial purposes to connect with the spirit world. Shamanic cultures specifically have always used psychoactive plants to see, to know, to grow.
Some millennia ago, the Blue Lotus (Nymphaea caerulea) was used medicinally and spiritually by the priesthoods of Ancient Egypt; and later by Hindus and Buddhists alike.
For the Greeks, the substance of higher consciousness was a beverage called Kykeon, which was ingested during the annual Eleusinian Mysteries festival that took place for 2000 long years. The mysteries share rituals and beliefs with Egypt, Crete, Anatolia, and Thrace; their origin roots back to the Neolithic age and the agrarian revolution. From approximately 1450 BCE to 392 CE, the celebration attracted thousands of people from all over the Greek world. It took place twice a year, with the Greater Mystery of the two taking place at Athens and Eleusis in the early fall, near the time of the autumnal equinox. Anyone could be initiated, including women and slaves, though they could only do it once in their lifetime.
The central mystery of the festival pertains to the nature of the ingested substance, the kykeon. It is believed to be a mixture of water, barley, and herbs (possibly mint) that the initiates ingest after being sensitised by fasting. They purify themselves by bathing in the sea while getting prepared for the preceding ceremonies.
The idea behind the Eleusinian Mysteries is to get a glimpse of the divine — by mimicking the enigmatic experience of death and rebirth in the ritual, which came to be known as The Eleusinian Mysteries. It is the origin of the Sacramental “communion” wine. The substance ingested then and there, however, was more than mere wine and, apparently in fact, hallucinogenic.
According to ancient texts, the authentic ingredients of that magical entheogenic potion were kept a secret guarded by the two hierophantic families who were in charge of making it and dispensing at Eleusis. The initiates were also sworn to secrecy. As such, until today no one knows exactly what the kykon was essentially made of but there are some suggestions.
Some of the famous initiatives who took place in the Eleusinian Mysteries were Herodotus and Plato who poetically wrote about his participation in Phaedrus:
“With a blessed company — we following in the train of Zeus, and others in that of some other god —… saw the blessed sight and vision and were initiated into that which is rightly called the most blessed of mysteries, which we celebrated in a state of perfection … being permitted as initiates to the sight of perfect and simple and calm and happy apparitions, which we saw in the pure light, being ourselves pure and not entombed in this which we carry about with us and call the body, in which we are imprisoned like an oyster in its shell.”
With that in mind, let us remember that we psychonauts are descendants of the same species that ate the mushrooms, the cactus, the lotus, Ayahuasca, Haoma (Sauma), Pituri, the Mayan’s Balché, El Toloache Moonflower (Datura inoxia) of the Chumash People of California, the famous Vedic medicine soma, and its Iranian variety haoma.
Accordingly, I find it quite ironic that such experiences that were once considered natural, insightful, and mystical by many cultures are now considered illegal by most of today’s modern societies. At the same time, other more acceptable and much more lethal, addictive drugs are marketed to the population while considered “safe”, like alcohol, tobacco and sugar; as well as all the pharmaceuticals prescribed by doctors — who, you know, always, always gave your best interest in mind.
If we mention World Affairs, whatever that means, it appears that for the powers that be, some drugs are more important than others. And it depends on who uses them and how much money can be made off them. How could cannabis and mushrooms be illegal? How could Nature be illegal? But now that they are legal in certain places around the world, the same powers that be are attempting to capitalise on it. Unregulated THC gummy bears for everyone. How about some spray and cream? 
![Kool Tunes Everyone Should Know [Videos] by Omar Cherif, One Lucky Soul](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC3OzGyu03LJ84usFxT1eiiv5vn1zCMRMoC88fOnKnUkeNDd3Lvn5wYp6c2LAF2UdF8_XxKMPP9waSMuiBQyJci7w2CFE5qvvNEH-vQKR9kG-Dv7_pyenD5gjNI9OlL-xpyk9aFV9DoilU/w537-h357/DSC00952.JPG "San Francisco by Omar Cherif, 2015 - Kool Tunes Everyone Should Know [Videos], One Lucky Soul")
.jpg "\"Zen\" by Omar Cherif in Venice Beach, California 2014 - OLS Reflections Onze, One Lucky Soul")
![The LSD Experiments of the 1950s and 60s [Videos & Documentaries] by Omar Cherif, One Lucky Soul](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlhIj6cqL5-EseiYmnexPRAwJG32nuBC0V2AJ04OGlLUnhScBMWBqeO2NZtqIUmewyB6WPEXoPmc_eLnQCTrxeNrX8o8zDiMQHXh5NFlb87oOUsTqCUmei_fi0u6y4AGyncLsAXR6UXT4f/s1600/9848LSD.jpg "DELYSID LSD - The LSD Experiments of the 1950s and 60s [Videos & Documentaries], One Lucky Soul")
![LSD sheet depicting Bicycle Day on April 19th - The LSD Experiments of the 1950s and 60s [Videos & Documentaries], One Lucky Soul](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf525WelQHrJLM-05xS_awakYUYj6FPlBChcrMOvGRlNmMK3ckThZ8kJ9cJfZiL7e4I_11YhaklnAQaJctvoh5btxq-8FjubKy4nZhR1NVLotyN4_ccsFlotDyKm0nbXAAuYLN7oqF-gBr/s1600/bicycle-day.jpg "The LSD Experiments of the 1950s and 60s [Videos & Documentaries] by Omar Cherif, One Lucky Soul")
![The LSD Experiments of the 1950s and 60s [Videos & Documentaries] by Omar Cherif, One Lucky Soul](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjoSkQF-KXrCa_OY6RZutcUjz3T6eX6cIdSWyMS3H1Ex4evON8PAeP5j7OQCP-oUA8psmgUFMd3EG_uVHuDxaOsqWyqBaf3fepgxNGIzLB-pDaC_d7aqFHaUXQKp3GowP5yQ5up2XPdzKw/s1600/10517643_677550615666049_7420246730461748756_o.jpg "Cary Grant about LSD - The LSD Experiments of the 1950s and 60s [Videos & Documentaries], One Lucky Soul")
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