University College London - Amazon S3 · 2015. 12. 4. · ! 1! LSD: The Contradiction of the Psychedelic Panacea that became Public Enemy Number One of the United States of America

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LSD:

The Contradiction of the Psychedelic Panacea

that became Public Enemy Number One

of the United States of America.

A social and cultural history from 1943-1965 and beyond.

by

Louise Crane

a thesis submitted to

University College London

for the requirements of

History of Medicine (MA)

30 September, 2013

Chapter One: Introduction

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The game is about to be changed, ladies and gentlemen. Man is about to make use of that fabulous electrical network he carries around in his skull. Present social establishments had better be prepared for the change. Our favorite concepts are standing in the way of a floodtide, two billion years building up. The verbal dam is collapsing. Head for the hills, or prepare your intellectual craft to flow with the current. Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass), 1963.1

Present drug laws prohibit or restrict the general production, supply, distribution

and possession of many substances that have useful therapeutic properties. Here in

the United Kingdom, the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act2 sets out legislation that enables

substances that are publicly understood as “drugs” in a negative sense to be used as

medicines.

The clearest example follows. Diamorphine is one of the most effective painkillers in

the medical arsenal and it is routinely used in hospital for management of pain.

Diamorphine is also used recreationally for the feelings of warmth and euphoria it

brings, and in this setting, diamorphine is known to the public as heroin, one of the

most damnable drugs known to our general society.3 Diamorphine’s therapeutic

(and therefore respectable) use in a medical context is legal under the 1971 act; the

demonized recreational use4 is illegal.

Along with older plant-‐based medicines such as diamorphine and cocaine, newer

synthetic and semi-‐synthetic drugs are prohibited and restricted under the 1971 Act.

Like diamorphine, many of these were originally investigated and used as medicines

before being added to the long list of prohibited drugs, but not all are afforded the

same category as diamorphine.5

1 Timothy Leary and Ram Dass, The Politics of Consciousness Expansion, 1963. 2 UK Statutory Instrument, The Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971. 3 Street heroin is technically different to diamorphine since it is cut with other substances to increase profit on black market sales. Prior to legal resitractions, “medical” diamorphine was marketed under the brand name Heroin and was a much purer form of diamorphine. See Louise Crane, Dissertation/Thesis, Unpublished (BSc), UCL. 4 Ibid. 5 Leslie A. King, The Misuse of Drugs Act: A Guide for Forensic Scientists, 2003. Many of the drugs currently abused were once not only on open sale, but promoted as beneficial substances.


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One of these substances is the psychedelic drug d-‐lysergic acid diethylamide,

commonly known as LSD or ‘acid’. LSD’s potential as a medicine was first discovered

at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, Basel by Albert Hofmann in 1943. Reports of its potency

and ability to (seemingly) induce a psychotic or schizophrenic state interested

researchers in the United States of America (US). By 1947 Sandoz was sending out

‘Delysid’ to eager psychiatrists. Author of The Psychedelic Renaissance and

psychiatrist, Ben Sessa, states: “Heralded as ‘the next big thing in psychiatry’, this

fascinating drug looked set to transform the management of ‘neurotic’ patients.”6

Between 1947 and the mid-‐1960s over 1,000 pharmacological studies were

conducted on LSD, discussing forty thousand patients, many of which demonstrate

its efficacy as a treatment for a number of psychiatric conditions, including

alcoholism, obsessional neurosis, and childhood autism.7 Several dozen books were

published and six international conferences on psychedelic drug therapy took place.8

But LSD is now a banned drug in many countries, including the UK the US.9 Why?

This dissertation will examine how a drug of demonstrable therapeutic efficacy

became a banned substance, and in particular, one that has “no currently accepted

medical use in treatment.” 10 Its safety was proven at the time.11 (Modern studies

confirm that LSD is not a drug of high physical risk.12) My area of focus will be the US

because the social and cultural settings, actors and responses that led to the ban

mostly occurred here.

The history of international drugs legislation begins in the early 20th century, with

the Shanghai Opium Commission in 1909 and the resulting International Convention

in 1912 that restricted the manufacturing, sale and distribution of cocaine, morphine

6 Ben Sessa, The Pharmacology of LSD: A Critical Review, 2011. 38. 7 Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar, Dealing with Drugs: Consequences of Government Control, 1987. 183-‐219. 8 Ibid. 9 U. Congress, United States Controlled Substances Act.Pub, L, 1970. 84. 10 Ibid. 11 Sidney Cohen, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1960. 30-‐40. 12 David Nutt et al., The Lancet, 2007. 1047-‐1053.


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and opium in 12 signatory countries.13 Following this the 1920 Dangerous Drugs Act

was passed to strengthen drugs control, and became the foundation for all future

drugs legislation, 14 including the 1961 and 1971 United Nations Conventions, which

are pertinent to this thesis on Narcotic Drugs.

Medical historians including Virginia Berridge have shown that these drug laws are a

complex mix of political, social/moral and medical influences.15 Whenever a new

medical drug is made illegal, these same themes appear. As Lester Grinspoon and

James Bakalar (respectively a psychiatrist and a lecturer in law at Harvard) have

observed:

The language of medicine was called on in the first place to make the

special severity of drug controls plausible where justifications based on

simple consumer protection or legal moralism seemed inadequate. But

since the usual forms of medical control are obviously too mild, we

continually turn back to other justifications to supplement the medical

one.16

So the story of the legislation of LSD shares commonalities with that of opium-‐

derivatives, cocaine and cannabis. Drug is often concurrent with another, so

although I will focus on LSD in this thesis, other substances will briefly enter the

frame for both historical comparison and explanation. In particular, marijuana and

LSD were used recreationally in the 1960s within the same cultures, when marijuana

was illegal but LSD was not. I will reflect on the influence of marijuana use on the

perception of LSD.

13 Virginia Berridge, British Journal of Addiction, 1984. 19. The Shanghai Act was preceded by domestic Acts from the Victorian era aimed at restricting the use of opium and other ‘poisons’. See Virginia Berridge and Griffith Edwards, Opium and the People, 1982. 14 Berridge, 22. 15 Ibid. 16 James B. Bakalar and Lester Grinspoon, Hastings Center Report, 1983. 34-‐39.


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To begin my thesis I will examine, in Chapter Two, LSD’s origin as a medical drug.

Chapter Three will set out the timeline of LSD’s legislation. Chapter Four will explore

how and why the 1960s recreational use by a counterculture occurred, which used

psychedelic drugs as a tool and a signifier to anti-‐establishment rebellion. Chapter

Five will examine will the media’s presentation of LSD from the early 1960s onwards

and how, in the mid-‐1960s it demonized LSD, which greatly influenced drugs policy.

Chapter Six will return to the research side of LSD, examining how this was perceived

within the wider community and why a lack of support meant media claims went,

largely, unchallenged. Chapter Seven concerns the major funding source of much

LSD research and the impact of its withdrawal in the early 1960s. I conclude with

Chapter Eight.

This first chapter has introduced the context of the dissertation and outlined the

current legal status of LSD. The apparent antagonism between the scientific

evidence for its efficacy and low harm, and its legislation as a drug of no medical

value provides my motivation to research this area. I will be drawing on the

observations made by Grinspoon and Bakalar about the “ambiguous meaning”17 of

the term “public health” (which could be described as a “keyword” under Cooter’s18

view of such terms. Any unreferenced word in double quotes denotes a “keyword”

in this thesis.):

The use of drugs for pleasure is believed to present three kinds of threat

to human welfare. It is an offense to morals or a danger to the social

fabric; in some ways it is also like an epidemic disease; and in some ways

it resembles the ignorant use of a dangerous instrument like a chainsaw.

Social attitudes and legal regulations conform to each of these three

analogies in different ways, and each model in turn reinforces the others

at their weak points to supply reasons for stricter controls.19

17 Ibid. 38. 18 See, for example, R. Cooter, The Lancet, 2004. 1749. 19 Bakalar and Grinspoon, 38. (1983).


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Centring my thesis on these analogies, I will explore the actors involved in LSD

research and how they spread the “epidemic” of LSD through the United States and

the world and the triad of LSD’s social construction within medicine; the youth

culture of the 1960s; and the political media arena. I will explore, in turn, LSD as a

panacea, a portal to enlightenment and a demon. By investigating perceptions from

above, below and within, I hope to uncover some reasons for LSD’s fall from grace.

Chapter Two: The Panacea

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The only problem that anyone could foresee was the possibility that somewhere down the road LSD might turn out to be physically harmful. One couldn't forget Freud, who had thought cocaine an innocuous panacea and had become addicted.20 Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven. 21

According to Jay Stevens, author of Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream,

“Few drugs have been studied so extensively,” as LSD.22 Between 1947 and the mid-‐

1960s, over one thousand papers were published on the drug:

Every type of parapsychological phenomenon, every type of mystical,

ecstatic illumination, Jungian archetypes, past lives, precognition,

psychosis, satori-‐samadhi-‐atman, union with God – it was all there, in the

scientific record.23

LSD was first synthesized on November 16, 1938 at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, Basel by

Dr Albert Hofmann. The synthesis was part of Hofmann’s investigations into the

alkaloids of ergot, a wheat fungus, which had potential stimulating effects on the

blood circulation and respiration; Hofmann was looking for such an analeptic. The

25th lysergic acid diethylamide compound prepared was labelled LSD-‐25 and for the

first five years of its life, it was shelved as unpromising.

But in April 1943 Hofmann re-‐investigated. Perhaps through his fingertips, he

accidentally absorbed the substance, and for the first time in history somebody

experienced what came to be called an ‘acid trip’. Hoffman saw, “an uninterrupted

stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscope like play

of colors.”24

Three days later, Hofmann deliberately ingested LSD-‐25 at a dosage he considered

suitable: 250μg (or 250 micrograms). This is double what is now considered a

20 Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream, 1987. 113. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 18. 23 Ibid. 19. 24 Albert Hofmann, LSD: My Problem Child, 1980.


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standard dose – at the time Hofmann was unaware of its potency. Subsequent

research showed LSD can be “centrally active at a dose of just 25µg,” and that 100µg

“powers an intense 12-‐hour psychological experience.”25

Hofmann’s second “trip” was thus much more intense, akin to what he perceived to

be a schizophrenic experience. Hofmann later said, “Since my self-‐experiment had

revealed LSD in its terrifying, demonic aspect, the last thing I could have expected

was that this substance could ever find application as anything approaching a

pleasure drug.”26 The initial interest was in LSD as a psychotomimetic to aid

therapists in understanding their patients’ conditions.

Straight away, Werner Stoll (son of Head of Sandoz’s Pharmaceutical Department,

Professor Arthur Stoll) began using LSD in order to experience the symptoms of

mental illness himself, and in a therapeutic context to shock his patients.27 The first

paper was published in 1947), concluding that LSD produced perceptual

disturbances and acceleration in thinking and that there were no “unfavourable after

effects.”28 The paper also showed that in low doses, “LSD seemed to facilitate the

psychotherapeutic process by allowing repressed material to pass easily into

consciousness.”29

Psychiatric disorders had become a major issue in the 1940s. In 1941, 14% of 14

million inductees were “declared unfit due to neuropsychiatric disorders,” and the

American media made “mental health, and our lack of it, a staple of post-‐war

reportage.”30 Psychiatry had emerged as a serious professional discipline post-‐First

World War, thanks to the apparent success of “heroic” treatments such as insulin

25 Robert EL Masters and Jean Houston, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 1968. 26 Richard Elliot Doblin, Regulation of the Medical use of Psychedelics and Marijuana, 2000. 109. 27 Stephen Snelders and Charles Kaplan, Medical History, 2002. 229. 28 WA Stoll, Schweitzer Arch Neurol Psychiatrie, 1947. 1-‐45. 29 Stevens, 36. 30 Ibid. 41.


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shock and electroconvulsive shock therapy. Psychosurgery in the late thirties and

forties also boosted the profession’s reputation.31

Pharmaceutical companies had begun an “aggressive” such for mind drugs in the

1930s following “a dawning awareness that certain drugs sometimes altered a

psychosis’s traditional course.”32 After the discovery of noradrenaline in 1946 came

the idea that madness and psychosis might be cause by a “metabolic malfunction.”33

Sandoz had, potentially, a marketable drug on its hands.34 The company began to

send out ‘Delysid’ in 1949, claiming it could “induce model psychoses of short

duration in more normal subjects, thus facilitating studies on the pathogenesis of

mental illness,” and “elicit release of repressed material and provide mental

relaxation, particularly in anxiety states and obsessional neuroses.”35

Following a presentation by Viennese doctor Otto Kauders at a conference at Boston

Psychopathic Hospital, research director Milton Greenblatt, showed great interest

using LSD to produce a ‘model psychosis’ for schizophrenia. His colleague,

neuropsychiatrist Max Rinkel, quickly contacted Sandoz to arrange a shipment of LSD

to Boston.36 Rinkel began investigations with colleague Robert Hyde, the “number

two man”37. By May 1950 Rinkel had evidence that LSD caused a “transitory

psychotic disturbance” in otherwise normal people and that this indeed could

allowed doctors to study mental disorders in a “controlled and objective way.”38

31 Jack D. Pressman, Last Resort: Psychosurgery and the Limits of Medicine, 2002. 32 Stevens, 39, 45. 33 Ibid. 44. 34 Hofmann claims it was clear “from the beginning” that LSD would not be a preparation of commercial value and that Sandoz’s distribution of Delysid was a “noble” effort to support “the scientific investigation of the substance, showing the eminent role LSD could play as an excellent tool in brain research and in psychiatry.” Michael Horowitz, High Times, 1976. 31. 35 Stevens, 36. 36 John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control, 1979. 58. 37 Ibid. 38 Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond, 2007. 19-‐20.


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Drs Anthony Busch and Warren Johnson of St. Louis, Missouri were the first to

publish LSD research in an American journal.39 They had observed that “patients

were able to verbalize the repressed components of their conflicts during a toxic

delirium,” and had begun to seek out drugs that might induce a “transitory delirious

state”.40 At this point, Sandoz offered Busch and Johnson Delysid. They sought to

find a better method of gaining information about the patient’s “basic conflicts,”

which was typically gained while patients were in the “altered state” that followed

electroconvulsive therapy and insulin shock therapy were useful for obtaining the

required information. 41

They found LSD resulted in “a reliving of repressed traumatic episodes of childhood,"

and were impressed, “by the various attempts most of the patients made to

establish some kind of interpersonal relationship with the personnel.” They

concluded that LSD induced “a controllable toxic state” that “re-‐activates anxiety

and fear with apparently just enough euphoria to permit recall of the provoking

experiences,” and without the confusion that followed the previous “heroic”

techniques. They suggested it could be used to gain access to chronically withdrawn

patients, and “as a new tool for shortening psychotherapy.”42

By 1951, over 100 articles on LSD had been published in medical journals.43 In 1952 a

paper appeared, authored by Charles Savage, about the use of LSD to treat

depression. Drs Humphry Osmond and Albert Hoffer in Canada were spurred by the

observation that LSD provided patients with “personal insights and clear self-‐

reflection” and began researching treatment of alcoholism with LSD in 1953.44 Their

technique was to use massive doses of LSD on their patients and then guide them

“into that part of the Other World where egos melted and something resembling a

39 A. K. Busch and W. C. Johnson, Diseases of the Nervous System, 1950. 241-‐243. 40 Ibid. 241. 41 Ibid. 241. 42 Ibid. 243. 43 Erika Dyck, Can J Psychiatry, 2005. 383. 44 Ibid.


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spiritual rebirth occured.”45 They reported results that “50% of people are

changed,”46 which was confirmed in a follow-‐up study in 1958.47

Two techniques of LSD therapy developed. One focused on the sometimes “mystical”

experience of a single large dose of LSD (200µg or more) and its power to make

experimental subjects “less depressed, anxious, guilty, and angry and more self-‐

accepting, tolerant, deeply religious, and sensually alert” in just one psychedelic

experience.48 This “psychedelic therapy” mainly focused on its potential to reform

criminals and cure alcoholics.49 It helped to define alcoholism as a medical, not moral

problem, which could be cured with medicine, furthering the reputation of the

psychiatric profession. 50

“Psycholytic therapy” followed the ideas of Busch and Johnson, that “ the powerful

psychedelic experiences of regression, abreaction, intense transference, and

symbolic drama in psychodynamic psychotherapy,” could be useful in treatment.51

This therapy used smaller doses (around 150µg) over several sessions, mainly in the

treatment of neurotic and psychosomatic disorders.52 Such treatment depended on

the utilisation of existing psychoanalytical concepts, incorporating Rank and Jung

when the appropriate experiences arose. 53 Pioneer of the field Dr Ronald Sandison

of Powick Hospital, Gloucestershire reported usefulness in helping patients to access

“deeper, repressed parts of their psyches”.54 By speeding up psychoanalysis, LSD

45 Stevens, 131. 46 Ibid. 47 C. M. Smith, Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 1958. 406-‐417. 48 William McGlothlin, Sidney Cohen and Marcella S. McGlothlin, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 1970. 20-‐31. 49 JN Sherwood, MJ Stolaroff and WW Harman, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 1968. 96-‐111. 50 Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar, Current Psychiatric Therapies, 1981. 275-‐283. During an era of increasingly stringent regulations on what constituted scientific evidence for efficacy, a treatment that is akin to a religious experience would later become problematic for psychiatrists looking to add credibility to their profession. I will address this in further chapters. 51 Busch and Johnson, 241-‐243. 52 Charles Savage, Mary Alice Hughes and Robert Mogar, The British Journal of Social Psychiatry, 1967. 59-‐66. 53 Grinspoon and Bakalar, 275-‐283. (1981) 54 Ronald A. Sandison, AM Spencer and JDA Whitelaw, The British Journal of Psychiatry, 1954. 491-‐507.


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sped up the process by which psychiatrists could legitimate their field by providing

tangible results, and psychedelics “played a role in dragging psychiatry into the

modern world.”55

Come 1954, LSD was being used in private psychiatric practice. Dr Oscar Janiger’s

clinic near Santa Monica saw visits from Cary Grant, Jack Nicholson, and Anäis Nin.56

Janiger’s research experiment was to have volunteers take LSD, provide them with

paper, pencils, typewriters and tape recorders and let them do what they wanted.57

One day a painter volunteered and spread the world to the local bohemian art scene

that there was a “shrink” with a “creativity pill”.58 Mortimer Hartman and Arthur

Chandler ran another LSD clinic in Beverly Hills. They were one of the first to charge

for LSD therapy, an astute financial decision in the “analysis-‐prone film colony” of

the Hills.59 Both practices saw LSD move out of the confines of medical research to a

much wider audience keen on ‘self-‐improvement’ and exploration.

The move away from the psychotomimetic ‘model psychosis’ idea was reflected in

the first International symposium in 1956.60 In 1958, the World Health Organization

(WHO) published an “enthusiastic” report on psychedelic studies, rejecting the idea

of “psychotomimetic” as “an adequate description of the nature of the psychedelic

experience.” 61

The First International Conference on LSD therapy62 took place at Princeton

University on April 22-‐24 1959. One of Janiger's counterparts, Los Angeles

psychiatrist Sidney Cohen, attended and concluded that due to the very small

55 Dyck, 382. (2005) 56 Oscar Janiger, California Clinician, 1959. 222-‐224. See also: Oscar Janiger and Marlene Dobkin de Rios, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 1989. 129-‐134. 57 Stevens, 96. 58 Ibid. 96. 59 Ibid. 103. 60 Ibid. 96. 61 World Health Organization. Study Group on Ataractic and Hallucinogenic Drugs in Psychiatry, Ataractic and Hallucinogenic Drugs in Psychiatry: Report of a Study Group, 1958. 62 Harold Alexander Abramson, The use of LSD in Psychotherapy: Transactions, 1960.


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number of reported adverse effects, “LSD is an astonishingly safe drug.”63 The next

year, Cohen produced a survey regarding potential adverse effects of LSD. The

responses covered LSD and mescaline research on 5,000 patients and experimental

subjects -‐ a total of 25,000 drug sessions. Two major concerns about psychedelic use,

prolonged psychosis and risk of suicide, were refuted. The suicide rate in patients

was 0.4 per 1000 in patients during and after therapy, and zero in experimental

subjects.64 Only 1.8 in 1000 patients and 0.8 in 1000 experimental subjects

experience a prolonged psychosis of 48 hours or more.65

Dr Timothy Leary founded the Psychedelic Research Project at Harvard University in

1960. Initially looking at psilocybin, he and co-‐researcher Richard Alpert explored

human consciousness, moving onto LSD in 1962. Leary and Alpert’s work focused on

‘game-‐playing’ and in 1961 they started working with convicts in the Massachusetts

Correctional Institution, a maximum-‐security prison for young offenders. The team

hoped that psilocybin would change the minds of the prisoners and make them

become less destructive citizens. The results were impressive: rather than the

predicted 64% return rate of paroled prisoners, only 25% had returned to prison

after six months.66 Leary and Alpert played a major role in the escape of LSD from its

clinical setting, as will be discussed in further chapters.

In 1961, the Royal MedicoPsychological Association devoted the whole of its three

day meeting to the psychedelic drugs.67 By the mid-‐1960s, over 40,000 patients had

taken LSD.68 Psychedelic medicine was enthusiastically advocated by numerous

psychiatrists from diverse cultural backgrounds and socio-‐political contexts, 69 and

63 Cohen, 30-‐40. (1960) 64 Ibid. 36. Cohen noted that it was not possible to compare this rate to other therapies, as “A search of the literature for a statistical report…. proved fruitless.” (38) 65Ibid. 66 Timothy Leary et al., Dittoed, Harvard Univ, 1962. 67 Richard Wilfred Crocket, RA Sandison and Alexander Walk, Hallucinogenic Drugs and their Psychotherapeutic Use, 1963. 68 Peter G. Stafford and Jeremy Bigwood, Psychedelics Encyclopedia, 1992. 40-‐44. 69 Snelders and Kaplan, 221.


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there was a Second International Conference on the Use of LSD in

Psychotherapy in May 1965.70

However, although LSD’s future looked bright, “already forces were in motion that

would change what seemed a complex but ultimately solvable scientific problem

into a complex and apparently insoluble social problem.”71 During the 1960s, several

laws and acts were passed that made research increasingly difficult. Psychedelic

research was stifled and the number of papers published began to dwindle.

By 1974 the National Institute of Mental Health had concluded that LSD had no

therapeutic use.72 The Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration

(ADAMHA) reported it was not funding any research involving administration of LSD

to humans in 1975 “due to the result of accumulated findings in the field,” and not

because of “policy.”73 Rick Doblin, founder of the present day Multidisciplinary

Association for Psychedelic Studies, claims this is worded to imply that research died

down because psychedelics were not safe or effective.74 However, Dr Stephen Szára,

former Chief of the Biomedical Research Branch, National Institute on Drug Abuse ,

remarked in 1992 that “clinical research with these drugs essentially stopped...

[there were] 20 years of deliberate legal neglect and constraints.”75

What might be the reason behind this “deliberate legal neglect”? The next chapter

will outline the legal changes that restricted LSD research. This will establish a

framework in which to explore the social and cultural situation that surrounded both

the medical research and the recreational use of LSD in the 1960s, which is key to

understanding the backlash against LSD.

70 HA Abramson, New York: The Bobbs-‐Merrill Company, 1967. 71 Stevens, 133. 72 Leigh A. Henderson and William J. Glass, LSD: Still with Us After all these Years. 1994. 73 Steven Szára in Hallucinogens: An Update, NIDA Monograph Series # 146 , . , 1994. 39. 74 Doblin, 54. 75 Szára, 39.

Chapter Three: The Law

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The fact is, the mind is constantly dulled by the inflow of everyday information, the same blue sky, the same wife and kids; it uses sensation the way we use grit to sharpen a dull blade. So to legislate against sensation-‐seeking is to legislate against one of our strongest drives.

Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven.76

Having briefly outlined the history of general drugs legislation in Chapter One, I will

now provide a timeline of legislation that affected LSD use, -‐ both medical and

recreational. Although some comment will be given to the social context of these

rulings, further chapters will examine these factors more fully.

Until 1938, “psychedelic” drugs (a term coined after 1938 to describe mescaline,

peyote derivatives, and LSD) were unrestricted by any act of law. Although it did not

place any restriction on psychedelics, The U.S. Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 – which

established licensing, taxation and the control over the manufacture, sale and

possession of opiates and cocaine77 -‐ kickstarted a series of legal moves that

eventually made psychedelics illegal.

Sociologist Alfred Lindesmith claims the Harrison Act, which required prescriptions

to be written for medical use of opium derivatives and cocaine above a specified

limit, intimidated the medical profession wishing to treat addicts with opiates, since

addiction was not classed as a disease. Eventually, legislation that aimed to

criminalise non-‐medical drug use effectively eliminated its medical use. This pattern

would be repeated with LSD.

Marijuana legislation began to appear around this time and gained swift ground

following the repeal of Prohibition in the United States in 1933. 78 The 1937

Marijuana Tax Act set fees of $1 an ounce for specified industrial or medical uses79

and $100 an ounce for unspecified uses (i.e. non-‐medical and non-‐industrial). The tax

76 Stevens, 32. 77 Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914, Public Law 63-‐223, Cong. Ch. 1; 38 Stat. 785 (1914). 78 Richard J. Bonnie and Charles H. Whitebread, Virginia Law Review, 1970. 971-‐1203. 79 Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, Public Law 75-‐238, Cong. Ch. 553; 50 Stat. 551 (1937).


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provided a new source of income for the U.S. Treasury,80 while making most

marijuana use prohibitively expensive.81 Thanks to Anslinger’s continued efforts,

marijuana was removed from the United States Pharmacopeia and National

Formulary in 1941, thus losing its therapeutic legitimacy. As with opiates before,

previous legislation against non-‐medical uses of a drug had led “to the suppression

of its medical uses.”82

The 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act included, for the first time, a

psychedelic drug: peyote (and its derivative, mescaline). This act, largely a response

to public fears over dangerous and impure medications, required that any drug

containing an amount of “narcotic and hypnotic drugs” had to be labelled, “Warning

-‐ May be Habit Forming.”83

The end of the Second World War affected drugs legislation in a subtle but powerful

way. The Nuremburg Trials of 1946 led to the 1947 The Nuremberg Code on

Permissible Medical Experiments, which listed ten basic principles, that covered

subjects’ voluntary consent and freedom to withdraw from a study; balance of risks

to subject versus potential benefit to society; and the avoidance of “unnecessary

physical and mental suffering and injury.”84

Although this Code was not initially enacted into US law or regulation, the 1962

Kefauver-‐Harris Amendments to the 1938 Act enforced the voluntary standard that

“subjects be fully informed of the experimental nature of the study and formally

consent to participate.”85 This was the first piece of legislation to have a marked

80 Richard J. Bonnie, Marijuana use and Criminal Sanctions: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Decriminalization, 1980. 1. 81 Doblin, 16. 82 Ibid. 83 Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, Public Law 75-‐717, Cong. Ch. 675; 52 Stat. 1040. (1938). 84 The Nuremberg Code, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law, 1949. 181-‐182. 85 Doblin, 35.


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impact on LSD research since its 1943 discovery (and later it would become apparent

that some of the research involved testing LSD on unknowing subjects).

The 1962 Amendments also required that Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

approval be obtained in order to market a medical drug. This entailed providing

“adequate and well controlled investigations” that showed a drug was safe and

effective.86 This was problematic for LSD research. The effects of LSD are subjective,

and depend on a variety of factors. It is not a straightforward casing of giving a dose

and seeing an expected, uniform effect. Neither Sandoz Pharmaceuticals nor any

other entity presented FDA with the evidence required. As a result, LSD, psilocybin

and mescaline and all other psychedelic drugs, though still legal, were considered to

be experimental, unapproved drugs for which FDA permission was required before

human administration could take place.87

As such, pharmaceutical companies could no longer direct supply physicians with

psychedelics. Psychedelics could no longer be administered as part of a research or

treatment program, unless linked to a federally approved research project, and from

1963 only researchers who either worked within federal or state agencies, or

obtained grants or permission from such agencies, could be supplied with

psychedelic drugs.88 This was a major hindrance to psychedelic research.

The 1964 Declaration of Helsinki,89 contained principles along the same lines as the

Nuremburg Code, including requirements that risks be full disclosed to subjects and

balanced by potential benefits, and reiterated that subjects must be volunteers with

a right to opt out at any time.

Some felt these laws were not stringent enough. Driven by a fear of psychotic

reaction and “psychic addiction” to LSD, President of the American Medical

86 Drug Amendments Act of 1962, Public Law 87-‐781, 76 Stat. 780 (1962). 87 Doblin, 35. 88 Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, 1979. 309. 89 Helsinki Declaration, Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects.with Later Amendments, Helsinki, World Medical Association, 1964.


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Association (AMA) Dr Roy Grinker wrote in an editorial for AMA’s journal, “The Food

and Drug Administration has failed in its policing functions. [Psychedelics] are indeed

dangerous even when used under the best of precautions and conditions.”90

In this wake came the Drug Abuse Control Amendments of 1965 that stated:

No person shall manufacture, compound, process or sell any depressant

or stimulant drugs, or any drugs with an “hallucinogenic effect,” except

for those people with special permits given for a few restricted uses,

primarily legitimate wholesale distribution, research and medical

applications.91

Now, licences were required to manufacture chemicals needed for LSD research. The

FDA required that most LSD psychedelic researchers (more than fifty) halt their work

and return their supplies of LSD,92 and the National Institute of Mental Health

(NIMH) stopped supplying LSD to some projects that had received previous approval.

In April 1965, Sandoz ceased LSD distribution in the United States.93

In May 1966 Senator Robert Kennedy convened a subcommittee on Government

programs relating to LSD in order to argue strongly for the continuation of research,

stating that LSD can be “very, very helpful” in society “if used properly” and that

they had lost sight of this.94 The same year psychiatrist Stephen Szára had accepted

the need to regulate the use of psycehdelics as “powerful and potentially dangerous

agents,” but warned we “should not throw the baby out with the bath water,” at a

meeting of the American Psychiatric Association the same month 95

90 Roy R. Grinker Sr, JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 1964. 768-‐768. 91 Drug Abuse Control Amendments of 1965, Public Law 89-‐74, 79 Stat. 226 (1965). 92 Grinspoon and Bakalar, 309. (1979) 93 Lee and Shlain, 93. 94 Sen Robert Kennedy. Senate Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization Hearing, Organization and Coordination of Federal Drug Research and Regulatory Programs: LSD, May 24-‐26, 1966. 63. 95 Stephen Szára, Am J Psychiatry, 1967. 1517.


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This was to no avail. In 1967 the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs ratified the

1961 international treaty of the same name.96 Although psychedelics were not

covered by the Convention -‐ and so remained under the control of the FDA – the

Convention allowed for the addition of further drugs by the Commission on Narcotic

Drugs of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson used his State of the Union address to promise

“stricter penalties for those who traffic in LSD and other dangerous drugs with our

people.”97 Following this, the FDA’s Bureau of Drug Abuse Control was combined

with the Department of Treasury’s Bureau of Narcotics to form The Bureau of

Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), which now came under the Department of

Justice.

This was one more step towards criminalising recreational LSD use. The final step

was made on October 24, 1968 by the Staggers-‐Dodd Bill, which made possession

of LSD illegal as a federal law.98 In the same year, the United Nations Economic

and Social Council (1968) passed a resolution claiming that psychedelics presented

“an increasingly serious problem that could have very dangerous consequences” and

recommending further limitations on their use.

Psychedelics research was effectively ended by the 1970 Controlled Substances Act,

which repealed all prior drug control laws, unifying them under one comprehensive

law.99 It placed psychedelics in the most restrictive category, Schedule 1, reserved

for drugs with a “high abuse potential,” “no currently accepted medical use in

treatment,” and “lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.”100

96 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, US Treaties and Other International Agreements, 1967. 1407-‐1431. 97 Lyndon Baines Johnson, State of the Union Message, 1968. . 98 LSD and Other Depressant and Stimulant Drugs, Possession Restriction. Public Law 90-‐639, 82 Stat 1361 (1968). 99 Controlled Substances Act of 1970, Public Law 91-‐513, 84 Stat. 1236 (1970). 100 Ibid.


20

This Act was passed under the government of President Richard Nixon, who took

responsibility for drug scheduling away from the Surgeon General and his team of

medical experts, and gave it to the attorney general and his term of law enforcement

experts.101 According to Andrew Demosthenous, author of Psychedelic Research

Resurgence, decisions made by the U.S. attorney general’s office regarding the

scheduling of drugs were more heavily influenced by the politics of the ‘war on

drugs’ than scientific data presented by doctors. As author Dan Baum writes, since

then, “cops and lawyers instead of doctors were judging the toxicity of drugs.”102

Rick Doblin, founder of the present day Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic

Studies (MAPS) claims that the criminalisation of LSD possession was a response to

the considerable amounts of drug abuse and social turmoil that Federal officials

attributed to the non-‐medical use of LSD.103 Furthermore, sociologists Benjamin

Cornwell and Annulla Linders claims that politicians repeated arguments found in

the press about pychedelic misuse by irresponsible users and the growing

prevalence of use by adolescents, attributing much influence on drugs policy to the

media.104

Historian Brian Inglis observes the apparent contradiction between the legislation

and the evidence for LSD’s therapeutic properties, saying that the “crimino-‐legal

system of control” worked on an agreement that drug use was a “social evil,”

however, those “whose opinions commanded respect… claimed that [LSD] could

bring great benefit to society.”105

The final two chapters will examine the evidence for LSD’s benefit to society, efficacy

and safety, and ask why it was not strong enough to stand up to legislation. But first

it is necessary to account for recreational use of LSD that was demonized in the press,

taken up by politicians, and eventually banned. The chapter following that will then

101 Andrew Demosthenous, The Proceedings of GREAT Day, 2011. 251. 102 Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure, 1996. 25-‐6. 103 Doblin, 47. 104 Benjamin Cornwell and Annulla Linders, Deviant Behavior, 2002. 319. 105 Brian Inglis, The Forbidden Game, 1975. 203.


21

look at how this was portrayed in the media in such a way that politicians and

lawmakers were compelled to take action.

Chapter Four: The Great Escape

22

The real problem wasn’t that the science story had somehow turned into a religion story, it was that the religion story had somehow turned into a cultural revolt.106 Jay Stevens

LSD’s use as a recreational drug increased greatly in the mid-‐1960s. Prior to 1962,

there was no LSD black market, such that only research study participants,

physicians, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals (or friends thereof)

were able to use the drug recreationally. Timothy Leary and his non-‐medical

associates “created the climate whereby LSD escaped the government's control and

became available by the early sixties on the black market,” thus making it available

to a wider audience.107

This audience, the “hippies,” was a “counterculture of mostly young people who felt

alienated from the mainstream American society and grew, in part, out of the anti-‐

Vietnam war sentiment of the time.”108 This chapter will examine the actors who

introduced LSD to the wider culture; who was taking it and why; and investigate how

LSD came to trouble society so much.

Writer Aldous Huxley’s widely discussed account of his first mescaline trip, The Doors

of Perception, published in 1954, ignited recreational use of psychedelics.109 Two

years later, he was given LSD by “Captain” Al Hubbard, to which he responded with

the essay Heaven and Hell. These two essays contributed to bringing psychedelic

experiences to the attention of the non-‐medical world.

Huxley’s acid experience led him to ponder, “Was it possible to use these new mind

changes to stimulate a subtle but revolutionary alteration in the way the smart

monkey perceived reality?”110 He suggested that the mind-‐changing powers of LSD

106 Stevens, 19. 107 Marks, 130. 108 James R. Allen and Louis Jolyon West, American Journal of Psychiatry, 1968. 364-‐370. 109 Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 1954. 110 Stevens, 93.


23

should be used to “turn on” opinion leaders, as a way to improve society.111 Poet

Allen Ginsberg rejected Huxley’s “elitist perspective” and as the “quintessential

egalitarian, wanted everyone to have the opportunity to take mind-‐expanding

drugs.”112 “We're going to teach people to stop hating… Start a peace and love

movement," he proclaimed.113 Kerouac dropped out of Columbia University in the

mid-‐1940s where he had met fellow students Jack Kerouac and Lucien Carr, and the

author William S. Burroughs and Neal Cassady. They helped found the ‘Beat’

movement, which revolved around jazz, poetry, nihilism and marijuana. His poetical

account of an LSD trip, Howl, read at the Six Gallery, San Francisco in October 1955

launched LSD into the Beat world.

Authors of the tome Acid Dreams Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain explain how Ginsberg,

Neal Cassady, William Burroughs and others “linked psychedelics to a tiny

groundswell of non-‐conformity that would grow into a mass rebellion” during the

1960s.114 Another actor to add to this is the Timothy Leary, whose bright smile and

charisma earned him many followers. Ginsberg saw him as “the perfect front” for a

drive to change the world by intoxication:

How ironic, Ginsberg noted, "that the very technology stereotyping our

consciousness and desensitizing our perceptions should throw up its

own antidote… Given such historic Comedy, who should emerge from

Harvard University but the one and only Dr. Leary, a respectable human

being, a worldly man faced with the task of a Messiah.”115

One night in December 1960, when taking psilocybin with Ginsberg, Leary realised,

“Political problems were manifestations of psychological problems. Positive social

change could be enacted by helping people access the ‘empathy circuits of the

111 Leary would later incorporate this into his infamous motto, “tune in, turn on, and drop out.” 112 Lee and Shlain, 78. 113 Ibid. 77. 114 Ibid. 61. 115 Ibid. 79.


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brain’.” 116 Leary writes in his autobiography, "It was then that we started plotting

the neurological revolution, moving beyond scientific detachment to social

activism.”117 Leary "immediately understood [psychedelics’] usefulness as tools for

transcendence and mind-‐expansion,” and his Harvard psilocybin project gathered

data on the psychedelic experience of ‘normal’ people.118 A series of volunteers

including Ginsberg, Kerouac and Cassady took part in the experiments he conducted

with Richard Alpert.

When Leary was introduced to LSD in 1962 by Michael Hollingshead (one of the

“Johnny Appleseeds of LSD” who carried around a mayonnaise jar full of icing sugar

mixed with liquid Sandoz LSD119) he described the trip as "the most shattering

experience of his life"120. Leary subsequently added LSD to his Harvard researcj

program.

Noting the “legal uncertainty” of using psychedelic substances, in the latter half of

1962, set up the independent organization the International Federation for Internal

Freedom (IFIF) with Alpert. After his dismissal from Harvard, Leary continued

preaching his “gospel that man's salvation lies in the expansion of his own

consciousness.” Following a short-‐lived attempt to set up base in Zihuatanejo,

Mexico, Leary, Alpert and the rest of the IFIF crowd moved into a sixty-‐four-‐room

mansion in upstate New York called Millbrook, which they rented off the young

millionaire Billy Hitchcock. 121

Therapeutic and recreational work continued together at Millbrook and many of the

proselytisers of LSD – Hollingshead, Huxley, the Beat crowd – visited. In 1965 Leary

founded the League for Spiritual Discovery, with LSD as the holy sacrament (which

116 Ibid. 79. 117 Robyn Lisa Hohauser, Dissertation/Thesis (Masters), Virginia Polytechnic, 1995. 46. 118 Ibid. 119 Erowid, "Erowid Character Vaults: Michael Hollingshead," http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/hollingshead_michael/hollingshead_michael.shtml. 120 Timothy Leary, Flashbacks: An Autobiography, 1983. 121 Michael Hollingshead, The Man Who Turned on the World, 1973. Chapter 5.


25

was likely an attempt to preserve LSD’s legal status on the basis of religious

freedom.)122 Leary toured the country, giving a presentation that attempted to

demonstrate the experience of a trip. He uttered the infamous words that define the

LSD movement during a 1967 speech in San Francisco before a crowd of 30,000:

"Turn on, tune in, drop out.”123

Hofmann explained how Leary’s views differed from his own when they met in 1971:

“Whereas Dr. Leary advocated the use of LSD under appropriate conditions by very

young people, by teenagers, I insisted that a ripe, stable personality be a prior

condition.”124

Dr. Leary gave me the impression of an idealistic person who believes in

the transforming influence of psychedelic drugs on mankind, is

conscious of the complexity of the drug problem and yet was careless of

all the difficulties involved in the promotion of his ideas.125

The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in 1969 attributed the wide use of LSD

to “trickle-‐down phenomenon” with users being introduced by other users of higher

status, spread around the country. Those of higher status were typically LSD

researchers, but the aforementioned men all played their role in distributing LSD.126

However, this assumes passivity on the person of lower status, neglectecting the real

appetite for what LSD represented: rebellion and non-‐conformity. The mid-‐1960s

was an “exceptionally creative period marked by a new assertiveness among young

people,” with a spirit of rebellion against cultural norms, and an anti-‐

authoritarianism that LSD accentuated.127 Taking drugs was a way of asserting this

122 Oakley Stern Ray and Charles Ksir, Drugs, Society, and Human Behavior, 2002. 123 Ibid. 124 Horowitz, 31. 125 Ibid. 126 Marks, 129. 127 Lee and Shlain, 283.


26

(particularly smoking marijuana, which was then illegal) and at the same time, LSD

helped the nascent activists explore the questions of psychic liberation.128

As Lee and Shlain explain:

The social environment in which drugs were taken fostered an outlaw

consciousness that was intrinsic to the development of the entire youth

culture, while the use of drugs encouraged a generalizing of discontent

that had significant political ramifications.129

LSD’s association with marijuana was a major problem for its political image. Thanks

largely to the work of Harry Anslinger, marijuana was associated with black men

raping white women and other violent activities as well as what we might today

refer to as ‘anti-‐social behaviour.’130 Though LSD use was legal, it was tainted with

illegality.

And as supply often meets demand, by 1963, LSD was available on the streets in

sugar cubes. 131 By March 1965, underground chemist Owsley ‘Bear’ Stanley

succeeded in synthesizing and distributing crystalline LSD.132 Easier to obtain

than mescaline, LSD was the psychedelic of choice. 133

An area named Haight-‐Ashbury in San Francisco became the centre of the LSD

subculture. Here were the “hippies,” who, in the eyes of a local tour bus guide,

“besides taking drugs, are parading and demonstrating, seminars and group

discussions about what’s wrong with the status quo; malingering; plus the ever-‐

present preoccupation with the soul, reality and self-‐expression, such as strumming

128 Ibid. 126. 129 Ibid. 283. 130 Harry Anslinger. Statement to Congress, 1937. 131 Lee and Shlain, 195. 132 Bruce Eisner, "Interview with an Alchemist: Bear Owsley," Psychedelic Island Views, 1997. 133 Inglis, 204.


27

guitars, piping flutes, and banging on bongo drums.” 134 The Haight saw wild

costumes, spontaneous theatre, long hair, communal living arrangements and a

loosening of sexual mores.135

LSD was “the glue that the Haight together.”136 As Lee and Schlain wrote,

LSD and marijuana formed the armature of a many-‐sided rebellion

whose tentacles reached to the heights of ego-‐dissolving delirium, a

rebellion as much concerned with the sexual and spiritual as with

anything traditionally political.137

Ronald Siegel undertook a research survey in 1968 asking why people in the Haight

took LSD, and the most common answer was that the use of psychedelics “was a

search for meaning and individuation in life, not an escape from life,” as most

“straights” thought.138 Stevens describes it as a “hippie sacrament, a mind detergent

capable of washing away years of social programming, a re-‐imprinting device, a

consciousness-‐expander.”139

The Haight was experiencing its “golden age” prior to the increased media coverage

of 1966.140 But then people came in droves – “tattered pilgrims who’d gone AWOL

from the Great Society” -‐ and brought with them the scrutiny of the media, the law

and the politicians.141 1967 saw the "Summer of Love,” on the Haight, but the

previously peaceful, if non-‐conformist, community was overwhelmed. 142 More

people came, more acid was dropped -‐ and in careless, unthoughtful ways that led

to harm. Acid was impure, mixed with adulterants like amphetamines; people were

134 Stevens, 16. 135 Lee and Shlain, 145. 136 Stevens, 17. 137 Lee and Shlain, 284. 138 Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar, Psychedelic Reflections, 1983. 216-‐7. 139 Stevens, 17. 140 Lee and Shlain, 145. 141 Ibid. 178. 142 Stevens, 17.


28

poisoned, and undertook criminal activities while high. 143 Psychedelics were

increasingly presented as drugs of abuse.144

This psychedelic culture soon found itself hand-‐in-‐hand with mass protest

movements, furthering LSD’s association with social disobedience and anti-‐

authoritarian attitudes.145 Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters helped link

LSD to counterculture music and the philosophy of “sex, drugs and rock and roll,”

particularly during the ‘Summer of Love’ engendering more controversy and vexing

the establishment.146 While Leary originally advocated a more serious, controlled use

of LSD, Kesey was an "acid populist" who believed that if enough people used it,

society as a whole could be transformed. The Pranksters’ mission, was to “shock

mainstream America with their bizarre costumes, face paints, music, and frivolity,”

and make those still “caught up in the game” step back and take a good look at

themselves -‐ Kesey wanted to turn on the world.147

One of the groups ‘turned on’ by Kesey was The Free Speech Movement, which

arose on the Berkeley campus in the fall of 1964. This was a movement filled with

student activists and young radicals who “believed that challenging entrenched

authority entailed a concerted attempt to alter the institutions and policy-‐making

apparatus that had been usurped by a self-‐serving power elite.”148According to

Murray Bookchin “It was the war, more than anything else, that drove activists to

the brink of desperation.”149

During a period of escalated U.S. military activity in Vietnam, on October 21, 1967,

seventy-‐five thousand protesters – some high on acid -‐ assembled at the Lincoln

143 Michael Montagne, "From Problem Child to Wonder Child: LSD Turns 50," MAPS Newsletter, 1993. 6. 144 See R. Horton, The Lancet, 2006. 1214. RSA Commission, Drugs -‐ Facing Facts, 2007. . http://www.rsadrugscommission.org.uk. 145 Dyck, 386. (2005) 146 Jill Jonnes, Hep-‐Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: A History of America's Romance with Illegal Drugs, 1996. 234. 147 Hohauser, 61. 148 Lee and Shlain, 217. 149 Ibid. 284.


29

Memorial and stormed the Pentagon, shouting anti-‐war slogans.150 The demo was

organised by Abbie Hoffmann, who was arrested in 1969 (along with seven others,

the ‘Chicago 7’) for “inciting a riot at the Democratic National Convention in

Chicago.”151

Figure 1: photograph from the Pentagon demonstration.

“What subverted the sixties decade,” according to socialist author Murray Bookchin,

“was precisely the percolation of traditional radical myths, political styles, a sense of

urgency, and above all, a heightened metabolism so destructive in its effects that it

loosened the very roots of 'the movement' even as it fostered its rank growth.”152

Jim Fadiman, who worked with Richard Alpert at Harvard, summed up the problem

for the hippies: “It’s not that our vision of what the world could be was incorrect. It’s

that by tearing down the buildings we happened to be standing in, we created a lot

of problems.”153

150 Ibid. 203-‐4. 151 Montagne, 6. 152 Murray Bookchin in The 60s without Apology, 1984. 250. 153 James Fadiman et al., Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2003. 120.


30

This chapter has shown how high profile LSD researchers and their associates

facilitated the wider, recreational use of LSD. These recreational users were,

generally, part of a counterculture movement, which partook in illegal marijuana

smoking and free sex practises. LSD was associated with anti-‐establishment ideology

and the ‘vice’ of marijuana, threatening the status quo. Anti-‐war movements

became the violent front of psychedelic use.

The next chapter will examine the media treatment of LSD, and how the events and

activities discussed in this chapter influenced the public profile of the drug.

Chapter Five: The Demonization

31

Ironically, it may not be the young who have suffered public obloquy because of their association with the psychedelics; it may be the psychedelics that have suffered because of their association with troublesome youngsters. Theodore Roszak, The Making of A Counter Culture154

By the mid-‐1960s, LSD was “Public Enemy Number One” in the mass media.155 LSD

was presented as a social menace that had dangerous effects on the human body,

which “whipped America into a virtual frenzy over psychedelic drugs.” 156 This

chapter will examine the trajectory of LSD’s media profile and consider why it may

have been represented as it was.

Early media coverage focused on LSD psychotherapy and was largely positive. Cary

Grant’s hyperbolic description in of his own sixty-‐fold157 psychedelic experiences in

Oscar Janiger’s clinic brought LSD out from the Beverly Hills therapy set and into the

wider world.158 The glowing report in Look magazine was followed by Good

Housekeeping declaring that Grant was “one of the subjects of a psychiatric

experiment with a drug that eventually may become an important tool in

psychotherapy.”159 Judy Balaban, who took up LSD therapy, is quoted as saying “I

figured if it was good enough for Cary Grant, it was good enough for me!”160

Life magazine had featured an article series by Robert Wasson and his search for

psychedelic mushrooms.161 A mass audience were now introduced to chemical

hallucinogens, and soon “hundreds of people started flocking to Mexico to find their

own curandero,”162 and everyone in Hollywood wanted to be “born again.”163

154 Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture. Reflections of a Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition, 1968. 172. 155 Lee and Shlain, 154. 156 Ibid. 157 Stevens, 103. 158 Laura Bergquist, "The Curious Story Behind the New Cary Grant," Look, September 1st, 1959. 159 Cary Beauchamp and Judy Balabam, "Cary in the Sky with Diamonds," Vanity Fair, 2010. 160 Ibid. 161 R. Gordon Wasson, "Seeking the Magic Mushroom," Life, May 13th, 1957. 162 Lee and Shlain, 73. 163 Stevens, 104.


32

Figure 2: Cover of Life magazine, May 1957.

The reports soured as the news turned to “irresponsible therapists,” in particular,

Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.164 The initial story appeared in the Harvard

Crimson, reporting that Harvard’s Center for Research in Personality had held a

164 Cornwell and Linders, 316.


33

meeting to discuss the rumour that Leary and Albert had given LSD to

undergraduates.165 The major Boston newspapers, “eager to put a local spin on the

breaking national story,”166 picked up that thread, announcing the FDA would be

investigating Leary’s project.167 They did indeed, and found a senior year student

who corroborated the story. Harvard’s administration subsequently fired Alpert and

suspended Leary’s teaching activities.168

The dismissal of a Harvard professor was headline news, and stories about LSD

began to increase markedly.169 Sensationalised reports of the Harvard activities

began to appear in The Reporter ('The Hallucinogenic Drug Cult'); Look ('Weird Story

of Harvard's Drug Scandal'); and an article in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

entitled 'Psycho Chemicals as Weapons'.170

In March 1966 Time magazine wrote of adolescent misuse of LSD on college

campuses:

The disease is striking in beachside beatnik pads and in the dormitories of

expensive prep schools … And everywhere the diagnosis is the same:

psychotic illness resulting from the unauthorized, nonmedical use of the

drug LSD-‐25.”171

The article predicted that one million doses of LSD would be taken in the U.S. that

year. “Panic-‐stricken” young patients were having “disastrous psychological effects”

following LSD trips. The idea of ‘flashbacks,’ was introduced, whereby “LSD

symptoms have recurred weeks after taking it, leading the victims to believe they

were losing their sanity.”

165 Andrew Weil, "Better than a Damn," Harvard Crimson, Pl, February 20th, 1962. 166 Cornwell and Linders, 320 167 Ibid. 317. 168 Ibid. 317. 169 Eric Goode and Nachmann Ben-‐Yehuda, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance, 1994. 170 Hollingshead, Chapter 2. 171 Psychiatric, "An Epidemic of Acid Heads," Time, 1966.


34

London’s Evening Standard made the story global, and even more hysterical,

claiming “Just half an ounce of LSD could knock out London” and that,

London Life magazine … has uncovered a social peril of magnitude which

it believes demands immediate legislation … to stop the spread of a cult

which could bring mental lethargy and chaos.172

Director of the Pharmaceutical Department of Sandoz Aurelio Cerletti claimed in

1965 that “sensationalist” stories caused widespread misconceptions. 173 Stories

appeared telling of tree trunk-‐eating college students who believed they could fly

while on the drug.174 “Premature and unsubstantiated” claims were made about a

link between psychedelic drugs use during pregnancy and birth defects,175 which led

to “the prospect of couples giving birth to ‘some kind of octopus.’” 176 This claim was

based on a single scientific paper published in the March 1967 issue of Science177

which had observed that LSD destroyed white-‐blood-‐cell chromosomes in test

tubes.178 The story made the front pages across America179 and strengthened public

anti-‐LSD discourse.

Three events sparked off the torrent of negative media stories in 1965.180 Firstly,

Leary was arrested on March 26th in Laredo for marijuana possession; second, on

April 6th, a five-‐year-‐old girl swallowed a sugar cube laced with LSD that her uncle

had left in the family refrigerator; and on April 11th Stephen Kessler was charged

with murdering his mother-‐in-‐law – he claimed he’d been “flying on LSD for days.”181

172 Hollingshead, Chpater 2. 173 Aurelio Cerletti, Decision Regarding LSD 25 and Other Hallucinogenic Substances, 1965. in Hofmann 174 Goode and Ben-‐Yehuda (1994) and Leary (1983). 175 Grinspoon and Bakalar, 129 176 Lee and Shlain, 154. 177 Maimon M. Cohen, Michelle J. Marinello and Nathan Back, Science, 1967. 1417-‐1419. 178 Bill Davison, The Saturday Evening Post, 1967. 19-‐23. 179 Cornwell and Linders, 318. 180 Stafford and Bigwood, 33-‐34 181 New York Times, April 12th, 1966.


35

Suddenly, LSD stories leapt from the science or health section of the newspaper to

crime, and crime was front page news.

Leary’s escapades filled many newspaper headlines. Dubbed the “LSD priest”

(although this was Leary’s term – he very much courted the media) who led a “drug

cult”, he was established as a major proponent of the LSD menace. Grinspoon and

Bakalar suggest that the “sacramental use” of psychedelic drugs “challenged the

hegemony of established medical and police rules … The old calling of priesthood or

shamanism invaded territory claimed by modern medical professionals.” The

shamanistic nature of the reported LSD cult tapped into a prior understanding of

mysticism as an opponent of established authority.182 Leary as “High Priest”

establishment him as rival to medicine, creating “a religious war in which medicine

served as the ideological arm of cultural orthodoxy,” a war “disguised by scientific

terminology and talk about health hazards.”183

LSD became an easy scapegoat, and a popular one. A New York Times article highly

publicized the LSD high claims of another man arrested for violently killing his

mother.184 However, when the truth came out that he was schizophrenic and had

consumed large quantities of alcohol and barbiturates, those facts were hardly

reported.185

The stories concerning health hazards played on pre-‐existing fears seeded by the

thalidomide tragedy of the early 1960s, when thousands of babies with severe birth

defects were born to mothers who had taken the morning sickness drug. It appears

that the terrible tragedy of thalidomide inspired fear-‐mongering within the media.

186

182 Grinspoon and Bakalar, Afterword (1983). 183 Ibid. 184 F. David Anderson, "MURDER SUSPECT TELLS OF LSD USE," New York Times, October 10th, 1967. 185 New York Times, October 18th, 1967. 186 Henry G. Grabowski, Drug Regulation and Innovation: Empirical Evidence and Policy Options, 1976. 3.


36

The most alarming press concerned suicide while high on acid. On 4 October 1969,

twenty-‐year-‐old Diane Linkletter jumped from her kitchen window and died in

hospital. Later, an autopsy revealed no drugs in her system but at the time her father,

TV and radio personality Ark Linkletter, claimed a bad LSD trip was to blame. (Diane

had been described as “Despondent, depressed” and “concerned with her identity,

her career” 187 at the scene of her death and it would appear her family were unable

to accept the true cause of her suicide.) The combination of drugs, tragedy and fame

by proxy led to nationwide headline news, and Diane’s father became a crusader in

the ‘war against drugs’.188

Why would the media focus on unusual and atypical reactions to LSD and perpetuate

the stories of youthful dissent? According to sociologist Stanley Cohen in 1972, the

media not only report events (as news) but also create them, and by this they

engender what he termed a “moral panic.”189 To create this moral panic, drug use is

blown out of proportion and sensationalized, generating a greater level of

concern,190 and the negative aspects of drug use are over-‐represented in order to

create a discourse of fear.191 This framework certainly fits with LSD.

There are two reasons why the media would aim to generate fear. The first is simple

capitalism: sociologist David Altheide speculates that the discourse of fear increases

interest in the news and thus generates sales.192 Secondly, Cornwell and Linders

have argued for the agency of social groups whose interests were threatened by

LSD.193 These were the parents and teachers of those likely to take LSD: “supposedly

intelligent young people who come from comfortable middle-‐ and upper-‐class

backgrounds.”194 LSD did not threaten the marginalized underclass, it threatened the

vitality of America’s youth – and that’s what grabbed the headlines. Furthermore,

187 Barbara Mikkelson, "The Scarlet Linkletter," http://www.snopes.com/horrors/drugs/linkletter.asp. 188 Art Linkletter, Drugs at My Door Step, 1973. 189 Stanley Cohen, Moral Panics and Folk Devils, 1972. 190 Goode and Ben-‐Yehuda, 153. 191 David L. Altheide, The Sociological Quarterly, 1997. 649. 192 Ibid. 653. 193 Cornwell and Linders, 315, 323. 194 John Cashman, The LSD Story, 1966. 3.


37

hippies, LSD, Leary and his associates were made into demons by the press, and they

did not play a passive role. Leary in particular reinforced the constructions and

interpretations played out by the press, seeking the attention of the spotlight.195

The LSD scene was demonized to further a message from social groups that LSD was

a threat to their society and to warn against its perceived dangers. It may not have

had the desired effect. Lee and Shlain theorize that, “The combination of dire

warnings and ecstatic praise created a highly polarized atmosphere. LSD acquired

the emotional and magnetic pull of the taboo, and as a result, more and more

people decided to try the drug.”196 Brian Inglis, author of The Forbidden Game,

observes that publicity around LSD legislation simply acted as a lure, in the same way

as opiates, the barbiturates and the amphetamines.197

Psychedelics were feared due to “a complex sociological and political agenda rather

than scientifically established dangers,” but “science” was used to discredit LSD in

the press.198 The next chapter will look at how the scientific community might have

responded

195 Cornwell and Linders, 325. 196 Lee and Shlain, 155. 197 Inglis, 204. 198 Jonathan Hobbs, Dissertation/Thesis, Unpublished (Honors thesis), University of Cambridge. 19.

Chapter Six: The Science Bit

38

From the early 1960s on, the revolutionary proclamations and religious fervor of the nonmedical advocates of psychedelic drugs began to evoke hostile incredulity rather than simply the natural skeptical response to extravagant claims backed mainly by intense subjective experiences. Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar, Dealing With Drugs.199

In Chapter Four I hinted that LSD’s reputation, and that of LSD research, was

tarnished by its integrity to the counterculture movements of the 1960s, and

Chapter Five explored how this was exploited by the media. Here, I will examine the

reputation of LSD and psychedelic research within the wider scientific community,

and the scientific evidence that refuted the media slur.

In a 2010 Vanity Fair article, main of the early adopters of LSD therapy said they

resented Timothy Leary’s “much-‐publicized campaign to ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’”

and the backlash it had sparked “against a drug they still believe to be a potentially

beneficial telescope into the subconscious.”200 Leary is the prime example of the ill

repute of LSD research – how seriously was this taken in the scientific community?

Leary and Alpert were criticised in the media, as we have seen, for their ‘laissez faire’

attitudes to distribution of psychedelics. Some choice criticisms were over their lack

of caution, and their being “given to making the kind of pronouncement about

their work that one associates with quacks.”201 David C. McClelland, chairman of

the Harvard Social Relations said, “It appeared that the more Leary and Alpert took

the drugs "the less they were interested in science."202

Other therapists were criticized for taking psychedelic drugs with their patients. The

argument was that taking LSD with patients allowed for a better rapport, but critics

thought this to “preclude any therapeutic gains or scientific analysis.”203 In 1966 an

article claimed that “Even researchers blinded by optimism were rarely able to

199 Grinspoon and Bakalar, 183-‐219. 200 Beauchamp and Balabam, Vanity Fair. 201 Andrew Weil, "Investigation Unlikely in Dismissal of Alpert," The Harvard Crimson, Pl, May 29, 1963. 1. 202 Ibid. 203 Hobbs, 15.


39

demonstrate the potential of psychedelics with any consistency.”204 Shulgin and

Shulgin have observed, retrospectively, that the use of prisoners in some psychedelic

studies could not have complete objectivity, since an individual in custody who

might reasonably wish to please his jailers.205 Other criticisms were that psychiatric

experiments lacked long-‐term follow-‐up, which was necessary to demonstrate

lasting changes and real efficacy.206

LSD research found itself at “an awkward junction between different

methodologies.”207 However, controlled studies came to be the ones considered

most convincing, and those that lacked proper controls would soon have little

influence in the medical and scientific world.208 The credibility of LSD therapy was

undermined by its variability. Some psychiatrists took a small dose of LSD along with

their patient to be on the ‘same level’; some guided patients with musical cues and

objects. No standard dose could be prescribed, as per chemotherapy – the then

wonder drug.209

Osmond described the standards he was expected to meet as "pretentious,

inaccurate and misleading” and felt that the LSD experience was too subjective to

measure in such a way. 210 Isolating the effects would involve restraints and

blindfolds, which would greatly influence the ‘trip’. Furthermore, producing double-‐

blind controlled experiments in LSD is near impossible, since the effects of the drug

are so apparent. 211

204 Mary Sarett, Frances Cheek and Humphry Osmond, Archives of General Psychiatry, 1966. 171. 205 Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin, TIHKAL: The Continuation, 1997. 403. 206 Hohauser, 12. 207 Hobbs, 13. 208 Ibid. 13. 209 Grinspoon and Bakalar, 275-‐283. James Le Fanu, The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine, 2011. 165-‐178 for an account of chemotherapy in this time period. 210 H. Osmond, Canadian Medical Association Journal, 1962. 708. 211 Sidney Cohen, The Beyond within: The LSD Story, 1964. 85.


40

James Fadiman et al. concede that much of the research was limited

“methodologically” by today’s standards, as per Grob’s 1998 book212, but “Even so,

some of the scientific, psychological, spiritual, and clinical implications of the findings,

as described and referenced below, were remarkable.213 Much of the research was

valid and met accepted standards for publication at the time. Much of the research

could have refuted the media outcry – if it had been given a voice – as follows.

A 1973 review of previous research undertaken by McWilliams and Tuttle concluded

that the danger of long-‐lasting psychological damage is low when the drug is used by

emotionally stable people in secure, controlled settings. They did conclude that

“those with psychiatric disturbance, unstable personalities, and current crisis

situations have experienced pathological behavior temporally related to drug

ingestion,” but affirmed that “adverse reactions were not reported in well-‐controlled

studies” with normal subjects.214

Death by LSD made major headlines in the 1960s, but later research showed very

little evidence for LSD’s lethal toxicity.215 There was a “remarkable low casualty rate”

in most LSD studies in the 1950s and 60s.216 Most reported LSD deaths were suicides,

however, all the scientific literature then (and to-‐date) shows that LSD use does not

increase the risk of suicide. Timothy Leary claims the suicide rate fell during the

psychedelic boom, with some researchers claiming that psychedelic drugs are more

likely to prevent suicide than cause it.217

Reports that did show a weak link did not account for “premorbid symptomatology

and suicide attempts, other drug alcohol abuse, and the nature of the situation in

which LSD was taken."218 Sidney Cohen and Barbara Eisner astutely observed in

1958 that "the possibility of suicide may be a real hazard, as it is in the treatment of

212 CS Grob, Heffter Review of Psychedelic Research, 1998. 8-‐20. 213 Fadiman et al., 112. 214 Spencer A. McWilliams and Renee J. Tuttle, Psychological Bulletin, 1973. 341. 215 Hobbs, 30. 216 Ibid. 217 Grinspoon and Bakalar, 136-‐7. (1983) 218 Rick J. Strassman, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1984. 577-‐595.


41

any serious mental illness," but affirmed that, “the dangers involved with its use are

not related to pharmacological toxicity.”219 Cohen, in his survey of 1960, wrote, "It is

noteworthy that all the suicidal acts have been in disturbed patients rather than

normal subjects."220 Stephen Szára sums it up well:

If the drug is taken by a borderline psychotic person or by a subject with

personality defects in a medically unsupervised or socially unsanctioned

setting, the results can he read in the criminal columns of the

newspapers and in the nationwide magazines.221

As for flashbacks, this appears to be another media myth, although it is only recent

research that has shown few users report unpleasant “flashbacks”.222 Cohen claimed

in 1964 that many of the risks attributed to LSD and other psychedelics by the media

were based on data taken from individuals who had taken illicit drugs of unknown

purity and composition.223 At the height of demand for LSD, “acid” would often

contain amphetamines, mescaline, phencyclidine and benactyzine – according to

medical historian Erika Dyck, in the mid-‐60s less than half of the illicitly sold "acid"

was actually LSD.224 Any study that looked at illicit drug users is questionable due to

this variation in dose and uncertainty of contents.225

And the reported chromosome damage: in 1971, Dishotsky et al. examined 100

papers to conclude that LSD does not cause chromosome damage in human beings

at normal doses.226 The Army Chemical Corps researched any potential hazards of

taking LSD, down to the cellular level. It could not replicate the findings of the one

study that demonstrated LSD caused chromosome breaks, reproting that they found 219 Betty Grover Eisner and Sidney Cohen, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1958. 534. 220 Cohen, 34. (1960) 221 Szára, 1513-‐1518. Cites Sidney Cohen and Keith S. Ditman, Archives of General Psychiatry, 1963. 475. and Arnold M. Ludwig and Jerome Levine, JAMA, 1965. 92-‐96. 222 David Abrahart, Dissertation/Thesis, Unpublished (Masters), University of Portsmouth. 6-‐19 223 Cohen, 6-‐14. 224 Erika Dyck, "Keeping Tabs: LSD and the Politics of Psychedelic Drug Experimentation" (Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Glasgow, Seminar Programme, February 20th, 2007) 225 Norman I. Dishotsky et al., Science, 1971. 431-‐440. 226 Grinspoon and Bakalar, 129. (1983)


42

breaks caused by caffeine more frequently. But this was never made public. Why the

retention of data that would set right public mis-‐information?227 Why wasn’t the

research given a voice? The next chapter will examine the involvement of the Army

and the CIA in LSD research and uncover a reason why LSD research was no longer

supported in the States after the early sixties.

227 Lee and Shlain, 155. Nor did the CIA attempt to set the record straight, even though the Agency had access to the same classified reports.

Chapter Seven: The Big CIA, the Nerds and the Labs and their LSD

43

No one could enter the world of psychedelics without first passing, unawares, through doors opened by the Agency. It would become a supreme irony that the CIA's enormous search for weapons among drugs—fuelled by the hope that spies could, like Dr. Frankenstein, control life with genius and machines—would wind up helping to create the wandering, uncontrollable minds of the counterculture. John D. Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.228

The final piece in the puzzle of LSD research is the CIA connection. Two books tell

this story well: Acid Dreams by American author and activist Martin A. Lee, and

writer Bruce Shlain, a thorough social history of LSD research that uncovers a

hitherto unknown major source of funding: the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

(CIA); the other is by John D. Marks, as per the epigraph. Both volumes draw from

the same material: over 15,000 pages of CIA documents released via a Freedom of

Information Act request in September 1977, at the request of former Foreign Service

Officer Marks.

Why was the CIA interested in LSD? According to historian Martin Inglis, who

authored another book that covered the issue (although written before the FOI

release of 1977) explains that, “By 1943, the Pentagon was looking for a drug which

might be used to facilitate brainwashing, or for disorienting enemy forces in the

field.”229

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the CIA's wartime predecessor) had looked at

alcohol, barbiturates, caffeine, peyote and marijuana in a top-‐secret research

program aimed at developing a “speech-‐inducing drug for use in intelligence

interrogations.”230 The CIA’s Office of Security took up the challenge with a program

– codenamed ARTICHOKE – to find a “truth drug or hypnotic method” for use in

interrogation.231 At the same time, the Technical Services Staff (TSS), which had a

Chemical Division headed by Dr Sidney Gottlieb (PhD in Chemistry from CalTech)

228 Marks, 130. 229 Inglis, 204. 230 Hohauser, 33. 231 Marks, 59.


44

from 1951-‐6, was investigating the whole area of applying chemical and biological

warfare (CBW) to covert operations.232 American was facing,

…the height of the Cold War with the Korean War just winding down;

with the CIA organizing its resources to liberate Eastern Europe by

paramilitary means; and with the threat of Soviet aggression very real

and tangible.233

In essence, the CIA hoped that LSD would be the drug that could “break the will of

enemy agents, unlock secrets in the minds of trained spies, and otherwise

manipulate human behaviour.” 234 A National Geographic Documentary takes this

further, suggesting that the Agency sought LSD for use as “a covert weapon to cause

brain damage or permanent insanity to the enemy” and “a mind control agent or

torture device for prisoners in order to obtain information.”235

At first, the TSS looked to the academic community who were already researching

LSD by this time, hoping to pick their brains. And so it turned out that Hyde, the first

person in American to take LSD, became a secret CIA consultant. 236 But the Agency

realized that funded programmes were required in order to undertake a “quick and

systematic study of the drug.” 237 Although The National Institutes of Mental Health

was funding research into LSD's relationship to mental illness, the CIA wanted data

on the effects on normal people. So, according to Marks, they chose “to take the

lead—in effect to create a whole new field of research.” 238

On April 13 1953, CIA Director Allen Dulles approved a Gottlieb-‐led program

proposed by Richard Helms of Clandestine Services to investigate "covert use of

232 Ibid. 233 Ibid. 62. As testified by Sidney Gottlieb. 234 Ibid. 58. 235 Gary Greenberg, Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease, 2010. and P. C. Wells, National Geographic Explorer: Inside LSD, 2009. . 236 Marks, 58. 237 Ibid. 63. 238 Ibid.


45

biological and chemical materials."239 The codename was MK-‐ULTRA. As with much

of modern warfare, “defense justified offense,” with Helms claiming that

…the development of a comprehensive capability in this field . . . gives

us a thorough knowledge of the enemy's theoretical potential, thus

enabling us to defend ourselves against a foe who might not be as

restrained in the use of these techniques as we are. 240

MK-‐ULTRA had $300,000 to fund its initial investigations into nicotine, cocaine, and a

large part towards LSD research. 241 The funding went to a large number of research

groups, through two conduits that disguised the source: The Josiah Macy, Jr

Foundation and the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research.242 Out of thirteen

articles related to LSD published in the Journal of Psychology in 1955, twelve were

funded by the CIA via these two organisations.243

The few researchers who did know about the CIA connection rarely published any

data connected to “rather unpleasant questions the MKULTRA men posed for

investigation.”244 They would write reports about the physiological effects of LSD in

the scientific journals, but report to the CIA only about “how the drug could be used

to ruin that patient's marriage or memory,”245 and information about “disturbance

of memory, alteration of sex patterns, eliciting information, increasing suggestibility,

and creating emotional dependence."246 Some acted as “scholar-‐spies” the most

active of whom was New York allergy doctor Harold Abramson, who reported to the

Agency on “all new developments in the LSD field.”247 Abramson was given $85,000

by Gottlieb to investigate “operationally pertinent materials along the following lines”

239 Ibid. 60. 240 Ibid. 241 Stevens, 124 242 Marks, 63. 243 Hohauser, 31. 244 Marks, 66. Chapter 4. 245 Ibid. 246 Lee and Shlain, 22-‐3. 247 Marks, 73.


46

including memory disturbance, sexual beahviours, dependence, eliciting of

information and suggestibility and “discrediting by aberrant behaviour.”248

Reason for the secrecy is twofold: one, that the CIA was concerned that Russia would

spot LSD research and started a program of its own – perhaps fuelled by 1951

reports from military channels that “the Russians had obtained some 50 million

doses from Sandoz.”249 Upon hearing in November 1953 that Sandoz had produced

10kg of LSD to sell on the open market (and thus making it available to Russia), the

CIA sent two men “ with a black bag full of cash to buy up Sandoz's is entire supply.” 250 This decision was made by a “top-‐level coordinating committee which included

CIA and Pentagon representatives” who “unanimously recommended that the

Agency put up $240,000 to buy it all.”251 Embarrassingly, it turned out that a CIA man

had miscalculated, mistaking a milligram for a kilogram.252

The Agency also feared a public reaction to its behaviour control experiments. Some

of the experiments were unethical and did not match up to the 1947 Nuremburg

Code principles.253 As the Inspector General reported in 1963, the “disclosure of

certain MKULTRA activities could result in serious adverse reaction’ among the

American public.”254 One particular example stands out: the use of prisoners at the

Addiction Research Center of the US Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington,

Kentucky. Lexington was “one of fifteen penal and mental institutions utilized by the

CIA in its super-‐secret drug development program during the 1950s,” and it was here

that Dr Harris Isbell, salaried by the CIA, carried out LSD experiments on prisoners. If

they took part, they would be rewarded with a drug of their choice – usually, heroin.

248 Ibid. 66. 249 Ibid. 70. 250 Stevens, 124 251 Marks, 70. 252 Ibid. 71. The Agency eventually asked Eli Lilly (who had devised a process to make synthetic LSD) to make them a batch, which the company subsequently donated to the government. 253 Code, 181-‐182. 254 Marks, 64.


47

Previously classified documents describe experiments where (usually black) inmates

were given LSD for 75 days straight.255

Figure 3. Commisioned report to the President on CIA activities with the U.S. and Washington Post front page, June 11th 1975. Image from DrugFreeWorld.com.

Their fears appear to have been justified when front-‐page new stories such as the

above appeared in 1975.256 The image in Figure 3 is from Drug Free World’s website,

that claims “Psychiatric mind-‐control programs focusing on LSD and other

hallucinogens created a generation of acidheads.”257 This quote is rather ignorant of

the wider social context of the Beat and ‘hippy’ movements prior to the introduction

of LSD. Having said that, it did enable LSD to get into the world outside of the lab –

255 Lee and Shlain, 25. 256 Thomas O'Toole, "CIA Infiltrated 17 Area Groups, Gave Out LSD: Suicide Revealed," Washington Post, June 11th, 1975. The story drew from a report that was commissioned by President Ford and drew on declassified CIA material. See: United States. Commission on CIA Activities within the United States and Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, 1975. 257 Foundation For A Drug-‐Free World, "LSD: A Short History," http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/lsd/a-‐short-‐history.html.


48

both Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg were introduced to LSD via CIA-‐funded

researchers.258 CIA acid may have fuelled the counterculture, but it did not create it.

According to Marks, “The MKULTRA scientists reaped little but disaster, mischief,

and disappointment from their efforts to use LSD as a miracle weapon against the

minds of their opponents.”259 By late 1953, and just six months into the program,

TSS officials were carrying out their last stage of research: systematic use of LSD on

"outsiders" who had no idea they had received the drug.260 Congress subsequently

investigated these experiments on unwitting American citizens.261

The U.S. Army also experimented with LSD, although much later. In 1961 they ran

fields tests on LSD as an interrogation device, threatening a man named James

Thornwell who was accused of stealing classified documents with a prolonged LSD

trip, to the point of causing him insanity. Military security agencies also funded

academic research at Harvard, University of Washington and the New York State

Psychiatric Institute, where, in 1953, professional tennis player Harold Blauer was

killed with forced injections of a mescaline derivative.262

By 1962, LSD testing was no longer a top priority for MK-‐ULTRA. They had learned

enough about the drug to understand how it could best be applied in selected covert

operations and began to orient its behavioural activities away from peripheral long-‐

range-‐studies. This new strategy resulted in the withdrawal of support for many

academics and private researchers. 263 More powerful chemicals like BZ were

258 Marks, 130. Ginsberg via Gregory Bateson, who was ‘turned’ on by Harold Abramson; Kesey at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Palo Alto where Bateson worked. 259 Ibid. 113. 260 Ibid. 77. 261 Hohauser, 18 cites United States Congress., Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification: Joint Hearing before the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, United States Senate, Ninety-‐Fifth Congress, First Session, August 3, 1977, 1977. 262 Marks, Chapter 4. Dr. James Cattell later told Army investigators, "We didn't know whether it was dog piss or what it was we were giving him." 263 Lee and Shlain, 92.


49

favoured as they were effective when inhaled and could be administered by bombs

and smoke on a much larger scale than LSD.264

The CIA was looking for a weapon, or a facilitator of espionage. When LSD failed to

live up to its promise in this capacity, the Agency saw no reason to continue research.

They did not value the psychoactive effects of the drug as researchers like Timothy

Leary did, and therein lies one of the major fractures in the story of LSD’s

legislation.265 The Agency saw LSD as a dangerous drug, too dangerous to be used by

the general public (and yet they were willing to experiment on the public in order to

discover the effects of LSD.)266

The CIA’s fear of what uncontrolled distribution of LSD would have on American

society led to their support of anti-‐legislation and was a factor in the negative public

opinion of the drug.267 “In the legislative arena, proponents of LSD were unsuccessful.

Furthermore, when the media uproar was in full swing during 1966, the medical

establishment and the journalists just “mimicked” the line – that “hallucinogenic

drugs were extremely dangerous because they drove people insane, and all this talk

about creativity and personal growth was just a lot of hocus pocus” -‐ which the CIA

had promoted, in secret, for years. It was this perception that governed major policy

decisions enacted by the FDA and drug control agencies, and thus it is seen that the

CIA played a major hand in the demonization of LSD.268

264 Hohauser, 39 265 Ibid. 21 266 Ibid. 20. 267 Ibid. 40. 268 Lee and Shlain, 70.

Chapter Eight: In Conclusion

50

Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-‐thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible. 269 Stanley Cohen, Moral Panics and Folk Devils

As previous chapters have shown, in little more than twenty years, LSD was

transformed from a potential psychiatric panacea to, in the interpretation of the

chairman of the New Jersey Narcotic Drug Safety Commission, “the greatest threat

facing the country today’’.270 “By the 1970s, psychedelic drugs were not only viewed

as a public health problem but also carried a social implication.”271

This idea of LSD as a major societal threat was based on three main factors: first, its

association with counter-‐culture; second, the very public misdemeanours of its

proselytisers and third, the reputation of scientific research in the field. This

perceived threat emerged from an interaction between the media, the reaction to

the media, politicians’ assessment of that reaction and the counterculture groups

who pushed society’s buttons.272

Many LSD researchers were quick to blame Leary and other high profile LSD users on

the recreational scene for the restrictions placed on psychedelic research. But this is

just one aspect of the story. The 1960s counterculture -‐ predominantly hippies and

anti-‐war protestors -‐ threatened the established status quo of capitalist America.273

This counterculture was fuelled, not created, by LSD and brought negative

connotations a promising therapeutic drug. Leary and associates may have fanned

the flames and brought LSD to the party, but such was the complex interaction of

actors and groups, and the actions of the CIA in releasing LSD onto an unsuspecting

269 Cohen, 9. (1972). 270 Edward M. Brecher, Licit and Illicit Drugs, 1972. 369. 271 Paula Kurtzweil, FDA Consumer Magazine, 1995. 1-‐5. 272 Cornwell and Linders, 321. 273 Hohauser, 75.


51

public, that LSD could have been expected to have found its way into society

somehow.

The counterculture tapped into the existing fears of American society and the media

created LSD, and particularly Leary, as the demons that lorded over it. By demonizing

the drug at the heart of this subculture, the subculture itself was demonized – a

story that repeats the situation with opium and the “yellow menace”, marijuana and

the Negroes.274

Several scholars have shown that social threats emerge not because they are

inherently dangerous but because of concerted social efforts to present them in this

way.275 Media portrayal is key here, and I have shown how stories in the press were

unrepresentative of the research on LSD and picked up sensationalist stories about

the drug to “imbue [it] with satanic qualities.”276 Cornwell and Linders describe the

process as “dialectical and emergent in nature,”277 rather than a “moral panic” as per

Stanley Cohen and I have shown how this process snowballed from early criticisms of

research and researchers, to concerns over a local area in San Francisco to a

nationwide demonization of the drug that spanned twenty years.

In addition to the media’s influence on public, cultural attitudes towards LSD, this

influencing further provided impetus to U.S. drug policy. Although LSD research was

not made unlawful, the public backlash towards it made researchers very

uncomfortable to continue, particularly amongst those who valued their career

prospects. Several journal articles complained that negative media coverage made

psychedelic research more difficult,278 and Albert Hofmann has attested that the

274 Berridge, 17-‐29. 275 Nachman Ben-‐Yehuda, The Sociological Quarterly, 1986. 495-‐513. 276 Cornwell and Linders, 321. 277 Ibid. 278 See, for example, Charles C. Dahlberg, Ruth Mechaneck and Stanley Feldstein, The American Journal of Psychiatry, 1968. and Sidney Cohen, American Journal of Psychiatry, 1968. 393-‐394.


52

combination of legislation and negative publicity surrounding psychedelics meant

that his company prevented him from continuing research on psychedelic plants.279

Figures presented at a 1967 seminar at Wesleyan University showed that in 1964

there were seventy licensed LSD investigators; in 1965, thirty nine; in 1966, thirty

one; and by 1967 there were just sixteen.280 A letter published in Science, authored

by a psychiatrist at University of Michigan, bemoaned the refusal of FDA and NIMH

to support new LSD research and the frustrating delays and bureaucracy in

attempting to obtain the required approval.281

Following legislation, even if a psychedelic research project were approved, the

increased taxation meant that in some cases, the price of psychedelics for research

increased by 700,000%. 282 After 1975, only three European studies in which

psychedelics were administered to humans were permitted to continue. Two studies

with LSD were conducted in the Netherlands, one by Dr. W. Arendsen Hein who

treated 'neurotic' patients in his clinic Veluweland at Ederveen until his retirement in

1977. The most recent US study involving human ingestion of LSD from this era was

published in 1973.283

Another factor in the weakening of the research base was the withdrawal of CIA)

funding. Without the support of the agency that funded much of the research

showing LSD was physiologically safe; new results that conformed to the established

scientific standards; and the respect of the wider scientific community, the position

from which LSD researchers could refute media claims was precarious.

Ambiguity over LSD’s potential therapeutic efficacy faded from the media during the

mid-‐1960s, and it became increasingly difficult for ‘legitimate’ political actors to

279 S. Grof, MAPS Bulletin, 2001. 22-‐35. 280 Hohauser, 78. 281 John C. Pollard, Science, 1966. 844. 282 Shulgin and Shulgin, 441. 283 Charles Savage and O. Lee McCabe, Archives of General Psychiatry, 1973. 808.


53

openly resist the “increasingly uniform interpretation: ‘LSD is dangerous’”.284 Further

to this, those who had a vested interest in prohibiting LSD use – DEA and other law

enforcement agencies – had better access to the media than the counterculture they

were attacking, and thus their views, opinions and voices are those that were heard.

285

Grinspoon and Bakalar suggest that LSD may have been seen as “part of a social

trend toward irrationalist religious enthusiasm”286 and that, in combination with

scorn for gainful labour and political participation, this caused societal unease:

We are unwilling to tolerate much ambiguity, for example, about

whether an activity is religious ritual, medicinal, or recreation, and our

legal arrangements depend on these classifications. Use of psychoactive

drugs in general and of psychedelic drugs in particular crosses these

lines and muddies these distinctions, and that appears as a threat to

control and rationality, a problem for the law and society.287

Jay Stevens explains, “The real problem wasn’t that the science story had

somehow turned into a religion story, it was that the religion story had

somehow turned into a cultural revolt.”288 In a way, LSD was its own worst

enemy – its position across all these activities is contingent on its inherent

psychedelic properties. The way it was used in scientific research, therapy,

religion and recreation made LSD hard for society to categorise and

compartmentalise, and so confusion reigns and it becomes an easy target of

fear. 289

284 Cornwell and Linders, 326. 285 Ibid. 324. 286 Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar, Psychedelic Reflections, 1983. 287 Ibid. 288 Stevens, 19. 289 Grinspoon and Bakalar (1983).


54

Albert Hofmann published his professional autobiography, “My Problem Child” in

1979 after years of observation and reflection of what he termed a “cultural

experiment.”290 In a 1993 meeting with writer Michael Montagne, Hofmann said that

in his opinion, “the last word has not yet been said about the possible medical

applications of this drug."291 Indeed, there has been a recent resurgence of scientific

interest in psychoactive drugs to treat mental illness and it will be interesting to

observe the public and policy reaction to this without the influence of a

counterculture revolution.

Could the promising research results from MDMA investigations open up the way for

an increased re-‐medicalisation of older psychedelics like LSD? Is the U.S. government

ready to re-‐evaluate the “war on drugs” and pay greater attention to the benefits of

psychedelics, thus separating them from political and social prejudice? History

cannot answer these questions but it forces them to arise, and they should be noted.

At a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1966, Dr. Stephen Szára

remarked “It is my belief that it would be most unfortunate if we were to permit

undue hysteria to destroy a valuable tool of science, and evaporate an eventual

hope for the hopeless.”292 Perhaps with the hysteria diminished, now will be the

time for Hofmann’s “Problem Child” to become his “Wonder Child.” 293

290 Montagne, 6-‐14. 291 Ibid. 292 Szára, 1517. 293 Montagne, 6-‐14.

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University College London - Amazon S3 · 2015. 12. 4. · ! 1! LSD: The Contradiction of the Psychedelic Panacea that became Public Enemy Number One of the United States of America