LSD

LSD

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LSD is the abbreviation for lysergic acid diethylamide, a synthetic hallucinogenic drug discovered by Albert Hofmann in 1938. By disrupting the action of serotonin in the brain, LSD produces markedly abnormal behavior, including psychotic episodes that can last anywhere from hours to several days. The drug is usually administered through the tongue, although it can be absorbed through any of the mucous membranes.

Medical experimentation with LSD began in the 1950s, soon after the Swiss pharmaceutical firm Sandoz Laboratories began legally manufacturing the drug. Early investigators included Oscar Janiger, a Los Angeles psychiatrist who administered LSD to approximately 1,000 volunteers between 1954 and 1962, and Timothy Leary, a Harvard psychology professor, who experimented with LSD during the early 1960s. Leary administered the drug to Harvard students, helping to spark an interest in it on college campuses around the nation. Like Janiger, Leary also gave the drug to a number of celebrities. Harvard fired Leary in 1963, but he continued his experiments and advocacy of what had come to be called psychedelic drugs. While the United States government had initially sponsored covert investigations into the utility of LSD for the military and other agencies, in response to mounting public concern and a Senate inquiry, the government outlawed LSD in 1966.

LSD moved rapidly from medicinal to recreational use. Interest in the drug was greatly stimulated by accounts of celebrities, including the actor Cary Grant, and artists who reported remarkable psychological insights and transformations after using LSD. The drug was touted as an aphrodisiac and as a chemical adjunct to the "hippie" movement. It was widely distributed through illegal channels during the 1960s to those eager to follow Leary's siren call to "turn on, tune in, drop out." When LSD was outlawed by most countries and abandoned by legal pharmaceutical manufacturers, any early promise it had as a therapeutic drug was lost in a wave of bad experiences associated with its illegal use and unregulated production.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lee, Martin, and Bruce Shlain. Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond. New York: Grove Press, 1985.

Montagne, Michael. "LSD at 50: Albert Hofmann and His Discovery." Pharmacy in History 35 (1993): 70–73.

Stevens, Jay. Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream. New York: Grove/Atlantic, 1998.

Ulrich, Robert F., and Bernard M. Patten. "The Rise, Decline, and Fall of LSD." Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 34 (1990–1991): 561–578.

Loren Butler Feffer

See also Counterculture ; Substance Abuse .