The Popularization of LSD
If a person ingests too much LSD, he or she just has to try to get through the trip. This makes the drug attractive for first-time users as well as experienced trippers. Peyote and, to a lesser extent, mushrooms require the user to eat a fairly large amount of plant material in order to obtain a sufficient amount of its chemical component to produce a high, while LSD is pure drug. First-time users have no problem ingesting and keeping acid (LSD) in their system. Its high potency also allows experienced users to increase their dosage far more than they would be able too with other drugs.
The above information shows why LSD is an attractive alternative over the other hallucinogens, but why is hallucinating a desirable experience for anyone? Psychedelics produce changed perceptions, emotions, moods, and sensations. Users of LSD report a wide range of experiences from the simple visual and auditory distortions to deep spiritual feelings. One college student’s report of her LSD experience follows, I felt the breeze kiss my skin, and it was almost orgasmic. I almost felt as though I had been touched by God. I felt like I was being enveloped by all of nature. I remember sitting on the front steps, enjoying all these new sensations, then looking at a few long blades of grass that were blowing in the breeze. I started to believe they were alive and aware, and that they weren’t just blowing in the breeze but were stretching toward me, reaching out to me. I remember reaching over to touch these blades of grass, then suddenly becoming aware that I was in the midst of so much life. I began to feel like I was so connected with all of life and nature. I think, at that moment, I never felt more alive (www.erowid.org).
For many users, LSD evokes feelings of connection with all that is around them resulting in an extremely pleasant, if not euphoric, sense of oneness and peace for many people.
LSD’s popularization can be attributed to the artists, authors, filmmakers, and musicians who have touted the drug’s wonders. Many of these people were introduced to the drug through psychiatry experiments. In 1950s psychiatrist Oscar Janiger conducted many experiments with LSD. These included experiments with artists. “The artists were especially exceptional! They told each other [about the drug’s effects], and before long we had hundreds of artists. Well, we couldn’t use them all… The artists were so enamored and so interested with the experience that they were recruiting each other” (www.maps.org/news-letters/v09n1/09107jan.html), reported Janiger.
During one experiment the subject, an artist, asked to paint. An easel was brought out and the artist was so thrilled with the experience he felt while painting that he said, “every artist should have this experiment” and promptly told all of his co-workers at a local art school. These responses from artists interested Janiger and he undertook a sub-study that focused on the creative effects of LSD in artists. Janiger reported that, “ninety-nine percent, if not all of them [subjects] were positive! Ninety-nine percent expressed the notion that this was an extraordinary, valuable tool for learning about art and the way one learns about painting or drawing. Almost all personally agreed they would take it again.” In addition to the multitude of professional artists, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Roman Polanski and Eric Clapton were all introduced to LSD in the early 1960s (www.cchr.org/art/eng/page22). Along with Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey, these people contributed to the spread of LSD in our culture. They personally experienced the wonders the drug evoked and their work, they believed, reflected their experiences.
Timothy Leary, a psychologist at Harvard, began experimenting with LSD with prison inmates, and then himself and friends. He actively promoted the drug’s use, and was responsible for the 1960s mantra “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.” Leary (and LSD) gained even more notoriety in 1963 when Harvard University dismissed him. After his dismissal Leary along with Richard Alpert set up the Castalia Institute in Millbrook, New York to continue his research. Leary wrote of his time in Millbrook, “we saw ourselves as anthropologists from the twenty-first century inhabiting a time module set somewhere in the dark ages of the 1960s. On this space colony we were attempting to create a new paganism and a new dedication to life as art.” The institute was eventually raided by the FBI and Leary was thrown into jail. However, this just served to give himself and LSD more notoriety.
Ken Kesey’s first introduction to LSD came in 1959 when he volunteered to take a government test at Menlo Park Veterans Hospital. Ken was involved in a variety of tests at the hospital and wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest based on his experiences. Kesey felt that acid had unlocked his mind and spread the word about its creative powers to his fellow writing majors at Stanford University. He frequently hosted large parties at his log cabin in La Honda that featured “electric” kool-aid, which meant the drink was spiked with LSD. In 1964 Kesey and some friends, relatives, and followers dubbed the “merry pranksters” loaded themselves into a bus to travel across country to see the World’s Fair. Frequently using marijuana and LSD, the pranksters made many stops along the way often shocking small- town Americans with their antics and turning some on to their drug-using lifestyle. This journey is documented in Tom Wolfe’s classic book Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
The Monterey California Pop Festival in 1967 began to merge LSD with music. “Many there took LSD to celebrate and enhance their appreciation of this festival. Musicians and artists soon began wide-scale experimentation with ways to perform that would complement, direct and heighten the effects of LSD, or present a ‘flash’ of the experience for the uninitiated,” writes Peter Stafford, a self proclaimed P.I. (psychedelics investigator). This concert attracted over 200,000 young people and featured 31 bands. Venues for LSD use began to grow. With so many respected artists and musicians espousing the virtues of the drug, it was not difficult for it to catch on.
By the time LSD became illegal in 1966, it was already entrenched in youth culture. As a result of this entrenchment, anti-LSD ad campaigns and the tough new laws against its use and sale had little effect. The new law did serve to raise the price of LSD, however, which attracted more dealers. When the drug had been legal, it was not all that profitable to sell it unless a dealer was selling massive quantities. The harsh laws ironically made the sale all the more profitable and may have resulted in LSD’s further spread.
The University of Michigan has been running a program to track the drug habits of high schoolers since 1975. The use of LSD among seniors remained relatively constant at around 13% until 2000 when it fell to 6.6 percent. In 2002 the figure dropped to 3.5 percent and the next year (2003) to 1.9 percent. Never had the researchers seen such a dramatic drop in a specific drug’s use. LSD’s decline in usage also can be seen in the decreasing number of hospital visits and arrests, as well as from stories of its difficulty to find. I remember being told by a friend in high school that hardly anyone in the country knew how to make LSD-25 anymore. Whether true or not it corresponds to my observations at Union. At Union it is possible to get just about any drug and most of these markets are consistent. However, the LSD market fluctuates quite a bit; it shows up for a while, then it is unavailable for a longer while. The DEA credits itself for the decrease in LSD availability, citing a huge bust it made in rural Kansas in 2000. This was the largest LSD laboratory every seized by the DEA; an estimated 400 million doses were seized. The DEA estimates that it reduced the supply of LSD by 95 percent. It’s hard to imagine one laboratory churning out 95 percent of the LSD sold in the USA. However, LSD is notoriously difficult to synthesize, it requires very precise chemistry and hard to obtain precursor chemicals.
Despite LSDs recent decline in use, it still remains popular. Acid and acid culture have become permanent fixtures in American pop culture and have been since the 1960s. It is highly unlikely that LSD use will ever be wiped out in the US.
Bibliography
Citizens Commission on Human Rights
2004 LSD: Psychiatry Controlling Culture. Electronic document, http://www.cchr.org/art/eng/page22.htm
Doblin, Rick
1999 Dr. Oscar Janiger’s Pioneering LSD Research: A Forty Year Followup. Electronic document, http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v09n1/09107jan.html
Grim, Ryan
2004 Whose Got the Acid? Slate, April 1
Marks, John
1979 The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. Times Books. New York
Leiby, Richard
1997 The Magical Mystery Cure. Esquire, Sept. 1.
The Vaults of Erowid
2000 Enveloped by All of Nature. Electronic document,
http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=1978
