LSD

Summary

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide is a widely known psychedelic/hallucinogenic drug first synthesized November 16, 1938. Many hallucinogens have similar chemical structures to those of neurotransmitters. The chemical structures of hallucinogens temporarily disrupt the neurotransmitters' ability to bind with receptor sites however, it is unknown how these substances exert their hallucinogenic abilities . LSD is a very potent mood changing chemical which is created from lysergic acid found in the fungus ergot . (COMMENTS:DOINA: GOOD-BUT WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS PROJECT?)

Origin

LSD was created in the Sandoz research lab in Basel, Switzerland in 1938 by Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann . Hofman created the substance by accident, due to the fact that he was experimenting with ergot mushrooms to find a way to stimulate the circulation in the heart and lungs. Albert Hofmann was the creator of LSD but he was also the first user of LSD. He stumbled across the latter accidentally too. For one day, while working in the lab, he had some slight residue of the substance in his fingertips. He rubbed his hands on his eyes and experienced the world's first "acid trip". He layed down on his couch and states that he "dreamed a wonderful dream" with "lights and colors with visions that lasted for hours" . After this event, he went on to experiment with LSD for over a hundred times, before it was banned in the late 1960's, and believed that LSD could be used for psychiatry (in order for the psychiatrists to empathize with their patients), and as a sort of anti-dote from the boredom caused by consumerism/industrialization in order to bring people to a more spiritual society.

Chronology

• 1938 Albert Hofmann discovers LSD accidentally in Basel, Switzerland .
• 1943 Hofmann becomes first user of LSD accidentally, thus experiences the first "acid trip" .

• 1959 Ken Kesey (grad student in creative writing at Stanford University) volunteers to take part in a government drug research program at Veterans Hospital in Palo Alto .

• 1958 LSD is tested on 95 volunteers at the Army's Chemical Warfare labs .
• 1962 Kesey writes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest .
• 1965 CIA begins project MKSEARCH to develope the capability to control human behavior through the use of mind-altering drugs .

• 1965 Drug Abuse Control Amendment is passed. LSD banned in U.S.A. .
• 1996 Timothy Leary dies of prostate cancer .
• 2008 Albert Hofmann (inventor of LSD) dies at an age of 102 .

Significant People

Timothy Leary Dr. Timothy Leary was a professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, who first encountered hallucinogenic drugs on a trip to Mexico. He took a "Mexican mushroom" and stated that in the few hours the hallucinogenic trip lasted he had learned more about the mind that he had while studying at Harvard. Leary began LSD tests on Bohemian luminaries like: Jack Kerouac and Aldous Huxley, then moved to prison inmates and students. Leary believed that LSD could be used to correct personality disorders, but his unethical tests of LSD got him thrown out of Harvard. After this phase in his life, Leary began to hold LSD sessions which were meant to (a) discover and make love with God, (b) to discover and make love with yourself, and (c) to discover and make love with a woman . His widespread preaching about the use of LSD made him one of the faces/icons of the sixties counterculture movement which began in San Francisco at the corner of Haight and Ashbury.

Albert Hofmann Albert Hofmann was the head of the Natural Products Division at Sandoz research lab in Switzerland and is most popularly known as "The Father of LSD" after successfully synthesizing the substance in 1938. However, he set aside LSD for five years after looking at it again. In 1943 he accidentally ingested a small sample through his fingertips and was introduced to the awesome power of LSD. Hofmann's first experience with LSD left him at the doorstep of a new era. He believed that LSD could be used for medicinal purposes in the field of psychiatry. Most importantly he achieved a certain state of "unity" during his first acid trip that he thought LSD could be used to bring people to a larger understanding of the mind and spirituality. He felt that LSD had given him a sense of union. Hofmann later called LSD his problem child . Due to the fact, that he had so many aspirations for the drug in the understading of the mind, while people were just using LSD recreationally disregarding the consequences. Hofmann spoke out against people like Timothy Leary and the Merry Pranksters who urged others to use LSD.

Ken Kesey Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, colorado to dairy farmers Fred and Geneva Kesey. Kesey attended the University of Oregon where he was a wrestler. After dislocating his shoulder wrestling he was exempt from the draft. Thus, he was free to attend Stanford's graduate writing program. He moved to Palo Alto with his wife to a very bohemian neighborhood called Perry Lane. There he was informed by a neighbor that the Veterans Hospital were paying volunteers to take "psychomimetic drugs". He volunteered for this in 1959 and his life was changed for ever. Kesey thought that LSD was full of insights that could alter one's fundamental understandings of life and mind. Therefore, he wanted to spread the wonders of LSD around his neighborhood. Shortly after this, Kesey took a job at Menlo Park's psychiatric ward as a night attendant. Sometimes he would go to work under the influence of LSD. Noticing the treatment of the patients, he thought that the hospital was treating patients in anti-therapeutic ways that seemed to deepen their fears and psychological instability rather than help. As a result he noticed that some patients had to fake their mental state to fit society's standards. He believed that patients in the asylum were not as crazy as the environment they were in. Following this experience, Kesey wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's, and created some passages under the influence of LSD. Kesey, along with the Merry Pranksters, held parties known as "Acid Tests" where the guests were sometimes unaware they were being drugged with LSD. The point of "Acid Tests" was to survive through the night, and to serve as social experiments to notice how people reacted with each other under the influence of LSD .

The Merry Pranksters The Merry Pranksters were a group of people, originated by Ken Kesey, who openly used psychoactive drugs in order to ultimately break through conformist thought and forge a reconfiguration of American society. The group cemented its image as "iconoclastic" after their long rode trip from California to New York. Ken Kesey's novel Sometimes a Great Notion was published in 1964 and was to be released in New York. The Merry Pranksters obtained a 1939 International Harvester school bus and painted it in garish colors and set off for New York in order to arrive for the publication of Kesey's new book. The top of the bus was made into a musical stage where in detours, the pranksters would blast out crude music and running commentary to all the bystanders . The bus was named "further" and there was an inscription in the back that read "weird load". The reason why this trip is important, is because the Merry Pranksters originated nearly every aspect of the new "hippie" aestheticbizarre dress, communal lifestyle, psychedelic drugs, light shows, and self-expressive Rock and Roll music. After this trip, the American people associated LSD with revelry/a disregard to societal values and not with therapeutic psychiatry.

Outcomes/Long Term Effects on U.S. Culture

Albert Hofmann (the creator of LSD)hoped that LSD would be used as a form of "anti-dote" from the monotonous aspects of society and as a way to bring people into a higher level of spirituality. Hofmann never intended LSD to be abused, like the way the Pranksters and Timothy Leary preached, but to be used sparingly under controlled environments. Hofmann wanted LSD to be used to benefit the psychiatric community. Hofmann was not a hippie and didn't want LSD to be used incorrectly. In the sixties, LSD was part of the counter-culture movement, that emphasized peace, free love, and free forms of expression. The only down side was that the counter-culture was abusing LSD without considering the repercussions. To some extent, now the youth isn't as wrapped up in social revolutions like in the sixties but more in making the world a better place conscientiously(I AM NOT SURE WHEN AND WHAT YOU ARE SPECIFICALY REFERRING TO). The "revolutions" of the sixties were necessary so the youth of today could have a more rational mindset( HOW WOULD ONE, A AS A STUDENT OF HISTORY MEASURE THIS?). Nowadays people still want peace, love and free forms of expression but without the mind-altering drugs.

External links:

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaplayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=90157319&m=90157286>

http://www.umedia.com/mediamike/govatrocities.html>

http://www.timothyleary.us/>

http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/law/law_fed_daca1.shtml

http://www.hofmann.org/

GOOD JOB ON ORGANIZATION-- FLOWS WELL, STRONGEST ON MERRY PRANKSTERS. PERHAPS A BIT BRIEF. 2 OF 5 EXTERNAL LINKS WERE NOT ACCESSABLE--NEED TO INCLUDE THE DATE THAT YOU ACCESSED THEM. IT SEEMED THAT YOU MISSED SEVERAL EXCEELENT OPPORTUNITIES SUCH AS TO LOOK AT THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THE USE OF THIS DRUG; TO EXPLORE THE REACTION AT THE USERS, LOOK AT THE NUMBERS OF PERSONS USING THE DRUG IN THE 60'S; PERHAPS WITHIN THE PAPER CONNECT THE DRUG WITH MUSIC RATHER THAN TRY TO LINK IT.