LSD

This really doesn't fit in well with the purpose of this site, but this article was rejected because of content by my main article distributor, so I am posting it here.

LSD was synthesized for the first time in 1938 by Dr. Albert Hofmann. He found the compound growing naturally in a fungus that grew on rye. He was the first person to ‘trip’ on acid (AKA LSD.) He took the substance and rode his bicycle home from work. He reported his strange bicycle trip to his fellow scientists the next day; citing ‘breathing buildings’ and other distortions. He then began self-experimenting to a small extent. Amazingly enough he is still alive at age 101. (As of the writing of this piece 10-24-07. He’ll be 102 next January)

Moving ahead to the cold war era, both the CIA and MI6 tried using LSD in mind control experiments, and as a truth serum. All efforts failed, but the mind altering drug eventually came to the attention of Timothy Leary, a professor at Berkley and a lecturer at Harvard. Leary’s experiments took the drug to hippy culture and the Acid Test was born. Mountain Girl, former wife of Jerry Garcia of Grateful Dead fame, described the acid rock concerts as a safe place to freak freely.

LSD has been described as a mind altering drug that can cause people to have personal revelations and stimulate mental evolution. It has also been described as a drug that can permanently damage your thinking process and cause ongoing delusions and impairment. I have personally observed both and would recommend staying away from LSD. In the best circumstances it can cause a shift in your awareness and give new perspective. Unfortunately, the results seem to be totally random and acid is mostly an unknown quantity, as are most illegal laboratory created drugs.

Even in the controlled experiments done in academia and by the CIA there were many different results coming from the same batches of LSD. One famous case went to court where an Army scientist unknowingly ingested LSD and eventually either committed suicide or was pushed out of a ten story window, depending on who you believe. That event happened many weeks after the LSD trip, so it is another example of the long reaching effects of this drug. Congress eventually voted to award a six figure sum of money to the family of that individual to stop the court case. Was this a cover up of the events that led to his death or to quiet public awareness of the methods of the CIA? The answer to that seems obvious, but it is supposition. Luckily today’s US government and the covert operations undertaken are all above board and nothing like the LSD situation could ever happen today. We are so lucky to have such an honest and straight shooting man at the helm. Uh, right.

To put it quite bluntly, even in the most controlled environments run by college professors, and in experiments by the CIA, there were far reaching negative consequences for taking LSD. The questionable benefits are far outweighed by the extreme danger posed by this seemingly innocuous substance. Delusions causing total inability to reconnect with reality and suicides have both been attributed to this drug. Bottom line is that it is not worth the possible damage you can do to yourself.