The Military’s LSD Experiments

LSD was discovered by the chemist Albert Hofmann, who found it to have psychedelic properties when he absorbed some of it through touching it with his hands in the lab. It was later patented as a pharmaceutical medication called Delysid. In the 1950s, a number of psychologist and researchers used it experimentally to either treat or attempt to induce psychosis and other mental conditions.

The military also got into the experimentation, though with considerably different goals and methods. They became interested after hearing that certain communist countries were using it to brainwash captured Americans. The thought was that it could be useful as a truth serum of sorts, and to test out this theory, reportedly the CIA would secretly drug everyday Americans and monitor the outcomes without the subjects knowing what they had taken and having no idea they were being watched.

By the time the program was scrapped, hundreds of CIA agents, military personnel, prostitutes, mental patients, and everyday Americans had been given LSD, as had many undergoing interrogations, to test its usefulness in getting them to reveal the truth. This was often done without the subjects’ knowledge or consent. And the means of conducting the studies were often as bizarre as the resulting trips themselves. An article from TIME magazine states, “involved agents using hookers to lure johns into a secret pad decorated with photos of women in bondage and other suggestive images by the French artist Toulouse-Lautrec. The johns were given acid-laced cocktails and, from behind two-way mirrors, a Bureau of Narcotics agent, who doubled as a CIA operative, along with his minions would quaff martinis and watch the drugged sex.”

The military has since acknowledged and apologized for the experiments.