The story of LSD in America is one of deception, manipulation, and control. Initially developed as a chemical weapon by the CIA, LSD was tested secretly on unsuspecting American citizens for decades in the 1950s and 1960s.
What started as "scientific research" at universities soon spiraled out of control. Timothy Leary, a Harvard psychologist, began advocating its recreational use and formed an LSD cult among students. Under the guise of academic freedom, LSD then spread from the labs onto college campuses. Once he was fired, Leary helped launch the psychedelic counter-culture by popularizing LSD use among the emerging hippie movement.
Meanwhile, the media downplayed the dangers of LSD. Time Magazine, owned by the pro-CIA Luce family, published glowing reports depicting LSD as a spiritual and consciousness-expanding drug. "Acid tests" hosted by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters glorified psychedelic experiences.
However, as Abbie Hoffman noted, the drug-focused hippies actually distracted from meaningful anti-war activism. Before the hippie movement, anti-war protesters were "clean-cut, normal-looking, all-American college students." But after the CIA introduced LSD-fueled orgies, hippies, and opposition to the war were associated with dirty, ignorant, communist, drug-addicted VD-infested degenerates.
Due to the clandestine nature of the agency, it's hard to prove whether this was an intended effect, or if they simply had agents that dropped the ball and let a mind-control drug into the crowd of dissenters. Based on the consequences to those dissenters that started communes and how the status quo lives on, it is not irrational to suspect this was intentional, even if it was perpetrated by a select few agents abusing their power. The agency isn't really known for making mistakes.
Journalist Steven Kinzler is quoted as saying "Gottlieb wanted to create a way to seize control of people's minds, and he realized it was a two-part process,"
Or did they? Brainwashing is not a new idea. It was once called putting someone under a spell. Introduce new ideas and entrancing music, after destroying the ego with drugs. It's not new. The official conclusion was
At the height of the hippie counterculture in 1968, Middle America elected Richard Nixon - the ultimate "anti-hippie" who then promptly escalated the war. We know the CIA, through figures like Miles Copeland Jr., had a hand in proliferating LSD during this time. The real goal appears now to have been dispersing and discrediting the anti-war movement - not spiritual awakening. It was only scandal that got Nixon and the war nixed.
The notion that LSD functions solely as a source of amusement and amazement trivializes the tremendous psychological disruption the drug is capable of inducing. When administered carefully and deliberately, even at modest doses, LSD has the potential for disrupting individuals, and coordinated group efforts in multiple ways. Some subjects in the CIA experiments even died tragic deaths and others were sent to mental institutions. The true toll is not even known.
Financial records indicate the CIA operative George White, under an alias of Morgan Hall, received over 200 checks signed with the code "STORMY" in the memo field, their CIA codename for LSD. Hall lured targets to a bugged apartment under false pretenses before dosing them with LSD and observing their drugged states through a one-way mirror from what he called his "portable toilet observation post" while getting drunk on martinis. For him, it was fun.
The larger MK -ULTRA program operated on a far grander scale across 86 known institutions with unwitting participation from researchers, doctors, and university staff to agents themselves.
Seemingly through happenstance, one MK ULTRA subject would go on to catalyze the 1960s counterculture revolution: Ken Kesey. The money from his CIA experiment at Stanford University funded the acid tests that helped launch the psychedelic era. Where an onlooker may have seen frivolity, LSD's power to fundamentally disrupt established cultural norms (and more) was on full display. Kesey inspired the visionaries who would redefine art, music, and politics for the Boomer generation.
The events surrounding MK-ULTRA remind us that moments perceived as transitions to more free and creative cultural eras were and are under attack by clandestine and coercive circumstances, with authorities wielding powerful tools of psychological influence on unwitting citizens.
“I didn’t believe it for a long time,” Kesey told NPR’s Terry Gross in 1989, “It was being done to try to make people insane – to weaken people and to try to put them under the control of interrogators.” “I found that my key opened a lot of the doors to these doctor’s offices,” He told Gross, “where these drugs were being kept.”
Before being introduced to LSD, he was a fairly straight-laced athlete. Then Kesey became part of an experiment he was told had the aim of helping mentally insane people. He didn’t understand that it was intended to make him insane.
Let us pause to reflect on the deeper implications of these anecdotes. It seems almost comical to think this was an accident. Is it possible LSD and even other drugs were introduced to society for malicious purposes? MDMA for example is often used at "raves", where entrancing music is performed. Could it be that this is not only tolerated but promoted and meant to keep people in line or for some other reason? After all, it too, was part of MK-ULTRA experiments. Though we only know of animal studies they conducted on it, many records were destroyed in 1973, so we may never know.
Kesey was unwittingly recruited into an insidious program of social engineering and psychological manipulation. Though he intuitively distrusted authority, he could not have envisioned the far-reaching impact his actions would have.
When one person is given the tools to disrupt others' mental faculties, it raises profound ethical questions. Kesey embraced psychedelics as a path to enlightenment, but the actual goal of those enabling him appears to breed dependence, weakness, and compliance to those holding the keys.
By popularizing LSD, Kesey catalyzed a cultural shift that undermined traditional values and authority. But his revolt was seemingly orchestrated by unseen hands pulling strings from above, even if indirectly. If the hippie ethos of "free love" and drug use didn't arise organically from the collective; it was engineered and then distributed as a social virus that devastated the movement with overdoses, disruption to family and community structures, and much more. The perfect clandestine weapon against the "commie hippies".
Kesey thought he was a rebel, but he may have unwittingly become a pawn in a larger game. His defiance was co-opted to sow the seeds of societal destabilization, focused on the communes that threatened the police state with self-governance much like our nation's founders had intended it to be.
The illusion of freedom masks the fact that those who control the drug supply ultimately determine the parameters of people's experiences. Selecting people with the right mild psychosis, and the right dose could drive them insane. Given to another individual with grandiose ideas, they may start preaching. Give the same drug to a group he preaches to, and they might develop a type of mass psychosis that adopts these perverted, though well-meaning ideals.
If you or someone you know has been trained to think fun is a synonym for drugs or sex, remember that these are not their original ideas. They were planted in these people by/at some unethical party, and their biggest crime is lying to themselves and allowing these ideas to possess their minds. The murderers of presidents felt threatened, so it appears they attacked in a covert way. Those peaceful protesters became targeted. The women of the movement were trained to seek out “free love” in the form of drugs and sex, burning up resources, time, and the real love of the families and men around them, and any love that was in their own hearts. Their families broken, children suffering, and the men drained of their resources and love until they become savage abusers that wind up in prison after hurting or killing someone… This may all be an indirect result of CIA conditioning from the top down.
While the counterculture may have unleashed creative sparks, it was distorted and twisted with lies telling women they could have free love through hollow sexual pursuits. The ability to alter people's consciousness comes with profound ethical responsibilities that were not heeded. Kesey played his part unknowingly, but history will mark him as a vessel through which forces beyond his understanding shaped the world for decades to come.
The story of LSD in America is one of deception, manipulation, and control. Initially developed as a chemical mind control weapon by the CIA, LSD was tested secretly on unsuspecting American citizens for decades in the 1950s and 1960s. The operation was so covert and effective, we aren't sure if it was lone actors within the agency, or an official operation that saw the hippies latch onto it. But one thing is for sure- it devastated the movement, so much so, that the war raged on until scandal and other arguments shifted opinions to the side of the anti-war crowd.
Also published here.