I would like to remind all the readers of this post that the united states government used to try to use LSD as a mind control drug. They (IIRC it was the CIA) got into all sorts of shenanigans, dosing people (including CIA officers) without their consent. Some people died and other people's lives were affected very negatively. This was back in the 1950s- a time at which American had little or no conception of the concept of a "psychedelic" at all.
Also, the Grateful Dead- whose parking lots were famous as large scale drug distribution sites- went from being counterculture to establishment in some ~25-30 years (the "house band" of the Clinton administration).
We apparently live don't live in the strangest timeline, but it's definitely the trippiest one.
FWIW there were deaths caused by the MKULTRA program[1], but the implication that LSD caused the deaths is probably not correct.
This is sort of just a historical dump since it’s a fascinating story: The notable death people remember is the Army officer who “jumped” out of his hotel window in NYC. Years later the Watergate investigation revealed the MKULTRA program and connected it to the Army officer’s death. CIA sort of implied “yeah we were doing stuff with LSD mind control and he went crazy,” but some (like the officer’s son) believe that is also a cover story. AFAIK the son still believes his father was going to blow the whistle on some sort of chem or bio weapon development (the father was a scientist at Fort Detrick, the US military’s bioweapon development center at the time) and he was assassinated before going public.
Anyway, the son’s theory almost seems like the most believable part of the whole MKULTRA universe.
[1] Among MKULTRA’s damage is arguably the creation of the Unabomber. Ted was an unknowing test subject at Harvard where he was basically emotionally tortured by a CIA agent posing as a fellow student. He had his beliefs — which he was always strongly identified with — systematically dismantled in order to cause emotional distress.
Ah yes this looks more correct, I was mistaken. Apparently TedK was subjected to these experiments by a professor who also happened to have been employed by US intelligence but it’s unclear whether the experiment was part of MKULTRA itself. Thanks for the correction!
They also used massive doses of LSD combined with electroshocks and managed to entirely wipe some patients’ memories, this person describing their experience is pretty mind-blowing:
Ken Kesey of merry pranksters fame "discovered" LSD via being a volunteer in the CIA's MKUltra experiments. So, interestingly, the CIA's experiments were one of the major triggers for the whole 60s counterculture.
They used to try.. then they succeeded with some of their research, rolled it into the private sector, and closed the official record with the notion that it was a waste of time.
Sure. It's possible, but as the article you linked noted:
But American academic Professor Steven Kaplan, who published
a book in 2008 on the Pont-Saint-Esprit incident, insists
that neither ergot nor LSD could have been responsible.
Ergot contamination would not, he says, have affected only
one sack of grain in one bakery, as was claimed here. The
outbreak would have been far more widespread.
He rules out LSD on the grounds that the symptoms people
suffered, though similar, do not quite fit the drug.
While the "symptoms" listed is just a report from a single person nearly 60 years later are scary, as someone who took LSD dozens of times I have to agree with Professor Kaplan that the effects mentioned don't comport with my experience.
That doesn't mean it didn't happen (or that the CIA wouldn't have done such a thing -- they've done much worse), but the "evidence" is pretty thin IMHO.
Also, the Grateful Dead- whose parking lots were famous as large scale drug distribution sites- went from being counterculture to establishment in some ~25-30 years (the "house band" of the Clinton administration).
We apparently live don't live in the strangest timeline, but it's definitely the trippiest one.