Katana VentraIP

LSD

Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD (from German Lysergsäure-diethylamid), and known colloquially as acid or lucy, is a potent psychedelic drug.[12] Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception.[13] At sufficiently high dosages, LSD manifests primarily mental, visual, and auditory hallucinations.[14][15] Dilated pupils, increased blood pressure, and increased body temperature are typical.[16]

Clinical data

/daɪ eθəl ˈæmaɪd/, /æmɪd/, or /eɪmaɪd/[1][2][3]

Delysid

LSD, LSD-25, LAD, Acid, others

  • None

2-Oxo-3-hydroxy-LSD[6]

30–40 minutes[8]

8–20 hours[10]

C20H25N3O

323.440 g·mol−1

80 to 85 °C (176 to 185 °F)

67.02[11] mg/mL (20 °C)

Effects typically begin within half an hour and can last for up to 20 hours (although on average, experiences last 8–12 hours).[16][17] LSD is also capable of causing mystical experiences and ego dissolution.[15][18] It is used mainly as a recreational drug or for spiritual reasons.[16][19] LSD is both the prototypical psychedelic and one of the "classical" psychedelics, being the psychedelic with the greatest scientific and cultural significance.[12] LSD is synthesized as a solid compound, typically in the form of a powder or a crystalline material. This solid LSD is then dissolved in a liquid solvent, such as ethanol or distilled water, to create a solution. The liquid serves as a carrier for the LSD, allowing for accurate dosage and administration onto small pieces of blotter paper called tabs. LSD is typically either swallowed or held under the tongue.[13] In pure form, LSD is clear or white in color, has no smell, and is crystalline.[13] It breaks down with exposure to ultraviolet light.[16]


LSD is pharmacologically considered to be non-addictive with a low potential for abuse. Adverse psychological reactions are possible, such as anxiety, paranoia, and delusions.[7] In rare cases, LSD can induce "flashbacks", known as hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, in which a person experiences apparent lasting or persistent visual hallucinations or perceptual distortions, such as visual snow and palinopsia.[20][21]


LSD is structurally related to substituted tryptamines, a class of compounds that includes psilocybin, the active compound found in psychedelic mushrooms. Thus, LSD shares some mechanisms of action and psychedelic effects with psilocybin and other tryptamines.[22][23][24]


The effects of LSD are thought to stem primarily from it being an agonist at the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor. While exactly how LSD exerts its effects by agonism at this receptor is not fully understood, corresponding increased glutamatergic neurotransmission and reduced default mode network activity are thought to be key mechanisms of action.[7][12][25][26][27] LSD also binds to dopamine D1 and D2 receptors, which is thought to contribute to reports of LSD being more stimulating than compounds such as psilocybin.[28][29]


Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first synthesized LSD in 1938 from lysergic acid, a chemical derived from the hydrolysis of ergotamine, an alkaloid found in ergot, a fungus that infects grain.[16][20] LSD was the 25th of various lysergamides Hofmann synthesized from lysergic acid while trying to develop a new analeptic, hence the alternate name LSD-25. Hofmann discovered its effects in humans in 1943, after unintentionally ingesting an unknown amount, possibly absorbing it through his skin.[30][31][32] LSD was subject to exceptional interest within the field of psychiatry in the 1950s and early 1960s, with Sandoz distributing LSD to researchers under the trademark name Delysid in an attempt to find a marketable use for it.[31]


LSD-assisted psychotherapy was used in the 1950s and early 1960s by psychiatrists such as Humphry Osmond, who pioneered the application of LSD to the treatment of alcoholism, with promising results.[31][33][34][35] Osmond coined the term "psychedelic" (lit. mind manifesting) as a term for LSD and related hallucinogens, superseding the previously held "psychotomimetic" model in which LSD was believed to mimic schizophrenia. In contrast to schizophrenia, LSD can induce transcendent experiences, or mental states that transcend the experience of everyday consciousness, with lasting psychological benefit.[12][31] During this time, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began using LSD in the research project Project MKUltra, which used psychoactive substances to aid interrogation. The CIA administered LSD to unwitting test subjects in order to observe how they would react, the most well-known example of this being Operation Midnight Climax.[31] LSD was one of several psychoactive substances evaluated by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps as possible non-lethal incapacitants in the Edgewood Arsenal human experiments.[31]


In the 1960s, LSD and other psychedelics were adopted by, and became synonymous with, the counterculture movement due to their perceived ability to expand consciousness. This resulted in LSD being viewed as a cultural threat to American values and the Vietnam war effort, and it was designated as a Schedule I (illegal for medical as well as recreational use) substance in 1968.[36] It was listed as a Schedule 1 controlled substance by the United Nations in 1971 and currently has no approved medical uses.[16] As of 2017, about 10% of people in the United States have used LSD at some point in their lives, while 0.7% have used it in the last year.[37] It was most popular in the 1960s to 1980s.[16] The use of LSD among US adults increased 56.4% from 2015 to 2018.[38]

Uses[edit]

Recreational[edit]

LSD is commonly used as a recreational drug.[39]

Spiritual[edit]

LSD can catalyze intense spiritual experiences and is thus considered an entheogen. Some users have reported out of body experiences. In 1966, Timothy Leary established the League for Spiritual Discovery with LSD as its sacrament.[40][41] Stanislav Grof has written that religious and mystical experiences observed during LSD sessions appear to be phenomenologically indistinguishable from similar descriptions in the sacred scriptures of the great religions of the world and the texts of ancient civilizations.[42]

Society and culture[edit]

Counterculture[edit]

By the mid-1960s, the youth countercultures in California, particularly in San Francisco, had widely adopted the use of hallucinogenic drugs, including LSD. The first major underground LSD factory was established by Owsley Stanley.[154] Around this time, the Merry Pranksters, associated with novelist Ken Kesey, organized the Acid Tests, events in San Francisco involving LSD consumption, accompanied by light shows and improvised music.[155][156] Their activities, including cross-country trips in a psychedelically decorated bus and interactions with major figures of the beat movement, were later documented in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).[157]


In San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, the Psychedelic Shop was opened in January 1966 by brothers Ron and Jay Thelin to promote safe use of LSD. This shop played a significant role in popularizing LSD in the area and establishing Haight-Ashbury as the epicenter of the hippie counterculture. The Thelins also organized the Love Pageant Rally in Golden Gate Park in October 1966, protesting against California's ban on LSD.[158][159]


A similar movement developed in London, led by British academic Michael Hollingshead, who first tried LSD in America in 1961. After experiencing LSD and interacting with notable figures such as Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, and Richard Alpert, Hollingshead played a key role in the famous LSD research at Millbrook before moving to New York City for his own experiments. In 1965, he returned to the UK and founded the World Psychedelic Center in Chelsea, London.[160]

the poet, said, "I myself have taken mescaline once and L.S.D. once. Aside from a slight schizophrenic dissociation of the I from the Not-I, including my body, nothing happened at all."[227] He also said, "LSD was a complete frost. … What it does seem to destroy is the power of communication. I have listened to tapes done by highly articulate people under LSD, for example, and they talk absolute drivel. They may have seen something interesting, but they certainly lose either the power or the wish to communicate."[228] He also said, "Nothing much happened but I did get the distinct impression that some birds were trying to communicate with me."[229]

W. H. Auden

an American peace activist, says he has had several hundred experiences with psychedelics.[230]

Daniel Ellsberg

a notable physicist at California Institute of Technology, tried LSD during his professorship at Caltech. Feynman largely sidestepped the issue when dictating his anecdotes; he mentions it in passing in the "O Americano, Outra Vez" section.[231][232]

Richard Feynman

stated in a July 3, 1989 interview for Relix Magazine, in response to the question "Have your feelings about LSD changed over the years?," "They haven't changed much. My feelings about LSD are mixed. It's something that I both fear and that I love at the same time. I never take any psychedelic, have a psychedelic experience, without having that feeling of, "I don't know what's going to happen." In that sense, it's still fundamentally an enigma and a mystery."[233]

Jerry Garcia

implied in an interview with Playboy that he tried LSD during his youth.[234]

Bill Gates

author of Brave New World, became a user of psychedelics after moving to Hollywood. He was at the forefront of the counterculture's use of psychedelic drugs, which led to his 1954 work The Doors of Perception. Dying from cancer, he asked his wife on 22 November 1963 to inject him with 100 µg of LSD. He died later that day.[235]

Aldous Huxley

co-founder and former CEO of Apple Inc., said, "Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life."[236]

Steve Jobs

German writer and philosopher, throughout his life had experimented with drugs such as ether, cocaine, and hashish; and later in life he used mescaline and LSD. These experiments were recorded comprehensively in Annäherungen (1970, Approaches). The novel Besuch auf Godenholm (1952, Visit to Godenholm) is clearly influenced by his early experiments with mescaline and LSD. He met with LSD inventor Albert Hofmann and they took LSD together several times. Hofmann's memoir LSD, My Problem Child describes some of these meetings.[237]

Ernst Jünger

In a 2004 interview, said that The Beatles' songs "Day Tripper" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" were inspired by LSD trips.[165]: 182  Nonetheless, John Lennon consistently stated over the course of many years that the fact that the initials of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" spelled out L-S-D was a coincidence (he stated that the title came from a picture drawn by his son Julian) and that the band members did not notice until after the song had been released, and Paul McCartney corroborated that story.[238] John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr also used the drug, although McCartney cautioned that "it's easy to overestimate the influence of drugs on the Beatles' music."[239]

Paul McCartney

had an LSD experience with Simeon Wade in the Death Valley and later wrote "it was the greatest experience of his life, and that it profoundly changed his life and his work."[240][241] According to Wade, as soon as he came back to Paris, Foucault scrapped the second History of Sexuality's manuscript, and totally rethought the whole project.[242]

Michel Foucault

is reported to credit LSD with helping him develop DNA amplification technology, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993.[243]

Kary Mullis

an Italian theoretical physicist and writer, has credited his use of LSD with sparking his interest in theoretical physics.[244]

Carlo Rovelli

a neurologist famous for writing best-selling case histories about his patients' disorders and unusual experiences, talks about his own experiences with LSD and other perception altering chemicals, in his book, Hallucinations.[245]

Oliver Sacks

and Trey Parker, creators of the TV series South Park, claimed to have shown up at the 72nd Academy Awards, at which they were nominated for Best Original Song, under the influence of LSD.[246]

Matt Stone

Some notable individuals have commented publicly on their experiences with LSD.[225][226] Some of these comments date from the era when it was legally available in the US and Europe for non-medical uses, and others pertain to psychiatric treatment in the 1950s and 1960s. Still others describe experiences with illegal LSD, obtained for philosophic, artistic, therapeutic, spiritual, or recreational purposes.

European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction

Drug Profiles: LSD

at Erowid

LSD-25

at PsychonautWiki

LSD

Archived August 28, 2021, at the Wayback Machine

LSD entry in TiHKAL • info

U.S. National Library of Medicine: Drug Information Portal – Lysergic acid diethylamide