LSD, the CIA & the History of Psychedelic Science

In 1938, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann accidentally developed the potent psychedelic LSD, although it would be several years before Hofmann realized what he’d created. During the Cold War, the CIA launched a top-secret mind control project, code-named MKUltra, experimenting with LSD and other psychedelic substances, drugging military personnel, CIA employees, and civilians, often without their consent or even their knowledge. At the same time, the CIA was funding university research on psychedelics, involving scientists like Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson and counterculture luminaries like Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg. Although mid-20th Century scientists had seen therapeutic promise in psychedelics, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, which classified LSD, along with psilocybin, MDMA, and peyote, as Schedule I drugs, defined by the DEA as having “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” Joining me in this episode is Dr. Benjamin Breen , Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science . Our theme song…