If the 1950s were the age of conformity, the 1960s marked the age of liberation. In a time dominated by Cold War fears and anxieties, the American public radically shifted the domestic discourse to free themselves of the confines of suspicion and fear. In order to do this, they turned to a new set of ideologies under the emerging psychedelic subculture that promoted liberation through peace, love, and LSD. The movement placed an emphasis on the use of hallucinogenic drugs, particularly LSD or acid as it is popularly known, to “free your mind” and “reveal your soul.”₁ While the use of drugs was initially promoted in psychotherapy, by the mid-1960s, the entire American public embraced drug use with open arms. In fact, the use of LSD became a part of music with the rise of psychedelic rock that was created by some of the most legendary artists of the time, including Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles. As The New York Times reflected on the decade’s impact on American culture fifty years later, they noted that there “seemed nothing ‘counter’ about [the] culture; it was prevalent.”₂ 

While popular culture embraced LSD as the key to “expanded consciousness,” the U.S. government feared the psychological possibilities of mind-altering drugs.₃ From the start of the Cold War, the U.S. was in direct competition with the Soviet Union to prove themselves as the superior post-war society. The treatment of LSD was no different as the U.S. government engaged in a Space Race-like battle to unlock the psychological possibilities of hallucinogens. With the American discourse of the time dominated by the fear of psychological warfare, the U.S. government thought that LSD was the means to unlocking the ability to brainwash. In a secret CIA project called MK-ULTRA, the government attempted to weaponize LSD in mind control. Like many cultural objects of the time, the representation of LSD in popular culture as a symbol of liberation was ironic when the government was actually trying to use it as a weapon in mind control.  

IVY LEAGUE ORIGINS

The acceptance of the mainstream use of LSD was largely accredited to Harvard psychology

professor Timothy Leary. In 1960, Leary took his first trip to Mexico where at a gathering, he took

his first acid trip and was hooked. As a professor of clinical psychology, he was drawn to the possible

use of the drug in psychotherapy. Upon his return to the U.S., he shared his experience with his

Harvard colleague, Richard Alpert.₄ After some discussion, the two began experimentation in the

Harvard Psilocybin Project, in which they administered a variety of hallucinogens including, LSD,

psilocybin, and mescaline, to students to study their effects. As they collected research, they began

to place an emphasis on LSD because they believed they were “dealing with a substance of

revolutionary social import.” In particular, they were testing whether the drug could facilitate a

“mystical experience” that would unlock an “expanded consciousness” and “freedom of the mind.”₄

While they were reaching breakthroughs in their own research, they were facing skepticism and opposition from the university’s administration. The controversy reached its peak in 1962 after The Harvard Crimson published an article detailing their experiments. Shortly after the articles were released both Leary and Alpert were dismissed from their positions at separate times for their involvement in hallucinogen research.₅ Instead of being a setback, they embraced their terminations and continued their research. In fact, they decided to place their full attention on their private organization, the International Federation for Internal Freedom, or IFIF, to study “expanding consciousness.”₆ As Leary and Alpert continued to publish their findings, their controversial and continued research brought drug culture to the national consciousness. 

POPULAR PSYCHEDELIC SOUNDS AND SIGHTS

Previous to Leary and Alpert’s research, LSD wasn’t given much attention in the media. 

However following their terminations, Harvard issued a statement warning students against using LSD, and the scandal made national news coverage in all of the major U.S. magazines, including Time and Newsweek.₆ Increased public interest and use were fueled by the publishment of Leary and Alpert’s 1964 book, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In the book, they describe how to maximize “personal power and sharpened insight into self, culture… and liberation,” through the use of LSD.₇ In the following year, The Beatles’ John Lennon would discover the book in a London bookshop, and it would inspire The Beatles 1965 album, Revolver. In the first song on the album “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Lennon sings, “turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.” These lyrics were directly inspired by Leary and Alpert advice, “whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream.”₈ The Beatles were already extremely popular internationally, and the success of Revolver inspired popular American artists to also produce acid inspired rock.

By 1966, the psychedelic subculture had become a full-scale movement in the U.S. For instance, Jimi Hendrix, known for his drug use, documented his psychedelic experiences with his band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience. They produced hits, such as “Purple Haze,” that reached popular success and established Hendrix as a legendary figure of the decade.₈

Furthermore, the psychedelic art movement created visuals of acid trips and “free thinking”

with kaleidoscopic-like patterns and bright colors by artists such as Salvador Dali and Peter

Max. These works of art were popular in homes and psychedelic designs were used in

posters to promote psychedelic musicians, such as Jimi Hendrix.₉ Eventually, even Leary

went on to record his own album in 1966 called “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out,” in which

he describes the meaning of his famous mantra as “the ability to activate neural and

genetic equipment to interact with the world in harmony… detached from unconscious

commitments.”₁₀ Overall, the popularity of these psychedelic sights and sounds prove

that the American public was embracing the message of liberation and freedom

through acid trips. They saw psychedelic subculture as a way to represent their political

freedom to express themselves as they please without governmental influence. These ideals

countered the portrayal of Soviet Union in the U.S. media as a strict society under

the control of governmental forces that imposed its beliefs onto its citizens. 

As the popularity of psychedelic sounds and visuals was reaching its peak, the media also embraced the message of liberation, which helped promote the U.S.’ belief in the freedom of the individual. In particular, magazine coverage of LSD detailing acid trips was increasing. Life and Newsweek produced cover stories in 1966 centering around the “New experience that bombards the senses: LSD Art”₁₁ and “LSD and the Mind Drugs”₁₂ respectively. In fact, even the popular humor and social commentary magazine Mad featured a cover entitled “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead.”₁₃ The cover has clear psychedelic influence with busy patterns and colors and depicts the style of the subculture with unkempt hair and large, jewelry that denotes spiritual meanings. However, the change of “drop out” to “drop dead” signals the beginning of the shifting media discourse to concern about the popularity of drug use. Even Life magazine changed its tune to cover LSD as “The Exploding Threat of the Mind Drug that got Out of Control.”₁₄ The shift in media coverage also denoted an increase in societal concern, particularly in the political realm, about LSD use. 

The governmental concern reached its peak when in the spring of 1966, Senator Thomas Dodd convened The Special Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency for three hearings on the recreational use LSD and other psychedelic drugs.₁₅ In order to gain an understanding of the effects of LSD, Leary was called in to testify as an expert witness. He advocated for the positive use of psychedelics and claimed that they were not dangerous if used “wisely and with precautions.” In spite of his avocations, he faced heavy criticism from Senator Ted Kennedy who said that Leary’s testimony was “general hyperbole.” While Sen. Ted Kennedy’s brother Senator Robert F. Kennedy defended the “medical possibilities” of the drug in the same hearing, Ted Kennedy’s opinion was backed by other doctors that testified that LSD “encourages homicidal tendencies and destructive behaviors.”₁₅ By the end of the subcommittee hearings, the government had taken a clear stance against the use of LSD. A few months after the hearings, the use of LSD was criminalized in California, and in October 1968, the possession of LSD was banned federally in the U.S. under the passage of the Staggers-Dodd Bill.₁₆ The government made it clear that prohibiting the use of LSD was for the safety of public health and not an attempt to suppression individual rights. They made it apparent to the world that they were still intent on upholding the rights of liberty and freedom, but not at the cost of societal well-being. 

BENEATH THE SURFACE

While the government was publicly taking a hard stance against the recreational use of

LSD, it was hiding its own dark, long acid trip. When hallucinogens first came to America in the 1950s to be used in medical research, the government took an immediate interest in the possibilities they could unlock. At the same time that doctors were researching “expanded consciousness,” the U.S. government was becoming increasingly concerned that the Soviet Union had successfully begun to deploy psychological warfare. The possibility of brainwashing was at the forefront of the American mind after the USSR seemed to be making large steps in mind control technology. In 1953, after the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed, the public expected that the American POWs would return home and freedom after being captured in the Korean War. However, twenty-three of the POWs refused repatriation and pledged their devotion to the Communist Party. Both the American public and government took this as confirmation of the Soviet Union’s ability to achieve mind control.₁₇

Since the U.S. could not allow the Soviet Union to gain the upper hand in psychological warfare, they began their own secret experiments to win the race of weaponized control over the human mind. In 1953, the CIA was authorized to begin discretely funding research of hallucinogens to uncover a “systematic design of effective persuasion, interrogation and torture methods” under their covert operation, the MKULTRA program. At the start of the program, the CIA was only secretly funding academic research at a number of universities across the country and after fronting twenty-five million dollars in funds, research began pointing to success in intelligence applications of hallucinogens. As a result, they began sponsoring their own experiments. In 1955, the CIA began to lure unknowing men into undisclosed testing using sex workers as a distraction while narcotics agents slipped them LSD.₁₆ In documents that were later unclassified, the CIA admits to “using human subjects focused on a substance identified as EA#3167,” or LSD.₁₈ Once the subjects were under the influence, agents would follow them and recorded their responses without ever debriefing the individuals involved.  

Despite the clearly unethical grounds of the experiments, the CIA continued testing on unwitting subjects until 1964. They believed that they were making some progress from their observations, so much progress that they began to use LSD as an interrogation tactic. In 1963 the CIA Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation manual, which has since been unclassified, the CIA provided detailed directions to aid interrogators in achieving “desired behavior in subjects” by making them “more susceptible to suggestion.” In the manual, interrogators were encouraged to, among many other psychological tactics, use “hypnosis and hallucinogenic drugs to extract information.”₁₉ It was clear that the CIA believed that they were making progress with their experimentation, and they had gathered enough information to believe that they could successfully implement mind control tactics with the use of LSD and other hallucinogens. LSD was now being used as a weapon by the American government to induce brainwashing effects in detainees.  

UNCLASSIFIED

While the use of LSD was encouraged, it is unclear whether the CIA made significant progress in their attempts to weaponize mind manipulation because the details of interrogations and all of the work that took place under project MKULTRA remained classified until 1974. In 1973, amid the Watergate scandal and widespread panic among government agencies, CIA Director Richard Helms had thousands of MKULTRA documents destroyed in an effort to ensure that the unethical practices were never revealed. The documents that survived remained hidden until 1977 when the Freedom of Information Act brought them to light.₂₀ Once revealed, the CIA faced an understandable public uproar and was under investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The investigation led to public hearings of “Project MKULTRA, The CIA’s program of Research in Behavioral Modification.”

Throughout the investigation and hearings, many disturbing facts about the project were revealed. The Deputy Director of the CIA, Vernon A. Walters, revealed that over “30 universities and institutions were involved in an ‘extensive testing and experimentation’... that involved the administration of LSD to unwitting subjects.” Many of the subjects became ill for hours or days without intervention as they attempted to find what they deemed the “perfect” dosage, and in at least in one instance, the subject died as a result of the activities.₂₁ With these shocking revelations and more, the media was in a frenzy to cover the dark details and interview individuals who claimed to be victims of the project. Primetime television programs, such as Jackson Anderson Confidential, interviewed victims who shared how their experiences led to depression “because [they] knew something was wrong and [they] couldn’t figure out what it was” and it pushed them to “slash [their] wrists.”₂₂ These horrific accounts led to extreme scrutiny of the CIA’s practices, and led President Gerald Ford to issue an executive order on Intelligence Activities that prohibited “experimentation with drugs on human subjects, except with the informed consent, in writing and witnessed by a disinterested party, of each human subject.”₁₆ Legally U.S. intelligence activities are no longer allowed to weaponize LSD or any other drug, and overall there is no, at least surviving, evidence that shows they were successful in achieving mind control.

OH, THE IRONY

The government’s dark hidden history with LSD reveals the ironies of the psychedelic subculture’s use of acid as a symbol of liberation and freedom of the mind. However, LSD was not the first cultural object to be weaponized by the U.S. government. Throughout the Cold War, popular culture's meanings of many objects of liberation and freedom had dark connections to the government. For instance, at the surface of the Abstract Expressionist art movement that rose to international prominence in the 1950s with artists such as Jackson Pollock, the paintings represented American individualism and freedom of expression. Although, beneath the haphazard splatters and drips of paint, the U.S. government was bankrolling many of the artists’ projects. The government organization, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, financed high-profile exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism that toured internationally.₂₃ The exhibitions were a form of soft power that the U.S. used in order to culturally spread anti-Communist ideals in its propaganda war against the Soviet Union. While the initial motivations of Abstract Expressionism promoted freedom of expression, its success was really a product of governmental intervention. The Abstract Expressionist movement carried far deeper meanings for U.S. intelligence agencies than the surface of the artwork revealed, much like the treatment of acid in American popular culture. 

The history of LSD reveals a common theme throughout the Cold War of popular cultural objects being weaponized in the fight for superiority against the Soviet Union. The rise of LSD as an everlasting staple of the sixties almost seems like an acid trip fantasy in and of itself. From Ivy League origins in controversial experimentation at Harvard to the inspiration behind an entire movement in art and music, psychedelic subculture painted LSD as the ultimate symbol of liberation and freedom of the mind. However, upon closer inspection, LSD represented the complete opposite to the U.S. government who tried to weaponize the drug to win the battle of the minds against the USSR. In an era where the American discourse was dominated by the fear of brainwashing, it’s no wonder why the LSD has become an infamous staple of an entire decade. For most, acid will always represent an “expanded consciousness” that freed their minds, but it’s important to recognize the dark history behind its use. It’s frightening how quickly an acid trip could go bad, and it’s just as haunting to know how easy it was for the government to weaponize culture.