LSD Gets Another Look
In the 1960s, a psychologist and former Harvard teacher named Timothy Leary coined the phrase ‘Turn on. Tune in. Drop out.’ The slogan was inspired by advertising jingles, but Leary wasn’t pushing a product, he was promoting a drug: LSD.
LSD was little more than a scientific curiosity in the early 1960s when Leary first took it. Developed by a Swiss pharmaceutical company, the drug had been sent out into the world in the 1940’s and 50’s with no clear idea of what it might do. At first, researchers used LSD to mimic psychosis in an attempt to study the origins and nature of schizophrenia. It was also given surreptitiously to soldiers in the search for a military application. But the most promising use of LSD was as an aide in psychotherapy, particularly when aimed at problems like alcohol addiction or depression and anxiety in terminal cancer patients.
And then along came Timothy Leary. He had conducted research at Harvard with psilocybin, another psychedelic drug derived from mushrooms. But after trying LSD, he became convinced the drug had even greater potential beyond the scientific realm and began preaching that young people could change their lives with an LSD trip. Before long, as the drug grew more popular, the stories about the dangers of recreational street use grew and it was declared a schedule one drug – the class of highly dangerous drugs with high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use.
But today, scientists are studying psychedelics once again, in the latest twist in the long, strange story of LSD.
View full episodes at PBS.org/RetroReport.
Related:
LSD-Like Drugs Are Out of the Haze and Back in the Labs by Clyde Haberman
More Stories From Retro Report on PBS
Newborns today are tested for genetic and immune disorders that might not be apparent at birth. The tests evolved from the treatment of a patient with a rare diagnosis who became known as “the Boy in the Bubble.”
The role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, once at the center of a moral panic, is now seen as a counterbalance to the problem of screen addiction.
About half a million children have dangerously high lead levels in their blood, mostly from exposure to peeling paint and contaminated dust. The fight over who should clean it up has lasted for decades.
In the 1980s, rising public awareness about waste was fueled by a bizarre news story about a meandering New York City garbage barge.