Comment by MichaelGG | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MichaelGG | Hacker News Reader

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I read LSD: My Problem Child. Interesting, short, book. At one point, Sandoz was giving out samples to anyone who asked, as they were hoping someone would find a good commercial use. Timothy Leary went and ordered 10 grams (which is 100,000 x 100ug doses), but apparently Princeton(?) didn't back him up or there was some importing issue, and by that time Sandoz started getting suspicious and stopped sending out samples. Oops.

It's probably due to the reckless behaviour of early users that LSD got such a bad rap and banned so hard. Not that they should have had to been responsible -- they shouldn't be blamed for stupid government actions -- it's just an unfortunate thing. And early proponents weren't very rigorous and came up with fantastical claims, greatly exaggerating LSD's capabilities. It's still great stuff, just not quite a magical cure-all. Also I'm guessing most ethics systems would have issues with dosing people without their knowledge/consent.

The book also talks of later trips to Mexico where they did mescaline I believe. And how the images they saw, the shapes and patterns, looked exactly like Aztec art.

> It's probably due to the reckless behaviour of early users that LSD got such a bad rap and banned so hard. Not that they should have had to been responsible -- they shouldn't be blamed for stupid government actions -- it's just an unfortunate thing. And early proponents weren't very rigorous and came up with fantastical claims, greatly exaggerating LSD's capabilities.

This had very little to do with reckless behaviour of early users. I think it's generally well known at this point - that the "war-on-drugs" had primarily political purposes, especially suppressing the counter-culture.

More generally it's a war of ideas; the idea that there was a reality or conception of the world outside of say contemporary Christianity and material consumer society - were highly threatening at the time (to the nation's well-being if you will); and they remain so today (and this has much less to do with LSD and psychedelics and much more with preserving a power-structure).

And I don't think a few studies of scientific merit would have helped. Just look at how it went down with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt.

LSD could have many therapeutic applications - especially for challenging existing doctrines and with managing addictions. But the government probably didn't want people to be freed of these mindsets.

The CIA immediately started testing it as a mind control substance and an adjunct to torture. They conducted thousands of cruel experiments, most of them without the consent of the experimentee's, usually on prisoners and people in mental institutions. I wouldn't put all the blame on Leary and other harmless eccentrics.

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