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History
LSD was first synthesized in 1938 by a chemist working for Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland. His name was Dr. Albert Hofmann. LSD was initially developed as a circulatory and respiratory stimulant. However, no real benefits of the compound were identified and its study was discontinued. In the 1940's, interest in the drug was revived when it was thought to be a possible treatment for schizophrenia. Because of LSD's structural relationship to a chemical that is present in the brain and its similarity in effect to certain aspects of psychosis, LSD was used as a research tool in studies of mental illness.
Sandoz Laboratories, the drug's sole producer, began marketing LSD in 1947 under the trade name Delysid and it was introduced into the United States a year later. Sandoz marketed LSD as a psychiatric cure-all and hailed it as a cure for everything from schizophrenia to criminal behavior, sexual perversions and alcoholism. AND Sandoz, in its LSD related literature suggested that psychiatrists take the drug themselves in order to gain an understanding of the subjective experiences of the schizophrenic. During a 15 year period beginning in 1950, research on LSD and other hallucinogens generated over 1,000 scientific papers, several dozen books, and 6 international conferences, and LSD was prescribed as treatment to over 40,000 patients. Although initial observations on the benefits of LSD were highly optimistic, empirical data developed subsequently proved much less promising.
The late Timothy Leary gave LSD its fame after being kicked out from Harvard University for using students and other volunteers to study the effects of LSD on the brain. He later became an advocate of the drug, promoting its mind expanding qualities. LSD as a cultural phenomenon in the 1960s and 1970s has been a subject for much literature, such as Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the drug culture adopted LSD as the psychedelic drug of choice. The infatuation with LSD lasted for a number of years until considerable negative publicity emerged on bad trips -- psychotic psychological traumas associated with the LSD high -- and flashbacks, uncontrollable recurring experiences. As a result of these revelations and effective drug law enforcement efforts, LSD dramatically decreased in popularity in the mid-1970s. Scientific study of LSD ceased around 1980 as research funding declined.
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