In the late 1940s, psychologists began experimenting with LSD as a "psychotomimetic" drug - one that causes the taker temporarily to mime the condition of psychosis. Some experimental subjects, however, and eventually some modern mystics like Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, and Alan Watts discovered in LSD a shortcut to the ecstasy and egolessness of nirvana. LSD was recognized as the switch that turned on the clear light of the void.

Today's acid trip, however, is far more likely to resemble a live TV broadcast in runny color from the from seat of a roller coaster or a scene from The Exorcist. The decline in psychedelic quality over the years, which resembles the degeneration of Christianity and Russian Communism, has been a consequence of greed and opportunism on the part of manufactures and distributors. They offer to substitute immediate sensory gratifications for the original spiritual ideals. But the history of underground chemistry is also one of ingenuity and courage though influenced by haste and amateurishness. Its is the story of how LSD-25, the most powerful and spiritual molecule known to humanity became a "street drug."

Originally all LSD was made by Sandoz Pharmaceutical company, which had developed the chemical and hoped to market it commercially. It came in glass ampules filled with blue liquid, or small tablets in bottles with pharmaceutical labels specifying strength.

Excerpted from the beginning of LSD Purity by Bruce Eisner -- Originally Published in High Times, January 1977 republished on Island Web.

The 1960s caused so much cultural change that the eminent historian Arnold Toynbee observed of this period in American history: "I have been visiting the United States since 1925. Before my last visit (1967), I had been absent for two years, and I came away with the impression that in those two years there has been more change in American life than in all the previous forty."

Of course it was LSD in the pills that gave people so much insight. LSD, a potent mind-changing drug with few physical side effects discovered in Basel, Switzerland, during the dark days prior to World War II, around the same time as a much larger group in New Mexico was cooking up the atomic bomb.

For many, LSD was a roller coaster ride through their unconscious, a virtual Disneyland. But for a much smaller number the experiences took on significance that they called "mystical" or "religious." This smaller group, sometimes called the "Psychedelic Movement ", grew from a small intellectual elite composed mainly of writers and artists in Los Angeles, New York, and London into a mass movement which involved the "best minds of [their] generation," including college students and open-minded people of all ages.

leary sixties For a few of those who took LSD, it had such a powerful immediate impact that they believed that it might provide insights of a similar magnitude in anyone who took it. There is the story told in High Priest (also see Storming Heaven) by Timothy Leary of poet Alan Ginsberg's taking psilocybin (an extract of the "magic mushroom" synthesized by Albert Hofmann and used in early experiments with psychedelic compounds at Harvard). Ginsberg became convinced that if he could get John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev to take LSD, it would end the Cold War; after not being able to get the telephone operators to connect him to either man, he slowly returned to the realities of 1962.

Excepted from "LSD and Aldous Huxley's Island: Setting Sail for a Better Country" by Bruce Eienr

Excerpt from Why We Get High by Bruce Eisner

Almost all of you have gotten "high." You might call it "getting stoned" or "tripping" or "having a session" or "going on vision quest" or "partying" but the urge to switch channels and move to another and less usual state of consciousness is as old as our species itself. Actually the quest for intoxication is even older!

Ronald Siegel, in his book, Intoxication, documents numerous animal species and most of the various human cultures that strive to get high or as he calls it, to intoxicate themselves. Siegel proposes that after food, drink and sex, "Intoxication is the fourth drive." He demonstrates through zoological and sociological evidence, that the urge to get high is among the most basic of motivations.

Andrew Weil, M.D., and Wilfred Rosen, in their wonderful introductory book From Chocolate to Morphine, explaining psychoactive drugs for the young reaffirms this idea. They point out:

Human beings it seems, are born with the need for periodic variations in consciousness. The behavior of young children supports this idea. Infants rock themselves into blissful states, many children discover that whirling or spinning is a powerful technique to change awareness, some also experiment with hyperventilation (rapid deep breathing) followed by mutual chest squeezing or choking, and tickling to produce paralyzing laughter. Even though these practices may produce some uncomfortable results such as dizziness or nausea, the whole experience is so reinforcing that children do it again and again, often despite parental objections. Since children all over the world engage in these activities, the desire to change consciousness does not seem to be a product of a particular culture but rather to arise from something basic. As children grow older they find that certain available substan