LSD, the drug known for its key role in the hippie counterculture of the 1960s, is once again being investigated for medicinal benefits.
Before it was banned in 1966, LSD a.k.a acid, was available legally in the United States as an experimental psychiatric drug, and was used as a treatment for everything from alcoholism to autism.
Last September, the FDA approved a clinical trial to treat cancer patients, and several other clinical trials involving LSD are also under way.
According to Rick Doblin, director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (or MAPS), the biggest roadblock to LSD research in not getting legal permission, but getting funding.
“We’ve had people too scared to be on our mailing lists,” Doblin says, “fearing the DEA is going to bust them.” Despite this, he’s found wealthy civil libertarians and Silicon Valley types who have had positive experiences with the drug to support what he expects to be a “$20 million, 20-year plan” to make medical LSD mainstream.
Could acid be the next Xanax?
View photo gallery of famous LSD users, including Angelina Jolie, Bill Gates, Dan Rather and Jack Nicholson below.
Cary Grant was the epitome of Hollywood glamour in the 1930s and ‘40s, but off-screen, his personal life was less than perfect. For years, he struggled with psychological demons, until he found his salvation in the late 1950s with LSD. Under the supervision of a therapist—while grappling with several failed marriages and the fact that his mother had abandoned him as a child—Grant began using the drug. “I was literally reborn,” he told the Saturday Evening Post in 1978. “I learned that I could control my life, that I am not a hapless victim. I was making the mistake of thinking each of my wives was my mother.” Although Grant went on to divorce two more times after treatment, he continued to swear by the drug for therapeutic purposes.
It’s good thing Angelina Jolie gave up LSD before becoming a mom of six, or else child rearing could have been a lot more complicated. In 2007, Jolie confessed to doing acid before going to Disneyland: “I started thinking about Mickey Mouse being a short, middle-aged man in a costume who hates life,” she said of her trip. “Those drugs can be dangerous if you don’t go into it positively—I gave them up long ago.”
More photos at The Daily Beast