LSD’s Origins in Nazi Germany Brain-Washing Experiments, the CIA’s MKUltra Program, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age

History Unplugged Podcast

LSD has been banned in the United States for decades and became a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance in 1970, but it has experienced a resurgence among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to overcome mental roadblocks and psychiatrists running tests to use it as a treatment for addiction, PTSD, and other mental illnesses. But what few know is that LSD has its origins in Nazi Germany.
The drug was developed in Switzerland in 1943 and quickly acquired and militarized by the Third Reich. The Nazis coopted LSD for their mind control military research—research that the US was desperate to acquire. This research birthed MKUltra, the CIA's notorious brainwashing and psychological torture program during the 1950s and 1960s.
Today’s guest is Norman Ohler, author of “Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age.” We discuss:
· How the history of LSD is interwoven with that of the Cold War and its arms race, and how the US government’s introduction to LSD through Nazi research influenced much of the federal government’s early attitudes around it
· How, in addition to LSD’s militarized misconception from the Nazis, there were other areasof US drug policy influenced by the Third Reich for over half a century
· How psychedelic research was marginalized and stigmatized for so long by prohibition and the War on Drugs, and how high the hurdles remain today for approval of psychedelic medicine, despite the opportunities—rather than dangers—they represent