LSD-25 (lysergic acid diethylamide) was first synthesized in 1938 by Albert Hofmann in the Sandoz chemical-pharmaceutical laboratories in Basle, Switzerland. As its name indicates, it was the twenty-fifth compound developed in a systematic study of amides of Iysergic acid.

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.

Cold War era intelligence services were keenly interested in the possibilities of using LSD for interrogation and mind control, and also for large-scale social engineering. The CIA conducted extensive research on LSD, which was mostly destroyed. Project MKULTRA (also known as MK-ULTRA) was the code name for a CIA mind-control research program begun in the 1950s and continued until the late 1960s.

The British government also indulged in LSD testing; in 1953 and 1954, scientists working for MI6 dosed servicemen in an effort to find a “truth drug”. The test subjects were not informed that they were being given LSD, and had in fact been told that they were participating in a medical project to find a cure for the common cold. One subject, aged 19 at the time, reported seeing “walls melting, cracks appearing in people’s faces ? eyes would run down cheeks, Salvador Dali-type faces ? a flower would turn into a slug”. After keeping the trials secret for many years, MI6 agreed in 2006 to pay the former test subjects financial compensation. Like the CIA, MI6 decided that LSD was not a practical drug for brainwashing purposes.

LSD first became popular recreationally among a small group of mental health professionals such as psychiatrists and psychologists during the 1950s, as well as by socially prominent and politically powerful individuals such as Henry and Clare Boothe Luce to whom the early LSD researchers were connected socially.

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 1960?s and early 1970?s, 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-1970?s. Scientific study of LSD ceased around 1980 as research funding declined.