LSD DESTROYING CREATIVITY

After LSD�s discovery in 1943 , psychiatrist Werner Stoll was one of the first to investigate and map how the drug could be used for psychological control. Enthusiastically received by other psychiatrists in the �50s, LSD became the perfect vehicle for psychiatry to promote the concept of improving life through �recreational,� psychotropic drugs. [In fact, all psychiatric drugs have, at some time, ended up as street drugs.]

Psychiatrist Oscar Janiger lured hundreds of writers, musicians, actors and filmmakers into taking LSD, with promises of �vivid aesthetic perceptions� that would lead them to a �greater appreciation of the arts� and enhanced creativity. And these individuals were capable of greatly influencing the values and trends in society. As a result of such introductions, LSD became a favorite within the arts, and from there, the general community. By the turbulent 1960s, LSD had become the symbol for New Age thinking and living.

The media, notably LIFE magazine, whose publisher Henry Luce took LSD, ran articles promoting it. Yet medical studies rapidly showed the drug could induce a �psychotic psychedelic experience characterized by intense fear to the point of panic, paranoid delusions of suspicion or grandeur, toxic confusion, depersonalization� and all of these could �be of powerful magnitude.�

LSD induced the very �madness� psychiatrists claimed to be able to cure. Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, Jimmy Hendrix and many others found their lives and careers devastated under the weight of these delusions and the accompanying depersonalization.

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