The CIA & LSD: How MK-Ultra Created The Counterculture and Changed The World

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) didn’t become the psychedelic compound that changed the world just overnight–it took a few important events first. Many folks may not know that LSD usage became widespread because of the U.S. government, specifically the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This federal agency’s failed attempt to create a mind-control drug inadvertently sparked America’s counterculture and the modern hippie movement. How did this monumental shift in American culture and human consciousness happen so fast?

Post WW-II, The Cold War, and the Race for Military Superiority

The aftermath of World War II led to a division between the U.S. and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), the two main beneficiaries of the war. These two countries also waged a non-physical war of resources and arms accumulation known as “The Cold War,” ultimately driving military expansion until the USSR collapsed in 1991.

Espionage became the primary method of surveilling the other side’s military capabilities and devising covert ways to undermine them. Intelligence gathering by CIA agents and spies revealed sometime in the 1950s that the USSR was working on a mind-control drug that could create “super soldiers” and aid in enemy interrogation. 

Determined to keep up with the Russians in the race for military superiority, the CIA launched its own top-secret mind-control program in the early 1950s. A government chemist named Sidney Gottlieb was a key figure in this program, serving as its creator and operator until the late 1960s. 

MK-Ultra, Mind Control, and LSD

The U.S. government, specifically the CIA, codenamed its covert mind control program MK-Ultra. CIA scientists were aware of a drug created by a Swiss chemist named Albert Hofmann called LSD, which lent itself to new ways of human consciousness, as well as vividly intense hallucinations at higher doses. Gottlieb went all-in, persuading the CIA to purchase the world’s entire supply of LSD, totaling about $240,000, for use in MK-Ultra experiments.

Gottlieb and the CIA created fake institutions and research firms to administer LSD to hospitals, universities, and prisons under the guise of laboratory research. Both parties also desired to unleash LSD, along with other psychedelics, on unsuspecting parties to see how they could be used for nefarious purposes. 

Who Was Experimented On During MK-Ultra & How?

Doctors working for the CIA administered prisoners, one of the largest groups the experiments preyed on, with high doses of LSD, isolation, and electroshock against their will. MK-Ultra researchers and doctors also subjected mental patients in psychiatric hospitals and clinics to psychological extremes for the sake of military dominance. These same bad actors recruited university volunteers who willingly signed up to earn a few extra bucks. Some of those volunteers ultimately became the proverbial Johnny Appleseeds responsible for psychedelia and counterculture itself.      

LSD Leaves the Lab with Ken Kesey & Friends

Ken Kesey was a young writer working for Stanford University’s creative writing center who volunteered for a “study” at the Veterans Hospital in nearby Menlo Park, CA, around 1960. These studies were eventually revealed to be MK-Ultra experiments under the guise of clinical studies. Human test subjects like Kesey took very large doses of LSD, along with other psychedelics, including mescaline, psilocybin, and dimethyltryptamine (DMT), while researchers would observe and record them. The potent and mind-altering psychedelics given to test subjects in these “clinical studies” often permanently harmed their nervous systems and mental well-being. 

However, Ken Kesey enjoyed his LSD experiences so much that he began secretly stealing large amounts of the drug from the study to share with his friends. He managed this because he worked nights as a hospital aide in the mental health ward of the same Veterans Hospital where the MK-Ultra experiments took place. This stint as a mental health aide, along with his early LSD experiences, formed the basis of his famous book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

LSD soon made its way to Kesey’s fellow test subjects, friends, and neighbors–including Allen Ginsberg, Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia, and other key figures of the Beat movement and emerging counterculture. Owsley Stanley, Kesey’s friend and renowned LSD chemist, eventually created a stronger, purer version than the government’s. By the mid-1960s, his “White Lightning” LSD was widely available across California.

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Acid Culture Takes Shape

Mass gatherings organized by Kesey and his psychedelic troupe, known as the Merry Pranksters, began to take shape around the same time. For a small fee, attendees entered a ballroom or dance hall, drank from a barrel of Kool-Aid spiked with Owsley’s super pure LSD, and experienced synesthesia and sensory overload through strobe lights, performance art, and projector shows.

Organizers called these performances “Acid Tests,” which included lots of music from Jerry Garcia and his band, the Grateful Dead—a group that continues to carry on the psychedelic counterculture tradition to this day. Acid Tests were precursors to the psychedelic era that would ensue for the next couple of years and ultimately leave their legacy in the form of modern concert lighting, sound, and public address systems. 

Changes in Societal Culture & Norms

The psychedelic attitude of free love, flower power, and a general proclivity towards peace and non-violence also shaped society and culture. LSD can reportedly make the user feel “at one” with the rest of the universe, potentially spurring feelings of peace and tranquility for all mankind. The “hippies” bolstered the anti-war movement with their desire for a world not constantly in conflict in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.

The hippies and their ideals birthed anti-consumerist, organic, and mindful living, which stood in stark contrast to the conservative establishment firmly rooted in the U.S. This right-leaning establishment would become known as “the Man”, a capitalistic police state responsible for systemic harm and prejudice. Mainstream society had rarely questioned authority before, but now a growing number, especially young people, were holding those in power accountable for inequality and destruction.

Some social scholars argue that Women’s rights, black rights, and gay rights wouldn’t have been able to take hold if it weren’t for LSD. The substance had opened American society’s eyes to the cruelty and control of “the Man” and the conservative establishment. 

READ: Psychedelics and Evolution: What is the Stoned Ape Theory?

A Crashing of the Wave of the 1960s

LSD changed the general consciousness so rapidly that the government quickly created federal laws to ban it and classify it as a Schedule I drug. However, by then, psychedelics had already saturated popular culture through music, television, literature, and film with new perspectives and artistic directions. Producers and advertisers also diluted popular culture with watered-down “hippy dippy” psychedelia, which they eagerly exploited for profit.

The counterculture lost much of its momentum due to arrests, law enforcement scare tactics, and violent incidents involving figures like Charles Manson in 1969 and the Hells Angels at Altamont in 1970. However, to this day, those seeking to connect with the world and beyond in unconventional ways continue to use LSD.. Rock bands like the Grateful Dead toured the country for decades as meeting places for the counterculture to assemble and vibe, while chemists continued to create LSD and “turn on” the next generations. 

Worldwide fashion, art, culture, and even politics have shifted in so many ways since the days when LSD reigned supreme, with roots in the freedom of expression and unconventional thinking that LSD spurred. The next time you scroll your phone or laptop, remember that LSD played a role in creating the World Wide Web, thanks to Merry Prankster Stewart Brand and his Whole Earth Catalog, which inspired a worldwide digital community. Thank you, CIA!

The Unveiling Of and Grand Irony of MK-Ultra

A congressional investigation in 1975 sought to uncover dubious and illegal activities of federal agencies, including the CIA. Former MK-Ultra participants testified about what happened during the experiments, while investigators used any remaining documents that survived destruction to shed light on the CIA’s illegal activity. Public trust in the government became eroded significantly due to the abusive and malicious nature of many of the experiments that left many subjects never the same again. Federal laws and oversight were then put into place to protect Americans from such clandestine abuses by their government. The fact remains that no one knows the full extent of the damage MK-Ultra inflicted in vain, since Gottlieb had shut the program down due to his inability to achieve his goals of mind control. 

The uncovering of MK-Ultra was also news to people like Kesey, who was eventually told by Allen Ginsberg that it was the CIA giving them LSD and psychedelics all those many years before. This revelation helped cement the idea that MK-Ultra spurred one of the greatest modern shifts in human consciousness. “What we hoped was that we could stop the coming end of the world”, said Kesey in a 1988 interview with Stanford magazine. 

The grand irony of MK-Ultra made a tool for control and manipulation spark a global awakening–breaking the powers-that-be’s hold on human spirit, consciousness, and our connection to the universe.