The CIA's TOP SECRET Mind Control Drug

At the end of the Korean War, the New York Times published a gripping story detailing how returning American soldiers may have been converted by communist brainwashers. The story became widely popular; some troops were allegedly confessing to war crimes, while others adopted the communist ideology and even refused to return home. The sphere of brainwashing or brain warfare both terrified and fascinated the American public at a time when political tensions were rising in the early years of the Cold War.

The CIA was convinced that the Soviet Union had developed a drug or technique to control minds. As a response, they launched a top-secret program called MK-Ultra. MK-Ultra's main purpose was to conduct covert experiments centered around behavior modification. Human test subjects were exposed to electroshock therapy, hypnosis, polygraphs, radiation, and a mixture of drugs, potions, and chemicals to see whether any of these would be successful in controlling the human mind.

While the CIA believed that all these experiments could be potentially useful, there was one drug that stood out and became MK-Ultra's obsession. In the 1950s and 60s, the alleged race for manipulating the human mind had just begun, and the drug at the heart of it was discovered by accident in 1938. Albert Hoffman, a researcher working for a Swiss chemical company called Sandoz, accidentally formulated a psychoactive hallucinogenic that would alter the course of history.

Hoffman initially wanted to synthesize a chemical compound that would stimulate the respiratory and circulatory system by combining lysergic acid with other molecules. On his 25th attempt, he inadvertently created lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD-25. While this new discovery was useless to his research at the time, Hoffman noticed that there was something interesting about this new compound. The animals that were exposed to it showed strange levels of excitement and behaved peculiarly. Not thinking too much of it, though, Hoffman shelved his new discovery for five years until the results of his testing piqued his interest again, and he decided to synthesize it in his lab once more.

While in the final stages of synthesizing LSD during the height of the Second World War in 1943, Hoffman accidentally absorbed some of the substance. He soon experienced restlessness, dizziness, and a state of extremely stimulated imagination that prompted him to abandon his work for the day and go home. The next morning, he returned to his lab with a burning desire to discover what had affected him the previous day. After ruling out all the possible contaminants, he came to the conclusion that he must have somehow ingested LSD and that what he experienced was similar to the animals he observed in his lab five years prior.

To verify this hypothesis, Hoffman decided that there was only one thing to do: self-experiment. So, on April 19, 1943, Albert Hoffman embarked on the world's first acid trip. Forty minutes after taking the drug, Hoffman began feeling dizziness, anxiety, visual distortions, and a sudden urge to laugh while riding his bicycle home. He also reported that everything in his field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen through a curved mirror. When he finally reached the safety of his home, he collapsed on his sofa. LSD's psychedelic effects locked him in a frenzy of hallucinations that manifested in a continued animated motion driven by inner restlessness.

Hoffman was so frightened that he thought he was going to die, but soon the effects subdued and the horrors softened, giving way to a feeling of good fortune and gratitude, magnified by an unprecedented display of colors and shapes behind his closed eyes. Everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. The world was as if it was newly created. He wrote the following morning, "All my senses vibrated in a condition of highest sensitivity, which persisted for the entire day."

Today, April 19th, is celebrated by recreational LSD users as Bicycle Day because of Hoffman's colorful ride home. "Acid" and "psychedelic" are two terms that are forever linked thanks to Hoffman. "Psychedelic" is a combination of the Greek words "psyche," which means mind, and "delos," which is to reveal. Clinically, a psychedelic experience refers to a class of compounds that induce a mind-manifesting state in its users, sending them on a journey that often provides unique insights and emotions that they were otherwise oblivious to.

This feeling can last for up to 12 hours and can be very dramatic. Most individuals report a distorted sense of time, an altered sense of self, and dramatic changes in feelings and sensations. Some experience synesthesia, where their senses intertwine, adding another dimension to their perceptions of the world, such as tasting music, seeing sounds, and hearing colors. An acid trip is a journey into one's own mind and can provide its users with deep and profound realizations. However, it can also be very unsettling, with the ability to push the mind into dark and unexplored places that could have some horrific effects.

Scientists believe that LSD influences the receptors in the brain responsible for regulating serotonin, which is a chemical that carries messages between nerve cells and plays a key role in regulating mood, happiness, and sexual desire, among other things. While there was and still is no research that connects LSD with mind control, in the late 1940s, the CIA received reports that the Soviets were engaged in intensive efforts to produce LSD, believing it to be the key to controlling an individual's mind. So, when the U.S. government found out that Hoffman had created this mind-altering drug, they approached his employer Sandoz and paid $240,000 to purchase the world's entire supply.

What followed was reported by investigative journalist Stephen Kinzer as the most sustained search in history for techniques of mind control. The CIA and MK-Ultra began distributing LSD to hospitals, clinics, prisons, and other institutions, asking them to carry out research projects on patients and prisoners so that they could understand what LSD was, how people reacted to it, and how it could potentially be used as a tool for mind control.

Whitey Bulger, a prisoner who volunteered for the program in exchange for a shorter sentence, was told that the drug was being tested as a cure for schizophrenia. As part of the experiment, he was administered LSD every day for over a year. He later realized he was a guinea pig—an experiment aimed at testing the long-term effects of LSD and understanding whether it could make a person lose their mind. Bulger wrote about his experience that he was closely monitored by physicians who repeatedly asked him leading questions such as, "Would you ever kill anyone?" That eventually drove him to the brink of insanity.

The experiments were the most extreme trials conducted on any human being by any U.S. agency, and Bulger claimed he was never the same after, as he was continually haunted by auditory and visual hallucinations, violent nightmares, and anxieties so severe that he couldn't even sleep. The CIA and MK-Ultra believed that LSD had the potential to blast a person's mind, which would open up the opportunity to reprogram it, either to help extract people from the alleged Soviet mind attacks or, more likely, to make their enemy an enemy of himself.

During the Cold War, the race for mind control was believed to be the most crucial of victories. So, the CIA and MK-Ultra basically had a license to kill from the U.S. government. They had the authority to requisition humans from all over the country and around the world and subject them to all kinds of abuse, even if it were fatal. Enemy agents captured in Europe and East Asia were subjected to all sorts of tests, from electroshock and sensory isolation to temperature extremes. These weren't designed to understand the human mind but rather to destroy it in order to rebuild it again from the ground up.

Perhaps the most notorious experiment of that era was Operation Midnight Climax. Government-employed prostitutes lured unsuspecting men to CIA safe houses where LSD experiments took place. The prostitutes dosed the men with LSD while CIA officials watched their minds unravel through a two-way mirror. As all this was underway, the agents themselves were also getting high and indulging in some unscrupulous behavior. The agent heading the program, George White, later wrote, "Of course, I was a very minor missionary—actually a heretic—but I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie,