2024-12-16 20:02:00
On October 6, 1966, Him LSD was declared illegal in USA by order of President Nixon. Subsequently, as a further demonstration of the power that Americans have always had in the United Nations, it was included in the list of that institution’s Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which, Indeedled to its ban globally.
From that moment on the substance became part, together with heroin, of category 1 of that document, which implied that It had no medical use whatsoever.that there was nothing good in it and therefore had to be subjected to the strictest level of regulation.
From being the fashionable drug among the New York intelligentsia, as we can see for example in the series Mad Menit became something described as so dangerous that all ongoing academic research, and hundreds of those carried out at multiple universities, laboratories and study centers, had to be immediately stopped.
The Beginnings of the “War on Drugs”
The history of the war on drugs, in which the United States and its political and economic interests have always had a capital importance, is plagued by these types of prohibitions.
Indeed, after decades of fears and restrictions, today ideas about substances such as LSD or MDMA are changing little by little. News on the good results obtained treat some diseasessuch as depression or post-traumatic stress, or as concentration and creativity enhancers administered in the form of microdoses popularized by Silicon Valley gurus.
Nazis, CIA and psychedelic drugs
The only way to fully understand the tortuous path of these substances is to investigate them starting from their origins and this is precisely the objective of A hallucinogenic journey (Critica, 2024), the book just released in Spain by the German journalist and writer Norman Ohler, known in our country for another investigation, published in 2021, on the relationship of the Nazis, and Hitler in particular, with drugs: The great delirium: Hitler, drugs and the Third Reich published by the same publisher.
Richard Nixon with Elvis Presley at the White House in December 1970. /Wikimedia
In his new work Ohler delves into the history of this complex substance derived from the ergot mushroom, LSD, and its complex relationship with scientific research, governments and culture. From its first synthesis which took place on November 16, 1938 in the Sandoz laboratories in Basel by Albert Hofmann, through the Nazis and the CIA, who wanted to use it as a truth serum, up to the United States Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the bosses of 60s counterculture, Elvis Presley or the scientist Leonardo Pickardwho spent 20 years in prison for creating what was probably the largest LSD production laboratory of all time.
The best cocaine in history: Berlin 1946
Drug trafficking is often thought to be something modern, but nothing could be further from the truth. According to Ohler in his book, when the victorious powers of World War II took control of Berlin, one of their main problems was not the revival of fascism, but drug use had skyrocketed after the armed conflict.
As we read in the documents of the time cited by Ohler, “gigantic quantities of narcotics” were circulating in the streets of the German capital, mostly stolen from the reserves of the defunct Wehrmacht, which supplied them to its soldiers, or “withdrawals from the ruins of buildings bombed” and put into circulation by crafty citizens.
Among the most notable were Temmler Laboratories’ Pervitin, which contained methamphetamine; the heroin that the Bayer laboratories were producing at the time; the cocaine produced by Merck in Darmstadt, considered the best in the world; or Eukodal, a euphoric opioid that had been Hitler’s drug of choice, also from Merck.
The first thing he thought of was a brutal repression similar to the one the Nazis had implemented just a few years earlier, consisting of sending drug addicts to concentration camps.
This panorama, which had nothing to envy of the late Love Parade that would be held in the German capital many years later, was very difficult for the allies to control, which is why they set to work to achieve it at all costs. The first thing he thought of was a brutal repression similar to that carried out by the Nazis only a few years earlier, consisting of send drug addicts to concentration camps. The Russians objected to these rapid and literally Nazi measures and refused to allow them to settle in liberated Berlin.
But the Americans did not give up and thought that to achieve their goals the best thing was to use the newly created United Nations to promote a worldwide ban. The Americans presented a report on the negative effects of drugs and accused the Soviet Union, with which things were getting worse and worse, of wanting to flood the West with narcotics in order to destabilize democratic societies. Paradoxically, it was they who wanted to use them in this way.
LSD as a weapon
Without doubt one of the most active battlefronts of the Second World War were the laboratories. Nazi and Western scientists competed during the war to find new ways to defeat their adversaries. Perhaps the most important example was the case of race to create the atomic bombthat the United States ultimately won thanks to the work of a team of scientists led by Robert Oppenheimer, but it was by no means the only example.
In the field of chemistry, the Nazis spent years experimenting on humans in their concentration camps. One of his obsessions, for example, was finding “chemical methods to nullify the will.” Since the beginning of the 1940s they carried out experiments with barbiturates, sulfonamides and morphine derivatives, but they failed to find the long-awaited truth drug. According to Ohler’s research, it is very likely that one of the substances tested was LSD.
Alsos’ secret mission
After the American invasion of Italy in September 1943, a secret mission was created to monitor Nazi successes in nuclear weapons research, as well as in development of biological and chemical weapons. This was christened Alsos, which is Greek for grove.
A team of secret service agents systematically appeared where the Germans had just retreated and dedicated themselves to locating the scientists who remained in the liberated areas to question them about their work. Plants dedicated to the production of fissile uranium or heavy water were also identified, as well as confiscated materials and documents. Thus, after a series of circumstances that Ohler describes in his book, this was how Americans discovered the Nazis’ use of chemicals, including LSD, and their potential as a weapon against their enemies.
Americans quickly realized that LSD could help them in two key ways: as a beneficial means in an interrogation situation and as a tool to confuse an enemy soldier enough to knock him out without having to kill him.
Cold War politicians didn’t think about the mental health or creativity of their citizens and banned very beneficial substances
Almost parallel to this process, LSD was marketed by Sandoz in the early 1950s for use in psychiatric research. A fact that greatly worried the American government for fear that it would end up in the hands of the Russians. Soon, the White House decided first to control its production and, years later, to ban it. Something they achieved in the mid-1960s “Cold War politicians They didn’t think about the mental health or creativity of their citizens, and they banned very beneficial substances. The biggest mistake was making LSD illegal in 1966,” comments the author.
But by then LSD had already become part of the history of humanity, arriving in the hands of people like Tim Leary or Ken Kesey, who made it popular among young people and who, according to Ohler, profoundly influenced our culture. “Music, writing and the visual arts have benefited greatly from artists taking LSD. Without psychedelics, our cultural and artistic scene would be much more boring,” said the author.
A personal experience
In addition to having spent a lot of time researching the influence of drugs on our history and culture, Ohler’s reasons for delving into the history of psychedelic drugs and, in particular, LSD, have a personal aspect.
It was precisely these investigations that led Ohler to a study which stated that taking LSD could have beneficial effects on people who suffer Alzheimer’s. As luck would have it, his mother found herself in that situation and the journalist one day commented on what he had read to his father.
He showed interest, but also asked a fundamental question: “if it’s so good, why can’t I buy it at the pharmacy?” To answer this very complicated question, Ohler wrote this book. Also, thanks to LSD, her mother, who has been microdosing for a while, is more active, talking and laughing like she hasn’t done in a long time. “LSD It is now legal in Australia for therapy it will soon be like this all over the world,” says the author.
“A hallucinogenic journey”
Norman Ohler
Revision
272 pages | 22.90 euros
#Illegalizing #mistake