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Conspiracy file · Since 1943

Psychedelics

Drugs such as psilocybin, LSD, DMT and mescaline that change perception, mood and the sense of self, mostly by acting on the brain's serotonin 2A receptors. Banned in the U.S. since 1970, they are back in university labs, and the theories about them never left.

Also known as Hallucinogens · Entheogens · Magic mushrooms

On the recordTimelineFrom the comicsIn Paranoid American comicsSources & further reading

Psychedelics, a panel from a Paranoid American comic
From Secret Mystery School #1

The story

Psychedelics are a family of drugs, some from plants and fungi and some from the lab, that alter perception and thought. Psilocybin comes from magic mushrooms, mescaline from the peyote cactus, DMT from many plants and the ayahuasca brew. LSD was first made by Albert Hofmann at Sandoz in 1938; he found out what it does in April 1943. Most of them work by activating the serotonin 2A receptor.

In the 1950s and 60s they were medicine, weapon and sacrament at once. Psychiatrists tested LSD on alcoholism and depression, the CIA tested it on unwitting subjects under MK-ULTRA, and a 1957 Life magazine article by banker R. Gordon Wasson took magic mushrooms mainstream. The backlash came fast: the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 put LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and DMT in Schedule I.

Research crept back in 2000, when Johns Hopkins won approval to give psilocybin to healthy volunteers, and in 2019 the university opened the first U.S. center devoted to psychedelic research. Alongside the science runs an older, stranger story: that these drugs open a door the ancients knew about, the mystery schools kept it, and governments closed it.

Memorandum for the recordSubject: Psychedelics

On the record

  1. Albert Hofmann first made LSD at Sandoz in 1938. He discovered its effects by accident on April 16, 1943, and took a deliberate dose on April 19, now called Bicycle Day.
  2. Life magazine published R. Gordon Wasson's "Seeking the Magic Mushroom" on May 13, 1957, describing a mushroom ceremony led by the Mazatec healer María Sabina.
  3. Hofmann isolated and named psilocybin and psilocin, the active compounds of those mushrooms, in 1958.
  4. Psychiatrist Humphry Osmond coined the word "psychedelic", "mind-manifesting", in 1957.
  5. The CIA's MK-ULTRA program, approved in 1953, gave LSD to unwitting subjects; a Senate hearing aired the details in 1977.
  6. The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 placed LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and DMT in Schedule I.
  7. Johns Hopkins opened its Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research in September 2019 with $17 million from private donors.

The theory

  • The ancient mysteries, from Eleusis to the Vedic soma rite, were built around a psychedelic sacrament (R. Gordon Wasson; The Road to Eleusis, 1978).
  • Psilocybin mushrooms sparked human consciousness and language: the "stoned ape" theory (Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods, 1992).
  • DMT puts users in touch with real beings, the "machine elves" of McKenna's reports.
  • Some versions say the CIA seeded the 1960s counterculture with LSD on purpose.
  • Psychedelics were banned because they make people hard to govern, not because they are dangerous: a common claim in psychedelic circles.

Timeline

  1. 1938Albert Hofmann synthesizes LSD-25 at Sandoz in Basel
  2. 1943Hofmann discovers LSD's effects (April 16) and rides home on Bicycle Day (April 19)
  3. 1953The CIA's MK-ULTRA program begins; Aldous Huxley tries mescaline
  4. 1957Life publishes "Seeking the Magic Mushroom"; Humphry Osmond coins "psychedelic"
  5. 1958Hofmann isolates psilocybin
  6. 1970The Controlled Substances Act puts the major psychedelics in Schedule I
  7. 1992Terence McKenna's Food of the Gods proposes the stoned ape theory
  8. 2006Johns Hopkins publishes its study of psilocybin and mystical experience
  9. 2019Johns Hopkins opens the first U.S. center for psychedelic research

From the comics

Panels straight from the page. Click one to read it full size.

From Secret Mystery School #1 · Pages 1-2

My Outdoor Proprietary Blend

First stop of the field trip, and Phil has already taken his pills: mostly psilocybin, with a little DMT. He also gets the pharmacology roughly right, which is more than most people on a hike can say.

My Outdoor Proprietary Blend, 1 of 4
My Outdoor Proprietary Blend, 2 of 4
My Outdoor Proprietary Blend, 3 of 4 My Outdoor Proprietary Blend, 4 of 4
  1. Psilocybin is the active compound in magic mushrooms; the body turns it into psilocin. DMT occurs in many plants and is the active ingredient of ayahuasca. Swallowed on its own it barely works, because stomach enzymes break it down: ayahuasca adds a plant that blocks them.
  2. Close. Psychedelics act mainly on the serotonin 2A receptor. LSD also binds dopamine receptors; psilocybin mostly does not.
  3. Psychonaut, a "sailor of the mind", was popularized by the German writer Ernst Jünger in 1970, in a book about his own drug experiments, which included LSD with Albert Hofmann.

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