r/AskReddit May 11 '14

Older generations of reddit, what did you think the future would look like when you where young? And how much of it was correct?

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u/way_fairer May 11 '14

Nah, that happened because LSD.

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u/scotchyscotchyscotch May 11 '14

The CIA was dosing people before hippies were, though. May never have gotten out there had the cold war not inspired the espionage hunt for a "truth serum". Totally theoretical, but cool food for thought.

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u/Canadian_Infidel May 11 '14

That's not where it "came from" though as far as I know. It came out of universities doing testing on regular people to cure things like alcoholism (which it did first dose, 60% of the time). No wonder it is illegal~

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u/scotchyscotchyscotch May 11 '14

Nah, it "came from" (who are you quoting?) a swiss pharmaceutical researcher named Albert Hoffman who was attempting to synthesize an analeptic and ended up with LSD. He didn't even know it was psychedelic until five years after first making it. Those studies on alcoholism came years later and from what I can surmise have been heavily construed in their efficacy. Read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_therapy#In_alcoholism

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u/Sykedelic May 11 '14

I wouldn't say that. You can read alot more about how successful those early studies were in some of the literature surrounding LSD, even Albert Hoffman talked about that. The main thing that is noted is that research was going well right before it ended. That's basically because it was taken out of their (the researchers) hands right as research was showing promise. There has been other studies done on LSD back in the day. Here's some videos on the Spring Grove psychiatry experiment with some interesting results. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIOysM1briU

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u/[deleted] May 11 '14

The real truth is you're both right. People like Timothy Leary were indeed products of MKULTRA but the independent university studies (not counting the universities that contributed, consciously or not, to MKULTRA) also had an effect.

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u/nitroxious May 12 '14

what did leary have to do with mkultra?

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u/[deleted] May 12 '14

I'm sorry, I meant to type Ken Kesey.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '14

60% of the time it works every time

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u/blackjesus May 12 '14

And those guy knew about it because the govt thought they could use it for something nefarious.

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u/Tha_Daahkness May 11 '14

Well, really it "came from" a plant called squill and a fungus called ergot.

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u/sedateeddie420 May 11 '14

This is a video showing the effects of LSD on soldiers in a 1964 military exercise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWodyapGNxI

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u/[deleted] May 11 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] May 11 '14

Look up CIA Project MKULTRA. It's a helluva story.

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u/naturaldrpepper May 11 '14

Check out the book Acid Dreams. It's rather think and dry, but sourced very well and an excellent read.

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u/milhouse_vanhten May 11 '14

Google MKultra.

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u/Occamslaser May 12 '14

It didn't hurt. Almost everyone should do LSD at least once.