Housewife on LSD
Turn on, tune in, stare at lemon.
Alex Q. Arbuckle
April 16, 1963
On April 16, 1943, Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann was conducting experiments with ergot, a black fungus sometimes found growing on rye. From ergotamine he derived lysergic acid, and by a chance combination of molecules, synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide.After a couple hours, he felt strange and went home, where he “experienced fantastic images of an extraordinary plasticity...associated with an intense kaleidoscopic play of colors.” Figuring that he had accidentally ingested some of his experiment, he went back for more, swallowing a minuscule dose of the compound. This time he felt distortions of time and space, and felt his consciousness removed from his body.Thus, was LSD born.In the following decades, LSD was the subject of thousands of experiments and research papers. Scientists studied the drug’s effect on mood and behavior, evaluating it as a possible treatment for depression, anxiety and other disorders.The CIA, in an illegal program called Project MKUltra, studied the effect of the drug on employees, military personnel and unwitting civilians, seeking a chemical method of pacifying a hostile population.With the help of figures such as Dr. Timothy Leary, the drug became tremendously popular among the 1960s counterculture. Users experienced marked increases in visual perception, hallucinations and occasional spiritual revelations. LSD was outlawed in the United States in 1968.Here, a LIFE magazine photographer follows Cambridge, Massachusetts housewife Barbara Dunlap as she joins a group of volunteers trying LSD for the first time in a psychiatric experiment administered by Dr. Madison Presnell of Leary's International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF). Surrounded by interesting stimuli such as statues and lemons, she evidently has a very good trip.
There is a dawning suspicion...that the politics of the nervous system are such that man uses only a fragment (perhaps less than one percent) of his available brain capacity. - IFIF Statement of Purpose
Expanded awareness, by definition, extends beyond the limits of the verbal and conceptual. [It] cannot come through verbal education, but rather via physical or psychological means. - IFIF Statement of Purpose
Cultural structures...inevitably produce roles, rules, rituals, values, words and strategies which end in external control of internal freedom. - IFIF Statement of Purpose
