Silicon Valley's extreme new productivity hack: LSD

Who are the tech execs illegally 'microdosing' one of the most powerful psychoactive substances in the world? Hayden Vernon went on the hunt

 The Highs and Lows of LSD Literature

Psychedelics are back, now in the language of health and wellness. Michael Pollan, Ayelet Waldman, and T.C. Boyle weigh in.

 The Trip of a Lifetime

Michael Pollan explores what LSD and other psychedelics can do for the no longer young.

 Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age

Bestseller Ohler follows up Blitzed, his exploration of Nazi drug use, with a fleet-footed and propulsive account of how the U.S. government picked up where the Nazis left off when it came to drugs. Concisely recapping the mid-century birth of psychedelics, he shows that the Nazis’ approach to drugs—punitive regulation coupled with extensive utilization for military purposes—was adopted by the U.S. after WWII. (Juicing up the troops was the Nazi goal, achieved via amphetamines; interrogation and mind control became the American military aims for LSD.

The most convincing argument for legalizing LSD, shrooms, and other psychedelics

I have a profound fear of death. It's not bad enough to cause serious depression or anxiety. But it is bad enough to make me avoid thinking about the possibility of dying — to avoid a mini existential crisis in my mind. But it turns out there may be a better cure for this fear than simply not thinking about it. It's not yoga, a new therapy program, or a medicine currently on the (legal) market. It's psychedelic drugs — LSD, ibogaine, and psilocybin, which is found in magic mushrooms.

'Apparently Useless': The Accidental Discovery of LSD

After the drug was dismissed by the pharmaceutical company that developed it, a researcher started experimenting on himself with it. Powerful hallucinations ensued.

Are Acid Flashbacks A Myth?

Flashbacks do occur, but very rarely.

LSD Archive Has Been on a Long, Strange Trip

Inventor’s papers, shunned by Sandoz, now under the care of Swiss dairy farmer.

LSD doesn't just treat mental illness, 'it could actually heal the brain'

Mental health for years has been inadequately addressed, partly because the tools we had on offer were hard to scale, and partly because some of the most powerful tools in brain health were stigmatised and turned into scheduled drugs, effectively halting any progress that could be made to prove their efficacy...

LSD literally gets stuck inside your brain

New research helps explain why the effects of acid last so long.

LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug?

When Kevin Herbert has a particularly intractable programming problem, or finds himself pondering a big career decision, he deploys a powerful mind expanding tool – LSD-25.

Nine Drawings

These 9 drawings were done by an artist under the influence of LSD -- part of a test conducted by the US government during it's dalliance with psychotomimetic drugs in the late 1950's.

The Time and Life Acid Trip

How Henry R. Luce and Clare Boothe Luce helped turn America on to LSD.

This Is What Happens When You Take 550 Doses of LSD At Once

Accidental LSD overdoses are not fun. But for some, they can have a bizarrely beneficial effect.

This is your brain on LSD

The new brain imaging study, for instance, found a connection between some of the changes in brain activity and what's known as "ego death": a phenomenon in which people lose their sense of self-identity and, as a result, are able to detach themselves from worldly concerns like a fear of death, addiction, and anxiety over temporary — perhaps exaggerated — life events. The research increasingly suggests this could help people not just with medical issues but with more typical everyday problems as well.

Tripping on LSD and mushrooms could help you quit smoking and cure depression

As the world increasingly embraces medical marijuana, some researchers are beginning to look at how other, more taboo drugs might be used to treat health issues. Hallucinogens aren't often at the center of conversations about US drug policy. But these drugs — LSD, mushrooms, and ecstasy, to name a few — are categorized by the federal government as schedule 1 substances, with high risk of abuse and no medical value.

Why Doctors Can't Give You LSD (But Maybe They Should)

For the first time since the 1970s, researchers are being allowed to study the potential medical properties of the most tightly controlled substances around. But it's not easy.

LSD Therapy Lowers Anxiety, Study Finds

We’re a long way from acid-assisted therapy going mainstream; LSD research like the kind in London is only legal in a handful of places around the world, and the science is still in very early stages. “Now is the first time we have both fMRI machines and clearance to do experiments with LSD,” Tagliazucchi says.

The real promise of LSD, MDMA and mushrooms for medical science

Psychedelic science is making a comeback. Scientific publications, therapeutic breakthroughs and cultural endorsements suggest that the historical reputation of psychedelics — such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), mescaline (from the peyote cactus) and psilocybin (mushrooms) — as dangerous or inherently risky have unfairly overshadowed a more optimistic interpretation.