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When the Sackler brothers studied LSD

One of the stranger episodes from the 1950s golden age of psychedelic therapy, and what it tells us about the history of technology

In the case of Tripping on Utopia, the press coverage was pretty clearly focused on Margaret Mead and her hitherto unknown role in the early days of psychedelic science. An ambitious young physician, named Arthur Sackler, who in 1949 had been newly elevated to the role of director of Creedmore Sanitarium on Long Island, exemplified both the idealism and the blond spots of this new postwar generation of drug researchers. Although the Sacklers never became central figures in psychedelic science, their publication record in the late 1950s and early 1960s shows that they did in fact ultimately purchase experimental samples of LSD and published several studies on the results.

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