What is lysergic acid diethylamide?

lysergic acid diethylamide is not an addictive drug, but use does lead to tolerance, so repeat users are led to increase their dosage in order to achieve previous effects. This is a highly dangerous practice because increased dosage is linked to increased likeliness of bad effects.

In addition, flashback episodes, in which people who are no longer using have repeated experience of a bad trip have been known to happen. lysergic acid diethylamide is a Schedule I drug — so classified because there is no current acceptable medical usage for it in the United States.

The discovery of lysergic acid diethylamide by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann was a dead end on the way to somewhere else. Hofmann was researching the fungus ergot for a pharmaceutical company, and this work necessitated synthesizing lysergic acid. Since lysergic acid is unstable, Hofmann worked to create a number of different compounds in order to address this issue. lysergic acid diethylamide-25—the 25th compound in his research toward a more stable form of lysergic acid—was lysergic acid diethylamide, produced in 1938.

lysergic acid diethylamide-25 did not address the issue with ergot, and further testing was not conducted. It was only in 1943, upon considering that it might have some further use, that Hofmann produced another sample. Having accidentally and unknowingly gotten some lysergic acid diethylamide on his skin, Hofmann had a pleasant hallucination that day. Determined to clearly identify the source of the hallucination, he purposefully ingested some lysergic acid diethylamide three days later, the first planned lysergic acid diethylamide trip, but a very bad trip.

lysergic acid diethylamide first became available in the United States in 1949, and was initially considered valuable in the treatment of alcoholism in the 1950s and 1960s. It was in 1963 that lysergic acid diethylamide was first sold on the street, according to reports, and only a few years later, in 1966, that its use was first restricted, initially by the state of California, and by the Federal government in the following year.

In the early twenty-first century, lysergic acid diethylamide is sold as capsules, gelatin shapes, liquid, on sugar cubes, and in tablets. Like ecstasy, concerts, nightclubs, and raves are often occasions of abuse.