Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (1960s)

I took a trip to Purple Orange room to find what life could mean. And I found Purple Orange room to do it for me. It's so phony, it's really phony. You can't put a trip down on film.

I mean, colors do look pretty, but there's so much more. B. Lysergic acid diaphylamide L.S.D. It is colorless, tasteless, odorless. One of the whole family of hallucinogens both natural and synthetic that includes STP, Piote, Mescaline, Silocybin.

L.S.D. is the most powerful of all. Known as acid, a single ounce is capable of producing 300,000 so-called trips, characterized by hallucinations, illusions, distortions of perception, and thinking. That's LSD. That's acid. As in... Words have been written and spoken about it.

Laws have been passed against it. Cults have sprung up around it. Individuals using it have experienced hope, suffering, tragedy. But for all the controversy, what is known today about LSD is fragmented, not all together.

In the next few minutes, we will be exploring these fragments, a complex mixture of superstition, medical research, personal experiences, a history that began yesterday. In 1951, a small provincial village in southern France named St. Esprit was stricken by a strange malady.

Overnight residents of all ages, hundreds of them, awakened to sharp pains, high fevers, massive somnion, and incredible herbilations. One man spent the hours of day and night endlessly counting the pains in his window. Another compulsively wrote the same words, over and over.

small girl saw tigers in her room and blood dripping from the ceiling. All complained of severe burning sensations. More than 300 cases had been counted, before the plague was identified as St. Anthony's fire, a poisoning produced by Ergot, a fungus that grew on rye which later was milled and baked into bread.