This tape was transferred from a 16mm film original by Colorlab for the
National Library of Medicine, September 2011, NLM call number HF 5962]
[LSD: Insight or Insanity?]
[Narrator:] Teenagers. All teenagers are different.
They come in all different shapes and sizes.
And range in age from teenyboppers to 19 year olds.
But just like in the old days,
teenagers have always shared one thing in common.
They've always found a unique way to express themselves as individuals.
[Shows teen swallowing a goldfish]
[Teens piling into a phone booth]
And this, of course, would be called group self-expression.
Today, just like always, clothes have been the groovy way
of really expressing yourself.
And teenagers can always be counted on to do something very original, and very self-expressive.
There are some girls who express themselves in the more simple look.
Others do so in highly feminized slacks.
And for hemlines, well, this may be the long and short of it.
But how much shorter can a skirt get?
[Stop sign]
[Drum music playing]
[Narrator:] Hair has always been very important.
Yes, even with boys.
It's been very short, and even longer than the Beatles.
But girls have always had a lot more ways
to express themselves through their hair.
They can change its color completely.
And they can even simplify the entire thing and just go out to a store
and buy some hair in any color they like.
They can curl it.
They can wave it.
And they can even iron it so it comes out nice and straight.
Split ends and all.
Certain hairstyles may make it necessary to take a good look to see
which is the girl and which is the boy.
That's not true for all boys.
Especially for those who are trying so desperately to prove their manhood.
[Groups of boys come together in slow-motion with fists and clubs, fighting one another.]
However, the more personal, the more individual, way
to prove your manhood was to play chicken.
[Two young men in cars driving straight at each other]
And at one time, a chicken run was considered the best way to prove manhood,
dead or alive.
[Young man in car closes his eyes and drives straight toward
another young man, while a group of girls screams from the sidewalk.]
For girls, the matter of being chicken and proving yourself as a
woman is still frequently based on accepting this kind of dare
from a so-called friend.
[Convertible full of boys]
[Two girls face off, one shaking her head no]
Even adults admit it, growing up isn't easy.
Especially if you're trying to keep up with the dares
and fads of some of your more advanced friends.
Two of the more advanced fads have to do with drugs.
[Older boy in car with a girl, holding a pill:] So why do you want to be down when you can be up?
Come on, just try it once, okay?
[Narrator:] Now there is a brilliant argument for you.
Why, with the help of a good, kind friend you can be turned on,
make the scene, blow grass, smoke reefers, or pot, joints, or mary janes.
Those are just a few of the cool, groovy names for marijuana.
And if grass doesn't make if for you baby,
and especially if you need to be in,
well, you can always drop a cap of acid.
And that's the real stuff.
Very, very cool, very, very groovy.
Now, everybody who takes it admits that there is always the risk
of a bad trip, a bummer, a freak-out, even a flip-out.
But why be lame, baby?
Give yourself a real kick.
Yes, a kick in the head.
[A young woman holds her head, screaming.]
[Narrator:] Is LSD merely another fad?
Another dare?
Another kick?
Is it insight or insanity?
What do America's leading scientists, doctors, and
psychiatrists working with people taking LSD say?
[Dr. Thomas Ungerleider:] As we see it from a typical psychiatric ward,
LSD is certainly much more than a mere fad.
Right now we have over a dozen people hospitalized
because of acute symptoms resulting directly from their taking LSD.
Bizarre fatal accidents and suicides have also occurred in LSD's users.
Because of this we say that LSD is not just a fad.
People are seriously disturbed,
some even dead.
What is LSD?
How does it work?
When did it all begin?
[Dr. W. Ross Adey:] It all begin in a laboratory very much like this one.
In 1938, Dr. Albert Hoffman in Switzerland was looking for new drugs
in the treatment of migraine headaches.
He had been studying substances that came from the mold that grows on rye plants.
Now it turned out that these substances were of no use
in the treatment of migraine headaches.
But subsequent investigation showed that they are very fascinating indeed
in the changes that they produce in our mental state.
It was found that these substances could produce a change in mental states
closely resembling some forms of insanity,
in particular, schizophrenia.
However, more interest has centered on the very peculiar symptoms
that the drug produces in the subject who is otherwise normal.
Normal people react to LSD
by seeing strange patterns of wildly moving colors.
[Random colors and patterns morph into one another.]
Time may appear to stand completely still.
Faces may appear and then melt away.
And at other times, the subject may recall with terrifying detail
incidents that are long, long forgotten.
[Little girl is at the top of the steps on her tricyle, then hurtles down.]
At the same time, there is often a loss of the normal cause-and-effect
relationships of things going on in the environment.
And this leads to distortion of judgment.
[Girl touches finger to gas flame on stove, which appears as a flower to her.]
One ounce of of LSD makes 300,000 doses.
An amount of LSD the size of an aspirin tablet can make 3,000 doses.
The normal dose is 100 micrograms.
An experienced chemist has no difficulty in making it at home.
However, we have found that this amateur stuff contains many other substances,
dangerous and often deadly.
The strength of this amateur stuff is always uncertain.
It may contain none, or 10, or 100, or 300 or maybe 3,000 micrograms.
We have produced convulsions and death in animals
with large doses of LSD.
[Dr. Ungerleider:] Nevertheless, in spite of the risk, the word was out.
LSD was it.
One pill and all unhappiness would vanish.
The real meaning of existence would become quickly clear.
Such nonsense!
Parents, deprived of LSD, did not understand.
Soon there was a great public outcry.
Lysergic acid diethylamide was tossed out into the street
amidst emerging controversy.
Because of this, the only legitimate company manufacturing pure LSD stopped.
Many scientists felt that good scientific work
was impossible in such a frantic mess.
This is unfortunate, because there are many basic questions about LSD
which remain unanswered.
What are the long-term effects in the brain of LSD?
Does it cause permanent damage?
Some doctors are afraid that it does cause permanent damage,
but at this time the facts remain unknown.
Many wild and very unscientific claims have been made about LSD.
[Sidney Cohen, M.D.:] I've spoken to a large number of young people,
asking them, "Why do take LSD?"
They have given me a variety of answers.
The most frequent are the following:
[Girl:] I took it the first time because I was curious.
[Boy with shades:] Under LSD, God is not a faraway idea.
He's something that's right inside you that you're experiencing now.
[Girl with books:] I took LSD for a kick.
[Boy:] Man, LSD is like a vitamin for the brain.
I mean, to expand your mind.
[Man with mustache:] LSD stimulates creativity in the brain.
In other words, it expands your thought processes so that you can take in more.
[Dr. Cohen:] We gave a series of 50 tests to people before and after LSD.
We found that at the end of six months following their LSD-taking,
that they were no more creative when we measured them
than they were before they took the LSD.
However, their feeling, their inner feeling of subjective creativity was there.
This means, perhaps, that they may have an impression of creativity,
but not creativity itself.
Creativity is 90 percent perspiration and only 10 percent inspiration.
And LSD doesn't enhance one's desire to perspire.
[Boy with shades:] LSD is a really groovy way to find out more about the things around you.
[Girl with books:] LSD helps me understand the whole world better.
[Man with mustache:] LSD helps you to understand your own mind.
It releases your mind to you.
[Boy:] LSD is a way about finding out about yourself.
About your own problems.
[Dr. Cohen:] What about the question of self-insight and self-awareness?
Is it enhanced under LSD?
Well, in over a dozen years of my own research,
speaking with hundreds of young people, and old,
I've found that their feeling that they had an increased awareness following LSD
is not often borne out by their subsequent behaviour.
They do not seem to have changed their lifestyle for the better.
Indeed, unfortunately, sometimes it is for the worse.
On rare occasions, they may obtain valid insights.
So often though, all too often, they do not.
[Dr. Ungerleider:] While there are many things that we don't know about LSD,
there are a few that we do know.
And perhaps the most important one we do know,
is that it is absolutely unpredictable who will have a bad experience from LSD
or when they will have it.
Some people have a bad experience the first time they take the drug.
Others take it 30, 60, or even 100 times before their bad trip.
And the bad trip: instant insanity, often a never-never land of no return.
[Ambulance attendants bring a babbling young woman to the hospital on a stretcher.]
[Young woman:] No get away, get away from me, call my mother, I gotta get out of here, I didn't take much, somebody help me!
[She continues, incoherently]
[Duke Fisher, M.D.:] This girl is obviously acutely disturbed.
She will be in the hospital for a few weeks or a few months.
The chances are that she will get well again.
At least well enough to leave the ward.
Whether she will ever be the same again,
have the same personality,
same ambition,
same abilitites to work,
to love,
to get along with other people...
that we won't know for a long time.
Some others who take LSD will have even more tragic freak-outs.
And there's no way to tell which ones these will be.
Many lose all contact with reality.
For instance, some forget what height means,
and in a turned-on or euphoric state,
step or attempt to fly from cliffs and high windows,
with real-life, permanent, non-psychedelic results.
Other trippers attempt to merge their beings with large, fast automobiles.
[Girl screaming]
[Dr. Ungerleider:] There is much conflicting opinion
as to why LSD should prove so popular with so many teenagers.
Psychiatrists do have some ideas.
One is that the teen age is a time of life that's full of conflict.
It's a time when people are struggling with who they are
and what they want to become.
A time when they are dealing with their own sexual and angry feelings.
It's a time for rebellion.
A time for experimentation.
A time for dares.
A time for fads.
It's unfortunate, however, that LSD has proven to be such an in fad.
Unfortunate not because LSD is wicked or sinful of itself,
but because it is such an extremely dangerous drug.
A drug whose effects are so unpredictable.
A drug which so often causes severe, long-lasting damage.
[Girl on stretcher with electrodes hooked to her head]
[Narrator:] Well, so much for the brain and psychological results.
Now what about the effects on your body when taking LSD?
[Newspaper clippings about effects of LSD]
[Dr. James Goddard:] The study of LSD-25 continues in laboratories and hospitals throughout the United States.
LSD-25 has been found by several investigators to cause breakage
in human chromosomes in studies carried out on peripheral blood
of persons who have taken this drug.
What does this mean?
Well, we at least have to begin to become concerned
about possible damage to unborn children.
And this is a very real concern of the scientists involved
and of the federal agency, the FDA.
[Dr. Legator:] The Food and Drug Administration for many years has
been involved in testing drugs that could cause genetic damage.
Genetic damage such as we are now beginning to see with LSD.
Let me illustrate on the board the various factors, the various things
that we think about when we say genetic damage.
First, we have an irreversible effect.
That is, when we do have genetic damage,
once it is set in motion,
we don't know how to stop it.
It's just like driving a car without brakes.
Point number two, we have a time factor.
That is, it may take as long as 10, 15 or even 20 years
before we see the harmful effects after exposure to a chemical
that causes genetic damage.
Number three, and perhaps one of the most important points,
is the age factor.
The younger the person is, the more harmful the effects are.
Now what do we mean when we say genetic damage?
What kind of conditions can we identify in you and me
as a consequence of genetic damage?
Number one, we see teratogenicity.
This is a rather big word.
It only means that we have abnormal fetuses.
We have children that are born without legs or arms,
the kind of thing we've seen after a thalidomide exposure.
Number two, it can be carcinogenic.
That is, it can induce cancer.
And number three, and perhaps one of the most important things,
is the fact that after genetic damage we may have a mutagenic event.
By this we mean an affect not only for our present generation,
but something that is carried over into succeeding generations.
LSD, as far as we now know, may be put in the category
of the type of compound or chemical that causes these types of damage.
If we think of radiation,
and of course we all know the harmful effects of radiation exposure,
we can find we get all three types of damage, the cancer,
the teratogenic effects, and the mutagenic effect.
There always has been a problem with testing chemicals
for chromosome damage in man.
We have 46 chromosomes, they are small.
This animal, a South American woolly oppossum,
has 14 chromosomes, as compared to our 46,
and they are a great deal larger.
This should enable us to see more subtle effects
than we have been able to see heretofore.
[Dr. Maimon Cohen:] One of more recent areas of investigation
concerning LSD has been the effect of the drug on human chromosomes.
The chromosomes are those tiny little structures of various shapes and sizes
which are responsible for the transmission of our traits
from one generation to the next.
When we added LSD to the blood of normal individuals in test groups,
we saw a large amount of chromosomal breakage and damage.
This made us go out to investigate whether or not similar damage was
occurring in the blood cells of individuals using LSD.
Upon examination of their blood cells, identical damage was observed.
This type of damage was reflected as either single breaks in the chromosome,
or fragments which have been broken off of the chromosome,
to rearrangements and bizarre configurations of the chromosomes,
not in their normal fashion.
These types of abnormalities are potentionally dangerous
to the individuals carrying them.
What are these dangers,
and what is the significance of this particular type of damage?
It has long been an established fact that chromosomal investigation of cells
which are derived from tumors,
or certain types of individuals with cancer,
show identical chromosomal damage.
This is not to say that LSD is going to cause cancer
in the individuals taking it.
The association of chromosomal damage and cancer is an established fact.
Whether one causes the other or vice versa is as yet unknown.
And much more research will be necessary
before we can answer this problem adequately.
The second area of concern is,
what is the effect of LSD on an unborn child?
What is the possible danger to a child whose mother takes LSD during her pregnancy?
There have been several reports recently of malformed children
born to mothers who took LSD during pregnancy.
However, there has not been enough time yet,
nor enough pregnancies of this type,
to fully answer the problem in man.
But, data from animal studies with experimental animals
under controlled conditions,
where we do have large litter sizes,
and do have the proper scientific controls,
have given us an answer.
[William F. Geber, Ph.D.:] For the past 10 years I and other scientists
throughout the world have been interested
in the effect of drugs on the pregnant animal
and their babies.
In a series of experiments utilizing over 200 pregnant hamsters
and 2,000 of their babies,
LSD and mescaline were injected into the pregnant animals.
A number of very serious defects reoccurred in each of the experiments.
I would like to now show you some of the results of these experiments.
This is a fetus from a mother not receiving LSD, a normal fetus.
This is a fetus from the mother receiving LSD.
Note the abnormal face,
the characteristics of the skull,
and the brain which is extended to the outside.
Note this control fetus from a mother not receiving LSD.
This is another fetus from a mother receiving LSD during her pregnancy.
Note the brain outside of the skull again.
Note also the hemorrhage in this brain.
Note the two control fetuses from mothers not receiving LSD.
The middle fetus represents one from a mother receiving LSD
during her pregnancy.
The spinal cord is exposed and the spine is deformed.
Again we have a control fetus from a mother
not receiving LSD during her pregnancy.
This is a fetus of a mother receiving the drug during her pregnancy.
The liver is external, not within the body cavity.
There is a hemorrhage in the brain also.
Here again is a control fetus from a mother not receiving LSD.
Here is an experimental fetus from a mother
receiving LSD during her pregnancy.
Note the fluid accumulation across the spinal area.
Note also the hemorrhage within the body cavity.
Here again is a control fetus from a mother
not receiving LSD during her pregnancy.
Here is an interesting fetus from a mother
who had received LSD during her pregnancy.
Note the many malformations present of the brain,
the spinal cord, and the limbs.
Obviously the results which we have just seen
were those obtained on animals.
However, these results should make us consider very seriously
potential hazards of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs in the human.
[Dr. Roger Meyer, NIMH:] We at the National Institute of Mental Health
provide much of the research money for investigations with LSD.
In addition, we are the sole legitimate supplier of LSD
to research investigators.
Of late we have been concerned about the biological hazards of LSD.
Specifically, chromosomal damage
that has been reported in various biological laboratories.
We've been concerned enough and we feel this is serious enough
to spend a good bit of time and money and effort
to find out what the significance of these findings really is.
[Dr. Goddard:] I know of no drug that we've studied that
has as many frightening potentials as this one.
Yes, LSD-25 is truly a dangerous drug to fool around with.
It is playing Russian roulette.
[A man spins the barrel of a gun and points it at his head.]
[Narrator:] Yes, taking LSD is like playing Russian roulette.
Not with one, but with three bullets in the chamber.
One bullet is for the risk to yourself.
Another for the risk to your children.
And another for the risk to your children's children.
Now it's up to you.
It's your brain.
Your chromosomes.
It's your life.
[Man points the gun at his head and fires.]
[Music]
[Narrated by Sal Mineo]
[Produced and Directed by Max Miller]
[Written by Max Miller and Richard S. Scott, M.D.]
[Production Associate: Sam Altonian]
[Editor: Paul Jasiukonis]
[Music Composed by Roy Norman]
[Medical Consultants: W. Ross Adey, M. D., Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, UCLA,
Director Space Biology Laboratory, Brain Research Institute, UCLA]
[Sidney Cohen, M.D. , Chief of Psychiatry, Wadsworth V.A. Hospital,
Los Angeles, author of: "The Beyond Within: The LSD Story"]
[J. Thomas Ungerleider, M.D., Asst. Prof. of Psychiatry, UCLA]
[Duke D. Fisher, M.D., Resident in Psychiatry, UCLA]
[Dr. James L. Goddard, Commissioner, Food and Drug Administration]
[Dr. Marvin S. Legator, Chief of Cell Biology Branch, Bureau of Science, Food and Drug Administration]
[Dr. Maimon M. Cohen, Director of Cytogenetics, Children's Hospital,
State University of New York at Buffalo]
[William F. Gerber, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pharmacology, Medical College of Georgia]
[Dr. Roger E. Meyer, Acting Chief, Center for Studies of Narcotic and Drug Abuse,
National Institute of Mental Health]
[Portions of this film included dramtic re-creations based on factual material.]
[Bailey Films, Hollywood, California, Distributors]