During the 1950s and 1960s, LSD a.k.a. acid was found to be a promising tool for psychiatry and psychotherapy and was studied by the CIA as a potential interrogation weapon (Project MKULTRA). But it has been illegal worldwide since the mid-1960s, after the great acid wave that washed over popular youth culture. Dr. Andrew Sewell, a psychiatrist and neurologist from the Harvard Medical School says "There is no evidence that LSD causes permanent brain damage — and quite a lot of evidence that it doesn’t."
While acid flashbacks exist, they’re rare and not as dangerous as the media makes them seem. Further, no one has died of an LSD overdose. While doubtless there have been people who’ve done some really stupid things while tripping, still others have accomplished great feats, like Pittsburgh’s Doc Ellis who pitched a perfect game on acid in 1970. Among the first to popularize the drug was author Aldous Huxeley in Doors of Perception and Dr. Timothy Leary, ex-Harvard psychologist turned LSD crusader. Nobel-prize-winner Francis Crick, discoverer of the double helical structure of DNA, told friends he received inspiration for his ideas from LSD. Many computer pioneers also credit LSD as their inspiration, including Douglas Englebart, the inventor of the mouse, and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who considers it as "one of the two or three most important things he has done in his life." So it’s no surprise that some computer companies, e.g. Cisco Systems, have banned drug testing for their technologists.
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