LSD: Insight or Insanity?

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DATE: 1968

LENGTH: 29 min

CATEGORY: Educational & Instructional, Research & Documentation, Sound, Color

DIRECTOR: Max Miller

PRODUCER/PUBLISHER: Bailey Films

Summary

Seemingly intended to educate, shock, and frighten all at once, LSD: Insight or Insanity?, is 29 minutes of medical and moralistic anti-drug propaganda. With dramatic scenes of near-carnage, white-coated experts, and Sal Mineo narrating, the film warns teens against peer pressure, rebellion, mistrust of authority, and the psychological and physical dangers of thrill-seeking drugs….Read The Essay

Supplementary Materials

Film Stills from LSD: Insight or Insanity?

A woman wearing glasses and a houndstooth jacket screams, her mouth open and eyes squeezed shut.

A Woman Reacts to a Car Accident National Library of Medicine #101557358

A man with long hair, oval sunglasses, and a black beret holds a cigarette.

A dark-haired man wearing a white medical coat leans against a counter in a hospital.

A smiling teenage boy in a red jacket dances at the edge of a cliff

A distraught young woman lies on a medical gurney, covered with a green blanket, her mouth open.

A man in a suit leans forward to the camera earnestly, an american flag behind him.

A dark-haired woman is seen from the rear, seated and holding a revolver in both hands.

A red sign with STOP printed on it, electric light bulbs trace each letter.

A clipped newspaper article titled Group Asks Investigation into LSD, Birth Defects

Two animal embryos, one healthy and one with visible deformities.

Research on Animal Embryos Suggested That LSD Might Affect the Developing Fetus

A clipped newspaper article titled Worse Deformities Feared in LSD than Thalidomide.

News Coverage of LSD Concerns

Listen to 1966 Senate hearings on LSD chaired by Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY)

In 1966, several Senate committees held hearings about LSD, driven by fears of abuse on college campuses in particular. A subcommittee led by Robert Kennedy compelled testimony from representatives of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Mental Health, and other U.S. government agencies to explore the role of the government in regulating the drug and overseeing research. Kennedy was in favor of more research, especially in the area of mental health.

Excerpts from Hearings of the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization of the Senate Committee on Government Operations concerning federal drug research and regulation of LSD, May 24, 1966 [NLM Historical Audiovisuals accession #2001-02]

A candid portrait of a smiling young man in a suit. — Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) *Photo: Wikimedia Commons*

Prints and Postcards from the National Library of Medicine

Swedish avant-garde artist Öyvind Fahlström’s ESSO-LSD painting hangs in the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
National Library of Medicine #101458604

Psychadelic-style illustration of a giant mushroom with multicolored waves like an atomic explosion and the text: lsd-day. — A movie poster for LSD-Day, a film-within-a-film from the 2000 movie The Independent
*National Library of Medicine #101701049*

Postcard flyer for 1971 film LSD-day with blurb and reviews. — Reverse of a movie postcard for LSD-Day, a film-within-a-film from the 2000 movie The Independent
*National Library of Medicine #101701049*

LSD images in Open-i

Open-i service of the National Library of Medicine enables search and retrieval of abstracts and images (including charts, graphs, clinical images, etc.) from the open source literature, and biomedical image collections. Searching may be done using text queries as well as query images.
Go to LSD in Open-i

LSD in PubMed Central

PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).
Go to LSD in PMC

On a tie-dye background, curling ribbon structures and hexagonal molecular structures interact. — An artistic representation of LSD (in blue) fitting into a serotonin receptor (the white ribbon).
*Bryan Roth, M.D., Ph.D., University of North Carolina*

In the News

LSD to Cure Depression? Not so Fast. By Richard A. Friedman, February 13, 2017
A writer for the New York Times argues the possible benefits of LSD are overstated.

LSD Could Make You Smarter, Happier, and Healthier. Should We All Try It? By Daniel Miller, April 1, 2016
A writer for The Washington Post discusses the therapeutic use of LSD and other psychedelics.