LSD is an acronym for lysergic acid diethylamide, also commonly known as acid. It is a powerful psychedelic drug that induces a temporary psychotic state that may include hallucinations and "deep insight" into the nature of things, say its adherents who made it into one of the counterculture's drugs of choice, especially during the 1960s. Developed by the CIA a decade earlier as a counter-espionage mind-controlling agent, LSD was initially intended for psychological torture during the Cold War. Psychiatrists later studied the drug as a means of observing their patients' uninhibited anxieties, and it was also used, with some success, to treat schizophrenia and autism in children, and chronic alcoholism and heroin addiction. In the 1950s, hundreds of subjects, including Hollywood and media celebrities and prominent artists, participated in experimental trips under the direction of Dr. Oscar Janiger, a Los Angeles-area psychiatrist, and other local therapists.

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