LSD - Notable Individuals

Notable Individuals

Some notable individuals have commented publicly on their experiences with LSD. Some of these comments date from the era when it was legally available in the US and Europe for non-medical uses, and others pertain to psychiatric treatment in the 1950s and 1960s. Still others describe experiences with illegal LSD, obtained for philosophic, artistic, therapeutic, spiritual, or recreational purposes.

• Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO of Apple Inc., said, "Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life."
• In a 2004 interview, Paul McCartney said that The Beatles' songs "Day Tripper" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" are about LSD, although John Lennon explicitly declared that "Lucy" was never about LSD but rather inspired by a picture drawn by his son Julian. John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr also experimented with the drug, although McCartney cautioned that "it's easy to overestimate the influence of drugs on the Beatles' music."
• Kary Mullis is reported to credit LSD with helping him develop DNA amplification technology.
• Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, became a user of psychedelics after moving to Hollywood. He was at the forefront of the counterculture's experimentation with psychedelic drugs, which led to his 1954 work The Doors of Perception. Dying of cancer, on November 22, 1963, he asked his wife to inject him with 100 µg of LSD. He died from the cancer later that day.