Broken Hallelujah

Acid Test

I can't tell by looking at the rat that it's on LSD. The rat doesn't seem too fazed. It looks kind of placid, unlike the fanged beasts that haunt Manhattan apartments. I start to wonder what a rat version of Dark Side of the Moon would sound like.



A scientist whisks me to the next room, which houses a maze. It looks like a giant plastic octopus lined with red lights, and it's for rats on various substances to wander through for more tests. The greenish glow of computer screens fills the next room, where a team of researchers is inputting data they hope will support new theories on how LSD, the common name for d-lysergic acid diethylamide, produces its profound effects on the human brain.



I'm out in bucolic West Lafayette, Indiana, about an hour's drive from Indianapolis. Cornfields are everywhere. The vast spaces not taken up by Purdue University or the highway are dotted with sports bars and houses. I've traveled all the way out here because this is one of the only labs in America doing pioneering LSD research. I'm searching for clues to a mystery: How, in terms of brain chemistry, does the fabled "acid trip" initially produce an overpowering swirl of visual effects, only to "come down" into something that's nonvisual, heavily introspective, and—in some cases—downright creepy? More...

David Nichols & Indiana lab doing research on LSD in Village Voice