Acid Lore: If you take LSD three times you are legally insane
Acid Lore: If you take LSD three times you are legally insane
If you’ve taken three LSD trips in your life, then you are deemed legally insane. At any time those nice young men in the clean white coats could drag you away to an institution and lock you up as a drug-crazed maniac. No matter how sane you felt or acted, the fact that you’d taken acid three times meant you were technically insane and at risk of being sectioned…
In some versions of this urban legend, you need to take LSD seven times to be legally insane. In others, you only need to have taken it once to be forever at risk of them coming to take you away. In other variants, the legal insanity only applies in certain US states.
This myth of LSD use and legal insanity reflects the popular perception that psychedelic drug use and madness are closely entwined. The myth was perhaps fuelled by several notorious ‘LSD murder trials’ in the 1960s in which LSD use and legal insanity were key factors – at least in the eyes of the media.
The LSD Murder Trial
The first of these trials was that of 32-year-old former Harvard medical student Stephen Kessler, a man described as ‘near-genius’. In April 1966 Kessler had taken LSD before going on to stab his mother-in-law Florence Cooper 105 times in her Brooklyn apartment.
At his trial the following year, his defense argued that Kessler was suffering from LSD-induced amnesia at the time of the murder. The prosecution argued that Kessler believed that his mother-in-law was preventing his getting back together with his estranged wife and that Kessler had taken LSD on the morning of the murder to provide him with a get-out-of-jail-free card if he were accused of the crime. They also pointed out that although Kessler claimed he had no memory of the crime, he tried to wash the blood out of his clothes, suggesting he knew what he was doing.
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The jury deliberated for 12 hours and reached deadlock on three occasions. Finally, they decided that Kessler was indeed legally insane at the time of his murder. He was committed to an institution rather than facing life imprisonment.
The trial received a great deal of coverage – drugs, a violent murder, genius, and madness made for a sensational story. In reporting the crime and the trial, the press gave the impression that Kessler was acquitted because his use of LSD made him legally insane and therefore not responsible for the killing. However, this is not what happened.
Although much trial time was taken up discussing the effects of LSD, Kessler was deemed not guilty by reasons of insanity unrelated to his drug use. He was a paranoid schizophrenic, and this was why he escaped a life sentence. However, in the public mind, Kessler had been found not guilty of murder because his use of LSD rendered him legally insane, albeit temporarily. The association between psychedelic drug use and legal insanity had been forged and this is reflected in the ‘three trips and you’re officially mad’ urban legend.
The Acid Alibi
The prosecution suspected that Kessler had cynically used LSD to avoid prison by claiming amnesia, and this is a ploy a number of lawyers have tried. In a letter to the American Journal of Psychiatry, Dr Thomas Underleider (the first to prove the benefits of medical marijuana) related his experience of acid alibis. One defendant told his prison doctor that after taking LSD he had come to believe he was Robin Hood and so went on a crime spree robbing three banks. When arrested, he claimed to have no memory of the robberies. When the money was found in his apartment, he said he had ‘forgotten’ to give the money to the poor. He eventually admitted that his lawyer had suggested this ploy to try and avoid prison.
Underleider points out that although people can commit crimes while on LSD or any other drug, in the case of LSD ‘complex goal-orientated behavior involving planning and delay of gratification is unlikely’ and that one should be skeptical of claims involving temporary insanity or amnesia from psychedelic drug use.
Underleider finishes his letter with the wry comment that ‘science, truth, and courtroom tactics are not synonymous.’
Psychedelics and Sanity
Two large-scale 2015 population studies published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology seem to have put the myth that psychedelics cause insanity to bed. People who had taken the ‘classical three’ psychedelic drugs – LSD, psilocybin magic mushrooms, and mescaline – were no more likely than the rest of the population to suffer from a range of mental health conditions such as anxiety, schizophrenia, depression, or psychosis. One of the studies also found that people who had taken psychedelics were less likely to contemplate or attempt suicide than people who had not taken the drug.
Teri Suzanne Krebs, the author of one of the studies, told Nature that the myth of the association between psychedelics and insanity confuses causation with correlation. Psychotic disorders are fairly common, affecting one in fifty of the population. According to Krebs, ‘Psychedelics are psychologically intense, and many people will blame anything that happens for the rest of their lives on a psychedelic experience.’
The myth that you can be deemed legally insane after a certain number of LSD trips lives on and can still be found repeated on internet forums today. It serves as a cautionary tale but carries within it a deeper truth: that it’s not the drug that’s a danger to one’s sanity, but rather it’s the medical and legal authorities that are a threat to one’s liberty.
Sources
Barter, J.T. and Reite, M. (1969), ‘Crime and LSD’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 126(4), pp.113-119
Bromberg, W. (1970) ‘LSD Induced Amnesia’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 126(8) p.166
Cormier, Z. (2015) ‘No link found between psychedelics and psychosis’, Nature
‘LSD Murder Trial End in Insanity Acquittal’, The New Mexican, 26 October 1967
Underleider, J.T. (1970) ‘LSD and the Courts’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 126(8) p.163
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