Artist Draws Nine Portraits on LSD During 1950s Research Experiment

In the 1950s the US government did a lot of experiments with psychotomimetic drugs (in fact, as anybody who’s seen or read ‘The Men Who Stare At Goats’ will know, the US government used to do all sorts of weird and wonderful experiments).

In one of these experiments, a researcher gave an artist two 50-microgram doses of LSD (each dose separated by about an hour), and then the artist was encouraged to draw pictures of the doctor who administered the drugs. Nine portraits were drawn over the space of eight hours. We still don’t know the identity of the artist. But it’s surmised that the researcher was Oscar Janiger, a University of California-Irvine psychiatrist known for his work on LSD.

1. Time: 20 Minutes After The First Dose (50ug)

2. Time: 85 Minutes After First Dose And 20 Minutes After A Second Dose Has Been Administered (50ug + 50ug)

3. Time: 2 Hours 30 Minutes After First Dose

4. Time: 2 Hours 32 Minutes After First Dose

5. Time: 2 Hours 35 Minutes After First Dose

6. Time: 2 Hours 45 Minutes After First Dose

7. Time: 4 Hours 25 Minutes After First Dose

8. Time: 5 Hours 45 Minutes After First Dose

9. Time: 8 Hours After First Dose