Educational Media Reviews Online

The Substance is a social and cultural history of lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. LSD began as an experiment in medical research, but its effect on the mind immediately became its most important property. The film takes us from the synthesis and discovery in the 1940s, through a slow rise in interest during the 1950s to its peak use as a legal, then illegal, drug of youth culture in the 1960s, through the near-abandonment of its legal use, and a recent resurgence of interest of its use for psychotherapy.

Albert Hofmann, Swiss chemist and discoverer of LSD, appears in subtitled interviews with archival film footage. Hofmann's first direct exposure in August 1943 was a "beautiful" experience. He began researching this new substance with its profound psychological effects by experimenting on himself. Hofmann's company, Sandoz, released it commercially for possible psychiatric use. Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof's fifty-year career has involved LSD, based on his powerful personal experience. "Chemoarchaeology" is Grof's description of unraveling the psyche's layers using LSD to aid psychotherapy. Espionage and military groups, such as the U.S. CIA and Army, tested LSD as a truth serum and as a weapon. Some studies abused experimental subjects. The effects were unpredictable, making it unsuitable.

Harvard researcher Dr. Timothy Leary worked with LSD, but self-experimentation led to his firing. He moved to a farm-turned-commune called Millbrook to continue, promoting a self-styled "science and art of ecstasy," and recommending that young people "turn on, tune in and drop out" for a "spiritual revolution." Hofmann met with Leary and decided he was forcing LSD on young people. This led to a cutoff of legal LSD from Sandoz, and underground synthesis was born, with an active black market dispensing doses carried by sugar cubes and blotter paper. Rock stars dropped acid, further boosting its popularity. Not everyone was as approving, and a split appeared along generational lines. Grof blames Leary for putting LSD in the hands of those not ready for it, emphasizing the positive aspects and minimizing the negative ones, and for "killing legitimate research."

Today LSD and a chemically-related drug, psilocybin, are in therapeutic use, e.g., with terminally-ill patients for pain control and adjustment to their coming deaths. One cancer patient describes his emotion-filled and transcendent experience. Research on hallucinogens today is characterized as "too dangerous or too edgy to be done." The film ends with Hofmann's thoughts, ending on a somber and reflective, but hopeful note.

The Substance is an excellent overview of the rise and fall of LSD, with its return to non-recreational use. Interviews are primarily with people who were there, creating and participating in the LSD culture. This is not a science video, with little about chemical structure, synthesis, or physiological effects. There are images from different decades of the 20th century from the clinical to the ecstatic to the frightful. There is some female nudity from two anti-LSD films. The film has an appropriately spacey original music score.