“A fleet-footed and propulsive account . . . Brilliantly sifting a massive history for its
ideological through lines this is a must-read." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) The
author of the New York Times bestseller Blitzed returns with a provocative new history of drugs
and postwar America examining the untold story of how Nazi experiments into psychedelics
covertly influenced CIA research and secretly shaped the War on Drugs. Berlin 1945. Following
the fall of the Third Reich drug use—long kept under control by the Nazis’ strict anti-drug
laws—is rampant throughout the city. Split into four sectors Berlin's drug policies are being
enforced under the individual jurisdictions of each allied power—the Soviet Union Britain
France and the US. In the American zone Arthur J. Giuliani of the nascent Federal Bureau of
Narcotics is tasked with learning about the Nazis’ anti-drug laws and bringing home anything
that might prove “useful” to the United States. Five years later Harvard professor Dr. Henry
Beecher began work with the US government to uncover the research behind the Nazis psychedelics
program. Begun as an attempt to find a “truth serum” and experiment with mind control the Nazi
study initially involved mescaline but quickly expanded to include LSD. Originally created for
medical purposes by Swiss pharmaceutical Sandoz the Nazis coopted the drug for their mind
control military research—research that following the war the US was desperate to acquire.
This research birthed MKUltra the CIA's notorious brainwashing and psychological torture
program during the 1950s and 1960s and ultimately shaped US drug policy regarding psychedelics
for over half a century. Based on extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic
Tripped is a wild unconventional postwar history a spiritual sequel to Norman Ohler’s New
York Times bestseller Blitzed . Revealing the close relationship and hidden connections between
the Nazis and the early days of drugs in America Ohler shares how this secret history held
back therapeutic research of psychedelic drugs for decades and eventually became part of the
foundation of America’s War on Drugs.
