Perhaps one of the most bizarre stories concerning LSD took place in 1962. The event concerned three researchers at the University of Oklahoma, a 7000 pound bull elephant, and a dart full of LSD.
The three men stated that their intention was to determine if LSD could reproduce a naturally occurring pachyderm phenomenon known as “musth.” This mental state would cause an elephant to become extremely violent and fickle. The reason why these three men wanted to test this state is unclear, although one of the men, Louis Jylon West was connected with the CIA. Perhaps he hoped to demonstrate that elephants tripping balls would be useful in the Cold War against communism, much like Hannibal Barca’s famous use of elephants against the Romans in the Second Punic War.
Although the pretenses were extremely bizarre, they were nothing compared to the sloppy guesswork that the three employed in order to undertake the experiment. The dosage given to the elephant was a whopping 297 mg of laboratory-produced LSD. Generally, humans take between 20 and 100 MICROGRAMS of the substance in order to feel profound psychedelic effects. Granted an elephant is much more massive than an average adult human, but even then the calculation is wholly baffling. Even if you do a rough calculation that the 7000 pound elephant would require a dose forty-seven times higher than an average 150 pound human, the three men gave the elephant in question over a hundred times stronger a dose needed. Well, you can imagine what would happen to a human if they all of a sudden decided to drop 100 tabs of acid in one sitting. What about an elephant? Of course, the estimation given here does not take into account the differences of metabolic rate between the two species which might have altered the final figure. In any case, the elephant was given a much higher amount than comparable to a normal human dose.
The elephant was injected with the enormous dose of LSD via a tranquilizer dart in the buttock. It only took five minutes for the disastrous effects to set in. According to the scientific journal in which the original finding was published, the elephant trumpeted loudly and keeled over onto its right side. Following this, it displayed marked labored breathing as well as muscle spasms and had bit through its tongue. After the men realized that the elephant was in a rather terminal condition, they decided to use alleviatory measures to stop the seizures and muscle spasms, to no avail. An hour and forty minutes after the dose of LSD had been given, the elephant was dead.
As you can well imagine, controversy ran rampant after the incident. West’s conduct was investigated and rumors circulated about a possible ulterior motive of developing LSD to be a mind-control device or a weapon in warfare. Others investigated the true cause of death in the animal, whether it was directly a result of the LSD injection or due to alleviatory injections of thorazine. In any case, it almost defies belief that the three men were able to construct such a poorly executed experiment on a very valuable and rare zoo animal. I think all can agree that this incident is one of the most bizarre ever to grace the research concerning psychoactive chemicals.
