Norman Ohler

And he reported to the CEO, I had very strong reactions basically in the brain.

So they set up an intoxication room.

I found the documents about this intoxication room in the Novartis archive when I researched tripped.

because Novartis bought Sandoz in the 90s.

So all the LSD stuff is in the Novartis archive.

And this intoxication room, I always think it's kind of interesting to imagine.

This was 1943.

There's a world war going on everywhere in Europe, except in Switzerland, which is a neutral country.

But Basel, where the LSD was found, is like a stone throw from the German border.

So you actually hear...

the war going on.

And so they created a nice room within the company and then all the employees voluntarily could go and take LSD.

So they were the first people to take LSD and they had no idea that there was at one point, you know, MKUltra and, you know, they were just trying out something that one of their guys had developed.

And I read through all these reports and they all had a great experience.

They were sitting in a nice chair and they looked outside the window and they were reporting stuff like, I just had to laugh the whole time.

I felt so good.

I realized about my life.

It kind of created in them the feeling like a heightened sensitivity and a feeling of that this is how life should feel kind of.

So the CEO, Arthur Stoll, he was really trying to figure out what he could market it for because he thought maybe this is a game changer in mental health because this was before antidepressants, before antipsychotics.

And it was in the middle of World War II, which had created already millions of traumatized people.