In 1938, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann synthesized LSD by accident and experienced the first-ever LSD trip. By the mid-1960s the U.S. government had funded over 1,000 clinical studies on it, secretly tested it on soldiers without their consent, and then criminalized it entirely... all within the same two decades.

In the first of a several-part series, this episode covers the discovery and history of LSD. We also get into Ricky Kasso, the seventeen-year-old from Northport, Long Island, known as The Acid King among peers, who murdered his friend Gary Lauwers and left his body in the woods for 35 days. In 1984, Gary's murder became the face of Satanic Panic in America.