Psychiatry: An Epidemic of Acid Heads

The disease is striking in beachside beatnik pads and in the dormitories of expensive prep schools; it has grown into an alarming problem at U.C.L.A. and on the U.C. campus at Berkeley. And everywhere the diagnosis is the same: psychotic illness resulting from unauthorized, nonmedical use of the drug LSD-25.

Patients with post-LSD symptoms are providing the U.C.L.A. Neuropsychiatric Institute with 10% to 15% of its cases; more are flocking to the university's general medical center and the County General Hospital. By best estimates, 10,000 students in the University of California system...