How Speed, LSD, and MK Ultra Gave Birth to the Chemical Imbalance Theory

Was the chemical imbalance theory a scientific discovery, or did it grow out of MK Ultra-era drug experiments?

Philosopher Justin Garson, author of The Madness Pill, traces the history of psychiatry from LSD in 1960s San Francisco to the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia, and how it paved the way for every “chemical imbalance” theory that followed. In 1973, Justin’s father was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He recovered through drug-free talk therapy and went back to work. Twelve years later, no psychiatrist would treat him without drugs, and he never recovered. Justin set out to understand what changed.

The answer runs through Solomon Snyder. Snyder took LSD in San Francisco in 1963 and then turned to amphetamine-induced psychosis. His lab was flush with FBI money, and some of his colleagues were tied to the CIA’s MK Ultra program. We discuss how speed ended the Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury, the CIA’s history of flooding communities with drugs, Charles Manson and the book Chaos, where the term “conspiracy theorist” came from, and psychiatry’s long role as an instrument of state control.

We also go beyond materialism: spiritual emergency, the Hearing Voices Network, why people diagnosed with schizophrenia often fare better in developing countries, and why depression may be a signal rather than a symptom.

About Justin Garson:

Justin Garson, Ph.D., is a philosopher, author, and Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. His work challenges conventional understandings of mental illness, exploring the history of psychiatry, the evolution of the mind, and alternative perspectives on mental health.

He is the author of several books, including Madness: A Philosophical Exploration and his latest, The Madness Pill: One Doctor’s Quest to Understand Schizophrenia (2026), which investigates the controversial drug experiments that helped shape modern biological psychiatry. His writing has appeared in Psychology Today, Aeon, and Mad in America.

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Dr. Roger McFillin and Tracy Thurman host Radically Genuine, challenging the systems, institutions, and ideas shaping how we think, live, heal, and understand the world around us. From medicine and mental health to technology, spirituality, institutional power, and human sovereignty, Roger and Tracy question accepted narratives, challenge what others won’t, and pursue truth whereve