The Chilling True Story Of The Secret CIA Program That Put Citizens Into Drug-Induced Comas

In the 1950s and '60s, the CIA conducted experiments involving torture, hypnosis, and brainwashing on thousands of people. These mind-control experiments were known as Project MK-Ultra.

The CIA had become convinced that the Soviet Union was able to do mind control, so they started trying to do the same in 1953. The program was carried out across 80 universities, institutions, and hospitals.

Project MK-Ultra was kept a closely guarded secret. It finally ended in the 1970s.

As the Cold War reached its height in the early 1950s, the U.S. government began to fear that the Soviet Union was becoming more technologically advanced.

Reports during the Korean War suggested that North Korean and Soviet forces had developed mind-control capabilities. The reports were later proven false.

On April 13, 1953, Project MK-Ultra was launched. It was headed by Sidney Gottlieb, who was a chemist and expert on poisons. He set out to create a truth serum, but it was a very difficult endeavor, so researchers turned their focus to placing test subjects in an altered mental state.

Overall, the program conducted 162 experiments, and a total of 185 researchers were involved. The most common method was to give large quantities of substances to subjects in the hopes of wiping their minds clean.

Substances such as alcohol, opioids, LSD, THC, and the super hallucinogen BZ were used. Sometimes, two drugs with opposite effects were administered at the same time.

Researchers also used hypnosis to instill fear into subjects and then exploit that fear to gain information. Some subjects were drugged and left comatose for months at a time. When they came to, they permanently suffered from incontinence and amnesia.

golubovy - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only, not the actual person - pictured above is a double exposure photo of a woman

An animal behaviorist, John C. Lilly, kept subjects in a sensory deprivation flotation tank so they could experience their acid trips away from the outside world.

Many test subjects were unaware that they were even participating in the experiments. Gottlieb and his research team targeted individuals who could not stand up for themselves, including drug addicts, prisoners, mental patients, and terminal cancer patients. Some were volunteers or paid students.

They endured all kinds of abuse. One mental patient was given LSD for 174 days straight. Gottlieb even administered LSD to CIA officials without their consent so he could study the effects of the substance in "normal" settings.

Those who survived the experiments experienced long-term effects like depression, amnesia, paralysis, withdrawal, pain, insomnia, confusion, disorientation, and schizophrenic-like symptoms.

In early 1973, the CIA director, Richard Helms, had all of MK-Ultra's records destroyed. But in 1975, President Gerald R. Ford launched an investigation into CIA activities.

Although most of the evidence of MK-Ultra was destroyed, a collection of 8,000 documents was discovered.

In 1977, the documents were released to the public under the Freedom of Information Act. Soon, survivors filed lawsuits against the CIA and the federal government.

In 1992, 77 former subjects were awarded a settlement. Most subjects were denied any retribution because of the difficulty in proving that the secret experiments had negatively affected them.

To this day, MK-Ultra is one of the most heinous government cover-ups in U.S. history.

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