A thirty-year old vial of Sandoz LSD provides an opportunity to study LSD purity, potency, and degradation

An unopened, brown-glass vial of 1951 Sandoz LSD-25 (Delysid) was contributed to a gathering in celebration of Albert Hofmann's 100th birthday. The vial had been in the possession of a single person for the last 30+ years, stored casually, mostly in darkness. When opened, the powder was a very light brown sugar to salmon color. One chemist described the fluffy, clumpy, sparkly crystalline powder as looking like "crushed needles". It was weighed and dissolved into four-ounce liquid doses containing between 100 and 110 micrograms each (± 10%).

Although the vial was completely sealed, without cracks, one of the major questions was whether there would be significant loss of potency by degradation as a result of the 55 years that had passed since it was manufactured. After trying it, the predominant opinion among the more than 70 participants and observers was that there was no detectable loss in potency. This was the clearest result from the reported experiment: air-tight brown glass appears to be a very effective long-term storage method for LSD. After 55 years, stored at varying room temperatures, the LSD seemed to be fully potent.