salon | The idea that LSD could produce mental disorganization encouraged the
CIA to start using it in experiments similar to those carried out by
the Nazi doctors. CIA operatives began administering the drug in secret
to different subject populations (or indeed to each other). Like the
Nazis, the CIA used different populations of helpless individuals such
as prisoners, drug addicts, and mental patients in their experiments,
often with appalling results. The CIA not only performed experiments on
individuals but also came up with schemes for contaminating the water
supply of potential enemies with LSD so as to incapacitate entire
hostile populations. For this they would need large amounts of the drug,
at one point ordering the equivalent of 100 million doses from Sandoz.
When they found out that obtaining such a large amount as this might be
somewhat problematic they turned to Eli Lilly and Company, whose capable
chemists broke the secret Sandoz patent and assured the CIA that they
could produce LSD in tons or similar amounts. Thankfully for the future
of humanity, this eventuality never came to pass. In the end the CIA
concluded that the effects of hallucinogenic drugs like LSD were just
too unpredictable for general use in the Cold War, and should just be
reserved for very specific circumstances. Nevertheless, in the
atmosphere of general paranoia that pervaded the postwar era, the CIA
maintained an important role in manipulating the developing drug
culture. CIA operatives acted as drug suppliers if they were interested
in observing drug effects under particular circumstances, and
infiltrated different drug-using groups with political points of view
deemed to be of “interest” so as to relay information back to
Washington.
However, it was not just the CIA who started the
nascent drug culture simmering in the United States. As we have seen,
Gordon Wasson had published his article on the use of psychedelic
mushrooms in Mexico in Life Magazine in 1957, and this was very widely
read and discussed. Aldous Huxley was another individual who greatly
enhanced the awareness of the potential of psychedelic drug use. His
interest in this subject clearly preceded the drug revolution of the
1960s as his famous book “Brave New World,” which had described the use
of psychotropic drugs to control an entire society, had been published
in 1931. Of course, much of the research on hallucinogenic drugs at the
time was not just being performed at the behest of the CIA. There was
enormous excitement in the psychiatric community about the possible uses
of hallucinogens in psychiatry. Not only was there the idea that these
drugs could be psychotomimetic and represented models of psychosis, but
simultaneously other theories were being proposed suggesting the
potential use of these same drugs in the treatment of mental disorders.
Hence, LSD was simultaneously viewed as being psychotomimetic and a
treatment for psychosis, reflecting the ferment in the psychiatric
research community that the arrival of such a powerful drug had stirred
up. LSD-mediated psychotherapy became highly popular and film stars such
as Cary Grant were treated in this way, becoming propagandists for the
drug.
In the vanguard of LSD research in psychiatry was Humphrey
Osmond, whom we have already encountered as the man who introduced the
word psychedelic and who, along with John Smythies, suggested the
endogenous psychotogen theory of schizophrenia. Osmond attempted to use
LSD as a treatment for a variety of disorders such as alcoholism, and
claimed to have had considerable success. Aldous Huxley became aware of
Osmond’s writings and volunteered to be a subject in one of his
experiments. So, in May 1953 Osmond agreed and travelled to Huxley’s
home in California to supervise his drug experience. Huxley was duly
impressed and continued experimenting with the drug on subsequent
occasions. Huxley’s final novel Island, published in 1960, summarized
his views on the use of hallucinogens (called moksha in this novel) as
an integral part of an ideal society. When he died in 1963 Huxley had
his wife administer LSD to him on his deathbed as he slid into the
hereafter. Other writers such as the “Beats,” including Allan Ginsberg
and William Burroughs, also experimented with hallucinogens. Their book
“The Yage Letters” (1963) details their sojourn in South America
experimenting with ayahuasca.
It can therefore be seen that in the
1950s hallucinogenic drugs including mescaline, psilocybin, and LSD had
become a widely discussed topic in medical, political, and artistic
circles. However, in order for the use of hallucinogens to really take
off in society in general, something else was needed. Proselytizing
leaders were required, and one was soon at hand.
In 1960 Timothy
Leary was a 39-year-old psychology lecturer at Harvard. He clearly had a
bright career ahead of him, having carried out important basic research
in behavioral psychology. Leary read Wasson’s article in Life Magazine
and, like many others, was intrigued. That summer he traveled down to
Cuernavaca in Mexico with friends and obtained some samples of
psilocybin mushrooms. Leary was profoundly impressed with his
experience. Basically, he was bored with the kind of life he was leading
as a faculty member at Harvard and saw that hallucinogens represented
an entirely new path for the exploration of the psyche. Soon after
returning to Boston he was sharing psilocybin with students and faculty
alike and, together with his colleague Richard Alpert, set up an entire
psilocybin-based research project which included “experiments” such as
the Marsh Chapel religious event discussed in the previous chapter.
Eventually Leary was also introduced to LSD, and this became his
experimental drug of choice. However, the authorities at Harvard had
soon had enough of Leary’s antics, self-promotion, and his entire modus
operandi. In 1963 both Leary and Alpert were dismissed from their
faculty positions.
However, Leary was not deterred in the
slightest. Initially he and Alpert started their own organization, the
International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF) for the further
study of the religious and psychological potential of hallucinogenic
drug use. The IFIF was headquartered in a Mexican resort town. However,
the reports of wild orgies and other unseemly behavior caused the
Mexican authorities to evict the group, and Leary was back in the United
States once again. By this time experimenting with LSD had developed a
cachet that was attracting the attention of many high rollers throughout
the country. Eventually Leary encountered the fabulously wealthy
William Mellon Hitchcock (aka “Mr. Billy”), the grandson of the founder
of Gulf Oil. Mr. Billy took to LSD and to Timothy Leary and offered him
and his acolytes the use of his 64-room country estate. Here at the
Millbrook estate Leary established the Castalia Foundation, named after
the priestly sect in Hesse’s novel The Glass Bead Game, which was
dedicated to the scholarly study of LSD and its spiritual applications.
Apparently Leary saw himself as a latter-day Joseph Knecht and proceeded
to hold court with anybody who cared to visit, partake of the LSD
experience, and discuss the matter with him. As a guide to the direction
and understanding of LSD-induced psychedelic experience, Leary used the
Tibetan Book of the Dead which deals explicitly with different states
of consciousness. Leary reinterpreted this so that it ended up as a sort
of mixture of Buddhist wisdom and Scientology. Clearly at this point
Leary had become the high priest of an LSD-fueled religion complete with
its own bible. Millbrook was visited by a wide variety of high-profile
individuals from the arts and politics, and its place in the general
public’s consciousness rapidly increased.
However, it was not only
Leary who catalyzed the popularity of LSD. In 1960 Ken Kesey, who had
graduated from Stanford’s creative writing workshop, answered an
advertisement for human guinea pigs to take part in one of the
CIA-sponsored research studies on psychedelic drugs at a local hospital
and ended up working there in the psychiatric ward. Here the ample
availability of both psychedelic drugs and mental patients inspired him
to write his first novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest”—a
considerable critical and popular success. The money that he earned from
the book allowed Kesey, like Leary on the East Coast, a certain degree
of freedom. While continuing to write, a group of like-minded and
frequently stoned associates began to form a loose association with him.
Kesey’s
take on the use of the LSD experience, however, was very different from
Leary’s. He saw himself as a sort of agent provocateur whose role was
to shake up the entire bourgeois establishment. In 1964, together with
his band of “Merry Pranksters,” he purchased a bus, painted it in bright
Day-Glo colors and, with the Pranksters attired in outrageous garb,
traveled across the country handing out LSD—or “acid” as it was becoming
known—to anybody who wanted to try it. In this way Kesey began to
democratize the use of LSD, and things began to take on the
characteristics of the drug counterculture movement of the 1960s. While
in New York, Kesey and the Pranksters visited Leary at Millbrook in what
clearly could have been an interesting meeting. However, the presence
of two egos as large as theirs was too much even for the 64 rooms of
Millbrook. Indeed, Leary did not deign to meet personally with Kesey,
and the latter was not impressed with the priestly atmosphere pervading
the upper class Millbrook estate where, in spite of everything else,
attempts were made to study the effects of LSD on behavior in a
conventional sense. So, the result was a culture clash—East coast versus
West Coast, upper class versus working class, exclusivity versus
egalitarianism. Kesey wanted to popularize the entire “acid trip” in a
way that was fundamentally different from what Leary was doing.
Following his return to California, Kesey began to mount a series of
“Acid Tests,” basically the precursors to hippie happenings where
acid-laced “Electric Kool-Aid” was readily available accompanied by the
latest music played by Kesey’s favorite rock group, The Warlocks, soon
to reemerge as The Grateful Dead.
In 1965, when large amounts of
easily available acid hit the streets of US cities, American society was
a powder keg ready to explode. The combination of the Vietnam war, the
assassination of Malcolm X, the race riots in Watts and other cities,
and the volatile mood on US college campuses, all contributed to the
general ferment. Society was becoming increasingly radicalized and many
young people felt completely disillusioned with their government and
society in general. They sought to distance themselves from the status
quo and to distinguish themselves as revolutionaries in as many ways as
possible.
ussian
President Vladimir Putin is on a geopolitical roll these days, despite
US and EU sanctions against some of his closest associates. On Monday he
recognized Crimea in the wake of its referendum on secession from the
Ukraine, despite Western warnings not to do so, and despite severe
questions about the accuracy of the statistics put out by Crimea’s rump
authorities concerning the alleged turnout and supposed overwhelming
vote in favor of seceding.
