Acid Dreams - Erowid

On April 19, three days after his initial psychedelic voyage, Dr. Hofmann swallowed amere 250 micrograms (a millionth of an ounce), thinking that such a minusculeamount would have negligible results. But he was in for a surprise. As he bicycledhome accompanied by his laboratory assistant, he realized the symptoms were muchstronger than before. "I had great difficulty in speaking coherently," he recounted."My field of vision swayed before me, and objects appeared distorted like images incurved mirrors. I had the impression of being unable to move from the spot,although my assistant told me afterwards that we had cycled at a good pace."When Hofmann arrived home, he consulted a physician, who was ill equipped to dealwith what would later be called a "bad trip." Hofmann did not know if he'd taken afatal dose or if he'd be lost forever in the twisted corridors of inner space. For a whilehe feared he was losing his mind: "Occasionally I felt as if I were out of my body . Ithought I had died. My 'ego' was suspended somewhere in space and I saw my bodylying dead on the sofa."Somehow Hofmann summoned the courage to endure this mind-wrenching ordeal.As the trip wore on, his psychic condition began to improve, and eventually he wasable to explore the hallucinogenic terrain with a modicum of composure. He spentthe remaining hours absorbed in a synesthetic swoon, bearing witness as each soundtriggered a corresponding optical effect, and vice versa, until he fell into a fitfulsleep. The next morning he awoke feeling perfectly fine.And so it was that Dr. Albert Hofmann made his fateful discovery. Right from thestart he sensed that LSD could be an important tool for studying how the mindworks, and he was pleased when the scientific community began to use the drug forthis purpose. But he did not anticipate that his "problem child," as he later referredto LSD, would have such enormous social and cultural impact in the years to come.Nor could he have foreseen that one day he would be revered as a near-mythicfigure by a generation of acid enthusiasts."Dr. Hofmann," said Stephen Gaskin, leader of the largest counterculture communein America, "there are thousands of people on the Farm who feel they owe their livesto you." Gaskin was among the guests invited to participate in a panel discussion onthe second day of the colloquium. Its purpose was to provide a forum forcounterculture veterans to reflect back upon the halcyon days of the psychedelicmovement, which had reached a peak a decade earlier during the infamous Summerof Love, and assess what had since come to pass. Poet Allen Ginsberg likened theevent to a "class reunion." He decided to do some homework before joining his fellowacid valedictorians, so he took some LSD on the plane flight to the West Coast. Whileunder the influence of the psychedelic, he began to ponder the disclosures that hadrecently surfaced in the news media concerning the ClA's use of LSD as a mindcontrol weapon. The possibility that an espionage organization might have promotedthe widespread use of LSD was disturbing to Ginsberg, who had been an outspokenadvocate of psychedelics during the 1960s. He grabbed a pen and started jottingdown some high-altitude thoughts. "Am I, Allen Ginsberg, the product of one of theClA's lamentable, ill-advised, or triumphantly successful experiments in mindcontrol?" Had the CIA, "by conscious plan or inadvertent Pandora's Box, let loose thewhole LSD Fad on the U.S. & the World?"6

Ginsberg raised the CIA issue during the conference, but few seemed to take thematter seriously. "The LSD movement was started by the CIA," quipped TimothyLeary with a wide grin on his face. "I wouldn't be here now without the foresight ofthe CIA scientists." The one-time Pied Piper of the flower children was in top form,laughing and joking with reporters, as though he hadn't been chased halfway aroundthe world by US narcotics police and spent the last few years in prison. "It was noaccident," Leary mused. "It was all planned and scripted by the Central Intelligence,and I'm all in favor of Central Intelligence."A jovial mood prevailed throughout much of the panel discussion. Old comrades whohad not seen each other for a long time swapped tales of acid glory and reminiscedabout the wild and unforgettable escapades of yesteryear. "As I look at mycolleagues and myself," said Richard Alpert, one of Leary's original cohorts atHarvard University in the early 1960s, "I see we have proceeded just as we wishedto, despite all conditions. I feel that what we are doing today is partly demonstratingthat we are not psychotic!" Alpert went on to declare that he didn't care if he evertook LSD again but that he appreciated what his hundreds of trips had taught himand hoped there would be a more favorable climate for serious LSD research in thenear future.Alpert's sentiments were echoed by many of the panelists, who called on thegovernment to reconsider its restrictive policies so that scientists and psychologistscould resume studying the drug. There were frequent testimonials to thecontributions LSD made to science and society. Acid was praised as a boon topsychotherapy, an enhancer of creativity, a religious sacrament, and a liberator ofthe human spirit. Dr. Ralph Metzner, the third member of the Harvard triumvirate,suggested that the appearance of LSD constituted nothing less than a turning pointin human evolution. It was no coincidence, he maintained, that Dr. Hofmanndiscovered the effects of LSD shortly after the first nuclear chain reaction wasachieved by the Manhattan Project. His remarks seemed to imply that LSD was somesort of divine antidote to the nuclear curse and that humanity must pay heed to thepsychedelic revelation if it was to alter its self-destructive course and avert a majorcatastrophe.Author Richard Ashley elaborated on the theme of acid as a chemical messiah. As faras he was concerned, LSD provided the most effective means of short-circuiting themental straitjacket that society imposes on its members. A worldwide police statewas a virtual certainty, Ashley predicted, unless more people used psychedelics toraise their consciousness and resist the ominous specter of thought control.Others were somewhat more cautious in speculating upon the role of hallucinogenicdrugs in advanced industrial society. "LSD came along before our culture was readyfor it," asserted Dr. Stanley Krippner, a leading parapsychologist who once directedthe Maimonides Dream Laboratory in New York. "I think we're still not ready for it.We haven't used it for its greatest potential. Psychedelic substances have been usedvery wisely in primitive cultures for spiritual and healing purposes. Our culture doesnot have this framework. We don't have the closeness to God, the closeness tonature, the shamanistic outlook. We've lost all that."7

By the time the conference drew to a close, over thirty speakers had rendered theirverdicts about LSD and the so-called psychedelic revolution. While it was clear thateveryone had been deeply affected by the drug experience and the social movementit inspired, there was no overall consensus as to what it all meant. Each person hadhis or her ideas about why things happened the way they did and what the futuremight portend. Some felt that LSD arrived on the scene just in the nick of time,others saw it as a premature discovery, and there were a few who thought it mightalready be too late. If that wasn't enough to thoroughly confuse the audience, JohnLilly, the dolphin scientist, urged his listeners to ignore everything they heard fromtheir elders and make their own discoveries. Ginsberg seconded the motion in hisconcluding remarks. "We must disentangle ourselves from past suppositions," hecounseled. "The words 'psychedelic revolution' are part of a past created largely bymedia images. We need to throw out the past images."Less than a month before the Santa Cruz convention, LSD was the main topic atanother well-attended gathering. The setting on this occasion was an ornate Senatehearing room on Capitol Hill. The television cameras were ready to roll as TedKennedy, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research,strolled toward the lectern flanked by a few of his aides. During the next two days hewould attempt to nail down the elusive details of Operation MK-ULTRA, the principalCIA program involving the development of chemical and biological agents during theCold War.In his opening statement Kennedy told a large audience that he hoped thesehearings would "close the book on this chapter of the ClA's life." He then proceededto question a group of former CIA employees about the Agency's testing of LSD andother drugs on unwitting American citizens. These activities were considered sosensitive that only a handful of people within the CIA even knew about them. Apreviously classified document explained why the program was shrouded in secrecy:"The knowledge that the Agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities wouldhave serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles and would bedetrimental to the accomplishment of its mission."Although most of the testimony had been rehearsed earlier when witnesses met witha Kennedy staff member, the senator from Massachusetts still managed to feign asense of astonishment when David Rhodes, formerly a CIA psychologist, recountedan ill-fated LSD experiment at a CIA safehouse in the San Francisco Bay area. Hedescribed how unsuspecting individuals were recruited from local bars and lured to aparty where CIA operatives intended to release LSD in the form of an aerosol spray.But as Rhodes explained, the air currents in the room were unsuitable for dosing thepartygoers, so one of his cohorts snuck into the bathroom and tried the spray onhimself. The audience chuckled at the thought of grown men spritzing themselveswith government acid, while news reporters scribbled their renditions of theheadline-making tale.8

Throughout the hearings the senators listened to one account after another ofbumbling and clumsiness on the part of Agency personnel. Phillip Goldman, a CIAchemical warfare specialist, could have been describing a Three Stooges routinewhen he told of an attempt to test a launching device for a stink bomb. Theprojectile hit the window ledge, and the spooks held their noses. There were morelaughs when he mentioned a drug-coated swizzle stick that dissolved in a cocktailbut left a taste so bitter that no one would drink it. And so forth and so on. This kindof buffoonery proved to be an effective public relations ploy for the CIA, deflectingserious scrutiny from drug-related misdeeds. By stressing ineptitude the Agencyconveyed an all too human air. After all, why prosecute a bunch of regular Joes forfooling around with chemicals they could never hope to understand?The star witness on the second day of the hearings was the ClA's chief sorcererscientist. Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who ran the MK-ULTRA program. Gottlieb, a slight manwith short gray hair and a clubfoot, agreed to testify only after receiving a grant ofimmunity from criminal prosecution. His testimony before the Senate subcommitteemarked the first public appearance of this shadowy figure since he left the Agency in1973. Actually his appearance was "semi-public." Because he suffered from a heartcondition, Gottlieb was allowed to speak with the senators in a small antechamberwhile everyone else listened to the proceedings over a public address system.The purpose of Operation MK-ULTRA and related programs, Gottlieb explained, was"to investigate whether and how it was possible to modify an individual's behavior bycovert means." When asked to elaborate on what the CIA learned from this research,Gottlieb was afflicted by a sudden loss of memory, as if he were under the influenceof one of his own amnesia drugs. However, he did confirm earlier reports thatprostitutes were used in the safehouse experiments to spike the drinks of unluckycustomers while CIA operatives observed, photographed, and recorded the action.When asked to justify this activity, Gottlieb resorted to the familiar Cold War refrainthat had been invoked repeatedly throughout the hearings by other witnesses. Theoriginal impetus for the ClA's drug programs, he maintained, stemmed from concernabout the aggressive use of behavior-altering techniques against the US by itsenemies. Gottlieb claimed there was evidence (which he never shared with thesenators) that the Soviets and the Red Chinese might have been mucking about withLSD in the early 1950S. This, he explained, had grave implications for our nationalsecurity.At the close of the hearings Kennedy summed up the surreptitious LSD tests bydeclaring, "These activities are part of history, not the current practice of the CIA."And that was as far as it went. The senators seemed eager to get the whole showover with, even though many issues were far from resolved. Later it was revealedthat some of the witnesses conferred among themselves, agreeing to limit theirtestimony to the minimum degree necessary to satisfy the committee. As Dr.Gottlieb admitted, "The bottom line on this whole business has not yet been written."Shortly after the Senate forum, a Washington attorney gave us a tip about how togain access to a special reading room that housed documents pertaining to OperationMK-ULTRA and other CIA mind control projects. The documents had recently beendeclassified as a result of a Freedom of Information request by researcher JohnMarks. Located on the bottom floor of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Rosslyn, Virginia,the reading room was smoke-filled and crowded with journalists working ondeadlines, scouring through a heap of papers as fast as their fingers could turn thepages. We were not bound by such constraints, and we decided to examine the filesat an unhurried pace.9

Reading through the intelligence records was both exciting and frustrating. Eachstack of heavily censored reports contained a hodge-podge of data, much of whichseemed trivial. There was no rhyme or reason to their arrangement: financialrecords, inventory lists, in-house gossip, and letters of recommendation wererandomly interspersed with minutes of top-secret meetings and other tantalizingmorsels.We dug in for the long haul, intent on examining every scrap of information relatedto the ClA's behavior modification programs. Our visits to the reading room becamea weekly ritual, and soon we expanded our investigation to include army, navy, andair force documents as well. During the next six months we reviewed approximatelytwenty thousand pages of previously classified memoranda. We began to think ofourselves as archeologists rather than muck-rakers, trying to unearth remnants of alost history buried underneath layers of secrecy.In the course of our inquiry we uncovered CIA documents describing experiments insensory deprivation, sleep teaching, ESP, subliminal projection, electronic brainstimulation, and many other methods that might have applications for behaviormodification. One project was designed to turn people into programmed assassinswho would kill on automatic command. Another document mentioned "hypnoticallyinduced anxieties" and "induced pain as a form of physical and psychologicalcontrol." There were repeated references to exotic drugs and biological agents thatcaused "headache clusters," uncontrollable twitching or drooling, or a lobotomy-likestupor. Deadly chemicals were concocted for the sole purpose of inducing a heartattack or cancer without leaving a clue as to the actual source of the disease. CIAspecialists also studied the effects of magnetic fields, ultrasonic vibrations, and otherforms of radiant energy on the brain. As one CIA doctor put it, "We lived in a nevernever land of 'eyes only' memos and unceasing experimentation."As it turns out, nearly every drug that appeared on the black market during the1960s—marijuana, cocaine, heroin, PCP, amyinitrate, mushrooms, DMT,barbiturates, laughing gas, speed, and many others—had previously beenscrutinized, tested, and in some cases refined by CIA and army scientists. But of allthe techniques explored by the Agency in its multimillion-dollar twenty-five-yearquest to conquer the human mind, none received as much attention or wasembraced with such enthusiasm as LSD-25. For a time CIA personnel werecompletely infatuated with the hallucinogen. Those who first tested LSD in the early1950s were convinced that it would revolutionize the cloak-and-dagger trade.As we studied the documents more closely, certain shapes and patterns came aliveto us. We began to get a sense of the internal dynamics of the ClA's secret LSDprogram and how it evolved over the years. The story that emerged was far morecomplex and rich in detail than the disconnected smattering of information that hadsurfaced in various press reports and government probes. We were able tounderstand what the spies were looking for when they first got into LSD, whathappened during the initial phase of experimentation, how their attitude changed asthey tested the drug on themselves and their associates, and how it was ultimatelyused in covert operations.10

The central irony of LSD is that it has been used both as a weapon and a sacrament,a mind control drug and a mind-expanding chemical. Each of these possibilitiesgenerated a unique history: a covert history, on the one hand, rooted in CIA andmilitary experimentation with hallucinogens, and a grassroots history of the drugcounterculture that exploded into prominence in the 1960s. At key points the twohistories converge and overlap, forming an interface between the ClA's secret drugprograms and the rise and fall of the psychedelic movement.The LSD story is inseparable from the cherished hopes and shattered illusions of thesixties generation. In many ways it provides a key for understanding what happenedduring that turbulent era, when political and cultural revolution erupted with full fury.And yet, as the decade drew to a close, the youth movement suddenly collapsed andbottomed out, leaving a trail of unanswered questions in its wake. Only by examiningboth sides of the psychedelic saga—the CIA's mind control program and the drugsubculture—can we grasp the true nature of LSD-25 and discern what effect thispowerful chemical agent had on the social upheavals of the 1960s.11

Part One: The Roots of Psychedelia1 In The Beginning There Was Madness The Truth SeekersIn the spring of 1942 General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, chief of the Office ofStrategic Services (OSS), the ClA's wartime predecessor, assembled a half-dozenprestigious American scientists and asked them to undertake a top-secret researchprogram. Their mission, Donovan explained, was to develop a speech-inducing drugfor use in intelligence interrogations. He insisted that the need for such a weaponwas so acute as to warrant any and every attempt to find it.The use of drugs by secret agents had long been a part of cloak-and-dagger folklore,but this would be the first concerted attempt on the part of an American espionageorganization to modify human behavior through chemical means. "We were notafraid to try things that had ne

native London armed with hundreds of copies of the updated Book of the Dead and five thousand doses of LSD (which he procured from Czech government laboratories in Prague)." And communism did collapse, though not right then, and acid did have quite a bit to do with