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Your Brain’s Anchor to Reality

Gary L. Wenk

in Your Brain on Food: How Chemicals Control Your Thoughts and Feelings

The consumption of many different plants by our ancestors lead to the discovery of the important role played by the neurotransmitter serotonin in your brain. Chemicals in these plants that interfere ... More

The consumption of many different plants by our ancestors lead to the discovery of the important role played by the neurotransmitter serotonin in your brain. Chemicals in these plants that interfere with the function of serotonin can produce vivid and colorful hallucinations, migraine headaches, anxiety, depression, sleep, and death. Consumption of grain or corn that is contaminated with an ergot fungus may have been responsible for the death of thousands of people in ancient Europe while the consumption of mushrooms in ancient Mexico may have lead to the appearance of various religious ceremonies that defined specific cultures. The merging and mixing of sensory processes, for example, sights that produce sounds or smells that have color, must have been very frightening to our ancestors. The experience often took on a mystical or religious interpretation in order to make sense of what we now call a hallucination. It is possible that ritualistic manipulation of serotonin neurons in the brain played a role in the individual expressions of religiosity across cultures. Today, we mostly focus upon the role of serotonin in the control of mood and migraines.Less

The Interpersonal and the Mystical

William A. Richards and G. William Barnard

in Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences

Role of interpersonal relationships in spiritual life.

Maximizing the Probability of Safety and Benefit

William A. Richards and G. William Barnard

in Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences

Physiological and Psychological Safety, Legal Considerations.

Painting

Christopher Gair

in The American Counterculture

Unlike the chapter on art in section one, this chapter focuses on figures who do not generally feature in accounts of the history of American Art. It commences with a look at the role of artists ... More

Unlike the chapter on art in section one, this chapter focuses on figures who do not generally feature in accounts of the history of American Art. It commences with a look at the role of artists operating around Haight-Ashbury and at the importance of posters for psychedelic rock concerts and at album cover artwork. It then assesses more overtly political West Coast art, such as the ‘Peace Tower’ erected in LA in 1966, before returning to New York and Andy Warhol’s Factory.Less

Music

Christopher Gair

in The American Counterculture

During the 1960s the music of the counterculture was transformed rapidly and repeatedly. This chapter traces these changes from the folk revival through the British invasion, Blues rock, psychedelia, ... More

During the 1960s the music of the counterculture was transformed rapidly and repeatedly. This chapter traces these changes from the folk revival through the British invasion, Blues rock, psychedelia, etc., looking at the impact of key figures including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix. It argues that the anti-modernist impulses of the early 1960s were replaced by an obsession with new technology and a corporate structure in which artists were able to hide their economic ambitions through the separation of musician and manager.Less

Hallucinogens: Magic Mushrooms, Ayahuasca, Mescal Buttons, and Dr. Hofmann’s Problem Child

Jerrold Winter

in Our Love Affair with Drugs: The History, the Science, the Politics

There are about 400,000 species of plants in this world. Only a small fraction, perhaps 100 in number, contain hallucinogenic chemicals. Nearly a century ago, Lewis ... More

There are about 400,000 species of plants in this world. Only a small fraction, perhaps 100 in number, contain hallucinogenic chemicals. Nearly a century ago, Lewis Lewin, professor of pharmacology at the University of Berlin, in speaking of drugs he called phantasticants, said “The passionate desire which . . . leads man to flee from the monotony of daily life . . . has made him discover strange substances (which) have been integral to human evolution both societal and cultural for thousands of years.” An unusual problem presents itself to me in writing about these drugs: They straddle the worlds of science and mysticism. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines mysticism as the practice of religious ecstasies (religious experiences during alternate states of consciousness), together with whatever ideologies, ethics, rites, myths, legends, and magic may be related to them. Science I am comfortable with; mysticism not so much. Yet in our exploration of the agents found in this chapter, we will encounter many persons speaking of drug-induced mystical experiences. I have attempted to get around my unease by first providing the history and the pharmacology of these agents and then touching only lightly on mysticism, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. What shall we call these chemicals? Hallucinogen, a substance that induces perception of objects with no reality, is the term most commonly encountered and the one that I have settled on for the title of this chapter. However, it comes with a caveat. Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, our prototypic hallucinogen, has pointed out that a true hallucination has the force of reality, but the effects of LSD only rarely include this feature. Two additional terms that we will find useful are psychotomimetic and psychedelic. We have already considered the former, an ability to mimic psychosis, in our discussion of amphetamine-induced paranoid psychosis in chapter 4 and the effects of phencyclidine in chapter 6. A psychedelic was defined in 1957 by Humphrey Osmond, inventor of the word, as a drug like LSD “which enriches the mind and enlarges the vision.” Less

January 1967: “Wild Man of Borneo”

Jas Obrecht

in Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966-June 1967

Jimi’s onstage antics bring him widespread coverage and interview opportunities in Record Mirror, New Musical Express (NME), Disc and Music Echo, and other British music magazines. The band tours ... More

Jimi’s onstage antics bring him widespread coverage and interview opportunities in Record Mirror, New Musical Express (NME), Disc and Music Echo, and other British music magazines. The band tours extensively outside of London and gains further exposure through their records being played by pirate radio stations and Radio Luxemburg. A row about Kathy Etchingham’s cooking inspires Jimi to compose “The Wind Cries Mary,” which the band records in a single session the following day. As the month progresses, the Experience record “Purple Haze,” “51st Anniversary,” “Fire.” A who’s-who of British rock musicians – the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Marianne Faithfull, and Donovan among them – regularly attend the Experience’s London performances. Staid British publications begin refering to Jimi with the racist term “Wild Man of Borneo.” In a series of interviews, some fuelled by his consumption of LSD, Jimi discuss his life, songwriting techniques, fears, loves, and spiritual beliefs. At month’s end, the Experience are filmed at the Saville Theatre.Less

Tom Wolfe’s: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Jack Schafer

in Second Read: Writers Look Back at Classic Works of Reportage

This essay reviews the book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe. Published in 1968, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a nonfiction work that chronicles the experiences of Ken Kesey and his ... More

This essay reviews the book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe. Published in 1968, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a nonfiction work that chronicles the experiences of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters, who traveled across the country in a colorfully painted school bus named Furthur. Wolfe takes his readers directly into the heads of his subjects, when necessary, to describe three years of Prankster adventures in consciousness along the California coast, across the country in Furthur, down to Mexico, where Kesey skedaddled to escape prosecution for possession of marijuana, and back to San Francisco. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test remains the best account—fictional or non, in print or on film—of the genesis of the 1960s hipster subculture. Kesey and the Pranksters didn't single-handedly invent psychedelic culture, and they weren't the only LSD proselytizers in the mid-1960s. But they swung the big broom, sweeping everything into their acid gospel—trash and kitsch, consumer culture, spray paint, electronics, daredevilry, and practical jokes—and it was their version that rose to dominance.Less

: Alcoholics and Pink Elephants

Matthew Warner Osborn

in Rum Maniacs: Alcoholic Insanity in the Early American Republic

Ranging broadly into the twenty-first century, the epilogue considers the enduring influence of delirium tremens on medical and popular conceptions of alcoholism and drug use. It illustrates how ... More

Ranging broadly into the twenty-first century, the epilogue considers the enduring influence of delirium tremens on medical and popular conceptions of alcoholism and drug use. It illustrates how delirium tremens and alcoholic hallucinations carried many of their nineteenth-century meanings into twentieth-century mass culture, featuring in children’s cartoons such as “Dumbo” and sentimental dramatizations of alcoholism. In the twentieth century, however, delirium tremens became fascination with drug-induced insanity, trance-states, and hallucinations persisted even in the literature of the modern recovery movement inspired by Bill Wilson and Alcoholic’s Anonymous, and in the psychedelic generations’ experimentations with LSD. In American popular culture, delirium tremens remained compelling theater because it continued to express a romantic longing to break free of the painful strictures of middle-class existence.Less

Drugs and the trail

Sharif Gemie and Brian Ireland

in The Hippie Trail: A History

Was a search for drugs the main motivation that inspired travellers to go to the East? The chapter begins by considering one addict’s experience: however, the argument presented is that this was not ... More

Was a search for drugs the main motivation that inspired travellers to go to the East? The chapter begins by considering one addict’s experience: however, the argument presented is that this was not typical. A historical contextualisation for drug-taking is given, noting how drugs of all sorts were often linked to Eastern cultures, even when there was no direct connection. Varied attitudes towards drug-taking are identified; in particular, the attitudes of an abstaining minority are considered. The chapter concludes by arguing that the existence of a wide range of considerably different attitudes to drug-taking means that drugs cannot be seen as a single, all-encompassing explanation for travel to the east.Less

1957: The Holy Thursday Experiment

Alexander S. Dawson

in Peyote Effect: From the Inquisition to the War on Drugs

After several decades in which scientists produced a slow trickle of scholarship on the potential uses of peyote/mescaline for mental health afflictions, in the 1950s this genre of psychiatric ... More

After several decades in which scientists produced a slow trickle of scholarship on the potential uses of peyote/mescaline for mental health afflictions, in the 1950s this genre of psychiatric research into hallucinogens expanded significantly. Mexico remained a relative backwater for this type of work until 1957, when Dr. José Rodríguez at the Sanatorio Psiquiatrico Santiago Ramírez Moreno in Mexico City initiated a mescaline study, in which a young Mexican doctor named Salvador Roquet participated. Though terrified and initially incapacitated by his experience, over time, Roquet came to believe that the psychedelics he took in this session offered profoundly powerful tools for psychiatry. Over the course of a decade, he sought to learn as much as he could about these drugs from their traditional users, the shamans of the Mazatec and Huichol communities, and to build a medical practice in Mexico City that translated that knowledge into something that would be useful for his urban, ladino, and generally well-educated patients. His Clínica de Psicosíntesis operated in Mexico City from 1967 to 1974.Less

Pilgrims of the Future

Catherine R. Osborne

in American Catholics and the Church of Tomorrow: Building Churches for the Future, 1925-1975

This chapter examines the influence of the theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, on how American Catholics experienced the Cold War and the space race. It argues that Teilhard's cosmic holism ... More

This chapter examines the influence of the theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, on how American Catholics experienced the Cold War and the space race. It argues that Teilhard's cosmic holism enabled them to envision a future of cosmic harmony rather than inevitable nuclear annihilation. It also examines interest in Teilhard among both Catholic and non-Catholic users of psychedelic drugs. Case studies of worship space include suggestions by the artist Louisa Jenkins, three "dream churches" commissioned by the magazine editor Maurice Lavanoux and meant for outer space or the depths of the ocean, and the architect and visionary Paolo Soleri's "arcologies."Less

Afterword: The Counterculture’s Looking Glass

David Farber and Beth Bailey

in Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture

The Sixties-era counterculture had its share of stoned, indolent hippies but it also had a productive wing that included a range of tech-savvy, scientifically minded visionaries. These ... More

The Sixties-era counterculture had its share of stoned, indolent hippies but it also had a productive wing that included a range of tech-savvy, scientifically minded visionaries. These countercultural tech activists did some of their best work well into the 1970s as they sought to make science and technology a human-scaled, hands-on enterprise that reached for the sublime possibilities of both transcendence and connection.Less

Introduction: Midcentury Media’s Trip With LSD

Stephen Siff

in Acid Hype: American News Media and the Psychedelic Experience

This introductory chapter describes the media hype over LSD and related psychedelic drugs: a grand arrival to a 1950s cultural landscape that had been deliberately scrubbed of alluring descriptions ... More

This introductory chapter describes the media hype over LSD and related psychedelic drugs: a grand arrival to a 1950s cultural landscape that had been deliberately scrubbed of alluring descriptions of drug use; the the picturesque drug trips related in mainstream magazines and newspapers; sensational television specials and radio discussions; the contradictory reactions in mass media as the drugs accrued both casualties and countercultural cachet; and, finally, the loss of interest in psychedelic drugs by mainstream media outlets at the end of the 1960s. Ultimately, the book's goal is to not build a general theory but to shed light on a particular case through close examination of the media content and circumstances surrounding it.Less

Introducing LSD, 1953–1956

Stephen Siff

in Acid Hype: American News Media and the Psychedelic Experience

This chapter studies the dramatic appearance of LSD on the news agenda in reports on scientific studies using drugs to simulate madness, and the concurrent discussion of mystical, mind-expanding drug ... More

This chapter studies the dramatic appearance of LSD on the news agenda in reports on scientific studies using drugs to simulate madness, and the concurrent discussion of mystical, mind-expanding drug use sparked by the publication of Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception. In addressing these topics, journalists introduced American audiences to new drugs and to the use of drugs to create mental states considered to have significant scholarly and academic importance. Scholarly interest gave journalists license to describe drug states that previously had been considered inappropriate for public view. Reports in mainstream media outlets were followed quickly by even more sensational coverage in more marginal publications.Less

Research at the Intersection of Media and Medicine, 1957–1962

Stephen Siff

in Acid Hype: American News Media and the Psychedelic Experience

This chapter explores cross-fertilization between researchers and media figures in the late 1950s, as LSD spread from controlled trials to the black market. News reporters gravitated toward research ... More

This chapter explores cross-fertilization between researchers and media figures in the late 1950s, as LSD spread from controlled trials to the black market. News reporters gravitated toward research documenting astonishing results with LSD, even as those studies were becoming further removed from the scientific consensus about the drug. Scholars James Coleman, Elihu Katz, and Herbert Menzel launched the study of the diffusion of tetracycline that resulted in the landmark Medical Innovation, cementing the idea that innovations spread through interpersonal relationships. Allowing for a role for media in informing physicians of the existence of new drugs, the scholars emphasized the apparent importance of social relationships in spreading the determination to actually use them.Less

Luce, Leary, and LSD, 1963–1965

Stephen Siff

in Acid Hype: American News Media and the Psychedelic Experience

This chapter details the celebrity coverage of Timothy Leary in the early 1960s and interest in LSD at Time and Life, where the publisher Henry Luce was becoming increasingly outspoken about his ... More

This chapter details the celebrity coverage of Timothy Leary in the early 1960s and interest in LSD at Time and Life, where the publisher Henry Luce was becoming increasingly outspoken about his interest in the drug. Reporters often treated Leary—a Harvard psychologist removed from his job as a result of drug experimentation—with skepticism while still permitting him to explain the LSD phenomenon and relying on his scholarship and wit. Journalists were often surprisingly accepting of Leary's conclusions about the drug experience, even while condemning his encouragement of drug use. Among the many magazines focusing attention on LSD, Time and Life were particularly protective of the technology and hopeful that it could be productively used by regular people.Less

Moral Panic and Media Hype, 1966–1968

Stephen Siff

in Acid Hype: American News Media and the Psychedelic Experience

This chapter focuses on how media coverage of LSD changed as recreational use of the drug was increasingly identified as an aspect of the blossoming hippie movement. Horror stories about LSD side ... More

This chapter focuses on how media coverage of LSD changed as recreational use of the drug was increasingly identified as an aspect of the blossoming hippie movement. Horror stories about LSD side effects and tales of nightmarish trips, including several that were demonstrably false, circulated through media. Still, the apparent cultural currency of psychedelic experience encouraged magazines in particular to continue to describe and depict drug experiences for their readers. A number of publications, including Time and Life, defended the importance of LSD and psychedelic experiences even while condemning its reckless use. The significance of LSD experiences was weighed against its harm to users in a number of television specials, radio documentaries, and printed reports.Less

Postscript: Psychedelic Media

Stephen Siff

in Acid Hype: American News Media and the Psychedelic Experience

This concluding chapter explains the dramatic decline in interest in LSD by the news media after about 1968, when the federal government finally prohibited possession of the drug. In the face of ... More

This concluding chapter explains the dramatic decline in interest in LSD by the news media after about 1968, when the federal government finally prohibited possession of the drug. In the face of growing government activism against drugs, elaborate reenactments of LSD trips faded from the news agenda. However, the psychedelic world introduced by the news media was increasingly enacted by television and film producers emboldened by the decline of the television and motion-picture production codes. As the 1960s faded into history, entertainment programming frequently offered itself as a substitute for the psychedelic drug experience that journalists had taught Americans to seek. Through intensive hype of LSD and psychedelic phenomena, the news media demonstrated the transporting, mind-expanding power not only of drugs, but also of journalism.Less