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Pretty weak on background. The introduction of LSD to America was mostly thanks to the CIA's search for a 'truth serum' which involved farming out their collec

Pretty weak on background. The introduction of LSD to America was mostly thanks to the CIA's search for a 'truth serum' which involved farming out their collection of powerful hallucinogens and other substances to a variety of institutions, from prisons to army bases to prostitution brothels to universities (along with research into things like sleep deprivation, electroshock, sensory isolation, etc.). While it's unlikely the CIA wanted to help kickstart a socially disruptive psychedelic movement (which was notably anti-authoritarian in nature), that was the consequence. The closest the article comes to mentioning this is: > "In Berkeley, as well as across the bay in Palo Alto, young people seeking a new way to live had begun using LSD to break down conventional social barriers. Until then, the drug had been available in America only to those conducting serious medical research. In 1959, the poet Allen Ginsberg took LSD for the first time, at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto. A year later, the novelist Ken Kesey was given acid at the Veterans Hospital in Menlo Park as part of a federally funded program in which volunteers were paid twenty dollars a session to ingest hallucinogens." As far as the psychedelic movement in general, LSD was only one of several substances, such as mescaline and psilocybin, that came to popular attention via a variety of routes, such as Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" (1954), and R Gordon Wasson's 1950s-era research into traditional psychedelic mushroom use in Mexico (a research program also secretly funded by the CIA's MK-ULTRA program). Apparently the members of the CIA's hallucinogen program used to dose each other all the time in the 1950s, until they found it would cause unpredictable behavior in some people - like a sudden attack of psychedelic-inspired moral conscience, see the Frank Olson incident for example. Sort of a 'while tripping my brains out I suddenly realized that manufacturing biological weapons was wrong!' type of story: https://wariscrime.com/new/scientist-frank-olson-killed-by-the-cia/ https://wariscrime.com/new/scientist-frank-olson-killed-by-t...

dr_dshiv 4y ago
> R Gordon Wasson's 1950s-era research into traditional psychedelic mushroom use in Mexico (a research program also secretly funded by the CIA's MK-ULTRA program). I don’t think Wasson had anything to do with MKUltra. Any source?
- dwater 4y ago
  "Wasson's 1956 expedition was funded by the CIA's MK-Ultra subproject 58, as was revealed by documents obtained by John Marks under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents state that Wasson was an 'unwitting' participant in the project." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Gordon_Wasson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Gordon_Wasson
  - dr_dshiv 4y ago
    Thanks for posting, I appreciate it. However… Makes no sense to me. I just don’t understand how they would fund his trip—let alone secretly. Also, he discovered magic mushrooms the first time— none of the ethnobotanists had yet. How did they know? I will remain skeptical till I get to primary sources.
    - Sin2x 4y ago
      See here: http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/mkultra/mkultra4/DOC_0000017457/DOC_0000017457.pdf http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/mkultra/mkultra... (58-2) This document states, however, that Wasson had three expeditions prior to CIA involvement.
    - lioeters 4y ago
      Apparently this topic is a deep rabbit hole. Here are some very questionable "fringe" theories. http://www.gordonwasson.com/ http://www.gordonwasson.com/ https://logosmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject https://logosmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6FBA86B0-0C57-9FCA-5CF9-D742DA541AAA#-4411 https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6FBA86B0-0C57-9FCA-5CF9...
      - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        > Apparently this topic is a deep rabbit hole. That's when you know you're on the right path — when the answers start getting harder to find, with more time between your certainty.
    - 4y ago
dwater 4y ago
Let's not forget perhaps their most famous alumnus, Ted Kaczynski aka the Unabomber [1]. It's not clear whether or not they dosed him with psychedelics, but the records of the research done to him were sealed [2], so we only know for sure that they inflicted significant psychological trauma on him. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-and-the-making-of-the-unabomber/378239/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard... [2] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2000/7/14/murray-center-seals-kaczynski-data-plondon-buried/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2000/7/14/murray-center-s...
- kirsebaer 4y ago
  The study that Kaczynski participated in did not involve LSD and in interviews Kaczynski has denied ever using LSD.
- asveikau 4y ago
  That Atlantic article fascinated me, but 1. It does not really say what you are claiming it says and 2. I disagree with the author's impression he was not psychotic. That whole "I've decided to kill" quote drove it home for me. First sentence is absurd, then the rest of the excerpt is very typical anosognosia. In fact I've read the manifesto before and I concluded you can't separate his message from his psychosis and violence, and it has a recognizable quality that I've seen before in people close to me with that kind of illness. He was smart, but having such a disorder doesn't mean you're intellectually disabled. Just look at John Nash or Vincent van Gogh.
jamal-kumar 4y ago
One of the most interesting figures from this era is Captain Al Hubbard [1]. He was one of the original proponents of the stuff going back to the 1950s. The amount of people in high places he introduced to the stuff went all the way up to Aldous Huxley via Dr. Humphrey Osmond. I once found one of the clinics where a bunch of experiments were done in Vancouver and called it up out of curiosity, nobody in there had any idea about the history of that place. Pretty crazy how long it took for this kind of research to find its way back into the mainstream. I hope it helps a lot of people. I'm not sure what else will at this point. [1] https://www.trippingly.net/lsd-studies/2018/5/20/al-hubbard-the-original-captain-trips https://www.trippingly.net/lsd-studies/2018/5/20/al-hubbard-...

dr_dshiv 4y ago

> R Gordon Wasson's 1950s-era research into traditional psychedelic mushroom use in Mexico (a research program also secretly funded by the CIA's MK-ULTRA program). I don’t think Wasson had anything to do with MKUltra. Any source?

dwater 4y ago
"Wasson's 1956 expedition was funded by the CIA's MK-Ultra subproject 58, as was revealed by documents obtained by John Marks under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents state that Wasson was an 'unwitting' participant in the project." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Gordon_Wasson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Gordon_Wasson
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  Thanks for posting, I appreciate it. However… Makes no sense to me. I just don’t understand how they would fund his trip—let alone secretly. Also, he discovered magic mushrooms the first time— none of the ethnobotanists had yet. How did they know? I will remain skeptical till I get to primary sources.
  - Sin2x 4y ago
    See here: http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/mkultra/mkultra4/DOC_0000017457/DOC_0000017457.pdf http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/mkultra/mkultra... (58-2) This document states, however, that Wasson had three expeditions prior to CIA involvement.
  - lioeters 4y ago
    Apparently this topic is a deep rabbit hole. Here are some very questionable "fringe" theories. http://www.gordonwasson.com/ http://www.gordonwasson.com/ https://logosmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject https://logosmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6FBA86B0-0C57-9FCA-5CF9-D742DA541AAA#-4411 https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6FBA86B0-0C57-9FCA-5CF9...
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      > Apparently this topic is a deep rabbit hole. That's when you know you're on the right path — when the answers start getting harder to find, with more time between your certainty.
  - 4y ago

dwater 4y ago

Let's not forget perhaps their most famous alumnus, Ted Kaczynski aka the Unabomber [1]. It's not clear whether or not they dosed him with psychedelics, but the records of the research done to him were sealed [2], so we only know for sure that they inflicted significant psychological trauma on him. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-and-the-making-of-the-unabomber/378239/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard... [2] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2000/7/14/murray-center-seals-kaczynski-data-plondon-buried/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2000/7/14/murray-center-s...

kirsebaer 4y ago
The study that Kaczynski participated in did not involve LSD and in interviews Kaczynski has denied ever using LSD.
asveikau 4y ago
That Atlantic article fascinated me, but 1. It does not really say what you are claiming it says and 2. I disagree with the author's impression he was not psychotic. That whole "I've decided to kill" quote drove it home for me. First sentence is absurd, then the rest of the excerpt is very typical anosognosia. In fact I've read the manifesto before and I concluded you can't separate his message from his psychosis and violence, and it has a recognizable quality that I've seen before in people close to me with that kind of illness. He was smart, but having such a disorder doesn't mean you're intellectually disabled. Just look at John Nash or Vincent van Gogh.

jamal-kumar 4y ago

One of the most interesting figures from this era is Captain Al Hubbard [1]. He was one of the original proponents of the stuff going back to the 1950s. The amount of people in high places he introduced to the stuff went all the way up to Aldous Huxley via Dr. Humphrey Osmond. I once found one of the clinics where a bunch of experiments were done in Vancouver and called it up out of curiosity, nobody in there had any idea about the history of that place. Pretty crazy how long it took for this kind of research to find its way back into the mainstream. I hope it helps a lot of people. I'm not sure what else will at this point. [1] https://www.trippingly.net/lsd-studies/2018/5/20/al-hubbard-the-original-captain-trips https://www.trippingly.net/lsd-studies/2018/5/20/al-hubbard-...