A trip or three back in time, with LSD and mescaline in the 1950s
October 12, 2014 6:50 AM Subscribe
Dr. Sidney Cohen talks to an unnamed housewife who volunteers to take LSD at Veteran's Administration Hospital circa 1954*, "Schizophrenia Psychosis Induced by LSD25" circa 1955**, and Mescaline (peyote) experiment with Humphry Osmond testing on Christopher Mayhew*** in 1955.
* Open Culture has a post on the unnamed volunteer at the Veteran's Administration Hospital, and ABC News even had a piece on the clip when it first surfaced online in 2011.
** The second video is attributed as a video of the CIA's Project MKUltra, and is supposedly filmed at USC's medical school, with the volunteer being William Millarc, an artist who committed suicide two years after this experiment. These connections are vague at best.
*** SOTCAA has a decent write-up of the video, in which the promising Labor politician and known TV presenter, Christopher Mayhew is "led astray" into trying mescaline for an unbroadcast epiosde of BBC's Panorama program, by a friend from school, Dr Humphry Fortescue Osmond, who was interested in hallucinogenics back in the early 1950s.
* Open Culture has a post on the unnamed volunteer at the Veteran's Administration Hospital, and ABC News even had a piece on the clip when it first surfaced online in 2011.
** The second video is attributed as a video of the CIA's Project MKUltra, and is supposedly filmed at USC's medical school, with the volunteer being William Millarc, an artist who committed suicide two years after this experiment. These connections are vague at best.
*** SOTCAA has a decent write-up of the video, in which the promising Labor politician and known TV presenter, Christopher Mayhew is "led astray" into trying mescaline for an unbroadcast epiosde of BBC's Panorama program, by a friend from school, Dr Humphry Fortescue Osmond, who was interested in hallucinogenics back in the early 1950s.
Whew. This is hard for me to watch because I think the primary method through which LSD connects us to source is through damaging the parts of the brain that are designed to protected us from excessive stimuli, knowledge or information about the universe, as well as simply damaging the brains methods of understanding the world leaving the spirit to take over.
This is also how I think people recall out of body experiences in which they give details of events that occurred while proclaimed dead. So yes you can damage your brain and then see more.. however that disregards the entire process of why we are set up to be protected from that, and the normal evolution from birth to death into blossoming into a new experience of the universe.
I see it as a destructive spiritual practice. As an agnostic this is just a guess so sure, people can have different views. Just wanted to put in out there because when people claim it's a safe spiritual journey it makes my insides burn on fire that people told me such things with such certainty, but I guess the anger is toward me for having been just an idiot as to believe them. We don't understand things, until we do, and there is no reason being angry at the ignorant who are trying to understand but don't. In this context I feel like I have a huge amount of anger at the medical establish for testing chemicals on human beings for the sake of research. I recognize agreeing to potentially damage people can be seen by some as "for the greater good", I just also feel that there are tons of things we already know could cause people to have healthy lives, like ending inequality and poverty, ensuring people have healthy diets and are not being injured physically or psychology by their work environments, or living environments or community behavioral practices and belief systems.
The idea that we can cheat at doing what we already know we should be doing by using chemicals and we're willing to see people be injured to find some better cheats for the rest of us is wrong.
Also I hate LSD and the men who give it to women to watch them lose their faculties. SO MANY MEN used to love the idea of trying to get me to do acid, for their own evil fucking reasons, so I guess when I see a man wanting to mentally destabilize a woman for an "experiment" while he watches there's an aspect of vulnerability and exploitation that I think is very real in this and in many experiments on humans where researchers pretend to be unbiased and to have no other motives but "science" and no one can call them on it or question what's being done to them because how dare we question scientists or the valuable research they're doing? They ALWAYS have good intentions! Excepting for the huge amount of documented history where they don't and the even huger amount of undocumented history where they also didn't and no one was every able to call them on their bullshit.
I think many people see LSD as a doorway to the heavens or God, but not as many wonder at why god would not open these doors without the use of such a chemical. We have worked our asses off the destroy God, to destroy our connection with the divine, to destroy our connection with beings around us. Have people who use a chemical to open these doors when it's convenient and you can enjoy the pretty colors and the spiritual ecstasy not considered that God and the conscious universe is all around you asking you to see the consciousness of other beings every day and you say no? Asking you to love the homeless, asking you to see the conscious earth, that we pillage and destroy, we TAKE and we give back NOTHING to nature. We see nature as resources to fulfill us and we give nothing back seeing none of the trees, and earth, and soil, and plants, sun and rivers as dancing with life energy themselves. We DESTROY ATOMS to let the essence explode and we delight, the cold cruel masters of the matter that we are, matter is not unconscious WE ARE! We are the beasts. And we sit there as scientists, scientists who torture animals and living beings, who dissect and torture living cells to do "good" who torture the poor and vulnerable and foolish to see what gains they can provide "humanity" even while turning away from serving the true force of compassion with their whole being, their careers, their social status and their pocket books, and we want God to dance for us in a clinical setting where we can control the divine.
If you know compassion you would see suffering as unacceptable, you would unite together to lift up all the suffering, you should see the dancing alive nature of the universe, YOUR SUN HAS A HEARTBEAT.
And you call it a scientific phenomena! Foolish, foolish humans.
And this housewife had to go home to male supremacist husband as those were the times, where there was no right to say no, wake up with greater consciousness to what? Perhaps god gives ignorance to those who have wrongfully been taken into hell, as innocents to serve as prey for the beasts.
This is just freestyle, stream of conscious response- I feel it fits the general theme of the post, watching people in various states and such. My ramblings are for science or something.
posted by xarnop at 7:40 AM on October 12, 2014 [22 favorites]
This is also how I think people recall out of body experiences in which they give details of events that occurred while proclaimed dead. So yes you can damage your brain and then see more.. however that disregards the entire process of why we are set up to be protected from that, and the normal evolution from birth to death into blossoming into a new experience of the universe.
I see it as a destructive spiritual practice. As an agnostic this is just a guess so sure, people can have different views. Just wanted to put in out there because when people claim it's a safe spiritual journey it makes my insides burn on fire that people told me such things with such certainty, but I guess the anger is toward me for having been just an idiot as to believe them. We don't understand things, until we do, and there is no reason being angry at the ignorant who are trying to understand but don't. In this context I feel like I have a huge amount of anger at the medical establish for testing chemicals on human beings for the sake of research. I recognize agreeing to potentially damage people can be seen by some as "for the greater good", I just also feel that there are tons of things we already know could cause people to have healthy lives, like ending inequality and poverty, ensuring people have healthy diets and are not being injured physically or psychology by their work environments, or living environments or community behavioral practices and belief systems.
The idea that we can cheat at doing what we already know we should be doing by using chemicals and we're willing to see people be injured to find some better cheats for the rest of us is wrong.
Also I hate LSD and the men who give it to women to watch them lose their faculties. SO MANY MEN used to love the idea of trying to get me to do acid, for their own evil fucking reasons, so I guess when I see a man wanting to mentally destabilize a woman for an "experiment" while he watches there's an aspect of vulnerability and exploitation that I think is very real in this and in many experiments on humans where researchers pretend to be unbiased and to have no other motives but "science" and no one can call them on it or question what's being done to them because how dare we question scientists or the valuable research they're doing? They ALWAYS have good intentions! Excepting for the huge amount of documented history where they don't and the even huger amount of undocumented history where they also didn't and no one was every able to call them on their bullshit.
I think many people see LSD as a doorway to the heavens or God, but not as many wonder at why god would not open these doors without the use of such a chemical. We have worked our asses off the destroy God, to destroy our connection with the divine, to destroy our connection with beings around us. Have people who use a chemical to open these doors when it's convenient and you can enjoy the pretty colors and the spiritual ecstasy not considered that God and the conscious universe is all around you asking you to see the consciousness of other beings every day and you say no? Asking you to love the homeless, asking you to see the conscious earth, that we pillage and destroy, we TAKE and we give back NOTHING to nature. We see nature as resources to fulfill us and we give nothing back seeing none of the trees, and earth, and soil, and plants, sun and rivers as dancing with life energy themselves. We DESTROY ATOMS to let the essence explode and we delight, the cold cruel masters of the matter that we are, matter is not unconscious WE ARE! We are the beasts. And we sit there as scientists, scientists who torture animals and living beings, who dissect and torture living cells to do "good" who torture the poor and vulnerable and foolish to see what gains they can provide "humanity" even while turning away from serving the true force of compassion with their whole being, their careers, their social status and their pocket books, and we want God to dance for us in a clinical setting where we can control the divine.
If you know compassion you would see suffering as unacceptable, you would unite together to lift up all the suffering, you should see the dancing alive nature of the universe, YOUR SUN HAS A HEARTBEAT.
And you call it a scientific phenomena! Foolish, foolish humans.
And this housewife had to go home to male supremacist husband as those were the times, where there was no right to say no, wake up with greater consciousness to what? Perhaps god gives ignorance to those who have wrongfully been taken into hell, as innocents to serve as prey for the beasts.
This is just freestyle, stream of conscious response- I feel it fits the general theme of the post, watching people in various states and such. My ramblings are for science or something.
posted by xarnop at 7:40 AM on October 12, 2014 [22 favorites]
Dig it.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 7:44 AM on October 12, 2014
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 7:44 AM on October 12, 2014
"I wish I could talk in Technicolor"
posted by forgetful snow at 7:58 AM on October 12, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by forgetful snow at 7:58 AM on October 12, 2014 [2 favorites]
William Millarc, the artist in the second video, killed himself a year later.
posted by shackpalace at 8:01 AM on October 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by shackpalace at 8:01 AM on October 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
Oops. Already mentioned above.
posted by shackpalace at 8:03 AM on October 12, 2014
posted by shackpalace at 8:03 AM on October 12, 2014
When I was 16 I biked everywhere. There was a torn up rail line behind my house and it was the most direct route from work to home. It was rare to see anybody on that route.
Imagine my surprise when I come upon the high school track star running down that trail one night and he gives me this tiny little piece of paper with Mickey Mouse on it and tells me to put it in my mouth. "It's acid man!"
This was someone who wouldn't speak to me in school, so of course I did it. He seemed very happy.
Nothing happened. I got home and ate and went to bed and then I woke up afraid of everything. How was I supposed to get down those creaky stairs and not wake up mom and get my bike out of the garage? So I just stayed in bed for hours. The ceiling had lips and wanted a big sloppy kiss. It was awful.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 8:04 AM on October 12, 2014 [2 favorites]
Imagine my surprise when I come upon the high school track star running down that trail one night and he gives me this tiny little piece of paper with Mickey Mouse on it and tells me to put it in my mouth. "It's acid man!"
This was someone who wouldn't speak to me in school, so of course I did it. He seemed very happy.
Nothing happened. I got home and ate and went to bed and then I woke up afraid of everything. How was I supposed to get down those creaky stairs and not wake up mom and get my bike out of the garage? So I just stayed in bed for hours. The ceiling had lips and wanted a big sloppy kiss. It was awful.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 8:04 AM on October 12, 2014 [2 favorites]
I'd seen the housewife on, but now watching the Christopher Mayhew one and it's awesome.
I keep hoping some psilocybin will cross my path again someday.
Also:
" The ceiling had lips and wanted a big sloppy kiss. It was awful."
posted by Mr. Yuck at 10:04 AM
Eponysterical!
posted by symbioid at 8:30 AM on October 12, 2014
I keep hoping some psilocybin will cross my path again someday.
Also:
" The ceiling had lips and wanted a big sloppy kiss. It was awful."
posted by Mr. Yuck at 10:04 AM
Eponysterical!
posted by symbioid at 8:30 AM on October 12, 2014
"I can't tell you about it. If you can't see it you'll just never know it. I feel sorry for you."
posted by grog at 8:37 AM on October 12, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by grog at 8:37 AM on October 12, 2014 [4 favorites]
a friend from school, Dr Humphry Fortescue Osmond, who was interested in hallucinogenics back in the early 1950s.
Humphry Osmond wasn't just "interested in hallucinogenics." He was a major pioneer in LSD research in the 1950s. He even invented the word "psychedelic" in a letter he wrote to Aldous Huxley.
posted by jonp72 at 9:02 AM on October 12, 2014 [4 favorites]
Humphry Osmond wasn't just "interested in hallucinogenics." He was a major pioneer in LSD research in the 1950s. He even invented the word "psychedelic" in a letter he wrote to Aldous Huxley.
posted by jonp72 at 9:02 AM on October 12, 2014 [4 favorites]
Did any of these people given the drugs suffer any long term negative effects? Or is that unknown?
Even if they did, though, I guess no one could say for certain whether it was the drugs that caused it or something totally unrelated, I guess.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 9:13 AM on October 12, 2014
Even if they did, though, I guess no one could say for certain whether it was the drugs that caused it or something totally unrelated, I guess.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 9:13 AM on October 12, 2014
Just a relevant reddit comment on the neurological effects.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:33 AM on October 12, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by jeffburdges at 9:33 AM on October 12, 2014 [2 favorites]
I've done acid a dozen times and mushrooms a few times and had no negative side effects other than a tendency to think that some dumb ideas were really profound.
posted by empath at 9:37 AM on October 12, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by empath at 9:37 AM on October 12, 2014 [4 favorites]
Porcupine Tree's Voyage 34 is interspersed with dialog from a woman experiencing LSD in what sounds like a clinical setting, though I've never ascertained it's provenance
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:58 AM on October 12, 2014
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:58 AM on October 12, 2014
I know a person who has faced a lot of stigmas for having had a very bad experience while being on angel caps and having a misdiagnosed infection which caused some permanent brain damage ie psychosis permanent short term memory loss and his personality's stuck in the mind of a 17 year old--when he had the crash.
It's sad that people don't recognize his ticks for what they are, a bad occurence with drugs while having an infection.
posted by Meatafoecure at 10:21 AM on October 12, 2014
It's sad that people don't recognize his ticks for what they are, a bad occurence with drugs while having an infection.
posted by Meatafoecure at 10:21 AM on October 12, 2014
My senior year of high school (1994/95) there was some wonderful stuff going around called chocolate mescaline, which was a very even-tempered psychedelic mixed into powdered chocolate milk mix.
I dunno....mescaline is supposed to be really hard to find, I have heard. Quite possibly there was something else in there, maybe MDMA, but who knows.
posted by thelonius at 10:38 AM on October 12, 2014
I dunno....mescaline is supposed to be really hard to find, I have heard. Quite possibly there was something else in there, maybe MDMA, but who knows.
posted by thelonius at 10:38 AM on October 12, 2014
xarnop - it would take a book to respond to every point your raise, so excuse me if I just narrow in on this ...
We DESTROY ATOMS to let the essence explode and we delight, the cold cruel masters of the matter that we are, matter is not unconscious WE ARE! We are the beasts.
Do a little research and you'll find that, on a broad historical timeline, LSD was synthesized and the atom split very, very close to one another -- the former by accident (obscure Swiss chemist mucking about with mold experiments while WW2 raged around him), the latter by massive intention (the Manhattan Project).
I don't know who said it first, but it always made a certain poetic sense to me: God gave us LSD because he knew that, having split the atom, we needed something to force us outside of our closed monkey brains, else we'd destroy everything forever ... and in very short order.
And so on.
posted by philip-random at 10:41 AM on October 12, 2014 [5 favorites]
We DESTROY ATOMS to let the essence explode and we delight, the cold cruel masters of the matter that we are, matter is not unconscious WE ARE! We are the beasts.
Do a little research and you'll find that, on a broad historical timeline, LSD was synthesized and the atom split very, very close to one another -- the former by accident (obscure Swiss chemist mucking about with mold experiments while WW2 raged around him), the latter by massive intention (the Manhattan Project).
I don't know who said it first, but it always made a certain poetic sense to me: God gave us LSD because he knew that, having split the atom, we needed something to force us outside of our closed monkey brains, else we'd destroy everything forever ... and in very short order.
And so on.
posted by philip-random at 10:41 AM on October 12, 2014 [5 favorites]
Terence McKenna claimed that on psychedelic drugs he received transmissions from entities/beings/spirits who gave to him the content of his "Novelty Theory" and his "Timewave Zero".
The "Schizophrenia Diagnosis" movie is mislabeled. He was tripping! What is that thing that many doctors do where they rush into their next sentence or question? I am suspicious when I observe this mode of communication they aren't really thinking about what they are saying, more like reciting a lesson and doing it quickly because they have learned that smart people think fast and talk fast and they get rewarded for being smart with dog biscuits or something.
Having an artist with his sober drawing and an apples to apples comparison with his trippy drawing is a great datum. I am so glad that I saw that youtube. I wonder if McKenna was aware of such data. One of my very first experiments was writing down my deep thoughts while under the influence and then reviewing them later, sober. And they were total dreck.
posted by bukvich at 11:35 AM on October 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
The "Schizophrenia Diagnosis" movie is mislabeled. He was tripping! What is that thing that many doctors do where they rush into their next sentence or question? I am suspicious when I observe this mode of communication they aren't really thinking about what they are saying, more like reciting a lesson and doing it quickly because they have learned that smart people think fast and talk fast and they get rewarded for being smart with dog biscuits or something.
Having an artist with his sober drawing and an apples to apples comparison with his trippy drawing is a great datum. I am so glad that I saw that youtube. I wonder if McKenna was aware of such data. One of my very first experiments was writing down my deep thoughts while under the influence and then reviewing them later, sober. And they were total dreck.
posted by bukvich at 11:35 AM on October 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
This is just freestyle, stream of conscious response
Wha - that was a great comment! Flagged as excellent.
posted by sweetkid at 12:12 PM on October 12, 2014
Wha - that was a great comment! Flagged as excellent.
posted by sweetkid at 12:12 PM on October 12, 2014
"I can't tell you about it. If you can't see it you'll just never know it. I feel sorry for you."
Wish I could find some again the LSD is the most baby. Strongly encourage all of you with access to it to send me some (and of course also try it yourself duh).
posted by Meatbomb at 2:39 PM on October 12, 2014
Wish I could find some again the LSD is the most baby. Strongly encourage all of you with access to it to send me some (and of course also try it yourself duh).
posted by Meatbomb at 2:39 PM on October 12, 2014
meatbomb - Follow the bitcoins ...
*takes drag on cigarette, steps back into shadows*
posted by plasmatron7 at 3:26 PM on October 12, 2014
*takes drag on cigarette, steps back into shadows*
posted by plasmatron7 at 3:26 PM on October 12, 2014
I think the primary method through which LSD connects us to source is through damaging the parts of the brain
LSD does not damage the brain or receptors the way, say, methamphetamine degrades receptors over time.
Have people who use a chemical to open these doors when it's convenient and you can enjoy the pretty colors and the spiritual ecstasy not considered that God and the conscious universe is all around you asking you to see the consciousness of other beings every day and you say no?
Have you considered that "psychedelic experiences" (or "altered states of consiousness") can be constructive in helping someone find the value and meaning in the universe of everyday life?
posted by Taft at 4:34 PM on October 12, 2014 [5 favorites]
LSD does not damage the brain or receptors the way, say, methamphetamine degrades receptors over time.
Have people who use a chemical to open these doors when it's convenient and you can enjoy the pretty colors and the spiritual ecstasy not considered that God and the conscious universe is all around you asking you to see the consciousness of other beings every day and you say no?
Have you considered that "psychedelic experiences" (or "altered states of consiousness") can be constructive in helping someone find the value and meaning in the universe of everyday life?
posted by Taft at 4:34 PM on October 12, 2014 [5 favorites]
Xarnop, I disagreed with a lot of what you said but I am mighty glad to have been here to have heard you say it.
posted by cleroy at 7:32 PM on October 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by cleroy at 7:32 PM on October 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
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posted by oceanjesse at 7:18 AM on October 12, 2014