Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD And The Sixties Rebellion (1994) - Plot & Excerpts
This is really as much a book about the CIA as about LSD. Authors Martin Lee and Bruce Shalin follow the 1938 discovery of Lsysergic Acid Diethylamide from the Sandoz Pharmaceuticals research lab in Switzerland to the psychedelic-soaked streets of San Francisco in 1970. The cast of characters is large and unlikely, including: scientists, political activists, politicians, an heir of the Mellon (Gulf Oil/ Mellon Bank) fortune, rockstars, law enforcement, the mafia, CIA, FBI, MI-6, INTERPOL, and the Hell's Angels.Most readers will have at least a passing familiarity with the pop culture aspects of LSD: flower children, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Woodstock, Haight-Ashbury, the Grateful Dead and Timothy Leary. That stuff has been well-covered in a thousand other books, so I won't elaborate here. Much less-explored, and in my opinion more interesting, is the story of what the CIA made of LSD. Discoverer Albert Hoffmann's early notes describe intense hallucinations and altered consciousness upon ingestion. Some of the anecdotes here are comical (e.g. tripping out while riding a bicycle through the streets of Zurich), but they attracted the attention of national security agencies. From its inception in 1947, the CIA took an active interest in the drug, believing its disorienting properties would make it a good "truth serum". A little exposition is in order here: there's apparently been a long history of intelligence agencies seeking out a fabled "truth serum", as if it were some sort of Holy Grail of the spy world. Through client agencies (including, oddly, several Canadian universities), the CIA conducted experiments exploring the pliability and suggestibility of subjects tripping on the compound. Often, the studies were conducted on people with questionable ability to refuse participation, such as the mentally deranged, prisoners, military recruits, and the terminally ill. Other times, studies were conducted on the unwitting or misinformed. The now-famous "MK-ULTRA" mind control program- as seen in "The Manchurian Candidate", "The X-Files" and Vigilantcitizen.com - are mentioned here in passing, but only as part of a much larger body of unethical experimentation. On one occasion, in 1954, the CIA actually rigged a New York City subway car to spray an aerosolized solution of LSD on riders. Those were unconsenting taxpayers! The very people who funded the CIA... who trusted it was "out there" fighting the good fight against the "Red Menace", not drugging up American citizens. Oh, the naïveté!The experiments didn't have the desired results, and the CIA eventually gave up on LSD as a truth serum. Instead of giving up entirely, the agency came to think of LSD as a good potential incapacitating agent. Weapons were devised. An LSD-laden hand grenade, for example- meant to disperse the hallucinogen throughout an enemy's camp on detonation, rendering them useless to fight. The grenade was actually manufactured and used in actual battlefield trials in Vietnam, but again proved disappointing. Results ranged from unreliable to completely ineffective; too little of the drug remained after the initial explosion, and there was no way to keep it from blowing back and affecting American troops. (American troops were big fans of LSD, it happens, and the book details that fact, but I will not here.) While Defense designers were busy coming up with weaponized psychadelics like that, civilian use was rapidly accelerating. From the mid-50's to mid-60's, enthusiastic intellectuals like Aldous Huxley popularized hallucinigens in writings like "The Doors of Perception" (from whom the band "The Doors" take their name). This encouragement pushed LSD into the common practice of psychotherapists, psychologists, academic philosophers, religious practitioners, even social workers. During a brief "golden age" of experimentation, the substance was uncontrolled, easy to obtain, and there were no stigmas attached to its use. From these conditions arose some unexpected developments: it turns out that LSD therapy has the best success rate of any program for rehabilitating chronic alcoholism. Creative types hailed it as a new muse- and indeed, Acid Rock, Acid Jazz, Alan Guinsburg's poetry, and William S. Burrough's novels seem to back this up- and no less than a Roman Catholic cardinal wrote that the substance is a gift from God, for the perspectives it opened users up to. Perspectives... that's what the philosophical war about LSD was waged over. The new post-war generation followed Timothy Leary's advice, and turned on to LSD. Unlike alcohol, it didn't intoxicate them. Unlike marijuana, it didn't mellow them. For lack of a better descriptor, it blew their minds.... made a lot of them spiritual. Users write about it intellectually, as a horizon expander, and the CIA, (California) Gov. Ronald Reagan, and other standard-bearers for conservatism came to see LSD and the expanded horizons that come with it as a reason the younger generation wasn't uncritically accepting the values and narratives of their elders. The postwar kids weren't putting their noses to the grindstone, dreaming of climbing the corporate ladder, working for The Man, and accumulating the prizes of mid-century consumerism; they were tripping out, dreaming of spiritual planes, worldwide love, communal consciousness, and a lot of other non-monetizable hooey. This is of course simplistic, but there is probably also a kernal of truth there too. The war in Vietnam was a more immediate source of youth discontent, and the demographics of the "baby boom" had more to do with inter-generational conflict than psychadelics. The social upheaval of the late 60's was multifactoral, but there in the midst of it was LSD, and that was an easy scapegoat. The powers that be, who once harbored secret hopes that LSD would be a tool of social control, now saw it as an inspiration to dissidents. It had to be turned off. It was made illegal in 1966, and the CIA and FBI used the apparatus of drug law enforcement to infiltrate and at times derail social protest movements. The mainstream press joined in, publishing apocryphal stories about LSD causing chromosome damage (there appears to be no evidence of this), and citing fictional cases about users trapped forever in a "bad trip". Simultaneously, however, the CIA had a hand in the production, distribution, and sale of LSD. It was a great source of revenue with no Congressional accountability tied to it. The final third of this book details a very complex web of CIA money laundering, through mafia-run Caribbean casinos and offshore banks run by politically well-connected freewheeling Wall Street financiers. To distribute the drug, the CIA had dubious partnerships with "Hell's Angels" biker gang, and production occured at one point on a cult commune in rural New Mexico. There are double and triple agents, as well as CIA "assets" in Hollywood and both major American political parties. Even the most outrageous James Bond plot can't outdo the crazy history of the CIA and LSD.Lee and Shalin wrap up the narrative in the mid-70's, with the flower children disbursing, the Vietnam war over, and new fads in recreational drug use on the horizon. Since then, cocaine has moved more money, commanded more interest, and created more geopolitical intrigue than LSD. Every drug probably has its own interesting story, but this one is worth reading.
Breif: This was a mind clenching book for it was mostly about conspiracys done by the CIA in the United States of America to find a truth Serium. Eventually, the truth serium, was found to be L.S.D. and it spreed to all forms of American culture. It also talked about the Nazi Scientist who worked on American Soldiers to find this serium. It was interesting to read, and really makes you question what is going on in the world today. This is why I really enjoyed this book.Samantha KerncSeptember 23, 2008Lit- to- WorldLiterary AnalysesAcid DreamstThroughout the ages US intelligence has fought in many wars. During the 1940’s and into the 1960’s they were heavily involved in the Cold War trying to undermind the Soviet Union and Cuba as well as communism in various places around the world. This is where my mind journey begins. This is a story that opened my eyes to what our government is really like, and not all the false propaganda that is proposed on television, on the radio, and in the everyday talk of other Americans. I was very surprised to find out that my America that I have envisioned was so pure and full of justice is so condescending or hypocritical. The CIA was one of America’s top intelligence groups and still is today. Today there is a war going on. This is the war against Terrorist Groups under the leadership of Al Quida networks. These Terrorist Groups are found in Afghanistan, and Iraq. Isn’t there some suspicious between the misleading truths of yesteryear and today?tOur national intelligence went into Iraq after proposing that weapons of mass-destruction were threatening the United States. These weapons of mass-destruction led us to the War on Terror. When we shipped our sons and daughters of America off to Iraq we learned that there are not these so called weapons of mass-destruction that the US was telling us about. So what did our country do after we found no weapons? Our country decided, well, we should stay there to help the people over come their leader. The United States of America said that we need to take down and overthrow this malicious tyrant because of all the horrid atrocities that he had done to his own people. Case in point, that Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein both used their own people to test bullet, bombs, drugs, and other war crimes. We had to save them and force the people to become just like us and be completely Americanized. What I learned in the book “Acid Dreams” was that we truly are no different than the countries that we say we’re trying to save. In our CIA, which John F. Kennedy tried to dismantle, we hired known Nazi war criminals. There were 600 hired Nazi scientists that were pardoned for all their war crimes while residing at concentration camps, but not only were they pardoned they received a high government status, a highly paid jobs, and a lifelong pension for the rest of their life and their families. While these Nazi scientists were still in Germany at Dachau concentration camp they would experiment with the human capacity for how long people could survive in different conditions using; weather aliments, bombs, gas, bullets, starvation, thirst, labor, mental abilities, and the list goes on and on. Our top Nazi scientists were: Dr. Hubertus Strughold, Dr. Sigmund Ruff, and Dr. Sigmund Rascher. It was known that Dr. Hubertus Strughold injected gasoline into inmates at Dachau concentration camp, and would either have them shot with a bullet so they could burn to death or crush them to death and then burn the bodies later. We let these scientists conduct experiments on our US Navy and Infantry during Operation Bluebird, Operation Artichoke and many others. On our soldiers they tried to find a “Truth Drug” or TD which was the billion dollar mission of the OSS “Office of Strategic Services.” This TD was supposed to be a speech inducing agent that was colorless, tasteless, and odorless so it could be administered in food or drink. They tried many substances: morphine, ether, Benzeclrine, ethyl alcohol, mescaline, marijuana, etc. The one that fit with their best option was Lysergic acid diethylaminde or LSD-25. It was delivered to the hands of the CIA by Dr. Werner Stoll who invented it using the ergot wheat fungus. It had all that they had wanted in a drug. At first, it had been used to induce speech and was given to foreign spies from whom we wanted information. It turned out to be not that affective since some of the spy’s figured out that they had been drugged. Then our government tried to use a stronger dose on our own spies, so if they were on a dangerous mission they could take the pill and would only speak gibberish while being questioned. When the drug was used in the battlefields of Vietnam it proved ineffective. They found more of the solders were being sent home from insanity than they were from being shot in battle. When LSD-25 was introduced in Vietnam it switched over to the popular culture of the American public and spread like wildfire. This was almost the overturn of our nation when the counter culture took over. When LSD spread to the Soviet Union the author thought it was a contributing factor in the break up of the Soviet Union.I found the facts presented in this book, “Acid Dreams,” were rather disturbing. It destroyed my optimistic connotations of America and it’s representation of righteousness. I would have never believed that someone would have hired Nazi scientists who had committed so many atrocities. I will always be left this question, why is it that in all of our history books do we only hear of the one side about all the Nazi’s who were committed for war crimes, and not about all the rest who were not punished?
What do You think about Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD And The Sixties Rebellion (1994)?
This is probably still my all-time favorite non-fiction book. It is certainly the book that had the biggest influence on my view of the world at the time in my life (early 20s) when I read it.I even remember buying it in West LA and starting it and feeling ticked at my friends for insisting I go out with them to see a terrible movie ("Boxing Helena") instead of staying home and reading it. This book reads like the best sort of spy novel, but with the added bonus that the stuff in it, crazy as it is, mind-bending as it is, is TRUE. If you have any sort of faith in the general decency of governments, this is the sort of book that will puncture a big hole in that faith.In short, the book details the massive role LSD played in the 1950s and 1960s. It mostly takes place in the U.S. The story we Gen Xers learned in the 1980s is mostly focused on the social revolution of the in-living-color 1960s, where LSD played a role in making young people grow their hair long, protest against the government with regard to the Vietnam War, Civl Rights, explore Eastern forms of spirituality and practice what they euphemistically dubbed "free love." Of course, growing up in the Reagan 1980s, we were subject more to the downside than the upside of all of this, so hearing LSD as a teenager instantly put thoughts of losing one's mind and jumping off a building thinking one could fly, or of running off and joining a cult of killers led by a madman like Charles Manson.But this book sets the record straight and what was most fascinating was learning about its history before it was made illegal in the 1966, about how the governments of the world in the post-World War II era were seeking truth serums for espionage purposes and how LSD was one of the drugs they investigated. This all ties into how the culture of that time was technology-obsessed, believing that we would come to have "better living through chemistry" as the popular t-shirt said in the 1960s, and how both the government, with their search for truth serums, and the youth, with their search for personal expression and discovery, both bought into that.Ultimately, this is truly a classic of non-fiction reporting that doesn't get the credit it deserves. While Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" is a wonderful ride and a great example of the New Journalism of the 1960s, it is a tightly focused ride, looking mostly at the US West Coast psychedelic scene, and in particular, Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters. This book has a broader focus, though still seems (if memory serves) to focus mostly on US history. Still, if you are at all interested in post-war America, an era that greatly shaped the world we live in today, and if you are interested in psychedelic history, this is a MUST read.
—Bryan Winchell
I remember Kesey as an unravelling Mythographer, a comic book penis, a extra-humanoid explainer, a roofless rattling genius, and a panda bear. A trip with him is going to be long-lasting infrared fun, so read him first and the others, too. Brief neighbors exchanging psychedelic favors. Then proceed to the CIA. Where the acid is a purer corrosive, the destruction much larger scale, senseless vip paranoia, assassins' elixir, wet dreams of the crew cuts, so suffocating as to cause bursting blood vessels in the night, from overly rampant discharge probably. There is indeed a social history here and I was told all of it and I listened like a ruthless child.
—Hortense
A strange story of a laboratory chemical which was thought to be a truth serum by the CIA, a nonlethal weapon of war by the army, a psychological simulation of psychosis by the psychiatric community. The people who had cosmic visions of ecstasy on LSD saw it as a potential liberator of consciousness. Many people who had peak experiences with the transcendent realm felt this is something that they had to give to humankind. Many were on a mission some felt themselves an elite vanguard of a new age. This often could degenerate into creepy cult-like behavior. Some like the pranksters with a more artistic than messianic vision saw it as a way to create artistic happenings and push the envelope of culture. They formed the core of the counterculture that at the time seemed so appealing to so many that it quickly mushroomed in places like San Francisco. It grew to fast and caused a lot of trouble until it finally imploded at the end of the sixties but not before it altered American culture for good. This book covers that sweep of cultural change brought about by a synthetic molecule.
—Peter Mcloughlin
