Distilled spirits

What Hacker News says

1. benbreenJan 2024
   Author of the book under review here. AMA!

   One thing I thought would be helpful is to link to the YouTube video described in the opening paragraph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMF-cyHAaSs

   It's from a 1957 CBS documentary series called "Focus on Sanity" that featured interviews with Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard, among others. I found it fascinating and my questions about it were actually one of the motive forces for why I wrote the book.

   I believe the recording was first brought to public attention by Don Lattin, whose books The Harvard Psychedelic Club (2010) and Distilled Spirits (2012) are both great.

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2. alchemismApr 2018
   Here's a few links to explore further:

   "This is some rare TV footage of LSD research conducted in Los Angeles in 1956 by Dr. Sidney Cohen, which included an interview with Gerald Heard, an Anglo-Irish philospher who turned on a number of influential Americans in the 1950s. Among them was AA co-founder Bill Wilson, who thought LSD could help some drunks have a spiritual awakening. Wilson's first trip was in this very room in summer of 1956 and was supervised by Dr. Cohen and guided by Mr. Heard. The whole story, and much more, is told in "Distilled Spirits -- Getting High, Then Sober, with a Famous Writer, a Forgotten Philosopher, and a Hopeless Drunk" by Don Lattin, the author of the bestselling "The Harvard Psychedelic Club." The "Famous Writer" in this blend of memoir and group biography is Aldous Huxley, the author of "Brave New World" and "The Doors of Perception."

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeO2BOdmkEg

   and

   https://aabeyondbelief.org/2015/10/21/the-lsd-experiments/

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