Name: Acid dreams
ISBN: 9780802130624

Acid dreams

"Acid Dreams is the complete social history of LSD and the counterculture it helped to define in the sixties. Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain's exhaustively researched and astonishing account - part of it gleaned from secret government files - tells how the CIA became obsessed with LSD as an espionage weapon during the early 1950s and launched a massive covert research program, in which countless unwitting citizens were used as guinea pigs. Though the CIA was intent on keeping the drug to itself, it ultimately couldn't prevent it from spreading into the popular culture; here LSD had a profound impact and helped spawn a political and social upheaval that changed the face of America. From the clandestine operations of the government to the escapades of Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, Allen Ginsberg, and many others, Acid Dreams provides an important and entertaining account that goes to the heart of a turbulent period in our history."--Jacket.

What Hacker News says

photochemsynJun 2023

The classic work on this is "Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond" by Lee & Shain. The Chapter "In the Beginning There Was Madness" covers the crazy era of MK-ULTRA (and the Frank Olson case, in which the CIA fed LSD to MKULTRA collaborators in the biological warfare program, where Olson worked - he then had a breakdown of some sort and wanted to quit the program and perhaps go public, so the CIA hit him in the head with a hammer and threw him out of a high-rise (probably, anyway) and called it a suicide for several decades).

https://spyscape.com/article/frank-olson-the-cias-secret-que...

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photochemsynJun 2023

If you want the real story on current CIA tradecraft (at least on the digital side):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7

For the rest of it, see books like "Legacy of Ashes" by Tim Weiner, or "Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA and the Sixties". A lot of that is about CIA recruitment and influence operations, which is perhaps not the kind of 'tradecraft' the CIA likes to popularize, e.g.:

https://coffeeordie.com/charles-manson-cia

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bmismynameSep 2022

2 books I recommend for anyone interested in the history of this stuff are "Acid Dreams" and "How to Change Your Mind". The latter is a bit more pop-sciency, and the former is probably more factually accurate (though who can say, it's a lot of he-said-she-said). For a fun read on the topic, "The Doors of Perception" is a classic.

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pmoriartyFeb 2020

The conventional narrative is that Leary was to blame for making psychedelics illegal by irresponsibly popularizing their use outside of medicine and academic research.

While Leary certainly deserves much of the credit for popularizing psychedelics, he was far from the only one who did so.

The interest in psychedelics was already widespread before he got involved, with Wasson's report in the enormously popular Life magazine about the use of the sacred mushroom, with Huxley's influential Doors of Perception, and before that many exposes on the psychedelic experiences of hashish. Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters were also great popularizers of LSD, with their Acid Tests, as were the Beatles, the Grateful Dead and other musicians and artists (we seem to forget that, but they were hugely influential).

Leary has been charged with encouraging irresponsible use of LSD, but that's not really true either, from everything I've been able to find on him. He always urged the responsible, careful use of LSD, with a clear understanding of its risks, and also made clear it wasn't for everyone. His ideal set and setting was in small groups, in quiet settings, in safe spaces and in nature.

The kind of use he advocated was actually quite similar to what the ideal set and setting is today, though of course back in the early days they didn't know as much about it as we do now, so it wasn't always ideal. They were still experimenting and researching, which was really what Leary wanted to focus on himself, but he didn't want to limit its use to just research and medical settings, as he saw great potential in psychedelics catalyzing positive societal transformation, which was really part of what at the same time scared the powers that be, who wanted to keep the status quo where they were in control and in power.

The ones who encouraged reckless, irresponsible use of LSD (though they hardly ever get even a fraction of the blame Leary does) were really the Merry Pranksters, who would do things like to give people massive doses of LSD without their knowledge and try to freak them out, and had thousands of people participating in their Acid Tests. It's a testament to how safe these substances were that many more people didn't have lasting negative damage despite such less than ideal circumstances.

Much more to blame for the eventual illegalization of LSD and other psychedelics were the mainstream media, politicians, and the general public who were whipped up in to a frenzy by what they saw in the media and heard from politicians. Both the mainstream media and politicians loved to focus on the minority of bad experiences people had sensationalize the hell out of them, facts be damned. They really bear the overwhelming brunt of the blame, in my eyes.

There were, of course, some horrific events like the Manson murders, which were blamed by the media on LSD. Art Linkletter's daughter committed suicide, and he blamed it on LSD. The media ate all this up and hyped it up, so no wonder people were scared, even though events like these were in the very tiny minority compared to the millions upon millions of times that LSD had been used by that time.

In to this sort of hysteria Leary stepped in and thumbed his nose at authority and said stuff that upset the powers that be, but really he was more of a convenient and willing scapegoat, who loved to be in the limelight and loved to play the role of the rebel, guru, pied-piper of youth, and the media and politicians lapped it up.

The underlying thing this all revolved around, and which so upset people in power and the general public was the youth culture, the counterculture, and the anti-war movement. All of these were tied up together with psychedelics and cannabis, which were opening the eyes of the youth to what they saw as injustices and also potential ways of doing things differently and better (such as dropping out of the rat race and trying alternative ways of living on farms, in nature, or in communes, or getting involved in the nascent environmental movement, or getting involved in the peace movemenent) which all seemed crazy to the mainstream.

Revolution was in the air at the time, and to the people who preferred the status quo (and who happened to be in power) that had to be stopped, so outlawing psychedelics, cannabis, and other drugs used by minorities (who also seemed to be on the verge of insurrection) seemed to be a good way to get control back.

And it seemed to work, at least partially. Protests died down, the youth stopped using psychedelics and started using speed, coke, and heroin (still not sure exactly why myself.. perhaps it was the media, or maybe they were just bored with psychedelics, which were no longer trendy and seemed to be more of a thing of the past, or maybe they were just burnt out), quit the communes, got jobs on Wall St, and voted for Reagan.

I'm still scratching my head about the U-Turn a lot of the youth from the 60's wound up taking in the 70's and 80's.. perhaps the opposition from the dominant culture and the lure of money and a safe, secure life was too great.

Anyway, sorry for straying from the topic of Leary himself, but I think this all ties together and it's hard to make sense of it without knowing how many of these pieces fit together. There's much more to say about this too. I recommend the book Acid Dreams for a good introduction.

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roymurdockFeb 2020

Agree with all you've written, just wanted to call out how Pollan painted the tension between Hubbard and Leary specifically. I'll check out the book Acid Dreams and I just ordered Electric Kool Aid Test to get a better understanding of the merry prankster scene.

I believe some of the 60's and 70's youth found sustainable ways to live outside the mainstream, but many of the communes/alternative living situations were volatile and corrupt. Take for example the Rajneesh community out in Oregon [1]...so much energy and potential channeled into a corrupt and ultimately destructive/pointless enterprise. The corporate way is the safe way in America, and I think many people were looking for safety in a confusing time when many alternatives looked bleak.

That said, this is just conjecture, I was born in the 90s so I have no first hand experience.

[1] great documentary on the Rajneesh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Wild_Country

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bcaa7f3a8bbcOct 2019

One also needs to look some of the experiments in terms of LSD. In the 60s an 70s, psychedelic drugs, especially LSD, were believed to have mind-changing power, both the counter-culture activists and the CIA establishment were experimenting with the drugs, the former group wants to use it as a tool to look beyond "The Matrix" and authority, and a gateway to a new spiritual world. While the establishment were trying to use it as a tool for psychological manipulation.

A good book that cover the history is Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain. If you want to learn more about LSD and computer culture, read What the Dormouse Said by John Markoff.

The history was quite interesting. For example, Kary Mullis claimed his discovery of PCR was inspirited by LSD, Whitfield Diffie is said to be active in the anti-war movement and knew about LSD, Dan Ingalls jokingly implied some features in Smalltalk were inspirited by LSD when journalists asked. Later, the psychedelic subculture was appropriated, commercialized, mainstreamed, losing the original countercultural context and message ("The early years of the 1970s saw advertisers using psychedelic art to sell a limitless array of consumer goods. Hair products, cars, cigarettes, and even pantyhose became colorful acts of pseudo-rebellion"), slowly disintegrated it, also, and the drugs didn't show such great power as previously promised, finally government had banned drugs as well.

Later, the personal computing in the mid-70s was literally seen as the new LSD, but this time not by chemistry, but by networks, building the cyberspace, a civilization of mind.

Now we see the history repeats again, full cycle. The advertisers and companies use it to make big money and push for pseudo-rebellions. Technically, the potential of Internet as a force of liberation is correct, but too overrated. Politically, the establishment like the NSA and CIA are trying to use it as a tool for psychological manipulation, and calls for more regulations (especially the anti-Fake News measures, the intention is good, but its implementation can be dangerous if the system is abused).

I believe the next failed revolution will be biohacking and transhumanism.

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