Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond

Martin A. Lee & Bruce Schlain – 1986

 

I highly recommend this work of renegade journalism by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Schlain, an absorbing, well-written and thoroughly researched chronicle of the cultural impact of LSD in America since the 1950s.  The project was triggered by the flow of forced revelations about CIA misdeeds in the mid-70s in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.  Pouring through mountains of once-secret internal CIA memos, the authors were amazed by the seemingly endless and outrageous schemes that had been cooked up and acted upon by the agency in the area of chemical research and the quest to find drugs that had Cold War applications; either as mind-control tools or as pacification weapons.  With zero accountability to keep them ethical or honest, the CIA (as well as the Army), immediately began experimenting on human guinea pigs, with and without consent, under the aegis of programs like MK-ULTRA.  The arrogance and general sloppiness of these unscientific experiments had the result of endless leaks that led to LSD seeping out into the civilian sphere and quickly being embraced by artists, intellectuals and activists as a new pathway to spiritual enlightenment, which in turn of course had profound bearing on the anti-establishment movements of the 1960s.  There were always theories that acid had been deliberately disseminated to American college campuses by the CIA in order to incapacitate or discredit Vietnam War protestors, or to encourage a surge in violent radicalism that would justify a harsh crackdown on the part of the government, which the Nixon administration (1969-1974) was happy to provide.  But this gives a little too much credit to the foresight of the presumed masterminds.  The truth is more likely that the cultural leaps of the 1960s, fueled by LSD and other psychedelics, occurred in spite of the CIA’s best efforts, not because of them.  I applaud Lee and Schlain for their even-handed approach to the many sensitive issues under discussion.  They have no pro or anti-drug axe to grind.  They are as skeptical of the evangelical promoters of acid as they are appalled by the literally inhumane way the government has persecuted dissenting voices, often using dubious drug law violations as an easy way to punish and smear activists.