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[July 6, 1969] Everybody's talking about Revolution, Evolution… (The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak)

If the title for this article sounds familiar, it's because you've heard the (just released) single from John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "bed in".  The Beatle and his new bride are living examples of Counter Culture.  But just what is "Counter Culture"?  Theodore Roszak has thoughts…and Kris has thoughts on those thoughts!


By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society & Its Youthful Opposition by Theodore Roszak Hardback Cover

All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned…

The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx

Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'

The Times They Are A-Changin', Bob Dylan

A spectre is haunting the campuses of the West, the spectre of the counter culture. All the powers of the Technocrats have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre.

Wait, you may well ask, I thought this was a contemporary review, not a poor pastiche of a 120-year-old piece of political economy? However, this is the central speculation of Theodor Roszak in his latest book: that these are the core oppositional forces of our time.

But what is the Technocratic Society and what is the Counter Culture?

Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today

In the case of the former, Roszak sees Technocracy as the governing by experts from a certain class with the aim of a routinised control over human interaction. This can be observed in our democratic political system where the two main parties in most Western nations usually are not concerned with creating vastly different Utopian systems. More often, it is a competition of seeming the most competent to deliver state run social services, defence and economic growth. Even in the Soviet Union, there is not much talk these days of instituting a worldwide proletarian revolution, compared with speeches on improving the efficiency of grain harvests or increasing housing stocks.

Black and White photo of Robert McNamara behind a set of microphones and in front of a map of Vietnam
Robert McNamara, Technocrat Extraordinaire

The technocrats themselves are rarely the presidents or prime ministers; they are merely the salesmen. Roszak sees them as the upper-level bureaucrats or the studious quiet men of the cabinets. Robert McNamara is a prime example of this tendency, moving between running Ford Motor Company, the World Bank and the US Defence Department and applying the same philosophy, one he outlined in his recent book, The Essence of Security:

…the real threat to democracy comes, not from overmanagement, but from undermanagement. To undermanage reality is not to keep it free. It is simply to let some other than reason shape reality…Vital decision making, particularly in policy matters. This is partly, though not completely, what the top is for.

You may well ask, what is the problem with this? Well, Roszak outlines the tecnocratic viewpoint thusly:
1. All problems are purely technical in nature, and, therefore, if it is not technical, it cannot be a problem. Depression -> More Pills. Rioting in the cities -> More police.
2. Their end is always the right end and any friction against this is a lack of communication. This can be solved by the Marketplace of Ideas.
3. However, the only people who can truly understand these principles and implement them are this technocratic elite. And, it just so happens, that a good sign that you are one of those qualified to understand these issues is that you are already a part of the governmental or corporate structure.

Ad for Playboy with the tagline "Waht sort of man reads Playboy", with a photo showing a man on a boat reading Playboy whilst he is surrounded by women in bikinis
Want Sexual Promiscuity? Buy A Boat!

And he does not see New Authoritarianism as only occurring in government business but creeping into all aspects of life. Take the example of Playboy, which appears at first to be approving of sexual permissiveness; but, in reality, the articles and photos create an association between sex and wealth for men, whilst reducing women to men’s playthings: making half the population repress themselves whilst striving to reach these elite heights, whilst the other half become accepting of this attitude by the rich and powerful. This viewpoint can be seen again in the trial of Lady Chatterly’s Lover where the argument of the prosecution was:

Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?

In fact, Roszak goes further, to state there is a mystification that has happened in the technocracy. Where, in the best Orwellian manner, language is used to obfuscate reality. Where the bombing in Vietnam is referred to as an “escalation” or dictatorial communist regimes refer to themselves as “democratic republics”. If an individual challenges this, the technocrats will merely dismiss them as not understanding the complexity of the issue.

So, what is the solution for this? Well that comes in its opposition.

God is Alive, Magic is Afoot

Black and white photo of a protest to legalise marijuana, at the front is Allen Ginsberg holding a sign that says "Pot is a reality kick"
Allen Ginsberg protesting to legalise marijuana

Counter Culture appears to be derived from the term “contraculture”, defined by Yinger in 1960 as:

wherever the normative system of a group contains, as a primary element, a theme of conflict with the values of the total society, where personality variables are directly involved in the development and maintenance of the group's values, and wherever its norms can be understood only by reference to the relationships of the group to a surrounding dominant culture.

This, though, is almost a decade older and could be seen as merely a standard part of society, like the Bright Young People of the Jazz Age. And the young have usually been the radicals. For example, in 17th Century England, many of the radical protests were led by the London Apprentice Boys, the militant student movement of the day. So what is the difference between the rebellions of yesteryear and the counter culture of today?

The difference is two-fold. First off, the traditional left-right axis does not really create an opposition to technocracy but a support of it. The communist, the fascist and the liberal all accept the need for rational efficiency and control of life by an elite, whether that be the bureaucrat, the camp commandant or the head of a Fortune 500 company. So even the most aggressive of demagogues are no longer opposing the technocracy, merely wishing to be a part of it.

Painting: The Disquieting Duckling by Asger Jorn
Showing a pastoral watecolour which has, on top of the picture, been painted a giant duckling in children's style in a manner of rainbow colours
The Disquieting Duckling by Asger Jorn

Secondly, the theories behind the opposition are not predominantly coming down from the elite but up from artists. Early examples include Situationists like Asger Jorn or Beat Poets like Allen Ginsberg, who themselves draw more from the tradition of Blake and Children’s Art than Joyce and Van Gogh. See for example Ginsberg’s Howl:

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

Black and White photo of a protest by Students For A Democratic Society, holding up signs saying:
"Refuse to pay taxes for Vietnam"
"Liberalism in the pursuit of fascism is no virtue"
"End Johnson's war on peasantry"
"LBJ, the lesser Evil?"
"End All Foreign Intervention in Vietnam"
"LBJ: The Myth of American Liberalism"
"Escalation Means Nuclear War"
Protest by Students For A Democratic Society

The reason, Roszak claims, this opposition is taking root within the youth movements is also a feature of the technocracy. As the bureaucracy of business has grown bigger and the need for rigid routine labour has diminished, intellectual thought is more valuable among workers. Therefore, experts like Dr. Spock have pushed parents away from regimented childcare towards exploration, and governments have moved children away from the factory floor to longer and longer periods of education. When this kind of student is suddenly ordered to cut his hair and put on a uniform to join the army or the corporation, he naturally rebels against it.

Whilst Roszak acknowledges there is no manifesto of the nebulous group but that what is required is:

…the subversion of the scientific world view, with its entrenched commitment to an egocentric and cerebral mode of consciousness. In its place, there must be a new culture in which the non-intellective capacities of the personalities – those capacities that take fire from visionary splendor and the experience of human communion – become the arbiters of the good, the true and the beautiful.

How will this be achieved? One area Roszack has little time for is the overuse of psychedelics. Whilst he acknowledges they may have use for skilled practitioners:

There is nothing whatever in common between a man of…experience and intellectual discipline sampling mescaline, and a fifteen-year-old tripper whiffing airplane glue.

In fact, he sees the current expansion of psychotropic drugs as having more in common with the technocracy, promising a quick granting of insight that is only superficial and built on a few getting rich whilst causing unhappiness to the many. No different to the barbiturates or alcoholic beverages marketed to the masses.

The actual means for this "subversion" to come about are nebulous. Rather, he sees that this will be developed over time through such concepts as the “Politics of No-Politics” and the de-centralised Utopian thought of Paul Goodman.

The Armies of the Night

Protestors putting flowers in the guns of military police
Protestors putting flowers in the guns of military police

Roszak goes through a number of different facets of the counter culture and their opposition to the technocratic rationality, from anti-schools to trying to levitate the Pentagon. I have to wonder sometimes if the free-wheeling rejection of rationality extends to his writing. I consider myself reasonably well-read and knowledgeable, but I found myself reaching for dictionaries and other reference material (or just plain scratching my head) trying to understand what he was talking about. He tends to work best in generalities, when he is (to steal a phrase for Kant) critiquing pure reason. When he goes into specifics, such as an entire chapter looking at how Marcuse and Brown attempt to reconcile Marx and Freud, Roszak moves away from insightful investigation to navel-gazing.

He spends some time comparing this movement to nascent Christianity and, by extension, suggesting how this movement over time could change the mode of Western thought. There is one problem I have with this, one he even acknowledges in passing: the fact that people enter and depart with ease and that there are a lot of tourists involved. This is not just the more egregious examples, like Burberry selling expensive imitations of Chinese Communist Army uniforms. Mick Jagger, an LSE drop-out with a public drug bust under his belt seems like the perfect candidate for the Counter Culture. But, whilst he may sing that “the time is right for violent revolution” or “my name is a number, a piece of plastic film”, the group is reportedly planning to tour the US with major venues and able to charge high ticket prices, and he seems just as at home among the accoutrements of wealth as any banker.

Overall, "The Making of a Counter Culture" is interesting as polemic and critique, for, as Roszak puts it:

What is of supreme importance is that each of us should become a person, a whole and integrated person in whom there is manifested a sense of human variety genuinely experienced, a sense of having come to terms with a reality that is awesomely vast.

But as prophecy? That is for the young to show us.

Four Stars






[August 22, 1966] Been Beatnik So Long, Hippies Looking Up to Me


by Gwyn Conaway

I just set down my brand new copy of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, a novel written by Richard Fariña, and I can confidently say that the colorful lights of hippie acid tests have finally overwhelmed the intellectually trendy monochrome of the beatniks. And though this has been a steadily changing tide the last few years, it now appears to be an inevitable rise that will affect our fashionable futures for years to come.


The novel is a modern Odyssey following the adventures of a college student named Gnossos in his search for a woman in green knee-socks. Most of the novel centers around challenging our systems of education and government, seeking karma, and liberating youth from the tyranny of traditional morals. In an act of divine poetry, Fariña died earlier this year in a motorcycle accident here in California, at the start of his book tour in San Francisco, where so much of this movement is coalescing.

California has become the center of a massive shift in popular culture this past year, seducing young intellectuals to its college campuses and festivals in a rapidly growing snowball of illicit substances, music, and self expression. This has led us into new, uncharted fashion waters dominated by natural fibers, hand-embellished adornments, and a color palette inspired by the pursuit of nirvana.

The Hippie Movement is most definitely a natural progression from the Beatnik Movement, following the ever-worsening divide between generations, the popularity of psychedelic drugs and dope, and the politics of questionable warfare. Both of these movements are centered around the crossroads between music and intellectualism, promoting a free love lifestyle through art and literature, with followers that migrate like pilgrims from one mecca to the next, relying heavily on their countercultural communities to find security rather than the suburbs and pensions.


Bob Dylan in San Francisco with poets Allen Ginsburg and Michael McClure, as well as guitarist Robbie Robertson, 1965. The beatniks adhere to the stereotype of a black beret, black turtleneck, and cigarette trousers and are iconified by idols such as Bob Dylan and The Beatles. The term, interestingly enough, also originated in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1958, combining The Beat Generation with the Yiddish -nik, which translates to -er. I suspect this is also in reference to Sputnik and served as a dig towards the Beat Generation, implying it was an unpatriotic and ungrateful youth movement.

There is, however, one defining difference between these two movements. While the beatniks feel dissonant and hopelessly separate from society at large, the hippies are overwhelmingly hopeful, striving to bring the world together.

This new wave of love and peace is particularly apparent in the Haight, a neighborhood in San Francisco where more than fifteen thousand hippies have migrated as of this summer, following the music of the likes of Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. This great social experiment has transformed life in the bay area with parties like the Acid Tests organized by Ken Kesey and new businesses such as the head shop Ron and Jay Thelin’s Psychedelic Shop, supplying much of the Haight’s LSD and marijuana, and the coffee shop The Blue Unicorn.

And while the Haight is a petri dish of hippie ideals, it’s the events of Ken Kesey that are truly at the center of hippie fashion. In January of this year, he organized the Trips Festival in San Francisco at the Longshoreman’s Hall. This weekend extravaganza is now considered the first real gathering of hippies en masse. The crowd of ten thousand drank punch spiked with LSD to experience the music in an altered state of consciousness. Similarly, Kesey’s Acid Tests, a series of parties organized largely in Los Angeles these days, also heavily promote the drug and enhance its properties with the use of strobe lights, glowing paints, and black lights.


Note that the two men pictured here are wearing a corduroy jacket with a lamb's wool collar (front) and a poet's shirt with a paisley facing in the collar (back). LSD not only affects the eye, but all other senses as well. As a result, we see heavy use of textured materials in hippie fashion, such as crochet, fringe, and beading. This sensitivity to designing for "the trip" is an entirely new way of thinking about fashion.


A Grateful Dead postcard in comparison to the psychedelic paisleys (center and right). LSD causes undulation of sight, which brings us this sensationally warped graphic design and revives paisley as a major motif of the era. Note how the paisley is designed with "burn out", meaning that it's meant to replicate the bleeding of colors experienced by those tripping on LSD.

It’s this attention to LSD in the design of these events that has so thoroughly influenced the young rebellious fashions of today. Bright kaleidoscopic color palettes, unsteady stripes and warped geometric forms are commonplace among the hippies. This has led to the rise in popularity of paisley patterns, tie dye, and corduroy.

Tie dye has an especially close connection to the music scene and as such I think will be a defining fashion of this new movement moving forward. During parties such as the Acid Tests, a projector screen is used to light the band with swirling colors and bubbles. This swirling light show directly relates to the swirling colors now found on microbuses, t-shirts, posters, and more.


An insider look into the Trips Festival this summer. Where kaleidoscopic lights and patterns were used to enhance the effects of LSD. Compare the light show to the tie dyes below.


Tie dye and other symbols of the Hippie Movement have already permeated the fashion world from the streets up. Here we have a psychedelic vendor at a music festival selling tie dye t-shirts next to a exceptional velvet coat designed by American fashion designer Roy Halston.

The surge of hippies in California has truly taken us by storm, and the rise of head shops, communes, and music festivals is not well-liked by many. Divisive opinions on those that partake in LSD and marijuana have colored the hippies as mentally unstable vagabonds. Already there are rumblings of LSD being made illegal in The Golden State to curb the tide. This pushback by the more conservative echelons of America, however, only legitimizes the movement in the eyes of the young and passionate.

Which invites the questions: how polarized will this movement become, and what lasting effects will it leave in its wake? How will it change fashion? Will we move towards nature and organic shapes again? Will we abandon synthetic fabrics in favor of natural fibers? Will men finally return to moustaches and beards for the first time since the start of modern warfare?

Only time and upheaval will tell.


[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge!  It's the grooviest place: Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




[April 4, 1965] A Future of Rainbows: Psychedelic-40, by Louis Charbonneau


by Erica Frank

With psychotropic drugs having arrived in the national consciousness, it's not surprising that they are starting to be the subject of mainstream science fiction books:

Cover art
“1993—A frighteningly prophetic novel of the U.S.A. ruled by the Syndicate—Men with super-minds who can probe the ordinary citizen's thoughts at will.”

I suspect the publisher insisted on the name for this one, because the word "psychedelic" only appears once in the book, and it's not referring to the drug PSI-40 that's the focus of the story.

The prologue nicely sets up the conflict: A young boy and his father are on the run, living in a remote rural location and trying not to be discovered by the Syndicate. They have incredible psychic powers, so they can maintain communication and view each others' surroundings, and the father insists on keeping their distance from each other to keep the boy safe. Their powers come from a drug, PSI-40, and the father makes sure to give his son the formula before the Syndicate catches up with him.

The Ultimate Drug

PSI-40 is, as one might guess, a pill that can awaken a person's psychic abilities. It doesn't work that way for everyone—just for the rare "Sensitives" and even rarer "Specials." For most people, its effects seem to be a blend of marijuana, LSD, and Aldous Huxley's "soma": rainbow lights, mellow mood, lowered inhibitions, heightened sensation, and a sense of peace and bliss.

Like marijuana, it causes relaxation and softens the emotions. Like LSD, it causes mild hallucinations: rainbow afterimages, distorted proportions, brighter lights and darker shadows, but nothing appearing real when it's not. And like soma, it has no unpleasant side effects and causes no disabilities—except for Sensitives, who are prone to intense headaches from the psychic powers it awakens.

Among the normal users, some people have religious experiences; some are overwhelmed with sensuality. It's only the Sensitives and Specials who get more than that—they gain telepathy, clairvoyance, and sometimes telekinesis. They also don't get much of the "normal" effects of the drug, so their thinking and reaction times aren't impaired from it.

The book is set in the near future; most of the events begin on the day of the presidential inauguration of 1993. (I wonder what current junior businessman or class president will be elected in 1992?) Jon Rand, security agent for the Syndicate that manufactures and controls PSI-40, is sent to Baja on a manhunt: find the rogue Special who's been eluding them for 17 years. At this point, the reader becomes aware that the hero of the prologue—young Kemp Johnson—is the target of the main story. A bit of math determines that he's probably born next year, sometime in 1966.

Picture of a soldier lying down near a tree and laughing
I wonder if that means the Syndicate is already testing drugs on people, looking for the ones who awaken hidden powers? (Image: of one of the British Marines being tested for the effects of LSD, 1964.)

Of Kemp, we know nothing except that he has mental powers, and he is filled with rage against the Syndicate. Rand is not so much a cypher, but he is very much a company man, striving to make sure his faction is in the limelight when the current aging president loses control. It's not immediately apparent if he is a "good guy" working within a corrupt and power-hungry organization, or someone who happily supports their regime.

Rand Discovers the World

On his travels to look for Kemp, he encounters a woman who speaks harshly of the Syndicate but does not seem to be one of the "Antis" who object to all uses of PSI-40. He also barely escapes a murder attempt, attends a funeral with people so doped they can't grieve, infiltrates an Anti activist group, and discovers the covert machinations within the Syndicate itself. Through these adventures, Rand is shown to be a good sort of fellow.

He tries to be honest, and he is supportive of the Latino people in Baja whose connection to PSI-40 is very different from his own. He is sympathetic to their hardships, which are eased by the drug, but concerned about both a society without mourning and other deep emotions. He is troubled that the Syndicate pulls strings far beyond what's needed for a business with a product in high demand. He is increasingly uncertain about the purpose of his chase and nervous about the secrets being withheld from him, but with no obvious way to find out more, he has no choice but to move forward as assigned.

Rand starts out contemptuous of the Antis: why would anyone object to a medicine that eases sorrow and enhances joy? But as he encounters more people outside of the Syndicate, he realizes its effects aren't that simple, and there are reasons to be wary of it. Still, he recognizes foolish propaganda when he hears it—the Antis aren't concerned with PSI-40's subtle influences as much as they're caught up in hating the corporate powers that create it.

Formulaic but Not Boring

I found the story compelling and easy to follow, other than losing track of a few people's names. (Several characters were introduced in the first chapter, and not mentioned again until more than halfway through the book, and then only by their surnames.) I found the obligatory romance plausible but unnecessary. I believe that, had the "interesting but maybe-opposition" character been a man, they would've developed a friendship rather than falling in bed together. I did enjoy Rand's innate suspicious nature, and that he aimed it at his own organization as easily as he directed it at outsiders.

I both admired the world building and found it a bit dry: Jon Rand, experienced agent of the Syndicate, is apparently prone to musing over what he knows of PSI-40 when he visits seedy nightclubs, nude beaches, or churches that use the drug as a sacrament. I would like to know more about the world; several characters complained that the Syndicate rations PSI-40, but the method of rationing and the purchase price are both opaque to us. Since the poorest of laborers can afford some (although not as much as they usually want), presumably the wealthy could pass their days in a rainbow-smeared fog of euphoria. Yet we are led to believe that their world works much like ours, albeit with a few technological enhancements brought on by 30 years of peace and prosperity.

The Firebird IV: GM's turbine-powered “Car of the Future” debuted at the 1964 World's Fair. (There are no actual turbines yet.)

While the story was interesting enough, most of the characters were a bit flat. Even the ones with mixed loyalties were complex in predictable ways. There were questions of who will betray him but none about which of these people might be the deceiver? Honest folk were honest, and shifty people with hidden agendas seemed to be hiding something, although it wasn't immediately apparent what.

What's Missing?

Psychedelic-40 was an enjoyable read, a nice consideration of "what if LSD really did expand consciousness, to such an extent that it gave mind-reading super powers to some users?" However, it's less of a science fiction book than a spy thriller with mental instead of physical technology. The psychic powers were a tool in Rand's arsenal, like Oddjob's weaponized hat or James Bond's tricked-out car. He was a super-agent, not super-human.

We saw normal people living distorted lives under the shadow of PSI-40, but it was treated like alcoholism–people using a party drug for everyday life–rather than something that caused an actual shift in perspective or life choices. Some of that can be excused as Rand's passing contact with them, but I would've liked to get a sense of how their communities differed from ours. The Baja of Rand's world seems too much like ours. Its jobs, entertainments, and religious factions seemed very similar to our own. While we did see a church dedicated to PSI-40, it was treated as just another drug den, albeit one with religious-themed accessories.

The book missed the opportunity to consider how a society that welcomed euphoric drug use might change over time, and I wish I'd gotten to read that story, too.

Also, the cover is boring. There is amazing psychedelic and surrealist art available today! Why couldn't Bantam have found an artist in the style of René Magritte or Mati Klarwein to do the cover art?

Two pictures, one surrealist and one psychedelic.
Left: Magritte's High Society; Right: Klarwein's Adam.

Three and a half stars out of five: quite engaging, but lacking something.  See for yourself and tell me what you think.



We had so much success with our first episode of The Journey Show (you can watch the kinescope rerun; check local listings for details) that we're going to have another one on April 11 at 1PM PDT with The Young Traveler as the special musical guest.  As the kids say, be there or be square!

[October 14, 1963] Take a little trip… (Timothy Leary's Psychedelic Review)


by Erica Frank

Our external freedom is expanding daily. We are developing ever more powerful technology, with bold goals such as flying to the moon and someday the stars; the human race has a tremendous talent for turning potential into reality. Because of this, psychedelic research goes hand-in-hand with traditional science studies; as the introduction to this journal says: "We can no longer accept the notion of a value-free science or espouse a naive optimism with regard to scientific and technological progress. We need to complement our technical skill in controlling the external world with a corresponding development of our inner resources."

Doctor Timothy Leary has joined Ralph Metzner to found a new academic journal: the Psychedelic Review. The first issue was released in June, and I believe it's very relevant to the Journey. The Review's purpose is studying psychedelic substances like LSD, psilocybin and mescaline, in order to enhance "the individual's control over his own mind, thereby enlarging his internal freedom."

It's dense reading, very much an academic journal aimed at philosophers, historians, and medical professionals. I am none of these, but the articles are still fascinating to me (and hopefully, to you, too!)

"Can This Drug Enlarge Man's Mind?", Gerald Heard

Gerald Heard is an esteemed philosopher with multiple books in that field, and the the author of science fiction books The Doppelgangers and The Lost Cavern.

The drug in question is LSD, short for Lysergic Acid Diethylamide – no wonder everyone uses the initials! The editors mention the controversy surrounding the drug: its detractors say it warps minds, while its proponents claim it inspires creativity and perhaps even wisdom. It is agreed, however, that it is not habit-forming nor physically toxic.

Heald describes the subjective effects of LSD, as reported by its users: it produces "a profound change in consciousness… You see and hear this world, but as the artist and musicians sees and hears." This shift in awareness, a kind of hyper-sensitivity to the world, often also brings a new awareness of the self; Heard compares this to a passage in the Odyssey, which differentiates between two types of thought: those from "the Gate of Horn," relating to events of the real world, and those from the "Gate of Ivory," the source of fantasy. LSD brings ideas from the latter, which are so intense that they can result in profound changes like those of a deep religious experience. He points out that the drug does not create personality changes; the experience only awakens the potential; he recommends more research find the full value of LSD in psychoanalysis and the creative arts.

Worth reading for the combination of internal reports and external description of the LSD experience.

The Subjective After-Effects of Psychedelic Experiences: A Summary of Four Recent Questionnaire Studies, Editors

This reviews and combines the results of four questionnaires filled out by people who have experienced LSD or psilocybin mushrooms in psychiatric settings. Most people claimed it was a positive experience; only a scant handful believe it harmed them. Many now noticed a deeper significance to various aspects of life; some reported that the people close to them had noticed positive changes. Some benefits lasted for years after a single experience, such as alcoholics with longer periods of sobriety and fewer arrests.

The calculations were especially interesting, as they showed how to take an intensely subjective experience and describe it in a way that's useful for medical research. I am not convinced, however, that the psilocybin study should've been included, since it's a different substance and it involved student volunteers instead of psychiatric patients.

"The Hallucinogenic Fungi of Mexico: An Inquiry into the Origins of the Religious Idea Among Primitive Peoples", R. Gordon Wasson

Wasson and his wife studied the history of mushrooms across the world, looking through ancient texts in multiple languages, trying to figure out what role mushrooms played in folklore and history.

His research focuses on psychoactive mushrooms, and how they were used for ecstatic experiences, allowing the user to feel that the human soul has touched the divine. He mentions that we have no good ways to describe these experiences:

We are entering upon a discussion where the vocabulary of the English language, of any European language, is seriously deficient. There are no apt words in them to characterize your state when you are, shall we say, "bemushroomed." For hundreds, even thousands, of years we have thought about these things in terms of alcohol, and we now have to break the bonds imposed on us by the alcoholic association.

He traveled into the mountains of Mexico, regions where the old languages are still used and Spanish is rare (and of course, they've barely heard of English), and took mushrooms under the guidance of tribal shamans. The practical details were covered in "Seeking the Magic Mushroom," published in Life magazine a few years ago; this article focuses on the experience itself. He seems to be looking for words that does not exist, and so falls back on using several paragraphs to describe the sensations and realizations he had.

I found the linguistic aspects of this article more interesting than the philosophical considerations, although those were also intriguing.

"A Touchstone for Courage", Plato

This is an excerpt of a passage from Plato's The Laws. I have never done well with Plato. I agree with Clinias: "I fear I hardly follow you, yet pray proceed with your statement as though I did."

Plato mentions how potential courage is rarely fully developed because most people don't often face their fears. He then discusses the value of a hypothetical drug that could inspire fear, and allow people to overcome those fears without the physical risks that attend most challenges that require courage.

The implication is that even the unpleasant, darker experiences of LSD and related substances have value: they allow people to face their innermost fears, and if not conquer them, at least endure them, and realize the fear itself did not destroy them.

I can't tell if this is "Plato taken far out of context" or "exactly the kind of consideration he would've wanted to inspire."

"Provoked Life: An Essay on the Anthropology of the Ego", Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn was an expressionist poet and author; this essay was originally published in Germany in 1949 and is reprinted with permission; this may be the first English translation available to the public.

The essay is beautiful and intense… and I have no idea what it actually says. It reads like a longer, more detailed and personal version of the drug experiences described in the earlier articles. The purple prose makes it hard to follow; the essay is packed with exotic imagery and sensory overloads, enough that I couldn't decide if he was making a point or just pondering a set of ideas.

"The Individual as Man/World", Alan W. Watts

Alan Watts is a philosopher who strives to bring Buddhist concepts into mainstream, Western psychology. His works include The Way of Zen and The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness. This article, originally a lecture delivered at Harvard, doesn't address psychedelics per se, but the personal experience of consciousness.

Watts points out that how people understand their own existence often does not match well with the descriptions taught in the sciences: a biologist's or ecologist's description of humanity bears little relation to human life as we experience it. Modern science is just as much a victim of cultural biases as the ancient Greeks, which presumed that all living things were distorted reflections of pure, abstract archetypes.

He discusses importance of considering people as a whole being, not a collection of parts, despite the current trends in medicine and psychology to reduce people to organ-based emotions and socially programmed impulses.

Watts is a delight to read. Even when he's explaining very complex concepts, he uses down-to-earth language that sets a foundation that builds them toward a single point of understanding. This is probably my favorite article in this issue.

"Annihilating Illumination", George Andrews

This is a poem in the Beat style: it does not rhyme; most lines don't begin with capital letters; they aren't of matching lengths; there is an utter lack of punctuation in this three-page poem, save for a single quoted sentence and the final period.

It reads like a shorter, less pompous version of "Provoked Life," and is therefore much more accessible, if not any more comprehensible.

While being struck by lightning in slow motion
the fire sears away layer after layer
sizzles me down to my ultimate ash
I quiver shrieks of laughing crystals
the radiant frenzy of the storm's soul dwells in the guts of the dragon

That's the beginning; it continues like that for three pages. I think I don't have access to the right drugs to enjoy this kind of poetry.

"The Pharmacology of Psychedelic Drugs", Ralph Metzner

This is the hard science article. It defines psychedelic substances  as those "whose primary effect on human subjects is the radical alteration of consciousness, perception and mood", and outlines the criteria for the ones being included in this review. These include negligible somatic effects, no addictive qualities, and a specific history in psychiatric literature.

I confess, I skimmed this article. I am not a chemist, not a biologist; once they start dragging out the molecular structure charts, I can be entertained but not informed. I know enough chemistry to understand the raw meanings of the diagrams, but not enough to have any idea how those connect to the practice of medicine.

This article is 30 pages; the references are an additional 15. The tone is very different from the other articles. It's written by one of the editors; I wonder if they created the journal for the purpose of publishing this. It reads like a chemical study in a medical journal, of little interest to other fields. It's possible that psychiatrists would find value in it, but only for understanding the biological effects; this article lacks the humanizing approach of the others.


Dr. Timothy Leary and Dr. Richard Alpert, Harvard, 1961

If you read medical journals, Psychedelic Review may be right up your alley. Otherwise, it comes across as a heavy-handed attempt to insist that psychedelic substances are worthy of real scientific consideration. This is understandable, given the recent history of the editors.

In May of this year, just about the time this issue was published, Dr. Leary and Dr. Richard Alpert were fired from Harvard for involving students in psychedelic substance testing. While they committed no crimes in sharing LSD and psilocybin with students, they did violate university policy, which only allows such substances to be given to graduate students. In addition, the university claims Leary was not meeting his lecture requirements.

I suppose that means he'll have more time to focus on research; I look forward to future issues of the Psychedelic Review.