Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD (10 page)

Osmond’s research attracted widespread attention within scientific circles. The CIA, ever intent on knowing the latest facts as early as possible, quickly sent informants to find out what was happening at Weyburn Hospital. Unbeknownst to Osmond and his cohorts, throughout the next decade they were contacted on repeated occasions by Agency personnel. Indeed, it was impossible for an LSD researcher not to rub shoulders with the espionage establishment, for the CIA was monitoring the entire scene.
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Osmond’s reports also caught the eye of Aldous Huxley, the eminent
British novelist who for years had been preoccupied with the specter of drug-induced thought control. In 1931 Huxley wrote Brave
New World
, a futuristic vision of a totalitarian society in which the World Controllers chemically coerced the population into loving its servitude. While Huxley grappled with the question of human freedom under pharmacological attack, he also recognized that certain drugs, particularly the hallucinogens, produced radical changes in consciousness that could have a profound and beneficial effect. Upon learning of Osmond’s work, he decided to offer himself as a guinea pig.

Huxley seemed like the perfect subject. A learned man steeped in many disciplines, he was also gifted with a writer’s eloquence. Even if the drug confounded him, it would not tongue-tie him, for he was a glorious talker. But Osmond was still a bit apprehensive. “I did not relish the possibility, however remote, of being the man who drove Aldous Huxley mad,” he explained. His worries proved to be unfounded.

In May 1953, less than a month after the CIA initiated Operation MK-ULTRA, Huxley tried mescaline for the first time at his home in Hollywood Hills, California, under Osmond’s supervision. “It was,” according to Huxley, “without question the most extraordinary and significant experience this side of the Beatific Vision.” Moreover, “it opens up a host of philosophical problems, throws intense light and raises all manner of questions in the field of aesthetics, religion, theory of knowledge.”

Huxley described his mescaline adventure in his famous essay
The Doors of Perception
(which took its title from the works of William Blake, the eighteenth-century British poet and visionary artist). With this book Huxley unabashedly declared himself a propagandist for hallucinogenic drugs, and for the first time a large segment
of the educated public became aware of the existence of these substances. Not surprisingly, the treatise created a storm in literary circles. Some hailed it as a major intellectual statement, others dismissed it as pure quackery. Few critics realized that the book would have such an enormous impact in years to come.

In
The Doors of Perception
Huxley elaborated on Henri Bergson’s theory that the brain and the nervous system are not the source of the cognitive process but rather a screening mechanism or “reducing valve” that transmits but a tiny fraction of “the Mind-at-Large,” yielding only the kind of information necessary for everyday matters of survival. If this screening mechanism was temporarily suspended, if the doors of perception were suddenly thrust open by a chemical such as mescaline or LSD, then the world would appear in an entirely new light. When he looked at a small vase of flowers, the mescal-inized Huxley saw “what Adam had seen on the morning of creation—the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence . . . flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged. . . . Words like ‘grace’ and ‘transfiguration’ came to my mind.”

Huxley obviously was not undergoing an “imitation psychosis.” On the contrary, he contended that the chemical mind-changers, when administered in the right kind of situation, could lead to a full-blown mystical experience. He went so far as to predict that a religious revival would “come about as the result of biochemical discoveries that will make it possible for large numbers of men and women to achieve a radical self-transcendence and a deeper understanding of the nature of things.”

Huxley recognized that the perceptions afforded by hallucinogens bore a striking similarity to experiences achieved without the use of drugs, either spontaneously or through various spiritual exercises. His writings reflected more than a passing interest in nonchemical methods of altering consciousness, such as hypnosis, sensory deprivation, prolonged sleeplessness, fasting—techniques closely scrutinized by the CIA as well, but for vastly different reasons. Whereas the CIA sought to impose an altered state on its victims in order to control them, Huxley’s explorations were self-directed and designed to expand consciousness. He was well aware of the potential dangers of behavior modification techniques and constantly warned of their abuse. Thus it is ironic that he unknowingly consorted with a number
of scientists who were engaged in mind control research for the CIA and the US military.
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While writing
Heaven and Hell
(the sequel to
The Doors of Perception)
in 1955, Huxley had his second mescaline experience, this time in the company of Captain Al Hubbard. They were joined by philosopher Gerald Heard, a close friend of Huxley’s. “Your nice Captain tried a new experiment—group mescalinization,” Huxley wrote to Osmond. “Since I was in a group, the experience had a human content, which the earlier, solitary experience, with its Other Worldly quality and its intensification of aesthetic experience, did not possess. . . . it was a transcendental experience within
this
world and with human references.”

Later that same year, with the Captain again acting as a guide, Huxley took his first dose of LSD. Although he consumed only a tiny amount, the experience was highly significant. “What came through the closed door,” he stated, “was the realization—not the knowledge, for this wasn’t verbal or abstract—but the direct, total awareness, from the inside, so to say, of Love as the primary and fundamental cosmic fact. These words, of course, have a kind of indecency and must necessarily ring false, seem like twaddle. But the fact remains. . .I was this fact; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this fact occupied the place where I had been.”

Huxley and his LSD mentor were a most improbable duo. The coarse, uneducated Captain lacked elegance and restraint (“I’m just a born son of a bitch!” he bellowed), while the tall, slender novelist epitomized the genteel qualities of the British intellectual. Yet the two men were evidently quite taken by each other. Huxley spoke admiringly of “the good Captain” whose uranium exploits served “as a passport into the most exalted spheres of government, business, and ecclesiastical polity.” In a letter to Osmond he commented, “What Babes in the Wood we literary gents and professional men are! The great World occasionally requires your services, is mildly
amused by mine; but its full attention and deference are paid to Uranium and Big Business. So what extraordinary luck that this representative of both these Higher Powers should (a) have become so passionately interested in mescalin and (b) be such a very nice man.”

Despite their markedly different styles Huxley and Hubbard shared a unique appreciation of the revelatory aspect of hallucinogenic drugs. It was Hubbard who originally suggested that an LSD-induced mystical experience might harbor unexplored therapeutic potential. He administered large doses of acid to gravely ill alcoholics with the hope that the ensuing experience would lead to a drastic and permanent change in the way they viewed themselves and the world. (According to Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, the most important factor in recovery for alcoholics is “a deep and genuine religious experience.”) Once the individual’s rigidified notion of himself had been shattered, “extensive emotional reeducation” was much more likely. At this point the Captain took over. By using religious symbols to trigger psychic responses, he attempted to assist the patient in forming a new and healthier frame of reference that would carry over after the drug wore off. Hubbard found that everyone who went through this process seemed to benefit from it. A number of former alcoholics described their recovery as nothing short of “miraculous.” Buoyed by these results, the Captain proceeded to establish LSD treatment centers at three major hospitals in Canada, most notably Hollywood Hospital in Vancouver, where he resided.

Dr. Humphry Osmond was also working with alcoholics in Saskatchewan, but initially he approached the problem from a different vantage point. Osmond noted that some alcoholics decided to give up the bottle only after they “hit bottom” and suffered the withdrawal symptoms of
delirium tremens.
Could a large dose of LSD or mescaline simulate a controlled attack of the DTs? A “model
delirium tremens,”
so to speak, would be considerably less dangerous than the real thing, which normally occurs after years of heavy drinking and often results in death. Osmond’s hypothesis was still rooted in the psychotomimetic tradition. But then Hubbard came along and turned the young psychiatrist on to the religious meaning of his “madness mimicking” drug. The Captain showed Osmond how to harness LSD’s transcendent potential. Nearly a thousand
hard-core alcoholics received high-dose LSD treatment at Weyburn Hospital, and the rate of recovery was significantly higher than for other forms of therapy—an astounding 50%.
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Osmond and his coworkers considered LSD the most remarkable drug they had ever come across. They saw no reason to restrict their studies to alcoholics. If LSD changed the way sick people looked at the world, would it not have as powerful an effect on others as well? With this in mind Osmond and Hubbard came up with the idea that LSD could be used to transform the belief systems of world leaders and thereby further the cause of world peace. Although few are willing to disclose the details of these sessions, a close associate of Hubbard’s insisted that they “affected the thinking of the political leadership of North America.” Those said to have participated in the LSD sessions include a prime minister, assistants to heads of state, UN representatives, and members of the British parliament. “My job,” said Hubbard, “was to sit on the couch next to the psychiatrist and put the people through it, which I did.”

Hubbard’s influence on the above-ground research scene went far beyond the numerous innovations he introduced: high-dose therapy, group sessions, enhancing the drug effect with strobe lights, and ESP experiments while under the influence of LSD. His impressive standing among business and political leaders in the United States and Canada enabled him to command large supplies of the hallucinogen, which he distributed freely to friends and researchers at considerable personal expense. “Cost me a couple of hundred thousand dollars,” he boasted. “I had six thousand bottles of it to begin with.” When Dr. Ross MacLean, the medical director at Hollywood Hospital in Vancouver, suggested that they form a partnership and set a price for administering LSD, Hubbard would hear nothing of it. For the Captain had “a mission,” as he put it, and making money never entered the picture.

Hubbard promoted his cause with indefatigable zeal, crisscrossing North America and Europe, giving LSD to anyone who would stand still. “People heard about it, and they wanted to try it,” he explained.
During the 1950s and early 1960s he turned on thousands of people from all walks of life—policemen, statesmen, captains of industry, church figures, scientists. “They all thought it was the most marvelous thing,” he stated. “And I never saw a psychosis in any one of these cases.”

When certain US medical officials complained that Hubbard was not a licensed physician and therefore should not be permitted to administer drugs, the Captain just laughed and bought a doctor’s degree from a diploma mill in Kentucky. “Dr.” Hubbard had such remarkable credentials that he received special permission from Rome to administer LSD within the context of the Catholic faith. “He had kind of an incredible way of getting that sort of thing,” said a close associate who claimed to have seen the papers from the Vatican.

Hubbard’s converts included the Reverend J. E. Brown, a Catholic priest at the Cathedral of the Holy Rosary in Vancouver. After his initiation into the psychedelic mysteries, Reverend Brown recommended the experience to members of his parish. In a letter to the faithful dated December 8, 1957, he wrote, “We humbly ask Our Heavenly Mother the Virgin Mary, help of all who call upon Her to aid us to know and understand the true qualities of these psychedelics, the full capacities of man’s noblest faculties and according to God’s laws to use them for the benefit of mankind here and in eternity.”

Like a molecule at full boil, the Captain moved about at high speeds in all directions. He traveled around the world in his own plane (he was a registered pilot and master of sea vessels), buying up LSD and stashing it, swapping different drugs, and building an underground supply. “I scattered it as I went along,” he recalled. With his leather pouch full of “wampum” he rode the circuit, and those on the receiving end were always grateful. “We waited for him like the little old lady on the prairie waiting for a copy of the Sears Roebuck catalogue,” said Dr. Oscar Janiger, a Los Angeles psychiatrist.

Dr. Janiger was part of a small circle of scientists and literary figures in the Los Angeles area who began to use psychedelics at social gatherings in the mid-1950s. In addition to Huxley and Gerald Heard, those who participated in these drug-inspired intellectual discussions included philosopher Alan Watts, deep-sea diver Perry Bivens, and researchers Sidney Cohen, Keith Ditman, and Arthur Chandler. This informal group was the first to use LSD socially
rather than clinically. Captain Al Hubbard, the wandering shaman who visited southern California on a regular basis, supplied the group with various chemicals.

“Something had to be done and I tried to do it,” Hubbard explained. He was, in his own words, “a catalytic agent” who had a “special, chosen role.” While this is certainly an accurate appraisal, he was also another kind of agent—an intelligence agent—which raises some intriguing questions about what he was really up to.