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

Martin A. Lee (Author), Bruce Shlain (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 21, 1994 | ISBN-10: 0802130623 | ISBN-13: 978-0802130624 | Edition: Revised

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 l950s 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. "Engaging throughout . . . at once entertaining and disturbing." - Andrew Weil, M.D., The Nation; "Marvelously detailed . . . loaded with startling revelations." - Los Angeles Daily News; "An engrossing account of a period . . . when a tiny psychoactive molecule affected almost every aspect of Western life." - William S. Burroughs; "An important historical synthesis of the spread and effects of a drug that served as a central metaphor for an era." - John Sayles.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This fascinating study examines how the CIA tested LSD on unwitting residents of Greenwich Village and San Francisco. Of particular interest are profiles of Timothy Leary, LSD chemist Ronald Stark and others.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; Revised edition (January 21, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802130623
• ISBN-13: 978-0802130624
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #58,662 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 71 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars LSD: What a Long Strange Trip.......and it ain't over yet... September 5, 1999

By Mr Potato Head

Format:Paperback

This is surprisingly one of the best books I have read. The authors give a colorfully accurate account of the events that occured decades ago, all of which still echo into our current era. It covers the origin of LSD, as a drug the CIA funded research on for use as a tool for mind control applications using civilians and military personnel as test subjects. At the very outset, it was obvious that the CIA was well aware of the potential power of this substance in its ability to wreak havoc on the collective psyche, to shatter current assumptions and threaten cherished ego boundaries. Yet, eventually it became available to the masses who would come to extol it's use religiously and otherwise.....giving rise to the groundswell of counterculture in the 60's. This book, more than any other source I have encountered, explores the underlying causes of the demise of the cultural/political/self re-evolution of that time and gives us pause to reflect on the politics of consciousness - to see who really won The War Of The Mind. Proof again that truth <however relative> is stranger than fiction. Be informed.........read this book.

54 of 60 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars There was something special about the 60s... August 6, 2001

By Cathleen M. Walker VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

In 1969, the year of Woodstock, I was 16 years old. Acid Dreams actually takes us back, back, much further to the beginnings of the LSD phenomenon in America in the fifties, through the turbulent sixties, and beyond. I was completely mesmerized by energy and enthusiasm Lee injects into his prose. The history of the Baby Boom generation is not one to be dismissed lightly, as many try to do, especially those in positions of corporate power who would rather forget that "tune in, turn on, drop out," meant a diversion *away* from the great American past time...shopping, consumerism, and corporate profit! If you aren't old enough to remember these times, and if you didn't learn about them in school (and I'll just bet you didn't!) this book should be mandatory reading in every high school! Because it condones and encourages the use of drugs? NO! Because it encourages critical thinking, questioning authority, and looking long and hard at the "war against drugs," which is nothing more, and nothing less, than a war for the *control* of who is going to make the money off them. That's not what LSD was about when it got away from the Government...for it was the Government that first brought LSD to these shores in an effort to control people to begin with. It flew in their faces as they watched the younger generation make it their own flight to freedom. The psychotic breakdowns of bad trips were largely scare tactics designed to put control back in the hands of the "experts" who originally "tabbed" thousands of people in this country without their knowledge and/or consent, which, with LSD, *creates* the paranoia of the "bad trip." With LSD, awareness and environment and the people you are with mean everything in terms of how it affects your ability to perceive the possibilities within you. Yes, I took LSD back then. I treated it with respect and when I had the time and the support to know I was safe. After reading this book, I am sad that it took the political turns it did, for it had so much potential, particularly in the therapeutic setting, where many doctors and patients found it mutually beneficial. If you didn't know that, that's just one reason of many to read this book! While I wasn't part of the core of the "revolutionary movement" of the sixties, I was aware enough to know that we *had* something, something *important* that needed to be said and heard, and in a desperate grasp to get a handle on it, I found the sweet taste of it in Acid Dreams. I am pleasantly surprised, and thrilled to feel reassured that there is hope left in a world that is so rapidly becoming globally Corporate. Let us not go quietly into that good night!

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Flashback. January 7, 2001

By Christopher B. Jonnes

Format:Paperback

This one caught me by surprise. It's not the stuffy this-is-all-the-bad-stuff-that-happened textbook I expected, but rather a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable study of LSD and the CIA's role in the cultural and political maelstrom of the 1960s. Over the past thirty years, from Watergate to Zippergate, Americans have learned that their government is capable of some pretty amazing shenanigans. That helps what we read in this book seem more plausible. What Lee and Shlain document in Acid Dreams, with an impressive volume of research, is the CIA's enormous effort to develop mind-control methods. These included various psychedelic drugs--with LSD topping the list--hypnosis, and more. The potential uses of such control range from military to civilian--and to downright bizarre. For example, they discuss the unresolved question--in some minds--of whether Sirhan Sirhan was actually a CIA-created murdering automaton, a drug-and-hypnosis-induced killer, programmed to kill Robert Kennedy.

Some the things they reveal are far-fetched and may be impossible to ever prove one way or another, but there's plenty more that is incontrovertible. And everything in the book is interesting. Acid Dreams adds a fresh and wonderful perspective on this aspect of our recent history. A more recent book called "Hepcats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams," provides a complimentary education on this topic, covering a broader history of illegal drugs throughout America's past. Readers who enjoy Acid Dreams may want to follow up with this one.--Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.