While I was born in '65 and can't attest to the accuracy of events and spirit of the times, this was written by two legit writers, not conspiracy theorists, even though some of the wackier, even more sinister events, may sound like conspiracy theory. Although the MK Ultra experiments are well documented, there is so much strange history here that it's hard to summarize. Essentially, the book traces the three main camps of LSD proponents and dabblers: The CIA/Military, interested in using it to break down prisoners and to use it for interrogation; Psychiatrists, interested in therapeutic and occasionally dubious research projects on its effects on the mind; and the Counterculture, including the New Left, Hippies, Yippees and beyond, interested in, as Kesey put it, 'turning the lab rats against their oppressors' and using the drug to transform individual consciousness and therefore all of culture.
There are all kinds of unlikely combinations of people intermingling with each other, including "Captain Trips", a former spy -turned Acid advocate hanging out with Aldous Huxley and both opining on the transformative nature of the drug. There are so many strange intersections of culture, psychology, politics, drug culture, horrifying military research, and overall weird agendas that I can see now that the sixties were far weirder than I'd ever thought.
The authors also note how LSD can be sort of a neutral mind-expanding agent that depends a lot upon context and environment, thus they have a fairly open-minded attitude about how it can be both used and abused. The book was neither strictly ruling it out as automatically inducing incurable psychosis and brain damage, or naively endorsing it as a social cure-all, the way Ginsberg and others did (who sound surprisingly daffy, given how informed and erudite Ginsberg was-- ah! hindsight!)
I also loved the part about the New Left and how acid played a part in giving the movement an almost magical-thinking type of mentality, losing sight of what was really realistic. It also confirmed my suspicions about certain types of radicals who have no patience with the more mundane aspects of activism (the so-called "Action" faction of the radical movement who thought organizers were boring sell-outs-- there are still these types of radicals today. Adrenaline junkies who have no patience for boring tasks and basically rationalize their tendencies as being 'pure'. Ugh!)
That chapter even put Manson's wacky revolutionary paranoia into context, and how his followers could actually believe his apocalyptic theories (including a series of underground lakes beneath Death Valley!!!) as you see how repeated use of the drug, along with severe isolation and cultish behavior, could make people really nuts. (Having just read a lot of stuff about the Family, I was puzzled how people could be so stupid and crazy; this chapter really puts that into context- how so many people were anticipating a violent revolution).
This book also has some humor, some horror, and a lot of insight. Very readable. Literally hard to put down. Highly recommended.
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Top reviews from other countries
Jeff
Entertainingly wriiten summary of the drug culture around in my early "experimental" years.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 11, 2015
