Miicro tripping on LSD
[link:http://www.themorningnews.org/article/the-heretic|
http://www.themorningnews.org/article/the-heretic
The Heretic
by Tim Doody
For decades, the U.S. government banned medical studies of the effects of LSD. But for one longtime, elite researcher, the promise of mind-blowing revelations was just too tempting.
Credit: Jonathan Castro
At 9:30 in the morning, an architect and three senior scientiststwo from Stanford, the other from Hewlett-Packarddonned eyeshades and earphones, sank into comfy couches, and waited for their government-approved dose of LSD to kick in. From across the suite and with no small amount of anticipation, Dr. James Fadiman spun the knobs of an impeccable sound system and unleashed Beethovens Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68. Then he stood by, ready to ease any concerns or discomfort.
For this particular experiment, the couched volunteers had each brought along three highly technical problems from their respective fields that theyd been unable to solve for at least several months. In approximately two hours, when the LSD became fully active, they were going to remove the eyeshades and earphones, and attempt to find some solutions. Fadiman and his team would monitor their efforts, insights, and output to determine if a relatively low dose of acid100 micrograms to be exactenhanced their creativity.
It was the summer of 66. And the morning was beginning like many others at the International Foundation for Advanced Study, an inconspicuously named, privately funded facility dedicated to psychedelic drug research, which was located, even less conspicuously, on the second floor of a shopping plaza in Menlo Park, Calif. However, this particular morning wasnt going to go like so many others had during the preceding five years, when researchers at IFAS (pronounced if-as) had legally dispensed LSD. Though Fadiman cant recall the exact date, this was the day, for him at least, that the music died. Or, perhaps more accurately for all parties involved in his creativity study, it was the day before.
drokhole
(1,230 posts)awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)stevedeshazer
(21,653 posts)I took LSD several times. I'm really glad I did.
wilsonbooks
(972 posts)Still, intriguing hints suggest that, despite stigma and risk of incarceration, some of our better innovators continued to feed their headsand society as a whole reaped the benefits. Francis Crick confessed that he was tripping the first time he envisioned the double helix. Steve Jobs called LSD one of the two or three most important things hed experienced. And Bill Wilson claimed it helped to facilitate breakthroughs of a more soulful variety: Decades after co-founding Alcoholics Anonymous, he tried LSD, said it tuned him in to the same spiritual awareness that made sobriety possible, and pitched its therapeutic useunsuccessfullyto the AA board. So perhaps the music never really died. Perhaps its more accurate to say instead that the music got much softer. And the ones who were still listening had to pretend they couldnt hear anything at all.
Shagman
(135 posts)Once you learn to question everything, you might question what your leaders are doing. We can't have that.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)true, that.