Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD (11 page)

After his legendary exploits with the OSS, the Captain continued to serve as an undercover operative for various agencies within the US government. He had many contacts with the FBI, for example, and he claimed to be a close friend of J. Edgar Hoover’s. “That old bugger was tough, really tough,” Hubbard said with admiration. But when he tried to turn on the FBI chief, Hoover stubbornly declined. However, the Captain did manage to give the drug to “some top intelligence men in Washington, always with good results.”

During the early 1950s Hubbard was asked to join the CIA, but he refused. “They lied so much, cheated so much. I don’t like ‘em,” he snarled. “They’re lousy deceivers, sons of the devils themselves.” The Captain’s beef with the Agency stemmed in part from his unsuccessful attempt to secure back pay owed to him from his OSS days. “They crooked me,” he complained bitterly.

Hubbard was unkindly disposed toward the CIA for other reasons as well. Most important, he didn’t approve of what the Agency was doing with his beloved LSD. “The CIA work stinks,” he said. “They were misusing it. I tried to tell them how to use it, but even when they were killing people, you couldn’t tell them a goddamned thing.” (Hubbard was certain that Frank Olson was not the only person who died as a result of the CIA’s surprise acid tests.)

“I don’t know how Al’s Washington affairs were done,” Dr. Osmond admitted. “He was one of those naturally brilliant wheeler-dealers.” Indeed, Hubbard seemed to have a knack for popping up in the most unpredictable places. He worked for the Treasury Department as a young man during the Capone days, busting moonshiners and gangsters who were smuggling liquor into the US from Canada. Apparently he was able to ingratiate himself with both sides during Prohibition, as he subsequently became deputy chief of security for the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas. “Those Mafia men were always interesting to talk to,” Hubbard remarked, “but they never smiled.”

The Captain also engaged in undercover work for a number of other government agencies, including the Federal Narcotics Bureau and the Food and Drug Administration (at a time when both organizations were assisting the CIA’s drug testing programs). During the mid-1960s he was employed by Teledyne, a major defense subcontractor, as “director of human factors research.” In this capacity Hubbard served as adviser and consultant to a combined navy and NASA project that involved testing the effects of psychochemical agents on a newly designed “helicopter avionics system.” Teledyne worked closely with various government organizations, including the CIA, to apply these techniques to additional areas of military interest.

While Hubbard was not a CIA operative per se, his particular area of expertise—hallucinogenic drugs—brought him into close contact with elements of the espionage community. The CIA must have known what he was up to, since Sandoz and the FDA kept the Agency informed whenever anyone received shipments of LSD. The Captain, of course, was one of their best customers, having purchased large amounts of the drug on different occasions.

In a sense “the mysterious Al” embodies the irony and ambiguity of the LSD story as a whole. As one of his friends put it, “Cappy was sort of a double agent. He worked for the government, but in his own way he was a rebel.” Some call him a “witch doctor,” others describe him as “an incurable scoundrel.” A most unlikely combination of mystic and redneck, Hubbard above all remains an enigma.

“Al Hubbard was a very strange man,” confided a fellow drug researcher, “but he probably knew more about LSD than anyone else in the world.” And while his tale has many gaps and fuzzy edges, this much can be established beyond a shadow of a doubt: his enthusiasm for LSD never waned. “Anyone who’ll try to tell me that this has all been a big hallucination has got to be out of their mind. . . . What I’ve seen with it has been the truth and nothing but the truth.”

And as a parting shot he added, “If you don’t think it’s amazing, all I’ve got to say is just go ahead and try it.”

Healing Acid

By the late 1950s, according to Robert Bernstein, former assistant surgeon general of the American army, “perhaps by coincidence, LSD
was almost simultaneously recognized by the army as a military threat and by certain segments of our US population as a means for self-fulfillment.” What puzzling characteristics does LSD possess that give rise to such disparate and seemingly contradictory points of view? How could the same drug be hailed as an unparalleled avenue to transcendental or visionary experiences and denounced as an agent of psychotic interludes?

Originally researchers viewed LSD solely in terms of its ability to create an experimental toxic psychosis. The LSD experience was synonymous with LSD psychosis—“good trips” were no exception. This frame of reference, uniformly shared by scientists at the outset of the 1950s, was typified by the comment of a CIA agent involved in the MK-ULTRA program: “Tripping and psychosis are one and the same. Tripping can be an awful schizoid feeling. Also there are hebephrenics—happy schizos. Their experience is similar to a good trip.”

Within a few years, however, reports with a different message began to circulate from Canada. After meeting Captain Hubbard, a small circle of researchers based in Saskatchewan broke with the psychotomimetic definition and started exploring new directions. Dr. Osmond noticed a significant discrepancy between the usual description of the drug experience as a close encounter with lunacy and the kinds of experiences reported by his patients when they were given LSD for their alcoholic problems. They often spoke of an LSD session as insightful and rewarding. Many subjects invoked superlatives, calling it an experience of great beauty. As the research at Weyburn Hospital progressed, it became apparent to Osmond and his cohorts that most people who took LSD did not become insane.

The terminology used to describe the LSD experience in the scientific literature did not sit well with Osmond. Words like
hallucination
and
psychosis
were loaded; they implied negative states of mind. The psychiatric jargon reflected a pathological orientation, whereas a truly objective science would not impose value judgments on chemicals that produced unusual or altered states of consciousness. Aldous Huxley also felt that the language of pathology was inadequate. He and Osmond agreed that a new word had to be invented to encompass the full range of effects of these drugs.

The two men had been close friends ever since Huxley’s initial mescaline experience, and they carried on a lively correspondence. At first Huxley proposed the word
phanerothyme
, which derived
from roots relating to “spirit” or “soul.” A letter to Osmond included the following couplet:

To make this trivial world sublime
,

Take half a Gramme of phanerothyme
.

To which Osmond responded:

To fathom hell or soar angelic

Just take a pinch of psychedelic
.

And so it came to pass that the word
psychedelic
was coined. Osmond introduced it to the psychiatric establishment in 1957. Addressing a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences, he argued that hallucinogenic drugs did “much more” than mimic psychosis, and therefore an appropriate name must “include concepts of enriching the mind and enlarging the vision.” He suggested a neutral term to replace
psychotomimetic
, and his choice was certainly vague enough. Literally translated,
psychedelic
means “mind-manifesting,” implying that drugs of this category do not produce a predictable sequence of events but bring to the fore whatever is latent within the unconscious. Accordingly Osmond recognized that LSD could be a valuable tool for psychotherapy. This notion represented a marked departure from the military-medical paradigm, which held that every LSD experience was automatically an experimental psychosis.

Dr. Albert Hofmann, the chemist who discovered LSD, thought Osmond’s choice appropriate, for it “corresponds better to the effects of these drugs than
hallucinogenic
or
psychotomimetic.”
The model psychosis concept was further called into question by published reports demonstrating that in many ways the comparison between naturally occurring and LSD-induced psychosis was facile. During the mid-1950s, researchers John MacDonald and James Galvin pointed out that schizophrenics did not experience the wealth of visual hallucinations common with LSD and mescaline but were prone to auditory aberrations, unlike drug subjects. Oddly enough, true schizophrenics hardly reacted to LSD unless given massive doses.

As the psychotomimetic paradigm began to weaken, the focus shifted toward investigating the therapeutic potential of LSD. Two forms of LSD therapy arose in the 1950s. The “psycholytic” or “mind-loosening” approach utilized low or moderate dosages of LSD as an adjunct to conventional psychoanalysis. Employed in repeated sessions,
the drug was said to speed up the process of psychoexploration by reducing the patient’s defensiveness and facilitating the recollection of repressed memories and traumatic experiences. Stripped of his censorious attitude, the subject might experience a catharsis in a detached and heightened state of awareness, allowing him to retain his insights after the effects of the chemical subsided. The low-dose technique was practiced primarily in England, where Dr. Ronald Sandison established the first LSD clinic open to the public in 1953. Before long, additional centers specializing in this type of therapy sprang up in Germany, Holland, France, Italy, Czechoslovakia and several Scandinavian countries.

A different approach caught on more quickly in Canada and the United States. Psychedelic therapy, developed by Captain Al Hubbard and popularized by Dr. Humphry Osmond, was geared toward achieving a mystical or conversion experience. The procedure involved high dosages of LSD, precluding any possibility that the patient’s ego defenses could withstand psychic dissolution.

According to this therapeutic model, as the drug starts to take effect there is an unfixing of perceptual constants and the subject’s habitual reality ties are suspended. It is as though one were suddenly thrust into a Van Gogh canvas,- objects ripple and breathe, an onrush of stimuli bombard and penetrate the body. Sensory functions overlap in a manner that might best be described as polymorphously perverse: one can “hear” colors and “see” sounds. The world is felt to be an extension of the flesh. Existence is no longer a riddle to be solved but a mystery to behold.

During the apotheosis of the acid high, the self-concept may be diminished to the point of depersonalization. As poet Octavio Paz describes in
Alternating Current
, “The self disappears, but no other self appears to occupy the empty space it has left. No god but rather the divine. No faith but rather the primordial feeling that sustains all faith, all hope. Peace in the crater of the volcano, the reconciliation of man—what remains of man—with total presence.”

This state of consciousness was thought to be conducive to healing deep-rooted psychological wounds. The task of the therapist was to help the patient understand and assimilate the experience in a way that would maximize personal growth. Best results were obtained when the therapist shed his “doctor” status and assumed the role of guide or mentor, intervening only to help the initiate relax
and “go with the flow.” To succeed, the therapist had to be well acquainted with the psychedelic terrain; this familiarity could only be gained by taking the drug and learning to direct a positive experience. (Osmond’s Golden Rule: “You start with yourself.”) It was not uncommon for a guide to take a small amount of LSD during the therapy session to increase his rapport with his patient.

Originally tested on alcoholics in Canada with remarkable results, high-dose therapy was subsequently applied to a wide range of diagnostic categories: juvenile delinquency, narcotics addiction, severe character neurosis, and the like. This approach was particularly effective in treating people who were emotionally blocked; they were able to cut through a lot of psychological red tape, so to speak, and get right to the heart of the matter. Oftentimes those who underwent psychedelic therapy reported dramatic personality changes involving not only the relief of neurotic symptoms but a wholesale revamping of value systems, religious and philosophical beliefs, and basic lifestyle. Numerous patients claimed that a few LSD trips proved more fruitful than years of psychoanalysis—at considerably less expense. In some cases spectacular success was achieved with only one dose of the drug.

LSD was the talk of the town in Hollywood and Beverly Hills in the late 1950s as various movie stars were dosed on the psychiatrist’s couch. Participants in such sessions included several of the glamor elite, each capable of generating a flash of publicity. Cary Grant first took LSD under the guidance of Dr. Mortimer Hartmann and then with Dr. Oscar Janiger. His therapy was such a success that he became a zealous missionary for LSD. “All my life,” Grant stated, “I’ve been searching for peace of mind. I’d explored yoga and hypnotism and made several attempts at mysticism. Nothing really seemed to give me what I wanted until this treatment.” People from all walks of life echoed Grant’s plaudits for the drug, and psychiatrists who practiced LSD therapy were inundated with inquiries.

Beatific, oceanic, redemptive—these words have been used to describe the peak of an LSD trip. But there is another side to it. To be cast about as flotsam in the power draughts of the universe can be a hellish as well as a heavenly ordeal. Both possibilities are rooted in the experience of depersonalization or ego loss. The CIA was not interested in the therapeutic applications of LSD. On the contrary, the men of ARTICHOKE and MK-ULTRA defined the drug as an anxiety-producing agent, and they realized it would be relatively
easy to “break” a person who was exposed to highly stressful stimuli while high on acid. As one CIA document instructed, “[Whatever] reduces integrative capacity may serve to increase the possibility of an individual being overwhelmed by frustrations and conflicts hitherto managed successfully.” The powerful ego-shattering effects of LSD were ideally suited for this purpose. CIA and military interrogators proceeded to utilize the drug as an instrument of psychological torture.