Author of 'Jesus Freaks' and 'The Harvard Psychedelic Club'
Here's some rare footage of an experimental LSD session that I came across doing research for my next book, a group biography of British writer Aldous Huxley, philosopher Gerald Heard, and Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's from a television program, circa 1956, about mental health issues.
The researcher, Dr. Sidney Cohen, was dosing volunteers at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Los Angeles. Aldous Huxley, who first tried mescaline in 1953 and wrote about it in his seminal book, The Doors of Perception, got Gerald Heard interested in the spiritual potential of psychedelic drugs.
Heard then turned on Bill Wilson, guiding him on an LSD trip supervised by Dr. Cohen in the summer of 1956 -- perhaps in the same room we see in this video. Wilson, who started AA in the 1930s, thought LSD could help alcoholics have the "spiritual awakening" that is such an important part of the twelve-step recovery program he popularized.
Heard and Huxley set the stage for better-known psychedelic research of Timothy Leary, Richard "Ram Dass" Alpert, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil, who are profiled in my 2010 book, The Harvard Psychedelic Club.
And you thought ringing cell phones were annoying. At a recent screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, an audience member on LSD lost control and started flailing his arms and yelling during the film’s Star Child sequence. How he kept his cool through Hal’s revolt and the trippy Star Gate sequence is anyone’s guess. Thanks to mobile phone cameras, the freak out is now making the Internet rounds and even though his ramblings are mostly incoherent, the video is quite a spectacle. It also made me think about those rare instances where audience disruption can actually enhance moviegoing.
Usually, even the most muted conversations during a movie infuriate me. But every now and then, the right disruption during the right movie can really bring out the pleasures of seeing a movie in a communal setting. During horror movies when audience members frantically chastise a character, I’m reminded how film immerses people on even the most visceral level. And there have definitely been a few times where well-timed audience one-liners salvaged otherwise worthless movies. In fact, part of the magic of seeing a movie with a huge group of strangers is that you never know how people will react.
I once saw a screening of Paul Morrisey’s Blood For Dracula where an audience member was either on drugs or blackout drunk. He made noises through most of the movie that only occasionally sounded like words, and never coherent ones.
Finally, during Roman Polanski’s cameo, the guy erupted with excitement and yelled “Polanski!” It was about then that the theater manager finally showed up to escort him out. The guy rambled about Polanski and mentioned Knife in the Water as if this somehow explained his behavior. When the manager said he hadn’t seen Knife in the Water the guy exploded, “What? That sh*t is classic! Come on! We’re going to my house right now to watch it!” We had all been united in opposition before, but I don’t think the entire audience laughed so hard together at any other point during the film.
So, while I empathize with Todd McCarthy’s lament that his children will remember the disruption more than the film itself, and agree that the situation wasn’t handled well, part of me wonders if the audience at the Egyptian has a whole new level of appreciation for the power of Kubrick’s images after witnessing their effect on the guy in the video below.
John Lennon, pictured with wife Yoko Ono, hid a stash of LSD in his garden / File
HARDCORE fans of The Beatles legend John Lennon uncovered where in the grounds of his Surrey, southern England, home he hid his stash of LSD more than 40 years ago.
Builders digging up the lawn of his old house, Kenwood, came across the remains of a leather holdall containing several large broken glass bottles, The Sun reports.
Legend has it that Lennon buried a large quantity of the drug in his garden in 1967 when The Beatles declared they had given up drugs in favour of transcendental meditation.
But when the band returned from India, John decided he had been a bit hasty and tried to dig it up - but never found it.
Now fans are convinced these bottles contained the missing treasure - though they will never know for sure as the one bottle found intact had a cracked cork, so it was empty.
The producers of this IHOP commercial from 1969 must have been on drugs...psychoactive drugs. After seeing this you will feel the way they did when they made it.
Lucy O'Donnell, the woman who inspired the classic Beatles song Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, has died aged 46.
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds featured on the ground-breaking 1967 album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club BandPhoto: PA
The song featured on the ground-breaking 1967 album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
John Lennon's elder son Julian said it was inspired by a picture he drew of his classmate Lucy O'Donnell when they were at a nursery school in Weybridge, Surrey, in 1966.
Julian said he took the picture home and showed it to his father, explaining: ''It's Lucy in the sky with diamonds.''
When Lennon and Paul McCartney's song was subsequently released, it caused controversy because of its hallucinogenic theme and supposed reference to the drug LSD.
The former classmates resumed their friendship in recent months when Lennon heard that Lucy, who was married to Ross Vodden and lived in Surbiton, Surrey, had become ill with lupus, a disease of the immune system.
The St Thomas Lupus Trust, which had been supporting Mr and Mrs Vodden during her illness, said she died last Tuesday aged 46.
Angie Davidson, campaign director of the trust, said: ''Everyone at the Louise Coote Lupus Unit was dreadfully shocked by the death of Lucy. She was a great supporter of ours and a real fighter.
''It's so sad that she has finally lost the battle she fought so bravely for so long.''
The trust said that Lennon and his mother Cynthia were ''shocked and saddened'' by Mrs Vodden's death.
A book of condolence will be opened on the trust's website www.lupus.org.uk.
LSD, the powerful hallucinogenic drug made famous by The Beatles, should be downgraded from a Class A drug, according to the Government's drugs adviser.
The news has emerged after the Professor David Nutt was ordered to apologise by the Home Secretary for saying that taking ecstasy was no worse than riding a horse.
Prof Nutt is chairman of the Government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which is set to recommend that ecstasy should be downgraded from A to B.
In a radio interview last year, months before he became chairman of the council, Prof Nutt disclosed that he also favoured downgrading LSD from A to B.
He said: "There are several drugs that are in class A and probably should not be there, like ecstasy and LSD. There are other drugs that should be up the scale.
"Ecstasy and LSD which tend to cause little dependence and relatively moderate degrees of personal damage are probably too highly classified."
LSD is ranked as a class A drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act. The maximum penalty for supplying the drug is life imprisonment.
Prof Nutt, who took over as chairman of the council last November, went on to call for a major overhaul of the drugs classification rules in Britain.
He said: "I think it is time to have a complete review of all the drug laws. And I would like to have that in the UK."
Prof Nutt said he was content that drugs like "heroin, crack, cocaine and metamphetamine pure" should remain as Class A drugs.
He told Radio New Zealand: "It is quite hard to move drugs out of classes. In the UK we have has these class system now since 1971.
"Only one drug has ever been moved down a class and a couple have moved up. Cannabis moved down and opiates moved up."
Prof Nutt said that if alcohol emerged as a substance in modern Britain it would be classified as an illegal Class B drug.
He said: "If alcohol was suddenly to emerge in society now and it was suddenly assessed as other drugs of abuse it would be rated as a B class drug and therefore not be made legal."
The Daily Telegraph disclosed last week how Prof Nutt had written in an academic journal that taking the drug was no more dangerous than an addiction to horse riding.
In the House of Commons on Monday, Jacqui Smith told MPs that his comments sent the wrong message to young people about the dangers of drugs.
She said: "I made clear to Prof Nutt that I felt his comments went beyond the scientific advice that I expect of him as the chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs."
Text by Johan Lehrer, graphics by Javier Zarracina
DO YOU EVER want to change the way you see the world? Wouldn't it be fun to hallucinate on your lunch break? Although we typically associate such phenomena with powerful drugs like LSD or mescaline, it's easy to fling open the doors of perception without them: All it takes is a basic understanding of how the mind works.
The first thing to know is that the mind isn't a mirror, or even a passive observer of reality. Much of what we think of as being out there actually comes from in here, and is a byproduct of how the brain processes sensation. In recent years scientists have come up with a number of simple tricks that expose the artifice of our senses, so that we end up perceiving what we know isn't real - tweaking the cortex to produce something uncannily like hallucinations. Perhaps we hear the voice of someone who is no longer alive, or feel as if our nose is suddenly 3 feet long.
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All you art collectors out there. Here is a chance to get a Giclee copy of some of Ian M Sherwin work. Ian is planning on doing a whole series of Marblehead, Massachusetts paintings. His work is amazing.
And you thought ringing cell phones were annoying. At a recent screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, an audience member on 
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