1968 - Mark Kurlansky [109]
Such articles described “college marijuana parties,” although a more typical get-together would be students lying around smoking joints and reading such an article while uncontrollable giggling led to gasping, wheezing laughter. A popular way to pass a rainy day in the East Village was to get stoned and go to the St. Marks Cinema, where sometimes included in the triple feature for a dollar would be the old documentary on the dangers of marijuana, Reefer Madness.
Marijuana was a twentieth-century drug in the United States. It had never even been banned by law until 1937. LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide, or acid, was invented by accident in a Swiss laboratory in the 1930s by a doctor, Albert Hofmann, when a small amount of the compound on his fingertips resulted in “an altered state of awareness of the world.” After the war, Hofmann’s laboratory sold small amounts in the United States, where saxophonist John Coltrane, celebrated for his introspective brilliance, jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and pianist Thelonious Monk experimented with the new drug, though not nearly as much as did the CIA. The substance was hard to detect because it had neither odor, taste, nor color. An enemy surreptitiously exposed to LSD might reveal secrets or become confused and surrender. This was the origin of the idea of slipping acid into the water cooler. Plans under consideration included slipping acid to Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Cuba’s Fidel Castro so that they would babble foolishly and lose their followings. But Castro’s popularity among the young would probably have been enormously magnified once Allen Ginsberg and others learned that Fidel, too, was an acid head.
Agents experimented on themselves, causing one to run outside to discover that cars were “bloodthirsty monsters.” They also, in conjunction with the army, experimented on unknowing victims, including prisoners and prostitutes. The tests resulted in a number of suicides and psychotic patients and left the CIA convinced that it was almost impossible to usefully interrogate someone while under the influence of LSD. Acid experiments were encouraged by Richard Helms, who later, between 1967 and 1973, served as CIA director.
Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, Harvard junior professors, studied LSD by taking it or giving it to others. Their work in the early sixties was well respected—until parents started complaining that their promising young Harvard student was boasting of having “found God and discovered the secret of the Universe.” The pair left Harvard in 1963 but continued experiments in Milbrook, New York. In 1966 LSD became an illegal substance by an act of Congress and Leary’s fame spread through arrests. Alpert became a Hindu and changed his name to Baba Ram Dass. In 1967, Allen Ginsberg urged everyone over the age of fourteen to try LSD at least once. Tom Wolfe’s bestselling book that extolled and popularized LSD, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, was published in 1968.
It was an unpredictable drug. Some people had a pleasant experience and others nightmarish cycles of mania and depression or paranoia known as “a bad trip.” Students who took pride in being responsible drug abusers insisted that tripping be done under the supervision of a friend who did not take the drug but had experienced it before. To many, including Abbie Hoffman, there was a kind of unspoken fraternity of those who had taken acid, and those who had not were on the outside.
Disturbing stories began to appear in the press. In January 1968 several newspapers reported that six young college men suffered