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Re-Creational 5 |
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By the late 1950s, great impetus came about for a more apt,
re-creational understand of LSD by way of a conference called by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. It became undeniably clear for the first time that LSD itself actually played a minor role in determining its subjective effects. Some of those attending stated that not one of their volunteers ever wanted to take LSD again, whether the setting had been the office or the hospital. This was rather startling to those who maintained the exact opposite about their groups: that all of their people had considered the experience to be rewarding. |
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Charles Savage, a very early LSD experimenter, spoke about how the gathering had changed ideas about LSD. He remarked that "This meeting is most valuable because it allows us to see all at once the results ranging from nihilistic conclusions of some to the evangelical ones of others. Because the results are so much influenced by the personality, aims, and expectations of the therapist, and by the setting, only a meeting such as this could provide us with such a variety of personalities and settings." |
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There are two other things of importance that occurred in the 1950s concerning the re-creational applications of LSD. The first is that in 1959 Albert Hofmann received a parcel of seeds from a man in Mexico City he had made contact with while investigating the sacred Mexican fungi. These seeds were from the Mexican morning glory (Rivea corymbosa), and soon he determined that they contained ergot alkaloids that were similar to LSD and when ingested evoked similar experiences.
Such knowledge soon spread, with the result that a closely-related cousin of LSD -- about 50 times less powerful than the molecule Hofmann had concocted -- was recognized as being readily available to anyone willing to swallow a handful of seeds. Some of those thus venturing came to feel that the Burpee Seed Company and other seed growers must have had an inkling as to the morning glory's mental effects when they named the psychoactive varieties in America "Pearly Gates," "Wedding Bells," "Flying Saucers" and "Heavenly Blue." |
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The other important development was that by the time the 1960s began, the word "psychedelic" (soul-manifesting) had come into some currency and began displacing "psychotomimetic" as the descriptive adjective for LSD's effects. At the time, many people thought that this term would never pass into common usage, because it sounded so strange. Richard Evans Schultes, of Harvard University and one of the greatest plant discoverers ever, objected further on the grounds that "psychedelic" was a mongrel word from both Greek and Latin roots. |
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In Aldous Huxley's 1956 volume Doors of Perception, LSD is not mentioned. But he is quite clear in this report about a May 1953 mescaline sulfate trip -- entered into under the supervision of Osmond -- that what he experienced was not really a psychotomimetic event, but more akin to a mystical state. "Psychedelic" connotes much more of this sort of interpretation than "psychotomimetic," which as a descriptive term would attract only a small number of re-creational users. Additionally, the second "e" in "psychedelic" helped to obliterate images of psychopaths. |
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This new word, "psychedelic," was at first largely reserved for description of the positive part of an LSD experience -- for the heavenly aspects, rather than for the moments considered to be hellish. But by the 1960s, this revised significater had begun to be used generally, even to the extent of changing expectations.
Abbie Hoffman, a counterculture hero who was first turned on to LSD in 1965 via acid supplied by the U.S. Army, indicated how this change in the sense of LSD's applicability had circulated even by the late 1950s: "Aldous Huxley had told me about LSD back in 1957. And I tried to get it in 1959. I stood in line at a clinic in San Francisco, after Herb Caen had run an announcement in his column in the Chronicle that if anybody wanted to take a new experimental drug called LSD, he would be paid $150 for his effort. Jesus, that emptied Berkeley! I got up about six in the morning, but I was about 1,500 in line . . . So I didn't get any until 1965." |
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