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katj3x's review
5.0
The history of LSD is full of fascinating characters and episodes, and this book covers it very well. It gives an accessible, comprehensive and well-researched overview of the culture surrounding acid from its discovery and early studies in the 1950s to the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s. It's an enlightening read, and a very fun one – Tim Leary's life, for instance, is much more interesting than I'd have thought. It's just a shame that the book is nearly thirty years old, and thus does not cover recent developments in drug culture.
uderecife's review
3.0
What a journey! That’s my feeling after having read this book. Published in 1984, here and there some aspects of it accuse its age and time of publication, taking for granted assumptions that were only possible in the eighties. But this is not to be taken as a flaw, for no one can truly think outside of its own time, and the authors (the whole bunch) are no exception. It’s just a quirk of the book, something that now happens to be there (when it was published it was probably not much of an issue).
As for the story itself, what a crazy trip that was! In a way it’s like LSD’s history is in itself as psychedelic as the substance itself. From Albert Hofmann’s bicycle ride home till the 60’s out of this world social upheavels, LSD seemed as if always bound to take its users to unknown and untold extremes, defying any atempt to a rational characterization of the whole ride.
In this sense, this book is an awesome journey onto that now much unknown succession of events that had so much influence on the world that we are still living today. Plus, by being written at a not too distant timeframe from those happenings, it still carries very tangible echoes of those times and expectations, and by this being much more alive than if it was researched and published today. It’s still dealing with [some] living characters, they’re still household names (Hofmann, Leary, Ginsberg, as many others), and their stories and influences are still very much alive in everyone’s imagination. It’s still beating with the beats of those now much more distant and, in a sense, more critically understood and much less revered times.
For all that, for being like a time capsule that takes you back to the heydays of some very weird and hectic (in a psychedelic sense) times, and for being so entertaining (as far as a history book goes), this is definitely worth a reading. And if you happen to wonder how people could be so naive, and oftentimes so out of touch with the real world, this book also offers you, in an implicit lesson on how our times will be perceived and understood for by the generations to come. Maybe that’s LSD’s way, as a history, of still providing its outside the box unique perspective.
As for the story itself, what a crazy trip that was! In a way it’s like LSD’s history is in itself as psychedelic as the substance itself. From Albert Hofmann’s bicycle ride home till the 60’s out of this world social upheavels, LSD seemed as if always bound to take its users to unknown and untold extremes, defying any atempt to a rational characterization of the whole ride.
In this sense, this book is an awesome journey onto that now much unknown succession of events that had so much influence on the world that we are still living today. Plus, by being written at a not too distant timeframe from those happenings, it still carries very tangible echoes of those times and expectations, and by this being much more alive than if it was researched and published today. It’s still dealing with [some] living characters, they’re still household names (Hofmann, Leary, Ginsberg, as many others), and their stories and influences are still very much alive in everyone’s imagination. It’s still beating with the beats of those now much more distant and, in a sense, more critically understood and much less revered times.
For all that, for being like a time capsule that takes you back to the heydays of some very weird and hectic (in a psychedelic sense) times, and for being so entertaining (as far as a history book goes), this is definitely worth a reading. And if you happen to wonder how people could be so naive, and oftentimes so out of touch with the real world, this book also offers you, in an implicit lesson on how our times will be perceived and understood for by the generations to come. Maybe that’s LSD’s way, as a history, of still providing its outside the box unique perspective.
pete0926's review
3.0
It was an interesting look at the history of this drug, from the early CIA experiments in the 50s to the be ins in SF and the haight-ashbury. The material is very dense and at times I struggled to get through some of it. Overall a well researched and well written book.
tomatowizardgrandandsupreme4's review
3.0
An immensely interesting topic written in a difficult to follow manner and bogged down by copious names and dates-type information
jcovey's review
5.0
Absolutely astonishing history. A must read. Can't pile on enough cliches about it.
adamz24's review
4.0
The "cultural history" stuff, as several critics have pointed out, is not anywhere near as compelling as the info gathered from declassified CIA files, which all sounds like the invention of some rambling ancient hippie rotting in an incense store somewhere, but, you know, isn't.
Takeaways:
Humans are really weird ape-things and it's hard to believe the world isn't much, much worse off than it is
Timothy Leary was a complete jackass who ruined everything for everyone
LSD is not a magic molecule that will save everyone and turn them into peaceful, caring, loving individuals who will forever maintain peace on Earth
LSD is a remarkable molecule with a huge number of possible benefits and a very, very high safety profile in comparison to just about every drug your doctor can prescribe you (fun fact: I get prescribed amphetamines, which, along with heroin, played a role in absolutely decimating the hippie movement, especially the Haight-Ashbury scene, bringing it to an early end, and is correlated with the increase in violence in New Left circles and a massive increase in crime in the Haight; fun fact: children get prescribed amphetamines; fun fact: doctors hand out opiates (no better/worse than heroin) like candy, fun fact: doctors hand out benzos like candy; fun fact: fun fact: alcoholics and other addicts do not have access to LSD, which has been shown over and over again to aid tremendously in treating addiction; fun fact: alcohol, which is a few hundred times more addictive and destructive than LSD [but still something we can consume with regularity without hugely negative results (!!!!)], which is known to be capable of causing cancer in just about every tissue in the human body, is easily bought, even in the form of pure fucking ethanol)
the US government's drug policy is insane and has no sound basis in reality
the cultural narrative surrounding psychedelic drug use is bullshit in its purest form
the CIA was and probably still is up to really, really weird shit. There is a distinction between unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and reasonable thoughts about the kinds of conspiracies that take place every day at the highest government levels. The CIA, factually, experimented with LSD (and around LSD) to highly nefarious ends and in highly nefarious ways. The CIA was involved in the hippie movement in sometimes shocking ways
The CIA is more stupid and reckless than it is evil
I was born waaaayyyy too late
__________________________________________________________________
I suppose the idea is to offer a "complete" account of LSD, in some sense, which makes the book feel disjointed, sometimes. But the book as a whole is immensely valuable and should give everyone who reads it pause before perpetuating outright lies and obscene falsehoods, from either perspective ("the government tells us the truth and LSD is evil and addictive and makes you go crazy and the CIA does important stuff to protect the good guys from the bad guys and doesn't use regular folk as guinea pigs and participate in drug trafficking and criminalize drugs to quell cultural rebellion and the government doesn't deliberately prevent therapeutic use of wondrous molecules that people don't get addicted to and don't have to use every day &c. &c." OR "heeyyy, mannn: acid is the truth, maannn").
There's some weird stuff in the reviews here about the "bias" of the writers. If understanding that LSD isn't Satan in his purest form counts as bias, then sure. If pointing out that LSD has enormous therapeutic potential and played an important role in a huge cultural shift, sure. But the writers go to great lengths, perhaps too great, to point out the not-so-great stuff that surrounded LSD use. LSD, the thesis goes, is a chemical molecule. Its moral value, in itself, is neutral. That is the very definition of an unbiased perspective.
I would like to see an updated version of this book/another book that covers the LSD boom in the 90s, the Pickard arrest and subsequent crash, etc.
Takeaways:
Humans are really weird ape-things and it's hard to believe the world isn't much, much worse off than it is
Timothy Leary was a complete jackass who ruined everything for everyone
LSD is not a magic molecule that will save everyone and turn them into peaceful, caring, loving individuals who will forever maintain peace on Earth
LSD is a remarkable molecule with a huge number of possible benefits and a very, very high safety profile in comparison to just about every drug your doctor can prescribe you (fun fact: I get prescribed amphetamines, which, along with heroin, played a role in absolutely decimating the hippie movement, especially the Haight-Ashbury scene, bringing it to an early end, and is correlated with the increase in violence in New Left circles and a massive increase in crime in the Haight; fun fact: children get prescribed amphetamines; fun fact: doctors hand out opiates (no better/worse than heroin) like candy, fun fact: doctors hand out benzos like candy; fun fact: fun fact: alcoholics and other addicts do not have access to LSD, which has been shown over and over again to aid tremendously in treating addiction; fun fact: alcohol, which is a few hundred times more addictive and destructive than LSD [but still something we can consume with regularity without hugely negative results (!!!!)], which is known to be capable of causing cancer in just about every tissue in the human body, is easily bought, even in the form of pure fucking ethanol)
the US government's drug policy is insane and has no sound basis in reality
the cultural narrative surrounding psychedelic drug use is bullshit in its purest form
the CIA was and probably still is up to really, really weird shit. There is a distinction between unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and reasonable thoughts about the kinds of conspiracies that take place every day at the highest government levels. The CIA, factually, experimented with LSD (and around LSD) to highly nefarious ends and in highly nefarious ways. The CIA was involved in the hippie movement in sometimes shocking ways
The CIA is more stupid and reckless than it is evil
I was born waaaayyyy too late
__________________________________________________________________
I suppose the idea is to offer a "complete" account of LSD, in some sense, which makes the book feel disjointed, sometimes. But the book as a whole is immensely valuable and should give everyone who reads it pause before perpetuating outright lies and obscene falsehoods, from either perspective ("the government tells us the truth and LSD is evil and addictive and makes you go crazy and the CIA does important stuff to protect the good guys from the bad guys and doesn't use regular folk as guinea pigs and participate in drug trafficking and criminalize drugs to quell cultural rebellion and the government doesn't deliberately prevent therapeutic use of wondrous molecules that people don't get addicted to and don't have to use every day &c. &c." OR "heeyyy, mannn: acid is the truth, maannn").
There's some weird stuff in the reviews here about the "bias" of the writers. If understanding that LSD isn't Satan in his purest form counts as bias, then sure. If pointing out that LSD has enormous therapeutic potential and played an important role in a huge cultural shift, sure. But the writers go to great lengths, perhaps too great, to point out the not-so-great stuff that surrounded LSD use. LSD, the thesis goes, is a chemical molecule. Its moral value, in itself, is neutral. That is the very definition of an unbiased perspective.
I would like to see an updated version of this book/another book that covers the LSD boom in the 90s, the Pickard arrest and subsequent crash, etc.