Turn On, Tune In, Drop By

By STEVE PULIMOOD
Published: September 9, 2010
The artists Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman have transformed an icon of modernist design into a swinging LSD safe house. And yes, it’s a total trip.

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Will Harvard drop acid again?

Will Harvard drop acid again?

Interview with John Halpern

Before we head into his office at McLean, Halpern wants to take a walk in the woods that surround the hospital’s Belmont grounds. It is a crisp spring morning, and I half expect Halpern to pick and ingest some lichen, or start scraping some bark off a tree that he would brew into a psychedelic tea. Eventually we find our way to his office, where I imagined would be cushions on the floor, or maybe a giant statue of Shiva or Vishnu. What I see instead is the office of a typical Harvard professor: wall-to-ceiling papers, books, and journals. And while the screen-saver on his computer monitor is decidedly psychedelic, there is nothing here to suggest I am in the den of a mad Harvard scientist, hell-bent on dosing the collective American consciousness with LSD. In fact, when I mention the ghost of Leary and his legacy, Halpern smiles and says, “Well, we have seen how not to do it, haven’t we?”

It’s true Halpern is giving MDMA to dying cancer patients who are suffering from related anxiety, but he explains that these are not take-home medicines. The same would be true of LSD if his study of that drug is approved, which he hopes will happen sometime this year. First he must deliver protocols to McLean’s Institutional Review Board. If these are accepted, he can go to the FDA to get its approval to use LSD in a clinical trial. [More...]

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Spiders on Drugs

The "Spiders on Drugs" have been around the interblock for at least five years now, but this is a new take on those spiders and what might happen if you add a narrative describing the spiders in human terms.

New Spiders on LSD
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LSD vs Alcohol vs Tree

LSD vs Alcohol vs Tree

Original idea: stlive
Modifications: leprosorium.ru

Go See the Whole Panel

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Mods and Rockers Festival

Mods and Rockers Festival: Skidoo

Writer Paul Krassner shares his recollections about the 1968 acid-comedy film Skidoo directed by Otto Preminger. The movie has its first 35mm screening in Los Angeles in over 25 years on Saturday July 14 at the Mods & Rockers Film Festival in Hollywood.

Timothy Leary had a certain sense of pride about the prominent people he and his associates had introduced to the psychedelic revolution. He once told me the names of some of the folks whose lives had been changed by taking LSD. Among them: director Otto Preminger, actor Cary Grant, conservative think-tanker Herman Kahn, Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson, Time magazine publishers Henry and Clare Booth Luce.

"But," Leary told me, "I consider Otto Preminger one of our failures."

...(Preminger's) Skidoo was pro-acid propaganda thinly disguised as a comedy adventure. However, LSD was not the reason that the FBI was annoyed with the film. Rather, according to Gleason's FBI files, they objected to one scene in the script where a file cabinet is stolen from an FBI building. Gleason was later approved as a special FBI contact in the entertainment business.

One of the characters in Skidoo was a Mafia chieftain named God. Screenwriter Bill Cannon had suggested Groucho Marx for the part. Preminger said it wasn't a good idea, but since they were already shooting, and that particular character was needed on the set in three days, Groucho got the job. During one scene, Preminger was screaming instructions at him.

Groucho yelled back, "Are you drunk?"

When Skidoo was released in 1968, Tim Leary saw it, and he cheerfully admitted, "I was fooled by Otto Preminger. He's much hipper than me."

Krassner's just got tons of good stories, doesn't he?

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Bogus Science - The LSD-Chromosome Scare

Bogus Science - The LSD-Chromosome Scare

Fraser Clark reminds us of the 1967 scare that Science Magazine published about LSD causing chromosome damage.

"THE HIDDEN EVILS OF LSD", screamed the Saturday Evening Post, Aug 12, 1967.

"By evening, the charge that LSD could break chromosomes was in all the nation's media." Peter Stafford: ‘Psychedelics Encyclopedia.’

But the entire story was basically a government-funded scam based on the examination of a single patient!

When I had my first child, my Mother was mortified that my previous lsd use (not while pregnant) would produce a deformed baby because of the bogus stories that started in 1967. It didn't.

Somebody wanted a whole generation to be scared straight. It worked about as good as those warnings on a pack of cigarettes do.

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Utopian Bliss Balls

Utopian Bliss Balls is a product exclusively available at Azarius. They are derived from the real Bliss Balls from the sixties, made of psychedelic LSA seeds and bee wax. This modern variety contains Hawaïan baby woodrose (Argyreia nervosa), fo ti tien (Centella asiatica), damiana (Turnera diffusa), ginseng (Panax ginseng) and bee pollen.

Very popular in the sixties among hippies and artists in California. Azarius gives them a brand new look! Made with the traditional ingredients like the Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds and damiana. Gives you an LSD-like trip.

Never heard of them, but it's sure got a great name.

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RADICAL LIVING PAPERS

RADICAL LIVING PAPERS
A history of the free, alternative, counter-culture and underground press, 1965-75
Gavin Brown's enterprise at PASSERBY
February 2 - March 7, 2007

Covering politics, revolutions, evolutions of the planets, freak-outs, love-ins, support of green politics, gay liberation, power to the people, the peace parties, protests, the Panthers, peyote, LSD, pot, fiction, music, poetry, prose, prayers and more. Publications include: Actuel, Avatar, Berkeley Barb, Berkeley Tribe, Black Panther Papers, Digger Papers, Door, East Village Other [EVO], The Fifth Estate, Freep, Grabuge, Hobo-Québec, International Times [it], Los Angeles Free Press, The Oracle, The Organ, Other Scenes, OZ, Rat, The Realist, Re Nudo, Rolling Stone, The Seed, Ann Arbor Sun....more.

GBE@Passerby

Blogged with Flock
(from the inbox via: arthur)

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Nena Von Schlebrugge

Uma? No. It certainly looks like Uma Thurman. It's Nena Von Schlebrugge, Uma's mother, as she gets ready to wed Timothy Leary. (She later divorced Leary and married Tibetan scholar, Dr. Robert Thurman.)

Nena was 28 when she met Leary, who was then 45, at his annual Fourth of July party upstate in Millbrook. According to Robert Greenfield (who recently wrote a bio of Leary), she told the mind-altering Harvard professor that she "wanted to go to India to seek ultimate wisdom, not to mention the secret sexual practices of the Orient."

"They took LSD and three days later they decided to get married," recalls Leary's ex-girlfriend Peggy Hitchcock.

Their Millbrook nuptials were a "phantasmagoric, magical mystery tour, the first real big coming-out party for all the A-list, jet-set, high-fashion beautiful people from New York who had recently discovered LSD," writes Greenfield. "Guests lined up to present the newlyweds with hash, grass and psychedelic mushrooms, as well as snuffboxes filled with LSD and cocaine." The wedding cake was crowned with the Hindu deities Shakti and Siva having sex.

You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You
By D A Pennebaker
1964, 12 minutes, Black & White

Watch Video (Quick Time)

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HYPERSPATIAL MAPS

MESCALYSERGIC VISIONS
(Vol. VII, No.1)

"I read that LSD and mescaline could be combined to yield a trip that was longer-lasting and smoother than either alone."

As it turned out, his experiment yielded him a shiny octopus-like creature that was loving and gentle. Makes sense to me now to have the vibrancy of the acid with the loving feelgood of the mescaline, although I never thought to combine the two before.

Floating in the corner of my room was an enormous, shimmering, translucent, opalescent, octopod/jellyfish-like creature from which the tentacles protruded! My initial reaction was one of disbelief, mixed with a substantial degree of fear. However, the thing immediately began to caress me with its tendrils--as if to reassure me, and my apprehension completely melted away. Amazingly, I actually perceived a gentle, soothing pressure against my skin as it caressed me like a child! As it touched me I felt its consciousness partially merge with mine, and I was then flooded with a sense of love unlike I have ever experienced before, or even imagined to be possible.

Thanks to Page 2 in the free issue Entheogen Review. (PDF file)

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John Halpern: an informant for the DEA?

-- by Jon Hanna

"I've recently penned the article "Halperngate" for the current issue of The Entheogen Review."

"Since this article deals with a lesser-known snitch, John Halpern, who has also been a psychedelic researcher largely supported by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and who still frequents underground events (he will be part of a team at the 2006 BOOM Festival's crisis tent), I feel that it is important for the psychonautical community to have the opportunity to read about Halpern's past choice to repeatedly provide testimony to the DEA related to the arrest and trial of Leonard Pickard and Clyde Apperson, who were ultimately both convicted of LSD manufacture." A PDF of the article is posted at:

www.entheogenreview.com/halperngate.html

"Information about the availability of the hard-copy of this issue of The Entheogen Review will be posted at their main site after 4/12/06; this issue (Vernal Equionox 2006) also contains some reviews of the LSD conference in Basel, the H.R. Giger museum, and a Swiss absinthe bar. As well, there's an ayahuasca article from Peter Gorman, and network feedback notes on the psychoactivity of Pedicularis species, Kaempferia galanga, Atropa belladonna, and DOC. Plus there's an events calendar, my "Sources" column reviewing the latest in psychedelic art, entheobotanical vendors, and book dealers, and a remembrance for Carla Higdon, who passed away earlier this year. See www.entheogenreview.com for more information on the journal."

Interesting.... and probably not the only one in the psychonautical community.

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Get BACK On The Bus - Kesey's magic bus is out of the swamp, may get back on the road. Acid test: Restaurateur wants to restore the vehicle once piloted by the LSD-fueled Merry Pranksters in the 1960s. [MORE]


STOP BITCHING, START A REVOLUTIONIt starts right now! We form S.B.S.R. (Stop Bitching Start a Revolution) Circles all over where we come together and start to talk about possibilities. The Circles would be a meeting, a get together, to start an energy going, to start talking to each other about possible solutions to the problems we're facing in our country, in our town, in our world. [MORE]

Blog Nod - to Global Voices Online. The world is talking. Are you listening? An international effort to diversify the conversation taking place online by involving speakers from around the world, and developing tools, institutions and relationships to help make these voices heard. And they may need your help.

I wondered why the Frisbee was getting bigger, and then it hit me.

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Lots of events surrounding the January 13-15, 2006, International Symposium celebrating the 100th Birthday of Albert Hofmann in Switzerland.

Project Eleusis - Release date: January 9th 2006. This Compilation is a Birthday Gift - A Tribute to his Revelations and Inspirations. The music on this CD is created under the influence of... Kykeon - the magical mystical Brew. All tracks are listed with their mp3 links.

Dropout Productions and Gaia Media Stiftung present:
Mystical Experience - Closing Ceremony for the International Symposium. Psychedelic Art and Live Music.

problem child and wonder drug

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URLS GONE WILD
Several mini-posts follow below for those of you reading this through Bloglines, Feedburner, etc.

Zombie Claus was celebrated in Michigan last night. [via]

* My favorite quotes: "...you've never seen the likes of it. A whole bunch of Santa Clauses, drunk as lords, cussing and cursing and scraping, all in broad daylight..." and "...Santas were brawling, swearing & falling about..."

* For Seattle, Denver, Nashville, Detroit, and More

* University Of Michigan newspaper does an online parody of Windows XP. Nicely done.
Link

* Skirt-chasing playboy Daniel Anceneaux spent weeks talking with a sensual woman on the Internet before arranging a romantic rendezvous at a remote beach -- and discovering that his on-line sweetie of six months was his own mother!
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* LSD Story Causes Flashbacks

* Reverend Billy exorcised the building, while the security guards looked on, wondering just how much damage control their PR people would have to do if they arrested a preacher and a gospel choir.
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* Howard Stern's free speech ride signs off.
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* Neil Young to keynote SXSW 2006

* A Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Allen Ginsberg's book as well as the American book launch for the 2005 publication of The Baby Beat Generation (The 1970s San Francisco Renaissance)
Link

Why is Christmas just like a day at work? You do all the work and the fat guy with the suit gets all the credit?

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LSD Blotter Art
This post's for the searchers who visit this site looking for posts about LSD Blotter Art. I've featured several sites over the past few years and thought I'd put all the URLS in one place to make it easier to find. Nice artwork and some will run as high as several hundred dollars for print.

Blotter Art is the original and still has the largest selection of blotter art for sale. The All In Your Head and Felix-Yellow pics shown here are some top sellers.

More Blotter Art Sites »
Tripatourium aka Blotter Sheets now.
Blotter Sheets
Blast
Stevee

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"Ecstasy: In and About Altered States," Oct. 9, 2005-Feb. 20, 2006, at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA,in Los Angeles. The exhibition includes 30 international artists and their magnificent works.

"Ecstasy" is the closest thing to an LSD flashback that you’re likely to see, a "sensation" in the truest meaning of the term. The strobe lights alone are enough to jump-start long-dormant memories, many of them quite pleasant.

Berlin-based artist Klaus Weber (b. 1967) has installed a cut-glass fountain bubbling with a clear liquid purported to be LSD, formulated in a homeopathic lab. Unsurprisingly, the work is secured behind glass walls and is all but impossible to reach. The implicit tease is whether or not it would be worth it to find out if the liquid is what the artist says it is.

There's also a voyage to the stars exhibit, a floating chamber exhibit, a suspended and architectural matrix of tiny green lights exhibit, giant mushrooms exhibit, an alien abduction exhibit, the cut-glass fountain bubbling with a clear liquid purported to be LSD exhibit and many more.Would love to speak to someone who's been to this exhibit. Gotta be a lot of fun.

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The Rare Vinyl Network specializes in 'hard-to-find' vinyl. But I also reading enjoy the back story on the albums about the band members or what was happening at the time it was made.

In 1967 the Beatles were in Abbey Road Studios putting the finishing touches on their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. At one point Paul McCartney wandered down the corridor and heard what was then a new young band called Pink Floyd working on their hypnotic debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. He listened for a moment, then came rushing back. "Hey guys" he reputedly said, "There's a new band in there and they're gonna steal our thunder". With their mix of blues, music hall influences, Lewis Carroll references, and dissonant experimentation, Pink Floyd was one of the key bands of the 1960s psychedelic revolution, a pop culture movement that emerged with American and British rock, before sweeping through film, literature, and the visual arts. The music was largely inspired by hallucinogens, or so-called 'mind-expanding' drugs such as marijuana and LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), and attempted to recreate drug-induced states through the use of overdriven guitar, amplified feedback, and droning guitar motifs influenced by Eastern music.

This psychedelic consciousness was seeded, in the United States, by countercultural gurus such as Timothy Leary, a Harvard University professor who began researching LSD as a tool of self-discovery from 1960, and writer Ken Kesey who with his Merry Pranksters staged Acid Tests - multimedia 'happenings' set to the music of the Warlocks (later the Grateful Dead) and documented by novelist Tom Wolfe in the literary classic The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) - and traversed the country during the mid-1960s on a kaleidoscope-colored school bus. Suzy Hopkins, formerly *Suzy Creamcheese, a dancer and inspirational figure on the underground scene in Los Angeles and London, remembers the visceral way psychedelic culture affected the senses. 'There's a difference between a drug and a psychedelic. Drugs make you drugged and psychedelics enhance your ability to see the truth or reality' she says. For her, LSD and music created a kind of alchemy. Many psychedelic bands explored this sense of abandonment in their music, moving away from standard rock rhythms and instrumentation.

* She's ONE of the Suzy Creamcheesees.

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The day Chet Helms died was the day they brought old San Francisco down.

Several years ago somebody wrote the SF Chronicle saying Chet Helms had died. So Chet decided to have a wake and a resurrection. He hired a hearse and a coffin and invited 200 people. He was driven up to the Gold Coast Restaurant in the hearse and the pall bearers were Terance Hallinan, Richard Hongisto and Wavy Gravy. The Coffin rolled into the restaurant and was opened. Chet lay there with flowers and a cellular phone on his chest. The phone rang and he rose to answer it and walked thru the toasting crowd and camera people.

The day Chet Helms died, goes the old eulogy, Owsley returned and gave out real LSD and everyone remembered their last ecstatic romance at the Avalon and began to dance that perfect trance dance that merged them with the divine.

But this past weekend, Chet Helms really did pass away. He died from complications of a stroke in San Francisco surrounded by family and friends; he was 62.

[Extensive info and obituary @ sfbg]

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LSD Tit Print '01 - Annie Sprinkle

An organization that supports psychedelic drug research is hosting an eBay auction featuring ecstasy icon Alexander Shulgin's lab glassware, LSD blotter paper art and a week of "tanning, dancing and trancing" on Ibiza, among other mind-bending items. This blotter print and others for sale until March 21 on eBay. (kulcha brought to you via: wired and annie)

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Psychedelic medicine: Mind bending, health giving
JOHN HALPERN clearly remembers what made him change his mind about psychedelic drugs. It was the early 1990s and the young medical student at a hospital in Brooklyn, New York, was getting frustrated that he could not do more to help the alcoholics and addicts in his care. He sounded off to an older psychiatrist, who mentioned that LSD and related drugs had once been considered promising treatments for addiction. "I was so fascinated that I did all this research," Halpern recalls. "I was reading all these papers from the 60s and going, whoa, wait a minute! How come nobody's talking about this?"

More than a decade later, Halpern is now an associate director of substance abuse research at Harvard University's McLean Hospital and is at the forefront of a revival of research into psychedelic medicine. He recently received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to give late-stage cancer patients the psychedelic drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy. He is also laying the groundwork for testing LSD as a treatment for dreaded super-migraines known as cluster headaches.

Say, I wonder if my doc would be open to some psychedelic therapy? My own personal psychedelic therapy doesn't seem to help my cluster (fucking) headaches one damn bit.

(link via mousemusings via New Scientist)

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