tagged w/ Aldous Huxley
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In 1956, the writings of Aldous Huxley prompted Dr. Sidney Cohen to test lysergic acid as a potential mental health treatment. In this old test footage, watch a self-described "normal" test subject get totally double-rainbowed.
Says Don Lattin, author of The Harvard Psychedelic Club, over at The Huffington Post:
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.
Cohen also worked with Wilson to see if LSD could potentially be used to treat alcoholics and give them mental clarity to confront their addiction. Needless to say, said treatment did not catch on.
http://io9.com/5735013/a-1950s-housewife-goes-on-an-aldous-huxley+inspired-acid-tripIn 1956, the writings of Aldous Huxley prompted Dr. Sidney Cohen to test lysergic acid... more
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Ridley Scott is going back to the future, this time with Leonardio DiCaprio along for the ride.
Both will produce, with backing from Universal, an adaptation of Aldious Huxley's Brave New World. And both have the option to "eye" for their respective roles (Scott to direct, DiCaprio to star) but are unconfirmed as of now.Ridley Scott is going back to the future, this time with Leonardio DiCaprio along for... more
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1. The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
Huxley's account of his experiments with mescaline in the 1950s make psychedelic use sound like a perfectly reasonable and admirable pursuit which would bring credit to any middle class gentleman. Huxley never wrote a dull sentence in his life and this is certainly one of his best works. If its influence of the likes of Timothy Leary or Jim Morrison is considered, then it could easily be his most culturally important book.
2. The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is usually considered Thompson's best work, but I much prefer The Great Shark Hunt. It's a huge book, a collection of the best of his journalism from the 60s and 70s, and it shows that Thompson had a far greater range than his later reputation suggests. His essay about Hemingway's death, in which he tried to understand why such a once-vibrant man ended up blowing his brains out in small town America, is particularly poignant following Thompson's suicide.
3. The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
This is Wolfe's account of life with Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters and the birth of the American west coast psychedelic movement. Wolfe knew that a detached, even-handed journalistic approach could never really explain what was happening, so he gave his book the same psychedelic viewpoint as his characters. The result is a wonderful piece of writing. For those of us who weren't born in the 60s, this is probably the closest we can get to experiencing it.
4. High Priest by Timothy Leary
Leary was a prolific writer, producing over 30 books and hundreds of essays and papers. I've chosen his autobiographical High Priest (1968) for this list as I think it is one of his most accomplished pieces of writing. It captures both the drug experience and the sense of discovery so well; the moment a scientist realises that the implications of their work are so huge that their life will never be the same again.
5. Sisters of the Extreme: Women writing on the drug experience by Cynthia Palmer and Michael Horowitz (eds)
Psychedelic use is split fairly evenly between the men and women, but the desire to write about and try to explain the experience is a predominantly male trait. Certainly every other book in this top ten is from a male author, which is why this book so important. It sheds light on the otherwise hidden half of the psychedelic experience.
6. The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia by Paul Devereux
Devereux's impressive and thorough trawl through prehistory will be an eye-opener for anyone who thought drug use was a modern phenomenon. Devereux demonstrates that this point in history is a strange quirk in the human story, a rare time where we don't have a structure for incorporating psychedelic use into our society. If nothing else, it will make you view your ancestors in a different light!
7. DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman, MD
The medical profession has written little about psychedelics since Timothy Leary, which makes this book all the more valuable. DMT, a natural chemical produced by the human brain, is a hallucinogen so powerful that it makes LSD look like lager shandy. DMT throws up some very big questions about the workings of the brain, consciousness and about the world at large, and Strassman does not shy from these. For those who think that one day science will have all the answers, this book shows just how clueless we still are.
8. Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati Volume 1 by Robert Anton Wilson
9. Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution by Kevin Booth and Michael Bertin
10. What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry by John Markoff
1. The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
Huxley's account of his... more
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