Psychedelic Tricksters: A True Secret History of LSD

by David Black

Timothy Leary, High Priest of LSD, "‘The next war for control of this planet and beyond has to do with the control of consciousness".From the late-1940s onwards, the US Central Intelligence Agency secretly attempted to use psychedelic drugs for purposes of social control and psychological warfare. But in the 1960s, LSD escaped its captors as a new generation of rebellious youth on both sides of the Atlantic discovered psychedelics as means for expanding consciousness rather than controlling it.Exploding many of the myths surrounding LSD, the CIA and the counterculture, this meticulously-researched narrative concentrates on the roles and motivations of the 'Tricksters' on both sides in this world-changing phenomenon.

Kindle Edition

Published May 11, 2020

About the author

Lives in London. Publisher'editor at BPC Publishing. Author of several titles, including:

1839: the Chartist Insurrection and the Newport Rising with co-author Chris Ford. Foreword by John McDonnell M.P. New edition issued by BPC 2025.

The Phantasmagoria of Capital: A Short History of the Commodity, the Spectacle and its Discontents (BPC 2025)

The Philosophical Roots of Anti-Capitalism: Essays on History, Culture, and Dialectical Thought (Lexington: 2013).

Psychedelic Tricksters: a True Secret History of LSD (BPC: 2020)

LSD Underground: Operation Julie, the Microdot Gang and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love (BPC: 2022)

Red Republican; the Complete Annotated Works of Helen Macfarlane - editor and author of introduction (Unkant Publishing 2014)

Raya Dunayevskaya's Intersectional Marxism: Race, Class, Gender, and the Dialectics of Liberation. Eds. Kevin B Anderson, Kieran Durkin, Heather A. Brown - chapter (Palgrave: 2020)