LSD: The Consciousness-Expanding Drug

by David Solomon (editor), Timothy Leary (introduction)

This collection of essays & articles became one of the best-selling LSD books of the '60s. Later printings are easy to find. It was conceived at a time when psychedelic research was still mainly an academic concern for shrinks & MDs. The tone is rather dry & technical. However the contributors are very impressive--a virtual who's who of the original scene. Editor David Solomon went on to new adventures as author of "The Marihuana Papers" & hands-on involvement with the "Brotherhood of Eternal Love" in the 1970s. The collection
Introduction-Timothy Leary
The Manipulation of the Mind-Humphry Osmond
Culture & the Individual-Aldous Huxley
The A Reporter's Objective Eye View-Dan Wakefield
A Visit to Inner Space-Alan Harrington
How to Change Behavior-Timothy Leary
A Psychedelic Fact or Fantasy-Alan Watts
A Review of the Clinical Effects of Psychotomimetic Agents- Humphrey Osmond
Do Drugs Have Religious Import-Huston Smith
Points of Distinction Between Sedative & Consciousness Expanding Drugs-Wm S. Burroughs
LSD Transcendence & the New Beginning-James Terrill, Chas Savage & Donald D. Jackson
Mescaline, LSD, Psilocybin & Personality Change-Sanford M. Unger
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-Roy R. Grinker
The Psychotomimetic An Overview-Jonathan O. Cole & Martin M. Katz
Pain & LSD 25: A Theory of Attenduation of Anticipation-Eric Kast
LSD & A Bibliography of the English Language Literature-Sanford M. Unger

Genres: Drugs, American History, Nonfiction, Psychology

268 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book in paper, then found a cloth edition at a used bookstore. Ironically, at the time of reading in 1983 I hadn't tried a psychedelic in about a decade. The interest, however, remained.

My exposure to LSD began in Mr. Martello's Public Speaking class at Maine South H.S. in Park Ridge, Illinois. We were assigned to give a number of researched presentations during the class and as my grandparents' Life Magazine had recently done a cover story on the growing controversy about it and related drugs, I chose that as a topic, beginning with Life's rather positive article, then continuing on to Scientific American and articles referred to in the Guide to Periodical Literature at the school library. I was sixteen and, thanks to the reading, I was unafraid and interested.

The actual taking of the drug didn't occur until the summer after high school when I was seventeen. I'd gotten into pot of course as everyone seemed to smoke it, but not too much except as a social thing. Alcohol was rather frowned upon by my set, pot was virtually universal, LSD and related chemicals were regarded with favor. Once, after a decision to get high had been made and finding that pot was temporarily unavailable, a friend and I decided to try his neighbor's acid.

The first experience was mild, pretty much what most people seem to report nowadays after a single hit: enhanced sensation, heightened consciousness, wavy walls--nothing too remarkable.

By summer's end, now eighteen, the same friend and I were offered some Owsley acid at cost ($1 per 100 micrograms--it being a principle among our group that no one would profit from the sale of drugs). I, at 125 pounds, took 500 micrograms on an empty stomach and, within an hour, was in a different world for about eight hours, more awake, more intense than I'd ever been. The closest analogy from ordinary experience to it is dreaming. LSD in sufficient quantity leads one into a waking dream. It was one of the better dreams in that it was fraught with religious and ethical significance--a quest dream filled with dragons and enormous exotic animals, pilgrims and gurus, noble ladies and alluring temptresses.

Of course, I didn't sleep that night, but instead, as the ability to employ English returned, tried to illustrate and write it down in my journal--notes later used, with the testimony of persons who were present that day, to reconstruct both the private, subjective experience and the public, objective events I had worked off of.

That trip gave me a healthy respect for the drug, increased my interest in psychedelics in general and led to further reading, much discussion with friends and future experimentation. I gave up on pot entirely, seeing it now as trivial, something I'd never really liked and had only taken because everybody else did. Acid, however, was serious and challenging.

By college I was taking an hallucinagen every week or two, fitting study and political work around it since the drugs would basically fill a day. The school, adapting to necessity, had a progressive drug policy which is to say no drug policy. They did, however, host an annual scholarly conference on altered states of consciousness and we did set up an all-night drug crisis center just in case such arose. If they did, I never heard of them. The only walk-ins I ever got were folks who, late at night, simply wanted company.

So far as "bad trips" go, I seemed to have had more of them than most anyone. Except for one more instance of simply bursting into a waking dream (this one, entirely removed from "objective" events and much like a DMT trip, extended for over ten hours), most of my trips were solitary excursions into self-examination. Basically, I was confronting my experience, my fears and annoyances, my hang-ups and prejudices. It was like being forced to look at something unpleasant, something one normally would avoid. It was like psychotherapy for free conducted by an omniscient analyst. It was profoundly unpleasant but clearly helpful. It was definitely character building.

The Solomon book is a rather well-balanced array of essays about LSD and the psychedelics written by scientific researchers and professionals in other fields. Although assembled in 1964, legal public research on these substances in the USA ended shortly thereafter, so, sadly, it is not as dated as it should be. Like its editor and contributors, LSD: The Consciousness-Expanding Drug is optimistic about the drug's potential benefits.

[Craig Rowland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Last summer I read Is Your Child on Drugs?, and as I delve further into my counterculture library I finally decided to read LSD: The Consciousness-Expanding Drug from 1964. This paperback edition came out in June of 1966. Like the above title I acquired this book as a rejected library donation. Its spine was bright red and showed LSD alone in yellow block capitals (no subtitle) so it definitely caught your eye as you perused my bookshelves. Books, however, are meant to be read and not to serve as literary wallpaper, so the weeding and decluttering job I embarked upon nearly two years ago continued when I decided to read this book and then part with it.

Fifteen essays were devoted to the title subject where less than half of them were what I’d call exciting reading. Most were clinical and psychiatric studies and were often repetitive and clouded in psychobabble. The text was not for a casual reader. Sadly, Timothy Leary, the godfather of LSD, did not impress me with his introduction or even his own chapter, entitled “How to Change Behavior”. I wonder how many people gave up on reading the rest of the book as they plodded through the introduction alone. The most insightful statement Leary made was:

“Let it be said directly that unless you have had a psychedelic experience, great portions of this book will be beyond your present mental categories. If you plan to impose your own rational structure on this book, you will end up with, and within, the limits of your own categories. And that will be everyone’s loss.”

One theme throughout the essays was the conflict between lucid scientific observer and hallucinated scientific observer as made below by two different chapter contributors:

“The question of who are ‘qualified researchers’ has become increasingly controversial, and charges have been leveled at Leary and [Richard] Alpert that their own use of the drugs has destroyed their objectivity as scientists. Dr. David C. McClelland, chairman of the Center for Research in Personality and the man who brought Leary and Alpert to Harvard, has said that the more they took the drug ‘the less they were interested in science.'”

and:

“There has also been concern over the possibility that investigators who have embarked on serious scientific work in this area may have been subject to the deleterious and seductive effects of these agents.”

I do admit that the more essays I read, the more I regarded the book as an excuse for the intelligentsia to drop acid and join the fun. Yet that impression goes counter to my overall opinion that this was a boring read, and unlikely to entice professors, researchers, psychiatrists or psychologists to experience the liberating effects of LSD ostensibly in order to broaden their academic horizons. And indeed, my observation was eventually reflected within the text:

“A hallucinogen party will not, by definition, look like a scene from La Dolce Vita but may, to an unhallucinated observer, bear more resemblance to an especially slow-moving Beckett play.”

I had few laugh-out-loud moments yet the passage below, cloaked in the camouflage of warfare, certainly elicited a chuckle at the end:

“Of course the products of the chemical revolution might be used for fiendish as well as divine purposes–already the powers of the hallucinogens are being investigated for their potential as a weapon of war. The Army Chemical Corps has studied LSD along with other drugs that upset the normal functioning of the brain and they are therefore put in the military category of ‘incapacitating drugs.’ It has been reported that a pound of LSD dropped into a city’s water supply could produce a psychosis of the population that would last long enough for enemy troops to take over–though there might be bizarre and unforeseen problems involved in the invasion of a city of schizophrenics.”

William S. Burroughs contributed a chapter entitled “Points of Distinction Between Sedative and Consciousness-Expanding Drugs” which, unlike his fiction, provided the easiest read among them. I can only suppose that he wrote this chapter while not under the influence of anything. He enlightened me on the composition of his most famous novel:

“It is unfortunate that marihuana, which is certainly the safest of the hallucinogen drugs, should be subject to the heaviest legal sanctions. Unquestionably this drug is very useful to the artist, activating trains of association that would otherwise be inaccessible, and I owe many of the scenes in Naked Lunch directly to the use of cannabis.”

For thirty years LSD served as curious book wallpaper that invited double takes of visitors yet now that I have read it I have no desire to keep it and will likely leave it in one of those mini-libraries that dot Toronto lawns. Maybe I will give someone else a chance to turn on, tune in, and drop out.

[Unholy Meat Obelisk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is surely one of the best entry points to psychedelic literature. A compendium of essays, this publication includes writings from heavyweights in LSD culture, such as Timothy Leary, Humphry Osmond, Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley and more, each providing important insight to the psychedelic realm, ranging the philosophical to the strictly medical.

The book does show its age, with some outdated information on psychiatry and psychology, but this way it functions as a mandatory look into the past of psychedelic research. We've come far, and it makes me wonder about the future of such wonderful drugs.

[Oriol Espinosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diferents personalitats parlent de LSD i els seus estudis o anàlisi que en fan. Molt a favor de la droga, editat per Leary.

Útil i divers.

[Perry Ruhland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating academic read on psychedelics, was surprised to find an original copy for dirt cheap.