Acid Dreams The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond

by Lee, Martin A.; Shlain, Bruce

• ISBN13: 9780802130624
• ISBN10: 0802130623
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-01-21
• Publisher: Grove Press

Summary

Acid Dreams is the complete social history of LSD and the counterculture it helped to define in the sixties. Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain's exhaustively researched and astonishing account -- part of it gleaned from secret government files -- tells how the CIA became obsessed with LSD as an espionage weapon during the early 1950s and launched a massive covert research program, in which countless unwitting citizens were used as guinea pigs. Though the CIA was intent on keeping the drug to itself, it ultimately couldn't prevent it from spreading into the popular culture; here LSD had a profound impact and helped spawn a political and social upheaval that changed the face of America. From the clandestine operations of the government to the escapades of Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, Allen Ginsberg, and many others, Acid Dreams provides an important and entertaining account that goes to the heart of a turbulent period in our history. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Martin A. Lee is the cofounder of FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) Bruce Shlain has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and other publications

Table of Contents

Introduction: Whose Worlds Are These?	p. xiii
Prologue	p. xvii
The Roots of Psychedelia
In the Beginning There Was Madness ...	p. 3
The Truth Seekers	p. 3
Enter LSD	p. 12
Laboratories of the State	p. 19
Midnight Climax	p. 27
The Hallucination Battlefield	p. 35
Psychedelic Pioneers	p. 44
The Original Captain Trips	p. 44
Healing Acid	p. 53
Psychosis or Gnosis?	p. 61
Under the Mushroom, Over the Rainbow	p. 71
Manna From Harvard	p. 71
Chemical Crusaders	p. 77
The Crackdown	p. 89
Preaching Lsd	p. 96
High Surrealism	p. 96
The Psychedelic Manual	p. 106
The Hard Sell	p. 113
The All-American Trip	p. 119
The Great Freak Forward	p. 119
Acid and the New Left	p. 126
Acid for the Masses
From Hip to Hippie	p. 141
Before the Deluge	p. 141
Politics of the Bummer	p. 150
The First Human Be-In	p. 157
The Capital of Forever	p. 170
Stone Free	p. 170
The Great Summer Dropout	p. 179
Peaking in Babylon	p. 194
A Gathering Storm	p. 194
Magical Politics	p. 201
Gotta Revolution	p. 211
Season of the Witch	p. 223
Armed Love	p. 223
The Acid Brotherhood	p. 234
Bad Moon Rising	p. 251
What a Field Day for the Heat	p. 259
Prisoner of Lsd	p. 259
A Bitter Pill	p. 267
The Great Lsd Conspiracy	p. 276
Postscript: Acid and After	p. 288
Afterword	p. 295
References	p. 298
Bibliography	p. 323
Index	p. 333
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