Rare footage of 1950s housewife in LSD experiment

Grandma on acid! Researcher finds rare footage of 1950s housewife in LSD experiment

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 11:28 PM on 18th January 2011

• Author discovers TV excerpt while researching Aldous Huxley biography
• 'I'm part of the air... I can see all the molecules,' says spaced-out volunteer

Next time you hear someone say 'Back in the olden days, we had to make our own fun', this is probably what they are talking about.

An American biographer - doing research for a book on pioneers in the field of hallucinogenic drug experimentation - has stumbled upon footage of a prim and proper housewife struggling with the effects of LSD.

The bizarre and slightly creepy footage shows a doctor dosing up the young woman and filming the consequences.

By now, of course, she's likely to be somebody's grandmother.

Experiment: Dr Sidney Cohen with his test subject, a well-dressed and 'normal' LA housewife

Biographer Don Lattin said he came across the footage while preparing a group biography of British writer Aldous Huxley, philosopher Gerald Heard, and Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. 

Mr Lattin said: 'It's from a television programme, circa 1956, about mental health issues.

'The researcher, Dr Sidney Cohen, was dosing volunteers at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Los Angeles.'

Down the hatch: The subject drinks her lysergic acid and embarks upon her first 'trip'. The footage provides a fascinating glimpse of how the drug totally warps the mind

'I don't have any inside': The tripping housewife struggles to explain what she is seeing and feeling but appears to be having a pleasant experience

Dr Cohen, seen sitting at a table and wearing a lounge suit  - his legs crossed in the classic I'm-a-scientist pose - interviews the unidentified housewife, who is dressed in her best black frock.

She tells the doctor: 'My husband is an employee here at the VA and he said they were looking for normal people, so I volunteered.'

Dr Cohen asks: 'How do you feel about coming here and drinking this strange material?'

She replies: 'A little nervous, perhaps.'

Drug enthusiasts: Aldous Huxley, who wrote The Doors Of Perception after taking mescaline, and Jim Morrison, who named The Doors after Huxley's book

In the unintentionally comical manner that seems to be the preserve of 1950s training films, the camera zooms in on an innocuous-looking glass of clear liquid on the table, as the good doctor says: 'Well, I think it's time for you to have your lycergic acid. Drink this down and we'll be back after a while and see how you're doing.'

As the housewife obediently drains the glass and Dr Cohen smiles benevolently, a dramatic voice-over explains: 'This is a glass of water, colourless, tasteless. It contains 100 gamma of LSD 25. One tenth of a milligram, the equivalent of one 600th of a grain.

GOOD TRIP, BAD TRIP

Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated to LSD and known colloquially as acid, is a psychedelic drug well known for its psychological effects.

Symptoms include altered thinking processes, hallucinations, synaesthesia (where senses are joined - so one can 'taste' colours or 'see' sounds), an altered sense of time and spiritual experiences.

It had a key role in 1960s hippy counterculture, and has been tested by the U.S. military and CIA as an aid in battle, truth serum and mind-control agent.

Regular users talk of 'bad trips', where the spiritual feelings and hallucinations give way to hellish visions and overwhelming anxiety. Bad trips have led to drug-related suicides. 

'An ounce of this material will make 150,000 such doses. Let us observe the affect some three hours later.'

Unsurprisingly, three hours later the housewife is insanely high.

She says: 'Everything is in colour and I can feel the air. I can see it, I can see all the molecules - I'm part of it. Can't you see it?'

Dr Cohen asks: 'How do you feel inside.'

She replies: 'Inside? I don't have any inside.'

Mr Lattin said: '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. 

'Heard then turned to Bill Wilson, guiding him on an LSD trip supervised by Dr Cohen in the summer of 1956 - perhaps in the same room we see in this video.

'Wilson, who started AA in the 1930s, thought LSD could help alcoholics have the spiritual awakening that is such an important part of the 12-step recovery programme he popularised. 

'Heard and Huxley set the stage for better-known psychedelic research.'

Huxley's early work also inspired a more layman drug researcher called Jim Morrison, who called his band The Doors after Huxley's The Doors Of Perception.  

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1348080/Grandma-acid-Researcher-finds-rare-footage-1950s-housewife-LSD-experiment.html#ixzz1CS5cpDpq