Roger gets his space ticket

MAD MEN gets it right again.

As I have written here before, LSD was originally the (legal) property of the drawing room and the elite types who visited psychiatrists, such as Henry and Claire Booth Luce, Cary Grant, RD Laing... and Roger Sterling and his wife Jane. Hippies did not widely partake until the Merry Pranksters decided to go cross-country, playing Johnny Appleseed and distributing it throughout the heartland. And THEN it was made illegal (in 1966), in response to their nefarious scheme to Enlighten the Masses.

In fact, where do you think the first hippies came from? Guys like Roger, transformed. I am curious what will happen to Roger now; the show closed with Roger informing the ever-beleaguered Don Draper, "It's a beautiful day!"

At this point in the show, it is likely Roger will tell Don about his acid-experience and 1) try to get Don to take it, or 2) Don will be sufficiently curious (after hearing Roger's description) to try it himself. And all of that childhood-trauma of Don's? Wow, that will be hairy. Because yes, those traumas really do come back in technicolor, they weren't joking about that. I would compare it to one of those 180-degree photographs, everything momentarily frozen so that you can go back and have a full-look at it, maybe start a conversation with someone else in the frame.

From Entertainment Weekly:

I could write 3,000 words just about what happened after Roger let a sugar cube of psychedelic chemicals dissolve on his tongue. So many of Roger's hallucinations fed right back into his horn-dog Peter Pan syndrome: The half-grey-half-black hair dye ad; the Beach Boys' "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" playing overtop a far older song I couldn't quite place; Roger cackling in the bathtub as the 1919 World Series unfolded in his head. It was a telling detail that Roger imagined Don to be his spiritual guide, but I ad0red so many of the small, silly details, too: The bombastic (possibly Russian?) opera that played after Roger uncorked a bottle of vodka; the cigarette that collapsed like an accordion the moment Roger began smoking it; the five dollar bill with Bert Cooper's face on it...

Although it never happened to me personally, paper-dollars with various faces on them was a pretty common LSD-hallucination. Also, the faces on the bills suddenly talking to you. George Washington talks! (I once got out a dollar-bill, hoping George would say something to me, but I guess money only talks to some people.)

And Roger and Jane finally get real:

Really, though, the long, strange trip was all about stripping away Roger's defenses -- his glib charm, his fragile ego -- and building up Jane's self-assurance and confidence so they could both admit to each other that their marriage was over. As Roger and Jane stared at the ceiling, the truth came gently tumbling out of them: "It's over." Their hostess wasn't Jane's friend, she was her therapist, who thinks Jane has been waiting for Roger to tell her their marriage is over so she won't have to. And although Jane's thought about having an affair, her love for Roger was real. But, Jane added, "I just know for a fact that you did not fall in love."

"So what was wrong again?" asked Roger.

"You don't like me."

"I did. I really did."

And their marriage is done.

~*~

As a lone six-year-old who had somehow blundered into the wrong place and time, I was once cornered in the doorway of an empty house by a cluster of (white female) teenage bullies. They had backed me into the proverbial corner and were slapping me, grabbing hair, kicking... all while laughing and laughing. I knew it was just the warm-up, because they were having too much fun. I was sick with fear.

I tried to say something cute, be charming or polite, all the things that had ever worked in the past; like a dog that rolls over and suddenly shows its underbelly in a fight, I was hollering uncle in a hundred ways. They correctly read my body-language of surrender and were emboldened and maliciously overjoyed by it, like a pack of wolves, circling. Exactly like that.

I turned, cupped my hand and peered through the small window on the door. "There's nobody in there," one said, threateningly. The words echoed and echoed through my psyche, and I could never remember what happened directly after. My mother said they had beaten me, but I could not remember it. Approaching that moment in my memory had always frightened me, more than the threat of nuclear weapons, more than drowning, more than snakes. I shut it down, pushed it back, thought of something else.

We all do this, and so do you.

But LSD goes straight for the house that has nobody inside (when it should have), straight for that thing you have repressed. And it can go several ways, from what I am told. But for me?

I was transported back to the sidewalk in front of the house (which I had passed many times) and saw the girls on the porch, who suddenly seemed so young. My goodness, I thought, they are only 14 or 15, aren't they? They aren't giants. They aren't adults. And as I ascended the porch stairs, one by one, they disappeared. I could never remember their faces anyway, but this made it official: they really did not exist any more. They were phantoms that had chased me. I realized, these girls had since grown up. I turned to one, just as she vanished, and asked her if she remembered. "Do you remember this?" I asked her.

She wrinkled her brow and shook her head, no. She was the blonde one, and she was the last to vanish.

I then saw my little six-year-old self, who had been beaten. I was wearing the same clothes I always remembered wearing. They had ripped my favorite shirt, with multicolored pockets on the front. I knew my grandmother (who had bought it for me) would be mad. I hoped she wouldn't be mad at me for straying too far from home, but of course, beaten or not, I thought she would be.

And then, the adult me embraced the six-year-old me. The little-me wept, while I soothed and comforted this little girl (me and not-me, all at once) and told her how strong she was for enduring this. I told her it would make her tough from this point onward, and as I said this, I realized: it had.

I told her everything would be okay, and she would grow up and the girls would vanish. Look, I said, they are gone already. I gestured, and showed her/me, that they were gone.

"They ARE gone!" the six-year-old me said, smiling through tears. Yes, they are.

And they were.

They never came back.

Here's hoping Roger fares as well. And Don, with his ghosts. They might vanish or they might return and kick his ass. It's all up to him.

Be nice to your old self; be charitable and kind to the younger-you. After all, you did the best you could.

Albert Hofmann 1906-2008

Left: Albert Hofmann shows us the molecule. (But first, are you experienced?) Photo from the New York Times.

~*~

Albert Hofmann was always pretty freaked out by the massive amounts of LSD taken in the USA. No wonder; he seemed transformed by only a small amount. At his 100-year-birthday celebration, covered by the New York Times two years ago, he described the experience of working for Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz Laboratories, isolating rye-grown, poisonous ergot fungus, used successfully by midwives for millennia to precipitate childbirth. He finally isolated the compound, lysergic acid. Tinkering a bit, it was his 25th compound that unlocked the stratosphere, lysergic acid diethylamide.

As legend and myth tell us, if you get any onya, well, kiss it goodbye for 10-12 hours. The stories are never-ending--one of my favorites involves an old friend who was cutting tabs of acid and looked down after about an hour to see his hands melting. (Humorously, he told me "I knew I'd never get any work done with hands like THOSE!")

LSD is tasteless, odorless, colorless and can be absorbed right through the skin. What, did you panic and decide you didn't want any after all? Ha! Too late, babe. Toss your cookies into the toilet all you want, but it's too late, ignition is imminent and your ticket to Andromeda will NOT be canceled, however much you barf up that little tab of paper with Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice printed thereon. You don't even have to swallow it; in fact, when some Yippie (I think it was Paul Krassner) spat on somebody important (possibly Richard Nixon?), law enforcement analyzed the saliva to make sure no LSD was present. (Chatter of dosing Richard Nixon was constant. Not as punishment, but to enlighten him, which as we know, he sorely needed.)

It was said that Hizzoner, Owsley himself, CLOSED THE LAB during the final stage of chemical composition, whatever IT IS that makes it happen. WE ARE CLOSING THE LAB, announced Bear. And if you were inside after the doors closed, you stayed in--and you went to Andromeda with everyone else. Those not ready for space travel waited patiently outside for the batch to be done, several hours it was, and then the magic batch was ready. Owsley's famous product, the veritable Cadillac of psychedelic drugs, then went into the eager hands of the Bay Area's prodigious acidheads, always up for infinite experimentation. The FINAL STAGE (more mythical terms) means one must inhale it, and then, like it's inventor, you are tripping.

At left: Owsley's acid tabs were often printed with R. Crumb's underground comic-book character Mr Natural on them, and this became a sign of quality as well as a brand name: "Does anyone have any Mr Natural?"


In the late 70s, various university towns hosted many tales of disreputable chemists, dropouts from various nearby schools, synthesizing LSD in the garage, but UNWILLING to go to the much-heralded, necessary FINAL STAGE--then selling this inferior, not-completely-synthesized product on the street as acid. Many of the bad trips, muscle-squeezing aches (imitating strychnine poisoning), crashing headaches and other bad side effects of late 70s acid, were said to be caused by this not-LSD, that was known as LSA. I have no way of knowing if these stories are true. Alas, one of the negative side effects of the drug war, then as now, has been to keep people uneducated about the basics; the street thrived on rumor. (And BTW, you are invited to post your own mythology and rumor in the comments!) Personally, I've always enjoyed these stories as spiritual dharma-talk: you know the disreputable acid-manufacturer by the fact that he is not willing to take his LSD himself.

But Dr Hofmann did. Of course, as stated above, he had to.

It was as he was synthesizing the drug on a Friday afternoon in April 1943 that he first experienced the altered state of consciousness for which it became famous. "Immediately, I recognized it as the same experience I had had as a child," he said. "I didn't know what caused it, but I knew that it was important."

When he returned to his lab the next Monday, he tried to identify the source of his experience, believing first that it had come from the fumes of a chloroform-like solvent he had been using. Inhaling the fumes produced no effect, though, and he realized he must have somehow ingested a trace of LSD. "LSD spoke to me," Mr. Hofmann said with an amused, animated smile. "He came to me and said, 'You must find me.' He told me, 'Don't give me to the pharmacologist, he won't find anything.' "

He experimented with the drug, taking a dose so small that even the most active toxin known at that time would have had little or no effect. The result with LSD, however, was a powerful experience, during which he rode his bicycle home, accompanied by an assistant. That day, April 19, later became memorialized by LSD enthusiasts as "bicycle day."

Riding the bicycle, Hofmann famously said "I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his own creation - the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence."(1) Words quoted over and over again, it was the statement heard round the world.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Mr. Hofmann participated in tests in a Sandoz laboratory, but found the experience frightening and realized that the drug should be used only under carefully controlled circumstances.

And this is what brought the CIA knocking. You have WHAT? A scary drug? When the Generals come calling, you know you got trouble.(2)

Thus, Hofmann learned the Gospel Rule of LSD (SET AND SETTING!) before anybody else:

In 1951, [Hofmann] wrote to the German novelist Ernst Junger, who had experimented with mescaline, and proposed that they take LSD together. They each took 0.05 milligrams of pure LSD at Mr. Hofmann's home accompanied by roses, music by Mozart and burning Japanese incense. "That was the first planned psychedelic test," Mr. Hofmann said.

He took the drug dozens of times after that, he said, and once experienced what he called a "horror trip" when he was tired and Mr. Junger gave him amphetamines first. But his hallucinogenic days are long behind him.

"I know LSD; I don't need to take it anymore," Mr. Hofmann said. "Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley," who asked his wife for an injection of LSD to help him through the final painful throes of his fatal throat cancer.

But Mr. Hofmann calls LSD "medicine for the soul" and is frustrated by the worldwide prohibition that has pushed it underground. "It was used very successfully for 10 years in psychoanalysis," he said, adding that the drug was hijacked by the youth movement of the 1960's and then demonized by the establishment that the movement opposed.

Indeed, we might name Timothy Leary the PT Barnum of the movement...as we go from bourgeois, ultra-civilized Hofmann and his Mozart (the museum or the drawing room, if you will) to the Merry Pranksters, Ken Kesey, Leary and the Grateful Dead, signifying the carnival, the circus, the traveling show, scary gypsies.(3) As LSD made it's way down the social ladder, it would become more dangerous, as indeed, life on the lower rungs is more fraught with danger in general. Dangerous, my late Native American friend Steve Conliff used to say, like gunpowder or nuclear fission. In the right hands, great, useful, incredible! But in the wrong hands?

I repeat, in the wrong hands? (4) When administering LSD, mind control is fairly easy to accomplish. And it was that hugely scary, almost effortless mind-control--the various vampiristic elements of the counterculture--that gave everyone pause. (They liked to call it "suggestibility" in the mental health literature.) As Leary was busted by none other than G. Gordon Liddy at Millbrook (5) the whole enterprise came crashing down, at least for awhile. But alas, the myth, the legend, the concept, would never die.

"Wanna buy a space ticket/see God?" is a pretty amazing selling-point. As we say in retail, it sells itself. The echoes of Eden, the invitation to bite the forbidden fruit and ye will be as Gods, is just TOO MUCH for some of us.

As lesser psychedelics, such as party-friendly Ecstasy, would take over the kids' market, LSD now remains in the hands of the psychedelic connoisseur, or the interrogator.

And now, the man who gave us the key to the golden door, has passed:

Mr. Hofmann rose, slightly stooped and now barely reaching five feet, and walked through his house with his arm-support cane. When asked if the drug had deepened his understanding of death, he appeared mildly startled and said no. "I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that's all," he said.

Goodbye, Dr Hofmann. And thank you for Andromeda. It was beautiful.

~*~

1) See Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream by Jay Stevens.

2) Heartily recommend the highly flawed but fascinating LSD-inspired movie, Brainstorm. Not entirely the movie-makers' fault that the movie ends badly, since Natalie Wood died during filming, re-arranging the plot. For a comprehensive account of extensive CIA research into LSD-based interrogation techniques (testing LSD on regular people who had no idea what awaited them), see the invaluable Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties and Beyond by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain.

3) See The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe.

4) See THE FAMILY: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion by Ed Sanders--the best book to place the whole Manson-family saga in the social setting of the times. (COURT TV groupies, take note, has tons of great observations, hippie history and creepy connections that you'll never read anywhere else.)

5) For both sides of this bust, see Flashbacks, Timothy Leary's autobiography. G. Gordon Liddy gives his version in his own autobiography, Will. Interestingly, they mirror each other's account of the bust remarkably well. Later, they would serve time in the same prison! (Is America great or what?)