Duly acknowledged, Dr. Dickens :-), and long may the PP institution continue!
It was just a stray thought, thinking of newspaper editorials, where the authors are never identified. I thought it might be useful to new, and casual visitors, to the PP.
judging from the review, the book fails to seriously engage with an important point: that LSD use is illegal. It's a criminalized activity. The "psychedelics introduced intentionally for government control" insinuations I've read somehow never address the implications of the most overt government intervention of all: criminalizing the user population, en masse.* Consider what that does to the Setting aspect of experiencing LSD. Even in the most privileged circumstances, impacts on Setting are present. As a background radiation, a malaise. With inverse and reciprocal effects, at extra orders of remove. Out of sight is out of mind is the default for all of us, of course. Nonetheless, the Shadow of LSD User Criminalization is inescapable. It's officially ordained for the entire society. And for that numerous cohort of LSD users who aren't at the income stratum that affords perks like lifetime membership at Burning Man Country Club, those Setting complications and stresses related to the Statutes have always loomed larger.
Some time around 2010 or so, the possible legitimacy of benefits from using psychedelics emerged as a topic of popular conversation and widespread media reportage in the US. Criminalization of LSD began in 1965-1966. And this very recent era of psychedelics getting a news media spotlight--and, often, positive stories of research into their therapeutic value--was preceded by at least 50 years of concerted anti-psychedelics propaganda. The campaign to suppress LSD practically characterized any admission of use as on par with admitting to volunteering for brain damage and insanity, and therefore served as sufficient justification for barring any known user from any position of adult responsibility in prestigious hierarchical institutions of power. As for the criminalized users population, the majority of those who ventured the clandestine experiment were teenagers. Zero status juveniles. (The deal made by the Drug War: as long as you take them when you're under 18, the threat of arrest leading to lasting legal consequences is nil. Those records are sealed. But for anyone over 18, a single drug possession arrest can potentially derail your whole life. It's guaranteed to complicate your life for at least a year, in very unpleasant ways.)
No academic researcher or social critics has addressed the ramifications of a half-century of consigning the entire population of psychedelics users to the far margins of American society with the pariah status of criminalization and the stigma of suspected mental illness. That's a population of at least 20 million users, over the span of decades. And if anyone has evidence of a single openly admitted--or even suspected--psychedelics user being elected to a single elected office, I'd really like to hear about it. I don't know of any. There may be some. But not at the level of US Congressperson or Senator. The usual template for eligibility to such positions of power requires anyone with a history of illegal drug use to regret it and beg forgiveness. And, of course, the default narrative template for criminalized experiments with chemical mind alteration emphasizes initiating use as a minor, binging indiscriminately, acting recklessly--and then either getting scared (for various entirely valid reasons) and quitting, or continuing down the road to more drugs, hard drugs, overuse, and addiction. And from there, to madness, or overdose, or Rehab.
To the extent that users of psychedelics have managed to avoid that negativity, it's no thanks to the loser scripts and alienating messages transmitted by the wider society since the mid-1960s. That social malaise has persisted so long that I regard the recent near-polar reversal of the news media toward flirting with pro-psychedelics Enthusiasm very warily. I mistrust the superficiality of pop-science, pop-medicine, pop-pharma, and pop-nutrition stories in the first place. I know how misleading they can be. I also know fickle they can be.
It also needs to be said that the administrative state "leniency" of "drug courts" for a first-time illicit drug possession offense is assignment to attend Addiction Counseling and 12-step meetings--regardless of whether the substance found is heroin, cocaine, marijuana, LSD, MDMA... I'd venture that most every state from coast to coast has a similar regime by now.
Considered in terms of its value for Harm Reduction related to psychedelics use, that's an insane policy. I've read of at least one case of a teenage kid caught with MDMA who went to his local rehab classes and got found dealer connections to more substances than he had ever imagined. It did not end well. If that was just a series-of-one anecdote, it wouldn't count for much. I bring up the story because it shows what a turnkey operation for disaster that policy is. There have to have been numerous similar cases, of "drug court" referrals who aren't addicts--who aren't even using an especially addictive substance--making their first serious acquaintance with the Hard Drugs Demimonde and Treatment-Resistant Polydrug Dependency of their peers and elders, so to speak.
Not All 12-Step Programs, presumably. I hope.
My main point is that if uncomplicated by any other criminal offense or antisocial behavior, it should be sufficient to deal with simple possession of very small quantities of illicit substances with confiscation and impoundment, with no further legal penalty. At least return the status quo of penalties for simple user possession to confiscation, which is what it was during the era of alcohol Prohibition.
Consider that there were over 200,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2023. And even if (I don't know, just speculating) 95% of them were quantities intended for retail, or the weed charge was an add-on to an actual malum in se offense, that means 10,000 people got arrested for a quantity of a Prohibited Substance equivalent to a fifth of whiskey during the era of the Volstead Act. But simple possession of one bottle of whiskey--or even a case--in the Prohibition Era was not a criminal offense in Federal law. About 7 years into US Federal Prohibition, a meeting was called about how to improve on its ineffective track record. The suggestion of user criminalization did not survive the meeting. (Imagine if user criminalization for booze possession had been enacted back then. Then imagine if it had continued for decades on end. In contrast to Prohibition, which lasted only 13 years.)
[* the "psychedelics are a CIA mind control plot" allegations also ignore a peculiar contradiction that's implicit in that conspiracy hypothesis. The logic of the plot indicates that while the conspirators would encourage others to take the mind-disabling drugs, they would absolutely refuse to ingest the substances themselves, so as to avoid the hazard of deranging their own minds. However, that is not the way the history played out at all, at all. Unless, that is, Huxley and Hubbard and Leary and Alpert and Kesey and all of the rest of the most infamous psychedelics advocates of the 1960s were stage magicians, palming their meds the entire time and then faking the effects. That really would qualify as some deep shit. Huge, if true. ]
I read the book Mindfuckers soon after it first came out. Without the references to psychedelics, it would just be another chronicle of crisis cults and cult-adjacent "group lifestyle experiments." A couple of the ones documented sound kinda meh, in terms of malign influence. Exploitative and guru-centered, yes. Mel Lyman came off as pretty psychopathic and controlling. But only the Manson Family really went off into apocalyptic antisociality, systematic criminality and violence. Crisis cult episodes are part of human history all over the world. They have an enduring appeal. Especially during times of upheaval and uncertainty in the Zeitgeist, and we're up to our ears in that. It used to be much more of a localized phenomenon. Now cult behaviors can be transmitted through self-selected niche social media circles, anywhere there's an Internet connection.
I recognize that one of the main psychological effects associated with psychedelics use is an increase in openness, and hence suggestibility. A property that also applies to the Internet and social media, as it happens. That's more about the vulnerability of naively unprepared, uncritical and unwary minds than the innate properties of the technologies, in my opinion. But that vulnerability is obviously substantial in the case of both social media rabbit holes and the social initiatory process associated with getting involved with psychedelics. All crisis cults gain their power and control through isolating the recruit. That's key to ensuring the controlling power of the conditioning.
In the case of forbidden psychedelic drugs, that liability is additionally exacerbated by the fact of user criminalization. It's difficult for me to imagine Charlie Manson's success as a cult leader without the criminalization of psychedelics use and their demonization--an officially ordained policy intended as an authoritative deterrent, but in practice a regime that threw young runaways and criminalized "acidheads", "burnouts", and "dopers" into the the shadows of the social milieu of criminality and prison culture. A culture that people like Manson knew inside out, and had the ability to navigate and exploit like sharks in a target-rich environment.
It's a good question. Who knows what their current priorities are? I imagine the postwar/cold war era had different objectives. Their techniques of surreptitiously funneling money through different organisations has seemingly reached a whole new level in the C21st though, and not only them... perhaps it's the old adage of 'follow the money'?
The CIA's plan in 1967, was to use LSD to control people. Intead it created protests against the Viet Nan war, draft card burnigs, hippies, and a big Fuck You to the establishment. How the CIA was able to put the cat back in the bag and disappear LSD is impossible to comprehend. All we are left with is the greatest music of all time.
A corrosive, radical form of dialectical reasoning aimed at dissolving entrenched systems of thought, combining philosophical critique with psychedelic, deconstructive, or countercultural elements. It seeks transformation through contradiction, rupture, and altered perception.
Drugs and power is indeed an area I’d like to know more about. Thank you for reviewing this effort.
Minor editorial point, Mr Dickens, you need to formally identify yourself as the reviewer. :)
Dr Dickins ;-) - but yes, I've always written the house book reviews - for the best part of 20 years now!
Duly acknowledged, Dr. Dickens :-), and long may the PP institution continue!
It was just a stray thought, thinking of newspaper editorials, where the authors are never identified. I thought it might be useful to new, and casual visitors, to the PP.
Also has that C19th journal vibe where the reviewers wrote anonymously - leading to some very spicy reviews!
judging from the review, the book fails to seriously engage with an important point: that LSD use is illegal. It's a criminalized activity. The "psychedelics introduced intentionally for government control" insinuations I've read somehow never address the implications of the most overt government intervention of all: criminalizing the user population, en masse.* Consider what that does to the Setting aspect of experiencing LSD. Even in the most privileged circumstances, impacts on Setting are present. As a background radiation, a malaise. With inverse and reciprocal effects, at extra orders of remove. Out of sight is out of mind is the default for all of us, of course. Nonetheless, the Shadow of LSD User Criminalization is inescapable. It's officially ordained for the entire society. And for that numerous cohort of LSD users who aren't at the income stratum that affords perks like lifetime membership at Burning Man Country Club, those Setting complications and stresses related to the Statutes have always loomed larger.
Some time around 2010 or so, the possible legitimacy of benefits from using psychedelics emerged as a topic of popular conversation and widespread media reportage in the US. Criminalization of LSD began in 1965-1966. And this very recent era of psychedelics getting a news media spotlight--and, often, positive stories of research into their therapeutic value--was preceded by at least 50 years of concerted anti-psychedelics propaganda. The campaign to suppress LSD practically characterized any admission of use as on par with admitting to volunteering for brain damage and insanity, and therefore served as sufficient justification for barring any known user from any position of adult responsibility in prestigious hierarchical institutions of power. As for the criminalized users population, the majority of those who ventured the clandestine experiment were teenagers. Zero status juveniles. (The deal made by the Drug War: as long as you take them when you're under 18, the threat of arrest leading to lasting legal consequences is nil. Those records are sealed. But for anyone over 18, a single drug possession arrest can potentially derail your whole life. It's guaranteed to complicate your life for at least a year, in very unpleasant ways.)
No academic researcher or social critics has addressed the ramifications of a half-century of consigning the entire population of psychedelics users to the far margins of American society with the pariah status of criminalization and the stigma of suspected mental illness. That's a population of at least 20 million users, over the span of decades. And if anyone has evidence of a single openly admitted--or even suspected--psychedelics user being elected to a single elected office, I'd really like to hear about it. I don't know of any. There may be some. But not at the level of US Congressperson or Senator. The usual template for eligibility to such positions of power requires anyone with a history of illegal drug use to regret it and beg forgiveness. And, of course, the default narrative template for criminalized experiments with chemical mind alteration emphasizes initiating use as a minor, binging indiscriminately, acting recklessly--and then either getting scared (for various entirely valid reasons) and quitting, or continuing down the road to more drugs, hard drugs, overuse, and addiction. And from there, to madness, or overdose, or Rehab.
To the extent that users of psychedelics have managed to avoid that negativity, it's no thanks to the loser scripts and alienating messages transmitted by the wider society since the mid-1960s. That social malaise has persisted so long that I regard the recent near-polar reversal of the news media toward flirting with pro-psychedelics Enthusiasm very warily. I mistrust the superficiality of pop-science, pop-medicine, pop-pharma, and pop-nutrition stories in the first place. I know how misleading they can be. I also know fickle they can be.
It also needs to be said that the administrative state "leniency" of "drug courts" for a first-time illicit drug possession offense is assignment to attend Addiction Counseling and 12-step meetings--regardless of whether the substance found is heroin, cocaine, marijuana, LSD, MDMA... I'd venture that most every state from coast to coast has a similar regime by now.
Considered in terms of its value for Harm Reduction related to psychedelics use, that's an insane policy. I've read of at least one case of a teenage kid caught with MDMA who went to his local rehab classes and got found dealer connections to more substances than he had ever imagined. It did not end well. If that was just a series-of-one anecdote, it wouldn't count for much. I bring up the story because it shows what a turnkey operation for disaster that policy is. There have to have been numerous similar cases, of "drug court" referrals who aren't addicts--who aren't even using an especially addictive substance--making their first serious acquaintance with the Hard Drugs Demimonde and Treatment-Resistant Polydrug Dependency of their peers and elders, so to speak.
Not All 12-Step Programs, presumably. I hope.
My main point is that if uncomplicated by any other criminal offense or antisocial behavior, it should be sufficient to deal with simple possession of very small quantities of illicit substances with confiscation and impoundment, with no further legal penalty. At least return the status quo of penalties for simple user possession to confiscation, which is what it was during the era of alcohol Prohibition.
Consider that there were over 200,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2023. And even if (I don't know, just speculating) 95% of them were quantities intended for retail, or the weed charge was an add-on to an actual malum in se offense, that means 10,000 people got arrested for a quantity of a Prohibited Substance equivalent to a fifth of whiskey during the era of the Volstead Act. But simple possession of one bottle of whiskey--or even a case--in the Prohibition Era was not a criminal offense in Federal law. About 7 years into US Federal Prohibition, a meeting was called about how to improve on its ineffective track record. The suggestion of user criminalization did not survive the meeting. (Imagine if user criminalization for booze possession had been enacted back then. Then imagine if it had continued for decades on end. In contrast to Prohibition, which lasted only 13 years.)
[* the "psychedelics are a CIA mind control plot" allegations also ignore a peculiar contradiction that's implicit in that conspiracy hypothesis. The logic of the plot indicates that while the conspirators would encourage others to take the mind-disabling drugs, they would absolutely refuse to ingest the substances themselves, so as to avoid the hazard of deranging their own minds. However, that is not the way the history played out at all, at all. Unless, that is, Huxley and Hubbard and Leary and Alpert and Kesey and all of the rest of the most infamous psychedelics advocates of the 1960s were stage magicians, palming their meds the entire time and then faking the effects. That really would qualify as some deep shit. Huge, if true. ]
I read the book Mindfuckers soon after it first came out. Without the references to psychedelics, it would just be another chronicle of crisis cults and cult-adjacent "group lifestyle experiments." A couple of the ones documented sound kinda meh, in terms of malign influence. Exploitative and guru-centered, yes. Mel Lyman came off as pretty psychopathic and controlling. But only the Manson Family really went off into apocalyptic antisociality, systematic criminality and violence. Crisis cult episodes are part of human history all over the world. They have an enduring appeal. Especially during times of upheaval and uncertainty in the Zeitgeist, and we're up to our ears in that. It used to be much more of a localized phenomenon. Now cult behaviors can be transmitted through self-selected niche social media circles, anywhere there's an Internet connection.
I recognize that one of the main psychological effects associated with psychedelics use is an increase in openness, and hence suggestibility. A property that also applies to the Internet and social media, as it happens. That's more about the vulnerability of naively unprepared, uncritical and unwary minds than the innate properties of the technologies, in my opinion. But that vulnerability is obviously substantial in the case of both social media rabbit holes and the social initiatory process associated with getting involved with psychedelics. All crisis cults gain their power and control through isolating the recruit. That's key to ensuring the controlling power of the conditioning.
In the case of forbidden psychedelic drugs, that liability is additionally exacerbated by the fact of user criminalization. It's difficult for me to imagine Charlie Manson's success as a cult leader without the criminalization of psychedelics use and their demonization--an officially ordained policy intended as an authoritative deterrent, but in practice a regime that threw young runaways and criminalized "acidheads", "burnouts", and "dopers" into the the shadows of the social milieu of criminality and prison culture. A culture that people like Manson knew inside out, and had the ability to navigate and exploit like sharks in a target-rich environment.
Where is the CIA in the psychedelic renaissance? I can’t believe it’s completely absent but also can’t find any evidence of its involvement at all…
It's a good question. Who knows what their current priorities are? I imagine the postwar/cold war era had different objectives. Their techniques of surreptitiously funneling money through different organisations has seemingly reached a whole new level in the C21st though, and not only them... perhaps it's the old adage of 'follow the money'?
The CIA's plan in 1967, was to use LSD to control people. Intead it created protests against the Viet Nan war, draft card burnigs, hippies, and a big Fuck You to the establishment. How the CIA was able to put the cat back in the bag and disappear LSD is impossible to comprehend. All we are left with is the greatest music of all time.
chat GPT
Acid Dialectics:
A corrosive, radical form of dialectical reasoning aimed at dissolving entrenched systems of thought, combining philosophical critique with psychedelic, deconstructive, or countercultural elements. It seeks transformation through contradiction, rupture, and altered perception.
Oh, guess it's not read it then?
I will read it .I want to what chat gp said