Acid Dreams

[Gillies, Lindsay]

>from eric:
>If you have any other ideas
>about background material with which to approach the topic of Pynchon &
>drugs let me know.

For a newer phase of the same phenomenon, check out the URL
http://hyperreal.com/drugs/e4x/
for info on MDMA, aka Ecstasy.  The URL points to an MS by  Nicholas 
Saunders.  The first paragraph of his chapter on the history of MDMA 
suggests its actually an older sibling of LSD:

"MDMA was patented as long ago as 1913 by the German company Merck. Rumour 
"has it that the drug was sold as a
"slimming pill along with comic descriptions of its strange side effects, 
although it was "never marketed and the patent doesn't
"mention uses. The next time it came to light was in 1953 when the US army 
tested a "number of drugs for military applications -
"again, folklore says it was tried as a truth drug but there is no evidence 
for this.

I once had the fascinating experience of meeting the inventor of LSD, Albert 
Hoffman, who was an old friend of Richard Shulteis, the ethnobotanist and 
expert (among other things) on the traditional pharmacoepia of the Amazon 
tribes. (Turns out that 90%+ of the world's psychotropic drugs come from the 
western hemisphere.)

In fact Albert (who was a Swiss and worked for Sandoz) was cycling through a 
variety of related compound syntheses, interested in their efficacy in 
asthma treatment.  He described, in effect, the first acid trip.  (He 
started to experience effects as he rode home on his bicycle.)  He became 
involved with another expert in this area, Gordon Wasson, who had studied 
the use of psychotropics among Mexican indians.  He acquired some mescaline 
from Gordon (LSD and mescaline are closely related in structural terms) to 
compare its chemistry to LSD, and also to test it.  He described testing on 
lab animals (an interesting epistomological problem!), and his realization 
that, given his dwindling supply, "I must test it on myself!".  He read from 
his lab notes of this particular test (literally done in the lab, with 
collegues), and mentioned that the association with the american southwest 
caused him to hallucinate his surroundings into a TexMex scene with 
sombreros, etc.

Another valuable source of info in Allen Ginsberg, in a variety of essays 
written over the years.  He knows Leary and Alpert well.

Generally speaking, LSD, whatever else it became, was also part of a long, 
long tradition of psychotropic mysticism, extant across all major culturals 
at many many points in human history.  It tends to be a secret tradition, 
transmitted by secret sharing, and just the sort of history that appeals to 
our hero.  The original German influence on modern chemistry and 
pharmacology is overwhelming.  In a way, the seance ramblings on the 
discovery of blue dye (the true beginning of modern industrial chemistry) 
and related chemical engineering matter may point to a kind of mystical 
induction via synthetic objects.  (The actual historical tradition from 
which this resonates, I'm suggesting, is one of mystical ingestion of 
organic matter.)