GRGR: LSD and rockets

[Doug Millison]

"[1964] The connection with NASA, who were developing JB118 came quite by
chance. One morning the telephone rang. It was a Dr. Steve Groff calling
from Miami. As staff hypnotist with NASA he was interested in the use of
psychedelic substances in connection with astronaut training. He had just
come from the space centre and told me that all the astronauts had taken
LSD to prepare themselves for weightlessness and disorientation due to the
lack of external coordinates from which to take their bearing. Could he
come to Millbrook for a session to see how we were administering LSD? Could
he examine for himself our claim to have joyful experiences with LSD, a
claim in direct contradiction to the results of sessions taken in clinical
psychiatric surroundings ? [...] The links made through Dr. Groff with NASA
resulted in us obtaining some JB118, the space drug officially on the
secrets list. Dick and I volunteered to try it and remarked that it looked
as if we were becoming the guinea pigs for NASA and the CIA. We went to the
recording room and when Dick sat down on the couch I took up the lotus
position on the floor. We ingested the drug and waited for the slight
change in body metabolism one associates with LSD. But wham ! ! ! ! This
took effect instantly in the somatic sensory areas. I felt myself moving
round the room in leaping acrobatic backward somersaults. I could not
prevent this, yet I was not hitting any of the electronic equipment in the
room. I was spinning round and round the centre of the room gliding past
everything. I had the absolute conviction that I was in a small space
capsule about the size of a tennis ball and that I had broken loose from
the safety-belts.     I felt alarmed and sensed a paranoic antipathy to
whoever had been careless enough to put me in the capsule in such a
dangerous way. Suddenly a door in the capsule opened and Whoosh ! ! ! ! I
was sucked out and down towards the atmosphere, hurtling down an air
corridor, free-falling, able to move any way but upwards. Observers said
that all the time I was spreadeagled on the floor, lying on my stomach. But
I remember a horrific sensation and suddenly there was a lurch and I
stood up. It seemed a parachute had opened just a foot before I hit the
earth's surface. Yet it had broken my fall.     I wanted to fly again and I
was a crow. I started to caw and flap my arms. Caw! Caw-caw! My eyes were
tightly closed and I knew what it was to be a bird. I started to hop around
the house, pegged my way downstairs and into the dining-room. With my eyes
still tightly shut I touched people to see who they were, let my
blackfeathered wings brush over human faces. And still I didn't bump into
anything. With my eyes closed I steered my way through the house several
times.
Through doors. Through corridors. Through passages.     Eventually I was
coaxed back upstairs with a piece of bread as bait and I nested militantly
until I finally evolved back into a man and came round. The whole trip had
lasted three hours. [...]
Even more extraordinary, if we indulge our empirical prejudices for a
moment, was the
experience of Alan Eager and Arnie Hendin on the space drug. They went on
an identical trip and were aware of doing so all the time. Like me they
were pulled into the vacuum of space and moved freely above the blue
curvature of the earth. They saw a little dot approaching them and noticed,
when it came closer, that it was a space-craft, with the hammer-and-sickle
on the side. As it floated towards them they clung to the side and saw two
Russian cosmonauts inside the craft. The men saw
Arnie and Alan and seemed frightened. So agitated did they become that
Arnie and Alan decided to float away on their own and eventually they
returned to earth in Millbrook. Next day, March 19, 1965, it was reported
that the Soviet Voskhod 2, containing cosmonauts Pavel Belyayev and Alexei
Leonov, had encountered difficulties in reentry. On their first attempt to
do so their automatic re-entry system failed and the Voskhod 2 pilots had
to make an extra orbit and then bring the spacecraft back to earth
themselves. This change in landing site meant a long wait in the winter
cold before rescue helicopters located them.... As few of us at Millbrook
took much interest in current news it is doubtful if either Arnie or Alan
had heard of this flight. They were sure they had not read about it prior
to taking the space drug and firmly maintained that the delay in re-entry
had been caused by the panic of the cosmonauts in seeing them. We await
confirmation from the Soviet Union."
-- http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/holl5.htm
 _The Man Who Turned on the World_  by Michael Hollingshead (1973)
(he's the guy who turned Tim Leary on to LSD)

"The navy became interested in mescaline as an interrogation agent when
American investigators learned of mind control experiments carried out by
Nazi doctors at the Dachau concentration camp during World War II. [...]
The mescaline experiments at Dachau were described in a lengthy report by
the U.S. Naval Technical Mission which swept across Europe in search of
every scrap of industrial material and scientific data that could be
garnered from the fallen Reich. This mission set the stage for the
wholesale importation of more than six hundred top Nazi scientists under
the auspices of Project Paperclip, which the CIA supervised during the
early years of the Cold War.  Among those who emigrated to the US in such a
fashion was Dr. Hubertus Strughold, the German scientist whose chief
subordinates (Dr. Sigmund Ruff and Dr. Sigmund Rascher) were directly
involved in "aviation medicine" experiments at Dachau, which included the
mescaline studies. Despite recurring allegations that he sanctioned medical
atrocities during the war, Strughold settled in Texas and became an
important figure in America's space program. After Wernher von Braun, he
was the top Nazi scientist employed by the American government, and he was
subsequently hailed by NASA as the "father of space medicine." "
--_Acid Dreams_, Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain (1985)

d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n
http://www.dougmillison.com
http://www.online-journalist.com