LSD, JFK, CIA?

[Doug Millison]

The point is not was LSD secret. But to say that "everybody" knew about it
is certainly hyperbole, knowledge of it was restricted to a small circle;
the National Science Foundation is hardly the Good Housekeeping Seal of
Approval, after all; and while Huxley was a popular novelist and perhaps
"everybody" did read Brave New World, I doubt that Huxley's Doors of
Perception enjoyed as much popular, mainstream success, and expect that
instead its reception was limited to a rather restricted group of literary
intellectuals (that would be the way Huxley's books are received now, every
sophomore reads Brave New World, but rare is the reader who has even heard
of Doors of Perception).  The Beatles may have taken it in '64, but that
wasn't part of the common knowledge about The Beatles at that time -- I'd
argue that only fairly hip fans of The Beatles realized when Sgt. Pepper
came out that they were singing about LSD.  Smoking pot and dropping acid
and knowing that most of the "straights" around you had no idea what you
were doing or what the substances made you feel like -- that you were
engaged in "secret" behavior, in other words -- was part of the allure.

Was LSD the sort of thing the average California housewife would be talking
about on the phone with a psychiatrist in 1965?  For starters, average
housewives, in California or elsewhere, in the early 60s didn't have
psychiatrists (they still don't), much less psychiatrists who prescribed
LSD. It's safe to say that LSD was not in the popular consciousness in any
sort of widespread, household knowledge way, until the mass media made it so
with coverage of the Summer of Love in '67. Prior to that, it was "secret"
to the degree that LSD was for initiates, people who had access to the
substance or access to people who had access, people inside the sub-culture
that used it, which was in every way marginal to mainstream American life;
when in fact LSD began to move from the margin into the mainstream(from
Haight/Ashberry to the suburbs), that's when the U.S. government freaked out
and made it illegal and stopped the research that was taking place (and from
which a relatively small amount of LSD was diverted to research of the
non-officially sanctioned sort; outlawing LSD of course created a market for
it of the sort that Pynchon in GR calls, not speaking directly of LSD,
"carefully styled black" or words to that effect). LSD was underground, just
as Pynchon was underground at this time in the early 60s -- hell, the guy
didn't even have a driver's license, which, in that car crazy era was
tantamount to burning the flag or pissing on Mom's apple pie and dissing the
girl next door.

How many novels that come anywhere near COL49's literary quality, or which
were taken as seriously by critics as COL49 was (in the wake of V. which was
extremely warmly received by critics of the U.S. literary Establishment)
mentioned LSD in the first chapter?