The concept of a 'bad trip' on psychedelics was used strategically by public health officials and regulators in the 1960s to justify prohibition, emphasizing violent and fearful outbursts as chemical reactions causing harm. However, psychedelic therapists in the 1950s and 1960s offered an alternative interpretation, viewing fear and trauma confrontation as beneficial in psychotherapy. By comparing cases from North American psychedelic clinics with news, personal testimonies, and regulatory outcomes in the United States, the article argues that the specter of the bad trip galvanized public support for prohibition. This removed psychedelics from active research, moving psychotherapy away from addressing fear and trauma through confrontation.
Wealthy patrons and philanthropic attitudes provided crucial financial, legal, and logistical support for Timothy Leary's early research into LSD and psilocybin, as well as his subsequent psychedelic movement. Leary's shift from academic researcher to LSD guru during the 1960s was accompanied by changes in the patterns of this support. His legal troubles later in the decade are linked to the emerging movement to legalize cannabis. The paper also draws historical continuity to contemporary efforts to fund psychedelic research.
A new academic biography of Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and a central figure in the psychedelic counterculture, fills a gap in scholarship. Rick Dodgson traces Kesey's life from childhood through the completion of his second novel, focusing on his early performance instincts, graduate work in Palo Alto, and discovery of mind-altering drugs. Dodgson argues that Tom Wolfe's influential account of Kesey's psychedelic adventures in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is hyperbolic rather than factual. The Acid Tests involved only a few hundred people, and underground chemists like Augustus Owsley Stanley III had a much greater influence on spreading psychedelia. Kesey's influence was tempered by his 1966 exile from the San Francisco scene due to legal troubles.