This video is truly amazing. The British had an entire unit take LSD to see how they performed after dropping acid. With one soldier climbing a tree to feed a bird and the commander rolling around laughing, the unit was ready more for Woodstock than Waterloo.
Presumably, the idea behind the exercise was to see the advantage of drugging opposing armies. This would simply require luring whole army divisions to rock concerts and slipping them LSD during the performances. You then have a division composed of Timothy Learys.
Here is the new divisional song for the Coldstream Guards:
I heard that this unit marched around singing a parody of a song made famous by Disney’s Snow White movie: High-ho, high-ho, war’s can be fun, you know!
But for MK-Ultra, there would have been no Haight-Ashbury.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk_ultra
“When they finally learned the hallucinogenic ropes, so to speak, they agreed among themselves to slip LSD into each other’s drinks. The target never knew when his turn would come, but as soon as the drug was ingested a TSS colleague would tell him so he could make the necessary preparations—which usually meant taking the rest of the day off. Initially the leaders of MK-ULTRA restricted the surprise acid tests to TSS members, but when this phase had run its course they started dosing other Agency personnel who had never tripped before. Nearly everyone was fair game, and surprise acid trips became something of an occupational hazard among CIA operatives. Such tests were considered necessary because foreknowledge would prejudice the results of the experiment.
Indeed, things were getting a bit raucous down at headquarters. When Security officials discovered what was going on, they began to have serious doubts about the wisdom of the TSS game plan. Moral reservations were not paramount; it was more a sense that the MK-ULTRA staff had become unhinged by the hallucinogen. The
Office of Security felt that the TSS should have exercised better judgment in dealing with such a powerful and dangerous chemical. The straw that broke the camel’s back came when a Security informant got wind of a plan by a few TSS jokers to put LSD in the punch served at the annual CIA Christmas office party. A Security memo dated December 15, 1954, noted that acid could “produce serious insanity for periods of 8 to 18 hours and possibly for longer.” The writer of this memo concluded indignantly and unequivocally that he did “not recommend testing in the Christmas punch bowls usually present at the Christmas office parties.”
(Acid Dreams, The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond, by Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain, 1985)
Were those guns loaded?
ram:
LSD looks much safer.
I guess you guys haven’t heard of BZ gas…….
Funny how commenters are mentioning how it would be useful against a military enemy–my guess is that is what the people who ran this experiment were trying to find out. I bet it would work too, if anyone could figure out how to deliver it. If you’re busy laughing or gazing at blades of grass, you aren’t likely to fight.
hold on a second:
it is probably not allowed by the EPA or Sierra Club for fear the Yellow Tailed Snail Gobbler will have a bad “trip”.
obviously they should aerisolize it and spray it at the enemy.
“I’ll bet the CIA has some footage like that from their experiments…”
Dude. It was college. And stop calling me CIA.
“Jesus man! You don’t look for acid! Acid finds you when *it* thinks you’re ready.” – Hunter S. Thompson
I’ll bet the CIA has some footage like that from their experiments…
rcampbell:
that is a brilliant idea. Hopefully someone in the pentagon will take note and use it.
Now we just have to figure out how to get acid into the food supplies of all those pesky al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Wouldn’t it be a hoot to watch all that fundamentalist aggression played out on acid?
I can see clearly now. I have seen the Rabbit that’s 10 feet tall. Say good night Alice.
Prof,
Are you sure some in the Office of the President have not seen the Rabbit too?