Foremost among his Palo Alto [often referred to as neighboring Menlo Park] recruits was Ken Kesey. In 1959, Bateson administered the first dose of LSD  to Kesey.  By 1962, Kesey had completed a novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which popularized the notion that society is a prison and the only truly "free" people are the insane.15

 

Kesey subsequently organized a circle of LSD initiates called "The Merry Pranksters." They toured the country disseminating LSD (often without forewarning the receiving parties), building up local distribution connections, and establishing the pretext for a high volume of publicity on behalf of the still minuscule "counterculture."

By 1967, the Kesey cult had handed out such quantities of LSD that a sizable drug population had emerged, centered in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.

 

 

above: Alfred E. Neuman [Mad, April 1968 cover] and Ken Kesey, a Stanford creative writing graduate student when George Bateson's guinea pig, indulging in Lyserg-S e-Diaethylamid [LSD or D-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide], psilocybin [essence of magic mushrooms], mescaline [essence of peyote], and amphetamine IT-290 [AMT or alpha-methyltryptamine].  How are you feeling, Ken?

Hollywood showers the 1975 movie of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with all five major Academy Awards.  Lobotomy complete?

 

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Arnold "Civilization Is Suicidal" Toynbee -- The Right Honorable Bertrand "Anti-Commie, except Russian Revolution; Anti-War, except WWII" Russell -- Aldous "Brave New World" Huxley -- George Bateson, a husband of Margaret "Free (Samoan) Love" Mead -- Ken "Magic Bus" Kesey -- Albert "Father of LSD" Hoffman -- Timothy "Turn on, Tune in, & Drop Out" Leary -- Alexander "PiHKAL, TiHKAL, Sasha" Shulgin -- Earth Day Ira "The Trunk" Einhorn -- et al.

By conducting a systematic comparison of the pharmacological effects of cocaine and methylphenidate [Ritalin] (a drug to treat children with attention deficit disorder), her studies have highlighted the importance of pharmacokinetics in enabling the reinforcing effects of stimulant drugs. These studies have shown that stimulant drugs, when used therapeutically, amplify dopamine signals in the brain and also result in improved attention and performance.

She was born and grew up in the house in Mexico City where her great-grandfather, the exiled Russian revolutionary, had been assassinated in 1940 with an ice pick. Volkow, 48, said her family's history helped shape her ambitions.

"It's a sense of doing something that can improve the quality of life for people," Volkow said. "Of course I admire [Trotsky], I think he was an incredibly visionary individual."

 

 

On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of anti-war protesters went into SDS [Students for a Democratic Society -- Brandeis U. their HQ] on the basis of outrage at the developments in Vietnam. But once caught in the environment defined by [Bertrand] Russell and the Tavistock Institute's psychological warfare experts, and inundated with the message that hedonistic pleasure-seeking was a legitimate alternative to "immoral war," their sense of values and their creative potential went up in a cloud of hashish smoke.

 

 

 

 

 

"As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends . . . to increase. And the dictator . . . will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope, the movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate." -- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1948).

 

 

 

 

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