Word: huxley
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When Aldous Huxley published his essay "The Doors of Perception" in 1954, he did much to publicize a very strange drug. "Mescaline," he writes, "admits one to an other-world of light, color, and increased awareness. In some cases there may be extra-sensory perceptions. Other persons discover a world of visionary beauty. To others again is revealed the glory, the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence...
Pure mescaline is synthesized today by several chemical companies, which supply it to qualified investigators at prices of about four dollars a dose. Huxley's intriguing essay is a subjective description of the symptoms that followed his taking 400 milligrams of mescaline, the usual amount. What mescaline does to the human mind is difficult to describe; its effects vary strikingly from person to person and from time to time in the same individual. The most significant fact is that a very large proportion of these experiences are pleasant throughout, many of them ecstatically...
Predictably, Huxley compares mescaline to soma, the universal antidote to everyday existence in Brave New World,--a drug with "all the advantages of Christianity and alcohol, none of the drawbacks." Like soma, mescaline is an hallucinogen and a euphoriant that is not harmful and provides a reasonably safe, extremely interesting escape from the world. But the effects of mescaline are far too capricious, much too susceptible to subtle psychological influences, and certainly too time-consuming to rank with those of Huxley's ideal drug. And with the majority that finds heaven in mescaline here is inevitably a small minority that...
...Huxley's assertion that man needs frequent escape from his environment and that some of this must be chemically induced. The stupendous consumption of alcohol in the world today may support this contention; certainly the interest aroused by mescaline among non-researchers is indication that it, too, has strong appeal...
...issue may be raised sooner than one might expect. Since mescaline became available, several other drugs with similar properties have been isolated, and some of these have very many of the qualities of Huxley's soma. The most astounding one is psilocybin, a compound isolated quite recently from a certain genus of Mexican mushrooms and now also synthesized. Psilocybin affects the mind much more selectively than mescaline, specifially stimulating those psychic effects that have been termed "broadened consciousness." It never impairs the higher mental functions, often it greatly enhances them. Visions and physical symptoms do occur but seem less intense...