Word: hysterias
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...however, no factual evidence that consciousness-expanding drugs are uniquely dangerous and considerable evidence that they are safe and beneficial. Any action or any stimulus may involve risk. But in law and science the concept "danger" must be proven clear and present. When we cut through rumor and hysteria, what are the published facts about consciousness-expanding drugs? The classic volume in this field (The Use of LSD in Psychotherapy, Josiah Macy Foundation, 1960) presents a table of "problems encountered" in 8,640 treatment doses and 3427 experimental doses, thirteen investigators reporting. Three problems were reported--"one disrobing," "one suicide...
Still the hysteria continues to mount. The alarm of policymakers on the one hand is matched by the enthusiasm and almost religious dedication of the "experienced". The latter group tones down its beliefs partly because of the present inadequacy of our vocabulary for describing such experiences and partly because of social fear...
...issue of consciousness-expanding drugs has not been ended by Dean Monro's warning or this letter. In the coming years we shall hear this question debated in many a forum. Remember, the drug hysteria masks the deeper issue of consciousness control. Our advise is similar to that presented in a recent CRIMSON editorial on this issue--keep an open mind. Place your trust not in Dean Monro's "grown-up responsibility of faculty members" (including the authors of this letter) but in the scientific data and in your own experienced judgment. Timothy Leary, Ph.D. Richard Alpert, Ph.D...
Presenting himself as proof that the universe is foul, Burroughs achieves the somewhat irrelevant honesty of hysteria as he writes of a malevolent world of users and pushers, of a mad conspiracy of spider-eyed manipulators who sell each other "adulterated shark repellent, cut antibiotics, condemned parachutes, stale antivenom, inactive serums and vaccines, leaking lifeboats." All pity is mockery ("Yes I know it all. The finance company is repossessing your wife's artificial kidney. They are evicting your grandmother from her iron lung"). All degradations are cherished: a coroner named Autopsy Ahmed makes a fortune peddling an Egyptian worm...
...room. It is a hilarious and heartbreaking scene, and belongs triumphantly to Margaret Leighton. She slugs down one whisky after another, and dances like a puritan posing as a pagan. "This is rather exciting, really," she says in an unlevel voice that slides precariously from jolly-good-sport toward hysteria...