Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Trip Down Memory Lane: 1950s Housewife Drops Acid


A fascinating before and after look at an acid trip. Subject: A California housewife.
The researcher in the video, Dr. Sidney Cohen, was conducting experiments by dosing volunteers at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Los Angeles for a program about mental health issues, according to Lattin.

Cohen was a leading authority on mind-altering drugs and one of the first to warn about the dangers of LSD, according to an obituary in The New York Times.

The woman does not give her name but says her husband works at the hospital.

Throughout the video, the woman handles her trip like an old pro, remaining calm as Cohen gently prods her to describe what she is seeing and feeling.

"It's here, can't you feel it?" the woman says. "This whole room, everything is in color and I can feel the air, I can see it. I can see all the molecules. I'm part of it. Can't you see it?"

Cohen responds that he is trying, and then asks her how she feels inside.

"I don't have an inside," the woman says.

In the end, words, at least as we know them, appear to fail her.

"I wish I could talk in Technicolor," she says.

"I can't tell you about it. If you can't see it, you'll just never know it," she adds. "I feel sorry for you."

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