The Consciousness-Expanding Drug

by David Solomon ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Solomon's symposium on LSD should be compared with Sidney Cohen's THE BEYOND WITHIN: The LSD Story also in this issue (see p. 798). Both of these studies of the controversial now drug have a fundamentally similar thesis: that the drug promises mankind a new vision of itself in the universe. ""In the universe"" is a necessary qualification because LSD is the great ""cosmic"" expansioner. That's why it is used to rise above the impediments of paperclips and planets. These proponents point out that LSD is not habit-forming, that no one has died from its use, and that most people who have experimented with it under favorable control conditions have had a death of the ego and birth of the soul that are valuable beyond description. In fact, most descriptions of the drug's effects leave the reader caught in an octagon of kaleidocoopic impressions as if the Museum of Modern Art had dropped on your head. Solomon's many contributors include Alan Watts, the Zen scholar, Aldous Huxley, William Burroughs of Naked Lunch (wearing better grammar than usual), Dr. Timothy Leary of the ill-famed Harvard and Mexico experiments, and others who reveal a revolutionary ferver.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1964

Categories: NONFICTION