May 20, 2012
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The 1950s housewife on LSD
BEST VIDEONewly unearthed footage shows a doctor speaking with a straight-laced woman in the middle of an acid trip. Best interview ever?
POSTED ON JANUARY 19, 2011, AT 2:00 PM
This 1950s housewife seems to have encountered a different reality that was “so beautiful and lovely and alive” after taking LSD. Photo: YouTubeSEE ALL 7 PHOTOS
Best Opinion: Gawker, Death and Taxes
The video: A recently discovered clip of a 1950s housewife on an acid trip became a viral-video sensation this week. (See video below.) In the eight-minute video, Los Angeles doctor Sidney Cohen administers a dose of acid to a self-described “normal” woman who hadvolunteered to participate in a study on the effects of LSD. Hours after taking a dose of the drug, the woman is clearly in the grips of a hallucinogenic revery, agape at the wonders of the world around her. In a trippy conversation with the doctor, she rattles off a number of memorable observations, such as, “I’ve never seen such infinite beauty in my life.” She also says, “I wish I could talk in Technicolor,” and “I can see all the molecules, I’m part of it. Can’t you see it?” The clip originally aired on television in 1956, when the drug was a still-legal curiosity — years before it became a controversial, and illegal, counterculture touchstone of the 1960s youth movement.
The reaction: ”As every college student knows, says Max Read atGawker, ”there is almost nothing funnier than watching a person try to narrate her acid trips.” But while that hilarity has stayed consistent over the last 55 years, says Carmen Lobello at Death and Taxes, the video is also a reminder of how times have changed. In the early days of LSD, advocates touted its healing powers. For instance, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous thought the drug could “could be a useful tool for recovering addicts.” But “while dropping acid may feel exactly the same in 2011 as it did in 1956, it’s hard to imagine it being seriously suggested today that the best way to cure addicts is to give them more drugs.” Watch the acid trip in action below:Copyright. 2012. The Week. All Rights Reserved
Comments (2)
In answer to your question — well, no — the best interview ever was the one I posted a link to yesterday at my own blog. Ayn Rand was interviewed by Phil Donohue and I was impressed how both parties stood up to each other without backing down. I have ALWAYS been favorably impressed by Donohue but in the interview in question, I was MORE favorably impressed by Rand, who ably defended her position while Donohue seemed incapable of understanding what she was saying.
Anyway, I hope you’ll give it a try and let me know what you think.
As for the LSD interview, my view is that it’s just not worth trying. Even though the woman appears not to have had a “bad trip,” all this seems to prove is that the drug is powerful and might result in a pleasant experience, but it’s not worth having, in view of the risks.
Just my opinion.
My laptop is telling me that I cannot get in to the video portion, but my husband, as a young man — long long ago, remembers similar circumstances from LSD, but with children in the future, soon left it to the ages. I think it is entirely appropriate to help people detox with other medications, for what kind of glory is there in people vomiting their guts out, feeling agony, and fearful of detoxing? We lost the war on drugs years ago, over crowded the jails, turned non-criminals in to criminals, and for what? I believe in the Dutch model which allows addicted people to work and live out lives in some normal fashion, and that may shock a whole lot of folks, but look at the brain power and the youth which we have incarcerated, led to suicides by making them second class citizens, and I ssy that with the experience of many years of being an overly educated nurse, six and a half years college before I decided to get a BSN. I say that on behalf of the woman who died from an OD that was my granddaughter’s mother. I say no glory in her death over a bunch of Vicodin. People are in pain, even if it is just in their heart and soul, or they would not choose hospital shopping and pole dancing as do many of the younger women as the one of whom I speak.
When will we stop wasting human talent for the sake of prohibition which has gone on since the mid 20th century. I am convinced that it is the dollar factor, that it pays to keep things illegal when masses of people are making money off the souls of those who never woke up one day and said, “I have dreamt of being addicted to drugs all of my life and how wonderful that would be.” Keeping it all illegal keeps a certain level of the world population rich and bargaining even on a political basis. We know this is true, and it is no different from the prohibition of alcohol all those years ago, except drug addicts are not usually beating each other to death. God have mercy on the poorest among us, and this is my prayer.
Would you jump in to the conversation? Blessings my friends, Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” Please look up on Amazon and Kindle, for this book has just taken a first honorable mention in The San Francixco Book Biography/Autobiography category; And I need those of you who will consider supporting, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” to please do so on Amazon, Create Space, and Kindle.
Thank you so much Vegas MIke for giving us food for thought per usual.
Barb Heintz