Ginsberg Senate Testimony on LSD (1966)

[Tuesday, June 14, 1966, afternoon session. Senator Quentin N. Burdick (1908–1992) of North Dakota presiding; Senator Jacob K. Javits (1904–1986) of New York also questioned the witness. Printed pp. 487–509. Speaker labels, printed in small capitals, are rendered here in title case.]

AFTERNOON SESSION

Senator Burdick. Most of our witnesses have been experts in the field of medicine or other sciences. Because we are concerned with all the approaches to LSD we are also interested in the position of those who have used the drug for nonscientific purposes.

Mr. Allen Ginsberg is a poet and attended Columbia University. He was a Guggenheim fellow during 1965 and 1966. He has read and published his poems throughout the world, and is one of the American artists most concerned with the use of LSD-type drugs.

We have heard during these hearings that LSD appeals to many of our talented young college students; in fact, many of our future leaders. According to testimony taken here, there is a great deal of experimentation and use of LSD on college campuses.

For this reason, I think it is important that we hear from the advocates of this drug so that we can better understand why it has such an attraction for many of our most promising young men and women.

We have been told that, at worst, LSD can be a fatal attraction. If this is so, we must quickly develop policies regarding its use. Mr. Ginsberg is one of the most influential advocates of LSD use. He has spoken on its behalf to many college students across the land.

I feel it is important that he tell this subcommittee of his motives and experiences so that we can better understand the reasons behind LSD use and make intelligent decisions on future courses of action by the Government.

I think it is important that we have on the record the points of view and the reasoning of these exponents of the drug who are capturing the minds of many of our young people. I do not feel we can fully understand the problem by ignoring these "Pied Pipers" of the LSD movement. That is why Mr. Ginsberg is here today.

STATEMENT OF ALLEN GINSBERG, POET, NEW YORK CITY

Mr. Ginsberg. I am here because I want to tell you about my own experience, and am worried that without sufficient understanding and sympathy for personal experience laws will be passed that are so rigid that they will cause more harm than the new LSD that they try to regulate. But with some sympathy, and if possible, kindness and understanding, it might be possible for all of us to get together and work out the riddle of LSD as it is approaching our society.

I hope that whatever prejudgment you may have of me or my bearded image you can suspend so that we can talk together as fellow beings in the same room of now, trying to come to some harmony and peacefulness between us. I am a little frightened to present myself, the fear of your rejection of me, the fear of not being tranquil enough to reassure you that we can talk together, make sense, and perhaps even like each other—enough to want not to offend, or speak in a way which is abrupt or hard to understand.

Senator Javits. Mr. Ginsberg, would mind an interruption?

Mr. Ginsberg. Certainly not.

Senator Javits. You have nothing to fear. The fact that you are here is a tribute to the fact that we want to hear you. You will be heard I can assure you with the utmost courtesy, and if there is anything that you say that can persuade us, we are not going to be dissuaded by your bearded image or preconception or anything else. I know my colleagues and I can assure you of that. Go right ahead. We may not agree with you, but you are a witness and you will be treated with every consideration.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes. Since I wish to speak personally I want to speak about my own inside feelings, because that is in a sense what we will be discussing.

I am 40 years old now, a poet, this year with the status of Guggenheim Foundation fellow. I graduated from Columbia College, curiously enough, and had a practical career in Market Research before I went to writing full time. When I was 22 I had a crucial experience—what is called a visionary experience or "esthetic" experience—without drugs—that deepened my life. William James' classic American book "Varieties of Religious Experience" describes similar happenings to people's consciousness. What happened to me amazed me—the whole universe seemed to wake up alive and full of intelligence and feeling: It was like a definite break in ordinary consciousness, lasted intermittently a week; then disappeared and left me vowing one thing—never to forget what I'd seen.

Now maybe that doesn't seem important, surely it's "subjective." But remember we are not machines, impersonal objective" figures. We are subject, person, most of all we are feeling—we are alive, and this aliveness that we all know in ourselves is just that feeling of individual, unique, sensitive person. And this Nation was made to be an association of such persons, and our democracy was framed to be a social structure where maximum development of individual person was to be encouraged.

I am taking the word from our prophet, Walt Whitman. This is the tradition of the Founding Fathers, this is the true myth of America, this is the prophecy of our most loved thinkers—Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman. That each man is a great universe in himself; this is the great value of America that we call freedom.

Now in the 20th century we have entered into a sort of science fiction space age: massive overpopulation on the planet, the possibility of planetary war and death, as in Buck Rogers, like a Biblical apocalypse, a network of electronic intercommunication which reaches and conditions our thoughts and feelings to each other, spaceships which leave earth, loss of our natural green surroundings in concrete cities filled with smoke, accelerating technology homogenizing our characters and experience. All this is inevitable, especially since presumably we have come to value material extensions of ourself, and don't want to give those up.

We all know and complain about the drawbacks; a feeling of being caught in a bureaucratic machine which is not built to serve some of our deepest personal feelings. A machine which closes down on our senses, reduces our language and thoughts to uniformity, reduces our sources of inspiration and fact to fewer and fewer channels—as TV does—and monopolizes our attention with secondhand imagery—packaged news, and we are having it packaged now, and entertainment hours a day—and doesn't really satisfy our deeper needs for communication with each other—healthy personal adventure in environment where we have living contact with each other in the flesh, the human universe we are built to enjoy and grow in.

Maybe you have already known about experiments with infant children's absolute need for contact with living bodies. If babies are totally isolated from human touch, warmth, contact, caressing, physical love, various studies have shown that they turn idiot or die. They have no life to turn to, react to, relate to. Human contact is built into our nature as a material need as strong as food, it is not an esthetic desire, it is not a fancy idea, it is an absolute fact of our existence, we can't survive without it. And this gives us an idea of what we all need, even all of us in this room grown up. We can't treat each other only as objects, categories of citizens, role players, big names, small names, objects of research or legislation—we can't treat each other as things lacking feeling, lacking sympathy. Our humanity would atrophy, cripple and die—want to die. Because life without feeling is just more "thing," more inhuman universe. There is certainly one thing we can all agree on, we all want to feel good, we don't want to feel bad basically.

What I am trying to do is articulate the common body of feeling that we all have together in this room, and I hope you will not reject my feelings of wanting mutual friendliness and communication here now—scared as my feelings are to make themselves known to you.

I had just begun to explain a vision that I once had, and immediately feared your dismissal of the idea of someone coming up in Congress and saying, "I had a vision 20 years ago," something so personal and nonobjective I want to explain why that very personal thing has a place here now.

The LSD experience is also a personal experience, that can be listened to with sympathy. Then we can make up our mind how to act on it, how far it feels all right to go along with it, how far it feels bad to go along. Please follow my presentation as long as it feels all right to you.

After having had a sort of vision, as I called it, I later took some peyote, the Indian cactus, in my house in Paterson, in the presence of my family. They didn't know the changed state of mind I was in—I watched them with new eyes—a family argument became extraordinarily sad, it seemed that they were as lost, or isolated, as I was, from the depth of my strangeness, watching them. I found that speaking to them tenderly pleased them, and drew us closer. Most of the day I spent in the backyard watching the cherry tree in bloom, and writing down my observations of the blue sky as seen through changed eyes—that day the openness of the sky seemed oddly like what it was—a giant place in which I was on a planet. So this is an area of consciousness that psychedelic drugs bring to awareness.

Now, this kind of feeling is natural to us, but because of stereotypes of habit and business and overactivity and political anxiety we have been conditioned to put these feelings off. How deeply these feelings had been buried in me is measured by the fact that the first vision I had, and the peyote vision, felt so strange and familiar as if from another lifetime, that I thought they were, like, eternal—like the myths of all religions, like the graceful appearance of divine presence, as if a god suddenly made himself in my old weekly New York universe. So that I used the word "vision" when it might be better to say I had come back to myself.

Where did I come back from? A world of thoughts, mental fantasies, schemes, words in my head, political or artistic concepts—mostly a world where language itself, or thoughts about reality, replaced my looking out on the actual place I was in, and the people there with me, with all our feelings together. A world where, for instance, you can look at death on television and not feel much or see much, only a familiar image like a movie.

I took peyote a few times again. It is nauseating and difficult for me to hold it down, and there is always a thrill of fear at returning to a larger, more detailed world than the normal mind—a world where I became conscious of being a brain and intestines and mysterious sensations called Allen Ginsberg, a lonely heart also, a world at war with itself, with unresolved conflict and fear leading to massacre between nations and neighboring races, a world which has police states, and my own Nation engaged in war as well.

In 1955 I wrote a poem describing this, a text which is now taught in many universities—a central part of the poem called "Howl" was written while I was in a state of consciousness altered, or enlarged, if you will accept that, by peyote. I have the poem here and will leave it with the committee if it wishes.

The second part of the poem "Howl" was written under the influence of peyote in San Francisco.

In succeeding years I experimented with mescaline, not often, once in a while, once every few years. In 1959 I took LSD twice under controlled experimental circumstances at Stanford University. I wrote a single poem on each drug, while still high, trying to articulate the insights that appeared. I tried to keep track and make public communicable record of those moments—and continued in South America where I had the opportunity of living for a month and working with a curandero, that is an herb doctor, who used a psychedelic vine ayahuasca, the Latin name is Banisteriopsis caapi, in weekly meetings with members of his community.

Use of this drug has been common for centuries all over the Amazon area, and appropriate traditions for institutionalizing the experience and integrating it into community life have been worked out so that that there is minimum anxiety and little incidence of stress breakdown caused by sudden changes of feelings of the self. This is possible in some cultures, with the psychedelic "mind-manifesting," drugs. Peaceful tribes, savage tribes, the headhunters, use it as well as the Chauma, a calm, peaceful, group.

One effect I experienced in Peru I would like to explain, for what it is worth in your consideration. From childhood I had been mainly shut off from relationships with women—possibly due to the fact that my own mother, was, from my early childhood on, in a state of great, suffering, frightening to me, and had finally died in a mental hospital.

In a trance state I experienced in the curandero's hut a very poignant memory of my mother's self, and how much I had lost in my distance from her, and my distance from other later friendly girls—for I had denied most of my feeling to them, out of old fear. And this tearful knowledge that had come up while my mind was opened through the native vine's effect did make some change—toward greater trust and closeless with all women thereafter. The human universe became more complete for me—my own feelings more complete—and that is a value which I hope you all understand and approve.

I also had had "trips"—sensations of fear, much like the feeling in nightmares—mainly the realization that one day I was going to die, and was not ready to give myself up. Later I traveled to India and sought out respectable Yogis and holy men and brought my fears to them, and was reassured by their attitude of tenderness to the living community, and their attitude toward visions—"If you see something horrible, don't cling to it; if you see something beautiful, don't cling to it." So said Dodjom Rimpoche a head of the N'yingmapa sect of Tibetan Buddhism, a celebrated group which practices intensive visionary meditation. "Your own heart is your teacher" one Swami, the famous Shivananda, advised.

I had not taken LSD for several years by now, and no longer wanted to pursue self-realization through drug means, but rather through trust in my own heart's feelings. By 1965 I felt secure enough from death anxiety and last fall went to a secluded place on the Pacific Ocean coast to see what I would feel with LSD again.

I was sympathetic to the Berkeley Vietnam Day march students, who were preparing for their demonstrations at that time and there was great anxiety in the air. There was a great deal of hostility, too—the Nation was not as understanding or sympathetic to political dissent that season as it is now. We were all confused, the Oakland police, the marchers, the Nation itself—many angry marchers blamed the President for the situation we were in in southeast Asia; I did, too.

The day I took LSD was the same day that President Johnson went into the operating room for his gall bladder illness. As I walked in the forest wondering what my feelings toward him were, and what I would have to say in Berkeley next week—the awesome place I was in impressed me with its old tree and ocean cliff majesty. Many tiny jeweled violet flowers along the path of a living brook that looked like Blake's illustration for a canal in grassy Eden; huge Pacific watery shore.

I saw a friend dancing long haired before giant green waves, under cliffs of titanic nature that Wordsworth described in his poetry, and a great yellow sun veiled with mist hanging over the planet's ocean horizon.

Armies at war on the other side of the planet. Berkeley's Vietnam protesters sadly preparing manifestoes for our march toward Oakland police and Hell's Angels, and the President in the valley of the shadow—himself experiencing what fear or grief?

I realized that more vile words for me would send out negative vibrations into the atmosphere—more hatred amassed against his poor flesh and soul on trial. So I knelt on the sand surrounded by masses of green kelp washed up by a storm, and prayed for President Johnson's tranquil health. Certainly more public hostility would not help him or me or anyone come through to some less rigid and more flexible awareness of ourselves or Vietnam.

On the second Vietnam Day march that November the public image of a violent clash between students and Hell's Angeles escalated in everybody's minds—like a hallucination. That is, the extremists among the marchers saw the Hell's Angels as swastika brown shirts. Hell's Angels mistook the Berkeley students for Communists, because that is what it said in some papers. The newspapers were excited and reported everybody readying for a massacre. Paranoia everywhere, some marchers thought the Oakland police would back the Angels.

Actually the majority of marchers actually appreciated the Hell's Angels as romantic space-age cowboys. We got together for debate at San Jose College and the majority of students there in the cafeteria actually called for violence, voted aloud their hope that marchers' blood would be spilled.

The Hell's Angels chief diplomatically vowed not to begin violence and to obey police. But this wasn't reported in the newspapers, and the violent image the Angels had to live up to was reinforced by more rumor. Berkeley meanwhile voted for passive resistance in case of violence. Two days before the march nobody knew what to expect.

At this point, Ken Kesey—a man whom you may have heard of as a major contemporary novelist—who lives near San Francisco and sympathized with both marchers and Angels, intervened. We all had a party at the Hell's Angels house. Most everybody took some LSD, and we settled down to discussing the situation and listening to Joan Baez on the phonograph, and chanting Buddhist prayers.

We were all awed by the communication possible—everybody able to drop their habitual image for the night and feel more common unity than conflict. And the evening ended with understanding that nobody really wanted violence; and there was none on the day of the march. The LSD was not the whole story—there was desire for communion and fear of endless isolation—but LSD helped break down the fear barrier.

Now I would like to address myself to the social riddles proposed by LSD. If we want to discourage use of LSD for altering our attitudes, we will have to encourage such changes in our society that nobody will need it to break through to common sympathy. And now so many people have experienced some new sense of openness, and lessening of prejudice and hostility to new experience through LSD, that I think we may expect the new generation to push for an environment less rigid, mechanical, less dominated by cold war habits. A new kind of light has rayed through our society—despite all the anxiety it has caused—maybe these hearings are a manifestation of that slightly changed awareness. I would not have thought it possible to speak like this a year ago. That we are more open to hear each other is the new consciousness itself; reveal one's vision to a congressional committee.

So I have spoken about myself and given you my direct experience of psychedelics under different conditions; in my family house, in formal research settings, in South American Indian traditional ceremonies, in solitude at the ocean. I accept the evidence of my own senses that, with psychedelics as catalysts, I have seen the world more deeply at specific times. And that has made me more peaceable.

Now I would like to offer some data to calm the anxiety that LSD is some awful mind-bending monster threat which must be kept under lock and key. There are three main ideas I would like to clarify for the committee:

1. There has been a journalistic panic exaggeration of LSD danger.

1. There is negligible danger to healthy people in trying LSD and comparatively little danger to most mentally sick people, according to what statistics we already have.

1. Research already has verified the appearance of religious or transcendental or serious blissful experience through psychedelics, and Government officials would be wise to take this factor into account and treat LSD use with proper humanity and respect.

A. The 1966 case that imprinted fear in most people's minds was that the 5-year-old Brooklyn girl who accidentally swallowed a sugar cube left in the icebox. First, here is a quote from a reliable, authoritative medical document saying flatly that nobody dies from LSD. Next a highly hysterical and inaccurate version of the story in the New York Post. Then a followup story 24 hours later which continued to exaggerate the terror and death fear. Last, a week later in the New York Telegram and Sun giving the actual facts—the little girl began to "behave normally again within hours."

The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, ed. Louis S. Goodman, MA, MD, (chairman, department of pharmocology, University Utah College of Medicine) and Alfred Gilman, Ph D., (chairman, department of pharmacology, Einstein College of Medicine, New York) Macmillan Co., New York, third edition 1965, page 207 Toxicity of LSD: "In no man, no deaths directly attributable to the drug are known *."

That is a flat statement. That was the information available to everybody including the newspaper reporters at the time that this story was reported.

The Morning Post of April 6, 1966, Wednesday, no byline:

GIRL, 5, EATS LSD AND GOES "WILD"

A 5-year-old Brooklyn girl, et cetera * people who have swallowed LSD went berserk. Some have killed—several deaths have been reported, sometimes because of the toxic effect of the drug and sometimes because of the hallucinations that lead to suicide.

New York Post, April 7, 1966, Thursday:

LSD GIRL, 5, CLINGING TO LIFE

(By Ralph Blumenfield)

Five-year-old Donna Wingenroth fought for life today after swallowing an LSD-coated sugar cube she found in the family refrigerator. The blond little Brooklyn girl was reported still in "very critical" condition 18 hours after doctors pumped her stomach and treated her for convulsions at Kings County Hospital said a Kings County Hospital aid, not a doctor "Right now it is at the grave or serious state * very critical. Silent and in an apparent coma, her face pale and drawn. Glucose was being fed intravenously into her right arm and both wrists were tied to the crib-bars with gauze so she could not thrash about.

New York World Telegram and Sun, April 14, 1966, Thursday:

LSD GIRL HOME, CONDITION SEEMS NORMAL

(By Lynn Minton)

was released from Kings County Hospital in apparently normal condition Donna began to behave normally again within hours after her arrival at Kings County, according to Morris Kelsky, assistant hospital administrator. Despite this she was placed on the critical list. She was kept under close observation by pediatricians and neurologists to test her reflexes and all her functions before she was released Kelsky explained that cases of accidental poisoning of children are not rare at the hospital Candy-flavored children's aspirin is one of the biggest dangers, said Dr. Achs * "We have had several deaths a year in this community from children's aspirin."

I think that these quotations speak for themselves as to how all of us were imprinted with a death fear, and through the use of an inaccurate language in dealing with a deplorable situation that the girl had had LSD accidentally and was suffering from a sense of consciousness that needed care, tenderness, reassurance, understanding, not the hysteria with which it was treated.

The key thing with LSD is that a hostile environment precipitates psychosis. A friendly environment cuts down the anxiety and cuts down the psychosis. So we have now to deal with statistics on breakdown through the use of LSD, which is crucial, because in reading earlier statements to this committee, Mr. Tannenbaum's statement I come across language like this:

One of the most common recurrent reactions to LSD is the psychotic breakdown.

There is no evidence that all users of LSD become temporarily insane.

The reason I am quoting that is to put these generalizations in the language used here in relation to the actual statistical information that we do have so far.

One of the main causes of medical worry and legislative worry, particularly in New York State where legislation was taken without even any kind of hearings on the actual scientific or sociological implications of LSD or the actual facts of the situation, the New York legislation which was taken without any hearings if you can imagine, one of the main causes of medical worry have been the reports issued on Bellevue LSD "psychosis" via the New York County Medical Society's report of May 5, 1966, and auxiliary papers detailing a few case histories in the New England Journal of Medicine.

New York County Medical Society report:

Seventy-five people in 12 months admitted to Bellevue with "acute psychoses induced by LSD." Most "recovered within a week. Five remained in mental hospitals a longer time."

I would like to comment on the presuppositions of the language used and on the statistics.

As some schools of psychiatry are aware, a "flip out" (here termed acute psychosis) may be a basically positive experience if rightly handled. This means there is a breakthrough of new awareness, temporary social disorientation as a result, and an "up-leveled" reorientation to slightly richer awareness with more variable flexible social role-playing as a result. Some of the hospitalized may qualify for this description. I have spoken to a few of those who were in Bellevue and who did feel positive about the whole experience.

Any laws witch-hunting use of LSD will have the inevitable result of increasing the number of marginal "psychoses" attributable to LSD. The social anxiety caused by illegalization will enter the environmental setting and influence LSD experimenters to greater traumatic disorientation than normal under LSD influence. The answer to marginal dangers of experimentation would be for Bellevue or some other place to serve its purpose as a temporary comfortable reassuring haven where people with LSD-consciousness anxiety could come to be protected and encouraged to healthy reintegration of their self-awareness, and not labeled "psychotic."

There are no real figures on LSD taking, it might be anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 in 12 months in New York City according to Dr. Donald B. Louria of the New York Medical Society, probably a great deal more. Above figures average perhaps one breakdown in a thousand users; it is a speculative, uncontrolled survey by New York County Medical Society. The incidence of semipermanent breakdown may be lower than liquor drinking, auto driving, and marriage, much less war making, or any business activity where a healthy amount of stress is encountered.

1. Here are some more authoritative statements on LSD breakdown;

Cohen, Sidney, M.D.: "The Beyond Within," Atheneum, New York, 1964, pages 210-211 says:

Major or prolonged psychological complications were almost never described In the group of experimental subjects who had been selected for their freedom from mental disturbances * When patients were given these drugs for therapeutic purposes, however, the untoward reactions were somewhat more frequent. Prolonged psychotic states occurred in 1 out of every 550 individuals. These breakdowns happened to individuals who were already emotionally ill: some had sustained schizophrenic breaks in the past.

Digest of Cohen's giant survey in R. E. O. Masters and Jean Houston book, called "Varieties of Psychedelic Experience," Hold, New York, 1966, note 23, page 319 says:

Cohen, S., Lysergic Acid Diethelmyde : Side effects and complications, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders, 130 :30, 1960. Cohen's report is based on 5,000 LSD and mescaline subjects who received the drugs 25,000 times, LSD dosages. In other words, some of them have high dosages, that are mythologically reputed to be absolutely damaging, though they are not actually. Among experimental subjects there were no suicide attempts and psychotic reactions lasting longer than 48 hours were met with in only 0.8/1000 of the cases. In patients undergoing therapy the rates were, attempted suicide, 1.2/1000, completed suicide: 0.4/1000; psychotic reaction over 48 hours: 1.8/1000.

Then we have another statement which I saw in the New Republic magazine, May 14, 1966, by one who I presume is authoritative. He works for the investigational drug branch of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Lescek Ochota, M.D., D.S.C. :

The suicide rate (in investigational group) has been reported as 0.1 percent, a remarkably low rate considering that LSD has been usually given to the rather severely ill patients including chronic alcoholics, neurotics, psychopaths, drug addicts, et cetera.

Even after reviewing 1,000 medical publications, surveying all of the literature and there is an immense mass of literature already accumulated, the author was unable to confirm reports that a psychosis can develop in a hitherto mentally healthy individual several months after his last LSD intake.

Questions then I propose to the committee for its thought and for research by the Government:

What is the suicide rate among the mentally ill who don't try LSD? What is the suicide rate of the average population? Does LSD significantly affect these rates in fact?

Or may it possibly turn out, and I have no idea, this is something I think we could begin thinking about, is it possible that the suicide rate for mentally ill people who have taken LSD is lower than the suicide rates for mentally ill people who have not taken LSD?

Is it ecstasy or is it bunk, the reports of the LSD consciousness state? It plainly shows a lack of friendly commonsense for the head of an agency charged with responsibility for licensing experiments with LSD to dismiss reports of its startling religious, or if we want to use the word peak experience, or another word, transcendental, or another word, esthetic effects as "pure bunk." I saw that in the New York Times yesterday, a Government official whose work I respect incidentally, but who I feel has not read sufficiently the literature or spoken perhaps to people who have had experience with LSD said that he thought that reports of visionary or religious experience were pure bunk, and I believe that that was repeated before one of the congressional committees.

I repeat, I recommend that those responsible for legislation and administration consider the myriad documents that have accumulated since Havelock Ellis and William James researched in the last century.

Here follows a summary of recent surveys in the book by Masters and Houston, "Varieties of Psychedelic Experience," which came out this year:

Taken altogether these findings must be regarded as remarkable in the five studies just cited between 32 and 75 percent of psychedelic subjects will report religious-type experiences if the setting is supportive, that means friendly, and in a setting providing religious stimuli, from 75 to 90 percent report experiences of a religious or even mystical nature.

The studies cited were—I have listed a series of very legitimate proper studies, one done for the Rand Corp.; one done by Timothy Leary. That may be questionable scientifically if anybody continues to insist on questioning Leary's experience, which is considerable in the matter, but also there are studies that were printed in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, and a paper delivered at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in St. Louis. I have got these listed for your reference.

Thank you for listening to my paper, which has been very long.

Senator Burdick. Thank you for your very unique testimony.

Now, Mr. Ginsberg, you say, did I hear you correctly when you said that one in a thousand were users of LSD?

Mr. Ginsberg. There are several statistics which I have cited. None of them are very—nobody knows really very clearly, because there hasn't been sufficient research done yet. The general figure seems to be one in a thousand of a breakdown lasting over 2 days or something like that, with people who are mentally ill. I am not really very sure. I have simply quoted the statistics which we do have at hand, which indicate something, whatever one can make of statistics.

The problem is that we don't have a comparative survey, how many people broke down and how many people took LSD. An enormous number of people perhaps a million, have taken LSD, but we can't compare a fixed figure. So, in a sense, there is no controlled survey possible.

Senator Burdick. The mere fact that death does not result from the use of this material doesn't prove it as not toxic, does it?

Mr. Ginsberg. Apparently, most scientific papers on it have said that there is no real dangerous toxicity. You can take enormous amounts. They are passed out through the urine apparently. There is a case on record reported in Life magazine where an elephant died, but the amount—this was in a scientific experiment by the way—the amount given to the elephant was according to his body weight. LSD affects the brain not the body, so they gave him something like 15,000 or 150,000 times the normal dose, which is like—in other words, if somebody gets that much salt you can die also. According to the Goodman and Gilman Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, there is very little danger of poison unto death.

Senator Burdick. That is your thesis, that no death results and also that the suicide rate is low, therefore, you conclude that this material is not toxic.

Mr. Ginsberg. I am not quite sure what you mean by toxic there, sir.

Senator Burdick. That it has a poisonous affect.

Mr. Ginsberg. You mean physically poisonous? I don't think there have been any reports saying that it is. My own experience is that it hasn't poisoned me, of course, or my friends.

Senator Burdick. Now, in your experience, based upon your experience, how many users do you think there are in this country of LSD?

Mr. Ginsberg. I am not sure. I think there are a great many, many thousands or tens of thousands.

Senator Burdick. Tens of thousands?

Mr. Ginsberg. Tens of thousands certainly, spread all over the country. Life magazine, I believe, estimated over one million. But such giant figures would be beyond my capacity as an individual to check on.

Senator Burdick. How long have you been a user?

Mr. Ginsberg. I have used psychedelic drugs, the varieties, infrequently since about 1952. I am not sure that I enjoy the use of the terminology "user" because it is associated with dope fiends and dope and drug users.

Senator Burdick. I will just use the word "used" then.

Mr. Ginsberg. I have used it since 1952, and I have used it actually, literally, about 30 times over a period of what is it, 15 years.

Senator Burdick. Would you say that in these past 15 years the use of this drug has been increasing across the country?

Mr. Ginsberg. Certainly.

Senator Burdick. And at what rate would you estimate?

Mr. Ginsberg. It has mushroomed.

Senator Burdick. It has mushroomed?

Mr. Ginsberg. It has mushroomed.

Senator Burdick. That is the word?

Mr. Ginsberg. And there has been an enormous amount of publicity for the last few months, which has contributed to that, I am sure.

Senator Burdick. Where does its use take place most frequently, in what areas of the country, what regions, what places?

Mr. Ginsberg. Recently I have been across the United States, reading poetry in a few places, maybe 5 or 10 places. Almost everywhere I have gone, which means the Midwest, that would be from Kansas through Nebraska, through Indiana, through Ohio to the West coast and the East coast, intellectuals, students, artists, middle-class people, lawyers, almost everywhere I have been, have familiarity with it.

Senator Burdick. Do you find a greater use in the area of the campuses, in the universities of the country?

Mr. Ginsberg. Apparently there is large use there yes; not necessarily greater. I suspect there is an enormous use on Madison Avenue.

Senator Burdick. You say you find it in all walks of life?

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes; mainly among middle-class people, professional people, and younger people, students.

Senator Burdick. Where do you obtain this material?

Mr. Ginsberg. At the moment I don't obtain it myself, so I don't know. In order to speak freely on the subject, I have had to quit all use, because I heard that at one point the Narcotics Bureau was trying to set me up for an arrest. And so I thought if I were going to be able to speak publicly and effect any kind of social understanding of the problem, I had better keep myself out of jail, and they apparently wanted to put me in because they felt I was a menace to the community.

Senator Burdick. If this is being used by thousands as you say, there must be a source some place.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes. What I am saying is I don't know directly what the sources are because I have cut myself off from direct contact with the use of LSD recently. I have talked to people who use it, but you know I have purposely not wanted to know where it is coming from.

Senator Burdick. But you don't know where it comes from?

Mr. Ginsberg. NO, I don't, sir.

Senator Burdick. Upward of a million people use this drug in the United States but you don't know where it comes from?

Mr. Ginsberg. That is Life magazine.

Senator Burdick. I am asking you, not Life.

Mr. Ginsberg. You mean literally whether it is manufactured here in America or brought in? I literally do not know.

Senator Burdick. Is it your contention that this material has no harmful effects of any kind.

Mr. Ginsberg. No. Potentially it is dangerous occasionally under certain circumstances. The specific circumstances of a hostile environment will precipitate psychosis, and also according to one very excellent authority, Dr. Humphrey Osmond, who is the head of the New Jersey Neuropsychiatric Institute of Princeton, he thinks that for people who have definite schizophrenic tendencies it is contraindicated, certainly. They already have too much of a widened consciousness. They are not able to define their own boundaries of self, and the LSD only aggravates the problem.

Senator Burdick. When you say it is potentially dangerous, what dangers are potentially possible?

Mr. Ginsberg. Loss of ego boundaries which means you don't have any defense against other people's hostility. You can get enormous anxiety attacks. Specific kinds of people though, these are dangerous for just specific kinds of people, not necessarily for a healthy person. Enormous anxiety attacks, and as a result of the anxiety attacks acting out of fearful reactions. Occasionally, over idealistic manifestations of happy community experience, like rushing out in the street naked perhaps.

Senator Burdick. Do you recommend the use of this material by the college students?

Mr. Ginsberg. What I would recommend, the first recommendation I would make is a recommendation for massive institutional research into it, a broad enough research so that any younger person, student, who wished to avail himself of the LSD experiences might have an opportunity to do so under safe circumstances.

Senator Burdick. Would your answer be the same for high school students?

Mr. Ginsberg. I think really yes actually yes, I think so.

Senator Burdick. How far down in age—

Mr. Ginsberg. The reason I say so is that a comparable experience for the American Indians is division classed among the Indians and that begins after puberty at 15, and that is when children do begin searching for the meaning of life. In a sense in America, our high school students are smothered in television and over protected from direct experience. There has been a tendency among younger kids to search out LSD. I don't think it is necessarily frightful or dangerous. It could be dangerous if we react dangerously to it. If we find the means to protect their tenderness, there need be no danger. But it is very hard to say, yes, let the high school kids get it, because it scares everybody. The problem is not to scare everybody.

Senator Burdick. How many organizations do you know of that center their activities around the use of LSD?

Mr. Ginsberg. Well, there is the formal organization—Timothy Leary's group—the Castalia Foundation which has done tremendous work with LSD. It has amassed an enormous amount of records, like descriptions of people under LSD effects.

I, myself, have written an essay for them describing experiments with psylocybin, and many other artists I know have done that and filled out all their forms, so they have a lot of material that still needs to be evaluated. The Castalia Foundation is one.

Mr. Kleps' Neo-American Church is another. It is a kind of interesting, curious organization. I decided I would join it also in case the problem ever got to have a constitutional aspect. I thought it would be interesting to see what it would be like to question the Government, if it tried to come up too harshly and punitively on grounds of religious freedom.

There aren't many formal organizations. There is one organization the committee certainly should take cognizance of, an organization forming now, the best possible organization I think, which is that all of the accredited medical men who have had experience with LSD and with LSD research have gotten together several times already, you know. The last was, I believe, last summer at Amityville, Long Island, under the auspices of the Sandoz Foundation. The Chairman was Dr. Harold Abramson of New York, who is a very considerable figure, the head of some hospital or other, who has had an enormous amount of experience with LSD and psychotherapy. It was a conference, an international conference of experts, and they had people from Czechoslovakia, from England, from Canada, and from the United States.

These were the people,

among the people to illustrate, these are the people we might turn to for advice, with some kind of confidence that they do know something about it.

I believe now there is an international psychedelic medical association in the process of formation. I think that is the only formal organization.

Senator Burdick. Has your experience included the use of marihuana?

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Burdick. Would your answer in regard to the harmful effects or nonharmful effects of marihuana be the same as with LSD?

Mr. Ginsberg. No. You know there are mimimal, marginal, statistically marginal dangers with LSD that have to be taken into account in forming policy. With marihuana I don't think there is any danger at all. I think that has been proved over and over again by all sorts of medical, statistical, institutional documents for the last 70 years. I can cite them if you are interested. There was the original British East India Hemp Commission report in 1893, which ran through 7,000 pages saying that the use of Cannabis in India was not a problem.

There was our own Panama Canal Zone Military Surgeon's report which said it wasn't a problem there and wasn't particularly dangerous, was much less dangerous than alcohol. That was in the 1930's or 1940's.

There was Mayor LaGuardia's celebrated report which has not been very much circulated, but which says it is not particularly, that there is no special danger with marihuana.

There was a report, May 5, of the New York County Medical Association which said that marihuana use was not connected with crimes of violence, and there is a very curious statement from the same lawyer, Lynch, that you mentioned before today, in California, saying that, so far as the California Crime Commission or Narcotics Bureau is concerned there there is no proof of its association with heroin use, anyway. So, I don't think there is any danger in the use of marihuana.

Senator Burdick. I believe the Commissioner this morning testified that the use of marihuana at least brought the user in contact with criminal elements.

Mr. Ginsberg. That is because the Treasury Department Narcotics Commissioner in 1937, when he was proposing the law, issued all sorts of inaccurate statements saying that marihuana was closely associated with crimes of violence, murder, rape and so made it illegal to possess marihuana. So, naturally, now that it is illegal, anybody who has marihuana disobeys the law. But there is nothing inherent in marihuana which is criminal, or leads to criminal behavior.

Senator Burdick. One more question and I will let the Senator from New York interrogate you. Is it your contention that both marihuana and LSD should be made available to the public without limitations or restrictions?

Mr. Ginsberg. I think that marihuana should be, could be, made available to the public with minimal limitations, if limitations are considered desirable to ease the way out of the ancient mythology of fear about marihuana that we have had; maybe then have it on prescription by doctors or something. In India, the way it is sold quite legally all over is Government tax shops.

I think there is no danger at all with marihuana. In fact, there is danger in keeping the laws. There is much more danger in keeping the laws against marihuana than there is in liberalizing them, because, as it is so many people smoke marihuana everywhere that it is like the old prohibition problem we had before I was conscious. The danger in illegalizing marihuana now is that you make criminals out of the most intelligent and sensitive people in the country. You create a climate of fear. You create police-state conditions in that area with policy spying, with attempts to set people up. You send young kids to jail and ruin their careers. There is the real danger. You get real breakdown and madness and often, I suppose, the possibility of suicide through that kind of social pressure.

I think this country would be a much healthier place if we got rid of the marihuana laws, or else made some amelioration which made it sensible to a point where what we all know unofficially becomes officially accepted.

Senator Burdick. What was your idea on LSD?

Mr. Ginsberg. LSD I am not absolutely sure how to deal with it. What I would suggest is first of all though, Mr. Goddard and the head of NIH, Yolles, have said they were interested in research and the Government was encouraging research; I have talked to a lot of doctors who have done considerable research in LSD, and they all report that research in LSD has ground to a halt. Sandoz, of course as you know, has stopped. Sandoz kind of "chickened out" with all the publicity. They didn't want to be involved with all the scandal. They didn't want their good name questioned any longer and for very good reason, because everybody was treating the problem so hysterically. So, Sandoz cut off its supply. The supplies of a number of doctors who are doctors of great experience, doctors who are internationally famous, have been cut off.

For instance, Dr. Abramson, Harold Abramson, that I mentioned who was selected by Sandoz to be the chairman of an international conference on LSD, his supplies were cut off. I saw a report on that in the New Republic, Tom Buckley's piece. Dr. Abramson got a letter from Sandoz I guess or perhaps from the Government which he had to take to a lawyer to figure out what it meant, and what it meant was that he, who had more experience than anybody else in the country practically, had his supplies for therapeutic use cut off.

I know another doctor in Trenton, Jack Ward, who has many, many years of experience in institutional circumstances in State reformatories in New Jersey, in the Mercy Hospital in Trenton—his supply was cut off.

I know various other doctors who would like to do research, who are complaining that their supply is cut off. So that actually, instead of having more research, more information, more understanding of what the problem is, we are getting less and less now.

So the first thing I would suggest is massive research. I talked with some doctors before I came down here. I talked with a number of doctors before I came down here, and if you will bear with me I will read a list of suggestions made as to what kind of research—that they have made—what kinds of research are possible that might sensibly extend LSD research, or shall we cut that off.

Senator Burdick. We will accept it for the record.

Mr. Ginsberg. I will have to type it up.

(The list referred to was marked "Exhibit No. 76" and is as follows:)

EXHIBIT No. 76

SUGGESTED ASPECTS OF CREATIVE RESEARCH ON LSD

Informal conversations with two dozen M.D.'s who have done clinical experimental & exploratory work with LSD and other Psychedelic chemicals have articulated the following suggestions for formal research. Some were characterized as logical research needs, others as likely areas for study according to classical traditions of normal intelligent scientific curiosity. The language here used to characterize these possible aspects of creative research is informal, the points made are not fixed points but suggestions for consideration.

(1) A giant voluntary study of all persons who have taken LSD, with no shadow of punitive anxiety attached to the research: scientific inquiry into the statistics, subjective reports of the experience, post-experience intelligence & psychological testings to be compared wth pre-experience school testing data commonly available, comparative evaluations of statistics on "bad" trips and "good" trips, inquiry into the quality of the trip matched with circumstantial environment, detailed surveys of indifferent or "good" trips matching already heavily emphasized analyses of "bad" trips, etc. It is generally claimed that non-medical (and medical) usefulness of LSD is neither "proved" or "unproved"; statistics & data should therefore be gathered from the massive numbers of people who have experimented with LSD in the last decades.

(2) Enlarged systematic research on efficacy of LSD with dying patients.

(3) Enlarged systematic research on efficacy of LSD against Alcoholism.

(4) Research on LSD effects on pyschosomatic ills.

(5) Research on LSD influence on problems of Obesity.

(6) Research on usefulness of LSD to break up Depression states.

(7) Research on usefulness of LSD with Autistic children.

(8) Research on usefulness of LSD against Opiate Addiction and other psychochemical addictions.

(9) Massive research on efficacy of LSD use with Neurotics in Psychotherapeutic situations (which research on the part of individual M.D.'s is now effectively forbidden).

(10) Research on efficacy or non-efficacy of LSD use with Neurotics in nonpsychotherapeutic situations.

(11) Research into classification of personality types, mental illnesses and other human characteristics in terms of LSD drug reactions.

(12) Research on LSD influence on problems of Homosexuality in Psychotherapeutic circumstances.

(13) Research on usefulness of LSD experience in preventing psychic crises leading to hospitalization. (i.e. how many who had been in Hospitals took LSD and then did not go back to hospitals?)

(14) Depth evaluation of recorded LSD breakdown statistics by case to determine—

(a) Was total experience positive & creative or negative & destructive in actual context? and by hindsight?

(b) To what extent was hospitalization during or after LSD stress the "elegant" acting out of prior wish for psychotherapeutic help? (The word "elegant" here used was suggested by the head of a hospital in L.I.)

(15) Research on statistics of "breakdown" where LSD is taken freely and legally compared to circumstances where its use is illegal: i.e. research on the imagery, sensations, and psychic effects caused by illegalization of LSD.

(16) Massive research on social conditions, tradition, ritual, terminology, effects, medical data, etc. of American Indians in their use of psychedelic cactus peyote; and projections of possibilities for adapting Indian traditional forms to other American subcultures. In other words, research into safe forms for socialinstitutional use of Psychedelics.

(17) Research into chemistry, metabolic changes and subjective phenomenology of LSD experience as compared with experience of weightlessness, sensory deprivation, space-travel, dance, chanting, yoga, religious ritual practice, drowning visions, progressive relaxation, hypnosis, starvation states, Amerindian vision-questing, sleeplessness, and strobiscope stimulation of Alpha-rhythms, etc.

(18) Research into the practicality or non-practicality, value or valueless-ness, of such Utopian LSD communities (aside from Amerindian) already come into being as available models for study: Neo-American Church, Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters Community, Dr. T. Leary's Millbrook Research Center, and the mutual help communities already evolved informally in Midwest campuses, etc.

(19) Depth research and evaluation of commonly observed LSD effect of "impairment of socially learned behavior." Is this due to changed motive, and is this change of motive creatively valid or not? Are we, in effect, in regulating LSD actually regulating value judgements? What are the consequences (as far as Social Scientists and Psychotherapists can determine) of Authoritative regulation of value-judgements?

(20) Comparative study and correlation of language and attitudes used by various social groups according to their roles in reacting to LSD experience directly and indirectly: Legislators, police, Psychoanalysts with experimental experience, Psychoanalysts without experimental experience, Anthropologists, Artists, Newsmen, Theologians, Marxists (Re Dr. Jiri Roubichek's language in Prague, "LSD inhibits conditioned reactions.") , College Administrators, FDA chiefs, Indians, Culture Morphologists, Musicians, Painters, Cineasts. Correlation would be useful in determining whether terminology used by different groups coincided in any respect, and in what respects differ, for categorization of the event under survey, namely the effect of LSD.

(21) Straight research and gathering of data in how to handle LSD panic, stress or crisis reaction: "We need research to know what to do when people come in sick, doctors need to be able to work with it to get experience otherwise it's hush hush like V.D. and public and professional ignorance spreads." Unquote a lady doctor, head of a mid-town Manhattan hospital research section.

ALLEN GINSBERG.

Senator Burdick. Senator Javits.

Senator Javits. Mr. Ginsberg, do you want us to legislate a national policy on LSD which is based upon your experience?

Mr. Ginsberg. I would say take my experience into account, certainly. Then take into account the experiences of the people who have taken LSD, which would mean a giant survey of all the people who have taken LSD, and again what the scientific data is on that.

Senator Javits. So, before we make it available generally to college and high school students over 15, you want us first to engage in a massive research program.

Mr. Ginsberg. I would say engage in massive research certainly. However, sir, it is available as Life magazine has reported and as everybody else has reported, so that the problem is how can it be handled legislatively now.

Senator Javits. Guns are available too, Mr. Ginsberg.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. So is potassium cyanide.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. That doesn't mean that we should allow their general use for illegal purposes.

Mr. Ginsberg. Right.

Senator Javits. Now the question. Do or do you not recommend to us that we allow LSD to be used by college students and high school students before or after the program you describe as a massive research program?

Mr. Ginsberg. The terminology that you are using to pose the question makes it in a sense an unanswerable question. What I would like to do in response to it, because I do really want to give you a response, is that to make punitive legislation making possession of LSD a crime will probably do more damage than the unrestricted use of LSD as it is.

Senator Javits. But right now possession is not a crime.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. So I am asking you, in the framework of the present law, do you want us to make it available to college students and high school students down to the age of 15 before or after we have a massive research program?

Mr. Ginsberg. I would say here Chinese wisdom, now, hands off. It would be wiser not to act at all in any direction until you get some more facts from a massive survey.

Senator Javits. So that your prescription for us is leave the law as it is?

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes, definitely.

Senator Javits. But don't loosen it up any further until you get the results, the evaluation of the research program.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes. I am not sure what you mean by "loosen," sir.

Senator Javits. Well, for example, making purchase or shipment legal. The law today makes it illegal, except for strictly experimental purposes under the Pure Food and Drug Act.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. Mr. Ginsberg, let me explain what I have in mind.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. You are no authority on this subject except in your personal experience.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. What you have gotten in the way of information you have testified to in the main. You are not a researcher, you are not a doctor and so on. You are the first to admit that. You are a poet.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. But you do have a great vogue among our young people.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. And, therefore, in fairness to them we want your clear purposes stated, because otherwise they might be misled as to what you are really advising them to do either by precept or by advice, so that in fairness to many young Americans, to whom you have read your poetry, and to whom you will read your poetry, and who may be paying some attention to you and to your views, I think you ought to state clearly what you have in mind. This is the place to do it.

Mr. Ginsberg. I think I have. But you want me in a sense to say take LSD or don't take LSD?

Senator Javits. No, I don't want you to do anything of the kind.

Mr. Ginsberg. Then I misunderstood. I was getting paranoid.

Senator Javits. I will just ask the question again. I am not trying to rush you into a reply. The only reason I press the question is for the reason I have stated. If you were a person of no influence it would be meaningless. But as I understand it from you, you suggest to us that we leave the law as it is. The law as it is permits possession.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. But prohibits shipment or purchase and sale except in pursuance for all practical purposes to the authority of the Pure Food and Drug Administration.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. For experimental purposes.

Mr. Ginsberg. It prohibits purchase also.

Senator Javits. Except possession, possession for personal use is not inhibited in the law.

Mr. Ginsberg. Is purchase for personal use inhibited?

Senator Javits. No; it isn't inhibited, purchase or sale. But the purchaser is not punished. It is the seller.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. Now the question. Do you wish us to leave the law as it is, and then engage promptly in massive experimentation, but not to make this drug generally available to college and high school students down to the age of 15, until the research has been evaluated? Is that your position?

Mr. Ginsberg. I don't know, because the creation of a large scale police agency checking up on purchasers may again do as much damage as the LSD itself, which is sold. By damage I mean the creation of a hostile environment and the causing of a number of psychotic episodes.

Senator Javits. Mr. Ginsberg, we are not talking about the implementation of the law. We are talking about leaving the law as it is.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. I don't know what implementation there will be, what Congress will appropriate or anything else.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. Leaving the law as it is, engaging in a research program and depending upon the evaluation of that research program, allowing the drug to be or not to be generally available.

Mr. Ginsberg. Actually really I think yes, let it be more available.

Senator Javits. Pardon?

Mr. Ginsberg. Actually personally, yes, I think it should be more available.

Senator Javits. It should be more available now?

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. Even before a research program?

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes, I think there should be some way to limit, to control the purchase and sale of it, but I simply don't feel right with laws which are going to really intrude on the feelings involved of all the people that take LSD. It is very difficult for me to formulate what to advise you in that respect.

Senator Javits. Do you agree that research had not yet demonstrated the fact that this is or is not a dangerous drug, or what dosages should or should not be taken without great harm, what frequency and so on?

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes, I think there is already sufficient research to show what dosages are dangerous and whether or not there is immediate danger. For instance, we have the experience of the American Indians for the last 70 years who have used peyote, which is a psychedelic drug.

Senator Javits. That is not LSD.

Mr. Ginsberg. They are very, very similar in effect.

Senator Javits. That is your opinion. Are you a doctor? Do you have any credentials to make scientific evaluations of this drug, its dosage, the frequency of its use, its effect and, so on, on anyone but yourself?

Mr. Ginsberg. Except for the reading or the fact that I might cite the Pharmacology of Therapeutics, which puts peyote and LSD together in the same class and says their effects are similar.

Senator Javits. Do you consider yourself qualified to give a medical opinion which will determine the fate of my 16½-year-old son?

Mr. Ginsberg. No, I am not pharmacologically qualified to give a judgment like that.

Senator Javits. Of course, you are not, and that is the important point that must be made to those who will listen to you.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes. Well, I would suggest—

Senator Javits. No inhibition about listening to you. That is their business. We have a right to demand that they understand what they are listening to.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. That is all I am trying to develop.

Now also, Mr. Ginsberg, one point I would like to emphasize to you as a lawyer is that you don't have to answer any of our questions which might in your judgment, and you have an absolute constitutional right to that, incriminate you. I notice you said something about being set up for a jail sentence. If there were anything like that, I would never forgive myself if I asked you any questions which led you into an admission without this injunction so please have that in mind. You can claim your constitutional privilege at any time.

Now I notice that you do say in your statement at page 10—

Any laws witch-hunting use of LSD will have the inevitable result of increasing the number of marginal "psychoses" attributable to LSD. The social anxiety caused by illegalization will enter the environmental setting and influence LSD experimenters to greater traumatic disorientation than normal under LSD influence.

Do I take that to mean that you favor, before widespread use—that is why I asked the question I did—the necessary experimentation?

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes. I had in that sentence meant self-experimentations, sir.

Senator Javits. Self-experimentations?

Mr. Ginsberg. In that sentence I had meant that. I wonder if I have spoken clearly on this subject of the anxiety in the environment causing traumatic damage.

Senator Javits. You have spoken very clearly, Mr. Ginsberg, in terms of your personal experience. The only thing that I am trying to do is to qualify you.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. Either pro or con as to whether that is more than personal experience.

Mr. Ginsberg. I have citations from Dr. Cohen and from many other reports to indicate that.

Senator Javits. To such extent as you have made them they are here. But the thing that I am anxious to make clear is that you are not testifying and you couldn't testify as an expert on this subject.

Mr. Ginsberg. May I read then into the record, there are some things from Dr. Cohen about that concerning the circumstances under which you take LSD.

Senator Javits. You made a quote here from Dr. Cohen. We have it in your testimony. You can put that in the record, sir.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes, I will put this in the record then.

(The references referred to follow:)

DANGERS OF OVERCONTROLLED LSD USE

(Masters & Houston, Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, Holt, NY 66)

Page 318, note 12

CF Hyde, R. W. "Psychological and Social Determinants of Drug Action" in Sarwer-Foner, G. J. The Dynamics of Psychiatric Drug Therapy. Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Ill., 1960, page 297, as regards the importance of "situational determinants." Reporting on sessions in which the subjects were students, nurses, attendants, and physicians, he found that impersonal, hostile, investigative attitudes on the part of others led to devaluative distortions and hostile responses in the subjects. Flexibility, familiarity, acceptance, and presence of others with common culture ameliorated the LSD reaction, while rigidity, unfamiliarity, nonacceptance and absence of others with common culture potentiate the (psychotic) reaction.

Pages 58-59: re meta-Beatnik fringes of the Drug Movement

"Yet, and totally committed as we are to the position that sessions must be adequately guided, we find it impossible to say on the basis of our many interviews and other studies of the Drug Movement that casualties have occurred among its members with a frequency as great as that among participants in many programs directed by medical and other scientific personnel. What this means is only that in the case of the latter nonsupportive (including inquisitorial) experimenter attitudes wedded to a psychotomimetic expectancy have proved to be even more damaging than the most haphazard drug use occurring in a basically friendly and supportive setting."

Page 136

"One of the more clear cut lessons taught us by scientific psychedelic drug research to date is that the hospital and other clinical settings should be avoided . . . . a hospital setting gives rise to all sorts of traditional fears of illness, death, and the mysterious and threatening practices of doctors. Science, the laboratory—these are alien and menacing areas for many persons. When, moreover, the setting is drab and antiseptic, and when the authority figures are coldly clinical, then anxiety is greatly increased and the subject's experience becomes even more disturbing and distasteful."

Cohen, Sidney: MD, the beyond within, atheneum, New York 1964 page 84

"If LSD is given under disinterested laboratory conditions while impersonal assistants attach electrodes, take blood samples and perform a number of other puzzling tasks, and if the subject gets the impression that he will be temporarily mad and observers provide neither support nor reasurrance, a psychotic state is bound to occur. On the other hand, if the situation is a more relaxed and agreeable one, etc."

Senator Javits. Now you have no idea, have you, as to the dosage which is being taken by the hundreds of thousands you say are using this drug?

Mr. Ginsberg. No. Apparently I hear from people and from reading it is anywhere from 75 to 800 micrograms.

Senator Javits. And, or the frequency of its use?

Mr. Ginsberg. No. That varies considerably.

Senator Javits. Or the physical conditions of the users. For example, some people are very allergic to antibiotic drugs and so on.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes.

Senator Javits. You have no idea on that in this area have you?

Mr. Ginsberg. NO.

Senator Javits. Now do you have any particular advocacy that the use of these drugs makes people generally more creative? Maybe it makes you more creative, but is there any evidence that it makes people generally more creative?

Mr. Ginsberg. There are some studies by a University of California psychologist, Frank Barren, and I think there are other studies which indicate that there is some increase in creativity and problem solving, yes.

Senator Javits. These gentlemen have this opinion, is that right?

Mr. Ginsberg. Well, they are scientific gentlemen whose work is regarded as reasonable.

Senator Javits. Do you know anything about how many made LSD, whether any of it is being made by chemistry students in labs or anything like that?

Mr. Ginsberg. No; I have no information on that.

Senator Javits. So you have no idea whatever as to the sources of this drug for the hundreds of thousands who are using it.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes; I have avoided contact with sources.

Senator Javits. Have you at any time urged its use upon those listening to you.

Mr. Ginsberg. Occasionally, where there was somebody I thought the use of it made sense. I haven't urged it very forcefully. I think basically the best policy is don't stop anybody from taking LSD, and don't force anybody to take LSD. I have also occasionally urged against its use.

Senator Javits. But all of this is without—

Mr. Ginsberg. In context.

Senator Javits. You admit without scientific background in individual cases?

Mr. Ginsberg. I have had to use my commonsense from experience,

Senator Javits. Your commonsense. OK,

that is all.

Senator Burdick. Mr. Ginsberg, what do you suggest that we do about young people who go on these, in the language that has been used here "bad trips" or bad experiences? What do we do about these people?

Mr. Ginsberg. One thing I saw in a midwestern college recently; it was a college where there was considerable use of LSD, and everybody in the college town knew about it, had sort of accepted it as part of the social circumstances, and so they had formed a kind of human community of self-help. If somebody was having a "bad trip," rushed out onto the campus in an obviously disturbed way, his friends would simply take him in, take care of him, hold his hand, calm him down, reassure him. I think what we need actually is the possibility of openness about the "trip," openness on the subject.

Senator Burdick. Would you describe the effects? What happens as a "bad trip"?

Mr. Ginsberg. Oh, you might rush out and say "the Kingdom of the Lord is at hand," or rush out babbling, or go around giggling, or go into the oceanside and start praying and attract attention by bizarre behavior bizarre, not necessarily evil, behavior; simply unusual behavior, sometimes in speech.

Senator Burdick. Do you think that is good?

Mr. Ginsberg. I don't think it is as bad; no more bizarre than the Beatles say, in their playing. I don't think it is necessarily as bad as we in our culture have a tendency to react automatically to any unusual behavior. This tendency is not necessarily a good thing for us.

Senator Burdick. If we don't have some laws, if we don't have some understanding, if we don't have some scientific findings, what is going to happen to the hundreds of young people that have these experiences throughout the land?

Mr. Ginsberg. I am suggesting that there are more scientific findings already available than have been made use of, that we need more scientific findings, but that has been shut off by the Government for the moment. And I suggest that we organize a much larger program of scientific research.

Senator Burdick. I think that is all the questions I have. Thank you.

Mr. Ginsberg. Yes; thank you, sir.

Senator Burdick. We will recess until tomorrow at 10:30.

(Whereupon, at 3:15 p.m., the committee recessed until 10:30 a.m., Wednesday, June 15, 1966.)