LSD / Allen Ginsberg

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Testimony of Allen Ginsberg on LSD before a Special Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary

Ginsberg Senate Testimony on LSD (1966)

The poet Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) testified on June 14, 1966, before the special Senate Judiciary subcommittee holding hearings on narcotic rehabilitation and LSD on college campuses, with Quentin N. Burdick (1908–1992) presiding. He read a long prepared statement describing his visionary experience of 1948 and his use of peyote, mescaline, LSD, and ayahuasca, then argued from newspaper coverage and the medical literature that LSD's dangers had been exaggerated and that research should be expanded. The record hosts the full printed text, pp. 487–509, including his questioning by Burdick and Jacob K. Javits (1904–1986), his list of proposed research topics (Exhibit No. 76), and the references he put into the record.

The Houseboat Summit

Houseboat Summit

A conversation among Leary, Ginsberg, Snyder, and Watts, taped aboard Watts's houseboat and published in San Francisco Oracle no. 7 (February 1967). Hosted here is the opening run of the conversation, in which the four debate dropping out of mainstream society versus working within it, and trace the psychedelic movement's lineage back through earlier utopian and religious dissent. The full conversation continues on to LSD, utopian withdrawal, and post-drop-out economics.

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