NP? A New Secret History of LSD

Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 22:41:46 EDT
Subject: MAPS: Submission - A New Secret History of LSD

Dear MAPS,
As I haven't posted very often in my four years membership, perhaps you will
indulge this blatantly self-serving notice that my new book, ACID A New
Secret History of LSD (David Black, Vision Paperbacks, London ISBN
190125030X), is now available in the US.
As I explained in the original version (Acid: the Secret History of LSD) in
1997, my main intention was to draw attention to some key facets of the
explosion in LSD use, especially in the 1969-77 period, which were glossed
over at the time and had never really been looked at. The extraordinary
career of Ronald Stark, a shadowy, American-born LSD manufacturer (and much
more besides), looms large in this tale. The story of his career alone, calls
for a reassessment of the role secret intelligence agencies played and
continue to play, in supposedly anti-drug smuggling activities aimed at
protecting our 'security' - which often turn out to be the opposite.
With the new version, taking in new research and expanding the content by
nearly a third of the orginal length, what has resulted is as much a cultural
history as a 'crime story'.
I close with two short reviews of the book:

Lobster magazine (Summer 2002)
This is revised edition of the book which was reviewed in Lobster 35 (1998).
I'm not sure how *new* it is. I no longer have the original edition but this
seems pretty similar to it. What is new is some new material on the activites
of Steve Abrams, one of the co-founders of SOMA, who had been an unwitting
part of the CIA's MKUltra programme while a post grad student at Oxford; and
the section on the mysterious Ronald Stark, LSD enterpreneur and apparent
American intelligence asset, has been elaborated. Most importantly, all the
technical foul-ups which marred the first edition have gone. Vision were
really crap when they started ou (they completely wrecked my *Prawn Cocktail
Party*, for example, scrambling the footnotes to four of the chapters; in
those days Vision skipped the poof reading stage).
This however, is decently produced and a 'clean' read. The story of the drug
culture of the sixties and seventies is important and entertaining and while
it still leaves the loose ends loose - was the whole thing a CIA social
experiment which ran amok? - this is the best account we have to date.
Robin Ramsay

Review of ACID A New Secret History of LSD by David Black in Nexus magazine
April-May 2002

The psychedelic drug LSD, or "acid", has had a colourful and chequered
history, not just through 1960s counterculture but in clandestine,
CIA-sponsored operations. This latter area is what particularly occupies
English author David Black in his investigation, Acid, first published in
1998 and now expanded with new evidence in this revised edition. Looking
back, we can understand how "the summer of love" could not have been
sustained, despite its intellectual supporters with links to early 1960s
university and volunteer-supported LSD experiments in the search of new
mental health therapies. besides, too many people were unnecessarily hassled
in crackdowns by the authorities.
Entrepeneurs with connections to organised crime, the Mafia, the Red Brigades
as well as various international intelligence agencies were making a fortune
out of the mid-1960s through 1970s LSD culture. One in particular was Ron
Stark, the so-called "Godfather of LSD" who supposedly died in 1984, though
Black looks at the evidence hinting that he may still be alive. But years
before, as we know, the CIA and military were conducting secret LSD
experiments in mind and behaviour control on human guinea pigs. The research
was carried out under the umbrellaa of MK-Ultra, the "black budget" project
that covered for countless sub-projects every bit as inhumane as those
conducted in Nazi Germany. Indeed some former Nazis took part in these very
projects
All sorts of covert agendas within agendas, shocking intrigues and heady
side-trips are exposed in Black's explosive investigation. It makes for
enlightening reading.
Duncan M Roads
[Ends]


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