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Psychedelic images coming from a chemical flask.

When America First Dropped Acid

Well before the hippies arrived, LSD and other hallucinogens were poised to enter the American mainstream.
by Margaret Talbot via The New Yorker on January 22, 2024
Artistic representation of a man using psychedelics. The man's head appears like a matryoshka doll.

Brains on Drugs

Between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, drug use to expand one’s consciousness went from an intellectual pastime to an emblem of social decay.
by John Semley via The Baffler on June 14, 2023
Roland R. Griffith and psychedelic mushrooms..

Roland Griffiths' Magical Profession

His research ushered in the psychedelic renaissance. Now it's changing how he's facing death.
by Tom Bartlett via The Chronicle of Higher Education on April 10, 2023
Psychedelic swirling bright colors.

The Fascinating History of Mescaline, the OG Psychedelic

From prehistoric caves, through Aztecs, Mormons, Beat poets, Jean-Paul Sartre and a British MP.
by Mike Jay, Max Daly via Vice on May 15, 2019

The Accidental, Psychedelic Discovery of LSD

After the drug was dismissed by the pharmaceutical company that developed it, a researcher started experimenting on himself with it. Powerful hallucinations ensued.
by Tom Shroder via The Atlantic on September 9, 2014
network of connected smiling faces

Ecstasy’s Odyssey

When the creator of MDMA first experimented with the drug, he felt a mellow sensation that he compared to "a low-calorie martini."
by Mike Jay via New York Review of Books on May 2, 2024
Margaret Mead and Joe Rogan.

Turn on, Tune in, Write Code

How psychedelics went from counterculture to grind culture.
by Geoff Shullenberger via The New Atlantis on April 12, 2024
Mead reading a book, against a psychedelic background.

One of Our Most Respected 20th-Century Scientists Was LSD-Curious. What Happened?

A document in her papers in the Library of Congress sheds new light on postwar research on psychedelics.
by Benjamin Breen via Slate on February 10, 2024
The crime scene. A woman's body lies in the middle of a clearning next to the river, surrounded by coroners and police

Bad Shot, Mary

The mistress of JFK, there was a lot more than wealth, whiteness, and femininity to make Mary Pinchot Meyer a target of murder.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Apocalypse Confidential on November 22, 2023
Collage of CIA director Richard Helms, Jimi Hendrix, and redacted Project MK-Ultra documents.

The Secret Black History of LSD

Research on psychedelics has been riddled with medical racism and exclusion but it hasn’t stopped Black people from finding creativity and solace through drugs.
by Kali Holloway via The Nation on March 22, 2022
Artists and people sitting on and around a hotel at Woodstock in 1967

The Dropout, a History: From Postwar Paranoia to a Summer of Love

The dropout was not just a hippy-trippy hedonist but a paranoid soul, who feared brainwashing and societal control.
by Charlie Williams via Aeon on December 3, 2021
A sea of people at Woodstock.

The Book That Began as an Acid-Fueled Speech at Woodstock

When Pete Townshend whacked Abbie Hoffman offstage.
by Jack Hoffman, Daniel Simon via Literary Hub on February 18, 2020

How a Small-Town Navy Vet Created Rock’s Most Iconic Surrealist Posters

The story of one of rock's most prolific poster artists.
by Ben Marks via Collectors Weekly on March 28, 2019

Aquarius Rising

Considering the religious roots of the 1960s anti-militarist counterculture.
by Jackson Lears via New York Review of Books on September 6, 2018

Where to Score: Classified Ads from Haight-Ashbury

From 1966-1969, the underground newspaper 'San Francisco Oracle' became exceedingly popular among counterculture communities.
by Jason Fulford, Jordan Stein via The Paris Review on March 14, 2018

For LSD, What A Long Strange Trip It's Been

It's been reviled and revered, criminalized and exploited by the CIA. And now and other psychedelic drugs are being tested as legitimate medical treatments.
by Agnus Chen via NPR on December 16, 2017

Michel Foucault in Death Valley

Simeon Wade describes visiting Death Valley with Michel Foucault in 1975.
by Simeon Wade, Heather Dundas via Boom California on September 10, 2017
Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman: The Original Substacker

Publishing needs his democratic spirit.
by Sam Kahn via UnHerd on December 13, 2024
Colorful, psychedelic illustration of three dolphins in the center with a rainbow in the sky above them and a pool, ocean, palm trees, and sky below them

Tripping on LSD at the Dolphin Research Lab

How a 1960s interspecies communication experiment went haywire.
by Benjamin Breen via The Chronicle of Higher Education on February 27, 2024
Book cover of "The Acrobat," featuring a jumbled facial picture of Cary Grant.

Acid’s First Convert, Cary Grant: On Edward J. Delaney’s “The Acrobat"

A novel illuminates a moment of psychedelic history that has often been overlooked: the emergence of LSD psychotherapy just before the moral panic took hold.
by James Penner via Los Angeles Review of Books on November 2, 2023
The women of the Source Family pose on a Rolls-Royce for an ad for the release of a recording of the cult's band, Ya Ho Wha 13.

The Cult Roots of Health Food in America

How the Source Family, a radical 1970s utopian commune, still impacts what we eat today.
by Diana Hubbell via Atlas Obscura on April 19, 2023

The Forgotten Drug Trips of the Nineteenth Century

Long before the hippies, a group of thinkers used substances like cocaine, hashish, and nitrous oxide to uncover the secrets of the mind.
by Claire Bucknell via The New Yorker on April 17, 2023
64 East 7th Street, New York City, 2022.

The Parsonage

An unprepossessing townhouse in the East Village has been central to a series of distinctive events in New York City history.
by David Hajdu via Places Journal on April 1, 2023
The four members of Creedence Clearwater Revival.

How CCR, “The Boy Scouts of Rock and Roll,” Took California and the Country by Storm

Creedence Clearwater Revival’s unique blend of traditional and progressive sensibilities.
by John Lingan via Literary Hub on August 9, 2022
Colorful rainbow image of a brain.

Mental Illness Is Not in Your Head

Decades of biological research haven't improved diagnosis or treatment. We should look to society, not to the brain.
by Marco Ramos via Boston Review on May 17, 2022
"What difference would another world make?", Sam Pulitzer, 2021.

New Left Review

Who did neoliberalism?
by Erik Baker via n+1 on March 8, 2022
Collage of demonstrators, boots, jeans, and a van

The Incredible True Adventure of Five Gay Activists in Search of the Black Panther Party

Communes, free love, coming out, getting arrested, consciousness-raising rap sessions, gun shooting, acid dropping, and trying to be macrobiotic at McDonald’s.
by Hugh Ryan via Harper's Bazaar on June 8, 2021
A worker removes the Sackler name from a building at Tufts University in 2019.

The Problem of Pain

It’s easier to blame individuals for the opioid crisis than to attempt to diagnose and cure the ills of a society.
by Sophie Pinkham via Dissent on April 5, 2021

Janis Joplin, the Mistaken Icon of the Counterculture

The counterculture dictum to “turn on, tune in, drop out” did not quite capture Janis’s philosophy to “get it while you can.”
by Shalon Van Tine via Tropics of Meta on March 15, 2020
Cathy Gillies, Kitty Lutesinger, Sandy Good, and Brenda McCann, of the Manson Family, kneel on the sidewalk outside the Los Angeles Hall of Justice on March 29, 1971.

The Manson Family Murders, and Their Complicated Legacy, Explained

The Manson Family murders weren’t a countercultural revolt. They were about power, entitlement, and Hollywood.
by Aja Romano via Vox on August 7, 2019
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