Acid Warfare

Jesse Walker | January 11, 2007

At 10 Zen Monkeys, RU Sirius interviews Dr. James S. Ketchum, author of a new memoir about the military's psychedelic experiments of the early 1960s. It's a fascinating chat.

Well of course, commanders wanted to know what would happen if this stuff were ever used in the field. So at first we set up an indoor type of situation, a sort of simulated command post with four soldiers in it. One of them was given a full dose of BZ while the others were given either small doses or none at all, in order to have some possibility of maintaining order. So this one individual would continually go to the door and try to get out. He'd turn around and say, "I'll see you later," but it was locked, and he finally concluded that he was trapped. When the cameras, which were behind these sliding plywood doors, were opened, he came over to one and looked into it as if it were the eye of a Martian. And then he tried to climb out through the medicine cabinet. Then he went over to the water bag and yelled, "Hey, this broad just committed suicide." It took quite a bit of help from his teammates to keep him from hurting himself. But fortunately, nothing serious happened.

N.B.: I can't agree with Ketchum's enthusiasm for how the Moscow theater hostage crisis of 2002 was resolved.

Comments

Thrall|1.11.07 @ 1:15PM|#

I stopped getting drunk for along time after I started psychoactives. It's just so fun to explore your mind, and I've never seen anyone I know chop their genitals off like the drug war people say.

It's too bad that it's not like the 1960's anymore. :(

Why do governments always want to control what their people put in their bodies. It's not logical.

Guy Montag|1.11.07 @ 1:47PM|#

I just popped in to see who commented.

Had a good list of who might be here and was wrong again. Today sure is not my psychic day!

|1.11.07 @ 3:00PM|#

I dunno. People would die, but the idea of hitting enemy troops with hallucinogens instead of bullets and bombs seems potentially merciful.