Mescaline
Mescaline is a psychedelic drug similar to LSD, that binds to serotonin receptors in the brain. Its psychoactive effects only occur after hours of nausea and vomiting. It was isolated from the peyote cactus in 1897 by German chemist Arthur Heffter and synthesized in 1919 by Ernst Späth (University of Vienna) who worked with Hans Tuppy who did research on insulin at Cambridge and died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. From 1920 it was sold by Merck. It is found in the San Pedro cactus in the Andes. |
It was used in research on mind control and in the CIA/MI6 controlled Beatnik culture, hippie counterculture of Laurel Canyon , Greenwich Village, Haight-Ashbury and Swinging London (rituals to open dimensional portals to parallel universes).
5000 years ago peyote was already used by Native Americans in Ghost Dance rituals to contact the spirits of the dead. It was also used by the Aztecs in Mexico. Spanish Catholic missionaries discovered mescaline after conquering Mexico.
Frederick Smith of the Mormon Church used peyote with mescaline in his rituals.
Surrealist poet Julian Trevelyan experimented with mescaline, married Ursula Darwin, and worked with Oskar Kokoshka and Pablo Picasso (program Modernism). Raymond Harrington (student of Franz Boas at Columbia University) introduced Mabel Dodge to peyote in Greenwich Village (modern art scene).
Surrealist Antonin Artaud experimented with peyote in Mexico.
Mescaline was used in German concentration camps where also experiments took place with torture and dissociation. SS member Kurt Plötner was involved in the malaria experiments of Claus Schilling at the camp of Dachau and used mescaline in interrogations to find a truth serum, while the OSS (pre CIA) did research on a truth serum in the US and LSD was being tested by Albert Hoffman in Sandoz Laboratory in Switzerland.
Plötner was hired by Boris Pash, who was part of Project Bluebird (hypnotic triggers for dissociation).
Theodor Benzinger (Operation Paperclip) and Charles
Savage did research on mescaline LSD in Project Chatter
in 1947. The same year modernist Antonin Artaud wrote the Peyote Dance.
In 1951 Humpfrey Osmond, John Smythies and Abram Hoffer conduct LSD, mescaline and insulin shock therapy at Weyburn Hospital Canada, helped by CIA agent Alfred Hubbard.
Aldous Huxley described his mescaline experience in The Doors of Perception in 1954 (inspiration for The Doors with Jim Morrison, who according to his mythology had a soul walk-in of a Native American). The next year Christopher Mayhew (Information Research Department, National Association for Mental Health) was given mescaline by Humpfrey Osmond on BBC's Panorama.
Oscar Janiger, the cousin of Allen Ginsberg, who also gave LSD of Sandoz Laboratory to Aldous Huxley and Cary Grant, did mescaline research with Alan Watts. He also worked with LSD dealer Michael Hollingshead (like Watts affiliated with Harvard).
It was used in the mind control of CIA hippie counterculture: Allen Ginsberg (poem Howl), Philip K Dick, Jerry Garcia (Grateful Dead), Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), Hunter S Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), Carlos Santana (Woodstock ritual), Boris Vian (friend of Serge Gainsbourg), Jean-Paul Sartre (treated by Jacques Lacan), Arthur Kleps (visited Timothy Leary at Milbrook),..
Anthropologist Carlo Castaneda (UCLA, Esalen) wrote the Teachings of Don Juan with foreword of Walter Goldschmidt, in 1967, which influenced George Lucas.
David Carradine was arrested in Laurel Canyon under influence of peyote.
Mike Jay wrote Mescaline A Global History of the First Psychedelic in 2019.