Pubdate: Thu, 01 Apr 2010
Source: StarPhoenix, The (CN SN)
Page: A3
Copyright: 2010 The StarPhoenix
Contact: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/400
Author: Les MacPherson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hallucinogens.htm (Hallucinogens)

LSD RESEARCH SHOWS CANINE-HIPPIE PARALLEL

Among the movies released on video this week is The Men Who Stare at 
Goats, a dark satire on paranormal research by the U.S. military. The 
idea was that a soldier with psychic training could kill an enemy by 
fiercely staring at him and willing his heart to stop. To that end, a 
secret army research unit experimented by staring at goats that had 
been de-bleated "for security reasons."

SPOILER ALERT: Except for the debleating, the goats came away unharmed.

Never officially confirmed or denied, the story seems almost too 
absurd for anyone to have made it up. There are precedents, too. 
Consider, for example, the men who gave LSD to dogs.

Getting dogs high on LSD was part of a Soviet project back in the 
early 1960s at the height of the Cold War. The experiments came to 
light last year through The Memory Hole, a website that publishes 
declassified government documents.

In this case, the document is an English translation of a Russian 
research paper, presumably acquired by the Americans through its 
intelligence sources of the day.

LSD still is little understood and was even less so in 1962 when the 
paper was written. The drug wasn't even illegal yet. Researchers then 
thought it might have intelligence applications, perhaps as a truth 
serum for captured spies or as a chemical weapon, clandestinely 
introduced through a water utility, say, to sow confusion among an 
enemy population.

That the Soviets experimented on dogs is somewhat to their credit. 
Around the same time, the CIA also was secretly studying the effects 
of LSD, only on people, often without their knowledge. The agency 
found the drug to be too unpredictable in its effects to be of any 
practical use. I know one or two old hippies who could have told them that.

Dogs given LSD likewise behaved unpredictably. Sometimes they were 
restless, sometimes lethargic. Sometimes they barked for no reason, 
sometimes they lapsed into a catatonic state.

"Not infrequently the animal would be frozen in one position for a 
long period of time with his muzzle pressed against the wall, and whining."

Yup, that would be LSD.

Often the subject dogs ignored or reacted inappropriately to external 
stimuli. They showed fear of familiar objects. They appeared to be 
lost in familiar surroundings. Again, there were quite a few hippies 
who reacted likewise. But that didn't stop them from doing it again 
and again, God bless them.

As with hippies, the dogs' ability to perform routine tasks dropped 
off sharply when they were blasted on acid. They now were lost in an 
obstacle course they had previously learned to negotiate in a few 
seconds. Of six dogs tested, four were able to do the course as usual 
the next day while one took two days and another five days to 
recover. That's still better than some hippies who never did recover.

In a related experiment, dogs were taught to avoid an electrical 
shock by jumping over a barrier when warned to do so by a particular 
sound or flashing light. Given LSD, they failed to respond to the 
warning in time to avoid the ensuing shock. They did react 
appropriately, however, when the actual shock was delivered. This is 
something to keep in mind if you're ever dealing with someone on LSD.

Based on these fairly dramatic results, the researchers determined 
LSD induces in dogs a kind of chemical psychosis. This, according to 
the paper, was contrary to earlier Soviet research which, remarkably, 
found dogs were unaffected by LSD. Either the earlier research was 
seriously flawed or the scientists in charge got ripped off by their dealer.

Authors of the later paper conclude further research would shed more 
light on both normal and pathological psychologies. On this, they 
were wrong. Subsequent years of experimentation with LSD appears not 
to have shed more light on anything, with the possible exception of 
Jimi Hendrix's guitar solo in Hey Joe.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom