LSD Essays (1755 words) - Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, Mind Control

LSD Despite the negative portrayal in mainstream 1960s media, justifications expressed by counterculture activists for further investigation, education and experimentation under government control of LSD were rational and valid arguments. Sex, drugs, protests, war, political upheaval, cultural chaos, and social rebellion; the many comforts TV dinner eating, republican voting, church going, suburbia conformists tried to escape through conservative ideals, town meetings, and The Andy Williams Family Hour. National consciousness in 1960s United States was alive, but existed differently in every mind it dwelled, and stirred uninterrupted in every life to which it was introduced. A dream of money, success, and a house with a white picket fence still existed within the pandemonium of the nation and many still relished in the idea of "Americanism." Television was a base for a magnitude of world news and national information. Television situation comedies created ideal families and contenting distractions from unsettling national realities. Mainstream media, both fact and fiction, influenced the nation's minds resulting in the effect of political change and further media influence over the government. The new decade, along with the effects of the Vietnam War and the strong influence of television, began to leak from the cracks of the nation a new counterculture of rebellious teenagers, unfamiliar narcotics, and a wave of promiscuity. Among the many issues and events molding our nation into a new decade, came the question of government and mind control. For some it was the next step into human evolution, a potential tool for mind control, a liberator of human kind, but for most LSD helped define 1960s counterculture, in which it was deeply rooted. LSD has proved that the mind contains much higher powers and energies, beyond the average10% of the brain that a typical human uses. These powers and energies, under the right circumstances, can be taken advantage of to benefit human kind spiritually, creatively, therapeutically, and intellectually. LSD has given human kind the option to chemically trigger mental energies and powers. Arguments that LSD is potentially a dangerous discovery and mind control should be strictly prohibited by the government holds much validity, although there are benefits and arguments of personal freedom of neurology to consider. Whether LSD reflects negativity as a weapon and mind control drug, or radiates euphoria as a mind-expanding chemical and sacrament, the choice to engage in such an experience should be through personal reasoning. It is not the states and other bureaucracies' duties to take control of the human brain and body. We no longer live in an age of industrial muscularity, and in this time of neurological intelligence, we should have the individual choice and freedom to further engage in the depths of our consciousness, if we are so graced with an option to do so. "No one can limit, restrict, or try to control how you access, activate, manipulate your own brain through the use of drugs." Temperance, moderation, and education should be applied to the use of mind control, but not restricting personal freedoms of neurology. Dr. Timothy Leary agrees: It's ludicrous and ominous to think that the government will try to limit, restrain, control where you're going to put your head, and how you're going to manage and direct your own neurology. That's the basis of your own freedom. Now, as far as behavior is concerned, if what you do in your head leads you to violate any behavioral law, a traffic law, or impose on the rights of the people?then you should be busted. But in the privacy of your own home, your own body, and your own brain, that's your business. Likewise, other individual freedoms justifying further investigation, education, and experimentation of LSD under moderate government control are questioned. The freedoms of spirituality and creativity are, similar to neurological freedom, issues in result of the use of psychedelic drugs. Spiritually, psychedelic drugs, are sacraments: divine substances no matter who uses them, in whatever sprit, with whatever intention. LSD, along with other drugs generates spiritual discovery and perception. Creatively, LSD has extreme potential; it is "a tool to explore the creative attributes of the mind." Dr. Oscar Janigar states, continuing that this tool could equal to "four years of art education." The further appreciation of the power of human thought, and the exploration of the boundaries of the human mind, LSD provokes, is extremely beneficial in freeing ones mind and taking full advantage of the powers in which the mind possesses. Within these powers LSD evokes is the capacity to resolve, therapeutically, personal emotional conflict. Although LSD, as previously proven, has its benefits it has yet to rise