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Acid Dreams
- The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
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Publisher's summary
Few events have had a more profound impact on the social and cultural upheavals of the Sixties than the psychedelic revolution spawned by the spread of LSD. This audiobook for the first time tells the full and astounding story - part of it hidden till now in secret Government files - of the role the mind-altering drug played in our recent turbulent history and the continuing influence it has on our time. And what a story it is, beginning with LSD’s discovery in 1943 as the most potent drug known to science until it spilled into public view some 20 years later to set the stage for one of the great ideological wars of the decade. In the intervening years the CIA had launched a massive covert research program in the hope that LSD would serve as an espionage weapon, psychiatric pioneers came to believe that acid would shed light on the perplexing problems of mental illness, and a new generation of writers and artists had given birth to the LSD sub-culture. Acid Dreams is a complete social history of the psychedelic counter-culture that burst into full view in the Sixties. With new information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the authors reveal how the CIA became obsessed with LSD during the Cold War, fearing the Soviets had designs on it as well. What follows is one of the more bizarre episodes in the covert history of U.S. intelligence as the search for a "truth drug” began to resemble a James Bond scenario in which agents spied on drug-addicted prostitutes through two-way mirrors and countless unwitting citizens received acid with sometimes tragic results.
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Scientology, created in 1954 by a prolific sci-fi writer named L. Ron Hubbard, claims to be the world's fastest-growing religion, with millions of members around the world and huge financial holdings. Its celebrity believers keep its profile high, and its teams of "volunteer ministers" offer aid at disaster sites such as Haiti and the World Trade Center. But Scientology is also a notably closed faith, harassing journalists and others through litigation and intimidation, even infiltrating the highest levels of government to further its goals.
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My cup of tea.
- By MWMcCabe on 08-09-11
By: Janet Reitman
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The Walrus and the Elephants
- John Lennon’s Years of Revolution
- By: James A. Mitchell
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In late 1971 John Lennon left London behind and moved to New York, eager to join a youth movement rallying for social justice and an end to the Vietnam War. Lennon was quickly embraced by radicals and revolutionaries, the hippies and Yippies at odds with the establishment. Settling in Greenwich Village, the heart of Manhattan's counterculture, the former Beatle was soon on the frontlines of the antiwar movement and championing a range of causes and issues.
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I wish you were still here
- By Kazuhiko on 12-09-13
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Idiot America
- How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
- By: Charles P. Pierce
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The culture wars are over and the idiots have won. This is a veteran journalist’s caustically funny, righteously angry lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States. The three Great Premises of Idiot America: · Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units; anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough; "fact" is that which enough people believe. And "truth" is determined by how fervently they believe it.
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You Get What You Paid For
- By Vargas on 09-19-11
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Miami
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It is where Fidel Castro raised money to overthrow Batista and where two generations of Castro's enemies have raised armies to overthrow him, so far without success. It is where the bitter opera of Cuban exile intersects with the cynicism of U.S. foreign policy. It is a city whose skyrocketing murder rate is fueled by the cocaine trade, racial discontent, and an undeclared war on the island 90 miles to the south.
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Havana vanities come to dust in Miami.
- By Darwin8u on 09-22-15
By: Joan Didion
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Malcolm X
- A Life of Reinvention
- By: Manning Marable
- Narrated by: G. Valmont Thomas
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Of the great figure in 20th-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age 39. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man.
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invites further reading on Malcolm X
- By connie on 05-14-11
By: Manning Marable
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The Future Is History
- How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own - as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings.
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The author is an international treasure
- By ThreeGems on 10-16-17
By: Masha Gessen
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Smoke Signals
- A Social History of Marijuana - Medical, Recreational, and Scientific
- By: Martin A. Lee
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 21 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Martin A. Lee traces the dramatic social history of marijuana, from its origins to its emergence in the 1960s as a defining force in a culture war that has never ceased. Lee describes how the illicit marijuana subculture overcame government opposition and morphed into a dynamic, multibillion-dollar industry. Colorful, illuminating, and at times irreverent, this is a fascinating listen for recreational users and patients, students and doctors, musicians and accountants, Baby Boomers and their kids, and anyone who has ever wondered about the secret life of this ubiquitous herb.
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A hard book for me to rate
- By Blake on 05-08-13
By: Martin A. Lee
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The Nazi and the Psychiatrist
- Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII
- By: Jack El-Hai
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1945, after his capture at the end of the Second World War, Hermann Göring arrived at an American-run detention center in war-torn Luxembourg, accompanied by 16 suitcases and a red hatbox. The suitcases contained all manner of paraphernalia: medals, gems, two cigar cutters, silk underwear, a hot water bottle, and the equivalent of $100,000,000 in cash. Hidden in a coffee can, a set of brass vials housed glass capsules containing a clear liquid and a white precipitate: potassium cyanide. Joining Göring in the detention center were the elite of the captured Nazi regime....
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I Don't Understand The Complaints...
- By Douglas on 01-03-14
By: Jack El-Hai
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Children of Paradise
- The Struggle for the Soul of Iran
- By: Laura Secor
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 17 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
The drama that shaped today’s Iran, from the Revolution to the present day. In 1979, seemingly overnight - moving at a clip some 30 years faster than the rest of the world - Iran became the first revolutionary theocracy in modern times. Since then, the country has been largely a black box to the West, a sinister presence looming over the horizon. But inside Iran, a breathtaking drama has unfolded since then, as religious thinkers, political operatives, poets, journalists, and activists have imagined and reimagined what Iran should be.
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Most Engaging
- By malita on 12-29-22
By: Laura Secor
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Phenomena
- The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For more than 40 years, the US government has researched extrasensory perception, using it in attempts to locate hostages, fugitives, secret bases, and downed fighter jets, to divine other nations' secrets, and even to predict future threats to national security. The intelligence agencies and military services involved include CIA, DIA, NSA, DEA, the navy, air force, and army - and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now, for the first time, New York Times best-selling author Annie Jacobsen tells the story of these radical, controversial programs.
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Phenomenally mediocre narration of a good book
- By philip on 05-18-17
By: Annie Jacobsen
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Lords of Chaos
- The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground
- By: Michael Moynihan, Didrik Soderlind
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Lords of Chaos focuses on the scene surrounding the extreme heavy metal subgenre black metal in Norway in the early 1990s, with a focus on the string of church burnings and murders that occurred in the country around 1993.
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Intentionally Misleading
- By Chris on 10-29-19
By: Michael Moynihan, and others
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The People's Republic of Amnesia
- Tiananmen Revisited
- By: Louisa Lim
- Narrated by: Louisa Lim
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The People's Republic of Amnesia, NPR correspondent Louisa Lim charts how the events of June 4 changed China, and how China changed the events of June 4 by rewriting its own history. Lim reveals new details about those fateful days, including how one of the country's most senior politicians lost a family member to an army bullet, as well as the inside story of the young soldiers sent to clear Tiananmen Square.
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great book and recording
- By Robert Peters on 06-14-16
By: Louisa Lim
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Fantasyland
- How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History
- By: Kurt Andersen
- Narrated by: Kurt Andersen
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A razor-sharp thinker offers a new understanding of our post-truth world and explains the American instinct to believe in make-believe, from the Pilgrims to P. T. Barnum to Disneyland to zealots of every stripe...to Donald Trump. In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen demonstrates that what's happening in our country today - this strange, post-factual, "fake news" moment we're all living through - is not something entirely new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character and path.
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Bland Title For An Amazing Book!
- By David Larson on 09-07-17
By: Kurt Andersen
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Based on extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, Tripped is a wild, unconventional postwar history, a spiritual sequel to Norman Ohler’s New York Times bestseller Blitzed. Revealing the close relationship and hidden connections between the Nazis and the early days of drugs in America, Ohler shares how this secret history held back therapeutic research of psychedelic drugs for decades and eventually became part of the foundation of America’s War on Drugs.
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What a wonderful read
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The Psychedelic Handbook
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Entering the world of psychedelic drugs can be challenging, and many aren't sure where to start. As research continues to expand and legalization looms on the horizon for psychedelics like psilocybin, you may need a guide to navigate what psychedelics are, how they work, and their potential benefits and risks. The Psychedelic Handbook is a manual that is accessible to anyone with an interest in these substances. Packed with information on psilocybin, LSD, DMT/ayahuasca, mescaline/peyote, ketamine, MDMA, and more.
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Great intro to what these substances are.
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The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
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Tom Wolfe - one of the 20th century’s foremost voices in cultural criticism - went from local news reporter to international icon in 1968, with the publication of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Now voiced with vivacity and vigor by Audible Hall of Fame narrator Luke Daniels, the non-fiction swan-dive delves into the world of hippies, hedonism, and everything in between.
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Maybe it resonated with a different time and place
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The Control of Candy Jones
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
"Candy Jones" was the stage name of Jessica Wilcox who became famous as a model and "pinup girl" in the early 1940s. Her story seems too bizarre to be true. One of America's most famous models, brainwashed by the CIA? Yes, it is another example of truth being stranger than fiction. The story begins with Candy's wedding to Long John Nebel, New York's most successful radio talk-show host. During the wedding, and regularly thereafter, Candy's personality would seem to shift. She would suddenly change from her affable, self-effacing self to a brusque, aggressive "stranger".
By: Donald Bain
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Drugs as Weapons Against Us
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Overall
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Story
Drugs as Weapons Against Us meticulously details how a group of opium-trafficking families came to form an American oligarchy and eventually achieved global dominance. This oligarchy helped fund the Nazi regime and then saved thousands of Nazis to work with the Central Intelligence Agency. CIA operations such as MK-Ultra pushed LSD and other drugs on leftist leaders and left-leaning populations at home and abroad.
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great book
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By: John L. Potash
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This is Your Country on Drugs
- The Secret History of Getting High in America
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- Narrated by: Milton Bagby
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Past antidrug campaigns actually encouraged drug use. A few years ago, America stopped dropping acid altogether. The meth epidemic peaked a long, long time ago. NAFTA opened the border and created a bonanza for cocaine and meth traffickers just as President Clinton knew it would. President Reagan may have inadvertently caused the crack epidemic. Kids today are doing fewer illegal drugs than kids from any time in the recent past, and for a surprising reason.
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A good book but....
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By: Ryan Grim
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Psychonauts
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Until the twentieth century, scientists investigating the effects of drugs on the mind did so by experimenting on themselves. Vivid descriptions of drug experiences sparked insights across the mind sciences, pharmacology, medicine, and philosophy. But after 1900 drugs were increasingly viewed as a social problem, and the long tradition of self-experimentation began to disappear. Mike Jay brilliantly recovers a lost intellectual tradition of drug-taking that fed the birth of psychology, the discovery of the unconscious, and the emergence of modernism.
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Outstanding
- By Austin on 07-20-24
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The Harvard Psychedelic Club
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It is impossible to overstate the cultural significance of the four men described in Don Lattin's The Harvard Psychedelic Club. Huston Smith, tirelessly working to promote cross-cultural religious and spiritual tolerance. Richard Alpert, aka Ram Dass, inspiring generations with his mantra "be here now". Andrew Weil, undisputed leader of the holistic medicine revolution. And, of course, Timothy Leary, the charismatic, rebellious counterculture icon and LSD guru.
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A Fascinating, Engaging Story, Expertly Told
- By Gillian Culff on 12-12-19
By: Don Lattin
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PIHKAL
- A Chemical Love Story
- By: Alexander Shulgin, Ann Shulgin
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Petrea Burchard
- Length: 22 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Alexander (better known as “Sasha”) and Ann Shulgin’s PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story has become a foundational work in the genre and was the first book to fully impart the how-to chemistry, and convey the effects, of many of the entheogenic drugs that are currently being studied and used to heal trauma and deal with death.
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Very Insightful
- By Stefan Jernberg on 01-09-22
By: Alexander Shulgin, and others
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DMT: The Spirit Molecule
- A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences
- By: Rick Strassman MD
- Narrated by: Drew Graham
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From 1990 to 1995 Dr. Rick Strassman conducted U.S. Government-approved and funded clinical research at the University of New Mexico in which he injected 60 volunteers with DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. His detailed account of those sessions is an extraordinarily riveting inquiry into the nature of the human mind and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. DMT, a plant-derived chemical found in the psychedelic Amazon brew, ayahuasca, is also manufactured by the human brain. In Strassman's volunteers, it consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences.
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good book, not what I expected
- By Jonathan O. on 08-11-21
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Operation White Rabbit
- LSD, the DEA, and the Fate of the Acid King
- By: Dennis McDougal
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Operation White Rabbit traces the rise and fall - and rise and fall again - of the psychedelic community through the life of the man known as the "Acid King": William Leonard Pickard. Pickard was a legitimate genius, a follower of Timothy Leary, a con artist, a womanizer, and a believer that LSD would save lives. He was a foreign diplomat, a Harvard fellow, and the biggest producer of LSD on the planet - if you believe the DEA.
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Psychonautics 101
- By Will Arthur Williams on 03-04-24
By: Dennis McDougal
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The CIA as Organized Crime
- How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World
- By: Douglas Valentine
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The author of three books on CIA operations, Douglas Valentine began his research into the agency's activities when CIA director William Colby gave him free access to interview agency officials who had been involved in various aspects of the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. It was a permission Colby was to regret. The CIA would eventually rescind it and made every effort to impede publication of The Phoenix Program, which documented an elaborate system of population surveillance, control, entrapment, imprisonment, torture, and assassination in Vietnam.
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The CIA as Organized Crime: A personal perspective
- By Ray Robles on 09-13-17
What listeners say about Acid Dreams
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Russell
- 11-26-14
Educational
If you could sum up Acid Dreams in three words, what would they be?
Surprising, eye opening
What did you like best about this story?
Details of the pre-sixties government involvement.
Which character – as performed by Oliver Wyman – was your favorite?
na
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Extreme interest.
Any additional comments?
Such a powerful part of my youth hitherto not understood. I have generally found LSD to be a taboo subject. Perhaps because the "experienced" fear a social stigma. Perhaps they are left with many questions and uncertainties better left undisturbed. Yet it remains one of the most powerful experiences of many lives.
This history of acid provided me with perspective. The authors illustrate amply the many conflicting points of view; the positive and negatives of the psychedelic experience. And, most importantly, it provides an opportunity for discussion.
Many thanks to the authors.
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- Stephen
- 01-03-19
Great education
This book provides a great history portrayed across 3 or more perspectives. It’s incredible. One of my all time favorite books.
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- Kara Demetropoulos
- 12-08-20
Captivating and insightful.
This was an incredible listen. A thorough overview of the wild history of LSD in the US, and the counterculture that it helped stoke. I found it absolutely fascinating, and learned so much about the 60's and 70's in the process. Especially given the trajectory of our current drug reform, this topic feels very relevant.
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- Another Reader
- 04-25-20
So good that I was sad when it ended
Fantastic! A classic that stands the test of time. Very glad it is on Audible. The CIA was the Johny Appleseed of LSD. Agents used it on others and used it themselves. So many threads in the story of LSD go back to the agency. Only in America do stories this crazy turn out to be true.
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- Dubi
- 08-06-15
Ultra Interesting
Acid Dreams is two books in one, both of them interesting, at least to those (like me) who remain fascinated by the 1960s. That is one strand followed closely by Lee and Shlain -- the history of the 1960s as seen through the prism of one of its primary catalysts, the drug that fuelled a generation that altered the course of American politics and society.
The other thread may prove to be topical even to readers who have no explicit interest in the 60s or in LSD -- the CIA's involvement in experimenting with this and other drugs as tactical tools during the Cold War, and possibly in illegal domestic efforts as agents provocateurs to discredit political dissidence, and maybe even (if you're into diehard conspiracy theory) to enrich themselves at the expense of the general welfare via the drug trade.
The book begins, after quickly reviewing the discovery of LSD, with the CIA's MK Ultra program, undertaken during the 1950s, centering around acid as a biological weapon, and going so far as to test the potent hallucinogen on unsuspecting Americans riding the New York subway system, released in aerosol form in a subway car. Crazy stuff, extremely disturbing. The book concludes with a look at the elusive Ron Stark, drug dealer supreme and formentor of revolution in the U.S. and beyond while likely working for the CIA.
There is an incredible cast of characters here, from the well-known -- Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsburg, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, Charlie Manson, the Beatles -- to others who exemplify the aphorism that truth is often stranger than fiction -- the Diggers, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Captain Al Hubbard, Billy Mellon Hitchcok, Owsley Stanley, the aforementioned superspy Ron Stark, and assorted figures of pure evil working for the CIA, epitomized by George White, his subway test only the most outrageous of his systematic dosing of unsuspecting people.
My only quibble with the book is that it cannot really be a "complete social history" without a closer look at the cultural aspects of psychedelia. There is no escaping the music, with the Beatles getting their due attention, but there was more to it than that, and the influence on cinema and art is ignored altogether -- which is a shame, because one of the biggest names to emerge from the psychedelic cinema of the 1960s, Jack Nicholson, is never mentioned in this book.
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- Jake Campos
- 02-12-15
A history of substance and cloture
While the second half of the book does tend to dull over some small sections; overall this was a fantastic history of the substance. The authors did a great job of weaving in the counterculture in a way that shone light on the ideals and morals without making an overall judgment. I have already recommended this book, with the caveat that at times it only appealed to the scholar in me, and left part of me longing for more classic historical context.
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- Amos Covali
- 01-12-20
A strange and compelling trip it has been...
The story of LSD, and psychedelics in general, is fascinating. Martin Lee & Bruce Shlain create a well researched, written and entertaining exploration, illuminating this long and strange trip.
Oliver Wyman reads with a clear voice.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-29-21
🤩
what an amazing book. I now understand the 60s for the first time . recommend reading for every one. i am 39 and never took acid before but looking forward to
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- Brian
- 03-06-15
Answered a lot of questions.
If you lived in this era, then read this book. The questions I had about the better living through chemistry era were answered in this book. I loved it. I grew up in the Bay Area when I was a kid and lived this changing world. The doctors fed us speed for hyperactivity gave mom tranquilizer dad drank. We made it through. I miss the LSD. To bad it did not give out a formula.
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- Jesse
- 03-07-19
Turned Me On
A fantastic and eye opening listen. From CIA Spooks to Hippies. Turn On Tune In
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