# 45 Years of Depersonalization; with a Twist



## jnsx (Feb 13, 2010)

Born in northern Vermont in 1950. I started first grade at four years old in a one-room schoolhouse without plumbing. I was a shy and reserved child, and remember not being comfortable attending school, but would rather be outside studying the bees or ants and playing in streams The teacher, knowing my hesitance to attend, would sometimes stop at my house and bring me to school in the morning. After a while I settled down and enjoyed learning. I also liked going to Sunday school.

We moved into town when I was entering forth grade and went though the school phobia thing again. This eventually dissipated and I made and enjoyed having friends. I wasn't comfortable doing such things as oral book reports.

In high school I did ok, but was somewhat of a under achiever. Indifferent, was the word entered on my report card. I was more comfortable with one or two persons than being in a group.

I had a number of different jobs after graduation; I found that I had trouble working with the public or work where I had to be directly in sync with others. I felt a little nervous and panicky. However I was capable of working with others in informal situations or on my own.

In my last year of high school 1968, the hippie and drug culture arrived in Vermont. We had been previously primed for it of course, with music, TV and other forms of media. The drugs first came via college students returning from Boston (Harvard) and back to the land hippies from urban areas (see: April, 1972 Playboy magazine article: Taking Over Vermont).

Now I was out of school, and with all this new excitement in the air, naturally I fell right in the thing.

That summer was one of socializing and partying with local and summer kids, daily arrivals, of back to the land city kids, who were starting communes.

We were invited to the communes, and had our astrological charts done, learned about I Ching and ate experiments in organic cooking. Most of the people in the communes were a few years older than us and from urban cultures. My friends and I were more interested in the pop version of the hippy stuff. The commune people seemed to have radical politics on their minds. Today some of them are in state government.

The next summer I attended Woodstock, which was quite an experience. There were a few persons around us having bad trips, we had to hold them down and talk them down because they were unprepared for the intensity of that experience. Their outlook on life probably would never be the same. I was starting to realize the alternative culture wasn't any better than the old one. Earlier on, the desire was to seek God and transcend materialism, which wasn't working. This was changing, now it seemed people were using drugs just as a frequent recreational activity.

That winter I went to northern New Hampshire to work at a large resort in the mountains. The cultural changes hadn't reached that part of the world yet, at least directly. I guess in a semi unconscious way I wanted to escape back to the old world again and be around people that were my age but hadn't been exposed to the New Age

However I found that by now it was an intricate part of me. It was hard to relate to others any other way. It had seared my conscience. As in my youth, I was out of touch with the world. It was going to get worst though.

Now moving ahead a couple of years, I was back in Vermont, living on a dairy farm of a friend, not to do farm work but electrical work on his house.
I was hanging out with old friends, and returned to old behaviors. Sometimes I would fake it and not inhale. It wasn't so much I needed or wanted the drugs either, but I felt the power of peer pressure and the momentum of the times-and I thought I was so independent and above such things. Now that I am much older this behavior seems stupid, reckless, which it was.

One day the friend with the farm asked me if I would like to ride over to Norton, Vt. and attend a party that evening at Earth People's Park, a large commune that was deeded to God, There was a band from Boston playing that night named, A Real Good F**k.
I said ok.

We arrived in the early evening, I had a few beers and then the band began to play. They played well and everyone was starting to have fun. I remember talking to a guy about the New Day that was coming and I commented that I did not want to throw the baby out with the bath water. He gave me a puzzled look. About then the pot (perhaps laced) was being passed around. If only I hadn't inhaled this time! A few minutes later all hell broke lose. I was catapulted into another dimension. I went into a total state of fear; my consciousness was altered beyond description. Everything seemed unreal and sinister, time was distorted. My perceptions of the world changed completely. LSD as powerful as it is didn't rival this.

I think the magnitude of this experience was traumatic enough to cause PTSD along with the DP.

After a while I did come down a little. I remember that night back home I was lying in bed and looking at objects in the room, they appeared to have sinister, unreal, death like qualities but the real horror of it was not just the furniture appearing this way, I and the furniture were one. I felt two-dimensional.
These experiences are not just imagination or obsessive thoughts, nor are they things that well up from some imagined deep recesses of the mind because of past-unresolved trauma. These things are actually experienced, or more precisely, are your experience!

I was struggling with this hell for a couple of weeks when some friends asked me to go to a banjo contest with them, when we arrived we learned it had been canceled. On the way back my friend pulled out some hash- concentrated THC. I can't believe to this day that I smoked! I saw rays of light come down from the sky onto these tropical plants (in Vermont) and it was as though these plants were communicating with me. I felt so overwhelmed by this disintegration of my being; it felt like I was dying and asked one of my friends to pound on my chest because it seemed like my heart had stopped. They must of thought it humorous. Back in town, my stomach was on fire, I ate a whole package of Rolaids.
I went to my parents house and hid in my bedroom. I didn't leave for months or maybe years, I couldn't tell. My brain was unable to filter or sort out this sensory overload. I had to paint my room gray because the wallpaper design was vibrating. I would lie on the bed feeling unreal, two-dimensional. Everything including colors seemed brilliantly dull and void of any goodness, like a living death. The wonderful ordinary things of life became extraordinarily bizarre. I was caught in an existential dilemma. I began to think I had died and gone to hell. I had no way to tell. One day an old friend came to the house, I reluctantly came downstairs to see him. When he saw me his jaw dropped, I was very thin.

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I know some people will say that this was ego death. If that is the problem I want as much ego back as I can get. This ain't it. Its much more complex than that. Recently, a person asked me why I didn't want to smoke pot. I said because it made me depersonalized, he said that depersonalization was the best part of smoking. I cant believe he had the same kind of depersonalization I experienced. Most people may get away with marijuana without this sort of problem, but I believe it can cause personality problems and brings misery too those around them.

Medical marijuana is just pretense for legalization by the many who are preoccupied with it, . I wonder how many persons prescribed medical marijuana by doctors, will become depersonalized? No doubt it will be blamed on something else. Look on YOUTUBE or the web, and you will see a vast amount of persons who became depersonalized from marijuana use.
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I know people using medical marijuana, who still need the prescription medicines they had before.
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http://rt.com/usa/so...-marijuana-189/
Billionaire, George Soros is funding the legalization of marijuana.
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MEDICAL MARIJUANA, THE NEW SNAKE OIL?

When you look online, the list of illness and social maladies that marijuana will fix grows day by day. Some even think it's the messiah and say it will save the world. Others see it as a battle cry for revolution,so much for peace and love.
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British elitist, Aldous Huxley quote;

There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their

servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.
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http://postflaviana.org/manufacturing-deadhead/
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Aldous Huxley predicted that drugs would one day become a humane alternative to "flogging" for rulers wishing to control "recalcitrant subjects." He wrote in a letter to his former student George Orwell in 1949: But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. [emphasis added] [10]

Decades later, one of the CIA's own MK-ULTRA researchers, Dr. Louis Jolyon West, while citing Huxley had this to say on the matter: The role of drugs in the exercise of political control is also coming under increasing discussion. Control can be through prohibition or supply. The total or even partial prohibition of drugs gives the government considerable leverage for other types of control. An example would be the selective application of drug laws permitting immediate search, or "no knock" entry, against selected components of the population such as members of certain minority groups or political organizations. But a government could also supply drugs to help control a population. This method, foreseen by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (1932), has the governing element employing drugs selectively to manipulate the governed in various ways.

To a large extent the numerous rural and urban communes, which provide a great freedom for private drug use and where hallucinogens are widely used today, are actually subsidized by our society. Their perpetuation is aided by parental or other family remittances, welfare, and unemployment payments, and benign neglect by the police. In fact, it may be more convenient and perhaps even more economical to keep the growing numbers of chronic drug users (especially of the hallucinogens) fairly isolated and also out of the labor market, with its millions of unemployed. To society, the communards with their hallucinogenic drugs are probably less bothersome-and less expensive-if they are living apart, than if they are engaging in alternative modesof expressing their alienation, such as active, organized, vigorous political protest and dissent. [&#8230;]

The hallucinogens presently comprise a moderate but significant portion of the total drug problem in Western society. The foregoing may provide a certain frame of reference against which not only the social but also the clinical problems created by these drugs can be considered.[11]

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At some point I went to the local mental health clinic, and tried a few medicines that didn't help. Then I tried Stelizine, which took the edge off. At least made it easier to cope. They diagnosed some form of schizophrenia. I began a study of these things. My condition did seem similar to schizophrenia in some ways but there were differences. One was I had too much insight. My core self or soul still seemed quite rational. This was an impossible situation. I had to endure the unendurable.

I was becoming disappointed and exacerbated with Mental Health. I would tell them that I believed my illness had something to do with brain chemistry. They didn't like this, wasn't part of their religion it seems. They didnt like me challenging their vague and irrelevant notions. I was willing to work with them at first but I was in a place where I needed a knowledgeable and clear understanding of my dilemma. I awkwardly tried to enlighten them but "Reality" was in their court. I was sick of pretenses. At some point, I told them I just wanted some medicine and to hell with their speculations. I was subjected to some hostility after that. Of course they retaliated by entering in my records that I was drug seeking and also malingering. Their way of saying I was just looking for a free ride. What an insult. I wanted to stop seeing them because they didn't have a clue about what I was going through. I knew there was no way for them to realize what it was like. It was frightening for me but them as well, they sort of disassociated from the strangeness of it. They were professional in their willful ignorance. It would have been nice to at least have some compassionate support even if they didn't have an honest understanding.

After getting copies of my records,I was appalled by how they converted what I said
into some kind of pseudo-scientific terminology,combined with moral and social judgments. It was as though I was being professionally and socially depersonalized.

Its ironic that years later I became vice president of this organization. It does try to help people but at the same time it's an agent of the state that fulfills the needs of politics in multiple ways. I heard more than one psychiatrist say they were astonished by the amount of power the State entrusted to them. The profession's
chameleon like abilities are sometimes called upon to help the state out of sticky situations. I've heard state employees say they were told that the state is "never wrong" and act accordingly.
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The Indefensible Science
My take on any useful value of psychiatry and psychology other than limited help from medications are, entertainment / false hopes-buys time and sometimes good intentions with common sense.
But it seems similar to a cult in that you have to believe in it's power. Of course if you're desperate to get help you quickly become a believer. If you study the the origins of psychology, you will find that it has occult believes mixed in with the science.

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Going out in public again was three steps forward and two back. I finally made it downtown. When I looked down the main street, my mind would perceive and amplified every little motion on the street, it all seemed asymmetrically choreographed like looking in a kaleidoscope, but not a pleasant one. Everything seemed sinister, dark, without life, meaningless. I headed home.

I kept pressing on, I managed in time to get out in the world more often. I had to become somewhat of an actor. I intellectually knew that my perceptions of the world and that of my body were distorted. I had to try and act how it was suppose to be. It had it limits and I avoided situations I knew were undoable. These are some more of the symptoms I was battling; anxiety, inability to concentrate especially in public or social settings, my thoughts would not flow smoothly but come and go in bit and pieces. Short-term memory impairment. I felt that there was always unwanted and undue attention on me. Panic attacks, sensations of dying. Common sounds such as bird songs were sharp and piercing. Visually things appeared unnaturally brilliant. . A vertigo of consciousness. Some things defy description. My math skills were seriously impaired by this condition so stores were difficult not to mention those fluorescent lights. My philosophy was to keep trying but be easy on myself. One positive thing was I did have a lot of time to read and study a variety of subjects.

One interesting aspect of depersonalization is that with this altered reality, our inner self or soul still remains intact and can see the stark "realities" of life. Normal persons seem mostly oblivious to this.

I would occasionally get indirect feedback from the community as to my being lazy and stupid. What could I say to them when even I didn't know what it was either. There are young people on YouTube with candid and honest stories of departmentalization. God bless them! At lease they have the comfort of knowing what it is and that they are not the only one.

Over the years I have improved, I don't know how much of that is symptom improvement or developing the muscle or techniques to cope. It can still be very difficult but life still has been good.

SERENDIPITY STRIKES!

In the early 90's, I got a job as a disability advocate. I had a client who I later became friends with. I would visit him sometimes in the evening and have a few beers. One night he poured his heart out, and in tears told me about being in Vietnam and having to kill children. He told me that when younger he was caught stealing cars and the judge gave him the choice to either go to jail for a long time or go in the Army. He chose the Army. When he arrived in Vietnam they put him under the CIA and had to do stuff for them that was very unpleasant, like killing children. I asked him if he would do these things today and he said no. I said these things would be forgiven if you are sincere and that the ones above him bore most of the responsibility. Then he told me when he came home he thought he was free of the CIA, not so, they came up from Boston and told him he had to go to Earth People's Park and secretly distribute drugs for them. There was a local woman, who had a criminal record, enlisted also. I asked what was their reason for given drugs to these people? He was told that they were communist. Humm.

Order Out Of Chaos
The CIA mules and middle management may of believed that they were fighting Communism but if you look at the big picture, the plan from above. It was a chemical tool to alter the consciousness of the masses, "hedonic engineering and bring about the advent of a New Age-occult secular utopia, which will probably turn out to be a global totally administered society, based on a blend of Materialism and Occultism. A carnal spirituality.

see: God Building, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God-Building

see: Stanford Research Institute's(a Tavistock Institute associate); "The Changing Image of Man". The aim of the study, the authors state, is to change the image of mankind from that of industrial progress to one of "spiritualism." The study asserts that in our present society, the "image of industrial and technological man" is obsolete and must be "discarded...
http://www.modernhis...arianConspiracy
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The Aquarian Conspiracy
by Marilyn Ferguson 1980
...years later with nearly an entire generation of American youth submerged in the drugs that flooded the nation's campuses, the Aquarian Conspiracy's Marilyn Ferguson is able to write:
"There are legions of [Aquarian] conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors' offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country
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I have no animosity toward my friend, we are still friends today. I believe he was also a victim.
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Now I know that any person that has a mental disorder and mentions the CIA is instantly discredited, but this unsolicited story came to me over 20 years after the fact.
I dont believe I was singled out in any way but was caught in some kind of shotgun approach. I also don;t believe that everyone who becomes depersonalized by drug use is a direct victim of CIA.

I told this story to my brother in law, who told me that he was at Earth People's Park that same night and had smoked something that caused him psychological distress that lasted about two weeks.

I was told by an friend, that was in the Air Force during the Vietnam War ,that he stayed in the U.S., doing the paper work for cargo planes returning from Vietnam. He personally saw many of these planes loaded with illegal drugs. He was told to look the other way.
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Some supporting documents:

I found this one on the web a few years ago and copied it ------
Jim Bray: The Blog
I'm listening to Wavy Gravy being interviewed on an internet stream from
KPFA <http://kpfa.org>.The program was "SATURDAY MORNING TALKIES". Howard Dean came up and Wavy said he was "beyond cool", like "tundra" or something. He told a story about the Feds using drug dealers to try to destroy Earth People's Park,
and how Wavy Gravy and Ben and Jerry and Howard Dean worked together to defeat the Feds and turn it into a State Park instead. If Wavy Gravy doesn't have serious counterculture activist credentials, someone let me know. Could at least influence the Old Hippie vote in 2004.

I'd say, more likely Dean and the Feds were working together.
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So drugs were being spread by the Left to soften the public to accept socialism, and then the Right employs drugs to counter them? Looks like I was caught in the crossfire.
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Earth People's Park (Wavy Gravy was involved) was a project of the same network of student revolutionaries and counter culture folks operating at Berkeley, CA. They had taken over a piece of property owned by the University and built People's Park. This led to actual street wars and the National Guard was called in. These sorts of activities were erupting though out the country. The authorities were no doubt alarmed!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie
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Earth People's Park
Wikepedia
Years of intensified government intelligence gathering and a series of arrests by state and federal law enforcement led to the seizure of the land in October 1990. A pair of park residents sold ten ounces of park-grown marijuana to an undercover narcotics agent for $500, introduced by a park resident turned paid informant.
This event gave the federal government probable cause to seize the land, evict everyone still living there, and to destroy any structures on the property. After drug forfeiture proceedings filed in US District Court (Burlington Vt. 1990) pursuant to 21 U.S.C. Sec. 881(a)(7), the 592 acres (2.40 km2) was eventually conveyed to the State of Vermont for use as publicly-owned state forest lands.

Originally destined for sale by the federal government, substantial unique natural resources were discovered allowing the land to escape sale under a provision in the forfeiture laws. After negotiations with the US Attorney's office state officials, including the office of then governor Howard Dean, the Vermont Land Trust, and other agencies, an agreement was signed to give the land to the state of Vermont. This respected the park founder's original intention of 'public' ownership of the land.
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research - United Nations " Agenda 21"
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Land turned over to State of Vermont, now Black Turn Brook State Forest on October 5, 1994, in a ceremony attended by Governor of Vermont Howard Dean, along with Wavy Gravy, Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's, along with representatives of other groups, including early park resident Laura Kross-(who had been charged with drug sales while living at Earth People's Park} on behalf of Earth People's Park Inc., title to the property was formally transferred. Today, the former park remains open to recreational visitors for hunting, fishing, and undeveloped hike-in type camping activities. It is now shown on area maps as Black Turn Brook State Forest, and is managed by the Vermont Dept. of Forests and Parks. Camping and other recreational activities are permitted under that Vermont's 'primitive use camping' rules, although vehicle access from the state highway is limited.

Many years ago, before I was aware of these things, I was delivering some firewood to a guy and in conversation he told me that he had been one of the people who had started Earth People's Park and that he had to move out because of the craziness going on there.
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From: Acid Dreams: the Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond

By Martin A. Lee
Page, 228
Reflecting on the 60, s a surprising number of counterculture veterans endorsed the notion that the CIA disseminated street acid en masse so as to deflate the political potency of the youth rebellion�.

Page, 283
The CIA;s behavior modification programs were geared toward domestic as well as foreign populations: targets included selected individuals and large groups of people.

The CIA came to terms with this fundamental truth about LSD only after years of intense experimentation...

Instead the emphasis shifted to broader questions related to social and political impact of the drug. A number of CIA-connected think tanks began to examine the relationship between the grass roots psychedelic scene and the New Left &#8230;.
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Taking Stock: From Tavistock to Woodstock
By Iona Miller
The counterculture failed to realize that in adopting the �spiritual drug, they were inadvertently sleeping with the enemy, the CIA. The therapeutic promise of the drug was lost on the conservative government. However, it still gave rise to the Human Potential movement and mind spas like Esalen, which also had a root in CIA experiments in extraordinary human potential, parapsychology, and creativity. As with many panaceas, the substance is both a cure and a poison a dream to some, a nightmare to others.

http://espionagecent...hats_new_2.html
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MKULTRA
Project MK-ULTRA was first brought to wide public attention in 1975 by the U.S. Congress, through investigations by the Church Committee, and by a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission. Investigative efforts were hampered by the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MK-ULTRA files destroyed in 1973; the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations relied on the sworn testimony of direct participants and on the relatively small number of documents that survived Helms' destruction order.[6]

Although the CIA insists that MK-ULTRA-type experiments have been abandoned, 14-year CIA veteran Victor Marchetti has stated in various interviews that the CIA routinely conducts disinformation campaigns and that CIA mind control research continued. In a 1977 interview, Marchetti specifically called the CIA claim that MK-ULTRA was abandoned a "cover story."[7][8]

On the Senate floor in 1977, Senator Ted Kennedy said:
The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an "extensive testing and experimentation" program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens "at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign." Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to "unwitting subjects in social situations." At least one death, that of Dr. Olson, resulted from these activities. The Agency itself acknowledged that these tests made little scientific sense. The agents doing the monitoring were not qualified scientific observers.[9] To this day most specific information regarding MK-ULTRA remains highly classified.
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Evidence Suggests CIA Funded Experiments at Vermont State Hospital
TIMES ARGUS newspaper article,By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau Published: November 30, 2008
Few people in Vermont remember Dr. Robert W. Hyde, but one of his former patients cant forget him. The doctor was involved in one of the nation at a Boston hospital through funding that apparently originated with the CIA. Later, he became director of research at the Vermont State Hospital.....
http://www.timesargu...STIN/811300297/
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=================================
Books:
The Aquarian Conspiracy
by Marilyn Ferguson 1980
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*Storming Heaven:
LSD and the American Dream
by Jay Stevens
http://stormingheaven.com/
email reply from
Jay Stevens to you 1/21/14:
*

*Jerry,*

* Very interesting. I've encountered more than a few of these stories.
I live in southern Vermont, so tales of what happened up north have made there way to me.
Jay*

*From: Storming Heaven*

page 150

Harvard Professor, Tim Leary,s plan

The consciousness-expanding drugs unplug these narrow programs. They unplug the ego, the game machinery, and mind (cluster of game concepts). And with the ego and mind unplugged, what is left? ...What is left is something Western culture knows little about. The open brain.......
What would happen if you began to systematically unplug the egos of America? These were the questions Leary was asking himself, and the answer he arrived at was that whatever happened, it would be for the best. It was time to unplug the old mind of **** sapiens,so anew one could take shape. This was the psilocybin projects hidden agenda, and the odd thing about it was that it seemed to come from a higher level of consciousness, a higher power. ..."A historical movement that would inevitably change man at the very center of his nature ,his consciousness."

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ACID DREAMS
The Complete Social History of LSD:
The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond
by, Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain
http://www.levity.com/aciddreams/

Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/

Cannabis: An apology
http://www.independe...ogy-440730.html
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on Google Books website
Surviving Evil: CIA Mind Control Experiments in Vermont
By Karen Wetmore
Manitou Communications, Inc., Jun 2, 2014

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/30/667946/-

CIA Experiments at Vermont State Hospital

Yet here we are 35 years later, and some information is still leaking out, in this case in the pages of a small, but noteworthy paper in Rutland, Vermont. The Rutland Herald won a Pulitzer Prize back in 2001. Reporter Louis Porter deserves one for his well-written expose on CIA experiments at Vermont State Hospital, and the purported participation of its head psychiatrist, Dr. Robert W. Hyde.

Throughout his article, Porter is careful not to claim too much. He constructs a circumstantial case for the use of experiments on mental patients, using archival and legal documents. He relies heavily on the testimony of former Hyde patient Karen Wetmore and her legal and medical defenders. No one at Vermont State Hospital today claims any knowledge of any drug or electoshock experimentation, nor has any professional who worked with Dr. Hyde, who died in 1976, come forward to verify Wetmore's claims.

As the article describes it, Karen Wetmore began receiving psychiatric care as a child and adolescent. She was diagnosed in the early 1960s with "hysteria" (a diagnosis no longer in use in the psychiatric field), and then with dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia. Wetmore denies she has schizophrenia.

In any case, her medical records were reviewed by Dr. Thomas Fox, a Rutland, Vermont doctor who later served as "a top mental health official with the state of New Hampshire." Dr. Fox, who had never offered testimony as an "expert witness" in a civil lawsuit, came forward in Karen's case, horrified by what he saw in her treatment. Even without any CIA involvement, her treatment was scandalous -- involuntary administration of drugs, long periods of isolation. Dr. Fox wrote in her deposition (emphasis added):

As Louis Porter documents, Karen Wetmore's doctor had connections with CIA researchers and psychologists. It only took me a few minutes to double-check with my sources to see that Robert Hyde had helped co-author two studies cited in the CIA-funded 1961 book, The Manipulation of Human Behavior. Along with LSD-experimenter, Army psychiatrist Max Rinkel, Hyde and other researchers wrote articles on "Experimental schizophrenia-like symptoms" and "Clinical and physiochemical psychosis."

"I became convinced, based on the record, that Karen had been mistreated at certain phases of her treatment in (Waterbury), and that, from a professional standpoint, the way in which we police ourselves, the way in which we keep each other ethical and competent, when we identify that, we (members of our profession) should do something about it," Fox said in a deposition in the lawsuit to Wetmore and the state's lawyer. "That's my feeling, you should act on it."

He wrote in an outline that he prepared for her lawsuit in 2000:* "I must conclude, in my opinion, that Karen was involved in drug experimentation without her knowledge or consent."*

If anything, the Porter article is a little too circumspect regarding Hyde's CIA ties. John Marks interviewed CIA personnel back in the 1970s, who verified Hyde's CIA credentials. According to Marks's sources, Hyde "advised the CIA on using LSD in covert operations" (p. 65, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate). He had his own special MKULTRA subproject to use as a funding conduit. Thus, while many MKULTRA contract researchers were unwitting recipients of CIA funding over the years, Hyde was not one of those. He was, to quote a certain vice president-elect (out of context, to be sure), "the real deal."

Nor was the use of mental patients for drug experimentation quite the scandal in the 1960s it would be today. In an article by Marvin Zuckerman from the 1960s on "Hallucinations, Reported Sensations, and Images," published in Sensory Deprivation: Fifteen Years of Research (1969, ed. by J.P. Zubek), we find the following (p. 121):

There's more to the Malitz et al. study, but the point here is that there was mass use of psychiatric patients who were given potent hallucinogens and other drugs to study phenomena of interest to the CIA, for example, sensory deprivation.

Malitz, Wilkens, and Esecover (1962) have presented data on 100 randomly selected chronic schizophrenic patients, and 57 acute psychiatric patients, and 42 normals administered one of three drugs: d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), d-l-methyl lysergic acid diethylamide (MLD), or d-l-acetyl lysergic acid diethylamide (ALD)....

The content of the drug-induced visual hallucinations was similar to the RVS [Reported Visual Stimulation] phenomena of sensory deprivation (e.g., abstract and geometrical forms, lattice work, flashes,and human, animal, and familiar forms).

In the infamous case of Ewen Cameron at Allen Memorial Hospital at McGill University in Montreal, LSD and other drugs were combined with electroshock, induced sleep or coma, and forced indoctrination in attempts to use patients as involuntary subjects in direct attempts to brainwash patients and induce new personalities or memories.

Porter's article traces the career of Robert Hyde, from the CIA-funded studies at Boston Psychopathic Hospital (now known as Massachusetts Mental Health Center) to Butler Health Center in Providence, R.I., to Vermont State Hospital. While MKULTRA experiments have been documented at both Boston Psychopathic and Butler, to date no one has placed such experimentation at Vermont State Hospital. As for Hyde, he was a highly regarded doctor in his time. Records online show him as a Sponsoring Member of the National Mental Health Committee. The University of Vermont College of Medicine has a "Medical Scholarship Fund" in his name.

Of course, the bulk of MKULTRA records were destroyed, and Porter is left to build a circumstantial case, from documents, and from the nearly destroyed memory of a former mental patient and likely subject of Dr. Hyde's experimentation. Porter's article cites a "1994 Government Accounting Office report on the clandestine research notes that at least 15 of the 80 facilities around North America known to have participated in the research remain unidentified."

Porter concludes:

It is not my intent to reproduce all of Mr. Porter's excellent article here. The point is to whet your appetite and send you off to the link. But a few conclusions of my own are in order.

Wetmore and her advocates could not unequivocally link her case to the CIA's research activities at other institutions through government documents from the agency, but histories of the CIA's psychiatric testing, other documents and a preponderance of circumstantial evidence around Wetmore's treatment based on her medical records suggest the Vermont State Hospital may have been one of the sites for secret experimentation.

First, it should be no news to anyone that the CIA cannot be trusted to produce evidence of their own wrong-doing. If too long is taken to get the investigatory machinery underway, crucial evidence can and will be destroyed. One only has to look at the controversy last Spring over the CIA's destruction of the interrogation videotapesof Abu Zubaydah.

Second, despite the efforts of many, it seems clear that there is much we don't know about our own history. And what sometimes we seem to know is only received knowledge or wisdom, repeated often enough by reputable sources, such that a false history is constructed. My one criticism of the Porter article concerns the way he traces U.S. torture back to Soviet and Chinese prototypes. This myth has been deconstructedby me, and also at length by the noted researcher Darius Rejali in his massive study,Torture and Democracy.

Finally, it is crucial that we understand that the resolution of these issues lies in our hands, not that of politicians, or of Obama in particular. Without an outcry by Americans, their own history, and the punishment of criminals in our midst who misused the public trust to engage in actions outside the pale of normal ethical behavior, who were responsible for serious harm or even death to vulnerable people in their care will go unpunished.

It is a short step, ethically, and perhaps politically, from unethical conduct upon mental patients, to lying about the causes for war, and the deaths of a million innocents, as in Iraq. If we don't do something about it, history will not absolve us.

My thanks to Austin K. for tipping me to Porter's article.

Also posted at Invictus

KINGS COLLAGE

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/depts/ps/research/neurobiologialmechanisms/depersonalisationresearchunit.aspx

Depersonalisation Research Unit

Depersonalisation Disorder (DPD) constitutes, according to the Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistic Manual (DSM) IV, a feeling of detachment or estrangement from one's self. The individual may feel like an automaton or as if he or she is living in a dream or a movie. There may be a sensation of being an outside observer of ones mental processes, ones body or parts of ones body.' People who experience depersonalisation may, at the same time, experience de-realisation, the sense that the external world is strange or unreal.

People with a major psychiatric disorder, including severe anxiety or panic disorder, depression, post traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia, and people with neurological conditions such as migraine and epilepsy, can experience depersonalisation as a symptom. People who do not have mental health or neurological problems can also experience depersonalisation when they are in states of fatigue, fear, stress, emotional turmoil or meditation, or after taking drugs like cannabis or Ecstasy.

The Depersonalisation Research Unit within the Section of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry carries out research to better understand depersonalisation both as an illness and a symptom.

People with DPD are recruited to studies through the only specialist clinic for depersonalisation in the UK, based at The Maudsley Hospital, where members of the Research Unit undertake clinical work. People are referred here from all over the country. The Research Unit now holds a database of information given by more than 400 people who have DPD.

One of the research team has developed the Cambridge Depersonalisation Scale, a resource for researchers in the field to measures peoples experience of depersonalisation.


download the Cambridge Depersonalisation Scale 

There are many theories about what causes depersonalisation. It might be induced by overwhelming anxiety or an early traumatic event. In these circumstances, becoming detached from one's body may seem a useful means of coping, but in some people, the depersonalisation then may become autonomous and a chronic disorder. Neurological theories include a disruption in the parts of the brain that integrate incoming sensory information with our internal representation of the Self (the temporal lobes). A specific part of the temporal lobe, the amygdala, which is responsible for processing emotion, may be crucial.

Two of the Unit completed studies using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) have shown significant differences in the way people who experience DPD and the way healthy controls process emotional stimuli and remember emotional words.

The Unit research has also shown that people with DPD have a low skin conductance response to unpleasant stimuli: this suggests an inhibitory mechanism on emotional processing. Skin conductance is when the skin momentarily becomes a better conductor of electricity because external or internal stimuli are physiologically arousing and help create an emotional response: measuring arousal is an important component of measuring emotion.

Other studies of people with DPD have found evidence of disrupted feelings of empathy for others; differences in heart rates; and differences in levels of hormones that deal with stress.

There is not yet evidence-based treatment for depersonalisation. Over the years, in-depth psychotherapy, electroconvulsive treatment, antipsychotic medication and antidepressants have all been tested. Two of the Units recent studies have yielded promising results that are being further investigated: these involved Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and, in another trial, participants took lamotrigine, an anti-convulsant medication.

Members of the Section of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry are the authors of a book about using cognitive behaviour therapy for depersonalisation. Overcoming Depersonalisation and Feelings of Unreality, A Self-Help Guide Using Cognitive Behavioural Techniques (by Dawn Baker, Elaine Hunter, Emma Lawrence & Anthony David with contributions by Mauricio Sierra & Nick Medford) was published in 2007 by Constable and Robinson as part of the consumer-friendly CBT-based Overcoming Series. Visit www.constablerobinson.com/.

A member of the research unit has published an up-to date review of depersonalization and this provides a reference book on depersonalization dealing with the subject from a wide range of perspectives covering historical, conceptual, clinical, trans-cultural, pharmacological and neurobiological factors. Depersonalization: A New Look at a Neglected Syndrome (by Mauricio Sierra, 2009, Cambridge University Press). Visit http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item2327426/?site_locale=en_GB.

Written information detailing the results of the Units research projects, and other studies in depersonalisation dating back to the 1930s are listed in the Papers, Articles, Books section.

Patient referrals should be sent to Dr Elaine Hunter

Institute of Psychiatry
Department of Psychosis Studies, PO68
De Crespigny Park
London SE5 8AF

Patients wanting more information on how to be referred should contact
Steven Wallace; 0207 848 0138
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## codeblue213 (Feb 15, 2010)

People, please read JNSX's post! Amazing story! Best wishes to you! I need to get the nerve to put my history on here. 15 plus years of DP/DR from the only hit of acid I've ever tried in my life!


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## Visual (Oct 13, 2010)

codeblue213 said:


> People, please read JNSX's post! Amazing story! Best wishes to you! I need to get the nerve to put my history on here. 15 plus years of DP/DR from the only hit of acid I've ever tried in my life!


Was reading JNSX's remarkable post about the CIA spiking drugs (figures don't it). And now wondering about your experience if anyone else was so severely harmed by the same batch of acid as you?


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## codeblue213 (Feb 15, 2010)

I must of been given something real bad. Thing of it is no one else in the group got sick off it. They left me in a corner to rot for 8 hours, instead of trying to get me through it. I might of been ok if someone talked me down. Then a month later I got catatonic and put in the hospital. Already had DP, didnt know what it was back then. Then I was put on over 10 different meds in a 5 month stay with no help from those. after came the CAT scans,MRIs. They found nothing. I was not responding so they had to result to ECT 15 times. woke me up a little, gave me severe memory loss, which took years to get back. But I had some good years with very little DP. For no apparent reason it's back again. But im going to whip its ass again!


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## Visual (Oct 13, 2010)

codeblue213 said:


> I must of been given something real bad. Thing of it is no one else in the group got sick off it. They left me in a corner to rot for 8 hours, instead of trying to get me through it. I might of been ok if someone talked me down. Then a month later I got catatonic and put in the hospital. Already had DP, didnt know what it was back then. Then I was put on over 10 different meds in a 5 month stay with no help from those. after came the CAT scans,MRIs. They found nothing. I was not responding so they had to result to ECT 15 times. woke me up a little, gave me severe memory loss, which took years to get back. But I had some good years with very little DP. For no apparent reason it's back again. But im going to whip its ass again!


Its something else that a person can be totally non-functional and have great brain scans! I've heard that cadavers can have really great blood tests (pre-embalmed one would assume).

Its weird that you went catatonic a whole month later. Was it this month when you first had the DP? Since you were the only one that got sick do you think maybe the trauma of the bad trip was what brought on the DP?


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## codeblue213 (Feb 15, 2010)

Visual Dude said:


> Its something else that a person can be totally non-functional and have great brain scans! I've heard that cadavers can have really great blood tests (pre-embalmed one would assume).
> 
> Its weird that you went catatonic a whole month later. Was it this month when you first had the DP? Since you were the only one that got sick do you think maybe the trauma of the bad trip was what brought on the DP?


I think the LSD cause PTSD which brought on DP.


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## BlackParasol (Nov 25, 2010)

Even 70% is something to be proud of.







Congratulations on making it as far as you have, and I hope that things only get better for you.


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## bactothebasics (Apr 17, 2011)

I respect what this individual(JNSX) feels about marijauna and what he feels it did to him.

However I have read and reread this post several times and it is very clear to me that this individuals opinions about using marijauana for recreational and medical use are not based on pure science and medical research but based on his emotional unprofessional laymans limited personal experiences and local environment and also a poor choice in friends. This individual obviously was very troubled and insecure from the start long before he ever used marijuana. There also seems to have been a complete lack of parental guidance and supervision in this individuals life as a child and teenager, as evident in the post since the only mention of the parents was "I went to my parents house and hid in the bedroom", also there was no mention of brothers and sisters. Sadly a conventional and loving familly life in this individuals life sadly seems to be missing, which says alot.

The bottom line is that this individual seems to be over simplyfying the causes of his troubled life by assigning all the blame on using marijauna that was possibly tainted with other drugs when it seems to me that he was a troubled unsupervised and poorly raised individual from the very the start.

Should we ban alcohol because of a minority of Alcoholics? Should we ban Kentucky Fried Chicked because 20% of Americans are now classified as morbidly obesse? Should we ban plastic model cement because some will get high on its fumes? Should we ban plastic bags because some will put the bags over their heads in an attempt to get the high from oxygen deprivation? There is always going to be a minority of folks that will find a way to abuse and misuse everything on the face of the planet. Why punish the majority for the the abuses and misuses of the minority? Besides making something illegal to own or use often incourages misuse and abuses and all to often creates more crime.

Why am I replying to this post? Simple. I have a severe case of ADHD disorder. I have been prescribed every known legal ADHD drug on the market plus a few experimental drugs not on the market to treat and deal with this disorder and all without success mostly due to the intolerable side affects of all these legal ADHD treatment drugs. I have found that self-medicating with marijuana to eradicate the symptoms and problems of ADHD gives me a near normal chance at leading a productive, peaceful and happy life and with no negative side affects. Without marijuana to treat the ADHD I can barely focus on even the simple joy of reading a newspaper. It is very interesting to read old medical journals from the 19th century and how they recomended using marijuana to treat many common ailments and injuries. Marijuana was basically banned early in the 20th century for reasons of racial prejuduce, that being that it was associated with Mexico and Mexicans imagrating into the country and the Anslinger-Hearst-Dupont conspriacy of 1938 which had to do with the powerful petrochemical interests lobbying against cannibus.

Simply put JNSX is not qualified to scientifically judge the growing acceptance and push to legalize medical marijuana "as a pretense for legalization by the many who are preoccupied with it and that there are better remedies". Since JNSX makes no mention of better and specific remedies. I can only assume that he is implying the use of over the counter and prescription drugs as better remedies. JNSX obviously hasn't taken the time to read the many harmful and dangerous side affects[some worse than the ailments themselves such as liver and kidney damage, hypertension, thoughts of suicide] listed on most legal over the counter and prescription medications. JNSX has also failed to take into account that many prescription drugs are too expensive for many living on fixed incomes. Marijuana when grown at home is affordable to almost everyone and you don't have to worry about dangerous counterfit pot or that it is tainted with other dangerous chemicals or drugs.

I support legalizing the recreational and medical use of marijauna. It should be treated, regulated, distributed and sold like alcohol. It would also help put an end to the deadly drug related violence and wars in Mexico. Legalizing marijuana is a win-win situation for everybody contrary to JNSX's anti-marijuana's unscientific opinions and views in his post.

Marijaunna is not the dangerous killer weed from Mexico as JNSX and some would have you believe. Like everything when used responsibly and in moderation its a wonderful gift from God and nature.

Am I a drug addict and or abuser? No. I use marijuana to treat my ADHD but you'll never see me stoned.
I'm an average middle income, married, middle aged working American who owns a home and has two beautiful healthy school aged children who are healthy and doing great.

P.S. I play a great game of golf.


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## jnsx (Feb 13, 2010)

x


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## jnsx (Feb 13, 2010)

[My responce to bactothebasics,

I feel I must defend my parents,they of course were not perfect but they were very wonderful, loving parents, they like other parents at that time were at a lost to grasp and respond appropriately to the sudden and rapid cultural changes taking place. (Younger people today, don't have any actual experience of the vast changes that have taking place since the early 60's.) Teenagers can effectively keep a lot of their activities from their parents,which I did at times. Also, I was at the age when I was excerting my independents from my parents. They understood and respected this. In any event, I loved them, thats why I went to them when I was having this trouble.

I must say however that your fantastic and speculative analysis of my story leads me to think that you have had psychological training or been around some kind of pop versions of it. Your inaccurate assumptions of my report remind me of the style used in medical reports of that "profession". My personal experiences with these reports were they usually had almost nothing to do with what I had said. Your erroneous and antiquated resort of family dynamics and depersonalizing me with the term "this individidual" also leds me to think this. I wasn't writing a compleat biography. You should ask yourself why you would indulge in this kind of wild speculations. Was it "logic",emotions or politics? I find this to be extremely malicious,dishonest and unethical. Do you really need to go to these lengths to support your politics and/or life style. Even if it is just for your medical concerns-it ain't right. Is it right to paint persons with diabilities as socially invalid and unreliable? Your ability to manufacture a fictious alternative of my life and family would put the best Marxist propagandist to shame. Discredit and smear the individual and the massage is invalid. Then again, maybe your just another addict.

I hope your children don't learn these values.

If you don't like negative stories about marijauna then perhaps you should pass by the tales of the depersonalized or perhaps you could spread stories of our lunacies,to counteract the political damage it may do to your cause.

See this persons story about his pot use and reasons for quiting. Its interesting that he gets the same kind of attacks on his personage ,as you did to me. Like its from a script or political think tank. I've found this mad dog strategy repeated on various other sites.

See: Marijuana is a Trap
http://www.henrymakow.com/pothead_says_marijuana_is_a_tr.html

MEDICAL MARIJUANA, THE NEW SNAKE OIL?

When you look online, the list of illness and social maladies that marijuana will fix are growing. Some even think its the messiah and say it will save the world. Others see it as a battle cry for revolution,so much for peace and love.

In the early years of my depersonalization I found thar beer gave me a certain amount of relief and made it easier to cope with socializing. However I relized the dangers of this and now seldom drink.

I agree with you that marijauna will be legal soon as will assisted suicide.

I do hope you have relief from your ADHD and wish you well with that.

JNSX


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## Jpa (Oct 10, 2012)

jnsx said:


> [My responce to bactothebasics,
> 
> I feel I must defend my parents,they of course were not perfect but they were very wonderful, loving parents, they like other parents at that time were at a lost to grasp and respond appropriately to the sudden and rapid cultural changes taking place. (Younger people today, don't have any actual experience of the vast changes that have taking place since the early 60's.) Teenagers can effectively keep a lot of their activities from their parents,which I did at times. Also, I was at the age when I was excerting my independents from my parents. They understood and respected this. In any event, I loved them, thats why I went to them when I was having this trouble.
> 
> ...


. Hi I've had depersonalization disorder for 4 months and I have a huge question for you. I am desperate. I would love to talk to you because I feel like I'm in a spot where I came out of the detachment but have no clue who I am and for some reason felt more connected to my family while I was in the middle of it. If I sent u my number would u contact me? I'm so curious to see how u managed to live like this for so long. I feel like I'm at a stopping point and am going to have to live like this. I could really use some advice. Thx!


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## kate_edwin (Aug 9, 2009)

Please don't randomly send new people your phone number.....


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## Guest (Dec 6, 2014)

Bump


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