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Pot and LSD tested on Army volunteers

Jakobien

Alpiniste Kundalini
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28 Oct 2005
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658
Army doctors gave soldier volunteers synthetic marijuana, LSD and two dozen other psychoactive drugs during experiments aimed at developing chemical weapons that could incapacitate enemy soldiers, a psychiatrist who performed the research says in a new memoir.

The program, which ran at the Army's Edgewood, Md., arsenal from 1955 until about 1972, concluded that counterculture staples such as acid and pot were either too unpredictable or too mellow to be useful as weapons, psychiatrist James Ketchum said in an interview.

The program did yield one hallucinogenic weapon: softball-size artillery rounds that were filled with powdered quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, a deliriant of the belladonnoid family that had placed some research subjects in a sleeplike state and left them impaired for days.

Ketchum says the BZ bombs were stockpiled at an Army arsenal in Arkansas but never deployed. They were later destroyed.

The Army acknowledged the program's existence in 1975. Follow-up studies by the Army in 1978 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1981 found that volunteers suffered no long-term effects.


Insider's account

Ketchum's book, Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten, appears to be the first insider's account of experiments performed on about 2,000 soldier volunteers, says Steven Aftergood, a government-secrecy expert for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C. Ketchum self-published the book, which he sells on his website.

In an interview, Ketchum, 75, said he wrote the book to trigger a debate about the potential uses of non-lethal chemicals to incapacitate terrorists who take hostages or use human shields. "Incapacitating agents are designed to save lives," he said. "Isn't it at least something we should be thinking about?"

Such research, says chemical weapons opponent Edward Hammond, would not only be illegal under current international law but probably never should have been performed.

"There are things that have taken place in the past that should probably stay there," says Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project, an Austin group that opposes biological warfare.

Ketchum's memoir draws from previously classified files, including filmed experiments, and notes of tests given subjects before, during and after they were fed, sprayed or injected with mind-altering chemicals.

He says:

•LSD was rejected for weapons use because even soldiers on prolonged trips could carry out violent acts.

•Even especially powerful marijuana lacked "knockdown effect." It was rejected because its effects could be overcome simply by lying down and resting.

•Soldier volunteers were willing participants who knew the program's potential risks. Drugs given to soldiers were described in general terms but not named though "many seemed to find out through the grapevine."

•Intelligence reports of the time showed that Soviet researchers were planning a large-scale LSD program.

•The CIA ran a parallel program that sometimes gave hallucinogens secretly to unwitting citizens. The agency persuaded two Army doctors to carry out experiments for the CIA that the Army would not have authorized.

Ketchum says the Army phased out the hallucinogen project in about 1972, in part because disclosure of such research would have caused a "public relations problem."

Ketchum's notes suggest the Army's fears were not imaginary. They describe soldiers on "red oil," an especially powerful form of marijuana, who smirked for hours and found even routine spatial reasoning tests to be hilarious.

Soldiers under the influence of hallucinogens ate imaginary chickens, took showers in full uniform while smoking cigars and chatted with invisible people for two to three days at a time. One attempted to ride off on an imaginary horse while another played with kittens only he could see. Another described an order of toast as smelling "like a French whore."

Some of the researchers also took LSD "as a matter of curiosity," Ketchum says.

His lone trip, he adds, was "something of an anti-climax." Colors seemed more vivid and music more compelling, he remembers, but "there were no breakthroughs in consciousness, no Timothy Leary stuff."

At least two soldiers who received LSD in the 1950s later sued the Army, alleging that the drug later caused them to suffer memory loss, hallucinations and occasional outbursts of violence. The claims were denied.

After leaving the Army, Ketchum saw patients in a private psychiatric practice.

The experiments on human subjects ended in 1975, according to Jeff Smart, historian for the Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.

The United States signed a United Nations-sponsored chemical weapons ban in 1993 that outlawed incapacitating agents.

Calmative agents

Even so, the U.S. military has remained interested in researching non-lethal chemicals.

In 2000, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, a Quantico, Va., group run by all four major military branches, commissioned a study of the possible military uses of "calmative" pharmaceuticals such as anesthetics and serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

The Sunshine Project's Hammond, who obtained the study through the Freedom of Information Act, says using calmatives as weapons would also be outlawed by the 1993 chemical weapons ban. Ketchum says that is not clear.

In October 2002, Russian special forces used a calmative agent to subdue Islamist Chechen terrorists who were holding about 850 hostages in a Moscow theater. More than 120 hostages died from the drug's effects.

By Richard Willing, USA TODAY
 
G

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Assholes!

Making everything illegal so nobody can enjoy it anymore and then they start to use it for war...

Ohw well, it was some time ago and we still haven't seen anything that seems like a psychedelic weapon yet...
 

Pinealjerker

Elfe Mécanique
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5 Avr 2007
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456
Soldiers under the influence of hallucinogens ate imaginary chickens, took showers in full uniform while smoking cigars and chatted with invisible people for two to three days at a time. One attempted to ride off on an imaginary horse while another played with kittens only he could see. Another described an order of toast as smelling "like a French whore."
I wonder what 'hallucinogens' were responsible for that. Sounds more like the effects of a deliriant like Datura or Belladonna. I only once saw people and things that weren't really there, and that was when I combined 4 hits of acid with Datura tea. And I won't ever do that again! :shock:
 

Dantediv86

Holofractale de l'hypervérité
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18 Avr 2007
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2 264
Damn it's too late i would have joined them to get some of that marijuana! :lol:
No kidding those guys musta had fun if they didn't have BTs

well the part that sounds good is the one talking about the fact that thy want to use something to impair instead of kill

can you imagine they find a chemical weapon that stuns without killing?

it would be a nice think if instead of killing bullets guns actually shot stunning bullets
people instead of committing murder would commit tripper!
wouldn't that be cool?
excuse the divagation :p ...now i'll watch the documentary...
 

Monochromatic_Knight

Neurotransmetteur
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18 Avr 2007
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44
For those interested you should also check out Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond.
http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Compl ... 0802130623

The Documentary "Crazy Rulers of the World" also touches upon this research.

R.U. Sirius has a good interview with Ketchum here:
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/01/10/ ... l-warfare/

And just looking up the CIA projects BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, and MKULTRA will provide you with a ton of info.

Otherwise, I find the Frank Olson story to be intriguing.
http://www.frankolsonproject.org/
 

ararat

Holofractale de l'hypervérité
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8 Juin 2006
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3 374
yeah that way you don't come home from war not only with a post-stress-disorder but a psychosis.
 

GOD

Holofractale de l'hypervérité
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14 Jan 2006
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Hey marc , or anyone else who knows ,

I beamed the .rm file down from your post above ...... How do i open it please ??? With what program ???
 

Psychoid

Holofractale de l'hypervérité
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27 Jan 2007
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4 506
misery a dit:
post-stress-disorder

Haha that reminds me of the song "Close your eyes" by Yahel, where it keeps repeeating "post-traumatic stress disorder" ^^

I know I'm very out of topic XD
 

aE3

Neurotransmetteur
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21 Août 2007
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30
GOD a dit:
Hey marc , or anyone else who knows ,

I beamed the .rm file down from your post above ...... How do i open it please ??? With what program ???

.rm is a real media video file.
You'll either need to install Real Player (which I wouldn't bother with) or media player classic with the real alternative pack.
You run the real alternative & it'll install the necessary codecs to playback the file.
Or VLC which has the codecs built in :
http://www.videolan.org/
 

aE3

Neurotransmetteur
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21 Août 2007
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Pinealjerker a dit:
Soldiers under the influence of hallucinogens ate imaginary chickens, took showers in full uniform while smoking cigars and chatted with invisible people for two to three days at a time. One attempted to ride off on an imaginary horse while another played with kittens only he could see. Another described an order of toast as smelling "like a French whore."
I wonder what 'hallucinogens' were responsible for that. Sounds more like the effects of a deliriant like Datura or Belladonna. I only once saw people and things that weren't really there, and that was when I combined 4 hits of acid with Datura tea. And I won't ever do that again! :shock:
The acid can't be strong enough.
Also when one takes acid knowingly, it's easier to keep a certain eye on reality.
Someone not really knowing about tripping won't necessarily know what is going on, not even knowing they are tripping, or if they do notice it not know what to do with it & confusion gets wider & more intense giving more powerful effects & taking the pschye into states of intense questioning & analysing & of course, unprepared & unable to cope with what is revealed they flip out into spaced out zone & go & sit in the corner & talk with Gerald the Giraffe for a while.
 

????????

Holofractale de l'hypervérité
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27 Sept 2007
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3 310
The fact that they even conceived of using marijuana as a weapon illustrates their complete ignorance of the plant.
 
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