Michael Hollingshead

Michael Hollingshead was a British researcher in psychedelic drugs and hallucinogens including psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide, among others, at Harvard University in the mid-twentieth century. He is the father of comedian Vanessa Hollingshead.

Biography

Hollingshead was the Executive Secretary for the Institute of British-American Cultural Exchange in 1961.[1] Dr. John Beresford received a package of LSD from Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland at a time when it was still legal to use in experiments, and he in turn gave one gram of it to Hollingshead. One experiment Hollingshead conducted involved studying the effects on web-weaving by spiders under the influence of the drug. He claims to have first tried LSD by licking the spoon of a batch of LSD-laced cake icing he had packed in 2 mayonnaise jars for transport. (This jar was to become an object of psychedelic legend.) After his first experience, he contacted Aldous Huxley who suggested he get in contact with Timothy Leary to discuss LSD's potential.

In September 1961 he met Leary in Cambridge, and was invited to live in Leary's house and teach a course at Harvard. Shortly thereafter, he introduced Leary to LSD. He participated in the Concord Prison Experiment with Leary, Ralph Metzner, and several others in 1962. For the next few years he worked with psychedelic therapists, and lived at Millbrook with Leary and Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass). He then set up a New York-based project of his own together with Jean Houston, where guided trips were performed and data gathered which, according to Hollingshead's book, formed the core material for Masters' and Houston's book The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience. In 1965 he moved to London where he opened the World Psychedelic Center. He also worked with experimental film, collaborating on the Scott Bartlett short subject "Moon 69", inspired by the 1969 Project Apollo orbit of the moon.

Hollingshead is an associate of the Castalia Foundation, a contributor to the Psychedelic Review, and interviewed Robert Anton Wilson for High Times magazine in 1980.[2]

Among those Hollingshead is reputed to have introduced to LSD are: Timothy Leary, William S. Burroughs, Roman Polanski, Allen Ginsberg, Storm Thorgerson, Maynard Ferguson, Donovan, Keith Richards, Paul Krassner, Houston Smith, Paul Lee, Pete LaRoca, Charles Mingus, Saul Steinberg, Alan Watts, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison.

Bibliography and articles

References

  1. ↑ Best Sellers (1987) by Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation, University of Scranton
  2. ↑ Robert Anton Wilson: The Author of The Illuminatus Trilogy Expounds on Multiple Realities, Guerrilla Ontology, LSD, Life Extension and Things that Go Bump in the Night by Michael Hollingshead. High Times (1980)

External links

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