Mario Arturo Iannaccone
Rivoluzione psichedelica

It's true that sometimes, to fully understand a theme like the psychedelic revolution, which gives its name to the substantial essay by Mario Arturo Iannaccone, it is advisable to go back in time. The author, in fact, starts from those religious ceremonies that took place in classical Greece and were called "Eleusinian Mysteries." These rituals reached ancient Rome, the caput mundi, intact, and celebrated the myth of Persephone being abducted from her mother Demeter by the will of Hades, king of the underworld. During the ceremony, it seems the officiants consumed a liquid called kykeon, which induced a hallucinatory and intoxicating state, perhaps derived from ergot (or something similar), a fungal parasite found in barley or rye grains and containing ergotamine alkaloids, the precursor to what would much later become LSD or LSD-25 lysergic acid diethylamide.

But all these pagan rites disappeared with the advent of the monotheistic Christian religion and for a long time were unheard of. Or at least they remained within the realm of those pre-Christian oddities, although it could happen that any harvests of barley or rye grains infested with strange unknown parasites led to slightly acidic baking, with consequent undesirable effects on those who consumed such slightly altered foods. Additionally, the use of drugs was not entirely absent, considering that the consumption of opiates was the domain of eccentric artistic personalities like Coleridge, De Quincey, and Artaud, all seeking satisfying effects both to cure anxiety states and to achieve a state of greater awareness and almost mystical enlightenment.

But it was only in 1938 that a chemist from the Swiss company Sandoz, Albert Hoffman, in the search for a substance to alleviate respiratory crises, accidentally discovered LSD, then directly testing it on himself in 1943. The effect was bewildering and gained prominence not only in scientific research but also for use in the control and psychological manipulation of people who were subjected to the first in corpore vili experiments. Since it was the early years after the end of World War II, the interest of certain organizations like the CIA was very keen.

As Iannaccone aptly describes, the spread of a new substance like LSD remained confined to narrow cultural circles like those expressed by influential authors of the Beat Generation such as Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac, before impacting a wider social scale, thanks to psychological and psychotherapeutic studies conducted by university professor Timothy Leary. He was convinced of the necessity of realizing the expansion of consciousness by resorting to LSD, quickly rising to the role of guru for the generation that fueled the youth protests of the 1960s in the USA and the Western world. This cultural revolution, with wide repercussions in the arts and rock music, experienced excesses like those recorded in the famous Summer of Love of 1967, when the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco became the epicenter of an occupation by numerous flower children or hippies dedicated to an alternative lifestyle, in which the consumption of lysergic acid and opiates was widespread. Among many oddities, one might encounter the group of Merry Pranksters following an eccentric artist like Ken Kesey (the author of the book "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"). Overall, a short-lived revolution, if we only consider that already in the fall of 1967, the hippies themselves held a funeral to celebrate the end of their movement, while a year earlier the U.S. government had declared the trade and consumption of hallucinogenic substances illegal.

Iannaccone is detailed in recounting an era full of incredible characters and episodes, also mentioning ambiguous individuals, like Leary himself, closely tied to the CIA, and sinister ones. Among these, certainly not only the occultist Alistair Crowley but also the writer William Burroughs who, after taking LSD, spent many years in a state of mental unease because he believed he was inhabited by a demon that tormented him. Not to mention an enigmatic figure like Roland Stark, who dealt lysergic acid shortly after its ban and orchestrated what was defined as the "Hippy Mafia." He, a sort of polyglot dandy globetrotter, then disappeared, not without later being involved in murky political connections with subversive organizations such as the Red Brigades themselves (he was investigated as a person informed of the facts related to the Aldo Moro affair in 1978, only to be cleared thanks to high-level U.S. connections).

The epilogue of this whole affair brings us to the present day, as the author himself suggests how, in medical and psychotherapeutic circles, the conviction has arisen that the lysergic substance can find careful and effective use in a therapeutic path for certain pathologies. In cases of severe alcoholism, depressive crisis, post-traumatic stress in war veterans and women victims of rape, LSD may prove useful for the healing of individuals affected by such dysfunctions. All assuming limited doses controlled by the attending medical team.

In short, without considering that the hallucinogenic substance can be taken like a nice glass of fresh water or like a modest dose of ecstasy at a rave party, the fact remains that a controlled use of LSD is possible. Perhaps while comfortably seated in an armchair, with pleasant background music like that of Bach or Mozart, carefully avoiding heavy metal tracks played at full volume (the consequences could be unpredictable...).