I’ve blogged about Leonard Cohen’s use of LSD on this illuminated scroll before. Today as I was sorting stories for the Remnants Flipboard when I came across this bizarre report from Abel Danger about Leonard Cohen’s involvement with early CIA LSD experiments in the 1950′s. Here’s the word…
The man in the photo, taken at McGill University in 1951, is 17-year-old Leonard Cohen. He’s wearing a blindfold, and his ears, fingers and hands are encased in padded restraints which prevent movement and cut off all sensory stimulation. This is one of Dr. Donald Hebb’s famous/notorious sensory isolation experiments, for which student volunteers were paid the then-princely sum of $20 a day. Some of the volunteers were unable to stand this torture for more than a few hours. Some tore off the bandages and banged on the door of the isolation chamber, screaming and crying to be released.
Back in the 1980s, when I lived next door to him, Leonard Cohen once told me he enjoyed these experiments. He said he learned to dissociate, leave his body, and go on long voyages through the universe. The experience was so pleasant that later he volunteered to be placed in a flotation tank while on LSD. He enjoyed that, too.
We now know that D.O. Hebb’s sensory isolation experiments became the foundation for torture techniques used by the CIA etc. in its secret prisons around the planet. Hebb, a neurologist, had CIA clearance, and also allegedly experimented on small children, mainly orphans and aboriginal children who arrived in his laboratory courtesy of McGill and the RCMP. Having access to human guinea pigs made Hebb’s research that much more impressive. He also, of course, worked with rats and monkeys. It seems quite likely that his famous “rat” study on the effects of sensory isolation on IQ, would have been based on his experiments with children. McGill, at the time, was controlled by a network that included many British-trained, mind-controlled pedophiles with an interest in eugenics – and probably still is today.
I don’t have any proof that any of this is true or false, but it’s interesting to note that Cohen may be counted among early countercultural revolutionaries like Ken Kesey who were part of similar LSD experiments and went on to create groundbreaking works of art. Here’s the man himself speaking on the poetic mind…
Stay Awake!
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Music posts
