Alan Piper Changes the Psychedelic Narrative

     A novel published in 1933, describes the isolation of a hallucinogenic drug from an ergot-type fungus. It remarkably predates the discovery the hallucinogenic properties of the ergot-derived alkaloid lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) by ten years. It also identifies ergot as the secret psychoactive sacrament of the ancient mysteries forty years before this hypothesis became a matter of academic and scientific investigation. In the novel, a central character plans to use an ergot derived drug as an agent of popular religious renewal, prefiguring the New Age religious revival initiated by the popular use of LSD. The story involves the mass testing of a hallucinogenic drug on the unsuspecting inhabitants of an isolated village almost twenty years before the Pont St Esprit incident of 1951, which has been ascribed to the CIA's plans for experimental dosing of unsuspecting civilians with psychoactive drugs. This article investigates how the author could have managed to foresee these future events in such prophetic detail and reveals the sources that were available. In this article the history of psychoactive drugs is set in the context of the political, scientific, literary, and philosophical culture of the interwar period and shows that the cultural history of psychoactive drugs is enhanced by such context.

Link to Piper's Paper

Link to Piper's Book : Strange Drugs Makes For Strange Bedfellows

     Psychedelic drugs and LSD in particular are associated with the Left Wing political radicalism and Hippie culture of the 1960s and as promising to usher in a world of peace love and understanding. However, the discovery of the powerful psychedelic drug LSD emerged in the shadow of the Second World War and has from the outset been a substance of interest to individuals of a radically conservative disposition such as Ernst Jünger, the close friend of Albert Hofmann who first synthesised LSD. That interest continues in the shape of elements of the present day Radical Right, who mix an interest in pre-war Volkish ideology and Nordic paganism with psychoactive drugs and contemporary right wing political thought. 

     ‘Strange Drugs make for Strange Bedfellows’ examines the promotion of conservative revolutionary thought within the New Age milieu, which includes contemporary psychedelia, and the interest of individuals from the Radical Right in the role of psychoactive drugs in traditional and contemporary Nordic shamanism. “The popular view of psychedelics regards these astonishing drugs as agents of positive personal and societal transformation, signposting humanity toward the Age of Aquarius. Yet there has always been an almost wilfully overlooked and sinister nightside to psychedelia’s sun-kissed Eden. 

     Alan Piper’s penetrating study delves deep in the murky historical backwaters of fascist thought, taking us on a long, strange, trip from the trenches to contemporary Nordic neo-paganism, where WWI warrior/philosopher Ernst Jünger’s personal and LSD informed relationship with Albert Hofmann rubs shoulders with arcane occult and right wing beliefs about psychedelics. Piper’s view that the qualities and experiences of LSD and other psychedelics suggests they are, perhaps, neutral tools that can be used to inform any philosophy, liberal or conservative will, rightfully, challenge and provoke many readers.