Mescaline Experiment with Dr. Humphry Osmond and Christopher Mayhew

[~lostgurl~]

A new entry has been added to Drugs Archive

Description:
9 min.

Humphry Osmond was the British psychiatrist who coined the term "psychedelic". This short video documents an experiment in 1955 in which he administered mescaline to Christopher Mayhew, a member of parliament. Mayhew ingested 400mg of mescaline hydrochloride and recorded his experience on camera.

The footage was originally supposed to be broadcast on BBC.
Mayhew himself maintains that it was a genuine mystical experience which "took place outside time" and wanted it to be shown. However, an "expert" committee of psychiatrists, philosophers, and theologians reviewed the footage and reached a unanimous verdict that Mayhew's experience was not a valid mystical experience. So it was never broadcast.

To check it out, rate it or add comments, visit Mescaline Experiment with Dr. Humphry Osmond and Christopher Mayhew
The comments you make there will appear in the posts below.

[Expat98]

"To fathom hell or soar angelic,
Just take a pinch of psychedelic"
- Dr Humphry Osmond, 1956

Here is an interesting article about the history of this video.

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Steve Coogan addresses a camera with his best old-school BBC announcer voice and declares that he's indulging in a fashionable exercise which most young people are trying these days. "I'm being 'fellated,' he says, by a young girl known as a 'groupie'. It's an interesting feeling, and certainly quite relaxing." As Coogan relishes the moment, the scene fades out.

A passage of time denoted, Coogan addresses the TV audience again, informing us that his initial feelings of euphoria have been replaced by those of "indequacy and gloom. It's not an experience I can see catching on. But neither is it one which I regret."

This memorable scene, part of the remarkable 'Attitudes Night' sketch in the first episode of The Day Today (BBC2, 19/01/94) is funny in itself as a pastiche of archive TV, but much funnier when you know that it references an actual, albeit untransmitted, incident from 1955 in which an equally plummy BBC presenter indulged in an equally counter-cultural television experiment.

Quite possibly one of the most famous 'unbroadcast' television shows of all time, the event - intended as a Panorama special - features the endearingly staid and proper-sounding Christopher Paget Mayhew MP demonstrating the effects of the mind-altering drug mescaline hydrochloride. With all the predictably comical incongruities which accompany this.

Christopher Mayhew was initially the golden boy of Labour politics, elected in 1945 as MP for South Norfolk and rapidly promoted to Parliamentary Under-Secretary. After a defeat in 1950 he was later returned for Woolwich East the following year.

Christopher Mayhew

An articulate and personable figure, Mayhew was also pretty well-known as a TV personality by this time. As well as being the chosen face for Labour party political broadcasts, he'd also presented a well-received series of half-hour documentaries on the subject of religion entitled Men Seeking God, which had also yielded a spin-off book of the same title (London George Allen & Unwin, 1955).

So what led such an upstanding pillar of the political scene to take part in such an eyebrow-raising experiment? The answer, as is so often the case, is that he was led astray by a rebellious mate from school.

The schoolfriend in question was one Dr Humphry Fortescue Osmond, a scientist who became interested in the field of hallucinogens in 1952 while working on a cure for mental illness. Having found himself eschewed by the British psychiatric establishment who were suspicious of his experiments, he upped sticks and relocated to Canada where, purportedly funded and protected by the CIA, he continued his research at the Weyburn Mental Hospital, Saskatchewan.

Dr. Humphry Osmond

A key historical figure, often overlooked, it was Dr Osmond who, the following year, embraced science-fiction writer Aldous Huxley with the fruits of his research, introducing him to the world of mescaline and who, during the ensuing correspondence, first coined the word "psychedelic". As a direct result of his experiences at the receiving end of Osmond's spoon, Huxley wrote his infamous guinea-pig dissertation 'The Doors Of Perception' (first published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus Ltd 1954), a book which would later become a veritable bible amongst the 60s acid subculture.

Osmond was thrilled by the results. Huxley, despite modest claims that he was 'a poor visualiser', was an expressive and illustrative writer and skillfully translated his experiences to the printed page, drawing on an eager interest and knowledge of historical art and culture to help take the reader on an easily-digestible 77-page psychedelic trip.

I took my pill at eleven. An hour and a half later, I was sitting in my study, looking intently at a small glass vase. The vase contained only three flowers-a full-blown Belie of Portugal rose, shell pink with a hint at every petal's base of a hotter, flamier hue; a large magenta and cream-colored carnation; and, pale purple at the end of its broken stalk, the bold heraldic blossom of an iris. Fortuitous and provisional, the little nosegay broke all the rules of traditional good taste. At breakfast that morning I had been struck by the lively dissonance of its colors. But that was no longer the point. I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation-the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.

"Is it agreeable?" somebody asked. (During this Part of the experiment, all conversations were recorded on a dictating machine, and it has been possible for me to refresh my memory of what was said.)

"Neither agreeable nor disagreeable," I answered. "it just is."

The Doors of Perception - Aldous Huxley

All well and good, but surely this was only the beginning. Osmond sought to spread the word further and, to that end, he contacted his old friend Christopher Mayhew to see if it was possible to arrange a BBC radio documentary on the subject.

Mayhew later told his side of events in an address which was included in a book called Hallucinogenic Drugs and Their Psychotherapeutic Use:

I took the drug because I am an old school friend of Dr. Humphry Osmond. ... I am sure he is well known to a number of you. He said he was coming over to England and could I recommend him for a BBC Third Program broadcast to describe his research work. I said, "Don't go on sound radio. No one listens to that. Explain about hallucinogens on television and give me this stuff in front of a film camera."

And the BBC quite rightly thought this was a first class idea for a program, and so did Humphry, and he came down to my home in Surrey, and in front of a film camera he gave me, I think it would be 400mg, of mescaline hydrochloride, sitting in my own armchair at home. Those are the circumstances of the experiment.

Hallucinogenic Drugs and Their Psychotherapeutic Use (page 169)

And so, on the 2nd of September, 1955, a small BBC crew descended on Christopher Mayhew's nice middle-class house in Surrey to film a load of footage which, sadly, was destined never to be edited into a full programme. It's entirely possible that, had it ever been broadcast, the show would have been remembered for decades afterwards as a unique event in television history and Mayhew would have been remembered as an underground hero for the mild-altering set (rather than 'that posh BBC bloke who took acid on black and white telly - ha ha, what were they thinking' which is more often than not the only response these days). His afternoon's experience of starving his brain of glucose certainly rivals that of Huxley's. However his spoken thoughts under the view of the camera are somewhat less than expressive. As Huxley himself observed, "The mescaline taker sees no reason for doing anything in particular and finds most of the causes for which, at ordinary times, he was prepared to act and suffer, profoundly uninteresting. He can't be bothered with them, for the good reason that he has better things to think about."

What follows is a complete transcript of the rushes filmed on that day. Cosmic.

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(The transcript, as well as still shots taken from the video, can be found at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/sotcaa/sot.../mayhew01.html )

[Synesthesiac]

Damn, its been taken down. Really wanted to see this. Anyone know where its available to watch or download? Or which youtube user uploaded it so I can ask him? Apparently the BBC did release it later after it was banned for broadcast, but I dont have a clue how or where they released it.