Cary Grant On LSD

Cary Grant On LSD

Cary Grant On LSD

Cary Grant, who took LSD more than sixty times under the therapeutic
auspices of Dr. Mortimer Hartmann and then Dr. Oscar Janiger, had this
to say about his treatment in 1959:

"All my life, I've been searching for peace of mind. I'd explored yoga
and hypnotism and made several attempts at mysticism. Nothing really
seemed to give me what I wanted until this treatment."

"I have been born again. I have been through a psychiatric experience
which has completely changed me. I was horrendous. I had to face
things about myself which I never admitted, which I didn't know were
there. Now I know that I hurt every woman I ever loved. I was an utter
fake, a self-opinionated bore, a know-all who knew very little. I
found I was hiding behind all kinds of defenses, hypocrisies and
vanities. I had to get rid of them layer by layer. The moment when
your conscious meets your subconscious is a hell of a wrench. With me
there came a day when I saw the light."

I don't know about you, but personally I think that's just beautiful!
-- RK :`)

URL: http :// www .psymon,com /psychedelia/images/carygrant.html

Re: Cary Grant On LSD

Cary Grant On LSD And Psychiatry

ARCHIE LEACH
by
Cary Grant

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Chapter Fourteen



Without the ability to fully love or be fully loved, so many of us
think that the acquisition of money can bring self-esteem and
happiness. I’ve enjoyed friendship with some exceedingly wealthy
people. If money brought happiness, then each of them should be
ecstatically happy. But I doubt whether any of them is any happier
than any of my less well-to-do friends. Money, it seems, attracts more
envy than empathy. More lust than love.
In 1932 the practice of psychiatry was little known or respected. The
public seemed to regard it, just as I probably did, with skepticism.
For years I absurdly treated subjects with which I was unfamiliar, or
sports in which I was not proficient, or books which I should have
read but didn’t, with disdain. But by 1956, lacking the foundation of
early spiritual training and suspecting that there was more happiness
available than I seemed able to grasp, I had grown much more tolerant
of, and receptive to, the knowledge of others. Other searchers, other
sharers. Humanitarians in all fields of endeavor. At the age of 53,
after three unsuccessful marriages, either something was wrong with me
or, obviously, with the whole sociological and moralistic concepts of
our civilization.

Now, I believe in caring for my health; and I trust you do too.
Physical health is a product of, and dependent upon, mental health —
one nurtures and nourishes the other. And so, together with a group of
other interested Californians — doctors, writers, scientists and
artists — and the encouragement of Betsy, who was interested herself,
I underwent a series of controlled experiments with Lysergic Acid, a
hallucinogenic chemical or drug known as LSD 25. Experiment is perhaps
a misleading word; to most people it signifies patronization and
objectivity. For my part I anxiously awaited their personal benefits
that could be derived from the experiences, and was quite willing to
be less than objective. Any man who experiments with something that
cannot benefit himself, or add to his happiness, and that of his
fellow man in turn, is a fool and a menace to society. I’ve heard that
a man here and there died during LSD25 sessions; but then I’ve heard
that men died during poker games and while watching horse racing; but
that didn’t seem to stop such occupations. Those men might have died
anywhere while doing anything. Men have also died testing airplanes
and parachutes, vaccines and common cold cures. In attempting to
traverse the next step into progress and knowledge, men have always
died. But there is a difference between the man who knows what he’s
about with a high-powered airplane, and an idiot who puts wings on a
bicycle and takes off from the edge of Niagra Falls.

LSD 25 is a psychic energizer and the exact opposite in reaction to
the addictive drugs and opiates. Indeed, Seconal, or similar sedative,
is usually given as an antidote, to quell and offset the effects of
LSD 25, if necessary. The action of the chemical releases the
subconscious so that it becomes apparent to yourself. So that you can
see what transpires in the depth of you mind — and what goes on there
you wouldn’t believe, ladies and gentlemen — and learn which
misconceptions, guilts and fears, with their resultant repressions,
inhibitions and insecurities, have formed the pattern for your past
behavior. A successively recurring pattern since childhood.

The feeling is that of an unmarshaling of the thoughts as you’ve
customarily associated them. The lessening of conscious control,
similar to the mental process which takes place when we dream. For
example, when you’re asleep and your mind no longer concerned with
matters and activities of the day, your subconscious often brings
itself to your attention by dreaming. With conscious controls relaxed,
those thoughts buried deep inside begin to come to the surface in the
form of dreams. These dreams, since they appear to us in symbolic
guise, are fantasies and, if you will accept the reasoning, could be
classified as hallucinations. Such fantasies, or hallucinations, are
inside every one of us, waiting to be released, aired and understood.
Dreams are really the emotions that we find ourselves reluctant to
examine, think about, or meditate upon, while conscious.

Under the effect of LSD 25, these dreams or hallucinations, if you
wish, are speeded up, and interpreted, when properly conducted ba a
psychiatrically orientated doctor who sits quietly by, awaiting
whatever communication one cares to make — the revealing of a hidden
memory seen again from an older, more mature viewpoint, or the dawning
of new enlightenment. Then, if the doctor is as skilled as mine was,
he carefully proffers a word or key, that can lead to the next
release, the next step toward fuller understanding.

The shock of each revelation brings with it an anguish of sadness for
what was not known before in the wasted years of ignorance and, at the
same time, an ecstasy of joy at being freed from the shackles of such
ignorance.

One becomes a battleground of old and new beliefs. Of nightmares
beyond description. I passed through changing seas of horrifying and
happy sights, through a montage of intense hate and love, a mosaic of
past impressions assembling and reassembling; through terrifying
depths of dark despair replaced by glorious heavenlike religious
symbolisms. Session after session. Week after week.

I learned may things in the quiet of that small room. I learned to
accept the responsibility for my own actions, and to blame myself and
no one else for circumstances of my own creating. I learned that no
one else was keeping me unhappy but me; that I could whip myself
better than any other guy in the joint.

I learned that all clichés prove true; which is, of course, the reason
for their repetition, even when the meaning has been forgotten by the
constant usage.

I learned that everything is, or becomes, its own opposite. A theory I
can sometimes apply, but would find difficult to convey.

I learned that my dear parents, products of their parents, could know
no better than they knew, and began to remember them only ofr the most
useful, the best, the wisest of their teachings. They gave me my life
and body, the promising combination of the two, and my initial
strength; they endowed me with an inquisitive mind. They taught me to
feed myself, to walk, to bathe myself and to clothe myself; and I
shall think of them always with love now, not only for what the did
know but, even, for what the didn’t know.

For a slow learner, I learned a great deal — and the result of it all
was rebirth. A new assessment of life and myself in it. An
immeasurably beneficial cleansing of so many needless fears and
guilts, and a release of the tensions that had been the result of
them. Not a cleansing and release of them all, certainly, for that
would be the absolute — the innocence of the newly born baby with an
unformed ego still close to God — and I cannot experience the absolute
until I have unreservedly returned to the comfort of God.

In life there is no end to getting well. Perhaps death itself is the
end to getting well. Or, if you prefer to think as I do, the beginning
of being well.

I have heard and now believe it to be so, that drowning men in the
last seconds of life relive the whole of it again; probably in order
to cleanse themselves before meeting the great Maker, just as our
religions instruct; and everyone is accustomed to the phenomenon of
elderly people remembering their childhood with extraordinary clarity,
yet forgetting what went on only yesterday. We call it second
childhood, but it is undoubtedly the same process, undergone at a
slower pace, as that experienced by the drowning man.

LSD 25 is no longer obtainable in America. Orthodox psychiatrists
using the slower customary methods resisted its usage, and it’s
unlikely that it will be reintroduced unless some brave, venturesome
and respected psychiatrist publicly speaks out in its favor.
Meanwhile, the authorities have banned its use; at least for
therapeutic purpose. Although how men can be authorities on something
they’ve never tried mystifies me. However, in the hands o f thrill-
seekers it could, like whiskey and the automobile, be exceedingly
dangerous. I suppose all new methods, new theories, new inventions go
through the filter of trial and error, acceptance and rejection. Past
the inevitable parade of scoffers and stone-throwers.

Yes, it takes a long time for happiness to break through either to the
individual or nations. It will take just as long as people themselves
continue to confound it. You’ll find that nowadays they put you away
for singing and dancing in the street. “Here now, let’s have none of
that happiness, my boy. You cut that out; waking up the neighbors!”
“Those darn neighbors need waking up, I can tell you, constable!”

I suppose if a healthy youngster walked along a street in a bathing
suit to allow his or her youthful pores a little more oxygen from the
meager amount obtainable in our smog-infested cities, he or she would
be arrested. “Here now, none of that trying to keep a healthy body in
this city. Go to the beach!” “In which direction , officer? This is
Kansas City.” Even bare feet and a rare acquaintance with the earth
beneath them would be sufficient to disassociate you from the
association of your embarrassed associates. Civilization! Oh, brother!
And you, too, sister!

I have made over 60 pictures and lived in Hollywood for more than 30
years. Thirty years spent in the stimulating company of hard-working,
excitable, dedicated, loving, serious, honest, good people. Casts and
crews. I recognize and respect them. I know their faults and their
insecurities. I hope they know and forgive mine. Thirty years ago my
hair was black and wavy. Today it’s gray and bristly. But today people
in cars, stopped alongside me at a traffic light, smile at me!

I feel fine. Alone. But fine. My mother is quite elderly. My wives
have divorced me, and I await a woman with the best qualities of each.
I will endow her with those qualities because they will be in my own
point of view.

As a philosopher once said, “You cannot judge the day until the
night.” Since it is for me evening, or at least teatime, I can now
look back and assess the day. It’s been a glorious adventure up to
here — even the saddest parts — and I look forward to seeing the rest
of the film. Just as I did in 1932 when I sat in that Paramount Studio
office. I took up the pen and wrote for the first time “Cary Grant.”
And that’s who, it seems, I am. Well, as some profound fellow said,
“I’d be a nut to go through all that again, but I wouldn’t have missed
it for anything.” And that goes for this autobiography.

THE END

URL: http :// www .carygrant,net /autobiography/autobiography14.html