'Utterly fascinating and illuminating' Sinclair McKay 'Fascinating... An astonishing read, with remarkably vivid protagonists' Harald J???hner 'In this superb sequel to Blitzed... Ohler weaves a masterful tapestry of history in this revealing and fresh account' David de Jong Berlin, 1945. Following the fall of the Third Reich, drug use - long kept under control by the Nazis' strict anti-drug laws - is rampant throughout the city. Split into four sectors, Berlin's drug policies are being enforced under the individual ...
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'Utterly fascinating and illuminating' Sinclair McKay 'Fascinating... An astonishing read, with remarkably vivid protagonists' Harald J???hner 'In this superb sequel to Blitzed... Ohler weaves a masterful tapestry of history in this revealing and fresh account' David de Jong Berlin, 1945. Following the fall of the Third Reich, drug use - long kept under control by the Nazis' strict anti-drug laws - is rampant throughout the city. Split into four sectors, Berlin's drug policies are being enforced under the individual jurisdictions of each allied power - the Soviet Union, Britain, France and the US. In the American zone, Arthur J. Giuliani of the nascent Federal Bureau of Narcotics is tasked with learning about the Nazis' anti-drug laws and bringing home anything that might prove 'useful'. Five years later, Harvard professor Dr Henry Beecher began work with the US government to uncover the research behind the Nazis psychedelics programme. The Nazi study, initially an attempt to find a 'truth serum' and experiment with mind control, involved mescaline but quickly expanded to include LSD. Originally created for medical purposes by Dr Albert Hofmann, who worked for the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz, the Nazis coopted the drug for their military mind control research - research that, following the war, the US was desperate to acquire. Based on extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, Tripped is a wild, unconventional postwar history, a spiritual sequel to Norman Ohler's bestselling Blitzed. Revealing the close relationship and hidden connections between the Nazis and the CIA's notorious brainwashing experimentation programme MKUltra, Ohler shares how this secret history held back the therapeutic research of psychedelic drugs for decades as the West sought to turn LSD into a weapon.
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