At 10 Zen Monkeys, RU Sirius interviews Dr. James S. Ketchum, a psychopharmacologist who was involved in secret tests of psychedelic weapons at the Army Chemical Center in the 1960s. He recently self-published a memoir of his experiences, titled Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten. From RU's interview with Ketchum:
JK: I watched a number of people – actually, more than a hundred – going through the experience of having BZ, which is a long-acting atropine type compound. It produces delirium if given in a sufficient dose. Half-a-milligram is sufficient in the case of BZ, as compared with about 10 milligrams of atropine. To describe the tripping in detail would take some time. In the book, I've documented an entire BZ trip over a hundred-hour period, including everything that was said and done.
RU: You had a man watching an entire football game on his fingernail or something?
JK: It was a tiny baseball game on the padded floor. The hallucinations were "real" hallucinations. I'd like to make a distinction between BZ hallucinations and LSD so-called hallucinations, which are really not hallucinations – they're more illusions. People generally know that they're not real, but produced by the drug. Whereas with BZ, the individual becomes delirious, and in that state is unable to distinguish fantasy from reality, and may see, for instance, strips of bacon along the edge of the floor.
Link to the interview,
Link to the book site
Previously on BB:
• World's Worst Excerpt — The Maddest Mad Scientist: The CIA's Dr. Sidney Gottlieb Link
• More on the CIA's evil genius, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb Link
• Midcentury LSD experiments at Canadian hospital Link
• Interview with LSD inventor Albert Hoffman, who's now 100 Link
• MKULTRA-related lawsuit dismissed Link
