Popular Science Takes Drugs
December 1967 From our archive: a reporter's LSD trip, a guide to getting high during Prohibition, and more Click to launch the photo gallery. Working and writing for Popular Science means being able to do fun things, like playing with the latest consumer electronics in Las Vegas, touring the Shanghai Expo, and getting paid to do hard drugs. We're not kidding. In 1967, reporter Robert Gannon spent a weekend getting high on LSD at a psychiatric institution in Pennsylvania. Under close supervision, Gannon passed the next 24 hours doing pirouettes, rolling around in the grass, biting his arms, and mumbling about the depravity of his generation. Then he got to write about it. "I'm totally insane," he said. "I know because I can see reality as it flicks past, just a little slit of sunlight. I'm in a giant maelstrom, swirling, whirling, with reality only a small slot in the side." Although...