W. Henry Wall, Jr: How the CIA's LSD Experiments Destroyed My Father's Mind

From Healing to Hell, a memoir in which oral surgeon and inventor W. Henry Wall Jr. explores how a mind control experiment destroyed his father, former Georgia senator and mental health advocate, Dr. W. Henry Wall, Sr."Daddy" became addicted to the narcotic Demerol after a routine dental procedure. His dependency eventually landed him in prison, where he became a victim of the CIA's MK-Ultra experiment. "We do not target American citizens. The nation must to a degree take it on faith that we who lead the CIA are honorable men, devoted to the nation's service." Richard Helms, former CIA director. In March 1979 the revelation came. After Times Books published journalist John Marks's nonfiction opus, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, a horrifying expose of a Central Intelligence Agency program known as MK-Ultra, that focused on attempts to find an effective mind control or "truth"drug, the Atlanta Journal Constitution featured a series of six articles detailing the book's content. By the time I read the second page of the second installment, I knew exactly what had happened to my dad. Stunned, I read it again slowly to be quite sure. As Marks reported, the linchpin of the MK Ultra program was the compound d-lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. I had heard plenty about this hallucinogen through the 1960s headline grabbing antics of Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, and other derangement devotees. Sought by some as a mind expander, at times the LSD experience or "acid trip" plunged other users into terrifying sensations and led to ghastly flashbacks that might persist for years. More to the point, as far as Daddy was concerned, its bad effects were said to be even greater for a person given the drug in "circumstances not conducive to pleasant feelings" as when you were given it by someone you despised.