WHAT A TRIP

Time magazine magnate Henry Luce, nutritionist Adele Davis, futurist Herman Kahn and economist George Goodman (“Adam Smith”) are among numerous alleged LSD experimenters from the late 1950s L.A. scene who figure in “Storming Heaven,” due out later this month from Atlantic Monthly Press ($19.95).

Author Jay Stevens tells us his book attempts “to fill in the gaps in the scientific, religious and cultural history of LSD,” the chemical at the center of the psychedelic revolution of the ‘60s.

It’s already well-recorded that L.A. was a center of early LSD experimentation by such prominent Angelenos as Cary Grant and Aldous Huxley, presaging its later counterculture popularization. According to Stevens, however, L.A. was “a psychedelic mecca” for scientists, therapists and eventually the rich and famous of the creative community, both for research and for what Stevens terms “extra-curricular activity: “(By the early 1960s) in Los Angeles, it was as easy to go on an LSD trip as it was to visit Disneyland.”

In one section of the book, Stevens describes a therapist’s office “full of analysts from the (Santa Monica-based) Rand Corp. . . . Herman Kahn lay on the floor murmuring ‘wow’ every few minutes,” writes Stevens. And: “Later, he claimed he had spent (the) time profitably reviewing bombing strategies against mainland China.”