Henry and Clare Booth Luce Love Their LSD Trips -

by Michele Steinberg

The following is from the third chapter of the 1985 book Acid Dreams, The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond, by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, published by Grove Press, New York.

'Manna From Harvard'

"Henry Luce, president of Time-Life, was a busy man during the Cold War. As the preeminent voice of Eisenhower, Dulles, and Pax Americana, he encouraged his correspodents to collaborate with the CIA, and his publishing empire served as a longtime propaganda asset for the agency. But Luce managed to find the time to experiment with LSD and glean whatever pleasures and insights it might afford. An avid fan of psychedelics, he turned on a half-dozen times in the late 1950s and early 1960s under the supervision of Dr. Sidney Cohen. On one occasion the media magnate claimed he talked to God on the golf course and found that the Old Boy was pretty much on top of things. During another trip, the tone-deaf publisher is said to have heard music so enchanting that he walked into a cactus garden and began conducting a phantom orchestra.

"Dr. Cohen, attached professionally to UCLA and the Veterans Hospital in Los Angeles, also turned on Henry's wife, Clare Booth Luce, and a number of other influential Americans. 'Oh sure, we all took acid. It was a creative group--my husband and I and Huxley and [Christopher] Isherwood,' recalled Mrs. Luce, who was, by all accounts, the grande dame of postwar American politics.... LSD was fine by Mrs. Luce as long as it remained strictly a drug for doctors and their friends in the ruling class. But she didn't like the idea that others might also want to partake of the experience. 'We wouldn't want everyone doing too much of a good thing,' she explained."