Aug. 2022 - NE Leaf

the psychedelia issue

SURRENDERING TOTHEVOID

Psychedelics for the End of Life Experience

LEAFMAGAZINES.COM

38

“Turn off your mind Relax and float down stream It is not dying It is not dying Lay down all thoughts Surrender to the void It is shining It is shining” “Tomorrow Never Knows” - The Beatles written by Paul McCartney & John Lennon

aug. 2022

IN

1963, WRITER ALDOUS HUXLEY was on his deathbed suffering from terminal cancer when he asked his wife to inject him with 100 micrograms of LSD. In a letter to friends, Laura Huxley wrote that she consulted Sidney Cohen, a psychiatrist who had pioneered the use of LSD. “I had asked him if he had ever given LSD to a man in this condition. He said he had only done it twice, actually,” wrote Laura, “and in one case it had brought up a sort of reconciliation with death.” After the author of “The Doors of Perception” and “Brave New World” passed away, Laura wrote, “All five people in the room said that this was the most serene, the most beautiful death. Both doctors and the nurse said they had never seen a person in similar physical condition going off so completely without pain and without struggle.” Three years later, LSD was officially banned in California.