William S. Burroughs' controversial novels—Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine, first published by Olympia Press—were originally banned in the United States. Before his recent overdue literary beatiifcation—he has been ranked with Céline, Beckett and Joyce by serious critics—his work had been noticed and printed in America by several small avant-garde reviews and the jazz magazine Metronome (which this anthologist then edited).

Burroughs is as exceptional a man as he is an artist. More than half of his adult years were spent in the psychological ice-box of heroin addiction. He has written:

. . .I was an addict for fifteen years. When I say addict I mean an addict to junk (generic term for opium and/or derivatives including all synthetics from demerol to palfium). I have used junk in many forms: morphine, heroin, dilaudid, eukodal, pantapon, diocodid, diosane, opium, demerol, dolophine, palfium. I have smoked junk, eaten it, sniffed it, injected it in vein-skin-muscle, inserted it in rectal suppositories. The needle is not important. Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction. When I speak of drug addiction I do not refer to keif, marijuana, or any preparation of hashish, mescaline, Bannisteria Caapi, LSD, Sacred Mushrooms, or any other drug of the hallucinogen group. . . . There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence. The action of these drugs is physiologically opposite to the action of junk. A lamentable confusion between the two classes of drugs has arisen owing to the zeal of the U.S. and other narcotic departments.

By the time Burroughs was approaching his middle forties he was injecting forty or more grains of heroin daily: an amount that would be lethally toxic for a nonaddict, and increasingly dangerous even for a confirmed user. Of this period of his life he has commented:

. . . at the end of the junk line . . . I lived in one room in the Native Quarter of Tangier. I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of terminal addiction. I never cleaned or dusted the room. Empty ampoule boxes and garbage piled to the ceiling. Light and water long since turned off for nonpayment. I did absolutely nothing. I could look at the end of my shoe for eight hours. I was only roused to action when the hourglass of junk ran out . . . suddenly my habit began to jump and jump. Forty, sixty grains a day. And still it was not enough. And I could not pay.

Burroughs finally understood that he was facing death from the Ilness known as terminal heroin addiction: "I stood there with wy last check in my hand and realized that it was my last Iteck." Summoning up all his courage and what remained of is money, he flew from Tangier to England where, securing 'egal and humane treatment for his disease, he was finally cured.

William S. Burroughs' experiences as an addict have been pro^ected with passion anddangeroust imagery in his novels. Few people, however, know that he has written as a lay expert on drugs for the British Journal of Addiction and has lectured in the same capacity before the American Psychological Symposium. (Burroughs, who was born in 1914, graduated from harvard, and did post graduate work there in anthropology.) The following essay is the address Burroughs delivered to the American Psychological Symposium on September 6, 1961. His remarks are particularly noteworthy here because they accurately identify marihuana not as an addicting sedative or depressant, but as an agent that expands the consciousness of the user. He reveals that after he broke his dependence upon heroin, he smoked marihuana as a therapeutic device and as an esthetic mechanism in his writing.

When his friend novelist Jack Kerouac read the first drafts of Naked Lunch, he suggested that title because it meant, in Burroughs' words, "exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch . . . a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork." That state of vision, Burroughs points out below, was substantially due to the consciousness-expanding properties of the marihuana he smoked at the time, which facilitated insights and images that proved of literary value.

Unfortunately the word "drug" activates a reflex of fear, disapproval and prurience in Western nervous systems. "Drug" of course is simply a generic term for any chemical agent. Alcohol is a sedative drug similar in action to the barbiturates. Yet because of purely verbal associations we do not think of alcohol as being a drug because it is our national drug. The American narcotics department has bracketed substances with opposite physiological effect as narcotic drugs. Morphine is actually an antidote for cocaine poisoning, Cannabis is a hallucinogen drug with no chemical or physiological affinity to either cocaine or morphine. Yet cocaine, morphine, and cannabis are all classified as "narcotic drugs." Unquestionably the term has emotional impact. But used in such a loose fashion it has no useful precision of meaning. I would like to draw at the outset a clear distinction between sedative and hallucinogen agents, between addicting and nonaddicting drugs.

What is addiction? The use of opium or derivatives leads to a state that defines, limits, and describes addiction. So the morphine or heroin addict provides the model and mirror of addiction. The addict functions on heroin. Without it he is helpless as a beached fish out of his medium. As a diver depends on his air line, the addict depends on his heroin connection. This situation of total dependence did not exist prior to his contact with heroin and his subsequent addiction.

A month more or less of daily exposure through injection or sniffing the drug and the addict is hooked, that is, addicted for life. Even if the addict is cured and off the drug for years he can be readdicted by one or two shots. Like the alcoholic, he has acquired a lifelong sensitivity to the drug. Investigators still do not know how heroin addiction is contracted. Doctor Isbell of Lexington, Ky., where most U.S. addicts are treated, has suggested that morphine acts on the cell receptors, perhaps altering the molecular structure of certain cell groups in the body.

While the action of morphine is not fully understood, alcohol and barbiturates are definite front-brain sedatives, and increased doses are generally required to achieve sedation. In fact, all sedative drugs may be said to act by sedating, that is, putting out of action some function of the nervous system, by decreasing awareness of surroundings and bodily processes. Addiction would seem to be a prerogative of sedatives and perhaps the opiates are the only class of truly addicting drugs. The symptoms that follow barbiturate withdrawal may be regarded as a mechanical reaction from massive front-brain sedation rather than a biological need for the drug.

What is a hallucinogen? A drug that expands consciousness and increases awareness of surroundings and bodily processes. (I would suggest that the term consciousness-expanding drugs be substituted for hallucinogen drug since actual hallucinations are rare and no precise definition of hallucination has been formulated.) Under the influence of mescaline, LSD, cannabis, the subject is acutely aware of colors, sounds, odors, and the effects of the drug may be said to consist of this phenomenon of increased awareness, which may be pleasant or unpleasant depending on the content of awareness. Colors and sounds gain an intense meaning and many insights carry over after the drug effects have worn off. Under the influence of mescaline I have had the experience of seeing a painting for the first time and I found later that I could see the painting without using the drug. The same insights into music or the beauty of an object ordinarily ignored carry over so that one exposure to a powerful consciousness-expanding drug often conveys a permanent increase in the range of experience. Mescaline transports the user to unexplored psychic areas, and he can often find the way back without a chemical guide.

I will describe a simple experiment that will make the distinction between sedative and consciousness-expanding drugs more precise. So far as I know this experiment has not been carried out in detail. Here is the proposed experiment: Administer a consciousness-expanding drug together with a precise array of stimuli—music, pictures, odors, tastes—timed and recorded so that the entire battery of stimuli can be exactly repeated. Some days later when the effects of the drug are completely dissipated expose the subject to the same stimuli in the same order. To what extent is the hallucinogen experience reactivated? Everyone who has used the conscious-expanding drugs knows that any one stimulus experienced under the influence of the drug can reactivate the drug experience. There is every reason to believe that the drug experience could be recaptured in detail with a precise repetition of associated stimuli.

Now try the same experiment with a morphine addict. Ace-minister a dose of morphine together with a battery of stimuli. Wait until withdrawal symptoms occur. Now repeat the stimuli. Is any relief from withdrawal symptoms experienced? On the contrary, the associated stimuli reactivate and intensify need for the drug. The same of course is true of alcohol. Stimuli associated with the consumption of alcohol activate the need for alcohol and conduce to relapse in the cured alcoholic.

The use of sedative drugs leads to increased dependence on the drug used. The use of consciousness-expanding drugs could show the way to obtain the useful aspects of hallucinogen experience without any chemical agent. Anything that can be done chemically can be done in other ways, given sufficient knowledge of the mechanisms involved. Recently a Cambridge dentist has extracted teeth with no other anesthetic than music through head phones. The patient was instructed to turn up the volume if he experienced any pain. The consciousness-expanding experience has been produced by flicker, that is, rhythmic light flashes in the retinae at the rate of from ten to twenty-five flashes per second. I quote from Grey Walters, The Living Brain: "The rhythmic series of flashes appeared to be breaking down of some of the physiological barriers between different regions of the brain. This meant that the stimulus of fficker received in the visual projection area of the cortex was breaking bounds, its ripples were overflowing into other areas."

Now it is precisely this overflow of the brain areas, hearing colors, seeing sounds and even odors that is a categorical characteristic of the consciousness-expanding drugs. Along with flicker Grey Walters has produced many of the phenomena associated with consciousness-expanding drugs. Subjects reported: "Lights like comets. . . Ultra unearthly colorsrmental, colors not deep visual ones. . . ."

The literature of mescaline and LSD abounds in such regrettably vague descriptions of visionary experiences. Further experiments with subliminal doses of mescaline accompanied by fficker, flicker administered under large dosage and repeated later, could well lead to a nonchemical method of expanding consciousness and increasing awareness.

There are many consciousness-expanding drugs each with distinct porperties, and scientists are just beginning to explore the chemistry of these drugs. I have had personal experience with mescaline, LSD, Bannisteria caapi, kava kava, dimethyltryptamine, and several others in the form of herbal preparations, the content of which was unknown to me. All these drugs open different psychic areas. Some of these areas are pleasant, some are not. Dimethyltryptamine and bufotenine seem to produce in many subjects alarming and disagreeable symptoms, and both drugs in my opinion should be used with great caution or not at all. Overdose of consciousness-expanding drugs can be a nightmare experience owing to the increased awareness of unpleasant or dangerous symptoms. I would like to mention a drug which is neither a front-brain stimulant like cocaine, nor a sedative like morphine and barbiturates nor a tranquilizer, nor an energizer, nor a hallucinogen, a drug that could act as a useful stabilizing agent when using the consciousness-expanding drugs. This drug is apomorphine. I quote from Anxiety and Its Treatment by Doctor John Dent of London: "Apomorphine is made from morphine by boiling with hydrochloric acid, but its physiological effect is quite different—apomorphine acts on the hypothalamus in such a way as to normalize metabolism and regulate the blood serum."

Administered with a consciousness-expanding drug apomorphine stabilizes the experience and reduces anxiety. I have observed and personally experienced dramatic relief from anxiety resulting from consciousness-expanding drugs after a dose of apomorphine. The drug has no sedative or addicting properties. No case of addiction to apomorphine has ever been recorded. Yet because of purely verbal associations the drug has been placed under the Harrison Narcotic Act and is seldom prescribed in this country. Apomorphine is a unique drug in that it acts as a metabolic regulator which stabilizes but does not cancel the consciousness-expanding experience.

In conclusion: The sedative drugs act to decrease awareness, and increased dosage is generally required to achieve or maintain this state of decreased awareness. The consciousness-expanding drugs act to increase awareness, and this state of increased awareness can be a permanent acquisition.

It is unfortunate that cannabis (the Latin term for preparations made from the hemp plant, such as marihuana and hashish), which is certainly the safest of the hallucinogen drugs, should be subject to the heaviest legal sanctions. Unquestionably this drug is very useful to the artist, activating trains of association that would otherwise be inaccessible, and I owe many of the scenes in Naked Lunch directly to the use of cannabis. Opiates, on the other hand, since they act to diminish awareness of surroundings and bodily processes, can only be a hindrance to the artist. Cannabis serves as a guide to psychic areas which can then be re-entered without it. I have now discontinued the use of cannabis for some years and find that I am able to achieve the same results by non-chemical means: flicker, music through head phones, cutups and foldins of my texts, and especially by training myself to think in association blocks instead of words, that is, cannabis, like all the hallucinogens, can be discontinued once the artist has familiarized himself with the areas opened up by the drug. Cannabis sometimes causes anxiety in large doses, and this anxiety is promptly relieved by apomorphine.

It would seem to me that cannabis and the other hallucinogens provide a key to the creative process, and that a systematic study of these drugs would open the way to non-chemical methods of expanding consciousness.