http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2010/03/his-girl-lsd-the-cary-grant-experience.html

[read the complete article with several illustrations at the url abve]

Destination Subconscious: Cary Grant and LSD

"I knew Cary Grant very well and he loved ... what did they call it? Acid! LSD. He
said he liked to take the trip." - Debbie Reynolds

"I learned many things in the quiet of that room ... I learned that everything is or
becomes its own opposite ... You know, we are all unconsciously holding our anus. In
one LSD dream ... I imagined myself as a giant penis launching off from earth like a
spaceship." - Cary Grant

It was 1943. Cary Grant was starring in the motion picture Destination Tokyo; an
action-filled wartime drama co-starring John Garfield and a deluge of racial slurs.
While America was embroiled in the intense fighting of World War Two, Axis powers
had surrounded the neutral country of Switzerland. Deep within Nazi surrounded
boundaries, Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman was busy toiling away in a dimly lit
laboratory, about to study the properties of a synthesis he had abandoned five years
earlier. Hoffman was trying to devise a chemical agent that could act as a circulatory
and respiratory stimulant when he accidentally absorbed lysergic acid through his
fingers. While Americans sat in darkened theaters enjoying Cary Grant's portrayal of a
submarine captain, Hoffman was experiencing accelerated thought patterns,
polychromatic visions and an unbearable onslaught of intense emotion. This was the
world's first acid trip. The discovery was soon to transform the life of one of
Hollywood's most glamorous stars.

Cary Grant was the first mainstream celebrity to espouse the virtues of psychedelic
drugs. Whereas novelist Aldous Huxley's famous 1954 treatise The Doors of
Perception recounted his remarkable experiences with mescaline, Huxley was hardly
mainstream - a darling of intellectual circles to be sure, but a far cry from a matinee
idol. Grant was one of the biggest stars Hollywood had to offer when he jumped
headlong into Huxley's Heaven and Hell. His endorsement of subconscious
exploration, arguably, created more interest in LSD than Dr. Timothy Leary who was
largely preaching to the converted.1 Grant on the other hand was the fantasy of
countless Midwestern women. He convinced wholesome movie starlets like Esther
Williams and Dyan Cannon to blow their minds. When Ladies Home Journal and Good
Housekeeping interviewed him, the topic of conversation wasn't Cary's favorite recipe
or "the problem with youth today." Instead, Cary Grant was telling happy
homemakers that LSD was the greatest thing in the world.


3 Cary Grant had been interested in various forms of mysticism throughout the
nineteen fifties. Initially he was fascinated by hypnosis, particularly self-hypnosis.
While filming a knife fight in The Pride and the Passion (1957), Grant received a
series of gashes across the torso. His body was covered with scars for several
months. Cary had been practicing self-hypnosis prior to the injuries as a means to
achieve "complete relaxation." He put himself into a transcendental state to will the
scars from his body. Grant said he entered the shower one day with the scars, put
himself into a relaxed state, and left the shower without a mark on his body.
Apparently his doctors were amazed. Skeptics might theorize that Grant was just
covered in dried-out stage blood from the film - and this was the first time he'd
showered in several months.

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