Cary in the Sky with Diamonds

This year, the FDA has allowed experimentation with LSD after 50 years. Before Leary, the hippie phenomenon, et all, interesting results were being had at the Beverley Hills Clinic.

Before Timothy Leary and the Beatles, LSD was largely unknown and unregulated. But in the 1950s, as many as 100 Hollywood luminaries—Cary Grant and Esther Williams among them—began taking the drug as part of psychotherapy. With LSD research beginning a comeback, the authors recount how two Beverly Hills doctors promoted a new “wonder drug,” at $100 a session, profoundly altering the lives of their glamorous patients, Balaban included.

Cary in the Sky with Diamonds | Vanity Fair