Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties

by Tom O'Neill

when the article, “Acute Amphetamine Toxicity,” finally appeared in the spring 1969 Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, both Roger Smith and Alan Rose had been removed as authors. Contradicting his later claim in Love Needs Care, David Smith wrote that he “disagreed” with the consensus that “personality was the prime factor in differentiating between psychotic and nonpsychotic reactions,” arguing instead that “in the drug subculture of the Haight-Ashbury, the prime determinates of psychotic vs. nonpsychotic reactions were immediate drug environment and experience of the user.” More significant than the contradiction, I felt, was the article’s obscurity: when the HAFMC republished bound editions of all the Journals five years later, “Acute Amphetamine Toxicity” wasn’t included in the collection. All the annotations referring to it in other Journal articles had been removed, too. Just as Manson’s time in the Haight was “extricated” from the record at trial, the study by the two Smiths and Alan Rose—a study into the origins of the same psychological tendencies found in members of the Manson Family—had disappeared.