October 25, 2021 • 49 mins
A look at the poisoning of the town Pont Saint Esprit, and how some mysterious bread turned hundreds of residents temporarily mad.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Well, come to Spookkey Week, a week where we are
not really any spooky or honestly than the average things happening,
because everything happening is is terrifying and like ghosts and
ghoules are are a lot more fun. Anyway, hang up
in this podcast, don't listen, Go watch Herbert West reanimat
(00:29):
or have some fun. Um. But if you decide to
keep listening to podcasts for some reason, we have a
bunch of spooky content for you this week. How was that?
How was that introduction? Sophie? Oh bad? All right, Garrison,
get going? Do your think? Yeah? My my thing? So, yeah,
(00:50):
we're doing We're doing spooky spooky Week, which is very
excited about. But yeah, every everyone I've told about spooky Week,
they're like, oh, so it's just a regular week for
for the show. Yeah, pretty much, it's more fun. But
it is in a few ways. It is actually gonna
be more fun because the spooky spooky mind goddamn yes,
(01:14):
spookoky mind bedding tails actually do have do have some
more fun than just the solely depressing ones. I mean,
this was this was the first theme week that we
all agreed upon. This was the first themes like can
we do something around spooky nous near Halloween? And everybody
youtly said yes, yes, yes, this is the first theme week. Um,
(01:37):
we have we we have, we have been promising Nut
Week coming up. Eventually we're gonna tease about things that
made us nut or where we talk about the legumes
mostly legumes. Okay, that's fair, um, but anyway we should
we should have start off our first, our first spooky tale. Um,
(01:57):
so I'm going I'm going to tell a very spooky
tale of a of an entire French town going going
mad over the course of a single week. Oh yeah,
probably probably with the help of psychoactive drugs and a
certain three letter agency. You know what. I think we're
gonna get to do. Garrison some messages that you can't
(02:23):
be racist against the French. They're like the British or Americans.
I didn't get a new messages saying that your French
accent was very racist to the French. There is a
certain number. It's like the Germans. There's a certain number
of genocides after which people get to make fun of
your country and it's not racist. And that number is
let's say three. Honestly, the worst part of this story
(02:48):
is that we're probably doing critical support for France. I
mean in a way. Well, honestly, I'm gonna be a
kind of more critical support to the CIA by the
end of this one. Um. Yeah, that's that is the
most critical support can be. So anyway, our very spooky
(03:11):
tail begins in ninety one in a small, charming French
village called Pont Saint a Spray, which is how I'm
gonna say that. Yeah, there you go. Um. So, not
much happened in this little picturesque, little little town on
the south side of France. You know. Uh. On the
day we start, it's just like a regular summer day.
People are going about their routine, going to their jobs,
(03:33):
kids are playing in the street, enjoying some delicious freshly
baked bread. Um. But suddenly strange things begin happening. Um,
and I'm gonna start off with some of the more mild,
mild mild effects here. So on in August, first dozens,
then hundreds of people began first just complaining of nausea, uh,
(03:55):
you know, and some people with some like stomach and
abdominable pain. They're coming up less often less often noted,
there was a few instances like vomiting and diarrhea. UM.
Only about thirty percent of people had diarrhea. That is
that is a weirder, weirder thing. Yeah, that is on
like a town wide basis three significant thirty Sorry, yeah,
(04:20):
that's a significant strain on the suit wag of the
people affected. It's just gonna be like a few hundred
versus I was taking drugs with a group of friends,
third of them had diarrhea. I would say, we might
need to go to a hospital that we have taken
someone that perhaps what we got was tainted. There is
there is. Yeah, well we'll we're talking about what actually
(04:41):
what the actual drugs being used here are going to be.
But uns were something where that's not an uncommon side effect.
But yeah, first first nausea, a little a little bit
of vomiting, stoma, pains, cramping, um. Hospitals began reporting people
experiencing alternating warm and cold waves for their body. Uh.
(05:01):
The British Medical Journal recalls abundant sweating and a disagreeable odor,
which I'm guessing the odor is just because there's all
those sweating people in the same cramped hospital room in
the summer. In the summer heats. Yeah, so anyway in
their French. So a lot of scargo sweats. I don't
(05:22):
want to get more messages saying that I have to stop.
Maybe he's going to do it more. By the way,
do we know that the diarrhea was the result of
whatever substance or maybe it's just the wine ships Again
we don't. Well, there's no way to tell. So yeah,
patients began complaining about weird pains and pressure around their neck,
(05:44):
which yeah, um. And one of the one of the
most reported symptoms was in insomnia, in some cases lasting
several days. Uh. Quoting the British Medical Journal, the first
symptoms appeared after a latent period of six to forty
eight hours the digestive disorders. They became worse with burning
sensations through the entire digestive tract. Some experienced sensations of
(06:06):
burning at the anus. A state of giddiness persisted. I mean,
who's not giddy when your anus is burning? Am I? Right?
I fear like like this is like this is like
the like the clear side that there's like some some
psychoactive job going on, because like your anus is burning
and yet your very you are born. Yeah, it's like
(06:28):
that sign from that what is that from a rejected
by what what? What's the cartoonist? Like my anus is bleeding,
but like you're down, you know, you're down for it. Yeah, yeah,
you're you're John Millenney impression. No no, no, it's it
wasn't a John Linney impression. So that's just your poisoned
(06:49):
millennial brain. Don Hertzfeld. Yeah great artist, Yeah, great artist.
H So these pale and limp patients still voting the
British Medical Journal, these pale and limp patients showed inconspicuous
trembling of the extremities, and they complained of disorders of
the visual accommodation and especially being unable to read. So
(07:12):
this this is this is the more mild. This is
the could So this is for many people affected, this
is where the symptoms stopped. After suffering for insomnia for
a while, with you know, mild disorders of the visual
(07:34):
accommodation um and you know and the stomach pains and
like weird like neck things, after they were able to sleep.
That was the sign of their recovery. Is like the
ability to sleep again. African insomnia war off but in
a in around fifty of the cases reported the effects
were much more intense. Um, I'm going to continue from
the from the medical journal first and then get into
(07:54):
some of the more colorful reporting around the incident. Uh.
Quoting the Medical journal again, Vivid visual hallucinations appeared, in
particular themes of visions of animals and of flames. All
of these visions were fleeting invariable in many of the patients.
They were followed by dreamy delirium. Yeah, that's that's about right.
That's actually pretty good description of like l S A
(08:16):
LSD those kind of like that. Movies always get it
wrong because you're not usually not like you're not seeing
some sort of like visual like cartoon world. It's it's
these kind of like fleeting impressions of visions and things
in the corner of your eyes. Yeah, it's a pretty
good especially on lower like it is unclear what exactly
they were on because then they definitely can be the
more cartoon lags. I mean, you can get full open
eyed hallucination, like especially the shogun chemicals will do that
(08:39):
that I don't get it so much with like LSD
L S A L say, if you want to shoot yourself,
that is that is some Hawaiian baby wood row seats
from home depot and have yourself a horrible right. So,
the delirium seemed to be systematized with animal hallucinations and
(09:00):
self accusation. It's weird, weird terms from them from accusations. Yeah,
it's I think I think they're trying to get at
ego death, but they don't have terms for it yet.
Do that or that, Like sometimes you're hallucinating it like
overcoming like guilt, like oh I did this terrible thing
or yeah yeah, yeah, everybody's angry at me or whatever,
(09:20):
like can continuing from the medical journal, self accusation, and
and it was sometimes mystical or macabre. In some cases,
terrifying visions were followed by fugus, which is an old
um for like fugues. It says, says fugues. Yeah, it's
it's it's like it's it's like it's like extreme it's
extreme disassociation. Yeah, yeah, you're kind of zombified a little bit. Yeah,
(09:44):
and two and two patients threw themselves out the window. Um. Yeah.
The delirium was of a confusal kind, which could be
interpreted for some moments by a strong stimulation. Every attempt
at restraint increased the agitation. Well, yeah, that's it restraining.
I've had to restrain a number of people and it
does not calm anyone down, especially especially when you're tripping hard. Yeah,
(10:09):
this sounds like a real, real bad time. Not the
thing to do. In severe cases, muscular spasms appeared. The
duration of these periods of delirium was varied. They lasted
several hours, several hours and some patients and in others
they persisted overnight. So that and then here it's it's
we're gonna get a little bit darker and then we're
(10:29):
gonna have more fun. Um. We observed four fatal cases,
three men and one woman. Three of these people were
old and in bad health. One of the men was
only twenty five years old and had been in good
health previously. They died in a muscular spasm in a
state of cardiovascular collapse. I think this is probably mostly
due to how the doctors were handling these patients. I mean, obviously,
(10:50):
you're your blood pressure want not can elevate when you're hallucinating.
But yeah, I think it also has a lot to
do with the way they were being handled. Yeah, you're right, Um,
the disorder has developed more quickly children but also left
them more quickly. An interesting feature some of the cases
was that the delirium it was the first sign to
be noted. So it depends people come up came up
on different ways, or some of them first had a
(11:10):
weird body feelings, some of them first started just seeing stuff. Um.
One other interesting tidbit that we're not going to spend
much time talking about, but like around two weeks after
this initial incident, some symptoms started to reappear, either through
like a secondary poison egg or it was like some
kind of like acid flashback. Yeah it must, it must
because I've done it, fuckload of ASCID. I've never had
(11:33):
a flashback. Um, I did at one point. I mean
I have like done some damage and so I have
permanent tracers. But it's not like, my guess is they
got I think the idea that there are like acid
flashbacks that are vivid hallucinations has been pretty heavily debunked.
My guesses they got redosed. Yeah, I don't know, I
might fight you. It's like it could be that it
(11:54):
was traumatic enough that like they're having they're dealing with
PTSD and kind of that that's what's happening. But don't know,
And I think I definitely have seen enough reports that
would see acid flashbacks definitely actually being a thing in
some cases, especially in the early days of studying these
types of drugs and like the sixties, like the CIA
reported a lot of stuff around acid flashbacks around the
people that we tortured. But I guess it's it's tide
(12:16):
to torture. That could just be PTSD. Stuff could be PTSD.
It's also, I mean, one thing you have to know,
and I don't know what kind of dose these people
were getting. With the CIA, with dose people, they were
sometimes giving people doses people do not take, like you
do not take that much, like hundreds or thousands or
millions of yeah, ridiculous irresponsible doses. Yeah. So now now
(12:37):
we're going to get to some of the some of
the more fun descriptions here, which we can actually kind
of like, based on our experiences, can actually kind of
see like what was actually going on in these people's heads. Um. So, basically,
we had at least dozens and dozens of people tripping
very very hard. Um. The local postman was doing his
rounds on his bicycle when he was suddenly overwhelmed by
nausea and wild hallucinations. Quoting him, it was terrible. I
(13:01):
had the sense, I had the sensation of shrinking and shrinking,
and the fire and the serpents coiling around by arms. Yeah,
that guy had some other stuff going on. Yeah, because
the very first acid trip was on a bicycle when
Heinrich Kaufman like made it and dosed himself. He started
coming up. I believe it was in Amsterdam, like riding
his bicycle, which is like, well, this is lovely. Yeah,
(13:22):
I've made something cool. Why was the postman riding a
bicycle to deliver packages? And because we have less fifties,
it's not there to France in four I mean that's
I'm sorry post So Yeah, the mailman fell off his
(13:44):
bike and was taken to the taking to a hospital
in a nearby town. He was putting a straight jacket,
and he shared a room with three teenagers who were
also tripping, and the teenagers were changed to their beds
to keep them under control. Yeah, that's that's how it
sounds horrible. Flash backs to this, to being chained to
a bed tripping. Yeah, some of my friends trying to
(14:08):
get out the window. They were thrashing, wildly, screaming, in
the sound of the metal beds and jumping up and down.
The noise was terrible. I would prefer I would prefer
to die then go through that again. Which this sounds
like like the worst acid trip you could go. That
sounds like about the worst way you could have a
trip go. It sounds awful. So back in the French town,
(14:29):
a little girl screamed as she was being chased by
man eating tigers. A woman sobbed about how her children
had been ground into sausages. Oh great and specific a
large men founded off terrific beasts by smashing its furniture
(14:51):
and using the wood as weapons. Good for you, buddy,
Good for you. Husband and wife right around chasing each
other with nice again, probably something else going on there.
My guess is we're not just talking the acid and
that because I have again, been on acid a lot
around knives and other weapons. I've never chased someone. I've
(15:13):
never chased someone around with knives, like the couple who
was on the verge of a knife chick. I think,
I think, I think the important part here is that
like in this French town, like acid wasn't a thing yet,
like like like lucinogenic drugs, weren't a thing, right, even
like even like mushrooms weren't popular around this time. No
one knew what what the hell was going on. Like
(15:34):
they just think that they're just basically losing their minds,
like like there's there's no other explanation for what's happening
to them. And let's just say that the most shocking
thing that has come out so far as that when
Robert was on acid, he wasn't chasing people with knives.
That seems like it's honest, Like, depending on your acid trip,
you wouldn't want to chase someone with a knife. Like,
it's not it's not the kind of we would we
(15:56):
would like during this, Yeah, we would. We would take
a bunch of drugs and grab my a K forty
seven and hike out into the woods and we would
shoot down a fir tree and we would drag it
back to a clearing and we would bury it standing up,
and we would drape it in pig intestines and put
a pig's heart on it. And when we cover it
in gasoline and light it with firecrackers and dance around
it like the pagans of old. But there was nothing
(16:17):
aggressive about No, you you you very rarely would want
to hurt somebody on acid, And my experience like you
generally generally are at least like way more compassionate in
a lot of ways. Um, But if you have no
idea what acid is and you're just you're in the
nineteen fifties and you're losing your mind and you're seeing
weird things that, Yeah, I can see how this would
maybe cause some other types of behavior. You just think
(16:38):
that because that is angry at you, like like like
it's like they're not they're not dosing themselves either, like
they're being dosed rights like they don't. It's very different
where like you're deciding to go with a trip versus
this is happening to you when you have no decision.
I think for basically anyone in this position, the logical
assum should be, oh, the devil has taken over our
town and our minds have we have been infested with
(17:00):
demons like that? What else are you going to assume?
You're not going to be like, Oh, this drug that's
just barely been invented and that nobody really knows about
yet except for weird nerds. It must be some version
of that that I've taken accidentally. No, you're going to
do in your blood. So one interesting tid. But before
we before we go and break um, even some of
(17:20):
the local animals had been affected by whatever poisoned the town. Um.
There there was there was one dog in particular that
kept chewing on rocks until its teeth chipped away. I
don't like this. And and ducks were behaving very odd. Um,
it's described that they were. They were walking around erect
and upright, like penguins in a line, and they're just
like weird, weird behavior from ducks so far that kind
(17:46):
of makes me want to dose our ducks scared. We're not.
We're not wasting acid on the ducks. I mean, there's
a lot of things you could give ducks. We're not.
We're not giving ducks asset. That's not about giving ducks drugs.
Is they're all monsters. That is true. They are monsters
and rapists, every one of them. Yeah, all the mail ducks.
(18:08):
So anyway, a reoccurring theme was that people were running
around wildly and being very fearful of like monstery animals
and encroaching flames. Um, it sounds like the ducks are
having a good time, though, doing their ministry of silly
walk shit, Like, I don't know what all these people
are bummed about. This is rad Okay. So when when
you first said that, I heard dogs, and I was like,
that is the most terrible ducks. It's like duck steady,
(18:31):
like very upright, like penguins walking around in the line.
I think ducks might enjoy it. I think dogs are
a little too aware of what's going on. Dog. The
stone thing was about the dog, yeah, with the dog. Yeah,
I just don't know that the dogs enjoy because, like
I've seen dogs accidentally eat large amounts of pot and
whatnot and they get weird. They they they're they're pretty
(18:55):
scared every good time. They're pretty're pretty scared. Yeah. Yeah.
Do you know what is also very spooky ca Yeah,
capitalism and all of these spooky advertisements to sell things.
Advertisements are also a form of mind control. Speaking of
the CIA in the fifties anyway, profoundly damaging. We are
(19:28):
back from the spooky advertising, yeah anyway. Um, So I
think another another reoccurring factor for why a lot of
these people have very similar types of experiences around like
snakes um, which we're talking about later, and like flames
is like with this many people tripping and no one
knows what tripping is. I think it's really easy for
(19:49):
an idea or a fear to spread from one person
to another while they're tripping. Um, with like this many people,
I think if someone says something, it's going to start
happening to someone else. And it's kind of kind of
this like cascading effect where they're all developed these very
similar fear is because it's almost like being spread like
an infection. Um. So there was there was a one
(20:09):
man convinced that red snakes were devouring his brain and
he jumped out a window. Oh no, what did he
live for? This? He did live? Um, I'm not guessing
a lot of these. It's it's like France and the fifties,
So I'm guessing most of these buildings are not super
they're not super high up. Now you're like falling a
foot or two. Although here we have another one. Another
mad reportedly left for a window, yelling, look everyone, I'm
(20:33):
a dragonfly. The men broke. The men broke both legs,
but he stood up and continued running, looking rad king
Sigma Stigma behavior Sigma. This is a new kind of man,
(20:55):
just drapped. Look, everyone, I have a dragonfly breaks legs,
he keeps running. Based on the information you've provided us,
I can't say he's not a dragon. No, he is
an absolute, absolute king. Good for I hope he had
a great life. Yeah. Another one saw his heart escape
(21:19):
through his feet and beseeched the doctor to try to
put it back into place. You don't want to have
that happen. That doesn't sound fun. You want to keep
that somewhere around the middle of your body. Someone sprinted
down the lane, claiming that he was being chased by
bandits with donkey ears. A nearby river, a man was
convinced that he was a circus tight rope walker and
(21:40):
attempted to balance his way across the cables of a
suspension bridge. You know it doesn't say. The report does
not tell you. So, yeah, he's not in the death report.
Yeah he's And therefore another another person did try to
die in the river. He tried to jump into the river,
only to be saved by his friends. And he was screaming,
(22:02):
I am dead, I am dead, and my head is
made of copper, and I have snakes in my stomach
and they are burning me. It's such a weird description
of like tripping and saying like my head is made
of copper. I'm trying to think of like what was
going on? What like what what series of events did
did he spiral down in his brain to have that
(22:24):
sentence I did? I'm not quite sure. It's it's it's
it's definitely. I can definitely see it happening. I just
I just can. I'm trying to think, like we're exactly
what would happen to get to that point. It's really
real interesting. I think some of these are hard because again,
it's like these people just think literally think they're going
insane or that like this stuff is just actually happening
to them. Like you were, like when when you're tripping
(22:46):
on acid, you already kind of have the feeling that
there is moments where you feel like this is like
this is like never gonna end, even though even though
you know you know you're on acid. These people don't
know that, right, Like these people don't have the reascernce
like no, I took acid, I'm on a drug, this
is gonna be for eight hours. They think this is
gonna last forever, right Like they think this this is
just the world now, Like this is just one of those.
(23:07):
Rubbert Anton Wilson, who is a thinker I enjoy a lot,
writes a lot about how to calm people down when
they've taken too much, and most of his advices around
talking about like, okay, well, how long ago did you
take it? Hey, well that the good news is that
this is going to end here. You know, it's only
gonna last this long, like you're you're through this point. Oh,
this is the this is the second hour, freakies, and
by the third hour you'll be fine again and enjoying it.
Like it's all about making keeping in people's minds like
(23:30):
this is going to pass. So yeah, you're right, Like
this is the fucking worst way to take drugs, alright.
So local newspapers uh and also like in national newspapers
described described this as a among the stricken delirium rose
patients thrash wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers
were blossoming from their bodies, people throwing themselves some rooftops,
(23:51):
men and women throwing their clothes off and running in
the streets naked, and children complaining their stomachs were infested
with coils and snakes, which I mean half of that
sounds like, yeah, that's like a normal good time just
running around the streets naked on acid. Other I was like, yeah,
that that doesn't seem pleasant with coils and snakes in
your stomach, but also like flowers bossoming fun your body.
I can, I can, I can understand that kind of sensation. Um,
(24:13):
but like it definitely definitely wasn't all horrible and the
night like nightmares we we were. We already mentioned the
giddy people with burning anuses, um, but for like the
full and tripping folks. According to the New York Times,
there's reports of people like hearing heavenly choruses and seeing
you know, bright colors. The world look beautiful to them. Apparently,
the head of the farming co op wrote hundreds of
(24:35):
pages of like enlightened tripping poetry. That that guy must
be sick as ship because knowing nothing, he starts tripping,
not knowing he's tripping. It's just like timeing to make
some fucking art. You know what, this head state is
good for writing some shit. He just went to his
(24:56):
cabinets wrote poetry. That's fucking awesome. That's a guy. I'll
bet he handled just everything that life through it. Well,
like that says a lot about you when you're like, oh,
demons have infiltrated my brain. Guess I'm gonna hang out
in my cabin and write some poems hundreds of pages. Wow,
(25:18):
like I could. I could hardly write ship on acid.
I cannot imagine trying to write poetry. I've done a
lot of creative stuff on acid. Creative stuff. Yeah, I
just feel like specifically, like reading and typing can can
be hard at certain points. You know, if if you're
like coming down that it can be easier, but really
good for like writing, It's good for ideas that you
(25:40):
later can flesh out into writing. But yeah, so unfortunately,
you know, because this was you know, no one who
was going on. Many people were taken to local asylums
and straight jackets and tied onto beds, making things undoubtedly
worse for people tripping. It's one of those things I
can't even be angry at them because like they don't
know what's going you know, like you have no idea
(26:00):
what's going on, the whole. Like every attemptant restraint increased
the agitation line. It's like horrifying from the concept of
like you're tripping, you you, you do, you don't know
what's going on, and people are tying you down to beds,
making you feel like you're even more stuck in this
permanent seat of delirium. It's just, it's just it is
the worst nightmare. Yeah, this is horrible. Yea. The mayor
of the town said, like, I've seen healthy men and
(26:22):
women suddenly become terrorized, ripping in their bed sheets, hiding
themselves beneath their blankets to escape their hallucinations. So yeah,
it's it's if you, if you, if you don't know
what's going on, pretty pretty pretty scary, except for the
poetry guy. Good for him, Yeah, good for him. Um. Yeah.
So by by the time the effects had subsided for
(26:43):
everyone affected, which is around like a few days after
the initial reported like nausea, like you know, not it
didn't affect everyone at the same time. You know, some
people got dosed later on. It's it's it's unclear what
exactly because it's the fifties, we didn't have a great
idea of the exact timeline of events of when the
first effects were felt and like how all the stuff
was spaced out. But this whole instant Arrassed lasted around
(27:05):
like a few days for like everyone everyone totaled. UM.
It was supported that anywhere between like three hundred and
five hundred people had felt the effects. UM, you know,
around fifty feeling very very extreme like open eye like
hallucinations of objects that aren't even there, like like very
extreme hallucinations. UM. And and four people did die in
connection to the poisoning. UM at least where people died.
(27:27):
It's again it's unclear for exact numbers for a lot
of this stuff. UM. An investigation into the sudden outbreak
of the madness was probably underway. Town officials wanted to
get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible. Yeah,
do you want to figure out what was happening? Yea. UM.
And the blame fell onto a single batch of bread
(27:50):
what so among the common denominator among those affected that
they all allegedly consumed bread from one specific baker. Um.
He he was accused of using er got contaminated rye flower,
and he was arrested and a temporary imprisoned. UM. Also,
a nearby miller that he got the flower from was
(28:10):
also arrested and given some of the blame. UM. The
funny part is that around this time, the French government
had a very top down grain distribution system that originally
controlled everything about where the grains were milled, where they
were sent, and what bakers could use which flower, so
bakers had no choice and what type of flower to
use or what kind of a grain they could use
(28:30):
in baking. It was all decided by other people. Bread
is like real big deal and it's pretty pretty pretty important. Yeah,
for the record, just like air got poisoning. There are
a lot of cases of like different like dancing manias
and whatnot in like the medieval in medieval Europe, or
like whole towns will be well, everyone will start like
(28:51):
dancing or like hallucinating, and you know they always came
down as like these people assumed apocryphal of stories about
like demon possessions or whatnot. And now a lot of
the sup and he's like, oh yeah, some ergod gotten. No,
yeah it was, it was. It was just tripping or poisoning.
It seems like one of the rougher trips to go on.
It's not super clean. It's no. I mean I've done
l s A, which I think is similar and similar
(29:12):
to ergotten. They're tripp to means that are like really rough,
and it's I would not don't don't do l s A.
No Hawaiian baby wood roase seeds. For if you're going
to take l s A, then actually like synthesizing, which
is a felon um. But you can just buy Hawaiian
(29:36):
baby wood roase seeds and eat them and you will
have maybe the worst trip of your life. Great advice
from the from the pod um. So yeah, on on
on on the on the On the rye and ergot topic,
the past growing season was especially wet and ergot fun
guy did grow across the country's rye fields. Um, but
the amount of ergot on the rye and the amount
(29:57):
of rye used in baking was thought to not being
enough to induce any any type of poisoning. UM. In fact,
that the last time or like or got poisoning had
struck France was back in was back in eighteen sixteen,
so almost like a century and a half before this incident.
And there was a century if it's the fifties right,
litt less than a century no, so the last instant
was eighteen sixteen. This was no, no, like a century
(30:24):
and a half ago, um, and no other towns anything,
and no other part of France was affected by anything
similar to this. Um. So the ur got thing is
kind of iffy um it. But the explanation was the
only thing that doctors investigators could come to would do,
like you know, the their their limited knowledge around brain
altering substances, and just pressure from town officials to get
(30:46):
to the bottom of this so that they had something
to blame and people could move on. Um. But you know,
as a result, not much evidence to really backs up
there backs up there got claim, and a lot of
experts today kind of deemon bunk, um it doesn't there's it,
and there's a bunch of like, um, there's this thing
hi ke on that the Greeks would take that was
like this recollucinatory thing that they think it was because
(31:08):
they were putting grain and wine and it might have
been air got poisoned, but also like people enjoyed it.
And so there's a lot of debate over whether or
not it could have been ergot. But I don't know, Um,
I don't know what else is There are other other
theories about what it might Boy is it the CIA
CIA garrison? Where could they get to it? So, yeah,
(31:29):
it doesn't really make much sense that the high amounts
of ergot rye would only be in one batch of
grain used in a single batch of bread from just
one bakery and one small town, doesn't doesn't really make sense. Um.
Other explanations um that people have come to includes like
mercury poisoning and overuse of other fungicides. These have been
mostly disproven. Yeah, that doesn't seem like mercury poisoning. No,
(31:50):
but there is a guy who likes to drink some mercury,
you know, boy on. So yeah, So there's a lot
of other theories around, like fungicides being used, but those
have been kind of disproved by some people, but others
still a point to them as possible explanations. But but
there is one other theory that we will focus on
that features two of my favorite things, LSD and the
(32:12):
nineteen fifties CIA because if you're gonna pick a c
i A, they had the most fun, they had the
most fun, right like you know who else has a
lot of fun? Garrison who is also the nineteen fifties
c i A whoms our sponsors, Oh really to happen
here is sponsored only by the fifties c i A.
(32:35):
Only the one from the fifties. Yeah, when you order
any of our product products, they will come to your
house and inject you with seven thousand hits of LSD.
Hey three, Hey, that is that sounds like a great deal. Honestly,
you're saving a lot of money. You are saying that
that is a lot of free a lot of acid
for the amount of money you're spending. You won't do
more acid, that's for sure. You're that that's acid for life.
(32:58):
You want do it again? Yeah, you might, you probably
probably you won't have to do it, you won't. You
want to do any expenses ever again. Yeah, you'll survive.
You'll just be a very different person by the end
of the Yeah. You you won't survive. Your body with
someone else will wake up. So, speaking of waking up,
here is a products so nifties c I a UM
(33:32):
Wild Time. In two USand nine, Hank P. Albarelli, as
an an American writer and journalist, released a book called
A Terrible Mistake, which focuses on the suspicious death of
a CIA scientist named Frank Olson, who worked on the
CIA mind control experiments during the late forties and early fifties.
While researching the book, Albarelli claims to have come across
(33:53):
a number of old CIA and White House documents referencing
the pont St De Sprite incident, and he claims at
the village was the target of a CIA experiment on
the mass effects of LSD, and that around the time
that Frank Olsen wanted to sever his ties with the
Army and CIA, Frank started talking about his participation in
the experiment, which may have led to the government off
in Olsen. So, I know that is a lot and
(34:15):
it is slightly more than just a speculation. We're going
to get into the evidence here shortly, UM. But by
now it's pretty well known that throughout theuthorities fifties and sixties,
both the U. S. Army and the CIA tried to
use hallucinogetic hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD as both an
offensive weapon and as a way to make like psychic
super soldiers. The programs like MK Ultra and Knaomi, Project Bluebird,
(34:37):
Project Artichoke, UM, lots of lots of these things were
trying to find different ways of using LSD for like
offensive and defensive means. Um. Some of the interest was
promoted by it was was prompted by reports of the
Soviet Union doing experiments with drugs around the same time.
Also stuff around like you know, hy like like like
psychic powers and hypnosis. This was very popular on this
(35:00):
time for for lots of different intelligence agencies. UM. But
so albare Eli uncovered report from nineteen nine by the
director of the Edwood Arsenal which many which which was
where many US government LST experiments were carried out. And
this report stated that the army should do everything, everything
is posted, everything, everything possible to launch so called field
(35:21):
experiments using this drug. And later in his to us
A nine book, Albrely claims that he found references to
a government document with the label rep STU SPRI and
f Olsen Files s O SPAN slash France Operation File
inclusive Olsen Intel Files. Hand Carrie to Bellan tell him
to see to it that these are buried. Um, this
(35:44):
document does exist like we we we like we we
we we we do have this label on on this document. Um.
But like the actual contents of documents are are gone.
But this is this is this is this is just
a label that is being referenced as title boy. So
the document label references Frank Olson and David Bellan. So
(36:04):
Belln was the executive director of the Rockefeller Commission, created
by the White House in the mid seventies to investigate
abuses carried out worldwide by the Central Intelligence Agency. So
Alberrey believes that the that the French town LSD incident um,
which is like the Pont saintis Breed which is the
name of the town, and the Ethelson files mentioned in
(36:25):
the document, would definitely show that if the document hadn't
been buried as it was said in the in the
label the CIA, it would show that the CIA was
experimenting on the townspeople by dosing them with what he
thinks was lsd UM. Now, there is also a bit
more to it than that um using foyas he got
ahold of another CIA document, a two page report from
my team fifty four detailing a conversation between a CIA
(36:47):
agent and a representative of the San DAWs Chemical Company.
So this the sand DAWs base was the place where
Albert Hoffman invented LSD in night um and it was
it was it was only a few hundred kilometers away
from Point St. A Spree, the town where this happened.
So the chemical company was actually pretty pretty close relatively
(37:08):
to like Europe. Um and it was also the only
place where LSD was being made at the time. And
they were providing both the Army and the CIA with
a lot of a lot of acid. But you mean
they're also giving it like, they were also giving it
to universities. They gave lots to Timothy Laria. Initially. They
were they were, they were, they were giving out to
(37:30):
a lot of different universities and people, but including the
US government. So the CIA. The CIA agent wrote um
in this report that was like he was detailing a
dinner he had with this representative of the chemical company,
and he reported that after having several drinks, the scientists
started talking about the pomp Sat desprite incident. The send
(37:51):
off official burned out the pomp sat a spirit secret
was that it was not the bread at all. Continued
to send off official for weeks. The French tied up
laboratories with analysis of the bread. It was not the
grain ergot, It was a diethyl laminate. Sorry, it's it's
the last part of the LSD. Yeah, the die ethyl
lemonide like compound. So yeah, surgic diethyl acid is what
(38:15):
LSD stands for so yeah, he the sideist said that
it was it was like it was like basically an
LSD like compound. Um. So that's that was the that
was reported detail like a dinner that a CIA agent
had with this scientist, um, and that document was uncovered
and that was it was from like the fifties. Now
(38:36):
this this, this next part has a little bit less
proof to it because there's no documents backing this up.
But l Brelli also claims that Dirk is diggig too forward.
CIA researchers reached out to him and revealed that revealed
some details of some possible details of the method of
the poisoning. They told him that the village was subjected
to an air blitz of pulverized LSD. I'm sorry, that's
(39:03):
fucking based so to force taking the substance through the air.
According to the researchers, this manner of of this manner
of distribution proved mostly unsuccessful, um, forcing the CIA to
move onto phase two, which was contaminating local food. So
apparently the if the if, if the air blitz was
(39:25):
a thing, it didn't work super well. Um. Although actually
about to have Sophie Bias a plane, we will talk
about this later. But um, the CIA did do more
air blitzing um of of acid in New York City.
Actually they would ride around in cars um in like
(39:45):
poorer and poorer more like multicultural areas, UM shooting LSD
out of the back of the car to see what
would happen to, I mean, take out the racism. And
that really is a dream job, just driving around cities
air dosing people with acid. It random smoking cigarettes probably.
So with the conclusion drawn that it was one of
(40:07):
the town's bakeries being the source of the poisoning, Alberrel
says it was possible that LSD was put in or
onto the bread. Um. So yeah. And uh also lots
of the scientists, lots of the scientists dispatched to investigate
the poisoning after it took place where actually from the
Sandaws Chemical company. Um. They studied the situation for like
(40:28):
two or three weeks UM and gave the explanation that
would later be kind of disproven, uh, that it was
got poisoning, which they they told the town officials and
the British medical journal. Um what what, what no one
knew at the time was that one the existence of
LSD in the first place. Um. And two that San
DAWs was the company making it and giving these drugs
to the U. S. Army and to the CIA. UM.
(40:50):
And apparently apparently Albert Hoffman himself went to the town
to investigate this incident. Um. So yeah, one last thing
on like the physical evidence side of things. Um. Albarelli
also found an undated White House document that appeared to
be part of a larger file that had been sent
to members of the Rockefeller Commission, containing the names of
(41:10):
two French nationals who had been secretly employed by the
CIA and made direct references to the quote pont Saint
Esprit incident um. Also it was linked the document linked
former CIA biological warfare expert and the chief of the
Fort Derek's Special Operations Division. So those are all places
that they were experiencing with this similar kind of thing. Um.
(41:31):
We we we have mentioned the Rockefeller Commission a few
times now, for remember the names uh, Frank Olsen, the
guy one of the CIA researchers on Lst. And David
Bellan where they were they were They were on the
label of that missing document. So but Bellin was the
executive director of the White House Commission to investigate the
CIA's abuses and crimes, which was called the Rockefeller Commission.
(41:51):
It was formed by President Ford in nineteen seventy five
to investigate abuses and other activities by the CIA and
a few other intelligence agencies that were operating within the States. Um.
So the Rockefeller Commission revealed not only like, the reason
why we know but m KOTRA was because the Rockefeller Commission,
this is this is how we know this was a thing. Um.
So it not only revealed toff about like programs around
(42:14):
m KAULTRA, but also revealed the details of the CIA
dosing their own scientist Frank Olsen with LSD and possibly
killing him. Um. There's also like, there's like a Netflix
series about this called Woodword, which I haven't I haven't
actually watched yet, so I don't know how good or
accurate it is. But they did, they did make a
series a few years ago about the death of Frank Olsen. Um,
and all of the weirds get yourself surrounding both his
(42:36):
job and and and and and his death. Um, we
do love the CIA, folks. So the the Commission also
concluded that the head of the CIA's LSD program, doctor
Sydney ghost leap destroyed all of the drug programs records
in nineteen seventy three to hide the details of possibly
illegal actions, and he was personally involved in the torture
(42:59):
of FRANKL. Wilson Um. Twenty years after Mr Olson's death
and ten years after the elistic experiments were halted, a
doctor Gotlieb ordered the destruction of all the records of
the program, including a total of one hundred and fifty
two separate files. This came shortly after other reports that
that that records were being destroyed by Richard Helms, that
the then Director of Central Intelligence. So it's undoubitbly true
(43:23):
that the CIA was up to up to some ship
involving LSD around around the exact time period of this
French Town incident. It's certainly not like you're not coming
out of nowhere suggesting the CIA may have dosed all
these people, but they set it to a bunch of folks.
If they didn't do it here, they've done similar ship
And it's it's also it's also worst mentioning at this
(43:44):
point that like this is like the point where the
CIA is also running this like enormous heroin network out
of France. As like if they basically basically have this
whole they have this deal with the French where they're like, okay,
so the French mob can like basically move all the
heroin they want and exchange they'll like stop the communists
and taking control of the point of marseilla Is. And
so this is this is all also going on like
(44:06):
at the same time that they're doing the LSD stuff.
It's great. Yeah, So there's there's some historians that think
the LSD theory does not hold enough water. Um. Stephen Kaplan,
it's a US historian specializing in the French food history
and the author of the two book Cursed Bread, which
follows this incident. Um. He says that he is I
have numerous objections to this poultry evidence that this that
(44:28):
this against the CIA. First of all, it's clinically incoherent.
LSD takes effects in just a few hours, whereas the inhabitants,
where the inhabitants showed symptoms only after thirty six hours
or more. For the more, LSD does not cause that
the digestive elements or the vegetative effects described by the townspeople. Um.
And so to both those claims, I say they're not
necessarily true. Um, it's it's it's unclear how soon the
(44:50):
delirious effects took place for some people. They were they
forced effect felt Um. So the whole thing about like
the effects only taking effect after thirty six hours, that's
not that's not necessarily true. Um. And Also LSD can
definitely have nauseating or digestive effects. Yeah, absolutely, so that's
that's that's not that's yeah, and and but but like
(45:11):
there were other types of symptoms that are not common
for what we think of as like modern LST. Again,
this is the nineties, and we don't know what they
were actually on it did It's maybe not. It may
not be what we think of as like LSD. Now
it could be slightly that you know that this is
a whole class of psychoactive drugs that's unclear what they
were all actually being dosed with. Yeah, who the funk
(45:31):
knows what they were being given and who the funk
knows what the actual like dose amount was. Yeah, we
no no idea. It's also you know, I think it's
Leary was the origin of the phrase that like the
things that determine what happens on a trip or set
setting in dose, So your mindset where you take it
and who you take it around, and the dose and
the fact that these are somewhat unique symptoms could be
(45:51):
to the fact that like, other people taking asset have
never taken it this way, and this without knowing what
asseid is like. So Kaplan's other objections revolve around like
the delivery system. He says, it's absurd this idea of
transmitting a very toxic drug by putting by putting it
in the bread as for pulver as to get for
ingestion through the air. That technology wasn't even possible at
(46:14):
the time. Most compelling lee why would they choose the
town of pont Saint a Spree to conduct these tests.
It was half destroyed by the U. S. Army during
fighting with the Germans in the Second World War. It
makes no sense. And and to that, I say, that
makes it the perfect town for the CIA to funk
with me. Yeah, they generally would choose to dose someone
(46:34):
with acid because it sounded funny, Like I think the
fact that this town was already kind of like only
half inhabited and half destroyed by the by the Second
World War, that makes it the perfect town to funk
with like. And also they Also, the CIA and the
government very much did have the means to try to
distribute stuff via the air, because we can see other
we can see other documents around the time of them
(46:56):
doing this too, specific areas of of New York City.
They also tried to poison the entire New York Subway
with LSD in the fifties, but that was shut down
by higher ups in in the Central Intelligence. Unly, God
what a time that would have been. But but cap
But but Caplan isn't sure or Got responsible either. Um.
He says that or in comambination would not have worked
(47:19):
because it doesn't make sense that only one sack of
grain would have been affected. Um. And he says if
it was or got the the effects would have been
way more widespread. He rules out LSD in the grounds
and the symptoms of people suffered, although similar don't quite
fit what we modernly think of the drug. Also, I
don't I don't think Caplin's ever taken LSD, so I
don't think talking about I think he's right about it
probably not being air got. But I don't think he
(47:40):
knows much. Yeah, he all. He also he also he
also points out that LSD probably wouldn't have survived the
fierce temperatures of the baker's oven, although Albarelli counters that
it could have been that LSD could have been added
after the fact to the surface of the breach. Yah,
you could just drop it on. You could just drop
it on with like with like liquid blodders, which also
explain how the effects were so different from person to person,
because one person maybe having a whole drop of LSD,
(48:01):
where somebody maybe only have like a tiny little like
you know, spec of like speck of like like moist liquid.
So I can explain some things, but you know, this
is still pretty much a mystery. You know, it's very clear,
it's very much, very well could have been some kind
of hidden LSD c I a experiment UM or the
CIA could have just been, you know, interested in studying
(48:23):
what happened in the town, since they were also doing
studies into psychoactives substances at the time. UM. It could
be either or UM. And that's where its spooky, because
you'll never know. So, yes, that is that, that is
the spooky incident of a French town basically thinking that
they lost their minds and then you know they do.
(48:44):
We it is a little funny. It is definitely a
little funny. Um it's it is a great example of
like the worst way to trip. Yeah that that's that's
pretty high up there. Um anyway, critical support to the
CIA for josing random people with acid. Always one of
my favorite sets of stories. You love to see it,
(49:07):
so yeah, tune tune in, tune in tomorrow for more spooky,
spooky story. And you can follow the spooky social media
that poisons your brain at com up in here pod
and cool Zone Media which yes, Twitter will poison your brain.
That is just as spooky, um more spooky, way worse
(49:29):
for your brain than surprise c I a acid to
be honest, the acid wears off
Well, come to Spookkey Week, a week where we are
not really any spooky or honestly than the average things happening,
because everything happening is is terrifying and like ghosts and
ghoules are are a lot more fun. Anyway, hang up
in this podcast, don't listen, Go watch Herbert West reanimat
(00:29):
or have some fun. Um. But if you decide to
keep listening to podcasts for some reason, we have a
bunch of spooky content for you this week. How was that?
How was that introduction? Sophie? Oh bad? All right, Garrison,
get going? Do your think? Yeah? My my thing? So, yeah,
(00:50):
we're doing We're doing spooky spooky Week, which is very
excited about. But yeah, every everyone I've told about spooky Week,
they're like, oh, so it's just a regular week for
for the show. Yeah, pretty much, it's more fun. But
it is in a few ways. It is actually gonna
be more fun because the spooky spooky mind goddamn yes,
(01:14):
spookoky mind bedding tails actually do have do have some
more fun than just the solely depressing ones. I mean,
this was this was the first theme week that we
all agreed upon. This was the first themes like can
we do something around spooky nous near Halloween? And everybody
youtly said yes, yes, yes, this is the first theme week. Um,
(01:37):
we have we we have, we have been promising Nut
Week coming up. Eventually we're gonna tease about things that
made us nut or where we talk about the legumes
mostly legumes. Okay, that's fair, um, but anyway we should
we should have start off our first, our first spooky tale. Um,
(01:57):
so I'm going I'm going to tell a very spooky
tale of a of an entire French town going going
mad over the course of a single week. Oh yeah,
probably probably with the help of psychoactive drugs and a
certain three letter agency. You know what. I think we're
gonna get to do. Garrison some messages that you can't
(02:23):
be racist against the French. They're like the British or Americans.
I didn't get a new messages saying that your French
accent was very racist to the French. There is a
certain number. It's like the Germans. There's a certain number
of genocides after which people get to make fun of
your country and it's not racist. And that number is
let's say three. Honestly, the worst part of this story
(02:48):
is that we're probably doing critical support for France. I
mean in a way. Well, honestly, I'm gonna be a
kind of more critical support to the CIA by the
end of this one. Um. Yeah, that's that is the
most critical support can be. So anyway, our very spooky
(03:11):
tail begins in ninety one in a small, charming French
village called Pont Saint a Spray, which is how I'm
gonna say that. Yeah, there you go. Um. So, not
much happened in this little picturesque, little little town on
the south side of France. You know. Uh. On the
day we start, it's just like a regular summer day.
People are going about their routine, going to their jobs,
(03:33):
kids are playing in the street, enjoying some delicious freshly
baked bread. Um. But suddenly strange things begin happening. Um,
and I'm gonna start off with some of the more mild,
mild mild effects here. So on in August, first dozens,
then hundreds of people began first just complaining of nausea, uh,
(03:55):
you know, and some people with some like stomach and
abdominable pain. They're coming up less often less often noted,
there was a few instances like vomiting and diarrhea. UM.
Only about thirty percent of people had diarrhea. That is
that is a weirder, weirder thing. Yeah, that is on
like a town wide basis three significant thirty Sorry, yeah,
(04:20):
that's a significant strain on the suit wag of the
people affected. It's just gonna be like a few hundred
versus I was taking drugs with a group of friends,
third of them had diarrhea. I would say, we might
need to go to a hospital that we have taken
someone that perhaps what we got was tainted. There is
there is. Yeah, well we'll we're talking about what actually
(04:41):
what the actual drugs being used here are going to be.
But uns were something where that's not an uncommon side effect.
But yeah, first first nausea, a little a little bit
of vomiting, stoma, pains, cramping, um. Hospitals began reporting people
experiencing alternating warm and cold waves for their body. Uh.
(05:01):
The British Medical Journal recalls abundant sweating and a disagreeable odor,
which I'm guessing the odor is just because there's all
those sweating people in the same cramped hospital room in
the summer. In the summer heats. Yeah, so anyway in
their French. So a lot of scargo sweats. I don't
(05:22):
want to get more messages saying that I have to stop.
Maybe he's going to do it more. By the way,
do we know that the diarrhea was the result of
whatever substance or maybe it's just the wine ships Again
we don't. Well, there's no way to tell. So yeah,
patients began complaining about weird pains and pressure around their neck,
(05:44):
which yeah, um. And one of the one of the
most reported symptoms was in insomnia, in some cases lasting
several days. Uh. Quoting the British Medical Journal, the first
symptoms appeared after a latent period of six to forty
eight hours the digestive disorders. They became worse with burning
sensations through the entire digestive tract. Some experienced sensations of
(06:06):
burning at the anus. A state of giddiness persisted. I mean,
who's not giddy when your anus is burning? Am I? Right?
I fear like like this is like this is like
the like the clear side that there's like some some
psychoactive job going on, because like your anus is burning
and yet your very you are born. Yeah, it's like
(06:28):
that sign from that what is that from a rejected
by what what? What's the cartoonist? Like my anus is bleeding,
but like you're down, you know, you're down for it. Yeah, yeah,
you're you're John Millenney impression. No no, no, it's it
wasn't a John Linney impression. So that's just your poisoned
(06:49):
millennial brain. Don Hertzfeld. Yeah great artist, Yeah, great artist.
H So these pale and limp patients still voting the
British Medical Journal, these pale and limp patients showed inconspicuous
trembling of the extremities, and they complained of disorders of
the visual accommodation and especially being unable to read. So
(07:12):
this this is this is the more mild. This is
the could So this is for many people affected, this
is where the symptoms stopped. After suffering for insomnia for
a while, with you know, mild disorders of the visual
(07:34):
accommodation um and you know and the stomach pains and
like weird like neck things, after they were able to sleep.
That was the sign of their recovery. Is like the
ability to sleep again. African insomnia war off but in
a in around fifty of the cases reported the effects
were much more intense. Um, I'm going to continue from
the from the medical journal first and then get into
(07:54):
some of the more colorful reporting around the incident. Uh.
Quoting the Medical journal again, Vivid visual hallucinations appeared, in
particular themes of visions of animals and of flames. All
of these visions were fleeting invariable in many of the patients.
They were followed by dreamy delirium. Yeah, that's that's about right.
That's actually pretty good description of like l S A
(08:16):
LSD those kind of like that. Movies always get it
wrong because you're not usually not like you're not seeing
some sort of like visual like cartoon world. It's it's
these kind of like fleeting impressions of visions and things
in the corner of your eyes. Yeah, it's a pretty
good especially on lower like it is unclear what exactly
they were on because then they definitely can be the
more cartoon lags. I mean, you can get full open
eyed hallucination, like especially the shogun chemicals will do that
(08:39):
that I don't get it so much with like LSD
L S A L say, if you want to shoot yourself,
that is that is some Hawaiian baby wood row seats
from home depot and have yourself a horrible right. So,
the delirium seemed to be systematized with animal hallucinations and
(09:00):
self accusation. It's weird, weird terms from them from accusations. Yeah,
it's I think I think they're trying to get at
ego death, but they don't have terms for it yet.
Do that or that, Like sometimes you're hallucinating it like
overcoming like guilt, like oh I did this terrible thing
or yeah yeah, yeah, everybody's angry at me or whatever,
(09:20):
like can continuing from the medical journal, self accusation, and
and it was sometimes mystical or macabre. In some cases,
terrifying visions were followed by fugus, which is an old
um for like fugues. It says, says fugues. Yeah, it's
it's it's like it's it's like it's like extreme it's
extreme disassociation. Yeah, yeah, you're kind of zombified a little bit. Yeah,
(09:44):
and two and two patients threw themselves out the window. Um. Yeah.
The delirium was of a confusal kind, which could be
interpreted for some moments by a strong stimulation. Every attempt
at restraint increased the agitation. Well, yeah, that's it restraining.
I've had to restrain a number of people and it
does not calm anyone down, especially especially when you're tripping hard. Yeah,
(10:09):
this sounds like a real, real bad time. Not the
thing to do. In severe cases, muscular spasms appeared. The
duration of these periods of delirium was varied. They lasted
several hours, several hours and some patients and in others
they persisted overnight. So that and then here it's it's
we're gonna get a little bit darker and then we're
(10:29):
gonna have more fun. Um. We observed four fatal cases,
three men and one woman. Three of these people were
old and in bad health. One of the men was
only twenty five years old and had been in good
health previously. They died in a muscular spasm in a
state of cardiovascular collapse. I think this is probably mostly
due to how the doctors were handling these patients. I mean, obviously,
(10:50):
you're your blood pressure want not can elevate when you're hallucinating.
But yeah, I think it also has a lot to
do with the way they were being handled. Yeah, you're right, Um,
the disorder has developed more quickly children but also left
them more quickly. An interesting feature some of the cases
was that the delirium it was the first sign to
be noted. So it depends people come up came up
on different ways, or some of them first had a
(11:10):
weird body feelings, some of them first started just seeing stuff. Um.
One other interesting tidbit that we're not going to spend
much time talking about, but like around two weeks after
this initial incident, some symptoms started to reappear, either through
like a secondary poison egg or it was like some
kind of like acid flashback. Yeah it must, it must
because I've done it, fuckload of ASCID. I've never had
(11:33):
a flashback. Um, I did at one point. I mean
I have like done some damage and so I have
permanent tracers. But it's not like, my guess is they
got I think the idea that there are like acid
flashbacks that are vivid hallucinations has been pretty heavily debunked.
My guesses they got redosed. Yeah, I don't know, I
might fight you. It's like it could be that it
(11:54):
was traumatic enough that like they're having they're dealing with
PTSD and kind of that that's what's happening. But don't know,
And I think I definitely have seen enough reports that
would see acid flashbacks definitely actually being a thing in
some cases, especially in the early days of studying these
types of drugs and like the sixties, like the CIA
reported a lot of stuff around acid flashbacks around the
people that we tortured. But I guess it's it's tide
(12:16):
to torture. That could just be PTSD. Stuff could be PTSD.
It's also, I mean, one thing you have to know,
and I don't know what kind of dose these people
were getting. With the CIA, with dose people, they were
sometimes giving people doses people do not take, like you
do not take that much, like hundreds or thousands or
millions of yeah, ridiculous irresponsible doses. Yeah. So now now
(12:37):
we're going to get to some of the some of
the more fun descriptions here, which we can actually kind
of like, based on our experiences, can actually kind of
see like what was actually going on in these people's heads. Um. So, basically,
we had at least dozens and dozens of people tripping
very very hard. Um. The local postman was doing his
rounds on his bicycle when he was suddenly overwhelmed by
nausea and wild hallucinations. Quoting him, it was terrible. I
(13:01):
had the sense, I had the sensation of shrinking and shrinking,
and the fire and the serpents coiling around by arms. Yeah,
that guy had some other stuff going on. Yeah, because
the very first acid trip was on a bicycle when
Heinrich Kaufman like made it and dosed himself. He started
coming up. I believe it was in Amsterdam, like riding
his bicycle, which is like, well, this is lovely. Yeah,
(13:22):
I've made something cool. Why was the postman riding a
bicycle to deliver packages? And because we have less fifties,
it's not there to France in four I mean that's
I'm sorry post So Yeah, the mailman fell off his
(13:44):
bike and was taken to the taking to a hospital
in a nearby town. He was putting a straight jacket,
and he shared a room with three teenagers who were
also tripping, and the teenagers were changed to their beds
to keep them under control. Yeah, that's that's how it
sounds horrible. Flash backs to this, to being chained to
a bed tripping. Yeah, some of my friends trying to
(14:08):
get out the window. They were thrashing, wildly, screaming, in
the sound of the metal beds and jumping up and down.
The noise was terrible. I would prefer I would prefer
to die then go through that again. Which this sounds
like like the worst acid trip you could go. That
sounds like about the worst way you could have a
trip go. It sounds awful. So back in the French town,
(14:29):
a little girl screamed as she was being chased by
man eating tigers. A woman sobbed about how her children
had been ground into sausages. Oh great and specific a
large men founded off terrific beasts by smashing its furniture
(14:51):
and using the wood as weapons. Good for you, buddy,
Good for you. Husband and wife right around chasing each
other with nice again, probably something else going on there.
My guess is we're not just talking the acid and
that because I have again, been on acid a lot
around knives and other weapons. I've never chased someone. I've
(15:13):
never chased someone around with knives, like the couple who
was on the verge of a knife chick. I think,
I think, I think the important part here is that
like in this French town, like acid wasn't a thing yet,
like like like lucinogenic drugs, weren't a thing, right, even
like even like mushrooms weren't popular around this time. No
one knew what what the hell was going on. Like
(15:34):
they just think that they're just basically losing their minds,
like like there's there's no other explanation for what's happening
to them. And let's just say that the most shocking
thing that has come out so far as that when
Robert was on acid, he wasn't chasing people with knives.
That seems like it's honest, Like, depending on your acid trip,
you wouldn't want to chase someone with a knife. Like,
it's not it's not the kind of we would we
(15:56):
would like during this, Yeah, we would. We would take
a bunch of drugs and grab my a K forty
seven and hike out into the woods and we would
shoot down a fir tree and we would drag it
back to a clearing and we would bury it standing up,
and we would drape it in pig intestines and put
a pig's heart on it. And when we cover it
in gasoline and light it with firecrackers and dance around
it like the pagans of old. But there was nothing
(16:17):
aggressive about No, you you you very rarely would want
to hurt somebody on acid, And my experience like you
generally generally are at least like way more compassionate in
a lot of ways. Um, But if you have no
idea what acid is and you're just you're in the
nineteen fifties and you're losing your mind and you're seeing
weird things that, Yeah, I can see how this would
maybe cause some other types of behavior. You just think
(16:38):
that because that is angry at you, like like like
it's like they're not they're not dosing themselves either, like
they're being dosed rights like they don't. It's very different
where like you're deciding to go with a trip versus
this is happening to you when you have no decision.
I think for basically anyone in this position, the logical
assum should be, oh, the devil has taken over our
town and our minds have we have been infested with
(17:00):
demons like that? What else are you going to assume?
You're not going to be like, Oh, this drug that's
just barely been invented and that nobody really knows about
yet except for weird nerds. It must be some version
of that that I've taken accidentally. No, you're going to
do in your blood. So one interesting tid. But before
we before we go and break um, even some of
(17:20):
the local animals had been affected by whatever poisoned the town. Um.
There there was there was one dog in particular that
kept chewing on rocks until its teeth chipped away. I
don't like this. And and ducks were behaving very odd. Um,
it's described that they were. They were walking around erect
and upright, like penguins in a line, and they're just
like weird, weird behavior from ducks so far that kind
(17:46):
of makes me want to dose our ducks scared. We're not.
We're not wasting acid on the ducks. I mean, there's
a lot of things you could give ducks. We're not.
We're not giving ducks asset. That's not about giving ducks drugs.
Is they're all monsters. That is true. They are monsters
and rapists, every one of them. Yeah, all the mail ducks.
(18:08):
So anyway, a reoccurring theme was that people were running
around wildly and being very fearful of like monstery animals
and encroaching flames. Um, it sounds like the ducks are
having a good time, though, doing their ministry of silly
walk shit, Like, I don't know what all these people
are bummed about. This is rad Okay. So when when
you first said that, I heard dogs, and I was like,
that is the most terrible ducks. It's like duck steady,
(18:31):
like very upright, like penguins walking around in the line.
I think ducks might enjoy it. I think dogs are
a little too aware of what's going on. Dog. The
stone thing was about the dog, yeah, with the dog. Yeah,
I just don't know that the dogs enjoy because, like
I've seen dogs accidentally eat large amounts of pot and
whatnot and they get weird. They they they're they're pretty
(18:55):
scared every good time. They're pretty're pretty scared. Yeah. Yeah.
Do you know what is also very spooky ca Yeah,
capitalism and all of these spooky advertisements to sell things.
Advertisements are also a form of mind control. Speaking of
the CIA in the fifties anyway, profoundly damaging. We are
(19:28):
back from the spooky advertising, yeah anyway. Um, So I
think another another reoccurring factor for why a lot of
these people have very similar types of experiences around like
snakes um, which we're talking about later, and like flames
is like with this many people tripping and no one
knows what tripping is. I think it's really easy for
(19:49):
an idea or a fear to spread from one person
to another while they're tripping. Um, with like this many people,
I think if someone says something, it's going to start
happening to someone else. And it's kind of kind of
this like cascading effect where they're all developed these very
similar fear is because it's almost like being spread like
an infection. Um. So there was there was a one
(20:09):
man convinced that red snakes were devouring his brain and
he jumped out a window. Oh no, what did he
live for? This? He did live? Um, I'm not guessing
a lot of these. It's it's like France and the fifties,
So I'm guessing most of these buildings are not super
they're not super high up. Now you're like falling a
foot or two. Although here we have another one. Another
mad reportedly left for a window, yelling, look everyone, I'm
(20:33):
a dragonfly. The men broke. The men broke both legs,
but he stood up and continued running, looking rad king
Sigma Stigma behavior Sigma. This is a new kind of man,
(20:55):
just drapped. Look, everyone, I have a dragonfly breaks legs,
he keeps running. Based on the information you've provided us,
I can't say he's not a dragon. No, he is
an absolute, absolute king. Good for I hope he had
a great life. Yeah. Another one saw his heart escape
(21:19):
through his feet and beseeched the doctor to try to
put it back into place. You don't want to have
that happen. That doesn't sound fun. You want to keep
that somewhere around the middle of your body. Someone sprinted
down the lane, claiming that he was being chased by
bandits with donkey ears. A nearby river, a man was
convinced that he was a circus tight rope walker and
(21:40):
attempted to balance his way across the cables of a
suspension bridge. You know it doesn't say. The report does
not tell you. So, yeah, he's not in the death report.
Yeah he's And therefore another another person did try to
die in the river. He tried to jump into the river,
only to be saved by his friends. And he was screaming,
(22:02):
I am dead, I am dead, and my head is
made of copper, and I have snakes in my stomach
and they are burning me. It's such a weird description
of like tripping and saying like my head is made
of copper. I'm trying to think of like what was
going on? What like what what series of events did
did he spiral down in his brain to have that
(22:24):
sentence I did? I'm not quite sure. It's it's it's
it's definitely. I can definitely see it happening. I just
I just can. I'm trying to think, like we're exactly
what would happen to get to that point. It's really
real interesting. I think some of these are hard because again,
it's like these people just think literally think they're going
insane or that like this stuff is just actually happening
to them. Like you were, like when when you're tripping
(22:46):
on acid, you already kind of have the feeling that
there is moments where you feel like this is like
this is like never gonna end, even though even though
you know you know you're on acid. These people don't
know that, right, Like these people don't have the reascernce
like no, I took acid, I'm on a drug, this
is gonna be for eight hours. They think this is
gonna last forever, right Like they think this this is
just the world now, Like this is just one of those.
(23:07):
Rubbert Anton Wilson, who is a thinker I enjoy a lot,
writes a lot about how to calm people down when
they've taken too much, and most of his advices around
talking about like, okay, well, how long ago did you
take it? Hey, well that the good news is that
this is going to end here. You know, it's only
gonna last this long, like you're you're through this point. Oh,
this is the this is the second hour, freakies, and
by the third hour you'll be fine again and enjoying it.
Like it's all about making keeping in people's minds like
(23:30):
this is going to pass. So yeah, you're right, Like
this is the fucking worst way to take drugs, alright.
So local newspapers uh and also like in national newspapers
described described this as a among the stricken delirium rose
patients thrash wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers
were blossoming from their bodies, people throwing themselves some rooftops,
(23:51):
men and women throwing their clothes off and running in
the streets naked, and children complaining their stomachs were infested
with coils and snakes, which I mean half of that
sounds like, yeah, that's like a normal good time just
running around the streets naked on acid. Other I was like, yeah,
that that doesn't seem pleasant with coils and snakes in
your stomach, but also like flowers bossoming fun your body.
I can, I can, I can understand that kind of sensation. Um,
(24:13):
but like it definitely definitely wasn't all horrible and the
night like nightmares we we were. We already mentioned the
giddy people with burning anuses, um, but for like the
full and tripping folks. According to the New York Times,
there's reports of people like hearing heavenly choruses and seeing
you know, bright colors. The world look beautiful to them. Apparently,
the head of the farming co op wrote hundreds of
(24:35):
pages of like enlightened tripping poetry. That that guy must
be sick as ship because knowing nothing, he starts tripping,
not knowing he's tripping. It's just like timeing to make
some fucking art. You know what, this head state is
good for writing some shit. He just went to his
(24:56):
cabinets wrote poetry. That's fucking awesome. That's a guy. I'll
bet he handled just everything that life through it. Well,
like that says a lot about you when you're like, oh,
demons have infiltrated my brain. Guess I'm gonna hang out
in my cabin and write some poems hundreds of pages. Wow,
(25:18):
like I could. I could hardly write ship on acid.
I cannot imagine trying to write poetry. I've done a
lot of creative stuff on acid. Creative stuff. Yeah, I
just feel like specifically, like reading and typing can can
be hard at certain points. You know, if if you're
like coming down that it can be easier, but really
good for like writing, It's good for ideas that you
(25:40):
later can flesh out into writing. But yeah, so unfortunately,
you know, because this was you know, no one who
was going on. Many people were taken to local asylums
and straight jackets and tied onto beds, making things undoubtedly
worse for people tripping. It's one of those things I
can't even be angry at them because like they don't
know what's going you know, like you have no idea
(26:00):
what's going on, the whole. Like every attemptant restraint increased
the agitation line. It's like horrifying from the concept of
like you're tripping, you you, you do, you don't know
what's going on, and people are tying you down to beds,
making you feel like you're even more stuck in this
permanent seat of delirium. It's just, it's just it is
the worst nightmare. Yeah, this is horrible. Yea. The mayor
of the town said, like, I've seen healthy men and
(26:22):
women suddenly become terrorized, ripping in their bed sheets, hiding
themselves beneath their blankets to escape their hallucinations. So yeah,
it's it's if you, if you, if you don't know
what's going on, pretty pretty pretty scary, except for the
poetry guy. Good for him, Yeah, good for him. Um. Yeah.
So by by the time the effects had subsided for
(26:43):
everyone affected, which is around like a few days after
the initial reported like nausea, like you know, not it
didn't affect everyone at the same time. You know, some
people got dosed later on. It's it's it's unclear what
exactly because it's the fifties, we didn't have a great
idea of the exact timeline of events of when the
first effects were felt and like how all the stuff
was spaced out. But this whole instant Arrassed lasted around
(27:05):
like a few days for like everyone everyone totaled. UM.
It was supported that anywhere between like three hundred and
five hundred people had felt the effects. UM, you know,
around fifty feeling very very extreme like open eye like
hallucinations of objects that aren't even there, like like very
extreme hallucinations. UM. And and four people did die in
connection to the poisoning. UM at least where people died.
(27:27):
It's again it's unclear for exact numbers for a lot
of this stuff. UM. An investigation into the sudden outbreak
of the madness was probably underway. Town officials wanted to
get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible. Yeah,
do you want to figure out what was happening? Yea. UM.
And the blame fell onto a single batch of bread
(27:50):
what so among the common denominator among those affected that
they all allegedly consumed bread from one specific baker. Um.
He he was accused of using er got contaminated rye flower,
and he was arrested and a temporary imprisoned. UM. Also,
a nearby miller that he got the flower from was
(28:10):
also arrested and given some of the blame. UM. The
funny part is that around this time, the French government
had a very top down grain distribution system that originally
controlled everything about where the grains were milled, where they
were sent, and what bakers could use which flower, so
bakers had no choice and what type of flower to
use or what kind of a grain they could use
(28:30):
in baking. It was all decided by other people. Bread
is like real big deal and it's pretty pretty pretty important. Yeah,
for the record, just like air got poisoning. There are
a lot of cases of like different like dancing manias
and whatnot in like the medieval in medieval Europe, or
like whole towns will be well, everyone will start like
(28:51):
dancing or like hallucinating, and you know they always came
down as like these people assumed apocryphal of stories about
like demon possessions or whatnot. And now a lot of
the sup and he's like, oh yeah, some ergod gotten. No,
yeah it was, it was. It was just tripping or poisoning.
It seems like one of the rougher trips to go on.
It's not super clean. It's no. I mean I've done
l s A, which I think is similar and similar
(29:12):
to ergotten. They're tripp to means that are like really rough,
and it's I would not don't don't do l s A.
No Hawaiian baby wood roase seeds. For if you're going
to take l s A, then actually like synthesizing, which
is a felon um. But you can just buy Hawaiian
(29:36):
baby wood roase seeds and eat them and you will
have maybe the worst trip of your life. Great advice
from the from the pod um. So yeah, on on
on on the on the On the rye and ergot topic,
the past growing season was especially wet and ergot fun
guy did grow across the country's rye fields. Um, but
the amount of ergot on the rye and the amount
(29:57):
of rye used in baking was thought to not being
enough to induce any any type of poisoning. UM. In fact,
that the last time or like or got poisoning had
struck France was back in was back in eighteen sixteen,
so almost like a century and a half before this incident.
And there was a century if it's the fifties right,
litt less than a century no, so the last instant
was eighteen sixteen. This was no, no, like a century
(30:24):
and a half ago, um, and no other towns anything,
and no other part of France was affected by anything
similar to this. Um. So the ur got thing is
kind of iffy um it. But the explanation was the
only thing that doctors investigators could come to would do,
like you know, the their their limited knowledge around brain
altering substances, and just pressure from town officials to get
(30:46):
to the bottom of this so that they had something
to blame and people could move on. Um. But you know,
as a result, not much evidence to really backs up
there backs up there got claim, and a lot of
experts today kind of deemon bunk, um it doesn't there's it,
and there's a bunch of like, um, there's this thing
hi ke on that the Greeks would take that was
like this recollucinatory thing that they think it was because
(31:08):
they were putting grain and wine and it might have
been air got poisoned, but also like people enjoyed it.
And so there's a lot of debate over whether or
not it could have been ergot. But I don't know, Um,
I don't know what else is There are other other
theories about what it might Boy is it the CIA
CIA garrison? Where could they get to it? So, yeah,
(31:29):
it doesn't really make much sense that the high amounts
of ergot rye would only be in one batch of
grain used in a single batch of bread from just
one bakery and one small town, doesn't doesn't really make sense. Um.
Other explanations um that people have come to includes like
mercury poisoning and overuse of other fungicides. These have been
mostly disproven. Yeah, that doesn't seem like mercury poisoning. No,
(31:50):
but there is a guy who likes to drink some mercury,
you know, boy on. So yeah, So there's a lot
of other theories around, like fungicides being used, but those
have been kind of disproved by some people, but others
still a point to them as possible explanations. But but
there is one other theory that we will focus on
that features two of my favorite things, LSD and the
(32:12):
nineteen fifties CIA because if you're gonna pick a c
i A, they had the most fun, they had the
most fun, right like you know who else has a
lot of fun? Garrison who is also the nineteen fifties
c i A whoms our sponsors, Oh really to happen
here is sponsored only by the fifties c i A.
(32:35):
Only the one from the fifties. Yeah, when you order
any of our product products, they will come to your
house and inject you with seven thousand hits of LSD.
Hey three, Hey, that is that sounds like a great deal. Honestly,
you're saving a lot of money. You are saying that
that is a lot of free a lot of acid
for the amount of money you're spending. You won't do
more acid, that's for sure. You're that that's acid for life.
(32:58):
You want do it again? Yeah, you might, you probably
probably you won't have to do it, you won't. You
want to do any expenses ever again. Yeah, you'll survive.
You'll just be a very different person by the end
of the Yeah. You you won't survive. Your body with
someone else will wake up. So, speaking of waking up,
here is a products so nifties c I a UM
(33:32):
Wild Time. In two USand nine, Hank P. Albarelli, as
an an American writer and journalist, released a book called
A Terrible Mistake, which focuses on the suspicious death of
a CIA scientist named Frank Olson, who worked on the
CIA mind control experiments during the late forties and early fifties.
While researching the book, Albarelli claims to have come across
(33:53):
a number of old CIA and White House documents referencing
the pont St De Sprite incident, and he claims at
the village was the target of a CIA experiment on
the mass effects of LSD, and that around the time
that Frank Olsen wanted to sever his ties with the
Army and CIA, Frank started talking about his participation in
the experiment, which may have led to the government off
in Olsen. So, I know that is a lot and
(34:15):
it is slightly more than just a speculation. We're going
to get into the evidence here shortly, UM. But by
now it's pretty well known that throughout theuthorities fifties and sixties,
both the U. S. Army and the CIA tried to
use hallucinogetic hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD as both an
offensive weapon and as a way to make like psychic
super soldiers. The programs like MK Ultra and Knaomi, Project Bluebird,
(34:37):
Project Artichoke, UM, lots of lots of these things were
trying to find different ways of using LSD for like
offensive and defensive means. Um. Some of the interest was
promoted by it was was prompted by reports of the
Soviet Union doing experiments with drugs around the same time.
Also stuff around like you know, hy like like like
psychic powers and hypnosis. This was very popular on this
(35:00):
time for for lots of different intelligence agencies. UM. But
so albare Eli uncovered report from nineteen nine by the
director of the Edwood Arsenal which many which which was
where many US government LST experiments were carried out. And
this report stated that the army should do everything, everything
is posted, everything, everything possible to launch so called field
(35:21):
experiments using this drug. And later in his to us
A nine book, Albrely claims that he found references to
a government document with the label rep STU SPRI and
f Olsen Files s O SPAN slash France Operation File
inclusive Olsen Intel Files. Hand Carrie to Bellan tell him
to see to it that these are buried. Um, this
(35:44):
document does exist like we we we like we we
we we we do have this label on on this document. Um.
But like the actual contents of documents are are gone.
But this is this is this is this is just
a label that is being referenced as title boy. So
the document label references Frank Olson and David Bellan. So
(36:04):
Belln was the executive director of the Rockefeller Commission, created
by the White House in the mid seventies to investigate
abuses carried out worldwide by the Central Intelligence Agency. So
Alberrey believes that the that the French town LSD incident um,
which is like the Pont saintis Breed which is the
name of the town, and the Ethelson files mentioned in
(36:25):
the document, would definitely show that if the document hadn't
been buried as it was said in the in the
label the CIA, it would show that the CIA was
experimenting on the townspeople by dosing them with what he
thinks was lsd UM. Now, there is also a bit
more to it than that um using foyas he got
ahold of another CIA document, a two page report from
my team fifty four detailing a conversation between a CIA
(36:47):
agent and a representative of the San DAWs Chemical Company.
So this the sand DAWs base was the place where
Albert Hoffman invented LSD in night um and it was
it was it was only a few hundred kilometers away
from Point St. A Spree, the town where this happened.
So the chemical company was actually pretty pretty close relatively
(37:08):
to like Europe. Um and it was also the only
place where LSD was being made at the time. And
they were providing both the Army and the CIA with
a lot of a lot of acid. But you mean
they're also giving it like, they were also giving it
to universities. They gave lots to Timothy Laria. Initially. They
were they were, they were, they were giving out to
(37:30):
a lot of different universities and people, but including the
US government. So the CIA. The CIA agent wrote um
in this report that was like he was detailing a
dinner he had with this representative of the chemical company,
and he reported that after having several drinks, the scientists
started talking about the pomp Sat desprite incident. The send
(37:51):
off official burned out the pomp sat a spirit secret
was that it was not the bread at all. Continued
to send off official for weeks. The French tied up
laboratories with analysis of the bread. It was not the
grain ergot, It was a diethyl laminate. Sorry, it's it's
the last part of the LSD. Yeah, the die ethyl
lemonide like compound. So yeah, surgic diethyl acid is what
(38:15):
LSD stands for so yeah, he the sideist said that
it was it was like it was like basically an
LSD like compound. Um. So that's that was the that
was reported detail like a dinner that a CIA agent
had with this scientist, um, and that document was uncovered
and that was it was from like the fifties. Now
(38:36):
this this, this next part has a little bit less
proof to it because there's no documents backing this up.
But l Brelli also claims that Dirk is diggig too forward.
CIA researchers reached out to him and revealed that revealed
some details of some possible details of the method of
the poisoning. They told him that the village was subjected
to an air blitz of pulverized LSD. I'm sorry, that's
(39:03):
fucking based so to force taking the substance through the air.
According to the researchers, this manner of of this manner
of distribution proved mostly unsuccessful, um, forcing the CIA to
move onto phase two, which was contaminating local food. So
apparently the if the if, if the air blitz was
(39:25):
a thing, it didn't work super well. Um. Although actually
about to have Sophie Bias a plane, we will talk
about this later. But um, the CIA did do more
air blitzing um of of acid in New York City.
Actually they would ride around in cars um in like
(39:45):
poorer and poorer more like multicultural areas, UM shooting LSD
out of the back of the car to see what
would happen to, I mean, take out the racism. And
that really is a dream job, just driving around cities
air dosing people with acid. It random smoking cigarettes probably.
So with the conclusion drawn that it was one of
(40:07):
the town's bakeries being the source of the poisoning, Alberrel
says it was possible that LSD was put in or
onto the bread. Um. So yeah. And uh also lots
of the scientists, lots of the scientists dispatched to investigate
the poisoning after it took place where actually from the
Sandaws Chemical company. Um. They studied the situation for like
(40:28):
two or three weeks UM and gave the explanation that
would later be kind of disproven, uh, that it was
got poisoning, which they they told the town officials and
the British medical journal. Um what what, what no one
knew at the time was that one the existence of
LSD in the first place. Um. And two that San
DAWs was the company making it and giving these drugs
to the U. S. Army and to the CIA. UM.
(40:50):
And apparently apparently Albert Hoffman himself went to the town
to investigate this incident. Um. So yeah, one last thing
on like the physical evidence side of things. Um. Albarelli
also found an undated White House document that appeared to
be part of a larger file that had been sent
to members of the Rockefeller Commission, containing the names of
(41:10):
two French nationals who had been secretly employed by the
CIA and made direct references to the quote pont Saint
Esprit incident um. Also it was linked the document linked
former CIA biological warfare expert and the chief of the
Fort Derek's Special Operations Division. So those are all places
that they were experiencing with this similar kind of thing. Um.
(41:31):
We we we have mentioned the Rockefeller Commission a few
times now, for remember the names uh, Frank Olsen, the
guy one of the CIA researchers on Lst. And David
Bellan where they were they were They were on the
label of that missing document. So but Bellin was the
executive director of the White House Commission to investigate the
CIA's abuses and crimes, which was called the Rockefeller Commission.
(41:51):
It was formed by President Ford in nineteen seventy five
to investigate abuses and other activities by the CIA and
a few other intelligence agencies that were operating within the States. Um.
So the Rockefeller Commission revealed not only like, the reason
why we know but m KOTRA was because the Rockefeller Commission,
this is this is how we know this was a thing. Um.
So it not only revealed toff about like programs around
(42:14):
m KAULTRA, but also revealed the details of the CIA
dosing their own scientist Frank Olsen with LSD and possibly
killing him. Um. There's also like, there's like a Netflix
series about this called Woodword, which I haven't I haven't
actually watched yet, so I don't know how good or
accurate it is. But they did, they did make a
series a few years ago about the death of Frank Olsen. Um,
and all of the weirds get yourself surrounding both his
(42:36):
job and and and and and his death. Um, we
do love the CIA, folks. So the the Commission also
concluded that the head of the CIA's LSD program, doctor
Sydney ghost leap destroyed all of the drug programs records
in nineteen seventy three to hide the details of possibly
illegal actions, and he was personally involved in the torture
(42:59):
of FRANKL. Wilson Um. Twenty years after Mr Olson's death
and ten years after the elistic experiments were halted, a
doctor Gotlieb ordered the destruction of all the records of
the program, including a total of one hundred and fifty
two separate files. This came shortly after other reports that
that that records were being destroyed by Richard Helms, that
the then Director of Central Intelligence. So it's undoubitbly true
(43:23):
that the CIA was up to up to some ship
involving LSD around around the exact time period of this
French Town incident. It's certainly not like you're not coming
out of nowhere suggesting the CIA may have dosed all
these people, but they set it to a bunch of folks.
If they didn't do it here, they've done similar ship
And it's it's also it's also worst mentioning at this
(43:44):
point that like this is like the point where the
CIA is also running this like enormous heroin network out
of France. As like if they basically basically have this
whole they have this deal with the French where they're like, okay,
so the French mob can like basically move all the
heroin they want and exchange they'll like stop the communists
and taking control of the point of marseilla Is. And
so this is this is all also going on like
(44:06):
at the same time that they're doing the LSD stuff.
It's great. Yeah, So there's there's some historians that think
the LSD theory does not hold enough water. Um. Stephen Kaplan,
it's a US historian specializing in the French food history
and the author of the two book Cursed Bread, which
follows this incident. Um. He says that he is I
have numerous objections to this poultry evidence that this that
(44:28):
this against the CIA. First of all, it's clinically incoherent.
LSD takes effects in just a few hours, whereas the inhabitants,
where the inhabitants showed symptoms only after thirty six hours
or more. For the more, LSD does not cause that
the digestive elements or the vegetative effects described by the townspeople. Um.
And so to both those claims, I say they're not
necessarily true. Um, it's it's it's unclear how soon the
(44:50):
delirious effects took place for some people. They were they
forced effect felt Um. So the whole thing about like
the effects only taking effect after thirty six hours, that's
not that's not necessarily true. Um. And Also LSD can
definitely have nauseating or digestive effects. Yeah, absolutely, so that's
that's that's not that's yeah, and and but but like
(45:11):
there were other types of symptoms that are not common
for what we think of as like modern LST. Again,
this is the nineties, and we don't know what they
were actually on it did It's maybe not. It may
not be what we think of as like LSD. Now
it could be slightly that you know that this is
a whole class of psychoactive drugs that's unclear what they
were all actually being dosed with. Yeah, who the funk
(45:31):
knows what they were being given and who the funk
knows what the actual like dose amount was. Yeah, we
no no idea. It's also you know, I think it's
Leary was the origin of the phrase that like the
things that determine what happens on a trip or set
setting in dose, So your mindset where you take it
and who you take it around, and the dose and
the fact that these are somewhat unique symptoms could be
(45:51):
to the fact that like, other people taking asset have
never taken it this way, and this without knowing what
asseid is like. So Kaplan's other objections revolve around like
the delivery system. He says, it's absurd this idea of
transmitting a very toxic drug by putting by putting it
in the bread as for pulver as to get for
ingestion through the air. That technology wasn't even possible at
(46:14):
the time. Most compelling lee why would they choose the
town of pont Saint a Spree to conduct these tests.
It was half destroyed by the U. S. Army during
fighting with the Germans in the Second World War. It
makes no sense. And and to that, I say, that
makes it the perfect town for the CIA to funk
with me. Yeah, they generally would choose to dose someone
(46:34):
with acid because it sounded funny, Like I think the
fact that this town was already kind of like only
half inhabited and half destroyed by the by the Second
World War, that makes it the perfect town to funk
with like. And also they Also, the CIA and the
government very much did have the means to try to
distribute stuff via the air, because we can see other
we can see other documents around the time of them
(46:56):
doing this too, specific areas of of New York City.
They also tried to poison the entire New York Subway
with LSD in the fifties, but that was shut down
by higher ups in in the Central Intelligence. Unly, God
what a time that would have been. But but cap
But but Caplan isn't sure or Got responsible either. Um.
He says that or in comambination would not have worked
(47:19):
because it doesn't make sense that only one sack of
grain would have been affected. Um. And he says if
it was or got the the effects would have been
way more widespread. He rules out LSD in the grounds
and the symptoms of people suffered, although similar don't quite
fit what we modernly think of the drug. Also, I
don't I don't think Caplin's ever taken LSD, so I
don't think talking about I think he's right about it
probably not being air got. But I don't think he
(47:40):
knows much. Yeah, he all. He also he also he
also points out that LSD probably wouldn't have survived the
fierce temperatures of the baker's oven, although Albarelli counters that
it could have been that LSD could have been added
after the fact to the surface of the breach. Yah,
you could just drop it on. You could just drop
it on with like with like liquid blodders, which also
explain how the effects were so different from person to person,
because one person maybe having a whole drop of LSD,
(48:01):
where somebody maybe only have like a tiny little like
you know, spec of like speck of like like moist liquid.
So I can explain some things, but you know, this
is still pretty much a mystery. You know, it's very clear,
it's very much, very well could have been some kind
of hidden LSD c I a experiment UM or the
CIA could have just been, you know, interested in studying
(48:23):
what happened in the town, since they were also doing
studies into psychoactives substances at the time. UM. It could
be either or UM. And that's where its spooky, because
you'll never know. So, yes, that is that, that is
the spooky incident of a French town basically thinking that
they lost their minds and then you know they do.
(48:44):
We it is a little funny. It is definitely a
little funny. Um it's it is a great example of
like the worst way to trip. Yeah that that's that's
pretty high up there. Um anyway, critical support to the
CIA for josing random people with acid. Always one of
my favorite sets of stories. You love to see it,
(49:07):
so yeah, tune tune in, tune in tomorrow for more spooky,
spooky story. And you can follow the spooky social media
that poisons your brain at com up in here pod
and cool Zone Media which yes, Twitter will poison your brain.
That is just as spooky, um more spooky, way worse
(49:29):
for your brain than surprise c I a acid to
be honest, the acid wears off
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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