Joe McHugh, founder of (and artist for) East Totem West, discovered LSD in 1964, when he was in the army stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He was on the staff of the base's psychiatric department, patrolling the wards atop America's stockpile of gold. He and Bob Hall, his mentor and supervisor, heard about a chemical that the army and the CIA had been experimenting with for years as a possible "truth serum". Hall initiated his eager young apprentice - fresh from art school at Lehigh and Rhode Island School of Design - into the psychedlic fold. It is ironic, in hindsight, that this drug - which the Establishment thought would strengthen their hand - became the lubricant for the loosening of society's moorings. What started out as a sinister torture tool had, within a decade, initiated a Dionysian romp into the Aquarian Age. As the city dweller would say, what goes around comes around. As Joe McHugh would say, think about it.

White Rabbit and Other Delights: East Totem West - A Hippie Company 1967-1969
by Alan Bisbort