LOST: Brave New Island

Purchased in 1960 for $285, this small substance may be said, without exaggeration, to have perpetrated the most significant cultural revolution of our time. John Beresford, a pediatrician of British extraction working in New York City, purchased gram H-00047. Before long, it passed into the systems of Donovan, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Paul Krassner, Frank Barron, Huston Smith, Aldous Huxley, Paul Lee, Richard Katz, Pete La Roca, Charlie Mingus, Saul Steinberg, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Ralph Metzner, Alan Watts, Jean Houston and perhaps a thousand others. "There is some possibility," commented Michael Hollingshead, a main distributor, "that my friends and I have illuminated more people than anyone else in history."

In 1955 Aldous Huxley's first wife died. In 1956 he married Laural Archera. In Heaven and Hell (1956) he described the use of mescaline to induce visionary states of mind.