Michael Hollingshead

Michael Hollingshead was a British researcher in psychedelic drugs and hallucinogens including psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide, among others, at Harvard University in the mid-twentieth century. He was the father of comedian Vanessa Hollingshead.

Hollingshead was the Executive Secretary for the Institute of British-American Cultural Exchange in 1961. A research scientist, Dr. John Beresford, received a package of one gram of LSD from Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland at a time when it was still legal to use in experiments, and he in turn gave part of it to Hollingshead. One experiment Hollingshead conducted involved studying the effects on web-weaving by spiders under the influence of the drug. He claims to have first tried LSD by licking the spoon of a batch of LSD-laced cake icing he had packed in a mayonnaise jar for transport. (This jar was to become an object of psychedelic legend.) After his first experience, he contacted Aldous Huxley who suggested he get in contact with Timothy Leary to discuss LSD's potential. In September 1961 he met Leary in Cambridge, and was invited to live in Leary's house and teach a course at Harvard. Shortly thereafter, he introduced Leary to LSD.

He participated in the Concord Prison Experiment with Leary, Ralph Metzner, and several others in 1962. For the next few years he worked with psychedelic therapists, and lived at Millbrook with Leary and Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass). He then set up a New York-based project of his own together with Jean Houston, where guided trips were performed and data gathered which, according to Hollingshead's book, formed the core material for Masters' and Houston's book The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience. In 1965 he moved to London where he opened the World Psychedelic Center. He also worked with experimental film, collaborating on the Scott Bartlett short subject "A Trip to the Moon", in 1968.

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