Feature image credit: Netflix
If you've been watching the latest Netflix Original Stranger Things, then, firstly, let me congratulate you on having great taste. It's so good; I binge watched the entire things in three days. If you haven't watched it yet, then you definitely need to get on board now.
A little warning, if you haven't watched past episode three then stop reading now, because SPOILERS. If, like me, you couldn't switch off from the nostalgia-fest, then read on because shit is about to get weird.
So, the part in episode three where Hooper finds reference to Project MK Ultra when he's doing his research, well, Project MK Ultra did actually exist. Now, I'm not saying it definitely created a bunch of super-children, like 11, but who knows? Well, no one knows because the government destroyed all the records under orders from Nixon.
However, one set of documents survived and was released under a freedom of information, and there's a lot of absolutely batshit stuff in there.
Project MK Ultra, which is also known as the CIA's mind control programme, used human test subjects to try and come up with new techniques/drugs to be used in interrogations in order to weaken whoever was being interrogated and force confessions, through mind control.
Credit: Netflix
There was a huge list of goals attached to the study, including to discover substances which will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public; materials which will cause temporary/permanent brain damage and loss of memory; and material which will cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning.
It sounds insane to us now, but at the time, drugs, such as LSD, were quite new and people didn't know about its powers or capabilities yet. The experiments began in the early 1950s and ran until 1973, it involved a LOT of illegal activity including the use of unwitting subjects as well as using LSD, barbiturates and amphetamine.
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Other reports suggest the use of total sensory deprivation, like what happens in Stranger Things, and hypnosis with various aims, including 'hypnotically inducing anxiety' and using hypnosis to improve memory. Some sources even claim that sexual abuse was used to 'break' test subjects and making them more open to suggestion.
Credit: Netflix
One study involved hooking a subject up to a barbiturate IV in one arm and amphetamine IV into the other. Researchers would then administer the barbiturates and, when the subject began to feel sleepy, pump them full of the amphetamines. The effect of this on the body would often end with subject incoherently babbling. Researchers would then ask the subjects a bunch of questions in the hope that this drug-induced state would result in useful answers.
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With a lack of full records, we'll never know the full extent of what went on during MK Ultra. But in 1976 the Church Committee of the US Senate issued a report called the Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operation with Respect to Intelligence Activities. It's a bit of a long title, but stick with me.
Inside this report was the following statement: "LSD was one of the materials tested in the MK Ultra program. The final phase of LSD testing involved surreptitious administration to unwitting non-volunteer subjects in normal life settings by undercover officers of the Bureau of Narcotics acting for the CIA."
So, to put it simply, at first, those involved with MK Ultra were just drugging people who had no fucking clue. Let's stop for a minute and think how weird that would be. One minute your working on a report, or whatever, and the next minute there's a couple of unicorns getting right in the way.
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Obviously a topic like this is going to attract a LOT of crazy conspiracy theories. I mean, destroying all records will do that. But this seems like one of those cases where we don't even need to make it more interesting with conspiracy theories. The truth is weird enough here, lads.
Words Claire Reid
Featured Image Credit:Topics: Netflix