Brian Wilson: ‘The voices started after LSD’

[SMiLE-addict]

Sez this piece in the Seattle P-I:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/people/2016/06/15/brian-wilson-the-voices-started-after-lsd/

"The 73-year-old musician, most famous for his pioneering work with the Beach Boys, spent much of his younger life as a recluse after developing schizophrenia in the 1960s. The condition means he hears voices, but it only began after he started taking LSD, also known as acid."

Now, I had always thought he started hearing them before he started doing LSD (such as the freak-out episode on the plane). Or maybe he didn't make himself clear to the writer of the article. Or maybe the article writer didn't understand him correctly. Or maybe he started going looney before the LSD, but the actual voices themselves didn't start until after.

Anyway...

[Emily]

I have a vague memory of reading a quote from Brian Wilson once saying that the voices started in '63 or '64. But I've looked for it pretty extensively and can't find it, so am beginning to think it was an amalgam of things in my brain.
In any case, one shouldn't assume that the sequence necessarily means cause and effect. Because people assume a relationship so frequently, LSD use by those with mental health issues, particularly with schizoid disorders and psychosis, has been studied pretty extensively, though the illegality of LSD has made structured tests difficult.
Anyway, the upshot is:
- LSD has not been shown to cause disorders (other than the direct reaction to the drug in your system);
- Some studies have indicated it might accelerate the onset of symptoms of a developing disorder.

Given B. Wilson's family history, it shouldn't be surprising that he had an inheritable condition. Given his childhood, it shouldn't be surprising that it developed into a full-fledged disorder.
Both schizoid personality disorder and bipolar disorder (which are the two things I understand Brian Wilson has been diagnosed with) tend to manifest in adolescence or post adolescence. Bipolar disorder has an average onset at the age of 25.

So he was probably already on the train, but LSD may have sped it up.

And after typing that I went to verify his diagnosis and, as most of you probably know, it's schizoaffective disorder, not schizoid personality disorder. Schizoaffective disorder actually tends to manifest later than schizoid personality disorder: not so much in adolescence, but in the 20s.
While reading about it, I came across this page that lists symptoms that should be familiar to any Beach Boys fan:
http://mentalhealth.com/home/dx/schizoaffective.html

[CenturyDeprived]

Is it possible that it was some particularly heavy/bad dose that really affected Brian? Even if the voices started pre-LSD, I wonder if he could have just done a dose of LSD from a different, milder batch, and have come out of it much less unscathed. I guess this is the problem with drugs being illegal - the inability to know the origins and full ingredients of what you are taking. I'm sure many people have in fact overdosed on a bad batch of an illegal narcotic, and had the narcotic been legal and of reputable origin (the way legal weed is nowadays, and presumably sourced with less/no (?) risk of being "laced", or of a higher dose than specified), they may have been fine.

Of course, being predisposed to mental illness would mean that taking any strong drug could be like playing Russian Roulette with your brain chemistry. I actually personally know a coworker who tragically seriously got messed up after taking hallucinogenic mushrooms; he became violent toward his girlfriend (who not long afterwards broke up with him as a result) and erratic starting the day after (he'd certainly done shrooms before, and was a general pothead, but his reaction to this one particular dose was seemingly out of left field)... the day after the dose (when theoretically he would have been sobered up), he actually crawled naked under his apartment building crawl space (cops had to be called out), eventually went MIA being paranoid and driving to another state, and eventually lost his job, and is currently living in his car. Really, really sad stuff.

Not trying to defend LSD usage per se (I did it a few times many years back and fortunately had no long term side effects), but I guess I think the proper tack to take is: if you're gonna do LSD, it's best to do a more mild dose of reputable origin, and DON'T do it at all if you have any predisposition to mental illness (which of course may be unknowable). Certainly it's also easy to just say "don't do hallucinogenic drugs ever, under any circumstances". I just think instead of a blanket "just say no" campaign, it's good to be aware and educated of nuances in how these things can work and be unpredictable.

[Emily]

LSD wasn't illegal in CA until October, 1966.

Did you read the symptoms of schizoaffective disorder on the link I posted? It's so exactly BW's symptoms I don't see any reason to think that something else caused them.

This isn't a criticism, but a legitimate question to anyone who feels unsatisfied with BW's diagnosis and who searches for other reasons for his issues: why? What about his diagnosis doesn't answer your questions regarding Brian Wilson's behavior? Is it a mistrust of psychiatry in general? Is it just that the diagnosis took so long to be known that it's hard to shake the habit of searching for explanations? Or do you feel that the diagnosis doesn't fit the behavior? Or something else?

[terrei]

1. He has always stated that the voices began a week after taking LSD

2. It's highly likely that the '1963' claim in the L&M film came from Ledbetter

[Emily]

1. He has always stated that the voices began a week after taking LSD

2. It's highly likely that the '1963' claim in the L&M film came from Ledbetter

Would you mind answering my question above?
What makes it highly likely that it came from Melinda Ledbetter?

[Matt Bielewicz]

I recall that in his 'Landyography' (page 86 in my edition), 'Brian' talks about having heard horrible noises in his *sleep* from late 1963. His description is that they were "Loud, terrifying screams... like goblins in a haunted house".

Of course, I know most of the book is a heap of made-up junk, but if I remember rightly, SOME of it did come from interviews with Brian... and this claim would be consistent with what was said in Love and Mercy, on which the Wilsons were consultants. Of course, that's far from proof, but it chimed with me when I heard that date in the film. I have a nagging feeling I've heard him use that date in other interviews, too, but can't place them right now.

Of course, hearing screams in your sleep is not quite the same thing as what most of us would, I think, take to be the meaning of 'hearing voices', which I would think requires you to be fully conscious in order for the experience to be truly as disturbing as it undoubtedly is for those that suffer it. If I heard screams in my sleep, it would definitely disturb me, but when I woke, I think I'd be so relieved ("Phew, it was only a dream!") that I'd soon forget about it. But suddenly hearing voices during the day that you realise no-one else could hear would seriously disturb me.

But who knows - maybe that is how it started for Brian and it progressed to voices talking coherent words and sentences to him during his waking state later on in the 60s?

Just thinking aloud... don't mind me...

[terrei]

Would you mind answering my question above?
What makes it highly likely that it came from Melinda Ledbetter?

1. I don't know the answer to (or care about) the irrelevant question you posed. Anyone who is interested in the relationship between LSD and latent psychosis can look it up for themselves. Anyone who is super interested in the specifics of Brian Wilson's mental health -- be it whether he is genetically predisposed to mental illness, how far you can trace it in his family tree, or if he's really schizoaffective like his doctors say he is -- should be more concerned with their own mental well-being.

2. Until September 2014, it was never claimed by anyone on record that Wilson experienced auditory hallucinations before taking LSD. Obviously someone close to Wilson knows something the public doesn't. Everything in the L&M film was 'fact checked' by the family, with Ledbetter as primary consultant. It's not 100% that the detail came from *her* specifically, but if she thought the '1963' date was inaccurate, it almost certainly would not have made it into the film.

Oren Moverman was very much interested in 'setting the record straight' based on what Ledbetter (or other people) had to say.

• Moverman: "One of my favorite corrections in the Brian mythology is when he’s sitting with Melinda and he’s at the piano and he’s like, “I don’t know, it just comes out,” and she says, “I have to ask you, did you really spend two years in bed?” And he says, “It was actually three years,” and then we added that line, “At least that’s what I tell people.” And there were sort of like these little things were there was sort of like a whole mythology about who Brian Wilson is and what his life is, but some of it is real, some of it is based on reality, and some of it is kind of an exaggeration or manipulation of facts or lore that just sort of happened through the years. So we were playing also with the idea that some of it may not be true. ... I think everything in the movie is based on fact, everything is based on research, but there were definitely shortcuts that we had to take and different things that we hand to twist around.  The Brian/Melinda story, every single scene in that part of the movie happened, because I talked to Melinda and she told me all these stories and I just transformed them into scenes ... all those things really happened at least in the way she told them. So that was sort of the official story."

So if she (or somebody else) knows better, why does Wilson always say that the hallucinations started after the LSD? Who knows. Go ask him. Or her. Or continue pointlessly discussing this inconclusive subject for a further 50 pages, as these threads tend to go.

[Paul J B]

1. He has always stated that the voices began a week after taking LSD

2. It's highly likely that the '1963' claim in the L&M film came from Ledbetter

In response:

1. Really? What are your sources?

2. What would be the point of that, or further, why claim someone heard voices earlier than they did?

Street drugs were bad for Brian and I believe they are bad for almost anyone. Still, I find it very hard to believe that his LSD trips caused him to hear voices. Even if there is evidence of Brian saying that himself at some point, it does not mean it to be true.

[HeyJude]

Anyone who is super interested in the specifics of Brian Wilson's mental health -- be it whether he is genetically predisposed to mental illness, how far you can trace it in his family tree, or if he's really schizoaffective like his doctors say he is -- should be more concerned with their own mental well-being.

So if she (or somebody else) knows better, why does Wilson always say that the hallucinations started after the LSD? Who knows. Go ask him. Or her. Or continue pointlessly discussing this inconclusive subject for a further 50 pages, as these threads tend to go.

If this is your feeling towards people interesting in discussing the topic, and you feel it's such a pointless discussion, why are you participating in it at all? Why would you even click on the thread in the first place?

I mean, I didn't burst into the "What if the Beach Boys had been born women?" thread just to say I thought it was a useless, ridiculous topic. If people want to discuss that, have at it. It's the whole point of the board.

[terrei]

why are you participating in it at all?

The OP's only question was about when exactly Wilson started hearing voices. The fact that Wilson is afflicted with the disorder is important for providing a significant degree of context -- it'd be useful to know when the hallucinations started so that one can have a specific point of reference when analyzing his music. That's the extent of my interest.

1. Really? What are your sources?

2. What would be the point of that, or further, why claim someone heard voices earlier than they did?

1. "I’d taken some psychedelic drugs, and then about a week after that I started hearing voices, and they’ve never stopped. For a long time I thought to myself, “Oh, I can’t deal with this.” But I learned to deal with it anyway."

2. The point of what?

I recall that in his 'Landyography' (page 86 in my edition), 'Brian' talks about having heard horrible noises in his *sleep* from late 1963. His description is that they were "Loud, terrifying screams... like goblins in a haunted house".

Wasn't aware of that -- good note

[HeyJude]

why are you participating in it at all?

The OP's only question was about when exactly Wilson started hearing voices. The fact that Wilson is afflicted with the disorder is important for providing a significant degree of context -- it'd be useful to know when the hallucinations started so that one can have a specific point of reference when analyzing his music. That's the extent of my interest.

That makes sense; I'm sure we all cherry pick bits of info in various threads that we personally find interesting. But I think every post in this thread has been "on-topic" enough to not warrant dismissive commentary characterizing elements of the discussion as "pointless."

The original question was about when he started hearing voices. Someone trying to get to the bottom of *why* Brian said what he did on this topic at various points, and addressing accusations that some public claims came "from Ledbetter" are all on topic for this sort of discussion.

I'd say if one feels the topic is not worthy of discussion, and one feels the pertinent question has been asked and answered, then again, why continue to read or post?

[thorgil]

Ty Emily for your link. I'm fully convinced that the diagnosis is correct and Brian was genetically (AND environmentally) predisposed to develop the illness. I'm also convinced that Brian is perfectly right when he strongly advises people not to "do drugs", and he is talking from horrible personal experience.
My own very short experience in my youth was much less horrible, thankfully, but scary enough.

[Emily]

1. He has always stated that the voices began a week after taking LSD
 

2. Until September 2014, it was never claimed by anyone on record that Wilson experienced auditory hallucinations before taking LSD.

So if she (or somebody else) knows better, why does Wilson always say that the hallucinations started after the LSD? Who knows. Go ask him. Or her. Or continue pointlessly discussing this inconclusive subject for a further 50 pages, as these threads tend to go.

1. Really? What are your sources?

1. "I’d taken some psychedelic drugs, and then about a week after that I started hearing voices, and they’ve never stopped. For a long time I thought to myself, “Oh, I can’t deal with this.” But I learned to deal with it anyway."

What are your sources for "He has always stated that the voices began a week after taking LSD" and "until September 2014, it was never claimed by anyone on record that Wilson experienced auditory hallucinations before taking LSD" (emphases mine)?
One quote can not be the source for either of those statements.

[filledeplage]

Would you mind answering my question above?
What makes it highly likely that it came from Melinda Ledbetter?

1. I don't know the answer to (or care about) the irrelevant question you posed. Anyone who is interested in the relationship between LSD and latent psychosis can look it up for themselves. Anyone who is super interested in the specifics of Brian Wilson's mental health -- be it whether he is genetically predisposed to mental illness, how far you can trace it in his family tree, or if he's really schizoaffective like his doctors say he is -- should be more concerned with their own mental well-being.

2. Until September 2014, it was never claimed by anyone on record that Wilson experienced auditory hallucinations before taking LSD. Obviously someone close to Wilson knows something the public doesn't. Everything in the L&M film was 'fact checked' by the family, with Ledbetter as primary consultant. It's not 100% that the detail came from *her* specifically, but if she thought the '1963' date was inaccurate, it almost certainly would not have made it into the film.

Oren Moverman was very much interested in 'setting the record straight' based on what Ledbetter (or other people) had to say.

• Moverman: "One of my favorite corrections in the Brian mythology is when he’s sitting with Melinda and he’s at the piano and he’s like, “I don’t know, it just comes out,” and she says, “I have to ask you, did you really spend two years in bed?” And he says, “It was actually three years,” and then we added that line, “At least that’s what I tell people.” And there were sort of like these little things were there was sort of like a whole mythology about who Brian Wilson is and what his life is, but some of it is real, some of it is based on reality, and some of it is kind of an exaggeration or manipulation of facts or lore that just sort of happened through the years. So we were playing also with the idea that some of it may not be true. ... I think everything in the movie is based on fact, everything is based on research, but there were definitely shortcuts that we had to take and different things that we hand to twist around.  The Brian/Melinda story, every single scene in that part of the movie happened, because I talked to Melinda and she told me all these stories and I just transformed them into scenes ... all those things really happened at least in the way she told them. So that was sort of the official story."

So if she (or somebody else) knows better, why does Wilson always say that the hallucinations started after the LSD? Who knows. Go ask him. Or her. Or continue pointlessly discussing this inconclusive subject for a further 50 pages, as these threads tend to go.

Here is a link to a Brian interview.  Straight from the master.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/05/brian-wilson-hallucinations_n_7520014.hml

Hope it copies! 

[HeyJude]

I've never had a super huge amount of interest specifically in Brian's LSD history, so can someone refresh my memory: Do we know what date/year is commonly known as his first time taking LSD?

The same interview cited in a previous thread some ways up above is preceded by a bit where he seems to indicate he was hearing voices on stage while still touring with the Beach Boys, which would of course date it to early-mid 1965 at the latest. Had he taken LSD prior to quitting the touring band?

[CenturyDeprived]

LSD wasn't illegal in CA until October, 1966.

Did you read the symptoms of schizoaffective disorder on the link I posted? It's so exactly BW's symptoms I don't see any reason to think that something else caused them.

This isn't a criticism, but a legitimate question to anyone who feels unsatisfied with BW's diagnosis and who searches for other reasons for his issues: why? What about his diagnosis doesn't answer your questions regarding Brian Wilson's behavior? Is it a mistrust of psychiatry in general? Is it just that the diagnosis took so long to be known that it's hard to shake the habit of searching for explanations? Or do you feel that the diagnosis doesn't fit the behavior? Or something else?

I did read that link, thanks for posting it. I don't for one moment doubt that LSD helped contribute to messing him up. Brian was the wrong guy with the wrong brain chemistry and predisposition to mental illness to be taking LSD, and more specifically to be taking LSD from the particular batch of LSD which he took from.

My pondering was just that I wonder two things: if you remove LSD from the equation, and Brian never touches the stuff, do his problems manifest in the same way, or in a lesser way (but still present)? I would tend to think the latter. I don't think LSD was the single cause for everything, but I think it factored heavily, plus I believe the emotional bullies that were in his life contributed to getting his emotions tied up in knots, and I can't think those are negligible factors either. Not a direct cause for voices, just a way of rubbing salt on a wound, so to speak.

My other question which I ponder is, as I'd mentioned in my previous post, if there was some particularly harsh/heavy dose of chemicals in a particular LSD dose that especially messed him up... had Brian not done *that* particular dose, but had instead done a dose that was less strong, could he have incurred less (maybe not zero, but less) longterm damage as a result? We'll never know for sure, but I'd tend to think this is possible too. For example... for anyone who has ever tried weed edibles... it is well known that sometimes they can be relatively mild, and sometimes they can REALLY mess you up in a really bad way. They are unpredictable, and I can certainly understand a blanket "stay away" recommendation being wise, but that said, I think it's possible to have non-damaging experiences on psychedelics, and that it was likely *possible* for Brian to have been able to have had non-damaging experiences on psychedelics. Unwise and risky considering his predispositions to begin with? Yes, certainly. I won't argue that.

[Emily]

I've never had a super huge amount of interest specifically in Brian's LSD history, so can someone refresh my memory: Do we know what date/year is commonly known as his first time taking LSD?

The same interview cited in a previous thread some ways up above is preceded by a bit where he seems to indicate he was hearing voices on stage while still touring with the Beach Boys, which would of course date it to early-mid 1965 at the latest. Had he taken LSD prior to quitting the touring band?

Aha!!!
You just revived my memory. I didn't read him saying '63 or '64. I read him saying (in a different interview) that the voices were one of the reasons he quit touring (so in my head I made it '63 or '64.) The claim is he first took LSD sometime in '65.

[bachelorofbullets]

Brian talks about hearing voices soon after taking LSD in "beautiful dreamer" if I remember correctly.

One thing I can't get over, many people who appeared in beautiful dreamer said that drugs had very little to do with the Brian Wilson story (except Brian).  Michael Vosse was adamant about it and referred to it as a "big red herring".  Yet Brian specifically states he didn't hear voices until after taking LSD.  So, something does not add up.     

[Cam Mott]

http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/interviews/a10139/brian-wilson-beach-boys-what-ive-learned/

[Emily]

Brian talks about hearing voices soon after taking LSD in "beautiful dreamer" if I remember correctly.

One thing I can't get over, many people who appeared in beautiful dreamer said that drugs had very little to do with the Brian Wilson story (except Brian).  Michael Vosse was adamant about it and referred to it as a "big red herring".  Yet Brian specifically states he didn't hear voices until after taking LSD.  So, something does not add up.      

I think the red herring is the sequence. I think Brian Wilson probably experienced it as causative because of the sequence. But I think if you step back and look, he was already on the trajectory. Take LSD out of the picture -

he's considered quirky then
he has panic attacks then
he has manic episodes  then <--- insert LSD here
he has hallucinations then
he has depressive episodes
and on and on

I guess it's a perfectly linear and familiar development without the LSD or with the LSD. There's no final answer. Based on our different experiences and reading we are inclined to see it one way or the other.

But for Brian Wilson, if he experienced it that way, he's going to have a harder time adjusting his thinking to new information than an observer.

[Cam Mott]

Brian talks about hearing voices soon after taking LSD in "beautiful dreamer" if I remember correctly.

One thing I can't get over, many people who appeared in beautiful dreamer said that drugs had very little to do with the Brian Wilson story (except Brian).  Michael Vosse was adamant about it and referred to it as a "big red herring".  Yet Brian specifically states he didn't hear voices until after taking LSD.  So, something does not add up.      

I think the red herring is the sequence. I think Brian Wilson probably experienced it as causative because of the sequence. But I think if you step back and look, he was already on the trajectory. Take LSD out of the picture -

he's considered quirky then
he has panic attacks then
he has manic episodes  then <--- insert LSD here
he has hallucinations then
he has depressive episodes
and on and on

I guess it's a perfectly linear and familiar development without the LSD or with the LSD. There's no final answer. Based on our different experiences and reading we are inclined to see it one way or the other.

But for Brian Wilson, if he experienced it that way, he's going to have a harder time adjusting his thinking to new information than an observer.

What were the manic episodes? Not coming to mind.

[Emily]

Brian talks about hearing voices soon after taking LSD in "beautiful dreamer" if I remember correctly.

One thing I can't get over, many people who appeared in beautiful dreamer said that drugs had very little to do with the Brian Wilson story (except Brian).  Michael Vosse was adamant about it and referred to it as a "big red herring".  Yet Brian specifically states he didn't hear voices until after taking LSD.  So, something does not add up.      

I think the red herring is the sequence. I think Brian Wilson probably experienced it as causative because of the sequence. But I think if you step back and look, he was already on the trajectory. Take LSD out of the picture -

he's considered quirky then
he has panic attacks then
he has manic episodes  then <--- insert LSD here
he has hallucinations then
he has depressive episodes
and on and on

I guess it's a perfectly linear and familiar development without the LSD or with the LSD. There's no final answer. Based on our different experiences and reading we are inclined to see it one way or the other.

But for Brian Wilson, if he experienced it that way, he's going to have a harder time adjusting his thinking to new information than an observer.

What were the manic episodes? Not coming to mind.

The hyped "up" he was on and off of as described in '65 and '66 - the heightened creativity and concentration, the perfectionism. Obviously in late '66 early '67 he had a more extreme manic episode, but you can hear it on the Party! and Pet Sounds sessions.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

We've spent 40 minutes together. "I enjoyed this interview very much," he says.

I tell him I'm surprised. People think he doesn't like interviews.

"I love interviews, are you kidding?"

What does he like about them?

"The questions!"  

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Brian talks about hearing voices soon after taking LSD in "beautiful dreamer" if I remember correctly.

One thing I can't get over, many people who appeared in beautiful dreamer said that drugs had very little to do with the Brian Wilson story (except Brian).  Michael Vosse was adamant about it and referred to it as a "big red herring".  Yet Brian specifically states he didn't hear voices until after taking LSD.  So, something does not add up.     

I think the red herring is the sequence. I think Brian Wilson probably experienced it as causative because of the sequence. But I think if you step back and look, he was already on the trajectory. Take LSD out of the picture -

he's considered quirky then
he has panic attacks then
he has manic episodes  then <--- insert LSD here
he has hallucinations then
he has depressive episodes
and on and on

I guess it's a perfectly linear and familiar development without the LSD or with the LSD. There's no final answer. Based on our different experiences and reading we are inclined to see it one way or the other.

But for Brian Wilson, if he experienced it that way, he's going to have a harder time adjusting his thinking to new information than an observer.

What were the manic episodes? Not coming to mind.

The hyped "up" he was on and off of as described in '65 and '66 - the heightened creativity and concentration, the perfectionism. Obviously in late '66 early '67 he had a more extreme manic episode, but you can hear it on the Party! and Pet Sounds sessions.

As someone who is bipolar myself, I agree that that time period had all the makings of an extended manic episode.