When Ken Kesey dropped acid for the first time, he was in an antiseptic hospital room with a cot, white walls, a glass of water and a Wollensack reel-to-reel tape recorder by his bedside.

The LSD was administered to volunteers by the U.S. government at V.A. hospitals across the country.

Kesey recorded his hallucinations for posterity, and, although he was in a sterile room with no visual stimuli, he saw thousands of images over the 12 hours that he spent  tripping. Bats and…