Clare Luce

Clare Boothe Luce was an American playwright, editor, journalist, ambassador and one of the first U.S. Congresswoman, representing the state of Connecticut.


 * "About an hour after taking LSD, Luce's notes show, she found herself confronting sensations of fear, nonexistence, bloodiness and meaninglessness, while feeling the effects of a wicked bout of colitis, a disease she suffered from throughout her life. The combination of frequent trips to the bathroom and the hallucinations made her morbid.


 * "Feel all true paths of glory lead but to the grave - an almost shattering fact," she wrote. "The futility of the search to be someone. Do you hear the drum?" Actually someone was knocking on the door. Soon she was holding her head in her hands, weeping. "I've paid the debt now I can rest," she scrawled. "I've paid enough." "I am quite gone," she noted bleakly. And so on.


 * "As the effects of the drug wore off, Luce recovered her humor and began to psychoanalyze herself."
 * -Luce Diaries Detail Her Bad Lsd Trips -- `I Am Quite Gone,' Conservative Wrote Washington Post, October 22, 1997


 * "In the early 1960s, both Clare and Henry were friends of philosopher, author, and LSD advocate Gerald Heard. They tried LSD one time under his careful supervision. Although taking LSD never turned into a habit for either of the Luces, a friend of theirs (and biographer of Clare), Wilfred Sheed, wrote that Clare made use of it at least several times."
 * - Clare Boothe Luce by Sheed, Wilfred 1982, p. 125