a
reduction in the
normal amount of oxygen in the blood, as at high altitudes.
n.
LRH def. a disease gotten by
pilots when they go above
normal breathing altitudes and when they get around 16, 17, 18 thousand feet and up they get this disease called anoxemia which means no oxygen. And they are up so high in the
rarefied air that they do the
goddamnedest things and they
don't realize that they are simply
running out of oxygen or that their mask has slipped or they
don't have one on. And they start
flying upside down and reading their instruments all
cross-eyed and
controlling the
plane fine and they get in this sort of a
euphoria, a sort of a "whee." And yet the airplane is all upside down and the engines are overheating and everything but it's all "whee," and they crash. So a
lot of experiments were carried out on this earlier by air forces and so on and they found out that's what it was. High
altitude flying. So now they take
vast precautions,
lights flash and
bells ring when there isn't enough oxygen. Anyway, this dread disease called anoxemia is something that very often gets into the heads of
executives and you take some
guy and you suddenly
shoot him up into a high
altitude or in a
PR line you suddenly put him into a
diplomatic or very important person zone and he gets anoxemia. The
altitude is too great for him and he will give you the
damnedest reports and he will do the weirdest things and he is very
hard to get back to
battery because he's "one of the great ones now." You'll see it occasionally in an
org where
guys are appointed
Dissemination Secretary from a
Shipping Clerk or he's made an
executive or something. He was a perfectly good
Shipping Clerk and you wonder what the
hell happened to this
guy. It's anoxemia,
rarefied air. [
LRH Notes 14 July 72]