In an interview about the sixth season of Mad Men, series creator Matthew Weiner talks about the recurring role of drugs in the series. “It’s film, so you can try to create that experience. My challenge is to make sure that it’s not the camera that’s on drugs, it’s the characters that are on drugs. But it is a moment to kind of find out what’s going on inside them. (…) It’s something amazing that you can do with film, to show people how you experience reality, and that it is altered a lot of the time.”
Mad Men already touched on the psychedelic experience quite skillfully in season five. Episode eight of season six tackles the drug laden 1960s from another angle, with the appearance of a Max-Jacobson-like Dr. Feelgood who shoots the entire office with what appears to have been a healthy dose of amphetamines in an effort to boost productivity. Much of the episode revolves around ensuing happenings, and the erratic and frantic behavior of Don Draper and his staff while on an extended amphetamine high which lasts three days. Here you can see an example for a typical amphetamine scene from the episode: a conversation between Don and Ken Kosgrove which portrays the effects of speed quite amusingly and hardly attractively.
