Editing Oliver Sacks (section)

==Beginning life in North America==
[[File:Oliver Sacks.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Sacks in 2005]]
Sacks left Britain and flew to Montreal, Canada, on 9 July 1960, his 27th birthday. He visited the [[Montreal Neurological Institute]] and the [[Royal Canadian Air Force]] (RCAF), telling them that he wanted to be a pilot. After some interviews and checking his background, they told him he would be best in medical research. But as he kept making mistakes, including losing data from several months of research, destroying irreplaceable slides, and losing biological samples, his supervisors had second thoughts about him.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2fopinions%2fthe-man-who-mistook-his-life-for-a-blunder%2f2015%2f05%2f13%2ff25faec8-ef56-11e4-a55f-38924fca94f9_story.html |title=Oliver Sacks chronicles the hilarious errors of his professional life and the fumbles in his private life |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |access-date=18 July 2020 |archive-date=18 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200718045728/https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fopinions%2Fthe-man-who-mistook-his-life-for-a-blunder%2F2015%2F05%2F13%2Ff25faec8-ef56-11e4-a55f-38924fca94f9_story.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Dr. Taylor, the head medical officer, told him, "You are clearly talented and we would love to have you, but I am not sure about your motives for joining." He was told to travel for a few months and reconsider. He used the next three months to travel across Canada and deep into the Canadian Rockies, which he described in his personal journal, later published as ''Canada: Pause, 1960''.<ref name=Move/>

In 1961 he arrived in the United States,<ref name=Rowland2016>{{cite journal |last1=Rowland |first1=Lewis P. |title=In Memoriam: Oliver Sacks, MD (July 9, 1933, to August 30, 2015) |journal=JAMA Neurology |date=1 February 2016 |volume=73 |issue=2 |pages=246–247 |doi=10.1001/jamaneurol.2015.3887 |pmid=26857603 |issn=2168-6149|doi-access=free }}</ref> completing an [[Internship (medicine)|internship]] at [[UCSF Medical Center|Mt. Zion Hospital]] in San Francisco and a [[Residency (medicine)|residency]] in neurology and neuropathology at [[UCLA]].<ref name="Columbia">{{cite web|url=http://asp.cumc.columbia.edu/facdb/profile_list.asp?uni=os2177&DepAffil=Psychiatry|title=Columbia University website, section of Psychiatry|publisher=Asp.cumc.columbia.edu|access-date=29 December 2013|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131224105729/http://asp.cumc.columbia.edu/facdb/profile_list.asp?uni=os2177&DepAffil=Psychiatry|archive-date=24 December 2013}}</ref> While in San Francisco, Sacks became a lifelong close friend of poet [[Thom Gunn]], saying he loved his wild imagination, his strict control, and perfect poetic form.<ref name="GuardianProfile"/> During much of his time at UCLA, he lived in a rented house in [[Topanga Canyon]]<ref>{{cite web|url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/oliver-sacks-tripping-in-topanga-1963|title=Oliver Sacks: Tripping in Topanga, 1963 – The Los Angeles Review of Books|publisher=Lareviewofbooks.org|date=12 December 2012|access-date=4 May 2015|archive-date=7 July 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150707040435/https://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/oliver-sacks-tripping-in-topanga-1963|url-status=live}}</ref> and experimented with various [[recreational drugs]]. He described some of his experiences in a 2012 ''[[The New Yorker|New Yorker]]'' article,<ref name="drugs">{{cite magazine|last=Sacks|first=Oliver|title=Altered States|magazine=The New Yorker|date=27 August 2012|page=40|url=https://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/27/120827fa_fact_sacks|access-date=14 December 2012|archive-date=26 November 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121126043126/http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/27/120827fa_fact_sacks|url-status=live}}</ref> and in his book ''[[Hallucinations (book)|Hallucinations]]''.<ref>Sacks, O. ''Hallucinations''. Knopf (2012). {{ISBN|0307957241}}</ref>  During his early career in California and New York City he indulged in:

{{blockquote|staggering bouts of pharmacological experimentation, underwent a fierce regimen of bodybuilding at Muscle Beach (for a time he held a California record, after he performed a [[Squat (exercise)|full squat]] with 600 pounds across his shoulders), and racked up more than 100,000 leather-clad miles on his motorcycle. And then one day he gave it all up—the drugs, the sex, the motorcycles, the bodybuilding.<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Weschler|first=Lawrence|url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/04/oliver-sacks-autobiography-before-cancer|title=Oliver Sacks, Before the Neurologist's Cancer and New York Times Op-Ed|magazine=Vanity Fair|date=28 April 2015|access-date=24 August 2015|archive-date=19 August 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150819085333/http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/04/oliver-sacks-autobiography-before-cancer|url-status=live}}</ref>}}

He wrote that after moving to New York City, an [[amphetamine]]-facilitated epiphany that came as he read a book by the 19th-century [[migraine]] doctor [[Edward Liveing]] inspired him to chronicle his observations on neurological diseases and oddities; to become the "Liveing of our Time".<ref name="drugs"/> Though he was a United States resident for the rest of his life, he never became a citizen.<ref name=OLSacks.NYTobit/> He told ''[[The Guardian]]'' in a 2005 interview, "In 1961, I declared my intention to become a United States citizen, which may have been a genuine intention, but I never got round to it. I think it may go with a slight feeling that this was only an extended visit. I rather like the words 'resident alien'. It's how I feel. I'm a sympathetic, resident, sort of visiting alien."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/mar/05/booksonhealth.whauden|last=Brown |first=Andrew|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|title=Seeing double|date=4 March 2005|access-date=31 May 2021|archive-date=25 December 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131225160619/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/mar/05/booksonhealth.whauden}}</ref>