Program Notes
Guest speakers: Jean and Myron Stolaroff
(Minutes : Seconds into program)
04:53Jean Stolaroff:Tells the story of how she first became involved with psychedelic medicines.
07:50 Myron Stolaroff: Tells how Death Valley came to be a favorite location for taking acid trips.
09:20 Myron tells some stories about Al Hubbard and Death Valley.
10:24 Myron tells of an acit trip in Death Valley that he had with Willis Harman and Al Hubbard.
15:56 Jean: “I knew I’d get a lot of fringe benefits from marrying Myron.”
17:10 Jean and Myron discuss 2C-E, “One of the very best.”
18:31 Jean and Myron discuss compounds they have no desire to ever try again.
21:33 Myron talking about 2C-B and how some substances react in unexpected ways with people.
25:14 Myron describes his first LSD experience, which took place in Canada on April 12, 1956.
35:18 Myron talks about Gerald Heard’s influence on his decision to try LSD.
37:30 Myron describes his first carbogen experience.
39:53 Myron describes the preparation that was required of participants in the Menlo Park work.
47:11 Myrondescribes how he first became involved in meditation practices.
54:42 Myron: “You know, if you’re going to work with these materials, meditation is a marvelous supporter because as you use the materials you open your consciousness more, and that opens your meditation more. So then your meditation becomes more effective and more fulfilling. So it’s a growing process.”
59:58 Myron: “And the only way that you can keep developing and learning more, and getting into higher levels of consciousness, is by really exerting yourself and learning to use everything that shows up when you do have these experiences.”
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:20 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
00:00:25 ►
Since our program today is a bit longer than normal, I’m going to just jump right in and introduce today’s speakers.
00:00:31 ►
Actually, it’s not a formal talk I’ll be playing today, but rather something much more intimate.
00:00:37 ►
And that is a recording of a conversation I had a couple of months ago with Myron and Gene Stolaroff.
00:00:43 ►
Now, if you go to the program notes for this podcast,
00:00:47 ►
you’ll find some links to more information about the Stolaroffs.
00:00:50 ►
And if you are serious about investigating the history of the use of psychedelic medicines
00:00:55 ►
in the Western world today,
00:00:57 ►
then you owe it to yourself to learn more about their fascinating lives.
00:01:01 ►
It’s really impossible for me to sum up the importance of Myron and
00:01:06 ►
Jean’s contributions to psychedelic research in the limited time I have here for an introduction,
00:01:12 ►
but I think it’s very safe to say that without the work that they have done,
00:01:16 ►
both with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Menlo Park that Myron and others operated, and
00:01:21 ►
also with the many weekends of investigative work that they both did in the years after the closing of the Institute,
00:01:28 ►
without all of that difficult and very rewarding work,
00:01:32 ►
our current understanding of these important substances would not be anywhere nearly as rich and deep as it is today.
00:01:39 ►
And if you’re looking for two of the true pioneers of modern psychedelic research,
00:01:49 ►
well, you won’t find two more important people than Gene and Myron Stolaroff.
00:01:56 ►
So it’s always a special privilege for Mary C. and I to be able to spend a few days with these wonderful friends,
00:02:01 ►
particularly when those days are spent with them in their lovely home in the high desert, just at the foot of the majestic Sierra Nevada mountain range. The conversation for quite a while before it dawned on me to take out my recorder and capture
00:02:25 ►
a little of our conversation for you to listen in on.
00:02:28 ►
As you listen, keep in mind the fact that Myron was 86 years old at the time of this
00:02:34 ►
recording.
00:02:35 ►
I think we can all say that we can only hope that we’ll be as sharp as he is when we reach
00:02:40 ►
that age.
00:02:41 ►
And since I was taught that it is indelicate to mention a lady’s age, all I will say about
00:02:47 ►
Jean is that she’s not the same age as Myron.
00:02:50 ►
Let’s just say that Myron married a younger woman.
00:02:54 ►
Now the conversation you’re about to hear took place around their dining room table
00:02:57 ►
just after lunch.
00:02:59 ►
And as you’ll hear, I’m still trying to figure out a good way to record these interviews.
00:03:04 ►
So there are some places
00:03:05 ►
where we pass the microphone back and forth, making enough noise to let you know that there
00:03:10 ►
was no professional recording crew at hand. And if you want to get a better idea of what the scene
00:03:15 ►
looked like when this recording was made, well, check out the photo of Myron that I took at the
00:03:20 ►
time. I’ll post it with the program notes for this podcast as soon as I get a chance.
00:03:26 ►
So let’s get started with me kind of fumbling around,
00:03:29 ►
trying to figure out how to get Gene and Myron to retell some of their wonderful stories.
00:03:37 ►
Maybe we even should start with Gene a little bit,
00:03:40 ►
because we were talking last night that there’s hardly any women
00:03:44 ►
that ever show up
00:03:46 ►
on these interviews and stuff like that and and i get a lot of emails from people saying
00:03:53 ►
how much they like ann shulgin’s talks and and and you know i think that if people use these
00:04:00 ►
medicines uh in ways other than just for recreation. And I have nothing against the recreation.
00:04:06 ►
I think that going out and taking one of these medicines and dancing all night is a real
00:04:11 ►
good, positive thing.
00:04:13 ►
But the kids will come up and say, oh, how do I take this feeling back to work on Monday?
00:04:19 ►
And we were talking about that some last night, about how do you maintain these feelings?
00:04:24 ►
And I don’t think it’s easy. I don’t think it’s automatic. about that some last night, you know, about how do you maintain these feelings, and I
00:04:25 ►
don’t think it’s easy, I don’t think it’s automatic, and maybe we just start with how
00:04:32 ►
you kind of started using them as a couple, and I don’t know, where do you want to start?
00:04:37 ►
How did you first get into this whole area?
00:04:39 ►
Well, when I met Myron through a mutual friend. It was on a blind date.
00:04:46 ►
And we sort of kind of, there was a little spark there that started.
00:04:48 ►
And we dated briefly.
00:04:50 ►
And in five months, we got married.
00:04:52 ►
Well, he told me about his work with the foundation.
00:04:55 ►
And I was really impressed.
00:04:57 ►
And then he asked me if I wanted to try some LSD.
00:05:00 ►
And I said, yes.
00:05:02 ►
So he had an airplane at the time
00:05:04 ►
and flew over to,
00:05:06 ►
flew over,
00:05:07 ►
this house wasn’t here,
00:05:08 ►
we stayed in the old shack.
00:05:10 ►
And then the next morning he gave,
00:05:12 ►
did I take 50 or 100 micrograms of LSD?
00:05:16 ►
I don’t remember.
00:05:17 ►
And we drove,
00:05:18 ►
he drove me to Death Valley.
00:05:21 ►
And I knew that I was going to have an interesting time,
00:05:24 ►
but I had no idea it would be so gorgeous
00:05:26 ►
the universe kept opening up
00:05:29 ►
it got bigger and bigger and bigger
00:05:30 ►
and bigger and bigger and bigger
00:05:32 ►
and more beautiful and more beautiful
00:05:34 ►
and more beautiful
00:05:34 ►
and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing
00:05:37 ►
I mean it was the big picture
00:05:38 ►
I mean it was much more than just what we see in daily life
00:05:41 ►
it was just, you could see details
00:05:44 ►
that you never imagined were there.
00:05:47 ►
So it was an exquisite experience, really.
00:05:51 ►
And then, I don’t remember the sequence of time,
00:05:57 ►
but we started working with MDMA when that was being researched.
00:06:05 ►
That was before it made it into the streets.
00:06:08 ►
Yeah, but it was still legal, yes.
00:06:10 ►
And we called it the love drug because it opened up the heart chakra.
00:06:15 ►
And so we did a lot of work with that,
00:06:17 ►
with a lot of different people and couples.
00:06:20 ►
You talked about couples earlier.
00:06:23 ►
It worked beautifully with couples who were having problems with their relationship with each other.
00:06:31 ►
Because they would get to see how foolish they were to feel left out or hurt or whatever.
00:06:38 ►
And so it helped a lot of people.
00:06:40 ►
Was that couples with a therapist or just couples on their own?
00:06:44 ►
Oh, just with us.
00:06:45 ►
Myron and I would have people.
00:06:48 ►
Well, this went on for years.
00:06:49 ►
When we built this house, we would have people come here and sit with us.
00:06:54 ►
We’d sit with them all day long with MDMA.
00:06:56 ►
And it was just wonderful to see how they softened up
00:07:02 ►
and recognized how foolish they were to feel the way they did.
00:07:07 ►
So anyhow, it was a new world, a new world.
00:07:11 ►
And it helped our relationship too, believe me,
00:07:15 ►
because we were pretty different.
00:07:20 ►
Anyhow, okay, does that answer your question?
00:07:22 ►
Yeah, and let me ask, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, Myra. No, for the record. Oh, okay, does that answer your question? Yeah, and let me ask, go ahead.
00:07:26 ►
No, for the record.
00:07:27 ►
Oh, okay.
00:07:28 ►
I’m just astounded.
00:07:30 ►
She’s telling you everything with utmost clarity, way beyond anything I think that I can remember.
00:07:37 ►
So keep her talking.
00:07:41 ►
I intend to do that, but I want to ask you a quick question about why Death Valley?
00:07:45 ►
Why did you go over to Death Valley?
00:07:49 ►
Death Valley was discovered by Al Hubbard.
00:07:53 ►
He was in Southern California, and it was Christmas time, and he went up there,
00:07:58 ►
and he found this really remarkable area.
00:08:02 ►
I don’t know if you’ve ever, have you been to Death Valley?
00:08:04 ►
I’ve never been there.
00:08:05 ►
Oh, well, it’s incredible.
00:08:09 ►
You know, part of it is 200 feet below sea level.
00:08:15 ►
And the mountains are fabulous and the colors in the mountains.
00:08:18 ►
It’s really a remarkable place to go.
00:08:22 ►
And when you have the effect of LSD operating,
00:08:27 ►
then it’s just multiplied intensely.
00:08:32 ►
And so just a wonderful experience to get over there.
00:08:36 ►
So Hubbard and his wife, they had gone over and discovered how nice it was.
00:08:42 ►
And he considered right off the bat that this was a really great place to train people.
00:08:49 ►
And by this time, you know, we were working in Menlo Park,
00:08:52 ►
and we were using LSD legally.
00:08:57 ►
And with Charles Savage as our instructor and leader and our local psychiatrist,
00:09:07 ►
he would be the one who interviewed people to see whether it was appropriate for them to go through the LSD experience.
00:09:18 ►
And he had gotten acquainted with Hubbard and Hubbard with him.
00:09:23 ►
He had gotten acquainted with Hubbard and Hubbard with him.
00:09:37 ►
And in the early days when we just started, Hubbard, he had lived in Canada, but he moved down to Southern California.
00:09:40 ►
He was living there for the next few years.
00:09:46 ►
And one Christmas time, he and his wife went to Death Valley, and he just found that to be a remarkable place because everything is wide open. First of all, it’s totally beautiful. The
00:09:54 ►
colors in the mountains are incredible. Rocks, all kinds of things there. It’s just an amazing place.
00:10:01 ►
kinds of things there.
00:10:02 ►
It’s just an amazing place.
00:10:08 ►
And he just felt that that was a wonderful place to take LSD.
00:10:12 ►
And so he started sending us there also.
00:10:18 ►
I went with him and a friend who was close to us.
00:10:20 ►
And actually, let’s see if he’s on.
00:10:26 ►
You know, Harmon is on the board, Willis Harmon.
00:10:29 ►
I went to Death Valley with Hubbard and Harmon,
00:10:33 ►
and it was a real interesting experience.
00:10:38 ►
I don’t open up to these things as well as some of the others,
00:10:40 ►
and sometimes it’s kind of painful.
00:10:44 ►
But between the two of them, they were just having a ball.
00:10:52 ►
Finally, toward the end, I began to wake up more, so things progressed better.
00:11:01 ►
One of the things that’s interesting, we were making our way back from Death Valley, coming over here.
00:11:02 ►
We’re going to spend the night here because it’s too to go back all the way back to the Bay Area and so we were driving back and it’s
00:11:12 ►
just really beautiful and incredible I’m still under the influence of LSD and
00:11:17 ►
everything was going really well so we got to a place, I think we were only about, oh, maybe it’s about 15 miles from here.
00:11:31 ►
And we’d stop the car, and there’s some old buildings there,
00:11:35 ►
and Hubbard always likes to go and explore those kinds of things.
00:11:38 ►
So he’d gone out, and so Bill and I were standing there,
00:11:51 ►
And so Bill and I were standing there and kind of talking and just wondering, full of wonderment about all the stuff that was going on.
00:11:56 ►
And then all of a sudden, we couldn’t see him.
00:11:58 ►
We thought he’d gone.
00:12:05 ►
And our first thought was that, well, now that he’s taught us what this is all about,
00:12:08 ►
he took off and he’s gone away.
00:12:10 ►
He’s going to leave it all in our hands.
00:12:20 ►
Fortunately or unfortunately, he came from behind some building.
00:12:23 ►
And so we all got back together again.
00:12:23 ►
Okay.
00:12:27 ►
But that was a remarkable day, and that was a really good experience for me and so from there on out death valley was one of your favorite
00:12:32 ►
places to yes that’s right that’s exactly right uh we didn’t uh uh al used it mostly for training those of us who were helping other people.
00:12:48 ►
And in rare cases, if we felt they were appropriate people and especially appropriate,
00:12:56 ►
we might take them here.
00:12:58 ►
And I’ve done that a number of times with people.
00:13:01 ►
And that’s why you took Jean there.
00:13:03 ►
She was especially appropriate.
00:13:05 ►
Exactly. Exactly.
00:13:08 ►
Exactly.
00:13:09 ►
Now, if I did my math right,
00:13:10 ►
you were probably in your late 30s, early 40s about then?
00:13:15 ►
Because you said you had your first experience
00:13:18 ►
when you were 36 years old,
00:13:20 ►
and so this would have been probably
00:13:21 ►
four or five years after that.
00:13:23 ►
Almost.
00:13:25 ►
Let’s see. It four or five years after that. Almost. Let’s see.
00:13:27 ►
It was about five years later, I guess, that I left Ampex and began to set up this place in Menlo Park.
00:13:39 ►
But you already had this property here then up in Lumpine at that time, I guess.
00:13:43 ►
You said you were in the other house?
00:13:47 ►
There was a salesman that lived here.
00:13:49 ►
He’s a wonderful human being, a wonderful person.
00:13:51 ►
And Al and he made good friends right away.
00:13:55 ►
And also I made good friends with him.
00:13:58 ►
He was a really wonderful person.
00:14:01 ►
And he let us come here and and be here we didn’t invest in anything as yet but
00:14:11 ►
he was perfectly willing because the land wasn’t moving very fast around here
00:14:16 ►
at that time so he was willing to let us use the old there’s an old cabin there. And so we would come and use this.
00:14:28 ►
And then Al got associated with people in Southern California.
00:14:32 ►
And some pretty bright people there he would bring up and give them LSD here.
00:14:38 ►
And I would join them from time to time.
00:14:42 ►
And I got where I really loved this area,
00:14:46 ►
and I liked it so much that after a while,
00:14:50 ►
I decided to buy it.
00:14:53 ►
And at first, I thought that I would share it with Hubbard,
00:14:57 ►
and apparently the cost went up some.
00:15:00 ►
Originally, I think it was $500 an acre.
00:15:04 ►
Then when I wanted to buy it
00:15:05 ►
it was $1,000 an acre
00:15:07 ►
so that was okay with me
00:15:09 ►
and Hubbard says
00:15:10 ►
I’m not going to do that
00:15:12 ►
that’s too much money
00:15:13 ►
so that was one of the luckiest things
00:15:16 ►
that ever happened to me
00:15:17 ►
is he didn’t participate
00:15:20 ►
and I bought the land myself
00:15:22 ►
so I bought 40 acres
00:15:24 ►
otherwise you might have bought it for him, as I understand.
00:15:28 ►
Well, I tell you, yes.
00:15:31 ►
Ultimately.
00:15:33 ►
Well, maybe we ought to go back to Gene.
00:15:38 ►
Your first experience was in Death Valley.
00:15:41 ►
And so I guess it was pleasant enough that you decided to have another experience
00:15:45 ►
and yes and then Myron and I got married
00:15:48 ►
so there was no question
00:15:50 ►
no turning back
00:15:52 ►
I knew I’d get a lot of fringe benefits
00:15:58 ►
from marrying Myron
00:16:00 ►
so then
00:16:02 ►
he was
00:16:03 ►
always willing to try something. And that’s why we started using the MDMA, because a dear friend of ours had done some experimenting with that. He called it the two martini feeling.
00:16:21 ►
martini feeling.
00:16:25 ►
So we started taking MDMA along with other compounds.
00:16:29 ►
And, yeah, so it’s been continuing,
00:16:31 ►
except for lately we haven’t done very much.
00:16:35 ►
Then it became illegal,
00:16:37 ►
and it sort of put the damper on.
00:16:39 ►
We couldn’t talk about it.
00:16:40 ►
But you found that these very…
00:16:42 ►
Were some of these substances
00:16:44 ►
better for relationships? Some of these substances better for relationships?
00:16:46 ►
Some of them were better for individuals?
00:16:47 ►
I mean…
00:16:48 ►
Yeah, we found that MDMA was
00:16:49 ►
excellent for couples.
00:16:53 ►
And then, of course,
00:16:54 ►
I forget the names and titles of the others,
00:16:56 ►
but some were good for this
00:16:58 ►
and some were good for that
00:16:59 ►
and some were fun,
00:17:00 ►
some were not fun.
00:17:02 ►
One I heard mentioned,
00:17:04 ►
I guess I read it in one of
00:17:06 ►
Myron’s books, that I’ve never
00:17:08 ►
tried, is 2CE.
00:17:10 ►
That’s one of the very best.
00:17:12 ►
We loved it because the E for me
00:17:14 ►
stood for energy. You got a very nice energy
00:17:16 ►
from that. Very lovely stuff.
00:17:19 ►
Did it have the
00:17:20 ►
empathy that MDMA
00:17:22 ►
did?
00:17:26 ►
It’s probably more like LSD,
00:17:30 ►
but it’s a powerful substance,
00:17:35 ►
and you learn a great deal from it.
00:17:39 ►
I think for quite a while,
00:17:41 ►
I thought it was even better than LSD.
00:17:45 ►
Wow, that’s really saying something, because I know you’re a fan of LSD.
00:17:50 ►
I don’t know where we should go from here.
00:17:54 ►
Well, I might just add a little bit here.
00:17:58 ►
Well, we were very interested in these compounds,
00:18:02 ►
and every chance we got we would
00:18:05 ►
try to participate
00:18:06 ►
and there were a lot of new things
00:18:09 ►
that came up
00:18:10 ►
so we
00:18:13 ►
tried them and some of them
00:18:15 ►
we liked a lot and there’s one or two
00:18:17 ►
that are pretty powerful
00:18:18 ►
we didn’t care if we never saw them again
00:18:22 ►
Do you want to mention any of those that you wouldn’t care if you ever saw again?
00:18:29 ►
That’s important information.
00:18:31 ►
The Alice?
00:18:32 ►
Do you remember the Alice?
00:18:35 ►
Oh, yeah.
00:18:37 ►
Oh, yeah, they were pretty wild.
00:18:42 ►
Uncomfortable.
00:18:42 ►
The Alice?
00:18:44 ►
Yeah, why don’t you… Oh, well, it’s written down somewhere. I can’t remember. I’m uncomfortable. The Aleph sign. Yeah, why don’t you…
00:18:45 ►
Oh, well, it’s written down somewhere.
00:18:48 ►
I can’t remember.
00:18:49 ►
I’m sorry.
00:18:49 ►
I just…
00:18:50 ►
That happened.
00:18:51 ►
That was a long time ago.
00:18:52 ►
But there was a series called Aleph.
00:18:55 ►
Well, there were several things
00:18:56 ►
that seemed promising and were powerful.
00:19:02 ►
But sometimes it was just too much to handle.
00:19:06 ►
And so there are other things that you could sort of grow into more gradually and keep
00:19:13 ►
expanding that way.
00:19:15 ►
Too much to handle from a body standpoint or just mental?
00:19:19 ►
Well, both.
00:19:20 ►
Both.
00:19:21 ►
Yeah.
00:19:22 ►
The question I want to ask is, you two have done so much work together and with other couples,
00:19:29 ►
but have you ever taken MDMA and danced all night?
00:19:33 ►
Or have you ever done what’s called recreational?
00:19:38 ►
Well, since you brought that up, I’ll say yes.
00:19:41 ►
That’s one of the things that we like to do.
00:19:43 ►
Gene and I would often, after an experience, and it would be different things.
00:19:49 ►
Vasculin was very good.
00:19:52 ►
Of course, LSD was our favorite.
00:19:55 ►
There were other things that we used.
00:19:57 ►
And a lot of times, at the end of the day, we’d turn on the music and dance and just had a ball with it.
00:20:05 ►
So you don’t have an objection to the recreational end of the medicines?
00:20:10 ►
Oh, not at all.
00:20:12 ►
What I’d like to say is we were first introduced to these things while we were living in the Bay Area,
00:20:20 ►
and then we decided to move out here.
00:20:22 ►
And we did.
00:20:24 ►
We had this house constructed, and we moved out here, I think it was in the 78, 1978,
00:20:36 ►
is when we finally moved out here.
00:20:39 ►
And by this time, we’d had quite a bit of experience with a lot of different substances,
00:20:44 ►
And by this time, we’d had quite a bit of experience with a lot of different substances,
00:20:47 ►
and we thought they were valuable,
00:20:53 ►
and we thought that maybe we could contribute by exploring with other people and seeing how others responded to it.
00:20:56 ►
So for some, I’d say maybe 15, 20 years, we were seeing people very regularly
00:21:05 ►
sometimes we would have people come every weekend
00:21:08 ►
if we got too much
00:21:10 ►
and it was getting too much
00:21:12 ►
for us we would skip a week or two
00:21:14 ►
but we
00:21:15 ►
were having people come
00:21:18 ►
on a regular basis
00:21:19 ►
and we would use these different substances
00:21:23 ►
it’s kind of interesting how people react differently.
00:21:32 ►
I think 2C-B was one that we thought was pretty good.
00:21:38 ►
And then we had some very close friends
00:21:40 ►
who had been close friends for 20, 30 years.
00:21:41 ►
close friends, had been close friends for 20, 30 years,
00:21:43 ►
and actually they had
00:21:45 ►
gone through
00:21:48 ►
the LSD
00:21:50 ►
treatment in Menlo Park
00:21:52 ►
when it was legal, and we were
00:21:53 ►
providing that function.
00:21:57 ►
And they
00:21:58 ►
came here,
00:21:59 ►
and we used the 2C-B,
00:22:02 ►
and boy, they didn’t like it at all.
00:22:05 ►
And I was really surprised because we thought it was pretty good.
00:22:10 ►
But the thing is, you see, people don’t know some of the deep things that you carry within our consciousness.
00:22:19 ►
These are repressed materials, and they’re quite a load to us.
00:22:24 ►
These are repressed materials, and they’re quite a load to us.
00:22:34 ►
And actually, it’s of enormous benefit to be willing to go into that, move into it, discover what it is,
00:22:38 ►
realize what it is, and be able to release it and be free.
00:22:42 ►
And when that happens, that’s an extremely freeing experience.
00:22:48 ►
It’s just like taking a load off of yourself. and so we like to encourage people to do that but every once in a while you know you find people who are up pretty tight and
00:22:55 ►
it’s almost too much but with those kind of people what we would do is we’d give them, go through some, and a lot of times they were too resistant and didn’t want to go too far.
00:23:08 ►
They’d come back another time and have them break through a little more,
00:23:12 ►
and hopefully after three or four times they would open up pretty much
00:23:16 ►
and get into a lot better space than they were before.
00:23:20 ►
So there are a lot of options.
00:23:24 ►
You know, I noticed that in the Shulgin’s books,
00:23:28 ►
they have recommended dosages for a lot of these.
00:23:33 ►
I call them the alphabet soup drugs because I can’t keep up with all the names.
00:23:37 ►
And it seems to me generally you follow those recommendations.
00:23:42 ►
They’re about right.
00:23:43 ►
But I’ve noticed that with LSD, people are sort of a wide range.
00:23:47 ►
I know like Gary Fisher’s work, he was doing really high-dose LSD.
00:23:51 ►
And I’ve heard that somewhere, I think in one of your books,
00:23:54 ►
you mentioned Al Hubbard had something he called a high-dose session.
00:23:59 ►
Do you have any feelings about the high-dose LSD versus the low-dose LSD?
00:24:03 ►
I’ll ask both of you that, actually.
00:24:06 ►
I have a lot.
00:24:08 ►
Well, Hubbard knew that I was pretty fragile.
00:24:13 ►
And I went to Vancouver to take LSD there.
00:24:21 ►
I think it was in April.
00:24:21 ►
to take LSD there.
00:24:24 ►
I think it was in April.
00:24:28 ►
And he had a companion that he liked to have sit with me also.
00:24:32 ►
The two of them worked together quite a bit
00:24:35 ►
and the other man was a younger person
00:24:37 ►
and he learned quite a bit with LSD.
00:24:41 ►
So my first LSD experience,
00:24:43 ►
I was sitting with the two of them.
00:24:46 ►
And, of course, that first experience was absolutely remarkable,
00:24:49 ►
just covered an awful lot of ground.
00:24:52 ►
That original dose was only two-thirds of an ampule.
00:24:55 ►
A full ampule would be 100 micrograms.
00:25:03 ►
And so it was a small amount,
00:25:05 ►
but I tell you,
00:25:06 ►
it was a powerful experience.
00:25:09 ►
Are you interested in getting more detail on that?
00:25:12 ►
Yeah, I’m still going on that.
00:25:13 ►
Okay.
00:25:14 ►
On the day I was to have LSD,
00:25:17 ►
Hubbard took me to a Monsignor
00:25:21 ►
whom he had formed a great friendship with.
00:25:25 ►
And the Monsignor was quite interested in LSD.
00:25:29 ►
Now, you’re Jewish, and he took you to a Monsignor.
00:25:32 ►
Now, how did you feel about that?
00:25:34 ►
Well, I’ll bring that up as time goes on.
00:25:38 ►
Okay.
00:25:39 ►
So I met him, and he blessed me, and he said at noon he would offer support of some kind that he was willing to support.
00:25:51 ►
Well, I’d be right in the middle of it then.
00:25:54 ►
And so he was a very wonderful person.
00:25:56 ►
I really enjoyed getting acquainted with him.
00:25:59 ►
But then we went to Hubbard’s home, and that’s where I ingested it.
00:26:07 ►
When I first took it, after I began to act, I began to realize that, well, I was really feeling very good and very happy.
00:26:22 ►
And then it just occurred to me that all of these monks
00:26:25 ►
really didn’t understand what it was all about.
00:26:29 ►
And I sort of laughed and said,
00:26:31 ►
gosh, they don’t have any idea what the real reality is about these things.
00:26:38 ►
After a while, the thing took a turn,
00:26:42 ►
and I began to get really uncomfortable and really hurting.
00:26:46 ►
They asked me to lie down, and I lay down for quite a while.
00:26:51 ►
Then I sat up.
00:26:54 ►
Was there music going?
00:26:56 ►
Yeah, they did have music, and I enjoyed the music.
00:27:00 ►
I was getting more deeply into it, and Hubbard handed me a picture, which is very, very important to him.
00:27:09 ►
Well, and for me, too, once I learned about it.
00:27:12 ►
But there is a picture of Christ, and you look at it, and you look at his eyes, and they’re open.
00:27:21 ►
And if you keep looking, they close.
00:27:30 ►
So the eyes open and close and at this at this point it was very very clear extremely clear and when I saw the eyes closed I thought oh my god something’s Something’s wrong with me. He doesn’t want to look at me.
00:27:46 ►
That’s kind of heavy, isn’t it?
00:27:49 ►
It was, believe me.
00:27:55 ►
But I kept watching, and then all of a sudden,
00:27:58 ►
I began to see other people.
00:28:03 ►
And at first, I was just starting to see a few here and there,
00:28:07 ►
and then it began to speed up, and and began to pour out more and more. And I began to see people from all over the world, all kinds of people.
00:28:12 ►
I saw pirates.
00:28:16 ►
I saw Chinamen.
00:28:19 ►
I saw young kids and older people.
00:28:23 ►
And it just went, just going as fast as you could possibly follow.
00:28:30 ►
The parade of life.
00:28:32 ►
The parade.
00:28:32 ►
It was exactly that.
00:28:34 ►
That’s well said.
00:28:35 ►
The complete parade of life.
00:28:38 ►
And I looked at Christ,
00:28:40 ►
and then I realized,
00:28:41 ►
this is every man.
00:28:45 ►
Wow, coming from your heritage, that’s a pretty profound experience.
00:28:50 ►
That’s right.
00:28:52 ►
Was Hubbard a Catholic or how did he get to be a Catholic?
00:28:54 ►
Yeah, he was Catholic.
00:28:55 ►
So that’s how he had the connection with the communion.
00:28:58 ►
And that’s just on like 66 micrograms of LSD.
00:29:02 ►
Right.
00:29:02 ►
Well, at a later stage, I was getting very, very uncomfortable
00:29:08 ►
and really was hurting quite a bit.
00:29:12 ►
And they had me lie down to see if I could work my way through.
00:29:19 ►
And it was really very difficult.
00:29:21 ►
So they had me sit up and they were asking me questions.
00:29:27 ►
What about my mother? what about my father and did they do anything wrong to me and so on and it didn’t seem to be
00:29:34 ►
it and then all of a sudden i went into a horrible horrible painful thing and what it seemed to me like is that I was in the womb and I was trying
00:29:50 ►
to get born and my mother can’t stand pain and they gave her well they gave her some my teeth
00:29:58 ►
that she went completely asleep so the whole action stopped,
00:30:10 ►
and I was stuck there and hung there in horrible, horrible pain.
00:30:17 ►
And then all of a sudden, I finally broke through, and I shot out, and I screamed.
00:30:19 ►
They couldn’t wait for me to be born.
00:30:25 ►
But that was a great relief coming out of that and oh actually
00:30:28 ►
I smelled ether
00:30:30 ►
so strongly
00:30:31 ►
it’s like they’d taken a wad of cotton
00:30:34 ►
with ether and hold it over my nose
00:30:36 ►
that’s how I experienced it
00:30:38 ►
that real
00:30:39 ►
so after that
00:30:43 ►
things began to get better and easier.
00:30:46 ►
I would hope so, or you’d never do it again.
00:30:49 ►
So it kept getting better and better.
00:30:51 ►
And I know that there was, at one time, I felt very guilty that I’d been doing things wrong
00:30:59 ►
and I was being punished somehow.
00:31:02 ►
And then all of a sudden that broke out.
00:31:08 ►
And all of that wasn’t necessary all i was able to rise above that and feel great so that’s pretty much uh how long did that session
00:31:16 ►
last do you think oh it was uh oh at least uh six six to eight hours so and then after it was over
00:31:25 ►
you guys just kind of talked
00:31:27 ►
and kind of hung around
00:31:29 ►
for a while
00:31:30 ►
and dear old
00:31:31 ►
his wife
00:31:34 ►
Rita
00:31:36 ►
she is a remarkable person
00:31:38 ►
we got to be the very best of friends
00:31:41 ►
and of course she had a nice dinner
00:31:43 ►
prepared of course
00:31:44 ►
and so all went well the very best of friends. And, of course, she had a nice dinner prepared for us.
00:31:48 ►
And so all went well.
00:31:49 ►
It wasn’t so painful that you didn’t ever want to do it again.
00:31:52 ►
Oh, no.
00:31:53 ►
The benefits were so great.
00:31:57 ►
I discovered all kinds of things.
00:32:00 ►
It was a complete win
00:32:04 ►
as far as I was concerned
00:32:05 ►
there were these difficult areas
00:32:07 ►
but that’s the stuff
00:32:09 ►
that was in me
00:32:10 ►
you have to find a way to resolve it
00:32:12 ►
you have to be willing to resolve it
00:32:15 ►
and we had
00:32:17 ►
a lot of experience later
00:32:18 ►
where people just
00:32:21 ►
weren’t willing to get into
00:32:23 ►
those places
00:32:24 ►
and okay, let them go and try it again another time people just weren’t willing to get into those places.
00:32:30 ►
And okay, let them go and try it again another time.
00:32:34 ►
And each time, people face it more completely until finally they break through.
00:32:36 ►
And once you get that breakthrough,
00:32:38 ►
then you realize that there’s an enormous accomplishment
00:32:41 ►
that’s enormously worthwhile.
00:32:46 ►
Do you have anything you want to add right here?
00:32:50 ►
Well, this may be a little bit on the negative side because Myron’s birth experience has always come up
00:32:54 ►
in most of his LSD experiences and even in some of the others.
00:32:59 ►
He would always get back in.
00:33:01 ►
It’s kind of the doldrums, I call it.
00:33:04 ►
And this, although you haven’t done it for many years, I don’t think,
00:33:09 ►
but it always used to come up,
00:33:11 ►
and he would be in the doldrums for a while,
00:33:14 ►
usually at the beginning of an experience.
00:33:16 ►
But then by the end of the day, he’d come out of it,
00:33:19 ►
and we’d laugh and sing and put on high dance music
00:33:22 ►
or high energy dance music or whatever.
00:33:25 ►
And this was both with just the two of us and with the group.
00:33:29 ►
So Myron’s birth experience was really, I think, I don’t know whether you’ve ever gotten over it completely.
00:33:40 ►
It’s heavy duty.
00:33:43 ►
Before I ask Myron this question, let me ask you,
00:33:46 ►
what was your second experience?
00:33:48 ►
Was it also LSD?
00:33:49 ►
How did you progress?
00:33:51 ►
Oh my gosh.
00:33:53 ►
Oh, let me think.
00:33:54 ►
I’m having a hard time remembering.
00:33:58 ►
Because we used to go,
00:33:59 ►
we used to have groups,
00:34:00 ►
and mostly with groups.
00:34:03 ►
I think it wasn’t too long a time after you had lsd
00:34:08 ►
uh that we got mdma and uh you know that was a whole new turn of things and uh we did that with
00:34:17 ►
with really supreme company and it was just really it’s just really remarkable thing
00:34:25 ►
it’s just
00:34:25 ►
very very pleasant
00:34:26 ►
so
00:34:27 ►
we got into that
00:34:29 ►
a fair amount
00:34:30 ►
did you put LSD aside
00:34:31 ►
for a while there
00:34:32 ►
when you got into
00:34:33 ►
MVMA
00:34:34 ►
and some of the new
00:34:35 ►
oh
00:34:36 ►
well
00:34:38 ►
we used
00:34:39 ►
different things
00:34:40 ►
you know
00:34:41 ►
we had a choice
00:34:43 ►
of quite a number of products.
00:34:47 ►
We were very fortunate to have some of those things.
00:34:51 ►
Because we talked about this last night,
00:34:53 ►
and I told you how my first experience,
00:34:56 ►
I was fearful for months.
00:34:58 ►
It took a lot of time to get crazy.
00:34:59 ►
Were you fearful before your first LSD experience?
00:35:03 ►
How did you address that going into it,
00:35:06 ►
or were you just anxious to do it?
00:35:07 ►
Oh, I was anxious to do it
00:35:09 ►
because I didn’t anticipate any pain or difficulties.
00:35:16 ►
Maybe I should add this a little bit.
00:35:20 ►
I’d gotten very well acquainted with Gerald Herr.
00:35:23 ►
He’s a brilliant, brilliant man.
00:35:22 ►
I’d gotten very well acquainted with Gerald Herr.
00:35:24 ►
He’s a brilliant, brilliant man.
00:35:32 ►
And he had taken LSD with Hubbard and also accompanied by Aldous Huxley.
00:35:39 ►
And I had liked him a lot.
00:35:43 ►
Every time I went to Southern California, I’d always go to see him.
00:35:48 ►
And it was great seeing him.
00:35:49 ►
He always welcomed me.
00:35:51 ►
And then one day he told me that he and Huxley had taken LSD with Hubbard.
00:35:58 ►
And I thought, my God, here’s one of the most brilliant men on the planet
00:36:01 ►
and one of the most brilliant men on the planet and one of the highest level thinkers
00:36:05 ►
and why in the world would he
00:36:07 ►
want to take
00:36:09 ►
something like that
00:36:10 ►
so he told me it was very worthwhile
00:36:14 ►
and so that’s when I
00:36:17 ►
wrote a letter to Hubbard
00:36:19 ►
what did you say in your letter
00:36:22 ►
to Hubbard? You just wrote to him
00:36:23 ►
out of the blue, right?
00:36:25 ►
well the sequence was this.
00:36:28 ►
So after I got the information from Gerald Hurd,
00:36:32 ►
well, I hadn’t really done anything particularly,
00:36:35 ►
but much to my amazement,
00:36:37 ►
our president of our company had gone to Canada,
00:36:43 ►
and he heard about Hubbard
00:36:46 ►
and people taking LSD,
00:36:49 ►
and he really got pretty excited about it.
00:36:53 ►
And when he came back,
00:36:54 ►
he told me about that.
00:36:56 ►
And so I decided then to contact Hubbard,
00:37:00 ►
and I wrote him a letter.
00:37:02 ►
And then it was only a month or two
00:37:03 ►
that he came to
00:37:07 ►
Ampex and looked me up. He just showed up? He just showed up with his wife and a good
00:37:14 ►
personal friend, a very nice lady that they were good friends with. And so we went to,
00:37:23 ►
and so we went to they were in a motel
00:37:26 ►
and I went and joined them there
00:37:28 ►
and then he laid me down
00:37:31 ►
and gave me a few whiffs of carbogen
00:37:33 ►
and he was very careful
00:37:35 ►
not to give me too much
00:37:36 ►
he’s a smart guy
00:37:38 ►
so I think I only had about four breaths
00:37:40 ►
usually we have people 15 or 25
00:37:43 ►
or something
00:37:44 ►
that really unloads you and incidentally
00:37:47 ►
that’s an area that we haven’t discussed at all yet so we’ll get back to that but so it was a
00:37:56 ►
short thing and felt really good and i saw very nice pictures and so uh made a really close connection with him.
00:38:13 ►
And the result was he invited me to come up in April.
00:38:18 ►
I think when we first saw him, I think it was still the fall before,
00:38:22 ►
but then I went up the following April,
00:38:25 ►
and I’ve already told you what happened there.
00:38:30 ►
You know, circling back to what kind of started this thing,
00:38:35 ►
is I asked you the difference between a high-dose and a low-dose crowd,
00:38:37 ►
which, where you fall.
00:38:41 ►
You, Menlo Park was more of a, I call it Menlo Park,
00:38:43 ►
the Institute for Advanced Studies,
00:38:49 ►
was sort of a low-dose, you know, 100 microgram or so that you were giving.
00:38:51 ►
Oh, no, we gave more than that.
00:38:51 ►
Oh, did you?
00:38:57 ►
Don’t forget, Charlie Savage was our medical director,
00:39:00 ►
and he was very skilled and very understanding.
00:39:06 ►
The people who were going through our program, they always went to him first and he would talk to them and
00:39:08 ►
he was very
00:39:10 ►
good at assessing people
00:39:12 ►
and
00:39:13 ►
so he would make the
00:39:16 ►
determination whether he thought it was appropriate
00:39:18 ►
for them to go through our program or not
00:39:20 ►
and
00:39:21 ►
most of the time
00:39:23 ►
I don’t think, I
00:39:25 ►
think it’s
00:39:26 ►
very rare
00:39:26 ►
that he
00:39:27 ►
ever rejected
00:39:27 ►
anyone.
00:39:29 ►
Yeah, I
00:39:29 ►
find that
00:39:30 ►
kind of
00:39:30 ►
fascinating
00:39:30 ►
because today,
00:39:31 ►
you know,
00:39:32 ►
kids just
00:39:32 ►
go out
00:39:33 ►
and teenagers
00:39:34 ►
and middle
00:39:35 ►
school even
00:39:35 ►
and take
00:39:36 ►
acid for
00:39:37 ►
the first
00:39:37 ►
time with
00:39:37 ►
some friends
00:39:38 ►
out, you
00:39:38 ►
know,
00:39:39 ►
sneaking
00:39:39 ►
around.
00:39:40 ►
You really
00:39:40 ►
had a
00:39:41 ►
program
00:39:41 ►
where you
00:39:42 ►
took people
00:39:44 ►
through Carbogen,
00:39:47 ►
and then you talked to them, you interviewed them before their first session.
00:39:51 ►
Oh, absolutely.
00:39:52 ►
Generally, we spent several weeks with them.
00:39:56 ►
They come in just once a week,
00:39:58 ►
and we would see them maybe three or four times to get better acquainted.
00:40:01 ►
them maybe three or four times to get better acquainted
00:40:04 ►
we’d give them
00:40:06 ►
Hubbard
00:40:07 ►
was the one that brought this to
00:40:09 ►
our attention
00:40:10 ►
Carbogen
00:40:12 ►
and
00:40:14 ►
they would come
00:40:17 ►
and we would discuss things with them
00:40:20 ►
find out what their problems
00:40:22 ►
were, what they were looking for
00:40:24 ►
and so on.
00:40:25 ►
And then we’d give them the carbogen.
00:40:28 ►
Do you understand what carbogen is?
00:40:31 ►
70% oxygen, 30% CO2, right?
00:40:35 ►
Right.
00:40:36 ►
And they would breathe that, and you get a lot of action out of that.
00:40:41 ►
But Hubbard loved calling people around
00:40:46 ►
while he gave me Carbogen
00:40:48 ►
because usually I exploded all over the place
00:40:51 ►
and I would shout, fuck them
00:40:53 ►
or Jesus Christ
00:40:57 ►
I’d always come up with something
00:40:59 ►
they all got a big kick out of it
00:41:02 ►
so you were the demonstrator.
00:41:07 ►
Yeah, the demonstrator.
00:41:09 ►
And if they saw your demonstration and still felt that they wanted to try it, then they passed the test.
00:41:14 ►
Right on.
00:41:17 ►
Did you subject Gene to any of these tests?
00:41:22 ►
I don’t think he ever took Carbogen, did you?
00:41:30 ►
I’m afraid to say I didn’t care for it i took maybe five breaths and i didn’t like it i i resisted i guess i guess i’d be too frightened um it’s scary what what did it what was it like
00:41:38 ►
for you nothing happened not not nothing happened just I was just really scared
00:41:46 ►
you know because you put it over your nose
00:41:49 ►
I felt
00:41:50 ►
almost smothered
00:41:52 ►
so I wasn’t
00:41:54 ►
open for that one
00:41:56 ►
but how about before your first LSD experience
00:41:59 ►
were you frightened at all about that?
00:42:00 ►
oh no I was very excited
00:42:02 ►
I heard Myron’s stories about the foundation
00:42:05 ►
and about how people got
00:42:06 ►
a lot out of these experiences.
00:42:09 ►
And I thought,
00:42:09 ►
well, sounds good to me.
00:42:11 ►
And I was such a square before that.
00:42:14 ►
I wouldn’t even think of
00:42:16 ►
taking a toke of marijuana,
00:42:18 ►
for heaven’s sake.
00:42:20 ►
But, no, I wasn’t…
00:42:21 ►
I don’t think I…
00:42:22 ►
Well, a little bit.
00:42:23 ►
A little bit scared,
00:42:24 ►
but, you know…
00:42:24 ►
But not too intimidated. No, I wasn’t, I don’t think I, well, a little bit, a little bit scared, but, you know. But not too intimidated?
00:42:27 ►
No, I thought it was wonderful.
00:42:29 ►
Now, your first experience was, what, around 100 micrograms?
00:42:32 ►
It was either 50 or 100, I don’t remember.
00:42:35 ►
I think it was 100, because by then we were just…
00:42:38 ►
An ampule, you know, an ampule from Switzerland.
00:42:43 ►
So I assume that you did it a few more times
00:42:45 ►
after that though before the MDMA showed up.
00:42:48 ►
Oh yes, yes, yes. Yes we did.
00:42:50 ►
Always in Death Valley
00:42:52 ►
or did you? Oh no, no.
00:42:53 ►
In Menlo Park. We lived in Menlo Park.
00:42:56 ►
No we used to.
00:42:57 ►
Then we moved here
00:43:01 ►
and so we would
00:43:03 ►
partake at times when we thought was appropriate for us.
00:43:08 ►
But here’s a question for Jean.
00:43:12 ►
Because I was a square before my first time, too,
00:43:15 ►
and a lot of my friends pretty much just thought I had lost it all.
00:43:20 ►
Did you have any reaction from your friends, or did you even tell them yours?
00:43:24 ►
Oh, no, I did not advertise.
00:43:27 ►
But we did,
00:43:28 ►
we were able to have
00:43:30 ►
our children involved
00:43:31 ►
in the MDMA business
00:43:32 ►
and they knew
00:43:33 ►
what we were doing.
00:43:35 ►
But no, I couldn’t talk about it
00:43:36 ►
with anyone.
00:43:38 ►
It wasn’t something
00:43:38 ►
you would talk to someone about
00:43:42 ►
unless you knew them intimately
00:43:44 ►
because it’s very profound what the stuff that comes up talk to someone about, unless you knew them intimately,
00:43:47 ►
because it’s very profound,
00:43:48 ►
the stuff that comes up and the stuff that you realize you have to handle
00:43:51 ►
and how you’re running your life.
00:43:55 ►
Did any of your former friends
00:43:58 ►
ever gravitate to the psychedelic lifestyle at all?
00:44:02 ►
Your personal friends that you had before you?
00:44:04 ►
No, no. No. I don’t believe so. the psychedelic lifestyle at all? Your personal friends that you had before you met Myron?
00:44:05 ►
No, no.
00:44:08 ►
I don’t believe so.
00:44:13 ►
We had a group around the Menlo Park area and we were, you know, maybe there were six or eight of us.
00:44:17 ►
And we knew each other and we stayed in that group mostly.
00:44:22 ►
So we didn’t have, actually didn’t have any other friends how about you Myron did other people at Ampex get involved in LSD or was it just you or did the president really get involved in it the president met Al Hubbard and agreed to have an experience with him.
00:44:48 ►
But on the day that he was to do it, he changed his mind.
00:44:54 ►
So he never did.
00:44:56 ►
And then he ended up never taking it.
00:45:00 ►
Did you have any people at Menlo Park that went through the preparation and got close and then backed out when they got there?
00:45:07 ►
Well, we had 350 people go through over three and a half years.
00:45:13 ►
And I’d say by a large majority that most of them felt that they had been benefited quite a bit. I had a lot of friends in Ampex
00:45:28 ►
where I worked, and a number of them were interested in what I was doing, and several
00:45:34 ►
of them came and participated. And almost all of them felt that they had been quite
00:45:41 ►
benefited. They learned how to get along better with their wives and their kids and stuff like that.
00:45:49 ►
And it wasn’t a big number,
00:45:52 ►
but it was quite satisfying to us to know
00:45:55 ►
that we had some of these people
00:45:57 ►
who thought enough of what we were doing
00:45:59 ►
that they would come and participate.
00:46:03 ►
Were you doing meditation before you started doing LSD,
00:46:08 ►
or when did meditation come into your life?
00:46:10 ►
There was a group in Palo Alto
00:46:15 ►
that were very deeply into spirituality.
00:46:20 ►
Harry Rathbun was an attorney,
00:46:23 ►
and he taught that at Stanford University.
00:46:30 ►
And he was very, very popular, a very lovable person. He would have a real large room and people could come and sort of get some really good experience about the possibilities of life and so on.
00:46:53 ►
And it got to be a favor that the school got really used to so that every year people would flood in to just hear him on at their last uh plus at their last uh program
00:47:09 ►
anyway he and his wife were really really very good at um introducing people to spirituality
00:47:16 ►
and uh i joined them and i was part of that group for a long time and found it very helpful. That’s where I learned
00:47:27 ►
a lot about meditation and did a lot of personal practice with meditation.
00:47:34 ►
So that was a really good association. And when Hubbard came along, I introduced them to them, and nobody
00:47:45 ►
liked him.
00:47:47 ►
Some of them wanted to take
00:47:50 ►
off and work with LSD
00:47:52 ►
on their own, and they didn’t
00:47:53 ►
know shit.
00:47:56 ►
So,
00:47:57 ►
I was very disappointed.
00:47:59 ►
They wanted to…
00:48:02 ►
Here, Hubbard knew all
00:48:03 ►
of this stuff backwards and forwards and everything,
00:48:06 ►
but they wanted to go ahead and do it their own way,
00:48:10 ►
and I couldn’t take that.
00:48:12 ►
I said goodbye to them.
00:48:14 ►
Was that part of the Sequoia seminar group that split out?
00:48:18 ►
Yeah.
00:48:18 ►
Yeah.
00:48:23 ►
My remembering of your story about the Sequoia seminar
00:48:27 ►
was that you were totally enthralled with it
00:48:31 ►
and you were taught the teachings of Jesus
00:48:36 ►
and you were in a state of shock when they told you
00:48:39 ►
that you have to read this book about the true teachings of Jesus.
00:48:44 ►
And I thought you were enthralled with it.
00:48:46 ►
I didn’t realize that you broke off with that group.
00:48:52 ►
I was involved with this group for quite a number of years.
00:48:57 ►
Now, the first part is what you’re talking about.
00:49:03 ►
See, well, I’ll tell you this
00:49:06 ►
it may not be much interest
00:49:08 ►
but at least you’ll have it if you want it
00:49:10 ►
I had a neighbor
00:49:11 ►
who lived very close to me
00:49:13 ►
and we both worked together at Ampex
00:49:16 ►
and he’d heard a little bit about
00:49:21 ►
Rathbun
00:49:24 ►
and Rathbun was giving a series of talks. And he said, why
00:49:31 ►
don’t you come with me? So I said, okay. And so I listened to him. And Rathbun was a marvelous
00:49:38 ►
teacher and a marvelous instructor. And I really liked everything he said and I think we went first several weeks in a row and then toward the end it turned out that I’m really a
00:49:53 ►
little dim on I know it was really important what he was saying and I
00:49:58 ►
thought and I was really glad I was going but then all of a sudden he threw
00:50:02 ►
in this thing about spirituality in Christ and I immediately felt I’d been screwed
00:50:10 ►
so bait and switch but a few a few months went by and they began starting having local gatherings. So I thought, oh, what the hell, I’ll go.
00:50:28 ►
And so I went, and Rathman was leading the group.
00:50:35 ►
And I sort of got pulled in and began to enjoy it more.
00:50:42 ►
And see, an awful lot of wisdom came from a person
00:50:46 ►
whose name that I don’t remember.
00:50:49 ►
The Rathmans were very, very close to him
00:50:51 ►
and they felt this particular man
00:50:55 ►
had spent 30 years of his life
00:50:57 ►
to find the real truth about Christ
00:51:00 ►
and what was really important
00:51:01 ►
and what was sort of made up by people
00:51:04 ►
and so
00:51:06 ►
that what you finally got out of it
00:51:07 ►
was very very sound
00:51:09 ►
information and
00:51:11 ►
I really enjoyed that
00:51:13 ►
so in spite of being Jewish
00:51:15 ►
I
00:51:17 ►
belonged to that group and I stayed with them
00:51:19 ►
for a long time and I became
00:51:22 ►
actually part of the leadership
00:51:24 ►
group
00:51:24 ►
so that went on for quite a while Charmin? for a long time and I became actually part of the leadership group.
00:51:27 ►
So that went on for quite a while.
00:51:29 ►
Charmin?
00:51:32 ►
Charmin was the one that set all that up.
00:51:33 ►
Good for you.
00:51:39 ►
Then when Hubbard came in to the picture,
00:51:43 ►
none of those people, well, I think I already said this, none of those people really cared for him.
00:51:46 ►
Was he, like, boisterous, or what was it that…
00:51:48 ►
Yeah, they felt he was too cocky, and I’m not sure what the problem was,
00:51:54 ►
because I was having a great time with him.
00:51:58 ►
But I think I already covered that some of the people decided they would try to work with LSD.
00:52:11 ►
And I felt they didn’t know what they were doing or how to do it.
00:52:14 ►
And they didn’t want to follow Hubbard.
00:52:19 ►
And Hubbard’s the one that really knew all about it.
00:52:23 ►
So I departed from that group.
00:52:28 ►
And we did have a group.
00:52:30 ►
There were two or three people there,
00:52:32 ►
but I began meeting once a week.
00:52:36 ►
We had people come together.
00:52:39 ►
And then we reached the point where
00:52:40 ►
one person who volunteered would take LSD
00:52:45 ►
and this was
00:52:47 ►
mostly done at our home
00:52:49 ►
and it was done in the evening
00:52:51 ►
and they would take
00:52:54 ►
it and the rest of us would just be there
00:52:55 ►
as supportive.
00:52:58 ►
One person would take it and the rest would
00:52:59 ►
support? Yeah.
00:53:01 ►
Then a week later, we would
00:53:04 ►
review it all, what the person got, what they felt was important about it.
00:53:09 ►
And then another person would be chosen, and then they would go through it.
00:53:16 ►
And finally, I think we had only about eight people in the group.
00:53:19 ►
We finally went through where all eight people went.
00:53:22 ►
We finally went through where all eight people went.
00:53:29 ►
I guess I have to ask this question because I’ve been in circles where, you know,
00:53:34 ►
a group has supported somebody that’s been smoking DMT, but it’s like 15 minutes. And that seems like forever boring, waiting for the person.
00:53:37 ►
How did you all sit there and support somebody for an LSD trip, which is hours?
00:53:43 ►
I mean, did you just sit there in silence?
00:53:46 ►
Yeah, really, yeah.
00:53:47 ►
We meditated.
00:53:50 ►
Then, oh, after a while,
00:53:55 ►
maybe two, three hours went by.
00:53:57 ►
If there wouldn’t be any discussion,
00:53:59 ►
we could bring up discussion with the group.
00:54:02 ►
But we didn’t fall into that too much.
00:54:06 ►
We usually let the person just go through,
00:54:09 ►
and then we’d talk about it the week later when we got together again.
00:54:13 ►
Now, did you keep your meditation practice up through this whole time,
00:54:16 ►
or did it slip when you first started doing LSD?
00:54:21 ►
No, I think I got pretty wedded to meditation with this group
00:54:25 ►
so I meditated regularly
00:54:29 ►
which you still do every day
00:54:30 ►
so my guess is that you would
00:54:34 ►
recommend that meditation practice
00:54:37 ►
is beneficial
00:54:40 ►
oh absolutely
00:54:41 ►
and you know if you’re going to work with these materials
00:54:44 ►
meditation is a marvelous supporter Oh, absolutely. And, you know, if you’re going to work with these materials,
00:54:47 ►
meditation is a marvelous supporter because as you use the materials,
00:54:51 ►
you open your consciousness more
00:54:53 ►
and that opens your meditation more.
00:54:56 ►
So then your meditation becomes more effective
00:54:58 ►
and more fulfilling.
00:55:01 ►
So it’s a growing process.
00:55:03 ►
I asked you last night, and i loved the answer you know
00:55:08 ►
what would your life have been like without lsd oh god it had been it would have been miserable
00:55:16 ►
by comparison absolutely miserable oh no taking taking lsd was just a remarkable change of life
00:55:24 ►
Oh, no, taking LSD was just a remarkable change of life.
00:55:34 ►
It’s just criminal that our nation holds it down so thoroughly they won’t have anything to do with it.
00:55:36 ►
They don’t even want to look at it.
00:55:38 ►
That’s changing a little bit now.
00:55:40 ►
It’s changing a little bit.
00:55:43 ►
And there may be some LSD work
00:55:45 ►
that will be permitted.
00:55:51 ►
But
00:55:51 ►
it’s just a shame that it’s
00:55:53 ►
so valuable and so effective
00:55:56 ►
that
00:55:56 ►
here we are supposed to,
00:56:00 ►
the nation is supposed to
00:56:01 ►
be the most open.
00:56:04 ►
And it’s become one of the most rigorous enemies.
00:56:09 ►
Amazing.
00:56:11 ►
You know, Gene,
00:56:13 ►
one of the things that kind of bugs me
00:56:16 ►
is that we hear all these men talking about these experiences,
00:56:20 ►
and is LSD only a male thing,
00:56:23 ►
or how has it affected your life?
00:56:25 ►
Well, I don’t know.
00:56:26 ►
They just interview the men.
00:56:28 ►
They don’t interview the ladies.
00:56:29 ►
But anyway, I don’t know.
00:56:32 ►
No, it’s not a male thing.
00:56:33 ►
I know a lot of women that have taken LSD and liked it.
00:56:37 ►
And I just wanted to comment about the first experience that I had, I remember.
00:56:44 ►
But, you know, I don’t remember the ones after that.
00:56:47 ►
And so much was going on.
00:56:50 ►
But the first time I took it, it’s mind-opening.
00:56:55 ►
And even if you only take it once, you really learn a great deal.
00:56:59 ►
So you don’t have to take it every week or every month or every year.
00:57:03 ►
That’s your choice.
00:57:03 ►
You don’t have to take it every week or every month or every year.
00:57:05 ►
That’s your choice.
00:57:09 ►
You know, I’ve found with some of these other medicines that many times the first experience is such a peak experience
00:57:15 ►
that it’s difficult to really repeat that one.
00:57:19 ►
Have you found the same thing?
00:57:20 ►
Oh, they’re never the same.
00:57:21 ►
I’ve never had two experiences that were the same.
00:57:30 ►
But I don’t remember clearly like I do the first one.
00:57:32 ►
I remember the first one very clearly,
00:57:34 ►
but I don’t remember the others.
00:57:38 ►
There seems to be a kind of dynamic that takes place,
00:57:45 ►
and it’s almost like your first experience it’s a real opener
00:57:45 ►
it’s almost
00:57:46 ►
like there’s
00:57:46 ►
something there
00:57:47 ►
that wants to
00:57:48 ►
sort of pull
00:57:49 ►
you in
00:57:49 ►
and let you
00:57:50 ►
know that
00:57:51 ►
there is way
00:57:52 ►
more to life
00:57:53 ►
than you ever
00:57:53 ►
thought before
00:57:54 ►
so you
00:57:57 ►
kind of
00:57:57 ►
get a nice
00:57:58 ►
start
00:57:59 ►
but then
00:58:01 ►
if you’re
00:58:02 ►
going to
00:58:02 ►
continue
00:58:03 ►
taking it
00:58:04 ►
you’re going to have to begin to open the doors that we’ve locked up and that we haven’t wanted to see at all.
00:58:13 ►
But sooner or later, you’ve got to open those things up.
00:58:17 ►
And so that for a while, it looks like it’s turning against you.
00:58:21 ►
It’s not turning against you it’s not turning against you it really wants to wants to help you get into
00:58:26 ►
these deeper areas and release them and understand them because uh they’re powerful things and we’re
00:58:32 ►
all carrying that stuff around and it’s like dragging you know dragging uh rocks piles of
00:58:40 ►
rocks that we have to pull around that’s what it’s like and you can get free of all that stuff so
00:58:46 ►
you know i i guess the the thing is and uh maybe huxley or you started saying this that you know
00:58:54 ►
they it opens the doors but you’ve got to go through and do the work if you want to absolutely
00:59:00 ►
how do you you know the the enthusiasm of the profound experience fades away.
00:59:05 ►
How do you maintain that, I guess, through the hard work?
00:59:10 ►
What happens a lot, and I talk to this every chance I get when we go to Kathleen’s place,
00:59:24 ►
and these people are taking it and they’re not really committing themselves
00:59:29 ►
to honor what they learned
00:59:33 ►
and do their best to make use of it
00:59:35 ►
and every chance I get
00:59:37 ►
when I get to a group or any of these people
00:59:40 ►
I always try to bring this up
00:59:42 ►
because I see it so much
00:59:43 ►
it’s just
00:59:44 ►
you go to a certain point and it’s like, well, this has been great and you’ve learned a lot,
00:59:53 ►
but you don’t realize that there’s way, way more waiting for you.
00:59:57 ►
And the only way that you can keep developing and learning more and getting into higher levels of consciousness is by really exerting yourself
01:00:08 ►
and learning to use everything that shows up
01:00:12 ►
when you do have these experiences.
01:00:15 ►
So it’s kind of disappointing when you go to Kathleen’s
01:00:18 ►
and you see how many people,
01:00:21 ►
you know, they love having the experience
01:00:23 ►
and they love repeating it,
01:00:26 ►
but I would say that only maybe a third of them, and maybe I’m being too harsh here,
01:00:34 ►
maybe half of them, but it seems to me somewhere between a third and a half of them aren’t
01:00:39 ►
really exerting themselves to put into effect what they could learn.
01:00:45 ►
Yeah, and you know, that may be pretty much true across the board, I’m afraid.
01:00:51 ►
We’ve been kind of a society, I think, brought up on the instant fix
01:00:55 ►
and you can do this quick weight loss diets and all these things
01:00:59 ►
and take a pill and you’re going to feel good.
01:01:03 ►
It’s not like you can keep taking these pills
01:01:06 ►
and have them work for you.
01:01:08 ►
Maybe we ought to take a little break.
01:01:10 ►
I guess one of the main things I hope you get from
01:01:16 ►
this conversation today is to have some idea
01:01:19 ►
of the intense amount of preparation that took place
01:01:22 ►
before people had their first LSD experience
01:01:25 ►
back in the early days of its use.
01:01:27 ►
In my humble opinion, we should still be using some of those techniques,
01:01:31 ►
at least in some modified form.
01:01:34 ►
And in the future, I hope to podcast several more reminiscences about Al Hubbard,
01:01:39 ►
who is often called the Johnny Appleseed of LSD.
01:01:42 ►
And no matter what one thinks about this exceptional man,
01:01:47 ►
I think it’s safe to say that he was indeed one of the major forces
01:01:51 ►
in spreading the word about LSD.
01:01:53 ►
You know, the people he turned on for the first time
01:01:56 ►
largely make up a who’s who of the early LSD researchers.
01:02:01 ►
You know, names like Gerald Hurd, Humphrey Osmond, Aldous Huxley, and
01:02:05 ►
Myron Stolaroff, among others, immediately come to mind when Hubbard’s influence is discussed.
01:02:11 ►
But just yesterday, Gary Fisher told me something about Al Hubbard that I hadn’t picked up
01:02:16 ►
on before.
01:02:17 ►
You know, while Myron and I discussed the fact that Hubbard was a Catholic, it was Gary
01:02:22 ►
who explained to me just how Catholic he was.
01:02:25 ►
Apparently, in the early days of LSD research here in North America,
01:02:30 ►
religious iconography was almost universally used,
01:02:34 ►
and it appears to have its genesis in use in the embodiment of one Al Hubbard.
01:02:41 ►
In particular, the painting called St. Veronica’s Veil
01:02:45 ►
appears to be as much a part of the experience in the early days
01:02:49 ►
as the music of Pink Floyd is for me today.
01:02:53 ►
The irony, of course, is that Al Hubbard was also somewhat of a con man.
01:02:59 ►
Perhaps that’s a little harsh, but after hearing so many stories about him,
01:03:03 ►
it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that if you were a close friend of Al’s,
01:03:07 ►
it wouldn’t be long before some significant sums of your hard-earned cash
01:03:12 ►
would wind up being used for one of Al’s various, what shall I call them,
01:03:17 ►
maybe I’ll just say one of Al’s pet projects.
01:03:20 ►
I’ll have more to say about all this next week when I play another recording I made of a conversation
01:03:26 ►
Myron and I had later that same day
01:03:29 ►
and by the way I’m not going to get next week’s podcast out until Thursday
01:03:34 ►
so don’t worry when it doesn’t appear on the now usual Wednesday evening
01:03:38 ►
but before I go today I want to point out one more thing
01:03:43 ►
and that is the experience of seeing the parade of life that Myron had during his first LSD experience.
01:03:51 ►
The reason I mention it is that just recently another friend of mine said that
01:03:56 ►
she had had the exact same experience during one of her first ayahuasca experiences.
01:04:02 ►
And it seems to be a common theme for a lot of us, at least
01:04:07 ►
in our early explorations. I have no idea what all that means, but since it does seem
01:04:12 ►
to be a common experience, it may be something you want to think about on your own sometime.
01:04:18 ►
You know, just what is this vast parade of human life all about anyway. As the King of Siam once has said, it’s a puzzlement.
01:04:28 ►
Well, once again, I’m going to have to sign off without mentioning any of the email I’ve been receiving.
01:04:33 ►
One reason is that after returning home from a weekend retreat,
01:04:37 ►
I discovered that the notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog,
01:04:41 ►
the place where I post the program notes for these podcasts,
01:04:45 ►
well, that blog just totally crashed.
01:04:47 ►
So I spent several days trying to fix it until, in desperation,
01:04:51 ►
I turned to the excellent tech support team at DreamHost for help.
01:04:55 ►
And within a few hours, they had the site up and running for me again.
01:04:58 ►
So, hey, thanks again, all you tech support guys at DreamHost.
01:05:02 ►
And if any of the rest of you went to our blog and couldn’t get in,
01:05:07 ►
well, give it a try again and hopefully it’ll be running along glitch-free.
01:05:12 ►
You know, at least until Mercury goes retrograde again.
01:05:16 ►
By the way, you can get to that part of our website in a number of different ways,
01:05:21 ►
but the direct link is simply www.psychedelicsalon.org.
01:05:27 ►
Before I go, I should mention that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon
01:05:32 ►
are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 2.5 license.
01:05:38 ►
And if you have any questions about that,
01:05:40 ►
just click the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,
01:05:43 ►
which you can find at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts. Thank you. I guess I’ve been somewhat remiss in not doing a better job of letting you know the source of the background music here in the salon.
01:06:07 ►
Chateau Hayouk is the name of a group whose music you’re hearing.
01:06:11 ►
And in particular, the cut that I play is from their self-titled album and is titled El Alien.
01:06:18 ►
And there’s a link to their MySpace site from our main podcast page.
01:06:22 ►
And you can also go directly to it, www.myspace.com slash Chetul Hayuk.
01:06:30 ►
And that’s spelled C-A-T-A-L-H-U-Y-U-K.
01:06:36 ►
Well, that’s it for today.
01:06:38 ►
Thanks again for being here.
01:06:40 ►
It really does mean a lot to me.
01:06:42 ►
And until next week, this is Lorenzo signing off
01:06:45 ►
from cyberdelic space.
01:06:48 ►
Be well, my friends.