Program Notes
Guest speaker: Myron Stolaroff
(Minutes : Seconds into program)
03:48 Myron Stolaroff:
“After I’d had LSD, there wasn’t anything that could come anywhere close to it. That was the most remarkable thing in my whole life.”
04:34 Myron talks about his meetings with Aldous Huxley.
07:39 Myron talks about Meduna’s mixture, carbogen.
09:42 Myron explains what a carbogen experience was like.
16:15 Why some people don’t seem to have a positive experience with psychedelics.
18:21 The importance of using psychedelics in small, supportive groups.
19:48 Myron discusses his favorite psychedelic substances.
20:37 Myron talks about Duncan Blewett
24:01Some thoughts about using music during a psychedelic experience.
25:05 Myron’s advice to psychonaughts.
28:20 Myron talks about his relationship with Timothy Leary.
31:00 Myron tells the story of removing Leary from the board of directors of the Institute for Advance Study.
33:30 Myron tells of his fist meeting with Dr. Albert Hofmann.
Books by Myron Stolaroff
http://astore.amazon.com/matrixmasterscom/detail/3861354535http://astore.amazon.com/matrixmasterscom/detail/0966001966
LSD manual mentioned in this podcast
HANDBOOK FOR THE THERAPEUTIC USE OF LYSERGIC ACID DIETHYLAMIDE-25 INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP PROCEDURES by D.B. BLEWETT, Ph.D. and N. CHWELOS, M.D.
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083 - Lone Pine Stories (Part 1)
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085 - The Great Project of the Universe
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.
00:00:21 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:25 ►
Well, it’s good to be back with you here today.
00:00:28 ►
Since you’re listening to this, I guess you didn’t give up on me getting a podcast out this week.
00:00:34 ►
And to tell the truth, I’m having a hard time getting back in the groove after the past few weeks.
00:00:39 ►
You know, after taking almost a week to get my internet connection working again,
00:00:43 ►
I left town and spent a few days in the mountains doing some work with our little clan out here.
00:00:50 ►
And soon after returning home, my grandchildren and their parents came for a week-long visit.
00:00:56 ►
After having so much fun with my children and grandchildren,
00:00:59 ►
sitting down in front of a computer for a few hours almost seems like work.
00:01:03 ►
Now that I’m here with you in the salon once again, I’m getting my second wind and getting back up to speed.
00:01:09 ►
So let’s journey back to last week’s program where I interview Gene and Myron Stolaroff about some of their experiences in the years past when they were actively engaged in psychedelic research.
00:01:21 ►
and psychedelic research.
00:01:25 ►
If you’ve seen that brilliant one-man show by Spalding Gray that he titled Swimming to Cambodia,
00:01:28 ►
you’re aware of his concept of having a perfect moment
00:01:31 ►
on every trip that he took.
00:01:33 ►
Well, what you’re about to hear is a conversation I had with Myron
00:01:37 ►
later that same day that, for me, was one such perfect moment.
00:01:42 ►
The interview that I played in the last program was recorded after lunch
00:01:46 ►
and was to have been our last recording session of that visit.
00:01:50 ►
But that evening, just as we began discussing dinner preparations,
00:01:54 ►
Myron pointed out the beauty of the light on the desert.
00:01:58 ►
And at the time, the sun was beginning to set,
00:02:00 ►
and while I had the best of intentions of helping Gene and Mary C. prepare our evening meal, I simply didn’t have the willpower to leave the beautifully unfolding
00:02:10 ►
twilight scene outside. Once the sun had set and the sky turned dark, Myron and I began to talk
00:02:17 ►
about all kinds of things. After a while, I asked him if it would be all right for me to turn on my
00:02:23 ►
recorder, and he had no objection. But at the time, of course, I was afraid that I hadn’t pressed the correct series
00:02:30 ►
of buttons to start my mini disc recording. But there was just something special about
00:02:36 ►
that moment of dimming light that would have been lost had I turned on the lights to check
00:02:40 ►
out my equipment. But fortunately the recorder worked. Now the microphone level it
00:02:46 ►
turned out was a little too high, and so we also picked up the musical sounds of Gene and Mary C’s
00:02:52 ►
conversation in the background. And while that may take a little away from what Myron is saying
00:02:57 ►
every once in a while, I hope it helps you feel like you are sitting right there with him and
00:03:02 ►
having a casual conversation in the gentle peace of twilight.
00:03:07 ►
I realize that this
00:03:08 ►
conversation won’t quite translate like
00:03:10 ►
that for you, but trust me
00:03:12 ►
on this. For me, it was
00:03:14 ►
a perfect moment.
00:03:16 ►
With your background,
00:03:18 ►
you went to Stanford.
00:03:20 ►
Didn’t you get your master’s and bachelor’s
00:03:22 ►
there? I got a master’s degree
00:03:24 ►
there. Yeah, there at Stanford by God
00:03:26 ►
you helped develop the video
00:03:28 ►
tape system at Ampex
00:03:30 ►
I’ve always wondered
00:03:33 ►
you were really
00:03:35 ►
on a fast track there
00:03:36 ►
I’ve been lucky as can be
00:03:39 ►
how did you feel about walking away from all that
00:03:41 ►
to really pursue
00:03:43 ►
the expansion of consciousness
00:03:44 ►
oh god after I’d had LSD walking away from all that, though, to really pursue the expansion of consciousness.
00:03:46 ►
Oh, God.
00:03:49 ►
After I’d had LSD,
00:03:51 ►
I think there wasn’t anything else that could come anywhere close to it.
00:03:54 ►
That was the most remarkable thing of my whole life.
00:03:58 ►
And even just the very first trial,
00:04:02 ►
it was so profound and so opening,
00:04:06 ►
and just dimensions of consciousness opened,
00:04:11 ►
and there’s nothing else like this anywhere.
00:04:14 ►
There’s nothing else you can do to equal that.
00:04:18 ►
Yeah.
00:04:20 ►
And so there’s just no hesitation.
00:04:22 ►
You knew that was the path that you were…
00:04:24 ►
Oh, absolutely.
00:04:25 ►
From the day that I took it.
00:04:28 ►
Well, you were like one of the real early pioneers back there.
00:04:33 ►
Did you ever get to meet Huxley or any of those guys?
00:04:35 ►
Oh, yeah.
00:04:36 ►
I knew Huxley.
00:04:39 ►
I met him several times.
00:04:40 ►
Once he actually visited us when we had this operation going in Menlo Park,
00:04:48 ►
and we were giving LSD to people, and one afternoon he came in.
00:04:54 ►
Well, he had stopped to visit some people at Stanford.
00:04:57 ►
Stanford, there was a place, I forget what they call it.
00:05:01 ►
I don’t know whether Ford’s, maybe Ford people had set it up.
00:05:09 ►
But there’s a place.
00:05:10 ►
Research Institute?
00:05:11 ►
Yeah.
00:05:12 ►
Every year they would allow 15, no, 50, 50 people who were busy in management and different things, but they could
00:05:25 ►
take one year sabbatical
00:05:28 ►
and they could
00:05:29 ►
investigate whatever they wanted, look into
00:05:31 ►
things and so on.
00:05:33 ►
So that was all set there.
00:05:36 ►
And Huxley had gone over to look
00:05:37 ►
that over, and then
00:05:39 ►
he came to see us
00:05:41 ►
and he didn’t think
00:05:43 ►
very much of the other house to tell you the truth so so he
00:05:50 ►
actually did get to see your your setup and meet with your staff so yeah yeah so what was he like
00:05:56 ►
was he uh oh oh he’s he’s very affable you know you see he’s tall and speaks very well.
00:06:08 ►
You know, he has trouble with his eyes somewhat.
00:06:15 ►
But by and large, you know, he’s just a really outstanding person.
00:06:16 ►
Friendly? Extraordinarily wise.
00:06:17 ►
Friendly.
00:06:19 ►
Well, that’s good to hear.
00:06:20 ►
Yeah.
00:06:20 ►
And so he was, of course, one of the early pioneers back there at the same time
00:06:26 ►
yeah that do you ever stay connected with any of these uh other elders of the tribe so to speak
00:06:32 ►
are there are there any left are you the last one standing
00:06:36 ►
well you know after i got acquainted with hubbard i was really glued to him for a long time that
00:06:43 ►
you know he was very smart.
00:06:46 ►
He knew how to take advantage of me.
00:06:48 ►
At the same time, I was delighted in all the things that he could provide for me.
00:06:53 ►
So I just had a ball with him.
00:06:55 ►
I was very fond of his wife.
00:07:00 ►
So we were good friends.
00:07:02 ►
I went there frequently.
00:07:04 ►
At least every year I would go up and visit him there,
00:07:08 ►
and a lot of times on the island that he owned.
00:07:14 ►
But eventually, when he saw that we were really getting started with this,
00:07:19 ►
he moved down to Southern California,
00:07:21 ►
and I actually hired him.
00:07:27 ►
I paid him about $400 hundred dollars a month i think just as a consultant and to keep everything going and to keep him happy and
00:07:34 ►
at the time i had enough money that didn’t bother me uh you know you earlier you were talking about
00:07:40 ►
the carvajal in your book uh uh one of your books you you called it maduna’s mixture
00:07:47 ►
oh maduna invented it he’s the one so that’s the name of the person that yeah yeah and he was well
00:07:54 ►
known he uh he finally had about i think 200 uh doctors got interested and and were using it
00:08:03 ►
and it went on for a few years,
00:08:06 ►
and then I think it faded out.
00:08:08 ►
Is Hubbard the one that brought it into use
00:08:10 ►
in the psychedelic?
00:08:11 ►
Yeah.
00:08:11 ►
He saw Medina face-to-face,
00:08:15 ►
and he saw what it could do,
00:08:18 ►
and then he had a policy.
00:08:23 ►
So he had a really good friend who owned airplanes, and they were business planes of different kinds.
00:08:35 ►
So Al was in close touch with him, and one of the things he would do, he would use that.
00:08:44 ►
He would use that, see, long before I even knew about it, he would use that to make sure that all the pilots were in good shape.
00:08:51 ►
And, you know, if they were kind of getting uneasy or anything, he’d give them that.
00:08:56 ►
And they shaped up.
00:09:00 ►
Actually, I was there on the island one time, and two aviators flew over.
00:09:08 ►
I think they came together.
00:09:10 ►
They were able to land in the water there.
00:09:12 ►
And they both came to Hubbard, and they each took their treatment from him
00:09:17 ►
because, you know, they considered that after the length of time, you know,
00:09:23 ►
if they’re getting uneasy or nervous
00:09:25 ►
or out of sorts or anything,
00:09:27 ►
they’d use that to kind of clear themselves
00:09:29 ►
and get a fresh start.
00:09:31 ►
So Hubbard had that pretty well under control.
00:09:35 ►
Now, what was the experience like,
00:09:37 ►
an acid experience,
00:09:38 ►
or what was it like when you inhaled that?
00:09:42 ►
Oh, gosh, it’s hard to, boy,
00:09:44 ►
you know, it covers a great amount of stuff one thing is i
00:09:48 ►
used to do hubbard just really got a big kick out of this i go them uh and uh you know
00:10:00 ►
at first i’d be going through all kinds of stuff. Sometimes it really hurt and was miserable,
00:10:05 ►
and then all of a sudden there’d just be an explosion of just letting go of stuff.
00:10:10 ►
And then a lot of times I’d feel a lot better after that.
00:10:14 ►
Wow.
00:10:14 ►
And then I had a very good friend who’s a psychiatrist,
00:10:18 ►
and often I would go and have lunch with him in his home,
00:10:24 ►
and he would give me a treatment of that.
00:10:27 ►
And he did that.
00:10:28 ►
I think he did that for a couple of years.
00:10:29 ►
Finally he said, man, you know, we’re not getting any places like this.
00:10:33 ►
I was getting all kinds of things.
00:10:36 ►
Gosh, I felt like at times that I was the wisest man in the world.
00:10:41 ►
I just saw practically everything going on. But a lot of times, you know, I was very uncomfortable
00:10:48 ►
because there was places I guess I didn’t want to attack very well.
00:10:54 ►
But I kept going, and I’d feel very good for several days,
00:10:58 ►
and then I began to feel kind of out of it.
00:11:03 ►
And I’d go back.
00:11:04 ►
I was seeing him once a week in his home.
00:11:08 ►
And I think I did it for a year, maybe two years.
00:11:12 ►
This was during Ampex time?
00:11:14 ►
Yeah.
00:11:16 ►
And I said, Byron, you’re not really getting anywhere.
00:11:22 ►
And he was right.
00:11:23 ►
Well, fortunately, LSD came along.
00:11:29 ►
In Tantos Eros,
00:11:32 ►
you mentioned that
00:11:33 ►
you felt that LSD
00:11:35 ►
improved your piano playing
00:11:38 ►
ability. Oh, no question.
00:11:39 ►
I never even knew you played the piano.
00:11:42 ►
That was the biggest surprise,
00:11:43 ►
first of all. Yeah.
00:11:45 ►
I said, one time in particular,
00:11:48 ►
I was under LSD and sat down and played the piano.
00:11:51 ►
I played it like I had never played it.
00:11:53 ►
Just, I didn’t know I could play that well.
00:11:57 ►
It was wonderful.
00:11:58 ►
Well, you know, it’s like that no-hitter
00:12:00 ►
that was pitched on acid,
00:12:02 ►
the thing in the World Series, I think.
00:12:04 ►
Oh.
00:12:06 ►
I’m not sure I know about that. It was well documented
00:12:08 ►
that Larson, maybe,
00:12:10 ►
but anyhow, he didn’t think he was
00:12:12 ►
going to pitch that day, and he took LSD
00:12:13 ►
and got called up, and he pitched the only
00:12:15 ►
no-hitter in the World Series or something.
00:12:18 ►
Not like what? The only no-hitter
00:12:20 ►
for many years in the World Series.
00:12:22 ►
But, you know, it was on acid,
00:12:24 ►
so kind of interesting.
00:12:25 ►
And so his performance?
00:12:28 ►
Greatly enhanced.
00:12:29 ►
Yeah.
00:12:29 ►
And again,
00:12:30 ►
that’s a physical
00:12:31 ►
performance,
00:12:32 ►
whereas piano playing
00:12:33 ►
is a combination.
00:12:34 ►
Well, I guess baseball
00:12:35 ►
is an art as well.
00:12:37 ►
And, you know,
00:12:39 ►
being an engineer myself,
00:12:40 ►
I was really,
00:12:42 ►
you know,
00:12:42 ►
I loved it
00:12:43 ►
when you said
00:12:44 ►
something about
00:12:44 ►
you found that
00:12:46 ►
the engineers responded to LSD because they were, like, unusually sensitive to these substances.
00:12:53 ►
And I found the same about LSD is a very, to me, a good engineering kind of deal.
00:12:59 ►
It makes you feel secure.
00:13:01 ►
Yeah, I had a number of people from Ampex.
00:13:05 ►
You know, they knew me well.
00:13:07 ►
And there was one time, let’s see, I think Hubbard was with us.
00:13:13 ►
Yeah, there was one time, oh, you know, I wanted to work with these guys
00:13:20 ►
because I thought they’d all learn more and would be better engineers and everything.
00:13:27 ►
And the people at the head of the company,
00:13:31 ►
one person that sort of knew
00:13:32 ►
that I was doing something with these things,
00:13:36 ►
and they put a stop to it.
00:13:37 ►
And people who were running the company
00:13:41 ►
didn’t want me to do anything.
00:13:43 ►
But to hell with it. I put about, I think I got around seven or eight people.
00:13:53 ►
And with Hubbard, we all drove up to somebody’s place way up in the mountains.
00:13:57 ►
And they all took something.
00:14:01 ►
And for most of them, it worked out quite well.
00:14:04 ►
and for most of them worked out quite well.
00:14:07 ►
And you know, at Menlo Park,
00:14:13 ►
because I’ve heard Jim Fadiman talk about some of the results of the architects
00:14:17 ►
and the people who had breakthroughs
00:14:18 ►
and business plans and all.
00:14:20 ►
It seems like you were doing things a little different,
00:14:24 ►
it seemed to me,
00:14:24 ►
in that you were looking at the creative end
00:14:26 ►
of using it as a tool.
00:14:28 ►
Am I incorrect in that?
00:14:30 ►
Oh, well, I think that’s what it is,
00:14:33 ►
the creative thing.
00:14:36 ►
It’s an opener.
00:14:38 ►
It’s a discoverer.
00:14:40 ►
You know, people vary.
00:14:44 ►
I don’t, I’m trying to think now I don’t think
00:14:48 ►
you know of this I think it was seven or eight people that went and you know I
00:14:53 ►
knew them all well because we worked together at Ampex for years for several
00:14:58 ►
years two or three of them are really had really great experiences, and I don’t remember that any of them had a bad experience.
00:15:08 ►
Why do you think so little attention has been paid
00:15:12 ►
to all this pioneering work that was done here?
00:15:15 ►
I mean, do you think just the drug laws
00:15:17 ►
made everybody kind of look the other way?
00:15:20 ►
Well, you know, in terms of our company,
00:15:23 ►
the top people in the company already, see, I had approached them.
00:15:28 ►
And one of the high people with them, they were also connected with some of the doctors that are exploring LSD.
00:15:41 ►
And they didn’t know what the hell they were doing.
00:15:43 ►
Out of the whole bunch, most of them had miserable experiences.
00:15:48 ►
There was one guy who was really very open and a real wonderful human being, and we became
00:15:55 ►
very good friends.
00:15:57 ►
But he really saw what it was all about.
00:16:00 ►
But a lot of those other people just had very unhappy experiences.
00:16:04 ►
They didn’t get anywhere
00:16:05 ►
they were psychiatrists
00:16:06 ►
but why do you think it is
00:16:08 ►
that for some people
00:16:10 ►
this is like a miracle drug
00:16:11 ►
and for others
00:16:13 ►
it’s something that
00:16:14 ►
it’s because they’re not willing
00:16:17 ►
to move into
00:16:19 ►
the repressed material inside
00:16:23 ►
you see a lot of them, you know,
00:16:28 ►
they’ve raised up to high levels of experience.
00:16:35 ►
You know, they’re important people.
00:16:38 ►
People come to them for help and so on,
00:16:40 ►
and they think that they know,
00:16:43 ►
but they don’t know, and they’re too scared. I mean, a they think that they know, but they don’t know.
00:16:45 ►
And they’re too scared.
00:16:47 ►
I mean, a lot of them tried it, and they had bad experiences.
00:16:53 ►
Wow.
00:16:54 ►
When I say a lot of them, I’m talking about a particular specific group in Palo Alto
00:17:00 ►
where they had finally agreed that they would investigate LSD to a certain extent.
00:17:09 ►
And I think there maybe were two.
00:17:13 ►
There was this one that I’d mentioned, and there was one other one that I knew.
00:17:18 ►
So I think there were two of them that sort of realized what LSD was,
00:17:23 ►
but the others would have nothing more to do with it.
00:17:26 ►
In some of the experience reports that you have in your book,
00:17:30 ►
you talk about doing a new substance or something with a single partner,
00:17:37 ►
but also doing it in groups.
00:17:39 ►
You seem to have had a lot of experience with several groups,
00:17:44 ►
small groups of people getting together. And the reason I’m asking the question is that I found that a
00:17:51 ►
lot of the people in the dance community are kind of surprised to hear that you can do
00:17:56 ►
it in a small group, and they think it’s only really for dancing. So I just wondered if
00:18:02 ►
you had anything to say about how it improves or whatever changes the experience
00:18:09 ►
if you’re in a group that has met regularly or just friends that do it once a year or something, get together.
00:18:17 ►
Does that enhance the experience?
00:18:20 ►
Oh, I think so.
00:18:22 ►
We really support each other.
00:18:25 ►
See, while we were doing this,
00:18:28 ►
we were doing this with other people.
00:18:31 ►
There was a group, you know,
00:18:33 ►
that we didn’t want to talk too much about.
00:18:39 ►
But by and large, you know,
00:18:42 ►
there’s usually seven or eight of us,
00:18:43 ►
and we’d be maybe exploring with different substances.
00:18:49 ►
And so sometimes it was unusually wonderful.
00:18:54 ►
Sometimes it wasn’t so good.
00:18:57 ►
Some of the compounds were just interesting.
00:19:01 ►
I know one in particular, I was really miserable.
00:19:06 ►
And I had a hard time sleeping that night.
00:19:10 ►
And that kind of broke through in the next morning.
00:19:14 ►
And then I think here, on my own,
00:19:19 ►
I decided to redo that
00:19:22 ►
because it seemed like there ought to be more to it.
00:19:28 ►
And so I did it alone here, and I think I got more benefit from it.
00:19:35 ►
But it’s a little tougher than some of the other things.
00:19:38 ►
It’s not one you’d want to pick out as your favorite.
00:19:44 ►
Is there one you’d want to pick out as your favorite is there
00:19:45 ►
one you’d
00:19:45 ►
want to
00:19:46 ►
pick out
00:19:46 ►
as your
00:19:46 ►
favorite
00:19:47 ►
I have
00:19:48 ►
several
00:19:48 ►
favorites
00:19:49 ►
you know
00:19:50 ►
one of
00:19:51 ►
my
00:19:51 ►
favorites
00:19:52 ►
might have
00:19:53 ►
been
00:19:53 ►
2CE
00:19:54 ►
2CE
00:19:56 ►
we talked
00:19:56 ►
about
00:19:56 ►
that’s one
00:19:57 ►
I’m not
00:19:57 ►
even familiar
00:19:57 ►
with
00:19:58 ►
that’s a
00:19:59 ►
powerful
00:19:59 ►
one
00:20:00 ►
I had
00:20:02 ►
not heard
00:20:03 ►
of it
00:20:03 ►
until I
00:20:03 ►
saw it
00:20:03 ►
in your
00:20:04 ►
book
00:20:04 ►
one I’ll have to keep my nose out for.
00:20:11 ►
Oh, you know, since I had the pleasure of meeting you and Duncan Blewett at the same time,
00:20:22 ►
I loved the story about your first meeting with Duncan Lewitt.
00:20:26 ►
And so I just want to say a little bit about who he is
00:20:29 ►
and what his role in this whole thing has been
00:20:32 ►
and anything you want to say about Duncan.
00:20:37 ►
Well, Duncan is really an outstanding person.
00:20:40 ►
He’s a psychologist, and he was teaching at the university
00:20:45 ►
in the central part
00:20:48 ►
of Canada.
00:20:49 ►
Well, let’s see. Let me start with the beginning there.
00:20:53 ►
Hubbard would come over
00:20:55 ►
and
00:20:57 ►
the
00:20:59 ►
older people there,
00:21:02 ►
Humphrey Osmond,
00:21:04 ►
anyhow, they worked together.
00:21:07 ►
And they were working with LSD,
00:21:11 ►
and they didn’t really understand it very much
00:21:13 ►
until Hubbard came in and taught them more about it.
00:21:19 ►
And then one day Hubbard was visiting them,
00:21:23 ►
and he gave it to to Duncan Bluett
00:21:27 ►
and Duncan was having the time of his life
00:21:31 ►
so he went in
00:21:34 ►
and he got the two guys
00:21:35 ►
and he says
00:21:35 ►
something’s wrong with this guy
00:21:37 ►
what is it?
00:21:39 ►
and Duncan would just laugh
00:21:41 ►
and laugh
00:21:42 ►
and they said
00:21:44 ►
well what’s going on?
00:21:45 ►
What is it?
00:21:46 ►
And the more that came up, the more Duncan laughed.
00:21:49 ►
He just, because he saw the whole picture, the whole brand new picture.
00:21:55 ►
And he thought how ridiculous all this other stuff is.
00:22:00 ►
So that was really quite something.
00:22:03 ►
I got to meet Duncan not too long after that
00:22:06 ►
because I was visiting Al quite a bit.
00:22:09 ►
And by this time, Duncan and he had gotten to be really good friends,
00:22:16 ►
so they’d come over and visit.
00:22:18 ►
And I caught up with him several times.
00:22:22 ►
And then Duncan even came all the way down to where we were doing our work in Mental Park.
00:22:28 ►
So he was around for a while.
00:22:30 ►
A wonderful human being.
00:22:32 ►
So your first meeting, the very first time you met him, in the book you mentioned he was bounding up the stairs with a peyote button.
00:22:40 ►
Right, right.
00:22:42 ►
And then we all, one of the favorite things Al liked to do,
00:22:48 ►
you know, he belonged to the yacht club, thank you.
00:22:52 ►
And so we were having dinner,
00:22:56 ►
and I think Doug passed around some stuff for us to chew.
00:23:00 ►
So he had some peyote,
00:23:12 ►
so he had he had some peyote and he handed me a little and I chewed it up and it didn’t feel very much but then after I started getting active it wasn’t very powerful just a small amount but
00:23:18 ►
all of a sudden everything just felt so smooth and nice. And Duncan just really felt so great being with him.
00:23:29 ►
And I looked around, and everything seemed more clear and more beautiful.
00:23:35 ►
And just from that little bit of stuff.
00:23:39 ►
So that was nice.
00:23:42 ►
Duncan’s always pulling tricks like that on me.
00:23:45 ►
Thank you.
00:23:48 ►
You always, I assume, use music,
00:23:51 ►
because we have known you can use music,
00:23:53 ►
but what’s your favorite kind of music to use?
00:23:56 ►
Or does it vary with what your expectation is?
00:23:58 ►
Well, first, you know, we like to ask people
00:24:02 ►
what they like about music.
00:24:05 ►
And then, one of the interesting things, you know, this is when we were doing this systematically for three and a half years.
00:24:16 ►
But there are a lot of people that don’t like classical music.
00:24:21 ►
And they only wanted popular music.
00:24:29 ►
music and they only wanted popular music and then we’d have them in there and say you know why don’t you just try a little of this music and they’d say okay so we
00:24:36 ►
play some classical music and to a person they came out of there preferring
00:24:42 ►
classical music to ordinary music
00:24:45 ►
see at first
00:24:47 ►
they didn’t like
00:24:49 ►
they wanted jazz
00:24:52 ►
and stuff like that
00:24:53 ►
you know you’ve had such a
00:24:55 ►
wide variety of
00:24:57 ►
careers from engineer
00:24:59 ►
to psychedelic explorer etc
00:25:02 ►
you know
00:25:03 ►
we’re making this recording for the people in the psychedelic explorer, etc. You know, we’re making this recording
00:25:05 ►
for the people in the psychedelic salon.
00:25:10 ►
You know, it’s people all over the world, really.
00:25:13 ►
They’re kind of sitting there,
00:25:15 ►
some feeling all alone,
00:25:16 ►
like they’re the only ones doing this
00:25:17 ►
or they can’t talk to anybody.
00:25:20 ►
You know, I think it’s important to know
00:25:22 ►
that there are a lot of people out there who are interested in this
00:25:26 ►
and that you’ve been doing this for over half your adult life.
00:25:30 ►
Is there anything that you want to give encouragement or reasons why to do this or why not to do this?
00:25:39 ►
Well, it’s a difficult question, you see, because we’re here in the United States and they have outlawed it.
00:25:47 ►
And so you can’t do anything without being an outlaw.
00:25:51 ►
And so it makes it very difficult.
00:25:55 ►
One of the people that we know was creating new things all the time.
00:26:00 ►
And we learned a lot from some of those things. But after a while, they shut the whole thing down altogether.
00:26:11 ►
And they’re really bitter about it.
00:26:13 ►
And they don’t understand what it’s all about.
00:26:17 ►
And they think that they’re being really proud and working for the government
00:26:23 ►
and preventing people from having anything to do with these substances.
00:26:29 ►
It’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.
00:26:32 ►
Thank God they’re wiser in Europe.
00:26:36 ►
There’s a lot more going on for a long time in England.
00:26:43 ►
I discovered fairly recently that an awful lot of workers continue to time in England. I discovered fairly recently
00:26:45 ►
that an awful lot of work has continued to go in Holland.
00:26:48 ►
They just kept quiet and didn’t report anything.
00:26:52 ►
All kinds of good stuff is going on there.
00:26:55 ►
People in Switzerland are doing more of this kind of work,
00:26:59 ►
a little bit in Germany.
00:27:01 ►
Now in Israel, I think Rick Doblin has gone over there quite a bit, and
00:27:08 ►
he’s encouraged them to get started with MDMA. So that’s proceeding. So there are breakthroughs,
00:27:18 ►
but they’re slow, and most of them are distant. And it’s just a shame that we can’t. Well, there are a few openings
00:27:25 ►
showing up in this country.
00:27:27 ►
I think there are three
00:27:29 ►
projects that are approved.
00:27:32 ►
Do you have any
00:27:33 ►
regrets about the path you’ve taken
00:27:36 ►
with your life? About what?
00:27:38 ►
About the path you’ve taken, about
00:27:39 ►
leaving the fast-rising
00:27:42 ►
engineer track to
00:27:43 ►
the almost outlaw track?
00:27:48 ►
Well, I don’t know.
00:27:49 ►
I don’t consider that it’s an outlaw track
00:27:52 ►
as long as the main thing you have to do
00:27:55 ►
is not get caught.
00:28:00 ►
So, you know, you have to plan those things carefully
00:28:05 ►
and think about it very carefully
00:28:06 ►
and
00:28:07 ►
because it can be in jeopardy
00:28:10 ►
so I do my best
00:28:13 ►
to totally avoid all of that
00:28:15 ►
yeah just be sensible
00:28:17 ►
don’t be
00:28:18 ►
do you want to say anything
00:28:21 ►
about your
00:28:21 ►
relationship with Timothy Leary and your relationship with Timothy Leary
00:28:25 ►
and your involvement with Timothy Leary,
00:28:27 ►
or do you want to leave that one alone?
00:28:28 ►
I don’t care.
00:28:30 ►
Well, I don’t mind saying Hubbard went and met Leary,
00:28:37 ►
and he liked him a whole lot.
00:28:39 ►
And he came back.
00:28:41 ►
He wanted me to put Leary on our board of directors,
00:28:45 ►
and I wasn’t about to do it without meeting him.
00:28:50 ►
And after a few months, after Hubbard had been over there,
00:28:54 ►
he came to the West Coast, and he came to our place,
00:28:59 ►
and I got introduced to him, and I found that he’s a very winsome person.
00:29:07 ►
He’s a very smooth talker.
00:29:09 ►
And I made a date with him.
00:29:15 ►
He was seeing some people in San Francisco.
00:29:20 ►
And so he told me to come up and we’d spend more time together.
00:29:25 ►
And he gave me the address of a lady to go to where he was going to see later in the day.
00:29:35 ►
And I got there quite a bit before he got there.
00:29:40 ►
So I spent some time talking with her.
00:29:41 ►
She was a lovely person.
00:29:43 ►
She was a nurse, and he had met her
00:29:45 ►
and he’s a smooth character
00:29:48 ►
I think he’s really smooth with women
00:29:51 ►
so the three of us went out for dinner
00:29:54 ►
and we talked until
00:29:59 ►
close to one o’clock in the morning
00:30:03 ►
and just between us,
00:30:05 ►
the girl, she must have been very, very bored.
00:30:08 ►
But on the other hand, you know,
00:30:11 ►
see, I was sitting there with her,
00:30:13 ►
and then when he came and knocked on the door,
00:30:15 ►
he walked in, he had a suitcase,
00:30:18 ►
and he set it down.
00:30:19 ►
It was very clear that he was going to spend the night there.
00:30:22 ►
So we enjoyed our dinner,
00:30:24 ►
and we enjoyed our talking.
00:30:26 ►
And she probably was pretty bored by all the stuff we were doing.
00:30:30 ►
I don’t know.
00:30:31 ►
Anyhow, I went home at 1 o’clock and he went back with her.
00:30:36 ►
And he made it to the board, I guess.
00:30:38 ►
And he made it to the board, yeah.
00:30:40 ►
I liked him.
00:30:42 ►
And then a whole bunch of stuff happened.
00:30:44 ►
And they said, look, they don’t care the way they’re behaving,
00:30:49 ►
and if they’re going to be on your board, we’re not.
00:30:52 ►
We’re going to resign.
00:30:54 ►
So I actually went out there and…
00:30:59 ►
Out to Harvard or Cambridge?
00:31:04 ►
Yeah.
00:31:05 ►
Larry was still at Harvard then. yeah and Larry was still
00:31:06 ►
at Harvard then
00:31:07 ►
yeah he was still
00:31:08 ►
at Harvard
00:31:09 ►
but the
00:31:09 ►
dissension
00:31:10 ►
had already
00:31:11 ►
gotten
00:31:11 ►
risen
00:31:12 ►
and we
00:31:13 ►
sat at
00:31:14 ►
Big Tail
00:31:14 ►
I remember
00:31:15 ►
about 24
00:31:15 ►
people there
00:31:16 ►
and they
00:31:18 ►
were part
00:31:19 ►
of his
00:31:19 ►
group
00:31:20 ►
I had
00:31:21 ►
heard that
00:31:22 ►
you know
00:31:22 ►
they were
00:31:23 ►
going to
00:31:23 ►
release him
00:31:24 ►
and somehow the discussion came up and I group. I had heard that they were going to release him.
00:31:27 ►
And somehow the discussion came up and I brought
00:31:29 ►
it up that
00:31:31 ►
when’s this going to happen?
00:31:33 ►
And all the other people said,
00:31:35 ►
what do you mean? This is all
00:31:37 ►
bullshit. That isn’t
00:31:39 ►
true. And I said,
00:31:41 ►
Tim, is this true
00:31:43 ►
or not that you’re going to be released?
00:31:47 ►
He hadn’t told his own people.
00:31:50 ►
But, you know, I had him caught and he said, yeah, this is going to happen.
00:31:54 ►
So that’s when they found out.
00:31:56 ►
That’s how they found out.
00:31:57 ►
If I hadn’t been there, God only knows how much longer it would have taken.
00:32:04 ►
The next morning, early in the morning, I had to catch a plane. smoke it would have taken the next
00:32:05 ►
morning
00:32:05 ►
early in
00:32:06 ►
the morning
00:32:06 ►
I had to
00:32:06 ►
catch a
00:32:07 ►
plane
00:32:07 ►
and I
00:32:09 ►
told him
00:32:09 ►
that we
00:32:10 ►
had to
00:32:10 ►
take him
00:32:10 ►
off
00:32:11 ►
and
00:32:12 ►
I couldn’t
00:32:15 ►
help liking
00:32:16 ►
the guy
00:32:16 ►
but
00:32:18 ►
how did
00:32:19 ►
he take
00:32:19 ►
it when
00:32:20 ►
you said
00:32:20 ►
you were
00:32:20 ►
taking him
00:32:20 ►
off the
00:32:21 ►
board
00:32:21 ►
he understood
00:32:23 ►
he understood
00:32:24 ►
after all the when you said you’re taking him off the board. Oh, he understood. Yeah. He understood.
00:32:32 ►
After all, if they can kick him out, I can kick him out, I guess.
00:32:37 ►
Yeah, but he’s pretty understanding about those things.
00:32:43 ►
Did you have any interaction or meeting with him after that, or any years later?
00:32:48 ►
Actually, on the way home on the airplane,
00:32:52 ►
I realized that I hadn’t been real honest with him.
00:32:56 ►
And when I got back, I wrote a pretty good letter back to him
00:32:59 ►
pointing out a number of things
00:33:02 ►
that were inappropriate and so on.
00:33:09 ►
It was very important for me to get back and really state my position very clearly.
00:33:10 ►
And I did that.
00:33:14 ►
Did you ever meet him again after that, in person?
00:33:15 ►
I don’t think I ever did.
00:33:18 ►
How about Dr. Hoffman?
00:33:22 ►
I’ve seen pictures of you and Dr. Hoffman.
00:33:25 ►
Well, I’ve been there three times.
00:33:30 ►
How did you first meet him and under what circumstances?
00:33:34 ►
The first time I met him, Hubbard was visiting him.
00:33:42 ►
And some guys were trying to sell me LSD.
00:33:48 ►
And Hubbard wanted me to buy it. And I paid $2,000 for some damn thing for it.
00:33:49 ►
How much?
00:33:50 ►
Huh?
00:33:50 ►
How much of it?
00:33:52 ►
Oh, it was a bottle full. It wasn. So at New York, I was getting, you
00:34:09 ►
have to go through a thing, and Hubbard told me, now be sure and tell them that you’ve
00:34:15 ►
got this because you want to bring it back. So I went to these people that were behind
00:34:21 ►
the thing, and I handed it to them,
00:34:25 ►
and I didn’t tell them about it,
00:34:27 ►
and they dropped it on the floor
00:34:29 ►
and splashed all over.
00:34:33 ►
Oh, God.
00:34:35 ►
But, you know, fortunately,
00:34:36 ►
there was enough of it in some pieces of glass
00:34:39 ►
that I was able to pour it into something
00:34:42 ►
so I could still take it.
00:34:44 ►
You scraped up these drops of LSD and took them to Switzerland?
00:34:48 ►
Yes, I managed to do that.
00:34:51 ►
And then I turned it over to Hoffman.
00:34:54 ►
And he went and checked it, and he came back, and he says it’s unusable.
00:35:02 ►
And that was your first meeting with Dr. Hoffman?
00:35:04 ►
First time, yeah. It’s unusable. And that was your first meeting with Dr. Hoffman?
00:35:07 ►
First time.
00:35:10 ►
I think that was the first time.
00:35:13 ►
And I saw him several times after that.
00:35:19 ►
And, you know, I understand you talk to him somewhat frequently.
00:35:20 ►
Pretty much so.
00:35:21 ►
How is he right now?
00:35:23 ►
He’s approaching 101.
00:35:25 ►
He is approaching 101. He is approaching 101.
00:35:28 ►
He’s having a hard time.
00:35:35 ►
He still likes to get out and walk, and he has to use things to lean on.
00:35:38 ►
They have a beautiful home.
00:35:40 ►
They’re way up on top of the hill. They didn’t know there’s houses in sight.
00:35:45 ►
Beautiful trees.
00:35:47 ►
He actually looked down into
00:35:49 ►
France.
00:35:51 ►
He loves the outdoors.
00:35:53 ►
He loves getting out and seeing all those
00:35:56 ►
things. But how’s his attitude?
00:35:58 ►
Is he still…
00:35:59 ►
He’s still very present.
00:36:02 ►
Very present, yeah.
00:36:07 ►
I’m happy to report that Myron told me he spoke with Dr. Hoffman a week or so ago
00:36:12 ►
and that he’s still going strong at 101.
00:36:15 ►
And wouldn’t it be a perfect world if the great Dr. Albert Hoffman
00:36:19 ►
received his well-deserved Nobel Prize before he died?
00:36:24 ►
Well, at least we can still dream about a perfect world.
00:36:27 ►
Hopefully it won’t take as long for the world to recognize the genius of Hoffman and Schulman
00:36:33 ►
as it did for the Catholic Church to admit that Galileo was right about the Earth going around the sun.
00:36:38 ►
But that’s another story.
00:36:41 ►
I’m really glad now that part of the conversation you just heard was about Duncan Blewett,
00:36:48 ►
and also that we were able to be talking about him while he was still alive.
00:36:52 ►
Because just two weeks ago, I received an email from Wooden Ship,
00:36:57 ►
who attached an obituary from a Canadian newspaper telling us of Duncan’s passing on to his next big adventure.
00:37:03 ►
paper telling us of Duncan’s passing on to his next big adventure.
00:37:09 ►
And although I only got to spend a week or so with Duncan and his wonderful wife June at a conference in the San Juan Islands a few years ago, it was truly a magical time
00:37:15 ►
for me.
00:37:16 ►
There’s just so much to remember about Duncan, as his friends called him, but the thing I
00:37:21 ►
remember best is his smile.
00:37:23 ►
In fact, I can’t remember ever seeing such a beatific smile as Duncan graced us with all that week.
00:37:30 ►
In his autobiographical book, Tantos de Eros, Myron Stolaroff includes a letter that Duncan wrote to Al Hubbard that starts off with a salutation,
00:37:40 ►
Hello, you old goat.
00:37:42 ►
salutation. Hello, you old goat.
00:37:44 ►
And that was pure Duncan, the
00:37:46 ►
elf-like psychologist who contributed
00:37:48 ►
so much to our understanding of
00:37:49 ►
psychedelic medicines at a time
00:37:52 ►
before the fascists shut down all the inquiry
00:37:54 ►
into these important evolutionary
00:37:55 ►
technologies. If the opportunity
00:37:58 ►
ever presents itself, I plan
00:38:00 ►
on compiling a few remembrances of
00:38:02 ►
Duncan from those who knew him.
00:38:03 ►
But for now, I’ll just pass on a comment that Myron made to me the other day
00:38:08 ►
when I phoned and asked him if there was anything he wanted to say to you about his dear friend, Dunk.
00:38:13 ►
And out of all the stories, books, and papers connected with Duncan Blewett,
00:38:17 ►
the one thing Myron thinks is the most important contribution he made
00:38:21 ►
is his landmark work titled,
00:38:23 ►
Handbook for the Therapeutic Use of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide 25 Individual and Group Procedures.
00:38:31 ►
Now whether or not you’ve ever used LSD or if you ever intend to try it,
00:38:36 ►
this one handbook, according to Myron and almost every other psychedelic researcher I’ve questioned,
00:38:41 ►
is still the single best source of information about the experience and how to manage it, both as a participant and as a sitter. The End notes for this podcast, which reminds me that I should probably point out that I’ve been
00:39:06 ►
writing program notes for these podcasts for the last 20 programs or so, and you can find
00:39:11 ►
them on our Notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog, and there are links to that blog from
00:39:16 ►
several places on our website, and you can also get there directly via www.psychedelicsalon.org.
00:39:24 ►
So get there directly via www.psychedelicsalon.org.
00:39:31 ►
Actually,.com,.net, and.org should all get you there if my redirects are working.
00:39:37 ►
And although I haven’t had time to go back and prepare detailed notes for some of the past programs,
00:39:41 ►
I am very pleased to announce that one of our very own saloners, Bill, who, if I remember correctly, is living in Japan at the moment,
00:39:46 ►
has begun working on some of Terrence McKenna’s talks and has already sent me some really
00:39:51 ►
good detailed program notes for the first two Valley of Novelty podcasts.
00:39:56 ►
I plan on having them posted in the next few days.
00:40:00 ►
And by the way, for this blog, I’m using the open source WordPress software, which means that you can also post comments and even original articles on that blog if you want.
00:40:10 ►
I’m a little behind in doing this right now, but I do try to send a personal welcome to those of you who have registered to post comments and stories.
00:40:18 ►
And I’m hoping that over time, that this will become an interactive place for all of us to continue exchanging ideas in cyberdelic space.
00:40:27 ►
Well, let’s see now.
00:40:28 ►
I’ve fallen so far behind in mentioning some of the items you’ve been pointing out in your emails,
00:40:34 ►
but there are a couple that I need to mention right now.
00:40:37 ►
One came from Rye, who sent a link about the ongoing attacks on Salvia Divinorum in California and other places.
00:41:05 ►
Thank you. And I really have to apologize to John, Robert, Michael, Martin, and Kevin, who during the past three weeks have all made donations to help these podcasts stay online,
00:41:10 ►
and who I haven’t yet had the time to personally write and thank them for their donations.
00:41:15 ►
Not only has their generosity ensured that our web hosting fees will continue to be paid,
00:41:21 ►
collectively they’ve also made it possible for me to finally get a decent microphone,
00:41:26 ►
which I plan on doing in the very near future. Gosh, there are several other emails I think
00:41:33 ►
would be of interest to you, like some of the ideas Lewis and Joanne sent, but since
00:41:39 ►
this podcast is already two days late in getting online, I’m going to have to postpone mentioning
00:41:44 ►
them until next week.
00:41:46 ►
I do want to thank all of you who have written,
00:41:48 ►
and I can assure you that your emails are being read as they come in.
00:41:52 ►
So if I haven’t mentioned something you brought to my attention,
00:41:55 ►
please don’t give up on me.
00:41:57 ►
My intentions, I assure you, are far better than my follow-through these days.
00:42:02 ►
And before I go, I guess I should mention
00:42:05 ►
that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon
00:42:07 ►
are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution
00:42:11 ►
Non-Commercial Sharealike 2.5 license.
00:42:13 ►
And if you have any questions about that,
00:42:15 ►
just click on the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,
00:42:19 ►
which you can find at matrixmasters.com slash podcast.
00:42:23 ►
And if you still have questions,
00:42:24 ►
just send them to lorenzo at matrixmasters.com slash podcast. If you still have questions, just send them to lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.
00:42:29 ►
I want to thank my friends Jacques Cordell and Wells of Chateau Hayouk
00:42:32 ►
for the use of their music here in the salon,
00:42:34 ►
and I hope to be able to give you an update on their new CD in a couple weeks
00:42:39 ►
after Jacques stops by the salon for a visit.
00:42:42 ►
Well, that’s it for today, and hey, thanks again for being here. It’s always good to be back in the salon for a visit. Well, that’s it for today. And, hey, thanks again for being here.
00:42:46 ►
It’s always good to be back in the salon with you.
00:42:49 ►
And until next week, this is Lorenzo signing off from cyberdelic space.
00:42:55 ►
Be well, my friends.