Program Notes
Guest speakers: Gary Fisher and Charlie Grob
In 1963, Dr. Gary Fisher wrote a paper titled
Interim report on Research project:
An Investigation to Determine Therapeutic Effectiveness of
LSD-25 and Psilocybin on Hospitalized
Severely Emotionally Disturbed Children
(This link will take you to the full report.)
[From the Report]
We have given treatment to 12 patients. They have ranged in age from 4 years, 10 months to 12 years, 11 months. The average age is 9 years, 10 months. All patients are severely emotionally disturbed and are considered variants of childhood schizophrenia and infantile autism. Nine Children are considered to be childhood schizophrenics, one case of symbiotic, infantile psychosis and one case of manic-depressive psychosis… . We have found that the patients who have responded best to the treatment are those who: have speech; are more schizophrenic than autistic; older (10 to 12 yrs.); exhibit more blatant psychotic symptomatology … The working hypothesis of this study is that the psychosis is a massive defensive structure in the service of protecting and defending the patient against his feeling and effectual states. The experiences that have produced such painful and frightening affect have been repressed and the feelings produced by such traumas have been denied. Consequently, the individual has built a massive control system wherein all experience is denied and he exists in an isolated, unfeeling condition which renders him helpless and incapacitated. The psychedelic drugs have the potential of breaking this psychotic control which then allows the individual to re-experience his trauma and to again experience his feelings. This phenomena has been amply proven with our work with these severely disturbed children, wherein they return to traumatic experiences and re-live and re-experience them. By working through these painful episodes the patient is then able to rid himself of the horror of them, to reevaluate their significance and be freed of the psychic effects of their repression. This process has been repeatedly observed in our psychotic children. The transcendental experience, often described in the literature, has occurred with 4 of our children. It might be added that we were very surprised to see this experience occur in such disturbed and young children.
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.
00:00:19 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:23 ►
Well, today I’ve got something for you that you haven’t heard somewhere else before.
00:00:28 ►
It’s an interview in which Dr. Charles Grobe speaks with Dr. Gary Fisher
00:00:32 ►
about his work in the early 1960s with severely disturbed children.
00:00:37 ►
That was when he treated them with LSD and psilocybin.
00:00:41 ►
And I think you’re going to find it quite interesting,
00:00:43 ►
because even if you aren’t
00:00:45 ►
interested in the research itself, Gary has several great stories to tell about the good old days when
00:00:51 ►
psychedelic research was in full bloom. But before I get to the interview, I first want to thank
00:00:58 ►
several of our fellow salonners who have made donations during the past two weeks to help offset
00:01:03 ►
the expenses associated with producing
00:01:05 ►
these podcasts. First of all, a couple of weeks back we received a donation from David A., along
00:01:12 ►
with a request to thank Panda Muffin for the donation. Well, I misplaced that email for a while,
00:01:18 ►
but now that it has reappeared, I can finally thank Panda Muffin for the donation. And I suspect that Panda Muffin will duly thank David in return.
00:01:28 ►
I also want to mention frequent donor and longtime friend of the salon, Robert O.,
00:01:33 ►
who just sent another donation from his home in Wales.
00:01:37 ►
And here’s part of what Rob has to say in his email.
00:01:41 ►
Hi, Lorenzo. Just a quick hello, hoping all is well in your family camp,
00:01:46 ►
and to say that through some amazing synchronicities,
00:01:49 ►
plus an ayahuasca ceremony,
00:01:50 ►
which seemed to gel the event together,
00:01:53 ►
my family finally got together
00:01:54 ►
for the first time in 12 years.
00:01:56 ►
Could you please say a big hello
00:01:58 ►
to my daughter Kaylee,
00:02:00 ►
and congratulations for her success in graduating
00:02:02 ►
and getting work as a staff nurse
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at a local hospital, and her sister Jo for being a in graduating and getting work as a staff nurse at a local hospital.
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And her sister, Jo, for being a wonderful mother and human being.
00:02:09 ►
And to Kayla, Jake, Jamal, and Maura, the rest of my family.
00:02:15 ►
Apologies, but I’m sending another photo.
00:02:17 ►
Good health to you and your tribe, Lorenzo, and keep up the fantastic work you do.
00:02:21 ►
Peace to the world. Love, Rob.
00:02:24 ►
Well, no need to apologize
00:02:26 ►
for sending the photo, Rob.
00:02:27 ►
As a fellow grandfather,
00:02:29 ►
I certainly recognize the impulse.
00:02:31 ►
And what a fine-looking tribe you have,
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by the way,
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and I like that T-shirt in the photo
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that says,
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I can feel the love.
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And I can also feel the love
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from Carl R.,
00:02:43 ►
David P.,
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SMD Books, and Connie S.,
00:02:47 ►
all of whom made very generous donations to the salon,
00:02:51 ►
and particularly you, Connie.
00:02:53 ►
Man, that was way over the top, and I certainly appreciate it very much.
00:02:58 ►
To be honest, I’m really overwhelmed as these donations come in,
00:03:02 ►
and they are allowing me to do things like I did this past weekend and travel to LA to record some new material for
00:03:10 ►
the salon so Connie Carl David and SMD books thank you one and all and now for
00:03:18 ►
today’s program as I just mentioned last Saturday dr. Charlie Grove and I met
00:03:24 ►
with dr. Gary Fisher to discuss Gary’s research with severely disturbed children.
00:03:30 ►
As you know, I’ve podcasted several other talks and conversations with both of these distinguished researchers,
00:03:37 ►
but I don’t think that I’ve properly introduced them as far as their credentials are concerned.
00:03:42 ►
them as far as their credentials are concerned.
00:03:49 ►
Although some of the popular histories of early psychedelic research don’t always spend as much time on Gary Fisher as they do on the more flamboyant characters of that era,
00:03:53 ►
like Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, and Aldous Huxley, it was Dr. Gary Fisher who provided
00:04:00 ►
much of the professional framework in which these psychedelic medicines were investigated
00:04:04 ►
back then.
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And over time, I plan on expanding the Gary Fisher section of my matrixmasters.com website,
00:04:12 ►
and hopefully you’ll then be able to get a better picture of the importance of Gary’s work.
00:04:17 ►
As for Dr. Grobe, well, it’s hard not to use a lot of superlatives
00:04:23 ►
when describing all that he has done in the realm of psychedelic research.
00:04:27 ►
For example, he led the first safety study of MDMA after it hit the streets as ecstasy and was banned.
00:04:34 ►
Charlie also participated in a human study involving ayahuasca in South America,
00:04:40 ►
and he is just now finishing an FDA-approved study in which he gave psilocybin to end-stage cancer patients
00:04:47 ►
to see if it would help ease their anxiety of an impending death.
00:04:52 ►
What I’m trying to say is that these two are giants in the field of psychedelic research,
00:04:57 ►
but to me, they are just Gary and Charlie, two of my closest friends.
00:05:02 ►
So it has become difficult for me to think of them in any
00:05:06 ►
other way. What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that even though you may think of Dr. Fisher and Dr.
00:05:13 ►
Grobe as extremely accomplished people, which they are, I hope you can also think of them as two
00:05:18 ►
people who are very much like you and me, just regular people who are doing their best to leave Thank you. California. The only report that was written about this work has never been published till now,
00:05:46 ►
and you’ll find a link to it along with the program notes for this podcast.
00:05:50 ►
Its full title is Interim Report on Research Project, an investigation to determine
00:05:57 ►
therapeutic effectiveness of LSD-25 and psilocybin on hospitalized, severely emotionally disturbed children.
00:06:07 ►
And by the way, this research took place between April and December of 1962.
00:06:13 ►
Let me just read a couple of sentences from Gary’s report to give you a little better
00:06:18 ►
idea of what the work entailed.
00:06:20 ►
And I quote, we have given treatment to 12 patients.
00:06:24 ►
They have ranged in age from four years, 10 months to 12 years, 11 months. And I quote, here in just a minute, the results of these experiments were nothing short of spectacular,
00:06:50 ►
in my opinion. However, I should warn you that your ears won’t be deceiving you if you think that this interview sounds as if it came from two different recorders, because
00:06:55 ►
that’s how I had to do it. Since I don’t have a stereo microphone, I had to use two recorders,
00:07:01 ►
one for Gary and one for Charlie, and then I cut and pasted them together
00:07:05 ►
as best I could. So even though the three of us were sitting at the same dining room table,
00:07:11 ►
it sounds as if we were in three different rooms. Hopefully that won’t interfere with your
00:07:16 ►
listening experience. So just sit back, relax, and join Dr. Gary Fisher, Dr. Charlie Grobe,
00:07:23 ►
and me for a Saturday afternoon conversation.
00:07:26 ►
Into the light, into the light, into the light of Bannock and True.
00:07:37 ►
So, well, I don’t know quite how to begin with this, except for the fact that a little background for charlie is i’ve done a i’ve
00:07:46 ►
done a couple recordings with gary and uh we talked about some of the work he did here with
00:07:52 ►
the kids and i put those podcasts out and and i’ve had uh analysts and psychiatrists write
00:07:59 ►
write to me and asked if they could see the report and uh g gave me a copy of it, and it took me only about a year to get it typed.
00:08:07 ►
It was a lot of work.
00:08:09 ►
I didn’t realize at the time.
00:08:11 ►
So I typed up this report, and as I got into it, I realized, my gosh,
00:08:17 ►
this is something that’s never going to happen again.
00:08:20 ►
I mean, there were no IRBs.
00:08:22 ►
What’s IRB?
00:08:22 ►
I mean, there were no IRBs.
00:08:23 ►
What’s IRB?
00:08:25 ►
Oh, sorry.
00:08:29 ►
The Institutional Review Board or the Human Subjects Committee.
00:08:37 ►
Every, I mean, a study like this would have to go through layers of approval.
00:08:41 ►
You’d have to go through the FDA, the DEA.
00:08:46 ►
You’d also have to go through your hospital research committee and your hospital IRB, which looks at safety issues.
00:08:49 ►
So I didn’t tell anybody what we were doing.
00:08:52 ►
That was in 1962.
00:08:55 ►
Times have changed.
00:08:57 ►
Now you can’t do anything without filing it in triplicate
00:09:02 ►
and waiting for it to be approved.
00:09:05 ►
So, you know,
00:09:09 ►
working with children
00:09:11 ►
using psychedelics in an approved context,
00:09:14 ►
that would be about the last population
00:09:16 ►
that would ever receive approval.
00:09:18 ►
I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility,
00:09:20 ►
but it would be the last population to be studied for ethical and safety and cultural convention reasons.
00:09:33 ►
Well, I was reading the thing that you typed up.
00:09:40 ►
And it was very interesting, you know, because I didn’t remember so much of it.
00:09:48 ►
But it really should be put out there somewhere in the world to say,
00:09:56 ►
look, this was what these people did in this year,
00:10:02 ►
and this is the results they got with these kids.
00:10:07 ►
And, of course, the dosages because we were using 400 milligrams with these little kids
00:10:11 ►
micrograms
00:10:12 ►
it was a unique opportunity
00:10:16 ►
interesting point in time when these substances were available
00:10:21 ►
but they had not as yet proliferated out into the public consciousness,
00:10:27 ►
and there was no perceptible abuse liability at that point in 1962.
00:10:33 ►
It’s also a fascinating data set.
00:10:39 ►
And what’s, of course, so intriguing is you were working with children with the most severe form of mental illness
00:10:48 ►
who were hospitalized in a state institution, long-term institutionalized children.
00:10:56 ►
And many of these kids appeared to have had a very salutary,
00:11:01 ►
a very therapeutic effect from your treatment interventions without apparent injury.
00:11:08 ►
One of the things I always remember, Dan Castile was a psychiatrist on board,
00:11:16 ►
and he had never taken acid. He was afraid to.
00:11:21 ►
But he said, well, why don’t you guys start with Nancy?
00:11:26 ►
Because she’s dying anyway.
00:11:28 ►
And I thought, great, here we are starting.
00:11:33 ►
And he says she’s dying anyway.
00:11:35 ►
Nancy was one of the sickest children on your unit.
00:11:38 ►
She was the sickest unit.
00:11:39 ►
She was in camisole tie-down all the time.
00:11:44 ►
She was self-abusive. She was black and blue. She was in camisole tie-down all the time. She was self-abusive.
00:11:45 ►
She was black and blue.
00:11:47 ►
She was skinny.
00:11:49 ►
She had no meat on her bones.
00:11:51 ►
And never talked.
00:11:53 ►
And just screamed.
00:11:54 ►
That’s all she did, was just scream.
00:11:56 ►
How long had she been in the hospital like that, that you knew of?
00:12:01 ►
Nothing comes to mind about how long she was.
00:12:04 ►
She was about 12 years old,
00:12:06 ►
and she was starving herself.
00:12:08 ►
She was engaging in self-injurious behavior
00:12:12 ►
of such a severity that she had to be tied down.
00:12:16 ►
She was not interacting constructively with anyone,
00:12:19 ►
not speaking,
00:12:21 ►
screaming in rage most of the time,
00:12:23 ►
but also not making
00:12:25 ►
intelligible sense.
00:12:27 ►
The thing that she said,
00:12:29 ►
the first words she said,
00:12:32 ►
we didn’t know that she had any
00:12:33 ►
vocabulary, because she
00:12:35 ►
never talked.
00:12:37 ►
And after, I mean,
00:12:39 ►
during the LSD session,
00:12:41 ►
her first session,
00:12:43 ►
she started screaming,
00:12:47 ►
and screaming, and screaming.
00:12:54 ►
And so I went up to her and just said, stop screaming, I can’t stand this anymore.
00:13:02 ►
And she stopped and looked at me in my eyes and said, I have to scream and you have to scream, and you have to leave me alone
00:13:05 ►
and let me scream as long as I need to scream.
00:13:10 ►
Those were the first words you would hear from her.
00:13:12 ►
Oh, goodness, she’ll even remember them.
00:13:15 ►
And she was all tied up and bound
00:13:19 ►
because we couldn’t take her out of a camisole
00:13:21 ►
because she would take her eyes and pull them out.
00:13:21 ►
we couldn’t take her out of a camisole because she would take her eyes and pull them out.
00:13:26 ►
How was she after her first psychedelic experience?
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Was she still refusing to eat and injuring herself
00:13:35 ►
and needing to be tied down?
00:13:37 ►
Well, it’s funny.
00:13:43 ►
There’s a whole sequence of things that happened.
00:13:46 ►
And then finally she got to the point where she would put a Kleenex on her hand
00:13:52 ►
so that she wouldn’t hit herself.
00:13:55 ►
And so I just got tired of it.
00:13:58 ►
And so, talk about crossing doctor-patient lines.
00:14:04 ►
And so she was doing that, and I just grabbed the tissue, Talk about crossing doctor-patient lines.
00:14:10 ►
So she was doing that, and I just grabbed the tissue, tore it up, and said, you don’t need that goddamn thing to make you stop hitting yourself.
00:14:20 ►
You can stop hitting yourself any time you want to.
00:14:23 ►
And she just went, hmm.
00:14:27 ►
And she thought about that for a while
00:14:29 ►
and never hit herself again.
00:14:33 ►
And this was after several sessions?
00:14:35 ►
Yeah.
00:14:36 ►
So she progressively improved.
00:14:38 ►
Oh, she was an amazing, smart, oh my God.
00:14:42 ►
Didn’t need to be tied down?
00:14:43 ►
Did she start to eat again?
00:14:44 ►
Oh, yeah. Put on weight? to eat again? Oh, yeah.
00:14:45 ►
Put on weight?
00:14:45 ►
Did she communicate?
00:14:49 ►
Oh, yeah.
00:14:50 ►
Oh, boy.
00:14:51 ►
One time, she was saying something to some of the nurses.
00:14:58 ►
And she said, well, I’ve got the night staff buffaloed
00:15:03 ►
because they don’t know
00:15:05 ►
what’s going on
00:15:06 ►
and I heard her and I said
00:15:08 ►
oh that’s interesting
00:15:10 ►
well I guess I’ll have to have a meeting with the night
00:15:12 ►
staff to tell them
00:15:15 ►
who you really are
00:15:16 ►
and she went oh
00:15:18 ►
god damn fucking asshole
00:15:20 ►
so she did have some vocabulary
00:15:24 ►
oh boy did she ever but she was just So she did have some vocabulary.
00:15:27 ►
Oh boy, did she ever.
00:15:29 ►
But she was just wonderful.
00:15:31 ►
I mean, she was amazing.
00:15:39 ►
Did she start to experience periods where she had an improved mood?
00:15:41 ►
Oh, yeah.
00:15:42 ►
She was in better spirits? Oh, yeah.
00:15:43 ►
She was in camisoles, and she went around the ward,
00:15:48 ►
and she was so bright, and she would mimic other patients,
00:15:59 ►
and she was a trip.
00:16:01 ►
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
00:16:04 ►
Do you recall if, I mean, what was her diagnosis at that time?
00:16:10 ►
Do you recall?
00:16:12 ►
We can find out which patient she was.
00:16:14 ►
They’re in here by number, and their diagnosis is listed.
00:16:21 ►
She was female.
00:16:23 ►
Was she 11 or 12?
00:16:25 ►
One or, right in there. and she was a female. Was she 11 or 12? Do you know?
00:16:26 ►
One or…
00:16:28 ►
Right in there.
00:16:31 ►
And let’s see.
00:16:32 ►
There’s an 11-year-old,
00:16:34 ►
three-month female
00:16:35 ►
that had 11 sessions.
00:16:37 ►
Yeah.
00:16:38 ►
And I assume Nancy probably
00:16:41 ►
had as many sessions as anybody.
00:16:42 ►
Yes.
00:16:43 ►
That was the most number of sessions, 11.
00:16:45 ►
Yes.
00:16:46 ►
So that was probably her.
00:16:48 ►
It says the diagnosis, childhood schizophrenia,
00:16:52 ►
onset of disturbance, three years.
00:16:55 ►
And so do you recall if she continued to be,
00:17:00 ►
let’s say, delusional?
00:17:03 ►
Or did she have an improved reality testing?
00:17:07 ►
Yes.
00:17:08 ►
And what’s interesting, too,
00:17:10 ►
is that she relived being molested
00:17:13 ►
by her grandfather.
00:17:17 ►
Because she would, in an LSD session,
00:17:21 ►
she would relive that
00:17:24 ►
and say,
00:17:26 ►
No, Grandpa, no, no, no, leave me alone, leave me alone.
00:17:31 ►
And so she relived it all.
00:17:33 ►
That’s very interesting.
00:17:35 ►
So we could conjecture even that a very severe sexual, perhaps physical trauma
00:17:41 ►
has led to her psychiatric decompensation some years earlier.
00:17:47 ►
She would have been three years old when he was.
00:17:49 ►
Right.
00:17:50 ►
What I found interesting, and you’re right up here,
00:17:53 ►
you briefly review the case histories of 12 patients you treated in 1962.
00:18:00 ►
A number of them apparently had sustained severe trauma,
00:18:10 ►
and this was one of the most salient observations you made during their treatment sessions,
00:18:23 ►
that they worked through that old trauma and came out of it in a healthier, more euthymic, less disturbed and disturbing state.
00:18:30 ►
This also then reflects the current research going on by Mithoffer in South Carolina where he uses MDMA to treat chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.
00:18:35 ►
His preliminary findings appear to be positive, that it’s helpful.
00:18:39 ►
You were not using MDMA.
00:18:41 ►
It was not available for you back then, but using LSD and psilocybin,
00:18:46 ►
you similarly found that the subjects were really able,
00:18:54 ►
under the influence of the psychedelic,
00:18:56 ►
very much able to process the trauma and to work through the blocks that it had imposed upon them.
00:19:02 ►
I find this very, very impressive.
00:19:06 ►
Yeah, your notes at the end about Nancy say
00:19:10 ►
that she has recently been making home visits
00:19:12 ►
and now attends hospital school in the mornings.
00:19:16 ►
So that’s from being on death’s doorstep for a long life.
00:19:20 ►
Now, Gary, I recall we’ve talked about this case before,
00:19:24 ►
and you told me another story of when you were forced to shut down your treatment program
00:19:30 ►
and Nancy’s reaction to your informing her that you would no longer be able to facilitate psychedelic treatment sessions.
00:19:40 ►
Yeah, that was Patty.
00:19:43 ►
A different case. Yeah. And so I was trying to explain to them
00:19:47 ►
why we couldn’t do these sessions anymore.
00:19:50 ►
So this was around 64, 65,
00:19:53 ►
and the government had ordered your study to shut down.
00:19:56 ►
Yeah.
00:19:58 ►
And so Patty was a manic depressive
00:20:02 ►
and then finally came out of it.
00:20:05 ►
And she was a twirler.
00:20:07 ►
You know, many kids that are very…
00:20:09 ►
She would just twirl and twirl and twirl
00:20:11 ►
and bang into other people,
00:20:14 ►
bang into other patients,
00:20:15 ►
bang into walls.
00:20:17 ►
Physically, she was a wreck.
00:20:19 ►
And blind also.
00:20:21 ►
She was blind.
00:20:22 ►
She had retro lentil.
00:20:25 ►
There’s one case in here with retinitis pigmentosa
00:20:27 ►
that you described.
00:20:29 ►
Yeah.
00:20:31 ►
And so I adored her.
00:20:36 ►
She had the most gorgeous hands when she would touch you.
00:20:40 ►
It was like there’s just a certain touch that she would have.
00:20:44 ►
And so she was saying, you know,
00:20:48 ►
do you know where the LSD, where it is?
00:20:52 ►
And I said, yes, it’s in San Francisco.
00:20:55 ►
That’s where Sandoz is.
00:20:57 ►
And she said, well, she said,
00:21:01 ►
I think what you need to do is to go up there
00:21:04 ►
and take a message to the people who have it from me
00:21:11 ►
and tell them that Patti Smith says that she really needs it.
00:21:17 ►
Oh, God.
00:21:19 ►
And you were telling her you couldn’t do it again.
00:21:21 ►
Yeah, I know.
00:21:22 ►
I mean, talk about being traumatized.
00:21:25 ►
You know, these were heartbreaking.
00:21:28 ►
And she was, what, 10, 11 or something?
00:21:30 ►
She was 12.
00:21:31 ►
00:21:33 ►
These treatments occurred at the hospital.
00:21:38 ►
And when did you arrive at the hospital?
00:21:42 ►
When did you take your position there?
00:21:44 ►
Do you recall? How long before you started at the ER? When did you take your position there? Do you recall?
00:21:45 ►
How long before you started this treatment program?
00:21:51 ►
Maybe a year.
00:21:52 ►
A year.
00:21:53 ►
Did you go there with the intention of starting a LSD and psilocybin treatment program?
00:22:00 ►
Well, see, I had gone to Canada and had taken LSD
00:22:05 ►
and so my thought was
00:22:08 ►
in a research study by the Saskatchewan group
00:22:10 ►
Nick Chuelos
00:22:14 ►
and so I thought well
00:22:17 ►
if it could change me
00:22:20 ►
it can change anybody
00:22:22 ►
so that was my thought that it’ll work with anybody
00:22:29 ►
if it could work with me, because I was just in my head all the time, totally in my head.
00:22:37 ►
And I was a very intellectual, intellectualized. I had a 4.0 average and an IQ of 176
00:22:47 ►
and all this stuff, you know.
00:22:50 ►
And what’s it good for?
00:22:53 ►
You know, nothing.
00:22:56 ►
And so that’s what I thought.
00:23:00 ►
I said, well, it can help these kids if it helped me.
00:23:04 ►
So you were working at the hospital at the time
00:23:06 ►
when you had your first LSD experience?
00:23:10 ►
Like on a holiday or something?
00:23:12 ►
Yes.
00:23:13 ►
So you had this hunch that perhaps psychedelics might be helpful
00:23:20 ►
for this patient population you were working with,
00:23:23 ►
and these patients were perceived as being quite hopeless.
00:23:26 ►
Hopeless.
00:23:27 ►
They had a very hopeless outlook, hopeless prognosis.
00:23:31 ►
So I imagine you presented your plans to the director or the hospital administrators?
00:23:40 ►
Or you just went ahead and did it?
00:23:41 ►
We didn’t tell anybody.
00:23:43 ►
Well, that was a different world.
00:23:46 ►
No, we did not tell anybody.
00:23:50 ►
And Dan Steele, the psychiatrist on the ward,
00:23:53 ►
he was very cool, very cool.
00:23:56 ►
And he was very intrigued by me.
00:23:59 ►
You know, like, how could I do all these things, you know?
00:24:03 ►
And so, you know, he gave me carte blanche
00:24:07 ►
through whatever I wanted to do.
00:24:11 ►
Now, were you aware of other psychiatrists
00:24:15 ►
or psychologists elsewhere in the country
00:24:19 ►
or elsewhere in the world
00:24:20 ►
who were treating children with psychedelics at that time?
00:24:24 ►
No.
00:24:27 ►
So you were not working with the knowledge that there was another program
00:24:28 ►
going on anyplace else?
00:24:30 ►
Well, the only person I’d ever heard was
00:24:34 ►
was a neurologist
00:24:35 ►
at the University of Chicago.
00:24:39 ►
And I can’t remember her name.
00:24:42 ►
But she was giving LSD to adolescents at bedtime.
00:24:49 ►
At bedtime?
00:24:50 ►
Yes, at bedtime.
00:24:51 ►
Before they went to sleep?
00:24:52 ►
Yeah.
00:24:53 ►
It didn’t keep them up all night?
00:24:54 ►
Yes, it did.
00:24:55 ►
Okay.
00:24:56 ►
And so I said it doesn’t work as a, you know.
00:25:00 ►
As a hypnotic?
00:25:01 ►
Yeah.
00:25:02 ►
Not a good sleeping pill that researcher had obviously not tried LSD herself
00:25:07 ►
or she might have figured that out ahead of time
00:25:10 ►
did you have any association with a child psychiatrist
00:25:15 ►
at NYU named Loretta Bender
00:25:17 ►
oh yes
00:25:18 ►
she was
00:25:20 ►
one of the A physicians who were working with children.
00:25:30 ►
And there’s a test named after her.
00:25:35 ►
I believe she did some exploration of utilizing LSD with very disturbed children.
00:25:45 ►
I believe there was that in the 50s.
00:25:48 ►
But the communication 50 years ago wasn’t what it is today.
00:25:53 ►
Right.
00:25:54 ►
And so her work might be sitting in a trunk somewhere too.
00:25:58 ►
There’s one published study which I’ve seen.
00:26:01 ►
Now, were you involved with the UCLA group
00:26:05 ►
that for a while in the mid-60s
00:26:07 ►
explored the use of psychedelics
00:26:09 ►
with severely ill children and adolescents?
00:26:16 ►
No.
00:26:17 ►
After I left,
00:26:18 ►
because we couldn’t do our work anymore,
00:26:21 ►
that’s when Tim asked me
00:26:24 ►
if I would go to Ziwa Taneo.
00:26:27 ►
Tim Larry.
00:26:27 ►
Yeah, Tim Larry.
00:26:28 ►
And how did you meet Tim Larry?
00:26:31 ►
Well, because Tim was a good friend
00:26:35 ►
of a friend of mine
00:26:36 ►
who was a yoga instructor.
00:26:38 ►
And so she had told Tim
00:26:43 ►
about what I was doing.
00:26:46 ►
And so that’s when he came to me and said,
00:26:49 ►
our people don’t know what they’re doing.
00:26:51 ►
And will you go down and sort of teach them?
00:26:54 ►
So your work arose entirely independent of Larry’s group in Boston.
00:27:04 ►
And your lineage then
00:27:06 ►
in regards to being a psychedelic researcher
00:27:09 ►
came from the Western Canadian group
00:27:11 ►
of Osmond and Hoffer and Shuelos.
00:27:16 ►
Shuelos.
00:27:17 ►
It’s a hard name.
00:27:18 ►
And don’t forget Duncan Blewett.
00:27:19 ►
Yeah, Duncan Blewett.
00:27:21 ►
Shuelos was your brother-in-law.
00:27:24 ►
Yeah.
00:27:24 ►
Right.
00:27:26 ►
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
00:27:28 ►
And Dunk Blewett just died recently.
00:27:31 ►
He had Alzheimer’s.
00:27:33 ►
Right, right.
00:27:34 ►
And I think one cannot credit enough the Canadian group
00:27:38 ►
for really the breakthroughs they made
00:27:41 ►
and really the tremendous research data they accrued treating very, very sick individuals.
00:27:49 ►
Osmond’s work and the rest of the group’s work with chronic alcoholics in particular was quite astounding,
00:27:58 ►
and still alcoholism remains a clinical condition for which modern medicine does not have much to offer.
00:28:05 ►
So that patient population would, you know,
00:28:08 ►
examining the Canadian group’s work back in the 50s and early 60s,
00:28:13 ►
that patient population would certainly be worth looking at.
00:28:17 ►
You know, since there was no such thing as e-mail and long distance was really expensive back then,
00:28:23 ►
so there’s not the communication back then there is today.
00:28:26 ►
But did you keep up with the Saskatchewan group at all?
00:28:29 ►
Did you tell them what you’re doing and talk back and forth?
00:28:31 ►
Well, yeah, because Nick Shalales, they would come down and visit.
00:28:39 ►
And then they got involved with the Alcoholics Anonymous in Southern California.
00:28:48 ►
And there was one guy particular.
00:28:51 ►
And I can’t remember his name, but her name, she was an alcoholic too, was B.
00:29:11 ►
And so we started then giving LSD to people that they were recommending.
00:29:14 ►
So we did some work in Palm Springs.
00:29:23 ►
And one of the interesting things, because, you know, life is a mystery.
00:29:29 ►
There’s this older lady,
00:29:35 ►
and she was very concerned about her child,
00:29:36 ►
who was psychotic.
00:29:44 ►
And so, since she was so agitated by this child,
00:29:47 ►
we or Nick or somebody decided that she should take LSD,
00:29:50 ►
that it might help her understand
00:29:52 ►
what her limits and what her abilities would be.
00:29:57 ►
And what happened, we were in the house,
00:30:00 ►
and all of a sudden,
00:30:03 ►
she gave off this smell
00:30:05 ►
like a gaseous smell
00:30:07 ►
and we had to take her outside
00:30:11 ►
because she was getting in all the clothing
00:30:15 ►
and all the furniture
00:30:16 ►
and so she had to go outside
00:30:20 ►
and she had all her session outside
00:30:24 ►
and this stuff coming out of her.
00:30:26 ►
But she’d take LSD and it would release this odor?
00:30:29 ►
Yeah.
00:30:29 ►
Really?
00:30:30 ►
She was detoxified, perhaps.
00:30:34 ►
Yeah, that’s right, exactly.
00:30:38 ►
So you saw some remarkable responses to this treatment model.
00:30:44 ►
Oh, yeah.
00:30:44 ►
And you treated a variety
00:30:46 ►
of different kinds of patients.
00:30:49 ►
Yeah, we had a couple
00:30:50 ►
and they were in their mid-90s.
00:30:53 ►
Wow.
00:30:53 ►
And he was extremely concerned
00:30:59 ►
about his wife’s death
00:31:02 ►
because he didn’t know
00:31:03 ►
how he could live without her.
00:31:06 ►
So we gave each of them LSD,
00:31:09 ►
but they were in separate rooms.
00:31:12 ►
And then at the end of the day,
00:31:15 ►
we put them together.
00:31:17 ►
Well, they were like teenagers.
00:31:19 ►
They were giggling and laughing and carrying on.
00:31:24 ►
And she eventually died from cancer.
00:31:28 ►
And he became very active in the community
00:31:32 ►
and did not show any sadness at her leaving
00:31:38 ►
because they both had gotten to cosmic consciousness.
00:31:44 ►
They both had hit the button.
00:31:47 ►
And they knew about death.
00:31:51 ►
Beautiful.
00:31:52 ►
Yeah, it was. It was amazing.
00:31:55 ►
I noticed that most of the diagnosis of these children,
00:31:59 ►
getting back to your work with the kids,
00:32:01 ►
is childhood schizophrenia.
00:32:03 ►
There were one or two instances you mentioned autism,
00:32:07 ►
but Charlie says a lot of these definitions have been evolving since then.
00:32:12 ►
So the reason I’m asking the question is the inquiries that come in by email
00:32:16 ►
are mainly people who have autistic kids,
00:32:21 ►
and they’re wondering if there’s any hope down these lines.
00:32:25 ►
And obviously there’s not going to be research done probably in the near future,
00:32:29 ►
but I was wondering if, Charlie, if you and Gary can talk a little bit to see if
00:32:33 ►
maybe some of these kids were all really seriously schizophrenic, or were they, you know,
00:32:39 ►
how do the definitions work?
00:32:42 ►
Diagnostic patterns have changed quite a bit over the last 40, 50 years.
00:32:49 ►
Childhood schizophrenia today is a far less common diagnosis.
00:32:53 ►
I think we have greater facility exploring the autistic spectrum,
00:32:59 ►
which can extend from very, very mild cases to cases where there’s profound incapacitation.
00:33:11 ►
I don’t know how well you remember some of these cases in regards to how they presented
00:33:17 ►
and whether there were, for instance, developmental delays,
00:33:28 ►
particularly of language acquisition early on?
00:33:35 ►
You know, we had very, very limited information from the parents, close to none.
00:33:40 ►
Because, first of all,
00:33:42 ►
the parents had just abandoned these kids
00:33:44 ►
and they never came to visit them.
00:33:48 ►
But I know that a couple of years ago,
00:33:54 ►
I had people come and visit me
00:33:56 ►
wanting to give their autistic children LSD.
00:34:25 ►
children, LSD. But the kids were more functional. They had speech, my solution to this one woman
00:34:29 ►
who kept wanting to give them LSD,
00:34:33 ►
I said, well, you need to take it first
00:34:38 ►
because she was so intermixed.
00:34:44 ►
And meshed. And meshed, yeah. Yeah, yeah. was so intermixed with… Enmeshed.
00:34:45 ►
Enmeshed, yeah.
00:34:47 ►
Yeah, yeah.
00:34:48 ►
And so they actually…
00:34:50 ►
Her husband was Mexican.
00:34:53 ►
And they didn’t actually get on to Mexico
00:34:57 ►
and take LSD.
00:35:00 ►
And she said, well, not much happened.
00:35:02 ►
They took it at night and they went to bed
00:35:04 ►
and went to sleep.
00:35:06 ►
They slept through it and could not remember their dreams in the morning.
00:35:11 ►
Well, you know, a number of years ago I gave a talk on MDMA.
00:35:29 ►
And one of the people in the audience was an expert on infantile autism named Peter Tange,
00:35:32 ►
a former professor at UCLA.
00:35:37 ►
He then moved, I believe, to the University of Louisville, but a very well-regarded expert.
00:35:40 ►
And afterwards, he spoke with me and he said, You know, I was struck by what you said about how MDMA increases empathy
00:35:48 ►
because it’s my belief that in infantile autism, the core deficit is a deficit of empathy.
00:35:57 ►
So just looking hypothetically, do you feel that psychedelics can facilitate experiences of heightened empathy?
00:36:09 ►
And might that have lasting therapeutic impact?
00:36:13 ►
Well, but you have to sort of remember what our population was
00:36:16 ►
and the lack of sophistication that we were dealing with.
00:36:23 ►
that we were dealing with.
00:36:31 ►
The autistic kids that we named autistic basically didn’t have any language.
00:36:35 ►
No language whatsoever.
00:36:37 ►
And they may also have had…
00:36:39 ►
The more severe cases of autism
00:36:43 ►
also often have serious mental retardation.
00:36:48 ►
So there may need to be a threshold of functional capacity
00:36:54 ►
in order to derive some benefit.
00:36:57 ►
We had one little girl.
00:37:00 ►
Her name was Coralie, and she was a little redhead,
00:37:03 ►
and she was tiny as can be.
00:37:02 ►
Her name was Coraline, and she was a little redhead,
00:37:04 ►
and she was tiny as can be.
00:37:10 ►
And so she couldn’t stand to be touched,
00:37:15 ►
and she would scream if anybody got near her.
00:37:20 ►
And after the session, she stopped screaming,
00:37:24 ►
and she always wanted to be sitting on somebody’s lap.
00:37:27 ►
She was like 20 pounds.
00:37:31 ►
But she had no language.
00:37:37 ►
And you saw sustained improvement after your treatments with her?
00:37:43 ►
Well, to this limited extent that she wanted to be around people and touch people and sit on their lap.
00:37:48 ►
Of course, as we said, this would be the last population in today’s world that we’d likely be able to look at
00:37:55 ►
because of safety issues, cultural issues as well.
00:38:04 ►
And also, we do have treatments.
00:38:07 ►
You know, we do have psychopharmacologic treatments
00:38:10 ►
that can help modify behaviors,
00:38:13 ►
particularly the atypical neuroleptics,
00:38:15 ►
but these are treatments that need to be administered daily,
00:38:19 ►
often for extensive periods of time.
00:38:22 ►
And although they can help with safety issues and with function issues,
00:38:30 ►
they’re not without a profile of rather serious side effects,
00:38:35 ►
including significant weight gain,
00:38:38 ►
significant disruption of metabolic profiles,
00:38:43 ►
including glucose metabolism,
00:38:45 ►
could amplify the risk of developing or the likelihood of developing diabetes.
00:38:51 ►
So conventional treatments have made some progress.
00:38:55 ►
Nevertheless, they are not without risk.
00:38:58 ►
And here, your experience was of an entirely different kind of treatment model
00:39:04 ►
that did not involve a daily administration of a drug.
00:39:09 ►
And from your old notes and reports and your recollection, it did not appear that you incurred any damaging effects in these patients of yours.
00:39:22 ►
No, because you must remember, you have to put the time element in there.
00:39:28 ►
You know, we hadn’t a clue what we were doing.
00:39:31 ►
And everything was experimental day after day.
00:39:36 ►
And when I think back on what we were doing,
00:39:41 ►
it seemed to me, in retrospect,
00:39:44 ►
we were very brave to do what we were doing, it seemed to me, in retrospect, we were very brave to do what we were doing.
00:39:47 ►
Absolutely.
00:39:49 ►
You were a frontiersman.
00:39:53 ►
Yes.
00:39:55 ►
Pushing the limits.
00:39:57 ►
But I’d say in your case, you did so safely. I would not say that of all the explorers
00:40:06 ►
from the 50s
00:40:08 ►
and early mid 60s
00:40:10 ►
but I think from, and I’ve known you for quite
00:40:11 ►
some time now, we’ve had many discussions
00:40:13 ►
of your old experience.
00:40:16 ►
My sense was you were very careful
00:40:17 ►
in how you selected
00:40:19 ►
patients, how you prepared
00:40:21 ►
them and were highly skilled
00:40:24 ►
in facilitation and integration afterwards. And from what I’ve
00:40:28 ►
gathered from you, your outcomes tended to be quite good without
00:40:32 ►
evident injury. So in your case, you seemed to, although
00:40:36 ►
you were working with limited information, you were kind of feeling your way on your own
00:40:40 ►
out there, your instincts appeared to have been very, very good.
00:40:46 ►
I noticed with Nancy, since we’ve been talking about her,
00:40:50 ►
that six days after her LSD session, where she had 200 micrograms of LSD,
00:40:58 ►
six days later you gave her 16 milligrams of psilocybin,
00:41:03 ►
and then 12 days after that she went back and did LSD again.
00:41:08 ►
And then it goes on until December.
00:41:10 ►
There was a 53-day gap and a 49-day gap.
00:41:15 ►
I assume you were just experimenting with the LSD, psilocybin,
00:41:20 ►
to see if you could find differences, one more effective than the other.
00:41:23 ►
But it seems to have been alternating
00:41:25 ►
with a lot of these kids throughout.
00:41:27 ►
Did you find any differences with psilocybin LSD,
00:41:30 ►
or was it the psychedelic experience
00:41:32 ►
that was maybe doing the work?
00:41:35 ►
Damn divine, oh.
00:41:39 ►
This is a long time ago, you know.
00:41:42 ►
How did you come up with,
00:41:44 ►
I can understand you started with LSD,
00:41:45 ►
but how did you decide to put psilocybin in the mix too?
00:41:50 ►
Well, just experimenting, you know,
00:41:52 ►
because I had always found psilocybin much easier to deal with.
00:42:03 ►
LSD is very powerful, and psilocybin was much more mellow. When did you try psilocybin
00:42:12 ►
first? That was pretty hard to come by back in those days, seems like from what I heard. Gee,
00:42:19 ►
we got it directly from Sandoz. They were little blue pills. It was not hard for investigators.
00:42:26 ►
And to be an investigator,
00:42:28 ►
all you needed to do was contact
00:42:29 ►
the pharmaceutical company in Switzerland,
00:42:31 ►
say you were interested in investigating
00:42:34 ►
the effects of the drug on patients,
00:42:37 ►
and they would send you, for minimal cost,
00:42:40 ►
a substantial quantity.
00:42:43 ►
And, of course, I imagine the model back in those days were,
00:42:47 ►
for some at least, that before experimenting with these unknown drugs on other people,
00:42:54 ►
you would first have to explore the terrain yourself.
00:42:57 ►
Always, always, always.
00:43:01 ►
Well, I don’t see the potential of a study with young people as young in the foreseeable future,
00:43:07 ►
but if you were going to create a protocol for not children as seriously ill as these children were,
00:43:17 ►
but for maybe people with Asperger’s syndrome or something less than full-on autism,
00:43:24 ►
is there any way you could devise a study where you would,
00:43:28 ►
not just a safety study, because I think among the three of us,
00:43:32 ►
at least, we know that it would be safe,
00:43:33 ►
but if it got into a phase two, phase three study,
00:43:36 ►
how would you actually treat children?
00:43:38 ►
Did you have therapy sessions with them in between these LSD sessions?
00:43:45 ►
Oh, no.
00:43:46 ►
No?
00:43:47 ►
So they’d just be back in the ward until you had your next session,
00:43:50 ►
other than whatever your normal therapy was.
00:43:52 ►
I thought you would meet with the kids in the days afterwards
00:43:58 ►
and see how they were doing and see if you could communicate and process.
00:44:03 ►
You saw them every day or every day that you came to work.
00:44:07 ►
So there was, to that degree, I think there was ongoing treatment.
00:44:11 ►
And to the degree that the kid could communicate, Gary and his colleagues were engaging in directions.
00:44:18 ►
Yeah, we had a number of technicians, war technicians, who were very, very instructive, very helpful.
00:44:30 ►
We were dependent on a lot of people.
00:44:35 ►
But I guess intuition was a lot of it.
00:44:41 ►
Now, I think you did this work for at least a couple of years, two or three years.
00:44:49 ►
And over time, you treated more and more patients,
00:44:53 ►
and it sounds like at least some of them were improving to an impressive degree.
00:44:59 ►
This must have caught the attention of the hospital director, of the administrative directors?
00:45:07 ►
What did they say to you when they saw how well your patients receiving psychedelic sessions were doing?
00:45:26 ►
when it became known amongst the administration of the hospital
00:45:31 ►
that things had been done
00:45:36 ►
with LSD and psilocybin.
00:45:39 ►
And so they went through the files
00:45:42 ►
and purged all the files
00:45:44 ►
and burned them.
00:45:49 ►
When they were being interviewed, they said no work like that had ever been done there.
00:45:56 ►
00:45:59 ►
They eliminated the history.
00:46:01 ►
And here we are.
00:46:02 ►
So they burned all the stuff.
00:46:04 ►
Because I went back
00:46:05 ►
to try to do follow-up.
00:46:07 ►
Well, follow-up on who?
00:46:10 ►
And they wouldn’t let me
00:46:11 ►
on the ward or anything.
00:46:12 ►
So here we are,
00:46:13 ►
some 45 years later,
00:46:17 ►
resurrecting history.
00:46:18 ►
Lost history.
00:46:20 ►
Lost history.
00:46:21 ►
And think of what could have happened
00:46:24 ►
had this work progressed in the last 45 years.
00:46:27 ►
I think psychiatry might be a little further along.
00:46:31 ►
Who knows?
00:46:33 ►
Do you believe that the administrators
00:46:37 ►
who decided to shut down your program,
00:46:40 ►
do you believe that they were influenced
00:46:42 ►
by the growing press accounts of psychedelic
00:46:47 ►
use at Harvard, amongst the Leary Group, and around the country?
00:46:54 ►
The advent of the counterculture, and the proliferation of psychedelics, and the ascension
00:47:02 ►
of Tim Leary into prominent media.
00:47:07 ►
Because it all became political.
00:47:14 ►
Of course, the irony I’m seeing here is that Leary and Alpert, of course,
00:47:17 ►
made it pretty public, and that got political.
00:47:22 ►
But then they somehow talked you into joining them for a little while.
00:47:25 ►
I know that wasn’t one of your finer experiences to travel around with them,
00:47:27 ►
but isn’t it kind of interesting
00:47:28 ►
that your work at the hospital kind of came to an end
00:47:30 ►
because of that?
00:47:31 ►
Yeah.
00:47:32 ►
And you know what was interesting?
00:47:35 ►
It was that Tim was an alcoholic
00:47:38 ►
and his drug of choice was gin.
00:47:43 ►
And his drug of choice was gin.
00:47:51 ►
And Ralph’s first wife would try to get him to smoke pot.
00:47:55 ►
And he’d get a little high, and then he’d run for the gin bottle and swing it out and get drunk.
00:47:59 ►
So what he was saying, what he was representing was just bullshit.
00:48:04 ►
Yeah.
00:48:01 ►
like what he was saying what he was representing
00:48:03 ►
was just bullshit
00:48:04 ►
he did become the leading
00:48:09 ►
spokesman for
00:48:10 ►
the effects of psychedelics
00:48:14 ►
and their potential impact
00:48:15 ►
on society
00:48:16 ►
I guess in your mind
00:48:18 ►
he was not the most constructive spokesman
00:48:21 ►
well I think those times
00:48:26 ►
were full of just chaos.
00:48:31 ►
And, I mean, he wanted to be,
00:48:33 ►
you know,
00:48:36 ►
what was his name?
00:48:42 ►
He was a philosopher.
00:48:45 ►
I forget his name.
00:48:46 ►
Alan Watts?
00:48:47 ►
Yes, Alan Watts.
00:48:49 ►
And so Tim had hired the auditorium in Santa Monica.
00:48:57 ►
And so Alan said they were wondering what to call this.
00:49:03 ►
And so Alan said,
00:49:06 ►
well, Tim, why don’t you say it like it is?
00:49:08 ►
The Second Coming.
00:49:12 ►
And Alan was very clever.
00:49:15 ►
He was so funny.
00:49:17 ►
But that’s what he thought it should be advertised as.
00:49:21 ►
And was that how it was advertised?
00:49:23 ►
I don’t remember.
00:49:26 ►
But Tim loved to get up and talk and be admired.
00:49:32 ►
You were with him in Zewatanejo, in the Caribbean, and then at Millbrook.
00:49:37 ►
When did you leave Millbrook?
00:49:40 ►
How long did you stay, I should say?
00:49:44 ►
Well, I saw what was happening.
00:49:47 ►
Gayatri Devi had agreed to teach us how to become an ashram.
00:49:57 ►
And so Tim had agreed that we would become an ashram,
00:50:01 ►
and Gayatri Devi would come.
00:50:03 ►
She had her bedroom next to mine,
00:50:06 ►
and she sang to the morning, every morning.
00:50:09 ►
It was just gorgeous.
00:50:12 ►
And so then Tim would stay at Millbrook for a few days,
00:50:19 ►
and then he had to go to New York to do whatever.
00:50:23 ►
Well, then he’d be on the news,
00:50:26 ►
talking about the establishment
00:50:28 ►
and how they were dangerous
00:50:29 ►
and how they’re limiting everybody in the world
00:50:33 ►
and they should be assassinated.
00:50:38 ►
I mean, he was just a nut.
00:50:44 ►
Well, it sounds like
00:50:45 ►
there were a couple of them there
00:50:47 ►
you’ve told me a couple of funny stories
00:50:48 ►
about Billy Hitchcock learning to fly a helicopter
00:50:50 ►
and Peggy ordering cows for the lawn
00:50:53 ►
did you hear those?
00:50:55 ►
no, not that one
00:50:56 ►
that was very funny
00:50:57 ►
well you know the estate at Millbrook was huge
00:51:00 ►
and
00:51:02 ►
so Peggy
00:51:04 ►
was the one who footed the bill for everything because
00:51:09 ►
she wanted to marry Tim. And why he didn’t marry her, I don’t know. Because he
00:51:15 ►
really loved money. And she had money. And so we were driving up one day and she said, you know, it would look real nice if we had cattle wandering through the drive from the house to the gate.
00:51:36 ►
And so then she was on the phone and she was ordered 40 head of cattle.
00:51:42 ►
And then somebody said, but somebody has to look after them.
00:51:46 ►
They just don’t stand there, you know.
00:51:48 ►
And so then she said,
00:51:52 ►
and send somebody else to look after them.
00:51:55 ►
I mean, they lived in such a different world.
00:51:59 ►
Such a different world.
00:52:01 ►
And then Billy was crazy.
00:52:08 ►
The house at Millbrook was four stories high, and there were cupolas at both ends. And so he had gotten a helicopter, because he wanted to
00:52:17 ►
have a helicopter in New York City and join some financial thing. And so he was practicing. And so he just, you know,
00:52:33 ►
was out for about maybe 20 minutes and then told the pilot to get out that he had learned
00:52:39 ►
and go home because he said, well, no, you don’t, you need a lot more lessons. He says, no, no, no, no.
00:52:46 ►
And so we were up in the fourth floor
00:52:51 ►
and he kept getting closer to the house.
00:52:55 ►
And we kept going like this,
00:52:57 ►
stay back, stay back,
00:52:58 ►
you’re going to run into the house.
00:53:00 ►
Well, he ran into the house.
00:53:03 ►
The helicopter went crashing
00:53:05 ►
and then called his…
00:53:09 ►
They all had a contact person 24-7.
00:53:14 ►
And he called and said,
00:53:15 ►
just send another helicopter.
00:53:19 ►
God damn it, just send another helicopter.
00:53:21 ►
One that doesn’t break.
00:53:24 ►
Those were crazy times at Milbrook.
00:53:28 ►
Well, is there anywhere else to go with this?
00:53:30 ►
Do you think this research, did you do additional research?
00:53:36 ►
Are there more reports?
00:53:37 ►
Is there more goodies here?
00:53:42 ►
Gary did write up one case at length
00:53:45 ►
I believe the case of Nancy
00:53:46 ►
which he published in the MAPS newsletter
00:53:48 ►
a number of years ago
00:53:50 ►
so that exists
00:53:51 ►
well what about
00:53:53 ►
the session with the guy
00:53:56 ►
who kept saying nothing’s happening
00:53:59 ►
that’s a good story
00:54:01 ►
that was published somewhere
00:54:03 ►
also in the MAPS newsletter.
00:54:05 ►
Okay.
00:54:05 ►
The treatment of a very difficult to treat patient.
00:54:11 ►
Yeah, this guy was the son of a big wheel at one of the studios.
00:54:22 ►
I forget what.
00:54:24 ►
But anyway, he was very big.
00:54:28 ►
And so he had one son.
00:54:31 ►
And the son had gone to Menninger’s,
00:54:34 ►
had had electric shock,
00:54:39 ►
had gone to a place in the East Coast,
00:54:44 ►
another very famous place.
00:54:46 ►
I can’t remember what it was now.
00:54:48 ►
But his burden was to be the sickest,
00:54:53 ►
most untreatable person in the world
00:54:56 ►
because his father was this man
00:55:00 ►
who had great success in the world.
00:55:05 ►
And so, what’s his name?
00:55:12 ►
What was the head of psychiatry?
00:55:15 ►
Judd Barber?
00:55:16 ►
Judd, yeah.
00:55:19 ►
And so Judd said…
00:55:20 ►
Was that the old Cedars of Lebanon Hospital?
00:55:24 ►
Or was that UCLA at that point? No, it wasn’t UCLA. It was Cedars of Lebanon hospital? Or was that UCLA at that point?
00:55:25 ►
No, it wasn’t UCLA.
00:55:26 ►
It was Cedars of Lebanon.
00:55:29 ►
Before they…
00:55:31 ►
Merged with Mount Sinai to create Cedars Sinai.
00:55:34 ►
Yes, and before the nuts took it over.
00:55:38 ►
What’s that group?
00:55:40 ►
What, the Thalians?
00:55:43 ►
At Cedars Sinai?
00:55:44 ►
Well, remember they took over the building.
00:55:49 ►
Scientologists.
00:55:50 ►
Oh, oh, oh.
00:55:51 ►
Yeah, Scientologists.
00:55:53 ►
Well, anyway, this guy asked Judd
00:55:58 ►
if there was any way that anybody could
00:56:02 ►
handle an LSD
00:56:05 ►
session with his patient.
00:56:09 ►
And
00:56:09 ►
so Judd came
00:56:12 ►
to me and said, well, you’re the only person we know.
00:56:15 ►
And Judd
00:56:16 ►
sort of thought I was weird.
00:56:19 ►
And
00:56:19 ►
so I said, sure, I’ll
00:56:22 ►
do a session with this
00:56:24 ►
guy.
00:56:32 ►
And so he became an inpatient for two days, and we gave him LSD.
00:56:41 ►
Well, this guy grunted and rolled and banged the walls. And then when I would say, well, tell me what’s happening,
00:56:45 ►
he would always say,
00:56:47 ►
nothing, nothing’s happening.
00:56:49 ►
And so that went on and on and on and on.
00:56:54 ►
Nothing was happening.
00:56:56 ►
And so finally,
00:56:59 ►
I said to this guy,
00:57:00 ►
because I had my teeth into him,
00:57:02 ►
and I said,
00:57:04 ►
well, I have contacted
00:57:05 ►
Aronson Hein in the Netherlands
00:57:09 ►
and he said that if I come with you
00:57:12 ►
that he would allow us to use his facilities
00:57:17 ►
in the Netherlands.
00:57:20 ►
And the guy just went white
00:57:23 ►
because he knew he couldn’t handle another LSD session.
00:57:29 ►
And so I said,
00:57:31 ►
well, I’ve made arrangements to go with you
00:57:34 ►
and run the sessions there.
00:57:37 ►
And he said, oh, my father would never approve of that.
00:57:41 ►
I said, oh yes, your father has already approved it.
00:57:44 ►
So we can take you.
00:57:48 ►
So he said, well, I’ll have to let you know when I’ll be ready. Last I ever talked to him,
00:57:55 ►
I kept calling the house, and he was never there, never there. Well, he never went out of the house. He had nurses that stayed with him all day long.
00:58:07 ►
But he was going out. And the wife said, well, he’s going out.
00:58:15 ►
The mother said that.
00:58:17 ►
The mother said that. And we don’t know where he is.
00:58:21 ►
And so finally he moved out and took an apartment and they didn’t know where it was.
00:58:29 ►
And then he got a girlfriend and was living with his girlfriend. And so I would call occasionally
00:58:37 ►
and say, well, let me know when you’re ready to go to the Netherlands. Never heard from him.
00:58:50 ►
So he became normal as the only retreat because there was nothing wrong with him.
00:58:52 ►
There was a threat of an LSD session
00:58:54 ►
hanging over his head.
00:58:55 ►
LSD session facilitated by you
00:58:57 ►
hanging over his head
00:58:59 ►
frightened him into normality.
00:59:01 ►
That’s right.
00:59:02 ►
A treatment success.
00:59:04 ►
A dubious success.
00:59:06 ►
It’s going to be difficult to teach that in medical school,
00:59:09 ►
but you’ve got to take your success where you can find them, I guess.
00:59:14 ►
You just said something about the right doses,
00:59:16 ►
and that’s something that we haven’t really talked about,
00:59:19 ►
is that looking at your work and the work that Myron was doing a little bit later,
00:59:25 ►
they did much lower doses than you did.
00:59:28 ►
What do you think about dosages?
00:59:30 ►
High doses.
00:59:31 ►
And what do you consider a high?
00:59:33 ►
600 milligrams.
00:59:35 ►
Microgram.
00:59:37 ►
Yeah, because you can’t fight.
00:59:40 ►
The ego can’t fight.
00:59:41 ►
So it’s a matter of just shattering the defenses.
00:59:44 ►
Just shattering the defenses. Just shattering the defenses.
00:59:46 ►
But doing so in a safe, supported setting,
00:59:49 ►
which also provides adequate follow-up and help integration.
00:59:53 ►
And skillful facilitators would be imperative.
00:59:58 ►
Not anybody, I imagine, could do this for you.
01:00:00 ►
I would never have broken through
01:00:03 ►
if I hadn’t had a huge dose the first time.
01:00:07 ►
My ego couldn’t handle my world dissolving.
01:00:15 ►
But by that point you had no ego.
01:00:18 ►
That’s right.
01:00:20 ►
You know, when Jonathan, when I first heard him say it, I laughed.
01:00:24 ►
And I realized that later that he was really serious.
01:00:27 ►
And his statement was, beware the dreaded underdose.
01:00:32 ►
And I think there’s a lot.
01:00:33 ►
That’s a very serious statement.
01:00:35 ►
Because I’ve seen people take a low-dose LSD and think they’ve done LSD.
01:00:39 ►
And they move on.
01:00:40 ►
And they’ve never really had the experience of 50 mites.
01:00:42 ►
I still think a low-dose psychedel psycholytic dosage can have a therapeutic effect.
01:00:48 ►
I think it may be a matter of scale,
01:00:50 ►
a matter of degree.
01:00:52 ►
You shouldn’t discount that potential.
01:00:54 ►
No, I agree.
01:00:55 ►
I think that the breakthrough is really crucial
01:00:58 ►
to break through that plateau at least once.
01:01:02 ►
But after that, I think a therapeutic dose
01:01:04 ►
can have some effect. Now, Gary, I think a therapeutic dose can have some effect.
01:01:06 ►
Now, Gary, I believe that some of the last patients
01:01:09 ►
you treated with psychedelics in the late 60s
01:01:13 ►
were cancer patients.
01:01:17 ►
Is that correct?
01:01:18 ►
Yes, that’s true.
01:01:18 ►
Could you kind of share some of what you learned
01:01:22 ►
doing that work?
01:01:24 ►
Well, that was done out of Cedars of Lebanon.
01:01:29 ►
And the guy, the oncologist,
01:01:34 ►
was, God, he was a nasty man, big guy.
01:01:39 ►
And so I was giving people LSD.
01:01:49 ►
I particularly remember this one woman.
01:01:52 ►
And she said that she didn’t have any more pain.
01:01:58 ►
And so he came in.
01:01:59 ►
After her LSD session, she reported that her pain had significantly reduced.
01:02:04 ►
And it had gone.
01:02:05 ►
Gone away.
01:02:06 ►
And so he was…
01:02:09 ►
She no longer needed the narcotic pain meds.
01:02:12 ►
Right.
01:02:13 ►
And he was furious, the oncologist.
01:02:17 ►
And he came in and said,
01:02:19 ►
I can show you by my x-rays that you have to have pain
01:02:23 ►
and quit lying to me that you’re having pain
01:02:28 ►
and you’re going to take the pain medication.”
01:02:31 ►
And she said,
01:02:32 ►
I’m not taking the pain medication
01:02:34 ►
and I’m going to discharge myself
01:02:36 ►
and just go my own way.
01:02:44 ►
And so he called, I guess it was Judd,
01:02:48 ►
and said, Dr. Fisher is making my patients all psychotic.
01:02:55 ►
Because these people deny that they’re having pain,
01:02:59 ►
and he’s causing it.
01:03:01 ►
So he can’t do that work anymore here.
01:03:04 ►
And that was the end of your career as a psychedelic. causing it. So he can’t do that work anymore here. And
01:03:05 ►
that was the end of your career
01:03:08 ►
in psychedelics.
01:03:10 ►
You cured your last
01:03:12 ►
patient and they let you go.
01:03:15 ►
That was about
01:03:16 ►
40 years ago since you
01:03:18 ►
I guess
01:03:19 ►
left the field
01:03:22 ►
in that regard.
01:03:24 ►
Do you have any
01:03:26 ►
thoughts as to
01:03:28 ►
what value psychedelics
01:03:30 ►
might hold today to
01:03:31 ►
health and mental health
01:03:34 ►
professionals
01:03:35 ►
give it to everybody
01:03:36 ►
really can you imagine
01:03:40 ►
what this earth would be like
01:03:42 ►
and the politics
01:03:42 ►
and the conflict and the wars.
01:03:47 ►
If everybody could have an LSD session and see the ultimate, the great beyond,
01:03:56 ►
be a different world.
01:04:01 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
01:04:03 ►
where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
01:04:10 ►
And I’m sure that you could tell that Gary was being quite serious
01:04:14 ►
when he suggested that LSD be given to everyone in the world.
01:04:18 ►
If you’ve been fortunate enough to have tried it yourself,
01:04:22 ►
well, then you know exactly what he’s talking about, and no doubt he’s right.
01:04:26 ►
The course of human events could change direction radically if we had a one-day worldwide everybody
01:04:32 ►
included acid trip, but I’ll let you speculate about that on your own.
01:04:38 ►
As regards Gary’s work, however, I hope you’ll have the time to take a look at his report.
01:04:44 ►
You don’t have to be an expert or a doctor to read it,
01:04:47 ►
and I think it’ll hold some interesting surprises for you.
01:04:51 ►
In addition to a several-page summary, there is a paragraph or two about each of the children,
01:04:56 ►
and for every session there is a record of the date, the number of days between sessions,
01:05:01 ►
dosage information, etc.
01:05:04 ►
I’ve posted the report itself at matrixmasters.com slash garyfisher,
01:05:09 ►
and you can read it online, print it out, or download it in PDF format if you want.
01:05:14 ►
I also plan on posting a JPEG scan of the original paper online sometime later this month.
01:05:21 ►
Now, some other web work I plan on getting done yet this month
01:05:24 ►
is to add links to two of KMO’s recent Sea Realm podcasts.
01:05:30 ►
They are his podcasts number 117 and number 118, and they feature interviews with Neil Kramer about UFOs and crop circles.
01:05:40 ►
And I think Neil and KMO provide some excellent additional commentary on our podcast here from the salon, numbers 150 and 125.
01:05:49 ►
As you know, in number 150, Terrence McKenna spoke about UFOs.
01:05:53 ►
And in number 125, it was a trialogue about crop circles with Ralph Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake, and Terrence McKenna.
01:06:03 ►
Now, you’ll have to be the judge of this for yourself,
01:06:05 ►
but in my humble opinion,
01:06:07 ►
Neil Kramer’s take on these topics is certainly as good as we heard from Terrence and his friends,
01:06:12 ►
and I think it’s a great extended commentary on these very interesting topics.
01:06:18 ►
And while I’m mentioning podcasts that are sort of intersecting with the salon,
01:06:23 ►
our good friend Matt Palomary showed up on episode 5.0 of Black Light in the Attic.
01:06:29 ►
And I should mention that just now I went to their website, which is blacklightattic.podomatic.com,
01:06:36 ►
and I went there to verify the program number just now and discovered that they are including
01:06:41 ►
some really great art with their program notes.
01:06:44 ►
So you might give them a look if you get a chance.
01:06:47 ►
Now, I should also let you know that I’m probably not going to be able to get a podcast out next week
01:06:52 ►
because I’m leaving for the East Coast tomorrow.
01:06:55 ►
I’m going there to visit two of my children and three of my grandchildren.
01:07:00 ►
And since I won’t get back here until late next week,
01:07:02 ►
it’ll probably be the following week before you hear from me again.
01:07:06 ►
And so I thought I’d read a few bits and pieces of email just to let you know that your fellow psychonauts are, well, they’re everywhere.
01:07:15 ►
The first one comes from Imarnie, who says, I’m a long way from you here in South Wales.
01:07:22 ►
Good to know Robert O. is out in these hills somewhere.
01:07:26 ►
There’s a lot of party activity here, but I’ve not come across, quote, the others yet.
01:07:31 ►
Lots of fun, natural living and home educating.
01:07:35 ►
It is easier to subvert the young that way, LOL.
01:07:39 ►
But nothing like your Burning Man. If anyone is going to Celtic Blue Rock and sees a woman, early 40s, with copper-henned hair, grayish eyes, and copper band on the right wrist, you are welcome to say hello if you have a mind to.
01:07:54 ►
In case I wasn’t supposed to read that, I’m Arnie.
01:07:58 ►
Should somebody come up to you that you don’t want to meet, just don’t admit that you are you.
01:08:03 ►
They’ll never know.
01:08:06 ►
And I am Arnie Enns by saying, also penniless I may be, but I can still offer hospitality,
01:08:12 ►
and if you and your good wife ever have the urge to come visit our stone circles and ancient
01:08:17 ►
sites, we could make a wee bit of room for you in our small but beautifully located council
01:08:22 ►
house.
01:08:23 ►
Love and light, I am Arnie.
01:08:25 ►
And I hope I’m pronouncing that right.
01:08:28 ►
Well, thank you for the very kind offer, and although I’ve become a bit of a hermit lately,
01:08:34 ►
maybe this trip to the East Coast will give me the travel bug once again.
01:08:39 ►
And stone circles and ancient sites would for sure be at the top of my list.
01:08:44 ►
Another email comes from Carl, who says, among other things, circles and ancient sites would for sure be at the top of my list.
01:08:51 ►
Another email comes from Carl who says, among other things, whenever possible, I’d like to hear some thoughts on talking about psychedelics to family, especially elders, and friends
01:08:56 ►
as the topic continues to be a taboo.
01:08:59 ►
Has it worked as a positive for others to open up to the people around them?
01:09:04 ►
Actually, Carl’s question came in before I touched on that subject last week.
01:09:09 ►
The reason I’m bringing it up again today is that this is something that just keeps coming up over and over,
01:09:15 ►
but nobody seems to have many good answers here.
01:09:18 ►
What I’m thinking is that one of our enterprising conference organizers
01:09:22 ►
should put together an entire weekend program on just that topic.
01:09:27 ►
How do we talk about psychedelics to our families?
01:09:30 ►
Until then, it sounds like a good topic for somebody to add to one of the forums over at thegrowreport.com.
01:09:38 ►
Another interesting message comes from longtime salonner Dean Haddock, who says,
01:09:43 ►
The message comes from longtime salonner Dean Haddock, who says,
01:09:50 ►
I recently developed StreamFist.com, that’s S-T-R-E-A-M-F-I-S-T dot com,
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which goes to YouTube and grabs playlists, not individual videos,
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and streams them continuously like a TV station.
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It’s free, and it’s a neat way to get a lot of those informational videos distributed in a free and search engine
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optimized framework. Let me know if you have any input. The McKenna talks on your broadcast are a
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huge impetus on this project. Well, Dean, I haven’t had a chance to put together a stream yet or really
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test any of this, but I really like the concept, and I’m hoping that some of our fellow slaunters
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will look into putting some StreamFist.com streams together for us to share. I’m hoping that some of our fellow salonners will look into putting some
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StreamFist.com streams together for us to share.
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I’m only just now beginning to experiment a little bit with torrents, and I found some
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amazing material tucked away in some of them.
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And I can see the same thing happening on StreamFist.com.
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If I can stay on schedule and finish my new book by the end of this year, I’ll have some
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time next year to play with some of these new tech toys.
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But something that doesn’t require a learning curve and that simply blew me away
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is a link that I got from Jonathan Phillips, who is Reality Sandwich’s community director.
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And by the way, if you haven’t visited RealitySandwich.com yet,
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well, what are you waiting for?
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It’s an amazing site where you’re going to find a lot of people you’ve heard from here in the salon.
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And anyway, I can’t recommend highly enough the first video from their Ayahuasca Monologue series.
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This is a video of a young man giving a talk at Allison and Alex Gray’s Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in New York.
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And I am here to report that it brought tears to my eyes.
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There’s so much I’d like to say about this short video, but until you see it and hear
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it for yourself, it’s going to be hard for you to imagine what I mean without me just
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repeating the whole thing.
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But I don’t think there’s any doubt anymore about what Lady Ayahuasca is about to extend her vines over the entire earth.
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Once again, I might add.
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Maybe I’m just being overly sentimental once again.
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But I’ll put a link to this video along with the program notes to the podcast on our notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog at psychedelicsalon.org.
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So if you get a chance, take a look at it and see if you don’t understand what I’m trying
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to say.
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It’s a very powerful story.
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And Jonathan tells me that they plan on producing a new ayahuasca monologue on realitysandwich.com
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every month.
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And if they’re only even half as powerful as this first one, I think we’re in for some amazing brain candy from those folks.
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Now, the last email I have time to read today comes from Cameron D., who says,
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Greetings, Lorenzo. My name is Cameron. I’m 19 and am living in Australia.
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I have been listening to your podcast for about four months now, and I have to say I’m hooked.
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At first, I was blown away to hear that there are four months now, and I have to say I’m hooked.
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At first, I was blown away to hear that there are so many like-minded people as myself.
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And then she goes on to mention a CD in which she thought she heard Terrence’s voice.
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Well, Cameron, I haven’t heard that particular track, but my guess is that you heard correctly.
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And now that you know who he is, I suspect that you’re going to hear Terrence McKenna’s voice just ghosting in the background
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of a lot of music that you like.
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But what I mainly want to say
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to Cameron and to all of the other women
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who join us here in the salon each week
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is that not only are there
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millions of like-minded people out there,
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but that at least half of them are women.
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You know, in the podcast world, my favorite is Black Beauty,
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who podcasts Bebe’s Bungalow once a month on the Cannabis Podcast Network
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at dopething.co.uk.
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Now, Bebe has a great program with a lot of variety,
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and hopefully more psychedelic women podcasters are going to be surfacing soon.
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You know, I’ve had several long conversations with Jean Stolaroff
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about women in the psychedelic community,
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and hopefully she’ll let me record one of these talks someday,
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but I can say this.
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While Myron Stolaroff and Sasha Shulgin are truly giants,
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they would be significantly lesser giants had it not been for Gene and Ann, who were there
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with him for almost every step of the way. Then there’s Kathleen, or Kat, Kat Harrison. She’s
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another woman who is a hero in the psychedelic community, and if you ever get a chance to hear
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one of her talks, I think you’re going to be blown away with her peaceful wisdom. And just by looking
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at the list of speakers that I featured here in the salon,
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you’d probably think that this is mainly a man’s game.
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But that is very far from the truth.
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If you want to get a little better appreciation for the important roles women have played in the psychedelic movement,
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I highly recommend reading Sisters of the Extreme, Women Writing on the Drug Experience.
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And it’s edited by Cynthia Palmer and Michael Horowitz.
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This is truly an extraordinary book.
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Beginning with women in myth and history, progressing through the Victorian era and up to the present,
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Palmer and Horowitz weave a story of a few of the many very progressive women who have been leaders in the psychedelic community.
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While there are over 75 women whose written work is featured in this big book,
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what really captivated me the most are the stories that Palmer and Horowitz tell,
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not only about the women whose work is featured, but also about many other women as well.
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I’d say that this is one of the books that no psychedelic library should be without. Another book I’d
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put into that category is Paul Devereaux’s 1997 volume titled The Long Trip, A Prehistory
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of Psychedelia, in which he says,
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We are at the dawn of an extremely sophisticated approach
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to decoding megalithic rock art,
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turning it into a written record of trance states across the ages.
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Basically, this book sets out in great detail
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the new way archaeologists have begun interpreting prehistory.
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And what they have uncovered is the fact that from the late Stone Age
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until several hundred years ago,
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psychedelics were an integral part of life in almost every human society on Earth.
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And according to some of the references in that book,
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it now looks to me like Terence McKenna might have gotten it right
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when he hypothesized that our humanness began to evolve once we began ingesting psychoactive mushrooms.
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So if your view of the prehistoric ages comes from what you learned in school, well, it’s most likely out of date.
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It seems that we began our human era as stoned apes.
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But right now, far too many of us seem to have reverted back to just being plain old apes.
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How right Gary Fisher was just now when Charlie Grobe asked him what he thought should be done with psychedelic medicines like LSD, and he said…
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Give it to everybody.
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Give it to everybody.
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Really, can you imagine what this earth would be like and the politics and the conflict and the wars?
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If everybody could have an LSD session
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and see the ultimate, the great beyond,
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be a different world.
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And for now,
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this is Lorenzo
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signing off from
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Cyberdelic Space.
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Be well, my friends.
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This is novelist
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Tom Robbins.
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When my mother was diagnosed with glaucoma,
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her conservative Virginia physician told her there was only one treatment
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that might ease her pain and save her eyesight.
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That treatment was medical marijuana, which he could not prescribe.
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I offered to get her some and teach her how to use
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it effectively, but my father objected because marijuana was against the law.
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So my mother, who loved to read and walk in nature, was condemned to grow cruelly,
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unnecessarily blind. Tragedies like this happen all the time, but they don’t have to keep happening. To learn
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more about medical marijuana, call the Marijuana Policy Project at 1-877-JOIN-MPP or visit them
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on the web at mpp.org.