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403 - Sasha Shulgin_ In His Own Words

Jun 11, 2014, 60 min read

Program Notes

Guest speaker: Sasha Shulgin

On June 2, 2014 Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin passed on to his next adventure. Although this podcast is a tribute to his life and work, I have decided to let it be told mainly in his own words. First you will hear the audio portion of a video tribute to Ann and Sasha Shulgin. Following that is a short interview of Sasha that was conducted by Terence McKenna. In closing I play the famous talk that Sasha gave at the 1983 Psychedelics and Spirituality Conference.

A Tribute to the Shulgins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw-I-5RQUiI?rel=0&width=800&height=600
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Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic

00:00:23 ►

salon.

00:00:23 ►

This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:30 ►

And, as you most likely know already, our beloved Sasha Shulgin died on June 2nd.

00:00:37 ►

News of his death, surprisingly for many of us, was well reported in dozens and dozens of newspapers and on television and radio all around the world.

00:00:40 ►

This world recognition of the man that many of us think to have been the greatest chemist to have lived during our lifetimes,

00:00:48 ►

well, that recognition is very heartwarming.

00:00:50 ►

It’s the kind of notice that I think he would have modestly appreciated.

00:00:55 ►

And in the weeks and months to come, I’m sure we’re going to be hearing and seeing many more tributes to the life of Sasha Shulgin

00:01:01 ►

and of the work that he and his wife Anne jointly pursued.

00:01:06 ►

We owe the two of them and their small cadre of explorers,

00:01:09 ►

well, more than just a simple debt of gratitude, much more,

00:01:13 ►

as I’m sure future historians will eventually figure out.

00:01:17 ►

For my part, I thought that maybe you’d like to hear a couple of things

00:01:21 ►

that I haven’t played here in the salon before,

00:01:24 ►

and then I’ll close with the talk by Sasha that actually changed the direction of my life.

00:01:30 ►

And that is the talk that I played back in my podcast number 100.

00:01:34 ►

The talk itself was given in 1983, and a transcript of it was given to me the first night that I used MDMA.

00:01:42 ►

In just a bit, you’re going to hear it for yourself,

00:01:47 ►

and I hope you’ll understand why it so impacted me.

00:01:51 ►

But first, just to let you know what a great person Sasha was,

00:01:54 ►

I’ll recount my own first contact with him.

00:01:59 ►

Through a friend, I’d received a substance that was called orchid spectrum,

00:02:03 ►

and for what it’s worth, I’ve never had anything that has come close to it from an overall perspective, but that’s another story.

00:02:07 ►

The year was 1989, and I was living in Florida at the time, sort of out at the end of the line and out of contact with my old friends in Dallas.

00:02:16 ►

So, just out of the blue, I sent a letter. This was before we were all using email. Remember those days?

00:02:22 ►

So, I sent a letter to Sasha that described the effects of

00:02:26 ►

the substance and asked him if he knew what it might be. To be honest, I didn’t really expect

00:02:32 ►

an answer, but answer me he did. In fact, I’m looking at his response right now, and he apparently

00:02:38 ►

typed it himself, and it covers two single-spaced pages. It began, Thank you for your kind personal letter of a few days ago.

00:02:47 ►

Now to begin with, I don’t even answer email within a few days, and here was Sasha back on

00:02:52 ►

November 29th, 1989, answering his snail mail in a few days. I still find this amazing. And just so

00:03:01 ►

as to not leave the thread of the story hanging here, after several years of exchanging letters, we decided that the substance in question was either DOM or DOB.

00:03:11 ►

Also, and it is one of my prized possessions, Sasha sent me an endorsed and autographed copy of the Controlled Substances Act.

00:03:19 ►

It’s hard to believe that 25 years have passed since then, but, well, they have, and they’ve been very good years indeed.

00:03:27 ►

If I’m correct, right about this very moment, as I’m recording this podcast,

00:03:32 ►

Sasha’s family and close friends are scattering his ashes on the Pacific Ocean,

00:03:37 ►

and I’m told that an announcement will be made soon about a public memorial that will be held in the Bay Area.

00:03:42 ►

about a public memorial that will be held in the Bay Area.

00:03:48 ►

For my part, I really don’t feel as if I can come up with my own words to describe what a giant of a man Alexander Sasha Shulgin was.

00:03:53 ►

So I’m going to continue following our format here in the salon

00:03:56 ►

and play a recording or two for you that I think you’ll find informative and fun to hear.

00:04:01 ►

I’m going to begin with the audio portion of a short video,

00:04:05 ►

and then follow that with another short interview of Sasha that Terrence McKenna conducted.

00:04:11 ►

And we’ll conclude with a talk by Sasha that changed my life. So the audio we’re about to

00:04:17 ►

hear right now will give you a good overview of Sasha’s work, and the importance of his wife Anne

00:04:22 ►

in that work. I’m going to embed the video with the program notes for this podcast,

00:04:27 ►

which you know you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us,

00:04:30 ►

and I urge you to surf on over there and watch the video

00:04:34 ►

because it’ll convey so much more to you about Anne and Sasha that audio alone can’t do.

00:04:39 ►

The film was shot by Kyle Cameron and Connie Littlefield in 2002 and 2003,

00:04:46 ►

and at that time I remember talking to Myron Stolaroff quite a bit,

00:04:50 ►

and he was telling me what a great job he thought that Connie was doing.

00:04:53 ►

So please be sure to watch it if you can.

00:04:57 ►

Now we are going to hear the soundtrack from that video tribute that was first shown at a MAPS dinner

00:05:02 ►

honoring the Shulgens on April 17, 2010.

00:05:06 ►

In the video, you actually get to see the Shulgens at home, as well as seeing the names of the people

00:05:12 ►

whose voices you are going to hear right now. And the first voice you’ll hear is that of Rick

00:05:16 ►

Doblin, who coincidentally was our guest speaker here in the salon last week.

00:05:34 ►

Sasha Shilgan did the early explorations of a vast amount of territory.

00:05:37 ►

I think it’s a lot like Columbus.

00:05:38 ►

Sasha discovered the continent,

00:05:40 ►

but he didn’t actually draw the map

00:05:42 ►

in as precise a way as it could be done.

00:05:44 ►

That was left for later researchers.

00:05:47 ►

But by discovering the vast continent of all of these psychedelic drugs that he synthesized,

00:05:52 ►

he’s done, like Columbus, an enormous contribution to science and to our knowledge.

00:06:08 ►

When I met Sasha and he told me what he did,

00:06:14 ►

which is he researched and published on new psychedelic drugs,

00:06:17 ►

I couldn’t believe it.

00:06:25 ►

I was absolutely dumbfounded that anyone could actually do something like that.

00:06:32 ►

And I wanted to know what he did and to maybe become part of his research group,

00:06:38 ►

which, of course, was not an unusual thing for people to want to do.

00:06:41 ►

It was wonderful. So that when it came to the area of psychedelic drugs and visionary plants,

00:06:52 ►

there was no way I wasn’t going to be completely intrigued by it

00:06:58 ►

because these were, after all, very ancient tools.

00:07:04 ►

I mean, I think the human race has been using them

00:07:07 ►

for at least 50,000 years.

00:07:09 ►

I mean, we have the evidence from 50,000 years ago.

00:07:13 ►

This is part of the human experience,

00:07:15 ►

is visionary plants.

00:07:19 ►

They’re used different ways in every culture,

00:07:22 ►

but obviously they are means by which the human being opens up his own psyche.

00:07:32 ►

I mean, they’re keys to the insides of us.

00:07:37 ►

So discovering a person who was just as fascinated as I was by this area,

00:07:47 ►

this kind of exploration, was just heaven on earth.

00:07:50 ►

It’s just wonderful.

00:07:54 ►

It worked out beautifully because she and I have formed a team,

00:07:59 ►

and we work together as a single.

00:08:02 ►

Very often I end up finishing her sentences or she ends up finishing mine. I don’t think I could have formed a team of that tightness with very many people.

00:08:16 ►

It’s worked out to be a beautiful relationship. And we are acting as one person.

00:08:26 ►

We have different vocabularies, different directions of interest.

00:08:30 ►

She will elaborate on something I’ll not agree with at all.

00:08:32 ►

I’ll elaborate on something she’ll not agree with at all.

00:08:35 ►

But basically we’re speaking the same language.

00:08:38 ►

And I just couldn’t visualize not being allied with her.

00:08:53 ►

Anne is my father’s grandmother.

00:08:58 ►

It allows him to have that light of fancy into the imagination and into the unknown,

00:09:02 ►

and she brings it back and corrects the typos

00:09:06 ►

and puts it into a dialogue.

00:09:12 ►

And they have a wonderful dialogue from that point of view.

00:09:14 ►

I think they work that well together

00:09:15 ►

because they work in completely separate ends of the house.

00:09:19 ►

And I think that’s a metaphor for their writing.

00:09:23 ►

In getting this information out in the way they have in this day and age, they’ve really

00:09:27 ►

gone against the societal norm, they’ve gone against the fear, they’ve gone against all

00:09:35 ►

of it and published and spoken out about their use and developing new things and so I think in the future

00:09:46 ►

they’ll be known

00:09:48 ►

for

00:09:48 ►

the

00:09:52 ►

larger

00:09:52 ►

picture of what they’ve been doing

00:09:56 ►

which is exploring the mind

00:09:58 ►

and exploring the soul

00:10:00 ►

in a way that

00:10:01 ►

isn’t done with anything else

00:10:04 ►

in any other way.

00:10:08 ►

I think Sasha’s work is an enormous contribution.

00:10:14 ►

These substances, as I’ve come to understand them and use them,

00:10:19 ►

are just really valuable tools.

00:10:22 ►

And I think our nation, I think the world is desperate for the kind

00:10:26 ►

of understanding that you can gain with them.

00:10:29 ►

I think Ann and Sasha Sheldon have devoted their lives to,

00:10:46 ►

they call it higher consciousness,

00:10:47 ►

I’d like to call it something else,

00:10:49 ►

to the opening, to the big window

00:10:51 ►

that everybody who has the chance to can look out of

00:10:55 ►

and see the world as it really is

00:10:58 ►

and not be confused with all the stuff that’s going on.

00:11:03 ►

And we’re grateful, grateful to them, very

00:11:06 ►

grateful.

00:11:09 ►

We

00:11:09 ►

care about this

00:11:11 ►

kind of experience. We

00:11:13 ►

care very much about

00:11:15 ►

what it can do for

00:11:17 ►

people, how

00:11:20 ►

it can enrich

00:11:21 ►

your life.

00:11:23 ►

So that very fact,

00:11:25 ►

the fact that we have something

00:11:27 ►

that concerns both

00:11:29 ►

of us, that we both care about,

00:11:32 ►

is also one of the

00:11:33 ►

things that can help hold a

00:11:35 ►

marriage together.

00:11:37 ►

So I

00:11:39 ►

think the psychedelic experiences

00:11:42 ►

have given both of us a great

00:11:43 ►

deal.

00:11:47 ►

But there’s no way to tell what would have happened without us. You can’t go through the same river twice.

00:11:50 ►

Absolutely, yeah.

00:11:54 ►

After hearing that, I think maybe you can now probably guess

00:11:57 ►

why I’ve been urging you to watch the video itself.

00:12:00 ►

Because during all of those beautiful musical interludes,

00:12:03 ►

you’ll see many images worth thousands of words.

00:12:06 ►

It’s truly a well-crafted piece.

00:12:09 ►

Now I’m going to play a relatively short piece

00:12:12 ►

that I’ve been tempted to play before

00:12:14 ►

but I always thought that the sound quality

00:12:17 ►

made it too difficult to hear in parts

00:12:19 ►

mainly due to all of the birds that were singing so gaily

00:12:24 ►

as Terrence and Sasha walked through a cemetery.

00:12:28 ►

But today seems like the perfect time to play this conversation.

00:12:32 ►

It’s one of the outtakes from Stephen Marschank’s film that he made of Terrence McKenna in Prague, called Prognosis.

00:12:40 ►

And this piece actually takes place in a cemetery, as you’ll hear,

00:12:52 ►

And this piece actually takes place in a cemetery, as you’ll hear, and consists of an interview that Terence McKenna conducted with Sasha Shulgin back in 1993, a little over 20 years ago.

00:13:09 ►

Alexander Shulgin, Sasha to his friends, is nothing less than the godfather of psychopharmacology, an expert on the cyclicized phenylethylamines, that is, psychoactive compounds useful in the emotional recovery of traumatic events. Shulgin has given his life to the study

00:13:17 ►

of the pharmacology of the psychedelic experience. In Prague, he told me, greater frontiers lie ahead, the next lost continent to be explored by Alexander Shulgin, the psychoactive tryptamines.

00:13:32 ►

Sasha suggested that I join him for a stroll among the graves of the cemetery of the Jewish ghetto of Prague, Europe’s oldest ghetto.

00:13:48 ►

ghetto of Prague, Europe’s oldest ghetto. There, walking among the stones, we reminisced and speculated about the history and the future of

00:13:53 ►

psychopharmacology. What do you make of your Russian colleagues here? I’m

00:14:00 ►

fascinated by what he’s doing and I’m intrigued by his ability to get out of what he was doing into the West,

00:14:08 ►

because the status of a physician in the West is not what we have come to respect in the West.

00:14:13 ►

You’re talking about Yevgeny Kropensky.

00:14:16 ►

I imagine you don’t view ketamine with…

00:14:18 ►

Well, how do you view ketamine?

00:14:20 ►

It’s an anesthetic, and it’s a dissociative thing, and it puts me out of body.

00:14:27 ►

It’s very dissociative. It puts me out of mind.

00:14:30 ►

It’s just you’re away, and I, frankly, with a full bladder like being here.

00:14:35 ►

And you suddenly realize that someone has a full bladder,

00:14:38 ►

and at only one intellectual level you realize it’s you.

00:14:41 ►

Yes.

00:14:43 ►

No, it’s so seriously disassociated in me

00:14:47 ►

that I felt it was a great victory

00:14:49 ►

when I finally realized that this was a drug.

00:14:53 ►

For a long time, I couldn’t figure out what it was

00:14:56 ►

or who was even asking the question.

00:14:59 ►

I kept calling it vitamin K,

00:15:01 ►

which is a fascinating euphemism

00:15:02 ►

for allowing to have some semblance of a food

00:15:05 ►

additive for a dietary supplement.

00:15:08 ►

Well, I had the interesting pleasure of being back at a big company in the East the day

00:15:14 ►

they had bought the rights to distribute ketamine.

00:15:17 ►

And I informed them, you do realize that ketamine is being made by Park Davis and shipped off

00:15:21 ►

to Mexico.

00:15:23 ►

It’s imported in gallon, not gallon, but liter bottles,

00:15:26 ►

all with a percentage of preservatives

00:15:28 ►

and came right back into California in the trunk of the car.

00:15:31 ►

And we were shocked.

00:15:32 ►

We did not know that there was any abuse whatsoever.

00:15:34 ►

Never could have conceived of human abuse.

00:15:37 ►

Oh, about 20 years ago,

00:15:39 ►

there was a class of compounds called quinucleidines.

00:15:44 ►

And for about three or four years

00:15:46 ►

I just noticed that there was no publishing

00:15:48 ►

in the Russian literature whatsoever

00:15:49 ►

on the area of quinucleidines.

00:15:51 ►

Then all of a sudden the Russian literature

00:15:53 ►

started publishing.

00:15:55 ►

And then we went into a sort of a gap.

00:15:59 ►

And then quinucleidine

00:16:00 ►

benzidate, which is one of the most potent

00:16:01 ►

of the anticholinergics, was suddenly revealed

00:16:04 ►

that the Russians were working on it as a

00:16:06 ►

chemical warfare agent, and then we

00:16:08 ►

were working on it as a defense against their chemical

00:16:10 ►

warfare agent. Uh-huh. And it’s active.

00:16:12 ►

It’s active 10, 20 micrograms.

00:16:14 ►

10, 20 micrograms.

00:16:17 ►

It makes you really wonky.

00:16:18 ►

It’s like atropine.

00:16:20 ►

Delusion, confusion. Uh-huh.

00:16:22 ►

But they design these fantastic

00:16:24 ►

bombs that they can explode and send out millions of little hypodermic needles.

00:16:29 ►

And so they don’t have to worry about wind blowing it downwind or upwind.

00:16:33 ►

So it’s essentially a chemical cluster bomb of some sort.

00:16:37 ►

Cluster bomb, but with little hypodermic needles.

00:16:38 ►

Yeah, I’m telling you.

00:16:39 ►

So that’s probably in the inventory.

00:16:42 ►

It’s already in the inventory.

00:16:43 ►

Uh-huh.

00:16:45 ►

Well, someone mentioned to me that you had expressed interest now,

00:16:50 ►

that you felt you had sort of done the work you wanted to do

00:16:53 ►

with cyclicized phenylethylamines

00:16:55 ►

and that you were going back to looking at tryptamines.

00:16:58 ►

Very much so. That’s the other side of the coin.

00:17:01 ►

This is rich and unexplored areas.

00:17:03 ►

That’s where 20 years ago. So are you going to illuminate it for us?

00:17:09 ►

Absolutely. I’ve already made the t-butyl, t-butylmethyl, isopropylmethyl is well known,

00:17:14 ►

but the secondary butylmethyl is not known. They’re all active by smoking.

00:17:18 ►

Uh-huh. And what are they, could you in blind test, pick one out from another?

00:17:27 ►

No, no, no. I don’t know yet. I doubt it somehow.

00:17:31 ►

I think they’re all going to be fast, impactful, and all very much like DMT.

00:17:35 ►

Duration-wise or presentation-wise?

00:17:37 ►

Probably, perhaps a little bit more potent.

00:17:39 ►

A little bit more potent?

00:17:41 ►

DMT is not that off-fired potent.

00:17:44 ►

It takes, you know, 10, 20, 50, no more, 50, 100 milligrams.

00:17:45 ►

50 to 70 and some days we’re getting into maybe at 30 20 and 30 milligrams but not actively you have to

00:17:51 ►

get up to a certain degree of shrubbery on the nitrogen to get our activity and how many of

00:17:57 ►

these compounds do you imagine there are that are casually you can make uh 30 40 50.

00:18:03 ►

At casually you can make 30, 40, 50.

00:18:11 ►

Why do you suppose it is that this fast-acting,

00:18:16 ►

easily manufactured, spectacular hallucinogen is so rarely met in the underground?

00:18:22 ►

I don’t know.

00:18:23 ►

I have heard that there is, it’s there in some quantity.

00:18:26 ►

I heard about a seizure in Boston, I believe it was of ayahuasca,

00:18:30 ►

and they seized it on the basis that it contained DMT.

00:18:33 ►

Right, that was the Santo Daime people from Brazil.

00:18:38 ►

But, you know, we live in a society where people jump out of airplanes

00:18:42 ►

and hang by bungee cords over bridges and

00:18:46 ►

DMT which is always described as an easy synthesis is just not not there it

00:18:56 ►

violates one of these economic laws Gresham or Graham or somebody. Something that I’ve always wanted to ask you, which is, unlike me,

00:19:11 ►

you seem remarkably resistant to what I call the implications.

00:19:18 ►

I mean, how can you just do these things over and over again

00:19:22 ►

and not be nutty as a fruitcake?

00:19:25 ►

So?

00:19:26 ►

Well, are you? Are you?

00:19:28 ►

I think I’m relaxed in any event.

00:19:31 ►

But unlike me, you don’t feel the need to rave about that aspect of it.

00:19:36 ►

No, I don’t think so. I’d rather quietly stay half in the closet and continue doing what I’m doing. But you do… You’ve probably seen more uncharted

00:19:47 ►

internal landscape

00:19:48 ►

than half of mankind put together.

00:19:50 ►

I mean, that would not be an immodest claim.

00:19:54 ►

They’re a little bit charted now.

00:19:56 ►

Well, a very little bit.

00:19:58 ►

Very little, that’s right.

00:19:59 ►

But the seeds are there to be used by anyone else.

00:20:02 ►

That’s the reason for the book,

00:20:03 ►

just to get it all recorded

00:20:05 ►

into a documented point but it always puzzles me i mean i think hoffman and watson and certainly to

00:20:14 ►

some degree schultes to some degree you nobody want everybody says well i’m just a humble botanist

00:20:21 ►

or i’m just a hard-working workbench chemist. Nobody wants to actually

00:20:26 ►

say this must be very, very important. We must because it’s so uniquely beyond ordinary

00:20:36 ►

expectation.

00:20:37 ►

Yes, but the importance is going to take a long time to realize. But you can’t build

00:20:43 ►

without the tools and you have to have the tools,

00:20:46 ►

and these are the tools that allow the building to be done.

00:20:48 ►

I’m not a builder. I’m a toolmaker.

00:20:52 ►

And that’s probably one of the reasons I’ve not

00:20:54 ►

described a lot of landscapes otherwise.

00:20:58 ►

If we could compare it to the invention of the telescope.

00:21:09 ►

Probably within 50 years of the invention of the telescope,

00:21:14 ►

the major solar system new paradigms were put in place.

00:21:17 ►

This seems very elusive.

00:21:23 ►

It seems hard for us to go beyond simply saying it exists, it’s really far out,

00:21:26 ►

and then we sort of fall silent.

00:21:28 ►

What do you think about that?

00:21:30 ►

I think the silence is in part imposed upon us

00:21:32 ►

by a very unsympathetic authority body.

00:21:36 ►

And maybe it’s just as well,

00:21:38 ►

because that way a lot of work can be done

00:21:39 ►

and sort of recorded for posterity.

00:21:42 ►

And the time the pendulums swing, they will swing back.

00:21:45 ►

And the time will come when this work will be used,

00:21:49 ►

research will be done with these tools.

00:21:53 ►

Well, obviously you believe in it strongly.

00:21:57 ►

What would you say to a critic who said,

00:22:01 ►

what’s so great about this?

00:22:04 ►

Are you and your friends in any significant way different from the rest of humanity?

00:22:10 ►

No.

00:22:11 ►

And I don’t see why it would be critical.

00:22:12 ►

I’m not offending him.

00:22:14 ►

I can see no way in which I’m offending him.

00:22:16 ►

I’m quietly doing my little alchemist thing at home.

00:22:20 ►

But you really must think that it does make a difference.

00:22:24 ►

I think it does. I think it will.

00:22:26 ►

It will.

00:22:27 ►

I don’t think it does now.

00:22:29 ►

So we really are cursed with being pioneers.

00:22:33 ►

Yeah.

00:22:34 ►

It’s not so bad. It’s not so bad.

00:22:36 ►

It has a nice…

00:22:38 ►

I mean, they’ll hang your picture in the main hall years hence and say,

00:22:42 ►

these were giants.

00:22:44 ►

I would rather have my picture hanging in the main hall than hence and say these were giants i would rather have my picture hanging in

00:22:46 ►

the main hall than me hanging well some people manage both and you you may end up that way too

00:22:55 ►

oh well it’s a short happy life it’s kind of neat well this is your territory, too. What’s your feeling? Do you feel that that’s a fair… I think that I have always, from the very first psychedelic experience, had the uncanny intuition

00:23:13 ►

that, yes, this has been around for 50,000 years, but it’s somehow going to be critically important in our lifetime that we will need it for something

00:23:29 ►

maybe just to think our way out of the mess that we’re getting into but you that if it’s needed

00:23:36 ►

we haven’t yes that’s the beauty that the tool is there for the time when the need is obvious

00:23:42 ►

and this may be maybe our lifetime so essentially what you’re doing is you’re placing tools on the shelf.

00:23:50 ►

Screwdrivers for screws that haven’t been invented yet.

00:23:53 ►

Exactly that.

00:23:54 ►

Except it’s a good tool.

00:23:55 ►

So its use will depend upon someone who has that particular view of need.

00:24:02 ►

Well, it’s a wonderful thing.

00:24:06 ►

Where do you hope

00:24:08 ►

to be in ten years or so

00:24:10 ►

with all of this?

00:24:12 ►

Probably starting on a third book.

00:24:15 ►

Do you think,

00:24:16 ►

I know you’re working on a book about

00:24:18 ►

legalization. Not actually,

00:24:20 ►

I’m working with a group

00:24:21 ►

who’s more or less

00:24:23 ►

funded to make arguments that would be raised, to address arguments that would be raised in the legalization process.

00:24:31 ►

What would be the answer of how drugs would be legalized?

00:24:33 ►

How would it be made available?

00:24:34 ►

Should it be in an open supermarket or should it be under some sort of governmental control?

00:24:38 ►

And it’s a research, more than that, a policy group.

00:24:42 ►

Studies.

00:24:43 ►

Setting up for that.

00:24:43 ►

I think it’s futile in the present state.

00:24:47 ►

In terms of practical impact.

00:24:49 ►

I don’t think anyone’s going to seriously entertain legalization.

00:24:51 ►

So it may be a fuel process, but it’s a fun process.

00:24:56 ►

Because in the process you begin evaluating your own relationship

00:24:59 ►

with drug law, drug regulation, drug control.

00:25:03 ►

If you were in charge of it, how do you see it happening?

00:25:08 ►

I mean, are there drugs you would keep legal, or do you think it should be…

00:25:12 ►

What I would do if I were running, I would keep certain laws that protect people of innocence.

00:25:18 ►

I would have absolutely no drug with children who are too young an age.

00:25:22 ►

God knows what their age may be.

00:25:23 ►

16, 18, 21,

00:25:25 ►

maybe alcohol-mongering.

00:25:27 ►

Right.

00:25:28 ►

Absolutely unallowed giving drugs

00:25:30 ►

to anyone without their consent.

00:25:32 ►

Not sure about that.

00:25:33 ►

Informed consent, knowledge, education.

00:25:35 ►

I would make absolutely available

00:25:38 ►

at all levels of propaganda,

00:25:40 ►

restrictions, information that is factual about drugs.

00:25:44 ►

Then I’d open the drug store.

00:25:46 ►

And you people, with the overuse, maybe.

00:25:49 ►

But I think that would very quickly dampen itself out to maybe about what we have now.

00:25:53 ►

We do have to remove the criminality, remove the violence,

00:25:57 ►

remove the entire social disruptiveness that these drug laws have caused.

00:26:02 ►

social disruptiveness that these drug laws have caused.

00:26:10 ►

Would you encourage the government to see these drugs as a vehicle for gaining tax revenue,

00:26:12 ►

or do you think the government should stay off that?

00:26:19 ►

Probably some tax revenue would be valid, as with other drugs of abuse, other things of abuse. Similarly to alcohol and tobacco.

00:26:22 ►

It’s a good model, and perhaps it’s a valid one.

00:26:24 ►

Well, that’s pretty much what I suggested in my book,

00:26:27 ►

but I agree with you that it’s easy to sit down and come up with a fine plan

00:26:32 ►

overcoming the political hurdles of an American…

00:26:36 ►

Too many people have too much to benefit on the laws being what they are

00:26:38 ►

and even becoming more intense.

00:26:41 ►

And so you change that motivation that that reward yes well the most

00:26:46 ►

cynical and the most naive people in america are keeping the drug problem going the most cynical by

00:26:53 ►

dealing and importing drugs and the most naive through the kind of christian terror of the

00:27:01 ►

monstrous industries that have been built up with it. The drug urine screening.

00:27:05 ►

Shameful.

00:27:06 ►

Right.

00:27:07 ►

But they’re multi-billion dollar things.

00:27:09 ►

This kit, that GCMS, this instrumentation,

00:27:12 ►

these people who make little wax urine bottles.

00:27:14 ►

It’s becoming…

00:27:15 ►

There’s no justification for urine screening

00:27:17 ►

at any time, of anyone,

00:27:19 ►

under any circumstance, on a random basis.

00:27:22 ►

Well, and the notion that in a democratic society

00:27:25 ►

people would get into that kind of thing is incredible, I think.

00:27:29 ►

It’s completely contrary to the principles of our society.

00:27:32 ►

The assumption of innocence.

00:27:34 ►

We blew it because it’s not in the Constitution.

00:27:35 ►

It should have been in it, but it wasn’t.

00:27:37 ►

But taking a urine sample on a random basis is an assumption of guilt.

00:27:42 ►

But what is in the Bill of Rights is life, liberty, and

00:27:46 ►

the pursuit of happiness. Declaration

00:27:48 ►

of Independence. But that

00:27:50 ►

could be used as a sufficient

00:27:51 ►

basis for…

00:27:54 ►

We should maintain a deception.

00:27:57 ►

Yeah, well, the first thing

00:27:58 ►

that goes when society

00:28:00 ►

hits the wall

00:28:02 ►

is democracy.

00:28:06 ►

And while I’m tempted to pick up on Terrence’s last remark,

00:28:10 ►

this isn’t the right time to take that tack.

00:28:14 ►

As the final segment in this tribute to Sasha Shulgin,

00:28:18 ►

I’m going to play a recording of the talk that he gave

00:28:20 ►

at the Psychedelics and Spirituality Conference

00:28:23 ►

that was held in Santa Barbara, California in 1983. When I first played this talk in my podcast number 100,

00:28:31 ►

I told some stories about the conference, the setting and the speakers, so I’m not going to

00:28:36 ►

repeat that here, but just briefly I want to again tell you how this talk changed my life.

00:28:42 ►

If you’ve heard my story in Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate,

00:28:46 ►

you heard me mention the fact that back in the early days,

00:28:49 ►

when MDMA first hit the streets in Dallas,

00:28:51 ►

there was practically no information about it or any other psychedelic substances,

00:28:56 ►

at least not down on the street level in Dallas.

00:28:59 ►

But there was one document that was significant.

00:29:02 ►

It was actually a mimeograph copy, if you can remember what those were.

00:29:06 ►

And that document was the text of the speech that you and I are about to listen to.

00:29:11 ►

My first exposure to this information was in written form,

00:29:15 ►

and I read it the morning after my first experience with MDMA.

00:29:18 ►

And if you’ve ever been there, especially that first time,

00:29:22 ►

well, you can imagine how forcefully this information

00:29:25 ►

took hold in my mind. I had just had one of the most ecstatic experiences of my life,

00:29:31 ►

and here was a scientist who was confirming the thoughts that had already begun racing

00:29:36 ►

through my mind. And if you’ve been there, I don’t have to tell you what I mean. So just

00:29:42 ►

sit back and pretend that you’re just now coming down from your very first MDMA experience

00:29:47 ►

and see if Sasha isn’t talking directly to you.

00:29:52 ►

I was at a meeting last year when Dr. Hoffman came

00:29:56 ►

and his opening sentence was,

00:29:57 ►

you expected the shaman, you’re going to get a chemist.

00:30:01 ►

When I actually, when I was first asked by Dr. Robert Gordon McCutcheon

00:30:05 ►

to come here tonight

00:30:06 ►

and talk about

00:30:06 ►

whatever I wanted to do

00:30:07 ►

my first impression

00:30:10 ►

as long as I allowed

00:30:12 ►

my first impression

00:30:12 ►

was to decline

00:30:13 ►

I had after all

00:30:15 ►

I am a student of chemistry

00:30:17 ►

and of pharmacology

00:30:18 ►

and not really a student

00:30:19 ►

of philosophy and religion

00:30:20 ►

and I felt I had

00:30:22 ►

probably contributed

00:30:23 ►

as much as I could

00:30:24 ►

last year

00:30:24 ►

when I took chalk

00:30:26 ►

to blackboard and do hexagons

00:30:28 ►

and tryptamine rings

00:30:29 ►

and gave my impression

00:30:31 ►

of what on a molecule

00:30:32 ►

caused it to do what.

00:30:34 ►

But my wife intervened.

00:30:36 ►

Why not tell them

00:30:37 ►

just why you do what you do?

00:30:39 ►

It got me lost

00:30:40 ►

into an interesting question.

00:30:41 ►

I never had actually

00:30:43 ►

spoken to myself and said,

00:30:44 ►

you know, why do you do what you do? The flippant answer is always at hand. Well, one does it because it’s

00:30:50 ►

there to be done. In the Mount Everest routine, I climb the mountain because it’s there to be

00:30:54 ►

climbed. But that is, of course, not the reason I do the research I do.

00:30:59 ►

Whenever this question would come up in a seminar or during a panel discussion,

00:31:04 ►

I’d place special emphasis on the word psychotomimetic.

00:31:06 ►

The word has been used quite a bit today.

00:31:09 ►

A term that is usually used by the scientific community when they wish to speak about the psychedelic drugs.

00:31:14 ►

The term psychedelic does not find a good audience in the psychiatric or in the chemical or in the medical literature.

00:31:21 ►

It carries a meta-message of drug use, drug encouragement, drug proselytizing, and as a result, the word is not often encountered.

00:31:32 ►

In its origin, as was pointed out, it comes from psychoto, meaning in essence psychosis,

00:31:39 ►

and mimesis, meaning the imitation of.

00:31:42 ►

And this indeed is the term that very early in the work in this area

00:31:46 ►

that had been given these materials

00:31:48 ►

because they had been cast in the role of causing syndrome,

00:31:53 ►

causing symptoms that would reflect the character of mental illness.

00:31:58 ►

And as felt by studying the effects of these materials in normal subjects,

00:32:01 ►

you might be able to glean some insight as to the mechanisms or at least the descriptions and definitions of this syndrome when seen

00:32:10 ►

in people who are spontaneously ill.

00:32:13 ►

This explanation, the search for new psychotomimetics for materials that would be more exacting

00:32:19 ►

the definition of psychosis, is completely logical in that all the hallucinogenics, the psychedelics that are

00:32:28 ►

known, can be classified into materials that are indoles, and there are many in this area,

00:32:33 ►

the cryptamines, the more convoluted carbamines, LSD as an ergot-type indole, or it can be

00:32:42 ►

classified as phenethylamines. And there are perhaps some three or four score that are in this classification.

00:32:48 ►

The analogs of mesclun compound has been mentioned several times

00:32:52 ►

or the substitution of variants of mesclun

00:32:55 ►

or the alpha-methyl compounds that have given rise to materials

00:32:59 ►

that are lumped chemically together as the amphetamines.

00:33:02 ►

And there are two principal neurotransmitters in the brain.

00:33:05 ►

One is an indole, and this is serotonin.

00:33:08 ►

One is a phenethylamine, namely dopamine.

00:33:11 ►

And it’s very desirable from the point of the neurochemist

00:33:14 ►

to find pigeonholes that can classify things.

00:33:16 ►

Here we have a group of psychedelics that are all indoles,

00:33:20 ►

and we have a neurotransmitter that’s indolic, serotonin.

00:33:23 ►

Here is a group that are all phenethylamines, and we have a neurotransmitter that’s indolic, serotonin. Here’s a group that are all phenethylamines

00:33:25 ►

and we have a neurotransmitter that’s a phenethylamine.

00:33:28 ►

All we have to do is understand why all of these work here

00:33:31 ►

and all of those work there

00:33:32 ►

and we shall now know how the neurotransmitters work in the brain.

00:33:35 ►

And once we know that, we’ll be able to cure mental illness.

00:33:39 ►

Well, it’s an appealing

00:33:41 ►

and it has not been a particularly rewarding classification.

00:33:44 ►

And the explanation, besides being logical, is quite safe,

00:33:48 ►

because it’s an unthreatening explanation.

00:33:50 ►

It’s easily accepted by the academic and administrative community.

00:33:54 ►

But the explanation is still not the explanation of why I do what I do.

00:33:58 ►

My work is indeed dedicated to the development of tools,

00:34:02 ►

but tools for quite a different purpose.

00:34:04 ►

And here is where I want to get quite away from chemistry and into some of my own

00:34:08 ►

personal thoughts. I’d like to lay a little background to establish a framework

00:34:12 ►

for these tools, and in part to define them, and in part to give

00:34:16 ►

emphasis to an urgency that I really feel associated with them.

00:34:21 ►

First, I am a very firm believer in

00:34:24 ►

the reality of a balance in all aspects

00:34:26 ►

of the human theater. When there seems to be a development of move that away, somehow,

00:34:33 ►

very shortly, or almost in concert, there is a move this away that keeps things in some

00:34:39 ►

delicate balance. If there must be a dichotomization of concepts into good and evil, then all good seems to contain its unexpressed evil, and all evil is unexpressed good.

00:34:52 ►

Within the human mind, there coexists the eros, the life-loving, the self-perpetrating force, with the thanatos, the self-destructive death wish.

00:35:01 ►

They’re the self-destructive death wish.

00:35:04 ►

Both are present in each of us,

00:35:08 ►

but are usually separated by a very difficult wall,

00:35:11 ►

a very difficult-to-penetrate wall of the unconscious.

00:35:17 ►

One definition of the tools I seek is that they may allow words of a vocabulary,

00:35:22 ►

a vocabulary which might allow each human being to more consciously and more clearly communicate with the interior of his own mind and psyche.

00:35:29 ►

This may be called a vocabulary of awareness.

00:35:32 ►

A person who becomes increasingly aware of, and so begins to acknowledge,

00:35:37 ►

the existence of the two opposite contributors to his motives and decisions

00:35:41 ►

may begin to make choices which are knowledgeable.

00:35:45 ►

And the learning process that follows such choices

00:35:48 ►

is the path that leads to wisdom.

00:35:51 ►

But just as there is a balance within the mind

00:35:53 ►

that needs establishment,

00:35:55 ►

there is an interesting record of balances

00:35:57 ►

of the same sort in society.

00:35:59 ►

Just look for a few minutes at some of the coincidences

00:36:01 ►

that have kept our human race

00:36:03 ►

in a rather precarious balance. Throughout the early centuries of the current millennium, there were carried

00:36:09 ►

out some of the most viciously inhuman wars that were known to man, all in the name of

00:36:13 ►

the forces of religion and the horrors of the Inquisition, with its lethal intolerance

00:36:18 ►

of heresy. And yet it was during these dark years that the structure of alchemy was established,

00:36:24 ►

not to change base metals into noble ones,

00:36:26 ►

as is often thought,

00:36:27 ►

but to acquire knowledge through the study of matter.

00:36:31 ►

The work of the alchemists

00:36:33 ►

extended up to the age of enlightenment

00:36:34 ►

with the urges of rationalism and of skepticism.

00:36:38 ►

And it was always directed toward the learning process.

00:36:42 ►

The reward of alchemistic effort

00:36:44 ►

has been simply stated as the effort to achieve the

00:36:47 ►

transmutation of base metals into gold.

00:36:50 ►

But as Ralph pointed out just a bit ago, this is not the actual reward.

00:36:54 ►

The value was the doing and the redoing and the redoing of the process of distillation,

00:37:00 ►

of sublimation, of condensation, of precipitation.

00:37:03 ►

It was a continual, ever more exact effort

00:37:05 ►

to understand these processes

00:37:07 ►

that from the learning of the process

00:37:09 ►

one would be able to find a unity

00:37:12 ►

between the physical and the spiritual world.

00:37:15 ►

It was the doing and the redoing itself

00:37:18 ►

that was the reward.

00:37:20 ►

In the last hundred years or so,

00:37:22 ►

this learning process has evolved

00:37:24 ►

into what we call science. However, there has been a subtle shift in the last hundred years or so this learning process has evolved into what we call science

00:37:25 ►

however there has been a subtle shift in the goal

00:37:28 ►

from the process

00:37:29 ►

itself to the results

00:37:32 ►

of the process

00:37:33 ►

in this age of science it is only the end result

00:37:36 ►

the gold that really matters

00:37:37 ►

it is not the act of achieving

00:37:40 ►

but the achievement itself

00:37:41 ►

that brings one the acknowledgement of his peers

00:37:44 ►

that brings recognition from the outside world,

00:37:47 ►

that results in wealth and influence and in power.

00:37:51 ►

And these end achievements, these results,

00:37:53 ►

show the same dichotomy of directions which was so evident from the previous centuries.

00:37:59 ►

For years, there had been no separation of values.

00:38:02 ►

Neither direction had taken the colors of good or for evil.

00:38:06 ►

But still, there were incredible coincidences of timing.

00:38:09 ►

For example, in 1895, Wilhelm Conrad von Lenken observed that when electricity was applied to an evacuated tube containing certain gases,

00:38:19 ►

a nearby plate covered with barium, platino-cyanide, emitted a visible glow.

00:38:24 ►

a nearby plate covered with barium, platino cyanide, emitted a visible glow.

00:38:33 ►

And the next year, in 1896, Antoine-Henri Becquerel found that these same metal-producing emanations were being emitted from uranium.

00:38:36 ►

Radioactivity had been discovered.

00:38:43 ►

But it was just in the following year, at 11.45 a.m. on the 23rd of November of 1897,

00:38:46 ►

that Arthur Hefter consumed an alkaloid that he had isolated from the peyote, dumpling cactus, brought to the Western world by the irrepressible

00:38:51 ►

pharmacologist Louis Levine. As Hefter wrote in his notes, and this is a quotation following 150

00:38:57 ►

milligrams of mescaline, from time to time dots with the most brilliant colors floated across the field of vision.

00:39:09 ►

Later on, landscapes, halls, architectural scenes also appeared.

00:39:12 ►

Muslin had also been discovered.

00:39:19 ►

During the 1920s and 1930s, both worlds, that of the physical sciences involving radiation and that of the psychopharmacological sciences involving psychotropic materials,

00:39:24 ►

and that of the psychopharmacological sciences involving psychotropic materials continued to develop without any clear sense of polarity,

00:39:28 ►

without the mine is good and yours is evil duality that was soon to come.

00:39:34 ►

Radioactivity and radiation were becoming the mainstays of medicine.

00:39:39 ►

X-ray photography was invaluable in diagnosis,

00:39:41 ►

and radium therapy was broadly used in treatment.

00:39:45 ►

Controlled and localized radiation could destroy malignant tissue while sparing the host.

00:39:51 ►

And in the area of psychology, there were parallel developments.

00:39:55 ►

The theories of Freud and Jung were being developed into increasingly useful clinical

00:39:59 ►

tools and approaches to mental illness.

00:40:02 ►

And the basis of experimental psychology was laid in the pioneering studies

00:40:06 ►

of Pavlov.

00:40:08 ►

Another coincidence in timing, which in retrospect

00:40:10 ►

started a dividing of science

00:40:12 ►

onto separate paths,

00:40:13 ►

occurred during World War II.

00:40:16 ►

In the late 1942,

00:40:18 ►

Enrico Fermi and several other scientists

00:40:20 ►

at the University of Chicago

00:40:22 ►

demonstrated for the first time ever

00:40:24 ►

that nuclear fission could be achieved and could be controlled by man. The age of unlimited power and freedom

00:40:30 ►

from dependency upon our dwindling fossil reserves had begun. Just the next year, at

00:40:37 ►

4.20 p.m. on the 19th of April, Albert Hoffman consumed a measured amount of a compound which

00:40:42 ►

he had first synthesized some five years earlier.

00:40:46 ►

As Hoffman subsequently reported,

00:40:49 ►

as a quotation following 250 micrograms,

00:40:52 ►

after the crisis of confusion and despair,

00:40:57 ►

I began to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted.

00:41:02 ►

Collideoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me,

00:41:06 ►

alternating, variegated, opening and closing themselves in circles and spirals.

00:41:08 ►

LSD had also been discovered.

00:41:11 ►

But then, still,

00:41:13 ►

and up until the last decade,

00:41:14 ►

it was the rich promise of the nuclear age,

00:41:17 ►

first with the power and potential of fission,

00:41:20 ►

and later with the virtually limitless potential

00:41:22 ►

of fusion energy

00:41:22 ►

that carried the banner and the hopes of man.

00:41:27 ►

And the area of the hallucinogenics was categorized as negative,

00:41:30 ►

psychosis-imitating, psychotomimetic.

00:41:35 ►

It was not until sometime in the 1970s

00:41:39 ►

that a strange and a fascinating and a rather frightening reversal of roles took place.

00:41:47 ►

The knowledge of nuclear fission and fusion took on a death-loving aspect,

00:41:52 ►

with country after country joining the fraternity of those skilled in the capacity for the eradication of the human experiment.

00:41:59 ►

And to have such power leads to the threat to use such power, which in time will actually lead to its use.

00:42:07 ►

But, as I said earlier, when one thing develops,

00:42:10 ►

there seems to spring forth a balancing, a compensatory counterpart.

00:42:13 ►

This balance can be realized with the psychedelic drugs.

00:42:17 ►

What had been simply tools for the study of psychosis at best,

00:42:21 ►

or for escapist self-gratification at worst,

00:42:24 ►

suddenly assume the character of

00:42:26 ►

tools of enlightenment and of some form of transcendental communication.

00:42:31 ►

If man’s alter ego, his thanatos, had been entrusted with the imperpetual knowledge of

00:42:37 ►

how he can completely destroy himself and this extraordinary experiment, then some development must occur at the eros side of his psyche

00:42:47 ►

that will and must afford the learning of how to live with this professional knowledge.

00:42:54 ►

It is a communication between these two sides of the mind

00:42:56 ►

that requires an extraordinary vocabulary.

00:43:00 ►

Where do these words come from, the words of this vocabulary?

00:43:04 ►

All depend upon an intimate insight into the working of the human mind,

00:43:08 ►

but this can be approached in many ways.

00:43:11 ►

The study of religion, of meditation, of self-yielding, provides a peace,

00:43:17 ►

but in my mind also tends toward a retreat and hence a capitulation.

00:43:23 ►

The efforts to amalgamate

00:43:25 ►

the two sides of the mind

00:43:26 ►

as seen in the Tao of physics

00:43:27 ►

and the rich findings

00:43:28 ►

of parallelisms

00:43:29 ►

between the Eastern

00:43:30 ►

and Western philosophies

00:43:31 ►

may eventually explain all

00:43:33 ►

and allow some unification

00:43:35 ►

for the human purpose.

00:43:37 ►

But I feel,

00:43:37 ►

along with many others,

00:43:39 ►

that the efforts

00:43:39 ►

being invested

00:43:40 ►

in the technology of destruction

00:43:42 ►

does not allow sufficient time.

00:43:45 ►

It is possibly only with the psychedelic drugs

00:43:47 ►

that words of vocabulary can be established

00:43:49 ►

which might tunnel through the subconscious

00:43:52 ►

between the conflicting aspects of the mind and psyche.

00:43:56 ►

It is here that I feel my skill lies.

00:43:59 ►

And this is exactly why I do what I do.

00:44:02 ►

Where do we stand as of today?

00:44:05 ►

In the last handful of years,

00:44:07 ►

the forces of government and nationalism

00:44:08 ►

have amassed an unprecedented arsenal

00:44:10 ►

of destructive power.

00:44:12 ►

The power is in the current arsenals

00:44:14 ►

of the world,

00:44:15 ►

if restructured into Hiroshima-strength weapons,

00:44:19 ►

to detonate one bomb every minute,

00:44:21 ►

on the minute,

00:44:22 ►

for the next two years.

00:44:25 ►

And the rationalization, the rationalized need to do so is becoming manifest at a frightening pace.

00:44:31 ►

But in the last handful of years, a number of tools of communication have increased at a like rate.

00:44:38 ►

There are currently nearly 200 psychedelic drugs known and described,

00:44:42 ►

some touching at one, some at another, of the fibers that unify

00:44:45 ►

our minds.

00:44:47 ►

By learning each of their structures of sensory communication in turn, we might find a form

00:44:52 ►

of communication that would disarm our destructive compulsion.

00:44:56 ►

And indeed, what form of tools are now available to us?

00:45:00 ►

Some of the tools that are available, or rather that have been available, are the widely publicized drugs of psychopharmacology, such as mesclit, psilocybin, DOM, LSD.

00:45:11 ►

These drugs played a role in defining the transition between drugs as entertainment, escape, turn on, and drugs as instructive vehicles for learning, enlightenment, and insight, but at quite a price.

00:45:22 ►

for learning, enlightenment, and insight,

00:45:24 ►

but at quite a price.

00:45:27 ►

They had a high profile at the time that the scheduled drug laws were written,

00:45:29 ►

and thus were made illegal and are not available.

00:45:33 ►

However, in their place,

00:45:34 ►

there are now many, many other materials,

00:45:36 ►

some more limited in their instructive capacity,

00:45:38 ►

and some perhaps even richer.

00:45:40 ►

And for everyone today, there will be ten tomorrow.

00:45:43 ►

Let me describe a small sampling of the recently born materials a bit more in detail.

00:45:50 ►

These are examples, with some quotations in some instances, of experiments in which there have been actually definitions of some aspect of sensory teasing apart of the complex sensorium attack and effects that these materials can have.

00:46:08 ►

DIPT is an abbreviation of NN-diisopropylcryptamine, a drug unique among the psychedelics in that

00:46:15 ►

it expresses a distortion in, or to an extent, a synthesis with the process of auditory

00:46:20 ►

intergrate.

00:46:22 ►

It is perhaps one of the less available senses to be teased apart for special study.

00:46:27 ►

Many of the close relatives, as you well know,

00:46:29 ►

deal with the visual process

00:46:32 ►

and in some way will change or synthesize

00:46:35 ►

or modify the visual integrity,

00:46:38 ►

but a rather interesting distinction

00:46:40 ►

between the drug-induced psychosis

00:46:41 ►

and endogenous schizophrenia

00:46:43 ►

is that very often in the latter

00:46:46 ►

the primary sensory character

00:46:50 ►

that is affected is the auditory influence.

00:46:54 ►

A quotation following 20 milligrams of DIPT.

00:46:58 ►

The telephone sounds partly underwater.

00:47:01 ►

Here are signs of a pitch change on radio.

00:47:05 ►

The absolute pitch

00:47:06 ►

down a major third.

00:47:08 ►

Chord on the piano

00:47:09 ►

sounds out of tune

00:47:10 ►

quite flat.

00:47:11 ►

Music terrible,

00:47:12 ►

unlistenable.

00:47:13 ►

The other senses

00:47:14 ►

seemed in no way affected.

00:47:16 ►

If I were deaf,

00:47:17 ►

I would have thought

00:47:17 ►

this an inactive drug.

00:47:20 ►

Several hours

00:47:20 ►

after ingestion

00:47:21 ►

of the material,

00:47:22 ►

this note.

00:47:23 ►

Hearing normal,

00:47:24 ►

piano back in tune.

00:47:28 ►

MDNA, or MDA, is abbreviation for 3,4-methylendioxy-methamphetamine.

00:47:33 ►

It’s a tool of communication that has shown, in recent years,

00:47:37 ►

an extraordinary utility in opening communication between individuals.

00:47:41 ►

This has promoted its use in psychotherapy,

00:47:43 ►

but has given promise as well

00:47:45 ►

as a vehicle for intrapersonal communication.

00:47:50 ►

This particular drug has been used clinically

00:47:52 ►

in many applications

00:47:53 ►

and these today probably number in the thousands

00:47:57 ►

and it has commanded a remarkably good record

00:47:59 ►

of positive results.

00:48:01 ►

A quotation following 120 milligrams.

00:48:04 ►

We kept up a lively conversation

00:48:06 ►

covering many interesting aspects of our various family relationships. The conversation was

00:48:11 ►

unusually insightful and free of defensiveness. And following a 40 milligram supplement at the

00:48:17 ►

two-hour point, Jean glowed with energy, became very beautiful. We talked freely and openly.

00:48:23 ►

Every bush and plant looks utterly alive.

00:48:25 ►

I am entranced

00:48:26 ►

by a large rock.

00:48:28 ►

As I look at its surface,

00:48:29 ►

I see the surface

00:48:30 ►

of a planet

00:48:31 ►

with mountains and valleys.

00:48:33 ►

Little crystals of mica

00:48:34 ►

are like jewels.

00:48:37 ►

Another material,

00:48:38 ►

2Cb,

00:48:40 ►

is the abbreviation

00:48:41 ►

for 2,5-dimethoxy-4-bromophenethylamine,

00:48:44 ►

a tool and a word of vocabulary

00:48:46 ►

which ties the mental process directly and constructively

00:48:50 ►

into the physical soma.

00:48:52 ►

The analgesic effects experienced with many,

00:48:55 ►

if not most, of the psychedelic drugs

00:48:57 ►

are not present with 2C-B.

00:48:59 ►

On the contrary, there is an increased body awareness of every kind,

00:49:02 ►

including skin sensitivity,

00:49:04 ►

heightened responsiveness to smells,

00:49:06 ►

tastes, to sexual stimulation.

00:49:09 ►

One experiences increased consciousness

00:49:11 ►

of physical health and energy,

00:49:12 ►

or, on the other hand,

00:49:14 ►

sharpened awareness of any body imbalance or discomfort.

00:49:18 ►

2C-B allows rich visual imagery

00:49:20 ►

and intense eyes-closed fantasy

00:49:21 ►

without cluttering up of the mental field

00:49:24 ►

with too many elaborations. A quotation following 20 milligrams. Along with the awareness of the body and the

00:49:31 ►

ability to deeply enjoy the fact that one is a physical as well as a spiritual being,

00:49:36 ►

the experience of 2CB allows exploration as far as one needs to go. There is at all times

00:49:42 ►

full connection with all parts of oneself, the emotional and

00:49:46 ►

the intellectual, the intuitive and the instinctual. It is a superb tool for learning and for growth,

00:49:54 ►

and 2C-B allows one to recover baseline within 6 to 8 hours using a maximum dosage of 25

00:49:59 ►

milligrams, usually lower in the area of 18 to 20. Another drug mentioned earlier, ketamine,

00:50:07 ►

is abbreviation for 2-orthochlorophenol-2-methylaminocyclohexanone,

00:50:13 ►

the antithesis of 2C-B,

00:50:15 ►

in that it effectively separates the mind and the body.

00:50:18 ►

This allows the mind a separate and constructive state

00:50:21 ►

apart from the physical groundings of the body.

00:50:23 ►

Although the primary clinical application

00:50:25 ►

of ketamine

00:50:26 ►

is as a dissociative anesthetic,

00:50:28 ►

an increasingly important

00:50:30 ►

direction of study

00:50:30 ►

is now being directed

00:50:32 ►

to the psychological

00:50:33 ►

loosening that it allows.

00:50:37 ►

MAL and CPM

00:50:38 ►

are abbreviations

00:50:39 ►

of the compounds

00:50:40 ►

that are fascinating

00:50:41 ►

analogs of mescaline,

00:50:42 ►

namely 4-methyl-3,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine and 4-cyclopropylmethyl-3,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine

00:50:45 ►

and 4-cyclopropylmethyl-3,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine,

00:50:49 ►

two compounds that activate opposite sides of the sensorium.

00:50:53 ►

The former provokes an intense visual distortion

00:50:57 ►

at the retinal level

00:50:58 ►

with consequential bizarre interpretations.

00:51:01 ►

The latter displays its effectiveness

00:51:03 ►

in the fantasy counterpart,

00:51:05 ►

seen only with the eyes closed.

00:51:07 ►

Following 65 milligrams of MAL,

00:51:10 ►

a quotation,

00:51:11 ►

within two hours, intense effect,

00:51:13 ►

beautiful, diuretic,

00:51:15 ►

good connections between parts of myself,

00:51:18 ►

continual fantasy and imagery,

00:51:20 ►

lovely experience of the erotic with husband.

00:51:22 ►

Around 12 hours, excellent solid sleep

00:51:24 ►

with clear, balanced dreams.

00:51:27 ►

Following 70 milligrams of CPM,

00:51:29 ►

a two-hour strong effect but no visual.

00:51:32 ►

Wonderful locking into music,

00:51:34 ►

deep loving, erotic very good,

00:51:37 ►

with eyes closed, intense colorful fantasy,

00:51:40 ►

much like LSD at times.

00:51:42 ►

No sleep before 18 hours.

00:51:45 ►

Lest anyone should have the impression, by the way,

00:51:47 ►

that research in this area leads always to God

00:51:49 ►

and to insight and to deeper experiences in loving,

00:51:52 ►

let me mention an example of a compound called 4-TASB,

00:51:56 ►

which is 4-thioethyl-3-ethoxy-5-methoxyphenethylamine,

00:52:01 ►

following a 100 milligram exposure.

00:52:04 ►

At about two hours, pleasant and positive,

00:52:06 ►

peaceful feelings, very good humored. Later, sleep impossible until early morning, and then only

00:52:12 ►

about two hours. All next day could not rest or sleep. Feeling of nerve endings raw and active,

00:52:18 ►

anxiety over heartbeat, frightening effects on nervous system. Depression, back of neck sore from tension.

00:52:26 ►

My first experience of being able to detect what felt like continual electrical impulses between

00:52:31 ►

nerve endings. Had the impression that if I allowed the wrong sequence of images to flow in my mind,

00:52:37 ►

I might experience some sort of convulsion, or might at least a kind of mental shock,

00:52:43 ►

or shorting out. When I tried to sleep,

00:52:45 ►

eyes closed fantasies

00:52:46 ►

became intensely negative

00:52:47 ►

and threatening.

00:52:49 ►

I could not smooth out

00:52:50 ►

the nervous system,

00:52:51 ►

felt very vulnerable.

00:52:52 ►

Do not repeat.

00:52:57 ►

Alpha-O-DMS is an abbreviation

00:52:59 ►

of 5-methoxy-alpha-methyltryptamines,

00:53:01 ►

an analog of a neurotransmitter

00:53:03 ►

serotonin that has been

00:53:04 ►

tailored chemically

00:53:05 ►

to allow it to enter into the CNS,

00:53:07 ►

into the brain.

00:53:09 ►

It is a very potent endo-psychedelic

00:53:11 ►

that touches closely on those areas

00:53:13 ►

involved with primal energies.

00:53:15 ►

Several researchers experienced dreams

00:53:17 ►

of catastrophic events

00:53:18 ►

after exploring this material.

00:53:21 ►

One researcher, however,

00:53:21 ►

had a dream which involved

00:53:23 ►

as a complete science fiction scenario. He found it absolutely enjoyable and is still thinking of writing it up and sending it

00:53:29 ►

into a publisher. These are only about a half a dozen or so of many scores of fascinating compounds

00:53:35 ►

that are now available for the study of this developing vocabulary. This is where we are at

00:53:39 ►

the moment. Some materials show incredible promise and some suggest caution. But what might we expect

00:53:46 ►

to emerge in the future? Let’s look at the past history of other areas of psychotropic chemistry.

00:53:51 ►

A few decades ago, it was marveled at that drugs such as the opiates, including morphine and

00:53:57 ►

heroin, and moperidine could have such an exacting influence on the brain’s integrity.

00:54:02 ►

Then it became known that there were natural factors in the brain

00:54:05 ►

that had these actions and that there were specific sites in the brain that were pre-designed to

00:54:10 ►

respond to them. There were the enkephalins and their fragmented portions known as the endorphins,

00:54:16 ►

which were derived from the cephalic process and related to morphine.

00:54:20 ►

These met a person’s need for the suppression of pain. Perhaps there are end-cadelics from the psychedelics, and specific end-escalins from mescalin yet to be discovered,

00:54:31 ►

that might relate to these communicative factors, which might be connected and eventually related to the natural receptor sites in the brain for transcendental communication.

00:54:45 ►

Their structures may someday be known.

00:54:47 ►

Their functions may someday be understood.

00:54:50 ►

There are a multitude of tenuous threads

00:54:52 ►

that tie together the fragile structure

00:54:53 ►

of the human spirit.

00:54:55 ►

The life-giving with the death-demanding side.

00:54:58 ►

The exalted voice with the mundane.

00:55:00 ►

The strongly centered self

00:55:01 ►

with the drive toward dispersion

00:55:03 ►

and loss of center.

00:55:05 ►

These all coexist in all of us,

00:55:07 ►

but there is an essential blockade between these inner worlds

00:55:10 ►

which I truly feel can be penetrated only with the words and the tools

00:55:14 ►

and the understanding that may be most easily obtained

00:55:17 ►

through the area of psychedelic experiences.

00:55:20 ►

William Blake said in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,

00:55:23 ►

Man has no body distinct from his soul

00:55:25 ►

for that called body is a portion of soul

00:55:28 ►

discerned by the five senses

00:55:30 ►

the chief inlets of soul in this age

00:55:33 ►

energy is the only life and is from the body

00:55:37 ►

and reason is the bound or outward circumference of energy

00:55:41 ►

energy is eternal delight

00:55:43 ►

these are responses to a

00:55:46 ►

heartfelt need for some vocabulary to allow the establishment of a dialogue that might

00:55:51 ►

diffuse the accelerating mad moves toward extinction. My personal philosophy might well

00:55:58 ►

be lifted directly from Blake. I must create a system or be slaved by another man’s I may be wrong

00:56:07 ►

but I must do what I’m doing

00:56:10 ►

and I will do what I can

00:56:13 ►

as fast as I can

00:56:14 ►

and for the next 30 years, he continued to do all that he could, and as fast as he could safely do it.

00:56:34 ►

In some ways, the older you get, the easier it is to deal with the deaths of those that are your age and those who are even older.

00:56:44 ►

are your age and those who are even older, having already lost everyone in my own family that I grew up with and now watching those almost forgotten high school and college classmates

00:56:49 ►

of mine die, well, news of yet another death in our extended family seems less troubling

00:56:55 ►

each time they occur.

00:56:57 ►

But after hearing the news of Sasha’s death, even though it has long been anticipated and

00:57:03 ►

even though I knew that it was imminent.

00:57:05 ►

The news hit hard, nonetheless.

00:57:08 ►

It was as if, for the past 30 years, I’ve been in the middle of a huge rock concert,

00:57:13 ►

but suddenly the music ended.

00:57:14 ►

The lights came up, and in the silence, now we’re all looking around and wondering,

00:57:20 ►

well, what next?

00:57:23 ►

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

00:57:28 ►

Sail on, dear Sasha. Sail on.

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