667 - A Conversation with Leonard Pickard

Program Notes §

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Date this lecture was recorded: April 2021
Guest speaker:
Leonard Pickard
Today’s Bicycle Day Podcast features a conversation that Leonard Pickard recently had with members of the London Psychedelic Society. After more than 20 years in prison, Leonard now is free to tell us about his prison ordeal and what his life is like today.
 

 
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666 - Winning the War on Drugs

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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.

00:00:24 ► §

And this morning I received an email from Leonard Picard, and he wished us all a happy bicycle day.

00:00:31 ► §

And he also sent a recording to a recent conversation that he had with his friends at the London Psychedelic Society.

00:00:38 ► §

Well, I know that you’ve been wondering how he’s doing now that he’s been released from prison after more than 20 years.

00:00:45 ► §

So, without any further ado, here is Leonard Picard.

00:00:50 ► §

Hello, good evening everyone. My name is Ania Oleksiuk. I’m one of the co-directors of the

00:00:55 ► §

Psychedelic Society. I feel very, very honored to have you here tonight during this special event

00:01:02 ► §

with a very, very special special guest William Leonard Picard.

00:01:07 ► §

Before I invite Leonard I just want to briefly share a fascinating story of his life with you all.

00:01:15 ► §

On July 27, 2020, Leonard was released from prison after serving 20 years of two life sentences

00:01:26 ► §

serving 20 years of two life sentences for producing what the United States government alleged was 90% of words LSD. He is now employed in New Mexico defending the rights of the Hispanic

00:01:35 ► §

community. During his incarceration under the most extreme conditions he wrote in pencil over five years, a semi-autobiographical book,

00:01:47 ► §

The Rose of Paracelsus, which is a renowned psychedelic masterpiece.

00:01:53 ► §

Prior to his arrest, Leonard was the deputy director of drug policy at the University of

00:01:59 ► §

California, conducting research on drug issues in the United States, Russia and Middle East.

00:02:06 ► §

He continues those inquiries during his sentence as well.

00:02:10 ► §

And the key focus of his research in drug policy is opioid epidemic in the United States and worldwide.

00:02:18 ► §

Without further ado, I would like to invite Leonard on screen here.

00:02:24 ► §

Hello, Leonard. How are you? Without further ado, I would like to invite Leonard on screen here.

00:02:25 ► §

Hello, Leonard.

00:02:26 ► §

How are you?

00:02:27 ► §

Hello, Anya.

00:02:28 ► §

Looking well.

00:02:30 ► §

Lovely to see you again.

00:02:39 ► §

And hello to our listeners from the great southwest on the high mesas and plains of the great American desert.

00:02:41 ► §

Wonderful.

00:02:43 ► §

Thank you so much for being here. It’s such an honor to have you as a guest. I read about you years, years ago, and having you today as a guest is such a privilege, and I feel really, really happy. So thank you so much I’m very much a strong supporter of the London Psychedelic Society and you and colleagues and dear friends in London. Very much appreciated.

00:03:14 ► §

Thank you so much. That’s super kind. So, Leonard, please let me know, how are you today and what are you doing nowadays after your release from jail?

00:03:25 ► §

How are you today and what are you doing nowadays after your release from jail? Well, let me correct that briefly.

00:03:27 ► §

Jail is an interesting word which is applied to those with very short sentences for minor infractions, up to a year in little cages. My situation, however, was 20 years in a maximum security federal prison, a completely different circumstance for more serious offenses, some of which I can barely describe, some of the individuals there.

00:04:01 ► §

Great violence.

00:04:01 ► §

Great violence.

00:04:08 ► §

I want to get into the stories from, well, would you call it prison?

00:04:11 ► §

Then I suppose we can call it prison to keep it short.

00:04:14 ► §

I want to go back to this in a bit, but I’m really curious.

00:04:15 ► §

How is your life now?

00:04:16 ► §

What are you up to today? And how have you been spending your time since you got out?

00:04:21 ► §

Well, upon release, I began to settle in Santa Fe. I have family here, a son here,

00:04:29 ► §

now at Boulder. And I, first few mornings, I walked on the trails. Santa Fe has hundreds of

00:04:37 ► §

miles of trails in the dry desert. It’s a high desert plateau. To the west, one can see far mesas with clouds at the bases, long, many miles of huge vistas, wide open spaces, as they say, ultra blue sky, often cloudless, with juniper and piñon and mesquite, exotic southwestern plants.

00:05:05 ► §

juniper and pinon and mesquite exotic southwestern plants.

00:05:08 ► §

And then as I mentioned, behind me a few miles is the Sangre de Cristo Ridge,

00:05:11 ► §

named by early Spanish settlers.

00:05:14 ► §

Many dry riverbeds called arroyos.

00:05:18 ► §

So we can walk in trails by the arroyos

00:05:20 ► §

as the townspeople often do in the morning.

00:05:24 ► §

So in the early mornings of the first few days

00:05:27 ► §

and weeks of release, I would wake at dawn

00:05:30 ► §

as was my practice just before dawn

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and go on these lengthy walks for hours,

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watching the sunrise over the desert and the far maces.

00:05:41 ► §

And little bunnies would run across the trail in front of me

00:05:44 ► §

and townspeople, girls with pigtails would come jogging by

00:05:48 ► §

and go, good morning, hi.

00:05:51 ► §

And I hadn’t experienced this kind of a gentleness

00:05:55 ► §

and soft reception of society in decades.

00:06:02 ► §

In prison, everyone was, well, half the people were armed with homemade knives made from stolen metal.

00:06:11 ► §

One would see on the walls stars from the sharpening of the knives crisscrossing back and forth to get an edge on them.

00:06:21 ► §

The larger ones were called bone crushers, they were a foot or foot or foot or more long

00:06:28 ► §

quite frightening but but santa fe since you ask is a charming bohemian artistic community

00:06:36 ► §

full of artists and writers well there’s also a an academic many academics here that are part of the Los Alamos National Laboratories just to the north on the high Mesa there.

00:06:52 ► §

The origin of the first atomic bomb.

00:06:55 ► §

The blast site called Trinity is only a few miles south of Santa Fe.

00:07:01 ► §

So we have many lab people wandering around.

00:07:04 ► §

But mostly artists and writers

00:07:07 ► §

all of the housing

00:07:12 ► §

this holds true for the entire state of New Mexico

00:07:16 ► §

is made of adobe

00:07:18 ► §

brown walls with little blue wooden doors

00:07:22 ► §

by state law everything is adobe,

00:07:25 ► §

even the petrol stations, if you will.

00:07:31 ► §

The federal and state buildings are all adobe.

00:07:35 ► §

So it has a certain charm,

00:07:36 ► §

which is not seen in other parts of America.

00:07:40 ► §

It’s on truly, deeply Native American

00:07:44 ► §

and Hispanic influence,

00:07:47 ► §

a real mix of cultures.

00:07:51 ► §

Nice.

00:07:52 ► §

So you’ve been surrounded by beauty and nature,

00:07:56 ► §

which is such a big contrast, obviously,

00:08:00 ► §

to what you just described with all the violence

00:08:03 ► §

and really, really horrible setting.

00:08:09 ► §

So how do you feel?

00:08:12 ► §

Do you feel full of life now that you’re out?

00:08:15 ► §

Or is that quite a lot to get used to?

00:08:18 ► §

How do you feel inside?

00:08:20 ► §

The first few days were, of course, like being born.

00:08:24 ► §

One was just learning to walk and to speak and to feel again, as though great barriers were being dissolved and released.

00:08:43 ► §

lots of people personally, both personally and online,

00:08:47 ► §

and having a glorious time making new friends and acquaintances and interacting

00:08:52 ► §

and working steadfastly on various projects.

00:08:57 ► §

So it’s a very happy time

00:08:59 ► §

and a relaxing time.

00:09:04 ► §

I could not be more happy.

00:09:09 ► §

I have a loving family and many friends, some of whom are listening to this today, and I’m well supported.

00:09:20 ► §

It’s a great gift of grace, a gift from above in a way.

00:09:25 ► §

Being released was something of a miracle.

00:09:29 ► §

There were quite hurdles, enormous hurdles to overcome.

00:09:35 ► §

We can talk about the process of release, if you wish, later in this broadcast, but extremely rare and extremely wonderful.

00:09:48 ► §

Well, we are all happier out.

00:09:51 ► §

There was a lot of people kind of in the background here in the UK

00:09:55 ► §

and in the States who are big fans and supporters.

00:09:59 ► §

And I know Julian Vane was writing to you.

00:10:02 ► §

Yes, he was writing to you.

00:10:05 ► §

Hello, Julian. This is your and Nikki and Kevin. Yes.

00:10:09 ► §

He’s got a number of chapters in my book on a podcast by Kat and Alexa

00:10:15 ► §

Lakey and New York and Santa Cruz are now are listening today.

00:10:21 ► §

So Julian has been just wonderful throughout this whole thing.

00:10:25 ► §

And before release was a great supporter, uh, spoke at Ben’s, uh, breaking convention

00:10:31 ► §

at Greenwich and in support of everything.

00:10:36 ► §

And it was that type of kindness, that type of heart that Julian brought forth, Julian and Nikki, that helped sustain me in the darkness

00:10:48 ► §

when there seemed to be no hope at all, not a vestige of it.

00:10:57 ► §

But Julian and Nikki kindly wrote and spoke on the phone and were very comforting and from that human kindness

00:11:07 ► §

somehow there was the courage to go go forward and the doors opened quite miraculously

00:11:18 ► §

thank you um so you shared a bit but would you be able to share a bit more about your time in this high-security prison?

00:11:28 ► §

And are there any particular stories that you want to or are willing to share with us that have the most profound effect on you in some way?

00:11:53 ► §

The hardest part was not the 30-foot walls or the razor wire or the many guard towers or the loudspeakers or the indignities or abuse or the specter of dying there or the

00:12:03 ► §

endless coldness of it all.

00:12:08 ► §

The greatest difficulty for me was the loss of loved ones.

00:12:14 ► §

My family has, in large part,

00:12:18 ► §

become very close.

00:12:23 ► §

And I’m very blessed with three children but there was also there are

00:12:34 ► §

also great losses of the heart unspeakable losses as though one were deeply in love and watched it slowly die.

00:12:49 ► §

And that was the most difficult part,

00:12:52 ► §

not the trials or the movement

00:12:56 ► §

or the continual leg chains, arm chains,

00:13:01 ► §

belly chains, handcuffs,

00:13:04 ► §

on and off, on and off, endlessly

00:13:06 ► §

the rattling of chains

00:13:07 ► §

the slamming of steel doors

00:13:10 ► §

the late night screaming of men

00:13:12 ► §

endlessly

00:13:14 ► §

that was not

00:13:16 ► §

as difficult as the loss of love

00:13:19 ► §

watching love slowly die

00:13:23 ► §

watching hopelessness come in.

00:13:26 ► §

Of course, I’m not alone in these feelings.

00:13:30 ► §

Every person incarcerated for decades experiences this.

00:13:38 ► §

And many never see a reawakening of the love and affection

00:13:43 ► §

that I’ve felt in the last few months.

00:13:47 ► §

Many have no contact with the outside world.

00:13:50 ► §

I was privileged to have my family, in large part, very close and friends very close.

00:13:58 ► §

It sustained me throughout this period.

00:14:00 ► §

But there are many men, many in prison that have no communication with

00:14:08 ► §

family or the outside world.

00:14:09 ► §

So prison becomes their world.

00:14:11 ► §

This is it.

00:14:13 ► §

The small village, extremely violent tribe.

00:14:20 ► §

And that is their reality.

00:14:22 ► §

And that is their reality.

00:14:41 ► §

I think we will see decades, hopefully decades or shorter, but certainly a century hence, we’ll look back upon this time as uncivilized in terms of long-term incarceration for nonviolent crimes. Not to say that some individuals should not be restrained.

00:14:48 ► §

I routinely had lunch with murderers, violent rapists,

00:14:58 ► §

people whose crimes were so severe,

00:15:02 ► §

I cannot describe them to you in this podcast,

00:15:07 ► §

nor would I describe them to my family.

00:15:10 ► §

Crimes too horrific to be discussed among sensitive individuals.

00:15:18 ► §

Being surrounded closely by such persons was quite the experience.

00:15:25 ► §

At the same time, there were many who should not have been there

00:15:29 ► §

or many who society would profit more greatly

00:15:35 ► §

by putting them electronic monitoring at home

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who would be perfectly punished by having the restraints

00:15:42 ► §

of electronic monitoring adequately punished for whatever infraction.

00:15:49 ► §

My favorite recollection and perhaps one person of great meaning to me,

00:15:58 ► §

incarcerated now, is Ross Ulbrich.

00:16:02 ► §

is Ross Ulbrich.

00:16:07 ► §

Young Ross Ulbrich was the founder of Silk Road,

00:16:11 ► §

a Bitcoin trading platform.

00:16:15 ► §

We became close friends.

00:16:18 ► §

Ross appeared in the last year,

00:16:21 ► §

and we spent many laps around the track talking.

00:16:24 ► §

He’s a very fine-looking young man,

00:16:27 ► §

perhaps 36 now,

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a mechanical engineer out of Penn.

00:16:33 ► §

Has a beautiful French girlfriend that comes to see him every weekend,

00:16:35 ► §

a programmer.

00:16:37 ► §

In the visiting room,

00:16:38 ► §

it was heartbreaking to watch the two

00:16:40 ► §

do their one embrace hello,

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just a few seconds,

00:16:44 ► §

their one embrace goodbye. Very a few seconds, their one embrace goodbye.

00:16:47 ► §

Very much in love, obviously, and the thought of Ross being there forever with his life sentence was truly heartbreaking to watch.

00:16:57 ► §

I strongly encourage Ross’s many supporters to continue that.

00:17:05 ► §

He loves to hear from people.

00:17:08 ► §

He meditates, reads endlessly, writes.

00:17:13 ► §

He’s a gentle soul.

00:17:16 ► §

And five or ten years is quite enough for his particular infraction.

00:17:22 ► §

Even Elon Musk recently stated that

00:17:25 ► §

the life sentence for Mr. Albrecht

00:17:29 ► §

seemed excessive.

00:17:32 ► §

And knowing him personally

00:17:33 ► §

and seeing the graciousness of his spirit,

00:17:38 ► §

I would tend to agree.

00:17:40 ► §

So that’s one memory of one individual.

00:17:44 ► §

But there’s so many individuals.

00:17:46 ► §

You understand in the penitentiary I just left, there were 2,000 people, like a small village.

00:17:56 ► §

There were no cars, of course.

00:17:57 ► §

You walk everywhere, perhaps the same 50 yards back and forth to the food service area several times a day or to our tattered library

00:18:06 ► §

several times a day or the dirt playing field several times a day and that’s it.

00:18:13 ► §

The small 50-yard loop incessantly repeated forever. But while doing so, one is passing people one knows very well, because one sees, we see each other every day.

00:18:28 ► §

This long stream of good morning, good morning, good morning, hi, hi, hi, hi.

00:18:34 ► §

Like a close-knit, tight little village that can occasionally break out into a homicide or a beating.

00:18:44 ► §

But by and large, relatively tranquil

00:18:49 ► §

and possessing of some remarkable individuals,

00:18:55 ► §

some demonic individuals,

00:18:58 ► §

some courageous individuals,

00:19:01 ► §

of relative innocence.

00:19:05 ► §

What a world. And one thing that comes. What a world.

00:19:07 ► §

What a problem.

00:19:08 ► §

Yeah.

00:19:09 ► §

One thing that comes to mind is that victims of war on drugs

00:19:13 ► §

are not only people that are actually in prison,

00:19:16 ► §

but also their families, their kids, their loved ones, their friends.

00:19:21 ► §

Everybody’s a victim of that.

00:19:22 ► §

It’s a horrible war that really needs to end ASAP. Yes, everybody’s a victim of that. It’s a horrible war that really needs to end ASAP.

00:19:27 ► §

Yes, everybody’s a victim. You know, the pain is not just with the men, but with, or the women,

00:19:33 ► §

the 10% of the federal system are women. The pain is also with the families and children. I

00:19:53 ► §

and children, I feel a great loss and tenderness for my own children who were raised in the last 20 years, brought up, as the English say, in the last 20 years without their father.

00:20:00 ► §

Just a distant voice on an occasional phone call interrupted by admonitions that this call is indeed from a federal prison,

00:20:10 ► §

several times during a phone call,

00:20:14 ► §

but just 15 minutes in which one tries to express one’s feeling and love

00:20:20 ► §

and tries to encourage one’s children and tries to raise them

00:20:25 ► §

through the different stages of childhood and adolescence

00:20:29 ► §

and young manhood, young womanhood.

00:20:33 ► §

Quite remarkably, having done this, I am now great friends

00:20:40 ► §

and hopefully a father to my now grown children, 20 and 24.

00:20:47 ► §

We talk quite a lot and have a great time.

00:20:54 ► §

And the moments I can spend with them are the most precious.

00:21:00 ► §

So to sum up the prison years, I can say that

00:21:04 ► §

when all is stripped away, when one has lost job, career, hope, self-empowerment, possessions,

00:21:26 ► §

houses, cars, clothes,

00:21:29 ► §

everything, friends,

00:21:31 ► §

everything.

00:21:32 ► §

When one has lost everything,

00:21:36 ► §

self-respect.

00:21:37 ► §

All that remains,

00:21:39 ► §

all that remains

00:21:41 ► §

is the loved one’s family and children.

00:21:46 ► §

And that is the guiding light in an absurdly deep darkness.

00:21:58 ► §

So what kept you going?

00:22:01 ► §

You mentioned contact with people.

00:22:04 ► §

And what else gave you hope?

00:22:05 ► §

What made you go through all this horrible thing?

00:22:09 ► §

What kept you alive and not go completely crazy?

00:22:14 ► §

My practice in prison was to read.

00:22:19 ► §

I am a devoted reader.

00:22:29 ► §

I’m a devoted reader and the entertainment for the men we rolled in housing units, perhaps a hundred men with seven televisions hanging from the ceiling,

00:22:34 ► §

which were on from five 30 in the morning till 10 at night.

00:22:39 ► §

And often all night, seven televisions on different channels,

00:22:42 ► §

seven televisions on different channels something of a babysitter if you will

00:22:47 ► §

for people that often don’t read

00:22:52 ► §

a getaway

00:22:55 ► §

we took our vacations sometimes by watching film

00:22:59 ► §

in my case I and quite a few men did

00:23:04 ► §

took to reading.

00:23:08 ► §

So I had the pleasure of reading the great literature for 20 years.

00:23:15 ► §

It took two years to get through Dickens and Thackeray and Trollope and all the English greats.

00:23:22 ► §

And my reading stops with Virginia Woolf’s

00:23:26 ► §

death in 1943

00:23:27 ► §

so I was immersed in

00:23:29 ► §

Edwardian and Victorian

00:23:31 ► §

literature for 20 years

00:23:33 ► §

that means from waking

00:23:35 ► §

every minute of the day

00:23:37 ► §

when one wasn’t working on legal documents

00:23:40 ► §

in an attempt

00:23:41 ► §

to get home

00:23:42 ► §

in my case, one read.

00:23:48 ► §

Always a book in hand, wherever one went.

00:23:52 ► §

Occasional conversations, generally reading,

00:23:57 ► §

and through this, the worlds of the great authors

00:24:01 ► §

of the 19th century, primarily.

00:24:04 ► §

So I’m very fond of carriages and horses and ladies’ gowns

00:24:09 ► §

and mannered language of the 19th century.

00:24:17 ► §

At the same time, some technical, popular scientific technical works,

00:24:21 ► §

the Ray Kurzweil, the great thinker in artificial intelligence,

00:24:26 ► §

your own Nick Bostrom at Oxford

00:24:30 ► §

and the Future of Humanity Institute

00:24:32 ► §

at the Oxford Martin School.

00:24:35 ► §

I did quite a number of writings on the future of AI

00:24:39 ► §

and I became very enamored of reading Nick’s work.

00:24:45 ► §

Occasionally books would arrive, gifts from friends, always a joy,

00:24:49 ► §

along with letters.

00:24:53 ► §

One dear friend sent me a postcard twice a week for 20 years.

00:24:59 ► §

Beautiful, often hand-painted Japanese prints,

00:25:05 ► §

postcards with a kiss on it

00:25:07 ► §

or a line of poetry.

00:25:11 ► §

I kept them all.

00:25:12 ► §

I had a mountain of postcards

00:25:15 ► §

maybe 20 feet high

00:25:16 ► §

in a locker here in Santa Fe.

00:25:19 ► §

I couldn’t bear to lose one.

00:25:23 ► §

You should make a giant artwork out of all of them, put them all on a wall.

00:25:28 ► §

Yes, I agree. I couldn’t do that inside. We only could have five books.

00:25:34 ► §

Of course, I had maybe 20 or 30, but we had to keep things.

00:25:39 ► §

They were more concerned, really, about whether our bed was made

00:25:43 ► §

than whether things, growth experiences experiences were occurring in our lives.

00:25:50 ► §

There was one more thing you were busy when you were inside.

00:25:54 ► §

It was writing your own book, obviously, The Rose of Paracelsus.

00:25:58 ► §

And you wrote it with pen and paper or pencil and paper, right?

00:26:02 ► §

And can you tell us just a bit about

00:26:05 ► §

an unpinning story and the motives of the book?

00:26:11 ► §

Anja, you’ll have to rephrase.

00:26:14 ► §

What’s the question again? I’m so sorry.

00:26:16 ► §

Can you just tell us a bit about the story

00:26:18 ► §

and the motives of the book?

00:26:21 ► §

Oh, well, the story and the motives are quite different.

00:26:25 ► §

A great influence was the appearance at the facility of a leading poet and writer,

00:26:38 ► §

Professor Emeritus, Regents Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona, Richard Shelton, a well-known American poet,

00:26:47 ► §

well-published in the New Yorker and all about. Professor Shelton knows every poet, including

00:26:53 ► §

Aptashenko in Russia. Everyone comes through and stays at his little cabana in Tucson.

00:27:04 ► §

and stays at his little cabana in Tucson.

00:27:13 ► §

Professor Shelton would visit once a week where we had a few men who liked to write,

00:27:16 ► §

and somehow I became involved in that. And under his guidance and thoughtful tutoring and encouragement,

00:27:23 ► §

I managed to write The Rose over a period of five years

00:27:27 ► §

and actually read every word to Professor Shelton

00:27:31 ► §

for his feedback orally in our little narrow two hours

00:27:36 ► §

on Friday when he would appear.

00:27:39 ► §

Occasionally the class was disbanded due to violence

00:27:42 ► §

occurring in one part of the institution.

00:27:45 ► §

So guards would rush in with guns with pepper spray in them

00:27:48 ► §

and clear everybody out shouting and this sort of thing,

00:27:51 ► §

and search us, body search us as we leave.

00:27:54 ► §

A beautiful writer’s workshop where we’re simply discussing our thoughts and feelings.

00:28:03 ► §

Quite a contrast in worlds.

00:28:06 ► §

So being in Professor Shelton’s workshop

00:28:08 ► §

was like being treated as a graduate student,

00:28:13 ► §

like being treated as a human,

00:28:16 ► §

one who innately had respect,

00:28:19 ► §

which was something of a great novelty.

00:28:24 ► §

So the time with Sheleldon was very precious.

00:28:30 ► §

I learned a great deal.

00:28:32 ► §

He was delighted to see the book being published.

00:28:41 ► §

So that was the beginning of the rose.

00:28:44 ► §

I decided to write, but I didn’t know how.

00:28:53 ► §

So I learned to force myself to sit down for an hour, excuse me, half hour, an hour, an

00:29:00 ► §

hour a day and do two or 300 hundred words in pencil 6 p.m.

00:29:06 ► §

every day two or three hundred words not worrying so much about content or

00:29:12 ► §

style just getting it down getting out as the writers are admonished just open

00:29:18 ► §

a vein and let it bleed so a year went by.

00:29:27 ► §

By that time, I’d learned enough about writing.

00:29:39 ► §

So I looked at this massive 100,000-word manuscript of collected 6 p.m. writings for the last year and thought, this is hopeless.

00:29:44 ► §

There’s no way I can possibly edit or massage this into something coherent and tossed it into the trash.

00:29:51 ► §

And started again using the techniques I had learned over the past year,

00:29:58 ► §

but very thoughtfully trying to make something beautiful.

00:30:08 ► §

What I personally thought was beautiful,

00:30:11 ► §

because I don’t know how to satisfy a wide variety of individuals.

00:30:17 ► §

So I wrote something that I thought was interesting and beautiful.

00:30:24 ► §

And did it very seriously.

00:30:28 ► §

And of course, always reading, reading, reading constantly to see the,

00:30:36 ► §

also the essential beauty of the word craft of the great writers,

00:30:42 ► §

the way of sharing things.

00:30:46 ► §

And so I would dig into my memories of the world,

00:30:50 ► §

having not seen it in, oh, by then 15 years,

00:30:53 ► §

to remember what a field of flowers looked like,

00:30:58 ► §

or the sound of a stream,

00:31:01 ► §

or how children left or memories of situations I had been in personally

00:31:14 ► §

around the world over the years Berlin Bangkok London because these memories were fading quickly.

00:31:28 ► §

One doesn’t indulge in memories in prison.

00:31:31 ► §

That’s much too painful.

00:31:32 ► §

So the world, to me, was becoming very frail,

00:31:36 ► §

and I felt it was important to grasp at the last tendrils

00:31:40 ► §

and get them down on paper,

00:31:41 ► §

because someday someone somewhere might read this perhaps

00:31:46 ► §

and perhaps it would reach them or touch them or lift their heart or mind.

00:31:55 ► §

So without intent, Penn was put to paper.

00:32:03 ► §

And it became no longer a daily chore, but a pleasure.

00:32:10 ► §

One got into the zone where the feelings and the thoughts began to flow.

00:32:17 ► §

At that point, I could write for many hours or days,

00:32:22 ► §

or just pull back into the cell and get into these worlds

00:32:26 ► §

that were so pleasurable

00:32:31 ► §

and also painful to write about

00:32:33 ► §

that I felt there might be another

00:32:37 ► §

who might enjoy reading this.

00:32:39 ► §

And so in the editing process,

00:32:42 ► §

which is the great bulk of the writing,

00:32:44 ► §

I would try to make it

00:32:47 ► §

perfect.

00:32:48 ► §

Try to make each sentence seem like a little long poem.

00:32:55 ► §

And then I realized I could describe any event.

00:33:04 ► §

I could go wild.

00:33:06 ► §

I can indulge my appetites.

00:33:10 ► §

I could speak of extremes.

00:33:13 ► §

I could speak of hallucinatory states.

00:33:18 ► §

I could speak of the greatest pathos I’d seen,

00:33:23 ► §

of the impoverished of the world.

00:33:28 ► §

And so I did.

00:33:37 ► §

Beautiful.

00:33:38 ► §

Thank you so much for sharing.

00:33:40 ► §

And I encourage everyone to get a book

00:33:42 ► §

and read it and find out

00:33:44 ► §

further on.

00:33:45 ► §

It’s very beautifully written.

00:33:48 ► §

If you’re not an English native speaker, it might be difficult, but I think you’ll manage.

00:33:55 ► §

So near the start of the book, the protagonist describes an experience at a Zen Buddhist monastery.

00:34:02 ► §

And this is based on your own experience

00:34:05 ► §

from what I understand.

00:34:06 ► §

So what inspired you to follow the path of Buddhism?

00:34:10 ► §

And did having Buddhist practices help you

00:34:13 ► §

with the time spent in prison?

00:34:19 ► §

Absolutely.

00:34:20 ► §

The practice of meditation,

00:34:22 ► §

not so much the formal theologies of Buddhism,

00:34:27 ► §

of the Tibetan or Zen,

00:34:30 ► §

of Vipassana practices,

00:34:34 ► §

without the theology and the robes or the text,

00:34:38 ► §

but the simple practice of sitting meditation

00:34:41 ► §

daily.

00:34:46 ► §

I found it extremely hopeful, even necessary

00:34:53 ► §

to survive the mental and emotional force

00:35:00 ► §

in which I was captive.

00:35:05 ► §

At times, I’ve been in facilities where the screaming would not stop until three or four in the morning.

00:35:18 ► §

The doors clanging.

00:35:22 ► §

The sounds of thousands of voices and no cessation of the sounds of the voices,

00:35:30 ► §

the, if you will, the vulgarities of language,

00:35:36 ► §

the obscenities of the language so used in such a cavalier and frequent manner, often by those who had less command of language, to put it gently, within

00:35:55 ► §

this harshness and this despair, if you will, the practice of meditation, it’s like a peaceful pool, a clear, peaceful pool in which one simply went to one’s center and watched all these emotions go by.

00:36:20 ► §

And found a certain quietude and nourishment therein.

00:36:25 ► §

It’s like the green growing edge of some newly born plant that is flowering inside.

00:36:37 ► §

A refuge, as the Buddhists say, one of the great refuges.

00:36:44 ► §

So that was my personal practice in the late hours after a hard day,

00:36:54 ► §

laying down in a hard bunk,

00:36:56 ► §

surrounded by what might be considered a mausoleum.

00:37:01 ► §

considered a mausoleum.

00:37:18 ► §

And of course, before bed, it’s my practice to offer up prayers, being raised in the Christian faith as a child.

00:37:20 ► §

I would always offer a prayer before bed, not being able to sleep without it.

00:37:24 ► §

I would always offer a prayer before bed, not being able to sleep without it.

00:37:35 ► §

And so I would pray for my family, my children, my friends, my name.

00:37:43 ► §

When Sasha died, I said a small prayer for Sasha every night for a year I don’t know if

00:37:46 ► §

anyone heard it except myself but it was done in honor of him these days I might

00:37:59 ► §

put in a plug for Sasha’s new book now the listeners may not realize that the nature of drugs by Sasha Shogan, his collected lectures

00:38:09 ► §

is coming out in May, are down 300 pages. Many, many blurbs in

00:38:17 ► §

front by all sorts of individuals central to

00:38:23 ► §

psychedelic research.

00:38:29 ► §

I have a small afterwards personally in there.

00:38:34 ► §

Having sat through these lectures in 1987 and actually listened to Sasha Deliverland,

00:38:38 ► §

I was privileged to put in a few comments

00:38:41 ► §

for the nature of drugs.

00:38:43 ► §

was privileged to put in a few comments for The Nature of Drugs.

00:38:47 ► §

Wonderful.

00:38:53 ► §

We will make sure to also give exposure to the book on our channels once it goes out.

00:39:00 ► §

And I also wanted to talk to you about your life before imprisonment, really. You had an academic career studying psychoactive substances.

00:39:04 ► §

really, you had an academic career studying psychoactive substances.

00:39:10 ► §

What initially drew you to investigating altered states of consciousness?

00:39:15 ► §

Well, that’s pretty easy to answer.

00:39:19 ► §

Let’s see, how should I describe this?

00:39:24 ► §

I was 21. Can you imagine that?

00:39:25 ► §

Yeah. Okay, 21. That you imagine that? Yeah.

00:39:30 ► §

Okay, 21. That’s 50 years ago. Seems like the blink of an eye.

00:39:34 ► §

25 of which were spent in prison.

00:39:40 ► §

00:39:49 ► §

23, San Francisco, the Summer of Love. and Tim Scully, who is still with us, a dear friend, and Nicky Sand, who just passed away

00:40:09 ► §

a few years ago. His wife, Usha, lives in London now. Yes, the first great detonation,

00:40:19 ► §

I guess you will, in those days, the deployment of large quantities of LSD caused a revolution

00:40:28 ► §

much like we’re seeing now.

00:40:31 ► §

It was a great excitement and enthusiasm for some years.

00:40:36 ► §

We’ll get into words of caution a little later in our discussion, perhaps.

00:40:42 ► §

So being young in San Francisco in 68 was also quite a privilege

00:40:47 ► §

one saw the first large scale distribution

00:40:51 ► §

of an exotic neurochemical among

00:40:53 ► §

large populations

00:40:55 ► §

all of the 18 to 24 year old cohort

00:40:59 ► §

the favorite child of

00:41:03 ► §

drug policy people, the 18 to 24-year-old cohort,

00:41:08 ► §

shared by hand.

00:41:09 ► §

This is pre-computer, pre-mobile phone,

00:41:15 ► §

one communicated by letter or in person or phone booths.

00:41:23 ► §

Young people had no elders to speak with

00:41:26 ► §

about these extraordinary subjective phenomena

00:41:31 ► §

that were occurring due to exposure to these materials.

00:41:36 ► §

We only had each other to talk to about it.

00:41:40 ► §

So I would say that probably was, without suggesting that I was an early user or anything,

00:41:53 ► §

that would be a description of how interest in drug policy began.

00:42:00 ► §

At the time, there was no great academic circle of people interested in psychedelics.

00:42:06 ► §

It was a small circle whose careers were at risk for even looking at these fringe, way-out, not understood by mainstream America, sort of wild drugs and people.

00:42:23 ► §

drugs and people.

00:42:27 ► §

Now, of course,

00:42:30 ► §

after so many years and so much suffering,

00:42:33 ► §

we’re seeing the mainstreaming

00:42:35 ► §

of this phenomenon

00:42:36 ► §

with

00:42:38 ► §

very excellent work,

00:42:42 ► §

work of great quality,

00:42:50 ► §

double-blind studies by distinguished researchers at Hopkins, at Yale, at NYU, Berkeley.

00:43:08 ► §

The great funding of this research in a very earnest and no-nonsense and rigorously controlled way with FDA oversight and all of that worldwide, Imperial, Zurich.

00:43:16 ► §

We’ll probably see the Indians and Chinese as well begin to participate.

00:43:20 ► §

A true third wave revolution.

00:43:36 ► §

But one must remember the origins of the times when it was ridiculed, not understood, severely punished, laughable, considered truly fringe, and threatening to the political structure.

00:43:50 ► §

And now things have changed considerably.

00:43:56 ► §

It’s quite amazing for me to come from the darkness of captivity

00:44:01 ► §

into this bright light of global interest

00:44:05 ► §

in worldwide clinical trials and a great deal of public discourse

00:44:11 ► §

by leaders and thinkers and medical experts and academicians.

00:44:21 ► §

A frenzy of interest.

00:44:24 ► §

Excuse me, a frenzy of interest excuse me

00:44:25 ► §

a frenzy of interest

00:44:26 ► §

I had no

00:44:29 ► §

excuse me I had no access to the internet

00:44:31 ► §

so I only heard bits and pieces of it

00:44:33 ► §

this while away

00:44:34 ► §

but now I can see it

00:44:37 ► §

and I’m delighted

00:44:38 ► §

and overwhelmed

00:44:41 ► §

and

00:44:43 ► §

send great blessings to everyone

00:44:45 ► §

and great hope

00:44:48 ► §

for the future

00:44:48 ► §

you’ll excuse me

00:44:51 ► §

I have to clear this throat a little bit

00:44:53 ► §

sure no worries

00:44:54 ► §

I’ll take opportunity

00:44:58 ► §

as well

00:44:58 ► §

excuse me

00:45:02 ► §

I’m not used to speaking so long

00:45:03 ► §

I don’t do podcasts normally.

00:45:06 ► §

This is because of the delight with what the London Society is doing

00:45:11 ► §

and to you personally.

00:45:14 ► §

Thank you, I really appreciate it.

00:45:16 ► §

And now it’s quite a long interview, but obviously our audience and myself

00:45:21 ► §

were so keen to ask you all those questions because you were away

00:45:24 ► §

for so many years.

00:45:25 ► §

And I actually wanted to ask you about the renaissance that you see now

00:45:30 ► §

because, as you said, you just saw tiny bits of news

00:45:35 ► §

and suddenly you came out and it’s just happening everywhere.

00:45:38 ► §

It’s like really becoming mainstream.

00:45:40 ► §

And you said you’re hopeful and a bit overwhelmed, but in a good way.

00:45:44 ► §

I also wanted to ask you do you see any dangers

00:45:47 ► §

do you see any shadow in this mainstreaming

00:45:49 ► §

and do you have any concerns about

00:45:53 ► §

them gaining such popularity in the Western world

00:45:56 ► §

so quickly

00:45:57 ► §

well I’m glad you asked

00:46:01 ► §

uh oh

00:46:04 ► §

now you asked. Now, you might consider me some sort of wildcard

00:46:11 ► §

West Coast hippie, presumably responsible for hundreds of

00:46:17 ► §

millions of doses of LSD. And therefore, I might be a liberal

00:46:22 ► §

in many people’s eyes.

00:46:24 ► §

But there’s conservative elements.

00:46:26 ► §

And so I wish to insert a word of caution in what’s going on now.

00:46:41 ► §

We’re seeing a great influx of individuals,

00:46:47 ► §

capitalist corporations,

00:46:54 ► §

people who are accepting of this if it’s mainstream,

00:46:58 ► §

but not so accepting if we’re a little further out. They recently come in and may not have a great deal of personal experience with these substances

00:47:07 ► §

and may not realize the strength and depth of the subjective changes one might experience.

00:47:24 ► §

one can go from a walk in the moonlight with friends

00:47:27 ► §

and a feeling of the profundity and unity of all things

00:47:32 ► §

but a lighthearted feeling

00:47:37 ► §

to a deep

00:47:40 ► §

life-changing

00:47:42 ► §

soul-rending theological confrontation with god

00:47:52 ► §

a writhing convulsive change and of course everything is dose dependent

00:48:14 ► §

So I’m not certain that the great influx of new individuals is aware of the range of subjective phenomena or has an appreciation for the power of these materials or why they among those that consider them sacraments

00:48:27 ► §

are considered sacramental or approach with a sense of reverence

00:48:38 ► §

so i am concerned about the widespread employment

00:48:51 ► §

about the widespread employment, even under medical conditions, worldwide of these materials. Let me give you what appears to be a great contrast between the 60s and now.

00:49:01 ► §

In the 60s, these materials were shared among friends, quietly, in a clandestine way, and

00:49:14 ► §

often gently, come explore with us.

00:49:19 ► §

You might like this, this is something you should know about.

00:49:24 ► §

Let’s spend an evening

00:49:25 ► §

together don’t tell anyone no this is a special privilege

00:49:33 ► §

and above all don’t give this to anyone with any problems if a person’s ending

00:49:42 ► §

relationship or breaking up with their lover or the person is somewhat bipolar

00:49:48 ► §

or skitzy or has any issues

00:49:50 ► §

don’t give it to them

00:49:52 ► §

because

00:49:53 ► §

it may destabilize them

00:49:55 ► §

or get them into difficult loops

00:49:58 ► §

that can be extremely painful

00:50:00 ► §

you know they might act out

00:50:02 ► §

and run down the street

00:50:02 ► §

or worse

00:50:05 ► §

so the idea of giving

00:50:07 ► §

these materials to an individual

00:50:11 ► §

with any personal emotional difficulties

00:50:13 ► §

was the unwritten rule

00:50:16 ► §

and so 99% of people exploring materials

00:50:22 ► §

were if you will normal humans

00:50:24 ► §

without major emotional problems, simply curious, and young enough to withstand all the changes.

00:50:36 ► §

Now, the paradigm has shifted completely.

00:50:47 ► §

completely. And while I realize the medical paradigm is necessary to get approval of these materials through government regulatory agencies, the medical paradigm nevertheless

00:50:55 ► §

insists on giving these materials as healing agents to people with problems,

00:51:04 ► §

as healing agents to people with problems,

00:51:07 ► §

depression, cluster headaches, PTSD,

00:51:12 ► §

an increasing range of possible applications.

00:51:16 ► §

And all that’s quite wonderful.

00:51:19 ► §

But the point I’m trying to make is,

00:51:24 ► §

there’s a great difference between giving it to an individual who simply wishes to explore, to gain wisdom or insight or experience, and giving it to a person who has a problem and we’re going to fix it.

00:51:39 ► §

But at the same time, the person with the problem may have very severe reactions and act out.

00:51:50 ► §

And so while I see these medicines as truly healing are obtained in various governments and regions throughout

00:52:10 ► §

the world and applied by treatment providers of different levels of professional expertise,

00:52:18 ► §

we’re going to see some patient reactions that may challenge the current bubble of euphoria.

00:52:32 ► §

And I think we’ll see these within three or four years

00:52:36 ► §

or upon approval when you can really expose

00:52:40 ► §

a patient population of, say, 100,000 people around the world.

00:52:45 ► §

I think we’ll see anecdotal reports in the medical literature,

00:52:49 ► §

in psychiatric literature, and certainly the news media

00:52:53 ► §

of people reacting in untoward ways.

00:53:02 ► §

So I can only say that while the medical

00:53:06 ► §

and psychiatric community certainly has

00:53:08 ► §

my blessing for what it’s worth

00:53:10 ► §

and we must

00:53:12 ► §

heal dreadful maladies

00:53:14 ► §

by whatever medicines can be obtained

00:53:16 ► §

that we must be extremely cautious

00:53:20 ► §

and follow the paradigms

00:53:24 ► §

established at Hopkins and NYU

00:53:27 ► §

and Yale very carefully and

00:53:31 ► §

select the patients very carefully. Some should be excluded

00:53:35 ► §

and not subjected to this type of treatment.

00:53:41 ► §

So I think that we’ll see

00:53:43 ► §

in the next three or four years a little blowback from the current

00:53:49 ► §

state of enthusiasm and euphoria, wonderful as it is, simply suggesting that we should

00:53:55 ► §

be prepared for that.

00:53:57 ► §

I agree 100% with you.

00:54:03 ► §

And at the moment

00:54:05 ► §

all those new people who came in

00:54:08 ► §

as you said they think they’re going to

00:54:10 ► §

heal everything with psychedelics

00:54:12 ► §

and it’s becoming quite crazy right now

00:54:15 ► §

it’s like they’re really treating it

00:54:17 ► §

as magic silver bullet

00:54:18 ► §

magic pill for everything

00:54:20 ► §

that’s true

00:54:22 ► §

may I state Ania

00:54:23 ► §

that’s simply characteristic of the early stages one’s encounter with the

00:54:28 ► §

substance. You see all these wonderful subjective effects

00:54:32 ► §

and indeed they are. Honeymoon. Great enthusiasm. So, that’s

00:54:36 ► §

the upswing of the curve of any drug epidemic. Great enthusiasm

00:54:41 ► §

also happened with cocaine and MDMA. Oh, this is the great new panacea, if you will.

00:54:48 ► §

And then there’s a leveling out as you have a large body of people that are being initiated.

00:54:55 ► §

And then the problems began to set in. So then there’s the downward sloping of the curve. This is

00:55:00 ► §

characteristic of most drug epidemics. A great paper was written on it for RAND by the drug policy analyst John Calkins.

00:55:12 ► §

And it was written on using XTC, XTC as the model, some years ago.

00:55:19 ► §

And it’s applicable to all drugs, this particular curve.

00:55:24 ► §

Excitement phrase, the spread proliferation phrase, the leveling off,

00:55:30 ► §

and then the slight downstream phase as it becomes integrated with society for better or worse.

00:55:52 ► §

But let me say that these sentiments are echoed, perhaps more severely, by two women, distinguished women.

00:56:01 ► §

Nora Volko, MD, head of the National Institute of Drug Abuse in Washington, D.C., NIDA.

00:56:06 ► §

Nora is the granddaughter of Trotsky, by the way.

00:56:08 ► §

Nora

00:56:09 ► §

is concerned

00:56:12 ► §

that the proliferation,

00:56:14 ► §

large scale proliferation by

00:56:15 ► §

mine-made field

00:56:18 ► §

trip, not to name

00:56:20 ► §

particular corporations,

00:56:22 ► §

the proliferation

00:56:23 ► §

of psilocybin LSD, mescaline, ibogaine analogs,

00:56:28 ► §

and what have you. She’s concerned that along with the proliferation, the medical use

00:56:35 ► §

will be a resurgence in personal use outside the medical protocols. And some would argue that’s great that will change society and it

00:56:48 ► §

may in some ways as those as the 60s changed society in some ways that were

00:56:52 ► §

benevolent no we may see a great benevolent change in art and literature

00:56:59 ► §

and music again at the same, we may see a few problems.

00:57:07 ► §

Nothing terribly harsh.

00:57:10 ► §

David Nutt’s great paper at Imperial,

00:57:13 ► §

David Nutt’s great paper in Lancet,

00:57:16 ► §

points out that psychedelics are really the least problematic substances

00:57:20 ► §

on the great drug spectrum.

00:57:23 ► §

substances on the great drug spectrum. So we don’t expect to see any major endemic, long-lasting

00:57:30 ► §

problems.

00:57:32 ► §

We’re going to see little bursts of problems

00:57:34 ► §

that will probably have been sensationalized.

00:57:38 ► §

The other distinguished female lead on the conservative side

00:57:44 ► §

is, and I’m not in communication with her,

00:57:47 ► §

but Bertha Madras at Harvard Medical School, a true conservative in drug matters, very down on

00:57:56 ► §

cannabis, for example. But Bertha does point out well that the treatment providers worldwide that are coming

00:58:07 ► §

range from highly trained individuals

00:58:11 ► §

such as Dr. Griffiths at Hopkins,

00:58:15 ► §

Franz Wellendeater at Zurich, to

00:58:19 ► §

individuals that may or may not have had

00:58:22 ► §

personal experience with these materials and little or no training,

00:58:27 ► §

often some retreat down in Bolivia.

00:58:31 ► §

And meanwhile, they’re giving this very powerful material to someone that’s just curious.

00:58:37 ► §

And goodness knows what will happen at that point.

00:58:41 ► §

But I’m sure we’ll hear of it.

00:58:43 ► §

at that point, but I’m sure we’ll hear of it.

00:58:47 ► §

Bertha pointed out, Dr. Madras pointed out,

00:58:52 ► §

that we need to be very cautious that these drugs will be administered

00:58:56 ► §

in ways that don’t have the rigor

00:58:58 ► §

and care that Roland Griffiths

00:59:04 ► §

employed at Hopkins.

00:59:09 ► §

So I’m just simply saying here, be prepared.

00:59:13 ► §

Be prepared for some sensationalized anecdotal reports in the next few years.

00:59:19 ► §

At the same time, I think these materials can be wonderfully healing in many ways, whether one is ill or not.

00:59:29 ► §

And there’s great hope for the future.

00:59:33 ► §

We already see a lot of problem with those kind of retreats and underground facilitators who,

00:59:42 ► §

probably because psychedelics amplified them,

00:59:45 ► §

they get into this like savior mode,

00:59:48 ► §

you know, basically giving medicine to others,

00:59:52 ► §

but then their practice is really dangerous.

00:59:56 ► §

So there were stories of people pushing their fingers

01:00:01 ► §

in people’s mouths.

01:00:02 ► §

There were stories of pasing people while tripping.

01:00:06 ► §

There were stories, like horrible stories of sexual abuse

01:00:09 ► §

and all kinds of things like that.

01:00:11 ► §

So this is already happening, and I am really shocked it’s not in the media yet.

01:00:17 ► §

I absolutely agree with you.

01:00:18 ► §

I absolutely agree with you, Anya.

01:00:20 ► §

A dear young friend in Oxford, a young theologian there,

01:00:27 ► §

wrote me of a charismatic figure that appeared in the Oxford community

01:00:32 ► §

involving ayahuasca, in which people were being drawn in by this charisma,

01:00:41 ► §

kind of like bhakti yoga, worship of a leader.

01:00:44 ► §

kind of a bhakti yoga worship of a leader.

01:00:50 ► §

And he was engaging in the sexual abuse, if you will.

01:00:56 ► §

But such charlatans appear in any type of religious movement

01:01:00 ► §

and they have appeared in psychedelic movement in the past and are appearing even now.

01:01:03 ► §

So one must be very cautious with mountebanks and charlatans

01:01:11 ► §

and snake oil salesmen and those that have a savior complex

01:01:15 ► §

where this is a great healing medicine

01:01:18 ► §

and this person is the one to explain it all to you.

01:01:22 ► §

So I see a few of these entities sort of budding

01:01:27 ► §

as I review the literature

01:01:29 ► §

and learn more about what’s going on.

01:01:35 ► §

Just be careful.

01:01:37 ► §

What was it Dylan said?

01:01:40 ► §

Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.

01:01:46 ► §

That’s a good one.

01:01:49 ► §

I agree with you 100%.

01:01:51 ► §

And I do hope that we’re going,

01:01:54 ► §

I do hope you’re not going to see many of those stories,

01:01:56 ► §

but I’m aware we will probably see more of those horror stories,

01:01:59 ► §

unfortunately.

01:02:00 ► §

So we urge everyone, again, who’s watching,

01:02:03 ► §

before you go to a retreat make sure you research it

01:02:05 ► §

well ideally go to someone that was recommended by someone else and be very very careful because

01:02:11 ► §

there’s loads of charlatans around as Leonard rightly said um I have last question because

01:02:17 ► §

I’m aware of time and I know audience will want to have any questions uh during your time in prison, you wrote a lot about your concerns on the opioid

01:02:27 ► §

crisis. And I want to find out what’s your particular interest in this subject. And also,

01:02:34 ► §

what is your opinion about how US government is handling this crisis at the moment?

01:02:42 ► §

Well, to answer that difficult question, we’d have to go back to 1996 when I was a graduate

01:02:49 ► §

student at the Kennedy School.

01:02:53 ► §

My interest was determining, predicting, as was the interest of the criminal justice department

01:02:59 ► §

there, predicting what would be the next major drug of abuse at that time at that time

01:03:08 ► §

the concerns and the great malaise in America and abroad were the legacy

01:03:14 ► §

narcotics if you will not true narcotics but it catch-all phrase but cocaine But cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, these three alcohol, these three malaises were responsible for most of the difficulties in drug settings.

01:03:38 ► §

Certainly in the United States and certainly Britain and Western Europe.

01:03:43 ► §

certainly in the United States and certainly Britain and Western Europe.

01:03:50 ► §

Of course, having close contact with Sasha, I realized,

01:03:53 ► §

and of course in my own research,

01:03:57 ► §

I realized the likelihood of many analogs being created,

01:04:06 ► §

not just in psychedelics, but in every known drug, variants of caffeine, variants of morphine, the fentanyls.

01:04:13 ► §

So I began thinking about what would be the next major drug of abuse.

01:04:19 ► §

And I looked at it from the point of a manufacturer.

01:04:23 ► §

If I were a manufacturer underground

01:04:26 ► §

manufacturer who cared not for people

01:04:32 ► §

what drug would I choose what would I make and I looked at analogs of cocaine, which is very popular in the 90s, and their synthetic protocols.

01:04:49 ► §

And I looked at varieties of methamphetamine and their synthetic abilities.

01:04:56 ► §

And went through a range of drugs, not even mentioning the word psychedelic at Harvard.

01:05:06 ► §

And into the morphine analogs and here we have something called fentanyl which few people have

01:05:12 ► §

heard of other than anesthesiologists which uses a neonatal um anesthetic if you will for surgery on

01:05:29 ► §

anesthetic, if you will, for surgery on newborns and children, very rarely used in the 90s.

01:05:32 ► §

It had only been invented in 63.

01:05:40 ► §

But hundreds, if not thousands, of analogs by Carl Jensen at Jensen Pharmaceuticals

01:05:43 ► §

began looking at fentanyl.

01:05:44 ► §

Well, this would be interesting.

01:05:47 ► §

And I noticed several things.

01:05:58 ► §

I noticed that it was a microgram range material about the potency of LSD,

01:06:04 ► §

which means a kilogram of fentanyl would be 10, 20 million doses.

01:06:12 ► §

And then I noticed a more worrisome thing, that the precursors, the starting materials for fentanyl

01:06:16 ► §

were uncontrolled.

01:06:19 ► §

There were no governments thinking

01:06:22 ► §

about making the precursors illegal.

01:06:28 ► §

And they could be purchased in large quantities.

01:06:33 ► §

And then I began looking at the synthesis, which was relatively complex,

01:06:39 ► §

but could be made more simplified.

01:06:45 ► §

And then I began talking to a number of heroin addicts in the Boston area about a small fentanyl

01:06:53 ► §

batch that had been made by a fellow named Mark Hart, now deceased in 93 in Boston, that

01:07:01 ► §

had killed a few hundred people,

01:07:06 ► §

heroin users injecting it.

01:07:11 ► §

I looked at all these factors, ease of synthesis,

01:07:15 ► §

availability of precursors uncontrolled,

01:07:19 ► §

the substitution of fentanyl for heroin in the heroin market.

01:07:26 ► §

And I realized that it was the ingredient

01:07:28 ► §

for a perfect storm.

01:07:32 ► §

That unscrupulous manufacturer,

01:07:35 ► §

unscrupulous clandestine chemist

01:07:38 ► §

with sufficient skill

01:07:39 ► §

that had some sort of access to the heroin market

01:07:45 ► §

could synthesize this material

01:07:48 ► §

and make a very large income

01:07:54 ► §

at the cost of hundreds or thousands of deaths.

01:08:01 ► §

And I thought, having a little perhaps less faith in that particular subculture, that someone would actually do it.

01:08:16 ► §

So I began looking at a small fentanyl outbreak, one in Boston, and I flew to Moscow and interviewed a number of addicts there and regulatory officials of a small outbreak in Moscow.

01:08:42 ► §

few years or a decade or two hence

01:08:42 ► §

someone

01:08:46 ► §

somewhere likely outside the

01:08:48 ► §

United States because things are more

01:08:50 ► §

relaxed regulatory

01:08:51 ► §

one could obtain precursors and hide

01:08:54 ► §

more easily

01:08:54 ► §

someone somewhere outside the United States

01:08:57 ► §

that had access to a very large

01:08:59 ► §

distribution system

01:09:01 ► §

would begin making this. And I delivered this lecture at the faculty club and

01:09:13 ► §

did my thesis on it. But happily nothing happened.

01:09:20 ► §

Sasha and I talked about it quite a lot. He wrote a 1974 paper called Future Drugs

01:09:27 ► §

in which he dedicated a few lines

01:09:30 ► §

to fentanyl being a likely culprit

01:09:32 ► §

for a new drug of abuse.

01:09:39 ► §

I had the same concept about the same time,

01:09:41 ► §

but did the groundwork of interviewing people that

01:09:45 ► §

had survived a small outbreak in Boston.

01:09:49 ► §

Nothing happened.

01:09:50 ► §

Years went by.

01:09:54 ► §

And I was arrested, of course, for alleged LSD manufacture on a certain scale and entered the prison system and spent a few days of my five days in

01:10:08 ► §

testimony and they happily I did this retrospect spent a few days of my five

01:10:14 ► §

days in a federal trial testifying about the fentanyl work in 2003

01:10:22 ► §

prosecutor asked me what I did I explained what I did regarding fentanyl in great detail

01:10:30 ► §

with the original overheads and documents for faculty club

01:10:34 ► §

lectures and all the Harvard documentation

01:10:39 ► §

was shown to the jury in an effort

01:10:42 ► §

to explain what I was doing in my day job.

01:10:50 ► §

And of course, it was considered irrelevant and not of concern.

01:10:55 ► §

And that was 2003.

01:11:01 ► §

And then I entered the prison system.

01:11:03 ► §

and then I entered the prison system.

01:11:08 ► §

And one night in 2015,

01:11:11 ► §

I was watching one of the seven televisions hanging from the ceiling

01:11:12 ► §

on a break from reading Dickens.

01:11:17 ► §

And I began talking about this drug called fentanyl,

01:11:20 ► §

which from a Mexican source, a lab in Mexico Mexico had killed a thousand people suddenly.

01:11:34 ► §

I began paying a little more closer attention to the nightly news

01:11:37 ► §

and watched this thing from 2015 to 2016 to 17

01:11:41 ► §

expand into modern drug policy, currently the world’s greatest killer, 100,000

01:11:52 ► §

deaths annually, proliferating unrestrained even now throughout many countries, multiple

01:12:02 ► §

labs popping up, simplified procedures by untutored individuals, creating this impure quantities of this material.

01:12:13 ► §

And I watched that explosion from 2016, 2017.

01:12:27 ► §

and my mentor at Harvard was then an NYU, Mark Kleiman,

01:12:33 ► §

to me, a beloved individual who stayed in touch for many years.

01:12:36 ► §

We spoke monthly for 20 years.

01:12:38 ► §

Mark somehow got the,

01:12:45 ► §

all these documents over to the American think tank, Rand, who looked at them. And then Rand quoted my work in their 2019 book,

01:12:52 ► §

The Future of Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Substances.

01:12:56 ► §

And that may have been one, that early prediction

01:13:00 ► §

and recommendations for control may have been one of the factors

01:13:03 ► §

in my release.

01:13:06 ► §

and recommendations for control may have been one of the factors in my release. I’m deeply appreciative to the think tank for recognizing the early effort.

01:13:14 ► §

But we did see it coming and federal agencies were told, but it seems science fiction. It seems science fiction until you have enough deaths

01:13:27 ► §

and it keeps growing and growing and growing.

01:13:32 ► §

It gets quite scary.

01:13:34 ► §

And the media then takes the drum.

01:13:40 ► §

So now the American government is doing what it can.

01:13:43 ► §

It did make the precursors illegal in about 2015 in America, although worldwide I think the UN has not yet still acted on it.

01:14:02 ► §

this thing is a raging beast that’s out of control and continues to grow

01:14:06 ► §

I’m not quite sure what to do to slow it down

01:14:11 ► §

other than advise people to

01:14:15 ► §

look at the great gift of life

01:14:18 ► §

that we all have

01:14:21 ► §

and there’s no need to inject yourself with opioids

01:14:25 ► §

to seek some state of bliss

01:14:29 ► §

when bliss is at hand in a moment’s reflection.

01:14:37 ► §

Thank you.

01:14:39 ► §

What comes to mind is just,

01:14:41 ► §

if government listened to scientists quicker,

01:14:43 ► §

then maybe work would be better

01:14:45 ► §

sometimes especially talking about drugs basically um yes you’re probably also aware uh when professor

01:14:54 ► §

not uh release his um you know research about uh well when he said that MDMA is safer than horse riding, you know, and he was basically fired from the government as an advisor.

01:15:11 ► §

So it’s happening everywhere in the world that governments just don’t listen to the scientists and they think they know better.

01:15:18 ► §

So I hope those days will end one day.

01:15:20 ► §

That’s a terribly unfortunate incident.

01:15:26 ► §

day that’s a terribly unfortunate incident uh david not is uh the uh a leading light if not the leading light uh in drug policy and uh the united kingdom has lost a stalwart visionary and

01:15:34 ► §

extremely important individual as an innate grasp of the future of how these things are going to play out, the United Kingdom would do very well to listen to Dr. Nutt

01:15:45 ► §

carefully.

01:15:48 ► §

I agree 100%.

01:15:50 ► §

We had Professor Nutt

01:15:51 ► §

at an event a few weeks

01:15:54 ► §

ago for a two-hour

01:15:55 ► §

interview as well, so

01:15:57 ► §

it was really beautiful. I was not the one

01:15:59 ► §

interviewing, but it was just an honor

01:16:01 ► §

to have him as a guest.

01:16:04 ► §

As a big honor to have you of course i

01:16:06 ► §

will say that again because it’s a really beautiful conversation like i’m done with my questions now

01:16:11 ► §

i’m going to go to audience questions i’m going to read them out to you um there is 12 so far we

01:16:17 ► §

might not be able to cover them all but we’ll we’ll see what we do i know you’re also tired

01:16:22 ► §

and so apologies that it’s taking so long.

01:16:25 ► §

Make sure to drink water before the next round.

01:16:30 ► §

It’s a water break.

01:16:33 ► §

So questions.

01:16:35 ► §

Guys, remember, vote up those questions if you like something

01:16:38 ► §

because we might have to skip you.

01:16:41 ► §

So question number one from anonymous attendee. Could you tell us about your first

01:16:47 ► §

experience of LSD? No. That’s fine. That’s completely cool. We can move on. Next one.

01:16:58 ► §

As a Buddhist, were you able to find compassion for those that kept you in prison and those who you met in prison who had been convicted of violent crimes?

01:17:10 ► §

That’s such a difficult question.

01:17:12 ► §

It’s such a good question.

01:17:13 ► §

And thank you for asking.

01:17:19 ► §

It’s difficult to not have anger to those that tried to take one’s life away by putting one in a small cell, immobile, mobile forever.

01:17:40 ► §

It’s difficult not to have anger for guards that are insulting or subjecting to indignities.

01:17:49 ► §

It’s difficult not to have anger for inmates that are unnecessarily cruel or have committed crimes that are so heinous that I cannot possibly even describe them.

01:18:02 ► §

So can the Buddhist, or for if that matter the Christian heart of

01:18:06 ► §

compassion be enlarged enough to forgive I upon my release I received two very

01:18:22 ► §

kind overtures from two brave men who were government witnesses against me,

01:18:30 ► §

one time dear friends.

01:18:31 ► §

And then out of fear, began to testify in the courtroom.

01:18:43 ► §

And as a result of their testimony,

01:18:46 ► §

of course, much other evidence,

01:18:47 ► §

I was convicted.

01:18:52 ► §

But recently,

01:18:58 ► §

I received a little welcome home note from them and actually contacted them

01:19:01 ► §

and had a wonderful conversation and a visit recently.

01:19:09 ► §

Because they were first and foremost friends with whom I went through quite remarkable changes and experiences.

01:19:33 ► §

Lastly, were they fearful individuals surrounded by government agents with guns who were desperate to save their families and therefore made the decision to sacrifice me?

01:19:40 ► §

So, yes, I have found a good portion of the heart of compassion.

01:19:50 ► §

In the last years in prison and certainly more recently so yes it is there

01:20:05 ► §

thank you so much for sharing this next question is from michelle baker-ones, who’s actually one of the psychedelic therapists,

01:20:07 ► §

one of the researchers currently in the UK.

01:20:13 ► §

And her question is, can you share one of your most profound psychedelic experiences and describe how it impacted your life?

01:20:17 ► §

Well, as you recall, when the individual earlier asked what was my first psychedelic experience,

01:20:23 ► §

I said, could I describe

01:20:25 ► §

it? I said, no. And the reason I did is because my posture at trial under oath in a federal

01:20:35 ► §

courtroom was that I have no involvement with any of this and I’m not a drug user.

01:20:43 ► §

You can get into psychedelic state by breathing, though.

01:20:47 ► §

Holotropic breathing, right?

01:20:48 ► §

Yes, but I will answer this question.

01:20:51 ► §

Okay.

01:20:57 ► §

But let me do it indirectly.

01:21:00 ► §

That’s completely cool.

01:21:01 ► §

I wrote about it in the Rose.

01:21:01 ► §

That’s completely cool.

01:21:03 ► §

I wrote about it in the Rose.

01:21:08 ► §

There was a,

01:21:12 ► §

the most hallucinatory subjective experience he’s talking about.

01:21:14 ► §

Okay.

01:21:14 ► §

What was that?

01:21:16 ► §

I can’t speak of it personally

01:21:17 ► §

since I’ve never had this sort of thing.

01:21:21 ► §

Of course.

01:21:22 ► §

But I can’t speak of it anecdotally as i i did in the rose and

01:21:27 ► §

for those that haven’t read it i’ll try to repeat it now

01:21:31 ► §

i’m speaking of an i wrote of a chemist called um indigo the scene in uh

01:21:41 ► §

a remote part of Northern Italy one night

01:21:45 ► §

with a remote clandestine laboratory

01:21:47 ► §

making hundreds of millions of doses of acid.

01:21:53 ► §

And in the book,

01:21:57 ► §

and this may be a real person or it may not be a real person

01:22:02 ► §

or some think it may be yours truly or not.

01:22:06 ► §

I can’t address those issues,

01:22:09 ► §

but I will describe the scene.

01:22:11 ► §

Make of it what you will.

01:22:17 ► §

Indigo, whoever that is,

01:22:20 ► §

is climbing a ladder in a clandestine acid lab one night

01:22:23 ► §

in protective garments because there’s constant micro dosing exposure, 50 micrograms a day for weeks, months or years.

01:22:35 ► §

The first micro doses for underground manufacturers just from being around it.

01:22:47 ► §

around it indigo is climbing his ladder later late at night in his protective garments among fields of glassware and exotic custom design materials for synthesis something that looks

01:22:53 ► §

extra planetary the lights are all dark red because lsd is a fragile molecule that can be broken by

01:23:02 ► §

exposure to sunlight or bright light so typically

01:23:06 ► §

a large-scale synthesis from my interviews I’ve learned tend to be

01:23:11 ► §

synthesized under red light one is very careful the room is bathed in red light

01:23:18 ► §

it’s kind of vibrating and breathing for those that are exposed to micro doses

01:23:23 ► §

even with protective garments.

01:23:26 ► §

And perhaps Hildegard von Bingen is playing on a chant

01:23:30 ► §

or Native American flute music or Hindu chants

01:23:36 ► §

or something magical and mystical as the auditory spectrum is filled with sounds.

01:23:41 ► §

And you’re in this red- lighted room carrying a large beaker

01:23:46 ► §

with a large separatory funnel if you will with 10 million doses in it

01:23:53 ► §

those have had one strong dose may appreciate the idea of enough to light up the city of new york

01:24:02 ► §

so indigo is climbing up this little ladder.

01:24:08 ► §

It’s two in the morning.

01:24:09 ► §

It’s been weeks of synthesis, and he’s rather fatigued

01:24:12 ► §

and makes glass-to-glass contact.

01:24:17 ► §

It’s a little slippery, and suddenly there’s huge shattering

01:24:22 ► §

and liquid spilling everywhere and indigo falls and is back into a

01:24:28 ► §

pool of glass shards and liquid and let me explain what the liquid is it’s methylene chloride a

01:24:36 ► §

solution of um lsd and 10 billion doses in methylene chloride in about two or three liters

01:24:43 ► §

okay of this stuff methylene chloride is

01:24:46 ► §

interesting material and to appreciate it let me say that it goes immediately through your skin

01:24:53 ► §

there is nothing that will prevent it from going through your skin it will dissolve latex gloves

01:24:59 ► §

instantly uh it doesn’t hurt you, you breathe it out.

01:25:06 ► §

And it’s slightly narcotic-y like, but relatively non-toxic, non-flammable.

01:25:13 ► §

And LSD is dissolved in this, so since the methylene chloride goes right through your

01:25:20 ► §

skin instantly, so does the other, whatever happens to be dissolved

01:25:25 ► §

in it.

01:25:28 ► §

So Indigo was exposed in that instant of shattered glassware to 10 million doses all over his

01:25:38 ► §

upper body, face, neck, hands, seeping into his skin, falling onto his back in a pool of it.

01:25:49 ► §

And to your questioner,

01:25:52 ► §

your therapist questioner, shall we describe

01:25:56 ► §

the hallucinatory outcome from that dose?

01:26:02 ► §

You probably would want to know.

01:26:05 ► §

Yeah.

01:26:08 ► §

Easily the largest human exposure in history.

01:26:15 ► §

So what happened?

01:26:17 ► §

What happened to Indigo?

01:26:19 ► §

What happened subjectively?

01:26:23 ► §

Indigo regained his footing and his legs are shaking.

01:26:28 ► §

He’s actually shaking in fear.

01:26:31 ► §

People do shake in fear.

01:26:33 ► §

Yeah.

01:26:35 ► §

Because Indigo thinks he will either die or have convulsions until he dies.

01:26:45 ► §

But he can’t call an ambulance.

01:26:49 ► §

One, he’s 20, 30 miles out in the desert.

01:26:55 ► §

Two, it would be sort of an unseemly event

01:26:58 ► §

for medical evacuation people to walk into

01:27:01 ► §

this extraterrestrial lab with, you know,

01:27:07 ► §

containers and beakers and pumps and under red light, Von Bingen playing, what would they think?

01:27:14 ► §

Right.

01:27:19 ► §

So Indigo rushes into the shower,

01:27:24 ► §

tears off his protective gear,

01:27:28 ► §

space shields, goggles, gloves, moon suit, boots.

01:27:33 ► §

He’s naked in the shower, holding onto the shower, twisting the knobs,

01:27:38 ► §

soaping himself, trying to get this material off of his skin.

01:27:42 ► §

Meanwhile, the angels are coming for him.

01:27:49 ► §

He’s on

01:27:49 ► §

worlds without end,

01:27:53 ► §

cast upon beaches

01:27:54 ► §

of unspeakable terrains,

01:27:57 ► §

flashing phenomena that have

01:28:00 ► §

no words.

01:28:02 ► §

And Indigo is praying,

01:28:04 ► §

Dear God,

01:28:09 ► §

those of you that have another had extreme experiences may actually remember themselves saying dear god dear god please let me survive this

01:28:16 ► §

and he survived how was it to come back i mean he survived. How was it to come back? I mean, he survived, sorry. And how did he tell you how was it to come back from such an experience? And how long did this experience even take?

01:28:46 ► §

happened. Of course, no words can possibly describe the changes that occurred under the showerhead or how long Indigo was there. You know, a second can be 10,000 years. So he

01:28:56 ► §

hung under the showerhead until there was no more hot water and ritually cleansed himself and walked into the main room where there

01:29:10 ► §

were fires burning all night.

01:29:13 ► §

Music was playing.

01:29:16 ► §

Votives were placed here and there, religious votives, as is customary among some manufacturers to place spiritual items about when things become

01:29:27 ► §

psychoactive and they offer prayers that there would be a great healing medicine i know nikki

01:29:33 ► §

sand did and peter vanda hayden now uh chief scientific officer at sein would pray when they crystallized this material.

01:29:47 ► §

And so Indigo was no stranger to prayer.

01:29:52 ► §

So he’s in the main room now, the big fire,

01:29:55 ► §

the all night fires are burning, cedar, desert, musky,

01:29:59 ► §

all alone in this clandestine site, not far from,

01:30:03 ► §

well, let’s see, the rose that was set in Northern Italy,

01:30:06 ► §

but it may have been Los Alamos.

01:30:14 ► §

Meanwhile, the walls, the ceilings, the floors,

01:30:18 ► §

everything is billowing, changing form.

01:30:27 ► §

But there were no convulsions.

01:30:33 ► §

It was a feeling of grace.

01:30:41 ► §

And so Indigo dressed an old blue work shirt and a pair of Levi’s,

01:30:43 ► §

clean,

01:30:44 ► §

an old blue work shirt and a pair of Levi’s, clean,

01:30:53 ► §

and walked out onto the porch of the site,

01:30:55 ► §

where there happened to be a full moon.

01:31:01 ► §

In the rows, it was the forest of northern Italy,

01:31:04 ► §

although it may have been the great deserts of the southwest.

01:31:11 ► §

And the indigo stood up against the,

01:31:13 ► §

backed himself against the wall and slowly slid down the wall

01:31:16 ► §

and went into a lotus posture

01:31:20 ► §

and looked at the moonlight

01:31:23 ► §

and landscape and awaited whatever was going to happen to happen.

01:31:39 ► §

So the question, of course, from your listener is what happened?

01:31:48 ► §

In the rose, Indigo simply watched the moon set and the sun rise over seven or eight hours.

01:32:03 ► §

There was little patterning of the environment.

01:32:07 ► §

You could smell the perfumed air.

01:32:11 ► §

You could see the ground like jewels.

01:32:14 ► §

You could see the mysterious motion of the trees in the sky.

01:32:20 ► §

It was all pretty much just our beautiful Earth,

01:32:28 ► §

this blessed planet on which we are privileged to live for a moment.

01:32:40 ► §

And he was thankful for the beauty and mystery of this great gift of life.

01:32:45 ► §

And he sat there and watched the moon set and the sun rise.

01:32:49 ► §

Nothing happened but that.

01:32:53 ► §

And in the rose it was the teaching was that the greatest gift is that which

01:32:59 ► §

we already have. And no drug is

01:33:03 ► §

necessary to take us there.

01:33:07 ► §

And it can’t be taken away from us.

01:33:12 ► §

And the sun rose.

01:33:16 ► §

And Indigo was grateful that he hadn’t died or had convulsions.

01:33:21 ► §

And that he’d received a great teaching.

01:33:25 ► §

And he went in and burned sage and lit candles

01:33:29 ► §

and bathed ritually and began the next synthesis.

01:33:35 ► §

Wow, Indigo is such a great character.

01:33:39 ► §

And it’s a beautiful journey.

01:33:44 ► §

It’s a beautiful story.

01:33:46 ► §

Thank you so much for sharing it with us tonight.

01:33:50 ► §

Well, stay with me for long, for sure.

01:33:53 ► §

Especially next time when I look at the full moon,

01:33:55 ► §

I will dedicate a thought to Indigo and his beautiful story.

01:34:02 ► §

Thank you, listener, for that question.

01:34:03 ► §

I hope it answers it.

01:34:05 ► §

I think it did answer it

01:34:08 ► §

perfectly.

01:34:10 ► §

Let me just say

01:34:11 ► §

as an observation, as a caution

01:34:13 ► §

to youth and to people that are

01:34:15 ► §

new in this realm,

01:34:17 ► §

it seems to be in the early

01:34:21 ► §

stages of encounters

01:34:24 ► §

with psychedelics,

01:34:25 ► §

a idea that let me take more because I want to hallucinate more

01:34:29 ► §

and I want to see, you know, crystalline palaces

01:34:31 ► §

and fantastic landscapes and all of that.

01:34:36 ► §

Until people keep going for higher and higher doses

01:34:39 ► §

and they hope that the patterning of the floors and the walls

01:34:42 ► §

and so forth that they see will somehow open up in some magical landscape.

01:34:50 ► §

But the early experiences, certainly Nikki and those that had access to extremely large doses

01:35:04 ► §

and humans that have had extremely large doses would say that the most interesting phenomena occur when you don’t encourage the break through what we see into some other realm.

01:35:26 ► §

The best experiences occur when the visual field is static, is frozen.

01:35:36 ► §

Trees are trees.

01:35:37 ► §

Cars are cars.

01:35:39 ► §

The moon is the moon.

01:35:41 ► §

Everything looks the same.

01:35:43 ► §

It’s perfect.

01:35:46 ► §

Just freeze that frame.

01:35:49 ► §

And then the interesting stuff starts to happen.

01:35:55 ► §

Yep.

01:35:59 ► §

Thank you.

01:35:59 ► §

I’m just having comments here in the chat from our audience

01:36:04 ► §

saying, such a beautiful story.

01:36:06 ► §

Thanks so much for sharing.

01:36:08 ► §

Another one, whoa, he went in,

01:36:10 ► §

burned sage with candles and they got the next sentence.

01:36:13 ► §

Just whoa.

01:36:16 ► §

So I think a lot of, yeah, thank you so much, Leonard.

01:36:19 ► §

I think people are really appreciative of a story of Indigo.

01:36:22 ► §

So thanks again for sharing it and indeed this is

01:36:25 ► §

the message we live on the beautiful planet and nature around us is all we need really we just

01:36:31 ► §

need to connect with it and take it in i’m going to go to the next question which was a bit more

01:36:39 ► §

down to earth is there any possibility leon Leonard could attend the next breaking convention in London

01:36:46 ► §

whenever lockdown allows? And we spoke about this today, so give us a comment here. Well, I’m still

01:36:53 ► §

on supervision, so I’ll need permission of the government to travel, but if Ben will write me a

01:36:59 ► §

nice letter, and I hope he will, I would love to attend Breaking. There’s so many friends there and so many gifted and great speakers who I have heard about for years or a few I know personally.

01:37:14 ► §

And I just wish to listen to their teachings and meet them and hug them.

01:37:19 ► §

And, yes, join the party, the celebration.

01:37:23 ► §

So, yes, I’ll come to Breaking the First Opportunity in London,

01:37:29 ► §

hopefully in August if I have a passport, maybe one day again.

01:37:36 ► §

Fingers crossed.

01:37:37 ► §

I do hope it happens.

01:37:38 ► §

We would love to have you in London.

01:37:39 ► §

And, yes, since you read so many British English books, you have to come back to london and walk around

01:37:48 ► §

around the old buildings so we’ll take you for a nice walk i hope you’ll have time oh lovely lovely

01:37:54 ► §

to see uh old london i have a dear artist friend uh simon tisco underground artist of great

01:38:01 ► §

creativity and merit who’s up quite late and he knows old London and

01:38:06 ► §

the more unusual aspects of some of the alleys and bookshops and artists and so I look forward to

01:38:14 ► §

touring with him and other friends in London. Wonderful.

01:38:20 ► §

Wonderful.

01:38:23 ► §

Wonderful.

01:38:26 ► §

Another question from Artem.

01:38:30 ► §

Rose of Paracelsus is such a beautiful and deep novel.

01:38:36 ► §

What do you think of the early success of companies like Compass Pathways and MindMed on stock market?

01:38:39 ► §

Does Six have anything to do with it?

01:38:42 ► §

Six?

01:38:42 ► §

I’m not sure what is this about.

01:38:45 ► §

Does Six have anything to do with it? Six? I’m not sure what is this about. Does six have anything to do with it?

01:38:47 ► §

What are they doing now?

01:38:48 ► §

He’s speaking of the central characters of Rose.

01:38:52 ► §

Right, sorry.

01:38:53 ► §

One is the six.

01:38:57 ► §

Goodness, what a question.

01:38:59 ► §

I do follow increasingly many hours each day the evolution of the corporatization of psychedelics.

01:39:11 ► §

I’m very well aware of Compass and their excellent work and MindMed led by the visionary J.R. Rahn, who is quite prominent online. He’s all over LinkedIn, and I’m enjoying J.R.’s

01:39:29 ► §

proselytization. He got into MindMed by his own personal experience, which was transformative

01:39:37 ► §

for him. So I must praise the effort of MindMed, and particularly Siben,

01:39:48 ► §

the effort of mine that and particularly siben um which are our neck and neck uh with a phase two trial in canada for um human application psilocybin i follow uh about 212 um

01:40:00 ► §

i follow about 200 with my um uh colleague r Place, who’s listening to this in Detroit.

01:40:09 ► §

Corporations and organizations around the world that are advancing the art encompassing my matter, two of them,

01:40:15 ► §

Simon Fieldtrip, the nascent tactogen and very important startup in Redwood City, California,

01:40:24 ► §

Algernon Pharmaceuticalss many others to be named

01:40:28 ► §

do the six have anything to do with this hmm well i suppose some mysteries uh should remain

01:40:37 ► §

certainly the early work of the six uh exposed hundreds of millions of individuals

01:40:44 ► §

exposed hundreds of millions of individuals to the psychedelic experience.

01:40:49 ► §

So that perhaps we won’t forget

01:40:53 ► §

that the early work of underground people

01:40:55 ► §

like Owsley and Mickey and Tim

01:40:57 ► §

and others unnamed

01:40:59 ► §

were responsible for the wide human exposures

01:41:05 ► §

whose enthusiasm has led to the current global corporatization.

01:41:17 ► §

So I suppose you could say the six had something to do with it.

01:41:23 ► §

Yes, I think, thank you for answering this I think this question

01:41:29 ► §

comes from the recent news that compass pathways is trying to patent psychedelic

01:41:34 ► §

therapy including holding hands and using soft burnishing so I’m wondering

01:41:40 ► §

if you heard that news at all and and do you have anything to comment on?

01:41:45 ► §

Yes, I can expand on that a little.

01:41:47 ► §

Yeah.

01:41:48 ► §

Not to alienate potential dear friends at Compass, who have done very good work

01:41:55 ► §

and employed Peter Thiel’s $5 million to go to Vail.

01:42:04 ► §

But there is a divisiveness in the Psy community.

01:42:09 ► §

We’re seeing vulcanization of the community as people become more

01:42:17 ► §

capitalistic.

01:42:22 ► §

So there is an argument brewing on the effort of

01:42:27 ► §

compass to patent

01:42:28 ► §

as you say treatment

01:42:31 ► §

paradigms

01:42:32 ► §

and perhaps even the crystalline structure

01:42:35 ► §

of psilocybin

01:42:36 ► §

others argue it can’t be patented because

01:42:38 ► §

dear Albert synthesized it in the 40s

01:42:41 ► §

and therefore

01:42:43 ► §

50s and therefore

01:42:44 ► §

it’s well known in the literature and no patent office would try to grant that patent.

01:42:51 ► §

Others saying that new crystalline forms of various morphs tend to create a patent loophole, so someone may actually seize control of it.

01:43:10 ► §

control of it. So there’s the division between it’s okay to patent this drug and have all control go to compass and others that say that’s anathema and wrong and this particular angel can’t be

01:43:20 ► §

corralled or lassoed, that it should be more widespread with many points of light

01:43:26 ► §

and not controlled by one megalithic corporate entity.

01:43:36 ► §

There are advantages and disadvantages to a single entity controlling things.

01:43:44 ► §

My inclination right now is to go with those that say there should be many

01:43:48 ► §

points of light because economic engines are driven by competition,

01:43:54 ► §

not monopolies.

01:43:59 ► §

I think that if Compass does succeed in patenting it, I wish them well.

01:44:08 ► §

that if Compass does succeed in patenting it, I wish them well. But I also foresee endless

01:44:16 ► §

litigation, certainly through the Supreme Court of the United States over patent rights in this material over the next decade or longer. So we’re in for a long and sometimes bouncy ride from the possible clinical trials not proving out as significantly healing.

01:44:39 ► §

They’ve yet to be shown in large groups.

01:44:42 ► §

They’ve yet to be shown in large groups.

01:44:50 ► §

We may have a negative report, which will plunge the stocks considerably.

01:44:56 ► §

We’ll see a shaking out of the SAI industry in the next three or four years because we’re in some sort of bubble right now, great enthusiasm.

01:45:00 ► §

Typical of trendy sectors in capital markets.

01:45:05 ► §

The size sector is just the latest.

01:45:14 ► §

But I think there will be many points of light,

01:45:18 ► §

and I hope you see that.

01:45:19 ► §

I don’t think these materials can be

01:45:22 ► §

successfully patented,

01:45:24 ► §

although I do wish people accomplished well

01:45:31 ► §

thank you for sharing um i’m going to jump to the next question now we have very little time

01:45:36 ► §

i’ll have 10 minutes so this is about your book and and it’s from anonymous attendee again leonard i engage with most literature

01:45:46 ► §

literature i can’t sorry i can’t pronounce things sometimes uh in audiobook form i’m dyslexic and i

01:45:54 ► §

find i get much more out of listening to a book than reading i would love to see an audiobook

01:46:00 ► §

of rose of paracelsus i have listened to the first three chapters in the Rose podcast, and as much as I enjoy them,

01:46:06 ► §

I really appreciate a consistent and professional narrator

01:46:10 ► §

delivering this great work.

01:46:12 ► §

Is this something we can look forward to?

01:46:15 ► §

So I suppose this is just a question about

01:46:18 ► §

who you chose to narrate your books and why,

01:46:23 ► §

and why is it not a professional actor, narrator reading,

01:46:28 ► §

but actually, yes, who is reading your book?

01:46:32 ► §

Well, what a question.

01:46:37 ► §

My dear friends Kat and Alexa Lakey,

01:46:40 ► §

who are watching from the sound studio of Michael Dupler in New York City,

01:46:46 ► §

are doing a podcast with Rose that did the first four chapters.

01:46:52 ► §

I read the first chapter rather painfully with about 20 phone calls,

01:46:58 ► §

which got spliced together from prison.

01:47:01 ► §

The next chapter was read by Brother David Steindl-Rost, a 93-year-old Benedictine monk, well-loved, known worldwide.

01:47:12 ► §

He has six million listeners on his TED Talk.

01:47:16 ► §

Brother David read Chapter 2 from Goot H., Good Heart, Priory Outside Salzburg.

01:47:26 ► §

Chapter three was read by Ben Sessa in a state of great enthusiasm.

01:47:32 ► §

Chapter four is read by Julian, Julian Vane.

01:47:38 ► §

And chapter five, which will be quite controversial due to its unusual erotic content, is being read by one of your own, Gaia Harvey.

01:47:48 ► §

And we’re having such fun having members of the Psy community and friends read these chapters

01:47:58 ► §

in a volunteer way and offering it for free with

01:48:05 ► §

Kat and Alexa’s beautiful editing

01:48:07 ► §

we’re having such fun bringing people together and having them read

01:48:11 ► §

and we’ll probably continue that indefinitely

01:48:15 ► §

through all 30 chapters if I live long enough

01:48:17 ► §

and we will

01:48:20 ► §

consider an audible

01:48:24 ► §

or audio book read after that if there’s a public interest in that.

01:48:30 ► §

But right now, I’m not fond of corporatization.

01:48:36 ► §

I do listen to audio books.

01:48:39 ► §

Currently, Flaubert is Madame Bovary as I walk the streets of Santa Fe.

01:48:45 ► §

So I understand what you’re saying,

01:48:46 ► §

but it’s lovely to hear friends’ voices reading,

01:48:51 ► §

and we’re meeting such extraordinary people that come in and volunteer

01:48:55 ► §

that we thought we would just invite all these lovely people

01:49:02 ► §

and notables to the party and have them read read the rose

01:49:07 ► §

because it’s it’s still our community maybe not for long but the present is ours

01:49:19 ► §

indeed and there’s a um just a comment here that, oh, I’ve lost it already

01:49:26 ► §

because the chat goes so quick.

01:49:27 ► §

But someone called, oh, yes, I love the variety of narrators of the Rose,

01:49:31 ► §

each one deeply connected to the story and to Leonard’s personal experiences.

01:49:37 ► §

There it is.

01:49:37 ► §

There it is.

01:49:38 ► §

So someone agrees.

01:49:40 ► §

Yes, someone agrees.

01:49:42 ► §

And there’s a link in the chat now to the third chapter if anybody

01:49:47 ► §

wants to check it out so click on the last link in the chat um julian just read chapter four

01:49:54 ► §

which has been out for a few weeks and uh um gaia is reading uh chapter. That’s going to be quite something.

01:50:07 ► §

That’s going to be a big one for sure.

01:50:10 ► §

I’ve read the whole chapter.

01:50:11 ► §

I’ve read that chapter.

01:50:11 ► §

Oh, yeah.

01:50:12 ► §

Oh, yeah.

01:50:17 ► §

Next question is from Mayela. I hope I pronounced your name right.

01:50:19 ► §

If I don’t, I do apologize.

01:50:21 ► §

Do you think achieving the effects of psychedelics through natural therapies,

01:50:34 ► §

for example, meditation, breath work, is more fulfilling and beneficial for the individual rather than the fast track enlightenment through psychedelics?

01:50:46 ► §

Well, of course, all spiritual practices and ways of self-healing and exploration have their own benefit.

01:50:53 ► §

And I think that breath work and yoga, meditation, long walks with friends,

01:50:58 ► §

simply the intention to grow one’s heart and mind, simply that intention by whatever means is not only a great blessing,

01:51:05 ► §

but certainly ultimately as comparable as a psychedelic experience.

01:51:12 ► §

That said, I wouldn’t consider psychedelics a fast track.

01:51:21 ► §

True, it may be over in a night or a few days, but people tend to remember their positive

01:51:33 ► §

transformations even into their old age most fondly.

01:51:39 ► §

That’s true. Another question is for Lucia. What meaning have you made of your experience in prison?

01:51:53 ► §

How do you understand it as part of your journey here on earth? Which is a good follow-up question now after the previous chats. Well, in prison I saw

01:52:05 ► §

the darkness

01:52:07 ► §

of what we

01:52:09 ► §

may do to each other.

01:52:14 ► §

I saw

01:52:15 ► §

great cruelty,

01:52:17 ► §

but I also saw

01:52:19 ► §

nobility.

01:52:24 ► §

I didn’t see,

01:52:25 ► §

I only saw one man cry

01:52:27 ► §

in 20 years.

01:52:33 ► §

These are the lost of the earth.

01:52:36 ► §

No one cares about prisoners.

01:52:39 ► §

They are the voiceless and the forgotten.

01:52:42 ► §

They have no hands.

01:52:44 ► §

They have no arms. They have no arms. They have no mouths. They are

01:52:52 ► §

isolated and rejected. Some deservingly so, most not. So I learned about the innate dignity of a man or woman

01:53:08 ► §

against all odds, against all faults

01:53:13 ► §

against every defamation and insult

01:53:17 ► §

the dignity that can be achieved

01:53:21 ► §

I remember the elderly black men the dignity that can be achieved.

01:53:28 ► §

I remember the elderly black men in their 70s or 80s,

01:53:34 ► §

some chair-bound, others on walkers,

01:53:36 ► §

that had no hope whatsoever

01:53:39 ► §

ever seeing a light of day or an ocean or stream or flower again.

01:53:47 ► §

But they got hardly right.

01:53:51 ► §

And truly no hope.

01:53:54 ► §

And I saw their dignity

01:53:56 ► §

and their grace

01:54:01 ► §

and their humility.

01:54:06 ► §

And I remember that as noble.

01:54:11 ► §

I remember their eyes.

01:54:17 ► §

Is Wi-Fi the most profound experience, more profound than any psychedelic?

01:54:25 ► §

Well, life, of course, is more profound than any psychedelics.

01:54:30 ► §

You know, some people, it’s hard to get through life without some

01:54:33 ► §

illumination somewhere, sometime.

01:54:38 ► §

Some people’s transformative event occurred in a foxhole in Vietnam or

01:54:43 ► §

Kuwait.

01:54:44 ► §

Transformative event occurred in a foxhole in Vietnam, Kuwait.

01:54:51 ► §

Others transformative event occurred in churches as they yielded their heart to Christ.

01:55:01 ► §

Others founded Four Hits of Blotter, a dancing at the Monterey Festival.

01:55:06 ► §

So I think that life doesn’t let you through it without some insight

01:55:09 ► §

into the divinity of it all

01:55:11 ► §

by some means.

01:55:13 ► §

And our little community

01:55:14 ► §

is those that perhaps

01:55:16 ► §

saw that divinity on a drug.

01:55:20 ► §

But most people

01:55:22 ► §

see it in other ways,

01:55:24 ► §

a myriad of other ways that it presents in their lives.

01:55:29 ► §

Breathwork,

01:55:32 ► §

blood activity in Hindustan,

01:55:35 ► §

the smile of a child or a new mother or an old mother.

01:55:42 ► §

I think this is a beautiful one to end with,

01:55:47 ► §

this long and beautiful interview.

01:55:51 ► §

I want to thank you so much for your insights and wisdom

01:55:56 ► §

and experience that you shared with us today.

01:56:02 ► §

And maybe just ask, do you have anything else to add

01:56:05 ► §

from you to our

01:56:07 ► §

audience tonight before

01:56:09 ► §

you say goodnight

01:56:10 ► §

to the British side and goodbye

01:56:13 ► §

to the American viewers

01:56:15 ► §

just to

01:56:17 ► §

send my love and affection

01:56:19 ► §

and appreciation to

01:56:21 ► §

many friends and loved ones

01:56:23 ► §

and to you Anya

01:56:24 ► §

and the London society,

01:56:28 ► §

Martin, Gaya, and people I’ve known throughout London and around the world

01:56:35 ► §

to send my deepest appreciation and affection to all.

01:56:46 ► §

Thank you so much have a great day

01:56:48 ► §

and I hope you can relax

01:56:50 ► §

and enjoy nature today after this

01:56:52 ► §

long long conversation and don’t do

01:56:54 ► §

too much work please and enjoy

01:56:56 ► §

the rest of the weekend

01:56:57 ► §

thank you Anya it was lovely

01:57:00 ► §

to meet with you and to

01:57:01 ► §

talk with you thank you so much

01:57:03 ► §

thank you bye and for now this is Lorenzo lovely to meet with you and to talk with you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye.

01:57:05 ► §

Bye.

01:57:07 ► §

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from cyberdelic space.

01:57:12 ► §

Namaste, my friends.