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Speaker 1: y c C hyphen presents Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Christian Seger. And this week we're talking
Speaker 1: about Timothy Leary. Now we're not just gonna talk about
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary. We're also going to talk about science of LSD,
Speaker 1: the history of LSD, the use of LSD and psilocybin
Speaker 1: in various UH research projects. What these substances actually due
Speaker 1: to the mind to the brain. But we're going to
Speaker 1: use Timothy Leary as kind of, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: a guiding principle, I guess for this episode. And if
Speaker 1: you're if you're out there and you're thinking, well, I
Speaker 1: love Timothy Learry, well, then strap in. If you're out
Speaker 1: there and you're you're thinking yourself, well, I don't know
Speaker 1: that I like this Timothy Leary guy, well, strap in
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, I think we've got something for everybody here.
Speaker 1: We uh, we're basically sheltered during a hurricane this week,
Speaker 1: and so Robert and I just binge read about Timothy
Speaker 1: Leary for four days straight. We've got a lot to
Speaker 1: share with you. My eyes are bleeding a little, but
Speaker 1: I think you're going to be interested in this so
Speaker 1: much so that we're going to do this as a
Speaker 1: two parter. Yes, uh, now, just to refresh anybody out
Speaker 1: there and too, and to inform from anyone who just
Speaker 1: who doesn't know who Timothy Learry is. Well. Timothy Leary
Speaker 1: was an American psychologist, author, and a key figure of
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties counterculture and psychedelics you know movement in general.
Speaker 1: He lived nineteen twenty through nineteen, and he managed to
Speaker 1: run a foul of pretty much every organization he was
Speaker 1: a part of. Uh. He was arrested uh enough times
Speaker 1: that he supposedly saw the inside of thirty six different prisons.
Speaker 1: He earned the ire of many Americans, even as he
Speaker 1: was able to submit a reputation as also kind of
Speaker 1: a you know, a counterculture leader uh his and I
Speaker 1: think the reason is because he has this message of
Speaker 1: inner exploration of anti establishment thinking, and this this resonated
Speaker 1: with folks and continues to resonate. His writings, his soothing,
Speaker 1: sage like voice on numerous audio recordings, his his his
Speaker 1: irresistible celebrity allure. It all made him just impossible to ignore,
Speaker 1: love him or hate him. Plus he was not the
Speaker 1: sort of guy to let the limelight go away new
Speaker 1: and we'll and we'll get into all that he uh yeah,
Speaker 1: he he clung to it, and people gravitated to him
Speaker 1: as well. He was more than willing to rub elbows
Speaker 1: with scientists like Carl Sagan, artists like hr and Geeger,
Speaker 1: performers like John Lennon, uh, and you know, such luminaries
Speaker 1: as Alan Ginsburg, a'l just Huxley, William Burrows, Jack Caro,
Speaker 1: Whack and kin KESI. He even kept the company of
Speaker 1: former enemies when it benefited, and such as Watergate Burglar
Speaker 1: and later conservative radio talk show host G Gordon Liddy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this guy has been widely influential. He was. I
Speaker 1: have a derogatory saying that I say sometimes about people
Speaker 1: like Leary, although I think Leary was doing this before
Speaker 1: this guy. He was the Cato Kalin of his time.
Speaker 1: Like he was famous for being famous he was. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: it wasn't because of a very specific thing he did,
Speaker 1: and we learned this through the research. But I have
Speaker 1: to be honest that, like, my experience with him was
Speaker 1: basically thinking, oh, this was an academic who had done
Speaker 1: some studies and then sort of became a guru like figure,
Speaker 1: much like Sasha Shulgin when we talked about him during
Speaker 1: our two parter on M D M A. Now, Sasha
Speaker 1: Shulgin was a practicing chemist who is in his laboratory
Speaker 1: up until he died. Right, Uh, Leary was not. He
Speaker 1: did do some interesting studies in the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna get into all of that stuff, but
Speaker 1: first I think we should probably talk about his influence
Speaker 1: on music. Yeah, I have to say that before I
Speaker 1: knew anything about Timothy Leary, I knew the moody blues
Speaker 1: song legend of the mind is the has the chorus
Speaker 1: Timothy Learies Dead, you know, yeah, and so forth. Wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful track. I listened to it several times while researching
Speaker 1: this episode. Other fan music fans out there might recognize
Speaker 1: the the the the sampling of his voice in various recordings,
Speaker 1: probably most notable a live version of Tools Third Eye,
Speaker 1: where they have the bit to think for yourself, question authority. Um,
Speaker 1: and then you'll find numerous other musical projects that make
Speaker 1: use of his soothing voice and in fact, and he
Speaker 1: was involved in several of these projects as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's an ambient instrumental like sitar distortion album titled Turn
Speaker 1: Onto an End Dropout, which was one of his catchphrases.
Speaker 1: And that's actually like really good listening. I fired up
Speaker 1: every now and then you just kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: chill out and and you know, don't think about what's
Speaker 1: being said too much. But um, the interesting thing is
Speaker 1: we've alluded to is that there is this kind of
Speaker 1: surface level pop culture idea of Leary and it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily hold up when you start going into
Speaker 1: the details of who he was, the sorts of research
Speaker 1: projects he was involved in. Um Like I I really
Speaker 1: wanted him to be more in line with with another
Speaker 1: counterculture contra virtual character. We've talked about John C. Lily, right,
Speaker 1: but there's not really a lot to compare the two
Speaker 1: besides the LSD connection, right, And that's actually kind of
Speaker 1: what's happening with this episode is we're getting a convergence
Speaker 1: of two types of episodes that we normally do. We
Speaker 1: have a history of doing these two parters on specific
Speaker 1: psychedelics and looking at their scientific and medical applications. But
Speaker 1: then we also have a history of doing episodes like
Speaker 1: the John C. Lily one or the Sasha Shulgin one.
Speaker 1: We call them our psychedelic Avengers. And we thought, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna emerge Tim Leary and this LSD psilocybin research
Speaker 1: together and it will be really interesting. It turns out
Speaker 1: that that he wasn't actually contributing to the research, but
Speaker 1: I think it does come together in a really interesting
Speaker 1: way thematically when we get to the whole piece of this,
Speaker 1: and in that I think he was a barometer for
Speaker 1: America's acceptance of the idea of researching acid as being
Speaker 1: a medical tool. Yeah, it's interesting how he was his
Speaker 1: just will just discuss he was, you know, a spokesperson
Speaker 1: for this. He represented that the supposedly a a learned
Speaker 1: academic who was who was advocating LSD as this this
Speaker 1: powerful tool, and yet at the same time he also
Speaker 1: was such um an inflammatory individual as part of the
Speaker 1: counterculture heat uh. A lot of people point to the
Speaker 1: harm he did as one of one of the key
Speaker 1: figures um more so than John C. Lily uh who
Speaker 1: who vilified the counterculture and vilify the use of psychedelics
Speaker 1: and one of the reasons that psychedelics were not studied
Speaker 1: for for decades. Yeah, there are multiple researchers in the
Speaker 1: notes here that we'll talk about throughout the course of
Speaker 1: these two episodes who point to Leary as being the
Speaker 1: reason why we haven't been able to use LSD in
Speaker 1: UM medically approved studies for going on thirty plus years now,
Speaker 1: longer than that, I think even it was. It's in
Speaker 1: the notes here somewhere, but it was in the mid
Speaker 1: sixties when it was banned. So, yeah, strap in because
Speaker 1: that's the other thing, we're going to get into a
Speaker 1: real basic primer for you on what LSD is, what's
Speaker 1: the difference between LSD and psilocybin, and then we'll roll
Speaker 1: into the Leary experience. Okay, So to go back to
Speaker 1: the very beginning here, let's just go to the the
Speaker 1: origins of l s D itself, since that's the main
Speaker 1: substance that we're gonna be discussing here. So Swiss chemist
Speaker 1: Albert Hoffman synthesized l s D and a Sandas pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: lab on November six uh. Sandas was working on a
Speaker 1: research project involving a parasitic fungus called ergot that grows
Speaker 1: on rye. Now you may remember that Joe and I
Speaker 1: recorded an episode titled The Psychedelic Nightmare of Ergotism that
Speaker 1: dealt with the ergot and that that is the same
Speaker 1: substance that we're discussing here. And you know, aside from
Speaker 1: a noteworthy and truly horrifying breakouts of ergod poisoning in Europe,
Speaker 1: it has been linked to various supernatural rights as well
Speaker 1: as as well as allegedly individual artist and artistic traditions
Speaker 1: throughout history, though I think sometimes those are mere theories, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so just to be clear here, San DAWs was
Speaker 1: a pharmaceutical company that started in eighteen eighties six and
Speaker 1: they began researching for more novel kind of drugs in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen. They were basically looking for therapeutic leads based
Speaker 1: on natural products. So they turned to ergot Why, well,
Speaker 1: they had an example that they had already created called ergotamine.
Speaker 1: That was a drug that they had created for treating
Speaker 1: migraine headaches. So Hoffman came along and he started looking
Speaker 1: at ergat and he saw the lisergic acid in it,
Speaker 1: and he thought, well, maybe this LSD that I can
Speaker 1: synthesize out of this will be a good respiratory stimulants.
Speaker 1: So for instance, make maybe if you have asthma, you
Speaker 1: take some LSD and it will help you breathe better. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he ended up derived being different compounds from lysergic acid,
Speaker 1: and he developed several medicines, including drugs that lowered blood
Speaker 1: pressure and improved brain function in the elderly. And he
Speaker 1: derived the twenty five in a series of these derivatives.
Speaker 1: It was lysergic acid dithalamide or LSD twenty five, and
Speaker 1: he thought that LSD stimulate breathing circulation, but test didn't
Speaker 1: show anything special, and Sandaz abandoned further study. But then
Speaker 1: five years later, Hoffman's thoughts returned to LSD potential and
Speaker 1: he felt that it hadn't been fully explored, so he
Speaker 1: took the you know, perhaps unusual step of synthesizing another
Speaker 1: batch further testing, and during the process he began to
Speaker 1: feel strange. Um. The rest is history. He discovered the
Speaker 1: properties of LSD and I've I've heard it described as
Speaker 1: his his problem child, like it. Basically the rest of
Speaker 1: his life he kept coming back to LSD and and
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, like, you know what what it
Speaker 1: can be used for and how you know, what are
Speaker 1: the true properties of this. At this same time, there's
Speaker 1: this kind of roller coaster of of cultural awareness of
Speaker 1: it taking place in the background. Yeah. Yeah, And he
Speaker 1: has that infamous bicycle ride as well, right after he
Speaker 1: takes it for the first time that has been sort
Speaker 1: of mythologized over the years. Yes. Now, l s D,
Speaker 1: to be clear, is a psychedelic drug, meaning that it
Speaker 1: alters perceptions of reality, the shape of thoughts, the connections
Speaker 1: that one forms. I can't stress enough that one should
Speaker 1: set aside any cinematic uh ideas of what acid trips
Speaker 1: consists of, because it's it's rare to find a film
Speaker 1: that truly feels trippy in a way that matches up
Speaker 1: with the actual experience of ls D. You don't. You
Speaker 1: don't see imaginary elves or anything. It's if you watch
Speaker 1: just films and TV, you just assume that an LSD
Speaker 1: trip is a dream sequence, and a dream sequence is
Speaker 1: just an LSD trip, that these are in just interchangeable
Speaker 1: altered states of reality, right, Yeah, exactly. I remember, like
Speaker 1: growing up when kids would start talking about LSD and
Speaker 1: it being available to us just all the like various
Speaker 1: like bizarre urban myths that people would tell, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's this one guy who took it and uh, he
Speaker 1: thinks he's an orange now and he doesn't know how
Speaker 1: stop being an orange, or like another one was like
Speaker 1: this guy took it and he saw a bunch of
Speaker 1: everybody looked like giant white guerrillas to him, and he
Speaker 1: fought all these guerrillas and it's like these sort of
Speaker 1: spectacular stories. Well, it does have hallucinogenic properties, there's their
Speaker 1: mythologized Yeah, I always think back to an episode of
Speaker 1: Strangers with Candy where there's a story of a girl
Speaker 1: who try took alice D and tried to force herself
Speaker 1: through a key hole. You know. Now, that's not to
Speaker 1: say that that nothing bad can happen while while one
Speaker 1: is on l S D. We'll have some examples of
Speaker 1: that as well as we go on here. But in
Speaker 1: terms of just like what the experience of the elics
Speaker 1: D that basically what is the psychedelic experience? Uh? Oddly enough,
Speaker 1: I'm I want to turn to some the words of
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary because I thought that that he actually managed
Speaker 1: to sum it up rather nicely here and uh, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and read it in my impersonation
Speaker 1: of Timothy Leary because it's more fun that way for
Speaker 1: me and hopefully for you. Of course, the drug dose
Speaker 1: does not produce transcendent experience. It merely acts as a
Speaker 1: chemical key. It opens the mind, frees the nervous system
Speaker 1: of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the
Speaker 1: experience depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes
Speaker 1: the preparation of the individual, including his personality, structure, and
Speaker 1: his mood. At the same time setting is physical, the weather,
Speaker 1: the room's atmosphere, social feelings of persons present toward one another,
Speaker 1: and cultural prevailing views as to what is real. It
Speaker 1: is for this reason that manuals or guide books are necessary.
Speaker 1: Their purpose is to enable a person to understand the
Speaker 1: new realities of the expanded consciousness, to serve as roadmaps
Speaker 1: for new interior territories which modern science has made accessible.
Speaker 1: So to give you an idea of what LSD is
Speaker 1: like outside of the experience, outside of getting turned on,
Speaker 1: as Leary would not right, It starts without about an
Speaker 1: hour of when you first take it, and it can
Speaker 1: last up to twelve hours. Uh, there's a peak about
Speaker 1: halfway through that experience. And the effects very widely, but
Speaker 1: biologically they include dilated pupils, increased blood pressure, high body temperature, dizziness, sweat,
Speaker 1: blurred vision, and tingly hands and feet. The primary effects, though,
Speaker 1: are visual, which is more what Leary is describing there.
Speaker 1: You get stronger colors, brighter lights, trails, halos, and patterns. Overall,
Speaker 1: people say it provides a sense of happiness and euphoria.
Speaker 1: That's very emotional. However, though, as we said, this can
Speaker 1: also lead to impulsive behavior. And poor judgment. When you're
Speaker 1: under the effects of this euphoria. Yeah, you you feel
Speaker 1: you're body as if it's something new, something different. You
Speaker 1: smell and taste the world in a different way, visual stimulized, processed,
Speaker 1: and with new areas of focus, new details, and and
Speaker 1: the same can be said for cognition. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: same can be said for the basic processing of time.
Speaker 1: And so indeed, that is the that is the essential
Speaker 1: psychedelic experience, uh, in a nutshell. And there's one thing
Speaker 1: I'd like to point out before we go further here,
Speaker 1: which is that we don't actually know how it affects
Speaker 1: the brain entirely. And why don't we know that because
Speaker 1: there's never been any scientific research on how it affects
Speaker 1: the brain because it has been banned largely in the
Speaker 1: United States and some other countries for for the last
Speaker 1: couple of decades, as we mentioned, So this is kind
Speaker 1: of a problem. We've got this thing on our hands.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows about it, we have a general understanding of it,
Speaker 1: but we haven't done the research. Yeah, and we've touched
Speaker 1: on this. So when we've talked about marijuana, so a
Speaker 1: cybin as well as m d M A you have
Speaker 1: these substances that just became banned. Research into their properties right,
Speaker 1: was at the very least professionally taboo for so long.
Speaker 1: So yeah, despite the fact that they clearly have powerful properties,
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily understand them all that much. It's believed
Speaker 1: that LSD works similar to serotonin, a neurotransmitters responsible for
Speaker 1: regulating moods, appetite, muscle control, sexuality, sleep, and sensory perception.
Speaker 1: And ls D seems to interfere with the way the
Speaker 1: brain serotonin receptors work, so it may inhibit neurotransmission, stimulated
Speaker 1: or both. It also affects the way that the retinas
Speaker 1: process information and conduct that information to the brain. So
Speaker 1: you might be listening to this and saying, well, hold on,
Speaker 1: I've never taken any of this stuff before, and you're
Speaker 1: just kind of throwing these terms around. What's the difference
Speaker 1: between LSD and psilocybin. While psilocybin is a fun guy,
Speaker 1: and that's classified by botanists and my cologists people to
Speaker 1: study mushrooms. While they were used by the Aztecs in
Speaker 1: religious rituals, the American public didn't really find out about
Speaker 1: psilocybin until nineteen fifty seven, and this was when an
Speaker 1: article in Life magazine recounted the adventures of a New
Speaker 1: York banker in Mexico where he tried it. H Yeah,
Speaker 1: LSD totally different. It is colorless, odorless, and tasteless and ingesting.
Speaker 1: Just twenty five micrograms is enough to feel effects. Now,
Speaker 1: to give you an idea of what twenty five micrograms is,
Speaker 1: that's less than the weight of two salt grains. It
Speaker 1: is very quickly metabolized by the human body. Now, as
Speaker 1: previously established, LSD is a chemical that synthesized in a
Speaker 1: laboratory setting, whereas psilocybin is a fun guy that's grown
Speaker 1: in nage. One is natural one is created in a lap.
Speaker 1: Several chemicals that could go into l s D are
Speaker 1: currently sales restricted here in America or are monitored by
Speaker 1: the Drug Enforcement Agency. And there's all kinds of different
Speaker 1: recipes on how to make it. Some start with lysergic
Speaker 1: acid that's derived from morning glory seeds. Others use that
Speaker 1: ergot fungus that we talked about earlier and how it
Speaker 1: was discovered. They culture that and they extract ergot alkaloids
Speaker 1: from it. This fungus and LSD itself can break down
Speaker 1: when exposed to light, and that's important to note as well.
Speaker 1: In this ergot recipe, the solvents and reagents involved are
Speaker 1: also very dangerous. They're poisonous, carcinogenic, and explosive. So it's fun.
Speaker 1: I would imagine marking on this stuff, like if you've
Speaker 1: got your little laboratory, you've got to be really careful.
Speaker 1: You know. This is like uh um, some Jesse and
Speaker 1: Walter White stuff where you've got to be really careful
Speaker 1: about what kind of stuff you're concocting and what you're
Speaker 1: breathing in and whether you're not you blow up your trailer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is straight up chemistry. And that's the other different
Speaker 1: psilocybin is uh is ultimately uh, it's it's about I
Speaker 1: guess scavenging or or growing naturally occurring organism. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is chemistry. So the way you do it is you
Speaker 1: synthesize the ergot alkaloid into a life surgic acid compound,
Speaker 1: and you do this by adding chemicals and applying heat.
Speaker 1: After word, you isomerize the compounds so that the atoms
Speaker 1: in its molecules rearrange. This involves some cooling, mixing, it
Speaker 1: with an acid, an actual acid, not the term acid,
Speaker 1: also a base, and then evaporating it. The remnants are
Speaker 1: iOS lysergic dithalamide, which is then isomerized again and that
Speaker 1: produces what's called active LSD. So finally you purify it,
Speaker 1: you crystallize it. Afterward, LSD can be made into tablets,
Speaker 1: or it's dissolved into liquid or made into gelatine squares.
Speaker 1: Most often it's dissolved into ethanol, and then that ethanol
Speaker 1: is added to sheets of blotting paper that are then dried,
Speaker 1: cut up into little pieces, and people get tabs. It
Speaker 1: looks just like the candy that you can buy. I'm
Speaker 1: not really sure on the history of that. Can you
Speaker 1: know the one where it basically looks like blot Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like which came first. It's a good question this is
Speaker 1: this like candy cigarettes or is it just a happy
Speaker 1: coincidence that this terrible candy looks like acid? Yeah? That
Speaker 1: is curious. If any listeners know, please let us in
Speaker 1: on the secret. There A lot of you have probably
Speaker 1: also heard about bad trips. We mentioned them earlier. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not really clear what causes these bad trips, but
Speaker 1: they result in fear and paranoia, and treatment usually requires
Speaker 1: basically going to a quiet space so that the user
Speaker 1: can just come down, but sometimes you have to administer
Speaker 1: anti anxiety medication or tranquilizers, so that that's important to
Speaker 1: remember as well. Yeah, this makes me think of a
Speaker 1: lot of the research involving psilocybin um that really ultimately
Speaker 1: kind of backs up some of what Leary said in
Speaker 1: that that bit that I read in that a lot
Speaker 1: of it comes down to priming, preparing the individual for
Speaker 1: what the trip is going to consist of, and then
Speaker 1: of course personal medical and personal psychiatric history is going
Speaker 1: to play into that scenario. Yeah. Absolutely. Now you've also
Speaker 1: probably heard of flashbacks, right, this is the other thing
Speaker 1: like when when I was in high school, like all
Speaker 1: the legends, it was like, Oh, he's gonna see those
Speaker 1: White Guerrillas every year for the rest of his life,
Speaker 1: right like something like that. Oh yeah, it's this is
Speaker 1: something that is that pops up in films and TV
Speaker 1: from time to time, and it's either just completely ridiculous,
Speaker 1: like the White Guerrillas, or even when it is a
Speaker 1: lot cooler and more believable, say with the first season
Speaker 1: of True Detective, there's still a lot a lot of
Speaker 1: doubts from some individuals to to what extent this is
Speaker 1: a thing or or a realistic depiction of it if
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, here's the deal with flashbacks. There's no
Speaker 1: evidence to support the idea that LSD remains in your
Speaker 1: body forever in amounts inside your brain or spinal fluid.
Speaker 1: People say that, but we don't have any evidence on it.
Speaker 1: Why because we really haven't been able to study it. Right. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some people think though, that this is what causes flashbacks.
Speaker 1: The majority of users the report never having had flashbacks,
Speaker 1: and of those who have reported it, many are mentally ill,
Speaker 1: and some doctors believe that what they're perceiving is actually
Speaker 1: a form of psychosis that emerged due to the LSD use.
Speaker 1: There's actually a medically recognized disorder called hallucinogen persisting perceptive disorder,
Speaker 1: and this is for people who constantly experience visual hallucinations
Speaker 1: after they take LSD. This is a little different than
Speaker 1: the idea of flashbacks, right. I mean, it's also worth
Speaker 1: noting that the visual hallucinations can occur for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons. Um, So it's it's entirely possible that one
Speaker 1: could could could take LSD and then what a year later,
Speaker 1: they experienced some sort of visual hallucination and one of
Speaker 1: the main ways they can describe it is the narrative
Speaker 1: of acid flashbacks and then they're going and then that
Speaker 1: becomes encoded in memory. So one last thing I want
Speaker 1: to make clear about ls D before we we cap
Speaker 1: off this summary here. LSD is not an addictive drug.
Speaker 1: So if somebody tells you you know you're gonna take that,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get hooked on it or something like that,
Speaker 1: that's just patently untrue. Uh. The real basic way that
Speaker 1: it works is that if you take it a lot,
Speaker 1: your body is going to get used to it, and
Speaker 1: subsequently the effects are going to lessen over time. So
Speaker 1: that's the opposite of something that you become addicted to.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work in the same way as something like heroin.
Speaker 1: Right though then some people may point out there's the
Speaker 1: whole idea that like, the first time you take heroin
Speaker 1: is the best, and then you're always chasing that dragon. Uh.
Speaker 1: But still, the LSD, psilocybin, d m T, any of
Speaker 1: these psychedelic substances that we've discussed on the program before,
Speaker 1: they are they are not addictive in the the very
Speaker 1: literal way that stuff like heroin is. Alright, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break and we come back. We're going
Speaker 1: to continue to talk about the psychedelics, and in particular,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about psychedelics in medicine. Alright, we're back. So,
Speaker 1: according to Timothy Leary's archivist, a guy named Michael Horowitz,
Speaker 1: before Leary, the research being done on psychedelics was mostly
Speaker 1: done by the CIA and the Army. Uh makes us
Speaker 1: think of d and stranger things. Yeah, but they were
Speaker 1: looking to weaponize it, dosing subjects without their knowledge. Now,
Speaker 1: what he's actually talking about is the CIS attempts with
Speaker 1: stuff like Project Bluebird and Project mk Ultra to develop
Speaker 1: mind control techniques. We actually have an episode about Stranger
Speaker 1: Things coming up in the next couple of weeks where
Speaker 1: we're going to talk more about this stuff. The basic
Speaker 1: idea here that I'm gonna boil it down quickly is
Speaker 1: that they were inspired by Nazi research experiments in the
Speaker 1: Dakow concentration camp. Subsequently, they tested on helpless populations like prisoners,
Speaker 1: drug addicts, and mental patients, and at one point the
Speaker 1: government reportedly ordered over a hundred million doses of LSD
Speaker 1: from sand DAWs, that company that discovered it, so that
Speaker 1: they could experiment with contaminating a water supply. So they
Speaker 1: wanted to weaponize this and basically see like, can we
Speaker 1: put a whole bunch of LSD in one of our
Speaker 1: enemies water supplies? You know this really sad thing about this,
Speaker 1: uh portion of the story is the it underlies, uh
Speaker 1: you know, a fact about military first research. You know
Speaker 1: that essentially mility military researchers come in and say, okay,
Speaker 1: can we use it to kill people? Better? Can we
Speaker 1: use it to enable our our our our warfare in
Speaker 1: some way, shape or form, And if not, well then
Speaker 1: we're done with it. We see this time and time
Speaker 1: again on the show, and whenever we dig deep into topics,
Speaker 1: whether it be uh the weaponization of animals we've done
Speaker 1: an episode on, or a lot of our space based
Speaker 1: stuff is usually related to weaponizing space at some point. Uh. So, Actually,
Speaker 1: the government Sandas wouldn't supply them that much, so they
Speaker 1: turned to another company. They wanted the company to break
Speaker 1: sandas is patent and produce the chemical, but the whole
Speaker 1: thing never came to pass, and the government essentially deemed
Speaker 1: LSD too unpredictable for their general use. Now, Leary pioneered
Speaker 1: research into how psychedelics could reveal the nature of human
Speaker 1: consciousness and possibly help people with depression and anxiety, but
Speaker 1: he also precipitated a backlash against psychedelics that criminalized them
Speaker 1: and made it impossible for others to do research on them. Uh.
Speaker 1: Leary supporters argue, that's not Leary's fault. This would have
Speaker 1: happened anyways, you know, And I can see, you know,
Speaker 1: I can see both sides of that. But he was
Speaker 1: undoubtedly m a key figure and in a in a
Speaker 1: very um, you know, ultimately a very like hateable figure.
Speaker 1: Like part of his his charisma and his charm, it
Speaker 1: just worked like poison against the people who already had,
Speaker 1: you know, a conservative bent. Yeah, it's true, and we're
Speaker 1: going to see time and time again people turn against him,
Speaker 1: and not the kind of people that you would expect. Right,
Speaker 1: So let's back up for a second here, what about
Speaker 1: before Leary? How we're scientists and researchers looking at it
Speaker 1: before that. Well, in the nineteen fifties, some researchers began
Speaker 1: investigating whether psychedelics could treat mental health disorders or addiction.
Speaker 1: The federal government funded a hundred and sixteen of these studies.
Speaker 1: But between nineteen fifty three and nineteen seventy three, again
Speaker 1: I turned to our episode on M D, M A
Speaker 1: and Sasha and Shulgin. They're perfect example of this. Along
Speaker 1: those lines is kind of what was going on with
Speaker 1: psychiatrists and various researchers working with LSD and patients to
Speaker 1: see how it could work. Sandaz was essentially selling it
Speaker 1: as a psychiatric product, right and these and these were
Speaker 1: reputable research operations. We had not yet gotten to the
Speaker 1: point where Leary comes along or or John C. Lily
Speaker 1: comes along and you know, starts giving it to dolphins, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: or or giving it to himself while he's hanging out
Speaker 1: with dolphins. Uh. Now, the sam Does Company patented it,
Speaker 1: but they sold it as Della sid beginning in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty seven, and they sold it in twenty five microgram
Speaker 1: tablets that were designed for analytical psychotherapy. They suggested that
Speaker 1: the psychiatrists themselves take it so that they could better
Speaker 1: understand their patients experiences. Now, when they stopped making it,
Speaker 1: they said, this is about the fact that there's a
Speaker 1: lack of regulation and that there's inaccurate information being perpetuated
Speaker 1: about this drug. But between nineteen fifty and nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: forty thousand patients were given Delhi sid tablets basically legal LSD,
Speaker 1: and Dr Max Wrinkle was the first to bring LSD
Speaker 1: to the United States and then test it on a
Speaker 1: population of a hundred volunteers. He and his colleague Dr
Speaker 1: Paul Hope noted that LSD produced effects that quote mimic
Speaker 1: schizophrenic psychosis. So this is you can see what there's
Speaker 1: some as Another theme that we come back to over
Speaker 1: and over again on the show is early psychological theory
Speaker 1: seems to be very uh generalized and biased, right, and
Speaker 1: this is another example of that. They're like, oh, there's
Speaker 1: this thing. It just seems to make you schizophrenic, you know,
Speaker 1: and there just wasn't enough research behind it. But recreational
Speaker 1: drug use increased dramatically in the sixt s, such that
Speaker 1: as many as two million people had dropped acid by
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. So by nineteen sixty five there were
Speaker 1: very few researchers who were allowed to possess LSD. Only
Speaker 1: six projects were conducted in nineteen sixty nine. In nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: the US Congress added psychedelics into the government War on Drugs,
Speaker 1: and the federal government declared these drugs had no medical use.
Speaker 1: The chairman for New Jersey's Narcotic Drug Study Commission called
Speaker 1: LSD the greatest threat facing the country today, more dangerous
Speaker 1: than the Vietnam War. It seems like a little hyperbot.
Speaker 1: By nineteen seventy four, the National Institutes for Mental Health
Speaker 1: declared that LSD had quote no real therapeutic value. So
Speaker 1: there was a strong establishment bent against this drug, which
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary unfortunately did not help with his antics. UH. Today,
Speaker 1: though l s D is a Schedule one drug in
Speaker 1: the United States, it's under the Controlled subs sens Is Act.
Speaker 1: This basically means the government believes that it has high
Speaker 1: abuse potential, which we've already established that's not addictive. UH,
Speaker 1: it has a lack of accepted safe uses when taken
Speaker 1: under medical supervision. We'll talk a little bit about how
Speaker 1: there actually are some of those, and that it basically
Speaker 1: has no current medical use in their minds. Again, there's
Speaker 1: evidence that it does. Now. I want to remind everybody
Speaker 1: that by placing it as a Schedule one, they're placing
Speaker 1: it in the same category as marijuana and uh, and
Speaker 1: they're placing it in a stricter category than category two,
Speaker 1: which includes cocaine. Yep. So since then, only a small
Speaker 1: number of studies have been conducted. You've got small sample sizes,
Speaker 1: so there's not a lot of research that we can
Speaker 1: rely on. The early results are broad. They suggest that
Speaker 1: when used by people without a family history or risk
Speaker 1: of psychological problems, psychedelics can actually make us kinder, calmer,
Speaker 1: and better at our jobs. They also help us solve
Speaker 1: problems more creatively and make us more open minded and generous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting when you look at the research here
Speaker 1: about these potential uses for psychedelics that one is insolute
Speaker 1: reminded of meditation, because both both meditation and psilocybin have
Speaker 1: been shown to shut down the default fault mode network,
Speaker 1: that constant stream of worry chat about past and future
Speaker 1: in your brain um, and that the brain activity is
Speaker 1: similar even if the experience you know, obviously isn't going
Speaker 1: to always be the same though there there is often
Speaker 1: a certain amount of crossover UM and we'll have to
Speaker 1: get into that more when we do a focus on
Speaker 1: meditation in the future. Yeah, I mean, what Robert's referring
Speaker 1: to is the default mode and network. This is a
Speaker 1: group of structures in the brain. They're found in the
Speaker 1: frontal and prefrontal cortex. That's what's responsible for our ego
Speaker 1: and our sense of self, and it's why we as
Speaker 1: humans have very rigid habitual thinking that let's face it,
Speaker 1: we can obsess over right on psychedelics that slows down
Speaker 1: and the boundaries betwe in the self in the world dissolve,
Speaker 1: allowing for therapy sessions that can be more effective. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a number of excellent studies here. At two
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven study at John Hopkins University gave high
Speaker 1: doses of psilocybin to fifty one test subjects and according
Speaker 1: to ABC News, a thirty of these individuals experienced measurable
Speaker 1: personality changes that lasted more than a year. So as
Speaker 1: of twenty six, a year ago, about five hundred people
Speaker 1: have participated informal psilocybin experience. That's not LSD. It's worth
Speaker 1: remembering though, that these volunteers are self selected and are
Speaker 1: carefully screened and then are guided by therapists. So psychedelics
Speaker 1: used outside of control settings, yes, they can cause problems,
Speaker 1: including bad trips where the users feel extremely anxious and depressed.
Speaker 1: This doesn't account for the occasional flashbacks that we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, whether that's a real thing or not. Right,
Speaker 1: the possible future of research is very promising. Patients are
Speaker 1: recommend ended for treatment by a doctor, for instance, This
Speaker 1: might be what we we look at in a few years. Right,
Speaker 1: you get recommended for LSD R psilocybin treatment by your doctor.
Speaker 1: They get you screened for mental illness, They look at
Speaker 1: your heart to see if you have any heart conditions.
Speaker 1: Then they're prepping you about what to expect. You're monitored
Speaker 1: by a medical professional while you're under the effects. This
Speaker 1: is someone that they have, you know, established a trusting
Speaker 1: relationship with you. Is not just some scary orderly who
Speaker 1: stands there the whole time. They have to work with
Speaker 1: you for at least six to eight hours ahead of time.
Speaker 1: Then the experience you have is contained, so it's something
Speaker 1: you can build a life around, right, you can you
Speaker 1: can figure out how to solve the problems that you're
Speaker 1: going in for around this. Across the board, though, like you,
Speaker 1: we're looking at at openness is one of the key
Speaker 1: positive results of psaulocybin use other hallucinations that have been
Speaker 1: explored in these various research programs. Yeah, and so you
Speaker 1: look at what are the possibilities here. If we can
Speaker 1: get the FDA to reschedule it, what can we do
Speaker 1: with it? Well, there, I've already been studies that have
Speaker 1: looked at how psilocybin or LSD can be used to
Speaker 1: help terminal patients deal with the end of life anxiety.
Speaker 1: You can potentially help people who have addictive problems. There's
Speaker 1: been studies that have been done on smoking cessation and
Speaker 1: alcoholism related to it. Uh. And then also psychedelics can
Speaker 1: potentially help mental wellness. There's been a number of studies
Speaker 1: that have been done basically looking at how it can
Speaker 1: prolong positive changes in attitude and mood. Um. When I
Speaker 1: think about LSD or psilocybin for myself, I've never taken either,
Speaker 1: But when I hear these very controlled laboratory conditions described
Speaker 1: as somebody who's never taken it, that's actually more appealing
Speaker 1: to me. The idea of it being done in a
Speaker 1: controlled setting like that. Well, you know, the crazy part
Speaker 1: about it is that like the idea of of say
Speaker 1: people or young people taking LSD, solocybin or whatever and
Speaker 1: not really knowing what they're doing and having, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a positive experience, maybe a negative like that's that's
Speaker 1: not in keeping a with the clinical use of it.
Speaker 1: But but all but be with the with the traditional
Speaker 1: use of some of these substances, where you would have
Speaker 1: not a scientist but a shaman to administer these things.
Speaker 1: There were rituals, there were there was a process. It
Speaker 1: was communal. Yeah, it was a communal experience with lots
Speaker 1: of priming. Yeah. Now, so just from my perspective, because
Speaker 1: I know I have a history of depression and anxiety,
Speaker 1: and my family has a history of depression and anxiety,
Speaker 1: I've always worried, well, I don't want to take this
Speaker 1: because I might have a bad reaction, right, Remember what
Speaker 1: they said some of the setup was because they needed
Speaker 1: to screen you for certain things. I'm also curious though
Speaker 1: they say things like it's going to increase your interest
Speaker 1: in fantasy and imagination, and I want to know how
Speaker 1: much more interested in fantasy and imagination I can get,
Speaker 1: because I'm already pretty well down that rabbit hole. One
Speaker 1: of the things that these researchers say is that when
Speaker 1: they take a look at it. It can help change
Speaker 1: your personality if you're having personality problems, right that the
Speaker 1: general idea is that personality is fixed after the age
Speaker 1: of thirty, but with the help of psychedelics, you may
Speaker 1: be able to overcome some you know, boundaries that you're
Speaker 1: facing in that respect. And I just think that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I've always just kind of anecdotally thought about it about
Speaker 1: ten years later than that. Like pretty much everybody I know,
Speaker 1: by the time they're forty, they are who they are
Speaker 1: and they're going to be that way. I have not
Speaker 1: seen anybody make any drastic changes, but it seems like
Speaker 1: if they have really difficult emotional problems in life that
Speaker 1: they're trying to get over, it seems like there's a
Speaker 1: possibility here that if we were only able to study
Speaker 1: this further, it might be an option for people like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: you know, we we like, we may think of ourselves
Speaker 1: a set in stone after a certain point, but but
Speaker 1: we're not. We're not really. I mean, we know that
Speaker 1: the mind is in memory is more malleable than that.
Speaker 1: Uh So, psychedelics come in as a as a possible
Speaker 1: means to loosen things up so that they can be reset. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course that being said, drugs are not the
Speaker 1: only thing that I think that they can allow a
Speaker 1: person to do that. I mean, sometimes something is simple,
Speaker 1: is say travel, uh, new experiences, um, reading a book
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have otherwise read this sort of thing. Generally,
Speaker 1: having a creative curiosity about life uh can can change
Speaker 1: who you are. I think one of the interesting things
Speaker 1: some of these studies of is that it makes you wonder, like,
Speaker 1: is the person that has administered the substance. Are they
Speaker 1: this the kind of person that is not a novelty seeker?
Speaker 1: They're not. They don't seek out new experiences otherwise. Like
Speaker 1: maybe that's the kind of individual for whom some potential
Speaker 1: future treatment would be best used. Like somebody who's who
Speaker 1: really can't shake some thing negative in their life. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they have a pretty established routine if how things are,
Speaker 1: But at the same time they recognize that there's something
Speaker 1: about that routine that is dysfunctional for them or for
Speaker 1: the world around. Yeah, there's some sort of cycle that
Speaker 1: needs to be broken. Uh, there's something that needs to
Speaker 1: be you know, just pulled apart so it can be
Speaker 1: put back together. In a slightly different form. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good way to approach it. So
Speaker 1: why don't we take another break, and then when we
Speaker 1: get back, we're gonna officially dive into the Leary stuff,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna start right at the beginning. Thank thank Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. Okay, So we're gonna talk about Timothy Leary
Speaker 1: for the rest of this episode and then into the
Speaker 1: next episode as well. Uh, you know, we're gonna start
Speaker 1: at the beginning because I think a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff that happens on early on in his life is
Speaker 1: going to be key. And it's interesting when we talk
Speaker 1: about this in terms of like, at what point is
Speaker 1: someone's personality set? At what point is somebody's destiny kind
Speaker 1: of set? Well, according to Robert Greenfield, who wrote to
Speaker 1: Timothy Learry a biography, yeah you can. You can sort
Speaker 1: of see a lot of that in Leary's early life.
Speaker 1: So he was born October ninety and Springfield, Massachusetts to
Speaker 1: an Irish Catholic family. His father with a stroll as
Speaker 1: a struggling dentist, and his mother was a working mother.
Speaker 1: That's my neck of the woods, Stoffield, Massachusetts. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: uncle works there. It's just my whole family is from
Speaker 1: the western part of that state. So I have a
Speaker 1: very clear picture in my head now of what his
Speaker 1: his young upbringing was like. So, according to Greenfield's biography,
Speaker 1: you can really attribute a lot of learies rebel rebellious
Speaker 1: spirit to his relationship with his father Tote, an alcoholic
Speaker 1: who brought imbalance to the home and depended on charity
Speaker 1: from family loans to prop up his struggling dental practice.
Speaker 1: And now the young Tim Larry you know, occasionally stood
Speaker 1: up to his father, but was also forced to hide
Speaker 1: from him on the roof on some occasions, and then
Speaker 1: total left the family when Tim was on fourteen UH,
Speaker 1: leaving him to find solace in books about mythic heroes
Speaker 1: and UH legends, and he was determined to become something better,
Speaker 1: greater than his father, and his mother obsessed as well
Speaker 1: over her her child's future, like how can I engineer
Speaker 1: uh somebody for success? And so Greenfield argues that we
Speaker 1: see the seeds of Leary's relationships with authority figures throughout
Speaker 1: his life, you know, pinpointed in his early life as
Speaker 1: well as his relationships with women. He would go through
Speaker 1: periods of finding structure within an within an institution, but
Speaker 1: would ultimately rebel against its order, and in times of
Speaker 1: distress he'd seek out women and for positive father figures.
Speaker 1: He turned to UH, not to his own father, of course,
Speaker 1: but to a flamboyant and sometimes dramatic family members. And
Speaker 1: he depended on the emotional and financial support UH first
Speaker 1: of all of his mother and UH and in Greenfield
Speaker 1: identifies a pattern of his leaving most of them along
Speaker 1: the way. Yeah. I mean, I think like one of
Speaker 1: the off whole themes that we're going to notice by
Speaker 1: the time we get to the end of this two
Speaker 1: parter is that he left a a wake behind him
Speaker 1: of either abused people or dead people. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into it. Yeah. There are a number
Speaker 1: of self destructive tendencies in Timothy Learry's life, al right.
Speaker 1: So in terms of his his school and his essentially
Speaker 1: pre psychedelics career, UH Learry attended classical high school alongside
Speaker 1: American author, a biographer and historian William Manchester. Somebody might
Speaker 1: be a familiar with him from a world lit only
Speaker 1: by fire The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, which is
Speaker 1: an excellent book. And he also went to the same
Speaker 1: school as a Theodore Geisel or Dr Seuss. He went
Speaker 1: to the College of Holy Cross and Worcester, uh is
Speaker 1: a strict Catholic school that of course inspired rebellion from Larry.
Speaker 1: He made money gambling on sports. He frequently hopped the
Speaker 1: wall with other adventure seekers in or Or to go
Speaker 1: out drinking in town and chase girls. My father from Worcester.
Speaker 1: So also, like this is like connecting the dots. So
Speaker 1: to give you an idea here if if you're not
Speaker 1: familiar with messages at all, Springfields in the western part
Speaker 1: of the state, Worcester sort of in the middle, but
Speaker 1: between Springfield and Boston. So it's not I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like forty five minutes probably from where he grew up.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, the next place we're going on the
Speaker 1: map here for Leary is west Point, and this is
Speaker 1: where he initially just goes all in on the culture
Speaker 1: of West Point. He wrote, according to the Greenfield, he's
Speaker 1: writing back to his mom with just the maximum amount
Speaker 1: of west Point lingo you can possibly use. And this
Speaker 1: is telling to like he'll start off really into a
Speaker 1: culture and then he rebels, and indeed he does. He
Speaker 1: returns to his old ways, even faces a court martial
Speaker 1: for drunken behavior. He's acquitted, but then he ends up
Speaker 1: facing what's known as the silence, or was known as
Speaker 1: the silence. This was a policy that Australized cadets who
Speaker 1: broke the honor code, and this was discontinued in seventy three.
Speaker 1: And Uh. He ultimately ends up resigning and is honorably
Speaker 1: discharged by the army. Then he applies to colleges across America.
Speaker 1: The University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa accepted in first, so
Speaker 1: that's where he went. He met Dr Donald Angus Ramsdell,
Speaker 1: a Harvard psychology PhD, a man who Leary would later
Speaker 1: refer to as Dr d which I found that interesting
Speaker 1: given our episodes on the real Doctor John Dyah. And Uh.
Speaker 1: He soon immersed himself in the study of psychology and
Speaker 1: in biology, and now having lost his draft de term deferment,
Speaker 1: he enrolled in r OTC to avoid a draft. And
Speaker 1: then he also ran a foul of the school here
Speaker 1: due to womanizing so much though the dean even accused
Speaker 1: him of sullying quote the honor of Southern womanhood, and
Speaker 1: he was expelled. Man like just from my point perspective
Speaker 1: from you know, being from up in New England and
Speaker 1: in the tooth thousands moving to the South into a
Speaker 1: progressive southern city. I had a lot of culture shock.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to imagine what it was like for this guy,
Speaker 1: you know, all these years ago, Uh, just transitioning and
Speaker 1: jumping around and getting into trouble and just really shaking
Speaker 1: things up everywhere he went. Well, it's interesting. One of
Speaker 1: the sort of side things in in Greenfield's biography that
Speaker 1: he points out is that apparently at the time the
Speaker 1: university in Tuscaloosa, you had these various liberal academics and
Speaker 1: in many cases, um homosexual academics who had found sort
Speaker 1: of a safe environment in which to thrive. So in
Speaker 1: a in a sense like if Timothy Leary was going
Speaker 1: to go to anywhere in the American South at that point,
Speaker 1: Tuscaloose was probably one of the places to go. And
Speaker 1: he did find people who who valued him and embraced him,
Speaker 1: you know initially, but he wasn't quite able to to
Speaker 1: finish his his academic duties. Oh of course not now.
Speaker 1: On the advice of Dr d he goes on to
Speaker 1: a role in the univer of Illinois he lines up
Speaker 1: work in the psychology department, and he eventually completes his
Speaker 1: education at Tuscaloosa remotely. But uh yeah, it's one of
Speaker 1: these situations where, um, you just see this pattern over
Speaker 1: and over again. As Greenfield writes, a clear pattern in
Speaker 1: his life had already emerged whenever Tim Leary began accepting
Speaker 1: the kind of success for which he had been programmed
Speaker 1: since birth by his mother, he would stop the process
Speaker 1: by indulging, just as his father had done before him,
Speaker 1: in self destructive behavior. So Leary then goes on to
Speaker 1: get his master's degree at the University of Washington. We're
Speaker 1: talking about Washington State now, So he's already jumped from
Speaker 1: New England to Alabama, to Illinois, and now up to
Speaker 1: Washington State. He received his doctorate in psychology in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty from the University of California at Berkeley. So then
Speaker 1: he jumps down to California. Here he decided that conventional
Speaker 1: psychotherapy was useless and he began experimenting with group therapy
Speaker 1: and transactional analysis. So this gives you an idea of
Speaker 1: like where he was that sort of academically disciplined wise
Speaker 1: before he was introduced to psychedelics. His first wife, Mary Anne,
Speaker 1: committed suicide during this time. This was in nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 1: This left him to raise their two children alone. We
Speaker 1: have more on this obviously. Yeah, this was just a
Speaker 1: real sad situation for a number of reasons. But basically,
Speaker 1: uh he he and Mary Anne had a very open relationship.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but also just a chaotic relationship, but just
Speaker 1: a lot of according to to Greenfield's account in the biography,
Speaker 1: just a lot of negative vibes in this uh, in
Speaker 1: this relationship, a lot was not working. Leary was apparently
Speaker 1: looking to end the relationship in the very near future anyway,
Speaker 1: and then she committed suicide and it was It's not
Speaker 1: like Leary wasn't an unfeeling person like this had a
Speaker 1: huge effect on him, like he would write about it,
Speaker 1: just essentially a pit that he wasn't able to emerge
Speaker 1: from emotionally, for you, for for decades even, and then
Speaker 1: you know, to to say nothing then of the children
Speaker 1: as well. Now, the urban legend of this goes this
Speaker 1: is what you know. I can't imagine how many articles
Speaker 1: and books Robert and I read for this, but it
Speaker 1: probably popped up in every single one of them. Is
Speaker 1: that the night before they were having an argument about
Speaker 1: their open relationship and about that he was in a
Speaker 1: relationship with a woman that he loved more than Mary
Speaker 1: and his wife, and that she was upset about this
Speaker 1: and she wanted him to break it off, and he
Speaker 1: went into the bedroom and said, it's your problem, not mine,
Speaker 1: and closed the door. When he woke up in the morning,
Speaker 1: she was dead. She had suffocated herself in the garage
Speaker 1: inside the family car. Yeah. In Greenfield's account, he he
Speaker 1: kind of points to the different versions of the story,
Speaker 1: so like there's the there's like a slightly different version
Speaker 1: that he that he tells the authorities and then he
Speaker 1: writes about later, and you know, you can sort of
Speaker 1: try to find the truth between all of these. Uh uh.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's just a really ugly situation with an
Speaker 1: ugly ending it is, but it's also, unfortunately, I think,
Speaker 1: an important sign of things to come with this guy
Speaker 1: and and sort of where his priorities were, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to end this this episode because
Speaker 1: we're about to wrap up our first part here, but
Speaker 1: I don't want to end it on such a super downer. Uh.
Speaker 1: He went on afterwards to teach at Berkeley and he
Speaker 1: actually was the director of psychological research at the Kaiser
Speaker 1: Foundation Hospital in Oakland, California, from nineteen fifty five until
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight. Now, during this period, uh, after his
Speaker 1: wife's suicide, Uh, he he also ends up going to
Speaker 1: uh to Europe a few times. He goes to Spain,
Speaker 1: he goes to Italy, and uh, this is kind of key.
Speaker 1: There was this, um, there was this period of time
Speaker 1: when he was when he was in Spain and he
Speaker 1: suddenly experienced this some sort of mysterious illness, so swelling pain. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was attended to buy a Danish doctor and he
Speaker 1: ends up passing this night in misery, ends up sending
Speaker 1: the kids to stay with another couple of of of
Speaker 1: Americans were staying close by, and he says, he said
Speaker 1: that he felt like he died during this time, that
Speaker 1: he that he let go and they put the past
Speaker 1: behind him. But you know, in a very interesting way,
Speaker 1: it was kind of his first psychedelic experience, like a
Speaker 1: taste of this altered state as a you know, not
Speaker 1: to be confused with all the times he'd gotten just
Speaker 1: blindly drunk in the past, because he had previously and
Speaker 1: for a lot of his life, had a severe alcohol problem.
Speaker 1: But it's it's shortly after that too, that Frank Baron,
Speaker 1: who was who was a colleague from Berkeley. Uh. He
Speaker 1: he visited Leary during an unproductive stay in Florence, Italy.
Speaker 1: He was always going on these trips to try and
Speaker 1: you know, to to write various things. And at this
Speaker 1: point Barren told him that during his research into creativity
Speaker 1: he had interviewed a psychiatrist who had used matt Aig
Speaker 1: mushrooms to produce visions and trances, and that Baron had
Speaker 1: tried them as well, resulting in a mystical transcendental insight. Now,
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, Leary warned him that he might lose his
Speaker 1: scientific credibility to be babbled on about this sort of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: And that, my friends, is what we call foreshadowing. Yes,
Speaker 1: so in the next episode we will get into the
Speaker 1: psychedelic experience of of Leary, basically one continuous psychedelic experience
Speaker 1: that lasted his entire life and uh basically dragged American
Speaker 1: culture with Yeah, please make sure that you tune into
Speaker 1: that second part. It's got a lot more of the
Speaker 1: juicy details of Timothy Leary's life and the science and
Speaker 1: research that he did into LSD and psilocybin. If you
Speaker 1: want to reach out to us about this episode and
Speaker 1: any of the stuff we brought up today regarding LSD
Speaker 1: research or possibly Timothy Leary's history, you can always get
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