1 00:00:00,280 --> 00:00:07,720 Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Natalman, and this is Psychoactive, a production 2 00:00:07,760 --> 00:00:11,600 Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the 3 00:00:11,640 --> 00:00:15,040 Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any 4 00:00:15,040 --> 00:00:17,880 Speaker 1: of view is expressed here do not represent those of 5 00:00:17,960 --> 00:00:23,040 Speaker 1: I Heart Media, Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, 6 00:00:23,280 --> 00:00:26,200 Speaker 1: as an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may 7 00:00:26,239 --> 00:00:30,360 Speaker 1: not even represent my own. And nothing contained in this 8 00:00:30,480 --> 00:00:33,360 Speaker 1: show should be used as medical advice or encouragement to 9 00:00:33,479 --> 00:00:45,360 Speaker 1: use any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. So today's 10 00:00:45,720 --> 00:00:50,199 Speaker 1: guest is a fellow name Mike J. Based in the 11 00:00:50,240 --> 00:00:56,640 Speaker 1: United Kingdom. I think he may be the most outstanding 12 00:00:57,360 --> 00:01:02,720 Speaker 1: of all the drug historians living today. And I say 13 00:01:02,720 --> 00:01:05,040 Speaker 1: that because there's a lot of competition for that title. 14 00:01:05,360 --> 00:01:08,960 Speaker 1: But Mike has been somebody who's both delved narrowly into 15 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:12,000 Speaker 1: specific bits of history as well as written kind of 16 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:15,440 Speaker 1: almost sort of global like histories about drugs. Google Hamm 17 00:01:15,520 --> 00:01:17,280 Speaker 1: or look him up on Amazon and you'll see his 18 00:01:17,319 --> 00:01:21,040 Speaker 1: books on drugs include High Society and Emperors of Dreams. 19 00:01:21,080 --> 00:01:23,280 Speaker 1: But he's also written you a dozen or more other 20 00:01:23,360 --> 00:01:26,320 Speaker 1: books about madness with all sorts of neat and weird titles. 21 00:01:26,640 --> 00:01:29,759 Speaker 1: I mean, he's been a historian for decades. He's he's 22 00:01:29,880 --> 00:01:34,800 Speaker 1: he's written about science and medicine and madness, literature, radical politics, 23 00:01:34,800 --> 00:01:38,720 Speaker 1: but drugs, psychoactor, drugs have played a really big role 24 00:01:38,760 --> 00:01:41,200 Speaker 1: in the stuff that he's been writing. So, Mike, we 25 00:01:41,280 --> 00:01:43,520 Speaker 1: only just start off by by welcoming you and and 26 00:01:43,640 --> 00:01:46,600 Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me on Psychoactive. Oh, 27 00:01:46,720 --> 00:01:49,640 Speaker 1: great pleasure to be here. I'm talking to Mike here 28 00:01:49,640 --> 00:01:52,280 Speaker 1: about his latest book, which is Mescalin. It's the history 29 00:01:52,360 --> 00:01:54,760 Speaker 1: of the drug mescal in. I mean, you've written about 30 00:01:54,840 --> 00:01:57,640 Speaker 1: the history of drugs going way back. What prompted you 31 00:01:57,720 --> 00:02:04,320 Speaker 1: to focus on mescalin as something write about, right? I 32 00:02:04,320 --> 00:02:07,480 Speaker 1: guess I started writing about the history of drugs at 33 00:02:07,480 --> 00:02:10,560 Speaker 1: a point when not many people were doing that, and 34 00:02:10,600 --> 00:02:13,200 Speaker 1: it's become, as you say, a kind of thing that 35 00:02:13,280 --> 00:02:19,519 Speaker 1: I do um among other things. And the history of 36 00:02:19,600 --> 00:02:23,120 Speaker 1: drugs is not a lot of what things that we 37 00:02:23,200 --> 00:02:27,800 Speaker 1: recognize today as psychedelics don't play a huge role in 38 00:02:27,919 --> 00:02:32,240 Speaker 1: broader histories, largely because a lot of them weren't synthesized 39 00:02:32,360 --> 00:02:37,120 Speaker 1: or discovered until then. UM and mescalin seemed to me 40 00:02:37,240 --> 00:02:41,240 Speaker 1: be a really appealing way of getting at this because 41 00:02:41,560 --> 00:02:46,799 Speaker 1: unlike L S D, for example, which kind of appeared 42 00:02:46,840 --> 00:02:50,200 Speaker 1: in a laboratory as we know in the nineties, having 43 00:02:50,280 --> 00:02:54,120 Speaker 1: had no previous life, mescaline had had many, many different 44 00:02:54,160 --> 00:02:58,200 Speaker 1: lives before it was the psychedelic, back before the fifties 45 00:02:58,600 --> 00:03:01,760 Speaker 1: for decades. That have been why we used in science 46 00:03:01,880 --> 00:03:05,200 Speaker 1: and in medicine and in psychiatry all the way back 47 00:03:05,240 --> 00:03:09,400 Speaker 1: to the nineteenth century, and then before that, of course, 48 00:03:09,400 --> 00:03:13,320 Speaker 1: it a very very long history through the mescaline containing 49 00:03:13,520 --> 00:03:18,440 Speaker 1: cacti and indigenous history going back thousands of years. So 50 00:03:18,600 --> 00:03:20,480 Speaker 1: it was a chance to look at something that is 51 00:03:20,560 --> 00:03:24,440 Speaker 1: kind of a foundational psychedelic and then to see how 52 00:03:24,480 --> 00:03:27,000 Speaker 1: it played out in different times and places, how it 53 00:03:27,080 --> 00:03:30,040 Speaker 1: was used before you know, all this kind of very 54 00:03:30,040 --> 00:03:34,400 Speaker 1: capacious concept of psychedelic got wrapped around it. And the 55 00:03:34,440 --> 00:03:38,360 Speaker 1: other thing that was really appealing to me about mescaline 56 00:03:38,400 --> 00:03:41,800 Speaker 1: was that it's a history that you can kind of 57 00:03:41,840 --> 00:03:46,720 Speaker 1: divide equally between Western and non Western understandings. It was 58 00:03:46,760 --> 00:03:49,560 Speaker 1: a chance to tease those two apart and see the 59 00:03:49,680 --> 00:03:54,560 Speaker 1: roles that mescaline containing plants have played in indigenous cultures, 60 00:03:54,600 --> 00:03:58,120 Speaker 1: and then kind of in parallel to unfold the story 61 00:03:58,160 --> 00:04:02,320 Speaker 1: of the Western discovery of mescaline the chemical compound. I 62 00:04:02,440 --> 00:04:05,480 Speaker 1: pitched that to my editor and he said, why isn't 63 00:04:05,520 --> 00:04:08,480 Speaker 1: there a book about mescaline. You know, there's dozens of 64 00:04:08,640 --> 00:04:11,000 Speaker 1: histories of LSD and m D, m A and stuff, 65 00:04:11,040 --> 00:04:14,960 Speaker 1: so why isn't there a history of masculine? And I said, oh, man, 66 00:04:15,040 --> 00:04:17,119 Speaker 1: that would be such a job to pull together because 67 00:04:17,120 --> 00:04:20,400 Speaker 1: most of the literature is not translated. Huge trunk chunks 68 00:04:20,400 --> 00:04:23,040 Speaker 1: of it are in French or in German, or in 69 00:04:23,160 --> 00:04:26,640 Speaker 1: Spanish or in Polish or Romanian. You know, you'd have 70 00:04:26,680 --> 00:04:29,200 Speaker 1: to be right across all these different disciplines and the 71 00:04:29,360 --> 00:04:33,200 Speaker 1: history of science. And he just taking, like good editions do. 72 00:04:33,480 --> 00:04:35,599 Speaker 1: I was pushy to do something that's more than you 73 00:04:35,680 --> 00:04:37,960 Speaker 1: wanted to do and sign up for in the first place. 74 00:04:38,360 --> 00:04:41,239 Speaker 1: So I guess that was the aha moment which I went, Okay, 75 00:04:41,520 --> 00:04:44,360 Speaker 1: we need approper history of mascaline. Part of what you 76 00:04:44,440 --> 00:04:46,520 Speaker 1: do early on in the book is that you take 77 00:04:46,720 --> 00:04:49,640 Speaker 1: mescaline back to its origins, and that origins doesn't just 78 00:04:49,720 --> 00:04:52,400 Speaker 1: go back to you know, Native Americans in a Native 79 00:04:52,400 --> 00:04:55,600 Speaker 1: American church and Peyote in the southwest of the us 80 00:04:55,640 --> 00:04:58,920 Speaker 1: a hundred years ago or so. It goes back much more, 81 00:04:59,120 --> 00:05:01,760 Speaker 1: much deeper than that. So why don't you start off, 82 00:05:01,800 --> 00:05:03,800 Speaker 1: by my test, tell us all bit about that more 83 00:05:03,839 --> 00:05:09,400 Speaker 1: ancient history of escaline. Yeah. I think for um, most 84 00:05:09,400 --> 00:05:12,200 Speaker 1: people who know a bit about psychedelics, the assumption is 85 00:05:12,200 --> 00:05:15,400 Speaker 1: that this is where the story starts in the nineteen fifties, 86 00:05:15,560 --> 00:05:20,560 Speaker 1: with all this Huxley and with Mescaline and LSD. That 87 00:05:20,680 --> 00:05:22,600 Speaker 1: was one of the things that I noticed early on 88 00:05:22,680 --> 00:05:24,640 Speaker 1: trying to tell the story of mescaline is that is 89 00:05:24,640 --> 00:05:27,080 Speaker 1: pretty much the end of the story of mescaline. I mean, 90 00:05:27,160 --> 00:05:30,839 Speaker 1: even when Huxley was writing Doors of Perception, it was 91 00:05:30,920 --> 00:05:34,320 Speaker 1: kind of being replaced by LSD and disappearing. So actually, 92 00:05:34,320 --> 00:05:37,680 Speaker 1: the story, the story of psychedelics, of course goes forward 93 00:05:37,680 --> 00:05:40,920 Speaker 1: from that moment, but the story of mescaline goes all 94 00:05:40,960 --> 00:05:44,080 Speaker 1: the way back. You know, it goes back in Western culture, 95 00:05:44,320 --> 00:05:46,560 Speaker 1: you know, to the nineteenth century, and I think that's 96 00:05:46,560 --> 00:05:49,400 Speaker 1: a fascinating period that's not really looked at. And then 97 00:05:49,839 --> 00:05:52,960 Speaker 1: before that we have this long period of indigenous history. 98 00:05:53,040 --> 00:05:57,240 Speaker 1: And what really opened that up for me was many 99 00:05:57,320 --> 00:06:01,640 Speaker 1: years ago, I guess about fifteen years ago, going to Peru, 100 00:06:01,680 --> 00:06:06,720 Speaker 1: and visiting this ancient temple site called Chavine, which is 101 00:06:06,960 --> 00:06:11,200 Speaker 1: up in the high Andes, very mysterious site. Not much 102 00:06:11,279 --> 00:06:15,000 Speaker 1: was known about it until recently, probably kind of a 103 00:06:15,040 --> 00:06:18,039 Speaker 1: thousand BC. Was one of the first sort of bit 104 00:06:18,080 --> 00:06:20,479 Speaker 1: of a temple there was built. And it's got a 105 00:06:20,520 --> 00:06:26,000 Speaker 1: freeze with drawings around it of these figures half human, 106 00:06:26,120 --> 00:06:29,359 Speaker 1: half animal with kind of fangs and claws, some of 107 00:06:29,360 --> 00:06:32,680 Speaker 1: them like they're transforming from humans into animals. And the 108 00:06:32,720 --> 00:06:35,839 Speaker 1: main one right in the middle is holding this cactus 109 00:06:35,880 --> 00:06:40,000 Speaker 1: which is very obviously the San Pedro cactus of mescaline 110 00:06:40,000 --> 00:06:44,240 Speaker 1: containing cactus and in fact still around Chevine there. San 111 00:06:44,320 --> 00:06:48,600 Speaker 1: Pedro cactus grows everywhere you're up on the high Altiplano there. 112 00:06:48,640 --> 00:06:51,800 Speaker 1: It's quite wind swept, so lots of people plant hedges 113 00:06:51,839 --> 00:06:55,640 Speaker 1: of san Pedro around their houses. It's that commonplace. And 114 00:06:55,880 --> 00:06:57,839 Speaker 1: actually just interrupt you nex thing because that we talked 115 00:06:57,839 --> 00:07:00,159 Speaker 1: a bit about this and the Michael Polin episode. But 116 00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:03,560 Speaker 1: when we think about mescaline, the two principal cactus one 117 00:07:03,640 --> 00:07:06,120 Speaker 1: is payote um you know, I guess from the similar 118 00:07:06,240 --> 00:07:08,840 Speaker 1: parts of our northern Mexico in the southwest of the US, 119 00:07:08,880 --> 00:07:10,920 Speaker 1: and the other one is san Pedro, which grows much 120 00:07:10,960 --> 00:07:15,360 Speaker 1: more extensively and doesn't quite have the famous ring of peyote, 121 00:07:15,560 --> 00:07:18,160 Speaker 1: but it's also a major and actually much more abundant 122 00:07:18,200 --> 00:07:23,200 Speaker 1: source of mescaline in its natural form right, it's enormously abundant. 123 00:07:23,240 --> 00:07:26,240 Speaker 1: I remember driving around the Andes and just you know, 124 00:07:26,360 --> 00:07:30,080 Speaker 1: through those valleys and you're saying, um, mile after mile 125 00:07:30,120 --> 00:07:33,400 Speaker 1: after mile, there's almost nothing but san pedro cactus. It's 126 00:07:33,440 --> 00:07:36,960 Speaker 1: not quite as potent, doesn't as a mascaline source as 127 00:07:37,040 --> 00:07:41,400 Speaker 1: pyote is. Percentages are difficult, but pyotes often about three 128 00:07:41,440 --> 00:07:45,880 Speaker 1: percent um mascaline and san pedro more like one percent. 129 00:07:46,680 --> 00:07:52,080 Speaker 1: It's traditionally um brewed up and student re boiled and 130 00:07:52,280 --> 00:07:56,720 Speaker 1: reduced and taken as a as a drink. And there 131 00:07:56,840 --> 00:08:02,640 Speaker 1: is a tradition of its use by Corndero's traditional healers, 132 00:08:02,680 --> 00:08:05,880 Speaker 1: which evolved on the north coast of Peru and was 133 00:08:06,080 --> 00:08:08,520 Speaker 1: not really much known about until the seventies when it 134 00:08:08,600 --> 00:08:11,880 Speaker 1: started to be studied. And now I think san pedro 135 00:08:12,680 --> 00:08:15,920 Speaker 1: to use it's it's indigenous, it's catch you a name. 136 00:08:16,120 --> 00:08:21,000 Speaker 1: Wachuma is very very widely used around the world in 137 00:08:21,280 --> 00:08:27,200 Speaker 1: kind of shamanic neo shamanic healing. Psychedelic contexts m So basically, 138 00:08:27,200 --> 00:08:29,520 Speaker 1: I mean one of the encounters writers. You have this 139 00:08:29,800 --> 00:08:33,280 Speaker 1: use going back thousands of years in parts of South America, 140 00:08:33,960 --> 00:08:39,240 Speaker 1: and then the Spanish conquistadors and invaders come, and as 141 00:08:39,320 --> 00:08:42,600 Speaker 1: with coca, there's quite a tangle as I understand, between 142 00:08:42,679 --> 00:08:46,280 Speaker 1: them and the indigenous users of this. I mean, the 143 00:08:46,320 --> 00:08:48,920 Speaker 1: main thing, of course, that we get, as you know, 144 00:08:48,960 --> 00:08:51,320 Speaker 1: looking back into this history is that's the point where 145 00:08:51,320 --> 00:08:56,360 Speaker 1: we get written records. So a lot of the Spanish 146 00:08:56,360 --> 00:09:00,960 Speaker 1: who arrived in Mexico in the sixteenth century due to it, 147 00:09:01,200 --> 00:09:07,880 Speaker 1: and also physicians and Spanish people of learning and military 148 00:09:07,920 --> 00:09:11,440 Speaker 1: people of different stripes give us little bits of about 149 00:09:11,440 --> 00:09:14,000 Speaker 1: peyote that give us some sense of how it's used. 150 00:09:14,440 --> 00:09:18,600 Speaker 1: And they're astonished, obviously to discover this culture, which is 151 00:09:18,600 --> 00:09:21,120 Speaker 1: in some ways in terms of herbal medicine, it's much 152 00:09:21,120 --> 00:09:26,040 Speaker 1: more advanced than Europe. It's got all kinds of valuable 153 00:09:26,080 --> 00:09:29,400 Speaker 1: medicines in it, but it's also got these mushrooms and 154 00:09:29,440 --> 00:09:33,880 Speaker 1: these cacti and all sorts of other plants and seeds 155 00:09:33,960 --> 00:09:40,720 Speaker 1: that produce hallucinations or visionary experiences. And yeah, we start 156 00:09:40,720 --> 00:09:43,120 Speaker 1: to get get an account of that and what's going on. 157 00:09:43,240 --> 00:09:48,040 Speaker 1: Of course, it's very heavily inflected through the religious wars 158 00:09:48,160 --> 00:09:50,400 Speaker 1: and the witch craze which are going on in Europe 159 00:09:50,440 --> 00:09:54,400 Speaker 1: at the time. So if people are taking a cactus 160 00:09:54,440 --> 00:09:57,560 Speaker 1: and getting possessed and going into trances and seeing the 161 00:09:57,640 --> 00:10:01,680 Speaker 1: future and channeling spirits and not Christian, this is obviously 162 00:10:01,720 --> 00:10:06,040 Speaker 1: the work of the devil. So from the seventeenth century onwards, 163 00:10:06,160 --> 00:10:11,960 Speaker 1: the Mexican Inquisition prohibited payote and it became excluded, but 164 00:10:12,080 --> 00:10:15,840 Speaker 1: nevertheless you can see people carried on using it, and 165 00:10:15,880 --> 00:10:21,960 Speaker 1: also the Mestizo populations, the generations who emerged after conquest 166 00:10:22,160 --> 00:10:26,360 Speaker 1: also started started using it for healing and divination and 167 00:10:26,440 --> 00:10:29,280 Speaker 1: sorcery and all kinds of other uses. So it became 168 00:10:29,760 --> 00:10:31,719 Speaker 1: a problem drug, I guess, in the way that we 169 00:10:31,760 --> 00:10:34,000 Speaker 1: would think of it in the in the modern era, 170 00:10:34,400 --> 00:10:37,240 Speaker 1: and also at the same time a marker of the 171 00:10:37,320 --> 00:10:42,760 Speaker 1: difference between indigenous people and civilized Western people. Indigenous people 172 00:10:42,880 --> 00:10:46,880 Speaker 1: used payote and civilized Western people didn't. The same way 173 00:10:46,880 --> 00:10:49,560 Speaker 1: in which the Spanish reacted to this stuff hundreds of 174 00:10:49,640 --> 00:10:53,160 Speaker 1: years ago really resembles the way the other elements of 175 00:10:53,200 --> 00:10:56,280 Speaker 1: the Western world, including in the US, respond to this stuff. 176 00:10:56,280 --> 00:10:58,720 Speaker 1: In the in the late nineteenth and twentieth century when 177 00:10:58,720 --> 00:11:01,600 Speaker 1: it becomes calm in among you know, for certain different 178 00:11:01,600 --> 00:11:04,600 Speaker 1: tribes in the southwest of the US. At one point 179 00:11:04,640 --> 00:11:09,240 Speaker 1: you say that the Spanish talking back in the fires, 180 00:11:09,440 --> 00:11:13,760 Speaker 1: the Spanish observed psychedelics through the lens of alcohol, while 181 00:11:13,880 --> 00:11:19,200 Speaker 1: the Indians treated alcohol like a psychedelic mm hmmm. I 182 00:11:19,240 --> 00:11:23,880 Speaker 1: think both cultures had very different attitudes to intoxication, and 183 00:11:24,080 --> 00:11:27,960 Speaker 1: each one imposes, you know, their cultural form of intoxication 184 00:11:28,520 --> 00:11:32,400 Speaker 1: on this. So the Spanish, i think, looked at indigenous 185 00:11:32,440 --> 00:11:38,240 Speaker 1: Mexicans on peyote or mushrooms and went, or they're drunk. 186 00:11:38,400 --> 00:11:41,920 Speaker 1: This is an intoxication. So they didn't really see the 187 00:11:41,960 --> 00:11:45,959 Speaker 1: ceremonies in which they were used as sacred or spiritual. 188 00:11:46,000 --> 00:11:49,080 Speaker 1: They just saw them as kind of drunken orgies. And 189 00:11:49,160 --> 00:11:52,679 Speaker 1: in the same way, the Indians, when they encountered alcohol, 190 00:11:53,280 --> 00:11:55,240 Speaker 1: used it in a way that looked to the Spanish 191 00:11:55,280 --> 00:11:59,280 Speaker 1: as if they were kind of just all congenital alcoholics 192 00:11:59,280 --> 00:12:02,040 Speaker 1: are unable to refrain from drinking. But they kind of 193 00:12:02,040 --> 00:12:04,760 Speaker 1: pursued alcohol in the same way that they would pursue 194 00:12:04,840 --> 00:12:09,679 Speaker 1: these kind of more intense plant psychedelics. So Spanish habits like, 195 00:12:09,800 --> 00:12:14,040 Speaker 1: for example, having a little casual drink of alcohol of 196 00:12:14,160 --> 00:12:17,360 Speaker 1: wine on your own, or you know, something like that. 197 00:12:17,440 --> 00:12:19,760 Speaker 1: You know, Indians would never have done. But if they 198 00:12:19,800 --> 00:12:23,680 Speaker 1: had some alcohol and they decided to take it together, 199 00:12:23,960 --> 00:12:26,320 Speaker 1: everybody would take it together, and everybody would drink at 200 00:12:26,320 --> 00:12:28,960 Speaker 1: all until it was drunk, and people would have, you know, 201 00:12:29,280 --> 00:12:32,960 Speaker 1: the most powerful visionary experience they could have. Yeah, I 202 00:12:32,960 --> 00:12:35,319 Speaker 1: mean in a way that their distinction between the sort 203 00:12:35,360 --> 00:12:40,480 Speaker 1: of communal use and experience of mescal land among indigenous 204 00:12:40,520 --> 00:12:43,959 Speaker 1: folks and on the other hand, are very individualistic use 205 00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:47,800 Speaker 1: of it among more contemporary Western folks, you know, is 206 00:12:48,120 --> 00:12:51,199 Speaker 1: a major theme throughout you're writing. Now. Presumably the use 207 00:12:51,240 --> 00:12:54,600 Speaker 1: of mescaline continues, you know, notwithspanning the Spanish efforts to 208 00:12:54,640 --> 00:12:57,800 Speaker 1: suppress it in a part of Latin America extending up 209 00:12:57,800 --> 00:13:01,000 Speaker 1: through Mexico. But I guess it really enters into the 210 00:13:01,120 --> 00:13:05,400 Speaker 1: US around the late nineteenth early twentieth century. And I'll 211 00:13:05,440 --> 00:13:07,160 Speaker 1: have to say there were two figures I did not 212 00:13:07,320 --> 00:13:10,840 Speaker 1: know about before um who really stand out in this 213 00:13:11,160 --> 00:13:13,319 Speaker 1: history of a hundred twenty years ago in the US. 214 00:13:13,400 --> 00:13:17,440 Speaker 1: One is a white guy named James Mooney, and the 215 00:13:17,559 --> 00:13:21,599 Speaker 1: other is a Native American, a Comanche leader named I 216 00:13:21,640 --> 00:13:24,240 Speaker 1: think Quit, And maybe you could just use those two 217 00:13:24,280 --> 00:13:26,040 Speaker 1: folks to tell us a little of the story about 218 00:13:26,080 --> 00:13:28,599 Speaker 1: how peyote in the church really get going in the 219 00:13:28,679 --> 00:13:35,319 Speaker 1: United States. Yeah, it's fascinating because payote is known back 220 00:13:35,320 --> 00:13:39,760 Speaker 1: into the tribes back in the sevente century as a medicine, 221 00:13:40,040 --> 00:13:43,360 Speaker 1: but it doesn't really get used as a sacrament, and 222 00:13:43,520 --> 00:13:48,520 Speaker 1: the payote religion doesn't really develop until the period of 223 00:13:48,559 --> 00:13:52,200 Speaker 1: forced captivity after the Indian Wars, when the Indians are 224 00:13:52,240 --> 00:13:57,280 Speaker 1: confined on reservations. Every tribe has got a different story 225 00:13:57,320 --> 00:13:59,319 Speaker 1: of how it starts. But the first thing you hear 226 00:13:59,400 --> 00:14:03,160 Speaker 1: from white sources is that there's is groups of Indians 227 00:14:03,200 --> 00:14:07,080 Speaker 1: getting together on reservations at night in the tp so 228 00:14:07,200 --> 00:14:10,440 Speaker 1: nobody can see what they're doing, and having these private, 229 00:14:10,480 --> 00:14:14,480 Speaker 1: little ceremonies. And the first white man to attend one 230 00:14:14,480 --> 00:14:18,160 Speaker 1: of these ceremonies was a fellow you mentioned, James Mooney, 231 00:14:18,200 --> 00:14:22,520 Speaker 1: who was an ethnographer at the Smithsonian Institution who spent 232 00:14:22,600 --> 00:14:26,280 Speaker 1: that period of his life traveling around Oklahoma and learning 233 00:14:26,280 --> 00:14:28,880 Speaker 1: everything he could about the tribes. He learned a lot 234 00:14:28,920 --> 00:14:32,720 Speaker 1: of their languages, He was fascinated by their traditions which 235 00:14:32,720 --> 00:14:35,720 Speaker 1: were of course at that point, all disappearing before his eyes, 236 00:14:35,800 --> 00:14:38,920 Speaker 1: because you know, the Federal Indian Bureau was about, you know, 237 00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:42,480 Speaker 1: assimilating the tribes into normal American life and breaking these 238 00:14:42,520 --> 00:14:46,000 Speaker 1: traditions down. So Mooney was really kind of running as 239 00:14:46,040 --> 00:14:48,280 Speaker 1: fast as he could to catch all these centuries of 240 00:14:48,320 --> 00:14:52,960 Speaker 1: tradition before they disappeared. And this is at the moment 241 00:14:53,040 --> 00:14:58,880 Speaker 1: when the Ghost Dance appears, a new Indian ceremony that 242 00:14:59,120 --> 00:15:03,800 Speaker 1: it's um prophesied by a prophet who comes up with 243 00:15:04,480 --> 00:15:08,840 Speaker 1: new dances and new songs and new costumes and begins 244 00:15:08,960 --> 00:15:12,880 Speaker 1: this movement, this kind of millenarian movement, which is about 245 00:15:12,960 --> 00:15:16,280 Speaker 1: kind of dancing the white man out of their out 246 00:15:16,280 --> 00:15:18,760 Speaker 1: of the territory. And this is the late the late 247 00:15:18,800 --> 00:15:22,760 Speaker 1: eighteenth century. Basically, Yeah, this is sort of eighteen ninety, 248 00:15:22,840 --> 00:15:27,080 Speaker 1: and we remember it from the terrible massacre at Wounded 249 00:15:27,160 --> 00:15:32,680 Speaker 1: Knee that ended it. So James Mooney wrote the Smithsonian 250 00:15:32,720 --> 00:15:35,240 Speaker 1: Institution's Report on the Ghost Dance that's still one of 251 00:15:35,280 --> 00:15:38,600 Speaker 1: the great classics of American anthropology. And the course of 252 00:15:38,600 --> 00:15:42,880 Speaker 1: this he became kind of a trusted interlocutor and was 253 00:15:42,920 --> 00:15:47,000 Speaker 1: introduced in Oklahoma by a group of Kiowa people to 254 00:15:47,160 --> 00:15:51,640 Speaker 1: a Payote ceremony and the wilderness up in the Washington Mountains, 255 00:15:51,840 --> 00:15:55,640 Speaker 1: which he attended, and after that became kind of a 256 00:15:55,720 --> 00:15:59,000 Speaker 1: very powerful advocate for Payote because he thought this was 257 00:15:59,120 --> 00:16:04,480 Speaker 1: really the solution to the problem of preserving indigenous Native 258 00:16:04,520 --> 00:16:10,200 Speaker 1: American culture and religion, because unlike the Ghost Dance, which 259 00:16:10,200 --> 00:16:14,760 Speaker 1: had been, you know, a real confrontation with white society 260 00:16:14,880 --> 00:16:19,000 Speaker 1: that the Indians were bound to lose, the Payote ceremony 261 00:16:19,080 --> 00:16:23,200 Speaker 1: was a way of keeping the old medicine alive inside 262 00:16:23,240 --> 00:16:25,800 Speaker 1: this sort of structure of white supremacy. You know, the 263 00:16:26,360 --> 00:16:30,200 Speaker 1: people were in the reservations, but when they got together 264 00:16:30,440 --> 00:16:33,960 Speaker 1: and had their Payote meetings, the spirit of the culture 265 00:16:34,040 --> 00:16:36,960 Speaker 1: and the religious tradition could still be kept alive. So 266 00:16:38,320 --> 00:16:41,120 Speaker 1: Money became passionate about trying to find out where this 267 00:16:41,200 --> 00:16:43,640 Speaker 1: had come from and how it had developed, and all 268 00:16:43,760 --> 00:16:47,480 Speaker 1: his leads pointed him back to the Comanche people who 269 00:16:47,480 --> 00:16:50,320 Speaker 1: were at that time in a reservation in the Washington 270 00:16:50,360 --> 00:16:54,240 Speaker 1: Mountains with Kuana Parker as their leader. Kuana had been 271 00:16:54,280 --> 00:16:58,400 Speaker 1: a rebel one of the last Comanche bands to be 272 00:16:58,520 --> 00:17:02,200 Speaker 1: brought into forced cap activity, and he became a very 273 00:17:02,240 --> 00:17:06,560 Speaker 1: powerful leader in this period speaking for his people keeping 274 00:17:06,600 --> 00:17:09,280 Speaker 1: all their kind of land and property that they've been 275 00:17:09,320 --> 00:17:14,000 Speaker 1: allocated together and fighting their cultural battles. And he was 276 00:17:14,040 --> 00:17:17,320 Speaker 1: also a very powerful advocate for payote because he'd seen 277 00:17:17,600 --> 00:17:20,080 Speaker 1: the ghost dance, I had seen how it was going 278 00:17:20,119 --> 00:17:22,840 Speaker 1: to end. He was at a point where he was 279 00:17:22,880 --> 00:17:27,440 Speaker 1: just starting to get his people living reasonably comfortably and 280 00:17:27,560 --> 00:17:30,399 Speaker 1: making a bit of money and surviving. So he was 281 00:17:30,440 --> 00:17:34,479 Speaker 1: also very keen to develop the peyote religion as a 282 00:17:34,560 --> 00:17:39,840 Speaker 1: way of preserving and sustaining and nurturing Indian culture in 283 00:17:39,920 --> 00:17:44,160 Speaker 1: this new age they were living in. Mooney eventually went 284 00:17:44,200 --> 00:17:48,280 Speaker 1: down to the Comanche Reservation and had a Payote meeting 285 00:17:48,320 --> 00:17:53,680 Speaker 1: with Quana Parker in eighteen ninety three. It's very well documented. 286 00:17:53,760 --> 00:17:58,400 Speaker 1: Mooney took photos and after the meeting, Mooney said to Kuana, 287 00:17:58,560 --> 00:18:01,280 Speaker 1: I would like some payote to back to Washington, d c. 288 00:18:01,520 --> 00:18:04,840 Speaker 1: To do kind of scientific tests on and so forth. 289 00:18:04,960 --> 00:18:07,840 Speaker 1: And Kuana sold him a big bill up sack of 290 00:18:08,040 --> 00:18:13,919 Speaker 1: dried peyote buttons, which Mooney took back to Washington, and 291 00:18:14,160 --> 00:18:17,320 Speaker 1: they were the peyote buttons that were used by the 292 00:18:17,400 --> 00:18:21,560 Speaker 1: Federal Department of Agriculture in their first chemical essays that 293 00:18:21,720 --> 00:18:24,639 Speaker 1: the medical department of the university used them in the 294 00:18:24,680 --> 00:18:29,080 Speaker 1: first human trials of psychedelics. They were given to America's 295 00:18:29,160 --> 00:18:33,280 Speaker 1: leading neurologist to that passed someone to his friend, William James, 296 00:18:33,560 --> 00:18:36,000 Speaker 1: and he had a terrible time of it. So William 297 00:18:36,080 --> 00:18:38,359 Speaker 1: James found the drug that took him where he wanted 298 00:18:38,400 --> 00:18:41,200 Speaker 1: to go. In fact, it turned out to be nitrous oxide, 299 00:18:41,240 --> 00:18:44,800 Speaker 1: which he writes about in the Varieties of Religious Experience. 300 00:18:44,880 --> 00:18:46,840 Speaker 1: And you know, so this is really the beginning of 301 00:18:46,840 --> 00:18:50,880 Speaker 1: what we now call psychedelic science. And it came out 302 00:18:50,920 --> 00:18:54,520 Speaker 1: of this transaction in the middle of Oklahoma between the 303 00:18:54,520 --> 00:18:57,480 Speaker 1: white man who knew most about Indian culture at that 304 00:18:57,520 --> 00:19:01,600 Speaker 1: point and the Indian who had really of negotiated what 305 00:19:01,600 --> 00:19:03,880 Speaker 1: what culture best than anyone else. So I think it's 306 00:19:03,880 --> 00:19:08,240 Speaker 1: a great moment. It's kind of a handover transmission between worlds. 307 00:19:08,280 --> 00:19:12,640 Speaker 1: It's the point where payote moves from centuries of indigenous 308 00:19:12,760 --> 00:19:17,720 Speaker 1: tradition to the gays of Western medicine and science. You know, 309 00:19:17,840 --> 00:19:20,080 Speaker 1: there were a couple of points you made about this 310 00:19:20,160 --> 00:19:24,720 Speaker 1: transitory period. One is that peyote in some extent plays 311 00:19:24,840 --> 00:19:27,880 Speaker 1: a role. It really among one of the first Pan 312 00:19:28,119 --> 00:19:31,600 Speaker 1: Indian movements in North America, right, that a lot of 313 00:19:31,600 --> 00:19:34,280 Speaker 1: it has been much more individual tribes in the past, 314 00:19:34,359 --> 00:19:36,720 Speaker 1: and where the federal government had played one against the other, 315 00:19:36,760 --> 00:19:38,800 Speaker 1: and where there has always been a tradition of conflict 316 00:19:38,840 --> 00:19:41,080 Speaker 1: between any of the both conflict and alliance, but between 317 00:19:41,119 --> 00:19:42,800 Speaker 1: any of the troops. And here you have a Pan 318 00:19:42,840 --> 00:19:45,440 Speaker 1: Indian movement. So it's not just one group the Commandes 319 00:19:45,560 --> 00:19:49,360 Speaker 1: or others. It's multiple groups. And the second thing that 320 00:19:49,400 --> 00:19:52,840 Speaker 1: I learned was that actually, when the Native American Church 321 00:19:53,040 --> 00:19:58,120 Speaker 1: actually gets formalized and created by Kanda and such, it's 322 00:19:58,119 --> 00:20:01,159 Speaker 1: actually the first time that you see the transition to 323 00:20:01,200 --> 00:20:04,399 Speaker 1: the phrase Native American from India. Right. I think you 324 00:20:04,480 --> 00:20:06,359 Speaker 1: make the point that you know, there have been white 325 00:20:06,400 --> 00:20:09,479 Speaker 1: Americans who call themselves Native American nineteenth century because they 326 00:20:09,480 --> 00:20:12,800 Speaker 1: wanted to distinguish themselves from other white immigrants who had 327 00:20:12,840 --> 00:20:14,840 Speaker 1: arrived the United States at a later point in the 328 00:20:14,920 --> 00:20:18,000 Speaker 1: late nineteenth century. But the ownership of the term Native 329 00:20:18,040 --> 00:20:22,639 Speaker 1: American by Indians really happens with the creation of this church, 330 00:20:23,160 --> 00:20:25,560 Speaker 1: and so that Pan Indian element of it. Just say 331 00:20:25,560 --> 00:20:28,199 Speaker 1: a little more about that. Yeah, that was something that 332 00:20:28,240 --> 00:20:30,920 Speaker 1: had started with the Ghost Dance with all the tribes 333 00:20:30,920 --> 00:20:36,119 Speaker 1: getting together in this mass act of resistance against white settlement. 334 00:20:36,520 --> 00:20:38,040 Speaker 1: And it was one of the things that the Ghost 335 00:20:38,160 --> 00:20:42,840 Speaker 1: Dance collapsed that people like Kwana Parker and James Mooney 336 00:20:42,880 --> 00:20:46,119 Speaker 1: were very keen to preserve and deepen was his connections 337 00:20:46,160 --> 00:20:50,840 Speaker 1: between tribes, and that's still very much part of the ethos. 338 00:20:50,920 --> 00:20:54,000 Speaker 1: When you have a pyote meeting these days, you should, oh, 339 00:20:54,080 --> 00:20:56,400 Speaker 1: it's it's good to have a bunch of people from 340 00:20:56,560 --> 00:21:00,480 Speaker 1: different tribes involved. That's an important part of it. And 341 00:21:00,600 --> 00:21:03,240 Speaker 1: the concept of Native American this is something that I 342 00:21:03,600 --> 00:21:07,280 Speaker 1: you know, I'd never read about or seen this before. 343 00:21:07,440 --> 00:21:09,560 Speaker 1: It was something that it was actually the president of 344 00:21:09,600 --> 00:21:14,480 Speaker 1: the Native American Church of Oklahoma, Charlie Haig, who's the Cheyenne, 345 00:21:14,560 --> 00:21:16,720 Speaker 1: kind of walked me around to the place where the 346 00:21:17,560 --> 00:21:20,040 Speaker 1: you know, the Native American Church charter was put together 347 00:21:20,080 --> 00:21:22,120 Speaker 1: and was telling me about the people who were involved, 348 00:21:22,160 --> 00:21:23,680 Speaker 1: and he said, you know, I think that's the first 349 00:21:23,680 --> 00:21:26,679 Speaker 1: time that Native American was ever used, and I've never 350 00:21:26,760 --> 00:21:29,159 Speaker 1: found any earlier use. And I think it's unlikely that 351 00:21:29,200 --> 00:21:33,119 Speaker 1: you would because Native Americans didn't become American citizens until 352 00:21:34,200 --> 00:21:37,000 Speaker 1: five and the church was founded in nineteen eighteen, so 353 00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:40,080 Speaker 1: at that point, you know, they weren't officially American citizens, 354 00:21:40,440 --> 00:21:42,680 Speaker 1: and as you said, the idea of a Native American 355 00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:46,760 Speaker 1: had been appropriated by you know, pretty much the Trumpists 356 00:21:46,800 --> 00:21:49,560 Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century. So it's very powerful phrase, the 357 00:21:49,640 --> 00:21:53,600 Speaker 1: Native American Church, and it's making a lot of big claims. 358 00:21:53,720 --> 00:21:56,000 Speaker 1: It's also kind of staking a big claim on the 359 00:21:56,000 --> 00:22:01,800 Speaker 1: future of Native Americans as Americans. And it's also you know, 360 00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:04,879 Speaker 1: the assumption from a lot of the federal governments, a 361 00:22:04,960 --> 00:22:07,240 Speaker 1: lot of the missionaries that this this was some kind 362 00:22:07,240 --> 00:22:11,440 Speaker 1: of drunken Hagen ceremony that was had to be stamped 363 00:22:11,440 --> 00:22:15,520 Speaker 1: out before the Indians would accept Christianity. What Quanna and 364 00:22:15,640 --> 00:22:18,000 Speaker 1: James Mooney both said was no, No, it's the other 365 00:22:18,040 --> 00:22:21,119 Speaker 1: way around this um. This religion is actually an Indian 366 00:22:21,160 --> 00:22:26,359 Speaker 1: expression of Christianity. It's not opposing Christianity. It's Christianity with 367 00:22:26,400 --> 00:22:31,439 Speaker 1: a distinctive Indian form and with its own sacraments. You know, 368 00:22:31,560 --> 00:22:33,720 Speaker 1: you to put this into broader context. Was a bit 369 00:22:33,720 --> 00:22:37,200 Speaker 1: remarkable about all this is that you're seeing the spread 370 00:22:37,480 --> 00:22:40,760 Speaker 1: and growth and even to some extent legitimation of this 371 00:22:40,920 --> 00:22:43,880 Speaker 1: Peyote use um and the emergen in the American Church 372 00:22:43,960 --> 00:22:47,840 Speaker 1: in the context of the progressive era movement in the 373 00:22:47,920 --> 00:22:50,920 Speaker 1: United States, which is, you know, advancing all of these 374 00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:54,919 Speaker 1: positive reforms around child labor, working conditions in food, and edicine, 375 00:22:54,920 --> 00:22:56,760 Speaker 1: all this sort of stuff, but at the same time 376 00:22:56,800 --> 00:22:59,760 Speaker 1: as pushing for the prohibition of psychoactive substances. I means 377 00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:02,119 Speaker 1: the this the progressive woman was pushes for the banning 378 00:23:02,119 --> 00:23:05,359 Speaker 1: of alcohol in the eighteenth Amendment. It's the progressive movement actually, 379 00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:07,679 Speaker 1: you know a li'm the banning of opium imports and 380 00:23:07,720 --> 00:23:10,280 Speaker 1: then the banning of heroin and coca and cocaine. So 381 00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:13,879 Speaker 1: there's a broad sort of prohibitionist movement directed or virtually 382 00:23:13,880 --> 00:23:18,040 Speaker 1: all psychoactive substances. And here's peyote and the Native American 383 00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:21,680 Speaker 1: use getting caught up in this stuff. But somehow they're 384 00:23:21,760 --> 00:23:25,240 Speaker 1: able to maneuver and survive through this part of it, 385 00:23:25,280 --> 00:23:27,119 Speaker 1: I guess must have been the fact that that that 386 00:23:27,200 --> 00:23:29,639 Speaker 1: you know, you had Kana and Mooney being very clever 387 00:23:30,240 --> 00:23:34,360 Speaker 1: about presenting this not as a threat or challenge to Christianity, 388 00:23:34,920 --> 00:23:39,399 Speaker 1: but as somehow advancing the goals of the missionaries and 389 00:23:39,520 --> 00:23:43,199 Speaker 1: those who hoped for Indians to be better human beings 390 00:23:43,200 --> 00:23:46,280 Speaker 1: than they imagine they could be. Yeah, that's right. I 391 00:23:46,280 --> 00:23:48,400 Speaker 1: mean it's a challenge generally for us. Now we think 392 00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:50,800 Speaker 1: about the Progressive era. Of course, as you say, it's 393 00:23:50,840 --> 00:23:54,880 Speaker 1: the era of drug and alcohol prohibition. But I think 394 00:23:55,080 --> 00:23:57,560 Speaker 1: one of the things, yes, it was the Progressive era 395 00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:03,480 Speaker 1: was also about uniting progressives and conservatives if you look 396 00:24:03,520 --> 00:24:06,640 Speaker 1: at things like alcohol prohibition. That was really what made 397 00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:08,800 Speaker 1: it so powerful, was it. It was a coalition that 398 00:24:08,880 --> 00:24:12,280 Speaker 1: include you know, doctors and the women's movement and all 399 00:24:12,320 --> 00:24:16,600 Speaker 1: these traditionally progressive forces alongside you know, the church and 400 00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:21,280 Speaker 1: all the the conservative ones. And inasmuch as the Progressive 401 00:24:21,440 --> 00:24:26,480 Speaker 1: era was about citizen activism and solidarity, of course in 402 00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:30,159 Speaker 1: the South it encouraged states rights. And it was also 403 00:24:30,480 --> 00:24:33,320 Speaker 1: the era of Jim Crow and Lynch ngs and so on. 404 00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:36,080 Speaker 1: So it's got this kind of double side to it. 405 00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:42,040 Speaker 1: But yeah, I think um Mooney and Quana both independently 406 00:24:42,680 --> 00:24:46,240 Speaker 1: figured out how to sell payot if you were to 407 00:24:46,320 --> 00:24:52,600 Speaker 1: a sort of predominantly hostile white culture, and that was 408 00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:56,480 Speaker 1: to make two claims for it. Firstly, it's a medicine. 409 00:24:56,880 --> 00:24:59,200 Speaker 1: This is a very valuable medicine. It's useful for all 410 00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:01,360 Speaker 1: kinds of things that should really be part of the 411 00:25:01,400 --> 00:25:05,320 Speaker 1: Western farmer kapea. Western doctors and scientists should be taking 412 00:25:05,359 --> 00:25:08,080 Speaker 1: a look at this, you know, hitting that message very hard, 413 00:25:08,600 --> 00:25:10,720 Speaker 1: and at the same time, you know, this is a 414 00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:14,879 Speaker 1: genuine spiritual experience. It's very valuable for the tribes. The 415 00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:17,959 Speaker 1: members of the Native American church are often the backbones 416 00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:20,800 Speaker 1: of their community, and these are the you know, these 417 00:25:20,800 --> 00:25:24,120 Speaker 1: are the people holding the society together. And it's interesting 418 00:25:24,160 --> 00:25:26,000 Speaker 1: to me to see the way they make those claims, 419 00:25:26,040 --> 00:25:28,480 Speaker 1: because there's a in a way, very much claims that 420 00:25:28,520 --> 00:25:32,399 Speaker 1: the psychedelic community make today. For psychedelics. You know that 421 00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:37,080 Speaker 1: it's a very valuable medicine and it produces genuine spiritual experiences. 422 00:25:37,160 --> 00:25:41,280 Speaker 1: And I think that's that's not necessarily because those are, like, objectively, 423 00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:44,240 Speaker 1: the two main properties of psychedelics. I think it's because 424 00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:48,480 Speaker 1: those are the two sets of values, the two propositions 425 00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:51,960 Speaker 1: that fall on the most fertile ground when you're trying 426 00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:55,240 Speaker 1: to sort of present the psychedelic experience to any culture 427 00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:59,399 Speaker 1: that doesn't understand it. We'll be talking more after we 428 00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:14,719 Speaker 1: hear in this that I have to say. I mean, 429 00:26:14,760 --> 00:26:16,880 Speaker 1: you know, my beloved New York Times, if you look 430 00:26:16,880 --> 00:26:20,159 Speaker 1: at its sordid history, of covering the drug issue. You know, 431 00:26:20,160 --> 00:26:24,000 Speaker 1: one of the more infamous headlines was Cocaine crazy negroes, 432 00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:27,200 Speaker 1: you know, killing people in the South. But another one 433 00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:31,000 Speaker 1: you pointed out was the headline of there's three peyote 434 00:26:31,160 --> 00:26:34,600 Speaker 1: used as drug and Indians cult of death above an 435 00:26:34,680 --> 00:26:37,800 Speaker 1: article arguing that it's worship originated in the Aztec cult 436 00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:40,240 Speaker 1: of human sacrifice. So even in twenty three, when you're 437 00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:42,399 Speaker 1: beginning to have a scientific thing, you still have the 438 00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:45,560 Speaker 1: quote unquote elite press, you know, doing the worst form 439 00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:48,960 Speaker 1: of sort of crappy journalism about this stuff. So obviously 440 00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:53,120 Speaker 1: most Americans are remaining deeply uninformed throughout this time. Yeah, 441 00:26:53,280 --> 00:26:57,760 Speaker 1: that's true in you know, progressive opinion as well. You know, 442 00:26:57,800 --> 00:27:00,320 Speaker 1: there are big kind of spiritual movements of the time, 443 00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:03,880 Speaker 1: sort of new thought, a lot of people reacting within 444 00:27:03,920 --> 00:27:09,080 Speaker 1: this progressive era context against mass culture and mass industry 445 00:27:09,119 --> 00:27:12,360 Speaker 1: and mass consumerism. There's a lot of people seeking out 446 00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:16,320 Speaker 1: other forms of life and sort of seeking to expand 447 00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:18,960 Speaker 1: consciousness in different ways. But even those people, when you 448 00:27:18,960 --> 00:27:22,919 Speaker 1: look at them, they kind of they're all opposed to alcohol, 449 00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:26,600 Speaker 1: of course, because they see that as something that's produced 450 00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:30,639 Speaker 1: by big business. You know, bruins and distillers praying on 451 00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:35,320 Speaker 1: the vulnerable, advertising their product, addicting people, and kind of 452 00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:37,879 Speaker 1: that's the way that drugs are seen as well. Drugs 453 00:27:37,880 --> 00:27:40,840 Speaker 1: are seen in you know, by those progressive figures as 454 00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:45,359 Speaker 1: something that is kind of deadening and dehumanizing and a 455 00:27:45,560 --> 00:27:51,879 Speaker 1: terrible kind of destructive effect on consciousness in modern society. Meanwhile, 456 00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:55,800 Speaker 1: there's also this fascining story about the head of the 457 00:27:55,840 --> 00:27:59,560 Speaker 1: Mormon Church, you know, becoming all bit and freily to 458 00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:04,199 Speaker 1: pay What was there about? I love that. That's fantastic. 459 00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:07,360 Speaker 1: I mean, here's the here's the grandson of of the founder, 460 00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:13,359 Speaker 1: Fred Smith. He was and his was a breakaway group, 461 00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:15,240 Speaker 1: but he was at that point, like a lot of 462 00:28:15,240 --> 00:28:18,639 Speaker 1: people in the progressive era, saying, um, you know, we 463 00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:23,760 Speaker 1: need real ecstatic spiritual experience. That's what's being ground out 464 00:28:23,800 --> 00:28:27,639 Speaker 1: of people in our kind of the mass culture that 465 00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:32,919 Speaker 1: we're living in today. And he was obviously in Utah. 466 00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:36,280 Speaker 1: The Mormons did a lot of outreach to the Native 467 00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:40,840 Speaker 1: American tribes, and fred Smith got very interested in their 468 00:28:41,520 --> 00:28:46,720 Speaker 1: religious practices, and he attended payote meetings and he studied 469 00:28:46,760 --> 00:28:50,960 Speaker 1: the history of kind of ecstatic spiritual experience, doing a 470 00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:54,560 Speaker 1: psychology doctorate, and he's reading his William James and he 471 00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:57,600 Speaker 1: gets very interested all Williams James and stuff about second Wind. 472 00:28:57,800 --> 00:29:00,240 Speaker 1: How it turns out that little kinds of ways and 473 00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:03,280 Speaker 1: all kinds of cultures people can reach what seemed to 474 00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:07,160 Speaker 1: be the limits of their physical endurance, but then suddenly 475 00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:11,400 Speaker 1: discover more energy, and there's a whole untapped sources of 476 00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:15,280 Speaker 1: mental and probably spiritual energy as well, that if we 477 00:29:15,280 --> 00:29:18,480 Speaker 1: could figure out how to get to, we could be superhuman. 478 00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:23,160 Speaker 1: That's what he reads m the Yet his Payote experiences 479 00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,080 Speaker 1: through the idea that if we can stay up all 480 00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:30,680 Speaker 1: night have this really intense experience altogether, than we push 481 00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:33,560 Speaker 1: ourselves onto a kind of higher mental plane and we 482 00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:36,200 Speaker 1: have access to parts of our minds that we normally 483 00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:39,520 Speaker 1: can't reach. And he wrote quite explicitly, he said, this 484 00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:41,440 Speaker 1: is what we need. This is what we're not giving 485 00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:44,080 Speaker 1: our worshippers. You know, it's all very well to kind 486 00:29:44,080 --> 00:29:46,920 Speaker 1: of all wandering to church and sing hymns together, but 487 00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:50,160 Speaker 1: you know, we need to be offering people the possibility 488 00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:54,520 Speaker 1: of real spiritual transcendence and advocating peyote is the way 489 00:29:54,560 --> 00:29:57,120 Speaker 1: to go, a proposition that didn't get very far, but 490 00:29:57,440 --> 00:29:59,640 Speaker 1: he wrote a book about it and a kind of 491 00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:02,440 Speaker 1: doctor world thesis, and it's fascinating to see the way 492 00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:07,160 Speaker 1: that uh he sees that something like Mormonism could incorporate 493 00:30:07,200 --> 00:30:09,800 Speaker 1: a psychedelic ritually into the center of it. Yeah, and 494 00:30:09,920 --> 00:30:11,760 Speaker 1: it reminded me so much of this story of Bill 495 00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:14,760 Speaker 1: w Right, one of the founders of books Anonymous, who 496 00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:17,560 Speaker 1: I think it was LSD, starts having LSD trips, you know, 497 00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:21,720 Speaker 1: and and begins to advocate that LSD use could basically help, 498 00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:24,320 Speaker 1: you know, lead to the kind of spiritual deep insight 499 00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:27,320 Speaker 1: that's necessary for people to put their alcohol addiction behind them. 500 00:30:27,320 --> 00:30:29,920 Speaker 1: I mean, there was a remarkable parallelsm I think, between 501 00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:32,920 Speaker 1: your story of Frederick Madison Smith and and Buill w 502 00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:35,200 Speaker 1: But look, let's let's switch over a little bit here, 503 00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:37,320 Speaker 1: which is that you know, many of our listeners will 504 00:30:37,280 --> 00:30:39,720 Speaker 1: be familiar with the organization MAPS, you know, founded by 505 00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:42,360 Speaker 1: Rick Doublin in the eighties in terms of his advocacy 506 00:30:42,360 --> 00:30:45,640 Speaker 1: around psychedelics research and m D m A. And some 507 00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:49,000 Speaker 1: will be familiar with the Heft Research Institute, which has 508 00:30:49,040 --> 00:30:51,480 Speaker 1: been also around for almost thirty years and probably the 509 00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:55,959 Speaker 1: leading organization of of researchers and scientists trying to do 510 00:30:56,080 --> 00:31:01,440 Speaker 1: psychedelics research. But Hefter plays an important role in your story. Yeah, 511 00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:05,800 Speaker 1: he does. After James Mooney brings the Payote back to 512 00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:11,560 Speaker 1: Washington and people start taking it and writing up the experiences, 513 00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:16,200 Speaker 1: often know very beautifully and very wonderful detail, and medical journals. 514 00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:19,760 Speaker 1: Of course, chemists get very excited to try and figure 515 00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:23,120 Speaker 1: out what it is, what's the active ingredient, what's the 516 00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:26,280 Speaker 1: thing in the payote cactus that is doing this specifically 517 00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:29,640 Speaker 1: producing the visions, which is a bit that Western scientists 518 00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:33,720 Speaker 1: get so fascinated by from the very beginning, And it 519 00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:36,160 Speaker 1: turns out to be a difficult question to answer because 520 00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:40,560 Speaker 1: Payote contains lots of resins and dozens of different alkaloids. 521 00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:43,600 Speaker 1: And there's kind of a race which is won by 522 00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:48,080 Speaker 1: Arthur Hefter, who's a not very well known chemist in Leipzig, 523 00:31:48,440 --> 00:31:51,400 Speaker 1: who wins this race by self experiment. He gets his 524 00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:55,520 Speaker 1: Payote buttons, he extracts some resin, He takes the resin. 525 00:31:55,600 --> 00:31:58,080 Speaker 1: He doesn't feel anything except but a bit of nausea. Okay, 526 00:31:58,080 --> 00:32:00,480 Speaker 1: it's not the resin. Then he starts looking through the 527 00:32:00,480 --> 00:32:05,320 Speaker 1: different alkaloids and then finds the one that produces the visions, 528 00:32:05,320 --> 00:32:08,640 Speaker 1: which he calls mescaline. Mescal is one of the words, 529 00:32:08,880 --> 00:32:12,280 Speaker 1: one of the names for peyote at that point. Yeah, 530 00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:16,840 Speaker 1: So from that point there is still the cactus, but 531 00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:20,600 Speaker 1: there is also this alkaline salt that's sort of pure drug, mescaline, 532 00:32:20,600 --> 00:32:26,280 Speaker 1: which then twenty years later in Vienna is synthesized for 533 00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:30,760 Speaker 1: the first time in the laboratory, not extracted from the cactus, 534 00:32:30,800 --> 00:32:34,880 Speaker 1: but synthesized from, you know, some starting from something you 535 00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:37,840 Speaker 1: get out of eucalyptus oil, you know, through organic chemistry, 536 00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:43,000 Speaker 1: you get this kind of chemical mescaline sulfate, which is 537 00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:48,240 Speaker 1: white crystalline powder. And as soon as you have that much, 538 00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:53,080 Speaker 1: the next year, um Mark Pharmaceuticals, the German pharmaceutical companies, 539 00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:56,160 Speaker 1: start making it available as a research chemical, and from 540 00:32:56,160 --> 00:33:00,280 Speaker 1: that point on you really have two different histories, because Sir, 541 00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:03,840 Speaker 1: before that, everybody knew that mescaline was this thing that 542 00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:06,560 Speaker 1: came out of this cactus that had this backstory that's 543 00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:09,800 Speaker 1: to do with American Indians and so forth. Once it 544 00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:13,040 Speaker 1: becomes a white powder and a little vile on a shelf, 545 00:33:13,080 --> 00:33:16,680 Speaker 1: people forget the backstory. So people forgot that mescaline came 546 00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:19,200 Speaker 1: from peyote, it became a substance in its own right. 547 00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:23,760 Speaker 1: Something the same happens with cocaine. In the nineteenth century. 548 00:33:23,800 --> 00:33:27,840 Speaker 1: The first coca wines and coca products are all branded 549 00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:31,200 Speaker 1: with pictures of incas and conquistadors and things, reminding us 550 00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:33,800 Speaker 1: that this comes from a plant in South America. Once 551 00:33:33,880 --> 00:33:37,040 Speaker 1: cocaine is isolated, it just becomes like white tablets, and 552 00:33:37,120 --> 00:33:40,400 Speaker 1: that becomes like what they're called a pure white drug, 553 00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:43,920 Speaker 1: you know, a product of modern science and changes its identity. 554 00:33:43,960 --> 00:33:46,520 Speaker 1: And so from that point on, mescaline has its own 555 00:33:46,520 --> 00:33:51,240 Speaker 1: distinctive Western identity that separates itself from its indigenous tradition. Well, 556 00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:52,920 Speaker 1: you know, to jump forward a bit, I mean, there's 557 00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:54,720 Speaker 1: this point in your story when you get to the 558 00:33:54,760 --> 00:33:57,680 Speaker 1: week fifties are always sixties, and it's kind of like 559 00:33:58,280 --> 00:34:01,240 Speaker 1: people had tried mescal in and now they're switching to 560 00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:05,520 Speaker 1: LSD because they prefer that, or maybe psilocybin or something else. 561 00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:08,759 Speaker 1: But the meat of your story, to some extent, is 562 00:34:08,800 --> 00:34:11,600 Speaker 1: this period really in the first half of the twentieth 563 00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:15,880 Speaker 1: century when mescaland's it right, there is no LSD and 564 00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:18,719 Speaker 1: psilocybin has not been um you know, it's sort of 565 00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:22,439 Speaker 1: extracted and synthesized, you know, from mushrooms and mescalin sort 566 00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:26,160 Speaker 1: of sort of reigns alone. And there's his vivid history described. 567 00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:31,360 Speaker 1: That's part about psychiatry and medicine and part about intellectuals 568 00:34:31,400 --> 00:34:34,480 Speaker 1: and artists and writers, and so first on that, on 569 00:34:34,560 --> 00:34:37,920 Speaker 1: that sort of psychiatric side, we know that psychedelics can 570 00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:40,120 Speaker 1: be risky for some people mental illness. We also know 571 00:34:40,200 --> 00:34:43,640 Speaker 1: it may be incredibly beneficial with people, you know, having 572 00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:46,600 Speaker 1: certain types of mentals. Now, when it comes to schizophrenia, 573 00:34:46,640 --> 00:34:48,960 Speaker 1: there's a special role I think that mescaland plays in 574 00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:51,880 Speaker 1: all this. Yeah, that's right, and that's what got it 575 00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:56,360 Speaker 1: to the point oldest Huxley decided he was interested in 576 00:34:56,360 --> 00:34:59,600 Speaker 1: in trying it. Through the en twenties and nineteen schies, 577 00:34:59,640 --> 00:35:03,920 Speaker 1: mescal and it's very, very widely used in psychology, and 578 00:35:03,960 --> 00:35:07,520 Speaker 1: the thing that people are most interested in studying is hallucinations, 579 00:35:07,600 --> 00:35:10,839 Speaker 1: as they call them, sort of visual imagery, which is 580 00:35:10,880 --> 00:35:14,040 Speaker 1: a kind of fascinating subject for psychologists because where do 581 00:35:14,320 --> 00:35:17,680 Speaker 1: hallucinations come from? And what do they mean? All these questions, 582 00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:21,240 Speaker 1: But also they're very hard to study because when people 583 00:35:21,239 --> 00:35:25,400 Speaker 1: are hallucinating, they're normally either kind of have a high 584 00:35:25,560 --> 00:35:28,080 Speaker 1: fever or in the middle of a toxic crisis or 585 00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:31,600 Speaker 1: a psychotic episode. They're normally not very good at telling 586 00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:33,600 Speaker 1: you what's going on, and normally in a kind of 587 00:35:33,719 --> 00:35:38,239 Speaker 1: extremely intense and disturbed state. But what scientists found so 588 00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:41,040 Speaker 1: fascinating about mescaline once they had it in this pure 589 00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:44,200 Speaker 1: form is that you could inject someone with it, which 590 00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:47,319 Speaker 1: is the way they usually went, and then an hour 591 00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:50,040 Speaker 1: or so later they would suddenly start seeing these visions. 592 00:35:50,040 --> 00:35:52,239 Speaker 1: You tell them to close their eyes and say, tell 593 00:35:52,239 --> 00:35:54,319 Speaker 1: me what you're seeing on your eyelids, and people would 594 00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:58,279 Speaker 1: produce these hours long monologues of these incredible visions that 595 00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:02,360 Speaker 1: are having having, you know, very particulately and coherently. So 596 00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:05,640 Speaker 1: there's a long history of that and of giving mascaline 597 00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:10,319 Speaker 1: to artists and philosophers and writers to see what they 598 00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:14,120 Speaker 1: made of the experience. So people like John Paul Sartre 599 00:36:14,360 --> 00:36:19,440 Speaker 1: and Walter Benjamine get given mescaline. Modernist artists paint on it, 600 00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:22,160 Speaker 1: and then when you get to the nineteen fifties is 601 00:36:22,160 --> 00:36:26,520 Speaker 1: where it really finds um it's kind of vital application 602 00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:32,120 Speaker 1: in psychiatry because that's the decade in which psychiatry starts 603 00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:37,640 Speaker 1: getting more biological in its orientation. People discover things like 604 00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:41,600 Speaker 1: clau promosine, the early antipsychotics, which look as if they 605 00:36:41,600 --> 00:36:45,440 Speaker 1: can switch off a psychosis. So then you've got these 606 00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:51,080 Speaker 1: things like mescaline and LSD which are conceived as psychoto mimetics. 607 00:36:51,200 --> 00:36:54,680 Speaker 1: The idea is that the effects they're producing a kind 608 00:36:54,680 --> 00:36:58,239 Speaker 1: of like a model psychosis, a chemical version of psychosis, 609 00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:01,280 Speaker 1: where you hallucinate and have disjoint in thinking, and time 610 00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:03,799 Speaker 1: and space gets start getting distorted and all these things 611 00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:07,759 Speaker 1: that people recognize that symptoms of schizophrenia, which is of course, 612 00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:10,880 Speaker 1: you know, the great sort of central mental disorder that 613 00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:13,879 Speaker 1: everybody is trying to deal with. So you get this idea, well, 614 00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:18,640 Speaker 1: if we can switch psychosis on w a psychedelic or 615 00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:22,040 Speaker 1: hallucinogen or a psychoto mimetic as they were called at 616 00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:25,240 Speaker 1: that time, and you can switch it off with an antipsychotic, 617 00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:29,319 Speaker 1: then we can play around experimentally. But also that suggests 618 00:37:29,719 --> 00:37:33,880 Speaker 1: that schizophrenia might have a chemical cause. So if masculine 619 00:37:33,960 --> 00:37:37,880 Speaker 1: or l s D produce something like schizophrenia, then maybe 620 00:37:38,120 --> 00:37:41,600 Speaker 1: there is a chemical in the brain that's something like 621 00:37:41,640 --> 00:37:46,000 Speaker 1: mesculine or l S D that's producing these um psychosis, 622 00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:49,520 Speaker 1: and that if you could figure out what that was, 623 00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:54,640 Speaker 1: then you could retrofitter chemical cure to it. But in 624 00:37:54,680 --> 00:37:58,719 Speaker 1: the end there doesn't go very far, right, That's right, 625 00:37:59,200 --> 00:38:01,960 Speaker 1: there's a great I mean, I think one episode that 626 00:38:02,040 --> 00:38:07,480 Speaker 1: people people usually remember is ken Kiss signing up as 627 00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:13,160 Speaker 1: a young man to a psychedelic trial um Palo Alto 628 00:38:13,840 --> 00:38:19,000 Speaker 1: Veterans Hospital and he's given LSD and mescaline and that's 629 00:38:19,040 --> 00:38:21,399 Speaker 1: how he gets turned onto them, and then he writes 630 00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:23,759 Speaker 1: one flu of a Cuckoo's Nest about it. Now. That 631 00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:27,480 Speaker 1: trial that he was participating in, run by a researcher 632 00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:33,880 Speaker 1: called Leo Hollister, was was kind of um. Was was 633 00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:36,480 Speaker 1: looking at this question of well, are the effects of 634 00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:40,279 Speaker 1: psychedelics really very like um, you know, the effects of 635 00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:44,640 Speaker 1: schizophrenia and psychosis. So Hollinger wanted a control trial of 636 00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:50,080 Speaker 1: healthy individuals to take psychedelics and see what happened to them. 637 00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:54,480 Speaker 1: And he went, well this words like this word um 638 00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:59,680 Speaker 1: hallucination sounds very kind of you know, clinical and precise, 639 00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:01,640 Speaker 1: and you get it in a lot of doctor's notes, 640 00:39:01,680 --> 00:39:04,160 Speaker 1: But actually, what are we talking about if you talk 641 00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:09,680 Speaker 1: about the hallucinations experienced by people having in psychotic episodes. 642 00:39:09,719 --> 00:39:13,000 Speaker 1: It's often that things kind of taste strange, or they 643 00:39:13,080 --> 00:39:16,239 Speaker 1: think they're being poisoned, or they hear voices. You know. 644 00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:20,760 Speaker 1: These are very different from the hallucinations that normal people 645 00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:24,560 Speaker 1: have on psychedelics. Yeah, so those two starts to get decoupled. 646 00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:27,719 Speaker 1: And then around about the same time as well, a 647 00:39:27,719 --> 00:39:31,279 Speaker 1: lot of people started coming into emergency wards with really 648 00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:34,839 Speaker 1: kind of having some full blown psychotic episodes and it 649 00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:38,239 Speaker 1: turned out they've been taking loads of amphetamines and they've 650 00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:40,960 Speaker 1: carried on taking them, and that was what happened. So 651 00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:45,959 Speaker 1: the term amphetamine psychosis was coined. And then people looked 652 00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:47,920 Speaker 1: at that and went, Okay, well that's working on the 653 00:39:47,960 --> 00:39:53,040 Speaker 1: dopamine system, So maybe um schizophrenia and the psychotic disorders 654 00:39:53,040 --> 00:39:56,720 Speaker 1: are dopamine disorders. So at that point the science shifted 655 00:39:56,760 --> 00:40:00,200 Speaker 1: away from mescaline and LSD and the psychedelics in a 656 00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:03,680 Speaker 1: different direction. Right, But before this shift, either was enough 657 00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:08,040 Speaker 1: interesting stuff out there to interest the CIA and its 658 00:40:08,040 --> 00:40:11,759 Speaker 1: predecessor agency, the o S SC after Strategic Services in 659 00:40:12,160 --> 00:40:16,720 Speaker 1: military branches. Of what was their interest in all of this, Well, 660 00:40:16,840 --> 00:40:21,759 Speaker 1: they pretty much every psychoactive drug they had a crack 661 00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:27,040 Speaker 1: at looking for truth serums, and they ended up, as 662 00:40:27,080 --> 00:40:30,560 Speaker 1: we know, sort of mostly with things like sodium pentophile 663 00:40:30,760 --> 00:40:35,640 Speaker 1: and these kind of narcotic, hypnotic sedative drugs. But on 664 00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:39,360 Speaker 1: the way, they tried cannabis, they tried LSD, they tried mescaline. 665 00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:42,279 Speaker 1: So I usually did persist for them for very long 666 00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:47,880 Speaker 1: until let's see, i A in the nineteen fifties decided 667 00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:51,080 Speaker 1: to work with LSD. So he just had this incredible 668 00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:57,399 Speaker 1: crazy period, completely unsupervised, completely unethical. Were you know, through 669 00:40:57,440 --> 00:41:01,000 Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and the nineteen sixties you had ci 670 00:41:01,120 --> 00:41:07,040 Speaker 1: A researchers giving LSD usually rather than mescaline, two hundreds 671 00:41:07,080 --> 00:41:10,840 Speaker 1: and hundreds of people to people in mental hospitals to 672 00:41:11,040 --> 00:41:14,719 Speaker 1: convict people without their knowledge. A lot of this, of course, 673 00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:19,120 Speaker 1: came out in the early nineties seventies, the mk Ultra 674 00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:22,040 Speaker 1: program was it was called m h. Well there was 675 00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:23,839 Speaker 1: another thing, too, right, I mean there was I think 676 00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:25,160 Speaker 1: you said that a lot of us about trying to 677 00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:27,000 Speaker 1: find a truth serum. Then the other old and I 678 00:41:27,040 --> 00:41:29,160 Speaker 1: think was about springing it into the air in order 679 00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:32,279 Speaker 1: to produce mass anxiety or something like that. I don't 680 00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:35,919 Speaker 1: think everything ever came of that right now, that's right, 681 00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:38,640 Speaker 1: or you know, that's sort of the kind of persistent 682 00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:40,800 Speaker 1: urban legend about how you could put it into the 683 00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:43,960 Speaker 1: water supply. The idea was that it could be used 684 00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:48,360 Speaker 1: in military combat in that way that you could disorientate 685 00:41:48,840 --> 00:41:51,879 Speaker 1: a civilian population and so on. But yeah, and then 686 00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:54,879 Speaker 1: there were all kinds of crazy ideas that we could 687 00:41:54,920 --> 00:42:00,359 Speaker 1: put some LSD in Castro's cigar and kind of you know, right, 688 00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:04,720 Speaker 1: make him crazy just before he did some big public lecture. 689 00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:06,640 Speaker 1: There were all kinds of ideas which, as you say, 690 00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:09,560 Speaker 1: didn't get anywhere. And actually kind of their real life 691 00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:11,839 Speaker 1: and their real contribution is to fiction. These are all 692 00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:14,880 Speaker 1: stories that we kind of know from sort of paranoid 693 00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:18,319 Speaker 1: science fiction spy thrillers, and I think that's where a 694 00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:20,520 Speaker 1: lot of them came from in the first place. These 695 00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:24,960 Speaker 1: CIA agents were great readers of you know, things like 696 00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:28,640 Speaker 1: the earlier James Bond novels and uh, you know, all 697 00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:34,040 Speaker 1: the way further the Manchurian Candidate and so on, and 698 00:42:34,120 --> 00:42:37,799 Speaker 1: I think there's some there's some great interviews with them 699 00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:39,920 Speaker 1: later where they said, oh, the trouble with the Manchurian 700 00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:42,839 Speaker 1: candidate was that persuaded everybody. This thing that we've been 701 00:42:42,880 --> 00:42:44,759 Speaker 1: trying to do for ages have been unable to do, 702 00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:48,279 Speaker 1: was possible. There was one interesting line that you head 703 00:42:48,280 --> 00:42:50,000 Speaker 1: in the book where you said that there was some 704 00:42:50,040 --> 00:42:51,880 Speaker 1: of the near immergrants would say, is that, you know, 705 00:42:52,120 --> 00:42:56,319 Speaker 1: with with with alcohol, the hangover comes later, with peyote, 706 00:42:56,400 --> 00:43:01,040 Speaker 1: the hangover comes first. Yeah, that's right, that's a that's 707 00:43:01,040 --> 00:43:07,200 Speaker 1: a Native American expression. Uh Mescaline is slightly different chemically 708 00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:12,239 Speaker 1: from the other psychedelics LSD and psilocybin and d MT. 709 00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:16,200 Speaker 1: Trip to means kind of class of chemical that's active 710 00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:18,760 Speaker 1: at very small doses and heads straight for the brain. 711 00:43:19,280 --> 00:43:23,279 Speaker 1: Mescaline is a finethylamine. I guess the chemical that it's 712 00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:26,400 Speaker 1: most closely related to is uh M d M A 713 00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:28,920 Speaker 1: or two CB. So you have to take a much 714 00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:31,600 Speaker 1: larger dose and it has a lot more physical effects. 715 00:43:32,040 --> 00:43:36,359 Speaker 1: And there's a lot in the Native American church payote 716 00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:41,040 Speaker 1: ceremony which is about mediating these effects, getting everybody sort 717 00:43:41,080 --> 00:43:44,800 Speaker 1: of you know, working the physical effects through with the 718 00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:48,200 Speaker 1: drums and the singing and the kind of whole stages 719 00:43:48,239 --> 00:43:52,520 Speaker 1: of the of the ceremony and so on. M You 720 00:43:52,600 --> 00:43:54,960 Speaker 1: also see at one point and it's probably released to 721 00:43:55,040 --> 00:43:58,839 Speaker 1: the sort of bigger cultural conflict over psycholics in the sixties. 722 00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:01,680 Speaker 1: And you're talking about two other quite famous intellectuals in 723 00:44:01,719 --> 00:44:04,279 Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century, you say, where is Walter Benjamin 724 00:44:04,760 --> 00:44:09,200 Speaker 1: saw the potential and psychedelics for political resistance in expanded consciousness. 725 00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:12,840 Speaker 1: Earns Younger saw a weapon of the individual against society. 726 00:44:12,960 --> 00:44:16,879 Speaker 1: When he was the fellow coined the phrase psychonaute. I mean, yes, 727 00:44:17,040 --> 00:44:19,680 Speaker 1: once again, so people sort of using this drug and 728 00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:23,200 Speaker 1: going in all sorts of different directions, and then many 729 00:44:23,239 --> 00:44:26,200 Speaker 1: of them getting frustrated and sort of turning away from it. 730 00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:29,840 Speaker 1: But Alvis Huxley really is kind of the right person, 731 00:44:30,120 --> 00:44:34,319 Speaker 1: right time, right place. How and why is that? It's 732 00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:37,800 Speaker 1: partly because he had figured all this stuff out already 733 00:44:37,880 --> 00:44:41,840 Speaker 1: before he took masculine in this sense, I mean, the 734 00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:46,560 Speaker 1: other great origin story of psychedelics is Albert Hoffman's. But 735 00:44:46,600 --> 00:44:49,200 Speaker 1: if he read Hoffman's notes that he wrote in nine 736 00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:55,680 Speaker 1: three after his LSD experience, it's kind of a horrible 737 00:44:55,760 --> 00:45:00,000 Speaker 1: overdose in regards as a terrible, you know, terrible experience. 738 00:45:00,360 --> 00:45:02,600 Speaker 1: And then gradually you can see as the way he 739 00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:05,239 Speaker 1: talks about it, it works its way through until by 740 00:45:05,239 --> 00:45:08,680 Speaker 1: the nanteen seventiers. You have his famous account of it 741 00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:12,400 Speaker 1: in LSD My Problem Child, which is all about, you know, 742 00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:16,719 Speaker 1: the beautiful visuals and the psychedelics and the kaleidoscopes and 743 00:45:16,760 --> 00:45:19,960 Speaker 1: the whirlpools and the rainbows and so on. It took 744 00:45:20,520 --> 00:45:24,200 Speaker 1: Hoffman a long time to really get with the psychedelic 745 00:45:24,440 --> 00:45:28,759 Speaker 1: aspects of LSD UM and I think Huxley actually was 746 00:45:28,800 --> 00:45:32,200 Speaker 1: there already. Ten years before he took mescaline. He had 747 00:45:32,239 --> 00:45:35,760 Speaker 1: written this anthology of the Perennial Philosophy where he gathered 748 00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:38,840 Speaker 1: together all his favorite sacred and mystical texts from different 749 00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:42,120 Speaker 1: traditions and said, look, they're all basically talking about the 750 00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:45,319 Speaker 1: same thing. He'd read his William James of course, and 751 00:45:45,360 --> 00:45:48,080 Speaker 1: William James had come up with this kind of classification 752 00:45:48,200 --> 00:45:52,919 Speaker 1: for spiritual experiences, saying they're no ethic, they seem really true, 753 00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:56,279 Speaker 1: they seem really undeniable. They just can't you can't prime them. 754 00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:58,719 Speaker 1: They just come and they just happen. They're not repeatable, 755 00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:01,799 Speaker 1: you know. So these had a good idea of what 756 00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:04,040 Speaker 1: the experience was going to be. I think before he 757 00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:06,600 Speaker 1: took it. I mean, the thing that he's most famous for, 758 00:46:06,760 --> 00:46:09,920 Speaker 1: you know, the insight in doors of perception that everyone 759 00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:12,560 Speaker 1: remembers is this idea that the brain is like a 760 00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:16,600 Speaker 1: reducing valve. You know, we have all these different experiences 761 00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:19,279 Speaker 1: and stimuli coming at us all the time, and our 762 00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:22,239 Speaker 1: brain reduces them down to the little trickle that we 763 00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:26,680 Speaker 1: can deal with in everyday life and normal reality. And 764 00:46:26,719 --> 00:46:29,879 Speaker 1: what mescaline does is to take away this reducing valve, 765 00:46:29,920 --> 00:46:32,680 Speaker 1: and suddenly we get flooded with all the stuff that's 766 00:46:32,680 --> 00:46:36,000 Speaker 1: going on there that we normally screen out. So Huxley 767 00:46:36,160 --> 00:46:40,080 Speaker 1: explains this all to Humphrey Osmond, the psychiatrist who gives 768 00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:42,920 Speaker 1: him the masculine in his first letter to Osmond, so 769 00:46:43,000 --> 00:46:46,000 Speaker 1: like way before he's taken it. So I think Huxley 770 00:46:46,080 --> 00:46:49,560 Speaker 1: had these ideas already worked out, and actually he was 771 00:46:49,600 --> 00:46:51,520 Speaker 1: a little bit depressed. It was a bit hard to 772 00:46:51,560 --> 00:46:54,600 Speaker 1: get through to people. People, particularly in the literary world, 773 00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:58,520 Speaker 1: were kind of jaded and cynical and oh, it's Huxley 774 00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:02,879 Speaker 1: and his cranky you know, spiritual theories again. But then 775 00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:06,120 Speaker 1: suddenly once they were insights from mescaline, which brought with 776 00:47:06,200 --> 00:47:09,160 Speaker 1: it this idea of kind of cutting edge science, you know, 777 00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:13,280 Speaker 1: very sort of futuristic, opening up new ideas about the minds. 778 00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:16,239 Speaker 1: Then a lot of the ideas that Huxley already had 779 00:47:16,680 --> 00:47:19,359 Speaker 1: were filtered through the mescaline experience, and he really went 780 00:47:19,400 --> 00:47:21,279 Speaker 1: with it as an identity, having a lot of those 781 00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:25,000 Speaker 1: early researchers like John pool satro or Walter Benjamin just 782 00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:27,279 Speaker 1: took it once. It was an interesting day, They wrote 783 00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:29,080 Speaker 1: it up and they got on with their lives, you know. 784 00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:31,680 Speaker 1: So Huxley it became his identity and I think it 785 00:47:31,719 --> 00:47:35,120 Speaker 1: really turned his late career around and made him into 786 00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:39,600 Speaker 1: you know, a peculiarly modern sort of profit. And of 787 00:47:39,640 --> 00:47:41,440 Speaker 1: course that was a contract because when he real breeve 788 00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:44,120 Speaker 1: New World, you know, there was a prominent drug in 789 00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:47,200 Speaker 1: their Soma, which was more of the kind of superific. 790 00:47:47,360 --> 00:47:49,080 Speaker 1: There was a bad drug. It was the one in 791 00:47:49,160 --> 00:47:53,000 Speaker 1: which you kept the masses happy at some superficial level, 792 00:47:53,080 --> 00:47:56,720 Speaker 1: so they didn't challenge the established order. So he obviously 793 00:47:56,840 --> 00:47:59,400 Speaker 1: got through an evolution in his view of psychoactives phycho 794 00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:02,319 Speaker 1: active subs. Yeah, I mean Soma is very much the 795 00:48:02,360 --> 00:48:05,800 Speaker 1: progressive era review of drugs. You know, it's the drug 796 00:48:05,880 --> 00:48:09,440 Speaker 1: that's mass produced by you know, forward industries or whatever, 797 00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:11,960 Speaker 1: and everybody has to take it and it keeps all 798 00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:16,239 Speaker 1: those difficult individual feelings in place and bonds everybody in 799 00:48:16,280 --> 00:48:19,279 Speaker 1: a rather kind of you know, bovine way, with the 800 00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:22,799 Speaker 1: sort of mass consciousness, and keeps society in its place. 801 00:48:22,840 --> 00:48:25,560 Speaker 1: And I think that was how progressive of that era 802 00:48:25,680 --> 00:48:28,239 Speaker 1: saw drugs in general. And I think Soma is the 803 00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:32,000 Speaker 1: great expression of that. And you know, even like a 804 00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:35,480 Speaker 1: year or two before he writes Doors of Perception, that's 805 00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:38,920 Speaker 1: still Hucksley line. You know that transcendence through drugs is 806 00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:44,279 Speaker 1: a false transcendence and your brains just being chemically manipulated 807 00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:47,080 Speaker 1: and you might get a brief little illumination, but the 808 00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:49,479 Speaker 1: calme down is going to be not worth it. He's 809 00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:51,640 Speaker 1: like that kind of right up until the moment when 810 00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:53,840 Speaker 1: he takes mescaline, and then I think he has this 811 00:48:53,920 --> 00:48:57,560 Speaker 1: thing of huh, well, this isn't drugs, this is something else. 812 00:48:57,840 --> 00:49:00,400 Speaker 1: You know. There's a little paragraph you have in book 813 00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:04,200 Speaker 1: which reminded me why Huxley also is that link between 814 00:49:04,200 --> 00:49:06,960 Speaker 1: on the one hand, the Bill w you know, or 815 00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:10,480 Speaker 1: Mormon leader Fred Smith insight from the religious side, and 816 00:49:10,520 --> 00:49:14,840 Speaker 1: the contemporary researchers. And you write mescaline did not drive 817 00:49:14,960 --> 00:49:19,360 Speaker 1: Huxley mad, as Osmond had feared, but it triggered the 818 00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:23,440 Speaker 1: quote unquote truth taking stare. His account has the urgent, 819 00:49:23,560 --> 00:49:27,239 Speaker 1: supercharged quality of what psychotherapists might describe as a quote 820 00:49:27,280 --> 00:49:31,640 Speaker 1: unquote spiritual emergency or breakdown breakthrough. It brought a long 821 00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:35,600 Speaker 1: period of accumulated mental and psychic stress to an explosive 822 00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:38,279 Speaker 1: moment of truth, from which he emerged with a new 823 00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:41,759 Speaker 1: narrative and direction. Yeah, that's right, And I think that's 824 00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:45,840 Speaker 1: such a that's such a joyous nous and uh Huxley's 825 00:49:46,080 --> 00:49:50,400 Speaker 1: uh discovery and acceptance of mescaline and uh that deals 826 00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:53,600 Speaker 1: the perception. I think that's it's kind of wonderful quality. 827 00:49:53,719 --> 00:49:57,120 Speaker 1: He's this intellectual who has read everything and knows everything 828 00:49:57,200 --> 00:50:00,080 Speaker 1: and then suddenly light in life. He takes full the 829 00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:03,560 Speaker 1: milligrams of this powder dissolved in water, and he suddenly 830 00:50:03,560 --> 00:50:07,000 Speaker 1: has this breakthrough experience. Yeah. I think at that point 831 00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:10,839 Speaker 1: in his career there was a lot of accumulated frustration, 832 00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:14,640 Speaker 1: a lot of ill health. He was, you know, attempting 833 00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:18,720 Speaker 1: all kinds of remedies for different health problems. His eyesight 834 00:50:18,840 --> 00:50:21,560 Speaker 1: was getting worse, and it really turned him around. It 835 00:50:21,600 --> 00:50:24,000 Speaker 1: made him back into a household name in a way 836 00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:26,560 Speaker 1: that they hadn't been since the twenties, and I think 837 00:50:26,560 --> 00:50:30,080 Speaker 1: it kind of you know, he just radiates this wonderful 838 00:50:30,160 --> 00:50:33,480 Speaker 1: serenity for those last few years of his life. I 839 00:50:33,480 --> 00:50:35,960 Speaker 1: think his most famous line in the book is when 840 00:50:35,960 --> 00:50:39,000 Speaker 1: he's looking at his pants and he says, those folds 841 00:50:39,080 --> 00:50:44,000 Speaker 1: in the trousers, what a labyrinth of endlessly significant complexity. 842 00:50:44,080 --> 00:50:47,040 Speaker 1: And the texture of the great flannel, how rich, how 843 00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:51,400 Speaker 1: deeply mysteriously sumptuous. And I think many of the psychelic 844 00:50:51,520 --> 00:50:54,160 Speaker 1: no that experience of just focusing on something and seeing 845 00:50:54,200 --> 00:50:58,759 Speaker 1: the endless number of things you've never seen before. That's right, Yeah, 846 00:50:59,160 --> 00:51:01,600 Speaker 1: how though? Did you say it? Actually, he wasn't actually 847 00:51:01,640 --> 00:51:04,719 Speaker 1: wearing great flannel pants, and his wife persuaded him to 848 00:51:04,800 --> 00:51:07,080 Speaker 1: change the story. He was just like wearing jeans, and 849 00:51:07,160 --> 00:51:09,400 Speaker 1: she said, I'll read Rhed read better if you actually 850 00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:13,760 Speaker 1: substitute flannel pants into this. Yeah, that's that's that's true. Uh, 851 00:51:13,800 --> 00:51:16,640 Speaker 1: he was, by all accounts wearing jeans. And then when 852 00:51:16,640 --> 00:51:19,360 Speaker 1: he wrote it and his wife read it, she said, oh, this, 853 00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:21,840 Speaker 1: I think he ought to dress up for your readers. 854 00:51:21,840 --> 00:51:23,600 Speaker 1: And I think that was just right, because if he'd 855 00:51:23,600 --> 00:51:25,960 Speaker 1: been wearing jeans, it wouldn't have been anywhere near as good. 856 00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:29,879 Speaker 1: It was because he was this kind of tweety, intellectual 857 00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:33,040 Speaker 1: British figure that this kind of effusion of joy was 858 00:51:33,080 --> 00:51:36,399 Speaker 1: so wonderful. H So listen, So now, by the time 859 00:51:36,440 --> 00:51:39,800 Speaker 1: you get to the sixties, just explain why there's this 860 00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:43,239 Speaker 1: sort of mass defection from mescal into LSD. A lot 861 00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:47,359 Speaker 1: of it, I think is about dose. A gram of 862 00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:51,280 Speaker 1: mescaline is two or three doses. The gram of LSD 863 00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:55,719 Speaker 1: is thousands of doses. So you know, even by the 864 00:51:55,760 --> 00:52:00,080 Speaker 1: time that Huxley was writing Doors of Perception, clinical researchers 865 00:52:00,080 --> 00:52:04,319 Speaker 1: were switching to LSD partly because it was cheaper, but 866 00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:08,400 Speaker 1: also because if it was active at such small doses, 867 00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:11,719 Speaker 1: and it must be hitting some particular trigger or lock 868 00:52:11,800 --> 00:52:14,960 Speaker 1: and key mechanism in the brain, because the theory of 869 00:52:15,040 --> 00:52:17,560 Speaker 1: mescaline and cannabis up until that point would been all 870 00:52:17,640 --> 00:52:20,759 Speaker 1: this kind of floods the brain with sort of weird chemicals. 871 00:52:21,080 --> 00:52:23,240 Speaker 1: But LSD obviously wasn't doing that. It was doing something 872 00:52:23,239 --> 00:52:26,560 Speaker 1: more specific, so I think that made it more appealing. 873 00:52:26,760 --> 00:52:31,719 Speaker 1: And then by the early nine sixties, when psychedelics were 874 00:52:31,760 --> 00:52:35,120 Speaker 1: starting to take off in the wider world, mescaline, of 875 00:52:35,160 --> 00:52:37,760 Speaker 1: course was one of the very first to be closed down. 876 00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:42,359 Speaker 1: You know, after sixty three. You know, you could get 877 00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:44,320 Speaker 1: hold of it if you had the right headed notepaper 878 00:52:44,440 --> 00:52:47,239 Speaker 1: or a PhD. But even that got tighter as things 879 00:52:47,280 --> 00:52:50,600 Speaker 1: went along, and then by five when you know, sort 880 00:52:50,640 --> 00:52:54,080 Speaker 1: of hours Lee and the underground chemists sort of starting 881 00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:56,680 Speaker 1: to synthesize psychedelics. You know, what are you going to 882 00:52:56,760 --> 00:52:59,000 Speaker 1: do is at the size and gram of mescaline and 883 00:52:59,040 --> 00:53:01,440 Speaker 1: give it to two of your friends, or the sizogram 884 00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:03,600 Speaker 1: of LSD and give it to like everybody in the 885 00:53:03,640 --> 00:53:07,080 Speaker 1: Bay area. That's the you know, and that you know, 886 00:53:07,120 --> 00:53:11,960 Speaker 1: the criminal penalties the same. So LSD entirely took over 887 00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:15,200 Speaker 1: the illicit market for the sixties drug culture from the 888 00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:18,680 Speaker 1: very beginning. But mescaline of course had a particular cachet 889 00:53:18,760 --> 00:53:21,319 Speaker 1: because everybody had read Doors of Perception, and you know, 890 00:53:21,440 --> 00:53:24,719 Speaker 1: everybody wants wants to try mescaline. It had this sort 891 00:53:24,760 --> 00:53:28,719 Speaker 1: of magic about it, and some kind of connoisseur chemists 892 00:53:28,719 --> 00:53:31,719 Speaker 1: would make small bat runs, so it was kind of 893 00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:34,080 Speaker 1: always remembered. But I think by the time you got 894 00:53:34,200 --> 00:53:36,440 Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy probably everybody had heard of it, but 895 00:53:36,560 --> 00:53:39,400 Speaker 1: very few people have taken it, and the cultural product 896 00:53:39,400 --> 00:53:42,919 Speaker 1: I think of from that moment is Hunter Thompson's Fear 897 00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:46,000 Speaker 1: and Loathing in Las Vegas, where you know, from page 898 00:53:46,040 --> 00:53:49,120 Speaker 1: one he's taking kind of every drug in the farmer 899 00:53:49,239 --> 00:53:51,680 Speaker 1: appear and more and then so where do you go, 900 00:53:51,880 --> 00:53:53,560 Speaker 1: like a third of the way in, you've got a 901 00:53:53,600 --> 00:53:58,080 Speaker 1: sort of head for some huge, sort of chaotic, apocalyptic 902 00:53:58,160 --> 00:54:01,440 Speaker 1: drug experience. And he says, at that point, we cracked 903 00:54:01,440 --> 00:54:04,239 Speaker 1: out the mescaline. And I think that's because there were 904 00:54:04,239 --> 00:54:06,319 Speaker 1: not that many people who really knew what it did, 905 00:54:06,360 --> 00:54:09,080 Speaker 1: but everybody knew what it signified. And after that, I 906 00:54:09,080 --> 00:54:11,360 Speaker 1: think people remembered it from Fear and Loathing as this 907 00:54:11,520 --> 00:54:13,799 Speaker 1: kind of it's a sort of no plus ultra. It's 908 00:54:13,920 --> 00:54:19,759 Speaker 1: it's the most intense psychedelic experience you can imagine. Let's 909 00:54:19,800 --> 00:54:34,200 Speaker 1: take a break here and go to an act. You know, 910 00:54:34,239 --> 00:54:37,120 Speaker 1: there's something almost about mescalin and your story that reminds 911 00:54:37,120 --> 00:54:39,279 Speaker 1: me of almost like like almost mescalin is almost sort 912 00:54:39,280 --> 00:54:42,719 Speaker 1: of the forest Gump of psychedelics, right somehow popping up 913 00:54:42,719 --> 00:54:45,040 Speaker 1: and showing up. I mean, you have this wonderful moment 914 00:54:45,080 --> 00:54:47,640 Speaker 1: where you you talk about the world at Mescalin plays 915 00:54:47,840 --> 00:54:50,840 Speaker 1: in one of the great works of Minor American poetry, 916 00:54:50,920 --> 00:54:54,479 Speaker 1: which was the poem Howell by Alan Ginsburg. Yeah, that's right. Well, 917 00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:59,480 Speaker 1: Um Ginsburg and William Burrows were very early adopters of 918 00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:03,799 Speaker 1: payote and mescaline. They were kind of taking a lot 919 00:55:04,000 --> 00:55:08,240 Speaker 1: around that Payote, particularly around the time that Ginsburg wrote 920 00:55:08,280 --> 00:55:11,520 Speaker 1: how And Yeah, that's the story he tells about that, 921 00:55:12,080 --> 00:55:15,640 Speaker 1: you know, devastating sequence in how We're sort of Molok. 922 00:55:15,880 --> 00:55:20,160 Speaker 1: You know, this enormous, great kind of sort of beasts 923 00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:26,040 Speaker 1: that represents some industrial mass society becomes its looming presence. 924 00:55:26,200 --> 00:55:29,319 Speaker 1: And there's a point where Ginsberg says he'd taken some 925 00:55:29,400 --> 00:55:32,480 Speaker 1: payote and was looking out of his window in San 926 00:55:32,520 --> 00:55:36,440 Speaker 1: Francisco in the fog and sort of big building with 927 00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:38,520 Speaker 1: all its lights on through the fog, and that's where 928 00:55:38,520 --> 00:55:41,520 Speaker 1: he got the idea of Molok, this kind of biblical 929 00:55:41,600 --> 00:55:46,040 Speaker 1: monster that consumes it's young m Now to jump forward, 930 00:55:46,360 --> 00:55:49,520 Speaker 1: another point you make here is that when you reflect back, 931 00:55:49,719 --> 00:55:53,640 Speaker 1: you say, the most consequential mescal in trip of the 932 00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:57,719 Speaker 1: sixties was the one taken in April nineteen sixty by 933 00:55:57,800 --> 00:56:02,200 Speaker 1: Alexander Shorgin that rate, Yeah, that's right, Well, that was 934 00:56:02,640 --> 00:56:08,440 Speaker 1: Alexander Shulgin's first psychedelic experience, and he puts it wonderfully, 935 00:56:08,480 --> 00:56:11,320 Speaker 1: his sort of his equivalent of Huxley looking at his 936 00:56:11,440 --> 00:56:16,520 Speaker 1: trousers is saying, um, it was amazing when the mascaline 937 00:56:16,560 --> 00:56:18,759 Speaker 1: came up, that he suddenly he was at a world 938 00:56:18,800 --> 00:56:20,400 Speaker 1: that he remembered, but it was the world that he 939 00:56:20,480 --> 00:56:22,520 Speaker 1: lived in when he was a child five or six 940 00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:25,000 Speaker 1: years old, when everything was kind of new and fresh 941 00:56:25,040 --> 00:56:28,120 Speaker 1: and everything was possible, that it transported him straight back 942 00:56:28,160 --> 00:56:32,200 Speaker 1: to that childlike moment. You know. William Wordsworth's poetry as 943 00:56:32,239 --> 00:56:35,000 Speaker 1: another great sort of touchstone for a lot of the 944 00:56:35,040 --> 00:56:38,520 Speaker 1: early mescaline experiment as I think for the same reason. 945 00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:43,880 Speaker 1: And then after the trip, Shulgin, who was an organic chemist, 946 00:56:43,960 --> 00:56:47,800 Speaker 1: became fascinated that there had been so little work around 947 00:56:48,120 --> 00:56:53,200 Speaker 1: analogs of mescaline. He started tinkering around and synthesizing versions 948 00:56:53,239 --> 00:56:56,759 Speaker 1: of it, and of course from those experiments he kind 949 00:56:56,760 --> 00:56:59,920 Speaker 1: of synthesized M D M A, which was the one 950 00:57:00,040 --> 00:57:03,360 Speaker 1: that you know, became a breakthrough first and psychotherapy, and 951 00:57:03,360 --> 00:57:07,680 Speaker 1: then are the street druggers ecstasy, So that whole sort 952 00:57:07,680 --> 00:57:09,880 Speaker 1: of second wave of psychedelic culture. I think you know 953 00:57:10,480 --> 00:57:14,640 Speaker 1: pretty much came out of Shilgun's mescaline trip in that sense, 954 00:57:14,680 --> 00:57:17,960 Speaker 1: and not just MG, of course, but dozens and dozens 955 00:57:17,960 --> 00:57:21,080 Speaker 1: of different finel A means and then trip do means 956 00:57:21,400 --> 00:57:24,600 Speaker 1: different novel psychedelics, I mean notably to CB as well. 957 00:57:24,640 --> 00:57:27,920 Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, that's right, yeah, you know, And in 958 00:57:27,920 --> 00:57:30,480 Speaker 1: a way it made me think, right when we think 959 00:57:30,520 --> 00:57:32,680 Speaker 1: about the use of M D M A, and we 960 00:57:32,720 --> 00:57:35,520 Speaker 1: think about it especially in two different types of contexts, 961 00:57:35,600 --> 00:57:38,280 Speaker 1: right one where or th really three, I mean, one 962 00:57:38,400 --> 00:57:41,040 Speaker 1: is in the its value in things like couples counseling 963 00:57:41,080 --> 00:57:44,040 Speaker 1: and psychotherapy and now we're will likely be approved for 964 00:57:44,440 --> 00:57:47,000 Speaker 1: you know, PTSD, and then we think about your um 965 00:57:47,080 --> 00:57:48,960 Speaker 1: or maybe that one shifts into the second, which is 966 00:57:49,000 --> 00:57:51,959 Speaker 1: the more medical use. But the third has been its 967 00:57:52,080 --> 00:57:55,640 Speaker 1: use in the rave scene and in people dancing together 968 00:57:55,680 --> 00:57:57,960 Speaker 1: and enjoying it in that context. And it made me 969 00:57:58,000 --> 00:58:00,360 Speaker 1: think in a way also, And now this lead to me, Squint, 970 00:58:00,480 --> 00:58:02,720 Speaker 1: where you talked about the way in which is used 971 00:58:02,720 --> 00:58:06,600 Speaker 1: communally among your Nativemerican church, among indigenous peoples, but also 972 00:58:06,840 --> 00:58:10,280 Speaker 1: much more individualistically very early as a group thing among 973 00:58:10,480 --> 00:58:14,400 Speaker 1: you know, Western world. But that's kind of similarity in 974 00:58:14,440 --> 00:58:18,640 Speaker 1: their sort of journeys in a way, or they're different experiences. Yeah, 975 00:58:18,880 --> 00:58:21,640 Speaker 1: I think that's uh. I think that that's very valid. 976 00:58:21,760 --> 00:58:25,320 Speaker 1: If you go back to the first Spanish reports of 977 00:58:25,600 --> 00:58:29,360 Speaker 1: payote in Mexico, they report on it being used in 978 00:58:29,360 --> 00:58:34,000 Speaker 1: two different ways. One for kind of healing or divination, 979 00:58:34,520 --> 00:58:38,320 Speaker 1: which is, you know, effectively a patient and a doctor 980 00:58:38,960 --> 00:58:42,000 Speaker 1: sitting down in a sort of healing compact in which 981 00:58:42,160 --> 00:58:45,400 Speaker 1: you know, the payote is sort of the third personality 982 00:58:45,440 --> 00:58:48,440 Speaker 1: that mediates and you get a kind of conversation between 983 00:58:49,120 --> 00:58:52,520 Speaker 1: the two people and the cactus from which you know, 984 00:58:52,760 --> 00:58:55,520 Speaker 1: the solution to the problem, whether it's a sort of 985 00:58:55,800 --> 00:58:59,760 Speaker 1: medical healing or whether it's divination or sorcery, you know, 986 00:59:00,240 --> 00:59:03,320 Speaker 1: emerges from that. And then there's a second use, which 987 00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:06,320 Speaker 1: you read about in some of the early Jesuit reports 988 00:59:06,360 --> 00:59:08,680 Speaker 1: where they find particularly up in the north of Mexico 989 00:59:08,760 --> 00:59:13,000 Speaker 1: where peote comes from whole villages where people take it together, 990 00:59:13,360 --> 00:59:16,880 Speaker 1: usually around afar, usually at night, usually with that kind 991 00:59:16,920 --> 00:59:20,479 Speaker 1: of three steps shuffle dance, and people will just keep 992 00:59:20,520 --> 00:59:23,640 Speaker 1: going on the cactus and on the dancing, and on 993 00:59:23,680 --> 00:59:26,280 Speaker 1: the alcohol if it's there as well, and get into 994 00:59:26,320 --> 00:59:29,360 Speaker 1: this kind of group trance group mind for which it's 995 00:59:29,400 --> 00:59:32,440 Speaker 1: so wonderfully effective. So I think, yeah, there's two modern 996 00:59:32,520 --> 00:59:34,920 Speaker 1: uses that you identify. You can follow them all the 997 00:59:34,920 --> 00:59:37,000 Speaker 1: way back to the very beginning of the story. In 998 00:59:37,040 --> 00:59:39,000 Speaker 1: a way, some of them, I think you present as 999 00:59:39,040 --> 00:59:42,000 Speaker 1: a difference nature of the use of peyote or san 1000 00:59:42,040 --> 00:59:45,600 Speaker 1: pedro between those Native American groups that have been more 1001 00:59:45,640 --> 00:59:48,800 Speaker 1: of the kind of warrior, the hunter, gatherer, the commanches, 1002 00:59:48,840 --> 00:59:51,320 Speaker 1: what have you, as opposed to the other more settled 1003 00:59:51,440 --> 00:59:54,200 Speaker 1: Indians who have been agricultural for hundreds of years, and 1004 00:59:54,560 --> 00:59:58,280 Speaker 1: in part because of their you know, very different cultures, 1005 00:59:58,520 --> 01:00:01,600 Speaker 1: their nature of the use of this it varied substantially. 1006 01:00:01,920 --> 01:00:05,400 Speaker 1: There's also a big distinction in that sense between the 1007 01:00:05,520 --> 01:00:08,840 Speaker 1: indigenous use of payote in Mexico by tribes like the 1008 01:00:09,000 --> 01:00:13,000 Speaker 1: witch All. There's usually a shaman or someone who's very 1009 01:00:13,040 --> 01:00:19,000 Speaker 1: specialized in mediating these ceremonies, mediating these states and these spaces. 1010 01:00:19,560 --> 01:00:21,920 Speaker 1: It's very different from the use of payote in the 1011 01:00:22,200 --> 01:00:26,000 Speaker 1: Native American Church, which is much more democratic and in 1012 01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:30,400 Speaker 1: a way, I think, perhaps reflecting the white Christian culture 1013 01:00:30,520 --> 01:00:35,919 Speaker 1: in which it evolved, it's more kind of Protestant. Everybody 1014 01:00:36,000 --> 01:00:40,600 Speaker 1: is their own conscience and their own priest. Everybody is 1015 01:00:40,640 --> 01:00:45,680 Speaker 1: having their own conversation with the payote and the roadman, 1016 01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:48,200 Speaker 1: who is the person who officiates at the ceremony is 1017 01:00:48,240 --> 01:00:51,000 Speaker 1: not a shaman or a priest or anyone with special 1018 01:00:51,400 --> 01:00:55,560 Speaker 1: spiritual power. In fact, they're very very scrupulous about making 1019 01:00:55,560 --> 01:00:59,320 Speaker 1: clear that's not what they are. All the ceremonial instruments 1020 01:00:59,400 --> 01:01:03,120 Speaker 1: get passed around the circle, so everybody gets to share. 1021 01:01:03,560 --> 01:01:06,360 Speaker 1: And that's a i think, a very different type of view. 1022 01:01:06,400 --> 01:01:08,560 Speaker 1: So it's kind of you know, it's sitting and seeing 1023 01:01:08,560 --> 01:01:11,120 Speaker 1: and praying. It said a way, very very sober as 1024 01:01:11,120 --> 01:01:15,120 Speaker 1: a ceremony. It's not a kind of ecstatic or dionysiac 1025 01:01:15,200 --> 01:01:17,880 Speaker 1: thing in every way. But that also, as you say, 1026 01:01:18,360 --> 01:01:21,280 Speaker 1: was much more congenial to some tribes than others. The 1027 01:01:21,360 --> 01:01:25,400 Speaker 1: Comanches where it may have started, they were nomadic people, 1028 01:01:25,800 --> 01:01:29,200 Speaker 1: and you know, any warrior pretty much could stand up 1029 01:01:29,240 --> 01:01:31,920 Speaker 1: and say, okay, I want to go down here and 1030 01:01:31,960 --> 01:01:35,120 Speaker 1: do a raid over the border in Mexico here and there, 1031 01:01:35,160 --> 01:01:37,200 Speaker 1: and other people would kind of say, okay, I'm with 1032 01:01:37,240 --> 01:01:39,160 Speaker 1: you and come with him. You get all these impromptu 1033 01:01:39,440 --> 01:01:41,960 Speaker 1: bands for me all the time. So within that context, 1034 01:01:41,960 --> 01:01:45,440 Speaker 1: it was very easy if some people chose to have 1035 01:01:45,600 --> 01:01:48,200 Speaker 1: the Peyote meetings and other people didn't. That was all 1036 01:01:48,200 --> 01:01:52,640 Speaker 1: pretty pretty loose and pretty simple, whereas with the Pueblo people, 1037 01:01:52,840 --> 01:01:55,000 Speaker 1: you know, he'd been living in much more tightly ordered 1038 01:01:55,000 --> 01:01:59,920 Speaker 1: societies for hundreds of years, where spiritual ceremonies tended to 1039 01:02:00,000 --> 01:02:02,920 Speaker 1: happen in a in a kiva, in a special sacred place, 1040 01:02:03,200 --> 01:02:06,240 Speaker 1: and everybody had their role in the ceremony. Much more 1041 01:02:06,320 --> 01:02:10,680 Speaker 1: disruptive in that kind of culture. To suddenly introduce the 1042 01:02:10,720 --> 01:02:14,400 Speaker 1: whole new religious movement, Mike, when you were doing this 1043 01:02:14,560 --> 01:02:18,960 Speaker 1: research right about the historical uses of pot and indigenous 1044 01:02:19,000 --> 01:02:21,840 Speaker 1: people's how do you deal with that issue of the sources, 1045 01:02:21,960 --> 01:02:24,960 Speaker 1: especially when they were not There's essentially nothing are almost 1046 01:02:24,960 --> 01:02:29,640 Speaker 1: nothing in the way of indigenous ridden sources about pot. Yeah, 1047 01:02:29,680 --> 01:02:34,360 Speaker 1: that's one of the fascinating things about writing a Western 1048 01:02:34,400 --> 01:02:37,520 Speaker 1: history and a non Western history in parallel. They're very 1049 01:02:37,600 --> 01:02:41,080 Speaker 1: very different types of history with very different types of sources. 1050 01:02:42,080 --> 01:02:44,760 Speaker 1: So from the very beginning, the Western history is about 1051 01:02:44,800 --> 01:02:48,840 Speaker 1: individual experience. There's an enormously rich history of I took 1052 01:02:48,920 --> 01:02:53,000 Speaker 1: some payote, and I took it at twenty three PM 1053 01:02:53,080 --> 01:02:55,440 Speaker 1: and at nine fifty and I started to notice these 1054 01:02:55,520 --> 01:02:59,600 Speaker 1: violent rings around the you know, it's a story about 1055 01:02:59,640 --> 01:03:04,720 Speaker 1: individ duals and individuals trying to describe this experience in isolation. 1056 01:03:04,880 --> 01:03:08,680 Speaker 1: And when you turn to indigenous sources, there is really 1057 01:03:08,800 --> 01:03:12,520 Speaker 1: very little like that. You can look out for sort 1058 01:03:12,560 --> 01:03:17,960 Speaker 1: of first person narratives of psychedelic experience from indigenous cultures, 1059 01:03:18,000 --> 01:03:20,440 Speaker 1: and there are really not a lot, And most of 1060 01:03:20,480 --> 01:03:24,840 Speaker 1: them are kind of in conversation with Western anthropologists because 1061 01:03:24,880 --> 01:03:29,120 Speaker 1: I think that's um it's a fundamentally different experience that 1062 01:03:29,160 --> 01:03:31,680 Speaker 1: produces a very different type of history. It's not so 1063 01:03:31,760 --> 01:03:36,640 Speaker 1: much about the individual experience, it's much more about the 1064 01:03:37,160 --> 01:03:40,240 Speaker 1: It's much more of a communal experience, and it can't 1065 01:03:40,320 --> 01:03:43,680 Speaker 1: really be lifted out of its culture. So what you're 1066 01:03:44,000 --> 01:03:48,120 Speaker 1: telling in sort of indigenous and non Western histories is 1067 01:03:48,840 --> 01:03:53,200 Speaker 1: much more broadly a story of the people and what's 1068 01:03:53,240 --> 01:03:56,160 Speaker 1: happening to them, you know, And those are wonderful narratives, 1069 01:03:56,200 --> 01:03:58,280 Speaker 1: you know, if you can find your way into them 1070 01:03:58,280 --> 01:04:02,160 Speaker 1: and find enough sources, you know, they're really epic and 1071 01:04:02,520 --> 01:04:05,280 Speaker 1: really powerful. And you come across it in various sources, 1072 01:04:05,320 --> 01:04:08,320 Speaker 1: sort of which all and Native American Church that there's 1073 01:04:08,320 --> 01:04:12,000 Speaker 1: a bit of a presumption against talking about the actual 1074 01:04:12,240 --> 01:04:16,120 Speaker 1: experience itself. If you say to people, so, what happened 1075 01:04:16,160 --> 01:04:18,720 Speaker 1: when you took the payote and the meeting, what were 1076 01:04:18,760 --> 01:04:22,480 Speaker 1: your experiences? People won't really answer that. And I think 1077 01:04:22,480 --> 01:04:24,640 Speaker 1: that's partly because you're you're not really thinking about your 1078 01:04:24,640 --> 01:04:28,040 Speaker 1: own experience at that point. You're part of something bigger. 1079 01:04:28,640 --> 01:04:32,720 Speaker 1: And also what you're getting when the payote speaks to 1080 01:04:32,760 --> 01:04:35,120 Speaker 1: you is something that's private. It's something that goes straight 1081 01:04:35,160 --> 01:04:38,400 Speaker 1: to your heart. And there's a lot more Indigenous cultures 1082 01:04:39,160 --> 01:04:43,640 Speaker 1: suspicion about people's motives and why would you share this 1083 01:04:43,840 --> 01:04:48,400 Speaker 1: incredibly private personal experience. Would you be doing it, you know, 1084 01:04:48,800 --> 01:04:51,040 Speaker 1: to boost your status? Would you be doing it to 1085 01:04:51,120 --> 01:04:53,640 Speaker 1: have some kind of influence or control over the person 1086 01:04:53,720 --> 01:04:56,280 Speaker 1: you're telling the story to. You have to come up 1087 01:04:56,360 --> 01:05:00,920 Speaker 1: the questioning quite a different way. And yeah, there are 1088 01:05:01,200 --> 01:05:06,400 Speaker 1: I'm sure enormous numbers of stories of indigenous people's all 1089 01:05:06,520 --> 01:05:09,600 Speaker 1: up and down the America's and the engagement with masculine 1090 01:05:09,640 --> 01:05:13,240 Speaker 1: containing cacti that we don't know, that we can't get to, 1091 01:05:13,680 --> 01:05:16,640 Speaker 1: but the ones that we can, they end up kind 1092 01:05:16,640 --> 01:05:18,760 Speaker 1: of being a very different type of story from the 1093 01:05:18,760 --> 01:05:22,360 Speaker 1: Western story. And it was fascinating to see the way 1094 01:05:22,360 --> 01:05:28,040 Speaker 1: that those two kind of sources and historical methods diverged. Well, 1095 01:05:28,080 --> 01:05:30,880 Speaker 1: I think it's also fortunate that you had first James 1096 01:05:30,960 --> 01:05:35,440 Speaker 1: Mooney and then after him the academic Western labar, both 1097 01:05:35,720 --> 01:05:40,880 Speaker 1: deeply committed to trying to present the Indians, the Native 1098 01:05:40,880 --> 01:05:44,960 Speaker 1: Americans use of these things, and they're very different experience 1099 01:05:45,040 --> 01:05:49,200 Speaker 1: to Western audiences, whether in testimony before legislative committees or 1100 01:05:49,200 --> 01:05:51,440 Speaker 1: in their books and their other writings. And and the 1101 01:05:51,480 --> 01:05:53,760 Speaker 1: fact that there were some who were deeply committed to 1102 01:05:53,800 --> 01:05:56,960 Speaker 1: that probably helped, but not as you and as a historian, 1103 01:05:57,040 --> 01:06:00,960 Speaker 1: but in terms of conveying this alternative perspective, even at 1104 01:06:00,960 --> 01:06:03,640 Speaker 1: the time, definitely. I mean, it's a great tragedy that 1105 01:06:03,760 --> 01:06:06,400 Speaker 1: James Mooney never got to write his Payote book. If 1106 01:06:06,440 --> 01:06:08,720 Speaker 1: we had a big Payote book to sit alongside his 1107 01:06:08,760 --> 01:06:11,680 Speaker 1: big ghost Dance book, that would be great. But in fact, 1108 01:06:12,200 --> 01:06:15,760 Speaker 1: Western Labarre, as you say, you know, a Yale anthropologist 1109 01:06:15,800 --> 01:06:21,880 Speaker 1: who spent time in Oklahoma in the nineteen thirties wrote 1110 01:06:21,920 --> 01:06:24,600 Speaker 1: a big book called The Peyote Cult, which was kind 1111 01:06:24,600 --> 01:06:27,120 Speaker 1: of effectively in a way, the book that Mooney had 1112 01:06:27,160 --> 01:06:30,040 Speaker 1: never written, and that became a bible for all sorts 1113 01:06:30,080 --> 01:06:33,320 Speaker 1: of people. It went through edition after edition after addition, 1114 01:06:33,760 --> 01:06:36,840 Speaker 1: and that time, from theties onwards, there were lots of 1115 01:06:36,920 --> 01:06:40,480 Speaker 1: Native American groups who were setting up Native American church 1116 01:06:40,840 --> 01:06:43,680 Speaker 1: branches and chapters around the place for the first time. 1117 01:06:43,720 --> 01:06:46,280 Speaker 1: And a couple of Native American sources have said to 1118 01:06:46,320 --> 01:06:48,080 Speaker 1: me that a lot of that was in you know, 1119 01:06:48,360 --> 01:06:51,360 Speaker 1: people would pick up the Western Labar's Payote cult as 1120 01:06:51,360 --> 01:06:54,680 Speaker 1: a bible, you know, and it's got the diagrams of 1121 01:06:54,720 --> 01:06:58,400 Speaker 1: how the fire circle is arranged in the different traditions. 1122 01:06:58,440 --> 01:07:01,000 Speaker 1: It's kind of a real how to guide and manual 1123 01:07:01,080 --> 01:07:03,160 Speaker 1: as well. M M, yeah, I mean. And then of 1124 01:07:03,160 --> 01:07:05,400 Speaker 1: course there's the next step of that where I think 1125 01:07:05,680 --> 01:07:07,960 Speaker 1: you describe with some of our taking along a young 1126 01:07:08,080 --> 01:07:11,800 Speaker 1: researcher named Richard Evan Shalty on one of his first experiences, 1127 01:07:11,840 --> 01:07:15,320 Speaker 1: and he then becomes the famed ethnobodenist at Harvard who 1128 01:07:15,400 --> 01:07:19,240 Speaker 1: mentors a whole new generation of people looking at psychoactive 1129 01:07:19,240 --> 01:07:24,240 Speaker 1: and non psychoactive medicines and plants, et cetera in Latin 1130 01:07:24,280 --> 01:07:27,680 Speaker 1: American elsewhere. That's right, and that's that is Richard Chilter 1131 01:07:27,800 --> 01:07:30,480 Speaker 1: is his first gig, and he gets interested by reading 1132 01:07:31,520 --> 01:07:35,280 Speaker 1: a book by a German psychologist from the nine twenties, 1133 01:07:35,360 --> 01:07:38,960 Speaker 1: Heinrich Cluver, who did some of that early mescaline research 1134 01:07:39,080 --> 01:07:42,680 Speaker 1: and tried to classify hallucinations in terms of what he 1135 01:07:42,760 --> 01:07:49,040 Speaker 1: called form constants, spirals and lattices and cobwebs, the underlying 1136 01:07:49,120 --> 01:07:52,720 Speaker 1: geometrical forms and what they tell us about the relationship 1137 01:07:52,760 --> 01:07:55,080 Speaker 1: between the eye and the brain and how mescaline might 1138 01:07:55,120 --> 01:07:58,400 Speaker 1: disrupt that. That was kind of really early classic of 1139 01:07:59,280 --> 01:08:02,320 Speaker 1: mescaline science cognitive psychology, I guess. And that was the 1140 01:08:02,320 --> 01:08:06,240 Speaker 1: book that Shelter has picked up in Harvard Botanical Library 1141 01:08:06,240 --> 01:08:08,960 Speaker 1: and read and thought, wow, this is fascinating, and then 1142 01:08:09,000 --> 01:08:12,120 Speaker 1: discovered that, yeah, there was this other young researcher, Western Labar, 1143 01:08:12,240 --> 01:08:15,560 Speaker 1: who was going out to Oklahoma and researching Payote, and 1144 01:08:15,600 --> 01:08:17,839 Speaker 1: he went along and they did what they called a 1145 01:08:17,920 --> 01:08:20,800 Speaker 1: joint Harvard Yale expedition, which was kind of the two 1146 01:08:20,840 --> 01:08:23,160 Speaker 1: of them in an old Studa baker bumping up and 1147 01:08:23,200 --> 01:08:25,880 Speaker 1: down dirt roads on the way out to the middle 1148 01:08:25,920 --> 01:08:29,160 Speaker 1: of nowhere in Oklahoma. But I think that Shalter says, well, 1149 01:08:29,240 --> 01:08:31,000 Speaker 1: that was the very first work that he did in 1150 01:08:31,000 --> 01:08:34,160 Speaker 1: this area was fantastic because he he said, Okay, the 1151 01:08:34,160 --> 01:08:38,560 Speaker 1: Payote ceremony is relatively new, and payote is not indigenous 1152 01:08:38,600 --> 01:08:40,799 Speaker 1: to hear, but let's look at all the other plants 1153 01:08:40,840 --> 01:08:43,280 Speaker 1: involved in the ceremony. Let's look at the stage and 1154 01:08:43,280 --> 01:08:45,800 Speaker 1: the cedar and all the incenses. And he did this 1155 01:08:45,920 --> 01:08:49,640 Speaker 1: beautiful sort of taxonomy of all the different plants that 1156 01:08:49,680 --> 01:08:51,519 Speaker 1: were used in the ceremony, so that you could see 1157 01:08:51,560 --> 01:08:54,920 Speaker 1: that even if the payote was a recent innovation, everything 1158 01:08:54,960 --> 01:08:58,479 Speaker 1: else was really really deeply embedded in the culture. Yeah, 1159 01:08:58,640 --> 01:09:00,240 Speaker 1: you know, it's funny the way you describe I was 1160 01:09:00,320 --> 01:09:03,320 Speaker 1: some of ours book that, in his making such an 1161 01:09:03,360 --> 01:09:07,120 Speaker 1: effort to depict accurately the perspectives and practices of Native 1162 01:09:07,120 --> 01:09:10,120 Speaker 1: Americans and using peyote, it lands up becoming the sort 1163 01:09:10,120 --> 01:09:13,000 Speaker 1: of guide in reference book for Native Americans themselves and 1164 01:09:13,040 --> 01:09:16,240 Speaker 1: succeeding generations. It reminds me, almost Mike, of what people 1165 01:09:16,280 --> 01:09:18,639 Speaker 1: hear about The Godfather, right, how it's kind of based 1166 01:09:18,680 --> 01:09:20,880 Speaker 1: up on mafia culture. And then it turns out that 1167 01:09:20,960 --> 01:09:23,479 Speaker 1: the mafia in the nineteen seventies and eighties and nineties, 1168 01:09:23,520 --> 01:09:26,320 Speaker 1: for them, the Godfather becomes their reference point to how 1169 01:09:26,360 --> 01:09:28,600 Speaker 1: to be a mafiosi, you know, So there is this 1170 01:09:28,680 --> 01:09:31,599 Speaker 1: kind of interplay back and forth between the uh, the 1171 01:09:31,640 --> 01:09:34,439 Speaker 1: writer and who portrays it to the broader world and 1172 01:09:34,520 --> 01:09:38,639 Speaker 1: actually the original people who they wrote about. That's right, yeah, 1173 01:09:38,720 --> 01:09:41,320 Speaker 1: you know, Mike, I'm just thinking that when we think 1174 01:09:41,479 --> 01:09:44,360 Speaker 1: about the sort of you know, the drug war, the 1175 01:09:44,400 --> 01:09:47,160 Speaker 1: modern American drug war, and not just beginning with Nicks 1176 01:09:47,200 --> 01:09:50,240 Speaker 1: in the seventies, but even before that, and you see 1177 01:09:50,400 --> 01:09:53,320 Speaker 1: mescaline getting swept up, you know, getting banned by the 1178 01:09:53,360 --> 01:09:56,479 Speaker 1: Perogrim in the sixties, it becomes you know, subject to 1179 01:09:56,840 --> 01:10:00,280 Speaker 1: you know, the nineteen seventy Controlled Substances Act, I think 1180 01:10:00,280 --> 01:10:03,200 Speaker 1: it's put in Schedule one. Then goes into the United 1181 01:10:03,280 --> 01:10:06,800 Speaker 1: Nations Convention of seventy one, it gets banned there, but 1182 01:10:06,880 --> 01:10:10,240 Speaker 1: amidst all of the sort of criminalization essentially of the 1183 01:10:10,320 --> 01:10:13,360 Speaker 1: crystal form of Mescaland at the same time, it almost 1184 01:10:13,400 --> 01:10:16,479 Speaker 1: feels like Peyote is sort of carrying the flag as 1185 01:10:16,560 --> 01:10:21,600 Speaker 1: the one semi quasi limited but still legal use of 1186 01:10:21,600 --> 01:10:24,840 Speaker 1: a psychedelic and that even when the threats come down, 1187 01:10:24,880 --> 01:10:26,840 Speaker 1: even when there's movements by the federal government back in 1188 01:10:26,880 --> 01:10:29,000 Speaker 1: the thirties to ban it, you know, the Native American 1189 01:10:29,080 --> 01:10:31,320 Speaker 1: Church is able to fight that fight back, and then 1190 01:10:31,360 --> 01:10:33,439 Speaker 1: at even at that key moment in the early nineteen 1191 01:10:33,560 --> 01:10:36,280 Speaker 1: nineties when the U. S. Supreme Court and Justice Scalia 1192 01:10:36,439 --> 01:10:39,240 Speaker 1: say no religious exception. The hell were the First Amendment 1193 01:10:39,240 --> 01:10:42,040 Speaker 1: frate and religion here doesn't go that far. You see 1194 01:10:42,080 --> 01:10:45,280 Speaker 1: Congress coming right back, you know, and saying, no, there's 1195 01:10:45,320 --> 01:10:48,720 Speaker 1: gonna be a federally federal protection here for the religious 1196 01:10:48,800 --> 01:10:51,639 Speaker 1: use of peyote by the Native American church. And so 1197 01:10:51,840 --> 01:10:56,479 Speaker 1: there's something about that fusion of this psychedelic with the 1198 01:10:56,520 --> 01:10:59,559 Speaker 1: sort of Native American use, and that even as Native 1199 01:10:59,560 --> 01:11:03,840 Speaker 1: Americans are being perpetually discriminated again string the second class citizens, 1200 01:11:03,920 --> 01:11:07,280 Speaker 1: being forced into elements of assimilation, what have you, there 1201 01:11:07,360 --> 01:11:09,880 Speaker 1: is that element of difference for this piece of it 1202 01:11:09,960 --> 01:11:13,599 Speaker 1: that enables it to survive and almost carry the torch 1203 01:11:13,760 --> 01:11:16,880 Speaker 1: until this new renaissance. Yeah, I mean they you know, 1204 01:11:16,920 --> 01:11:20,360 Speaker 1: the persecution of payote was brutal, you know, from the 1205 01:11:20,360 --> 01:11:23,800 Speaker 1: eighties all the way through to the nineteen thirties, and 1206 01:11:23,840 --> 01:11:26,559 Speaker 1: then you had the Indian New Deal and in theory 1207 01:11:26,760 --> 01:11:30,840 Speaker 1: more of an acceptance of the principle of preserving traditional 1208 01:11:31,080 --> 01:11:35,480 Speaker 1: Indigenous culture and worship. But then after that the harassment 1209 01:11:35,640 --> 01:11:37,920 Speaker 1: continued and continued, and as you say, it all went 1210 01:11:37,960 --> 01:11:41,200 Speaker 1: all the way to the Supreme Court in the ninety nineties. 1211 01:11:41,479 --> 01:11:45,160 Speaker 1: You know, it's been a generational and attritional struggle, and 1212 01:11:45,200 --> 01:11:49,240 Speaker 1: I really understand why for Native Americans it is a 1213 01:11:49,320 --> 01:11:51,240 Speaker 1: little hard to take the fact that we've got this 1214 01:11:51,320 --> 01:11:55,080 Speaker 1: new young generation of white Americans um saying yeah it 1215 01:11:55,120 --> 01:11:58,960 Speaker 1: psychedelics are great, and yeah peyote, and you know, that's 1216 01:11:59,040 --> 01:12:02,280 Speaker 1: I think pretty hard for those, particularly the older generation 1217 01:12:02,360 --> 01:12:06,360 Speaker 1: of people who've lived through that history, to come to 1218 01:12:06,520 --> 01:12:08,960 Speaker 1: terms with. But I think it is fascinating that at 1219 01:12:08,960 --> 01:12:12,280 Speaker 1: this point mescaline, the crystal, as you say, has pretty 1220 01:12:12,360 --> 01:12:17,040 Speaker 1: much disappeared. You can still get it um, you know, 1221 01:12:17,240 --> 01:12:21,720 Speaker 1: on some chemical websites, but obviously very highly controlled and 1222 01:12:21,760 --> 01:12:24,920 Speaker 1: it's only really used for kind of small amounts of 1223 01:12:25,000 --> 01:12:28,400 Speaker 1: sort of you know, drug testing purposes and so on, 1224 01:12:28,800 --> 01:12:33,000 Speaker 1: as a recreational or non medical or illicit drug. I mean, 1225 01:12:33,080 --> 01:12:35,880 Speaker 1: you could barely find it on the on the dark web. 1226 01:12:36,120 --> 01:12:40,280 Speaker 1: You kind of can, but it's almost disappeared. And really, 1227 01:12:40,520 --> 01:12:43,320 Speaker 1: you know, the flag as you say, for mescaline, is 1228 01:12:43,360 --> 01:12:45,720 Speaker 1: now being carried by the Catti, and there must be 1229 01:12:46,439 --> 01:12:50,639 Speaker 1: more people around the world taking peyote in San Pedro 1230 01:12:50,880 --> 01:12:55,240 Speaker 1: than ever before that. There are serious conservation issues. Around 1231 01:12:55,479 --> 01:12:57,960 Speaker 1: San Pedro, there is not enough of it. It only 1232 01:12:58,040 --> 01:13:04,559 Speaker 1: grows and it's kind of quite small area of sorry, yes, yes, 1233 01:13:05,080 --> 01:13:09,200 Speaker 1: around Peyote. It grows a little bit kind of in 1234 01:13:09,280 --> 01:13:13,640 Speaker 1: Texas around Laredo, but there's barely enough if there is 1235 01:13:13,800 --> 01:13:16,720 Speaker 1: enough to supply the Native American Church, let alone all 1236 01:13:16,720 --> 01:13:19,840 Speaker 1: the other people who are suddenly interested in it. So 1237 01:13:19,880 --> 01:13:22,880 Speaker 1: I think what emerges from this is um Actually that 1238 01:13:23,080 --> 01:13:27,880 Speaker 1: San Pedro looks like the future because there are unlimited 1239 01:13:27,920 --> 01:13:32,000 Speaker 1: amounts of it. Unlike Peyote, it grows very very quickly, 1240 01:13:32,400 --> 01:13:35,639 Speaker 1: and you can grow it pretty much anywhere, and lots 1241 01:13:35,640 --> 01:13:40,160 Speaker 1: of people do. Mescaline is federally prohibited, but you know, 1242 01:13:40,600 --> 01:13:45,320 Speaker 1: growing and trading San Pedro cacti seems to be pretty 1243 01:13:45,360 --> 01:13:48,800 Speaker 1: loosely controlled. I mean, I'm aware of some people being 1244 01:13:48,880 --> 01:13:51,840 Speaker 1: arrested for doing it, but there are also lots of 1245 01:13:52,240 --> 01:13:56,640 Speaker 1: parts of the world where that's not enforced. So curiously, 1246 01:13:56,920 --> 01:13:59,840 Speaker 1: it's the Yeah, it's the San Pedro cactus that has 1247 01:14:00,040 --> 01:14:03,400 Speaker 1: emerged as the foreman, which mescaline looks most likely to 1248 01:14:03,439 --> 01:14:07,920 Speaker 1: survive and be used broadly in the future. That's wonderful way. 1249 01:14:08,040 --> 01:14:11,200 Speaker 1: So what's the next book about? Well, The next book 1250 01:14:11,280 --> 01:14:15,599 Speaker 1: is kind of a a big survey of the history 1251 01:14:15,600 --> 01:14:19,240 Speaker 1: of drugs. It's working title is Drugs and the Making 1252 01:14:19,280 --> 01:14:21,800 Speaker 1: of the Modern Mind, So it's kind of the history 1253 01:14:21,840 --> 01:14:27,240 Speaker 1: of addiction and the history of criminalization and drug control. 1254 01:14:27,680 --> 01:14:30,880 Speaker 1: And there was very little about the drug experience and 1255 01:14:30,960 --> 01:14:35,760 Speaker 1: drug experiments and you know, the user's perspective. So that's 1256 01:14:35,800 --> 01:14:39,120 Speaker 1: the kind of material that I've been gathering over the years, 1257 01:14:39,280 --> 01:14:41,559 Speaker 1: and you end up with this picture where you can see, like, 1258 01:14:41,640 --> 01:14:45,560 Speaker 1: particularly by the end of the nineteenth century, drug experiments 1259 01:14:45,600 --> 01:14:49,400 Speaker 1: in science and medicine are very common and beyond as well. 1260 01:14:49,479 --> 01:14:52,679 Speaker 1: And this is the period of course, of the birth 1261 01:14:52,720 --> 01:14:55,559 Speaker 1: of psychology and the discovery of the unconscious, and the 1262 01:14:55,640 --> 01:15:00,479 Speaker 1: arrival of modernism, and all these um aspects of modernity 1263 01:15:00,560 --> 01:15:04,600 Speaker 1: are really thoroughly infused with drug experiments and drug experiences. 1264 01:15:04,960 --> 01:15:07,360 Speaker 1: And then in the twentieth century they kind of get 1265 01:15:07,360 --> 01:15:12,280 Speaker 1: written out of our intellectual history because once drugs are problematized, 1266 01:15:12,800 --> 01:15:15,040 Speaker 1: we kind of forget. This is what I'm really trying 1267 01:15:15,040 --> 01:15:17,639 Speaker 1: to do in this new book is to say that 1268 01:15:17,680 --> 01:15:20,640 Speaker 1: what we have now in the twentieth century, this fascination 1269 01:15:20,720 --> 01:15:27,000 Speaker 1: with drug experiences and sort of expanded altered states of consciousness, 1270 01:15:27,360 --> 01:15:29,599 Speaker 1: which we tend to assume is something that we've just 1271 01:15:29,720 --> 01:15:32,479 Speaker 1: discovered in the West, right, that we have no tradition of. 1272 01:15:32,840 --> 01:15:34,640 Speaker 1: In fact, there is a long tradition of this in 1273 01:15:35,080 --> 01:15:38,240 Speaker 1: Western culture and Western science, and so that's what I'm 1274 01:15:38,240 --> 01:15:43,559 Speaker 1: really trying to encompass and sort of reclaim and you know, 1275 01:15:43,720 --> 01:15:46,120 Speaker 1: restore that story to where it should be in our 1276 01:15:46,200 --> 01:15:49,960 Speaker 1: intellectual history. Oh, Mike, I can't wait for it, So listen. 1277 01:15:49,960 --> 01:15:53,040 Speaker 1: I mean, I think I'd love this conversation. Let me 1278 01:15:53,120 --> 01:15:55,639 Speaker 1: just tell tad or listeners first. I mean, just take 1279 01:15:55,680 --> 01:15:57,599 Speaker 1: a look at you know, google him, look on Amazon 1280 01:15:57,640 --> 01:16:00,760 Speaker 1: whenever you'll see these amazing sets of book he's He's 1281 01:16:00,760 --> 01:16:04,320 Speaker 1: written about all sorts of drug and other issues. But 1282 01:16:04,400 --> 01:16:07,160 Speaker 1: beyond that, I haven't really asked this before, but I'm 1283 01:16:07,200 --> 01:16:09,720 Speaker 1: really curious. If you really liked this episode and if 1284 01:16:09,760 --> 01:16:14,280 Speaker 1: you'd like to hear more conversations with historians, just tweet 1285 01:16:14,360 --> 01:16:17,840 Speaker 1: me or send an email to psychoactive at protozoa dot 1286 01:16:17,920 --> 01:16:20,600 Speaker 1: com and let me know, and in which case I 1287 01:16:20,640 --> 01:16:24,320 Speaker 1: will be happy to oblige. So Mike, thanks ever so much, 1288 01:16:24,360 --> 01:16:26,160 Speaker 1: best of luck with this next book, and I look 1289 01:16:26,200 --> 01:16:29,320 Speaker 1: forward to our pass crossing again sometimes. Oh thanks so 1290 01:16:29,400 --> 01:16:35,800 Speaker 1: much and that's a great pleasure. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, 1291 01:16:36,240 --> 01:16:38,760 Speaker 1: please tell your friends about it, or you can write 1292 01:16:38,800 --> 01:16:41,240 Speaker 1: us a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get 1293 01:16:41,320 --> 01:16:44,439 Speaker 1: your podcasts. We love to hear from our listeners. If 1294 01:16:44,479 --> 01:16:47,400 Speaker 1: you'd like to share your own stories, comments and ideas, 1295 01:16:47,520 --> 01:16:50,559 Speaker 1: then leave us a message at one eight three three 1296 01:16:51,160 --> 01:16:57,080 Speaker 1: seven seven nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, 1297 01:16:57,640 --> 01:17:01,280 Speaker 1: or you can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com, 1298 01:17:01,400 --> 01:17:04,400 Speaker 1: or find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man. You 1299 01:17:04,400 --> 01:17:08,520 Speaker 1: can also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive 1300 01:17:08,720 --> 01:17:12,040 Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. 1301 01:17:12,160 --> 01:17:15,799 Speaker 1: It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman. It's produced by Noam 1302 01:17:15,840 --> 01:17:19,880 Speaker 1: Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, 1303 01:17:20,080 --> 01:17:24,360 Speaker 1: Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures, 1304 01:17:24,400 --> 01:17:27,240 Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio and 1305 01:17:27,320 --> 01:17:31,680 Speaker 1: me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by Ari Blucien and 1306 01:17:31,760 --> 01:17:35,480 Speaker 1: a special thanks to a Brio s f Bianca Grimshaw 1307 01:17:35,760 --> 01:17:51,799 Speaker 1: and Robert Deep. Next week in advance of the upcoming 1308 01:17:51,840 --> 01:17:55,320 Speaker 1: presidential election in the Philippines to replace President to Turkey. 1309 01:17:55,680 --> 01:17:59,640 Speaker 1: I'll be speaking with Gideon Lasco, a medical anthropologist and 1310 01:17:59,680 --> 01:18:04,200 Speaker 1: what If Philippines leading academic studying the drug war. When 1311 01:18:04,200 --> 01:18:07,639 Speaker 1: I started interviewing the young men, they ended up sharing 1312 01:18:07,680 --> 01:18:11,880 Speaker 1: me their stories about shaboo, about meta feta mean. So 1313 01:18:12,160 --> 01:18:14,280 Speaker 1: I got to know that their their community, I got 1314 01:18:14,320 --> 01:18:17,280 Speaker 1: to know their lives, I got to have out with them. 1315 01:18:17,360 --> 01:18:21,800 Speaker 1: But when a few years later, the third embarked on 1316 01:18:21,840 --> 01:18:26,400 Speaker 1: this deadly drug war, my thoughts came back to all 1317 01:18:26,479 --> 01:18:29,400 Speaker 1: the young men I met and wondering if they were 1318 01:18:29,439 --> 01:18:32,080 Speaker 1: targeted at all. By by day, and I knew that 1319 01:18:32,120 --> 01:18:35,240 Speaker 1: the people like them were being killed, and I felt 1320 01:18:35,280 --> 01:18:37,680 Speaker 1: that I had a moral responsibility to go back to 1321 01:18:37,760 --> 01:18:42,560 Speaker 1: this topic to be an advocate of drug reform. Subscribe 1322 01:18:42,600 --> 01:18:44,439 Speaker 1: to Psychoactive now see it, don't miss it.