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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In It's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the old vault, this time for

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Speaker 1: an episode that you and Christian did back. I think

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Speaker 1: this was published originally in September of that's right. Since

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Speaker 1: we're doing this series on psychedelics, I thought it'd be

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Speaker 1: good to revisit these older episodes that Christian I did

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Speaker 1: on Timothy Leary. Looking at Timothy Leary, his biography and

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Speaker 1: the role he played in the the history of psychedelics,

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Speaker 1: which is kind of a you know, a double edged

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Speaker 1: sword here, I guess you know. It's on one hand,

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Speaker 1: he he was at the forefront of the counterculture movement,

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Speaker 1: but he undoubtedly did a lot of damage to the

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Speaker 1: reputation of psychedelics. Interesting that he has a controversial legacy,

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Speaker 1: not just among people who were opposed to psychedelics, but

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Speaker 1: among a lot of psychedelic supporters, people who are involved

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Speaker 1: in psychedelic rely search there there's a lot of I

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Speaker 1: don't know if you'd say anger, but even in contemporary accounts,

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Speaker 1: you read about people who are who just kind of

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Speaker 1: hang their head and they're like man, Timothy really really

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Speaker 1: made things difficult for us. Yeah. Indeed, and we discussed

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Speaker 1: some of that in the Psychedelics episodes that that are

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Speaker 1: publishing right now. So let's go ahead and jump into

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Speaker 1: this one, part one of a two thousand seventeen look

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Speaker 1: at Timothy Leary. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind

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Speaker 1: from how Stuffwork dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm

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Speaker 1: Christian Seger. And this week we're talking about Timothy Leary.

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Speaker 1: Now we're not just gonna talk about Timothy Leary. We're

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Speaker 1: also going to talk about science of LSD, the history

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Speaker 1: of LSD, the use of LSD and psilocybin in various

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Speaker 1: UH research projects, what these substance is actually due to

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Speaker 1: the mind to the brain. But we're going to use

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Speaker 1: Timothy Learry as kind of, you know, sort of a

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Speaker 1: guiding principle, I guess for this episode. And if you're

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Speaker 1: if you're out there and you're thinking, well, I love

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Speaker 1: Timothy Larry, Well, then strap in. If you're out there

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Speaker 1: and you're you're thinking yourself, well, I don't know that

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Speaker 1: I like this Timothy Learry guy, well, strap in as well. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think we've got something for everybody here. We were

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Speaker 1: basically sheltered during a hurricane this week, and so Robert

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Speaker 1: and I just binge read about Timothy Leary for four

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Speaker 1: days straight. We've got a lot to share with you.

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Speaker 1: My eyes are bleeding a little, but I think you're

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Speaker 1: going to be interested in this so much so that

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Speaker 1: we're going to do this as a two parter, yes now,

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Speaker 1: just to refresh anybody out there, and to and to

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Speaker 1: inform anyone who just who doesn't know who Timothy Learry is. Well.

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Speaker 1: Timothy Leary was an American psychologist, author, and a key

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Speaker 1: figure of the nineteen sixties counterculture and psychedelics you know

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Speaker 1: movement in general. You live and he managed to run

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Speaker 1: a foul of pretty much every organization he was a

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Speaker 1: part of. Uh. He was arrested u enough times that

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Speaker 1: he supposedly saw the inside of thirty six different prisons.

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Speaker 1: He he earned the ire of many Americans, even as

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Speaker 1: he was able to submit a reputation as also kind

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Speaker 1: of a you know, a counterculture leader uh his and

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Speaker 1: I think the reason is because he has this message

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Speaker 1: of inner exploration of anti establishment thinking and this this

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Speaker 1: resonated with folks and continues to resonate his writings, his soothing,

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Speaker 1: sage like voice on numerous audio recordings. His his his

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Speaker 1: irresistible celebrity allure. It all made him just impossible to ignore,

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Speaker 1: love him or hate him. Plus he was not the

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Speaker 1: sort of guy to let the limelight go away new

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Speaker 1: and well and we'll get into all that he uh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he he clung to it and people gravitated to him

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Speaker 1: as well. He was more than willing to rub elbows

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Speaker 1: with scientists like Carl Sagan, artists like h Geeger, performers

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Speaker 1: like John Lennon. Uh, and you know such show luminaries

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Speaker 1: as Alan Ginsburg, Al Just Huxley, William Burrows, Jack Kara Whack,

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Speaker 1: and Kim Ksy. He even kept the company of former

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Speaker 1: enemies when it benefited him, such as Watergate Burglar and

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Speaker 1: later conservative radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so this guy has been widely influential. He was. I

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Speaker 1: have a derogatory saying that I say sometimes about about

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Speaker 1: people like Leary, although I think Leary was doing this

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Speaker 1: before this guy. He was the Cato Kalin of his time.

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Speaker 1: Like he was famous for being famous. He was. Yeah, Um,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't because of a very specific thing he did,

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Speaker 1: and we learned this through the research. But I have

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Speaker 1: to be honest that, like my experience with him was

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Speaker 1: basically thinking, oh, this was an academic who had done

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Speaker 1: some studies and then sort of became a guru like figure,

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Speaker 1: much like Sasha Shulgin when we talked about him during

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Speaker 1: our two parter on M M A. Now, Sasha Shulgin

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Speaker 1: was a practicing chemist who is in his laboratory up

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Speaker 1: until he died, right, Uh, Leary was not. He did

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Speaker 1: do some interesting studies in the fifties and sixties, and

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Speaker 1: we're gonna get into all of that stuff, but first

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Speaker 1: I think we should probably talk about his influence on music. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I have to say that before I knew anything about

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Speaker 1: Timothy Leary, I knew the Moody blues song Legend of

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Speaker 1: the Mind. Okay, this is the has the chorus Timothy

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Speaker 1: Learies Dead you know and so forth. Wonderful, wonderful track.

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Speaker 1: I listened to it several times while researching this episode.

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Speaker 1: Other fan music fans out there might recognize the the

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Speaker 1: the sampling of his voice in various recordings, probably most

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Speaker 1: notably a live version of Tools Third Eye, where they

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Speaker 1: have the bit to think for yourself, question authority. Um.

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Speaker 1: And then you'll find numerous other musical projects that make

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Speaker 1: use of his soothing voice, and in fact, he was

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Speaker 1: involved in several of these product as well. Uh, there's

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Speaker 1: an ambient instrumental like Situr distortion album the titled turn

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Speaker 1: onto an End Dropout, which was one of his catch phrases.

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Speaker 1: And that's actually like really good listening. I fired up

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Speaker 1: every now and then you just kind of, you know,

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Speaker 1: chill out and and you know, don't think about what's

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Speaker 1: being said too much. But um, the interesting thing is

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Speaker 1: we've alluded to is that there is this kind of

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Speaker 1: surface level pop culture idea of Leary, and it doesn't

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Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily hold up when you start going into

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Speaker 1: the details of who he was, the sorts of research

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Speaker 1: projects he was involved in. Um. Like, I really wanted

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Speaker 1: him to be more in line with with another counterculture

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Speaker 1: controversial character that we've talked about, John C. Lily, But

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Speaker 1: there's not really a lot to compare the two besides

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Speaker 1: the LSD connection, right, And that's actually kind of what's

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Speaker 1: happening with this episode is we're getting a convergence of

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Speaker 1: two types of episodes that we normally do. We have

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Speaker 1: history of doing these two parters on specific psychedelics and

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Speaker 1: looking at their scientific and medical applications. But then we

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Speaker 1: also have a history of doing episodes like the John C.

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Speaker 1: Lily one or the Sasha Shulgin one. We call them

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Speaker 1: our psychedelic Avengers. And we thought, oh, we're gonna emerge

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Speaker 1: Tim Leary in this l s D psilocybin research together

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Speaker 1: and it will be really interesting. It turns out that

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Speaker 1: that he wasn't actually contributing to the research, but I

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Speaker 1: think it does come together in a really interesting way

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Speaker 1: thematically when we get to the whole piece of this,

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Speaker 1: and in that I think he was a barometer for

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Speaker 1: America's acceptance of the idea of researching acid as being

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Speaker 1: a medical tool. Yeah, it's interesting how he was is

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Speaker 1: this will just discuss he was, you know, a spokesperson

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Speaker 1: for this. He represented that the supposedly a a learned

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Speaker 1: academic who was who was advocating LSD A is this

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Speaker 1: this powerful tool? And yet at the same time he

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Speaker 1: also was such um an inflammatory individual as part of

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Speaker 1: the counterculture heat Uh. A lot of people point to

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Speaker 1: the harm he did as one of one of the

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Speaker 1: key figures, um more so than John C. Lily Uh

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Speaker 1: who who vilified the counterculture and vilified the use of

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Speaker 1: psychedelics and one of the reasons that psychedelics were not

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Speaker 1: studied for for decades. Yeah, there are multiple researchers in

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Speaker 1: the notes here that we'll talk about throughout the course

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Speaker 1: of these two episodes who point to Leary as being

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Speaker 1: the reason why we haven't been able to use l

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Speaker 1: s D in medically approved studies for going on thirty

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Speaker 1: plus years now. Longer than that, I think even it was.

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Speaker 1: It's in the notes here somewhere, but it was in

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Speaker 1: the mid sixties when it was banned. So, yeah, strap in,

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Speaker 1: because that's the other thing. We're going to get into

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Speaker 1: a real basic primer for you on what LSD is,

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Speaker 1: what's the difference between LSD and psilocybin, and then will

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Speaker 1: roll into the Leary experience. Okay, So to go back

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Speaker 1: to the very beginning here, let's just go to the

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Speaker 1: the the origins of l s D itself, since that's

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Speaker 1: the main substance that we're gonna be discussing here. So

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Speaker 1: Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman synthesized l s D and a

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Speaker 1: sandas pharmaceutical lab on November six, uh Sanders was working

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Speaker 1: on a research project involving a parasitic fungus called ergot

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Speaker 1: that grows on rye. Now you may remember that Joe

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Speaker 1: and I recorded an episode titled The Psychedelic Nightmare of

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Speaker 1: Ergotism that dealt with the ergot and that that is

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Speaker 1: the same substance that we're discussing here. And you know,

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Speaker 1: aside from a noteworthy and truly horrifying breakouts of ergot

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Speaker 1: poisoning in Europe, it has been linked to various supernatural

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Speaker 1: rights as well as as well as allegedly individual artist

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Speaker 1: and artistic traditions throughout history, though I think and sometimes

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Speaker 1: those are mere theories, right, Yeah, And so just to

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Speaker 1: be clear here, Sandaws was a pharmaceutical company that started

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Speaker 1: in eighteen eighties six, and they began researching for more

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Speaker 1: novel kind of drugs in nineteen seventeen. They were basically

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Speaker 1: looking for therapeutic leads based on natural products. So they

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Speaker 1: turned to ergot. Why well, they had an example that

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Speaker 1: they had already created called ergotamine. That was a drug

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Speaker 1: that they had created for treating migraine headaches. So Hoffman

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Speaker 1: came along and he started looking at ergot and he

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Speaker 1: saw the lisergic acid in it, and he thought, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe this LSD that I can synthesize out of this

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Speaker 1: will be a good respiratory stimulants. So, for instance, make

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Speaker 1: maybe if you have asthma, you take some LSD and

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Speaker 1: it will help you breathe better. Yeah. So he ended

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Speaker 1: up deriving different compounds from lysergic acid, and he developed

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Speaker 1: several medicines, including drugs that lowered blood pressure and improved

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Speaker 1: brain function of the elderly. And in eight he derived

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Speaker 1: the twenty five in a series of these derivatives. It

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Speaker 1: was lysergic acid dithalamide, or LSD, and he thought that

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Speaker 1: LSD stimulate breathing circulation, but test didn't show anything special

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Speaker 1: and Sandaz abandoned further study. But then five years later,

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Speaker 1: Hoffman's thoughts returned to LSD potential and he felt that

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Speaker 1: it hadn't been fully explored, so he took the perhaps

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Speaker 1: unusual step of synthesizing another batch further testing, and during

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Speaker 1: the process he began to feel strange. Um. The rest

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Speaker 1: is history. He discovered the properties of LSD, and I've

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Speaker 1: heard it described as his his problem child like it.

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Speaker 1: Basically the rest of his life he kept coming back

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Speaker 1: to LSD and and trying to figure out, like, you

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Speaker 1: know what what it can be used for and how

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Speaker 1: you know, what are the true properties of this. At

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Speaker 1: the same time, there's this kind of roller coaster of

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Speaker 1: of cultural awareness of it taking place in the background. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And he has that infamous bicycle ride as well, right

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Speaker 1: after he takes it for the first time that has

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Speaker 1: been sort mythologized over the years. Yes. Now, l s D,

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Speaker 1: to be clear, is a psychedelic drug, meaning that it

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Speaker 1: alters perceptions of reality, the shape of thoughts, the connections

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Speaker 1: that one forms. I can't stress enough that one should

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Speaker 1: set aside any cinematic ideas of what acid trips consists of,

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Speaker 1: because it's it's rare to find a film that truly

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Speaker 1: feels trippy in a way that matches up with the

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Speaker 1: actual experience of LSD. You don't. You don't see imaginary

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Speaker 1: elves or anything. It's if you watch just films and TV,

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Speaker 1: you just assume that an LSD trip is a dream sequence,

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Speaker 1: and a dream sequence is just an LSD trip, that

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Speaker 1: these are in just interchangeable, uh altered states of reality. Right, Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: I remember like growing up when kids would start talking

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Speaker 1: about l s D and it being available to us,

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Speaker 1: just all the like various like bizarre urban myths that

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Speaker 1: people would tell, you know, like oh, there's this one

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Speaker 1: guy who took it and he thinks he's an orange

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Speaker 1: now and he doesn't know how stop being an orange,

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Speaker 1: or like another one was like this guy took it

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Speaker 1: and he saw a bunch of everybody looked like giant

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Speaker 1: white guerrillas to him, and he fought all these guerrillas.

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Speaker 1: And it's like these sort of spectacular stories. Well, it

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Speaker 1: does have hallucinogenic properties, there's they're mythologized. Yeah. I always

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Speaker 1: think back to an episode of Strangers with Candy where

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Speaker 1: there's a story of a girl who try took alics

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Speaker 1: D and tried to force herself through a key hole.

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Speaker 1: You know. Now, that's not to say that nothing bad

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Speaker 1: can happen while while one is on LSD. We'll have

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Speaker 1: some examples of that as as we go on here.

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Speaker 1: But in terms of just like what the experience of

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Speaker 1: of LSD, that basically, what is the psychedelic experience? Uh,

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Speaker 1: oddly enough, I'm I want to turn to some of

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Speaker 1: the words of Timothy Leary, because I thought that that

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Speaker 1: he actually managed to sum it up rather nicely here

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Speaker 1: and uh, and I'm gonna go ahead and read it

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Speaker 1: in my impersonation of Timothy Leary, because it's more fun

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Speaker 1: that way for me and hopefully for you. Of course,

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Speaker 1: the drug dose does not produce transcendent experience. It merely

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Speaker 1: acts as a chemical key. It opens the mind, frees

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Speaker 1: the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. The

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Speaker 1: nature of the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting.

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Speaker 1: Set denotes the preparation of the individual, including his personality, structure,

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Speaker 1: and his mood. At the same time, setting is physical,

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Speaker 1: the weather, the room's atmosphere, social feelings of persons present

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Speaker 1: toward one another, and cultural prevailing views as to what

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Speaker 1: is real. It is for this reason that manuals are

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Speaker 1: guide books are necessary. Their purpose is to enable a

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Speaker 1: person to understand the new realities of the expanded consciousness,

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Speaker 1: to serve as roadmaps for new interior territories which modern

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Speaker 1: science has made accessible. So to give you an idea

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Speaker 1: of what LSD is like outside of the experience, outside

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Speaker 1: of getting turned on, as Leary would right, it starts

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Speaker 1: without about an hour of when you first take it,

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Speaker 1: and it can last up to twelve hours. Uh. There's

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Speaker 1: a peak about halfway through that experience. And the effects

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Speaker 1: very widely, but biologically they include dilated pupils, increased blood pressure,

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Speaker 1: high body temperature, dizziness, sweat, blurred vision, and tingly hands

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Speaker 1: and feet. The primary effects though, are visual, which is

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Speaker 1: more what Leary is describing there. You get stronger colors,

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Speaker 1: brighter lights, trails, halos, and patterns. Overall, people say it

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Speaker 1: provides a sense of happiness and euphoria. That's very emotional. However, though,

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Speaker 1: as we said, this can also lead to impulsive behavior

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Speaker 1: and poor judgment. When you're under the effects of this euphoria. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you you feel your body as if it's something new,

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Speaker 1: something different. You smell and taste the world in a

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Speaker 1: different way. Visual stimulized, processed in a with new areas

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Speaker 1: of focus, new details, and and the same can be

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Speaker 1: said for cognition, and the same can be said for

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Speaker 1: the basic processing of time. And so indeed, that is

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Speaker 1: the that is the essential psychedelic experience, uh in a nutshell.

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Speaker 1: And there's one thing I'd like to point out before

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Speaker 1: we go further here, which is that we don't actually

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Speaker 1: know how it affects the brain entirely. And why don't

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Speaker 1: we know that because there's never been any scientific research

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Speaker 1: on how it affects the brain, because it has been

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Speaker 1: banned largely in the United States and some other countries

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Speaker 1: for for the last couple of decades, as we mentioned,

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Speaker 1: So this is kind of a problem. We've got this

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Speaker 1: thing on our hands. Everybody knows about it, we have

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Speaker 1: a general understanding of it, but we haven't done the research. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and we've touched on this. So when we've talked about marijuana,

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Speaker 1: pslocybin as well as m D m A, you have

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Speaker 1: these substances that just became banned research into their properties,

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Speaker 1: right was it the very least professionally taboo for so long.

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Speaker 1: So Yeah, despite the fact that they clearly have powerful properties,

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Speaker 1: we don't necessarily understand them all that much. It's believed

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Speaker 1: that LSD works similar to sarah tonin and neurotraine. It's

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Speaker 1: made responsible for regulating moods, appetite, muscle control, sexuality, sleep

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Speaker 1: and since re perception and alice D seems to interfere

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Speaker 1: with the way the brain serotonin receptors work, so it

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Speaker 1: may inhibit neurotransmission, stimulated or both. It also affects the

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Speaker 1: way that the retinas process information and conduct that information

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Speaker 1: to the brain. So you might be listening to this

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Speaker 1: and saying, well, hold on, I've never taken any of

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Speaker 1: this stuff before, and you're just kind of throwing these

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Speaker 1: terms around. What's the difference between LSD and psilocybin? While

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Speaker 1: psilocybin is a fun guy, and that's classified by botanists

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Speaker 1: and my cologists, people who study mushrooms. While they were

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Speaker 1: used by the Aztecs in religious rituals, the American public

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Speaker 1: didn't really find out about psilocybin until nineteen fifty seven,

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Speaker 1: and this was when an article in Life magazine recounted

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Speaker 1: the adventures of a New York banker in Mexico where

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Speaker 1: he tried it. Huh yeah, LSD totally different. It is

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Speaker 1: color us odorless and tasteless and ingesting. Just twenty five

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Speaker 1: micrograms is enough to feel effects. Now, to give you

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Speaker 1: an idea of what twenty five micrograms is, that's less

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Speaker 1: than the weight of too salt grains is very quickly

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Speaker 1: metabolized by the human body. Now, as previously established, LSD

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Speaker 1: is a chemical that synthesized in a laboratory setting. Where

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Speaker 1: a psilocybin is a fungi that's grown in nat one

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Speaker 1: is natural one is created in a lapp. Several chemicals

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Speaker 1: that could go into l s D are currently sales

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Speaker 1: restricted here in America or are monitored by the Drug

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Speaker 1: Enforcement Agency, And there's all kinds of different recipes on

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Speaker 1: how to make it. Some start with lysergic acid that's

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Speaker 1: derived from morning glory seeds. Others use that ergot fungus

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Speaker 1: that we talked about earlier and how it was discovered.

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Speaker 1: They culture that and they extract ergot alkaloids from it.

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Speaker 1: This fungus and LSD itself can break down when exposed

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Speaker 1: to light, and that's important to note as well. In

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Speaker 1: this ergot recipe, the solvent and reagents involved are also

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Speaker 1: very dangerous. They're poisonous, carcinogenic, and explosive. So it's fun.

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Speaker 1: I would imagine marking on this stuff, like if you've

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Speaker 1: got your little laboratory, you've got to be really careful.

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Speaker 1: You know, this is like uh um, some Jesse and

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Speaker 1: Walter White stuff where you've got to be really careful

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Speaker 1: about what kind of stuff you're concocting and what you're

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Speaker 1: breathing in, and whether you're not, you blow up your trailer. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is straight up chemistry. And that's the other different

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Speaker 1: psilocybin is uh is ultimately Uh, it's it's about I guess,

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Speaker 1: scavenging or or growing naturally occurring organism. Uh. This is chemistry.

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Speaker 1: So the way you do it is you synthesize the

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Speaker 1: ergot alkaloid into a life surgic acid compound, and you

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Speaker 1: do this by adding chemicals and applying heat. Afterward, you

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Speaker 1: isomerize the compounds so that the atoms in its molecules rearrange.

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Speaker 1: This involves some cooling, mixing it with an acid, an

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Speaker 1: actual acid, not the term acid, also a base, and

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Speaker 1: then evaporating it. The remnants are i as lysergic dithalamide,

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Speaker 1: which is then isomerized again and that produces what's called

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Speaker 1: active LSD. So finally you purify it, you crystallize it. Afterward,

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Speaker 1: LSD can be made into tablets, or it's dissolved into

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Speaker 1: liquid or made into gelatine squares. Most often it's dissolved

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Speaker 1: into ethanol, and then that ethanol is added to sheets

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Speaker 1: of blotting paper that are then dried, cut up into

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Speaker 1: little pieces, and people get tabs. Yeah, it looks just

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Speaker 1: like the candy that you can buy. I'm not really

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Speaker 1: sure on the history of that. Can you know the

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Speaker 1: one where it basically looks like blots? Yeah? Like which

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Speaker 1: came first? That's a good question. This is this like

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Speaker 1: candy cigarettes or is it just a happy coincidence that

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Speaker 1: this terrible candy looks like acid? Yeah, that is curious.

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Speaker 1: If any listeners, no, please let us in on the

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Speaker 1: secret there A lot of you have probably also heard

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Speaker 1: about bad trips. We mentioned them earlier. Well, it's not

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Speaker 1: really clear what causes these bad trips, but they result

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Speaker 1: in fear and paranoia, and treatment usually requires basically going

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Speaker 1: to a quiet space so that the user can just

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Speaker 1: come down, but sometimes you have to administer anti anxiety

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Speaker 1: medication or tranquilizers, so that that's important to remember as well. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this makes me think of a lot of the research

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Speaker 1: involving psilocybin um that really ultimately kind of backs up

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Speaker 1: some of what Leary said in that that bit that

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Speaker 1: I read in that a lot of it comes down

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Speaker 1: to priming, preparing the individual for what the trip is

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Speaker 1: going to consist of and then of course personal medical

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Speaker 1: and personal psychiatric history is going to play into that scenario. Yeah. Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: Now you've also probably heard of flashbacks, right, this is

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Speaker 1: the other thing, Like when when I was in high school,

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Speaker 1: like all the legends, it was like, Oh, he's gonna

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Speaker 1: see those white guerillas every year for the rest of

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Speaker 1: his life, right like something like that. Oh yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: this is something that is that pops up in films

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Speaker 1: and TV from time to time, and it's either just

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Speaker 1: completely ridiculous, like the White Guerillas, or even when it

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Speaker 1: is a lot cooler and more believable, say with the

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Speaker 1: season of True Detective, there's still a lot a lot

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Speaker 1: of doubts from some individuals to to what extent this

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Speaker 1: is a thing or or a realistic depiction of it

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Speaker 1: if it is. Yeah, here's the deal with flashbacks. There's

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Speaker 1: no evidence to support the idea that LSD remains in

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Speaker 1: your body forever in amounts inside your brain or spinal fluid.

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Speaker 1: People say that, but we don't have any evidence on it.

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Speaker 1: Why because we really haven't been able to study it. Right. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Some people think though that this is what causes flashbacks.

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Speaker 1: The majority of users, the report never having had flashbacks,

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Speaker 1: and of those who have reported it, many are mentally ill,

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Speaker 1: and some doctors believe that what they're perceiving is actually

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Speaker 1: a form of psychosis that emerged due to the l

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Speaker 1: s D use. There's actually a medically recognized disorder called

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Speaker 1: hallucinogen persisting perceptive disorder, and this is for people who

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Speaker 1: constantly experience visual hallucinations after they take LSD. This is

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Speaker 1: a little different than the idea of halashbacks, right, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's also worth noting that the visual hallucinations can occur

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Speaker 1: for a number of reasons. Um So it's it's entirely

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Speaker 1: possible that one could could could take l s D

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Speaker 1: and then what a year later they experienced some sort

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Speaker 1: of visual hallucination. And one of the main ways they

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00:23:16,600 --> 00:23:20,399
Speaker 1: can describe it is the narrative of acid flashbacks and

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Speaker 1: then they're going and then that becomes encoded in memory.

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Speaker 1: So one last thing I want to make clear about

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Speaker 1: l s D before we we cap off this summary here.

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Speaker 1: LSD is not an addictive drug. So if somebody tells

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Speaker 1: you you know you're gonna take that, you're gonna get

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00:23:35,359 --> 00:23:39,000
Speaker 1: hooked on it or something like that, that's just patently untrue. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The real basic way that it works is that if

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Speaker 1: you take it a lot, your body is going to

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Speaker 1: get used to it, and subsequently the effects are going

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Speaker 1: to lessen over time. So that's the opposite of something

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Speaker 1: that you become addicted to. It doesn't work in the

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Speaker 1: same way as something like heroin. Right though then some

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Speaker 1: people may point out there's the whole idea of that,

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Speaker 1: like the first time you take heroin is the best,

416
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Speaker 1: and then you're always chasing that dragon. Um. But still

417
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Speaker 1: the LSD, psilocybin, d m T, any of these psychedelic

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Speaker 1: substances that we've discussed on the program before, they are

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Speaker 1: they are not addictive in the the very literal way

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Speaker 1: that stuff like heroin is. All Right, we're gonna take

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Speaker 1: a quick break and we come back. We're going to

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Speaker 1: continue to talk about the psychedelics, and in particular we're

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Speaker 1: gonna talk about psychedelics in medicine. Alright, we're back. So,

424
00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:34,280
Speaker 1: according to Timothy Leary's archivist, a guy named Michael Horowitz,

425
00:24:34,680 --> 00:24:38,960
Speaker 1: before Leary, the research being done on psychedelics was mostly

426
00:24:39,160 --> 00:24:43,679
Speaker 1: done by the CIA and the Army. Uh makes us

427
00:24:43,720 --> 00:24:48,320
Speaker 1: think of again and stranger things yeah, but they were

428
00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:51,840
Speaker 1: looking to weaponize it, dosing subjects without their knowledge. Now,

429
00:24:52,080 --> 00:24:54,760
Speaker 1: what are he's actually talking about is the CIA's attempts

430
00:24:55,119 --> 00:24:58,280
Speaker 1: with stuff like Project Bluebird and Project mk Ultra to

431
00:24:58,359 --> 00:25:01,879
Speaker 1: develop mind control techniques. We actually have an episode about

432
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:04,160
Speaker 1: Stranger Things coming up in the next couple of weeks

433
00:25:04,440 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 1: where we're going to talk more about this stuff. The

434
00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:08,879
Speaker 1: basic idea here that I'm gonna boil it down quickly

435
00:25:09,080 --> 00:25:11,920
Speaker 1: is that they were inspired by Nazi research experiments in

436
00:25:11,960 --> 00:25:16,920
Speaker 1: the Dakow concentration camp. Subsequently, they tested on helpless populations

437
00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:20,720
Speaker 1: like prisoners, drug addicts, and mental patients, and at one

438
00:25:20,840 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 1: point the government reportedly ordered over a hundred million doses

439
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:29,440
Speaker 1: of LSD from sand DAWs, that company that discovered it,

440
00:25:29,760 --> 00:25:33,000
Speaker 1: so that they could experiment with contaminating a water supply.

441
00:25:33,400 --> 00:25:35,359
Speaker 1: So they wanted to weaponize this and basically see like,

442
00:25:35,440 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 1: can we put a whole bunch of LSD in one

443
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:41,720
Speaker 1: of our enemies water supplies? You know this really sad

444
00:25:41,800 --> 00:25:44,760
Speaker 1: thing about this, uh portion of the story is that

445
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:51,400
Speaker 1: it underlies, uh, you know, a fact about military first research.

446
00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:55,040
Speaker 1: You know that essentially military military researchers come in and say, okay,

447
00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:57,399
Speaker 1: can we use it to kill people? Better, can we

448
00:25:57,520 --> 00:26:01,840
Speaker 1: use it to enable our our our our warfare in

449
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:05,200
Speaker 1: some way, shape or form? And if not, well, then

450
00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:07,000
Speaker 1: we're done with it. We see this time and time

451
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:09,639
Speaker 1: again on the show, and whenever we dig deep into topics,

452
00:26:09,680 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 1: whether it be uh the weaponization of animals we've done

453
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:15,280
Speaker 1: an episode on, or a lot of our space based

454
00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:18,720
Speaker 1: stuff is usually related to weaponizing space in some way.

455
00:26:19,359 --> 00:26:23,199
Speaker 1: Uh So, Actually, the government Sandas wouldn't supply them that much,

456
00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:25,919
Speaker 1: so they turned to another company. They wanted the company

457
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 1: to break sandas is patent and produce the chemical, but

458
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:31,000
Speaker 1: the whole thing never came to pass, and the government

459
00:26:31,119 --> 00:26:36,199
Speaker 1: essentially deemed LSD too unpredictable for their general use. Now.

460
00:26:36,359 --> 00:26:40,760
Speaker 1: Leary pioneered research into how psychedelics could reveal the nature

461
00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:45,520
Speaker 1: of human consciousness and possibly help people with depression and anxiety,

462
00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:51,040
Speaker 1: but he also precipitated a backlash against psychedelics that criminalized

463
00:26:51,119 --> 00:26:54,200
Speaker 1: them and made it impossible for others to do research

464
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:57,720
Speaker 1: on them. H Leary supporters argue that's not Leary's fault.

465
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:00,680
Speaker 1: This would have happened anyways. He you know, and I

466
00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:03,399
Speaker 1: can see you know, I can see both sides of that,

467
00:27:03,640 --> 00:27:08,879
Speaker 1: but he was undoubtedly a key figure and in a

468
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:11,960
Speaker 1: in a very um, you know, ultimately a very like

469
00:27:12,119 --> 00:27:16,119
Speaker 1: hateable figure. Like part of his his charisma and his charm,

470
00:27:16,520 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: he just worked like poison against people who already had,

471
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:22,360
Speaker 1: you know, a conservative bent. Yeah, it's true, and we're

472
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 1: going to see time and time again people turn against him,

473
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:27,879
Speaker 1: and not the kind of people that you would expect. Right,

474
00:27:28,240 --> 00:27:30,520
Speaker 1: So let's back up for a second here. What about

475
00:27:30,600 --> 00:27:33,600
Speaker 1: before Leary, how we're scientists and researchers looking at it

476
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:36,680
Speaker 1: before that, Well, in the nineteen fifties, some researchers began

477
00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:41,080
Speaker 1: investigating whether psychedelics could treat mental health disorders or addiction.

478
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:44,280
Speaker 1: The federal government funded a hundred and sixteen of these

479
00:27:44,280 --> 00:27:47,920
Speaker 1: studies between nineteen fifty three and nineteen seventy three. Again,

480
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:50,320
Speaker 1: I turned to our episode on M D, M A

481
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:54,320
Speaker 1: and Sasha and Shulgin. They're perfect example of this. Along

482
00:27:54,520 --> 00:27:57,720
Speaker 1: those lines is kind of what was going on with

483
00:27:58,040 --> 00:28:02,920
Speaker 1: psychiatrists and very as researchers working with LSD and patients

484
00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:05,919
Speaker 1: to see how it could work. Sandaz was essentially selling

485
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:09,160
Speaker 1: it as a psychiatric product, right, And these and these

486
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:12,399
Speaker 1: were reputable research operations. We had not yet gotten to

487
00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:15,840
Speaker 1: the point where Leary comes along or or John C.

488
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:20,440
Speaker 1: Lily comes along and you know, starts giving it to dolphins, Yeah, exactly,

489
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:22,919
Speaker 1: or or giving it to himself while he's hanging out

490
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:26,920
Speaker 1: with dolphins. Uh. Now, the sam Does Company patented it,

491
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 1: but they sold it as a delacid beginning in nineteen

492
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 1: forty seven, and they sold it in twenty five microgram

493
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:37,600
Speaker 1: tablets that were designed for analytical psychotherapy. They suggested that

494
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:40,680
Speaker 1: the psychiatrists themselves take it so that they could better

495
00:28:40,840 --> 00:28:44,880
Speaker 1: understand their patients experiences. Now, when they stopped making it,

496
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:47,560
Speaker 1: they said, this is about the fact that there's a

497
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:51,240
Speaker 1: lack of regulation and that there's inaccurate information being perpetuated

498
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 1: about this drug. But between nineteen fifty and nineteen sixty five,

499
00:28:56,080 --> 00:29:01,680
Speaker 1: forty thousand patients were given delcid tab Blitz, basically legal LSD,

500
00:29:02,400 --> 00:29:05,600
Speaker 1: and Dr Max Wrinkle was the first to bring LSD

501
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:07,720
Speaker 1: to the United States and then test it on a

502
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:11,480
Speaker 1: population of a hundred volunteers. He and his colleague Dr

503
00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:16,240
Speaker 1: Paul Hope noted that LSD produced effects that quote mimic

504
00:29:16,560 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 1: schizophrenic psychosis. So this is you can see what there's

505
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 1: some as Another theme that we come back to over

506
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 1: and over again on the show is like early psychological

507
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: theory seems to be very uh generalized and biased, right,

508
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:35,360
Speaker 1: and this is another example of that. They're like, oh,

509
00:29:35,800 --> 00:29:38,480
Speaker 1: there's this thing. It just seems to make you schizophrenic,

510
00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: you know, and there just wasn't enough research behind it.

511
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 1: But recreational drug use increased dramatically in the sixties, such

512
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 1: that as many as two million people had dropped acid

513
00:29:49,240 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 1: by the nineteen seventies. So by nine sixty five there

514
00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 1: were very few researchers who are allowed to possess LSD.

515
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:59,320
Speaker 1: Only six projects were conducted in nineteen sixty nine. In

516
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:02,480
Speaker 1: nineteen seven D the U. S. Congress added psychedelics into

517
00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 1: the government War on Drugs, and the federal government declared

518
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:10,040
Speaker 1: these drugs had no medical use. The chairman for New

519
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:14,000
Speaker 1: Jersey's Narcotic Drug Study Commission called l s D the

520
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 1: greatest threat facing the country today, more dangerous than the

521
00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:23,880
Speaker 1: Vietnam War. Seems like a little hyperbect By nineteen seventy four,

522
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:27,840
Speaker 1: the National Institutes for Mental Health declared that LSD had

523
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:31,040
Speaker 1: quote no real therapeutic value. So there was a strong

524
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 1: establishment bent against this drug, which Timothy Leary unfortunately did

525
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 1: not help with his antics. UH. Today, though l s

526
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 1: D is a Schedule one drug in the United States,

527
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:46,600
Speaker 1: it's under the Controlled Substances Act. This basically means the

528
00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:49,760
Speaker 1: government believes that it has high abuse potential, which we've

529
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:53,680
Speaker 1: already established that's not addictive, UH, has a lack of

530
00:30:53,800 --> 00:30:57,600
Speaker 1: accepted safe uses when taken under medical supervision. We'll talk

531
00:30:57,600 --> 00:30:59,680
Speaker 1: a little bit about how there actually are some of those,

532
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:03,200
Speaker 1: and that it basically has no current medical use in

533
00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:06,000
Speaker 1: their minds. Again, there's evidence that it does. Now. I

534
00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:08,040
Speaker 1: want to remind everybody that by placing it as a

535
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:10,640
Speaker 1: Schedule one, they're placing it in the same category as

536
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 1: marijuana and UH, and they're placing it in a stricter

537
00:31:14,680 --> 00:31:21,240
Speaker 1: category than Category two, which includes cocaine. Yep. So since then,

538
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:24,200
Speaker 1: only a small number of studies have been conducted. You've

539
00:31:24,200 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 1: got small sample sizes, so there's not a lot of

540
00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:29,600
Speaker 1: research that we can rely on. The early results are broad.

541
00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:32,920
Speaker 1: They suggest that when used by people without a family

542
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:38,040
Speaker 1: history or risk of psychological problems, psychedelics can actually make

543
00:31:38,200 --> 00:31:43,200
Speaker 1: us kinder, calmer, and better at our jobs. They also

544
00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:46,520
Speaker 1: help us solve problems more creatively and make us more

545
00:31:46,640 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 1: open minded and generous. Yeah, it's it's interesting when you

546
00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:54,560
Speaker 1: look at the research here about these digital uses for psychedelics.

547
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:58,600
Speaker 1: One is insolute reminded of meditation because both both meditation

548
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:02,120
Speaker 1: and psilocybin have been shown to shut down the default

549
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:05,800
Speaker 1: fault mode network, that constant stream of worry chat about

550
00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:08,640
Speaker 1: past and future in your brain. Um, and that the

551
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 1: brain activity is similar even if the experience you know

552
00:32:12,120 --> 00:32:15,440
Speaker 1: obviously isn't going to always be the same though there

553
00:32:15,600 --> 00:32:18,440
Speaker 1: there is often a certain amount of crossover um, and

554
00:32:18,720 --> 00:32:20,720
Speaker 1: we'll have to get into that more when we do

555
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:23,479
Speaker 1: a focus on meditation in the future. Yeah. I mean

556
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:26,200
Speaker 1: what Robert's referring to is the default mode and network.

557
00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:28,480
Speaker 1: This is a group of structures in the brain. They're

558
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:31,880
Speaker 1: found in the frontal and prefrontal cortex. That's what's responsible

559
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:34,680
Speaker 1: for our ego and our sense of self, and it's

560
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:38,480
Speaker 1: why we as humans have very rigid habitual thinking that

561
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 1: let's face it, we can obsess over right on psychedelics

562
00:32:42,840 --> 00:32:45,520
Speaker 1: that slows down and the boundaries between the self and

563
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 1: the world dissolve, allowing for therapy sessions that can be

564
00:32:49,520 --> 00:32:52,960
Speaker 1: more effective. Yeah. Yeah, there are a number of excellent

565
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 1: studies here. At two thousand and eleven study at Johns

566
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:59,000
Speaker 1: Hopkins University gave high doses of psilocybin to fifty one

567
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:02,440
Speaker 1: test subjects and according to ABC News, a thirty of

568
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 1: these individuals experienced measurable personality changes that lasted more than

569
00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 1: a year. So as of a year ago, about five

570
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:16,960
Speaker 1: hundred people have participated informal psilocybin experience. That's not LSD.

571
00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:21,600
Speaker 1: It's worth remembering, though, that these volunteers are self selected

572
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,680
Speaker 1: and are carefully screened and then are guided by therapists.

573
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:29,840
Speaker 1: So psychedelics used outside of control settings, yes, they can

574
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:32,920
Speaker 1: cause problems, including bad trips where the users feel extremely

575
00:33:32,960 --> 00:33:37,400
Speaker 1: anxious and depressed. This doesn't account for the occasional flashbacks

576
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:39,440
Speaker 1: that we talked about earlier, whether that's a real thing

577
00:33:39,560 --> 00:33:43,440
Speaker 1: or not. Right, the possible future of research is very promising.

578
00:33:43,840 --> 00:33:46,760
Speaker 1: Patients are recommended for treatment by a doctor, for instance,

579
00:33:46,840 --> 00:33:48,640
Speaker 1: this might be what we we look at in a

580
00:33:48,760 --> 00:33:53,280
Speaker 1: few years. Right, you get recommended for LST or psilocybin

581
00:33:53,320 --> 00:33:56,240
Speaker 1: treatment by your doctor, They get you screened for mental illness,

582
00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:57,800
Speaker 1: They look at your heart to see if you have

583
00:33:57,840 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: any heart conditions. Then they're prepping you about what to expect.

584
00:34:02,560 --> 00:34:05,840
Speaker 1: You're monitored by a medical professional while you're under the effects.

585
00:34:06,280 --> 00:34:09,200
Speaker 1: This is someone that they have, you know, established a

586
00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:12,080
Speaker 1: trusting relationship with you. It's not just some scary orderly

587
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:14,440
Speaker 1: whose stands there at the whole time. They have to

588
00:34:14,480 --> 00:34:16,480
Speaker 1: work with you for at least six to eight hours

589
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:20,319
Speaker 1: ahead of time. Then the experience you have is contained.

590
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 1: So it's something you can build a life around, right,

591
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:25,960
Speaker 1: you can you can figure out how to solve the

592
00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 1: problems that you're going in for around this. Across the

593
00:34:29,239 --> 00:34:31,840
Speaker 1: board though, like you, we're looking at it. Openness is

594
00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:37,520
Speaker 1: one of the key positive results of psaulocybin use some

595
00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:41,879
Speaker 1: other hallucinogens that have been explored in these various research programs. Yeah,

596
00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:45,080
Speaker 1: and so you look at what are the possibilities here.

597
00:34:45,120 --> 00:34:48,160
Speaker 1: If we can get the FDA to reschedule it, what

598
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:50,520
Speaker 1: can we do with it. Well, there have already been

599
00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:54,080
Speaker 1: studies that have looked at how psilocybin or LSD can

600
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:56,319
Speaker 1: be used to help terminal patients deal with the end

601
00:34:56,360 --> 00:34:59,880
Speaker 1: of life anxiety. You can potentially help people who have

602
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:03,120
Speaker 1: addictive problems. There's been studies that have been done on

603
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:07,359
Speaker 1: smoking cessation and alcoholism related to it. Uh, and then

604
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:11,759
Speaker 1: also psychedelics can potentially help mental wellness. There's been a

605
00:35:11,920 --> 00:35:15,279
Speaker 1: number of studies that have been done basically looking at

606
00:35:15,360 --> 00:35:20,200
Speaker 1: how it can prolong positive changes in attitude and mood. Um.

607
00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:24,839
Speaker 1: When I think about LSD or psilocybin, for myself, I've

608
00:35:24,960 --> 00:35:30,200
Speaker 1: never taken either, But when I hear these very controlled

609
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:35,600
Speaker 1: laboratory conditions described as somebody who's never taken it, that's

610
00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 1: actually more appealing to me. The idea of it being

611
00:35:39,400 --> 00:35:42,440
Speaker 1: done in a controlled setting like that, Well, you know,

612
00:35:42,760 --> 00:35:45,600
Speaker 1: the crazy part about it is that like the idea

613
00:35:45,800 --> 00:35:50,719
Speaker 1: of of say people or young people taking LSD, pilocybin

614
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:52,880
Speaker 1: or whatever and not really knowing what they're doing and

615
00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:56,000
Speaker 1: having you know, maybe a positive experience, maybe a negative

616
00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:59,440
Speaker 1: like that's that's not in keeping a with the clinical

617
00:35:59,560 --> 00:36:01,880
Speaker 1: use of it. But but all but be with the

618
00:36:02,560 --> 00:36:05,279
Speaker 1: with the traditional use of some of these substances, where

619
00:36:05,360 --> 00:36:07,640
Speaker 1: you would have not a scientist but a shaman to

620
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:10,360
Speaker 1: administer these things. There were rituals, there were there was

621
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:12,920
Speaker 1: a process. It was communal. Yeah, it was a communal

622
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:17,279
Speaker 1: experience with lots of priming. Yeah. Now, so just from

623
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 1: my perspective because I know I have a history of

624
00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 1: depression and anxiety, and my family has a history of

625
00:36:22,760 --> 00:36:25,480
Speaker 1: depression and anxiety. I've always worried, well, I don't want

626
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:27,799
Speaker 1: to take this because I might have a bad reaction, right,

627
00:36:28,040 --> 00:36:30,520
Speaker 1: Remember what they said some of the setup was because

628
00:36:30,520 --> 00:36:33,000
Speaker 1: they needed to screen you for certain things. I'm also

629
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:36,440
Speaker 1: curious though. They say things like it's going to increase

630
00:36:36,560 --> 00:36:39,440
Speaker 1: your interest in fantasy and imagination, and I want to

631
00:36:39,520 --> 00:36:42,759
Speaker 1: know how much more interested in fantasy and imagination I

632
00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 1: can get, because I'm already pretty well down that rabbit hole.

633
00:36:46,719 --> 00:36:49,560
Speaker 1: One of the things that these researchers say is that

634
00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:51,319
Speaker 1: when they take a look at it, it can help

635
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:56,000
Speaker 1: change your personality if you're having personality problems, right that

636
00:36:56,160 --> 00:36:59,840
Speaker 1: the general idea is that personality is fixed after the

637
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:03,360
Speaker 1: age of thirty, but with the help of psychedelics, you

638
00:37:03,480 --> 00:37:06,200
Speaker 1: may be able to overcome some you know, boundaries that

639
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 1: you're facing in that respect. And I just think that's interesting.

640
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:11,720
Speaker 1: I've always just kind of anecdotally thought about it about

641
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:14,560
Speaker 1: ten years later than that. Like pretty much everybody I know,

642
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:18,319
Speaker 1: by the time they're forty, they are who they are

643
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 1: and they're going to be that way. I have not

644
00:37:20,239 --> 00:37:24,120
Speaker 1: seen anybody make any drastic changes. But it seems like

645
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:27,560
Speaker 1: if they have really difficult emotional problems in life that

646
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:29,200
Speaker 1: they're trying to get over, it seems like there's a

647
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:32,480
Speaker 1: possibility here that if we were only able to study

648
00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:35,560
Speaker 1: this further, it might be an option for people like that. Yeah,

649
00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:37,239
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's one of those things where

650
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:40,280
Speaker 1: you know, we were like, we may think of ourselves

651
00:37:40,320 --> 00:37:42,800
Speaker 1: with set in stone after a certain point, but but

652
00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:44,800
Speaker 1: we're not. We're not really. I mean, we know that

653
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:48,880
Speaker 1: the mind is in memory is more malleable than that. Uh.

654
00:37:49,239 --> 00:37:53,240
Speaker 1: So psychedelics come in as a as a possible means

655
00:37:53,600 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 1: to loosen things up so that they can be reset. Uh.

656
00:37:57,200 --> 00:38:00,480
Speaker 1: And of course that being said, drugs not the only

657
00:38:00,560 --> 00:38:03,120
Speaker 1: thing that I think that they can allow a person

658
00:38:03,200 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 1: to do that. I mean, sometimes something as simple as

659
00:38:05,160 --> 00:38:11,080
Speaker 1: say travel new experiences, um, reading a book you wouldn't

660
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 1: have otherwise read this sort of thing. Generally, having a

661
00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 1: creative curiosity about life, uh, can can change who you are.

662
00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:22,719
Speaker 1: I think one of the interesting things some of these

663
00:38:22,760 --> 00:38:26,640
Speaker 1: studies of is that it makes you wonder like, is

664
00:38:26,719 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 1: the person that has administered the substance, are they the

665
00:38:30,200 --> 00:38:33,319
Speaker 1: kind of person that is not a novelty seeker. They're

666
00:38:33,360 --> 00:38:36,680
Speaker 1: not They don't seek out new experiences otherwise, Like maybe

667
00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:39,840
Speaker 1: that's the kind of individual for whom some potential future

668
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:43,839
Speaker 1: treatment would be best used. Like somebody who's who really

669
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:47,200
Speaker 1: can't shake something negative in their life and they have

670
00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:50,400
Speaker 1: a pretty established routine if how things are, but at

671
00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:53,360
Speaker 1: the same time they recognize that there's something about that

672
00:38:53,520 --> 00:38:56,920
Speaker 1: routine that is dysfunctional for them or for the world around. Yeah,

673
00:38:56,920 --> 00:38:59,200
Speaker 1: there's some sort of cycle that needs to be broken. Uh,

674
00:38:59,280 --> 00:39:01,959
Speaker 1: there's something needs to be you know, just pulled apart

675
00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:03,640
Speaker 1: so it can be put back together in a slightly

676
00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:06,040
Speaker 1: different form. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good way

677
00:39:06,120 --> 00:39:09,200
Speaker 1: to approach it. So why don't we take another break,

678
00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:11,840
Speaker 1: and then when we get back, we're going to officially

679
00:39:12,120 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 1: dive in to the Leary stuff, and we're gonna start

680
00:39:15,600 --> 00:39:22,160
Speaker 1: right at the beginning. Alright, we're back, Okay, So we're

681
00:39:22,200 --> 00:39:23,960
Speaker 1: gonna talk about Timothy Leary for the rest of this

682
00:39:24,040 --> 00:39:27,080
Speaker 1: episode and then into the next episode as well. Uh,

683
00:39:27,160 --> 00:39:29,800
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna start at the beginning because I

684
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:33,080
Speaker 1: think a lot of the stuff that happens on early

685
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:34,920
Speaker 1: on in his life is going to be key. And

686
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:37,040
Speaker 1: it's interesting when we talk about this in terms of like,

687
00:39:37,120 --> 00:39:40,480
Speaker 1: at what point is someone's personality set? At what point

688
00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:45,640
Speaker 1: is somebody's destiny kind of set? Well, according to Robert Greenfield,

689
00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:49,120
Speaker 1: who wrote Timothy Leary at Biography, yeah you can. You

690
00:39:49,160 --> 00:39:51,160
Speaker 1: can sort of see a lot of that in Leary's

691
00:39:51,200 --> 00:39:56,440
Speaker 1: early life. So he was born October n Springfield, Massachusetts,

692
00:39:56,760 --> 00:39:59,719
Speaker 1: to an Irish Catholic family. His father with the strow

693
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:03,839
Speaker 1: as a struggling dentist, and his mother was a working mother.

694
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:06,719
Speaker 1: That's my nick of the woods Saffield, Massachusetts. Yeah, my

695
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:09,719
Speaker 1: uncle works there. It's just my whole family is from

696
00:40:09,719 --> 00:40:11,200
Speaker 1: the western part of that state. So I have a

697
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:13,840
Speaker 1: very clear picture in my head now of what his

698
00:40:14,120 --> 00:40:19,239
Speaker 1: his young upbringing was like. So according to Greenfield's biography, uh,

699
00:40:20,120 --> 00:40:23,040
Speaker 1: you can really attribute a lot of learies rebel, rebellious

700
00:40:23,080 --> 00:40:27,879
Speaker 1: spirit to his relationship with his father Tote, an alcoholic

701
00:40:28,200 --> 00:40:31,120
Speaker 1: who brought imbalance to the home and depended on charity

702
00:40:31,200 --> 00:40:34,360
Speaker 1: from family loans to prop up his struggling dental practice.

703
00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:38,000
Speaker 1: And now the young Tim Leary, you know, occasionally stood

704
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:40,480
Speaker 1: up to his father, but was also forced to hide

705
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:43,120
Speaker 1: from him on the roof on some occasions, and then

706
00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:46,359
Speaker 1: total left the family when Tim was only fourteen, UH,

707
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 1: leaving him to find solace in books about mythic heroes

708
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:53,399
Speaker 1: and UH legends, and he was determined to become something better,

709
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:56,719
Speaker 1: greater than his father, and his mother obsessed as well

710
00:40:56,880 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 1: over her her child's future, like how can I engineer

711
00:41:01,160 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 1: UH somebody for success? And so Greenfield argues that we

712
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:09,040
Speaker 1: see the seeds of Leary's relationships with authority figures throughout

713
00:41:09,080 --> 00:41:12,319
Speaker 1: his life, you know, pinpointed in his early life as

714
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:14,640
Speaker 1: well as his relationships with women. He would go through

715
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:18,320
Speaker 1: periods of finding structure within an within an institution, but

716
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:21,880
Speaker 1: would ultimately rebel against its order, and in times of distress,

717
00:41:22,239 --> 00:41:25,279
Speaker 1: he'd seek out women and for positive father figures. He

718
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:28,160
Speaker 1: turned to UH, not to his own father, of course,

719
00:41:28,200 --> 00:41:32,160
Speaker 1: but to a flamboyant and sometimes dramatic family members. And

720
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:35,879
Speaker 1: he depended on the emotional and financial support UH first

721
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:38,320
Speaker 1: of all of his mother and UH, and in Greenfield

722
00:41:38,320 --> 00:41:41,680
Speaker 1: identifies a pattern of his leaving most of them along

723
00:41:41,760 --> 00:41:44,200
Speaker 1: the way. Yeah, I mean, I think like one of

724
00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:46,600
Speaker 1: the awful themes that we're going to notice by the

725
00:41:46,680 --> 00:41:48,200
Speaker 1: time we get to the end of this two parter

726
00:41:48,560 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 1: is that he left a a wake behind him of

727
00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:59,560
Speaker 1: either abused people or dead people. I mean, what we're

728
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:02,800
Speaker 1: gonna get into it. Yeah, there are a number of

729
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:07,160
Speaker 1: self destructive tendencies in Timothy Learry's life al right. So

730
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:10,600
Speaker 1: in terms of his his school and his essentially pre

731
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:15,960
Speaker 1: psychedelics career, uh, Learry attended classical high school alongside American author,

732
00:42:16,560 --> 00:42:20,080
Speaker 1: a biographer and historian William Manchester. Some of you might

733
00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:23,200
Speaker 1: be familiar with him from a World Lit Only by Fire,

734
00:42:23,560 --> 00:42:26,080
Speaker 1: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, which is an excellent book.

735
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:29,160
Speaker 1: And he also went to the same school as a

736
00:42:29,239 --> 00:42:33,400
Speaker 1: Theodore Geisel or Dr Seuss. He went to the College

737
00:42:33,440 --> 00:42:36,400
Speaker 1: of Holy Cross and Worcester. Uh. It's a strict Catholic

738
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:40,200
Speaker 1: school that of course inspired rebellion from Larry. He made

739
00:42:40,239 --> 00:42:42,840
Speaker 1: money gambling on sports. He frequently hopped the wall with

740
00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:45,759
Speaker 1: other adventure seekers in order to go out drinking in

741
00:42:45,840 --> 00:42:50,920
Speaker 1: town and chase girls. My father from Worcester. So also

742
00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:54,600
Speaker 1: like this is like connecting the dots. So to give

743
00:42:54,600 --> 00:42:56,360
Speaker 1: you an idea here if if you're not familiar with

744
00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:58,200
Speaker 1: the messages that all springfields in the western part of

745
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:01,719
Speaker 1: the state, Worcester sort of in the middle between Springfield

746
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:04,279
Speaker 1: and Boston. Okay, so it's not I mean, it's like

747
00:43:04,400 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: forty five minutes probably from where he grew up. All right, Well,

748
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:08,920
Speaker 1: the next place we're going on the map here for

749
00:43:09,040 --> 00:43:13,680
Speaker 1: Learry is West Point and this is where he initially

750
00:43:13,760 --> 00:43:16,239
Speaker 1: just goes all in on the culture of West Point.

751
00:43:16,280 --> 00:43:19,000
Speaker 1: He according to the Greenfield, he's writing back to his

752
00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:22,320
Speaker 1: mom with just the maximum amount of West Point lingo

753
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:25,160
Speaker 1: you can possibly use. And this is telling to like

754
00:43:25,360 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 1: he'll start off really into a culture and then he rebels,

755
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:31,760
Speaker 1: and indeed he does. He returns to his old ways,

756
00:43:31,880 --> 00:43:35,360
Speaker 1: even faces a court martial for drunken behavior. He's acquitted,

757
00:43:35,400 --> 00:43:38,040
Speaker 1: but then he ends up facing what's known as the Silence,

758
00:43:38,239 --> 00:43:40,560
Speaker 1: or was known as the silence. This was a policy

759
00:43:40,640 --> 00:43:43,480
Speaker 1: that Australized cadets who broke the honor code, and this

760
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:47,799
Speaker 1: was discontinued in seventy three. And uh. He ultimately ends

761
00:43:47,840 --> 00:43:51,880
Speaker 1: up resigning and is honorably discharged by the Army. Then

762
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:55,880
Speaker 1: he applies to colleges across America. The University of Alabama

763
00:43:55,960 --> 00:43:58,520
Speaker 1: at Tuscaloosa accepted him first, so that's where he went.

764
00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:05,240
Speaker 1: He met Dr Donald Angus Ramsdell, a Harvard psychology PhD,

765
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:08,719
Speaker 1: a man who Leary would later refer to as Dr

766
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:12,160
Speaker 1: D which I found that interesting given our episodes on

767
00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 1: The Real Doctor John d. Yeah, and uh yeah. He

768
00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:20,400
Speaker 1: soon immersed himself in the study of psychology and in biology,

769
00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:24,360
Speaker 1: and now having lost his draft determina deferment, he enrolled

770
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:27,120
Speaker 1: in r OTC to avoid a draft, and then he

771
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 1: also ran a foul of the school here due to

772
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:33,440
Speaker 1: womanizing so much though the dean even accused him of

773
00:44:33,560 --> 00:44:37,640
Speaker 1: sullying quote, the honor of Southern womanhood, and he was expelled.

774
00:44:38,040 --> 00:44:41,719
Speaker 1: Man Like, just from my point perspective, from you know,

775
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:44,719
Speaker 1: being from up in New England and in the two

776
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:48,799
Speaker 1: thousands moving to the South into a progressive southern city,

777
00:44:49,760 --> 00:44:51,560
Speaker 1: I had a lot of culture shock. I'm trying to

778
00:44:51,640 --> 00:44:54,480
Speaker 1: imagine what it was like for this guy, you know,

779
00:44:54,760 --> 00:44:58,959
Speaker 1: all these years ago, uh, just transitioning and jumping around

780
00:44:59,000 --> 00:45:01,680
Speaker 1: and getting into trouble and just really shaking things up

781
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:04,600
Speaker 1: everywhere he went. Well, it's interesting. One of the sort

782
00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:08,319
Speaker 1: of side things in in Greenfield's biography that he points

783
00:45:08,320 --> 00:45:10,520
Speaker 1: out is that apparently at the time of the university

784
00:45:10,600 --> 00:45:15,520
Speaker 1: in Tuscaloosa, you had these various liberal academics and in

785
00:45:15,600 --> 00:45:20,040
Speaker 1: many cases homosexual academics who had found sort of a

786
00:45:20,200 --> 00:45:24,120
Speaker 1: safe environment in which to thrive. So in a in

787
00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 1: a sense like if Timothy Leary was going to go

788
00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:29,920
Speaker 1: to anywhere in the American South at that point, Tuscaloose

789
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:31,719
Speaker 1: was probably one of the places to go. And he

790
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:35,319
Speaker 1: did find people who who valued him and embraced him,

791
00:45:35,680 --> 00:45:39,560
Speaker 1: you know, initially, but he wasn't quite able to finish

792
00:45:39,640 --> 00:45:42,800
Speaker 1: his his academic duties, oh of course not now. On

793
00:45:42,880 --> 00:45:44,279
Speaker 1: the advice of Dr d he goes on to a

794
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 1: role in the University of Illinois. He lines up work

795
00:45:47,080 --> 00:45:50,520
Speaker 1: in the psychology department, and he eventually completes his education

796
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:56,319
Speaker 1: at Tuscaloosa remotely. But uh yeah, it's one of these

797
00:45:56,360 --> 00:46:00,840
Speaker 1: situations where, um, you just see this pattern run over again.

798
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:04,480
Speaker 1: As Greenfield writes, a clear pattern in his life had

799
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:07,400
Speaker 1: already emerged whenever tim Leary began accepting the kind of

800
00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:10,440
Speaker 1: success for which he had been programmed since birth by

801
00:46:10,520 --> 00:46:13,520
Speaker 1: his mother, he would stop the process by indulging, just

802
00:46:13,680 --> 00:46:16,680
Speaker 1: as his father had done before him, in self destructive behavior.

803
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:19,920
Speaker 1: So Leary then goes on to get his master's degree

804
00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 1: at the University of Washington. We're talking about Washington State now,

805
00:46:23,160 --> 00:46:26,880
Speaker 1: So he's already jumped from New England to Alabama, to Illinois,

806
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 1: and now up to Washington State. He received his doctorate

807
00:46:30,560 --> 00:46:33,920
Speaker 1: in psychology in nineteen fifty from the University of California

808
00:46:33,920 --> 00:46:36,919
Speaker 1: at Berkeley, So then he jumps down to California. Here

809
00:46:37,040 --> 00:46:41,560
Speaker 1: he decided that conventional psychotherapy was useless and he began

810
00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:45,759
Speaker 1: experimenting with group therapy and transactional analysis. So this gives

811
00:46:45,800 --> 00:46:47,719
Speaker 1: you an idea of like where he was a sort

812
00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:52,120
Speaker 1: of academically disciplined wise before he was introduced to psychedelics.

813
00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:57,439
Speaker 1: His first wife, Mary Anne, committed suicide during this time.

814
00:46:57,560 --> 00:47:00,600
Speaker 1: This was in nineteen fifty five. This left him to

815
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:05,319
Speaker 1: raise their two children alone. We have more on this obviously. Yeah,

816
00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:08,719
Speaker 1: this was just a real sad situation for a number

817
00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:12,080
Speaker 1: of reasons. But basically, uh, he and Mary Anne had

818
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:16,360
Speaker 1: a very open relationship. Well yeah, but also just a

819
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:19,759
Speaker 1: chaotic relationship but just a lot of according to to

820
00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:23,440
Speaker 1: Greenfield's account in the biography, just a lot of negative

821
00:47:23,520 --> 00:47:26,520
Speaker 1: vibes in this uh, in this relationship, a lot was

822
00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:31,279
Speaker 1: not working. Leary was apparently looking to in the relationship

823
00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:34,440
Speaker 1: in the very near future anyway, and then she committed

824
00:47:34,440 --> 00:47:38,080
Speaker 1: suicide and it was you know, it's not like Leary

825
00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:42,200
Speaker 1: wasn't an unfeeling person like this had a huge effect

826
00:47:42,280 --> 00:47:44,400
Speaker 1: on him. Uh, like he would write about it is

827
00:47:44,719 --> 00:47:47,240
Speaker 1: just essentially a pit that he wasn't able to emerge

828
00:47:47,320 --> 00:47:51,160
Speaker 1: from emotionally for you know, for for decades even, and

829
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:52,840
Speaker 1: then you know, to to say nothing then of the

830
00:47:53,120 --> 00:47:56,160
Speaker 1: children as well. Now, the urban legend of this goes,

831
00:47:56,360 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 1: this is what you know. I can't imagine how many

832
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:01,200
Speaker 1: articles in book Robert and I read for this, but

833
00:48:01,239 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 1: it probably popped up in every single one of them.

834
00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:06,280
Speaker 1: Is that the night before they were having an argument

835
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:10,279
Speaker 1: about their open relationship and about that he was in

836
00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:12,279
Speaker 1: a relationship with a woman that he loved more than

837
00:48:12,440 --> 00:48:15,520
Speaker 1: Mary and his wife, and that she was upset about

838
00:48:15,560 --> 00:48:17,320
Speaker 1: this and she wanted him to break it off, and

839
00:48:17,440 --> 00:48:20,400
Speaker 1: he went into the bedroom and said it's your problem,

840
00:48:20,640 --> 00:48:23,120
Speaker 1: not mine, and closed the door. When he woke up

841
00:48:23,160 --> 00:48:26,440
Speaker 1: in the morning, she was dead. She had suffocated herself

842
00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:32,280
Speaker 1: in the garage inside the family car. Yeah. In Greenfield's account,

843
00:48:32,360 --> 00:48:34,200
Speaker 1: he he kind of points to the different versions of

844
00:48:34,239 --> 00:48:36,720
Speaker 1: the story, so like there's the there's like a slightly

845
00:48:36,719 --> 00:48:39,040
Speaker 1: different version that he that he tells the authorities and

846
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:41,239
Speaker 1: then he writes about later and you know, you can

847
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:44,200
Speaker 1: sort of try to find the truth between all of

848
00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:48,600
Speaker 1: these uh uh. And yeah, it's just a really ugly

849
00:48:48,680 --> 00:48:54,360
Speaker 1: situation with an ugly ending it is, but it's also, unfortunately,

850
00:48:54,560 --> 00:48:57,680
Speaker 1: I think, an important sign of things to come with

851
00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:01,759
Speaker 1: this guy and and sort of wear his priorities were right. Uh.

852
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:04,279
Speaker 1: And I don't want to end this this episode because

853
00:49:04,280 --> 00:49:06,160
Speaker 1: we're about to wrap up our first part here, but

854
00:49:06,160 --> 00:49:08,759
Speaker 1: I don't want to end it on such a super downer. Uh.

855
00:49:09,080 --> 00:49:13,000
Speaker 1: He went on afterwards to teach at Berkeley, and he

856
00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:17,040
Speaker 1: actually was the director of psychological research at the Kaiser

857
00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:21,839
Speaker 1: Foundation Hospital in Oakland, California, from nineteen fifty five until

858
00:49:21,920 --> 00:49:26,160
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight. Now, during this period, um, after his

859
00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:29,360
Speaker 1: wife's suicide. Uh, he he also ends up going to

860
00:49:29,680 --> 00:49:31,440
Speaker 1: uh to Europe a few times. He goes to Spain,

861
00:49:31,560 --> 00:49:34,879
Speaker 1: he goes to Italy, and uh, this is kind of key.

862
00:49:34,960 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 1: There was this, um, there was this period of time

863
00:49:37,960 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 1: when he was when he was in Spain and he

864
00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:47,600
Speaker 1: suddenly experienced this some sort of mysterious illness, so swelling pain. Uh.

865
00:49:47,880 --> 00:49:50,640
Speaker 1: He was attended to buy a Danish doctor and he

866
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:53,080
Speaker 1: ends up passing this night in misery, ends up sending

867
00:49:53,080 --> 00:49:55,759
Speaker 1: the kids to stay with another couple of of of

868
00:49:55,840 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 1: Americans were staying close by, and he says, he's said

869
00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:02,520
Speaker 1: that he felt like he died during this time, that

870
00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:04,399
Speaker 1: he that he let go and then put the past

871
00:50:04,440 --> 00:50:06,960
Speaker 1: behind him. But you know, in a very interesting way,

872
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:10,440
Speaker 1: it was kind of his first psychedelic experience, like a

873
00:50:10,560 --> 00:50:13,560
Speaker 1: taste of this altered state, as you know. Not to

874
00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:16,279
Speaker 1: be confused with all the times he'd gotten just blindly

875
00:50:16,400 --> 00:50:19,920
Speaker 1: drunk in the past, because he had previously and for

876
00:50:20,040 --> 00:50:22,880
Speaker 1: a lot of his life, had a severe alcohol problem.

877
00:50:24,080 --> 00:50:27,480
Speaker 1: But it's it's shortly after that too that Frank Baron,

878
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:30,400
Speaker 1: who was who was a colleague from Berkeley. Uh. He

879
00:50:30,840 --> 00:50:34,040
Speaker 1: he visited Leary during an unproductive stay in Florence, Italy.

880
00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:35,759
Speaker 1: He was always going on these trips to try and

881
00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:39,320
Speaker 1: you know, to to write various things. And at this

882
00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:42,600
Speaker 1: point Baron told him that during his research into creativity,

883
00:50:42,880 --> 00:50:45,400
Speaker 1: he had interviewed a psychiatrist who had use magic mushrooms

884
00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:48,000
Speaker 1: to produce visions and trances, and that Baron had tried

885
00:50:48,040 --> 00:50:52,239
Speaker 1: them as well, resulting in a mystical transcendental insight. Now,

886
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, Leary warned him that he might lose his

887
00:50:55,560 --> 00:50:58,200
Speaker 1: scientific credibility and he babbled on about this sort of

888
00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:02,799
Speaker 1: thing um with that, my friends, is what we call foreshadowing. Yes,

889
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:07,440
Speaker 1: so in the next episode we will get into the

890
00:51:08,200 --> 00:51:13,960
Speaker 1: psychedelic experience of of Leary, basically one continuous psychedelic experience

891
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:17,840
Speaker 1: that lasted his entire life and uh, basically dragged American

892
00:51:17,840 --> 00:51:20,239
Speaker 1: culture with. Yeah, please make sure that you tune into

893
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:22,320
Speaker 1: that second part. It's got a lot more of the

894
00:51:22,440 --> 00:51:26,200
Speaker 1: juicy details of Timothy Leary's life and the science and

895
00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:29,440
Speaker 1: research that he did into LSD and psilocybin. If you

896
00:51:29,520 --> 00:51:31,719
Speaker 1: want to reach out to us about this episode and

897
00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:34,200
Speaker 1: any of the stuff we brought up today regarding LSD

898
00:51:34,400 --> 00:51:38,440
Speaker 1: research or possibly Timothy Leary's history, you can always get

899
00:51:38,520 --> 00:51:41,120
Speaker 1: us on social media. We're on Facebook, we're on Twitter,

900
00:51:41,360 --> 00:51:44,279
Speaker 1: We're on tumbler, and we are on Instagram. And if

901
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:45,960
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with the old fashioned way,

902
00:51:46,040 --> 00:51:48,279
Speaker 1: just shoot us an email at blow the Mind and

903
00:51:48,360 --> 00:52:00,279
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and

904
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:03,160
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.

905
00:52:09,080 --> 00:52:09,120
Speaker 1: The