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