Original subtitles

The people who do not know anything about this whole area.

They similarly ask are you on anything now?

They think that we

go around on psychedelic drugs all the time. - They're not all the time.

Uh, mushrooms, psilocybin,

I call 2CB as being a very,

2CB

a very, excellent psychedelic.

Uh, mescaline.

Mescaline.

I don't like drugs that get too

too sparkly.

Like the MDA world.

Yeah I don't like stoning drugs.

I don't like being stoned.

Thats uh.

You don't learn anything.

Um,

I don't like drugs that inhibit communication.

It's like for instance,

2CE.

I mean, right, MDE.

Oh okay, I agree with you. Yeah.

I could do without MDE.

2CI is good.

2CI is very good.

The sexual aspects are always very,

very,

positive contributors to...

If you can't make love on a drug then

this something not quite right.

This fire in here, we got Ethel B-3 burning.

Lets go! Everybody out of here!

All we’re going to do is,

we’re going to try and figure out what you’re doing there, and if what’s your doing is legal

In 1966 Shulgin quit his job as a chemist for Dow Chemical

to devote himself entirely to the study of

psychoactive drugs.

Drugs that alter the mind.

The stepfather of rave's favorite pharmaceutical lives in the hills behind San Francisco.

In the mid-1960s,

he resynthesized an obscure drug that had been patented, but then ignored.

It was called 3/4 Methylenedioxymethamphetamine.

MDMA for short.

It would later acquired a street name, ecstasy.

Just as LSD marijuana and Woodstock

unite a generation.

Ecstasy and the rave scene

act as a glue for millions of savvy middle-class kids

seeking an escape.

From Bangkok to Bournemouth. Manchester to Miami.

If there was one place on earth where it all began, then it's right here in California.

In the small home laboratory of a man.

He's known

as The Godfather

of ecstasy.

No other drug

has ever spread so fast.

25 milligrams, no effect. 40, no effect.

60 milligrams. No effect. 81 milligrams is,

that I got a plus-one.

53 minutes smooth shift into a light intoxication

distinct, almost early alcohol like intoxication.

I first met Ann and Sasha many years ago.

I thought about how I would introduce him and everything I thought about saying,

I got so emotional, I started crying.

Hello, this is kind of a personal question..

Is there anything that does to the brain, what MDMA does to the heart?

Alexander Sasha, Shulgin, PhD is a pharmacologist, chemist, and drug developer.

2C-T-7, 2C-I, and 2C-B are the most well known.

Shulgin personally tested hundreds of drugs.

New York Times Magazine.

It's an article on Dr. E, for ecstasy.

There’s no reason that I should be

Doctor Ecstasy,

Ecstasy is not the name I gave anything.

I called it MDMA,

and uh, its just uh, its an element of notoriety that does no good.

He didn't even invent it in his

Discoveries and his own inventions he encountered this drug that somebody else had made.

It didn't exist in nature until chemists

working for the German pharmaceutical company, Merck

synthesized it by accident in their laboratories in 1912.

No use for the new molecule was discovered,

and MDMA remained little more than a formula on faded paper for more than 60 years.

So somebody made it,

but didn't realize its potential.

This is World War one

with Germany's defeat,

MDMA and every other patented drug

is turned over to the Allies as a spoil of war.

Its existence is lost from memory,

until the Cold War compels the Pentagon

to re-examine its potential for national defense.

The love drug does nothing of use for war.

but the compound still exists.

It sat on a shelf

but he thought hmm they never really took it orally.

I wonder if it's active.

Let's try it at the

50 milligram dose let's try it at

the hundred milligram dose.

Oh there's something going on here.

Wow!

Whoa this has an

altered state experience.

Dr. Shulgin made these careful notes.

The first recorded experience on ecstasy.

Actually, the first, first trial in that particular guise was on a train trip.

He published a paper on it,

described its effects,

and several of his friends are psychiatrists

and they decided to try it.

Tried it on themselves first.

In the psychotherapeutic community,

MDMA is called empathy.

Its effect is likened to a year of therapy, in six hours.

Once the psychiatrists started using it,

whew.

Man, it was in demand.

We've got another drug

it is synthetic

and it makes you love everybody.

I was diagnosed to have terminal cancer a few months ago,

and naturally there's a lot of fear, and anger, and pain.

Emotional pain that surrounds something like that.

It has allowed me to open up and have

communication with my family

that I have never been able to have before.

It's called, it's called ecstasy.

Now who doesn't want to take ecstasy?

The whole concept of the MDMA going into

Ecstasy,

well really, it was Empathy, but nobody really knew what Empathy was.

they called E for ecstasy.

It is a popularization

and in essence destroy the...

medical value

effectively of the material.

Had MDMA not strayed from that community,

it might have remained legal.

But beyond the therapist office,

it becomes wildly popular

and that is the beginning of the end

for the legal use of ecstasy.

This morning the Drug Enforcement Administration

is announcing its intention

to place the drug known as MDMA,

or by the street name ecstasy,

under emergency controls in schedule 1.

This whole thing is is pitched as a self-development

type of experience.

Get in touch with nature, get in touch with the universe, get in touch with your mother.

They said half a head of E would be fun.

Everywhere you look, it's there.

Including service members, I mean, it's everywhere.

And now the term now applies to anything and everything that's used at a rave

doesn't have to have any MDMA in it at all.

Just the term is used as a

as a party escape drug.

And I am saddened to say that I am not happy with it.

To Dr. Shulgin it was just one of hundreds of mind-altering drugs he concocted.

In books and papers he has published the formulas

and the effects of each.

His critics argue that Shulgin is simply providing a road map

for drug abuse.

They're you!

I didn't want my life to be a carbon of his own.

That the number one reason I knew he was a brilliant

scientist.

I would never even compete within that world.

That I didn't want to be compared against

See, my dad was very hip.

During the 60s and the 70s he was the beatnik

and I was the rebel.

Titan close and not involved

in that world I just I didn't want anything to do with this world.

Where our heads were connecting

was a flash of light that shot out

straight ahead and we can see it.

Basically I see psychedelics as spiritual tools.

which is not quite the way Sasha sees them.

And it produces this cascade of inflammatory changes.

They are very good tools

for anyone who's on any kind of spiritual journey,

whatever that means and it means different things to different people.

Psychotherapy can be

part of that.

I mean

people who go into psychotherapy are on a spiritual quest,

whether they call it that or not.

How do you define consciousness and how much of it is determined by chemistry

Well that's not a question.

I consider consciousness where you are if you're alive.

A lot of people put it as a brain function, I consider consciousness a mental function.

He's outside the mainstream I mean he is kind of a rogue.

He's not part of an official establishment .

He's doing things that are sort of socially frowned upon by the majority of of our society.

I always duck down in case a bird flies out.

Oh my golly.

That's where that compound went.

Usually you have wall-to-wall carpeting ,

clean benches,

and all the bottles on the Shelf lined up in alphabetical order.

That's a display in a moving picture laboratory,

or a government laboratory.

A real productive laboratory is in essence a personal mess

and as you have things at hand,

you remember what it was

drop it down

get it back up it again.

No that's not ready to work up yet.

Well Sasha is

passionately committed to understanding how these drugs work

and their structure activity he's mainly a chemist.

I know I tried running a reaction with quite a bit of heat

in a matter of an hour or two and it almost had no reaction at all.

So I put it over a little magnetic stirrer

that throws off a small amount, a small amount of heat.

And it's just slightly warm.

Maybe 30 degrees.

And it's been that now for

a couple of months

And so his real fascination again is to make the to make chemicals with very small differences

and to test that, to see what those differences are.

You know, he's been willing to test them on himself

For the longest time period,

he's been the principal subject.

And all this mess around here,

except those things that dropped down thanks to squirrels

and other rodents

and birds.

Birds come down the fireplace periodically.

His fundamental driving force

is to understand how how these compounds work,

and what their differences are.

Rather than just to get loaded.

I sure collect a lot of stuff.

My God I was looking the other day, and I said, "Where did I get all this stuff?"

But I used it all at one time or another.

Of all things this is to imitate

a

egg-sucking leech.

If you can believe that.

Oh I was gung ho for

working for the government and doing some good.

Yeah in 1969 I transferred to

at that time was Durham Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs

and took over as the director of the crime lab in San Francisco.

That was my grandfather's weapon.

Well muzzleloader.

And it was

very

heartwarming to meet the agents, the other chemists.

it was it was like a family.

and they knew that if you had a problem, they would help you.

See my current collection.

Working on her.

I noticed on one of the pakanoids, there was some blue a couple of days ago,

but it think its pretty well gone now.

think it's pretty well gone now prove iana's attract a serious macro goodness

Just about every country and every culture on earth

has at least one visionary plant

that they they use

or that some of them use for altering consciousness.

Well, the cactus, how many, varieties do you think there are Ted?

In here?

No I mean overall, 50?

Yeah.

Perhaps 50 varieties of cactus.

And they are all chosen because they are all psychoactive.

I mean we have receptors for psychoactive drugs.

We do not have natural psychoactive drugs inside of us.

Why do we have the receptors and not the drugs?

Well perhaps at one time we had the drugs.

As part of a metabolic process we generated the drugs that made the

psychedelic state a natural state.

And these people then, I guess, see the potential of

looking at the tooth of a saber-toothed tiger and saying

"Oh look at the pretty designs on this tooth,"

and as a consequence of dropping your

defenses against an enemy, be removed from the gene pool.

So perhaps those

people who did turn on because of endogenous psychedelics,

were removed from the gene pool.

And therefore they are no longer there.

The drugs are not made in the body,

but the acceptors are still there.

Because the receptors were not the hazard.

It was a drug that was generated that was the hazard to survival.

So that is maybe why some of these plants with their psychedelic components

turn you on because the receptors are intact from generations.

But the natural, psychedelic

metabolites in the body no longer exists.

Is it the path you should avoid or a passage go down?

I don't know how you can answer the question until you start down the path.

I really don't.

If we could get two seats over here and a little bit more in the

shade I would love that.

I'd feel much better about everything.

It's been, I think, a little bit embarrassing, e

especially to my children,

that I had written quite a lot about

making love under the influence of psychedelics.

These books have been an exploration,

not just of the effects of drugs but

of the effects of these particular drugs on us.

Chemical structure.

Outline of synthesis.

Biochemistry, pharmacology, legal status.

What I saw a lot in the work I did,

doing raids on clandestine laboratories.

You have that whole class of people that know nothing about what they're doing.

But they read things on how to make a drug

and they screw it up and I mean they'd cost a lot of damage.

Not just to themselves but to their families.

To the surrounding area to the environment.

We really had some dummies.

Huh, man I mean,

total idiots.

Trying to cook drugs it's, its just..

That's what made it so dangerous,

because we never really knew what they were doing, cause they didn't know what they were doing!

Bond to carbon, bond to another carbon, and then back into the ring.

You have a fine membered ring,

you're a chemist,

and therefor your benzene ring has two rings

alongside it, on either side, hence the idea of fly, as if there were wings.

In some areas you don't want to teach a teenager how to make a bomb, you just don't.

You have to synthesize it yourself.

I don't think it's ever ever been commercially available

I've been dying to meet you.

I so honor you, thank you.

Thank you very much, yes.

Yeah it was a good agency, uhm.

And they were all dedicated.

They believed in what they were doing.

But it changed.

Sorry.

Oh yeah,

it will rain sometime tonight.

When I was

in high school

my father was never speaking on the telephone.

He wanted to be in person, in private.

He always thought the phones might be tapped.

And I never questioned that they might be tapped

it's just that I couldn't

think of why they were wishing to persecute my father.

There's fire in here. We got ethyl ether in here.

Everybody out of here. You too.

Mr. cameraman this is a safety issue now you can take your pictures,

but you're going to do it out of the area.

The trouble started only when the first book had been published.

He said, "holy mackerel', or something to that effect.

This guy has a DEA license.

Sasha was on very good terms with a lot of the chemists in the DEA

because chemists love chemistry.

And here was

this maverick chemist.

He had a DEA license to do lab work.

And uh, you know. This is a respectable man a respectable scientist.

So you don't just barge in.

Did my wife invite you?

We were here for the call, let's move out of here.

I am very, I am very...

Are you trying to resist arrest? - I'm not resisting arrest!

One of them asked,

"You don't by any chance have any peyote here do you?"

We said, "Yeah right there next to your feet.

They just jumped.

Suddenly you realize that these people were really scared

of these things it's just a little damn cactus.

All we’re going to do,

is we’re going to figure out what you’re doing there,

and if what you’re doing is legal.

They didn't understand psychedelics.

They had the image of somebody out of control.

Somebody who didn't belong in decent society.

The whole process of

drug enforcement,

I found it to be a huge game with them.

I realized that my father was

active bait for these people.

The powers not delegated to the United States

by the Constitution.

Even though he didn't commit any crime,

there was never a charge filed

but they could they could

hound him and I understand this frustration.

Or to the people

And there's no mention in the constitution of drugs anywhere.

I mean...

I, I...

So is there a dark side to what Sasha did? Certainly.

Lots of people have used a number of these compounds and hurt themselves

significantly because of it.

So there is, yeah, there is a dark side to

to discovering this kind of information.

But I certainly wouldn't argue that it shouldn't be done.

Sasha's interest has been exploring than you know the nature and the limits of

the human condition through tweaking some of these

molecules to produce you know different and interesting kinds of effects.

That's really at its heart what

the clinical pharmacology is is about.

I mean we're studying the nature of

the human organism.

Well a lot of people think I created much

much grief and much sadness and naughty, naughty, naughty.

It was my first experience with mescaline.

Which is a psychoactive drug that's found in the peyote cactus and in many other cacti.

And I had experienced it.

Gosh what is that, 45-50 years ago?

I saw colors that I was totally unfamiliar with.

The flower and had a color that I couldn't give a name to.

I had recalled memories of childhood.

I've seen those with articulate clarity.

And then I thought,

"Why would 400 milligrams of white crystal have all of this in it?"

What it's doing is allowing me

to communicate with parts of me that I had not communicated with for a long time.

Pretty sure he was 15 when he enrolled at Harvard.

I think he only went,

maybe three semesters or something like that.

And emotionally it was very difficult for him because of his age compared to the

the age of the other people in the university.

Plus a difference in background.

I was curious in the Navy

when I study chemistry nights the Navy I had a big textbook that I carried around

for three years in the Atlantic and I memorized it in the process this was

kind of a neat challenge but I came out and went into chemistry in University

and then I took my doctorate work in biochemistry I won't have access to

exploring and interpreting the exploration of these things I did not

know where it's going to go but I went into industrial chemistry and there I

really caught the good luck of having predicted the structure of something

that would you go commercial and it was given total licence evidently he had

been one of the most productive chemists in the Dow Chemical organization and had

developed a series of insecticides that were making many millions of dollars for

the camera three division of the corporation and

they let him just do whatever he would felt like

that bridge could be the gateway to a whole world of Californian charms and

surprises when I was an intern in San Francisco 1962 to 1963

I just love drugs I was always interested in how drugs act and I wanted

to be a psychiatrist was particularly fascinated by drugs and the brain the

most crooked Street in the world as a curiosity in every Sunday my wife and I

and our friends would get together and quote experiments that was the

ceremonies in which President Bush made the National Medal of Science so I was

already fascinated by the psychedelic drugs and when I was asked to evaluate a

program involving drugs of that sort at the Dow Chemical Company I left it the

opportunity when I arrived there I learned all about what had been going on

with Sasha from that point on my all my Chemical thought process all my plans on

my structural synthetic designs we're in the area of taking the simple little

molecule mescaline 3 methoxy groups a little chain and a nitrogen and

modifying this atom modifying that atom change this atom to that atom change

this make it longer make this shorter add something else out here remove that

wear around this entire thing can I make all these changes one at a time and see

where what is it in this molecule that lets it fit into the receptor site that

causes a psychedelic action he argued to his superiors that this could be

therapeutically important at doses at which there was no risk of psychotic

effects and their attitude was if anything comes valuable will exploit it

independently and a lot of those were patented Sasha's work took this to a

level of serious corporate in even though this was the time of the

haight-ashbury district in San Francisco with publicity all over the United

States about the hippies taking LSD and other psychedelic drugs and how

irresponsible it was very very controversial for some the lifestyle of

the late 60s was bohemian dropouts from the corporate culture joined communes on

campuses in cities and on farms I was never part of the a - buri scene I was

interested in seeing where I was going and I would like to get what information

I could get from it as to what drugs are being used and I had made a couple of

allies in the Haight Ashbury to get little samples of materials and from

this I was able to identify them but some were things I had made and

published some are just totally from other other sources they may obtain

valid insights so often though all too often they do not and it turned on or

euphoric state step or attempt to fly from cliffs and high windows with

real-life permanent non psychedelic regimes

other tripperz attempt to merge their beans large the government was very very

scared of abuse of psychedelic drugs and there would be corporate risks of having

the Dow respected name associated with something that people could criticize

and because of that ultimately the Board of Directors are down decided not to go

forward with this drug development now no longer at Dow but I have my

laboratory set up at home and I continued making compounds of new

materials what would have happened if now administration had said let's go for

it that's quite possible that the careful use of the appropriate drugs

might well have been a big advance in psychiatry

yes okay

is our stairway they have it this black stuff in here is platinum

this is full hydrogen you look just like the Hindenburg this is actually a baby

psychedelic in here hmm something either maybe it's something about money that's

what I need I need good news about money well I know what this is yeah this is a

dopamine d3 antagonist that we're using to figure out what LSD is doing in the

brain my hands are stronger I'm working in the system doing it the way they say

you have to do it you know we have all kinds of OSHA rules and EPA rules and

all the radioisotopes have to be taken care of and that's always you know been

my shtick is if you want to make change happen at work inside the system have

you seen Sasha's life yeah so I mean what more can I say yeah I mean his is

really more of an alchemist hanging out with anything you know sort of fact it

was the almost simultaneous discovery of serotonins occurrence in the brain and

the discovery by Albert Hoffman of LSD that really made people look at the role

of serotonin in behavioral States because in the 1940s psychiatry didn't

really believe in neuro chemistry they thought it was all bad mothering

there wasn't nurturing whatever he had no idea that neuro chemicals could

affect the way that we feel so the discovery of LSD in 1943 and then the

discovery of serotonin in 48 and then its discovery in the brain in the early

50s people put two and two together and said you know LSD has this powerful

behavioural effect and it's got a piece of serotonin embedded in it and

serotonin in the brain so maybe serotonin has some effect on mood

regulation of course now we know it affects almost everything mood appetite

hunger sex consciousness you name it Stuart this is a guy who this is a guy

who made the mescaline or the psilocybin he's that he's the real copper here

there's probably not that many labs in the United States where peak al is a

desk reference and and usually and probably not where it's a desk reference

where the spine is broken from being opened up so much but that well there's

actually you know in as far as the synthesis of phenol amides are concerned

there's you know a lot of good work in there too you know so when you need a

quick you know a quick tickle to you know well how are we gonna make this

thing ethylene or this nitro styrene or something you look in there and see you

know what he did

so uh this is probably gonna be a little jarring because we have sort of a mix of

1970s technology and more current stuff going on but we've made a lot of

flashing lights and wires

this room here is where we do our more sort of long-term studies with dr.

shogun you know he made a pretty strong case for sort of self experimentation

and you know he talked about the fact that if you want to know what these

drugs are like you need to try them and you know he said that answers the

question and in his books you see that a lot and it answers some questions it

doesn't answer my questions so this is one of the good ones that dissolves

without much trouble you know I think there are certain things that you can

really only do in animal models right now where we can sort of study the

mechanism of action of these drugs we put the animals into these boxes here so

you know the whole cage fits right in this guy's got one of those probes right

now so we could throw them in there and fire it up and see what his temperature

is if we wanted to so what that animal is saying is that as we increase the

dose and get two active doses of this test drug in his MDMA like to them the

animals trained sort of you know put its head through there instead of pushing a

lever they use their head to break a photo beam and that's what counts is the

response working with animals really helps to sort of peel away some of the

sort of mystical veneer that has been put onto these drugs throughout the past

you're making a material that's never been I've never been looked at before

no one's ever made it and so you wonder is it is a psychedelic you don't know

you can't go to the literature cos is not in the literature it's a brand new

thing it meets you and you meet it you begin learning from it and it learns

from you you can define the basic emotions in animals but you don't find

the subtleties of the mental process and that's why you must use human subjects

and why you must be careful because sometimes you've been something that

doesn't unbend

what happens it's like your hair on your neck stands up a little bit something is

going on is that a little aura of beginning effect once I have found what

I believe is the active level then an joins me in an experiment to confirm

that it's not me that's strange but it's the compound it has the same action on

both of us to some extent and once that has been confirmed in our research group

will meet was the compound about maybe eight or maybe ten people and we'll

share the compound all around he is a little bit more sensitive so often he'll

take a little bit less he's a little bit in the refractory maybe a little bit

more and we're gonna get a feel of the whole group and then group all confirms

the activity you've answered the question what you have is part of the

self-preservation is to ignore 95% of the stuff that's out there you have a

person who's observing everything and remembers everything he can't cross the

street because he's fascinated by the green lights by the cars with a gravel

by the flies that are over there other thing but the fact that a car has a

little linker going and if he pays attention to everything he saw he'd be a

life's risk to go across a crosswalk crossing a street so he learned to turn

that off turn that off her and watch for the green light what's where the first

step foot goes down there glance right and left there's no car coming and you

get across the street safely you have to ignore 99% of what's around you to be

safe to achieve where you want to achieve what these things catalyze

letting you get access to those things you've been ignoring or have been

denying

Albert Hofmann was a Swiss chemist Swiss and German chemists were known for the

precision and meticulous techniques so he first made LSD in 1938 and sent it to

the pharmacology department he said what's not interesting and then he comes

back in 1943 and he has this really strong impression this sort of intuition

that they must have screwed up something I got to make that truck again so then

he gets some somehow in his body so we have a plum tree a sour cherry tree

peach tree Asian pear and an apple tree over there how does a meticulous Swiss

chemist get that in his body he can't tell you how I got in this body so let

me offer an alternate hypothesis first of all we know he had mystical

experiences when he was a child he talks about it he was walking out in the field

one day and he had this mystical experience so let me suggest that he had

a propensity to have a mystical experience shouldn't even let you see

this um so I've done such a bad job this year it just hasn't been watered I

haven't thinned it I haven't taken the weeds out I offered that hypothesis I

fact I told Albert I said you know I don't think you actually ingested any

that first time I think it was you had some kind of spontaneous experience and

that spontaneous experience was related to the fact that you had this strong

intuition issues you should go back and make more of it I've always haven't

always had a garden grown something so it's sort of a cosmic conspiracy like

and as a scientist I'm not allowed to say things like that so here's some

blackberries

so you think you know how the line works it just is a lot to be found you have to

find out by influencing changing disturbing I loves the use of

radioactive materials because you can scan yourself and find out where it goes

in the brain and that it's worth where's the mind where would you say the mind is

in the brain in the spirit in the gallbladder where is the mind in the

body when obvious think so mind you in the brain no no the mind I mean where's

the soul is it in you or around you

where's it located what does it look like it's rectangular is it round you

know I think the idea of a soul whatever it is whatever different people from all

over the world think it is it seems to me the commonality is that it's

something that continues after you're dead and to me that's crazy

I mean I don't understand how anybody could truly believe that when you're

dead you're dead I used to get really upset about it I used to you know tell

him like I've lost too many people but I love to not again that there's a heaven

and I'm just thinking oh they're running away you know so and he would just be

like no that's what happens you know why would a great boy oh I'm just gonna

freeze my head you know but she really doesn't like the idea freezing my head

at the moment of death so that I can get it grafted onto a cloned body when they

can cure whatever it wasn't killed me

yeah bang in some new future chicks that aren't you very jealous it's to death

till death do us part right I'm out what's your dad I think the brain is

what most people mean when they say the mind I think the brain is what most

people mean when they talk about their personality who

they are you know what they believe how they feel things like that

that stuff's controlled by your brain it's controlled by brain chemistry

that's why the drugs that we give to treat people that are having emotional

problems you know problems with anxiety depression aggression you know on and on

the drugs that we give them they don't work by affecting your heart you know

they don't work by affecting your spleen or your you know your liver or your god

or your lungs they go into the brain and they change brain chemistry and when you

change brain chemistry you change psychology

I was curious to know about the effects of these drugs that hadn't been studied

very carefully clinically for 35 years and we decided wouldn't it be

interesting to undertake a study with a classical hallucinogen that are alleged

to model primary mystical experiences

psilocybin is from the mushroom which has been used sacramentally for

thousands of years hi roland griffiths you can tell them

that you're working in a research pharmacy they see Rite Aid or something

they have no clue now if I sum this much

but I don't think they know what psilocybin is and I can't say that I

held up much hope that psilocybin would necessarily be a very good model I mean

it almost sounds ludicrous you know and what percentage of God did you

experience eat people typically we go well you know when my firstborn

you know was delivered that changed me forever I'll never forget that moment

and my father recently passed away and that was deeply moving and say you know

it's kind of like that I don't like that so it it was it was an experience of

that order of magnitude I had no idea instead of either or either or it's both

an both an both and this is eight hours laying on a couch here at Johns Hopkins

I died but I've never been more alive there's something at his core that has

to do with the core of ethical and moral behavior about the sense of

interconnectedness of all people and things at its heart

we're talking about altruism and it's first sentence we're talking about love

and caretaking for other people and for the environment and we have the

opportunity to study that I can't imagine anything more important than

that sitting beside someone who is it whose

consciousness is entering into these profound realms that's at the extreme

it's almost like you're like sitting beside the Buddha under the bow tree is

enlightenment is happening baptise you're mystique you become aware of

yourself as a glowing thread in a tapestry and all those you know cliches

but they the cliches are based on real experience and real feeling your real

sensations and they don't mean anything unless you and unless they have

influence on what you do with your life

children live in the world that that we revisit with psychedelics almost

invariably the first experience with a psychedelic person will come out of it

saying oh it was all so familiar to advance spiritually you have to

encounter your monster your your shadow the shadow is created by parents and by

our society our neighborhood out of those things which we learn as children

we cannot do we can't grab a toy from the other child just because we want the

toy we can't kill of a baby sister just because you know we resent the fact that

she's taken over the household there are certain things the impulses that have to

be controlled but they don't disappear from the psyche they become repressed

and all of us have that if we're socialized if we're able to live in in

society or we have a shadow side well when you have four children somewhere

along the line you learn how to cut pumpkins because you don't want them

cutting them very small as a lay therapist I spent about a year and a

half almost two years with patients doing work on the shadow that part of

yourself that you are ashamed of and that you also believe you cannot live

with with a good psychedelic tool we have the

patient step into the body of the monster and turn around and look out its

eyes at which point there is no fear there is

immense strength and looking out the eyes of your own monster you begin to

make friends with it it it never becomes entirely civilized but it can become

your ally

it was a depressed state and a lost my balance

so I seeing a psychiatrist and at the time MDMA had not been controlled and it

was not even a prescription drug but it was available and she prescribed it to

me and man it it totally changed my life

it's called by the psychiatrist who uses a name pathogen it gives you empathy for

yourself I relive the thing that I'm were

surprised I wipe this out I was in the first grade in great school and the

we're in an old old building and it had the big high plaster ceilings or 12 feet

high and the ceiling collapsed and the plaster fell on his kid that was right

in front of me hit him on the head and busted it all open and then collapsed my

desk right down on my legs and here he has his head back bleeding on me and I'm

trapped under here all the other kids screamed and they were run out of the

room and I'm trapped and well that's oh what a feeling then I had strangely

enough survivor guilt but anyway after those two episodes got rid of that

trapped feeling so that was a big benefit to me

last year my father was dealing with that like suicidal issues in talking of

him I found out that he's had it since he was a child I was able to take the

information that you that you talked about and reveal to him things about his

shadow to get him to open up and so if I credit you and helping to save my

father's life and so I want you to know I like I'm

getting goose before just telling me that but thank you so much

between mind and brain when you die the brain is becomes non-functional do you

do you believe that the mind may still be functional in the absence of a brain

do you think the soul might be functional in the absence of a brain I

remember one time I was on an experiment I forget the chemical doesn't matter but

as I was in fact you were with me we were together and I was looking at the

clock because it was interesting to see the second hand of the clock way around

and as I was watching the second hand the clock it was going slower and slower

and slower and we decided how much slower could you get it to go so he

watched the second hand we worked together and he got the second hand to

work very very slowly moving and it another second occurred is now within

six seconds of eating the bottom of this down number six down there and then a

little while later sometime later another second occurred but each one was

taking long as in the previous second and occurred to me if the clock were to

stop what defines death and suddenly I realized I had taken a chemical that's

causing the clock to slow down continuously and we both snapped around

out of it and the clock went normally again

no he chickened out if you are approaching death in asymptotic way

where you're getting closer and closer and closer to time and you never touched

that baseline your eternal your life is eternal you just going to get a smaller

piece

questions opening up to to it yeah yes yeah you're going in you do so you don't

have to walk up your floors up there yes

every new generation automatically wants to break the the bonds created by the

older generation I mean that's what that's part of their job is to you know

stretch things and never trust anybody over 16

sascha likes to say there is no casual experiment and when you're dealing with

the human psyche especially the past that's not conscious most the time

you're dealing with life and death sometimes whether you expect to be or

not

so all you can do is is write down the things you know and the cautions you

know if you do this this way you could probably be safe always use a babysitter

etc etc

any child with any amount of intelligence is going to be curious and

want to find out what it is that the grown-ups are saying no to and the

children are they see themselves as eternal yeah they will never die because

they they're young they're they that the whole life ahead of them goes on forever

it's only when you get up into the end of the 30s you begin realizing maybe it

is not eternal

yeah

I don't usually do my experiments in the lab I usually go to my office or the

house and where I have the assurance of someone else there in case if somebody

is quite a miss and occasionally you get into a situation with it with a new

material that you don't know where it is I have a classification of minus plus

minus plus two plus three plus --is to give the relative potency of something

there is one unusual category that I have only used twice or three times in

my life of four pluses anything and everything that occurs is at your

command you can look at a cat up in the hill and the cat looks at me and I smile

at the cat and the cat runs away you are controlling that cat you have control

over everything around total control of my environment told him list and it

occurred to me after about half an hour of this extraordinary state what if the

thing we're not reversible could one stay in a state of bliss for the rest of

his life it's pretty scary thought to be able to control everything totally and I

was very happy when it began drifting away and went back to her just a plane

plus three a super stone state but these are little things can occur center of

that ilk that are disturbing because you suddenly realize there they may not be

reversible perhaps you have instituted a change and your mindset or your or your

sensory integrity that it's not reversible this is quite scary and this

has happened a couple of times

tiny bit of a breeze but

at the moment not even that much

lightness lightness running my own body my own show at my own pace could I Drive

a car no I couldn't drive a car but couldn't anyway because I'm blind

that doesn't that doesn't count but you could play the piano this is not not

with the ruling strings I'm standing up just a bit

he's trying to think of something out

no throw it on the bricks there ya go squirrels we get it first though I'm

pretty close to a close tree really

frankly they're very boring to me you only get a bloom once in a while you

can't control the bloom they'll bloom when they're ready to

bloom cactus I'm surrounded by them just as my

father is surrounded by them my father to my best knowledge may not even know

what I didn't mean research he probably intellectually knew of it

and was not was not considered not interested not know what it meant this

is my best guess I never thought of it I don't have any problem and understanding

the the Botanical structure I don't have a problem with the grafting I don't have

anything but cactus have this thing called spines and there's nothing I can

do to stay away from a spine but beyond that I'm not saying that what I have

done is less than or better than I can only say that it's quite different then

I deal in nuts and bolts hydraulic adapters fasteners or all different

kinds of structures things that you can't find at the normal hardware store

okay

and living out here I was totally in love that was a German girl D Silla and

she was married it was a very complex relationship because she wanted to move

in with me here but also she's loved her husband

that's after my wife's Testament later life death and service relationship will

end it is evolved into a very firm very firm partnership

oh yeah maybe it's not your eat as many videos no the piano I think it went out

of tune did not ask me but without shits that much I'm gonna try to find out if

it's my ears or the taliban's has shifted the whole herd out of tune we

have deep respect for each other we don't try and change each other

I treasure him as he is and he treats me exactly the same way it was right at the

passageway no I haven't the slightest idea why I put it there no we both

learned from unhappy marriages what not to do and I'm happy to say that after

having had three previous marriages for not great relationships so that's good

for my children to see too because they had awful lot of failed

marriages but in this case we both have a very strong common interest

psychedelic drugs and visionary plants but you know they're not the only way of

doing it but it's just chosen way you want the most famous example of ordinary

everyday on the state falling in love any time you fall in love if you go into

an altered state there is no question you can have a complete absolute

psychedelic experience by falling in love which is kind of nice

because nobody can legislate against that though they would have favored

because falling in love is also potentially very dangerous

maybe maybe not I may have to take my chances

because more more murders are being committed over the loss of a love

relationship than anything else in human experience right yes right

I don't know if that's done

it's time to turn that one off and there are people who have psychedelic

experience from the food and that has its dangers - oh my god

no I do not I'm guessing it's Sasha well go find

this go ask the guy with the white hair beer the mind is I think the allows you

of order touching of a consciousness how far out from you is your you the outer

universe where does your consciousness extend to where it is how how do we

communicate by word by motion by action these are things that are thought out

processes this is the the brain function the talking all the operations are brain

but the concept of an idea the expression of an emotion of a of a

empathy the the word is the concept of empathy originate only anyone knows

exactly what what what's meant by the term empathy in terms of actual

biological relationships with with others one theory is it like when you

have kids one of the reasons you bond with your children because you know

children are are are completely parasitic you know they eat your food

they sleep in your house they you know I mean there's there's no rational reason

I got to wonderful case there's no rational reason why anyone want children

right I mean you know but but but once you have them you give them anything

right you know so that's that's total empathic bonding

what's love you know what is what is what what is that

is there a biology of love undoubtedly there is every human experiences love

right but you know is that different than empathy that area has been

underfinanced and under study

yeah you're right it's getting wet in here now I'm trying to make it a deal as

you get older you tend to get interested in more spirituality is there life after

death that sort of stuff I may wind up there one day myself but you know the

psychedelics have multiple effects for sure you could imagine efforts through

chemistry that define a new molecule which is subtly different from the ones

we know of that is now able to give you for example an anti-anxiety effect with

one of these sorts of drugs without the psychedelic action we need new

anti-anxiety medications we need better antidepressants the antidepressants that

we have are terrible they rarely are as good as placebo when you test them but

they're very widely prescribed there's a load of people on them they come with

all sorts of side effects sexual side effects metabolic side effects leading

to weight gain things like that who wouldn't want something better than that

and you know that's sort of where I see myself

you'd you want to respond to this order

yeah when she's grant that up there are many doing but I did in the 50s to 60s

today he has a little laboratories but in the commentary of all the recipes I

left a lot of clues little clues ideas people are picking up on them and

they're pursuing them and that's exactly what I wanted

are you surprised your work would have such a creative influence he's an artist

I want this to be an encouragement with ideas I've got more ideas than I have

time or energy to exploit there are a lot of people working around the edge of

the law spending a lot of money turning a lot of wheels and put all a lot of

people in jail but it did not change the drug scene it just didn't yeah well I

know I'm awful glad to be out of it cuz I don't think we did a whole lot of good

we sure tried

hello friends that is indeed how are you hey buddy boy

yes good to see you

are you sue Republican about half sorry mom I don't care well I really don't

care anyway right there okay that's kind okay

xeno Zingo Xango okay okay and here's a nitrogen okay obviously CH double bond c

CH 3 ah come on no I think that way but you see

you look you can't do it there you are you complete you know how many years now

have you been friends oh my god since 1969 the pepper community here is right

in San Francisco 17th floor their ability yes oh yeah yes yes wonderful we

are going up to like a plus one and it's very what she was he it was that

conference I think where we got a picture taken together yeah it was great

Sunday afternoons my jobs keep the fireplace going and to make runs up and

down to the magic store room where we get chemical store I'm pretty good long

as I didn't get paid it was okay no to work in his lab ex Accord he was able to

get us standard for new drugs that are out on the street before we could get

him from headquarters she did all kinds of stuff for us we gave him an award for

his assistance 410 or zinc lead oxide metalwork water he's my brother

maybe we were brothers in a previous life no

watch me Buffy whoopee I don't hear it Kirito yeah come on out in the Sun babe

yeah so we're supposed to play for a hog roast next Saturday across the street

again

nuts red light red light they're like no walkie no walking

how much still to my story about the time I came to visit you and you had

figured out this formula result you know we used to get together once or maybe

twice a year at a meeting or something that's always fun it's nice when you can

talk to somebody who sort of understands your language what you're talking about

Sascha is basically retired he's trying to write up his final book I take a

printout I can't even read that anymore now you know secretly down down secretly

I wish they were drugged we could find that could someone could take it and

they could go do you realize how fucked up you are in your thinking you know do

you realize what you've done you know what we as the most advanced

civilization world what have we done we landed on the moon but other than that

and we had the best weapons we have the best stealth missiles the best stealth

bombers you know the best machine guns the best laser-guided missiles I mean is

that something to be proud of you know I don't think so try to pick up a few

hints and get better so when I retire I can play with a band and some blues band

and say here's dr. Dave on the harp used to be the world's LSD expert and now he

plays blues harp for us

the sort of existential questions that people have I am just not sure that

science is what you want but I don't take these drugs I haven't had one of

these experiences before and if someone who had were to sort of argue that you

know that's missing the core of the experience I would say okay you know

that I accept that you know fill it in for me you know what do you got

Oh Agis little pills our hair

okay mr. red come on

that's like totally an amazing sight it's handwritten mouth you know drawing

molecules on bottles and stuff like that it's way cool I think it's just art he

does it so beautifully his notebooks are filled with this with these he calls

them dirty pictures and when you consider that each one of those is

probably weeks the months of work and in the some hundreds of compounds that he's

synthesized and tested when I first started doing serious work here Sasha

hadn't been working and has been invaded by local critters but his vision and his

intuition are still very lively I'm sure I could not keep up with all the things

that he would like to make but I'm gradually getting a little better and

there's there's a long way to go okay so now it's down to 50 degrees even see an

IPA at 50 degrees yes good enough so it's good okay and we got a little over

one and a half grams of total cleaned five methoxy Nault out of that I'd

middle you'd have bought wouldn't you right methyl how long for to me so we

don't have methyl yet no so this is really mono that'll trick me

right except Kali in law then you're into into oh you're into ambiguity

ambiguity right and lord knows you got all the ambiguity we can we all can

possibly want yes

I did not have a go I still don't have a goal what I am looking for is learning

from the process what's the goal of a hole I can't think of a good analogy and

mccann Explorer you know there's a hill in front of them and these data see the

hallway filled with closed doors go through them and you find another

hallway as more doors it's an actually Marvis continuous process of discovery

maybe the mind does continue and the soul does continue when read the

observers over the normal clock see the brain stops

you

you

you