ONE
LSD
A Powerful Tool
Substance: LSD-25 (lysergic acid diethylamide), also known as acid and LSD
Schedule: I*1
A Brief History of LSD
LSD—lysergic acid diethylamide—was first synthesized on November 16, 1938, by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland, as part of a large research program searching for medically useful ergot-alkaloid derivatives. LSD’s psychedelic properties were discovered five years later, when Hofmann himself accidentally ingested an unknown quantity of the chemical.
The first intentional ingestion of LSD occurred some years later in 1943, when Hofmann himself ingested 250 micrograms—yes, micrograms.†1 He said this would be a threshold dose based on the dosages of other ergot alkaloids. Well, Hofmann found the effects to be much stronger than he anticipated. After ingesting the LSD, Hofmann got on his bicycle to go home. This came to be known as one of the most famous bike rides in all of history.
Sandoz Laboratories introduced LSD as a psychiatric drug in 1947. Then, beginning in the 1950s, the United States Central Intelligence Agency began a research program code-named Project MKUltra. Experiments included administering LSD to CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, mentally ill patients, and members of the general public. Some believe—in fact, many believe—they usually studied subjects’ reactions without the subjects’ knowledge.
The project was revealed in the U.S. Congressional Rockefeller Commission Report (on CIA activities in the United States) in 1975. In 1963, Sandoz’s patents expired. The same year, in 1963, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration classified LSD as an Investigational New Drug, which meant there were new restrictions on medical and scientific use. Several figures, including Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, and others, began to advocate the consumption of LSD, and it became central to the counterculture of the 1960s. Then, on October 24, 1968, possession of LSD was made illegal in the United States.
The last FDA-approved study of LSD in patients ended in 1980, while a study with healthy volunteers was made in the late ’80s. For the most part, research into LSD has been suppressed in this country. Why is that? By classifying LSD as a Schedule I substance, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) holds that LSD meets the following three criteria:
1) It is deemed to have a high potential for abuse.
2) It has no legitimate medical use and treatment.
3) There is a lack of accepted safety for its use under medical supervision.
Leading the Way
Four Pioneering Researchers on LSD
When it comes to LSD, there are four prominent scientists we will be talking with: David Nichols, PhD, an American pharmacologist and medicinal chemist; Amanda Feilding, Countess of Wemyss and March, an English artist, scientist, and drug-policy reformer; Stanislav Grof, MD, PhD, a Czech psychiatrist, one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology and a researcher into the use of nonordinary states of consciousness; and James Fadiman, PhD, an American psychologist, author, researcher, and lecturer in psychedelic studies.
A Seminar for the Like-minded
In the mid-1980s, the Esalen Institute held a special—by invitation only—seminar, inviting the very few scientists in the United States who were allowed by the U.S. government to conduct research on psychedelic medicines.
It was at this seminar that I first met Dave Nichols, PhD, a professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Purdue University. Nichols is our country’s, if not the world’s, leading scientist on the subject of LSD. Mild-mannered and straightforward, with no agenda other than pure science, he was the perfect person to conduct research on a topic that garnered so much controversy. Being one of the only—if not the only—scientists allowed to research LSD, a great deal of weight has been on Nichols’s shoulders. Here, we shall find out some of what he has to report.
The Biochemistry of Changes in Consciousness
David Nichols, PhD
November 15, 2011
DAVID NICHOLS, PHD, holds the Robert C. and Charlotte P. Anderson distinguished chair in pharmacology at Purdue University College of Pharmacy. He is also a distinguished professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology and is an adjunct professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Dave has published nearly three hundred scientific articles and is recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on the chemistry and pharmacology of psychedelics.
Learning from the Past, Working in the Present
Early Research Cut Short by DEA Scheduling
Dr. Richard Louis Miller (RLM): Welcome to Mind, Body, Health & Politics, Dave.
David Nichols, PhD (DN): Good morning.
RLM: The DEA holds that LSD meets the criteria for Schedule I substances, that is, it is deemed to have a high potential for abuse, has no legitimate medical use and treatment, and there is a lack of accepted safety for its use under medical supervision. What does your research have to say?
DN: To begin with, the DEA’s definition of high potential for abuse really means that people will take it without a prescription. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it has the possibility of getting people addicted. On the safety issue, LSD has never killed anyone directly from overdose. It’s a fairly benign substance from a physiological point of view. Now, that doesn’t mean that it can’t lead to psychological problems, but from a physiological point of view it’s pretty safe. Also, lack of medical uses were really never documented. The research was nipped in the bud.
LSD’s Mark on the Field of Behavioral Psychology
DN: There was a lot of enthusiasm when LSD sprang on the scene in the early 1950s. In fact, it catalyzed a lot of neuroscience research. The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors [SSRIs] we use now for treating depression probably wouldn’t have arrived as quickly as they did if LSD hadn’t been discovered. Because of the profound effects of LSD on the human psyche, it really was the first point at which neuroscientists realized that there was a connection between brain chemistry and behavior. Prior to that time, if a child became schizophrenic, they would blame the parents or the mother, figuring the parents failed or that breastfeeding had failed.
There was no recognition that brain chemistry had anything to do with behavior. That seems kind of amazing today, but that actually was the situation. It was only within a few years of the discovery of LSD that serotonin was discovered in the brain. Looking at those two structures, researchers realized LSD actually has the same kind of chemical template as serotonin, and serotonin was in the brain, and LSD produces these dramatic behavioral changes—so they realized maybe there is some relationship between brain serotonin and behavior.
Early LSD Research: A Scattershot Approach with Promising Prospects
DN: With all of the enthusiasm and excitement, they tried LSD in almost any imaginable condition: for autism . . . alcoholism . . . sexual dysfunction. You name it, they tried it—to see what it could do. It was usually given by poorly trained therapists, or lay therapists, or self-proclaimed therapists, because you could get the drug easily.
There were thousands of papers published on the uses of LSD, but they weren’t done to rigorous standards. So we don’t really know what can be done. There certainly were tantalizing hints that LSD might be useful in treating alcoholism or substance abuse. One of the best-documented uses was for treating anxiety and depression in terminal cancer patients. Between 60 and 70 percent had alleviation of symptoms and, in some cases, a reduction in need for pain medication. Under proper medical supervision, the safety of LSD was not really an issue. When used in a proper and appropriate medical context, the incidence of adverse effects is very small.
How University Research Is Suppressed
Lack of Funding and Champions for the Cause
RLM: Why is the research still so limited among serious university researchers like yourself?
DN: Research is driven by funding mechanisms. For almost thirty years, I was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse [NIDA] to study hallucinogens, or psychedelics. My research is fundamentally focused on how they work in the brain. How do they produce their effects? When there is widespread use in the population, NIDA says we should throw some money at it. So for cocaine, MDMA, and new synthetic cannabinoids like “Spice,” they say, “We need to look at that.” So they put money there. People were not using hallucinogens to that great of an extent. That’s part of it. Also, government agencies are driven by in-house programs that study marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and so forth—all the substances that are serious problems in their view—so that’s where they put the money. Hallucinogens are not really something they’re that concerned with.
Since these substances became controlled, and especially Schedule I, you have to receive a special license to study them. You have to say exactly how you’re going to use LSD, how much you’re going to use, and how long you’re going to use it. That all has to be approved by the DEA, and I believe they now even include the FDA in requiring approval. The approval process can take anywhere from six months to two years, and then you have to have a secure place to store the substance—even if it’s a relatively small amount. Suppose you ordered five milligrams of LSD, which wouldn’t be a huge amount. The DEA’s concern is that you would still need the same kind of storage safeguards and record keeping you would need if you had much larger amounts. Scientists know this is a hassle, and they don’t want to have to do this. I have to get a special registration and I have to pay a fee. With respect to clinical research, that’s an order of magnitude—more regulation than animal or test-tube research.
RLM: So a person needs a great deal of inherent interest to want to go through the hassle and impediments of getting the protocols accepted?
DN: Basically, you need personal motivation or reasons to devote yourself to this kind of activity. For example, it has taken a few years to get approval for the recent studies with psilocybin. You also need approval by the institutional review board.
There are maybe half a dozen people in the world who really believe that these things have some value and have a sort of personal commitment to making it happen. But you don’t see a large-scale movement to study these substances, in contrast to something like cancer or HIV/AIDS. Everyone is aware that cancer is a big problem. A young researcher might have had somebody in her family who had cancer, so she will go into cancer research. Or maybe someone had an acquaintance die of HIV/AIDS. You don’t have the feeling in the population that psychedelics are really an important field. It takes a personal commitment by a few people, whom I would call visionary, to look at this and say, “There is something there that’s valuable, and we need to pick through it, find little nuggets, find out what they are, and bring them out for medicine.”
Psychedelics: A “Career Killer”
RLM: When I was a young graduate student, there were some topics of research we were told were almost career killers. One of them was hypnosis, for example. I remember talking to Ernest Hilgard of Stanford University, a behaviorist who did years of rat research until he eventually became a full professor at Stanford, after which he began doing research into hypnosis. Hilgard said to me directly, “I made my career in rats so that I could finally do the hypnosis research. I knew if I went into hypnosis first, I’d never get anywhere.”
DN: Studying psychedelics would be another career killer for most people.
RLM: You’re saying there’s about a half dozen around the country . . . that’s like Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins doing the psilocybin research that’s been getting some press . . . Charles Grob down at Harbor-UCLA Medical . . .
DN: Right, also Steve Ross. We have another fellow, Michael Bogenschutz, at University of New Mexico that is now looking at psilocybin in treatment of alcoholism. And then Franz Vollenweider in Zurich, Switzerland, has a laboratory where he’s doing a lot of basic clinical science research. All of these people are actually involved in the Heffter Research Institute, which I founded in 1993 to carry out legitimate research with these substances.
The Biggest Job Requirement for a Psychedelic Pharmacologist: Curiosity
DN: In 1970 we had the Controlled Substances Act, and soon these things all became illegal. I had studied the chemistry of these substances as a graduate student from 1969 to 1973, and I was looking forward to doing some pharmacological work and understanding how they worked. In fact, I did a postdoctoral fellowship in pharmacology in the College of Medicine at Iowa, and then I finished up, and they were illegal.
RLM: What piqued your interest to continue?
DN: I say to people, “Think of the things that can change your life, okay? You fall in love, get married, have a child . . . maybe a parent dies, a sibling dies, or child dies . . . or you get divorced . . . or you take a dose of LSD . . .” And suddenly people are caught off guard, and they look at you and say, “LSD?”
I say, “Yes. How is it possible that if you ingest a tiny amount of this substance, it will diffuse into your brain, stay for three or four hours, and diffuse back out, such that some people say they never see the world in the same way again? Some people are permanently changed for good or for bad, depending. How is it possible that a molecule can do that?”
I had been interested in philosophy—Who are we? How did we get here? What is man?—not real well-formed ideas. But it occurred to me . . . a drug that could do this must be interacting in a very fundamental place in the brain, a place that is important to determining who we are, how we perceive the world around us, and how we interact.
Unlocking the Secrets of Neuroscience
DN: When I started in the medicinal chemistry department, I developed what is called structure-activity series. You make a series of molecules, and you look at how active they are, and then you try to figure out why one was more active than the other. To use a crude analogy: You have a lock, and you don’t know what the proper key is, so you keep making keys and find out that in the first position it will push one of the tumblers up. You keep making more keys until you know whether or not a particular part of the key would activate one of the tumblers in the lock. Eventually you get a key that opens the lock. In medicinal chemistry, you make lots of related molecules with similar structures and then you do some kind of a biological assay [determination of the potency or quality of each molecule’s effect] and determine how potent they are with respect to each other. You look at the most potent and least potent, and you ask what they have in common and how they differ. This was an indirect way for me to probe, “Where is the site in the brain where they bind? What is the site ‘looking for’ when it binds these substances?”
RLM: Were you yourself taking LSD at the time during graduate school?
DN: No. Maybe I would have made more discoveries if I had been. Basically I was figuring out how to make these synthetic compounds. It was clear that a lot of these compounds, called substituted amphetamines [related to mescaline], had optical isomers, meaning they were sort of two forms. Nobody had found a good way to make those two forms, and as a graduate student, I found a way that we subsequently patented. I was making tools and finding molecules that other people could use in their models to do the assays. I really didn’t do much in the way of biological assays until my postdoctoral work.
The Mystery of a Mind-Changing Molecule
RLM: One dose of LSD can create life change. That is what you’re talking about, and that is what many of us know. Why?
DN: I can’t give you the answer to that question at this point.
RLM: Still under investigation?
DN: Yes. LSD is unique among all of these compounds. You have mescaline and there are a whole series of derivatives that have names like DOB, DOI, 2C-I, and 2C-B. None of them really have the profundity of effect that you see with LSD.
We’re trying to figure out what LSD does that makes it different from these others, and we haven’t really discovered what it is. We think part of the secret is that LSD interacts with a dozen or so receptors, whereas if you look at something like mescaline or psilocybin, they really only interact powerfully with a couple of brain receptors. But we’ve been doing studies looking at the actual receptor itself that these drugs bind to, mutating and changing the amino acids, and looking at how these drugs bind. LSD has this one feature—the diethylamide part of lysergic acid diethylamide—that seems to interact with this flap at the top of the receptor. We’ve made about twenty-five different derivatives where we’ve made the diethyls into rings—big rings, small rings, and all kinds of things. When we make a change like that the molecule invariably loses about 90 percent of its activity in the models we used. So there is something going on with that diethylamide. We think that the receptor folds over and interacts in way that produces a change in the receptor that we haven’t quantified yet. It’s a very complex problem, though.
A Serotonergic Clue
DN: All of the psychedelics also interact or activate the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor.
RLM: Why is serotonin so important, and why does it get so much press?
DN: Serotonin is a very ancient and foundational neurotransmitter. There are three kinds of what we call monoamine neurotransmitters in the brain: dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. All of these transmitters are produced by neurons that come from groups of cell bodies at the top of the brain stem, or in the lower midbrain—right where the spinal cord enters the brain. The raphe nuclei are neurons that make serotonin and send their projections to all parts of the brain.
There are fifteen different types of receptors known for serotonin—far more than for dopamine and norepinephrine. If you build a phylogenetic tree, you find that serotonin goes way back into evolutionary history, occurring in paramecia and simple insects. It was employed early on in evolution for a variety of things—including brain development and all kinds of systems development. In humans, we know that serotonin neurons project into virtually all parts of the cortex and higher areas of the brain. They’re involved in emotions—anger, rage, hunger, sex drive, cognition, depression, mood, and more.
LSD Modulates Information the Brain Counts as Relevant
RLM: So it is a major information transmitter?
DN: Well, dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine are really modulators of other systems. The real hardwiring in the brain uses fast transmitters, such as glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid [GABA], and to some extent acetylcholine. Serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine will modulate those systems—regulate them up and down. The hardware is driven by glutamate and GABA, and ion transport. Serotonin modulates those systems and makes them more reactive or less reactive. That’s probably the best analogy I can give.
The most ancient, as far as I can tell, are the serotonin 2 receptors, which come in three variations: 2A, 2B, and 2C. It turns out that the serotonin 2A receptor is heavily expressed in a lot of the areas of the brain involved in cognition and higher cortical processing. It’s also heavily expressed in the primary visual cortex, so with low doses of psychedelics you see a lot of visual illusions and distortions. People say the walls are melting, or they see moving patterns in carpets, and so forth.
RLM: What’s happening when one seems to see the desk breathing, or the wall breathing—like a Dali painting, where the pieces seem to be melting? Are these illusions or distortions?
DN: The first place visual information goes is from the eyes into the primary visual cortex, and so it clearly is going to be corrupted at that level, but then it gets processed at higher centers, where you put it together to make sense out of it. All of that architecture is affected by LSD as well.
There are also serotonin 2A receptors in the area called the thalamus and in the reticular nucleus of the thalamus—a gateway center in the brain that decides what sensory information gets sent to the cortex for processing. Normally, in everyday life, you’re not attending to every possible thing that’s going on in your body or around you: the muscles that are maintaining your posture, the temperature in the room, or noise you’ve become accustomed to. Your brain shuts out the things that are not relevant sensory information.
There are serotonin 2A receptors in the part of the brain referred to as the searchlight of attention, the locus coeruleus, which is a novelty detector. So if something in your environment happens that is novel—if you turn around when you hear somebody slam the door in your studio—your locus coeruleus starts firing and calling your attention to it.
There are serotonin 1A receptors in the raphe nuclei themselves, which are the cell bodies that send out these serotonin projections to all parts of the brain, and they also fire at different rates, depending upon whether their serotonin 1A receptors are activated. LSD also activates serotonin 1A receptors.
RLM: So the serotonin that the public hears about—particularly with the advent of the SSRIs—it’s not sending different messages, each having a direct effect. Rather, it is a modulator, or a governor, of the serotonin that is having an effect on these other neurotransmitters. So it is your serotonin governor that’s being affected when serotonin is affected, is that correct?
DN: Yes, psychedelics activate serotonin 2A receptors, which are important in determining your level of awareness, your vigilance, your cognitive processing. These receptors are heavily expressed on neurons in the prefrontal cortex, where you make your executive decisions . . . where everything kind of comes together, and you create your own reality. Psychedelics change the firing frequency of those cells, so every place in the brain that is involved in cognition and consciousness is directly or indirectly affected when psychedelics stimulate these serotonin 2A receptors.
The Interplay of Serotonin 2A and 2C Activation
DN: All of the psychedelics activate the 2A and 2C receptors about equally. In some cases they are even more effective at the 2C receptor than at the 2A receptor. The interesting thing is that activation of the 2A and 2C receptors produces opposite effects on brain chemistry. Activation of the 2A receptor enhances the formation and release of dopamine. Activation of the 2C receptor suppresses formation and release of dopamine. These two receptors in various parts of the brain actually oppose each other. All the studies have suggested that the key thing a psychedelic does is activate the serotonin 2A receptor, and they ignore what goes on at the 2C receptor because it doesn’t seem to be a player. For a long time I wanted to try to find a way to develop a drug that would be specific and only activate the 2A receptor without activating the 2C receptor.
RLM: To increase the dopamine . . . and that’s the connection with your Parkinson’s research, I imagine?
DN: It goes beyond that. There are a whole host of functions where the two receptors just antagonize each other. So dopamine has one effect, but there are lots of others. We recently stumbled on a way to actually just activate 2A receptors. We’re now making some compounds that are selective for serotonin 2A receptors, just to make them as tools for people to use to say, “Okay, now you’ve got a drug that only activates the serotonin 2A receptor.” I’ve spent a lot of time with the Heffter Research Institute—although I’m not a clinician—dialoguing and trying to keep that fundraising going, and getting investigators interested in doing clinical research.
The Quantum Change in Consciousness
High-Dose Unpredictability
RLM: How do you connect the size of the psychological effect with the psychopharmacological effect that you’ve been describing for us?
DN: I believe there is actually a sort of quantum change in consciousness when people have these life-changing events. At lower doses, sensory information is all that’s being altered by this drug—the curtains breathe, walls breathe, maybe you close your eyes and see colored patterns that move with the music—but at a certain point, and at some doses, it’s unpredictable. In a lot of cases, all that external sensory change in your environment disappears, and you are projected into a novel environment of another place and time. It may have beings in it. It may not have beings. You may have a perception of a creator. There is something different that happens there that no one has been able to trap yet.
Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins found that something like 60 percent of people had what he called a “mystical transcendental experience” (see chapter 3). In all of the research with psychedelics, when they’ve seen a permanent, powerful change, it has generally occurred following one of these intense mystical transcendental experiences that is ineffable . . . indescribable. People believe in some cases that they have had a vision of paradise or that they have spoken with God, or Buddha, or whatever. Nobody understands what happens there, and I think there’s fundamentally a difference that occurs—some kind of a quantum state in the brain that changes. No one knows exactly how or why that happens, but it has to be related to these 2A receptors.
RLM: What is the higher dose that occasions these experiences?
DN: It’s rare to see that happen for the kinds of doses that are available on the street today—between 20 and 60 micrograms—although under the right circumstances it could. But in the ‘60s, when LSD was available on the street in tablets containing between 150 and 400 micrograms, most people who took a dose like that would have difficulty maintaining contact with the environment they were familiar with. But a high dose doesn’t guarantee that, and a low dose doesn’t preclude that.
Resetting Behavioral Subroutines
RLM: Do we know what size dose is best for psychotherapeutic use?
DN: It depends upon the kind of psychotherapy. There were two kinds of therapies: psycholytic and psychedelic. Psycholytic was where you would give a relatively low dose to the person and engage them in cognitive therapy—talk therapy, if you will.
Psychedelic therapy was where you really didn’t do much except prepare the patient beforehand and give them a very large, overwhelming dose. The idea was that if you prepared them correctly, their own brain and mind would realize what the problem was and come to a solution.
A really interesting case was published back in the ‘70s about an individual that developed severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. He had to quit his job because he would have to wash his hands a dozen times and use four rolls of toilet paper every time he went to the bathroom. He was given LSD without any therapy at all—just put in the room and told to think about whatever—and there was a nurse and doctor available. The patient took LSD, virtually alone, about once a month for a year, and he completely recovered his normal personality, got his job back, and his friends and relatives said he was better than ever. There wasn’t any therapy involved other than the LSD.
So the goal of psychedelic therapy is to produce a transcendental mystical state where you get a different perspective on things. Nobody can explain how it happens. I use the analogy of rebooting a computer. I believe we may accumulate what are called behavioral subroutines during life. These start to control the way you feel, the way you think, and so forth. We are not aware of them, because they’re running in a subliminal way. Whatever this psychedelic effect is, it somehow reboots and inactivates some of these dysfunctional behaviors. I’m just speculating on the evidence.
RLM: A very interesting way of looking at it.
Artist, Researcher, Reformer
Now, I want to move on to my second interviewee, researcher Amanda Feilding. I am very fortunate to be able to include her historic research on brain imaging and LSD in this book, because this cutting-edge information became available after the initial draft of this book was completed. I met Amanda’s son, Cosmo, at the Mendocino International Film Festival where I sponsored and introduced a film he made, The Sunshine Makers. The Sunshine Makers is about the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which at one time was one of the world’s largest distributors of LSD. Subsequently I was introduced to Amanda by my good friend Nick Cozzi, PhD, a research medical pharmacologist at the University of Wisconsin. Amanda is a major force in England toward creating medicine policies based on science.
LSD Brain-Imaging Studies
Amanda Feilding
Excerpt from July 7, 2016
AMANDA FEILDING is an English artist, scientist, and drug-policy reformer. In 1998 Amanda founded the Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust that promotes a rational, evidence-based approach to global drug policy and initiates, designs, and carries out pioneering neuroscientific and clinical research into the effects of psychoactive substances on the brain and on cognition. She is dedicated to investigating novel treatment pathways for mental and physical conditions as well as developing new means to enhance creativity and well-being.
RLM: Today we’ve got an exciting interview with researcher Amanda Feilding. Welcome to Mind, Body, Health & Politics, Amanda.
Amanda Feilding (AF): Thank you.
RLM: My understanding is that you originally set up the Beckley/Imperial Research Programme. When was that, way back in 1998?
AF: No, it was a long way after that. I set up the Beckley Foundation in 1998 in order to do scientific research and discover the mechanisms that underlie changes in consciousness. Then in 2005 I initiated a collaboration with professor David Nutt at Bristol, and that in time became the Beckley/Imperial Research Programme—in 2009. Things move very slowly. Now, finally, a shift is happening.
RLM: Given that Albert Hofmann discovered LSD in 1938, I believe.
AF: That was the first time, but then no one recognized that it had any interesting effects. Do you know the story? It’s rather amazing. The first LSD was discarded, as it was tested on animals, and no obvious benefits were noted. Then, five years later, he resynthesized it, as a result of a “peculiar presentiment,” namely that it might have other unknown effective qualities . . . something he’d never done for another compound. Then, somehow, he accidentally ingested some of the compound. That was in 1943. That is when the first LSD experience happened. He recognized the experience from mystical experiences in his youth.
RLM: That’s what is referred to as the Bicycle Trip, isn’t it?
AF: I think actually that was a few days later, when he took what he thought was the smallest dose you can take, 250 micrograms, which in fact turned out to be a very big trip, and it gave him quite an uncomfortable ride.
RLM: That was ‘43.
AF: Yes.
RLM: Then fast forward to 1966, when LSD was made illegal in the United States.
AF: Actually, I think federal law banned it in 1968, following the summer of love in ‘67.
RLM: Were you already doing research prior to 1966, or did your work start after that?
AF: In England it became illegal a bit later. I’d been studying mysticism and comparative religions, which had been my passion. Then I first took LSD in 1965, and in 1966 I met a Dutch scientist who had a new hypothesis of the mechanisms underlying changes in consciousness. It was then that I became fascinated with the scientific explanation of consciousness and how we could better understand it. It became my passion to do scientific research with it to explore these issues.
RLM: If you recall, tell us a little bit about your experience in 1965. The reason I’m asking for that is I want to put into context what we’re going to be leading up to. Our listeners will hear some of the history, but what we’re going to be leading up to is your recent groundbreaking research showing digital images of the inside of a brain on LSD and the placebo group that was not on LSD. Right now, we’re going to hear about Amanda Feilding’s first experience with this material, LSD, back in 1965 when it was still very legal in 1965 in England. Tell us about that experience, please.
AF: It was obviously an amazing experience, as people who’ve taken psychoactive substances know. It changes your visual experience and the way you hear music, and it provides a sense of wonder and unity. I, at that point, didn’t think it was a way of life. It was more of a wonderful trip to the fun fair. Then the following year I met this scientist named Bart Huges, who had a hypothesis about how it changes the cerebral circulation, increasing the volume of blood in the brain capillaries. He explained that with this knowledge you could control your experience on LSD and use it as a tool with which to increase your cognitive functioning, creativity, and productivity, apart from of course having transformational experiences, insights, and a sense of union and connectivity with the universe.
RLM: He was already hypothesizing back in the ‘60s about blood flow and oxygen being regulated by this medicine.
AF: Exactly.
RLM: Lysergic acid diethylamide.
AF: Yes.
LSD and Changes in Consciousness
Whole Brain Communication
AF: His other major hypothesis, which I found of even greater interest, described the ego as a mechanism of constriction that is superimposed upon the rest of the brain and is developed by conditioning from infancy onward, becoming the controller of the gates of consciousness. It decides what gets through to consciousness and what is repressed. Amazingly, that is what our recent brain-imaging studies with psilocybin and LSD have shown. In modern neuroscientific terms it’s called the “default mode network,” a top-down controlling network that, interestingly, has its blood supply reduced by psychedelics so that its repressing function is reduced, the brain becomes more anarchical, and the whole brain begins to communicate.
Increased Blood Supply for Expanded Consciousness
RLM: When this gentleman that you met way back then was talking about controlling, was he talking about our being able to voluntarily take control of the blood flow to different areas of the brain in order to get through this gatekeeper that we’re referring to as the ego?
AF: He described how the underlying action of a psychedelic substance is to constrict the veins, thereby increasing the volume of blood in the brain capillaries. Since the cranial cavity is a finite size it can only accept a larger volume of blood in the capillaries if an equal amount of cerebrospinal fluid—the other fluid volume in the brain—is squeezed out. By having more blood in the capillaries, there is more exchange of glucose and oxygen between the blood supply and brain cells. Likewise more waste products can be washed away. By changing the ratio between blood and cerebrospinal fluid in favor of blood, billions more brain cells are provided with sufficient energy to function simultaneously, and hence the expansion of consciousness one experiences on a psychedelic.
Bypassing the Ego Reflex Mechanism
AF: That is the basic hypothesis. The second hypothesis is about the “ego” being a reflex mechanism that is controlled through conditioning, and which then directs the blood where it is most needed. This ego mechanism controls the distribution of blood in the brain, and what becomes conscious and what does not. In a normal everyday situation, because of man’s upright position and the skull closing at the end of growth, there is less blood in the brain than is optimal. When the blood supply to the brain is increased through a psychedelic substance, then connectivity throughout the brain is also increased. Remarkably, that is what we are seeing in our recent brain-imaging studies of the human brain on LSD.
RLM: Remarkably, what you’re finding now, some fifty years later, is what this gentleman was hypothesizing to you as a young woman in your twenties, back in the 1960s.
AF: Yes. It is funny how long it has taken to get to this point. Of course, we could have been there twenty years ago if it wasn’t for the fact that politics obstruct science.
RLM: You listened to this scientist. You’ve had one experience in 1965 with this material.
AF: I had many more than one experience.
RLM: After the first one?
AF: Yes.
RLM: You’ve had more than one experience. You’re listening to this scientist. He’s giving you some hypotheses about how this medicine that you’ve now taken more than once works. How does that affect you? How does that affect the course of your life after that?
AF: It actually very much changed the course of my life. I had had a passionate interest, as I said, in mystics and the mysticism that underlies spiritual and religious practices. I studied under the leading professor of the time, Professor R. C. Zaehner of All Souls College in Oxford. I was fascinated with and wanted to understand the unifying experience that all religions hold at their center. Then when I experienced LSD, I realized, “Wow this is it. Aha! This is the experience that the mystics talk about.” For me, the description of the changes in blood supply—and how one could control those experiences by maintaining a normal glucose level in the blood—was very revealing.
The whole idea of the ego as this conditioned reflex mechanism that creates a veil between our perception of reality and actual reality through the veil of words made a lot of sense. I thought, this is so fascinating I will dedicate my life to researching more about it. I consider the study of consciousness to be the holy grail of scientific research. What is more important than a better understanding of our own consciousness? To be able to modulate the levels at which one is conscious is surely a very valuable new skill. This skill, of course, is not new, because obviously people have been doing it since the beginning of human civilization.
RLM: The search for consciousness and to understand consciousness indeed has been going on since the beginning.
AF: Yes.
Psychedelics Shake Up Rigid Patterns
RLM: Again, here you are. You’re a young woman in your twenties. It’s the 1960s. You’re in England. You see this as a life changer.
AF: Yes.
RLM: What do you do?
AF: I more or less devoted the next fifty years to this topic. For the first forty years it was totally taboo! Now it is less of a taboo, I hope partly due to my labors. I think at last, hopefully, society is beginning to recognize that these compounds are extremely valuable as tools to alter consciousness and to be able to study consciousness and that they can open up amazing new avenues of treatment for many of our most debilitating illnesses such as depression, anxiety, addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], and OCD, among others.
All of these conditions are based on rigid thought patterns and behavioral patterns. What our studies show is that under the influence of a psychedelic, these rigid patterns are shaken. They lose their grip. By losing their grip, there’s an afterglow once the psychedelic wears off.
United States’ Political Influence
RLM: Amanda, I want to ask you a very personal question. I know that you are connected to the highest levels of English government. It’s well known that you’re part of the nobility; you’re a countess yourself. My question is why do you think the English government has made this medicine illegal, and why do you think the English government has made basic scientific research at the very highest levels so difficult to do? What is your thinking? Why is that going on, please?
AF: To please America, to put it in the shortest possible way. It’s a disgrace, because actually David Cameron, before becoming prime minister, was in favor of reform, quite clearly, and spoke very well on it, saying more or less the same things that I’ve been saying. When he became prime minister, all of that was forgotten, and sadly his home secretary, Theresa May, only a month ago brought about a new act that prohibited and criminalized all psychoactive substances, even those to be made in the future.
Sadly, she’s just become our new prime minister. I would like to think that she will mend her ways and have a more thoughtful attitude. Maybe she will. Let’s hope so.
RLM: Do you think she’s coming from a place of concern about the United States government’s attitude if she thinks differently, or do you think it’s personal with her? What is your thinking about where she is coming from?
AF: I think she comes from probably a rather conventional, fearful, Middle England background on these issues. She’s probably genuinely fearful of psychoactive substances. But she should know from studying the literature and from what’s happening in other countries that if you want to protect the health of your children, and the children of the country, it’s much better to legally regulate these substances, take them out of the hands of criminals, and bring them into the hands of educated, government-sponsored systems where they’re regulated. One does one’s very best to minimize harm and protect children from use before a suitable age and to educate and provide treatment for those who get in the habit of misusing them.
I became involved in this fight back in ‘98, and then there was no scientific evidence about the negative effects of illegal drugs. I set about trying to create an evidence-base, and now eighteen years later there is very firm evidence that shows that strong prohibition actually results in greater harm than from the drugs themselves. Countries like Portugal, which have decriminalized all drugs, have a much lower rate of use and, more importantly, of harmful use. It’s going against the scientific evidence-base to be prohibitionist. America is changing within states, but the cruel thing is that the United Nations is completely controlled by the United States, and the UN controls all the countries in the world. All around the world, countries are having to keep psychoactive substances criminalized, whereas the United States of America can break their own conventions, and now their fastest growing industry is cannabis!
RLM: What is the prevalent thinking within the English government about why the United States government has continued to suppress scientific research in this particular area? How do the English see us about this?
AF: Actually, in the constitution of the UN, scientific and medical research is permitted. Sadly, the reality is that it’s made impossible. Firstly, it’s made so restrictive and so expensive that no one can undertake the research. Secondly, there’s no funding. No one wants to fund the research, because they think it might be bad for their reputation. Thirdly, no scientist wants to get near it, because again it could damage their careers and future funding potential. For fifty years, there’s been virtually no research on this incredibly valuable area of potential treatment. Now, luckily, because of the endeavors of a few small organizations like my own—the Beckley Foundation, Heffter, MAPS, and a few institutions like Johns Hopkins—it’s slowly becoming apparent that these substances can actually bring about remarkable results.
I think that this reality is slowly beginning to permeate public consciousness. I’ve always thought that it’s only through the very best scientific research that we have any hope of reintegrating these compounds into the fabric of society.
RLM: I totally agree with you that it’s only the best scientific research that is going to educate us and show us what is possible. The question we come back to over and over again is a question that you’ve dedicated your life to promoting: How do we open the doors to allowing the research? That’s why I’m coming back to the question of how English leaders view the United States and its sanctioning countries around the world who try to do this research.
I went to Israel some years ago with Rick Doblin, PhD, the founder of MAPS, and a group of scientists including Michael Mithoefer, PhD, who did the groundbreaking MDMA study that MAPS sponsored. While we were in Israel I was told by the head of their Supreme Court, “We would love to do this MDMA research with our posttraumatic stress disorder people, but we can’t, because the United States government will sanction us if we do.”
AF: Absolutely.
RLM: You’re validating that in England it’s the same feeling?
AF: Yes.
RLM: You’re educating us that it goes beyond England, and that the United States government has used its power in the United Nations to suppress research worldwide. The question in 2016 again is, what do the English think the Americans are up to in suppressing research around the world? Do they think we’re just crazy? Do they think there’s a reason behind it? What do they think? Are we just a country gone nuts that we suppress science? What do you all think about us?
AF: What I think about it is one thing, but the government doesn’t think about it at all.
RLM: They don’t even think about it?
AF: They don’t think about it. It’s not a topic that interests them. It doesn’t get votes in Middle England. Actually the interesting thing is the Americans—the U.S. government—have patented most of the cannabinoids while simultaneously criminalizing them. Way back in the ‘70s, they were patenting them.
RLM: Yes.
AF: It’s a very dirty business, actually. The whole war on drugs has caused untold suffering in countries around the world under the pretense that it’s to protect young people from drugs. Actually, the U.S. government had a whole load of different reasons for getting the war on drugs into other countries, such as controlling socio-political situations. It’s done more damage I think than any other civil intervention.
RLM: Political influence, of course.
AF: Yeah.
RLM: In this country we’ve got our prisons and jails disproportionately full of young black men who have been put away for relatively minor marijuana offenses.
AF: Absolutely. I think you are seven times more likely to go to prison if you’re black than if you’re white, and no more blacks use these substances than whites. It’s appalling. It’s the same in England. It’s a new form of discrimination.
RLM: Yeah, we learned that in Chasing the Scream.*2 I know you know the author, Johann Hari.
AF: Absolutely.
RLM: We have this painful situation. Our prisons and jails are full here. We have more people in jail I think than . . .
AF: Than any other country in the world.
RLM: Everybody knows that about us.
AF: Yes. Isn’t it the biggest growing industry in California?
RLM: The industry of institutionalization of people who have been convicted for minor offenses.
AF: Yes.
RLM: It’s a horror story.
AF: Yes.
Birthing Brain Cells with Ayahuasca
RLM: Within that horror story we’re going to come back to your breakthrough research that you were able to do after lifelong pushing, and we want to hear about it. Please tell us something about a topic that’s exotic to a lot of listeners: your research with ayahuasca.
AF: Yes, that’s very recent. We collaborated with a researcher in Barcelona called Jordi Riba, and he’s probably the leading researcher on ayahuasca in the world. Together, we have carried out a series of studies with ayahuasca, and this particular one you are referring to was looking at whether compounds in ayahuasca produce the birth of new brain cells.
RLM: The actual birth of new brain cells.
AF: Yes, it was done in a petri dish, with cells from the hippocampus of mice. It’s quite amazing how we saw a flood of new neurons.
RLM: I’m looking at one of your slides as you speak. I’m actually looking at a slide of young neurons, they’re stained green, and then mature neurons, they’re stained red. It’s a beautiful piece of work here, by the way. Thank you so much for it.
AF: Isn’t it exciting? It’s literally a very first phase, but as we all know many illnesses like dementia and Alzheimer’s result from the death of brain cells. We know now that new neurons can be made in the adult brain, which ten years ago scientists didn’t think could happen. This is a flood of new neurons. If this can be replicated in vivo, it could be a great step forward in the research of novel treatments for neurodegenerative diseases. I would be surprised if we didn’t find that other psychoactive substances also stimulate the birth of new neurons. That’s something I very much want to investigate next, to see if LSD might have the same effect.
LSD’s Burst of Connectivity
RLM: I want to discuss the study that was recently written up in the New York Times with photographs of your brain imaging. Please tell us about your digital-imaging research with LSD.
AF: Yes. That’s very exciting. My old passion from the ‘60s was investigating the changes in cerebral circulation underlying the changes in neural functioning brought about by LSD. The study we published in April and presented at the Royal Society in London shows how the visual parts of the brain act in normal circumstances, that is, on the placebo. Then, when the infusion of LSD takes place, one sees suddenly the whole brain is much more connected. Different parts of the brain are speaking to each other simultaneously. The whole brain is lit up with connectivity—the blood supply is increased.
There is a burst of connectivity, which goes a long way in explaining why, when on LSD, one has the feeling that one’s seeing is much, much deeper. You see beauty with incredible depth, and it’s the same with music. Everyone has always said how amazingly deep, vibrant, and wonderful musical and visual stimulations are when using LSD. That’s because the parts of the brain that are dealing with emotion and memory are all talking with the visual areas. They are informing the visual area. Indeed, we can now see the mechanisms of hallucinations, in that there is as much stimulation of the visual area of the brain with eyes closed as with eyes open.
RLM: I’m looking at a slide from your research, and it’s so dramatic. I’m looking at the slide of the brains from the subjects who had taken the LSD, and it’s bright. The whole brain is bright and lit up.
AF: Absolutely.
RLM: Remember folks, these slides were made by functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI]. We actually are looking at the inside of the brain, and I’m looking at photographs of these slides. The placebo subjects, who received no LSD, have little patches of lit up areas, but most of the brain is dark.
AF: Yes, absolutely.
RLM: It’s as if this is validating the stuff that we’ve been hearing all our lives on the street, which is that you only use 5 percent of your brain, or you only use 10 percent of it. It turns out, according to your research, that’s accurate.
AF: Yes, we certainly don’t use our brains optimally. That’s what’s so incredibly exciting. That’s really why I set up the Beckley Foundation, because with brain imaging you can actually see what’s happening in the brain at the same time as the person is having an experience, and it can tell you what is underlying the experience. That is, you can correlate the experience with changes in brain activity. Really, the combination of brain imaging and psychedelic substances, which alter consciousness in such a reliable and profound way, is an incredible microscope to the workings of the mind. The impact of brain imaging and psychedelics for the study of consciousness is comparable to the impact of the telescope to astronomy and the microscope to biology.
RLM: Again, it’s bringing us back to what your friend theorized some fifty years ago, that the LSD is evidently opening up the vessels so that the brain areas that are ordinarily not used are being infused with more oxygen, which allows those areas to be utilized.
AF: And glucose.
RLM: Oxygen and glucose.
AF: Consciousness is the result of the oxidation of glucose, the energy that produces the neuronal activity. Just last week I embarked on a new study, which is very exciting. It’s been a well-known fact for quite a few years now that LSD, and indeed all psychedelics, works through the serotonin 2A receptor. Nobody knows what happens beyond that. With a new form of optogenetics investigation, one can see right into the pyramidal cells, which are found in layer five of the cortex, and see how they react to LSD and how changes in the blood supply are related to the stimulation of neurons. We can work out which comes first—whether changes in blood supply stimulate neurons, or whether the stimulation of neurons creates changes in blood supply. Which is the egg and which is the chicken?
RLM: We have a combination of possibilities here. It is so exciting talking to you. You bring us the possibility of actually taking a medicine that will create new neurons, bringing more activity into play. At the same time, another medicine may stimulate cerebral circulation and neuronal activity and allow us to actually access other areas of our brain that we haven’t had access to on a day-to-day basis as we go through life. As you’ve explained to us, we grow what you call filters as we’re living and the filters constrict us.
AF: Yes, the building up of the constricting, filtering mechanism is an incredible process that happens in humans particularly, from infancy onward, as we slowly learn the art of control and repression. Obviously, it’s a vital element that enables us to do all the incredible things we do. At the same time it can become a very dangerous implementation that can stop us from having a real grasp of reality, because we’re looking through a veil of words and superimposed meaning, which may have little relationship with reality.
RLM: Our greatest asset becomes our greatest liability, as is so often the case.
AF: Absolutely, and as we get older this kind of set pattern of behavior—the one-track thinking, the myopic vision—becomes more and more established. In fact when it gets really rigid, this rigidity underlies conditions like depression, and addiction, and obsessive-compulsive disorders, all of those conditions that are based on hyper, fixed patterns of thought and behavior. That’s what a psychedelic experience seems to shake in a way that actually leaves an afterglow. Actually this is all kind of new, these findings with the recent research. It’s very exciting to see. It allows us to see how these compounds work in the brain and their value.
In the last fifty years I’ve met many, many people who’ve said, “My goodness. I would have never done this without the insights I had through my LSD experience,” whether it was starting a school in India for untouchable children or discovering DNA [like Kary Mullis]. It wasn’t obvious why or what the mechanisms underlying these experiences were. That’s what we are beginning to unravel now. I think our foot is only just in the door, but it’s a lovely place to be, in the door. It’s much better than being outside the door, which is where we have been, in terms of understanding the mechanisms underlying consciousness.
RLM: Definitely. Twice during our interview you’ve mentioned this afterglow. You used the word afterglow after taking the medicine. Elaborate a little bit for us on this afterglow that you’re talking about.
AF: That’s like what is shown in the depression study: that three months later 42 percent of the study patients are still experiencing a remission in chronic depression, and they’re still reporting feeling much more optimistic and having more of a sense of openness. In the research I’ve done with Jordi Riba with ayahuasca, people report the same thing—much more openness. Also, there are measures of mindfulness that people can gain through mindful meditation. People who are regular ayahuasca users score a high level of mindfulness on these tests.
There’s a very fascinating observation we made in our first psilocybin study, which was about this network in the brain called the “default mode network,” which has only recently been identified. In a way it’s like the conductor in an orchestra. It’s part of the ego mechanism described by Freud, which controls what enters consciousness and what doesn’t. It’s a circuit of high-level hub centers that control the sensory perceptions coming in, determining whether they get through to consciousness or whether they’re repressed and kept beneath the threshold of consciousness. It’s like the controller of the veils, basically.
On a psychedelic—in this case it was psilocybin—we noticed that there was a reduction in blood flow to the default mode network. What we noticed was that the integrity within the network disappeared. Usually within a network there’s a lot of communication between the different key hubs. In the default mode network there are two very important hubs: one is the medial prefrontal cortex and the other is the posterior cingulate cortex.
In depressed patients it had been observed that there is chronic over-activity between these two centers. There is a repetitive conversation saying, “I’m so depressed, I’m so depressed,” or “I want another drink, I want another drink.” When the psychedelic reduces the blood supply to this network, the activity drops. The controlling grip of the default mode network diminishes. Suddenly, all the different networks in the brain begin to communicate with each other. These networks, which were normally anticorrelated, that is, didn’t talk to each other, suddenly begin talking. That’s what we can see in the LSD study. We have all these different parts in the brain lit up, communicating with each other.
RLM: You are conducting the pioneering work on understanding the mechanism that’s going on in the brain in relation to the psychedelic medicines.
AF: Exactly. That’s the action beneath the mystical experience—when the person experiences themselves as being part of the whole, part of the universe, part of however they want to verbalize it.
Not Addictive Medicines
RLM: We’ve got a little time left. I want to ask a couple of quick questions, Amanda. One is, I’ve had a specialty of addiction treatment going back for many decades, and I’ve treated people for heroin and cocaine addiction. I don’t get people coming in addicted to LSD or to psilocybin or ayahuasca. Why is that?
AF: Because they simply aren’t addictive. You cannot make an animal addicted to a psychedelic. They are nontoxic and nonaddictive.
RLM: They’re not only nontoxic, they’re also nonaddictive.
AF: Yeah.
Voluntary Healing?
RLM: Next question. When we cut ourselves and healing takes place—like on the back of my arm, if I cut myself it would heal—it’s involuntary. It just happens. Do you think that with these medicines there will be a day when we’ll be able to take voluntary control of our healing? Will we be able to focus the mind in such a way that rather than all healing being involuntary, we’ll be able to go inside, find damaged tissue on an organ, and actually use the mind to aid in the repair voluntarily? Can you see that happening?
AF: Possibly. That’s a power that high-level yogis have. I think it’s a very high-level skill. But if it is possible, psychedelics could help to achieve it, with much trained concentration.
RLM: Do you think the medicines that you’re researching can assist us in learning how to take voluntary control of our mind toward healing and repair?
AF: I do, and I also think they can assist in taking the blood supply to repressed areas. I think the core of a trauma is a repressed area, which is cut off from freely moving blood circulation. The pain is locked into this “do not enter” area. By removing the repression in this area—which is brought about by the default mode network protecting the person against the pain—by washing it out, you can wash out the pain, and then the repressed area can heal itself. I think these substances are amazing tools of healing, but also of self-realization and transformation. They are also tools for creativity, because they enable different parts of the brain to work simultaneously, allowing new combinations of ideas to come together.
In many ways they’re a win-win gift. They’re a gift of the gods that modern man has foolishly criminalized. It’s time that we left this dark age, and we integrate psychedelics with the knowledge of science, medicine, and spirituality. I think finally the tide has begun to turn, and hopefully, we’re slowly climbing that particular mountain.
RLM: Thank you, Amanda Feilding. Thank you for your lifework and for bringing us out of this darkness of lack of research. Thank you for putting so much of your time, energy, and lifework into bringing research out to the public so that these medicines will eventually become available, and thank you so much for appearing on our program today. It’s been a pleasure having you.
AF: Thank you very, very much. Let’s hope governments can change and allow us to set up clinics where people can get this therapy.
RLM: Hear, hear!
Four Thousand Journeys
Our next expert in the field of LSD research is Stanislav Grof, MD, PhD, a Czech psychiatrist, one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology, and a researcher into the use of nonordinary states of consciousness for purposes of exploring, healing, and obtaining growth and insights into the human psyche. Dr. Grof had the good fortune to have been around while LSD was still legal. This allowed him to do direct psychotherapy with LSD. We have the good fortune that he recorded much of his work, publishing many books on the topic (see his biography). While reading the interview, keep in mind that Stan has guided people in over four thousand LSD journeys, probably more than any other person on the planet.
Observations from 4,000 LSD Sessions
Stanislav Grof, MD, PhD
July 21, 2015
STANISLAV GROF, MD, PHD, is author of Realms of the Human Unconscious, LSD Psychotherapy, Beyond Death, The Adventure of Self Discovery, Beyond the Brain, Psychology of the Future, The Cosmic Game, Healing Our Deepest Wounds, and Modern Consciousness Research and the Understanding of Art.
A Package from Albert Hofmann to Stanislav Graf
Abandoning Freudian Therapy for Cartooning
RLM: You started out as a psychiatrist doing Freudian work. You were initially deeply interested in psychoanalysis, but then something happened that brought you into the field of research with LSD.
Stanislav Grof, MD, PhD (SG): I was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and originally wanted to go into animated movies. Just before I made the final commitment, I read Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis and I got very excited. That week I decided not to work in animated movies but to study medicine and to become a psychiatrist. As I was getting deeper into psychoanalysis I became disappointed—at first not with the theory but with the practice of psychoanalysis: how long it takes, how much money it costs, and how much energy it consumes. And the results were not exactly breathtaking. I started nostalgically returning in my mind to animated movies, feeling that it would have been a better career.
Then the psychiatric department I was working in received a large supply of LSD-25 from the pharmaceutical company Sandoz in Basel, Switzerland. It came with a letter describing the serendipitous discovery of its psychedelic effect by Albert Hofmann, a chemist who intoxicated himself accidentally when he was synthesizing it. It was supposed to be one of the substances used in gynecology and for relief of migraine headaches, which were the main indications of the ergot alkaloids, though Hofmann’s discovery was a very unexpected fringe benefit from this research. It was not considered a particularly interesting substance, so the research was discontinued. Those of us who knew Albert Hofmann frequently heard the story that he somehow could not get this substance off his mind for irrational reasons. He felt the pharmacologists must have overlooked something. So in 1943 he decided to synthesize another sample and this is when the intoxication occasion happened.
RLM: Yes, the famous bicycle ride.
An Unconventional Experimental Tool
RLM: So Sandoz sent LSD around the world, and you were one of the people to whom it was sent. You received the package, and what happened?
SG: The letter accompanying the package suggested on the basis of the pilot studies conducted in Zurich that LSD could be used for inducing experimental psychosis. We would have a model that we could study. There was another suggestion that this could be a kind of unconventional educational tool—that psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and students would have the chance to spend a few hours in a world that seemed to be like the world of some of their patients. This would help them to understand their patients better, to be able to communicate with them more effectively and hopefully be more successful in treating them. That was something that was sorely needed at the time; psychiatric therapy was truly medieval—electroshock, insulin comas, cardiazol shocks, dunking in cold water, straitjackets, and so forth.
RLM: So the therapists would have an experiential understanding of the psychoses of their patients by going into that realm for a limited number of hours?
SG: Yes, that was the idea. At that point I was quite disappointed with psychoanalysis, and this seemed like a new possibility. I became an early volunteer in Prague, and I had an experience that within a day transformed me professionally and personally.
Transformation from Materialist to Mystic
RLM: I heard you talk about that transformation at the Bently Reserve presentation. How can you start out as Stan Grof, take a substance, and at the end of the experience be a different Stan Grof?
SG: I was brought up in a family where there was no religious affiliation. My parents did not commit me or my brother to any religion. I had a very materialistic worldview and went from this family upbringing straight to medical school, which certainly does not cultivate mystical awareness. Czechoslovakia was at that time controlled by the Soviet Union, and we had a very strong materialistic education. Yet within those few hours in this experience I basically became somebody with a spiritual, mystical worldview and a completely transformed perspective on life. Also, my interest shifted from psychoanalysis to nonordinary states of consciousness. Research into these states has now been for over half a century my profession, my vocation, and I would say passion. I have done very little in this half century that has not been related to these special states of consciousness.
RLM: Talk to us more about this transition. What does it mean to be a materialist, and what does it mean to you to be more spiritual or mystical?
SG: I was trained to believe that this was a material universe, which in a sense created itself without any guiding intelligence. There was no place for spirituality. If we believe that this is a universe of matter and that life, intelligence, and consciousness are latecomers after billions of years of the development of matter, then they are just side products or “epiphenomena” of material processes. This worldview rejected spirit; to be spiritual meant to be ignorant and superstitious, not having studied what material science discovered and says about the universe.
This was a completely different perspective than one saying the universe is permeated by superior intelligence and that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe—not the side product of the human brain. It was a very radical transformation.
RLM: Are you putting forth that there is a consciousness floating through the universe? Perhaps some Möbius strip of consciousness that is always around us? How do you conceptualize this spiritual consciousness?
SG: Consciousness for us is like water for fish. It is a fundamental aspect of our existence. If I had to name an existing conceptual framework for what I have experienced, I would go to the great spiritual philosophies of the East: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. These cultures were involved in systematic exploration of consciousness, with the same kind of focus and enthusiasm that we have for the material world. They were not particularly interested in developing technologies and industry. Their focus was on exploration of consciousness. Their understanding of the human psyche and consciousness was way beyond what we have now in the materialistic science in the West.
A New Worldview
Curbing Our Rationality and Connecting with Nature
RLM: I’m beginning to understand what you mean by being transformed in a day. Starting out with a materialistic framework has political implications for how we live our lives in terms of the importance of acquiring material things and living in a culture that values material things as the goal. It is light years away from a conceptual framework in which spirituality and consciousness are paramount. Therefore, the value system that would come out of a spiritual world-view would be much more aligned with feelings and people—in terms of their nature and in terms of connecting with nature rather than connecting with things. Is that correct?
SG: Yes. We have now the most advanced worldview in Western science—the new or emerging paradigm—and we see that it is rapidly converging with this spiritual worldview of ancient systems, particularly the great spiritual philosophies and religions of the Far East. There are repeated reports now from quantum relativistic physics that come to the same conclusion—that consciousness is somehow fundamentally involved in the creation of the experience of the material world itself.
RLM: Yes.
SG: The new science is converging with mysticism. What we were experiencing and finding in our psychedelic research was fundamentally incompatible with the Cartesian-Newtonian worldview—basically the seventeenth-century philosophy—but perfectly reconcilable with the emerging paradigm.
Observations from 4,000 LSD Sessions
Peeling the Unconscious
RLM: Some time after you had this transformation, you moved to the United States.
SG: Yes. I had my first psychedelic session in 1956, and I moved to the United States in 1967. I had worked in psychedelic research in Prague for eleven years before leaving the country.
RLM: Were you able to do LSD research during those eleven years?
SG: Yes. We were doing something that we called psycholytic therapy, which was a large number of medium dosages of LSD—something that one of my patients called “onion peeling of the unconscious.” We were able to remove layer after layer and map the unconscious, moving from the Freudian individual, or personal unconscious, through what I call “the perinatal unconscious,” related to the memory of birth, to what Jung called the collective unconscious—both its historical and mythological, or archetypal, aspects.
RLM: During that period, Stan, from 1956 to 1967—eleven years—approximately how many people were treated with this dosage of LSD?
SG: If I add up the sessions in Prague and later in the United States, I have been personally involved in about four thousand psychedelic sessions.
RLM: What is a medium dose?
SG: Maybe about 150 to 200 micrograms. Once we go to 250 and up to 500 micrograms, we would call them high-dose sessions.
Neither Panacea nor Devil’s Drug
RLM: The American public has been, one might say, traumatized by the very word LSD as a result of the terrible negative publicity that came out of the 1960s. But here we have someone who has done actual scientific research—four thousand cases—to tell us whether this is a dangerous medicine. Are the side effects such that your patients were jumping out of windows? Did they have to be institutionalized?
SG: Well, it is a very powerful tool. The perspectives ranged from calling it a panacea to the devil’s drug. What is overlooked is that this is a tool. Humphry Osmond [the English psychiatrist and researcher who coined the term psychedelic] compared it to a knife. Is a knife a terribly dangerous tool or is it a useful instrument? Imagine a discussion where the chief of the New York Police Department would describe the murders committed in the back streets of New York City, and the Surgeon General would say, “Well, if you have the right kind of education you can do amazing medical interventions with the knife.” And we would have in the same discussion a housewife talk, who would think about a knife primarily as a tool to cut salami and vegetables, and an artist whose emphasis would be using it for carving wood. It would be absolutely clear that we are not talking about the knife—we are talking about the various human uses of the knife for different purposes and different intentions.
Psychedelics were used for many different reasons—from therapy of difficult psychiatric patients and alleviation of fear of death and physical pain in terminal cancer patients, through facilitation of mystical experiences or artistic inspiration, to means of compromising of foreign diplomats and chemical warfare. What would happen if you put it into people’s water supply? If you would use it in aerosols in the field? If you would smuggle it somehow into the drinks of diplomats and politicians and military leaders and so on? Those are all human uses with very different motivations. Psychedelics are powerful openers of the mind, so they can be used for all those different purposes. So it is a question of set and setting—who is giving psychedelics to whom, in what physical environment, with what kind of intention, and for what kind of purpose.
In industrial civilization we have so far abused everything. We have abused biology for biological warfare, chemistry for chemical warfare, atomic energy for nuclear warfare, laser and rockets for destructive purposes, and so on. Why would psychedelics be different? We are incredibly developed in terms of the neocortex and intellectual capacity, but we stayed stuck in the Stone Age with our emotion. As a result, we are using nuclear weapons and other means of mass destruction with the same kind of mentality with which the Neanderthals were using stones and sticks.
Understanding Our Ecological Interconnectedness
RLM: Well, there is a reason that LSD has such a psychological effect on the public: the fact that the medicine itself can change consciousness; for example, your experience of starting out as one Stan Grof, with a materialistic framework for how the world works, and then achieving a new Stan Grof, with a different worldview: expanded from materialism to spiritualism plus mysticism. That is a radical transformation. This medicine could be seen, and I think it is seen by many, as revolutionary, because it has the potential to change consciousness on a grand scale; is that not accurate?
SG: It has tremendous potential for individual therapy, but it is also associated with a radical transformation of worldview and bringing in the spiritual perspective. If it could be applied on a large enough scale, it could significantly increase our chances for survival on the planet. If we continue our ignorant strategy—bringing a linear focus into a biological system that is basically circular—we do not have great chances for survival. Plundering of nonrenewable resources and turning them into pollution is the last thing we need as biological entities. We need clean water, clean air, and clean soil in which we grow our food. Nothing is more important—no economic, political, ideological, military, or religious concerns. Nothing should be more important than protecting life and creating optimal conditions for survival on the planet. We are violating this and are polluting the very environment that we depend on.
This can change through these transformative experiences, where people can work through the traumas that they experienced in childhood, in infancy, during birth and prenatal existence. We need to be open to the mystical, spiritual perspective—recognizing our fundamental connection with other people and the way we are embedded in nature. We cannot do anything to harm nature that will not ricochet and hurt us.
Caution Required
RLM: We have millions of people in the United States, and I do not know how many around the world, who are experimenting on their own with LSD. We do not have alarming reports from emergency rooms around the United States about mass occurrences of psychotic breakdowns. We do not have reports from police departments around the United States of incidents being created by LSD. These people are taking it on their own as you well know—as we all well know. Some of them have guides, some of them do not have guides. They are taking this substance that has huge potential for transformation. Why are we not hearing more, over these decades, about emergency room incidents, and police, and people killing people?
SG: There was a big study conducted by Sidney Cohen, one of the early pioneers.
RLM: I remember him—yes.
SG: A psychoanalyst in Los Angeles. He wrote a review of the side effects and complications of LSD and mescaline sessions, drawn from twenty-five thousand administrations.*3 The side effects and negative aftereffects were minimal as long as it was done responsibly. In the early years, we did not know very much about the effects of these psychedelics, but it was understood that if somebody had this powerful experience, there had to be somebody around in the usual state of consciousness to “hold the kite string.” You had to keep people overnight and talk with them in the morning before you sent them home. Under those circumstances the incidence of complications was minimal. It was ridiculous compared with what we had with electroshocks or insulin comas, where 1 percent mortality was considered an acceptable therapeutic risk.
RLM: Yes, or the lobotomy.
SG: Do you know that in 1948, Portuguese neurosurgeon Edgar Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize for prefrontal lobotomy? Nobel Prize for lobotomy, where you insert a scalpel into the frontal lobe and cut it off. This was the original, massive lobotomy, not the refined transorbital lobotomy. I have seen in autopsies of these patients that an entire frontal lobe was changed into a large hemorrhagic cyst. All these were procedures with incredible risk compared to the responsible use of psychedelics. People were using psychedelics in places like Woodstock, where they were handing out all kinds of substances of unknown origin, quality, and dosages—handing it out with both hands. It is a miracle that there were not more complications under such circumstances, if we compare it with what can happen with alcohol.
Psychedelics are certainly powerful tools. It makes me very uncomfortable when I see that young people play with them in open public places where nobody is holding the space, knowing that they are doing something illegal and that police might show up any minute. This kind of use significantly increases the risks and diminishes potential benefits and gains. I hope that the recent renaissance of interest in psychedelic research will generate new unbiased information and eventually lead not only to mainstream therapeutic use but also eventually to the creation of a network of facilities where people who want to experiment with psychedelics will have the chance to do it with known doses of pharmaceutically pure substances and under expert guidance. This will take us far in the direction that Albert Hofmann wanted to see for LSD, his “wonder child” turned “problem child”—a New Atlantis in which psychedelics’ potential for healing, enhancement of creativity, and spiritual opening will be integrated into future society and contribute to international peaceful coexistence.
A Psychedelic Explorer
For my final interview on the topic of LSD, I am delighted to include Jim Fadiman, PhD, a colleague and a friend. I first met Jim in the late 1960s when we were both among a group of over two hundred psychologists that joined with Nick Cummings, PhD, who later became the president of the American Psychological Association, in starting the California School for Professional Psychology, the first independent, free-standing, PhD-granting, psychology graduate school in the United States. Jim is widely acknowledged for his extensive work in the field of psychedelic research, including a major contribution with his most recent book, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide.
The Condensed Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide
James Fadiman, PhD
October 18, 2011
JAMES FADIMAN, PHD, is a psychologist and author of The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys. He is one of the foremost pioneers of the potential for psychedelic substances for self-discovery, psychotherapy, and creative problem solving and has been involved with psychedelic research since the 1960s. Fadiman is the president of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology and the director at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He cofounded, along with Robert Frager, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, which later became Sofia University.
A Country of Hypocrites
RLM: How were you able to write a book, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, about exploring a medicine that is illegal to administer or use?
Jim Fadiman, PhD (JF): One way is to recognize that there is some basic research that we had started before the government stopped us, and there is some research that’s coming back in. The other is to notice that since the government banned all possible use, including research, and so forth, 23 million Americans have taken LSD. And not only that, but that number goes up by four to six hundred thousand each year.
RLM: How does a researcher get those numbers?
JF: Personally, I think the numbers are a little low because they come from the U.S. government. Imagine the government gives you a little form and says, “Please check off all the illegal activities you have been involved in, in the last month, and in your lifetime.” I suspect there is underreporting. And remember that’s only the United States and that is only LSD. If we include MDMA, or ecstasy, the figure jumps by millions. If you simply add other consciousness-altering drugs, like marijuana, there are 140 million people in the United States who don’t think prohibition personally applies to them. We are a country of lawbreakers, or as some people say, we’re a country of plant users.
RLM: I suppose from another perspective we’re a country of hypocrites.
JF: The people who make laws often do it based on spur-of-the-moment excitement. One of the reasons the research is coming back is the government actually is no longer desperately trying to prevent research, it’s just allowing the research to proceed extremely carefully and safely.
Putting Real Dangers in Perspective
RLM: LSD. How dangerous is it? If you look at the sun while you’re on LSD do you go blind? Does hair grow on the palm of your hands? Do you end up in the emergency room? We have now had forty to fifty years of people using it on their own, illegally. You’re citing figures going into the tens of millions—you know how many people are being admitted to the emergency rooms each year around the country. You know how many people have died, so please share that information with us.
JF: I say to people that these are very powerful substances, and used incorrectly you can get in trouble. Used correctly, the chances of anything going wrong are extraordinarily low. One of the reasons I like LSD is that you use literally a hundred millionths of a gram—there are almost no physiological changes.
Things go wrong if you take it in the wrong setting, with the wrong friends, at the wrong time, with the wrong other substances. Or if you take too much—which is true of most other substances. Tobacco causes approximately 400,000 deaths a year. Alcohol causes approximately 125,000 deaths per year. Peanuts cause about 100 deaths. Psychedelics aren’t even on the list. Although I am beginning to worry about peanuts. Have people gotten into serious trouble? Have some been hospitalized for years after taking psychedelics? The answer is yes, but probably as much from the bad situation and from the kind of well-meaning but ignorant health care they received immediately afterward.
Forbidden Fruit and the Folly of Prohibition
JF: If you go to Burning Man, where there’s a huge amount of drug use, they have a medical tent, and what they call Sanctuary, which is there to help people who are frightened, upset, and paranoid (also dehydrated), usually to simply recover without interrupting the flow, so the experience can complete itself. There are even ways to work with very difficult situations, which are especially common at major concerts or festivals, where people have not had the chance to get decent information for the last forty years. One of the reasons I wrote the book was to put out the basic safety information, to ensure that if people are going to use something illegally that they have the best information available—to get the safest and most beneficial experience possible. We must not forget that the reason people want to use these substances is because they feel there’s some benefit.
RLM: Yes, so here we have a legal book about how to use an illegal substance, which is so attractive to people that they’re using it by the tens of millions—right in the face of government and media focus that says: “This is so dangerous that we’re making it illegal.”
JF: The last time the government tried to prevent people from doing what they wanted was called Prohibition. Before Prohibition, there were eight hundred drinking establishments around Times Square. During Prohibition there were twenty-five hundred drinking establishments in that same area. We should have learned that prohibition is not the best way to prevent people from using whatever it is that the government doesn’t like.
RLM: In fact, if anything, it makes it more interesting. It’s like when we were told as children that we should keep away from a certain thing the adults might be using, and we were thinking, “Gee, if that’s the thing to keep away from, I want to find out what it is.”
JF: We must never give a bean to a small child and say, “Don’t put it up your nose.”
Six Variables for a Safe and Beneficial Psychedelic Session
RLM: I’m asking you a question I shouldn’t ask, but I’m asking anyway—if you’re allowed to do this, tell us, what is the proper way to take LSD?
JF: I’m going to give your listeners a premium. There are several chapters of the book up for free on EntheoGuide.net, which describe it in detail. They asked me to contribute those chapters so that people would have access to the six major variables that make a successful psychedelic session. Successful means healthy, safe, and meaningful.
Those include:
First, the mental set.
Second, the physical setting, which should be safe and comfortable.
Third, the sitter—I recommend, recommend, recommend a guide who can assist you if you get into places that are frightening or difficult.
Fourth, the substance—there are many kinds of psychedelics and how much you take matters.
Fifth, the session itself—how the six to twelve hours run, what you do during that time.
Sixth, what kind of a life group you come back into—to people who support this kind of expanded awareness? Or to people who feel that you have just done something either evil or dangerous?
I want those basics available out there as widely as possible, because I’m a safety nut, and I’m also a guide nut. You don’t learn to drive by throwing someone the car keys and saying, “Good luck!”
Set: Mental Attitude and Intention
RLM: What is set?
JF: Set is mental attitude or intention. Are you taking this because you would like to become closer to divinity, however you understand that? Or are you taking it because you are interested in working on your own personal issues? Or are you taking it just for self-discovery? Are you taking it just for recreation? Someone in New York recently asked me at a conference, “Is there anything wrong with using things just to have fun?” I had to admit there is a good argument for that. Other ways of using it are for scientific problem solving—for very hard-nosed, rational problems—and just for discovering what happens inside your own mind when you give it a nudge in a different direction.
RLM: What is an example of using LSD for problem solving?
JF: We did some research just as the government was shutting us down, and we’d had senior scientists taking what we call low doses of LSD. That would be 100 micrograms, a hundred millionth of a gram, and we basically gave them a safe, supportive setting. We gave them a couple of hours of free ranging inside their mind, and we then asked them at the peak of the experience to work on their own chosen problem—an important technical problem—and I mean very technical: theory of the photon, chip design, engineering problems, architecture problems, and so forth. Things that they had hitherto worked on and not been successful. That was our criteria, because we wanted them to care a lot about problem solving.
There’s been a lot of stuff on every level about Steve Jobs, and my favorite headline is “Steve Jobs Had LSD. We Have the iPhone.”*4 From what he reported, it was one of the most important experiences of his life. And to me that meant that he did it well—did it carefully. He was looking at the material world as well as his inner world.
RLM: We don’t know whether he continued to use it, we just know that he did use it early on. There are so many people—as you well know, Jim, myself included at various times in my career—who were willing to talk about using it many years ago. If there are those who would prosecute me I would say, “That was thirty years ago.”
JF: But I think we can say with Steve Jobs that we have zero indication that he used it later in his life. He did use it early in his life. It was part of what oriented him toward elegance, and beauty, and making things easy for people, but he did not use it and come up with the iPad.
RLM: But we also know, for example, that Carl Sagan’s widow revealed he had used LSD but was afraid to tell the world. Even a man of his great magnitude was afraid to tell the world that he used it in some of those discoveries, which I think speaks volumes about the fear level that has been perpetrated in our country about this.
JF: Fear and social stigma. When I walk around carrying this book—as authors do—almost everyone I meet suddenly begins telling me about their psychedelic experiences after I talk to them for a while.
RLM: Jim Fadiman is referring to his book, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys. So we have some idea of what set means: your mental set, that is, what’s going on in your mind—your intention.
Setting: Landscapes and Soundscapes
RLM: The next thing one wants to be aware of when experimenting with psychedelic medicine is setting. What is setting?
JF: Setting is literally the physical situation in which you find yourself. Albert Hofmann, who was still giving two-hour lectures to professional groups at 101 years old, was asked—as he said, “only ten thousand times”—how should you take LSD? His answer was, “Always take it in nature.”
My answer is a little different. Take it in as safe and comfortable a setting as possible, which often is the living room, where you are able also to lie down to listen to music through headphones or earbuds; and to even put on an eye mask so that you can investigate the universe from the inside. Then perhaps later in the day it is good to be outside in nature to investigate the universe from the outside. Setting is the physical environment and the people who are in that environment—which we’ll get to when we talk about sitter, because taking it around people you feel safe with turns out to be very important.
RLM: What about the place of ambient noise? Is that a factor that people should be cautious about? A machine noise, lawn mowers—the things that are going to intrude on consciousness?
JF: One of the wonderful things we have technologically are headphones, which block out ambient noise. Almost everyone, including indigenous people, find music or singing to be a very important part of the psychedelic experience. What we’ve found is, the reason people prefer music, and music without words, is that it allows them to stop thinking about daily trivia and to simply appreciate the enormous expansion of awareness that comes with almost any psychedelic. The most common comment we hear is, “I never knew music could be so beautiful and so intricate.”
You know, when you hear a symphony orchestra, and you kind of hear a blur of sound with the melody rising and falling? If you’re a professional musician you hear more, but on psychedelics, people report hearing each individual section, working with and against the others, and even report hearing individual players. So you’re hearing with a much higher level of awareness. Headphones seemed to be the best way to handle the lawn mower, the ambulance, and the jackhammers.
RLM: So the setting is the physical environment: nature, or some very safe-feeling and quiet place, using headphones to block out ambient sound.
Sitter: Your Psychedelic Safari Guide
RLM: What is the sitter?
JF: Well, I sometimes lose some of my hipper, younger friends when I say you should take it with a guide. A guide is someone who knows the terrain, who’s been there a number of times, who is not disturbed by a little difficulty. The reason for having a guide is the same reason you start with a guide when scuba diving or learning to fly a plane. The image that makes the most sense to me is of a safari guide, say in Africa. He doesn’t see the animals for you, but he may say, “You see that rhinoceros that’s running toward us? If I were you I would stand behind a tree.” Or, he may say, “That little patch of sand in front, to your right? That’s actually quicksand. You might want to walk around that.”
So a guide or coach seems to be invaluable if you are taking your own experience seriously and you’re interested in using the materials the way they’ve been used in a sacred way in every culture we know of that had access to it.
Substance: “What” and “How Much”?
RLM: What do you mean when you say the “substance”?
JF: What you take matters. There is an enormous list of psychedelic substances: mushrooms, peyote, and mescaline, all of which have the same basic set of experiences available. The biggest difference is a psilocybin (mushroom) experience lasts six to eight hours and LSD lasts usually eight to twelve hours. LSD is the one I know the best.
There are other psychedelic families, including the one that is most exciting to people these days, called ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is really two plants combined together, and they have a much different, much more physical expression, and it takes you to a very different part of the radio dial of consciousness.
What you take matters, and how much you take matters enormously. If you take too much of anything—that includes aspirin and peanut butter—you will get ill. With psychedelics, that “too much” is of two sorts. One is you really won’t know where you are, and you can become disorganized and more frightened. Two—and for me this is equally important—you really won’t remember the useful or beneficial parts. You’ll simply have had an experience that you have no remembrance of. Some people take too much to prove how macho they are, and that’s just a waste of everyone’s time. If you take a small dose, obviously you’ll have less of an experience. The purpose of the guide is so you don’t make a mistake about what’s correct for your body and your intention.
RLM: What is an appropriate dose if one wants to do inner-space work—one wants to explore and learn about oneself? What is a substantial dose of LSD in micrograms?
JF: One hundred to 200 micrograms is the dose people have used historically when they are working psychotherapeutically. If you’re working for spiritual experiences it’s double that [200 to 400 micrograms]. For people who are alcoholics—and the alcoholism research with LSD is excellent—it is usually necessary to take a larger dose, because they are used to alcohol, and it’s stifling their own altered state inside themselves. Again, the guide turns out to be invaluable. Giving dosage numbers over the air, given how different people are, is simply not the correct service.
RLM: Understood. But what you’re saying across the board, in terms of the normal curve, is that 300 to 400 micrograms is more of a spiritual dose, and 100 to 200 micrograms is more a dose for psychotherapeutic inner work.
JF: Right, psychotherapeutic inner work, where again, you need someone else with you. And if you’re going for the higher doses, a guide is an absolute necessity if you wish to discover what it is that the classical mystics are talking about.
RLM: Is a higher dose 500, 600, 700 micrograms, or more?
JF: No, it’s 300 to 400 micrograms.
RLM: I see. What happens when you get above 400 micrograms?
JF: My recommendation is: don’t. You bring back too little and you risk too much.
Session: The Duration of Mind Alteration
RLM: What is meant by the “Session,” Jim?
JF: A session is the hours when the substance is affecting you. We’re talking about a substance in millionths of a gram. It actually leaves the body in about 1.5 hours, so most everything that goes on is within your own body and within your own body chemistry. But this is a full day or full night of events, and therefore you need to plan for that entire time.
Remember we need to reiterate—both my personal taste and my publisher’s taste is to remind you—these are illegal substances, and that affects all these things. These are illegal substances, and people are imprisoned for far longer than anybody thinks is sane for both using and distributing. Therefore, this is not to suggest that anybody should use these, because they are illegal. But a bit like sex, you’re probably going to be interested in it, so you might as well understand it. If you go ahead and do it, you might as well do it with some good sense to prevent illness, disease, and so forth.
With that caveat, this is only for people who have some understanding of what I’m talking about from their prior experience. We are looking at the ways to make things safe. What are the ways that lead to what is called a learning experience? Because we’re not just talking about a single experience, like a roller coaster. A recent article pointed out that people who took psilocybin for spiritual purposes at Johns Hopkins University were still, fourteen months later, what they called “more open to the creative” and “more open to relationships”—basically a healthier person as well as psychology can measure.*5
RLM: I can feel my blood starting to boil when you talk about that study, Jim. I’m thinking about fifty years of government suppression of these psychedelic medicines. Here we have one psychedelic medicine, which the people took one time, and a year later they’re still having positive effects. How many medicines do we have in our entire pharmacopeia that you can take one time and a year later you’re still feeling positive effects?
Basically, in the pharmaceutical industry you sign up for an annuity, right? You’re going to be taking the medication daily and paying for it for the rest of your life. On the other hand we have a psychedelic medicine people can take one time, and a full year later they’re still feeling measurable positive effects. However, no one can buy this new medicine right now. No one can get it legally. Your doctor can’t prescribe it to you—there’s nowhere you can get it legally in the United States. Isn’t that correct?
JF: Let me add, Richard, a wonderful bit of film footage I saw recently about someone who took LSD once forty years ago, who was a serious, heavy-duty alcoholic—losing his job, his marriage was falling apart, life was terrible, and he was totally addicted. He took LSD once in a safe, secure, therapeutic setting, and forty years later, the filmmaker asks if he’s had alcohol since then. He said, “Oh no, not a drop.” The filmmaker then says something about willpower, and the man laughs and says, “No. No interest.”
The change is about learning—about worldview and changing the way you see things. We really need to begin to let go of the medical model. As you were saying, the medical model says, “Pill in, body changes. Pill out, body back to normal. Needs more pills for next cycle.” Psychedelics are really more like discovery. You only have to go to Europe once to find out that the world is much larger than the United States. You don’t have to keep going back every week to be reminded.
RLM: Yes, the psychedelic medicine finds the atherosclerosis of the spirit and cleans it out. It’s like a spiritual Roto-Rooter, and it gets all the junk out of us and clears us up.
JF: Right—one wants to see something that relaxes the hardening of the attitudes.
Life Group: Supportive Community
RLM: Jim Fadiman is all about safety. I totally support that—I’m all about safety myself. The sixth thing on your list of the six essential things to know for a safe psychedelic journey is the life group after. Tell us about what that means psychologically. Tell us about the life group that you come into after you’ve had this psychedelic experience.
JF: Remember that for over 80 percent of people in one study, taking a psychedelic was the most important experience of their life. Basically, the lifegroup is seen if you had this kind of transformative experience and you come back home to your family, and they say, “Isn’t that wonderful! We really are delighted that you also now understand what we’ve known,” or if you come back to your family and friends and they say, “That’s nonsense. You’re not supposed to know about God. There are books for that. You’re always supposed to go to some other authority to ask their opinion,” or even worse if they say, “This is craziness, and we’re not sure that you should be allowed to go to work!”
We’re talking about what kind of worldview you are in. Fortunately, knowing a lot about your sphere of radio influence, there’s not much of a problem in this part of California, because so many people have already had these kinds of experiences and are basically aware that the material world simply can’t be all there is. No culture but ours has ever made that materialistic assumption, and as we all know, we got it wrong. The world is being loused up by people who have forgotten that the interconnectedness of all things turns out to be very important.
In this chapter we have heard reports of the scientific findings of four leading scientists—from the United States, England, and Czechoslovakia—representing over 160 years of combined research experience. What they have discovered is that psychedelic medicines have huge potential for healing, creativity, and personal transformation. These medicines, when used properly, are safe with virtually no negative side effects. Keeping these medicines illegal is a cruel affront to the public who are being denied access to their curative and transformational powers.