LSD- MY PROBLEM CHILD... CONTINUED... All these legislative and official precautions, however, had little influence and continue to hinder medicinal-psychiatric use and LSD research in biology and neurology, because many researchers dread the red tape that is connected with the procurement of a license for the use of LSD. The bad reputation of LSD - its depiction as an "insanity drug" and a "satanic invention" - constitutes a further reason why many doctors shunned use of LSD in their psychiatric practice. In the course of recent years the uproar of publicity about LSD has quieted, and the consumption of LSD as an inebriant has also diminished, as far as that can be concluded from the rare reports about accidents and other regrettable occurrences following LSD ingestion. It may be that the decrease of LSD accidents, however, is not simply due to a decline in LSD consumption. Possibly the recreational users, with time, have become more aware of the particular effects and dangers of LSD and more cautious in their use of this drug. Certainly LSD, which was for a time considered in the Western world, above all in the United States, to be the number-one inebriant, has relinquished this leading role to other inebriants such as hashish and the habituating, even physically destructive drugs like heroin and amphetamine. The last-mentioned drugs represent an alarming sociological and public health problem today. Dangers of Nomnedicinal LSD Experiments While professional use of LSD in psychiatry entails hardly any risk, the ingestion of this substance outside of medical practice, without medical supervision, is subject to multifarious dangers. These dangers reside, on the one hand, in external circumstances connected with illegal drug use and, on the other hand, in the peculiarity of LSD's psychic effects. The advocates of uncontrolled, free use of LSD and other hallucinogens base their attitude on two claims: (l) this type of drug produces no addiction, and (2) until now no danger to health from moderate use of hallucinogens has been demonstrated. Both are true. Genuine addiction, characterized by the fact that psychic and often severe physical disturbances appear on withdrawal of the drug, has not been observed, even in cases in which LSD was taken often and over a long period of time. No organic injury or death as a direct consequence of an LSD intoxication has yet been reported. As discussed in greater detail in the chapter "LSD in Animal Experiments and Biological Research," LSD is actually a relatively nontoxic substance in proportion to its extraordinarily high psychic activity. Psychotic Reactions Like the other hallucinogens, however, LSD is dangerous in an entirely different sense. While the psychic and physical dangers of the addicting narcotics, the opiates, amphetamines, and so forth, appear only with chronic use, the possible danger of LSD exists in every single experiment. This is because severe disoriented states can appear during any LSD inebriation. It is true that through careful preparation of the experiment and the experimenter such episodes can largely be avoided, but they cannot be excluded with certainty. LSD crises resemble psychotic attacks with a manic or depressive character. In the manic, hyperactive condition, the feeling of omnipotence or invulnerability can lead to serious casualties. Such accidents have occurred when inebriated persons confused in this way - believing themselves to be invulnerable - walked in front of a moving automobile or jumped out a window in the belief that they were able to fly. This type of LSD casualty, however, is not so common as one might be led to think on the basis of reports that were sensationally exaggerated by the mass media. Nevertheless, such reports must serve as serious warnings. On the other hand, a report that made the rounds worldwide, in 1966, about an alleged murder committed under the influence on LSD, cannot be true. The suspect, a young man in New York accused of having killed his mother-in- law, explained at his arrest, immediately after the fact, that he knew nothing of the crime and that he had been on an LSD trip for three days. But an LSD inebriation, even with the highest doses, lasts no longer than twelve hours, and repeated ingestion leads to tolerance, which means that extra doses are ineffective. Besides, LSD inebriation is characterized by the fact that the person remembers exactly what he or she has experienced. Presumably the defendant in this case expected leniency for extenuating circumstances, owing to unsoundness of mind. The danger of a psychotic reaction is especially great if LSD is given to someone without his or her knowledge. This was demonstrated in an episode that took place soon after the discovery of LSD, during the first investigations with the new substance in the Zurich University Psychiatric Clinic, when people were not yet aware of the danger of such jokes. A young doctor, whose colleagues had slipped LSD into his coffee as a lark, wanted to swim across Lake Zurich during the winter at -20!C (-4!F) and had to be prevented by force. There is a different danger when the LSD-induced disorientation exhibits a depressive rather than manic character. In the course of such an LSD experiment, frightening visions, death agony, or the fear of becoming insane can lead to a threatening psychic breakdown or even to suicide. Here the LSD trip becomes a "horror trip." The demise of a Dr. Olson, who had been given LSD without his knowledge in the course of U.S. Army drug experiments, and who then committed suicide by jumping from a window, caused a particular sensation. His family could not understand how this quiet, well-adjusted man could have been driven to this deed. Not until fifteen years later, when the secret documents about the experiments were published, did they learn the true circumstances, whereupon the president of the United States publicly apologized to the dependents. The conditions for the positive outcome of an LSD experiment, with little possibility of a psychotic derailment, reside on the one hand in the individual and on the other hand in the external milieu of the experiment. The internal, personal factors are called set, the external conditions setting. The beauty of a living room or of an outdoor location is perceived with particular force because of the highly stimulated sense organs during LSD inebriation, and such an amenity has a substantial influence on the course of the experiment. The persons present, their appearance, their traits, are also part of the setting that determines the experience. The acoustic milieu is equally significant. Even harmless noises can turn to torment, and conversely lovely music can develop into a euphoric experience. With LSD experiments in ugly or noisy surroundings, however, there is greater danger of a negative outcome, including psychotic crises. The machine- and appliance-world of today offers much scenery and all types of noise that could very well trigger panic during enhanced sensibility. Just as meaningful as the external milieu of the LSD experience, if not even more important, is the mental condition of the experimenters, their current state of mind, their attitude to the drug experience, and their expectations associated with it. Even unconscious feelings of happiness or fear can have an effect. LSD tends to intensify the actual psychic state. A feeling of happiness can be heightened to bliss, a depression can deepen to despair. LSD is thus the most inappropriate means imaginable for curing a depressive state. It is dangerous to take LSD in a disturbed, unhappy frame of mind, or in a state of fear. The probability that the experiment will end in a psychic breakdown is then quite high. Among persons with unstable personality structures, tending to psychotic reactions, LSD experimentation ought to be completely avoided. Here an LSD shock, by releasing a latent psychosis, can produce a lasting mental injury. The psyche of very young persons should also be considered as unstable, in the sense of not yet having matured. In any case, the shock of such a powerful stream of new and strange perceptions and feelings, such as is engendered by LSD, endangers the sensitive, still-developing psycho- organism. Even the medicinal use of LSD in youths under eighteen years of age, in the scope of psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic treatment, is discouraged in professional circles, correctly so in my opinion. Juveniles for the most part still lack a secure, solid relationship to reality. Such a relationship is needed before the dramatic experience of new dimensions of reality can be meaningfully integrated into the world view. Instead of leading to a broadening and deepening of reality consciousness, such an experience in adolescents will lead to insecurity and a feeling of being lost. Because of the freshness of sensory perception in youth and the still- unlimited capacity for experience, spontaneous visionary experiences occur much more frequently than in later life. For this reason as well, psychostimulating agents should not be used by juveniles. Even in healthy, adult persons, even with adherence to all of the preparatory and protective measures discussed, an LSD experiment can fail, causing psychotic reactions. Medical supervision is therefore earnestly to be recommended, even for nonmedicinal LSD experiments. This should include an examination of the state of health before the experiment. The doctor need not be present at the session; however, medical help should at all times be readily available. Acute LSD psychoses can be cut short and brought under control quickly and reliably by injection of chlorpromazine or another sedative of this type. The presence of a familiar person, who can request medical help in the event of an emergency, is also an indispensable psychological assurance. Although the LSD inebriation is characterized mostly by an immersion in the individual inner world, a deep need for human contact sometimes arises, especially in depressive phases. LSD from the Black Market Nonmedicinal LSD consumption can bring dangers of an entirely different type than hitherto discussed: for most of the LSD offered in the drug scene is of unknown origin. LSD preparations from the black market are unreliable when it comes to both quality and dosage. They rarely contain the declared quantity, but mostly have less LSD, often none at all, and sometimes even too much. In many cases other drugs or even poisonous substances are sold as LSD. These observations were made in our laboratory upon analysis of a great number of LSD samples from the black market. They coincide with the experiences of national drug control departments. The unreliability in the strength of LSD preparations on the illicit drug market can lead to dangerous overdosage. Overdoses have often proved to be the cause of failed LSD experiments that led to severe psychic and physical breakdowns. Reports of alleged fatal LSD poisoning, however, have yet to be confirmed. Close scrutiny of such cases invariably established other causative factors. The following case, which took place in 1970, is cited as an example of the possible dangers of black market LSD. We received for investigation from the police a drug powder distributed as LSD. It came from a young man who was admitted to the hospital in critical condition and whose friend had also ingested this preparation and died as a result. Analysis showed that the powder contained no LSD, but rather the very poisonous alkaloid strychnine. If most black market LSD preparations contained less than the stated quantity and often no LSD at all, the reason is either deliberate falsification or the great instability of this substance. LSD is very sensitive to air and light. It is oxidatively destroyed by the oxygen in the air and is transformed into an inactive substance under the influence of light. This must be taken into account during the synthesis and especially during the production of stable, storable forms of LSD. Claims that LSD may easily be prepared, or that every chemistry student in a half-decent laboratory is capable of producing it, are untrue. Procedures for synthesis of LSD have indeed been published and are accessible to everyone. With these detailed procedures in hand, chemists would be able to carry out the synthesis, provided they had pure lysergic acid at their disposal; its possession today, however, is subject to the same strict regulations as LSD. In order to isolate LSD in pure crystalline form from the reaction solution and in order to produce stable preparations, however, special equipment and not easily acquired specific experience are required, owing (as stated previously) to the great instability of this substance. Only in completely oxygen-free ampules protected from light is LSD absolutely stable. Such ampules, containing 100 ,Lg (= 0.1 mg) LSD-tartrate (tartaric acid salt of LSD) in 1 cc of aqueous solution, were produced for biological research and medicinal use by the Sandoz firm. LSD in tablets prepared with additives that inhibit oxidation, while not absolutely stable, at least keeps for a longer time. But LSD preparations often found on the black market - LSD that has been applied in solution onto sugar cubes or blotting paper - decompose in the course of weeks or a few months. With such a highly potent substance as LSD, the correct dosage is of paramount importance. Here the tenet of Paracelsus holds good: the dose determines whether a substance acts as a remedy or as a poison. A controlled dosage, however, is not possible with preparations from the black market, whose active strength is in no way guaranteed. One of the greatest dangers of non-medicinal LSD experiments lies, therefore, in the use of such preparations of unknown provenience. The Case of Dr. Leary Dr. Timothy Leary, who has become known worldwide in his role of drug apostle, had an extraordinarily strong influence on the diffusion of illegal LSD consumption in the United States. On the occasion of a vacation in Mexico in the year 1960, Leary had eaten the legendary "sacred mushrooms," which he had purchased from a shaman. During the mushroom inebriation he entered into a state of mystico-religious ecstasy, which he described as the deepest religious experience of his life. From then on, Dr. Leary, who at the time was a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dedicated himself totally to research on the effects and possibilities of the use of psychedelic drugs. Together with his colleague Dr. Richard Alpert, he started various research projects at the university, in which LSD and psilocybin, isolated by us in the meantime, were employed. The reintegration of convicts into society, the production of mystico- religious experiences in theologians and members of the clergy, and the furtherance of creativity in artists and writers with the help of LSD and psilocybin were tested with scientific methodology. Even persons like Aldous Huxley, Arthur Koestler, and Allen Ginsberg participated in these investigations. Particular consideration was given to the question, to what degree mental preparation and expectation of the subjects, along with the external milieu of the experiment, are able to influence the course and character of states of psychedelic inebriation. In January 1963, Dr. Leary sent me a detailed report of these studies, in which he enthusiastically imparted the positive results obtained and gave expression to his beliefs in the advantages and very promising possibilities of such use of these active compounds. At the same time, the Sandoz firm received an inquiry about the supply of lOOg LSD and 25 kg psilocybin, signed by Dr. Timothy Leary, from the Harvard University Department of Social Relations. The requirement for such an enormous quantity (the stated amounts correspond to 1 million doses of LSD and 2.5 million doses of psilocybin) was based on the planned extension of investigations to tissue, organ, and animal studies. We made the supply of these substances contingent upon the production of an import license on behalf of the U.S. health authorities. Immediately we received the order for the stated quantities of LSD and psilocybin, along with a check for $10,000 as deposit but without the required import license. Dr. Leary signed for this order, but no longer as lecturer at Harvard University, rather as president of an organization he had recently founded, the International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF). Because, in addition, our inquiry to the appropriate dean of Harvard University had shown that the university authorities did not approve of the continuation of the research project by Leary and Alpert, we canceled our offer upon return of the deposit. Shortly thereafter, Leary and Alpert were discharged from the teaching staff of Harvard- University because the investigations, at first conducted in an academic milieu, had lost their scientific character. The experiments had turned into LSD parties. The LSD trip - LSD as a ticket to an adventurous journey into new worlds of mental and physical experience - became the latest exciting fashion among academic youth, spreading rapidly from Harvard to other universities. Leary's doctrine - that LSD not only served to find the divine and to discover the self, but indeed was the most potent aphrodisiac yet discovered - surely contributed quite decisively to the rapid propagation of LSD consumption among the younger generation. Later, in an interview with the monthly magazine Playboy, Leary said that the intensification of sexual experience and the potentiation of sexual ecstasy by LSD was one of the chief reasons for the LSD boom. After his expulsion from Harvard University, Leary was completely transformed from a psychology lecturer pursuing research, into the messiah of the psychedelic movement. He and his friends of the IFIF founded a psychedelic research center in lovely, scenic surroundings in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. I received a personal invitation from Dr. Leary to participate in a top-level planning session on psychedelic drugs, scheduled to take place there in August 1963. I would gladly have accepted this grand invitation, in which I was offered reimbursement for travel expenses and free lodging, in order to learn from personal observation the methods, operation, and the entire atmosphere of such a psychedelic research center, about which contradictory, to some extent very remarkable, reports were then circulating. Unfortunately, professional obligations kept me at that moment from flying to Mexico to get a picture at first hand of the controversial enterprise. The Zihuatanejo Research Center did not last long. Leary and his adherents were expelled from the country by the Mexican government. Leary, however, who had now become not only the messiah but also the martyr of the psychedelic movement, soon received help from the young New York millionaire William Hitchcock, who made a manorial house on his large estate in Millbrook, New York, available to Leary as new home and headquarters. Millbrook was also the home of another foundation for the psychedelic, transcendental way of life, the Castalia Foundation. On a trip to India in 1965 Leary was converted to Hinduism. In the following year he founded a religious community, the League for Spiritual Discovery, whose initials give the abbreviation "LSD." Leary's proclamation to youth, condensed in his famous slogan "Turn on, tune in, drop out !", became a central dogma of the hippie movement. Leary is one of the founding fathers of the hippie cult. The last of these three precepts, "drop out," was the challenge to escape from bourgeois life, to turn one's back on society, to give up school, studies, and employment, and to dedicate oneself wholly to the true inner universe, the study of one's own nervous system, after one has turned on with LSD. This challenge above all went beyond the psychological and religious domain to assume social and political significance. It is therefore understandable that Leary not only became the enfant terrible of the university and among his academic colleagues in psychology and psychiatry, but also earned the wrath of the political authorities. He was, therefore, placed under surveillance, followed, and ultimately locked in prison. The high sentences - ten years' imprisonment each for convictions in Texas and California concerning possession of LSD and marijuana, and conviction (later overturned) with a sentence of thirty years' imprisonment for marijuana smuggling - show that the punishment of these offenses was only a pretext: the real aim was to put under lock and key the seducer and instigator of youth, who could not otherwise be prosecuted. On the night of 13-14 September 1970, Leary managed to escape from the California prison in San Luis Obispo. On a detour from Algeria, where he made contact with Eldridge Cleaver, a leader of the Black Panther movement living there in exile, Leary came to Switzerland and there petitioned for political asylum. Meeting with Timothy Leay Dr. Leary lived with his wife, Rosemary, in the resort town Villars-sur- Ollon in western Switzerland. Through the intercession of Dr. Mastronardi, Dr. Leary's lawyer, contact was established between us. On 3 September 1971, I met Dr. Leary in the railway station snack bar in Lausanne. The greeting was cordial, a symbol of our fateful relationship through LSD. Leary was medium-sized, slender, resiliently active, his brown face surrounded with slightly curly hair mixed with gray, youthful, with bright, laughing eyes. This gave Leary somewhat the mark of a tennis champion rather than that of a former Harvard lecturer. We traveled by automobile to Buchillons, where in the arbor of the restaurant A la Grande Foret, over a meal of fish and a glass of white wine, the dialogue between the father and the apostle of LSD finally began. I voiced my regret that the investigations with LSD and psilocybin at Harvard University, which had begun promisingly, had degenerated to such an extent that their continuance in an academic milieu became impossible. My most serious remonstrance to Leary, however, concerned the propagation of LSD use among juveniles. Leary did not attempt to refute my opinions about the particular dangers of LSD for youth. He maintained, however, that I was unjustified in reproaching him for the seduction of immature persons to drug consumption, because teenagers in the United States, with regard to information and life experience, were comparable to adult Europeans. Maturity, with satiation and intellectual stagnation, would be reached very early in the United States. For that reason, he deemed the LSD experience significant, useful, and enriching, even for people still very young in years. In this conversation, I further objected to the great publicity that Leary sought for his LSD and psilocybin investigations, since he had invited reporters from daily papers and magazines to his experiments and had mobilized radio and television. Emphasis was thereby placed on publicity rather than on objective information. Leary defended this publicity program because he felt it had been his fateful historic role to make LSD known worldwide. The overwhelmingly positive effects of such dissemination, above all among America's younger generation, would make any trifling injuries, any regrettable accidents as a result of improper use of LSD, unimportant in comparison, a small price to pay. During this conversation, I ascertained that one did Leary an injustice by indiscriminately describing him as a drug apostle. He made a sharp distinction between psychedelic drugs - LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, hashish - of whose salutary effects he was persuaded, and the addicting narcotics morphine, heroin, etc., against whose use he repeatedly cautioned. My impression of Dr. Leary in this personal meeting was that of a charming personage, convinced of his mission, who defended his opinions with humor yet uncompromisingly; a man who truly soared high in the clouds pervaded by beliefs in the wondrous effects of psychedelic drugs and the optimism resulting therefrom, and thus a man who tended to underrate or completely overlook practical difficulties, unpleasant facts, and dangers. Leary also showed carelessness regarding charges and dangers that concerned his own person, as his further path in life emphatically showed. During his Swiss sojourn, I met Leary by chance once more, in February 1972, in Basel, on the occasion of a visit by Michael Horowitz, curator of the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library in San Francisco, a library specializing in drug literature. We traveled together to my house in the country near Burg, where we resumed our conversation of the previous September. Leary appeared fidgety and detached, probably owing to a momentary indisposition, so that our discussions were less productive this time. That was my last meeting with Dr. Leary. He left Switzerland at the end of the year, having separated from his wife, Rosemary, now accompanied by his new friend Joanna Harcourt-Smith. After a short stay in Austria, where he assisted in a documentary film about heroin, Leary and friend traveled to Afghanistan. At the airport in Kabul he was apprehended by agents of the American secret service and brought back to the San Luis Obispo prison in California. After nothing had been heard from Leary for a long time, his name again appeared in the daily papers in summer 1975 with the announcement of a parole and early release from prison. But he was not set free until early in 1976. I learned from his friends that he was now occupied with psychological problems of space travel and with the exploration of cosmic relationships between the human nervous system and interstellar space - that is, with problems whose study would bring him no further difficulties on the part of governmental authorities. Travels in the Universe of the Soul Thus the Islamic scholar Dr. Rudolf Gelpke entitled his accounts of self- experiments with LSD and psilocybin, which appeared in the publication Antaios, for January 1962, and this title could also be used for the following descriptions of LSD experiments. LSD trips and the space flights of the astronauts are comparable in many respects. Both enterprises require very careful preparations, as far as measures for safety as well as objectives are concerned, in order to minimize dangers and to derive the most valuable results possible. The astronauts cannot remain in space nor the LSD experimenters in transcendental spheres, they have to return to earth and everyday reality, where the newly acquired experiences must be evaluated. The following reports were selected in order to demonstrate how varied the experiences of LSD inebriation can be. The particular motivation for undertaking the experiments was also decisive in their selection. Without exception, this selection involves only reports by persons who have tried LSD not simply out of curiosity or as a sophisticated pleasure drug, but who rather experimented with it in the quest for expanded possibilities of experience of the inner and outer world; who attempted, with the help of this drug key, to unlock new "doors of perception" (William Blake); or, to continue with the comparison chosen by Rudolf Gelpke, who employed LSD to surmount the force of gravity of space and time in the accustomed world view, in order to arrive thereby at new outlooks and understandings in the "universe of the soul." The first two of the following research records are taken from the previously cited report by Rudolf Gelpke in Antaios. Dance of the Spirits in the Wind (0.075 mg LSD on 23 June 1961, 13:00 hours) After I had ingested this dose, which could be considered average, I conversed very animatedly with a professional colleague until approximately 14:00 hours. Following this, I proceeded alone to the Werthmuller bookstore where the drug now began to act most unmistakably. I discerned, above all, that the subjects of the books in which I rummaged peacefully in the back of the shop were indifferent to me, whereas random details of my surroundings suddenly stood out strongly, and somehow appeared to be "meaningful." . . . Then, after some ten minutes, I was discovered by a married couple known to me, and had to let myself become involved in a conversation with them that, I admit, was by no means pleasant to me, though not really painful either. I listened to the conversation (even to myself) " as from far away. " The things that were discussed (the conversation dealt with Persian stories that I had translated) "belonged to another world": a world about which I could indeed express myself (I had, after all, recently still inhabited it myself and remembered the "rules of the game"!), but to which I no longer possessed any emotional connection. My interest in it was obliterated - only I did not dare to let myself observe that. After I managed to dismiss myself, I strolled farther through the city to the marketplace. I had no "visions," saw and heard everything as usual, and yet everything was also altered in an indescribable way; "imperceptible glassy walls" everywhere. With every step that I took, I became more and more like an automaton. It especially struck me that I seemed to lose control over my facial musculature - I was convinced that my face was grown stiff, completely expressionless, empty, slack and masklike. The only reason I could still walk and put myself in motion, was because I remembered that, and how I had "earlier" gone and moved myself. But the farther back the recollection went, the more uncertain I became. I remember that my own hands somehow were in my way: I put them in my pockets, let them dangle, entwined them behind my back . . . as some burdensome objects, which must be dragged around with us and which no one knows quite how to stow away. I had the same reaction concerning my whole body. I no longer knew why it was there, and where I should go with it. All sense for decisions of that kind had been lost . They could only be reconstructed laboriously, taking a detour through memories from the past. It took a struggle of this kind to enable me to cover the short distance from the marketplace to my home, which I reached at about 15:10. In no way had I had the feeling of being inebriated. What I experienced was rather a gradual mental extinction. It was not at all frightening; but I can imagine that in the transition to certain mental disturbances - naturally dispersed over a greater interval - a very similar process happens: as long as the recollection of the former individual existence in the human world is still present, the patient who has become unconnected can still (to some extent) find his way about in the world: later, however, when the memories fade and ultimately die out, he completely loses this ability. Shortly after I had entered my room, the "glassy stupor" gave way. I sat down, with a view out of a window, and was at once enraptured: the window was opened wide, the diaphanous gossamer curtains, on the other hand, were drawn, and now a mild wind from the outside played with these veils and with the silhouettes of potted plants and leafy tendrils on the sill behind, which the sunlight delineated on the curtains breathing in the breeze. This spectacle captivated me completely. I "sank" into it, saw only this gentle and incessant waving and rocking of the plant shadows in the sun and the wind. I knew what "it" was, but I sought after the name for it, after the formula, after the "magic word" that I knew and already I had it: Totentanz, the dance of the dead.... This was what the wind and the light were showing me on the screen of gossamer. Was it frightening? Was I afraid? Perhaps - at first. But then a great cheerfulness infiltrated me, and I heard the music of silence, and even my soul danced with the redeemed shadows to the whistle of the wind. Yes, I understood: this is the curtain, and this curtain itself IS the secret, the "ultimate" that it concealed. Why, therefore, tear it up? He who does that only tears up himself. Because "there behind," behind the curtain, is "nothing.". . . Polyp from the Deep (0.150 mg LSD on 15 April 1961, 9:15 hours) Beginning of the effect already after about 30 minutes with strong inner agitation, trembling hands, skin chills, taste of metal on the palate. 10:00: The environment of the room transforms itself into phosphorescent waves, running hither from the feet even through my body. The skin - and above all the toes - is as electrically charged; a still constantly growing excitement hinders all clear thoughts.... 10:20: I lack the words to describe my current condition. It is as if an "other" complete stranger were seizing possession of me bit by bit. Have greatest trouble writing ("inhibited" or "uninhibited"? - I don't know!). This sinister process of an advancing self-estrangement aroused in me the feeling of powerlessness, of being helplessly delivered up. Around 10:30, through closed eyes I saw innumerable, self-intertwining threads on a red background. A sky as heavy as lead appeared to press down on everything; I felt my ego compressed in itself, and I felt like a withered dwarf.... Shortly before 13:00 I escaped the more and more oppressing atmosphere of the company in the studio, in which we only hindered one another reciprocally from unfolding completely into the inebriation. I sat down in a small, empty room, on the floor, with my back to the wall, and saw through the only window on the narrow frontage opposite me a bit of gray-white cloudy sky. This, like the whole environment in general, appeared to be hopelessly normal at this moment. I was dejected, and my self seemed so repulsive and hateful to me that I had not dared (and on this day even had actually repeatedly desperately avoided) to look in a mirror or in the face of another person. I very much wished this inebriation were finally finished, but it still had my body totally in its possession. I imagined that I perceived, deep within its stubborn oppressive weight, how it held my limbs surrounded with a hundred polyp arms - yes, I actually experienced this in a mysterious rhythm; electrified contacts, as of a real, indeed imperceptible, but sinister alien sent being, which I addressed with a loud voice, reviled, bid, and challenged to open combat. "It is only the projection of evil in your self," another voice assured me. "It is your soul monster!" This perception was like a flashing sword. It passed through me with redeeming sharpness. The polyp arms fell away from me - as if cut through - and simultaneously the hitherto dull and gloomy gray-white of the sky behind the open window suddenly scintillated like sunlit water. As I stared at it so enchanted, it changed (for me!) to real water: a subterranean spring overran me, which had ruptured there all at once and now boiled up toward me, wanted to become a storm, a lake, an ocean, with millions and millions of drops - and on all of these drops, on every single one of them, the light danced.... As the room, window, and sky came back into my consciousness (it was 13:25 hours), the inebriation was certainly not at an end - not yet - but its rearguard, which passed by me during the ensuing two hours, very much resembled the rainbow that follows the storm. Both the estrangement from the environment and the estrangement from the individual body, experienced in both of the preceding experiments described by Gelpke - as well as the feeling of an alien being, a demon, seizing possession of oneself - are features of LSD inebriation that, in spite of all the other diversity and variability of the experience, are cited in most research reports. I have already described the possession by the LSD demon as an uncanny experience in my first planned self-experiment. Anxiety and terror then affected me especially strongly, because at that time I had no way of knowing that the demon would again release his victim. The adventures described in the following report, by a painter, belong to a completely different type of LSD experience. This artist visited me in order to obtain my opinion about how the experience under LSD should be understood and interpreted. He feared that the profound transformation of his personal life, which had resulted from his experiment with LSD, could rest on a mere delusion. My explanation - that LSD, as a biochemical agent, only triggered his visions but had not created them and that these visions rather originated from his own soul - gave him confidence in the meaning of his transformation. LSD Experience of a Painter . . . Therefore I traveled with Eva to a solitary mountain valley. Up there in nature, I thought it would be particularly beautiful with Eva. Eva was young and attractive. Twenty years older than she, I was already in the middle of life. Despite the sorrowful consequences that I had experienced previously, as a result of erotic escapades, despite the pain and the disappointments that I inflicted on those who loved me and had believed in me, I was drawn again with irresistible power to this adventure, to Eva, to her youth. I was under the spell of this girl. Our affair indeed was only beginning, but I felt this seductive power more strongly than ever before. I knew that I could no longer resist. For the second time in my life I was again ready to desert my family, to give up my position, to break all bridges. I wanted to hurl myself uninhibitedly into this lustful inebriation with Eva. She was life, youth. Over again it cried out in me, again and again to drain the cup of lust and life until the last drop, until death and perdition. Let the Devil fetch me later on! I had indeed long ago done away with God and the Devil. They were for me only human inventions, which came to be utilized by a skeptical, unscrupulous minority, in order to suppress and exploit a believing, naive majority. I wanted to have nothing to do with this mendacious social moral. To enjoy, at all costs, I wished to enjoy et apres nous te deluge. "What is wife to me, what is child to me - let them go begging, if they are hungry." I also perceived the institution of marriage as a social lie. The marriage of my parents and marriages of my acquaintances seemed to confirm that sufficiently for me. Couples remained together because it was more convenient; they were accustomed to it, and "yes, if it weren't for the children . . ." Under the pretense of a good marriage, each tormented the other emotionally, to the point of rashes and stomach ulcers, or each went his own way. Everything in me rebelled against the thought of having to love only one and the same woman a life long. I frankly perceived that as repugnant and unnatural. Thus stood my inner disposition on that portentous summer evening at the mountain lake. At seven o'clock in the evening both of us took a moderately strong dose of LSD, some 0.1 milligrams. Then we strolled along about the lake and then sat on the bank. We threw stones in the water and watched the forming wave circles. We felt a slight inner restlessness. Around eight o'clock we entered the hotel lounge and ordered tea and sandwiches. Some guests still sat there, telling jokes and laughing loudly. They winked at us. Their eyes sparkled strangely. We felt strange and distant and had the feeling that they would notice something in us. Outside it slowly became dark. We decided only reluctantly to go to our hotel room. A street without lights led along the black lake to the distant guest house. As I switched on the light, the granite staircase, leading from the shore road to the house, appeared to flame up from step to step. Eva quivered all at once, frightened. "Hellish" went through my mind, and all of a sudden horror passed through my limbs, and I knew: now it's going to turn out badly. From afar, from the village, a clock struck nine. Scarcely were we in our room, when Eva threw herself on the bed and looked at me with wide eyes. It was not in the least possible to think of love. I sat down on the edge of the bed and held both of Eva's hands. Then came the terror. We sank into a deep, indescribable horror, which neither of us understood. "Look in my eyes, look at me," I implored Eva, yet again and again her gaze was averted from me, and then she cried out loud in terror and trembled all over her body. There was no way out. Outside was only gloomy night and the deep, black lake. In the public house all the lights were extinguished; the people had probably gone to sleep. What would they have said if they could see us now? Possibly they would summon the police, and then everything would become still much worse. A drug scandal - intolerable agonizing thoughts. We could no longer move from the spot. We sat there surrounded by four wooden walls whose board joints shone infernally. It became more unbearable all the time. Suddenly the door was opened and "something dreadful" entered. Eva cried out wildly and hid herself under the bed covers. Once again a cry. The horror under the covers was yet worse. "Look straight in my eyes!" I called to her, but she rolled her eyes back and forth as though out of her mind. She is becoming insane, I realized. In desperation I seized her by the hair so that she could no longer turn her face away from me. I saw dreadful fear in her eyes. Everything around us was hostile and threatening, as if everything wanted to attack us in the next moment. You must protect Eva, you must bring her through until morning, then the effects will discontinue, I said to myself. Then again, however, I plunged into nameless horror. There was no more time or reason; it seemed as if this condition would never end. The objects in the room were animated to caricatures; everything on all sides sneered scornfully. I saw Eva's yellow-black striped shoes, which I had found so stimulating, appearing as two large, evil wasps crawling on the floor. The water piping above the washbasin changed to a dragon head, whose eyes, the two water taps, observed me malevolently. My first name, George, came into my mind, and all at once I felt like Knight George, who must fight for Eva. Eva's cries tore me from these thoughts. Bathed in perspiration and trembling, she fastened herself to me. "I am thirsty," she moaned. With great effort, without releasing Eva's hand, I succeeded in getting a glass of water for her. But the water seemed slimy and viscous, was poisonous, and we could not quench our thirst with it. The two night- table lamps glowed with a strange brightness, in an infernal light. The clock struck twelve. This is hell, I thought. There is indeed no Devil and no demons, and yet they were perceptible in us, filled up the room, and tormented us with unimaginable terror. Imagination, or not? Hallucinations, projections? - insignificant questions when confronted with the reality of fear that was fixed in our bodies and shook us: the fear alone, it existed. Some passages from Huxley's book The Doors of Perception came to me and brought me brief comfort. I looked at Eva, at this whimpering, horrified being in her torment, and felt great remorse and pity. She had become strange to me; I scarcely recognized her any longer. She wore a fine golden chain around her neck with the medallion of the Virgin Mary. It was a gift from her younger brother. I noticed how a benevolent, comforting radiation, which was connected with pure love, emanated from this necklace. But then the terror broke loose again, as if to our final destruction. I needed my whole strength to constrain Eva. Loudly I heard the electrical meter ticking weirdly outside of the door, as if it wanted to make a most important, evil, devastating announcement to me in the next moment. Disdain, derision, and malignity again whispered out of all nooks and crevices. There, in the midst of this agony, I perceived the ringing of cowbells from afar as a wonderful, promising music. Yet soon it became silent again, and renewed fear and dread once again set in. As a drowning man hopes for a rescuing plank, so I wished that the cows would yet again want to draw near the house. But everything remained quiet, and only the threatening tick and hum of the current meter buzzed round us like an invisible, malevolent insect. Morning finally dawned. With great relief I noticed how the chinks in the window shutters lit up. Now I could leave Eva to herself; she had quieted down. Exhausted, she closed her eyes and fell asleep. Shocked and deeply sad, I still sat on the edge of the bed. Gone was my pride and self-assurance; all that remained of me was a small heap of misery. I examined myself in the mirror and started: I had become ten years older in the course of the night. Downcast, I stared at the light of the night-table lamp with the hideous shade of intertwined plastic cords. All at once the light seemed to become brighter, and in the plastic cords it began to sparkle and to twinkle; it glowed like diamonds and gems of all colors, and an overwhelming feeling of happiness welled up in me. All at once, lamp, room, and Eva disappeared, and I found myself in a wonderful, fantastic landscape. It was comparable to the interior of an immense Gothic church nave, with infinitely many columns and Gothic arches. These consisted, however, not of stone, but rather of crystal. Bluish, yellowish, milky, and clearly transparent crystal columns surrounded me like trees in an open forest. Their points and arches became lost in dizzying heights. A bright light appeared before my inner eye, and a wonderful, gentle voice spoke to me out of the light. I did not hear it with my external ear, but rather perceived it, as if it were clear thoughts that arise in one. I realized that in the horror of the passing night I had experienced my own individual condition: selfishness. My egotism had kept me separated from mankind and had led me to inner isolation. I had loved only myself, not my neighbor; loved only the gratification that the other offered me. The world had existed only for the satisfaction of my greed. I had become tough, cold, and cynical. Hell, therefore, had signified that: egotism and lovelessness. Therefore everything had seemed strange and unconnected to me, so scornful and threatening. Amid flowing tears, I was enlightened with the knowledge that true love means surrender of selfishness and that it is not desires but rather selfless love that forms the bridge to the heart of our fellow man. Waves of ineffable happiness flowed through my body. I had experienced the grace of God. But how could it be possible that it was radiating toward me, particularly out of this cheap lampshade? Then the inner voice answered: God is in everything. The experience at the mountain lake has given me the certainty that beyond the ephemeral, material world there also exists an imperishable, spiritual reality, which is our true home. I am now on my way home. For Eva everything remained just a bad dream. We broke up a short time thereafter. The following notes kept by a twenty-five-year-old advertising agent are contained in The LSD Story by John Cashman (Fawcett Publications, Greenwich, Conn., 1966). They were included in this selection of LSD reports, along with the preceding example, because the progression that they describe - from terrifying visions to extreme euphoria, a kind of death rebirth cycle - is characteristic of many LSD experiments. A Joyous Song of Being My first experience with LSD came at the home of a close friend who served as my guide. The surroundings were comfortably familiar and relaxing. I took two ampuls (200 micrograms) of LSD mixed in half a glass of distilled water. The experience lasted for close to eleven hours, from 8 o'clock on a Saturday evening until very nearly 7 o'clock the next morning. I have no firm point of comparison, but I am positive that no saint ever saw more glorious or joyously beautiful visions or experienced a more blissful state of transcendence. My powers to convey the miracles are shabby and far too inadequate to the task at hand. A sketch, and an artless one at that, must suffice where only the hand of a great master working from a complete palette could do justice to the subject. I must apologize for my own limitations in this feeble attempt to reduce the most remarkable experience of my life to mere words. My superior smile at the fumbling, halting attempts of others in their attempts to explain the heavenly visions to me has been transformed into a knowing smile of a conspirator - the common experience requires no words. My first thought after drinking the LSD was that it was having absolutely no effect. They had told me thirty minutes would produce the first sensation, a tingling of the skin. There was no tingling. I commented on this and was told to relax and wait. For the lack of anything else to do I stared at the dial light of the table radio, nodding my head to a jazz piece I did not recognize. I think it was several minutes before I realized that the light was changing color kaleidoscopically with the different pitch of the musical sounds, bright reds and yellows in the high register, deep purple in the low. I laughed. I had no idea when it had started. I simply knew it had. I closed my eyes, but the colored notes were still there. I was overcome by the remarkable brilliance of the colors. I tried to talk, to explain what I was seeing, the vibrant and luminous colors. Somehow it didn't seem important. With my eyes open, the radiant colors flooded the room, folding over on top of one another in rhythm with the music. Suddenly I was aware that the colors were the music. The discovery did not seem startling. Values, so cherished and guarded, were becoming unimportant. I wanted to talk about the colored music, but I couldn't. I was reduced to uttering one-syllable words while polysyllabic impressions tumbled through my mind with the speed of light. The dimensions of the room were changing, now sliding into a fluttering diamond shape, then straining into an oval shape as if someone were pumping air into the room, expanding it to the bursting point. I was having trouble focusing on objects. They would melt into fuzzy masses of nothing or sail off into space, self-propelled, slow-motion trips that were of acute interest to me. I tried to check the time on my watch, but I was unable to focus on the hands. I thought of asking for the time, but the thought passed. I was too busy seeing and listening. The sounds were exhilarating, the sights remarkable. I was completely entranced. I have no idea how long this lasted. I do know the egg came next. The egg, large, pulsating, and a luminous green, was there before I actually saw it. I sensed it was there. It hung suspended about halfway between where I sat and the far wall. I was intrigued by the beauty of the egg. At the same time I was afraid it would drop to the floor and break. I didn't want the egg to break. It seemed most important that the egg should not break. But even as I thought of this, the egg slowly dissolved and revealed a great multihued flower that was like no flower I have ever seen. Its incredibly exquisite petals opened on the room, spraying indescribable colors in every direction. I felt the colors and heard them as they played across my body, cool and warm, reedlike and tinkling. The first tinge of apprehension came later when I saw the center of the flower slowly eating away at the petals, a black, shiny center that appeared to be formed by the backs of a thousand ants. It ate away the petals at an agonizingly slow pace. I wanted to scream for it to stop or to hurry up. I was pained by the gradual disappearance of the beautiful petals as if being swallowed by an insidious disease. Then in a flash of insight I realized to my horror that the black thing was actually devouring me. I was the flower and this foreign, creeping thing was eating me! I shouted or screamed, I really don't remember. I was too full of fear and loathing. I heard my guide say: "Easy now. Just go with it. Don't fight it. Go with it." I tried, but the hideous blackness caused such repulsion that I screamed: "I can't! For God's sake help me! Help me!" The voice was soothing, reassuring: "Let it come. Everything is all right. Don't worry. Go with it. Don't fight." I felt myself dissolving into the terrifying apparition, my body melting in waves into the core of blackness, my mind stripped of ego and life and, yes even death. In one great crystal instant I realized that I was immortal. I asked the question: "Am I dead?" But the question had no meaning. Meaning was meaningless. Suddenly there was white light and the shimmering beauty of unity. There was light everywhere, white light with a clarity beyond description. I was dead and I was born and the exultation was pure and holy. My lungs were bursting with the joyful song of being. There was unity and life and the exquisite love that filled my being was unbounded. My awareness was acute and complete. I saw God and the devil and all the saints and I knew the truth. I felt myself flowing into the cosmos, levitated beyond all restraint, liberated to swim in the blissful radiance of the heavenly visions. I wanted to shout and sing of miraculous new life and sense and form, of the joyous beauty and the whole mad ecstasy of loveliness. I knew and understood all there is to know and understand. I was immortal, wise beyond wisdom, and capable of love, of all loves. Every atom of my body and soul had seen and felt God. The world was warmth and goodness. There was no time, no place, no me. There was only cosmic harmony. It was all there in the white light. With every fiber of my being I knew it was so. I embraced the enlightenment with complete abandonment. As the experience receded I longed to hold onto it and tenaciously fought against the encroachment of the realities of time and place. For me, the realities of our limited existence were no longer valid. I had seen the ultimate realities and there would be no others. As I was slowly transported back to the tyranny of clocks and schedules and petty hatreds, I tried to talk of my trip, my enlightenment, the horrors, the beauty, all of it. I must have been babbling like an idiot. My thoughts swirled at a fantastic rate, but the words couldn't keep pace. My guide smiled and told me he understood. The preceding collection of reports on "travels in the universe of the soul," even though they encompass such dissimilar experiences, are still not able to establish a complete picture of the broad spectrum of all possible reactions to LSD, which extends from the most sublime spiritual, religious, and mystical experiences, down to gross psychosomatic disturbances. Cases of LSD sessions have been described in which the stimulation of fantasy and of visionary experience, as expressed in the LSD reports assembled here, is completely absent, and the experimenter was for the whole time in a state of ghastly physical and mental discomfort, or even felt severely ill. Reports about the modification of sexual experience under the influence of LSD are also contradictory. Since stimulation of all sensory perception is an essential feature of LSD effects, the sensual orgy of sexual intercourse can undergo unimaginable enhancements. Cases have also been described, however, in which LSD led not to the anticipated erotic paradise, but rather to a purgatory or even to the hell of frightful extinction of every perception and to a lifeless vacuum. Such a variety and contradiction of reactions to a drug is found only in LSD and the related hallucinogens. The explanation for this lies in the complexity and variability of the conscious and subconscious minds of people, which LSD is able to penetrate and to bring to life as experienced reality. 6. The Mexican Relatives of LSD The Sacred Mushroom Teonanacatl Late in 1956 a notice in the daily paper caught my interest. Among some Indians in southern Mexico, American researchers had discovered mushrooms that were eaten in religious ceremonies and that produced an inebriated condition accompanied by hallucinations. Since, outside of the mescaline cactus found also in Mexico, no other drug was known at the time that, like LSD, produced hallucinations, I would have liked to establish contact with these researchers, in order to learn details about these hallucinogenic mushrooms. But there were no names and addresses in the short newspaper article, so that it was impossible to get further information. Nevertheless, the mysterious mushrooms, whose chemical investigation would be a tempting problem, stayed in my thoughts from then on. As it later turned out, LSD was the reason that these mushrooms found their way into my laboratory, with out my assistance, at the beginning of the following year. Through the mediation of Dr. Yves Dunant, at the time director of the Paris branch of Sandoz, an inquiry came to the pharmaceutical research management in Basel from Professor Roger Heim, director of the Laboratoire de Cryptogamie of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, asking whether we were interested in carrying out the chemical investigation of the Mexican hallucinogenic mushrooms. With great joy I declared myself ready to begin this work in my department, in the laboratories for natural product research. That was to be my link to the exciting investigations of the Mexican sacred mushrooms, which were already broadly advanced in the ethnomycological and botanical aspects. For a long time the existence of these magic mushrooms had remained an enigma. The history of their rediscovery is presented at first hand in the magnificent two-volume standard work of ethnomycology, Mushrooms, Russia and History (Pantheon Books, New York, 1957), for the authors, the American researchers Valentina Pavlovna Wasson and her husband, R. Gordon Wasson, played a decisive role in this rediscovery. The following descriptions of the fascinating history of these mushrooms are taken from the Wassons' book. The first written evidence of the use of inebriating mushrooms on festival occasions, or in the course of religious ceremonies and magically oriented healing practices, is found among the Spanish chroniclers and naturalists of the sixteenth century, who entered the country soon after the conquest of Mexico by Hernan Cortes. The most important of these witnesses is the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun, who mentions the magic mushrooms and describes their effects and their use in several passages of his famous historical work, Historia General de tas Cosas de Nueva Espana, written between the years 1529 and 1590. Thus he describes, for example, how merchants celebrated the return home from a successful business trip with a mushroom party: Coming at the very first, at the time of feasting, they ate mushrooms when, as they said, it was the hour of the blowing of the flutes. Not yet did they partake of food; they drank only chocolate during the night. And they ate mushrooms with honey. When already the mushrooms were taking effect, there was dancing, there was weeping.... Some saw in a vision that they would die in war. Some saw in a vision that they would be devoured by wild beasts.... Some saw in a vision that they would become rich, wealthy. Some saw in a vision that they would buy slaves, would become slave owners. Some saw in a vision that they would commit adultery [and so] would have their heads bashed in, would be stoned to death.... Some saw in a vision that they would perish in the water. Some saw in a vision that they would pass to tranquility in death. Some saw in a vision that they would fall from the housetop, tumble to their death. . . . All such things they saw.... And when [the effects of] the mushroom ceased, they conversed with one another, spoke of what they had seen in the vision. In a publication from the same period, Diego Duran, a Dominican friar, reported that inebriating mushrooms were eaten at the great festivity on the occasion of the accession to the throne of Moctezuma II, the famed emperor of the Aztecs, in the year 1502. A passage in the seventeenth-century chronicle of Don Jacinto de la Serna refers to the use of these mushrooms in a religious framework: And what happened was that there had come to [the village] an Indian . . . and his name was Juan Chichiton . . . and he had brought the red- colored mushrooms that are gathered in the uplands, and with them he had committed a great idolatry.... In the house where everyone had gathered on the occasion of a saint's feast . . . the teponastli [an Aztec percussion instrument] was playing and singing was going on the whole night through. After most of the night had passed, Juan Chichiton, who was the priest for that solumn rite, to all of those present at the fiesta gave the mushrooms to eat, after the manner of Communion, and gave them pulque to drink. . . so that they all went out of their heads, a shame it was to see. In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, these mushrooms were described as teonanactl, which can be translated as "sacred mushroom." There are indications that ceremonial use of such mushrooms reaches far back into pre-Columbian times. So-called mushroom stones have been found in El Salvador, Guatemala, and the contiguous mountainous districts of Mexico. These are stone sculptures in the form of pileate mushroom, on whose stem the face or the form of a god or an animal-like demon is carved. Most are about 30 cm high. The oldest examples, according to archaeologists, date back to before 500 B.C. R. G. Wasson argues, quite convincingly, that there is a connection between these mushroom stones and teonanacatl. If true, this means that the mushroom cult, the magico-medicinal and religious-ceremonial use of the magic mushrooms, is more than two thousand years old. To the Christian missionaries, the inebriating, vision- and hallucination- producing effects of these mushrooms seemed to be the Devil's work. They therefore tried, with all the means in their power, to extirpate their use. But they succeeded only partially, for the Indians have continued secretly down to our time to utilize the mushroom teonanacatl, which was sacred to them. Strange to say, the reports in the old chronicles about the use of magic mushrooms remained unnoticed during the following centuries, probably because they were considered products of the imagination of a superstitious age. All traces of the existence of "sacred mushrooms" were in danger of becoming obliterated once and for all, when, in 1915, an American botanist of repute, Dr. W. E. Safford, in an address before the Botanical Society in Washington and in a scientific publication, advanced the thesis that no such thing as magic mushrooms had ever existed at all: the Spanish chroniclers had taken the mescaline cactus for a mushroom! Even if false, this proposition of Safford's served nevertheless to direct the attention of the scientific world to the riddle of the mysterious mushrooms. It was the Mexican physician Dr. Blas Pablo Reko who first openly disagreed with Safford's interpretation and who found evidence that mushrooms were still employed in medicinal-religious ceremonies even in our time, in remote districts of the southern mountains of Mexico. But not until the years 1938 did the anthropologist Robert J. Weitlaner and Dr. Richard Evans Schultes, a botanist from Harvard University, find actual mushrooms in that region, which were used there for this ceremonial purpose; and only in 1938 could a group of young American anthropologists, under the direction of Jean Bassett Johnson, attend a secret nocturnal mushroom ceremony for the first time. This was in Huautla de Jimenez, the capital of the Mazatec country, in the State of Oaxaca. But these researchers were only spectators, they were not permitted to partake of the mushrooms. Johnson reported on the experience in a Swedish journal (Ethnotogical Studies 9, 1939). Then exploration of the magic mushrooms was interrupted. World War II broke out. Schultes, at the behest of the American government, had to occupy himself with rubber production in the Amazon territory, and Johnson was killed after the Allied landing in North Africa. It was the American researchers, the married couple Dr. Valentina Pavlovna Wasson and her husband, R. Gordon Wasson, who again took up the problem from the ethnographic aspect. R. G. Wasson was a banker, vice-president of the J. P. Morgan Co. in New York. His wife, who died in 1958, was a pediatrician. The Wassons began their work in 1953, in the Mazatec village Huautla de Jimenez, where fifteen years earlier J. B. Johnson and others had established the continued existence of the ancient Indian mushroom cult. They received especially valuable information from an American missionary who had been active there for many years, Eunice V. Pike, member of the Wycliffe Bible Translators. Thanks to her knowledge of the native language and her ministerial association with the inhabitants, Pike had information about the significance of the magic mushrooms that nobody else possessed. During several lengthy sojourns in Huautla and environs, the Wassons were able to study the present use of the mushrooms in detail and compare it with the descriptions in the old chronicles. This showed that the belief in the "sacred mushrooms" was still prevalent in that region. However, the Indians kept their beliefs a secret from strangers. It took great tact and skill, therefore, to gain the confidence of the indigenous population and to receive insight into this secret domain. In the modern form of the mushroom cult, the old religious ideas and customs are mingled with Christian ideas and Christian terminology. Thus the mushrooms are often spoken of as the blood of Christ, because they will grow only where a drop of Christ's blood has fallen on the earth. According to another notion, the mushrooms sprout where a drop of saliva from Christ's mouth has moistened the ground, and it is therefore Jesus Christ himself who speaks through the mushrooms. The mushroom ceremony follows the form of a consultation. The seeker of advice or a sick person or his or her family questions a "wise man" or a "wise woman," asabio orsabia, also named curandero orcurandera, in return for a modest payment. Curandero can best be translated into English as "healing priest," for his function is that of a physician as well as that of a priest, both being found only rarely in these remote regions. In the Mazatec language the healing priest is called co-ta-ci-ne, which means "one who knows." He eats the mushroom in the framework of a ceremony that always takes place at night. The other persons present at the ceremony may sometimes receive mushrooms as well, yet a much greater dose always goes to the curandero. The performance is executed with the accompaniment of prayers and entreaties, while the mushrooms are incensed briefly over a basin, in which copal (an incense-like resin) is burned. In complete darkness, at times by candlelight, while the others present lie quietly on their straw mats, the curandero, kneeling or sitting, prays and sings before a type of altar bearing a crucifix, an image of a saint, or some other object of worship. Under the influence of the sacred mushrooms, the curandero counsels in a visionary state, in which even the inactive observers more or less participate. In the monotonous song of the curandero, the mushroom teonanacatl gives its answers to the questions posed. It says whether the diseased person will live or die, which herbs will effect the cure; it reveals who has killed a specific person, or who has stolen the horse; or it makes known how a distant relative fares, and so forth. The mushroom ceremony not only has the function of a consulation of the type described, for the Indians it also has a meaning in many respects similar to the Holy Communion for the believing Christian. From many utterances of the natives it could be inferred that they believe that God has given the Indians the sacred mushroom because they are poor and possess no doctors and medicines; and also, because they cannot read, in particular the Bible, God can therefore speak directly to them through the mushroom. The missionary Eunice V. Pike even alluded to the difficulties that result from explaining the Christian message, the written word, to a people who believe they possess a means - the sacred mushrooms of course - to make God's will known to them in a direct, clear manner: yes, the mushrooms permit them to see into heaven and to establish communication with God himself. The Indians' reverence for the sacred mushrooms is also evident in their belief that they can be eaten only by a "clean" person. "Clean" here means ceremonially clean, and that term among other things includes sexual abstinence at least four days before and after ingestion of the mushrooms. Certain rules must also be observed in gathering the mushrooms. With nonobservance of these commandments, the mushrooms can make the person who eats it insane, or can even kill. The Wassons had undertaken their first expedition to the Mazatec country in 1953, but not until 1955 did they succeed in overcoming the shyness and reserve of the Mazatec friends they had managed to make, to the point of being admitted as active participants in a mushroom ceremony. R. Gordon Wasson and his companion, the photographer Allan Richardson, were given sacred mushrooms to eat at the end of June 1955, on the occasion of a nocturnal mushroom ceremony. They thereby became in all likelihood the first outsiders, the first whites, ever permitted to take teonanacatl. In the second volume of Mushrooms, Russia and History, in enraptured words, Wasson describes how the mushroom seized possession of him completely, although he had tried to struggle against its effects, in order to be able to remain an objective observer. First he saw geometric, colored patterns, which then took on architectural characteristics. Next followed visions of splendid colonnades, palaces of supernatural harmony and magnificence embellished with precious gems, triumphal cars drawn by fabulous creatures as they are known only from mythology, and landscapes of fabulous luster. Detached from the body, the spirit soared timelessly in a realm of fantasy among images of a higher reality and deeper meaning than those of the ordinary, everyday world. The essence of life, the ineffable, seemed to be on the verge of being unlocked, but the ultimate door failed to open. This experience was the final proof, for Wasson, that the magical powers attributed to the mushrooms actually existed and were not merely superstition. In order to introduce the mushrooms to scientific research, Wasson had earlier established an association with mycologist Professor Roger Heim of Paris. Accompanying the Wassons on further expeditions into the Mazatec country, Heim conducted the botanical identification of the sacred mushrooms. He showed that they were gilled mushrooms from the family Strophariaceae, about a dozen different species not previously described scientifically, the greatest part belonging to the genus Psilocybe. Professor Heim also succeeded in cultivating some of the species in the laboratory. The mushroom Psilocybe mexicana turned out to be especially suitable for artificial cultivation. Chemical investigations ran parallel with these botanical studies on the magic mushrooms, with the goal of extracting the hallucinogenically active principle from the mushroom material and preparing it in chemically pure form. Such investigations were carried out at Professor Heim's instigation in the chemicaI laboratory of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and work teams were occupied with this problem in the United States in the research laboratories of two large pharmaceutical companies: Merck, and Smith, Kline and French. The American laboratories had obtained some of the mushrooms from R. G. Wasson and had gathered others themselves in the Sierra Mazateca. As the chemical investigations in Paris and in the United States turned out to be ineffectual, Professor Heim addressed this matter to our firm, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, because he felt that our experimental experience with LSD, related to the magic mushrooms by similar activity, could be of use in the isolation attempts. Thus it was LSD that showed teonanacatl the way into our laboratory. As director of the department of natural products of the Sandoz pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratories at that time, I wanted to assign-the investigation of the magic mushrooms to one of my coworkers. However, nobody showed much eagerness to take on this problem because it was known that LSD and everything connected with it were scarcely popular subjects to the top management. Because the enthusiasm necessary for successful endeavors cannot be commanded, and because the enthusiasm was already present in me as far as this problem was concerned, I decided to conduct the investigation myself. Some 100 g of dried mushrooms of the species Psilocybe mexicana, cultivated by Professor Heim in the laboratory, were available for the beginning of the chemical analysis. My laboratory assistant, Hans Tscherter, who during our decade-long collaboration, had developed into a very capable helper, completely familiar with my manner of work, aided me in the extraction and isolation attempts. Since there were no clues at all concerning the chemical properties of the active principle we sought, the isolation attempts had to be conducted on the basis of the effects of the extract fractions. But none of the various extracts showed an unequivocal effect, either in the mouse or the dog, which could have pointed to the presence of hallucinogenic principles. It therefore became doubtful whether the mushrooms cultivated and dried in Paris were still active at all. That could only be determined by experimenting with this mushroom material on a human being. As in the case of LSD, I made this fundamental experiment myself, since it is not appropriate for researchers to ask anyone else to perform self-experiments that they require for their own investigations, especially if they entail, as in this case, a certain risk. In this experiment I ate 32 dried specimens of Psilocybe mexicana, which together weighed 2.4 g. This amount corresponded to an average dose, according to the reports of Wasson and Heim, as it is used by the curanderos. The mushrooms displayed a strong psychic effect, as the following extract from the report on that experiment shows: Thirty minutes after my taking the mushrooms, the exterior world began to undergo a strange transformation. Everything assumed a Mexican character. As I was perfectly well aware that my knowledge of the Mexican origin of the mushroom would lead me to imagine only Mexican scenery, I tried deliberately to look on my environment as I knew it normally. But all voluntary efforts to look at things in their customary forms and colors proved ineffective. Whether my eyes were closed or open, I saw only Mexican motifs and colors. When the doctor supervising the experiment bent over me to check my blood pressure, he was transformed into an Aztec priest and I would not have been astonished if he had drawn an obsidian knife. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, it amused me to see how the Germanic face of my colleague had acquired a purely Indian expression. At the peak of the intoxication, about 1 1/2 hours after ingestion of the mushrooms, the rush of interior pictures, mostly abstract motifs rapidly changing in shape and color, reached such an alarming degree that I feared that I would be torn into this whirlpool of form and color and would dissolve. After about six hours the dream came to an end. Subjectively, I had no idea how long this condition had lasted. I felt my return to everyday reality to be a happy return from a strange, fantastic but quite real world to an old and familiar home. This self-experiment showed once again that human beings react much more sensitively than animals to psychoactive substances. We had already reached the same conclusion in experimenting with LSD on animals, as described in an earlier chapter of this book. It was not inactivity of the mushroom material, but rather the deficient reaction capability of the research animals vis-a-vis such a type of active principle, that explained why our extracts had appeared inactive in the mouse and dog. Because the assay on human subjects was the only test at our disposal for the detection of the active extract fractions, we had no other choice than to perform the testing on ourselves if we wanted to carry on the work and bring it to a successful conclusion. In the self-experiment just described, a strong reaction lasting several hours was produced by 2.4 g dried mushrooms. Therefore, in the sequel we used samples corresponding to only one-third of this amount, namely 0.8 g dried mushrooms. If these samples contained the active principle, they would only provoke a mild effect that impaired the ability to work for a short time, but this effect would still be so distinct that the inactive fractions and those containing the active principle could unequivocally be differentiated from one another. Several coworkers and colleagues volunteered as guinea pigs for this series of tests. Psilocybin and Psilocin With the help of this reliable test on human subjects, the active principle could be isolated, concentrated, and transformed into a chemically pure state by means of the newest separation methods. Two new substances, which I named psilocybin and psilocin, were thereby obtained in the form of colorless crystals. These results were published in March 1958 in the journal Experientia, in collaboration with Professor Heim and with my colleagues Dr. A. Brack and Dr. H. Kobel, who had provided greater quantities of mushroom material for these investigations after they had essentially improved the laboratory cultivation of the mushrooms. Some of my coworkers at the time - Drs. A. J. Frey, H. Ott, T. Petrzilka, and F. Troxler - then participated in the next steps of these investigations, the determination of the chemical structure of psilocybin and psilocin and the subsequent synthesis of these compounds, the results of which were published in the November 1958 issue of Experientia. The chemical structures of these mushroom factors deserve special attention in several respects. Psilocybin and psilocin belong, like LSD, to the indole compounds, the biologically important class of substances found in the plant and animal kingdoms. Particular chemical features common to both the mushroom substances and LSD show that psilocybin and psilocin are closely related to LSD, not only with regard to psychic effects but also to their chemical structures. Psilocybin is the phosphoric acid ester of psilocin and, as such, is the first and hitherto only phosphoric-acid-containing indole compound discovered in nature. The phosphoric acid residue does not contribute to the activity, for the phosphoric-acid-free psilocin is just as active as psilocybin, but it makes the molecule more stable. While psilocin is readily decomposed by the oxygen in air, psilocybin is a stable substance. Psilocybin and psilocin possess a chemical structure very similar to the brain factor serotonin. As was already mentioned in the chapter on animal experiments and biological research, serotonin plays an important role in the chemistry of brain functions. The two mushroom factors, like LSD, block the effects of serotonin in pharmacological experiments on different organs. Other pharmacological properties of psilocybin and psilocin are also similar to those of LSD. The main difference consists in the quantitative activity, in animal as well as human experimentation. The average active dose of psilocybin or psilocin in human beings amounts to 10 mg (0.01 g); accordingly, these two substances are more than 100 times less active than LSD, of which 0.1 mg constitutes a strong dose. Moreover, the effects of the mushroom factors last only four to six hours, much shorter than the effects of LSD (eight to twelve hours). The total synthesis of psilocybin and psilocin, without the aid of the mushrooms, could be developed into a technical process, which would allow these substances to be produced on a large scale. Synthetic production is more rational and cheaper than extraction from the mushrooms. Thus with the isolation and synthesis of the active principles, the demystification of the magic mushrooms was accomplished. The compounds whose wondrous effects led the Indians to believe for millennia that a god was residing in the mushrooms had their chemical structures elucidated and could be produced synthetically in flasks. Just what progress in scientific knowledge was accomplished by natural products research in this case? Essentially, when all is said and done, we can only say that the mystery of the wondrous effects of teonanacatl was reduced to the mystery of the effects of two crystalline substances - since these effects cannot be explained by science either, but can only be described. A Voyage into the Universe of the Soul with Psilocybin The relationship between the psychic effects of psilocybin and those of LSD, their visionary hallucinatory character, is evident in the following report from Antaios, of a psilocybin experiment by Dr. Rudolf Gelpke. He has characterized his experiences with LSD and psilocybin, as already mentioned in a previous chapter, as "travels in the universe of the soul." Where Time Stands Still (10 mg psilocybin, 6 April 1961, 10:20) After ca. 20 minutes, beginning effects: serenity, speechlessness, mild but pleasant dizzy sensation, and "pleasureful deep breathing." 10:50 Strong! dizziness, can no longer concentrate . 10:55 Excited, intensity of colors: everything pink to red. 11:05 The world concentrates itself there on the center of the table. Colors very intense. 11:10 A divided being, unprecedented - how can I describe this sensation of life? Waves, different selves, must control me. Immediately after this note I went outdoors, leaving the breakfast table, where I had eaten with Dr. H. and our wives, and lay down on the lawn. The inebriation pushed rapidly to its climax. Although I had firmly resolved to make constant notes, it now seemed to me a complete waste of time, the motion of writing infinitely slow, the possibilities of verbal expression unspeakably paltry - measured by the flood of inner experience that inundated me and threatened to burst me. It seemed to me that 100 years would not be sufficient to describe the fullness of experience of a single minute. At the beginning, optical impressions predominated: I saw with delight the boundless succession of rows of trees in the nearby forest. Then the tattered clouds in the sunny sky rapidly piled up with silent and breathtaking majesty to a superimposition of thousands of layers - heaven on heaven - and I waited then expecting that up there in the next moment something completely powerful, unheard of, not yet existing, would appear or happen - would I behold a god? But only the expectation remained, the presentiment, this hovering, "on the threshold of the ultimate feeling." . . . Then I moved farther away (the proximity of others disturbed me) and lay down in a nook of the garden on a sun-warmed wood pile - my fingers stroked this wood with overflowing, animal-like sensual affection. At the same time I was submerged within myself; it was an absolute climax: a sensation of bliss pervaded me, a contented happiness - I found myself behind my closed eyes in a cavity full of brick-red ornaments, and at the same time in the "center of the universe of consummate calm." I knew everything was good - the cause and origins of everything was good. But at the same moment I also understood the suffering and the loathing, the depression and misunderstanding of ordinary life: there one is never "total," but instead divided, cut in pieces, and split up into the tiny fragments of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years: there one is a slave of Moloch time, which devoured one piecemeal; one is condemned to stammering, bungling, and patchwork; one must drag about with oneself the perfection and absolute, the togetherness of all things; the eternal moment of the golden age, this original ground of being - that indeed nevertheless has always endured and will endure forever - there in the weekday of human existence, as a tormenting thorn buried deeply in the soul, as a memorial of a claim never fulfilled, as a fata morgana of a lost and promised paradise; through this feverish dream "present" to a condemned "past" in a clouded "future." I understood. This inebriation was a spaceflight, not of the outer but rather of the inner man, and for a moment I experienced reality from a location that lies somewhere beyond the force of gravity of time. As I began again to feel this force of gravity, I was childish enough to want to postpone the return by taking a new dose of 6 mg psilocybin at 11:45, and once again 4 mg at 14:30. The effect was trifling, and in any case not worth mentioning. Mrs. Li Gelpke, an artist, also participated in this series of investigations, taking three self-experiments with LSD and psilocybin. The artist wrote of the drawing she made during the experiment: Nothing on this page is consciously fashioned. While I worked on it, the memory (of the experience under psilocybin) was again reality, and led me at every stroke. For that reason the picture is as many-layered as this memory, and the figure at the lower right is really the captive of its dream.... When books about Mexican art came into my hands three weeks later, I again found the motifs of my visions there with a sudden start.... I have also mentioned the occurrence of Mexican motifs in psilocybin inebriation during my first self-experiment with dried Psilocybe mexicana mushrooms, as was described in the section on the chemical investigation of these mushrooms. The same phenomenon has also struck R. Gordon Wasson. Proceeding from such observations, he has advanced the conjecture that ancient Mexican art could have been influenced by visionary images, as they appear in mushroom inebriation. The "Magic Morning Glory" Ololiuhqui After we had managed to solve the riddle of the sacred mushroom teonanacatl in a relatively short time, I also became interested in the problem of another Mexican magic drug not yet chemically elucidated, olotiuhqui. Ololiuhqui is the Aztec name for the seeds of certain climbing plants (Convolvulaceae) that, like the mescaline cactus peyotl and the teonanacatl mushrooms, were used in pre-Columbian times by the Aztecs and neighboring people in religious ceremonies and magical healing practices. Ololiuhqui is still used even today by certain Indian tribes like the Zapotec, Chinantec, Mazatec, and Mixtec, who until a short time ago still led a geniunely isolated existence, little influenced by Christianity, in the remote mountains of southern Mexico. An excellent study of the historical, ethnological, and botanical aspects of ololiuhqui was published in 1941 by Richard Evans Schultes, director of the Harvard Botanical Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is entitled "A Contribution to Our Knowledge of Rivea corymbosa, the Narcotic Ololiuqui of the Aztecs." The following statements about the history of ololiuhqui derive chiefly from Schultes's monograph. [Translator's note: As R. Gordon Wasson has pointed out, "ololiuhqui" is a more precise orthography than the more popular spelling used by Schultes. See Botanical Museum Leaflets Harvard University 20: 161-212, 1963.] The earliest records about this drug were written by Spanish chroniclers of the sixteenth century, who also mentioned peyotl and teonanacatl. Thus the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun, in his already cited famous chronicle Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espana, writes about the wondrous effects of olotiuhqui: "There is an herb, called coatl xoxouhqui (green snake), which produces seeds that are called ololiuhqui. These seeds stupefy and deprive one of reason: they are taken as a potion." We obtain further information about these seeds from the physician Francisco Hernandez, whom Philip II sent to Mexico from Spain, from 1570 to 1575, in order to study the medicaments of the natives. In the chapter "On Ololiuhqui" of his monumental work entitled Rerum Medicarum Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus seu Plantarum, Animalium Mineralium Mexicanorum Historia, published in Rome in 1651, he gives a detailed description and the first illustration of ololiuhqui. An extract from the Latin text accompanying the illustration reads in translation: "Ololiuhqui, which others call coaxihuitl or snake plant, is a climber with thin, green, heart-shaped leaves.... The flowers are white, fairly large.... The seeds are roundish. . . . When the priests of the Indians wanted to visit with the gods and obtain information from them, they ate of this plant in order to become inebriated. Thousands of fantastic images and demons then appeared to them...." Despite this comparatively good description, the botanical identification of ololiuhqui as seeds of Rivea corymbosa (L.) Hall. f. occasioned many discussions in specialist circles. Recently preference has been given to the synonym Turbina corymbosa (L.) Raf. When I decided in 1959 to attempt the isolation of the active principles of ololiuhqui, only a single report on chemical work with the seeds of Turbina cormbosa was available. It was the work of the pharmacologist C. G. Santesson of Stockholm, from the year 1937. Santesson, however, was not successful in isolating an active substance in pure form. Contradictory findings had been published about the activity of theololiuhqui seeds. The psychiatrist H. Osmond conducted a self-experiment with the seeds of Turbina corymbosa in 1955. After the ingestion of 60 to 100 seeds, he entered into a state of apathy and emptiness, accompanied by enhanced visual sensitivity. After four hours, there followed a period of relaxation and well-being, lasting for a longer time. The results of V. J. Kinross-Wright, published in England in 1958, in which eight voluntary research subjects, who had taken up to 125 seeds, perceived no effects at all, contradicted this report. Through the mediation of R. Gordon Wasson, I obtained two samples of ololiuhgui seeds. In his accompanying letter of 6 August 1959 from Mexico City, he wrote of them: . . . The parcels that I am sending you are the following: . . . A small parcel of seeds that I take to be Rivea corymbosa, otherwise known as ololiuqui well-known narcotic of the Aztecs, called in Huautla "la semilla de la Virgen." This parcel, you will find, consists of two little bottles, which represent two deliveries of seeds made to us in Huautla, and a larger batch of seeds delivered to us by Francisco Ortega "Chico," the Zapotec guide, who himself gathered the seeds from the plants at the Zapotec town of San Bartolo Yautepec.... The first-named, round, light brown seeds from Huautla proved in the botanical determination to have been correctly identified as Rivea (Turbina) corymbosa, while the black, angular seeds from San Bartolo Yautepec were identified as Ipomoea violacea L. While Turbina corymbosa thrives only in tropical or subtropical climates, one also finds Ipomoea violacea as an ornamental plant dispersed over the whole earth in the temperate zones. It is the morning glory that delights the eye in our gardens in diverse varieties with blue or blue-red striped caiyxes. The Zapotec, besides the original ololiuhqui (that is, the seeds of Turbina corymbosa, which they call badoh), also utilize badoh negro, the seeds of Ipomoea violacea. T. MacDougall, who furnished us with a second larger consignment of the last-named seeds, made this observation. My capable laboratory assistant Hans Tscherter, with whom I had already carried out the isolation of the active principles of the mushrooms, participated in the chemical investigation of the ololiuhqui drug. We advanced the working hypothesis that the active principles of the ololiuhqui seeds could be representatives of the same class of chemical substances, the indole compounds, to which LSD, psilocybin, and psilocin belong. Considering the very great number of other groups of substances that, like the indoles, were under consideration as active principles of ololiuhqui, it was indeed extremely improbable that this assumption would prove true. It could, however, very easily be tested. The presence of indole compounds, of course, may simply and rapidly be determined by colorimetric reactions. Thus even traces of indole substances, with a certain reagent, give an intense blue- colored solution. We had luck with our hypothesis. Extracts of ololiuhqui seeds with the appropriate reagent gave the blue coloration characteristic of indole compounds. With the help of this colorimetric test, we succeeded in a short time in isolating the indole substances from the seeds and in obtaining them in chemically pure form. Their identification led to an astonishing result. What we found appeared at first scarcely believable. Only after repetition and the most careful scrutiny of the operations was our suspicion concerning the peculiar findings eliminated: the active principles from the ancient Mexican magic drug ololiuhqui proved to be identical with substances that were already present in my laboratory. They were identical with alkaloids that had been obtained in the course of the decades long investigations of ergot; partly isolated as such from ergot, partly obtained through chemical modification of ergot substances. Lysergic acid amide, lysergic acid hydroxyethylamide, and alkaloids closely related to them chemically were established as the main active principles of olotiuhqui. (See formulae in the appendix.) Also present was the alkaloid ergobasine, whose synthesis had constituted the starting point of my investigations on ergot alkaloids. Lysergic acid amide and lysergic acid hydroxyethylamide, active principles of ololiuhqui, are chemically very closely related to lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), which even for the nonchemist follows from the names. Lysergic acid amide was described for the first time by the English chemists S. Smith and G. M. Timmis as a cleavage product of ergot alkaloids, and I had also produced this substance synthetically in the course of the investigations in which LSD originated. Certainly, nobody at the time could have suspected that this cornpound synthesized in the flask would be discovered twenty years later as a naturally occurring active principle of an ancient Mexican magic drug. After the discovery of the psychic effects of LSD, I had also tested lysergic acid amide in a self-experiment and established that it likewise evoked a dreamlike condition, but only with about a tenfold to twentyfold greater dose than LSD. This effect was characterized by a sensation of mental emptiness and the unreality and meaninglessness of the outer world, by enhanced sensitivity of hearing, and by a not unpleasant physical lassitude, which ultimately led to sleep. This picture of the effects of LA-l 1 1, as lysergic acid amide was called as a research preparation, was confirmed in a systematic investigation by the psychiatrist Dr. H. Solms. When I presented the findings of our investigations on ololiuhqui at the Natural Products Congress of the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) in Sydney, Australia, in the fall of 1960, my colleagues received my talk with skepticism. In the discussions following my lecture, some persons voiced the suspicion that the ololiuhqui extracts could well have been contaminated with traces of lysergic acid derivatives, with which so much work had been done in my laboratory. There was another reason for the doubt in specialist circles concerning our findings. The occurrence in higher plants (i.e., in the morning glory family) of ergot alkaloids that hitherto had been known only as constituents of lower fungi, contradicted the experience that certain substances are typical of and restricted to respective plant families. It is indeed a very rare exception to find a characteristic group of substances, in this case the ergot alkaloids, occurring in two divisions of the plant kingdom broadly separated in evolutionary history. Our results were confirmed, however, when different laboratories in the United States, Germany, and Holland subsequently verified our investigations on the ololiuhqui seeds. Nevertheless, the skepticism went so far that some persons even considered the possibility that the seeds could have been infected with alkaloid-producing fungi. That suspicion, however, was ruled out experimentally. These studies on the active principles of ololiuhqui seeds, although they were published only in professional journals, had an unexpected sequel. We were apprised by two Dutch wholesale seed companies that their sale of seeds of Ipomoea violacea, the ornamental blue morning glory, had reached unusual proportions in recent times. They had heard that the great demand was connected with investigations of these seeds in our laboratory, about which they were eager to learn the details. It turned out that the new demand derived from hippie circles and other groups interested in hallucinogenic drugs. They believed they had found in the ololiuhqui seeds a substitute for LSD, which was becoming less and less accessible. The morning glory seed boom, however, lasted only a comparatively short time, evidently because of the undesirable experiences that those in the drug world had with this "new" ancient inebriant. The ololiuhqui seeds, which are taken crushed with water or another mild beverage, taste very bad and are difficult for the stomach to digest. Moreover, the psychic effects of ololiuhqui, in fact, differ from those of LSD in that the euphoric and the hallucinogenic components are less pronounced, while a sensation of mental emptiness, often anxiety and depression, predominates. Furthermore, weariness and lassitude are hardly desirable effects as traits in an inebriant. These could all be reasons why the drug culture's interest in the morning glory seeds has diminished. Only a few investigations have considered the question whether the active principles of ololiuhqui could find a useful application in medicine. In my opinion, it would be worthwhile to clarify above all whether the strong narcotic, sedative effect of certain ololiuhqui constituents, or of chemical modifications of these, is medicinally useful. My studies in the field of hallucinogenic drugs reached a kind of logical conclusion with the investigations of ololiuhqui. They now formed a circle, one could almost say a magic circle: the starting point had been the synthesis of lysergic acid amides, among them the naturally occurring ergot alkaloid ergobasin. This led to the synthesis of lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD. The hallucinogenic properties of LSD were the reason why the hallucinogenic magic mushroom teonanacatl found its way into my laboratory. The work with teonanacatl, from which psilocybin and psilocin were isolated, proceeded to the investigation of another Mexican magic drug, olotiuhqui, in which hallucinogenic principles in the form of lysergic acid amides were again encountered, including ergobasin-with which the magic circle closed. In Search of the Magic Plant "Ska Maria Pastora" in the Mazatec Country R. Gordon Wasson, with whom I had maintained friendly relations since the investigations of the Mexican magic mushrooms, invited my wife and me to take part in an expedition to Mexico in the fall of 1962. The purpose of the journey was to search for another Mexican magic plant. Wasson had learned on his travels in the mountains of southern Mexico that the expressed juice of the leaves of a plant, which were called hojas de la Pastora or hojas de Maria Pastora, in Mazatec ska Pastora or ska Maria Pastora (leaves of the shepherdess or leaves of Mary the shepherdess), were used among the Mazatec in medico-religious practices, like the teonanacatl mushrooms and the ololiuhqui seeds. The question now was to ascertain from what sort of plant the "leaves of Mary the shepherdess" derived, and then to identify this plant botanically. We also hoped, if at all possible, to gather sufficient plant material to conduct a chemical investigation on the hallucinogenic principles it contained. Ride through the Sierra Mazateca On 26 September 1962, my wife and I accordingly flew to Mexico City, where we met Gordon Wasson. He had made all the necessary preparations for the expedition, so that in two days we had already set out on the next leg of the journey to the south. Mrs. Irmgard Weitlaner Johnson, (widow of Jean B. Johnson, a pioneer of the ethnographic study of the Mexican magic mushrooms, killed in the Allied landing in North Africa) had joined us. Her father, Robert J. Weitlaner, had emigrated to Mexico from Austria and had likewise contributed toward the rediscovery of the mushroom cult. Mrs. Johnson worked at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, as an expert on Indian textiles. After a two-day journey in a spacious Land Rover, which took us over the plateau, along the snow-capped Popocatepetl, passing Puebla, down into the Valley of Orizaba with its magnificent tropical vegetation, then by ferry across the Popoloapan (Butterfly River), on through the former Aztec garrison Tuxtepec, we arrived at the starting point of our expedition, the Mazatec village of Jalapa de Diaz, lying on a hillside. There we were in the midst of the environment and among the people that we would come to know in the succeeding 2 1/2 weeks. There was an uproar upon our arrival in the marketplace, center of this village widely dispersed in the jungle. Old and young men, who had been squatting and standing around in the half-opened bars and shops, pressed suspiciously yet curiously about our Land Rover; they were mostly barefoot but all wore a sombrero. Women and girls were nowhere to be seen. One of the men gave us to understand that we should follow him. He led us to the local president, a fat mestizo who had his office in a one-story house with a corrugated iron roof. Gordon showed him our credentials from the civil authorities and from the military governor of Oaxaca, which explained that we had come here to carry out scientific investigations. The president, who probably could not read at all, was visibly impressed by the large-sized documents equipped with official seals. He had lodgings assigned to us in a spacious shed, in which we could place our air mattresses and sleeping bags. I looked around the region somewhat. The ruins of a large church from colonial times, which must have once been very beautiful, rose almost ghostlike in the direction of an ascending slope at the side of the village square. Now I could also see women looking out of their huts, venturing to examine the strangers. In their long, white dresses, adorned with red borders, and with their long braids of blue-black hair, they offered a picturesque sight. We-were fed by an old Mazatec woman, who directed a young cook and two helpers. She lived in one of the typical Mazatec huts. These are simply rectangular structures with thatched gabled roofs and walls of wooden poles joined together, windowless, the chinks between the wooden poles offering sufficient opportunity to look out. In the middle of the hut, on the stamped clay floor, was an elevated, open fireplace, built up out of dried clay or made of stones. The smoke escaped through large openings in the walls under the two ends of the roof. Bast mats that lay in a corner or along the walls served as beds. The huts were shared with the domestic animals, as well as black swine, turkeys, and chickens. There was roasted chicken to eat, black beans, and also, in place of bread, tortittas, a type of cornmeal pancake that is baked on the hot stone slab of the hearth. Beer and tequila, an Agave liquor, were served. Next morning our troop formed for the ride through the Sierra Mazateca. Mules and guides were engaged from the horsekeeper of the village. Guadelupe, the Mazatec familiar with the route, took charge of guiding the lead animal. Gordon, Irmgard, my wife, and I were stationed on our mules in the middle. Teodosio and Pedro, called Chico, two young fellows who trotted along barefoot beside the two mules laden with our baggage, brought up the rear. It took some time to get accustomed to the hard wooden saddles. Then, however, this mode of locomotion proved to be the most ideal type of travel that I know of. The mules followed the leader, single file, at a steady pace. They required no direction at all by the rider. With surprising dexterity, they sought out the best spots along the almost impassable, partly rocky, partly marshy paths, which led through thickets and streams or onto precipitous slopes. Relieved of all travel cares, we could devote all our attention to the beauty of the landscape and the tropical vegetation. There were tropical forests with gigantic trees overgrown with twining plants, then again clearings with banana groves or coffee plantations, between light stands of trees, flowers at the edge of the path, over which wondrous butterflies bustled about.... We made our way upstream along the broad riverbed of Rio Santo Domingo, with brooding heat and steamy air, now steeply ascending, then again falling. During a short, violent tropical downpour, the long broad ponchos of oilcloth, with which Gordon had equipped us, proved quite useful. Our Indian guides had protected themselves from the cloudburst with gigantic, heart-shaped leaves that they nimbly chopped off at the edge of the path. Teodosio and Chico gave the impression of great, green hay ricks as they ran, covered with these leaves, beside their mules. Shortly before nightfall we arrived at the first settlement, La Providencia ranch. The patron, Don Joaquin Garcia, the head of a large family, welcomed us hospitably and full of dignity. It was impossible to determine how many children, in addition to the grown-ups and the domestic animals, were present in the large living room, feebly illuminated by the hearth fire alone. Gordon and I placed our sleeping bags outdoors under the projecting roof. I awoke in the morning to find a pig grunting over my face. After another day's journey on the backs of our worthy mules, we arrived at Ayautla, a Mazatec settlement spread across a hillside. En route, among the shrubbery, I had delighted in the blue calyxes of the magic morning glory Ipomoea violacea, the mother plant of the ololiuhqui seeds. It grew wild there, whereas among us it is only found in the Garden as an ornamental plant. We remained in Ayautla for several days. We had lodging in the house of Dona Donata Sosa de Garcia. Dona Donata was in charge of a large family, which included her ailing husband. In addition, she presided over the coffee cultivation of the region. The collection center for the freshly picked coffee beans was in an adjacent building. It was a lovely picture, the young Indian woman and girls returning home from the harvest toward evening, in their bright garments adorned with colored borders, the coffee sacks carried on their backs by headbands. Dona Donata also managed a type of grocery store, in which her husband, Don Eduardo, stood behind the counter. In the evening by candlelight, Dona Donata, who besides Mazatec also spoke Spanish, told us about life in the village; one tragedy or another had already struck nearly every one of the seemingly peaceful huts that lay surrounded by this paradisiacal scenery. A man who had murdered his wife, and who now sits in prison for life, had lived in the house next door, which now stood empty. The husband of a daughter of Dona Donata, after an affair with another woman, was murdered out of jealousy. The president of Ayautla, a young bull of a mestizo, to whom we had made our formal visit in the afternoon, never made the short walk from his hut to his "office" in the village hall (with the corrugated iron roof) unless accompanied by two heavily armed men. Because he exacted illegal taxes, he was afraid of being shot to death. Since no higher authority sees to justice in this remote region, people have recourse to self-defense of this type. Thanks to Dona Donata's good connections, we received the first sample of the sought-after plant, some leaves of hojas de la Pastora, from an old woman. Since the flowers and roots were missing, however, this plant material was not suitable for botanical identification. Our efforts to obtain more precise information about the habitat of the plant and its use were also fruitless.