================================================================================ SOURCE: Food of the Gods -- Terence McKenna ================================================================================ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my friends and colleagues for their patience and encouragement in the writing of this book, especially Ralph Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Metzner, Dennis McKenna, Chris Harrison, Neil Hassall, Dan Levy, Ernest Waugh, Richard Bird, Roy and Diane Tuckman, Faustin Bray and Brian Wallace, and Marion and Allan Hunt-Badiner. Thanks also to correspondents Dr. Elizabeth Judd and Marc Lamoreaux who passed along useful information. Each made their own unique contribution to my thinking, though my conclusions are mine to defend. Archivist and friend Michael Horowitz made a deep contribution to this work. He read and criticized the manuscript carefully and made available the pictorial archives of the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library, thus tremendously enriching the visual side of my argument. Thank you, Michael. Special appreciation is offered to Michael and Dulce Murphy, Steve and Anita Donovan, Nancy Lunney, Paul Herbert, Kathleen O'Shaughnessy, and all of Esalen Institute for providing me with an opportunity to be the Esalen Scholar in Residence in June of 1989 and 1990. Parts of this book were written during those residencies. Thanks also to Lew and Jill Carlino and Robert Chartoff, patient friends who listened to parts of this book without, perhaps, realizing it. My partner Kat, Kathleen Harrison McKenna, has long shared my passion for the psychedelic ocean and the ideas that swim there. In our voyages to the Amazon and elsewhere she has been the best possible companion, colleague, and muse. Kat and my two children, Finn and Klea, supported me through writing this book, immune to my many moods and prolonged periods of writer's hibernation. To them I offer my deepest love and appreciation. Thanks for hanging in there, guys. Very special thanks to Leslie Meredith, my editor at Bantam Books, and to her editorial assistant, Claudine Murphy. Their unflagging belief in the importance of these ideas was an inspiration to clarify and extend my thinking into new areas. Thanks also to my agent, John Brockman, who led me through the special initiation that only the Reality Club can give. Lastly I want to acknowledge my deep debt to the psychedelic community, the hundreds of people that it has been my privilege to come into contact with during a lifetime spent in the pursuit of even a glimpse of the peacock angel. It is the shamans among us, both ancient and modern, those whose eyes have gazed on sights previously unseen by anyone, it is they who showed the way and who were my inspiration. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: A MANIFESTO FOR NEW THOUGHT ABOUT DRUGS xiii An Agonizing Reappraisal • An Archaic Revival • A New Manifesto • The Dominator Inheritance I. PARADISE 1 1. SHAMANISM: SETTING THE STAGE 3 Shamanism and Ordinary Religion • The Techniques of Ecstasy • A World Made of Language • Higher Dimensional Reality • A Shamanic Meme • Shamanism and the Lost Archaic World 2. THE MAGIC IN FOOD 14 A Shaggy Primate Story • You Are What You Eat Symbiosis • A New View of Human Evolution • The Real Missing Link • Three Big Steps for the Human Race • Steering Clear of Lamarck • Acquired Tastes 3. THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINAL TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 31 Hallucinogens as the Real Missing Link • Seeking the Tree of Knowledge • Weeding Out the Candidates • The Ur Plant What Are Plant Hallucinogens? - The Transcendent Other 4. PLANTS AND PRIMATES: POSTCARDS FROM THE STONED AGE 43 Human Uniqueness • Human Cognition • Transformations of Monkeys • The Prehistoric Emergence of Human Imagination Patterns and Understanding • Catalyzing Consciousness • The Flesh Made Word • Women and Language 5. HABIT AS CULTURE AND RELIGION 57 Ecstasy • Shamanism as Social Catalyst • Monotheism Pathological Monotheism • Archaic Sexuality • Ibogame Among the Fang • Contrasts in Sexual Politics 6. THE HIGH PLAINS OF EDEN 69 The Tassili Plateau • The Round Head Civilization • Paradise Found? • A Missing Link Culture • African Genesis • Qatal Huyuk • The Crucial Difference • The Vegetable Mind Gaian Holism II. PARADISE LOST 95 7. SEARCHING FOR SOMA: THE GOLDEN VEDIC ENIGMA 97 Contacting the Mind Behind Nature • Soma-What Is It? Haoma and Zoroaster • Haoma and Harmaline • The Wassons' Amanita Theory • Objections to Fly Agaric • Wasson: His Contradictions and Other Fungal Candidates for Soma • Peganum Harmala as Soma • Soma as Male Moon God • Soma and Cattle • Wasson's Doubts • A More Plausible Argument • The Indo-Europeans 8. TWILIGHT IN EDEN: MINOAN CRETE AND THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERY 121 Abandonment of the Mystery • The Fall of Qatal Hiiyuk and the Age of Kingship • Minoan Mushroom Fantasies • The Myth of Glaukos • Honey and Opium • The Dionysus Connection • The Mystery at Eleusis • A Psychedelic Mystery? • The Ergotized Beer Theory • Graves's Psilocybin Theory • A Historical Watershed 9. ALCOHOL AND THE ALCHEMY OF SPIRIT 138 Nostalgia for Paradise • Alcohol and Honey • Wine and Woman • Natural and Synthetic Drugs • Alchemy and Alcohol • Alcohol as Scourge • Alcohol and the Feminine Sexual Stereotypes and Alcohol 10. THE BALLAD OF THE DREAMING WEAVERS: CANNABIS AND CULTURE 150 Hashish • The Scythians • India and China • Cannabis as a Cultural Style • Classical Cannabis • Cannabis and the Language of Story • Orientomania and Cannabis in Europe Cannabis and Nineteenth-Century America • Evolving Drug Attitudes • Fitz Hugh Ludlow • Cannabis in the Twentieth Century III. HELL 167 11. COMPLACENCIES OF THE PEIGNOIR: SUGAR, COFFEE, TEA, AND CHOCOLATE 169 Broadening Our Taste • Life without Spice • Enter Sugar Sugar as Addiction • Sugar and Slavery • Sugar and the Dominator Style • The Drugs of Gentility • Coffee and Tea: New Alternatives to Alcohol • Tea Brews a Revolution • Exploitation Cycles • Coffee • Contra Coffee • Chocolate 12. SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES: OPIUM AND TOBACCO 188 Paradoxical Attitudes • Smoking Introduced to Europe • The Ancient Lure of Opium • Alchemical Opium • Tobacco Redux • Shamanic Tobaccos • Tobacco as Quack Medicine Contra Tobacco • Tobacco Triumphant • The Opium Wars • Opium and Cultural Style: De Quincey • The Beginning of Psychopharmacology 13. SYNTHETICS: HEROIN, COCAINE, AND TELEVISION 207 Hard Narcotics • Cocaine: The Horror of the Whiteness • Pro Cocaine • Modern Antidrug Hysteria • Drugs and Governments • Drugs and International Intelligence • Electronic Drugs • The Hidden Persuader IV. PARADISE REGAINED? 221 14. A BRIEF HISTORY OF PSYCHEDELICS 223 The New World Hallucinogens • Ayahuasca • The Father of Psychopharmacology • The Pleasures of Mescaline • A Modern Renaissance • Whispers of a New World Mushroom • The Invention of LSD - Pandora's Box Flung Open - LSD and the Psychedelic Sixties • Richard Schultes and the Plant Hallucinogens • Leary at Harvard • Psilocybin: Psychedelics in the Seventies • Psychedelic Implications • Public Awareness of the Problem 15. ANTICIPATING THE ARCHAIC PARADISE 246 Real World Options • The Case for Hallucinogenic Tryptamines • How Does It Feel? • Facing the Answer Consider the Octopus • Art and the Revolution Consciousness Expansion • The Drug War • Hyperspace and Human Freedom • What Is New Here • The DMT Experience • Hyperspace and the Law • Meetings with a Remarkable Overmind • Recovering Our Origins • The Fundamentalist Contribution • The Legalization Issue A Modest Proposal EPILOGUE: LOOKING OUTWARD AND INWARD TO A SEA OF STARS 271 If Not Us, Who? If Not Now, When? • Finding the Way Out From the Grasslands to the Starship • We Await Ourselves within the Vision INTRODUCTION: A MANIFESTO FOR NEW THOUGHT ABOUT DRUGS A specter is haunting planetary culture-the specter of drugs. The definition of human dignity created by the Renaissance and elaborated into the democratic values of modern Western civilization seems on the point of dissolving. The major media inform us at high volume that the human capacity for obsessional behavior and addiction has made a satanic marriage with modern pharmacology, marketing, and high-speed transportation. Previously obscure forms of chemical use now freely compete in a largely unregulated global marketplace. Whole governments and nations in the Third World are held in thrall by legal and illegal commodities promoting obsessional behavior. This situation is not new, but it is getting worse. Until quite recently international narcotics cartels were the obedient creations of governments and intelligence agencies that were searching for sources of "invisible" money with which to finance their own brand of institutionalized obsessional behavior.' Today, these drug cartels have evolved, through the unprecedented rise in the demand for cocaine, into rogue elephants before whose power even their creators have begun to grow uneasy.' We are beset by the sad spectacle of "drug wars" waged by governmental institutions that usually are paralyzed by lethargy and inefficiency or are in transparent collusion with the international drug cartels they are publicly pledged to destroy. No light can penetrate this situation of pandemic drug use and abuse unless we undertake a hard-eyed reappraisal of our present situation and an examination of some old, nearly forgotten, patterns of drug-related experience and behavior. The importance of this task cannot be overestimated. Clearly the self-administration of psychoactive substances, legal and illegal, will be increasingly a part of the future unfolding of global culture. AN AGONIZING REAPPRAISAL Any reappraisal of our use of substances must begin with the notion of habit, "a settled tendency or practice." Familiar, repetitious, and largely unexamined, habits are simply the things that we do. "People," says an old adage, "are creatures of habit." Culture is largely a matter of habit, learned from parents and those around us and then slowly modified by shifting conditions and inspired innovations. Yet, however slow these cultural modifications may seem, when contrasted with the slower-than-glaciers modification of species and ecosystems, culture presents a spectacle of wild and continuous novelty. If nature represents a principle of economy, then culture surely must exemplify the principle of innovation through excess. When habits consume us, when our devotion to them exceeds the culturally defined norms, we label them as obsessions. We feel, in such situations, as though the uniquely human dimension of free will has somehow been violated. We can become obsessed with almost anything: with a behavior pattern such as reading the morning paper or with material objects (the collector), land and property (the empire builder), or power over other people (the politician). While many of us may be collectors, few of us have the opportunity to indulge our obsessions to the point of becoming empire builders or politicians. The obsessions of the ordinary person tend to focus on the here-and-now, on the realm of immediate gratification through sex, food, and drugs. An obsession with the chemical constituents of foods and drugs (also called metabolites) is labeled an addiction. Addictions and obsessions are unique to human beings. Yes, ample anecdotal evidence supports the existence of a preference for intoxicated states among elephants, chimpanzees, and some butterflies.' But, as when we contrast the linguistic abilities of chimpanzees and dolphins with human speech, we see that these animal behaviors are enormously different from those of humans. Habit. Obsession. Addiction. These words are signposts along a path of ever-decreasing free will. Denial of the power of free will is implicit in the notion of addiction, and in our culture, addictions are viewed seriously-especially exotic or unfamiliar addictions. In the nineteenth century the opium addict was the "opium fiend," a description that harkened back to the idea of a demonic possession by a controlling force from without. In the twentieth century, the addict as a person possessed has been replaced with the notion of addiction as disease. And, with the notion of addiction as disease, the role of free will is finally reduced to the vanishing point. After all, we are not responsible for the diseases that we may inherit or develop. Today, however, human chemical dependence plays a more conscious role than ever before in the formation and maintenance of cultural values. Since the middle of the nineteenth century and with ever-greater speed and efficiency, organic chemistry has placed into the hands of researchers, physicians, and ultimately everyone an endless cornucopia of synthetic drugs. These drugs are more powerful, more effective, of greater duration, and in some cases, many times more addictive than their natural relatives. (An exception is cocaine, which, although a natural product, when refined, concentrated, and injected is particularly destructive.) The rise of a global information culture has led to the ubiquity of information on the recreational, aphrodisiacal, stimulating, sedative, and psychedelic plants that have been discovered by inquisitive human beings living in remote and previously unconnected parts of the planet. At the same time that this flood of botanical and ethnographic information arrived in Western society, grafting other cultures' habits onto our own and giving us greater choices than ever, great strides were being made in the synthesis of complex organic molecules and in the understanding of the molecular machinery of genes and heredity. These new insights and technologies are contributing to a very different culture of psychopharmacological engineering. Designer drugs such as MDMA, or Ecstasy, and anabolic steroids used by athletes and teenagers to stimulate muscle development are harbingers of an era of ever more frequent and effective pharmacological intervention in how we look, perform, and feel. The notion of regulating, on a planetary scale, first hundreds and then thousands of easily produced, highly sought after, but illegal synthetic substances is appalling to anyone who hopes for a more open and less regimented future. AN ARCHAIC REVIVAL This book will explore the possibility of a revival of the Archaicor preindustrial and preliterate-attitude toward community, substance use, and nature-an attitude that served our nomadic prehistoric ancestors long and well, before the rise of the current cultural style we call "Western." The Archaic refers to the Upper Paleolithic, a period seven to ten thousand years in the past, immediately preceding the invention and dissemination of agriculture. The Archaic was a time of nomadic pastoralism and partnership, a culture based on cattle-raising, shamanism, and Goddess worship. I have organized the discussion in a roughly chronological order, with the last and most future-oriented sections taking up and recasting the Archaic themes of the early chapters. The argument proceeds along the lines of a pharmacological pilgrim's progress. Thus I have called the four sections of the book "Paradise," "Paradise Lost," "Hell," and, hopefully not too optimistically, "Paradise Regained?" A glossary of special terms appears at the end of the book. Obviously, we cannot continue to think about drug use in the same old ways. As a global society, we must find a new guiding image for our culture, one that unifies the aspirations of humanity with the needs of the planet and the individual. Analysis of the existential incompleteness within us that drives us to form relationships of dependency and addiction with plants and drugs will show that at the dawn of history, we lost something precious, the absence of which has made us ill with narcissism. Only a recovery of the relationship that we evolved with nature through use of psychoactive plants before the fall into history can offer us hope of a humane and open-ended future. Before we commit ourselves irrevocably to the chimera of a drugfree culture purchased at the price of a complete jettisoning of the ideals of a free and democratic planetary society, we must ask hard questions: Why, as a species, are we so fascinated by altered states of consciousness? What has been their impact on our esthetic and spiritual aspirations? What have we lost by denying the legitimacy of each individual's drive to use substances to experience personally the transcendental and the sacred? My hope is that answering these questions will force us to confront the consequences of denying nature's spiritual dimension, of seeing nature as nothing more than a "resource" to be fought over and plundered. Informed discussion of these issues will give no comfort to the control-obsessed, no comfort to know-nothing religious fundamentalism, no comfort to beige fascism of whatever form. The question of how we, as a society and as individuals, relate to psychoactive plants in the late twentieth century, raises a larger question: how, over time, have we been shaped by the shifting alliances that we have formed and broken with various members of the vegetable world as we have made our way through the maze of history? This is a question that will occupy us in some detail in the chapters to come. The Ur-myth of our culture opens in the Garden of Eden, with the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. If we do not learn from our past, this story could end with a planet toxified, its forests a memory, its biological cohesion shattered, our birth legacy a weedchoked wasteland. If we have overlooked something in our previous attempts to understand our origins and place in nature, are we now in a position to look back and to understand, not only our past, but our future, in an entirely new way? If we can recover the lost sense of nature as a living mystery, we can be confident of new perspectives on the cultural adventure that surely must lie ahead. We have the opportunity to move away from the gloomy historical nihilism that characterizes the reign of our deeply patriarchal, dominator culture. We are in a position to regain the Archaic appreciation of our nearsymbiotic relationship with psychoactive plants as a wellspring of insight and coordination flowing from the vegetable world to the human world. The mystery of our own consciousness and powers of self-reflection is somehow linked to this channel of communication with the unseen mind that shamans insist is the spirit of the living world of nature. For shamans and shamanic cultures, exploration of this mystery has always been a credible alternative to living in a confining materialist culture. We of the industrial democracies can choose to explore these unfamiliar dimensions now or we can wait until the advancing destruction of the living planet makes all further exploration irrelevant. A NEW MANIFESTO The time has therefore come, in the great natural discourse that is the history of ideas, thoroughly to rethink our fascination with habitual use of psychoactive and physioactive plants. We have to learn from the excesses of the past, especially the 1960s, but we cannot simply advocate "Just say no" any more than we can advocate "Try it, you'll like it." Nor can we support a view that wishes to divide society into users and nonusers. We need a comprehensive approach to these questions that encompasses the deeper evolutionary and historical implications. The mutation-inducing influence of diet on early humans and the effect of exotic metabolites on the evolution of their neurochemistry and culture is still unstudied territory. The early hominids' adoption of an omnivorous diet and their discovery of the power of certain plants were decisive factors in moving early humans out of the stream of animal evolution and into the fast-rising tide of language and culture. Our remote ancestors discovered that certain plants, when self-administered, suppress appetite, diminish pain, supply bursts of sudden energy, confer immunity against pathogens, and synergize cognitive activities. These discoveries set us on the long journey to self-reflection. Once we became tool-using omnivores, evolution itself changed from a process of slow modification of our physical form to a rapid definition of cultural forms by the elaboration of rituals, languages, writing, mnemonic skills, and technology. These immense changes occurred largely as a result of the synergies between human beings and the various plants with which they interacted and coevolved. An honest appraisal of the impact of plants on the foundations of human institutions would find them to be absolutely primary. In the future, the application of botanically inspired steady-state solutions, such as zero population growth, hydrogen extraction from seawater, and massive recycling programs, may help reorganize our societies and planet along more holistic, environmentally aware, neo-Archaic lines. The suppression of the natural human fascination with altered states of consciousness and the present perilous situation of all life on earth are intimately and causally connected. When we suppress access to shamanic ecstasy, we close off the refreshing waters of emotion that flow from having a deeply bonded, almost symbiotic relationship to the earth. As a consequence, the maladaptive social styles that encourage overpopulation, resource mismanagement, and environmental toxification develop and maintain themselves. No culture on earth is as heavily narcotized as the industrial West in terms of being inured to the consequences of maladaptive behavior. We pursue a business-as-usual attitude in a surreal atmosphere of mounting crises and irreconcilable contradictions. As a species, we need to acknowledge the depth of our historical dilemma. We will continue to play with half a deck as long as we continue to tolerate cardinals of government and science who presume to dictate where human curiosity can legitimately focus its attention and where it cannot. Such restrictions on the human imagination are demeaning and preposterous. The government not only restricts research on psychedelics that could conceivably yield valuable psychological and medical insights, it presumes to prevent their religious and spiritual use, as well. Religious use of psychedelic plants is a civil rights issue; its restriction is the repression of a legitimate religious sensibility. In fact, it is not a religious sensibility that is being repressed, but the religious sensibility, an experience of religio based on the plant-human relationships that were in place long before the advent of history. We can no longer postpone an honest reappraisal of the true costs and benefits of habitual use of plants and drugs versus the true costs and benefits of suppression of their use. Our global culture finds itself in danger of succumbing to an Orwellian effort to bludgeon the problem out of existence through military and police terrorism directed toward drug consumers in our own population and drug producers in the Third World. This repressive response is largely fueled by an unexamined fear that is the product of misinformation and historical ignorance. Deep-seated cultural biases explain why the Western mind turns suddenly anxious and repressive on contemplating drugs. Substanceinduced changes in consciousness dramatically reveal that our mental life has physical foundations. Psychoactive drugs thus challenge the Christian assumption of the inviolability and special ontological status of the soul. Similarly, they challenge the modern idea of the ego and its inviolability and control structures. In short, encounters with psychedelic plants throw into question the entire world view of the dominator culture. We will come across this theme of the ego and the dominator culture often in this reexamination of history. In fact, the terror the ego feels in contemplating the dissolution of boundaries between self and world not only lies behind the suppression of altered states of consciousness but, more generally, explains the suppression of the feminine, the foreign and exotic, and transcendental experiences. In the prehistoric but post-Archaic times of about 5000 to 3000 B.C., suppression of partnership society by patriarchal invaders set the stage for suppression of the open-ended experimental investigation of nature carried on by shamans. In highly organized societies that Archaic tradition was replaced by one of dogma, priestcraft, patriarchy, warfare and, eventually, "rational and scientific" or dominator values. To this point I have used the terms "partnership" and "dominator" styles of culture without explanation. I owe these useful terms to Riane Eisler and her important re-visioning of history, The Chalice and the Blade.' Eisler has advanced the notion that "partnership" models of society preceded and later competed with, and were oppressed by, "dominator" forms of social organization. Dominator cultures are hierarchical, paternalistic, materialistic, and male-dominated. Eisler believes that the tension between the partnership and dominator organizations and the overexpression of the dominator model are responsible for our alienation from nature, from ourselves, and from each other. Eisler has written a brilliant synthesis of the emergence of human culture in the ancient Near East and the unfolding political debate concerning the feminizing of culture and the need to overcome patterns of male dominance in creating a viable future. Her analysis of gender politics raises the level of debate beyond those who have so shrilly hailed and decried this or that ancient "matriarchy" or "patriarchy." The Chalice and the Blade introduces the notion of "partnership societies" and "dominator societies" and uses the archaeological record to argue that over vast areas and for many centuries the partnership societies of the ancient Middle East were without warfare and upheaval. Warfare and patriarchy arrived with the appearance of dominator values. THE DOMINATOR INHERITANCE Our culture, self-toxified by the poisonous by-products of technology and egocentric ideology, is the unhappy inheritor of the dominator attitude that alteration of consciousness by the use of plants or substances is somehow wrong, onanistic, and perversely antisocial. I will argue that suppression of shamanic gnosis, with its reliance and insistence on ecstatic dissolution of the ego, has robbed us of life's meaning and made us enemies of the planet, of ourselves, and our grandchildren. We are killing the planet in order to keep intact the wrongheaded assumptions of the ego-dominator cultural style. It is time for change. 1 SHAMANISM: SETTING THE STAGE Raongi sat still in the fading light of the fire. He felt his body flex deep within in ways that reminded him of the gulping of an eel. As he formed this thought, an eel's head, oversized and bathed in electric blue, appeared obediently in the darkened space behind his eyelids. . "Mother spirit of the first waterfall . . ." "Grandmother of the first rivers. . ." "Show yourself, show yourself" Responding to the voices, the darkened space behind the now slowly spinning eel apparition filled with sparks; waves of light leaped higher and higher, accompanied by a roar of increasing intensity. "It is the first maria." The voice is that of Mangi, the elder shaman of the village of jarocamena. "It is strong. So strong." Mangi is silent as the visions close over them. They are on the brink of Venturi, the real world, the blue zone. The sound of falling rain outside is unrecognizable. There is the shuffling of dry leaves mingled with the sound of distant bells. Their tingling seems more like light than sound. Until relatively recently, the practices of Mangi and her remote Amazonian tribe were typical of religious practice everywhere. Only in the last several millennia have theology and ritual graduated to more elaborate-and not necessarily more serviceable-forms. SHAMANISM AND ORDINARY RELIGION When I arrived in the Upper Amazon in early 1970, I had just spent several years living in Asian societies. Asia is a place where the shattered shells of castoff religious ontologies litter the dusty landscape like the carapaces of sand-scoured scarabs. I had traveled India in search of the miraculous. I had visited its temples and ashrams, its jungles and mountain retreats. But Yoga, a lifetime calling, the obsession of a disciplined and ascetic few, was not sufficient to carry me to the inner landscapes that I sought. I learned in India that religion, in all times and places where the luminous flame of the spirit has guttered low, is no more than a hustle. Religion in India stares from world-weary eyes familiar with four millennia of priestcraft. Modern Hindu India to me was both an antithesis and a fitting prelude to the nearly archaic shamanism that I found in the lower Rio Putumayo of Colombia when I arrived there to begin studying the shamanic use of hallucinogenic plants. Shamanism is the practice of the Upper Paleolithic tradition of healing, divination, and theatrical performance based on natural magic developed ten to fifty thousand years ago. Mircea Eliade, author of Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy and the foremost authority on shamanism in the context of comparative religion, has shown that in all times and places shamanism maintains a surprising internal coherency of practice and belief. Whether the shaman is an Arctic-dwelling Inuit or a Witoto of the Upper Amazon, certain techniques and expectations remain the same. Most important of these invariants is ecstasy, a point my brother and I make in our book The Invisible Landscape: The ecstatic part of the shaman's initiation is harder to analyze, for it is dependent on a certain receptivity to states of trance and ecstasy on the part of the novice; he may be moody, somewhat frail and sickly, predisposed to solitude, and may perhaps have fits of epilepsy or catatonia, or some other psychological aberrance (though not always as some writers on the subject have asserted).' In any case, his psychological predisposition to ecstasy forms only the starting point for his initiation: the novice, after a history of psychosomatic illness or psychological aberration that may be more or less intense, will at last begin to undergo initiatory sickness and trances; he will lie as though dead or in deep trance for days on end. During this time, he is approached in dreams by his helping spirits, and may receive instruction from them. Invariably during this prolonged trance the novice will undergo an episode of mystical death and resurrection; he may see himself reduced to a skeleton and then clothed with new flesh; or he may see himself boiled in a caldron, devoured by the spirits, and then made whole again; or he may imagine himself being operated on by the spirits, his organs removed and replaced with "magical stones" and then sewn up again. Eliade showed that, while the particular motifs may vary between cultures and even individuals, shamanism's general structure is clear: the neophyte shaman undergoes a symbolic death and resurrection, which is understood as a radical transformation into a superhuman condition. Henceforth, the shaman has access to the superhuman plane, is a master of ecstasy, can travel in the spirit realm at will, and most important, can cure and divine. As we noted in The Invisible Landscape: In short, the shaman is transformed from a profane into a sacred state of being. Not only has he effected his own cure through this mystical transmutation, he is now invested with the power of the sacred, and hence can cure others as well. It is of the first order of importance to remember this, that the shaman is more than merely a sick man, or a madman; he is a sick man who has healed himself, who is cured, and who must shamanize in order to remain cured.' It should be noted that Eliade used the word "profane" deliberately with the intent of creating a clear split between the notion of the profane world of ordinary experience and the sacred world which is "Wholly Other."' THE TECHNIQUES OF ECSTASY Not all shamans use intoxication with plants to obtain ecstasy, but all shamanic practice aims to give rise to ecstasy. Drumming, manipulation of breath, ordeals, fasting, theatrical illusions, sexual abstinence-all are time-honored methods for entering into the trance necessary for shamanic work. Yet none of these methods is as effective, as ancient, and as overwhelming as the use of plants containing chemical compounds that produce visions. This practice of using visionary plant intoxicants may seem alien or surprising to some Westerners. Our society regards psychoactive drugs as either frivolous or dangerous, at best reserved for the treatment of the seriously mentally ill where no other effective method is available. We retain the notion of the healer in the figure of the medical professional who, through the possession of special knowledge, can cure. But the specialized knowledge of the modern physician is clinical knowledge, removed from the unfolding drama of each unique and particular person. Shamanism is different. Usually, if drugs are used, the shaman, not the patient, will take the drug. The motivation is also entirely different. The plants used by the shaman are not intended to stimulate the immune system or the body's other natural defenses against disease. Rather, the shamanic plants allow the healer to journey into an invisible realm in which the causality of the ordinary world is replaced with the rationale of natural magic. In this realm, language, ideas, and meaning have greater power than cause and effect. Sympathies, resonances, intentions, and personal will are linguistically magnified through poetic rhetoric. The imagination is invoked and sometimes its forms are beheld visibly. Within the magical mind-set of the shaman, the ordinary connections of the world and what we call natural laws are deemphasized or ignored. A WORLD MADE OF LANGUAGE The evidence gathered from millennia of shamanic experience argues that the world is actually made of language in some fashion. Although at odds with the expectations of modern science, this radical proposition is in agreement with much of current linguistic thinking. "The twentieth-century linguistic revolution," says Boston University anthropologist Misia Landau, "is the recognition that language is not merely a device for communicating ideas about the world, but rather a tool for bringing the world into existence in the first place. Reality is not simply `experienced' or `reflected' in language, but instead is actually produced by language. "4 From the point of view of the psychedelic shaman, the world appears to be more in the nature of an utterance or a tale than in any way related to the leptons and baryons or charge and spin that our high priests, the physicists, speak of. For the shaman, the cosmos is a tale that becomes true as it is told, and as it tells itself. This perspective implies that human imagination can seize the tiller of being in the world. Freedom, personal responsibility, and a humbling awareness of the true size and intelligence of the world combine in this point of view to make it a fitting basis for living an authentic neo-Archaic life. A reverence for and an immersion in the powers of language and communication are the basis of the shamanic path. This is why the shaman is the remote ancestor of the poet and artist. Our need to feel part of the world seems to demand that we express ourselves through creative activity. The ultimate wellsprings of this creativity are hidden in the mystery of language. Shamanic ecstasy is an act of surrender that authenticates both the individual self and that which is surrendered to, the mystery of being. Because our maps of reality are determined by our present circumstances, we tend to lose awareness of the larger patterns of time and space. Only by gaining access to the Transcendent Other can those patterns of time and space and our role in them be glimpsed. Shamanism strives for this higher point of view, which is achieved through a feat of linguistic prowess. A shaman is one who has attained a vision of the beginnings and the endings of all things and who can communicate that vision. To the rational thinker, this is inconceivable, yet the techniques of shamanism are directed toward this end and this is the source of their power. Preeminent among the shaman's techniques is the use of the plant hallucinogens, repositories of living vegetable gnosis that lie, now nearly forgotten, in our ancient past. By entering the domain of plant intelligence, the shaman becomes, in a way, privileged to a higher dimensional perspective on experience. Common sense assumes that, though languages are always evolving, the raw stuff of what language expresses is relatively constant and common to all humans. Yet we also know that the Hopi language has no past or future tenses or concepts. How, then, can the Hopi world be like ours? And the Inuit have no first-person pronoun. How, then, can their world be like ours? The grammars of languages-their internal rules-have been carefully studied. Yet too little attention has been devoted to examining how language creates and defines the limits of reality. Perhaps language is more properly understood when thought of as magic, for it is the implicit position of magic that the world is made of language. If language is accepted as the primary datum of knowing, then we in the West have been sadly misled. Only shamanic approaches will be able to give us answers to the questions we find most interesting: who are we, where did we come from, and toward what fate do we move? These questions have never been more important than today, when evidence of the failure of science to nurture the soul of humanity is everywhere around us. Ours is not merely temporary ennui of the spirit; if we are not careful, ours is a terminal condition of the collective body and spirit. The rational, mechanistic, antispiritual bias of our own culture has made it impossible for us to appreciate the mind-set of the shaman. We are culturally and linguistically blind to the world of forces and interconnections clearly visible to those who have retained the Archaic relationship to nature. Of course, when I arrived in the Amazon twenty years ago, I knew nothing of the above. Like most Westerners, I believed that magic was a phenomenon of the naive and the primitive, that science could provide an explanation for the workings of the world. In that position of intellectual naivete, I encountered psilocybin mushrooms for the first time, at San Augustine in the Alto Magdalena of southern Colombia. Later and not far away, in Florencia, I also encountered and used visionary brews made from Banisteriopsis vines, the yage or ayahuasca of 1960s underground legend.' The experiences that I had during those travels were personally transforming and, more important, they introduced me to a class of experiences that is vital to the restoration of balance in our social and environmental worlds. I have shared the group mind that is generated in the vision sessions of the ayahuasqueros. I have seen the magical darts of red light that one shaman can send against another. But more revelatory than the paranormal feats of gifted magicians and spiritual healers were the inner riches that I discovered within my own mind at the apex of these experiences. I offer my account as a kind of witness, an Everyman; if these experiences happened to me, then they can be part of the general experience of men and women everywhere. A SHAMANIC MEME My shamanic education was not unique. Thousands of people have, by one means or another, come to the conclusion that psychedelic plants, and the shamanic institutions that their use implies, are profound tools for the exploration of the inner depths of the human psyche. Psychedelic shamans now constitute a worldwide and growing subculture of hyperdimensional explorers, many of whom are scientifically sophisticated. A landscape is coming into focus, a region still glimpsed only dimly, but emerging, claiming the attention of rational discourse-and possibly threatening to confound it. We may yet remember how to behave, how to take our correct place in the connecting pattern, the seamless web of all things. An understanding of how to achieve this balance lingers on in the forgotten and trampled cultures of the rain forests and deserts of the Third World, and in the reserves and reservations into which dominator cultures force their aboriginal people. The shamanic gnosis is possibly dying; certainly it is changing. Yet the plant hallucinogens that are the source of this, the oldest of human religions, remain a clear running spring, as refreshing as they have always been. Shamanism is vital and real because of the individual encounter with the challenge and wonder, the ecstasy and exaltation induced by hallucinogenic plants. My encounters with shamanism and hallucinogens in the Amazon convinced me of their salvific importance. Once convinced, I was determined to filter out the various forms of linguistic, cultural, pharmacological, and personal noise that obscured the Mystery. I hoped to distill the essence of shamanism, to track the Epiphany to her lair. I wanted to see beyond the veils of her whirling dance. A cosmic peeping Tom, I dreamed of confronting naked beauty. A cynic in the dominator style might be content to dismiss this as delusions of romantic youth. Ironically, I was at one time that cynic. I felt the folly of the quest. I knew the odds. "The Other? Naked Platonic beauty? You must be kidding!" And it must be admitted that there were many wild misadventures along the way. "We must become God's fools," an enthusiastic Zen acquaintance once urged, by which he meant, "Hit the road." Seeking and finding had been a method that had worked for me in the past. I knew that shamanic practices based on the use of hallucinogenic plants still survived in the Amazon, and I was determined to confirm my intuition that a great secret lay undiscovered behind this fact. Reality outran apprehension. The mottled face of the leprous old woman was made more startlingly hideous when the fire she tended suddenly flared as she added more wood. In the semidarkness behind her, I could see the guide who had brought me to this unnamed place on the Rio Cumala. Back in the river town bar this chance encounter with a boatman willing to take me to see the miracleworking ayahuasca witch of local legend had seemed like a great chance for a story. Now, after three days of river travel and a halfday struggling through trails so flooded with mud that they threatened with each step to suck your boots right off you, I was not so sure. At this point, the original object of my quest the authentic deep forest ayahuasca, reportedly so different from the swill of the char latans of the marketplace-hardly held any interest for me. "Tome, caballero!" the old woman had cackled as she offered me a full cup of the black, slow-flowing liquid. Its surface had the sheen of motor oil. She must have grown into this role, I thought as I drank. It was warm and salty, chalky and bittersweet. It tasted like the blood of some old, old thing. I tried not to think about how much at the mercy of these strange people I now was. But in fact my courage was failing. Both Dona Catalina and the guide's mocking eyes had slowly gone cold and mantislike. A wave of insect sound sweeping up the river seemed to splatter the darkness with shards of sharpedged light. I felt my lips go numb. Trying not to appear as loaded as I felt, I crossed to my hammock and lay back. Behind my closed eyelids there was a flowing river of magenta light. It occurred to me in a kind of dreamy mental pirouette that a helicopter must be landing on top of the hut, and this was the last impression I had. When I regained consciousness I appeared to myself to be surfing on the inner curl of a wave of brightly lit transparent information several hundred feet high. Exhilaration gave way to terror as I realized that my wave was speeding toward a rocky coastline. Everything disappeared in the roaring chaos of informational wave meeting virtual land. More lost time and then an impression of being a shipwrecked sailor washed onto a tropical shore. I feel that I am pressing my face into the hot sand of a tropical beach. I feel lucky to be alive. I am lucky to be alive! Or is it that I am alive to be lucky? I break up laughing. At this point the old woman begins to sing. Hers is no ordinary song, but an icaro, a magical curing song that in our intoxicated and ecstatic state seems more like a tropical reef fish or an animated silk scarf of many colors than a vocal performance. The song is a visible manifestation of power, enfolding us and making us secure. SHAMANISM AND THE LOST ARCHAIC WORLD Shamanism was beautifully defined by Mircea Eliade as "the archaic techniques of ecstasy." Eliade's use of the term "archaic" is important here because it alerts us to the role that shamanism must play in any authentic revival of vital Archaic forms of being, living, and understanding. The shaman gains entrance into a world that is hidden from those who dwell in ordinary reality. In this other dimension lurk powers both helpful and malevolent. Its rules are not the rules of our world; they are more like the rules that operate in myth and dream. Shamanic healers insist on the existence of an intelligent Other somewhere in a dimension nearby. The existence of an ecology of souls or a disincarnate intelligence is not something that science can be expected to grapple with and emerge with its own premises intact. Particularly if this Other has long been a part of the terrestrial ecology, present but unseen, a global secret sharer. The writings of Carlos Castaneda and his imitators have resulted in a fad of "shamanic awareness" which, although muddled, has turned the shaman from a peripheral figure in the literature of cultural anthropology into the media role model for full membership in neo-Archaic society. In spite of the grip that shamanism has on the popular imagination, the paranormal phenomena that it assumes to be actual and true have never been taken seriously by modern science, even if scientists, in a rare case of deference, have called on psychologists and anthropologists to analyze shamanism. This blindness to the paranormal world has created an intellectual blind spot in our normal world view. We are completely unaware of the magical world of the shaman. It is quite simply stranger than we can suppose. Consider a shaman who uses plants to converse with an invisible world inhabited by nonhuman intelligences. This would seem to rate a headline in the supermarket tabloids. Yet anthropologists report such things all the time and no one raises an eyebrow. That is because we tend to assume that the shaman interprets his experience of intoxication as communication with spirits or ancestors. The implication is that you or I would interpret this same experience differently and that therefore it is no big deal that some poor, uneducated campesino thought he was talking with an angel. Xenophobic as this attitude is, it suggests a good operating procedure since what it is saying is, "Show me the techniques of your ecstasy and I will judge their effectiveness for myself." I did this. This is my credential for the theories and opinions I hold. I was initially appalled at what I found: the world of shamanism, of allies, shape shifting, and magical attack are far more real than the constructs of science can ever be, because these spirit ancestors and their other world can be seen and felt, they can be known, in the nonordinary reality. Something profound, unexpected, nearly unimaginable awaits us if we will turn our investigative attentions toward the phenomenon of shamanic plant hallucinogens. The people outside of Western history, those still in the dream time of preliteracy, have kept the flame of a tremendous mystery burning. It will be humbling to admit this and to learn from them, but that too is a part of the Archaic Revival. This is not to imply that we must stand slack-jawed before the accomplishments of the "primitive" in yet another version of the Noble Savage Cha-Cha. Everyone who has worked in the field is aware of the frequent clash between our expectations of how "true rain forest people" should behave and the realities of tribal daily life. No one yet understands the mysterious intelligence within plants or the implications of the idea that nature communicates in a basic chemical language that is unconscious but profound. We do not yet understand how hallucinogens transform the message in the unconscious into revelations beheld by the conscious mind. As archaic people honed their intuitions and their senses by using whatever plants were at hand to increase their adaptive advantage, they had little time for philosophy. To this day the implications of the existence of this mind within nature discovered by shamanic peoples have yet to fully dawn. Meanwhile, quietly and outside of history, shamanism has pursued its dialogue with an invisible world. Shamanism's legacy can act as a steadying force to redirect our awareness toward the collective fate of the biosphere. The shamanic faith is that humanity is not without allies. There are forces friendly to our struggle to birth ourselves as an intelligent species. But they are quiet and shy; they are to be sought, not in the arrival of alien star fleets in the skies of earth, but nearby, in wilderness solitude, in the ambience of waterfalls, and yes, in the grasslands and pastures now too rarely beneath our feet. 2 THE MAGIC IN FOOD For days the Fox Clan had been gathering and storing unusually large amounts of food. Strips of gazelle meat had been smoked to a uniform darkness, while the clan children had gathered sweet grass corms and insect pupas. And the women had amassed eggs-the largest number ever. These eggs preoccupied Lami, who was careful to attend to the task before her. After all, was she not the daughter of the Mistress of All Birds? The eggs had to be carefully stacked in open wicker baskets and transported on the heads of some of the more responsible girls. The food trading ritual would take place when the people of the Fox Clan, Lami's people, met the Hawk people, the mysterious dwellers in the land of sandstone pinnacles. This very day they would join those others, as they had each year for time untellable, for the great festival dances and the food exchange. Lami recalled the last gathering of her sib, when Venda, the most-cycles shaman of the Fox People, had proclaimed the festival and its motivation. "To share food is to be of one body. As the Hawk Clan eats of our food they become as we are. As we eat of their food we become them. Through eating the food of the others, we remain as one." With her shriveled breasts and bent back, Venda seemed ancient to Lami. Whatever her age, no one remembered more than she, and her word was rarely questioned within the group. Lami gently hoisted her burden for the trek. If the Hawk people wanted eggs, then eggs they would have. The ways in which humans use plants, foods, and drugs cause the values of individuals and, ultimately, whole societies to shift. Eating some foods makes us happy, eating others sleepy, and still others alert. We are jovial, restless, aroused, or depressed depending on what we have eaten. Society tacitly encourages certain behaviors that correspond to internal feelings, thereby encouraging the use of substances that produce acceptable behaviors. Suppression or expression of sexuality, fertility and sexual potency, degree of visual acuity, sensitivity to sound, speed of motor response, rate of maturation, and lifespan-these are only some of an animal's characteristics that can be influenced by food plants with exotic chemistries. Human symbol formation, linguistic facility, and sensitivity to community values may also shift under the influence of psychoactive and physiologically active metabolites. A night spent observing behavior in a singles bar should be fieldwork enough to confirm this observation. Indeed the mate-getting hustle has always placed a high premium on linguistic facility, as perennial attention to patter styles and opening lines attests. When thinking about drugs, we tend to focus on episodes of intoxication, but many drugs are normally used in subthreshold or maintenance doses; coffee and tobacco are obvious examples in our culture. The result of this is a kind of "ambience of intoxication." Like fish in water, people in a culture swim in the virtually invisible medium of culturally sanctioned yet artificial states of mind. Languages appear invisible to the people who speak them, yet they create the fabric of reality for their users. The problem of mistaking language for reality in the everyday world is only too well known. Plant use is an example of a complex language of chemical and social interactions. Yet most of us are unaware of the effects of plants on ourselves and our reality, partly because we have forgotten that plants have always mediated the human cultural relationship to the world at large. A SHAGGY PRIMATE STORY At Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, primatologists found that one particular species of leaf kept appearing undigested in chimpanzee dung. They found that every few days the chimps, instead of eating wild fruit as usual, would walk for twenty minutes or more to a site where a species of Aspilia grew. The chimps would repeatedly place their lips over an Aspilia leaf and hold it in their mouths. They would pluck a leaf, place it in their mouths, roll it around for a few moments, then swallow it whole. In this way as many as thirty small leaves might be eaten. Biochemist Eloy Rodriguez of the University of California at Irvine isolated the active principle from the Aspilia-a reddish oil now named thiarubrine-A. Neil Towers of the University of British Columbia found that this compound can kill common bacteria in concentrations of less than one part per million. Herbarium records studied by Rodriguez and Towers showed that African peoples used Aspilia leaves to treat wounds and stomachaches. Of the four species native to Africa, the indigenous peoples used only three, the same three species used by the chimpanzees.' Rodriguez and Towers have continued their observations of chimp and plant interactions and can now identify nearly a dozen plants, a veritable matcria medica, in use among chimpanzee populations. YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT Our proposed story of human emergence into the light of selfreflection is a you-are-what-you-eat story. Major climatic change and a newly broadened and hence mutagenic diet provided many opportunities for natural selection to affect the evolution of major human traits. Each encounter with a new food, drug, or flavoring was fraught with risk and unpredictable consequences. And this is even more true today, when our food contains hundreds of poorly studied preservatives and additives. As an example of plants with a potential impact on a human population, consider sweet potatoes of the genus Dioscorea. In much of the tropical world, sweet potatoes provide a reliable and nutritious source of food. Nevertheless, several closely related species contain compounds that can interfere with ovulation. (These have become the source of raw materials for modern birth control pills.) Something close to genetic chaos would descend on a population of primates that settled into feeding upon these species of Dioscorea. Many such scenarios, though of a less spectacular magnitude, must have occurred as early hominids experimented with new foods while expanding their omnivorous dietary habits. Eating a plant or an animal is a way of claiming its power, a way of assimilating its magic to one's self. In the minds of preliterate people, the lines between drugs, foods, and spices are rarely clearly drawn. The shaman who gorges himself on chili peppers to raise inner heat is hardly in a less altered state than the nitrous oxide enthusiast after a long inhalation. In our perception of flavor and our pursuit of variety in the sensation of eating, we are markedly different from even our primate cousins. Somewhere along the line, our new omnivorous eating habits and our evolving brain with its capacity to process sensory data. were united in the happy notion that food can be experience. Gastronomy was born-born to join pharmacology, which must surely have preceded it, since maintenance of health through regulation of diet is seen among many animals. The strategy of the early hominid omnivores was to eat everything that seemed foodlike and to vomit whatever was unpalatable. Plants, insects, and small animals found edible by this method were then inculcated into their diet. A changing diet or an omnivorous diet means exposure to an ever-shifting chemical equilibrium. An organism may regulate this chemical input through internal processes but, ultimately, mutagenic influences will increase and a greater than usual number of genetically variant individuals will be offered up to the process of natural selection. The results of this natural selection are accelerated changes in neural organization, states of consciousness, and behavior. No change is permanent, each gives way to yet another. All flows. SYMBIOSIS As plants influenced the development of humans and other animals, so were the plants themselves affected in turn. This coevolution invokes the idea of symbiosis. "Symbiosis" has several meanings; I use it to mean a relationship between two species that confers mutual benefit upon their members. The biological and evolutionary success of each species is linked to and enhanced by that of the other. This situation is the opposite of parasitism, though happy is the parasite that can evolve into a symbiont. Symbiotic relationships, in which each member requires the other, can be very tightly bound genetically or the linkage can be somewhat more open. While human-plant interactions were symbiotic in their pattern of mutual gain and advantage, these relationships were not genetically programmed. They are clearly seen instead as deep habits when contrasted with examples of true symbiosis from the world of nature. One example of a genetically bound and hence truly symbiotic relationship involves the small clown anemone fish, Amphiprion ocellaris, which spends its life in the proximity of certain species of sea anemones. These clown fish are protected from larger predators by the anemones, and the anemones' food supply is expanded by the clown fish, which attract larger fish into the area where the anemone is feeding. When such a mutually agreeable arrangement is in place for a long time, it will eventually "institutionalize" itself by progressively blurring the clear genetic distinction between the symbionts. Ultimately one organism may actually become a part of the other, much in the way that mitochondria, the powerhouses of the animal cell, joined with other structures to form the cell. Mitochondria have a separate genetic component, whose ancestry can be traced to free-swimming eukaryotic bacteria, which once, hundreds of millions of years ago, were independent organisms. Another instance of symbiosis that is instructive and that may have deep implications for our own situation is the relationship that has evolved between leafcutter ants and a species of basidiomycete, a mushroom. E. O. Wilson discusses this relationship: At the end of the trail the burdened foragers rush down the nest hole, into throngs of nestmates and along tortuous channels that end near the water table fifteen feet or more below. The ants drop the leaf sections onto the floor of a chamber, to be picked up by workers of a slightly smaller size who clip them into fragments about a millimeter across. Within minutes still smaller ants take over, crush and mold the fragments into moist pellets, and carefully insert them into a mass of similar material. This mass ranges in size between a clenched fist and a human head, is riddled with channels, and resembles a gray cleaning sponge. It is the garden of the ants: on its surface a symbiotic fungus grows which, along with the leaf sap, forms the ants' sole nourishment. The fungus spreads like a white frost, sinking its hyphae into the leaf paste to digest the abundant cellulose and proteins held there in partial solution. The gardening cycle proceeds. Worker ants even smaller than those just described pluck loose those strands of the fungus from places of dense growth and plant them onto the newly constructed surfaces. Finally, the very smallestand most abundant-workers patrol the beds of fungal strands, delicately probing them with their antennae, licking their surfaces clean, and plucking out the spores and hyphen of alien species of mold. These colony dwarfs are able to travel through the narrowest channels deep within the garden masses. From time to time they pull tufts of fungus loose and carry them out to their larger nestmates. No other animals have evolved the ability to turn fresh vegetation into mushrooms. The evolutionary event occurred only once, millions of years ago, somewhere in South America. It gave the ants an enormous advantage: They could now send out specialized workers to collect the vegetation while keeping the bulk of their populations safe in subterranean retreats. As a result, all of the different kinds of leafcutters together, comprising fourteen species in the genus Atta and twenty-three in Acromyrmex, dominate a large part of the American tropics. They consume more vegetation than any other group of animals, including the more abundant forms of caterpillars, grasshoppers, birds, and mammals.' We can forgive E. O. Wilson, the foremost exponent of sociobiology, for thinking that an animal and a mushroom formed a mutually beneficial relationship only once in the history of the earth. His description of leafcutter ant society and its relationship to fungal agriculture anticipates and introduces central considerations in my effort to re-vision our own complex relationship to plants. For as we shall see, a by-product of the lifestyle of the nomadic human pastoralist was the increased availability and use of psychoactive fungi. Like the agricultural activities of the ants, the behavior patterns of nomadic human societies served as an effective way for some mushrooms to expand their range. A NEW VIEW OF HUMAN EVOLUTION The first encounters between hominids and psilocybin-containing mushrooms may have predated the domestication of cattle in Africa by a million years or more. And during this million-year period, the mushrooms were not only gathered and eaten but probably also achieved the status of a cult. But domestication of wild cattle, a great step in human cultural evolution, by bringing humans into greater proximity to cattle, also entailed increased contact with the mushrooms, because these mushrooms grow only in the dung of cattle. As a result, the human-mushroom interspecies codependency was enhanced and deepened. It was at this time that religious ritual, calendar making, and natural magic came into their own. Shortly after humans encountered the visionary fungi of the African grasslands, and like the leafcutter ants, we too became the dominant species of our area, and we too learned ways of "keeping the bulk of our populations safe in subterranean retreats." In our case these retreats were walled cities. In pondering the course of human evolution, some thoughtful observers have questioned the scenario that physical anthropologists present us. Evolution in higher animals takes a long time to occur, operating in time spans of rarely less than a million years and more often in tens of millions of years. But the emergence of modern humans from the higher primates-with the enormous changes effected in brain size and behavior-transpired in fewer than three million years. Physically, in the last 100,000 years, we have apparently changed very little. But the amazing proliferation of cultures, social institutions, and linguistic systems has come so quickly that modern evolutionary biologists can scarcely account for it. Most do not even attempt an explanation. Indeed, the absence of a theoretical model is not surprising; there is much that we do not know about the complex situation prevailing among the hominids just prior to and during the time when modern human beings were emerging onto the scene. Biological and fossil evidence clearly indicates that man is descended from primate ancestors not radically different from primate species still extant, and yet Homo sapiens obviously is in a class apart from other members of the order. Thinking about human evolution ultimately means thinking about the evolution of human consciousness. What, then, are the origins of the human mind? In their explanations, some investigators have adopted a primarily cultural emphasis. They point to our unique linguistic and symbolical capabilities, our use of tools, and our ability to store information epigenetically as songs, art, books, computers, thereby creating not only culture, but also history. Others, taking a somewhat more biological approach, have emphasized our physiological and neurological peculiarities, including the exceptionally large size and complexity of the human neocortex, a great proportion of which is devoted to complex linguistic processing, storage, and retrieval of information, as well as being associated with motor systems governing activities like speech and writing. More recently the feedback interactions between cultural influence and biological ontogeny have been recognized and seen to be involved in certain human developmental oddities, such as prolonged childhood and adolescence, the delayed onset of sexual maturity, and the persistence of many essentially neonatal characteristics through adult life. Unfortunately the union of these points of view has not yet led to the recognition of the genome-shaping power of psychoactive and physioactive dietary constituents. By 3 million years ago, and through a combination of the processes discussed above, at least three clearly recognized species of protohominids were in place in East Africa. These were Homo africanus, Homo boisei, and Homo robustus. Also at that time, the omnivorous Homo habilis, the first true hominid, had clearly emerged from a division of species that also gave rise to two vegetarian man-apes. The grasslands expanded slowly; early hominids moved through a mosaic of grasslands and forests. These creatures, with brains proportionately only slightly larger than chimpanzees', were already walking upright and probably carrying food and tools between patches of forest which they continued to exploit for tubers and insects. Their arms were proportionately longer than ours, and they possessed a more powerful grasping hand. The evolution to upright posture and the initial expansion into a grassland niche had occurred earlier, between 9 and 5 million years ago. Unfortunately we lack fossil evidence for this earlier transition. The hominids likely expanded their original diet of fruit and small animal kills by including underground roots, tubers, and corms. A simple digging stick would allow access to this previously untapped food source. Modern baboons on the savannah subsist largely on grass corms during certain seasons. Chimpanzees add substantial amounts of beans to their diet when they venture onto the savannah. Both baboons and chimpanzees hunt cooperatively and prey on small animals. They do not generally use tools in hunting, however, and there is no evidence that early hominids did either. Among chimps, baboons, and hominids, hunting appears to be a male activity. Early hominids hunted both cooperatively and alone. With Homo habilis began a sudden and mysterious expansion of brain size. Homo habilis's brain weighed an average 770 grams (27. 5 ounces), compared with 530 grams (19 ounces) for competing hominids. The next two and a quarter million years brought an unusually rapid evolution in brain size and complexity. By 750,000 to 1.1 million years ago a new hominid type, Homo erectus, was widespread. The brain size of this new hominid was 900 to 1100 grams (2 to 2.4 pounds). Evidence is good that Homo erectus used tools and possessed some sort of rudimentary culture. At Choukoutien Cave in South Africa, there is good evidence of fire use along with burnt bones indicating the cooking of meat. These are attributed to Homo erectus, which was the earliest hominid to leave Africa, a million or so years ago. Older theories suggested that modern humans evolved from Homo erectus in different locales. Increasingly, however, modern evolutionary primatologists accept the notion that modern Homo sapiens also arose in Africa, some 100,000 years ago, and made a second great outward migration from there to people the entire planet. At Border Cave and the Klasies River Mouth Cave in South Africa, there is evidence of the earliest modern Homo sapiens living in a mixed forest and grassland environment. In one of many .attempts to understand this momentous transition, Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson wrote: Behavioral ecologists have gradually assembled a theory to explain why the advance to an erect posture was taken, one that accounts for many of the most distinctive biological traits of modern man. The earliest man-apes shifted out of the tropical evergreen forest into more open, seasonal habitats, where they became committed to an exclusively terrestrial existence. They constructed base camps and became dependent on a division of labor, by which some individuals, probably the females, wandered less and devoted more time to the care of the young; others, primarily or exclusively the males, dispersed widely in the search for animal prey. Bi-pedalism conferred a great advantage in open-country locomotion. It also freed the arms, permitting the ancestral man-apes to use tools and to carry dead animals and other food back to the base camp. Food sharing and related forms of reciprocity automatically followed as central processes of the social life of the man-apes. So did close, long-term sexual bonding and heightened sexuality, which were put to the service of rearing the young. Many of the most distinctive forms of human social behavior are the product of this tightly interwoven complex of adaptation. One advanced hominid type followed another in the African evolutionary laboratory, and, beginning with Homo erectus, representatives of each type radiated across the Eurasian landmass in the interglacial periods. During each glaciation, migration out of Africa was bottled up; new hominids were "cooked" in the African ambience of intensified forces of mutation from exotic diets and climatically induced increased natural selection. At the end of these truly remarkable three million years in the evolution of the human species, human brain size had tripled! Lumsden and Wilson call this "perhaps the fastest advance recorded for any complex organ in the whole history of life."' Such a remarkable rate of evolutionary change in the primary organ of a species implies the presence of extraordinary selective pressures. Because scientists were unable to explain this tripling of the human brain size in so short a span of evolutionary time, some of the early primate paleontologists and evolutionary theorists predicted and searched for evidence of transitional skeletons. Today the idea of a "missing link" has largely been abandoned. Bipedalism, binocular vision, the opposable thumb, the throwing arm-all have been put forth as the key ingredient in the mix that caused selfreflecting humans to crystallize out of the caldron of competing hominid types and strategies. Yet all we really know is that the shift in brain size was accompanied by remarkable changes in the social organization of the hominids. They became users of tools, fire, and language. They began the process as higher animals and emerged from it 100,000 years ago as conscious, self-aware individuals. THE REAL MISSING LINK My contention is that mutation-causing, psychoactive chemical compounds in the early human diet directly influenced the rapid reorganization of the brain's information-processing capacities. Alkaloids in plants, specifically the hallucinogenic compounds such as psilocybin, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), and harmaline, could be the chemical factors in the protohuman diet that catalyzed the emergence of human self-reflection. The action of hallucinogens present in many common plants enhanced our informationprocessing activity, or environmental sensitivity, and thus contributed to the sudden expansion of the human brain size. At a later stage in this same process, hallucinogens acted as catalysts in the development of imagination, fueling the creation of internal stratagems and hopes that may well have synergized the emergence of language and religion. In research done in the late 1960s, Roland Fischer gave small amounts of psilocybin to graduate students and then measured their ability to detect the moment when previously parallel lines became skewed. He found that performance ability on this particular task was actually improved after small doses of psilocybin.5 When I discussed these findings with Fischer, he smiled after explaining his conclusions, then summed up, "You see what is conclusively proven here is that under certain circumstances one is actually better informed concerning the real world if one has taken a drug than if one has not." His facetious remark stuck with me, first as an academic anecdote, later as an effort on his part to communicate something profound. What would be the consequences for evolutionary theory of admitting that some chemical habits confer adaptive advantage and thereby become deeply scripted in the behavior and even genome of some individuals? THREE BIG STEPS FOR THE HUMAN RACE In trying to answer that question I have constructed a scenario, some may call it fantasy; it is the world as seen from the vantage point of a mind for which the millennia are but seasons, a vision that years of musing on these matters has moved me toward. Let us imagine for a moment that we stand outside the surging gene swarm that is biological history, and that we can see the interwoven consequences of changes in diet and climate, which must certainly have been too slow to be felt by our ancestors. The scenario that unfolds involves the interconnected and mutually reinforcing effects of psilocybin taken at three different levels. Unique in its properties, psilocybin is the only substance, I believe, that could yield this scenario. At the first, low, level of usage is the effect that Fischer noted: small amounts of psilocybin, consumed with no awareness of its psychoactivity while in the general act of browsing for food, and perhaps later consumed consciously, impart a noticeable increase in visual acuity, especially edge detection. As visual acuity is at a premium among hunter-gatherers, the discovery of the equivalent of "chemical binoculars" could not fail to have an impact on the hunting and gathering success of those individuals who availed themselves of this advantage. Partnership groups containing individuals with improved eyesight will be more successful at feeding their offspring. Because of the increase in available food, the offspring within such groups will have a higher probability of themselves reaching reproductive age. In such a situation, the out breeding (or decline) of non-psilocybin-using groups would be a natural consequence. Because psilocybin is a stimulant of the central nervous system, when taken in slightly larger doses, it tends to trigger restlessness and sexual arousal. Thus, at this second level of usage, by increasing instances of copulation, the mushrooms directly favored human reproduction. The tendency to regulate and schedule sexual activity within the group, by linking it to a lunar cycle of mushroom availability, may have been important as a first step toward ritual and religion. Certainly at the third and highest level of usage, religious concerns would be at the forefront of the tribe's consciousness, simply because of the power and strangeness of the experience itself. This third level, then, is the level of the full-blown shamanic ecstasy. The psilocybin intoxication is a rapture whose breadth and depth is the despair of prose. It is wholly Other and no less mysterious to us than it was to our mushroom-munching ancestors. The boundary-dissolving qualities of shamanic ecstasy predispose hallucinogen-using tribal groups to community bonding and to group sexual activities, which promote gene mixing, higher birth rates, and a communal sense of responsibility for the group offspring. At whatever dose the mushroom was used, it possessed the magical property of conferring adaptive advantages upon its archaic users and their group. Increased visual acuity, sexual arousal, and access to the transcendent Other led to success in obtaining food, sexual prowess and stamina, abundance of offspring, and access to realms of supernatural power. All of these advantages can be easily selfregulated through manipulation of dosage and frequency of ingestion. Chapter 4 will detail psilocybin's remarkable property of stimulating the language-forming capacity of the brain. Its power is so extraordinary that psilocybin can be considered the catalyst to the human development of language. STEERING CLEAR OF LAMARCK An objection to these ideas inevitably arises and should be dealt with. This scenario of human emergence may seem to smack of Lamarckism, which theorizes that characteristics acquired by an organism during its lifetime can be passed on to its progeny. The classic example is the claim that giraffes have long necks because they stretch their necks to reach high branches. This straightforward and rather common-sense idea is absolutely anathema among neoDarwinians, who currently hold the high ground in evolutionary theory. Their position is that mutations are entirely random and that only after the mutations are expressed as the traits of organisms does natural selection mindlessly and dispassionately fulfill its function of preserving those individuals upon whom an adaptive advantage had been conferred. Their objection can be put like this: While the mushrooms may have given us better eyesight, sex, and language when eaten, how did these enhancements get into the human genome and become innately human? Nongenetic enhancements of an organism's functioning made by outside agents retard the corresponding genetic reservoirs of those facilities by rendering them superfluous. In other words, if a necessary metabolite is common in available food, there will not be pressure to develop a trait for endogenous expression of the metabolite. Mushroom use would thus create individuals with less visual acuity, language facility, and consciousness. Nature would not provide those enhancements through organic evolution because the metabolic investment required to sustain them wouldn't pay off, relative to the tiny metabolic investment required to eat mushrooms. And yet today we all have these enhancements, without taking mushrooms. So how did the mushroom modifications get into the genome? The short answer to this objection, one that requires no defense of Lamarck's ideas, is that the presence of psilocybin in the hominid diet changed the parameters of the process of natural selection by changing the behavioral patterns upon which that selection was operating. Experimentation with many types of foods was causing a general increase in the numbers of random mutations being offered up to the process of natural selection, while the augmentation of visual acuity, language use, and ritual activity through the use of psilocybin represented new behaviors. One of these new behaviors, language use, previously only a marginally important trait, was suddenly very useful in the context of new hunting and gathering lifestyles. Hence psilocybin inclusion in the diet shifted the parameters of human behavior in favor of patterns of activity that promoted increased language; acquisition of language led to more vocabulary and an expanded memory capacity. The psilocybin-using individuals evolved epigenetic rules or cultural forms that enabled them to survive and reproduce better than other individuals. Eventually the more successful epigenetically based styles of behavior spread through the populations along with the genes that reinforce them. In this fashion the population would evolve genetically and cul turally. As for visual acuity, perhaps the widespread need for corrective lenses among modern humans is a legacy of the long period o "artificial" enhancement of vision through psilocybin use. After all, atrophy of the olfactory abilities of human beings is thought by one school to be a result of a need for hungry omnivores to tolerate strong smells and tastes, perhaps even carrion. Trade-offs of this sort are common in evolution. The suppression of keenness of tasty and smell would allow inclusion of foods in the diet that migh otherwise be passed over as "too strong." Or it may indicate some thing more profound about our evolutionary relationship to diet My brother Dennis has written: The apparent atrophy of the human olfactory system may actually represent a functional shift in a set of primitive, externally directed chemo-receptors to an interiorized regulatory function. This function may be related to the control of the human pheromonal system, which is largely under the control of the pineal gland, and which mediates, on a subliminal level, a host of psycho-sexual and psycho-social interactions between individuals. The pineal tends to suppress gonadal development and the onset of puberty, among other functions, and this mechanism may play a role in the persistence of neonatal characteristics in the human species. Delayed maturation and prolonged childhood and adolescence play a critical role in the neurological and psychological development of the individual, since they provide the circumstances which permit the post-natal development of the brain in the early, formative years of childhood. The symbolic, cognitive and linguistic stimuli that the brain experiences during this period are essential to its development and are the factors that make us the unique, conscious, symbol-manipulating, language-using beings that we are. Neuroactive amines and alkaloids in the diet of early primates may have played a role in the biochemical activation of the pineal gland and the resulting adaptations. ACQUIRED TASTES Humans are both attracted and repelled by substances whose taste skirts the edges of acceptability. Foods that are highly spiced or bitter or aromatic arouse strong reactions from us. We say of such a food that one must "acquire a taste" for it. This is true of foods such as soft cheese or pickled eggs, but is also and even more true of drugs. To recall one's first cigarette or first shot of bourbon is to recall an organism violently rejecting the acquisition of a particular taste. Repetition of exposure seems to be the key to acquiring a taste, which suggests that the process is complex and involves both behavioral and biochemical adaptation. What we are talking about begins to sound strangely like the process of drug addiction. Something foreign to the body is nevertheless repeatedly introduced into it by conscious decision. The body adjusts to the new chemical regimen-and then does more than adjust: it accepts the new chemical regimen as right and proper and gives off signals of alarm should the regimen be threatened. These signals may be both psychological and physiological, and will be felt whenever the new chemical environment within the body is imperiled for any reason, including a conscious decision to discontinue use of the chemical in question. Among the vast number of chemicals that constitute nature's molecular storehouse, we have been discussing a relatively small number of compounds that interact with the senses and the neurological processing of sensory data. These compounds include all of the psychoactive amines, alkaloids, pheromones, and hallucinogens-indeed, all compounds that can interact with any of the senses ranging from taste and smell to vision and hearing and combinations of all of these. The acquisition of a taste for these compounds, the acquisition of a behaviorally and physiologically reinforced habit, is what defines the basic chemical addiction syndrome. These compounds have the remarkable ability to remind us of both our frailty and our capacity for the magnificent. Drugs, like reality, seem destined to confound those who seek clear boundaries and an easy division of the world into black and white. How we meet the challenge of defining our future relationships to these compounds and to the dimensions of risk and opportunity they offer may say the final word about our potential for survival and evolution as a conscious species. 3 THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINAL TREE OF KNOWLEDGE He had left the confusing flickering of the group fire and walked a few steps away to make water. The sound of his own voice came low and in the throat. Nee nee nee nee neeeh. She Who Feeds Us seemed unusually powerful this harvest moon night. Enchanted by the landscape transformed by intoxication and moonlight, he walked farther away from the noises of the domestic scene. The hekuli was near, he could feel it. At this thought the hair on the back of his neck rose up. There was a sound like the shaking of seeds in a gourd. Then he saw the hekuli; it looked like an iridescent flower, mouth, or sphincter hanging in space. And there were others behind it, spinning slowly in the darkness, some one way, some another. They approached him like a school of curious jellyfish. There was a soft liquid explosion as the nearest one reached him and passed through his body. At that moment the interior of his head flared with sunrise-pink light and he was infused with the presence of the thing. Impressions followed one another too swiftly to comprehend. Time fell away, superfluids of frozen agate seemed to rush through enormous spillways. He had a sense of flinging himself happily into death, a kind of wild orgasmic paroxysm of self-affirmation. A previously inarticulate bubble of emotive intent came to his lips. Tears were running down his cheeks. He had said the words before. But he had never said and understood them in this way before. Ta wades! Ta wades! I am! I am! HALLUCINOGENS AS THE REAL MISSING LINK The notion we are exploring in this book is that a particular family of active chemical compounds, the indole hallucinogens, played a decisive role in the emergence of our essential humanness, of the human characteristic of self-reflection. It is important, therefore, to know just what these compounds are and the roles that they perform in nature. The defining characteristic of these hallucinogens is structural: all have a five-sided pyrrole group in association with the better known benzene ring (see Figure 28 on page 290). These molecular rings make the indoles highly reactive chemically and hence ideal molecules for metabolic activity in the high-energy world of organic life. Hallucinogens may be psychoactive and/or physiologically active and may target many systems within the body. Some indoles are endogenous to the human body, serotonin being a good example. Many more are exogenous, found in nature and the plants we can eat. Some behave like hormones and regulate growth or rate of sexual maturation. Others influence mood and state of alertness. The indole families of compounds that are strong visionary hallucinogens and also occur in plants are four in number: 1. The LSD-type compounds. Found in several related genera of morning glories and ergot, the LSD hallucinogens are rare in nature. That they are the best known of the hallucinogens is undoubtedly due to the fact that millions of doses of LSD were manufactured and sold during the 1960s. LSD is a psychedelic, but rather large doses are necessary to elicit the hallucinogenic paradis artificiel, of vivid and utterly transmundane hallucinations, that is produced by DMT and psilocybin at quite traditional doses. Nevertheless, many researchers have stressed the importance of the nonhallucinogenic effects of LSD and other psychedelics. These other effects in clude a sense of mind expansion and increased speed of thought; the ability to understand and to relate to complex issues of behavior, life patterning, and complex, decision-making networks of connective linkage. LSD continues to be manufactured and sold in larger amounts than any other hallucinogen. It has been shown to aid in psychotherapy and the treatment of chronic alcoholism: "Wherever it has been tried, all over the world, it has proved to be an interesting treatment for a very old disease. No other drug so far has been able to match its record in salvaging tormented lives from the alcoholic scrap heap, directly, as a treatment, or indirectly, as a means of yielding valuable information."' Yet, as a consequence of media hysteria its potential may never be known. 2. The tryptamine hallucinogens, especially DMT, psilocin, and psilocybin. Tryptamine hallucinogens are found throughout the higher plant families, for example, in legumes, and psilocin and psilocybin occur in mushrooms. DMT also occurs endogenously in the human brain. For this reason, perhaps DMT should not be thought of as a drug at all, but DMT intoxication is the most profound and visually spectacular of the visionary hallucinogens, remarkable for its brevity, intensity, and nontoxicity. 3. The beta -carbolines. Beta-carbolines, such as harmine and harmaline, can be hallucinogenic at close to toxic levels. They are important for visionary shamanism because they can inhibit enzyme systems in the body that would otherwise depotentiate hallucinogens of the DMT type. Hence beta-carbolines can be used in conjunction with DMT to prolong and intensify visual hallucinations. This combination is the basis of the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca or yage, in use in Amazonian South America. Beta-carbolines are legal and until very recently were virtually unknown to the general public. 4. The ibogaine family of substances. These substances occur in two related African and South American tree genera, Tabernanthe and Tabernamontana. Taber nanthe iboga is a small, yellow flowered bush which has a history of usage as a hallucinogen in tropical West Africa. Its active compounds bear a structural relationship to beta-carbolines. Ibogaine is known more as a powerful aphrodisiac than as a hallucinogen. Nevertheless, in sufficient doses it is capable of inducing a powerful visionary and emotional experience. These few numbered paragraphs above may contain the most important and exciting information that human beings have gathered concerning the natural world since the long-forgotten birth of science. More precious than the news of the anti-neutrino, more full of hope for humanity than the detection of new quasars, is the knowledge that certain plants, certain compounds, unlock forgotten doorways onto worlds of immediate experience that confound our science, and indeed, confound us. Properly understood and applied, this information can become a compass leading us back to the lost garden world of our origins. SEEKING THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE In attempting to understand which indole hallucinogens and which plants might have been causally implicated in the emergence of consciousness, several important points need to be kept in mind: The plant we are seeking must be African, since the evidence is overwhelming that the human type emerged in Africa. More specifically, the African plant should be native to grassland, as this is where our newly omnivorous ancestors learned to adapt, coordinate their bipedalism, and refine existing methods of signaling. The plant must require no preparation; it must be active in its natural state. To suppose otherwise is to strain credulity-mixtures, compounded drugs, extracts, and concentrations all belong to later stages of culture, when human consciousness and the use of language are well established. The plant must be continuously available to a nomadic population, easily noticed, and plentiful. The plant must confer immediate and tangible benefits upon individuals who are eating it. Only in that way would the plant establish and maintain itself as a part of the hominid diet. These requirements dramatically reduce the number of contenders. Africa has a scarcity of hallucinogenic plants. This scarcity and the contrasting overabundance of such plants in the tropical New World have never been satisfactorily explained. Can it be mere coincidence that the longer an environment has been exposed to human beings, the fewer its native hallucinogens, and the fewer the species of plants generally occurring within it? Today Africa supports almost no native plants that are really good candidates for catalysis of consciousness among the evolving hominids. Grasslands have far fewer plant species than forests. Because of this scarcity, it is highly likely that a hominid would test any grassland plant encountered for its food potential. The eminent geographer Carl Saur felt that there was no such thing as a natural grassland. He suggested that all grasslands were human artifacts, resulting from the cumulative impact of seasonal burning. He based this argument on the fact that all grassland species can be found in the understory of the forests at the edges of the grasslands whereas a very high percentage of the forest species are absent from the grasslands. Saur concluded that the grasslands are so recent that they must be seen as concomitant with the rise of fire-using human populations.' WEEDING OUT THE CANDIDATES Today only the Bwiti religion among the Fang of Gabon and Zaire can be called a truly African hallucinogenic plant cult. Conceivably, the plant that is used, Tabernanthe iboga, could have had some influence on prehistoric people. However, there is absolutely no evidence of its use before the early nineteenth century. At no point, for example, was it mentioned by the Portuguese, who had a long history of trade and exploration in West Africa. This lack of evidence is difficult to explain if one believes that use of the plant is very old. Analyzed sociologically, Bwiti is a force not only for group cohesion but also for holding marriages together. Historically, divorce is a chronic source of group anxiety among the Fang. This is due to the fact that divorce is easily obtained but, once granted, must be followed by complicated, protracted, and potentially expensive negotiations with the family of the divorced partner concerning the return of a portion of the dowry.' Perhaps iboga, as well as being a hallucinogen, activates a pheromone promoting pair bonding. Its reputation for being an aphrodisiac could well be partially related to its promotion of pair bonding. The plant itself is a medium-sized bush, not a native of the grasslands but of the tropical forest. It is rarely found growing outside of cultivation. As a result of European contacts with tropical Africa, iboga became the first indole to come into vogue in Europe. Tonics based on the whole plant extract became extremely popular in France and Belgium after iboga was promoted to the public at the Paris Exposition of 1867. This crude extract was sold in Europe as Lambarene, a cure for everything from neurasthenia to syphilis and, above all, an aphrodisiac. Not until 1901 was the alkaloid isolated. The initial wave of research that followed seemed promising. A cure for male impotence was eagerly anticipated. Yet ibogaine, once chemically characterized, was quickly forgotten. Though no evidence was ever offered that it was dangerous or addictive, the compound was placed in Schedule I, the most restrictive and controlled category, in the United States, making further research highly unlikely. Ibogaine remains to this day nearly unstudied in human beings. What we know of the iboga cult we learned from the observations of field anthropologists. The root scrapings of the plant are taken in quite prodigious amounts. Among the Fang it is believed that they acquired this folkway during a centuries-long migration, in which they were for some time in the proximity of Pygmy people who taught them the spiritual power resident in Bwiti. The root bark of the Tabernanthe iboga plant contains the psychoactive portion of the plant. According to the Fang, many grams of this root material must be eaten in order to "open one's head." Lesser amounts are then effective for the remainder of a person's life. While the iboga cult is very interesting, I do not think iboga was the catalyst of consciousness in evolving humans. As already mentioned, it has not been shown to have a long history of use and is not a grassland plant. In addition, at small doses it diminishes ordinary vision by facilitating afterimages, halos, and visual "streaking. No plants containing LSD-type compounds are known to have been used in Africa. Nor are there any striking examples of plants that are rich in these compounds. Peganum harmala, the giant Syrian rue, is rich in the betacarboline harmine and today occurs wild across the arid portions of Mediterranean North Africa. There is, however, no record of its use in Africa as a hallucinogen, and in any case it must be concentrated and/or combined with DMT to activate its visionary potential.4 THE UR PLANT We are left, then, by a process of elimination, with the tryptamine type hallucinogens-psilocybin, psilocin, and DMT. In a grassland environment these compounds might be expected to occur in either a dung-loving (coprophilic) mushroom containing psilocybin or in a grass containing DMT. But unless the DMT were extracted and concentrated, something beyond the technical reach of early human beings, these grasses could never supply sufficient amounts of DMT to provide an effective hallucinogen. By a process of elimination we are led to suspect a mushroom might have been involved. When our remote ancestors moved out of the trees and on to the grasslands, they increasingly encountered hooved beasts who ate vegetation. These beasts became a major source of potential sustenance. Our ancestors also encountered the manure of these same wild cattle and the mushrooms that grow in it. Several of these grassland mushrooms contain psilocybin: Panaeolus species and Stropharia cubensis, also called Psilocybe cubensis (see Figure 1). This latter is the familiar "magic mushroom," now grown by enthusiasts worldwide.' Of these mushroom species, only Stropharia cubensis contains psilocybin in concentrated amounts and is free of nausea-producing compounds. It alone is pandemic-it occurs throughout the tropical regions, at least wherever cattle of the zebu (Bos indicus) type graze. This raises a number of questions. Does Stropharia cubensis occur exclusively in the manure of zebu or can it occur in the manure of other cattle? How recently has it reached its various habitats? The first specimen of Psilocybe cubensis was collected by the American botanist Earle in Cuba in 1906, but current botanical thinking places the species' point of origin in Southeast Asia. At an archaeological dig in Thailand at a place called Non Nak Tha, which has been dated to 15,000 B.P., the bones of zebu cattle have been found coincident with human graves. Stropharia cubensis is common in the Non Nak Tha area today. The Non Nak Tha site suggests mushroom use was a human trait that emerged wherever human populations and cattle evolved together. Ample evidence supports the notion that Stropharia cubensis is the Ur plant, our umbilicus to the feminine mind of the planet, which, when its cult, the Paleolithic cult of the Great Horned Goddess, was intact, conveyed to us such knowledge that we were able to live in a dynamic equilibrium with nature, with each other, and within ourselves. Hallucinogenic mushroom use evolved as a kind of natural habit with behavioral and evolutionary consequences. This relationship between human beings and mushrooms had to have also included cattle, the creators of the only source of the mushrooms. The relationship is probably altogether no more than a million years old, for the era of the nomadic human hunter dates from that time. The last 100,000 years is probably a more than generous amount of time to allow for the evolution of pastoralism from its first faint glimmerings. Since the entire relationship extends no further than a million years, we are not discussing a biological symbiosis that might take many millions of years to evolve. Rather, we are talking about a deep-rooted custom, an extremely powerful natural habit. Whatever we call the human interaction with the mushroom Stropharia cubensis, it has not been a static relationship, but rather a dynamic through which we have been bootstrapped to higher and higher cultural levels and levels of individual self-awareness. I believe that the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms on the grasslands of Africa gave us the model for all religions to follow. And when, after long centuries of slow forgetting, migration, and climatic change, the knowledge of the mystery was finally lost, we in our anguish traded partnership for dominance, traded harmony with nature for rape of nature, traded poetry for the sophistry of science. In short, we traded our birthright as partners in the drama of the living mind of the planet for the broken pot shards of history, warfare, neurosis, and-if we do not quickly awaken to our predicament-planetary catastrophe. WHAT ARE PLANT HALLUCINOGENS? In the light of their suggested importance for human evolution, it is natural to inquire what mutagens and other secondary by-products are actually doing for the plants in which they occur. This is a botanic mystery that remains controversial among evolutionary biologists even today. It has been suggested that toxic and bioactive compounds are produced in plants in order to make them unpalatable and hence undesirable as food. It has also been suggested, conversely, that such compounds were developed to attract insects or birds that pollinate or distribute seeds. A more likely explanation for the presence of secondary compounds is based on the recognition that they are not, in fact, secondary or peripheral. Evidence for this is that alkaloids, usually regarded as secondary, are formed in the greatest amounts in tissues that are most active in overall metabolism. Alkaloids, including all the hallucinogens discussed here, are not inert end products in the plants in which they occur, but are in a dynamic state, fluctuating in both concentration and in their rate of metabolic decay. The role of these alkaloids in the chemistry of metabolism makes it clear that they are essential to the life and the survival strategy of the organism, but they are acting in ways that we do not yet understand. One possibility is that some of these compounds may be exopheromones. Exopheromones are chemical messengers that do not act among the members of a single species, but instead, act across species lines, so that an individual influences members of a different species. Some exopheromones act in ways that allow a small group of individuals to affect a community or an entire biome. The notion of nature as an organismic and planetary whole that mediates and controls its own development through the release of chemical messages may seem somewhat radical. Our heritage from the nineteenth century is a nature all "tooth and claw," where a pitiless and mindless natural order promotes survival of those capable of ensuring their own continued existence at the expense of competitors. Competitors, in this theory, mean all the rest of nature. Yet most evolutionary biologists have long held this classical Darwinian view of nature to be incomplete. It is now generally understood that nature, far from being endless warfare among the species, is an endless dance of diplomacy. And diplomacy is largely a matter of language. Nature appears to maximize mutual cooperation and mutual coordination of goals. To be indispensable to the organisms with which one shares an environment-that is the strategy that ensures successful breeding and continued survival. It is a strategy in which communication and sensitivity to signal processing are paramount. These are language skills. The idea that nature might be an organism whose interconnected components act upon and communicate with one another through the release of chemical signals into the environment is only now beginning to be carefully studied. Nature, however, tends to act with a certain economy; once developed, a given evolutionary response to a problem will be applied again and again in situations where it is appropriate. THE TRANSCENDENT OTHER If hallucinogens function as interspecies chemical messengers, then the dynamic of the close relationship between primate and hallucinogenic plant is one of information transfer from one species to the other. Where plant hallucinogens do not occur, such transfers of information take place with great slowness, but in the presence of hallucinogens a culture is quickly introduced to ever more novel information, sensory input, and behavior and thus is bootstrapped to higher and higher states of self-reflection. I call this the encounter with the Transcendent Other, but this is only a label, not an explanation. From one point of view the Transcendent Other is nature correctly perceived to be alive and intelligent. From another it is the awesomely unfamiliar union of all the senses with memory of the past and anticipation of the future. The Transcendent Other is what one encounters on powerful hallucinogens. It is the crucible of the Mystery of our being, both as a species and as individuals. The Transcendent Other is Nature without her cheerfully reassuring mask of ordinary space, time, and causality. Of course, imagining these higher states of self-reflection is not easy. For when we seek to do this we are acting as if we expect language to somehow encompass that which is, at present, beyond language, or trans-linguistic. Psilocybin, the hallucinogen unique to mushrooms, is an effective tool in this situation. Psilocybin's main synergistic effect seems ultimately to be in the domain of language. It excites vocalization; it empowers articulation; it transmutes language into something that is visibly beheld. It could have had an impact on the sudden emergence of consciousness and language use in early humans. We literally may have eaten our way to higher consciousness. In this context it is important to note that the most powerful mutagens in the natural environment occur in molds and fungi. Mushrooms and cereal grains infected by molds may have had a major influence on animal species, including primates, evolving in the grasslands. 4 PLANTS AND PRIMATES: POSTCARDS FROM THE STONED AGE Ifi had more summers than all the fingers of his two hands. He was near now to the age when he would join the hunters at their fire. It was a great step, this short journey from the children's but to the fire of the hunters near the song but of the true men. It had been a long journey not through space but through time. For many years he had been pointed toward this day-the hours of practicing spear thrusts with the fire-hardened sticks that served the boys for mock weapons, Doknu's endless instruction in tracking, in reading weather signs, in remaining aware of the winds. And instruction in the magic of hunting. The boy suppressed a desire to finger the talisman that his mother had prepared for him and that now hung from his neck. He did not move. His mind seemed removed from the scene, as if viewing it from above and a little way off. He had stood thus for more than twelve hours. Unmoving, all but unwinking. "This will give you the gift of stillness. And power!" He remembered the soapy taste of the rasped root bark as he had forced it down under the watchful gaze of his teacher, Doknu. "With this you become invisible, little brother," he had said, adding in a calm voice, "Kill cleanly. Then you honor our ancestors." Ifi could feel that the moment of his truth was now nearly upon him. Under the influence of the Togna, the plant-of-power-to-sit-still, he had been brought to this desolate place and told to wait near the fresh carcass of a zebra. Doknu, his father, and his uncles had all wished him well, laughing, making promises, and using new and unfamiliar words to describe the way the village women would receive him if he succeeded. Those words had excited him for a time, but then he had settled into his wait. The Togna made this a wonderfully easy thing for the boy to do. His body seemed impervious to fatigue, and his mind drifted, delighted with scenes swimming in his head from stories and experiences told around the fire. Suddenly, and without his shifting a hair, Ifi's mind flared into total alertness: Something sounded nearby. There it was again! From the pebblestrewn wash beyond the tamarisks under which he waited came a dry sound. Chuff. Chuff. Ifi felt neither fear nor dread of what he was about to see. He anticipated, his muscles drew power into themselves from the shimmering air. He did not move. The lioness was enormous, and wary with the stealth of all animals in the land of the great hunters. Thinking that he was but a boulder or a tree, Ifi watched. The lioness was no more than twice his body length away. Dropping her guard, she moved forward to nuzzle the zebra's bloodied haunch. At that moment, from a center of focus hundreds of generations deep, Ifi struck-cleanly, slightly to one side of the spine and behind the shoulder blade. The scream of mingled pain and rage was earsplitting. So great was the force behind the man-boy's blow that for a moment the lioness was pinned to the ground, long enough for the boy to leap away from the claws of the dying animal. The bellies of Ifi's clan would be filled that night, and the hunter's circle would admit a new member to their boisterous and privileged ranks. This example makes clear the way in which a beneficial plant, in this case a powerful stimulant, once discovered, can be included in the diet and thus confer an adaptive advantage. A plant can confer strength and alertness and so insure hunting success and steady food supplies. The person or group is much less threatened by certain environmental factors, which may have previously limited individuals' life spans and hence the growth of the population as a whole. Less easy to understand is the way in which plant hallucinogens might have provided similar yet different adaptive advantages. These compounds do not, for example, catalyze the immune system into higher states of activity, although this may be a secondary effect. Rather, they catalyze consciousness, that peculiar, self-reflecting ability that has reached its greatest apparent expression in human beings. They do not, however, cause consciousness, which is a generalized function present in some degree in all life forms. Catalysis is a speeding up of processes that are already present. One can hardly doubt that consciousness, like the ability to resist disease, confers an immense adaptive advantage on any individual who possesses it. In the search for a causal agent capable of synergizing cognitive activity and thereby of playing a role in the emergence of the hominid, researchers might long ago have looked to plant hallucinogens were it not for our strong, almost compulsive avoidance of the idea that our exalted position in the hierarchy of nature might be somehow due to the power of plants or natural forces of any sort. Even as the nineteenth century had to come to terms with the notion of human descent from apes, we must now come to terms with the fact that those apes were stoned apes. Being stoned seems to have been our unique characteristic. HUMAN UNIQUENESS To seek to understand human beings is to seek to understand their uniqueness. The radical division between human beings and the rest of nature is so striking that for prescientific thinkers it was sufficient proof that we were the divinely favored portion of creation-somehow different, somehow nearer to God. After all, human beings speak, fantasize, laugh, fall in love, are capable of great acts of self-sacrifice or of cruelty; human beings create great works of art and propound theoretical and mathematical models of phenomena. And human beings distinguish themselves by the sheer numbers of kinds of substances they use and become addicted to in the environment. HUMAN COGNITION All the unique characteristics and preoccupations of human beings can be summed up under the heading of cognitive activities: dance, philosophy, painting, poetry, sport, meditation, erotic fantasy, politics, and ecstatic self-intoxication. We are truly Homo sapiens, the thinking animal; our acts are all a product of the dimension that is uniquely ours, the dimension of cognitive activity. Of thought and emotion, memory and anticipation. Of Psyche. From observing the ayahuasca-using people of the Upper Amazon, it became very clear to me that shamanism is often intuitively guided group decision making. The shamans decide when the group should move or hunt or make war. Human cognition is an adaptive response that is profoundly flexible in the way it allows us to manage what in other species are genetically programmed behaviors. We alone live in an environment that is conditioned not only by the biological and physical constraints to which all species are subject but also by symbols and language. Our human environment is conditioned by meaning. And meaning lies in the collective mind of the group. Symbols and language allow us to act in a dimension that is "supranatural"-outside the ordinary activities of other forms of organic life. We can actualize our cultural assumptions, alter and shape the natural world in the pursuit of ideological ends and according to the internal model of the world that our symbols have empowered us to create. We do this through the elaboration of ever more effective, and hence ever more destructive, artifacts and technologies, which we feel compelled to use. Symbols allow us to store information outside of the physical brain. This creates for us a relationship to the past very different from that of our animal companions. Finally, we must add to any analysis of the human picture the notion of self-directed modification of activity. We are able to modify our behavior patterns based on a symbolic analysis of past events, in other words, through history. Through our ability to store and recover information as images and written records, we have created a human environment as much conditioned by symbols and languages as by biological and environmental factors. TRANSFORMATIONS OF MONKEYS The evolutionary breakouts that led to the appearance of language and, later, writing are examples of fundamental, almost ontological, transformations of the hominid line. Besides providing us with the ability to code data outside the confines of DNA, cognitive activities allow us to transmit information across space and time. At first this amounted merely to the ability to shout a warning or a command, really little more than a modification of the cry of alarm that is a familiar feature of the behavior of social animals. Over the course of human history this impulse to communicate has motivated the elaboration of ever more effective communication techniques. But by our century, this basic ability has turned into the all-pervasive communications media, which literally engulf the space surrounding our planet. The planet swims through a self-generated ocean of messages. Telephone calls, data exchanges, and electronically transmitted entertainment create an invisible world experienced as global informational simultaneity. We think nothing of this; as a culture we take it for granted. Our unique and feverish love of word and symbol has given us a collective gnosis, a collective understanding of ourselves and our world that has survived throughout history until very recent times. This collective gnosis lies behind the faith of earlier centuries in "universal truths" and common human values. Ideologies can be thought of as meaning-defined environments. They are invisible, yet they surround us and determine for us, though we may never realize it, what we should think about ourselves and reality. Indeed they define for us what we can think. The rise of globally simultaneous electronic culture has vastly accelerated the rate at which we each can obtain information necessary to our survival. This and the sheer size of the human population as a whole have brought to a halt our physical evolution as a species. The larger a population is, the less impact mutations will have on the evolution of that species. This fact, coupled with the development of shamanism and, later, scientific medicine, has removed us from the theater of natural selection. Meanwhile libraries and electronic data bases have replaced the individual human mind as the basic hardware providing storage for the cultural data base. Symbols and languages have gradually moved us away from the style of social organization that characterized the mute nomadism of our remote ancestors and has replaced that archaic model with the vastly more complicated social organization characteristic of an electronically unified planetary society. As a result of these changes, we ourselves have become largely epigenetic, meaning that much of what we are as human beings is no longer in our genes but in our culture. THE PREHISTORIC EMERGENCE OF HUMAN IMAGINATION Our capacity for cognitive and linguistic activity is related to the size and organization of the human brain. Neural structures concerned with conceptualization, visualization, signification, and association are highly developed in our species. Through the act of speaking vividly, we enter into a flirtation with the domain of the imagination. The ability to associate sounds, or the small mouth noises of language, with meaningful internal images is a synesthesic activity. The most recently evolved areas of the human brain, Broca's area and the neocortex, are devoted to the control of symbol and language processing. The conclusion universally drawn from these facts is that the highly organized neurolinguistic areas of our brain have made language and culture possible. Where the search for scenarios of human emergence and social organization is concerned, the problem is this: we know that our linguistic abilities must have evolved in response to enormous evolutionary pressures-but we do not know what these pressures were. Where psychoactive plant use was present, hominid nervous systems over many millennia would have been flooded by hallucinogenic realms of strange and alien beauty. However, evolutionary necessity channels the organism's awareness into a narrow cul-desac where ordinary reality is perceived through the reducing valve of the senses. Otherwise, we would be rather poorly adapted for the rough-and-tumble of immediate existence. As creatures with animal bodies, we are aware that we are subject to a range of immediate concerns that we can ignore only at great peril. As human beings we are also aware of an interior world, beyond the needs of the animal body, but evolutionary necessity has placed that world far from ordinary consciousness. PATTERNS AND UNDERSTANDING Consciousness has been called awareness of awareness' and is characterized by novel associations and connections among the various data of experience. Consciousness is like a super nonspecific immune response. The key to the working of the immune system is the ability of one chemical to recognize, to have a key-in-lock relationship, with another. Thus both the immune system and consciousness represent systems that learn, recognize, and remember.' As I write this I think of what Alfred North Whitehead said about understanding, that it is apperception of pattern as such. This is also a perfectly acceptable definition of consciousness. Awareness of pattern conveys the feeling that attends understanding. There presumably can be no limit to how much consciousness a species can acquire, since understanding is not a finite project with an imaginable conclusion, but rather a stance toward immediate experience. This appears self-evident from within a world view that sees consciousness as analogous to a source of light. The more powerful the light, the greater the surface area of darkness revealed. Consciousness is the moment-to-moment integration of the individual's perception of the world. How well, one could almost say how gracefully, an individual accomplishes this integration determines that individual's unique adaptive response to existence. We are masters not only of individual cognitive activity, but, when acting together, of group cognitive activity as well. Cognitive activity within a group usually means the elaboration and manipulation of symbols and language. Although this occurs in many species, within the human species it is especially well developed. Our immense power to manipulate symbols and language gives us our unique position in the natural world. The power of our magic and our science arises out of our commitment to group mental activity, symbol sharing, meme replication (the spreading of ideas), and the telling of tall tales. The idea, expressed above, that ordinary consciousness is the end product of a process of extensive compression and filtration, and that the psychedelic experience is the antithesis of this construction, was put forward by Aldous Huxley, who contrasted this with the psychedelic experience. In analyzing his experiences with mescaline, Huxley wrote: I find myself agreeing with the eminent Cambridge philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad, "that we should do well to consider the suggestion that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive." The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful. According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born. That which, in the language of religion, is called "this world" is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language. The various "other worlds" with which human beings erratically make contact are so many elements in the totality of the awareness belonging to Mind at Large .... Temporary by-passes may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of deliberate "spiritual exercises,". . . or by means of drugs.' What Huxley did not mention was that drugs, specifically the plant hallucinogens, can reliably and repeatedly open the floodgates of the reducing valve of consciousness and expose the individual to the full force of the howling Tao. The way in which we internalize the impact of this experience of the Unspeakable, whether encountered through psychedelics or other means, is to generalize and extrapolate our world view through acts of imagination. These acts of imagination represent our adaptive response to information concerning the outside world that is conveyed to us by our senses. In our species, culture-specific, situation-specific syntactic software in the form of language can compete with and sometimes replace the instinctual world of hard-wired animal behavior. This means that we can learn and communicate experience and thus put maladaptive behaviors behind us. We can collectively recognize the virtues of peace over war, or of cooperation over struggle. We can change. As we have seen, human language may have arisen when primate organizational potential was synergized by plant hallucinogens. The psychedelic experience inspired us to true self-reflective thought in the first place and then further inspired us to communicate our thoughts about it. Others have sensed the importance of hallucinations as catalysts of human psychic organization. Julian Jaynes's theory, presented in his controversial book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,' makes the point that major shifts in human self-definition may have occurred even in historical times. He proposes that through Homeric times people did not have the kind of interior psychic organization that we take for granted. Thus, what we call ego was for Homeric people a "god." When danger threatened suddenly, the god's voice was heard in the individual's mind; an intrusive and alien psychic function was expressed as a kind of metaprogram for survival called forth under moments of great stress. This psychic function was perceived by those experiencing it as the direct voice of a god, of the king, or of the king in the afterlife. Merchants and traders moving from one society to another brought the unwelcome news that the gods were saying different things in different places, and so cast early seeds of doubt. At some point people integrated this previously autonomous function, and each person became the god and reinterpreted the inner voice as the "self" or, as it was later called, the "ego." Jaynes's theory has been largely dismissed. Regrettably his book on the impact of hallucinations on culture, though 467 pages in length, manages to avoid discussion of hallucinogenic plants or drugs nearly entirely. By this omission Jaynes deprived himself of a mechanism that could reliably drive the kind of transformative changes he saw taking place in the evolution of human consciousness. CATALYZING CONSCIOUSNESS The impact of hallucinogens in the diet has been more than psychological; hallucinogenic plants may have been the catalysts for everything about us that distinguishes us from other higher primates, for all the mental functions that we associate with humanness. Our society more than others will find this theory difficult to accept, because we have made pharmacologically obtained ecstasy a taboo. Like sexuality, altered states of consciousness are taboo because they are consciously or unconsciously sensed to be entwined with the mysteries of our origin-with where we came from and how we got to be the way we are. Such experiences dissolve boundaries and threaten the order of the reigning patriarchy and the domination of society by the unreflecting expression of ego. Yet consider how plant hallucinogens may have catalyzed the use of language, the most unique of human activities. One has, in a hallucinogenic state, the incontrovertible impression that language possesses an objectified and visible dimension, which is ordinarily hidden from our awareness. Language, under such conditions, is seen, is beheld, just as we would ordinarily see our homes and normal surroundings. In fact our ordinary cultural environment is correctly recognized, during the experience of the altered state, as the bass drone in the ongoing linguistic business of objectifying the imagination. In other words, the collectively designed cultural environment in which we all live is the objectification of our collective linguistic intent. Our language-forming ability may have become active through the mutagenic influence of hallucinogens working directly on organelles that are concerned with the processing and generation of signals. These neural substructures are found in various portions of the brain, such as Broca's area, that govern speech formation. In other words, opening the valve that limits consciousness forces utterance, almost as if the word is a concretion of meaning previously felt but left unarticulated. This active impulse to speak, the "going forth of the word," is sensed and described in the cosmogonies of many peoples. Psilocybin specifically activates the areas of the brain concerned with processing signals. A common occurrence with psilocybin intoxication is spontaneous outbursts of poetry and other vocal activity such as speaking in tongues, though in a manner distinct from ordinary glossolalia. In cultures with a tradition of mushroom use, these phenomena have given rise to the notion of discourse with spirit doctors and supernatural allies. Researchers familiar with the territory agree that psilocybin has a profoundly catalytic effect on the linguistic impulse. Once activities involving syntactic self-expression were established habits among early human beings, the continued evolution of language in environments where mushrooms were scarce or unavailable permitted a tendency toward the expression and emergence of the ego. If the ego is not regularly and repeatedly dissolved in the unbounded hyperspace of the Transcendent Other, there will always be slow drift away from the sense of self as part of nature's larger whole. The ultimate consequence of this drift is the fatal ennui that now permeates Western civilization. The connection between mushrooms and language was brilliantly anticipated by Henry Munn in his essay "The Mushrooms of Language Language is an ecstatic activity of signification. Intoxicated by the mushrooms, the fluency, the ease, the aptness of expression one becomes capable of are such that one is astounded by the words that issue forth from the contact of the intention of articulation with the matter of experience. The spontaneity the mushrooms liberate is not only perceptual, but linguistic. For the shaman, it is as if existence were uttering itself through him.' THE FLESH MADE WORD The evolutionary advantages of the use of speech are both obvious and subtle. Many unusual factors converged at the birth of human language. Obviously speech facilitates communication and cognitive activity, but it also may have had unanticipated effects on the whole human enterprise. Some neurophysiologists have hypothesized that the vocal vibration associated with human use of language caused a kind of cleansing of the cerebrospinal fluid. It has been observed that vibrations can precipitate and concentrate small molecules in the spinal fluid, which bathes and continuously purifies the brain. Our ancestors may have, consciously or unconsciously, discovered that vocal sound cleared the chemical cobwebs out of their heads. This practice may have affected the evolution of our present-day thin skull structure and proclivity for language. A self-regulated process as simple as singing might well have positive adaptive advantages if it also made the removal of chemical waste from the brain more efficient. The following excerpt supports this provocative idea: Vibrations of human skull, as produced by loud vocalization, exert a massaging effect on the brain and facilitate elution of metabolic products from the brain into the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) . . . . The Neanderthals had a brain 15% larger than we have, yet they did not survive in competition with modern humans. Their brains were more polluted, because their massive skulls did not vibrate and therefore the brains were not sufficiently cleaned. In the evolution of the modern humans the thinning of cranial bones was important.' As already discussed, hominids and hallucinogenic plants must have been in close association for a long span of time, especially if we want to suggest that actual physical changes in the human genome resulted from the association. The structure of the soft palate in the human infant and timing of its descent is a recent adaptation that facilitates the acquisition of language. No other primate exhibits this characteristic. This change may have been a result of selective pressure on mutations originally caused by the new omnivorous diet. WOMEN AND LANGUAGE Women, the gatherers in the Archaic hunter-gatherer equation, were under much greater pressure to develop language than were their male counterparts. Hunting, the prerogative of the larger male, placed a premium on strength, stealth, and stoic waiting. The hunter was able to function quite well on a very limited number of linguistic signals, as is still the case among hunting peoples such as the !Kung or the Maku. For gatherers, the situation was different. Those women with the largest repertoire of communicable images of foods and their sources and secrets of preparation were unquestionably placed in a position of advantage. Language may well have arisen as a mysterious power possessed largely by women-women who spent much more of their waking time together-and, usually, talking-than did men, women who in all societies are seen as group-minded, in contrast to the lone male image, which is the romanticized version of the alpha male of the primate troop. The linguistic accomplishments of women were driven by a need to remember and describe to each other a variety of locations and landmarks as well as numerous taxonomic and structural details about plants to be sought or avoided. The complex morphology of the natural world propelled the evolution of language toward modeling of the world beheld. To this day a taxonomic description of a plant is a Joycean thrill to read: "Shrub 2 to 6 feet in height, glabrous throughout. Leaves mostly opposite, some in threes or uppermost alternate, sessile, linear-lanceolate or lanceolate, acute or acuminate. Flowers solitary in axils, yellow, with aroma, pedicellate. Calyx campanulate, petals soon caducous, obovate" and so on for many lines. The linguistic depth women attained as gatherers eventually led to a momentous discovery: the discovery of agriculture. I call it momentous because of its consequences. Women realized that they could simply grow a restricted number of plants. As a result, they learned the needs of only those few plants, embraced a sedentary lifestyle, and began to forget the rest of nature they had once known so well. At that point the retreat from the natural world began, and the dualism of humanity versus nature was born. As we will soon see, one of the places where the old goddess culture died, fatal Huyuk, in present-day Anatolian Turkey, is the very place where agriculture may have first arisen. At places like fatal Huyuk and Jericho, humans and their domesticated plants and animals became for the first time physically and psychologically separate from the life of untamed nature and the howling unknown. Use of hallucinogens can only be sanctioned in hunting and gathering societies. When agriculturists use these plants, they are unable to get up at dawn the morning after and go hoe the fields. At that point, corn and grain become gods-gods that symbolize domesticity and hard labor. These replace the old goddesses of plant-induced ecstasy. Agriculture brings with it the potential for overproduction, which leads to excess wealth, hoarding, and trade. Trade leads to cities; cities isolate their inhabitants from the natural world. Paradoxically, more efficient utilization of plant resources through agriculture led to a breaking away from the symbiotic relationship that had bound human beings to nature. I do not mean this metaphorically. The ennui of modernity is the consequence of a disrupted quasisymbiotic relationship between ourselves and Galan nature. Only a restoration of this relationship in some form is capable of carrying us into a full appreciation of our birthright and sense of ourselves as complete human beings. 5 HABIT ASCULTURE AND RELIGION At regular intervals that were probably lunar, the ordinary activities of the small nomadic group of herders were put aside. Rains usually followed the new moon in the tropics, making mushrooms plentiful. Gatherings took place at night; night is the time of magical projection and hallucinations, and visions are more easily obtained in darkness. The whole clan was present from oldest to youngest. Elders, especially shamans, usually women but often men, doled out each person's dose. Each clan member stood before the group and reflectively chewed and swallowed the body of the Goddess before returning to his or her place in the circle. Bone flutes and drums wove within the chanting. Line dances with heavy foot stamping channeled the energy of the first wave of visions. Suddenly the elders signal silence. In the motionless darkness each mind follows its own trail of sparks into the bush while some people keen softly. They feel fear, and they triumph over fear through the strength of the group. They feel relief mingled with wonder at the beauty of the visionary expanse; some spontaneously reach out to those nearby in simple affection and an impulse for closeness or in erotic desire. An individual feels no distance between himself or herself and the rest of the clan or between the clan and the world. Identity is dissolved in the higher wordless truth of ecstasy. In that world, all divisions are overcome. There is only the One Great Life; it sees itself at play, and it is glad. The impact of plants on the evolution of culture and consciousness has not been widely explored, though a conservative form of this notion appears in R. Gordon Wasson's The Road to Eleusis. Wasson does not comment on the emergence of self-reflection in hominids, but does suggest hallucinogenic mushrooms as the causal agent in the appearance of spiritually aware human beings and the genesis of religion. Wasson feels that omnivorous foraging humans would have sooner or later encountered hallucinogenic mushrooms or other psychoactive plants in their environment: As man emerged from his brutish past, thousands of years ago, there was a stage in the evolution of his awareness when the discovery of the mushroom (or was it a higher plant?) with miraculous properties was a revelation to him, a veritable detonator to his soul, arousing in him sentiments of awe and reverence, and gentleness and love, to the highest pitch of which mankind is capable, all those sentiments and virtues that mankind has ever since regarded as the highest attribute of his kind. It made him see what this perishing mortal eye cannot see. How right the Greeks were to hedge about this Mystery, this imbibing of the potion with secrecy and surveillance! . . . Perhaps with all our modern knowledge we do not need the divine mushroom anymore. Or do we need them more than ever? Some are shocked that the key even to religion might be reduced to a mere drug. On the other hand, the drug is as mysterious as it ever was: "like the wind that comes we know not whence nor why." Out of a mere drug comes the ineffable, comes ecstasy. It is not the only instance in the history of humankind where the lowly has given birth to the divine.' Scattered across the African grasslands, the mushrooms would be especially noticeable to hungry eyes because of their inviting smell and unusual form and color. Once having experienced the state of consciousness induced by the mushrooms, foraging humans would return to them repeatedly, in order to reexperience their bewitching novelty. This process would create what C. H. Waddington called a "creode, "z a pathway of developmental activity, what we call a habit. ECSTASY We have already mentioned the importance of ecstasy for shamanism. Among early humans a preference for the intoxication experience was ensured simply because the experience was ecstatic. "Ecstatic" is a word central to my argument and preeminently worthy of further attention. It is a notion that is forced on us whenever we wish to indicate an experience or a state of mind that is cosmic in scale. An ecstatic experience transcends duality; it is simultaneously terrifying, hilarious, awe-inspiring, familiar, and bizarre. It is an experience that one wishes to have over and over again. For a minded and language-using species like ourselves, the experience of ecstasy is not perceived as simple pleasure but, rather, is incredibly intense and complex. It is tied up with the very nature of ourselves and our reality, our languages, and our imagings of ourselves. It is fitting, then, that it is enshrined at the center of shamanic approaches to existence. As Mircea Eliade pointed out, shamanism and ecstasy are at root one concern: This shamanic complex is very old; it is found, in whole or in part, among the Australians, the archaic peoples of North and South America, in the polar regions, etc. The essential and defining element of shamanism is ecstasythe shaman is a specialist in the sacred, able to abandon his body and undertake cosmic journeys "in the spirit" (in trance). "Possession" by spirits, although documented in a great many shamanisms, does not seem to have been a primary and essential element. Rather, it suggests a phenomenon of degeneration; for the supreme goal of the shaman is to abandon his body and rise to heaven or descend into hell-not to let himself be "possessed" by his assisting spirits, by demons or the souls of the dead; the shaman's ideal is to master these spirits, not to let himself be "occupied" by them.' Gordon Wasson added these observations on ecstasy: In his trance the shaman goes on a far journey-the place of the departed ancestors, or the nether world, or there where the gods dwell-and this wonderland is, I submit, precisely where the hallucinogens take us. They are a gateway to ecstasy. Ecstasy in itself is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. The bliss or panic into which it plunges you is incidental to ecstasy. When you are in a state of ecstasy, your very soul seems scooped out from your body and away it goes. Who controls its flight: Is it you, or your "subconscious," or a "higher power"? Perhaps it is pitch dark, yet you see and hear more clearly than you have ever seen or heard before. You are at last face to face with Ultimate Truth: this is the overwhelming impression (or illusion) that grips you. You may visit Hell, or the Elysian fields of Asphodel, or the Gobi desert, or Arctic wastes. You know awe, you know bliss, and fear, even terror. Everyone experiences ecstasy in his own way, and never twice in the same way. Ecstasy is the very essence of shamanism. The neophyte from the great world associates the mushrooms primarily with visions, but for those who know the Indian language of the shaman the mushrooms "speak" through the shaman. The mushroom is the Word: es habla, as Aurelio told me. The mushroom bestows on the curandero what the Greeks called Logos, the Aryan Vac, Vedic Kavya, "poetic potency," as Louis Renous put it. The divine afflatus of poetry is the gift of the entheogen. The textual exegete skilled only in dissecting the cruces of the verses lying before him is of course indispensable and his shrewd observations should have our full attention, but unless gifted with Kavya, he does well to be cautious in discussing the higher reaches of Poetry. He dissects the verses but knows not ecstasy, which is the soul of the verses.' SHAMANISM AS SOCIAL CATALYST In claiming that religion originated when hominids encountered hallucinogenic alkaloids, Wasson was at odds with Mircea Eliade. Eliade considered what he called "narcotic" shamanism to be decadent. He felt that if individuals cannot achieve ecstasy without drugs, then their culture is probably in a decadent phase. The use of the word "narcotic"-a term usually reserved for soporifics-to describe this form of shamanism betrays a botanical and pharmacological naivete. Wasson's view, which I share, is precisely the opposite: the presence of a hallucinogen indicates that shamanism is authentic and alive; the late, decadent phase of shamanism is characterized by elaborate rituals, ordeals and reliance on pathological personalities. Where these phenomena are central, shamanism is well on its way to becoming simply "religion."5 And at its fullest, shamanism is not simply religion, it is a dynamic connection into the totality of life on the planet. If, as suggested earlier, hallucinogens operate in the natural environment as message-bearing molecules, exopheromones, then the relationship between primate and hallucinogenic plant signifies a transfer of information from one species to another. The benefits to the mushroom arise out of the hominid domestication of cattle and hence the expansion of the niche occupied by the mushroom. Where plant hallucinogens do not occur, cultural innovation occurs very slowly, if at all, but we have seen that in the presence of hallucinogens a culture is regularly introduced to ever more novel information, sensory input, and behavior and thus is moved to higher and higher states of self-reflection. The shamans are the vanguard of this creative advance. How, specifically, might the consciousness-catalyzing properties of plants have played a role in the emergence of culture and religion? What was the effect of this folkway, this promotion of languageusing, thinking, but stoned hominids into the natural order? I believe that the natural psychedelic compounds acted as feminizing agents that tempered and civilized the egocentric values of the solitary hunter-individual with the feminine concerns for child-rearing and group survival. The prolonged and repeated exposure to the psychedelic experience, the Wholly Other rupture of the mundane plane caused by the hallucinogenic ritual ecstasy, acted steadily to dissolve that portion of the psyche which we moderns call the ego. Wherever and whenever the ego function began to form, it was akin to a calcareous tumor or a blockage in the energy of the psyche. The use of psychedelic plants in a context of shamanic initiation dissolved-as it dissolves today-the knotted structure of the ego into undifferentiated feeling, what Eastern philosophy calls the Tao. This dissolving of individual identity into the Tao is the goal of much of Eastern thought and has traditionally been recognized as the key to psychological health and balance for both the group and the individual. To appraise our dilemma correctly, we need to appraise what this loss of Tao, this loss of collective connection to the Earth, has meant for our humanness. MONOTHEISM We in the West are the inheritors of a very different understanding of the world. Loss of connection to the Tao has meant that the psychological development of Western civilization has been markedly different from the East's. In the West there has been a steady focus on the ego and on the god of the ego-the monotheistic ideal. Monotheism exhibits what is essentially a pathological personality pattern projected onto the ideal of God: the pattern of the paranoid, possessive, power-obsessed male ego. This God is not someone you would care to invite to a garden party. Also interesting is that the Western ideal is the only formulation of deity that has no relationship with woman at any point in the theological myth. In ancient Babylon Anu was paired with his consort Inanna; Grecian religion assigned Zeus a wife, many consorts, and daughters. These heavenly pairings are typical. Only the god of Western civilization has no mother, no sister, no female consort, and no daughter. Hinduism and Buddhism have maintained traditions of techniques of ecstasy that include, as stated in the Yogic Sutras of Patanjah, "light filled herbs," and the rituals of these great religions give ample scope for the expression and appreciation of the feminine. Sadly, the Western tradition has suffered a long, sustained break with the sociosymbiotic relationship to the feminine and the mysteries'of organic life that can be realized through shamanic use of hallucinogenic plants. Modern religion in the West is a set of social patterns, or a set of anxieties centered on a particular moral structure and view of obligation. Modern religion is rarely an experience of setting aside the ego. Since the 1960s, the spread of popular cults of trance and dance, such as disco and reggae, is an inevitable and healthy counter to the generally moribund form religious expression has taken on in Western and high-tech culture. The connection between rock and roll and psychedelics is a shamanic connection; trance, dance, and intoxication make up the Archaic formula for both religious celebration and a guaranteed good time. The global triumph of Western values means we, as a species, have wandered into a state of prolonged neurosis because of the absence of a connection to the unconscious. Gaining access to the unconscious through plant hallucinogen use reaffirms our original bond to the living planet. Our estrangement from nature and the unconscious became entrenched roughly two thousand years ago, during the shift from the Age of the Great God Pan to that of Pisces that occurred with the suppression of the pagan mysteries and the rise of Christianity. The psychological shift that ensued left European civilization staring into two millennia of religious mania and persecution, warfare, materialism, and rationalism. The monstrous forces of scientific industrialism and global politics that have been born into modern times were conceived at the time of the shattering of the symbiotic relationships with the plants that had bound us to nature from our dim beginnings. This left each human being frightened, guilt-burdened, and alone. Existential man was born. Terror of being was the placenta that accompanied the birth of Christianity, the ultimate cult of domination by the unconstrained male ego. The abandonment of the ego-dissolving rites of the visionary plants had allowed what began as an individually maladaptive style to become the guiding image of the entire social organism. From within the context of an unchecked growth of dominator values and history told from a dominator point of view, we need to turn attention back toward the Archaic way of vision plants and the Goddess. PATHOLOGICAL MONOTHEISM The drive for unitary wholeness within the psyche, which is to a degree instinctual, can nevertheless become pathological if pursued in a context in which dissolution of boundaries and rediscovery of the ground of being has been made impossible. Monotheism became the carrier of the dominator model, the Apollonian model of the self as solar and complete in its masculine expression. As a result of this pathological model, the worth and power of emotion and the natural world have been devalued and replaced by a narcissistic fascination with the abstract and the metaphysical. This attitude has proved a double-edged sword, it has given science explanatory power and its capacity for moral bankruptcy. Dominator culture has shown a remarkable ability to redesign itself to meet changing levels of technology and collective selfawareness. In all its manifestations, monotheism has been and remains the single most stubborn force resisting perception of the primacy of the natural world. Monotheism strenuously denies the need to return to a cultural style that periodically places the ego and its values in perspective through contact with a boundary-dissolving immersion in the Archaic mystery of plant-induced, hence mother-associated, psychedelic ecstasy and wholeness, what Joyce called the "mama matrix most mysterious." ARCHAIC SEXUALITY This is not to imply that the life of the nomadic pastoralist is free of anxiety. Doubtless jealousy and possessiveness persisted among mushroom-using archaic humans, if only as a vestige of hierarchical organization in the social forms of protohominids. Observation of modern primates-of their dominance games and their violently enforced hierarchical structure-suggests that protohominid societies that were premushroom may well have been dominator in style. Thus, we may have experienced no more than a brief abandonment of the dominator style-a brief tendency toward a true dynamic and conscious equilibrium with nature, at variance with our primate past and too soon crushed beneath the chariot wheels of historical process. Since the abandonment of our sojourn with mushroom use in the African Eden, we have only become progressively more bestial in our treatment of one another. An open and nonproprietary approach to sexuality is fundamental to the partnership model. But this tendency was synergized and strengthened by the orgiastic behavior that was certainly a part of the African Goddess/mushroom religion. Group sexual activity within a small tribe of hunter-gatherers and group experiences with hallucinogens acted to dissolve boundaries and differences between people and to promote the open and unstructured sexuality that is naturally a part of nomadic tribalism. (This is not to imply that contemporary mushroom rituals are "orgies," despite what a small sensation-hungry segment of the public may choose to believe.) IBOGAINE AMONG THE FANG The Bwiti cults of West Africa, discussed in Chapter 3, offer an instructive example: use of a hallucinogenic indole-containing plant provides not only visionary ecstasy but also what its users call "open heartedness." This quality, a caring awareness of others, is widely believed to explain the internal cohesiveness of Fang society and the ability of Bwitists among the Fang to resist commercial and missionary incursions into their cultural integrity: Neither Bwitists nor Fang felt they could eradicate ritual sin or evil in the world. This incapacity means that men have to celebrate. Good and bad walk together. As Fang frequently enough told missionaries, "We have two hearts, good and bad." Early missionaries, aware of these self-confessed contradictions, evangelized with the promise of "one heartedness" in Christianity. But Fang by and large did not find it there. For many, Christian one heartedness was a constriction of their selves. While "one heartedness" is celebrated in Bwiti, it is a one heartedness which is coagulated out of a flow of many qualities from one state to another. It is goodness achieved in the presence of badness, an aboveness achieved in the presence of belowness. It is an emergent quality energized in the presence of its opposite. Paradoxically ibogaine, the indole hallucinogen responsible for the pharmacological activity of the Bwiti plant (Tabemanthe iboga), is widely recognized both as a factor holding married couples together in the face of Fang institutions like easy divorce and as an aphrodisiac. It is perhaps one of the few plants of the many dozens claimed to be aphrodisiacs that actually performs as advertised.' Most other candidates for the title are in fact merely stimulants that can cause a generalized arousal and sustained erection. Ibogaine seems actually to change, to deepen, and to enhance the psychological mechanisms that lie behind sexual drive; one experiences a simultaneous sense of detachment and involvement that is empowering. Yet in situations where sexual activity is neither sanctioned nor appropriate, ibogaine does not cause, or even raise the possibility of, sexual behavior. In these situations it functions much as ayahuasca functions among its traditional users; as a boundary-dissolving visionary hallucinogen. Here is another example of research only waiting for social attitudes to change in order to be done. If the impact of ibogaine on sexual dysfunction is found to be congruent with its folklore, then further research might be especially promising. These powerful plants that change our relationship to our sexuality, and our view of self and world, are the special province of peoples whom we are accustomed to thinking of as primitive. This is but one more indication of the extent to which unconsciously imbibed dominator attitudes have robbed us of participation in the wider and richer world of eros and the spirit. For easily discerned reasons, the dominator societies that arose to replace partnership societies were far less eager to suppress group sexual activities than they were to suppress the hallucinogenic mushroom religion. Group sexual activity without the dissolution of the dominator ego would help the most ego-obsessed males gain power and rise in the social hierarchy. Since domination of others ultimately includes sexual domination as well, this would explain the persistence of orgies and group sexual activities in many of the mystery religions, at the festivals of Dionysus and the Roman Saturnalia, and within paganism generally long after the heart of the pagan world had ceased to beat. Eventually, however, the dominator anxiety about the establishing of clear lines of male paternity outweighed all other considerations. Then ego domination finally achieved complete preeminence. Through Christianity's ruthless extermination of all heterodoxy, orgies were recognized and suppressed as the subversive, boundary-dissolving activities that they are. CONTRASTS IN SEXUAL POLITICS Several important contrasts emerge from a comparison of the egobased dominator society and the nonrigid, psychologically unbounded partnership society. Much diminished in the partnership model is the proprietary attitude of men toward women that is so centrally a part of the dominator model. Less prominent as well is the tendency for women to seek extended commitment to pair bonding from men in the pursuit of security and vicarious social ranking. Family organization is not rigid and hierarchical. Children are raised by an extended family of cousins and siblings, aunts and uncles, and former and current sexual partners of their parents. In such a milieu, a child has many different relationships and a variety of role models. Group values are not usually at odds with that of the individual or his or her mate and children. Adolescent sexual experimentation is expected and encouraged. Couples may bond for any number of reasons related to themselves and the welfare of the group; such bonding may be-but is not necessarily-lifelong. Sexuality is rarely taboo in such societies, only becoming so as a result of contact with dominator values. In dominator society, men tend to choose sexual partners who are young, healthy, and capable of bearing many children. And the strategy of women within a dominator society is often to bond with an older man who, by being in control of group resources (food, land, or other women), could ensure that a woman's worth won't be devalued as she becomes older and passes out of her childbearing years. In the ideal partnership society, older men may have sexual relations with younger women, but without threatening the bonds that have been formed with older women; however, women are not driven to seek reproductive security under the protection of older men. This situation arose because power did not lie exclusively with aging and powerful males. Rather, power was distributed between men and women and through all age groups. Ultimate power in such societies was the power to create and sustain life and so was naturally imaged as female-the power of the great Goddess. Jean Baker Miller pointed out that the so-called need to control and dominate others is psychologically a function, not of a feeling of power, but of a feeling of powerlessness. Distinguishing between "power for oneself and power over others," she writes: "In a basic sense, the greater the development of each individual the more able, more effective, and less needy of limiting or restricting others she or he will be."' Partnership societies do not simply replace a patriarchy with a matriarchy; such concepts are too limited and gender bound. The real difference here is between a society based on partnership and roles appropriate to age, size, and level of skill and a society in which a dominance hierarchy is maintained at the expense of the full expression and social utilization of the individuals within the group. In the partnership situation the lack of concepts based on property and ego inflation made jealousy and possessiveness less of a problem. The generally hostile attitude of dominator society toward sexual expression can be traced to the terror that the dominator ego feels in any situation in which boundaries are dissolved, even the most pleasurable and natural of situations. The French notion of orgasm as petit mort perfectly encapsulates the fear and fascination that boundary-dissolving orgasm holds for dominator cultures. 6 THE HIGH PLAINS OF EDEN Angi and her sister, along with some of the other girls of the sib, crowded around the doorway into the chapel. The cowhide covering that usually hid the interior from view had been removed. This was the time of the fall festival celebrating the bounty of the Great Goddess. The great women of the city, their hair greased back, their breasts and thighs covered with the gray-blue color of ceremonial ash, were kneeling and singing around the festooned, entranced figure of the Goddess. She was resplendent, lying on the horn recliner with bunches of flowers and offerings of pine nuts heaped about her. Watching through the flickering of many lamps, the young observers never so much as imagined that what they saw was not the Goddess herself, her pregnant form rising and falling in deep sleep, but a wooden statue inset with the fine obsidian for which the city was famous and rubbed with generations of pigments and fat until her skin shone with the same deep ebony luster as that of the city's people. In a small open space at the foot of the Goddess, three of the shamans of the highest, most secret order danced slowly in vulture costumes, whose shadows mingled hypnotically with similar vultures painted on the whitewashed walls. At the conclusion of the dance, richly painted wooden vessels with lids were brought from a niche in the wall and unwrapped from covers of dyed and woven fabric. Every one present, even our little spies at the doorway, knew that the mushroom, She of Many Names, was within. And the sacrament was brought forth and distributed to be eaten among the women present. It was a rare privilege for the girls to be ignored and so allowed to witness the Harvest Mother mysteries-a mark of their rising status with the women, really. Each knew that in a few years she would take her place as an initiate into the ritual which they now beheld but could not understand. Though she was only eight, and her sister Slinga was six, Angi knew that what they saw, no man of the city had ever seen. The men's mysteries were different, also secret, also never spoken of THE TASSILI PLATEAU Archaeological evidence for these speculative ideas can be found in the Sahara Desert of southern Algeria in an area called the Tassili-n-Ajjer Plateau. A curious geological formation, the plateau is like a labyrinth, a vast badlands of stone escarpments that have been cut by the wind into many perpendicular narrow corridors. Aerial photographs give the eerie impression of an abandoned city (Figure 2). In the Tassili-n-Ajjer, rock paintings date from the late Neolithic to as recently as two thousand years ago. Here are the earliest known depictions of shamans with large numbers of grazing cattle. The shamans are dancing with fists full of mushrooms and also have mushrooms sprouting out of their bodies (Figure 3). In one instance they are shown running joyfully, surrounded by the geometric structures of their hallucinations' (Figure 4). The pictorial evidence seems incontrovertible. Images similar to those of the Tassili occur in pre-Columbian Peruvian textiles. In these textiles the shamans hold objects that may be mushrooms but may also be chopping tools. With the Tassili frescoes, however, the case is clear. At Matalen-Amazar and Ti-nTazarift on the Tassili, the dancing shamans clearly have mushrooms in their hands and sprouting from their bodies. The pastoral peoples who produced the Tassili paintings gradually moved out of Africa over a long period of time, from twenty thou FIGURE 2. Aerial photo of the region of Tamrit, Ti-n-Bedjadj of the Tassili-nAjjer Plateau. From The Search for the Tassili Frescoes by Henri Lhote (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1959), Figure 71, pp. 184-185. FIGURE 3. The bee-faced mushroom shaman of Tassili-n-Ajjer. Drawing by Kat Harrison-McKenna. From O. T. Oss and O. N. Oeric, Psilocybin: The Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide, 1986, p. 71. From the original in Jean-Dominique Lajoux, The Rock Paintings of the Tassili (New York: World Publishing, 1963), p. 71. FIGURE 4. Mushroom runners from Tassili. Drawing by Kat Harrison-McKenna. From O. T. Oss and O. N., Oeric, Psilocybin: The Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide, 1986, p. 6. From the original in Jean-Dominique Lajoux, The Rock Paintings of the Tassili, 1963, pp. 72-73. sand to seven thousand years ago. Wherever they went, their pastoral lifestyle went with them.' The Red Sea was landlocked during much of this time. Lowered sea levels meant that the boot of Arabia was backed up against the African continent. Land bridges at both ends of the Red Sea were utilized by some of these African pastoralists to enter the Fertile Crescent and Asia Minor, where they intermingled with hunter-gatherer populations already present. The pastoral mode had been well established across the ancient Near East by twelve thousand years ago. These pastoral people brought with them a cult of cattle and a cult of the Great Goddess. The evidence that they had such cults comes from rock paintings in the Tassili-n-Ajjer that are from what scholars have named the Round Head Period. This period is named for the style of depiction of the human figure in these paintings-a style not known from any other site. THE ROUND HEAD CIVILIZATION The Round Head Period is believed to have begun very early and probably ended before the seventh millennium B.P. Henri Lhote estimates that the Round Head Period lasted several thousand years, placing its beginning somewhere near the start of the ninth millennium. That the Great Goddess was part of the world view of the Round Head-style painters is beyond dispute. A painting from Inaouanrhat in the Tassili includes a wonderful image of a dancing woman (Figure 5). With her outstretched arms and horns extended horizontally on either side of her head, she is the embodiment of the Great Horned Goddess. Her discoverers saw her as having a relationship with the Egyptian Great Goddess Isis, mythical protector of the cultivation of grain. This impressive figure highlights one of the many problems raised by the Tassili finds. Why, if done at a time when the stratigraphy of the Nile valley shows it to have been nearly deserted, do many of the paintings of the Round Head Period show an unmistakable Egyptian influence in content and style? The logical conclusion is that these motifs and stylistic conceits that we associate with ancient Egypt were first introduced into Egypt by the dwellers of the Western Desert. If proven, this suggestion would indicate the central Sahara as the source of what later became the high civilization of preDynastic Egypt. PARADISE FOUND? The Tassili-n-Ajjer of 12,000 B.C. may well have been the partnership paradise whose loss has created one of the most persistent and poignant of our mythological motifs-the nostalgia for paradise, the idea of a lost golden age of plenty, partnership, and social balance. The contention here is that the rise of language, partnership society, and complex religious ideas may have occurred not far from the area where humans emerged-the game-filled, mushroom-dotted grasslands and savannahs of tropical and subtropical Africa. There the partnership society arose and flourished; there huntergatherer culture slowly gave way to domestication of animals and plants. In this milieu the psilocybin-containing mushrooms were encountered, consumed, and deified. Language, poetry, ritual, and thought emerged from the darkness of the hominid mind. Eden was not a myth-for the prehistoric peoples of the high plateau of the Tassili-n-Ajjer, Eden was home. The end of that story may well be the beginning of our own. Is it mere coincidence that at the beginning of the source code of FIGURE 5. Late Round Head Period painting at Inaouanrhat in the Tassili includes a wonderful image of a dancing Horned Goddess. From The Search for the Tassili Frescoes by Henri Lhote, 1959, plate 35, opposite p. 88. Western civilization, in the Book of Genesis, we read an account of history's first drug bust: 3.6. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good to eat, and that it was pleasing to the eye and pleasing to contemplate, she took some and ate it. She also gave her husband some and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they discovered that they were naked; so they stitched fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 3.22. The Lord God made tunics of skins for Adam and his wife and clothed them. He said "The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; what if he now reaches out his hand and takes fruit from the tree of life also, eats it and lives forever?" So the Lord God drove him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he had been taken. He cast him out, and to the east of the Garden of Eden he stationed the cherubim and a sword whirling and flashing to guard the way to the tree of life. The story of Genesis is the story of a woman who is mistress of the magical plants (Figure 6). She eats and shares the fruits of the Tree of Life or the Tree of Knowledge, fruits which are "pleasing to the eye and pleasing to contemplate." Note that "the eyes of both of them were opened and they discovered that they were naked." At the metaphorical level, they had attained consciousness of themselves as individuals and of each other as "Other." So the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge gave accurate insights, or perhaps it enhanced their appreciation of sensuality. Whichever the case, this ancient story of our ancestors being cast out of a garden by a spiteful and insecure Jehovah, a storm god, is the story of a Goddess-oriented, partnership society thrown into disequilibrium by successive episodes of drought that affected the carrying capacity and climate of the pastoralists' Saharan Eden. The angel with flashing sword who guards the return to Eden seems an obvious symbol of the unforgiving harshness of the desert sun and the severe drought conditions that accompany it. Tension between male and female is close to the surface in this story and indicates that at the time the story was first recorded the FIGURE 6. Eve by Lucas Cranach, c. 1520. Galleria delgi Uffizi of Florence. Courtesy of Fitz Hugh Ludlow Library. change from partnership- to dominator-style cultures was already well advanced. The woman ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; this mysterious fruit is the psilocybin-containing mushroom Stropharia cubensis that catalyzed the Tassili partnership Eden and then maintained it through a religion that placed a premium on frequent dissolution of personal boundaries into the oceanic presence of the Great Goddess, who is also called Gala, Geo, Ge, the Earth. John Pfeiffer, in discussing the Upper Paleolithic cave art of Europe, makes a number of observations that are important for these ideas. He believes that the placement of art within the caves in often nearly inaccessible spots is related to the use of the sites for initiation ceremonies that involved quite complex theatrical effects. He further suggests that what he calls "twilight-state thinking" is a precondition to having great culturally sanctioned truths revealed. Twilight-state thinking is characterized by a loss of objectivity, temporal distortion, and a tendency to experience mild hallucinations, and is nothing more than a gloss for egoless and unbounded psychedelic arousal: The prevalence of twilight-state thinking, our very susceptibility to the condition, argues for its evolutionary importance. In extreme cases it results in pathology, derangements and delusions, persisting hallucinations and fanaticism. But it is also the driving force behind efforts to see things whole, to achieve a variety of syntheses from unified field theories in physics to blueprints for utopias in which people will live together in peace. There must have been an enormous selective premium on the twilight state during prehistoric times. If the pressures of the Upper Paleolithic demanded fervid belief and the following of leaders for survival's sake, then individuals endowed with such qualities, with a capacity to fall readily into trances, would out-reproduce more resistant individuals.' Pfeiffer neglects to discuss psychoactive plants and any role they might have played in bringing about twilight thought, and he limits his discussion to Europe. However, the placement of the Tassili rock paintings is similar to that of paintings in many of the European sites, and so it can be presumed that the paintings were used for generally similar purposes; most likely similar religious rites were practiced across southern Europe and North Africa. The retreat of the glaciers from the Eurasian landmass and the simultaneous acceleration of aridity in the African grasslands eventually brought the "casting out of Eden" allegorically conveyed in Genesis. The mushroom peoples of Tassili-n-Ajjer began to move "east of Eden." And in fact it is possible to trace this migration in the archaeological record. A MISSING LINK CULTURE In the middle of the tenth millennium B.C., Palestine, which had been only lightly populated, was the site of the sudden appearance of a remarkably advanced culture that brought with it an explosion in the size of settlements, and in arts, crafts, and technologies, such as had never before been seen in the Near East or, for that matter, anywhere on this planet. This is the Natufian culture, whose crescent-moon flints and elegantly naturalistic carved bonework are unrivaled by anything contemporary found in Europe. As James Mellaart writes, "There is in the Early Natufian a love of art, sometimes naturalistic, sometimes more schematized. The crouching limestone figurine from the cave of Umm ez Zuweitina, or the handle of a sickle from El Wad showing a fawn, are superb examples of naturalistic art, worthy of Upper Paleolithic France."4 (See Figure 7. ) In spite of the assumption of European academic archaeology that such a culture must have had links with the settlements of Old Europe, the skeletal evidence from Jericho, where the Natufian culture reached its peak, shows clearly that the inhabitants were of Eurafrican stock, fairly robust with long skulls. The ceramic evidence also favors the notion of an African origin: occurring in the Natufian sites is dark, burnished monochrome pottery that is known as Sahara-Sudanese ware. Pottery of this type has been found near the Egyptian-Sudanese border in a situation that suggests that domesticated cattle were present. And it has been found in and near the Tassili-n-Ajjer, evidently having appeared at the end of the Round Head Period. Mary Settegast wrote, "The origin of these African ceramics is unknown. Very recent excavations of Ti-n-Torha FIGURE 7. Natufian naturalistic art from Palestine. From Figures 5 (p. 25) and 10 (p. 29) of Earliest Civilizations of the Near East by James Mellaart (London: Thames & Hudson, 1965). in the Libyan Sahara have uncovered Sahara-Sudanese type pottery with one carbon-14 reading of 7100 B.C., which, if a reliable date, would suggest a western seniority."5 Such statements support the notion that a high culture to the west of the Nile was the source of the new advanced culture appearing in the Nile valley and Palestine. Of interest in this context is the Natufian culture's particularly close and intense involvement with plants: Inquiry into the relationship of environmental and behavioral systems from 10,000-8,000 B.C. reveals that the subsistence base of Natufian populations did not differ appreciably from the local Upper Paleolithic tradition. However, the emphases on plant resources, in the Natufian, allowed for a storable surplus which, in turn, had an effect on the Natufian behavioral patterns. Much of the Natufian material culture (architecture, grinding stones) and settlement pattern were influenced by an intensive exploitation of plant resources.' AFRICAN GENESIS If the source of the oldest ceramics at the Natufian sites is North African, this would suggest strongly that the Natufian source culture was the previously disrupted partnership paradise that flourished in the wetter and more western regions of the Sahara, especially the Tassili-n-Ajjer. Archaeology may eventually provide answers, but to date no archaeology of significance has been done with these questions in mind. The western Sahara has not been taken seriously as a possible source of the advanced culture that entered Palestine in the mid-tenth millennium B.C. The result of this failure is reflected in comments like the following: "What is puzzling, however, is that the Palestinian sequence provides nothing at all convincing for an ancestor for the very original first stages of the Natufian. The industry which immediately precedes it . . . is a rather uninteresting culture, having very little in common with its successor. The Natufian, in fact, makes its first appearance apparently full-grown with no traceable roots in the past. "' The early Natufians in Palestine settled caves and the terraces in front of caves, and it was in precisely such situations that the rock paintings in the Tassili were done. Further excavation of the major Round Head mural finds in the Tassili might reveal traces of the precocious civilization that is the Natufian source culture. FATAL HUYUK If the Tassili-n-Ajjer can claim consideration as the original Eden and westernmost location of partnership culture, then certainly Qatal Huyuk, in central Anatolia, must be seen as its Neolithic and eastern culmination. Qatal Huyuk has been called "a premature flash of brilliance and complexity" and "an immensely rich and luxurious city." The stratigraphy for the site begins in the middle of the ninth millennium B.C. Elaboration of cultural forms reaches a pinnacle in Qatal Level VI, in the middle of the seventh millennium B.C. Qatal Huyuk was a huge settlement, spreading over thirty-two acres of the Konya Plain and, at its peak, accommodating over seven thousand people. Although barely begun, the excavation of Qatal Huyuk has already yielded amazing shrines with cattle bas-reliefs and heads of now extinct aurochs (Bos primigenius) covered with ocher designsthe very complex paintings of a complicated civilization (Figure 8). Qatal Huyuk complexity has puzzled archaeologists: "Less than three percent of the site has been explored. But Catal Huyuk has already yielded a wealth of religious art and symbolism that appears to be three or four thousand years ahead of its time. The mature complexity of the traditions at this Neolithic site further presupposes, according to the excavator, an Upper Paleolithic ancestor of whom we have no trace."' I contend that the "Upper Paleolithic ancestor of which we have no trace" is the culture of the Tassili-n-Ajjer. The Natufian culture was a transitional culture directly linking the Round Head culture in Africa with Qatal Huyuk In support of this rather startling statement consider the following observations by other scholars. Mellaart said of agriculture at Qatal: FIGURE 8. Religious shrine at Qatal Huyuk: From Catal Huyuk: A Neolithic Town in Anatolia by James Mellaart (San Francisco: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1967), Figure 41, p. 128. Everything indicates that the plant husbandry of fatal Huyuk must have a long prehistory somewhere else, in a region where the wild ancestors of these plants were at home presumably in hilly country, well away from the man-made environment of the Konya Plain .... The beginnings must be sought in the Natufian of Palestine, the still unknown earlier aceramic of the Anatolian Plateau [of Turkey] and in Khuzistan [farther to the East]. 9 Here is Mellaart on the material culture at fatal (Figure 9): In contrast to other contemporary Neolithic cultures, fatal Huyuk preserved a number of traditions that seem archaic in a fully developed Neolithic society. The art of wall-painting, the reliefs modelled in clay or cut out of the wall-plaster, the naturalistic representations of animals, human figures and deities, the occasional use of finger impressed clay designs like "macaroni," the developed use of geometric ornament including spirals and meanders, incised on seals or transferred to a new medium of weaving; the modelling of animals wounded in hunting-rites, the practice of red-ochre burials, the archaic amulets in the form of a bird-like steatopygous goddess, and finally certain types of stone tools and the preference for dentalium shells in jewelry, all preserve remains of an Upper Paleolithic heritage. To a greater or less extent, such archaic elements are also traceable in a number of other post-Paleolithic cultures, such as the Natufian of Palestine, but nowhere are they so pronounced as in the Neolithic of Qatal Huyuk.'° Writing of the painted walls of shrines at Qatal Huyuk, Settegast made this observation: The range of pigments used by the Qatal artists was unmatched in the Near East (although equaled or surpassed in the Round Head art of the Sahara) .... A third type of decoration was accomplished by cutting out silhouettes of animals from the deep accumulations of plaster on the walls, a curious use of interior surfaces that Mellaart [the excavator] believes may have been carried over from the techniques of rock art." The elegant naturalism of the art at Qatal Huyuk is an echo of the beautiful and sensitive renderings of cattle that typify the Tassili art finds (see, for example, Figure 10). Speaking of the inspired animal art of the Upper Paleolithic, Mellaart says: We have already seen a faint survival [of the naturalistic style] in the Natufian of Palestine but it was far more marked in the wall paintings and plaster engravings of the Neolithic site of Qatal Huyuk. There this naturalistic art survived until the middle of the fifty-eighth century B.C., but it is no longer found in the later culture of Hacilar or Can Hasan, cultures which followed in the same area." What could account for the vitiation of the naturalistic spirit in archaic art that accompanies the changeover from hunting-gathering to agriculture? While the absence of the inspiring mushroom and the visual acuity it imparted cannot be the sole cause, its loss may well have sapped the vitality of the archaic vision. The Goddessworshiping pastoralists saw more deeply into nature, and their naturalistic style sacrificed esoteric symbolic representation to visual realism, often of the most pristine sort. The most common motifs at Qatal Huyuk are cattle and bulls and, secondarily, vultures and leopards-all animals of the African grasslands (Figure 11). Of the vultures, Settegast says: In any event, if the vulture theme did enter Qatal Huyuk at Level VIII with the pre-dynastic style flint daggers and possibly Sahara-Sudanese-related ceramics, as the excavations to this point suggest, the chance that some of this Anatolian vulture symbolism was actually African cannot be ruled out." The conclusion that peoples and cultural institutions long old in Africa were entering and flourishing for a time in the Near Eastern environment is logical and difficult to avoid. Mellaart is puzzled that Qatal Huyuk left no great impact on subsequent cultures in the area, remarking that "the neolithic cultures of Anatolia introduced the first beginnings of agriculture and stock breeding and a cult of the Mother Goddess, the basis of our civilization."" A basis many today still deny, it may fairly be added. Riane Eisler, who has examined the psychology and mechanisms for maintaining cultural equilibrium in partnership society, argues convincingly that the later pattern to emerge, that of the dominator society, came with the Indo-Europeans-the horse-mounted, wheeled-vehicle cultures from the cold country north of the Black Sea. These are the people of the controversial and hypothetical "Kurgan Waves" of Indo-European population movement. On this matter Eisler's position echoes that of Marija Gimbutas, who wrote: The term Old Europe is applied to a pre- Indo-European culture of Europe, a culture matrifocal and probably matrilinear, agricultural and sedentary, egalitarian and peaceful. It contrasted sharply with the ensuing proto-IndoEuropean culture which was patriarchal, stratified, pastoral, mobile, and war-oriented, superimposed on all Europe, except the southern and western fringes, in the course of three waves of infiltration from the Russian steppe, between 4500 and 2500 B.C. During and after this period the female deities, or more accurately the Goddess Creatrix in her many aspects, were largely replaced by the predominantly male divinities of the Indo-Europeans. What developed after c. 2500 B.C. was a melange of the two mythic systems, OldEuropean and Indo-European." Gimbutas believes, in short, that the sedentary matrilinear civilization of Old Europe was disrupted by successive waves of IndoEuropean invaders with a different culture and language. Cambridge archaeologist Colin Renfrew has offered an alternative interpretation of this Kurgan Waves theory of Indo-European language diffusion. He claims Qatal Huyuk is the point of origin of the Indo-European language group and the area most likely to be implicated in the invention of agriculture." To support his unorthodox views, Renfrew calls upon the linguistic findings of Vladislav M. Illich-Svitych and Aron Dolgopolsky, which also point toward Anatolia as the home of the Indo-European languages. Dolgopolsky's student Sergei Starostin has argued that about seven thousand years ago Indo-Europeans borrowed a massive number of words from the North Caucasian language of Anatolia. The date of this borrowing argues for our conclusion that Qatal Huyuk was not founded by Indo-Europeans, who would have migrated there during a much later period." The recent genetic findings of Luigi Cavalli-Sforza and Allan C. Wilson at Berkeley also seem to support this conclusion. The Berkeley group analyzed blood groupings of living populations and traced the populations' genetic roots. They concluded that there is a close genetic relationship among the speakers of the Afro-Asiatic and the Indo-European languages. Their work also supports the view that populations with linguistic roots in Africa had been living on the Anatolian plateau long before the appearance of the IndoEuropeans. The legacy of Qatal Huyuk was suppressed precisely because of the culture's deep association with the Mother Goddess. The or giastic psychedelic religion that worshiped the Mother Goddess made the Qatal culture anathema to the new dominator style of warfare and hierarchy. This was a cultural style that arrived suddenly and without warning; the domestication of the horse and discovery of the wheel allowed the Indo-European tribal populations to move south of the Zagros Mountains for the first time. Horse-mounted plunder brought the dominator style to Anatolia, and trampled beneath its hooves the last great partnership civilization. Plunder replaced pastoralism, mead cults finally completed the already well advanced process of supplanting mushroom use; human god-kings replaced the religion of the Goddess. However, at its height the cult at ('natal Huyuk represented the most advanced and coherent expression of religious feeling in the world. We have very little evidence upon which to reconstruct the nature of the cult acts performed, but the sheer number of shrines in relation to the total number of rooms bespeaks a culture obsessed with religious observances. We know that this was a cult of totemic animals-the vulture, the hunting cat, and always preeminent, the bull or the cow. Later religions in the ancient Middle East were bull worshiping in spirit, but we cannot assume this for Catal Huyuk. The sculpted heads of cattle that protrude into the cattle shrines at Qatal Huyuk. are sexually ambiguous and may represent bulls or cows or simply cattle generally. However, the prevalence of female symbolism in the shrines is overwhelmingfor example, the breasts of sculpted stucco that are apparently randomly placed-makes it seem likely that the religious officials were women. The presence of built-in "recliners" in some shrines suggests that curing or midwifery in a shamanic style may have been part of the rites. It is impossible not to see in the cult of the Great Goddess and the cattle cult of the Late Neolithic a recognition of the mushroom as the third and hidden member of a kind of shamanic trinity. The mushroom, seen to be as much a product of cattle as are milk, meat, and manure, was recognized very early as the physical connection to the presence of the Goddess. This is the secret that was lost some six thousand years ago at the eclipse of Qatal Huyuk. THE CRUCIAL DIFFERENCE I am in general agreement with Eisler's view expressed in The Chalice and the Blade and hope only to extend her argument by asking the following question: What factor maintained the equilibrium of the partnership societies of the Late Neolithic and then faded, setting the stage for the emergence of the evolutionarily maladaptive dominator model? In my thinking on this matter, I have been guided by a belief that the depth of the relationship of a human group to the gnosis of the Transcendent Other, the Gaian collectivity of organic life, determines the strength of the group's connection to the archetype of the Goddess and hence to the partnership style of social organization. I base this assumption on observation of shamans in the Amazon, and on observation of the impact of plant hallucinogens on my own psychology and that of my peers. The mainstream of Western thought ceased to be refreshed by the gnosis of the boundary-dissolving plant hallucinogens long before the close of the Minoan Era, circa 850 B.C. In Crete, and in nearby Greece, awareness of the vegetable Logos continued as an esoteric and diminished presence until the Eleusianian mysteries were finally suppressed by enthusiastic Christian barbarians in A. D 268.'8 The consequence of that severed connection is the modern world-a planet dying under moral anesthesia. Suppression of the feminine and of knowledge of the natural world has been the hallmark of the intervening centuries. The late medieval Church that conducted the great witch burnings wanted all magic and derangement to be attributed to the Devil; for this reason, it suppressed all knowledge of plants such as thorn apple (Datura), deadly nightshade, and monkshood and of the role these plants were playing in the nocturnal activities of the practitioners of witchcraft. And this role was an extensive one; flying ointments and magical salves were compounded out of Datura roots and seeds, parts of the plant rich in delirium- and delusion-producing tropane alkaloids. When this material was applied to the witch's body, it produced states of extraordinary derangement and delusion. Hans Baldung's treatment of this subject (Figure 12) leaves no doubt about the terror of the Other the medieval mind projected on the image of intoxicated women. But in the accounts of the Inquisition, the central role of plants was never stressed. After all, the Church had no interest in a Devil who is such a diminished figure that he must rely on mere herbs to work his wiles. The Devil must be a worthy foe of the Christos, and hence nearly coequal: We must assume that the role of mind-altering plants in some witches' flights was not only under-emphasized, but entirely suppressed for a reason. If this had not been done, then a natural explanation for such phenomena would have suggested itself, something in fact advanced by the physicians, philosophers, and magicians quoted here, such as Porta, Weier, and Cardanus. The Devil would then have been left with only a very modest significance, or none at all. If he was assigned nothing more than the role of carnival conjurer, who caused mere illusions to flame up in the heads of witches, he could not have fulfilled the function assigned to him, namely the mighty enemy and seducer of Christendom." THE VEGETABLE MIND In view of our present cultural impasse, I conclude that the next evolutionary step must involve not only a repudiation of dominator culture but an Archaic Revival and a rebirth of awareness of the Goddess. Implicit in the ending of profane and secular history is the notion of our involvement with the reemergence of the vegetable mind. That same mind that coaxed us into self-reflecting language now offers us the boundless landscapes of the imagination. This is the same vision of human fulfillment through the "Divine Imagination" that was presciently glimpsed by William Blake. Without such a visionary relationship to psychedelic exopheromones that regulate our symbiotic relationship with the plant kingdom, we stand outside of an understanding of planetary purpose. And understanding planetary purpose may be the major contribution that we can make to the evolutionary process. Returning to the balance of the planetary partnership style means trading the point of view of the egoistic dominator for the intuitional, feeling-toned understanding of the maternal matrix. A rethinking of the role that hallucinogenic plants and fungi have played in the promotion of human emergence from primate organization can help lead to a new appreciation of the unique confluence of factors responsible and necessary for the evolution of human beings. The widely felt intuition of the presence of the Other as a goddess can be traced back to society's immersion in the vegetable mind. This sense of the female companion explains the persistent intrusion of themes of the mother/goddess even into the most patriarchal domains. The persistence of the cult of Mary in Christianity is a case in point, as is the fervor reserved for the cult of Kali, the destroying mother, and the idea of the divine Purusha in Hinduism. The anima mundi, the soul of the world, of Hermetic thought is another image of the Goddess of the World. Ultimately, all of these female images are reducible to the archetype of the original vegetable mind. Immersion in the psychedelic experience provided the ritual context in which human consciousness emerged into the light of self-awareness, self-reflection, and self-articulation-into the light of Gaia, the Earth herself. GAIAN HOLISM Deconstruction of dominator cultural values means promotion of what might be called a sense of Gaian Holism-that is, a sense of the unity and balance of nature and of our own position within that dynamic, evolving balance. It is a plant-based view. This return to a perspective on self and ego that places them within the larger context of planetary life and evolution is the essence of the Archaic Revival. Marshall McLuhan was correct to see that planetary human culture, the global village, would be tribal in character. The next great step toward a planetary holism is the partial merging of the technologically transformed human world with the Archaic matrix of vegetable intelligence that is the Transcendent Other. I hesitate to characterize this dawning awareness as religious; yet that is what it surely is. And it will involve a full exploration of the dimensions revealed by plant hallucinogens, especially those structurally related to neurotransmitters already present in the human brain. Careful exploration of the plant hallucinogens will probe the most Archaic and sensitive level of the drama of the emergence of consciousness: the plant-human quasi-symbiotic relationship that characterized archaic society and religion and through which the numinous mystery was originally experienced. And this experience is no less mysterious for us today, in spite of the general assumption that we have replaced the simple awe of our ancestors with philosophical and epistemic tools of the utmost sophistication and analytical power. Now our choice as a planetary culture is a simple one: Go green or die. II Paradise Lost 7 SEARCHING FOR SOMA: THE GOLDEN VEDIC ENIGMA Our present global crisis is more profound than any previous historical crises; hence our solutions must be more drastic. Plants and a renewal of our Archaic relationship with plants could serve as the organizational model for life in the twenty-first century, lust as the computer operates as the dominant model of the late twentieth century. We need to think back to the last sane moment that we, as a species, ever knew and then act from the premises that were in place at that moment. This means reaching back in time to models that were successful 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. This shift in viewpoint would enable us to see plants as more than food, shelter, clothing, or even sources of education and religion; they would become models of process. They are, after all, exemplars of symbiotic connectedness and efficient resource recycling and management. If we acknowledge that the Archaic Revival will be a paradigm transformation and that we really can create a caring, refeminized, ecosensitive world by going back to very old models, then we must admit that more than political exhortation will be needed. To be effective, the Archaic Revival must rest on an experience that shakes each and every one of us to our very roots. The experience must be real, generalized, and discussable. We can begin this restructuring of thought by declaring legitimate what we have denied for so long. Let us declare Nature to be legitimate. The notion of illegal plants is obnoxious and ridiculous in the first place. CONTACTING THE MIND BEHIND NATURE The last best hope for dissolving the steep walls of cultural inflexibility that appear to be channeling us toward true ruin is a renewed shamanism. By reestablishing channels of direct communication with the Other, the mind behind nature, through the use of hallucinogenic plants, we will obtain a new set of lenses to see our way in the world. When the medieval world grew moribund in its world view, secularized European society sought salvation in the revivifying of classical Greek and Roman approaches to law, philosophy, esthetics, city planning, and agriculture. Our dilemma, being deeper, will cast us further back into time in a search for answers. We need to examine the visionary intoxicants of our collective past, which include the strange cult of Soma described in the earliest Indo-European spiritual writings. No history of plants and peoples could claim completeness without a thorough treatment of the mysterious Soma cult of the ancient Indo-Europeans. As mentioned in Chapter 6, the Indo-Europeans were a nomadic people whose original home has been a matter of scholarly debate and who are associated with patriarchy, wheeled chariots, and the domestication of the horse. Also associated with the Indo-Europeans is a religion based on the magnificently intoxicating Soma. Soma was a juice or sap pressed out of the swollen fibers of a plant that was also called Soma. The texts seem to imply that the juice was purified by being poured through a woolen filter and then in some cases was mixed with milk. Again and again, and in various ways, we find Soma intimately connected with the symbolism and rituals related to cattle and pastoralism. As will be discussed, the identity of Soma is not known. I believe this connection to cattle is central to any attempt to identify Soma. The earliest scriptural writings of these Indo-European people are the Vedas. Of these the best known is the Rig Veda, best de scribed as a collection of nearly 120 hymns to Soma, the plant and the god. Indeed, the Ninth Mandala of the Rig Veda is entirely composed of a paean of praise for the magical plant. The beginning of the Ninth Mandala' is typical of the praises of Soma that pervade and typify Indo-European literature of the period: Thy juices, purified Soma, all-pervading, swift as thought, go of themselves like the offspring of swift mares; the celestial well-winged sweet-flavored juices, great exciters of exhilaration, alight upon the receptacle. Thy exhilarating all-pervading juices are let loose separately like chariot-horses; the sweet-flavored Soma waves go to Indra the wielder of the thunderbolt as a cow with milk to the calf Like a horse urged on to do battle, do thou who art allknowing rush from heaven to the receptacle whose mother is the cloud .... Purified Soma, thy celestial steed-like streams as quick as thought are pouring along with the milk into the receptacle; the rishis, the ordainers of sacrifice, who cleanse thee, 0 rishi-enjoyed Soma, pour thy continuous streams into the midst of the vessel.' Soma was prominent in the pre-Zoroastrian religion of Iran as "Haoma." "Soma" and "haoma" are different forms of the same word, derived from a root meaning to squeeze out liquid, which is su in Sanskrit, and hu in Avestan. No praise seems to have been too excessive to be applied to the magical intoxicant. Soma was thought to have been brought by an eagle from the highest heaven, or from the mountains where it had been placed by Varuna, a member of the early Hindu pantheon. Here is another quote from Rig Veda: It is drunk by the sick man as medicine at sunrise; partaking of it strengthens the limbs, preserves the legs from breaking, wards off all disease and lengthens life. Then need and trouble vanish away, pinching want is driven off and flees when the inspiring one lays hold of the mortal; the poor man, in the intoxication of the Soma, feels himself rich; the draught impels the singer to lift his voice and inspires him for song; it gives the poet supernatural power, so that he feels himself immortal. On account of this inspiring power of the drink, there arose even in the IndoIranian period a personification of the sap as the god Soma, and ascription to him of almost all the deeds of other gods, the strength of the gods even being increased by this draught. Like Agni, Soma causes his radiance to shine cheeringly in the waters; like Vayu, he drives on with his steeds; like the Acvins, he comes in haste with aid when summoned; like Pusan, he excites reverence, watches over the herds, and leads by the shortest roads to success. Like Indra, as the sought-for ally, he overcomes all enemies, near and far, frees from the evil intentions of the envious, from danger and want, brings goodly riches from heaven, from earth and the air. Soma, too, makes the sun rise in the heavens, restores what has been lost, has a thousand ways and means of help, heals all, blind and lame, chases away the black skin [aborigines], and gives everything into the possession of the pious Arya. In his, the world-ruler's, ordinances these lands stand; he, the bearer of heaven and the prop of earth, holds all people in his hand. Bright shining as Mitra, awecompelling as Aryaman, he exults and gleams like Surya; Varuna's commands are his commands; he, too, measures the earth's spaces, and built the vault of the heavens; like him, he, too, full of wisdom, guards the community, watches over men even in hidden places, knows the most secret things .... He will lengthen the life of the devout endlessly, and after death make him immortal in the place of the blessed, in the highest heaven."' SOMA-WHATISIT? A crucial question arises in any discussion of this powerful plant on whose ecstatic visions all later Hindu religiosity is based: What was the botanical identity of Soma, "the pillar of the World"? In the nineteenth century this question was nearly impossible to frame. The state of comparative philology was too rudimentary, and there was little impulse to adopt an interdisciplinary approach to the problem: Sanskritists did not talk to botanists, and neither talked to pharmacologists. In fact, to the nineteenth century the question was uninteresting, rather like asking "What song did the Sirens sing?" or "Where is Troy?" Thanks to the discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann, who followed his own inner voices and promptings, it is generally agreed that we now know where Troy actually stood. And in that spirit of respect for the factual veracity of ancient texts, twentieth-century scholarship has attempted to decipher the botanical identity of Soma. These attempts have ranged from the casual to the exhaustive. The game is precisely the sort that scholars love to play; the answer must be contained in fragmented descriptions in a long-dead language filled with color words and words which only occur once in a literature of a given language. What plant best fits the scattered references to the physical form of this most mysterious member of the visionary flora? To answer this question we must try to reconstruct the context in which the Indo-Europeans found themselves. One possibility is that the migrations beginning sometime during the sixth millenniUM B.C. carried the Indo-European tribes far beyond the forest environment suitable to the source of Archaic Soma. Of course, events would have unfolded slowly; the Archaic Soma must have been an item of trade between the original homelands of the Aryans and the frontiers of their southeastward-expanding sphere of influence. Another possibility is that Soma was something that the IndoEuropeans did not come in contact with until they encountered the valley-dwelling pastoralists who presumably used mushrooms and who lived on the Konya Plain of Anatolia. (See Figure 13.) In either case and over time-as linguistic differences arose, as trade routes became ever longer, and as local substitutes for Soma were experimented with and the local traditions of conquered people assimilated-the original identity of Soma became mingled with myth. Progressively more esoteric, it became a secret teaching, delivered orally and known but to a few, until finally it was forgotten. The preparation of visionary Soma seems to be something that faded as the Indo-European migrations ceased, at a time when reform and revitalization movements were being strongly felt in Persia as well as on the subcontinent of India. HAOMA AND ZOROASTER Perhaps the disappearance of Soma occurred because the newly reform-minded religion of Zoroaster (established circa 575 B.C.), then holding sway on the Iranian plateau, had chosen to take a repressive approach to the ancient sacrament of God-like empowerment. Zoroaster told of Ahura Mazda, a supreme creator, who creates through his own holy spirit and who rules over a world divided between Truth and Lies. The creatures of Ahura Mazda are free and thus responsible for their destiny; the outward symbol of Truth is fire; and the fire altar is the center of Zoroastrian cultic practice. But, as the following makes clear, the old allure of Soma was difficult to suppress: There are only two references to Haoma [Soma] in the Gathas [or sacred verses] of Zoroaster, one mentioning Duroaosa "averter of death," and the other alluding to "the filthiness of this intoxicant." These allusions are sufficient to prove that the intoxicating Haoma was under the ban of the great reformer. But in the later Avesta [sacred book of Zoroastrianism], Haoma, like so many other of the old daevas [gods], came back again, and according to Yasna IX-X was in almost every respect the same as the Vedic Soma.' Indeed, Zoroaster may not have actually intended to ban Haoma. Perhaps Zoroaster was merely objecting to the sacrifice of bulls, which was part of the rite. Bull sacrifice would certainly be anathema to anyone who was aware of the connection between cattle and mushrooms in the old religion of the Great Goddess. R. C. Zahner argues persuasively that Zoroaster never abolished the Haoma rite: In the Yasna the Haoma is prepared for the satisfaction of the "righteous Fravashi of Zoroaster." It is, of course, quite true that the Zoroastrians of what we have called the "catholic" period brought back a vast amount of "pagan" material from the older national religion .... So far as we can tell, the Haoma rite has been the central liturgical act of Zoroastrianism ever since that religion developed liturgical worship; and the central position it enjoys has never at any time been disputed. This is, however, not true of animal sacrifice; in later times this was practised by some but opposed by others.' What clues are there that might guide us in the search for a botanical identity for Soma? In both the Veda and Avesta, the Soma plant is described as having hanging branches and a yellow color. Its mountain origin is also generally agreed upon. Soma substitutes had to be found once the tradition was forced underground on the Iranian plateau. Presumably, substitutes chosen would be similar in appearance to the original Soma plant. It is also probable that the technical terms of the ritual would be retained, even if the substitute plant did not correspond perfectly to Soma. Since the Soma rite was the essence of Vedic ritual, three daily pressings were necessary to worship the gods, which means large amounts of the plant would have been required. But most important, no plant could substitute for Soma if it were not itself an ecstatic visionary intoxicant worthy of being described in such extravagant terms as these: Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is placed, in that immortal imperishable world place me, 0 Soma .... Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal .... Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are attained, there make me immortal.' HAOMA AND HARMALINE Attempts to identify Soma have led to heated debates about, for example, the precise meaning of certain color words in the Vedic descriptions.' Soma has been identified variously as an Ephedra, a plant related to the plant that is the source of the stimulant ephedrine; a Sarcostemma, a relative of the American milkweeds; Cannabis; and a leafless climber of the genus Periploca (see Figure 14). It has also been identified as fermented mare's milk, fermented honey, or a mixture of these and other substances. Recently Peganum harmala, the giant Syrian rue, which contains psychoactive substances, has been argued for very persuasively by David Flattery and Martin Schwartz in their intriguing book Haoma and Harmaline.' They contend that the original identification of Vedic Soma with Syrian rue by Sir William Jones in 1794 was correct. They make their argument using the Zend Avesta and other scriptural materials of the Parsi religion that other scholars had passed over. In discussing the ordinarily invisible spiritual world of the after-death state, called menog existence in the Avestan religion, Flattery says this: The consumption of sauma [Soma] may have been the only means recognized in Iranian religion of seeing into menog existence before death; at all events, it is the only means acknowledged in Zoroastrian literature .... and, as we have seen, is the means used by Ohrmazd when he wishes to make the menog existence visible to living persons. In ancient Iranian religion there is little evidence of concern with meditative practice which might foster development of alternative, non-pharmacological means to such vision. In Iran, vision into the spirit world was not thought to come about simply by divine grace or as a reward for saintliness. From the apparent role of sauma in initiation rites, experience of the effects of sauma, which is to say vision of menog existence, must have at one time been required of all priests (or the shamans antecedent to them).10 THE WASSONS' AMANITA THEORY Gordon and Valentina Wasson, the founders of the science of ethnomycology, the study of human uses of and lore concerning mushrooms and other fungi, first suggested that Soma might be a FIGURE 14. Substitutes for Soma. From R. G. Wasson, Soma: Divine Mushroom of immortality (New York Harcourt Brace jovanovich, 1971), p. 105. mushroom-specifically, that it was the scarlet-capped, whitespotted fly agaric, Amanita muscaria, an extremely ancient shamanic intoxicant until recently used by the Tungusic tribes of arctic Siberia. The evidence that the Wassons gathered was massive. By studying the evolution of the languages involved, tracing artistic motifs, and judiciously reexamining and reinterpreting the Vedic material, they made a strong case that a mushroom lay behind the mystery of Soma. Theirs was the first botanically sophisticated, pharmacologically informed inquiry into the identity of Soma. In other research, the Wassons discovered the existence of stillactive shamanic mushroom cults in the mountains of the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxacan Mexico. Gordon Wasson brought samples of Mexican mushrooms to Swiss pharmaceutical chemist and LSD discoverer Albert Hofmann and thus set the stage for the characterization and isolation of psilocybin in 1957. The same psilocybin that I argue was involved in the emergence of human self-reflection on the African grasslands some tens of millennia ago. In 1971 Gordon Wasson published Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. There the case for fly agaric is presented in its most complete form. Wasson was brilliant in advancing the notion that a mushroom of some sort was implicated in the Soma mystery. He was less successful in showing that the species behind the mystery was the fly agaric. He, like all those before him who had attempted an identification of Soma, had forgotten that whatever Soma was, it was a visionary intoxicant of tremendous power and an unparalleled hallucinogen. In contrast, he was well aware that European scholarship had settled upon Siberian shamanism as "exemplary" of all Archaic shamanism and that fly agaric had long been used in Siberia to induce shamanic journeys and initiate neophyte shamans into the fullness of their heritage. As a result of Wasson's own discoveries in Mexico, it was known that mushrooms other than fly agaric could contain visionary intoxicants, but psilocybin mushrooms were thought to be a strictly New World phenomenon, since no other intoxicating mushrooms were known. Wasson assumed that if a mushroom were Soma, then that mushroom must be a fly agaric. This overemphasis of Amanita muscaria has haunted efforts to understand Soma ever since. OBJECTIONS TO FLY AGARIC Genetically and chemically Amanita muscaria is extremely variable; many kinds of fly agaric do not provide a reliable ecstatic experience. Soil considerations and geographic and seasonal factors also affect its hallucinogenic properties. Use of a plant by a shaman does not necessarily mean it is ecstatic. Many rather unpleasant plants are used by shamans to intoxicate themselves and to open the "crack between the worlds." Among these are the Daturas-relatives of jimsonweed, the arborescent Brugmansias whose pendulous blossoms are familiar as landscaping ornamentals; bright red and black Sophora secundifolla seeds, Brunfelsias, and Virola-based snuffs made of powdered tree resin. In spite of their shamanic usage, these plants do not induce an ecstatic experience that could inspire the rapturous praise heaped on Soma. Wasson himself was aware that Anianita was unreliable, as he himself never had an ecstatic experience from eating Amanda. Instead of realizing that Amanita muscaria was an unlikely candidate for Vedic Soma, Wasson became convinced that some method of preparation must have been involved. But no ingredient or procedure has ever been found that reliably transforms the often uncomfortable subtoxic experience of Amanita into visionary journeying to a magical paradise. Wasson himself knew of only one inexplicable and unrcplicated exception: In 1965 and again in 1966 we tried out the fly-agarics (Amanita muscaria) repeatedly on ourselves. The results were disappointing. We ate them raw, on empty stomachs. We drank the juice, on empty stomachs. We mixed the juice with milk and drank the mixture, always on empty stomachs. We felt nauseated and some of us threw up. We felt disposed to sleep, and fell into a deep slumber from which shouts could not rouse us, lying like logs, not snoring, dead to the outside world. When in this state I once had vivid dreams, but nothing like what happened when I took the psilocybe mushrooms in Mexico, where I did not sleep at all. In our experiments at Sugadaira [Japan], there was one occasion that differed from the others, one that could be called successful. Rokuya Imazeki took his mushrooms with mizo shiru, the delectable soup that the Japanese usually serve for breakfast, and he toasted his mushroom caps on a fork before an open fire. When he rose from the sleep that comes with the mushroom, he was in full elation. For three hours he could not help but speak; he was a compulsive speaker. The purport of his remarks was that this was nothing like the alcoholic state; it was infinitely better, beyond all comparison. We did not know at the time why, on this single occasion, our friend Imazeki was affected this way." The chemical compounds active in Anianita muscaria are muscarine and muscimol. Muscarine is highly toxic and like most cholinergic poisons, its activity is reversed by injection of atropine sulfate. Muscimol, the likely candidate for the psychoactivity of the mushroom, has been described as merely an emetic and a sedative. " Human exposure to muscimol is not described in the literature. (Incredibly, the obvious step of giving muscimol to human beings to determine its psychedelic potential, if any, has not been undertaken. This fact again points out the queasy illogic that overtakes the academic mentality in the presence of questions revolving around self-induced changes in consciousness.) To the above let me add my own personal experience of the fly agaric. I have ingested it on two occasions. Once the specimens were a dried collection made at sea level in northern California. My experience of five dried grams was one of nausea, salivation, and blurred vision. Drifting images were present with eyes closed but of a trivial and unengaging sort. My second exposure was a dinner-plate-sized fresh specimen collected at 10,000 feet in the mountains behind Boulder, Colorado. In this case, salivation and stomach cramps were the only effects. Finally, here is part of an account of fly agaric intoxication by an extremely sophisticated subject, a professional psychotherapist and neurophysiologist. The dose taken was one cup of finely chopped mushroom. The mushrooms came from the Pecos river drainage of New Mexico: I was occasionally twitching, a gleam of perspiration over me. Saliva dribbling rapidly out of my mouth. I did not know how the time passed. Thought I was awake, or dreaming dreams that were totally lifelike--dreamed in total awareness. I was only dimly or not at all aware of the music being played. Threw off my blanket-very hot sweaty, very cold-chilled, but no visible chills. It seemed unusually quiet inside. I was very stoned. Unlike anything I had felt before"psychedelic" is too broad a term, too all encompassing, it was not truly psychedelic. It was as if everything were exactly the same but totally unfamiliar-but it all looked like I knew it to be. Except that this world was about a shade (or a quantum level) off--different in an eerie, profound and unmistakable way. I was ataxic [unable to coordinate voluntary movements] and euphoric-there was very little visual stuff." In short, Amanita muscaria is doubtless an effective sharnam vehicle in the floristically limited Arctic environment in which has been traditionally utilized as a psychoactive agent. But th rapturous visionary ecstasy that inspired the Vedas and was th central mystery of the Indo-European peoples as they moved across the Iranian plateau could not possibly have been caused by Amanit muscaria. WASSON: HIS CONTRADICTIONS AND OTHER FUNGAL CANDIDATES FOR SOMA Wasson remained convinced that fly agaric was Soma. In his la book, Persephone's Quest, published posthumously, he characte ized fly agaric as "the supreme entheogen of all time"-apparentl on faith, since he admitted it was disappointing and only reported attaining shamanic ecstasy by using psilocybin, which he never introduces into the Soma puzzle. However, he did introduce a interesting caveat when writing of India: Other fungal entheogens grow at the lower levels. They come in cattle dung, are easily identified and gathered, and are effective. But they fall to conform to Brahmanic practices; they are known to tribals and sudras [untouchables]. Soma on the other hand exacts self-discipline of the priests, a long initiation and training: it is, for proper exploitation, an affair of a priestly elite. But the possible role of Stropharia cubensis growing in the dung of cattle in the lives of the lower orders remains to this day wholly unexplored. Is S. cubensis responsible for the elevation of the cow to a sacred status? And for the inclusion of the urine and dung of cows in the pancagavya (the Vedic sacrifice)? And was that a contributing reason for abandoning Soma? Given the ecological conditions prevailing in the Indus Valley and Kashmir, only a few of the Indo-Europeans could know by personal experience the secret of the Divine Herb. The cult of Soma must have been shaped by the peculiar circumstances prevailing in the area, but ultimately those circumstances must have doomed that cult. Today it lives on in India only as an intense and glowing memory of an ancient rite. In discussing the prohibition against eating mushrooms if one is a Brahmin, a prohibition established in the late Vedic phase, Wasson says: We still do not know-we will probably never knowwhen the proscription came into force, perhaps over centuries while the Vedic hymns were being composed, or possibly when the hierarchs among the Brahmans learned of the entheogenic virtues of Stropharia cubensis as known to the lower orders living in India ...... Something unusual is going on in these two passages. A great scholar, himself quite a Brahman, an investment banker by profession and an honorary fellow of Harvard University, seems to be behaving in a most unscholarly manner. We know from his own eloquent descriptions that Wasson experienced the ecstasy of psilocybin on more than one occasion. And we know that he never obtained a satisfying experience from Anianita muscaria. Yet in these passages he dismisses, ignores, and passes over ample evidence that the mushroom that lay behind the mystery of Soma was the psilocybin-rich Stropharia cubensis. He calls it "easily identified" and "effective" but cannot conceive that it could be the Soma he seeks. He asks himself whether Stropharia cubensis could have been "a contributing reason for abandoning Soma." Then he ignores his own question. If Soma is Stropharia cubensis, then the tradition could be traced unbroken back to prehistoric Africa. Twice in these two passages he refers to "the lower orders," a break with his usual egalitarianism. My contention is that many considerations, some of them unconscious, shaped Wasson's words as he formulated his last statement on the problem that had consumed most of his life. Those who knew Wasson knew that he had a tremendous aversion to "hippies" and that he was deeply troubled by the events that unfolded in Oaxaca after he published his findings on the mushroom cults that survived there. The predictable migration of adventurers, spiritual seekers, young people, and sensationalists that followed upon Wasson's revelations of the mushroom cults made him bitter and defensive on the subject of psychedelic culture. I have often taken the sacred mushrooms, but never for a "kick" or for "recreation. " Knowing as I did from the outset the lofty regard in which they are held by those who believe in them, I would not, could not, so profane them. Following my article in Life a mob of thrill-mongers seeking the "magic mushroom" descended on Huautla de Jimenez-hippies, self-styled psychiatrists, oddballs, even tour leaders with their docile flocks, many accompanied by their molls .... Countless thousands elsewhere have taken the mushrooms (or the synthetic pills containing their active agent) and the chatter of some of them fills the nether reaches of one segment of our "free press." I deplore this activity of the riffraff of our population but what else could we have done?" Wasson maintained a position of stern disapproval of hedonistic use of his beloved "entheogens"-a clumsy word freighted with theological baggage that he preferred to the common term "psychedelic. " Perhaps it was this attitude that caused Wasson to decide that his magnum opus, written in colloboration with the French mycologist Roger Heim, Les Champignons Hallucinogenes du Mexique, should not be made available in the 1960s in an English translation. There could have been a host of reasons, of course. The fact remains that Wasson's most important work is his only work not available in English. PEGANUM HARMALA AS SOMA In fairness to Wasson it must be said that he assumed that Stropharia cubensis was first encountered by the Indo-Europeans when they reached India-and thus that it entered the Soma equation rather late. My own contention is that Stropharia cubensis, or a conspecific coprophilic species, was well established in Africa, Anatolia, and perhaps the Iranian Plateau millennia before the coming of the Indo-Europeans. This assumption changes the picture in important ways. It means that the invading Indo-European tribes encountered old mushroom-using cultures already in place on the Anatolian and Iranian plateaus * The increasing dryness of the region could possibly have prompted a search for mushroom substitutes long before the IndoEuropean invasions. I confess to being impressed by the new data on harmaline put forth by Flattery and Schwartz," arguing conclusively that, at least by late Vedic times, haoma/soma was understood to be Peganum harmala. Harmaline, the beta-carboline present in Peganum harmala, is distinct in its pharmacological activity from harmine, its near relative which occurs in the South American ayahuasca plant, Banisteriopsis caapi. It is known that harmaline is more psychoactive and less toxic than harmine. This may mean that Peganum harmala, by itself, when brewed to sufficient strength, can give a reliable and ecstatic hallucinogenic experience. It certainly would be true that Peganum harmala in combination with psilocybin in any form would synergize and enhance the effects of psilocybin. Perhaps when mushroom supplies were low, this combination was used. Gradually, Peganum harmala might have come to supplant the ever-rarer mushrooms altogether. Here is an area where further research is clearly called for. Whatever the ultimate ethnopharmacological importance assigned to Peganum harmala, it is clear that before the Indo-European invasion, the cultures of Anatolia and Iran were of the Catal Huyuk type. They were cattle-raising, Great Goddess-worshiping partnership societies practicing an orgiastic and psychedelic religion, the roots of which reach back toward Neolithic Africa and the emergence of self-reflecting consciousness. SOMA AS MALE MOON GOD The Ninth Mandala of the Rig Veda goes into great detail concerning Soma and states that Soma stands above the gods. Soma is the supreme entity. Soma is the moon; Soma is masculine. Here we have a rare phenomenon: a male lunar deity. It is limited to certain North American Indian peoples and to the Indo-Europeans (the German folk conception of the moon is masculine to this day). In studying folklore, the connection between the feminine and the moon is so deep and obvious that a lunar male deity stands out, making its traditional history in any region easy to trace. In the mythologies of the Near East, there is a lunar god that must have been imported to India from the west. The Babylonian civilization's northernmost outpost was the city of Harran, a city traditionally associated with the original home of Abraham and the beginning of astrology. The patron deity of Harran was a male moon god: Sin or Nannar. He was thought to have arisen from a god of nomads and a protector of cattle related to the masculine cult of the moon god in early Arabia. His daughter Ishtar in time overshadowed all the other female deities, as did her counterpart Isis in Egypt. 18 As the father, or source, of the Goddess, it is fitting that Sin wears headgear suggestive of a mushroom (see Figure 15). No other deity in the Babylonian pantheon has this headgear. I found three examples of Sin or Nannar on cylinder seals; in each the headgear was prominent, and in one instance the accompanying text by a nineteenth-century scholar mentioned that this headgear was in fact the identifier for the god." Why was the Harran patron deity connected with the mushroom FiGURE 15. Cylinder seal that depicts the Harran moon god Sin or Narmar reproduced in The Dawn of Civilization: Egypt and Chaldea by Gaston Maspero, 4th ed. (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1922), p. 655. Originally drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure by M6nant, La Gliptique Orientale, vol. i. pl. iv., no. 2. perceived as male? This is a problem for folklorists and mythologists; yet it is clear that the Stropharia cubensis mushroom will take the projection of masculinity or femininity with equal ease. It is obviously connected to the moon: it has a lustrous, silvery appearance in certain forms, and the overnight appearance of mushrooms in a field implies that they are active at night when the moon rules the heavens. On the other hand, one can shift the point of view and suddenly see the mushroom as masculine: It is solar in color, phallic in appearance, and imparts a great energy, being traditionally thought of as the child of lightning. The mushroom is most correctly seen as an androgynous shape-shifting deity, which can take various forms depending on the predisposition of the culture encountering it. One can almost say that it is a mirror of cultural expectations, and so for the Indo-Europeans took on a masculine quality and in Saharan Africa and at Qatal Huyuk a very lunar and feminine quality. In any case, it is a hallucinogen or a god that is not wild, that is associated with the domestication of animals and with human culture. SOMA AND CATTLE The domestication of the mushroom can serve as the thread to specifically connect the dung-loving Stropharia cubensis mushrooms to Soma. That cattle are a major motif in the Soma cult makes little if any sense if one believes that Soma is Anianita muscaria. Wasson noted the association of cattle and Soma but went to some lengths to avoid the logical conclusion that Soma must be a dung-loving species: "So much emphasis is laid on cows in the Rig Veda and on the urine of bulls in the religion of the Parsis that the question naturally presents itself whether cows consume the fly-agaric and whether they are affected by it, along with their urine and milk. I cannot answer this."" Some eighteen years later, Carl A. P. Ruck, in his contribution to Wasson's last published work, commented on the above passage in a footnote: Metaphors of cattle are also attributes of Soma, which can be described as an "udder" that yields the entheogenic milk and as a "bellowing bull," the latter being apparently a characteristic of the mushroom that Perseus picked at Mycenae. The bull is the most common metaphor for Soma, and this manifestation of the sacred plant may underlie the tradition that Zeus, in establishing European civilization, abducted the Anatolian Europea by appearing to her in the form of a bull that breathed upon her the inspiration of the flower he had grazed upon." In order to save the hypothesis that Amanda muscaria is Soma, these authors have seized on the fact that the urine of reindeer and human beings who have eaten Anianita muscaria is itself a psychoactive material. Among the Siberian tribes where this fact was noted, the urine is preferred over the plant itself. But Amanita muscaria does not grow in grasslands and cattle do not habitually graze on mushrooms, nor is there any reason to believe that if they did their urine would have psychoactive properties, as the hallucinogens would probably have been metabolized. WASSON'S DOUBTS Wasson himself was not as certain as his published statements might seem to indicate. In 1977 Wasson wrote the following in answer to my inquiry concerning the Stropharia versus Anianita question: Your question about Str[opharial cubensis has also bothered me. When Roger Heim and I went to India in 1967, in the Simlipal Hills of Orissa, I was given an account of a mushroom growing in cow's dung that tallied perfectly with Str. cubensis even to its psychoactive powers. My informant said that everyone avoided it. He seemed not to be withholding anything. He said he would deliver the mushroom to us, but though we stayed there a couple more days, I saw no more of him. Our purpose in going to India was altogether different. It will be necessary to pursue Str. cubensis further not only in India but elsewhere in the world. Of course Str. cubensis must flourish in India. Did it play a part in the abandonment of Soma? Inebriation from Str. cubensis and the other psilocybin species is clearly, in my opinion, superior to Afmanita] muscaria. I may develop this as one of several further ideas that I propose to include in my book next after this one, which I am now drawing to a close." Eventually, however, Wasson contradicted this position. A MORE PLAUSIBLE ARGUMENT As the arguments for Amanda being Soma are quite tortured, I believe the idea is best abandoned. The web of textual and linguistic associations that was so convincing to some can probably not be saved. Nevertheless, a more plausible reconstruction might run as follows: In their original homeland north of the Black Sea, the IndoEuropeans might well have practiced a shamanic religion with close similarities to the Amanita-using shamanism characteristic of the Koryak, Chukchi, and the Kamchadal peoples of northeast Siberia. The Indo-Europeans were at that time surrounded to the north and the east by Finno-Ugric peoples with a presumed long history of fly agaric use. In the sixth millennium B.C., settled agricultural populations had already been present in Europe for over two thousand years and urban civilizations were already ancient in the fertile river valleys of the Near East and the Anatolian plain. Sometime in this millennium, the first extensive Indo-European colonization of the Asian steppes and desert areas began. On the Eurasian steppes north of the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Taurus and Zagros mountains, the horse provided the key. If the domestication of cattle in Africa had set the stage for mushroom-using, Goddess-worshiping partnership societies, among the Indo-Europeans the domestication of the horse reinforced mobility, male dominance, and a social economy based on rape and plunder. Wheeled vehicles, first invented on the fringes of the Caucasus where woodland and steppe meet, soon spread among the Indo-European tribes. With horse and chariot, they began moving west into the zone of established farming groups, east into central Asia, and south toward Lake Van, where they encountered the urban cultures of the Anatolian and Iranian plateaus. These were cultures long in place and connected to a past that reached south and west, to the cradle of consciousness in temperate African grasslands. Use of psilocybin was a folk practice as old as these cultures themselves. THE INDO-EUROPEANS Whatever relationship the Indo-Europeans may have had to Amanita in their region of origin, it is most reasonable to suppose that the Vedas were written during the long centuries of their migrations toward the Indian subcontinent. These were centuries during which the Indo-Europeans subjugated and assimilated the valley pastoralists whom they conquered. From their contact with these cultures, the Indo-Europeans for the first time encountered the miracle of Soma and the awesome power in psilocybin. And while the Great Mother Goddess was suppressed in favor of the early Vedic pantheon, and the partnership pattern was replaced by male dominance and patriarchy, still what was retained, exalted, and deified during the nomadic phase was the mushroom, now become Soma, Thunderbolt of Indra. And though in earlier chapters, I argued for psilocybin use in prehistoric Africa and Asia Minor, the evidence for this position is pictorial and circumstantial; it is not yet direct. A remarkable 2,500year-old vessel with two grinning anthropomorphic mushrooms embossed on its surface found in Anatolia suggests that physical evidence of Middle Eastern mushroom use may soon emerge. (See Figure 13.) Small mushroom-shaped objects carved from green 21 stone have been found in Yugoslavia as well. (See Figure 16.) As climatic conditions changed and as the Indo-Europeans migrated farther and farther east, it is likely that the mild temperatures and grassland conditions required by Stropharia cubensis ceased to be available. Other mushrooms may have enjoyed use as Soma substitutes, and of these Amanita muscaria may have been preferred, because of its availability in colder climes, its psychoactivity (however ambiguous), and its striking appearance. There are a number of possible problems with this theory. Primary among them is the lack of confirmation of the presence in India of Stropharia cubensis or other psilocybin-containing mushrooms. Amanita muscaria is also rare in India. I predict, however, that a careful search of the flora of India will reveal Stropharia cubensis as a common indigenous component of the biome of the subcontinent. The desertification of the entire area from North Africa to the region around Delhi has distorted our conception of what occurred when ancient civilizations were in their infancy and the area received higher rainfall. The psilocybin mushroom religion, born at the birth of cognition in the grasslands of Africa, may actually be the generic religion of human beings. All later adumbrations of religion in the ancient Near East can be traced to a cult of Goddess and cattle worship, whose Archaic roots reach back to an extremely ancient rite of ingestion of psilocybin mushrooms to induce ecstasy, dissolve the boundaries of the ego, and reunite the worshiper with the personified vegetable matrix of planetary life. 8 TWILIGHT IN EDEN: MINOAN CRETE AND THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERY In the absence of a partnership community and with the loss of the psychoactive plants that catalyze and maintain partnership, nostalgia for paradise appears quite naturally in a dominator society. The abandonment of the original catalyst for the emergence of self-reflection and language, the Stropharia cubensis psilocybin-con-taining mushroom, has been a process with four distinct stages. Each stage represents a further dilution of awareness of the power and the numinous meaning resident in the mystery. The first step away from the symbiosis of the human-fungal partnership that characterized the early pastoralist societies was the introduction of other psychoactive plant substitutes for the original mushroom. This psychoactivity can range from being equal in the depths of its profundity to the Stropharia cubensis psilocybin intoxication, as in the case with the classical hallucinogens of the New World tropics, to being relatively trivial. Examples of the latter are the use of Ephedra, a stimulant, and fermented honey as Soma substitutes. ABANDONMENT OF THE MYSTERY In the case of Stropharia cubensis in Africa, a gradual trivialization scenario is reasonable: With changes in climate, frequent, if not continual, low levels of mushroom ingestion gradually gave way to use that was merely seasonal. Conscious ceremonial use of mushrooms must have been at its apex during this seasonal availability phase, which may have lasted many thousands of years. Gradually, as mushrooms and mushroom ecologies grew more rare, there may have been efforts to preserve mushrooms by drying and by preserving them in honey. As honey itself easily ferments into an alcoholic intoxicant, it is possible that over time a practice of mixing fewer and fewer mushrooms in more and more honey may have encouraged replacement of the mushroom cult with a cult of mead. No greater shift of social values is possible to imagine than that which would accompany the gradual changeover of a psilocybin cult to an alcohol cult. Such gradual profanation of a psychoactive plant sacrament merges easily into the second step in the abandonment of the original psychosymbiotic mystery; the second step is the substitution of completely inactive materials for active ones. In this situation, the substitutes, though usually still plants, are really no more than symbols of the former power of the mystery to authentically move initiates. And in the third stage of the process, symbols are all that is left. Not only are psychoactive plants now out of the picture, but plants of any sort have disappeared, and in their place are esoteric teachings and dogma, rituals, stress on lineages, gestures, and cosmogonic diagrams. Today's major world religions are typical of this stage. The third stage leads into yet another stage. This other stage is, of course, the complete abandonment of even the pretense of remembering the felt experience of the mystery. This last stage is typified by secular scientism as perfected in the twentieth century. We could perhaps even posit a further aspect of this fourth stage in the process of abandonment: the rediscovery of the mystery and its interpretation as evil and threatening to social values. The current suppression of psychedelic research and the hysteria fanned by phar-maphobic media is an obvious case in point. The discussion of Minoan civilization and the mystery cults it spawned and sheltered takes us to the domain of the plant substitutes for Stropharia cubensis psilocybin. These were powerful cults with powerful plants to aid in the formulation of a religious ontology— but in all likelihood they were not directly dependent on sources of psilocybin for the attainment of ecstasy. In Minoan Crete and still later at Eleusis on the Greek mainland, hallucinogenic in-doles of other types were admitted as techniques of ecstasy. Cultural and climatic conditions made the original source of the boundary-dissolving psilocybin ecstasy no more than a memory and its image no more than a symbol. THE FALL OF (JATAL HUYUK AND THE AGE OF KINGSHIP James Mellaart, the principal investigator of the site, makes the point that for all its brilliance Catal Huyiik had no impact on the societies around it. A disastrous series of fires swept through Levels V and VIA around 6500 B.C., and the city was abandoned, making all too clear that the age of undefended cities, the age of partnership, was ending. From then on, partnership-based social institutions and the old Mother Goddess religion in the Near East would witness a slow erosion and fragmentation. Refugees from the fall of the Catal Hiiyiik civilization were scattered. Some few of them fled to the island of Crete: The story of Minoan civilization begins around 6000 , B.C.E., when a small colony of immigrants, probably from Anatolia, first arrived on the island's shores. These immigrants brought the Goddess with them, as well as an agrarian ... technology that classifies these first new settlers as Neolithic. For the next four thousand years there was slow and steady technological progress, in pottery making, weaving, metallurgy, engraving, architecture, and other crafts, as well as increasing trade and the gradual evolution of the lively and joyful artistic style so characteristic of Crete. On the island of Crete where the Goddess was still supreme there are no signs of war. Here the economy prospered and the arts flourished. And even when in the fifteenth century B.C. the island finally came under Achaean dominion—when the archaeologists no longer speak of Mi-noan but rather of a Minoan-Mycenaean culture—the Goddess and the way of thinking and living she symbolized still appear to have held fast.' The ambience of Minoan-Mycenaean religion was one of realism, a sense of the vitality of bios, and sensual celebration. The snake-handling Minoan nature Goddess is representative of all these values. In all Minoan depictions, her breasts are full and bare and she handles a golden snake. Scholars have followed shamanic convention and have seen in the snake a symbol of the soul of the deceased. We are dealing with a goddess who, like Persephone, rules over the underworld, a shamaness of great power whose mystery was already millennia old.2 Meanwhile, on the mainland of Asia Minor, the Indo-European waves of successive migration abated and the great urban river valley civilizations arose. Kingship and chariot warfare and the travails of great male heros now held sway in the collective imagination. Warfare and the building of fortified cities had become the enterprise of civilization. In the age of kingship, only Crete—an island and in those times remote from the events of Asia Minor—harbored the old partnership model. The mysterious Minoan civilization became the inheritor of the style and gnosis of forgotten and far-off times. It was a living monument to the partnership ideal, enduring for three millennia after the triumph of the dominator style was everywhere else complete. MINOAN MUSHROOM FANTASIES The question naturally arises of the relationship of Minoan society to the Archaic source of power behind the partnership ideal, namely, mushroom psilocybin. Was the old mushroom religion of the African Eden preserved and absorbed into the life of Minoan culture? Did the people still search for ecstasy but through other means in the absence of mushrooms? What are we to make of the worship of pillars that characterized Minoan religion, remembering that Soma was called "pillar of the World" in the Rig Veda? It is generally assumed that these pillars are related to the Great Goddess religion and her vegetation cult, but could they be explicit echoes of the memory of the mushrooms? The palaces were characteristic of the style of Minoan culture and probably were sacred in their totality, though only certain rooms were employed in the cult. . . . On the upper floors we find several rooms each with a single round column in the center, a column broadening toward the top, as—to cite a simple example—in the so-called temple tomb near the palace of Knossos. The religious implications of this column cannot be doubted.3 Was the pillar somehow an esoteric reference to the mushroom mystery, or a last aniconic vestige of the mushroom image?4 Such columns were widely understood to stand for a sacred tree. The column was connected with images and rituals of vegetative significance that were very old. Was the use of mushrooms on Crete once an active and widespread cult, or was mushroom use only a memory of long-forgotten times before the arrival of the Goddess worshipers on Cretan shores? The great mystery cults that coexisted in the ancient Greek world of the fourth century B.C., which we call Dionysian and Eleusinian, were the last frail outposts in the west of a tradition of using psychoactive plants to dissolve personal boundaries, and to gain access to gnosis; true knowledge of the nature of things, that was many thousands of years old. Although they can be traced to Cretan origins, it is not clear whether psychoactive substances were a part of the celebration of the Minoan rites for the Goddess. Archaeological evidence on this point is lacking. Strong cultural evidence, however, to be discussed below, suggests that Eleusis, that most Greek of all the Mysteries, was a cult of plant-induced group psychedelic ecstasy. A curious and suggestive myth may shed some light on the problem of psychoactive plant use in the Minoan-Mycenaean context. This myth, the story of Glaukos, son of King Minos and Pasiphae, the Moon Goddess, has received little attention from modern scholars. It is preserved in complete form in only two late sources, Apol-lodorus and Hygeinus; fragmented versions are found in earlier writers.5 Parts of the story also appear in Aeschylus's Kressai, Sophocles' Mantels, and Euripides' Polyidos. The fascination this myth had for the great dramatists suggests that it was a popular theme of the Classic period. The story is old, definitely from the prehistoric phase of Greek mythological thinking. The retelling below follows the version of Apollodorus.6 THE MYTH OF GLAUKOS While Glaukos, the son of Minos and Pasiphae, was still a small child, he died from falling into a jar,a pithos, filled with honey, while he was pursuing a rat, or a fly; the manuscripts are uncertain. Upon his disappearance his father Minos made many attempts to find him, and finally went to diviners for advice on how he should go about his search. The Kouretes answered that Minos had among his herds a cow of three different colors and that the man who could offer the best simile for this phenomenon would also be the one to know how to restore the boy to life. The diviners gathered together for this task, and finally Polyidos, son of Koiranos, compared the cow's colors to the fruit of the bramble. Compelled thereupon to search for the boy, he eventually found him by means of his powers of divination, but Minos next insisted that Polyidos must restore the boy to life. He was therefore shut up in a tomb with the dead body. While in this great perplexity, he saw a snake approach the corpse. Fearing for his own life should any harm befall the boy's body, Polyidos threw a stone at the serpent and killed it. Then a second snake crept forth, and when it saw its mate lying dead it disappeared, only to return with an herb which it placed on the dead snake, immediately restoring it to life. After Polyidos has seen this with great surprise, he took the same herb and applied it to the body of Glaukos, thereby raising him from the dead. Now although Minos had his son restored to life again, he would not allow Polyidos to depart home to Argos until he had taught Glaukos the art of divination. Under this compulsion Polyidos instructed the youth in the art. But when Polyidos was about to sail away, he bade Glaukos spit into his mouth. This Glaukos did, and thereby unwittingly lost the power of divination. This must suffice for my account of the descendants of Europa.7 Let us attempt to analyze this peculiar story. First of all, it is necessary to comment on the significance of the names of the two main characters: Polyidos is clearly "the man-who-has-many-ideas," and Glaukos simply means "blue-gray." The meaning of Glaukos was for me the entry point into the intention of the myth. It is well known among mycologists that the flesh of Stropharia cubensis and other psilocybin mushrooms has the property of staining a bluish color when bruised or broken. This blue staining is an enzymatic reaction and a fairly reliable indicator of the presence of psilocybin. Glaukos, the youth who is preserved in the jar of honey, seems symbolic of the mushroom itself. Indeed, Wasson mentions the frequent allusions to honey in connection with Soma in the Rig Veda. He rejects the notion that mead, the fermented form of honey, could have been the basis of Soma: "Honey, madhu, is mentioned frequently in the Rig Veda but mead never. Honey is cited for its sweetness and also is often applied as a metaphor of enhancement to Soma. There is reason to think it was used on occasions to mix with Soma, but the two were never confused."8 HONEY AND OPIUM The antiseptic properties of honey have made it a preferred medium among many peoples for the preservation of delicate foods. And in Mexico honey has long been used to preserve psilocybin-containing mushrooms. The fact that Glaukos, the blue-gray one, fell into a honey pot (whose shape suggests the bucket-shaped graves of the Natufians) and was preserved there until the time of his resurrection seems highly suggestive. Herodotus mentions that the Babylonians preserved their dead in honey, and the use of large storage vessels, or pithoi, for burying the dead was widespread in the Bronze Age Aegean. The motif of cattle is present in the story in the bizarre section concerning the simile of the three-colored cow and the need to demonstrate linguistic facility as a precondition to being able to find the lost child. And the serpent, familiar from the Genesis story of Eden, makes a cameo appearance—and once again proves to have accurate and secret information concerning plants, especially plants that confer immortality. Polyidos, the shaman figure, uses the information gained from the serpent to return Glaukos to life; he shares his shamanic understanding with the boy, but later, all the information leaves Glaukos and returns to his departing teacher. This may refer to the elusive nature of the visions glimpsed during mushroom intoxication. The story is obviously garbled in this version, and the simile contest regarding the three-colored cow hardly makes sense; yet all the motifs of a barely remembered mushroom cult are there— themes of death and rebirth, cattle, serpents with herbal knowledge, and a blue-gray child who is preserved in honey. A parallel example is provided by the mushroom cults of the New World: throughout their range in Mesoamerica, the psychoactive mushrooms are thought of as small children—los ninos, "the dear sweet little ones," Maria Sabina, the mushroom shamaness of Huautla de Jimenez, called them. This is an instance of the motif of the alchemical children, the elfin denizens of some nearby magical continuum, accessed through psilocybin. We may never know with certainty the role that hallucinogenic fungi and plants had in the Minoan world. Much can change over the length of nearly four thousand years, and we know from the scholarship of Kerenyi and others that the late Mycenaean-Minoan civilization was more fascinated by opium than by psychedelic plants: It may be presumed that toward the end of the late Minoan period, opium stimulated the visionary faculty and aroused visions which had earlier been obtained without opium. For a time, an artificially induced experience of transcendence in nature was able to replace the original experience. In the history of religions, periods of "strong medicine" usually occur when the simpler methods no longer suffice. . . . Opium was consonant with the style of Minoan culture and helped to preserve it. When Minoan culture came to an end, the use of opium died out. This culture was characterized by an atmosphere which in the end required such "strong medicine." The style of Minoan bios is discernible in what I have called the "spirit" of Minoan art. This spirit is perfectly inconceivable without opi- um. The openness of Minoan society to the inclusion of opium in its religious rites is indicative of a willingness to associate ecstasy and the pursuit of altered states of consciousness with plant alkaloids. It is therefore a strong argument that other plants may have been utilized originally. THE DIONYSUS CONNECTION Dionysus, son of Zeus and the mortal Semele, twice born, god of intoxication who brings madness to women, has never been a comfortable figure in the Greek pantheon. There is something older, wilder, and strange that hovers about him. He is a vegetation god, a mad god and a dying god, a god of orgy, androgyny, and intoxication—and yet more, for from his miraculous birth onward, his story contains unique elements. Dionysus was twice born because his mother died, consumed in a lightning storm before she could give birth: The father did not let his son perish. Cooling ivy tendrils protected him from the heat by which his mother was consumed. The father himself assumed the role of the mother. He took up the fruit of the womb, not yet capable of life, and placed it in his divine body. And when the number of months was accomplished, he brought his son into the light.10 This notion of the "twice born god" anticipates the mystery of the Christos in ways scholarship has not fully explored. Only in the late phase of Greek culture was Dionysus transformed into the god of wine and drunken revelry; the older stratum of material is darker and touched with the bizarre. Semele was thought to be one of the four daughters of King Cadmus of Thebes, according to Graves.11 A clue to the Minoan connections surrounding Dionysus is the fact that Semele, though mortal, was accorded her own special cult honors as a goddess. The rites of Dionysus as practiced on the island of Myconos were deeply entangled with rites that honored his mother. Scholars have in fact reconsidered Semele's mortality and decided that she may have been a goddess all along. Kretschmer pointed out that Apollodorus equated Semele with Ge, the Thracian form of Gaia. In the older stratum, the Minoan stratum, Dionysus is the son of the Great Mother Goddess and is totally subservient to her. A point of view sensitive to the polarity of the partnership versus dominator relationship in the ancient world and of the change from one to the other cannot fail to see this as an important clue. Is not Dionysus, in his androgyny, in his madness, in his personification of ecstatic intoxication, the image of the spiritual crises that overcame the Minoan Archaic ideal? A male god, but softened by the androgynous values of Gaian culture, a dying god, personifying the death agony of the symbiotic relationship to vegetation that male dominance, Christianity, and the phonetic alphabet would finally overthrow. A god comprehensible only to initiates, usually women, in the cult—and from the point of view of the patriarchy, something wild, ancient, and potentially dangerous. The Dionysian theme entered staid Greece from the south, from island cultures with roots ten thousand years deep in the religion of the mushroom Mother Goddess: it entered from Asia Minor, but via four millennia of incubation within Minoan civilization. The mysteries that were planted on Grecian shores at Eleusis were the latest, last, and most baroque adumbrations of the great Archaic religion of the Goddess, cattle, and ecstatic intoxication by indole hallucinogens. THE MYSTERY AT ELEUSIS Each September, for two thousand years that more than span the classical Greek and Roman civilizations, a great festival was celebrated on the Eleusinian plain near Athens. In that place, tradition held, the goddess Demeter had been reunited with her daughter, Kore or Persephone, who had been abducted into the nether world by its lord and ruler, Pluto. These two goddesses, seeming sometimes more sisters than mother and daughter, are the two great figures around which the Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated. The festival of the Mysteries was held on two occasions during the Athenian year: the Lesser Mysteries celebrated in the spring to welcome the return of vegetation anticipated the Great Mysteries celebrated at harvest time. The Mysteries were clearly connected to Minoan rites: The oldest Telesteria [cult structures] are pre-Hellenic; the name Eleusis suggests pre-Hellenic Crete; certain cult vessels, the kemoi, and libation jugs are common to Eleusinian and Minoan cults; the form of the Telesteria may possibly be a further development of the so-called Minoan theater; the anaktoron is the same as the Cretan repositories and so-called house chapels; the purifications of the Eleusinian cult come from Crete, where they originally belonged to the Minoan religion; the kernel of the mysteries is a cult of fertility, which is also the kernel in the Minoan religion; a double ancient tradition traces the mysteries to Crete: on the one hand Diodoros, who stands independently, on the other the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. . . . These conclusions, established nearly twenty years ago, have since been adopted by leading historians of religion. The correctness of the interpretation, achieved without the more intimate knowledge of the basic content of the Minoan religion which we now have, is further strengthened by the present research.12 Though Eleusis has commanded the attention of many scholars, we still do not have a definitive understanding of exactly what it was that gave the Mystery a power over the Hellenistic imagination such that for nearly two thousand years literally everyone who was anyone made their way to the great harvest festival celebrated on the plain of Athens. The French historian of religion Le Clerc de Septchenes, writing toward the close of the eighteenth century, put it this way: According to Cicero, people came from all quarters to be initiated here. "Is there a single Greek, says Aristides, a single Barbarian so ignorant, so impious, as not to consider Eleusis as the common temple of the world?" That temple was built at a town in the neighborhood of Athens, on the ground that had first yielded the bounties of Ceres. It was remarkable for the magnificence of its architecture, as well as for its immense extent; and Strabo observes, that it would contain as many people as the largest Amphitheater.13 The power of the Eleusinian Mysteries lay in the fact that they possessed no dogma but, rather, involved certain sacred acts that engendered religious feeling and into which each successive age could project the symbolism it desired. Orthodox scholars, themselves unfamiliar with the reality-transforming power of plant hallucinogens, have fallen victim to the prejudiced attitude toward ecstasy that typifies the constipated patriarchal academy and hence have been baffled by the Mystery. And their bafflement has produced some of the most tortured of speculations. Albrecht Dieterich presumed that the object taken from the chest and in some way manipulated by the mystes was a phallus. This, however, met with the objection that De-meter was after all a female deity. Alfred Korte was therefore much applauded when he announced that it must be a female sexual symbol. Now everything seemed clear as day. By touching the "womb," as the sexual symbol was called, the mystes was reborn; and since such an act must after all have constituted the climax of the mysteries, Ludwig Noack went so far as to assume that the hierophant displayed this "womb" to the congregation in a blaze of light and that, beholding it, the initiates could no longer doubt their beatific lot as children of the goddess. It is difficult to report such notions without a smile.M Indeed. Displaying a representation of the vagina might have riveted a room full of male Victorian classicists, but one would like to believe that the mystical wellspring of the classical world was something more than a peep show. A PSYCHEDELIC MYSTERY? There is little doubt that at Eleusis something was drunk by each initiate and each saw something during the initiation that was utterly unexpected, transformative, and capable of remaining with each participant as a powerful memory for the rest of their life. It is an incredible testament to the obtuseness of the scholars of the dom-inator society that not until 1964 did someone make bold to suggest that a hallucinogenic plant must have been involved. That person was the English poet Robert Graves in his essay "The Two Births of Dionysus": The secret which Demeter sent around the world from Eleusis in charge of her protege Triptolemus is said to have been the art of sowing and harvesting grain. . . . Something is wrong here. Triptolemus belongs to the late second millennium B.C.; and grain, we now know, had been cultivated , at Jericho and elsewhere since around 7000 B.C. So Trip-tolemus's news would have been no news. . . . Triptolemus's secret seems therefore concerned with hallucinogenic mushrooms, and my guess is that the priesthood at Eleusis had discovered an alternative hallucinogenic mushroom easier to handle than the Amanita muscaria; one that could be baked in sacrificial cakes, shaped like pigs or phalloi, without losing its hallucinogenic powers.15 This was the first of many observations Graves made on the underground tradition of mushroom use in prehistory. He suggested to the Wassons that they visit Mazatecan Mexico for evidence supporting their theories on the impact of intoxicating mushrooms on culture. Graves believed that recipes in classical sources for the preparation of the ritual Eleusinian beverage contained ingredients whose first letters could be arranged to spell out the word "mushroom"—the secret ingredient. Such a cypher is called an ogham after the similar poetic device in use in Irish riddlery and poetics. Graves readily grants that "you are at liberty to call me crazy," but then goes on to defend his thesis very well. Perhaps we shall never know the nature of the hallucinogenic plants that lie behind the Eleusinian Mystery or that propelled the celebrants of Dionysus into a frenzy that was overwhelming to experience and frightening to behold. Graves, having opened the way to speculation on the botanical reality behind the Eleusinian sacrament, then had the pleasure of seeing his friend Wasson stride down that newly opened avenue of thought with a bold and convincing theory. THE ERGOTIZED BEER THEORY Wasson's notion, worked out in collaboration with his fellow sleuths Albert Hofmann and Carl Ruck and unveiled at a mushroom conference in San Francisco in 1977, was that Eleusis was a rite of visionary intoxication but mushrooms were not directly involved. Wasson gave cogency to much that had previously been obscure by arguing that the source of intoxication was an ergotized beer brewed from a strain of ergot fungus. Some background is necessary to appreciate the neatness of this suggestion. Grain was somehow very important to the cult at Eleusis. The festival of the Mysteries was a harvest festival, as well as the celebration of a great agricultural secret and a mystery of the Mother Goddess and Dionysus. Claviceps purpurea, a small fungus that infects edible grains, produces ergot, a source of powerful alkaloids capable of causing hallucination (as well as of triggering the onset of labor and having a strong vasoconstrictive effect). The purple traditionally associated with the robe of Demeter may signify the distinctive purple color of the sclerotia, the ergot of commerce which are purple and are an asexual resting stage in the life cycle of the organism. Mycelium sprouts from them and aggregates to form the spore-containing asci which do look like tiny mushrooms, but they are not purple but rather light bluish. Arguing for their theory, Wasson and his colleagues wrote: Clearly ergot of barley is the likely psychotropic ingredient in the Eleusinian potion. Its seeming symbiotic relationship to the barley signified an appropriate expropriation and transmutation of the Dionysian spirit to which the grain, Demeter's daughter, was lost in the nuptial embrace with earth. Grain and ergot together, moreover, were joined in a bisexual union as siblings, bearing at the time of the maiden's loss already the potential for her own return and for the birth of the phalloid son [the mushroom] that would grow from her body. A similar hermaphroditism occurs in the mythical traditions about the grotesquely fertile woman whose obscene jests were said to have cheered De-meter from her grief just before she drank the potion.16 Wasson and Hofmann's theory is bold and well argued. Certainly, their discussion of the scandal of 415 B.C., in which the Athenian noble Alcibiades was fined for having the Eleusinian sacrament in his home and using it for the entertainment of his friends, makes clear to even the most resistant skeptic that whatever the catalyst for ecstasy at Eleusis was, it was tangible. The notion that Eleusinian rites were celebrated with ergotized beer is entirely consistent with the notion that they had historical roots in Minoan Crete. In 1900 Sir Arthur Evans, excavating near the palace of Knossos, unearthed vessels adorned with ears of barley in relief. He therefore assumed that a kind of beer had preceded wine on Crete. Kerenyi believes that the small size of these vessels indicates they were used for a special kind of barley drink—-the visionary sacrament of the Eleusinian mysteries—in rites "allegedly performed without secrecy at Knossos."17 Of course, "the burden of proof is on those who assert," and so far as I am aware no one has subjected the Wasson-Hofmann theory to the acid test. That would mean the actual brewing of a superior hallucinogen from a cereal grain infected with some strain of ergot. Until this is done the theory remains nothing more than well-argued speculation. One problem in particular needs to be dealt with: in documented instances in which large numbers of people have eaten ergot-infected grain, the result has been far from happy. Ergot is toxic. In A.D. 994, an outbreak of ergotism associated with infected grain killed nearly 40,000 people in France; an outbreak in 1129 killed about 1,200 people. Recently the historian Mary Kilbourne Matossian has argued that La Grande Peur of 1789, a peasant uprising pivotal in the French Revolution, had its roots in ergot-infected rye bread that constituted the bulk of the diet of the rural peasantry of the period. It has also been proposed that ergot-infected flour was a factor in the decline of the Roman Empire and in the Salem witch burnings.18 The following summarizes the apparent effects of ergotism: Two clinical types of ergotism have been described, the gangrenous and the convulsive. Gangrenous ergotism started with tingling in the fingers, then vomiting and diarrhea, followed within a few days by gangrene in the toes and fingers. Entire limbs were affected by a dry gangrene of the entire limb, followed by its separation. The convulsive form started the same way but was followed by painful spasms of the limb muscles which culminated in epileptic-like convulsions. Many patients become delirious.19 Clearly unpleasant experiences may lie ahead for those who set out to prove by self-experiment the Wasson-Hofmann theory concerning Eleusis. There are old mycologists, and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists. As with Was-son's theory of the identity of Soma, the problem is to obtain a reliable intoxication from the assumed source of the intoxicant. If the source of the Eleusinian Mystery was ergotized beer, how could it have been taken for so many centuries without unpleasant side effects becoming a part of the legend? There may be a way around these difficulties. Claviceps paspali, which preferentially infects barley instead of rye, may have a higher proportion of the psychoactive but less toxic "simple" ergot alkaloids (similar to those in morning glories) and a lower proportion of the toxic peptide-containing ergot alkaloids. Also, as Wasson and Hof-mann reported in The Road to Eleusis, macerating the ergotized grain in water would effectively separate the water-soluble psychoactive alkaloids from the fat- or lipo-soluble toxic alkaloids. GRAVES'S PSILOCYBIN THEORY Should future research indicate that ergot played no part at Eleusis, then Graves's insistence that psilocybin mushrooms constituted the mystery would need to be looked at very carefully. Perhaps knowledge of the Ur-plant of the Goddess, Stropharia cubensis, or some other psilocybin-containing mushroom did survive, not only into Minoan-Mycenaean times but even up until the final destruction of Eleusis. Whatever its nature, the Eleusinian sacrament commanded the greatest respect and even love of the classical writers who invoked it: "Happy is he who, having seen these rites, goes below the hollow earth; for he knows the end of life and he knows its god-sent beginning," wrote the Greek poet Pindar. With the passing of Eleusis, the great broad river of partnership, Goddess worship, and hallucinogenic ecstasy that had flowed for over ten thousand years sank at last into that chthonic realm reserved for forgotten religions. Christianity's triumph ended the glorification of nature and planet as supreme spiritual forces. What Eisler called the "triumph of the blade" of dominator social models of paternalism and patriarchy was everywhere complete. Only a dim echo of the old ways continued to reverberate in the form of such underground concerns as alchemy, hermeticism, midwifery, and herbalism. A HISTORICAL WATERSHED With the eclipse of Minoan Crete and its Mysteries, humankind crossed a watershed into the progressively more vacant, more ego-dominated world, whose energies were coalescing into monotheism, patriarchy, and male domination. Henceforward the great society-shaping plant relationships of the Old World's past would decline to the status of "mysteries," esoteric pursuits of monied travelers and the religiously obsessed, and, later, cynical intelligence operatives. As the Mysteries faded, the phonetic alphabet helped move consciousness toward a world emphasizing spoken and written language and away from the world of a gestalt pictographic awareness. These developments reinforced the emergence of the antivisionary dominator style of culture. The dark night of the planetary soul that we call Western civilization began. 9 ALCOHOL AND THE ALCHEMY OF SPIRIT The ecstatic and orgiastic, visionary and boundary-dissolving experiences, the central mysteries of the mushroom religion, were the very factors in the human situation acting to keep our ancestors human. The commonality of feeling generated by the mushroom held the community together. The divine, inspiring power of the mushroom spoke through the bards and singers. The indwelling spirit of the mushroom moved the hand that carved bone and painted stone. Such things were a commonplace of the Edenic world of the Goddess. Life was lived not as we have chosen to imagine it, on the edge of mute bestiality, but rather, close to a dimension of spontaneous magical and linguistic expression that now shines only briefly in each of us at the pinnacle of experimental intoxication but that then was the empowered and enveloping reality: the presence of the Great Goddess. NOSTALGIA FOR PARADISE History is the story of our unfocused agony over the loss of this perfect human world, and then of our forgetting it altogether, denying it and in so doing, denying a part of ourselves. It is a story of relationships, quasi-symbiotic compacts, with plants that were made and broken. The consequence of not seeing ourselves as a part of the green engine of vegetable nature is the alienation and despair that surrounds us and threatens to make the future unbearable. It took many centuries for the flame of Eleusis to gutter into extinction, for the partnership, Mother Goddess view of community and society to fade. Then came many centuries more of nostalgia for paradise and its rivers of heavenly Soma, a nostalgia that took new and varied forms as humans sought to satisfy the innate yearning for intoxication. All the natural narcotics, stimulants, relaxants and hallucinogens known to the modern botanist and pharmacologist were discovered by primitive man and have been in use from time immemorial. One of the first things that Homo sapiens did with his newly developed rationality and self-consciousness was to set them to work to find out a way to by-pass analytical thinking and to transcend or, in extreme cases, temporarily obliterate, the isolating awareness of the self. Trying all things that grew in field or forest, they held fast to that which, in this context, seemed good-everything, that is to say, that would change the quality of consciousness, would make it different, no matter how, from everyday feeling, perceiving and thinking.' Over the next few chapters we will examine these substitutes for the original mushroom intoxicant of prehistory. Unfortunately, our survey will only serve to underscore how far we have fallen from the original dynamic equilibrium of the partnership paradise. ALCOHOL ANA HONEY The great plant-drug complex that spans this cultural divide is alcohol. Alcohol has its roots in the deepest stratum of Archaic cultural activities. Ancient civilizations of the Near East were preoccupied with beer making; very early in the development of human culture, FIGURE 17. The bee-headed dancing goddesses. From a gold ring found at Isopata near Knossos. The heads and hands are those of an insect. From Marija Gimbutas's The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 1982, Figure 146, p. 185. if not long before, the intoxicating effects of fermented honey and fruit juices must have been noticed. Honey is a magical substance-a medicinal substance in all traditional cultures. As we have seen, it has been used to preserve both human bodies and mushrooms. Mead, or fermented honey, seems to have been the recreational drug of the Indo-European tribes. This was a cultural trait they shared with the mushroom-using pastoralists of the ancient Near East. One of the most astonishing murals unearthed at fatal Hiiyiik apparently depicts the life cycle and metamorphosis of honeybees. (See Figure 9. ) The belief widely held in the classical world that bees were generated from the carcasses of cattle makes more sense if seen as an effort to connect bees as a source of honey and mead, the supplanting intoxicant, with cattle and the older mushroom cult. It may be that mead cults and mushroom cults that used honey as a preservative developed in close association with each other. Honey is closely connected to the Great Goddess rites of the Archaic Minoan civilization and is a prominent motif in the myths surrounding Dionysus (Figure 17). Dionysus was said by the Roman poet Ovid to have invented honey;' and the sacred ground on which the maenads, his handmaidens, performed their ritual dance was said to have flowed with milk, wine, and the "Nectre of bees." It was also said that honey dripped from the thyrsos staffs that the maenads carried. Kerenyi, speaking of the honey offerings in Minoan religion, observes: "The honey offering given to the `mistress of the labyrinth' carries the style of a much earlier period: that stage in which Minoan culture was still in contact with an `age of honey. "'3 Each intoxicant, each effort to recapture the symbiotic balance of the human-mushroom relationship in the lost African Eden, is a paler, more distorted image of the original Mystery than the last. The devolution of sacramental elements in the religion of the ancient Near East must have led from mushrooms through fermented honey and juices to the emergence of the grape as the favored wine plant. Over time and often within the same cultures, fermented cereals and grains were manipulated experimentally to produce early types of beer. WINE AND WOMAN Fruits rich in seed, such as pomegranates and figs, appear from the earliest times as symbols of fecundity. The vine and its juice has a long history of religious significance. Deified, like the Zoroastrian haoma and Vedic soma, its powers of exhilaration and intoxication were thought to be manifestations of divine possession. In the group of sacraments or "mysteries" that we shall examine .... the vine symbolizes especially the fruitfulness of woman, and its juice, mostly unfermented, is drunk ceremonially in order to promote the fertility of the womb.' Wine played a central part in later Greek culture, so much so that in classical times the disturbing figure of ecstatic Dionysus was converted into the hairy-footed and lascivious wine-god Bacchus, the lord of orgy and, now, drunken revelry carried on in the traditional dominator style. The fermentation of grains and fruits must have been generally known and can claim no discoverer or point of origin. Greek wines have always been somewhat puzzling to scholars. Their alcohol content could not have exceeded 14 percent since, when a fermentation process reaches this concentration, further formation of alcohol is inhibited. Yet Greek wines are sometimes described as requiring many dilutions before they could be drunk with comfort. This seems to suggest that Greek wines were more akin to extracts and tinctures of other plant essences than they were to wine as we know it today. This would have made them more chemically complex and therefore more intoxicating. The practice of adding resin to wine in Greece to make retsina may well hark back to times when other plants, perhaps belladonna or Datura, also went into wine. Alcohol is the first example of a disturbing phenomenon that we will meet again and again in our discussion of differences in ancient and modern approaches to drug use and drug technology. Human use of alcohol in the form of fermented grains, juices, and mead is extremely ancient. Distilled spirits, in contrast, were not known to the ancients (though Pliny mentions one Roman wine so powerful that it burned when poured onto a fire). And today it is distilled alcohol that is the chief culprit among the drugs labeled "legal" and "recreational." NATURAL AND SYNTHETIC DRUGS Discussion of alcohol gives us our first opportunity to examine the distinction between natural and synthetic drugs, for though distilled alcohol waited for hundreds of years to be joined by a second example of a chemically refined intoxicant, it was the first highly concentrated and purified drug, the first synthetic drug. This distinction is very important for the argument to be made here. Alcoholism as a social and community problem appears to have been rare before the discovery of distillation. Just as heroin addiction was the malignant flower that sprang from the relatively benign habit of opium use, so distilled alcohol changed the sacred art of the brewer and the vintner into a profane economic engine for the consumption of human hopes. It is no accident that alcohol was the first intoxicant to undergo this transformation. Alcohol can be fermented out of many kinds of fruits, grains, and plants, and so has been more widely experimented with than obscure and localized sources of intoxication. Indeed, fermentation is a natural process that in many cases is difficult to avoid. And fermented alcohol can be produced in prodigious-and hence commercial-amounts. The toddy palms of Southeast Asia produce debatably drinkable alcohol straight from the tree. Birds, raccoons, horses, and even wasps and butterflies are aware of the fleeting virtues that attend eating fermented fruit: In wild habitats most intoxications occur with the ingestion of fermented fruits, grains, or saps. Field teams have investigated dozens of cases, from Sumatra to the Sudan, involving creatures from bumblebees to bull elephants. The results? In natural habitats, most animals seek alcohol-laden food for the smells, tastes, calories, or nutrients they provide. The intoxications are side effects but not serious enough to deter future use. One sort of accidental intoxication occurs when tree sap is exposed to the proper temperature and ferments. The North American sapsuckers, a type of woodpecker, drill pitlike holes in trees that then fill with sap. The birds feed on the sap and insects attracted to the sap pits. They move on to other trees, literally "leaving the doors open" for the sap to ferment and intoxicate other animals before the tree heals over. The drinking of fermented sap has been held responsible for an array of abnormal behaviors observed in hummingbirds, squirrels, and unsuspecting sapsuckers.' Alcohol can be distilled by using heat to vaporize it and separate it from its source, unlike alkaloids and indoles, which must somehow be extracted using solvents and then concentrated. This fact -that a simple water-cooled condenser can capture the vapor of alcohol and return it to liquid form-made it possible for alcohol to be the first intoxicant to be chemically "isolated." (The quality of being recaptured from its vaporous state is what gave rise to the practice of referring to distilled alcohol as "spirits.") The first reference that we have to what might be a distilled form of alcohol occurs in the fourth century A. D. writings of the Chinese alchemist Ko Hung. In discussing recipes for the preparation of cinnabar, Ko Hung comments: "They are like wine that has been fermented once; it cannot be compared with the pure, clear wine that has been fermented nine times."' This statement seems to imply the knowledge of methods for the preparation of very strong clear alcohols, perhaps by the capture of alcohol vapor in wool from which could be wrung a relatively pure liquid alcohol. ALCHEMY AND ALCOHOL In the West the discovery of distilled alcohol is alternately credited to the alchemist Raymond Lully, about whom very little is known with certainty, or to his peer and companion in alchemical exploits, Arnoldus de Villanova. Lully's search for the true elixir led him to the preparation of aqua vini, the first brandy. According to Matheson, Lully was so awed by the wonders of aqua vini that he thought its discovery must surely herald the end of the world.' True to his alchemical roots, Lully made his universal panacea by fermenting wine in a double boiler of horse dung for twenty days before distilling it with a crude cold-water condenser. (See Figure I8). Lully did not hide his discovery; on the contrary, he invited others to make the elixir for themselves and hailed the product offered by Villanova as comparable to his own. Of alcohol he wrote, "The taste of it exceedeth all other tastes and the smell all other smells." It is, he says, "of marvelous use and commodity a little before the joining in battle to encourage the soldiers' minds."' These discoveries of the intoxicating chemical agent lying behind the fermentation of fruit juices, honey, and grains were made, both in China and in Europe, by alchemists. Alchemy was a slowly evolving, loosely knit, and not mutually exclusive group of Gnostic and Hermetic theories concerning human origins and the dichotomy of spirit and matter. Its roots reached back deep into time, to at least Dynastic Egypt and the slow accumulation of jealously guarded secrets of processes for dyeing fabric, gilding metals, and mummifying bodies. Upon those ancient foundations had risen an edifice of preSocratic, Pythagorean, and Hermetic philosophical ideas, which FIGURE 18. Protochemical procedures and naive fantasy mingle in an alchemical process from the Mutus Liber. Courtesy of Fitz Hugh Ludlow Library. ultimately came to revolve around the notion of the alchemical work as the task of somehow gathering into a unity and thereby rescuing the Divine Light that had been scattered through an alien and unfriendly universe by the fall of Adam. The natural world had come to be seen, by late Roman times, as a demonic and imprisoning shell. This was the spiritual legacy of the destruction of the partnership model of self and society and its replacement with the dominator model. The nostalgia for the Gaian Earth Mother was suppressed but could not, cannot, be ignored. Hence it reemerged in time in a clandestine form-as the alchemical theme of the magma mater, the mysterious mother matrix of the world, somehow everywhere, invisible yet potentially condensable into a visible manifestation of the universal panacea residing in nature. In such an atmosphere of feverish and ontologically naive speculation, alchemy was able to thrive. Categories concerning self and matter, subject and object, were not yet fixed by the conventions introduced by phonetic alphabet and later exaggerated by print. It was not entirely clear to the alchemical investigators what about their labors was fancy, fact, or expectation. It is ironic that this was the context for the discovery of a powerful mind-altering drug; that the spirit in alcohol, sensed and enjoyed in beer and wine brewed through the ages, became in the alchemical laboratories a demon, an elemental and fiery quintessence. And like those other quintessences that would follow it into existence, morphine and cocaine, the quintessence of the grape once passed through the furnace and the retorts of the alchemist had become deprived of its natural soul. That absence made it no longer a carrier of the vitality of the earth, no longer an echo of the lost paradise of prehistory, but rather something raw, untamed, and ultimately set against the human grain. ALCOHOL AS SCOURGE No other drug has had such a prolonged detrimental effect on human beings. The struggle to produce, control, and tax alcohol and to absorb its social consequences is a significant part of the story of the evolution of the mercantile empires of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Alcohol and slavery often went hand in hand across the economic landscape. In many cases alcohol literally was slavery as the triangular trade of slaves, sugar, and rum and other practices of European civilization spread over the earth, subjugating other cultures. Sugar and the alcohol that could be made from it became a European obsession that severely distorted the demographics of tropical regions. For example, in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, colonial policy paid women to produce as many children as possible, in order to provide workers for the laborintensive cultivation of sugar. The modern legacy of this policy is that Java, formerly the center of the Dutch East Indies, is today the most overpopulated large island in the world. Most of the sugar ended up as distilled alcohol, and what was not exported to Europe was consumed by the local population. A "besotted underclass" was a permanent fixture of mercantile society whether in the home countries or the colonies. And what of the psychology of alcoholism and alcohol use? Is there a gestalt of alcohol, and if there is, then what are its characteristics? I have implied that alcohol is the dominator drug par excellence. Alcohol has the effect of being libidinally stimulating at moderate doses at the same time that the ego feels empowered and social boundaries are felt to lose some of their restraining power. Often these feelings are accompanied by a sense of verbal facility ordinarily out of reach. The difficulty with all of this is that research findings suggest these fleeting effects are usually followed by a narrowing of awareness, a diminishing of ability to respond to social cues, and an infantile regression into loss of sexual performance, loss of general motor control, and consequent loss of self-esteem. Moderation in drinking seems the obvious course. Yet alcoholism is a major and unremitting problem throughout global society. I believe that the alcohol abuse syndrome is symptomatic of the state of disequilibrium and tension existing between men and women and between the individual and society. Alcoholism is a condition of ego obsession and inability to resist the drive toward immediate gratification. The social domain in which the repression of women and the feminine is most graphically and brutally realized is that of the drunken episode or lifestyle. The darkest expressions of the terror and the anxiety engendered by severance from the maternal matrix have traditionally been acted out there. Wife beating without alcohol is like a circus without lions. ALCOHOL AND THE FEMININE The suppression of the feminine has been associated with the use of alcohol since very early times. One manifestation was the restriction of alcohol use to men. According to Lewin, women in ancient Rome were not allowed to drink wine.' When Egnatius Mecenius's wife drank wine from a barrel, he beat her to death. He was later acquitted. Pompiliu Faunus had his wife whipped to death because she had drunk his wine. And yet another Roman woman of the gentry was condemned to die of hunger merely because she had opened the cupboard wherein were kept the keys to the wine cellar. Dominator style hatred of women, general sexual ambivalence and anxiety, and alcohol culture conspired to create the peculiarly neurotic approach to sexuality that characterizes European civilization. Gone are the boundary-dissolving hallucinogenic orgies that diminished the ego of the individual and reasserted the values of the extended family and the tribe. The dominator response to the need to release sexual tension in an ambience of alcohol is the dance hall, the bordello, and the institutionalized expansion of a new underclass-that of the "fallen woman." The prostitute is a convenience for the dominator style, with its fear and disgust of women; alcohol and its social institutions create the social space in which this fascination and disgust can be acted out without responsibility. This is a difficult subject to address. Alcohol is used by millions of people, both men and women, and I will make no friends by taking the position that alcohol culture is not politically correct. Yet how can we explain the legal toleration for alcohol, the most destructive of all intoxicants, and the almost frenzied efforts to repress nearly all other drugs? Could it not be that we are willing to pay the terrible toll that alcohol extracts because it is allowing us to continue the repressive dominator style that keeps us all infantile and irresponsible participants in a dominator world characterized by the marketing of ungratified sexual fantasy? SEXUAL STEREOTYPES AND ALCOHOL If you find this difficult to believe, then think about the extent to which images of sexual desirability in our society are associated with images of sophisticated use of alcohol. How many women have their first sexual experiences in an atmosphere of alcohol use that ensures that these crucial experiences take place entirely on dominator terms? The strongest argument for the legalization of any drug is that society has been able to survive the legalization of alcohol. If we can tolerate the legal use of alcohol, what drug cannot be absorbed in the structure of society? We can almost see toleration of alcohol as the distinguishing feature of Western culture. This tolerance is related not only to a dominator approach to sexual politics but also to, for example, a reliance on sugar and red meat, which are complementary to an alcohol lifestyle. In spite of natural food fads and a rise in dietary awareness, the typical American adult diet continues to be one of sugar, meat, and alcohol. This "burn out diet" is neither healthy nor ecologically sound; it promotes heart disease, abuse of the land, and toxic addiction and intoxication. It exemplifies, in short, everything that is wrong with us, everything that we have been left with as a result of an unhindered millennium of practicing the tenets of dominator culture. We have achieved the triumphs of the dominator style-triumphs of high technology and scientific method-largely through a suppression of the more untidy, emotional, and "merely felt" aspects of our existence. Alcohol has always been there when we needed to call upon it to propel us further down this same path. Alcohol helps nerve a man for battle, helps nerve men and women for love, and keeps an authentic perspective on self and world forever at bay. It is unsettling to realize that the delicately maintained web of diplomatic agreements and treaties standing between us and nuclear Armageddon was fabricated in the atmosphere of misguided sentimentality and blustering bravado that is typical of alcoholic personalities everywhere. 10 THE BALLAD OF THE DREAMING WEAVERS: CANNABIS AND CULTURE No plant has been a continuous part of the human family longer than the hemp plant. Hemp seeds and remains of ancient cordage have been found in the earliest strata of many Eurasian habitation sites. Cannabis, a native of the heartlands of Central Asia, was spread throughout the world by human agency. It was introduced into Africa at a very early date, and cold-adapted strains traveled with the early human beings who crossed the land bridge into the New World. Because of its pandemic range and environmental adaptability, cannabis has had a major impact on human social forms and cultural self-images. When the resin of the cannabis plant is collected together into black sticky balls, its effects are comparable to the power of a hallucinogen, providing that the material is eaten. This is the classic hashish. The thousands of names by which cannabis is known in hundreds of languages are testament not only to its cultural history and ubiquity but also its power to move the language-making faculty of the poetic soul. Kunubu it is called in an Assyrian letter tentatively dated 685 B.C.; a hundred years later it is referred to as kannapu, the root of the Greek and Latin cannabis. It is bang, beng, and bbnj; it is ganja, gangika, and ganga. Asa to the Japanese is dagga to the Hottentots; it is also keif and keef and kerp and ma. American slang alone contains a prodigious number of words for cannabis. Even before 1940, before it was a part of mainstream white culture, cannabis was known as muggles, mooter, reefer, greefa, gri ffo, Mary Warner, Mary Weaver, Mary Jane, Indian hay, loco weed, love weed, joy smoke, giggle smoke, bambalacha, mohasky, mu, and moocah. Such terms were the mantras of an experientially oriented underclass religion that worshiped a jolly green goddess.' HASHISH Hashish is several thousands of years old, although at what point human beings began to gather and concentrate cannabis resin in this way is not clear. Smoking of cannabis products, the most efficient and rapid way of obtaining their effects, reached Europe rather late. In fact, smoking itself was only introduced into Europe when Columbus returned with tobacco from his second trip to the New World. This is rather remarkable: a major human behavior pattern was unknown in Europe until quite recently. One might make the observation that Europeans generally seemed resistant to the development of innovative strategies of drug use. For example, the enema, another means of administering strong plant extracts, was also developed in the New World, by Indians of the equatorial Amazonian forests to whom natural rubber was familiar. Its development allowed experimentation with plants whose effects or taste were objectionable when taken orally. It is not possible to say with certainty when cannabis was first smoked or, indeed, whether smoking was once part of the cultural repertoire of Old World peoples and then forgotten, only to be reintroduced from the New World at the time of the Spanish Conquest. For while smoking was unknown to the Greeks and the Romans, it may have flourished in the Old World in prehistoric times. Archaeological digging at Non Nak Tha in Thailand has yielded, in graves dated 15,000 B.P., the remains of animal bones that appear to have had plant material repeatedly burned in their hollow centers. The favorite instrument for the smoking of cannabis in India even to this day is a chelum, a simple wooden, ceramic, or soapstone tube that is packed with hashish and tobacco. How long have chelums been used in India is a matter of debate, but there can be little doubt that the method is extremely effective. THE SCYTHIANS The Scythians, a nomadic central Asian barbarian group who entered eastern Europe around 700 B.C., are the people who brought the use of cannabis to the European world. Herodotus describes their novel method of self-intoxication, a kind of cannabis sweat lodge: They have a sort of hemp growing in this country [Scythia], very like flax, except in thickness and height; in this respect the hemp is far superior: it grows both spontaneously and from cultivation .... When, therefore, the Scythians have taken some seed of this hemp, they creep under the cloths [of the sweat lodge] and then put the seed on the red hot stones; but this being put on smokes, and produces such a steam, that no Grecian vapour-bath would surpass it. The Scythians, transported by the vapour, shout aloud.' Elsewhere Herodotus comments on another, similar method: [The Scythians] have discovered other trees that produce fruit of a peculiar kind, which the inhabitants, when they meet together in companies, and have lit a fire, throw on the fire, as they sit round in a circle; and that by inhaling the fumes of the burning fruit that has been thrown on, they become intoxicated by the odor, just as the Greeks do by wine; and that the more fruit that is thrown on the more intoxicated they become, until they rise up to dance and betake themselves to singing.' The passage from Herodotus makes clear that though the Scythians had discovered that inhaling the smoke of cannabis was the most effective way to enjoy it, nevertheless they were unable to make the creative leap to the invention of the pipe or chelum! The Greek herbalist and natural scientist Dioscorides also described cannabis, but until effective smoking practices were adopted, it made no inroads into European and American cultures. INDIA AND CHINA Chinese tradition holds that hemp cultivation began as early as the twenty-eighth century B.C., when the emperor Shen-Nung taught the cultivation of hemp for fiber. And around A. D. 220 the physician Hoa-tho evidently recommended hemp preparations in wine as an anaesthetic: "After a certain number of days or the end of a month the patient finds he has recovered without having experienced the slightest pain during the operation."' Cannabis was used and regarded as a plant of great spiritual power for many centuries in India before it was first smoked. Opium, too, seems to have been used for many centuries before the effectiveness of smoking it was discovered. Awareness of hemp in India cannot be documented before 1000 B.C., but by that time it was known as a remedy and the names for it in use in the earliest Indian pharmacopoeias indicate that its activity as a euphoriant was clearly understood. General awareness of the properties of cannabis grew very slowly and cannot be assumed to be widespread until around the tenth century A.D., only shortly before the Islamic invasion of Hindu India. Cannabis had associations with the esoteric, hence secret, side of Muslim and Hindu religiosity. Esoteric spirituality, the yogic practices of saddhus, and the emphasis on the direct experience of the transcendent are all little more than aspects of the veneration of cannabis in India. J. Campbell Oman, a latenineteenth-century observer of Indian folkways, wrote: It would be an interesting philosophical study to endeavor to trace the influence of these powerful narcotics on the minds and bodies of the itinerant monks who habitually use them. We may be sure that these hemp drugs, known since very early times in the East, are not irresponsible for some of its wild dreamings.5 CANNABIS AS A CULTURAL STYLE Oman touches here on a very fruitful theme-the degree to which the style and way of life of an entire culture can be imbued with the attitudes and assumptions engendered by a particular psychoactive plant or drug. There is something to the notion that the architectural styles and design motifs of Mughal Delhi or tenthcentury Isfahan are somehow derivative of or inspired by the visions of hashish. And there is something to the notion that alcohol channeled the development of social forms and cultural self-image in feudal Europe. Aesthetic assumptions and styles are indices of the level and kind of understanding and awareness that a society sanctions. Each plant relationship will tend to accentuate some concerns and diminish others. Outpourings of style and esthetically managed personal display are usually anathema to the nuts-and-bolts mentality of dominator cultures. In dominator cultures without any living traditions of use of plants that dissolve social conditioning, such displays are usually felt to be the prerogative of women. Men who focus on such concerns are often assumed to be homosexuals-that is, they are not following the accepted canons of male behavior within the dominator model. The longer hair lengths for men seen with the rise of marijuana use in the United States in the 1960s were a textbook case of an influx of apparently feminine values accompanying the use of a boundary-dissolving plant. The hysterical reaction to such a minor adjustment in folkways revealed the insecurity and sense of danger felt by the male ego in the presence of any factor that might tend to restore the importance of partnership in human affairs. In this context, it is interesting to note that cannabis occurs in both a male and a female form. And it is the identification, care, and propagation of the female of the species that is the total concern of the grower interested in the narcotic power of the plant. This is because the resin is the exclusive product of the female plant. Not only do males not produce a usable drug, but if the pollen from male plants reaches females, the females will begin to "set" seed and will cease their production of resin. It is thus a kind of happy coincidence that the subjective effects of ingesting cannabis and the care and attention needed to produce a good resin strain both conspire to accentuate values that are oriented toward honoring and preserving the feminine. Of all the pandemic plant intoxicants inhabiting the earth, cannabis is second only to mushrooms in its promotion of the social values and sensory ratios that typified the original partnership societies. How else are we to explain the unrelenting persecution of cannabis use in the face of overwhelming evidence that, of all the intoxicants ever used, cannabis is among the most benign? Its social consequences are negligible compared with those of alcohol. Cannabis is anathema to the dominator culture because it deconditions or decouples users from accepted values. Because of its subliminally psychedelic effect, cannabis, when pursued as a lifestyle, places a person in intuitive contact with less goal-oriented and less competitive behavior patterns. For these reasons marijuana is unwelcome in the modern office environment, while a drug such as coffee, which reinforces the values of industrial culture, is both welcomed and encouraged. Cannabis use is correctly sensed as heretical and deeply disloyal to the values of male dominance and stratified hierarchy. Legalization of marijuana is thus a complex issue, since it involves legitimating a social factor that might ameliorate or even modify ego-dominant values. Legalization and taxation of cannabis would provide a tax base that could help clean up the national deficit. Instead, we continue to hurl millions of dollars into marijuana eradication, a policy that creates suspicion and a permanent criminal class in communities that are otherwise among the most law abiding in the country. As indicated, society's contempt for the cannabis user is a thinly disguised contempt for the values of community and the feminine. How else to explain the media's need to endlessly repudiate the psychedelic drug use and underground social experiments of the sixties? The fear that the flower children engendered in the establishment becomes understandable when analyzed in the light of the idea that what confronted the establishment was an outbreak of genderless partnership thinking based on a diminished sense of selfimportance. CLASSICAL CANNABIS The Roman natural historian Pliny (A.D. 23-79) reproduces a fragment from Democratus concerning a plant called thalassaegle or potamaugis that many scholars consider a reference to cannabis: Taken in drink it produces a delirium, which presents to the fancy visions of a most extraordinary nature. The theangelis, he says, grows upon Mount Libanus in Syria, upon the chain of mountains called Dicte in Crete, and at Babylon and Susa in Persia. An infusion of it imparts powers of divination to the Magi. The gelotophyllis too, is a plant found in Bactriana, and on the banks of the Borysthenes. Taken internally with myrrh and wine all sorts of visionary forms present themselves, exciting the most immoderate laughter.' Dioscorides, writing during the first century, gave an excellent description of cannabis and mentions its use in rope making and medicine, but he says nothing of its intoxicating properties. Because the climate favored the growth of hemp and Islam encouraged its use over alcohol, in the Near Eastern and Arab worlds, cannabis became the intoxicant of choice for many. This predilection for hashish and cannabis was already very old at the time of the Prophet, which explains why alcohol is explicitly forbidden to the faithful but hashish is a matter of theological disputation. By A.D. 950 use and abuse of hashish is widespread enough that it comes to occupy a prominent position in the literature of the period. A perfect encapsulation of the attitudes of dominator society toward cannabis is contained in the following, one of the earliest descriptions we possess of addictive behavior with this plant: A Moslem priest exhorting in the mosque against the use of "beng," a plant of which the principal quality is to intoxicate and induce sleep, was so carried away with the violence of his discourse that a paper containing some of the prohibited drug which often enslaved him fell from his breast into the midst of his audience. The priest without loss of countenance cried immediately, "There is this enemy, this demon of which I have told you; the force of my words has put it to flight, take care that in quitting me it does not hurl itself on one of you and possess him." No one dared to touch it; after the sermon, the zealous sophist recovered his "beng. "' As this story makes clear, the ego of the monotheist is capable of the most extraordinary feats of self-delusion. CANNABIS AND THE LANGUAGE OF STORY Cannabis is a multipurpose plant: it very early came to the attention of hunter-gatherers as a source of cordage for weaving and rope making. But unlike other cordage plants-the flax of central Asia or the chimbira of the Amazon-cannabis is also psychoactive. In this context, it is interesting to note that the English vocabulary that refers to spoken discourse is often the same as that used to describe cordage-making and weaving. One weaves a story, or unravels an incident, or spins a yarn. We follow the thread of a story and stitch together an excuse. Lies are made from whole cloth, reality is an endless golden braid. Does this shared vocabulary reflect an ancient connection between the intoxicating hemp plant and the intellectual processes that lay behind the discovery of the art of weaving and of storytelling? I suggest that such may well be the case. Cannabis was the most likely plant candidate to replace the sacred psilocybin mushrooms of the older cultures of the Near East. Though this transition from mushrooms to cannabis lies far in the past, its legacy to the present era is the association of cannabis with the style of the partnership society. And, indeed, the growing presence of cannabis in Vedic society and later in Islam may have acted to slow the rise of dominator values. Certainly it gave encouragement to heterodox forces-Shivites in the case of Hinduism and Sufis in the case of Islam-who made no secret of their reliance on cannabis as a source of religious inspiration that was particularly feminine in emphasis. The role of cannabis in European society is complex. Marco Polo, whose exploits and travel descriptions of the mysterious East did so much to enrich and catalyze the European imagination, gave one of the first and most widely read accounts of the use of hashish when he repeated the popular folktale of the "Old Man of the Mountain" Ibn el Sabah, reputed leader of the violent cult of the hashishin, the infamous sect of assassins. According to the legend, young men wishing to be initiated into the sect were given large doses of hashish and then introduced into an "artificial paradise"a hidden valley of exotic floral gardens, splashing fountains, and nubile young women. They were told that return to this land of dreams was only possible after they had carried out certain acts of political murder. Indeed, "hashishin" and "assassin" are thought to be etymologically related. The truth of this old story is widely disputed, but there can be no doubt that it was the circulation of the story in Europe that gave cannabis its blackened reputation and its fascination. Some five hundred years after Marco Polo, French administrators of Napoleonic Egypt failed utterly in their efforts to control the production and sale of cannabis preparations. In response to a ban on sales, Greek smugglers immediately began a lucrative underground business of importing hashish into Egypt. Militarily, Napoleon's expedition into Egypt was a failure, but as an effort at the cross-fertilization of disparate cultures it was a resounding success. Napoleon took with him into Egypt an excellent library and 175 scholars who observed, sketched, and collected linguistic and cultural information. This effort ultimately resulted in the publication of twenty-four volumes (Description d'Egypte) between 1809 and 1813. These volumes inspired a wide variety of travel books and in general were a tremendous stimulus to the European imagination. ORIENTOMANIA AND CANNABIS IN EUROPE While Napoleon struggled with the prevalence of cannabis use in Egypt, new intellectual forces were stirring in Europe. Romanticism, Orientomania, and a fascination with psychology and the paranormal all combined with the well-established upper-class craze for opium and the opium tincture, laudanum, to create a climate in which the reputed pleasures of hashish could be explored by daring and unconventional souls. The legal and intellectual ambience of drug taking in the early nineteenth century could hardly have been more different from that of our own times. Opium and hashish were not controlled substances, and no opprobrium was attached to their use. Tobacco and coffee had long since been introduced into Europe and become indispensable parts of the rituals of European civilization, so it was not surprising that the extravagant tales of travelers concerning narcotic raptures and vistas of transcendental ecstasy acted to promote experimentation with cannabis. By the early 1840s a group of French writers, among them Theophile Gautier, Baudelaire, Gerard de Nerval, Dumas, and Balzac, as well as a number of sculptors, painters, and other Bohemians, had formed the now famous "Club des Hachischins." The club held weekly meetings in damask-hung rooms of the Hotel Luzan in Ile St.-Louis in Paris. At these meetings, world traveler and psychiatrist J. J. Moreau de Tours provided a form of jellied Algerian hashish called dawamesc. The meetings were the private explorations of successful and respected literary figures. Nevertheless, only a few years later, during the Paris uprising of 1848, the student firebrands carried banners through the streets demanding free availability of cannabis and ether. In 1842, the English physician W. B. O'Shaughnessy became the first to introduce ganja, potent Indian hemp, to England, in his Bengal Pharmacopeia Cannabis became a part of English medical practice and hence a part of the inventory of every English apothecary. The relation between opium and hashish in the shaping of the European imagination is complex and synergistic. Opium has a much longer history of wide use in the West than has cannabis. Opium was known and used by physicians since at least late Egyptian and Minoan times, and it played a major part in the late, decadent phase of Minoan religion. Cannabis was introduced into Europe later and largely as a consequence of the interest in altered states that had already been kindled by opium enthusiasts. Though cannabis had been used in the East for many centuries, it is very unlikely that more than a handful of Europeans were aware of its existence before the sensational account of Marco Polo appeared around 1290. In spite of the fact that the German physician Johannus Weier mentioned the use of hashish by groups of witches in the sixteenth century, drugs based on hemp were absent from the materia medica of alchemy and were probably not brought into Europe in any quantity until O'Shaughnessy and his French contemporary, Aubert-Roche, advocated their use around 1840. In 1845 J. J. Moreau de Tours published his Du Hachisch et de l'Alienation Mentale (Hashish and Mental Illness). His detailed accounts of the effects of hashish sparked interest in both medical and literary circles, and set off a wave of experimentation. Even so, interest in hashish never traveled much beyond the Parisian circles in which Moreau himself moved. Hashish eating never became a European craze in the nineteenth century; use of hashish continued to be mostly confined to the Near and Middle East. CANNABIS AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA It was not the English or the French but the Americans who created a literature around the charms and phantasmagoria of hashish. In so doing they were following the example of English opium habitues such as Coleridge and De Quincey. Thus their writings were strongly influenced by the "joys and horrors" style that had made De Quincey's name a household word. Their descriptions of the effects of cannabis make it abundantly clear that for them it had all the impact of a shattering metaphysical revelation. Today hashish eating, save for the occasional holiday cannabis cookie, is almost unknown as a method of cannabis ingestion; for us moderns, cannabis is inevitably something that one smokes. This was not true for the nineteenth century, which seems always to have eaten its hashish in the form of confections imported from the Middle East. These visions and the resulting intoxications leave no doubt that this method turns hashish into a powerful engine for the exploration of inner vistas of fantasy and awareness. The first exploratory journey into the teeming cosmos of cannabis to appear in print was an account by American traveler Bayard Taylor first published in Atlantic Monthly in 1854: The sense of limitation-of the confinement of our senses within the bounds of our own flesh and blood-instantly fell away. The walls of my frame were burst outward and tumbled into ruin; and, without thinking what form I wore-losing sight even of all idea of form-I felt that I existed throughout a vast extent of space . . . the spirit (demon shall I rather say?) of Hasheesh had entire possession of me. I was cast upon the flood of his illusions, and drifted helplessly whithersoever they might choose to bear me. The thrills which ran through my nervous system became more rapid and fierce, accompanied with sensations that steeped my whole being in unutterable rapture. I was encompassed by a sea of light, through which played the pure, harmonious colors that are born of light. While endeavoring, in broken expression, to describe my feelings to my friends, who sat looking upon me incredulously-not yet having been affected by the drug-I suddenly found myself at the foot of the great Pyramid of Cheops. The tapering courses of yellow limestone gleamed like gold in the sun, and the pile rose so high that it seemed to lean for support upon the blue arch of the sky. I wished to ascend it, and the wish alone placed me immediately upon its apex, lifted thousands of feet above the wheat-fields and palm-groves of Egypt. I cast my eyes downward, and, to my astonishment, saw that it was built, not of limestone, but of huge square plugs of Cavendish tobacco! Words cannot paint the overwhelming sense of the ludicrous which I then experienced. I writhed on my chair in an agony of laughter, which was only relieved by the vision melting away like a dissolving view; till, out of my confusion of indistinct images and fragments of images, another and more wonderful vision arose. The more vividly I recall the scene which followed, the more carefully I restore its different features, and separate the many threads of sensation which it wove into one gorgeous web, the more I despair of representing its exceeding glory. I was moving over the Desert, not upon the rocking dromedary, but seated in a barque made of mother-of-pearl, and studded with jewels of surpassing lustre. The sand was of grains of gold, and my keel slid through them without jar or sound. The air was radiant with excess of light, though no sun was to be seen. I inhaled the most delicious perfumes; and harmonies, such as Beethoven may have heard in dreams, but never wrote, floated around me. The atmosphere itself was light, odor, music; and each and all sublimated beyond anything the sober senses are capable of receiving. Before me-for a thousand leagues, as it seemed-stretched a vista of rainbows, whose colors gleamed with the splendor of gems-arches of living amethyst, sapphire, emerald, topaz, and ruby. By thousands and tens of thousands, they flew past me, as my dazzling barge sped down the magnificent arcade; yet the vista still stretched as far as ever before me. I revelled in a sensuous elysium, which was perfect, because no sense was left ungratified. But beyond all, my mind was filled with a boundless feeling of triumph. Such descriptions go a long way toward making clear why the "artificial paradise" was so alluring to the Romantic imagination: it was almost as though one were made for the other. And, indeed, the Romantics, with their attention to the dramatic moods of nature and their cultivation of a sensitivity that their critics found "feminine," bear all the signs of an incipient partnership revival. With the reportage of Bayard Taylor we are firmly in the domain of modern drug literature and modern values vis-a-vis the content of the intoxication. Taylor is impressed by the beauty, power, and general depth of information contained in the experience. His approach is not hedonistic but knowledge seeking, and for him as for us, the drug states raise questions about human psychology. EVOLVING DRUG ATTITUDES This "scientific" attitude was typical of the nineteenth-century literate user of opium and hashish. Usually investigators began their involvement with these substances in order to "fire the creative imagination" or for a vaguely defined "inspiration." Similar motives were behind the use of marijuana by the writers of the Beat Generation, as well as the jazz artists before them and the rockers after them. Few myths of the underground culture invite as much current scorn as the notion that cannabis could contribute to a creative lifestyle. Nevertheless, a portion of the cannabis-using community continues to use it in this way. The pharmacological profile of a drug defines only some of its parameters; the context-or "setting," in Leary and Metzner's fortunate turn of phrase-is at least as important. The "recreational" context for substance use, as currently understood in the United States, is an atmosphere that trivializes the cognitive impact of the substance used. Low doses of most drugs that affect the central nervous system are felt by the organism as artificial stimulation or energy, which can be directed outward in the form of physical activity in order both to express the energy and to quench it. This pharmacological fact lies behind most of the recreational drug craze whether legal or illegal. An environment dense with social signals, noise, and visual distraction-a nightclub, for example-is typical of the culturally validated context for use of recreational drugs. In our culture, private drug taking is viewed as dubious; solitary drug use is viewed as positively morbid; and, indeed, all introspection is seen this way. The Archaic model for use of psychoactive plants, including cannabis, is quite the opposite. Ritual, isolation, and sensory deprivation are the techniques used by the Archaic shaman seeking to journey in the world of the spirits and ancestors. There is no doubt that cannabis is trivialized as a commodity and is degraded by the designation "recreational drug," but there is also no doubt that when used occasionally in a context of ritual and culturally reinforced expectation of a transformation of consciousness, cannabis is capable of nearly the full spectrum of psychedelic effects associated with hallucinogens. FITZ HUGH LUDLOW After Bayard Taylor the next great commentator on the phenomenon of hashish was the irrepressible Fitz Hugh Ludlow. This littleknown bon vivant of nineteenth-century literature began a tradition of pharmo-picaresque literature that would find later practitioners in William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson. Ludlow, as a freshman at Union College in 1855, decided to explore scientifically the powers of hashish while attending a student tea: I was sitting at the tea table when the thrill smote me. I had handed my cup to Miss M'Ilvaine to replenish for the first time, and as she was about restoring it to me brimming with the draught which cheers but not inebriates. I should be loath to calculate the arc through which her hand appeared to me to travel on its way to the side of my plate. The wall grew populous with dancing satyrs; Chinese mandarins nodded idiotically in all the corners, and I felt strongly the necessity of leaving the table before I betrayed myself.' There is in Ludlow's cannabis reportage a wonderful distillation of all that was zany in the Yankee transcendentalist approach. Ludlow creates a literary persona not unlike the poet John Shade in Nabokov's Pale Fire, a character who allows us to see deeper into his predicament than he can see himself. Part genius, part madman, Ludlow lies halfway between Captain Ahab and P. T. Barnum, a kind of Mark Twain on hashish. There is a wonderful charm to his free-spirited, pseudoscientific openness as he makes his way into the shifting dunescapes of the world of hashish: How far hasheesh throws light upon the most interior of the mental arcana is a question which will be dogmatically decided in two diametrically opposite ways. The man who believes in nothing which does not, in some way, become tangent to his bodily organs will instinctively withdraw himself into the fortress of what he supposes to be antique common sense, and cry "madman!" from within. He will reject all of experience under stimulus, and the facts which it professedly evolved as truth, with the final and unanswerable verdict of insanity. There is another class of men which has its type in him who, while acknowledging the corporeal senses as very important in the present nutriment and muniment of our being, is convinced that they give him appearances alone; not things as they are in their essence and their law, classified harmoniously with reference to their source, but only as they affect him through the different adits of the body. This man will be prone to believe the Mind, in its prerogative of the only self-conscious being in the universe, has the right and the capacity to turn inward to itself for an answer to the puzzling enigmas of the world .... Arguing thus, the man, albeit a visionary, will recognize the possibility of discovering from mind, in some of its extraordinarily awakened states, a truth, or a collection of truths, which do not become manifest in his every day condition. '° CANNABIS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The history of cannabis in the United States after Ludlow was at first a happy one. Cannabis use was neither stigmatized nor popularized. This situation lasted until the early 1930s, when the crusades of Harry J. Anslinger, U. S. Commissioner of Narcotics, created a public hysteria. Anslinger appears to have acted largely at the behest of American chemical and petrochemical companies interested in eliminating hemp as a competitor in the areas of lubricants, food, plastics, and fiber." Anslinger and the yellow press characterized cannabis as the "weed of death." William Randolph Hearst popularized the term "marijuana" with a clear intent of linking it to a mistrusted darkskinned underclass. Yet it has been extraordinarily difficult for science to state exactly what the objections to the cannabis habit are. Patterns of government funding for research make it virtually certain that "Caesar will hear only what is pleasing to Caesar." Despite all the pressures brought against it, cannabis use rose until today cannabis may well be America's single largest agricultural product. This is one of the most persistent aspects of the great paradigm shift that I am here calling the Archaic Revival. It indicates that the innate drive to restore the psychological balance typifying the partnership society, once it finds a suitable vehicle, is not easily deterred. Everything about cannabis that makes it inimical to contemporary bourgeois values endears it to the Archaic Revival. It diminishes the power of ego, has a mitigating effect on competitiveness, causes one to question authority, and reinforces the notion of the merely relative importance of social values. No other drug can compete with cannabis for its ability to satisfy the innate yearnings for Archaic boundary dissolution and yet leave intact the structures of ordinary society. If every alcoholic were a pothead, if every crack user were a pothead, if every smoker smoked only cannabis, the social consequences of the "drug problem" would be transformed. Yet, as a society we are not ready to discuss the possibility of self-managed addictions and the possibility of intelligently choosing the plants we ally ourselves to. In time, and perhaps out of desperation, this will come. iii HELL 11 COMPLACENCIES OF THE PEIGNOIR: SUGAR, COFFEE, TEA, AND CHOCOLATE Long ago, motivated by dwindling resources and changing climate, our protohominid ancestors learned to test the natural products in the environment as sources of food. Modern primates such as baboons still do this. An unusual or never before encountered source of food is approached gingerly, examined carefully for visual appearance and odor, and then tentatively placed in the mouth and held there, not swallowed. After a few moments the animal makes the decision to swallow the morsel or to spit it out. Such a procedure has been repeated uncounted times over the long ages of human dietary definition. Obviously a balance must be struck between excluding foods that would be outright injurious to the individual's health and reproductive ability and including as many sources of nutrition as possible. Evolutionary logic dictates that in situations of food scarcity those animals able and willing to tolerate many marginal foods will be more evolutionarily successful than those that can accept only a limited number of items into their diet. In other words, there will be pressure on a given animal to broaden its definition of what are acceptable foods by broadening its tastes. BROADENING OUR TASTE Broadening of tastes or acquiring a taste is a process that is learned; it is a process with both a psychological and biochemical component. The process of acquiring a taste is an extremely complex one. On the one hand, it entails overcoming the inertia of established habits, those habits that exclude the potential new food item, seeing it as exotic, unfamiliar, poisonous, or associated with enemies or social outcasts. And on the other hand, it involves an adaptation to a chemically exotic food. This process brings into action involuntary systems such as the immune system; it also involves psychological mechanisms, such as wanting to accept the new food item for reasons that may be as much social as nutritional. In the case of hallucinogenic plants, the shifts in self-image and societal role that often follow their acceptance are rapid and massive. But we should remember that hallucinogens are at the dramatic end of this scale. What of the countless plants that impart flavoring but confer little nutritional value and negligible psychoactivity? They, too, have managed to become items habitually used by human beings. In fact, they went from being the exotic luxuries of a tiny leisure class in Roman times to commercial commodities that focused the vast European efforts at exploration and colonization, that drove the engines of mercantilism and empire building which replaced the inward-turned medieval stasis in Christian Europe. "Variety is the spice of life" is an adage familiar to us all. Yet when we examine the impact of plants and plant products on the history of human beings it seems more true to say that "Spice is the variety of life." Medieval times-and their close-are a case in point. Dominator culture has never been more powerfully entrenched than in Christian Europe after the eclipse of the Roman Empire. And it probably is safe to say that scarcely ever have human populations existed in such a prolonged situation of drug scarcity and lack of chemical stimulation. Variety, which promotes learning and eases boredom, had too long been suppressed in Europe. Medieval Europe was one of the most constipated, neurotic, and woman-hating societies ever to exist. It was a society dying to escape from itself, a society obsessed with moral rectitude and sexual repression. It was a society chained to the land, ruled by gouty, beef-eating men wearing dresses but suppressing women. Is it any wonder, then, that dyes and spices, hardly the stuff of social revolutions, became an absolute mania for medieval Europe? Such was the strength of this mania that the arts of shipbuilding and navigation and the banking and the trading industries all turned to serve the nearaddiction that most Europeans felt for these things. Spices gave food, and hence life, a variety never known before. Dyes, new dyeing techniques, and exotic fabrics revolutionized fashion. LIFE WITHOUT SPICE It is difficult for most people born into a society of abundance, sensual gratification, and high-definition TV to imagine the stultifying dullness of most of the societies of the past. The "splendor" of the great societies of the past was essentially just a display of variety-variety in colors, fabrics, materials, and visual design. Such displays of variety were particularly the prerogative of the ruler and the court. The novelty of the costumes and the appointments of the court was somehow a direct index of its power. Thus it was when the emerging bourgeoisie of the late Middle Ages began importing dyes and spices, silks and fine manufactured objects into Europe. I can personally attest to the power of color and variety over the human imagination. My periods of jungle isolation doing fieldwork in the Upper Amazon taught me how quickly the bewildering multiplicity of civilized life can be forgotten and then hungered for almost like the withdrawal from a powerful drug. After weeks in the jungle, one's mind is filled with plans for the restaurants to be visited once back in civilization, the music to be heard, the movies seen. Once, after many days in the rain forest, I went to a village to ask permission to make plant collections in the tribal area. The only "high-tech" intrusion into the primitive circumstances of the tribe was a cheesecake calendar brought from Iquitos and proudly affixed to the thatched wall directly behind the headman of the village. As I talked with him my gaze returned again and again to the calendar, not the content but the colors. Magenta, cyan, and apricot the terrible and obsessive attraction to variety was as haunting as the lure of any drug! The dyes and spices of the more technically advanced and esthetically refined world of Islam entered the bloodstream of dreary Christian Europe with the force of a hallucinogenic drug. Cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, mace, and cardamom, and dozens of other exotic spices, flavorings, and dyes, arrived to brighten the palate and the wardrobe of a wool-swaddled, beer and bread culture. Our own culture during the last few years has seen a similar though more superficial trend in the rise of the yuppie craze for novelty and new exotic restaurants from ethnic to nouvelle. As schoolchildren we are taught that the spice trade ended the Middle Ages and created the basis of modern trade and commerce; what we are not made aware of is the fact that the breakup of Christian medieval Europe occurred as a result of an epidemic obsession with the new, the exotic, and the delightful-in short with consciousness-expanding substances. Drugs such as coffee, wormwood, and opium, dyes, silks, rare woods, gems, and even human beings were brought back to Europe and displayed almost like the plunder of a looted extraterrestrial civilization. The notion of oriental splendor-with its luxury, its sensuality, and its unexpectedly outre design motifs-acted to transform not only esthetic conventions, but canons of social behavior and individual selfimage. The names of cities of the silk road, such as Samarkand and Ecbatana, became mantras, bespeaking worlds of refinement and luxury previously associated only with paradise. Social boundaries were dissolved; old problems were seen in a new light; and new secular classes emerged to challenge the power monopoly of popes and kings. In short, there was a sudden acceleration of novelty and appearance of new social forms, the telltale tracks of a quantum leap forward in the power of the European imagination. Once again, pursuit of plants and of the mental stimulation they induce was propelling a portion of the human family into experimentation with new social forms, new technologies, and a sudden expansion of language and imagination. Pressure to expand the spice trade remade the arts of navigation, shipbuilding, diplomacy, warfare, geography and economic planning. Once again, the unconscious drive to mimic and thus partly recapture the lost symbiosis with the vegetable world was acting as a catalyst to dietary experimentation and to a restless quest for new plants and new relationships with plants, including new forms of intoxication. ENTER SUGAR When the thirst for variety was slaked by massive and continuous importation of spices, dyes, and flavorings, the infrastructure that had been put in place turned its attention to fulfilling other cravings for variety-specifically, to the production and shipping of sugar, of chocolate, tea, and coffee, and of distilled alcohol, all of which are drugs. Our present global trading system was created to cater to people's inherent need for variety and stimulation. It did this with a single-minded intensity that brooked no interference from the church or the state. Neither moral scruples nor physical barriers were able to stand in its way. Now we may appear to ourselves to have succeeded only too well-now any "spice" or drug, no matter how restricted its traditional area of use, can be identified and produced or synthesized for rapid export and sale to hungry markets anywhere on the globe. Worldwide pandemics of substance abuse now become possible. The importation of tobacco smoking into Europe in the sixteenth century was the first and most obvious example. It was followed by many others, ranging from the forced spread of opium use in China by the British through the opium craze in eighteenth-century England to the spread of distilled alcohol abuse among the North American Indian tribes. Of the many new commodities that made their way into Europe during the breakup of the medieval stasis, one in particular emerged as the new spice or drug of choice. This was cane sugar. Sugar had been known for centuries as a rare medicinal substance. The Romans knew that it was derived from a bamboolike grass. But the tropical conditions needed for the cultivation of sugarcane ensured that sugar would be a rare and imported commodity in Europe. Only in the nineteenth century, at the encouragement of Napoleon I, were sugar beets developed as an alternative to cane sugar. Sugarcane is known to occur as a wild plant, and the genus is well represented in tropical Asia and at least five species are native to India. Sugarcane, Saccharum officinarum, has doubtless undergone considerable hybridization during its long history of domestication. The Persian king Khusraw I (A.D. 531-578), whose court was near Jundi-Shapur, dispatched envoys to India to investigate rumors of exotic drugs: Among those [drugs brought to Jundi-Shapur from India was sukkar (Persian shakar or shakkar, Sanskrit sarkara), our sugar, unknown to Herodotus and Ktesias, but known to Nearchus and Onesicritus as "reed Honey," supposed to have been made from reeds by bees. Legend relates that Khusraw discovered a store of sugar amongst the treasures taken in 527 at the capture of Dastigrid. The juice of the sugar cane was purified and made into sugar in India about A.D. 300, and now the cane began to be cultivated about Jundi-Shapur, where there were sugar mills at an early date. At that time and for long afterwards sugar was used only to sweeten otherwise bitter medicines, it was not until much later that it began to replace honey as an ordinary means of sweetening.' Sugar reached England around 1319 and was popular in Sweden by 1390. It was an expensive and exotic novelty, mostly found in its traditional role in medicine: sugar made palatable the foul-tasting mixture of medicinal herbs, entrails, and other materials typical of the medieval pharmacopeia. In the age before antibiotics, it was commonly used to pack wounds before binding them, as the desiccant action of the sugar may have aided healing. The Spanish planted sugarcane in their Caribbean holdings, and they can claim the dubious distinction of introducing slavery into the New World for the purpose of producing sugar: Until 1550 the only sugar imported from the Western hemisphere consisted of a few loaves brought as proof of the possibility of production, or as mere curiosities. The plantings in West Atlantic islands and the New World had no effect on production, distribution, or prices until the latter half of the sixteenth century, and only became dominant from about 1650.2 SUGAR AS ADDICTION Is it stretching a point to discuss sugar in a history of human drug use? It is not. Sugar abuse is the world's least discussed and most widespread addiction. And it is one of the hardest of all habits to kick. Sugar addicts may be maintenance users or they may be binge eaters. The depths of serious sugar addiction are exemplified by bulimics who may binge on sugar-saturated food and then induce vomiting or use a laxative purge to enable them to eat more sugar. Imagine if a similar practice were associated with heroin addictionhow much more odious and insidious the use of heroin would then seem! As with all stimulants, ingestion of sugar is followed by a brief euphoric "rush," which is itself followed by depression and guilt. Sugar addiction rarely occurs alone as a syndrome; mixed addictions-for example, sugar and caffeine-are more common. There are other destructive patterns of drug use that accompany sugar abuse. Some addicts use diet pills to help them control their soaring body weight, and then tranquilizers to mitigate the jitteriness caused by the diet pills. Sugar abuse is often involved in the development of serious alcohol abuse; an absolute correlation has been shown between high sugar consumption and high alcohol intake outside meals. After alcohol and tobacco, sugar is the most damaging addictive substance consumed by human beings. Its uncontrolled use can be a major chemical dependence. In describing sugar addicts, Janice K. Phelps has said: The people we are describing are addictive people who are indeed addicted to one of the most powerful substances to be found anywhere-the refined sugars. Their addiction to sugar is a real, harmful, highly damaging health problem, just as debilitating as addiction to any other substance. Like any addiction, when their chemical isn't supplied, they suffer identifiable withdrawal symptoms; like any addiction, the process of feeding their physiological hunger with a chemical is destructive to the body; and like any addiction, the point may be reached when supplying the chemical becomes as painful as withdrawing from it. The cycle of chemical dependence becomes both entrenched and intolerable.' SUGAR AND SLAVERY The distortion and dehumanizing of human institutions and human lives caused by crack cocaine today is nothing compared with what the European desire for sugar did in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One may argue that something approaching slave labor is typical of the early stages with cocaine production but the difference is that it is not slavery sanctioned by mendacious popes and openly pursued by corrupt but legitimate governments. A further difference must be noted: brutal as it is, the modern drug trade is not involved in anything resembling the wholesale kidnapping, transporting, and mass murder of huge populations as was done to further the process of sugar production. True, the roots of slavery in Europe reach far back. During the golden age of Periclean Athens fully two-thirds of the city's residents were slaves; in Italy at the time of Julius Caesar, perhaps one-half of the population were slaves. Under the Roman Imperium slavery became increasingly insupportable: slaves had no civil rights and in court disputes their testimony was acceptable only if it had been obtained by torture. If a slaveholder were to die suddenly or under suspicious circumstances, then all of his slaves, without regard to guilt or innocence, were quickly put to death. It is fair to say that the reliance of the Imperium on the institution of slavery must mitigate any admiration that we might feel for the "grandeur that was Rome." In truth, the grandeur of Rome was the grandeur of a pig sty masquerading as a military brothel. Slavery diminished with the dissolution of the empire, as all social institutions dissolved into the chaos of the early Dark Ages. Feudalism replaced slavery with serfdom. Serfdom was somewhat better than slavery: a serf could at least maintain a home, marry, till the land, and participate in communal life. Most important, perhaps, a serf could not be separated from or transported off the land. When the land was sold the serf nearly always went with it. In 1432 Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, who was more manager and entrepreneur than explorer, established the first commercial cane sugar plantation in Madeira. Plantings of sugar were made in the other eastern Atlantic holdings of Portugal more than sixty years before there was contact with the New World. More than a thousand men-including debtors, convicts, and unconverted Jews-were taken from Europe to work in the sugar operations. Their condition was one of quasi-servitude-somewhat akin to the penal colonists and indentured servants who populated Australia and some Middle Atlantic American colonies. Sugarcane was the first crop to be introduced into commercial cultivation in the New World. It is reliably estimated that by 1530, less than forty years after the initial European contact, there were more than a dozen sugar plantations operating in the West Indies. In his book Seeds of Change, Henry Hobhouse writes of the beginning of African enslavement. In 1443 one of Prince Henry's returning captains brought news of a capture at sea of a crew of black Arabs and Moslems: These men, who were of mixed Arab-Negro parentage and Moslems, claimed that they were of a proud race and unfit to be bondsmen. They argued forcefully that there were in the hinterland of Africa many heathen blacks, the children of Ham, who made excellent slaves, and who they could enslave in exchange for their freedom. Thus began the modern slave trade-not the transatlantic trade, which was yet to come, but its precursor, the trade between Africa and southern Europe.4 Hobhouse goes on to describe sugar slavery in the New World: Sugar slavery was of quite a different order. It was the first time since the Roman latifundia that mass slavery had been used to grow a crop for trade (not subsistence) in a big way. It was also the first time in history that one race had been uniquely selected for a servile role. Spain and Portugal voluntarily abjured the enslavement of East Indian, Chinese, Japanese or European slaves to work in the Americas.' The slave trade was itself a kind of addiction. The early importation of African slave labor into the New World was for one purpose only, to support an agricultural economy based on sugar. The craze for sugar was so overwhelming that a thousand years of Christian ethical conditioning meant nothing. An outbreak of human cruelty and bestiality of incredible proportions was blandly accepted by the institutions of polite society. Let us be absolutely clear, sugar is entirely unnecessary to the human diet; before the arrival of industrial cane and beet sugar humanity managed well enough without refined sugar, which is nearly pure sucrose. Sugar contributes nothing that cannot be gotten from some other, easily available source. It is a "kick," nothing more. Yet for this kick the dominator culture of Europe was willing to betray the ideals of the Enlightenment by its collusion with slave traders. In 1800 virtually every ton of sugar imported into England had been produced with slave labor. The ability of the ego-dominator culture to suppress these realities is astonishing. If it seems that too much ire is vented on the sugar habit, it is because in many ways the addiction to sugar seems a distillation of all the wrongheaded attitudes that attend our thinking about drugs. SUGAR AND THE DOMINATOR STYLE When temporal distance from the original partnership paradise increases, when the connection with the vegetable/feminine matrix of planetary life slips far into the past, then the hold of cultural neurosis increases and manifestations of unchecked ego and dominator theories of social organization proliferate. Slavery, almost unknown during the medieval period, when the notion of private property restricted ownership of anything to a privileged few, returned with a vengeance to fill the need for manpower in the laborintensive colonial cultivation of sugar. Thomas Hobbes's vision of human society as the inevitable subjugation of the weak by the strong and Jeremy Bentham's notion of the ultimate economic basis of all social worth signal that values that seek to nurture the earth and to participate with it in a life of natural emotive balance have been forsaken for the rapacious self-centeredness of Faustian science. The soul of the planet, shrunken by Christian monotheism to the dimensions of a human being, is finally denied any existence at all by the heirs of Cartesian rationalism. The stage is then set for the evolution of a human self-image that is entirely dis-ensouled, adrift in a dead universe devoid of meaning and without moral compass. Organic nature is seen as war, meaning becomes "contextual," and the cosmos is rendered meaningless. This process of deepening cultural psychosis (an obsession with ego, money, and the sugar/alcohol drug complex) reaches its culmination in the mid-twentieth century with Sartre's appalling assertion that "nature is mute." Nature is not mute, but modern man is deaf-made deaf because he is unwilling to hear the message of caring, balance, and cooperation that is nature's message. In our state of denial we must proclaim nature mute-how else to avoid facing the awful crimes we have committed for centuries against nature and each other. The Nazis said that Jews were not true human beings and that their mass murder was thus not of any consequence. Some industrialists and politicians use a similar dis-ensouling argument to excuse the destruction of the planet, the maternal matrix necessary to all life. Only a terminal addiction to the ego and styles of brutal domination could give rise to a mass mental environment in which such statements could appear plausible, let alone true. Sugar stands at a watershed in such matters, for sugar and the caffeine drugs that spread with it reinforce and support industrial civilization's unreflecting emphasis on efficiency at the price of Archaic human values. THE DRUGS OF GENTILITY In the opening lines of his magnificent poem "Sunday Morning," Wallace Stevens delivers an image of radiant transcendence and the familiar and ordinary worthy of Cezanne: Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.' Stevens's lines evoke an aura of genteel satiety that surrounds the drug caffeine. "Sunday Morning" reminds us that our stereotyped notion of what constitutes drugs is strained when we are asked to consider such delicate accessories of bourgeois sensibility as tea, coffee, and cocoa as being in the same category as heroin and cocaine. Yet all are drugs; our unconscious striving to find our way back to the sensory ratios of prehistory has led us to develop countless variations on the act of paying homage to plant-based psychoactivity. Mild stimulants, with nondestructive or manageable impact, have been a part of the diet of primates since long before the emergence of hominids. Caffeine is the alkaloid that lies at the basis of much of the human involvement with plants that stimulate. Caffeine is a powerful stimulator well below the toxic dose. It occurs in tea and coffee and in numerous other plants, such as Ilex paraguayensis, the source of mate, or Paullinia yoco, an appetite-suppressing Amazonian liana, which have their own localized but ancient and highly ritualized styles of use. Caffeine is bitter, and the inevitable discovery that it could be made more palatable with the addition of honey or sugar set the stage for the very prevalent and little remarked synergistic effect that occurs between sugar and the various caffeine beverages. Sugar's tendency to become addictive is reinforced if sugar is also being used to make the ingestion of a stimulating alkaloid such as caffeine more palatable. Sugar is culturally defined by us as a food. This definition denies that sugar can act as a highly addictive drug, yet the evidence is all around us. Many children and compulsive eaters live in a motivational environment primarily ruled by mood swings resulting from cravings for sugar. COFFEE AND TEA: NEW ALTERNATIVES TO ALCOHOL For all practical purposes we can say that tea, coffee, and cocoa were introduced simultaneously into England in the 1650s. For the first time in its history, Christian Europe had an alternative to drinking alcohol. All three were stimulants; all were brewed with hot water that had been boiled and thus rendered free from the then-rampant problem of waterborne diseases; and all required copious amounts of sugar. The sugar craze promoted coffee, tea, and chocolate use, which in turn promoted sugar consumption. And the new stimulants were grown in the same colonial holdings then proving so profitable in the production of sugar. Tea, coffee, and cocoa held out the possibility of crop diversification in the colonies and hence of greater economic stability for both colony and mother country. By 1820 many thousands of tons of tea were being imported into Europe each year, with about 30 million pounds being consumed in the United Kingdom alone. The tea for the European market all came from the southern Chinese coastal city of Canton from the mid-seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. The tea buyers were not allowed to penetrate inland, nor were they privy to any of the details of the cultivation and cropping of the tea plant. As Hobhouse writes, "History's joke on Europe is that for nearly two centuries a commodity was imported halfway across the world, and that a huge industry grew up involving as much as 5 percent of England's entire gross domestic product, and yet no one knew anything about how tea was grown, prepared, or blended."' Such ignorance was no barrier to the commercial exploitation of tea; however, the Turkish capture of Constantinople in 1453 certainly was. When trade routes through the eastern Mediterranean were in the hands of the Turk, there was considerable pressure on the sciences of navigation and shipbuilding to perfect the ocean route to the East via the Cape of Africa. The route was discovered, in 1498, by Vasco da Gama. When Dutch and Portuguese navigators eventually reached the Moluccas, in eastern Indonesia, then called the Spice Islands, spices became much cheaper in Europe and the struggle among all parties to create monopolies was joined. The type of organization best able to maintain a monopoly was the trading company, a group of merchants drawn together to reduce capital risks and competition. The large, well-armed ships of the various East India companies spelled the end of the age of the self-employed merchant-captain. The British East India Company, destined to become the most important of the trading companies, was founded in 1600. From that date until 1834, when free trade liberals opened the tea trade to all interested parties, the company controlled the tea trade to its great advantage: The British East India Company was believed to add at least a third to the price of tea, thus taking £100 a ton out of the 375,000 tons imported during the eighteenth century. This global figure obscures the rise, on the same basis, of the East India Company's cut, from a sum equivalent to $17 million at the beginning of the century to an annual equivalent of $800 million in 1800. The East India Company was big business, hated and loathed by smugglers and consumers alike, and a symbol of corrupt, complacent monopoly.' TEA BREWS A REVOLUTION Toward the end of the eighteenth century the tea trade was in crisis and the government of Lord North made a series of ill-considered decisions that were not only to ruin the tea trade but were also to lose England her colonies in North America. North's strategy was to sell tea at reduced prices in the colonies, thus diminishing surpluses and driving smuggler competitors out of business. He also sought to place a small and, he imagined, inconsequential tax on tea going to the colonies, simply to force the unruly colonists to submit to imperial authority. As is common knowledge, this tea tax was the straw that broke the camel's back, in the political foment that was then gripping the American colonies. On December 16, 1773, angry colonial radicals in Boston turned on His Majesty's tea ships and destroyed their cargo. The salty tea of revolution was brewed that night. And there were other "tea parties," at New York, Charleston, Savannah, and Philadelphia. The affair might have passed off in a few weeks had not the British response of closing the port of Boston made the Declaration of Independence inevitable. By the early 1800s the tea trade was showing signs of strain. On the European continent the Napoleonic wars had left coffers depleted. The response had been to print paper money unsecured by gold, and this practice eventually resulted in serious inflation: costs rose, product values rose much less, resulting in economic misery. The panacea to this economic impasse was opium. EXPLOITATION CYCLES The opium trade was nothing less than British terrorism waged against the population of China until the Chinese government's restrictions against the importation of opium were totally done away with. There is in these events a pattern that has been repeated in our own century. Just as the dealers of the drug tea turned to opium when their tea market suffered depression, so did Western intelligence groups, such as the CIA and the French secret service, turn their attention to the importation of cocaine in the eighties, after having lost a near monopoly on heroin to the heroin-dealing mullahs of the Iranian Revolution. The history of commercial drug synergies-the way in which one drug has been cynically encouraged and used to support the introduction of others---over the past five hundred years is not pleasant to contemplate. Perhaps that is why the exercise is so rarely undertaken. The cycles began with sugar. As discussed, sugar, whose existence depended on a savage slave trade, deepened its claim on consumers throughout the sixteenth century. The seventeenth-century introduction of tea, coffee, and chocolate only drove the craze for sugar to new heights. Through its use in caffeine drinks and distilled alcohol, sugar played a major indirect role in furthering the dominator culture's suppression of the underclass and of women of all classes. Slavery to drugs is a tired metaphor, but in the case of sugar the metaphor was made horribly real. When the tea market collapsed, the distributing system that had been put in place and capitalized by the British East India Company turned to the production and selling of opium and the exploitation of the Chinese population which was outside of the colonial system proper. The invention of morphine (1803) and then heroin (1873) carries us to the threshold of the twentieth century. Alarmed social reformers who attempted to legislate drug use only succeeded in driving it underground. There it remains, controlled today, not by robber baron corporations operating under public charter, but by international crime cartels often posing as intelligence agencies. It is, as William Burroughs has remarked, "Not a pretty picture." Since the Age of Exploration, drugs and plant products have become increasingly important factors in the equations of international diplomacy. No longer are the distant tropical regions and peoples of the world to languish unattended by the rapacious eye of the white man; they have become production areas populated by an indentured labor force and expected to provide raw materials and a ready market for finished goods. Like the maenads lost in the transport of Dionysian fury, the sugar-intoxicated dominator economies of Europe sought to devour their own children. COFFEE The eleventh-century Persian polymath Avicenna, who in 1037 became history's first recorded death from opium overdose, was one of the first to write about coffee, though it had been in use for some time in Ethiopia and Arabia, where the source plant occurred wild. On the Arabian peninsula it has long been known that coffee was a plant of marvelous properties. There is even an apocryphal story that when the Prophet lay ill he was visited by the Archangel Gabriel who offered him coffee to restore him to health. Because of the plant's long association with the Arabs, Linnaeus, the great Danish naturalist and the inventor of modern scientific taxonomy, named the plant Coffea arabica. When coffee was first introduced to Europe, it was used as a food or medicine; the oil-rich berries were pulverized and mixed with fat. Later ground coffee was mixed into wine and cooked to provide what must have been a quite stimulating and intense refreshment. Coffee was not brewed as a drink until around 1100 in Europe, and only in the thirteenth century did the modern practice of roasting coffee beans begin in Syria. Though coffee was an Old World plant and was used in some circles a long time before tea, nevertheless tea cleared the way for the popularity of coffee. Their stimulant properties made caffeine in coffee and its close cousin theobromine in tea the ideal drugs for the Industrial Revolution: they provided an energy lift, enabling people to keep working at repetitious tasks that demanded concentration. Indeed, the tea and coffee break is the only drug ritual that has never been criticized by those who profit from the modern industrial state. Nevertheless, it is well established that coffee is addictive, causes stomach ulcers, can aggravate heart conditions, and can cause irritability and insomnia and, in excessive doses, even tremors and convulsions. CONTRA COFFEE Coffee has not been without its detractors, but they have always been in the minority. Coffee was widely blamed for the death of the French minister Colbert, who died of stomach cancer. Goethe blamed his habitual Gaffe latte for his chronic melancholia and his attacks of anxiety. Coffee has also been blamed for causing what Lewin called "an excessive state of brain-excitation which becomes manifest by a remarkable loquaciousness sometimes accompanied by accelerated association of ideas. It may also be observed in coffee house politicians who drink cup after cup of black coffee and by this abuse are inspired to profound wisdom on all earthly events."9 The tendency to excessive raving after coffee drinking apparently lay behind several edicts against coffee issued in Europe in 1511. The prince of Waldeck pioneered an early version of the drug-snitch program when he offered a reward of ten thalers to anyone who would report a coffee drinker to the authorities. Even servants were rewarded if they informed on employers who had sold them coffee. By 1777, however; authorities in continental Europe recognized the suitability of coffee for use by the pillars of dominator societythe clergy and the aristocracy. Punishment for a coffee offense by members of less privileged classes was usually a public caning followed by fines. And, of course, coffee was once widely suspected of causing impotence: It has frequently been stated that the drinking of coffee diminishes sexual excitability and gives rise to sterility. Though this is a mere fable, it was believed in former times. Olearius says in the account of his travels that the Persians drink "the hot, black water Chawae" whose property it is "to sterilize nature and extinguish carnal desires." A sultan was so greatly attracted by coffee that he became tired of his wife. The latter one day saw a stallion being castrated and declared that it would be better to give the animal coffee, and then it would be in the same state as her husband. The Princess Palatine Elizabeth Charlotte of Orleans, the mother of the dissipated Regent Philip II, wrote to her sister: "Coffee is not so necessary for Protestant ministers as for Catholic priests, who are not allowed to marry and must remain chaste .... I am surprised that so many people like coffee, for it has a bitter and a bad taste. I think it tastes exactly like foul breath."" The physician-explorer Rauwolf of Augsburg, who later became the discoverer of the first tranquilizer, the plant extract rauwolfia, found coffee apparently long established and widely traded in Asia Minor and Persia when he visited the area in the mid-1570s. Accounts such as Rauwolf's soon made coffee a fad. Coffee was introduced in Paris in 1643, and within thirty years there were over 250 coffee houses in the city. In the years immediately preceding the French Revolution there were nearly 2,000 coffee establishments operating. If wild talk is the mother of revolution, then certainly coffee and coffee houses must be its midwife. CHOCOLATE The introduction of chocolate into Europe is almost no more than a coda to the craze for caffeine stimulation that began with the Industrial Revolution. Chocolate, made from the ground beans of a native Amazonian tree, Theobroma cacao, contains only small amounts of caffeine but is rich in caffeine's near-relative theobromine. Both are chemicals with close relatives that occur endogenously in normal human metabolism. Like caffeine, theobromine is a stimulant, and the addictive potential of chocolate is significant. " Cacao trees had been introduced into central Mexico from tropical South America centuries before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores. There they had a major sacramental role in Maya and Aztec religion. The Maya also used cacao beans as the equivalent of money. The Aztec ruler Montezuma was said to be seriously addicted to ground cacao; he drank his chocolate unsweetened in a cold water infusion. A mixture of ground chocolate and psilocybincontaining mushrooms was served to the guests at the coronation feast of Montezuma II in 1502.'Z Cortes was informed of the existence of cacao by his mistress, a Native American woman named Dona Marina, who had been given to Cortes as one of nineteen young women offered in tribute by Montezuma. Assured by Dona Marina that cacao was a powerful aphrodisiac, Cortes was eager to begin cultivation of the plant; he wrote to the emperor Charles V: "On the lands of one farm two thousand trees have been planted; the fruits are similar to almonds and are sold in a powdered state."'3 Shortly thereafter, chocolate was imported into Spain, where it was soon extremely popular. Nevertheless the spread of chocolate was slow, perhaps because so many new stimulants were then vying for European attention. Chocolate did not appear in Italy or the Law Countries until 1606; it reached France and England only in the 1650s. Except for a brief period during the reign of Frederick II, when it became the favorite vehicle for poisons used by professional poisoners, chocolate has steadily increased in popularity and annual tonnage produced. It is extraordinary that in the relatively short span of two centuries four stimulants-sugar, tea, coffee, and chocolate-could have emerged out of local obscurity and become a basis for vast mercantile empires, defended by the greatest military powers ever known to that time and supported by the newly reintroduced practice of slavery. Such is the power of "the cup that cheers, but not inebriates." 12 SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES: OPIUM AND TOBACCO Few plants can lay claim to such complex and tangled relationships to human beings as can the opium poppy and the tobacco plant. Both plants are central to extremely addictive behaviors in human beings that shorten life and burden society with medical and financial consequences. Yet the general attitude toward these plants could hardly be more different. Opium is illegal throughout most of the world. The poppy-growing areas that are the source of raw opium are closely monitored by photo surveillance satellites, and yearly advance projections of world opium production are closely studied by governments to aid them in calculating how much of their budgets to allocate to treatment of addicts, foreign eradication efforts, and domestic interdiction of refined opium products like morphine and heroin. Tobacco, on the other hand, is probably the most widely consumed plant drug on earth. No nation has decreed smoking of tobacco illegal, and indeed, any country that sought to do so would find itself at loggerheads with one of the most powerful international narcotic cartels ever to exist. Yet there is no dispute that tobacco smoking is the cause of early death for millions of people; lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease have all been linked to smoking. And tobacco is no less addicting than the supposed hardest of hard drugs, heroin. When this fact was stated by U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, it was quickly buried in the storm of derision unleashed by the major American tobacco companies and their legions of addicted customers. PARADOXICAL ATTITUDES What can we learn from the comparison of these two plants? Both have a long history of human usage, both are addictive and ultimately destructive, and yet one is firmly integrated into our lifestyles and sold to us as masculine, sophisticated, pleasurable, while the other is illegal, furiously suppressed, inveighed against as suicidal, and viewed with an unreflecting horror that earlier generations reserved for Bolsheviks, suffragettes, and oral sex. This situation is but another example of the hypocrisy of dom-inator culture as it picks and chooses the truths and realities that it finds comfortable. The fact is that, while heroin is highly addictive and while one of its preferred routes of ingestion, intravenous self-injection, offers opportunities for the spread of serious disease, it is nevertheless no more dangerous than its legal and highly touted competitor, tobacco: "Volumes of scientific research . . . have concluded that no known organic damage is caused by the use of heroin. It is a physically benign, though powerfully addicting, substance."1 The differences in the way that society views these two now globally pandemic plant-based drugs cannot be the result of a reasonable assessment of their deleterious social impacts. If it were, then attitudes toward these two plants would be similar. As it is, we must look at effects unrelated to the shared property of addiction to understand why dominator society has chosen to suppress one and exalt the other. SMOKING INTRODUCED TO EUROPE Tobacco is native to the New World, and so is the custom of smoking plant material to obtain narcotic effects from it. Smoking may have been known in the Old World during the Neolithic period; scholarly opinion differs. However, there is no evidence of tobacco smoking being a practice known to any of the historical civilizations of the Old World until Columbus introduced it following his second voyage to the Americas. Less than a hundred years later, small packets of tobacco were being placed into the graves of Lapland shamans! This gives some notion of how quickly tobacco was able to assert its traditional pattern of usage, even in a society that was completely unfamiliar with it. Tobacco—chewed, snuffed, and smoked—has been with us ever since. By the nineteenth century, tobacco use had been culturally classified in Europe as a "man's prerogative." Successful men were judged by the quantity and quality of cigars they smoked. And tobacco was added to the long list of male dom-inator privileges which included nearly all alcohol (brandies for the ladies, please), control of finance, access to prostitutes, and control of political power (recall those "smoke-filled rooms"). Even in today's drug-conscious atmosphere, no contradiction is perceived between the strident calls to eliminate the use of drugs in professional athletics and the figure of the tobacco-chewing major league pitcher, eyes hardened with narcotic intensity as he strides to the mound. Does the elimination of drugs from competitive sports mean the extinction of that lovable figure, the lump-cheeked hayseed with a good pitching arm? Somehow I doubt it. As tobacco was achieving its present stature, opium, too, was enjoying a vogue, albeit nothing on the scale of tobacco. Laudanum, tincture of opium in alcohol, was being used as a cure for colic in infants, a "women's tonic," a cure for dysentery, and most significantly, by writers, travelers, and other Bohemian types, as a stimulant of the creative imagination. Morphine, which must be injected, was the first alkaloid to be isolated. This event, in 1805, cast a dark shadow over the halcyon world of the laudanum enthusiast—for, however much artistic mileage Coleridge and De Quin-cey obtained from their imagined enslavement to the "fiend of opium," their addictions, though serious, when judged in the light of modern experience with cocaine free-base and new synthetic forms of heroin, appear almost minor. THE ANCIENT LURE OF OPIUM The seed of the poppy is a delicious and nonpsychoactive food, as all enthusiasts of poppy seed rolls can attest. Yet when the seed capsule is scratched with blade or fingernail, a milky latexlike material soon accumulates and, as it hardens, turns a dark brown. This material is raw opium. Like the psilocybin mushroom with its association with cattle, and the parasitism of ergot on rye and other cereals, the opium poppy is a major psychoactive plant that has evolved in the presence of a human food source. In the case of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, the psychoactivity and the nutritional value are sectioned off into different parts of the same plant. Opium in various forms has been in the physicians' armamentarium since at least 1600 B.C. An Egyptian medical treatise of that period prescribed opium for crying children just as Victorian nannies dosed infants with opiate-laced Godfrey's Cordial to keep them quiet. For most of its history opium was not smoked but rather the black sticky resin was dissolved into wine and drunk, or else rolled into a pellet and swallowed. Opium, as a cure for pain, as euphorint and rumored aphrodisiac, was known in Eurasia for several thousands of years. During the waning of the millennia-long Minoan civilization and its religion of Archaic worship of a Great Mother, the original source of the connection to the Goddess of vegetable nature came eventually to be replaced by the intoxication of opium. Early Minoan texts testify to the fact that poppies were widely cultivated on both Crete and Pylos during the Late Minoan; in these texts, the poppy head is used as an ideogram in financial tallies. The yield of poppies indicated is so huge that for some time it was assumed that these numbers must refer to grain rather than opium. The confusion of grain and poppy is easy to understand as Demeter was the goddess of both (see Figure 19). In fact, how much of the lore of the poppy was transferred to the Greek Mysteries of Demeter on the mainland remains to be elucidated, especially as there is some iconographic confusion between the poppy flower and the pomegranate, also a plant associated with the Mysteries. Kerenyi quotes Theokritos VII. 157: For the Greeks Demeter was still a poppy goddess, Bearing sheaves and poppies in both hands.2 A remarkable illustration in Erich Neumann's The Great Mother shows the Goddess in association with a beehive and holding poppy FIGURE 19. Demeter with barley', opium, and snakes. Courtesy of Fitz Hugh Ludlow Library. seed capsules and heads of grain in her left hand while resting her right hand on one of the unadorned pillars central to the Minoan earth religion (see Figure 20). Rarely have so many elements of the Archaic technology of ecstasy been brought together so explicitly. The figure is almost an allegory of the transformation of Minoan shamanic spirituality in its late phase. Its mushroom roots are symbolized in the aniconic column; they are the touchstone of the Goddess who looks toward the promise of poppies and ergotized grain. The hive of bees introduces the theme of honey, the archetypal image of ecstasy, female sexuality, and preservation that survives the shifting botanical identities of the sacraments. Poppies and gum opium were known to the ancient Egyptians and appear in their funereal arts as well as in the earliest medical papyruses. Poppies were known in several varieties to the Persians; in ancient Greece and elsewhere, the poppy was known as "the destroyer of grief": Theophrastus knew of it as a sleep inducing drug in 300 B.C., and his observations were repeated by Pliny in the first FIGURE 20. Spes, with Sheaves and Hive. From Eric Neumann's The Great Mother (New York: Pantheon, 1955), p. 263. century A.D. with added thoughts on opium poisoning. The Greeks consecrated the poppy to Nyx, goddess of night, Morpheus, son of Hypnos and god of dreams, and Thanatos, god of death. They summarized all of its properties in the deities to whom it was offered. Opium spread throughout the Islamic world after the seventh century. It was undoubtedly used both as a dysentery cure and for those overburdened with grief and care.3 Though opium's habit-forming quality was mentioned by Her-aclides of Tarentum, in the third century B.C., this was something even physicians were generally unaware of until nearly two thousand years later. We who have been raised with the notion of addiction as disease may find it hard to believe that chemical dependency upon opiates was not noted or described by medical authorities until early in the seventeenth century. Samuel Purchas, writing in 1613, observed of opium that "but being once used, it must daily be continued on paine of death, though some escape by taking to wine instead." Alethea Hayter comments that "this awareness that opium is addictive is rarely found so early."4 For the ancient world, then, opium was that which brought sleep and relief from pain. Opium was prescribed and perhaps overpre-scribed during the final days of the Roman Empire. Then the use of opium nearly ceased for many centuries in Europe; the early herbals of Saxon England mention juice expelled from poppies as a cure for headache and sleeplessness, but clearly opium played a very minor role in the armamentarium of medieval Europe.5 Martin Ruland's Alchemical Lexicon, published in 1612, mentions only the word "osoror" as a synonym for opium, and then without explanation. ALCHEMICAL OPIUM It is to Paracelsus, the famed "father of chemo-therapy," that we can trace the revival of interest in opium. The great sixteenth-century Swiss alchemist, medical reformer, and quack advocated and used opium on a lavish scale. Here again, as in the case of distilled alcohol, it is an alchemist, one involved in the pursuit of the spirit assumed to be locked into matter, who discovered the means to release the power locked within a simple plant. And, like Lully before him, Paracelsus assumed that he had discovered the universal panacea: "I possess a secret remedy which I call laudanum and which is superior to all other heroic remedies."6 Shortly after Paracelsus began promulgating the virtues of opium, physicians of his school of thought were preparing nostrums whose sole basis of activity was the copious amount of opium that they contained. One of these enthusiastic followers, the alchemist van Helmont, became well known as "Doctor Opiatus," the first "croaker" or junk doctor. TOBACCO REDUX While the "iatro-chemists" of the Paracelsan persuasion were spreading the use of opium in Europe, an exotic newcomer was quietly making its way onto the European stage. Tobacco was the first and most immediate payoff of the discovery of the New World. On November 2, 1492, less than a month after his first arrival in the New World, Columbus landed on the north coast of Cuba. There the Admiral of the Ocean Sea dispatched two gift-laden members of his crew to the interior of the island, where he believed that the king of the many coastal villages he had seen must reside. Doubtless there was still some hope in the admiral's mind that his men would return with word of gold, precious stones, fine woods, and spices—the wealth of the Indies. Instead, the scouts returned with an account of men and women who partially inserted burning rolls of leaves into their nostrils. These burning rolls were called tobacos and consisted of dry herbs wrapped up in a large dry leaf. They were lit at one end, and the people sucked at the other and "drank the smoke," or inhaled, something that was utterly unknown in Europe. De las Casas, the bishop of Chiapas, who published the account of Columbus's in which this description occurs, added this observation: I know of Spaniards who imitate this custom, and when I reprimanded the savage practice, they answered that it was not in their power to refrain from indulging in the habit. Although the Spaniards were extremely surprised by this peculiar custom, on experimenting with it themselves they soon obtained such pleasure that they began to imitate the savage example.7 Four years after the first voyage, the hermit Romano Pane, whom Columbus had left in Haiti at the conclusion of the second voyage to the New World, described in his journal the native habit of inhaling the tobacco fumes with the help of a bird-bone instrument inserted into the nose and held over tobacco strewn on a bed of coals. The consequences of this simple ethnographic observation have still to be calculated. It introduced into Europe an extremely efficient method for conveying drugs—including many potentially dangerous drugs—into the human body. It made possible the worldwide pandemic of tobacco smoking. It was a fast-acting and easily abused route of administering both opium and hashish. And it was the distant ancestor of the crack cocaine and PCP smoker. It also, it must be said, makes possible the most profound of the indole-hallucinogen-induced ecstasies, the rarely encountered but incomparable practice of smoking dimethyltryptamine. SHAMANIC TOBACCOS Tobacco smoking was widespread in North America at the time of the European contact. While the habit of taking hallucinogenic DMT-containing snuffs was also prevalent in the Caribbean cultural area, there are no confirmed reports of materials other than tobacco being smoked. The high culture of the Maya that flourished until the mid-800s in Mesoamerica had an old and complex relationship with tobacco and the habit of smoking it. The tobacco of the Classical Maya was Nicotiana rustica, which is still in use among aboriginal populations in South America today. This species is much more potent, chemically complex, and potentially hallucinogenic than the commercial grades of Nicotiana tabacum available today. The difference between this tobacco and cigarette tobacco is profound. This wild tobacco was cured and rolled into cigars which were smoked. The trancelike state that followed, partially synergized by the presence of compounds that included MAO inhibitors, was central to the shamanism of the Maya. Recently introduced antidepressants of the MAO inhibitor type are distant synthetic relatives of these natural compounds. Francis Robicsek has published extensively on the Mayan fascination with tobacco and its chemical complexity: It also must be recognized that nicotine is by no means the only bioactive substance in the tobacco leaf. Recently alkaloids of the harmala group, barman and norharman, have been isolated from cured commercial tobaccos and their smoke. They constitute a chemical group of beta-carbolines, which include harmine, harmaline, tetrahydroharmine, and 6-methoxy harmine, all with hallucinogenic properties. While to date no native varieties of tobacco have been analyzed for these substances, it is a reasonable supposition that their composition may vary widely, depending upon the variety and growth, and that some of the native-grown tobaccos may contain a relatively high concentration of them.8 Tobacco was and is the ever-present adjunct of the more powerful and visionary hallucinogenic plants wherever in the Americas they are used in a traditional and shamanic way. And one of the traditional uses of tobacco involved the New World's invention of the first enemas. Peter Furst has researched the role of enemas and clysters in Mesoamerican medicine and shamanism: It has only recently come to light that the ancient Maya like the ancient Peruvians employed enemas. Enema syringes or narcotic clysters, and even enema rituals, were discovered to be represented in Maya art, an outstanding example being a large painted vase dating A.D. 600-800, on which a man is depicted carrying an enema syringe, applying an enema to himself, and having a woman apply it to him. As a result of this newly discovered scene, archaeologist M. D. Coe was able to identify a curious object held by a jaguar deity on another painted Maya vessel as an enema syringe. If the enemas of the ancient Maya were, like those of the Peruvian Indians, intoxicating or hallucinogenic, they might have consisted of fermented balche (honey mead). Balche is a very sacred beverage and it may have been fortified with tobacco or with morning-glory seed infusions. Datura infusions and even hallucinogenic mushrooms may have been taken in this way. Of course they could also have used a tobacco infusion alone. TOBACCO AS QUACK MEDICINE Any drug introduced into use inevitably winds up associated with a number of quack medical theories and treatments. Cocaine abuse, as we shall see, was preceded by the craze for the tonic Vin de Mariani, and heroin was touted as a cure for morphine addiction. Lest we recoil from the enema rituals of the Maya, consider that in 1661 the Danish physician Thomas Bartholin recommended not only tobacco-juice enemas but also tobacco-smoke enemas to his patients: Those who have swallowed tobacco by accident can testify to its purgative effect. This property is employed in the tobacco clyster used as an enema. My beloved brother, Erasmus, has shown me the method. Smoke from two pipes [filled with tobacco] is blown into the intestines. A suitable instrument for this was devised by the ingenious English.10 Not to be outdone by the clever English, an eighteenth-century French physician named Buc'hoz advocated the use of "intra-vaginal insufflation of tobacco smoke to cure hysteria." Quite aside from these eccentric and bizarre applications of the use of tobacco, and despite the scorn of the clergy, the habit of smoking spread quickly in Europe. Every drug, during the process of its introduction into a new cultural milieu, is hailed as a "love drug," this apparently being the most effective of all advertising ploys. Drugs as diverse as heroin and cocaine, LSD, and MDMA were all at some point presented as promoting intimacy, sexual or psychological. Tobacco was no different; part of the reason for its rapid spread was widely circulated sailors' yarns of its remarkable properties as an aphrodisiac: Sailors told of the women of Nicaragua who smoked this weed and displayed an ardor undreamed of. It was probably this rumor that clinched the popularity of smoking among the women of Europe. Perhaps this is the reason why an ex-Franciscan monk, Andre Thevet, experienced such success in introducing tobacco to the French court in 1579." Thevet fully intended that tobacco be smoked and used as a recreational drug. Earlier the French ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot, had experimented with crushed tobacco leaves used as a snuff for the purpose of curing migraine headache. In 1560 Nicot conveyed a sample of his snuff to Catherine de Medici, who was a chronic migraine sufferer. The queen was enthusiastic about the plant's powers, and it briefly became known as "Herba Medicea" or "Herba Catherinea." Nicot's snuff was derived from the generally more toxic Nicotiana rustica, the classic, shamanic tobacco of the Maya. Thevet's Nicotiana tabacum conquered Europe in the form of the cigarette and was the plant that became the basis for the tremendously important tobacco economy that grew up in the colonial New World. CONTRA TOBACCO Tobacco was not welcomed by all. Pope Urban VIII ordered excommunication for anyone who smoked or used snuff in the churches of Spain. In 1650 Innocent X forbade snuff taking in the basilica of St. Peter, on pain of excommunication. Protestants also decried the new habit, and were led in their effort by no less than King James I of England, whose inflammatory Counterblaste to Tobacco appeared in 1604: And now good Country man, let us (I pray you) consider what honor or policie can move us to imitate the slavish Indians, especially in so vile and stinking custome. ... I say without blushing, (why do we) abase ourselves so farre, as ' to imitate these beastly Indians, slaves to the Spaniards, refuse to the world, and as yet aliens to the holy Covenant of God? Why do we not as well imitate them in walking naked as they doe? . . . Yes, why do we not denie God and adore the Devill, as they doe.12 Having unleashed this rhetorical "counterblaste," in what may be seen as the first unlimbering of the "just say no" approach, the king turned his attention to other matters. Eight years later a report claimed that in the city of London alone, there were no fewer than 7,000 tobacconists and tobacco houses! Tobacco smoking and snuff taking were pursued at the level of intensity of a modern craze. TOBACCO TRIUMPHANT In commercial terms, tobacco did not attain major importance until after the close of the Thirty Years War in 1648. By then American colonies were in place and well able to participate in the mercantile economy that had been established. In fact, this economy ran in large part on the tobacco of the North American colonies and the distilled alcohol and raw sugar of the more tropical outposts. The Age of Enlightenment was firmly founded on a drug-based economy. A remarkable process attended the introduction of tobacco into Europe: because of the emphasis on the recreational potential and the large-scale planting of Nicotiana tabacum, the less toxic of the two major species, tobacco lost its connotation as a plant of shamanic and even hallucinogenic power. This was more than a matter of shifts in the standard dose and the method of administration. The native tobaccos that I have experienced among Amazonian peoples were extremely disorienting and barely subtoxic. They were definitely capable of producing an altered state of consciousness. The tobacco-using habit as it evolved in Europe was secular and recreational, and hence much more mild strains of tobacco were commercially successful. Once a drug is discovered, it often goes through a process of dilution before a general consensus is reached on the most desirable level of effect. Moving from eating opium or hashish to smoking of these substances was such a process, as was the move from large doses of LSD in the 1960s to the current practice of taking small doses of LSD for recreational reasons. This latter move may have been the consequence of the small but persistent percentage of people who suffered severe psychotic breaks after using large doses of LSD. The notion of the "correct" dose of a drug is something that a culture evolves over time. (There are, of course, some counterexamples as well; the trend from snuffing powdered cocaine to smoking crack cocaine exemplifies a movement toward larger doses and more dangerous use patterns.) THE OPIUM WARS It was the prohibition of tobacco smoking in China by the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1628-1644) that led frustrated tobacco addicts to experiment with smoking opium. Before that time the smoking of opium was not known. Thus it is that the suppression of one drug seems inevitably to lead to involvement with another. By 1793 opium and tobacco were being routinely smoked together throughout China. Beginning in 1729 the Chinese had strictly prohibited the importation and sale of opium. In spite of this, opium imports, brought by the Portuguese from plantations in Goa, continued to rise, until by 1830 more than 25,000 chests of opium were being illegally imported into China. English financial interests that felt threatened by the prohibitions manipulated the situation into the so-called Opium Wars of 1838-1842: The East India Company and the British government rationalized the opium trade with the kind of bland hypocrisy which has made the English establishment a byword for three centuries. There was no direct connection between the opium trade and the East India Company which, of course, had a monopoly position in the British tea trade until 1834. . . . The opium was sold at auction in Calcutta. After this the Company abjured all responsibility for the drug. The incident that triggered this episode of capitalistic terrorism and true drug enslavement on a mass scale was the destruction of 20,000 chests of opium by Chinese authorities. In 1838 the emperor Tao-Kwang sent an official emissary named Lin to Canton to end the illegal trade in opium. Official orders were issued to the British and Chinese drug dealers to remove their goods, but the orders were ignored. Commissioner Lin then burned the Chinese warehouses on land and the British ships awaiting unloading in the harbor. More than a year's supply of opium was sent up in smoke; chroniclers who witnessed the event recalled that the aroma was incomparable." The controversy dragged on, but eventually, in 1840, war was declared. The British took the initiative, secure in the power and preeminence of the Royal Navy. The Chinese did not have a chance; the war was short and decisive. In 1840 Chusan was captured, and the following year the British bombarded and destroyed forts on the Canton River. The local Chinese commander, Ki Shen, who had succeeded Commissioner Lin, agreed to cede Hong Kong and pay an indemnity of 6 million Chinese silver dollars, worth about F-300,000. When the news reached Peking, the emperor was left with no course but to agree. Thus the Chinese suffered considerable losses in money and territory. 15 Fifteen years later a second war broke out. This war, too, ended unsuccessfully for China. Shortly afterward the Treaty of Tientsin legalized the Chinese opium traffic. In many ways this incident was to be the model for much larger forays into international drug trading on the part of twentiethcentury governments. It showed clearly that the potential marketability of new drugs can and will overwhelm institutional forces that oppose or appear to oppose the new commodity. The pattern established by England's nineteenth-century opium diplomacy has been repeated, albeit with some new wrinkles, in Central Intelligence Agency collusion in the international heroin and cocaine trade of our own time. OPIUM AND CULTURAL STYLE: DE QUINCE In the early nineteenth century, opium was influencing more tha the Far Eastern policy of the mercantile empires; it was also havin an unexpected influence on the esthetic forms and styles of Euro pean thought. In a sense European society was awakening fron narcissistic preoccupation with Renaissance Classicism and findin itself a spectator at the seductively metaphysical and estheticall exotic banquet being conducted by the Grand Turk of the Otto mans-a banquet whose major aperitif was the opium vision. There is no way to avoid a discussion of Thomas De Quince at this point. Like Timothy Leary in the 1960s, De Quincey wa able to convey the visionary power of what he experienced. For D Quincey this was a power imprisoned within the labyrinth of th poppy. He was able to convey the opium vision with the force an the filigree of melancholia typical of Romanticism. Almost single handedly he created, in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater the cultural image, the Zeitgeist, of the experience of opium in toxication and a metaphysic of opium. He invented the form of th drug "confession," the primary genre of subsequent drug literature His descriptions of the world view of the opium user are unsurpassed Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's "AntiquIties of Rome," Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, called his "Dreams," and which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them (I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels, cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, etc., expressive of enormous power put forth, and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the wall, you perceived a stai rcase; and upon it, groping his way upward, was Piranesi himself Follow the stairs a little farther, and you perceive it to come to a sudden, abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onward to him who had reached the extremity, except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranes], you suppose, at least that his labors must in some way terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher; on which again Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eyes, and a still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld; and again is poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labors; and so on, until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. With the same power of endless growth and self-reproduction did my architecture proceed in dreams." Opium exhilarates the spirit; it can produce endlessly unraveling streamers of thought and rhapsodic speculation. The fifty year following De Quincey's Confessions were to see a deep grappling with the impact of opium use on creativity, especially literary crea tivity. De Quincey pioneered this effort; he was the first writer to study deliberately, from within his personal experience, the way in which dreams and visions are formed, how opium helps to form them and intensifies them and how they are then re-composed and used in conscious art-in his case in "impassioned prose," but the process would also apply to poetry. He learned his waking technique as a writer partly from observation of how the mind works in dreams and reveries under the influence of opium. It was his belief that opium dreams and reveries could be in themselves a creative process both analogous to, and leading to, literary creation. He used dreams in his writing not as decoration, not as allegory, not as a device to create atmosphere or to forestall and help on the plot, not even as intimations of a higher reality (although he believed that they were that) but as a form of art in themselves. His study of the workings of the imagination in sleep to produce dreams was pursued with as much concentration as some of his contemporaries devoted to the working of the waking imagination to produce poetry. " THE BEGINNING OF PSYCHO PHARMACOLOGY The analytical and psychological interests of men like De Quincey and the French psychiatrist J. J. Moreau de Tours, and their attitudes toward the substances that they sought to explore, signify the beginnings of the less than happy effort of science to come to terms with these materials. Implicit in their work is the assumption that intoxication can mimic madness, a strong hint that madness, that most "mental" of maladies, was rooted in physical causes. The opium dream was seen as a kind of waking theater of the imagination. And there is in the fascination with dreams an anticipation of the psychoanalytical methods of Freud and Jung; this fascination is felt throughout the literature of the nineteenth century-in Goethe, in Baudelaire, in Mallarme, Huysmans, and Heine. It is the sirens' song of the unconscious, silent since the destruction of Eleusis but expressed in Romanticism and the pre-Raphaelites as a pagan exuberance, driven as often as not by devotion to opium. The heavy-lidded harlots of a Beardsley seraglio or the darker labyrinthine visions of Odilon Redon or Dante Gabriel Rossetti epitomize this esthetic. As the esthetic had a darker side, so too the chemistry of the poppy began to yield more consuming and more virulently addictive derivatives. The hypodermic syringe was discovered in 1853, and from then on the users of opiates have had the cautionary example of the severely addicted intravenous user of morphine to temper their devotion. (See Figure 21.) The nineteenth century experienced a sorting out of the bewildering variety of new drugs and stimulants that the previous two centuries of exploration and exploitation of far-flung lands had brought. Tobacco use in its various forms became widespread in all social classes, especially among men. Opium was abused by smaller but nonetheless vast numbers of persons, also drawn from all classes. Distilled alcohol was produced and abused in far larger quantities than ever before. In this environment temperance organizations also emerged, and the modern positions vis-a-vis the drug question began to develop. Yet the true impact of the spreading habits of synthetic drug abuse still lay ahead, in the twentieth century. 13 SYNTHETICS: HEROIN, COCAINE, AND TELEVISION Morphine was isolated in 1805 by the young German chemist Friedrich Serturner. For Serturner morphine was the purest essence of the poppy plant; he named it after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. It was this success in isolating the essence of the opium poppy that inspired chemists to attempt the isolation of pure compounds from other proven materia medica. Drugs for the relief of heart disease were isolated from foxglove. Quinine was extracted from the cinchona tree, purified, and used in the colonial conquest of the malarial zone. And from the leaves of a South American bush was extracted a new and promising local anesthetic-cocaine. Morphine use was restricted and sporadic until after the middle of the nineteenth century. At first its major nonmedical use was as a vehicle of suicide, but this phase was brief and soon morphine was established as a new and very different sort of drug. In 1853 Alexander Wood invented the hypodermic syringe. Before its invention, physicians had used the hollow stems of the lilac plant to introduce drugs inside the body. The syringe arrived just in time to be used to inject morphine into soldiers wounded in the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. This established a pattern that we will meet again in the history of opiates-the pattern of war as vector of addiction. By 1890 use of morphine on the battlefield had resulted in significant addict populations in both Europe and the United States. So many Civil War veterans returned home as addicts to injectable morphine that yellow journalists referred to morphine addiction as "the soldier's disease." HARD NARCOTICS Distilled alcohol and white sugar had preceded morphine as examples of high purity addictive compounds, but morphine set the pattern for the modern "hard drugs," meaning highly addictive injectable narcotics. At first such drugs were derived from opiates, but all too soon cocaine joined the list. Once heroin, invented as a cure for morphine addiction, was introduced, it quickly replaced morphine as the synthetic opiate of choice among addicts. Heroin has retained this position throughout the twentieth century. Heroin also quickly replaced all other drugs in the public fantasy concerning the evils of drug addiction. Even to this day, with statistics showing that alcohol kills ten times more often than heroin, heroin addiction is still viewed as the depths of drug depravity. There are two reasons for this view. One reason is the actual addictive power of heroin. The craving for heroin and the illegal or violent acts that the craving may induce have given heroin the reputation as a drug whose addicts will kill for it. Tobacco addicts might kill for their fix, too, if they had to, but instead they simply walk out to a 7-Eleven to buy cigarettes. The other reason for the distaste with which heroin addiction is viewed is the characteristics of the intoxicated state. Immediately after his shot the heroin addict is cheerful, almost ebullient. This active response to the shot quickly gives way to the "nod" or "nodding out." The junkie's goal with each shot of junk is to "get the nod on," to get into the detached state of twilight sleep in which the long reveries of the opiates can unfurl themselves. In this state there is no pain, no regret, no distraction, and no fear. Heroin is the perfect drug for anyone who has been damaged by lack of selfesteem or traumatized by historical upheaval. It is a drug of battlefields, concentration camps, cancer wards, prisons, and ghettos. It is the drug of the resigned and the dissolute, the surely dying and the victims unwilling or unable to fight back: Junk is the ideal product. . . the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. . . . The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client. He pays his staff in junk. Junk yields a basic formula of "evil" virus: The Algebra of Need. The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?77 Yes, you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite.1 COCAINE: THE HORROR OF THE WHITENESS Like heroin, cocaine is a modern high-purity drug derived from a plant with a long history of folk use. For millennia the peoples of the montane rain forests of South America have held cultural values that promote the ritual and religious use of the stimulant/food coca. Locals in areas where coca has traditionally been cultivated and used will immediately tell one, "Cocci no es un droga, es comida." Coca is not a drug, it is food. And indeed this appears to be largely the case. The self-administered doses of ground coca dust contain a significant percentage of the daily requirement of vitamins and minerals.2 Coca also is a powerful appetite suppressant. The importance of these facts cannot be appreciated without an understanding of the situation regarding protein availability in the Amazonian forest and Andean Altipano. 'I'he casual traveler might suppose that the lushness of the tropical forest signifies an abundance of fruits, edible seeds, and roots. This is not the ease. Competition for available protein resources is so fierce among the thousands of species of life that comprise the jungle biota that nearly all usable organic materials are actually bound in living systems. Human penetration into such an environment is greatly aided by an appetite-suppressing plant. Of course appetite suppression is only one characteristic of coca use. The important characteristic is stimulation. The climaxed rain forest is a difficult place to inhabit. Gathering food and building shelter often requires carrying large amounts of material over considerable distances. Often the machete is the only tool to hold the rain forest at bay. To the ancient Inca culture of Peru, and later to the indigenous people and the mestizo colonistas, coca was a goddess, a kind of New World echo of Graves's white goddess Leucothea. Significantly, the goddess Mama Coca as a young girl, offering the saving branch of coca to the Spanish conqueror, figures prominently in the frontispiece of W. Golden Mortimer's classic History of Coca: The Divine Plant of the Incas {see Figure 22). In 1859 cocaine was isolated for the first time. Pharmacology was undergoing a kind of renaissance, and research with cocaine was vigorously pursued over the next several decades. At this point in our discussion it seems hardly necessary to mention that cocaine was first hailed as an obvious cure for morphinism! Medical researchers who were attracted to the new drug included the young Sigmund Freud: , At present it is impossible to assess with any certainty to what extent coca can be expected to increase human mental powers. I have the impression that protracted use of coca can lead to a lasting improvement if the inhibitions manifested before it is taken are due only to physical causes or to exhaustion. To be sure, the instantaneous effect of a dose of coca cannot be compared with that of a morphine injection; but, on the good side of the ledger, there is no danger of general damage to the body as is the case with the chronic use of morphine. Freud's findings, which he would later repudiate, were neither very widely publicized nor well received where they were noticed. It was a fellow student of Freud's in Vienna, Carl Koller, who took FIGURE 22. Mania Coca as a New World goddess who welcomes the arriving Spaniards. From the frontispiece of W. C. Mortimer's History of Coca: The Divine Plant of the Incas (San Francisco: And/Or Press, 1974). Courtesy of Fitz Hugh Ludlow Library. the next step in the medical application of cocaine, the discovery of its use as a local anesthetic. Overnight Roller's discovery revolutionized surgery; by 1885 cocaine was being hailed as a tremendous medical breakthrough. However, as its use spread, its action as an addiction-inducing stimulant was also noted. Cocaine was the inspiration for the unnamed drug that causes sudden personality change in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—a fact that contributed to its fast-accruing reputation as a virulent new vice of the wealthy and depraved. PRO COCAINE Not all literary references to cocaine portrayed it in such a horrific light. In 1888 British physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a now-famous short novel, The Sign of Four, in which his detective, the redoubtable Sherlock Holmes, comments on his use of cocaine: "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendingly stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small amount."4 Coca followed the pattern already set with coffee, tea, and chocolate; that is, it quickly attracted entrepreneurial attention. Chief among those who saw commercial opportunities in coca was a Frenchman, M. Angelo Mariani. In 1888 the first bottle of Vin Mariani was marketed (see Figure 23), and soon there was an entire line of coca-based and -laced wines, tonics, and elixirs: Mariani was the greatest exponent of the virtues of coca the world has ever known. He steeped himself in coca lore, surrounded himself with Incan artifacts, cultivated a coca garden at his home, and directed a merchandising empire that featured his tonic wine. Through his genius for advertising he came closer to "turning on the World" than any man who ever lived. Queen Victoria, Pope Leo XIII, Sarah Bernhardt, Thomas Edison, and hundreds of other celebrities and medical men gave public testimony to the tonic properties of his products in a series of twelve volumes published by his company.5 FIGURE 23. Advertisement for Vin Mariani. Courtesy of Fritz Hugh Ludlow Library. MODERN ANTIDRUG HYSTERIA In the United States at the turn of the century, racist rumormongering fanned the hysterical fear that southern blacks, maddened by cocaine, might attack whites. In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed; it made cocaine and heroin illegal and set the stage for the legally sanctioned suppression of the synthetic and addictive compounds found in the opium poppy and the coca bush. In contrast to tobacco, tea, and coffee, which were initially resisted and then made legal, morphine/heroin and cocaine began their career in modern society as legal substances but once recognized as addictive were suppressed. Why these drugs and not others? Was the addiction more virulent? Was the use of the hypodermic injection somehow offensive? Or was there some difference in the social and psychological effect of these drugs that made them scapegoats for the damage being done to society by alcohol and tobacco? These are difficult questions, not amenable to easy answers. Yet, if we are to understand the different climate of drug markets and drug use in the twentieth century, these are the questions we must attempt to answer. Part of the answer may lie in the fact that by the beginning of the twentieth century nearly a hundred years of experience with the social consequences of addictive synthetic drugs was behind us. The cheerful folly of hailing each new pharmacological discovery as a universal panacea had been amply demonstrated. What could be ignored or left undocumented in the eighteenth or even nineteenth century could not be so easily hidden in the twentieth. Ever more rapid communication and transportation networks spread information about the drugs as well as the drugs themselves (Figure 24). These technologies helped lead to efficiently organized and administered large-scale criminal syndicates. Yet the rise of these syndicates and of modern narcotics production and distribution systems also required connivance on the part of governments. Hard drug addiction had given the drug trade a blackened reputation. Governments that had dealt drugs with impunity for centuries suddenly found themselves, in the new atmosphere of temperance and social reform, forced to legislate this lucrative trade out of the realm of ordinary commerce and into the status of an illicit activity. Governments would now make their drug money in kickback schemes and in situations in which they would be paid to "look the other way." DRUGS AND GOVERNMENTS Government involvement in and direct responsibility for the drug trade would diminish, with protection rackets replacing direct earn- FIGURE 24. Cocaine Lil by John Powys. Courtesy of Fitz Hugh Ludlow Library. ings, while retail prices would rise astronomically. The new price structure made the drug money pie large enough for all parties to profit handsomely—governments and criminal syndicates alike. In effect, the modern solution has been for the drug cartels to operate as proxies for national governments in the matter of supplying addictive narcotics. Governments can no longer participate openly in the world narcotic trade and claim legitimacy. Only pariah governments operate without fronts. Legitimate governments prefer to have their intelligence agencies cut secret deals with the drug mafiosi while the visible machinery of diplomacy seems all aflutter over the "drug problem"—a problem always presented in such terms as to convince any reasonable person of its utter insolubility. It is significant that the major production areas of hard narcotics are "tribal zones." Modern imperialists would have us believe that, try as they might, they have never been able to overrun and control these areas, in Pakistan and Burma for example, where major production of opium occurs. Consequently, faceless tribal leaders, ever changing and with unpronounceable names, can be held responsible for it all. From 1914 until World War II, drug distribution was largely in the same hands of the gangsters who directed other illicit operations that characterize gangster subculture: prostitution, loan sharking, and various rackets. The prohibition of alcohol in the United States had created a vast windfall market for hard narcotics, as well as offering the opportunity for easy profits from alcohol manufactured illegally and sold untaxed. Government manipulation of drug markets occurred elsewhere, too. During World War II the Japanese occupiers of Manchuria took a page from the book of British colonial oppression of a century earlier and produced vast amounts of opium and heroin for distribution inside China. This was done, not with an eye to profit, as in the British case, but with the intent of creating so many addicts that the will of the Chinese people to resist the occupation effectively would be broken. Later, during the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency would use the same technique to smother political dissent in American black ghettos under an avalanche of No. 4 China White—heroin of extraordinary purity.6 DRUGS AND INTERNATIONAL INTELLIGENCE The virulence of addictions to synthetics like heroin and cocaine could not long escape the attention of the inheritors of the slave trade and the opium wars—international intelligence agencies and secret police organizations. These shadowy groups have an insatiable need for untraceable money to fund the private armies, terrorist cells, coups d'etat, and front groups that are their stock in trade. Involvement in, and indeed domination of, the world narcotics trade has proven irresistible to groups such as the CIA, Opus Dei, and the French secret service: The U.S. Government's Mafia and narcotics connection goes back, as is well known, to World War II. Two controversial joint operations between OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and ONI (U.S. Naval Intelligence) established contacts (via Lucky Luciano) with the Sicilian Mafia and (via Tai Li) with the dope-dealing Green Gang of Tu Yueh-Sheng in Shanghai. Both connections were extended into the post-war period.7 The involvement of legitimate institutions remains the same with certain exceptions. In the late 1970s, there was a move in American hard drug culture from emphasis on heroin to emphasis on cocaine. This move was in part a logical consequence of the American military defeat in Vietnam and retraction from Southeast Asia. It was soon reinforced when the Reagan agenda of contra support and narcoterrorism opened new frontiers for covert operations. Yet it is unlikely that the virulence or social cost of the cocaine epidemic was ever anticipated. Perhaps no one ever asked the question "What are the consequences of hooking the American public on cocaine?" Perhaps the development of smokable, more efficient, and more addictive crack cocaine was unexpected. It is highly likely that the phenomenon of crack is an instance of technology having escaped from the control of its creators. In the 1980s cocaine assumed a form more virulent than any of its earlier victims and detractors could have possibly imagined. This is a new and disturbing pattern in the evolution of human-drug interactions—a pattern that cannot be ignored. If today we are confronted by a superaddictive form of cocaine, why not tomorrow a superaddictive form of heroin? In fact, such forms of heroin already exist. Fortunately they are simply not as easy to manufacture as is crack cocaine. Ice, a smokable form of highly addictive metham-phetamine, has appeared in the drug underground. There will be other drugs in the future—more addictive, more destructive than anything now possible. How, then, will law and society respond to this phenomenon? It is to be hoped the response won't be one of self-righteously holding the addicts up as examples of contemptible behavior. From a historical point of view, restricting the availability of addictive substances must be seen as a peculiarly perverse example of Calvinist dominator thought—a system in which the sinner is to be punished in this world by being transformed into an exploitable, hapless customer, who is punished for addiction by being relieved of his cash, by the criminal/governmental combine that provides the addictive substances. The image is more horrifying than that of the serpent that devours itself—it is once again the Dionysian image of the mother who devours her children, the image of a house divided against itself. ELECTRONIC DRUGS In his science fiction novel The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick imagined an alternative world in which World War II had been won by the Japanese and the Third Reich.8 In Dick's fictional world, the Japanese occupation authorities introduced and legalized marijuana as one of their first moves at pacifying the population of California. Things are hardly less strange here in what conventional wisdom lightheartedly refers to as "reality." In "this world" too, the victors introduced an all-pervasive, ultra-powerful society-shaping drug. This drug was the first of a growing group of high-technology drugs that deliver the user into an alternative reality by acting directly on the user's sensorium, without chemicals being introduced into the nervous system. It was television. No epidemic or addictive craze or religious hysteria has ever moved faster or made as many converts in so short a time. The nearest analogy to the addictive power of television and the transformation of values that is wrought in the life of the heavy user is probably heroin. Heroin flattens the image; with heroin, things are neither hot nor cold; the junkie looks out at the world certain that whatever it is, it does not matter. The illusion of knowing and of control that heroin engenders is analogous to the unconscious assumption of the television consumer that what is seen is "real" somewhere in the world. In fact, what is seen are the cosmetically enhanced surfaces of products. Television, while chemically non-invasive, nevertheless is every bit as addicting and physiologically damaging as any other drug Not unlike drugs or alcohol, the television experience 4 allows the participant to blot out the real world and enter into a pleasurable and passive mental state. The worries and anxieties of reality arc as effectively deferred by becoming absorbed in a television program as by going on a "trip" induced by drugs or alcohol. And just as alcoholics are only vaguely aware of their addiction, feeling that they control their drinking more than they really do ... people similarly overestimate their control over television watching. ... Finally it is the adverse effect of television viewing on the lives of so many people that defines it as a serious addiction. The television habit distorts the sense of time. It renders other experiences vague and curiously unreal while taking on a greater reality for itself. It weakens relationships by reducing ; and sometimes eliminating normal opportunities for talking, for communicating. THE HIDDEN PERSUADER Most unsettling of all is this: the content of television is not a vision but a manufactured data stream that can be sanitized to "protect" or impose cultural values. Thus we are confronted with an addictive and all-pervasive drug that delivers an experience whose message is whatever those who deal the drug wish it to be. Could anything provide a more fertile ground for fostering fascism and totalitarianism than this? In the United States, there are many more televisions than households, the average television set is on six hours a day, and the average person watches more than five hours a day— nearly one-third their waking time. Aware as we all are of these simple facts, we seem unable to react to their implications. Serious study of the effects of television on health and culture has only begun recently. Yet no drug in history has so quickly or completely isolated the entire culture of its users from contact with reality. And no drug in history has so completely succeeded in remaking in its own image the values of the culture that it has infected. Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a tool of coersion, brainwashing, and manipulation.10 Television induces a trance state in the viewer that is the necessary precondition for brainwashing. As with all other drugs and technologies, television's basic character cannot be changed; television is no more reformable than is the technology that produces automatic assault rifles. Television came along at precisely the right time from the point of view of the dominator elite. The nearly one hundred and fifty years of synthetic drug epidemics that began in 1806 had led to disgust at the spectacle of human degradation and spiritual cannibalism that institutional marketing of drugs created. In the same way that slavery eventually, when no longer convenient, became odious in the eyes of the very institutions that had created it, the abuse of drugs eventually triggered a backlash against this particular form of piratical capitalism. Hard drugs were made illegal. Of course underground markets then flourished. But drugs as stated instruments of national policy had been discredited. There would continue to be opium wars, instances of governments coercing other governments and peoples to produce or buy drugs—but in the future these wars would be dirty and secret, they would be "covert." As the intelligence agencies that arose in the wake of World War II moved to take up their "deep cover" positions as the masterminds of the international narcotics cartels, the popular mind was turning on to television. Flattening, editing, and simplifying, television did its job and created a postwar American culture of the Ken-and-Barbie variety. The children of Ken and Barbie briefly broke out of the television intoxication in the mid-sixties through the use of hallucinogens. "Oops," responded the dominators, and they quickly made psychedelics illegal and halted all research. A double dose of TV therapy plus cocaine was ordered up for the errant hippies, and they were quickly cured and turned into consumption-oriented yuppies. Only a recalcitrant few escaped this leveling of values.'' Nearly everyone learned to love Big Brother. And these few who don't are still clucked over by the dominator culture each time it compulsively scratches in the barnyard dust of its puzzlement over "what happened in the Sixties." IV • • • PARADISE REGAINED? 14 A BRIEF HISTORY OF PSYCHEDELICS Psychedelic plants and experience were first suppressed by European civilization, then ignored and forgotten. The fourth century witnessed the suppression of the mystery religions—the cults of Bacchus and Diana, of Attis and Cybele. The rich syncretism that was typical of the Hellenistic world had become a thing of the past. Christianity triumphed over the Gnostic sects—Valentinians, Marcionites, and others—which were the last bastions of paganism. These repressive episodes in the evolution of Western thought effectively closed the door on communication with the Gaian mind. Hierarchically imposed religion and, later, hierarchically dispensed scientific knowledge were substituted for any sort of direct experience of the mind behind nature. The intoxicants of the Christian dominator culture, whether plants or synthetic drugs, were inevitably stimulants or narcotics— drugs of the workplace or drugs to dull care and pain. Drugs in the twentieth century serve only medical or recreational purposes. Yet even the West has retained the thin thread of remembrance of the Archaic, hierophantic, and ecstatic potential that certain plants hold. The survival through long centuries in Europe of witchcraft and rites involving psychoactive plants attests that the gnosis of entering parallel dimensions by altering brain chemistry was never entirely lost. The plants of European witchcraft—thorn apple, mandrake, and nightshade—did not contain indole hallucinogens but were nevertheless capable of inducing intense altered states of consciousness. The Archaic connection of feminism to a magical dimension of risk and power was clearly perceived as a threat by the medieval church: As late as the Middle Ages the witch was still the ha-gazussa, a being that sat on the Hag, the fence, which passed behind the gardens and separated the village from the wilderness. She was a being who participated in both worlds. As we might say today, she was semi-demonic. In time, however, she lost her double features and evolved more and more into a representation of what was being expelled from culture, only to return, distorted, in the night.1 That these plants were the basis for entry into other dimensions was the result of the relative paucity in Europe of hallucinogen-containing species. THE NEW WORLD HALLUCINOGENS Indole-containing plant hallucinogens, and their cults, cluster in the tropical New World. The New World subtropical and tropical zones are phenomenally rich in hallucinogenic plants. Similar ecosystems in the Southeast Asian and Indonesian tropics cannot compare in numbers of endemic species that contain psychoactive indoles. Why are the Old World tropics, the tropics of Africa and Indonesia, not equally rich in hallucinogenic flora? No one has been able to answer this question. But statistically speaking the New World seems to be the preferred home of the more powerful psychoactive plants. Psilocybin, while now known to occur in European species, of diminutive mushrooms of the genus Psilocybe, has never been convincingly shown to have been a part of European shamanism or ethnomedicine. Yet its shamanic use in Oaxacan Mexico is three millennia old. Similarly, the New World has the only living cults based on use of dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the beta-carboline group including harmine, and the ergotlike complex in morning glories. A historical consequence of this clustering of hallucinogens in the New World was that Western science discovered their existence rather late. This may explain the absence of "psychedelic" input into Western drugs for psychiatric uses. Meanwhile, because of the influence of hashish and opium on the Romantic imagination, the hashish reverie or opium dream became the paradigm of the action of the new "mental drugs" that fascinated the Bohemian literati from the late eighteenth century on. Indeed, hallucinogens were seen as capable of mimicking psychoses in their early encounter with Western psychotherapy. In the nineteenth century explorer-naturalists began to return with more or less accurate ethnographic reports of the activities of aboriginal peoples. Botanists Richard Spruce and Alfred Russel Wallace traveled in the Amazon drainage in the 1850s. On the upper reaches of the Rio Negro, Spruce observed a group of Indians prepare an unfamiliar hallucinogen. He further observed that the main ingredient for this intoxicant was a liana, a woody climbing vine, which he named Banisteria caapi. Several years later, while traveling in western Ecuador he saw the same plant being used to make a hallucinogen called ayahuasca.2 (See Figure 25.) Ayahuasca has continued to the present day to be a part of the spiritual life of many of the tribes in the montane rain forest of South America. Immigrants into the Amazon basin have also accepted ayahuasca and have created their own ethnobotanical-medical system for using the psychedelic visions it imparts to promote healing. The word ayahuasca is a Quechua word that roughly translates as "vine of the dead" or "vine of souls." This term refers not only to the prepared hallucinogenic beverage but also to one of its main ingredients, the woody liana. The tissues of this plant are rich in alkaloids of the beta-carboline type. The most important beta-carboline occurring in what is now called Banisteriopsis caapi is harmine. Harmine is an indole, but it is not overtly psychedelic unless taken in amounts that approach what is considered a toxic dose. However, well below that level, harmine is an effective short-acting monoamine oxidase inhibitor. Thus, a hallucinogen such as DMT, which would normally be inactive if taken orally, is rendered highly psychoactive if taken orally in combination with harmine. Native peoples of the Amazon region have brilliantly exploited these facts in their search for techniques to access the magical dimensions crucial to shamanism.3 By combining, in ayahuasca, DMT-con-taining plants with plants that contain MAO inhibitors, they have long exploited a pharmacological mechanism, MAO inhibition, not described by Western science until the 1950s. In the presence of harmine, DMT becomes a highly psychoactive compound that enters the bloodstream and eventually makes its way past the blood-brain barrier and into the brain. There it very effectively competes with serotonin for synaptic bonding sites. This experience of the slow release of DMT lasts four to six hours and is the basis of the magical and shamanic view of reality that characterizes the ayahuasquero and his or her circle of initiates. Unin-volved or so-called objective styles of anthropological reportage have tended to undercmphasize the culture-shaping importance that these altered states have had for tribal Amazonian societies. The experience of ingesting ayahuasca—organic DMT taken in combination with the Banisteriopsis vine—has a number of characteristics that set it apart from the experience of smoking DMT. Ayahuasca is gentler and of much greater duration. Its themes and hallucinations are oriented toward the organic and the natural world, in marked contrast to the titanic, alien, and off-planet motifs that characterize the DMT flash. Why such major differences should exist between compounds that appear to be so structurally similar is an uninvestigated problem. Indeed, the whole relationship of particular kinds of visions to the compounds that elicit them is not well understood. In the native areas of its use, ayahuasca is regarded as a general-purpose healing elixir and is called la purga, the purge. Its effectiveness in combating intestinal parasites has been proven. Its effectiveness in killing the malaria organism is now being investigated. And its long history of effective shamanic use in folk psychiatry has been documented by Naranjo, Dobkin de Rios, Luna, and others. AYAHUASCA The experience induced by ayahuasca includes extremely rich tapestries of visual hallucination that are particularly susceptible to being "driven" and directed by sound, especially vocally produced sound. Consequently, one of the legacies of the ayahuasca-using cultures is a large repository of icaros, or magical songs (Figure 26). The effectiveness, sophistication, and dedication of an ayahuasquero is predicated upon how many magical songs he or she has effectively memorized. In the actual curing sessions, both patient and healer ingest ayahuasca and the singing of the magical songs is a shared experience that is largely visual. The impact of long-term use of hallucinogenic indoles on mental and physical health is not yet well understood. My own experiences among the mestizo populations of Amazonas convince me that the long-term effect of ayahuasca use is an extraordinary state of health and integration. Ayahuasqueros use sound and suggestion to direct healing energy into parts of the body and unexamined aspects of an individual's personal history where psychic tension has come to rest. Often these methods exhibit startling parallels to the techniques of modem psychotherapy; at other times they seem to represent an understanding of possibilities and energies still unrecognized by Western theories of healing. Most interesting from the point of view of the arguments made in this book are the persistent rumors of states of group-mind or telepathy that occur among the less acculturated tribal peoples. Our history of skepticism and empiricism would have us dismiss such claims as impossible, but we should think twice before doing so. The chief lesson to be learned from the psychedelic experience is the degree to which unexamined cultural values and limitations of language have made us the unwitting prisoners of our own assumptions. For it cannot be without reason that wherever in the world hallucinogenic indoles have been utilized, their use has been equated with magical self-healing and regeneration. The low incidence of serious mental illness among such populations is well documented. THE FATHER OF PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY The modern era of psychopharmacology's interest in the aboriginal use of hallucinogenic plants has been extraordinarily brief. It dates to only a century ago, to German pharmacologist Lewis Lewin's tour of the United States. On returning to Berlin in 1887, Lewin carried with him a quantity of peyote buttons, the vision-inducing cactus of the Sonoran Indians, that he had obtained from the Parke-Davis Company during his stay in Detroit. He set to work extracting, characterizing, and self-experimenting with the new compounds he discovered. Within a decade, peyote had attracted sufficient attention that in 1897 Philadelphia novelist and physician Silas Weir Mitchell became the first gringo to describe peyote intoxication: The display which for an enchanted two hours followed was such as I find it hopeless to describe in language which shall convey to others the beauty and splendor of what I saw. Stars. . . delicate floating films of color. . . then an abrupt rush of countless points of white light swept across the field of view, as if the unseen millions of the Milky Way were to flow a sparkling river before the eyes. . . zigzag lines of very bright colors. . . the wonderful loveliness of swelling colors of more vivid colors gone before I could name them. Then, for the first time, definite objects associated with colors appeared. A white spear of grey stone grew up to huge height, and became a tall, richly finished Gothic tower of very elaborate and definite design, with many rather worn statues standing in the doorways or on stone brackets. As I gazed every projecting angle, cornice, and even the faces of the stones at their joining were by degrees covered or hung with clusters of what seemed to be huge precious stones, but uncut, some being like masses of transparent fruit. THE PLEASURES OF MESCALINE In 1897, Arthur Heffter, a rival of Lewin's, became the first human being to isolate and ingest pure mescaline. Mescaline is a powerful visionary phenethylamine that occurs in the peyote cactus Lopho-phora williamsii. It has been used for at least several centuries by the Indians of Northern Mexico. Its use in Peru, where it is derived from species of cactus other than peyote, is at least several thousand years old. The psychologist and pioneer sexologist Havelock Ellis, following the example of Weir Mitchell, soon offered his own account of mescaline's pleasures: The visions never resembled familiar objects; they were extremely definite, but yet always novel; they were constantly approaching, and yet constantly eluding, the semblance of known things. I would see thick, glorious fields of jewels, solitary or clustered, sometimes brilliant and sparkling, sometimes with a dull rich glow. Then they would spring up into flowerlike shapes beneath my gaze and then seem to turn into gorgeous butterfly forms or endless folds of glistening iridescent fibrous wings of wonderful insects. . . . Monstrous forms, fabulous landscapes, etc., appear. ... It seems to us that any scheme which, in a detailed manner, assigns different kinds of visions to successive stages of the rnescal state must be viewed as extremely arbitrary. The only thing that is typical with regard to sequence is that very elementary visions are followed by visions of a more complex character.6 Mescaline introduced experimenters to an agent of the paradis artificiel more potent than either cannabis or opium. Descriptions of mescaline states could hardly fail to attract the attention of the surrealists and psychologists who also shared a fascination with the images hidden in the depths of the newly defined unconscious. Dr. Kurt Beringer, Lewin's student and an acquaintance of Hermann Hesse's and Carl Jung's, became the father of psychedelic psychiatry. His phenomenological approach stressed reportage of the internal vistas beheld. He conducted hundreds of experiments with mescaline in human beings. The accounts given by his subjects are fascinating. Then the dark room once more. The visions of fantastic architecture again took hold of me, endless passages in Moorish style moving like waves alternated with astonishing pictures of curious figures. A design in the form of a cross was very frequent and present in unceasing variety. Inces- santly the central lines of the ornament emanated, creeping like serpents or shooting forth like tongues toward the sides, but always in straight lines. Crystals appeared again and again, changing form and color and in the rapidity with which they came before my eyes. Then the pictures grew more steady, and slowly two immense cosmic systems were created, divided by a kind of line into an upper and a lower half. Shining with their own light, they appeared in unlimited space. From the interior new rays appeared in more luminescent colors, and gradually becoming perfect, they assumed the form of oblong prisms. At the same time they began to move. The systems approaching each other were attracted and repelled.7 In 1927 Beringer published his magnum opus Der Meskalin-musch, translated into Spanish but never into English. It is an inspired work, and it set the stage for the science of investigative pharmacology. The following year saw the publication in English of Heinrich Kluver's Mescal, the Divine Plant and Its Psychological Effects. Kluver7 whose work built on the observations of Weir Mitchell and Havelock Ellis, reintroduced the English-speaking world to the notion of visionary pharmacology. Especially important was the fact that Kluver took the hallucinogenic content of the experiences he was observing seriously and became the first to attempt to give a phenomenological description of the psychedelic experience: Clouds from left to right through optical field. Tail of a pheasant (in centre of field) turns into bright yellow star; star into sparks. Moving scintillating screw; "hundreds" of screws. A sequence of rapidly changing objects in agreeable colours. A rotating wheel (diameter about 1 cm.) in the centre of a silvery ground. Suddenly in the wheel a picture of God as represented in old Christian paintings.—Intention to see a homogeneous dark field of vision: red and green shoes appear. Most phenomena much nearer than reading distance. A MODERN RENAISSANCE The investigation of hallucinogenic indoles also dates to the 1920s. A veritable Renaissance of psychopharmacology was taking place in Germany. In this atmosphere, Lewin and others became interested in harmine, an indole whose only source was thought to be Ban-isteriopsis caapi, the woody liana encountered by Richard Spruce nearly eighty years before. Indeed, Lewin's last published work reflected his new fascination with caapi; entitled Banisteria Caapi, ein neues Rauschgift und Heilmittel, it appeared in 1929. The excitement of Lewin and his colleagues was understandable: ethnographers such as the German Theodore Koch-Grunbcrg returned from Amazonas with accounts of tribes using telepathy-inducing plant drugs to direct the course of their societies. In 1927, the chemists E. Perrot and M. Raymond-Hamet isolated the active agent from Banisteriopsis caapi and named it telepathine. Years later, in 1957, researchers realized that telepathine was identical to the compound harmaline, extracted from Peganum harmala, and the name harmine was given official precedence over telepathine. In the 1930s, the enthusiasm for the harmala alkaloids by and large vanished, as did much of the interest in ethnopharmacology. There were, however, notable exceptions. Among them was an Austrian expatriate living in Mexico. Blas Pablo Reko, born Blasius Paul Reko, was a person of wide-ranging interests. His wandering life took him to the United States, to Ecuador, and finally to Oaxacan Mexico. There he became interested in ethnobotany and what is today called archaeo-astron-omy, the study of ancient cultures' observations and attitudes toward the stars. Reko was an astute observer of the plant usages among the native people with whom he lived. In 1919, in rebuttal to an article by William Safford, Reko wrote that it was a hallucinogenic mushroom, and not peyote, that shamans of the Mixtec and Ma-zatecan people still used in a traditional way to induce visions. In 1937, Reko sent Henry Wassen, an anthropologist and the curator of the ethnographical museum in Gothenburg, Sweden, a package containing collections of two plants that Reko had found particularly interesting. One of the samples was piule seed, the visionary morning glory seeds of Ipomoea violacea, which contain hallucinogenic indoles related to LSD. Reko's other sample, unfortunately too decomposed to be identified to species, was a fragment of teonandcatl, the first specimen of a psilocybin-containing mushroom to be brought to scientific attention. Thus Reko initiated the study of the indole hallucinogens of Mexico and two chains of research and discovery, which would eventually be reunited when Albert Hofmann, the Swiss pharmaceutical chemist, characterized both compounds in his laboratory. WHISPERS OF A NEW WORLD MUSHROOM Reko had obtained his mushroom sample from Roberto Weitlander, a European engineer working in Mexico. The following year, 1938, a small group including Weitlander's daughter and anthropologist Jean Basset Johnson became the first whites to attend a nightlong mushroom ceremony, or velada. Wassen eventually forwarded Reko's samples to Harvard, where they came to the attention of the young ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes. Schultes had been a medical student until he had happened upon Kluver's work on mescaline. Schultes believed that Reko's mushroom might be the mysterious teonandcatl described by the Spanish chroniclers. He and an anthropology student from Yale, Weston La Barre, published a summation of the evidence for teonandcatl being a psychoactive mushroom. The next year found Schultes accompanying Reko to the village of Huatla de Jimenez in the Sierra Mazatecan highlands. Specimens of psychoactive mushrooms were collected and forwarded to Harvard. But larger forces were afoot during the late thirties; like research in many other areas, ethnobotanical research slowed to a stop as the world slipped into world war. Reko retired, and as the Japanese solidified their hold on the rubber plantations of Malaya, Schultes accepted an assignment to the Amazon Basin to study rubber extraction for the U.S. government's wartime Office of Strategic Services. But, before this, in 1939, he published The Identification of Teonandcatl, a Narcotic Basidiomycete of the Aztecs. Here he quietly announced his correct solution to an enigma that at that time seemed no more than a matter of scholarly debate among Mesoamericanists. THE INVENTION OF LSD Yet, even as the lights were going out in Europe, a fundamental breakthrough occurred. In 1938 Albert Hofmann was engaged in routine pharmaceutical research at Sandoz Laboratories, in Basel, Switzerland. Hofmann hoped to produce new drugs that would ease labor and childbirth. While working with the vasoconstricting substances derived from ergot, Hofmann synthesized the first d-lysergic acid diethylamide tartratc—LSD-25. Hofmann, a modest man, merely noted the correct completion of the synthesis, and the untested compound was cataloged and placed into storage. There it remained, surrounded by Nazi Europe for the next five years, five of the most tumultuous years in human history. It is frightening to imagine some of the possible consequences had Hofmann's discovery been recognized for what it was even a moment earlier. Alfred Jarry may have anticipated and allegorized the great event when he wrote "The Passion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race"11 in 1894. Indeed, the Dadaists and Surrealists and their forerunners grouped around Jarry and his Ecole du Pataphysique did much to explore the use of hashish and mescaline as augmentations to creative expression. They set the cultural stage for the truly surreal emergence of society's awareness of LSD. Every LSD enthusiast knows the story of how on April 16, 1943, feeling a touch of the Friday blahs, and unaware that he had absorbed a dose of LSD through handling the chemical without gloves, chemist, and soon-to-be counterculture hero, Albert Hofmann left work early and set off on his bicycle through the streets of Basel: I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated dreamlike condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (1 found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away. PANDORA'S BOX FLUNG OPEN Finally, in 1947, the news of Hofmann's extraordinary discovery, a megahallucinogen active in the microgram range, surfaced in the scientific literature. As events in the 1950s made clear, Pandora's box had been flung open. - In 1954, Aldous Huxley wrote The Doors of Perception, a brilliant literary snapshot of the male European intellectual grappling with and agape at the realization of the true dimensions of consciousness and the cosmos What the rest of us see only under the influence of mes- caline, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time. His perception is not limited to what is biologically or so- daily useful. A little of the knowledge belonging to Mind at Large oozes past the reducing valve of brain and ego, into his consciousness. It is a knowledge of the intrinsic significance of every existent. For the artist, as for the mes- caline taker, draperies are living hieroglyphs that stand in some peculiarly expressive way for the unfathomable mys- tery of our being. More even than the chair, though less perhaps than those wholly supernatural flowers, the folds of my gray flannel trousers were charged with "is-ness." To what they owed this privileged status, I cannot say. In 1956 the Czech chemist Steven Szara synthesized dimcthyl-tryptamine, DMT. DMT remains the most powerful of all hallucinogens and one of the most short acting of these compounds known. When DMT is smoked, the intoxication reaches a peak in about two minutes and then abates over about ten minutes. Injections are typically more prolonged in their effect. Here is the discoverer's account: On the third or fourth minute after the injection vegetative symptoms appeared, such as tingling sensations, trembling, slight nausea, mydriasis, elevation of the blood pressure and increase of the pulse rate. At the same time eidetic phenomena, optical illusions, pseudo-hallucinations, and later real hallucinations appeared. The hallucinations consisted of moving, brilliantly colored oriental motifs, and later I saw wonderful scenes altering very rapidly- - A year later, in May 1957, Valentina and Gordon Wasson published their now famous article in Life magazine announcing the discovery of the psilocybin mushroom complex. This article, as much as any other single piece of writing published on the subject, introduced into mass consciousness the notion that plants could cause exotic, perhaps even paranormal, visions. A New York investment banker, Wasson was well acquainted with the movers and shakers of the Establishment. Therefore, it was natural that he should turn to his friend Henry Luce, publisher of Life, when he needed a public forum in which to announce his discoveries. The tone of the Life article contrasts sharply with the hysteria and distortion that the American media would later fan. The article is both fair and detailed, both open-minded and scientific. The chemical loose ends of the Wassons' discoveries were tidied up by Albert Hofmann, who made a second starring appearance in the history of psychedelic pharmacology by chemically isolating psilocybin and determining its structure in 1958. In the short space of a dozen years in the recent past, from 1947 until 1960, the major indole hallucinogens were characterized, purified, and investigated. It is no coincidence that the subsequent decade was the most turbulent decade in America in a hundred years. LSD AND THE PSYCHEDELIC SIXTIES To understand the role of psychedelics in the 1960s, we must recall the lessons of prehistory and the importance to early human beings of the dissolution of boundaries in group ritual based on ingestion of hallucinogenic plants. The effect of these compounds is largely psychological and is only partially culturally conditioned; in fact, the compounds act to dissolve cultural conditioning of any sort. They force the corrosive process of reform of community values. Such compounds should be recognized as deconditioning agents; by revealing the relativity of conventional values, they become powerful forces in the political struggle to control the evolution of social images. The sudden introduction of a powerful deconditioning agent such as LSD had the effect of creating a mass defection from community values, especially values based on a dominator hierarchy accustomed to suppressing consciousness and awareness. LSD is unique among drugs in the power of its dose range. LSD is detectable in human beings at a dose of 50 micrograms, or 5/100,000 of a gram. Compounds that can elicit effects from amounts smaller than this are unheard of. This means that ten thousand doses of 100 micrograms each could in theory be obtained from one pure gram. More than any other aspect, this staggering ratio of physical mass to market value explains the meteoric rise of LSD use and its subsequent suppression. LSD is odorless and colorless, and it can be mixed in liquids; hundreds of doses could be concealed under a postage stamp. Prison walls were no barrier to LSD, nor were national borders. It could be manufactured in any location with the necessary technology and immediately transported anywhere. Millions of doses of LSD could be and were manufactured by a very few people. Pyramidal markets formed around these sources of supply; criminal syndicalism, a precondition to fascism, quickly followed. But LSD is more than a commodity—it is a commodity that dissolves the social machinery through which it moves. This effect has bedeviled all the factions that have sought to use LSD to advance a political agenda. A psychological deconditioning agent is inherently counter-agenda. Once the various parties attempting to gain control of the situation recognized this, they were able to agree on one thing— that LSD be stopped. How and by whom this was done is a lively story that has been well told, most notably by Jay Stevens in Storming Heaven and Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain in Acid Dreams.15 These authors make clear that when the methods that worked for colonial empires peddling opium in the nineteenth century were applied by the CIA to the internal management of the American state of mind during the Vietnam War they damn near blew up the whole psycho-social shithouse. Lee and Shlain write: The use of LSD among young people in the US reached a peak in the late 1960s, shortly after the CIA initiated a series of covert operations designed to disrupt, discredit, and neutralize the New Left. Was this merely a historical coincidence, or did the Agency actually take steps to promote the illicit acid trade? Not surprisingly, CIA spokesmen dismiss such a notion out of hand. "We do not target American citizens," former CIA director Richard Helms told the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1971. "The nation must to a degree take it on faith that we who lead the CIA are honorable men, devoted to the nation's service." Helms's reassurances are hardly comforting in light of his own role as the prime instigator of Operation MK-UL-TRA, which utilized unwitting Americans as guinea pigs for testing LSD and other mind-altering substances. As it turns out, nearly every drug that appeared on the black market during the 1960s—marijuana, cocaine, heroin, PCP, amyl nitrate, mushrooms, DMT, barbiturates, laughing gas, speed, and many others—had previously been scrutinized, tested, and in some cases refined by CIA and army scientists. But of all the techniques explored by the Agency in its multimillion-dollar twenty-five-year quest to conquer the human mind, none received as much attention or was embraced with such enthusiasm as LSD-25. For a time CIA personnel were completely infatuated with the hallucinogen. Those who first tested LSD in the early 1950s were convinced that it would revolutionize the cloak and dagger trade. During Helms's tenure as CIA director, the Agency conducted a massive illegal domestic campaign against the antiwar movement and other dissident elements in the US. As a result of Helms' successful campaign, the New Left was in a shambles when Helms retired from the CIA in 1973. Most of the official records pertaining to the CIA's drug and mind control projects were summarily destroyed on orders from Helms shortly before his departure. The files were shredded, according to Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, chief of the CIA's Technical Services Staff, because of "a burgeoning paper problem." Lost in the process were numerous documents concerning the operational employment of hallucinogenic drugs, including all existing copies of a classified CIA manual titled "LSD: Some Un-Psychedelic Implications." The times were extraordinary, made only more so by the fantasies of those who sought to control them. The 1960s can almost be seen as a time when two pharmacological mind-sets clashed in an atmosphere close to that of war. On the one hand, international heroin syndicates sought to narcotize America's black ghettos, while hoodwinking the middle class into supporting military adventurism. On the other, self-organized criminal syndicates manufactured and distributed tens of millions of doses of LSD while waging a highly visible underground campaign for their own brand of psychedelic cryptoanarchy. The result of this encounter can be seen as something of a standoff. The war in Southeast Asia was a catastrophic defeat for the American Establishment, yet paradoxically barely a shred of psychedelic utopianism survived the encounter. All psychedelic drugs, even such unknowns as ibogaine and bufotinin, were made illegal. A relentless restructuring of values was begun in the West; throughout the seventies and eighties the need to deny the impact of the sixties took on something of the flavor of a mass obsession. As the seventies progressed, the new management agenda became clear; while heroin had lost some of its glamour, now there was to be television for the poor and cocaine for the rich. By the end of the 1960s psychedelic research had been hounded out of existence—not only in the United States, but around the world. And this happened despite the enormous excitement these discoveries had created among psychologists and students of human behavior, an excitement analogous to the feelings that swept the physics community at the news of the splitting of the atom. But whereas the power of the atom, convertible into weapons of mass destruction, was fascinating to the dominator Establishment, the psychedelic experience loomed ultimately as an abyss. The new era of repression came despite the fact that a number of researchers were using LSD to cure conditions previously considered untreatable. Canadian psychiatrists Abram Hoffer and Humphrey Osmond tabulated the results of eleven separate studies of alcoholism and concluded that 45 percent of the patients treated with LSD improved. Promising results were obtained in attempts to treat schizophrenics, autistic children, and the severely depressed. Many of these findings were attacked after LSD became illegal, but better experiments were never designed and the work could not be repeated because of its illegality. Psychiatry's promising new uses of LSD to treat pain, addiction, alcoholism, and depression during terminal illness were put on indefinite hold. It fell to the humble science of botany to advance our understanding of hallucinogenic plants. RICHARD SCHULTES AND THE PLANT HALLUCINOGENS At the center of this quiet revolution in botany was a single man, Richard Evans Schultes—the same Schultes who had seen his Mexican research interrupted by World War II. Schultes spent more than fifteen years in the Amazon Basin; he filed reports with the OSS on the natural rubber crop until the invention of synthetic rubber made that task unnecessary; and he studied and collected the orchids of the rain forest and the alti piano. As Schultes traveled, it became clear that his interest in Kluver's experiments with mes-caline, and his fascination with the psychoactive plants of Mexico, would not be wasted in South America. Years later, he would write of his work among the shamans of the Sibundoy Valley of southern Colombia: "The shamanism of this valley may well represent the most highly evolved narcotic consciousness on earth." What was true of the Sibundoy was nearly as true of the Upper Amazon generally, and over the next several decades it was Schultes and his graduate students who practiced and spread the gospel of modern ethnobotany. Schultes focused on psychoactive plants from the beginning of his work. He correctly recognized that aboriginal people who had painstakingly composed an armamentorium of healing and medicinal plants were likely to most clearly understand their mental effects. After his early work on peyote and mushrooms, Schultes turned his attention to the several species of vision-inducing morning glories used in Oaxaca. In 1954 he published on the snuffs of the Amazon and thus announced to the world the existence of traditional shamanic usage of plant-produced DMT. Throughout the next thirty-five years the Harvard group meticulously investigated and published all instances of psychoactive plant usage that came to their attention. This body of now continuously expanding work—an integrated body of taxonomic, ethnographic, pharmacological, and medical information—constitutes the core of the data base currently in global use. The birth of ethnopsychopharmacology took place at Harvard under Schultes's watchful eye, much of it during the turbulent years when Timothy Leary was also at Harvard and attracting a very different sort of reputation through his own effort to place the psychedelic experience on the social agenda. LEARY AT HARVARD It is doubtful that either Leary or Schultes saw much to like in the other. They could hardly have been more different—Schultes the reticent Brahmin, scholar, and botanist/scientist, Leary the sha-manic trickster and social scientist. Leary's earliest psychedelic experience had been with mushrooms; he would later recall that he was recruited for what he called "my planetary mission" by that first psilocybin encounter in Mexico. But the politics of expediency were forced on the Harvard Psilocybin Project; LSD was more accessible and less expensive than psilocybin. Michael Hollingshead was the person most responsible for making LSD the drug of choice in Harvard's psychedelic circles: [Leary] latched onto Hollingshead as his guru. Leary followed him around for days on end. . . . Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner, two of Leary's closest associates, were vexed to see him in such a helpless state. They thought he had really blown his mind and they blamed Hollingshead. But it was only a matter of time before they too sampled the contents of the mayonnaise jar. Hollingshead gave the drug to the members of the psilocybin project and from then on LSD was part of their research repertoire. PSILOCYBIN: PSYCHEDELICS IN THE SEVENTIES After the suppression of the psychedelic subculture that began with the illegalization of LSD in October 1966, the evolution of substance sophistication seemed to lose momentum. The most significant development during the 1970s from the point of view of those alerted to the psychedelic potential by earlier experiences with LSD and mescaline was the appearance, beginning in late 1975, of techniques and manuals for the home cultivation of psilocybin mush- rooms. Several such manuals appeared, the earliest being Psilocybin: The Magic Mushroom Growers Guide written by my brother and me and published pseudonymously under the names O. T. Oss and O. N. Oeric. The book sold over a hundred thousand copies over the next five years, and several imitators also did very well. Hence psilocybin, long sought and long familiar to the psychedelic community through the effusive prose of Wasson and Leary, became available at last to large numbers of people, who no longer needed to travel to Oaxaca to obtain the experience. The ambience of psilocybin is different from that of LSD. Hallucinations come easier, and so does a sense that this is not merely a lens for the inspection of the personal psyche, but a communication device for getting in touch with the world of the high shamanism of Archaic antiquity. A community of therapists and astronauts of inner space has evolved around the use of the mushrooms. To this day these quiet groups of professionals and inner pioneers constitute the core of the community of people who have admitted the fact of the psychedelic experience into their lives and professions and who continue to grapple with it and learn from it. And there we will leave the history of human involvement with plants that intoxicate or bring visions or consuming frenzy. We now know no more really than was known by our remote ancestors. Perhaps less. Indeed, we cannot even be certain whether science, the epistemic tool upon which we have come to depend most heavily, is up to this task. For we can begin our quest for understanding in the cool domains of archaeology or botany or neuro-pharmacology, but what is troubling and miraculous is the fact that all these approaches, when seen with psychedelic eyes, seem to lead to the internal nexus of self and world that we experience as the deepest levels of our own being. PSYCHEDELIC IMPLICATIONS What does it mean that pharmacology's effort to reduce the mind to molecular machinery confined within the brain has handed back to us a vision of mind that argues for its almost cosmic proportions? Drugs seem the potential agents of both our devolution back into the animal and our metamorphosis into a shining dream of possible perfection. "Man to man is like unto an errant beast," wrote the English social philosopher Thomas Hobbes, "and man to man is like unto a god." To this we might add "and never more so than when using drugs." The 1980s were an era unusually empty of developments in the area of psychedelics. Synthetic amphetamines such as MDA were sporadically available from the early 1970s on, and during the 1980s MDMA (Ecstasy) appeared in significant amounts. MDMA in particular showed promise when used with directed psychotherapy, but these drugs were quickly made illegal and forced underground before they achieved any general impact on society. MDMA was simply the most recent echo of the search for inner balance that drives ever-shifting styles of drug use and inner exploration. The drug terror of the 1980s was crack cocaine, a drug whose economic profile and high risk for addiction made it ideal in the eyes of the already established infrastructure for supplying the ordinary cocaine market. The costs of drug education and drug treatment are small relative to routine military expenditures and could be contained. What cannot be contained are the effects that psychedelics would have in shaping the cultural self-image if all drugs were legal and available. This is the hidden issue that makes governments unwilling to consider legalization: the unmanaged shift of consciousness that legal and available drugs, including plant psychedelics, would bring is extremely threatening to a dominator, ego-oriented culture. PUBLIC AWARENESS OF THE PROBLEM To this point public awareness of issues concerning drugs has been lacking and public opinion easily manipulated. The situation must change. We must prepare to master the problem of our relationship to psychoactive substances. This cannot be done by an appeal to some antihuman standard of behavior that spells more suppression of the mass psyche by dominator metaphors. There can be no "Saying No" to drugs; nothing so asinine or preposterous will do. Nor can we be led down the primrose path by feel-good philosophies that see unbridled hedonism as the Holy Grail of social organization. Our only reasonable course is decriminalization of drugs, mass education, and shamanism as an interdisciplinary and professional approach to these realities. It is our souls that have become ill when we abuse drugs, and the shaman is a healer of souls. Such measures will not immediately solve the general drug problem, but they will preserve the sorely needed pipeline to the spirit that we must have if we expect to restructure society's attitude toward plant and substance use and abuse. An interrupted psychophysical symbiosis between ourselves and the visionary plants is the unrecognized cause of the alienation of modernity and the cultural mind-set of planetary civilization. A worldwide attitude of fear toward drugs is being fostered and manipulated by the dominator culture and its propaganda organs. Vast illicit fortunes continue to be made; government continues to wring its hands. This is but the most recent effort to profiteer from and frustrate our species' deeply instinctual need to make contact with the Gaian mind of the living planet. 15 ANTICIPATING THE ARCHAIC PARADISE Let us turn to the kind of options available to someone who seriously wishes to redress the history-created ego imbalance within themselves. This requires a brief survey of the opportunities to explore plant hallucinogens presently afforded by non-Western societies around the world. REAL WORLD OPTIONS There is, of course, the psilocybin complex discovered by Valentina and Gordon Wasson—the magic mushrooms of central Mexico, which almost certainly played a major role in the religion of the Mayan and Toltec civilizations. This complex includes the more widely distributed Stropharia cubensis, which is thought to have originated in Thailand but is now found throughout the warm tropics. The highlands of Mazetecan Mexico are home to two species of morning glories. Ipomoea purpura and Turbina (formerly Rivea) corymbosa. The properties of ergot that interested Albert Hofmann and led eventually to his discovery of LSD, that of being a constrictor of smooth muscle and thus a potential aid in labor, had long been known to midwives of the Sierra Mazateca. The accompanying dissolution of perceived boundaries and influx of visionary information made these morning glories the preferred substitute in times when psilocybin-containing mushrooms were not available. With only one exception, all of the shamanic vision plants— including the morning glory complex of Mexico and the psilocybin complex—turn out to be hallucinogenic indoles. The single exception is mescaline, which is a kind of phenethylamine. And one must not fail to consider those other indoles, the short-acting tryptamines and the beta-carbolines. The short-acting tryptamines can be used separately or in combination with beta-carbolines. The beta-carbolines, though hallucinogenic in themselves, are most effective when used as monoamine oxidase inhibitors to enhance the effects of short-acting tryptamines and also to cause tryptamines to become orally active. I have not mentioned any synthetics, because I would prefer to separate the vision-producing plants from the popular notion of drugs. The global drug problem is a different issue entirely and has to do with the fates of nations and mega-dollar criminal syndicates. I avoid synthetic drugs and prefer the organic hallucinogens, because I believe that a long history of shamanic usage is the first seal of approval that one must look for when selecting a substance for its possible effects on personal growth. And if a plant has been used for thousands of years, one can also be fairly confident that it does not cause tumors or miscarriages or carry other unacceptable physical risks. Over time, trial and error has resulted in the choice of the most effective and least toxic plants for shamanic use. Other criteria are also relevant when evaluating a substance. It is important to use only those compounds that do not insult the physical brain; regardless of what the physical brain does or doesn't have to do with the mind, it certainly has much to do with the metabolism of hallucinogens. Compounds alien to the brain and therefore difficult for it to metabolize should be avoided. One way of judging how long a relationship between humans and a plant has been in place is to notice how benign the compound is in human metabolism. If after you have taken a plant, your eyes are not in focus forty-eight hours later, or your knees are feeling rubbery three days later, then this is not a benign compound that has evolved into a smooth hand-in-glove fit with the human user. THE CASE FOR HALLUCINOGENIC TRYPTAMINES These criteria explain why, to my mind, the tryptamines are so interesting, and why I argue for the psilocybin mushroom as the primary hallucinogen involved in the Archaic origin of consciousness. The tryptamines, including psilocybin, bear a striking resemblance to human neurochemistry. The human brain, and indeed most nervous systems, run partially on 5-hydroxytryptamine, also known as serotonin. DMT, closely related to serotonin, is the hallucinogenic compound central to Amazonian shamanism, and is the most powerful of all hallucinogens in human beings and yet when smoked clears the system in less than fifteen minutes. The structural similarity between these two compounds may indicate the great antiquity of the evolutionary relationship between human brain metabolism and these particular compounds. Having discussed options, it only remains to discuss techniques. Aldous Huxley called the psychedelic experience "a gratuitous grace." By this he meant that by itself the psychedelic experience is neither necessary nor sufficient for personal salvation. It also can be elusive. All conditions for success may be present and one can still fail to connect. However, one cannot fail to connect if all conditions for success are present and one does it over and over again—perhaps there is a temporal variable there. Good technique is obvious: one sits down, one shuts up, and one pays attention. That is the essence of good technique. These journeys should be taken on an empty stomach, in silent darkness, and in a situation of comfort, familiarity, and security. "Set" and "setting," terms established by Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner in the 1960s, have remained excellent reference points. Set refers to the interiorized feelings, hopes, fears, and expectations of the would-be psychonaut. Setting refers to the external situation in which the interior journey will take place—the noise level, light level, and level of familiarity to the voyager. Both set and setting should optimize feelings of security and confidence. External stimuli should be severely limited—phones unplugged, noisy machines stilled. Study the darkness behind closed eyelids with the expectation of seeing something. The experience is not simply eidetic hallucination (which we get when we press on our closed eyelids), al- though it begins like eidetic hallucination. Comfortable, silent darkness is the preferred environment for the shaman to launch what the neo-Platonic mystic Plotinus called "the flight of the alone to the Alone." Major conceptual and linguistic difficulties are involved in conveying to people precisely what this experience is like. Most of those reading my words will have had at some point in their lives something which they would describe as a "drug experience." But did you know that your experience is bound to be unique and different from that of everyone else? These experiences range from mild tingling in the feet to being in titanic and alien realms where the mind boggles and language fails. And one feels the presence of the utterly unspeakable, the wholly Other. Memories fall, gritty and particulate, like the snows of yesteryear. Opalescence anticipates neon, and language gives birth to itself. Hyperbole becomes impossible. And therein lies the importance of discussing these matters. HOW DOES IT FEEL? What was the ambience of that lost Edenic world? What is the feeling whose absence has left us stranded in history? The onset of an indole hallucinogen is characterized first by a somatic activation, a feeling in the body. The indoles are not soporifics but central nervous system stimulants. The familiar feeling of "fight or flight" is often a feature of the first wave of somatic feelings associated with the hallucinogen. One must discipline the hind brain and simply wait through this turmoil within the animal body. An orally active compound such as psilocybin makes its full effects felt in about an hour and a half; a compound that is smoked, such as DMT, becomes active in less than a minute. By whatever route the indole hallucinations are triggered, their full unfolding is impressive indeed. Bizarre ideas, often hilariously funny, curious insights, some seeming almost godlike in their profundity, shards of memories and free-form hallucinations all clamor for attention. In the state of hallucinogenic intoxication, creativity is not something that one expresses; it is something that one observes. The existence of this dimension of knowable meaning that appears to be without connection to one's personal past or aspirations seems to argue that we are facing either a thinking Other or the deep structures of the psyche made suddenly visible. Perhaps both. The profundity of this state and its potential for a positive feedback into the process of reorganizing the personality should have long ago made psychedelics an indispensable tool for psychotherapy. After all, dreams have made a major claim on the attention of the theoreticians of psychic process, as have free association and hypnotic regression; yet these are but peepholes into the hidden world of psychic dynamics compared with the expansive view that psychedelics provide. FACING THE ANSWER The situation that we now must deal with is not one of seeking the answer, but of facing the answer. The answer has been found; it just happens to lie on the wrong side of the fence of social toleration and legality. We are thus forced into a strange little dance. Those professionally involved know that psychedelics are the most powerful instruments for the study of the mind that are possible to conceive. And yet these people often work in academia and must frantically try to ignore the fact that the answer has been placed in our hands. Our situation is not unlike that of the sixteenth century when the telescope was invented and shattered the established paradigm of the heavens. The 1960s proved that we are not wise enough to take the psychedelic tools into our hands without a social and intellectual transformation. This transformation must begin now with each of us. Nature, in her evolutionary and morphogenetic richness, has offered a compelling model for us to follow in the shamanic task of re-sacralization and self-transformation that lies ahead. The to-temic animal image for the future human to model is the octopus. This is because the cephalopods, the squids and octopi, lowly creatures though they may seem, have perfected a form of communication that is both psychedelic and telepathic—an inspiring model for the human communications of the future. CONSIDER THE OCTOPUS An octopus does not communicate with small mouth noises, even though water is a good medium for acoustic signaling. Rather, the octopus becomes its own linguistic intent. Octopi have a large repertoire of color changes, dots, blushes, and traveling bars that move across their surfaces. This repertoire in combination with the soft-bodied physique of the creature allows it to obscure and reveal its linguistic intent simply by rapidly folding and unfolding the changing parts of its body. The mind and the body of the octopus are the same and hence equally visible; the octopus wears its language like a kind of second skin. Octopi can hardly not communicate. Indeed, their use of "ink" clouds to conceal themselves may indicate that this is the only way that they can have anything like a private thought. The ink cloud may be a kind of correction fluid for voluble octopi who have misstated themselves. Martin Moyniham has written of the complexities of cephalopod communication: The communication and related systems of. . . cephalo-pods are largely visual. They include arrangements of pigment cells, postures, and movements. The postures and movements can be ritualized or unritualized. Color changes presumably are always ritualized. The various patterns can be combined in many and often intricate ways. They can be changed very rapidly. Since they are visual, they should be relatively easy to describe and to decipher by human observers. There are, however, complications. . . . Read or not, correctly or not, the patterns of cephalopods, like those of all other animals, encode information. When and insofar as they are messages, intentional or not, [they] would seem to have not only syntax but also a simple grammar. Like the octopi, our destiny is to become what we think, to have our thoughts become our bodies and our bodies become our thoughts. This is the essence of the more perfect Logos envisioned by the Hellenistic polymath Philo Judaeus—a Logos, an indwelling of the Goddess, not heard but beheld. Hans Jonas explains Philo Judaeus's concept as follows: A more perfect archetypal logos, exempt from the human duality of sign and thing, and therefore not bound by the forms of speech, would not require the mediation of hearing, but is immediately beheld by the mind as the truth of things. In other words the antithesis of seeing and hearing argued by Philo lies as a whole within the realm of "seeing"—that is to say, it is no real antithesis but a difference of degree relative to the ideal of immediate intuitive presence of the object. It is with a view to this ideal that the "hearing" here opposed to "seeing" is conceived, namely as its deputizing, provisional mode, and not as something authentic, basically other than seeing. Accordingly the turn from hearing to seeing here envisaged is merely a progress from a limited knowledge to an adequate knowledge of the same and within the same project of knowledge. ART AND THE REVOLUTION The Archaic Revival is a clarion call to recover our birthright, however uncomfortable that may make us. It is a call to realize that life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience upon which primordial shamanism is based is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego and its fear of dissolution in the mysterious matrix of feeling that is all around us. It is in the Archaic Revival that our transcendence of the historical dilemma actually lies. There is something more. It is now clear that new developments in many areas—including mind-machine interfacing, pharmacology of the synthetic variety, and data storage, imaging, and retrieval techniques—are coalescing into the potential for a truly demonic or an angelic self-imaging of our culture. Those who are on the demonic side of this process are fully aware of this potential and are hurrying full tilt forward with their plans to capture the technological high ground. It is a position from which they hope to turn nearly everyone into a believing consumer in a beige fascism from whose image factory none will escape. The shamanic response, the Archaic response, the human response, to this situation should be to locate the art pedal and push it to the floor. This is one of the primary functions of shamanism, and is the function that is tremendously synergized by the psy-chedelics. If psychedelics are exopheromones that dissolve the dominant ego, then they are also enzymes that synergize the human imagination and empower language. They cause us to connect and reconnect the contents of the collective mind in ever more implausible, beautiful, and self-fulfilling ways. If we are serious about an Archaic Revival, then we need a new paradigmatic image that can take us rapidly forward and through the historical choke point that we can feel impeding and resisting a more expansive, more humane, more caring dimension that is insisting on being born. Our sense of political obligation, of the need to reform or save the collective soul of humanity, our wish to connect the end of history with the beginning of history—all of this should impel us to look at shamanism as an exemplary model. In the current global crisis we cannot fail to take its techniques seriously, even those which may challenge the divinely ordained covenants of the constabulary. CONSCIOUSNESS EXPANSION Years ago, before Humphrey Osmond coined the term "psychedelic," there was current a phenomenological description for psychedelics; they were called "consciousness-expanding drugs." I believe that this is a very good description. Consider our dilemma on this planet. If the expansion of consciousness does not loom large in the human future, what kind of future is it going to be? To my mind, the propsychedelic position is most fundamentally threatening to the Establishment because, when fully and logically thought through, it is an antidrug, antiaddiction position. And make no mistake about it; the issue is drugs. How drugged shall you be? Or, to put it another way, how conscious shall you be? Who shall be conscious? Who shall be unconscious? We need a serviceable definition of what we mean by "drug." A drug is something that causes unexamined, obsessive, and habitual behavior. You don't examine obsessive behavior; you just do it. You let nothing get in the way of your gratification. This is the kind of life that we are being sold at every level. To watch, to consume, and to watch and consume yet more. The psychedelic option is off in a tiny corner, never mentioned; yet it represents the only coun-terflow directed against a tendency to leave people in designer states of consciousness. Not their own designs, but the designs of Madison Avenue, of the Pentagon, of the Fortune 500 corporations. This isn't just metaphor; it is really happening to us. Looking down on Los Angeles from an airliner, I never fail to notice that it is like looking at a printed circuit: all those curved driveways and cul de sacs with the same little modules installed along each one. As long as the Reader's Digest stays subscribed to and the TV stays on, these modules are all interchangeable parts within a very large machine. This is the nightmarish reality that Marshall McLuhan and Wyndham Lewis and others foresaw: the creation of the public as herd. The public has no history and no future, the public lives in a golden moment created by a credit system which binds them ineluctably to a web of illusions that is never critiqued. This is the ultimate consequence of having broken off the symbiotic relationship with the Gaian matrix of the planet. This is the consequence of lack of partnership; this is the legacy of imbalance between the sexes; this is the terminal phase of a long descent into meaninglessness and toxic existential confusion. The credit for giving us tools to resist this horror belongs to unsung heroes who are botanists and chemists, people such as Richard Schultes, the Wassons, and Albert Hofmann. Thanks to them we have, in this most chaotic of centuries, taken into our frail hands the means to do something about our predicament. Psychology, in contrast, has been complacent and silent. Psychologists have been content with behaviorist theory-making for fifty years, while knowing in their hearts that they were doing a potentially fatal disservice to human dignity, by ignoring the potential of psychedelics. THE DRUG WAR If there was ever a moment to be heard and be counted and to try to clarify thinking on these issues, that moment is now. For some time there has been a major attack on the Bill of Rights under the pretext of the so-called drug war. Somehow the drug issue is even more frightening to the public herd than was Communism, even more insidious. The quality of rhetoric emanating from the psychedelic community must improve radically. If it does not, we will forfeit the reclamation of our birthright and all opportunity for exploring the psychedelic dimension will be closed off. Ironically, this tragedy could occur almost as a footnote to the suppression of synthetic and addictive narcotics. It cannot be said too often: the psychedelic issue is a civil rights and civil liberties issue. It is an issue concerned with the most basic of human freedoms: religious practice and the privacy of the individual mind. It was said that women could not be given the vote because society would be destroyed. Before that, kings could not give up absolute power because chaos would result. And now we are told that drugs cannot be legalized because society would disintegrate. This is puerile nonsense! As we have seen, human history could be written as a series of relationships with plants, relationships made and broken. We have explored a number of ways in which plants, drugs, and politics have cruelly intermingled—from the influence of sugar on mercantilism to the influence of coffee on the modern office worker, from the British forcing opium on the Chinese population to the CIA using heroin in the ghetto to choke off dissent and dissatisfaction. History is the story of these plant relationships. The lessons to be learned can be raised into consciousness, integrated into social policy, and used to create a more caring, meaningful world, or they can be denied just as discussion of human sexuality was repressed until the work of Freud and others brought it into the light. The analogy is apt because the enhanced capacity for cognitive experience made possible by plant hallucinogens is as basic a part of our humanness as is our sexuality. The question of how quickly we develop into a mature community able to address these issues lies entirely with us. HYPERSPACE AND HUMAN FREEDOM What is most feared by those who advocate the unworkable Luddite solution of "Just say no" is a world in which all traditional community values have dissolved in the face of an endless search for self-gratification on the part of drug-obsessed individuals and pop- ulations. We should not dismiss this only too real possibility. But what must be rejected is the notion that this admittedly disturbing future can be avoided by witch hunts, the suppression of research, and the hysterical spreading of disinformation and lies. Drugs have been a part of the galaxy of cultural concerns since the dawn of time. It was only with the advent of technologies capable of refining and concentrating the active principles of plants and plant preparations that drugs separate themselves from the general background of cultural concerns and become instead a scourge. In a sense what we have is not a drug problem, but a problem with the management of our technologies. Is our future to include the appearance of new synthetic drugs, a hundred or a thousand times more addictive than heroin or crack? The answer is absolutely yes—unless we bring to consciousness and examine the basic human need for chemical dependency and then find and sanction avenues for expression of this need. We are discovering that human beings are creatures of chemical habit with the same horrified disbelief as when the Victorians discovered that humans are creatures of sexual fantasy and obsession. This process of facing ourselves as a species is a necessary precondition to the creation of a more humane social and natural order. It is important to remember that the adventure of facing who we are did not begin or end with Freud and Jung. The argument this book has sought to develop is that the next step in the adventure of self-understanding can begin only when we take note of our innate and legitimate need for an environment rich in mental states that are induced through an act of will. I believe we can initiate the process by revisioning our origins. Indeed, I have taken great pains to show that in the Archaic milieu in which self-reflection first emerged we find clues to the roots of our own troubled history. WHAT IS NEW HERE The hallucinogenic indoles, unstudied and legally suppressed, are here presented as agents of evolutionary change. They are biochemical agents whose ultimate impact is not on the direct experience of the individual but on the genetic constitution of the species. Earlier chapters drew attention to the fact that increased visual acuity, increased reproductive success, and increased stimulation of protolinguistic brain functions are all logical consequences of the inclusion of psilocybin in the early human diet. If the notion that human consciousness emerged out of indole-mediated synergy of neurodevelopment could be proven, then our image of ourselves, -our relationship to nature, and the present dilemma over drug use in society would change. There is no solution to the "drug problem," or to the problem of environmental destruction or the problem of nuclear weapons stockpiles, until and unless our self-image as a species is reconnected to the earth. This begins with an analysis of the unique confluence of conditions that must have been necessary for animal organization to make the leap to conscious self-reflection in the first place. Once the centrality of the hallucinogen-mediated human-plant symbiosis in the scenario of our origins is understood, we are then in a position to appreciate our current state of neurosis. Assimilation of the lessons contained in those ancient and formative events can lay the groundwork for solutions to meet not only society's need to manage substance use and abuse but also our deep and growing need for a spiritual dimension to our lives. THE DMT EXPERIENCE Earlier in this chapter, DMT was singled out as being of particular interest. What can be said of DMT as an experience and in relation to our own spiritual emptiness? Does it offer us answers? Do the short-acting tryptamines offer an analogy to the ecstasy of the partnership society before Eden became a memory? And if they do, then what can we say about it? What has impressed me repeatedly during my many glimpses into the world of the hallucinogenic indoles, and what seems generally to have escaped comment, is the transformation of narrative and language. The experience that engulfs one's entire being as one slips beneath the surface of the DMT ecstasy feels like the penetration of a membrane. The mind and the self literally unfold before one's eyes. There is a sense that one is made new, yet unchanged, as if one were made of gold and had just been recast in the furnace of one's birth. Breathing is normal, heartbeat steady, the mind clear and observing. But what of the world? What of incoming sensory data? Under the influence of DMT, the world becomes an Arabian labyrinth, a palace, a more than possible Martian jewel, vast with motifs that flood the gaping mind with complex and wordless awe. Color and the sense of a reality-unlocking secret nearby pervade the experience. There is a sense of other times, and of one's own infancy, and of wonder, wonder, and more wonder. It is an audience with the alien nuncio. In the midst of this experience, apparently at the end of human history, guarding gates that seem surely to open on the howling maelstrom of the unspeakable emptiness between the stars, is the Aeon. The Aeon, as Heraclitus presciently observed, is a child at play with colored balls. Many diminutive beings are present there—the tykes, the self-transforming machine elves of hyperspace. Are they the children destined to be father to the man? One has the impression of entering into an ecology of souls that lies beyond the portals of what we naively call death. I do not know. Are they the synesthetic embodiment of ourselves as the Other, or of the Other as ourselves? Are they the elves lost to us since the fading of the magic light of childhood? Here is a tremendum barely to be told, an epiphany beyond our wildest dreams. Here is the realm of that which is stranger than we can suppose. Here is the mystery, alive, unscathed, still as new for us as when our ancestors lived it fifteen thousand summers ago. The tryptamine entities offer the gift of new language; they sing in pearly voices that rain down as colored petals and flow through the air like hot metal to become toys and such gifts as gods would give their children. The sense of emotional connection is terrifying and intense. The Mysteries revealed are real and if ever fully told will leave no stone upon another in the small world we have gone so ill in. This is not the mercurial world of the UFO, to be invoked from lonely hilltops; this is not the siren song of lost Atlantis wailing through the trailer courts of crack-crazed America. DMT is not one of our irrational illusions. I believe that what we experience in the presence of DMT is real news. It is a nearby dimension—frightening, transformative, and beyond our powers to imagine, and yet to be explored in the usual way. We must send fearless experts, whatever that may come to mean, to explore and to report on what they find. DMT, as we have discussed earlier, occurs as a part of ordinary human neurometabolism and is the most powerful of the naturally occurring indole hallucinogens. The extraordinary ease with which DMT utterly destroys all boundaries and conveys one into an impossible-to-anticipate and compellingly Other dimension is one of the miracles of life itself. And this first miracle is followed by a second: the utter ease and simplicity with which enzyme systems in the human brain recognize the DMT molecules at the synapses. After only a few hundred seconds, these enzymes have completely and harmlessly inactivated the DMT and reduced it to by-products of ordinary metabolism. That, with the most powerful of all hallucinogenic indoles, ordinary amine levels in the brain are reestablished so quickly argues there may have been a long co-evolutionary association between human beings and hallucinogenic tryptamines. Although psilocybin and psilocin, the hallucinogenic indoles active in the cattle-associated Stropharia cubensis mushroom, are not presently thought to directly metabolize into DMT before becoming active in the brain, nevertheless their pathway is the closest of relatives to the neural pathway of DMT activity. Indeed, they may be active at the same synapses, with DMT being, however, more reactive. The source of this difference is probably pharmacoki-netic—that is, DMT may cross the blood-brain barrier more readily, so that more reaches the site of activity in a shorter time. Affinity of the two compounds for the bond site is approximately equal. As mentioned earlier, research on DMT, particularly in human beings, has been by and large inadequate. When DMT has been studied, it was administered by injection. This is the preferred procedure with experimental drugs because dosages can be known precisely. Nevertheless, in the case of DMT this approach masked the existence of the extraordinary "turnaround time" of the experience when DMT is smoked. The experience of DMT by intermuscular injection lasts nearly an hour; the peak of the experience obtained by smoking occurs in about one minute. In the Amazon Basin some tribal people have a tradition of using DMT-containing plants. They use the sap of Virola trees, relatives of nutmeg, or the ground and toasted seeds of Anadenanthera peregrina, a huge leguminous tree. The generally accepted method of activating the indole is to snuff the powdered plant material. Such snuffing is not left to the discretion of the user; rather, the user has a friend blow a hollow reed full of fine powder up first one nostril, then the other (see Figure 27). Excruciating as this process is, it leaves no doubt that Amazonian shamans learned what modern DMT researchers have not: the most effective route of administration is by absorption through the nasal mucosa. HYPERSPACE AND THE LAW Perhaps you will object, "But isn't DMT illegal?" Yes, DMT is currently a Schedule I compound in the United States. Schedule I is a classification for drugs with no proven medical application whatsoever. Not even cocaine rates a Schedule I classification. Psilocybin and DMT were made Schedule I without any scientific evidence at all being presented for or against their use. In the paranoid atmosphere of the late sixties, the mere fact that these compounds cause hallucinations was sufficient grounds for their placement in a category so restrictive that even medical research is discouraged. Faced with such hysterical Know-Nothingism, we would do well to recall that at one time dissection of corpses was forbidden by the Church and denounced as witchcraft. Modern anatomy was created by medical students who visited battlefields or who stole corpses from the gallows. To advance their knowledge of the human body, they risked arrest and imprisonment. Should we be any less courageous in attempting to push back the frontiers of the known and the possible? The dominator mentality has always resisted change, almost as if it sensed the possibility of a kind of change that would leave it bereft of its power once and for all. In the phenomenon of the indole hallucinogens that prescient fear has born bounteous fruit— nothing less than the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. To eat it is to become as gods, and that will surely mean eclipse for the style of the dominators. Such would be the hope of any Archaic Revival. MEETINGS WITH A REMARKABLE OVERMIND The meltdown of Western rationalism has proceeded quite far, as anyone who will read any up-to-date popular book on cosmology or quantum physics can easily assure himself. Nevertheless, I wish to stoke the fires slightly by adding the concept of some kind of interdimensional nexus that is gained most reliably and directly through the use of indole hallucinogens with a long history of human usage and human coevolution. Such compounds are apparently functioning as regulators of cultural change and can be a means of obtaining access to the intentionality of some very large self-regulating system. Perhaps this is the Overmind of the species, or a kind of "mind of the planet' or perhaps we have been parochial in our search for nonhuman intelligence, and another minded, but radically different, intelligent species shares the earth with us. I offer these ideas in a speculative vein. I have no strong personal intuition as to what is going on. What I do believe is that I have a sufficient grasp of the customs, expectations, rules of evidence, and "common knowledge" of human beings to be able to report that what is going on inside the DMT intoxication is much more peculiar than anything anyone ever dreamed could be covered by the term "intoxication." When intoxicated by DMT, the mind finds itself in a convincingly real, apparently coexisting alien world. Not a world about our thoughts, our hopes, our fears; rather, a world about the tykes—their joys, their dreams, their poetry. Why? I have not the faintest idea. These are the facts of the matter; this is how it is with us. Alone among twentieth-century schools of mainstream thought, Jungian psychology has sought to confront some of the phenomena so central to shamanism. Alchemy, which Jung studied very carefully, was the inheritor of a long tradition of shamanistic and magical techniques, as well as more practical chemical procedures such as metalworking and embalming. The literature of alchemy shows that the swirling contents of the alchemical vessel were fertile ground for the projection of the contents of the naive prescientific mind. Jung insisted that alchemical allegories and emblems were products of the unconscious and could be analyzed in the same way as dreams. From Jung's point of view, finding the same motifs in the fantastic speculations of the alchemists and in the dreams of his patients was strong support for his theory of the collective unconscious and its universal generic archetypes. In the course of his alchemical studies, Jung encountered the accounts of the cabiri, the fairylike, alchemical children whose appearance, or felt presence, is a part of the late stages of the alchemical opus. These alchemical children are similar to the small helping spirits that the shaman calls to his aid. Jung saw them as autonomous portions of the psyche that have temporarily escaped from the control of the ego. Unfortunately, the explanation that these alchemical genii are "autonomous portions of the psyche" is no explanation at all. It is as if we were to describe an elf as a small nonphysical person of uncertain parentage. Such explanations only evade the need to confront the deeper nature of experience itself. Science has not been helpful in the matter of elusive human contacts with other intelligences. It prefers to direct its attention elsewhere, with the comment that subjective experiences, however peculiar, are not its province. What a pity, since subjective experience is all that any of us ever has. Anyhow, the largely subjective nature of the so-called objective universe has now been secured by that most objective of the sciences, physics. The new physics has the subjective observer inextricably tangled with the phenomena observed. Ironically, this is a return to the shamanic point of view. The real intellectual legacy of quantum physics may be the new respectability and primacy that it gives to subjectivity. Recentering ourselves in our subjectivity means a tremendous new reempowering of language, for language is the stuff of which the subjective world is made. Through psychedelics we are learning that God is not an idea, God is a lost continent in the human mind. That continent has been rediscovered in a time of great peril for ourselves and our world. Is this coincidence, synchronicity, or a cruelly meaningless juxtaposition of hope and ruin? Years ago I directed my life's work toward understanding the mystery at the center of the experience induced by tryptamine hallucinogens. It is not, ultimately, a mystery that science can elucidate. Of course I am aware that one's obsessions expand to fill all space. But in the climactic events surrounding the emergence of pastoralism and language in human beings, I found the ancient echo of the things that I had personally felt and witnessed. Now the answer sought and found must be faced. Flickering before us is a dimension so huge that its outlines can barely be brought into focus in the human frame of reference. Our animal existence, our planetary existence, is ending. In geological time that end is now only moments away. A great dying, a great extinction of many species, has been occurring since at least the pinnacle of the partnership society in prehistoric Africa. Our future lies in the mind; our weary planet's only hope of survival is that we find our- selves in the mind and make of it a friend that can reunite us with the earth while simultaneously carrying us to the stars. Change, more radical by magnitudes than anything that has gone before, looms immediately ahead. Shamans have kept the gnosis of the accessibility of the Other for millennia; now it is global knowledge. The consequences of this situation have only begun to unfold. Naturally I do not expect my words to be taken at face value. Nevertheless, these conclusions are based on an experience available to anyone who will but take the time to investigate DMT. The experience itself lasts less than fifteen minutes. I do not anticipate criticism from people who have not taken the trouble to conduct this simple and definitive experiment. After all, how seriously can critics be engaged with the problem if they are unwilling to invest a few minutes of their time to experience the phenomena firsthand? The deep psychedelic experience does not simply hold out the possibility of a world of sane people living in balance with the earth and one another. It also promises high adventure, engagement with something completely unexpected—a nearby alien universe teeming with life and beauty. Don't ask where; at the present moment we can only say, not here and not there. We have still to admit our ignorance concerning the nature of mind and how precisely the world comes to be and what it is. For more than several millennia our dream has been to understand these matters, and we are defeated. Defeated unless we remember the other possibility—the possibility of the wholly Other. Some misguided souls scan the heavens for friendly flying saucers that will intervene in profane history and carry us to paradise; others preach redemption at the feet of various rishis, roshis, geysheys, and gurus. Searchers are better advised to look to the work of the botanists, anthropologists, and chemists who have located, identified, and characterized the shamanic hallucinogens. Through them, we have had placed into our hands a tool for the redemption of the human enterprise. It is a great tool, but it is a tool that must be used. Our addictions down through the ages, from sugar to cocaine and television, have been a restless search for the thing torn from us in paradise. The answer has been found. It is no longer something to be sought. It has been found. RECOVERING OUR ORIGINS Using plants such as those described above will help us understand the precious gift of plant partnership that was lost at the dawn of time. Many people yearn to be introduced to the facts concerning their true identity. This essential identity is explicitly addressed by a plant hallucinogen. Not to know one's true identity is to be a mad, disensouled thing — a golem. And, indeed, this image, sick-eningly Orwellian, applies to the mass of human beings now living in the high-tech industrial democracies. Their authenticity lies in their ability to obey and follow mass style changes that are conveyed through the media. Immersed in junk food, trash media, and cryp-tofascist politics, they are condemned to toxic lives of low awareness. Sedated by the prescripted daily television fix, they are a living dead, lost to all but the act of consuming. I believe that the failure of our civilization to come to terms with the issue of drugs and habitual destructive behavior is a legacy of unhappiness for us all. But if we sufficiently reconstructed our image of self and world, we could make out of psychopharmacology the stuff of our grandest hopes and dreams. Instead, pharmacology has become the demonic handmaiden of an unchecked descent into regimentation and erosion of civil liberties. Most people are addicted to some substance and, more important, all people are addicted to patterns of behavior. Attempting to distinguish between habits and addictions does damage to the indissoluble confluence of mental and physical energies that shapes the behavior of each of us. People not involved in a relationship with food/drug stimulation are rare and by their preference for dogma and deliberately self-limited horizons must be judged to have failed to create a viable alternative to substance involvement. I have attempted here to examine our biological history and our more recent cultural history with an eye to something that may have been missed. My theme was human arrangements with plants, made and broken over the millennia. These relationships have shaped every aspect of our identities as self-reflecting beings — our languages, our cultural values, our sexual behavior, what we remember and what we forget about our own past. Plants are the missing link in the search to understand the human mind and its place in nature. THE FUNDAMENTALIST CONTRIBUTION In the United States, the federal government's zeal to appear to wish to eradicate drugs is directly linked to the degree to which the government has been co-opted by the values of fundamentalist Christianity. We entertain the illusion of the constitutional separation of church and state in the United States. But in fact the federal government, when it acted to prohibit alcohol during Prohibition, when it interferes with rights to reproductive freedom, or with the use of peyote in Native American religious rituals, and when it attempts unreasonably to regulate foods and substances, is acting as the enforcing arm for the values of right-wing fundamentalism. Eventually the right to determine our own food and drug preferences will be seen as a natural consequence of human dignity, as long as it is done in a way that does not limit the rights of others. The signing of the Magna Carta, the abolition of slavery, the enfranchisement of women—these are instances in which the evolving definition of what constituted fairness swept away ossified social structures that had come to rely more and more on a "fundamentalist" reading of their own first principles. The war on drugs is schizophrenically waged by governments that deplore the drug trade and yet are also the major guarantors and patrons of the international drug cartels. Such an approach is doomed to failure. The war on drugs was never meant to be won. Instead, it will be prolonged as long as possible in order to allow various intelligence operations to wring the last few hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits from the global drug scam; then defeat will have to be declared. "Defeat" will mean, as it did in the case of the Vietnam War, that the media will correctly portray the true dimensions of the situation and the real players, and that public revulsion at the culpability, stupidity, and venality of the Establishment's role will force a policy review. In cynically manipulating nations and peoples with narcotics and stimulants, modern governments have associated themselves with an ethical disaster comparable to the eighteenth-century rebirth of the slave trade or the recently renounced excesses of Marxism-Leninism. THE LEGALIZATION ISSUE The conclusion seems obvious: only legalization can lay the basis for a sane drug policy. Indeed, this opinion has been reached by most disinterested commentators on the problem, although the political consequences of advocating legalization have made it slow to be considered. Most recently Arnold Trebach's thoughtful book, The Great Drug War, has marshaled persuasive arguments in favor of a revolution in drug policy: Another model for guidance in approaching the subject of drug abuse may be found in the manner with which America has historically dealt with conflicting religious creeds; virtually all are accepted as decent moral options that ought to be available for those people who believe in them. The subject of drugs should be approached in the same spirit—more like religion than science. My wish is that law and medicine recognize the personal and nonscien-tific nature of the drug-abuse arena by enacting some form of First Amendment guarantee of freedom to select a personal drug abuse doctrine, but limited somewhat by enlightened principles of medicine. What Trebach does not discuss, indeed does not even mention, is the role to be played by hallucinogens in the postsuppression scenario. Indeed, psychedelics seem unimportant if the only measure of a drug's social impact is the estimate of the millions of dollars of street sales that may have taken place. Only LSD continues to be occasionally singled out among the psychedelics as a possible large-scale problem. However, estimates of the amount of psychedelics produced and used in the United States have been politicized and hence are unreliable and meaningless. But another measure of the social importance of a substance argues that we are remiss in not at least beginning to discuss the social impact of psychedelic use when we contemplate legalization of drugs. A clue to that other measure is the interest the CIA and military intelligence gave to psychedelics during the sixties through projects such as MK (for mind control) and MK-ULTRA. The widespread belief that the conclusion of these studies was that television was the drug of choice for mass hypnosis, while reasonable, should not be taken at face value. I believe that, once drugs are legalized, the fear that there will be a vast epidemic of cocaine or heroin addiction will be proven groundless. I also believe that there will be increased interest in and use of psychedelics, and that this possibility is of great concern to the Establishment. This new interest in psychedelics should be anticipated and provided for. If use of psychedelics makes it easier to recapture the social attitudes and assumptions of the original partnership cultures, then eventually educational institutions may wish to encourage this awareness. A new global consensus appears to be building. What was previously inchoate and unconscious is now becoming conscious and at the same time structured. The collapse of the Marxist alternative to media-dense, high-tech democratic consumerism has been swift and complete. For the first time in planetary history, a defined, albeit dimly defined, consensus exists for "democratic values." This trend will encounter real resistance from various forms of monotheistic religious fundamentalism during the 1990s. It is a phenomenon of expanded consciousness driven by the information explosion. Democracy is an articulation of the Archaic notion of the nomadic egalitarian group. In its purest expression it is thoroughly psychedelic and its triumph seems ultimately certain. The "drug problem" runs against the tendency toward global expansion of consciousness through spread of democratic values. There is no question that a society that sets out to control its citizens' use of drugs sets out on the slippery path to totalitarianism. No amount of police power, surveillance, and intrusion into people's lives can be expected to affect "the drug problem." Hence there is no limit to the amount of repression that frightened institutions and their brainwashed populations may call for. A MODEST PROPOSAL A drug policy respectful of democratic values would aim to educate people to make informed choices based on their own needs and ideals. Such a simple prescription is necessary and sadly overdue. A master plan for seriously seeking to come to terms with America's drug problems might explore a number of options, including the following. 1. A 200 percent federal tax should be imposed on tobacco and alcohol. All government subsidies for tobacco production should be ended. Warnings on packaging should be strengthened. A 20 percent federal sales tax should be levied on sugar and sugar substitutes, and all supports for sugar production should be ended. Sugar packages should also carry warnings, and sugar should be a mandatory topic in school nutrition curricula. 2. All forms of cannabis should be legalized and a 200 percent federal sales tax imposed on cannabis products. Information as to the THC content of the product and current conclusions regarding its impact on health should be printed on the packaging. 3. International Monetary Fund and World Bank lending should be withdrawn from countries that produce hard drugs. Only international inspection and certification that a country is in compliance would restore loan eligibility. 4. Strict gun control must apply to both manufacture and possession. It is the unrestricted availability of firearms that has made violent crime and the drug abuse problem so intertwined. 5. The legality of nature must be recognized, so that all plants are legal to grow and possess. 6. Psychedelic therapy should be made legal and insurance coverage extended to include it. 7. Currency and banking regulations need to be strengthened. Presently bank collusion with criminal cartels allows large-scale money laundering to take place. 8. There is an immediate need for massive support for scientific research into all aspects of substance use and abuse and an equally massive commitment to public education. 9. One year after implementation of the above, all drugs still illegal in the United States should be decrimi- nalized. The middleman is eliminated, the government can sell drugs at cost plus 200 percent, and those monies can be placed in a special fund to pay the social, medical, and educational costs of the legalization program. Money from taxes on alcohol, tobacco, sugar, and can-nabis can also be placed in this fund. Also following this one-year period, pardons should be given to all offenders in drug cases that did not involve firearms or felonious assault. If these proposals seem radical, it is only because we have drifted so far from the ideals that were originally most American. At the foundation of the American theory of social polity is the notion that our inalienable rights include "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." To pretend that the right to the pursuit of happiness does not include the right to experiment with psychoactive plants and substances is to make an argument that is at best narrow and at worst ignorant and primitive. The only religions that are anything more than the traditionally sanctioned moral codes are religions of trance, dance ecstasy, and intoxication by hallucinogens. The living fact of the mystery of being is there, and it is an inalienable religious right to be able to approach it on one's own terms. A civilized society would enshrine that principle in law. EPILOGUE: LOOKING OUTWARD AND INWARD TO A SEA OF STARS We have arrived at the point in our story where history merges with the political energies of the moment. The current controversies that have use and abuse of substances as their theme must share the stage with other issues of equal import: poverty and overpopulation, environmental destruction, and unmet political expectations. These phenomena are the inevitable by-products of the dominator culture. In struggling with these social problems we must remember that the roots of our humanness lie elsewhere, in the cascade of mental abilities that were unleashed within our species many tens of millennia ago—the ability to name, to classify, to compare, and to remember. These functions all can be traced back to the quasi-symbiotic relationship that we enjoyed with psilocybin mushrooms in the African partnership society of prehistory. Our breach of faith with the symbiotic relationship to the plant hallucinogens has made us susceptible to an ever more neurotic response to each other and the world around us. Several thousand years of such bereavement have left us the nearly psychotic inheritors of a planet festering with the toxic by-products of scientific industrialism. IF NOT IF NOT US, WHO? NOW, WHEN? It is time for us to undertake a dialogue based on an objective assessment of what our culture does and means. Another hundred years of business as usual is inconceivable. Dogma and ideology have become obsolete; their poisonous assumptions allow us to close our eyes to our hideous destructiveness and to loot even those resources that properly belong to our children and grandchildren. Our toys do not satisfy; our religions are no more than manias; our political systems are a grotesque aping of what we intended them to be. How can we hope to do better? Although fears of nuclear confrontation have diminished with the recent changes in the Eastern bloc, the world is still plagued by hunger, overpopulation, racism, sexism, and religious and political fundamentalism. We have the capacity—industrial, scientific, and financial—to change the world. The question is, do we have the capacity to change ourselves, to change our minds? I believe that the answer to this must be yes but not without help from nature. If mere preaching of virtue could provide the answer, then we would have arrived at the threshold of angelic existence some time ago. If mere legislation of virtue were an answer, we would have learned that a long time ago. Help from nature means recognizing that the satisfaction of the religious impulse comes not from ritual, and still less from dogma, but rather, from a fundamental kind of experience—the experience of symbiosis with hallucinogenic plants and, through them, symbiosis with the whole of planetary life. Radical as this proposal may appear, it has been anticipated in the work of no less a sober observer of Western culture than Arthur Koestler: Nature has let us down, God seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out. To hope for salvation to be synthesized in the laboratory may seem materialistic, crankish, or naive; but, to tell the truth, there is a Jungian twist to it—for it reflects the ancient alchemist's dream to concoct the elixir vitae. What we expect from it, however, is not eternal life, nor the transformation of base metal into gold, but the transformation of homo maniacus into homo sapiens. When man decides to take his fate into his own hands, that possibility will be within reach. Koestler concludes from his examination of our history of institutionalized violence as a species that some form of pharmacological intervention will be necessary before we can be at peace with one another. He proceeds to make an argument for conscious and scientifically managed psychopharmacological intervention in the life of society that has grave implications for the preservation of ideals of human independence and liberty. Koestler was apparently unaware of the shamanic tradition or of the richness of the psychedelic experience. Hence he was not aware that the task of managing a global human population into a state of balance and happiness could involve introducing the experience of an internal horizon of transcendence into people's lives. FINDING THE WAY OUT Without the escape hatch into the transcendental and transpersonal realm that is provided by plant-based indole hallucinogens, the human future would be bleak indeed. We have lost the ability to be swayed by the power of myths, and our history should convince us of the fallacy of dogma. What we require is a new dimension of self-experience that individually and collectively authenticates democratic social forms and our stewardship of this small part of the larger universe. Discovery of such a dimension will mean risk and opportunity. Seeking the answer is the stance of the ingenue, the preinitiate, and the fool. We must now have done with such posturing; it is for us to face the answer. Facing the answer means recognizing that the world we have prepared to hand on to the generations of the future is no more than a mess of broken pottage. It is not the dispossessed people of the ruined rain forests who are pathetic, it is not the stoic opium farmers of tribal Burma who menace distant hopes and populations—it is ourselves. FROM THE GRASSLANDS TO THE STARSHIP Human history has been a fifteen-thousand-year dash from the equilibrium of the African cradle to the twentieth-century apotheosis of delusion, devaluation, and mass death. Now we stand on the brink of star flight, virtual reality technologies, and a revivified shamanism that heralds the abandonment of the monkey body and tribal group that has always been our context. The age of the imagination is dawning. The shamanic plants and the worlds that they reveal are the worlds from which we imagine that we came long ago, worlds of light and power and beauty that in some form or another lie behind the eschatological visions of all of the world's great religions. We can claim this prodigal legacy only as quickly as we can remake our language and ourselves. Remaking our language means rejecting the image of ourselves inherited from dominator culture—that of a creature guilty of sin and hence deserving of exclusion from paradise. Paradise is our birthright and can be claimed by any one of us. Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored. Shamanism has always known this, and shamanism has always, in its most authentic expressions, taught that the path required allies. These allies are the hallucinogenic plants and the mysterious teaching entities, luminous and transcendental, that reside in that nearby dimension of ecstatic beauty and understanding that we have denied until it is now nearly too late. WE AWAIT OURSELVES WITHIN THE VISION We can now move toward a new vision of ourselves and our role in nature. We are the omni-adaptable species, we are the thinkers, the makers, and the solvers of problems. These great gifts that are ours alone and which come out of the evolutionary matrix of the planet are not for us—our convenience, our satisfaction, our greater glory. They are for life; they are the special qualities that we can contribute to the great community of organic being, if we are to become the care giver, the gardener, and the mother of our mother, which is the living earth. Here there is great mystery. In the middle of the slow-moving desert of unreflecting nature we come upon ourselves and perhaps see ourselves for the first time. We are colorful, cantankerous, and alive with hopes and dreams that, so far as we know, are unique in the universe. We have been too long asleep and shackled by the power we have ceded to the least noble parts of ourselves and the least noble among us. It is time that we stood up and faced the fact that we must and can change our minds. The long night of human history is drawing at last to its conclusion. Now the air is hushed and the east is streaked with the rosy blush of dawn. Yet in the world we have always known evening grows deeper and the shadows lengthen toward a night that will know no end. One way or another the story of the foolish monkey is nearly forever over. Our destiny is to turn without regret from what has been, to face ourselves, our parents, lovers, and children, to gather our tool kits, our animals, and the old, old dreams, so that we may move out across the visionary landscape of ever-deeper understanding. Hopefully there, where we have always been most comfortable, most ourselves, we will find glory and triumph in the search for meaning in the endless life of the imagination, at play at last in the fields of an Eden refound. ================================================================================ SOURCE: How to Change Your Mind_ What the New Science of -- Pollan, Michael ================================================================================ ALSO BY Michael Pollan Cooked Food Rules In Defense of Food The Omnivore’s Dilemma The Botany of Desire A Place of My Own Second Nature PENGUIN PRESS An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 penguin.com Copyright © 2018 by Michael Pollan Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. Image here and here from “Homological scaffolds of brain functional networks,” by G. Petri, P. Expert, F. Turkheimer, R. Carhart-Harris, D. Nutt, P. J. Hellyer, and F. Vaccarino, Journal of the Royal Society Interface , 2014. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Names: Pollan, Michael, 1955– author. Title: How to change your mind : what the new science of psychedelics teaches us about consciousness, dying, addiction, depression, and transcendence / Michael Pollan. Description: New York : Penguin Press, 2018. Identifiers: LCCN 2018006190 (print) | LCCN 2018010396 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525558941 (ebook) | ISBN 9781594204227 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Pollan, Michael, 1955—Mental health. | Hallucinogenic drugs—Therapeutic use. | Psychotherapy patients—Biography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Science & Technology. | MEDICAL / Mental Health. Classification: LCC RM324.8 (ebook) | LCC RM324.8 .P65 2018 (print) | DDC 615.7/883—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006190 NOTE: This book relates the author’s investigative reporting on, and related self-experimentation with, psilocybin mushrooms, the drug lysergic acid diethylamide (or, as it is more commonly known, LSD), and the drug 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (more commonly known as 5-MeO-DMT or The Toad). It is a criminal offense in the United States and in many other countries, punishable by imprisonment and/or fines, to manufacture, possess, or supply LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, and/or the drug 5-MeO-DMT, except in connection with government-sanctioned research. You should therefore understand that this book is intended to convey the author’s experiences and to provide an understanding of the background and current state of research into these substances. It is not intended to encourage you to break the law and no attempt should be made to use these substances for any purpose except in a legally sanctioned clinical trial. The author and the publisher expressly disclaim any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, that is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the contents of this book. Certain names and locations have been changed in order to protect the author and others. Version_1 For my father The soul should always stand ajar. —EMILY DICKINSON Contents Also by Michael Pollan Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Prologue: A New Door CHAPTER ONE A Renaissance CHAPTER TWO Natural History: Bemushroomed Coda CHAPTER THREE History: The First Wave Part I: The Promise Part II: The Crack-Up Coda CHAPTER FOUR Travelogue: Journeying Underground Trip One: LSD Trip Two: Psilocybin Trip Three: 5-MeO-DMT (or, The Toad) CHAPTER FIVE The Neuroscience: Your Brain on Psychedelics CHAPTER SIX The Trip Treatment: Psychedelics in Psychotherapy One: Dying Two: Addiction Three: Depression Coda: Going to Meet My Default Mode Network Epilogue: In Praise of Neural Diversity Glossary Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index About the Author PROLOGUE A New Door M IDWAY THROUGH the twentieth century, two unusual new molecules, organic compounds with a striking family resemblance, exploded upon the West. In time, they would change the course of social, political, and cultural history, as well as the personal histories of the millions of people who would eventually introduce them to their brains. As it happened, the arrival of these disruptive chemistries coincided with another world historical explosion—that of the atomic bomb. There were people who compared the two events and made much of the cosmic synchronicity. Extraordinary new energies had been loosed upon the world; things would never be quite the same. The first of these molecules was an accidental invention of science. Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD, was first synthesized by Albert Hofmann in 1938, shortly before physicists split an atom of uranium for the first time. Hofmann, who worked for the Swiss pharmaceutical firm Sandoz, had been looking for a drug to stimulate circulation, not a psychoactive compound. It wasn’t until five years later when he accidentally ingested a minuscule quantity of the new chemical that he realized he had created something powerful, at once terrifying and wondrous. The second molecule had been around for thousands of years, though no one in the developed world was aware of it. Produced not by a chemist but by an inconspicuous little brown mushroom, this molecule, which would come to be known as psilocybin, had been used by the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America for hundreds of years as a sacrament. Called teonanácatl by the Aztecs, or “flesh of the gods,” the mushroom was brutally suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church after the Spanish conquest and driven underground. In 1955, twelve years after Albert Hofmann’s discovery of LSD, a Manhattan banker and amateur mycologist named R. Gordon Wasson sampled the magic mushroom in the town of Huautla de Jiménez in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Two years later, he published a fifteen-page account of the “mushrooms that cause strange visions” in Life magazine, marking the moment when news of a new form of consciousness first reached the general public. (In 1957, knowledge of LSD was mostly confined to the community of researchers and mental health professionals.) People would not realize the magnitude of what had happened for several more years, but history in the West had shifted. The impact of these two molecules is hard to overestimate. The advent of LSD can be linked to the revolution in brain science that begins in the 1950s, when scientists discovered the role of neurotransmitters in the brain. That quantities of LSD measured in micrograms could produce symptoms resembling psychosis inspired brain scientists to search for the neurochemical basis of mental disorders previously believed to be psychological in origin. At the same time, psychedelics found their way into psychotherapy, where they were used to treat a variety of disorders, including alcoholism, anxiety, and depression. For most of the 1950s and early 1960s, many in the psychiatric establishment regarded LSD and psilocybin as miracle drugs. The arrival of these two compounds is also linked to the rise of the counterculture during the 1960s and, perhaps especially, to its particular tone and style. For the first time in history, the young had a rite of passage all their own: the “acid trip.” Instead of folding the young into the adult world, as rites of passage have always done, this one landed them in a country of the mind few adults had any idea even existed. The effect on society was, to put it mildly, disruptive. Yet by the end of the 1960s, the social and political shock waves unleashed by these molecules seemed to dissipate. The dark side of psychedelics began to receive tremendous amounts of publicity—bad trips, psychotic breaks, flashbacks, suicides—and beginning in 1965 the exuberance surrounding these new drugs gave way to moral panic. As quickly as the culture and the scientific establishment had embraced psychedelics, they now turned sharply against them. By the end of the decade, psychedelic drugs—which had been legal in most places—were outlawed and forced underground. At least one of the twentieth century’s two bombs appeared to have been defused. Then something unexpected and telling happened. Beginning in the 1990s, well out of view of most of us, a small group of scientists, psychotherapists, and so-called psychonauts, believing that something precious had been lost from both science and culture, resolved to recover it. Today, after several decades of suppression and neglect, psychedelics are having a renaissance. A new generation of scientists, many of them inspired by their own personal experience of the compounds, are testing their potential to heal mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, trauma, and addiction. Other scientists are using psychedelics in conjunction with new brain-imaging tools to explore the links between brain and mind, hoping to unravel some of the mysteries of consciousness. One good way to understand a complex system is to disturb it and then see what happens. By smashing atoms, a particle accelerator forces them to yield their secrets. By administering psychedelics in carefully calibrated doses, neuroscientists can profoundly disturb the normal waking consciousness of volunteers, dissolving the structures of the self and occasioning what can be described as a mystical experience. While this is happening, imaging tools can observe the changes in the brain’s activity and patterns of connection. Already this work is yielding surprising insights into the “neural correlates” of the sense of self and spiritual experience. The hoary 1960s platitude that psychedelics offered a key to understanding—and “expanding”—consciousness no longer looks quite so preposterous. How to Change Your Mind is the story of this renaissance. Although it didn’t start out that way, it is a very personal as well as public history. Perhaps this was inevitable. Everything I was learning about the third-person history of psychedelic research made me want to explore this novel landscape of the mind in the first person too—to see how the changes in consciousness these molecules wrought actually feel and what, if anything, they had to teach me about my mind and might contribute to my life. • • • T HIS WAS, FOR ME, a completely unexpected turn of events. The history of psychedelics I’ve summarized here is not a history I lived. I was born in 1955, halfway through the decade that psychedelics first burst onto the American scene, but it wasn’t until the prospect of turning sixty had drifted into view that I seriously considered trying LSD for the first time. Coming from a baby boomer, that might sound improbable, a dereliction of generational duty. But I was only twelve years old in 1967, too young to have been more than dimly aware of the Summer of Love or the San Francisco Acid Tests. At fourteen, the only way I was going to get to Woodstock was if my parents drove me. Much of the 1960s I experienced through the pages of Time magazine. By the time the idea of trying or not trying LSD swam into my conscious awareness, it had already completed its speedy media arc from psychiatric wonder drug to counterculture sacrament to destroyer of young minds. I must have been in junior high school when a scientist reported (mistakenly, as it turned out) that LSD scrambled your chromosomes; the entire media, as well as my health-ed teacher, made sure we heard all about it. A couple of years later, the television personality Art Linkletter began campaigning against LSD, which he blamed for the fact his daughter had jumped out of an apartment window, killing herself. LSD supposedly had something to do with the Manson murders too. By the early 1970s, when I went to college, everything you heard about LSD seemed calculated to terrify. It worked on me: I’m less a child of the psychedelic 1960s than of the moral panic that psychedelics provoked. I also had my own personal reason for steering clear of psychedelics: a painfully anxious adolescence that left me (and at least one psychiatrist) doubting my grip on sanity. By the time I got to college, I was feeling sturdier, but the idea of rolling the mental dice with a psychedelic drug still seemed like a bad idea. Years later, in my late twenties and feeling more settled, I did try magic mushrooms two or three times. A friend had given me a Mason jar full of dried, gnarly Psilocybes, and on a couple of memorable occasions my partner (now wife), Judith, and I choked down two or three of them, endured a brief wave of nausea, and then sailed off on four or five interesting hours in the company of each other and what felt like a wonderfully italicized version of the familiar reality. Psychedelic aficionados would probably categorize what we had as a low-dose “aesthetic experience,” rather than a full-blown ego-disintegrating trip. We certainly didn’t take leave of the known universe or have what anyone would call a mystical experience. But it was really interesting. What I particularly remember was the preternatural vividness of the greens in the woods, and in particular the velvety chartreuse softness of the ferns. I was gripped by a powerful compulsion to be outdoors, undressed, and as far from anything made of metal or plastic as it was possible to get. Because we were alone in the country, this was all doable. I don’t recall much about a follow-up trip on a Saturday in Riverside Park in Manhattan except that it was considerably less enjoyable and unselfconscious, with too much time spent wondering if other people could tell that we were high. I didn’t know it at the time, but the difference between these two experiences of the same drug demonstrated something important, and special, about psychedelics: the critical influence of “set” and “setting.” Set is the mind-set or expectation one brings to the experience, and setting is the environment in which it takes place. Compared with other drugs, psychedelics seldom affect people the same way twice, because they tend to magnify whatever’s already going on both inside and outside one’s head. After those two brief trips, the mushroom jar lived in the back of our pantry for years, untouched. The thought of giving over a whole day to a psychedelic experience had come to seem inconceivable. We were working long hours at new careers, and those vast swaths of unallocated time that college (or unemployment) affords had become a memory. Now another, very different kind of drug was available, one that was considerably easier to weave into the fabric of a Manhattan career: cocaine. The snowy-white powder made the wrinkled brown mushrooms seem dowdy, unpredictable, and overly demanding. Cleaning out the kitchen cabinets one weekend, we stumbled upon the forgotten jar and tossed it in the trash, along with the exhausted spices and expired packages of food. Fast-forward three decades, and I really wish I hadn’t done that. I’d give a lot to have a whole jar of magic mushrooms now. I’ve begun to wonder if perhaps these remarkable molecules might be wasted on the young, that they may have more to offer us later in life, after the cement of our mental habits and everyday behaviors has set. Carl Jung once wrote that it is not the young but people in middle age who need to have an “experience of the numinous” to help them negotiate the second half of their lives. By the time I arrived safely in my fifties, life seemed to be running along a few deep but comfortable grooves: a long and happy marriage alongside an equally long and gratifying career. As we do, I had developed a set of fairly dependable mental algorithms for navigating whatever life threw at me, whether at home or at work. What was missing from my life? Nothing I could think of—until, that is, word of the new research into psychedelics began to find its way to me, making me wonder if perhaps I had failed to recognize the potential of these molecules as a tool for both understanding the mind and, potentially, changing it. • • • H ERE ARE THE THREE DATA POINTS that persuaded me this was the case. In the spring of 2010, a front-page story appeared in the New York Times headlined “Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again.” It reported that researchers had been giving large doses of psilocybin— the active compound in magic mushrooms—to terminal cancer patients as a way to help them deal with their “existential distress” at the approach of death. These experiments, which were taking place simultaneously at Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and New York University, seemed not just improbable but crazy. Faced with a terminal diagnosis, the very last thing I would want to do is take a psychedelic drug—that is, surrender control of my mind and then in that psychologically vulnerable state stare straight into the abyss. But many of the volunteers reported that over the course of a single guided psychedelic “journey” they reconceived how they viewed their cancer and the prospect of dying. Several of them said they had lost their fear of death completely. The reasons offered for this transformation were intriguing but also somewhat elusive. “Individuals transcend their primary identification with their bodies and experience ego-free states,” one of the researchers was quoted as saying. They “return with a new perspective and profound acceptance.” I filed that story away, until a year or two later, when Judith and I found ourselves at a dinner party at a big house in the Berkeley Hills, seated at a long table with a dozen or so people, when a woman at the far end of the table began talking about her acid trips. She looked to be about my age and, I learned, was a prominent psychologist. I was engrossed in a different conversation at the time, but as soon as the phonemes L-S-D drifted down to my end of the table, I couldn’t help but cup my ear (literally) and try to tune in. At first, I assumed she was dredging up some well-polished anecdote from her college days. Not the case. It soon became clear that the acid trip in question had taken place only days or weeks before, and in fact was one of her first. The assembled eyebrows rose. She and her husband, a retired software engineer, had found the occasional use of LSD both intellectually stimulating and of value to their work. Specifically, the psychologist felt that LSD gave her insight into how young children perceive the world. Kids’ perceptions are not mediated by expectations and conventions in the been-there, done-that way that adult perception is; as adults, she explained, our minds don’t simply take in the world as it is so much as they make educated guesses about it. Relying on these guesses, which are based on past experience, saves the mind time and energy, as when, say, it’s trying to figure out what that fractal pattern of green dots in its visual field might be. (The leaves on a tree, probably.) LSD appears to disable such conventionalized, shorthand modes of perception and, by doing so, restores a childlike immediacy, and sense of wonder, to our experience of reality, as if we were seeing everything for the first time. ( Leaves! ) I piped up to ask if she had any plans to write about these ideas, which riveted everyone at the table. She laughed and gave me a look that I took to say, How naive can you be? LSD is a schedule 1 substance, meaning the government regards it as a drug of abuse with no accepted medical use. Surely it would be foolhardy for someone in her position to suggest, in print, that psychedelics might have anything to contribute to philosophy or psychology—that they might actually be a valuable tool for exploring the mysteries of human consciousness. Serious research into psychedelics had been more or less purged from the university fifty years ago, soon after Timothy Leary’s Harvard Psilocybin Project crashed and burned in 1963. Not even Berkeley, it seemed, was ready to go there again, at least not yet. Third data point: The dinner table conversation jogged a vague memory that a few years before somebody had e-mailed me a scientific paper about psilocybin research. Busy with other things at the time, I hadn’t even opened it, but a quick search of the term “psilocybin” instantly fished the paper out of the virtual pile of discarded e-mail on my computer. The paper had been sent to me by one of its co-authors, a man I didn’t know by the name of Bob Jesse; perhaps he had read something I’d written about psychoactive plants and thought I might be interested. The article, which was written by the same team at Hopkins that was giving psilocybin to cancer patients, had just been published in the journal Psychopharmacology. For a peer-reviewed scientific paper, it had a most unusual title: “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance.” Never mind the word “psilocybin”; it was the words “mystical” and “spiritual” and “meaning” that leaped out from the pages of a pharmacology journal. The title hinted at an intriguing frontier of research, one that seemed to straddle two worlds we’ve grown accustomed to think are irreconcilable: science and spirituality. Now I fell on the Hopkins paper, fascinated. Thirty volunteers who had never before used psychedelics had been given a pill containing either a synthetic version of psilocybin or an “active placebo”—methylphenidate, or Ritalin—to fool them into thinking they had received the psychedelic. They then lay down on a couch wearing eyeshades and listening to music through headphones, attended the whole time by two therapists. (The eyeshades and headphones encourage a more inward-focused journey.) After about thirty minutes, extraordinary things began to happen in the minds of the people who had gotten the psilocybin pill. The study demonstrated that a high dose of psilocybin could be used to safely and reliably “occasion” a mystical experience—typically described as the dissolution of one’s ego followed by a sense of merging with nature or the universe. This might not come as news to people who take psychedelic drugs or to the researchers who first studied them back in the 1950s and 1960s. But it wasn’t at all obvious to modern science, or to me, in 2006, when the paper was published. What was most remarkable about the results reported in the article is that participants ranked their psilocybin experience as one of the most meaningful in their lives, comparable “to the birth of a first child or death of a parent.” Two-thirds of the participants rated the session among the top five “most spiritually significant experiences” of their lives; one-third ranked it the most significant such experience in their lives. Fourteen months later, these ratings had slipped only slightly. The volunteers reported significant improvements in their “personal well-being, life satisfaction and positive behavior change,” changes that were confirmed by their family members and friends. Though no one knew it at the time, the renaissance of psychedelic research now under way began in earnest with the publication of that paper. It led directly to a series of trials—at Hopkins and several other universities—using psilocybin to treat a variety of indications, including anxiety and depression in cancer patients, addiction to nicotine and alcohol, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and eating disorders. What is striking about this whole line of clinical research is the premise that it is not the pharmacological effect of the drug itself but the kind of mental experience it occasions—involving the temporary dissolution of one’s ego—that may be the key to changing one’s mind. • • • A S SOMEONE not at all sure he has ever had a single “spiritually significant” experience, much less enough of them to make a ranking, I found that the 2006 paper piqued my curiosity but also my skepticism. Many of the volunteers described being given access to an alternative reality, a “beyond” where the usual physical laws don’t apply and various manifestations of cosmic consciousness or divinity present themselves as unmistakably real. All this I found both a little hard to take (couldn’t this be just a drug-induced hallucination?) and yet at the same time intriguing; part of me wanted it to be true, whatever exactly “it” was. This surprised me, because I have never thought of myself as a particularly spiritual, much less mystical, person. This is partly a function of worldview, I suppose, and partly of neglect: I’ve never devoted much time to exploring spiritual paths and did not have a religious upbringing. My default perspective is that of the philosophical materialist, who believes that matter is the fundamental substance of the world and the physical laws it obeys should be able to explain everything that happens. I start from the assumption that nature is all that there is and gravitate toward scientific explanations of phenomena. That said, I’m also sensitive to the limitations of the scientific-materialist perspective and believe that nature (including the human mind) still holds deep mysteries toward which science can sometimes seem arrogant and unjustifiably dismissive. Was it possible that a single psychedelic experience—something that turned on nothing more than the ingestion of a pill or square of blotter paper—could put a big dent in such a worldview? Shift how one thought about mortality? Actually change one’s mind in enduring ways? The idea took hold of me. It was a little like being shown a door in a familiar room—the room of your own mind—that you had somehow never noticed before and being told by people you trusted (scientists!) that a whole other way of thinking—of being!—lay waiting on the other side. All you had to do was turn the knob and enter. Who wouldn’t be curious? I might not have been looking to change my life, but the idea of learning something new about it, and of shining a fresh light on this old world, began to occupy my thoughts. Maybe there was something missing from my life, something I just hadn’t named. Now, I already knew something about such doors, having written about psychoactive plants earlier in my career. In The Botany of Desire, I explored at some length what I had been surprised to discover is a universal human desire to change consciousness. There is not a culture on earth (well, one * ) that doesn’t make use of certain plants to change the contents of the mind, whether as a matter of healing, habit, or spiritual practice. That such a curious and seemingly maladaptive desire should exist alongside our desires for nourishment and beauty and sex—all of which make much more obvious evolutionary sense—cried out for an explanation. The simplest was that these substances help relieve pain and boredom. Yet the powerful feelings and elaborate taboos and rituals that surround many of these psychoactive species suggest there must be something more to it. For our species, I learned, plants and fungi with the power to radically alter consciousness have long and widely been used as tools for healing the mind, for facilitating rites of passage, and for serving as a medium for communicating with supernatural realms, or spirit worlds. These uses were ancient and venerable in a great many cultures, but I ventured one other application: to enrich the collective imagination—the culture—with the novel ideas and visions that a select few people bring back from wherever it is they go. • • • N OW THAT I HAD DEVELOPED an intellectual appreciation for the potential value of these psychoactive substances, you might think I would have been more eager to try them. I’m not sure what I was waiting for: courage, maybe, or the right opportunity, which a busy life lived mainly on the right side of the law never quite seemed to afford. But when I began to weigh the potential benefits I was hearing about against the risks, I was surprised to learn that psychedelics are far more frightening to people than they are dangerous. Many of the most notorious perils are either exaggerated or mythical. It is virtually impossible to die from an overdose of LSD or psilocybin, for example, and neither drug is addictive. After trying them once, animals will not seek a second dose, and repeated use by people robs the drugs of their effect. * It is true that the terrifying experiences some people have on psychedelics can risk flipping those at risk into psychosis, so no one with a family history or predisposition to mental illness should ever take them. But emergency room admissions involving psychedelics are exceedingly rare, and many of the cases doctors diagnose as psychotic breaks turn out to be merely short-lived panic attacks. It is also the case that people on psychedelics are liable to do stupid and dangerous things: walk out into traffic, fall from high places, and, on rare occasions, kill themselves. “Bad trips” are very real and can be one of “the most challenging experiences of [a] lifetime,” according to a large survey of psychedelic users asked about their experiences. * But it’s important to distinguish what can happen when these drugs are used in uncontrolled situations, without attention to set and setting, from what happens under clinical conditions, after careful screening and under supervision. Since the revival of sanctioned psychedelic research beginning in the 1990s, nearly a thousand volunteers have been dosed, and not a single serious adverse event has been reported. • • • I T WAS AT THIS POINT that the idea of “shaking the snow globe,” as one neuroscientist described the psychedelic experience, came to seem more attractive to me than frightening, though it was still that too. After more than half a century of its more or less constant companionship, one’s self—this ever-present voice in the head, this ceaselessly commenting, interpreting, labeling, defending I—becomes perhaps a little too familiar. I’m not talking about anything as deep as self-knowledge here. No, just about how, over time, we tend to optimize and conventionalize our responses to whatever life brings. Each of us develops our shorthand ways of slotting and processing everyday experiences and solving problems, and while this is no doubt adaptive—it helps us get the job done with a minimum of fuss—eventually it becomes rote. It dulls us. The muscles of attention atrophy. Habits are undeniably useful tools, relieving us of the need to run a complex mental operation every time we’re confronted with a new task or situation. Yet they also relieve us of the need to stay awake to the world: to attend, feel, think, and then act in a deliberate manner. (That is, from freedom rather than compulsion.) If you need to be reminded how completely mental habit blinds us to experience, just take a trip to an unfamiliar country. Suddenly you wake up! And the algorithms of everyday life all but start over, as if from scratch. This is why the various travel metaphors for the psychedelic experience are so apt. The efficiencies of the adult mind, useful as they are, blind us to the present moment. We’re constantly jumping ahead to the next thing. We approach experience much as an artificial intelligence (AI) program does, with our brains continually translating the data of the present into the terms of the past, reaching back in time for the relevant experience, and then using that to make its best guess as to how to predict and navigate the future. One of the things that commends travel, art, nature, work, and certain drugs to us is the way these experiences, at their best, block every mental path forward and back, immersing us in the flow of a present that is literally wonderful—wonder being the by-product of precisely the kind of unencumbered first sight, or virginal noticing, to which the adult brain has closed itself. (It’s so inefficient!) Alas, most of the time I inhabit a near-future tense, my psychic thermostat set to a low simmer of anticipation and, too often, worry. The good thing is I’m seldom surprised. The bad thing is I’m seldom surprised. What I am struggling to describe here is what I think of as my default mode of consciousness. It works well enough, certainly gets the job done, but what if it isn’t the only, or necessarily the best, way to go through life? The premise of psychedelic research is that this special group of molecules can give us access to other modes of consciousness that might offer us specific benefits, whether therapeutic, spiritual, or creative. Psychedelics are certainly not the only door to these other forms of consciousness—and I explore some non-pharmacological alternatives in these pages—but they do seem to be one of the easier knobs to take hold of and turn. The whole idea of expanding our repertoire of conscious states is not an entirely new idea: Hinduism and Buddhism are steeped in it, and there are intriguing precedents even in Western science. William James, the pioneering American psychologist and author of The Varieties of Religious Experience, ventured into these realms more than a century ago. He returned with the conviction that our everyday waking consciousness “is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.” James is speaking, I realized, of the unopened door in our minds. For him, the “touch” that could throw open the door and disclose these realms on the other side was nitrous oxide. (Mescaline, the psychedelic compound derived from the peyote cactus, was available to researchers at the time, but James was apparently too fearful to try it.) “No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. “At any rate,” James concluded, these other states, the existence of which he believed was as real as the ink on this page, “forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.” The first time I read that sentence, I realized James had my number: as a staunch materialist, and as an adult of a certain age, I had pretty much closed my accounts with reality. Perhaps this had been premature. Well, here was an invitation to reopen them. • • • I F EVERYDAY WAKING CONSCIOUSNESS is but one of several possible ways to construct a world, then perhaps there is value in cultivating a greater amount of what I’ve come to think of as neural diversity. With that in mind, How to Change Your Mind approaches its subject from several different perspectives, employing several different narrative modes: social and scientific history; natural history; memoir; science journalism; and case studies of volunteers and patients. In the middle of the journey, I also offer an account of my own firsthand research (or perhaps I should say search) in the form of a kind of mental travelogue. In telling the story of psychedelic research, past and present, I do not attempt to be comprehensive. The subject of psychedelics, as a matter of both science and social history, is too vast to squeeze between the covers of a single book. Rather than try to introduce readers to the entire cast of characters responsible for the psychedelic renaissance, my narrative follows a small number of pioneers who constitute a particular scientific lineage, with the inevitable result that the contributions of many others have received short shrift. Also in the interest of narrative coherence, I’ve focused on certain drugs to the exclusion of others. There is, for example, little here about MDMA (also known as Ecstasy), which is showing great promise in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Some researchers count MDMA among the psychedelics, but most do not, and I follow their lead. MDMA operates through a different set of pathways in the brain and has a substantially different social history from that of the so-called classical psychedelics. Of these, I focus primarily on the ones that are receiving the most attention from scientists—psilocybin and LSD—which means that other psychedelics that are equally interesting and powerful but more difficult to bring into the laboratory—such as ayahuasca—receive less attention. A final word on nomenclature. The class of molecules to which psilocybin and LSD (and mescaline, DMT, and a handful of others) belong has been called by many names in the decades since they have come to our attention. Initially, they were called hallucinogens. But they do so many other things (and in fact full-blown hallucinations are fairly uncommon) that researchers soon went looking for more precise and comprehensive terms, a quest chronicled in chapter three. The term “psychedelics,” which I will mainly use here, does have its downside. Embraced in the 1960s, the term carries a lot of countercultural baggage. Hoping to escape those associations and underscore the spiritual dimensions of these drugs, some researchers have proposed they instead be called “entheogens”—from the Greek for “the divine within.” This strikes me as too emphatic. Despite the 1960s trappings, the term “psychedelic,” coined in 1956, is etymologically accurate. Drawn from the Greek, it means simply “mind manifesting,” which is precisely what these extraordinary molecules hold the power to do. CHAPTER ONE A Renaissance I F THE START of the modern renaissance of psychedelic research can be dated with any precision, one good place to do it would be the year 2006. Not that this was obvious to many people at the time. There was no law passed or regulation lifted or discovery announced to mark the historical shift. But as three unrelated events unfolded during the course of that year—the first in Basel, Switzerland, the second in Washington, D.C., and the third in Baltimore, Maryland—sensitive ears could make out the sound of ice beginning to crack. The first event, which looked back but also forward like a kind of historical hinge, was the centennial of the birth of Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who, in 1943, accidentally found that he had discovered (five years earlier) the psychoactive molecule that came to be known as LSD. This was an unusual centennial in that the man being feted was very much in attendance. Entering his second century, Hofmann appeared in remarkably good shape, physically spry and mentally sharp, and he was able to take an active part in the festivities, which included a birthday ceremony followed by a three-day symposium. The symposium’s opening ceremony was on January 13, two days after Hofmann’s 100th birthday (he would live to be 102). Two thousand people packed the hall at the Basel Congress Center, rising to applaud as a stooped stick of a man in a dark suit and a necktie, barely five feet tall, slowly crossed the stage and took his seat. Two hundred journalists from around the world were in attendance, along with more than a thousand healers, seekers, mystics, psychiatrists, pharmacologists, consciousness researchers, and neuroscientists, most of them people whose lives had been profoundly altered by the remarkable molecule that this man had derived from a fungus half a century before. They had come to celebrate him and what his friend the Swiss poet and physician Walter Vogt called “ the only joyous invention of the twentieth century.” Among the people in the hall, this did not qualify as hyperbole. According to one of the American scientists in attendance, many had come “to worship” Albert Hofmann, and indeed the event bore many of the hallmarks of a religious observance. Although virtually every person in that hall knew the story of LSD’s discovery by heart, Hofmann was asked to recite the creation myth one more time. (He tells the story, memorably, in his 1979 memoir, LSD, My Problem Child. ) As a young chemist working in a unit of Sandoz Laboratories charged with isolating the compounds in medicinal plants to find new drugs, Hofmann had been tasked with synthesizing, one by one, the molecules in the alkaloids produced by ergot. Ergot is a fungus that can infect grain, often rye, occasionally causing those who consume bread made from it to appear mad or possessed. (One theory of the Salem witch trials blames ergot poisoning for the behavior of the women accused.) But midwives had long used ergot to induce labor and stanch bleeding postpartum, so Sandoz was hoping to isolate a marketable drug from the fungus’s alkaloids. In the fall of 1938, Hofmann made the twenty-fifth molecule in this series, naming it lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD-25 for short. Preliminary testing of the compound on animals did not show much promise (they became restless, but that was about it), so the formula for LSD-25 was put on the shelf. And there it remained for five years, until one April day in 1943, in the middle of the war, when Hofmann had “a peculiar presentiment” that LSD-25 deserved a second look. Here his account takes a slightly mystical turn. Normally, when a compound showing no promise was discarded, he explained, it was discarded for good. But Hofmann “liked the chemical structure of the LSD molecule,” and something about it told him that “this substance could possess properties other than those established in the first investigations.” Another mysterious anomaly occurred when he synthesized LSD-25 for the second time. Despite the meticulous precautions he always took when working with a substance as toxic as ergot, Hofmann must somehow have absorbed a bit of the chemical through his skin, because he “was interrupted in my work by unusual sensations.” Hofmann went home, lay down on a couch, and “in a dreamlike state, with eyes closed . . . I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors.” Thus unfolds the world’s first LSD trip, in neutral Switzerland during the darkest days of World War II. It is also the only LSD trip ever taken that was entirely innocent of expectation. Intrigued, Hofmann decided a few days later to conduct an experiment on himself—not an uncommon practice at the time. Proceeding with what he thought was extreme caution, he ingested 0.25 milligrams—a milligram is one-thousandth of a gram—of LSD dissolved in a glass of water. This would represent a minuscule dose of any other drug, but LSD, it turns out, is one of the most potent psychoactive compounds ever discovered, active at doses measured in micrograms—that is, one thousandth of a milligram. This surprising fact would soon inspire scientists to look for, and eventually find, the brain receptors and the endogenous chemical—serotonin—that activates them like a key in a lock, as a way to explain how such a small number of molecules could have such a profound effect on the mind. In this and other ways, Hofmann’s discovery helped to launch modern brain science in the 1950s. Now unfolds the world’s first bad acid trip as Hofmann is plunged into what he is certain is irretrievable madness. He tells his lab assistant he needs to get home, and with the use of automobiles restricted during wartime, he somehow manages to pedal home by bicycle and lie down while his assistant summons the doctor. (Today LSD devotees celebrate “Bicycle Day” each year on April 19.) Hofmann describes how “familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms. They were in continuous motion, animated as if driven by an inner restlessness.” He experienced the disintegration of the outer world and the dissolution of his own ego. “A demon had invaded me, had taken possession of my body, mind, and soul. I jumped up and screamed, trying to free myself from him, but then sank down again and lay helpless on the sofa.” Hofmann became convinced he was going to be rendered permanently insane or might actually be dying. “ My ego was suspended somewhere in space and I saw my body lying dead on the sofa.” When the doctor arrived and examined him, however, he found that all of Hofmann’s vital signs—heartbeat, blood pressure, breathing—were perfectly normal. The only indication something was amiss were his pupils, which were dilated in the extreme. Once the acute effects wore off, Hofmann felt the “afterglow” that frequently follows a psychedelic experience, the exact opposite of a hangover. When he walked out into his garden after a spring rain, “ everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. The world was as if newly created.” We’ve since learned that the experience of psychedelics is powerfully influenced by one’s expectation; no other class of drugs are more suggestible in their effects. Because Hofmann’s experiences with LSD are the only ones we have that are uncontaminated by previous accounts, it’s interesting to note they exhibit neither the Eastern nor the Christian flavorings that would soon become conventions of the genre. However, his experience of familiar objects coming to life and the world “as if newly created”—the same rapturous Adamic moment that Aldous Huxley would describe so vividly a decade later in The Doors of Perception —would become commonplaces of the psychedelic experience. Hofmann came back from his trip convinced, first, that LSD had somehow found him rather than the other way around and, second, that LSD would someday be of great value to medicine and especially psychiatry, possibly by offering researchers a model of schizophrenia. It never occurred to him that his “problem child,” as he eventually would regard LSD, would also become a “pleasure drug” and a drug of abuse. Yet Hofmann also came to regard the youth culture’s adoption of LSD in the 1960s as an understandable response to the emptiness of what he described as a materialist, industrialized, and spiritually impoverished society that had lost its connection to nature. This master of chemistry—perhaps the most materialist of all disciplines—emerged from his experience with LSD-25 convinced the molecule offered civilization not only a potential therapeutic but also a spiritual balm—by opening a crack “ in the edifice of materialist rationality.” (In the words of his friend and translator, Jonathan Ott.) Like so many who followed after him, the brilliant chemist became something of a mystic, preaching a gospel of spiritual renewal and reconnection with nature. Presented with a bouquet of roses that 2006 day in Basel, the scientist told the assembled that “ the feeling of co-creatureliness with all things alive should enter our consciousness more fully and counterbalance the materialistic and nonsensical technological developments in order to enable us to return to the roses, to the flowers, to nature, where we belong.” The audience erupted in applause. A skeptical witness to the event would not be entirely wrong to regard the little man on the stage as the founder of a new religion and the audience as his congregation. But if this is a religion, it’s one with a significant difference. Typically, only the founder of a religion and perhaps a few early acolytes can lay claim to the kind of authority that flows from a direct experience of the sacred. For everyone coming after, there is the comparatively thin gruel of the stories, the symbolism of the sacrament, and faith. History attenuates the original power of it all, which now must be mediated by the priests. But the extraordinary promise on offer in the Church of Psychedelics is that anyone at any time may gain access to the primary religious experience by means of the sacrament, which happens to be a psychoactive molecule. Faith is rendered superfluous. Running alongside the celebration’s spiritual undercurrent, however, there also, perhaps somewhat incongruously, came science. During the weekend symposium following the observation of Hofmann’s birthday, researchers from a variety of disciplines—including neuroscience, psychiatry, pharmacology, and consciousness studies, as well as the arts—explored the impact of Hofmann’s invention on society and culture and its potential for expanding our understanding of consciousness and treating several intractable mental disorders. A handful of research projects, studying the effects of psychedelics on humans, had been approved or were under way in Switzerland and the United States, and scientists at the symposium voiced their hope that the long hiatus in psychedelic research might finally be coming to an end. Irrational exuberance seems to be an occupational hazard among people working in this area, but in 2006 there was good reason to think the weather might actually be turning. • • • T HE SECOND WATERSHED EVENT of 2006 came only five weeks later when the U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision written by the new chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., ruled that the UDV, a tiny religious sect that uses a hallucinogenic tea called ayahuasca as its sacrament, could import the drink to the United States, even though it contains the schedule 1 substance dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. The ruling was based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which had sought to clarify the right (under the First Amendment’s religious freedom clause) of Native Americans to use peyote in their ceremonies, as they have done for generations. The 1993 law says that only if the government has a “compelling interest” can it interfere with one’s practice of religion. In the UDV case, the Bush administration had argued that only Native Americans, because of their “unique relationship” to the government, had the right to use psychedelics as part of their worship, and even in their case this right could be abridged by the state. The Court soundly rejected the government’s argument, interpreting the 1993 law to mean that, absent a compelling state interest, the federal government cannot prohibit a recognized religious group from using psychedelic substances in their observances. Evidently, this includes relatively new and tiny religious groups specifically organized around a psychedelic sacrament, or “plant medicine,” as the ayahuasqueros call their tea. The UDV is a Christian spiritist sect founded in 1961 in Brazil by José Gabriel da Costa, a rubber tapper inspired by revelations he experienced after receiving ayahuasca from an Amazonian shaman two years before. The church claims 17,000 members in six countries, but at the time of the ruling there were only 130 American members of the UDV. (The initials stand for União do Vegetal, or Union of the Plants, because ayahuasca is made by brewing together two Amazonian plant species, Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis .) The Court’s decision inspired something of a religious awakening around ayahuasca in America. Today there are close to 525 American members of the church, with communities in nine locations. To supply them, the UDV has begun growing the plants needed to make the tea in Hawaii and shipping it to groups on the mainland without interference. But the number of Americans participating in ayahuasca ceremonies outside the UDV has also mushroomed in the years since, and any given night there are probably dozens if not hundreds of ceremonies taking place somewhere in America (with concentrations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Brooklyn). Federal prosecutions for possession or importation of ayahuasca appear to have stopped, at least for the time being. With its 2006 decision, the Supreme Court seems to have opened up a religious path—narrow, perhaps, but firmly rooted in the Bill of Rights—to the legal recognition of psychedelic drugs, at least when they’re being used as a sacrament by a religious community. It remains to be seen how wide or well trod that path will become, but it does make you wonder what the government, and the Court, will do when an American José Gabriel da Costa steps forward and attempts to turn his or her own psychedelic revelations into a new religion intent on using a psychoactive chemical as its sacrament. The jurisprudence of “cognitive liberty,” as some in the psychedelic community call it, is still scant and limited (to religion), but now it had been affirmed, opening a new crack in the edifice of the drug war. • • • O F THE THREE 2006 EVENTS that helped bring psychedelics out of their decades-long slumber, by far the most far-reaching in its impact was the publication that summer of the paper in Psychopharmacology described in the prologue—the one Bob Jesse e-mailed me at the time but that I didn’t bother to open . This event, too, had a distinctly spiritual cast, even though the experiment it reported was the work of a rigorous and highly regarded scientist: Roland Griffiths. It just so happens that Griffiths, a most unlikely psychedelic researcher, was inspired to investigate the power of psilocybin to occasion a “mystical-type” experience by a mystical experience of his own. Griffiths’s landmark paper, “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance,” was the first rigorously designed, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical study in more than four decades—if not ever—to examine the psychological effects of a psychedelic. It received a small torrent of press coverage, most of it so enthusiastic as to make you wonder if the moral panic around psychedelics that took hold in the late 1960s might finally have run its course. No doubt the positive tenor of the coverage owed much to the fact that, at Griffiths’s urging, the journal had invited several of the world’s most prominent drug researchers—some of them decorated soldiers in the drug war—to comment on the study, giving the journalists covering the study plenty of ideological cover. All of the commentators treated the publication as a major event. Herbert D. Kleber, a former deputy to William Bennett, George H. W. Bush’s drug czar, and later director of the Division on Substance Abuse at Columbia University, applauded the paper for its methodological rigor and acknowledged there might be “ major therapeutic possibilities” in psychedelic research “merit[ing] NIH support.” Charles “Bob” Schuster, who had served two Republican presidents as director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), noted that the term “psychedelic” implies a mind-expanding experience and expressed his “ hope that this landmark paper will also be ‘field expanding.’” He suggested that this “fascinating” class of drugs, and the spiritual experience they occasion, might prove useful in treating addiction. Griffiths’s paper and its reception served to reinforce an important distinction between the so-called classical psychedelics—psilocybin, LSD, DMT, and mescaline—and the more common drugs of abuse, with their demonstrated toxicity and potential for addiction. The American drug research establishment, such as it is, had signaled in the pages of one of its leading journals that these psychedelic drugs deserved to be treated very differently and had demonstrated, in the words of one commentator, “ that, when used appropriately, these compounds can produce remarkable, possibly beneficial, effects that certainly deserve further study.” The story of how this paper came to be sheds an interesting light on the fraught relationship between science and that other realm of human inquiry that science has historically disdained and generally wants nothing to do with: spirituality. For in designing this, the first modern study of psilocybin, Griffiths had decided to focus not on a potential therapeutic application of the drug—the path taken by other researchers hoping to rehabilitate other banned substances, like MDMA—but rather on the spiritual effects of the experience on so-called healthy normals. What good was that ? In an editorial accompanying Griffiths’s paper, the University of Chicago psychiatrist and drug abuse expert Harriet de Wit tried to address this tension, pointing out that the quest for experiences that “ free oneself of the bounds of everyday perception and thought in a search for universal truths and enlightenment” is an abiding element of our humanity that has nevertheless “enjoyed little credibility in the mainstream scientific world.” The time had come, she suggested, for science “to recognize these extraordinary subjective experiences . . . even if they sometimes involve claims about ultimate realities that lie outside the purview of science.” • • • R OLAND G RIFFITHS might be the last scientist one would ever imagine getting mixed up with psychedelics, which surely helps explain his success in returning psychedelic research to scientific respectability. Six feet tall and rail thin, Griffiths, in his seventies, holds himself bolt upright; the only undisciplined thing about him is a thatch of white hair so dense it appears to have held his comb to a draw. At least until you get him talking about the ultimate questions, which light him up, he comes across as the ultimate straight arrow: sober, earnest, and methodical. Born in 1944, Griffiths grew up in El Cerrito, California, in the Bay Area, and went to Occidental College for his undergraduate education (majoring in psychology) and then on to the University of Minnesota to study psychopharmacology. At Minnesota in the late 1960s, he came under the influence of B. F. Skinner, the radical behaviorist who helped shift the focus of psychology from the exploration of inner states and subjective experience to the study of outward behavior and how it is conditioned. Behaviorism has little interest in plumbing the depths of the human psyche, but the approach proved very useful in studying behaviors like drug use and dependence, which became Griffiths’s specialty. Psychedelic drugs played no role in either his formal or his informal education. By the time Griffiths got to graduate school, Timothy Leary’s notorious psychedelic research project at Harvard had already collapsed in scandal, and “it was clear from my mentors that these were compounds that had no future.” In 1972, right out of graduate school, Griffiths was hired at Johns Hopkins, where he has worked ever since, making his mark as a researcher studying the mechanisms of dependence in a variety of legal and illegal drugs, including the opiates, the so-called sedative hypnotics (like Valium), nicotine, alcohol, and caffeine. Working under grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Griffiths helped pioneer the sorts of experiments in which an animal, often a baboon or a rat, is presented with a lever allowing it to self-administer various drugs intravenously, a powerful tool for researchers studying reinforcement, dependence, preferences ( lunch or more cocaine? ), and withdrawal. The fifty-five papers he published exploring the addictive properties of caffeine transformed the field, helping us to see coffee less as a food than as a drug, and led to the listing of “caffeine withdrawal” syndrome in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM 5 . By the time Griffiths turned fifty, in 1994, he was a scientist at the top of his game and his field. But that year Griffiths’s career took an unexpected turn, the result of two serendipitous introductions. The first came when a friend introduced him to Siddha Yoga. Despite his behaviorist orientation as a scientist, Griffiths had always been interested in what philosophers call phenomenology—the subjective experience of consciousness. He had tried meditation as a graduate student but found that “he couldn’t sit still without going stark-raving mad. Three minutes felt like three hours.” But when he tried it again in 1994, “something opened up for me.” He started meditating regularly, going on retreats, and working his way through a variety of Eastern spiritual traditions. He found himself drawn “deeper and deeper into this mystery.” Somewhere along the way, Griffiths had what he modestly describes as “a funny kind of awakening”—a mystical experience. I was surprised when Griffiths mentioned this during our first meeting in his office, so I hadn’t followed up, but even after I had gotten to know him a little better, Griffiths was still reluctant to say much more about exactly what happened and, as someone who had never had such an experience, I had trouble gaining any traction with the idea whatsoever. All he would tell me is that the experience, which took place in his meditation practice, acquainted him with “something way, way beyond a material worldview that I can’t really talk to my colleagues about, because it involves metaphors or assumptions that I’m really uncomfortable with as a scientist.” In time, what he was learning about “the mystery of consciousness and existence” in his meditation practice came to seem more compelling to him than his science. He began to feel somewhat alienated: “None of the people I was close to had any interest in entertaining those questions, which fell into the general category of the spiritual, and religious people I just didn’t get. “Here I am, a full professor, publishing like crazy, running off to important meetings, and thinking I was a fraud.” He began to lose interest in the research that had organized his whole adult life. “I could study a new sedative hypnotic, learn something new about brain receptors, be on another FDA [Food and Drug Administration] panel, go to another conference, but so what? I was more emotionally and intellectually curious about where this other path might lead. My drug research began to seem vacuous. I was going through the motions at work, much more interested in going home in the evening to meditate.” The only way he could motivate himself to continue writing grants was to think of it as a “service project” for his graduate students and postdocs. In the case of his caffeine research, Griffiths had been able to take his curiosity about a dimension of his own experience—why did he feel compelled to drink coffee every day?—and turn it into a productive line of scientific inquiry. But he could see no way to do that with his deepening curiosity about the dimensions of consciousness that meditation had opened up to him. “It never occurred to me there was any way to study it scientifically.” Stymied and bored, Griffiths began to entertain thoughts of quitting science and going off to an ashram in India. It was around this time that Bob Schuster, an old friend and colleague who had recently retired as head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, phoned Griffiths to suggest he talk to a young man he had recently met at Esalen named Bob Jesse. Jesse had organized a small gathering of researchers, therapists, and religious scholars at the legendary Big Sur retreat center to discuss the spiritual and therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs and how they might be rehabilitated. Jesse himself was neither a medical professional nor a scientist; he was a computer engineer, a vice president of business development at Oracle, who had made it his mission to revive the science of psychedelics—but as a tool not so much of medicine as of spiritual development. Griffiths had told Schuster a little about his spiritual practice and confided in him his growing discontent with conventional drug research. “You should talk to this guy,” Schuster told him. “They have some interesting ideas about working with entheogens,” he said. “You might have something in common.” • • • W HEN THE HISTORY of second-wave psychedelic research is written, Bob Jesse will be seen as one of a pair of scientific outsiders in America—amateurs, really, and brilliant eccentrics—who worked tirelessly, often behind the scenes, to get it off the ground. Both found their vocation in the wake of transformative psychedelic experiences that convinced them these substances had the potential to heal not only individuals but humankind as a whole and that the best path to their rehabilitation was by way of credible scientific research. In many cases, these untrained researchers dreamed up the experiments first and then found (and funded) the scientists to conduct them. Often you will find their names on the papers, usually in the last position. Of the two, Rick Doblin has been at it longer and is by far the more well known. Doblin founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) all the way back in the dark days of 1986—the year after MDMA was made illegal and a time when most wiser heads were convinced that restarting research into psychedelics was a cause beyond hopeless. Doblin, born in 1953, is a great shaggy dog with a bone; he has been lobbying to change the government’s mind about psychedelics since shortly after graduating from New College, in Florida, in 1987. After experimenting with LSD as an undergraduate, and later with MDMA, Doblin decided his calling in life was to become a psychedelic therapist. But after the banning of MDMA in 1985, that dream became unachievable without a change in federal laws and regulations, so he decided he’d better first get a doctorate in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. There, he mastered the intricacies of the FDA’s drug approval process, and in his dissertation plotted the laborious path to official acceptance that psilocybin and MDMA are now following. Doblin is disarmingly, perhaps helplessly, candid, happy to talk openly to a reporter about his formative psychedelic experiences as well as political strategy and tactics. Like Timothy Leary, Doblin is the happiest of warriors, never not smiling and exhibiting a degree of enthusiasm for the work you wouldn’t expect from a man who has been knocking his head against the same wall for his entire adult life. Doblin works out of a somewhat Dickensian office tucked into the attic of his rambling colonial in Belmont, Massachusetts, at a desk stacked to the ceiling with precarious piles of manuscripts, journal articles, photographs, and memorabilia reaching back more than forty years. Some of the memorabilia commemorates the time early in his career when Doblin decided the best way to end sectarian strife would be to mail a group of the world’s spiritual leaders tablets of MDMA, a drug famous for its ability to break down barriers between people and kindle empathy. Around the same time, he arranged to have a thousand doses of MDMA sent to people in the Soviet military who were working on arms control negotiations with President Reagan. For Doblin, winning FDA approval for the medical use of psychedelics—which he believes is now in view, for both MDMA and psilocybin—is a means to a more ambitious and still more controversial end: the incorporation of psychedelics into American society and culture, not just medicine. This of course is the same winning strategy followed by the campaign to decriminalize marijuana, in which promoting the medical uses of cannabis changed the drug’s image, leading to a more general public acceptance. Not surprisingly, this sort of talk rankles more cautious heads in the community (Bob Jesse among them), but Rick Doblin is not one to soft-pedal his agenda or to even think about taking an interview off the record. This gets him a lot of press; how much it helps the cause is debatable. But there is no question that especially in the last several years Doblin has succeeded in getting important research approved and funded, especially in the case of MDMA, which has long been MAPS’s main focus. MAPS has sponsored several small clinical trials that have demonstrated MDMA’s value in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. (Doblin defines psychedelics generously, so as to include MDMA and even cannabis, even though their mechanisms of action in the brain are very different from that of the classical psychedelics.) But beyond helping those suffering with PTSD and other indications—MAPS is sponsoring a clinical study at UCLA that involves treating autistic adults with MDMA—Doblin believes fervently in the power of psychedelics to improve humankind by disclosing a spiritual dimension of consciousness we all share, regardless of our religious beliefs or lack thereof. “Mysticism,” he likes to say, “is the antidote to fundamentalism.” • • • C OMPARED WITH R ICK D OBLIN, Bob Jesse is a monk. There is nothing shaggy or uncareful about him. Taut, press shy, and disposed to choose his words with a pair of tweezers, Jesse, now in his fifties, prefers to do his work out of public view, and preferably from the one-room cabin where he lives by himself in the rugged hills north of San Francisco, off the grid except for a fast Internet connection. “Bob Jesse is like the puppeteer,” Katherine MacLean told me. MacLean is a psychologist who worked in Roland Griffiths’s lab from 2009 until 2013. “He’s the visionary guy working behind the scenes.” Following Jesse’s meticulous directions, I drove north from the Bay Area, eventually winding up at the end of a narrow dirt road in a county he asked me not to name. I parked at a trailhead and made my way past the “No Trespassing” signs, following a path up a hill that brought me to his picturesque mountaintop camp. I felt as if I were going to visit the wizard. The shipshape little cabin is tight for two, so Jesse has set out among the fir trees and boulders some comfortable sofas, chairs, and tables. He’s also built an outdoor kitchen and, on a shelf of rock commanding a spectacular view of the mountains, an outdoor shower, giving the camp the feeling of a house turned inside out. We spent the better part of an early spring day outdoors in his living room, sipping herbal tea and discussing his notably quieter campaign to restore psychedelics to respectability—a master plan in which Roland Griffiths plays a central role. “I’m a little camera shy,” he began, “so please, no pictures or recordings of any kind.” Jesse is a slender, compact fellow with a squarish head of closely cropped gray hair and rimless rectangular glasses that are unostentatiously stylish. Jesse seldom smiles and has some of the stiffness I associate with engineers, though occasionally he’ll surprise you with a flash of emotion he will immediately then caption: “You may have noticed that thinking about that subject made my eyes get a little watery. Let me explain why . . .” Not only does he choose his own words with great care, but he insists that you do too, so, for example, when I carelessly deployed the term “recreational use,” he stopped me in mid-sentence. “Maybe we need to reexamine that term. Typically, it is used to trivialize an experience. But why? In its literal meaning, the word ‘recreation’ implies something decidedly nontrivial. There is much more to be said, but let’s bookmark this topic for another time. Please go on.” My notes show that Jesse took our first conversation on and off the record half a dozen times. Jesse grew up outside Baltimore and went to Johns Hopkins, where he studied computer science and electrical engineering. For several years in his twenties, he worked for Bell Labs, commuting weekly from Baltimore to New Jersey. During this period, he came out of the closet and persuaded management to recognize the company’s first gay and lesbian employee group. (At the time, AT&T, the parent company, employed some 300,000 people.) Later, he persuaded AT&T management to fly a rainbow flag over headquarters during Gay Pride Week and send a delegation to march in the parade. This achievement formed Bob Jesse’s political education, impressing on him the value of working behind the scenes without making a lot of noise or demanding credit. Jesse moved to Oracle, and the Bay Area, in 1990, becoming employee number 8766—not one of the first, but early enough to have acquired a chunk of stock in the company. It wasn’t long before Oracle fielded its own contingent in San Francisco’s Gay Pride Parade, and after Jesse’s gentle prodding of senior management Oracle became one of the first Fortune 500 companies to offer benefits to the same-sex partners of its employees. Jesse’s curiosity about psychedelics was first piqued during a drug education unit in his high school science class. This particular class of drugs was neither physically nor psychologically addictive, he was told (correctly); his teacher went on to describe the drugs’ effects, including shifts in consciousness and visual perception that Jesse found intriguing. “I could sense there was even more here than they were telling us,” he recalled. “So I made a mental note.” But he would not be ready to see for himself what psychedelics were all about until much later. Why? He answered in the third person: “A closeted gay kid might be afraid of what might come out if he let his guard down.” In his twenties, while working at Bell Labs, Jesse fell in with a group of friends in Baltimore who decided, in a most deliberate way, to experiment with psychedelics. Someone would always remain “close to ground level” in case anyone needed help or the doorbell rang, and doses escalated gradually. It was during one of these Saturday afternoon experiments, in an apartment in Baltimore, that Jesse, twenty-five years old and having ingested a high dose of LSD, had a powerful “non-dual experience” that would prove transformative. I asked him to describe it, and after some hemming and hawing—“I hope you’ll bracket what is sensitive”—he gingerly proceeded to tell the story. “I was lying on my back underneath a ficus tree,” he recalls. “I knew it was going to be a strong experience. And the point came where the little I still was just started slipping away. I lost all awareness of being on the floor in an apartment in Baltimore; I couldn’t tell if my eyes were opened or closed. What opened up before me was, for lack of a better word, a space, but not our ordinary concept of space, just the pure awareness of a realm without form and void of content. And into that realm came a celestial entity, which was the emergence of the physical world. It was like the big bang, but without the boom or the blinding light. It was the birth of the physical universe. In one sense it was dramatic—maybe the most important thing that ever occurred in the history of the world—yet it just sort of happened.” I asked him where he was in all this. “I was a diffusely located observer. I was coextensive with this emergence.” Here I let him know he was losing me. Long pause. “I’m hesitating because the words are an awkward fit; words seem too constraining.” Ineffability is of course a hallmark of the mystical experience. “The awareness transcends any particular sensory modality,” he explained, unhelpfully. Was it scary? “There was no terror, only fascination and awe.” Pause. “Um, maybe a little fear.” From here on, Jesse watched (or whatever you call it) the birth of . . . everything, in the unfolding of an epic sequence beginning with the appearance of cosmic dust leading to the creation of the stars and then the solar systems, followed by the emergence of life and from there the arrival of “what we call humans,” then the acquisition of language and the unfolding of awareness, “all the way up to one’s self, here in this room, surrounded by my friends. I had come all the way back to right where I was. How much clock time had elapsed? I had no idea. “What stands out most for me is the quality of the awareness I experienced, something entirely distinct from what I’ve come to regard as Bob. How does this expanded awareness fit into the scope of things? To the extent I regard the experience as veridical—and about that I’m still not sure—it tells me that consciousness is primary to the physical universe. In fact, it precedes it.” Did he now believe consciousness exists outside the brain? He’s not certain. “But to go from being very sure that the opposite is true”—that consciousness is the product of our gray matter—“to be unsure is an immense shift.” I asked him if he agreed with something I’d read the Dalai Lama had said, that the idea that brains create consciousness—an idea accepted without question by most scientists—“is a metaphysical assumption, not a scientific fact.” “Bingo,” Jesse said. “And for someone with my orientation”—agnostic, enamored of science—“that changes everything.” • • • H ERE’S WHAT I DON’T GET about an experience like Bob Jesse’s: Why in the world would you ever credit it at all? I didn’t understand why you wouldn’t simply file it under “interesting dream” or “drug-induced fantasy.” But along with the feeling of ineffability, the conviction that some profound objective truth has been disclosed to you is a hallmark of the mystical experience, regardless of whether it has been occasioned by a drug, meditation, fasting, flagellation, or sensory deprivation. William James gave a name to this conviction: the noetic quality. People feel they have been let in on a deep secret of the universe, and they cannot be shaken from that conviction. As James wrote, “ Dreams cannot stand this test.” No doubt this is why some of the people who have such an experience go on to found religions, changing the course of history or, in a great many more cases, the course of their own lives. “No doubt” is the key. I can think of a couple of ways to account for such a phenomenon, neither entirely satisfying. The most straightforward and yet hardest to accept explanation is that it’s simply true: the altered state of consciousness has opened the person up to a truth that the rest of us, imprisoned in ordinary waking consciousness, simply cannot see. Science has trouble with this interpretation, however, because, whatever the perception is, it can’t be verified by its customary tools. It’s an anecdotal report, in effect, and so has no value. Science has little interest in, and tolerance for, the testimony of the individual; in this it is, curiously, much like an organized religion, which has a big problem crediting direct revelation too. But it’s worth pointing out that there are cases where science has no choice but to rely on individual testimony—as in the study of subjective consciousness, which is inaccessible to our scientific tools and so can only be described by the person experiencing it. Here phenomenology is the all-important data. However, this is not the case when ascertaining truths about the world outside our heads. The problem with crediting mystical experiences is precisely that they often seem to erase the distinction between inside and outside, in the way that Bob Jesse’s “diffuse awareness” seemed to be his but also to exist outside him. This points to the second possible explanation for the noetic sense: when our sense of a subjective “I” disintegrates, as it often does in a high-dose psychedelic experience (as well as in meditation by experienced meditators), it becomes impossible to distinguish between what is subjectively and objectively true. What’s left to do the doubting if not your I? • • • I N THE YEARS following that first powerful psychedelic journey, Bob Jesse had a series of other experiences that shifted the course of his life. Living in San Francisco in the early 1990s, he got involved in the rave scene and discovered that the “collective effervescence” of the best all-night dance parties, with or without psychedelic “materials,” could also dissolve the “subject-object duality” and open up new spiritual vistas. He began to explore various spiritual traditions, from Buddhism to Quakerism to meditation, and found his priorities in life gradually shifting. “It began to occur to me that spending time in this area might actually be far more important and far more fulfilling than what I had been doing” as a computer engineer. While on a sabbatical from Oracle (he would leave for good in 1995), Jesse set up a nonprofit called the Council on Spiritual Practices (CSP), with the aim of “making direct experience of the sacred more available to more people.” The website downplays the organization’s interest in promoting entheogens—Bob Jesse’s preferred term for psychedelics—but does describe its mission in suggestive terms: “to identify and develop approaches to primary religious experience that can be used safely and effectively.” The website (csp.org) offers an excellent bibliography of psychedelic research and regular updates on the work under way at Johns Hopkins. CSP would also play a role in supporting the UDV lawsuit that resulted in the 2006 Supreme Court decision. The Council on Spiritual Practices grew out of Jesse’s systematic exploration of the psychedelic literature and the psychedelic community in the Bay Area soon after he moved to San Francisco. In his highly deliberate, slightly obsessive, and scrupulously polite way, Jesse contacted the region’s numerous “psychedelic elders”—the rich cast of characters who had been deeply involved in research and therapy in the years before most of the drugs were banned in 1970, with the passing of the Controlled Substances Act, and the classification of LSD and psilocybin as schedule 1 substances with a high potential for abuse and no recognized medical use. There was James Fadiman, the Stanford-trained psychologist who had done pioneering research on psychedelics and problem solving at the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, until the FDA halted the group’s work in 1966. (In the early 1960s, there was at least as much psychedelic research going on around Stanford as there was at Harvard; it just didn’t have a character of the wattage of a Timothy Leary out talking about it.) Then there was Fadiman’s colleague at the institute Myron Stolaroff, a prominent Silicon Valley electrical engineer who worked as a senior executive at Ampex, the magnetic recording equipment maker, until an LSD trip inspired him to give up engineering (much like Bob Jesse) for a career as a psychedelic researcher and therapist. Jesse also found his way into the inner circle of Sasha and Ann Shulgin, legendary Bay Area figures who held weekly dinners for a community of therapists, scientists, and others interested in psychedelics. (Sasha Shulgin, who died in 2014, was a brilliant chemist who held a DEA license allowing him to synthesize novel psychedelic compounds, which he did in prodigious numbers. He also was the first to synthesize MDMA since it had been patented by Merck in 1912 and forgotten. Recognizing its psychoactive properties, he introduced the so-called empathogen to the Bay Area’s psychotherapy community. Only later, did it become the club drug known as Ecstasy.) Jesse also befriended Huston Smith, the scholar of comparative religion, whose mind had been opened to the spiritual potential of psychedelics when, as an instructor/lecturer at MIT in 1962, he served as a volunteer in the Good Friday Experiment, from which he came away convinced that a mystical experience occasioned by a drug was no different from any other kind. By way of these “elders” and his own reading, Jesse began unearthing the rich body of first-wave psychedelic research, much of which had been lost to science. He learned that there had been more than a thousand scientific papers on psychedelic drug therapy before 1965, involving more than forty thousand research subjects. Beginning in the 1950s and continuing into the early 1970s, psychedelic compounds had been used to treat a variety of conditions—including alcoholism, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety at the end of life—frequently with impressive results. But few of the studies were well controlled by modern standards, and some of them were compromised by the enthusiasm of the researchers involved. Of even keener interest to Bob Jesse was the early research exploring the potential of psychedelics to contribute to what, in a striking phrase, he calls “the betterment of well people.” There had been studies in “healthy normals” of artistic and scientific creativity and spirituality. The most famous of these was the Good Friday, or Marsh Chapel, Experiment, conducted in 1962 by Walter Pahnke, a psychiatrist and minister working on a PhD dissertation at Harvard under Timothy Leary. In this double-blind experiment, twenty divinity students received a capsule of white powder during a Good Friday service at Marsh Chapel on the Boston University campus, ten of them containing psilocybin, ten an “active placebo”—in this case niacin, which creates a tingling sensation. Eight of the ten students receiving psilocybin reported a powerful mystical experience, while only one in the control group did. (Telling them apart was not difficult, rendering the double blind a somewhat hollow conceit: those on the placebo sat sedately in their pews while the others lay down or wandered about the chapel, muttering things like “God is everywhere” and “Oh, the Glory!”) Pahnke concluded that the experiences of those who received the psilocybin were “indistinguishable from, if not identical with,” the classic mystical experiences reported in the literature. Huston Smith agreed. “ Until the Good Friday Experiment,” he told an interviewer in 1996, “I had had no direct personal encounter with God.” In 1986, Rick Doblin conducted a follow-up study of the Good Friday Experiment in which he tracked down and interviewed all but one of the divinity students who received psilocybin at Marsh Chapel. Most reported that the experience had reshaped their lives and work in profound and enduring ways. However, Doblin found serious flaws in Pahnke’s published account: Pahnke had failed to mention that several subjects had struggled with acute anxiety during their experience. One had to be restrained and given an injection of Thorazine, a powerful antipsychotic, after he fled from the chapel and headed down Commonwealth Avenue, convinced he had been chosen to announce the news of the coming of the Messiah. In this and a second review of another Timothy Leary–supervised experiment, of recidivism at Concord State Prison, Doblin had raised troubling questions about the quality of the research done in the Harvard Psilocybin Project, suggesting that the enthusiasm of the experimenters had tainted the reported results. If this research were going to be revived and taken seriously, Jesse concluded, it would have to be done with considerably more rigor and objectivity. And yet the results of the Good Friday Experiment were highly suggestive and, as Bob Jesse and Roland Griffiths would soon decide, well worth trying to reproduce. • • • B OB J ESSE SPENT the early 1990s excavating the knowledge about psychedelics that had been lost when formal research was halted and informal research went underground. In this, he was a little like those Renaissance scholars who rediscovered the lost world of classical thought in a handful of manuscripts squirreled away in monasteries. However, in this case, considerably less time had elapsed, so the knowledge remained in the brains of people still alive, like James Fadiman and Myron Stolaroff and Willis Harman (another Bay Area engineer turned psychedelic researcher), who merely had to be asked for it, and in scientific papers in libraries and databases, which merely had to be searched. But if there is a modern analogy to the medieval monastery where the world of classical thought was saved from oblivion, a place where the guttering flame of psychedelic knowledge was assiduously fanned during its own dark age, that place would have to be Esalen, the legendary retreat center in Big Sur, California. Perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific as if barely clinging to the continent, the Esalen Institute was founded in 1962 and ever since has been a center of gravity for the so-called human potential movement in America, serving as the unofficial capital of the New Age. A great many therapeutic and spiritual modalities were developed and taught here over the years, including the therapeutic and spiritual potential of psychedelics. Beginning in 1973, Stanislav Grof, the Czech émigré psychiatrist who is one of the pioneers of LSD-assisted psychotherapy, served as scholar in residence at Esalen, but he had conducted workshops there for years before. Grof, who has guided thousands of LSD sessions, once predicted that psychedelics “ would be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology or the telescope is for astronomy. These tools make it possible to study important processes that under normal circumstances are not available for direct observation.” Hundreds came to Esalen to peer through that microscope, often in workshops Grof led for psychotherapists who wanted to incorporate psychedelics in their practices. Many if not most of the therapists and guides now doing this work underground learned their craft at the feet of Stan Grof in the Big House at Esalen. Whether such work continued at Esalen after LSD was made illegal is uncertain, but it wouldn’t be surprising: the place is perched so far out over the edge of the continent as to feel beyond the reach of federal law enforcement. But at least officially, such workshops ended when LSD became illegal. Grof began teaching instead something called holotropic breathwork, a technique for inducing a psychedelic state of consciousness without drugs, by means of deep, rapid, and rhythmic breathing, usually accompanied by loud drumming. Yet Esalen’s role in the history of psychedelics did not end with their prohibition. It became the place where people hoping to bring these molecules back into the culture, whether as an adjunct to therapy or a means of spiritual development, met to plot their campaigns. In January 1994, Bob Jesse managed to get himself invited to one such meeting at Esalen. While helping out with the dishes after a Friday night dinner at the Shulgins’, Jesse learned that a group of therapists and scientists would be gathering in Big Sur to discuss the prospects for reviving psychedelic research. There were signs that the door Washington, D.C., had slammed shut on research in the late 1960s might be opening, if only a crack: Curtis Wright, a new administrator at the FDA (and, as it happens, a former student of Roland Griffiths’s at Hopkins), had signaled that research protocols for psychedelics would be treated like any other—judged on their merits. Testing this new receptivity, a psychiatrist at the University of New Mexico named Rick Strassman had sought and received approval to study the physiological effects of DMT, a powerful psychedelic compound found in many plants. This small trial marked the first federally sanctioned experiment with a psychedelic compound since the 1970s—in retrospect, a watershed event. Around the same time, Rick Doblin and Charles Grob, a psychiatrist at UCLA, had succeeded in persuading the government to approve the first human trial of MDMA. (Grob is one of the first psychiatrists to advocate for the return of psychedelics to psychotherapy; he later conducted the first modern trial of psilocybin for cancer patients.) The year before the Esalen gathering (which Grob and Doblin both attended), David Nichols, a Purdue University chemist and pharmacologist, launched the Heffter Research Institute (named for the German chemist who first identified the mescaline compound in 1897) with the then improbable ambition of funding serious psychedelic science. (Heffter has since helped fund many of the modern trials of psilocybin.) So there were scattered hopeful signs in the early 1990s that conditions were ripening for a revival of psychedelic research. The tiny community that had sustained such a dream through the dark ages began, tentatively, quietly, to organize. Even though Jesse was new to this community, and neither a scientist nor a therapist, he asked if he could attend the Esalen meeting and offered to make himself useful, refilling water glasses if that’s what it took. Most of the gathering was taken up with discussions of the potential medical applications of psychedelics, as well as the need for basic research on the neuroscience. Jesse was struck by the fact that so little attention was paid to the spiritual potential of these compounds. He left the meeting convinced that “okay, there is room to maneuver here. I was hoping one of these people would pick up the ball and run with it, but they were busy with the other ball. So I made a decision to seek a leave of absence from Oracle.” Within a year, Jesse would launch the Council on Spiritual Practices, and within two the council would convene its own meeting at Esalen, in January 1996, with the aim of opening a second front in the campaign to resurrect psychedelics. Fittingly, the gathering took place in the Maslow Room at Esalen, named for the psychologist whose writings on the hierarchy of human needs underscored the importance of “peak experiences” in self-actualization. Most of the fifteen in attendance were “psychedelic elders,” therapists and researchers like James Fadiman and Willis Harman, Mark Kleiman, then a drug-policy expert at the Kennedy School (and Rick Doblin’s thesis tutor there), and religious figures like Huston Smith, Brother David Steindl-Rast, and Jeffrey Bronfman, the head of the UDV church in America (and heir to the Seagram’s liquor fortune). But Jesse wisely decided to invite an outsider as well: Charles “Bob” Schuster, who had served both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Jesse didn’t know Schuster well at all; they had once spoken briefly at a conference. But Jesse came away from the encounter thinking Schuster just might be receptive to an invitation. Exactly why Bob Schuster—a leading figure in the academic establishment undergirding the drug war—would be open to the idea of coming to Esalen to discuss the spiritual potential of psychedelics was a mystery, at least until I had the opportunity to speak to his widow, Chris-Ellyn Johanson. Johanson, who is also a drug researcher, painted a picture of a man of exceptionally broad interests and deep curiosity. “Bob was open-minded to a fault,” she told me, with a laugh. “He would talk to anyone.” Like many people in the NIDA community, Schuster well understood that psychedelics fit awkwardly into the profile of a drug of abuse; animals, given the choice, will not self-administer a psychedelic more than once, and the classical psychedelics exhibit remarkably little toxicity. I asked Johanson if Schuster had ever taken a psychedelic himself; Roland Griffiths had told me he thought it was possible. (“Bob was a jazz musician,” Griffiths told me, “so I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”) But Johanson said no. “He was definitely curious about them,” she told me, “but I think he was too afraid. We were martini people.” I asked if he was a spiritual man. “Not really, though I think he would have liked to have been.” Jesse, not quite sure what Schuster would make of the meeting, arranged to have Jim Fadiman bunk with him, instructing Fadiman, a psychologist, to check him out. “Early the next morning Jim found me and said, ‘Bob, mission accomplished. You have found a gem of a human being.’” Schuster thoroughly enjoyed his time at Esalen, according to his wife. He took part in a drumming circle Jesse had arranged—you don’t leave Esalen without doing some such thing—and was amazed to discover how easily he could slip into a trance. But Schuster also made some key contributions to the group’s deliberations. He warned Jesse off working with MDMA, which he believed was toxic to the brain and had by then acquired an unsavory reputation as a club drug. He also suggested that psilocybin was a much better candidate for research than LSD, largely for political reasons: because so many fewer people had heard of it, psilocybin carried none of the political and cultural baggage of LSD. By the end of the meeting, the Esalen group had settled on a short list of objectives, some of them modest—to draft a code of ethics for spiritual guides—and others more ambitious: “to get aboveboard, unimpeachable research done, at an institution with investigators beyond reproach,” and, ideally, “do this without any pretext of clinical treatment.” “We weren’t sure that was possible,” Jesse told me, but he and his colleagues believed “it would be a big mistake if medicalization is all that happens.” Why a mistake? Because Bob Jesse was ultimately less interested in people’s mental problems than with their spiritual well-being—in using entheogens for the betterment of well people. Shortly after the Esalen meeting, Schuster made what would turn out to be his most important contribution: telling Bob Jesse about his old friend Roland Griffiths, whom he described as exactly “the investigator beyond reproach” Jesse was looking for and “a scientist of the first order.” “Everything Roland’s done he’s devoted himself to completely,” Jesse recalls Schuster saying, “including his meditation practice. We think it’s changed him.” Griffiths had shared with Schuster his growing dissatisfaction with science and his deepening interest in the kind of “ultimate questions” coming up in his meditation practice. Schuster then made the call to Griffiths telling him about the interesting young man he’d just met at Esalen, explaining that they shared an interest in spirituality, and suggesting they should meet. After an exchange of e-mails, Jesse flew to Baltimore to have lunch with Griffiths in the cafeteria on the Bayview medical campus, inaugurating a series of conversations and meetings that would eventually lead to their collaboration on the 2006 study of psilocybin and mystical experience at Johns Hopkins. • • • B UT THERE WAS STILL one missing piece of the puzzle and the scientific team. Most of the drug trials Griffiths had run in the past involved baboons and other nonhuman primates; he had much less clinical experience working with humans and realized he needed a skilled therapist to join the project—a “master clinician,” as he put it. As it happened, Bob Jesse had met a psychologist at a psychedelic conference a few years before who not only filled the bill but lived in Baltimore. Still more fortuitous, this psychologist, whose name was Bill Richards, probably has more experience guiding psychedelic journeys in the 1960s and 1970s than anyone alive, with the possible exception of Stan Grof (with whom he had once worked). In fact, Bill Richards administered the very last legal dose of psilocybin to an American, at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center at Spring Grove State Hospital in the spring of 1977. In the decades since, he had been practicing more conventional psychotherapy out of his home in a leafy Baltimore neighborhood called Windsor Hills, biding his time and waiting patiently for the world to come around so that he might work with psychedelics once again. “In the big picture,” he told me the first time we met in his home office, “these drugs have been around at least five thousand years, and many times they have surfaced and have been repressed, so this was another cycle. But the mushroom still grows, and eventually this work would come around again. Or so I hoped.” When he got the call from Bob Jesse in 1998, and met Roland Griffiths shortly thereafter, he couldn’t quite believe his good fortune. “It was thrilling.” Bill Richards, a preternaturally cheerful man in his seventies, is a bridge between the two eras of psychedelic therapy. Walter Pahnke was the best man at his wedding; he worked closely with Stan Grof at Spring Grove and visited Timothy Leary in Millbrook, New York, where Leary landed after his exile from Harvard. Though Richards left the Midwest half a century ago, he’s retained the speech patterns of rural Michigan, where he was born in 1940. Richards today sports a white goatee, laughs with an infectious cackle, and ends many of his sentences with a cheerful, up-spoken “y’know?” Richards, who holds graduate degrees in both psychology and divinity, had his first psychedelic experience while a divinity student at Yale in 1963. He was spending the year studying in Germany, at the University of Göttingen, and found himself drawn to the Department of Psychiatry, where he learned about a research project involving a drug called psilocybin. “I had no idea what that was, but two friends of mine had participated and had had interesting experiences.” One of them, whose father had been killed in the war, had regressed to childhood to find himself sitting on his father’s lap. The other had hallucinations of SS men marching in the street. “I had never had a decent hallucination,” Richards said with a chuckle, “and I was trying to get some insight into my childhood. In those days, I viewed my own mind as a psychological laboratory, so I decided to volunteer. “This was before the importance of set and setting was understood. I was brought to a basement room, given an injection, and left alone.” A recipe for a bad trip, surely, but Richards had precisely the opposite experience. “I felt immersed in this incredibly detailed imagery that looked like Islamic architecture, with Arabic script, about which I knew nothing. And then I somehow became these exquisitely intricate patterns, losing my usual identity. And all I can say is that the eternal brilliance of mystical consciousness manifested itself. My awareness was flooded with love, beauty, and peace beyond anything I ever had known or imagined to be possible. ‘Awe,’ ‘glory,’ and ‘gratitude’ were the only words that remained relevant.” Descriptions of such experiences always sound a little thin, at least when compared with the emotional impact people are trying to convey; for a life-transforming event, the words can seem paltry. When I mentioned this to Richards, he smiled. “You have to imagine a caveman transported into the middle of Manhattan. He sees buses, cell phones, skyscrapers, airplanes. Then zap him back to his cave. What does he say about the experience? ‘It was big, it was impressive, it was loud.’ He doesn’t have the vocabulary for ‘skyscraper,’ ‘elevator,’ ‘cell phone.’ Maybe he has an intuitive sense there was some sort of significance or order to the scene. But there are words we need that don’t yet exist. We’ve got five crayons when we need fifty thousand different shades.” In the middle of his journey, one of the psychiatric residents stopped by the room to look in on Richards, asking him to sit up so he could test his reflexes. As the resident tapped his patellar tendon with his little rubber hammer, Richards remembers feeling “compassion for the infancy of science. The researchers had no idea what really was happening in my inner experiential world, of its unspeakable beauty or of its potential importance for all of us.” A few days after the experience, Richards returned to the lab and asked, “What was that drug you gave me? How is it spelled? “And the rest of my life is footnotes!” Yet after several subsequent psilocybin sessions failed to produce another mystical experience, Richards started to wonder if perhaps he had exaggerated that first trip. Some time later, Walter Pahnke arrived at the university, fresh from his graduate work with Timothy Leary at Harvard, and the two became friends. (It was Richards who gave Pahnke his first psychedelic trip while the two were in Germany; he had apparently never taken LSD or psilocybin at Harvard, thinking it might compromise the objectivity of the Good Friday Experiment.) Pahnke suggested Richards try one more time, but in a room with soft lighting, plants, and music and using a higher dose. Once again, Richards had “an incredibly profound experience. I realized I had not exaggerated the first trip but in fact had forgotten 80 percent of it. “I have never doubted the validity of these experiences,” Richards told me. “This was the realm of mystical consciousness that Shankara was talking about, that Plotinus was writing about, that Saint John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart were writing about. It’s also what Abraham Maslow was talking about with his ‘peak experiences,’ though Abe could get there without the drugs.” Richards would go on to study psychology under Maslow at Brandeis University. “Abe was a natural Jewish mystic. He could just lie down in the backyard and have a mystical experience. Psychedelics are for those of us who aren’t so innately gifted.” Richards emerged from those first psychedelic explorations in possession of three unshakable convictions. The first is that the experience of the sacred reported both by the great mystics and by people on high-dose psychedelic journeys is the same experience and is “real”—that is, not just a figment of the imagination. “You go deep enough or far out enough in consciousness and you will bump into the sacred. It’s not something we generate; it’s something out there waiting to be discovered. And this reliably happens to nonbelievers as well as believers.” Second, that, whether occasioned by drugs or other means, these experiences of mystical consciousness are in all likelihood the primal basis of religion. (Partly for this reason Richards believes that psychedelics should be part of a divinity student’s education.) And third, that consciousness is a property of the universe, not brains. On this question, he holds with Henri Bergson, the French philosopher, who conceived of the human mind as a kind of radio receiver, able to tune in to frequencies of energy and information that exist outside it. “If you wanted to find the blonde who delivered the news last night,” Richards offered by way of an analogy, “you wouldn’t look for her in the TV set.” The television set is, like the human brain, necessary but not sufficient. After Richards finished with his graduate studies in the late 1960s, he found work as a research fellow at the Spring Grove State Hospital outside Baltimore, where a most improbable counterfactual history of psychedelic research was quietly unfolding, far from the noise and glare surrounding Timothy Leary. Indeed, this is a case where the force of the Leary narrative has bent the received history out of shape, such that many of us assume there was no serious psychedelic research before Leary arrived at Harvard and no serious research after he was fired. But until Bill Richards administered psilocybin to his last volunteer in 1977, Spring Grove was actively (and without much controversy) conducting an ambitious program of psychedelic research—much of it under grants from the National Institute of Mental Health—with schizophrenics, alcoholics and other addicts, cancer patients struggling with anxiety, religious and mental health professionals, and patients with severe personality disorders. Several hundred patients and volunteers received psychedelic therapy at Spring Grove between the early 1960s and the mid-1970s. In many cases, the researchers were getting very good results in well-designed studies that were being regularly published in peer-reviewed journals such as JAMA and the Archives of General Psychiatry . (Roland Griffiths is of the opinion that much of this research is “suspect,” but Richards told me, “These studies weren’t as bad as people like Roland might imply.”) It is remarkable just how much of the work being done today, at Hopkins and NYU and other places, was prefigured at Spring Grove; indeed, it is hard to find a contemporary experiment with psychedelics that wasn’t already done in Maryland in the 1960s or 1970s. At least at the beginning, the Spring Grove psychedelic work enjoyed lots of public support. In 1965, CBS News broadcast an admiring hour-long “special report” on the hospital’s work with alcoholics, called LSD: The Spring Grove Experiment . The response to the program was so positive that the Maryland state legislature established a multimillion-dollar research facility on the campus of the Spring Grove State Hospital, called the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. Stan Grof, Walter Pahnke, and Bill Richards were hired to help run it, along with several dozen other therapists, psychiatrists, pharmacologists, and support staff. Equally hard to believe today is the fact that, as Richards told me, “whenever we hired someone, they would receive a couple of LSD sessions as part of their training to do the work. We had authorization! How else could you be sensitive to what was going on in the mind of the patient? I wish we could do that at Hopkins.” The fact that such an ambitious research program continued at Spring Grove well into the 1970s suggests the story of the suppression of psychedelic research is a little more complicated than the conventional narrative would indicate. While it is true that some research projects—such as Jim Fadiman’s creativity trials in Palo Alto—received orders from Washington to stop, other projects on long-term grants were allowed to continue until the money ran out, as it eventually did. Rather than shut down all research, as many in the psychedelic community believe happened, the government simply made it more difficult to get approvals, and funding gradually dried up. As time went on, researchers found that on top of all the bureaucratic and financial hurdles they also had to deal with “the snicker test”: How would your colleagues react when you told them you were running experiments with LSD? By the mid-1970s, psychedelics had become something of a scientific embarrassment—not because they were a failure, but because they had become identified with the counterculture and with disgraced scientists such as Timothy Leary. But there was nothing embarrassing about psychedelic research at Spring Grove in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Then, and there, it looked like the future. “We thought this was the most incredible frontier in psychiatry,” Richards recalls. “We would all sit around the conference table talking about how we were going to train the hundreds if not thousands of therapists that would be needed to do this work. (And look, we’re having the same conversation again today!) There were international conferences on psychedelic research, and we had colleagues throughout Europe doing similar work. The field was taking off. But in the end the societal forces were stronger than we were.” In 1971, Richard Nixon declared Timothy Leary, a washed-up psychology professor, “the most dangerous man in America.” Psychedelics were nourishing the counterculture, and the counterculture was sapping the willingness of America’s young to fight. The Nixon administration sought to blunt the counterculture by attacking its neurochemical infrastructure. Was the suppression of psychedelic research inevitable? Many of the researchers I interviewed feel that it might have been avoided had the drugs not leaped the laboratory walls—a contingency that, fairly or not, most of them blame squarely on the “antics,” “misbehavior,” and “evangelism” of Timothy Leary. Stanislav Grof believes that psychedelics loosed “the Dionysian element” on 1960s America, posing a threat to the country’s puritan values that was bound to be repulsed. (He told me he also thinks the same thing could happen again.) Roland Griffiths points out that ours is not the first culture to feel threatened by psychedelics: the reason R. Gordon Wasson had to rediscover magic mushrooms in Mexico was that the Spanish had suppressed them so effectively, deeming them dangerous instruments of paganism. “That says something important about how reluctant cultures are to expose themselves to the changes these kinds of compounds can occasion,” he told me the first time we met. “There is so much authority that comes out of the primary mystical experience that it can be threatening to existing hierarchical structures.” • • • B Y THE MID-1970S, the LSD work at Spring Grove, much of which was state funded, had become a political hot potato in Annapolis. In 1975, the Rockefeller Commission investigating the CIA disclosed that the agency had also been running LSD experiments in Maryland, at Fort Detrick, as part of a mind-control project called MK-Ultra. ( An internal memo the commission released concisely set forth the agency’s objective: “Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?”) It was revealed that the CIA was dosing both government employees and civilians without their knowledge; at least one person had died. The news that Maryland taxpayers were also supporting research with LSD promptly blew up into a scandal, and pressure to close down psychedelic research at Spring Grove became irresistible. “Pretty soon it was just me and two secretaries,” Richards recalls. “And then it was over.” Today Roland Griffiths, who would pick up the thread of research that was dropped when the work at Spring Grove ended, marvels at the fact that the first wave of psychedelic research, promising as it was, would end for reasons having nothing to do with science. “We ended up demonizing these compounds. Can you think of another area of science thought to be so dangerous and taboo that all research gets shut down for decades? It’s unprecedented in modern science.” So too, perhaps, is the sheer amount of scientific knowledge that was simply erased. In 1998, Griffiths, Jesse, and Richards began designing a pilot study loosely based on the Good Friday Experiment. “It wasn’t a psychotherapy study,” Richards points out. “It was a study designed to determine whether psilocybin can elicit a transcendental experience. That we were able to obtain permission to give it to healthy normals is a tribute to Roland’s long history of commanding respect both at Hopkins and in Washington.” In 1999, the protocol was approved, but only after wending its way through five layers of review at Hopkins as well as the FDA and the DEA. (Many of Griffiths’s Hopkins colleagues were skeptical of the proposal, worried psychedelic research might jeopardize federal funding; one told me there were “people in the Department of Psychiatry and the broader institution who questioned the work, because this class of compounds carries a lot of baggage from the ’60s.”) “We had faith that the people on all these committees would be good scientists,” Richards told me. “And with luck maybe a few of them had tried mushrooms in college!” Roland Griffiths became the principal investigator of the trial, Bill Richards became the clinical director, and Bob Jesse continued to work behind the scenes. “I can vividly remember the first session I ran after that long twenty-two-year hiatus,” Richards recalled. He and I were together in the session room at Hopkins; I was sitting on the couch where the volunteers lie down during their journeys, and Richards was in the chair where he has now sat and guided more than a hundred psilocybin journeys since 1999. The room feels more like a den or living room than a room in a laboratory, with a plush sofa, vaguely spiritual paintings on the walls, a sculpture of the Buddha on a side table, and shelves holding a giant stone mushroom and various other nondenominational spiritual artifacts, as well as the small chalice in which the volunteers receive their pills. “This guy is lying on the couch right there where you are, with tears streaming down his face, and I’m thinking, how absolutely beautiful and meaningful this experience is. How sacred. How can this ever have been illegal? It’s as if we made entering Gothic cathedrals illegal, or museums, or sunsets! “I honestly never knew if this would happen again in my lifetime. And look at where we are now: the work at Hopkins has been going on now for fifteen years—five years longer than Spring Grove.” • • • I N 1999, an odd but intriguing advertisement began appearing in weeklies in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., area, under the headline “Interested in the Spiritual Life?” University research with entheogens (roughly, God-evoking substances such as peyote and sacred mushrooms) has returned. The field of study includes pharmacology, psychology, creativity enhancement, and spirituality. To explore the possibility of participating in confidential entheogen research projects, call 1-888-585-8870, toll free. www.csp.org. Not long after, Bill Richards and Mary Cosimano, a social worker and school guidance counselor Richards recruited to help him guide psychedelic sessions, administered the first legal dose of psilocybin to an American in twenty-two years. In the years since, the Hopkins team has conducted more than three hundred psilocybin sessions, working in a variety of populations, including healthy normals, long-term and novice meditators, cancer patients, smokers seeking to break their habit, and religious professionals. I was curious to get the volunteer’s-eye view of the experience from all these types, but especially from that first cohort of healthy normals, partly because they were participants in a study that would turn out to be historically important and partly because I figured they would be the most like, well, me. What is it like to have a legally sanctioned, professionally guided, optimally comfortable high-dose psilocybin experience? Yet the volunteers in the first experiments were not exactly like me, because at the time I doubt I would have read past “Interested in the Spiritual Life?” There were no stone-cold atheists in the original group, and interviews with nearly a dozen of them suggested many if not most of them came into the study with spiritual leanings to one degree or another. There was an energy healer, a man who’d done the whole Iron John trip, a former Franciscan friar, and an herbalist. There was also a physicist with an interest in Zen and a philosophy professor with an interest in theology. Roland Griffiths acknowledged, “We were interested in a spiritual effect and were biasing the condition initially [in that direction].” That said, Griffiths went to great lengths in the design of the study to control for “expectancy effects.” In part this owed to Griffiths’s skepticism that a drug could occasion the same kind of mystical experience he had had in his meditation: “This is all truth to Bill and hypothesis to me. So we needed to control for Bill’s biases.” All of the volunteers were “hallucinogen naive,” so had no idea what psilocybin felt like, and neither they nor their monitors knew in any given session whether they were getting psilocybin or a placebo, and whether that placebo was a sugar pill or any one of half a dozen different psychoactive drugs. In fact the placebo was Ritalin, and as it turned out, the monitors guessed wrong nearly a quarter of the time as to what was in the pill a volunteer had received. Even years after their experiences in the trials, the volunteers I spoke to recalled them in vivid detail and at considerable length; the interviews lasted hours. These people had big stories to tell; in several cases, these were the most meaningful experiences of their lives, and they clearly relished the opportunity to relive them for me in great detail, whether in person, by Skype, or on the telephone. The volunteers were also required to write a report of their experiences soon after they occurred, and all of the ones I interviewed were happy to share these reports, which made for strange and fascinating reading. Many of the volunteers I spoke to reported initial episodes of intense fear and anxiety before surrendering themselves to the experience—as the sitters encourage them to do. The sitters work from a set of “flight instructions” prepared by Bill Richards, based on the hundreds of psychedelic journeys he has guided. The guides go over the instructions with the volunteers during the eight hours of preparation all of them receive before commencing their journeys. The flight instructions advise guides to use mantras like “Trust the trajectory” and “TLO—Trust, Let Go, Be Open.” Some guides like to quote John Lennon: “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.” Volunteers are told they may experience the “death/transcendence of your ego or everyday self,” but this is “always followed by Rebirth/Return to the normative world of space & time. Safest way to return to normal is to entrust self unconditionally to the emerging experiences.” Guides are instructed to remind volunteers they’ll never be left alone and not to worry about the body while journeying because the guides are there to keep an eye on it. If you feel as if you are “dying, melting, dissolving, exploding, going crazy etc.—go ahead.” Volunteers are quizzed: “If you see a door, what do you do? If you see a staircase, what do you do?” “Open it” and “climb up it” are of course the right answers. This careful preparation means that a certain expectancy effect is probably unavoidable. After all, the researchers are preparing people for a major experience, involving death and rebirth and holding the potential for transformation. “It would be irresponsible not to warn volunteers these things could happen,” Griffiths pointed out when I asked if his volunteers were being “primed” for a certain kind of experience. One volunteer—the physicist—told me that the “mystical experience questionnaire” he filled out after every session also planted expectations. “I long to see some of the stuff hinted at in the questionnaire,” he wrote after an underwhelming session—perhaps on the placebo. “Seeing everything as alive and connected, meeting the void, or some embodiment of deities and things like that.” In this and so many other ways, it seems, the Hopkins psilocybin experience is the artifact not only of this powerful molecule but also of the preparation and expectations of the volunteer, the skills and worldviews of the sitters, Bill Richards’s flight instructions, the decor of the room, the inward focus encouraged by the eyeshades and the music (and the music itself, much of which to my ears sounds notably religious), and, though they might not be pleased to hear it, the minds of the designers of the experiments. The sheer suggestibility of psychedelics is one of their defining characteristics, so in one sense it is no wonder that so many of the first cohort of volunteers at Hopkins had powerful mystical experiences: the experiment was designed by three men intensely interested in mystical states of consciousness. (And it is likewise no wonder that the European researchers I interviewed all failed to see as many instances of mystical experience in their subjects as the Americans did in theirs.) And yet, for all the priming going on, the fact remains that the people who received a placebo simply didn’t have the kinds of experiences that volunteer after volunteer described to me as the most meaningful or significant in their lives. Soon after a volunteer takes her pill from the little chalice, but before she feels any effects, Roland Griffiths will usually drop by the session room to wish her bon voyage. Griffiths often uses a particular metaphor that made an impression on many of the volunteers I spoke to. “Think of yourself as an astronaut being blasted into outer space,” Richard Boothby recalled him saying. Boothby is a philosophy professor who was in his early fifties when he volunteered at Hopkins. “You’re going way out there to take it all in and engage with whatever you find there, but you can be confident that we’ll be here keeping an eye on things. Think of us as ground control. We’ve got you covered.” For the astronaut being blasted into space, the shudder of liftoff and strain of escaping Earth’s gravitational field can be wrenching—even terrifying. Several volunteers describe trying to hold on for dear life as they felt their sense of self rapidly disintegrating. Brian Turner, who at the time of his journey was a forty-four-year-old physicist working for a military contractor (with a security clearance), put it this way: I could feel my body dissolving, beginning with my feet, until it all disappeared but the left side of my jaw. It was really unpleasant; I could count only a few teeth left and the bottom part of my jaw. I knew that if that went away I would be gone. Then I remembered what they told me, that whenever you encounter anything scary, go toward it. So instead of being afraid of dying I got curious about what was going on. I was no longer trying to avoid dying. Instead of recoiling from the experience, I began to interrogate it. And with that, the whole situation dissolved into this pleasant floaty feeling, and I became the music for a while. Soon after, he found himself “in a large cave where all my past relationships were hanging down as icicles: the person who sat next to me in second grade, high school friends, my first girlfriend, all of them were there, encased in ice. It was very cool. I thought about each of them in turn, remembering everything about our relationship. It was a review—something about the trajectory of my life. All these people had made me what I had become.” Amy Charnay, a nutritionist and herbalist in her thirties, came to Hopkins after a crisis. An avid runner, she had been studying forest ecology when she fell from a tree and shattered her ankle, ending both her running and her forestry careers. In the early moments of her journey, Amy was overcome by waves of guilt and fear. “The visual I had was from the 1800s and I was up on this stage. Two people next to me were slipping a noose around my neck while a crowd of people watched, cheering for my death. I felt drenched with guilt, just terrified. I was in a hell realm. And I remember Bill asking, ‘What’s going on?’ “‘I’m experiencing a lot of guilt.’ Bill replied, ‘That’s a very common human experience,’ and with that, the whole image of being hanged pixilated and then just disappeared, to be replaced by this tremendous sensation of freedom and interconnectedness. This was huge for me. I saw that if I can name and admit a feeling, confess it to someone, it would let go. A little older and wiser, now I can do this for myself.” Some time later, Charnay found herself flying around the world and through time perched on the back of a bird. “I was aware enough to know my body was on the couch, but I was leaving my body and experiencing these things firsthand. I found myself in a drumming circle with an indigenous tribe somewhere, and I was being healed but was also being the healer. This was very profound for me. Not having that traditional lineage [of a healer], I had always felt like I was a phony doing plant medicine, but this made me see I was connected to the plants and to people who use plants, whether for rituals or psychedelics or salad!” During a subsequent session, Charnay reconnected with a boyfriend from her youth who had died in a car accident at nineteen. “All of a sudden there is a piece of Phil living in my left shoulder. I’ve never had an experience like that, but it was so real. I don’t know why he’s yellow and lives in my left shoulder—what does that even mean?—but I don’t care. He’s back with me.” Such reconnections with the dead are not uncommon. Richard Boothby, whose twenty-three-year-old son had committed suicide a year earlier after years of drug addiction, told me, “Oliver was more present to me now than he had ever been before.” The supreme importance of surrendering to the experience, however frightening or bizarre, is stressed in the preparatory sessions and figures largely in many people’s journeys, and beyond. Boothby, the philosopher, took the advice to heart and found that he could use the idea as a kind of tool to shape the experience in real time. He wrote: Early on I began to perceive that the effects of the drug respond strikingly to my own subjective determination. If, in response to the swelling intensity of the whole experience, I began to tense up with anxiety, the whole scene appears to tighten in some way. But if I then consciously remind myself to relax, to let myself go into the experience, the effect is dramatic. The space in which I seem to find myself, already enormous, suddenly yawns open even further and the shapes that undulate before my eyes appear to explode with new and even more extravagant patterns. Over and over again I had the overwhelming sense of infinity being multiplied by another infinity. I joked to my wife as she drove me home that I felt as if I had been repeatedly sucked into the asshole of God. Boothby had what sounds very much like a classic mystical experience, though he may be the first in the long line of Western mystics to enter the divine realm through that particular aperture. At the depths of this delirium I conceived that I was either dying or, most bizarrely, I was already dead. All points of secure attachment to a trustworthy sense of reality had fallen away. Why not think that I am dead? And if this is dying, I thought, then so be it. How can I say no to this? At this point, at the greatest depth of the experience, I felt all my organizing categories of opposition—dreaming and wakefulness, life and death, inside and outside, self and other—collapse into each other . . . Reality appeared to fold in on itself, to implode in a kind of ecstatic catastrophe of logic. Yet in the midst of this hallucinatory hurricane I was having a weird experience of ultra-sublimity. And I remember repeating to myself again and again, “Nothing matters, nothing matters any more. I see the point! Nothing matters at all.” And then it was over. During the last few hours, reality began slowly, effortlessly, to stitch itself back together. In sync with some particularly wowing choral music, I had an incredibly moving sense of triumphant reawakening, as if a new day were dawning after a long and harrowing night. • • • A T THE SAME TIME I was interviewing Richard Boothby and his fellow volunteers, I was reading William James’s account of mystical consciousness in The Varieties of Religious Experience in the hope of orienting myself. And indeed much of what James had to say helped me get my bearings amid the torrent of words and images I was collecting. James prefaced his discussion of mystical states of consciousness by admitting that “ my own constitution shuts me out from their enjoyment almost entirely.” Almost entirely: what James knows about mystical states was gleaned not just from his reading but also from his own experiments with drugs, including nitrous oxide. Rather than attempt to define something as difficult to grab hold of as a mystical experience, James offers four “marks” by which we may recognize one. The first and, to his mind, “handiest” is ineffability: “ The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.” With the possible exception of Boothby, all the volunteers I spoke to at one point or another despaired of conveying the full force of what they had experienced, gamely though they tried. “You had to be there” was a regular refrain. The noetic quality is James’s second mark: “ Mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge . . . They are illuminations, revelations full of significance and importance . . . and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority.” For every volunteer I’ve interviewed, the experience yielded many more answers than questions, and—curiously for what is after all a drug experience—these answers had about them a remarkable sturdiness and durability. John Hayes, a psychotherapist in his fifties who was one of the first volunteers at Hopkins, felt like mysteries were being unveiled and yet it all felt familiar and more like I was being reminded of things I had already known. I had a sense of initiation into dimensions of existence most people never know exist, including the distinct sense that death was illusory, in the sense that it is a door we walk through into another plane of existence, that we’re sprung from an eternity to which we will return. Which is true enough, I suppose, but to someone having a mystical experience, such an insight acquires the force of revealed truth. So many of the specific insights gleaned during the psychedelic journey exist on a knife-edge poised between profundity and utter banality. Boothby, an intellectual with a highly developed sense of irony, struggled to put words to the deep truths about the essence of our humanity revealed to him during one of his psilocybin journeys. I have at times been almost embarrassed by them, as if they give voice to a cosmic vision of the triumph of love that one associates derisively with the platitudes of Hallmark cards. All the same, the basic insights afforded to me during the session still seem for the most part compelling. What was the philosophy professor’s compelling insight? “Love conquers all.” James touches on the banality of these mystical insights: “ that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one. ‘I’ve heard that said all my life,’ we exclaim, ‘but I never realized its full meaning until now.’” The mystical journey seems to offer a graduate education in the obvious. Yet people come out of the experience understanding these platitudes in a new way; what was merely known is now felt, takes on the authority of a deeply rooted conviction. And, more often than not, that conviction concerns the supreme importance of love. Karin Sokel, a life coach and energy healer in her fifties, described an experience “that changed everything and opened me profoundly.” At the climax of her journey, she had an encounter with a god who called himself “I Am.” In its presence, she recalled, “every one of my chakras was exploding. And then there was this light, it was the pure light of love and divinity, and it was with me and no words were needed. I was in the presence of this absolute pure divine love and I was merging with it, in this explosion of energy . . . Just talking about it my fingers are getting electric. It sort of penetrated me. The core of our being, I now knew, is love. At the peak of the experience, I was literally holding the face of Osama bin Laden, looking into his eyes, feeling pure love from him and giving it to him. The core is not evil, it is love. I had the same experience with Hitler, and then someone from North Korea. So I think we are divine. This is not intellectual, this is a core knowingness.” I asked Sokel what made her so sure this wasn’t a dream or drug-induced fantasy—a suggestion that proved no match for her noetic sense. “This was no dream. This was as real as you and I having this conversation. I wouldn’t have understood it either if I hadn’t had the direct experience. Now it is hardwired in my brain so I can connect to it and do often.” This last point James alludes to in his discussion of the third mark of mystical consciousness, which is “transiency.” For although the mystical state cannot be sustained for long, its traces persist and recur, “ and from one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and importance.” The fourth and last mark in James’s typology is the essential “passivity” of the mystical experience. “ The mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power.” This sense of having temporarily surrendered to a superior force often leaves the person feeling as if he or she has been permanently transformed. For most of the Hopkins volunteers I interviewed, their psilocybin journeys had taken place ten or fifteen years earlier, and yet their effects were still keenly felt, in some cases on a daily basis. “Psilocybin awakened my loving compassion and gratitude in a way I had never experienced before,” a psychologist who asked not to be named told me when I asked her about lasting effects. “Trust, Letting go, Openness, and Being were the touchstones of the experience for me. Now I know these things instead of just believing.” She had turned Bill Richards’s flight instructions into a manual for living. Richard Boothby did much the same thing, converting his insight about letting go into a kind of ethic: During my session this art of relaxation itself became the basis of an immense revelation, as it suddenly appeared to me that something in the spirit of this relaxation, something in the achievement of a perfect, trusting and loving openness of spirit, is the very essence and purpose of life. Our task in life consists precisely in a form of letting go of fear and expectations, an attempt to purely give oneself to the impact of the present. John Hayes, the psychotherapist, emerged with “his sense of the concrete destabilized,” replaced by a conviction “that there’s a reality beneath the reality of ordinary perceptions. It informed my cosmology—that there is a world beyond this one.” Hayes particularly recommends the experience to people in middle age for whom, as Carl Jung suggested, experience of the numinous can help them negotiate the second half of their lives. Hayes added, “I would not recommend it to young people.” Charnay’s journey at Hopkins solidified her commitment to herbal medicine (she now works for a supplement maker in Northern California); it also confirmed her in a decision to divorce her husband. “Everything was now so clear to me. I came out of the session, and my husband was late to pick me up. I realized, this is the theme with us. We’re just really different people. I just got my ass kicked today, and I needed him to be on time.” She broke the news to him in the car going home and has not looked back. To listen to these people describe the changes in their lives inspired by their psilocybin journeys is to wonder if the Hopkins session room isn’t a kind of “human transformation factory,” as Mary Cosimano, the guide who has probably spent more time there than anyone else, described it to me. “From now on,” one volunteer told me, “I think of my life as before and after psilocybin.” Soon after his psilocybin experience, Brian Turner, the physicist, quit his job with the military contractor and moved to Colorado to study Zen. He had had a meditation practice before psilocybin, but “now I had the motivation, because I had tasted the destination”; he was willing to do the hard work of Zen now that he had gotten a preview of the new modes of consciousness it could make available to him. Turner is now an ordained Zen monk, yet he is also still a physicist, working for a company that makes helium neon lasers. I asked him if he felt any tension between his science and his spiritual practice. “I don’t feel there’s a contradiction. Yet what happened at Hopkins has influenced my physics. I realize there are just some domains that science will not penetrate. Science can bring you to the big bang, but it can’t take you beyond it. You need a different kind of apparatus to peer into that.” These anecdotal reports of personal transformation found strong support in a follow-up study done on the first groups of healthy normals studied at Hopkins. Katherine MacLean, a psychologist on the Hopkins team, crunched the survey data produced by fifty-two volunteers, including follow-up interviews with friends and family members they had designated, and discovered that in many cases the psilocybin experience had led to lasting changes in their personalities. Specifically, those volunteers who had “complete mystical experiences” (as determined by their scores on the Pahnke-Richards Mystical Experience Questionnaire) showed, in addition to lasting improvements in well-being, long-term increases in the personality trait of “openness to experience.” One of the five traits psychologists use to assess personality (the other four are conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism), openness encompasses aesthetic appreciation and sensitivity, fantasy and imagination, as well as tolerance of others’ viewpoints and values; it also predicts creativity in both the arts and the sciences, as well as, presumably, a willingness to entertain ideas at odds with those of current science. Such pronounced and lasting changes in the personalities of adults are rare. Yet not all these shifts in the direction of greater openness were confined to the volunteers in the Hopkins experiments; the sitters, too, speak of having been changed by the experience of witnessing these journeys, sometimes in surprising ways. Katherine MacLean, who guided dozens of sessions during her time at Hopkins, told me, “I started out on the atheist side, but I began seeing things every day in my work that were at odds with this belief. My world became more and more mysterious as I sat with people on psilocybin.” During my last interview with Richard Boothby, toward the end of a leisurely Sunday brunch at the modern art museum in Baltimore, he looked at me with an expression that mixed an almost evangelical fervor about the “treasures” he had glimpsed at Hopkins with a measure of pity for his still-hallucinogen-naive interlocutor. “I don’t blame you for being envious.” • • • M Y ENCOUNTERS with the Hopkins volunteers had indeed left me feeling somewhat envious, but also with a great many more questions than answers. How are we to evaluate the “insights” these people bring back from their psychedelic journeys? What sort of authority should we grant them? Where in the world does the material that makes up these waking dreams or, as one volunteer put it, “intrapsychic movies,” come from? The unconscious? From the suggestions of their guides and the setting of the experiment? Or, as many of the volunteers believe, from somewhere “out there” or “beyond”? What do these mystical states of consciousness ultimately mean for our understanding of either the human mind or the universe? For his part, Roland Griffiths’s own encounters with the volunteers in the 2006 study reignited his passion for science, but they also left him with a deeper respect for all that science does not know—for what he is content to call “the mysteries.” “For me the data [from those first sessions] were . . . I don’t want to use the word mind-blowing, but it was unprecedented the kinds of things we were seeing there, in terms of the deep meaning and lasting spiritual significance of these effects. I’ve given lots of drugs to lots of people, and what you get are drug experiences. What’s unique about the psychedelics is the meaning that comes out of the experience.” Yet how real is that meaning? Griffiths himself is agnostic, but strikingly open-minded, even about his volunteers’ firsthand reports of a “beyond,” however they define it. “I’m willing to hold the possibility these experiences may or may not be true,” he told me. “The exciting part is to use the tools we have to explore and pick apart this mystery.” Not all of his colleagues share his open-mindedness. During one of our meetings, over breakfast on the sunporch of his modest ranch house in suburban Baltimore, Griffiths mentioned a colleague at Hopkins, a prominent psychiatrist named Paul McHugh, who dismisses the psychedelic experience as nothing more than a form of “toxic delirium.” He encouraged me to google McHugh. “ Doctors encounter this strange and colorful state of mind in patients suffering from advanced hepatic, renal, or pulmonary disease, in which toxic products accumulate in the body and do to the brain and mind just what LSD does,” McHugh had written in a review of a book about the Harvard Psilocybin Project in Commentary . “The vividness of color perception, the merging of physical sensations, the hallucinations, the disorientation and loss of a sense of time, the delusional joys and terrors that come and go evoking unpredictable feelings and behaviors—are sadly familiar symptoms doctors are called to treat in hospitals every day.” Griffiths admits it is possible that what he’s seeing is some form of temporary psychosis, and he plans to test for delirium in an upcoming experiment, but he seriously doubts that diagnosis accurately describes what is going on with his volunteers. “Patients suffering from delirium find it really unpleasant,” he points out, “and they certainly don’t report months later, ‘Wow, that was one of the greatest and most meaningful experiences of my life.’” William James grappled with these questions of veracity in his discussion on mystical states of consciousness. He concluded that the import of these experiences is, and should be, “ authoritative over the individuals to whom they come” but that there is no reason the rest of us must “accept their revelations uncritically.” And yet he believed that the very possibility people can experience these states of consciousness should bear on our understanding of the mind and world: “ The existence of mystical states absolutely overthrows the pretension of non-mystical states to be the sole and ultimate dictators of what we may believe.” These alternate forms of consciousness “ might, in spite of all the perplexity, be indispensable stages in our approach to the final fullness of the truth.” He detected in such experiences, in which the mind “ ascend[s] to a more enveloping point of view,” hints of a grand metaphysical “reconciliation”: “ It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity.” This ultimate unity, he suspected, was no mere delusion. • • • R OLAND G RIFFITHS today sounds like a scientist deeply committed—or rather recommitted—to his research. “I described to you how when I first got into meditation, I felt disconnected from my work life and considered dropping it entirely. I would say I’m now reengaged in a way that’s more integrated than it has ever been. I’m more interested in the final questions and existential truths and with the sense of well-being, compassion, and love that come from these practices. Now I’m bringing these gifts to the laboratory. And it feels great.” The idea that we can now approach mystical states of consciousness with the tools of science is what gets Roland Griffiths out of bed in the morning. “As a scientific phenomenon, if you can create a condition in which 70 percent of people will say they have had one of the most meaningful experiences of their lives . . . well, as a scientist that’s just incredible.” For him the import of the 2006 result is that it proved “we can now do prospective studies” of mystical states of consciousness “because we can occasion them with a high degree of probability. That’s the way science gains real traction.” He believes the psilocybin work has opened a whole new frontier of human consciousness to scientific exploration. “I describe myself as a kid in a candy shop.” The gamble Roland Griffiths took with his career in 1998, when he decided to devote himself to the investigation of psychedelics and mystical experience, has already paid off. A month before our breakfast, Griffiths had received the Eddy Award from the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, perhaps the most prestigious lifetime achievement prize in the field. The nominators all cited Griffiths’s psychedelic work as one of his signal contributions. The scope of that work has expanded significantly since the 2006 paper; when I last visited Hopkins, in 2015, some twenty people were working on various studies involving psychedelics. Not since Spring Grove has there been such strong institutional support for the study of psychedelics, and never before has an institution of Hopkins’s reputation devoted so many resources to what is, after all, the study of mystical states of consciousness. The Hopkins lab remains keenly interested in exploring spirituality and the “betterment of well people”—there are trials under way giving psilocybin to long-term meditators and religious professionals—but the transformative effect of the mystical experience has obvious therapeutic implications that the lab has been investigating. Completed studies suggest that psilocybin—or rather the mystical state of consciousness that psilocybin occasions—may be useful in treating both addiction ( a pilot study in smoking cessation achieved an 80 percent success rate, which is unprecedented) and the existential distress that often debilitates people facing a terminal diagnosis. When we last met, Griffiths was about to submit an article reporting striking results in the lab’s trial using psilocybin to treat the anxiety and depression of cancer patients; the study found one of the largest treatment effects ever demonstrated for a psychiatric intervention. The majority of volunteers who had a mystical experience reported that their fear of death had either greatly diminished or completely disappeared. Once again, hard questions arise about the meaning and authority of such experiences, especially ones that appear to convince people that consciousness is not confined to brains and might somehow survive our deaths. Yet even to questions of this kind Griffiths brings an open and curious mind. “The phenomenology of these experiences is so profoundly reorganizing and profoundly compelling that I’m willing to hold there’s a mystery here we can’t understand.” Griffiths has clearly traveled a long way from the strict behaviorism that once informed his scientific worldview; the experience of alternate states of consciousness, both his own and those of his volunteers, has opened him to possibilities about which few scientists will dare speak openly. “So what happens after you die? All I need is one percent [of uncertainty]. I can’t think of anything more interesting than what I may or may not discover at the time I die. That’s the most interesting question going.” For that reason, he fervently hopes he isn’t hit by a bus but rather has enough time to “savor” the experience without the distraction of pain. “Western materialism says the switch gets turned off and that’s it. But there are so many other descriptions. It could be a beginning! Wouldn’t that be amazing?” This is when Griffiths turned the tables and started asking me about my own spiritual outlook, questions for which I was completely unprepared. “How sure are you there is nothing after death?” he asked. I demurred, but he persisted. “What do you think the chances are there is something beyond death? In percentages.” “Oh, I don’t know,” I stammered. “Two or three percent?” To this day I have no idea where that estimate came from, but Griffiths seized on it. “That’s a lot!” So I turned the table back again, put the same question to him. “I don’t know if I want to answer it,” he said with a laugh, glancing at my tape recorder. “It depends on which hat I’m wearing.” Roland Griffiths had more than one hat! I only had one, I realized, and that made me feel a little jealous. Compared with many scientists—or for that matter many spiritual types—Roland Griffiths possesses a large measure of what Keats, referring to Shakespeare, described as “negative capability,” the ability to exist amid uncertainties, mysteries, and doubt without reaching for absolutes, whether those of science or spirituality. “It makes no more sense to say I’m 100 percent convinced of a material worldview than to say I’m 100 percent convinced of the literal version of the Bible.” At our last meeting, a dinner at a bistro in his Baltimore neighborhood, I tried to engage Griffiths in a discussion of the ostensible conflict between science and spirituality. I asked him if he agreed with E. O. Wilson, who has written that all of us must ultimately choose: either the path of science or the path of spirituality. But Griffiths doesn’t see the two ways of knowing as mutually exclusive and has little patience for absolutists on either side of the supposed divide. Rather, he hopes the two ways can inform each other and correct each other’s defects, and in that exchange help us to pose and then, possibly, answer the big questions we face. I then read to him a letter from Huston Smith, the scholar of comparative religion who in 1962 had volunteered in Walter Pahnke’s Good Friday Experiment. It was written to Bob Jesse shortly after the publication of Griffiths’s landmark 2006 paper; Jesse had shared it with me. “The Johns Hopkins experiment shows—proves—that under controlled, experimental conditions, psilocybin can occasion genuine mystical experiences. It uses science, which modernity trusts, to undermine modernity’s secularism. In doing so, it offers hope of nothing less than a re-sacralization of the natural and social world, a spiritual revival that is our best defense against not only soullessness, but against religious fanaticism. And it does so in the very teeth of the unscientific prejudices built into our current drug laws.” As I read Smith’s letter aloud, a smile bloomed across Griffiths’s face; he was clearly moved but had little to add except to say, “That’s beautiful.” CHAPTER TWO NATURAL HISTORY Bemushroomed A T THE END of my first meeting with Roland Griffiths, the session in his Johns Hopkins office where he engaged me on the topics of his own mystical experience, my assessment of the odds of an afterlife, and the potential of psilocybin to change people’s lives, the scientist stood up from his desk, unfolding his lanky frame, and reached into the pocket of his trousers to take out a small medallion. “A little gift for you,” he explained. “But first, you must answer a question. “At this moment,” Griffiths began, locking me in firm eye contact, “are you aware that you are aware?” Perplexed, I thought for a long, self-conscious moment and then replied in the affirmative. This must have been the correct answer, because Griffiths handed me the coin. On one side was a quartet of tall, slender, curving Psilocybe cubensis, one of the more common species of magic mushroom. On the back was a quotation from William Blake that, it occurred to me later, neatly aligned the way of the scientist with that of the mystic: “The true method of knowledge is experiment.” It seems that the previous summer Roland Griffiths had gone for the first time to Burning Man ( had I heard of it? ), and when he learned that no money is exchanged in the temporary city, only gifts, he had the mushroom medallions minted so he would have something suitable to give away or trade. Now, he gives the coins to volunteers in the research program as a parting gift. Griffiths had surprised me once again. Or twice. First, that the scientist had attended the arts-and-psychedelics festival in the Nevada desert. And, second, that he had seen fit in choosing his gift to honor the psilocybin mushroom itself. On one level, a mushroom medallion made perfect sense: the molecule that Griffiths and his colleagues have been working with for the last fifteen years does, after all, come from a fungus. Both the mushroom and its psychoactive compound were unknown to science until the 1950s, when the psilocybin mushroom was discovered in southern Mexico, where Mazatec Indians had been using “the flesh of the gods,” in secret, for healing and divination since before the Spanish conquest. Yet, apart from the decorative ceramic mushroom on the shelf in the session room, there are few if any reminders of “magic mushrooms” in the lab. No one I spoke to at Hopkins ever mentioned the rather astonishing fact that the life-changing experiences their volunteers were reporting owed to the action of a chemical compound found in nature—in a mushroom. In the laboratory context, it can be easy to lose sight of this astonishment. All of the scientists doing psychedelic research today work exclusively with a synthetic version of the psilocybin molecule. (The mushroom’s psychoactive compound was first identified, synthesized, and named in the late 1950s by Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD.) So the volunteers ingest a little white pill made in a lab, rather than a handful of gnarly and acrid-tasting mushrooms. Their journeys unfold in a landscape of medical suites populated, figuratively speaking, by men and women in white coats. I suppose this is the usual distancing effect of modern science at work, but here it is compounded by a specific desire to distance psilocybin from its tangled roots (or I should say, mycelia) in the worlds of 1960s counterculture, Native American shamanism, and, perhaps, nature itself. For it is there—in nature—that we bump up against the mystery of a little brown mushroom with the power to change the consciousness of the animals that eat it. LSD too, it is easy to forget, was derived from a fungus, Claviceps purpurea, or ergot. Somehow, for some reason, these remarkable mushrooms produce, in addition to spores, meanings in human minds. In the course of my days spent hanging around the Hopkins lab and hours spent interviewing people about their psilocybin journeys, I became increasingly curious to explore this other territory—that is, the natural history of these mushrooms and their strange powers. Where did these mushrooms grow, and how? Why did they evolve the ability to produce a chemical compound so closely related to serotonin, the neurotransmitter, that it can slip across the blood-brain barrier and temporarily take charge of the mammalian brain? Was it a defense chemical, intended to poison mushroom eaters? That would seem to be the most straightforward explanation, yet it is undermined by the fact the fungus produces the hallucinogen almost exclusively in its “fruiting body”—that part of the organism it is happiest to have eaten. Was there perhaps some benefit to the mushroom in being able to change the minds of the animals that eat it? * There were also the more philosophical questions posed by the existence of a fungus that could not only change consciousness but occasion a profound mystical experience in humans. This fact can be interpreted in two completely different ways. On the first interpretation, the mind-altering power of psilocybin argues for a firmly materialist understanding of consciousness and spirituality, because the changes observed in the mind can be traced directly to the presence of a chemical—psilocybin. What is more material than a chemical? One could reasonably conclude from the action of psychedelics that the gods are nothing more than chemically induced figments of the hominid imagination. Yet, surprisingly, most of the people who have had these experiences don’t see the matter that way at all. Even the most secular among them come away from their journeys convinced there exists something that transcends a material understanding of reality: some sort of a “Beyond.” It’s not that they deny a naturalistic basis for this revelation; they just interpret it differently. If the experience of transcendence is mediated by molecules that flow through both our brains and the natural world of plants and fungi, then perhaps nature is not as mute as Science has told us, and “Spirit,” however defined, exists out there —is immanent in nature, in other words, just as countless premodern cultures have believed. What to my (spiritually impoverished) mind seemed to constitute a good case for the disenchantment of the world becomes in the minds of the more psychedelically experienced irrefutable proof of its fundamental enchantment. Flesh of the gods, indeed. So here was a curious paradox. The same phenomenon that pointed to a materialist explanation for spiritual and religious belief gave people an experience so powerful it convinced them of the existence of a nonmaterial reality—the very basis of religious belief. I hoped that getting to know the psychoactive LBMs (mycologist shorthand for “little brown mushrooms”) at the bottom of this paradox might clarify the matter or, perhaps, somehow dissolve it. I was already something of a mushroom hunter, secure in my ability to identify a handful of edible woodland species (chanterelles, morels, black trumpets, and porcini) with a high enough degree of confidence to eat what I found. However, I had been told by all my teachers that the world of LBMs was far more daunting in its complexity and peril; many if not most of the species that can kill you are LBMs. But perhaps with some expert guidance, I could add a Psilocybe or two to my mushroom hunting repertoire and in the process begin to unpack the mystery of their existence and spooky powers. • • • T HERE WAS NEVER any doubt who could best help me on this quest, assuming he was willing. Paul Stamets, a mycologist from Washington State who literally wrote the book on the genus Psilocybe, * in the form of the authoritative 1996 field guide Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World . Stamets has himself “published”—that is, identified and described in a peer-reviewed journal—four new species of Psilocybe, including azurescens, named for his son Azureus * and the most potent species yet known. But while Stamets is one of the country’s most respected mycologists, he works entirely outside the academy, has no graduate degree, funds most of his own research, * and holds views of the role of fungi in nature that are well outside the scientific mainstream and that, he will gladly tell you, owe to insights granted to him by the mushrooms themselves, in the course of both close study and regular ingestion. I’ve known Stamets for years, though not very well and always from what I confess has been a somewhat skeptical distance. His extravagant claims for the powers of mushrooms and eyebrow-elevating boasts about his mushroom work with institutions like DARPA (the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and NIH (the National Institutes of Health) are bound to set off a journalist’s bullshit detector, rightly or—as often happens in his case—wrongly. Over the years, we’ve found ourselves at some of the same conferences, so I’ve had several opportunities to hear his talks, which consist of a beguiling (often brilliant) mash-up of hard science and visionary speculation, with the line between the two often impossible to discern. His 2008 TED talk, which is representative, has been viewed online more than four million times. Stamets, who was born in 1955 in Salem, Ohio, is a big hairy man with a beard and a bearish mien; I was not surprised to learn he once worked as a lumberjack in the Pacific Northwest. Onstage, he usually wears what appears to be a felt hat in the alpine style but which, as he’ll explain, is in fact made in Transylvania from something called amadou, the spongy inner layer of the horse’s hoof fungus ( Fomes fomentarius ), a polypore that grows on several species of dead or dying trees. Amadou is flammable and in ancient times was used to start and transport fires. Ötzi, the five-thousand-year-old “Ice Man” found mummified in an alpine glacier in 1991, was carrying a pouch in which he had a piece of amadou. Because of its antimicrobial properties, Fomes fomentarius was also used to dress wounds and preserve food. Stamets is so deep into the world of fungi there’s frequently one perched on top of his head. Fungi constitute the most poorly understood and underappreciated kingdom of life on earth. Though indispensable to the health of the planet (as recyclers of organic matter and builders of soil), they are the victims not only of our disregard but of a deep-seated ill will, a mycophobia that Stamets deems a form of “biological racism.” Leaving aside their reputation for poisoning us, this is surprising in that we are closer, genetically speaking, to the fungal kingdom than to that of the plants. Like us, they live off the energy that plants harvest from the sun. Stamets has made it his life’s work to right this wrong, by speaking out on their behalf and by demonstrating the potential of mushrooms to solve a great many of the world’s problems. Indeed, the title of his most popular lecture, and the subtitle of his 2005 book, Mycelium Running, is “How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World.” By the end of his presentation, this claim no longer sounds hyperbolic. I can remember the first time I heard Stamets talk about “mycoremediation”—his term for the use of mushrooms to clean up pollution and industrial waste. One of the jobs of fungi in nature is to break down complex organic molecules; without them, the earth would long ago have become a vast, uninhabitable waste heap of dead but undecomposed plants and animals. So after the Exxon Valdez ran aground off the coast of Alaska in 1989, spilling millions of gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound, Stamets revived a long-standing idea of putting fungi to work breaking down petrochemical waste. He showed a slide of a steaming heap of oily black sludge before inoculating it with the spores of oyster mushrooms, and then a second photograph of the same pile taken four weeks later, when it was reduced by a third and covered in a thick mantle of snowy white oyster mushrooms. It was a performance, and a feat of alchemy, I won’t soon forget. But Stamets’s aspirations for the fungal kingdom go well beyond turning petrochemical sludge into arable soil. Indeed, in his view there is scarcely an ecological or medical problem that mushrooms can’t help solve. Cancer? Stamets’s extract of turkey tail mushrooms ( Trametes versicolor ) has been shown to help cancer patients by stimulating their immune systems. (Stamets claims to have used it to help cure his mother’s stage 4 breast cancer.) Bioterrorism? After 9/11, the federal government’s Bioshield program asked to screen hundreds of the rare mushroom strains in Stamets’s collection and found several that showed strong activity against SARS, smallpox, herpes, and bird and swine flu. (If this strikes you as implausible, remember that penicillin is the product of a fungus.) Colony collapse disorder (CCD)? After watching honeybees visiting a woodpile to nibble on mycelium, Stamets identified several species of fungus that bolster the bees’ resistance to infection and CCD. Insect infestation? A few years ago, Stamets won a patent for a “mycopesticide”—a mutant mycelium from a species of Cordyceps that, after being eaten by carpenter ants, colonizes their bodies and kills them, but not before chemically inducing the ant to climb to the highest point in its environment and then bursting a mushroom from the top of its head that releases its spores to the wind. The second or third time I watched Stamets show a video of a Cordyceps doing its diabolical thing to an ant—commandeering its body, making it do its bidding, and then exploding a mushroom from its brain in order to disseminate its genes—it occurred to me that Stamets and that poor ant had rather a lot in common. Fungi haven’t killed him, it’s true, and he probably knows enough about their wiles to head off that fate. But it’s also true that this man’s life—his brain!—has been utterly taken over by fungi; he has dedicated himself to their cause, speaking for the mushrooms in the same way that Dr. Seuss’s Lorax speaks for the trees. He disseminates fungal spores far and wide, helping them, whether by mail order or sheer dint of his enthusiasm, to vastly expand their range and spread their message. • • • I DON’T THINK I’m saying anything about Paul Stamets to which he would object. He writes in his book that mycelia—the vast, cobwebby whitish net of single-celled filaments, called hyphae, with which fungi weave their way through the soil—are intelligent, forming “a sentient membrane” and “the neurological network of nature.” The title of his book Mycelium Running can be read in two ways. The mycelium is indeed always running through the ground, where it plays a critical role in forming soils, keeping plants and animals in good health, and knitting together the forest. But the mycelium are also, in Stamets’s view, running the show—that of nature in general and, like a neural software program, the minds of certain creatures, including, he would be the first to tell you, Paul Stamets himself. “Mushrooms are bringing us a message from nature,” he likes to say. “This is a call I’m hearing.” Yet even some of Stamets’s airier notions turn out to have a scientific foundation beneath them. For years now, Stamets has been talking about the vast web of mycelia in the soil as “Earth’s natural Internet”—a redundant, complexly branched, self-repairing, and scalable communications network linking many species over tremendous distances. (The biggest organism on earth is not a whale or a tree but a mushroom—a honey fungus in Oregon that is 2.4 miles wide.) Stamets contends that these mycelial networks are in some sense “conscious”: aware of their environment and able to respond to challenges accordingly. When I first heard these ideas, I thought they were, at best, fanciful metaphors. Yet in the years since, I’ve watched as a growing body of scientific research has emerged to suggest they are much more than metaphors. Experiments with slime molds have demonstrated these organisms can navigate mazes in search of food—sensing its location and then growing in that direction. The mycelia in a forest do link the trees in it, root to root, not only supplying them with nutrients, but serving as a medium that conveys information about environmental threats and allows trees to selectively send nutrients to other trees in the forest. * A forest is a far more complex, sociable, and intelligent entity than we knew, and it is fungi that organize the arboreal society. Stamets’s ideas and theories have turned out to be far more durable, and practicable, than I ever would have guessed. This was the other reason I became eager to spend some time with Stamets: I was curious to find out how his own experience with psilocybin had colored his thinking and lifework. Yet I wasn’t at all certain he would be willing to talk on the record about psilocybin, much less take me ’shroom hunting, now that he had a successful business, had eight or nine patents to his name, and was collaborating with institutions like DARPA and NIH and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In the more recent interviews and lectures I could find online, he seldom talked about psilocybin and often omitted mention of the field guide from his list of publications. What’s more, he had just received prestigious honors from the Mycological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Paul Stamets, it seemed, had gone legit. Bad timing for me. • • • T HANKFULLY, I WAS WRONG. When I reached Stamets at his home in Kamilche, Washington, and told him what I was up to, he couldn’t have been more forthcoming or cooperative. We talked for a long time about psilocybin mushrooms, and it soon became clear they remained a subject of keen interest to him. He knew all about the work going on at Hopkins—in fact had consulted with the Hopkins team when they were first looking for a source of psilocybin. My impression was that the revival of legitimate university research had made Stamets more comfortable reopening this particular chapter in his life. He mentioned he was in the process of updating the 1996 psilocybin field guide. The only discordant note in the conversation came when I casually dropped the slang expression for psilocybin when asking him about going hunting for ’shrooms. “I really, really hate that word,” he said, almost gravely, adopting the tone of a parent upbraiding a potty-mouthed child. The word never crossed my lips again. By the end of the call, Stamets had invited me up to his place in Washington State, on the Little Skookum Inlet at the base of the Olympic Peninsula. I asked him, gingerly, if I could come at a time when the Psilocybes were fruiting. “Most of them have already come and gone,” he said. “But if you come right after Thanksgiving, and the weather’s right, I can take you to the only place in the world where Psilocybe azurescens has been consistently found, at the mouth of the Columbia River.” He mentioned the name of the park where he had found them in the past and told me to book a yurt there, adding, “Probably best not to use my name.” • • • I N THE WEEKS BEFORE my trip to Washington State, I pored over Stamets’s field guide, hoping to prepare myself for the hunt. It seems there are more than two hundred species of Psilocybe, distributed all over the world; it’s not clear whether that’s always been the case, or if the mushrooms have followed in the footsteps of the animals who have taken such a keen interest in them. ( Humans have been using psilocybin mushrooms sacramentally for at least seven thousand years, according to Stamets. But animals sometimes ingest them too, for reasons that remain obscure.) Psilocybes are saprophytes, living off dead plant matter and dung. They are denizens of disturbed land, popping up most often in the habitats created by ecological catastrophe, such as landslides, floods, storms, and volcanoes. They also prosper in the ecological catastrophes caused by our species: clear-cut forests, road cuts, the wakes of bulldozers, and agriculture. (Several species live in and fruit from the manure of ruminants.) Curiously, or perhaps not so curiously, the most potent species occur less often in the wild than in cities and towns; their predilection for habitats disturbed by us has allowed them to travel widely, “following streams of debris,” including our own. In recent years, the practice of mulching with wood chips has vastly expanded the range of a handful of potent Psilocybes once confined to the Pacific Northwest. They now thrive in all those places we humans now “landscape”: suburban gardens, nurseries, city parks, churchyards, highway rest stops, prisons, college campuses, even, as Stamets likes to point out, on the grounds of courthouses and police stations. “ Psilocybe mushrooms and civilization continue to co-evolve,” Stamets writes. So you would think these mushrooms would be fairly easy to find. In fact after I published an article about psilocybin research, I was informed by a student that after the December rains Psilocybes can be found on the Berkeley campus, where I teach. “Look in the wood chips,” he advised. Yet as soon as I began studying the photographs in Stamets’s field guide, I began to despair of ever identifying any mushroom as a member of the genus, much less learning how to distinguish one species of Psilocybe from another. To judge from the pictures, the genus is just a big bunch of little brown mushrooms, most of them utterly nondescript. By comparison, the edible species with which I was familiar were as distinct as tulips are from roses, poodles from Great Danes. Yes, all the Psilocybes have gills, but that isn’t much help, because thousands of other mushrooms have gills, too. After that, you’re trying to sort out a bewildering array of characteristics, not all of which are shared by the class. Some Psilocybes have a little nipple-like knob or protrusion on top—it’s called an umbo, I learned; others don’t. Some were “viscid”—slippery or slimy when wet, giving them a shiny appearance. Others were dull and matte gray; some, like azurescens, were a milky caramel color. Many but not all Psilocybes sport a “pellicle”—a condom-like layer of gelatinous material covering the cap that can be peeled off. My fungal vocabulary might be expanding, but my confidence was rapidly collapsing, much like the mushroom that, in the course of a single day, decomposes into an inky puddle. By the time I got to chapter four, “The Dangers of Mistaken Identification,” I was ready to throw in the towel. “ Mistakes in mushroom identification can be lethal,” Stamets begins, before displaying a photograph in which a Psilocybe stuntzii is seen growing cheek by jowl with a trio of indistinguishable Galerina autumnalis, an unremarkable little mushroom that, when eaten, “can result in an agonizing death.” But while Stamets urges extreme circumspection in amateurs hoping to identify Psilocybes, he also equips the mushroom hunter who hasn’t been completely discouraged with something he calls “ The Stametsian Rule”: a three-pronged test that, he (sort of) assures us, can head off death and disaster. “How do I know if a mushroom is a psilocybin producing species or not?” “If a gilled mushroom has purplish brown to black spores, and the flesh bruises bluish, the mushroom in question is very likely a psilocybin-producing species.” This is definitely a big help, though I wouldn’t mind something more categorical than “very likely.” He then offers a sobering caveat. “I know of no exceptions to this rule,” he adds, “but that does not mean there are none!” After committing to memory the Stametsian Rule, I began picking promising-looking gilled LBMs—in my neighbors’ yards, on my walk to work, in the parking lot of the bank—and then roughing them up a bit to see if they would turn black and blue. The blue pigment is in fact evidence of oxidized psilocin, one of the two main psychoactive compounds in a Psilocybe . (The other is psilocybin, which breaks down into psilocin in the body.) To determine if the mushroom in question had purplish-brown or black spores, I began making spore prints. This involves cutting the cap off a mushroom and placing it, gill side down, on a piece of white paper. (Or black paper if you have reason to believe the mushroom has white spores.) Within hours, the mushroom cap releases its microscopic spores, which will form a pretty, shadowy pattern on the paper (reminiscent of a lipstick kiss) that you can then try to decide is purplish brown or black—or rust colored, in which case you might have a deadly Galerina on your hands. Certain things are perhaps best learned in person, rather than from a book. I decided I should probably wait before making any irreversible decisions until I had spent some time in the company of my mycological Virgil. • • • A T THE TIME OF MY VISIT, Paul Stamets lived with his partner, Dusty Yao, and their two big dogs, Plato and Sophie, in a sprawling new house on the Little Skookum Inlet that is constructed inside and out of a small forest’s worth of the most gorgeous clear Douglas fir and cedar. Like many species of fungi, Stamets has a passionate attachment to trees and wood. I arrived on a Friday; our reservation at the campsite wasn’t until Sunday night, so we had the better part of the weekend to talk Psilocybes, eat (other kinds of) mushrooms, tour the Fungi Perfecti facilities, and ramble the surrounding woods and shoreline with the dogs before driving south to the Oregon border Sunday morning to hunt azzies. This was the house that mushrooms built, Stamets explained, launching into its story before I had a chance to unpack my bag. It replaced a rickety old farmhouse on the site that, when Stamets moved in, was slowly succumbing to an infestation of carpenter ants. Stamets set about devising a mycological solution to the problem. He knew precisely which species of Cordyceps could wipe out the ant colony, but so did the ants: they scrupulously inspect every returning member for Cordyceps spores and promptly chew off the head of any ant bearing spores, dumping the body far away from the colony. Stamets outwitted the ants’ defense by breeding a mutant Cordyceps -like fungus that postponed sporulation. He put some of its mycelium in his daughter’s dollhouse bowl, left that on the floor of the kitchen, and during the night watched as a parade of ants carried the mycelium into the nest—having mistaken it for a safe food source. When the fungus eventually sporulated, it was already deep inside the colony and the ants were done for: the Cordyceps colonized their bodies and sent fruiting bodies bursting forth from their heads. It was too late to save the farmhouse, but with the proceeds from the sale of his patent on the fungus Stamets was able to erect this far grander monument to mycological ingenuity. The house was spacious and comfortable; I had a whole upstairs wing of bedrooms to myself. The living room, where we spent most of a rainy December weekend, had a soaring cathedral ceiling, a big wood-burning fireplace, and, looming over the room from across the way, a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall skeleton of a cave bear. A painting of Albert Hofmann hangs over the fireplace. Overhead, beneath the peak, is a massive round stained glass depicting “The Universality of the Mycelial Archetype”—an intricate tracery of blue lines on a night sky, the lines representing at once mycelium, roots, neurons, the Internet, and dark matter. Displayed on the walls heading upstairs from the living room are framed artworks, photographs, and keepsakes, including a diploma signifying the successful completion of one of the Merry Pranksters’ Acid Tests, signed by Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady. There are several photographs of Dusty posing in old-growth forests with impressive specimens of fungi and a colorfully grotesque print by Alex Grey, the dean of American psychedelic artists. The print is Grey’s interpretation of the so-called stoned ape theory, depicting an early, electrified-looking hominid clutching a Psilocybe while a cyclone of abstractions flies out of its mouth and forehead. The only reason I could make any sense of the image at all was that a few days earlier I had received an e-mail from Stamets referring to the theory in question: “I want to discuss the high likelihood that the Stoned Ape Theory, first presented by Roland Fischer and then popularized/restated by Terence McKenna, is probably true—[ingestion of psilocybin] causing a rapid development of the hominid brain for analytical thinking and societal bonding. Did you know that 23 primates (including humans) consume mushrooms and know how to distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’?” I did not. But the brief, elliptical e-mail nicely prefigured the tenor of my weekend with Stamets as I struggled to absorb a torrent of mycological fact and speculation that, like a rushing river, is impossible to ford without being knocked sideways. The sheer brilliance of Stamets’s mushroom’s-eye view of the world can be dazzling, but after a while it can also make you feel claustrophobic, as only the true monomaniac or autodidact—and Stamets is both—can do. Everything is connected is ever the subtext with such people; in this case what connects everything you could possibly think of just happens to be fungal mycelia. I was curious to find out how Stamets came by his mycocentric worldview and what role psilocybin mushrooms, in particular, might have contributed to it. Stamets grew up in an Ohio town outside Youngstown called Columbiana, the youngest of five children. His father’s engineering company went belly-up when Paul was a boy, the family “going from riches to rags pretty quickly.” Dad began to drink heavily, and Paul began looking up to his older brother John as a role model. Five years his senior, John was an aspiring scientist—he would receive a scholarship to study neurophysiology—who kept “an exquisite laboratory in the basement,” a realm that was Paul’s idea of heaven, but to which John seldom granted his little brother admittance. “I thought all houses had laboratories, so whenever I went over to a friend’s house, I would ask where the laboratory was. I didn’t understand why they would always point me to the bathroom instead—the lavatory.” Winning John’s approval became a motive force in Paul’s life, which perhaps explains the value Stamets places on mainstream scientific recognition of work. John had died, of a heart attack, six months before my visit and, as it happened, on the same day Paul received word of his AAAS honor. His death was a loss from which Paul hadn’t yet recovered. When Paul was fourteen, John told him about magic mushrooms, and when he went off to Yale, John left behind a book, Altered States of Consciousness, that made a tremendous impression on Paul. Edited by Charles T. Tart, a psychologist, the book is a doorstop of an anthology of scholarly writings about non-ordinary mental states, covering the spectrum from dreaming and hypnosis to meditation and psychedelics. But the reason the book made such a lasting impression on Stamets had less to do with its contents, provocative as these were, than with the reaction the book elicited in certain adults. “My friend Ryan Snyder wanted to borrow it. His parents were really conservative. A week later, when I told him I wanted it back, he stalls and delays. Another week goes by, I ask him again, and he finally confesses what happened. ‘My parents found it and they burned it.’ “ They burned my book?!? That was a pivotal moment for me. I saw the Snyders as the enemy, trying to suppress the exploration of consciousness. But if this was such powerful information that they felt compelled to destroy it, then this was powerful information I now had to have. So I owe them a debt of gratitude.” Stamets went off to Kenyon College, where, as a freshman, he had “a profound psychedelic experience” that set his course in life. As long as he could remember, Stamets had been stymied by a debilitating stutter. “This was a huge issue for me. I was always looking down at the ground because I was afraid people would try to speak to me. In fact, one of the reasons I got so good at finding mushrooms was because I was always looking down.” One spring afternoon toward the end of his freshman year, walking alone along the wooded ridgeline above campus, Stamets ate a whole bag of mushrooms, perhaps ten grams, thinking that was a proper dose. (Four grams is a lot.) As the psilocybin was coming on, Stamets spied a particularly beautiful oak tree and decided he would climb it. “As I’m climbing the tree, I’m literally getting higher as I’m climbing higher.” Just then the sky begins to darken, and a thunderstorm lights up the horizon. The wind surges as the storm approaches, and the tree begins to sway. “I’m getting vertigo but I can’t climb down, I’m too high, so I just wrapped my arms around the tree and held on, hugging it tightly. The tree became the axis mundi, rooting me to the earth. ‘This is the tree of life,’ I thought; it was expanding into the sky and connecting me to the universe. And then it hits me: I’m going to be struck by lightning! Every few seconds there’s another strike, here, then there, all around me. On the verge of enlightenment, I’m going to be electrocuted. This is my destiny! The whole time, I’m being washed by warm rains. I am crying now, there is liquid everywhere, but I also feel one with the universe. “And then I say to myself, what are my issues if I survive this? Paul, I said, you’re not stupid, but stuttering is holding you back. You can’t look women in the eyes. What should I do? Stop stuttering now— that became my mantra. Stop stuttering now, I said it over and over and over . “The storm eventually passed. I climbed down from the tree and walked back to my room and went to sleep. That was the most important experience of my life to that point, and here’s why: The next morning, I’m walking down the sidewalk, and here comes this girl I was attracted to. She’s way beyond my reach. She’s walking toward me, and she says, ‘Good morning, Paul. How are you?’ I look at her and say, ‘I’m doing great.’ I wasn’t stuttering! And I have hardly ever stuttered since. “And that’s when I realized I wanted to look into these mushrooms.” • • • I N A REMARKABLY SHORT SPAN of time, Stamets made himself into one of the country’s leading experts on the genus Psilocybe . In 1978, at the age of twenty-three, he published his first book, Psilocybe Mushrooms and Their Allies —their allies understood to be us, the animal that had done the most to spread their genes and, as Stamets now saw as his calling, their planetary gospel. Stamets got his mycological education not at Kenyon, which he left after one year, but at the Evergreen State College, which in the mid-1970s was a new experimental college in Olympia, Washington, where students could design their own course of independent study. A young professor named Michael Beug, who had a degree in environmental chemistry, agreed to take under his wing Stamets and two other equally promising mycologically obsessed students: Jeremy Bigwood and Jonathan Ott. Beug was not himself a mycologist by training, but the four of them mastered the subject together, with the help of an electron microscope and a DEA license that Beug had somehow secured. Thus armed, the four trained their attention on a genus that the rest of the field generally chose to pass over in uncomfortable silence. Illegal since 1970, psilocybin mushrooms were at the time chiefly of interest to the counterculture, as a gentler, more natural alternative to LSD, but very little was known about their habitat, distribution, life cycle, or potency. It was believed that psychedelic mushrooms were native to southern Mexico, where R. Gordon Wasson had “discovered” them in 1955. By the 1970s, most of the psilocybin in circulation in America was being imported from Latin America or grown domestically from spores of Latin American species, mainly cubensis . The Evergreen group chalked up several notable accomplishments: they identified and published three new psilocybin species, perfected methods for growing them indoors, and developed techniques for measuring levels of psilocin and psilocybin in mushrooms. But perhaps the group’s most important contribution was to shift the focus of attention among people who cared about Psilocybes from southern Mexico to the Pacific Northwest. Stamets and his colleagues were finding new species of psilocybin mushrooms all around them and publishing their findings. “You could almost feel the earth’s axis tilting to this corner of the world.” Anywhere you went in the Pacific Northwest, Stamets recalls, you could see people tracing peculiar patterns through farm fields and lawns, bent over in what he calls “the psilocybin stoop.” During this period, the Pacific Northwest emerged as a new center of gravity in American psychedelic culture, with the Evergreen State College serving as its de facto intellectual hub and R&D facility. Beginning in 1976, Stamets and his Evergreen colleagues organized a series of now-legendary mushroom conferences, bringing together the leading lights of both the credentialed and the amateur wings of the psychedelic world, and during my first evening at his house Stamets dug out some VHS tapes of the last of these conferences, held in 1999. The footage had been shot by Les Blank, but as often happened with coverage of such psychedelic gatherings, no one could ever quite get it together to edit the raw footage, so raw it remains. “Conference” might not do justice to what now appeared on Stamets’s television. We watched as several of the attendees—I spotted Dr. Andrew Weil, best known for his books on holistic medicine; the psychedelic chemist Sasha Shulgin and his wife, Ann; and the New York Botanical Garden mycologist Gary Lincoff—arrived to great fanfare in a psychedelically painted school bus piloted by Ken Kesey. (The bus was called Farther, the successor to Further, the original Merry Prankster bus, evidently no longer roadworthy.) The proceedings looked more like a Dionysian revel than a conference, yet there were some serious talks. Jonathan Ott delivered a brilliant lecture on the history of “entheogens”—a term he helped coin. He traced their use all the way back to the Eleusinian mysteries of the Greeks, through the “pharmocratic inquisition,” when the Spanish conquest suppressed the Mesoamerican mushroom cults, and forward to the “entheogenic reformation” that has been under way since R. Gordon Wasson’s discovery that those cults had survived in Mexico. Along the way, Ott made an offhand reference to the “placebo sacraments” of the Catholic Eucharist. Then came footage of a big costume ball with lingering close-ups of a giant punch bowl that had been spiked with dozens of different kinds of psychedelic mushrooms. Stamets pointed out several prominent mycologists and ethnobotanists among the revelers; many of them dressed as specific kinds of fungus— Amanita muscaria, button mushrooms, and so on. Stamets himself appeared dressed as a bear. When one is screening raw footage of people in costume tripping on mushrooms and dancing sloppily to a reggae band, a little goes a long way, so after a few minutes we flicked off the TV. I asked Stamets about earlier iterations of the conference, some of which seemed to have a slightly more interesting ratio of intellectual substance to Dionysian revelry. In 1977, for instance, Stamets had the opportunity to play host to two of his heroes: Albert Hofmann and R. Gordon Wasson, whose 1957 article in Life magazine describing the first psilocybin journey ever taken by a Westerner—his own—helped launch the psychedelic revolution in America. Stamets mentioned that he collected original copies of that issue of Life, which occasionally show up on eBay and at flea markets, and on my way upstairs to bed that night we stopped in his office so I could have a look at it. The issue was dated May 13, 1957, and Bert Lahr was on the cover, mugging for the camera in a morning suit and a bowler hat. But the most prominent cover line was devoted to Wasson’s notorious article: “The Discovery of Mushrooms That Cause Strange Visions.” Stamets said I could have a copy, and I took it to bed. • • • F ROM THE VANTAGE OF TODAY, it is hard to believe that psilocybin was introduced to the West by a vice president of J. P. Morgan in the pages of a mass-circulation magazine owned by Henry Luce; two more establishment characters it would be difficult to dream up. But in 1957, psychedelic drugs had not yet acquired any of the cultural and political stigmas that, a decade later, would weigh on our attitudes toward them. At the time, LSD was not well known outside the small community of medical professionals who regarded it as a potential miracle drug for psychiatric illness and alcohol addiction. As it happened, the Time-Life founder and editor in chief, Henry Luce, along with his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, had personal knowledge of psychedelic drugs, and they shared the enthusiasm of the medical and cultural elites who had embraced them in the 1950s. In 1964, Luce told a gathering of his staff that he and his wife had been taking LSD “under doctor’s supervision”; Clare Boothe Luce recalled that during her first trip in the 1950s she saw the world “ through the eyes of a happy and gifted child.” Before 1965, when a moral panic erupted over LSD, Time-Life publications were enthusiastic boosters of psychedelics, and Luce took a personal interest in directing his magazine’s coverage of them. So when R. Gordon Wasson approached Life magazine with his story, he could not have knocked on a more receptive door. Life gave him a generous contract that, in addition to the princely sum of eighty-five hundred dollars, granted him final approval on the editing of his article, as well as the wording of headlines and captions. It specified that Wasson’s account include a “ description of your own sensations and fantasies under the influence of the mushroom.” As I paged through the issue in bed that evening, the world of 1957 seemed like a faraway planet, even though I lived on it, albeit as a two-year-old. My parents subscribed to Life, so the issue probably sat in the big pile in our den for a stretch of my childhood. Life magazine was a mass medium in 1957, with a circulation of 5.7 million. “ Seeking the Magic Mushroom,” in which “a New York banker goes to Mexico’s mountains to participate in the age-old rituals of Indians who chew strange growths that produce visions,” opened on a spread with a full-page color photograph of a Mazatec woman turning a mushroom over a smoky fire and goes on for no fewer than fifteen pages. The headline is the first known reference to “magic mushrooms,” a phrase that, it turns out, was coined not by a stoned hippie but by a Time-Life headline writer. “We chewed and swallowed these acrid mushrooms, saw visions, and emerged from the experience awestruck,” Wasson tells us, somewhat breathlessly, in the first paragraph. “We had come from afar to attend a mushroom rite but had expected nothing so staggering as the virtuosity of the performing curanderas [healers] and the astonishing effects of the mushrooms. [The photographer] and I were the first white men in recorded history to eat the divine mushrooms, which for centuries had been a secret of certain Indian peoples living far from the great world in southern Mexico.” Wasson then proceeds to tell the improbable tale of how someone like him, “a banker by occupation,” would end up eating magic mushrooms in the dirt-floored basement of a thatch-roofed, adobe-walled home in a Oaxacan town so remote it could only be reached by means of an eleven-hour trek through the mountains by mule. The story begins in 1927, during Wasson’s honeymoon in the Catskills. During an afternoon stroll in the autumn woods, his bride, a Russian physician named Valentina, spotted a patch of wild mushrooms, before which “she knelt in poses of adoration.” Wasson knew nothing of “those putrid, treacherous excrescences” and was alarmed when Valentina proposed to cook them for dinner. He refused to partake. “Not long married,” Wasson wrote, “I thought to wake up the next morning a widower.” The couple became curious as to how two cultures could hold such diametrically opposed attitudes toward mushrooms. They soon embarked on a research project to understand the origins of both “mycophobia” and “mycophilia,” terms that the Wassons introduced. They concluded that each Indo-European people is by cultural inheritance either mycophobic (for example, the Anglo-Saxons, Celts, and Scandinavians) or mycophilic (the Russians, Catalans, and Slavs) and proposed an explanation for the powerful feelings in both camps: “Was it not probable that, long ago, long before the beginnings of written history, our ancestors had worshipped a divine mushroom? This would explain the aura of the supernatural in which all fungi seem to be bathed.” * The logical next question presented itself to the Wassons—“What kind of mushroom was once worshipped, and why?”—and with that question in hand they embarked on a thirty-year quest to find the divine mushroom. They hoped to obtain evidence for the audacious theory that Wasson had developed and that would occupy him until his death: that the religious impulse in humankind had been first kindled by the visions inspired by a psychoactive mushroom. As a prominent financier, R. Gordon Wasson had the resources and the connections to enlist all manner of experts and scholars in his quest. One of these was the poet Robert Graves, who shared the Wassons’ interest in the role of mushrooms in history and in the common origins of the world’s myths and religions. In 1952, Graves sent Wasson a clipping from a pharmaceutical journal that made reference to a psychoactive mushroom used by sixteenth-century Mesoamerican Indians. The article was based on research done in Central America by Richard Evans Schultes, a Harvard ethnobotanist who studied the uses of psychoactive plants and fungi by indigenous cultures. Schultes was a revered professor whom students recall shooting blowguns in class and keeping a basket of peyote buttons outside his Harvard office; he trained a generation of American ethnobotanists, including Wade Davis, Mark Plotkin, Michael Balick, Tim Plowman, and Andrew Weil. Along with Wasson, Schultes is one of a handful of figures whose role in bringing psychedelics to the West has gone underappreciated; indeed, some of the first seeds of that movement have quite literally sat in the Harvard herbarium since the 1930s, more than a quarter century before Timothy Leary set foot on the campus. For it was Schultes who first identified teonanácatl —the sacred mushroom of the Aztecs and their descendants—as well as ololiuqui, the seeds of the morning glory, which the Aztecs also consumed sacramentally and which contain an alkaloid closely related to LSD. Up to this point, the Wassons had been looking toward Asia for their divine mushroom; Schultes reoriented their quest, pointing them toward the Americas, where there were scattered reports, from missionaries and anthropologists, suggesting that an ancient mushroom cult might yet survive in the remote mountain villages of southern Mexico. In 1953, Wasson made the first of ten trips to Mexico and Central America, several of them to the village of Huautla de Jiménez, deep in the mountains of Oaxaca, where one of his informants—a missionary—had told him healers were using mushrooms. At first the locals were tight-lipped. Some told Wasson they had never heard of the mushrooms, or that they were no longer used, or that the practice survived only in some other, distant village. Their reticence was not surprising. The sacramental use of psychoactive mushrooms had been kept secret from Westerners for four hundred years, since shortly after the Spanish conquest, when it was driven underground. The best account we have of the practice is that of the Spanish missionary priest Bernardino de Sahagún, who in the sixteenth century described the use of mushrooms in an Aztec religious observance: These they ate before dawn with honey, and they also drank cacao before dawn. The mushrooms they ate with honey when they began to get heated from them, they began to dance, and some sang, and some wept . . . Some cared not to sing, but would sit down in their rooms, and stayed there pensive-like. And some saw in a vision that they were dying, and they wept, and others saw in a vision that some wild beast was eating them, others saw in a vision that they were taking captives in war . . . others saw in a vision that they were to commit adultery and that their heads were to be bashed in therefor . . . Then when the drunkenness of the mushrooms had passed, they spoke one with another about the visions that they had seen. The Spanish sought to crush the mushroom cults, viewing them, rightly, as a mortal threat to the authority of the church. One of the first priests Cortés brought to Mexico to Christianize the Aztecs declared that the mushrooms were the flesh of “ the devil that they worshipped, and . . . with this bitter food they received their cruel god in communion.” Indians were interrogated and tortured into confessing the practice, and mushroom stones—many of them foot-tall chiseled basalt sculptures of the sacred fungi, presumably used in religious ceremonies—were smashed. The Inquisition would bring dozens of charges against Native Americans for crimes involving both peyote and psilocybin, in what amounted to an early battle in the war on drugs—or, to be more precise, the war on certain plants and fungi. In 1620, the Roman Catholic Church declared that the use of plants for divination was “ an act of superstition condemned as opposed to the purity and integrity of our Holy Catholic Faith.” It’s not hard to see why the church would have reacted so violently to the sacramental use of mushrooms. The Nahuatl word for the mushrooms—flesh of the gods—must have sounded to Spanish ears like a direct challenge to the Christian Sacrament, which of course was also understood to be the flesh of the gods, or rather of the one God. Yet the mushroom sacrament enjoyed an undeniable advantage over the Christian version. It took an act of faith to believe that eating the bread and wine of the Eucharist gave the worshipper access to the divine, an access that had to be mediated by a priest and the church liturgy. Compare that with the Aztec sacrament, a psychoactive mushroom that granted anyone who ate it direct, unmediated access to the divine—to visions of another world, a realm of the gods. So who had the more powerful sacrament? As a Mazatec Indian told Wasson, the mushrooms “ carry you there where god is.” The Roman Catholic Church might have been the first institution to fully recognize the threat to its authority posed by a psychedelic plant, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. • • • O N THE NIGHT OF J UNE 29–30 , 1955 , R. Gordon Wasson experienced the sacred mushrooms firsthand. On his third trip to Huautla, he had persuaded María Sabina, a sixty-one-year-old Mazatec and a respected curandera in the village, to let him and his photographer not only observe but take part in a ceremony in which no outsider had ever participated. The velada, as the ceremony was called, took place after dark in the basement of the home of a local official Wasson had enlisted in his cause, before a simple altar “adorned with Christian images.” To protect her identity, Wasson called Sabina “Eva Mendez,” discerning “a spirituality in her expression that struck us at once.” After cleaning the mushrooms and passing them through the purifying smoke of incense, Sabina handed Wasson a cup containing six pairs of mushrooms; she called them “the little children.” They tasted awful: “acrid with a rancid odor that repeated itself.” Even so, “I could not have been happier: this was the culmination of six years of pursuit.” The visions that now arrived “were in vivid color, always harmonious. They began with art motifs, angular such as might decorate carpets or textiles or wallpaper . . . Then they evolved into palaces with courts, arcades, gardens—resplendent palaces all laid over with semiprecious stone. Then I saw a mythological beast drawing a regal chariot.” And so forth. Wasson’s original field notebooks are in the botanical library at Harvard. In a neat but somewhat idiosyncratic hand, he kept meticulous track of the time that night, from arrival (8:15) to ingestion (10:40) to the snuffing out of the last candle (10:45). After that, the handwriting disintegrates. Some sentences now appear upside down, and Wasson’s descriptions of what he felt and saw gradually break into fragments: Nausea as vision distorted. Touching wall—made the world of visions seem to crumble. Light from above door and below—moon. Table took new forms—creatures, great processional vehicle, architectural patterns of radiant color. Nausea. No photos once the [illegible] seized us. Architectural Eyes out of focus—the candles we saw them double. Oriental splendor—Alhambra—chariot Table transformed Contrast vision and reality—I touch wall. “The visions were not blurred or uncertain,” he writes. Indeed, “they seemed more real to me than anything I had ever seen with my own eyes.” At this point, the reader begins to feel the literary hand of Aldous Huxley exerting a certain pressure on both Wasson’s prose and his perceptions: “I felt that I was now seeing plain, whereas ordinary vision gives us an imperfect view.” Wasson’s own doors of perception had been flung wide open: “I was seeing the archetypes, the Platonic ideas, that underlie the imperfect images of everyday life.” To read Wasson is to feel as if you were witnessing the still-fresh and malleable conventions of the psychedelic narrative gradually solidifying before your eyes. Whether Aldous Huxley invented these tropes, or was merely their stenographer, is hard to say, but they would inform the genre, as well as the experience, from here on. “For the first time the word ecstasy took on real meaning,” Wasson recalls. “For the first time it did not mean someone else’s state of mind.” Wasson concluded from his experience that his working hypothesis about the roots of the religious experience in psychoactive fungi had been vindicated. “In man’s evolutionary past . . . there must have come a moment in time when he discovered the secret of the hallucinatory mushrooms. Their effect on him, as I see it, could only have been profound, a detonator to new ideas. For the mushrooms revealed to him worlds beyond the horizons known to him, in space and time, even worlds on a different plane of being, a heaven and perhaps a hell . . . One is emboldened to the point of asking whether they may not have planted in primitive man the very idea of a God.” Whatever one thinks about this idea, it’s worth pointing out that Wasson came to Huautla with it already firmly planted and he was willing to subtly twist various elements of his experience there in order to confirm it. As much as he wants us to see María Sabina as a religious figure, and her ceremony as a form of what he calls “Holy communion,” she saw herself quite differently. The mushroom might well have served as a sacrament five hundred years earlier, but by 1955 many Mazatecs had become devout Catholics, and they now used mushrooms not for worship but for healing and divination—to locate missing people and important items. Wasson knew this perfectly well, which is why he employed the ruse he did to gain access to a ceremony: he told María Sabina he was worried about his son back home and wanted information about his whereabouts and well-being. (Spookily enough, he received what he discovered on his return to New York to be accurate information on both counts.) Wasson was distorting a complex indigenous practice in order to fit a preconceived theory and conflating the historical significance of that practice with its contemporary meaning. As Sabina told an interviewer some years later, “ Before Wasson nobody took the mushrooms only to find God. They were always taken for the sick to get well.” As one of Wasson’s harsher critics, the English writer Andy Letcher, acidly put it, “ To find God, Sabina—like all good Catholics—went to Mass.” • • • W ASSON’S ARTICLE IN L IFE was read by millions of people (including a psychology professor on his way to Harvard named Timothy Leary). Wasson’s story reached tens of millions more when he shared it on the popular CBS news program Person to Person, and in the months to follow several other magazines, including True: The Man’s Magazine, ran first-person accounts of magic mushroom journeys (“The Vegetable That Drives Men Mad”), journeys for which Wasson supplied the mushrooms. (He had brought back a supply and would conduct ceremonies in his Manhattan apartment.) An exhibition on magic mushrooms soon followed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Shortly after the article in Life was published, Wasson arranged to have some specimens of the Mexican mushrooms sent to Albert Hofmann in Switzerland for analysis. In 1958, Hofmann isolated and named the two psychoactive compounds, psilocybin and psilocin, and developed the synthetic version of psilocybin used in the current research. Hofmann also experimented with the mushrooms himself. “ Thirty minutes after my taking the mushrooms,” he wrote, “the exterior world began to undergo a strange transformation. Everything assumed a Mexican character.” In 1962, Hofmann joined Wasson on one of his return trips to Huautla, during which the chemist gave María Sabina psilocybin in pill form. She took two of the pills and declared they did indeed contain the spirit of the mushroom. * It didn’t take long for thousands of other people—including, eventually, celebrities such as Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Mick Jagger—to find their way to Huautla and to María Sabina’s door. * For María Sabina and her village, the attention was ruinous. Wasson would later hold himself responsible for “ unleash[ing] on lovely Huautla a torrent of commercial exploitation of the vilest kind,” as he wrote in a plaintive 1970 New York Times op-ed. Huautla had become first a beatnik, then a hippie mecca, and the sacred mushrooms, once a closely guarded secret, were now being sold openly on the street. María Sabina’s neighbors blamed her for what was happening to their village; her home was burned down, and she was briefly jailed. Nearing the end of her life, she had nothing but regret for having shared the divine mushrooms with R. Gordon Wasson and, in turn, the world. “ From the moment the foreigners arrived,” she told a visitor, “the saint children lost their purity. They lost their force; the foreigners spoiled them. From now on they won’t be any good.” • • • W HEN THE NEXT MORNING I came downstairs, Paul Stamets was in the living room, arranging his collection of mushroom stones on the coffee table. I had read about these artifacts but had never seen or held one, and they were impressive objects: roughly carved chunks of basalt in a variety of sizes and shapes. Some were simple and looked like gigantic mushrooms; others had a tripod or four-footed base, and still others had a figure carved into the stipe (or stem). Thousands of these stones were smashed by the Spanish, but two hundred are known to survive, and Stamets owns sixteen of them. Most of the surviving stones have been found in the Guatemalan highlands, often when farmers are plowing their fields; some have been dated to at least 1000 B.C . As Stamets carried the heavy stones, one by one, from their cabinet to the coffee table, where he arranged them with great care, he looked like an altar boy, handling them with the sobriety appropriate to irreplaceable sacred objects. It occurred to me Paul Stamets is R. Gordon Wasson’s rightful heir. (Wasson, too, collected mushroom stones, some of which I saw at Harvard.) He shares his radically mycocentric cosmology and sees evidence wherever he looks for the centrality of psychoactive mushrooms in culture, religion, and nature. Stamets’s laptop is crammed with images of Psilocybes taken not only from nature (he’s a superb photographer) but also from cave paintings, North African petroglyphs, medieval church architecture, and Islamic designs, some of which recall the forms of mushrooms or, with their fractal geometric patternings, mushroom experiences. I confess that try as I might, I often failed to find the mushrooms lurking in the pictures. No doubt the mushrooms themselves could help. This brings us to Terence McKenna’s stoned ape theory, the epitome of all mycocentric speculation, which Stamets had wanted to make sure we discussed. Though reading is no substitute for hearing McKenna expound his thesis ( you can find him on YouTube), he summarizes it in Food of the Gods (1992): Psilocybes gave our hominid ancestors “ access to realms of supernatural power,” “ catalyzed the emergence of human self-reflection,” and “ brought us out of the animal mind and into the world of articulated speech and imagination.” This last hypothesis about the invention of language turns on the concept of synesthesia, the conflation of the senses that psychedelics are known to induce: under the influence of psilocybin, numbers can take on colors, colors attach to sounds, and so on. Language, he contends, represents a special case of synesthesia, in which otherwise meaningless sounds become linked to concepts. Hence, the stoned ape: by giving us the gifts of language and self-reflection psilocybin mushrooms made us who we are, transforming our primate ancestors into Homo sapiens . The stoned ape theory is not really susceptible to proof or disproof. The consumption of mushrooms by early hominids would be unlikely to leave any trace in the fossil record, because the mushrooms are soft tissue and can be eaten fresh, requiring no special tools or processing methods that might have survived. McKenna never really explains how the consumption of psychoactive mushrooms could have influenced biological evolution—that is, selected for changes at the level of the genome. It would have been easier for him to make an argument for psychoactive fungi’s influence on cultural evolution—such as the one Wasson made—but evidently the fungi had more ambitious plans for the mind of Terence McKenna, and Terence McKenna was more than happy to oblige. Stamets became good friends with McKenna during the last few years of his life, and ever since McKenna’s death (at age fifty-three, from brain cancer), he has been carrying the stoned ape’s torch, recounting McKenna’s theory in many of his talks. Stamets acknowledges the challenges of ever proving it to anyone’s satisfaction yet deems it “more likely than not” that psilocybin “was pivotal in human evolution.” What is it about these mushrooms, I wondered, and the experience they sponsor in the minds of men, that fires this kind of intellectual extravagance and conviction? The stories of myco-evangelists like McKenna read like conversion narratives, in which certain people who have felt the power of these mushrooms firsthand emerge from the experience convinced that these fungi are prime movers—gods, of a sort—that can explain everything. Their prophetic mission in life becomes clear: bring this news to the world! Now consider all this from the mushroom’s point of view: what might have started as a biochemical accident has turned into an ingenious strategy for enlarging the species’ range and number, by winning the fervent devotion of an animal as ingenious and well traveled (and well spoken!) as Homo sapiens . In McKenna’s vision, it is the mushroom itself that helped form precisely the kind of mind—endowed with the tools of language and fired by imagination—that could best advance its interests. How diabolically brilliant! No wonder Paul Stamets is convinced of their intelligence. • • • T HE NEXT MORNING, before we packed up the cars for our trip south, Stamets had another gift he wanted to give me. We were in his office, looking at some images on his computer, when he pulled off the shelf a small pile of amadou hats. “See if one of these fits you.” Most of the mushroom hats were too big for me, but I found one that sat comfortably on my head and thanked him for the gift. The hat was surprisingly soft and almost weightless, but I felt a little silly with a mushroom on my head, so I carefully packed it in my luggage. Early Sunday morning we drove west toward the Pacific coast and then south to the Columbia River, stopping for lunch and camping provisions in the resort town of Long Beach. This being the first week of December, the town was pretty well buttoned up and sleepy. Stamets requested that I not publish the exact location where we went hunting for Psilocybe azurescens . But what I can say is that there are three public parks bordering the wide-open mouth of the Columbia—Fort Stevens, Cape Disappointment, and the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park—and we stayed at one of them. Stamets, who has been coming here to hunt azzies for years, was mildly paranoid about being recognized by a ranger, so he stayed in the car while I checked in at the office and picked up a map giving directions to our yurt. As soon as we unloaded and stowed our gear, we laced up our boots and headed out to look for mushrooms. Which really just meant walking around with eyes cast downward, tracing desultory patterns through the scrub along the sand dunes and in the grassy areas adjoining the yurts. We adopted the posture of the psilocybin stoop, except that we raised our heads every time we heard a car coming. Foraging mushrooms is prohibited in most state parks, and being in possession of psilocybin mushrooms is both a state and a federal crime. The weather was overcast in the high forties—balmy for this far north on the Pacific coast in December, when it can be cold, wet, and stormy. We pretty much had the whole park to ourselves. It was a stunning, desolate landscape, with pine trees pruned low and angular by the winds coming off the ocean, endless dead-flat sandy beaches with plenty of driftwood, and giant storm-tossed timbers washed up and jack-strawed here and there along the beach. These logs had somehow slipped out from under the thumb of the lumber industry, floating down the Columbia from the old-growth forests hundreds of miles upriver and washing up here. Stamets suspects that Psilocybe azurescens might originally have ridden out of the forest in the flesh of those logs and found its way here to the mouth of the Columbia—thus far the only place the species has ever been found. Some mycelium will actually insinuate itself into the grain of trees, taking up residence and forming a symbiotic relationship with the tree. Stamets believes the mycelium functions as a kind of immune system for its arboreal host, secreting antibacterial, antiviral, and insecticidal compounds that protect the trees from diseases and pests, in exchange for nourishment and habitat. As we walked in widening spirals and figure eights over the grassy dunes, Stamets kept up a steady mycological patter; one nice thing about hunting mushrooms is that you don’t have to worry about scaring them away with the sound of your voice. Every now and then he paused to show me a mushroom. Little brown mushrooms are notoriously difficult to identify, but Stamets almost always had its Latin binomial and a few interesting facts about it at his fingertips. At one point, he handed me a Russula, explaining it was good to eat. I only nibbled at the ruddy cap before I had to spit it out, it was so fiery. Evidently, offering newbies this particular Russula is an old mycologist hazing ritual. I saw plenty of LBMs that might or might not be psilocybin and was constantly interrupting Stamets for another ID, and every time he had to prick my bubble of hope that I had at last found the precious quarry. After an hour or two of fruitless searching, Stamets wondered aloud if maybe we had come too late for the azzies. And then all of a sudden, in an excited stage whisper, he called out, “Got one!” I raced over, asking him to leave the mushroom in place so I could see where and how it grew. This would, I hoped, allow me to “get my eyes on,” as mushroom hunters like to say. Once we register on our retinas the visual pattern of the object we’re searching for, it’s much more likely to pop out of the visual field. (In fact the technical name for this phenomenon is “the pop-out effect.”) It was a handsome little mushroom, with a smooth, slightly glossy caramel-colored cap. Stamets let me pick it; it had a surprisingly tenacious grip, and when it came out of the ground, it brought with it some leaf litter, soil, and a little knot of bright white mycelium. “Bruise the stipe a bit,” Stamets suggested. I did, and within minutes a blue tinge appeared where I’d rubbed it. “That’s the psilocin.” I never expected to actually see the chemical I had read so much about. The mushroom had been growing a stone’s throw from our yurt, right on the edge of a parking spot. Stamets says that like many psilocybin species “azzies are organisms of the ecological edge. Look at where we are: at the edge of the continent, the edge of an ecosystem, the edge of civilization, and of course these mushrooms bring us to the edge of consciousness.” At this point, Stamets, who when it comes to mushrooms is one serious dude, made the first joke I had ever heard him make: “You know one of the best indicator species for Psilocybe azurescens are Winnebagos.” We’re obviously not the first people to hunt for azzies in this park, and anyone who picks a mushroom trails an invisible cloud of its spore behind him; this, he believes, is the origin of the idea of fairy dust. At the end of many of those trails is apt to be a campsite, a car, or a Winnebago. We found seven azzies that afternoon, though by we I mean Stamets; I only found one, and even then I wasn’t at all certain it was a Psilocybe until Stamets gave me a smile and a thumbs-up. I could swear it looked exactly like half a dozen other species I was finding. Stamets patiently tutored me in mushroom morphology, and by the following day my luck had improved, and I found four little caramel beauties on my own. Not much of a haul, but then Stamets had said that even just one of these mushrooms could underwrite a major psychic expedition. That evening, we carefully laid out our seven mushrooms on a paper towel and photographed them before putting them in front of the yurt’s space heater to dry. Within hours, the hot air had transformed a mushroom that was unimpressive to begin with into a tiny, shriveled gray-blue scrap it would be easy to overlook. The idea that something so unprepossessing could have such consequence was hard to credit. I had been looking forward to trying an azzie, but before the evening was over, Stamets had dampened my enthusiasm. “I find azurescens almost too strong,” he told me when we were standing around the fire pit outside our yurt, having a beer. After nightfall, we had driven out onto the beach to hunt for razor clams by headlight; now we were sautéing them with onions over the fire. “And azzies have one potential side effect that some people find troubling.” Yes? “Temporary paralysis,” he said matter-of-factly. He explained that some people on azzies find they can’t move their muscles for a period of time. That might be tolerable if you’re in a safe place, he suggested, “but what if you’re outdoors and the weather turns cold and wet? You could die of hypothermia.” Not much of an advertisement for azurescens, especially coming from the man who discovered the species and named it. I was suddenly in much less of a hurry to try one. • • • T HE QUESTION I KEPT returning to that weekend is this: Why in the world would a fungus go to the trouble of producing a chemical compound that has such a radical effect on the minds of the animals that eat it? What, if anything, did this peculiar chemical do for the mushroom? One could construct a quasi-mystical explanation for this phenomenon, as Stamets and McKenna have done: both suggest that neurochemistry is the language in which nature communicates with us, and it’s trying to tell us something important by way of psilocybin. But this strikes me as more of a poetic conceit than a scientific theory. The best answer I’ve managed to find arrived a few weeks later courtesy of Paul Stamets’s professor at Evergreen State, Michael Beug, the chemist. When I reached him by phone at his home in the Columbia River Gorge, 160 miles upriver of our campsite, Beug said he was retired from teaching and hadn’t spent much time thinking about Psilocybes recently, but he was intrigued by my question. I asked him if there is reason to believe that psilocybin is a defense chemical for the mushroom. Defense against pests and diseases is the most common function of the so-called secondary metabolites produced in plants. Curiously, many plant toxins don’t directly kill pests, but often act as psychostimulants as well as poisons, which is why we use many of them as drugs to alter consciousness. Why wouldn’t plants just kill their predators outright? Perhaps because that would quickly select for resistance, whereas messing with its neurotransmitter networks can distract the predator or, better still, lead it to engage in risky behaviors likely to shorten its life. Think of an inebriated insect behaving in a way that attracts the attention of a hungry bird. But Beug pointed out that if psilocybin were a defense chemical, “my former student Paul Stamets would have jumped on it long ago and found a use for it as an antifungal, antibacterial, or insecticide.” In fact Beug has tested fungi for psilocybin and psilocin levels and found that they occur only in minute quantities in the mycelium—the part of the organism most likely to be well defended. “Instead the chemicals are in the fruiting bodies—sometimes at over two percent by dry weight!”—a stupendous quantity, and in a part of the organism it is not a priority to defend. Even if psilocybin in mushrooms began as “an accident of a metabolic pathway,” the fact that it wasn’t discarded during the course of the species’ evolution suggests it must have offered some benefit. “My best guess,” Beug says, “is that the mushrooms that produced the most psilocybin got selectively eaten and so their spores got more widely disseminated.” Eaten by whom, or what? And why? Beug says that many animals are known to eat psilocybin mushrooms, including horses, cattle, and dogs. Some, like cows, appear unaffected, but many animals appear to enjoy an occasional change in consciousness too. Beug is in charge of gathering mushroom-poisoning reports for the North American Mycological Association and over the years has seen accounts of horses tripping in their paddocks and dogs that “zero in on Psilocybes and appear to be hallucinating.” Several primate species (aside from our own) are also known to enjoy psychedelic mushrooms. Presumably animals with a taste for altered states of consciousness have helped spread psilocybin far and wide. “The strains of a species that produced more rather than less psilocybin and psilocin would tend to be favored and so gradually become more widespread.” Eaten in small doses, psychedelic mushrooms might well increase fitness in animals, by increasing sensory acuity and possibly focus as well. A 2015 review article in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology reported that several tribes around the world feed psychoactive plants to their dogs in order to improve their hunting ability. * At higher doses, however, one would think that animals tripping on psychedelic mushrooms would be at a distinct disadvantage for survival, and no doubt many of them are. But for a select few, the effects may offer some adaptive value, not only for themselves, but also possibly for the group and even the species. Here we venture out onto highly speculative, slightly squishy ground, guided by an Italian ethnobotanist named Giorgio Samorini. In a book called Animals and Psychedelics: The Natural World and the Instinct to Alter Consciousness, Samorini hypothesizes that during times of rapid environmental change or crisis it may avail the survival of a group when a few of its members abandon their accustomed conditioned responses and experiment with some radically new and different behaviors. Much like genetic mutations, most of these novelties will prove disastrous and be discarded by natural selection. But the laws of probability suggest that a few of the novel behaviors might end up being useful, helping the individual, the group, and possibly the species to adapt to rapid changes in their environment. Samorini calls this a “depatterning factor.” There are times in the evolution of a species when the old patterns no longer avail, and the radical, potentially innovative perceptions and behaviors that psychedelics sometimes inspire may offer the best chance for adaptation. Think of it as a neurochemically induced source of variation in a population. It is difficult to read about Samorini’s lovely theory without thinking about our own species and the challenging circumstances in which we find ourselves today. Homo sapiens might have arrived at one of those periods of crisis that calls for some mental and behavioral depatterning. Could that be why nature has sent us these psychedelic molecules now? • • • S UCH A NOTION would not strike Paul Stamets as the least bit far-fetched. As we stood around the fire pit, the warm light flickering across our faces while our dinner sizzled in its pan, Stamets talked about what mushrooms have taught him about nature. He was expansive, eloquent, grandiose, and, at times, in acute danger of slipping the surly bonds of plausibility. We had had a few beers, and while we hadn’t touched our tiny stash of azzies, we had smoked a little pot. Stamets dilated on the idea of psilocybin as a chemical messenger sent from Earth, and how we had been elected, by virtue of the gift of consciousness and language, to hear its call and act before it’s too late. “Plants and mushrooms have intelligence, and they want us to take care of the environment, and so they communicate that to us in a way we can understand.” Why us? “We humans are the most populous bipedal organisms walking around, so some plants and fungi are especially interested in enlisting our support. I think they have a consciousness and are constantly trying to direct our evolution by speaking out to us biochemically. We just need to be better listeners.” These were riffs I’d heard Stamets deliver in countless talks and interviews. “Mushrooms have taught me the interconnectedness of all life-forms and the molecular matrix that we share,” he explains in another one. “I no longer feel that I am in this envelope of a human life called Paul Stamets. I am part of the stream of molecules that are flowing through nature. I am given a voice, given consciousness for a time, but I feel that I am part of this continuum of stardust into which I am born and to which I will return at the end of this life.” Stamets sounded very much like the volunteers I met at Hopkins who had had full-blown mystical experiences, people whose sense of themselves as individuals had been subsumed into a larger whole—a form of “unitive consciousness,” which, in Stamets’s case, had folded him into the web of nature, as its not so humble servant. “I think Psilocybes have given me new insights that may allow me to help steer and speed fungal evolution so that we can find solutions to our problems.” Especially in a time of ecological crisis, he suggests, we can’t afford to wait for evolution, unfolding at its normal pace, to put forth these solutions in time. Let the depatterning begin. As Stamets held forth, and forth, I couldn’t help but picture in my mind Alex Grey’s wacked painting of the stoned ape, with the tornadoes of thought flying out of his hairy head. So much of what Stamets has to say treads a perilously narrow ledge, perched between the autodidact’s soaring speculative flights and the stoned crank’s late night riffings that eventually send everyone in earshot off to bed. But just when I was beginning to grow impatient with his meanders, and could hear the call of my sleeping bag from inside the yurt, he, or I, turned a corner, and his mycological prophecies suddenly appeared to me in a more generous light. The day before, Stamets had given me a tour of the labs and grow rooms at Fungi Perfecti, the company he founded right out of college. Tucked into the evergreen forest a short walk from his house, the Fungi Perfecti complex consists of a series of long white metal buildings that look like Quonset huts or small hangars. Outside are piles of wood chips, discarded fungi, and growing media. Some of the buildings house the grow rooms where he raises medicinal and edible species; others contain his research facility, with clean rooms and laminar flow chambers in which Stamets reproduces fungi from tissue culture and conducts his experiments. On the office walls hang several of his patents, framed. Amid the torrent of words, what I observed in these buildings was a salutary reminder that while Stamets is surely a big talker, he is not just a talker. He is a big doer too, a successful researcher and entrepreneur who is using fungi to make original contributions across a remarkably wide range of fields, from medicine and environmental restoration to agriculture and forestry and even national defense. Stamets is in fact a scientist, albeit of a special kind. Exactly what kind of scientist I didn’t completely understand until a few weeks later, when I happened to read a wonderful biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the great early nineteenth-century German scientist (and colleague of Goethe’s) who revolutionized our understanding of the natural world. Humboldt believed it is only with our feelings, our senses, and our imaginations—that is, with the faculties of human subjectivity—that we can ever penetrate nature’s secrets. “ Nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice” that is “familiar to his soul.” There is an order and beauty organizing the system of nature—a system that Humboldt, after briefly considering the name “Gaia,” chose to call “Cosmos”—but it would never have revealed itself to us if not for the human imagination, which is itself of course a product of nature, of the very system it allows us to comprehend. The modern conceit of the scientist attempting to observe nature with perfect objectivity, as if from a vantage located outside it, would have been anathema to Humboldt. “ I myself am identical with nature.” If Stamets is a scientist, as I believe he is, it is in the Humboldtian mold, making him something of a throwback. I don’t mean to suggest his contribution is on the same order as Humboldt’s. But he too is an amateur in the best sense, self-taught, uncredentialed, and blithe about trespassing disciplinary borders. He too is an accomplished naturalist and inventor, with several new species and patents to his credit. He too hears nature’s voice, and it is his imagination—wild as it often is—that allows him to see systems where others have not, such as what is going on beneath our feet in a forest. I’m thinking, for example, of the “earth’s Internet,” “the neurological network of nature,” and the “forest’s immune system”—three Romantic-sounding metaphors that it would be foolish to bet against. What strikes me about both Stamets and many of the so-called Romantic scientists (like Humboldt and Goethe, Joseph Banks, Erasmus Darwin, and I would include Thoreau) is how very much more alive nature seems in their hands than it would soon become in the cooler hands of the professionals. These more specialized scientists (a word that wasn’t coined until 1834) gradually moved science indoors and increasingly gazed at nature through devices that allowed them to observe it at scales invisible to the human eye. These moves subtly changed the object of study—indeed, made it more of an object. Instead of seeing nature as a collection of discrete objects, the Romantic scientists—and I include Stamets in their number—saw a densely tangled web of subjects, each acting on the other in the great dance that would come to be called coevolution. “ Everything,” Humboldt said, “is interaction and reciprocal.” They could see this dance of subjectivities because they cultivated the plant’s-eye view, the animal’s-eye view, the microbe’s-eye view, and the fungus’s-eye view—perspectives that depend as much on imagination as observation. I suspect that imaginative leap has become harder for us moderns to make. Our science and technology encourage us in precisely the opposite direction, toward the objectification of nature and of all species other than our own. Surely we need to acknowledge the practical power of this perspective, which has given us so much, but we should at the same time acknowledge its costs, material as well as spiritual. Yet that older, more enchanted way of seeing may still pay dividends, as it does (to cite just one small example) when it allows Paul Stamets to figure out that the reason honeybees like to visit woodpiles is to medicate themselves, by nibbling on a saprophytic mycelium that produces just the right antimicrobial compound that the hive needs to survive, a gift the fungus is trading for . . . what? Something yet to be imagined. Coda You are probably wondering what ever happened to the azzies Stamets and I found that weekend. Many months later, in the middle of a summer week spent in the house in New England where we used to live, a place freighted with memories, I ate them, with Judith. I crumbled two little mushrooms in each of two glasses and poured hot water over them to make a tea; Stamets had recommended that I “cook” the mushrooms to destroy the compounds that can upset the stomach. Judith and I each drank half a cup, ingesting both the liquid and the crumbles of mushroom. I suggested we take a walk on the dirt road near our house while we waited for the psilocybin to come on. However, after only about twenty minutes or so, Judith reported she was “feeling things,” none of them pleasant. She didn’t want to be walking anymore, she said, but now we were at least a mile from home. She told me her mind and her body seemed to be drifting apart and then that her mind had flown out of her head and up into the trees, like a bird or insect. “I need to get home and feel safe,” she said, now with some urgency. I tried to reassure her as we abruptly turned around and picked up our pace. It was hot and the air was thick with humidity. She said, “I really don’t want to run into anybody.” I assured her we wouldn’t. I still felt more or less myself, but it may be that Judith’s distress was keeping me from feeling the mushrooms; somebody had to be ready to act normally if a neighbor happened to drive by and roll down his window for a chat, a prospect that was quickly taking on the proportions of nightmare. In fact shortly before we got back to home base—so it now felt to both of us—we spotted a neighbor’s pickup truck bearing down on us and, like guilty children, we ducked into the woods until it passed. Judith made a beeline for the couch in the living room, where she lay down with the shades drawn, while I went into the kitchen to polish off my cup of mushroom tea, because I wasn’t yet feeling very much. I was a little worried about her, but once she reached her base on the living room couch, her mood lightened and she said she was fine. I couldn’t understand her desire to be indoors. I went out and sat on the screened porch for a while, listening to the sounds in the garden, which suddenly grew very loud, as if the volume had been turned way up. The air was stock-still, but the desultory sounds of flying insects and the digital buzz of hummingbirds rose to form a cacophony I had never heard before. It began to grate on my nerves, until I decided I would be better off regarding the sound as beautiful, and then all at once it was. I lifted an arm, then a foot, and noted with relief that I wasn’t paralyzed, though I also didn’t feel like moving a muscle. Whenever I closed my eyes, random images erupted as if the insides of my lids were a screen. My notes record: Fractal patterns, tunnels plunging through foliage, ropy vines forming grids. But when I started to feel panic rise at the lack of control I had over my visual field, I discovered that all I needed to do to restore a sense of semi-normalcy was to open my eyes. To open or close my eyes was like changing the channel. I thought, “I am learning how to manage this experience.” Much happened, or seemed to happen, during the course of that August afternoon, but I want to focus here on just one element of the experience, because it bears on the questions of nature and our place in it that psilocybin seems to provoke, at least for me. I decided I wanted to walk out to my writing house, a little structure I had built myself twenty-five years ago, in what is now another life, and which holds a great many memories. I had written two and a half books in the little room (including one about building it), sitting before a broad window that looked back over a pond and the garden to our house. However, I was still vaguely worried about Judith, so before wandering too far from the house, I went inside to check on her. She was stretched out on the couch, with a cool damp cloth over her eyes. She was fine. “I’m having these very interesting visuals,” she said, something having to do with the stains on the coffee table coming to life, swirling and transforming and rising from the surface in ways she found compelling. She made it clear she wanted to be left alone to sink more deeply into the images—she is a painter. The phrase “parallel play” popped into my mind, and so it would be for the rest of the afternoon. I stepped outside, feeling unsteady on my feet, legs a little rubbery. The garden was thrumming with activity, dragonflies tracing complicated patterns in the air, the seed heads of plume poppies rattling like snakes as I brushed by, the phlox perfuming the air with its sweet, heavy scent, and the air itself so palpably dense it had to be forded. The word and sense of “poignance” flooded over me during the walk through the garden, and it would return later. Maybe because we no longer live here, and this garden, where we spent so many summers as a couple and then a family, and which at this moment seemed so acutely present, was in fact now part of an irretrievable past. It was as if a precious memory had not just been recalled but had actually come back to life, in a reincarnation both beautiful and cruel. Also heartrending was the fleetingness of this moment in time, the ripeness of a New England garden in late August on the verge of turning the corner of the season. Before dawn one cloudless night very soon and without warning, the thrum and bloom and perfume would end all at once, with the arrival of the killing frost. I felt wide open emotionally, undefended. When at last I arrived at the writing house, I stretched out on the daybed, something I hardly ever took the time to do in all the years when I was working here so industriously. The bookshelves had been emptied, and the place felt abandoned, a little sad. From where I lay, I could see over my toes to the window screen and, past that, to the grid of an arbor that was now densely woven with the twining vines of what had become a venerable old climbing hydrangea, a petiolaris . I had planted the hydrangea decades ago, in hopes of creating just this sort of intricately tangled prospect. Backlit by the late afternoon sunlight streaming in, its neat round leaves completely filled the window, which meant you gazed out at the world through the fresh green scrim they formed. It seemed to me these were the most beautiful leaves I had ever seen. It was as if they were emitting their own soft green glow. And it felt like a kind of privilege to gaze out at the world through their eyes, as it were, as the leaves drank up the last draughts of sunlight, transforming those photons into new matter. A plant’s-eye view of the world —it was that, and for real! But the leaves were also looking back at me, fixing me with this utterly benign gaze. I could feel their curiosity and what I was certain was an attitude of utter benevolence toward me and my kind. (Do I need to say that I know how crazy this sounds? I do!) I felt as though I were communing directly with a plant for the first time and that certain ideas I had long thought about and written about—having to do with the subjectivity of other species and the way they act upon us in ways we’re too self-regarding to appreciate—had taken on the flesh of feeling and reality. I looked through the negative spaces formed by the hydrangea leaves to fix my gaze on the swamp maple in the middle of the meadow beyond, and it too was now more alive than I’d ever known a tree to be, infused with some kind of spirit—this one, too, benevolent. The idea that there had ever been a disagreement between matter and spirit seemed risible, and I felt as though whatever it is that usually divides me from the world out there had begun to fall away. Not completely: the battlements of ego had not fallen; this was not what the researchers would deem a “complete” mystical experience, because I retained the sense of an observing I. But the doors and windows of perception had opened wide, and they were admitting more of the world and its myriad nonhuman personalities than ever before. Buoyed by this development, I sat up now and looked out over my desk, through the big window that faced back to the house. When I sited the building, I carefully framed the main view between two very old and venerable trees, a stolidly vertical ash on the right and an elegantly angled and intricately branched white oak on the left. The ash has seen better days; storms have shorn several important limbs from it, wrecking its symmetry and leaving some ragged stumps. The oak was somewhat healthier, in full leaf now with its upturned limbs reaching into the sky like the limbs of a dancer. But the main trunk, which had always leaned precariously to one side, now concerned me: a section of it had rotted out at ground level, and for the first time it was possible to look clear through it and see daylight. How was it possibly still standing? As I gazed at the two trees I had gazed at so many times before from my desk, it suddenly dawned on me that these trees were— obviously! —my parents: the stolid ash my father, the elegant oak my mother. I don’t know exactly what I mean by that, except that thinking about those trees became identical to thinking about my parents. They were completely, indelibly, present in those trees. And so I thought about all they had given me, and about all that time had done to them, and what was going to become of this prospect, this place ( this me! ), when they finally fell, as eventually they would. That parents die is not exactly the stuff of epiphany, but the prospect, no longer distant or abstract, pierced me more deeply than it ever had, and I was disarmed yet again by the pervasive sense of poignancy that trailed me all that afternoon. Yet I must have still had some wits about me, because I made a note to call the arborist tomorrow; maybe something could be done to reduce the weight on the leaning side of the oak, in order to prevent it from falling, if only for a while longer. My walk back to the house was, I think, the peak of the experience and comes back to me now in the colors and tones of a dream. There was, again, the sense of pushing my body through a mass of air that had been sweetened by phlox and was teeming, almost frenetic, with activity. The dragonflies, big as birds, were now out in force, touching down just long enough to kiss the phlox blossoms and then lift off, before madly crisscrossing the garden path. These were more dragonflies than I had ever seen in one place, so many in fact that I wasn’t completely sure if they were real. (Judith later confirmed the sighting when I got her to come outside.) And as they executed their flight patterns, they left behind them contrails that persisted in the air, or so at least it appeared. Dusk now approaching, the air traffic in the garden had built to a riotous crescendo: the pollinators making their last rounds of the day, the plants still signifying to them with their flowers: me, me, me! In one way I knew this scene well—the garden coming briefly back to life after the heat of a summer day has relented—but never had I felt so integral to it. I was no longer the alienated human observer, gazing at the garden from a distance, whether literal or figural, but rather felt part and parcel of all that was transpiring here. So the flowers were addressing me as much as the pollinators, and perhaps because the very air that afternoon was such a felt presence, one’s usual sense of oneself as a subject observing objects in space—objects that have been thrown into relief and rendered discrete by the apparent void that surrounds them—gave way to a sense of being deep inside and fully implicated in this scene, one more being in relation to the myriad other beings and to the whole. “Everything is interaction and reciprocal,” wrote Humboldt, and that felt very much the case, and so, for the first time I can remember, did this: “I myself am identical with nature.” • • • I HONESTLY DON’T KNOW what to make of this experience. In a certain light at certain moments, I feel as though I had had some kind of spiritual experience. I had felt the personhood of other beings in a way I hadn’t before; whatever it is that keeps us from feeling our full implication in nature had been temporarily in abeyance. There had also been, I felt, an opening of the heart, toward my parents, yes, and toward Judith, but also, weirdly, toward some of the plants and trees and birds and even the damn bugs on our property. Some of this openness has persisted. I think back on it now as an experience of wonder and immanence. The fact that this transformation of my familiar world into something I can only describe as numinous was occasioned by the eating of a little brown mushroom that Stamets and I had found growing on the edge of a parking lot in a state park on the Pacific coast—well, that fact can be viewed in one of two ways: either as an additional wonder or as support for a more prosaic and materialist interpretation of what happened to me that August afternoon. According to one interpretation, I had had “a drug experience,” plain and simple. It was a kind of waking dream, interesting and pleasurable but signifying nothing. The psilocin in that mushroom unlocked the 5-hydroxytryptamine 2-A receptors in my brain, causing them to fire wildly and set off a cascade of disordered mental events that, among other things, permitted some thoughts and feelings, presumably from my subconscious (and, perhaps, my reading too), to get cross-wired with my visual cortex as it was processing images of the trees and plants and insects in my field of vision. Not quite a hallucination, “projection” is probably the psychological term for this phenomenon: when we mix our emotions with certain objects that then reflect those feelings back to us so that they appear to glisten with meaning. T. S. Eliot called these things and situations the “objective correlatives” of human emotion. Emerson had a similar phenomenon in mind when he said that “ Nature always wears the colors of the spirit,” suggesting it is our minds that dress her in such significance. I’m struck by the fact there was nothing supernatural about my heightened perceptions that afternoon, nothing that I needed an idea of magic or a divinity to explain. No, all it took was another perceptual slant on the same old reality, a lens or mode of consciousness that invented nothing but merely ( merely! ) italicized the prose of ordinary experience, disclosing the wonder that is always there in a garden or wood, hidden in plain sight— another form of consciousness “parted from [us],” as William James put it, “by the filmiest of screens.” Nature does in fact teem with subjectivities—call them spirits if you like—other than our own; it is only the human ego, with its imagined monopoly on subjectivity, that keeps us from recognizing them all, our kith and kin. In this sense, I guess Paul Stamets is right to think the mushrooms are bringing us messages from nature, or at least helping us to open up and read them. Before this afternoon, I had always assumed access to a spiritual dimension hinged on one’s acceptance of the supernatural—of God, of a Beyond—but now I’m not so sure. The Beyond, whatever it consists of, might not be nearly as far away or inaccessible as we think. Huston Smith, the scholar of religion, once described a spiritually “realized being” as simply a person with “an acute sense of the astonishing mystery of everything.” Faith need not figure. Maybe to be in a garden and feel awe, or wonder, in the presence of an astonishing mystery, is nothing more than a recovery of a misplaced perspective, perhaps the child’s-eye view; maybe we regain it by means of a neurochemical change that disables the filters (of convention, of ego) that prevent us in ordinary hours from seeing what is, like those lovely leaves, staring us in the face. I don’t know. But if those dried-up little scraps of fungus taught me anything, it is that there are other, stranger forms of consciousness available to us, and, whatever they mean, their very existence, to quote William James again, “ forbid[s] a premature closing of our accounts with reality.” Open-minded. And bemushroomed. That was me, now, ready to reopen my own accounts with reality. CHAPTER THREE HISTORY The First Wave W HEN THE FEDERAL AUTHORITIES CAME down hard on Timothy Leary in the mid-1960s, hitting him with a thirty-year sentence for attempting to bring a small amount of marijuana over the border at Laredo, Texas, in 1966, * the embattled former psychology professor turned to Marshall McLuhan for some advice. The country was in the throes of a moral panic about LSD, inspired in no small part by Leary’s own promotion of psychedelic drugs as a means of personal and cultural transformation and by his recommendation to America’s youth that they “turn on, tune in, drop out.” Dated and goofy as those words sound to our ears, there was a moment when they were treated as a credible threat to the social order, an invitation to America’s children not only to take mind-altering drugs but to reject the path laid out for them by their parents and their government—including the path taking young men to Vietnam. Also in 1966, Leary was called before a committee of the U.S. Senate to defend his notorious slogan, which he gamely if not very persuasively attempted to do. In the midst of the national storm raging around him—a storm, it should be said, he quite enjoyed—Leary met with Marshall McLuhan over lunch at the Plaza hotel in New York, the LSD guru betting that the media guru might have some tips on how best to handle the public and the press. “ Dreary Senate hearing and courtrooms are not the platforms for your message, Tim,” McLuhan advised, in a conversation that Leary recounts in Flashbacks, one of his many autobiographies. (Leary would write another one every time legal fees and alimony payments threatened to empty his bank account.) “To dispel fear you must use your public image. You are the basic product endorser.” The product by this point was of course LSD. “Whenever you are photographed, smile. Wave reassuringly. Radiate courage. Never complain or appear angry. It’s okay if you come off as flamboyant and eccentric. You’re a professor after all. But a confident attitude is the best advertisement. You must be known for your smile.” Leary took McLuhan’s advice to heart. In virtually all of the many thousands of photographs taken of him from that lunch date forward, Leary made sure to present the gift of his most winning grin to the camera. It didn’t matter if he was coming into or out of a courthouse, addressing a throng of youthful admirers in his love beads and white robes, being jostled into a squad car freshly handcuffed, or perched on the edge of John and Yoko’s bed in a Montreal hotel room, Timothy Leary always managed to summon a bright smile and a cheerful wave for the camera. So, ever smiling, the charismatic figure of Timothy Leary looms large over the history of psychedelics in America. Yet it doesn’t take many hours in the library before you begin to wonder if maybe Timothy Leary looms a little too large in that history, or at least in our popular understanding of it. I was hardly alone in assuming that the Harvard Psilocybin Project—launched by Leary in the fall of 1960, immediately after his first life-changing experience with psilocybin in Mexico—represented the beginning of serious academic research into these substances or that Leary’s dismissal from Harvard in 1963 marked the end of that research. But in fact neither proposition is even remotely true. Leary played an important role in the modern history of psychedelics, but it’s not at all the pioneering role he wrote for himself. His success in shaping the popular narrative of psychedelics in the 1960s obscures as much as it reveals, creating a kind of reality distortion field that makes it difficult to see everything that came either before or after his big moment onstage. In a truer telling of the history, the Harvard Psilocybin Project would appear more like the beginning of the end of what had been a remarkably fertile and promising period of research that unfolded during the previous decade far from Cambridge, in places as far flung as Saskatchewan, Vancouver, California, and England, and, everywhere, with a lot less sound and fury or countercultural baggage. The larger-than-life figure of Leary has also obscured from view the role of a dedicated but little-known group of scientists, therapists, and passionate amateurs who, long before Leary had ever tried psilocybin or LSD, developed the theoretical framework to make sense of these unusual chemicals and devised the therapeutic protocols to put them to use healing people. Many of these researchers eventually watched in dismay as Leary (and his “antics,” as they inevitably referred to his various stunts and pronouncements) ignited what would become a public bonfire of all their hard-won knowledge and experience. In telling the modern history of psychedelics, I want to put aside the Leary saga, at least until the crack-up where it properly belongs, to see if we can’t recover some of that knowledge and the experience that produced it without passing it through the light-bending prism of the “Psychedelic Sixties.” In doing so, I’m following in the steps of several of the current generation of psychedelic researchers, who, beginning in the late 1990s, set out to excavate the intellectual ruins of this first flowering of research into LSD and psilocybin and were astounded by what they found. Stephen Ross is one such researcher. A psychiatrist specializing in addiction at Bellevue, he directed an NYU trial using psilocybin to treat the existential distress of cancer patients, to which I will return later; since then, he has turned to the treatment of alcoholics with psychedelics, what had been perhaps the single most promising area of clinical research in the 1950s. When several years ago an NYU colleague mentioned to Ross that LSD had once been used to treat thousands of alcoholics in Canada and the United States (and that Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, had sought to introduce LSD therapy into AA in the 1950s), Ross, who was in his thirties at the time, did some research and was “flabbergasted” by all that he—as an expert on the treatment of alcoholism—did not know and hadn’t been told. His own field had a secret history. “I felt a little like an archaeologist, unearthing a completely buried body of knowledge. Beginning in the early fifties, psychedelics had been used to treat a whole host of conditions,” including addiction, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, autism, and end-of-life anxiety. “There had been forty thousand research participants and more than a thousand clinical papers! The American Psychiatric Association had whole meetings centered around LSD, this new wonder drug.” In fact, there were six international scientific meetings devoted to psychedelics between 1950 and 1965. “Some of the best minds in psychiatry had seriously studied these compounds in therapeutic models, with government funding.” But after the culture and the psychiatric establishment turned against psychedelics in the mid-1960s, an entire body of knowledge was effectively erased from the field, as if all that research and clinical experience had never happened. “By the time I got to medical school in the 1990s, no one even talked about it.” • • • W HEN LSD BURST onto the psychiatric scene in 1950, the drug’s effects on patients (and researchers, who routinely tried the drug on themselves) were so novel and strange that scientists struggled for the better part of a decade to figure out what these extraordinary experiences were or meant. How, exactly, did this new mind-altering drug fit into the existing paradigms for understanding the mind and the prevailing modes of psychiatry and psychotherapy? A lively debate over these questions went on for more than a decade. What wasn’t known at the time is that beginning in 1953, the CIA was conducting its own (classified) research into psychedelics and was struggling with similar issues of interpretation and application: Was LSD best regarded as a potential truth serum, or a mind-control agent, or a chemical weapon? The world’s very first LSD trip, and the only one undertaken with no prior expectations, was the one Albert Hofmann took in 1943. While it left him uncertain whether he had experienced madness or transcendence, Hofmann immediately sensed the potential importance of this compound for neurology and psychiatry. So Sandoz, the pharmaceutical company for which he worked at the time of his discovery, did something unusual: in effect, it crowd-sourced a worldwide research effort to figure out what in the world Delysid—its brand name for LSD-25—might be good for. Hoping someone somewhere would hit upon a commercial application for its spookily powerful new compound, Sandoz offered to supply, free of charge, however much LSD any researcher requested. The company defined the term “researcher” liberally enough to include any therapist who promised to write up his or her clinical observations. This policy remained more or less unchanged from 1949 to 1966 and was in large part responsible for setting off the first wave of psychedelic research—the one that crashed in 1966, when Sandoz, alarmed at the controversy that had erupted around its experimental drug, abruptly withdrew Delysid from circulation. So what was learned during that fertile and freewheeling period of investigation? A straightforward question, and yet the answer is complicated by the very nature of these drugs, which is anything but straightforward. As the literary theorists would say, the psychedelic experience is highly “constructed.” If you are told you will have a spiritual experience, chances are pretty good that you will, and, likewise, if you are told the drug may drive you temporarily insane, or acquaint you with the collective unconscious, or help you access “cosmic consciousness,” or revisit the trauma of your birth, you stand a good chance of having exactly that kind of experience. Psychologists call these self-fulfilling prophecies “expectancy effects,” and they turn out to be especially powerful in the case of psychedelics. So, for example, if you have ever read Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception, which was published in 1954, your own psychedelic experience has probably been influenced by the author’s mysticism and, specifically, the mysticism of the East to which Huxley was inclined. Indeed, even if you have never read Huxley, his construction of the experience has probably influenced your own, for that Eastern flavoring—think of the Beatles song “Tomorrow Never Knows”—would come to characterize the LSD experience from 1954 on. (Leary would pick up this psychedelic orientalism from Huxley and then greatly amplify it when he and his Harvard colleagues wrote a bestselling manual for psychedelic experience based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead .) Further complicating the story and adding another feedback loop, Huxley was inspired to try psychedelics and write about the experience by a scientist who gave him mescaline in the explicit hope that a great writer’s descriptions and metaphors would help him and his colleagues make sense of an experience they were struggling to interpret. So did Aldous Huxley “make sense” of the modern psychedelic experience, or did he in some sense invent it? This hall of epistemological mirrors was just one of the many challenges facing the researchers who wanted to bring LSD into the field of psychiatry and psychotherapy: psychedelic therapy could look more like shamanism or faith healing than medicine. Another challenge was the irrational exuberance that seemed to infect any researchers who got involved with LSD, an enthusiasm that might have improved the results of their experiments at the same time it fueled the skepticism of colleagues who remained psychedelic virgins. Yet a third challenge was how to fit psychedelics into the existing structures of science and psychiatry, if indeed that was possible. How do you do a controlled experiment with a psychedelic? How do you effectively blind your patients and clinicians or control for the powerful expectancy effect? When “set” and “setting” play such a big role in the patient’s experience, how can you hope to isolate a single variable or design a therapeutic application? Part I: The Promise The drugs weren’t called “psychedelics” at the beginning; that term wasn’t introduced until 1957. In the same way that Sandoz couldn’t figure out what it had on its hands with LSD, the researchers experimenting with the drug couldn’t figure out what to call it. Over the course of the 1950s, this class of drugs underwent a succession of name changes as our understanding of the chemicals and their action evolved, each new name reflecting the shifting interpretation—or was it a construction?—of what these strange and powerful molecules meant and did. The first name was perhaps the most awkward: beginning around 1950, shortly after LSD was made available to researchers, the compound was known as a psychotomimetic, which is to say, a mind drug that mimicked psychoses. This was the most obvious and parsimonious interpretation of a psychedelic’s effects. Viewed from the outside, people given doses of LSD and, later, psilocybin exhibited many of the signs of a temporary psychosis. Early researchers reported a range of disturbing symptoms in their LSD volunteers, including depersonalization, loss of ego boundaries, distorted body image, synesthesia (seeing sounds or hearing sights), emotional lability, giggling and weeping, distortion of the sense of time, delirium, hallucinations, paranoid delusions, and, in the words of one writer, “ a tantalizing sense of portentousness.” When researchers administered standardized psychiatric tests to volunteers on LSD—such as the Rorschach ink blots or the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test—the results mirrored those of psychotics and, specifically, schizophrenics. Volunteers on LSD appeared to be losing their minds. This suggested to some researchers that LSD held promise as a tool for understanding psychosis, which is precisely how Sandoz initially marketed Delysid. Although the drug might not cure anything, the resemblance of its effects to the symptoms of schizophrenia suggested that the mental disorder might have a chemical basis that LSD could somehow illuminate. For clinicians, the drug promised to help them better understand and empathize with their schizophrenic patients. That of course meant taking the drug themselves, which seems odd, even scandalous, to us today. But in the years before 1962, when Congress passed a law giving the FDA authority to regulate new “investigational” drugs, this was in fact common practice. Indeed, it was considered the ethical thing to do, for to not take the drug yourself was tantamount to treating your patients as guinea pigs. Humphry Osmond wrote that the extraordinary promise of LSD was to allow the therapist who took it to “ enter the illness and see with a madman’s eyes, hear with his ears, and feel with his skin.” Born in Surrey, England, in 1917, Osmond is a little-known but pivotal figure in the history of psychedelic research, * probably contributing more to our understanding of these compounds and their therapeutic potential than any other single researcher. In the years following World War II, Osmond, a tall reed of a man with raucous teeth, was practicing psychiatry at St. George’s Hospital in London when a colleague named John Smythies introduced him to an obscure body of medical literature about mescaline. After learning that mescaline induced hallucinations much like those reported by schizophrenics, the two researchers began to explore the idea that the disease was caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. At a time when the role of brain chemistry in mental illness had not yet been established, this was a radical hypothesis. The two psychiatrists had observed that the molecular structure of mescaline closely resembled that of adrenaline. Could schizophrenia result from some kind of dysfunction in the metabolism of adrenaline, transforming it into a compound that produced the schizophrenic rupture with reality? No, as it would turn out. But it was a productive hypothesis even so, and Osmond’s research into the biochemical basis of mental illness contributed to the rise of neurochemistry in the 1950s. LSD research would eventually give an important boost to the nascent field. The fact that such a vanishingly small number of LSD molecules could exert such a profound effect on the mind was an important clue that a system of neurotransmitters with dedicated receptors might play a role in organizing our mental experience. This insight eventually led to the discovery of serotonin and the class of antidepressants known as SSRIs. But the powers that be at St. George’s Hospital were unsupportive of Osmond’s research on mescaline. In frustration, the young doctor went looking for a more hospitable institution in which to conduct it. This he found in the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan, of all places. Beginning in the mid-1940s, the province’s leftist government had instituted several radical reforms in public policy, including the nation’s first system of publicly funded health care. (It became the model for the system Canada would adopt in 1966.) Hoping to make the province a center of cutting-edge medical research, the government offered generous funding and a rare degree of freedom to lure researchers to the frozen wastes of the Canadian prairies. After replying to an ad in the Lancet, Osmond received an invitation from the provincial government to move his family and his novel research project to the remote agrarian community of Weyburn, Saskatchewan, forty-five miles north of the North Dakota border. The Saskatchewan Mental Hospital in Weyburn would soon become the world’s most important hub of research into psychedelics—or rather, into the class of compounds still known as psychotomimetics. That paradigm still ruled the thinking of Osmond and his new, like-minded colleague and research director, a Canadian psychiatrist named Abram Hoffer, as they began conducting experiments using a supply of LSD-25 obtained from Sandoz. The psychotomimetic model was introduced to the general public in 1953, when Maclean’s, the popular Canadian magazine, published a harrowing account of a journalist’s experience on LSD titled “ My 12 Hours as a Madman.” Sidney Katz had become the first “civilian” to participate in one of Osmond and Hoffer’s LSD experiments at Weyburn hospital. Katz had been led to expect madness, and madness he duly experienced: “I saw faces of familiar friends turn into fleshless skulls and the heads of menacing witches, pigs and weasels. The gaily patterned carpet at my feet was transformed into a fabulous heaving mass of living matter, part vegetable, part animal.” Katz’s article, which was illustrated with an artist’s rendering of chairs flying through a collapsing room, reads like the work of a fervent anti-LSD propagandist circa 1965: “I was repeatedly held in the grip of a terrifying hallucination in which I could feel and see my body convulse and shrink until all that remained was a hard sickly stone.” Yet, curiously, his twelve hours of insanity “were not all filled with horror,” he reported. “At times I beheld visions of dazzling beauty—visions so rapturous, so unearthly, that no artist will ever paint them.” During this period, Osmond and Hoffer administered Sandoz LSD to dozens of people, including colleagues, friends, family members, volunteers, and, of course, themselves. Their focus on LSD as a window into the biochemistry of mental illness gradually gave way to a deepening curiosity about the power of the experience itself and whether the perceptual disturbances produced by the drug might themselves confer some therapeutic benefit. During a late night brainstorming session in an Ottawa hotel room in 1953, Osmond and Hoffer noted that the LSD experience appeared to share many features with the descriptions of delirium tremens reported by alcoholics—the hellish, days-long bout of madness alcoholics often suffer while in the throes of withdrawal. Many recovering alcoholics look back on the hallucinatory horrors of the DTs as a conversion experience and the basis of the spiritual awakening that allows them to remain sober. The idea that an LSD experience could mimic the DTs “ seemed so bizarre that we laughed uproariously,” Hoffer recalled years later. “But when our laughter subsided, the question seemed less comical and we formed our hypothesis . . . : would a controlled LSD-produced delirium help alcoholics stay sober?” Here was an arresting application of the psychotomimetic paradigm: use a single high-dose LSD session to induce an episode of madness in an alcoholic that would simulate delirium tremens, shocking the patient into sobriety. Over the next decade, Osmond and Hoffer tested this hypothesis on more than seven hundred alcoholics, and in roughly half the cases, they reported, the treatment worked: the volunteers got sober and remained so for at least several months. Not only was the new approach more effective than other therapies, but it suggested a whole new way to think about psychopharmacology. “ From the first,” Hoffer wrote, “we considered not the chemical, but the experience as a key factor in therapy.” This novel idea would become a central tenet of psychedelic therapy. The emphasis on what subjects felt represented a major break with the prevailing ideas of behaviorism in psychology, in which only observable and measurable outcomes counted and subjective experience was deemed irrelevant. The analysis of these subjective experiences, sometimes called phenomenology, had of course been the basis of Freudian psychoanalysis, which behaviorism had rejected as insufficiently rigorous or scientific. There was no point in trying to get inside the mind; it was, in B. F. Skinner’s famous phrase, “a black box.” Instead, you measured what you could measure, which was outward behavior. The work with psychedelics would eventually spark a revival of interest in the subjective dimensions of the mind—in consciousness. How ironic that it took, of all things, a chemical—LSD-25—to bring interiority back into psychology. And yet, successful as the new therapy seemed to be, there was a nagging little problem with the theoretical model on which it was based. When the therapists began to analyze the reports of volunteers, their subjective experiences while on LSD bore little if any resemblance to the horrors of the DTs, or to madness of any kind. To the contrary, their experiences were, for the most part, incredibly—and bafflingly—positive. When Osmond and Hoffer began to catalog their volunteers’ session reports, “psychotic changes”—hallucinations, paranoia, anxiety—sometimes occurred, but there were also descriptions of, say, “a transcendental feeling of being united with the world,” one of the most common feelings reported. Rather than madness, most volunteers described sensations such as a new ability “to see oneself objectively”; “enhancement in the sensory fields”; profound new understandings “in the field of philosophy or religion”; and “increased sensitivity to the feelings of others.” * In spite of the powerful expectancy effect, symptoms that looked nothing like those of insanity were busting through the researchers’ preconceptions. For many of the alcoholics treated at Weyburn hospital, the core of the LSD experience seemed to involve something closer to transcendence, or spiritual epiphany, than temporary psychosis. Osmond and Hoffer began to entertain doubts about their delirium tremens model and, eventually, to wonder if perhaps the whole psychotomimetic paradigm—and name for these drugs—might need retooling. They received a strong push in that direction from Aldous Huxley after his mescaline experience, which he declared bore scant resemblance to psychosis. What a psychiatrist might diagnose as depersonalization, hallucinations, or mania might better be thought of as instances of mystical union, visionary experience, or ecstasy. Could it be that the doctors were mistaking transcendence for insanity? At the same time, Osmond and Hoffer were learning from their volunteers that the environment in which the LSD session took place exerted a powerful effect on the kinds of experiences people had and that one of the best ways to avoid a bad session was the presence of an engaged and empathetic therapist, ideally someone who had had his or her own LSD experience. They came to suspect that the few psychotic reactions they did observe might actually be an artifact of the metaphorical white room and white-coated clinician. Though the terms “set” and “setting” would not be used in this context for several more years (and became closely identified with Timothy Leary’s work at Harvard a decade later), Osmond and Hoffer were already coming to appreciate the supreme importance of those factors in the success of their treatment. But however it worked, it worked, or certainly seemed to: by the end of the decade, LSD was widely regarded in North America as a miracle cure for alcohol addiction. Based on this success, the Saskatchewan provincial government helped develop policies making LSD therapy a standard treatment option for alcoholics in the province. Yet not everyone in the Canadian medical establishment found the Saskatchewan results credible: they seemed too good to be true. In the early 1960s, the Addiction Research Foundation in Toronto, the leading institute of its kind in Canada, set out to replicate the Saskatchewan trials using better controls. Hoping to isolate the effects of the drug from all other variables, clinicians administered LSD to alcoholics in neutral rooms and under instructions not to engage with them during their trips, except to administer an extensive questionnaire. The volunteers were then put in constraints or blindfolded, or both. Not surprisingly, the results failed to match those obtained by Osmond and Hoffer. Worse still, more than a few of the volunteers endured terrifying experiences—bad trips, as they would come to be called. Critics of treating alcoholics with LSD concluded that the treatment didn’t work as well under rigorously controlled conditions, which was true enough, while supporters of the practice concluded that attention to set and setting was essential to the success of LSD therapy, which was also true. • • • I N THE MID-1950S, Bill Wilson, the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, learned about Osmond and Hoffer’s work with alcoholics. The idea that a drug could occasion a life-changing spiritual experience was not exactly news to Bill W., as he was known in the fellowship. He credited his own sobriety to a mystical experience he had on belladonna, a plant-derived alkaloid with hallucinogenic properties that was administered to him at Towns Hospital in Manhattan in 1934. Few members of AA realize that the whole idea of a spiritual awakening leading one to surrender to a “higher power”—a cornerstone of Alcoholics Anonymous—can be traced to a psychedelic drug trip. Twenty years later, Bill W. became curious to see if LSD, this new wonder drug, might prove useful in helping recovering alcoholics have such an awakening. Through Humphry Osmond he got in touch with Sidney Cohen, an internist at the Brentwood VA hospital (and, later, UCLA) who had been experimenting with Sandoz LSD since 1955. Beginning in 1956, Bill W. had several LSD sessions in Los Angeles with Sidney Cohen and Betty Eisner, a young psychologist who had recently completed her doctorate at UCLA. Along with the psychiatrist Oscar Janiger, Cohen and Eisner were by then leading figures in a new hub of LSD research loosely centered on UCLA. By the mid-1950s, there were perhaps a dozen such hubs in North America and Europe; most of them kept in close contact with one another, sharing techniques, discoveries, and, sometimes, drugs, in a spirit that was generally more cooperative than competitive. Bill W.’s sessions with Cohen and Eisner convinced him that LSD could reliably occasion the kind of spiritual awakening he believed one needed in order to get sober; however, he did not believe the LSD experience was anything like the DTs, thus driving another nail in the coffin of that idea. Bill W. thought there might be a place for LSD therapy in AA, but his colleagues on the board of the fellowship strongly disagreed, believing that to condone the use of any mind-altering substance risked muddying the organization’s brand and message. • • • S IDNEY C OHEN AND HIS COLLEAGUES in Los Angeles had, like the Canadian group, started out thinking that LSD was a psychotomimetic, but by the mid-1950s Cohen, too, had come to question that model. Born in 1910 in New York City to Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, Cohen, who in photographs looks very distinguished, with thick white hair slicked back, trained in pharmacology at Columbia University and served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps in the South Pacific during World War II. It was in 1953, while working on a review article about chemically induced psychoses—a long-standing research interest—that Cohen first read about a new drug called LSD. Yet when Cohen finally tried LSD himself in October 1955, he “ was taken by surprise.” Expecting to find himself trapped inside the mind of a madman, Cohen instead experienced a profound, even transcendent sense of tranquillity, as if “ the problems and strivings, the worries and frustrations of everyday life [had] vanished; in their place was a majestic, sunlit, heavenly inner quietude . . . I seemed to have finally arrived at the contemplation of eternal truth.” Whatever this was, he felt certain it wasn’t a temporary psychosis. Betty Eisner wrote that Cohen came to think of it instead as something he called “unsanity”: “a state beyond the control of the ego.” As often happens in science when a theoretical paradigm comes under the pressure of contrary evidence, the paradigm totters for a period of time as researchers attempt to prop it up with various amendments and adjustments, and then, often quite suddenly and swiftly, it collapses as a new paradigm rises to take its place. Such was the fate of the psychotomimetic paradigm in the mid-1950s. Certainly, a number of volunteers were reporting challenging and sometimes even harrowing trips, but remarkably few were having the full-on psychosis the paradigm promised. Even poor Mr. Katz’s twelve hours as a madman included passages of indescribable pleasure and insight that could not be overlooked. As it happened, the psychotomimetic paradigm was replaced not by one but by two distinct new theoretical models: the psycholytic and, later, the psychedelic model. Each was based on a different conception of how the compounds worked on the mind and therefore how they might best be deployed in the treatment of mental illness. The two models weren’t at odds with each other, exactly, and some researchers explored both at various times, but they did represent profoundly different approaches to understanding the psyche, as well as to psychotherapy and, ultimately, science itself. The so-called psycholytic paradigm was developed first and proved especially popular in Europe and with the Los Angeles group identified with Sidney Cohen, Betty Eisner, and Oscar Janiger. Coined by an English psychiatrist named Ronald Sandison, “ psycholytic” means “mind loosening,” which is what LSD and psilocybin seem to do—at least at low doses. Therapists who administered doses of LSD as low as 25 micrograms (and seldom higher than 150 micrograms) reported that their patients’ ego defenses relaxed, allowing them to bring up and discuss difficult or repressed material with relative ease. This suggested that the drugs could be used as an aid to talking therapy, because at these doses the patients’ egos remained sufficiently intact to allow them to converse with a therapist and later recall what was discussed. The supreme virtue of the psycholytic approach was that it meshed so neatly with the prevailing modes of psychoanalysis, a practice that the drugs promised to speed up and streamline, rather than revolutionize or render obsolete. The big problem with psychoanalysis is that the access to the unconscious mind on which the whole approach depends is difficult and limited to two less-than-optimal routes: the patient’s free associations and dreams. Freud called dreams “the royal road” to the subconscious, bypassing the gates of both the ego and the superego, yet the road has plenty of ruts and potholes: patients don’t always remember their dreams, and when they do recall them, it is often imperfectly. Drugs like LSD and psilocybin promised a better route into the subconscious. Stanislav Grof, who trained as a psychoanalyst, found that under moderate doses of LSD his patients would quickly establish a strong transference with the therapist, recover childhood traumas, give voice to buried emotions, and, in some cases, actually relive the experience of their birth—our first trauma and, Grof believed (following Otto Rank), a key determinant of personality. (Grof did extensive research trying to correlate his patients’ recollections of their birth experience on LSD with contemporaneous reports from medical personnel and parents. He concluded that with the help of LSD many people can indeed recall the circumstances of their birth, especially when it was a difficult one.) In Los Angeles, Cohen, Eisner, and Janiger began incorporating LSD in their weekly therapeutic sessions, gradually stepping up the dose each week until their patients gained access to subconscious material such as repressed emotions and buried memories of childhood trauma. They mainly treated neurotics and alcoholics and people with minor personality disorders—the usual sorts of patients seen by psychotherapists, functional and articulate people with intact egos and the will to get better. The Los Angeles group also treated hundreds of painters, composers, and writers, on the theory that if the wellspring of creativity was the subconscious, LSD would expand one’s access to it. These therapists and their patients expected the drug to be therapeutic, and, lo and behold, it frequently was: Cohen and Eisner reported that sixteen of their first twenty-two patients showed marked improvement. A 1967 review article summarizing papers about psycholytic therapy published between 1953 and 1965 estimated that the technique’s rate of success ranged from 70 percent in cases of anxiety neurosis, 62 percent for depression, and 42 percent for obsessive-compulsive disorder. These results were impressive, yet there were few if any attempts to replicate them in controlled trials. By the end of the decade, psycholytic LSD therapy was routine practice in the tonier precincts of Los Angeles, such as Beverly Hills. Certainly the business model was hard to beat: some therapists were charging upwards of five hundred dollars a session to administer a drug they were often getting from Sandoz for free. LSD therapy also became the subject of remarkably positive press attention. Articles like “My 12 Hours as a Madman” gave way to the enthusiastic testimonials of the numerous Hollywood celebrities who had had transformative experiences in the offices of Oscar Janiger, Betty Eisner, and Sidney Cohen and a growing number of other therapists. Anaïs Nin, Jack Nicholson, Stanley Kubrick, André Previn, James Coburn, and the beat comedian Lord Buckley all underwent LSD therapy, many of them on the couch of Oscar Janiger. But the most famous of these patients was Cary Grant, who gave an interview in 1959 to the syndicated gossip columnist Joe Hyams extolling the benefits of LSD therapy. Grant had more than sixty sessions and by the end declared himself “born again.” “ All the sadness and vanities were torn away,” the fifty-five-year-old actor told Hyams, in an interview all the more surprising in the light of Cary Grant’s image as a reserved and proper Englishman. “I’ve had my ego stripped away. A man is a better actor without ego, because he has truth in him. Now I cannot behave untruthfully toward anyone, and certainly not to myself.” From the sound of it, LSD had turned Cary Grant into an American. “ I’m no longer lonely and I am a happy man,” Grant declared. He said the experience had allowed him to overcome his narcissism, greatly improving not only his acting but his relationships with women: “ Young women have never before been so attracted to me.” Not surprisingly, Grant’s interview, which received boatloads of national publicity, created a surge in demand for LSD therapy, and for just plain LSD. Hyams received more than eight hundred letters from readers eager to know how they might obtain it: “Psychiatrists called, complaining that their patients were now begging them for LSD.” If the period we call “the 1960s” actually began sometime in the 1950s, the fad for LSD therapy that Cary Grant unleashed in 1959 is one good place to mark a shift in the cultural breeze. Years before Timothy Leary became notorious for promoting LSD outside a therapeutic or research context, the drug had already begun “escaping from the lab” in Los Angeles and receiving fervent national press attention. By 1959, LSD was showing up on the street in some places. Several therapists and researchers in Los Angeles and New York began holding LSD “sessions” in their homes for friends and colleagues, though exactly how these sessions could be distinguished from parties is difficult to say. At least in Los Angeles, the premise of “doing research” had become tenuous at best. As one of these putative researchers would later write, “ LSD became for us an intellectual fun drug.” Sidney Cohen, who by now was the dean of LSD researchers in Los Angeles, scrupulously avoided this scene and began to have second thoughts about the drug, or at least about the way it was now being used and discussed. According to his biographer, the historian Steven Novak, Cohen was made uncomfortable by the cultishness and aura of religiosity and magic that now wreathed LSD. Sounding a theme that would crop up repeatedly in the history of psychedelic research, Cohen struggled with the tension between the spiritual import of the LSD experience (and the mystical inclinations it brought out in its clinical practitioners) and the ethos of science to which he was devoted. He remained deeply ambivalent: LSD, he wrote in a 1959 letter to a colleague, had “opened a door from which we must not retreat merely because we feel uncomfortably unscientific at the threshold.” And yet that is precisely how the LSD work often made him feel: uncomfortably unscientific. Cohen also began to wonder about the status of the insights that patients brought back from their journeys. He came to believe that “ under LSD the fondest theories of the therapist are confirmed by his patient.” The expectancy effect was such that patients working with Freudian therapists returned with Freudian insights (framed in terms of childhood trauma, sexual drives, and oedipal emotions), while patients working with Jungian therapists returned with vivid archetypes from the attic of the collective unconscious, and Rankians with recovered memories of their birth traumas. This radical suggestibility posed a scientific dilemma, surely, but was it necessarily a therapeutic dilemma as well? Perhaps not: Cohen wrote that “ any explanation of the patient’s problems, if firmly believed by both the therapist and the patient, constitutes insight or is useful as insight.” Yet he qualified this perspective by acknowledging it was “nihilistic,” which, scientifically speaking, it surely was. For it takes psychotherapy perilously close to the world of shamanism and faith healing, a distinctly uncomfortable place for a scientist to be. And yet as long as it works, as long as it heals people, why should anyone care? (This is the same discomfort scientists feel about using placebos. It suggests an interesting way to think about psychedelics: as a kind of “active placebo,” to borrow a term proposed by Andrew Weil in his 1972 book, The Natural Mind . They do some thing, surely, but most of what that is may be self-generated. Or as Stanislav Grof put it, psychedelics are “nonspecific amplifiers” of mental processes.) Cohen’s thoughtful ambivalence about LSD, which he would continue to feel until the end of his career, marks him as that rare figure in a world densely populated by psychedelic evangelists: the open-minded skeptic, a man capable of holding contrary ideas in his head. Cohen continued to believe in the therapeutic power of LSD, especially in the treatment of anxiety in cancer patients, which he wrote about, enthusiastically, for Harper’s in 1965. There, he called it “ therapy by self-transcendence,” suggesting he saw a role in Western medicine for what would come to be called applied mysticism. Yet Cohen never hesitated to call attention to the abuses and dangers of LSD, or to call out his more fervent colleagues when they strayed too far off the path of science—the path from which the siren song of psychedelics would lure so many. • • • B ACK IN S ASKATCHEWAN, Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer had taken a very different path after the collapse of the psychotomimetic paradigm, though this path, too, ended up complicating their own relationship to science. Struggling to formulate a new therapeutic model for LSD, they turned to a pair of brilliant amateurs—one a famous author, Aldous Huxley, and the other an obscure former bootlegger and gunrunner, spy, inventor, boat captain, ex-con, and Catholic mystic named Al Hubbard. These two most unlikely nonscientists would help the Canadian psychiatrists reconceptualize the LSD experience and develop the therapeutic protocol that is still in use today. The name for this new approach, and the name for this class of drugs that would finally stick—psychedelics—emerged from a 1956 exchange of letters between Humphry Osmond and Aldous Huxley. The two had first met in 1953, after Huxley wrote to Osmond expressing interest in trying mescaline; he had read a journal article by Osmond describing the drug’s effects on the mind. Huxley had long harbored a lively interest in drugs and consciousness—the plot of his most famous novel, Brave New World (1932), turns on a mind-control drug he called soma—as well as mysticism, paranormal perception, reincarnation, UFOs, and so on. So in the spring of 1953, Humphry Osmond traveled to Los Angeles to administer mescaline to Aldous Huxley, though not without some trepidation. In advance of the session, he confided to a colleague that he did not “ relish the possibility, however remote, of finding a small but discreditable niche in literary history as the man who drove Aldous Huxley mad.” He need not have worried. Huxley had a splendid trip, one that would change forever the culture’s understanding of these drugs when, the following year, he published his account of his experience in The Doors of Perception. “ It was without question the most extraordinary and significant experience this side of the Beatific Vision,” Huxley wrote in a letter to his editor shortly after it happened. For Huxley, there was no question but that the drugs gave him access not to the mind of the madman but to a spiritual realm of ineffable beauty. The most mundane objects glowed with the light of a divinity he called “the Mind at Large.” Even “ the folds of my gray flannel trousers were charged with ‘is-ness,’” he tells us, before dilating on the beauty of the draperies in Botticelli’s paintings and the “Allness and Infinity of folded cloth.” When he gazed upon a small vase of flowers, he saw “ what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation—the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence . . . flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged.” “ Words like ‘grace’ and ‘transfiguration’ came to my mind.” For Huxley, the drug gave him unmediated access to realms of existence usually known only to mystics and a handful of history’s great visionary artists. This other world is always present but in ordinary moments is kept from our awareness by the “reducing valve” of everyday waking consciousness, a kind of mental filter that admits only “ a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness” we need in order to survive. The rest was a gorgeous superfluity, which, like poetry, men die every day for the lack thereof. Mescaline flung open what William Blake had called “the doors of perception,” admitting to our conscious awareness a glimpse of the infinite, which is always present all around us—even in the creases in our trousers!—if only we could just see . Like every psychedelic experience before or since, Huxley’s did not unfold on a blank slate, de novo, the pure product of the chemical, but rather was shaped in important ways by his reading and the philosophical and spiritual inclinations he brought to the experience. (It was only when I typed his line about flowers “shining with their own inner light” and “all but quivering under the pressure” of their significance that I realized just how strongly Huxley had inflected my own perception of plants under the influence of psilocybin.) The idea of a mental reducing valve that constrains our perceptions, for instance, comes from the French philosopher Henri Bergson. Bergson believed that consciousness was not generated by human brains but rather exists in a field outside us, something like electromagnetic waves; our brains, which he likened to radio receivers, can tune in to different frequencies of consciousness. Huxley also believed that at the base of all the world’s religions there lies a common core of mystical experience he called “the Perennial Philosophy.” Naturally, Huxley’s morning on mescaline confirmed him in all these ideas; as one reviewer of The Doors of Perception put it, rather snidely, the book contained “ 99 percent Aldous Huxley and only one half gram mescaline.” But it didn’t matter: great writers stamp the world with their minds, and the psychedelic experience will forevermore bear Huxley’s indelible imprint. Whatever else it impressed on the culture, Huxley’s experience left no doubt in his mind or Osmond’s that the “model psychosis” didn’t begin to describe the mind on mescaline or LSD, which Huxley would try for the first time two years later. One person’s “depersonalization” could be another’s “sense of oneness”; it was all a matter of perspective and vocabulary. “ It will give that elixir a bad name if it continues to be associated, in the public mind, with schizophrenia symptoms,” Huxley wrote to Osmond in 1955. “People will think they are going mad, when in fact they are beginning, when they take it, to go sane.” Clearly a new name for this class of drugs was called for, and in a 1956 exchange of letters the psychiatrist and the writer came up with a couple of candidates. Surprisingly, however, it was the psychiatrist, not the writer, who had the winning idea. Huxley’s proposal came in a couplet: To make this mundane world sublime Just half a gram of phanerothyme. His coinage combined the Greek words for “spirit” and “manifesting.” Perhaps wary of adopting such an overtly spiritual term, the scientist replied with his own rhyme: To fall in hell or soar Angelic You’ll need a pinch of psychedelic. Osmond’s neologism married two Greek words that together mean “mind manifesting.” Though by now the word has taken on the Day-Glo coloring of the 1960s, at the time it was the very neutrality of “psychedelic” that commended it to him: the word “ had no particular connotation of madness, craziness or ecstasy, but suggested an enlargement and expansion of mind.” It also had the virtue of being “ uncontaminated by other associations,” though that would not remain the case for long. “Psychedelic therapy,” as Osmond and his colleagues practiced it beginning in the mid-1950s, typically involved a single, high-dose session, usually of LSD, that took place in comfortable surroundings, the subject stretched out on a couch, with a therapist (or two) in attendance who says very little, allowing the journey to unfold according to its own logic. To eliminate distractions and encourage an inward journey, music is played and the subject usually wears eyeshades. The goal was to create the conditions for a spiritual epiphany—what amounted to a conversion experience. But though this mode of therapy would become closely identified with Osmond and Hoffer, they themselves credited someone else for critical elements of its design, a man of considerable mystery with no formal training as a scientist or therapist: Al Hubbard. A treatment space decorated to feel more like a home than a hospital came to be known as a Hubbard Room, and at least one early psychedelic researcher told me that this whole therapeutic regime, which is now the norm, should by all rights be known as “the Hubbard method.” Yet Al Hubbard, a.k.a. “Captain Trips” and “the Johnny Appleseed of LSD,” is not the kind of intellectual forebear anyone doing serious psychedelic science today is eager to acknowledge, much less celebrate. • • • A L H UBBARD IS SURELY the most improbable, intriguing, and elusive figure to grace the history of psychedelics, and that’s saying a lot. There is much we don’t know about him, and many key facts about his life are impossible to confirm, contradictory, or just plain fishy. To cite one small example, his FBI file puts his height at five feet eleven, but in photographs and videos Hubbard appears short and stocky, with a big round head topped with a crew cut; for reasons known only to himself, he often wore a paramilitary uniform and carried a Colt .45 revolver, giving the impression of a small-town sheriff. But based on his extensive correspondence with colleagues and a handful of accounts in the Canadian press and books about the period, * as well as interviews with a handful of people who knew him well, it’s possible to assemble a rough portrait of the man, even if it does leave some important areas blurry or blank. Hubbard was born poor in the hills of Kentucky in either 1901 or 1902 (his FBI file gives both dates); he liked to tell people he was twelve before he owned a pair of shoes. He never got past the third grade, but the boy evidently had a flair for electronics. As a teenager, he invented something called the Hubbard Energy Transformer, a new type of battery powered by radioactivity that “could not be explained by the technology of the day”—this according to the best account we have of his life, a well-researched 1991 High Times article by Todd Brendan Fahey. Hubbard sold a half interest in the patent for seventy-five thousand dollars, though nothing ever came of the invention and Popular Science magazine once included it in a survey of technological hoaxes. During Prohibition, Hubbard drove a taxi in Seattle, but that appears to have been a cover: in the trunk of his cab he kept a sophisticated ship-to-shore communications system he used to guide bootleggers seeking to evade the Coast Guard. Hubbard was eventually busted by the FBI and spent eighteen months in prison on a smuggling charge. After his release from prison the trail of Hubbard’s life becomes even more difficult to follow, muddied by vague and contradictory accounts. In one of them, Hubbard became involved in an undercover operation to ship heavy armaments from San Diego to Canada and from there on to Britain, in the years before the U.S. entered World War II, when the nation was still officially neutral. (Scouts for the future OSS officer Allen Dulles, impressed by Hubbard’s expertise in electronics, may or may not have recruited him for the mission.) But when Congress began investigating the operation, Hubbard fled to Vancouver to avoid prosecution. There he became a Canadian citizen, founded a charter boat business (earning him the title of Captain) and became the science director of a uranium mining company. (According to one account, Hubbard had something to do with supplying uranium to the Manhattan Project.) By the age of fifty, the “barefoot boy from Kentucky” had become a millionaire, owner of a fleet of aircraft, a one-hundred-foot yacht, a Rolls-Royce, and a private island off Vancouver. At some point during the war Hubbard apparently returned to the United States, and he joined the OSS shortly before the wartime intelligence agency became the CIA. A few other curious facts about the prepsychedelic Al Hubbard: He was an ardent Catholic, with a pronounced mystical bent. And he was unusually flexible in his professional loyalties, working at various times as a rum- and gunrunner as well as an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Was he a double agent of some kind? Possibly. At one time or another, he also worked for the Canadian Special Services, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Food and Drug Administration. His FBI file suggests he had links to the CIA during the 1950s, but the redactions are too heavy for it to reveal much about his role, if any. We know the government kept close tabs on the psychedelic research community all through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s (funding university research on LSD and scientific conferences in some cases), and it wouldn’t be surprising if, in exchange for information, the government would allow Hubbard to operate with as much freedom as he did. But this remains speculation. Al Hubbard’s life made a right-angled change of course in 1951. At the time, he was hugely successful but unhappy, “desperately searching for meaning in his life”—this according to Willis Harman, one of a group of Silicon Valley engineers to whom Hubbard would introduce LSD later in the decade. As Hubbard told the story to Harman (and Harman told it to Todd Brendan Fahey), he was hiking in Washington State when an angel appeared to him in a clearing. “She told Al that something tremendously important to the future of mankind would be coming soon, and that he could play a role in it if he wanted to. But he hadn’t the faintest clue what he was supposed to be looking for.” The clue arrived a year later, in the form of an article in a scientific journal describing the behavior of rats given a newly discovered compound called LSD. Hubbard tracked down the researcher, obtained some LSD, and had a literally life-changing experience. He witnessed the beginning of life on earth as well as his own conception. “ It was the deepest mystical thing I’ve ever seen,” he told friends later. “I saw myself as a tiny mite in a big swamp with a spark of intelligence. I saw my mother and father having intercourse.” Clearly this was what the angel had foretold—“something tremendously important to the future of mankind.” Hubbard realized it was up to him to bring the new gospel of LSD, and the chemical itself, to as many people as he possibly could. He had been given what he called a “special chosen role.” Thus began Al Hubbard’s career as the Johnny Appleseed of LSD. Through his extensive connections in both government and business, he persuaded Sandoz Laboratories to give him a mind-boggling quantity of LSD—a liter bottle of it, in one account, forty-three cases in another, six thousand vials in a third. (He reportedly told Albert Hofmann he planned to use it “to liberate human consciousness.”) Depending on whom you believe, he kept his supply hidden in a safe-deposit box in Zurich or buried somewhere in Death Valley, but a substantial part of it he carried with him in a leather satchel. Eventually, Hubbard became the exclusive distributor of Sandoz LSD in Canada and, later, somehow secured an Investigational New Drug permit from the FDA allowing him to conduct clinical research on LSD in the United States—this even though he had a third-grade education, a criminal record, and a single, arguably fraudulent scientific credential. (His PhD had been purchased from a diploma mill.) Seeing himself as “ a catalytic agent,” Hubbard would introduce an estimated six thousand people to LSD between 1951 and 1966, in an avowed effort to shift the course of human history. Curiously, the barefoot boy from Kentucky was something of a mandarin, choosing as his subjects leading figures in business, government, the arts, religion, and technology. He believed in working from the top down and disdained other psychedelic evangelists, like Timothy Leary, who took a more democratic approach. Members of Parliament, officials of the Roman Catholic Church, * Hollywood actors, government officials, prominent writers and philosophers, university officials, computer engineers, and prominent businessmen were all introduced to LSD as part of Hubbard’s mission to shift the course of history from above. (Not everyone Hubbard approached would play: J. Edgar Hoover, whom Hubbard claimed as a close friend, declined.) Hubbard believed that “ if he could give the psychedelic experience to the major executives of the Fortune 500 companies,” Abram Hoffer recalled, “he would change the whole of society.” One of the executives Hubbard turned on in the late 1950s—Myron Stolaroff, assistant to the president for long-term planning at Ampex, at the time a leading electronics firm in Silicon Valley—became “ convinced that [Al Hubbard] was the man to bring LSD to planet Earth.” • • • I N 1953, not long after his psychedelic epiphany, Hubbard invited Humphry Osmond to lunch at the Vancouver Yacht Club. Like so many others, Osmond was deeply impressed by Hubbard’s worldliness, wealth, connections, and access to seemingly endless supplies of LSD. The lunch led to a collaboration that changed the course of psychedelic research and, in important ways, laid the groundwork for the research taking place today. Under the influence of both Hubbard and Huxley, whose primary interest was in the revelatory import of psychedelics, Osmond abandoned the psychotomimetic model. It was Hubbard who first proposed to him that the mystical experience many subjects had on a single high dose of mescaline or LSD might itself be harnessed as a mode of therapy—and that the experience was more important than the chemical. The psychedelic journey could, like the conversion experience, forcibly show people a new, more encompassing perspective on their lives that would help them to change. But perhaps Hubbard’s most enduring contribution to psychedelic therapy emerged in, of all places, the treatment room. It is easier to accumulate facts about Al Hubbard’s life than it is to get a steady sense of the character of the man, it was so rife with contradiction. The pistol-packing tough guy was also an ardent mystic who talked about love and the heavenly beatitudes. And the well-connected businessman and government agent proved to be a remarkably sensitive and gifted therapist. Though he never used those terms, Hubbard was the first researcher to grasp the critical importance of set and setting in shaping the psychedelic experience. He instinctively understood that the white walls and fluorescent lighting of the sanitized hospital room were all wrong. So he brought pictures and music, flowers and diamonds, into the treatment room, where he would use them to prime patients for a mystical revelation or divert a journey when it took a terrifying turn. He liked to show people paintings by Salvador Dalí and pictures of Jesus or to ask them to study the facets of a diamond he carried. One patient he treated in Vancouver, an alcoholic paralyzed by social anxiety, recalled Hubbard handing him a bouquet of roses during an LSD session: “ He said, ‘Now hate them.’ They withered and the petals fell off, and I started to cry. Then he said, ‘Love them,’ and they came back brighter and even more spectacular than before. That meant a lot to me. I realized that you can make your relationships anything you want. The trouble I was having with people was coming from me.” What Hubbard was bringing into the treatment room was something well known to any traditional healer. Shamans have understood for millennia that a person in the depths of a trance or under the influence of a powerful plant medicine can be readily manipulated with the help of certain words, special objects, or the right kind of music. Hubbard understood intuitively how the suggestibility of the human mind during an altered state of consciousness could be harnessed as an important resource for healing—for breaking destructive patterns of thought and proposing new perspectives in their place. Researchers might prefer to call this a manipulation of set and setting, which is accurate enough, but Hubbard’s greatest contribution to modern psychedelic therapy was to introduce the tried-and-true tools of shamanism, or at least a Westernized version of it. • • • W ITHIN A FEW YEARS, Hubbard had made the acquaintance of just about everybody in the psychedelic research community in North America, leaving an indelible impression on everyone he met, along with a trail of therapeutic tips and ampules of Sandoz LSD. By the late 1950s, he had become a kind of psychedelic circuit rider. One week he might be in Weyburn, assisting Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer in their work with alcoholics, which was earning them international attention. From there to Manhattan, to meet with R. Gordon Wasson, and then a stop on his way back west to administer LSD to a VIP or check in on a research group working in Chicago. The next week might find him in Los Angeles, conducting LSD sessions with Betty Eisner, Sidney Cohen, or Oscar Janiger, freely sharing his treatment techniques and supplies of LSD. (“ We waited for him like the little old lady on the prairie waiting for a copy of the Sears Roebuck catalog,” Oscar Janiger recalled years later.) And then it was back to Vancouver, where he had persuaded Hollywood Hospital to dedicate an entire wing to treating alcoholics with LSD. * Hubbard would often fly his plane down to Los Angeles to discreetly ferry Hollywood celebrities up to Vancouver for treatment. It was this sideline that earned him the nickname Captain Trips. Hubbard also established two other alcoholism treatment facilities in Canada, where he regularly conducted LSD sessions and reported impressive rates of success. LSD treatment for alcoholism using the Hubbard method became a business in Canada. But Hubbard believed it was unethical to profit from LSD, which led to tensions between him and some of the institutions he worked with, because they were charging patients upwards of five hundred dollars for an LSD session. For Hubbard, psychedelic therapy was a form of philanthropy, and he drained his fortune advancing the cause. Al Hubbard moved between these far-flung centers of research like a kind of psychedelic honeybee, disseminating information, chemicals, and clinical expertise while building what became an extensive network across North America. In time, he would add Menlo Park and Cambridge to his circuit. But was Hubbard just spreading information, or was he also collecting it and passing it on to the CIA? Was the pollinator also a spy? It’s impossible to say for certain; some people who knew Hubbard (like James Fadiman) think it’s entirely plausible, while others aren’t so sure, pointing to the fact the Captain often criticized the CIA for using LSD as a weapon. “ The CIA work stinks,” he told Oscar Janiger in the late 1970s. Hubbard was referring to the agency’s MK-Ultra research program, which since 1953 had been trying to figure out whether LSD could be used as a nonlethal weapon of war (by, say, dumping it in an adversary’s water supply), a truth serum in interrogations, a means of mind control, * or a dirty trick to play on unfriendly foreign leaders, causing them to act or speak in embarrassing ways. None of these schemes panned out, at least as far as we know, and all reflected a research agenda that remained stuck on the psychotomimetic model long after other researchers had abandoned it. Along the way, the CIA dosed its own employees and unwitting civilians with LSD; in one notorious case that didn’t come to light until the 1970s, the CIA admitted to secretly giving LSD to an army biological weapons specialist named Frank Olson in 1953; a few days later, Olson supposedly jumped to his death from the thirteenth floor of the Statler Hotel in New York. (Others believe Olson was pushed and that the CIA’s admission, embarrassing as it was, was actually a cover-up for a crime far more heinous.) It could be Olson whom Al Hubbard was referring to when he said, “ I tried to tell them how to use it, but even when they were killing people, you couldn’t tell them a goddamned thing.” A regular stop on Hubbard’s visits to Los Angeles was the home of Aldous and Laura Huxley. Huxley and Hubbard had formed the most unlikely of friendships after Hubbard introduced the author to LSD—and the Hubbard method—in 1955. The experience put the author’s 1953 mescaline trip in the shade. As Huxley wrote to Osmond in its aftermath, “ What came through the closed door was the realization . . . the direct, total awareness, from the inside, so to say, of Love as the primary and fundamental cosmic fact.” The force of this insight seemed almost to embarrass the writer in its baldness: “The words, of course, have a kind of indecency and must necessarily ring false, seem like twaddle. But the fact remains.” Huxley immediately recognized the value of an ally as skilled in the ways of the world as the man he liked to call “the good Captain.” As so often seems to happen, the Man of Letters became smitten with the Man of Action. “ What Babes in the Woods we literary gents and professional men are!” Huxley wrote to Osmond about Hubbard. “The great World occasionally requires your services, is mildly amused by mine, but its full attention and deference are paid to Uranium and Big Business. So what extraordinary luck that this representative of both these Higher Powers should (a) have become so passionately interested in mescaline and (b) be such a very nice man.” Neither Huxley nor Hubbard was particularly dedicated to medicine or science, so it’s not surprising that over time their primary interest would drift from the treatment of individuals with psychological problems to a desire to treat the whole of society. (This aspiration seems eventually to infect everyone who works with psychedelics, touching scientists, too, including ones as different in temperament as Timothy Leary and Roland Griffiths.) But psychological research proceeds person by person and experiment by experiment; there is no real-world model for using a drug to change all of society as Hubbard and Huxley determined to do, with the result that the scientific method began to feel to them, as it later would to Leary, like a straitjacket. In the wake of his first LSD experience, Huxley wrote to Osmond suggesting that “ who, having once come to the realization of the primordial fact of unity in love, would ever want to return to experimentation on the psychic level? . . . My point is that the opening of the door by mescalin[e] or LSD is too precious an opportunity, too high a privilege to be neglected for the sake of experimentation.” Or to be limited to sick people. Osmond was actually sympathetic to this viewpoint—after all, he had administered mescaline to Huxley, hardly a controlled experiment—and he participated in many of Hubbard’s sessions turning on the Best and Brightest. But Osmond wasn’t prepared to abandon science or medicine for whatever Huxley and Hubbard imagined might lay beyond it. In 1955, Al Hubbard sought to escape the scientific straitjacket and formalize his network of psychedelic researchers by establishing something he called the Commission for the Study of Creative Imagination. The name reflected his own desire to take his work with psychedelics beyond the limits of medicine and its focus on the ill. To serve on the commission’s board, Hubbard recruited Osmond, Hoffer, Huxley, and Cohen, as well as half a dozen other psychedelic researchers, a philosopher (Gerald Heard), and a UN official; he named himself “scientific director.” (What did these people think of Hubbard and his grandiose title, not to mention his phony academic credentials? They were at once indulgent and full of admiration. After Betty Eisner wrote a letter to Osmond expressing discomfort with some of Hubbard’s representations, he suggested she think of him as a kind of Christopher Columbus: “ Explorers have not always been the most scientific, excellent or wholly detached people.”) It isn’t clear how much more there was to the Commission for the Study of Creative Imagination than a fancy letterhead, but its very existence signaled a deepening fissure between the medical and the spiritual approach to psychedelics. (Sidney Cohen, ever ambivalent on questions of science versus mysticism, abruptly resigned in 1957, only a year after joining the board.) His title as “scientific director” notwithstanding, Hubbard himself said during this period, “ My regard for science, as an end within itself, is diminishing as time goes on . . . when the thing I want with all of my being, is something that lives far outside and out of reach of empirical manipulation.” Long before Leary, the shift in the objective of psychedelic research from psychotherapy to cultural revolution was well under way. • • • O NE LAST NODE worth visiting in Al Hubbard’s far-flung psychedelic network is Silicon Valley, where the potential for LSD to foster “creative imagination” and thereby change the culture received its most thorough test to date. Indeed, the seeds that Hubbard planted in Silicon Valley continue to yield interesting fruit, in the form of the valley’s ongoing interest in psychedelics as a tool for creativity and innovation. (As I write, the practice of microdosing—taking a tiny, “subperceptual” regular dose of LSD as a kind of mental tonic—is all the rage in the tech community.) Steve Jobs often told people that his experiments with LSD had been one of his two or three most important life experiences. He liked to taunt Bill Gates by suggesting, “ He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.” (Gates has said he did in fact try LSD.) It might not be a straight one, but it is possible to draw a line connecting Al Hubbard’s arrival in Silicon Valley with his satchelful of LSD to the tech boom that Steve Jobs helped set off a quarter century later. The key figure in the marriage of Al Hubbard and Silicon Valley was Myron Stolaroff. Stolaroff was a gifted electrical engineer who, by the mid-1950s, had become assistant to the president for strategic planning at Ampex, one of the first technology companies to set up shop in what at the time was a sleepy valley of farms and orchards. (It wouldn’t be called Silicon Valley until 1971.) Ampex, which at its peak had thirteen thousand employees, was a pioneer in the development of reel-to-reel magnetic tape for both audio and data recording. Born in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1920, Stolaroff studied engineering at Stanford and was one of Ampex’s very first employees, a fact that would make him a wealthy man. Nominally Jewish, he was by his thirties a spiritual seeker whose path eventually led him to Gerald Heard, the English philosopher and friend of Aldous Huxley’s. Stolaroff was so moved by Heard’s description of his LSD experience with Al Hubbard that in March 1956 he traveled to Vancouver for a session with the Captain in his apartment. Sixty-six micrograms of Sandoz LSD launched Stolaroff on a journey by turns terrifying and ecstatic. Over the course of several hours, he witnessed the entire history of the planet from its formation through the development of life on earth and the appearance of humankind, culminating in the trauma of his own birth. (This seems to have been a common trajectory of Hubbard-guided trips.) “ That was a remarkable opening for me,” he told an interviewer years later, “a tremendous opening. I relived a very painful birth experience that had determined almost all my personality features. But I also experienced the oneness of mankind, and the reality of God. I knew that from then on . . . I would be totally committed to this work. “ After that first LSD experience, I said, ‘this is the greatest discovery man has ever made.’” Stolaroff shared the news with a small number of his friends and colleagues at Ampex. They began meeting every month or so to discuss spiritual questions and the potential of LSD to help individuals—healthy individuals—realize their full potential. Don Allen, a young Ampex engineer, and Willis Harman, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, joined the group, and Al Hubbard began coming down to Menlo Park to guide the members on psychedelic journeys and then train them to guide others. “As a therapist,” Stolaroff recalled, “he was one of the best.” Convinced of the power of LSD to help people transcend their limitations, Stolaroff tried for a time, with Hubbard’s help, to reshape Ampex as the world’s first “psychedelic corporation.” Hubbard conducted a series of weekly workshops at headquarters and administered LSD to company executives at a site in the Sierra. But the project foundered when the company’s general manager, who was Jewish, objected to the images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Last Supper that Hubbard insisted on bringing into his office. Around the same time, Willis Harman shifted the focus of his teaching at Stanford, offering a new class on “the human potential” that ended with a unit on psychedelics. The engineers were getting religion. (And have it still: I know of one Bay Area tech company today that uses psychedelics in its management training. A handful of others have instituted “microdosing Fridays.”) In 1961, Stolaroff left Ampex to dedicate himself full-time to psychedelic research. With Willis Harman, he established the orotundly titled International Foundation for Advanced Study (IFAS) to explore the potential of LSD to enhance human personality and creativity. Stolaroff hired a psychiatrist named Charles Savage as medical director and, as staff psychologist, a first-year graduate student by the name of James Fadiman. (Fadiman, who graduated from Harvard in 1960, was introduced to psilocybin by Richard Alpert, though not until after his graduation. “ The greatest thing in the world has happened to me,” Alpert told his former student, “and I want to share it with you.”) Don Allen also left his engineering post at Ampex to join IFAS as a screener and guide. The foundation secured a drug research permit from the FDA and a supply of LSD and mescaline from Al Hubbard and began—to use an Al Hubbard term—“processing clients.” Over the next six years, the foundation would process some 350 people. As James Fadiman and Don Allen recall those years at the foundation (both sat for extensive interviews), it was a thrilling and heady time to be working on what they were convinced was the frontier of human possibility. For the most part, their experimental subjects were “healthy normals” or what Fadiman described as “a healthy neurotic outpatient population.” Each client paid five hundred dollars for a package that included before-and-after personality testing, a guided LSD session, and some follow-up. Al Hubbard “would float in and out,” Don Allen recalls. He “was both our inspiration and our resident expert.” James Fadiman says, “He was the hidden force behind the Menlo Park research.” From time to time, Hubbard would take members of the staff to Death Valley for training sessions, in the belief that the primordial landscape there was particularly conducive to revelatory experience. In half a dozen or so papers published in the early 1960s, the foundation’s researchers reported some provocative “results.” Seventy-eight percent of clients said the experience had increased their ability to love, 71 percent registered an increase in self-esteem, and 83 percent said that during their sessions they had glimpsed “a higher power, or ultimate reality.” Those who had such an experience were the ones who reported the most lasting benefits from their session. Don Allen told me that most clients emerged with “notable and fairly sustainable changes in beliefs, attitudes, and behavior, way above statistical probability.” Specifically, they became “much less judgmental, much less rigid, more open, and less defended.” But it wasn’t all sweetness and light: several clients abruptly broke off marriages after their sessions, now believing they were mismatched or trapped in destructive patterns of behavior. The foundation also conducted studies to determine if LSD could in fact enhance creativity and problem solving. “This wasn’t at all obvious,” James Fadiman points out, “since the experience is so powerful, you might just wander off and lose track of what you were trying to accomplish.” So to test their hypothesis, Fadiman and his colleagues started with themselves, seeing if they could design a credible creativity experiment while on a relatively light dose of LSD—a hundred micrograms. Perhaps not surprisingly, they determined that they could. Working in groups of four, James Fadiman and Willis Harman administered the same dose of LSD to artists, engineers, architects, and scientists, all of whom were somehow “stuck” in their work on a particular project. “We used every manipulation of set and setting in the book,” Fadiman recalled, telling subjects “they would be fascinated by their intellectual capacities and would solve problems as never before.” Subjects reported much greater fluidity in their thinking, as well as an enhanced ability to both visualize a problem and recontextualize it. “ We were amazed, as were our participants, at how many novel and effective solutions came out of our sessions,” Fadiman wrote. Among their subjects were some of the visionaries who in the next few years would revolutionize computers, including William English and Doug Engelbart. * There are all sorts of problems with this study—it was not controlled, it relied on the subjects’ own assessments of their success, and it was halted before it could be completed—but it does at least point to a promising avenue for research. The foundation had closed up shop by 1966, but Hubbard’s work in Silicon Valley was not quite over. In one of the more mysterious episodes of his career, Hubbard was called out of semiretirement by Willis Harman in 1968. After IFAS disbanded, Harman had gone to work at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), a prestigious think tank affiliated with Stanford University and a recipient of contracts from several branches of the federal government, including the military. Harman was put in charge of SRI’s Educational Policy Research Center, with a mandate to envision education’s future. LSD by now was illegal but still very much in use in the community of engineers and academics in and around Stanford. Hubbard, who by now was broke, was hired as a part-time “special investigative agent,” ostensibly to keep tabs on the use of drugs in the student movement. Harman’s letter of employment to Hubbard is both obscure and suggestive: “ Our investigations of some of the current social movements affecting education indicate that the drug use prevalent among student members of the New Left is not entirely undesigned. Some of it appears to be present as a deliberate weapon aimed at political change. We are concerned with assessing the significance of this as it impacts on matters of long-range educational policy. In this connection it would be advantageous to have you considered in the capacity of a special investigative agent who might have access to relevant data which is not ordinarily available.” Though not mentioned in the letter, Hubbard’s services to SRI also included using his extensive government contacts to keep contracts flowing. So Al Hubbard once again donned his khaki security-guard uniform, complete with gold badge, sidearm, and a belt studded with bullets, and got back to work. But the uniform and the “special agent” title were all a cover, and an audacious one at that. As a vocal enemy of the rising counterculture, it’s entirely possible Hubbard did investigate illegal drug use on campus for SRI (or others * ), but if he did, he was once again working both sides of the street. For though the legal status of LSD had changed by 1968, Hubbard and Harman’s mission—“ to provide the [LSD] experience to political and intellectual leaders around the world”—apparently had not. The work might well have continued, just more quietly and beneath a cover story. For as Willis Harman told Todd Brendan Fahey in a 1990 interview and as a former SRI employee confirmed, “ Al never did anything resembling security work. “Al’s job was to run the special sessions for us.” That former SRI employee is Peter Schwartz, an engineer who became a leading futurist; he is currently senior vice president for government relations and strategic planning at Salesforce.com. In 1973, Schwartz went to work for Willis Harman at SRI, his first job out of graduate school. By then, Al Hubbard was more or less retired, and Schwartz was given his office. On the wall above the desk hung a large photograph of Richard Nixon, inscribed “to my good friend, Al, for all your years of service, your friend, Dick.” A pile of mail accumulated in the in-box, with letters addressed to A. M. Hubbard from all over the world, including, he recalled, one from George Bush, the future CIA director, who at the time was serving as head of the Republican National Committee. “Who was this fellow?” Schwartz wondered. And then one day this round fellow with a gray crew cut, dressed in a security guard’s uniform and carrying a .38, showed up to retrieve his mail. “‘I’m a friend of Willis’s,’” Hubbard told Schwartz. “And then he began asking me the strangest questions, completely without context. ‘Where do you think you actually came from? What do you think about the cosmos?’ I learned later this was how he checked people out, to decide whether or not you were a worthy candidate.” Intrigued, Schwartz asked Harman about this mystery man and, piece by piece, began to put together much of the tale of Hubbard’s life. The young futurist soon realized that “most of the people I was meeting who had interesting ideas had tripped with Hubbard: professors at Stanford, Berkeley, the staff at SRI, computer engineers, scientists, writers. And all of them had been transformed by the experience.” Schwartz said that several of the early computer engineers relied on LSD in designing circuit chips, especially in the years before they could be designed on computers. “You had to be able to visualize a staggering complexity in three dimensions, hold it all in your head. They found that LSD could help.” Schwartz eventually realized that “everyone in that community”—referring to the Bay Area tech crowd in the 1960s and early 1970s, as well as the people in and around Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Network—“had taken Hubbard LSD.” Why were engineers in particular so taken with psychedelics? Schwartz, himself trained as an aerospace engineer, thinks it has to do with the fact that unlike the work of scientists, who can simplify the problems they work on, “problem solving in engineering always involves irreducible complexity. You’re always balancing complex variables you can never get perfect, so you’re desperately searching to find patterns. LSD shows you patterns. “I have no doubt that all that Hubbard LSD all of us had taken had a big effect on the birth of Silicon Valley.” Stewart Brand received his own baptism in Hubbard LSD at IFAS in 1962, with James Fadiman presiding as his guide. His first experience with LSD “was kind of a bum trip,” he recalls, but it led to a series of other journeys that reshaped his worldview and, indirectly, all of ours. The Whole Earth Network Brand would subsequently gather together (which included Peter Schwartz, Esther Dyson, Kevin Kelly, Howard Rheingold, and John Perry Barlow) and play a key role in redefining what computers meant and did, helping to transform them from a top-down tool of the military-industrial complex—with the computer punch card a handy symbol of Organization Man—into a tool of personal liberation and virtual community, with a distinctly countercultural vibe. How much does the idea of cyberspace, an immaterial realm where one can construct a new identity and merge with a community of virtual others, owe to an imagination shaped by the experience of psychedelics? Or for that matter virtual reality? * The whole notion of cybernetics, the idea that material reality can be translated into bits of information, may also owe something to the experience of LSD, with its power to collapse matter into spirit. Brand thinks LSD’s value to his community was as an instigator of creativity, one that first helped bring the power of networked computers to people (via SRI computer visionaries such as Doug Engelbart and the early hacker community), but then was superseded by the computers themselves. (“At a certain point, the drugs weren’t getting any better,” Brand said, “but the computers were.”) After his experience at IFAS, Brand got involved with Ken Kesey and his notorious Acid Tests, which he describes as “a participatory art form that led directly to Burning Man,” the annual gathering of the arts, technology, and psychedelic communities in the Nevada desert. In his view, LSD was a critical ingredient in nourishing the spirit of collaborative experiment, and tolerance of failure, that distinguish the computer culture of the West Coast. “It gave us permission to try weird shit in cahoots with other people.” On occasion, the LSD produced genuine insight, as it did for Brand himself one chilly afternoon in the spring of 1966. Bored, he went up onto the roof of his building in North Beach and took a hundred micrograms of acid—Fadiman’s creativity dose. As he looked toward downtown while wrapped in a blanket, it appeared that the streets lined with buildings were not quite parallel. This must be due to the curvature of Earth, Brand decided. It occurred to him that when we think of Earth as flat, as we usually do, we assume it is infinite, and we treat its resources that way. “The relationship to infinity is to use it up,” he thought, “but a round earth was a finite spaceship you had to manage carefully.” At least that’s how it appeared to him that afternoon, “from three stories and one hundred mikes up.” It would change everything if he could convey this to people! But how? He flashed on the space program and wondered, “Why haven’t we seen a picture of the earth from space? I become fixed on this, on how to get this photo that would revolutionize our understanding of our place in the universe. I know, I’ll make a button! But what should it say? ‘Let’s have a photo of the earth from space.’ No, it needs to be a question, and maybe a little paranoid—draw on that American resource. ‘Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole earth yet?’” Brand came down from his roof and launched a campaign that eventually reached the halls of Congress and NASA. Who knows if it was the direct result of Brand’s campaign, but two years later, in 1968, the Apollo astronauts turned their cameras around and gave us the first photograph of Earth from the moon, and Stewart Brand gave us the first edition of the Whole Earth Catalog . Did everything change? The case could be made that it had. Part II: The Crack-Up Timothy Leary came late to psychedelics. By the time he launched the Harvard Psilocybin Project in 1960, there had already been a full decade of psychedelic research in North America, with hundreds of academic papers and several international conferences to show for it. Leary himself seldom made reference to this body of work, preferring to give the impression that his own psychedelic research represented a radical new chapter in the annals of psychology. In 1960, the future of psychedelic research looked bright. Yet within the brief span of five years, the political and cultural weather completely shifted, a moral panic about LSD engulfed America, and virtually all psychedelic research and therapy were either halted or driven underground. What happened? “Timothy Leary” is the too-obvious answer to that question. Just about everyone I’ve interviewed on the subject—dozens of people—has prefaced his or her answer by saying, “It’s far too easy to blame Leary,” before proceeding to do precisely that. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the flamboyant psychology professor with a tropism bending him toward the sun of publicity, good or bad, did grave damage to the cause of psychedelic research. He did. And yet the social forces unleashed by the drugs themselves once they moved from the laboratory out into the culture were bigger and stronger than any individual could withstand—or take credit for. With or without the heedless, joyful, and amply publicized antics of Timothy Leary, the sheer Dionysian power of LSD was itself bound to shake things up and incite a reaction. By the time Leary was hired by Harvard in 1959, he had a national reputation as a gifted personality researcher, and yet even then—before his first shattering experience with psilocybin in Cuernavaca during the summer of 1960—Leary was feeling somewhat disenchanted with his field. A few years before, while working as director of psychiatric research at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, Leary and a colleague had conducted a clever experiment to assess the effectiveness of psychotherapy. A group of patients seeking psychiatric care were divided into two groups; one received the standard treatment of the time, the other (consisting of people on a waiting list) no treatment at all. After a year, one-third of all the subjects had improved, one-third had gotten worse, and one-third remained unchanged—regardless of which group they were in. Whether or not a subject received treatment made no difference whatsoever in the outcome. So what good was conventional psychotherapy? Psychology? Leary had begun to wonder. Leary quickly established himself at Harvard’s Department of Social Relations as a dynamic and charismatic, if somewhat cynical, teacher. The handsome professor was a great talker, in the expansive Irish mode, and could charm the pants off anyone, especially women, for whom he was apparently catnip. Leary had always had a roguish, rebellious streak—he was court-martialed during his time at West Point for violating the honor code and expelled from the University of Alabama for spending the night in a women’s dorm—and Harvard-the-institution brought out rebellion in him. Leary would speak cynically of psychological research as a “game.” Herbert Kelman, a colleague in the department who later became Leary’s chief adversary, recalls the new professor as “personable” (Kelman helped him find his first house) but says, “I had misgivings about him from the beginning. He would often talk out of the top of his head about things he knew nothing about, like existentialism, and he was telling our students psychology was all a game. It seemed to me a bit cavalier and irresponsible.” I met Kelman, now in his nineties, in the small, overstuffed apartment where he lives with his wife in an assisted-living facility in West Cambridge. Kelman displayed no rancor toward Leary yet evinced little respect for him either as a teacher or as a scientist; indeed, he believes Leary had become disenchanted with science well before psychedelics came into his life. In Kelman’s opinion, even before the psilocybin, “He was already halfway off the deep end.” Leary’s introduction to psilocybin, poolside in Mexico during the summer of 1960, came three years after R. Gordon Wasson published his notorious Life magazine article about the “mushrooms that cause strange visions.” For Leary, the mushrooms were transformative. In an afternoon, his passion to understand the human mind had been reignited—indeed, had exploded. “ In four hours by the swimming pool in Cuernavaca I learned more about the mind, the brain, and its structures than I did in the preceding fifteen as a diligent psychologist,” he wrote later in Flashbacks, his 1983 memoir. “I learned that the brain is an underutilized biocomputer . . . I learned that normal consciousness is one drop in an ocean of intelligence. That consciousness and intelligence can be systematically expanded. That the brain can be reprogrammed.” Leary returned from his journey with an irresistible urge to “rush back and tell everyone,” as he recalled in High Priest, his 1968 memoir. And then in a handful of sentences he slid into a prophetic voice, one in which the whole future trajectory of Timothy Leary could be foretold: Listen! Wake up! You are God! You have the Divine plan engraved in cellular script within you. Listen! Take this sacrament! You’ll see! You’ll get the revelation! It will change your life! But at least for the first year or two at Harvard, Leary went through the motions of doing science. Back in Cambridge that fall, he recruited Richard Alpert, a promising assistant professor who was heir to a railroad fortune, and, having secured the tacit approval of their department chair, David McClelland, the two launched the Harvard Psilocybin Project, operating out of a tiny broom closet of an office in the Department of Social Relations in a house at 5 Divinity Avenue. (I went looking for the house, but it has long since been razed and replaced by a sprawling, block-long brick science building.) Leary, ever the salesman, had convinced Harvard that the research he proposed to undertake was squarely in the tradition of William James, who in the early years of the century had also studied altered states of consciousness and mystical experience at Harvard. The university placed one condition on the research: Leary and Alpert could give the new drugs to graduate students, but not to undergraduates. Before long, an intriguingly titled new seminar showed up in the Harvard course listings: Experimental Expansion of Consciousness The literature describing internally and externally induced changes in awareness will be reviewed. The basic elements of mystical experiences will be studied cross-culturally. The members of the seminar will participate in experiences with consciousness expanding methods and a systematic analysis of attention will be paid to the problems of methodology in this area. This seminar will be limited to advanced graduate students. Admission by consent of the instructor. “Experimental Expansion of Consciousness” proved to be extremely popular. • • • I N ITS THREE YEARS of existence, the Harvard Psilocybin Project accomplished surprisingly little, at least in terms of science. In their first experiments, Leary and Alpert administered psilocybin to hundreds of people of all sorts, including housewives, musicians, artists, academics, writers, fellow psychologists, and graduate students, who then completed questionnaires about their experiences. According to “Americans and Mushrooms in a Naturalistic Environment: A Preliminary Report,” most subjects had generally very positive and occasionally life-changing experiences. “Naturalistic” was apt: these sessions took place not in university buildings but in comfortable living rooms, accompanied by music and candlelight, and to a casual observer they would have looked more like parties than experiments, especially because the researchers themselves usually joined in. (Leary and Alpert took a heroic amount of psilocybin and, later, LSD.) At least in the beginning, Leary, Alpert, and their graduate students endeavored to write up accounts of their own and their subjects’ psilocybin journeys, as if they were pioneers exploring an unmapped frontier of consciousness and the previous decade of work surveying the psychedelic landscape had never happened. “ We were on our own,” Leary wrote, somewhat disingenuously. “Western literature had almost no guides, no maps, no texts that even recognized the existence of altered states.” Drawing on their extensive fieldwork, however, Leary did do some original work theorizing the idea of “set” and “setting,” deploying the words in this context for the first time in the literature. These useful terms, if not the concepts they denote—for which Al Hubbard deserves most of the credit—may well represent Leary’s most enduring contribution to psychedelic science. Leary and Alpert published a handful of papers in the early years at Harvard that are still worth reading, both as well-written and closely observed ethnographies of the experience and as texts in which the early stirrings of a new sensibility can be glimpsed. Building on the idea that the life-changing experiences of volunteers in the Psilocybin Project might have some broader social application, in 1961 Leary and a graduate student, Ralph Metzner, dreamed up a more ambitious research project. The Concord Prison Experiment sought to discover if the potential of psilocybin to change personality could be used to reduce recidivism in a population of hardened criminals. That this audacious experiment ever got off the ground is a testimony to Leary’s salesmanship and charm, for not only the prison psychiatrist but the warden had to sign off on it. The idea was to compare the recidivism rates of two groups of prisoners in a maximum security prison in Concord, Massachusetts. A group of thirty-two inmates received psilocybin in sessions that took place in the prison, with one member of Leary’s team taking the drug with them—so as not to condescend to the prisoners, Leary explained, or treat them like guinea pigs. * The other remained straight in order to observe and take notes. A second group of inmates received no drugs or special treatment of any kind. The two groups were then followed for a period of months after their release. Leary reported eye-popping results: ten months after their release, only 25 percent of the psilocybin recipients had ended up back in jail, while the control group returned at a more typical rate of 80 percent. But when Rick Doblin at MAPS meticulously reconstructed the Concord experiment decades later, reviewing the outcomes subject by subject, he concluded that Leary had exaggerated the data; in fact, there was no statistically significant difference in the rates of recidivism between the two groups. (Even at the time, the methodological shortcomings of the study had prompted David McClelland, the department chair, to write a scathing memo to Metzner.) Of Leary’s scientific work, Sidney Cohen, himself a psychedelic researcher, concluded that “ it was the sort of research that made scientists wince.” Leary played a more tangential role in one other, much more credible study done in the spring of 1962: the Good Friday Experiment, described in chapter one. Unlike the Concord Prison Experiment, the “Miracle at Marsh Chapel,” as it became known, made a good faith effort to honor the conventions of the controlled, double-blind psychology experiment. Neither the investigators nor the subjects—twenty divinity students—were told who had gotten the drug and who had gotten the placebo, which was active. The Good Friday study was far from perfect; Pahnke suppressed the fact that one subject freaked out and had to be sedated. Yet Pahnke’s main conclusion—that psilocybin can reliably occasion a mystical experience that is “indistinguishable from, if not identical with,” the experiences described in the literature—still stands and helped to inspire the current wave of research, particularly at Johns Hopkins, where it was replicated (roughly speaking) in 2006. But most of the credit for the Good Friday Experiment rightfully belongs to Walter Pahnke, not Timothy Leary, who was critical of its design from the start; he had told Pahnke it was a waste of time to use a control group or a placebo. “ If we learned one thing from that experience,” Leary later wrote, “it was how foolish it was to use a double-blind experiment with psychedelics. After five minutes, no one’s fooling anyone.” • • • B Y NOW, Leary had pretty much lost interest in doing science; he was getting ready to trade the “psychology game” for what he would call the “guru game.” (Perhaps Leary’s most endearing character trait was never to take himself too seriously—even as a guru.) It had become clear to him that the spiritual and cultural import of psilocybin and LSD far outweighed any therapeutic benefit to individuals. As with Hubbard and Huxley and Osmond before him, psychedelics had convinced Leary that they had the power not just to heal people but to change society and save humankind, and it was his mission to serve as their prophet. It was as though the chemicals themselves had hit upon a brilliant scheme for their own proliferation, by colonizing the brains of a certain type of charismatic and messianic human. “ We were thinking far-out history thoughts at Harvard,” Leary later wrote about this period, “believing that it was a time (after the shallow, nostalgic fifties) for far-out visions, knowing that America had run out of philosophy, that a new, empirical, tangible meta-physics was desperately needed.” The bomb and the cold war formed the crucial background to these ideas, investing the project with urgency. Leary was also encouraged in his shift from scientist to evangelist by some of the artists he turned on. In one notable session at his Newton home in December 1960, Leary gave psilocybin to the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, a man who needed no chemical inducement to play the role of visionary prophet. Toward the end of an ecstatic trip, Ginsberg stumbled downstairs, took off all his clothes, and announced his intention to march naked through the streets of Newton preaching the new gospel. “ We’re going to teach people to stop hating,” Ginsberg said, “start a peace and love movement.” You can almost hear in his words the 1960s being born, the still-damp, Day-Glo chick cracking out of its shell. When Leary managed to persuade Ginsberg not to leave the house (among other issues, it was December), the poet got on the phone and started dialing world leaders, trying to get Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Mao Zedong on the line to work out their differences. In the end, Ginsberg was only able to reach his friend Jack Kerouac, identifying himself as God (“that’s G-O-D”) and telling him he must take these magic mushrooms. Along with everyone else. Ginsberg was convinced that Leary, the Harvard professor, was the perfect man to lead the new psychedelic crusade. To Ginsberg, the fact that the new prophet “should emerge from Harvard University,” the alma mater of the newly elected president, was a case of “historic comedy,” for here was “the one and only Dr. Leary, a respectable human being, a worldly man faced with the task of a Messiah.” Coming from the great poet, the words landed like seeds on the fertile, well-watered soil of Timothy Leary’s ego. (It is one of the many paradoxes of psychedelics that these drugs can sponsor an ego-dissolving experience that in some people quickly leads to massive ego inflation. Having been let in on a great secret of the universe, the recipient of this knowledge is bound to feel special, chosen for great things.) Huxley and Hubbard and Osmond shared Leary’s sense of historical mission, but they had a very different idea of how best to fulfill it. The three were inclined to a more supply-side kind of spiritualism—first you must turn on the elite, and then let the new consciousness filter down to the masses, who might not be ready to absorb such a shattering experience all at once. Their unspoken model was the Eleusinian mysteries, in which the Greek elite gathered in secret to ingest the sacred kykeon and share a night of revelation. But Leary and Ginsberg, both firmly in the American grain, were determined to democratize the visionary experience, make transcendence available to everyone now . Surely that was the great blessing of psychedelics: for the first time, there was a technology that made this possible. Years later Lester Grinspoon, a Harvard professor of psychiatry, captured the ethos nicely in a book he wrote with James Bakalar, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered : “ Psychedelic drugs opened to mass tourism mental territories previously explored only by small parties of particularly intrepid adventurers, mainly religious mystics.” As well as visionary artists like William Blake, Walt Whitman, and Allen Ginsberg. Now, with a pill or square of blotter paper, anyone could experience firsthand exactly what in the world Blake and Whitman were talking about. But this new form of spiritual mass tourism had not yet received much advertising or promotion before the spring of 1962. That’s when news of controversy surrounding the Harvard Psilocybin Project first hit the newspapers, beginning with Harvard’s own student paper, the Crimson . Harvard being Harvard, and Leary Leary, the story quickly spread to the national press, turning the psychology professor into a celebrity and hastening his, and Alpert’s, departure from Harvard, in a scandal that both prefigured and helped fuel the backlash against psychedelics that would soon close down most research. Leary and Alpert’s colleagues had been uncomfortable about the Harvard Psilocybin Project almost from the start. A 1961 memo from David McClelland had raised questions about the absence of controls in Leary and Alpert’s “naturalistic” studies as well as the lack of medical supervision and the fact that the investigators insisted on taking the drugs with their subjects, of whom there were hundreds. (“How often should a person take psilocybin?” he asked, referring to Leary and Alpert.) McClelland also called the two researchers out on their “philosophical naivete.” “Many reports are given of deep mystical experiences,” he wrote, “but their chief characteristic is the wonder at one’s own profundity.” The following year, in a detailed critique of Ralph Metzner’s Concord Prison Experiment, McClelland accused the graduate student of failing to “ analyz[e] your data objectively and carefully. You know what the conclusions are to be . . . and the data are simply used to support what you already know to be true.” No doubt the popularity of the Psilocybin Project among the department’s students, as well as its cliquishness, rankled the rest of the faculty, who had to compete with Leary and Alpert and their drugs for a precious academic resource: talented graduate students. But these grievances didn’t leave the premises of 5 Divinity Avenue—not until March 1962. That’s when McClelland, responding to a request by Herb Kelman, called a meeting of the faculty and students to air concerns about the Psilocybin Project. Kelman asked for the meeting because he had heard from his graduate students that a kind of cult had formed around Alpert and Leary, and some students felt pressure to participate in the drug taking. Early in the meeting Kelman took the floor: “ I wish I could treat this as scholarly disagreement, but this work violates the values of the academic community. The whole program has an anti-intellectual atmosphere. Its emphasis is on pure experience, not on verbalizing findings. “I’m also sorry to say that Dr. Leary and Dr. Alpert have taken a very nonchalant attitude toward these experiments—especially considering the effects these drugs might have on the subjects. “What most concerns me,” Kelman concluded, “and others who have come to me, is how the hallucinogenic and mental effects of these drugs have been used to form a kind of ‘insider’ sect within the department. Those who choose not to participate are labeled as ‘squares.’ I just don’t think that kind of thing should be encouraged in this department.” Psychedelic drugs had divided a Harvard department just as they would soon divide the culture. Alpert responded forcefully, claiming the work was “right in the tradition of William James,” the department’s presiding deity, and that Kelman’s critique amounted to an attack on academic freedom. But Leary took a more conciliatory approach, consenting to a few reasonable restrictions on the research. Everyone went home thinking the matter had been closed. Until the following morning. The room had been so completely jammed with faculty and students that no one noticed the presence of an undergraduate reporter from the Crimson named Robert Ellis Smith, furiously taking notes. The next day’s Crimson put the controversy on page 1: “Psychologists Disagree on Psilocybin Research.” The day after that, the story was picked up by the Boston Herald, a Hearst paper, and given a much punchier if not quite as accurate headline: “ Hallucination Drug Fought at Harvard—350 Students Take Pills.” Now the story was out, and very soon Timothy Leary, always happy to supply a reporter with a delectably outrageous quote, was famous. He delivered a particularly choice one after the university forced him to put his supply of Sandoz psilocybin pills under the control of Health Services: “ Psychedelic drugs cause panic and temporary insanity in people who have not taken them.” By the end of the year, Leary and Alpert had concluded that “ these materials are too powerful and too controversial to be researched in a university setting.” They announced in a letter to the Crimson they were forming something called the International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF) and henceforth would be conducting research under its umbrella rather than Harvard’s. They decried the new restrictions placed on psychedelic research, not only at Harvard, but by the federal government: in the wake of the thalidomide tragedy, in which a new sedative given to pregnant women for morning sickness had caused terrible birth defects in their children, Congress had given the FDA authority to regulate experimental drugs. “ For the first time in American history,” the IFIF announced, “and for the first time in the Western world since the Inquisition there now exists a scientific underground.” They predicted that “a major civil liberties issue of the next decade will be the control and expansion of consciousness.” “Who controls your cortex?” they wrote in their letter to the Crimson —which is to say, to students. “Who decides on the range and limits of your awareness? If you want to research your own nervous system, expand your consciousness, who is to decide that you can’t and why?” It’s often said that in the 1960s psychedelics “escaped from the laboratory,” but it would probably be more accurate to say they were thrown over the laboratory wall, and never with as much loft or velocity as by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert at the end of 1962. “ We’re through playing the science game,” Leary told McClelland when he returned to Cambridge that fall. Now, Leary and Alpert were playing the game of cultural revolution. • • • T HE LARGER COMMUNITY of psychedelic researchers across North America reacted to Leary’s provocations with dismay and then alarm. Leary had been in regular contact with the West Coast and Canadian groups, exchanging letters and visits with his far-flung colleagues on a fairly regular basis. (He and Alpert had paid a visit to Stolaroff’s foundation in 1960 or 1961; “I think they thought we were too straitlaced,” Don Allen told me.) Soon after arriving at Harvard, Leary had gotten to know Huxley, who was teaching for a semester at MIT. Huxley had become extremely fond of the roguish professor, and shared his aspirations for psychedelics as an agent of cultural transformation, but worried that Leary was moving too fast and too flagrantly. * During his last visit to Cambridge (Huxley would die in Los Angeles in November 1963, on the same day as John F. Kennedy), Huxley felt that Leary “ had talked such nonsense . . . that I became quite concerned. Not about his sanity—because he is perfectly sane—but about his prospects in the world.” Soon after Leary announced the formation of the International Federation for Internal Freedom, Humphry Osmond traveled to Cambridge to try to talk some sense into him. He and Abram Hoffer were worried that Leary’s promotion of the drugs outside the context of clinical research threatened to provoke the government and upend their own research. Osmond also faulted Leary for working without a psychopharmacologist and for treating these “ powerful chemicals [as] harmless toys.” Hoping to distance serious research from irresponsible use, and troubled that the counterculture was contaminating his formerly neutral term “psychedelic,” Osmond tried once again to coin a new one: “psychodelytic.” I don’t need to tell you it failed to catch on. “ You must face these objections rather than dissipate them with a smile, however cosmic,” Osmond told him. There it was again: the indestructible Leary smile! But Osmond got nothing more than that for his troubles. Myron Stolaroff weighed in with a blunt letter to Leary describing the IFIF as “insane” and accurately prophesying the crack-up to come: It will “ wreak havoc on all of us doing LSD work all over the nation . . . “Tim, I am convinced you are heading for very serious trouble if your plan goes ahead as you have described it to me, and it would not only make a great deal of trouble for you, but for all of us, and may do irreparable harm to the psychedelic field in general.” But what exactly was the plan of the IFIF? Leary was happy to state it openly: to introduce as many Americans to “the strong psychedelics” as it possibly could in order to change the country one brain at a time. He had done the math and concluded that “the critical figure for blowing the mind of the American society would be four million LSD users and this would happen by 1969.” As it would turn out, Leary’s math was not far off. Though closer to two million Americans had tried LSD by 1969, this cadre had indeed blown the mind of America, leaving the country in a substantially different place. But perhaps the most violent response to Leary’s plans for worldwide mental revolution came from Al Hubbard, who had always had an uneasy relationship with the professor. The two had met soon after Leary got to Harvard, when Hubbard made the drive to Cambridge in his Rolls-Royce, bringing a supply of LSD he hoped to trade for some of Leary’s psilocybin. “ He blew in with that uniform,” Leary recalled, “laying down the most incredible atmosphere of mystery and flamboyance, and really impressive bullshit!”—a subject on which Leary was certainly qualified to judge. Hubbard “started name-dropping like you wouldn’t believe . . . claimed he was friends with the Pope. “The thing that impressed me is, on one hand he looked like a carpetbagger con man, and on the other he had these most impressive people in the world in his lap, basically backing him.” But Leary’s legendary charm never had much traction with Hubbard, a deeply conservative and devout man who disdained both the glare of publicity and the nascent counterculture. “ I liked Tim when we first met,” he said years later, “but I warned him a dozen times” about staying out of trouble and the press. “He seemed like a well-intentioned person, but then he went overboard . . . he turned out to be completely no good.” Like many of his colleagues, Hubbard strongly objected to Leary’s do-it-yourself approach to psychedelics, especially his willingness to dispense with the all-important trained guide. His attitude toward Leary might also have been influenced by his extensive contacts in law enforcement and intelligence, which by now had the professor on their radar. According to Osmond, the Captain’s antipathy toward Leary surfaced alarmingly during a psychedelic session the two shared during this period of mounting controversy. “ Al got greatly preoccupied with the idea he ought to shoot Timothy, and when I began to reason with him that this would be a very bad idea . . . I became much concerned he might shoot me.” Hubbard was probably right to think that nothing short of a bullet was going to stop Timothy Leary now. As Stolaroff put the matter in closing his letter to Leary, “ I suppose there is little hope that with the bit so firmly in your mouth you can be deterred.” • • • B Y THE SPRING OF 1963, Leary had one foot out of Harvard, skipping classes and voicing his intention to leave at the end of the school year, when his contract would be up. But Alpert had a new appointment in the School of Education and planned to stay on—until another explosive article in the Crimson got them both fired. This one was written by an undergraduate named Andrew Weil. Weil had arrived at Harvard with a keen interest in psychedelic drugs—he had devoured Huxley’s Doors of Perception in high school—and when he learned about the Psilocybin Project, he beat a path to Professor Leary’s office door to ask if he could participate. Leary explained the university rule restricting the drugs to graduate students. Yet, trying to be helpful, he told Weil about a company in Texas where he might order some mescaline by mail (it was still legal at the time), which Weil promptly did (using university stationery). Weil became fascinated with the potential of psychedelics and helped form an undergraduate mescaline group. But he wanted badly to be part of Leary and Alpert’s more exclusive club, so when in the fall of 1962 Weil began to hear about other undergraduates who had received drugs from Richard Alpert, he was indignant. He went to his editor at the Crimson and proposed an investigation. Weil developed leads on a handful of fellow students whom Alpert had turned on in violation of university rules. (Weil would later write that “students and others were using hallucinogens for seductions both heterosexual and homosexual.”) But there were two problems with his scoop: none of the students to whom Alpert supposedly gave drugs were willing to say so on the record, and the Crimson ’s lawyers were worried about printing defamatory charges against professors. The lawyers advised Weil to turn over his information to the administration. He could then write a story reporting on whatever actions the university took in response to the charges, thereby reducing the newspaper’s legal exposure. But Weil still needed a student to come forward. He traveled to New York City to meet with the prominent father of one of them—Ronnie Winston—and offered him a deal. As Alpert tells the story, * “He went to Harry Winston”—the famous Fifth Avenue jeweler—“and he said, ‘Your son is getting drugs from a faculty member. If your son will admit to that charge, we’ll cut out your son’s name. We won’t use it in the article.’” So young Ronnie went to the dean and, when asked if he had taken drugs from Dr. Alpert, confessed, adding an unexpected fillip: “ Yes, sir, I did. And it was the most educational experience I’ve had at Harvard.” Alpert and Leary appear to be the only Harvard professors fired in the twentieth century. (Technically, Leary wasn’t fired, but Harvard stopped paying him several months before his contract ended.) The story became national news, introducing millions of Americans to the controversy surrounding these exotic new drugs. It also earned Andrew Weil a plum assignment from Look magazine to write about the controversy, which spread the story still further. Describing the psychedelic scene at Harvard in the third person, Weil alluded to “ an undergraduate group . . . conducting covert research with mescaline,” neglecting to mention he was a founding member of that group. This was not, suffice it to say, Andrew Weil’s proudest moment, and when I spoke to him about it recently, he confessed that he’s felt badly about the episode ever since and had sought to make amends to both Leary and Ram Dass. (Two years after his departure from Harvard, Alpert embarked on a spiritual journey to India and returned as Ram Dass.) Leary readily accepted Weil’s apology—the man was apparently incapable of holding a grudge—but Ram Dass refused to talk to Weil for years, which pained him. But after Ram Dass suffered a stroke in 1997, Weil traveled to Hawaii to seek his forgiveness. Ram Dass finally relented, telling Weil that he had come to regard being fired from Harvard as a blessing. “If you hadn’t done what you did,” he told Weil, “I would never have become Ram Dass.” • • • H ERE, UPON THEIR EXIT from Harvard, we should probably take our leave of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, even though their long, strange trip through American culture still had a long, strange way to go. The two would now take their show (with its numerous ex-students and hangers-on) on the road, moving the International Federation for Internal Freedom (which would later morph into the League for Spiritual Discovery) from Cambridge to Zihuatanejo, until the Mexican government (under pressure from U.S. authorities) kicked them out, then briefly to the Caribbean island of Dominica, until that government kicked them out, before finally settling for several raucous years in a sixty-four-room mansion in Millbrook, New York, owned by a wealthy patron named Billy Hitchcock. Embraced by the rising counterculture, Leary was invited (along with Allen Ginsberg) to speak at the first Human Be-In in San Francisco, an event that drew some twenty-five thousand young people to Golden Gate Park in January 1967, to trip on freely distributed LSD while listening to speakers proclaim a new age. The ex-professor, who for the occasion had traded in his Brooks Brothers for white robes and love beads (and flowers in his graying hair), implored the throng of tripping “hippies”—the term popularized that year by the local newspaper columnist Herb Caen—to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” The slogan—which he at first said he had thought up in the shower but years later claimed was “ given to him” by Marshall McLuhan—would cling to Leary for the rest of his life, earning him the contempt of parents and politicians the world over. But Leary’s story only gets weirder, and sadder. Soon after his departure from Cambridge, the government, alarmed at his growing influence on the country’s youth, launched a campaign of harassment that culminated in the 1966 bust in Laredo; he was driving his family to Mexico on vacation, when a border search of his car turned up a small quantity of marijuana. Leary would spend years in jail battling federal marijuana charges and then several more years on the lam as an international fugitive from justice. He acquired this status in 1970 after his bold escape from a California prison, with the help of the Weathermen, the revolutionary group. His comrades managed to spirit Leary out of the country to Algeria, into the arms of Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther, who had established a base of operations there. But asylum under Cleaver turned out to be no picnic: the Panther confiscated his passport, effectively holding Leary hostage. Leary had to escape yet again, this time making his way to Switzerland (where he found luxurious refuge in the chalet of an arms dealer), then (after the U.S. government persuaded Switzerland to jail him) on to Vienna, Beirut, and Kabul, where he was finally seized by U.S. agents and remanded to an American prison, now maximum security and, for a time, solitary confinement. But the persecution only fed his sense of destiny. The rest of his life is an improbable 1960s tragicomedy featuring plenty of courtrooms and jails (twenty-nine in all) but also memoirs and speeches and television appearances, a campaign for governor of California (for which John Lennon wrote, and the Beatles recorded, the campaign song, “Come Together”), and a successful if somewhat pathetic run on the college lecture circuit teamed up with G. Gordon Liddy. Yes, the Watergate burglar, who in an earlier incarnation as Dutchess County assistant DA had busted Leary at Millbrook. Through it all, Leary remains improbably upbeat, never displaying anger or, it would seem from the countless photographs and film clips, forgetting Marshall McLuhan’s sage advice to smile always, no matter what. Meanwhile, beginning in 1965, Leary’s former partner in psychedelic research, Richard Alpert, was off on a considerably less hectic spiritual odyssey to the East. As Ram Dass, and the author of the 1971 classic Be Here Now, he would put his own lasting mark on American culture, having blazed one of the main trails by which Eastern religion found its way into the counterculture and then the so-called New Age. To the extent that the 1960s birthed a form of spiritual revival in America, Ram Dass was one of its fathers. But Leary’s post-Harvard “antics” are relevant to the extent they contributed to the moral panic that now engulfed psychedelics and doomed the research. Leary became a poster boy not just for the drugs but for the idea that a crucial part of the counterculture’s DNA could be spelled out in the letters LSD . Beginning with Allen Ginsberg’s December 1960 psilocybin trip at his house in Newton, Leary forged a link between psychedelics and the counterculture that has never been broken and that is surely one of the reasons they came to be regarded as so threatening to the establishment. (Could it have possibly been otherwise? What if the cultural identity of the drugs had been shaped by, say, a conservative Catholic like Al Hubbard? It’s difficult to imagine such a counter history.) It didn’t help that Leary liked to say things like “LSD is more frightening than the bomb” or “ The kids who take LSD aren’t going to fight your wars. They’re not going to join your corporations.” These were no empty words: beginning in the mid-1960s, tens of thousands of American children actually did drop out, washing up on the streets of Haight-Ashbury and the East Village. * And young men were refusing to go to Vietnam. The will to fight and the authority of Authority had been undermined. These strange new drugs, which seemed to change the people who took them, surely had some thing to do with it. Timothy Leary had said so. But this upheaval would almost certainly have happened without Timothy Leary. He was by no means the only route by which psychedelics were seeping into American culture; he was just the most notorious. In 1960, the same year Leary tried psilocybin and launched his research project, Ken Kesey, the novelist, had his own mind-blowing LSD experience, a trip that would inspire him to spread the psychedelic word, and the drugs themselves, as widely and loudly as he could. It is one of the richer ironies of psychedelic history that Kesey had his first LSD experience courtesy of a government research program conducted at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital, which paid him seventy-five dollars to try the experimental drug. Unbeknownst to Kesey, his first LSD trip was bought and paid for by the CIA, which had sponsored the Menlo Park research as part of its MK-Ultra program, the agency’s decade-long effort to discover whether LSD could somehow be weaponized. With Ken Kesey, the CIA had turned on exactly the wrong man. In what he aptly called “the revolt of the guinea pigs,” Kesey proceeded to organize with his band of Merry Pranksters a series of “Acid Tests” in which thousands of young people in the Bay Area were given LSD in an effort to change the mind of a generation. To the extent that Ken Kesey and his Pranksters helped shape the new zeitgeist, a case can be made that the cultural upheaval we call the 1960s began with a CIA mind-control experiment gone awry. • • • I N RETROSPECT, the psychiatric establishment’s reaction was probably unavoidable the moment that Humphry Osmond, Al Hubbard, and Aldous Huxley put forward their new paradigm for psychedelic therapy in 1956–1957. The previous theoretical models used to make sense of these drugs were, by comparison, easy to fold into the field’s existing frameworks without greatly disturbing the status quo. “Psychotomimetics” fit nicely into the standard psychiatric understanding of mental illness—the drugs’ effects resembled familiar psychoses—and “psycholytics” could be incorporated into both the theory and the practice of psychoanalysis as a useful adjunct to talking therapy. But the whole idea of psychedelic therapy posed a much stiffer challenge to the field and the profession. Instead of interminable weekly sessions, the new mode of therapy called for only a single high-dose session, aimed at achieving a kind of conversion experience in which the customary roles of both patient and therapist had to be reimagined. Academic psychiatrists were also made uncomfortable by the spiritual trappings of psychedelic therapy. Charles Grob, the UCLA psychiatrist who would play an important role in the revival of research, wrote in a 1998 article on the history of psychedelics that “ by blurring the boundaries between religion and science, between sickness and health, and between healer and sufferer, the psychedelic model entered the realm of applied mysticism”—a realm where psychiatry, increasingly committed to a biochemical understanding of the mind, was reluctant to venture. With its emphasis on set and setting—what Grob calls “the critical extra-pharmacological variables”—psychedelic therapy was also a little too close to shamanism for comfort. For so-called shrinks not entirely secure in their identity as scientists (the slang is short for “headshrinkers,” conjuring images of witch doctors in loincloths), this was perhaps too far to go. Another factor was the rise of the placebo-controlled double-blind trial as the “gold standard” for testing drugs in the wake of the thalidomide scandal, a standard difficult for psychedelic research to meet. By 1963, leaders of the profession had begun editorializing against psychedelic research in their journals. Roy Grinker, the editor of the Archives of General Psychiatry, lambasted researchers who were administering “ the drugs to themselves and . . . [had become] enamored with the mystical hallucinatory state,” thus rendering them “disqualified as competent investigators.” Writing the following year in the Journal of the American Medical Association ( JAMA ), Grinker deplored the practice of investigators taking the drugs themselves, thereby “ rendering their conclusions biased by their own ecstasy.” An unscientific “ aura of magic” surrounded the new drugs, another critic charged in JAMA in 1964. (It didn’t help that some psychedelic therapists, like Betty Eisner, celebrated the introduction of “ the transcendental into psychiatry” and developed an interest in paranormal phenomenon.) But although there is surely truth to the charge that researchers were often biased by their own experiences using the drugs, the obvious alternative—abstinence—posed its own set of challenges, with the result that the loudest and most authoritative voices in the debate over psychedelics during the 1960s were precisely the people who knew the least about them. To psychiatrists with no personal experience of psychedelics, their effects were bound to look a lot more like psychoses than transcendence. The psychotomimetic paradigm had returned, now with a vengeance. After quantities of “bootleg LSD” showed up on the street in 1962–1963 and people in the throes of “bad trips” began appearing in emergency rooms and psych wards, mainstream psychiatry felt compelled to abandon psychedelic research. LSD was now regarded as a cause of mental illness rather than a cure. In 1965, Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan admitted sixty-five people for what it called LSD-induced psychoses. With the media now in full panic mode, urban legends about the perils of LSD spread more rapidly than facts. * The same was often true in the case of ostensibly scientific findings. In one widely publicized study, a researcher reported in Science that LSD could damage chromosomes, potentially leading to birth defects. But when the study was later discredited (also in Science ), the refutation received little attention. It didn’t fit the new public narrative of LSD as a threat. Yet it was true that the mid-1960s saw a surge of people on LSD showing up in emergency rooms with acute symptoms of paranoia, mania, catatonia, and anxiety, as well as “acid flashbacks”—a spontaneous recurrence of symptoms days or weeks after ingesting LSD. Some of these patients were having genuine psychotic breaks. Especially in the case of young people at risk for schizophrenia, an LSD trip can trigger their first psychotic episode, and sometimes did. (It should be noted that any traumatic experience can serve as such a trigger, including the divorce of one’s parents or graduate school.) But in many other cases, doctors with little experience of psychedelics mistook a panic reaction for a full-blown psychosis. Which usually made things worse. Andrew Weil, who as a young doctor volunteered in the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in 1968, saw a lot of bad trips and eventually developed an effective way to “treat” them. “I would examine the patient, determine it was a panic reaction, and then tell him or her, ‘Will you excuse me for a moment? There’s someone in the next room who has a serious problem.’ They would immediately begin to feel much better.” The risks of LSD and other psychedelic drugs were fiercely debated during the 1960s, both among scientists and in the press. Voices on both sides of this debate typically cherry-picked evidence and anecdotes to make their case, but Sidney Cohen was an exception, approaching the question with an open mind and actually conducting research to answer it. Beginning in 1960, he published a series of articles that track his growing concerns. For his first study, Cohen surveyed forty-four researchers working with psychedelics, collecting data on some five thousand subjects taking LSD or mescaline on a total of twenty-five thousand occasions. He found only two credible reports of suicide in this population (a low rate for a group of psychiatric patients), several transient panic reactions, but “no evidence of serious prolonged physical side effects.” He concluded that when psychedelics are administered by qualified therapists and researchers, complications were “surprisingly infrequent” and that LSD and mescaline were “safe.” Leary and others often cited Cohen’s 1960 paper as an exoneration of psychedelics. Yet in a follow-up article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1962, Cohen reported new and “alarming” developments. The casual use of LSD outside the clinical setting, and in the hands of irresponsible therapists, was leading to “serious complications” and occasional “catastrophic reactions.” Alarmed that physicians were losing control of the drug, Cohen warned that “ the dangers of suicide, prolonged psychotic reactions and antisocial acting out behavior exist.” In another paper published in the Archives of General Psychiatry the following year, he reported several cases of psychotic breaks and an attempted suicide and presented an account of a boy who, after ingesting a sugar cube laced with LSD that his father, a detective, had confiscated from a “pusher,” endured more than a month of visual distortions and anxiety before recovering. It was this article that inspired Roy Grinker, the journal’s editor, to condemn psychedelic research in an accompanying commentary, even though Cohen himself continued to believe that psychedelics in the hands of responsible therapists had great potential. A fourth article that Cohen published in 1966 reported still more LSD casualties, including two accidental deaths associated with LSD, one from drowning and the other from walking into traffic shouting, “Halt.” But balanced assessments of the risks and benefits of psychedelics were the exception to what by 1966 had become a full-on moral panic about LSD. A handful of headlines from the period suggests the mood: “LSD-Use Charged with Killing Teacher”; “Sampled LSD, Youth Plunges from Viaduct”; “LSD Use Near Epidemic in California”; “Six Students Blinded on LSD Trip in Sun”; “Girl, 5, Eats LSD and Goes Wild”; “Thrill Drug Warps Mind, Kills”; and “A Monster in Our Midst—a Drug Called LSD.” Even Life magazine, which had helped ignite public interest in psychedelics just nine years before with R. Gordon Wasson’s enthusiastic article on psilocybin, joined the chorus of condemnation, publishing a feverish cover story titled “LSD: The Exploding Threat of the Mind Drug That Got out of Control.” Never mind that the magazine’s publisher and his wife had recently had several positive LSD experiences themselves (under the guidance of Sidney Cohen); now the kids were doing it, and it had gotten “out of control.” With pictures of crazed people cowering in corners, the story warned that “an LSD trip is not always a round trip” but rather could be “a one-way trip to an asylum, a prison or a grave.” * As Clare Boothe Luce wrote to Sidney Cohen in 1965, “ LSD has been your Frankenstein monster.” • • • O THER POWERFUL DRUGS subject to abuse, such as the opiates, have managed to maintain a separate identity as a legitimate tool of medicine. Why not psychedelics? The story of Timothy Leary, the most famous psychedelic researcher, made it difficult to argue that a bright line between the scientific and the recreational use of psychedelics could be drawn and patrolled. The man had deliberately—indeed gleefully—erased all such lines. But the “personality” of the drug may have as much to do with the collapse of such distinctions as the personalities of people like Timothy Leary or the flaws in their research. What doomed the first wave of psychedelic research was an irrational exuberance about its potential that was nourished by the drugs themselves—that, and the fact that these chemicals are what today we would call disruptive technologies. For people working with these powerful molecules, it was impossible not to conclude that—like that divinity student running down Commonwealth Avenue—you were suddenly in possession of news with the power to change not just individuals but the world. To confine these drugs to the laboratory, or to use them only for the benefit of the sick, became hard to justify, when they could do so much for everyone, including the researchers themselves! Leary might have made his more straitlaced colleagues cringe at his lack of caution, yet most of them shared his exuberance and had come to more or less the same conclusions about the potential of psychedelics; they were just more judicious when speaking about them in public. Who among the first generation of psychedelic researchers would dispute a word of this classic gust of Leary exuberance, circa 1963: “Make no mistake: the effect of consciousness-expanding drugs will be to transform our concepts of human nature, of human potentialities, of existence. The game is about to be changed, ladies and gentlemen. Man is about to make use of that fabulous electrical network he carries around in his skull. Present social establishments had better be prepared for the change. Our favorite concepts are standing in the way of a floodtide, two billion years building up. The verbal dam is collapsing. Head for the hills, or prepare your intellectual craft to flow with the current.” * So perhaps Leary’s real sin was to have the courage of his convictions—his and everyone else’s in the psychedelic research community. It’s often said that a political scandal is what happens when someone in power inadvertently speaks the truth. Leary was all too often willing to say out loud to anyone in earshot what everyone else believed but knew better than to speak or write about candidly. It was one thing to use these drugs to treat the ill and maladjusted—society will indulge any effort to help the wayward individual conform to its norms—but it is quite another to use them to treat society itself as if it were sick and to turn the ostensibly healthy into wayward individuals. The fact is that whether by their very nature or the way that first generation of researchers happened to construct the experience, psychedelics introduced something deeply subversive to the West that the various establishments had little choice but to repulse. LSD truly was an acid, dissolving almost everything with which it came into contact, beginning with the hierarchies of the mind (the superego, ego, and unconscious) and going on from there to society’s various structures of authority and then to lines of every imaginable kind: between patient and therapist, research and recreation, sickness and health, self and other, subject and object, the spiritual and the material. If all such lines are manifestations of the Apollonian strain in Western civilization, the impulse that erects distinctions, dualities, and hierarchies and defends them, then psychedelics represented the ungovernable Dionysian force that blithely washes all those lines away. But it surely is not the case that the forces unleashed by these chemicals are necessarily ungovernable. Even the most powerful acids can be carefully handled and put to use as tools for accomplishing important things. What is the story of the first-wave researchers if not a story about searching for an appropriate container for these powerful chemicals? They tested several different possibilities: the psychotomimetic, the psycholytic, the psychedelic, and, still later, the entheogenic. None were perfect, but each represented a different way to regulate the power of these compounds, by proposing a set of protocols for their use as well as a theoretical framework. Where Leary and the counterculture ultimately parted ways with the first generation of researchers was in deciding that no such container—whether medical, religious, or scientific—was needed and that an unguided, do-it-yourself approach to psychedelics was just fine. This is risky, as it turns out, and probably a mistake. But how would we ever have discovered this, without experimenting? Before 1943, our society had never had such powerful mind-changing drugs available to it. Other societies have had long and productive experience with psychedelics, and their examples might have saved us a lot of trouble had we only known and paid attention. The fact that we regard many of these societies as “backward” probably kept us from learning from them. But the biggest thing we might have learned is that these powerful medicines can be dangerous—both to the individual and to the society—when they don’t have a sturdy social container: a steadying set of rituals and rules—protocols—governing their use, and the crucial involvement of a guide, the figure that is usually called a shaman. Psychedelic therapy—the Hubbard method—was groping toward a Westernized version of this ideal, and it remains the closest thing we have to such a protocol. For young Americans in the 1960s, for whom the psychedelic experience was new in every way, the whole idea of involving elders was probably never going to fly. But this is, I think, the great lesson of the 1960s experiment with psychedelics: the importance of finding the proper context, or container, for these powerful chemicals and experiences. Speaking of lines, psychedelics in the 1960s did draw at least one of them, and it has probably never before been quite so sharp or bright: the line, I mean, between generations. Saying exactly how or what psychedelics contributed to the counterculture of the 1960s is not an easy task, there were so many other forces at work. With or without psychedelics, there probably would have been a counterculture; the Vietnam War and the draft made it more than likely. But the forms the counterculture took and its distinctive styles—of music, art, writing, design, and social relations—would surely have been completely different were it not for these chemicals. Psychedelics also contributed to what Todd Gitlin has called the “as if” mood of 1960s politics—the sense that everything now was up for grabs, that nothing given was inviolate, and that it might actually be possible to erase history (there was that acid again) and start the world over again from scratch. But to the extent that the upheaval of the 1960s was the result of an unusually sharp break between generations, psychedelics deserve much of the blame—or credit—for creating this unprecedented “generation gap.” For at what other time in history did a society’s young undergo a searing rite of passage with which the previous generation was utterly unfamiliar? Normally, rites of passage help knit societies together as the young cross over hurdles and through gates erected and maintained by their elders, coming out on the other side to take their place in the community of adults. Not so with the psychedelic journey in the 1960s, which at its conclusion dropped its young travelers onto a psychic landscape unrecognizable to their parents. That this won’t ever happen again is reason to hope that the next chapter in psychedelic history won’t be quite so divisive. So maybe this, then, is the enduring contribution of Leary: by turning on a generation—the generation that, years later, has now taken charge of our institutions—he helped create the conditions in which a revival of psychedelic research is now possible. • • • B Y THE END OF 1966, the whole project of psychedelic science had collapsed. In April of that year, Sandoz, hoping to distance itself from the controversy engulfing the drug that Albert Hofmann would come to call his “problem child,” withdrew LSD-25 from circulation, turning over most of its remaining stocks to the U.S. government and leading many of the seventy research programs then under way to shut down. In May of that year, the Senate held hearings about the LSD problem. Timothy Leary and Sidney Cohen both testified, attempting valiantly to defend psychedelic research and draw lines between legitimate use and a black market that the government was now determined to crush. They found a surprisingly sympathetic ear in Senator Robert F. Kennedy, whose wife, Ethel, had reportedly been treated with LSD at Hollywood Hospital in Vancouver—one of Al Hubbard’s outposts. Grilling the FDA regulators about their plans to cancel many of the remaining research projects, Kennedy demanded to know, “ Why if [these projects] were worthwhile six months ago, why aren’t they worthwhile now?” Kennedy said it would be a “loss to the nation” if psychedelics were banned from medicine because of illicit use. “Perhaps we have lost sight of the fact that [they] can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly.” But Kennedy got nowhere. Leary, and perhaps the drugs themselves, had made drawing such distinctions impossible. In October, some sixty psychedelic researchers scattered across the United States received a letter from the FDA ordering them to stop their work. James Fadiman, the psychologist conducting experiments on creativity at the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, remembers the day well. The letter revoking FDA approval of the project arrived at the very moment he had finished dosing four of his problem-solving creatives to begin their session. As he read the letter, sprawled on the floor in the next room, “ four men lay, their minds literally expanding.” Fadiman said to his colleagues, “I think we need to agree that we got this letter tomorrow.” And so it was not until the following day that the research program of the International Foundation for Advanced Study, along with virtually every other research program then under way in the United States, closed down. One psychedelic research program survived the purge: the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center at Spring Grove. Here, researchers such as Stanislav Grof, Bill Richards, Richard Yensen, and, until his death in 1971, Walter Pahnke (the Good Friday researcher) continued to explore the potential of psilocybin and LSD to treat alcoholism, schizophrenia, and the existential distress of cancer patients, among other indications. It remains something of a mystery why this large psychedelic research program was allowed to continue—as it did until 1976—when dozens of others were being closed down. Some researchers who weren’t so fortunate speculate that Spring Grove might have been making psychedelic therapy available to powerful people in Washington who recognized its value or hoped to learn from the research or perhaps wanted to retain their own access to the drugs. But the former staff members at the center I spoke to doubt this was the case. They did confirm, however, that the center’s director, Albert Kurland, MD, besides having a sterling reputation among federal officials, was exceptionally well connected in Washington and used his connections to keep the lights on—and obtain LSD, some of it from the government—for a decade after they had been switched off everywhere else. Yet it turns out that the events of neither 1966 nor 1976 put an end to psychedelic research and therapy in America. Moving now underground, it went on, quietly and in secret. Coda In February 1979, virtually all the important figures in the first wave of American psychedelic research gathered for a reunion in Los Angeles at the home of Oscar Janiger. Someone made a videotape of the event, and though the quality is poor, most of the conversation is audible. Here in Janiger’s living room we see Humphry Osmond, Sidney Cohen, Myron Stolaroff, Willis Harman, Timothy Leary, and, sitting on the couch next to him, looking distinctly uncomfortable, Captain Al Hubbard. He’s seventy-seven (or eight), and he’s traveled from Casa Grande, Arizona, where he lives in a trailer park. He’s wearing his paramilitary getup, though I can’t tell if he’s carrying a sidearm. The old men reminisce, a bit stiffly at first. Some hard feelings hang in the air. But Leary, still charming, is remarkably generous, working to put everyone at ease. Their best days are behind them; the great project to which they devoted their lives lay in ruins. But something important was accomplished, they all believe—else they wouldn’t be here at this reunion. Sidney Cohen, dressed in a jacket and tie, asks the question on everyone’s mind—“What does it all mean?”—and then ventures an answer: “It stirred people up. It cracked their frame of reference by the thousands—millions perhaps. And anything that does that is pretty good I think.” It’s Leary, of all people, who asks the group, “Does anyone here feel that mistakes were made?” Osmond, the unfailingly polite Englishman, his teeth now in full revolt, declines to use the word “mistake.” “What I would say is . . . you could have seen other ways of doing it.” Someone I don’t recognize cracks, “There was a mistake made: nobody gave it to Nixon!” It’s Myron Stolaroff who finally confronts the elephant in the room, turning to Leary to say, “We were a little disturbed at some of the things you were doing that [were] making it more difficult to carry on legitimate research.” Leary reminds him that as he told them then, he had a different role to play: “Let us be the far-out explorers. The farther out we go, the more ground it gives the people at Spring Grove to denounce us.” And so appear responsible. “And I just wish, I hope we all understand that we’ve all been playing parts that have been assigned to us, and there’s no good-guy/bad-guy, or credit or blame, whatever . . .” “Well, I think we need people like Tim and Al,” Sidney Cohen offers, genially accepting Leary’s framing. “They’re absolutely necessary to get out, way out, too far out in fact—in order to move the ship . . . [turn] things around.” Then, turning to Osmond: “And we need people like you, to be reflective about it and to study it. And little by little, a slight movement is made in the totality. So, you know, I can’t think of how it could have worked out otherwise.” Al Hubbard listens intently to all this but has little to add; he fiddles with a hardback book in his lap. At one point, he pipes up to suggest the work should go on, drug laws be damned: We should “just keep on doing it. Wake people up! Let them see for themselves what they are. I think old Carter could stand a good dose!” Carter’s defense secretary, Harold Brown, and CIA director, Stansfield Turner, too. But Hubbard’s not at all sure he wants to be on this couch with Timothy Leary and is less willing than the others to let bygones be bygones, or Leary off the hook, no matter how solicitous he is of the Captain. “Oh, Al! I owe everything to you,” Leary offers at one point, beaming his most excellent smile at Hubbard. “The galactic center sent you down just at the right moment.” Hubbard doesn’t crack a smile. And then, a few minutes later: “You sure as heck contributed your part.” CHAPTER FOUR TRAVELOGUE Journeying Underground M Y PLAN HAD BEEN TO volunteer for one of the Hopkins or NYU experimental trials. If I was going to have my own guided psychedelic journey, a harrowing prospect under any circumstances, I very much liked the idea of traveling in the company of trained professionals close by a hospital emergency room. But the aboveground researchers were no longer working with “healthy normals.” This meant that if I hoped to have the journey I had heard so much about, it would have to take place underground. Could I find a guide willing to work with a writer who planned to publish an account of his journey, and would that person be someone I felt sufficiently comfortable with and confident in to entrust with my mind? The whole endeavor was fraught with uncertainty and entailed risks of several kinds—legal, ethical, psychological, and even literary. For how do you put into words an experience said to be ineffable? “Curiosity” is an accurate but tepid word for what drove me. By now, I had interviewed at length more than a dozen people who had gone on guided psychedelic journeys, and it was impossible to listen to their stories without wondering what the journey would be like for one’s self. For many of them, these were among the two or three most profound experiences of their lives, in several cases changing them in positive and lasting ways. To become more “open”—especially at this age, when the grooves of mental habit have been etched so deep as to seem inescapable—was an appealing prospect. And then there was the possibility, however remote, of having some kind of spiritual epiphany. Many of the people I’d interviewed had started out stone-cold materialists and atheists, no more spiritually developed than I, and yet several had had “mystical experiences” that left them with the unshakable conviction that there was something more to this world than we know—a “beyond” of some kind that transcended the material universe I presume to constitute the whole shebang. I thought often about one of the cancer patients I interviewed, an avowed atheist who had nevertheless found herself “bathed in God’s love.” Yet not everything I’d heard from these people made me eager to follow them onto the couch. Many had been borne by psilocybin deep into their pasts, a few of them traveling all the way back to scenes of unremembered childhood trauma. These journeys had been wrenching, shaking the travelers to their core, but they had been cathartic too. Clearly these medicines—as guides both above- and belowground invariably call the drugs they administer—powerfully stir the psychic pot, surfacing all sorts of repressed material, some of it terrifying and ugly. Did I really want to go there? No!—to be perfectly honest. You should know I have never been one for deep or sustained introspection. My usual orientation is more forward than back, or down, and I generally prefer to leave my psychic depths undisturbed, assuming they exist. (There’s quite enough to deal with up here on the surface; maybe that’s why I became a journalist rather than a novelist or poet.) All that stuff down there in the psychic basement has been stowed there for a reason, and unless you’re looking for something specific to help solve a problem, why would anyone willingly go down those steps and switch on that light? People generally think of me as a fairly even-keeled and psychologically sturdy person, and I’ve played that role for so long now—in my family as a child, in my family as an adult, with my friends, and with my colleagues—that it’s probably an accurate enough characterization. But every so often, perhaps in the wee-hour throes of insomnia or under the influence of cannabis, I have found myself tossed in a psychic storm of existential dread so dark and violent that the keel comes off the boat, capsizing this trusty identity. At such times, I begin seriously to entertain the possibility that somewhere deep beneath the equable presence I present, there exists a shadow me made up of forces roiling, anarchic, and potentially mad. Just how thin is the skin of my sanity? There are times when I wonder. Perhaps we all do. But did I really want to find out? R. D. Laing once said there are three things human beings are afraid of: death, other people, and their own minds. Put me down as two for three. But there are moments when curiosity gets the better of fear. I guess for me such a moment had arrived. • • • B Y “PSYCHEDELIC UNDERGROUND,” I don’t mean the shadowy world of people making, selling, and using psychedelic drugs illegally. I have in mind a specific subset of that world, populated by perhaps a couple hundred “guides,” or therapists, working with a variety of psychedelic substances in a carefully prescribed manner, with the intention of healing the ill or bettering the well by helping them fulfill their spiritual, creative, or emotional potential. Many of these guides are credentialed therapists, so by doing this work they are risking not only their freedom but also their professional licenses. I met one who was a physician and heard about another. Some are religious professionals—rabbis and ministers of various denominations; a few call themselves shamans; one described himself as a druid. The rest are therapists trained in dizzying combinations of alternative schools: I met Jungians and Reichians, Gestalt therapists and “transpersonal” psychologists; energy healers; practitioners of aura work, breathwork, and bodywork; EST, past-life, and family constellation therapists, vision questers, astrologers, and meditation teachers of every stripe—a shaggy reunion of that whole 1970s class of alternative “modalities” that usually get lumped together under the rubric of the “human potential movement” and that has as its world headquarters Esalen. The New Age terminology can be a little off-putting; there were times when I felt I was listening to people whose language and vocabulary had stopped evolving sometime in the early 1970s, at the very moment when psychedelic therapy was forced underground, freezing a subculture in time. I tracked down several of these people in the Bay Area, which probably has the largest concentration of underground guides in the country, without much difficulty. Asking around, I soon discovered that a friend had a friend who worked with a guide down in Santa Cruz, doing an annual psilocybin journey on the occasion of his birthday. I also soon discovered that the membrane between the aboveground and the belowground psychedelic worlds is permeable in certain places; a couple of the people I befriended while reporting on the university psilocybin trials were willing to introduce me to “colleagues” who worked underground. One introduction led to another as people came to trust my intentions. By now, I’ve interviewed fifteen underground guides and have worked with five. Considering the risks involved, I found most of these people unexpectedly open, generous, and trusting. Although the authorities have so far shown no interest in going after people practicing psychedelic-assisted therapy, the work remains illegal and so is dangerous to share with a journalist without taking precautions. All the guides asked me not to disclose their names or locations and to take whatever other measures I could to protect them. With that in mind, I have changed not only their names and locations but also certain other identifying details in each of their stories. But all the people you are about to meet are real individuals, not composites or fictions. Virtually all of the underground guides I met are descended in one way or another from the generation of psychedelic therapists working on the West Coast and around Cambridge during the 1950s and 1960s when this work was still legal. Indeed, just about everyone I interviewed could trace a professional lineage reaching back to Timothy Leary (often through one of his graduate students), Stanislav Grof, Al Hubbard, or a Bay Area psychologist named Leo Zeff. Zeff, who died in 1988, was one of the earliest underground therapists, and certainly the most well-known; he claims to have “processed” (Al Hubbard’s term) three thousand patients and trained 150 guides during his career, including several of the ones I met on the West Coast. Zeff also left a posthumous (and anonymous) account of his work, in the form of a 1997 book called The Secret Chief, a series of interviews with a therapist called Jacob conducted by his close friend Myron Stolaroff. (In 2004, Zeff’s family gave Stolaroff permission to disclose his identity and republish the book as The Secret Chief Revealed .) On the evidence of his interviews, Zeff is in many ways typical of the underground therapists I met, in both his approach and his manner; he comes across rather as folksy, or haimish, to use a Yiddish word Zeff would have appreciated, rather than as a renegade, guru, or hippie. In a photograph included in the 2004 edition, a smiling Zeff, wearing a big pair of aviator glasses and a sweater vest over his shirtsleeves, looks more like a favorite uncle than either an outlaw or mystic. Yet he was both. Zeff was a forty-nine-year-old Jungian therapist practicing in Oakland in 1961 when he had his first trip, on a hundred micrograms of LSD. (It might have been Stolaroff himself who first “tripped him,” to borrow one of Zeff’s locutions.) The guide had asked him to bring along an object of personal significance, so Zeff brought his Torah. After the effects of the LSD had come on, his guide “ laid the Torah across my chest and I immediately went into the lap of God. He and I were One.” Zeff soon began incorporating a range of different psychedelics in his practice and found that the medicines helped his patients break through their defenses, bringing buried layers of unconscious material to the surface, and achieve spiritual insights, often in a single session. The results were so “fantastic,” he told Stolaroff, that when the federal government put psychedelics on schedule 1 in 1970, prohibiting their use for any purpose, Zeff made the momentous decision to continue his work underground. This was not easy. “ Many times I’d be in much agony falling asleep, and wake up in the morning and have it hit me,” he told Stolaroff. “‘Jacob [his pseudonym], for Christ’s sake what are you exposing yourself to all this shit for? You don’t need it.’ Then I’d look and I’d say, ‘Look at the people. Look what’s happening to them.’ I’d say, ‘Is it worth it?’ . . . Inevitably I’d come back with ‘Yeah, it’s worth it’ . . . Whatever you have to go through. It’s worth it to produce these results!” During his long career, Zeff helped codify many of the protocols of underground therapy, setting forth the “agreements” guides typically make with their clients—regarding confidentiality (strict), sexual contact (forbidden), obedience to the therapist’s instructions during the session (absolute), and so on—and developing many of the ceremonial touches, such as having participants take the medicine from a cup: “a very important symbol of the transformation experience.” Zeff also described the departures from conventional therapeutic practice common among psychedelic guides. He believed it was imperative that guides have personal experience of any medicine they administer. (Aboveground guides either don’t seek such experience or don’t admit to it.) He came to believe that guides should not try to direct or manipulate the psychedelic journey, allowing it instead to find its own course and destination. ( “ Just leave ’em alone!” he tells Stolaroff.) Guides should also be willing to drop the analyst’s mask of detachment, offering their personalities and emotions, as well as a comforting touch or hug to the client undergoing a particularly challenging trip. In his introduction to The Secret Chief Revealed, Myron Stolaroff sketched the influence of underground guides like Leo Zeff on the field as a whole, suggesting that the legitimate psychedelic research that resumed in the late 1990s, when he was writing, had “evolved as a result of anecdotal evidence from underground therapists” like Zeff, as well as from the first wave of psychedelic research done in the 1950s and 1960s. Psychedelic researchers working in universities today are understandably reluctant to acknowledge it, but there is a certain amount of traffic between the two worlds, and a small number of figures who move, somewhat gingerly, back and forth between them. For example, some prominent underground therapists have been recruited to help train a new cohort of psychedelic guides to work in university trials of psychedelic drugs. When the Hopkins team wanted to study the role of music in the guided psilocybin session, it reached out to several underground guides, surveying their musical practices. No one had any idea how many underground guides were working in America, or exactly what that work consisted of, until 2010. That was the year James Fadiman, the Stanford-trained psychologist who took part in psychedelic research at the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park in the early 1960s, attended a conference on psychedelic science in the Bay Area. The conference was organized by MAPS, with sponsorship from Heffter, the Beckley Foundation, and Bob Jesse’s Council on Spiritual Practices, the three other nonprofits that funded most of the psychedelic research under way at the time. In a Holiday Inn in San Jose, the conference brought together more than a thousand people, including several dozen scientists (who presented their research, complete with PowerPoint slides), a number of guides drawn from both the university trials and the underground, and a great many more “psychonauts”—people of all ages who make regular use of psychedelics in their lives, whether for spiritual, therapeutic, or “recreational” purposes. (As Bob Jesse is always quick to remind me whenever I use that word, “recreational” doesn’t necessarily mean frivolous, careless, or lacking in intention. Point taken.) James Fadiman came to the MAPS conference “on the science track,” to give a talk about the value of the guided entheogenic journey. He wondered if there were many underground guides in the audience, so at the end of his talk he announced that there would be a meeting of guides at 8:00 the following morning. “I dragged myself out of bed at 7:30 expecting to see maybe five people, but a hundred showed up! It was staggering.” It would probably be too strong to describe this far-flung and disparate group as a community, much less an organization, yet my interviews with more than a dozen of them suggest they are professionals who share an outlook, a set of practices, and even a code of conduct. Soon after the meeting in San Jose, a “wiki” appeared on the Internet—a collaborative website where individuals can share documents and together create new content. (Fadiman included the URL in his 2011 book, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide .) Here, I found two items of particular interest, as well as several sub-wikis—documents under development—that hadn’t had a new entry for several years; it could be that public disclosure of the site in Fadiman’s book had led the creators to abandon it or move elsewhere online. The first item was a draft charter: “to support a category of profound, prized experiences becoming more available to more people.” These experiences are described as “unitive consciousness” and “non-dual consciousness,” among other terms, and several non-pharmacological modalities for achieving these states are mentioned, including meditation, breathwork, and fasting. “A principal tool of the Guides is the judicious use of a class of psychoactive substances” known to be “potent spiritual catalysts.” The website offers would-be guides links to printable forms for legal releases, ethical agreements, and medical questionnaires. (“We don’t have very good insurance,” one guide told me, with a sardonic smile. “So we’re very careful.”) There’s also a link to a thoughtful “Code of Ethics for Spiritual Guides,” which acknowledges the psychological and physical risks of journeying and emphasizes the guide’s ultimate responsibility for the well-being of the client. Recognizing that during “primary religious practices” “participants may be especially open to suggestion, manipulation, and exploitation,” the code states that it is incumbent upon the guide to disclose all risks, obtain consent, guarantee confidentiality, protect the safety and health of participants at all times, “safeguard against . . . ambition” and self-promotion, and accommodate clients “without regard to their ability to pay.” Perhaps the most useful document on the website is the “Guidelines for Voyagers and Guides.” * The guidelines represent a compendium of half a century’s accumulated knowledge and wisdom about how best to approach the psychedelic journey, whether as a participant or as a guide. It covers the basics of set and setting; mental and physical preparation for the session; potential drug interactions; the value of formulating an intention; what to expect during the experience, both good and bad; the stages of the journey; what can go wrong and how to deal with frightening material; the supreme importance of post-session “integration”; and so on. For me, standing on the threshold of such an experience, it was reassuring to learn that the underground community of psychedelic guides, which I had assumed consisted of a bunch of individuals all doing pretty much their own thing, operated like professionals, working from a body of accumulated knowledge and experience and in a set of traditions that had been handed down from psychedelic pioneers such as Al Hubbard, Timothy Leary, Myron Stolaroff, Stan Grof, and Leo Zeff. They had rules and codes and agreements, and many elements of the work had been more or less institutionalized. Stumbling upon the website also made me appreciate just how far the culture of psychedelics has evolved since the 1950s and 1960s. Implicit in these documents, it seemed to me, was the recognition that these powerful, anarchic medicines can and have been misused and that if they are to do more good than harm, they require a cultural vessel of some kind: protocols, rules, and rituals that together form a kind of Apollonian counterweight to contain and channel their sheer Dionysian force. Modern medicine, with its controlled trials and white-coated clinicians and DSM diagnoses, offers one such container; the underground guides offer another. • • • Y ET THE FIRST COUPLE of guides I interviewed did not fill me with confidence. Maybe it was because I was so new to the territory, and nervous about the contemplated journey, but I kept hearing things in their spiels that set off alarm bells and made me want to run in the opposite direction. Andrei, the first guide I interviewed, was a gruff Romanian-born psychologist in his late sixties with decades of experience; he had worked with a friend of a friend of a friend. We met at his office in a modest neighborhood of small bungalows and neat lawns in a city in the Pacific Northwest. A hand-lettered sign on the door instructed visitors to remove their shoes and come upstairs to the dimly lit waiting room. A kilim rug had been pinned to the wall. Instead of a table piled with old copies of People or Consumer Reports, I found a small shrine populated with spiritual artifacts from a bewildering variety of traditions: a Buddha, a crystal, a crow’s wing, a brass bowl for burning incense, a branch of sage. At the back of the shrine stood two framed photographs, one of a Hindu guru I didn’t recognize and the other of a Mexican curandera I did: María Sabina. This was not the last time I would encounter such a confusing tableau. In fact every guide I met maintained some such shrine in the room where he or she worked, and clients were often asked to contribute an item of personal significance before embarking on their journeys. What I was tempted to dismiss as a smorgasbord of equal-opportunity New Age tchotchkes, I would eventually come to regard more sympathetically, as the material expression of the syncretism prevalent in the psychedelic community. Members of this community tend to be more spiritual than religious in any formal sense, focused on the common core of mysticism or “cosmic consciousness” that they believe lies behind all the different religious traditions. So what appeared to me as a bunch of conflicting symbols of divinity are in fact different means of expressing or interpreting the same underlying spiritual reality, “the perennial philosophy” that Aldous Huxley held to undergird all religions and to which psychedelics supposedly can offer direct access. After a few minutes, Andrei bounded into the room, and when I stood to offer my hand, he surprised me with a bear hug. A big man with a full head of hastily combed gray hair, Andrei was wearing a blue-checked button-down over a yellow T-shirt that struggled to encompass the globe of his belly. Speaking with a thick accent, he managed to seem both amiable and disconcertingly blunt. Andrei had his first experience with LSD at twenty-one, soon after he came out of the army; a friend had sent it from America, and the experience transformed him. “It made me realize we live a very limited version of what life is.” That realization propelled him on a journey through Eastern religion and Western psychology that eventually culminated in a doctorate in psychology. When military service threatened to interrupt his psycho-spiritual journey, he “decided I have to make my own choices” and deserted. Andrei eventually left Bucharest for San Francisco, bound for what he had heard was “the first New Age graduate school”—the California Institute of Integral Studies. Founded in 1968, the institute specializes in “transpersonal psychology,” a school of therapy with a strong spiritual orientation rooted in the work of Carl Jung and Abraham Maslow as well as the “wisdom traditions” of the East and the West, including Native American healing and South American shamanism. Stanislav Grof, a pioneer of both transpersonal and psychedelic therapy, has been on the faculty for many years. In 2016, the institute began offering the nation’s first certificate program in psychedelic therapy. As part of his degree program, Andrei had to undergo psychotherapy and found his way to a Native American “doing medicine work” in the Four Corners as well as the Bay Area. “Whoopee!” he recalled thinking. “Because of my LSD experience, I knew it was viable.” Medicine work became his vocation. “I help people find out who they are so they can live their lives fully. I used to work with whoever came to me, but some were too fucked up. If you’re on the edge of psychosis, this work can push you over. You need a strong ego in order to let go of it and then be able to spring back to your boundaries.” He mentioned he’d once been sued by a troubled client who blamed him for a subsequent breakdown. “So I decided, I don’t work with crazies anymore. And as soon as I made this statement to the universe, they stopped coming.” These days he works with a lot of young people in the tech world. “I’m the dangerous virus of Silicon Valley. They come to me wondering, ‘What am I doing here, chasing the golden carrot in the golden cage?’ Many of them go on to do something more meaningful with their lives. [The experience] opens them up to the spiritual reality.” It’s hard to say exactly what put me off working with Andrei, but oddly enough it was less the New Agey spiritualism than his nonchalance about a process I still found exotic and scary. “I don’t play the psychotherapy game,” he told me, as blasé as a guy behind a deli counter wrapping and slicing a sandwich. “None of that blank screen. In mainstream psychology, you don’t hug. I hug. I touch them. I give advice. I have people come stay with us in the forest.” He works with clients not here in the office but in a rural location deep in the woods of the Olympic Peninsula. “Those are all big no-no’s.” He shrugged as if to say, so what? I shared some of my fears. He’d heard it all before. “You may not get what you want,” he told me, “but you’ll get what you need.” I gulped mentally. “The main thing is to surrender to the experience, even when it gets difficult. Surrender to your fear. The biggest fears that come up are the fear of death and the fear of madness. But the only thing to do is surrender. So surrender!” Andrei had named my two biggest fears, but his prescription seemed easier said than done. I was hoping for a guide who exuded perhaps a little more tenderness and patience, I realized, yet I wasn’t sure I should let Andrei’s gruff manner put me off. He was smart, he had loads of experience, and he was willing to work with me. Then he told a story that decided the matter. It was about working with a man my age who became convinced during his psilocybin journey he was having a heart attack. “‘I’m dying,’ he said, ‘call 911! I feel it, my heart!’ I told him to surrender to the dying. That Saint Francis said that in dying you gain eternal life. When you realize death is just another experience, there’s nothing more to worry about.” Okay, but what if it had been a real heart attack? Out there in the woods in the middle of the Olympic Peninsula? Andrei mentioned that an aspiring guide he was training had “once asked me, ‘What do you do if someone dies?’” I don’t know what I expected him to say, but Andrei’s reply, delivered with one of his most matter-of-fact shrugs, was not it. “You bury him with all the other dead people.” I told Andrei I would be in touch. The psychedelic underground was populated with a great many such vivid characters, I soon discovered, but not necessarily the kinds of characters to whom I felt I could entrust my mind—or for that matter any part of me. Immediately after my session with Andrei, I had a meeting with a second prospective guide, a brilliant psychologist in his eighties who had been a student of Timothy Leary’s at Harvard. His knowledge of psychedelics was deep; his credentials impressive; he had been highly recommended by people I respected. Yet when over lunch at a Tibetan restaurant near his office he removed his bolo tie and suspended it over the menu, I began to lose confidence that this was my man. He explained that he relied on the energies released by the pendulum swing of the silver clasp to choose the entrée most likely to agree with his temperamental digestion. I forget what his tie ordered for lunch, but even before he began dilating on the evidence that 9/11 was an inside job, I knew my search for a guide was not over quite yet. • • • O NE NOTABLE DIFFERENCE about doing psychedelics at sixty, as opposed to when you’re eighteen or twenty, is that at sixty you’re more likely to have a cardiologist you might want to consult in advance of your trip. That was me. A year before I had decided to embark on this adventure, my heart, the reliable operations of which I had taken completely for granted to that point, had suddenly made its presence felt and, for the first time in my life, demanded my attention. While sitting at my computer one afternoon, I was suddenly made aware of a pronounced and crazily syncopated new rhythm in my chest. “Atrial fibrillation” was the name the doctor gave the abnormal squiggles that appeared on my EKG. The danger of AFib is not a heart attack, he said to my (short-lived) relief, but a heightened risk of stroke. “My cardiologist”—the unfortunate phrase had suddenly joined my vocabulary, probably for the duration—put me on a couple of meds to calm the heart rhythms and lower the blood pressure, plus a daily baby aspirin to thin my blood. And then he told me not to worry about it. I followed all of his advice except the last bit. Now I couldn’t help but think about my heart constantly. All of its operations that had previously taken place completely outside my conscious awareness suddenly became salient: something I could hear and feel whenever I thought to check in, which now was incessantly. Months later, the AFib had not recurred, but my surveillance of my poor heart had gotten out of control. I checked my blood pressure daily and listened for signs of ventricular eccentricity every time I got into bed. It took months of not having a stroke before I could once again trust my heart to go about its business without my supervision. Gradually, thankfully, it retreated once again to the background of my attention. I tell you all this by way of explaining why I felt I should talk to my cardiologist before embarking on a psychedelic journey. My cardiologist was my age, so not likely to be shocked by the word “psilocybin” or “LSD” or “MDMA.” I told him what I had in mind and asked if any of the drugs in question were contraindicated, given my coronary issues, or if there was any risk of an interaction with the meds he had prescribed. He was not overly concerned about the psychedelics—most of them concentrate their effects in the mind with remarkably little impact on the cardiovascular system—but one of the drugs I mentioned he advised I avoid. This was MDMA, also known as Ecstasy or Molly, which has been on schedule 1 since the mid-1980s, when it emerged as a popular rave drug. The drug 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine is not a classical psychedelic (it works on different brain receptors and doesn’t have strong visual effects), yet several of the guides I was interviewing had told me it was part of their regimen. Sometimes called an empathogen, MDMA lowers psychological defenses and helps to swiftly build a bond between patient and therapist. (Leo Zeff was one of the first therapists to use MDMA in the 1970s, after the compound was popularized by his friend the legendary Bay Area chemist Sasha Shulgin and his wife, the therapist Ann Shulgin.) Guides told me MDMA was a good way to “break the ice” and establish trust before the psychedelic journey. (One said, “It condenses years of psychotherapy into an afternoon.”) But as its scientific name indicates, MDMA is an amphetamine, and so, chemically, it implicates the heart in a way psychedelics don’t. I was disappointed my cardiologist had taken MDMA off the table but pleased that he had more or less given me a green light on the rest of my travel plans. Trip One: LSD At least on paper, nothing about the first guide I chose to work with sounds auspicious. The man lived and worked so far off the grid, in the mountains of the American West, that he had no phone service, generated his own electricity, pumped his own water, grew his own food, and had only the spottiest satellite Internet. I could just forget about the whole idea of being anywhere in range of a hospital emergency room. Then there was the fact that while I was a Jew from a family that had once been reluctant to buy a German car, this fellow was the son of a Nazi—a German in his midsixties whose father had served in the SS during World War II. After I had heard so much about the importance of both set and setting, none of these details augured especially well. Yet I liked Fritz from the moment he came out to greet me, offering a broad grin and a warm hug (I was getting used to these) when I pulled my rental into his remote camp. This consisted of a tidy village of structures—a handmade house and a couple of smaller cabins, an octagonal yurt, and two gaily painted outhouses set out in a clearing on the crest of a heavily wooded mountain. Following the hand-drawn map Fritz had sent me (the area was terra incognita for GPS), I drove for miles on a dusty dirt road that passed through the blasted landscape of an abandoned mine before rising into a dark forest of cypress and ponderosa pine, with a dense understory of manzanitas, their smooth bark the color of fresh blood. I had come to the middle of nowhere. Fritz was a tangle of contradiction and yet manifestly a warm and seemingly happy man. At sixty-five, he resembled a European movie actor gone slightly to seed, with thick gray hair parted in the middle and a blocky, muscular frame just beginning to yield. Fritz grew up in Bavaria, the son of a raging alcoholic who had served in the SS as a bodyguard for the cultural attaché responsible for producing operas and other entertainments for the troops—the Nazis’ USO. Later, his father fought on the Russian front and survived Stalingrad but came home from the war shell-shocked. Fritz grew up in the dense shade of his misery, sharing the shame and anger of so many in his postwar generation. “When the military came for me [to serve his period of conscription],” he said, as we sat at his kitchen table sipping tea on a sunny spring afternoon, “I told them to fuck themselves and they threw me into prison.” Forced eventually to serve in the army, Fritz was court-martialed twice—once for setting his uniform on fire. He spent time in solitary confinement reading Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and plotting revolution with the Maoist in the next cell, with whom he communicated through the prison plumbing. “My proudest moment was the time I gave all the guards Orange Sunshine that I had gotten from a friend in California.” At university, he studied psychology and took a lot of LSD, which he obtained from the American troops stationed in Germany. “Compared to LSD, Freud was a joke. For him biography was everything. He had no use for mystical experience.” Fritz moved on to Jung and Wilhelm Reich, “my hero.” Along the way, he discovered that LSD was a powerful tool for exploring the depths of his own psyche, allowing him to reexperience and then let go of the anger and depression that hobbled him as a young man. “There was more light in my life after that. Something shifted.” As it had for many of the guides I had met, the mystical experience Fritz had on psychedelics launched him on a decades-long spiritual quest that eventually “blew my linear, empirical mind,” opening him up to the possibility of past lives, telepathy, precognition, and “synchronicities” that defy our conceptions of space and time. He spent time on an ashram in India, where he witnessed specific scenes that had been prefigured in his psychedelic journeys. Once, making love to a woman in Germany (the two were practicing Tantrism), he and she shared an out-of-body experience that allowed them to observe themselves from the ceiling. “These medicines have shown me that something quote-unquote impossible exists. But I don’t think it’s magic or supernatural. It’s a technology of consciousness we don’t understand yet.” Normally when people start talking about transpersonal dimensions of consciousness and “morphogenetic fields,” I have little (if any) patience, but there was something about Fritz that made such talk, if not persuasive, then at least . . . provocative. He managed to express the most far-fetched ideas in a disarmingly modest, even down-to-earth way. I had the impression he had no agenda beyond feeding his own curiosity, whether with psychedelics or books on paranormal phenomena. For some people, the privilege of having had a mystical experience tends to massively inflate the ego, convincing them they’ve been granted sole possession of a key to the universe. This is an excellent recipe for creating a guru. The certitude and condescension for mere mortals that usually come with that key can render these people insufferable. But that wasn’t Fritz. To the contrary. His otherworldly experiences had humbled him, opening him up to possibilities and mysteries without closing him to skepticism—or to the pleasures of everyday life on this earth. There was nothing ethereal about him. I surprised myself by liking Fritz as much as I did. After five years spent living on a commune in Bavaria (“we were all trying to undo some of the damage done to the postwar generation”), in 1976 he met a woman from California while hiking in the Himalayas and followed her back to Santa Cruz. There he fell into the whole Northern California human potential scene, at various times running a meditation center for an Indian guru named Rajneesh and doing bodywork (including deep-tissue massage and Rolfing), Gestalt and Reichian therapy, and some landscaping to pay the bills. When in 1982, soon after his father’s death, he met Stan Grof at a breathwork course at Esalen, he felt he had at last found his rightful father. During the workshop, Fritz “had an experience as powerful as any psychedelic. Out of the blue, I experienced myself being born—my mother giving birth to me. While this was happening, I watched the goddess Shiva on a gigantic IMAX screen, creating worlds and destroying worlds. Everyone in the group wanted what I had!” He now added holotropic breathwork to his bodywork practice. Eventually, Fritz did an intensive series of multiyear trainings with Grof in Northern California and British Columbia. At one of them, he met his future wife, a clinical psychologist. Grof was ostensibly teaching holotropic breathwork, the non-pharmacological modality he had developed after psychedelics were made illegal. But Fritz said that Grof also shared with this select group his deep knowledge about the practice of psychedelic therapy, discreetly passing on his methods to a new generation. Several people in the workshop, Fritz and his future wife among them, went on to become underground guides. She works with the women who find their way up the mountain, he with the men. “You don’t make a lot of money,” Fritz told me. Indeed, he charged only nine hundred dollars for a three-day session, which included room and board. “It’s illegal and dangerous. You can have a person go psychotic. And you really don’t make a lot of money. But I’m a healer and these medicines work.” It was abundantly clear he had a calling and loved what he did—loved witnessing people undergo profound transformations before his eyes. • • • F RITZ TOLD ME what to expect if I were to work with him. It would mean returning here for three days, sleeping in the eight-sided yurt, where we would also do “the work.” The first afternoon would be a warm-up or get-acquainted session, using either MDMA or breathwork. (I explained why in my case it would have to be breathwork.) This would give him a chance to observe how I handled an altered state of consciousness before sending me on an LSD journey the morning of the second day; it would also help him determine a suitable dose. I asked him how he could be sure of the purity and quality of the medicines he uses, since they come from chemists working illicitly. Whenever he receives a new shipment, he explained, “I first test it for purity, and then I take a heroic dose to see how it feels before I give it to anyone.” Not exactly FDA approval, I thought to myself, but better than nothing. Fritz doesn’t take any medicine himself while he’s working but often gets “a contact high” from his clients. During the session he takes notes, selects the music, and checks in every twenty minutes or so. “I’ll ask you not how you are but where you are. “I’m here just for you, to hold the space, so you don’t have to worry about anything or anyone else. Not the wife, not the child. So you can really let go—and go .” This, I realized, was another reason I was eager to work with a guide. When Judith and I had our magic mushroom day the previous summer, the simmer of worry about her welfare kept intruding on my journey, forcing me to stay close to the surface. Much as I hated the psychobabble-y locution, I loved the idea of someone “holding space” for me. “That night I’ll ask you to make some notes before you go to sleep. On your last morning, we’ll compare notes and try to integrate and make sense of your experience. Then I’ll cook you a big breakfast to get you ready to face the interstate!” We scheduled a time for me to come back. • • • T HE FIRST THING I learned about myself that first afternoon, working with Fritz in the yurt, is that I am “easy to put under”—susceptible to trance, a mental space completely new to me and accessible by nothing more than a shift in the pattern of one’s breathing. It was the damnedest thing. Fritz’s instructions were straightforward: Breathe deeply and rapidly while exhaling as strongly as you can. “At first it will feel unnatural and you’ll have to concentrate to maintain the rhythm, but after a few minutes your body will take over and do it automatically.” I stretched out on the mattress and donned a pair of eyeshades while he put on some music, something generically tribal and rhythmic, dominated by the pounding of a drum. He placed a plastic bucket at my side, explaining that occasionally people throw up. It was hard work at first, to breathe in such an exaggerated and unnatural way, even with Fritz’s enthusiastic coaching, but then all at once my body took over, and I found that no thought was required to maintain the driving pace and rhythm. It was as if I had broken free from gravity and settled into an orbit: the big deep breaths just came, automatically. Now I felt an uncontrollable urge to move my legs and arms in sync with the pounding of the drums, which resonated in my rib cage like a powerful new heartbeat. I felt possessed, both my body and my mind. I can’t remember many thoughts except “Hey, this is working, whatever it is!” I was flat on my back yet dancing wildly, my arms and legs moving with a will of their own. All control of my body I had surrendered to the music. It felt a little like speaking in tongues, or what I imagine that to be, with some external force taking over the mind and body for its own obscure purpose. There wasn’t much visual imagery, just the naked sensation of exhilaration, until I began to picture myself on the back of a big black horse, galloping headlong down a path through a forest. I was perched up high on its shoulders, like a jockey, holding on tight as the beast scissored its great muscles forward and back with each long stride. As my rhythm synced with that of the horse, I could feel myself absorbing the animal’s power. It felt fantastic to so fully inhabit my body, as if for the first time. And yet because I am not a very confident rider (or dancer!), it also felt precarious, as if were I to miss a breath or beat I might tumble off. I had no idea how long the trance lasted, time was utterly lost on me, but when Fritz gently brought me back to the present moment and the reality of the room, simply by encouraging me to slow and relax my breathing, he reported I had been “in it” for an hour and fifteen minutes. I felt flushed and sweaty and triumphant, as if I had run a marathon; Fritz said I looked “radiant”—“young like a baby.” “You had no resistance,” he said approvingly; “that’s a good sign for tomorrow.” I had no idea what had just happened, could recall little more of the hour than riding the horse, but the episode seemed to have involved a terrific physical release of some kind. Some thing had let go of me or been expunged, and I felt buoyant. And humbled by the mystery of it. For here was (to quote William James) one of the “ forms of consciousness entirely different” from the ordinary and yet so close by—separated from normal waking consciousness by . . . what? A handful of exhalations! Then something frightening happened. Fritz had gone up to the house to prepare our dinner, leaving me to make some notes about the experience on my laptop, when all at once I felt my heart surge and then begin to dance madly in my chest. I immediately recognized the sensation of turbulence as AFib, and when I took my pulse, it was chaotic. A panicky bird was trapped in my rib cage, throwing itself against the bars in an attempt to get out. And here I was, a dozen miles off the grid smack in the middle of nowhere. It went on like that for two hours, straight through a subdued and anxious dinner. Fritz seemed concerned; in all the hundreds of breathwork sessions he had led or witnessed, he had never seen such a reaction. (He had mentioned earlier a single fatality attributed to holotropic breathwork: a man who had had an aneurism.) Now I was worried about tomorrow, and I think he was too. Though he also wondered if perhaps what I was feeling in my heart might reflect some psychic shift or “heart opening.” I resisted the implied metaphor, holding firm to the plane of physiology: the heart is a pump, and this one is malfunctioning. We discussed tomorrow’s plan. Maybe we want to go with a lower dose, Fritz suggested; “you’re so susceptible you might not need very much to journey.” I told him I might bail out altogether. And then, as suddenly as it had come on, I felt my heart slip back into the sweet groove of its accustomed rhythm. I got little sleep that night as a debate raged in my head about whether or not I was crazy to proceed in the morning with LSD at any dose. I could die up here and wouldn’t that be stupid? But was I really in any danger? Now my heart felt fine, and from everything I read, the effects of LSD were confined to the brain, more or less, leaving the cardiovascular system unaffected. In retrospect, it made perfect sense that a process as physically arduous as holotropic breathwork would discombobulate the heart. * Yes, I could take a rain check on my LSD journey, but even the thought of that option landed like a crushing disappointment. I had come this far, and I had had this intriguing glimpse into a state of consciousness that for all my trepidations I was eager to explore more deeply. This went on all night, back and forth, pro and con, but by the time the sun came up, the earliest rays threading the needles of the eastern pines, I was resolved. At breakfast, I told Fritz I felt good and wanted to proceed. We agreed, however, to go with a modest dose—a hundred micrograms, with “a booster” after an hour or two if I wanted one. Fritz sent me out on a walk to clear my head and think about my intention while he did the dishes and readied the yurt for my journey. I hiked for an hour on a trail through the forest, which had been refreshed overnight by a rain shower; the cleansed air held the scent of cedar, and the barkless red limbs of the manzanita were glowing. Fritz had told me to look for an object to put on the altar. While I was looking and walking, I decided I would ask Fritz to give me his pledge that if anything whatsoever went wrong, he would call 911 for help regardless of the personal risk. I returned to the yurt around ten with a manzanita leaf and a smooth black stone in my pocket and a straightforward intention: to learn whatever the journey had to teach me about myself. Fritz had lit a fire in the woodstove, and the room was beginning to give up its chill. He had moved the mattress across the room so my head would be close to the speakers. In somber tones, he talked about what to expect and how to handle various difficulties that might arise: “paranoia, spooky places, the feeling you’re losing your mind or that you are dying. “It’s like when you see a mountain lion,” he suggested. “If you run, it will chase you. So you must stand your ground.” I was reminded of the “flight instructions” that the guides employed at Johns Hopkins: instead of turning away from any monster that appears, move toward it, stand your ground, and demand to know, “What are you doing in my mind? What do you have to teach me?” I added my stone and leaf to the altar, which held a bronze Buddha surrounded by the items of many previous travelers. “Something hard and something soft,” Fritz observed. I asked for the assurances I needed to proceed and received them. Now he handed me a Japanese teacup at the bottom of which lay a tiny square of blotter paper and the torn scraps of a second square—the booster. One side of the blotter paper had a Buddha printed on it, the other a cartoon character I didn’t recognize. I put the square on my tongue and, taking a sip of water, swallowed. Fritz didn’t perform much of a ceremony, but he did talk about the “sacred tradition” I was now joining, the lineage of all the tribes and peoples down through time and around the world who used such medicines in their rites of initiation. Here I was, in range of my sixtieth birthday, taking LSD for the first time. It did feel something like a rite of passage, but a passage to where, exactly? While waiting for the LSD to come on, we sat on the wooden skirt of decking that circled the yurt, chatting quietly about this and that. Life up here on the mountain; the wildlife that shared the property with him because he didn’t keep a dog: there were mountain lions, bears, coyotes, foxes, and rattlesnakes. Jittery, I tried to change the subject; as it was, I’d been afraid during the night to visit the outhouse, choosing instead to pee off the porch. Lions and bears and snakes were the last thing I wanted to think about just now. Around eleven, I told Fritz I was starting to feel wobbly. He suggested I lie down on the mattress and put on my eyeshades. As soon as he started the music—something Amazonian in flavor, gently rhythmic with traditional instruments but also nature sounds (rain showers and crickets) that created a vivid dimensional sense of outdoor space—I was off, traveling somewhere in my mind, in a fully realized forest landscape that the music had somehow summoned into being. It made me realize what a powerful little technology a pair of eyeshades could be, at least in this context: it was like donning a pair of virtual reality goggles, allowing me immediately to take leave of this place and time. I guessed I was hallucinating, yet this was not at all what I expected an LSD hallucination to be, which was overpowering. But Fritz had told me that the literal meaning of the word is to wander in one’s mind, and that was exactly what I was doing, with the same desultory indifference to agency the wanderer feels. Yet I still had agency: I could change at will the contents of my thoughts, but in this dreamy state, so wide open to suggestion, I was happy to let the terrain, and the music, dictate my path. And for the next several hours the music did just that, summoning into existence a sequence of psychic landscapes, some of them populated by the people closest to me, others explored on my own. A lot of the music was New Age drivel—the sort of stuff you might hear while getting a massage in a high-end spa—yet never had it sounded so evocative, so beautiful! Music had become something much greater and more profound than mere sound. Freely trespassing the borders of the other senses, it was palpable enough to touch, forming three-dimensional spaces I could move through. The Amazonian-tribal song put me on a trail that ascended steeply through redwoods, following a ravine notched into a hillside by the silvery blade of a powerful stream. I know this place : it was the trail that rises from Stinson Beach to Mount Tamalpais. But as soon as I secured that recognition, it morphed into something else entirely. Now the music formed a vertical architecture of wooden timbers, horizontals and verticals and diagonals that were being magically craned into place, forming levels that rose one on top of the other, ever higher into the sky like a multistoried tree house under construction, yet a structure as open to the air and its influences as a wind chime. I saw that each level represented another phase in my life with Judith. There we were, ascending stage by stage through our many years together, beginning as kids who met in college, falling in love, living together in the city, getting married, having our son, Isaac, becoming a family, moving to the country. Now, here at the top, I watched a new, as yet inchoate stage being constructed as indeed one now is: whatever this life together is going to be now that Isaac has grown up and left home. I looked hard, hoping for some clue about what to expect, but the only thing I could see clearly was that this new stage was being built on the wooden scaffolding of earlier ones and therefore promised to be sturdy. So it went, song by song, for hours. Something aboriginal, with the deep spooky tones of a didgeridoo, put me underground, moving somehow through the brownish-black rootscape of a forest. I tensed momentarily: Was this about to get terrifying? Have I died and been interred? If so, I was fine with it. I got absorbed watching a white tracery of mycelium threading among the roots and linking the trees in a network intricate beyond comprehension. I knew all about this mycelial network, how it forms a kind of arboreal Internet allowing the trees in a forest to exchange information, but now what had been merely an intellectual conceit was a vivid, felt reality of which I had become a part. When the music turned more masculine or martial, as it now did, sons and then fathers filled my mental field. I watched a swiftly unfolding biopic of Isaac’s life to this point—his struggles as an exquisitely sensitive boy, and how those sensitivities had turned into strengths, making him who he is. I thought about things I needed to tell him—about the surging pride I felt as he embarked on his adult life and made his way in a new city and career, but also my fervent hope that he not harden himself in success or disown his vulnerabilities and his sweetness. I felt something on my eyeshades and realized I had wet them with my tears. I was already feeling wide open and undefended when it dawned on me that I wasn’t talking to Isaac, or not only to him, but to myself as well. Something hard and something soft: the paired terms kept turning over like a coin. The night before coming to Fritz’s place, I had spoken to two thousand people in a concert hall, tracked across a stage by a spotlight as I played the role of the man with the answers, the one people could depend on to explain things. This was much the same role I played in my family growing up, not only for my younger sisters, but, in times of crisis, for my parents too. (Even now, my sisters stubbornly refuse ever to accept from me the words “I don’t know.”) “So now look at me!” I thought , a smile blooming on my face: this grown man blindfolded and laid out on the floor of a psychedelic therapist’s yurt, chasing after my mind as it wandered heedlessly through the woods of my life, warm tears—of what? I didn’t know!—sliding down my cheeks. This was unfamiliar territory for me and not at all where I expected to find myself on LSD. I hadn’t traveled very far from home. Instead of the demons and angels and various other entities I was expecting to meet, I was having a series of encounters with the people in my family. I visited each of them in turn, the music setting the tone, and the emotions came over me in great waves, whether of admiration (for my sisters and mother, whom I pictured seated around a horseshoe-shaped table—like the UN!—each of them representing a different ideal of feminine strength); gratitude; or compassion, especially for my father, a man both driven and pursued for much of his life, and someone whom before this moment I’d never before fully imagined as a son, and a son of ferociously demanding parents. The flood tide of compassion overflowed its banks and leaked into some unexpected places, like my fourth-grade music class. Here I inexplicably encountered poor Mr. Roper, this earnest young man in a cheap suit who in spite of heroic efforts could not get us to give a shit about the sections of an orchestra he mapped on the board or the characters of the various instruments, no matter how many times he played Peter and the Wolf for us. As he paced the classroom in his excitement, we would wait in breathless suspense for him to step on one of the upturned thumbtacks we placed in his path, a thrill for which we were willing to risk staying after school in detention. But who was this Mr. Roper, really? Why couldn’t we see that behind the cartoon figure we tortured so mercilessly was, no doubt, a decent guy who wanted nothing more than to ignite in us his passion for music? The unthinking cruelty of children sent a quick shiver of shame through me. But then: What a surfeit of compassion I must be feeling, to spare that much for Mr. Roper! And cresting over all these encounters came a cascading dam break of love, love for Judith and Isaac and everyone in my family, love even for my impossible grandmother and her long-suffering husband. The next day, during our integration session, Fritz read from his notes two things I apparently said aloud during this part of the journey: “I don’t want to be so stingy with my feelings.” And, “All this time spent worrying about my heart. What about all the other hearts in my life?” It embarrasses me to write these words; they sound so thin, so banal. This is a failure of my language, no doubt, but perhaps it is not only that. Psychedelic experiences are notoriously hard to render in words; to try is necessarily to do violence to what has been seen and felt, which is in some fundamental way pre- or post-linguistic or, as students of mysticism say, ineffable. Emotions arrive in all their newborn nakedness, unprotected from the harsh light of scrutiny and, especially, the pitiless glare of irony. Platitudes that wouldn’t seem out of place on a Hallmark card glow with the force of revealed truth. Love is everything. Okay, but what else did you learn? No— you must not have heard me: it’s every thing! Is a platitude so deeply felt still just a platitude? No, I decided. A platitude is precisely what is left of a truth after it has been drained of all emotion. To resaturate that dried husk with feeling is to see it again for what it is: the loveliest and most deeply rooted of truths, hidden in plain sight. A spiritual insight? Maybe so. Or at least that’s how it appeared in the middle of my journey. Psychedelics can make even the most cynical of us into fervent evangelists of the obvious. You could say the medicine makes you stupid, but after my journey through what must sound like a banal and sentimental landscape, I don’t think that’s it. For what after all is the sense of banality, or the ironic perspective, if not two of the sturdier defenses the adult ego deploys to keep from being overwhelmed—by our emotions, certainly, but perhaps also by our senses, which are liable at any time to astonish us with news of the sheer wonder of the world. If we are ever to get through the day, we need to put most of what we perceive into boxes neatly labeled “Known,” to be quickly shelved with little thought to the marvels therein, and “Novel,” to which, understandably, we pay more attention, at least until it isn’t that anymore. A psychedelic is liable to take all the boxes off the shelf, open and remove even the most familiar items, turning them over and imaginatively scrubbing them until they shine once again with the light of first sight. Is this reclassification of the familiar a waste of time? If it is, then so is a lot of art. It seems to me there is great value in such renovation, the more so as we grow older and come to think we’ve seen and felt it all before. Yet one hundred micrograms of LSD had surely not propelled me into the lap of God, as it had Leo Zeff; even after the booster (another fifty micrograms, which I was eager to take, in hopes of going deeper and longer). I never achieved a transcendent, “non-dual” or “mystical-like” experience, and as I recapped the journey with Fritz the following morning, I registered a certain disappointment. But the novel plane of consciousness I’d spent a few hours wandering on had been interesting and pleasurable and, I think, useful to me. I would have to see if its effects endured, but it felt as though the experience had opened me up in unexpected ways. Because the acid had not completely dissolved my ego, I never completely lost the ability to redirect the stream of my consciousness or the awareness it was in fact mine. But the stream itself felt distinctly different, less subject to will or outside interference. It reminded me of the pleasantly bizarre mental space that sometimes opens up at night in bed when we’re poised between the states of being awake and falling asleep—so-called hypnagogic consciousness. The ego seems to sign off a few moments before the rest of the mind does, leaving the field of consciousness unsupervised and vulnerable to gentle eruptions of imagery and hallucinatory snatches of narrative. Imagine that state extended indefinitely, yet with some ability to direct your attention to this or that, as if in an especially vivid and absorbing daydream. Unlike a daydream, however, you are fully present to the contents of whatever narrative is unfolding, completely inside it and beyond the reach of distraction. I had little choice but to obey the daydream’s logic, its ontological and epistemological rules, until, either by force of will or by the fresh notes of a new song, the mental channel would change and I would find myself somewhere else entirely. This, I guess, is what happens when the ego’s grip on the mind is relaxed but not eliminated, as a larger dose would probably have done. “ For the moment that interfering neurotic who, in waking hours, tries to run the show, was blessedly out of the way,” as Aldous Huxley put it in The Doors of Perception . Not entirely out of the way in my case, but the LSD had definitely muffled that controlling voice, and in that lightly regulated space all sorts of interesting things could bubble up, things that any self-respecting ego would probably have kept submerged. I had had a psycholytic dose of LSD, one that allowed the patient to explore his psyche in an unconstrained but still deliberate manner while remaining sufficiently combobulated to talk about it. For me it felt less like a drug experience—the LSD feels completely transparent, with none of the physiological noise I associate with other psychoactive drugs—than a novel mode of cognition, falling somewhere between intellection and feeling. I had conjured several of the people closest to me, and in the presence of each of them had come stronger emotions than I had felt in some time. A dam had been breached, and the sensation of release felt wonderful. Too, a few genuine insights had emerged from these encounters, like the one about my father as a son, which turned on an act of imagination (of empathy) that even grown children seldom have sufficient distance to perform. During our integration session, Fritz mentioned that some people on LSD have an experience that in content and character is more like MDMA than a classic psychedelic trip; maybe what I had had was the MDMA session I’d had to pass up. The notion of a few years of psychotherapy condensed into several hours seemed about right, especially after Fritz and I spent that morning unpacking the scenes from my journey. As I steered my rental car down the mountain and toward the airport for the flight home, I was relieved that the experience had been so benign (I had survived! Had roused no sleeping monsters in my unconscious!) and grateful it had been productive. All that day and well into the next, a high-pressure system of well-being dominated my psychological weather. Judith found me unusually chatty and available; my usual impatience was in abeyance, and I could outlast her at the table after dinner, being in no hurry to get up and do the dishes so I could move on to the next thing and then the thing after that. I guessed this was the afterglow I’d read about, and for a few days it cast a pleasantly theatrical light over everything, italicizing the ordinary in such a way as to make me feel uncommonly . . . appreciative. It didn’t last, however, and in time I grew disappointed that the experience hadn’t been more transformative. I had been granted a taste of a slightly other way to be—less defended, I would say, and so more present. And now that I had acquainted myself with the territory and returned from this first foray more or less intact, I decided it was time to venture farther out. Trip Two: Psilocybin My second journey began around an altar, in the middle of a second-story loft in a suburb of a small city on the Eastern Seaboard. The altar was being prayed over by an attractive woman with long blond hair parted in the middle and high cheekbones that I mention only because they would later figure in her transformation into a Mexican Indian. Seated across the altar from me, Mary’s eyes were closed as she recited a long and elaborate Native American prayer. She invoked in turn the power of each of the cardinal directions, the four elements, and the animal, plant, and mineral realms, the spirits of which she implored to help guide me on my journey. My eyes were closed too, but now and again I couldn’t resist peeking out to take in the scene: the squash-colored loft with its potted plants and symbols of fertility and female power; the embroidered purple fabric from Peru that covered the altar; and the collection of items arrayed across it, including an amethyst in the shape of a heart, a purple crystal holding a candle, little cups filled with water, a bowl holding a few rectangles of dark chocolate, the two “sacred items” she had asked me to bring (a bronze Buddha a close friend had brought back from a trip to the East; the psilocybin coin Roland Griffiths had given me at our first meeting), and, squarely before me, an antique plate decorated in a grandmotherly floral pattern that held the biggest psilocybin mushroom I had ever seen. It was hard to believe I was about to eat the whole thing. The crowded altar also held a branch of sage and a stub of Palo Santo, a fragrant South American wood that Indians burn ceremonially, and the jet-black wing of a crow. At various points in the ceremony, Mary lit the sage and the Palo Santo, using the wing to “smudge” me with the smoke—guide the spirits through the space around my head. The wing made an otherworldly whoosh as she flicked it by my ear, the spooky sound of a large bird coming too close for comfort, or a dark spirit being shooed away from a body. The whole thing must sound ridiculously hokey, I know, but the conviction Mary brought to the ceremony, together with the aromas of the burning plants and the sounds of the wing pulsing the air— plus my own nervousness about the journey in store—cast a spell that allowed me to suspend my disbelief. I had decided to give myself up to this big mushroom, and for Mary, the guide to whom I had entrusted my psyche for this journey, ceremony counted for as much as chemistry. In this she was acting more like a shaman than a psychologist. Mary had been recommended by a guide I’d interviewed on the West Coast, a rabbi who had taken an interest in my psychedelic education. Mary, who was my age, had trained with the eighty-something student of Timothy Leary whom I had interviewed and decided was a little too far out there for me. One might think the same of Mary, on paper, but something about her manner, her sobriety, and her evident compassion made me more comfortable in her presence. Mary had practiced the whole grab bag of New Age therapies, from energy healing to spiritual psychology to family constellation therapy, * before being introduced to medicine work when she was fifty. (“It created the glue that brought together all this other work I’d been doing.”) At the time, Mary had used a psychedelic only once and long ago: at her twenty-first birthday party while in college. A friend had given her a jar of honey laced with psilocybin mushrooms. Mary immediately went up to her room, ate two or three spoonfuls, “and had the most profound experience of being with God. I was God and God was me.” Friends who had been partying downstairs came up to knock at her door, but Mary was gone. As a child growing up outside Providence, Mary had been an enthusiastic Catholic, until “I realized I was a girl”—a fact that would disqualify her from ever performing the ceremonies she cherished. Mary’s religiosity lay dormant until that taste of honey, which “catapulted me into a huge change,” she told me the first time we met. “I dropped into something I hadn’t felt connected to since I was a little girl.” The reawakening of her spiritual life led her onto the path of Tibetan Buddhism and eventually to take the vow of an initiate: “‘To assist all sentient beings in their awakening and their enlightenment.’ Which is still my vocation.” And now sitting before her in her treatment room was me, the next sentient being on deck, hoping to be wakened. I shared my intention: to learn what I could about myself and also about the nature of consciousness—my own but also its “transpersonal” dimension, if such a dimension exists. “The mushroom teacher helps us to see who we really are,” Mary said, “brings us back to our soul’s purpose for being here in this lifetime.” I can imagine how these words might sound to an outsider. But by now I was inured to the New Age lingo, perhaps because I had glimpsed the potential for something meaningful behind the well-worn words. I’d also been impressed by Mary’s intelligence and her professionalism. In addition to having me consent to the standard “agreements” (bowing to her authority for the duration; remaining in the room until she gave me permission to leave; no sexual contact; and so on), she had me fill out a detailed medical form, a legal release, and a fifteen-page autobiographical questionnaire that took me the better part of a day to complete. All of which made me feel I was in good hands—even when those hands were flapping a crow’s wing around my head. Yet, as I sat there before the altar, it seemed doubtful I could choke down that whole mushroom. It had to be five or six inches long, with a cap the size of a golf ball. I asked her if I could crumble it into a glass of hot water, make a tea, and drink it. “Better to be fully conscious of what you’re doing,” she said, “which is eating a mushroom that came from the earth, one bite at a time. Examine it first, closely, then start at the cap.” She offered me a choice of honey or chocolate to help get it down; I went with the chocolate. Mary had told me that a friend of hers grows the psilocybin and had learned the craft years ago in a mushroom cultivation workshop taught by Paul Stamets. It seems there is only one or two degrees of separation between any two people in this world. On the tongue, the mushroom was dry as the desert and tasted like earth-flavored cardboard, but alternating each bite with a nibble of the chocolate helped. Except for the gnarly bit at the very base of the stipe, I ate all of it, which amounted to two grams. Mary planned to offer me another two grams along the way, for a total of four. This would roughly approximate the dose being given to volunteers in the NYU and Hopkins trials and was equivalent to roughly three hundred micrograms of LSD—twice as much as I had taken with Fritz. We chatted quietly for twenty minutes or so before Mary noticed my face was flushed and suggested I lie down and put on eyeshades. I chose a pair of high-tech black plastic ones, which in retrospect might have been a mistake. The perimeters were lined with soft black foam rubber, allowing the wearer to open his eyes to pitch darkness. Called the Mindfold Relaxation Mask, Mary told me, it had been expressly designed for this purpose by Alex Grey, the psychedelic artist. As soon as Mary put on the first song—a truly insipid New Age composition by someone named Thierry David (an artist thrice nominated, I would later learn, in the category of Best Chill/Groove Album)—I was immediately propelled into a nighttime urban landscape that appeared to have been generated by a computer. Once again, sound begat space (“in the beginning was the note,” I remember thinking, with a sense of profundity), and what I took to be Thierry’s electronica conjured a depopulated futuristic city, with each note forming another soft black stalagmite or stalactite that together resembled the high-relief soundproofing material used to line recording studios. (The black foam forming this high-relief landscape, I realized later, was the same material lining my eyeshades.) I moved effortlessly through this digital nightscape as if within the confines of a video-game dystopia. Though the place wasn’t particularly frightening, and it had a certain sleek beauty, I hated being in it and wished to be somewhere else, but it went on seemingly forever and for hours, with no way out. I told Mary I didn’t like the electronic music and asked her to put on something else, but though the feeling tone changed with the new music, I was still stuck in this sunless computer world. Why, oh, why couldn’t I be outside! In nature? Because I had never much enjoyed video games, this seemed cruel, an expulsion from the garden: no plants, no people, no sunlight. Not that the computer world wasn’t an interesting place to explore. I watched in awe as, one by one, musical notes turned into palpable forms before my eyes. Annoying music was the presiding deity of the place, the generative force. Even the most spa-appropriate New Age composition had the power to spawn fractal patterns in space that grew and branched and multiplied to infinity. Weirdly, everything in my visual field was black, but in so many different shades that it was easy to see. I was traversing a world generated by mathematical algorithms, and this gave it a certain alienated, lifeless beauty. But whose world was it? Not mine, and I began to wonder, whose brain am I in? (Please, not Thierry David’s!) “This could easily take a terrifying turn,” it occurred to me, and with that a dim tide of anxiety began to build. Recalling the flight instructions, I told myself there was nothing to do but let go and surrender to the experience. Relax and float downstream . This was not at all like previous trips, which had left me more or less the captain of my attention, able to direct it this way or that and change the mental channel at will. No, this was more like being strapped into the front car of a cosmic roller coaster, its heedless headlong trajectory determining moment by moment what would appear in my field of consciousness. Actually, this is not completely accurate: all I had to do was to remove my eyeshades and reality, or at least something loosely based on it, would reconstitute itself. This is what I now did, partly to satisfy myself that the world was still existing but mostly because I badly had to pee. Sunlight and color flooded my eyes, and I drank it in greedily, surveying the room for the welcome signifiers of non-digital reality: walls, windows, plants. But all of it appeared in a new aspect: jeweled with light. I realized I should probably put on my glasses, which partly domesticated the scene, but only partly: objects continued to send their sparkles of light my way. I got up carefully from the mattress, first onto one knee, then, unsteadily, onto my feet. Mary took me by the elbow, geriatrically, and together we made the journey across the room. I avoided looking at her, uncertain what I might see in her face or betray in mine. At the bathroom door she let go of my elbow. Inside, the bathroom was a riot of sparkling light. The arc of water I sent forth was truly the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, a waterfall of diamonds cascading into a pool, breaking its surface into a billion clattering fractals of light. This went on for a pleasant eternity. When I was out of diamonds, I went to the sink and splashed my face with water, making sure not to catch sight of myself in the mirror, which seemed like a psychologically risky thing to do. I made my unsteady way back to the mattress and lay down. Speaking softly, Mary asked if I wanted a booster. I did and sat up to receive it. Mary was squatting next to me, and when I finally looked up into her face, I saw she had turned into María Sabina, the Mexican curandera who had given psilocybin to R. Gordon Wasson in that dirt basement in Huautla de Jiménez sixty years ago. Her hair was black, her face, stretched taut over its high cheekbones, was anciently weathered, and she was wearing a simple white peasant dress. I took the dried mushroom from the woman’s wrinkled brown hand and looked away as I chewed. I didn’t think I should tell Mary what had happened to her. (Later, when I did, she was flattered: María Sabina was her hero.) • • • B UT THERE WAS SOMETHING I needed to do before putting my eyeshades back on and going back under, a little experiment I had told Mary I wanted to perform on myself during my trip. I wasn’t sure if in my condition I could pull it off, but I’d found that even in the middle of the journey it was possible to summon oneself to a semblance of normality for a few moments at a time. Loaded on my laptop was a brief video of a rotating face mask, used in a psychological test called the binocular depth inversion illusion. As the mask rotates in space, its convex side turning to reveal its concave back, something remarkable happens: the hollow mask appears to pop out to become convex again. This is a trick performed by the mind, which assumes all faces to be convex, and so automatically corrects for the seeming error—unless, as a neuroscientist had told me, one was under the influence of a psychedelic. This auto-correct feature is a hallmark of our perception, which in the sane, adult mind is based as much on educated guesswork as the raw data of the senses. By adulthood, the mind has gotten very good at observing and testing reality and developing confident predictions about it that optimize our investments of energy (mental and otherwise) and therefore our survival. So rather than starting from scratch to build a new perception from every batch of raw data delivered by the senses, the mind jumps to the most sensible conclusion based on past experience combined with a tiny sample of that data . Our brains are prediction machines optimized by experience, and when it comes to faces, they have boatloads of experience: faces are always convex, so this hollow mask must be a prediction error to be corrected. These so-called Bayesian inferences (named for Thomas Bayes, the eighteenth-century English philosopher who developed the mathematics of probability, on which these mental predictions are based) serve us well most of the time, speeding perception while saving effort and energy, but they can also trap us in literally preconceived images of reality that are simply false, as in the case of the rotating mask. Yet it turns out that Bayesian inference breaks down in some people: schizophrenics and, according to some neuroscientists, people on high doses of psychedelics drugs, neither of whom “see” in this predictive or conventionalized manner. (Nor do young children, who have yet to build the sort of database necessary for confident predictions.) This raises an interesting question: Is it possible that the perceptions of schizophrenics, people tripping on psychedelics, and young children are, at least in certain instances, more accurate—less influenced by expectation and therefore more faithful to reality—than those of sane and sober adults? Before we started, I had cued up the video on my laptop, and now I clicked to run it. The mask on the screen, gray against a black ground, was clearly the product of computer animation and was uncannily consistent with the visual style of the world I’d been in. (During my integration session with Mary the next day, she suggested that it might have been this image on my laptop that had conjured the computer world and trapped me in it. Could there be a better demonstration of the power of set and setting?) As the convex face rotated to reveal its concave back, the mask popped back out, only a bit more slowly than it did before I ate the mushroom. Evidently, Bayesian inference was still operational in my brain. I’d try again later. • • • W HEN I PUT MY EYESHADES back on and lay down, I was disappointed to find myself back in computer world, but something had changed, no doubt the result of the stepped-up dose. Whereas before I navigated this landscape as myself, taking in the scene from a perspective recognizable as my own, with my attitudes intact (highly critical of the music, for instance, and anxious about what demons might appear), now I watched as that familiar self began to fall apart before my eyes, gradually at first and then all at once. “I” now turned into a sheaf of little papers, no bigger than Post-its, and they were being scattered to the wind. But the “I” taking in this seeming catastrophe had no desire to chase after the slips and pile my old self back together. No desires of any kind, in fact. Whoever I now was was fine with whatever happened. No more ego? That was okay, in fact the most natural thing in the world . And then I looked and saw myself out there again, but this time spread over the landscape like paint, or butter, thinly coating a wide expanse of the world with a substance I recognized as me. But who was this “I” that was able to take in the scene of its own dissolution? Good question. It wasn’t me, exactly. Here, the limits of our language become a problem: in order to completely make sense of the divide that had opened up in my perspective, I would need a whole new first-person pronoun. For what was observing the scene was a vantage and mode of awareness entirely distinct from my accustomed self; in fact I hesitate to use the “I” to denote the presiding awareness, it was so different from my usual first person. Where that self had always been a subject encapsulated in this body, this one seemed unbounded by any body, even though I now had access to its perspective. That perspective was supremely indifferent, neutral on all questions of interpretation, and unperturbed even in the face of what should by all rights have been an unmitigated personal disaster. Yet the “personal” had been obliterated. Everything I once was and called me, this self six decades in the making, had been liquefied and dispersed over the scene. What had always been a thinking, feeling, perceiving subject based in here was now an object out there. I was paint! The sovereign ego, with all its armaments and fears, its backward-looking resentments and forward-looking worries, was simply no more, and there was no one left to mourn its passing. Yet something had succeeded it: this bare disembodied awareness, which gazed upon the scene of the self’s dissolution with benign indifference. I was present to reality but as something other than my self. And although there was no self left to feel, exactly, there was a feeling tone, which was calm, unburdened, content. There was life after the death of the ego. This was big news. When I think back on this part of the experience, I’ve occasionally wondered if this enduring awareness might have been the “Mind at Large” that Aldous Huxley described during his mescaline trip in 1953. Huxley never quite defined what he meant by the term—except to speak of “ the totality of the awareness belonging to Mind at Large”—but he seems to be describing a universal, shareable form of consciousness unbounded by any single brain. Others have called it cosmic consciousness, the Oversoul, or Universal Mind. This is supposed to exist outside our brains—as a property of the universe, like light or gravity, and just as pervasive. Constitutive too. Certain individuals at certain times gain access to this awareness, allowing them to perceive reality in its perfected light, at least for a time. Nothing in my experience led me to believe this novel form of consciousness originated outside me; it seems just as plausible, and surely more parsimonious, to assume it was a product of my brain, just like the ego it supplanted. Yet this by itself strikes me as a remarkable gift: that we can let go of so much—the desires, fears, and defenses of a lifetime!—without suffering complete annihilation. This might not come as a surprise to Buddhists, transcendentalists, or experienced meditators, but it was sure news to me, who has never felt anything but identical to my ego. Could it be there is another ground on which to plant our feet? For the first time since embarking on this project, I began to understand what the volunteers in the cancer-anxiety trials had been trying to tell me: how it was that a psychedelic journey had granted them a perspective from which the very worst life can throw at us, up to and including death, could be regarded objectively and accepted with equanimity. • • • A CTUALLY, this understanding arrived a little later, during the last part of my psilocybin trip, when the journey took a darker turn. After spending an unknown number of hours in computer world—for time was completely lost on me—I registered the desire to check back in on reality, and to pee again. Same deal: Mary guided me to the bathroom by the elbow, geriatrically, and left me there to produce another spectacular crop of diamonds. But this time I dared to look in the mirror. What looked back at me was a human skull, but for the thinnest, palest layer of skin stretched over it, tight as a drum. The bathroom was decorated in a Mexican folk art theme, and the head/skull immediately put me in mind of the Day of the Dead. With its deep sockets and lightning bolt of vein zigzagging down its temple on one side, I recognized this ashen head/skull as my own but at the same time as my dead grandfather’s. This was surprising, if only because Bob, my father’s father, is not someone with whom I ever felt much in common. In fact I loved him for all the ways he seemed unlike me—or anyone else I knew. Bob was a preternaturally sunny and seemingly uncomplicated man incapable of thinking ill of anyone or seeing evil in the world. (His wife, Harriet, amply compensated for his generosity of spirit.) Bob had a long career as a liquor salesman, making the weekly rounds of the nightclubs in Times Square for a company that everyone but he knew was owned by the mob. Upon reaching the age I am now, he retired to become a painter of lovely naive landscapes and abstractions in spectacular colors; I’d brought one of them with me to Mary’s room, along with a watercolor of Judith’s. Bob was a genuinely happy, angst-free man who lived to be ninety-six, his paintings becoming ever more colorful, abstract, and free toward the end. To see him so vividly in my reflection was chilling. A few years before, visiting Bob in the nursing home in the Colorado desert where he would soon die, I’d watched what had been a fit and vigorous man (it had been his habit to stand on his head every day well into his eighties) contract into a parenthesis of skin and bones marooned in a tiny bed. The esophageal muscles required to swallow had given out, and he was tethered to a feeding tube. By then, his situation was pitiful in so many respects, but for some reason I fixed on the fact that never again would a taste of food ever cross his lips. I splashed cold water on our joint face and made my unsteady way back to Mary. Risking another glance at her, this time I was rewarded by the sight of a ravishing young woman, blond once again but now in the full radiance of youth. Mary was so beautiful I had to look away. She gave me another small mushroom—gram number four—and a piece of chocolate. Before I put on my eyeshade, I attempted to conduct the rotating mask test a second time . . . and it was a complete bust, neither confirming nor disproving the hypothesis. As the mask began to rotate, gradually bringing its back side into view, the whole thing dissolved into a gray jelly that slid down the screen of my laptop before I could determine whether the melting mask I was watching was convex or concave. So much for conducting psychological experiments while tripping. I put on my eyeshades and sank back down into what now became a cracked and parched desert landscape dense with artifacts and images of death. Bleached skulls and bones and the faces of the familiar dead passed before me, aunts and uncles and grandparents, friends and teachers and my father-in-law—with a voice telling me I had failed to properly mourn all of them. It was true. I had never really reckoned the death of any one in my life; something had always gotten in the way. I could do it here and now and did. I looked hard at each of their faces, one after another, with a pity that seemed bottomless but with no fear whatsoever. Except once, when I came to my aunt Ruthellen and watched, horrified, as her face slowly transformed into Judith’s. Ruthellen and Judith were both artists, and both had been diagnosed with breast cancer around the same time. The cancer had killed Ruthellen and spared Judith. So what was Judith doing down here among the unmourned dead? Had I been defending myself against that possibility all this time? Heart wide open, defenses melting, the tears began to flow. • • • I ’VE LEFT OUT one important part of my journey to the underworld: the soundtrack. Before going back under for this last passage, I had asked Mary to please stop playing spa music and put on something classical. We settled on the second of Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites, performed by Yo-Yo Ma. The suite in D minor is a spare and mournful piece that I’d heard many times before, often at funerals, but until this moment I had never truly listened to it. Though “listen” doesn’t begin to describe what transpired between me and the vibrations of air set in motion by the four strings of that cello. Never before has a piece of music pierced me as deeply as this one did now. Though even to call it “music” is to diminish what now began to flow, which was nothing less than the stream of human consciousness, something in which one might glean the very meaning of life and, if you could bear it, read life’s last chapter. (A question formed: Why don’t we play music like this at births as well as funerals? And the answer came immediately: there is too much life-already-lived in this piece, and poignancy for the passing of time that no birth, no beginning, could possibly withstand it.) Four hours and four grams of magic mushroom into the journey, this is where I lost whatever ability I still had to distinguish subject from object, tell apart what remained of me and what was Bach’s music. Instead of Emerson’s transparent eyeball, egoless and one with all it beheld, I became a transparent ear, indistinguishable from the stream of sound that flooded my consciousness until there was nothing else in it, not even a dry tiny corner in which to plant an I and observe. Opened to the music, I became first the strings, could feel on my skin the exquisite friction of the horsehair rubbing over me, and then the breeze of sound flowing past as it crossed the lips of the instrument and went out to meet the world, beginning its lonely transit of the universe. Then I passed down into the resonant black well of space inside the cello, the vibrating envelope of air formed by the curves of its spruce roof and maple walls. The instrument’s wooden interior formed a mouth capable of unparalleled eloquence—indeed, of articulating everything a human could conceive. But the cello’s interior also formed a room to write in and a skull in which to think and I was now it, with no remainder. So I became the cello and mourned with it for the twenty or so minutes it took for that piece to, well, change everything. Or so it seemed; now, its vibrations subsiding, I’m less certain. But for the duration of those exquisite moments, Bach’s cello suite had had the unmistakable effect of reconciling me to death—to the deaths of the people now present to me, Bob’s and Ruthellen’s and Roy’s, Judith’s father’s, and so many others, but also to the deaths to come and to my own, no longer so far off. Losing myself in this music was a kind of practice for that—for losing myself, period. Having let go of the rope of self and slipped into the warm waters of this worldly beauty—Bach’s sublime music, I mean, and Yo-Yo Ma’s bow caressing those four strings suspended over that envelope of air—I felt as though I’d passed beyond the reach of suffering and regret. • • • T HAT WAS MY PSILOCYBIN JOURNEY, as faithfully as I can recount it. As I read those words now, doubt returns in full force: “Fool, you were on drugs!” And it’s true: you can put the experience in that handy box and throw it away, never to dwell on it again. No doubt this has been the fate of countless psychedelic journeys that their travelers didn’t quite know what to do with, or failed to make sense of. Yet though it is true that a chemical launched me on this journey, it is also true that everything I experienced I experienced: these are events that took place in my mind, psychological facts that were neither weightless nor evanescent. Unlike most dreams, the traces these experiences inscribed remain indelible and accessible. The day after my journey I was glad for the opportunity to return to Mary’s room for a couple of hours of “integration.” I hoped to make sense of what happened by telling the story of my trip and hearing her thoughts about it. What you’ve just read is the result, and the beneficiary, of that work, for immediately after the journey I was much more confused by it than I am now. What now reads like a reasonably coherent narrative highlighting certain themes began as a jumble of disjointed images and shards of sense. To put words to an experience that was in fact ineffable at the time, and then to shape them into sentences and then a story, is inevitably to do it a kind of violence. But the alternative is, literally, unthinkable. Mary had taken apart the altar, but we sat in the same chairs, facing each other across a small table. Twenty-four hours later, what had I learned? That I had had no reason to be afraid: no sleeping monsters had awakened in my unconscious and turned on me. This was a deep fear that went back several decades, to a terrifying moment in a hotel room in Seattle when, alone and having smoked too much cannabis, I had had to marshal every last ounce of will to keep myself from doing something deeply crazy and irrevocable. But here in this room I had let down my guard completely, and nothing terrible had happened. The serpent of madness that I worried might be waiting had not surfaced or pulled me under. Did this mean it didn’t exist, that I was psychologically sturdier than I believed? Maybe that’s what the episode with Bob was all about: maybe I was more like him than I knew, and not nearly as deep or complicated as I liked to think. (Can a recognition of one’s shallowness qualify as a profound insight?) Mary wasn’t so sure: “You bring a different self to the journey every time.” The demons might rouse themselves the next time. That I could survive the dissolution of my ego without struggle or turning into a puddle was something to be grateful for, but even better was the discovery that there might be another vantage—one less neurotic and more generous—from which to take in reality. “That alone seems worth the price of admission,” Mary offered, and I had to agree. Yet, twenty-four hours later, my old ego was back in uniform and on patrol, so what long-term good was that beguiling glimpse of a loftier perspective? Mary suggested that having had a taste of a different, less defended way to be, I might learn, through practice, to relax the ego’s trigger-happy command of my reactions to people and events. “Now you have had an experience of another way to react—or not react. That can be cultivated.” Meditation, she suggested, was one way to do that. It is, I think, precisely this perspective that had allowed so many of the volunteers I interviewed to overcome their fears and anxieties, and in the case of the smokers, their addictions. Temporarily freed from the tyranny of the ego, with its maddeningly reflexive reactions and its pinched conception of one’s self-interest, we get to experience an extreme version of Keats’s “negative capability”—the ability to exist amid doubts and mysteries without reflexively reaching for certainty. To cultivate this mode of consciousness, with its exceptional degree of selflessness (literally!), requires us to transcend our subjectivity or—it comes to the same thing—widen its circle so far that it takes in, besides ourselves, other people and, beyond that, all of nature. Now I understood how a psychedelic could help us to make precisely that move, from the first-person singular to the plural and beyond. Under its influence, a sense of our interconnectedness— that platitude—is felt, becomes flesh. Though this perspective is not something a chemical can sustain for more than a few hours, those hours can give us an opportunity to see how it might go. And perhaps to practice being there. I left Mary’s loft in high spirits, but also with the feeling I was holding on to something precious by the thinnest, most tenuous of threads. It seemed doubtful I could maintain my grip on this outlook for the rest of the day, much less the rest of my life, but it also seemed worth trying. Trip Three: 5-MeO-DMT (or, The Toad) Yes, “the toad,” or to be more precise, the smoked venom of the Sonoran Desert toad ( Incilius alvarius ) , also called the Colorado River toad, which contains a molecule called 5-MeO-DMT that is one of the most potent and fast-acting psychotropic drugs there is. No, I had never heard of it either. It is so obscure, in fact, that the federal government did not list 5-MeO-DMT as a controlled substance until 2011. The opportunity to smoke the toad popped up suddenly, giving me very little time to decide if doing so was crazy or not. I got a call from one of my sources, a woman who was training to become a certified psychedelic guide, inviting me to meet her friend Rocío, a thirty-five-year-old Mexican therapist whom she described as “probably the world’s leading expert on the toad.” (Though how intense, really, could the competition for that title be?) Rocío is from the state of Sonora, in northern Mexico, where she collects the toads and milks their venom; she administers the medicine to people both in Mexico, where its legal status is gray, and in the United States, where it isn’t. (It doesn’t appear to be on the official radar, however.) Rocío worked in a clinic in Mexico that treated drug addicts with a combination of iboga, a psychedelic plant from Africa, and 5-MeO-DMT—apparently with striking rates of success. In recent years, she’s become the Johnny Appleseed of toad, traveling all over North America with her capsules of crystallized venom and her vaporizer. As my circle of psychonauts expanded, most anyone I met who’d had an encounter with the toad had been introduced to it by Rocío. The first time I met Rocío, at a small dinner organized by our mutual friend, she told me about the toad and what I might expect from it. Rocío was petite, pretty, and fashionably dressed, her shoulder-length black hair cut to frame her face with bangs. She has an easy smile that brings out a dimple on one cheek. Not at all what I expected, Rocío looked less the part of a shaman or curandera than that of an urban professional. After going to college and working for a few years in the United States, five years ago Rocío found herself back at home in Mexico living with her parents and without direction. Online, she found a manual about the toad, which she learned was native to the local desert. (Its habitat extends the length of the Sonoran Desert north into Arizona.) Nine months of the year, the toad lives underground, protected from the desert sun and heat, but when the winter rains come, it emerges at night from its burrow for a brief orgy of eating and copulation. Following the instructions spelled out in the manual, Rocío strapped on a headlamp and went hunting for toads. “They’re not very hard to catch,” she told me. “They freeze in the beam of light so you can just grab them.” The toads, which are warty, sand colored, and roughly the size of a man’s hand, have a large gland on each side of their necks, and smaller ones on their legs. “You gently squeeze the gland while holding a mirror in front of it to catch the spray.” The toad is apparently none the worse for being milked. Overnight, the venom dries on the glass, turning into flaky crystals the color of brown sugar. In its natural state, the venom is toxic—a defense chemical sprayed by the toad when it feels threatened. But when the crystals are volatilized, the toxins are destroyed, leaving behind the 5-MeO-DMT. Rocío vaporizes the crystals in a glass pipe while the recipient inhales; before you’ve had a chance to exhale, you are gone. “The toad comes on quickly, and at first it can be unbelievably intense.” I noticed that Rocío personified the toad and seldom called the medicine by its molecular name. “Some people remain perfectly still. Other people scream and flail, especially when the toad brings out traumas, which it can do. A few people will vomit. And then after twenty or thirty minutes, the toad is all done and it leaves.” My first instinct when facing such a decision is to read as much about it as I can, and later that night Rocío e-mailed me a few articles. But the pickings were slim. Unlike most other psychedelics, which by now have been extensively studied by scientists and, in many cases, in use for hundreds if not thousands of years, the toad has been known to Western science only since 1992. That’s when Andrew Weil and Wade Davis published a paper called “Identity of a New World Psychoactive Toad.” They had been inspired to look for such a fantastical creature by the images of frogs in Mayan art. But the only psychoactive toad they could find lives far to the north of Mayan civilization. It’s possible that these toads became an item of trade, but as yet there is no proof that the practice of smoking toad venom has any antiquity whatsoever. However, 5-MeO-DMT also occurs in a handful of South American plants, and there are several Amazonian tribes who pound these plants into a snuff for use in shamanic rituals. Among some of these tribes, these snuffs are known as the “semen of the sun.” I couldn’t find much in the way of solid medical information about potential side effects or dangerous drug interactions; little research has been done. What I did find were plenty of trip reports online, and many of these were terrifying. I also learned there was someone in town, a friend of a friend I had met a few times at dinner parties, who had tried 5-MeO-DMT—not the toad but a synthetic version of the active ingredient. I took her out to lunch to see what I could learn. “This is the Everest of psychedelics,” she began, portentously, putting a steadying hand on my forearm. Olivia is in her early fifties, a management consultant with a couple of kids; I had vaguely known she was into Eastern religion but had no idea she was a psychonaut, too. “You need to be prepared.” Over grilled cheeses, she described a harrowing onset. “I was shot out into an infinite realm of pure being. There were no figures in this world, no entities of any kind, just pure being. And it was huge; I didn’t know what infinity was before this. But it was a two-dimensional realm, not three, and after the rush of liftoff, I found myself installed in this infinite space as a star. I remember thinking, if this is death, I’m fine with it. It was . . . bliss. I had the feeling—no, the knowledge —that every single thing there is is made of love. “After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only minutes, you start to reassemble and come back into your body. I had the thought, ‘There are children to raise. And there is an infinite amount of time to be dead.’” I asked her the question that gnawed at me whenever someone recounted such a mystical experience: “How can you be sure this was a genuine spiritual event and not just a drug experience?” “It’s an irrelevant question,” she replied coolly. “This was something being revealed to me.” There it was: the noetic sense William James had described as a mark of the mystical experience. I envied Olivia’s certainty. Which I suppose is the reason I decided I would smoke the toad. • • • T HE NIGHT BEFORE my date with Rocío was, predictably, sleepless. Yes, I’d come through these first two trips intact, grateful, even, for having gone on them, and had come away with the idea I was stronger, physically and mentally, than I had previously thought. But now all the old fears rushed back, assailing me through the long fitful night. Everest! Could my heart take the intensity of those first harrowing moments of ascent? What were the chances I’d go mad? Slim, perhaps, but surely not zero. So was this an absolutely insane thing to do? On the plus side, I figured, whatever happened, it would all be over in half an hour. On the negative side, every thing might be over in half an hour. As the sun came up, I decided I would decide when I got there. Rocío, whom I’d made aware of my trepidations, had offered to let me watch her work with someone else before it was my turn. This proved reassuring, as she knew it would. The guy before me, a supremely low-affect college student who had done the toad once before, took a puff from Rocío’s pipe, lay back on a mattress, and embarked on what appeared to be a placid thirty-minute nap, during which he exhibited no signs of distress, let alone existential terror. After it was over, he seemed perfectly fine. A great deal had gone on in his mind, he indicated, but from the looks of it, his body had scarcely been perturbed. Okay then. Death or madness seemed much less likely. I could do this. After positioning me on the mattress just so, Rocío had me sit up while she loaded a premeasured capsule of the crystals into a glass vial that she then screwed onto the barrel of the pipe. She asked me to give thanks to the toad and think about my intention. (Something fairly generic about learning whatever the toad had to teach me.) Rocío lit a butane flame underneath the vial and instructed me to draw on the pipe in short sips of air as the white smoke swirled and then filled the glass. “Then one big final draw that I want you to hold as long as you can.” I have no memory of ever having exhaled, or of being lowered onto the mattress and covered with a blanket. All at once I felt a tremendous rush of energy fill my head accompanied by a punishing roar. I managed, barely, to squeeze out the words I had prepared, “trust” and “surrender.” These words became my mantra, but they seemed utterly pathetic, wishful scraps of paper in the face of this category 5 mental storm. Terror seized me—and then, like one of those flimsy wooden houses erected on Bikini Atoll to be blown up in the nuclear tests, “I” was no more, blasted to a confetti cloud by an explosive force I could no longer locate in my head, because it had exploded that too, expanding to become all that there was. Whatever this was, it was not a hallucination. A hallucination implies a reality and a point of reference and an entity to have it. None of those things remained. Unfortunately, the terror didn’t disappear with the extinction of my “I.” Whatever allowed me to register this experience, the post-egoic awareness I’d first experienced on mushrooms, was now consumed in the flames of terror too. In fact every touchstone that tells us “I exist” was annihilated, and yet I remained conscious. “Is this what death feels like? Could this be it?” That was the thought, though there was no longer a thinker to have it. Here words fail. In truth, there were no flames, no blast, no thermonuclear storm; I’m grasping at metaphor in the hope of forming some stable and shareable concept of what was unfolding in my mind. In the event, there was no coherent thought, just pure and terrible sensation. Only afterward did I wonder if this was what the mystics call the mysterium tremendum— the blinding unendurable mystery (whether of God or some other Ultimate or Absolute) before which humans tremble in awe. Huxley described it as the fear “ of being overwhelmed, of disintegrating under a pressure of reality greater than a mind, accustomed to living most of the time in a cosy world of symbols, could possibly bear.” Oh, to be back in the cozy world of symbols! After the fact I kept returning to one of two metaphors, and while they inevitably deform the experience, * as any words or metaphors or symbols must, they at least allow me to grasp hold of a shadow of it and, perhaps, share it. The first is the image of being on the outside of a rocket after launch. I’m holding on with both hands, legs clenched around it, while the rapidly mounting g-forces clutch at my flesh, pulling my face down into a taut grimace, as the great cylinder rises through successive layers of clouds, exponentially gaining speed and altitude, the fuselage shuddering on the brink of self-destruction as it strains to break free from Earth’s grip, while the friction it generates as it crashes through the thinning air issues in a deafening roar. It was a little like that . The other metaphor was the big bang, but the big bang run in reverse, from our familiar world all the way back to a point before there was anything, no time or space or matter, only the pure unbounded energy that was all there was then, before an imperfection, a ripple in its waveform, caused the universe of energy to fall into time, space, and matter. Rushing backward through fourteen billion years, I watched the dimensions of reality collapse one by one until there was nothing left, not even being. Only the all-consuming roar. It was just horrible. And then suddenly the devolution of everything into the nothingness of pure force reverses course. One by one, the elements of our universe begin to reconstitute themselves: the dimensions of time and space returned first, blessing my still-scattered confetti brain with the cozy coordinates of place; this is somewhere! And then I slipped back into my familiar “I” like an old pair of slippers and soon after felt something I recognized as my body begin to reassemble. The film of reality was now running in reverse, as if all the leaves that the thermonuclear blast had blown off the great tree of being and scattered to the four winds were suddenly to find their way back, fly up into the welcoming limbs of reality, and reattach. The order of things was being restored, me notably included. I was alive! The descent and reentry into familiar reality was swifter than I expected. Having undergone the shuddering agony of launch, I had expected to be deposited, weightless, into orbit—my installation in the firmament as a blissed-out star! Alas. Like those first Mercury astronauts, my flight remained suborbital, describing an arc that only kissed the serenity of infinite space before falling back down to Earth. And yet as I felt myself reconstitute as a self and then a body, something for which I now sought confirmation by running my hands along my legs and squirming beneath the blanket, I felt ecstatic—as happy as I can remember ever feeling. But this ecstasy was not sui generis, not exactly. It was more like the equal and opposite reaction to the terror I had just endured, less of a divine gift than the surge of pleasure that comes from the cessation of unendurable pain. But a sense of relief so vast and deep as to be cosmic. With the rediscovery of my body, I felt an inexplicable urge to lift my knees, and as soon as I raised them, I felt something squeeze out from between my legs, but easily and without struggle or pain. It was a boy: the infant me. That seemed exactly right: having died, I was now being reborn. Yet as soon as I looked closely at this new being, it morphed smoothly into Isaac, my son. And I thought, how fortunate—how astounding!—for a father to experience the perfect physical intimacy that heretofore only mothers have ever had with their babies. Whatever space had ever intervened between my son and me now closed, and I could feel the warm tears sliding down my cheeks. Next came an overwhelming wave of gratitude. For what? For once again existing, yes, for the existence of Isaac and Judith too, but also for something even more fundamental: I felt for the first time gratitude for the very fact of being, that there is anything whatsoever. Rather than being necessarily the case, this now seemed quite the miracle, and something I resolved never again to take for granted. Everybody gives thanks for “being alive,” but who stops to offer thanks for the bare-bones gerund that comes before “alive”? I had just come from a place where being was no more and now vowed never to forget what a gift (and mystery) it is, that there is something rather than nothing. I had entered a familiar and more congenial mental space, one in which I was still tripping but could put together thoughts and direct them here or there. (I make no claims as to their quality.) Before I drew the smoke into my lungs, Rocío had asked me, as she asks everyone who meets the toad, to search the experience for a “peace offering”—some idea or resolution I could bring back and put to good use in my life. Mine, I decided, had to do with this question of being and what I took to be its opposite term, “doing.” I meditated on this duality, which came to seem momentous, and concluded that I was too much occupied with the latter term in my life and not enough with the former. True, one had to favor doing in order to get anything done, but wasn’t there also a great virtue and psychic benefit in simply being? In contemplation rather than action? I decided I needed to practice being with stillness, being with other people as I find them (imperfect), and being with my own unimproved self. To savor whatever is at this very moment, without trying to change it or even describe it. (Huxley struggled with the same aspiration during his mescaline journey: “ If one always saw like this, one would never want to do anything else.”) Even now, borne along on this pleasant contemplative stream, I had to resist the urge to drag myself onto shore and tell Rocío about my big breakthrough. No! I had to remind myself: just be with it. Judith and I had had a fight the previous night that, I realized, turned on this distinction, and on my impatience with being. She was complaining about something she doesn’t like about her life, and rather than simply commiserate, being with her and her dilemma, I immediately went to the checklist of practical things she might do to fix it. But this was not at all what she wanted or needed, and she got angry. Now I could see with perfect clarity why my attempt to be helpful had been so hurtful. So that was my peace offering: to be more and do less. But as soon as I put it that way, I realized there was a problem—a big problem, in fact. For wasn’t the very act of resolving to favor being a form of doing? A betrayal of the whole idea? A true connoisseur of being would never dream of making resolutions! I had tied myself up in a philosophical knot, constructed a paradox or koan I was clearly not smart enough or sufficiently enlightened to untangle. And so what had begun as one of the most shattering experiences of my life ended half an hour later with a wan smile. • • • E VEN NOW, many months later, I still don’t know exactly what to make of this last trip. Its violent narrative arc—that awful climax followed so swiftly by such a sweet denouement—upended the form of a story or journey. It lacked the beginning, middle, and end that all my previous trips had had and that we rely on to make sense of experience. That and its mind-bending velocity made it difficult to extract much information or knowledge from the journey, except for the (classic) psychedelic platitude about the importance of being. (A few days after my encounter with the toad, I happened on an old e-mail from James Fadiman that ended, uncannily, with these words, which you should picture arranged on the screen like a poem: “I hope whatever you’re doing, / you’re stopping now and then / and / not doing it at all.”) The integration had been cursory, leaving me to puzzle out the toad’s teachings, such as they were, on my own. Had I had any sort of a spiritual or mystical experience? Or was what took place in my mind merely the epiphenomenon of these strange molecules? (Or was it both?) Olivia’s words echoed: “It’s an irrelevant question. This was something being revealed to me.” What, if anything, had been revealed to me? Not sure exactly where to begin, I realized it might be useful to measure my experiences against those of the volunteers in the Hopkins and NYU studies. I decided to fill out one of the Mystical Experience Questionnaires (MEQs) * that the scientists had their subjects complete, hoping to learn if mine qualified. The MEQ asked me to rank a list of thirty mental phenomena—thoughts, images, and sensations that psychologists and philosophers regard as typical of a mystical experience. (The questionnaire draws on the work of William James, W. T. Stace, and Walter Pahnke.) “Looking back on the entirety of your session, please rate the degree to which at any time . . . you experienced the following phenomena” using a six-point scale. (From zero, for “none at all,” to five, for extreme: “more than any other time in my life.”) Some items were easy to rate: “Loss of your usual sense of time.” Check; five. “Experience of amazement.” Uh-huh. Another five. “Sense that the experience cannot be described adequately in words.” Yup. Five again. “Gain of insightful knowledge experienced at an intuitive level.” Hmmm. I guess the platitude about being would qualify. Maybe a three? But I was unsure what to do with this one: “Feeling that you experienced eternity or infinity.” The language implies something more positive than what I felt when time vanished and terror took hold; NA, I decided. The “experience of the fusion of your personal self into a larger whole” also seemed like an overly nice way to put the sensation of becoming one with a nuclear blast. It seemed less fusion than fission, but okay. I gave it a four. And what to do with this one? “Certainty of encounter with ultimate reality (in the sense of being able to ‘know’ and ‘see’ what is really real at some point in your experience).” I might have emerged from the experience with certain convictions (the one about being and doing, say), but these hardly seemed like encounters with “ultimate reality,” whatever that is. Similarly, a few other items made me want to throw up my hands: “Feeling that you experienced something profoundly sacred and holy” (No) or “Experience of the insight ‘all is One’” (Yes, but not in a good way; in the midst of that all-consuming mind storm, there was nothing I missed more than differentiation and multiplicity). Struggling to assign ratings to a handful of such items, I felt the survey pulling me in the direction of a conclusion that was not at all consistent with what I felt. But when I tallied my score, I was surprised: I had scored a sixty-one, one point over the threshold for a “complete” mystical experience. I had squeaked through. So that was a mystical experience? It didn’t feel at all like what I expected a mystical experience to be. I concluded that the MEQ was a poor net for capturing my encounter with the toad. The result was psychological bycatch, I decided, and should probably be tossed out. Yet I wonder if my dissatisfaction with the survey had something to do with the intrinsic nature—the sheer intensity and bizarre shape—of the toad experience, for which it wasn’t designed, after all. Because when I used the same survey to evaluate my psilocybin journey, the fit seemed much better and rating the phenomena much easier. Reflecting just on the cello interlude, for example, I could easily confirm the “fusion of [my] personal self into a larger whole,” as well as the “feeling that [I] experienced something profoundly sacred and holy” and “of being at a spiritual height” and even the “experience of unity with ultimate reality.” Yes, yes, yes, and yes—provided, that is, my endorsement of those loaded adjectives doesn’t imply any belief in a supernatural reality. My psilocybin journey with Mary yielded a sixty-six on the Mystical Experience Questionnaire. For some reason, I felt stupidly proud of my score. (There I was again, doing being.) It had been my objective to have such an experience, and at least according to the scientists a mystical experience I had had. Yet it had brought me no closer to a belief in God or in a cosmic form of consciousness or in anything magical at all—all of which I might have been, unreasonably, expecting (hoping?) it might do. Still, there was no question that something novel and profound had happened to me—something I am prepared to call spiritual, though only with an asterisk. I guess I’ve always assumed that spirituality implied a belief or faith I’ve never shared and from which it supposedly flows. But now I wondered, is this always or necessarily the case? Only in the wake of my journeys have I been able to unravel the paradox that had so perplexed me when I interviewed Dinah Bazer, a NYU cancer patient who began and ended her psilocybin experience an avowed atheist. During the climax of a journey that extinguished her fear of death, Bazer described “being bathed in God’s love,” and yet she emerged with her atheism intact. How could someone hold those two warring ideas in the same brain? I think I get it now. Not only was the flood of love she experienced ineffably powerful, but it was unattributable to any individual or worldly cause, and so was purely gratuitous—a form of grace. So how to convey the magnitude of such a gift? “God” might be the only word in the language big enough. Part of the problem I was having evaluating my own experience had to do with another big and loaded word—“mystical”—implying as it does an experience beyond the reach of ordinary comprehension or science. It reeks of the supernatural. Yet I think it would be wrong to discard the mystical, if only because so much work has been done by so many great minds—over literally thousands of years—to find the words for this extraordinary human experience and make sense of it. When we read the testimony of these minds, we find a striking commonality in their descriptions, even if we civilians can’t quite understand what in the world (or out of it) they’re talking about. According to scholars of mysticism, these shared traits generally include a vision of unity in which all things, including the self, are subsumed (expressed in the phrase “All is one”); a sense of certainty about what one has perceived (“Knowledge has been revealed to me”); feelings of joy, blessedness, and satisfaction; a transcendence of the categories we rely on to organize the world, such as time and space or self and other; a sense that whatever has been apprehended is somehow sacred (Wordsworth: “Something far more deeply interfused” with meaning) and often paradoxical (so while the self may vanish, awareness abides). Last is the conviction that the experience is ineffable, even as thousands of words are expended in the attempt to communicate its power. (Guilty.) Before my journeys, words and phrases such as these left me cold; they seemed utterly opaque, so much quasi-religious mumbo jumbo. Now they paint a recognizable reality. Likewise, certain mystical passages from literature that once seemed so overstated and abstract that I read them indulgently (if at all), now I can read as a subspecies of journalism. Here are three nineteenth-century examples, but you can find them in any century. Ralph Waldo Emerson crossing a wintry New England commons in “Nature”: Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. Or Walt Whitman, in the early lines of the first (much briefer and more mystical) edition of Leaves of Grass : Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all the art and argument of the earth; And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers . . . and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson * of the creation is love. And here is Alfred, Lord Tennyson, describing in a letter the “waking trance” that descended upon him from time to time since his boyhood: All at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade into boundless being; and this was not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest; utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility; the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. What had changed for me was that now I understood exactly what these writers were talking about: their own mystical experiences, however achieved, however interpreted. Formerly inert, their words now emitted a new ray of relation, or at least I was now in a position to receive it. Such emissions had always been present in our world, flowing through literature and religion, but like electromagnetic waves they couldn’t be understood without some kind of receiver. I had become such a one. A phrase like “boundless being,” which once I might have skated past as overly abstract and hyperbolic, now communicated something specific and even familiar. A door had opened for me onto a realm of human experience that for sixty years had been closed. * But had I earned the right to go through that door, enter into that conversation? I don’t know about Emerson’s mystical experience (or Whitman’s or Tennyson’s), but mine owed to a chemical. Wasn’t that cheating? Perhaps not: it seems likely that all mental experiences are mediated by chemicals in the brain, even the most seemingly “transcendent.” How much should the genealogy of these chemicals matter? It turns out the very same molecules flow through the natural world and the human brain, linking us all together in a vast watershed of tryptamines. Are these exogenous molecules any less miraculous? (When they come from a mushroom or a plant or a toad !) It’s worth remembering that there are many cultures where the fact that the inspiration for visionary experiences comes from nature, is the gift of other creatures, renders them more meaningful, not less. My own interpretation of what I experienced—my now officially verified mystical experience—remains a work in progress, still in search of the right words. But I have no problem using the word “spiritual” to describe elements of what I saw and felt, as long as it is not taken in a supernatural sense. For me, “spiritual” is a good name for some of the powerful mental phenomena that arise when the voice of the ego is muted or silenced. If nothing else, these journeys have shown me how that psychic construct—at once so familiar and on reflection so strange—stands between us and some striking new dimensions of experience, whether of the world outside us or of the mind within. The journeys have shown me what the Buddhists try to tell us but I have never really understood: that there is much more to consciousness than the ego, as we would see if it would just shut up. And that its dissolution (or transcendence) is nothing to fear; in fact, it is a prerequisite for making any spiritual progress. But the ego, that inner neurotic who insists on running the mental show, is wily and doesn’t relinquish its power without a struggle. Deeming itself indispensable, it will battle against its diminishment, whether in advance or in the middle of the journey. I suspect that’s exactly what mine was up to all through the sleepless nights that preceded each of my trips, striving to convince me that I was risking everything, when really all I was putting at risk was its sovereignty. When Huxley speaks of the mind’s “reducing valve”—the faculty that eliminates as much of the world from our conscious awareness as it lets in—he is talking about the ego. That stingy, vigilant security guard admits only the narrowest bandwidth of reality, “a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive.” It’s really good at performing all those activities that natural selection values: getting ahead, getting liked and loved, getting fed, getting laid. Keeping us on task, it is a ferocious editor of anything that might distract us from the work at hand, whether that means regulating our access to memories and strong emotions from within or news of the world without. What of the world it does admit it tends to objectify, for the ego wants to reserve the gifts of subjectivity to itself. That’s why it fails to see that there is a whole world of souls and spirits out there, by which I simply mean subjectivities other than our own. It was only when the voice of my ego was quieted by psilocybin that I was able to sense that the plants in my garden had a spirit too. (In the words of R. M. Bucke, a nineteenth-century Canadian psychiatrist and mystic, “ I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence.”) “Ecology” and “coevolution” are scientific names for the same phenomena: every species a subject acting on other subjects. But when this concept acquires the flesh of feeling, becomes “more deeply interfused,” as it did during my first psilocybin journey, I’m happy to call it a spiritual experience. So too my various psychedelic mergings: with Bach’s cello suite, with my son, Isaac, with my grandfather Bob, all spirits directly apprehended and embraced, each time with a flood of feeling. So perhaps spiritual experience is simply what happens in the space that opens up in the mind when “all mean egotism vanishes.” Wonders (and terrors) we’re ordinarily defended against flow into our awareness; the far ends of the sensory spectrum, which are normally invisible to us, our senses can suddenly admit. While the ego sleeps, the mind plays, proposing unexpected patterns of thought and new rays of relation. The gulf between self and world, that no-man’s-land which in ordinary hours the ego so vigilantly patrols, closes down, allowing us to feel less separate and more connected, “part and particle” of some larger entity. Whether we call that entity Nature, the Mind at Large, or God hardly matters. But it seems to be in the crucible of that merging that death loses some of its sting. CHAPTER FIVE THE NEUROSCIENCE Your Brain on Psychedelics W HAT JUST HAPPENED in my brain ? A molecule had launched me on each of these trips, and I returned from my travels intensely curious to learn what the chemistry could tell me about consciousness and what that might reveal about the brain’s relationship to the mind. How do you get from the ingestion of a compound created by a fungus or a toad (or a human chemist) to a novel state of consciousness with the power to change one’s perspective on things, not just during the journey, but long after the molecule has left the body? Actually, there were three different molecules in question—psilocin, LSD, and 5-MeO-DMT—but even a casual glance at their structures (and I say this as someone who earned a D in high school chemistry) indicates a resemblance. All three molecules are tryptamines. A tryptamine is a type of organic compound (an indole, to be exact) distinguished by the presence of two linked rings, one of them with six atoms and the other with five. Living nature is awash in tryptamines, which show up in plants, fungi, and animals, where they typically act as signaling molecules between cells. The most famous tryptamine in the human body is the neurotransmitter serotonin, the chemical name of which is 5-hydroxytryptamine. It is no coincidence that this molecule has a strong family resemblance with the psychedelic molecules. Serotonin might be famous, as neurotransmitters go, yet much about it remains a mystery. For example, it binds with a dozen or so different receptors, and these are found not only across many parts of the brain but throughout the body, with a substantial representation in the digestive tract. Depending on the type of receptor in question and its location, serotonin is liable to make very different things happen—sometimes exciting a neuron to fire, other times inhibiting it. Think of it as a kind of word, the meaning or import of which can change radically depending on the context or even its placement in a sentence. The group of tryptamines we call “the classical psychedelics” have a strong affinity with one particular type of serotonin receptor, called the 5-HT 2A . These receptors are found in large numbers in the human cortex, the outermost, and evolutionarily most recent, layer of the brain. Basically, the psychedelics resemble serotonin closely enough that they can attach themselves to this receptor site in such a way as to activate it to do various things. Curiously, LSD has an even stronger affinity with the 5-HT 2A receptor—is “stickier”—than serotonin itself, making this an instance where the simulacrum is more convincing, chemically, than the original. This has led some scientists to speculate that the human body must produce some other, more bespoke chemical for the express purpose of activating the 5-HT 2A receptor—perhaps an endogenous psychedelic that is released under certain circumstances, perhaps when dreaming. One candidate for that chemical is the psychedelic molecule DMT, which has been found in trace amounts in the pineal gland of rats. The science of serotonin and LSD has been closely intertwined since the 1950s; in fact, it was the discovery that LSD affected consciousness at such infinitesimal doses that helped to advance the new field of neurochemistry in the 1950s, leading to the development of the SSRI antidepressants. But it wasn’t until 1998 that Franz Vollenweider, a Swiss researcher who is one of the pioneers of psychedelic neuroscience, demonstrated that psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin work on the human brain by binding with the 5-HT 2A receptors. He did this by giving subjects a drug called ketanserin that blocks the receptor; when he then administered psilocybin, nothing happened. Yet Vollenweider’s discovery, important as it was, is but a small step on the long (and winding) road from psychedelic chemistry to psychedelic consciousness. The 5-HT 2A receptor might be the lock on the door to the mind that those three molecules unlock, but how did that chemical opening lead, ultimately, to what I felt and experienced? To the dissolution of my ego, for example, and the collapse of any distinction between subject and object? Or to the morphing in my mind’s eye of Mary into María Sabina? Put another way, what, if anything, can brain chemistry tell us about the “phenomenology” of the psychedelic experience? All these questions concern the contents of consciousness, of course, which at least to this point has eluded the tools of neuroscience. By consciousness, I don’t mean simply “being conscious”—the basic sensory awareness creatures have of changes in their environment, which is easy to measure experimentally. In this limited sense, even plants are “conscious,” though it’s doubtful they possess full-blown consciousness. What neuroscientists and philosophers and psychologists mean by consciousness is the unmistakable sense we have that we are, or possess, a self that has experiences. Sigmund Freud wrote that “ there is nothing of which we are more certain than the feeling of our self, our own ego.” Yet it is difficult to be quite so certain that anyone else possesses consciousness, much less other creatures, because there is no outward physical evidence that consciousness as we experience it exists. The thing of which we are most certain is beyond the reach of our science, supposedly our surest way of knowing anything. This dilemma has left ajar a door through which writers and philosophers have stepped. The classic thought experiment to determine whether another being is in possession of consciousness was proposed by Thomas Nagel, a philosopher, in a famous 1974 paper, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” He argued that if “there is something that it is like to be a bat”—if there is any subjective dimension to bat experience—then a bat possesses consciousness. He went on to suggest that this “what it is like” quality may not be reducible to material terms. Ever. Whether or not Nagel’s right about that is the biggest argument going in the field of consciousness studies. The question at its heart is often referred to as “the hard problem” or the “explanatory gap”: How do you explain mind—the subjective quality of experience—in terms of meat, that is, in terms of the physical structures or chemistry of the brain? The question assumes, as most (but not all) scientists do, that consciousness is a product of brains and that it will eventually be explained as the epiphenomenon of material things like neurons and brain structures, chemicals and communications networks. That would certainly seem to be the most parsimonious hypothesis. Yet it is a long way from being proven, and a number of neuroscientists question whether it ever will be: whether something as elusive as subjective experience—what it feels like to be you—will ever yield to the reductions of science. These scientists and philosophers are sometimes called mysterians, which is not meant as a compliment. Some scientists have raised the possibility that consciousness may pervade the universe, suggesting we think of it the same way we do electromagnetism or gravity, as one of the fundamental building blocks of reality. The idea that psychedelic drugs might shed some light on the problems of consciousness makes a certain sense. A psychedelic drug is powerful enough to disrupt the system we call normal waking consciousness in ways that may force some of its fundamental properties into view. True, anesthetics disrupt consciousness too, yet because such drugs shut it down, this kind of disturbance yields relatively little data. In contrast, someone on a psychedelic remains awake and able to report on what he or she is experiencing in real time. Nowadays, these subjective reports can be correlated with various measures of brain activity, using several different modes of imaging—tools unavailable to researchers during the first wave of psychedelic research in the 1950s and 1960s. By deploying these technologies in combination with LSD and psilocybin, a handful of scientists working in both Europe and the United States are opening a new window onto consciousness, and what they are glimpsing through it promises to change our understanding of the links between our brains and our minds. • • • P ERHAPS THE MOST AMBITIOUS neuroscientific expedition using psychedelics to map the terrain of human consciousness is taking place in a laboratory at the Centre for Psychiatry on the Hammersmith campus of Imperial College in West London. Recently completed, the campus consists of a futuristic but oddly depressing network of buildings, linked by glass-walled aerial walkways and glass doors that slide open silently at the detection of the proper identification. It is here in the lab of David Nutt, a prominent English psychopharmacologist, that a team led by a thirtysomething neuroscientist named Robin Carhart-Harris has been working since 2009 to identify the “neural correlates,” or physical counterparts, of the psychedelic experience. By injecting volunteers with LSD and psilocybin and then using a variety of scanning technologies—including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG)—to observe the changes in their brains, he and his team have given us our first glimpses of what something like ego dissolution, or a hallucination, actually looks like in the brain as it unfolds in the mind. The fact that such an improbable and potentially controversial research project ever got off the ground owes to the convergence of three most unusual characters, and careers, in England in the year 2005: David Nutt, Robin Carhart-Harris, and Amanda Feilding, a.k.a. the Countess of Wemyss and March. Robin Carhart-Harris’s path to David Nutt’s psychopharmacology lab was an eccentric one, having first passed through a graduate course in psychoanalysis. These days psychoanalysis is a theory few neuroscientists take seriously, regarding it less as a science than as a set of untestable beliefs. Carhart-Harris felt strongly otherwise. Steeped in the writings of Freud and Jung, he was fascinated by psychoanalytic theory while at the same time frustrated by its lack of scientific rigor, as well as by the limitations of its tools for exploring what it deemed most important about the mind: the unconscious. “If the only way we can access the unconscious is via dreams and free association,” he explained the first time we talked, “we aren’t going to get anywhere. Surely there must be something else.” One day he asked his seminar professor if that something else might be a drug. (I asked Robin if his hunch was based on personal experience or research, but he made clear this was not a subject he wished to discuss.) His professor sent him to read a book called Realms of the Human Unconscious by Stanislav Grof. “I went to the library and read the book cover to cover. I was blown away. That set the course for the rest of my young life.” Carhart-Harris, who is a slender, intense young man in a hurry, with a neatly trimmed beard and large pale blue eyes that seldom blink, formulated a plan it would take him a few years to put into motion: he would use psychedelic drugs and modern brain-imaging technologies to build a foundation of hard science beneath the edifice of psychoanalysis. “Freud said dreams were the royal road to the unconscious,” he reminded me. “Psychedelics could turn out to be the superhighway.” Carhart-Harris’s demeanor is modest, even humble, offering no clue to the audacity of his ambition. He likes to quote Grof’s grand claim that what the telescope was for astronomy, or the microscope for biology, psychedelics will be for understanding the mind. Carhart-Harris completed his master’s in psychoanalysis in 2005 and began to plot his move into the neuroscience of psychedelics. He asked around and did some Internet research that eventually led him to David Nutt and Amanda Feilding as two people who might be interested in his project and in a position to help. He first approached Feilding, who in 1998 had established something called the Beckley Foundation to study the effects of psychoactive substances on the brain and to lobby for drug policy reform. The foundation is named for Beckley Park, the sprawling fourteenth-century Tudor manor where she grew up in Oxfordshire and where, in 2005, she invited Carhart-Harris to lunch. (On a recent visit of my own to Beckley, I counted two towers and three moats.) Amanda Feilding, who was born in 1943, is an eccentric as only the English aristocracy can breed them. (She’s descended from the house of Habsburg and two of Charles II’s illegitimate children.) A student of comparative religion and mysticism, Feilding has had a long-standing interest in altered states of consciousness and, specifically, the role of blood flow to the brain, which in Homo sapiens, she believes, has been compromised ever since our species began standing upright. LSD, Feilding believes, enhances cognitive function and facilitates higher states of consciousness by increasing cerebral circulation. A second way to achieve a similar result is by means of the ancient practice of trepanation. This deserves a brief digression. Trepanation involves drilling a shallow hole in the skull supposedly to improve cerebral blood circulation; in effect, it reverses the fusing of the cranial bones that happens in childhood. Trepanation was for centuries a common medical procedure, to judge by the number of ancient skulls that have turned up with neat holes in them. Convinced that trepanation would help facilitate higher states of consciousness, Feilding went looking for someone to perform the operation on her. When it became clear no professional would oblige, she trepanned herself in 1970, boring a small hole in the middle of her forehead with an electric drill. (She documented the procedure in a short but horrifying film called Heartbeat in the Brain .) Pleased with the results, Feilding went on to stand for election to Parliament, twice, on a platform of “Trepanation for the National Health.” But while Amanda Feilding may be eccentric, she is by no means feckless. Her work on both drug research and drug policy reform has been serious, strategic, and productive. In recent years, her focus has shifted from trepanation to the potential of psychedelics to improve brain function. In her own life, she has used LSD as a kind of “brain tonic,” favoring a daily dose that hits “that sweet spot where creativity and enthusiasm is increased, but control is maintained.” (She told me that there was a time when she put that tonic dose at 150 micrograms—far above a microdose and enough to send most people, myself included, on a full-fledged trip. But because frequent use of LSD can lead to tolerance, it’s entirely possible that for some people 150 micrograms merely “adds a certain sparkle to consciousness.”) I found Feilding to be disarmingly frank about the baggage she brings to the new conversation about psychedelic science: “I’m a druggie. I live in this big house. And I have a hole in my head. I guess that disqualifies me.” So, when an aspiring young scientist named Robin Carhart-Harris came for lunch at Beckley in 2005, sharing his ambition to combine research into LSD and Freud, Feilding immediately saw the potential, as well as an opportunity to put her theories about cerebral blood circulation to the test. Feilding indicated to Carhart-Harris that her foundation might be willing to fund such research and suggested that he contact David Nutt, then a professor at the University of Bristol and an ally of Feilding’s in the campaign to reform drug policy. In his own way, David Nutt is as notorious in England as Amanda Feilding. Nutt, who is a large, jolly fellow in his sixties with a mustache and a booming laugh, achieved his particular notoriety in 2009. That’s when the home secretary fired him from the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, of which he had been chair. The committee is charged with advising the government on the classification of illicit drugs based on their risk to individuals and society. Nutt, who is an expert on addiction and on the class of drugs called benzodiazepines (such as Valium), had committed the fatal political error of quantifying empirically the risks of various psychoactive substances, both legal and illegal. He had concluded from his research, and would tell anyone who asked, that alcohol was more dangerous than cannabis and that using Ecstasy was safer than riding a horse. “But the sentence that got me sacked,” he told me when we met in his office at Imperial, “was when I went on live breakfast television. I was asked, ‘You’re not seriously telling us that LSD is less harmful than alcohol, are you?’ Of course I am!” * Robin Carhart-Harris came to see David Nutt in 2005, hoping to study psychedelics and dreaming under him at Bristol; trying to be strategic, he mentioned the possibility of funding from Feilding. As Carhart-Harris recalls the interview, Nutt was blunt in his dismissal: “‘The idea you want to do is incredibly far-fetched, you have no neuroscience experience, it’s completely unrealistic.’ But I told him I put all my eggs in this basket.” Impressed by the young man’s determination, Nutt made him an offer: “Come do a PhD with me. We’ll start with something straightforward”—this turned out to be the effect of MDMA on the serotonin system—“and then maybe later on we can do psychedelics.” “Later on” came in 2009, when Carhart-Harris, armed with a PhD and working in Nutt’s lab with funding from Amanda Feilding, received approval (from the National Health Service and the Home Office) to study the effect of psilocybin on the brain. (LSD would come a few years later.) Carhart-Harris put himself forward as the first volunteer. “If you’re going to give this drug to people and put them in a scanner, I thought, the honest thing is to do it first to yourself.” But, as he told Nutt, “I have an anxious disposition, and may not have been in the best place psychologically, so he dissuaded me; he also thought participating in the experiment might compromise my objectivity.” In the end, a colleague became the first volunteer to receive an injection of psilocybin and then slide into an fMRI scanner to have his tripping brain imaged. Carhart-Harris’s working hypothesis was that their brains would exhibit increases in activity, particularly in the emotion centers. “I thought it would look like the dreaming brain,” he told me. Employing a different scanning technology, Franz Vollenweider had published data indicating that psychedelics stimulated brain activity, especially in the frontal lobes. (An area responsible for executive and other higher cognitive functions.) But when the first set of data came in, Carhart-Harris got a surprise: “We were seeing decreases in blood flow”—blood flow being one of the proxies for brain activity that fMRI measures. “Had we made a mistake? It was a real head-scratcher.” But the initial data on blood flow was corroborated by a second measure that looks at changes in oxygen consumption to pinpoint areas of elevated brain activity. Carhart-Harris and his colleagues had discovered that psilocybin reduces brain activity, with the falloff concentrated in one particular brain network that at the time he knew little about: the default mode network. Carhart-Harris began reading up on it. The default mode network, or DMN, was not known to brain science until 2001. That was when Marcus Raichle, a neurologist at Washington University, described it in a landmark paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS . The network forms a critical and centrally located hub of brain activity that links parts of the cerebral cortex to deeper (and older) structures involved in memory and emotion. * The discovery of the default mode network was actually a scientific accident, a happy by-product of the use of brain-imaging technologies in brain research. * The typical fMRI experiment begins by establishing a “resting state” baseline for neural activity as the volunteer sits quietly in the scanner awaiting whatever tests the researcher has in store. Raichle had noticed that several areas in the brain exhibited heightened activity precisely when his subjects were doing nothing mentally. This was the brain’s “default mode,” the network of brain structures that light up with activity when there are no demands on our attention and we have no mental task to perform. Put another way, Raichle had discovered the place where our minds go to wander—to daydream, ruminate, travel in time, reflect on ourselves, and worry. It may be through these very structures that the stream of our consciousness flows. The default network stands in a kind of seesaw relationship with the attentional networks that wake up whenever the outside world demands our attention; when one is active, the other goes quiet, and vice versa. But as any person can tell you, quite a lot happens in the mind when nothing much is going on outside us. (In fact, the DMN consumes a disproportionate share of the brain’s energy.) Working at a remove from our sensory processing of the outside world, the default mode is most active when we are engaged in higher-level “metacognitive” processes such as self-reflection, mental time travel, mental constructions (such as the self or ego), moral reasoning, and “theory of mind”—the ability to attribute mental states to others, as when we try to imagine “what it is like” to be someone else. All these functions may belong exclusively to humans, and specifically to adult humans, for the default mode network isn’t operational until late in a child’s development. “The brain is a hierarchical system,” Carhart-Harris explained in one of our interviews. “The highest-level parts”—those developed late in our evolution, typically located in the cortex—“exert an inhibitory influence on the lower-level [and older] parts, like emotion and memory.” As a whole, the default mode network exerts a top-down influence on other parts of the brain, many of which communicate with one another through its centrally located hub. Robin has described the DMN variously as the brain’s “orchestra conductor,” “corporate executive,” or “capital city,” charged with managing and “holding the whole system together.” And with keeping the brain’s unrulier tendencies in check. The brain consists of several different specialized systems—one for visual processing, for example, another to control motor activity—each doing its own thing. “ Chaos is averted because all systems are not created equal,” Marcus Raichle has written. “Electrical signaling from some brain areas takes precedence over others. At the top of this hierarchy resides the DMN, which acts as an uber-conductor to ensure that the cacophony of competing signals from one system do not interfere with those from another.” The default mode network keeps order in a system so complex it might otherwise descend into the anarchy of mental illness. As mentioned, the default mode network appears to play a role in the creation of mental constructs or projections, the most important of which is the construct we call the self, or ego. * This is why some neuroscientists call it “the me network.” If a researcher gives you a list of adjectives and asks you to consider how they apply to you, it is your default mode network that leaps into action. ( It also lights up when we receive “likes” on our social media feeds.) Nodes in the default network are thought to be responsible for autobiographical memory, the material from which we compose the story of who we are, by linking our past experiences with what happens to us and with projections of our future goals. The achievement of an individual self, a being with a unique past and a trajectory into the future, is one of the glories of human evolution, but it is not without its drawbacks and potential disorders. The price of the sense of an individual identity is a sense of separation from others and nature. Self-reflection can lead to great intellectual and artistic achievement but also to destructive forms of self-regard and many types of unhappiness. ( In an often-cited paper titled “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind,” psychologists identified a strong correlation between unhappiness and time spent in mind wandering, a principal activity of the default mode network.) But, accepting the good with the bad, most of us take this self as an unshakable given, as real as anything we know, and as the foundation of our life as conscious human beings. Or at least I always took it that way, until my psychedelic experiences led me to wonder. Perhaps the most striking discovery of Carhart-Harris’s first experiment was that the steepest drops in default mode network activity correlated with his volunteers’ subjective experience of “ego dissolution.” (“I existed only as an idea or concept,” one volunteer reported. Recalled another, “I didn’t know where I ended and my surroundings began.”) The more precipitous the drop-off in blood flow and oxygen consumption in the default network, the more likely a volunteer was to report the loss of a sense of self. * Shortly after Carhart-Harris published his results in a 2012 paper in PNAS (“Neural Correlates of the Psychedelic State as Determined by fMRI Studies with Psilocybin” * ), Judson Brewer, a researcher at Yale * who was using fMRI to study the brains of experienced meditators, noticed that his scans and Robin’s looked remarkably alike. The transcendence of self reported by expert meditators showed up on fMRIs as a quieting of the default mode network. It appears that when activity in the default mode network falls off precipitously, the ego temporarily vanishes, and the usual boundaries we experience between self and world, subject and object, all melt away. This sense of merging into some larger totality is of course one of the hallmarks of the mystical experience; our sense of individuality and separateness hinges on a bounded self and a clear demarcation between subject and object. But all that may be a mental construction, a kind of illusion—just as the Buddhists have been trying to tell us. The psychedelic experience of “non-duality” suggests that consciousness survives the disappearance of the self, that it is not so indispensable as we—and it—like to think. Carhart-Harris suspects that the loss of a clear distinction between subject and object might help explain another feature of the mystical experience: the fact that the insights it sponsors are felt to be objectively true—revealed truths rather than plain old insights. It could be that in order to judge an insight as merely subjective, one person’s opinion, you must first have a sense of subjectivity. Which is precisely what the mystic on psychedelics has lost. The mystical experience may just be what it feels like when you deactivate the brain’s default mode network. This can be achieved any number of ways: through psychedelics and meditation, as Robin Carhart-Harris and Judson Brewer have demonstrated, but perhaps also by means of certain breathing exercises (like holotropic breathwork), sensory deprivation, fasting, prayer, overwhelming experiences of awe, extreme sports, near-death experiences, and so on. What would scans of brains in the midst of those activities reveal? We can only speculate, but quite possibly we would see the same quieting of the default mode network Brewer and Carhart-Harris have found. This quieting might be accomplished by restricting blood flow to the network, or by stimulating the serotonin 2A receptors in the cortex, or by otherwise disturbing the oscillatory rhythms that normally organize the brain. But however it happens, taking this particular network off-line may give us access to extraordinary states of consciousness—moments of oneness or ecstasy that are no less wondrous for having a physical cause. • • • I F THE DEFAULT MODE network is the conductor of the symphony of brain activity, you would expect its temporary absence from the stage to lead to an increase in dissonance and mental disorder—as indeed appears to happen during the psychedelic journey. In a series of subsequent experiments using a variety of brain-imaging techniques, Carhart-Harris and his colleagues began to study what happens elsewhere in the neural orchestra when the default mode network puts down its baton. Taken as a whole, the default mode network exerts an inhibitory influence on other parts of the brain, notably including the limbic regions involved in emotion and memory, in much the same way Freud conceived of the ego keeping the anarchic forces of the unconscious id in check. (David Nutt puts the matter bluntly, claiming that in the DMN “we’ve found the neural correlate for repression.”) Carhart-Harris hypothesizes that these and other centers of mental activity are “let off the leash” when the default mode leaves the stage, and in fact brain scans show an increase in activity (as reflected by increases in blood flow and oxygen consumption) in several other brain regions, including the limbic regions, under the influence of psychedelics. This disinhibition might explain why material that is unavailable to us during normal waking consciousness now floats to the surface of our awareness, including emotions and memories and, sometimes, long-buried childhood traumas. It is for this reason that some scientists and psychotherapists believe psychedelics can be profitably used to surface and explore the contents of the unconscious mind. But the default mode network doesn’t only exert top-down control over material arising from within; it also helps regulate what is let into consciousness from the world outside. It operates as a kind of filter (or “reducing valve”) charged with admitting only that “measly trickle” of information required for us to get through the day. If not for the brain’s filtering mechanisms, the torrent of information the senses make available to our brains at any given moment might prove difficult to process—as indeed is sometimes the case during the psychedelic experience. “The question,” as David Nutt puts it, “is why the brain is ordinarily so constrained rather than so open?” The answer may be as simple as “efficiency.” Today most neuroscientists work under a paradigm of the brain as a prediction-making machine. To form a perception of something out in the world, the brain takes in as little sensory information as it needs to make an educated guess. We are forever cutting to the chase, basically, and leaping to conclusions, relying on prior experience to inform current perception. The mask experiment I attempted to perform during my psilocybin journey is a powerful demonstration of this phenomenon. At least when it is working normally, the brain, presented with a few visual clues suggesting it is looking at a face, insists on seeing the face as a convex structure even when it is not, because that’s the way faces usually are. The philosophical implications of “predictive coding” are deep and strange. The model suggests that our perceptions of the world offer us not a literal transcription of reality but rather a seamless illusion woven from both the data of our senses and the models in our memories. Normal waking consciousness feels perfectly transparent, and yet it is less a window on reality than the product of our imaginations—a kind of controlled hallucination. This raises a question: How is normal waking consciousness any different from other, seemingly less faithful productions of our imagination—such as dreams or psychotic delusions or psychedelic trips? In fact, all these states of consciousness are “imagined”: they’re mental constructs that weave together some news of the world with priors of various kinds. But in the case of normal waking consciousness, the handshake between the data of our senses and our preconceptions is especially firm. That’s because it is subject to a continual process of reality testing, as when you reach out to confirm the existence of the object in your visual field or, upon waking from a nightmare, consult your memory to see if you really did show up to teach a class without any clothes on. Unlike these other states of consciousness, ordinary waking consciousness has been optimized by natural selection to best facilitate our everyday survival. Indeed, that feeling of transparency we associate with ordinary consciousness may owe more to familiarity and habit than it does to verisimilitude. As a psychonaut acquaintance put it to me, “If it were possible to temporarily experience another person’s mental state, my guess is that it would feel more like a psychedelic state than a ‘normal’ state, because of its massive disparity with whatever mental state is habitual with you.” Another trippy thought experiment is to try to imagine the world as it appears to a creature with an entirely different sensory apparatus and way of life. You quickly realize there is no single reality out there waiting to be faithfully and comprehensively transcribed. Our senses have evolved for a much narrower purpose and take in only what serves our needs as animals of a particular kind. The bee perceives a substantially different spectrum of light than we do; to look at the world through its eyes is to perceive ultraviolet markings on the petals of flowers (evolved to guide their landings like runway lights) that don’t exist for us. That example is at least a kind of seeing—a sense we happen to share with bees. But how do we even begin to conceive of the sense that allows bees to register (through the hairs on their legs) the electromagnetic fields that plants produce? (A weak charge indicates another bee has recently visited the flower; depleted of nectar, it’s probably not worth a stop.) Then there is the world according to an octopus! Imagine how differently reality presents itself to a brain that has been so radically decentralized, its intelligence distributed across eight arms so that each of them can taste, touch, and even make its own “decisions” without consulting headquarters. • • • W HAT HAPPENS WHEN, under the influence of psychedelics, the usually firm handshake between brain and world breaks down? No one thing, as it turns out. I asked Carhart-Harris whether the tripping brain favors top-down predictions or bottom-up sensory data. “That’s the classic dilemma,” he suggested: whether the mind, unconstrained, will tend to favor its priors or the evidence of its senses. “You do often find a kind of impetuousness or overzealousness on the part of the priors, as when you see faces in the clouds.” Eager to make sense of the data rushing in, the brain leaps to erroneous conclusions and, sometimes, a hallucination results. (The paranoid does much the same thing, ferociously imposing a false narrative on the stream of incoming information.) But in other cases, the reducing valve opens wide to admit lots more information, unedited and sometimes welcome. People who are color-blind report being able to see certain colors for the first time when on psychedelics, and there is research to suggest that people hear music differently under the influence of these drugs. They process the timbre, or coloration, of music more acutely— a dimension of music that conveys emotion. When I listened to Bach’s cello suite during my psilocybin journey, I was certain I heard more of it than I ever had, registering shadings and nuances and tones that I hadn’t been able to hear before and haven’t heard since. Carhart-Harris thinks that psychedelics render the brain’s usual handshake of perception less stable and more slippery. The tripping brain may “slip back and forth” between imposing its priors and admitting the raw evidence of its senses. He suspects that there are moments during the psychedelic experience when confidence in our usual top-down concepts of reality collapses, opening the way for more bottom-up information to get through the filter. But when all that sensory information threatens to overwhelm us, the mind furiously generates new concepts (crazy or brilliant, it hardly matters) to make sense of it all—“and so you might see faces coming out of the rain. “That’s the brain doing what the brain does”—that is, working to reduce uncertainty by, in effect, telling itself stories. • • • T HE HUMAN BRAIN is an inconceivably complex system—perhaps the most complex system ever to exist—in which an order has emerged, the highest expression of which is the sovereign self and our normal waking consciousness. By adulthood, the brain has gotten very good at observing and testing reality and developing reliable predictions about it that optimize our investments of energy (mental and otherwise) and therefore our chances of survival. Uncertainty is a complex brain’s biggest challenge, and predictive coding evolved to help us reduce it. In general, the kind of precooked or conventionalized thinking this adaptation produces serves us well. But only up to a point. Precisely where that point lies is a question Robin Carhart-Harris and his colleagues have explored in an ambitious and provocative paper titled “The Entropic Brain: A Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs,” published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in 2014. Here, Carhart-Harris attempts to lay out his grand synthesis of psychoanalysis and cognitive brain science. The question at its heart is, do we pay a price for the achievement of order and selfhood in the adult human mind? The paper concludes that we do. While suppressing entropy (in this context, a synonym for uncertainty) in the brain “ serves to promote realism, foresight, careful reflection and an ability to recognize and overcome wishful and paranoid fantasies,” at the same time this achievement tends to “constrain cognition” and exert “a limiting or narrowing influence on consciousness.” After a series of Skype interviews, Robin Carhart-Harris and I were meeting for the first time, in his fifth-floor walk-up in an unposh section of Notting Hill, a few months after the publication of the entropy paper. In person, I was struck by Robin’s youthfulness and intensity. For all his ambition, his affect is strikingly self-effacing and does little to prepare you for his willingness to venture out onto intellectual limbs that would scare off less intrepid scientists. The entropy paper asks us to conceive of the mind as an uncertainty-reducing machine with a few serious bugs in it. The sheer complexity of the human brain and the greater number of different mental states in its repertoire (as compared with other animals) make the maintenance of order a top priority, lest the system descend into chaos. Once upon a time, Carhart-Harris writes, the human or protohuman brain exhibited a much more anarchic form of “primary consciousness,” characterized by “magical thinking”—beliefs about the world that have been shaped by wishes and fears and supernatural interpretation. (In primary consciousness, Carhart-Harris writes, “cognition is less meticulous in its sampling of the external world and is instead easily biased by emotion, e.g., wishes and anxieties.”) Magical thinking is one way for human minds to reduce their uncertainty about the world, but it is less than optimal for the success of the species. A better way to suppress uncertainty and entropy in the human brain emerged with the evolution of the default mode network, Carhart-Harris contends, a brain-regulating system that is absent or undeveloped in lower animals and young children. Along with the default mode network, “a coherent sense of self or ‘ego’ emerges” and, with that, the human capacity for self-reflection and reason. Magical thinking gives way to “a more reality-bound style of thinking, governed by the ego.” Borrowing from Freud, he calls this more highly evolved mode of cognition “secondary consciousness.” Secondary consciousness “pays deference to reality and diligently seeks to represent the world as precisely as possible” in order to minimize “surprise and uncertainty (i.e. entropy).” The article offers an intriguing graphic depicting a “spectrum of cognitive states,” ranging from high-entropy mental states to low ones. At the high-entropy end of the spectrum, he lists psychedelic states; infant consciousness; early psychosis; magical thinking; and divergent or creative thinking. At the low-entropy end of the spectrum, he lists narrow or rigid thinking; addiction; obsessive-compulsive disorder; depression; anesthesia; and, finally, coma. Carhart-Harris suggests that the psychological “disorders” at the low-entropy end of the spectrum are not the result of a lack of order in the brain but rather stem from an excess of order. When the grooves of self-reflective thinking deepen and harden, the ego becomes overbearing. This is perhaps most clearly evident in depression, when the ego turns on itself and uncontrollable introspection gradually shades out reality. Carhart-Harris cites research indicating that this debilitating state of mind (sometimes called heavy self-consciousness or depressive realism) may be the result of a hyperactive default mode network, which can trap us in repetitive and destructive loops of rumination that eventually close us off from the world outside. Huxley’s reducing valve contracts to zero. Carhart-Harris believes that people suffering from a whole range of disorders characterized by excessively rigid patterns of thought—including addiction, obsessions, and eating disorders as well as depression—stand to benefit from “the ability of psychedelics to disrupt stereotyped patterns of thought and behavior by disintegrating the patterns of [neural] activity upon which they rest.” So it may be that some brains could stand to have a little more entropy, not less. This is where psychedelics come in. By quieting the default mode network, these compounds can loosen the ego’s grip on the machinery of the mind, “lubricating” cognition where before it had been rusted stuck. “Psychedelics alter consciousness by disorganizing brain activity,” Carhart-Harris writes. They increase the amount of entropy in the brain, with the result that the system reverts to a less constrained mode of cognition. * “It’s not just that one system drops away,” he says, “but that an older system reemerges.” That older system is primary consciousness, a mode of thinking in which the ego temporarily loses its dominion and the unconscious, now unregulated, “is brought into an observable space.” This, for Carhart-Harris, is the heuristic value of psychedelics to the study of the mind, though he sees therapeutic value as well. It’s worth noting that Carhart-Harris does not romanticize psychedelics and has little patience for the sort of “magical thinking” and “metaphysics” that they nourish in their acolytes—such as the idea that consciousness is “transpersonal,” a property of the universe rather than the human brain. In his view, the forms of consciousness that psychedelics unleash are regressions to a “more primitive” mode of cognition. With Freud, he believes that the loss of self, and the sense of oneness, characteristic of the mystical experience—whether occasioned by chemistry or religion—return us to the psychological condition of the infant on its mother’s breast, a stage when it has yet to develop a sense of itself as a separate and bounded individual. For Carhart-Harris, the pinnacle of human development is the achievement of this differentiated self, or ego, and its imposition of order on the anarchy of a primitive mind buffeted by fears and wishes and given to various forms of magical thinking. While he holds with Aldous Huxley that psychedelics throw open the doors of perception, he does not agree that everything that comes through that opening—including the “Mind at Large” that Huxley glimpsed—is necessarily real. “The psychedelic experience can yield a lot of fool’s gold,” he told me. Yet Carhart-Harris also believes there is genuine gold in the psychedelic experience. When we met, he offered examples of scientists whose own experiences with LSD had supplied them with insights into the workings of the brain. Too much entropy in the human brain may lead to atavistic thinking and, at the far end, madness, yet too little can cripple us as well. The grip of an overbearing ego can enforce a rigidity in our thinking that is psychologically destructive. It may be socially and politically destructive too, in that it closes the mind to information and alternative points of view. In one of our conversations, Robin speculated that a class of drugs with the power to overturn hierarchies in the mind and sponsor unconventional thinking has the potential to reshape users’ attitudes toward authority of all kinds; that is, the compounds may have a political effect. Many believe LSD played precisely that role in the political upheaval of the 1960s. “Was it that hippies gravitated to psychedelics, or do psychedelics create hippies? Nixon thought it was the latter. He may have been right!” Robin believes that psychedelics may also subtly shift people’s attitudes toward nature, which also underwent a sea change in the 1960s. When the influence of the DMN declines, so does our sense of separateness from our environment. His team at Imperial College has tested volunteers on a standard psychological scale that measures “nature relatedness” (respondents rate their agreement with statements like “I am not separate from nature, but a part of nature”). A psychedelic experience elevated people’s scores. * • • • S O WHAT DOES a high-entropy brain look like? The various scanning technologies that the Imperial College lab has used to map the tripping brain show that the specialized neural networks of the brain—such as the default mode network and the visual processing system—each become disintegrated, while the brain as a whole becomes more integrated as new connections spring up among regions that ordinarily kept mainly to themselves or were linked only via the central hub of the DMN. Put another way, the various networks of the brain became less specialized. “ Distinct networks became less distinct under the drug,” Carhart-Harris and his colleagues wrote, “implying that they communicate more openly,” with other brain networks. “The brain operates with greater flexibility and interconnectedness under hallucinogens.” In a 2014 paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the Imperial College team demonstrated how the usual lines of communications within the brain are radically reorganized when the default mode network goes off-line and the tide of entropy is allowed to rise. Using a scanning technique called magnetoencephalography, which maps electrical activity in the brain, the authors produced a map of the brain’s internal communications during normal waking consciousness and after an injection of psilocybin (shown on the following pages). In its normal state, shown on the left, the brain’s various networks (here depicted lining the circle, each represented by a different color) talk mostly to themselves, with a relatively few heavily trafficked pathways among them. But when the brain operates under the influence of psilocybin, as shown on the right, thousands of new connections form, linking far-flung brain regions that during normal waking consciousness don’t exchange much information. In effect, traffic is rerouted from a relatively small number of interstate highways onto myriad smaller roads linking a great many more destinations. The brain appears to become less specialized and more globally interconnected, with considerably more intercourse, or “cross talk,” among its various neighborhoods. There are several ways this temporary rewiring of the brain may affect mental experience. When the memory and emotion centers are allowed to communicate directly with the visual processing centers, it’s possible our wishes and fears, prejudices and emotions, begin to inform what we see—a hallmark of primary consciousness and a recipe for magical thinking. Likewise, the establishment of new linkages across brain systems can give rise to synesthesia, as when sense information gets cross-wired so that colors become sounds or sounds become tactile. Or the new links give rise to hallucination, as when the contents of my memory transformed my visual perception of Mary into María Sabina, or the image of my face in the mirror into a vision of my grandfather. The forming of still other kinds of novel connections could manifest in mental experience as a new idea, a fresh perspective, a creative insight, or the ascribing of new meanings to familiar things—or any number of the bizarre mental phenomena people on psychedelics report. The increase in entropy allows a thousand mental states to bloom, many of them bizarre and senseless, but some number of them revelatory, imaginative, and, at least potentially, transformative. One way to think about this blooming of mental states is that it temporarily boosts the sheer amount of diversity in our mental life. If problem solving is anything like evolutionary adaptation, the more possibilities the mind has at its disposal, the more creative its solutions will be. In this sense, entropy in the brain is a bit like variation in evolution: it supplies the diversity of raw materials on which selection can then operate to solve problems and bring novelty into the world. If, as so many artists and scientists have testified, the psychedelic experience is an aid to creativity—to thinking “outside the box”—this model might help explain why that is the case. Maybe the problem with “the box” is that it is singular. A key question that the science of psychedelics has not even begun to answer is whether the new neural connections that psychedelics make possible endure in any way, or if the brain’s wiring returns to the status quo ante once the drug wears off. The finding by Roland Griffiths’s lab that the psychedelic experience leads to long-term changes in the personality trait of openness raises the possibility that some kind of learning takes place while the brain is rewired and that it might in some way persist. Learning entails the establishment of new neural circuits; these get stronger the more exercise they get. The long-term fate of the novel connections formed during the psychedelic experience—whether they prove durable or evanescent—might depend on whether we recall and, in effect, exercise them after the experience ends. (This could be as simple as recollecting what we experienced, reinforcing it during the integration process, or using meditation to reenact the altered state of consciousness.) Franz Vollenweider has suggested that the psychedelic experience may facilitate “neuroplasticity”: it opens a window in which patterns of thought and behavior become more plastic and so easier to change. His model sounds like a chemically mediated form of cognitive behavioral therapy. But so far this is all highly speculative; as yet there has been little mapping of the brain before and after psychedelics to determine what, if anything, the experience changes in a lasting way. Carhart-Harris argues in the entropy paper that even a temporary rewiring of the brain is potentially valuable, especially for people suffering from disorders characterized by mental rigidity. A high-dose psychedelic experience has the power to “shake the snow globe,” he says, disrupting unhealthy patterns of thought and creating a space of flexibility—entropy—in which more salubrious patterns and narratives have an opportunity to coalesce as the snow slowly resettles. • • • T HE IDEA that increasing the amount of entropy in the human brain might actually be good for us is surely counterintuitive. Most of us bring a negative connotation to the term: entropy suggests the gradual deterioration of a hard-won order, the disintegration of a system over time. Certainly getting older feels like an entropic process—a gradual running down and disordering of the mind and body. But maybe that’s the wrong way to think about it. Robin Carhart-Harris’s paper got me wondering if, at least for the mind, aging is really a process of declining entropy, the fading over time of what we should regard as a positive attribute of mental life. Certainly by middle age, the sway of habitual thinking over the operations of the mind is nearly absolute. By now, I can count on past experience to propose quick and usually serviceable answers to just about any question reality poses, whether it’s about how to soothe a child or mollify a spouse, repair a sentence, accept a compliment, answer the next question, or make sense of whatever’s happening in the world. With experience and time, it gets easier to cut to the chase and leap to conclusions—clichés that imply a kind of agility but that in fact may signify precisely the opposite: a petrifaction of thought. Think of it as predictive coding on the scale of life; the priors—and by now I’ve got millions of them—usually have my back, can be relied on to give me a decent enough answer, even if it isn’t a particularly fresh or imaginative one. A flattering term for this regime of good enough predictions is “wisdom.” Reading Robin’s paper helped me better understand what I was looking for when I decided to explore psychedelics: to give my own snow globe a vigorous shaking, see if I could renovate my everyday mental life by introducing a greater measure of entropy, and uncertainty, into it. Getting older might render the world more predictable (in every sense), yet it also lightens the burden of responsibility, creating a new space for experiment. Mine had been to see if it wasn’t too late to skip out of some of the deeper grooves of habit that the been-theres and done-thats of long experience had inscribed on my mind. • • • I N BOTH PHYSICS and information theory, entropy is often associated with expansion—as in the expansion of a gas when it is heated or freed from the constraints of a container. As the gas’s molecules diffuse in space, it becomes harder to predict the location of any given one; the uncertainty of the system thus increases. In a throwaway line at the end of his entropy paper, Carhart-Harris reminds us that in the 1960s the psychedelic experience was usually described as “consciousness-expansion”; knowingly or not, Timothy Leary and his colleagues had hit on exactly the right metaphor for the entropic brain. This expansion metaphor also chimes with Huxley’s reducing valve, implying as it does that consciousness exists in a state of opening or contraction. As a matter of experience, a quality as abstract as entropy is almost impossible for us to perceive, but expansion, perhaps, is not. Judson Brewer, the neuroscientist who studies meditation, has found that a felt sense of expansion in consciousness correlates with a drop in activity in one particular node of the default mode network—the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), which is associated with self-referential processing. One of the most interesting things about a psychedelic experience is that it sharpens one’s sensitivity to one’s own mental states, especially in the days immediately following. The usual seamlessness of consciousness is disturbed in such a way as to make any given state—mind wandering, focused attention, rumination—both more salient and somewhat easier to manipulate. In the wake of my psychedelic experiences (and, perhaps, in the wake of interviewing Judson Brewer), I found that when I put my mind to it, I could locate my own state of consciousness on a spectrum ranging from contraction to expansion. When, for example, I’m feeling especially generous or grateful, open to feelings and people and nature, I register a sense of expansion. This feeling is often accompanied by a diminution of ego, as well as a falloff in the attention paid to past and future on which the ego feasts. (And depends.) By the same token, there is a pronounced sense of contraction when I’m obsessing about things or feeling fearful, defensive, rushed, worried, and regretful. (These last two feelings don’t exist without time travel.) At such times, I feel altogether more me, and not in a good way. If the neuroscientists are right, what I’m observing in my mind has a physical correlate in the brain: the default mode network is either online or off; entropy is either high or low. What exactly to do with this information I’m not yet sure. • • • B Y NOW, it may be lost to memory, but all of us, even the psychedelically naive, have had direct personal experience of an entropic brain and the novel type of consciousness it sponsors—as a young child. Baby consciousness is so different from adult consciousness as to constitute a mental country of its own, one from which we are expelled sometime early in adolescence. Is there a way back in? The closest we can come to visiting that foreign land as adults may be during the psychedelic journey. This at least is the startling hypothesis of Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist and philosopher who happens to be a colleague of mine at Berkeley. Alison Gopnik and Robin Carhart-Harris come at the problem of consciousness from what seem like completely different directions and disciplines, but soon after they learned of each other’s work (I had e-mailed a PDF of Robin’s entropy paper to Alison and told him about her superb book, The Philosophical Baby ), they struck up a conversation that has proven to be remarkably illuminating, at least for me. In April 2016, their conversation wound up on a stage at a conference on consciousness in Tucson, Arizona, where the two met for the first time and shared a panel. * In much the same way psychedelics have given Carhart-Harris an oblique angle from which to approach the phenomena of normal consciousness by exploring an altered state of it, Gopnik proposes we regard the mind of the young child as another kind of “altered state,” and in a number of respects it is a strikingly similar one. She cautions that our thinking about the subject is usually constrained by our own restricted experience of consciousness, which we naturally take to be the whole of it. In this case, most of the theories and generalizations about consciousness have been made by people who share a fairly limited subtype of it she calls “professor consciousness,” which she defines as “the phenomenology of your average middle-aged professor.” “As academics, either we’re incredibly focused on a particular problem,” Gopnik told the audience of philosophers and neuroscientists in Tucson, “or we’re sitting there saying to ourselves, ‘Why can’t I focus on this problem I’m supposed to be focused on, and why instead am I daydreaming?’” Gopnik herself looks the part of a Berkeley professor in her early sixties, with her colorful scarves, flowing skirts, and sensible shoes. A child of the 1960s who is now a grandmother, she has a speaking style that is at once lighthearted and learned, studded with references indicating a mind as much at home in the humanities as the sciences. “If you thought, as people often have thought, that this was all there was to consciousness . . . you might very well find yourself thinking that young children were actually less conscious than we were,” because both focused attention and self-reflection are absent in young children. Gopnik asks us to think about child consciousness in terms of not what’s missing from it or undeveloped but rather what is uniquely and wonderfully present—qualities that she believes psychedelics can help us to better appreciate and, possibly, reexperience. In The Philosophical Baby, Gopnik draws a useful distinction between the “spotlight consciousness” of adults and the “lantern consciousness” of young children. The first mode gives adults the ability to narrowly focus attention on a goal. (In his own remarks, Carhart-Harris called this “ego consciousness” or “consciousness with a point.”) In the second mode—lantern consciousness—attention is more widely diffused, allowing the child to take in information from virtually anywhere in her field of awareness, which is quite wide, wider than that of most adults. (By this measure, children are more conscious than adults, rather than less.) While children seldom exhibit sustained periods of spotlight consciousness, adults occasionally experience that “vivid panoramic illumination of the everyday” that lantern consciousness affords us. To borrow Judson Brewer’s terms, lantern consciousness is expansive, spotlight consciousness narrow, or contracted. The adult brain directs the spotlight of its attention where it will and then relies on predictive coding to make sense of what it perceives. This is not at all the child’s approach, Gopnik has discovered. Being inexperienced in the way of the world, the mind of the young child has comparatively few priors, or preconceptions, to guide her perceptions down the predictable tracks. Instead, the child approaches reality with the astonishment of an adult on psychedelics. What this means for cognition and learning can be best understood by looking at machine learning, or artificial intelligence, Gopnik suggests. In teaching computers how to learn and solve problems, AI designers speak in terms of “high temperature” and “low temperature” searches for the answers to questions. A low-temperature search (so-called because it requires less energy) involves reaching for the most probable or nearest-to-hand answer, like the one that worked for a similar problem in the past. Low-temperature searches succeed more often than not. A high-temperature search requires more energy because it involves reaching for less likely but possibly more ingenious and creative answers—those found outside the box of preconception. Drawing on its wealth of experience, the adult mind performs low-temperature searches most of the time. Gopnik believes that both the young child (five and under) and the adult on a psychedelic have a stronger predilection for the high-temperature search; in their quest to make sense of things, their minds explore not just the nearby and most likely but “the entire space of possibilities.” These high-temperature searches might be inefficient, incurring a higher rate of error and requiring more time and mental energy to perform. High-temperature searches can yield answers that are more magical than realistic. Yet there are times when hot searches are the only way to solve a problem, and occasionally they return answers of surpassing beauty and originality. E = mc 2 was the product of a high-temperature search. Gopnik has tested this hypothesis on children in her lab and has found that there are learning problems that four-year-olds are better at solving than adults. These are precisely the kinds of problems that require thinking outside the box, those times when experience hobbles rather than greases the gears of problem solving, often because the problem is so novel. In one experiment, she presented children with a toy box that lights up and plays music when a certain kind of block is placed on top of it. Normally, this “blicket detector” is set to respond to a single block of a certain color or shape, but when the experimenter reprograms the machine so that it responds only when two blocks are placed on it, four-year-olds figure it out much faster than adults do. “Their thinking is less constrained by experience, so they will try even the most unlikely possibilities”; that is, they’ll conduct lots of high-temperature searches, testing the most far-out hypotheses. “Children are better learners than adults in many cases when the solutions are nonobvious” or, as she puts it, “further out in the space of possibilities,” a realm where they are more at home than we are. Far out, indeed. “We have the longest childhood of any species,” Gopnik says. “This extended period of learning and exploration is what’s distinctive about us. I think of childhood as the R&D stage of the species, concerned exclusively with learning and exploring. We adults are production and marketing.” Later I asked her if she meant to say that children perform R&D for the individual, not the species, but in fact she meant exactly what she said. “Each generation of children confronts a new environment,” she explained, “and their brains are particularly good at learning and thriving in that environment. Think of the children of immigrants, or four-year-olds confronted with an iPhone. Children don’t invent these new tools, they don’t create the new environment, but in every generation they build the kind of brain that can best thrive in it. Childhood is the species’ ways of injecting noise into the system of cultural evolution.” “Noise,” of course, is in this context another word for “entropy.” “The child’s brain is extremely plastic, good for learning, not accomplishing”—better for “exploring rather than exploiting.” It also has a great many more neural connections than the adult brain. (During the panel, Carhart-Harris showed his map of the mind on psilocybin, with its dense forest of lines connecting every region to every other.) But as we reach adolescence, most of those connections get pruned, so that the “human brain becomes a lean, mean acting machine.” A key element of that developmental process is the suppression of entropy, with all of its implications, both good and bad. The system cools, and hot searches become the exception rather than the rule. The default mode network comes online. “Consciousness narrows as we get older,” Gopnik says. “ Adults have congealed in their beliefs and are hard to shift,” she has written, whereas “children are more fluid and consequently more willing to entertain new ideas. “If you want to understand what an expanded consciousness looks like, all you have to do is have tea with a four-year-old.” Or drop a tab of LSD. Gopnik told me she has been struck by the similarities between the phenomenology of the LSD experience and her understanding of the consciousness of children: hotter searches, diffused attention, more mental noise (or entropy), magical thinking, and little sense of a self that is continuous over time. “The short summary is, babies and children are basically tripping all the time.” • • • S URELY THIS INSIGHT is interesting, but is it useful? Both Gopnik and Carhart-Harris believe it is, believe that the psychedelic experience, as they conceptualize it, has the potential to help people who are sick and people who are not. For the well, psychedelics, by introducing more noise or entropy into the brain, might shake people out of their usual patterns of thought—“lubricate cognition,” in Carhart-Harris’s words—in ways that might enhance well-being, make us more open and boost creativity. In Gopnik’s terms, the drugs could help adults achieve the kind of fluid thinking that is second nature to kids, expanding the space of creative possibility. If, as Gopnik hypothesizes, “childhood is a way of injecting noise—and novelty—into the system of cultural evolution,” psychedelics might do the same thing for the system of the adult mind. As for the unwell, the patients who stand to gain the most are probably those suffering from the kinds of mental disorders characterized by mental rigidity: addiction, depression, obsession. “There are a range of difficulties and pathologies in adults, like depression, that are connected with the phenomenology of rumination and an excessively narrow, ego-based focus,” Gopnik says. “You get stuck on the same thing, you can’t escape, you become obsessive, perhaps addicted. It seems plausible to me that the psychedelic experience could help us get out of those states, create an opportunity in which the old stories of who we are might be rewritten.” The experience could work as a kind of reset—as when you “introduce a burst of noise into a system” that has gotten locked into a rigid pattern. Quieting the default mode network and loosening the grip of the ego—which she suggests may be illusory anyway—might also be helpful to such people. Gopnik’s idea of a brain reboot sounded very much like Carhart-Harris’s notion of shaking the snow globe: a way to boost entropy, or heat, in a system that has gotten frozen stuck. Soon after publishing his entropy paper, Carhart-Harris resolved to put some of his theories into practice by testing them on patients. For the first time, the lab expanded its focus from pure research to a clinical application of that work. David Nutt secured a grant from the U.K. government for the lab to conduct a small pilot study looking at the potential of psilocybin to relieve the symptoms of “treatment-resistant depression”—patients who hadn’t responded to the usual therapeutic protocols and drugs. Doing clinical work was definitely outside Carhart-Harris’s experience and comfort zone, as well as the lab’s. One unfortunate early episode pointed up the inherent tensions between the roles of the clinician, devoted solely to the patient’s welfare, and the scientist, intent on gathering data as well. After being injected with LSD in a trial Carhart-Harris was running (not a clinical trial, it should be pointed out), a volunteer in his late thirties named Toby Slater began feeling anxious in the fMRI scanner and asked to get out. After taking a break, Slater, perhaps hoping to please the researchers, volunteered to get back in the machine so they could complete the experiment. (“I’m afraid he could see my disappointment,” Carhart-Harris recalls, ruefully.) But Slater’s anxiety returned: “I felt like a lab rat,” he told me. He asked to get out again and tried to leave the lab. The researchers had to persuade him to stay and let them administer a sedative. Carhart-Harris describes the episode—one of the very few adverse events seen in the Imperial research—as “a learning experience” and, by all accounts, he has since shown himself to be a compassionate and effective clinician as well as an original scientist—surely a rare combination. The response of most patients in the depression trial, as we will see in the following chapter, has been remarkably positive, at least in the short term. Over dinner at a restaurant in West London, Robin told me about one severely depressed woman in the trial whom over the course of several meetings he had never once seen smile. As he sat with her during her psilocybin journey, “she smiled for the very first time. “‘It’s nice to smile,’ she said. “After it was over, she told me she had been visited by a guardian angel. She described a presence of some kind, a voice that was entirely supportive and wanted her to be well. It would say things like ‘Darling, you need to smile more, hold your head up high, stop looking down at the ground. Then it reached over and pushed up my cheeks,’ she said, ‘lifting the corners of my mouth.’ “That must have been what was happening in her mind when I observed her smiling,” Robin said, now smiling himself, broadly if a bit sheepishly. In the aftermath of her experience, the woman’s depression score dropped from thirty-six to four. “I have to say, that was a very nice feeling.” CHAPTER SIX THE TRIP TREATMENT Psychedelics in Psychotherapy One: Dying A T N EW Y ORK U NIVERSITY, psilocybin trips take place in a treatment room carefully decorated to look more like a cozy den than a hospital suite. The effect almost works, but not entirely, for the stainless steel and plastic fittings of modern medicine peek through the domestic scrim here and there, chilly reminders that the room you are tripping in is still in the belly of a big city hospital complex. Against one wall is a comfortable couch long enough for a patient to stretch out on during a session. An abstract painting—or is it a cubist landscape?—hangs on the opposite wall, and on the bookshelves large-format books about art and mythology share space with native craft items and spiritual knickknacks—a large glazed ceramic mushroom, a Buddha, a crystal. This could be the apartment of a well-traveled shrink of a certain age, one with an interest in Eastern religions and the art of what used to be called primitive cultures. Yet the illusion crumbles as soon as you lift your gaze to the ceiling, where the tracks that would ordinarily support the curtains dividing one hospital bed from another traverse the white acoustic tiles. And then there is the supersized bathroom, ablaze with fluorescent light and outfitted with the requisite grab bars and pedals. It was here in this room that I first heard the story of Patrick Mettes, a volunteer in NYU’s psilocybin cancer trial who, in the course of a turbulent six-hour psilocybin journey on the couch where I now sat, had a life-changing—or perhaps I should say death-changing—experience. I had come to interview Tony Bossis, the palliative care psychologist who guided Mettes that day, and his colleague Stephen Ross, the Bellevue psychiatrist who directed the trial, which sought to determine whether a single high dose of psilocybin could alleviate the anxiety and depression that often follow a life-threatening cancer diagnosis. While Bossis, hirsute and bearish, looks the part of a fifty-something Manhattan shrink with an interest in alternative therapies, Ross, who is in his forties, comes across as more of a straight arrow; neatly trimmed in a suit and tie, he could pass for a Wall Street banker. A bookish teenager growing up in L.A., Ross says he had no personal experience of psychedelics and knew next to nothing about them before a colleague happened to mention that LSD had been used successfully to treat alcoholics in the 1950s and 1960s. This being his psychiatric specialty, Ross did some research and was astonished to discover a “completely buried body of knowledge.” By the 1990s, when he began his residency in psychiatry at Columbia and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, the history of psychedelic therapy had been erased from the field, never to be mentioned. The trial at NYU, along with a sister study conducted in Roland Griffiths’s lab at Johns Hopkins, represents one of a handful of efforts to pick up the thread of inquiry that got dropped in the 1970s when sanctioned psychedelic therapy ended. While the NYU and Hopkins trials are assessing the potential of psychedelics to help the dying, other trials now under way are exploring the possibility that psychedelics (usually psilocybin rather than LSD, because, as Ross explained, it “carries none of the political baggage of those three letters”) could be used to lift depression and break addictions—to alcohol, cocaine, and tobacco. None of this work is exactly new: to delve into the history of clinical research with psychedelics is to realize that most of this ground has already been tilled. Charles Grob, the UCLA psychiatrist whose 2011 pilot study of psilocybin for cancer anxiety cleared the path for the NYU and Hopkins trials, acknowledges that “in a lot of ways we are simply picking up the torch from earlier generations of researchers who had to put it down because of cultural pressures.” But if psychedelics are ever to find acceptance in modern medicine, all this buried knowledge will need to be excavated and the experiments that produced it reprised according to the prevailing scientific standards. Yet even as psychedelic therapies are being tested by modern science, the very strangeness of these molecules and their actions upon the mind is at the same time testing whether Western medicine can deal with the implicit challenges they pose. To cite one obvious example, conventional drug trials of psychedelics are difficult if not impossible to blind: most participants can tell whether they’ve received psilocybin or a placebo, and so can their guides. Also, in testing these drugs, how can researchers hope to tease out the chemical’s effect from the critical influence of set and setting? Western science and modern drug testing depend on the ability to isolate a single variable, but it isn’t clear that the effects of a psychedelic drug can ever be isolated, whether from the context in which it is administered, the presence of the therapists involved, or the volunteer’s expectations. Any of these factors can muddy the waters of causality. And how is Western medicine to evaluate a psychiatric drug that appears to work not by means of any strictly pharmacological effect but by administering a certain kind of experience in the minds of the people who take it? Add to this the fact that the kind of experience these drugs sponsor often goes under the heading of “spiritual,” and you have, with psychedelic therapy, a very large pill for modern medicine to swallow. Charles Grob well appreciates the challenge but is also refreshingly unapologetic about it: he describes psychedelic therapy as a form of “applied mysticism.” This is surely an odd phrase to hear on the lips of a scientist, and to many ears it sounds dangerously unscientific. “ For me that is not a medical concept,” Franz Vollenweider, the pioneering psychedelic researcher, told Science magazine, when asked to comment on the role of mysticism in psychedelic therapy. “It’s more like an interesting shamanic concept.” But other researchers working on psychedelics don’t run from the idea that elements of shamanism might have a role to play in psychedelic therapy—as indeed it has probably done for several thousand years before there was such a thing as science. “ If we are to develop optimal research designs for evaluating the therapeutic utility of hallucinogens,” Grob has written, “it will not be sufficient to adhere to strict standards of scientific methodology alone. We must also pay heed to the examples provided us by such successful applications of the shamanic paradigm.” Under that paradigm, the shaman/therapist carefully orchestrates “extrapharmacological variables” such as set and setting in order to put the “hyper-suggestible properties” of these medicines to best use. This is precisely where psychedelic therapy seems to be operating: on a frontier between spirituality and science that is as provocative as it is uncomfortable. Yet the new research into psychedelics comes along at a time when mental health treatment in this country is so “broken”—to use the word of Tom Insel, who until 2015 was director of the National Institute of Mental Health—that the field’s willingness to entertain radical new approaches is perhaps greater than it has been in a generation. The pharmacological toolbox for treating depression—which afflicts nearly a tenth of all Americans and, worldwide, is the leading cause of disability—has little in it today, with antidepressants losing their effectiveness * and the pipeline for new psychiatric drugs drying up. Pharmaceutical companies are no longer investing in the development of so-called CNS drugs—medicines targeted at the central nervous system. The mental health system reaches only a fraction of the people suffering from mental disorders, most of whom are discouraged from seeking treatment by its cost, social stigma, or ineffectiveness. There are almost forty-three thousand suicides every year in America (more than the number of deaths from either breast cancer or auto accidents), yet only about half of the people who take their lives have ever received mental health treatment. “Broken” does not seem too harsh a characterization of such a system. Jeffrey Guss, a Manhattan psychiatrist and a coinvestigator on the NYU trial, thinks the moment could be ripe for psychotherapy to entertain a completely new paradigm. Guss points out that for many years now “we’ve had this conflict between the biologically based treatments and psychodynamic treatments. They’ve been fighting one another for legitimacy and resources. Is mental illness a disorder of chemistry, or is it a loss of meaning in one’s life? Psychedelic therapy is the wedding of those two approaches.” In recent years, “ psychiatry has gone from being brainless to being mindless,” as one psychoanalyst has put it. If psychedelic therapy proves successful, it will be because it succeeds in rejoining the brain and the mind in the practice of psychotherapy. At least that’s the promise. For the therapists working with people approaching the end of life, these questions are of more than academic interest. As I chatted with Stephen Ross and Tony Bossis in the NYU treatment room, I was struck by their excitement, verging on giddiness, at the results they were observing in their cancer patients—after a single guided psilocybin session. At first, Ross couldn’t believe what he was seeing: “I thought the first ten or twenty people were plants—that they must be faking it. They were saying things like ‘I understand love is the most powerful force on the planet’ or ‘I had an encounter with my cancer, this black cloud of smoke.’ People were journeying to early parts of their lives and coming back with a profound new sense of things, new priorities. People who had been palpably scared of death—they lost their fear. The fact that a drug given once could have such an effect for so long is an unprecedented finding. We have never had anything like that in the psychiatric field.” This is when Tony Bossis first told me about his experience sitting with Patrick Mettes as he journeyed to a place in his mind that, somehow, lifted the siege of his terror. “You’re in this room, but you’re in the presence of something large. I remember how, after two hours of silence, Patrick began to cry softly and say, twice, ‘Birth and death is a lot of work.’ It’s humbling to sit there. It’s the most rewarding day of your career.” As a palliative care specialist, Bossis spends a lot of his time with the dying. “People don’t realize how few tools we have in psychiatry to address existential distress.” Existential distress is what psychologists call the complex of depression, anxiety, and fear common in people confronting a terminal diagnosis. “Xanax isn’t the answer.” If there is an answer, Bossis believes, it is going to be more spiritual in nature than pharmacological. “So how do we not explore this,” he asks, “if it can recalibrate how we die?” • • • I T WAS ON AN A PRIL M ONDAY in 2010 that Patrick Mettes, a fifty-three-year-old television news director being treated for a cancer of his bile ducts, read the article on the front page of the New York Times that would change his death. His diagnosis had come three years earlier, shortly after his wife, Lisa Callaghan, noticed that the whites of his eyes had suddenly turned yellow. By 2010, the cancer had spread to Patrick’s lungs, and he was buckling under the weight of an especially debilitating chemotherapy regime and the dawning realization that he might not survive. The article, headlined “Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again,” briefly mentioned research at NYU, where psilocybin was being tested to relieve existential distress in cancer patients. According to Lisa, Patrick had no experience with psychedelics, but he immediately determined to call NYU and volunteer. Lisa was against the idea. “I didn’t want there to be an easy way out,” she told me. “I wanted him to fight.” Patrick placed the call anyway and, after filling out some forms and answering a long list of questions, was accepted into the trial. He was assigned to Tony Bossis. Tony was roughly the same age as Patrick; he is also a soulful man of uncommon warmth and compassion, and the two immediately hit it off. At their first meeting, Bossis told Patrick what to expect. After three or four preparatory sessions of talking therapy, Patrick would be scheduled for two dosings—one of them an “active placebo” (in this case a high dose of niacin, which produces a tingling sensation), and the other a capsule containing twenty-five milligrams of psilocybin. Both sessions would take place in the treatment room where I met Bossis and Ross. During each session, which would last the better part of a day, Patrick would lie on the couch wearing eyeshades and listening through headphones to a playlist of carefully curated music—Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Pat Metheny, and Ravi Shankar, as well as some classical and New Age compositions. Two sitters—one of them male (Bossis) and the other female (Krystallia Kalliontzi)—would be in attendance for the duration, saying very little but available to help should he run into any trouble. In preparation, the two shared with Patrick the set of “flight instructions” written by the Hopkins researcher Bill Richards. Bossis suggested that Patrick use the phrase “Trust and let go” as a kind of mantra for his journey. Go wherever it takes you, he advised: “Climb staircases, open doors, explore paths, fly over landscapes.” But the most important advice for the journey he offered is always to move toward, rather than try to flee, anything truly threatening or monstrous you encounter—look it straight in the eyes. “Dig in your heels and ask, ‘What are you doing in my mind?’ Or, ‘What can I learn from you?’” • • • T HE IDEA OF GIVING a psychedelic drug to the dying was first broached not by a therapist or scientist but by Aldous Huxley in a letter to Humphry Osmond, proposing a research project involving “the administration of LSD to terminal cancer cases, in the hope that it would make dying a more spiritual, less strictly physiological process.” Huxley himself had his wife, Laura, give him an injection of LSD when he was on his own deathbed, on November 22, 1963. By then, Huxley’s idea had been tested on a number of cancer patients in North America. In 1965, Sidney Cohen wrote an essay for Harper’s (“LSD and the Anguish of Dying”) exploring the potential of psychedelics to “ alter[] the experience of dying.” He described treatment with LSD as “therapy by self-transcendence.” The premise behind the approach was that our fear of death is a function of our egos, which burden us with a sense of separateness that can become unbearable as we approach death. “We are born into an egoless world,” Cohen wrote, “but we live and die imprisoned within ourselves.” The idea was to use psychedelics to escape the prison of self. “We wanted to provide a brief, lucid interval of complete egolessness to demonstrate that personal intactness was not absolutely necessary, and that perhaps there was something ‘out there’”—something greater than our individual selves that might survive our demise. Cohen quoted a patient, a woman dying of ovarian cancer, describing the shift in her perspective following an LSD session: My extinction is not of great consequence at this moment, not even for me. It’s just another turn in the swing of existence and non-existence. I feel it has little to do with the church or talk of death. I suppose that I’m detached—that’s it—away from myself and my pain and my decaying. I could die nicely now—if it should be so. I do not invite it, nor do I put it off. In 1972, Stanislav Grof and Bill Richards, who were working together at Spring Grove, wrote that LSD gave patients an experience “ of cosmic unity” such that death, “instead of being seen as the absolute end of everything and a step into nothingness, appears suddenly as a transition into another type of existence . . . The idea of possible continuity of consciousness beyond physical death becomes much more plausible than the opposite.” • • • V OLUNTEERS IN THE NYU psilocybin trial are required to write an account of their journey soon after its completion, and Patrick Mettes, who worked in journalism, took the assignment seriously. His wife, Lisa, said that after his Friday session Patrick labored all weekend to make sense of the experience and write it down. Lisa agreed to share his account with me and also gave Patrick’s therapist, Tony Bossis, permission to show me the notes he took during the session, as well as his notes from several follow-up psychotherapy sessions. Lisa, who at the time worked as a marketing executive for a cookware company, had an important meeting on that January morning in 2011, so Patrick came by himself to the treatment room in the NYU dental school on First Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street, taking the subway from their apartment in Brooklyn. (The treatment room was in the dental college because, at the time, both Bellevue and NYU’s cancer center wanted to keep their distance from a trial involving psychedelics.) Tony Bossis and Krystallia Kalliontzi, his guides, greeted him, reviewed the day’s plans, and then at 9:00 a.m. presented Patrick with a chalice containing the pill; whether it contained psilocybin or the placebo, none of them would know for at least thirty minutes. Patrick was asked to state his intention, which he said was to learn to cope better with the anxiety and depression he felt about his cancer and to work on what he called his “regret in life.” He placed a few photographs around the room, of himself and Lisa on their wedding day and of their dog, Arlo. At 9:30, Patrick lay down on the couch, put on the headphones and eyeshades, and fell quiet. In his account, Patrick likened the start of the journey to the launch of a space shuttle: “a physically violent and rather clunky liftoff which eventually gave way to the blissful serenity of weightlessness.” Many of the volunteers I interviewed reported initial episodes of intense fear and anxiety before giving themselves up to the experience, as the guides encourage them to do. This is where the flight instructions come in. Their promise is that if you surrender to whatever happens (“trust, let go, and be open” or “relax and float downstream”), whatever at first might seem terrifying will soon morph into something else, and likely something pleasant, even blissful. Early in his journey, Patrick encountered his brother’s wife, who died of cancer more than twenty years earlier, at forty-three. “Ruth acted as my tour guide,” he wrote, and “didn’t seem surprised to see me. She ‘wore’ her translucent body so I would know her . . . This period of my journey seemed to be about the feminine.” Michelle Obama made an appearance. “The considerable feminine energy all around me made clear the idea that a mother, any mother, regardless of her shortcomings . . . could never NOT love her offspring. This was very powerful. I knew I was crying . . . it was here that I felt as if I was coming out of the womb . . . being birthed again. My rebirth was smooth . . . comforting.” Outwardly, however, what was happening to Patrick appeared to be anything but smooth. He was crying, Bossis noted, and breathing heavily. This is when he first said, “Birth and death is a lot of work,” and seemed to be convulsing. Then Patrick reached out and clutched Kalliontzi’s hand while pulling up his knees and pushing, as if he were delivering a baby. From Bossis’s notes: 11:15 “Oh God.” 11:25 “It’s really so simple.” 11:47 “Who knew a man could give birth?” And then, “I gave birth, to what I don’t know.” 12:10 “It’s just too amazing.” Patrick is alternately laughing and crying at this point. “Oh God, it all makes sense now, so simple and beautiful.” Now Patrick asked to take a break. “It was getting too intense,” he wrote. He removed the headphones and eyeshades. “I sat up and spoke with Tony and Krystallia. I mentioned that everyone deserved to have this experience . . . that if everyone did, no one could ever do harm to another again . . . wars would be impossible to wage. The room and everything in it was beautiful. Tony and Krystallia, sitting on [their] pillows, were radiant!” They helped him to the bathroom. “Even the germs (if there were any present) were beautiful, as was everything in our world and universe.” Afterward, he voiced some reluctance to “go back in.” “The work was considerable but I loved the sense of adventure.” Eventually, he put his eyeshades and headphones on and lay back down. “From here on, love was the only consideration . . . It was and is the only purpose. Love seemed to emanate from a single point of light . . . and it vibrated . . . I could feel my physical body trying to vibrate in unity with the cosmos . . . and, frustratingly, I felt like a guy who couldn’t dance . . . but the universe accepted it. The sheer joy . . . the bliss . . . the nirvana . . . was indescribable. And in fact there are no words to accurately capture my experience . . . my state . . . this place. I know I’ve had no earthly pleasure that’s ever come close to this feeling . . . no sensation, no image of beauty, nothing during my time on earth has felt as pure and joyful and glorious as the height of this journey.” Aloud, he said, “Never had an orgasm of the soul before.” The music loomed large in the experience: “I was learning a song and the song was simple . . . it was one note . . . C . . . it was the vibration of the universe . . . a collection of everything that ever existed . . . all together equaling God.” Patrick then described an epiphany having to do with simplicity. He was thinking about politics and food, music and architecture, and—his field—television news, which he realized was, like so much else, “over-produced. We put too many notes in a song . . . too many ingredients in our recipes . . . too many flourishes in the clothes we wear, the houses we live in . . . it all seemed so pointless when really all we needed to do was focus on the love.” Just then he saw Derek Jeter, then the Yankee shortstop, “making yet another balletic turn to first base.” “I was convinced in that moment I had figured it all out . . . It was right there in front of me . . . love . . . the only thing that mattered. This was now to be my life’s cause.” Then he said something that Bossis jotted down at 12:15: “Ok, I get it! You can all punch out now. Our work is done.” But it wasn’t done, not yet. Now “I took a tour of my lungs . . . I remember breathing deeply to help facilitate the ‘seeing.’” Bossis noted that at 2:30 Patrick had said, “I went into my lungs and saw two spots. They were no big deal. “I was being told (without words) not to worry about the cancer . . . it’s minor in the scheme of things . . . simply an imperfection of your humanity and that the more important matter . . . the real work to be done is before you. Again, love.” Now Patrick experienced what he called “a brief death.” “I approached what appeared to be a very sharp, pointed piece of stainless steel. It had a razor blade quality to it. I continued up to the apex of this shiny metal object and as I arrived, I had a choice, to look or not look, over the edge and into the infinite abyss . . . the vastness of the universe . . . the eye of everything . . . [and] of nothing. I was hesitant but not frightened. I wanted to go all in but felt that if I did, I would possibly leave my body permanently . . . death from this life. But it was not a difficult decision . . . I knew there was much more for me here.” Telling his guides about his choice, Patrick explained that he “was not ready to jump off and leave Lisa.” Then, rather suddenly around 3:00 p.m., it was over. “The transition from a state where I had no sense of time or space to the relative dullness of now, happened quickly. I had a headache.” When Lisa arrived to take him home, Patrick “looked like he had run a race,” she recalled. “The color in his face was not good, he looked tired and sweaty, but he was on fire. He was lit up with all the things he wanted to tell me and all the things he couldn’t.” He told her he “had touched the face of God.” • • • E VERY PSYCHEDELIC JOURNEY is different, yet a few common themes seem to recur in the journeys of those struggling with cancer. Many of the cancer patients I interviewed described an experience of either giving birth or being reborn, though none quite as intense as Patrick’s. Many also described an encounter with their cancer (or their fear of it) that had the effect of shrinking its power over them. I mentioned earlier the experience of Dinah Bazer, a petite and mild New Yorker in her sixties, a figure-skating instructor, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2010. When we met in the NYU treatment room, Dinah, who has auburn curls and wore large hoop earrings, told me that even after a successful course of chemotherapy she was paralyzed by the fear of a recurrence and wasted her days “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” She too worked with Tony Bossis and in the difficult first moments of her session imagined herself trapped in the hold of a ship, rocking back and forth, consumed by fear. “I stuck my hand out from under the blanket and said, ‘I am so scared.’ Tony took my hand and told me to just go with it. His hand became my anchor. “I saw my fear. Almost as in a dream, my fear was located under my rib cage on the left side; it was not my tumor, but it was this black thing in my body. And it made me immensely angry; I was enraged by my fear. I screamed, ‘Get the fuck out! I won’t be eaten alive.’ And you know what? It was gone! It went away. I drove it away with my anger.” Dinah reports that years later it hasn’t returned. “The cancer is something completely out of my control, but the fear, I realized, is not.” Dinah’s epiphany gave way to feelings of “overwhelming love” as her thoughts turned from her fear to her children. She told me she was and remains a “solid atheist,” and yet “the phrase that I used—which I hate to use but it’s the only way to describe it—is that I felt ‘bathed in God’s love.’” Paradox is a hallmark of the mystical experience, and the contradiction between the divine love Dinah felt and “not having a shred of belief” didn’t seem to faze her. When I pointed this out, she shrugged and then smiled: “What other way is there to express it?” Not surprisingly, visions of death loom large in the journeys taken by the cancer patients I interviewed at NYU and Hopkins. A breast cancer survivor in her sixties (who asked to remain anonymous) described zipping merrily through space as if in a video game until she arrived smack at the wall of a crematorium and realized, with a fright, “I’ve died and now I’m going to be cremated. (But I didn’t have the experience of burning—how could I? I was dead!) The next thing I know, I’m belowground in this gorgeous forest, deep woods, loamy and brown. There are roots all around me and I’m seeing the trees growing, and I’m part of them. I had died but I was there in the ground with all these roots and it didn’t feel sad or happy, just natural, contented, peaceful. I wasn’t gone. I was part of the earth.” Several cancer patients described edging up to the precipice of death and looking over to the other side before drawing back. Tammy Burgess, diagnosed with ovarian cancer at fifty-five, found herself peering across “the great plane of consciousness. It was very serene and beautiful. I felt alone, but I could reach out and touch anyone I’d ever known. “When my time came, that’s where my life would go once it left me, and that was okay.” The uncanny authority of the psychedelic experience might help explain why so many cancer patients in the trials reported that their fear of death had lifted or at least abated: they had stared directly at death and come to know something about it, in a kind of dress rehearsal. “A high-dose psychedelic experience is death practice,” says Katherine MacLean, the former Hopkins psychologist. “You’re losing everything you know to be real, letting go of your ego and your body, and that process can feel like dying.” And yet the experience brings the comforting news that there is something on the other side of that death—whether it is the “great plane of consciousness” or one’s ashes underground being taken up by the roots of trees—and some abiding, disembodied intelligence to somehow know it. “Now I am aware that there is a whole other ‘reality,’” one NYU volunteer told a researcher a few months after her journey. “Compared to other people, it is like I know another language.” At a follow-up session with Tony Bossis a few weeks after his journey, Patrick Mettes—whom his wife, Lisa, describes as “an earthy, connected person, a doer”—discussed the idea of an afterlife. Bossis’s notes indicate that Patrick interpreted his journey as “pretty clearly a window . . . [on] a kind of afterlife, something beyond this physical body.” He spoke of “the plane of existence of love” as “infinite.” In subsequent sessions, Patrick talked about his body and cancer “as [a] type of illusion.” It also became clear that, psychologically at least, Patrick was doing remarkably well in the aftermath of his session. He was meditating regularly, felt he had become better able to live in the present, and “described loving [his] wife even more.” In a session in March, two months out from his journey, Bossis noted that Patrick, though slowly dying of cancer, “feels the happiest in his life.” “ I am the luckiest man on earth.” • • • H OW MUCH SHOULD THE AUTHENTICITY of these experiences concern us? Most of the therapists involved in the research take a scrupulously pragmatic view of the question. They’re fixed on relieving their patients’ suffering and exhibit scant interest in metaphysical theories or questions of truth. “That’s above my pay grade,” Tony Bossis said with a shrug when I asked him whether he thought the experiences of cosmic consciousness described by his patients were fictive or real. Asked the same question, Bill Richards cited William James, who suggested we judge the mystical experience not by its veracity, which is unknowable, but by “its fruits”: Does it turn someone’s life in a positive direction? Many researchers acknowledge that a strong placebo effect may be at work when a drug as suggestible as psilocybin is administered by medical professionals with legal and institutional sanction: under such conditions, the expectations of the therapist are much more likely to be fulfilled by the patient. (And bad trips are much less likely to occur.) Here we bump into one of the richer paradoxes of the psilocybin trials: while it succeeds in no small part because it has the sanction and authority of science, its effectiveness seems to depend on a mystical experience that leaves people convinced there is more to this world than science can explain. Science is being used to validate an experience that would appear to undermine the scientific perspective in what might be called White-Coat Shamanism. Are questions of truth important, if the therapy helps people who are suffering? I had difficulty finding anyone involved in the research who was troubled by such questions. David Nichols, the retired Purdue University chemist and pharmacologist who founded the Heffter Research Institute in 1993 to support psychedelic research (including the trials at Hopkins, for which he synthesized the psilocybin), puts the pragmatic case most baldly. In a 2014 interview with Science magazine, he said, “If it gives them peace, if it helps people to die peacefully with their friends and their family at their side, I don’t care if it’s real or an illusion.” For his part, Roland Griffiths acknowledges that “authenticity is a scientific question not yet answered. All we have to go by is the phenomenology”—that is, what people tell us about their internal experiences. That’s when he began querying me about my own spiritual development, which I confessed was still fairly rudimentary; I told him my worldview has always been staunchly materialist. “Okay, then, but what about the miracle that we are conscious? Just think about that for a second, that we are aware and that we are aware that we are aware! How unlikely is that ?” How can we be certain, he was suggesting, that our experience of consciousness is “authentic”? The answer is we can’t; it is beyond the reach of our science, and yet who doubts its reality? In fact, the evidence for the existence of consciousness is much like the evidence for the reality of the mystical experience: we believe it exists not because science can independently verify it but because a great many people have been convinced of its reality; here, too, all we have to go on is the phenomenology. Griffiths was suggesting that insofar as I was on board for one “miracle” well beyond the reach of materialist science—“the marvel of consciousness,” as Vladimir Nabokov once called it, “that sudden window swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidst the night of non-being”—maybe I needed to keep a more open mind to the possibility of others. • • • I N D ECEMBER 2016, a front-page story in the New York Times reported on the dramatic results of the Johns Hopkins and NYU psilocybin cancer studies, which were published together in a special issue of the Journal of Psychopharmacology, along with nearly a dozen commentaries from prominent voices in the mental health establishment—including two past presidents of the American Psychiatric Association—hailing the findings. In both the NYU and the Hopkins trials, some 80 percent of cancer patients showed clinically significant reductions in standard measures of anxiety and depression, an effect that endured for at least six months after their psilocybin session. In both trials, the intensity of the mystical experience volunteers reported closely correlated with the degree to which their symptoms subsided. Few if any psychiatric interventions of any kind have demonstrated such dramatic and sustained results. * The trials were small—eighty subjects in all—and will have to be repeated on a larger scale before the government will consider rescheduling psilocybin and approving the treatment. * But the results were encouraging enough to win the attention and cautious support of the mental health community, which has called for more research. Dozens of medical schools have asked to participate in future trials, and funders have stepped forward to underwrite those trials. After decades in the shadows, psychedelic therapy is suddenly respectable again, or nearly so. New York University, which proudly promoted the results of a trial it had once only tolerated somewhat grudgingly, invited Stephen Ross to move his treatment room from the dental college into the main hospital. Even the NYU cancer center, which had initially been reluctant to refer patients to the psilocybin trial, asked Ross to set up a treatment room on its premises for an upcoming trial. The papers offered little in the way of a theory to explain the effects of psilocybin, except to point out that the patients with the best outcomes were the ones who had the most complete mystical experience. But exactly why should that experience translate into relief from anxiety and depression? Is it the intimation of some kind of immortality that accounts for the effect? This seems too simple and fails to account for the variety of experiences people had, many of which did not dwell on an afterlife. And some of the ones that did conceived of what happens after death in naturalistic terms, as when the anonymous volunteer imagined herself as “part of the earth,” molecules of matter being taken up by the roots of trees. This really happens. Of course the mystical experience consists of several components, most of which don’t require a supernatural explanation. The dissolution of the sense of self, for example, can be understood in either psychological or neurobiological terms (as possibly the disintegration of the default mode network) and may explain many of the benefits people experienced during their journeys without resort to any spiritual conception of “oneness.” Likewise, the sense of “sacredness” that classically accompanies the mystical experience can be understood in more secular terms as simply a heightened sense of meaning or purpose. It’s still early days in our understanding of consciousness, and no single one of our vocabularies for approaching the subject—the biological, the psychological, the philosophical, or the spiritual—has yet earned the right to claim it has the final word. It may be that by layering these different perspectives one upon the other, we can gain the richest picture of what might be going on. In a follow-up study to the NYU trial, “Patient Experiences of Psilocybin-Assisted Psychotherapy,” published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology in 2017, Alexander Belser, a member of the NYU team, interviewed volunteers to better understand the psychological mechanisms underlying the transformations they experienced. I read the study as a subtle attempt to move beyond the mystical experience paradigm to a more humanistic one and at the same time to underscore the importance of the psychotherapist in the psychedelic experience. (Note the use of the term “psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy” in the title; neither of the papers in Psychopharmacology mentioned psychotherapy in its title, only the drug.) A few key themes emerged. All of the patients interviewed described powerful feelings of connection to loved ones (“relational embeddedness” is the term the authors used) and, more generally, a shift “from feelings of separateness to interconnectedness.” In most cases, this shift was accompanied by a repertoire of powerful emotions, including “exalted feelings of joy, bliss, and love.” Difficult passages during the journey were typically followed by positive feelings of surrender and acceptance (even of their cancers) as people’s fears fell away. Jeffrey Guss, a coauthor on the paper and a psychiatrist, interprets what happens during the session in terms of the psilocybin’s “egolytic” effects—the drug’s ability to either silence or at least muffle the voice of the ego. In his view, which is informed by his psychoanalytic training, the ego is a mental construct that performs certain functions on behalf of the self. Chief among these are maintaining the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious realms of the mind and the boundary between self and other, or subject and object. It is only when these boundaries fade or disappear, as they seem to do under the influence of psychedelics, that we can “let go of rigid patterns of thought, allowing us to perceive new meanings with less fear.” The whole question of meaning is central to the approach of the NYU therapists, * and is perhaps especially helpful in understanding the experience of the cancer patients on psilocybin. For many of these patients, a diagnosis of terminal cancer constitutes, among other things, a crisis of meaning. Why me? Why have I been singled out for this fate? Is there any sense to life and the universe? Under the weight of this existential crisis, one’s horizon shrinks, one’s emotional repertoire contracts, and one’s focus narrows as the mind turns in on itself, shutting out the world. Loops of rumination and worry come to occupy more of one’s mental time and space, reinforcing habits of thought it becomes ever more difficult to escape. Existential distress at the end of life bears many of the hallmarks of a hyperactive default network, including obsessive self-reflection and an inability to jump the deepening grooves of negative thinking. The ego, faced with the prospect of its own extinction, turns inward and becomes hypervigilant, withdrawing its investment in the world and other people. The cancer patients I interviewed spoke of feeling closed off from loved ones, from the world, and from the full range of emotions; they felt, as one put it, “existentially alone.” By temporarily disabling the ego, psilocybin seems to open a new field of psychological possibility, symbolized by the death and rebirth reported by many of the patients I interviewed. At first, the falling away of the self feels threatening, but if one can let go and surrender, powerful and usually positive emotions flow in—along with formerly inaccessible memories and sense impressions and meanings. No longer defended by the ego, the gate between self and other—Huxley’s reducing valve—is thrown wide open. And what comes through that opening for many people, in a great flood, is love. Love for specific individuals, yes, but also, as Patrick Mettes came to feel (to know! ), love for everyone and everything—love as the meaning and purpose of life, the key to the universe, and the ultimate truth. So it may be that the loss of self leads to a gain in meaning. Can this be explained biologically? Probably not yet, but recent neuroscience offers a few intriguing clues. Recall that the Imperial College team found that when the default mode network disintegrates (taking with it the sense of self), the brain’s overall connectivity increases, allowing brain regions that don’t ordinarily communicate to form new lines of connection. Is it possible that some of these new connections in the brain manifest in the mind as new meanings or perspectives? The connecting of formerly far-flung dots? It may also be that psychedelics can directly imbue otherwise irrelevant sensory information with meaning. A recent paper in Current Biology * described an experiment in which pieces of music that held no personal relevance for volunteers were played for them while on LSD. Under the influence of the psychedelic, however, volunteers attributed marked and lasting personal meaning to the same songs.These medicines may help us construct meaning, if not discover it. No doubt the suggestibility of the mind on psychedelics and the guiding presence of psychotherapists also play a role in attributing meaning to the experience. In preparing volunteers for their journeys, Jeffrey Guss speaks explicitly about the acquisition of meaning, telling his patients “that the medicine will show you hidden or unknown shadow parts of yourself; that you will gain insight into yourself, and come to learn about the meaning of life and existence.” (He also tells them they may have a mystical or transcendent experience but carefully refrains from defining it.) “As a result of this molecule being in your body, you’ll understand more about yourself and life and the universe.” And more often than not this happens. Replace the science-y word “molecule” with “sacred mushroom” or “plant teacher,” and you have the incantations of a shaman at the start of a ceremonial healing. But however it works, and whatever vocabulary we use to explain it, this seems to me the great gift of the psychedelic journey, especially to the dying: its power to imbue everything in our field of experience with a heightened sense of purpose and consequence. Depending on one’s orientation, this can be understood either in humanistic or in spiritual terms—for what is the Sacred but a capitalized version of significance? Even for atheists like Dinah Bazer— like me! —psychedelics can charge a world from which the gods long ago departed with the pulse of meaning, the immanence with which they once infused it. The sense of a cold and arbitrary universe governed purely by chance is banished. Especially in the absence of faith, these medicines, in the right hands, may offer powerful antidotes for the existential terrors that afflict not only the dying. To believe that life has any meaning at all is of course a large presumption, requiring in some a leap of faith, but surely it is a helpful one, and never more so than at the approach of death. To situate the self in a larger context of meaning, whatever it is—a sense of oneness with nature or universal love—can make extinction of the self somewhat easier to contemplate. Religion has always understood this wager, but why should religion enjoy a monopoly? Bertrand Russell wrote that the best way to overcome one’s fear of death “ is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.” He goes on: An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually, the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. • • • P ATRICK M ETTES lived seventeen months after his psilocybin session, and according to Lisa those months were filled with a great many unexpected satisfactions, alongside Patrick’s dawning acceptance that he was going to die. Lisa had initially been wary of the NYU trial, interpreting Patrick’s desire to participate as a sign he’d given up the fight. In the event, he came away convinced he still had much to do in this life—much love to give and receive—and wasn’t yet ready to leave it and, especially, his wife. Patrick’s psychedelic journey had shifted his perspective, from a narrow lens trained on the prospect of dying to a renewed focus on how best to live the time left to him. “He had a new resolve. That there was a point to his life, that he got it, and was moving with it. “We still had our arguments,” Lisa recalled, “and we had a very trying summer” as they endured a calamitous apartment renovation in Brooklyn. “That was hell on earth,” Lisa recalled, but Patrick “had changed. He had a sense of patience he had never had before, and with me he had real joy about things. It was as if he had been relieved of the duty of caring about the details of life, and he could let all that go. Now it was about being with people, enjoying his sandwich and the walk on the promenade. It was as if we lived a lifetime in a year.” After the psilocybin session, Lisa somehow convinced herself that Patrick was not going to die after all. He continued with his chemo and his spirits improved, but she now thinks all this time “he knew very well he wasn’t going to make it.” Lisa continued to work, and Patrick spent his good days walking the city. “He would walk everywhere, try every restaurant for lunch, and tell me about all the great places he discovered. But his good days got fewer and fewer.” Then, in March 2012, he told her he wanted to stop chemo. “He didn’t want to die,” Lisa says, “but I think he just decided that this is not how he wanted to live.” That fall his lungs began to fail, and Patrick wound up in the hospital. “He gathered everyone together and said good-bye and explained that this is how he wanted to die. He had a very conscious death.” Patrick’s seeming equanimity in the face of death exerted a powerful influence on everyone around him, Lisa said, and his room in the palliative care unit at Mount Sinai became a center of gravity in the hospital. “Everyone, the nurses and the doctors, wanted to hang out in our room; they just didn’t want to leave. Patrick would talk and talk. It was like he was a yogi. He put out so much love.” When Tony Bossis visited Patrick a week before he died, he was struck by the mood in the room and by Patrick’s serenity. “He was consoling me . He said his biggest sadness was leaving his wife. But he was not afraid.” Lisa e-mailed me a photograph of Patrick she had taken a few days before he died, and when the image popped open on my screen, it momentarily took my breath away. Here was an emaciated man in a hospital gown, an oxygen clip in his nose, but with bright, shining blue eyes and a broad smile. On the eve of death, the man was beaming. Lisa stayed with Patrick in his hospital room night after night, the two of them often talking into the wee hours. “I feel like I have one foot in this world and one in the next,” he told her at one point. “One of the last nights we were together, he said, ‘Honey, don’t push me. I’m finding my way.’” At the same time, he sought to comfort her. “This is simply the wheel of life,” she recalls him saying. “‘You feel like you’re being ground down by it now, but the wheel is going to turn and you’ll be on top again.’” Lisa hadn’t had a shower in days, and her brother finally persuaded her to go home for a few hours. Minutes before she returned to his bedside, Patrick slipped away. “I went home to shower and he died.” We were speaking on the phone, and I could hear her crying softly. “He wasn’t going to die as long as I was there. My brother had told me, ‘You need to let him go.’” Patrick was gone by the time she got back to the hospital. “He had died seconds before. It was like something had evaporated from him. I sat with him for three hours. It’s a long time before the soul is out of the room.” “It was a good death,” Lisa told me, a fact she credits to the people at NYU and to Patrick’s psilocybin journey. “I feel indebted to them for what they allowed him to experience—the deep resources they allowed him to tap into. These were his own deep resources. That, I think, is what these mind-altering drugs do.” “Patrick was far more spiritual than I was to begin with,” Lisa told me the last time we spoke. It was clear his journey had changed her too. “It was an affirmation of a world I knew nothing about. But there are more dimensions to this world than I ever knew existed.” Two: Addiction The dozen or so Apollo astronauts who have escaped Earth’s orbit and traveled to the moon had the privilege of seeing the planet from a perspective never before available to our species, and several of them reported that the experience changed them in profound and enduring ways. The sight of that “pale blue dot” hanging in the infinite black void of space erased the national borders on our maps and rendered Earth small, vulnerable, exceptional, and precious. Edgar Mitchell, returning from the moon on Apollo 14, had what he has described as a mystical experience, specifically a savikalpa samadhi, in which the ego vanishes when confronted with the immensity of the universe during the course of a meditation on an object—in this case, planet Earth. “The biggest joy was on the way home,” he recalled. “In my cockpit window, every two minutes: the earth, the moon, the sun, and the whole panorama of the heavens. That was a powerful, overwhelming experience. “ And suddenly I realized that the molecules of my body, and the molecules of my spacecraft, the molecules in the body of my partners, were prototyped, manufactured in some ancient generation of stars. [I felt] an overwhelming sense of oneness, of connectedness . . . It wasn’t ‘Them and Us,’ it was ‘That’s me! That’s all of it, it’s one thing.’ And it was accompanied by an ecstasy, a sense of ‘Oh my God, wow, yes’—an insight, an epiphany.” * It was the power of this novel perspective—the same perspective that Stewart Brand, after his 1966 LSD trip on a North Beach rooftop, worked so hard to disseminate to the culture—that helped to inspire the modern environmental movement as well as the Gaia hypothesis, the idea that Earth and its atmosphere together constitute a single living organism. I thought about this so-called overview effect during my conversations with volunteers in the psilocybin trials, and especially with those who had overcome their addictions after a psychedelic journey—to inner space, if you will. Several volunteers described achieving a new distance on their own lives, a vantage from which matters that had once seemed daunting now seemed smaller and more manageable, including their addictions. It sounded as though the psychedelic experience had given many of them an overview effect on the scenes of their own lives, making possible a shift in worldview and priorities that allowed them to let go of old habits, sometimes with remarkable ease. As one lifetime smoker put it to me in terms so simple I found it hard to believe, “Smoking became irrelevant, so I stopped.” The smoking cessation pilot study in which this man took part—his name is Charles Bessant, and he has been abstinent now for six years—was directed by Matthew Johnson, a protégé of Roland Griffiths’s at Johns Hopkins, where the study took place. Johnson is a psychologist in his early forties who, like Griffiths, trained as a behaviorist, studying things like “operant conditioning” in rats. Tall, slender, and angular, Johnson wears a scrupulously trimmed black beard and oversized retro-nerd black glasses that make him look a little like Ira Glass. His interest in psychedelics goes back to his college days, when he read Ram Dass and learned about the Harvard Psilocybin Project, but never did he dare to imagine he would someday have a job working with them in a laboratory. “I had it in the back of my mind that someday I wanted to do research with the psychedelic compounds,” he told me when we first met in his Hopkins office, “but I figured that was a long way off in the future.” Yet soon after Johnson arrived at Johns Hopkins to do a pharmacology postdoc in 2004, “I found out that Roland had this super hush-hush project with psilocybin. Everything lined up perfectly.” Johnson worked on the lab’s early psilocybin studies, serving as a guide for several dozen sessions and helping to crunch the data, before launching a study of his own in 2009. The smoking study gave fifteen volunteer smokers who were trying to quit several sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy followed by two or three doses of psilocybin. A so-called open-label study, there was no placebo, so they all knew they were getting the drug. Volunteers had to stop smoking before their psilocybin session; they had their carbon-monoxide levels measured at several intervals to ensure compliance and confirm they remained abstinent. The study was tiny and not randomized, but the results were nevertheless striking, especially when you consider that smoking is one of the most difficult addictions to break—harder, some say, than heroin. Six months after their psychedelic sessions, 80 percent of the volunteers were confirmed as abstinent; at the one-year mark, that figure had fallen to 67 percent, which is still a better rate of success than the best treatment now available. (A much larger randomized study, comparing the effectiveness of psilocybin therapy with the nicotine patch, is currently under way.) As in the cancer-anxiety studies, the volunteers who had the most complete mystical experiences had the best outcomes; they were, like Charles Bessant, able to quit smoking. After interviewing cancer patients confronted with the prospect of death, people who had had epic journeys in which they confronted their cancers and traveled to the underworld, I wondered how the experience would compare when the stakes were lower: What kinds of journeys would ordinary people simply hoping to break a bad habit have, and what kinds of insights would they return with? Surprisingly banal, it turns out. Not that their journeys were banal—psilocybin transported them all over the world and through history and to outer space—but the insights they brought back with them were mundane in the extreme. Alice O’Donnell, a sixtyish book editor born in Ireland, reveled “in the freedom to go everywhere” in the course of her journey. She grew feathers that allowed her to travel back in time to various scenes of European history, died three times, watched her “soul move from her body to a funeral pyre floating on the Ganges,” and found herself “standing on the edge of the universe, witnessing the dawn of creation.” She had the “humbling” realization that “everything in the universe is of equal importance, including yourself. “Instead of being so narrowly focused, moving through this little tunnel of adult life,” she found that the journey “returned me to the child’s wider sense of wonder—to the world of Wordsworth. A part of my brain that had gone to sleep was awakened. “The universe was so great and there were so many things you could do and see in it that killing yourself seemed like a dumb idea. It put smoking in a whole new context. Smoking seemed very unimportant; it seemed kind of stupid, to be honest.” Alice imagined herself throwing out lots of junk from her house, emptying the attic and the basement: “I had an image of tossing everything over the ledge, all the stuff I didn’t need anymore. It’s amazing how you can whittle things down to the few really important things that are necessary for survival. And the most important thing of all is the breath. When that stops, you’re dead.” She emerged from her journey with the conviction “that you should cherish your breath.” She has not had a cigarette since her psilocybin journey. Whenever she feels a craving, she goes back in memory to her session “and thinks of all the wonderful things I experienced, and how it felt to be on that much higher plane.” Charles Bessant had his epiphany while on a similarly “higher plane.” Bessant, a museum exhibit designer in his sixties, found himself standing on a mountaintop in the Alps, “the German states stretching out before me all the way to the Baltic.” (Wagner was playing in his headphones.) “My ego had dissolved, yet I’m telling you this. It was terrifying.” He sounded like a nineteenth-century Romantic describing an encounter with the sublime, at once terrible and awe inspiring. “People use words like ‘oneness,’ ‘connectivity,’ ‘unity’—I get it! I was part of something so much larger than anything I had ever imagined.” We were speaking by phone on a Saturday morning, and at one point Bessant paused in his account to describe the scene before him. “Right now, I’m standing here in my garden, and the light is coming through the canopy of leaves. For me to be able to stand here in the beauty of this light, talking to you, it’s only because my eyes are open to see it. If you don’t stop to look, you’ll never see it. It’s the statement of an obvious thing, I know, but to feel it, to look and be amazed by this light” is a gift he attributes to his session, which gave him “a feeling of connectedness to everything.” Bessant followed up on our conversation by e-mail with a series of clarifications and elaborations, striving to find the words equal to the immensity of the experience. It was in the face of this immensity that smoking suddenly seemed pitifully small. “Why quit smoking? Because I found it irrelevant. Because other things had become so much more important.” Some volunteers marveled themselves at the simultaneous power and banality of their insights. Savannah Miller is a single mom in her thirties who works as a bookkeeper for her father’s company in Maryland. Possibly because she spent her twenties tangled in an abusive relationship with a man she describes as “a psychopath,” her trip was painful but ultimately cathartic; she remembers crying uncontrollably and producing tremendous amounts of snot (something her guides confirmed really happened). Savannah gave little thought to her habit during the journey, except toward the end when she pictured herself as a smoking gargoyle. “You know how gargoyles look, crouched down with their shoulders hunched? That’s how I felt and saw myself, a little golem creature smoking, pulling in the smoke and not letting it out, until my chest hurts and I’m choking. It was powerful and disgusting. I can still see it now, that hideous coughing gargoyle, whenever I picture myself as a smoker.” Months later, she says the image is still helpful when the inevitable cravings arise. In the middle of her session, Savannah suddenly sat up and announced she had discovered something important, an “epiphany” that her guides needed to write down so it wouldn’t be lost to posterity: “Eat right. Exercise. Stretch.” Matt Johnson refers to these realizations as “duh moments” and says they are common among his volunteers and not at all insignificant. Smokers know perfectly well that their habit is unhealthy, disgusting, expensive, and unnecessary, but under the influence of psilocybin that knowing acquires a new weight, becomes “something they feel in the gut and the heart. Insights like this become more compelling, stickier, and harder to avoid thinking about. These sessions deprive people of the luxury of mindlessness”—our default state, and one in which addictions like smoking can flourish. Johnson believes the value of psilocybin for the addict is in the new perspective—at once obvious and profound—that it opens onto one’s life and its habits. “Addiction is a story we get stuck in, a story that gets reinforced every time we try and fail to quit: ‘I’m a smoker and I’m powerless to stop.’ The journey allows them to get some distance and see the bigger picture and to see the short-term pleasures of smoking in the larger, longer-term context of their lives.” Of course, this re-contextualization of an old habit doesn’t just happen; countless people have taken psilocybin and continued to smoke. If it does happen, it’s because breaking the habit is the avowed intention of the session, strongly reinforced by the therapist in the preparatory meetings and the integration afterward. The “set” of the psychedelic journey is carefully orchestrated by the therapist in much the same way a shaman would use his authority and stagecraft to maximize the medicine’s deep powers of suggestion. This is why it is important to understand that “psychedelic therapy” is not simply treatment with a psychedelic drug but rather a form of “psychedelic-assisted therapy,” as many of the researchers take pains to emphasize. Yet what accounts for the unusual authority of the rather ordinary insights volunteers brought back from their journeys? “You don’t get that on any other drug,” Roland Griffiths points out. Indeed, after most drug experiences, we’re fully aware of, and often embarrassed by, the inauthenticity of what we thought and felt while under the influence. Though neither Griffiths nor Johnson mentioned it, the connection between seeing and believing might explain this sense of authenticity. Very often on psychedelics our thoughts become visible. These are not hallucinations, exactly, because the subject is often fully aware that what she is seeing is not really before her, yet these thoughts made visible are nevertheless remarkably concrete, vivid, and therefore memorable. This is a curious phenomenon, as yet unexplained by neuroscience, though some interesting hypotheses have recently been proposed. When neuroscientists who study vision use fMRIs to image brain activity, they find that the same regions in the visual cortex light up whether one is seeing an object live—“online”—or merely recalling or imagining it, off-line. This suggests that the ability to visualize our thoughts should be the rule rather than the exception. Some neuroscientists suspect that during normal waking hours something in the brain inhibits the visual cortex from presenting to consciousness a visual image of whatever it is we’re thinking about. It’s not hard to see why such an inhibition might be adaptive: cluttering the mind with vivid images would complicate reasoning and abstract thought, not to mention everyday activities like walking or driving a car. But when we are able to visualize our thoughts—such as the thought of ourselves as a smoker looking like a coughing gargoyle—those thoughts take on added weight, feel more real to us. Seeing is believing. Perhaps this is one of the things psychedelics do: relax the brain’s inhibition on visualizing our thoughts, thereby rendering them more authoritative, memorable, and sticky. The overview effect reported by the astronauts didn’t add anything to our intellectual understanding of this “pale blue dot” in the vast sea of space, but seeing it made it real in a way it had never been before. Perhaps the equally vivid overview effect on the scenes of their lives that psychedelics afford some people is what makes it possible for them to change their behavior. Matt Johnson believes that psychedelics can be used to change all sorts of behaviors, not just addiction. The key, in his view, is their power to occasion a sufficiently dramatic experience to “dope-slap people out of their story. It’s literally a reboot of the system—a biological control-alt-delete. Psychedelics open a window of mental flexibility in which people can let go of the mental models we use to organize reality.” In his view, the most important such model is the self, or ego, which a high-dose psychedelic experience temporarily dissolves. He speaks of “our addiction to a pattern of thinking with the self at the center of it.” This underlying addiction to a pattern of thinking, or cognitive style, links the addict to the depressive and to the cancer patient obsessed with death or recurrence. “So much of human suffering stems from having this self that needs to be psychologically defended at all costs. We’re trapped in a story that sees ourselves as independent, isolated agents acting in the world. But that self is an illusion. It can be a useful illusion, when you’re swinging through the trees or escaping from a cheetah or trying to do your taxes. But at the systems level, there is no truth to it. You can take any number of more accurate perspectives: that we’re a swarm of genes, vehicles for passing on DNA; that we’re social creatures through and through, unable to survive alone; that we’re organisms in an ecosystem, linked together on this planet floating in the middle of nowhere. Wherever you look, you see that the level of interconnectedness is truly amazing, and yet we insist on thinking of ourselves as individual agents.” Albert Einstein called the modern human’s sense of separateness “a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.” * “Psychedelics knock the legs out from under that model. That can be dangerous in the wrong circumstances, leading to bad trips and worse.” Johnson brought up the case of Charles Manson, who reportedly used LSD to break down and brainwash his followers, a theory of the case he deems plausible. “But in the right setting, where your safety is assured, it may be a good intervention for dealing with some of the problems of the self”—of which addiction is only one. Dying, depression, obsession, eating disorders—all are exacerbated by the tyranny of an ego and the fixed narratives it constructs about our relationship to the world. By temporarily overturning that tyranny and throwing our minds into an unusually plastic state (Robin Carhart-Harris would call it a state of heightened entropy), psychedelics, with the help of a good therapist, give us an opportunity to propose some new, more constructive stories about the self and its relationship to the world, stories that just might stick. This is a very different kind of therapy than we are accustomed to in the West, because it is neither purely chemical nor purely psychodynamic—neither mindless nor brainless. Whether Western medicine is ready to accommodate such a radically novel—and ancient—model for mental transformation is an open question. In taking people safely through the liminal state psychedelics occasion, with its radical suggestibility, Johnson acknowledges that the doctors and researchers “play the same role as shamans or elders. “Whatever we’re delving into here, it’s in the same realm as the placebo. But a placebo on rocket boosters.” • • • T HE WHOLE IDEA of using a psychedelic drug to treat addiction is not new. Native Americans have long used peyote as both a sacrament and a treatment for alcoholism, a scourge of the indigenous community since the arrival of the white man. Speaking at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1971, the psychiatrist Karl Menninger said that “peyote is not harmful to these people . . . It is a better antidote to alcohol than anything the missionaries, the white man, the American Medical Association, and the public health services have come up with.” * Thousands of alcoholics were treated with LSD and other psychedelics in the 1950s and 1960s, though until recently it’s been hard to say anything definitive about the results. For a time, the therapy was deemed effective enough to become a standard treatment for alcoholism in Saskatchewan. Clinical reports were enthusiastic, yet most of the formal studies conducted were poorly designed and badly controlled, if at all. Results were notably impressive when the studies were performed by sympathetic therapists (and especially by therapists who themselves had taken LSD) and notably dismal when conducted by inexperienced investigators who gave mammoth doses to patients with no attention to set or setting. The record was a complete muddle until 2012, when a meta-analysis that combined data from the six best randomized controlled studies done in the 1960s and 1970s (involving more than five hundred patients in all) found that indeed there had been a statistically robust and clinically “significant beneficial effect on alcohol misuse” from a single dose of LSD, an effect that lasted up to six months. “ Given the evidence for a beneficial effect of LSD on alcoholism,” the authors concluded, “it is puzzling why this treatment has been largely overlooked.” Since then, psychedelic therapy for alcohol and other addictions has undergone a modest and so far encouraging revival, both in university studies and in various underground settings. * In a 2015 pilot study conducted at the University of New Mexico ten alcoholics received psilocybin, combined with “motivational enhancement therapy,” a type of cognitive behavioral therapy designed expressly to treat addiction. By itself, the psychotherapy had little effect on drinking behavior, but after the psilocybin session drinking decreased significantly, and these changes were sustained during the thirty-six weeks of follow-up. Michael Bogenschutz, the lead investigator, reported a strong correlation between the “strength of the experience and the effect” on drinking behavior. The New Mexico results were encouraging enough to warrant a much larger phase 2 trial, involving 180 volunteers, which Bogenschutz is now conducting at NYU in collaboration with Stephen Ross and Jeffrey Guss. “Alcoholism can be understood as a spiritual disorder,” Ross told me the first time we met, in the treatment room at NYU. “Over time you lose your connection to everything but this compound. Life loses all meaning. At the end, nothing is more important than that bottle, not even your wife and your kids. Eventually, there is nothing you won’t sacrifice for it.” It was Ross who first told me the story of Bill W., the founder of AA, how he got sober after a mystical experience on belladonna and in the 1950s sought to introduce LSD into the fellowship. To use a drug to promote sobriety might sound counterintuitive, even crazy, yet it makes a certain sense when you consider how reliably psychedelics can sponsor spiritual breakthroughs as well as the conviction, central to the AA philosophy, that before she can hope to recover, the alcoholic must first acknowledge her “powerlessness.” AA takes a dim view of the human ego and, like psychedelic therapy, attempts to shift the addict’s attention from the self to a “higher power” as well as to the consolations of fellowship—the sense of interconnectedness. Michael Bogenschutz put me in touch with a woman I’ll call Terry McDaniels, a volunteer in his alcoholism pilot study in New Mexico—a surprising introduction, I came to think, because hers wasn’t the kind of unqualified success story researchers like to give journalists. I spoke to McDaniels by phone from her trailer park outside Albuquerque, where she lives on disability a few trailers down from her daughter. She hasn’t been able to work since 1997, when “my ex-husband beat my head in with a cast-iron skillet. Since that occurred, I’ve had a real problem with my memory.” McDaniels, who was born in 1954, has had a tough life, going back to her childhood, when her parents left her for long periods in the indifferent care of older siblings. “Even to this day I have a hard time laughing.” She told me she spends many of her days mired in feelings of regret, anger, envy, self-loathing, and, especially, a deep sense of guilt toward her children. “I feel very bad I haven’t given them the life I could have if I had stayed away from drink. I think about that other life I might have had all the time.” When I asked McDaniels how long she had been sober, she surprised me: she wasn’t. She’d actually been on a bender just a few weeks earlier, after her daughter “hurt my feelings by asking for money I owed her.” But the binge lasted only a day, and she had only had beer and wine to drink; in the years before her psychedelic session, she would binge on hard liquor for two weeks at a time, the drinking interrupted only when she blacked out. For McDaniels, a one-day binge now and again represents progress. McDaniels read about the psilocybin trial in the local alternative weekly. She had never before used a psychedelic but felt desperate and willing to try something new. She had made many attempts to get sober, had been in rehab, therapy, and AA, but always fell back on the bottle. She worried that her head injury might disqualify her from the trial, but she was accepted and in the event had a powerful spiritual experience. The first part of the trip was unbearably dark: “I saw my children and I was bawling and bawling, for the life they never had.” But eventually it turned into something awe inspiring. “I saw Jesus on the cross,” she recalled. “It was just his head and shoulders, and it was like I was a little kid in a tiny helicopter circling around his head. But he was on the cross. And he just sort of gathered me up in his hands, you know, the way you would comfort a small child. I felt such a great weight lift from my shoulders, felt very much at peace. It was a beautiful experience.” The teaching of the experience, she felt, was self-acceptance. “I spend less time thinking about people who have a better life than me. I realize I’m not a bad person; I’m a person who’s had a lot of bad things happen. Jesus might have been trying to tell me it was okay, that these things happen. He was trying to comfort me.” Now, McDaniels says, “I read my Bible every day and keep a conscious contact with God.” By her own lights, McDaniels is doing, if not well exactly, then somewhat better. The experience has helped her begin to rethink the story of her life she tells herself: “I don’t take everything so personally, like I used to. I have more self-acceptance, and that is a gift, because for a lot of years, I did not like myself. But I am not a bad person.” That one’s perspective could shift in such a way in the absence of any change in circumstance strikes me as both hopeful and poignant. I was reminded of an experiment that several of the addiction researchers I interviewed had told me about—the so-called rat park experiment. It’s well known in the field of drug abuse research that rats in a cage given access to drugs of various kinds will quickly addict themselves, pressing the little levers for the drug on offer in preference to food, often to the point of death. Much less well known, however, is the fact that if the cage is “enriched” with opportunities for play, interaction with other rats, and exposure to nature, the same rats will utterly ignore the drugs and so never become addicted. The rat park experiments lend support to the idea that the propensity to addiction might have less to do with genes or chemistry than with one’s personal history and environment. Now comes a class of chemicals that may have the power to change how we experience our personal history and environment, no matter how impoverished or painful they may be. “Do you see the world as a prison or a playground?” is the key question Matt Johnson takes away from the rat park experiment. If addiction represents a radical narrowing of one’s perspective and behavior and emotional repertoire, the psychedelic journey has the potential to reverse that constriction, open people up to the possibility of change by disrupting and enriching their interior environment. “People come out of these experiences seeing the world a little more like a playground.” • • • O NE GOOD WORD to describe the experiences of both the Apollo astronauts and the volunteers on their psilocybin journeys is “awe,” a human emotion that can perhaps help weave together the disparate strands of psychological interpretation proposed by the psychedelic researchers with whom I spoke. It was Peter Hendricks, a young psychologist at the University of Alabama conducting a trial using psilocybin to treat cocaine addicts, who first suggested to me that the experience of awe might offer the psychological key to explain the power of psychedelics to alter deeply rooted patterns of behavior. “People who are addicted know they’re harming themselves—their health, their careers, their social well-being—but they often fail to see the damage their behavior is doing to others.” Addiction is, among other things, a radical form of selfishness. One of the challenges of treating the addict is getting him to broaden his perspective beyond a consuming self-interest in his addiction, the behavior that has come to define his identity and organize his days. Awe, Hendricks believes, has the power to do this. Hendricks mentioned the research of Dacher Keltner , a psychologist at Berkeley who happens to be a close friend. “Keltner believes that awe is a fundamental human emotion, one that evolved in us because it promotes altruistic behavior. We are descendants of those who found the experience of awe blissful, because it’s advantageous for the species to have an emotion that makes us feel part of something much larger than ourselves.” This larger entity could be the social collective, nature as a whole, or a spirit world, but it is something sufficiently overpowering to dwarf us and our narrow self-interest. “Awe promotes a sense of the ‘small self’ that directs our attention away from the individual to the group and the greater good.” Keltner’s lab at Berkeley has done a clever series of experiments demonstrating that after people have had even a relatively modest experience of awe, such as looking at soaring trees, they’re more likely to come to the assistance of others. (In this experiment, conducted in a eucalyptus grove on the Berkeley campus, volunteers spent a minute looking either at the trees or at the façade of a nearby building. Then a confederate walked toward the participants and stumbled, scattering pens on the ground. Bystanders who had looked at the trees proved more likely to come to her aid than those who had looked at the building.) In another experiment, Keltner’s lab found that if you ask people to draw themselves before and after viewing awe-inspiring images of nature, the after-awe self-portraits will take up considerably less space on the page. An experience of awe appears to be an excellent antidote for egotism. “We now have a pharmacological intervention that can occasion truly profound experiences of awe,” Hendricks pointed out. Awe in a pill. For the self-obsessed addict, “it can be blissful to feel a part of something larger and greater than themselves, to feel reconnected to other people”—to the weave of social and family relations that addiction reliably frays. “Very often they come to recognize the harm they’re doing not only to themselves but to loved ones. That’s where the motivation to change often comes from—a renewed sense of connection and responsibility, as well as the positive feeling of being a small self in the presence of something greater.” The concept of awe, I realized, could help connect several of the dots I’d been collecting in the course of my journey through the landscape of psychedelic therapy. Whether awe is a cause or an effect of the mental changes psychedelics sponsor isn’t entirely clear. But either way, awe figures in much of the phenomenology of psychedelic consciousness, including the mystical experience, the overview effect, self-transcendence, the enrichment of our inner environment, and even the generation of new meanings. As Keltner has written, the overwhelming force and the mystery of awe are such that the experience can’t readily be interpreted according to our accustomed frames of thought. By rocking those conceptual frameworks, awe has the power to change our minds. Three: Depression Something unexpected happened when, early in 2017, Roland Griffiths and Stephen Ross brought the results of their clinical trials to the FDA, hoping to win approval for a larger, phase 3 trial of psilocybin for cancer patients. Impressed by their data—and seemingly undeterred by the unique challenges posed by psychedelic research, such as the problem of blinding, the combining of therapy and medicine, and the fact that the drug in question is still illegal—the FDA staff surprised the researchers by asking them to expand their focus and ambition: to test whether psilocybin could be used to treat the much larger and more pressing problem of depression in the general population. As the regulators saw it, the data contained a strong enough “signal” that psilocybin could relieve depression; it would be a shame not to test the proposition, given the enormity of the need and the limitations of the therapies now available. Ross and Griffiths had focused on cancer patients because they thought it would be easier to win approval to study a controlled substance in people who were already seriously ill or dying. Now the government was telling them to raise their sights. “It was surreal,” Ross told me, twice, as he recounted the meeting, still somewhat stunned at the response and outcome. (The FDA declined to confirm or deny this account of the meeting, explaining that it doesn’t comment on drugs in development or under regulatory review.) Much the same thing happened in Europe, when, in 2016, researchers approached the European Medicines Agency (EMA)—the European Union’s drug-regulating body—seeking approval to use psilocybin in the treatment of anxiety and depression in patients with life-changing diagnoses. “Existential distress” is not an official DSM diagnosis, the regulators pointed out, so the national health services won’t cover it. But there’s a signal here that psilocybin could be useful in treating depression, so why don’t you do a big, multisite trial for that? The EMA was responding not only to the Hopkins and NYU data but also to the small “feasibility study” of the potential of using psilocybin to treat depression that Robin Carhart-Harris had directed in David Nutt’s lab at Imperial College. In the study, the initial results of which appeared in Lancet Psychiatry in 2016, researchers gave psilocybin to six men and six women suffering from “treatment-resistant depression”—meaning they had already tried at least two treatments without success. There was no control group, so everyone knew he or she was getting psilocybin. After a week, all of the volunteers showed improvement in their symptoms, and two-thirds of them were depression-free, in some cases for the first time in years. Seven of the twelve volunteers still showed substantial benefit after three months. The study was expanded to include a total of twenty volunteers; after six months, six remained in remission, while the others had relapsed to one degree or another, suggesting the treatment might need to be repeated. The study was modest in scale and not randomized, but it demonstrated that psilocybin was well tolerated in this population, with no adverse events, and most of the subjects had seen benefits that were marked and rapid. * The EMA was sufficiently impressed with the data to suggest a much larger trial for treatment-resistant depression, which afflicts more than 800,000 people in Europe. (This is out of a total of some 40 million Europeans with depressive disorders, according to the World Health Organization.) Rosalind Watts was a young clinical psychologist working for the National Health Service when she read an article about psychedelic therapy in the New Yorker. * The idea that you might actually be able to cure mental illness rather than just manage its symptoms inspired her to write to Robin Carhart-Harris, who hired her to help out with the depression study, the lab’s first foray into clinical research. Watts guided several sessions and then conducted qualitative interviews with all of the volunteers six months after their treatments, hoping to understand exactly how the psychedelic session had affected them. Watts’s interviews uncovered two “master” themes. The first was that the volunteers depicted their depression foremost as a state of “disconnection,” whether from other people, their earlier selves, their senses and feelings, their core beliefs and spiritual values, or nature. Several referred to living in “a mental prison,” others to being “stuck” in endless circles of rumination they likened to mental “gridlock.” I was reminded of Carhart-Harris’s hypothesis that depression might be the result of an overactive default mode network—the site in the brain where rumination appears to take place. The Imperial depressives also felt disconnected from their senses. “I would look at orchids,” one told Watts, “and intellectually understand that there was beauty, but not experience it.” For most of the volunteers, the psilocybin experience had sprung them from their mental jails, if only temporarily. One woman in the study told me that the month following her session was the first time she had been free from depression since 1991. Others described similar experiences: “ It was like a holiday away from the prison of my brain. I felt free, carefree, reenergized.” “It was like the light switch being turned on in a dark house.” “You’re not immersed in thought patterns; the concrete coat has come off.” “It was like when you defrag the hard drive on your computer . . . I thought, ‘My brain is being defragged, how brilliant is that!’” For many of the volunteers, these changes in the experience of their own minds persisted: “My mind works differently. I ruminate much less, and my thoughts feel ordered, contextualized.” Several reported reconnecting to their senses: “A veil dropped from my eyes, things were suddenly clear, glowing, bright. I looked at plants and felt their beauty. I can still look at my orchids and feel that: that is one thing that has really lasted.” Some reconnected to themselves: “I had an experience of tenderness toward myself.” “At its most basic, I feel like I used to before the depression.” Others reconnected to other people: “I was talking to strangers. I had these full long conversations with everybody I came into contact with.” “I would look at people on the street and think, ‘How interesting we are’—I felt connected to them all.” And to nature: “Before, I enjoyed nature; now I feel part of it. Before I was looking at it as a thing, like TV or painting. You’re part of it, there’s no separation or distinction, you are it.” “I was everybody, unity, one life with 6 billion faces. I was the one asking for love and giving love, I was swimming in the sea, and the sea was me.” The second master theme was a new access to difficult emotions, emotions that depression often blunts or closes down completely. Watts hypothesizes that the depressed patient’s incessant rumination constricts his or her emotional repertoire. In other cases, the depressive keeps emotions at bay because it is too painful to experience them. This is especially true in cases of childhood trauma. Watts put me in touch with a thirty-nine-year-old man in the study, a music journalist named Ian Rouiller, who, along with his older sister, had been abused by his father as a child. As adults, the siblings brought charges against their father that put him in jail for several years, but this hadn’t relieved the depression that has trailed Ian for most of his life. “I can remember the moment when the horrible cloud first came over me. It was in the family room of a pub called the Fighting Cocks in St. Albans. I was ten.” Antidepressants helped for a while, but “putting the plaster over the wound doesn’t heal anything.” On psilocybin, he was able for the first time to confront his lifelong pain—and his father. “Normally, when Dad comes up in my head, I just push the thought away. But this time I went the other way.” His guide had told him he should “go in and through” any frightening material that arose during his journey. “So this time I looked him in the eye. That was a really big thing for me, to literally face the demon. And there he was. But he was a horse! A military horse standing on its hind legs, dressed in a military outfit with a helmet, and holding a gun. It was terrifying, and I wanted to push the image aside, but I didn’t. In and through : Instead, I looked the horse in the eyes—and promptly started to laugh, it was so ridiculous. “That’s when what had been a bad trip really turned. Now I had every sort of emotion, positive, negative, it didn’t matter. I thought about the [Syrian] refugees in Calais and started crying for them, and I saw that every emotion is as valid as any other. You don’t cherry-pick happiness and enjoyment, the so-called good emotions; it was okay to have negative thoughts. That’s life. For me, trying to resist emotions just amplified them. Once I was in this state, it was beautiful—a feeling of deep contentment. I had this overwhelming feeling—it wasn’t even a thought—that everything and everyone needs to be approached with love, including myself.” Ian enjoyed several months of relief from his depression as well as a new perspective on his life—something no antidepressant had ever given him. “Like Google Earth, I had zoomed out,” he told Watts in his six-month interview. For several weeks after his session, “I was absolutely connected to myself, to every living thing, to the universe.” Eventually, Ian’s overview effect faded, however, and he ended up back on Zoloft. “ The sheen and shine that life and existence had regained immediately after the trial and for several weeks after gradually faded,” he wrote one year later. “The insights I gained during the trial have never left and will never leave me. But they now feel more like ideas,” he says. He says he’s doing better than before and has been able to hold down a job, but his depression has returned. He told me he wishes he could have another psilocybin session at Imperial. Because that’s currently not an option, he’ll sometimes meditate and listen to the playlist from his session. “That really does help put me back in that place.” More than half of the Imperial volunteers saw the clouds of their depression eventually return, so it seems likely that psychedelic therapy for depression, should it prove useful and be approved, will not be a onetime intervention. But even the temporary respite the volunteers regarded as precious, because it reminded them there was another way to be that was worth working to recapture. Like electroconvulsive therapy for depression, which it in some ways resembles, psychedelic therapy is a shock to the system—a “reboot” or “defragging”—that may need to be repeated every so often. (Assuming the treatment works as well when repeated.) But the potential of the therapy has regulators and researchers and much of the mental health community feeling hopeful. “I believe this could revolutionize mental health care,” Watts told me. Her conviction is shared by every other psychedelic researcher I interviewed. • • • “ I F MANY REMEDIES are prescribed for an illness,” wrote Anton Chekhov, who was a physician as well as a writer, “you may be certain that the illness has no cure.” But what about the reverse of Chekhov’s statement? What are we to make of a single remedy being prescribed for a great many illnesses? How could it be that psychedelic therapy might be helpful for disorders as different as depression, addiction, the anxiety of the cancer patient, not to mention obsessive-compulsive disorder (about which there has been one encouraging study) and eating disorders (which Hopkins now plans to study)? We shouldn’t forget that irrational exuberance has afflicted psychedelic research since the beginning, and the belief that these molecules are a panacea for whatever ails us is at least as old as Timothy Leary. It could well be that the current enthusiasm will eventually give way to a more modest assessment of their potential. New treatments always look shiniest and most promising at the beginning. In early studies with small samples, the researchers, who are usually biased in favor of finding an effect, have the luxury of selecting the volunteers most likely to respond. Because their number is so small, these volunteers benefit from the care and attention of exceptionally well-trained and dedicated therapists, who are also biased in favor of success. Also, the placebo effect is usually strongest in a new medicine and tends to fade over time, as observed in the case of antidepressants; they don’t work nearly as well today as they did upon their introduction in the 1980s. None of these psychedelic therapies have yet proven themselves to work in large populations; what successes have been reported should be taken as promising signals standing out from the noise of data, rather than as definitive proofs of cure. Yet the fact that psychedelics have produced such a signal across a range of indications can be interpreted in a more positive light. When a single remedy is prescribed for a great many illnesses, to paraphrase Chekhov, it could mean those illnesses are more alike than we’re accustomed to think. If a therapy contains an implicit theory of the disorder it purports to remedy, what might the fact that psychedelic therapy seems to address so many indications have to tell us about what those disorders might have in common? And about mental illness in general? I put this question to Tom Insel, the former head of the National Institute of Mental Health. “It doesn’t surprise me at all” that the same treatment should show promise for so many indications. He points out that the DSM —the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, now in its fifth edition—draws somewhat arbitrary lines between mental disorders, lines that shift with each new edition. “The DSM categories we have don’t reflect reality,” Insel said; they exist for the convenience of the insurance industry as much as anything else. “There’s much more of a continuum between these disorders than the DSM recognizes.” He points to the fact that SSRIs, when they work, are useful for treating a range of conditions besides depression, including anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, suggesting the existence of some common underlying mechanism. Andrew Solomon, in his book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, traces the links between addiction and depression, which frequently co-occur, as well as the intimate relationship between depression and anxiety. He quotes an expert on anxiety who suggests we should think of the two disorders as “fraternal twins”: “ Depression is a response to past loss, and anxiety is a response to future loss.” Both reflect a mind mired in rumination, one dwelling on the past, the other worrying about the future. What mainly distinguishes the two disorders is their tense. A handful of researchers in the mental health field seem to be groping toward a grand unified theory of mental illness, though they would not be so arrogant as to call it that. David Kessler, the physician and former head of the FDA, recently published a book called Capture: Unraveling the Mystery of Mental Suffering that makes the case for such an approach. “Capture” is his term for the common mechanism underlying addiction, depression, anxiety, mania, and obsession; in his view, all these disorders involve learned habits of negative thinking and behavior that hijack our attention and trap us in loops of self-reflection. “ What started as a pleasure becomes a need; what was once a bad mood becomes continuous self-indictment; what was once an annoyance becomes persecution,” in a process he describes as a form of “inverse learning.” “Every time we respond [to a stimulus], we strengthen the neural circuitry that prompts us to repeat” the same destructive thoughts or behaviors. Could it be that the science of psychedelics has a contribution to make to the development of a grand unified theory of mental illness—or at least of some mental illnesses? Most of the researchers in the field—from Robin Carhart-Harris to Roland Griffiths, Matthew Johnson, and Jeffrey Guss—have become convinced that psychedelics operate on some higher-order mechanisms in the brain and mind, mechanisms that may underlie, and help explain, a wide variety of mental and behavioral disorders, as well as, perhaps, garden-variety unhappiness. It could be as straightforward as the notion of a “mental reboot”—Matt Johnson’s biological control-alt-delete key—that jolts the brain out of destructive patterns (such as Kessler’s “capture”), affording an opportunity for new patterns to take root. It could be that, as Franz Vollenweider has hypothesized, psychedelics enhance neuroplasticity. The myriad new connections that spring up in the brain during the psychedelic experience, as mapped by the neuroimaging done at Imperial College, and the disintegration of well-traveled old connections, may serve simply to “shake the snow globe,” in Robin Carhart-Harris’s phrase, a predicate for establishing new pathways. Mendel Kaelen, a Dutch postdoc in the Imperial lab, proposes a more extended snow metaphor: “Think of the brain as a hill covered in snow, and thoughts as sleds gliding down that hill. As one sled after another goes down the hill, a small number of main trails will appear in the snow. And every time a new sled goes down, it will be drawn into the preexisting trails, almost like a magnet.” Those main trails represent the most well-traveled neural connections in your brain, many of them passing through the default mode network. “In time, it becomes more and more difficult to glide down the hill on any other path or in a different direction. “Think of psychedelics as temporarily flattening the snow. The deeply worn trails disappear, and suddenly the sled can go in other directions, exploring new landscapes and, literally, creating new pathways.” When the snow is freshest, the mind is most impressionable, and the slightest nudge—whether from a song or an intention or a therapist’s suggestion—can powerfully influence its future course. Robin Carhart-Harris’s theory of the entropic brain represents a promising elaboration on this general idea, and a first stab at a unified theory of mental illness that helps explain all three of the disorders we’ve examined in these pages. A happy brain is a supple and flexible brain, he believes; depression, anxiety, obsession, and the cravings of addiction are how it feels to have a brain that has become excessively rigid or fixed in its pathways and linkages—a brain with more order than is good for it. On the spectrum he lays out (in his entropic brain article) ranging from excessive order to excessive entropy, depression, addiction, and disorders of obsession all fall on the too-much-order end. (Psychosis is on the entropy end of the spectrum, which is why it probably doesn’t respond to psychedelic therapy.) The therapeutic value of psychedelics, in Carhart-Harris’s view, lies in their ability to temporarily elevate entropy in the inflexible brain, jolting the system out of its default patterns. Carhart-Harris uses the metaphor of annealing from metallurgy: psychedelics introduce energy into the system, giving it the flexibility necessary for it to bend and so change. The Hopkins researchers use a similar metaphor to make the same point: psychedelic therapy creates an interval of maximum plasticity in which, with proper guidance, new patterns of thought and behavior can be learned. All these metaphors for brain activity are just that—metaphors—and not the thing itself. Yet the neuroimaging of tripping brains that’s been done at Imperial College (and that has since been replicated in several other labs using not only psilocybin but also LSD and ayahuasca) has identified measurable changes in the brain that lend credence to these metaphors. In particular, the changes in activity and connectivity in the default mode network on psychedelics suggest it may be possible to link the felt experience of certain types of mental suffering with something observable—and alterable—in the brain. If the default mode network does what neuroscientists think it does, then an intervention that targets that network has the potential to help relieve several forms of mental illness, including the handful of disorders psychedelic researchers have trialed so far. So many of the volunteers I spoke to, whether among the dying, the addicted, or the depressed, described feeling mentally “stuck,” captured in ruminative loops they felt powerless to break. They talked about “prisons of the self,” spirals of obsessive introspection that wall them off from other people, nature, their earlier selves, and the present moment. All these thoughts and feelings may be the products of an overactive default mode network, that tightly linked set of brain structures implicated in rumination, self-referential thought, and metacognition—thinking about thinking. It stands to reason that by quieting the brain network responsible for thinking about ourselves, and thinking about thinking about ourselves, we might be able to jump that track, or erase it from the snow. The default mode network appears to be the seat not only of the ego, or self, but of the mental faculty of time travel as well. The two are of course closely related: without the ability to remember our past and imagine a future, the notion of a coherent self could hardly be said to exist; we define ourselves with reference to our personal history and future objectives. (As meditators eventually discover, if we can manage to stop thinking about the past or future and sink into the present, the self seems to disappear.) Mental time travel is constantly taking us off the frontier of the present moment. This can be highly adaptive; it allows us to learn from the past and plan for the future. But when time travel turns obsessive, it fosters the backward-looking gaze of depression and the forward pitch of anxiety. Addiction, too, seems to involve uncontrollable time travel. The addict uses his habit to organize time: When was the last hit, and when can I get the next? To say the default mode network is the seat of the self is not a simple proposition, especially when you consider that the self may not be exactly real. Yet we can say there is a set of mental operations, time travel among them, that are associated with the self. Think of it simply as the locus of this particular set of mental activities, many of which appear to have their home in the structures of the default mode network. Another type of mental activity that neuroimaging has located in the DMN (and specifically in the posterior cingulate cortex) is the work performed by the so-called autobiographical or experiential self: the mental operation responsible for the narratives that link our first person to the world, and so help define us. “This is who I am.” “I don’t deserve to be loved.” “I’m the kind of person without the willpower to break this addiction.” Getting overly attached to these narratives, taking them as fixed truths about ourselves rather than as stories subject to revision, contributes mightily to addiction, depression, and anxiety. Psychedelic therapy seems to weaken the grip of these narratives, perhaps by temporarily disintegrating the parts of the default mode network where they operate. And then there is the ego, perhaps the most formidable creation of the default mode network, which strives to defend us from threats both internal and external. When all is working as it should be, the ego keeps the organism on track, helping it to realize its goals and provide for its needs, notably for survival and reproduction. It gets the job done. But it is also fundamentally conservative. “The ego keeps us in our grooves,” as Matt Johnson puts it. For better and, sometimes, for worse. For occasionally the ego can become tyrannical and turn its formidable powers on the rest of us. * Perhaps this is the link between the various forms of mental illness that psychedelic therapy seems to help most: all involve a disordered ego—overbearing, punishing, or misdirected. * In a college commencement address he delivered three years before his suicide, David Foster Wallace asked his audience to “think of the old cliché about ‘the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.’ This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth,” he said. “It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head. They shoot the terrible master.” • • • O F ALL THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL EFFECTS that people on psychedelics report, the dissolution of the ego seems to me by far the most important and the most therapeutic. I found little consensus on terminology among the researchers I interviewed, but when I unpack their metaphors and vocabularies—whether spiritual, humanistic, psychoanalytic, or neurological—it is finally the loss of ego or self (what Jung called “psychic death”) they’re suggesting is the key psychological driver of the experience. It is this that gives us the mystical experience, the death rehearsal process, the overview effect, the notion of a mental reboot, the making of new meanings, and the experience of awe. Consider the case of the mystical experience: the sense of transcendence, sacredness, unitive consciousness, infinitude, and blissfulness people report can all be explained as what it can feel like to a mind when its sense of being, or having, a separate self is suddenly no more. Is it any wonder we would feel one with the universe when the boundaries between self and world that the ego patrols suddenly fall away? Because we are meaning-making creatures, our minds strive to come up with new stories to explain what is happening to them during the experience. Some of these stories are bound to be supernatural or “spiritual,” if only because the phenomena are so extraordinary they can’t be easily explained in terms of our usual conceptual categories. The predictive brain is getting so many error signals that it is forced to develop extravagant new interpretations of an experience that transcends its capacity for understanding. Whether the most magnificent of these stories represent a regression to magical thinking, as Freud believed, or access to transpersonal realms such as the “Mind at Large,” as Huxley believed, is itself a matter of interpretation. Who can say for certain? Yet it seems to me very likely that losing or shrinking the self would make anyone feel more “spiritual,” however you choose to define the word, and that this is apt to make one feel better. The usual antonym for the word “spiritual” is “material.” That at least is what I believed when I began this inquiry—that the whole issue with spirituality turned on a question of metaphysics. Now I’m inclined to think a much better and certainly more useful antonym for “spiritual” might be “egotistical.” Self and Spirit define the opposite ends of a spectrum, but that spectrum needn’t reach clear to the heavens to have meaning for us. It can stay right here on earth. When the ego dissolves, so does a bounded conception not only of our self but of our self-interest. What emerges in its place is invariably a broader, more openhearted and altruistic—that is, more spiritual—idea of what matters in life. One in which a new sense of connection, or love, however defined, seems to figure prominently. “The psychedelic journey may not give you what you want,” as more than one guide memorably warned me, “but it will give you what you need.” I guess that’s been true for me. It might have been nothing like the one I signed up for, but I can see now that the journey has been a spiritual education after all. Coda: Going to Meet My Default Mode Network I got the opportunity—a non-pharmacological opportunity—to peer into my own default mode network soon after I interviewed Judson Brewer, the psychiatrist and neuroscientist who studies the brains of meditators. It was Brewer, you’ll recall, who discovered that the brains of experienced meditators look much like the brains of people on psilocybin: the practice and the medicine both dramatically reduce activity in the default mode network. Brewer invited me to visit his lab at the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts medical school in Worcester to run some experiments on my own default mode network. His lab has developed a neural feedback tool that allows researchers (and their volunteers) to observe in real time the activity in one of the key brain structures in the default mode network: the posterior cingulate cortex. Until now I have tried to spare you the names and functions of specific parts of brain anatomy, but I do need to describe this one in a bit more detail. The posterior cingulate cortex is a centrally located node within the default mode network involved in self-referential mental processes. Situated in the middle of the brain, it links the prefrontal cortex—site of our executive function, where we plan and exercise will—with the centers of memory and emotion in the hippocampus. The PCC is believed to be the locus of the experiential or narrative self; it appears to generate the narratives that link what happens to us to our abiding sense of who we are. Brewer believes that this particular operation, when it goes awry, is at the root of several forms of mental suffering, including addiction. As Brewer explains it, activity in the PCC is correlated not so much with our thoughts and feelings as with “ how we relate to our thoughts and feelings.” It is where we get “caught up in the push and pull of our experience.” (This has particular relevance for the addict: “It’s one thing to have cravings,” as Brewer points out, “but quite another to get caught up in your cravings.”) When we take something that happens to us personally? That’s the PCC doing its (egotistical) thing. To hear Brewer describe it is to suspect neuroscience might have at last found the address for the “But enough about you” center of the brain. Buddhists believe that attachment is at the root of all forms of mental suffering; if the neuroscience is right, a lot of these attachments have their mooring in the PCC, where they are nurtured and sustained. Brewer thinks that by diminishing its activity, whether by means of meditation or psychedelics, we can learn “to be with our thoughts and cravings without getting caught up in them.” Achieving such a detachment from our thoughts, feelings, and desires is what Buddhism (along with several other wisdom traditions) teaches is the surest path out of human suffering. Brewer took me into a small, darkened room where a comfortable chair faced a computer monitor. One of his laboratory assistants brought in the contraption: a red rubber bathing cap with 128 sensors arrayed in a dense grid across every centimeter of its surface. Each of the sensors was linked to a cable. After the assistant carefully fitted the cap onto my skull, she squirted a dab of conductive gel beneath each of the 128 electrodes to ensure the faint electrical signals emanating from deep within my brain could readily traverse my scalp. Brewer took a picture of me on my phone: I had sprouted a goofy tangle of high-tech dreadlocks. To calibrate a baseline level of activity for my PCC, Brewer projected a series of adjectives on the screen—“courageous,” “cheap,” “patriotic,” “impulsive,” and so on. Simply reading the list does nothing to activate the PCC, which is why he told me now to think about how these adjectives either applied or didn’t apply to me. Take it personally, in other words. This is precisely the thought process that the PCC exists to perform, relating thoughts and experiences to our sense of who we are. Once he had established a baseline, Brewer, from another room, led me through a series of exercises to see if I could alter the activity of my PCC by thinking different kinds of thoughts. At the completion of each “run”—lasting a few minutes—he would project a bar graph on the screen in front of me; the length of each bar indicates to what extent the activity in my PCC had exceeded or dropped below baseline, in ten-second increments. I could also follow the ups and downs of my PCC activity by listening to rising and falling tones on a monitor, but I found that too distracting. I began by trying to meditate, something I’d gotten into the habit of doing early in my foray into the science and practice of psychedelic consciousness. A brief daily meditation had become a way for me to stay in touch with the kind of thinking I’d done on psychedelics. I discovered my trips had made it easier for me to drop into a mentally quiet place, something that in the past had always eluded me. So I closed my eyes and began to follow my breath. I had never tried to meditate in front of other people, and it felt awkward, but when Brewer put the graph up on the screen, I could see that I had succeeded in quieting my PCC—not by a lot, but most of the bars dipped below baseline. Yet the graph was somewhat jagged, with several bars leaping above baseline. Brewer explained that this is what happens when you’re trying too hard to meditate and become conscious of the effort. There it was in black and white: the graph of my effortfulness and self-criticism. Next Brewer asked me to do a “loving-kindness” meditation. This is one where you’re supposed to close your eyes and think warm and charitable thoughts about people: first yourself, then those closest to you, and finally people you don’t know—humanity at large. The bars dropped smartly below baseline, deeper than before: I was good at this! (A self-congratulatory thought that no doubt shot a bar skyward.) For the next and last run, I told Brewer I had an idea for a mental exercise I wanted to try but didn’t want to tell him what it was until afterward. I closed my eyes and tried to summon scenes from my psychedelic journeys. The one that came to mind first was an image of a pastoral landscape, a gently rolling quilt of field and forest and pond, directly above which hovered some kind of gigantic rectangular frame made of steel. The structure, which was a few stories tall but hollow, resembled a pylon for electrical transmission lines or something a kid might build from an Erector set—a favorite toy of my childhood. Anyway, by the odd logic of psychedelic experience, it was clear to me even in the moment that this structure represented my ego, and the landscape above which it loomed was, I presumed, the rest of me. The description makes it sound as though the structure were menacing, hovering overhead like a UFO, but in fact the emotional tone of the image was mostly benign. The structure had revealed itself as empty and superfluous and had lost its purchase on the ground—on me. The scene had given me a kind of overview effect: behold your ego, sturdy, gray, empty, and floating free, like an untethered pylon. Consider how much more beautiful the scene would be were it not in the way. The phrase “child’s play” looped in my mind: the structure was nothing more than a toy that a child could assemble and disassemble at will. During the trip the structure continued to loom, casting an intricate shadow over the scene, but now in my recollection I could picture it drifting off, leaving me . . . to be. Who knows what kinds of electrical signals were leaking from my default mode network during this reverie, or for that matter what the image symbolized. You’ve read this chapter: obviously, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the ego and its discontents. Here was some of that thinking rendered starkly visible. I had succeeded in detaching myself from my ego, at least imaginatively, something I would never have thought possible before psychedelics. Aren’t we identical with our ego? What’s left of us without it? The lesson of both psychedelics and meditation is the same: No! on the first count, and More than enough on the second. Including this lovely landscape of the mind, which became lovelier still when I let that ridiculous steel structure float away, taking its shadow with it. A beep indicated the run was over. Brewer’s voice came on the loudspeaker: “What in the world were you thinking ?” Apparently, I’d dropped way below baseline. I told him, in general terms. He sounded excited by the idea that the mere recollection of a psychedelic experience might somehow replicate what happens in the brain during the real thing. Maybe that’s what was going on. Or maybe it was the specific content of the image, and the mere thought of bidding adieu to my ego, watching it float away like a hot-air balloon, that had the power to silence my default mode network. Brewer started spouting hypotheses. Which is really all that science can offer us at this point: hunches, theories, so many more experiments to try. We have plenty of clues, and more now than before the renaissance of psychedelic science, but we remain a long way from understanding exactly what happens to consciousness when we alter it, either with a molecule or with meditation. Yet gazing at the bars on the graph before me, these crude hieroglyphs of psychedelic thought, I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a wide-open frontier, squinting to make out something wondrous. EPILOGUE In Praise of Neural Diversity I N A PRIL 2017, the international psychedelic community gathered in the Oakland Convention Center for Psychedelic Science , an every-few-years-or-so event organized by MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the nonprofit established by Rick Doblin in 1986 with the improbable goal of returning psychedelics to scientific and cultural respectability. In 2016, Doblin himself seemed stunned at how far and fast things had come and how close to hand victory now seemed. Earlier in the year, the FDA had approved phase 3 trials of MDMA, and psilocybin was not far behind. If the results of these trials come anywhere near those of phase 2, the government will presumably have to reschedule the two drugs, and then doctors will be able to prescribe them. “ We are not the counterculture,” Doblin told a reporter during the conference. “We are the culture.” What had been as recently as 2010 a modest gathering of psychonauts and a handful of renegade researchers was now a six-day convention-cum-conference that had drawn more than three thousand people from all over the world to hear researchers from twenty-five countries present their findings. Not that there weren’t also plenty of psychonauts and legions of the psychedelically curious. Between the lectures and panels and plenaries, they browsed a sprawling marketplace offering psychedelic books, psychedelic artwork, and psychedelic music. For me, the event turned out to be a kind of reunion, bringing together most of the characters in my story under one roof. I was able to catch up with virtually all the scientists I’d interviewed (though Robin Carhart-Harris, with a baby on the way, had to skip), as well as several of the underground guides with whom I’d worked. Everyone, it seemed, was here, scientists rubbing shoulders with guides and shamans, veteran psychonauts, a large contingent of therapists eager to add psychedelics to their practice, plus funders and filmmakers and even a smattering of entrepreneurs sniffing out business opportunities. And although I picked up snippets of concern about the new attorney general’s efforts to rekindle the drug war, on the whole the mood was unmistakably celebratory. When I asked conferencegoers which session they deemed most memorable, almost invariably they mentioned the plenary panel called “Future of Psychedelic Psychiatry.” What was most noteworthy about this panel was the identity of the panelists, which, at a psychedelic convention, was cause for cognitive dissonance. Here was Paul Summergrad, MD, the former head of the American Psychiatric Association, seated next to Tom Insel, MD, the former head of the National Institute of Mental Health. The panel was organized and moderated by George Goldsmith, an American entrepreneur and health industry consultant based in London. In the last several years, he and his wife, Ekaterina Malievskaia, a Russian-born physician, have devoted their considerable energy and resources to winning approval for psilocybin-assisted therapy in the European Union. It was clear to everyone in the standing-room crowd exactly what the three men on the panel represented: the recognition of psychedelic therapy by the mental health establishment. Insel spoke of how poorly the record of mental health care stacks up against the achievements of the rest of medicine. He pointed out that it has failed to lower mortality from serious psychiatric disorders and spoke of the promise of new models of mental health treatment such as psychedelic therapy. “I’m really impressed by the approach here,” he told the group. “People don’t say, simply, we’re gonna give psychedelics. They talk about ‘psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.’ . . . I think it’s a really novel approach.” Insel tempered his enthusiasm, however, by noting that such a novel paradigm may bedevil regulators accustomed to evaluating new drugs in isolation. George Goldsmith asked both men what advice they would give to the researchers in the room, men and women who have been working diligently for years to bring psychedelic therapy to patients. Without hesitating, Insel turned to the audience and said, “Don’t screw it up!” “There may be lots of promise here,” Insel said, “but it’s really easy to forget about issues related to safety, issues related to rigor, issues related to reputational risks.” He suggested that psychedelics would probably need to be rebranded in the public mind and that it would be essential to steer clear of anything that smacked of “recreational use.” He and Summergrad both warned that a single sloppy researcher, or a patient with a disastrous experience, could poison the well for everybody. Nobody needed to mention the name Timothy Leary. • • • H OW CLOSE ARE WE to a world in which psychedelic therapy is sanctioned and routine, and what would such a world look like? Bob Jesse was in the audience when the former head of NIMH took his swipe against “recreational use,” and though I didn’t see it, I can picture his grimace. And what exactly is wrong with re-creating ourselves? Bob Jesse worries that the “medicalization” of psychedelics these men were advocating as the one true path would be a mistake. Not that medicalization will be easy. Several steep regulatory hurdles will first need to be overcome. Phase 3 trials involve multiple sites and hundreds of volunteers; they can cost tens of millions of dollars. Normally Big Pharma foots the bill for such trials, but thus far the pharmaceutical companies have shown scant interest in psychedelics. For one thing, this class of drugs offers them little if any intellectual property: psilocybin is a product of nature, and the patent on LSD expired decades ago. For another, Big Pharma mostly invests in drugs for chronic conditions, the pills you have to take every day. Why would it invest in a pill patients might only need to take once in a lifetime? Psychiatry faces a similar dilemma: it too is wedded to interminable therapies, whether that means the daily antidepressant or the weekly psychotherapy session. It is true that a psychedelic session lasts several hours and usually requires two therapists be present for the duration, but if the therapy works as it’s supposed to, there won’t be a lot of repeat business. It’s not at all clear what the business model might be. Yet. Several of the researchers and therapists I’ve interviewed nevertheless look forward to a time, not far off, when psychedelic therapy is routine and widely available, in the form of a novel hybrid of pharmacology and psychotherapy. George Goldsmith envisions a network of psychedelic treatment centers, facilities in attractive natural settings where patients will go for their guided sessions. He has formed a company called Compass Pathways to build these centers in the belief they can offer a treatment for a range of mental illnesses sufficiently effective and economical that Europe’s national health services will reimburse for them. Goldsmith has so far raised three million pounds to fund and organize psilocybin trials (starting with treatment-resistant depression) at multiple sites in Europe. Already he is working with designers at IDEO, the international design firm, to redesign the entire experience of psychedelic therapy. Paul Summergrad and Tom Insel have both joined his advisory board. Katherine MacLean, the former Hopkins researcher who wrote the landmark paper on openness, hopes someday to establish a “psychedelic hospice,” a retreat center somewhere out in nature where not only the dying but their loved ones can use psychedelics to help them let go—the patient and the loved ones both. “If we limit psychedelics just to the patient,” she explains, “we’re sticking to the old medical model. But psychedelics are more radical than that. I get nervous when people say they should only be prescribed by a doctor. I imagine a broader application.” In MacLean’s words it’s easy to hear echoes of the 1960s experience with psychedelics—the excitement about their potential to help not only the sick but everyone else too. This kind of thinking—or talking—makes some of her mainstream colleagues nervous. It’s exactly the kind of talk that Insel and Summergrad were warning the community against. Good luck with that. “The betterment of well people” is very much on the minds of most of the researchers I interviewed, even if some of them were more reluctant to discuss it on the record than institutional outsiders like Bob Jesse and Rick Doblin and Katherine MacLean. For them, medical acceptance is a first step toward a much broader cultural acceptance—outright legalization, in Doblin’s view, or something more carefully controlled in MacLean’s and Jesse’s. Jesse would like to see the drugs administered by trained guides working in what he calls “longitudinal multigenerational contexts,” which, as he describes them, sound a lot like churches. (Think of the churches that use ayahuasca in a ritual context, administered by experienced elders in a group setting.) Others envision a time when people seeking a psychedelic experience—whether for reasons of mental health or spiritual seeking or simple curiosity—could go, very occasionally, to something like a “mental health club,” as Julie Holland, a psychiatrist who used to work with Stephen Ross at Bellevue, described it. “Sort of like a cross between a spa/retreat and a gym, where people can experience psychedelics in a safe, supportive environment.” * Everyone speaks of the importance of well-trained psychedelic guides—“board certified”—and the need to help people afterward integrate the powerful experiences they have had in order to make sense of them and render them truly useful. Tony Bossis paraphrases the religious scholar (and Good Friday Experiment volunteer) Huston Smith on this point: “A spiritual experience does not by itself make a spiritual life.” Integration is essential to making sense of the experience, whether in or out of the medical context. Or else it remains just a drug experience. As for the guides themselves, they are already being trained and certified: late in 2016, the California Institute of Integral Studies graduated its first class of forty-two psychedelic therapists. (This is a development that worries some in the underground, who fear being left behind when psychedelic therapy is legitimized. Yet it’s hard to imagine such experienced and highly skilled practitioners won’t continue to find clients, especially among the well.) When I asked Rick Doblin if he worries about another backlash, he pointed out that our culture has come a long way from the 1960s and has shown a remarkable ability to digest a great many of the cultural novelties first cooked up during that era. “That was a very different time. People wouldn’t even talk about cancer or death then. Women were tranquilized to give birth; men weren’t allowed in the delivery room! Yoga and meditation were totally weird. Now mindfulness is mainstream and everyone does yoga, and there are birthing centers and hospices all over. We’ve integrated all these things into our culture. And now I think we’re ready to integrate psychedelics.” Doblin points out that many of the people now in charge of our institutions are of a generation well acquainted with these molecules. This, he suggests, is the true legacy of Timothy Leary. It’s all well and good for today’s researchers to disdain his “antics” and blame him for derailing the first wave of research, and yet, as Doblin points out with a smile, “there would be no second wave if Leary hadn’t turned on a whole generation.” Indeed. Consider the case of Paul Summergrad, who has spoken publicly of his own youthful use of psychedelics. In a videotaped interview with Ram Dass that was shown at the 2015 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, he told his colleagues that an acid trip he took in college had been formative in his intellectual development. (Jeffrey Lieberman, another past president of the American Psychiatric Association, has also written of the insights gleaned from his youthful experiments with LSD. * ) And yet, and yet . . . As much as I want to believe Doblin’s sunny forecast, it’s not hard to imagine things easily going off the rails. Tony Bossis agrees, as much as he hopes that psychedelics will someday be routine in palliative care. “We don’t die well in America. Ask people where do you want to die, and they will tell you, at home with their loved ones. But most of us die in an ICU. The biggest taboo in America is the conversation about death. Sure, it’s gotten better; now we have hospices, which didn’t exist not so long ago. But to a doctor, it’s still an insult to let a patient go.” In his view, psychedelics have the potential not only to open up that difficult conversation but to change the experience of dying itself. If the medical community will embrace them. “This culture has a fear of death, a fear of transcendence, and a fear of the unknown, all of which are embodied in this work.” Psychedelics may by their very nature be too disruptive for our institutions ever to embrace them. Institutions generally like to mediate the individual’s access to authority of whatever kind—whether medical or spiritual—whereas the psychedelic experience offers something akin to direct revelation, making it inherently antinomian. And yet some cultures have successfully devised ritual forms to contain and harness the Dionysian energies of psychedelics; think of the Eleusinian mysteries of ancient Greece or the shamanic ceremonies surrounding peyote or ayahuasca in the Americas today. It is not impossible. The first time I raised Jesse’s idea of the betterment of well people with Roland Griffiths, he seemed to squirm a bit in his chair and then chose his words with care. “Culturally right now, that is a dangerous idea to promote.” And yet, as we’ve talked, now over the course of three years, it’s become clear that he too feels that many of us, and not just those dealing with cancer or depression or addiction, stand to benefit from these remarkable molecules and, even more, from the spiritual experiences to which he believes—indeed, his research has demonstrated—they can open a door. “We’re all dealing with death,” as he told me the first time we met. “This is far too valuable to limit to sick people.” A careful man, mindful of the political land mines that may yet lie ahead, Griffiths amended that last sentence just slightly, recast it in the future tense: “This will be far too valuable to limit to sick people.” • • • I , FOR ONE, sincerely hope that the kinds of experiences I’ve had on psychedelics will not be limited to sick people and will someday become more widely available. Does that mean I think these drugs should simply be legalized? Not exactly. It is true I had a very positive experience using psilocybin “recreationally”—on my own, that is, without the support of a guide—and for some people this might be fine. But sooner or later, it seems, everyone has a trip for which “bad” is far too pallid a modifier. I would hate to be alone when that happens. For me, working one-on-one with an experienced guide in a safe place removed from my everyday life turned out to be the ideal way to explore psychedelics. Yet there are other ways to structure the psychedelic journey—to provide a safe container for its potentially overwhelming energies. Ayahuasca and peyote are typically used in a group, with the leader, often but not necessarily a shaman, acting in a supervisory role and helping people to navigate and interpret their experiences. But whether individually or in a group, the presence of someone with training and experience who can “hold the space”—to use that hoary New Age locution—is more meaningful and comforting than I would have imagined. Not only did my guides create a setting in which I felt safe enough to surrender to the psychedelic experience, but they also helped me to make sense of it afterward. Just as important, they helped me to see there was something here worth making sense of. This is by no means self-evident. It is all too easy to dismiss what unfolds in our minds during a psychedelic journey as simply a “drug experience,” and that is precisely what our culture encourages us to do. Matt Johnson made this point the first time we spoke: “Let’s say you have some nineteen-year-olds taking mushrooms at a party. One of them has a profound experience. He’s come to understand what God is, or his connection to the universe. What do his friends say? ‘Oh, man, you had too much last night! No more mushrooms for you!’ “‘Were you drinking or on drugs?’ is what our culture says when you have a powerful experience.” Yet even a moment’s reflection tells you that attributing the content of the psychedelic experience to “drugs” explains virtually nothing about it. The images and the narratives and the insights don’t come from nowhere, and they certainly don’t come from a chemical. They come from inside our minds, * and at the very least have something to tell us about that . If dreams and fantasies and free associations are worth interpreting, then surely so is the more vivid and detailed material with which the psychedelic journey presents us. It opens a new door on one’s mind. And about that my psychedelic journeys have taught me a great many interesting things. Many of these were the kinds of things one might learn in the course of psychotherapy: insights into important relationships; the outlines of fears and desires ordinarily kept out of view; repressed memories and emotions; and, perhaps most interesting and useful, a new perspective on how one’s mind works. This, I think, is the great value of exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness: the light they reflect back on the ordinary ones, which no longer seem quite so transparent or so ordinary. To realize, as William James concluded, that normal waking consciousness is but one of many potential forms of consciousness—ways of perceiving or constructing the world—separated from it by merely “the filmiest of screens,” is to recognize that our account of reality, whether inward or outward, is incomplete at best. Normal waking consciousness might seem to offer a faithful map to the territory of reality, and it is good for many things, but it is only a map—and not the only map. As to why these other modes of consciousness exist, we can only speculate. Most of the time, it is normal waking consciousness that best serves the interests of survival—and is most adaptive. But there are moments in the life of an individual or a community when the imaginative novelties proposed by altered states of consciousness introduce exactly the sort of variation that can send a life, or a culture, down a new path. For me, the moment I recognized the tenuousness and relativity of my own default consciousness came that afternoon on Fritz’s mountaintop, when he taught me how to enter a trance state by means of nothing more than a pattern of rapid breathing and the sounds of rhythmic drumming. Where in the world has that been all my life? This is nothing Freud or any number of psychologists and behavioral economists haven’t told us, but the idea that “normal” consciousness is but the tip of a large and largely uncharted psychic iceberg is now for me something more than a theory; the hidden vastness of the mind is a felt reality. I don’t mean to suggest I have achieved this state of ego-transcending awareness, only tasted it. These experiences don’t last, or at least they didn’t for me. After each of my psychedelic sessions came a period of several weeks in which I felt noticeably different—more present to the moment, much less inclined to dwell on what’s next. I was also notably more emotional and surprised myself on several occasions by how little it took to make me tear up or smile. I found myself thinking about things like death and time and infinity, but less in angst than in wonder. (I spent an unreasonable amount of time reflecting on how improbable and fortunate it is to be living here and now at the frontier of two eternities of nonexistence.) All at once and unexpectedly, waves of compassion or wonder or pity would wash over me. This was a way of being I treasured, but, alas, every time it eventually faded. It’s difficult not to slip back into the familiar grooves of mental habit; they are so well worn; the tidal pull of what the Buddhists call our “habit energies” is difficult to withstand. Add to this the expectations of other people, which subtly enforce a certain way of being yourself, no matter how much you might want to attempt another. After a month or so, it was pretty much back to baseline. But not quite, not completely. For much like the depressed patients I interviewed in London, who described being nourished and even inspired by their furloughs from the cage of depression, the experience of some other way of being in the world survives in memory, as a possibility and a destination. For me, the psychedelic experience opened a door to a specific mode of consciousness that I can now occasionally recapture in meditation. I’m speaking of a certain cognitive space that opens up late in a trip or in the midst of a mild one, a space where you can entertain all sorts of thoughts and scenarios without reaching for any kind of resolution. It somewhat resembles hypnagogic consciousness, that liminal state perched on the edge of sleep when all kinds of images and scraps of story briefly surface before floating away. But this is sustained, and what comes up can be clearly recalled. And though the images and ideas that appear are not under your direct control, but rather seem to be arriving and departing of their own accord, you can launch a topic or change it, like a channel. The ego is not entirely absent—you haven’t been blasted into particles, or have returned from that particular state—but the stream of consciousness is taking its own desultory course, and you are bobbing and drifting along with it, looking neither forward nor back, immersed in the currents of being rather than doing. And yet a certain kind of mental work is getting done, and occasionally I have emerged from the state with usable ideas, images, or metaphors. * My psychedelic adventures familiarized me with this mental territory, and, sometimes, not always, I find I can return to it during my daily meditation. I don’t know if this is exactly where I’m supposed to be when I’m meditating, but I’m always happy to find myself floating in this particular mental stream. I would never have found it if not for psychedelics. This strikes me as one of the great gifts of the experience they afford: the expansion of one’s repertoire of conscious states. Just because the psychedelic journey takes place entirely in one’s mind doesn’t mean it isn’t real. It is an experience and, for some of us, one of the most profound a person can have. As such, it takes its place as a feature in the landscape of a life. It can serve as a reference point, a guidepost, a wellspring, and, for some, a kind of spiritual sign or shrine. For me, the experiences have become landmarks to circle around and interrogate for meaning—meanings about myself, obviously, but also about the world. Several of the images that appeared in the course of my trips I think about all the time, hoping to unwrap what feels like a gift of meaning—from where or what or whom, I cannot say. There was that steel pylon hovering over the landscape of self. Or the image of my grandfather’s skull staring back at me in Mary’s mirror. The majestic but now hollowed-out trees in which my parents appeared to me, liable to topple in the next windstorm. Or the inky well of Yo-Yo Ma’s cello, resonating with Bach’s warm embrace of death. But there is one other image I haven’t shared that I keep thinking must contain some important teaching, even as it continues to mystify me. My last psychedelic journey was on ayahuasca. I was invited to join a circle of women who gather every three or four months to work with a legendary guide, a woman in her eighties who had trained under Leo Zeff. (She in turn had trained Mary, the woman who guided my psilocybin journey.) This journey was different from the others in that it took place in the company of a dozen other travelers, all of them strangers to me. Befitting this particular psychedelic, which is a tea brewed from two Amazonian plants (one a vine, the other a leaf), there was a considerable amount of ceremony in the shamanic mode: the singing of traditional icaros, prayers and invocations to “the grandmother” (a.k.a. the “plant teacher” or ayahuasca), bells and rattles and shakapas, and the blowing on us of various scents and smokes. All of which contributed to a mood of deep mystery and a suspension of disbelief that was especially welcome, inasmuch as we were in a yoga studio a long way from any jungle. As has been the case with all of my journeys, the night before had been sleepless, as part of me worked to convince the rest of me not to do this crazy thing. That part was of course my ego, which before every trip has fought the threat to its integrity with ferocity and ingenuity, planting doubts and scenarios of disaster I had trouble batting away. What about your heart, pal? You could die! What if you lose your lunch or, even worse, your shit?! And what if “the grandmother” dredges up some childhood trauma? Do you really want to lose it among these strangers? These women? (Part of the power of the ego flows from its command of one’s rational faculties.) By the time I arrived for the circle, I was a nervous wreck, assailed by second and third thoughts as to the wisdom of what I was about to do. But, as has happened every time, as soon as I swallowed the medicine and slipped past the point of no return, the voice of doubt went quiet and I surrendered to whatever was in store. Which was not unlike my other psychedelic experiences, with a couple of notable exceptions. Perhaps because the tea, which was viscous and acrid and unexpectedly sweet, makes its alien presence felt in your stomach and intestines, ayahuasca is a more bodily experience than some other psychedelics. I did not get sick, but I was very much aware of the thick brew moving through me and, as the effect of the DMT (ayahuasca’s active ingredient) came on, imagined it as a vine winding its way through the curls and convolutions of my intestines, occupying my body before slowly working its snakelike way up to and into my head. There followed a great many memories and images, some horrifying, others magnificent, but I want to describe one in particular because, although I don’t completely understand it, it captures something that psychedelics have taught me, something important. Because there was still some light in the room when the ceremony began, we were all wearing eye masks, and mine felt a little tight around my head. Early in the journey, I became aware of the black straps circling my skull, and these morphed into bars. My head was caged in steel. The bars then began to multiply, moving down from my head to encircle my torso and then my legs. I was now trapped head to toe in a black steel cage. I pressed against the bars, but they were unyielding. There was no way out. Panic was building when I noticed the green tip of a vine at the base of the cage. It was growing steadily upward and then turning, sinuously, to slip out between two of the bars, freeing itself and at the same time reaching toward the light. “A plant can’t be caged,” I heard myself thinking. “Only an animal can be caged.” I can’t tell you what this means, if anything. Was the plant showing me a way out? Perhaps, but it’s not as if I could actually follow it; I am an animal, after all. Yet it seemed the plant was trying to teach me some thing, that it was proposing a kind of visual koan for me to unpack, and I have been turning it over in my mind ever since. Maybe it was a lesson about the folly of approaching an obstacle head-on, that sometimes the answer is not the application of force but rather changing the terms of the problem in such a way that it loses its dominion without actually crumbling. It felt like some kind of jujitsu. Because the vine wasn’t just escaping the confines of the cage, it was using the structure to improve its situation, climbing higher to gather more light for itself. Or maybe the lesson was more universal, something about plants themselves and how we underestimate them. My plant teacher, as I began to think of the vine, was trying to tell me something about itself and the green kingdom it represents, a kingdom that has always figured largely in my work and my imagination. That plants are intelligent I have believed for a long time—not necessarily in the way we think of intelligence, but in a way appropriate to themselves. We can do many things plants can’t, yet they can do all sorts of things we can’t—escaping from steel cages, for example, or eating sunlight. If you define intelligence as the ability to solve the novel problems reality throws at the living, plants surely have it. They also possess agency, an awareness of their environment, and a kind of subjectivity—a set of interests they pursue and so a point of view. But though these are all ideas I have long believed and am happy to defend, never before have I felt them to be true, to be as deeply rooted as I did after my psychedelic journeys. The un-cageable vine reminded me of that first psilocybin trip, when I felt the leaves and plants in the garden returning my gaze. One of the gifts of psychedelics is the way they reanimate the world, as if they were distributing the blessings of consciousness more widely and evenly over the landscape, in the process breaking the human monopoly on subjectivity that we moderns take as a given. To us, we are the world’s only conscious subjects, with the rest of creation made up of objects; to the more egotistical among us, even other people count as objects. Psychedelic consciousness overturns that view, by granting us a wider, more generous lens through which we can glimpse the subject-hood—the spirit!—of everything, animal, vegetable, even mineral, all of it now somehow returning our gaze. Spirits, it seems, are everywhere. New rays of relation appear between us and all the world’s Others. Even in the case of the minerals, modern physics (forget psychedelics!) gives us reason to wonder if perhaps some form of consciousness might not figure in the construction of reality. Quantum mechanics holds that matter may not be as innocent of mind as the materialist would have us believe. For example, a subatomic particle can exist simultaneously in multiple locations, is pure possibility, until it is measured—that is, perceived by a mind. Only then and not a moment sooner does it drop into reality as we know it: acquire fixed coordinates in time and space. The implication here is that matter might not exist as such in the absence of a perceiving subject. Needless to say, this raises some tricky questions for a materialist understanding of consciousness. The ground underfoot may be much less solid than we think. This is the view of quantum physics, not some psychonaut— though it is a very psychedelic theory. I mention it only because it lends some of the authority of science to speculations that would otherwise sound utterly lunatic. I still tend to think that consciousness must be confined to brains, but I am less certain of this belief now than I was before I embarked on this journey. Maybe it too has slipped out from between the bars of that cage. Mysteries abide. But this I can say with certainty: the mind is vaster, and the world ever so much more alive, than I knew when I began. Glossary active placebo: A type of placebo used in drug trials to fool the volunteer into thinking he has received the psychoactive drug being tested. In the psilocybin trials, researchers have used niacin, which produces a tingling sensation, and methylphenidate (Ritalin), which is a stimulant. ayahuasca: A psychedelic tea made from a combination of plants native to the Amazon basin, typically Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis (or chacruna ), and used sacramentally by indigenous peoples of South America. The chacruna plant contains the psychedelic compound DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine), but it is deactivated by digestive enzymes unless it is ingested with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor such as Banisteriopsis . In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right of the Brazil-based UDV Church to use ayahuasca as a sacrament. Beckley Foundation: The organization established by Amanda Feilding in England in 1998 to support research into psychedelics and advocate internationally for the reform of drug laws. The organization is named for Feilding’s ancestral estate in Oxfordshire (BeckleyFoundation.org). Council on Spiritual Practices (CSP): A nonprofit organization established by Bob Jesse in 1993 and “dedicated to making direct experience of the sacred more available to more people.” CSP helped organize and fund the first experiments in psychedelic research at Johns Hopkins; CSP also supported the suit that resulted in the 2006 Supreme Court decision recognizing ayahuasca as a sacrament in the UDV Church. In 1995, CSP developed and published the “Code of Ethics for Spiritual Guides” that many underground psychedelic guides have adopted (csp.org). default mode network (DMN): A set of interacting brain structures first described in 2001 by the Washington University neuroscientist Marcus Raichle. The default mode network, called that because it is most active when the brain is in a resting state, links parts of the cerebral cortex with deeper and evolutionarily older structures of the brain involved in emotion and memory. (Its key structures include, and link, the posterior cingulate cortex, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the hippocampus.) Neuroimaging studies suggest that the DMN is involved in such higher-order “metacognitive” activities as self-reflection, mental projection, time travel, and theory of mind—the ability to attribute mental states to others. Activity in the DMN falls during the psychedelic experiences, and when it falls most precipitously volunteers often report a dissolution of their sense of self. DMT (or N,N-dimethyltryptamine): A rapid-onset, intense, and short-acting psychedelic compound sometimes referred to as “the businessman’s trip.” This tryptamine molecule is found in many plants and animals for reasons not well understood. empathogen: A psychoactive drug that produces a heightened sense of connectedness, emotional openness, and compassion. MDMA, or Ecstasy, is such a drug. Also sometimes called an entactogen. entheogen: From the Greek, “generating the divine within.” A psychoactive substance that produces or facilitates a spiritual experience. Entheogens have been used by many cultures for thousands of years, whether by shamans or as part of religious or spiritual practices. However, the term was not coined until the 1970s, by a group of scholars that included R. Gordon Wasson, Richard Evans Schultes, Jonathan Ott, and Carl Ruck. The word was intended to help rehabilitate psychedelics by distinguishing their ancient spiritual role from the recreational uses to which they were often put beginning in the 1960s. Esalen, or the Esalen Institute: A retreat center in Big Sur, California, founded in 1962 to explore the various methods for expanding consciousness that often go under the umbrella of the human potential movement. Esalen was closely identified with the psychedelic movement before the drugs were banned; in the years afterward, a series of meetings took place at Esalen, where strategies to rehabilitate and restart research into psychedelics were developed. Many psychedelic guides now working underground received their training at Esalen. 5-HT 2A receptor: One of several types of receptors in the brain that respond to the neurotransmitter serotonin. Psychedelic compounds also bind to this receptor, precipitating a cascade of (poorly understood) events that produce the psychedelic experience. Because of its distinctive molecular shape, LSD binds particularly well to the 5-HT 2A receptor. In addition, a portion of the receptor folds over the LSD molecule and holds it inside the receptor, which might explain its intensity and long duration of action. 5-MeO-DMT (5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine): A powerful, short-acting psychedelic compound found in certain South American plants and in the venom of the Sonoran desert toad ( Incilius alvarius ). The toad venom is typically vaporized and smoked; 5-MeO-DMT obtained from plants is usually made into a snuff. The compound has been used sacramentally in South America for many years; it was first synthesized in 1936 and was not made illegal until 2011. hallucinogen: The class of psychoactive drugs that induce hallucinations, including the psychedelics, the dissociatives, and the deliriants. The term is often used as a synonym for psychedelics, even though psychedelics don’t necessarily produce full-fledged hallucinations. Harvard Psilocybin Project: The psychological research program established by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard in 1960. The researchers (who included Ralph Metzner, a graduate student) administered psilocybin to hundreds of volunteers “in a naturalistic setting”; they also conducted experiments with prisoners at Concord State Prison and with theology students at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel. Later, the group began working with LSD. The project was engulfed in controversy in 1962 and closed down after it had been reported that Alpert had given psilocybin to an undergraduate, in violation of its agreement with Harvard. Leary and Alpert established a successor organization in Cambridge but outside Harvard, called the International Federation for Internal Freedom. Heffter Research Institute: A nonprofit established in 1993 by David E. Nichols, a chemist and pharmacologist at Purdue University, with several colleagues, to support scientific research into psychedelic compounds. The institute was named for Arthur Heffter, the German chemist, pharmacologist, and physician who first identified mescaline as the psychoactive component of the peyote cactus in the late 1890s. Established at a time when psychedelic research had been dormant for two decades, the Heffter Institute has played a pivotal, but quiet, role in the revival of that research, helping to fund most of the psilocybin trials done in America since the late 1990s, including the work at Hopkins and NYU (Heffter.org). holotropic breathwork: A breathing exercise developed in the mid 1970s by the psychedelic therapist Stanislav Grof, and his wife, Christina, after LSD was made illegal. By breathing rapidly and exhaling deeply, nearly to the point of hyperventilation, subjects enter an altered state of consciousness without the use of a drug. This trancelike state can give access to subconscious material. “Holotropic” means “moving toward wholeness.” LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide): Also known as acid, this psychedelic compound was first synthesized in 1938 by Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist at Sandoz who was searching for a drug to stimulate circulation. LSD was the twenty-fifth molecule that Hofmann had derived from the alkaloids produced by ergot, a fungus that infects grain. Hofmann shelved the compound when it proved ineffective as a medicine, but five years later a premonition led him to resynthesize it. After accidentally ingesting a small quantity of LSD, he discovered its powerful psychoactive properties. In 1947, Sandoz began marketing LSD as a psychiatric drug under the name Delysid. It was withdrawn from circulation in 1966 after the drug appeared on the black market. MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies): The nonprofit membership organization founded in 1986 by Rick Doblin to increase public understanding of psychedelics and support scientific research into their therapeutic applications. Based in Santa Cruz, California, MAPS has focused its efforts on MDMA, or Ecstasy, as a therapeutic intervention for people suffering from PTSD. In 2016, it won FDA approval to conduct phase 3 trials of MDMA in the treatment of PTSD; in 2017, the FDA designated MDMA as a “breakthrough therapy” for PTSD, clearing the way for an expedited review. Doblin, and MAPS, have played a central role in the revival of psychedelic research. MAPS also sponsors Psychedelic Science, the international conference on psychedelic research that takes place in Northern California every few years. MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine): A psychoactive compound first synthesized by Merck in 1912 but never marketed. After the compound was resynthesized by the Bay Area chemist Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin in the 1970s, it became a popular adjunct to psychotherapy, because its “empathogenic” qualities helped patients form a strong bond of trust with their therapists. In the 1980s, the drug showed up in the rave scene, where it was sold under the name of Ecstasy (or E or later Molly); in 1986, the U.S. government put MDMA on schedule 1, declaring it a drug of abuse with no accepted medical use. However, recent drug trials sponsored by MAPS have demonstrated MDMA’s value in treating PTSD. MDMA is not considered a “classical psychedelic,” because it appears to operate on different brain pathways from LSD or psilocybin. mescaline: A psychedelic compound derived from several cacti, including peyote and San Pedro. The compound was first identified and named by the German chemist Arthur Heffter in 1897. The Doors of Perception is a first-person account of Aldous Huxley’s first mescaline experience. microdosing: The practice of ingesting a small, “subperceptual” dose of a psychedelic, usually LSD or psilocybin, every few days as an aid to mental health or mental performance. A common protocol is to take ten micrograms of LSD (a tenth of a medium dose) every fourth day. The practice is fairly new, and as yet the evidence for its effectiveness is anecdotal. Several trials are under way. MK-Ultra: The code name for an undercover research program on psychedelic drugs conducted by the CIA beginning in 1953; it was closed down in 1963 or 1964. At various times, the CIA sought to determine whether LSD and related compounds could be used as a means of mind control; an interrogation tool (or truth serum); a biological weapon (added to a population’s water supply); or a political tool (by dosing adversaries to get them to do foolish things). As part of the research program, which at times involved forty-four universities and colleges, civilians and military personnel were dosed without their knowledge, sometimes with disastrous consequences. The public first learned about MK-Ultra during the Church Committee hearings on the CIA held in 1975; further hearings on the program were held in 1977. However, most of the agency’s documents on the program had been destroyed in 1973 on orders from director Richard Helms. Mystical Experience Questionnaire: The psychological survey, developed by Walter Pahnke and William Richards in the 1960s, used to assess whether a volunteer in a trial of a psychedelic drug has undergone a mystical-type experience. It seeks to measure, on a scale of one to five, seven attributes of a mystical experience: internal unity; external unity; transcendence of time and space; ineffability and paradoxicality; a sense of sacredness; the noetic quality; and a deeply felt positive mood. Several revised versions of the MEQ have since been developed. noetic quality: A term introduced by William James, an American psychologist, to denote the fact that the mystical state registers not only as a feeling but as a state of knowledge. People emerge with the enduring conviction that important truths have been revealed to them. The noetic quality was, for James, one of the four marks of the mystical experience, along with ineffability, transiency, and passivity. phenethylamines: A class of organic molecule, and the name for one of the two principal types of psychedelic compounds; the other is the tryptamines. Mescaline and MDMA are examples of phenethylamines. psilocin: One of the two principal psychoactive compounds found in psilocybin mushrooms. The other is psilocybin, which breaks down to psilocin under certain conditions. Both compounds were isolated (from mushrooms provided by R. Gordon Wasson) and named by Albert Hofmann in 1958. Psilocin is what gives psilocybin mushrooms their bluish tint when bruised. Psilocybe : A genus of approximately two hundred gilled mushrooms, roughly half of which produce psychoactive compounds such as psilocybin and psilocin. Psilocybes are distributed throughout the world. Their possession is illegal in most jurisdictions. The best-known members of the genus are Psilocybe cubensis, Psilocybe cyanescens, Psilocybe semilanceata, and Psilocybe azurescens . psilocybin: The main psychoactive compound found in psilocybin mushrooms and a shorthand for the class of mushrooms that contain it. psychedelic: From the Greek for “mind manifesting.” The term was coined in 1956 by Humphry Osmond to describe drugs like LSD and psilocybin that produce radical changes in consciousness. psycholytic: A term coined in the 1960s for a drug, or dose of a drug, that loosens constraints on the mind, allowing subconscious material to enter one’s awareness. Also the name for a form of psychotherapy that uses low doses of psychedelics to relax the patient’s ego without obliterating it. psychotomimetic: The name for a drug that produces effects resembling psychosis. This was a common term for LSD and drugs like it when they were first introduced to psychiatry in the 1950s; researchers believed they produced temporary psychoses that would yield insights into the nature of mental illness and give therapists the opportunity to experience madness firsthand. reducing valve: The term used by Aldous Huxley in The Doors of Perception for the mental filter that admits to our awareness only a “measly trickle of the kind of consciousness” we need to survive. In his view, the value of psychedelics was to open the reducing valve, giving us access to the fullness of experience and the universal “Mind at Large.” set and setting: The inner and outer environments in which a drug experience takes place; “set” is a term for the mind-set and expectations the person brings to the experience, and “setting” is the outward circumstances in which it takes place. Set and setting are particularly influential in the case of psychedelics. The terms are usually credited to Timothy Leary, but the concept was recognized and made use of by earlier researchers such as Al Hubbard. tryptamine: A class of organic molecule common in nature, and the name for one of the two principal types of psychedelic compounds; the other is the phenethylamines. LSD, psilocybin, and DMT are tryptamines. The neurotransmitter serotonin is also a tryptamine. Acknowledgments C HANGING ONE’S MIND, or one’s subject as a writer, is never easy, and this book would never have been ventured, much less completed, if not for the support and encouragement of the people around me. Ann Godoff, my book editor for going on four decades now, didn’t blink or blanch when I told her I wanted to write a book about psychedelics; her enthusiasm and sure-footed editorial guidance through this, our eighth book together, has been a blessing. Amanda Urban, too, abetted this adventure in so many ways; my career-long debt to her is incalculable. Thanks, too, to the superb teams in their respective offices: Sarah Hutson, Casey Denis, and Karen Mayer, at Penguin; and, at ICM, Liz Farrell, Maris Dyer, Daisy Meyrick, Molly Atlas, and Ron Bernstein. The best thing about being a journalist is getting paid to learn whole new subjects as an adult. Yet the pursuit of such a continuing education would be impossible without the forbearance of the people we ask to be our teachers. I’m grateful to everyone—the scientists, the volunteers, the patients, the therapists, and the advocates—who endured the multiple, lengthy interviews and all the dumb questions. Special thanks to Bob Jesse, Roland Griffiths, Matthew Johnson, Mary Cosimano, Bill Richards, Katherine MacLean, Rick Doblin, Paul Stamets, James Fadiman, Stephen Ross, Tony Bossis, Jeffrey Guss, George Goldsmith, Ekaterina Malievskaia, Charles Grob, Teri Krebs, Robin Carhart-Harris, David Nutt, David Nichols, George Sarlo, Vicky Dulai, Judson Brewer, Bia Labate, Gabor Maté, Lisa Callaghan, and Andrew Weil. Though not everyone I interviewed is quoted here by name, all were excellent teachers, and I am deeply grateful for your patience with my questions and generosity with your answers. Several people took substantial risks in sharing their stories with me; although I can’t thank them publicly, I owe a tremendous debt to the many underground guides who gave so freely of their time, their experience, and their wisdom. It is a shame that at least for now their healing practice depends on acts of civil disobedience. I spent a productive and pleasurable year as a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, which gave me the opportunity to research and write the history of psychedelic research in the city where an important chapter of it took place. The institute offered the perfect environment for pursuing a project that touches on so many different disciplines: I only had to walk down the hall to consult a brain scientist, a biologist, an anthropologist, and an investigative reporter. While at Radcliffe, I was blessed to work with a dogged undergraduate research assistant who helped me navigate the Harvard archives and turned up one hidden gem after another: thank you, Teddy Delwiche. I also owe a debt to Ed Wasserman, my dean at the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley, for granting me time off from teaching so that I could go to Cambridge and, later, complete the book. Back in Berkeley, Bridget Huber did brilliant work, first as a research assistant and then as a fact-checker; that this is the most thoroughly sourced of my books owes entirely to her diligence and skill. Several of my colleagues at Berkeley contributed hugely to my education in neuroscience and psychology: David Presti, Dacher Keltner, and Alison Gopnik enriched this book in more ways than they realize and, in the case of David and his partner, Kristi Panik, who read a draft of the neuroscience chapter, saved me from errors large and small. (Though they bear no responsibility for any errors that may remain.) Mark Edmundson supplied some crucial early advice that helped shape the narrative, and Mark Danner was, as ever, an invaluable sounding board on our walks at Inspiration Point. I count myself especially lucky to be close friends with an editor as astute and generous as Gerry Marzorati; his comments on the manuscript were invaluable and saved you, dear reader, from having to read several thousand unnecessary words. My first foray into the subject of psychedelics came in a 2015 piece in the New Yorker, “The Trip Treatment”; thanks to Alan Burdick, the gifted editor who assigned it, and David Remnick, for seeing it fit to publish; the piece opened all sorts of doors. For crucial research assistance along the way, as well as their indispensable online library, I’m deeply grateful to Earth and Fire, the proprietors of Erowid, which is the single most important resource on psychedelics there is. Check it out. For their wise, helpful, and reassuring legal counsel, I’m grateful to my dear friend Howard Sobel and his colleague Marvin Putnam at Latham & Watkins. I sleep much better knowing they have my back. A long book project has a way of inflecting the emotional weather in a family, this one perhaps more than most. Isaac, it has meant the world to me to be able to talk through my journeys with you; I always come away from our conversations with something smart, useful, and unexpected. Your support, curiosity, and encouragement have made all the difference. When I embarked on this long, strange trip, Judith wondered what it might mean for our thirty-year-plus collaboration. Would I return somehow changed? Never would I have imagined that after all that time anything could bring us closer together, but there it is. Thank you for pushing me to attempt something new, for the searching questions and insights along the way, for the close editing of every chapter—and, most of all, for going with me on the journey. Notes PROLOGUE A NEW DOOR The first of these molecules : Hofmann, LSD, My Problem Child, 40–47. The second molecule : Wasson and Wasson, Mushrooms, Russia, and History, vol. 2. a fifteen-page account : Wasson, “Seeking the Magic Mushroom.” LSD scrambled your chromosomes : Cohen, Hirschhorn, and Frosch, “In Vivo and In Vitro Chromosomal Damage Induced by LSD-25.” In the spring of 2010 : Tierney, “Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again.” For a peer-reviewed scientific paper : Griffiths et al., “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance.” emergency room admissions involving psychedelics : Johansen and Krebs, “Psychedelics Not Linked to Mental Health Problems or Suicidal Behavior.” nearly a thousand volunteers : Personal correspondence with Matthew W. Johnson, PhD. the term “psychedelics” : Dyck, Psychedelic Psychiatry, 1–2. CHAPTER ONE A RENAISSANCE Entering his second century : Langlitz, Neuropsychedelia, 24–26. “the only joyous invention” : Hofmann, LSD, My Problem Child, 184–85. As a young chemist : Ibid., 36–45. And there it remained for five years : Ibid., 46–47. Now unfolds the world’s first bad acid trip : Ibid., 48–49. “My ego was suspended” : Quoted in Nichols, “LSD.” “everything glistened and sparkled” : Hofmann, LSD, My Problem Child, 51. “in the edifice of materialist rationality” : Jonathan Ott in translator’s preface to ibid., 25. “the feeling of co-creatureliness” : Langlitz, Neuropsychedelia, 25–26. The second watershed event of 2006 : Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal . “major therapeutic possibilities” : Kleber, “Commentary On: Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences,” 292. “hope that this landmark paper” : Schuster, “Commentary On: Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences,” 289. “that, when used appropriately” : Nichols, “Commentary On: Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences,” 284. “free oneself of the bounds” : Wit, “Towards a Science of Spiritual Experience.” the noetic quality : James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 370. “Dreams cannot stand this test” : Ibid., 389. more than a thousand scientific papers : See, for example, Grinspoon and Bakalar, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, 192. a PhD dissertation at Harvard : Walter Pahnke’s thesis, “Drugs and Mysticism: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Psychedelic Drugs and the Mystical Consciousness,” is available in PDF form at http://www.maps.org/images/pdf/books/pahnke/walter_pahnke_drugs_and_mysticism.pdf. “Until the Good Friday Experiment” : Huston Smith, Huston Smith Reader, 73. a follow-up study of the Good Friday Experiment : Doblin, “Pahnke’s ‘Good Friday Experiment.’” a second review : Doblin, “Dr. Leary’s Concord Prison Experiment.” “would be for psychiatry” : Quoted in Nutt, “Brave New World for Psychology?,” 658. the first modern trial of psilocybin : Grob et al., “Pilot Study of Psilocybin Treatment for Anxiety in Patients with Advanced-Stage Cancer.” An internal memo : A cache of declassified CIA files related to Project Artichoke is available at http://www.paperlessarchives.com/FreeTitles/ARTICHOKECIAFiles.pdf. “my own constitution shuts me out” : James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 369. “The subject of it immediately says” : Ibid., 370. “Mystical states seem to those who experience them” : Ibid. “that deepened sense of the significance” : Ibid., 372. “and from one recurrence to another” : Ibid., 371. “The mystic feels as if his own will” : Ibid. led to lasting changes in their personalities : MacLean et al., “Mystical Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin Lead to Increases in the Personality Domain of Openness.” “Doctors encounter this strange” : McHugh, review of The Harvard Psychedelic Club, by Don Lattin. “authoritative over the individuals” : James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 415. “The existence of mystical states” : Ibid., 419. “might, in spite of all the perplexity” : Ibid., 420. “ascend[s] to a more enveloping point of view” : Ibid. “It is as if the opposites of the world” : Ibid., 378. a pilot study in smoking cessation : Johnson et al., “Pilot Study of the 5-HT 2AR Agonist Psilocybin in the Treatment of Tobacco Addiction.” CHAPTER TWO NATURAL HISTORY: BEMUSHROOMED The mycelia in a forest : Simard et al., “Net Transfer of Carbon Between Ectomycorrhizal Tree Species in the Field.” Humans have been using psilocybin mushrooms : Stamets, Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World, 11. “Psilocybe mushrooms and civilization” : Ibid., 16. “Mistakes in mushroom identification can be lethal” : Ibid., 30–32. “The Stametsian Rule” : Ibid., 53. had personal knowledge of psychedelic drugs : Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 71. “through the eyes of a happy and gifted child” : Siff, Acid Hype, 93. Life gave him a generous contract : Ibid., 80. “description of your own sensations” : Ibid., 73. a circulation of 5.7 million : Ibid. “Seeking the Magic Mushroom” : All quotations appear in Wasson, “Seeking the Magic Mushroom.” “These they ate before dawn” : Wasson and Wasson, Mushrooms, Russia, and History, 223. “the devil that they worshipped” : Davis, One River, 95. “an act of superstition condemned” : Siff, Acid Hype, 69. “carry you there where god is” : Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck, Road to Eleusis, 33. On the night of June 29–30, 1955 : Wasson, “Seeking the Magic Mushroom.” “Before Wasson nobody took the mushrooms” : Estrada, María Sabina, 73. “To find God, Sabina” : Letcher, Shroom, 104. Person to Person : Siff, Acid Hype, 80. several other magazines : Ibid., 83. An exhibition on magic mushrooms : Ibid., 74. Hofmann isolated and named : Hofmann, LSD, My Problem Child, 128. “Thirty minutes after my taking” : Ibid., 126. In 1962, Hofmann joined Wasson : Ibid., 139–52. “unleash[ing] on lovely Huautla” : Wasson, “Drugs,” 21. “From the moment the foreigners arrived” : Estrada, María Sabina, 90–91. you can find him on YouTube : The video, The Stoned Ape Theory, by Terence McKenna, is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOtLJwK7kdk. “access to realms of supernatural power” : McKenna, Food of the Gods, 26. “catalyzed the emergence of human self-reflection” : Ibid., 24. “brought us out of the animal mind” : See McKenna’s talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOtLJwK7kdk. Samorini calls this a “depatterning factor” : Samorini, Animals and Psychedelics, 84–88. “Nature everywhere speaks to man” : Wulf, Invention of Nature, 54. “I myself am identical with nature” : Ibid., 128. “Everything,” Humboldt said, “is interaction and reciprocal” : Ibid., 59. “Nature always wears the colors” : Emerson, Nature, 14. another form of consciousness “parted from [us]” : James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 377. a spiritually “realized being” : Huston Smith, Cleansing the Doors of Perception, 76. “forbid[s] a premature closing” : James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 378. CHAPTER THREE HISTORY: THE FIRST WAVE When the federal authorities : Leary, Flashbacks, 232–42. Leary was called before a committee : Greenfield, Timothy Leary, 267–72. “Dreary Senate hearing and courtrooms” : Leary, Flashbacks, 251–52. “a tantalizing sense of portentousness” : Novak, “LSD Before Leary,” 91. “enter the illness and see with a madman’s eyes” : Osmond, “On Being Mad.” In the years following World War II : Dyck, Psychedelic Psychiatry, 17. the two researchers began to explore : Ibid. But it was a productive hypothesis : For an excellent overview of how this research contributed to the rise of neurochemistry, see Nichols, “Psychedelics,” 267. The Saskatchewan Mental Hospital : Weyburn would soon become the world’s most important hub of research into psychedelics. Dyck, Psychedelic Psychiatry, 26–28. “My 12 Hours as a Madman” : For a discussion of the article, see ibid., 31–33. Their focus on LSD : Ibid., 40–42. “seemed so bizarre that we laughed uproariously” : Ibid., 58–59. “From the first” : Ibid., 59. Based on this success : Ibid., 71. they seemed too good to be true : Ibid., 73. The idea that a drug could occasion : See Novak, “LSD Before Leary,” 97, and the anonymously published “Pass It On,” Kindle location 5372. Beginning in 1956, Bill W. had several LSD sessions : Eisner, “Remembrances of LSD Therapy Past,” 14, 26–45; Novak, “LSD Before Leary,” 97. Born in 1910 in New York City : Novak, “LSD Before Leary,” 88–89. “was taken by surprise” : Ibid., 92. “the problems and strivings” : Ibid. Cohen came to think of it : Betty Grover Eisner, draft of “Sidney Cohen, M.D.: A Remembrance,” box 7, folder 3, Betty Grover Eisner Papers, Stanford University Department of Special Collections and University Archives. “psycholytic” means “mind loosening” : Grinspoon and Bakalar, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, 7. Stanislav Grof, who trained as a psychoanalyst : For a detailed account of this work, see Grof, LSD . A 1967 review article : Grinspoon and Bakalar, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, 208. Anaïs Nin, Jack Nicholson, Stanley Kubrick : Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 62. the most famous of these patients was Cary Grant : Siff, Acid Hype, 100. declared himself “born again” : Stevens, Storming Heaven, 64. “All the sadness and vanities” : Siff, Acid Hype, 100. “I’m no longer lonely” : Ibid. “Young women have never before” : Novak, “LSD Before Leary,” 103. a surge in demand for LSD therapy : Ibid. “LSD became for us an intellectual fun drug” : Ibid., 99. Cohen was made uncomfortable : Ibid., 99–101. He remained deeply ambivalent : Ibid., 100. “under LSD the fondest theories” : Cohen, Beyond Within, 182. “any explanation of the patient’s problems” : Ibid. “therapy by self-transcendence” : Cohen, “LSD and the Anguish of Dying,” 71. “relish the possibility” : Dyck, Psychedelic Psychiatry, 1. “It was without question” : Huxley, Moksha, 42. “the folds of my gray flannel trousers” : Huxley, Doors of Perception, 33. “what Adam had seen on the morning” : Ibid., 17. “Words like ‘grace’ and ‘transfiguration’” : Ibid., 18. “a measly trickle” : Ibid., 23. “shining with their own inner light” : Ibid., 17. a common core of mystical experience : Huxley, Perennial Philosophy . “99 percent Aldous Huxley” : Novak, “LSD Before Leary,” 93. “It will give that elixir a bad name” : Ibid., 95. Clearly a new name for this class : Dyck, Psychedelic Psychiatry, 1–2. “had no particular connotation of madness” : Ibid., 2. “uncontaminated by other associations” : Osmond, “Review of the Clinical Effects of Psychotomimetic Agents,” 429. The goal was to create the conditions : Grinspoon and Bakalar, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, 194–95. his FBI file : Hubbard’s FBI file is available at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/AlHubbard. the best account we have of his life : Fahey, “Original Captain Trips.” the trail of Hubbard’s life : These facts, and their contradictions, are drawn from Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, and Fahey, “Original Captain Trips.” We know the government kept close tabs : Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 45. “It was the deepest mystical thing” : Ibid. “a catalytic agent” : Ibid., 52. “if he could give the psychedelic experience” : Fahey, “Original Captain Trips.” “convinced that [Al Hubbard] was the man” : Ibid. Osmond abandoned the psychotomimetic model : Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 54. Hubbard was the first researcher to grasp : Dyck, Psychedelic Psychiatry, 93. “He said, ‘Now hate them’” : R.C., “B.C.’s Acid Flashback.” “We waited for him like the little old lady” : Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 51. impressive rates of success : Stevens, Storming Heaven, 175. “The CIA work stinks” : Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 52. “I tried to tell them how to use it” : Ibid. “What came through the closed door” : Stevens, Storming Heaven, 56. “What Babes in the Woods” : Ibid., 54. “who, having once come to the realization” : Ibid., 57. Commission for the Study of Creative Imagination : Eisner, “Remembrances of LSD Therapy Past,” 10. “Explorers have not always been the most scientific” : Ibid., 57. “My regard for science” : Dyck, Psychedelic Psychiatry, 97–98. Steve Jobs often told people : Markoff, What the Dormouse Said, xix. “He’d be a broader guy” : Isaacson, Steve Jobs, 172–73. “That was a remarkable opening” : Goldsmith, “Conversation with George Greer and Myron Stolaroff.” “After that first LSD experience” : Fahey, “Original Captain Trips.” “The greatest thing in the world” : Markoff, What the Dormouse Said, 58. Seventy-eight percent of clients : Stevens, Storming Heaven, 178. “We were amazed” : Fadiman, Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, 185. “Our investigations of some of the current social movements” : Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 198. “to provide the [LSD] experience” : Fahey, “Original Captain Trips.” “Al never did anything resembling security work” : Ibid. his first shattering experience : Leary, Flashbacks, 29–33. “In four hours by the swimming pool” : Ibid., 33. Listen! Wake up! You are God! : Leary, High Priest, 285. Experimental Expansion of Consciousness : This course description is in the New York Public Library’s collection of Leary’s papers. http://archives.nypl.org/mss/18400#detailed. “We were on our own” : Stevens, Storming Heaven, 135. Leary reported eye-popping results : Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 75. Rick Doblin at MAPS meticulously reconstructed : Doblin, “Dr. Leary’s Concord Prison Experiment.” “it was the sort of research” : Cohen, Beyond Within, 224. “If we learned one thing” : Lattin, Harvard Psychedelic Club, 74. “We were thinking far-out history thoughts” : Leary et al., Neuropolitics, 3. “We’re going to teach people” : Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 77. “Psychedelic drugs opened to mass tourism” : Grinspoon and Bakalar, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, 86. A 1961 memo from David McClelland : “Some Social Reactions to the Psilocybin Research Project,” Oct. 8, 1961. “analyz[e] your data objectively” : Memo from McClelland to Metzner, Dec. 19, 1962. “I wish I could treat this” : Lattin, Harvard Psychedelic Club, 89. The next day’s Crimson : Robert Ellis Smith, “Psychologists Disagree on Psilocybin Research.” “Hallucination Drug Fought at Harvard” : Lattin, Harvard Psychedelic Club, 91. “Psychedelic drugs cause panic” : Grinspoon and Bakalar, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, 66. “these materials are too powerful” : Leary and Alpert, “Letter from Alpert, Leary.” “For the first time in American history” : Ibid. “We’re through playing the science game” : Stevens, Storming Heaven, 189. “had talked such nonsense” : Ibid., 190. “powerful chemicals [as] harmless toys” : Eisner, “Remembrances of LSD Therapy Past,” 145. Osmond tried once again to coin a new one : Dyck, Psychedelic Psychiatry, 132. “You must face these objections” : Ibid., 108. “wreak havoc on all of us” : Stevens, Storming Heaven, 191. Leary was happy to state it : Leary, High Priest, 132. “He blew in with that uniform” : Fahey, “Original Captain Trips.” “I liked Tim when we first met” : Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 88. “Al got greatly preoccupied” : Fahey, “Original Captain Trips.” “I suppose there is little hope” : Stevens, Storming Heaven, 191. “using hallucinogens for seductions” : Weil, “Strange Case of the Harvard Drug Scandal.” “Yes, sir, I did” : Lattin, Harvard Psychedelic Club, 94. Alpert and Leary appear to be : Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams. “an undergraduate group” : Weil, “Strange Case of the Harvard Drug Scandal.” “given to him” by Marshall McLuhan : Strauss, Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead, location 352. “The kids who take LSD” : This quotation appears in a video made by Retro Report, available here: https://www.retroreport.org/video/the-long-strange-trip-of-lsd/. With Ken Kesey, the CIA had turned on : Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 124. “by blurring the boundaries” : Grob, “Psychiatric Research with Hallucinogens.” “the drugs to themselves” : Grinker, “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.” “rendering their conclusions biased” : Grinker, “Bootlegged Ecstasy.” “aura of magic” : Cole and Katz, “Psychotomimetic Drugs,” 758. “the transcendental into psychiatry” : Eisner, “Remembrances of LSD Therapy Past,” 112. But when the study was later discredited : Presti and Beck, “Strychnine and Other Enduring Myths,” 130–31. For his first study : Cohen, “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.” “the dangers of suicide” : Cohen and Ditman, “Complications Associated with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD-25),” 162. In another paper published : Cohen and Ditman, “Prolonged Adverse Reactions to Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.” A fourth article : Cohen, “Classification of LSD Complications.” feverish cover story : Moore and Schiller, “Exploding Threat of the Mind Drug That Got out of Control.” “LSD has been your Frankenstein” : Novak, “LSD Before Leary,” 109. “Why if [these projects] were worthwhile” : Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 93. “four men lay, their minds literally expanding” : Fadiman, Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, 186. Someone made a videotape of the event : And it’s available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjylxvQqm0U. he’s traveled from Casa Grande : Fahey, “Original Captain Trips.” CHAPTER FOUR TRAVELOGUE: JOURNEYING UNDERGROUND there are three things human beings are afraid of : Quoted in Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, 119. three thousand patients and trained 150 guides : Stolaroff, Secret Chief Revealed, 28, 59. “laid the Torah across my chest” : Ibid., 36. “Many times I’d be in much agony” : Ibid., 61. “Just leave ’em alone!” : Ibid., 50. surveying their musical practices : Barrett et al., “Qualitative and Quantitative Features of Music Reported to Support Peak Mystical Experiences During Psychedelic Therapy Sessions.” “forms of consciousness entirely different” : James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 377. “For the moment that interfering neurotic” : Huxley, Doors of Perception, 53. “the totality of the awareness belonging to Mind at Large” : Ibid., 24. “of being overwhelmed, of disintegrating” : Ibid., 55. “If one always saw like this” : Ibid., 34–35. “Standing on the bare ground” : Emerson, Nature, 13. “Swiftly arose and spread around me” : Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 29. “All at once, as it were out of the intensity” : Tennysons, “Luminous Sleep.” “I saw that the universe” : Quoted in James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 391. CHAPTER FIVE NEUROSCIENCE: YOUR BRAIN ON PSYCHEDELICS One candidate for that chemical : For more detail, see David Nichols’s talk “DMT and the Pineal Gland: Facts vs. Fantasy,” available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeeqHUiC8Io. psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin work: Vollenweider et al., “Psilocybin Induces Schizophrenia-Like Psychosis in Humans via a Serotonin-2 Agonist Action.” “there is nothing of which we are more certain” : Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 12. The classic thought experiment : Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” consciousness may pervade the universe : Frank, “Minding Matter.” a landmark paper : Raichle et al., “Default Mode of Brain Function.” “Chaos is averted” : Raichle, “Brain’s Dark Energy.” It also lights up when we receive “likes” : Brewer, Craving Mind, 46. In an often-cited paper : Killingsworth and Gilbert, “Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind.” Shortly after Carhart-Harris published : Carhart-Harris et al., “Neural Correlates of the Psychedelic State as Determined by fMRI Studies with Psilocybin.” The bee perceives a substantially different spectrum : Srinivasan, “Honey Bees as a Model for Vision, Perception, and Cognition”; Dyer et al., “Seeing in Colour.” the sense that allows bees to register : Sutton et al., “Mechanosensory Hairs in Bumblebees ( Bombus terrestris ) Detect Weak Electric Fields.” a dimension of music that conveys emotion : Kaelen, “Psychological and Human Brain Effects of Music in Combination with Psychedelic Drugs.” “serves to promote realism” : Carhart-Harris et al., “Entropic Brain.” “Distinct networks became less distinct” : Carhart-Harris, Kaelen, and Nutt, “How Do Hallucinogens Work on the Brain?” the usual lines of communications : Petri et al., “Homological Scaffolds of Brain Functional Networks.” her superb book : Gopnik, Philosophical Baby . “Adults have congealed in their beliefs” : Lucas et al., “When Children Are Better (or at Least More Open-Minded) Learners Than Adults.” CHAPTER SIX THE TRIP TREATMENT: PSYCHEDELICS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY “For me that is not a medical concept” : Kupferschmidt, “High Hopes,” 23. “If we are to develop optimal research designs” : Grob, “Psychiatric Research with Hallucinogens.” only about half of the people who take their lives : Beacon Health Options, “We Need to Talk About Suicide,” 10. “psychiatry has gone from being brainless” : Solomon, Noonday Demon, 102. “alter[] the experience of dying” : Cohen, “LSD and the Anguish of Dying.” “of cosmic unity” : Richards et al., “LSD-Assisted Psychotherapy and the Human Encounter with Death.” “I am the luckiest man on earth” : Grob, Bossis, and Griffiths, “Use of the Classic Hallucinogen Psilocybin for Treatment of Existential Distress Associated with Cancer,” 303. In December 2016, a front-page story : Hoffman, “Dose of a Hallucinogen from a ‘Magic Mushroom,’ and Then Lasting Peace.” In a follow-up study to the NYU trial : Belser et al., “Patient Experiences of Psilocybin-Assisted Psychotherapy: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.” “is to make your interests gradually wider” : Bertrand Russell, “How to Grow Old.” “And suddenly I realized that the molecules” : Hertzberg, “Moon Shots (3 of 3).” 80 percent of the volunteers were confirmed as abstinent : Johnson et al., “Pilot Study of the 5-HT 2AR Agonist Psilocybin in the Treatment of Tobacco Addiction.” This suggests that the ability : Personal communication with the neuroscientist Draulio Araujo. The record was a complete muddle : Krebs and Johansen, “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) for Alcoholism.” “Given the evidence for a beneficial effect” : Ibid. a 2015 pilot study : Bogenschutz et al., “Psilocybin-Assisted Treatment for Alcohol Dependence.” volunteers spent a minute looking : Piff et al., “Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior.” the after-awe self-portraits : Bai et al., “Awe, the Diminished Self, and Collective Engagement.” researchers gave psilocybin to six men : Carhart-Harris et al., “Psilocybin with Psychological Support for Treatment-Resistant Depression.” Watts’s interviews uncovered two “master” themes : Watts et al., “Patients’ Accounts of Increased ‘Connectedness’ and ‘Acceptance’ After Psilocybin for Treatment-Resistant Depression.” “It was like a holiday” : Ibid. “The sheen and shine that life and existence” : For Rouiller’s full account, see http://inandthrough.blogspot.com/2016/08/psilocybin-trial-diary-one-year-on.html. obsessive-compulsive disorder : Moreno et al., “Safety, Tolerability, and Efficacy of Psilocybin in 9 Patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.” “Depression is a response to past loss” : Solomon, Noonday Demon, 65. “What started as a pleasure becomes a need” : Kessler, Capture, 8–9. psychedelics enhance neuroplasticity : Vollenweider and Kometer, “Neurobiology of Psychedelic Drugs.” In a college commencement address : Reproduced, in part, at Brain Pickings: https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/09/12/this-is-water-david-foster-wallace/. “how we relate to our thoughts and feelings” : Brewer, Craving Mind, 115. 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Note: Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. abuse of psychedelics, low risk of, 50 Acid Tests, 184 , 206 active placebos, psychedelics as, 159 Adamic moments, 25 addiction, 358 –75 and autobiographical narratives, 387 –88, 391 and awe-inspiring experiences, 373 –75 and ayahuasca, 369n banality of insights after treatments, 361 –62, 363 –64 and default mode network, 387 –88 depression’s links to, 383 and ego dissolution, 271 , 366 and excess of order in brain, 313 , 329 , 385 and mental time travel, 387 and negative thinking habits, 383 Nutt’s conclusions on, 300n and overview effect, 359 –60 and rat park experiment, 372 –73 and risks of psychedelics, 14 , 30 See also alcoholism; smoking cessation Addiction Research Foundation in Toronto, 151 adrenaline, 146 afterglow of psychedelic experiences, 24 –25, 254 agnostics and atheists mystical experiences of, 74 , 222 , 284 –85, 345 and value of meaning, 355 Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), 141 , 152 –53, 370 alcoholism and Bill W’s psychedelic experiences, 152 –53, 370 and Hubbard’s treatment facilities, 171 LSD as treatment for, 141 , 148 –53, 368 –69, 370 and Osmond/Hoffer’s research, 170 and personal history/environment, 370 –72 peyote used to treat, 368 and psychotherapy, 369 results from treatment of, 368 –69 and Spring Grove’s research, 57 , 218 and suppression of psychedelic research, 141 –42 Allen, Don, 176 –77, 178 , 181n , 198 , 206n Alpert, Richard (later Ram Dass) and counterculture, 205 criticisms of research, 194 , 195 defense of research, 196 dismissal from Harvard, 202 –3 and Fadiman, 177 and Harvard Psilocybin Project, 188 , 189 , 190 and International Federation for Internal Freedom, 203 and Johnson, 360 post-Harvard life of, 205 and psychedelics’ escape from the lab, 197 and Weil, 202 –3 Altered States of Consciousness (Tart), 99 altruistic behavior, 373 –74 amadou, 87 , 117 American Psychiatric Association (APA), 141 Ampex, 44 , 176 Animals and Psychedelics (Samorini), 123 –24 animals’ consumption of Psilocybes , 93 , 98 , 122 –23 antidepressants discovery of, 147 and loss of effectiveness, 335 and neurochemistry field, 293 and placebo effect, 335n , 382 range of disorders addressed by, 383 anxiety and autobiographical narratives, 387 –88 and default mode network, 387 –88 and effect of psychedelics on ego, 271 and mental time travel, 387 and negative thinking habits, 383 during psychedelic experiences, 46 , 63 and psycholytic LSD therapy, 156 , 159 rumination in, 383 Apollo astronauts, 358 –59, 373 artificial intelligence (AI), 325 –26 authority of psychedelic experiences, 59 , 71 , 346 , 365 –66 autism, 37 autobiographical self, 304 , 387 –88, 391 awe, experiences of, 306 , 373 –75, 389 ayahuasca in addiction treatments, 369n in group settings, 405 lack of research on, 18 and Pollan’s psychedelic journeys, 410 –13 ritual use of, 402 , 404 and UDV court case, 27 –28 Aztecs, 2 , 108 –9 bad trips and backlash against psychedelics, 3 and expectations of therapist, 347 first bad trip, 24 in general population, 209 and LSD therapy for alcoholism, 152 and role of guides, 405 and role of setting, 14 Weil’s “treatment” for, 210 Balick, Michael, 107 Barlow, John Perry, 183 Bay Area tech community, 171 , 175 –83, 181n Bayesian inferences, 261 –63 Bazer, Dinah, 284 –85, 344 –45, 355 Be Here Now (Ram Dass), 205 Beatles, 143 , 204 Beckley Foundation, 228 , 297 , 299 behaviorism, 149 being/doing duality, 280 –81, 282 belladonna, 152 , 370 Belser, Alexander, 351 Bergson, Henri, 56 , 162 Bessant, Charles, 360 , 361 , 362 –63 Beug, Michael, 101 , 121 –23 “Bicycle Day” (April 19), 24 Bigwood, Jeremy, 101 bioterrorism, 89 birth experiences, 155 , 176 , 240 , 279 –80, 341 –42, 344 Blake, William, 82 , 161 , 194 Bogenschutz, Michael, 369 , 370 –72 Boothby, Richard, 65 , 67 –68, 69 , 70 , 72 , 75 Bossis, Tony on authenticity questions, 347 and Bazer’s therapy, 344 –45 on cultural fear of death, 404 and Mettes’s therapy, 336 , 337 –38, 340 –43, 346 , 357 on results with cancer patients, 336 on role of guides, 402 The Botany of Desire (Pollan), 12 –13 brain science, 2 –3, 24 . See also neuroscience of psychedelics Brand, Stewart, 182 , 183 –85, 359 Brave New World (Huxley), 160 breathwork, 242 –44, 245 , 245n , 306 Brewer, Judson and expansion/contraction of consciousness, 322 , 325 and meditation experiment, 392 –95 and quieting of default mode network, 305 , 306 , 322 , 390 –91 Bronfman, Jeffrey, 49 Bucke, R. M., 289 Buckley, Lord, 157 Buddhism, 16 , 288 , 305 , 392 Burgess, Tammy, 346 Burning Man, 83 , 184 Bush, George, 27 , 181 Caen, Herb, 204 California Institute of Integral Studies, 232 –33, 402 Canada, 147 –50, 171 , 198 cancer patient research, 331 –58 and authenticity questions, 347 –49 and birth experiences, 338 –39, 344 common themes in, 344 –46 criticisms of research, 350n and death rehearsal process, 346 and fear of death, 8 , 79 , 336 –37, 346 –47 and fear/anxiety during treatments, 341 , 345 and flight instructions, 338 , 341 follow-up study, 351 –52 Griffiths’s landmark paper on, 10 –11, 29 –30 meaning in, 352 –55 and mystical experiences, 79 , 349 , 350 –51 at New York University, 332 –33, 337 –38 origins of, 338 –39 and Patrick Mettes, 332 , 336 , 337 –38, 340 –44, 346 –47, 356 –57 and perspective shifts of patients, 339 –40 and psycholytic LSD therapy, 159 results of, 349 –50 at Spring Grove, 218 treatment rooms in, 331 –32 and visions of death, 345 –46 volunteers’ accounts of, 351 –52 cannabis and marijuana, 36 , 37 , 138 , 138n , 204 , 299 Capture: Unraveling the Mystery of Mental Suffering (Kessler), 383 Carhart-Harris, Robin on consciousness-expansion, 322 and depression pilot study, 329 –30, 376 –81 on disorganizing effect of psychedelics, 314 , 314n and effect of psilocybin on brain activity, 300 –301 and Feilding, 297 , 299 and Gopnik, 323 –24 on political effects of psychedelics, 315 on predictive/sensory data, 310 –11 psychoanalysis research of, 296 –97, 311 on rewiring of brain, 316 , 320 , 327 , 384 on value of psychedelic experiences, 315 , 328 See also default mode network (DMN); entropic brain theory carpenter ants, 89 , 96 –97 CBS News, 57 , 113 celebrities on psycholytic LSD therapy, 156 –57, 171 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and cultural upheaval of the sixties, 206 –7 and Hubbard, 166 , 171 –72 MK-Ultra experiments of, 59 , 113n , 172 , 172n , 206 , 207 and psychotomimetic model, 172 and search for LSD applications, 142 , 206 Centre for Psychiatry, Imperial College London, 295 –96 Charnay, Amy, 66 –67, 73 Chekhov, Anton, 381 , 382 children consciousness of, 323 –28 and default mode network (DMN), 312 , 328 memories from childhood, 222 , 307 problem solving in, 325 –28 as R&D stage of species, 327 and suppression of entropy, 328 Claviceps purpurea , 84 . See also LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) Cleaver, Eldridge, 204 Coburn, James, 156 cocaine, 7 Cohen, Sidney ambivalence about psychedelics, 158 –59, 175 and Bill W’s psychedelic experiences, 152 –53 and Commission for the Study of Creative Imagination, 174 , 175 and congressional hearings, 217 and Hubbard, 171 , 174 , 175 on Leary’s methodological issues, 191 LSD experiences of, 153 –54 and LSD therapy, 156 and reunion of first wave figures, 219 , 220 on risks of psychedelics, 210 –11 on terminal patients, 339 colony collapse disorder (CCD), 89 color blindness, 310 “Come Together” (Beatles), 204 Commission for the Study of Creative Imagination, 174 –75 Compass Pathways, 401 computer technology, 183 –84, 183n Concord Prison Experiment, 46 , 190 –91, 190n , 195 consciousness and arrival of psychedelics, 2 Bergson on, 162 Carhart-Harris’s theory on, 312 –13, 314 of children, 323 –28 and default mode network (DMN), 302 , 306 , 307 expanding repertoire of, 408 –9 expansion and contraction of, 322 –23 and Huxley’s “reducing valve” concept, 161 –62, 289 , 307 , 313 , 322 hypnagogic consciousness, 252 Jesse on, 41 lantern vs. spotlight, 325 Leary on, 187 and meditation, 408 –9 neuroscience of, 293 –95, 302 , 305 –6, 307 –9, 311 –14, 322 –23 and our perceptions of reality, 137 and paradox of psilocybin, 85 philosophical approach to, 294 preconceptions, 308 as product of brain, 41 , 265 as property of the universe, 56 , 264 , 314 and quantum mechanics, 413 –14 scientific evidence for, 348 –49 and trepanation, 298 universal desire to change, 13 value of altered states of, 406 –9 conviction associated with mystical experiences, 41 , 70 –71 Cordyceps , 89 , 96 –97 Cosimano, Mary, 61 , 73 Costa, José Gabriel da, 27 –28 Council on Spiritual Practices (CSP), 43 , 49 –51, 228 counterculture and computer technology, 183 –84, 183n do-it-yourself approach of, 215 and Eastern religion, 205 efforts to distance psychedelic research from, 84 and generation gap, 215 –16 and Hubbard, 181 , 181n , 200 inevitability of, 215 –16 and Kesey’s Acid Tests, 206 –7 and Leary, 203 –4, 205 negative associations of, 58 and Nixon administration, 58 psychedelics’ link to, 205 , 215 –16 and “psychedelics” term, 19 and Ram Dass, 205 and researchers, 215 rise of, 3 and upheavals of the sixties, 205 –7, 215 –16, 315 and Vietnam War, 215 Coyne, James, 350n creative imagination, 156 , 175 , 179 , 183 , 319 cultural revolution, 175 , 197 , 205 –7. See also counterculture cybernetics, 183 Dalai Lama, 41 dangers of psychedelics, 14 –15, 209 –11, 209n Davis, Wade, 107 , 274 death and dying death rehearsal process, 346 , 389 deaths associated with psychedelics, 14 , 211 fear of, 8 , 78 –79, 218 , 223 , 336 –37, 339 , 346 –47, 353 , 355 , 404 Griffiths’s outlook on, 79 –80 and hospice services, 401 near-death experiences, 306 perceptions of, 68 , 70 , 79 and Pollan’s psychedelic journeys, 267 , 269 reconnections with the dead, 67 visions of, 345 –46 See also cancer patient research default mode network (DMN) activity reductions in, 300 , 304 –6, 313 –14, 316 –20, 322 and autobiographical narratives, 304 , 387 –88, 391 and children’s brains, 312 , 328 and depression, 313 , 378 , 387 –88 discovery of, 301 –2 and disorganizing effect of psychedelics, 314n effect of psilocybin on, 300 –301, 304 –5 and ego, 312 , 313 –14, 329 , 387 , 388 and ego dissolution, 304 –5, 351 evolution of, 312 and existential distress, 353 and expansion/contraction of consciousness, 322 –23 function of, 301 –4, 306 –7 key structures of, 301n and mental illness, 329 , 386 and mental time travel, 387 and mystical experiences, 306 overactivity in, 313 , 353 , 378 , 386 and posterior cingulate cortex, 387 –88, 391 –93 quieting through meditation, 305 , 306 , 391 , 392 –95 and relationship to nature, 315 –16 and rewiring of brain, 316 –20, 353 –54 and snow trails metaphor, 385 Delysid (LSD-25), 142 –43, 145 –46, 216 –17 depatterning factor, 124 depression, 375 –81 and access to emotions, 379 –80 addiction’s links to, 383 and antidepressants, 147 , 293 , 335 , 335n , 382 and autobiographical narratives, 387 –88 Carhart-Harris’s pilot study on, 329 –30, 376 –81 and default mode network, 313 , 378 , 387 –88 disconnection experienced in, 377 –78 and ego’s tyranny, 367 and excess of order in brain, 313 , 329 , 385 inadequate treatments for, 335 and mental time travel, 387 and psycholytic LSD therapy, 156 return of, 380 –81 and rumination, 377 –78, 383 and studies requested by FDA, 375 –76 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM ), 383 dimethyltryptamine (DMT), 27 , 48 , 293 Doblin, Rick ambitions of, 36 –37, 401 –2 background of, 35 on legalization, 402 and MAPS, 35 , 36 –37, 397 and MDMA trials, 48 on progress of field, 397 , 403 –4 on quality of Harvard-based research, 45 –46, 191 The Doors of Perception (Huxley), 25 , 143 , 160 , 162 , 201 , 253 double-blind trials in research, 208 dreams and dreaming, 155 , 292 , 297 Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), 60 drug war, 28 , 50 , 398 Drugs Without the Hot Air (Nutt), 300n Dulles, Allen, 165 Dylan, Bob, 114 Dyson, Esther, 183 Eastern religions, 205 eating disorders, 313 , 367 ecstasy in psychedelic experiences, 111 ego and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), 370 and awe-inspiring experiences, 374 and default mode network (DMN), 312 , 313 –14, 329 , 387 , 388 excessive control of, 313 , 315 , 367 , 388 and existential distress, 353 and expansion/contraction of consciousness, 323 and fear of death, 339 functions of, 352 and mental time travel, 387 silencing of, 288 –90, 394 –95 and spirituality, 390 weakened state of, 252 –53 ego dissolution and addiction treatment, 366 attitudes predicted by, 316n and default mode network (DMN), 304 –5, 351 and Griffiths’s landmark paper, 10 in Hofmann’s trip, 24 and mystical experiences, 389 and noetic quality, 42 and Pollan’s psychedelic journeys, 252 , 263 –65, 270 –71, 277 and spirituality, 288 , 390 therapeutic value of, 389 –90 volunteers’ accounts of, 65 –66 Einstein, Albert, 367 Eisner, Betty on Cohen’s “unsanity,” 154 and Hubbard, 171 , 174 and LSD therapy, 156 paranormal interests of, 208 and West Coast research hub, 152 –53 Eliot, T. S., 136 emergency room admissions, 14 , 209 –10 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 136 , 286 emotions access to difficult, 379 –80 and cancer patient research, 351 –52, 353 inhibited by default mode network, 307 and quieting of default mode network, 317 Engelbart, Doug, 179 , 179n , 183 –84 engineers’ use of psychedelics, 182 English, William, 179 entheogens, 19 , 103 entropic brain theory and aging, 321 and children’s brains, 312 , 323 –28 and communications within brain, 316 –20, 318 –19 and evolution of default mode network, 312 and excess order in brain, 313 , 315 , 385 and expansion/contraction of consciousness, 322 –23 and grand unified theory of mental illness, 385 and quieting of default mode network, 313 –14, 316 –20 and spectrum of cognitive states, 313 , 315 , 385 and value of psychedelics, 313 –14, 315 , 385 environment, attitudes toward, 315 –16, 359 environment, personal, 372 –73 environment of psychedelic experiences and bad trips, 152 and criticisms of psychedelic therapy, 207 –8 Hubbard’s role in, 164 , 169 –70, 190 and Osmond and Hoffer’s research, 151 , 152 , 163 –64 and “set and setting” concepts, 14 , 53 , 151 , 190 , 207 –8 ergot, 22 –23, 84 Esalen Institute, 47 –48, 49 –51 European Medicines Agency (EMA), 376 –77 Evergreen State College, 101 , 102 evolution, role of psilocybin in, 115 –16 existential distress, 8 , 78 –79, 218 , 223 , 336 –37, 353 expectancy effects and Cohen’s ambivalence about LSD, 158 and expectations of therapist, 347 and Griffiths’s psilocybin research, 62 –63, 64 and Huxley, 143 –44, 161 –62 and LSD therapy for alcoholism, 150 Exxon Valdez disaster, 88 Fadiman, James and Alpert (later Ram Dass), 177 and Council on Spiritual Practices, 49 and creative dose of LSD, 184 and Hubbard, 172 at International Foundation for Advanced Study, 177 –78, 183 , 184 and Jesse, 43 –44, 46 , 49 as pioneer in field, 43 –44 The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide , 229 and research approval revoked by FDA, 57 , 217 –18 on Schuster, 50 and underground therapists, 228 Fahey, Todd Brendan, 165 , 166 , 181 fasting, 306 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 164 Feilding, Amanda background of, 297 –99 and Carhart-Harris, 296 , 297 , 299 cerebral circulation theory of, 298 , 299 , 305n and research funding, 299 , 300 Fischer, Roland, 97 5-HT 2A receptors, 292 –93, 354n 5-MeO-DMT (The Toad), 272 –90, 291 –92 flashbacks, 3 , 209 Flashbacks (Leary), 139 , 187 , 190n flight instructions and cancer patient research at NYU, 338 , 341 and Hopkins’s psilocybin research, 63 , 64 , 72 and Pollan’s psychedelic journeys, 246 , 259 –60 Fomes fomentarius , 87 Food of the Gods (McKenna), 115 forests, mycelial networks in, 91 , 91n Frankl, Viktor, 352n Freud, Sigmund, 155 , 294 , 297 , 307 , 312 , 314 , 389 fungi Claviceps purpurea , 84 ( see also LSD) Cordyceps , 89 , 96 –97 and forests, 91 , 91n Galerina autumnalis , 94 mycelial networks of, 84n , 90 –91, 118 , 122 and mycoremediation, 88 Stamets’s advocacy for, 87 –90 See also Psilocybes Fungi Perfecti operation of Stamets, 86n , 126 Gaia hypothesis, 359 Galerina autumnalis , 94 Gates, Bill, 175 Ginsberg, Allen, 193 –94, 203 , 205 Gitlin, Todd, 216 God experiences, 71 , 343 , 344 , 345 , 371 –72 Goldsmith, George, 398 –99, 400 –401 Good Friday (Marsh Chapel) Experiment, 45 –46, 60 , 80 –81, 191 –92 Gopnik, Alison, 323 –28, 329 Gottlieb, Sidney, 172n Grant, Cary, 157 Graves, Robert, 107 Grey, Alex, 125 Griffiths, Roland on applications for well people, 404 –5 on authenticity questions, 76 , 348 –49 on authority of experiences, 365 awakening of, 33 background of, 31 –34 career success of, 78 commitment to research, 77 on death, 79 –80 and depression research, 375 –76 and Jesse, 38 , 51 –52 on longterm changes in openness, 319 –20 on meaning associated with psychedelic experiences, 75 mushroom medallions of, 82 –83 mysteries and uncertainties embraced by, 75 , 79 , 80 on preparing volunteers for trials, 64 “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance,” 10 –11, 29 –30 and psilocybin trials at Hopkins, 60 , 62 , 65 , 79 , 360 on research at Spring Grove, 56 and Richards, 53 on Schuster, 50 spiritual emphasis of, 62 on “threats” of psychedelics, 59 Grinker, Roy, 208 , 211 Grob, Charles on “applied mysticism,” 207 , 334 on first wave research, 333 and MDMA trials, 48 and shamanic paradigm, 208 , 334 Grof, Stanislav on American values, 58 –59 on amplification effects of psychedelics, 159 on birth experiences, 155 and California Institute of Integral Studies, 232 at Esalen Institute, 47 and guides, 225 , 230 , 240 Realms of the Human Unconscious , 297 and Richards, 53 at Spring Grove, 57 , 218 and terminal patients, 339 group settings, psychedelics in, 405 Guatemala, 114 –15 guides and bad trips, 405 code of ethics, 229 and future of psychedelics, 402 –3 guidelines and protocols of, 226 –27, 230 , 230n and integration of journey, 250 –52, 269 –71, 282 , 364 , 402 , 405 –6 interviews with, 231 –35 personal experiences with psychedelics, 227 in Pollan’s psychedelic journeys, 237 –41, 242 , 254 –57, 272 –74 in psychedelic underground, 223 –30 qualifications of, 224 risks assumed by, 224 –25 role of, 215 , 242 , 364 –65, 405 –6 and second wave of research, 227 shrines or altars of, 231 –32, 245 –46, 254 –55 training of, 225 , 402 website for, 228 –30 Guss, Jeffrey, 335 , 352 , 354 , 369 habits, 360 –64. See also smoking cessation hacker community, 184 hallucinations, 310 , 317 hallucinogens (term), 18 Harman, Willis ambitions of, 181 and Hubbard, 166 and International Foundation for Advanced Study (IFAS), 177 and Jesse, 46 , 49 and psychedelics in Silicon Valley, 176 –77 research on creative problem solving, 179 and reunion of first wave figures, 219 at Stanford Research Institute, 180 –82 Harvard Psilocybin Project controversy surrounding, 194 –97 criticisms of, 46 , 76 , 195 misperceptions of, 140 nature of experiments in, 189 and research of previous decade, 140 , 185 researchers’ consumption of drugs in, 189 , 195 and Weil, 201 Harvard University and Concord Prison Experiment, 46 , 190 –91, 190n , 195 and Good Friday (Marsh Chapel) Experiment, 45 –46, 60 , 191 –92 and James, 188 , 196 Leary’s employment at, 140 , 186 –87, 201 –3 and Leary’s psychedelic seminar, 188 –89 and Schultes, 107 Hayes, John, 70 , 72 –73 Heard, Gerald, 174 , 176 Heffter Research Institute, 48 –49, 228 Helms, Richard, 172n Hendricks, Peter, 373 hierarchies, psychedelics’ ability to overturn, 315 High Priest (Leary), 187 –88 Hinduism, 16 hippies of the sixties, 203 –4, 315 history, personal, 372 –73 Hitchcock, Billy, 203 Hoffer, Abram and Commission for the Study of Creative Imagination, 174 and Hubbard, 168 , 170 , 174 and Leary, 198 and LSD therapy for alcoholism, 147 –52, 170 and psychotomimetic model, 159 –60 and role of environment, 151 Hofmann, Albert birthday celebration for, 21 –22 creation of LSD-25, 1 –2, 22 –23 and Hubbard, 167 isolation of psilocybin and psilocin, 113 and mushroom conferences, 103 psychedelic experiences of, 23 –25, 113 , 142 on reconnection with nature, 25 –26 and Stamets, 97 , 103 and synthetic psilocybin, 83 , 113 Holland, Julie, 402 Hollywood celebrities, 156 –57, 171 holotropic breathwork, 242 –44, 245 , 245n , 306 honeybees and colony collapse disorder, 89 , 128 Hoover, J. Edgar, 168 hospice, psychedelic, 401 Huautla de Jiménez in southern Mexico, 2 , 108 , 110 , 112 , 113 –14 Hubbard, Al advocacy for psychedelics, 167 –68 ambitions of, 167 –68, 173 , 181 , 194 , 198n background of, 164 –67 and Bay Area community, 171 , 175 –78, 180 –83 Captain Trips nickname, 171 and CIA, 166 , 171 –72 and Commission for the Study of Creative Imagination, 174 –75 contradictions in life of, 164 , 169 and counterculture, 181 , 181n , 200 and environment of psychedelic experiences, 164 and guides, 225 , 230 and Huxley, 172 –74 and leading researchers, 170 –71 and Leary, 199 –200, 219 , 220 LSD experiences of, 167 and mescaline, 169 , 173 and Osmond, 168 –69, 200 and Osmond/Hoffer’s research, 170 and psychedelic therapy paradigm, 160 , 164 , 169 –70, 171 , 207 and reunion of first wave figures, 219 , 220 and Sandoz LSD, 167 , 170 at Stanford Research Institute, 180 –82 on therapeutic value of psychedelics, 169 and Wasson, 170 Human Be-In in San Francisco, 203 –4 Humboldt, Alexander von, 126 –27, 128 , 134 Huxley, Aldous ambitions of, 194 , 198n Brave New World , 160 and Commission for the Study of Creative Imagination, 174 death of, 338 The Doors of Perception , 25 , 143 , 160 , 162 , 201 , 253 on ego, 253 , 289 and expectancy effects, 143 –44, 161 –62 and Hubbard, 172 –74 imprint on modern psychedelic experiences, 111 , 143 –44, 162 and Leary, 198 LSD experiences of, 173 –74 mescaline experience of, 144 , 151 , 160 –62 and “Mind at Large” state, 264 , 315 , 389 and Osmond, 160 , 174 Perennial Philosophy concept of, 162 , 232 and psychedelic therapy paradigm, 160 , 207 and “psychedelics” term, 160 , 162 –63 “reducing valve” concept of, 161 –62, 289 , 307 , 313 , 322 , 353 and terminal patients, 338 Huxley, Laura, 172 Hyams, Joe, 157 hypnagogic consciousness, 252 ibogaine, 369n imagination, 308 Imperial College London’s Centre for Psychiatry, 295 –96. See also Carhart-Harris, Robin industrial waste, mycoremediation of, 88 ineffability of mystical experiences, 40 , 54 , 69 , 251 , 270 , 285 Insel, Tom, 335 , 383 , 388n , 398 , 401 interconnectedness and addiction treatment, 362 –63 Alcoholics Anonymous’s emphasis on, 370 and cancer patient research, 351 and default mode network (DMN), 305 and depression pilot study, 379 in mystical experiences, 285 , 305 and overview effect, 359 and Pollan’s Psilocybes experience, 134 Stamets on, 125 International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF), 197 , 198 , 199 , 203 International Foundation for Advanced Study (IFAS) and Brand, 183 closure of, 180 Fadiman’s work at, 43 –44 and Leary, 198 research approval revoked by FDA, 44 , 217 –18 research conducted at, 177 –79 Inuit people, 13n Jagger, Mick, 114 James, William on consciousness, 16 –17, 136 , 137 , 244 , 407 on four hallmarks of mystical experiences, 69 –72 on judging mystical experiences, 347 and mystical experience survey, 282 on noetic quality of mystical experiences, 41 , 69 –70, 275 and questions of veracity, 76 –77 research at Harvard, 188 , 196 and reunion of first wave figures, 219 The Varieties of Religious Experience , 69 Janiger, Oscar and celebrities in LSD therapy, 156 –57 and Hubbard, 171 , 172 and LSD therapy, 156 and West Coast research hub, 153 Jesse, Bob background of, 38 –40, 42 –43 behind-the-scenes work of, 37 and betterment of well people, 45 , 51 , 401 –2, 404 cabin of, 37 –38 and Council on Spiritual Practices, 43 , 49 –51, 228 and Doblin’s ambitions, 36 early psychedelic experiences of, 39 –40 and elders of psychedelic community, 43 –44 and Esalen Institute, 48 , 49 and first-wave of psychedelic research, 44 –45, 46 –47 and Griffiths, 38 , 51 –52 and John Hopkins experiment, 81 and MDMA, 51 and “medicalization” concerns, 51 , 400 and psilocybin trials at Hopkins, 10 , 60 on “recreational use” term, 38 , 400 and Richards, 52 role of, in second-wave research, 34 –35 spiritual emphasis of, 51 Jobs, Steve, 175 Johanson, Chris-Ellyn, 50 John Hopkins’s psychedelic research and astronaut/ground control metaphor, 65 with cancer patients, 8 , 10 –11, 332 –33, 349 controlling for expectancy effects in, 62 , 64 and hallmarks of mystical states, 69 –72 landmark psilocybin paper, 10 –11, 29 –30 launch of trial, 60 –61 preparing volunteers in, 63 –65, 67 recruitment of volunteers for, 61 replication of Good Friday experiment, 192 and sitters, 63 –64, 74 and Stamets, 92 on therapeutic applications, 78 –79 volunteers’ accounts of, 63 , 65 –69, 70 –71, 72 –75 Johnson, Matthew background of, 360 on banal insights, 364 and ego’s control, 388 and “mental reboot,” 366 , 384 and personal history/environment, 372 –73 on reactions to powerful experiences, 406 and smoking cessation study, 360 , 364 on value of psychedelics, 366 –68 Jung, Carl, 7 , 73 , 232 , 389 Kaelen, Mendel, 384 –85 Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, 186 Kalliontzi, Krystallia, 338 , 340 , 342 Katz, Sidney, 148 , 154 Kelly, Kevin, 183 Kelman, Herbert, 187 , 195 –96 Keltner, Dacher, 373 –74, 375 Kennedy, Robert F., 217 Kerouac, Jack, 193 Kesey, Ken, 102 , 184 , 206 –7 Kessler, David, 383 Kleber, Herbert D., 29 –30 Kleiman, Mark, 49 Kubrick, Stanley, 156 Kurland, Albert, 218 Laing, R. D., 223 League for Spiritual Discovery, 203 Leary, Timothy arrests and sentences of, 138 , 204 candor of, 213 –14 and concerns of research community, 198 –201 and Concord Prison Experiment, 46 , 190 –91, 190n and congressional hearings, 217 on consciousness-expansion, 322 and counterculture, 203 –4, 205 criticisms of research, 46 , 191 , 194 –97 and cultural upheaval of the sixties, 205 –7 deemed “most dangerous man in America,” 58 desire to effect social changes, 173 , 192 , 194 , 198n , 199 , 213 do-it-yourself approach of, 200 , 215 and Eastern influences, 143 –44 exuberance of, 187 –88, 192 Flashbacks , 139 , 187 , 190n and Ginsberg, 193 –94, 205 and Good Friday (Marsh Chapel) Experiment, 191 –92 government’s pursuit of, 204 and guides, 225 , 230 at Harvard, 140 , 186 –87, 201 –3 High Priest , 187 –88 and Hubbard, 199 –200, 219 , 220 impact on psychedelic research, 9 , 185 –86, 190 , 198 –99, 212 , 219 –20, 403 and International Federation for Internal Freedom, 197 , 198 , 199 , 203 and moral panic provoked by psychedelics, 185 , 205 and Osmond, 198 –99 post-Harvard life of, 203 –6 and psilocybin, 187 –88 psychedelic seminar offered by, 188 –89 and psychedelics’ escape from the lab, 197 and research of previous decade, 140 , 185 , 189 and reunion of first wave figures, 219 –20 and Richards, 53 “set” and “setting” concepts of, 151 , 190 smiling persona of, 139 , 199 , 205 , 220 “turn on, tune in, drop out” slogan of, 138 , 139 , 204 , 206 and Wasson’s Life magazine article, 113 and Weil, 201 –3 See also Harvard Psilocybin Project Leaves of Grass (Whitman), 286 legal status of psychedelics, 3 , 402 , 405 Lennon, John, 114 , 204 Letcher, Andy, 112 Liddy, G. Gordon, 205 Lieberman, Jeffrey, 403 Life magazine on moral panic, 211 –12 Wasson’s psilocybin article in, 2 , 103 –9, 113 limbic system, 307 Lincoff, Gary, 102 Linkletter, Art, 5 Los Angeles group, 152 , 153 , 154 –58. See also Cohen, Sidney; Eisner, Betty; Janiger, Oscar LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) accidental invention of, 1 –2, 22 –25 and Acid Tests of Kesey, 184 , 206 as alcoholism treatment, 141 , 148 –53, 368 –69, 370 and bad trips, 209 , 210 and “Bicycle Day,” 24 bootleg/underground production of, 181n , 209 and brain science, 2 –3, 24 , 147 casual use of, 211 , 212 CIA’s research on, 59 , 113n , 142 , 172 , 172n , 206 , 207 Cohen’s ambivalence about, 158 –59 creation myth of, 22 –25 and creative imagination, 175 as derivative of fungus, 84 engineers’ use of, 182 “escaping from the lab,” 157 –58 and Feilding’s cerebral circulation theory, 298 first LSD trips, 23 –25 Hubbard on therapeutic value of, 169 legal status of, 3 , 181 and Manson murders, 5 , 367 misinformation about, 5 moral panic provoked by, 138 –39, 209 Nutt on low risks of, 300 perceived dangers of, 209 –11, 209n and pharmaceutical companies, 400 political baggage of, 51 , 333 and political upheavals of the sixties, 315 and Pollan’s psychedelic journeys, 237 –54 and psychotomimetic model, 153 –54, 162 receptors for, 292 –93 and research at Esalen Institute, 47 Sandoz’s distribution of Delysid, 142 –43, 148 , 152 , 176 Sandoz’s withdrawal of Delysid, 143 , 216 –17 and schizophrenia research, 146 –47 and second wave of research, 333 in Silicon Valley, 175 –80 and Spring Grove’s research, 56 –58, 59 , 218 subversive power of, 214 as tryptamine, 291 –92 youth culture’s adoption of, 25 , 212 Luce, Clare Boothe, 104 , 212 Luce, Henry, 104 , 212 machine learning, 325 –26 MacLean, Katherine, 37 , 74 , 346 , 401 , 402 Maclean’s , 148 magical thinking, 312 , 314 , 317 , 389 Malievskaia, Ekaterina, 399 mania, 383 Man’s Search for Meaning (Frankl), 352n Manson, Charles, 5 , 367 marijuana and cannabis, 36 , 37 , 138 , 138n , 204 , 299 Maryland Psychiatric Research Center at Spring Grove, 52 , 57 , 218 Maslow, Abraham, 49 , 55 , 232 materialist perspective, 12 , 85 , 135 Mayan civilization, 274 Mazatec Indians, 83 , 109 , 110 , 112 McClelland, David, 191 , 195 , 197 McDaniels, Terry, 370 –72 McHugh, Paul, 76 McKenna, Terence, 97 , 115 –17, 121 McLuhan, Marshall, 138 , 139 , 204 , 205 MDMA (Ecstasy) and cardiac concerns, 236 –37 Doblin’s distribution of, 36 Nutt’s conclusions on, 299 and phase 3 trials approval, 397 in PTSD treatments, 18 , 36 –37 Schuster on, 51 Shulgin’s synthesis of, 44 and therapeutic bond, 236 –37 trials for, 48 meaning, personal and awe-inspiring experiences, 375 and cancer patient research, 11 , 63 , 352 –55 construction of, 354 and ego dissolution, 389 and 5-HT 2A receptors, 354n Griffiths on, 75 –76 and suggestibility of psychedelics, 354 value of, 355 media and Harvard Psilocybin Project controversy, 194 –95, 196 –97 and Katz’s “My 12 Hours as a Madman,” 148 , 154 and LSD’s escape from the lab, 157 on moral panic, 211 –12 on perils of psychedelics, 209 , 209n on psychedelics at Harvard, 202 on psycholytic LSD therapy, 156 –57 medicalization of psychedelic drugs, 36 , 51 , 400 , 402 meditation and access to other modes of consciousness, 408 –9 of Griffiths, 32 –33 and mental time travel, 387 and quieting of default mode network, 305 , 306 , 391 , 392 –95 memories, 307 , 317 Menlo Park, psychedelic use in and CIA’s mind control research, 206 –7 and Hubbard, 171 , 177 –78 at International Foundation for Advanced Study, 43 –44, 177 –80, 198 , 217 , 228 Menninger, Karl, 368 mental illness associated with mental rigidity, 329 common underlying mechanism for, 383 –84 and default mode network (DMN), 329 , 386 and ego in low-entropy disorders, 313 grand unified theory of, 383 –84, 385 inadequate treatments for, 335 –36 potential for curing, 377 and suicides, 335 See also addiction; depression Merry Pranksters, 206 –7 mescaline and Harvard controversy, 202 and Hubbard, 169 , 173 and Huxley, 144 , 150 –51, 160 –62 and James, 17 and Osmond’s research, 146 , 147 perceived dangers of, 210 and psychotomimetic model, 162 and schizophrenia research, 146 and Weil, 201 Mesoamerican Indians, 107 Mettes, Patrick, 332 , 336 , 337 –38, 340 –44, 346 , 356 –57 Metzner, Ralph, 190 , 191 , 195 Michaux, Henri, 278n “microdosing,” 14n , 175 middle-aged people, 7 , 73 , 321 Miller, Savannah, 363 –64 mind wandering, 304 Miserable Miracle (Michaux), 278n Mitchell, Edgar, 358 –59 MK-Ultra experiments of CIA, 59 , 113n , 172 , 172n , 206 , 207 Moore, James, 113n moral panic provoked by psychedelics effect of, on psychedelic research, 185 , 205 and Leary, 138 –39, 205 media coverage of, 211 –12 and outlawing of psychedelics, 3 Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), 35 , 36 –37, 191 , 228 , 397 –99 mushrooms identification of, 94 –96, 119 lethal varieties of, 86 , 94 in Pollan’s psychedelic journeys, 257 –58, 266 Russula , 119 stone artifacts of, 114 –15 See also Psilocybes ; psilocybin Mushrooms, Russia, and History (Wasson), 114n mycelial networks, 84n , 90 –91, 118 , 122 Mycelium Running (Stamets), 88 , 90 mycopesticides, 89 mycoremediation, 88 mysterium tremendum , 277 Mystical Experience Questionnaires (MEQs), 282 –84 mystical experiences of agnostics and atheists, 74 , 222 , 284 –85, 345 and awe-inspiring experiences, 375 brain-based explanations for, 76 in cancer patient research, 79 , 349 , 350 –51 and deactivation of default mode network, 305 –6 and ego dissolution, 389 in European research, 64 and expectancy effects, 143 and fanaticism/fundamentalism, 37 , 81 and Good Friday (Marsh Chapel) Experiment, 45 , 191 –92 of Griffiths, 33 and Griffiths’s landmark paper, 10 –11, 29 –30 of Hubbard, 167 of Huxley, 161 ineffability of, 40 , 54 , 69 , 251 , 270 , 285 interconnectedness in, 285 , 305 language of, 285 –87 in literature, 286 –87 and loss of subjectivity, 305 –6 noetic quality of, 41 –42, 69 –70, 275 , 285 , 305 –6 and overview effect, 359 and paradoxes, 85 , 345 passivity as hallmark of, 72 profundity/banality of insights from, 70 –71, 251 of Richards, 53 –55 science as a means to, 77 –78, 81 and science-mysticism paradox, 347 –48 shared traits of, 285 and smoking cessation, 361 strength of, correlated with outcomes, 361 and suggestibility of psychedelics, 64 transiency as hallmark of, 71 –72 of Wasson, 111 of Zeff, 226 Nabokov, Vladimir, 349 Nagel, Thomas, 294 narcissism, 157 NASA’s photo of Earth from space, 184 –85 National Institute of Mental Health, 56 Native Americans conversion to Christianity, 112 and peyote, 27 , 368 sacramental use of plants, 2 , 27 , 83 , 108 –9, 112 and Spanish suppression of mushrooms, 108 –9 The Natural Mind (Weil), 159 nature attitudes toward, 315 –16, 379 Hofmann on reconnection with, 25 –26 near-death experiences, 306 negative thinking, 353 , 383 –84 neurochemistry, emergence of, 147 , 293 neuroplasticity, 320 , 384 neuroscience of psychedelics, 291 –330 and authority of psychedelic experiences, 365 –66 and Bayesian inferences, 261 –63 and children’s brains, 323 –28 and consciousness, 293 –95, 302 , 305 –6, 307 –9, 311 –14, 322 –23 and disorganizing effect of psychedelics, 314 and expansion/contraction of consciousness, 322 –23 and hallucinations, 310 and mental rigidity in mental illness, 329 –30 and predictive coding, 307 –8, 310 , 311 , 321 , 325 and psychoanalysis, 296 –97, 299 , 311 receptors, 292 –93, 314n and rewiring of brain, 316 –20, 318 – 19 , 353 –54 and rotating face mask test, 261 –63, 267 and visual cortex, 365 See also default mode network (DMN); entropic brain theory neurotransmitters, 147 New Age, 205 , 224 New York Times , 7 –8, 114 , 349 New York University alcoholism treatment at, 369 cancer patient research at, 8 , 141 , 332 –33, 337 –38, 349 , 350 Nichols, David, 48 –49, 348 Nicholson, Jack, 156 Nin, Anaïs, 156 nitrous oxide, 17 , 69 Nixon, Richard, 58 , 181 , 219 , 315 noetic quality of mystical experiences, 41 –42, 69 –70, 275 , 285 , 305 –6 The Noonday Demon (Solomon), 383 Novak, Steven, 158 Nutt, David background of, 299 –300 and Carhart-Harris’s research, 295 –96, 297 , 300 on comparative risks of drugs, 299 –300, 300n and depression pilot study, 329 Drugs Without the Hot Air , 300n on repression, 307 obsessive-compulsive disorder and ego’s tyranny, 367 and excess of order in brain, 313 , 329 , 385 and negative thinking habits, 383 and psycholytic LSD therapy, 156 ololiuqui (seeds of the morning glory), 107 Olson, Frank, 172 openness to experience and ego dissolution, 316n longterm changes in, 74 , 319 –20 in Pollan’s psychedelic journeys, 135 , 137 , 222 , 252 opiates, 212 , 369n Osmond, Humphry ambitions of, 194 and Commission for the Study of Creative Imagination, 174 and Hubbard, 168 –69, 170 , 174 , 200 and Huxley, 160 , 174 and Leary, 198 –99, 198n and LSD therapy for alcoholism, 148 –52, 170 and mescaline, 146 –47 and psychedelic therapy paradigm, 160 , 163 , 169 , 207 and “psychedelics” term, 160 , 162 –63 and “psychodelytic” term, 199 and psychotomimetic model, 162 , 169 and reunion of first wave figures, 219 , 220 and role of environment, 151 schizophrenia research of, 146 –47 Ott, Jonathan, 25 , 101 , 103 overdosing with psychedelics, 14 overview effect, 359 –60, 366 , 375 , 380 , 389 Pahnke, Walter and Good Friday (Marsh Chapel) Experiment, 45 –46, 80 –81, 191 –92 on modes of consciousness, 409n and mystical experience survey, 282 and Richards, 53 , 54 –55 at Spring Grove, 57 , 218 paranoia, 310 passivity of mystical experiences, 72 peak experiences, Maslow’s concept of, 49 , 55 perceptions and senses, 308 –9 Person to Person CBS news program, 113 personality disorders, 56 petrochemical waste, mycoremediation of, 88 peyote, 17 , 27 , 368 , 404 , 405 . See also mescaline pharmaceutical companies, 400 phase 3 trials for psychedelics, 397 , 400 phenomenology, 42 , 149 The Philosophical Baby (Gopnik), 325 placebo effect, 347 , 368 , 382 placebo-controlled double-blind trials, 208 platitudes, 251 Plotkin, Mark, 107 Plowman, Tim, 107 political effects of psychedelics, 315 pollution, mycoremediation of, 88 posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), 322 , 387 –88, 391 –93 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 18 , 36 –37 prayer, 306 predictive coding by brain, 307 –8, 310 , 311 , 321 , 325 Previn, André, 156 primates’ consumption of mushrooms, 97 –98, 123 problem solving high/low temperature searches in, 325 –27 impact of LSD on, 179 , 182 and rewiring of brain, 318 –19 protocols for psychedelic use, value of, 214 –15 psilocin and animals’ mushroom consumption, 123 Hofmann’s isolation of, 113 and materialist perspective, 135 measuring, 102 and mushroom identification, 95 , 119 in mycelium, 122 Psilocybe Mushrooms and Their Allies (Stamets), 101 Psilocybes author’s early experience with, 5 –6 and Aztecs, 2 consumed by animals, 93 , 98 , 122 –23 evolutionary function of psilocybin in, 84 , 121 –24 as “flesh of the gods,” 2 , 83 , 109 habitats of, 93 –94, 101 identification of, 94 –96 Latin American sources of, 101 legal penalties for possession of, 118 and mushroom conferences, 102 –3 Native Americans’ use of, 2 , 83 , 107 new species identified, 86 , 101 –2 P. azurescens , 86 , 92 , 94 , 117 –21, 128 –34 in Pacific Northwest, 102 and Pollan’s azurescens experience, 128 –37, 161 –62 sacramental use of, 2 , 93 , 107 , 109 , 112 searching for, 117 –21 and ’shrooms (term), 92 species of, 93 Stamets’s images of, 115 and Stoned Ape Theory, 97 –98, 115 –17 suppression of, 2 , 59 , 108 –9 Wasson’s rediscovery of, 59 , 101 psilocybin arrival of, in the West, 1 , 2 and CIA’s psychedelic research, 113n and Concord Prison Experiment, 46 , 190 –91, 190n discovery of, 83 effect of, on brain activity, 300 –301 evolutionary function of, 84 , 121 –24 and Ginsberg, 193 –94, 205 and Good Friday (Marsh Chapel) Experiment, 45 –46, 80 –81, 191 at Harvard ( see Harvard Psilocybin Project) Hofmann’s isolation of, 113 at Hopkins ( see John Hopkins’s psychedelic research) and human evolution, 116 John Hopkins’s landmark paper on, 10 –11 Leary’s introduction to, 187 –88 materialist/nonmaterialist paradox of, 85 and mystical experiences, 10 –11 and pharmaceutical companies, 400 and phase 3 trials approval, 397 and Pollan’s psychedelic journeys, 254 –72, 284 receptors for, 293 and rewiring of brain, 317 , 318 – 19 Schuster on research potential of, 51 and second wave of research, 79 , 333 and Spring Grove’s research, 218 and Stamets’s messenger theory, 124 –25 and studies requested by FDA, 375 –76 synthetic version of, 83 –84, 113 as tryptamine, 291 –92 See also mushrooms “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance” (Griffiths, Richards, McCann, Jesse), 10 –11, 29 –30 Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World (Stamets), 86 Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered (Grinspoon and Bakalar), 194 The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide (Fadiman), 229 psychedelic journeys of Pollan and cardiac concerns, 235 –37, 244 –45, 245n and language of mysticism, 285 –87 with LSD, 237 –54 and mystical experience survey, 282 –84 with psilocybin, 254 –72, 284 recaps and reflections on, 250 –54, 269 –72, 281 –84 and search for a guide, 231 –35 as “spiritual” experience, 288 –90 with The Toad (5-MeO-DMT), 272 –90 Psychedelic Psychiatry (Dyck), 146n Psychedelic Science 2017, 397 psychedelic therapy as “applied mysticism,” 207 and aspirations of proponents, 173 and betterment of well people, 45 , 51 , 78 , 401 , 404 and California Institute of Integral Studies, 233 and Cohen’s ambivalence about LSD, 158 –59 criticisms and challenges faced by, 207 –8 and ego dissolution, 389 –90 emergence of paradigm, 160 , 163 –64, 169 –71, 207 and established psychiatric field, 207 at frontier of spirituality and science, 334 future of, 400 –405 growing recognition of, 399 and Hubbard, 160 , 164 , 169 –70, 171 , 207 key role of experience in, 149 , 169 and low risks, 210 and previous theoretical models, 207 and priming patients, 169 –70 protocols and agreements of, 215 , 226 –27 and “psychedelic-assisted therapy” term, 365 , 399 range of disorders addressed by, 382 –83 as reboot of system, 366 , 384 , 389 results of, 368 –69 and return of symptoms, 380 –81 revival of, 369 role of environment in, 163 –64, 169 –70, 207 –8, 365 role of therapist in, 365 –66, 368 ( see also guides) shamanism’s role in, 334 spiritual trappings of, 207 and suggestibility of psychedelics, 158 –59, 170 visual imagery in, 365 –66 See also addiction; cancer patient research; depression “psychedelics” term, 18 –19, 144 –45, 160 , 162 –63 psychiatry field, 207 –8, 211 , 400 psychoanalysis, 149 , 155 , 207 , 296 –97, 311 psycholytic model, 154 –57, 207 psychosis and entropic brain theory, 313 , 385 panic reactions mistaken for, 210 psychotic breaks, 3 , 14 , 209 , 211 and psychotomimetic model, 145 , 150 –51, 154 , 162 and risks associated with psychedelics, 14 , 233 psychotherapy, 2 –3, 186 , 351 , 369 , 406 psychotomimetic model, 145 –50 and CIA’s psychedelic research, 172 and Cohen, 153 –54 and established psychiatric field, 207 and Osmond, 162 , 169 and psychiatrists’ criticisms of psychedelic therapy, 208 and Saskatchewan Mental Hospital in Canada, 147 –50 quantum mechanics, 413 –14 Raichle, Marcus, 301 , 303 Ram Dass, 203 , 205 , 360 . See also Alpert, Richard Rank, Otto, 155 rat park experiment, 372 –73 Realms of the Human Unconscious (Grof), 297 recidivism at Concord State Prison experiment, 46 , 190 –91, 190n , 195 “recreational” drug use, 38 , 228 , 399 , 400 religion and drug use in religious practices, 27 –28 fanaticism/fundamentalism in, 81 origins of religious belief, 55 –56, 85 , 106 , 111 –12 and suppression of psychoactive plants, 2 , 109 See also spirituality Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, 27 renaissance of psychedelics and Griffiths’s landmark paper, 11 , 29 –30 and Hofmann’s 100th birthday celebration/symposium, 21 –22, 26 –27 and second wave of research, 3 –4 and UDV court case, 27 –28 research on psychedelics, first wave, 138 –218 and aspirations of proponents, 173 , 212 –13 bad trips in, 152 challenges faced by, 144 congressional hearings on, 217 and counterculture, 215 end of, 59 –60, 216 –17 and expectancy effects, 143 –44 and exuberance of researchers, 144 , 212 –13 federal monitoring of, 166 federal restrictions on, 197 federal support for, 57 –58 funding for, 57 Good Friday (Marsh Chapel) Experiment, 45 –46, 60 , 80 –81, 191 –92 and guides, 200 hubs of research, 153 initiated by Sandoz’s Delysid distribution, 143 and International Foundation for Advanced Study, 43 –44, 177 –80, 198 , 217 , 228 Jesse’s interest in, 44 –46 Leary’s impact on, 9 , 185 –86, 190 , 198 –99, 212 , 219 –20 and LSD therapy for alcoholism, 148 –52 and methodological issues, 152 , 208 and moral panic provoked by psychedelics, 185 , 205 and psychedelics’ escape from the lab, 157 –58, 197 and psycholytic model, 154 –57 and psychotomimetic model, 145 –50 researchers’ consumption of drugs, 146 , 148 , 189 , 195 , 208 reunion of figures in (1979), 218 –20 at Saskatchewan Mental Hospital in Canada, 147 –50 skepticism toward, 144 at Spring Grove facilities, 52 , 56 –58, 59 , 218 structured approaches/protocols of, 214 –15 suppression of, 44 , 57 –58, 60 , 141 –42, 332 and terminal patients, 338 –40 volume and scope of, 44 –45, 141 –42 See also Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); Harvard Psilocybin Project research on psychedelics, second wave absence of adverse events in, 14 –15 and betterment of well people, 45 , 51 , 78 , 401 , 404 challenges faced by, 333 –34 and counterculture of the sixties, 84 critics of, 76 and CSP website, 43 and discoveries of first-wave research, 332 and exuberance of researchers, 26 –27, 381 , 382 FDA protocols on, 48 federal sanctioning of, 48 and Hofmann’s 100th birthday celebration/symposium, 21 –22, 26 –27 Jesse’s role in, 34 –35 and methodological issues, 333 –34 and phase 3 trials for psychedelics, 397 , 400 replication of Good Friday experiment, 192 role of scientific outsiders in, 34 –35 with synthetic psilocybin, 83 –84 and underground therapists, 227 See also cancer patient research Rheingold, Howard, 183 Richards, Bill on authenticity questions, 347 as bridge between first/second eras, 52 –53 flight instructions prepared by, 63 , 72 and Jesse, 52 , 53 and Pahnke, 53 , 54 –55 and psilocybin trials at Hopkins, 60 –61 psychedelic experiences of, 53 –55 at Spring Grove, 52 , 56 –58, 218 and terminal patients, 339 risky behaviors of people on psychedelics, 14 rite of passage, psychedelic trips as, 3 , 216 , 246 rituals for psychedelics, 404 Roberts, John G., 27 Roman Catholic Church, 2 , 109 Romantic scientists, 126 –28 Ross, Stephen on alcoholism, 369 –70 and new respectability of research, 350 on results with cancer patients, 336 and studies requested by FDA, 375 –76 on suppression of research, 141 –42, 332 rotating face mask test, 261 –63, 267 , 308 Rouiller, Ian, 379 rumination, 313 , 329 , 353 , 377 –78, 383 Russell, Bertrand, 355 Russula mushroom, 119 Sabina, María in Pollan’s psychedelic journeys, 261 , 317 and Wasson, 110 , 112 , 113 –14, 114n sacraments, psychedelic used as, 2 , 27 –28, 83 , 93 , 107 –9, 112 Sahagún, Bernardino de, 108 Samorini, Giorgio, 123 –24 Sandoz pharmaceutical firm creation of LSD-25, 1 –2, 22 –23 distribution of LSD-25 (Delysid), 142 –43, 148 , 152 , 176 and Hubbard, 167 , 170 and psychotomimetic model, 145 –46 withdrawal of Delysid, 143 , 216 –17 Saskatchewan Mental Hospital in Canada, 147 –50. See also Hoffer, Abram; Osmond, Humphry Savage, Charles, 177 schizophrenia and emergence of neurochemistry field, 146 –47 and LSD as trigger of psychotic breaks, 209 –10 and psychotomimetic model, 145 –46, 162 and rotating face mask test, 262 and Spring Grove’s research, 218 Schultes, Richard Evans, 107 Schuster, Charles “Bob,” 30 , 34 , 49 –50 Schwartz, Peter, 181 –82, 183 science and Cohen’s ambivalence about LSD, 158 –59 as a means to mystical experience, 77 –78, 81 methodological standards in, 208 and mysticism-science paradox, 347 –48 and nature’s mysteries, 12 and Romantic scientists, 126 –28 and spirituality, 30 –31, 73 –74, 80 , 174 –75, 207 , 334 and testimony of individuals, 42 and validation of mystical experiences, 347 –48 The Secret Chief (Zeff), 225 senses and perceptions, 308 –9 sensory deprivation, 306 serotonin, 24 , 147 , 292 , 314n set and setting, 14 , 53 , 151 , 190 , 207 –8 shamanism, 84 , 170 , 214 –15, 334 , 348 ’shrooms (term), 92 Shulgin, Ann, 44 , 102 Shulgin, Sasha, 44 , 102 , 236 , 237 side effects of psychedelics, 210 Silicon Valley, 44 , 175 –83 Skinner, B. F., 149 Slater, Toby, 330 Smith, Huston and Council on Spiritual Practices, 49 and Good Friday (Marsh Chapel) Experiment, 45 on Griffiths’s landmark paper, 80 –81 and Jesse, 44 , 49 on spirituality, 136 , 402 Smith, Robert Ellis, 196 smoking cessation, 78 , 360 –64 Smythies, John, 146 social media, 304 Sokel, Karin, 71 Solomon, Andrew, 383 Spanish suppression of psychoactive mushrooms, 59 –60, 108 spirituality and ego dissolution, 390 and Griffiths’s landmark paper, 10 –11, 29 –30 and modern medicine, 334 and Pollan’s psychedelic journeys, 288 –90 and role of guides, 402 and science, 30 –31, 73 –74, 80 , 174 –75, 207 , 334 state of, 136 sports, 306 Spring Grove hospital and research center, 52 , 56 –58, 59 , 218 Stace, W. T., 282 Stamets, Paul advocacy for fungi, 87 –90 background of, 87 , 98 –100 on evolutionary function of psilocybin, 121 expertise in mycology, 86 , 99 , 127 field guides of, 86 , 92 Fungi Perfecti operation of, 86n , 126 and Hofmann, 97 , 103 home of, 96 –97 honors accorded to, 91 –92 on human evolution, 115 –16 hunting for mushrooms, 117 –21 and images of Psilocybes , 115 and McKenna, 116 and mushroom conferences, 102 –3 on mushroom identification, 94 –95 mushroom stone artifacts of, 114 –15 Mycelium Running , 88 , 90 mycological theories of, 124 –26, 136 new species identified by, 86 and P. azurescens , 86 , 92 , 118 , 120 –21, 129 Psilocybe Mushrooms and Their Allies , 101 Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World , 86 as Romantic scientist, 126 –28 and ’shrooms (term), 92 and Stoned Ape Theory, 97 –98, 115 –17 Stanford Research Institute (SRI), 180 –82 Stanford University, 44 , 180 Stanley, Owsley, III, 181n Steindl-Rast, David, 49 stigmas of psychedelic drugs, 104 Stolaroff, Myron background of, 175 –76 career pivot of, 44 , 177 , 206n and guides, 230 and Hubbard, 168 , 177 and International Foundation for Advanced Study (IFAS), 177 and Jesse, 44 , 46 and Leary, 198 , 199 , 200 –201 psychedelic experiences of, 176 and psychedelics in Silicon Valley, 176 –77 and reunion of first wave figures, 219 and underground therapists, 227 and Zeff, 225 , 227 Stoned Ape Theory, 97 –98, 115 –17 Strassman, Rick, 48 subconscious, 155 subjectivity, 305 –6, 413 suggestibility of psychedelics and attributions of meaning, 354 and Cohen’s ambivalence about LSD, 158 and expectations of users, 25 and Hopkins’s psilocybin research, 64 and Hubbard, 170 and placebo effect, 347 suicides, 3 , 210 , 211 , 335 , 388 Summergrad, Paul, 398 , 401 , 403 synesthesia, 115 –16, 145 , 317 talking therapy, 155 technological advances, 183 –84 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 287 teonanácatl (sacred mushroom of the Aztecs), 2 , 107 terminal patients, 78 –79, 338 –40. See also cancer patient research thalidomide tragedy, 197 , 208 time travel, mental faculty of, 387 Time-Life publications, 104 Toad. See 5-MeO-DMT (the Toad) tolerance for psychedelics, 14 , 299 “Tomorrow Never Knows” (Beatles), 143 toxicity of psychedelics, low levels of, 50 trances, 242 –44 transiency of mystical experiences, 71 –72 travel metaphors for psychedelic experiences, 15 trees and mycelial networks, 91 , 91n , 118 trepanation, 298 True: The Man’s Magazine , 113 truths, revelations of, 70 , 251 , 305 –6 tryptamines, 291 –92 Turner, Brian, 65 –66, 73 –74 UDV court case, 27 –28, 43 , 49 University of California, Los Angeles, 8 , 37 , 152 –53 University of New Mexico, 369 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and approval of Strassman’s trial, 48 depression studies requested by, 375 –76 and Hubbard’s clinical research, 167 and phase 3 trials approvals, 397 and potential rescheduling of psychedelics, 36 , 397 and psilocybin trials at Hopkins, 60 regulation of experimental drugs, 146 , 197 research approvals revoked by, 217 –18 and thalidomide tragedy, 197 U.S. Supreme Court, 27 –28 The Varieties of Religious Experience (James), 69 Vietnam War, 139 , 206 , 215 –16 virtual reality, 183 visualizing thoughts, 365 –66 Vogt, Walter, 22 Vollenweider, Franz, 293 , 301 , 320 , 334 , 384 Wallace, David Foster, 388 Wasson, R. Gordon critics of, 112 field notebooks of, 110 –11 and Hubbard, 170 Life magazine article of, 2 , 103 –9, 113 and mushroom conferences, 103 Mushrooms, Russia, and History , 114n and mushrooms from southern Mexico, 2 , 59 , 101 , 110 –14, 114n and origins of religious belief, 106 , 111 –12 preconceived theories of, 112 psychedelic experiences of, 110 –12 Watts, Rosalind, 377 , 379 , 380 , 381 Weathermen, 204 Weil, Andrew on active placebos, 159 and dismissals of Leary and Alpert, 201 –3 and mushroom conferences, 102 The Natural Mind , 159 and Schultes, 107 and Toad (5-MeO-DMT), 274 and treatment of bad trips, 210 well-being, improvements in, 74 , 254 , 285 Whitman, Walt, 194 , 286 Whole Earth Network, 182 , 183 Wilson, Bill, 141 , 152 –53, 369 Wilson, E. O., 80 wisdom, 321 Wit, Harriet de, 30 –31 wonder, 16 , 135 , 136 Wordsworth, William, 285 Wright, Curtis, 48 Yensen, Richard, 218 Yoder, Norman, 209n youth culture, 25 Zeff, Leo, 225 –27, 230 , 236 , 252 Zen, 73 About the Author MICHAEL POLLAN is the author of seven previous books, including Cooked , Food Rules , In Defense of Food , The Omnivore’s Dilemma , and The Botany of Desire , all of which were New York Times bestsellers. A longtime contributor to The New York Times Magazine , he also teaches writing at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley, where he is the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism. In 2010, Time magazine named him in its list of the one hundred most influential people in the world. * The Inuit appear to be the exception that proves the rule, but only because nothing psychoactive grows where they live. (At least not yet.) * David J. Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs (Cambridge, U.K.: UIT, 2012). This is why people “microdosing” on psychedelics never take them on consecutive days. * Theresa M. Carbonaro et al., “Survey Study of Challenging Experiences After Ingesting Psilocybin Mushrooms: Acute and Enduring Positive and Negative Consequences,” Journal of Psychopharmacology (2016): 1268–78. The survey found that 7.6 percent of respondents sought treatment for “one or more psychological symptoms they attributed to their challenging psilocybin experience.” * Technically, a mushroom is the “fruiting body” of a fungus—its reproductive organ. Think of mushrooms as the apples on a tree that grows entirely underground. Most of the fungal organism exists belowground, in the form of mycelia—the typically white cobwebby single-cell-wide filaments that extend through the soil. But because it is hard to observe and study these delicate subterranean structures—they can’t be unearthed without breaking—we tend to focus on the mushrooms we can see, even though they are just the tip of a kind of fungal iceberg. * Pronounced sill-OSS-a-bee. * Complicating matters, Stamets first named his son for the bluish color that Psilocybes turn, then named the bluest of Psilocybes after his son. * Since 1984, Stamets has run a very successful company called Fungi Perfecti, which sells medicinal mushroom supplements, spores, and growing kits for edible mushrooms, as well as various other mushroom-related paraphernalia. * Scientists at the University of British Columbia (UBC) injected fir trees with radioactive carbon isotopes, then followed the spread of the isotopes through the forest community using a variety of sensing methods, including a Geiger counter. Within a few days, stores of the radioactive carbon had been routed from tree to tree. Every tree in a plot thirty meters square was connected to the network; the oldest trees functioned as hubs, some with as many as forty-seven connections. The diagram of the forest network resembled a map of the Internet. In what is surely a tip of the hat to Stamets, a paper by one of the UBC scientists dubbed it the “wood-wide web.” * The Wassons either dismissed or overlooked a somewhat simpler explanation: that powerful feelings and a cult of mystery could be expected to gather around a “plant” that, depending on knowledge and context, could either nourish and delight or lead to an agonizing death. * On another return trip, Wasson was joined by James Moore, who had introduced himself as a chemist for a pharmaceutical company. But Moore was really a CIA agent eager to obtain psilocybin for the agency’s own psychedelic research program, MK-Ultra. * Wasson was halfhearted in his desire to protect María Sabina’s identity. The same week that the Life article appeared, he self-published a book, Mushrooms, Russia, and History, in which he retold her story but neglected to disguise her name. * The authors concluded that “hallucinogenic plants alter perception in hunting dogs by diminishing extraneous signals and by enhancing sensory perception (most likely olfaction) that is directly involved in the detection and capture of game.” Bradley C. Bennett and Rocío Alarcón, “Hunting and Hallucinogens: The Use Psychoactive and Other Plants to Improve the Hunting Ability of Dogs,” Journal of Ethnopharmacology 171 (2015): 171–83. * Because possession of LSD wouldn’t be a federal crime until 1968, the government often had to rely on marijuana prosecutions when moving against people in the counterculture. * Osmond’s story, and the rich Canadian history of psychedelic research, is well told in Erika Dyck, Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD from Clinic to Campus (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). * Duncan C. Blewett and Nick Chwelos, Handbook for the Therapeutic Use of Lysergic Acid Diethlylamide-25: Individual and Group Procedures (1959), http://www.maps.org/research-archive/ritesofpassage/lsdhandbook.pdf. Blewett and Chwelos drew heavily on Osmond and Hoffer’s case reports for their manual. * See especially Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD (New York: Grove Press, 1992), and Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (New York: Grove Press, 1987). * Hubbard treasured a 1957 letter he received from a Monsignor Brownmajor in Vancouver endorsing his work: “We therefore approach the study of these psychedelics and their influence on the mind of man anxious to discover whatever attributes they possess, respectfully evaluating their proper place in the Divine Economy.” * Hubbard’s name appears on a single scientific paper, written with his colleagues at Hollywood Hospital: “The Use of LSD-25 in the Treatment of Alcoholism and Other Psychiatric Problems,” Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol 22 (March 1961): 34–45. * Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA officer in charge of MK-Ultra, would testify to Congress that its goal was “to investigate whether and how it was possible to modify an individual’s behavior by covert means.” We would know more about MK-Ultra had Gottlieb not destroyed most of the program’s records on the orders of the CIA director Richard Helms. * During his LSD session, Engelbart invented a “tinkle toy” to toilet train children, or at least boys: a waterwheel floating in a toilet that could be powered by a stream of urine. He went on to considerably more significant accomplishments, including the computer mouse, the graphical computer interface, text editing, hypertext, networked computers, e-mail, and videoconferencing, all of which he demonstrated in a legendary “mother of all demos” in San Francisco in 1968. * Hubbard hated the idea of street acid and the counterculture’s use of it. According to Don Allen, he played a role in at least one bust of an important underground LSD chemist in 1967. Hubbard sent Don Allen to a meeting to pose as a Canadian buyer looking to purchase “pure LSD” from a Bay Area group that included the notorious LSD chemist (and Grateful Dead sound engineer) Owsley Stanley III. Federal agents tailed the people at the meeting back to Stanley and his lab in Orinda, California; during the bust, they reportedly found 350,000 doses of LSD. * The two best accounts of the counterculture’s (and its chemicals’) influence on the computer revolution are Fred Turner’s From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006) and John Markoff’s What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Penguin Books, 2005). * Leary wrote in Flashbacks that he was initially frightened to take psilocybin in a prison with violent criminals. When he confessed his fear to one of the prisoners, the inmate admitted he was afraid too. “Why are you afraid of me?” Leary asked, puzzled. “I’m afraid of you ’cause you’re a fucking mad scientist.” * In a 1992 letter to Betty Eisner, Humphry Osmond wrote, “Where both Al [Hubbard] and Aldous [Huxley] disagreed with Timothy Leary was that they believed that he had got the time scale wrong, and that the US had a much greater inertia than he supposed. They both believed for quite different reasons that working inconspicuously but determinedly within the system could transform it in the long run. Timothy believed that it could be taken by storm.” * In Don Lattin, The Harvard Psychedelic Club (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 94. * One could argue that the LSD dropout problem began back in the 1950s, when successful engineers like Myron Stolaroff, Willis Harman, and Don Allen left Ampex and Stanford to tune in to psychedelics. * Several of these urban legends have been traced to their source and discredited. For example, a 1967 Newsweek story about six college students tripping on LSD who went blind after staring into the sun turned out to be a hoax concocted by Pennsylvania’s state commissioner for the blind, Dr. Norman Yoder. According to the governor, who disclosed the hoax, Yoder had “attended a lecture on the use of LSD by children and became concerned and emotionally involved.” Yet once introduced into the culture, these urban legends survive and, on occasion, go on to become “true” when people tripping on LSD are inspired to imitate them, as has happened in the case of the staring-into-the-sun story. See David Presti and Jerome Beck, “Strychnine and Other Enduring Myths: Expert and User Folklore Surrounding LSD,” in Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion, ed. Thomas B. Roberts (San Francisco: Council on Spiritual Practices, 2001). * There are quotations in this piece that should have set off any editor’s bullshit detector. “When my husband and I want to take a trip together,” says the psychedelic mother of four, “I just put a little acid in the kids’ orange juice in the morning and let them spend the day freaking out in the woods.” * Originally published in Harvard Review (Summer 1963) and reprinted in Timothy Leary and James Penner, Timothy Leary, The Harvard Years: Early Writings on LSD and Psilocybin with Richard Alpert, Huston Smith, Ralph Metzner, and Others (Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2014). The paragraph also appears in the transcript of a 1966 Senate hearing on federal regulation of LSD by the Senate Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization, p. 141. * A version of the guidelines can also be found in James Fadiman’s book The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys (Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2011). * I subsequently learned that hyperventilation, which plays a role in breathwork, changes the CO2 levels of the blood, which in turn can alter the rhythms of the heart in some people. What I assumed was a physiologically benign alternative to MDMA turns out to be nothing of the kind; even without a drug, it is possible to change one’s blood chemistry in ways that can affect heart rhythms. * Family constellation therapy, which was founded by a German therapist named Bert Hellinger, focuses on the hidden role of ancestors in shaping our lives and works to help us make peace with these ghostlike presences. * Henri Michaux, a contemporary of Huxley’s who also wrote about his psychedelic experiences, took a very different tact, refusing the offer of metaphor to make sense of something he believed was beyond comprehension. In his book Miserable Miracle, he aimed to be “attentive to what’s going on—as it is —without trying to deform it and imagine it otherwise in order to make it more interesting to me.” Or sensible to his readers: the book is intermittently brilliant but for long stretches unreadable. “I had no longer any authority over words. I no longer knew how to manage them. Farewell to writing!” I know what he means, but I’ve elected to resist, even if that means tolerating some measure of deformation in my account. * Specifically, I took the Revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire, or MEQ30. * “Kelson” is a nautical term for a structural member in the hull of a boat. * Or at least fifty-five years, because I think young children have ready access to these kinds of experiences, as we will see in the next chapter. * In his 2012 book, Drugs Without the Hot Air, Nutt writes that “psychedelics overall are among the safest drugs we know of . . . It’s virtually impossible to die from an overdose of them; they cause no physical harm; and if anything they’re anti-addictive” (254). * The key structures making up the default mode network are the medial prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex, the inferior parietal lobule, the lateral temporal cortex, the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, and the hippocampus formation. See Randy L. Buckner, Jessica R. Andrews - Hanna, and Daniel L. Schacter, “The Brain’s Default Network,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1124, no. 1 (2008). While neuroimaging indicates strong links between these structures, the concept of the default mode network remains new and is still not universally accepted. * It’s important to keep in mind the limitations of fMRI and other neuroimaging technologies. Most of them measure not brain activity directly but proxies of it, such as blood flow and oxygen consumption. They also depend on complex software to translate faint signals into dramatic images, software the accuracy of which critics have recently questioned. In my experience, brain scientists who work with animals they can insert probes into are dismissive of fMRI, while brain scientists who work with humans accept it as the best tool available. * I’m using the terms more or less interchangeably here. However, the ego, being closely associated with Freud’s model of the mind, implies a construct that stands in a dynamic relationship to other parts of the mind, such as the unconscious, or id, acting on behalf of the self. * It’s worth noting that these findings seem to be at odds with Amanda Feilding’s initial hypothesis that psychedelics work by increasing blood flow to the brain. * David Nutt and Amanda Feilding are coauthors. * Brewer has since moved to the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he’s the director of research at the Center for Mindfulness. * Exactly how psychedelics accomplish this, neurochemically, is still uncertain, but some of Carhart-Harris’s research points to a plausible mechanism. Because of their affinity with the serotonin 2A receptors, psychedelic compounds cause a set of neurons in the cortex (“layer five pyramidal neurons,” to be exact) that are rich in these receptors to fire in such a way as to desynchronize the usual oscillations of the brain. Carhart-Harris likens these oscillations, which help to organize brain activity, to the synchronized clapping of an audience. When a few wayward individuals clap out of order, the applause becomes less rhythmic and more chaotic. Similarly, the excitation of these cortical neurons appears to disrupt oscillations in a particular frequency—the alpha waves—that have been correlated with activity in the default mode network and, specifically, in self-reflection. * This research was published in 2017: Matthew M. Nour et al., “Psychedelics, Personality, and Political Perspectives,” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs . “Ego dissolution experienced during a participant’s ‘most intense’ psychedelic experience positively predicted liberal political views, openness and nature relatedness, and negatively predicted authoritarian political views.” * The panel was recorded and is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2VzRMevUXg. * As in the case of many drugs, the SSRI antidepressants introduced in the 1980s were much more effective when they were new, probably owing to the placebo effect. Today, they perform only slightly better than a placebo. * The statistical “effect size” of these results—at or above 1.0 for most of the outcome measures used in both trials—is remarkable for a psychiatric treatment. As a comparison, when the SSRI antidepressants had their first clinical trials, the effect size was only 0.3—which was good enough for them to be approved. * A few critical voices were heard. In a pair of blog posts on PLOS, James Coyne raised several methodological objections having to do with the size and composition of the patient group, the reliability of the diagnoses, the placebo control, the blinding, and the theoretical assumptions: “Since when are existential/spiritual well-being issues psychiatric?” http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/2016/12/14/psilocybin-as-a-treatment-for-cancer-patients-who-are-not-depressed-the-nyu-study/. * Several of the NYU therapists referred me to the writing of Viktor E. Frankl, the Viennese psychoanalyst and the author of Man’s Search for Meaning . Frankl, who survived both Auschwitz and Dachau, believed that the crucial human drive is not for pleasure, as his teacher Freud maintained, or power, as Alfred Adler maintained, but meaning. Frankl concurs with Nietzsche, who wrote, “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” * Katrin H. Preller et al., “The Fabric of Meaning and Subjective Effects in LSD-Induced States Depend on Serotonin 2A Receptor Activation,” Current Biology 27, no. 3 (2017): 451–57. The work was done in Franz Vollenweider’s lab. When the serotonin 5-HT 2A receptors were blocked with a drug (ketanserin), “the LSD-induced attribution of personal relevance to previously meaningless stimuli” was also blocked, leading the authors to conclude that these receptors play a role in the generation and attribution of personal meaning. * The experience would shape his post-NASA work: the former engineer established the Institute of Noetic Sciences to study consciousness and paranormal phenomena. * “A human being is a part of the whole called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ( Walter Sullivan, “The Einstein Papers: A Man of Many Parts,” The New York Times, March 29, 1972.) * Quoted in Charles S. Grob, “Psychiatric Research with Hallucinogens: What Have We Learned?,” Heffter Review of Psychedelic Research 1 (1998). * Ibogaine, a psychedelic derived from the root of an African shrub, is being used underground as well as in clinics in Mexico to treat opiate addiction; ayahuasca has also been reported to be helpful breaking addictions. * As for the three volunteers who received no benefit, they had mild or unremarkable sessions. This might be because they were still on SSRIs, which may block the effects of psychedelics, or because some fraction of the population simply doesn’t respond to the drugs. The Hopkins team, too, has occasionally seen cases of “dud trips” that leave people unaffected. * By me, as it happened. “The Trip Treatment,” New Yorker, Feb. 9, 2015. * This is how Freud understood depression, which he called melancholia: after the loss of an object of desire, the ego splits in two, with one part punishing the other, which has taken the place of the lost love in our attentions. In his view, depression is a misplaced form of revenge for a loss, retribution that has been misdirected at the self. * Tom Insel, who after leaving the NIMH went to work for Google’s life science subsidiary, Verily, before joining a mental health start-up called Mindstrong Health, told me that there are now algorithms that can reliably diagnose depression based on the frequency and context of one’s use of the first-person pronoun. * Or at least people who can afford it. One advantage of medicalizing psychedelic therapy is that it would presumably be accessible to everyone with health insurance. * He recounts these experiences in his book Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry (New York: Little, Brown, 2015), 190–93. * I don’t dismiss the possibility they may come from somewhere else, but will confine myself here to the more parsimonious explanation. * In a 1969 essay in the Harvard Theological Review, Walter Pahnke described several distinct modes of psychedelic consciousness, including one he termed “the cognitive psychedelic experience.” This is “characterized by astonishingly lucid thought. Problems can be seen from a novel perspective, and the inner relationships of many levels or dimensions can be seen all at once. The creative experience may have something in common with this kind of psychedelic experience, but such a possibility must await the result of future investigation.” What’s next on your reading list? Discover your next great read! 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Cover Also by Michael Pollan Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Contents PROLOGUE: A New Door CHAPTER ONE: A Renaissance CHAPTER TWO: NATURAL HISTORY CHAPTER THREE: HISTORY Part I: The Promise Part II: The Crack-Up CHAPTER FOUR: TRAVELOGUE Trip One: LSD Trip Two: Psilocybin Trip Three: 5-MeO-DMT (or, The Toad) CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEUROSCIENCE CHAPTER SIX: THE TRIP TREATMENT One: Dying Two: Addiction Three: Depression EPILOGUE: In Praise of Neural Diversity Glossary Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index About the Author Table of Contents Cover Text i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi xii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 436 437 438 439 440 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 453 454 455 456 457 458 459 460 461 462 463 464 465 ================================================================================ SOURCE: Psychedelic Psychotherapy_ A User Friendly Guide ================================================================================ PSYCHEDELIC PSYCHOTHERAPY A USER-FRIENDLY GUIDE FOR PSYCHEDELIC DRUG-ASSISTED PSYCHOTHERAPY R. COLEMAN CONTENTS Introduction 1. Psychedelics And Healing 2. How Psychedelic Therapy Heals Trauma 3. Layers Of The Psychedelic Healing Process 4. Primary Tools 5. Using A Sitter 6. Guidelines For The Sitter 7. Guidelines For The Professional Psychotherapist 8. Preparation For The Journey 9. Guidelines For The Journeyer 10. Restoring Sanity With The Peak Experience 11. Embracing The Shadow 12. Resourcing 13. Beyond The Ego 14. After The Journey 15. Useful Techniques 16. Supplemental Practices That Support Journeywork 17. Journey Stories About the Author INTRODUCTION The use of psychedelics for healing is a practice thousands of years old, and is well-documented in indigenous cultures all over the world. Today, psychedelic drugs are proving to be extraordinary catalysts that accelerate healing and transcend the limitations of mainstream psychotherapy. Psychedelic drugs are commonly associated with young people getting high in stimulating, hedonistic, social environments like music festivals. Although most people today know of psychedelics only as recreational drugs, their earliest recorded uses were religious and therapeutic. In the 1950s and ‘60s, hundreds of psychotherapy sessions were conducted using LSD and other substances. This work went underground but did not end when psychedelics were made illegal. Courageous therapists and guides willing to risk working outside the law found that psychedelics allowed them to help people who had not responded to conventional treatment. This manual is intended to be a resource for those using psychedelic drugs for psychological healing in controlled, therapeutic settings that promote focused introspection. This guide is dedicated to suffering individuals who seek to be truly free from the debilitating effects of childhood trauma, and to those who wish to help them. The information contained herein was learned during three decades of the author’s personal healing and professional experience facilitating thousands of psychedelic therapy sessions. This is by no means THE definitive guide to all the possible ways psychedelics can be used for healing. There are extensive known and yet to be discovered ways that psychedelics can facilitate psychological healing, personal growth, and spiritual awakening. Psychedelics are powerful but potentially dangerous tools to access the human psyche. Use these drugs with great caution. Psychedelic therapy requires courage and determination to face one’s deepest fears. The process can be challenging and painful--it should not be undertaken alone. Psychedelic therapy can be profoundly transformational, when used in a careful and informed manner. Note: In this guide, psychedelic sessions are referred to as “journeys.” Time spent in an altered state is referred to as “journeyspace.” All journey stories and excerpts are from actual sessions. The Author's Story In my early twenties, I was disturbed by the suffering and madness in the world. I embarked on a quest to find the meaning and purpose of life. My search led me to a guide who introduced me to psychedelics. During my sessions, I had transcendent, mystical experiences that expanded my worldview beyond the confines of my five senses. I experienced my life as a brief moment in infinite time and space. I awakened from the trance of limiting beliefs and mundane, consensus reality. I felt connected to God, my soul, and the sacredness of all living things. My spiritual life soared, but serious health, sexual, and relationship issues persisted. I still suffered from chronic fatigue, depression, and bleeding ulcers in my colon. I tried treating my symptoms with conventional and alternative medicine. This approach produced some relief, but did not get to the root cause. I searched for psychosomatic origins. Psychotherapy was expensive and frustratingly slow. I felt like I was rearranging deck chairs on a capsizing Titanic. I was sinking. I was suicidal. One day, I met a therapist who recommended using MDMA to get “unstuck.” From the very first session, I began making amazing breakthroughs. The split between my mind and body began to dissolve. Being present in my body became an experience, not a concept. My heart opened. I could access blocked emotions as never before. As I continued psychedelic therapy, I discovered and worked through trauma of childhood neglect and abuse. Hidden sources of my chronic illness, anxiety, and depression were revealed. My colitis healed, my depression vanished, and my health improved. As my sexual and relationship issues healed, I was able to manifest the healthy, happy marriage I enjoy today. I spent years in cognitive and Reichian therapy before I discovered psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. I meditated, practiced yoga, got Rolfed and rebirthed. All these were helpful, but were only able to take me so far. I believe that without the help of psychedelics I would never have healed. Psychedelic therapy saved my life. 1 PSYCHEDELICS AND HEALING Psychedelic work is distinct from any other healing modality currently available. Psychiatric medication is designed to extinguish or alleviate symptoms. Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis aim at finding solutions through cognitive and behavioral modification or through construction of a long-term healing relationship between therapist and client. Even when augmented by clinical hypnosis, dreamwork, energy psychology, and other excellent techniques, the healing of deeply entrenched defense patterns arising from profound early trauma, if successful at all, takes many years in talk-based therapies. Bodywork, breathwork, and other body-centered healing modalities may bypass the body-mind defenses, but they cannot tap as deeply into our innate mechanisms for healing as do properly used psychedelics. Psychedelics permit the innate intelligence of the body, developed during five million years of evolution, to step in and unleash natural healing from the inside. They allow healing at the root cause of our ailment, be it physical, emotional, cognitive, spiritual, or a combination of these. They work in the places the intellect is afraid, or unable, to go. Psychedelics quickly zero in on the blocks, constrictions, dysfunctions, and mental distortions that accumulate over a lifetime. Psychedelics permit an individual to access unconscious and highly defended memories that are accessible through other modalities only after many years of work, and sometimes not even then. They cut through denial and provide a safe container for the release of trauma. They provide the clarity and openness that lead to integration, making it possible for people to reclaim their whole, fully-functional selves and realize their highest potential. These pages offer the collective experience, knowledge, thoughts, and observations of practitioners and subjects who have used psychedelics for healing. The field is new, the work experimental and groundbreaking. What works for one person may be of little or no help to others. No doubt, scores of additional psychedelic healing techniques will emerge as this work continues to gain acceptance. The information provided here is offered as a kind of rough roadmap--an early travel guide to an as yet sparsely traveled land. 2 HOW PSYCHEDELIC THERAPY HEALS TRAUMA Evolution has equipped humans with a variety of mechanisms to encourage survival, even in the face of major traumatic injury. Important among these survival mechanisms is dissociation. “Dissociation” means that trauma is not being felt, experienced, absorbed, or assimilated by the person to whom it is happening. A traumatic injury can be so emotionally overwhelming that the stress could kill a person or bring on a psychotic breakdown. But if some or all awareness of the trauma can be set aside, or experienced as something else while it is happening, the survivor may be able to withstand the initial impact. Later, when they have reached safety and become stronger, they can feel the trauma and let it go. For example, imagine you are driving up a winding mountain road at night. Suddenly, an oncoming eighteen-wheeler careens across the center meridian, speeding right towards you! You panic, swerve, and narrowly escape a head-on collision. Your heart races and your body shakes, but you must keep driving another eighty miles to reach a place where you can pull over and calm down. To carry on, you have to override your fear and your body’s reactions by suppressing your breath, tensing your muscles, and blocking your thoughts of the incident until you get to the place where you can safely “fall apart” and recover. Something like that happens in response to any highly threatening incident when there is no safe way to process the pain and emotion out of the nervous system. Infants and children are especially prone to dissociate in threatening situations. They have far fewer resources than adults to help them deal with trauma. They don't have strong, developed bodies, fighting skills, strategic thinking, a secure sense of self, or a calming belief system. Their immature nervous systems cannot process all the physical and emotional distress generated by traumatic events or circumstances. When traumatic events happen to children today, they respond the same way our ancestors responded when threatened by a saber-toothed tiger. They dissociate from the overwhelming terror, setting it aside to be felt and released later. They are able to postpone the full, head-on experience until sufficient resources are available (i.e., Mom and safety) to feel and gradually release feelings they were unable to process at the time of traumatic injury or life-threatening danger. Sadly, for many infants and children, Mom doesn't come--or she doesn't represent safety and support. Perhaps she died in an auto accident where the child is left alive, frozen with terror, and alone. Perhaps she is drunk or high, and her long absence or crazy behavior is the source of the child’s terror. Perhaps the child never finds a place that feels safe until much later in life. The mechanism that allows feelings from traumatic experiences to be postponed permits such a child to survive and function into adulthood even though the trauma remains frozen within their muscles, nerves, brain, and psyche as if it were still happening. This frozen trauma lies at the root of many persistent psychological problems and psychosomatic medical disorders. Over time, inner walls that were built to keep trauma at bay harden and solidify. We become the walking wounded, numb and unremembering, but bleeding inside. Much of our energy is required to keep the walls between our conscious existence and the wounded part of ourselves intact. Our “normal” or even “happy” childhood is a fiction our minds invent that, if repeated over and over, 24 hours a day, becomes almost true. Psychedelics act like the little boy in the story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” They give us an objective look from outside our ordinary thinking, which lays bare the lies we tell ourselves, the things we run from, and the parts of ourselves we don't want to look at. In the safe and sympathetic presence of our sitter, it is liberating to see these truths. Finally we can begin releasing the trauma. Soon we see the ways our repressed early trauma is creating the emotional and physical dysfunction in our current lives. More and more we discern the walls built on fiction, and allow them to dissolve in the face of truth. As we do so, we can achieve a more grounded, honest, fluid, and happy participation in our own lives. As our minds release the trauma, so do our bodies. Clenched muscles loosen, allowing us to feel more bodily pleasure. Energy previously used to block off pain is now free to revitalize the body as a vehicle for living. Psychedelic drugs can be used to explore the depths of the psyche like submarines are used to explore the depths of the ocean. Effective transformational therapy requires that we dive into the unconscious thoughts and emotions that lie deeply submerged beneath the surface of our ordinary awareness. Because the unconscious psyche is seldom accessible to our normal, everyday waking consciousness, we need to alter our consciousness to access this realm experientially. Therapists use dreams and altered state-inducing techniques such as free association, hypnosis, special breathing and body work to access the unconscious. Rarely can these non-drug modalities reach the unconscious as deeply, directly and profoundly as do psychedelic drugs used in controlled therapeutic settings. Without the help of these drugs, the adventure of self-exploration may be limited to relatively shallow waters. Deep emotional healing can be an excruciatingly slow process, typically requiring years of expensive, weekly psychotherapy sessions that many suffering people can't afford. People who begin serious healing in midlife might not want to spend years in therapy that yields limited results. Recovery from trauma is a challenging odyssey. To complete the journey, travelers must access repressed memories and associated emotions which may be shrouded in amnesia. Traumatic memories often lack verbal narrative or context; rather, they are stored and encoded in the form of bodily sensations, feelings, and images. These memories and emotions are encased in thick walls of muscular armoring, denial, and fear. Most therapies laboriously scratch at the surface of these walls. Psychedelic drugs miraculously melt them. Psychedelics are seldom a quick fix, but they have proven to be a near-miraculous tool for enhancing and accelerating the deepest alchemy of the psyche. For adventurous, motivated souls who are resistant to, or impatient with, mainstream therapies, these medicines are cutting-edge tools to access the inner worlds of body, mind and spirit. Using psychedelics to heal trauma is not for everyone. It's not recommended for those living with psychotic and personality disorders. Psychedelic therapy may often be ineffective or even destabilizing for these people. For help diagnosing and understanding personality disorders, I recommend the easy-to-read book, "Wounded Personalities", by Gregory Pacana and Edward Hicks. 3 LAYERS OF THE PSYCHEDELIC HEALING PROCESS If you are drawn to explore psychedelic therapy, you are probably motivated by pain and frustration. You may suffer from chronic depression or anxiety. You might struggle with addictions. You may be unhappy with your life, and unsuccessful in your career or relationships. Perhaps you tried many forms of self-help, medications, and mainstream therapies but have been disappointed with the results. Psychedelics may be the missing tool that gets you unstuck. Psychedelic therapy is an exciting, profound experiential voyage into the vast, mysterious, inner realm of the body and psyche. Your psychedelic therapy sessions may be nothing like you expected, read about, or imagined. Your experiences will be unique to you, but there are elements that are common. Awareness You can't fix something you don't know is broken. Therefore, the first step towards healing is to become aware of where you are broken. Without self-awareness you sleepwalk through life, plagued by inexplicable symptoms, bumping into unseen roadblocks, blindly repeating self-sabotaging behaviors and life scripts. The consciousness-expanding properties of psychedelics expose thoughts, feelings, sensations, and phenomena that are normally hidden from your conscious awareness. Once this unconscious material is brought to light, you can begin the healing process. Early in your explorations you may become keenly aware of self-defeating patterns of behavior. You may also see the social masks and roles you've played to avoid pain and gain acceptance. You'll discover denied, repressed parts of yourself that are vulnerable, soft, innocent, pure, powerful, wise, luminous, primal, dark, deceitful, afraid, angry, brokenhearted, etc. As you embrace or heal these parts, you will get better at creating a satisfying life. You will also be more comfortable being genuine, honest, and compassionate with yourself and others. You may become conscious of psychological defenses such as projection and denial as you catch yourself using them. Psychological concepts you may have understood intellectually now become tangible experience. You may encounter visions like demons, deities, and mythological archetypes. These visions often symbolize parts of yourself, significant others, spiritual phenomena, or emerging patterns that may be explored, integrated, or healed. You may experience profound inner peace, transcendental bliss, and other states of consciousness beyond what you have known. You may experience being vibrantly alive, spontaneous, and open-hearted. You may be less guarded, more relaxed, and more in touch with emotions than you can remember. As these states become imprinted and integrated into consciousness, you will be more able to access them without drugs. You may experience yourself as pure consciousness beyond your mind and body. You may discover your Higher Self in the form of deep inner wisdom, intuition, spirit guides, animal totems, ancestors, and the like. You may receive information, clarity, and guidance that proves to be astonishingly accurate. Facing Your Demons As psychedelics soften psychological defenses and cut through denial, you may unearth scary “demons” from traumatic childhood memories that expose the truth about your family, your childhood, and yourself. During your session, your guide will encourage you to focus beyond your thoughts, into your breath and body. Parts of your body may vibrate, feel tingly, electric, warm, and alive. Other parts may feel painful, tense, heavy, numb, or jittery. You may become cold, nauseous, dizzy, feverish, or drowsy. Your breathing and heartbeat may quicken, you may shiver, your teeth may chatter, you might have the urge to urinate, defecate, vomit, or flee. If this happens, you know you are right on the edge of accessing buried trauma that is ready to be felt and released. If scary, painful feelings or traumatic memories surface, your guide will help you safely through them. As your breathing softens muscular armor, your body may involuntarily tremble, spasm, or thrash about. You might belch, wretch, or vomit. Your legs might kick or run in place. Your hands may clench into fists that pound or punch. Your arms may make pushing-away movements or protective gestures. These are thwarted fight or flight impulses that were frozen with the trauma. These spontaneous, instinctual actions allow the body to discharge trauma. During your session, the full impact of old emotional wounds may be felt and released in cathartic explosions of grief, rage, or terror. You may regress to an earlier age, engulfed in vivid, sensory experiences of repressed traumatic events. You may experience the intense emotional pain of feeling unloved by caretakers. You might feel the physical pain of rape, injuries, abuse, surgery, etc. as if it were happening now. As the pain, fear, and anger are felt and released, old wounds heal. The supportive, therapeutic setting allows you to safely feel emotions you've run from for many years. Mourning As you come out of the shock of trauma, you may need to grieve the absence of the protection, love, and caring you needed as a child. You'll need time to nurture and comfort your wounded self. While you are in an open, altered state, and still somewhat regressed, you may receive from your caring sitter some of the love and comfort you didn't get from your family. If you are in a receptive mood, this can have the effect of reprogramming unmet childhood needs for attention, acceptance, respect, understanding, and tender touch. When the trauma has been fully felt, discharged, and grieved, the protective walls you built around your heart will melt. You will now be able to love and let love in deeply. You will feel lighter, calmer, and happier. Addictions, depression, neuroses, psychosomatic medical issues, and self-defeating patterns of behavior will fall away. You will be drawn into relationships that are deeply loving and without painful drama. You will now be able to love and care for yourself enough to create a life where the deepest needs of your heart and soul are met. The Hero’s Journey The healing process is much like a mythological Hero's Journey. Shaken from complacency by a crisis or intolerable suffering, you begin the quest for a cure. You meet a guide, swallow an elixir, close your eyes, and plunge down the rabbit hole into a mysterious inner world. You face fears, discover enchanted realms, enlist allies, and conquer demons. There is no single Yellow Brick Road to follow. Once begun, your healing journey unfolds with its own unique, organic intelligence. Your first steps may be full of beauty and wonder as you discover ethereal realms of consciousness beyond the ordinary. Visiting these realms gives you glimpses of vast, unexplored, inner landscapes. On your quest for healing, you will eventually encounter domains of darkness whose gates are guarded by the fierce demons of your fears. When you are strong and ready for the task, you walk through your fears and begin the descent into hidden pain and trauma at the core of your being. Each psychedelic session may reveal a new layer of previously repressed trauma which must be acknowledged, felt and integrated. You may find many layers of fear, anger, and sadness arising from various periods of your life. The more intense and prolonged your trauma, and the earlier in childhood your wounding occurred, the longer your trek through darkness may be. For some, a few sessions can be life changing; for others the healing journey may be a long and winding road. If you surrender to the process, taking time to rest and recharge after each encounter, you will come through into the light. The pain and trauma that was stored in your body and psyche is finite. Once felt and discharged, you are forever free of it. As old wounds are peeled away, you uncover a radiant Self that has been healed and transformed by the Hero's Journey. You emerge from the adventure happier, stronger, and wiser. 4 PRIMARY TOOLS There are many useful therapeutic tools in the psychedelic pharmacopeia. This section discusses four basic substances: MDMA (ecstasy), LSD, psilocybin (magic mushrooms), and marijuana. Each has unique benefits and unique limitations. They can be calibrated by dosage, they can be enhanced, and they can be combined, depending on the journeyer's needs at the time of the session. With patience and skilled, intelligent use, these four materials can facilitate the healing of most psychological wounds. Psychedelics by themselves have no intrinsic, magical healing properties. The therapeutic effectiveness of these drugs depends on the intention, emotional state, mental health, personal history, and level of awareness of the user. The effectiveness of these drugs is also enhanced by the safety, privacy, and aesthetics of the setting, and the caliber of the sitter/therapist. The efficacy of each drug in an individual’s healing process may vary. What works well in one person's therapy may not work the same way for someone else. Extremely wounded people with thick walls of defenses may initially have disappointingly limited experiences. Dosages generally need to be adjusted to fit the body weight and gender of the journeyer. Men often need higher doses than women. Less guarded individuals with sensitive constitutions may need lower doses. Moderate doses are safest and generally most suitable for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. The term “psycholytic therapy” has been used to describe this conservative dose protocol. High dose work will not be covered in this guide. MDMA (Ecstasy) MDMA is a relatively mild, highly controllable feeling enhancer. It's ideal for working with emotional issues and trauma. It softens feelings of fear and shame, allowing journeyers to speak honestly and openly about painful or embarrassing issues they may never have felt safe to disclose before--even to themselves. MDMA relaxes chronic psychological defenses. It engulfs the subject in warm feelings that promote trust and open communication. It speeds the development of a healing, therapeutic bond between the journeyer and the sitter or therapist. This effect of MDMA also makes it ideal for couples counseling. MDMA's famous “ecstatic” experience of feeling good, relaxed, open, peaceful, and present in one's body can be revelatory for very wounded people who cannot remember ever having known such a pleasant state. Psychologically healthy human beings often feel relaxed, open, and peaceful just naturally. MDMA gives the journeyer a glimpse of this end goal of therapeutic work. Neurotic and psychosomatic symptoms are often temporarily suspended during the journey. Inhibitions and self-conscious behaviors fall away. Defensive body armor, constrictions, and chronically tight muscles soften. The chatter of the analytical mind quiets and allows the rich, satisfying experience of being fully present in the moment. Journeyers can experience a taste of the way life feels when their trauma has been released and their human potential is no longer blocked. They can find themselves in a profound serenity that resembles the state of samadhi, a mental and emotional condition that disciplined meditators practice years to achieve. As this state becomes imprinted and integrated into consciousness, it can become familiar and more accessible using non-drug relaxation methods. MDMA promotes uninhibited, honest communication. It allows journeyers to relax into a positive experience of genuine intimacy that can be learned and incorporated into daily life. For those who have been isolated inside their own emotional walls, this oceanic experience of love and openness offers an opportunity to feel the pleasure of being connected to others. It may motivate them to begin healing important relationships and fashioning permanent doors in their emotional walls. MDMA magnifies awareness of body sensations, thoughts, emotions, and intuitive perceptions that are normally repressed, unconscious, or ignored. From this expanded perspective, fresh insights into deep-rooted issues may emerge. Therapeutically used, MDMA is a powerful tool that can melt psychological defenses and break the spell of denial and amnesia that keeps people in the dark about the existence, source, or intensity of prior trauma. Engulfed in a state of well-being, freed of fear and shame, the journeyer is able, without being overwhelmed, to vividly recall, feel, and release the primal terror, pain, and rage of forgotten trauma. MDMA does not pierce as deeply through some of the veils of denial as other psychedelics. Sometimes it will be too euphoric and shield the journeyer from deeper layers of trauma. At that point, continuing to work with MDMA, alone or mixed with other psychedelics, may abort deeper healing. It may sugar-coat shadow material that needs to be experienced raw in order to fully heal. If a journeyer is given more MDMA later in a session when they are getting close to significant trauma, the healing process may be derailed. MDMA is an amazing tool for lowering defenses and fear levels when needed, but it can sometimes mask old pain, anger, and fear that needs to be felt and discharged. Other times, MDMA may not soften the psychedelic therapy experience. Those who are sitting on trauma that is ready to surface may not experience the pleasurable, soothing qualities for which MDMA is famous. For most people, an effective dose is around 100 milligrams. A single dose will provide a working period of about four hours. Augmenting the initial dose with an additional dose of 50 to 100 mg about an hour later will insure an optimal, effective working period of five to six hours. The strength of the booster dose should be determined by how responsive the journeyer is to the original dose. Tolerance can be a significant problem with MDMA. Unlike LSD and psilocybin, MDMA will lose effectiveness if used too often or too long. To extend its useful therapeutic lifespan with a given journeyer, no more than 200 mg should be administered in a single session, and at least two weeks should elapse between MDMA sessions. One must exercise discipline to get the most out of MDMA. Exceeding the maximum recommended dosage of 200 milligrams is likely to create unpleasant side effects that overwhelm any good that might have been achieved in the session. Also, using MDMA more than once every two weeks will quickly lead to the development of tolerance, after which the benefits decline and die out. Common side effects of MDMA use are appetite loss, jaw clenching, and nystagmus (lateral eye wiggle). The use of calcium-magnesium supplements the day before and leading up to the use of MDMA helps decrease jaw tension. This can prevent days of soreness for individuals who chronically hold tension in their jaws. A journeyer may feel substantially depleted for one or more days after an MDMA session. It may be difficult to sleep. Their jaws may be tight or painful, or they could feel tired or depressed. Therefore, to the extent possible, journeyers should clear their schedule of demanding work and difficult personal encounters for up to three days after the session. Some people claim that taking 100 mg of 5-HTP (available in health food stores) each day for three days before a session and for four to six days afterward helps avoid the serotonin dip that causes the MDMA hangover. Do not take 5-HTP six hours before a journey. Contraction often follows the emotional and sensory expansion provided by MDMA. Returning to something like their previously contracted state can be discouraging for journeyers, who may think no progress has been made. The body’s contraction after a huge expansion is normal and healthy. It's a return to the boundaries that help a person navigate a complex social and economic world. But it can feel overwhelmingly sad and depressing when contrasted with memories of the expanded MDMA experience. Journeyers should be advised beforehand that they may feel down and depressed for a couple of days after the MDMA experience, and that it may take a few days to notice ways they have become more open and functional as a result of their session. Persons with the following conditions should avoid taking MDMA or use only a very small dose: heart conditions, high blood pressure, diabetes, and bipolar disorder. Persons taking certain medications should avoid concurrent use of MDMA. MDMA should not be used by anyone taking an MAO inhibitor, fluvoxamine (sold as Fevarin, etc.), or ritonavir (aka Norvir). SSRI antidepressants must be discontinued gradually starting at least six weeks prior to an MDMA session. (It's extremely dangerous to stop taking an SSRI abruptly.) A person must be completely off SSRIs for at least two weeks before an MDMA session. Some over-the-counter cough, cold, and asthma medicines may present problems with MDMA use, such as pseudoephedrine (Sudafed), and dextromethorphan (or DXM, in Robitussin, NyQuil and others). As a precaution, intake of these medications should be stopped or strictly limited prior to MDMA usage. More information is available at https://dancesafe.org/drug-information/mdma-contraindications/. LSD In psychotherapy, LSD’s most salient quality is to greatly amplify whatever is hidden in one’s unconscious. It cuts right through trance and denial. LSD allows vivid access to buried memories like being in mother’s womb, birth trauma, infantile trauma, and early childhood physical and sexual abuse memories that are difficult or impossible to retrieve through other means. LSD allows access to previously blocked aspects of the inner worlds of body, psyche, and spirit. With eyes closed, one can experience a whole universe of sensations inside the body. Focusing on problem areas in the body can reveal psychosomatic roots of pain, malfunction, and disease. LSD promotes clarity. It's a powerful, versatile tool that lets journeyers focus directly into the heart of their issues. It encourages creative, innovative thinking and out-of-the-box problem solving. Like a truth serum, LSD has the capacity to awaken one from lifelong trance states that were induced by early trauma or harmful familial and cultural beliefs. New concepts and profound realizations can be accepted and absorbed, replacing erroneous core beliefs about the self, others, the world, reality, life, and death. At higher doses, LSD opens doors to transcendent dimensions of reality, transgenerational memories, and unresolved trauma from previous lifetimes. LSD is not usually the best therapeutic choice for intellectuals and other head-trippers. It may create the illusion that thinking can solve everything. Overdosing with LSD can be overwhelming, dangerous, and retraumatizing. The higher the dose, the more likely both sitter and journeyer will get into scary, hard-to-manage territory. The potential for inadvertently causing psychological harm at higher doses requires that the sitter be experienced and extremely knowledgeable. Unlike MDMA, LSD has no inherent feel-good properties. Those who have significant childhood trauma may find LSD to be stark and brutal in higher doses. High doses may sometimes plummet these journeyers into abstract, paranoid mind spaces where everything seems fake and godless. The higher the dose of LSD, the more it may amplify negative transference. Hatred or fear originally felt toward some perpetrator, parent, etc., may be transferred onto the therapist/sitter. In the journeyer's mind, the sitter becomes the feared or hated person from the past, and all safety vanishes from the setting. Having a second or backup sitter, preferably of a different gender, can save the day. Getting lost in trippy visuals or music may be a defense against deeper exploration. Breathing deeply and continuously help a journeyer keep from getting caught in the shallows. Higher doses of LSD may last eight or nine hours. A session this long will exhaust even the most intrepid sitter. Even small amounts of LSD have powerful effects. Most beginners should start with a 100 mcg dose. Starting with a low dose, the journeyer can cautiously work up to higher doses in future journeys, if needed. When used by itself, or as the primary tool for a session, the dosage will likely range from 50 to 300 mcg. A moderate dose will provide an effective working period of six to eight hours. Higher doses generally last longer. Some prescription medications are contraindicated when taking LSD. Check with erowid.org or another reliable source for information. For many, the after-effects of LSD can be jarring or jagged. Sleep may be difficult the first night without some form of assisted relaxation, such as melatonin or valerian. Psilocybin (Magic Mushrooms) Magic mushrooms are all-purpose, shamanic medicine teachers that seem to have their own organic intelligence. They are catalysts that promote accelerated personal healing, awareness, and spiritual growth in ways that are uniquely relevant to each sincere seeker. The intelligence of the mushrooms appears to interface with one's own deepest wisdom, bringing forth whatever experience is most beneficial for healing and awakening at the time of the journey. Psilocybin powerfully and relentlessly unlocks the doors to an individual’s deeper truth. Anything that is blocked, constricted, unconscious, or out of integrity will be brought to conscious awareness. This may not be a pleasant experience, but it results in profound, liberating change. For some, memories and reenactments of hidden trauma surface as if they are happening for the first time in that moment. The expansive nature of psilocybin promotes physical and emotional release of trauma. As the nervous system releases suppressed fight and flight impulses, the body may involuntarily thrash about, shake, spasm, kick, hit, twist, etc. There may be deep emotional catharsis like sobbing or screaming. Some journeyers sob for hours, feeling previously unexpressed grief for their own pain and the pain of all beings who suffer. Certain transpersonal experiences, which may also occur with LSD, are more common with psilocybin. Some people experience a state of pure, peaceful being, and deep wisdom without thought or identification with their ego self. Some feel their interconnection with all beings and a sense of oneness with nature. Some receive guidance from a source beyond their rational mind. In higher doses, psilocybin can open up realms beyond the ego mind, beyond space and time, beyond the personal unconscious into the collective unconscious realms of numinous archetypes and spirit. Some people report accessing cellular memory of being earlier evolutionary life forms, being a sperm or an egg, reliving intrauterine or past life experiences, or experiencing unhealed trauma from their parents and ancestors. Like LSD, psilocybin can awaken one from personal and cultural trance. Liberation from limiting beliefs can inspire expansion into one's full potential, and free one to explore creative, fulfilling lifestyles beyond society's straitjacket of conventions. Sometimes journeys are sprinkled with childlike giggling and laughter. One may be able to appreciate the Cosmic Joke--seeing the humor in our lives, our culture, and the human condition. Laughter can be a joyous, cathartic release, and a doorway to the happy inner child. Psilocybin seems to have its own organic, healing intelligence. While this trait is magical, it makes psilocybin an unwieldy medicine that can seldom be focused onto a particular issue. It's not amenable to much direction by the journeyer's will or by the therapist/sitter. Once it's ingested, personal control and psychotherapeutic paradigms are best abandoned. Psilocybin may not give the experience most desired, but it will generally give the experience most needed. The best way to approach a mushroom journey is to imagine laying on an operating room table, surrendering to the wisdom of the Great Surgeon. Psilocybin can promote dissociation at higher doses. Moderate doses are needed when the intention is to stay embodied and focused on trauma releasing. Most beginners should start with a 3-gram dose of dried mushrooms. This dose can be gradually increased to 6-9 grams in future journeys, if needed. The lowest dose that can be felt is between one and two grams. A single dose provides an effective working period of three to six hours. An accurate scale is essential to measure fractions of a gram. The difference between one gram and two of mushrooms cannot be distinguished by sight, but will be felt clearly once ingested. The potency may vary from batch to batch. Mushrooms can be eaten but many people dislike the taste. They are somewhat more palatable ground to a powder in a coffee grinder and mixed in a blender with juice. Pineapple-grapefruit juice works well. They can also be brewed into a tea. Here is one recipe: Chop mushrooms up into 1/4 inch chunks. Soak chunks for 15 minutes in just enough lemon juice to cover. Drain juice and save. Add boiling water, and steep mushrooms for 20 minutes. Discard mushrooms. Mix the tea with the lemon juice and add a little maple syrup or other sweetener. Psilocybin may promote nausea. Slight nausea is common, especially at the beginning of a journey. More intense nausea usually indicates that scary, upsetting feelings or unconscious material is coming up to be healed. After psilocybin has been digested and absorbed--about an hour or so--vomiting should be allowed. Throwing up is one way the body releases trauma. The journeyer usually feels much better afterwards. This sort of purging can promote lasting, positive life changes. Higher doses (five to ten grams) may cause temporary loss of touch with reality, highly amplified transference, and delusional thinking, usually during the peak hour of the journey. This may manifest as bizarre, unsafe behavior like wanting to fly off a balcony or believing the sitter is Hitler. The higher the dose, the less likely one may remember what happened during the journey. This does not affect results. Higher doses may also trigger an “ego death” phenomenon in which subjects seriously believe they are dying or going permanently crazy. Navigating through such an experience in a safe, supportive setting can be transformational. For more information, read the “Beyond Ego” section in this guide. The higher the dose, the more likely both sitter and subject can get into scary, unwieldy territory. The risk of inadvertently causing psychological harm requires that the sitter be experienced and extremely knowledgeable when high doses of psilocybin are being used. Marijuana In a therapeutic setting, where the intention of emotional healing is clear and strong, smoking marijuana is a shorter-acting, milder option that can work in ways similar to psychedelics. This is an especially effective option for journeyers who have not established a pattern of using marijuana recreationally or to self-medicate. Once psychedelics have opened the doors to a person's unconscious, judicious use of marijuana away from the psychedelic session can continue the healing process. For some people, pot helps access feelings, insights, and buried trauma. Smoking pot during a psychedelic therapy session is seldom a good idea. It tends to promote dissociation, fuzziness, and loss of focus. However, at the end of a journey, when the journeyer needs to let go and rest, marijuana may help bring on a much-needed period of relaxation and pleasure. Edible Marijuana Indica strains of cannabis greatly amplify awareness of bodily sensations. This medicine allows those who habitually live in their heads to feel their bodies. Whereas it's common for psychedelics to bring up trauma, this is less likely to happen with marijuana. Marijuana cooked into butter, candy, cookies, brownies and other food items is particularly helpful for this. Take care not to overdose on edibles! Excessive doses can induce harrowing experiences. Potency of edibles varies greatly, and it may be hours before it’s evident how any given amount will affect a journeyer. Start experimenting with lower doses. If more is needed, it’s possible to gradually work up to edibles containing four to eight grams of pot. Even if eaten on an empty stomach, it may be an hour and a half before their effects are felt, if at all. After that, effects will strengthen, then continue for five or six hours. Mixing Medicines In a session in which LSD is to be the principal tool, an initial dose of 70-100 mg of MDMA, taken about an hour before the LSD, creates a softer entry for new users into the world of the stronger medicine. Similarly, when psilocybin is to be the principal tool, one may lead with a single dose of MDMA a half-hour to an hour before the psilocybin. For journeyers who already have a good relationship with MDMA, this is an ideal way to gently introduce new and unfamiliar substances. If a journeyer using LSD or psilocybin alone starts having difficulty letting go of their defenses and relaxing into the experience, administering MDMA may allow them to proceed fearlessly into deeper territory. Or if they get stuck in a dark place, and are unable to process through it, administering MDMA at that point may facilitate a gentle finish that will not leave them in a negative psychological state. For those who are emotionally shut down, adding MDMA to the other psychedelic may promote a more heart-opening experience. Finally, putting MDMA in the mix with LSD or psilocybin can help a chronically anxious and internally constricted journeyer relax and open up. When using LSD and MDMA together, adding LSD amps up the intensity of an MDMA session. It introduces more clarity, and it promotes breaking through denial and amnesia to an extent that MDMA alone might not achieve. Combining psilocybin with LSD is a particularly effective protocol for accessing and releasing trauma. Taking LSD about an hour before ingesting psilocybin breaks through denial and brings up buried traumatic memories. Adding the softening, healing properties of psilocybin induces the release of the trauma from the body. This powerful combination is not for beginners in psychedelic therapy. LSD and Edible Marijuana is useful for people who have been dissociated from their bodies all their life, either through constant thinking or through spacing out. Relatively low doses of LSD (generally not more than 150 mcg) combined with Indica-strain edible cannabis is an excellent tool for helping them explore and get grounded into their bodies. Introducing New Medicines Gradually MDMA is an ideal, safe medicine for first journeys. Its gentle nature allows inexperienced beginners to become comfortable exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness. If you are an experienced recreational user of MDMA and other psychedelic meds, using psychedelics to explore deep-seated psychological issues in a therapeutic setting may be surprisingly uncomfortable and challenging. Don’t assume, just because psychedelics were always pleasant when you used them recreationally, that using them for therapy will be a walk in the park. Start with MDMA. Depending on your own unique circumstances and issues, MDMA journeys may allow you to resolve all the issues for which you came to therapy. If it's working, there's no need to change it. If, however, you have not been able to reach your therapeutic goals with MDMA, and you and your sitter feel that you’re ready to go deeper, you can gradually introduce small amounts of mushrooms and/or LSD into your journeys. At first you might begin these deeper sessions with 100 mg or less of MDMA to soften defenses and anxiety about the unfamiliar meds. This will help you relax and let go into the new experience. Alternatively, you may want to try a low dose of each new medicine by itself, so you can gain familiarity with its unique properties and capabilities. It's important to go slowly. Introduce stronger medicines gradually. While it might take a few journeys to work up to the dose that will be most effective for you, being gentle and cautious will prevent the re-traumatization that results if you push too far, too fast. One consequence of going too fast is that you may be afraid to return to journeywork again. There is often a vast difference between what your mind thinks you can handle and what your psyche can actually handle. Fools rush in where wise ones fear to tread. If you've had a harrowing LSD or psilocybin journey that felt like you bit off more than you could chew, lower the dose and reintroduce MDMA into your next journey to softly navigate through the trauma of the previous, overwhelming journey. If you are successfully working through trauma or accessing buried pain, it's not helpful to add more medicines late in the journey to extend the session. The psyche seems able to handle only one chunk of difficult material at a time. 5 USING A SITTER If you are contemplating doing this therapy, you will want to work with a skilled practitioner experienced in the field of psychedelic healing. Therapeutic journeywork will and should be very different from recreational trips you may have experienced. Any thought that you are experienced enough to embark on this kind of journey without assistance is naive. The fact that you are contemplating journeywork for healing is a strong indicator that there are hidden, unexplored places in your psyche, filled with things you've been avoiding because you couldn’t handle seeing them. It's foolish to imagine you'll know what to do when you face your own unconscious and long-hidden material for the first time in journeyspace. If disturbing feelings and memories surface, an experienced sitter will help you move safely through them. A competent sitter can reassure journeyers and support them as they process through emerging sensations, feelings, visions, and behaviors that may be bizarre, incomprehensible, or scary. A wise practitioner can help you make sense of your sometimes wild and crazy experience. Your mind craves and needs such clarity for it to be an ally in your healing process. Your eyes are part of your face, so you can't see your face without a mirror. Similarly, you'll need a sitter to direct your awareness and attention to patterns, symptoms, and blind spots that you can't see yourself. Your psychological defenses will be challenged during journeywork. Defenses block you from getting to difficult, core material that needs healing. A sitter sees what's happening and helps you navigate through your defenses in a way that you, in journeyspace, would be unable to do. It's easy to get lost in journeyspace. A sitter can help you keep track. An idea, a thought, a discussion that you want to follow, may just slip from your mind. “What was I saying?” comes up more often that you might think. Journeywork may bring up repressed emotional pain and trauma from events long ago that no one ever talked about or perhaps even knew about. Having an empathic witness to see, hear, and validate your experience is itself part of the healing. It's comforting to let go and rely on someone else to take care of you. While in an altered state, you may need help getting water, getting to the bathroom, getting an extra blanket, and other tactical maneuvers. Your sitter will assist you when needed. A sitter will also handle any unexpected emergencies and glitches like audio equipment malfunctions, power outages, a clogged toilet, etc. A sitter can run interference for you, shielding you from unwanted, unexpected guests that might show up in the middle of a journey. Besides totally derailing whatever was going on in your journey, these interruptions can be scary and debilitating. A trustworthy sitter will handle any unforeseen danger or distraction so that you can relax and let your full attention be absorbed in your inner experience. Meet with your sitter for at least an hour or two on a day prior to your journey. Make sure your sitter knows as much as possible about you, your issues, and your history. The sitter must agree to keep confidential your information and everything that happens during the journey. Take this time to share your fears about doing journeywork and any concerns about working with your sitter, regardless of how silly or insignificant they seem. Sharing journeyspace with a sitter provides an opportunity to connect with and practice being open, vulnerable, and totally honest with an attentive, caring, non-judgmental human being. The relationship with the sitter becomes a safe space in which your interpersonal issues can emerge and heal. In a hundred ways, a skilled, experienced practitioner can help you step around the many potholes and dangerous road conditions that come up in journeys. Sitters will have knowledge, tools, and techniques that enable them to make precise interventions and comments to help you in your healing. Effective guides will have done extensive work on healing their own trauma and will be both knowledgeable and experienced in psychotherapeutic and altered state shadow work. Having a competent guide will substantially reduce the chance of your becoming retraumatized, which could leave you with the kind of damage that causes some people to turn their backs on this powerful mode of therapy. The use of the substances described in these pages is presently illegal in the USA and in many other countries. You will therefore find little in the way of advertising by practitioners in the field. Word of mouth is the most effective way to find a good sitter. Alternative healing practitioners are more likely than most to have encountered someone who does this kind of work. 6 GUIDELINES FOR THE SITTER You, as sitter, are performing an essential service. The journeyer is depending on you in deep and critical ways. If you are careless, inexperienced, or uninformed, you can cause serious psychological damage. What you do and say can have a profound effect on the outcome of the journey. Therefore, it is important that you review and fully understand these guidelines. Most of the healing that takes place will come from within the journeyer. A vast reservoir of healing intelligence resides within each person. Psychedelics allow that reservoir to open. Sitters must step back and allow journeyers to discover and follow their own inner wisdom and guidance. Every journey path is unique. If you have done journeywork yourself but have never been a sitter for others, you may expect and coax others to have experiences like yours. That would be a mistake. It's essential that you, as sitter, completely let go of personal agendas and rigid therapeutic formulas in order to support each journeyer's individual process. You must fearlessly accommodate new situations that may not fit any conventional theoretical framework. You must rigorously monitor any personal ego desires to be validated as a clever, knowledgeable guide. Avoid any temptation to play guru or brilliant therapist. Let the healing process unfold out of the journeyer's own inner direction and authority. Being a sitter is more of an art form than a science. While knowledge and experience are crucial, an ideal sitter needs to be sensitive, caring, and intuitive. A sitter’s job is mostly passive. However, sometimes judicious intervention or involvement is necessary. This section assumes that the intended sitter has little or no experience in sitting for another’s journey. However, many of the guidelines and suggestions will also be useful to the more experienced sitter. Keeping It Safe First and foremost, the sitter is present to insure that the journeyer does not get hurt or damage the journey setting. A journeyer who is releasing trauma may thrash about wildly or need to discharge anger by hitting something. The sitter should provide a punching bag or pillows to accommodate anger release, and make sure nothing in the room gets damaged. Suicidal or self-destructive impulses may occasionally arise during the journey of one who has been deeply traumatized. They may feel driven to hit or claw themselves, pull their hair, hit their head against a wall, etc. If the conduct could produce real injury, you should express concern and stop the self-harming impulses from being acted out. You might communicate, in a compassionate way, something like: “You’ve been hurt enough already. Please don’t hurt yourself.” The desire to die or feel physical pain is normally a defense against a frighteningly painful emotion or memory that is trying to come up. The fact that this underlying material is surfacing in the journey is good, because that means it's ready to be released. But the journeyer must be guided past self-destructive thoughts and be reassured that they are now an adult who is strong enough to face whatever comes up. A period of slow, regular breathing can help journeyers move past fear-based, self-destructive impulses and open them to the feeling or memory that's trying to come through. Sexual Boundaries NEVER ALLOW ANYTHING SEXUAL TO HAPPEN BETWEEN THE JOURNEYER AND THE SITTER. There's a very high statistical likelihood that a journeyer's psychological problems may be traced back to some form of sexual abuse or other sexual boundary violation in their past. This may be true even when journeyers have no memory of abuse or reason to suspect that any sexual trauma has ever happened to them. Because they have been abused, or because they are in an altered state, journeyers may have no sense of appropriate sexual boundaries. It's up to you to make sure those boundaries are never crossed for any reason. As sitter, you are in the position of a protective, caring parent to the journeyer. Even if he or she becomes seductive, asks you to participate in sexual healing, says they want or need this and know what they are doing, do NOT cross the sexual boundary. The reality is, this journeyer may be acting out past sexual trauma. Letting that happen in journeyspace would cause retraumatization and would permanently, irrevocably disrupt the relationship of trust and safety between sitter and journeyer. If a journeyer is being seductive, remind them in a kind way that there is a rule against any kind of sexual contact between you. For some people who have been deeply damaged, sexual engagement feels like the only way they can connect to others or to their own worth. They think their only value lies in their sexual desirability. To validate this destructive belief would do great harm. Explain that you understand the journeyer may believe they have to be desired to be valued, but that's not really true. Name the journeyer’s best traits, such as intelligence, sensitivity, talent, or courage, and say something like, “I admire these traits in you and hope you will come to see how valuable you are because of them.” Appropriate hugging, holding, and non-sexual touching can be hugely healing in journeyspace. As sitter, you must always ask the journeyer’s permission before initiating any sort of physical contact. There should be an agreement that if the journeyer starts to feel uncomfortable, contact from the sitter will stop or change as requested. You must be rigorously vigilant to be sure that your physical contact with the journeyer does not come from your own needs or desires. There is a line that you, as sitter, should never cross. If you don’t know where that line is, or if you feel you could be tempted to cross that line, decline right up front to sit for the journeyer. If you are journeying with a significant other with whom you have an established, trusting sexual relationship, the line will be different than with a casual acquaintance, friend, or therapist. The ability of psychedelics to bypass shame, suppress inhibitions, soften body armor, amplify sensual stimuli, and rewire neural pleasure pathways in the brain can make them highly effective in sexual healing work. Until you’ve had experience doing journeywork together without sexual touch, however, you might not recognize the risks you are taking. The journey setting needs to be a safe, confidential, non-shaming space where natural eroticism is celebrated and journeyers feel free to talk openly about sex. They need to be able to discuss fantasies, desires, inhibitions, and to confess shameful or deviant sexual attractions or behaviors. They may need to feel their own genitals or get naked. As sitter, you must never impose your own sexual morals, sex-negative beliefs, judgments, or hang-ups on the journeyer. On rare occasions, a journeyer may feel a genuine need to explore their own genitals or masturbate in order to heal early sexual shaming or to consciously inhabit their genitals. Be sure the journeyer is using masturbation to heal, and not to escape disturbing feelings or memories that are coming up in the work. If the person is a sex addict, they may habitually masturbate to avoid facing their feelings. Don’t let that happen in journeyspace; focus them back on the experience they were having when the desire to masturbate came up. If the journeyer is not acting out sexual addiction or using the sitter as an object of desire, this impulse should be allowed within mutually comfortable boundaries. For example, you can drape a sheet over the journeyer, you may turn your back, or you may temporarily leave the room. Presence Journeyers whose feelings and thoughts were not seen, heard, or taken seriously when they were children, will need your complete attention and emotional attunement. This makes journeyspace a deeply corrective experience in which the journeyer feels supported by a completely available, patient, interested, accepting, surrogate parent. This helps them develop a sense of self-worth, and it opens up their ability to receive from others. In journeyspace, those who feel self-conscious and anxious relating to others can learn to relax and feel confident in the presence of an amicable sitter. The sitter must be authentic and sincere. In an altered state, journeyers can easily detect false comments and demeanor. Your presence as sitter is important for the journey as a whole, but there may be times when the journeyer will want privacy. Honoring that is part of being a good surrogate parent. If it seems safe to do so, you may agree to leave the room for a while. The journeyer can call you back in when ready, or there can be an agreement for you to check back in after a period of time. Focusing Coach One of the sitter’s jobs is to keep the journeyer from intellectualizing, spacing out, or avoiding uncomfortable issues and feelings. Sometimes, journeyers will ask the sitter to help them focus; more often, the sitter will have to sense when there's a need for it and take the initiative. Beginning journeyers often believe they must cognitively monitor and understand what's going on during the session in order to heal. They may need frequent coaching to suspend their mind's need to know, and to trust the inner intelligence of their body and psyche. The time to analyze and think about the experience is after the journey is over. Many journeyers process feelings and memories by talking about them as they come up. This can go on for hours, and it's fine. But constant talking that reflects thinking or figuring things out intellectually can be an avoidance tactic rather than a method of processing. If it looks like that's what's going on, try focusing the journeyer's attention on their breath and into their body. You can also remind them that thinking gets in the way of feeling, and feeling is the true guide on a journey. Journeyers who have caretaker or co-dependent tendencies may need reminding to stay focused on themselves, rather than get distracted about fixing other people. Journeyers could have a hard time surrendering into an altered state. Or they may become stuck in a fearful place during the journey and not be able to move forward. At these times, you may need to offer frequent reassurance, saying, “It’s okay; you’re safe. I'm here holding your hand.” You may also remind them they can trust the wisdom of the medicine, their body, and their Higher Self. During difficult parts of the journey, you will likely need to coach the journeyer to breathe fully. Deep, deliberate, steady breathing carries the journeyer past fear and thinking, deep into the truth and the healing spaces of the unconscious. Coach the journeyer with gentle, verbal reminders to breathe or remind them to breathe by breathing out loud yourself. When journeyers suddenly get nauseous, or drift off into thinking or daydreaming, it generally means they're close to traumatic memories they are afraid to explore. Motivate journeyers to persevere by informing them that they are approaching a valuable healing opportunity. Get them back on course by urging them to breathe. Let them know they are strong enough now to handle whatever comes up. Right in the middle of recovering a traumatic memory, a journeyer may space out and forget what just happened or where they are in the unfolding memory. They may need reminders and coaching to focus them back into the experience. You can ask questions like, “What happens next?” “Who is in the room with you?” “How old do you feel?” “Is it daytime or nighttime?” and so on. People who were physically, sexually or verbally abused as children often learned to dissociate or “space out” to escape the pain of their experience. When that pain starts to be remembered or felt in journeyspace, it's essential that they stay present in their body to feel, process and release it, as opposed to denying or escaping it. Some sort of physical contact, massage, or bodywork may help them stay grounded, but be sure you ask first if it's okay to touch them. If touching would interfere, you can coach journeyers to rub their arms or legs, or stretch, or bicycle their legs in the air, whatever keeps them feeling that they are in a body. A person’s body will often signal where trauma is stored by creating physical pain in that place. So if someone shows up for a journey talking about how stiff their hip is or how tight they feel around their heart, take note. Take note also if they become suddenly aware of a physical pain during the journey. In either case, help the journeyer focus attention into the painful place. With sustained attention, the sensation of pain can become a guide into a trauma that has been buried in the body for many years. Coach the journeyer to stay focused and breathe into the pain. A sitter might say something like, “The pain is a part of you that's like a hurt little child. It needs your love and attention in order to feel better. Imagine that with each inhale you are sending fresh oxygen and healing into the pain.” If the journeyer finds it hard to maintain focus, you might ask about the size and intensity of the pain or if it has a color, an emotion, a message, or any visual image or words coming from it. Coaching is best communicated as reminders and suggestions, not commands. A sitter might say something like, “You might try experimenting with focusing your attention into the painful place and explore what you find there.” To avoid performance anxiety in journeyers who are new to this type of work, the sitter can suggest that they may or may not find something to experience by focusing into the painful place. If it becomes clear that the journeyer is not yet ready to focus, the sitter should respect the person’s natural pace and let it go for a while. After having some time to digress, talk, joke, or follow their own inner guidance, journeyers may be more ready to tackle the defended, scary places. If a person is having a difficult journey, they might be feeling more terror, anguish, and emotional pain than they’ve ever felt in their life. Their body may involuntarily spasm, shake, or thrash about. This is a healing process, but it won't feel that way to them! They'll need the sitter’s calming reassurance that this is a cathartic release of stuff they've been holding in their bodies. Let journeyers know that if they allow themselves to really feel it, they are moving through it, processing it, and letting it go forever. The more trauma they allow themselves to feel now, the lighter and happier they'll be for the rest of their life. It may be helpful for the sitter to explain that being willing to surrender to these hellish feelings is like moving through a long, dark tunnel. Let them know that if they stay with the feelings, they will eventually come out into the light on the other side. After many hours of an arduous, turbulent shadow journey, there will usually be a positive shift into a rewarding, peaceful experience. Often this happens toward the end of a journey; other times it may show up in the next few days. When journeyers are experiencing trauma, your job as sitter is first and foremost to stay calm. Anything you see is OK. Don't try to stop or fix the experience. Let it play out. Inspire the journeyer to keep going. You may need to offer reassurance, soothing touch, and a sense of safety during challenging moments. You can support them through difficult episodes with phrases such as these: “You are safe, now. It’s safe to feel these feelings.” “These are old feelings. You're not in danger here and now.” “Keep breathing and feeling. You're doing great work.” “You’re being really brave to feel these feelings. You’re getting through a lot.” “Stay with it, keep going.” “You will get through this; you are stronger than you think.” If it’s clear the journeyer is becoming overwhelmed, you might say something like, “You have control over these feelings. You can take a break, if you really need to.” A journeyer may sometimes become very still and quiet for long periods of time. They're not falling asleep, but are seemingly engrossed in some inner world. A lot of good work may be going on inside, and it's best not to interrupt that. Generally people move out of it on their own. But the stillness may also suggest a dissociated (spaced-out) state, in which no healing work is being done. If you're not sure if the journeyer is spacing out or deeply engaged in a productive experience, allow the silence to go on for a period of time, say 15 minutes. Beyond that, you might gently ask, “I’d like to check in with you. What’s going on?” It may be that their inner experience is profoundly spiritual or hugely healing for them, and they may be able to let you know. If it becomes clear that the journeyer is avoiding real work by dissociating, bring it to their attention and suggest some things to get them back into the room and back into their body. Deep, even breathing will generally bring them back, but it may not. You don’t want to force them to do anything. You might try saying something like, “Be aware that you are dissociating. Don't beat yourself up about it, but when you catch yourself spacing out, gently bring your attention back into your body and breath.” Or you might say, “I want you to get the most out of your session today. I wonder if this might be a good time to re-focus on your intentions.” Sometimes, people need to dissociate for a while to let their nervous system calm down because they are on the cusp of some really scary work or are consciously or unconsciously overwhelmed. It's important for the sitter to honor this, but if it goes on more than 20 minutes, it is a waste of valuable session time. Time is relative for the journeyer. In an altered state so much can be happening inside that ten minutes may seem like an hour, or an hour can seem like ten minutes. Prior to the journey, the journeyer may identify certain areas of work or inquiry they wish to explore during the session. These areas may be promptly forgotten once the journey begins, and the first couple hours may be taken up with more urgent issues that have emerged. If there is a period later in the journey when the main work seems to be done and nothing new is coming up, the sitter may choose to remind the journeyer about one of those areas. Valuable exploration may be done when the person is still in an altered state. Healing Comments When people talk about “expanded awareness” in regard to psychedelics, they mean that these substances, when used properly, can let people see past the constrictions, absurdities, and fallacies of their prior social conditioning. The mind-expanding properties of psychedelics allow journeyers to be open and receptive to correcting erroneous, self-deprecating beliefs about themselves. Corrective, healing moments that would take years to open up in psychoanalysis or psychodynamic psychotherapy often occur in one or two sessions of psychedelic therapy. This is one of the things that makes psychedelics so powerful as a therapeutic tool. In journeyspace, the journeyer’s inner wisdom may focus their attention on certain strongly conditioned beliefs about themselves and others that do not reflect reality. For instance, as a result of early family and societal events, journeyers may believe they are inferior, incompetent, or downright worthless. They may believe no one will ever care what they think or what they need. As a result, when someone has listened to, respected and cared for them, they have not been able to take it in. In journeyspace, the person will be able to see and discard such self-destructive patterns of thought and feeling, realizing they arose out of damaging childhood events. A sitter’s carefully placed, corrective comment at a critical moment can activate this insight. For example, when a survivor of childhood abuse is feeling they were intrinsically bad and deserving of punishment, the sitter can help them re-frame this archaic belief by pointing out that it was the perpetrator who was bad. Simple, affirming statements like “Everything about you is good” can sink deeply into the unconscious mind at this time in the journey because the expanded mind is able to see that it could be true. You might repeat the statement several times to give the shift time to take place. Another time is when someone in journeyspace is feeling the pain of their neglected inner child’s core belief that he or she is unlovable. They can revise that belief with the help of true statements like “You were lovable, but your parents did not have the love you needed” or “There is nothing wrong with you. There was something wrong with your parents.” Another journeyer, who was neglected or abused as a child, may hold a deep belief that no one cares about their welfare. At the point in the session when they are feeling the pain of that belief, simple statements like “You matter” can help them let go of it. When a journeyer is remembering childhood events where developmentally normal sexual curiosity and exploration were shamed, punished, or suppressed, a sitter can interject a supportive comment that normalizes and celebrates budding childhood sexuality. If the journeyer is feeling hopeless at the emerging realization of how damaged they are, a simple and true statement like “There is much more to you than your damage” can put things in perspective. Sometimes it's appropriate for the sitter to keep quiet and let the journeyer feel like a bad person. If the journeyer becomes aware that they acted without integrity or thoughtlessly hurt someone, allow time for them to be remorseful. If the sitter says anything, it might be “I believe you need to feel that.” Re-parenting Sometimes journeyers may spontaneously age-regress. They become soft and vulnerable, like a little child. They may even act and talk in a child-like manner. When this happens, a nurturing bond with the sitter provides a rare opportunity to fulfill unmet or inadequately met early childhood developmental needs. Being held and comforted with tender, non-sexual touch and soothing, parental words of unconditional love is profoundly healing for adults who were emotionally neglected as children. MDMA is especially effective at opening a window in time through which a caring sitter can re-parent a journeyer who felt unloved as a child. Those who were never securely attached or bonded with their mother may experience a deep, symbiotic melting when being cradled in the sitter’s embrace. For some, this may be the first time they have ever let in love. Gentle back rubs, belly rubs, hugs, and foot massages are calming. Having a hand to hold helps in the scary moments. A teddy bear, baby bottle, and pacifier can be deeply soothing. Those who were never held as children, or were never given safe, loving touch, may not know they need nurturing contact when distressed. The sitter may have to intuit their need for comfort and then initiate appropriate, tender touch. Remember, you must always ask the journeyer permission before initiating any sort of physical contact. There should be a prior agreement that if the journeyer expresses discomfort, the contact will stop or change. You must be sure that your physical contact with the journeyer does not come from your own needs or desires. A sitter's loving, parental gaze and voice tone that acknowledges the journeyer's suffering can be deeply healing. A sitter might say something like one of these: “That must have really hurt.” “I’m so sad that happened to you. You didn't deserve that.” “If I were your parent, I would never let anybody hurt you.” In order to have deep impact, these words must come from a place of heartfelt empathy within the sitter. Most psychological wounds can be traced back to a lack of love. Therefore, love is the ultimate healer. If you are raised by wolves, you will act like a wolf. If you are raised by parents who only validate the parts of you they like, you will create a false self to get their love and approval. If your parents only praise academic achievement, athletic ability, physical attractiveness, or monetary success, there may be vital parts of your authentic self that lie dormant. A sitter can observe and mirror back parts of the journeyer's natural self that may not have been seen or supported by their parents. Qualities such as goodness, sensitivity, intuition, depth, creativity, integrity, psychic ability, and an innate connection to spirit can be acknowledged and supported by the sitter. Witness/Record Keeper A sitter should be an attentive, attuned observer of everything that unfolds during a journey. Keep a record of what takes place and when. Make note of medicines, dosages, and times taken. Note observable body language, energy shifts, releases, words spoken, discussions during the journey, and anything else that may seem important to report after the journey is over. Sometimes the journeyer won't remember parts of the session. They may have exhibited significant body movements and activities that they were not aware of during the journey. As a witness, the sitter can document and report these observations. A review of notes after the journey can help jog the journeyer’s memory of moments that deserve attention. Such information can help uncover patterns and promote insight. In the days after a journey, some people find it valuable to review and process audio or video recordings of their session. Deejay Softly played background music can have a powerful effect in journeyspace. Appropriate music can help keep the mind quiet, promote relaxation, and evoke emotional responses. Most music should be ambient, instrumental, and non-intrusive. Soft chanting in foreign languages, Kirtan, and trance-inducing drumming are OK. Sometimes, more dynamic, emotionally evocative music may help the journeyer access deeper feeling states. Musical options should be discussed before the session begins. Some journeyers will prefer quiet. Even if the journeyer has requested quiet, it can be beneficial to introduce certain kinds of music at appropriate times. For instance, when repressed grief needs to be felt, sad music encourages deeper feeling. Conversely, if a journeyer is accessing primal strengths, upbeat music with drumming can encourage empowerment. But be careful: As deejay, the sitter should play music that supports or enhances the journeyer’s unfolding experience rather than programming it. Music should be carefully pre-screened to avoid anything remotely ominous or dark. Scary music can unnecessarily plunge a journeyer into a bleak place. Music that works for one person might have no effect on another, or it might even be intolerable. A song that brought out a river of tears on one journey might be experienced on the same person's next journey as an irritation. The sitter should always let it be known that music can be stopped or changed if it is not working for the journeyer. Outside Contact Sometimes, a journeyer may want to call, text, or go see someone right in the middle of a journey. This is never a good idea. Get them to wait until the journey is over. If they make a call, the journeyer is unlikely to remember what they said. They may scare or alienate the person they are calling, and there may be a lot of difficult explaining to do later. Don’t let them do it. If the journeyer wants to go outside during a journey, it may or may not be a good idea. If you have a private back yard, live in a natural setting, or have isolated nature nearby, this can be a healing environment for journeywork. If, however, the journeyer insists on going to a public area, or to visit a neighbor, talk them out of it! This activity is distracting, potentially dangerous, and is unlikely to result in any productive healing work. Primitive Behavior Journeyers are likely to engage in behavior that might be called primitive. There can be screaming, wailing, thrashing, belching, passing gas, throwing up, unleashing furious rage, animalistic behavior, taking clothes off, etc. It's important for the sitter to remain calm, accepting, and supportive. Know that deep wounds can find release and healing through these primitive behaviors. If you are freaked out by what you see, the journeyer will immediately pick up on your revulsion and think they are doing something wrong. Be prepared for primitive behavior to come up, and show acceptance when it does. Magnified Transference Transference is the unconscious, irrational transfer onto others of positive or negative feelings, expectations, or qualities that were originally associated with significant persons in one’s past. Psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin can greatly amplify transference. The higher the dose, the greater the possibility that a journeyer’s childhood relationship issues will be re-created in a transference onto the sitter. Within the safety of the therapeutic relationship, transference allows repressed memories of childhood relational dynamics to be brought to awareness and worked through. For instance, in an altered state, journeyers may believe that the sitter is judging them, upset with them, or doesn’t truly care about them. The sitter should encourage the sharing of these feelings and perceptions. If needed, the sitter may gently correct the journeyer's erroneous projections (e.g., by saying “I am not upset with you”). The sitter can then encourage the journeyer to look in their past for the origin of their assumptions. For example, a journeyer believes that her expressions of deep emotional pain are being judged by the sitter. She imagines the sitter is thinking that she is acting or being dramatic. The sitter might respond with something like, “Your emotions feel very real to me, I’m sure you’re not acting. Your feelings are big and important. When you were a child, I wonder who made you feel like you were being dramatic?” During a journey, anger toward someone in the journeyer’s past who hurt or abused them may be transferred onto the sitter. This is most likely to happen when the perpetrator was a parent or caregiver. On rare occasions, journeyers may scream angry accusations at the sitter. This is a challenge for even the most compassionate sitter. The sitter must stay calm, not get defensive, not retaliate, not take it personally, and not distance from the journeyer. The journeyer should be allowed to express anger as long as it is not physically abusive to the sitter or destructive to the environment. People living with Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities) and Borderline Personality Disorder usually have angry, distrusting parts of themselves that may emerge and direct their hatred onto the sitter. Psychedelic work can be effective in treating Dissociative Identity Disorder, but it is NOT recommended for Borderline Personality Disorder. Repressed memories can sometimes show up as transference hallucinations. Scenarios from the journeyer's past can be projected onto the sitter. For example, a woman is journeying with a male therapist. During the journey she regresses into a frightened little girl. Her body shakes, she curls up in fetal position and sucks her thumb. She looks at the sitter with frightened eyes. The sitter asks, ”Are you afraid of me?” She replies, “Yes, you are looking at me sexually and playing with yourself.” An objective part of her is aware that the sitter is not actually doing this, but this is what she is seeing and feeling. The sitter assures her this is untrue and encourages her to stay with the scary experience. When she is coming down from the drugs she processes the experience with the sitter. She begins to understand the transference as an important stage in uncovering and healing her early childhood sexual abuse. In high-dose psychedelic therapy, the ideal is to have two sitters, one male and one female. This way, if the journeyer starts projecting negative transference onto one of the sitters and starts feeling unsafe, the other sitter can take over. The sitter should NEVER role-play a perpetrator from the journeyer's past. Verbally or physically acting a role as a technique to trigger emotions or memories of past trauma is dangerous. In an altered state, the journeyer may lose the ability to tell the difference between the perpetrator in the past and the present person of the sitter. When this happens, the journeyer will feel completely unsafe and will be re-traumatized. Patience Being a sitter requires patience. You will be devoting six to eight hours (occasionally more) to being present and attentive to the journeyer. You may need to listen, be attuned and responsive to hours of verbal processing. There may be hours of intense emotional catharsis and somatic releasing. There may be repetitive ranting in which the same phrases or expletives are repeated over and over again for hours. There may be hours of silence when journeyers are deeply engrossed in internal experiences. When it appears that nothing important is happening, you will need patience, wisdom, and restraint not to interfere prematurely or inappropriately to make something happen. Although these times can be tedious for the sitter, your presence is crucial for the important work that is going on inside the journeyer. Psychedelically-assisted psychotherapy is an extremely accelerated modality. Many people's lives improve markedly from a single session. However, some wounds still take a long time to heal. If you are working with those who have known enormous or prolonged trauma, you will need to be patient and supportive for healing processes that may take years to complete. Also, certain therapies may take quite a few journeys just to get off the ground. Here are some things you may face: It may take a few sessions for a neophyte journeyer to feel safe being open and vulnerable in altered states, even when the medicine is MDMA. Working with those who have early childhood attachment and bonding wounds may require many journeys devoted to building a foundation of connection and trust within the therapeutic relationship. Initial journeys need to be gentle, positive experiences. You must establish a basic infrastructure of strength before delving into traumatic material. You may need to work slowly through psychological defenses before it is possible to access and heal core issues. Rigid individuals who need to stay in control will have the most difficulty letting go into an altered state. They may unconsciously fight the drug for the entire journey. These highly defended people seldom experience the full effect of the drug. They may experience intense anxiety and/or a variety of unpleasant psychosomatic symptoms. When journeyers are resistant to treatment and are not getting results, a frustrated sitter should NEVER blame the journeyer. Never make comments like, “You aren't trying hard enough.” There are always painful origins for strong defenses. Be patient and compassionate. Being a sitter is exciting, fascinating, sacred work but it's often draining, sometimes tedious, and occasionally boring. Spiritual Support An ideal sitter must be able to support, understand, and validate any spiritual experiences and epiphanies that emerge in journeywork. It's essential for the sitter to work within the journeyer’s personal spiritual or religious paradigms. To validate the journeyer's experience, it may occasionally help if the sitter shares personal spiritual experiences, wisdom, or beliefs. The sitter should clearly state that these are personal experiences and beliefs, not absolute truths. It is never appropriate for the sitter to impose their beliefs on the journeyer. Silence is Golden A sitter should always refrain from excessive talking. In an altered state, the journeyer is often too deep inside themself to engage in a real dialogue, and too high to follow complex conversation. Journeyers are highly suggestible and vulnerable, so be very careful what you say. Do not preach, analyze, interpret, or engage in intellectual discourse. Keep comments short. Speak in simple language. A judicious amount of guidance and support from an experienced sitter can be important, but when in doubt, don't say anything. The Sitter’s Pre-journey Briefing It's a good idea for the sitter to communicate rules and guidelines before the start of a first session with a new journeyer. This can eliminate unnecessary confusion, fears, concerns, and ambiguities during the journey. The following is a sample directive used by the author: 1. There is no right way to do journeys. Everyone is different; every journey is different. You can experiment with going deeper by closing your eyes, breathing, and focusing on your inner world. 2. You may get deep insights and clarity during the journey, but the most profound healing and transformation often happens beyond words or thinking. Thus, results may not become evident until the days or weeks following the journey. 3. I (the sitter) do not have a universal treatment plan that I will impose on your experience. I believe each person has their own, unique healing path, inner wisdom, and guidance. I will support that. 4. If I am being too directive or talking too much, it's important that you let me know. Conversely, if I am silent, and you need guidance or help, let me know that. 5. If I say or do something that annoys you, pisses you off, or makes you feel unsafe, it is VERY important to let me know. My feelings will not be hurt. If you hold your feelings in, we could miss some important issue that needs to be explored. Unspoken discord between us can seriously compromise the success of the journey. 6. I am very interested in hearing about your unfolding journey experience, but there is no need to report everything to me. If a lot is happening internally, stopping to talk about it can remove you from the experience. It's like being on a roller coaster while trying to have a conversation with your ride partner. If there is something important you want to share or make sure you'll remember later, tell me and I will write it down. We can always talk about your experience after the session. 7. The only directive I may be somewhat relentless about is making sure you are aware of your breath and fully breathing. Focusing on your breath helps keep your chattering mind quiet by giving it something simple and hypnotic to focus on. Breathing helps relax chronic constrictions, allowing emotions and traumatic memories to surface and release. Breathing keeps the healing process moving. 8. Make sure to let me know if you need a drink of water or are uncomfortable, too cold or hot. I have blankets, fans, etc., to insure your comfort. 9. You may choose to have silence or some appropriate, non-intrusive journey music to help you relax. If you have opted for music, but it's not working for you, let me know so I can change it or turn it off. If you have chosen silence, I may, at my discretion, put on some music I think might help you get deeper into an emerging feeling. For example, if you need to feel deeper into some grief or pain, I may put on sad music to help elicit tears. If the music is not right, let me know. 10. There are boundaries on appropriate behavior within your session. Touch: If you need a hand to hold or some other comforting touch, ask for it. I will never touch you without first asking if you are OK with it. If you become uncomfortable with our contact at any time let me know and I will stop. Sex: It's OK to honor and work with sexual feelings and material that comes up, but there will NEVER be anything sexual allowed between us. Anger: This is a safe place to release repressed anger. I'm comfortable with it and encourage it. It’s OK to scream as loud as you want, and I have a punching bag, etc., if needed. My boundaries are that you are not allowed to harm me or damage my stuff. 11. Sitter’s needs: I will need to go to the bathroom now and then. I will need to eat something at some point during the journey. I may need to stand and stretch occasionally. I will be with you the entire journey unless you need private space. If you need time alone I will stay within earshot. Let me know when you want me back. 12. Everything that happens and is said here will remain confidential. 13. If you are taking a high dose of psilocybin, at some point in the journey you may believe you are going crazy or dying. It may feel very real and frightening. I assure you that this is a safe, transformational process that will wind down as the drug wears off. 7 GUIDELINES FOR THE PROFESSIONAL PSYCHOTHERAPIST If a patient of yours has expressed an interest in using psychedelics for emotional healing, you will want to know about safety and efficacy. Many of your questions can be addressed by learning about the numerous government-approved studies undertaken in the past few years. The best resource for this is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies website (www.MAPS.org). Regarding safety, two questions are paramount. First, is it physically safe for your patient to ingest LSD, psilocybin (mushrooms), and/or MDMA (ecstasy)? Research conforming to modern drug-development standards has been conducted regarding the safety of each of these substances in its pure form. None has been shown to have lasting toxicity. In practice, responsible psychedelic users take into account that LSD and MDMA have stimulant effects. Although there are no reported cases of injury from using these substances in journeys, caution makes psilocybin the best choice for journeyers who have high blood pressure or other heart-related conditions. Second, as a result of things that have happened when unstable people used psychedelics recreationally, some wonder whether these drugs can ever be psychiatrically safe. When practiced using the guidelines in this manual, psychedelic therapy is safe for normally functioning people. Psychedelic substances do their work by allowing people to bypass their usual defenses. Some people are already too open and uncontained to live a stable life. Psychedelic therapy would do them no good, and might impair their already shaky functioning. With rare exceptions, the following people should not use psychedelics, even in a controlled therapeutic setting: 1. Those who have been diagnosed as having a personality disorder. 2. Those who have had manic or major depressive episodes significant enough to impair functioning or cause hospitalization. 3. Those who have periods of being actively suicidal, or who cut themselves or engage in similar self-harming behavior. 4. Those who have schizophrenic or other psychotic disorders. 5. Those with severely impaired impulse control. 6. Survivors of satanic ritual abuse. Psychedelic psychotherapy is an excellent treatment for adults who are so defended against or troubled by past trauma that they now suffer from anxiety, depression, and an inability to form satisfying relationships. We know this as Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Typically, it results from childhood physical, sexual or emotional abuse; rape; catastrophic accident or injury; and war. There are two things psychedelic therapy can offer, when it is used as an adjunct to psychoanalysis or psychotherapy, which likely will not be achieved through more conventional means. Its most gratifying effect occurs when a patient is truly stuck, unable to move forward in treatment or in life. One to three sessions of psychedelic therapy can safely expose buried feelings and memories to the light of day, where they can be processed and released or integrated during the session, or in the patient’s regular therapy once the door has been opened. Sometimes clients who are not completely stuck just don’t have the perseverance for conventional psychotherapy. Such a person may see psychedelic work as a way to speed up the healing process. This is accurate; it will. Applying psychedelic therapy at judicious intervals during the person’s work with you will ensure that the healing moves along at a good clip. Psychedelic therapy may occasionally expose repressed material faster than it can be adequately processed. Stay alert for signs that your client is becoming less stable. Point out these signs firmly, talk about the possible consequences of continuing, and ask your client to halt the psychedelic sessions until he or she has been able to integrate everything that has been unearthed so far. What if you want to do psychedelic psychotherapy with your own clients? Although a therapist’s sensibilities are helpful in any kind of healing work, there is little resemblance between the job of a professional psychotherapist and that of a sitter. The principal psychotherapist in psychedelic psychotherapy is the client’s inner wisdom. Trained psychotherapists find it difficult to stay silent and not try to help, but in a journey, therapeutic interventions can often interfere with an inwardly-guided process that is already well underway. You know that a psychotherapist, to be any good, must go through his or her own therapy first. Similarly, your client deserves a sitter who is personally familiar with psychedelic work. The way to understand what is and is not needed in a journey is to have been a journeyer yourself numerous times, assisted by an experienced sitter. Only in that way will you attain a sense of what is and is not constructive in the work of a sitter. 8 PREPARATION FOR THE JOURNEY A setting which both protects and supports the work is essential to a journey’s success. The most important things to organize in advance are sound considerations, appearance, comfort, and the arrangement of the physical space. Journey space must allow for noisy, cathartic venting because some people need to scream out their pain and rage during journeys. Often there is little or no warning. They might yell, wail, scream out obscenities, and make all kinds of animalistic, primitive sounds. Some people may have ten completely quiet, inward journeys, but on the eleventh they may go bonkers! Be prepared. A soundproof room would be ideal. Lacking that, if you have close neighbors, you would be well advised to prepare them. Let them know you will be having therapy (or acting class, or whatever) that could involve making loud noise, so they don't worry if they hear yelling or crying. This way you will not get a visit from the police or be interrupted by freaked-out neighbors concerned for your safety. If circumstances require you to keep things quiet, screaming into a pillow will muffle most of the sound. To the extent that you can, protect the journeyspace from the distraction of abrupt outside noise. For instance, on the day of the journey, don't schedule someone to repair the plumbing or use a chain saw to prune a tree on the property. If your next door neighbor is having a party, just close the windows. It will be fine as long as the journeyer knows the context for human noise. It may even bring up memories that move the journey forward. A journey room should be a cozy, pleasant, private space. A journeyer who becomes stuck in fear should be able to open their eyes and see things that support them to calm down and feel safe. An ideal journey room should have soft, soothing colors and fabrics, reassuring art and art objects, empowering religious or spiritual symbols, living plants, and gentle lighting. The space should allow the journeyer to move about, dance, do yoga, etc. It should have a comfortable area for reclining and relaxing; and it should be flexible. During parts of a session, the journeyer may want you to be very close. At other times, they may want you farther away or behind a barrier of pillows. Some people roll or thrash around during journeywork. As much as possible, the space where the journeyer will be working should be softly padded. A king or queen size mattress on a carpeted floor is ideal. Gym mats, floor pads, and assorted sized pillows may come in handy. Sharp objects, hard furniture with sharp edges, and breakable items should be kept away from the immediate journey space. Things You Will Need on the Journey Basics: The journeyer should wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothing. They should dress in layers to accommodate fluctuations of body temperature during the session. For the same reason, equip the room with extra sheets and blankets. To support the journey, there should be audio equipment for the sitter to play soft, non-intrusive instrumental or emotive music. Journeyers may bring their own personal music that evokes feelings or memories. Fan and/or heater. Water (in unbreakable bottles). Kleenex. A large bowl in case the journeyer needs to throw up. Use an unbreakable bowl with a flat bottom that won’t tip over easily. Two bowls are good. If the journeyer vomits into one bowl, you can replace it with a fresh, empty one without having to leave the journey room. A towel or two. A sleep mask or eye pillow to cover the eyes. A punching bag or a firm, heavy pillow to hit. Optional: Journeyers may bring childhood photos of themselves at different ages, plus photos of parents, siblings, and other significant persons. Recording device (audio or video). A favorite stuffed animal. Toys, dolls, puppets, etc. (for play therapy if journeyer is regressed). Drawing materials (crayons and a big sketch pad work well). Baby pacifier and baby bottle (for regressed states). Heating pad (soothing for hurting places on journeyer's body). Disposable, absorbent bed pads and/or adult diapers. (On rare occasions someone may have childhood toilet training issues or fears of letting go of bowel control during a journey. Having these on hand allows the journeyer and sitter to relax and not worry about this issue.) A rubber dog bone or something similar to bite down on (for primal anger work). Sacred objects or objects personally significant to the journeyer. A journey takes six to eight hours. The journeyer should set aside the rest of that day for recovery and integration. This time must be free from all commitments and obligations. On the day of the journey, it's essential there be no interruptions from visitors, delivery or service people, and the like. Turn off all phones during the time of the journey. If the journey takes place away from the journeyer’s home, they should arrange to have a friend drive them and pick them up. Even if they think they will be OK to drive after the journey, not having to worry about being sober enough to drive can help them relax more deeply into altered states during the journey. At least one day after the session should be reserved to rest and process the journey experience. This is best done alone. If there can be two or three days’ down time after the journey, all the better. 9 GUIDELINES FOR THE JOURNEYER Getting Started Avoid scary, violent media, and upsetting situations the day before your journey, if possible. Whatever you put into your consciousness may show up in your journey experience. Get a good night’s sleep the night before a journey, if possible. Conscious and unconscious anxiety about the journey may make sleep difficult. You might consider taking a moderate dose of Valium, melatonin or some herbal sleep formula to help. Expect to be anxious. You are heading into the unknown. The unknown is always scary. Anxiety may make you feel nauseous or sick. Even seasoned journeyers often experience anxiety before each new journey. Don't eat at least four hours prior to your journey. You will not feel hungry once the journey starts. Do not eat until after the session. If you are hypoglycemic, a three-hour fast will be adequate if your last meal is light (no meat). Eating too close to the time you take psychedelics will DRASTICALLY reduce the effect of the drugs, and may cause nausea. Prepare a meal that will be ready to eat after the journey. Wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothing. Turn off all phones. Make sure all obligations, including pets and children, will be someone else’s responsibility for the duration of your journey, and for some time thereafter. Bring your sitter up to date about any important new developments in your life that have not been previously discussed. Make sure to clear any fears or issues about going into journeyspace. Say a prayer and/or state your intentions. Your intention may be to address specific issues, or to simply trust the wisdom and guidance of a Higher Power. Take your planned medications, lie down or sit comfortably, and start breathing. Everyone will have different journey experiences. No two journeys for any one person will ever be alike either. So, the first hard and fast rule is that there are no hard and fast rules about how to journey. Coming On “Whenever there is a reaching down into innermost experience, into the nucleus of personality, most people are overcome by fright, and run away…. The risk of inner experience, the adventure of the spirit, is in any case, alien to most human beings.” ~ Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections If you have never taken psychedelics before or have had a bad experience with them in the past, approaching your psychedelic therapy session may be scary. The transition from a normal waking state to an altered state may be fraught with conscious or unconscious anxiety. It generally takes 45 minutes to an hour for most meds to start working. As you begin coming on, you'll probably feel anxious. Your heart rate may increase. You may tremble, tingle, become nauseous, hot, or chilled. If you feel the urge to vomit, try to keep it down for the first hour so you don’t throw up the medicine. You may experience an alarming rush of fear when the drug begins to take effect. Don’t panic. This will pass as you begin to feel safe and comfortable being in an altered state. To encourage the deepest possible passage into journeyspace, lie down, get cozy, and restrict extraneous talking. Close your eyes, if you are comfortable doing so. Begin quieting your mind by focusing on your breath. Yoga, stretching, or dance movement may help focus your attention out of your thoughts and into your body. Soft, meditative, instrumental music may help you relax. After coming on, the potency of the meds will build for the next hour or so. You will then have about three to four hours of prime working time before the drug starts winding down. Letting Go of Control “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” ~ Andre Gide Psychedelics are powerful keys that can unlock the natural healing intelligence within you. Psychedelic therapy works best when you can step out of the way and allow the healing to occur. The best approach is to set intentions about what issues need healing, then let go of expectations and ideas about how to fix these issues. Trust a deeper intelligence. The more you journey, the more you will come to trust this inner guidance. The idea of being under the influence of a mind-altering drug may seem dangerous. You may fear the drug will be in control, not you. If you are not in control, you may be afraid of experiencing something scary that you will not be able to handle. You may fear you will act in a way that will be embarrassing or destructive. You may be afraid of revealing parts of yourself that are hidden or repressed. You may fear being too honest, open, and vulnerable. You may be afraid that you’ll become addicted, permanently incapacitated, go crazy, or die. Rest assured, you will be able to relinquish control incrementally, at your own pace. If letting go into a deeper experience becomes scary, reassuring words and nurturing contact from your sitter may help. Guided meditations and peaceful music may also promote letting go. If you are feeling overwhelmed, you can keep your eyes open and pay attention to something pleasurable. Letting go into an altered state feels like falling asleep to some people. Rest assured that your sitter will awaken you if you do fall asleep. With practice, you will begin to trust that you have control if things get scary. Moderate doses of psychedelics can be willfully controlled. If you are afraid of encountering inner demons, know that your psyche will present to awareness only as much difficult material as you can presently handle. Beyond that point you will usually space out, get distracted, or become sober. Staying Out of Your Head Your intellect is an amazing computer. Give it a task and it can do marvelous things. Left to run on its own, it can drive you crazy. The best advice for getting the most out of a journey is to stay out of your incessantly chattering mind. The first step towards getting out of your head is to realize that you are in it! In journeyspace you may become acutely aware of how thinking distracts you from deeper experiences. Unless you are an accomplished meditator, holding your attention beyond your thoughts will be a challenge. To discipline a scattered mind you must focus your attention like a laser beam. Concentration on the rhythmic rising and falling of your chest and belly directs awareness out of your head and into your body. Deep breathing also softens chronic muscle tension and lowers anxiety, allowing access to blocked emotions and the body's own healing wisdom. In the course of a journey you may experience waves of exciting insight. Familiar ideas may suddenly be understood in startling new ways. Psychological concepts you’ve understood intellectually may suddenly be felt experientially. You may receive fresh perspectives and revelations about issues, situations, and problems you have been grappling with for years. Profound realizations may pop up out of the blue. This whirlwind of new information is exhilarating to the intellect. A rush of thoughts can keep your attention engrossed in your head. Your mind may delight in pondering the significance of all this titillating new information. In journeyspace it is usually difficult to follow lengthy trains of thought, but it is still possible to get lost in your head for long periods of time. Every time you stop to analyze your experience during a journey, you interrupt the ongoing experience. Analyzing is different than insight. Analysis is a directed, time-consuming process that uses the left brain to understand something. Insight that emerges in journeyspace is a spontaneous “Aha!” phenomenon. It’s like a light bulb switched on in a darkened room. You may want to make an audio recording of your journey so important insights can be verbalized and recorded as they occur. This way, you are free to stay present during the journey, knowing you can remember and reflect upon insights later, when the recording is played back. If you were traumatized as a bright child, you may have escaped into your head to avoid feeling the neglect or abuse you endured. You may have become a bookworm or an A student. As an adult, you may ruminate as a way to avoid painful feelings. You may have split off from your embodied, emotional self, into the safe world of your mind. When this happens, your mind can become a tyrannical devil with a will of its own. Its mission is to perpetually distract you from painful memories and feelings--regardless of the cost. Your mind will convince you that letting go of its protective control is dangerous. Encountering Defenses If you feel sober, restless, hungry, chatty, or sleepy, you are probably encountering defenses. If you feel compelled to flee or order pizza, recognize these impulses as resistance. There are many forms of resistive behavior. The most common is the unwillingness or inability to stay out of your head. Exciting thoughts, insights, and fantasies can distract you from deeper growth and healing. Another common form of resistance is the unwillingness or inability to stay focused on intent. You may drift off into daydreams or feel compelled to engage in diversionary activities or thoughts in order to avoid dealing with more uncomfortable situations, issues and feelings. Spiritually oriented people may habitually resist exploration of their body and negative emotions. They may prefer to float in a state of transcendent bliss. This can be a valid, transformational experience for some, but a form of avoidance and escape for others. Some degree of resistance is normal for everyone. It may last only a short time and dissipate without much effort. Overcoming Defenses You will need sincere commitment and discipline to get through persistent defenses. The most universally effective way to soften resistance is to breathe deeply and continuously. Full, unimpeded breathing means both the chest and abdomen rise and fall with each inhale and exhale in a gentle, rhythmic sequence. During inhalation the abdomen begins to swell slightly before the chest expands. Effort is concentrated on inflating the belly and the chest. During exhalation the chest begins to deflate before the abdomen. The breath is released effortlessly, not pushed out with force. If you are a shallow breather, you may find deep breathing difficult or even painful at first. Shallow breathing is a common defense mechanism that can minimize bad feelings. If you grew up in an unsafe environment, your diaphragm and rib cage may be chronically “frozen in fear.” You may have learned to hold your breath to stop unwanted feelings. Deep breathing reverses this process. It unlocks the rib cage and diaphragm. It allows you to move through defenses and feel emotions. To move beyond anxious defenses, try focusing your attention inside your body to find where you feel the fear. You may discover jittery sensations or tightness in your belly, for example. With each inhalation, imagine that you are sending peace and healing into the frightened areas. Imagine releasing the fear with each exhalation. Breathing deeply into places in your body where you hold fear promotes calm, and induces the discharge of trauma that may be stored there. There are other ways to soften defenses. Ask your sitter for comforting physical contact that feels safe and calming (like holding hands or being held). Hug a teddy bear. Visualize yourself in a peaceful setting in your mind’s eye. For example, you could imagine yourself romping through soft grasses in a spring meadow, or lounging on a secluded, tropical beach. This can be a familiar place you’ve been or a fantasy you make up. Immerse all your senses in this experience. Imagine feeling the warm sand under your feet, smell the ocean breeze, etc. If you believe in a higher power, call on the presence of that power for protection and comfort. Do not criticize or belittle yourself for being fearful. Underneath our tough adult armor we are all scared little children. A man who is fearless on the battlefields of war and business may be terrified to be soft and vulnerable. Appreciate that your defenses have been vital, protective mechanisms that allowed you to survive trauma. Psychological defenses may be the cornerstones that have supported your internal status quo. Your very survival may feel threatened by disturbing this status quo. In the face of overwhelming trauma, defenses act like internal circuit-breakers that protect the fragile psyche. Dismantling defenses may feel like re-exposing yourself to the terror of certain annihilation. To illustrate this concept, imagine you are a two year-old child playing at the seashore. A storm begins to generate terrifying, six foot waves that could easily drown you. To protect yourself, you build a six foot-high wall between you and the menacing surf. As years go by, you grow stronger and taller. The wall has successfully protected you from being drowned. Today you are nearly a six foot-tall adult who can swim, yet you have never dared dismantle the wall. Inside you are still a vulnerable little two-year old who is terrified of six-foot waves. To unblock resistance, it's often helpful to remind your frightened inner child that you now have the strength, wits and resources to survive six-foot waves. The experience of wrestling defenses is not limited to the beginning of journeys. Defenses will arise whenever you approach scary new issues, traumatic memories, or uncomfortable situations. The amount and intensity of resistance is often directly proportionate to the amount and intensity of that which is resisted. You will strongly resist dealing with that which is most traumatic or uncomfortable to deal with. The greater the trauma, the stronger the defenses. If you encounter strong defenses, know that you are getting very close to something traumatic that is ready to be healed. To move through stubborn defenses you may need to change or augment the medicines you are using. So, for example, you encounter strong defenses during a journey in which you have not already taken the maximum dose of MDMA (about 200 mg). Taking additional MDMA at this stuck point may move you through defenses. An additional 50 to 75 mg may be sufficient. It's a good idea for the sitter to have these smaller doses prepared in advance for such emergencies. If you are working with LSD or psilocybin, you may need to increase the dosage of these meds to get beyond defenses. If you are not able to break through resistance, just be aware that you are confronting your own defenses. You may have intellectual knowledge of psychological defenses, but never consciously experienced them in action. Awareness of when and how you unconsciously avoid scary feelings can be an important insight and the beginning of change. Working through strong defenses may take time. You can't force it. Attempts to blast through defenses before you are ready will result in retraumatizing. Learn to work gently, honoring your psyche's own wisdom and pace. 10 RESTORING SANITY WITH THE PEAK EXPERIENCE Traditional psychotherapy and psychoanalysis concentrates on exploring what Carl Jung called the “shadow.” The shadow is the unconscious part of ourselves we deny or repress. Parts of our shadow may contain painful, frightening thoughts, feelings, and sensations, and disturbing memories of childhood trauma that create problems for us as adults. Traditional therapy attempts to bring this unconscious material into conscious awareness so it can be dealt with. Psychological healing with psychedelic drugs involves not only this shadow work, but also includes what is called the “peak experience.” The peak experience is a sampling of how we might feel and perceive life if we had never been programmed or traumatized. It's an experience of peace, relaxation, and connection with Spirit. It is a fresh, “here and now” experience of the joy of existing without the fears, anxiety, neuroses, judgments, and conceptualizations that habitually contaminate our perception of reality. Words cannot adequately describe the places you may visit in non-ordinary states of consciousness. They are sacred experiences of sanity that can be remembered and used as reference points to cultivate and learn to reproduce without the drug as we heal and evolve. The peak experience may be likened to rare days in Los Angeles, when strong winds clear out the smog. During this time you can see mountains and trees you never knew were there. Most of us have grown accustomed to living in a stressful, alienating, toxic fog for so long we are unaware of how dangerously out of balance, tense, and crazy we have become. The beauty of psychedelic drugs is that within an hour or two, you can be lifted high above the fog into an experience of profound peace and sanity. Having such a peak experience can deeply enrich, balance, and transform your life. Being “How narrow is the vision that exalts the business of the ant above the singing of the grasshopper.” ~ Kahlil Gibran A basic element of peak experiences is the experience of “beingness.” Beingness is a state of being spontaneous, uninhibited, and fully present in the moment. It's an experience of being fully aware of what's going on inside and outside your body. It requires a willingness to let go of control, personal agenda, and judgment in order to “go with the flow” of naturally unfolding events. It requires having a mind quiet enough to experience the exquisiteness of the ordinary. Beingness is a natural, timeless state of simple existence that is shared by every species of life on the planet except adult human beings. The pace and complexity of modern culture has turned most human beings into “human doings.” We are obsessed with achieving and consuming. We are driven by fear and desire. We are committed to the belief that life is a struggle and a puzzle to be figured out. We are so focused on securing the pot of gold, we miss the rainbow. Beingness comes naturally to animals. Humans have great difficulty with it. Throughout history, mystics have dedicated their lives to meditation and the practice of austerities in order to experience pure states of beingness. What makes the achievement of these states so difficult is our human mind. Our thoughts cloud and distort our direct experience of life. Thinking keeps us constantly absorbed in the past and the future. To experience the present moment fully, we must gain control over the incessant chatter of our thoughts. Psychedelics can temporarily quiet the mind and induce states of beingness that are similar to those states that meditators spend years to achieve. Seeing “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” ~ Marcel Proust Another element of the peak experience is “seeing.” Seeing, in this context, is the experience of perceiving things as they are, without conceptualizing, categorizing, projecting, or judging. It's the ability to suspend the clatter of the analytical mind long enough to behold things afresh, with the eyes of a child. As we become adults, most of us lose the ability to really see things. We become jaded. We no longer experience a tree as we did for the first time. Our eyes notice something green and tall, and our brain instantly identifies this object as a tree. We no longer behold the awesome phenomenon of a tree; we experience the abstract concept of a tree. People live in a world of concepts, words, and pictures in their head that is removed from the direct, sensory experience of reality. Our nervous system and brain are bombarded with billions of bits of sense data every second. To protect ourselves from being overwhelmed and confused, our brains automatically ignore most everything that is not relevant for our immediate need, interest, or survival. Psychedelic drugs can temporarily override this reductive function. When our full range of awareness is restored, we can behold the beauty and magic of the world we live in. “To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large...” ~ Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception. Knowing “I did not arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe with my rational mind.” ~ Albert Einstein Another element of the peak experience is a sense of instinctive, intuitive knowing. This non-rational knowledge supports inspired insight and inner guidance. During a peak experience, it's common to get fresh insights and see possible new solutions to problematic situations and relationships in your life. A journeyer can get clarity and a cosmic perspective on the overall direction and meaning of their life, and the meaning of life in general. Being in an altered state enables a shift from a survival-oriented, intellect-dominated state into a more relaxed, expansive state. In this receptive state a journeyer experiences heightened awareness of subtle messages of instinct, intuition, and wisdom from their Higher Self. There are many ways that psychedelic drugs encourage mind expansion. Psychedelic chemicals permit access to less dominant parts of the brain and encourage neurons to make fresh new connections. Insight may also come when psychedelic drugs wake us from our enculturated trance. Most of us unknowingly live in a trance state of consensus reality that is the result of lifelong programming by our family, culture, and mass media. An infant born to a remote tribe in the Amazon jungle will grow up with a greatly different world view and experience of reality than an infant born in New York City. Having a concrete experience of an alternative reality offers an expanded perspective from which we can see how our culture’s mindset colors our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. We may see clearly how our lives have been controlled by Madison Avenue, government propaganda, religious dogma, and social ethic. As we awaken from this trance, we begin to see the arbitrariness of social mores that have imprisoned us. This may open up an unlimited range of creative lifestyle options and new possibilities we may have never considered or dared to implement. We may also begin to appreciate the humor of it all. When people first begin using psychedelic drugs they often experience fits of uncontrollable laughter as they are struck with the absurdity of modern life. Profound insight may also come from the shift of identification from the ego self to the authentic self. Most people assume that who they are is a composite of their body, thoughts, occupation, lifestyle, nationality, race, religion, political persuasion, favorite football team, and so on. Psychoactive drugs like LSD and psilocybin can break this trance, offering an experience of one's essence. This essence is the “witness” that has been observing the world through your eyes and listening behind your ears since you were a baby. It has witnessed your body growing up. It will witness your body growing old. It witnesses your thoughts, your emotions, your pleasure, your pain, your successes, and your failures. It's constant, unchangeable, and indestructible. It is pure consciousness that outlives your body. Religions call it the Soul. Hindus call it Brahman, and describe it as: “The imperishable, the supreme, dwelling in each body .... Weapons cut it not; fire burns it not; water wets it not; wind dries it not.” ~ Bhagavad Gita 2:23 As you shift your identification from your ego self to your essence, you become lighter, freer, and less fearful. You gain access to the resources and wisdom of your Higher Self. You arrive at a dispassionate vantage point from which you can clearly observe your ego self and its pathology. You can monitor and examine your own thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and responses almost as if you were an objective outside observer. You begin to see the overall pattern and bigger picture of your life as if you were an eagle soaring high above your limited ego perspective. Loving “This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.” ~ Jesus (John 13:34) A common attribute of peak psychedelic experiences is a softening of emotional defenses and an engulfment in warm feelings that radiate from your own heart center. Many of us in this culture walk around unconsciously protecting ourselves with thick walls of emotional armor. We've been forging and thickening these walls of steel since childhood. As infants and children, we instinctively reach out for love and seek physical and emotional intimacy. If we are ignored, rejected, or abused, we learn to surround our tender hearts with walls. We come to believe that no one can be trusted to enter. The same walls that protect us from being hurt again also hold us prisoner. Nothing and nobody can truly touch our hearts, and we can no longer reach out beyond the walls. As the years go by, we get so used to the walls that we forget we are in prison. Under the influence of MDMA and other psychedelics, these walls begin to melt. Barriers of fear, judgment, and pretense that separate us from others begin to drop. You may begin to feel a deep kinship, compassion, and unconditional love for all living beings. You may be filled with love and appreciation for those who are dear to you. You may experience a sense of well-being that promotes honest and open communication. You may feel uninhibited about being physically affectionate and close with friends and lovers. If your heart has been closed, you may experience letting love in for the first time in your adult life. If you have been imprisoned for decades inside your own emotional walls, this ecstatic experience of love and openness offers an opportunity to feel connected in love to all humankind. This pleasurable experience may give you the awareness, motivation, and courage to begin the process of fashioning permanent doors and windows in your walls. A forty year old first-time journeyer described her peak experience during her MDMA session: “It’s amazing to just feel relaxed, present, and comfortable in my own skin. No fear, no self-consciousness! I'm not monitoring everything I say. It's so different than how I always am. I've been so wound tight! I multi-task and schedule every minute of my life. Now I realize how much anxiety I usually feel. My legs and feet are trembling. How interesting! I'm letting my body do things I'm not in control of. I'm just letting my body BE. I don't have to analyze or DO anything. I'm learning how to just BE.” Limitations of the Peak Experience Peak experiences can be powerfully eye-opening and transformational. Even so, positive results from peak experiences may be modest or fade in time if there are hidden or unhealed parts of the self that still need to be addressed. Psychedelically induced spiritual awakenings can artificially bypass years of the earnest spiritual practice needed to cultivate lasting transformation. Without further integration of new awareness and insight experienced on these drugs, old habits and neuroses can soon return. People who use psychoactive drugs recreationally often get depressed when the drug's effects wear off and they return to their mundane lives. Without doing rigorous inner work and making needed life changes, the recreational user may become dependent on the drug to access states of bliss. Some become addicted to the peak experience as an escape. Using psychoactive drugs in this addictive way usually doesn’t last long. At some point, during some journey, the unhealed parts of one’s psyche eventually surface and plummet the user into a “bad trip.” This unpleasant experience often discourages further recreational use. Others may eventually reach an unconscious barrier that shields unhealed parts of the psyche from awareness. When this happens, further levels of consciousness expansion and exploration are blocked, the peak experience is flattened, and the user soon loses interest in psychedelics. 11 EMBRACING THE SHADOW There is a story about a holy man in India who spent many years meditating in a cave. He had reached a state of great peace and enlightenment through his simple life style and dedication to truth. One day, the holy man went out to gather wood for a fire. When he returned to his cave he found terrifying, saucer-eyed demons in it! He dropped his wood and ran away, hoping the demons would leave on their own accord. The next day he returned to his cave. The demons were still there. The holy man decided to sit nearby to meditate and pray for God to take the demons away. He sat deeply meditating and praying all day and all night. In the morning the demons were still there. He became furious. He gathered up his courage, stormed up to his cave, and screamed at the demons. He threw rocks at them and commanded them to leave. The demons did not budge. The man gave up. That night, in his sleep, he received an inspiration. The next morning he went into his cave and prepared tea for the demons. He sat and talked with them all day and all night. The following day the demons left amicably and never returned. To banish your demons, you must be willing to delve beyond peak experiences to explore hidden, scary parts of your shadow. The shadow self contains the parts that you unconsciously conceal from yourself and others. Your shadow may contain shameful, frightening, painful thoughts, feelings, impulses, and memories you do not want to see or feel. These are your demons. The only way to make them leave is to invite them to tea and conversation. You cannot captain your own ship as long as you are blown about by unseen forces in your shadow. As long as the contents of your shadow remain unconscious and unexamined, you can struggle with addictions, self-sabotaging behaviors, and dysfunctional relationship patterns. You will unconsciously act from childhood wounds. Your perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, and emotions will be unconsciously distorted by demons hidden in your shadow. Psychedelics function like a microscope, magnifying demons that hide in your shadow. Those who imagine that all psychedelic journeys would be trippy, cosmic experiences of light, love, and magical transformation will often abandon psychedelics once they encounter their shadow. Only those who are highly motivated will welcome the opportunity to face their demons. “You cannot get to the promised land if you are not willing to go through the wilderness.” ~ T.D. Jakes Breaking Through Denial and Dissociation Denial and dissociation are coping mechanisms that banish memories of intolerable traumatic events to shadow realms. Denial is a psychological defense that rejects and represses conscious awareness of a traumatic event or events. We may deny that an event occurred or we may minimize its impact because the emotions that come with truly acknowledging it are too painful or scary to feel. Psychedelics break the spell of denial, allowing denied feelings and memories to surface. Dissociation is a psychological defense that disconnects you from the unbearable horror of trauma. It allows you to “be absent” during traumatic experiences. It is a survival mechanism that blocks the experience from entering conscious awareness and prevents annihilation of the psyche. The experience of trauma is frozen and stored in the unconscious psyche and the body to shield you from having to suffer the full impact of the trauma as a whole. Psychedelics can melt walls of amnesia to expose memories, sensations, and feelings that were split off from conscious awareness. When an overwhelming event happens that we are not sufficiently resourced to deal with, we slam shut an internal door to protect us from its demons. When psychedelics open the door, all the demons are still there, just as scary and overwhelming as when we shut the door on them. Even with the help of MDMA to soften defenses and anxiety, most people are initially afraid to open the door. They fear that if they open their own personal Pandora's box, they will be flooded with pain or anger they will be unable to handle. Those who were childhood victims of adult rage may be afraid of their anger. They could have learned that expressing anger at perpetrators is dangerous; such expression could have jeopardized their connection to adults they depended on for survival. They may fear if they access their anger, they will act out their rage in uncontrollable ways that will hurt or alienate people. Those who are afraid of their emotional pain may fear that if they open to their pain in any way, they will become seriously depressed and unable to function. They may need assurance that the psyche will open the door just a little at a time, as they are ready. They may also need reminding that the pain they are uncovering is probably old, childhood pain they were too fragile to feel when they were young. Emotions that overwhelm children are manageable for adults. It is safe to feel and express feelings in a supportive, therapeutic environment. Those who are willing to feel their deepest pain are rewarded with the greatest life-changing transformation. “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly” ~ Richard Bach The amazing ability of psychedelics to penetrate psychological defenses and bring shadow material to consciousness is precisely why recreational use can sometimes lead to a treacherous “bad trip.” A novice expecting to have a fun, party experience will be unprepared and frightened if scary shadow material emerges. If they manage to abort the process, they may have recurring, disturbing flashbacks long after the drug wears off. Most initial journeys are eye-opening, peak experiences. Allow trust, safety, and resources to build with gentle, healing journeys before introducing stronger meds with intention focused on working through shadow material. Accessing Traumatic Memory As you navigate beyond your defenses, psychedelics will shine a spotlight into the dark corners of your psyche, bringing to consciousness relevant material that is ready to process. Memories you have forgotten, denied, never felt or assimilated may begin to surface. Memories can arise spontaneously or be triggered by current events in your life. Talking about your issues or looking at photos from childhood can also bring up memories. For example, a journeyer talks about his fears in a new relationship. The sitter inquires about the fear's origin. Suddenly, the journeyer recalls a long-forgotten, teenage, first love that ended in heartbreak. “I had no idea that affected me so much!” he exclaims. Immersed in memory, he feels the full, painful impact of the rejection and loss for the first time. “Now I can see I've kept my heart closed. I never wanted to risk being hurt like that again.” Traumatic memories often manifest as emotions or bodily sensations and behaviors--sometimes without words or story. As memories surface, you may cry, sob, wail, or scream. You might become chilled, tremble, spasm, or thrash about. Your teeth may chatter, your legs may run in place. You may suddenly become weak and unable to move. You may experience nausea, retching, coughing, flu-like symptoms, and rapid breathing. This deep feeling and releasing can go on for hours. The cathartic expression of emotions and somatic tensions while reliving repressed traumatic events is called “abreaction.” Even if no narrative or visual memories are recalled, abreaction is a form of memory release. As you stay with primal feelings and sensations, relevant cognitive memory may surface. Denied events may be vividly recalled. A myriad of fresh memories may pop up that you have never recalled or thought about before. You may find yourself spontaneously age regressed, experiencing emotions you felt as a vulnerable little child. You may be transported back in time to experience feelings, sensations and body memories of traumatic events passed on to you from ancestors or past lives. For some, memories and associated expressions unfold in age-related, chronological order. Each journey picks up where the last one left off. For instance, in one journey you may navigate through infant issues; in the following journey you may deal with toddler issues. Memories may also unfold in reverse chronological order, with more current incidents arising first. Memories of dissociated events will usually be more fragmented and less explicit than denied events. Dissociated events are generally not recalled as a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. They are more likely to emerge as intense emotions, physical sensations, sensory impressions, symbolic enactments, or fleeting images. You may have a felt sense of knowing what is being experienced. A felt sense is an intuitive, bodily knowledge that is not yet formed into thought or words. Because dissociated traumatic memories were never consciously experienced or recorded in a linear way in the cerebral cortex, they may initially be hard to believe. Learn to let material surface without stopping to understand or question its validity. Trauma from early, pre-verbal childhood can be accessed, felt, and released, but may never have concrete memories attached. The experience may not be translatable into communicable language. This is because infants' brains and nervous systems have not developed the capacity to record memory in explicit words and images. Trauma from infancy may sometimes be replicated in transference within the therapeutic relationship. Pre-verbal trauma may also emerge as archetypal images and stories that represent events or interpersonal dynamics between infant and parents or caretakers. If needed, the sitter may help the journeyer make sense of, and process through, their experience by asking questions like: “If what you are feeling had words and could speak, I wonder what it might say.” If fragments of memories emerge, the sitter may probe to expand the memories by asking questions like: “Then what happens?” “How old do you feel?” “Who else is there with you?” “Is it night or day?” and so on. Such questioning helps flesh out the traumatic event into a coherent story that the journeyer can integrate into conscious awareness. Since traumatic memories may only be accessible with the help of psychedelics, the rational mind may doubt or dismiss their validity. Thoughts like “I’m making this up,” “It's not real,” or “It’s just the drug” are common until further compelling evidence becomes convincing. It may be helpful for the sitter to explain that psychedelics are tools that magnify hidden, unconscious material like microscopes magnify micro-worlds hidden from the naked eye. A sitter should assume that all memories are based on truth, even if the journeyer doubts them. It is important that these discoveries be acknowledged and validated. New memories of trauma can be shocking and must be allowed to come up at an organic pace that allows them to be gradually accepted and digested. A sitter must NEVER lead this process by prematurely filling in the blanks or creating a story before journeyers are ready to discover the truth for themselves. For example, a psychologically savvy sitter may detect convincing clues of childhood sexual abuse as the journeyer talks about sexual issues, fears, fantasies, and phobias. When repressed abuse material begins to surface, the journeyer may start having glimpses and vague memories of events. This process often begins with memories of feeling uncomfortable, scared, or “icky” around certain people. The journeyer’s body may involuntarily assume positions that appear to be body memories that replicate sexual abuse. If the journeyer is unable to make sense of these feelings and involuntary behaviors in journey after journey, the sitter can help them connect the dots of emerging phenomena by reporting observable clues and introducing the possibility of sexual abuse. “Many people who have experienced what you are experiencing now were sexually abused as children,” might be appropriate to say, but only if the journeyer is ready and resourced enough to deal with this information. The sitter should NEVER authoritatively declare anything like, “You were sexually abused by your father,” before the journeyer has recovered convincing memories for him or herself. As new, traumatic, childhood memories surface, previously held beliefs of having had a reasonably happy, normal childhood fade. This may shatter tenaciously held fantasies about parents and caretakers. Every child is born with a hard-wired survival instinct to bond with parents or caregivers. It is a psychological imperative for children to believe that they are wanted, loved, protected, and cared for. When this is not their experience, they must deny their true feelings and create a fantasy of idealized parents. This fantasy bond defense can be extremely hard to crack in mainstream talk therapy. The ability of psychedelics to pierce through denial allows the truth to emerge. When the truth is exposed, the healing process can begin. Lisa was seriously overweight and depressed. She struggled with an eating disorder. During her second MDMA journey, she focused into her body and gave this report. “My whole body is tingling and quivering. I feel tightness in my chest. It feels like there’s an iron shield protecting my heart from being hurt. My heart is sad. There’s a knot in my stomach--as I breathe into it I feel lonely. Ow! It hurts! Every time my Dad hurt me it felt like a knife stab in my stomach. I didn’t want to feel it--I want to eat to stop the pain. My whole pelvis feels numb. I don’t like feeling inside my body--there's so much pain here. I see how disconnected I’ve been from it.” Lisa spent hours sobbing and releasing the terror, pain, shame, and rage of early childhood incest. During another session, she experienced memories of leaving her body when the abuse became overwhelming: “I feel strange, light headed. I feel dizzy, out of control. Feels like I’m spinning all around the room. Once I give up fighting, I feel peaceful--numb all over. It feels kind of pleasant. I’m detached from feelings of what he’s doing to me. Where’s my body? I feel my spirit leave. My body is just a piece of meat at this point. If I stay disconnected he can’t hurt me.” Navigating Through Trauma Choosing the Right Meds Everyone responds differently to every medicine and every medicine has its own unique properties. A strongly defended journeyer will initially need higher dosages to get results. For those with a sensitive constitution, higher doses may be overwhelming. The ideal protocol softens psychological defenses and habitual needs to be in control. An effective dose should fully immerse the person into the journey experience, and be strong enough to access unconscious material and promote releasing of trauma. MDMA is essential for lowering defenses and assuring a safe passage through trauma. If MDMA alone does not achieve the desired destination, consider gradually introducing stronger meds. LSD will cut through denial and amplify deeper layers of unconscious material. WARNING! LSD can transport a person into their deepest, darkest, most traumatic memories. Those who have significant childhood trauma may find LSD to be stark and brutal in higher doses. For this reason, sitters should start beginners with a conservative 50 mcg to 100 mcg dose. Taking 50 to 100 mg of MDMA at the beginning of an LSD session will allow journeyers to stay present with unfolding traumatic memories without spacing out or getting overwhelmed. Take MDMA first, then wait thirty to sixty minutes before adding LSD. This allows the MDMA to soften defenses before the LSD takes effect. An additional dose of 50 to 100 mg of MDMA may be added an hour or so into the session. The effects of LSD last longer than MDMA; therefore, additional MDMA may be needed to soften defenses for the duration of the journey. If the introductory-dose LSD session is tolerated well, it can be increased gradually in each future journey until an optimum working dose is reached. Psilocybin can access and release trauma in a warmer, more organic way than LSD, and with less danger of re-traumatization if doses are kept moderate. The healing intelligence of mushrooms works in paradigms beyond the scope of psychotherapeutic models. Those who are new to psilocybin should start with a cautious dose of two or three grams. To lower defenses and insure the deepest possible experience, beginners can take 50 to 100 mg of MDMA first, then take psilocybin about an hour later. Once a journeyer is comfortable with the mushroom experience, it may be safe to try psilocybin by itself in subsequent journeys. For those who are more experienced, LSD combined with psilocybin can be an effective protocol for releasing trauma. Beginning the session with LSD greatly amplifies unconscious material. It allows the journeyer to sharply focus into places in the body where trauma is stored. Adding a moderate dose of psilocybin about an hour after taking LSD promotes further discharge and healing of trauma. The type and dose of medicines that work best for a journeyer will most likely change as they proceed along the healing path. If they get stuck in an impasse where results are dwindling, experiment with different meds. Here is an example of how one might choose the right meds: Let's say that you, the journeyer, have ample prior experience working with MDMA, LSD, and Psilocybin in your therapy. You and your sitter/therapist are familiar with how each medicine affects you and what dosages work best for you. As your healing process unfolds, you become aware that there is a troublesome issue or place in your body that needs further exploration and healing. You feel lots of fear and resistance to embarking on such a journey, so you decide you will start the session with 90 mg of MDMA. This dose is just enough to insure a safe passage through your initial defenses without candy coating shadow material that may need to be felt and processed. Next, you plan to take a 100 mcg dose of LSD thirty to forty-five minutes later, allowing time for the MDMA to start lowering defenses before the LSD takes effect. From experience, you know this dose of LSD is high enough to bring unconscious material to conscious awareness, yet moderate enough for you to be able to stay focused and embodied. Finally, you decide you'll add three grams of psilocybin an hour after taking the LSD, allowing time for the LSD to amplify unconscious material before the mushrooms take effect. From experience, you know that this light dose of psilocybin is just enough to enhance the release of trauma and add an extra dimension of healing that mushrooms often provide. A higher dose of mushrooms might take the journey into disembodied realms that could distract you from your intended focus. Through this trial and error process, you and your therapist/sitter find a protocol that best moves you toward your therapeutic goals. Focusing in Your Body “The body’s life is the life of sensations and emotions. The body feels real hunger, real thirst, real joy in the sun or the snow, real pleasure in the smell of roses or the look of a lilac bush, real anger, real sorrow, real tenderness, real warmth, real passion, real hate, real grief. All the emotions belong in the body and are only recognized by the mind.” ~ D.H. Lawrence Unhealed trauma gets frozen and stored in various parts of the body. Therefore, to heal trauma you must focus your attention back into your body. If you habitually live in your head, focusing inside your body during a journey will require diligent discipline. Dissociation from the body is not just a phenomenon reserved for survivors of trauma. Living in your head has become the norm. The internet and omnipresent media keep us constantly engaged in our heads. Exaltation of the intellect has produced a culture of adults who live largely in worlds of thoughts and images. Being present in one's body is a subjective experience that cannot be scientifically quantified. As a result, most people commonly assume they are more in their bodies than they actually are. Most of us relate to our body as a machine-like extension of our brain. We push it to perform according to our will, with little awareness of its inner depth and mystery. To explore your inner body during journeys, close your eyes and focus your attention on body sensations. Be aware of the gentle rising and falling of your chest and belly with each breath. Feel your heart beat. Be aware of the mass your body occupies in space. Feel the weight of your body being supported by what you're sitting or lying on. Notice if the right and left sides of your body feel different. Feel sensations as you touch various parts of your body. Feel pleasurable sensations on your skin from subtle breezes, contact with fabrics, and so on. As psychedelics amplify body sensations, you may become aware of chronic muscle tension and unconscious armoring. Let your body stretch, move, dance, tremble, spasm, or roll about to release this tension. Trust your body’s intuition. Don’t think about it. Scan your attention inside your body from head to toes. See if you can find places that feel relaxed, tingly, alive, and pleasurable. Spend time letting good sensations in. Then look for places that feel painful, numb, jittery, tight, or heavy. These unpleasant sensations are your body’s way of saying “Pay attention here.” When you find these places, focus your attention there. What sensations or emotions do you feel there? Imagine that with each inhale you are breathing new life and healing into these problem areas. As your breath softens chronic muscular armor, the trauma underneath can be felt and discharged. Allow all emotions, visions, memories, insights, and involuntary movements to surface. Symptoms from old injuries or surgeries sometimes materialize to be felt and released. Trust the wisdom of your body and psyche to process and clear trauma. There may be pockets of trauma stored in various places in your body. You may discover trauma hidden in dissociated parts of your body that were split off from conscious awareness. The belly and heart center in the middle of your chest are common places where old emotional pain and fear may be stored. You might get visuals of some sort of wall or protective covering over your heart that has been keeping it closed. Imagine using your breath to open it. Be willing to feel any heartbreak, betrayal, and grief that caused your heart to wall up. You may need the concentration of a Zen master to stay focused on places in your body that contain highly defended, traumatic memories. You will need to narrow your awareness like a laser beam, shining the light of your attention into targeted areas. You may strongly resist feeling distressing, scary emotions and sensations that arise from these places. If your attention wanders, you may need coaching from your sitter to stay focused. Nurturing physical contact, massage, or bodywork from your sitter may help keep the healing process moving. During a combination MDMA/LSD journey, a woman had this experience while focusing in her body: “My heart is aching. It feels numb. It feels like I want to cry but I can't. Now I am feeling a hole in my stomach. It's like a bullet hole where I've been shot. It's awful! I don't want to feel this pain. I want to scream.” She screams and kicks her legs as she is immersed in memories of being raped by her father. “Now my heart feels heavy. Where were you, Mom? You did nothing to stop it. Not once. Never! I knew Dad didn't love me but I still wanted your love. I'm feeling so sad. I was in denial. I thought I loved my Mom, but I really don't. Now I'm realizing how numb I've been, how I shut my feelings down, how guarded my heart has been. There is a longing for something that wasn't. I'm feeling melancholy. The hole in my stomach was all the love and affection I never got from my parents. I'm working on letting my heart open now.” Discharging Fear Unconscious fear from unhealed trauma can severely impair your health and well-being. Symptoms include generalized anxiety, muscle tension, sleep disturbances, digestive problems, difficulty concentrating, and avoidance of situations that resemble past traumatic events. When you are on the verge of accessing unhealed trauma, you may experience a flood of intense anxiety. This means you are getting close to scary, painful feelings that once threatened your very survival as a child. You may want to flee, engage in distractions, or end the journey. MDMA lowers anxiety and helps you pass through this defensive layer of fear. Once you navigate beyond the initial rush of anxiety, your body may start releasing fear from past traumatic events. You may feel waves of terror coursing through your body. Your breathing may accelerate. Your teeth might chatter. Your body may tremble or convulse. You may become nauseous or chilled. You might experience speedy, electric current sensations of adrenalin running through your body--sometimes accompanied by intense vibrations with high or low pitched tones. You are releasing fear by feeling these sensations, even if there is no story or emotion attached. The discharging of fear may ebb and flow for hours during journeys. There may be layers of fear and it may require multiple journeys to release them. This is a healing process. It's the body's way of letting go of accumulated fear. Let it happen. A patient sought treatment for recurring panic attacks. For six months she had lived in constant dread, never knowing when another episode would strike. In public or when falling asleep at night, her heart would suddenly start pounding. She'd gasp for air, terrified she was having a fatal heart attack. Her doctor prescribed Xanex, but she did not want to continue being dependent on the drug. We had already established a trusting therapeutic relationship during our prior journeywork together, so we decided to try an MDMA session. About an hour into her journey, she became very frightened and cold. I covered her with blankets and held her hand. Then her body started violently shaking and thrashing about. MDMA and the safety of my comforting presence allowed her to move through her terror of dying from a heart attack. There were waves of fear and trembling throughout the session as we processed through underlying sources of stress that were at the root of her anxiety attacks. A month later she reported that she’d had no more anxiety attacks since the journey. Discharging Anger Children who are abused by adults or bullied by peers are often too powerless or scared to protest or retaliate with righteous anger. Children who are neglected, shamed, or abandoned generally have little idea they deserve better. In both cases, the primal fight response to trauma is repressed. When the sitter can sense a journeyer's repressed anger escalating, its expression should be encouraged--the more primal and cathartic, the better. The sitter can suggest giving voice to the anger by roaring or growling like a big, powerful animal, or yelling words like “No!” “Stop!” and “I hate you!” The sitter can encourage the journeyer to vent in some visceral way, like screaming, kicking, or hitting. At first, journeyers may feel silly or uncomfortable doing this. If attempts at hitting a punching bag or pillow are lackluster, or result in collapsing into tears and powerlessness, the sitter may suggest “fake it 'til you make it” or using Method acting tactics. When the journeyer thinks about something that makes them angry, then primes the pump by going through the motions of hitting or screaming, they can cause authentic rage to kick in. If the journeyer can't get beyond a personal taboo against expressing anger directly at a perpetrator, the sitter may get things rolling by invoking the journeyer’s anger at some person, institution, or organization they are angry at right now. Global issues like political corruption, treatment of minorities, animal cruelty, etc. may help trigger anger. Sometimes, anger is blocked by fear. Journeyers may be afraid that if they open the floodgates of rage, they will kill people or become just like their scary, angry perpetrators. The sitter may need to reassure the journeyer that venting anger in a therapeutic setting is safe and important for healing. Spiritual people may have been taught to deny anger by concealing it under a sugary frosting of premature forgiveness. They may need assurance that venting righteous anger in therapy hurts no one and will eventually lead to genuine forgiveness. If attempts to induce the expression of anger fail, don't force it. If it needs to be felt and vented, it will erupt at another time in the journeyer's healing process. For some, anger may not be accessible until they have come out of denial about their childhood pain. Once they have felt the full impact of the abuse or neglect, they will have something to be angry about. Once repressed anger has been unleashed in journeyspace, a person may become hyper-sensitive in anger- provoking situations for days or weeks after a journey. The slightest irritation may cause an explosion of anger. When the floodgates of a lifetime of suppressed anger open, there may be a tidal wave of pent up rage that needs to be honored, felt, and expressed before it dissipates. If this happens to you, don’t panic. This stage will pass. Make sure you have a safe way of venting, like hitting and screaming into pillows. A self-defense class may be an effective venue to discharge anger and feel empowered. You might want to warn people around you not to take your outbursts personally. Let them know this is a temporary part of your healing process. Timid individuals who habitually suppress, deny, or sublimate their anger, often experience their rage as an empowering, exhilarating feeling that builds healthy assertiveness and self-worth. At a primal level, anger affirms that “I matter. Treat me with respect and kindness.” A woman in her forties had a pattern of getting into relationships with abusive men. She never felt anger when boyfriends abused or betrayed her. During her journey on LSD and MDMA she notices the mean streak her dad and ex-boyfriend have in common. She starts feeling nauseous. Her body trembles in fear as new memories of her father emerge: “Dad is shoving me down the hall. He is over me--pinching me. I am pinned against the wall. No escape. He's unreasonable. You never knew when he'd get triggered. I'd seen him hit my Mom. I lived in constant fear.” I (the sitter) encourage her to get angry at her Dad. She screams and beats a punching bag. The intensity of her venting builds to a primal rage. It's the first time she has ever expressed anger. Months after her journey, she sent me this email: “I’ve found my anger! I mean really found it! I was in a pissy mood for a long time after the journey where I felt anger for the first time. I was pissed off and had no idea why until I remembered you warning me I might be easily irritated after opening the door to my anger. As soon as I realized what was going on, the pissy mood went away. In its place I felt a sense of enormous strength! I was filled with a don't-mess-with-me feeling. It is absolutely incredible! I love it!” Empowered by accessing her anger, this woman was able to break old, ineffectual patterns. She is now in a healthy relationship with a wonderful man. Nobody messes with her anymore. Embracing Emotional Pain “All our neuroses are substitutes for legitimate suffering.” ~ Carl Jung Healthy children openly express a full range of emotions. They scream and throw tantrums when they are angry. They cry when they hurt. They giggle and squeal with joy when they are happy. Their hearts are full of love and bubbling with enthusiasm for the adventure of life. If you were a child who was abused, neglected, abandoned, or betrayed, you most likely shut the door to your heart to block out the pain. You may have learned to ignore your pain if your suffering was ignored by your caretakers. You might have been told shaming axioms like “Boys don't cry” “You're too sensitive” or “Stop being a baby.” You may have spent years medicating your sadness in order to function and put on a happy social face. You might experience chronic depression but be unable to heal the origin of your sadness. You might avoid deep emotional intimacy to prevent being hurt again. When psychedelics open your heart all the pain is still there, just as fresh and intense as the day you shut the door on it. As your heart opens, you may uncover painful, new memories. You may encounter layers of old grief, hopelessness, and despair. You may feel the pain of not feeling seen, loved, and protected by parents. You might feel losses of loved ones and pets you never grieved. You may mourn the loss of childhood innocence and the lost years you've spent floundering. As you awaken from denial, you may feel the pain and suffering of all living beings. Pain you medicated with addictions or antidepressants must now be felt and released in order to heal. It's not crucial to associate the pain with any particular memory or story. There may be a huge reservoir of undifferentiated or preverbal pain that needs to be felt. During your journey, crying, wailing, and sobbing can sometimes go on for hours. Crying and sobbing are ways the body releases sadness and heals old wounds. Let it happen. For some, this grieving can feel like an exquisite purge that opens their heart and validates their humanity. Once wounds are laid bare in journeyspace, you may feel sad for days or weeks following your journey. Surrender to the grieving process. Give yourself down time to cry. Listen to sad music or watch sad movies that promote tears. Resist old patterns of keeping busy in order to avoid, stuff, or ignore painful feelings. If you have a history of depression, you might be reluctant to feel your pain. You may fear you'll never come back from the sadness. Know that once all your old sadness is truly felt, you will be free of it forever. As you uncover layers of pain, you may become temporarily age-regressed and less functional as an adult. You may need time to comfort, pamper and communicate with your hurting, inner-child self. Some journeyers have suicidal thoughts and feelings arise during their healing process. If this happens to you, it’s probably a sign that you are getting close to core wounds. It usually means repressed pain from your past is coming up to be felt and healed. Suicidal moods will pass if you allow yourself to feel them. If suicidal feelings become overwhelming, contact your therapist or a suicide hotline. Addictions may temporarily resurface as the psyche attempts to medicate or manage the emerging pain. If this happens, be compassionate. Don't beat yourself up. Temporarily reverting to familiar, self-soothing addictions may be necessary as a resource to help you move through overwhelmingly painful parts of your healing process. If you are acting out excessively, seek out extra therapy and support to help you through these tough times. The soul of a child thrives in the environment of parental love. To escape the unbearable pain of not being truly loved and wanted, psychological defenses sequester the soul within protective walls, creating an existential void at one’s core. As layers of defenses are stripped away in journeywork, you may encounter this as a terrifying abyss. To rescue your soul, you must be willing to plunge into the void to feel and release the pain. Wounds take time to heal. Be patient and compassionate with yourself. Don’t expect yourself to feel and process through all your pain in a journey or two. Your psyche can handle only a little at a time. Don't force your hurting inner child to feel more pain than they are ready to feel. Shadow work is like psychological detoxing. As toxic trauma is being cleared, you will most likely feel worse before you feel better. You are being remodeled. Your old structure is being torn down in order for a healthy new structure to be built. It's going to be messy and take a while. At the end of the process, your willingness to feel your deepest pain opens your heart to love and joy again. A fifty-year-old father was told by his therapist and wife that he was emotionally disconnected. Here are excerpts from one of his early LSD sessions: “Emotional detachment, what does it mean? Was it Mom? How could she go through her whole life and never say 'I love you' to me or my sister? All she had to say was 'You’re doing OK, you’re my boy, I’m proud of you.' She never hugged or complimented me. I was never good enough. She made me feel worthless. “How does it feel when your mother doesn’t love you? Am I disconnected? I need to feel this. Oh my God, I feel the pain right in my chest! I’m falling into the abyss. I feel it in my whole body. I understand; this is pain. This is sorrow and deep, deep loss. I feel tears all around me. Buckets of tears. I had no idea I had this pain and sorrow. This is not crying, it’s like weeping--so much deeper. I’ve been carrying this bag for too long. Let it go! “Now I am being filled up. This must be my heart. My heart is opening! This has to be what it feels like to love! How absolutely beautiful! I have never felt this before. What a terrible waste of time. Why did I go through life that way? How can we walk through life half asleep? “My God, I had no idea—none. No shit, emotionally disconnected! How can I ever be the same? Breathe; breathe deep. I am having consistent feelings of purging my pain and being filled with love. It is so wonderful! There are no words that can describe what I'm going through now. I'm walking in the garden of Eden with my wife and kids. It's paradise! So beautiful! I felt pain that I never admitted was there. Never have I felt such sorrow and pain--but also happiness. I feel like I’m born again. I have another chance.” Moving Through Shadow As you move through your shadow, memories of trauma will pop up like ghosts from your past. Each ghost will evoke layers of emotion. At first you will feel afraid. You may have run from these scary feelings most of your life. Next, you might feel a layer of anger erupt. Finally, you uncover a layer of emotional pain hidden under the anger. Sometimes you may feel the pain before you get to the anger. Once the pain is felt and cleared, another ghost from your past may materialize, triggering new memories and more layers of emotion. You might discover different types of trauma from different ages. Initial journeys may bring up early childhood abandonment wounds. Subsequent journeys may reveal abuse wounds from adolescence. As new layers of unhealed material surface, you may encounter new layers of defenses. To surmount these defenses you may need to increase dosages or change which meds you use. Including MDMA in your protocol always helps soften stubborn defenses. At some points in your journeys, you may feel like you are going crazy. This most commonly happens on higher doses of psilocybin or LSD. Don’t panic. This could be part of the transformational process called “ego death” that is explained later in this guide. The feeling of going crazy may also be part of remembering and releasing the confusion and unbearable pain that originally overwhelmed your mind. If you are experiencing craziness, focus your attention outside of the turmoil in your head. Stay centered in your body and your breath. As you feel and release the trauma, the craziness will eventually pass. This is a healing process. Let it happen. Your psychological and social development may have been impaired by childhood trauma. As you heal, you may need to learn skills from missed developmental stages. For example, if your wounds prevented you from healthy adolescent dating, you might now need to navigate this arena like a beginner. If you are dealing with sexual abuse issues, your sexual libido may flat-line for periods of time during your healing process. This can be especially worrisome for men. Don’t be alarmed. As you continue healing, your interest in sex will be renewed. You may become aware of old patterns of unhealthy sexual behavior that were unconscious reenactments of your sexual abuse. You may need a period of abstinence to rewire addictive and/or impersonal sexual habits. If you are feeling and releasing trauma in your journeywork, your body and psyche may want to continue the healing process for days or weeks after your session. Give yourself time and space to honor emerging emotions, sensations, and somatic discharging. If you have been deeply wounded, your journey through shadow might be a slow process that takes years. Deep healing is an organic, feminine process analogous to birthing a baby. It takes nine months to create a baby. You can’t rush the job because you want it faster. The trajectory of the healing path is seldom a straight line. You might take three steps forward, then seem to fall one step back when unexpected road blocks or new layers of unhealed material appear. You may get frustrated and worried if your therapeutic goals are not realized quickly. Be patient. Results from inner work may not show up in your life for a while. The healing process is similar to a caterpillar's metamorphosis. You can't see a pupa transforming inside its cocoon until it emerges as a butterfly. Similarly, you may not be able to spread your new wings and fly until your inner healing process is complete. For survivors of major traumas, it may seem like the wounds are too great and the trauma releasing will go on forever. It's easy to lose hope. It may be helpful to consider that you're probably the first person in your family to heal from generations of dysfunction. According to the new science of epigenetics, you likely inherited trauma from the DNA of your ancestors. Healing multi-generational wounds is like stopping a train that has been building speed for decades. And, who knows? You may have been dealing with these issues and wounds for many lifetimes. Expect it to take a while. As layers of trauma are peeled away, you may get glimpses of your core essence underneath. If you were not valued or treated with love and respect as a child you may feel--deep down inside--that you are inferior, unlovable, or bad. As these false identities drop away, your pure spirit is free to blossom. Enjoy taking time to discover and explore your emerging new Self. 12 RESOURCING You need nutritious food and a good night's sleep to rejuvenate for another active day. Similarly, you need recharging, support, and restorative breaks to get through arduous shadow work. This is called “resourcing.” A toddler learns to separate from mommy by going a few feet away from her, then running back to the comfort and safety of her arms. The ability to run back allows the toddler to go a few feet farther the next time. So it is with trauma healing work. To safely process through trauma, you need to be able to pendulate back and forth between focusing on trauma, allowing resourcing, then returning to the trauma. Taking time to stop, rest, play, joke, and find safety will allow the next layer of trauma work to take place. The following are examples of resources you can draw upon to help you through tortuous journeys. 1. Pleasurable sensory stimuli: Take breaks to appreciate beautiful music, art, flowers, and other sensory delights. If you are journeying where you have easy access to a private back yard or garden, spend some time outdoors. Because psychedelics can amplify sensual pleasure, you might experience ordinary stimuli to be exquisite. A back yard may become an enchanting wonderland. 2. Memories of times and places where you felt happy and safe: Immerse yourself in memories of idyllic settings in nature or holidays at Grandma's house, for instance. You may also use your imagination to create a personal “safe space” that can include magical landscapes, people, animals, deities, etc. 3. Current and/or previous sources of love and comfort: Bring to mind favorite relatives, caretakers, friends, spouses, or pets. Sometimes, good memories may be buried in your past and long forgotten. Search for them. If you were raised by parents or caretakers who were neglectful or abusive, there still might be some bright moments worth remembering and feeling. 4. Connection to a comforting, protective Higher Power: Much has already been documented about how psychedelics can promote a profound connection to your Higher Self, God, spirit guides, and the like. You may or may not have such an experience. If you do, it will likely resonate with your own prior beliefs and exposure to spirituality. Faith in a Higher Power will support you through any challenge. Men tend to believe that cathartic trauma releasing alone will heal them. In time, this foolhardy, macho approach often backfires. It's like driving your car to a distant destination without stopping to fill the gas tank. Take time to relax and recharge between journeys. Seek out resources like support groups, therapy, bodywork, supportive friends, and sources of spiritual inspiration. Get some fun exercise. Eat good, healthy food. Get a massage. Hang out with pets. Spend time in nature. Make space in your busy schedule to do things you enjoy. Allow at least two weeks between journeys. Some people survive trauma by becoming emotionally numb. They are unable to experience pleasure or joy in ordinary activities. For these people, feel-good MDMA journeys may be an essential resource. An MDMA journey can be a healing, restorative, mini-vacation. Your intent for such a journey might be to let go of stress, relax chronic tension, and focus on pleasure. If possible, get comforted by a caring loved one. Let in tender, soothing touch you may never have received as a child. This feminine aspect of healing is every bit as powerful and productive as cathartic, masculine, shadow work. The following personal experience is an example of a resourcing journey. “In the summer of 1988, a dear old boyfriend and I took a boat trip to Catalina Island with the intention of having an MDMA resourcing day. I was weary from working through childhood trauma in my journeywork. We were both facing stressful, troubling times in our lives. “We hired a taxi to take us far from town to a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean. It was a perfect, warm, sunny day. We found a beautiful spot, got comfortable, and took MDMA. We talked some, but mostly sat silently, gazing at the sunlight shimmering on the vast ocean stretched out before us. Our minds were still, our bodies were relaxed. Hours passed. We were immersed in a blissful, timeless paradise. The sublime experience of tranquility, contentment, and communion with nature rejuvenated our spirits. “As late afternoon began to get chilly, I asked my friend to hold me as we beheld the glorious sunset. As I sank into his arms, my chronic, defensive armoring melted. I had a profound experience of letting love into my unloved, inner child for the first time in my life.” 13 BEYOND THE EGO “You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body.” ~ C.S. Lewis Experiencing “Ego Death” At some point in your journeys you may suddenly feel like you are dying or going crazy. This most commonly happens on higher doses of psilocybin or LSD, as mentioned earlier in this guide. This harrowing experience may be part of a transformational process called “ego death.” It's not actual death, nor a death of the healthy ego. It's an experience of letting go of rigid identification with your body, mind, biographical story, and the concepts you have used to define yourself. When the ego death process begins, you'll most likely experience great fear and confusion. As you move beyond your familiar sense of self, you may encounter a frightful inner void. Don't panic. If you let go into the void, you will eventually experience your true, essential Self, beyond the confines of body, mind, ego, space, and time. Ego death can be an immediate experience or a process that unfolds over time. Those who traverse this territory generally come away with an expansive, new perspective on life. They become less fear-driven. Their fears of death fade. Realms of mystical and spiritual experience become more tangible. They are able to live more peacefully and joyfully in the moment. “If you have identified with your soul while you're alive, death is just another moment.” ~ Ram Dass A thirty-nine year old woman gave this account of her transcendent experience on LSD and psilocybin. “I saw a golden light, I went beyond ego, Higher Self, confusion--beyond what I can describe in words, beyond God and me, beyond duality--infinite. It’s like a paradigm shift. How do I make sense of all this? Be simple. Go back to childlike innocence and love.” A young woman was able to attribute most of her fear, sadness, and depression to her fear of death. Her dreams indicated it was time to deal with this issue. She wondered what might be gained by encountering death and returning. She approached her fourth journey with an intention to have a death experience. The following is her report of her experience on 5.5 grams of psilocybin. “I was descending, ever so slowly, into an abyss. My mother, father, and our family home were the only threads I held onto during this period of my session. I tried to summon the will to steer the journey toward my boyfriend, possibly in an attempt to move the journey to more comfortable and comprehensible ground. His face appeared hazy and left quickly. I tried to remember anything I could about him, which at this point seemed nearly impossible. I felt myself detaching from everything familiar in my life, a process that was leaving me feeling extremely ungrounded. “Some time passed while I traveled the universe. My focus turned toward trying to bring myself back to my life. However, the more I tried, the more confused and frightened I became at the understanding that it was slipping farther and farther away. My parents’ names and personalities were gone from memory. I could not recall my boyfriend’s identity. Finally, I could not remember my own name or virtually anything about who I was as a human being. I was sinking very quickly and fell into a state of panic. I said, 'I think I’m going crazy.' “I was alone and in the dark. I had completely detached from my body. The only way I knew I existed, that I was something, somewhere, was because I could hear myself breathing. My terror began to fade slightly and as I sat in this place, I began to accept that I was completely alone in oblivion, and I could possibly remain here forever. A beautiful sensation of acceptance of this fact overcame me. Mild relief replaced some of my panic as I listened to the sound of aloneness, my own breath. I remember thinking, 'I could die here and never return.' Then aloud, I whispered, 'It’s OK if I die. It’s OK if I die.' This moment of complete acceptance of death was the pinnacle of my journey. “The journey acted as a paradigm blaster that allowed me to view my current life template through a different theoretical lens. The medicine pulled me down past my daily concerns and struggles and brought me to the ultimate moment of fear: my death. Once experienced and accepted, the medicine began my ascent back into ego consciousness. The medicine taught me that I can enter and accept perceived permanent aloneness and nothingness, and with that knowledge, I can return to the world in which I currently exist--and live in it differently. The high stakes of this world having fallen, life decisions and events feel less dire. The medicine also taught me to disengage from attachments and the need for certainty in this realm. In essence, entering and returning from oblivion substantially reduced my anxiety because of the new lens through which I view my existence. When I am anxious now, it is a signal that the unknown is calling. I can then practice a transit to that place, disengage myself from my current reality, and be reminded that I will be all right when my physical death finally comes, and realize that the realm in which I walk now is one of an infinite number. This knowledge grounds me in a deeper place of being.” 14 AFTER THE JOURNEY If you have taken MDMA during your journey, you may feel depleted afterward. MDMA is generally harder on the body than LSD, psilocybin, or marijuana. There are many anecdotal suggestions about how to best repair the body after an MDMA journey. Do your own research. Find what works best for you. More information can be found at www.erowid.org. Always eat a little healthy food after journeys, even if you don’t feel like eating. Choose something easy to eat and digest, like fruit, yogurt, or soup. Include something with protein to refuel and ground after strenuous, draining journeywork. The end of the journey can often be a time of deep reflection. Spend quiet time with yourself. Be gentle. You may feel more open, fragile and vulnerable than you are used to being. Take a shower or bath. Rest or sleep, if possible. It may be best to avoid socializing, as you have been to places few will understand or know how to support. Attempts to communicate your profound journey insights and experience to those who have never journeyed will likely fall on deaf ears. Avoid talking about your session with insensitive individuals who might make critical comments that breed doubts about the validity of your journey experience. Give yourself sufficient time after your journey to assimilate and integrate the work you did. Jumping right back into your daily routine doesn't honor, or help facilitate, the deep healing process that's taking place. Allow yourself to just feel. Just be. If it was a difficult journey, make sure to pamper yourself. Be aware of post-journey “contraction.” During your journey, you may have experienced yourself in a hugely expanded state. After a big expansion, you'll likely contract--but not all the way back to who you were before the journey. Compared to the expanded version of yourself you experienced on your journey, it may not seem like you've changed in any way when you come down. Try not to prematurely evaluate your session. It may take a few days to notice results. For example, an ordinarily unemotional man feels powerful emotions on his journey. When he comes down, he's disappointed that he can no longer feel so intensely. A week later he realizes he is feeling emotions more deeply than he ever did before. You might find it hard to sleep the night after your journey. You may need some sleep aids, like melatonin or Valium. Your dreams may be vivid that evening and over the next week. Or you may have no dreams at all. If you have the ability to make a cocoon of your life for a couple days after your journey, you'll see better, faster results. Give yourself time to relax, recharge, and nurture your body, soul, and inner child. Get a massage. Reward yourself for all the courageous, difficult work you are doing. Set up an appointment with your sitter or therapist to help support, process, and integrate your journey experience. Give yourself time to assimilate and incorporate your experience into your psyche, body, and life. Follow up on any guidance received in your journey. Sometimes intense emotions, moods, or physical symptoms that arise during a journey may persist for several days afterward. If major new material surfaced but was not fully processed, you may experience uncomfortable feelings and body sensations that could last until the next journey. For example, you might feel fragile, irritable, or sad. You might cry often. Physical symptoms might include stomach aches or other discomforts. Get support from a therapist, guide or bodyworker to help you process through this unfinished business. Don’t judge the session by what you think happened during the journey. Give it time to percolate. The real test of a journey’s effectiveness will show up in the days and weeks afterward. Don’t be disappointed if nothing dramatic happened during your journey. Gentle journeys can produce dramatic changes. Be alert for positive shifts in how you feel and how you react to things, people, and situations. Psychedelic therapy greatly accelerates healing and transformation. As you continue journeywork, you might outgrow old friends and dysfunctional relationships. You may want to spend more time with kindred spirits who are healthy and inspiring. 15 USEFUL TECHNIQUES Therapeutic techniques used in depth therapy can sometimes be applied to psychedelic work. With the aid of psychedelics, these techniques often work powerfully—even for those who have had no previous success with them. Here are some examples. Inner Child Work There are thousands of people who get up every morning giddy with wonder and excitement about the adventure of life. Most of them are under five years old! Your inner child is the part of yourself that is feeling-oriented, soft, spontaneous, imaginative, innocent, and playful. The archetype of the child is often used as a symbol of the purity of the soul. Most adults have grown distant from this vital part of themselves. To survive childhood trauma, this vulnerable part of yourself may have been secured within protective walls. MDMA is especially effective at melting these walls. When you first contact your inner child you may find that he or she is sad, angry, afraid, or distrustful. This wounded child needs to be seen, heard, felt, and loved in order for the adult self to heal. Your childhood is the foundation upon which your adult life is built. Until the foundation is repaired, everything you build upon it will be shaky. In journeyspace, try reconnecting to your inner child by looking at photographs of yourself as a child. In an altered state, you may be able to see emotions in the child's eyes that tell you what he or she is feeling. Try dialoging with your child. Ask questions like: “What do you want to tell me?” “What do you need from me?” and “How can I make you feel better?” Wait and listen for answers. Trust the first response that comes to mind. Reparent your child with comments like “I love you.” “I will protect you.” And “I will always be there for you.” Praise your child with comments like “You are wonderful and lovable.” Be a loving parent to your own inner child. Provide toys, dolls, stuffed animals, and puppets to play with during journeys. Have crayons and a sketch pad to draw on. Allow yourself to draw and play. You may be surprised to discover how this can jog childhood memories, reveal unconscious material, and help work out childhood issues. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. Caution: Reconnecting to your inner child is an important part of healing childhood wounds. However, prolonged regression to a childlike state can become a defense against more challenging shadow work. If you are being re-parented by your therapist, regression can become a way of staying dependent on the therapeutic relationship rather than growing into a responsible, strong adult. Working with Photographs In journeyspace, family pictures from childhood and photos of significant people in your past can stimulate insights, emotions, and memories. In an altered state you might detect body language, facial expressions, and family dynamics you never noticed before. Notice your positive or negative visceral and emotional reactions to each person in the photographs. If you have a strong response to someone, trust and explore your feelings. Look at childhood photos of yourself at different ages. See if you can spot when you began to lose the brightness in your eyes. When did you start getting chubby or skinny? When did you start looking sad, scared, lost, or angry? These clues can jog memories and help construct a coherent story that verifies when trauma occurred. Some photos may activate memories of long-forgotten kindness and support from caring people in your past that made you feel loved and important. Let these good feelings in! If you have unfinished business with anyone in your photos, verbalize what you want to say to them. Mirror Work In journeyspace, looking at your face in a mirror can be powerful. Gazing gently into your eyes, ignore the rest of your face. Speak positive affirmations to yourself. Try saying “I love you.” Dialog with yourself. Ask yourself important questions. This works especially well on MDMA. WARNING: On LSD you may look hideous. Don’t panic. It’s just the drug! Guided Meditations A guided meditation at the beginning of a journey can help journeyers relax, move beyond thoughts, and get centered in their body. In a calming, hypnotic tone, a sitter might say something like this: “Close your eyes and focus on the gentle rising and falling of your chest and belly with each breath. Rising and falling like gentle waves at the sea shore. Rising and falling. Rising and falling. Be aware of mother earth supporting your weight. Nothing to think about, nowhere you have to be, nothing you have to do. As you breathe, relax your toes, your feet, your calves, your thighs (keep directing attention to include the whole body). Breathe into any places in your body that feel tight, painful, or numb.” Guided meditations can occasionally be used to resource journeyers working through memories of traumatic events. For example, if the journeyer experiences being abused as a powerless child, a sitter can say something like, “Imagine you are no longer a powerless little child. Imagine you are a big, fearless adult or a fierce animal. What would you do and say to your abuser now? Imagine how it would feel to run away to the safety of a comforting relative or friend (real or imaginary).” This type of directed fantasy enables a journeyer to feel powerful where they once were powerless. Guided meditations can also be used to reprogram childhood experiences of being abused or neglected by parents. A sitter can encourage the journeyer to imagine the feeling of having ideal parents, taking time to imagine scenarios of happy interactions with these caring parents. The journeyer can inhabit fantasies of being held and cherished by a warm, loving mother, or feeling safe and protected by a doting father. For survivors of childhood sexual abuse, the sitter can suggest the journeyer imagine an ideal, first-time sexual scenario with a consenting peer. For those whose budding sexuality was shamed by adults, the sitter can suggest imagining growing up with adults who normalized and celebrated their emerging sexuality. When guided meditations are used to reprogram traumatic events, they should never impose upon or interrupt the journeyer's unfolding process. They should never be used as a way to avoid the full impact and release of trauma. Use them as a resource to heal wounds that are already being felt and released. When the rational, critical mind is bypassed in journeyspace, guided meditations with positive affirmations can sink deeply into the unconscious mind, reprograming traumatic memories and negative beliefs. 16 SUPPLEMENTAL PRACTICES THAT SUPPORT JOURNEYWORK Bodywork When stress is chronic or traumatic, our muscles respond with excessive or continuous contraction. If the trauma is too overwhelming to process, it's frozen and retained within the contraction. Muscles have memory, but not cognitive memory. They have memory like a pre-verbal child would have. Memory at this primitive level cannot be accessed by cognitive dialogue. Bodywork can directly access and release trauma at this non-verbal, often unconscious level. MDMA deepens and accelerates bodywork. It lowers the pain threshold, allowing for more muscular release. It also enhances the journeyer's ability to engage at a feeling level. A moderate dose of LSD can also enhance bodywork. It brings unconscious constriction and the emotional material locked inside into conscious awareness. The addition of MDMA or a low dose of psilocybin to LSD tends to promote releasing. If you have training in a gentle form of bodywork, it can be successfully combined with therapeutic journeywork. When journeyers start feeling the effects of the medicine, or experience difficult passages during a session, their body tensions can increase. When this happens, bodywork may be helpful. To keep the focus on psychological work, a full body massage is not recommended, but calming the body and relaxing tense muscles can reduce distractions. Touch can also speed healing by facilitating the release of old traumas that are held in the body. Offer touch only if asked, or if it looks like it would be helpful, rather than a distraction from the journeyer's ongoing process. Touch is supportive only if you are truly comfortable touching the person in that moment. The body perceives much that's unspoken; reluctant touch can undermine the trust you’ve built with the journeyer. “Holding” is the most underrated massage stroke, and often the best touch a person can receive. Holding is simply placing a hand gently on a specific spot with no movement. It can be unexpectedly difficult to do well. It requires allowing your hand to rest on another person without tension or movement. If you find tension entering your hand or arm, make sure you’re in a completely comfortable position physically and mentally; breathe deeply and evenly. Then begin again. When you touch the journeyer, patiently listen and watch for feedback. Proceed attentively. Listen for sounds and verbal messages as to how the touch is being received. For example, a long sigh is a sign of release and/or relaxation. Watch and feel for physical twitches or other movements. These can be signs of relaxation or of increasing tension. If you are not sure which, ask the journeyer: “How is this touch?” or “Is this working for you?” It can be frustrating for a person to want a very specific kind of touch but not be able to explain it. Be willing to ask for feedback. Sometimes it’s easiest to have the person demonstrate on your body exactly what they want. If they model their desired touch on your body, there are a number of factors to notice. Pay attention to where they touch and the amount of pressure they use. Notice what part of their hand they use and if they include another part of their body as well (maybe they lean against you as they hold). Notice whether their fingers are together or spread, whether their hand is flat or wrapped around the body part, whether they move the hand or hold it still. If they demonstrate fairly accurately, they will start feeling some sense of relief as if you were already touching them in that way. The end of a session is an especially good time for bodywork. Use only gentle forms such as relaxing Swedish massage, energy work, craniosacral, or the Trager method. Yoga If you habitually live in your thoughts, you may have little awareness of your body's interior. Yoga promotes awareness of the inside of your body. You learn how breathing helps open up constricted places in your body. These constricted places may be holding in repressed feelings and memories that need to be reawakened, felt, and released in order to heal. A thorough practice of yoga will open these places and soften muscular armor that holds trauma. The more conscious you are of your inner body, the more productive your journeywork will be. Note: Kundalini yoga is not the best type of yoga for promoting embodiment and the release of trauma. While it can affect the body in profound ways, it is specifically about consciously building and working with Kundalini energy that rises up the spine--connecting personal energy with the greater energy of Spirit. Rather than relaxing the muscles, it can increase the energy level in the body. Meditation Most of us are thinkers. Our culture stimulates, reveres, and rewards thinking. Thinking, however, is not productive for journeywork. The best work happens in places of no thought. If you are practiced at quieting your mind, you will be able to go deeper in journeyspace. Take time to cultivate a meditation practice. Turn off the internet and TV. Sit in silence. Breathe. Be fully present with yourself in the moment. Find your calm center within. If you make a habit of controlling the chatter in your head, it will be easier to get your mind out of the way when you journey. Lifestyle Psychedelic therapy will change your life—both inside and outside. If your outside life is too busy or structured to accommodate inner changes, you’re better off postponing journeywork until more flexibility is available. High-intensity work or lifestyle demands are the antithesis of organic healing processes. To profit from journeywork, you need to devote time, energy, and attention to your inner life. You will need ample downtime for processing, self-care, and integration. Allow for your life to change. You may be feeling things you have never felt before. You may experience new levels of consciousness that inspire you to change your habitual ways of being and living. The more rigid and unyielding your present life circumstances are, the harder it will be to allow a new you to come forth. 17 JOURNEY STORIES Prenatal Memories A fifty-year-old science teacher had worked through many issues in previous journeys with me, but still felt anxious and suicidal whenever he was alone. Many years of previous talk therapy hadn't helped. As he became adept at getting to the root of his feelings, he was able to identify the core fear: “When I’m alone I feel like I'm going to die.” During a journey using MDMA and LSD, he experiences being in a stark, white room full of bright light. He senses that he's in a hospital. It becomes clear that the bright lights are in a surgery room. He is there--in his Mother’s belly. “I see a knife coming towards me. It wants to kill me. Nowhere to escape. I'm very scared. I might die. I can’t scream, yell, or talk. I'm totally helpless. Mother wants an abortion. That’s why she came to the hospital. The doctor wants to put a knife in her vagina. At the last minute she got scared and said ‘no.’ I don’t think the knife actually came inside.” All during this experience the journeyer’s legs and body shake intensely. I ask him about the doctor: “I think he doesn’t want to do the abortion. I sense he is very kind. I think he tries to convince Mom not to do it.” I ask him if there is anyone else in the room. “I see an image of a guardian angel. He wants to protect me. He has my good in mind. He protects me, I think, by not letting her do it--and making her change her mind.” I ask the journeyer if the angel protected him later in life. He recounts six near-catastrophic incidents when his life was miraculously saved. In three of these cases, “something” told him to take quick action that prevented a serious accident. A week after his journey, he reports that when he's alone he no longer feels like dying. Regression to Infancy A businessman in his fifties struggled with depression, low self-esteem, and sex addiction. He was unable to love or connect emotionally with his wife and children. The following are excerpts from his first MDMA journey in which he spontaneously regressed to infancy. “I’m a little baby. I’m in my crib, alone. I want someone to come spend time with me. My tummy hurts. I feel so empty.” I (the sitter) give him a baby bottle filled with water. “My bottle is the only thing to fill my tummy. My bottle is all I have. I’m so alone. Mommy and Daddy are working. I cry for attention. That’s the only way I can get someone to be there. They don’t like me to cry. “My nursemaid is all I have. She makes me feel like I am wanted. She takes care of me. I’d always look forward to her coming. I’d wait for her to come. I was alone and afraid. My body is shaking. All the pain I felt as a baby is coming up.” After the journey he reports: “How absolutely real, authentic, and primal it was for me. While there, in the session, I’m connecting to my authentic self and the exiled parts of me are getting a chance to be expressed and seen by my adult self. I rediscovered my inner child. He was finally heard, and was able to talk about anything. I felt very open and vulnerable. I want this so much for myself. Simply, during the session, I can be real and risk letting all of those hurts, pains, shame, and memories that are sabotaging my adult life out into the light.” Empowering the Majestic Inner Primate A journeyer recovering from childhood incest wrote this report of his empowering LSD session. “I was barely a child when I was crushed under the weight of my father and older brother’s shame and depravity. My power sucked from me before I even knew what power was. Later in life, I would develop all different kinds of counterfeit strengths that gave the impression that I was a man. But if you looked closely, you would have discovered an impersonator. A weak, damaged child wearing the skins of men--a TV director, a father, a coach, a teacher. “Once I began a course of therapy using psychedelics in a controlled therapeutic setting there was no turning back. First I saw the crippled homunculus of that child trapped inside me. Then I uncovered my childhood sexual abuse, shaking and thrashing uncontrollably as my body released the shame and pain put there by those who were supposed to protect me. Then, in my darkest place, a window opened that made me realize I was one of many who had been sexually abused as a child. A flood of compassion filled me. Then the shaking began again, but this time it was different. Something else was inside of me. Once I joined with it, strength and power flooded into me. “Last week I had one of my most important journeys. Two hits of LSD manifested an ape-like primacy in me. I could feel its primal force, a beast fully born of the Earth, rising inside me. Grunting. Baring its teeth. Muscles rippling. I felt confident, dangerous, and--kind. I felt what it must have been like to have been a Neanderthal experiencing the gift of consciousness and wonder. My body, an animal full of power and grace, my heart and mind fixed on a wondrous eternity. “Then I started to move, feeling the animal inside. I grabbed a wooden walking stick by the door and snapped it in half--showering the room in splinters. Gripping the two split halves, I felt like one of the apes in the “Dawn of Man” segment of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I started pounding the furniture, reveling in the discovery of this new power. Snarling in celebration. Becoming. “It’s important to know that this power is in fact a weapon. And like any weapon, it can be used to defend or attack. This power in the hands of my father was used to crush and humiliate. I was afraid of it. I was afraid of what it could do to people. The pain it could inflict. I wanted nothing to do with it. But this was not my power alone. This was something greater. As I felt it expand inside of me I experienced the humbling responsibility that comes with it. And I knew I wanted this. I knew I needed this, and I knew what my journey guide said was true: ‘This power, full of compassion and understanding is what is needed right now if we have any hope to change the world.’ “I still have far to go but I feel eternally grateful for the teachers, teacher plants and other entheogens that have conspired to bring me out of my tomb of abuse and into the body of a man.” The Author’s Journey Stories In the initial phase of my psychedelic therapy, the medicines uncovered hard truths that I was an unwanted child who never had a warm, devoted mother to bond with. My father was distant, narcissistic, and mostly absent. I was raised by a series of paid nannies. I felt unloved and unsafe. The following narrative is from one of my early journeys. Healing my Infant Trauma “An hour ago I ingested two hits of LSD. I am in a comfortable room with my trusted therapist. I close my eyes and begin to focus my attention into my body. I am surprised to discover that I feel sensations wherever I direct my awareness. Some places feel relaxed and tingly, some tight and jittery, some heavy, some numb. I can feel a whole universe inside my skin! “My therapist directs me to scan my body to find places where there is pain. My belly feels constricted. There are pockets of sharp pain in my colon. I am asked to focus my attention and breathe into the pain. I struggle to quiet the incessant thoughts that distract attention away from my belly. I’m anxious. Deep breathing is difficult. I suddenly get very cold. My heart races, my teeth chatter, my body trembles. Even though I'm aware that I'm an adult participating in a psychedelic therapy session, I feel like an infant. I'm feeling terror from my childhood! My nursemaid is scary--she's hurting me. No one is protecting me. I feel alone and utterly helpless. Each time I breathe into the constrictions in my belly, my body releases more terror. I'm experiencing this nightmare as though it were happening right now. “In the core of the tightness I feel Mommy doesn’t want me, and nobody truly loves or cares about me. I burst into deep, gut-wrenching sobbing. It feels strangely purging. I weep, I wail, and with encouragement from my therapist, I scream and kick my legs. ‘Stop! Get away from me! I hate you!’ I'm amazed I've been carrying all this rage, fear, and sadness inside me all my life. “For hours I continue to breathe into my belly. I'm immersed in powerful emotions and vivid memories of childhood. As I feel and release the trauma, the constriction and pain in my colon subsides. My therapist comforts my infant self, and I begin to feel a robust, new sense of well-being and peace. “When the drug wears off, I am dumbfounded at the stark reality of events that happened to me forty years ago. How can a drug unlock these memories? How did I ever survive my childhood? No wonder I’ve been sick and depressed for so many years!” Healing My Sexual Abuse Trauma As my parental wounds healed, new traumatic memories began to surface during an LSD/psilocybin session. “‘My lower back is frozen! It's so tight I can barely move.’ My therapist helps me focus attention and breath into the tightness at the base of my spine. My pelvis feels numb. I'm nauseous and thirsty. I feel fear in my thighs and lower back. Everything is turning dark and scary. I'm breathing fast. My body is beginning to shake and spasm. I whimper like a child in a high-pitched voice. My legs start to run in place. My therapist asks me if the fear has words. I scream, ‘I’m afraid, don’t hurt me. STOP!’ Suddenly, body memories of sexual abuse surface. There are no linear or visual memories, but my body is being jerked about like a limp rag doll. My body's intense, involuntary response is undeniable evidence that I am a little boy being anally raped. I sob, cough, and scream, ‘Help me! I feel so helpless, unprotected, and unloved. He's threatening if I tell anyone, he'll hurt my mother.’ “I am immersed in this nightmare for hours. Finally, I feel the drug wear off and the cathartic releasing wind down. My therapist comforts me with a soothing belly rub. I gently sob. Tears flow. I don't want to believe I was raped. It's hard to accept this shocking revelation.” In subsequent sessions, I discovered and released rape trauma that was hidden in different places in my body. I felt layers of fear, pain, and anger that took dozens of journeys to work through. As I processed through the rape, sexual anxieties and dysfunctions I had lived with all my adult life began to vanish. Healing my sexual abuse transformed the myriad different ways the trauma had compromised my health and happiness. As it turns out, my bleeding ulcers and depression were symptoms of deep, hidden wounds. Fixing my symptoms would have only addressed the tip of the iceberg. Looking back on my life, I appreciate how my symptoms were catalysts that pushed me onto a road less travelled. Sometimes, life’s challenges are dancing lessons from God. ABOUT THE AUTHOR R. Coleman has been a pioneering, underground psychedelic therapist for thirty years, working with survivors of severe childhood trauma who have been unable to heal using mainstream therapies. In this one-of-a-kind book, he imparts knowledge gathered from facilitating more than three thousand psychedelic therapy sessions. Copyright © 2017 by R. Coleman Made in the United States of America All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission. For information contact: TRANSFORM PRESS PO BOX 11552 BERKELEY, CA 94712 www.transformpress.com First Edition ISBN: 978-0-9630096-8-5 Cover Design by Mitchell Walker Ebook design by Emily June Street ================================================================================ SOURCE: The Mushroom Cultivator A Practical Guide to Growing -- Paul Stamets ================================================================================ The Mushroom Cultivator A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home by Paul Stamets & J.S. Chilton Produced by Paul Stamets and J.S. Chilton The authors invite comments on The Mushroom Cultivator as well as personal experiences concerning mushroom cultivation. Address all mail to Agarikon Press. © 1983 Paul Stamets and J.S. Chilton original source: http://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Permaculture/Mushroom_Cultivator-A_Practical_Guide_to_Growing_Mushrooms_at_Home.pdf backup source: http://www.psilosophy.info/resources/Mushroom_Cultivator-A_Practical_Guide_to_Growing_Mushrooms_at_Home.pdf To Azureus, Skye, and LaDena Table of Contents: FOREWORD by Dr. Andrew Weil PREFACE I. INTRODUCTION TO MUSHROOM CULTURE An Overview of Techniques for Mushroom Cultivation Mushrooms and Mushroom Culture The Mushroom Life Cycle II. STERILE TECHNIQUE AND AGAR CULTURE Design and Construction of a Sterile Laboratory Preparation of Agar Media Starting a Culture from Spores Taking a Spore Print Techniques for Spore Germination Characteristics of the Mushroom Mycelium Ramifications of Multispore Culture Starting a Culture from Live Tissue Sectoring: Strain Selection and Development Stock Cultures: Methods For Preserving Mushroom Strains III. GRAIN CULTURE The Development of Grain Spawn Preparation of Grain Spawn Spawn Formulas Inoculation of Sterilized Grain from Agar Media Inoculation of Grain from Grain Masters Alternative Spawn Media Sawdust/Bran Spawn Perlite Spawn Liquid Inoculation Techniques Incubation of Spawn IV. THE MUSHROOM GROWING ROOM Structure and Growing Systems soma rights re-served 1 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Structure Shelves Trays Environmental Control Systems Fresh Air Fans Air Ducting Filters Exhaust Vents Heating Cooling Humidification Thermostats and Humidistats Lighting Environmental Monitoring Equipment V. COMPOST PREPARATION Phase I Composting Basic Raw Materials Supplements Group I: High nitrogen, no organic matter Group II: 10-14% N Group III: 3-7% N Group IV: Low nitrogen, high carbohydrate Group V: Animal manures Group VI: Hay Group VII: Minerals Gypsum - Calcium sulfate Limestone flour - Calcium carbonate Group VIII: Starting materials Compost Formulas Formula I Formula II Ammonia Carbon:Nitrogen Ratio Water and Air Pre-wetting Building the Pile Turning Temperature Long Composting Short Composting Short Compost Procedure Synthetic Compost Procedure Composting Tools Characteristics of the Compost at Filling Supplementation at Filling Phase II Composting Basic Air Requirements Phase II Room Design Filling Procedures Depth of Fill Phase II Procedures: Trays or Shelves Phase II in Bulk Bulk Room Design Features Bulk Room Filling Procedures Bulk Room Phase II Procedures soma rights re-served 2 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Testing for Ammonia Aspect of the Finished Compost Alternative Composts and Composting Procedures Sugar Cane Bagasse Compost The Five Day Express Composting Method VI. NON-COMPOSTED SUBSTRATES Natural Culture Semi-sterile and Sterile Wood Based Substrates Growing on Pasteurized Straw VII. SPAWNING AND SPAWN RUNNING IN BULK SUBSTRATES Moisture Content Substrate Temperature Dry Weight of Substrate Duration of Spawn Run Spawning Methods Environmental Conditions Super Spawning Supplementation at Spawning Supplementation at Casing (S.A.C.) VIII. THE CASING LAYER Functions Properties Materials Casing Formulas and Preparation Application Casing Colonization Casing Moisture and Mycelial Appearance IX. STRATEGIES FOR MUSHROOM FORMATION (PINHEAD INITIATION) Basic Pinning Strategy Primordia Formation Procedures Stage I: Preparation Stage II: Environmental Transition - The Prelude to Setting Primordia Stage III: Primordia Formation (Knotting) Stage IV: Pinhead Development The Relationship Between Primordia Formation and Yield The Influence of Light on Pinhead Initiation X. ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS: SUSTAINING THE MUSHROOM CROP Temperature Flushing Pattern Air Movement Watering Harvesting Harvesting techniques Preserving Mushrooms XI. GROWING PARAMETERS FOR VARIOUS MUSHROOM SPECIES Agaricus bitorquis A. bitorquis - Growth Parameters Agaricus brunnescens A. brunnescens - Growth Parameters Coprinus comatus C. comatus - Growth Parameters Flammulina velutipes F. velutipes - Growth Parameters Lentinus edodes L. edodes - Growth Parameters Lepista nuda soma rights re-served 3 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb L. nuda - Growth Parameters Panaeolus cyanescens P. cyanescens - Growth Parameters Panaeolus subbalteatus P. subbalteatus - Growth Parameters Pleurotus ostreatus P. ostreatus - Growth Parameters Pleurotus ostreatus (Florida variety) P. ostreatus (Florida variety) - Growth Parameters Psilocybe cubensis P. cubensis - Growth Parameters Psilocybe cyanescens Psil. cyanescens - Growth Parameters Psilocybe mexicana P. mexicana - Growth Parameters Psilocybe tampanensis P. tampanensis - Growth Parameters Stropharia rugoso-annulata S. rugoso-annulata - Growth Parameters Volvariella volvacea V. volvacea - Growth Parameters XII. CULTIVATION PROBLEMS AND THEIR SOLUTIONS: A TROUBLE SHOOTING GUIDE Sterile Technique Agar Culture Grain Culture Compost Preparation Phase I Phase II Spawn Running Case Running Mushroom Formation and Development Pinhead Initiation Cropping XIII. THE CONTAMINANTS OF MUSHROOM CULTURE: IDENTIFICATION AND CONTROL A Key to the Common Contaminants of Mushroom Culture Virus (Die-Back Disease) Actinomyces (Firefang) Bacillus (Wet Spot) Pseudomonas (Bacterial Blotch & Pit) Streptomyces (Firefang) Alternaria (Black Mold) Aspergillus (Green Mold) Botrytis (Brown Mold) Chaetomium (Olive Green Mold) Chrysosporium (Yellow Mold) Cladosporium (Dark Green Mold) Coprinus (Inky Cap) Cryptococcus (Cream Colored Yeast) Dactylium (Cobweb Mold) Doratormyces (Black Whisker Mold) Epicoccum (Yellow Mold) Fusarium Geotrichum (Lipstick Mold) Humicola (Gray Mold) Monilia (White Flour Mold) Mucor (Black Pin Mold) soma rights re-served 4 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Mycelia Sterilia (White Mold) Mycogone (Wet Bubble) Neurospora (Pink Mold) Papulospora (Brown Plaster Mold) Penicillium (Bluish Green Mold) Rhizopus (Black Pin Mold) Scopulariopsis (White Plaster Mold) Sepedonium (White or Yellow Mold) Torula (Black Yeast) Trichoderma (Forest Green Mold) Trichothecium (Pink Mold) Verticillium (Dry Bubble) XIV. THE PESTS OF MUSHROOM CULTURE Mushroom Flies Fly Control Measures Sciarid Fly Phorid Fly Cecid Fly Mushroom Mites Nematodes (Eelworms) Saprophagous Nematodes Mycophagous Nematodes XV. MUSHROOM GENETICS Introduction What Are Genes? What Do Genes Do? The Advantage of Multiple Copies of Genes Chromosomes Mitosis Meiosis Reproductive Strategies Asexual Reproduction in the Fungi Sexual Reproduction in Mushrooms Implications for Culture Work Culture Trials Spore Dilution Technique APPENDICES Appendix I - Medicinal Properties of Mushrooms Appendix II - Laminar Flow Systems The Air The Filter The Fan Laminar Flow Designs Appendix III - The Effect of Bacteria and Other Microorganisms on Fruiting Appendix IV - The Use of Mushroom Extracts to Induce Fruiting Appendix V - Data Collection and Environmental Monitoring Records Spawn Making Compost Making: Phase I Compost Making: Phase II Spawn Running Casing: Case Running Pinhead Initiation Cropping Flushing Pattern Appendix VI - Analyses of Basic Materials Used in Substrate Preparation Dry Roughages of Fibrous Materials soma rights re-served 5 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Concentrates Appendix VII - Resources For Mushroom Growing Equipment and Supplies Appendix VIII - English to Metric Conversion Tables PHOTOGRAPHY AND ILLUSTRATION CREDITS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS GLOSSARY BIBLIOGRAPHY soma rights re-served 6 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb FOREWORD by Dr. Andrew Weil Ever since French growers pioneered the cultivation of the common Agaricus more than two hundred years ago, mushroom cultivation in the Western world has been a mysterious art. Professional cultivators, fearful of competition, have guarded their techniques as trade secrets, sharing them only with closest associates, never with amateurs. The difficulty of domesticating mushrooms adds to the mystery: they are just harder to grow than flowering plants. Some species refuse to grow at all under artificial conditions; many more refuse to fruit; and even the familiar Agaricus of supermarkets demands a level of care and attention to detail much beyond the scope of ordinary gardening and agriculture. In the past ten years, interest in mushrooms has literally mushroomed in America. For the first time in history the English-speaking world is flooded with good field guides to the higher fungi, and significant numbers of people are learning to collect and eat choice wild species. In the United States and Canada mushroom conferences and forays attract more and more participants. Cultivated forms of species other than the common Agaricus have begun to appear in specialty shops and even supermarkets. The reasons for this dramatic change in a traditionally mycophobic part of the world may never be known. I have been fascinated with mushrooms as symbols of the unconscious mind and think their growing popularity here is a hopeful sign of progress in the revolution of consciousness that began in the 1960s. A more specific reason may be the rediscovery of psychedelic mushrooms - the Psilocybes and their allies - which have thoroughly invaded American society in recent years. The possibility of collecting wild psychoactive mushrooms in many parts of North America has motivated thousands of people to buy field guides and attend mushroom conferences. The possibility of growing Psilocybe cubensis at home, one of the easier species to cultivate, has made many people eager to learn the art of mushroom production. As they pursue their hobby, fans of Psilocybes often find their interest in mushrooms broadening to include other genera that boast non-psychoactive but delicious edible species. Other mycophiles, uninterested in altered states of consciousness, have grown so fond of some edible species as to want better access to them than foraying in the wild provides. The result has been a demand from a variety of amateurs for the trade secrets of professional cultivators. The book you are about to read is a milestone in the new awareness of mushrooms. THE MUSHROOM CULTIVATOR by Paul Stamets and Jeff Chilton is easily the best source of information on growing mushrooms at home. Both authors are experts on the higher fungi, on their technical aspects as well as the practical methods of working with the most interesting species. Paul Stamets is a recognized authority on the Psilocybes and their relatives; Jeff Chilton has been a professional consultant to large-scale, commercial producers of the common Agaricus and the once-exotic shiitake of Japan and China. Together they have organized a number of successful mushroom conferences in the Pacific Northwest and have championed the cause of growing at home. Unlike experts of the past (and some of the present), they are willing and ready to share their knowledge and practical information with all lovers of mushrooms, whether they are amateurs or professionals, devotees of Psilocybe or of Pleurotus. THE MUSHROOM CULTIVATOR is indeed "A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home," as its subtitle indicates. It covers every aspect of the subject in a readable style and in sufficient detail to enable both rank amateurs and serious mycologists to succeed at growing the mushrooms they like. By including a wealth of excellent illustrations, information on obtaining equipment and supplies, and step-by-step directions for every procedure, from starting spore cultures to harvesting fruiting bodies to dealing with contaminants and pests, the authors demystify the art of mushroom cultivation and put mastery of it within everyone's reach. It is a pleasure to introduce this fine book. If you have been searching for information on this topic, you will find it to be all that you have been looking for and more. Andrew Weil, M.D., F.L.S soma rights re-served 7 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb PREFACE The use of mushrooms as food crosses all cultural boundaries. Highly prized by the Greeks, mushroom consumption in European nations has deep traditional roots. The Agari, a pre-Scythian people from Samartia (now Poland and the western Soviet Union), held mushrooms in high esteem and used them medicinally. The early Greeks held a similar fascination for fungi and apparently worked them into their religious rituals, even to the extent that to discuss the use of these sacraments violated strong taboos. For thousands of years, the Chinese and Japanese have prized a variety of mushroom species for their beneficial properties. In the New World, the Aztec and Mazatec Indians of Mexico used mushrooms for both their healing and divining properties. Clearly, mushrooms have played a significant role in the course of human cultures worldwide. Although the Japanese have cultivated the Shiitake mushroom for two thousand years, the earliest record of European mushroom cultivation was in the 17th century when an agronomist to Louis XIV, Olivier de Serres, retrieved wild specimens and implanted mushroom mycelium in prepared substrates. In those times mushroom growing was a small scale outdoor activity practiced by the rural populace. Materials in which mushrooms grew naturally were collected and concentrated into prepared beds. These beds were cropped and then used to start new beds. As demand increased and new methods improved yields, mushroom growing developed into a large scale commercial business complete with computer controlled indoor environments and scientifically formulated substrates. Spawn with which to plant prepared beds, initially gathered in nature, became standardized as sterile culture techniques were perfected. It is now known that many of the mushrooms presently under cultivation rank above all vegetable and legumes (except soybeans) in protein content, and have significant levels of B and C vitamins and are low in fat. Research has shown that certain cultivated mushrooms reduce serum cholesterol, inhibit tumors, stimulate interferon production and possess antiviral properties. It is no surprise, therefore, that as food plants were developed into cultivars, mushrooms were among those selected. Discovering the methods most successful for mushroom cultivation has been a long and arduous task, evolving from the experience of lifetimes of research. As mushroom growing expanded from the realm of home cultivators to that of a multimillion dollar industry, it is not surprising that growers became more secretive about their methods. For prospective home cultivators, finding appropriate information has become increasingly difficult. As a result, the number of small growers decreased and home cultivation became a rare enterprise. The Mushroom Cultivator is written expressly for the home cultivator and is without bias against any group of interested growers. For the first time, information previously unavailable to the general public is presented in a clear and easy to understand fashion. The book reflects not only the work of the authors but also the cumulative knowledge gained through countless trials by mushrooms growers and researchers. It is the sincere hope of the authors that this work will re-open the door to the fascinating world of mushroom culture. The Mushroom Cultivator is dedicated to this goal as we pursue the Art and Science of mushroom cultivation. soma rights re-served 8 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb I. INTRODUCTION TO MUSHROOM CULTURE Figure 0 - Wall of Pleurotus ostreatus fruitbodies. An Overview of Techniques for Mushroom Cultivation Techniques for cultivating mushrooms, whatever the species, follow the same basic pattern. Whereas two species may differ in temperature requirements, pH preferences or the substrate on which they grow, the steps leading to fruiting are essentially the same. They can be summarized as follows: 1. Preparation and pouring of agar media into Petri dishes. 2. Germination of spores and isolation of pure mushroom mycelium. 3. Expansion of mycelial mass on agar media. 4. Preparation of grain media. 5. Inoculation of grain media with pure mycelium grown on agar media. 6. Incubation of inoculated grain media (spawn). 7. A. Laying out grain spawn onto trays. Or B. Inoculation of grain spawn into bulk substrates. 8. Casing - covering of substrate with a moist mixture of peat and other materials. soma rights re-served 9 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb 9. Initiation - lowering temperature, increasing humidity to 95%, increasing air circulation, decreasing carbon dioxide and/or introducing light. 10. Cropping - maintaining temperature, lowering humidity to 85-92%, maintaining air circulation, carbon dioxide and/or light levels. Figure 1 - Diagram illustrating overview of general techniques for the cultivation of mushrooms. With many species moderate crops can be produced on cased grain cultures. Or, the cultivator can go one step further and inoculate compost, straw or wood. In either case, the fruiting of mushrooms requires a high soma rights re-served 10 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb humidity environment that can be readily controlled. Without proper moisture, mushrooms don't grow. In the subsequent chapters standard methods for germinating spores are discussed, followed by techniques for growing mycelium on agar, producing grain and/or bran "spawn", preparing composted and non-composted substrates, spawn running, casing and pinhead formation. With this last step the methods for fruiting various species diverge and techniques specific to each mushroom are individually outlined. A trouble-shooting guide helps cultivators identify and solve problems that are commonly encountered. This is followed by a thorough analysis of the contaminants and pests of mushroom culture and a chapter explaining the nature of mushroom genetics. In all, the book is a system of knowledge that integrates the various techniques developed by commercial growers worldwide and makes the cultivation of mushrooms at home a practical endeavor. Mushrooms and Mushroom Culture Mushrooms inspire awe in those encountering them. They seem different. Neither plant-like nor animal-like, mushrooms have a texture, appearance and manner of growth all their own. Mushrooms represent a small branch in the evolution of the fungal kingdom Eumycota and are commonly known as the "fleshy fungi". In fact, fungi are non-photosynthetic organisms that evolved from algae. The primary role of fungi in the ecosystem is decomposition, one organism in a succession of microbes that break down dead organic matter. And although tens of thousands of fungi are know, mushrooms constitute only a small fraction, amounting to a few thousand species. Regardless of the species, several steps are universal to the cultivation of all mushrooms. Not surprisingly, these initial steps directly reflect the life cycle of the mushroom. The role of the cultivator is to isolate a particular mushroom species from the highly competitive natural world and implant it in an environment that gives the mushroom plant a distinct advantage over competing organisms. The three major steps in the growing of mushrooms parallel three phases in their life cycle. They are: 1. Spore collection, spore germination and isolation of mycelium; or tissue cloning. 2. Preparation of inoculum by the expansion of mycelial mass on enriched agar media and then on grain. Implantation of grain spawn into composted and uncomposted substrates or the use of grain as a fruiting substrate. 3. Fruitbody (mushroom) initiation and development. Having a basic understanding of the mushroom life cycle greatly aids the learning of techniques essential to cultivation. Mushrooms are the fruit of the mushroom plant, the mycelium. A mycelium is a vast network of interconnected cells that permeates the ground and lives perennially. This resident mycelium only produces fruitbodies, what are commonly called mushrooms, under optimum conditions of temperature, humidity and nutrition. For the most part, the parent mycelium has but one recourse for insuring the survival of the species: to release enormous numbers of spores. This is accomplished through the generation of mushrooms. In the life cycle of the mushroom plant, the fruitbody occurs briefly. The mycelial network can sit dormant for months, sometimes years and may only produce a single flush of mushrooms. During those few weeks of fruiting, the mycelium is in a frenzied state of growth, amassing nutrients and forming dense ball-like masses called primorida that eventually enlarge into the towering mushroom structure. The gills first develop from the tissue on the underside of the cap, appearing as folds, then becoming blunt ridges and eventually extending into flat, vertically aligned plates. These efficiently arranged symmetrical gills are populated with spore producing cells called basidia. From a structural point of view, the mushroom is an efficient reproductive body. The cap acts as a domed shield protecting the underlying gills from the damaging effects of rain, wind and sun. Covering the gills in many species is a well developed layer of tissue called the partial veil which extends from the cap margin to the stem. Spores start falling from the gills just before the partial veil tears. After the partial veil has fallen, spores are projected from the gills in ever increasing numbers. The cap is supported by a pillar-like stem that elevates the gills above ground where the spores can be carried off by the slightest wind currents. Clearly, every part of the mushroom fruitbody is designed to give the spores the best opportunity to mature and spread soma rights re-served 11 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb in an external environment that is often harsh and drastically fluctuating. As the mushroom matures, spore production slows and eventually stops. At this time mushrooms are in their last hours of life. Soon decay from bacteria and other fungi sets in, reducing the once majestic mushroom into a soggy mass of fetid tissue that melts into the ground from which it sprung. The Mushroom Life Cycle Figure 2 - The Mushroom Life Cycle. Cultivating mushrooms is one of the best ways to observe the entirety of the Mushroom Life Cycle. The life cycle first starts with a spore which produces a primary mycelium. When the mycelium originating from two soma rights re-served 12 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb spores mates, a secondary mycelium is produced. This mycelium continues to grow vegetatively. When vegetative mycelium has matured, its cells are capable of a phenomenal rate of reproduction which culminates in the erection of mushroom fruitbody. This represents the last functional change and it has become, in effect, tertiary mycelium. These types of mycelia represent the three major phases in the progression of the mushroom life cycle. Most mushrooms produce spores that are uninucleate and genetically haploid (1N). This means each spore contains one nucleus and has half the complement of chromosomes for the species. Thus spores have a "sex" in that each has to mate with mycelia from another spore type to be fertile for producing offspring. When spores are first released they are fully inflated "moist" cells that can easily germinate. Soon they dehydrate, collapsing at their centers and in this phase they can sit dormant through long periods of dry weather or severe drought. When weather conditions provide a sufficiently moist environment, the spores rehydrate and fully inflate. Only then is germination possible. Figure 3 - Scanning electron micrograph of Russula spores. Figure 4 - Scanning electron micrograph of Entoloma spores. Spores within an individual species are fairly constant in their shape and structure. However, many mushroom species differ remarkably in their spore types. Some are smooth and lemon shaped (in the genus Copelandia, for instance); many are ellipsoid (as in the genus Psilocybe); while others are highly ornamented and irregularly shaped (such as those in Lactarius or Entoloma). A feature common to the spores of many mushrooms, particularly the psilocybian species, is the formation of an apical germ pore. The germ pore, a circular depression at one end of the spore, is the site of germination from which a haploid strand of mycelium called a hypha emanates. This hypha continues to grow, branches and becomes a mycelial network. When two sexually complementary hyphal networks intercept one another and make contact, cell walls separating the two hyphal systems dissolve and cytoplasmic and genetic materials are exchanged. Erotic or not, this is "mushroom sex". Hence - forth, all resulting mycelium is binucleate and dikaryotic. This means each cell has two nuclei and a full complement of chromosomes. With few exceptions, only mated (dikaryotic) mycelia is fertile and capable of producing fruitbodies. Typically, dikaryotic mycelia is faster running and more vigorous than unmated, monokaryotic mycelia. Once a mycelium has entered into the dikaryophase, fruiting can occur shortly thereafter. In Psilocybe cubensis, the time between spore germination and fruitbody initials can be as brief as two weeks; in some Panaeolus species only a week transpires before mushrooms appear. Most mushroom species, however, take several weeks or months before mushrooms can be generated from the time of spore germination. soma rights re-served 13 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 5 - High resolution scanning electron micrograph showing germ pores of Psilocybe pelliculosa spores. Cultivators interested in developing new strains by crossing single spore isolates take advantage of the occurrence of clamp connections to tell whether or not mating has taken place. Clamp connections are microscopic bridges that protrude from one adjoining cell to another and are only found in dikaryotic mycelia. Clamps can be readily seen with a light microscope at 100-400X magnification. Not all species form clamp connections. (Agaricus brunnescens does not; most all Psilocybe and Panaeolus species do). In contrast, mycelia resulting from haploid spores lack clamps. This feature is an invaluable tool for the researcher developing new strains. (For more information on breeding strategies, see Chapter XV.) Figure 6 - Scanning electron micrograph of Psilocybe baeocystis spore germinating. soma rights re-served 14 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Two dikaryotic mycelial networks can also grow together, exchange genetic material and form a new strain. Such an encounter, where two hyphal systems fuse, is known as anastomosis. When two incompatible colonies of mycelia meet, a zone of inhibited growth frequently forms. On agar media, this zone of incompatibility is visible to the unaided eye. Figure 7 - Scanning electron micrograph of hyphae emanating from a bed of germinating Psilocybe cubensis spores. When a mycelium produces mushrooms, several radical changes in its metabolism occurs. Up to this point, the mycelium has been growing vegetatively. In the vegetative state, hyphal cells are amassing nutrients. Curiously, there is a gradual increase in the number of nuclei per cell, sometimes to as many as ten just prior to the formation of mushrooms. Immediately before fruitbodies form, new cell walls divide the nuclei, reducing their number per cell to an average of two. The high number of nuclei per cell in pre-generative mycelia seems to be a prerequisite for fruiting in many mushroom species. As the gills mature, basidia cells emerge in ever increasing numbers, first appearing as small bubble-like cells and resembling cobblestones on a street. The basidia are the focal point in the reproductive phase of the mushroom life cycle. The basidia, however, do not mature all at once. In the genus Panaeolus for instance, the basidia cells mature regionally, giving the gill surface a spotted look. The cells giving rise to the basidia are typically binucleate, each nucleus is haploid (1N) and the cell is said to be dikaryotic. The composition of the young basidia cells are similar. At a specific point in time, the two nuclei in the basidium migrate towards one another and merge into a single diploid (2N) nucleus. This event is known as karyogamy. Soon thereafter, the diploid nucleus undergoes meiosis and typically produces four haploid daughter cells. On the surface of the basidia, arm-like projections called sterigmatae arise through which these nuclei then migrate. In most species four spores form at the tips of these projections. The spores continue to develop until they are forcefully liberated from the basidia and propelled into free space. The mechanism for spore release has not yet been proven. But, the model most widely accepted within the mycological community is one where a "gas bubble" forms at the junction of the spore and the sterigmata. This gas bubble inflates, violently explodes and jettisons the spore into the cavity between the gills where it is taken away by air currents. Most commonly, sets of opposing spores are released in this manner. With spore release, the life cycle is completed. soma rights re-served 15 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 8, 9, & 10 - Scanning electron micrographs of the mycelial network of Psilocybe cubensis. Note hyphal crossings and clamp connections. Not all mushroom species have basidia that produce four haploid spores. Agaricus brunnescens (= Agaricus bisporus), the common button mushroom, has basidia with two diploid (2N) spores. This means each spore can evolve into a mycelium that is fully capable of producing mushrooms. Agaricus brunnescens is one example of a diploid bipolar species. Some Copelandian Panaeoli (the strongly bluing species in the genus Panaeolus) are two spored and have mating properties similar to Agaricus brunnescens. Other mushroom species have exclusively three spored basidia; some have five spored basidia; and a few, like the common Chantarelle, have as many as eight spores per basidium! soma rights re-served 16 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 11, 12 & 13 - Scanning electron micrographs showing the development of the basidium and spores in Ramaria iongispora, a coral fungus. An awareness of the life cycle will greatly aid beginning cultivators in their initial attempts to cultivate mushrooms. Once a basic understanding of mushroom culture and the life processes of these organisms is achieved, cultivators can progress to more advanced subjects like genetics, strain selection and breeding. This wholistic approach increases the depth of one's understanding and facilitates development of innovative approaches to mushroom cultivation. Figure 14 - Scanning electron micrograph of mature basidium in Panaeolus foenisecii. soma rights re-served 17 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 15a, 15b - Scanning electron micrographs showing basidium of Psilocybe pelliculosa. Note spore/sterigmata junction. Figure 16 - Scanning electron micrograph of two spored basidium of an as yet unpublished species closely related to Copelandia cyanescens. Note "shadow" nuclei visible within each spore. Figure 17 - Scanning electron micrograph of the gill surface of Cantharellus cibarius. Note six and eight spored basidia. soma rights re-served 18 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb II. STERILE TECHNIQUE AND AGAR CULTURE Fiqure 18 - A home cultivator's pantry converted into a sterile laboratory. The air we breathe is a living sea of microscopic organisms that ebbs and flows with the slightest wind currents. Fungi, bacteria, viruses and plants use the atmosphere to carry their offspring to new environments. These microscopic particles can make sterile technique difficult unless proper precautions are taken. If one can eliminate or reduce the movement of these organisms in the air, however, success in sterile technique is assured. There are five primary sources of contamination in mushroom culture work: 1. The immediate external environment 2. The culture medium 3. The culturing equipment 4. The cultivator and his or her clothes 5. The mushroom spores or the mycelium Mushrooms - and all living organisms - are in constant competition for available nutrients. In creating a sterile soma rights re-served 19 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb environment, the cultivator seeks to give advantage to the mushroom over the myriad legions of other competitors. Before culture work can begin, the first step is the construction of an inoculation chamber or sterile laboratory. Design and Construction of a Sterile Laboratory The majority of cultivators fail because they do not take the time to construct a laboratory for sterile work. An afternoon's work is usually all that is required to convert a walk-in closet, a pantry or a small storage room into a workable inoculation chamber. Begin by removing all rugs, curtains and other cloth-like material that can harbor dust and spores. Thoroughly clean the floors, walls and ceiling with a mild disinfectant. Painting the room with a high gloss white enamel will make future cleaning easier. Cover windows or any other sources of potential air leaks with plastic sheeting. On either side of the room's entrance, using plastic sheeting or other materials, construct an antechamber which serves as an airlock. This acts as a protective buffer between the laboratory and the outside environment. The chamber should be designed so that the sterile room door is closed while the anteroom is entered. Equip the lab with these items: 1. a chair and a sturdy table with a smooth surface. 2. a propane torch, an alcohol lamp, a bunsen burner or a butane lighter. 3. a clearly marked spray bottle containing a 10% bleach solution. 4. sterile Petri dishes and test tube "slants". 5. stick-on labels, notebook, ballpoint pen and a permanent marking pen. 6. an agar knife and inoculating loop. All these items should remain in the laboratory. If any equipment is removed, make sure it is absolutely clean before being returned to the room. A semisterile environment can be established in the laboratory through simple maintenance depending on the frequency of use. The amount of cleaning necessary will be a function of the spore load in the external environment. In winter the number of free spores drastically decreases while in the spring and summer months one sees a remarkable increase. Consequently, more cleaning is necessary during these peak contamination periods. More importantly, all contaminated jars and Petri dishes should be disposed of in a fashion that poses no risk to the sterile lab. Once the sterile work room has been constructed, follow a strict and unwavering regimen of hygiene. The room should be cleaned with a disinfectant, the floors mopped and lastly the room's air washed with a fine mist of 10% bleach solution. After spraying, the laboratory should not be reentered for a minimum of 15 minutes until the suspended particles have settled. A regimen of cleaning MUST precede every set of inoculations. As a rule, contamination is easier to prevent than to eliminate after it occurs. Before going further, a few words of caution are required. Sterile work demands concentration, attention to detail and a steady hand. Work for reasonable periods of time and not to the point of exhaustion. Never leave a lit alcohol lamp or butane torch unattended and be conscious of the fact that in an airtight space oxygen can soon be depleted. Some cultivators wage war on contamination to an unhealthy and unnecessary extreme. They tend to "overkill" their laboratory with toxic fungicides and bacteriocides, exposing themselves to dangerously mutagenic chemical agents. In one incident a worker entered a room that had just been heavily sprayed with a phenol based germicide. Because of congestion he could not sense the danger and minutes later experienced extreme shortness of breath, numbness of the extremities and convulsions. These symptoms persisted for hours and he did not recover for several days. In yet another instance, a person mounted a short wave ultraviolet light in a glove box and conducted transfers over a period of months with no protection and unaware of the danger. This type of light can cause skin cancer after prolonged exposure. Other alternatives, posing little or no health hazard, can just as effectively eliminate contaminants, sometimes more so. If despite one's best efforts a high contamination rate persists, several additional measures can be soma rights re-served 20 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb implemented. The first is inexpensive and simple, utilizing a colloidal suspension of light oil into the laboratory's atmosphere; the second involves the construction of a still air chamber called a glove box; and the third is moderately expensive, employing high efficiency micron filters. 1. By asperating sterile oil, a cloud of highly viscous droplets is created. As the droplets descend they trap airborne contaminant particles. This technique uses triethylene glycol that is vaporized through a heated wick. Finer and more volatile than mineral oil, triethylene glycol leaves little or no noticable film layer. However a daily schedule of hygiene maintenance is still recommended. (A German Firm sells a product called an "aero-disinfector" that utilizes the low boiling point of tri-ethylene glycol. For information write: Chemische Fabrik Bruno Vogelmann & Co., Postfach 440, 718 Crailsheim, West Germany. The unit sells for less than $50.00). 2. A glovebox is an airtight chamber that provides a semisterile still air environment in which to conduct transfers. Typically, it is constructed of wood, with a sneeze window for viewing and is sometimes equipped with rubber gloves into which the cultivator inserts his hands. Often, in place of gloves, the front face is covered with a removable cotton cloth that is periodically sterilized. The main advantage of a glove box is that it provides an inexpensive, easily cleaned area where culture work can take place with little or no air movement. 3. Modern laboratories solve the problem of airborne contamination by installing High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters. These filters screen out all particulates exceeding 0.1 - 0.3 microns in diameter, smaller than the spores of all fungi and practically all bacteria. HEPA filters are built into what is commonly known as a laminar flow hood. Some sterile laboratories have an entire wall or ceiling constructed of HEPA filters through which pressurized air is forced from the outside. In effect, a positive pressure, sterile environment is created. Specific data regarding the building and design of laminar flow systems is discussed in greater detail in Appendix IV. Some cultivators have few problems with contaminants while working in what seems like the most primitive conditions. Others encounter pronounced contamination levels and have to invest in high technology controls. Each circumstance dictates an appropriate couriter-measure. Whether one is a home cultivator or a spawn maker in a commercial laboratory, the problems encountered are similar, differing not in kind, but in degree. Figure 19 - Aero-disinfector for reducing contaminant spore load in laboratory. soma rights re-served Figure 20 - Laminar flow hood. 21 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Preparation of Agar Media Once the sterile laboratory is completed, the next step is the preparation of nutrified agar media. Derived from seaweed, agar is a solidifying agent similar to but more effective than gelatin. There are many recipes for producing enriched agar media suitable for mushroom culture. The standard formulas have been Potatoe Dextrose Agar (PDA) and Malt Extract Agar (MEA) to which yeast is often added as a nutritional supplement. Many of the mycological journals list agar media containing peptone or neopeptone, two easily accessed sources of protein for mushroom mycelium. Another type of agar media that the authors recommend is a broth made from boiling wheat or rye kernels which is then supplemented with malt sugar. If a high rate of contamination from bacteria is experienced, the addition of antibiotics to the culture media will prevent their growth. Most antibiotics, like streptomycin, are not autoclavable and must be added to the agar media after sterilization while it is still molten. One antibiotic, gentamycin sulfate, survives autoclaving and is effective against a broad range of bacteria. Antibiotics should be used sparingly and only as a temporary control until the sources of bacteria can be eliminated. The mycelia of some mushroom species are adversely affected by antibiotics. Dozens of enriched agar media have been used successfully in the cultivation of fungi and every cultivator develops distinct preferences based on experience. Regardless of the type of agar medium employed, a major consideration is its pH, a logarithmic scale denoting the level of acidity or alkalinity in a range from 0 (highly acidic) to 14 (highly basic) with 7 being neutral. Species of Psilocybe thrive in media balanced between 6.0-7.0 whereas Agaricus brunnescens and allies grow better in near neutral media. Most mycelia are fairly tolerant and grow well in the 5.5-7.5 pH range. One needs to be concerned with exact pH levels only if spores fail to germinate or if mycelial growth is unusually slow. Figure 21 - Standard glove box. What follows are several formulas for the preparation of nutritionally balanced enriched agar media, any one of which is highly suited for the growth of Agaricus, Pleurotus, Lentinus, Stropharia, Lepista, Flammulina, Volvariella, Panaeolus and Psilocybe mycelia. Of these the authors have two preferences: PDY (Potatoe Dextrose Yeast) and MPG (Malt Peptone Grain) agar media. The addition of ground rye grain or grain extract to whatever media is chosen clearly promotes the growth of strandy mycelium, the kind that is generally preferred for its fast growth. Choose one formula, mix the ingredients in dry form, place into a flask and add water until one liter of medium is made. PDY (Potato Dextrose Yeast) Agar soma rights re-served 22 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb the filtered, extracted broth from boiling 300 grams of sliced potatoes in 1 liter of water for 1 hour 10 grams dextrose sugar 2 grams yeast (optional) 20 grams agar MEA (Malt Extract Agar) 20 grams tan malt 2 grams yeast 20 grams agar (Avoid dark brewer's malts which have become caramelized. The malt that should be used is a light tan brewer's form). MPG (Malt Peptone Grain) Agar 20 grams tan malt 5 grams ground rye grain 5 grams peptone or neopeptone 2 grams yeast (optional) 20 grams agar For controlling bacteria, 0.10 grams of 60-80% pure gentamycin sulfate can be added to each liter of media prior to sterilization. (See Resources in Appendix.) Water quality - its pH and mineral content - varies from region to region. If living in an area of questionable water purity, the use of distilled water is advisable. For all practical purposes, however, tap water can be used without harm to the mushroom mycelium. A time may come when balancing pH is important - especially at spore germination or in the culture of exotic species. The pH of media can be altered by adding a drop at a time of 1 molar concentration of hydrochloric acid (HCL) or sodium hydroxide (NaOH). The medium is thoroughly mixed and then measured using a pH meter or pH papers. (One molar HCL has a pH of 0; one molar NaOH has a pH of 12; and distilled water has a pH of 7). After thoroughly mixing these ingredients, sterilize the medium in a pressure cooker for 30 minutes at 15 psi. (Pressure cookers are a safe and effective means of sterilizing media provided they are operated according to the manufacturer's instructions). A small mouthed vessel is recommended for holding the agar media. If not using a flask specifically manufactured for pouring media, any narrow necked glass bottle will suffice. Be sure to plug its opening with cotton and cover with aluminum foil before inserting into the pressure cooker. The media container should be filled only to ⅔ to ¾ of its capacity. Place the media filled container into the pressure cooker along with an adequate amount of water for generating steam. (Usually a ½ inch layer of water at the bottom will do). Seal the cooker according to the manufacturer's directions. Place the pressure cooker on a burner and heat until ample steam is being generated. Allow the steam to vent for 4-5 minutes before closing the stop-cock. Slowly bring the pressure up to 15 psi and maintain for ½ hour. Do not let the temperature of the cooker exceed 250°F. or else the sugar in the media will caramelize. Media with caramelized sugar inhibits mycelial growth and promotes genetic mutations. A sterilized pot holder or newly laundered cloth should be handy in the sterile lab to aid in removing the media flask from the pressure cooker. While the media is being sterilized, immaculately clean the laboratory. The time necessary for sterilization varies at different altitudes. At a constant volume, pressure and temperature directly correspond (a relationship known as Boyle's Law). When a certain pressure (= temperature) is recommended, it is based on a sea level standard. Those cultivating at higher elevations must cook at higher pressures to achieve the same sterilization effect. Here are two abbreviated charts showing the relationships between temperature and pressure and the changes in the boiling point of water at various elevations. Increase the amount of pressure over the recommended amount based on the difference of the boiling point at sea level and one's own altitude. For example, at 5000 feet the difference in the boiling point of water is approximately 10°F. This means that the pressure must be increased to 20 psi, 5 psi above the recommended 15 psi sea level standard, to correspond to a "10°F. increase" in temperature. (Actually soma rights re-served 23 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb temperature remains the same; it is pressure that differs). Relationship of Pressure and Temperature at Constant Volume The Relationship of Altitude to the Boiling Point of Water Pressure (psi) °Fahrenheit Altitude Boiling Point(°F.) 1 212 Sea Level 212 3 220 1,025 210 5 228 2,063 208 10 240 3,115 206 15 250 4,169 204 20 259 5,225 202 25 267 6,304 200 7,381 197 8,481 196 9,031 195 Note that the effect achieved from sterilizing at 60 minutes at 15 psi is the same as that from 30 minutes at 30 psi. Hence a doubling of pressure reduces sterilization time by one half. Most pressure cookers can not be safely operated at this level unless carefully modified according to the manufacturer's recommendations. And some extra time must be allowed for adequate penetration of steam, especially in densely packed, large autoclaves. Figure 22 & 23 - Pouring agar media into sterile Petri dishes. At left, vertical stack technique. Once sterilized, place the cooker in the laboratory or in a semisterile room and allow the pressure to return to 1 psi before opening. One liter of agar media can generously fill thirty 100 x 15 mm. Petri dishes. Techniques for pouring vary with the cultivator. If only one or two sleeves of Petri dishes are being prepared, the plates should be laid out side by side on the working surface. If more than two sleeves are being poured or table space is limited, pouring the sterile Petri dishes in a vertical stack is usually more convenient. Before pouring, vigorously shake the molten media to evenly distribute its ingredients. Experienced cultivators fill the plates rhythmically and without interruption. Allow the agar media to cool and solidify before using. Condensation often forms on the inside surface of the upper lid of a Petri dish when the agar media being poured is still at a high temperature. To reduce condensation, one can wait a period of time before pouring. If the pressure cooker sits for 45 minutes after reaching 1 psi, a liter of liquid media can be poured with little soma rights re-served 24 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb discomfort to unprotected hands. Two types of cultures can be obtained from a selected mushroom: one from its spores and the other from living tissue of a mushroom. Either type can produce a viable strain of mycelia. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Starting a Culture from Spores A mushroom culture can be started in one of two ways. Most growers start a culture from spores. The advantage of using spores is that they are viable for weeks to months after the mushroom has decomposed. The other way of obtaining a culture is to cut a piece of interior tissue from a live specimen, in effect a clone. Tissue cultures must be taken within a day or two from the time the mushroom has been picked, after which a healthy clone becomes increasingly difficult to establish. Taking a Spore Print To collect spores, sever the cap from the stem of a fresh, well cleaned mushroom and place it gills down on a piece of clean white paper or a clean glass surface such as a microscope slide. If a specimen is partially dried, add a drop or two of water to the cap surface to aid in the release of spores. To lessen evaporation and disturbance from air currents, place a cup or glass over the mushroom cap. After a few hours, the spores will have fallen according to the radiating symmetry of the gills. If the spore print has been taken on paper, cut it out, fold it in half, seal in an airtight container and label the print with the date, species and collection number. When using microscope slides, the spores can be sandwiched between two pieces of glass and taped along the edges to prevent the entry of contaminant spores. A spore print carelessly taken or stored can easily become contaminated, decreasing the chance of acquiring a pure culture. Figure 24a - Taking a spore print on typing paper. Agaricus brunnescens, Psilocybe cubensis and many other mushroom species have a partial veil - a thin layer of tissue extending from the cap margin to the stem. This veil can be an aid in the procurement of nearly contaminant-free spores. The veil seals the gill from the outside, creating a semi-sterile chamber from which spores can be removed with little danger of contamination. By choosing a healthy, young specimen with the veil intact, and then by carefully removing the veil tissue under aseptic conditions, a nearly pure spore print is obtained. This is the ideal way to start a multispore culture. soma rights re-served 25 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 24b - Taking a spore print on a sterile Petri dish and on glass microscope slides. Figure 25 - Sterilizing two scalpels speeds up agar transfer technique. Techniques for Spore Germination Once a spore print is obtained, mushroom culture can begin. Sterilize an inoculating loop or scalpel by holding it over the flame of an alcohol lamp or butane torch for five or ten seconds until it is red hot. (If a butane torch is used, turn it down to the lowest possible setting to minimize air disturbance). Cool the tip by inserting it into the sterile media in a Petri dish and scrape some spores off the print. Transfer the spores by streaking the tip of the transfer tool across the agar surface. A similar method calls for scraping the spore print above an opened Petri dish and allowing them to free-fall onto the medium. When starting a new culture from spores, it is best to inoculate at least three media dishes to improve the chances of getting a successful germination. Mycelium started in this manner is called a multispore culture. When first produced, spores are moist, inflated cells with a relatively high rate of germination. As time passes, they dry, collapse at their centers and can not easily germinate. The probability of germinating dehydrated spores increases by soaking them in sterilized water. For 30 minutes at 15 psi, sterilize an eye dropper or similar device (syringe or pipette) and a water filled test tube or 25-250 ml. Erlenmeyer flask stopped with cotton and covered with aluminum foil. Carefully touch some spores onto a scalpel and insert into sterile water. Tightly seal and let stand for 6-12 hours. After this period draw up several milliliters of this spore solution with the eye dropper, syringe or pipette and inoculate several plates with one or two drops. Keep in mind that if the original spore print was taken under unsanitary conditions, this technique just as likely favors contaminant spores as the spores of mushrooms. Characteristics of the Mushroom Mycelium With either method of inoculation, spore germination and any initial stages of contamination should be evident in three to seven days. Germinating spores are thread-like strands of cells emanating from a central point of origin. These mycelial strands appear grayish and diffuse at first and soon become whitish as more hyphae divide, grow and spread through the medium. The mycelia of most species, particularly Agaricus, Coprinus, Lentinus, Panaeolus and Psilocybe are grayish to whitish in color. Other mushroom species have variously pigmented mycelia. Lepista nuda can have a remarkable purplish blue mycelium; Psilocybe tampanensis is often multi-colored with brownish hues. Keep in mind, however, that color varies with the strain and the media upon which the mycelium is grown. Another aspect of the mycelial appearance is its type of growth, whether it is aerial or appressed, cottony or rhizomorphic. Aerial mycelium can be species related or often it is a function of high humidity. Appressed mycelium can also be a species specific character or it can be the result of dry conditions. The subject of mycelial types is discussed in greater detail under the sub-chapter Sectoring. (See Color Photos 1-4). soma rights re-served 26 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Once the mushroom mycelium has been identified, sites of germinating spores should be transferred to new media dishes. In this way the cultivator is selectively isolating mushroom mycelia and will soon establish a pure culture free of contamination. If contamination appears at the same time, cut out segments of the emerging mushroom mycelia away from the contaminant colonies. Since many of the common contaminants are sporulating molds, be careful not to jolt the culture or to do anything that might spread their spores. And be sure the scalpel is cool before cutting into the agar media. A hot scalpel causes an explosive burst of vapor which in the microcosm of the Petri dish easily liberates spores of neighboring molds. Ramifications of Multispore Culture Multispore culture is the least difficult method of obtaining a viable if not absolutely pure strain. In the germination of such a multitude of spores, one in fact creates many strains, some incompatible with others and each potentially different in the manner and degree to which they fruit under artificial conditions. This mixture of strains can have a limiting effect on total yields, with the less productive strains inhibiting the activity of more productive ones. In general, strains created from spores have a high probability of resembling their parents. If those parents have been domesticated and fruit well under laboratory conditions, their progeny can be expected to behave similarly. In contrast, cultures from wild specimens may fruit very poorly in an artificial environment. Just as with wild plants, strains of wild mushrooms must be selectively developed. Figure 26 - Stropharia rugoso-annulata spores germinating. Of the many newly created strains intrinsic to multispore germination, some may be only capable of vegetative growth. Such mycelia can assimilate nutrients but can not form a mushroom fruitbody (the product of generative growth). A network of cells coming from a single spore is called a monokaryon. As a rule, monokaryons are not capable of producing fertile spore-bearing mushrooms. When two compatible monokaryons encounter one another and mate, cytoplasmic and genetic material is exchanged. The resultant mycelium is a dikaryon that can produce fertile offspring in the form of mushrooms. Branching or networking between different dikaryotic strains is known as anastomosis. This process of recombination can occur at any stage of the cultivation process: on agar; on grain; or on bulk substrates. The crossing of different mushroom strains is analogous to the creation of hybrids in horticulture. soma rights re-served 27 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 27 - Psilocybe cubensis mycelium growing from agar wedge, transferred from a multispore germination. Note two types of mycelial growth. Another method for starting cultures is the creation of single spore isolates and is accomplished by diluting spores in a volume of sterile water. This spore solution is further diluted into larger volumes of sterile water which is in turn used to inoculate media dishes. In this way, cultivators can observe individual monokaryons and in a controlled manner institute a mating schedule for the development of high yielding strains. For cultivators interested solely in obtaining a viable culture, this technique is unnecessary and multispore germinations generally suffice. But for those interested in crossing monokaryotic strains and studying mating characteristics, this method is of great value. Keep in mind that for every one hundred spores, only an average of one to five germinate. For a more detailed explanation of strains and strain genetics, see Chapter XV. Figure 28 - Four strains of Psilocybe cubensis mycelium: (clockwise, upper right) Matias Romero; Misantla; Amazonian; and Palenque. soma rights re-served 28 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb The greatest danger of doing concentrated multispore germinations is the increased possibility of contamination, especially from bacteria. Some bacteria parasitize the cell walls of the mycelium, while others stimulate spore germination only to be carried upon and to slowly digest the resulting mycelia. Hence, some strains are inherently unhealthy and tend to be associated with a high percentage of contamination. These infected spores, increase the likelihood of disease spreading to neighboring spores when germination is attempted in such high numbers. Many fungi, however, have developed a unique symbiotic relationship with other microorganisms. Some bacteria and yeasts actually stimulate spore germination in mushrooms that otherwise are difficult to grow in sterile culture. The spores of Cantharellus cibarius, the common and highly prized Chantrelle, do not germinate under artificial conditions, resisting the efforts of world's most experienced mycologists. Recently, Nils Fries (1979), a Swedish mycologist, discovered that when activated charcoal and a red yeast, Rhodotorula glutinis (Fres.) Harrison, were added to the media, spore germination soon followed. (Activated charcoal is recommended for any mushroom whose spores do not easily germinate.) Figure 29 - Psilocybe cubensis spores infected with rod shaped bacteria. Many growers have reported that certain cultures flourish when a bacterium accidentally contaminates or is purposely introduced into a culture. Pseudomonas putida, Bacillus megaterium, Azotobacter vinelanclii and others have all been shown to have stimulatory effects on various mushroom species - either in the germination of spores, the growth of mycelia or the formation of fruitbodies (Curto and Favelli, 1972; Hayes et al., 1969; Eger, 1972; Urayama, 1961). Techniques utilizing these bacteria are discussed in Appendix III. However, most of the contaminants one encounters in mushroom cultivation, whether they are airborne or intrinsic to the culture, are not helpful. Bacteria can be the most pernicious of all competitors. A diligent regimen of hygiene, the use of high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters and good laboratory technique all but eliminate these costly contaminants. Starting a Culture from Live Tissue Tissue culture is an assured method of preserving the exact genetic character of a living mushroom. In tissue culture a living specimen is cloned whereas in multispore culture new strains are created. Tissue cultures must be taken from mushrooms within twenty-four to forty-eight hours of being picked. If the specimens are several days old, too dry or too mature, a pure culture will be difficult to isolate. Spores, on the other hand, can be saved over long periods of time. soma rights re-served 29 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 30 - Splitting the mushroom stem to expose interior tissue. Figure 31 - Cutting into mushroom flesh with a cooled, flame sterilized scalpel. Figure 32 - Excising a piece of tissue for transfer into a Petri dish. Since the entire mushroom is composed of compressed mycelia, a viable culture can be obtained from any part of the mushroom fruitbody. The cap, the upper region of the stem and/or the area where the gill plate joins the underside of the cap are the best locations for excising clean tissue. Some mushrooms have a thick cuticle overlaying the cap. This skin can be peeled back and a tissue culture can be taken from the flesh underlying it. Wipe the surface of the mushroom with a cotton swab soaked in alcohol and remove any dirt or damaged soma rights re-served 30 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb external tissue. Break the mushroom cap or stem, exposing the interior hyphae. Immediately flame a scalpel until red-hot and cool in a media filled Petri dish. Now cut into the flesh removing a small fragment of tissue. Transfer the tissue fragment to the center of the nutrient filled Petri dish as quickly as possible, exposing the tissue and agar to the open air for a minimal time. Repeat this technique into at least three, preferably five more dishes. Label each dish with the species, date, type of culture (tissue) and kind of agar medium. If successful, mycelial growth will be evident in three to seven days. An overall contamination rate of a 10% is one most cultivators can tolerate. In primary cultures however, especially those isolated from wild specimens, it is not unusual to have a 25% contamination rate. Diverse and colorful contaminants often appear near to the point of transfer. Their numbers depend on the cleanliness of the tissue or spores transferred and the hygienic state of the laboratory where the transfers were conducted. In tissue culture, the most commonly encountered contaminants are bacteria. Contamination is a fact of life for every cultivator. Contaminants become a problem when their populations spiral above tolerable levels, an indication of impending disaster in the laboratory. If a five, ten or fifteen percent contamination rate is normal for a cultivator and suddenly the contamination level escalates without an alteration of regimen, then new measures of control should be introduced immediately. Once the tissue shows signs of growth, it should be transferred to yet another media dish. If no signs of contamination are evident, early transfer is not critical. If sporulating colonies of mold develop adjacent to the growing mycelium, the culture should be promptly isolated. Continue transferring the mycelium away from the contaminants until a pure strain is established. Obviously, isolating mycelia from a partially contaminated culture is more difficult than transferring from a pure one. The mere attempt of isolating mycelia away from a nearby contaminant is fraught with the danger of spreading its spores. Although undetectable to us, when the rim of a Petri dish is lifted external air rapidly enters and spores become airborne. Therefore, the sooner the cultivator is no longer dependent upon a partially contaminated culture dish, the easier it will be to maintain pure cultures. Keep in mind that a strain isolated from a contaminated media dish can harbor spores although to the unaided eye the culture may appear pure. Only when this contaminant laden mycelium is inoculated into sterile grain will these inherent bacteria and molds become evident. To minimize contamination in the laboratory there are many measures one can undertake. The physical ones such as the use of HEPA filters, asperated oil and glove boxes have already been discussed. One's attitude towards contamination and cleanliness is perhaps more important than the installation of any piece of equipment. The authors have seen laboratories with high contamination rates and closets that have had very little. Here are two general guidelines that should help many first-time cultivators. 1. Give the first attempt at sterile culture the best effort. Everything should be clean: the lab; clothes; tools; and especially the cultivator. 2. Once a pure culture has been established, make every attempt to preserve its purity. Save only the cultures that show no signs of mold and bacteria. Throw away all contaminated dishes, even though they may only be partially infected. If failure greets one's first attempts at mushroom culture, do not despair. Only through practice and experience will sterile culture techniques become fluent. Agar culture is but one in a series of steps in the cultivation of mushrooms. By itself, agar media is impractical for the production of mushrooms. The advantage of its use in mushroom culture is that mycelial mass can be rapidly multiplied using the smallest fragments of tissue. Since contaminants can be readily observed on the flat two dimensional surface of a media filled Petri dish, it is fairly easy to recognize and maintain pure cultures. Sectoring: Strain Selection and Development As mycelium grows out on a nutrient agar, it can display a remarkable diversity of forms. Some mycelia are fairly uniform in appearance; others can be polymorphous at first and then suddenly develop into a homogeneous looking mycelia. This is the nature of mushroom mycelia - to constantly change and evolve. soma rights re-served 31 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb When a mycelium grows from a single inoculation site and several divergent types appear, it is said to be sectoring. A sector is defined solely in contrast to the surrounding, predominant mycelia. There are two major classes of mycelial sectors: rhizomorphic (strandy) and tomentose (cottony). Also, an intermediate type of mycelium occurs which grows linearly (longitudinally radial) but does not have twisted strands of interwoven hyphae that characterize the rhizomorphic kind. Rhizomorphic mycelium is more apt to produce primordia. Linear mycelium can also produce abundant primordia but this usually occurs soon after it forms rhizomorphs. Keep in mind, however, that characteristics of fruiting mycelium are often species specific and may not conform precisely to the categories outlined here. Figure 33 - Bacteria growing from contaminated mushroom Figure 34 - Rhizomorphic mycelium. Note divergent ropey mycelium. strands. Figure 35 - Intermediate linear type mycelium. Note Figure 36 - Rhizomorphic mycelia with tomentose (cottony) longitudinally radial fine strands (Psilocybe cyanescens sector (of Agaricus brunnescens). mycelium). In a dish that is largely covered with a cottony mycelia, a fan of strandy mycelia would be called a rhizomorphic sector, and vice versa. Sectors are common in mushroom culture and although little is known as to their cause or function, it is clear that genetics, nutrition and age of the mycelium play important roles. soma rights re-served 32 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb According to Stoller (1962) the growth of fluffy sectors is encouraged by broken and exploded kernels which increase the availability of starch in the spawn media. Working with Agaricus brunnescens, Stoller noted that although mycelial growth is faster at high pH levels (7.5) than at slightly acid pH levels (6.5), sectoring is more frequent. He found that sectors on grain could be reduced by avoiding exploded grains (a consequence of excessive water) and buffering the pH to 6.5 using a combination of chalk (precipitated calcium carbonate) and gypsum (calcium sulfate). Figure 37 - Psilocybe cubensis mycelia with cottony and rhizomorphic sectors. Note that primordia form abundantly on rhizomorphic mycelium but not on the cottony type. Figure 38 - Hyphal aggregates of Agaricus bitorquis forming on malt agar media. soma rights re-served 33 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 39 - Primordia of Psilocybe cubensis forming on malt agar media. Commercial Agaricus cultivators have long noted that the slower growing cottony mycelium is inferior to the faster growing rhizomorphic mycelium. There is an apparent correlation between cottony mycelia on agar and the later occurrence of "stroma", a dense mat-like growth of mycelia on the casing which rarely produces mushrooms. Furthermore, primordia frequently form along generatively oriented rhizomorphs but rarely on somatically disposed cottony mycelia. It is of interest to mention that, under a microscope, the hyphae of a rhizomorphic mycelial network are larger and branch less frequently than those of the cottony network. Rhizomorphic mycelia run faster, form more primordia and in the final analysis yield more mushrooms than cottony mycelia. One example of this is illustrated in Fig. 37. A single wedge of mycelium was transferred to a Petri dish and two distinct mycelial types grew from it. The stringy sector formed abundant primordia while the cottony sector did not, an event common in agar culture. When a mycelium grows old it is said to be senescing. Senescent mycelium, like any aged plant or animal, is far less vigorous and fertile than its counterpart. In general, a change from rhizomorphic to cottony looking mycelium should be a warning that strain degeneration has begun. If at first a culture is predominantly rhizomorphic, and then it begins to sector, there are several measures that can be undertaken to promote rhizomorphism and prevent the strain's degeneration. 1. Propagate only rhizomorphic sectors and avoid cottony ones. 2. Alter the media regularly using the formulas described herein. Growing a strain on the same agar formula is not recommended because the nutritional composition of the medium exerts an selective influence on the ability of the mushroom mycelium to produce digestive enzymes. By varying the media, the strain's enzyme system remains broadly based and the mycelium is better suited for survival. Species vary greatly in their preferences. Unless specific data is available, trial and error is the only recourse. 3. Only grow out the amount of mycelium needed for spawn production and return the strain to storage when not in use. Do not expect mycelium that has been grown over several years at optimum temperatures to resemble the primary culture from which it came. After so many cell divisions and continual transfers, a sub-strain is likely to have been selected out, one that may distantly resemble the original in both vitality, mycelial appearance and fruiting potential. 4. If efforts to preserve a vital strain fail, re-isolate new substrains from multispore germinations. 5. Another alternative is to continuously experiment with the creation of hybrid strains that are formed from the mating of dikaryotic mycelia of two genetically distinct parents. (Experiments with Agaricus brunnescens have shown, however, that most hybrids yield less than both or one of the contributing strains. A minority of the hybrids resulted in more productive strains.) soma rights re-served 34 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Home cultivators can selectively develop mushroom strains by rating mycelia according to several characteristics. These characteristics are: 1. Rhizomorphism - fast growing vegetative mycelium. 2. Purity of the strain - lack of cottony sectors. 3. Cleanliness of the mycelia - lack of associated competitor organisms (bacteria, molds and mites). 4. Response time to primodia formation conditions. 5. Number of primordia formed. 6. Proportion of primordia formed that grow to maturity. 7. Size, shape and/or color of fruitbodies. 8. Total yield. 9. Disease resistance. 10. CO2 tolerance/sensitivity. 11. Temperature limits. 12. Ease of harvesting. Using these characteristics, mushroom breeders can qualitatively judge strains and select ones over a period of time according to how well they conform to a grower's preferences. Figure 40 - Mature stand of Psilocybe cubensis on malt agar media. Stock Cultures: Methods For Preserving Mushroom Strains Once a pure strain has been created and isolated, saving it in the form of a "stock culture" is wise. Stock cultures - or "slants" as they are commonly called - are media filled glass test tubes which are sterilized and then inoculated with mushroom mycelium. A suitable size for a culture tube is 20 mm. x 100 mm. with a screw cap. Every experienced cultivator maintains a collection of stock cultures, known as a "species bank". The species bank is an integral part of the cultivation process. With it, a cultivator may preserve strains for years. To prepare slants, first mix any of the agar media formulas discussed earlier in this chapter. Fill test tubes one third of the way, plug with cotton and cover with aluminum foil or simply screw on the cap if the tubes are of this type. Sterilize in a pressure cooker for 30 minutes at 15 psi. Allow the cooker to return to atmospheric pressure and then take it into the sterile room before opening. Remove the slants, gently shake them to soma rights re-served 35 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb distribute the liquified media and lay them at a 15-30 degree angle to cool and solidify. When ready, inoculate the slants with a fragment of mushroom mycelium. Label each tube with the date, type of agar, species and strain. Make at least three slants per strain to insure against loss. Incubate for one week at 75°F. (24°C.). Once the mycelia has covered a major portion of the agar's surface and appears to be free of contamination, store at 35-40°F. (2-4°C.). At these temperatures, the metabolic activity of most mycelia is lowered to a level where growth and nutrient absorbtion virtually stops. Ideally one should check the vitality of stored cultures every six months by removing fragments of mycelium and inoculating more Petri dishes. Once the mycelium has colonized two-thirds of the media dish, select for strandy growth (rhizomorphism) and reinoculate more slants. Label and store until needed. Often, growing out minicultures is a good way to check a stored strain's vitality and fruiting ability. An excellent method to save cultures is by the buddy system: passing duplicates of each species or of strains to a cultivator friend. Mushroom strains are more easily lost than one might expect. Once lost, they may never be recovered. In most cases, the method described above safely preserves cultures. Avid cultivators, however, can easily acquire fifty to a hundred strains and having to regularly revitalize them becomes tedious and time consuming. When a library of cultures has expanded to this point, there are several additional measures that further extend the life span of stock cultures. A simple method for preserving cultures over long periods of time calls for the application of a thin layer of sterile mineral oil over the live mycelium once it has been established in a test tube. The mineral oil is nontoxic to the mycelium, greatly reduces the mycelium's metabolism and inhibits water evaporation from the agar base. The culture is then stored at 37-41°F. until needed. In a recent study (Perrin, 1979), all of the 30 wood inhabiting species stored under mineral oil for 27 years produced a viable culture. To reactivate the strains, slants were first inverted upside down so the oil would drain off and then incubated at 77°F. Within three weeks each slant showed renewed signs of growth and when subcultured onto agar plates they yielded uncontaminated cultures. Figure 41 - Filling test tubes with liquid agar media prior to sterilization in a pressure cooker. Although a strain may be preserved over the long term using this method, will it be as productive as when it was first stored? Other studies have concluded that strains saved for more than 5 years under mineral oil showed distinct signs of degeneration while these same strains were just as productive at 2½ years as the day they were preserved. Nevertheless, it is not unreasonable to presume, based on these studies, that cultures soma rights re-served 36 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb can be stored up to two years without serious impairment to their vitality. Figure 42 - Inoculating a test tube slant with a piece of mycelium. Four other methods of preservation include: the immersion of slants into liquid nitrogen (an expensive procedure); the inoculation of washed sterilized horse manure/straw compost that is then kept at 36-38°F. (See Chapter V on compost preparation); the inoculation of sawdust/bran media for wood decomposers (see section in Chapter III on alternative spawn media); or saving spores aseptically under refrigerated conditions perhaps the simplest method for home cultivators. Whatever method is used, remember that the mushroom's nature is to fruit, sporulate and evolve. Cultivation techniques should evolve with the mushroom and the cultivator must selectively isolate and maintain promising strains as they develop. So don't be too surprised if five years down the line a stored strain poorly resembles the original in its fruiting potential or form. Figure 43 - Culture slant of healthy mycelium ready for cool storage. soma rights re-served 37 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb III. GRAIN CULTURE Figure 44 - Half gallon spawn jars at 3 and 8 days after inoculation. The Development of Grain Spawn Mushroom spawn is used to inoculate prepared substrates. This inoculum consists of a carrier material fully colonized by mushroom mycelium. The type of carrier varies according to the mushroom species cultivated, although rye grain is the choice of most spawn makers. The history of the development of mushroom spawn for Agaricus brunnescens culture illustrates how spawn production has progressed in the last hundred years. During the 1800's Agaricus growers obtained spawn by gathering concentrations of mycelium from its natural habitat. To further encourage mycelial growth this "virgin spawn" was supplemented with materials similar to those occurring naturally, in this case horse manure. Spent compost from prior crops was also used as spawn. This kind of spawn, however, contained many contaminants and pests, and yielded few mushrooms. Before serious commercial cultivation could begin, methods guaranteeing the quality and mass production of the mushroom mycelium had to be developed. soma rights re-served 38 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb With the advent of pure culture techniques, propagation of mushroom mycelium by spore germination or by living tissue completely superseded virgin spawn. Now the grower was assured of not only a clean inoculum but also a degree of certainty as to the strain itself. Strain selection and development was possible for the first time in the history of mushroom culture because high yielding strains could be preserved on a medium of precise composition. Sterilized, chopped, washed compost became the preferred medium for original pure culture spawn and was for years the standard of the Agaricus industry. In 1932, Dr. James Sinden patented a new spawn making process using cereal grain as the mycelial carrier. Since then rye has been the most common grain employed although millet, milo and wheat have also been used. Sinden's novel approach set a new standard for spawn making and forms the basis for most modern spawn production. The distinct advantage of grain spawn is the increased number of inoculation sites. Each individual kernel becomes one such point from which mycelium can spread. Thus, a liter of rye grain spawn that contains approximately 25,000 kernels represents a vast improvement over inocula transmitted by coarser materials. Listed below are cereal grains that can be used to produce spawn. Immediately following this list is a chart illustrating some of the physical properties important to the spawn maker. RICE: Utilized by few cultivators. Even when it is balanced to recommended moisture levels, the kernels tend to clump together owing to the sticky nature of the outer coat. MILLET: Although having a higher number of inoculation points than rye, it is more difficult to formulate as spawn. Amycel, a commercial spawn-making company, has successfully developed a formula and process utilizing millet as their primary spawn medium. SORGHUM: Has spherical kernels and works relatively well as a spawn medium but it can be difficult to obtain. Milo, a type of sorghum, has been used for years by the Stoller Spawn Company. WHEAT: Works equally well as rye for spawn making and fruitbody production. WHEAT GRASS and RYE GRASS SEED: Both have many more kernels per gram than grain. The disadvantage of seed is the tendency to lose its moisture and its inability to separate into individual kernels, making it difficult to shake. (Rye grass and wheat grass seed are widely used to promote sclerotia formation in Psilocybe tampanensis, Psilocybe mexicana and Psilocybe armandii. Perennial or annual can be used although annual is far cheaper. See the species parameters for these species in Chapter XI.) RYE: Its availability, low cost and ability to separate into individual kernels are all features recommending its use as a spawn and fruiting medium. THE CEREAL GRAINS AND THEIR PHYSICAL PROPERTIES (tests run by the authors) TYPE KERNELS/GRAM GRAMS/100 ML % MOISTURE COMMERCIAL FEED RYE 30 75 15% COMMERCIAL MUSHROOM RYE 40 72 13% ORGANIC CO-OP RYE 55 76 11% ORGANIC WHEAT 34 90 10% SHORT GRAIN BROWN RICE 39 100 26% LONG GRAIN BROWN RICE 45 86 15% SORGHUM (MILO) 33 93 15% PERENNIAL WHEAT GRASS SEED 450 43 16% PERENNIAL RYE GRASS SEED 415 39 12% MILLET 166 83 13% In a single gram of commercial rye, Secale cereale, there is an estimated cell count of 50,000-100,000 bacteria, more than 200,000 actinomyces, 12,000 fungi and a large number of yeasts. To sterilize one gram of grain would require, in effect, the destruction of more than 300,000 contaminants! In a spawn jar containing in excess of a hundred grams of grain, and with the addition of water, the cell population soars to astronomical figures. Of all the groups of these organisms, bacteria are the most pernicious. Bacteria can divide every twenty or so minutes at room temperature. At this rate, a single bacterium multiplies into more than a million cells in less than ten hours. In another ten hours, each one of these bacteria beget another million cells. If only a small soma rights re-served 39 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb fraction of one percent of these contaminants survive the sterilization process, they can render grain spawn useless within only a few days. Most microorganisms are killed in the sterilization process. For liquids, the standard time and pressure for steam sterilization is 25 minutes at 15 psi (250°F). For solids such as rye, the sterilization time must be increased to insure that the steam sufficiently penetrates the small air pockets and structural cavities in the grain. Within these cavities bacteria and other thermo-resistant organisms, partially protected from the effects of steam, have a better chance of enduring a shorter sterilization period than a longer one. Hence, a full hour at 15 psi is the minimum time recommended to sterilize jars of rye grain. Some shipments of grain contain extraordinarily high levels of bacteria and fungi. Correspondingly the contamination rate on these grains are higher, even after autoclaving and prior to inoculation. Such grain should be discarded outright and replaced with grain of known quality. Once the grain has been sterilized, it is presumed all competitors have been neutralized. The next most probable source of contamination is the air immediately surrounding the jars. As hot jars cool, they suck in air along with airborne contaminants. If the external spore load is excessively high, many of these contaminants will be introduced into the grain even before conducting a single inoculation! In an average room, there are 10,000 particulates exceeding .3 microns (dust, spores, etc.) per cubic foot while in a "sterile" laboratory there are less than 100 per cubic foot. With these facts in mind, two procedures will lessen the chance of contamination after the spawn jars have been autoclaved. 1. If autoclaving grain media outside the laboratory in an unsterile environment (a kitchen, for instance), be sure to clean the outside of the pressure cooker before bringing it into the sterile inoculating room. 2. Inoculate the jars as soon as they have cooled to room temperature. Although many cultivators leave uninoculated jars sitting in pressure cookers overnight, this is not recommended. The amount of water added to the grain is an important factor contributing to the reproduction of contaminants. Excessive water in a spawn jar favors the growth of bacteria and other competitors. In wet grain the mushroom mycelium grows denser and slower. Oversaturated grain kernels explode during the sterilization process, and with their interiors exposed, the grain is even more susceptible to contamination. In addition, wet grain permeated with mycelium is difficult to break up into individual kernels. When such grain comes in contact with a non-sterile medium such as casing soil or compost, it frequently becomes contaminated. Spawn made with a balanced moisture content has none of these problems. It easily breaks apart into individual mycelium covered kernels, insuring a maximum number of inoculation points from which mycelial strands can emerge. Determining the exact moisture content of grain is not difficult. Once done, the cultivator can easily calculate a specific moisture content that is optimal for use as spawn. Commercial rye grain, available through co-ops and feed companies, is 11% water by mass, plus or minus 2%. The precise amount of water locked up in grain can be determined by weighing a sample of 100 grams. Then reweigh the same grain after it has been dried in an oven (250°F. for 3 hours) and subtract this new weight from the original 100 grams. The resultant figure is the percentage of moisture naturally bound within the grain. Preparation of Grain Spawn The optimum moisture content for grain in the production of spawn is between 49-54%. The following formulas are based on cereal rye grain, Secale cereale, which usually has a moisture content of 11%. Some variation should be expected depending on the brand, kernel size, geographical origin and the way the grain has been stored. The standard spawn container for the home cultivator is the quart mason jar while the commercial spawn maker prefers the gallon jar. Wide mouth mason jars have been extensively used by home cultivators because of several books popularizing fruitbody production in these jars. Wide mouth jars have been preferred because mushrooms grown in them are easier to harvest than those in narrow mouth ones. Not only is this method of growing mushrooms outdated, but wide mouth jars have several disadvantages for spawn production and hence are not recommended. Narrow mouthed containers have less chance of contaminating from airborne soma rights re-served 40 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb spores because of their smaller openings and are more suited to use with synthetic filter discs. The purpose of the spawn container is to temporarily house the incubating mycelium before it is laid out in trays or used to inoculate bulk substrates. Jars are not well suited as a fruiting container. Most commercial spawn makers cap their spawn bottles with synthetic filter discs which allow air penetration and gaseous exchange but not the free passage of contaminating spores. Home cultivators, on the other hand, have used inverted mason lids which imperfectly seal and allow some air exchange. This method works fine under sterile conditions although the degree of filtration is not guaranteed. The best combination uses filter discs in conjunction with one piece screw top lids having a ⅜-½ inch diameter hole drilled into its center and fitting a narrow mouthed autoclavable container. The authors personally find the regular mouthed ½ gallon mason jar to be ideal. (Note: These ½ gallon jars are inoculated from quart masters, a technique soon to be discussed). Using only filter discs on wide mouth jars is not recommended due to the excessive evaporation from the grain medium. Figure 45 - Two jars of grain media, before and after autoclaving using the above formulas. To produce grain spawn of 48-52% moisture use the formulas outlined below and autoclave in a pressure cooker for 1 hour at 15-18 psi. Note that considerable variation exists between measuring cups, differing as much as 10% in their volumes. Check the measuring cup with a graduated cylinder. Once standardized, fashion a "grain scoop" and a "water scoop" from a plastic container to the proportions specified below. Spawn Formulas QUART JARS ½ GALLON JARS 1 cup rye grain 3 cups rye grain ⅔-¾ cup water 1¾ cups water or (approximately) 240 ml. grain 600 ml. rye grain 170-200 ml. water 400-460 ml. water The above formulas fill a quart or a half gallon jar to nearly ⅔ of its capacity after autoclaving. In all these formulas, chalk (CaCO3) and gypsum (CaSO4) can be added at a rate of 1-3 parts by weight per 100 parts of grain (dry weight). The ratio of chalk to gypsum is 1:4. The addition of these elements to spawn is optional for most species but necessary when growing Agaricus brunnescens. When these calcium buffers are used, add 10% more water than that listed above. soma rights re-served 41 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 46 - Commercial spawn maker's autoclave. Figure 47 - Pressure cooker of home cultivator. Figure 48 - The rubber tire is a helpful tool for the spawn laboratory. It is used to loosen grain spawn. Once the grain filled jars have been autoclaved, they should be placed in the sterile room and allowed to cool. Prior to this point, the room and its air should be disinfected, either through the use of traditional cleaning methods, HEPA filters or both. Upon removing the warm jars from the pressure cooker or autoclave, shake them to loosen the grain and to evenly distribute wet and dry kernels. Shaking also prevents the kernels at the bottom of the jar from clumping. An excellent tool to help in this procedure is a bald car tire or padded chair. Having been carefully cleaned and disinfected, the tire should be mounted in an upright and stable position. The tire has a perfect surface against which to shake the jars, minimizing discomfort to the hands and reducing the risk of injury from breakage. The tire will be used at another stage in grain culture, so it should be cleaned regularly. Paint shakers are employed by commercial spawn makers for this same purpose but they are inappropriate for the home cultivator. CAUTION: ALWAYS INSPECT THE JARS FOR CRACKS BEFORE SHAKING. soma rights re-served 42 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb When the grain jars have returned to room temperature, agar to grain inoculations can commence. Once again, good hygiene is of the upmost importance. When transferring mycelium from agar to grain, another dimension is added in which contaminants can replicate. In agar culture, the mycelium grows over a flat, two dimensional surface. If contamination is present, it is easily seen. In grain culture, however, the added dimension of depth comes into play and contaminants become more elusive, often escaping detection from the most discerning eye. If not noticed, contamination will be spread when this spawn is used to inoculate more sterilized grain. Before conducting transfers, take precautions to insure the sterile quality of the inoculation environment. After cleaning the room, do not jeopardize its cleanliness by wearing soiled clothes. Few cultivators take into consideration that they are a major source of contamination. In fact, the human body is in itself a habitat crawling with bacteria, microscopic mites, and resplendent with spores of plants and fungi. When satisfied that all these preparatory conditions are in force, the making of spawn can begin. Inoculation of Sterilized Grain from Agar Media Select a vigorously growing culture whose mycelium covers no more than ¾ of the agar's surface. Cultures that have entirely overrun the Petri dish should be avoided because contaminants often enter along the margin of the Petri dish. If that outer edge is grown over with mycelium, these invaders can go undetected. Since this peripheral mycelium can become laden with contaminant spores, any grain inoculated with it would become spoiled. Flame sterilize a scalpel and cut out a triangular wedge of mycelium covered agar using the technique described for doing agar-to-agar transfers. With careful, deliberate movements quickly transfer the wedge to an awaiting jar, exposing the grain for a minimal amount of time. For each transfer, flame sterilize the scalpel and inoculate wedges of mycelium into as many jars as desired. A Petri dish two thirds covered with mycelium should amply inoculate 6-8 quart jars of grain. (A maximum of 10-12 jars is possible). The more mycelia transferred, the faster the colonization and the less chance of contamination. Since these jars become the "master cultures", do everything possible to guarantee the highest standard of purity. The authors recommend a "double wedge" transfer technique whereby a single triangular wedge of mycelium is cut in half, both pieces are speared and then inserted into an awaiting jar of sterilized grain. Jars inoculated with this method grow out far faster than the single wedge transfer technique. Loosening the lids prior to inoculation facilitates speedy transfers. As each agar-to-grain transfer is completed, replace the lid and continue to the next inoculation. Once the set is finished, tightly secure the lids and shake each jar thoroughly to evenly distribute the mycelial wedges. In the course of shaking, each wedge travels throughout the grain media leaving mycelial fragments adhering to the grain kernels. If a wedge sticks to the glass, distribution is hampered and spawn running is inhibited. This problem is usually an indication of agar media that has been too thinly poured or has been allowed to dehydrate. Once shaken, incubate the spawn jars at the appropriate temperature. (A second shaking may be necessary on Day 4 or Day 5). In general, the grain should be fully colonized with mycelium in seven to ten days. Inoculation of Grain from Grain Masters Once fully colonized, these grain masters are now used for the further production of grain spawn in quart or ½ gallon containers. Masters must be transferred within a few days of their full colonization; otherwise the myceliated kernels do not break apart easily. A step by step description of the grain-to-grain transfer technique follows. 1. Carefully scrutinize each jar for any signs of contamination. Look for such abnormalities as: heavy growth; regions of sparse, inhibited growth; slimy or wet looking kernels (an indication of bacteria); exploded kernels with pallid, irregular margins; and any unusual colorations. If in doubt lift the lid and smell the spawn - a sour "rotten apple" or otherwise pungent odor is usually an indication of contamination by bacteria. Jars having this scent should be discarded. (Sometimes spawn partially soma rights re-served 43 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb contaminated with bacteria can be cased and fruited). Do NOT use any jar with a suspect appearance for subsequent inoculations. 2. After choosing the best looking spawn masters, break up the grain in each jar by shaking the jars against a tire or slamming them against the palm of the hand. The grain should break easily into individual kernels. Shake as many masters as needed knowing that each jar can amply inoculate ten to twelve quart jars or seven to nine half gallon jars. Once completed, SET THE SPAWN JARS ON A SEPARATE SHELF AND WAIT TWELVE TO TWENTYFOUR HOURS BEFORE USING. This waiting period is important because some of the spawn may not recover, suffering usually from bacterial contamination. Had these jars been used, the contamination rate would have been multiplied by a factor of ten. 3. Inspect the jars again for signs of contamination. After twelve to twenty-four hours, the mycelium shows signs of renewed growth. 4. If the masters had been shaken the night before, the inoculations can begin the following morning or as soon as the receiving jars (G-2) have cooled. Again, wash the lab, be personally clean and wear newly laundered clothes. Place 10 sterilized grain-filled jars on the work-bench in the sterile room. Loosen each of the lids so they can be removed with one hand. Gently shake the master jar until the grain spawn separates into individual kernels. Hold the master in your preferred hand. Remove the master's lid and then with the other hand open the first jar to be inoculated. With a rolling of the wrist, pour one tenth of the master's contents into the first jar, replace its lid and continue to the second, third, fourth jars, until the set is completed. When this first set is done, firmly secure the lids. Replace the lid on the now empty spawn master jar and put it aside. Take each newly inoculated jar, and with a combination of rolling and shaking, distribute the mycelium covered kernels evenly throughout. 5. Incubate at the temperature appropriate for the species being cultivated. In a week the mycelium should totally permeate the grain. Designated G-2, these jars can be used for further inoculations, as spawn for the inoculation of bulk substrates, or as a fruiting medium. Figure 49 - Flaming the scalpel. Figure 50 - Cutting two wedges of mycelium colonized agar. soma rights re-served 44 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 51 - Inoculating sterilized grain. Some species are less aggressive than others. Agaricus brunnescens, for instance, can take up to two and a half weeks to colonize grain while Psilocybe cubensis grows through in a week to ten days. Here again, the use of the tire as a striking surface can be an aid to shaking. For slower growing species, a common shaking schedule is on the 5th and 9th days after inoculation. The cultures should be incubated in a semi-sterile environment at the temperature most appropriate for the species being cultivated. (See Chapter XI). After transferring mycelium from agar to grain, further transfers can be conducted from these grain cultures to even more grain filled jars. A schedule of successive transfers from the first inoculated grain jar, designated G-1, through two more "generations" of transfers (G-2, G-3 respectively) will result in an exponential expansion of mycelial mass. If for instance, 10 jars were inoculated from an agar grown culture (G-1), they could further inoculate 100 jars (G-2) which in turn could go into 1000 jars (G-3). As one can see, it is of critical importance that the first set of spawn masters be absolutely pure for it may ultimately inoculate as many as 1,000 jars! Inoculations beyond the third generation of transfers are not recommended. Indeed, if a contamination rate above 10% is experienced at the second generation of transfers, then consider G-2 a terminal stage. These cultures can inoculate bulk substrates or be laid out in trays, cased and fruited. Grain-to-grain transfers are one of the most efficient methods of spawn making. This method is preferred by most commercial spawn laboratories specializing in Agaricus culture. They in turn sell grain spawn that is a second or third transfer to Agaricus farmers who use this to impregnate their compost. For the creation of large quantities of spawn, the grain-to-grain technique is far superior to agar-to-grain for both its ease and speed. However, every cultivator must ultimately return to agar culture in order to maintain the purity of the strain. Figure 52a - Spawn master ready for Figure 52b - Spawn master after Figure 52c - Inoculating sterilized grain transfer. shaking. from spawn master. soma rights re-served 45 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 53 - Spawn jar contaminated with Wet Spot bacteria, giving the grain a greasy appearance and emitting a sour odor. Figure 54 - Spawn jar with Heavy Growth, an undesirable characteristic arising from cottony sectors. soma rights re-served 46 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 55 - Diagramatic expansion of mycelial mass using grain-to-grain transfer technique. One Petri dish can inoculate 10 spawn jars (G-1) which in turn can be used to inoculate 100 more jars (G-2) and eventually 1000 jars of spawn (G-3) provided the culture remains pure. Alternative Spawn Media Some mushroom species do not grow well on grain and are better suited to alternative spawn media. Other mushrooms are grown on substrates incompatible with grain spawn. For example, sawdust and bran are the preferred spawn materials for the cultivations of wood inhabitors such as Lentinus edodes and Flammulina velutipes. Another spawn media has a perlite bran base. Perlite is vitreous rock, heated to 1000°F. and exploded like popcorn. The thin flakes of bran are readily sterilized while the perlite gives the medium its structure. The recipes are: soma rights re-served 47 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Sawdust/Bran Spawn 4 parts sawdust (hardwood) 1 part bran (rice or wheat) Soak the sawdust in water for a least twenty four hours, allow to drain and then thoroughly mix in the bran. If the mixture has the proper moisture content, a firm squeeze results in a few drops between the fingers. Fill the material firmly to the neck of the spawn container (wide mouth). Japanese spawn makers bore a ½ inch diameter hole down the center of the media into which they later insert their inoculum. Sterilize for 60-90 minutes at 15 psi. Once cooled, inoculate from agar media, liquid emulsion, or grain. A fully grown bottle of sawdust bran spawn can also be used for further inoculations. Perlite Spawn 120 milliliters water 40 grams perlite 50 grams wheat bran 6 grams gypsum (calcium sulfate) 1.5 grams calcium carbonate Screen the perlite to remove the fine powder and particulates. Fill the container (small mouth) with the dry ingredients and mix well. Add the water and continue mixing until the ingredients are thoroughly moistened. Sterilize for one hour at 15 psi. Inoculate from agar media or liquid emulsion. Figure 56 - Mycelium running through sawdust/bran spawn. Liquid Inoculation Techniques A highly effective technique for inoculating grain utilizes the suspension of fragmented mushroom mycelia in sterile water. This mycelium enriched solution, containing hundreds of minute cellular chains, is then injected into a jar of sterilized grain. As this water seeps down through the grain, mycelial fragments are evenly distributed, each one of which becomes a point of inoculation. For several days little or no sign of growth may be apparent. On the fourth to fifth day after injection, given optimum incubation temperatures, sites of actively growing mycelium become visible. In a matter of hours, these zones enlarge and the grain soon becomes engulfed with mycelium. Using the liquid inoculation technique eliminates the need for repeated shaking, and a single plate of mycelium can inoculate up to 100 jars, more than ten times the number inoculated by the traditional transfer method. There are several ways to suspend mycelium in water, two of which are described here. The first method is quite simple. Using an autoclaved glass syringe, inject 30-50 ml. of sterilized water into a healthy culture. Then scrape the surface of the mycelial mat, drawing up as many fragments of mycelium as possible. As little as 5 ml. of mycelial suspension adequately inoculates a quart jar of grain. soma rights re-served 48 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb The second method incorporates a blender with an autoclavable container-stirrer assembly. (Several companies sell aluminum and stainless steel units specifically manufactured for liquid culture techniques refer to the sources listed in the Appendix). Fill with water until two thirds to three quarters full, cover with aluminum foil (if a tight fitting metal top is not handy), sterilize and allow to cool to room temperature. Under aseptic conditions, insert an entire agar culture of vigorously grown mycelium into the sterilized stirrer by cutting it into four quadrants or into narrow strips. Because many contaminants appear along the outer periphery of a culture dish, it is recommended that these regions not be used. Place all four quadrants or mycelial strips into the liquid. Turn on the blender at high speed for no longer than 5 seconds. (Longer stirring times result not in the fragmentation of cell chains but in the fracturing of individual cells. Such suspensions are inviable). Draw up 5-10 ml. of the mycelium concentrate and inoculate an awaiting grain jar. Figure 57 - Drawing up mycelium from culture dish with syringe. Figure 58 - Syringe inoculation of sterilized grain. Figure 59 - Eberbach container manufactured for liquid culture. Note bolt covering inoculation hole. Figure 60 - Drawing up liquid inoculum. soma rights re-served 49 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb A further improvement on this technique calls for a 10:1 dilution of the concentrated mycelial solution. Inject 50 ml. of mycelial suspension into four vessels containing 450 ml. of sterilized water. Narrow mouth quart mason jars are well suited to this technique. Gently shaking each jar will help evenly distribute the mycelium. Next inoculate the grain jars with 10-15 milliliters of the diluted solution. This method results in an exponential increase of liquid inoculum with the water acting as a vehicle for carrying the mycelial fragments deep into the grain filled jar. This is only one technique using water suspended fragments of mycelium. Undoubtedly, there will be further improvements as mycophiles experiment and develop their own techniques. When using metal lids a small 1-2 mm. hole can be drilled and then covered with tape. When the sterilized containers are to be inoculated, remove the tape, insert the needle of syringe, inject the suspension of mycelia and replace the tape. In this way, the aperture through which the inoculation takes place is of minimal size and is exposed for a only second or two. The chance of airborne contamination is minimized. The liquid inoculation technique works well provided the cultures selected are free from foreign spores; otherwise the entire set of jars inoculated from that dish will be lost. The disadvantage with this method is that there is no opportunity to avoid suspect zones on the culture dish - the water suspends contaminant spores and mycelia alike. If a culture dish is contaminated in one region, a few jars may be lost via the traditional inoculation method while with the liquid inoculation technique whole sets of up to one hundred spawn jars would be made useless. Although mycelial suspensions created in this manner work for many species, the mycelia of some mushrooms do not survive the stirring process. Incubation of Spawn With each step in the cultivation process, the mycelial mass and its host substrate increases. In seven days to two weeks after inoculation, the spawn jars should be fully colonized with mushroom mycelia. The danger here is that, if contamination goes undetected, that mold or bacterium will likewise be produced in large quantities. Hence, as time goes by the importance of clean masters becomes paramount. By balancing environmental parameters during incubation, especially temperature, the mycelium is favored. Once the jars have been inoculated, store them on shelves in a semisterile room whose temperature can be easily controlled. Light and humidity are not important at this time as a sealed jar should retain its moisture. Air circulation is important only if the incubating jars overheat. In packing a room tightly with spawn jars, overheating is a danger. Many thermophilic fungi that are inactive at room temperature flourish at temperatures too high for mushrooms. Herein lies one of the major problems with rooms having a high density of incubating spawn jars. If possible, some provisions should be made to prevent temperature stratification in the incubation environment. The major factor influencing the rate of mycelial growth is temperature. For every species there is an optimum temperature at which the rate of mycelial growth is maximized. As a general rule, the best temperature for vegetative (spawn) growth is several degrees higher than the one most stimulatory for fruiting. In Chapter XI, these optimum temperatures and other parameters are listed for more than a dozen cultivated mushrooms. Yet another factor affecting both growth rate and susceptibility to contamination is moisture content, a subject covered in the previous chapter on grain culture. Every day or so inspect the jars and check for the slightest sign of contamination. The most common are the green molds Penicillium and Aspergillus. If contamination is detected, seal the lid and remove the infected culture from the laboratory and growing facility. If a jar is suspected to be contaminated, mark it for future inspection. Not all discolorations of the grain are de facto contaminants. Mushroom mycelium exudes a yellowish liquid metabolite that collects as droplets around the myceliated kernels of grain. As the culture ages and the kernels are digested, more metabolic wastes are secreted. Although this secretion is mostly composed of alcohols (ethanol and acetone), in time acids are produced that cause the lowering of the substrate's pH. These waste products are favorable to the propagation of bacteria that thrive in aqueous environments. Small amounts of this fluid do not endanger the culture; excessive waste fluids (where the culture takes on a yellowish hue) are soma rights re-served 50 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb definitely detrimental. If this fluid collects in quantities, the mycelium sickens and eventually dies in its own wastes. Such excessive "sweating" is indicative of one or a combination of the following conditions: Figure 61 - Half gallon jars of spawn incubating in semisterile Figure 62 - Gallon jars incubating in semisterile environment. environment. 1. Incubation at too high a temperature for the species being cultivated. Note that the temperature within a spawn jar is several degrees higher than the surrounding air temperature. 2. Over-aging of the cultures; too lengthy an incubation period. 3. Lack of gas exchange, encouraging anaerobic contamination. Figure 63 - Chart showing influence of temperature on the rate of mycelial growth in Psilocybe cubensis and Psilocybe mexicana. (Adapted from Ames et al., 1958). soma rights re-served 51 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Contaminated jars should be sterilized on a weekly basis. Do not dig out moldy cultures unless they have been autoclaved or if the identity of the contaminant in question is known to be benign. Several contaminants in mushroom culture are pathogenic to humans, causing a variety of skin diseases and respiratory ailments. (See Chapter XIII on the contaminants of mushroom culture). Autoclave contaminated jars for 30 minutes at 15 psi and clean soon after. Many autoclaved jars, once contaminated, re-contaminate within only a few days if their contents have been not discarded. If an exceptionally high contamination rate persists, review the possible sources of contamination, particularly the quality of the master spawn cultures (such as the moisture content of the grain) and the general hygiene of the immediate environment. Once the cultures have grown through with mycelium and are of known purity, this spawn can be used to inoculate bulk substrates or can be layed out in trays, cased and fruited. soma rights re-served 52 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb IV. THE MUSHROOM GROWING ROOM Figure 64 - Small growing room utilizing shelves. Structure and Growing Systems Mushroom cultivation was originally an outdoor activity dependent on seasonal conditions. Substrates were prepared and spawned when outside temperatures and humidify were favorable. This is still the case with many small scale growers of Volvariella volvacea, Stropharia rugoso-annulata and Lentinus edodes. Agaricus cultivators grow solely indoors. Initially, Agaricus growers in France adapted the limestone mines near Paris and in the Loire valley to meet the necessary cultural requirements of that mushroom. These "caves" were well suited because of their constant temperature and high humidity, essential requirements for mushroom growing. When the first houses designed solely for mushrooms were built in the early 1900's, temperature and humidify control were the main factors guiding their construction. For the home cultivator, a growing room should be scaled according to the scope of the project. The following guidelines supply the information to properly design and equip a growing chamber, basement growing room, outdoor shed or garage. soma rights re-served 53 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 65 - An insulated plastic greenhouse suitable for mushroom growing. Structure The basic structure of a mushroom house is made of wood or concrete block with a cement floor. Because water collects on the floor during the cropping cycle, provisions should be made for drainage. A wood floor can be covered with a heavy gauge plastic. Interior walls, ceilings and exposed wood surfaces should be treated with a marine enamel or epoxy-plastic based paint. A white color enhances lighting and exposes any contaminating molds. The most important feature of a growing room is the ability to maintain a constant temperature. In this respect, insulation is critical. The walls should be insulated with R=11 or R=9 and the ceiling with R=30 insulating materials. Fiberglass or styrofoam work well but should be protected from the high humidities of the growing room to prevent water from saturating them. For this purpose, a 2-4 mil. plastic vapor barrier is placed between the insulation and the interior wall. An airtight room is an essential feature of the mushroom growing environment, preventing insects and spores from entering as well as giving the cultivator full control over the fresh air supply. During the construction or modification of the room, all cracks, seams and joints should be carefully sealed. Many growers modify existing rooms in their own homes or basements. The main consideration for this approach is to protect the house structure (normally wood) from water damage and to make the growing chamber airtight. This is accomplished by plastic sheets stapled or taped to the walls, ceiling and floor, with the seams and adjoining pieces well sealed. If the room is adjacent to an exterior house wall where a wide temperature fluctuation occurs, condensation may form between the plastic and the wall. Within these larger structures, a plastic tent or envelope room can be constructed. Such a structure can be framed with 2" PVC pipe. The pipe forms a box frame to which the plastic is attached. This type of growing room should not need insulation because of the air buffer between it and the larger room. soma rights re-served 54 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 66 - Cultivation of mushrooms in an aquarium. Porches, basements and garages can all be modified in the ways just mentioned. These areas can also be used with little additional change if the climate of the region is compatible with the mushroom species being grown. For example, Lentinus edodes, the shiitake mushroom, readily fruits at 50-60 degrees F. in a garage or basement environment. The newest innovation in mushroom growing structures is the insulated plastic greenhouse. The framework is made of galvanized metal pipe bent into a semi-circular shape and mounted at ground level or on a 3.5 foot side wall. The ends of the walls and the doors are framed with wood. Heavy plastic (5-6 mil) is stretched over the metal framework to form the inner skin of the room. A layer of wire mesh is laid over the plastic and functions to hold 3-6 inches of fiberglass insulation in place. A second plastic sheet covers the insulation and protects it from the weather. The plastic should be stretched tight and anchored well. These layers are held in place by structural cable spanning the top and secured at each side. (See Figure 65). This type of structure, plastic coverings and plastic fasteners are all available at nursery supply companies. Remember, the design of a mushroom growing room strives to minimize heat gain and loss. For people with little or no available space, "mini-culture" in small environmental chambers may be the most appropriate way to grow mushrooms. Styrofoam ice chests, aquariums and plastic lined wood or cardboard boxes can all be used successfully. Because of the small volume of substrates contained in one of these chambers, air exchange requirements are minimal. Usually, enough air is exchanged in opening the chamber for a daily or twice daily misting. Clear, perforated plastic covering the opening maintains the necessary humidity and the heat can be supplied by the outer room. Larger chambers can be equipped with heating coils or a light bulb on a rheostat. Both should be mounted at the base of the chamber. Mini-culture is an excellent and proven way to grow small quantities of mushrooms for those not having the time or resources to erect larger, more controlled environments. Shelves The most common indoor cultivation method is the shelf system. In this system, shelves form a platform upon which the mushroom growing substrate is placed. The shelf framework consists of upright posts with cross bars at each level to support the shelf boards. This fixed framework is constructed of wood or non-corrosive tubular metal. The shelves should be a preservative-treated softwood. The bottom boards are commonly six inches wide with one inch spaces between them. Side boards are 6-8 inches high depending on the depth of fill. A standardized design is shown in Figure 67. All shelf boards are placed unattached thereby allowing easy filling, emptying and cleaning. Agaricus growers fill the shelf house from the bottom up. The shelf boards are stacked at the side of the room and put into place after each level is completed. soma rights re-served 55 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb The center pole design (shown in Figure 67) is a simple variation that is less restrictive and ideally suited for growing in plastic bags. Another alternative is to use metal storage shelves. These units come in a variety of widths and lengths and have the distinct advantage of being impervious to disease growth. Their use is particularly appropriate for cropping on sterilized substrates in small containers. Figure 67 - Double support and centerpole design shelves. Both shelves are firmly attached to the floor and the ceiling. Trays The development of the tray system in Agaricus culture is largely due to the work of Dr. James Sinden. In direct contrast to anchored static shelves, trays are individual cropping units that have the distinct advantage of being mobile. This mobility has made mechanization of commercial cultivation possible. Automated tray lines are capable of filling, spawning and casing in less time, with fewer people and with better quality management. Whereas in the shelf system all stages of the cultural cycle occur in the same room, the tray system utilizes a separate room for Phase II composting. On a commercial tray farm only the Phase II room is equipped for steaming and high velocity air movement. A Sinden system tray design is shown in Figure 68. This tray has short legs in the up-position. During Phase II and spawn running these trays are stacked 15 cm. apart and tightly placed within the room to fully utilize compost heat. After casing, a wooden spacer is inserted between the trays for crop management, increasing the space to 25-35 cm. Other tray designs have longer legs in the down position and higher sideboards to accommodate more compost. These trays are similarly spaced throughout the cycle. In the growing room, trays can be stacked 3-6 high in evenly spaced rows. The main considerations for the home cultivator are that the trays can be easily handled and that they fit the floor space of the room. The real advantage of the tray system is the ability to fill, spawn and case single units in an unrestricted environment outside the actual growing room. The tray system also gives the cultivator more control over hygiene and improves the efficiency of the operation. Moving trays from room to room does present contamination possibilities; therefore, the operations room must also be clean and fly tight for spawning and casing. Because there is no fixed framework in the growing room, it is easily cleaned and disinfected. The tray method has many distinct advantages over the mason jar method for home cultivators preferring to fruit mushrooms on sterilized grain. These advantages are: fewer necessary spawn containers; fewer aborts due to uncontrolled primordia formation between the glass/grain interface; ease of picking and watering; better ratio of surface area to grain depth; and comparatively higher yields on the first and second flushes. An inexpensive tray is the 3-4 inch deep plant propagation flat commonly sold for staring seedlings. An example of soma rights re-served 56 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb such a tray is pictured in Fig. 69. Figure 68 - Sinden system tray. The tray can be constructed of 1 x 6 or 2 x 6 inch lumber for bottom and side boards and 4 x 4 inch corner posts. (1 x 8 or 2 x 8 inch side boards are suggested for deep fills). Figure 69 - Psilocybe cubensis fruiting on cased grain in a tray. Figure 70 - Psilocybe cubensis fruiting in pint and a half jars. Figure 71 - Psilocybe cubensis fruiting in pint jars. Figure 72 - Psilocybe cubensis fruiting in a plastic lined box. soma rights re-served 57 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Environmental Control Systems The mushroom growing room is designed to maintain a selected temperature range at high relative humidities. This is accomplished through adequate insulation and an environmental control system with provisions for heating, cooling, humidification and air handling. In the original shelf houses the environment was controlled by a combination of active and passive means. Fresh air was introduced through adjustable vents running the length of the ceiling above the center aisle. Heat was supplied by a hot water pipe along the side walls, a foot above ground level. And humidity was controlled by similarly placed piping carrying live steam. The warm air rising up the walls in combination with the cool fresh air falling down the center aisle created convection currents for air circulation. Although no longer in general use by Agaricus growers, air movement based on convection can be similarly designed for small growth chambers where mechanical means are inappropriate. Present day Agaricus farms integrate heating, cooling and humidification equipment into the air handling system and in this way are able to achieve balanced conditions throughout the growing room. Figure 73 shows an example of this type of system. Figure 73 - Standard ventilation system used by Agaricus growers. (After Vedder) Fresh Air Filtered fresh air enters the room at the mixing box where it is proportionally regulated with recirculated air by a single damper. To prevent leakage during spawn running and pre-pinning, the damper fits tightly against the fresh air inlet. This allows full recirculation of room air to maintain even conditions, thereby counteracting temperature and CO2 stratification. When fresh air is required, the damper can be adjusted to any setting, including complete closure of the recirculation inlet. As fresh air is introduced, room air is displaced and evacuated through an exhaust vent or cracks around the door. Because fresh air is generally at a different temperature than the one required for the growing room, it must be used judiciously in order to avoid disrupting the growing room environment or overworking the heating, cooling and humidication systems. By properly mixing the fresh outside air and the room air, a balance can be achieved and optimum conditions for mushroom growth prevail. Fresh air serves many important functions in mushroom culture, primarily by supplying oxygen to the growing mushrooms and carrying away CO2. Fresh air also facilitates moisture evaporation from the cropping surface. To determine the exact amount of air needed in a given situation, a knowledge of the CO2 requirements for the species being grown is necessary. (See Chapter XI on growing parameters for various species). The fresh air can also be measured in terms of air changes per hour, a common way mushroom growers size the fan in the growing room. soma rights re-served 58 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Fans Axial flow and centrifugal fans are the two most commonly used in mushroom houses. Both fans operate well against high static pressure, which is a measure of the resistance to forced air. Static pressure is measured in inches of water gauge - the height in inches to which the pressure lifts a column of water - and is caused by filters, heating and cooling coils or other obstructions to the free flow of air. Fans are rated in terms of their output, a measurement of cubic feet per minute (CFM) at varying static pressures (S.P.). When choosing a fan, these two factors must be considered for proper sizing. Agaricus growers use fans capable of 4-6 changes per hour, or 0.5 CFM per square foot of cropping surface. For most small growing rooms, an axial flow fan, 6-10 inches in diameter and delivering between 100-500 CFM at up to 0.5 inches of static pressure, should meet general growing requirements. The addition of a variable speed motor control allows precise air velocity adjustment during different phases of the cultural cycle. This is especially important if the static pressure increases from spore build-up in the filter. A convenient method of testing air circulation is by blowing a small amount of cigarette smoke onto the cropping surface: the smoke should dissipate within twenty seconds. The minimum fan output for a given room can be determined through knowledge of the air changes per hour required by the mushroom species. First calculate the volume of the room in cubic feet (height x width x length) and substract from this the volume occupied by trays, shelves, substrate and other fixtures. This figure is the free air space in the room. By dividing the CFM (cubic feet per minute) of the fan into the cubic feet of free air space, the time in minutes it takes for one air change is determined. This number is then divided into 60 minutes to calculate the air changes per hour. Another method to determine the CFM of the fan needed is described below. Let X = the desired net CFM of a high pressure fan pushing through a filter. Let Y = the total cubic feet of FREE air space in the growing room. A maximum number of air exchanges/hour for Agaricus brunnescens is 4-6. A maximum number of air exchanges/hour for Psilocybe cubensis is 2-3. Therefore: 4 air exchanges/hour ∗ Y = 60 minutes ∗ X 4∗Y 60 minutes Y 15 = X = necessary net CFM of fan =X Example: If the growing environment measures 8 ft. x 8 ft. x 15 ft., the total volume would be 960 cu. ft. if the beds occupy 160 cu. ft. the net volume of free air space would be Y = 800 cu. ft. Therefore: 4 ∗ 800 cu. ft. 60 min. =X 4 ∗ 3200 cubic feet 60 min. =X 53.3 CFM = X Another factor of importance for proper ventilation is the air-to-bed ratio, which is the cubic feet of free air space divided by square feet of cropping surface. Agaricus growers have found a ratio of 5:1 to be optimum and this serves as a useful guideline when cropping other mushrooms on bulk substrates. The reason this ratio soma rights re-served 59 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb is so important is that increased amounts of substrate can generate heat and carbon dioxide beyond the handling capacity of the ventilation system. A large free air space acts to buffer these changes. Ostensibly, a ventilation system could be matched with a room having a 3:1 air-to-bed ratio, but it would have to move such a volume of air that evaporation off the sensitive cropping surface would be uncontrollable and excessive. Growing mushrooms on thin layers of grain (1-3 inches), however, produces less CO2 than growing on 8 inches of compost and consequently would emit a lower air-to-bed ratio. Air Ducting Ducting for the air system is standard inflatable polyethylene tubing, sized to conform to the fan diameter. If ducting is not available in the correct size, PVC pipe can be substituted. Figures 74, 75 and 76 show different air distribution arrangements and their flow patterns. The ducts run the length of the room at ceiling level. One is centrally mounted and discharges towards both walls or directly down the center aisle, whereas the other is wall mounted and is directed across the width of the room. The outlet holes in the duct are designed to discharge air at such a velocity that the airstream reaches the walls and passes down to the floor without directly hitting the top containers. The holes are spaced so that the boundaries of the adjacent jets meet just before reaching the wall or floor. This effectively eliminates dead-air pockets. To size and space the outlet holes exactly, two guidelines are used: 1. The total surface area of the holes is equal to the cross section of the duct. (The area of a circle is 22/7 times the radius squared, A = ∏(r)2). 2. The space between the holes is equal to a quarter of the distance between the duct and the wall or floor. The discharge of air at velocities sufficient to draw in surrounding room air is called entrainment, a phenomenon that enhances the capacity of the air circulation system. A flow pattern of even air is then reached that directly benefits the growing mushrooms. The entrainment of air is the goal of air management in the growing room. Filters Fresh air filters are an important part of the ventilation system and contribute to the health of the crop. Their function is to screen out atmospheric dust particles like smoke, silica, soot and decayed biological matter. Atmospheric dust also contains spores, bacteria and plant pollen, some of which are detrimental to mushroom culture. Furthermore, spores and microorganisms originating within the cropping room can also be spread by air movement. To counteract this danger, some mushroom farms filter recirculated air as well. Agaricus growers commonly use high efficiency, extended surface, dry filters. These filters are of pleated or deep fold design which gives them much more surface area than their frame opening. They filter out 0.3 micron particles with 90-95% efficiency and 5.0 micron particles with an efficiency of 99% at an initial resistance of 0.10 to 0.50 inches of static pressure. High efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters are even more efficient than those just described and are cost effective for the home cultivator. They screen out particulates down to 0.1-0.3 microns with a rated 99.96% to 99.99% efficiency and have a resistance of .75-1.00 inches of static pressure. HEPA filters are made of a variety of materials, depending on their intended application. Most HEPA filters operate in environments of up to 80% humidity without disintegration. Special "waterproof" filters operable in 100% humidify environments can also be purchased at little or no extra expense. These "waterproof" filters are especially appropriate for use with systems that push recirculated air through the filter. This type of system is illustrated in Figure 77. To protect the filters and prolong their usefulness, a one inch prefilter of open celled foam or fiberglass (of the furnace type) is installed to remove large particulates. soma rights re-served 60 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 74 - Central aisle outward flow air circulation pattern. Figure 75 - Central aisle downflow air circulation pattern with wall mounted baseboard heating. Figure 76 - Wall mounted duct directing airflow across the width or down the sidewall of the room. soma rights re-served 61 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 77 - Schematic of mixing box and controlled recirculation system in the growing room. Exhaust Vents Exhaust vents are designed to relieve overpressure within the growing room caused by the introduction of fresh air. Without an exit for the air, a back pressure is created that increases resistance and reduces the CFM of the fan. Small rooms operating with low fresh air requirements can forgo special exhaust vents and allow the air to escape around the seals of the room entrance, in effect creating a positive pressure environment. Positive pressure within a room can also be created by undersizing the exhaust vent, which should be no larger than half the size of the fresh air inlet. Free swinging dampers operating on overpressure are widely employed in the mushroom growing industry. The outlet should be screened from the inside to prevent the entry of flies. Heating Heating systems for cropping rooms can be based on either dry heat or live steam. Dry heat refers to a heating source that lowers the moisture content of the air as it raises the temperature. These systems utilize either hot water or steam circulating through a closed system of pipes or radiator coils. Heating systems can also be simple resistance coils or baseboard electric heaters. Heat coils are placed in the air circulation system ahead of the fan as shown in Figure 73. Small portable space heaters can also be attached to the mixing box or placed on the wall under it. Otherwise, baseboard heaters can be installed along the length of the side walls and matched with the air circulation design shown in Figure 75. Heat supplied by live steam has the advantage of keeping the humidity high while raising the temperature of the room. If regulated correctly, steam can maintain the temperature and relative humidity within the required ranges without drawing upon other sources. Nevertheless, a backup heat source is advantageous in the event humidity levels become too high. For steam heat to function properly it should be controlled volumetrically by adjusting a hand valve (rather than simply on and off). Vaporizers well suited for small growing rooms are available in varying capacities, and can be fitted with a duct that connects with the air system downstream from the fan and filter. To avoid high energy consumption and the expense associated with equipment purchase, operation and maintenance, the growing room should be designed to take full advantage of the heat generating capabilities of the substrate. This is done by matching the air-to-bed ratio to the type of substrate. Growing on thin layers soma rights re-served 62 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb of grain can be done with a ratio of 4:1 (or less) whereas compost demands 5:1. The influence of the outside climate and its capacity for cooling the growing room should also be considered. All these factors must be evaluated before a growing environment with efficient temperature control can be constructed. Cooling Commercial farms use cooling coils with cold water or glycol circulating through them. The coils are placed before the fan as shown in Figure 73 and are supplied by a central chiller or underground tank and well. Other systems use home or industrial refrigeration or air conditioning units that operate with a compressor and liquid coolant filled coils. These units are positioned to draw in recirculated as well as fresh air. All these systems share the common trait of drawing warm air over a colder surface. In doing so, moisture condenses out of the air and in effect dehumidifies the room. The oldest and most widely practiced method of cooling is through the use of fresh air. Cooling with fresh air depends upon the weather and the temperature requirements of the species being cultivated. However, its use is the most practical means available to the home cultivator. In climates with high daily temperatures, fresh air can be shut off or reduced to a minimum during the day and then fully opened at night when temperatures are at their lowest. Humidification Most mushroom growers use steam as the principal means of humidification. The steam is injected into the air system duct on the downstream side of the fan and filter. Household vaporizers are well suited for small growing rooms. They are available in various capacities and can be fitted with a duct running to the air system. The vaporizer can also be positioned under the mixing box for steam uptake with the recirculated air. Keep in mind that cold fresh air has much less capacity for moisture absorption and therefore does not mix well with large volumes of steam. Another method of humidification uses atomizing nozzles to project a fine mist into the air stream. Large systems have a separate mixing chamber with nozzles mounted to spray the passing air. In a small room, a single nozzle can be mounted in the center of the duct and aimed to flow with the air as it exits the fan. (See Figure 77). An appropriately sized nozzle emits 0.5-1.0 gallons per hour at 20-30 psi. To prevent the nozzle from plugging up, filters should be incorporated in the water supply line. In a third method, air passes through a coarse mesh absorbant material that is saturated with water. This system is widely used for cooling at nurseries. It is similar in principle to a "swamp cooler". In this system (and the water atomizing system), the temperature of the supply water can be regulated to provide a measure of heating and cooling. Both systems also produce some free water so provisions must be made for drainage. Thermostats and Humidistats In general, thermostats and humidistats are designed to open and close valves in response to pre-set temperature or humidity limits. The instrument sensors are placed in a moving air stream representative of room conditions, usually in or near the recirculation inlet. Because these instruments are programmed for either on or off, heat and humidity come in surges. Often this results in uneven and fluctuating conditions within the room. The ideal in environmental control is to supply just enough heat and humidity to make up for losses from the room and to compensate for differences in the fresh air. Modulating thermostats do this by supplying heat continuously in proportion to the deviation from the desired temperature. Positive control of this sort can also be accomplished by hand valves, alone or in conjunction with on/off instruments. Supply line volume is thereby regulated in order to attain an equilibrium. With a thermostat, this means keeping the supply volume just below the cut-off point. soma rights re-served 63 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Lighting Many cultivated mushrooms require light for pinhead initiation and proper development of the fruitbody. In fact, such phototropic mushrooms actually twist and turn towards a light source, especially if it is dim and distant in an otherwise darkened room. Consequently, it is important to equip the growing room with a lighting system that provides even illumination to all areas and levels. Figures 78, 79 & 80 - Charts showing the proportions of spectra in incandescent, fluorescent and natural lighting. Figure 81 - An inexpensive hygrometer for measuring relative humidity. Flourescent light fixtures are the most practical and give the broadest coverage. These fixtures should be evenly spaced and mounted vertically on the side walls of the room or horizontally on the ceiling above the center isle. An alternative is to mount the lights on the underside of each tier of shelf or tray, at least 18 inches above the cropping surface. To eliminate the heat and consequent drying action caused by the fixture ballasts, soma rights re-served 64 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb these can be removed and placed outside the room. The best type of light tube is one which most closely resembles natural outdoor light: i.e. one that has at least 140 microwatts per 10 nanometer per lumen of blue spectra (440-495 nm). In contrast, warm-white fluorescent light has only 40-50 microwatts/nm/lum. and cool-white has 100-110 microwatts/nm/lum. Commercial lights meeting the photo-requirements of species mentioned in this book are the "Daylite 65" kind manufactured by the Durotest Corporation and having a "color temperature" of 6500°K and the "Vita-Lite" fluorescent at 5500°K. These color temperatures provide the proper amount of blue light for promoting primordia formation in Pleurotus ostreatus, Psilocybe cubensis and in other photosensitive species. Environmental Monitoring Equipment Few organisms are as sensitive to fluctuations in the environment as mushrooms. A matter of a few degrees in temperature or humidity can dramatically influence the progression of fruiting and affect overall yields. To adequately monitor the growing environment, quality equipment is essential for accurate readings. This equipment should include maximum-minimum thermometers to gauge temperature fluctuations and a hygrometer or a sling psychrometer for measuring humidity. Hygrometers should be periodically calibrated with a sling psychrometer to insure accuracy. Thermometers also should be checked as there are occasional irregularities. Other more advanced, expensive but not absolutely essential equipment helpful to mushroom growers include: CO2 detectors; moisture meters; anemometers; and light measuring devices. soma rights re-served 65 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb V. COMPOST PREPARATION Figure 82 - Compost pile in a standard configuration. The purpose of composting is to prepare a nutritious medium of such characteristics that the growth of mushroom mycelium is promoted to the practical exclusion of competitor organisms. Specifically this means: 1. To create a physically and chemically homogeneous substrate. 2. To create a selective substrate, one in which the mushroom mycelium thrives better than competitor microorganisms. 3. To concentrate nutrients for use by the mushroom plant and to exhaust nutrients favored by competitors. 4. To remove the heat generating capabilities of the substrate. Mushroom mycelium grows on a wide variety of plant matter and animal manures. These materials occur naturally in various combinations and in varying stages of decomposition. Physically and chemically they are a heterogeneous mixture containing a wide variety of insects, microorganisms and nematodes. Many of these organisms directly compete with the mushroom mycelium for the available nutrients and inhibit its growth. By composting, nutrients favored by competitors gradually diminish while nutrients available to the mushroom mycelium are accumulated. With time, the substrate becomes specific for the growth of mushrooms. The composting process is divided into two stages, commonly called Phase I and Phase II. Each stage is designed to accomplish specific ends, these being: Phase I: Termed outdoor composting, this stage involves the mixing and primary decomposition of the raw materials. Phase II: Carried out indoors in specially designed rooms, the compost is pasteurized and conditioned within strict temperature zones. soma rights re-served 66 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Phase I Composting Basic Raw Materials The basic raw material used for composting is cereal straw from wheat, rye, oat, barley and rye grass. Of these, wheat straw is preferred due to its more resilient nature. This characteristic helps provide structure to the compost. Other straw types, oat and barley in particular, tend to flatten out and waterlog, leading to anaerobic conditions within a compost pile. Rye grass straw is more resistant to decomposition, taking longer to compost. Given these factors and with proper management, all straw types can be used successfully. Straw provides a compost with carbohydrates, the basic food stuffs of mushroom nutrition. Wheat straw is 36% cellulose, 25% pentosan and 16% lignin. Cellulose and pentosan are carbohydrates which upon break down yield simple sugars. These sugars supply the energy for microbial growth. Lignin, a highly resistant material also found in the heartwood of trees, is changed during composting to a "Nitrogen-rich-lignin-humuscomplex", a source of protein. In essence, straw is a material with the structural and chemical properties ideal for making a mushroom compost. When cereal straw is gathered from horse stables, it is called "horse manure". Although cultivators call it by this name, the material is actually 90% straw and 10% manure. This "horse manure" includes the droppings, urine and straw that has been bedding material. The quality of this material depends on the proportions of urine and droppings present, the essential elements nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium being contained therein. The reason horse manure is favored for making compost is the fact that fully 30-40% of the droppings are comprised of living microorganisms. These microorganisms accelerate the composting process, thereby giving horse manure a decided advantage over other raw materials. Horse manure used by commercial mushroom farms generally comes from race tracks. The bedding straw is changed frequently, producing a material that is light in urine and droppings. On the other hand, boarding stables change the bedding less, generating a heavier material. If sawdust or shavings are used in place of straw for bedding, the material should be regarded as a supplement and not as a basic starting ingredient. When horse manure is used as the basic starting ingredient, the compost is considered a "horse manure compost" whereas "synthetic compost" refers to a compost using no horse manure. Straw, sometimes mixed with hay, is the base ingredient in synthetic composts. Because straw is low in potassium and phosphorus, these elements must be provided by supplementation and for this reason chicken manure is the standard additive for synthetic composts. No composts are made exclusively of hay because of its high cost and small fiber. In fact, mushroom growers have traditionally used waste products because they are both cheap and readily available. By themselves horse manure or straw are insufficient for producing a nutritious compost. Nor do they decompose rapidly. They must be fortified by specific materials called supplements. In order to determine how much supplementation is necessary for a given amount of horse manure or straw based synthetic, a special formula is used. This formula insures the correct proportion of initial ingredients, which largely determines the course of the composting process. The formula is based on the total nitrogen present in each ingredient as determined by the Kjeldahl method. By using this formula and certain composting principles, the carbon:nitrogen ratio for optimum microbial decompositions is assured. In turn, maximum nutritional value will be achieved. Supplements Composting is a process of microbial decomposition. The microbes are already present in large numbers in the compost ingredients and need only the addition of water to become active. To stimulate microbial activity and enhance their growth, nutrient supplements are added to the bulk starting materials. These supplements are designed to provide protein (nitrogen) and carbohydrates to feed the ever increasing microbial populations. Microbes can use almost any nitrogen source as long as sufficient carbohydrates are readily available to supply energy for the nitrogen utilization. Because of the tough nature of cellulose, the carbohydrates in straw soma rights re-served 67 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb are not initially usable and must come from another source. A balanced supplement is therefore highly desirable. It should contain not only nitrogen but also sufficient organic matter to supply these essential carbohydrates. For this reason certain manures and animal feed meals are widely used for composting. The following is a list of possible compost ingredients or supplements, grouped according to nitrogen content. Their use by commercial growers is largely determined by availability and cost. This list is not all inclusive and similar materials can be substituted. (See Appendix). Group I: High nitrogen, no organic matter Ammonium sulfate - 21 % N Ammonium nitrate - 26% N Urea - 46% N Maximum rate - 25 lbs/dry ton of starting materials These are inorganic compounds that supply a rapid burst of ammonia. They are frequently used for initial straw softening in synthetic composts. When used, care should be taken that they are applied evenly. If ammonium sulfate is used, calcium carbonate must also be added at a rate of 3 parts CaCO3 to 1, to neutralize sulfuric acid groups. These supplements are not recommended for horse manure composts. Group II: 10-14% N Blood Meal - 13.5% N Fish Meal - 10.5% N These materials consist mainly of proteins but because of their high cost are rarely used. Group III: 3-7% N Malt sprouts - 4% N Brewers' grains - 3-5% N Cottonseed meal - 6.5% N Peanut meal - 6.5% N Chicken manure - 3-6% N This group contains the materials most widely used by commercial growers and is characterized by a favorable carbon:nitrogen balance. Dried chicken manure from broilers mixed with sawdust is commonly used and easy to handle. Group IV: Low nitrogen, high carbohydrate Grape pomace - 1.5% N Sugar beet pulp - l.5% N Potato pulp - 1% N Apple pomace - 0.7% N Molasses - 0.5% N Cottonseed hulls - 1 % N These materials are excellent temperature boosters and for this reason are a recommended additive to all composts. They can be added to any compost formula at a rate of 250 lbs per dry to of ingredients. Cottonseed hulls are an excellent structural additive. Group V: Animal manures Cow manure - 0.5 % N soma rights re-served 68 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Pig manure - 0.3-0.8% N These manures are rarely used for composting, except in areas without horses or chickens. They have been used with success and should be considered supplements to a synthetic blend. Group VI: Hay Alfalfa - 2.0-2.5% N Clover - 2% N Hay is useful for boosting initial temperatures in synthetic composts. Hay contains substantial quantities of carbohydrates which help build the microbial population. Yet another advantage is the relatively high nitrogen content in alfalfa and clover. Use at a rate of 20% of the basic starting material (dry weight). Group VII: Minerals Gypsum - Calcium sulfate Gypsum is an essential element for all composts. Its action, largely chemical in nature, facilitates proper composting. Its effects are: 1. To improve the physical structure of the compost by causing aggregation of colloidal particles. This produces a more granular, open structure which results in larger air spaces and improved aeration. 2. To increase the water holding capacity, while decreasing the danger of over-wetting. Loose water is bound to the straw by colloidal particles. 3. To counteract harmfully high concentrations of the elements K, Mg, P and Na should they occur, thereby preventing a greasy condition in the compost. 4. To supply the calcium necessary for mushroom metabolism. Gypsum should be added at a rate of 50-100 lbs per dry ton of ingredients. When supplementing with chicken manure, it is advisable to use the high rate. Limestone flour - Calcium carbonate Limestone is used when one or more supplements are very acidic and need to be buffered. A good example of this is grape pomace, which has a pH of 4. Because it is added in large quantities, grape pomace could affect the composting process which normally occurs under alkaline conditions. Group VIII: Starting materials Horse manure - 0.9-1.2% N Straw, all types - 0.5-0.7% N Compost Formulas The following formulas for high yield compost are commercially proven. If an ingredient is not available locally, substitute one that is. The aim of the formula is to achieve a nitrogen content of 1.5-1.7% at the initial make-up of the compost pile. In order for these formulas to be effective, the moisture content and nitrogen content must be correct. Moisture level is determined by weighing 100 grams of the material, drying it in an oven at 200°F. for several hours, and then reweighing it. The difference is the percent moisture. Be sure the sample is representative. The nitrogen content (protein divided by 6.25) is always listed with commercial materials because they are priced according to percentage of protein. On the other hand, barnyard materials vary considerably with age. The more a material breaks down, the more nitrogen it loses. Most compost supplements are purchased dry soma rights re-served 69 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb and added dry, helping even distribution as well as enabling easy storage. It is also important that the raw materials used for composting be as fresh as possible. This insures maximum utilization of their properties. Baled straw stored for a year and kept dry is fine. If the straw has gotten wet, moldy or otherwise started to decompose, it should not be used. Formula I Wet wt. % H2 O Dry wt. %N lbs. Horse manure 2,000 50 1,000 1.0 10 Cottonseed meal 30 10 117 6.5 8 Gypsum 50 - 50 - - Ingredient 1,167 18 (18)÷(1,167)=1.54% N This formula makes approximately 2800 pounds of compost at a 70% moisture content. Formula II Wet wt. % H2O Dry wt. Wheat straw 2,000 10 1,800 0.5 9 Chicken manure 2,000 20 1,600 3.00 48 Gypsum 125 - 125 - Ingredient %N 3,525 lbs. 57 (57)÷(3,525)=1.62% N This formula make approximately 7,000 pounds of compost at a 71% moisture content. Although 7,000 pounds of compost seems like a large quantity, at a fill level of 20 pounds per sq. ft., this will fill only 350 sq. ft. of beds or trays. Keep in mind that during the composting process there is a gradual reduction in the the total volume of raw materials. Fully 20-30% of the dry matter is consumed during Phase I and another 10-15% during Phase II. In total, approximately 40% of the dry matter is reduced by microbial and chemical processes. This loss of potential nutrients can not be avoided and demonstrates the importance of composting no longer than necessary. Ammonia The production of ammonia is essential to the composting process. Just as the carbohydrates must be in a form that microbes can utilize, so must the nitrogen. 1. Ammonia supplies nitrogen for microbial use. 2. Ammonia is produced by microbes acting upon the protein contained in the supplements. With the energy supplied by readily available carbohydrates, microbes use the ammonia to form body tissues. A microbial succession of generations is established, with each new generation decomposing the remains of the previous one. Microbial action also fixes a certain amount of the ammonia, forming the "nitrogen-richlignin-humus-complex". Unused ammonia volatilizes into the atmosphere. The smell of ammonia should be evident throughout Phase I, reaching a peak at filling. Carbon:Nitrogen Ratio The importance of a carbon:nitrogen balance cannot be underestimated. A well balanced compost holds an optimum nutritional level for microbial growth. An imbalance slows and impedes this growth. It is the compost formula that enables the grower to achieve the correct C:N balance. Because organic matter is reduced during composting, the C:N ratio gradually decreases. Approximate values are: 30:1 at make-up; 20:1 at filling; and 17:1 at spawning. 1. Over-supplementation with nitrogen results in prolonged ammonia release. soma rights re-served 70 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb 2. Over-supplementation with carbohydrates results in residual carbon compounds. Prolonged ammonia release from an over-supplemented compost necessitates longer composting times. If composting continues too long, the physical structure and nutritional qualities are negatively affected. If the ammonia persists, the compost becomes unsuitable for mycelial growth. Readily available carbohydrates which are not consumed by the microbes during composting can become food for competitors. It is therefore important that these compounds are no longer present when composting is finished. Water and Air Water is the most important component in the composting process. To a large degree water governs the level of microbial activity. In turn, this activity determines the amount of heat generated within the compost pile because the microorganisms can only take up nutrients in solution. Not only do the microorganisms need water to thrive, but they also need oxygen. Years of practice and research have established a basic relationship between the amount of water added and the aeration of the compost. An inverse relationship exists between the amount of water and the amount of oxygen in a compost pile. 1. Too much water = too little air Moisture content 75% or above. 2. Too little water = too much air Moisture content 67% or below. Overwetting a compost causes the air spaces to fill with water. Oxygen is unable to penetrate, causing an anaerobic condition. In contrast, insufficient water results in a compost that is too airy. Beneficial high temperatures are never reached because the heat generated is quickly convected away. Figure 83 - Pre-wetted raw materials in a windrow. Compost microorganisms can be divided into two classes according to their oxygen requirements. Those needing oxygen to live and grow are called Aerobes while those living in the absence of oxygen are called Anaerobes. Each class has well defined characteristics. 1. Aerobes decompose organic matter rapidly and completely with a corresponding production of CO2, water and heat. This heat generation is called Thermogenesis. soma rights re-served 71 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb 2. Anaerobes partially decompose organic matter, producing not only CO2 and water, but also certain organic acids and several types of gases such as hydrogen sulfide and methane. Anaerobes generate less heat than aerobes. Examination of anaerobic areas of the compost reveals a yellowish, under-composted material that smells like rotten eggs. These areas in a compost pile are noticeably cooler and generally waterlogged. Anaerobic compost is unsuitable for mushroom growth. Since neither fresh horse manure nor straw based synthetics have the correct moisture content, water must be added to these materials. The recommended levels for optimum composting are: Horse manure: 69-71% Synthetic: 71-73% Pre-wetting As long as the composting ingredients remain dry, the microorganisms lie dormant and composting does not take place. The first step in the composting process is the initial watering of the starting materials. The purpose of this pre-composting or pre-wetting is to activate the microbes. Once activated, the microbes begin to attack the straw and decompose the waxy film which encases the straw fibers. Until this film is degraded, water will not penetrate the straw and its nutrients will remain unavailable. As the process progresses, the fibers become increasingly receptive to water, which rather than being free or on the surface, penetrates and is absorbed into the straw. There are many methods for pre-wetting. These include: dipping or dunking the material into a tank of water; spraying it with a hose; or spreading it out in a flat pile 2-3 feet high and running a sprinkler over it. Regardless of the method used, the result should be the same - a homogeneous evenly wetted pile. Horse manure needs less time for pre-wetting due to the nature of the bedding straw. This straw has been trampled upon, opening the straw fiber and damaging the waxy film. The urine and droppings have also begun to soften it. This is not the case with a synthetic compost in which the baled straw is still fresh and tough. To stimulate microbial action in synthetics, some supplements are added at pre-wetting. Suitable supplements include any from group 1, 4, 5 or chicken manure. The length of time needed for pre-wetting varies according to the condition of the starting materials. Generally 3 days for horse manure and 5-12 days for a synthetic compost is sufficient. The pre-wetting time for a synthetic compost can be shortened if the straw is mechanically chopped, but care should be taken that the fibers do not become too short. The wetted materials are then piled in a large rounded heap called a windrow. During this period the windrow can be turned and re-wetted as needed, usually 1-3 times. Building the Pile Building the compost pile is called stacking, ricking or "make-up". At this time the pre-wetted starting materials and the nitrogenous supplements are evenly mixed, watered and assembled into a pile. The size, shape and specific physical properties of this pile are very important for optimum composting. These are: 1. Pile dimensions should be 5-6 feet wide by 4-6 feet high. The shape should be rectangular or square. 2. The side of the pile should be vertical and compressed from the outside by 3-6 inches. The internal section should be less dense than the outer section. 3. The pile is such that any further increase in size would result in an anaerobic core. Throughout the composting process, the size of the pile varies depending on the physical condition of the straw, which provides the pile's basic structure. The structure of the compost refers to the physical interaction of raw materials, especially the straw fibers. As the straw degrades and the fibers flatten out, the structure soma rights re-served 72 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb becomes more dense and the airflow is restricted. The pile becomes more compact and its size is reduced accordingly. Initially the fresh straw allows for generous air penetration which convects away heat and slows microbial action. To counteract this heat loss, the pile should be of maximum size and optimum moisture content at make-up. Figure 85 illustrates air penetration of a compost pile. Air enters the pile from the sides. As the oxygen is used by microorganisms, heat is set free and the air temperature rises. The warm air current created rises to the top of the pile. This is called the chimney effect. The factors that affect the rate of internal air flow are pile size and structure, moisture content and the differential between ambient air and internal pile temperatures. Figure 84 - Ricking the compost pile. soma rights re-served 73 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 85 - Chimney effect in a compost pile. Turning A well built compost pile runs out of oxygen in 48 to 96 hours and then enters an anaerobic state. To prevent this, the pile should be disassembled and then reassembled. The purposes of this turning procedure are: 1. To aerate the pile, preventing anaerobic composting. 2. To add water lost through evaporation. 3. To mix in supplements as required. 4. To fully mix the compost, preventing uneven decomposition. As a consequence of microbial decomposition, the compost pile begins to shrink and becomes more compact. Coupled with loose water gravitating downward and water generated by microbes in the inner active areas, this compaction closes the air spaces and stifles aerobic action, particularly in the core at the bottom center. Through the use of a long stemmed thermometer reaching to the center of the pile, the time of oxygen depletion can be monitored by watching temperature. When the temperature begins to drop, indicating a slowing of microbial action, it is time to turn the compost. soma rights re-served 74 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 86 - Turning the compost pile using wire mesh pile formers. In the early stages the temperature stratification in the pile is quite pronounced. Outer areas are cool and dry from the air flowing inward and the accompanying evaporation. These outer areas are watered during turning and moved to the center of the newly built pile and the center areas are relocated to the outside. Being aware of the varied rate of decomposition in a stratified pile and compensating during turning maintains the important homogeneous character of the pile. Supplements deleted at make-up should be added during the turning cycle. Gypsum is normally added at the second turn. Adding gypsum any earlier is believed to depress ammonia production. Until some decomposition has occurred, the beneficial action of gypsum will not be realized. As with other supplements, gypsum is mixed in as evenly as possible. Temperature Environmental conditions in the compost are specifically designed to facilitate growth of beneficial aerobic microorganisms. Given the proper balance of raw materials, air and water, a continuous succession of microbial populations produces temperatures up to 180°F. These microbes can be divided into two groups according to their temperature requirements. Mesophiles are active under 90°F. and thermophiles are active from 90-160°F. The action of these microbial groups during the composting process is summarized in the following paragraphs. During pre-composting mesophilic bacteria and fungi, utilizing available carbohydrates, attack the nitrogenous compounds thereby releasing ammonia. This ammonia is then utilized by successive microbial populations and the temperature rises. soma rights re-served 75 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 87 - Standard temperature zonation in a compost pile. After make-up, the mesophiles remain in the cool outer zones while the thermophilic fungi, actinomycetes and bacteria dominate the inside of the pile. The actinomycetes are clearly visible as whitish flecks forming a distinct ring around the hot center. Bacteria dominate this center area and continue to decompose the nitrogenous supplements, liberating more ammonia. At this point the carbohydrates in the straw are ready for microbial use. At temperatures over 150°F., microbial action slows and chemical processes begin. Between 150-165°F. microbial and chemical actions occur simultaneously. From 165-180°F. decomposition is mainly due to the chemical reactions of humification and caramellization, the latter taking place under conditions of high temperature, high pH (8.5) and in the presence of ammonia and oxygen. Many of the dark compounds produced during composting are believed to result from these chemical reactions. Decomposition proceeds rapidly at these high temperatures, and if they can be maintained throughout the process, composting time will be greatly reduced. Figure 87 shows the temperature zonation commonly found in a compost pile. Studies by Dr. E.B. Lambert in the 1930's showed that compost taken from zone 2 produced the highest yielding crops. Based on this research, growers always subject their compost to zone 2 conditions prior to spawning. This normally occurs during Phase II in specially designed rooms. However, if a Phase II room can not be built, zone 2 conditions can be achieved by an alternate method known as Long Composting, developed by C. Riber Rasmussen of Denmark. Long Composting Long composting is designed to carry out the complete composting process outdoors (excluding pasteurization). The method is characterized by the avoidance of high temperature chemical decomposition and a reliance on purely microbial action. Specifically this procedure is designed to promote the growth of actinomycetes and rid the compost of all ammonia by the time of filling. The temperature zonation desired in this method is illustrated in Figure 88. An outline of the Long Composting procedure follows. DAY LONG COMPOSTING PROCEDURE -10 For synthetic composts: Break the straw bales and water them thoroughly. Mix in group 1, 4 or 5 supplements or chicken manure. Windrow. Start at day -5 if straw is short or has been chopped. -5 For synthetic composts: Turn and add more water. Break up any concentrations of supplements. Windrow. soma rights re-served 76 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb -2 For horse manure or synthetic composts: Thoroughly wet and mix all raw materials and supplements (except gypsum). Windrow. 0 Make up the pile. Dimensions should be 6 feet wide and 4 feet high. The vertical sides should be tightly compressed with the middle of the pile remaining loose. Use the pile formers to make the stack and stomp the sides from the top to achieve ample compression. Water dry areas. 6 First turn: Water as needed. Move the center anaerobic zone to the outside of the new pile and the outside zone to the center. Keep the pile height and length constant by reducing the width as decomposition proceeds. 10-12 Second turn: Add the gypsum and water as needed. Distribute the zone of actinomycetes evenly throughout. 13-15 Third turn: The actinomycete zone should be evident throughout. Strong actinomycete growth may cause excessive drying, so be sure to check moisture content and water as needed. The smell of ammonia should be slight. Build the new pile only 24 inches high and 4-5 feet wide. Distribute the actinomycetes evenly throughout. 15-17 Fourth turn: The compost should now appear dark brown and well flecked with actinomycetes. All traces of ammonia should be gone. Moisture content should be approximately 67-70% and the pH 7.0-7.5. If this is not the case, continue the process turning at 2 day intervals until this condition is reached. The pile height may vary between 16-24 inches and is designed solely to promote optimum conditions for the growth of the actinomycetes - temperatures of 120-135°F. Once finished, this compost is normally pasteurized at 135°F. for four hours. If pasteurization is impossible, discard the cool outer shell and utilize the areas showing strong actinomycete activity. Although these areas will not be free from all pests and competitors, they should provide a reasonably productive substrate. The aspect and characteristics of a properly prepared Long Compost should conform to the guidelines for compost after Phase II. (See Aspect of the Finished Compost on page 105 and Color Plate 8.) Short Composting Commercial Agaricus growers uniformly base their composting procedures on the methodology developed by Dr. James Sinden, who called his technique "Short Composting" in reference to the short period of time involved. Dr. Sinden's process is centered around the fast acting chemical reactions occurring in zone 3. Besides the shorter preparation time, this process also results in a greater preservation of dry matter, thus retaining valuable nutrients. Figure 89 illustrates the zonation during short composting. Without commercial composting equipment, approximating the temperature conditions of Short Composting is very difficult. However, it does provide a model for optimum composting and can be approached by adhering to the basic principles discussed in this chapter. The Short Composting procedure is outlined below. Short Compost Procedure DAY SHORT COMPOSTING PROCEDURE: Formula 1 -1 For horse manure: Wet the starting materials thoroughly. Windrow. 0 Make up the pile. Add all supplements except gypsum. Mix and water thoroughly. Pile should be 6 feet wide by 5-6 feet high. The sides should be vertical and compressed tightly. 2,3 First turn: Add gypsum and water as needed. Keep the pile height constant and vary the width only in relation to the amount of anaerobic material. 5 Second turn: Add water as needed. 7 Third turn: Add water as needed. Compost should be ready to fill. The procedures for making a synthetic compost by the short composting method are outlined below, with minor modifications for the home cultivator. Note the longer period of pre-composting to condition the straw. Synthetic Compost Procedure DAY SYNTHETIC COMPOSTING PROCEDURE: Formula 2 -10 Break straw bales and wet thoroughly. Windrow or spread out in a low flat pile, 2-3 feet high. Water daily. -7 Mix the chicken manure together with the straw, wetting both well. Avoid water run-off. Windrow. soma rights re-served 77 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb -3 Re-mix the windrow, adding water as necessary. Start here if chopped straw is used - wet the straw and chicken manure. Mix well and windrow. 0 Make up the pile. Dimensions should be 6 feet wide by 5 feet high. Add as much water as possible without run-off. Use pile formers to insure vertical sides and stomp down the sides from the top to achieve adequate compression. The pile should be tight and compact. 4 First turn: Add the gypsum. Water as needed. Keep the pile dimensions constant, varying the width as indicated by the amount of anaerobic material in the center. Maintain pile compaction. 7 Second turn: Water as needed and redistribute outer and inner areas. Redistribution should occur during each turn to keep the material in an even state of decomposition. 10 Third turn: Mix well and add water as needed. Reduce width to 5 feet. Fill if ready. 13 Fill if ready, or continue composting, turning at two day intervals. Figure 88 - Temperature zonation during Long Composting. Figure 89 - Temperature zonation during Short Composting. Composting Tools Since commercial growers work with many tons of compost, a bucket loader is essential. They also use a specially designed machine for turning the piles. This compost turner can travel through a 200 foot pile in a little over one hour, mixing in supplements and adding water. Small scale cultivators can make compost without these machines. The following is a list of tools and facilities that are basic to compost preparation. 1. A cement floor. Not absolutely necessary but highly desirable, a cement floor is easy to work on, prevents migration of water to the earth and prevents soil and unwanted soil organisms from contaminating the pile. Water leaching from the pile, a good indicator of compost moistures, is quite evident on a cement floor. If a cement floor is not available, a sheet of heavy plastic can be used. 2. Bobcat or small tractor loader with ¾-1 yard bucket with fork. If producing large amounts of compost, one of these machines saves time and labor. Not only do they make pre-wetting, supplementing and pile building easier, they can be used to turn the pile. 3. Pile formers. These are constructed from 2 x 4's and plywood or planks to the dimensions desired for the compost pile. One for each side is necessary. Standard size would be 4-5 feet high by 8 feet long. An alternative to pile formers is a three sided bin. 4. Long handled pitchfork with 4 or 5 prongs. The basic tool in a compost yard, all compost piles were turned with pitchforks before the advent of compost turners and bucket loaders. 5. Flat bladed shovel. Used for handling supplements. 6. Hose with spray nozzle, or sprinkler. 7. Thermometers. Although pile temperatures can be guaged by touch, a long stemmed thermometer gives accurate readings. soma rights re-served 78 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 90 - Commercial compost turning machine. Figure 91 - Pile Formers in use. Characteristics of the Compost at Filling The composting materials undergo very distinct changes during Phase I. A judgment as to the suitability of the compost for filling is based on color, texture and odor. Gradual darkening of the straw and the pronounced scent of ammonia are the most obvious features. These and other characteristics provide important guidelines for judging the right time for filling the compost. (Note: these guidelines do not apply for a compost prepared by the Long Composting methods.) The compost is ready for filling if: 1. Compost is uniformly deep brown. 2. Straw is still long and fibrous, but can be sheared with some resistance. 3. When the compost is firmly squeezed, liquid appears between the fingers. 4. Compost has a strong smell of ammonia, pH of 8.0-8.5. 5. Compost is lightly flecked with whitish colonies of actinomycetes. 6. Kjeldahl nitrogen is 1.5% for horse manure and 1.7% for synthetic composts. soma rights re-served 79 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 92, 93 - Compost at filling can be sheared with moderate resistance. Figure 94 - Compost at filling should release some moisture when firmly squeezed. Supplementation at Filling The key to a successful Phase II, whether in trays, shelves or a bulk room, lies in the heat generating capabilities of the completed Phase I compost. To this end the compost should be biologically "active," a term that describes a compost with sufficient food reserves to sustain a high level of microbial activity. Whereas the Sinden Short Compost is a model of a vitally active compost, the Rasmussen Long Compost is considered biologically "dead" because these food reserves have been deliberately exhausted during Phase I. In this same soma rights re-served 80 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb sense, a compost having completed the Phase II is also considered a dead compost. A method that insures a high level of microbial activity during the Phase II is supplementation with highly soluble carbohydrates during Phase I or with vegetable oils (fats) at filling. The purpose of these supplements is to provide readily available nutrients which stimulate the growth of the microbial populations. The effect of carbohydrates or oil supplementation on the Phase II is: 1. Accelerated thermogenesis - The nutrients provided by the supplements act as a "supercharger" for the microbial populations. Consequently their increased activity generates more heat. Specifically, supplementation with vegetable oil (cottonseed oil) increased populations of actinomycetes and thermophilic fungi (Schisler and Patton, 1970) while soluble carbohydrates (molasses) enhanced bacterial populations (Hayes and Randle, 1968). 2. Better compost ventilation - Heightened thermogenesis within the compost requires lower air temperatures within the Phase II room. The greater the compost to air temperature differential, the better the air movement through the compost. In this respect a dead compost requires a high room temperature and is difficult to condition because of its low microbial activity. 3. Rapid reduction of free ammonia - The increased ventilation and microbial activity give rise to a rapid fixation of ammonia. As a result, the Phase II period is reduced by as much as three days. The advantage of this reduced time period is that dry matter and hence nutrients for mushroom growth are conserved. 4. Reduced spawn running period - Oil supplemented composts show increased mycelial activity and therefore higher temperatures during the spawn running period. As a result the colonization period is shortened by three to five days. 5. Increased yields - Yield increases of 0.4-0.5 lbs/ft2 are common for Agaricus growers using vegetable oil at filling. Similar increases are reported for molasses. Compost supplementation with soluble carbohydrates is an effective way to prepare an active compost. These materials are listed earlier in the chapter as Group IV supplements. They are added to a synthetic compost during pre-composting (50%) and at third turn (50%) and to a horse manure compost at make-up and at third turn. Molasses is added at make-up at a rate of 10 ml per pound of compost wet weight and is diluted 1:2 with water for easy application. Vegetable oil is sprayed onto the compost the day of fill at a rate of 10 ml per pound of compost wet weight. Even application is important to avoid creating hot spots. Compost supplementation with soluble carbohydrates or vegetable oils is highly recommended, especially for those planning a Phase II without steam or with only limited supplemental heating. Hence, this type of supplementation is particularly appropriate for the home cultivator. Phase II Composting While Phase I is a combination of biological and chemical processes, Phase II is purely biological. In fact, Phase II can be considered a process of microbial husbandry. By bringing the compost indoors into specially designed rooms, the environmental factors of temperature, humidity and fresh air can be controlled to such a degree that conditions for growth of select microbial groups can be maximized. These thermophilic and thermotolerant groups and their temperature ranges are: Bacteria: 100-170°F. Different species of bacteria are active throughout this range so an optimum can not be given. At temperatures above 130°F. bacteria dominate and are responsible for the ammonification that occurs at these temperatures. The most common bacteria found by researchers are Pseudomonas species. Actinomycetes: 115-140°F. with an optimum temperature range of 125-132°F. The most common species are found in the genera Streptomyces and Thermomonospora. Work done by Stanek (1971) has shown that actinomycetes and bacteria are mutually stimulatory, resulting in greater efficiency when working together. Fungi: 110-130°F. with an optimum temperature of 118-122°F. Common genera are Humicola and Torula. Recent research indicates that these fungi are the most efficient de-ammonifiers, which has led to a more general use of their temperature range for Phase II conditioning. The basic function of these microorganisms is to utilize and thereby exhaust the readily available soma rights re-served 81 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb carbohydrates and the free ammonia. Ammonia in particular must be completely removed because of its inhibitory effect on the growth of mushroom mycelium. The result of this microbial action is a build-up of cell substance or "biomass" which contains vitamins, fats and proteins. What the mushroom mycelium uses for a large portion of its nutrition then, is the concentrated bodies forming the microbial biomass. This biomass constitutes part of the brown layer coating the partially decomposed straw fibers. Figure 95 - Temperature vs. ammonia utilization by microbial populations. (After Ross, 1978) Many growers consider Phase II to be the most important stage in the growing cycle and rightly so. An improperly prepared substrate yields few if any mushrooms. It is critical, therefore, that the environmental conditions required during Phase II be carefully maintained. Phase II can be separated into two distinct parts, each serving a specific function. These are: 1. PASTEURIZATION: The air and compost temperature are held at 135-140°F. for 2-6 hours. The purpose of pasteurization is to kill or neutralize all harmful organisms in the compost, compost container and the room. These are mainly nematodes, eggs and larvae of flies, mites, harmful fungi and their spores. The length of time needed generally depends on the depth of fill. Deeper compost layers require more time than shallow ones. In general, two hours at 140°F. is sufficient. Compost temperatures above 140°F. must be avoided because they inactivate fungi and actinomycetes while at the same time stimulating the ammonifying bacteria. If temperatures do go above 140°F., be sure there is a generous supply of fresh air. 2. CONDITIONING: The compost temperature is held at 118-130°F. Once the pasteurization is completed, the compost temperature should be lowered gradually over 24 hours to the temperature zone favored by actinomycetes and fungi. The exact temperature varies according to the depth of fill. At depths up to 8 inches, 122°F. as measured in the center of the compost is most frequently used. At depths over 8 inches, temperature stratification becomes more pronounced, making a higher core temperature of 128°F. advantageous. A common procedure is to bring the compost temperature down in steps, dropping the core temperature 2° per day, from 130° to 122°F. This temperature is then held until all traces of ammonia are gone. Basic Air Requirements Phase II is purely a process of aerobic fermentation and as such a constant supply of fresh air is essential. To insure this supply, a minimum fresh air setting is established on the air intake damper. A standard minimum setting is 8-10% of the intake opening. The oxygen level can be checked in a practical manner by lighting a match in the Phase II room. If a flame can be maintained, the oxygen level is sufficient. Lack of oxygen stimulates the growth of Chaetomium, the Olive Green Mold, which will spoil the compost. (See Chapter XIII). Compost temperatures follow the air temperature of the room. Fresh air not only supplies oxygen, but is also used to keep the compost within the correct temperature zone. To drop the compost temperature, more fresh soma rights re-served 82 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb air is introduced and vice versa. Oversupply of fresh air is only a problem if it leads to rapid cooling of the compost. In this regard, changes in the fresh air setting should be slow and deliberate. Only when the compost threatens to overheat should maximum fresh air be introduced. This is particularly common directly after pasteurization. Peak microbial activity normally occurs 24-48 hours after pasteurization. As Phase II progresses and the food supply diminishes, this activity begins to slow. Compost temperatures should begin to drop on their own. As they drop, the fresh air supply should be decreased, thus slowly raising the air temperature as the compost reaches the required temperature zones. If the fresh air minimum is reached and the compost temperatures are still dropping, a supplemental heat source must be installed. Phase II Room Design The Phase II room can be a special room set aside solely for this purpose (the norm on tray farms) or it can be in the same room where cropping occurs. Design features are critical for its success and should be strictly adhered to. These features are: 1. Adequate insulation: Insulate to a R value of 19 for walls and a minimum of 30 for the ceiling. A vapor barrier is needed to protect the insulation. (A layer of polyethylene is cheap and effective.) 2. The room must be functionally airtight. The door should form a tight seal. Any cracks or openings allow the passage of flies. 3. The ventilation system uses a backward-curved centrifugal fan driven by pulleys and belts, and whose speed can be varied. The fan should be capable of moving air at 1 cubic foot per minute (CFM) per square foot of compost surface area. A perforated polythene duct runs the length of the room and directs the air either straight down the center aisle or across the ceiling to the side walls. High velocity airflow is necessary to maintain even temperatures throughout as well as to keep the room under positive pressure. 4. A fresh air vent is located before the fan. This damper also regulates recirculated air. (See Fig. 73). 5. Filters are placed before the fresh air inlet. These filters are important as protection against flies, dust and spores. High efficiency spore filters are commonly used for the incoming fresh air. A pre-filter placed upstream of the main filter will increase its life. Recirculated air should never be filtered during Phase II because of its high moisture content. 6. At the opposite end of the room from the fresh air vent are exhaust louvers operating on air pressure. This exhaust air outlet must be screened from the inside. 7. If steam is used for boosting temperature, pipes can be run the length of the floor along the side walls discharging outwards. Steam can also be discharged directly into the air duct after the fan. High output electric space heaters can also be used. Filling Procedures Depending on the growing system chosen, the compost is loaded into trays, shelves or a bulk room. Certain basic principles should be adhered to when filling. These are: 1. Fill the room as quickly as possible to minimize heat loss from the compost. 2. Compress a long strawy compost and fill loosely a short dense compost. 3. If the compost appears dry, water lightly and evenly during filling. If water streams out when a handful is squeezed, don't fill. Add again as much gypsum, turn and wait a few days. 4. Fill all shelves and trays evenly and to the same depth. Avoid creating pockets of compact compost. Keep all compost within the container. No compost should hang over the sides. 5. Once finished, the floor should be cleaned of all loose compost, then washed with water. soma rights re-served 83 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 96 - Small Phase II room designed for trays or bulk fill. Figure 97 - Phase II temperature profile for trays or shelves. soma rights re-served 84 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Depth of Fill Up to a point there exists a direct relationship between the amount of compost filled per square foot and yield. In a fixed shelf system, the amount of compost filled is usually the amount available for cropping. This normally holds true for trays, although some systems empty the trays at spawning and then refill 25% fewer trays than the number that was originally filled. This results in high dry weight efficiencies without the complications of deep compost layers during Phase II. As a general rule, a fill depth of 8 inches will provide sufficient nutrients as well as contribute to the ease of Phase II. At depths over 8 inches temperature stratification will lead to varying conditions within the compost, complicating the Phase II program. At depths under 5 inches there is insufficient mass for proper heat generation and large quantities of steam may be needed. An important consideration is the ratio of cubic feet of compost filled to cubic feet of air space in the room. This ratio largely determines whether a supplementary heating source is necessary. Clearly, greater volumes of compost require less additional heating. To maximize compost heat generation, some tray systems stack trays no more than 3-4 inches apart during Phase II. These trays are later distributed to two cropping rooms with a spacer inserted between the trays to facilitate picking. Phase II Procedures: Trays or Shelves Day Phase II Procedure: Trays or Shelves 0 The house is filled and cleaned. Thermometers are placed in the center of at least four containers, and one in the middle of the room for reading air temperature. Shut the door, turn on the fan and close the fresh air vent. Air and compost temperatures should rise from microbial activity. If not, additional heat should be supplied. Once the compost reaches 120°F., the fresh air vent should be opened and regulated to maintain compost temperatures in the 125-130°F. range. From this point on, the fresh air vent should never be less than the minimum setting of 10%. 1-2 A temperature chart should be kept, noting air and compost as well as fresh air and steam settings. Temperatures should be read every 4-6 hours. Compost temperatures should be in the 125-130°F. range for the first 48 hours after fill. After this period, pasteurization should commence. The air temperature is boosted to 140°F. and held long enough to subject the compost to 140°F. for 2 hours. If 140° can not be reached, a compost and air temperature of 135° for four hours is sufficient. The temperatures should be monitored closely to be sure pasteurization is complete. A long stemmed thermometer can be pushed through a drilled opening in the door, or a remote reading thermocouple can be used. After pasteurization, full fresh air is introduced to stop rising compost temperatures. Once the compost temperature begins to drop, adjust the fresh air setting to stop the compost in the temperature zone required, 128-130°F. 2-10 Starting at 128°F., use fresh air to lower the compost temperature gradually, 2° per day, until 122° is reached. Hold the compost at that temperature until it is free of ammonia. Throughout this conditioning process, a compost to air differential of 10-30°F. is normal. This differential is important for the passage of air through the compost. Little or no differential is undesirable and indicates over-composting or undersupplementation. During the conditioning period definite changes in the compost become apparent. The compost becomes well flecked with whitish actinomycetes, and on the surface whitish grey aerial mycelia of Humicola species appear. Both are indicators of proper microbial conversion. 2-10 Once the compost is free of ammonia, full fresh air is introduced, dropping the compost temperature rapidly to spawning temperatures in the 76-80°F. range. Phase II in Bulk For many people, equipping a standard Phase II room for trays or shelves may be inappropriate, especially if steam is used. The recent development of the bulk system now gives the home grower the ability to perform the Phase II without steam. This system utilizes compost heat more efficiently by loading the compost in mass, five feet deep, into a small well insulated room with a slatted floor. Instead of air diffusing through the compost by convection, air is blown under the floor and forced up through the compost. The wide compost to air temperature differential so essential to conventional Phase II processes is eliminated; compost and air temperatures are now no more than 5°F. apart. This narrow differential is in part related to a reduced compost-to-air volume ratio, which in a bulk room is 1:1 or 1:¾. This reduction of air space, coupled with the airtight, well insulated room, results in full utilization of compost heat generation. A large measure of control soma rights re-served 85 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb over compost temperatures becomes possible and optimum temperatures within the mass can be tightly regulated. Bulk Room Design Features The size of the bulk room varies according to individual needs, but should be large enough that there is sufficient compost mass to supply heat. 1. At a fill depth of 4-5 feet, one ton of compost requires approximately 8-10 sq. ft. of floor space. 2. Bulk rooms are well insulated. The walls and door are R-19; the ceiling is R-30 minimum. A vapor barrier should protect all insulation. 3. The room has a double floor. The bottom floor is concrete, insulated to R-19 with styrofoam or other water impervious material, and covered with tar or temperature resistant plastic as a vapor barrier. The compost floor is 12-18 inches above the bottom floor, and is made of 4 x 4's with spacers in between to leave 20% air space. This floor is removable to permit periodic cleaning. 4. The interior walls and ceiling are made of exterior grade plywood, treated with a wood preservative or marine epoxy. Allow 1/4 inch for expansion. Caulk or seal with fiberglass tape. 5. The room must be airtight. Caulk all cracks and corners. 6. The access door runs the width of the room for easy loading and unloading. An airtight seal is essential. 7. A wood plank wall is inserted before the access door to prevent the compost from pressing against it. The plank wall is held in place by runners on either wall. 8. The ventilation system is powered by a centrifugal, high pressure belt driven blower, with a capacity of 90-120 CFM per ton of compost at a static pressure of up to 4 inches of water gauge. The recirculation duct comes out on the top of the back wall and down to the fan. The supply duct goes from the fan to the air chamber under the compost floor. All ductwork should be insulated. 9. The fresh air inlet and damper are located before the fan. This damper also regulates the recirculated air. The fresh air should be filtered. 10. The exhaust outlet is located on the access door. This is a free swinging damper that operates on room pressure. This outlet is covered by a coarse filter. 11. Standard inside dimensions are 6-12 feet wide by 8-10 feet high. 12. For better temperature control the bulk room should be built inside a larger building, like a garage, where temperature differences are less extreme. The introduction of cold fresh air hampers the process by neutralizing the compost heat. A simple variation of this bulk room is a well insulated bin. The bin is constructed using the principles just outlined. Rather than a mechanical air system, fresh air is admitted through adjustable vents at floor level and exits through similar vents in the ceiling. Because air passage is by convection, the compost should be filled loosely and to a depth of no greater than four feet. Figure 98 - Bulk pasteurization room. Ventilation system on end wall. (Design - Vedder) soma rights re-served 86 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 99 - Bulk pasteurization room. Ventilation system on side wall. (Design - Claron) Bulk Room Filling Procedures 1. Fill as quickly as possible to minimize heat loss. 2. Compost should have good structure and optimum moisture content. Do not fill a dense, overwet compost. 3. Fill evenly. Compost density is important. Avoid localized compaction as well as gaps. Gaps or holes in the compost become air channels to the detriment of the surrounding material. Be sure the compost presses firmly and evenly against all sides of the room. 4. Before filling the last three feet, put the inside board wall in place. Now fill the remaining area. The compost should press firmly against the board wall. Bulk Room Phase II Procedures Day Bulk Room Phase II Procedures 0 Filling. Compost is brought into the room. If remote reading temperature sensors are used, place 2-4 sensors in different locations within the compost, and one in the air above. If remote sensors are not used, place one thermometer in the return air duct and one downstream from the fan in the supply duct. The compost temperature should be within the readings of these two air thermometers. Turn the fan on, close the fresh air damper and re-circulate until 120°F. is reached. This should take 8-24 hours. Then open the fresh air damper to the minimum setting, 8-10%. 1-2 Pasteurization: Allow the temperature to rise to 132-135°F. Adjust the fresh air damper to hold this temperature for at least six hours and a maximum of ten hours. Once completed, introduce sufficient fresh air to bring the temperature down to 122°F. This should take approximately 12 hours. Be sure to anticipate temperature trends and adjust the fresh air accordingly. 2-10 Conditioning: By adjusting the amount of fresh air, the compost is held in the 118-122°F. range until all ammonia is gone. Fresh air should gradually be reduced as thermogenesis subsides. The temperature in the return air duct should always be higher than in the supply duct. 4-10 Cool-down: Once the ammonia content of the air is below 10 parts per million (ppm) full fresh air is given to reduce the compost temperature to 80°F. The cool-down should proceed as rapidly as possible. Testing for Ammonia The basic ammonia detection test has always been the sense of smell. The odor of ammonia must be completely gone from the compost before it can be spawned. Odors are always good indicators of compost suitability. However, to be absolutely certain, other methods are also used. soma rights re-served 87 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb 1. Cresyl Orange and filter paper: Pre-cut strips of white filter paper are saturated with a few drops of cresyl orange liquid which turns the white paper yellow. Expose the paper to the inside of the Phase II room or to the exhaust air of the bulk room. The paper can also be placed into small holes dug into the compost. The presence of ammonia turns the paper varying shades of red. Purple indicates the highest concentration, while pink indicates a lower one. When the yellow paper remains unchanged in color, free ammonia is absent. 2. Air samplers using gas detection tubes: These tubes are filled with chemicals that change color as air samples are drawn into them. The tubes are calibrated in parts per million (ppm) and give accurate readings down to 1 ppm. The air samplers are manufactured by Mine Safety Co. and the Draeger Corp. Individual tubes cost from $2.00-$4.00 in lots of ten. (See sources in Appendix). Aspect of the Finished Compost The following guidelines can be used to determine whether a compost is ready for spawning. (See Color Photographs 5-8). Figure 100 - Bulk room Phase II temperature profile. (Dutch procedure) 1. The raw pungent odor is gone; the odor is now light and pleasant, even slightly sweet. 2. The ammonia odor is completely gone. The cresyl orange test shows no reaction. Detector tubes read 10 ppm or less. 3. The pH is below 7.8, preferably 7.5. 4. Straws appear dull and uniformly chocolate brown, speckled with whitish actinomycetes. 5. The compost is soft and pliable and can be sheared easily. 6. When squeezed the compost holds its form. No water appears and the hand remains relatively clean. 7. Moisture content is 64-66% for horse manure and 67-68% for synthetics. 8. Nitrogen content is 2.0-2.3%; the C:N ratio is 17:1. soma rights re-served 88 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Alternative Composts and Composting Procedures Sugar Cane Bagasse Compost Sugar cane bagasse is the cellulosic by-product of sugar cane after most of the sugars have been removed. It is generally a short fibrous material with a high moisture holding capacity. Total nitrogen amounts to 0.18%. In 1960, Dr. Kneebone of Pennsylvania State University reported growing Psilocybe aztecorum on a bagasse based compost. He later reported in more detail on experiments using bagasse compost for growing Agaricus brunnescens. Bagasse used as stable bedding produced yields comparable to the horse manure based control. Bagasse supplemented with a commercial activator ("Acto 88") yielded poorly. Dr. Kneebone's composts were prepared using the standard techniques elucidated in this chapter with a turn schedule on days 0-2-5-7-9. The supplemented bagasse was composted 3 days longer and all bagasse based composts had moisture contents ranging from 75-83%. Significantly, the bagasse compost with the lowest moisture content had the highest yield. All bagasse composts had larger mushrooms than the control. This work by Kneebone demonstrates the value of bagasse as a mushroom growing substrate. Using the compost formula format, composts can be devised to meet the needs of the two species named and many others. A good supplement would be horse droppings on wood shavings. If the bagasse compost becomes too short or wet, the gypsum can be increased from 5% to 8% of the dry weight. The Five Day Express Composting Method During the past 20 years compost research has been directed towards shortening the overall preparation period. The goal is to reduce handling and further conserve the nutrient base (dry matter). But so far, no one has been able to consistently produce a high yielding compost by rapid preparation methods. However, a recent article by Kaj Bech (1978) of the Mushroom Research Lab in Denmark reports the most promising method to date. According to Bech, total dry matter loss is held to 20-25% with a composting time of 8-10 days (5 day Phase I and 3-5 day Phase II). His method and materials follow: Day Procedure -2 Take one ton wheat straw based horse manure (moisture content 50%, nitrogen content of 1.0-1.1). Homogenize well and make up the pile using standard dimensions. 0 1st turn: Add ammonia sulfate, (NH4)2SO4, 11.25 kg. Wet thoroughly with approximately 450 liters of water. 2 2nd turn: add calcium carbonate (CaCO3) 33.75 kg. Add approximately 180 liters of water. 3 Mix well and fill trays, shelves or tunnel for standard Phase II. soma rights re-served 89 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb VI. NON-COMPOSTED SUBSTRATES Figure 101 - Psilocybe cyanescens fruiting outdoors in a bed of fresh alder chips. The use of non-composted and semi-composted materials as mushroom growing substrates is common among commercial growers of Pleurotus, Voivarielia, Flammulina and Stropharia. Because of the simplicity and ease by which they are produced, these substrates are ideal for the home cultivator. The advantages of these substrates are the rapid preparation times and the easily standardized mixtures formulated from readily available raw materials. These substrates can be treated by sterilization, pasteurization or used untreated in their natural state. Natural Culture For most people mushroom cultivation implies an indoor process employing sterile culture techniques and a controlled growing environment. Although this has been the natural progression of events for commercial cultivators and is the only way to consistently grow year round crops, it need not be the sole method available to the home cultivator. For hundreds of years home growers have made up outdoor beds and have enjoyed soma rights re-served 90 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb harvesting seasonal crops of mushrooms. In fact, most mushrooms now being grown commercially were originally grown using natural culture techniques. By observing wild mushrooms fruiting in their natural habitats, one can begin to understand their growth requirements. To fully illustrate how this methodology works, the development of natural culture for Psilocybe cyanescens will be used as an example. Psilocybe cyanescens grows along fence lines and hedge rows, in tall rank grass, in berry thickets, in well mulched rhododendron beds, in piles of wood chips and shavings and in ecologically disturbed areas. In many instances, the mushrooms are found growing in soil, but upon close examination of the underlying mycelial network, it is apparent that they are feeding on wood or other similar cellulosic material. Due to the thick strandy mycelium of Psilocybe cyanescens, it is relatively easy to locate and gather colonized pieces of substrate. These pieces are considered virgin spawn and are used to inoculate similar materials. Freshly cut chips of alder, maple and fir all support healthy mycelial growth. Because alder is high in sugar content, without resins and abundant in northwestern North America, it has been selected as the primary substrate material. Figure 102 - Virgin spawn: Psilocybe cyanescens mycelium on a wood chip. Even though such a virgin spawn is not absolutely clean, Psilocybe cyanescens mycelium colonizes fresh substrate pieces so rapidly that there is little risk of contamination. In order to prepare inoculum for the following year, the newly inoculated chips are kept indoors in gallon jars or other protective containers. With sufficient moisture, minimal air exchange and normal indoor temperatures, the mycelium soon spreads throughout the fresh chips. For the best results a 1:5 ratio of virgin spawn to fresh chips is recommended. As one jar becomes fully permeated, it can be used to produce more spawn. In the spring freshly cut wood branches are chipped, then mixed with the fully colonized inoculum and made into a ridge bed directly on the ground. Experience has shown that irregular chips approximately 1-3 inches long give better results than finely ground material such as sawdust. Fresh chips not only provide a greater nutrient and water reservoir, but also have substantial surface area for primordia formation. Strong mycelial growth can be sustained on wood chips for a prolonged period of time. (Mycelial growth on fresh sawdust is at first rapid and rhizomorphic but soon slows and loses its vitality). The ridge beds should be made 4-6 inches deep and 2 feet wide. To insure a humid microclimate for mushroom development the bed should be made under rhododendrons or other leafy ornamentals, along a fence or hedge row, or on grass which is allowed to grow up through the bed. The bed must never be placed where it is exposed to direct sunlight but it should not be so well protected that rainfall can not reach it. soma rights re-served 91 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 103 - Chipping freshly cut alder branches. During the spring and summer the mycelium colonizes the fresh substrate which should be covered with plastic or cardboard to prevent drying. A weekly watering helps to keep the moisture content high. In the fall the bed is uncovered and given a heavy watering twice a week, but with care not to flood it. When the mushrooms begin to fruit, watering should be gauged according to environmental conditions and natural precipitation. As long as the temperature stays above freezing the mushrooms will grow continuously. If a freeze is expected, the beds can be protected with a plastic covering. Extended freezing weather ends outdoor cropping until the following year. Throughout the winter the beds can be protected by a layer of straw, cardboard or new chips topped with plastic. This is particularly important for harsh climates. Other possibilities include making the bed inside a cold frame or plastic greenhouse. Certain regions of the country like the North-west are better suited to natural culture than others. In this respect it is desirable to use a local strain adapted to local conditions. In climates unsuited to outdoor cultivation, the wood chips can be filled into trays and brought inside. Once the primary bed has been established outdoors, it can be likened to a perennial plant, which is the nature of mushroom mycelium. Indoor spawn preparation and incubation become unnecessary. With each successive year chips can be drawn from the original bed and used as inoculum. This means that the total bed area can be multiplied by five on an annual basis. (See Figure 164 of Psilocybe cyanescens fruiting indoors in tray of alder chips). Figure 104 - Oak dowels before and after colonization by shiitake (Lentinus edodes) mycelium. soma rights re-served 92 Figure 105 - Shiitake plug inserted into oak log. since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 106 - Stacked arrangement of shiitake logs in a greenhouse. Figure 107 - Shiitake culture outdoors under shade cloth. Semi-sterile and Sterile Wood Based Substrates Mushrooms that grow on wood or wood wastes are termed lignicolous due to their ability to utilize lignin, a microbial resistant substance that constitutes the heart wood of trees. The main components of wood, however, are cellulose and hemicellulose, which are also nutrients available to lignin degrading mushroom mycelium. The chart appearing below shows a typical analysis of different wood and straw types. This table not only illustrates the similarities between wood and straw, but also the important differences between coniferous and broad leaf trees. The high concentrations of resins, turpentine and tanins make conifers less suitable for mushroom growing. Conifers are used on occasion, but they are mixed one to one with hardwood sawdust. In general, the wood of broad leaf or hardwood species have proven to be the best mushroom growing substrates. Specifically these tree types are: oak; elm; chestnut; beech; maple; and alder. Resin N P-2 0-5 K2O Hemicell. Cell. Lignin Spruce (Picea excelsa) 2.30 0.08 0.02 0.10 11.30 57.84 28.29 Pine (Pinus silvestris) 3.45 0.06 0.02 0.09 11.02 54.25 26.25 Beech (Fagus silvatica) 1.78 0.13 0.02 0.21 24.86 53.46 22.46 Birch (Betula verrucosa) 1.80 - - - 27.07 45.30 19.56 Wheat Straw (Triticum sativum) 0.00 0.60 0.30 1.10 - 36.15 16.15 Type Table of the analyses of various types of wood and straw. Figures are percent of dry weight. (Adapted from H. Rempe (1953)). The most notable commercial species grown on wood is Lentinus edodes, the shiitake mushroom. Traditional methods use oak logs, 3-6 inches in diameter and three feet long, cut between fall and spring when the sap content is the highest. Special care should be taken not to injure the bark layer when cutting and handling the logs. The bark is of critical importance for fruiting and is one of the key factors considered by commercial growers when selecting tree species. The logs should be scraped clean of lichens and fungi and then drilled with four longitudinal rows of one inch deep holes spaced eight inches apart. Next, these holes are plugged with spawn and covered with wax. After 9 to 15 months of incubation the logs begin to fruit. (See the species parameter section in Chapter XI.) The use of freshly cut logs provides a semi-sterile substrate with no special treatment and is a very effective method for the home cultivator. Commercial growers of lignicolous mushrooms are turning increasingly to sawdust based substrates. Such substrates have been developed in Japan for growing Pleurotus, Flammulina and Auricularia. They are also being utilized with some modifications by commercial shiitake growers in the United States. The development of these mushroom specific substrates follows certain well defined guidelines. The basic raw material is cellulose, a major constituent of sawdust, straw, cardboard or paper wastes, wood chips, or other natural plant fibers. Any of these materials should be chopped or shredded, but never so finely as to eliminate their inherent structural qualities. This cellulosic base comprises approximately 80% of the soma rights re-served 93 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb total substrate mixture. To these basic substrate materials are added various nutrient supplements and growth stimulators in meal or flour form. By supplying proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, the supplements serve to enhance the yield capabilities of the substrate base. Protein sources include concentrates like soya meal or soya flour, wheat germ and brewer's yeast. The most suitable carbohydrate sources are starchy materials such as rice, potatoes, corn and wheat. Some supplements are well balanced and provide both carbohydrates and proteins. Examples of these are bran, oatmeal and grains of all types. The number of possible supplements is extensive and need not be limited to those listed. The supplements comprise approximately 8-25% of the total dry weight. The addition of gypsum at a rate of 5% of the dry weight can improve the structure and porosity. It should be considered an optional ingredient. Japanese growers of Flammulina velutipes, Auricularia auricula and allies, and Pleurotus ostreatus have a standard substrate formula consisting of 4 parts sawdust and 1 part bran. The sawdust can be aged up to one year, which is said to improve its moisture holding capacity. Presoaking the sawdust prior to mixing in the bran is an effective way to achieve the required 60% moisture optimum. A firm squeeze of the mixture should produce only a few drops of water between the fingers. If the mixture has too much moisture, loose water collects in the bottom of the substrate container, a condition predisposing the culture to contamination. Figure 108 - Photograph of shiitake mushrooms growing on a sawdust block. The substrate can be filled into a number of different containers. Mason jars, polypropylene jars or high density, heat-resistant polyethylene bags are commonly employed. The containers are closed and sealed with a microporous filter. They are sterilized at 15 psi for 60-90 minutes. After sterilization the containers are cooled to ambient temperature and inoculated. The inoculum can be either grain spawn or sawdust-bran spawn. During incubation substrate filled plastic bags can be molded to the desired cropping form. Common shapes are round mini-logs or rectangular blocks. Some Pleurotus growers mold the sawdust substrate into a cylindrical shape, 6-8 inches long and 4-5 inches in diameter. The fully colonized "logs" are stacked together on their sides with the ends exposed as the cropping surfaces. An alternative is to slit the bag lengthwise in four places, exposing the substrate to air while retaining the plastic as a humidity hood. If growing in jars, Flammulina and Pleurotus fruit from the exposed surface at the mouth of the jars. soma rights re-served 94 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 109 - Flammulina velutipes, the Enoke Mushroom, fruiting in mason jar containing sawdust mixture. Figure 110 - Autoclavable plastic bag and microporous filter disc, known in the Orient as the Space Bag. Growing on Pasteurized Straw In commercial mushroom production one of the most frequently used substrate materials is cereal straw. Not only does straw form the basis for mushroom composts, but it is also used uncomposted as the sole ingredient for the growth of various mushroom species. Although all types of straw are more or less suitable, most growers use wheat because of its coarse fiber and its availability. The straw should be clean, free from molds and unspoiled by any preliminary decomposition. Preparation simply involves chopping or shredding the dry straw into 1-3 inch pieces. This can be done with a wood chipper, a garden compost shredder or a power mower. The shredding increases moisture absorption by expanding the available surface area. Shredding also increases the density of the substrate mass. The chopped straw is treated by pasteurization which can be carried out with live steam or hot water. Presoaked to approximately 75% water, the straw is filled into a tunnel or steam room as described in the corn posting chapter. It is steamed for 2-4 hours at 140-150°F., then cooled to 80°F. and spawned. An alternative program calls for 12-24 hours at 122°F. after the high temperature pasteurization. This program is designed to promote beneficial microbial growth giving the straw a higher degree of selectivity for mushroom mycelium. The method best suited to the home cultivator is the hot water bath. Figure 111 illustrates a simple system utilizing a 55 gallon drum and a propane burner. The drum is half filled with water that is then heated to 160-170°F. Chopped dry straw is placed into the wire mesh basket and submerged in the hot water. (A weight is needed to keep the straw underwater.) After 30-45 minutes the straw is removed from the water and allowed to drain. It is very important to let all loose water run off. soma rights re-served 95 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 111 - Equipment needed for pasteurization of straw: 55 gallon drum; gas burner; shredder; hardware cloth basket and straw. Figure 112 - Shredding the straw. soma rights re-served Figure 113 - Filling the shredded straw into the wire basket. 96 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 114 - Checking the water temperature. Figure 115 - Draining the pasteurized straw. Once drained, the straw is spread out on a clean surface and allowed to cool to 80°F. (or less), at which point it can be spawned. The straw is evenly mixed with spawn and filled into trays, shelves or plastic bags. Some compression of the straw into the container is desirable because the cropping efficiency will be increased. The use of plastic bags is a simple and efficient way to handle straw substrates. A five gallon bag (1-2 mils thick) is well suited to most situations. Two dozen nail sized holes equally spaced around the bags provide aeration. Upon full colonization, the mycelia of species like Pleurotus ostreatus and Psilocybe cubensis actually hold the straw together, at which time the bag can be completely removed. Another alternative is to perforate or strip the bag from the top or side to allow easy cropping. Figure 116 - Inoculating grain spawn onto the cooled pasteurized straw. soma rights re-served 97 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 117 - Pasteurized straw stuffed into plastic bags which are then perforated with nail size holes. Wheat straw prepared and pasteurized in this manner can be used to grow Pleurotus ostreatus, Stropharia rugoso-annulata, Panaeolus cyanescens and Psilocybe cubensis. It is quite possible that other species can utilize this substrate or a modification of it. Studies with Pleurotus ostreatus have demonstrated yield increases with the addition of 20% grass meal prior to substrate pasteurization. Supplementation of the straw after a full spawn run is another method of boosting yields (See Chapter VII). Bono (1978) obtained a yield increase of 85% with Pleurotus flabellatus by adding cottonseed meal to the fully colonized straw. The optimum rate of addition was 132 grams per kilogram of dry straw (approximately 22 grams crude protein per kilogram straw). Bono also found that supplementation increased the protein content and intensified the flavor of the mushrooms. soma rights re-served 98 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb VII. SPAWNING AND SPAWN RUNNING IN BULK SUBSTRATES Figure 118 - Mycelium running through compost. The inoculation of compost or bulk substrates is called spawning. The colonization of these substrates by the mushroom mycelium is known as spawn running. At spawning and during spawn running there are several factors that must be considered if yields are to be maximized. These factors are: 1. Moisture content of the substrate. 2. Temperature of the substrate. 3. Dry weight of the substrate per square foot of cropping surface. 4. Duration of spawn running. Moisture Content Mushroom mycelium does not grow in a substrate that is either too dry or too wet. A dry substrate produces a fine wispy mycelial growth and poor mushroom formation because the water essential for the transport and soma rights re-served 99 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb assimilation of nutrients is lacking. On the other hand, an over-wet substrate inhibits mycelial growth and produces overly stringy mycelia. Controlled experiments with Agaricus brunnescens grown on horse manure composts have shown yield depressions when the moisture content deviates more than 2% from the optimum. Deviations greater than 5% generally result in a spawn run that does not support fruitbody production. A dry compost at spawning should be lightly watered and mixed well to guard against the formation of wet spots. For an over-wet compost the common procedure is to add gypsum until the loose water is bound. Substrate Temperature Since mushroom mycelium grows within the substrate, the substrate temperature must be monitored closely. Thermometers are placed both in the center of the substrate - the hottest region - and in the room's atmosphere. These two thermometers establish a temperature differential. If the hottest point in the substrate is 80°F. and the air is 70°F. then the temperature of the total mass must lie within this range. The optimum temperature for mycelial growth varies depending on the mushroom species. Agaricus brunnescens grows fastest at 77°F. whereas Psilocybe cubensis prefers 86°F. Temperatures higher or lower simply slow mycelial growth. The growth curve shown in Figure 119 illustrates the effect of temperature on the growth of Agaricus brunnescens mycelium. Note that growth slows at a faster rate as the temperature rises above the optimum. Therefore the object during spawn running is to keep the substrate within the temperature range that is optimal for the fastest growth of mycelium. Dry Weight of Substrate Other factors aside, the dry weight of substrate per square foot of cropping surface largely determines total yield. Commercial Agaricus growers aim for at least five pounds of dry weight of compost per square foot and sometimes compress up to eight pounds per sq. ft. into their containers. Cropping efficiencies are calculated by dividing total yield per square foot into the dry weight of one square foot of the substrate. Thus a yield of four pounds per sq. ft. of freshly picked mushrooms divided by five pounds dry weight of substrate equals an 80% cropping efficiency. Efficiencies of 80-100% are considered to be close to the maximum yield potential of Agaricus brunnescens. The actual amount of substrate that can be compacted into one square foot of growing area and managed depends upon the cooling capabilities of the control system as well as the outside temperature. Experiments using tracer elements in mushroom beds three feet deep have shown that nutrients from the farthest point are transported to the growing mushrooms. Yields per sq. ft. increased although at a lower substrate efficiency. During spawn running the metabolism of the growing mycelium generates tremendous quantities of heat. Substrate temperatures normally reach a peak on the 7th-9th days after spawning and can easily reach 90°F. At this temperature thermophilic microorganisms become active, thereby increasing the possibilities of further heat generation. The substrate can easily soar above 100°F. and a compost can actually rise again to conditioning temperatures. Temperatures between 95-110°F. can kill the mycelium of many mushrooms. Even if the mycelium is not completely killed, these temperatures do irreversible harm to mycelial vitality and fruiting potential. These elevated temperatures also stimulate the activity of competitor molds and may render the substrate unsuitable for further mushroom growth. Because of the enhanced heat generating capabilities of deeply filled beds, Agaricus growers rarely fill more than 12 inches of compost into the beds. The decision on how deep to fill the spawned substrate is an important one. Here again, the ratio of substrate to free air space in the growing room is significant. (See Chapter IV). An efficient method of spawn running is to the fill trays 6-8 inches deep with compost and stack them closely together in the room. In this manner the heat generated within each tray remains controllable, while at the same time the total compost heat will be sufficient to heat the room. Outside air temperature as well as the capacity of the heating and cooling equipment should determine how many substrate filled containers can be placed within a given space. Fresh air is generally used to provide cooling except when it is warmer than the room temperature. soma rights re-served 100 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 119 - Growth curve of Agaricus brunnescens on compost. Duration of Spawn Run Once colonization is complete, the substrate should be cased, or if casing is not used, it should be switched to a fruiting mode. If spawn running is continued beyond this point, valuable nutrients that could be utilized for production of fruitbodies will be consumed by further vegetative growth. If for some reason the cropping cycle must be delayed, the substrate should be cooled until a more opportune time. Spawning Methods Spawning methods, like spawn itself, have evolved over the years. As late as 1950 Agaricus brunnescens growers customarily planted walnut sized pieces of manure spawn or kernels of grain spawn in holes poked into the compost at regular intervals. Using this method spawn running was slow, and areas far from the inoculum were more susceptible to invasion by competitors. The full potential of grain spawn was not realized until the development of "mixed spawning". The principle of mixed spawning is the complete and thorough mixing of the grain kernels throughout the substrate. In this manner all parts of the substrate are equally inoculated, resulting in the most rapid and complete colonization possible. The standard spawning rate used by Agaricus growers is seven liters/ton of compost or one quart/8 sq. ft. If spawn is readily available and cheap, it is advantageous to use high spawning rates which lead to more rapid colonization. It is also advantageous to break up the grain spawn into individual kernels the day before spawning. If the spawn is fresh, the grain should break apart easily. If the spawn can not be used when fresh, it should be refrigerated at 38°F. The basic principle of spawn running is the same regardless of the type of mushroom or substrate. COLONIZATION MUST PROCEED AS RAPIDLY AS POSSIBLE TO PREVENT OTHER ORGANISMS FROM BECOMING ESTABLISHED. Once the mushroom mycelium becomes dominant, natural antibiotics secreted into the substrate inhibit competitors. To prevent invasion by competitors it is important that spawning take place under carefully controlled hygienic conditions. Fungus gnats in particular must be excluded, and for this purpose a tight, well sealed working area is best. This area and all tools should be disinfected one day prior to spawning with a 10% bleach solution. When using disinfectants be sure your skin is protected and avoid breathing any fumes. soma rights re-served 101 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 120 - Psilocybe semilanceata mycelium running through pasteurized wheat straw. If the substrate has been filled into shelves, the spawn is broadcast over the surface and mixed in with a pitchfork or by hand. With trays, a similar method can be used, or alternatively, the substrate can be dumped out on a clean surface, mixed with spawn and then replaced in the trays. Substrates from a bulk room are removed, mixed with spawn and then placed into the chosen container. It is common procedure to level and compress the substrate to avoid dehydration caused by excessive air penetration. The degree of compression depends upon substrate structure. Long, airy materials can be compacted more than short, dense ones. Commercial tray growers compact the compost into the trays with a hydraulic press so that the compost surface resembles a table top. This enables the application of an even casing layer. Environmental Conditions The required environmental conditions for spawn running are very specific and must be closely monitored. Substrate temperatures are controlled by careful manipulation of the surrounding air temperature. Heating and cooling equipment are helpful but not absolutely essential unless the outside climate is extreme. A well insulated room with provisions for fresh air entrance and exhaust air exit should be adequate for most situations. The steady or periodic recirculation of room air by means of a small fan helps to keep an even temperature throughout the room and guards against localized over-heating, especially in the uppermost containers. Humidity is extremely important at this time and must be held at 90-100%. If the humidity falls below this level, water evaporates from the substrate surface to the detriment of the growing mycelium. Humidification can be accomplished by steam humidifiers or by cold water misters. If steam is used, care must be taken that the increase in air temperature does not drive the substrate temperature above the optimal range. One common method of counteracting drying is to cover the substrate with plastic. Be ready to remove the covering during the period of peak activity if temperatures rise too quickly. During spawn run the mushroom mycelium generates large quantities of carbon dioxide. In fact, it has been demonstrated that mushroom mycelium is capable of CO2 fixation. Because of this ability to absorb CO2, room concentrations of 10,000-15,000 ppm are considered beneficial and desirable. A CO2 level high enough to stop growth is uncommon under normal circumstances. Being heavier than air, CO2 settles at the bottom of the room, which is yet another reason for even air circulation within the growing environment. Super Spawning Super spawning is also called "active mycelium spawning" vis á vis the Hunke-Till process. Essentially, a set amount of substrate is inoculated and colonized in the normal manner. The fully run substrate is then used as inoculum to spawn increased amounts of a similar substrate. One could theoretically pyramid a small quantity of inoculum into a considerable amount of fully colonized substrate. This technique requires the primary soma rights re-served 102 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb substrate to be contaminant free; otherwise contamination, not mycelium, will be propagated. The possibilities inherent in this method may be of greater application when transferring naturally occurring mycelial colonies to non-sterile yet mushroom specific substrates. An excellent example of this is the propagation of Psilocybe cyanescens on wood chips. (See Chapter VI.) Supplementation at Spawning One of the newest advances in Agaricus culture is the development of delayed release nutrients added to the compost at spawning. These supplements are specially formulated nutrients encapsulated in a denatured protein coat. They are designed to become available to the growing mushrooms during the first three flushes. The application rate is 5-7% of the dry weight of the substrate. Yield increases of ½ to 1 lb/sq. ft. are normal. Here again, complete and thorough mixing is essential to success. Caution: these materials enrich the substrate, making it more suitable to contaminants if factors predisposing to their growth are present. (For suppliers of delayed release nutrients, refer to the resource section in the Appendix). Supplementation at Casing (S.A.C.) SACing is another method used to boost the nutritional content of the substrate. The materials used are soy bean meal, cottonseed meal, and/or ground rye, wheat or kafir corn grains. The fully colonized substrate is thoroughly mixed with any one of these materials at a rate of 10% of the dry weight of the substrate. The substrate and the supplements must both be clean and free from contaminants; otherwise contamination will spread and threaten the entire culture. High substrate temperatures should be anticipated on the second to third day after supplementation. With this type of nutrient enhancement yield increases of ½-2 lbs/sq. ft. are possible. soma rights re-served 103 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb VIII. THE CASING LAYER Figure 121 - Panaeolus cyanescens fruiting in tray of pasteurized straw. Note mushrooms formed only on cased half. Covering the substrate surface with a layer of moist material having specific structural characteristics is called casing. This practice was developed by Agaricus growers who found that mushroom formation was stimulated by covering their compost with such a layer. A casing layer encourages fruiting and enhances yield potential in many, but not all, cultivated mushrooms. In all species where the use of a casing has been indicated as optional, yields are clearly enhanced with the application of one. The chart above [below] refers to the practical cultivation of mushrooms in quantity. It excludes fruitings on nutrified agar media or on other substrates that produce but a few mushrooms. Consequently, casing has become an integral part of the mushroom growing methodology. soma rights re-served 104 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb CASING OPTIONAL SPECIES CASING REQUIRED Agaricus brunnescens ■ Agaricus bitorquis ■ Coprinus comatus CASING NOT REQUIRED ■ Flammulina velutipes ■ Lentinus edodes ■ Lepista nuda ■ Pleurotus ostreatus ■ Pleurotus ostreatus (Florida variety) ■ Panaeolus cyanescens ■ Panaeolus subbalteatus ■ Psilocybe cubensis ■ Psilocybe cyanescens ■ Psilocybe mexicana ■ Psilocybe tampanensis ■ Stropharia rugoso-annulata ■ Volvariella volvacea ■ Functions The basic functions of the casing layer are: 1. To protect the colonized substrate from drying out. Mushroom mycelium is extremely sensitive to dry air. Although a fully colonized substrate is primarily protected from dehydration by its container (the tray, jar or plastic bag), the cropping surface remains exposed. Should the exposed surface dry out, the mycelium dies and forms a hardened mat of cells. By covering the surface with a moist casing layer, the mycelium is protected from the damaging effects of drying. Moisture toss from the substrate is also reduced. 2. To provide a humid microclimate for primordia formation and development. The casing is a layer of material in which the mushroom mycelium can develop an extensive, healthy network. The mycelium within the casing zone becomes a platform that supports formation of primordia and their consequent growth into mushrooms. It is the moist humid microclimate in the casing that sustains and nurtures mycelial growth and primordia formation. 3. To provide a water reservoir for the maturing mushrooms. The enlargement of a pinhead into a fully mature mushroom is strongly influenced by available water, without which a mushroom remains small and stunted. With the casing layer functioning as a water reservoir, mushrooms can reach full size. This is particularly important for heavy flushes when mushrooms are competing for water reserves. 4. To support the growth of fructification enhancing microorganisms. Many ecological factors influence the formation of mushroom primordia. One of these factors is the action of select groups of microorganisms present in the casing. A casing prepared with the correct materials and managed according to the guidelines outlined in this chapter supports the growth of beneficial microflora. Properties The casing layer must maintain mycelial growth, stimulate fruiting and support continual flushes of mushrooms. In preparing the casing, the materials must be carefully chosen according to their chemical and physical properties. These properties are: soma rights re-served 105 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb 1. Water Retention: The casing must have the capacity to both absorb and release substantial quantities of water. Not only does the casing sustain vegetative growth, but it also must supply sufficient moisture for successive generations of fruitbodies. 2. Structure: The structure of the casing surface must be porous and open, and remain so despite repeated waterings. Within this porous surface are small moist cavities that protect developing primordia and allow metabolic gases to diffuse from the substrate into the air. If this surface microclimate becomes closed, gases build up and inhibit primordia formation. A closed surface also reduces the structural cavities in which primordia form. For these reasons, the retention of surface structure directly affects a casing's capability to form primordia and sustain fruitbody production. 3. Microflora: Recent studies have demonstrated the importance of beneficial bacteria in the casing layer. High levels of bacteria such as Pseudomonas putida result in increased primordia formation, earlier cropping and higher yields. During the casing colonization period these beneficial bacteria are stimulated by metabolic gases that build up in the substrate and diffuse through the casing. In fact, dense casing layers and deep casing layers generally yield more mushrooms because they slow diffusion. It is desirable therefore to build-up CO2 and other gases prior to primordia formation. (For a further discussion on the influence of bacteria on primordia formation, see Appendix II.) The selection of specific microbial groups by mycelial metabolites is an excellent example of symbiosis. These same bacteria give the casing a natural resistance to competitors. In this respect, a sterilized casing lacks beneficial microorganisms and has little resistance to contaminants. 4. Nutritive Value: The casing is not designed to provide nutrients to developing mushrooms and should have low nutritional value compared to the substrate. A nutritive casing supports a broader range of competitor molds. Wood fragments and other undecomposed plant matter are prime sites for mold growth and should be carefully screened out of a well formulated casing. 5. pH: The pH of the casing must be within certain limits for strong mycelial growth. An overly acidic or alkaline casing mixture depresses mycelial growth and supports competitors. Agaricus brunnescens prefers a casing with pH values between 7.0-7.5. Even though the casing has a pH of 7.5 when first applied, it gradually falls to a pH of nearly 6.0 by the end of cropping due to acids secreted by the mushroom mycelium. Buffering the casing with limestone flour is an effective means to counter this gradual acidification. The optimum pH range varies according to the species. (See the growing parameters for each species in Chapter XI.) 6. Hygienic Quality: The casing must be free of pests, pathogens and extraneous debris. Of particular importance, the casing must not harbor nematodes or insect larvae. Materials To better understand how a casing layer functions requires a basic understanding of soil components and their specific structural and textural characteristics. When combined properly, the soil components create a casing layer that is both water retentive and porous. 1. Sand: Characterized by large individual particles with large air spaces in between, sandy soils are well aerated. Their structure is considered "open". Sandy soils are heavy, hold little water and release it quickly. 2. Clay: Having minute individual particles bound together in aggregations, clay soils have few air pockets and are structurally "closed". Water is more easily bound by clay soils. 3. Loam: Loam is a loose soil composed of varying proportions of sand and clay, and is characterized by a high humus content. Agaricus growers found that the best type of soil for mushroom growing was a clay/loam. The humus and sand in a clay/loam soil open up the clay which is typically dense and closed. The casing's structure is improved soma rights re-served 106 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb while the property of particle aggregation is retained. The humus/clay combination holds moisture well and forms a crumbly, well aerated casing. There are two basic problems with using soils for casing-the increased contamination risk from fungi and nematodes, and the loss of structure after repeated waterings. Cultivators can reduce the risk of contamination by pasteurization, a process whereby the moistened casing soil is thoroughly and evenly steamed for two hours at 160°F. An alternative method is to bake the moist soil in an oven for two hours at 160°F. Figure 122 - Sphagnum peat and limestone flour needed for casing. The development of casings based on peat moss has practically eliminated the use of soil in mushroom culture. Peat is highly decomposed plant matter and has a pH in the 3.5-4.5 range. Since this acidic condition precludes many contaminants from colonizing it as a substrate, peat is considered to be a fairly "clean" starting material. Peat based casings rarely require pasteurization. But because peat is too acidic for most mushrooms, the addition of some form of calcium buffering agent like limestone is essential. "Liming" also causes the aggregation of the peat particles, giving peat a structure similar to a clay/loam soil. A coarse fibrous peat is preferred because it holds its structure better than a fine peat. In essence, the properties of sphagnum peat conform to all the guidelines of a good casing layer. Buffering agents are used to counter the acidic effects of peat and other casing materials. Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) is most commonly used and comes in different forms, some more desirable than others. 1. Chalk: Used extensively in Europe, chalk is soft in texture and holds water well. Chunks of chalk, ranging from one inch thick to dust, improve casing structure and continuously leach into the casing, giving long lasting buffering action. 2. Limestone Flour: Limestone flour is calcitic limestone mined from rock quarries and ground to a fine powder. It is the buffering agent most widely used by Agaricus growers in the United States. Limestone flour is 97% CaCO3 with less than 2% magnesium. 3. Limestone Grit: Produced in a fashion similar to limestone flour, limestone grit is rated according to particle size after being screened through varying meshes. Limestone grit is an excellent structural additive but has low buffering abilities. A number 9 grit is recommended. soma rights re-served 107 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb 4. Dolomitic Limestone: This limestone is rarely used by Agaricus growers due to its high magnesium content. Some researchers have reported depressed mycelial growth in casings high in magnesium. 5. Marl: Dredged from dry lake bottoms, marl is a soft lime similar to chalk but has the consistency of clay. It is a composite of clay and calcium carbonate with good water holding capacity. 6. Oyster Shell: Comprised of calcium carbonate, ground up oyster shell is similar to limestone grit in its buffering action and its structural contribution to the casing layer. But oyster shell should not be used as the sole buffering agent because of its low solubility in water. Absorption Potential milliliters water/gram % Water at Saturation Vermiculite 5.0 84% Peat 2.5 79% Potting Soil 0.7 76% Loam 0.3 25% Chalk 0.6 37% Limestone Grit 0.2 15% Sand 0.2 18% Material Values vary according to source and quality of material used. (Tests run by the authors.) Casing Formulas and Preparation The following casing formulas are widely used in Agaricus culture. With pH adjustments they can be used with most mushroom species that require a casing. Measurement of materials is by volume. FORMULA 1 Coarse peat: 4 parts Limestone flour: 1 part Limestone grit: ½ part Water: Approximately 2-2¼ parts FORMULA 2 Coarse peat: 2 parts Chalk or Marl: 1 part Water: Approximately 1-1¼ parts One half to one part coarse vermiculite can be added to improve the water retaining capacity of these casing mixtures and can be an aid if fruiting on thinly laid substrates. When used, it must be presoaked to saturation before being mixed with the other listed ingredients. An important reference point for cultivators is the moisture saturation level of the casing. To determine this level, completely saturate a sample of the casing and allow it to drain. Cover and wait for one half hour. Now weigh out 100 grams of it and dry in an oven at 200°F. for two to three hours or until dry. Reweigh the sample and the difference in weight is the percent moisture at saturation. This percentage can be used to compare moisture levels at any point in the cropping cycle. Optimum moisture content is normally 2-4% below saturation. Typically, peat based casings are balanced to a 70-75% moisture content. Application To prepare a casing, assemble and mix the components while in a dry or semi-dry state. Even distribution of the limestone buffer is important with a thoroughly homogeneous mixture being the goal. When these materials have been sufficiently mixed, add water slowly and evenly, bringing the moisture content up to 90% of its saturation level. There is an easy method for preparing a casing of proper moisture content. Remove 10-20% of the volume of the dry mix and then saturate the remaining 80-90%. Then add the remaining dry material. This method brings the moisture content to the near optimum. (Some growers prefer to let the casing sit for 24 hours and fully absorb water. Prior to its application, the casing is then thoroughly mixed again for even moisture distribution.) soma rights re-served 108 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb At this point apply the casing to the fully run substrate. Use a pre-measured container to consistently add the same volume to each cropping unit. 1. Depth: The correct depth to apply the casing layer is directly related to the depth of the substrate. Greater amounts of substrate increase yield potential which in turn puts more stress on the casing layer. Prolific first and second flushes can remove a thin casing or damage its surface structure, thereby limiting future mushroom production. A thin casing layer also lacks the body and moisture holding capacity to support large flushes. AS A GENERAL RULE, THE MORE MUSHROOMS EXPECTED PER SQUARE FOOT OF SURFACE AREA, THE DEEPER THE CASING LAYER. Agaricus growers use a minimum of one inch and a maximum of two inches of casing on their beds. Substrate depths of six to eight inches are cased 1¼ to 1½ inches deep. Substrates deeper than 8 inches are cased 1½ to 2 inches deep. Nevertheless, experiments in Holland using casing depths of 1 inch and 2 inches demonstrated that the deep casing layer supported higher levels of microorganisms and produced more mushrooms. (See Visscher, 1975). To gain the full benefits of a casing layer, an absolute minimum depth on bulk substrates is 1 inch. For fruiting on sterilized grain, the casing need not be as deep as for fruitings on bulk substrates. Shallow layers of grain are commonly cased ¾ to 1 inch deep. 2. Evenness: The casing layer should be applied as evenly as possible on a level substrate surface. An uneven casing depth is undesirable for two reasons: shallower regions can easily be overwatered, thereby stifling mycelial growth; and secondly, the mycelium breaks through the surface at different times, resulting in irregular pinhead formation. When applying the casing to large areas, "depth rings" can be an effective means to insure evenness. These rings are fabricated out of flat metal or six inch PVC pipe, cut to any depth. They are placed on the substrate and covered with the casing, which is then leveled using the rings as a guide. Once the casing is level and even, the rings are removed. Although the casing layer must be even, the surface of the casing should remain rough and porous, with small "mountains and valleys". The surface structure is a key to optimum pinhead formation and will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. Figures 123, 124 & 125 - Casing a tray of grain spawn. First the fully colonized grain is carefully broken up and evenly distributed into the tray. As an option, a layer of partially moistened vermiculite can be placed along the bottom of the tray to absorb excess water. If the grain appears to have uncolonized kernels, cover the container with plastic and let the spawn recover for 24 hours before casing. Otherwise, casing can proceed immediately after the spawn has been laid out. Casing Colonization Environmental conditions after casing should be the same as during spawn running. Substrate temperatures soma rights re-served 109 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb are maintained within the optimum range for mycelial growth; relative humidity is 90-100%; and fresh air is kept to a minimum. (Fresh air should only be introduced to offset over-heating). The build-up of CO2 in the room is beneficial to mycelial growth and is controlled by an airtight room and tightly sealed fresh air damper. If the entrance of fresh air cannot be controlled, a sheet of plastic should be placed over the casing. This plastic sheet also prevents moisture loss from the casing. Figure 126 - Depth rings used for even casing application on bulk substrates. Figure 127 - Mycelial growth (Agaricus brunnescens) into casing with optimum moisture. Soon after casing, substrate temperatures surge upward due to the hampered diffusion of metabolic gases which would normally conduct heat away. This surge is an indication of mycelial vitality and is a positive sign if the room temperature can be controlled. This temperature rise can be anticipated by lowering either the soma rights re-served 110 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb temperature of the substrate prior to casing or lowering the air temperature of the room after casing. Within three days of application, the mycelium should be growing into the casing layer. Once mycelial growth is firmly established, the casing is gradually watered up to its optimum moisture holding capacity. This is accomplished by a series of light waterings with a misting nozzle over a two to four day period (depending upon the depth of the casing). Deeper casings require more waterings. Optimum moisture capacity should be achieved at least two days before the mycelium reaches the surface. IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THAT THE WATERINGS DO NOT DAMAGE THE SURFACE STRUCTURE OF THE CASING. Heavy direct watering can "pan" the casing surface, closing all the pore spaces and effectively sealing it. The growing mycelium is then trapped within the casing layer and may not break through it at all. The ultimate example of panning is a soil turned to mud. To repair a casing surface damaged by watering, the top ¼ inch can be reopened by a technique called "scratching". The tool used is simply a 1 x 2 x 24 inch board with parallel rows of nails (6 penny) slightly offset relative to one another. With this "scratching stick", the casing is lightly ruffled prior to the mycelium breaking through to the surface. After the surface has been scratched, the casing should be given its final waterings prior to pinning. Figure 128 - Mycelial growth (Psilocybe cubensis) into casing with optimum moisture. A modified application of this technique is "deep scratching". When the mycelium is midway through the casing, the entire layer is thoroughly ruffled down to the bulk substrate. The agitated and broken mycelium rapidly reestablishes itself and within three to four days it completely colonizes the casing. The result is an early, even and prolific pinhead formation. Before using this technique, the grower must be certain that the substrate and casing are free of competitor molds and nematodes. Casing Moisture and Mycelial Appearance Moisture within the casing layer has a direct effect on the diameter and degree of branching in growing mycelium. These characteristics are indicators of moisture content and can be used as a guide to proper watering. 1. Optimum Casing Moisture: Mushroom mycelium thrives in a moist humid casing, sending out minute branching networks. These networks expand and grow, absorbing water, CO2 and oxygen from the near saturated casing. This mycelial growth is characterized by many thick, white rhizomorphic strands that soma rights re-served 111 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb branch into mycelia of smaller diameters and correspondingly smaller, finer capillaries. The overall aspect is lush and dense. When a section of casing is examined, it is held firmly together by the mycelial network but will separate with little effort. The casing itself remains soft and pliable. 2. Overly dry casing: In a dry casing, the mycelium is characterized by a lack of rhizomorphs and an abundance of fine capillary type mycelia. This fine growth can totally permeate the casing layer, which then becomes hard, compact and unreceptive to water. It is common for puddles to form on a dry casing that has just been watered. Also, a dry casing rarely permits primordia formation because of its arid microclimate and is susceptible to "overlay". Mushrooms, if they occur, frequently form along the edges of the tray. Overlay is a dense mycelial growth that covers the casing surface and shows little or no inclination to form pinheads. Overlay directly results from a dry casing, high levels of CO2 and/or low humidity. (See Chapter IX on pinhead initiation) 3. Overly Wet Casing: In a saturated casing, the mycelium grows coarse and stringy, with very little branching and few capillaries. Mycelial growth is slow and sparse which leaves the casing largely uncolonized. Often the saturated casing leaches onto the substrate surface which then becomes waterlogged, inhibiting further growth and promoting contamination. Subsequent drying may eventually reactivate the mycelium, but a reduction in yield is to be expected. soma rights re-served 112 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb IX. STRATEGIES FOR MUSHROOM FORMATION (PINHEAD INITIATION) Fiqure 129 - Scanning electron micrograph of Psilocybe cubensis primordia. The change from the vegetative state of mycelial growth to the generative one of primordia formation is called pinning, pin setting, pinhead initiation or fructification. Primordia or pinheads are knots of mycelium that precede development into small mushrooms. All species require a set of environmental conditions for pinning that are quite different from the conditions for mycelial growth. By understanding the factors that regulate this change in the mushroom life cycle, the cultivator can control the pinning process. In nature primordia formation is primarily influenced by seasonal changes in environmental conditions. In temperate climates most mushrooms fruit during the cool, wet fall whereas in tropical and subtropical climates mushrooms fruit during the rainy season. The fruiting period ends when the season changes and environmental conditions become too hot, too cold or too dry. The mycelium then lies dormant or grows slowly, reactivated only by the warming of spring and summer. These seasons are times for the mycelium to expand its network, absorb nutrients and rebuild its energy reserves. Once the cool wet conditions of fall return, these reserves are used to support another crop of mushrooms. soma rights re-served 113 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Basic Pinning Strategy Mushrooms fruit indoors in response to much the same conditions that trigger fruiting in the wild. Several environmental factors, working in combination, provide an ideal environment in which mushrooms flourish. Most, if not all cultivated mushrooms fruit at lower temperatures than the optimum for the growth of mycelium. Usually, a drop in temperature is accompanied by rain or an increase in humidity. Water is essential for the absorption of nutrients by the mycelium. And vaporous water creates the humid microclimate that is so critical for the developing primordia. Primordia have a low tolerance to CO2 and need ample fresh air. And while the mycelium has no requirement for light, many species need light to initiate pinheads and to mature into healthy mushrooms. Mushrooms form only when there is a coincidence of all these factors. Cultivators create an artificial environment that prolongs these optimum conditions so that mushrooms are given the best possible environment in which to grow. Primordia formation strategies are well defined for species now under cultivation. These procedures are similar in their approach and differ only in certain environmental requirements. Given that the substrate has sufficient nutrients, the interaction of water, humidity, temperature, fresh air, CO 2 and light all play determining roles in the fructification process. (In some cases, specific microorganisms must be present before fruiting can occur). The modification of any one of these factors beyond the fruiting requirements can inhibit or stop the process. Hence, the cultivator must have precise control over conditions within the growing room if this critical phase is to be carried out successfully. Primordia Formation Procedures Agaricus brunnescens culture illustrates the interplay of environmental factors in pinhead initiation. It serves as a useful model for setting primordia in many species, especially those using a casing layer. In each of the following stages, the main considerations are highlighted and then discussed in detail. Although Agaricus does not require light, and since most cultivated mushrooms do, this requirement has been listed as the last parameter. Stage I: Preparation Following its application, the casing is conditioned to allow even mycelial growth into it. Once mycelial growth is well established, the casing layer microclimate and the growing room are carefully managed to meet the following requirements. 1. The casing layer is at optimum moisture capacity. 2. The casing layer surface is rough and porous. 3. The relative humidity of the growing room's air is 95%. 4. The substrate is incubated in total darkness. During the casing colonization period, the casing layer is being conditioned for pinhead initiation. Gradually, the moisture content is brought up to the optimum and a microclimate with high relative humidity is carefully maintained. Water in the casing moves by capillary action to the surface where it is drawn into the air by evaporation. This constant movement slowly depletes the casing of the moisture needed to protect pinhead development. Therefore, in conjunction with an optimum casing moisture level, the relative humidity of the room must be held at 95%. Lower humidities must be accompanied by light but regular waterings. The higher the humidity (rH), the less water will be lost to evaporation. Given optimum moisture conditions in and directly above the casing layer, the next step is to prepare the casing surface. Whether by initial application or by ruffling at a later time, the casing surface should be rough and open - with minute mountains and valleys. A rough open casing has more surface area where pinheads can form, provides a humid environment conducive to that formation and allows the diffusion of metabolic gases. soma rights re-served 114 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Stage II: Environmental Transition - The Prelude to Setting Primordia Pinhead initiation techniques should begin when the mycelium reaches the valleys of the casing surface. Once the mycelium is clearly established in the valleys, the cultivator can begin the first steps leading to the setting of pinheads. Within this one to two day period, the 1. Substrate and air temperatures are lowered to the fruiting range. 2. The humidity is maintained at the 95% level. 3. The carbon dioxide content of the room is reduced by the introduction of fresh air. 4. The room is lighted on a 12 hour on/off cycle. Figure 130 - Overlay. Mycelium breaking through the casing surface early should be lightly sprinkled with moist casing. Uneven growth through the casing layer is usually an indication of a casing with irregular depths. By "patching" shallow areas, an even mycelial spread is assured. Note that the more even the distribution of the mycelium in the valleys of the casing's surface, the more even the pin-set and the greater the first and second flushes. The exact time for initiation varies with the strain and according to the experience of the individual grower. Some strains continue to grow vegetatively for a period after the initial temperature shock whereas others stop immediately. For this reason, some cultivators initiate when 20% of the valleys show mycelial growth while others wait until 90% are run through with mycelium. Normally within 12-48 hours from the time the mycelium is first visible in the valleys, the initiation sequence is started. The first step in the pinhead initiation process is to lower the substrate and air temperature from the mycelial growth optimum to the fruiting range. This temperature "shock" is accomplished by ventilation with a large volume of cool fresh air, thereby lowering the room's temperature to a point 5-20° below the optimum for spawn running. (For Agaricus brunnescens, this would mean dropping air temperature from 70°F. to 64°F.). Whatever the air temperature may be, the bed temperature is normally several degrees warmer. The length of time needed to affect this change is determined by the total volume of substrate and the temperature of the air being introduced. Within 48 hours, the substrate temperature should fall to fruiting temperatures, effectively slowing vegetative growth. This change signals to the mycelium that it is time to fruit. soma rights re-served 115 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 131 - Cased grain culture of Agaricus brunnescens showing overlay and stroma. Fresh air also removes high concentrations of carbon dioxide and other metabolic gases from the room. Since Agaricus brunnescens does not pin properly at CO2 concentrations above 2000 ppm, lowering the carbon dioxide content of the room's air to under 2000 ppm is critical. The inhibitory effect of carbon dioxide on mushroom formation gives Agaricus growers a high degree of control over the pinning process. Not until carbon dioxide is removed will pinheads form. If carbon dioxide levels remain high, the mycelium will totally cover the casing surface, a condition called overlay. The mycelial mat formed by overlay makes the casing impervious to water and produces few pinheads. Overlay also occurs if the casing surface is too dry, the humidity (rH) is too low or the air temperature remains too high. Overlay can be counteracted by patching, but the cause must be diagnosed and carefully corrected if the culture is to be revived. Few flushes will be as great from a casing with overlay as from a casing properly managed. Stage III: Primordia Formation (Knotting) Once substrate temperatures have been lowered and CO2 levels have been reduced, primordia will begin to form. Maintain: 1. A constant fresh air supply to remove metabolic gases, and CO2 at levels less than 1000 ppm. 2. A constant temperature in the growing room that is within the fruiting range. 3. A relative humidity of 95%. 4. A 12 hour on/off light cycle. The combination of temperature drop, high humidity and reduction of metabolic gases by a constant supply of fresh air now provides an environment conducive to pinhead formation. These parameters should be held constant until the pins are set. Any abrupt changes in temperature or humidity will be harmful to primordial growth. Pinhead initials form in the humid valleys of the casing layer and are visible as small knots of mycelium. This is the earliest stage of fruiting. Within five days these knots enlarge into small mounds or buttons that soon differentiate into mushrooms. Due to slowed mycelial growth in the cooled substrate, carbon dioxide evolution is greatly reduced. Consequently, the fresh air supply can be moderated to the minimum level necessary to maintain 1000 ppm of carbon dioxide. At this time, oversupply of fresh air can lead to high evaporation rates and excessive drying. The humidity should never be allowed to fall below 90%. If dry air becomes a problem, a light misting of the soma rights re-served 116 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb casing surface, two to five times daily, should keep the microclimate moist. In fact, some growers knock down the mycelium with a forceful watering on the first day of initiation. Others mist daily as a standard practice. However, once pinning has begun, any forceful watering will kill a number of developing pins, and damage others. Given sufficient casing moisture and a high humidity, these watering practices become unnecessary. Stage IV: Pinhead Development After the pinheads have grown to pea size (3-5 mm.), their further development is primarily dependent on air temperature and relative humidity. To insure that they mature into healthy mushrooms, the 1. Air temperature is held constant within the fruiting range. 2. Relative humidity is lowered to 85-92%. 3. A constant fresh air supply with CO2 below 2000 ppm. 4. A 12 hour on/off light cycle. The humidity is lowered to 85-92%, thereby increasing the evaporation rate, an essential requirement for pinhead maturation. If humidity remains too high, pinhead development will be retarded. The easiest way to reduce humidity is to raise the air temperature by 1-2°F. or to increase air movement within the room. Under no circumstances should pockets of stagnant air be allowed to form. Evaporation is negligible in stagnant air pockets which are also excellent breeding grounds for mushroom pathogens. At this time, a slightly higher level of carbon dioxide is desirable (in the 1500-2000 ppm range) and fresh air can be cut back accordingly. Given proper CO2 levels, and sufficient evaporation, the pins continue to develop. The exact rate of growth depends on the air temperature in the room. Work done by Lambert (1938) has shown that a pinhead of Agaricus brunnescens with a diameter of 2 millimeters fully develops into a mature mushroom in twenty-two days at 50°F., in ten days at 60°F. and in six days at 70°F. Although mushrooms develop more quickly at 70°F., overall yields diminish. Optimum temperature for cropping in Agaricus brunnescens is 62-64°F. Figure 132, 133 & 134 - Three day pinhead development sequence in Agaricus brunnescens. Change-over from Stage III to Stage IV occurs within this time frame. soma rights re-served 117 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb The Relationship Between Primordia Formation and Yield The importance of the primordia formation period can not be over-emphasized. For maximum yields an optimum number of pinheads must be set, matured and brought to harvest. Certain relationships exist between the pinning process and yields. These are: 1. During the primordia formation period, pinheads for the first and second flush are being generated. The second flush primordia are present as thickened mycelial knots which develop after the first flush is harvested. Once the first flush is off the beds, the second set of primordia begin to enlarge and within days attain button size. Because 60-75% of the total yield is normally harvested from the first two flushes, the few days of pinhead initiation are the most critical in the growing of mushrooms. Hence, all environmental factors must be carefully monitored to insure the best possible pin-set. 2. The greater the number of pins set for the first flush, the higher the yield, provided sufficient nutrients are available to support their growth. However, with more pinheads competing for the same nutrient base, the smaller are the mushrooms arising from it. Fewer pinheads result in larger mushrooms, but lower total yields. 3. The substrate will only support the development of a certain number of primordia per flush. Under normal circumstances with an even pin-set, pinheads may "abort" because of insufficient nutrients or late formation. 4. Pins that form early delay the growth of neighboring primordia. Good examples of this can be found in shallow areas or along the borders of the substrate container. Removing these relatively few "volunteers" before they develop is advantageous to the remaining primordia that constitute the first flush. Figure 135 - Three pinheads of Coprinus comatus forming on cased section of compost. Note mycelial knot in upper center. soma rights re-served 118 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb The Influence of Light on Pinhead Initiation Mushroom species requiring light for primordia formation are said to be photosensitive. Although light is not necessary to induce fructification in all mushrooms (i.e. Agaricus brunnescens), certain spectra have proven to be stimulatory to pinhead initiation and are critical for the normal development of the fruitbody. Psilocybe cubensis and Pleurotus ostreatus are two such photosensitive species. A thorough investigation on the photosensitivity of Psilocybe cubensis can be found in a master's thesis by E.R. Badham (1979). His work reinforces the conclusions of other researchers working with the Basidiomycetes: more pinheads are initiated upon exposure to blue and ultra-violet light with distinct peaks at 370, 440 and 460 nanometers. Badham showed that light stimulation at these wavelengths for as little as half a millisecond per day caused primordia to form. In contrast, red, infra-red and green light having wavelengths greater than 510 nanometers were ineffective. With this knowledge, the cultivator of photosensitive species can develop initiation strategies incorporating the influence of light. Ideally a fully colonized substrate should be incubated in total darkness and exposed to light only after the mycelium first shows through the casing layer. If the cultivator wants to check the culture without the chance of premature pinning, red light is recommended. (The proper location and type of light is discussed in more detail in Chapter IV). soma rights re-served 119 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb X. ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS: SUSTAINING THE MUSHROOM CROP Figure 136 - Wild strain of Agaricus brunnescens fruiting in bag of cased compost. For the home cultivator the onset of cropping is a time of excitement and anticipation. It is also a time for increased attention to the finer details of environmental control. Temperature, humidity, light and airflow in the growing room all play vital roles which together determine the nature of further mushroom development. Temperature During the vegetative growth period, the substrate was held in the optimum range by careful manipulation of the air temperature. But once the change to generative growth is initiated, the substrate temperature becomes less important and air temperature becomes the controlling factor. The time it takes button sized mushrooms to mature is influenced primarily by the air temperature of the growing chamber. Each species has an optimum temperature for fruitbody development that lies within a broader growing range. Knowing the temperature parameters as outlined in Chapter XI, the cultivator can speed or slow development depending on which end of the cropping range is chosen. Lower temperatures can be used to postpone or lengthen the harvesting period and allow for maximum quality control. High soma rights re-served 120 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb temperatures serve to shorten the cropping period by promoting rapid, intense flushes. However, the dangers of high temperatures include the risk of heat building up in the substrate and consequent CO2 generation, as well as the ability of insects and contaminants to grow and reproduce at faster rates. Commericial Agaricus growers commonly lower the air temperature by 2°F. 48 hours prior to the peak of the first and second flushes. Further flushes are then run hotter to speed the crop to completion. It is important that the cultivator evaluate the heat generating capabilities of the crop and insure that the environmental control system is capable of handling them. Flushing Pattern The mushroom crop grows in cycles called flushes or "breaks". Depending on the species being grown these flushes normally come in seven to ten day intervals with each successive flush bearing fewer mushrooms. The manner in which these flushes appear is determined during the pin initiation period. Even pinning sets up a uniform pattern of flushing that continues throughout the cropping cycle. Uneven flushing creates difficult situations for proper watering and environmental control. To encourage even flushing, early forming pinheads are picked off as buttons unless it appears that these pins constitute the flush itself. Poor first flushes are indicative of faulty pinning procedures and lead to lower total yields and a longer cropping period as the cultivator tries to maximize yields from the following flushes. But keep in mind that many times it is the progressive build-up of competing contaminant organisms that eventually bring mushroom growth to a halt. For this reason, the goal is to maximize yields in the early flushes. To further increase the flushing speed the actual harvest period in each flush should be kept short and concise. Late developing mushrooms are removed with or on the day after peak production. The sooner the flush is completely removed the quicker the next one will appear and the shorter the overall cropping cycle. Stunted undeveloped mushrooms are also cleared from the cropping surface between breaks with care not to disturb the casing. Small dead pinheads should be left in place and cause little harm. (As a rule, an aborted mushroom can be removed as long as the casing is not touched in the process.) At no time should the casing be over-handled in an attempt to clean. Such handling can spread disease spores and damage subsequent pin formation. Figure 137 - Agaricus brunnescens affected by high CO2 concentration. Note long stems and underdeveloped caps. soma rights re-served 121 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 138 - The effect of dry air on Psilocybe cubensis caps, a condition known as "scaling". Figure 139 - Rosecomb on Psilocybe cubensis, an abnormality Figure 140 - Fruitbody abnormality occasionally seen in caused by contact with chemicals, especially those that are Psilocybe cubensis. petroleum based. soma rights re-served 122 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Air Movement Air movement in the growing room is designed to create an even flow across all levels of cropping surface. This even airflow counteracts temperature stratification and dead air pockets by equalizing the environment of the room. In this manner the crop can be managed as a whole, giving the grower greater control over the cropping cycle. During the pin initiation period fresh air is introduced into the room to remove metabolic gases produced by the mushroom mycelium. Although gas production is reduced once this vegetative growth has been slowed, the maturing mushrooms create more carbon dioxide, the removal of which requires a continuous supply of fresh air. The number of these air changes varies depending upon the air/bed ratio and the CO2 requirement of the mushroom species being grown. Agaricus bitorquis needs only half the amount of fresh air required by Agaricus brunnescens. A common rate for Agaricus brunnescens is 4-6 changes per hour. For more CO 2 tolerant species such as Psilocybe cubensis, 2-3 changes per hour is sufficient. (The most accurate method for determining fresh air requirements employs the multiple gas detector. This instrument measures CO2 content of the air in parts per million (ppm), from 300 (natural level) up to 20,000 ppm. See Appendix for sources.) Because many mushrooms are sensitive to carbon dioxide, the physical development of the mushroom can also be used as a guide. High CO2 environments produce long stems and small underdeveloped caps in Agaricus brunnescens and Pleurotus ostreatus. Pleurotus exhibits similar symptoms in conditions of low light intensity. Figure 141 - Bacterial blotch parasitizing Agaricus brunnescens. Figure 142 - Characteristic phototropic response of Psilocybe cubensis toward light. In general, too much fresh air is preferable to insufficient air supply. However, fresh air displaces the existing room air which is then exhausted from the room. Unless this fresh air is preconditioned to meet the requirements of the species, one will be constantly disrupting the growing environment and thereby overworking the heating and humidification systems. For this reason the air circulation system should be designed to recirculate the room air. This is accomplished by a mixing box with an adjustable damper that proportions fresh and recirculated air. In this regard, CO 2 tolerant species give the grower a distinct advantage in maintaining the correct environment because they need less fresh air for growth. An important effect of air circulation and fresh air supply is the evaporation of moisture from the cropping surface. Excessive humidity without adequate air movement and evaporation retards mushroom development. Saturated stagnant air pockets are also breeding areas for contaminants like the Forest Green Mold (Trichoderma) and Bacterial Blotch (Pseudomonas). As stated in the previous chapter on pinhead initiation, once the primordia are set, the relative humidity should be lowered to 85-92% and held constant within this range throughout cropping. Besides the creation of a cool surface by "evaporative cooling", evaporation aids in the transport of nutrients (in solution) from the substrate to the growing mushrooms. If the evaporation rate is soma rights re-served 123 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb too high and the humidity falls below 85%, excessive drying occurs, causing small stunted mushrooms and cracked scaly caps. A dry cropping surface further reduces yields and is difficult to recondition. In this respect, it is critical for the grower to reach a balance between air circulation, fresh air and humidification. This is but one aspect of the "Art" of mushroom culture. Watering Maturing mushrooms have water requirements that must be met if maximum yields are to be achieved. Mushrooms grown on uncased substrates draw their moisture from the substrate, whereas those grown with a casing draw equally from both. Uncased substrates are more susceptible to dry air and therefore require a relative humidity of 90-95% as well as periodic misting of the cropping surface. If the cropping surface dries and forms a dead mycelial mat, it can be reopened to further flushing by raking or scratching. This technique is often used by Pleurotus growers to stimulate later flushes. The advantages of using a casing layer are many. Protected from atmospheric drying, the substrate moisture is channeled solely to the mushroom crop. And, the water reservoir provided by the casing not only supplies the mushroom flushes but also serves to keep a high humidity in the cropping surface microclimate. In order to sustain these benefits, the grower must learn to gauge casing moisture and know when to water. Other than light mistings, any substantial waterings before the button stage can result in damaged pins. But once the mushrooms have reached button size, it is time to begin building the casing moisture back up to the peak reached at pre-pinning. The aim is to reach capacity just prior to the main harvest. This is accomplished by a series of daily, light to moderate waterings with a fine misting nozzle. Commercial Agaricus growers have traditionally used a rose-nozzle but many have now switched to nozzles with finer sprays and variable volume outputs. This enables the grower to add moisture without damaging the casing surface. In this regard, high water pressures and close nozzle proximity to the casing should be avoided. The goal is to keep the surface of the casing open and porous throughout the cropping cycle. Putting on too much water at once is the most common cause of panning. By watering 2-4 times/day rather than just once, the casing can slowly absorb the water without damage to the surface. After the first flush is harvested the casing should be kept moist with light mistings until the next flush reaches the button stage. The casing moisture is then built up again. Each new flush is treated in this manner, although later flushes will have fewer mushrooms and therefore require less water. At no time should the casing be allowed to dry out. Mushrooms pulled from a dried casing carry large chunks of casing with them, creating gaps in the cropping surface and at times exposing the substrate to possible colonization by contaminants. If the substrate is exposed during picking, the holes should be filled with moist casing. To recondition a dry casing, moisture should be added slowly over a period of a few days. One of the common contaminants in mushroom growing is Bacterial Blotch (see Chapter XIII). Blotch results from mushroom caps that remain wet for extended periods of time. Agaricus growers attempt to dry recently watered mushroom caps as quickly as possible by lowering the humidity of the room. This is accomplished by increasing air circulation and introducing more fresh air or by raising the air temperature 1-2°F. Agaricus growers also stop watering once the mushroom cap has reached adolescence because wet mushroom caps become prime sites for disease. Small scale growers may be able to water around maturing mushrooms without directly hitting the caps. If Bacterial Blotch or other diseases appear on the mushrooms or the casing soil, these areas should not be watered. Watering contaminated regions will spread the infection further. A common strategy for serious disease outbreaks is to lower the relative humidity and run the casing drier than normal. Agaricus cultivators also use slightly chlorinated water (150 ppm). Harvesting The way an individual picks mushrooms can dramatically affect future flushes. Damage to resting pinheads and disturbance of the casing soil must be minimized during picking. Often times pinheads are in close proximity to developing mushrooms and enlarge directly after the mature ones are picked. Should any pinhead be harmed, the grower will have lost a potential fruitbody. Moreover, these damaged pin heads are easily soma rights re-served 124 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb parasitized by fly larvae and other contaminants. The best pickers are meticulous, unhurried, and above all treat the mushrooms with care. Carelessness in picking, when multiplied by hundreds of cultures, can be costly indeed. The most important factor in harvesting mushrooms is timing. Agaricus brunnescens should be picked before the veil breaks and the stem elongates. Psilocybe cubensis is morphologically distinct from Agaricus species, having a longer stem, a less fleshy cap and a more delicate veil. It is both natural and desirable to have tall stands of Psilocybe mushrooms while this is not the case with Agaricus. Cultivators of these two species, however, share many things in common. One particular problem is the massive release of spores from the mature mushrooms. These spores often times cover the casing layer and can inhibit further pinhead development. High spore loads can also cause allergic reactions amongst workers. For these reasons, one should pick the mushrooms at the stage when the veil begins to tear or soon thereafter. The nature of the crop determines how the mushrooms should be picked. Flushes with mushrooms in varying stages of development are more difficult to harvest. This is especially true if the primordia formation period was interrupted by fluctuations in the environment. One example is a phenomenon common to Psilocybe cubensis culture in mason jars. Mushrooms sometimes form between the casing and the glass. These "border breaks" are due to high humidity pockets and premature light stimulation. In tray culture where mycelium is not exposed to side light and proper moisture is easily managed, border breaks are uncommon. Mushrooms then grow uniformly from the surface of the casing layer where they can be easily picked. Harvesting techniques 1. Equipped with a basket and short bladed paring knife, grasp the base of the stem, and with a twisting motion, pull the mushroom from the casing layer being careful not to disturb neighboring pinheads. 2. Trim the stem base, removing only flesh to which the casing or substrate is attached. Mushrooms having thin stems are best cleaned using a knife in a downward scraping motion. All trimmings should be placed in a sealed plastic bag and removed from the cropping area. 3. Mushrooms growing in clumps or clusters should be broken apart and harvested individually when possible. Special care must be taken with those clumps containing both mature and immature mushrooms. Leave immature mushrooms attached to the casing layer or substrate to insure continued growth. Preserving Mushrooms If not served within four days, mushrooms can be preserved by drying freezing or canning. Air drying of mushrooms is the method most widely used by home cultivators and field hunters. Since most mushrooms are 90% water, they must be dried within a few hours or fly larvae and bacteria will consume them. Provided mushrooms are placed in a flow of warm, dry air, this large fraction of water soon evaporates into the air. Dried mushrooms are smaller, lighter and less fragrant than fresh ones. Once dried, they are sealed in airtight moisture proof plastic containers and refrigerated. Mushrooms will be preserved for years in this manner. When needed, simply rehydrate them in water before cooking. They will regain much of their original size and flavour. Commercially available food dehydrators are well suited for drying mushrooms. Their only disadvantage is that the trays are often too close together, necessitating the cutting of large mushrooms into thin slices. Or, one can build a dehydrator solely designed for this function and customized to an individual's particular needs. A good dryer should be able to dry the mushrooms in 24-48 hours by passing warm air no hotter than 110°F. Open air drying at room temperature is also feasible using dehumidifiers in combination with air circulation fans. "Flash" drying at high temperatures should be avoided since the mushrooms lose much of their nutritive value and, as the case may be, much of their psilocybin content. Freezing is another method of preserving mushrooms. But unless the mushrooms are first dried, frozen mushrooms are soggy and unappealing upon thawing. In freezing, the water constituting 90% of a mushroom's mass becomes crystallized. Frozen mushrooms are held together more by ice crystals rather than their own cellular structure. Since ice expands upon crystallization, cells break under the stress. Because frozen soma rights re-served 125 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb mushrooms disintegrate into a formless mass when thawed, they are mostly used in soups or stews. The best of both drying and freezing is freeze drying. This is the ideal method for preserving the flavor, nutrition, form and/or psilocybian content of mushrooms. Because of the expense, only a few commercial mushrooms, such as shiitake (Lentinus edodes) are freeze dried. Freeze dryers operate on the principle of first flash freezing fresh mushrooms which are then placed onto heated trays in a cooled, high vacuum chamber. The frozen water within the mushrooms begins to melt from the heat generated from the trays. But instead of becoming a liquid, the water is immediately transformed into a vapor that is pumped out of the freeze drier. Freeze drying preserves much of the original cell structure and hence mushrooms dried in this manner are often life-like in appearance. Since commercial freeze driers are prohibitively expensive, few home cultivators can afford them. Many people have discovered, however, that mushrooms placed in a frost-free refrigerator are almost as well preserved. Canning is another method for storing mushrooms. Mushrooms preserved by canning must be carefully cleaned beforehand, precooked for 3 or 4 minutes in boiling water, then inserted into glass jars with a small amount of vinegar and sterilized in a pressure cooker. (Sterilization for mushrooms is usually 30-40 minutes at 10 psi. Consult a book on mushroom cookery for further information on canning mushrooms). Canned mushrooms, especially those that have been pickled, are preferred by many epicureans to those preserved by other means. No matter what the technique, fresh mushrooms are undoubtedly better tasting than preserved mushrooms. If one chooses to dry, freeze or can, young mushrooms should be selected over old ones. Label each container with the species, the name of who grew or identified the mushrooms, the date and the place of origin. (One general rule recommended by all mycologists is: when eating wild mushrooms for the first time, always leave one or two small specimens aside in case illness ensues and a mycologist or a doctor needs to be consulted.) soma rights re-served 126 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb XI. GROWING PARAMETERS FOR VARIOUS MUSHROOM SPECIES Figure 143 - Stropharia rugoso-annulata fruiting in a bed of wood chips. Growing parameters for mushrooms vary with every species. Through time spent in countless trials and from observations by both home and commercial cultivators, specific cultural requirements have been ascertained. Mushrooms fruit in response to unique sets of conditions involving nutrition (substrate), temperature, pH, relative humidity, light and carbon dioxide. What follows are outlines pin-pointing the optimal environmental ranges for each stage in the mushroom's life cycle. By adhering to these optima, a cultivator can maximize fruitbody production in a precise and deliberate fashion. soma rights re-served 127 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb SPECIES: Agaricus bitorquis (Quel.) Saccardo = Agaricus rodmanll Peck = Agaricus campestris var. edulis Vitt. = Agaricus edulis (Vitt.) Moller and Schaeff. Figure 144 - Linear (longitudinally radial) mycelium of Agaricus bitorquis. STRAINS: Horst B30 (The first commercial strain to be developed by Gerda Fritsche at the Dutch Mushroom Research Center in Horst, Holland). Horst K26, K32 (These are two second generation strains from Horst B30 and are distinctive from it in that they fruit earlier, give higher yields and have slightly longer stems. Spawn of this species is now available from Amycel.) COMMON NAME: Rodman's Agaricus GREEK ROOT: Agaricus comes from the greek word "agarikon" which scholars believed originated with a Scythian people called Agari who were well versed in the use of medicinal plants and employed a fungus called "agaricum", probably a polypore in the genus Fomes. The species epithet bitorquis means having two rings, for the double annulus that so distinguishes this species from close relatives like Agaricus campestris, the Meadow Mushroom. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Cap smooth, white, thick fleshed, convex to broadly convex to plane with age. The cap margin is incurved at first but soon decurves. The gills are pinkish at first, soon darkening to chocolate brown with spore maturity. The stem is thick, relatively short and adorned with a double membranous annulus. (The lower ring is often a thin annular zone). Its spores are dark chocolate brown in mass. NATURAL HABITAT: Naturally found in lawns, gardens, roadside areas, pastures, in enriched grounds and on hard packed soil. A temperate species, widely distributed, A. bitorquis fruits primarily in the spring and to a lesser degree in the fall. soma rights re-served 128 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb A. bitorquis - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Rhizomorphic to linear; whitish to pale whitish in color. Spawn Medium: Rye grain buffered with calcium carbonate and/or calcium sulfate. See Chapter III. Fruiting Substrate: Nitrogen enriched wheat straw and/or horse manure based compost balanced to 71-74% moisture content. Method of Preparation: See Chapter V on compost preparation. Pasteurization achieved through exposure to live steam for 2 hours at 140°F. throughout the substrate. Compost should be filled to a depth of 6-12 inches. Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90-100%. Substrate Temperature: 84-86°F. Thermal death limits have been established at 93°F. over prolonged period of time. Duration: 2 weeks. CO2: 5,000-10,000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Type of Casing: After fully run, cover with the standard casing whose preparation is described in Chapter VIII. Layer to a depth of 1-2 inches. The casing should be balanced to a pH of 7.2-7.5. Post Casing/Prepinning: Relative Humidity: 90-100%. Bed Temperature: 84-86°F. Duration of Case Run: 10-12 days. CO2: 5000-10,000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Primordia Formation: Relative Humidity: 95-100%. Bed Temperature: 77-80°F Air Temperature: 75-77°F. Lighting: None required. CO2: less than 2000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2-4 per hour. Watering: Regular misting (once to twice daily) of the beds stimulates primordia formation. Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 75-77°F. CO2: less than 3000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2-4 per hour. Flushing Interval: Every 8-9 days. Harvest Stage: Directly before the partial veil stretches. Yield Potential: Average commercial yields are reported at 3 lbs/sq.ft. over a 5 week cropping period. Maximum yields are 4 lbs per square foot. Moisture Content of Mushrooms: 92% water; 8% dry matter. Nutritional Content: Thought to be similar to Agaricus brunnescens. soma rights re-served 129 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Comments: The development of Agaricus bitorquis has given commercial growers greater flexibility, especially those in warmer climates where elevated temperatures have been a limiting factor. An advantage of this mushroom is its resistance to virus (a devastating disease that attacks A. brunnescens) and its tolerance of high CO2 levels. A disadvantage of growing this warmth-loving Agaricus is the higher incidence of disease endemic to the temperature range in which this species flourishes. Agaricus bitorquis is coarser, firmer, more strongly flavored and has a longer shelf life than its close relative, A. brunnescens. Genetic Characteristics: Basidia tetrapolar (4-spored), forming haploid spores, heterothallic. The mating of compatible monokaryons can result in fruiting strains. Clamp connections absent. See Chapter XV. For further information consult: P.J.C. Vedder 1978, "Modern Mushroom Growing", Educaboek, Culemborg, Netherlands. (English edition available from Swiss American Spawn Company, Inc., Madisonville, Texas.) P.J.C. Vedder 1978, "The Cultivation of Agaricus bitorquis" in The Biology and Cultivation of Edible Mushrooms ed. by Chang and Hayes. Academic Press, New York. Darmycel LTD. Spawn Lab Bulletin 1978, "A Guide to Darlington and Somycel Spawn Strains". SPECIES: Agaricus brunnescens Peck = Agaricus bisporus (Lge.) Sing. Figure 145 - Agaricus brunnescens fruiting in trays of compost. STRAINS: Type or Brown Variety (var. bisporus) White Variety (var. albidus) Cream Variety (var. avellaneous) COMMON NAME: The Button Mushroom. GREEK ROOT: Agaricus comes from the greek word "agarikon" which scholars believed originated with a Scythian people called Agari who were well versed in the use of medicinal plants and employed a fungus called "agaricum", probably a polypore in the genus Fomes. The species epithet brunnescens comes from the latin "brunneus" or brown. Literally, the name means the fungus that becomes brown, probably referring to the color change of the flesh upon bruising. Also called Agaricus bisporus for the two spored basidia populating soma rights re-served 130 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb the gill faces. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: A robust, thick fleshed Agaricus species, with thin gills that are pinkish when young, and darkening to sepia and then chocolate brown in age. The cap is characteristically brownish, whitish or cream colored. The cap surface is smooth to appressed squamulose and dry. This species has a short, thick stem which is adorned with a persistent membranous annulus from a well developed partial veil. Its spores are chocolate brown in mass. NATURAL HABITAT: Naturally found in soils enriched with dung, on compost piles and in horse stables. A temperate species, widely distributed, A. brunnescens fruits from May until November over much of the northern hemisphere outside the tropical zone. A. brunnescens - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Moderately rhizomorphic; dingy white, sometimes with brownish hues. Spawn Medium: Rye grain buffered with calcium carbonate and/or calcium sulfate. See Chapter III. Fruiting Substrate: Nitrogen enriched wheat straw and/or horse manure based compost balanced to 71-74% moisture content. This species also fruits well on rye grain covered with an unsterilized peat based casing layer. Method of Preparation: See Chapter V on compost preparation. Pasteurization achieved through exposure to live steam for 2 hours at 140°F. throughout the substrate. Compost should be filled to a depth of 6-12 inches. Figure 145a - Agaricus brunnescens fruiting on cased rye grain spawn. Figure 145b - Characteristic Agaricus brunnescens mycelium. Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90-100%. Substrate Temperature: 76-78°F. Thermal death limits have been established at 96°F. but damage can occur as low as 90°F. Duration: 2 weeks. CO2: 5000-10,000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. soma rights re-served 131 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Type of Casing: After fully run, cover with the standard casing whose preparation is described in Chapter VIII. Layer to a depth of 1-2 inches. The casing should be balanced to a pH of 7.0-7.5. Post Casing/Prepinning: Relative Humidity: 90-100%. Bed Temperature: 76-80°F. Duration of Case Run: 8-12 days. CO2: 5000-10,000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Primordia Formation: Relative Humidity: 95-100%. Compost Temperature: 65-70°F. Air Temperature: 62-65°F. CO2: less than 1000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 4 per hour. Light: None required. Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 62-65°F. CO2: less than 1000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 4 per hour. Flushing Interval: 7-10 days. Harvest Stage: Directly before the partial veil stretches. Light: None required. Yield Potential: Average commercial yields are 3 lbs/sq.ft. over a 5 week cropping period. Maximum yield is 6 lbs. per square foot. Moisture Content of Mushrooms: 92% water; 8% dry matter. Nutritional Content: 24-44% protein (dry weight); 56 milligrams of niacin per 100 grams dry weight. Comments: Historically, this species and/or its close relatives were the first mushrooms to be cultivated in Europe during the late 1700's. It remains the most widely cultivated mushroom in the world today. A broad range of commercially available strains exist, many of which have been genetically selected for certain advantageous characteristics, especially yield, color and stature. This species does not form pinheads on agar media unless activated charcoal or select bacteria are present. A species sensitive to high levels of carbon dioxide, Agaricus brunnescens fruits only within narrow environmental parameters. As a secondary decomposer, this species fruits best on substrates that have been transformed by a succession of specific microorganisms. The common button mushroom is the mainstay of the mushroom growing industry in this country. Genetic Characteristics: Basidia bipolar (2-spored), forming diploid spores; secondarily homothallic. The mating of compatible dikaryons typically results in strains both more vigorous and higher yielding. Clamp connections absent. See Chapter XV. For further information consult: P.J.C. Vedder 1978, "Modern Mushroom Growing", Educaboek, Culemborg, Netherlands. (English edition available from Swiss American Spawn Company, Inc., Madisonville, Texas). Fred Atkins, 1973, "Mushroom Growing Today", MacMillan Publishing Co., New York. soma rights re-served 132 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb SPECIES: Coprinus comatus (Mull. ex Fr.) Gray Figure 146 - Fully mature Coprinus comatus fruiting in a tray of compost. STRAINS: On deposit at the American Type Culture Collection and available through various culture banks, both commercial and private. COMMON NAME: The Shaggy Mane. GREEK AND LATIN ROOTS: Coprinus comes from the Greek word "kopros" meaning dung and comatus from the Latin "coma" meaning shaggy or adorned with hair tufts. The genus Coprinus is noted for the several species that grow on dung and for deliquescing gills. The species epithet describes the shaggy texture of the cap's surface. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Cap medium to large in size, whitish, ovoid when young, soon elongating upwards and becoming parabolic. As the mushroom matures and spores are produced, the cap begins to disintegrate from the margin's edge by an autodigestive process known as deliquescence. The disintegrating portions progressively darken and eventually liquify. The cap surface is smooth at the disc, scaly below, soon gray, darkening with maturity until black and thin fleshed. The gills are very crowded, whitish at first, soon gray, darkening with age to black. The partial veil membranous, often leaving a fugacious, membranous (collar-like) annulus that can be moved over the stem. The spore deposit is black. NATURAL HABITAT: Common along roadsides, near debris piles, in lawns and in barnyards during the late summer and fall. soma rights re-served 133 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figures 147-150 - Four day developmental sequence of Coprinus comatus fruiting in a tray of compost. C. comatus - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Linear to cottony, zonate-cottony mycelia; whitish in color. Spawn Medium: Rye grain. See Chapter III. Fruiting Substrate: Composted wheat straw enriched with horse and/or chicken manure, adjusted to 70% moisture content. Also, pasteurized chopped wheat straw supports fruitings of this species. Garcha et al. (1979) reported that composts having the distinct scent of ammonia after Phase II supported the greatest fruitings of Coprinus comatus. Method of Preparation: See Chapters V & VI on the preparation of compost and straw. Pasteurization soma rights re-served 134 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb achieved through exposure to live steam for 2 hours at 140°F. Compost or straw should be filled to a depth of 6-12 inches. Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90-100%. Substrate Temperature: 76-80°F. Duration: 8-12 days. CO2: 5000-10,000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0-1 per hour. Type of Casing: After fully run, cover with the standard casing whose preparation is described in Chapter VIII. Layer to a depth of 1-2 inches. The casing should be balanced to a pH of 7.0-7.5. Post Casing/Prepinning: Relative Humidity: 90-100%. Bed Temperature: 76-80°F. Duration of Case Run: 10-12 days. CO2: 5000-10,000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0-1 per hour. Primordia Formation: Relative Humidity: 95-100%. Bed Temperature: 65-67°F. Air Temperature: 62-65°F. CO2: less than 1000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 4 per hour. Light: Natural daylight or grow-light recommended on a 12 hour on/off cycle. Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 62-65°F. CO2: less than 1000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 4 per hour. Flushing Interval: 7-10 days. Harvest Stage: Directly before the gills begin to deliquesce. Light: Natural daylight or grow-light on a 12 hour cycle on/off cycle Yield Potential: Average commercial yields are 2-3 lbs/sq.ft. over a 4 week cropping period. Maximum yield potential has not yet been established. Moisture Content of Mushrooms: 92-94% water; 6-8% dry matter. Nutritional Content: 25.4 % protein (dry weight). Comments: Like many other species in this genus, Coprinus comatus is a thermotolerant mesophile that often appears in compost piles. This mushroom was first grown in quantity at the Dutch Mushroom Research Station using the same compost, casing and environmental parameters as for the cultivation of Agaricus brunnescens. The authors have grown this species on compost prepared for Agaricus and on straw alone, although fruitings appear more substantial on the former. Coprinus comatus is edible and choice. However, the crops are difficult to keep because of the early onset of deliquescence. By submerging mushrooms in water, deliquescence is slowed and mushrooms remain in good condition for several days after picking. soma rights re-served 135 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Extracts from fresh specimens of this species has been shown to have antibiotic properties, similar to those from Lentinus edodes. Genetic Characteristics: Basidia tetrapolar (4-spored), forming haploid spores; heterothallic. Clamp connections present. See Chapter XV. For further information consult: P.J.C. Vedder 1978, "Modern Mushroom Growing", Educaboek, Culemborg, Netherlands. (English edition available from Swiss American Spawn Company, Inc., Madisonville, Texas). SPECIES: Flammulina velutipes (Curt. ex Fr.) Sing. = Collybia velutipes (Curt. ex Fr.) Kumm. Figure 151 - Flammulina velutipes fruiting in tray. STRAINS: Many wild and domesticated strains of F. velutipes are available from commercial and private stocks. (See Appendix). The Japanese have remained at the forefront of Enoke cultivation with two popular commercial strains, "Maruei" and "Ebios". COMMON NAME: Enoke; Winter Mushroom; or Velvet Stem. LATIN ROOT: Flammulina comes from the latin word "flammeus" or flame colored for the yellowish orange to reddish orange color of the cap. The species epithet velutipes is the conjunction of two latin words, the adjective "velutinus" meaning covered with fine hairs and the noun "pes" or foot. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Caps typically small, reddish orange to reddish brown, at first hemispherical, soon plane. The cap margin is often irregularly shaped. The gills are yellowish tinged. In wild collections, the stem is densely fibrillose, velvety, short and tough. In culture, however, the stems are long and smooth. A partial veil is absent. Its spores are whitish in mass. soma rights re-served 136 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb NATURAL HABITAT: Common across the North American continent and in other temperate to boreal regions of the world. Thriving on woody tissue, especially living trees and considered a cold weather mushroom. Figure 152 - Developing pinheads of Flammulina velutipes. F. velutipes - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Linear to cottony mycelia, sometimes aerial. Spawn Medium: Sawdust/bran. One liter (1000 ml.) bottle of spawn inoculates 50-160 (800 ml.) containers. See Chapter III. Fruiting Substrate: A 80-90% hardwood sawdust and 10-20% rice bran medium. Newly chipped sawdust holds moisture poorly and some Japanese growers age the sawdust for several years before using. Standard fruiting containers are quart mason jars or 800 ml. small mouthed plastic bottles. Some growers are currently experimenting with the cultivation of this species on bulk substrates in trays. Adjust moisture content of substrate to 58-60%. Method of Preparation: See Chapter III for the preparation of sawdust/bran media. A 4:1 volumetric ratio of sawdust to bran (equivalent to a mass ratio of 10:1 sawdust to bran) is recommended. Sterilize for 1-2 hours at 250°F. (15 psi). Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90-100%. Substrate Temperature: 72-77°F. Duration: 20-30 days using standard methods; 12-13 days using in vitro inoculation methods. CO2: 5000-10,000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. soma rights re-served 137 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Type of Casing: None required. Primordia Formation: Relative Humidity: 85%. Air Temperature: 50-55°F. CO2: less than 1000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 4 per hour. Light: None needed. Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85%. Air Temperature: 50-55°F. Duration: 2-3 weeks. CO2: less than 1000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 4 per hour. Light: Natural daylight or grow-light on a 12 hour cycle on/off cycle. Flushing Interval: 10 days. Figure 153 - Flammulina velutipes fruiting in plastic jar. Yield Potential: Average commercial yields are 160-220 grams per 800 ml. bottle. Maximum yields are nearly 600 grams per 800 ml. bottle. Moisture Content of Mushrooms: 92% water; 8% dry matter. Nutritional Content: Reports vary from 18% to 31% protein (dry weight); 107 milligrams of niacin per 100 grams dry weight. F. Zadrazil (1979) found that colonization of straw by this species decreases its digestibility for use as fodder. This contrasts with the effects of Pleurotus and Stropharia rugoso-annulata whose presence on straw markedly increases its digestibility. Like many wood degrading fungi, an anti-tumor antibiotic has been isolated from F. velutipes and is appropriately called flammulin. soma rights re-served 138 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Comments: F. velutipes tends to form mycelial "pellets" soon after colonizing a substrate. This phenomenon makes liquid culture techniques more difficult. Japanese researchers found that the addition of 5% corn starch and 2% malt to a liquid solution inhibits the formation of these troublesome pellets. Curiously, fruitings on sawdust/bran beds can be precipitated when pieces of a fruitbody are added to this solution. Shiio et al. (1974) found that one could induce the early formation of fruitbodies with a technique whereby fresh pieces of Flammulina velutipes are mixed directly into liquid spawn and then introduced into the sawdust/bran medium. Not only was the fruiting process accelerated, the spawning period was cut in half and yield was nearly quadrupled over a year's time. Using this same technique with Pleurotus ostreatus, yields were increased over and above the norm by a factor of three. Total production in either case, equalled as much as ¼ of the substrate on a dry weight basis. An analogous technique was developed by Urayama (1972) who discovered that cell-free extracts of fresh F. velutipes mushrooms introduced to cultures of distantly related species caused fruitbody formation. Genetic Characteristics: Basidia tetrapolar (4-spored), forming haploid spores; bifactorially heterothallic. Single spore isolates capable of producing sterile fruitbodies. Dikaryons are faster growing and characterized by clamp connections. Mycelium can produce oidia, self sectioning chains of cells with similar functions as spores. See Chapter XV. For further information consult: H. Tonomura, 1974. "Flammulina velutipes" in The Biology and Cultivation of Edible Mushrooms. Academic Press, New York. SPECIES: Lentinus edodes (Berk.) Sing. Figure 154 - Lentinus edodes, the shiitake mushroom, fruiting on oak logs. soma rights re-served 139 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb STRAINS: Numerous strains of Lentinus edodes are available from commercial and private stocks. The American Type Culture Collection, which sells cultures to educational organizations and research facilities, has stock cultures of several wild and domesticated strains. Strains are often distinquished by their preferences for fruiting in colder or warmer temperature zones. COMMON NAMES: The Shiitake Mushroom; The Japanese Black Mushroom; and The Chinese Black Mushroom. (The name shiitake comes from the association of this mushroom to the shiia tree, a member of the genus Pasania). LATIN AND GREEK ROOTS: Lentinus comes from "lentis" or lens-shaped for the form of the cap and edodes signifies the edibility of this species. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Cap pale to dark reddish brown, convex, becoming broadly convex to nearly plane in age. The cap margin is typically inrolled when young. The cap surface is covered with whitish veil remnants, especially along the margin. The flesh is firm, pliant, easily drying and reconstituting. The gills are whitish, close to crowded, often with serrated edges. The stem is centrally attached to the cap, short, very tough and adorned with scattered fibrillose remnants of the partial veil. Its spores are whitish in mass. NATURAL HABITAT: A wood decomposer, typically saprophytic. Lentinus species are common on the dead tissue of deciduous trees, mainly Fagaceae (oak, chestnut, shiia [Pasania] and beech). In nature, they particularly prefer oaks. Fruiting in the fall, early winter and spring, this species is indigenous to Japan, China and other countries in the temperate zone of the Indo-China region. L. edodes - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Rhizomorphic to linear. Spawn Medium: Pre-soaked wooden dowels or a 4:1 sawdust/bran mixture. See Chapter III. Fruiting Substrate and Method of Preparation: Oak or alder logs, 4-6 inches in diameter, are sawed into 3 foot lengths. These logs should be cut in the spring or fall to maximize sap content and can be inoculated immediately. (Some growers prefer to season their logs in shaded, open air stacks for one month prior to inoculation). Before inoculating, logs should be cleaned of any lichen or fungal growths. Alternative fruiting substrates include alder or oak sawdust and bran mixed 4:1 with a moisture content of 60% and sterilized at 15 psi for 1-1½ hours. Fortified rye grass straw has also been used as a sterile fruiting medium. (See Chapter III). Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 60-75% for logs; 90% for sawdust. Substrate Temperature: Fast growth at 77°F. (Temperatures above 95°F. and below 41°F. stop mycelial growth). Duration: 6-12 months for cut logs; 30-60 days for sawdust blocks. CO2: None established; no controls needed using these methods. Fresh Air Exchanges: Stacks in open air sufficient. (Recent innovations show that logs stacked in a vertical configuration and covered with straw and plastic to maintain even temperatures result in faster spawn running in an outdoor environment. Within a controlled greenhouse, the logs need not be covered. The contact between the log surfaces should be minimized to prevent competitor molds and lichens from forming). pH Optima: 5-6. Light: None required. Type of Casing: None needed. soma rights re-served 140 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Pinhead Initiation: Initiation Technique: Submerge logs and blocks in cold water for 24-72 hours. Relative Humidity: 95%. Air Temperature: 59-68°F. Duration: 7-14 days after soaking. CO2: Not applicable. Fresh Air Exchanges: If within a greenhouse, 2-4 per hour. Light: Ambient natural light or optimally 10 lux in the 370-420 nanometer range. Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-90%. Air Temperature: 59-68°F. CO2: less than 1000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2-4 per hour or sufficient to meet CO2 and/or cooling requirements. Duration: 3-5 years on oak logs; 2-3 years on alder. Harvest Stage: Directly before the incurved margin straightens and the cap expands to plane. Flushing Interval: Outdoor methods generate 2 flushes per year (fall and spring); indoor methods can produce up to 4 flushes depending on the soaking/initiation schedule. Light: Same as above. Yield Potential: Average commercial yields are 2-3 lbs (fresh weight) of mushrooms per log. Moisture Content of Mushrooms: 85% water; 15% dry matter. Nutritional Content: 10.0-17.5% crude protein (dry weight) and 55 milligrams of niacin per 100 grams dry weight. Comments: Compounds in this mushroom have anti-cholesterol effects. Chihara (1979) reported that lentinan, a water soluble polysacharide in L. edodes, was "found to almost completely regress the solid type tumors of sarcoma-180 and several kind (sic) of tumors...". The work of others (Cochran, 1978; Tokita et al., 1972; Tokuda and Kaneda, 1979) have similarly described the beneficial properties of this fungus. (See Appendix III). Although the standard method of cultivation involves oak logs, recent experiments employing sawdust or rye grass based "synthetic" mixtures have proved that Lentinus edodes can be grown on a variety of substrates. In a recent article, Han et alia (1981) report the results of growth experiments with shiitake mini-logs composed of 90% broadleaf sawdust, 10% rice bran and 0.2% CaCO3. Supplements that increased mycelial growth more than rice bran were yeast powder (2.0%), soybean meal (5.0%), milk powder (2.0%) and molasses (1.5%). The fastest mycelial growth occurred when the moisture content of the logs was balanced to 50-60%. In tests on fruiting and yield the following data were compiled: Once mycelial growth is complete, highest yields were achieved if the vegetative cycle was prolonged 4-12 weeks, with the maximum yield at 12 weeks. At pin initiation, water bath periods of 48-72 hours increased the moisture content of the logs by 5-15% and yields by 50%. Cooling the logs for eight days at 60-62°F. following 48 hours of soaking gave the highest yields. Using 0.1 % N hydrochloride to adjust the pH of the water bath from 4.5-7.0, a pH of 5.0 produced the most primorida and mature mushrooms. At a light intensity of 550 lux, yields were highest. The addition of the hormones NAA (5ppm), gibberellin (l0ppm), ethylene chlorohydrin (2000x) and colchicine (8000x) as well as yeast powder (0.1%) to the water bath increased yields. Nevertheless, the traditional log method remains the most commercially feasible at this time and the one best suited to home cultivation. Genetic Characteristics: Basidia tetrapolar, forming four haploid spores; heterothallic. Dikaryons with clamp connections. See Chapter XV. soma rights re-served 141 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb For more information consult: H. Akiyama et al., 1974. "The Cultivation of Shii-ta-ke in a Short Period". Mushroom Science IX, pp. 423-433. T. Ito, 1978. "Cultivation of Lentinus edodes" in The Biology and Cultivation of Edible Mushrooms Ed. by S.T. Chang, pp. 461-473. R. Kerrigan, 1982. "Is Shiitake Farming for You?" Far West Fungi, Santa Cruz. Y.H. Han, W.T. Veng and S. Cheng, 1981. "Physiology and Ecology of Lentinus edodes (Berk) Sing." Mushroom Science XI, Melbourne. SPECIES: Lepista nuda (Bull. ex Fr.) Cooke = Clitocybe nuda (Fr.) Bigelow and Smith = Tricholoma nudum (Fr.) Kummer Figure 155 - Mycelium of Lepista nuda. STRAINS: Available from commercial and private stocks. The American Type Culture Collection has several strains. Although few spawn companies sell strains of L. nuda, tissue and spore cultures are easily obtained from wild specimens. Nevertheless, there are a limited number of productive strains currently in circulation. COMMON NAME: The Blewit. LATIN AND GREEK ROOTS: Lepista comes from the greek "lepis" which means scale. On the other hand, the species epithet nuda comes from "nudus" or naked. The name Lepista nuda constitutes a contradition of terms, literally translating as the scaly smooth mushroom. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Cap typically violet when fresh, becoming buff brown in drying; smooth, without hairs; dry; convex or broadly convex to plane in age. The cap margin is inrolled or incurved when young and simply decurved at maturity. The gills are a pale violet color, sometimes developing brownish hues in age and are adnexed or ascending in their attachment to the stem. The stem is equal overall but bulbous at the base and covered with fine fibrils over much of its surface. Fruifbodies can be moderately large when mature. A partial veil is absent. The spore deposit is pale pinkish tan. soma rights re-served 142 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb NATURAL HABITAT: Commonly occurring in the summer to late fall across much of the temperate regions of North America and Europe. This species is found in and around decomposing piles of sawdust, in conifer duff, amongst leaves and in mature compost piles. L. nuda - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Linear to cottony and usually with purplish to violet hues. (See Color Photo 3). Spawn Medium: A 4:1 sawdust/bran mixture or rye grain spawn. See Chapter III. Fruiting Substrates: Horse manure/straw compost mixed with 10% fresh straw at spawning; leaf mulch/sawdust mixtures. Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90+%. Substrate Temperature: Fastest growth at 70-75°F. Temperature maxima and minima: 40°F. and 86°F. respectively. Duration: 25-60 days for complete colonization. CO2: 5000-10,000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Light: Incubation in total darkness. Type of Casing: Standard peat based casing. An option is the addition of shredded leaf material and activated charcoal to 10% of total mass. Balance to a pH of 7.0. Pinhead Initiation: Relative Humidity: 95%. Air Temperature: 55-65°F. Duration: 7-14 days. CO2: less than 1000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2-4 per hour. Light: Ambient natural light or optimally 10 lux in the 370-420 nanometer range. (Light requirements have not yet been established for this species, and until that time, light stimulation should be presumed as a prerequisite for fruiting.) Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-90%. Air Temperature: 55-65°F. Duration: 24-52 weeks. CO2: less than 1000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2-4 per hour. Harvest Stage: While the mushroom caps remain convex. Flushing Interval: 10-14 days. Light: Same as above. Yield Potential: Data very limited. Yields of one and a quarter pounds per square foot in 14 weeks have been reported by Visscher (1981). (Recent studies show that yields can be increased substantially, although no maxima have yet been established.) Moisture Content of Mushrooms: 88-90% water; 10-12% dry matter. Nutritional Content: No data available. Comments: Several contradictions about the fruiting requirements for this species are apparent. Although soma rights re-served 143 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Wright and Hayes (1979) reported that immature horse manure/straw composts supported the most vigorous mycelial growth, the work of previous researchers indicates that the best fruitings occurred on "spent" compost that has been colonized for a year or more. Fruitbodies also form on spawned leaf mulch mixed with sawdust. The fruiting mechanism may, in part, be controlled by bacterial flora associated with leaf mulch and the decomposition process. Singer (1963) reported that mycelium implanted in beds of horse manure/straw compost for 7-14 months produced mushrooms directly after the appearance of rhizomorphs. J. Garbaye et al. (1979) published data indicating that the supplementation of natural patches with a NPKCa mineral fertilization induced large fruitings of L. nuda as well as Boletus edulis and Lepiota rachodes, two unrelated species of culinary distinction. Alexander Smith (1980) remarks that this mushroom should not be eaten raw, but only after cooking. European books have reported that this mushroom contains thermobile hemolysin, a compound that degenerates red blood cells. Although this mushroom has been responsible for scattered poisonings when quantities have been eaten, the effects have been relatively minor and the toxin is easily destroyed by cooking or parboiling. Lepista nuda is, however, a mushroom with many positive attributes. Its striking color, firm texture and good taste recommend this species as one of high culinary appeal. Some commercial production of L. nuda is ongoing in Europe. Nevertheless, this mushroom is not, as of yet, a species with yields substantial enough to warrant commercial production in this country. It is a mushroom more suited to the interests of home cultivators and natural culture techniques. Genetic Characteristics: Basidia tetrapolar, forming four haploid spores; heterothallic. Dikaryons with clamp connections. See Chapter XV. For more information consult: S.H. Wright and W.A. Hayes, 1979. "Nutrition and Fruit body Formation of Lepista Nuda (Bull. ex Fr.) Cooke", pp. 873-884 in Mushroom Science X, Part I. Bordeaux. J. Garbaye et alia, 1979. "Production De Champignons Comestibles En Foret Par Fertilisation MineralePremiers Resultats Sur Rhodopaxillus Nudus". pp. 811-816 in Mushroom Science X, Part I. Bordeaux. M. Vaandrager and H.R. Visscher, 1981. Experiments on the Cultivation of Lepista Nuda, the Wood Blewit", pp. 749-759 in Mushroom Science XI, Australia. soma rights re-served 144 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb SPECIES: Panaeolus cyanescens Berkeley and Broome = Copelandia cyanescens (Berk. & Br.) Sing. Figure 156 - Panaeolus cyanescens fruiting on cased straw. STRAINS: Hawaiian. Mexican. COMMON NAME: Pan cyan. GREEK ROOT: Panaeolus is Greek for "all variegated", in reference to the spotted appearance of the gills. The species name cyanescens comes from "cyaneus" or blue for the color the flesh becomes upon bruising. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Cap 15-40 mm. broad. Hemispheric to campanulate to convex or broadly convex at maturity. The margin is initially shortly translucent striate when wet, opaque when dry. The cap is light brown at first, becoming pallid grey in drying, eventually pallid to white, often covered with spores. The gills soma rights re-served 145 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb are adnexed in their attachment, close, thin, with two or three tiers of intermediate gills and mottled grayish black at with spore maturity. The stem is 85-120 long x 15-30 mm. thick and equal to bulbous at the base, tubular, often grayish towards the apex, pale yellowish overall, and flesh colored to light brown towards the base. The flesh readily turns bluish where bruised. A partial veil is absent. Its spores are dark violet-black. NATURAL HABITAT: Scattered to numerous on dung, in well manured grounds, grassy areas, meadows, or pastures. Known from Hawaii and Mexico. Two other Panaeoli, close to P. cyanescens macroscopically and microscopically, grow in western Washington and in Florida. P. cyanescens - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Linear to cottony mycelia; white to off-white, sometimes bruising bluish where injured. Spawn Medium: Rye grain. See Chapter III. Fruiting Substrates: Pasteurized wheat straw; horse manure/straw compost. Method of Preparation: Chopped wheat straw pasteurized in a hot water bath at 160° for 20-30 minutes, cooled and spawned or horse manure/straw compost prepared according methods outlined in Chapter V. Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90+%. Substrate Temperature: 79-84°F. Duration: 7-12 days. CO2: 10,000 ppm or higher. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Type of Casing: Standard peat based casing whose preparation is described in Chapter VIII. Layer to a depth of ½-1 inch. Post Casing/Pre-pinning: Relative Humidity: 90+%. Substrate Temperature: 79-84°F. CO2: 10,000 ppm or above. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Light: Incubation in darkness. Primordia Formation: Relative Humidity: 95+%. Air Temperature: 75-80°F. CO2: 5,000 ppm or below. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2 per hour. Light requirements: Diffuse natural or fluorescent grow-lights. Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 75-80°F. CO2: 5,000 ppm or below. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2 per hour. Harvest Stage: When the caps are convex. Flushing Interval: 5-7 days. Light: Diffuse natural or grow-lights. Yield Potential: Not yet established. soma rights re-served 146 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Moisture Content: 90-92% water; 8-10% dry matter. Comments: This rapidly growing species fruits readily on pasteurized straw provided a thin layer of casing is applied (½ inch). No more than one week passes from the time of casing to the first flush. Although the fruitbodies are small, the flushes are typically abundant. The degree of bluing seems to vary with the strain and substrate. SPECIES: Panaeolus subbalteatus Berkeley and Broome = Panaeolus venenosus Murrill Figure 157 - Panaeolus subbalteatus fruiting outdoors on horse manurewood chip compost. STRAINS: Fruiting strains are easily obtained from wild specimens. COMMON NAME: The Belted Cap Panaeolus. GREEK ROOT: Panaeolus is Greek for "all variegated" in reference to the spotted appearance of the gills. The species name subbalteatus comes from the conjunction of the prefix "sub-" meaning almost or somewhat and "balteatus" or belt-like, for the characteristic color zonation that forms along the margin of the cap in drying. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Cap 35-50 mm. broad at maturity. The cap is convex to campanulate, then broadly convex and finally expanding to nearly plane with a broad umbo. The color is cinnamon brown to orangish cinnamon brown, fading to tan in drying with a dark brown encircling zone along the cap margin. The gills are attached to the stem, broader at the center and with three tiers of intermediate gills inserted. The gill color is soma rights re-served 147 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb brownish and spotted, with the edges remaining whitish, becoming blackish overall from spore maturity. The stem is 50-60 mm. long by 4 mm. thick at maturity and is brittle, hollow, fibrous, and enlarges towards the base. The color is reddish toned beneath a fine sheath of minute whitish fibrils, darkening downwards or when touched. The stem base often bruises bluish. On the cap, bluing is rarely seen. NATURAL HABITAT: Scattered to numerous on stable leavings from horses; in horse dung; or in well manured grounds. This species is widely distributed across the North American continent and throughout temperate regions of the world. P. subbalteatus - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Cottony mycelia noted; whitish to off-white in color. Spawn Medium: Rye grain. Fruiting Substrate: Horse manure compost, pasteurized wheat straw. Method of Preparation: Horse manure/straw compost or pasteurized wheat straw prepared according to methods outlined in Chapters V & VI respectively. Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90+%. Substrate Temperature: 80-86°F. Duration: 7-12 days. CO2: 10,000 ppm or higher. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Type of Casing: Casing optional. If used, make up a standard peat based casing whose preparation is described in Chapter VIII. Layer to a depth of ½ to 1 inch. Post Casing/Pre-pinning: Relative Humidity: 90%. Substrate Temperature: 80-86°F. CO2: 10,000 ppm or above. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Light: Incubate in darkness. Primordia Formation: Relative Humidity: 95+%. Air Temperature: 75-80°F. CO2: 5,000 ppm or below. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2 per hour. Light: Diffuse natural or grow-lights. Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 75-80°F. CO2: 5,000 ppm or below. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2 per hour. Harvest Stage: When the caps have expanded to nearly plane. Light: Diffuse natural or grow-lights. Yield Potential: Not yet established. soma rights re-served 148 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Moisture Content: 90-92% water; 8-10% dry matter. Comments: Panaeolus subbalteatus is a fast running and an early fruiting mushroom that easily grows in controlled environments. Possessing low levels of psilocybin and/or psilocin, the fruitbodies are small compared to other cultivated mushrooms. Hence, it has not been as popular with home cultivators as for instance, Psilocybe cubensis. Given the fact that Panaeolus cyanescens fruits well on pasteurized wheat straw, Panaeolus subbalteatus is likely to fruit on that substrate as well. Pollock (1977) fruited this species on cased crimped oat spawn. Undoubtedly, Panaeolus subbalteatus can be grown on a wide variety of substrates. Short term "natural culture" of this mushroom is also possible although yields are much lower than those attained in a controlled indoor growing environment. Horse manure/straw compost arranged in outdoor beds can be inoculated with mycelium from wild patches or grain spawn can be used. Panaeolus subbalteatus is considered a "weed mushroom" by commercial Agaricus growers and its presence suggests under-composting and/or excessive moisture. This species once had the reputation, albeit undeserved, of being poisonous - thus the synonym Panaeolus venenosus. SPECIES: Pleurotus ostreatus (Jacq. ex Fr.) Kummer Figure 158 - Fully mature Pleurotus ostreatus mushrooms fruiting on straw. STRAINS: Strains of Pleurotus ostreatus are available from commercial and private stocks. The American Type Culture Collection, which sells cultures to educational organizations and research facilities, has stock cultures of several wild and domesticated strains. Somycel's-3004 is the standard strain used by the European Pleurotus industry and is synonymous with ATCC's-38546. COMMON NAME: The Oyster Mushroom. soma rights re-served 149 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb LATIN AND GREEK ROOTS: Pleurotus comes from the greek "pleuro" which means formed laterally or in a sideways position, referring to the lateral position of the stem relative to the cap. The species epithet ostreatus refers to its oyster shell-like appearance and color. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Cap tongue shaped, maturing to a shell shaped form, 50-150 mm. in diameter; whitish to gray to blue gray overall. (Color is a light determined factor in this species). The flesh is thin and white. The margin is even and occasionally wavy. The gills are white, decurrent and broadly spaced. The stem is attached in an off-centered fashion and is short at first and absent in age. Its spores are whitish to lilac gray in mass. Figures 159-162 - Four day developmental sequence of Pleurotus ostreatus fruiting on wheat straw. NATURAL HABITAT: A wood decomposing, saprophytic or parasitic fungus. Pleurotus ostreatus grows abundantly on standing and fallen alder, cottonwood and maple. This species is especially numerous in river valleys and fruits in the fall, early winter and spring across much of temperate North America. P. ostreatus - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Fast growing rhizomorphic to linear mycelia noted. Color is typically whitish. Spawn Medium: Rye grain. See Chapter III. Fruiting Substrate and Method of Preparation: Cereal straw (normally wheat) balanced to a 75% moisture content. The straw, chopped or whole, is pasteurized by submerging in a 160°F. water bath for 30-45 minutes. An alternative method utilizes live steam pasteurization at 140°F. for 6 hours. In Japan, Pleurotus is grown on soma rights re-served 150 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb a mixture of hardwood sawdust and bran (4 parts to 1, 65% moisture and a pH of 6.8-7.0). This mixture is sterilized for 1-2 hours at 15 psi. Being a primary decomposer, Pleurotus grows on a wide variety of cellulosic wastes. Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90-100%. Substrate Temperature: Fastest growth at 78-84°F. Thermal death occurs if mycelium is held above 104°F. for 48 hours. Duration: 10-14 days for complete colonization. CO2: 20,000 ppm or 20% CO2 by volume. (Growth is stimulated up to 28,000 ppm). Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Light: Incubation in total darkness. Type of Casing: None needed. Pinhead Initiation: Relative Humidity: 95%. Air Temperature: 55-60°F. Duration: 7-14 days. CO2: less than 600 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 4 per hour. Light: Phototropic, most responsive to an exposure of 2,000 lux/hour for 12 hours/day. Grow-lux type fluorescent lighting is recommended. Diffuse natural light is sufficient. Watering: Regular misting once to twice daily until fruitbodies are 30-40% of harvest size and then water as needed to prevent caps from cracking. Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 60-64°F. Duration: 5-7 weeks. CO2: less than 600 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 4-6 per hour or sufficient to meet CO2 and/or cooling requirements. Harvest Stage: Directly before incurved margin elevates to plane. Flushing Interval: 10 days. Light: Same as above. Watering: Regular misting to prevent caps from cracking and to keep resting pinheads viable. Yield Potential: Average commercial yields are 1 kilogram fresh weight of mushrooms per kilogram of dry weight of straw substrate. Moisture Content of Mushrooms: 91% water; 9% dry matter. Nutritional Content: Crude protein has been reported at 30.4 % of dry weight and 109 milligrams of niacin per 100 grams dry weight. Comments: Biologically, Pleurotus ostreatus efficiently utilizes its substrate. Its ability to fruit on a single component substrate, to permeate the straw rapidly while tolerating high carbon dioxide levels and to produce abundant crops within a short time period, make Pleurotus ideal for home cultivation. Of concern to cultivators growing in enclosed rooms is the abundant spore load generated by this species. Pleurotus spores cause allergic reactions amongst some workers and mycophagists. Sporeless strains are therefore desirable and are the object of current research. Eger (1974) noted the possibility that heavy spore concentrations from Pleurotus farms could infect surrounding woodlands. Pleurotus ostreatus var. florida, a warmth loving relative, is also cultivated in Europe (Hungary) and shares soma rights re-served 151 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb many of the growth properties of Pleurotus ostreatus. Genetic Characteristics: Basidia tetrapolar, producing 4 haploid spores; heterothallic. Clamp connections present. See Chapter XV. For more information consult: F. Zadrazil, 1974. "The Ecology and Industrial Production of Pleurotus ostreatus, Pleurotus florida, Pleurotus cornucopiae, and Pleurotus eryngii" in Mushroom Science IX (Part I), The Mushroom Research Institute, Japan. SPECIES: Pleurotus ostreatus (Jacq. ex Fr.) Kummer (Florida variety) = Pleurotus ostreatus var. florida nom. prov. Eger = Pleurotus floridanus Singer STRAINS: Most strains of this mushroom originate from wild specimens cultivated in 1958 by S.S. Block of Gainesville, Florida. Eger compared the Florida strains with Pleurotus ostreatus from Michigan (supplied by Alexander Smith) and found them to be identical in form, taste, color and odor. Spore size and shape are also the same. Monokaryons arising from single spore germinations are completely cross fertile, suggesting that these two mushrooms are not separate species, but different strains within the same species. The American Type Culture Collection, which sells cultures to educational organizations and research facilities, lists this mushroom under Pleurotus ostreatus as number #38538. This strain is Block's original. Eger returned to Florida with San Antonio in 1977 and recollected four more strains of Pleurotus, three of which were deposited with ATCC. They are respectively: F1 = ATCC #38539; F2 = #38540; F4 = #38541. The Florida Pleurotus is available as commercial spawn from Somycel as #3025. The Swiss American Spawn Company sells a "low spore load" strain called P-3. COMMON NAME: Pleurotus Florida. The Florida Pleurotus. LATIN AND GREEK ROOTS: Pleurotus comes from the Greek "pleuro" which means formed laterally or in a sideways position, referring to the lateral position of the stem relative to the cap. The epithet Florida obviously refers to the locality where this mushroom was first collected. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Cap tongue shaped, maturing to a shell shaped form, 50-100 mm. in diameter; whitish to gray to pale yellow brown. (Color is a light and temperature determined factor in this species). The flesh is thin and white. The margin is even and occasionally wavy. The gills are white, decurrent and broadly spaced. The stem is attached in an off-centered fashion and is short at first and absent in age. Its spores are whitish to lilac gray in mass. NATURAL HABITAT: A wood decomposing, saprophytic or parasitic fungus. Pleurotus ostreatus grows abundantly on standing and fallen alder, cottonwood and maple. This species is especially numerous in river valleys and fruits in the fall, early winter and spring in subtropical environs. P. ostreatus (Florida variety) - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Fast growing rhizomorphic to linear mycelia. Its color is typically whitish. Standard Spawn Medium: Rye grain. See Chapter III. Fruiting Substrate and Method of Preparation: Cereal straw (normally wheat) balanced to a 75% moisture content. The straw, chopped or whole, is pasteurized by submerging in a 160°F. water bath for 20-30 minutes. An alternative method utilizes live steam pasteurization at 140°F. for 6 hours. In Japan, Pleurotus is grown on a mixture of hardwood sawdust and bran (4 parts to 1,65% moisture and a pH soma rights re-served 152 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb of 6.8-7.0). This mixture is sterilized for 1 hour at 15 psi. Being a primary decomposer, Pleurotus grows on a wide variety of wastes high in cellulose. Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90-100%. Substrate Temperature: Fastest growth at 82-86°F. Thermal death occurs if mycelium is held above 104°F. for 72 hours. Duration: 10-14 days for complete colonization. CO2: 20,000 ppm or 20% CO2 by volume. (Growth is stimulated up to 28,000 ppm). Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Light: Incubation in total darkness. Type of Casing: None needed. Pinhead Initiation: Relative Humidity: 95%. Air Temperature: 72-77°F. Duration: 7-14 days. CO2: less than 600 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 4 per hour. Light: Positive phototropism has been firmly established. 2,000 lux/hours for 12 hours/day is most stimulatory. Grow-lux type fluorescent lighting is recommended. Diffuse natural light is sufficient. Watering: Regular misting (once to twice daily) of the substrate until the fruitbodies are 30-40% of harvest size. Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 72-77°F. Duration: 4-5 weeks. CO2: less than 600 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 4-6 per hour or sufficient to meet CO2 and/or cooling requirements. Harvest Stage: Directly before incurved margin expands to plane. Flushing Intervals: 10 days. Light: Same as above. Watering: Misting recommended to prevent cracking of caps and to prevent resting primordia from drying. Yield Potential: Average commercial yields for Pleurotus ostreatus var. florida are 1 kilogram fresh weight of mushrooms per kilogram of dry weight of straw substrate. Pleurotus ostreatus var. florida produces more mushrooms within a shorter period of time while attaining a similar total yield per dry pound of substrate than does Pleurotus ostreatus. Moisture Content of Mushrooms: 91 % water; 9% dry matter. Nutritional Content: Crude protein has been reported at 30.4% of dry weight and 109 milligrams of niacin per 100 grams dry weight. Comments: The Floridan Pleurotus ostreatus, a warmth loving variety, is popular with growers in Europe (Hungary, France and Germany) and shares many of the growth characteristics of Pleurotus ostreatus. Its preference for warmer climes recommends this species for cultivation during the late spring through early fall whereas P. ostreatus is ideal for winter cultivation. This mushroom, like its close cousin P. ostreatus, is perfect for the home cultivator. But, the Floridan Pleurotus ostreatus has a distinct advantage over P. ostreatus in that a "cold shock" is not needed for pinhead formation and the period from initiation to first flush is only 10 days compared to 20 days for P. ostreatus. Its ability to soma rights re-served 153 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb fruit on a singular substrate, to permeate the straw rapidly while tolerating high CO2 levels and to produce abundant crops within a short time frame, makes Pleurotus an excellent species for small scale cultivation. The taxonomy of this "species" is unsettled and contradictory. Dr. Rolf Singer places P. floridanus in the Section Lentodiellum whose species are characterized by deeply rooted metuloid pleurocystidia (sterile surface cells on the gill having incrustations) and have mycelia that do not sclerotize. On the other hand, he assigns Pleurotus ostreatus to the type section Pleurotus which lacks metuloid pleurocystidia and has hyphae that undergoes sclerotization. Since monokaryons from single spores are compatible between these two mushrooms, and because sporulating fruitbodies form as a result of their mating, it seems clear that these two mushrooms are one species sharing a common genetic heritage. Of concern to cultivators is the abundant spore load produced by this mushroom, most noticeable within an enclosed growing environment. Some people suffer allergic reactions when coming into contact with Pleurotus spores. A small fraction of mycophagists are unable to eat P. ostreatus and allies without stomach upset. Hence, when eating these mushrooms for the first time, small portions are recommended. Genetic Characteristics: Basidia tetrapolar, producing 4 haploid spores; heterothallic. Clamp connections present. See Chapter XV. For more information consult: F. Zadrazil, 1974. "The Ecology and Industrial Production of Pleurotus ostreatus, Pleurotus florida, Pleurotus cornucopiae, and Pleurotus eryngii" in Mushroom Science IX (Part I). The Mushroom Research Institute, Japan. F. Zadrazil, 1978. "Cultivation of Pleurotus" in The Biology and Cultivation of Edible Mushrooms ed. by S.T. Chang and W.A. Hayes. Academic Press, New York. I. Heltay, 1980. "Pleurotus florida Production in Borota, Hungary". Mushroom Journal, London. soma rights re-served 154 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb SPECIES: Psilocybe cubensis (Earle) Singer = Stropharia cubensis Earle. = Stropharia cyanescens Murr. = Stropharia caerulescens (Pat.) Sing. = Naematoloma caerulescens Pat. = Hypholoma caerulescens (Pat.) Sacc. & Trott. Figure 163 - Psilocybe cubensis fruiting on cased grain. STRAINS: Strains of Psilocybe cubensis are available from private and commercial stocks. The American Type Culture Collection, which sells cultures to educational organizations and research facilities, has stock cultures of several wild strains. Note that the strains listed below are only some of those that are presently circulating. There are many more. Some strains may originate from the same region but have features not in agreement with those described here. Amazonian: Medium to large mushrooms on rye grain; thick whitish stems; tenaciously attached to the casing. Ecuadorian: Medium sized mushrooms on rye grain; hemispheric caps; abundant primordia former; high yielding on compost; thin whitish stems; easily picked. Matias Romero: Medium to large mushrooms on rye grain; early fruiter; thick whitish stems and tenaciously attached. Misantla: Medium sized mushrooms on rye grain; thin yellowish stems; tall standing and easily picked. Palenque: Large mushrooms on rye grain; high yielding; and easily picked. COMMON NAMES: San Isidro; Cubensis. soma rights re-served 155 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb GREEK ROOT: Psilocybe comes from the Greek root "psilos" meaning bald head and cubensis, a name Earle assigned to this mushroom because it was first recognized as a new species from specimens collected in Cuba. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: A medium to large size mushroom having a cap that becomes convex to plane in age and is usually pigmented chestnut brown to deep yellowish or golden brown. The cap surface is finely fibrillose, sometimes covered with scattered, fugacious, cottony scales that soon disappear. The partial veil is membranous, well developed and typically leaving a persistent annulus on the upper regions of the stem. The stem is often longitudinally striate, powdered above the annulus and often covered with dense fibrils below. Flesh bruising bluish or bluish green. Its spores purplish brown in mass. NATURAL HABITAT: Naturally found in horse and cow pastures, in dung or in soil enriched with manure. Psilocybe cubensis is a widely distributed species that is found throughout tropical and subtropical zones of the world and is common in the pasturelands of the gulf coast of the southern United States and eastern Mexico. Figure 164 - Psilocybe cubensis fruiting on cased straw. P. cubensis - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Rhizomorphic to linear; whitish in overall color but often bruising bluish where injured. Standard Spawn Medium: Rye grain. See Chapter III. Fruiting Substrate: Rye grain; wheat straw; leached horse or cow manure; and/or horse manure/straw compost balanced to a 71-74% moisture content. Method of Preparation: See Chapters III, V, and VI. Pasteurization achieved through exposure to live steam for 2 hours at 140°F. throughout the substrate. Straw or compost should be filled to a depth of 6-12 inches. Straw should be spawned at a rate of 2 cups/sq. ft. soma rights re-served 156 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90%. Substrate Temperature: 84-86°F. Thermal death limits have been established at 106°F. Duration: 10-14 days. CO2: 5000-10,000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Type of Casing: After fully run, cover with the standard casing whose preparation is described in Chapter VIII. Layer to a depth of 1-2 inches. The casing should be balanced to an initial pH of 6.8-7.2. Post Casing/Prepinning: Relative Humidity: 90+%. Substrate Temperature: 84-86°F. Duration of Case Run: 5-10 days. CO2: 5000-10,000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Light: Incubation in total darkness. Primordia Formation: Relative Humidity: 95-100%. Air Temperature: 74-78°F. Duration: 6-10 days. CO2: less than 5000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 1-3 per hour. Light: Diffuse natural or exposure for 12-16 hours/day of grow-lux type fluorescent light high in blue spectra at the 480 nanometer wavelength. (See Chapters IV and IX). Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 74-78°F. CO2: less than 5000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 1-3 per hour. Flushing Pattern: Every 5-8 days. Harvest Stage: When the cap becomes convex and soon after the partial veil ruptures. Light: Indirect natural or same as above. Yield Potential: Average yields are 2-4 lbs./sq.ft. over a 5 week cropping period. Maximum yield potential has not been established. Moisture Content of Mushrooms: 92% water; 8% dry matter. Nutritional Content: Not yet established. Comments: One of the easiest mushrooms to grow, this species fruits on a wide variety of substrates within broad environmental parameters. As a primary and secondary decomposer, Psilocybe cubensis fruits well on untreated pasteurized straw and on horse manure/straw composts transformed by microbial activity. Sterilized grain typically produces smaller mushrooms than bulk substrates. Given the numerous substrates that support fruitings, Psilocybe cubensis is well suited for home cultivation. Psilocybe cubensis cultivation was unheard of twenty years ago. Today, this species ranks amongst one of the most commonly cultivated mushrooms in the U.S. and soon the world. This sudden escalation in interest is largely due to the publication of several popular guides illustrating techniques for its culture. Psilocybe cubensis is a mushroom with psychoactive properties, containing up to 1% psilocybin and/or psilocin soma rights re-served 157 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb per dried gram. The function of these serotonin-like compounds in the life cycle of the mushroom is not known. Genetic Characteristics: Basidia tetrapolar (4-spored), forming haploid spores (1N); heterothallic. The mating of compatible monokaryons often results in fruiting strains. Clamp connections are present. See Chapter XV. For further information consult: Oss, O.T. and O.N. Oeric, 1976. "Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide" And/Or Press, Berkeley. SPECIES: Psilocybe cyanescens Wakefield = Geophila cyanescens (Maire) Kuhn. & Romagn. = Psilocybe mairei Singer Figure 165 - Psilocybe cyanescens fruiting indoors in a tray of alder chips. STRAINS: St. Clair. Many wild strains can be adapted to cultivation. COMMON NAMES: Cyan; Grandote. GREEK AND LATIN ROOTS: Psilocybe comes from the Greek "psilos" or bald head. The species name cyanescens is from "cyaneus" or blue for the color reaction of the flesh upon bruising. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Cap 20-50 mm. broad, convex to broadly convex to plane in age with an elevated and undulating margin which is, in turn, translucent-striate. The cap surface is smooth and viscid when moist from a separable gelatinous pellicle ("skin"). The color is caramel brown, fading to yellow-brown to straw colored from the center. The gills are attached in an adnate to adnexed fashion, dull brown with whitish edges. The stem is 60-80 mm. long by 2-5 mm. thick, fibrous and enlarged towards the base. Its surface is smooth or powdered (pruinose). The stem color is whitish, silky and becomes blue where injured, with rhizomorphs soma rights re-served 158 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb protruding about the stem base. The partial veil is cortinate (cobweb-like), leaving little or no trace on the stem. Its spore print is dark purplish brown. NATURAL HABITAT: Clustered in woody habitats; in soils high in the tissue of deciduous trees; or in tall rank grass. This species grows throughout the Pacific Northwest in areas well mulched by woody debris of deciduous and coniferous trees (typically not associated with bark). It has been reported from England and is thought to be broadly distributed throughout the European continent. Figure 166 - Psilocybe cyanescens mycelium growing on soaked corrugated cardboard inoculated with grain spawn. Psil. cyanescens - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Rhizomorphic to closely linear; whitish in color. Spawn Medium: Sawdust/bran or rye grain spawn. Fruiting Substrate: A lignicolous species utilizing a number of wood types, most notably alder, maple and fir. It is able to grow on a wide variety of cellulosic wastes including newspaper and cardboard. Method of Preparation: Branches and other small diameter wood are chipped into 1-3 inch pieces, preferably in the spring when the sap content is highest. This material is spawned with sawdust/bran (4:1) and made into prepared beds outdoors amongst ornamental shade plants (especially rhododendrons) or tall grass. Another method is to use sawdust/bran or rye grain spawn to inoculate soaked corrugated cardboard. When fully colonized, sheets of cardboard are laid at the bottom of trays which are then covered with a 2-4 inch layer of freshly cut alder chips. (Wood chips are far superior to sawdust as a fruiting substrate). Spawn Run: Substrate Temperature: 65-75°F. Duration: 30-60 days. Relative Humidity: 90+% soma rights re-served 159 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb CO2: 10,000 ppm or higher. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Type of Casing: None required. Primordia Formation: Relative Humidity: 95%. Air Temperature: 50-60°F. CO2: 5000 ppm or below. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2 per hour. Light requirements: Diffuse natural or grow-lights. Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 50-60°F. CO2: 5000 ppm or below. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2 per hour. Harvest Stage: When the caps become nearly plane. Light: Diffuse natural or grow-lights. Yield Potential: In natural outdoor culture on alder chips, 1 lb. wet weight per square foot in one growing season is easily obtained. Moisture Content: 90-92% water; 8% dry matter in fruitbodies. Comments: Psilocybe cyanescens is a primary decomposer, readily digesting newly cut alder and other deciduous woods. Considered the grandote of the Pacific Northwest, this species is both robust and potently psilocybian. Much sought after for its high psilocybin and psilocin content, it is a favored mushroom by those seeking entheogenic experiences. Psilocybe cyanescens' adaptability to natural outdoor culture makes this species attractive to beginning and connoisseur cultivators alike. Virgin spawn can be collected from the wild and implanted in prepared beds (see Chapter VI) or spawn can be grown out on bran/sawdust or grain and inoculated directly onto unsterilized soaked corrugated cardboard. Grain spawn inoculated onto untreated wood chips is associated with a higher contamination rate than the same spawn implanted onto soaked cardboard, owing to the partial selectivity of the latter material. Although fruitbodies can form on fresh sawdust, they do so reluctantly and belatedly. The fact that sawdust so readily loses its moisture may explain, in part, why Psilocybe cyanescens has difficulty fruiting on it. Psilocybe cyanescens has a mycelium that is typically whitish and strandy (rhizomorphic). Tissue and spore cultures are easy to obtain. Outdoor colonies can be maintained for years with minimal effort and produce two to three flushes within a season. See Color Photos 17 & 18. soma rights re-served 160 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb SPECIES: Psilocybe mexicana Heim Figure 167 - Sclerotia of Psilocybe mexicana harvested from one cup of rye grass seed six weeks after inoculation. STRAINS: Heim Strain, Pollock Strain. COMMON NAMES: Mushroom of the Gods; Teonanácatl or God's Flesh; Nize (Mazatec Name); and Pajaritos (Spanish Name). GREEK ROOT: Psilocybe comes from the Greek "psilos" or bald head. The species name mexicana denotes the country in which this mushroom grows. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Convex to subumbonate, sometimes with a small umbo, expanding in age to plane or nearly so. The surface is smooth, translucent-striate two thirds to the disc. The cap color is brownish to orangish grey to straw brown, more yellowish to the disc. The gills are adnately attached, grey to dark purplish brown. The stem is equal, smooth, hollow, pale straw to brown to reddish yellow, darkening when injured but typically not bruising bluish. Its spores are dark violet brown in mass. NATURAL HABITAT: Solitary to numerous in grassy areas, horse pastures and meadows although not occurring on dung. Distributed throughout subtropical regions in Mexico, common in the state of Oaxaca, and also known from Guatemala. P. mexicana - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Slightly rhizomorphic to finely linear; off-white to tan in color, sometimes with multicolored zones. Spawn Media: Annual rye grass seed or rye grain. Fruiting Substrates: Rye grass seed and to a lesser degree rye grain and pasteurized wheat straw. Few fruitbodies form on enriched malt agar media. Method of Preparation: Rye grass seed combined with water in a 2:1 volumetric proportion, preferably soma rights re-served 161 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb soaked overnight and then sterilized for 1 hour at 15 psi. Wheat straw is pasteurized in a hot water bath at 160-170°F. for 30 minutes. Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90+% Substrate Temperature: 75-81°F. Duration: 10-14 days. Relative Humidity: 90+%. CO2: 10,000 ppm or higher. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Type of Casing: Standard peat based casing whose preparation is described in Chapter VIII. Layer to a depth of ½-1 inch. Post Casing/Pre-pinning: Relative Humidity: 90+%. Substrate Temperature: 75-81°F. CO2: 10,000 ppm or above. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Light: Incubation in darkness. Primordia Formation: Relative Humidity: 95+%. Air Temperature: 71-74°F. CO2: 5,000 ppm or below. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2 per hour. Light: Diffuse natural or fluorescent grow-lights for 12 hours daily. Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 71-74°F. CO2: 5000 ppm or below. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2 per hour. Harvest Stage: When the caps become nearly plane. Light: Same as above. Yield Potential: Not yet established. A petite mushroom. Psilocybe mexicana is an interesting species for the connoisseur. Because of the small stature of the fruitbody, one should expect low yields per square foot. Sclerotia formation on rye grass seed after two months is 50-70 grams per cup of seed. Moisture Content: 90-92% water and 8% dry matter in fruitbodies; 70% water and 30% dry matter in sclerotia. Comments: This species is most remarkable for its early formation of sclerotia - only three weeks after inoculation onto rye grass seed. Heim and Wasson (1958) considered sclerotia production in this species to be the most efficient method for the generation of biomass. Optimum temperature for sclerotia production was reported to be at 70-75°F. in darkness. Sclerotia on agar media peaked at 4.5% malt concentration. Heim and Wasson also found fruitbody production was maximized on agar media when the percentage of malt was balanced to .45%. Nevertheless, sclerotia form best on rye grass seed incubated in total darkness. For further information consult: "Les Champignons Hallucinogenes du Mexique" by R. Heim and R. G. Wasson, 1958. Editions du Museum National D'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. See Color Photographs 2 and 13. soma rights re-served 162 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 168 - Two quart jars at 10 days and 30 days after inoculation onto rye grass seed. SPECIES: Psilocybe tampanensis Guzmán and Pollock Figure 169 - Sclerotia of Psilocybe tampanensis harvested from one cup of rye grass seed six months after inoculation. soma rights re-served 163 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb STRAINS: Pollock Strain. COMMON NAMES: The Tampa Psilocybe; Pollock's Psilocybe. Sclerotia are called The New Age Philosopher's Stone or Cosmic Comote. GREEK ROOT: Psilocybe comes from the Greek "psilos" or bald head. The species name tampenensis denotes the city near which this mushroom was first collected. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Cap convex to subumbonate, soon broadly convex to plane. The surface is smooth and the color is ochraceous brown to straw brown to grey brown. The gills are adnately attached, dark violet brown with whitish edges. The stem is 20-60 mm. long by 3-5 mm. thick, fibrous and enlarged towards the base. The stem surface is smooth to powdered (pruinose) and its color is yellowish brown to reddish brown overall, with whitish to bluish mycelium at or around the base. Its spores are dark purplish brown in mass. NATURAL HABITAT: Solitary to scattered in sandy soils and meadows in Florida (near the city of Tampa). This species is known only from the type locality where one wild specimen was collected. P. tampanensis - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Finely linear to cottony; tan to brownish in color, often multicolored with brownish hues. Spawn Media: Annual rye grass seed, wheat grass seed or rye grain. Fruiting Substrate: Cased rye grass seed (and possibly rye grain); leached cow manure; some potting soils; and enriched malt agar media. This species will probably fruit on cased pasteurized wheat straw. Method of Preparation: Rye grass seed combined with water in a 2:1 volumetric proportion, preferably soaked overnight. Sterilize for 1 hour at 15 psi. Wheat straw is pasteurized in a hot water bath at 160-170°F. for 20 minutes. Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90+%. Substrate Temperature: 75-81°F. Duration: 10-14 days. CO2: 10,000 ppm or higher. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Type of Casing: Standard peat based casing whose preparation is described in Chapter VIII. Layer to a depth of ½ to 1 inch. Post Casing/Pre-pinning: Substrate Temperature: 75-81°F. Relative Humidity: 90+%. CO2: 10,000 ppm or above. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Light: Incubation in darkness. Primordia Formation: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 71-74°F. CO2: 5000 ppm or below. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2 per hour. Light requirements: Diffuse natural or grow-lights for 12 hours/day. soma rights re-served 164 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 71-74°F. CO2: 5000 ppm or below. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2 per hour. Harvest Stage: When the caps become nearly plane. Light requirements: Diffuse natural or grow-lights for 12 hours/day. Yield Potential: A petite species, Psilocybe tampanensis is noted for its sclerotia forming ability, approximately 10-30 grams (wet weight) per cup of rye grass seed over 12 weeks. Because of the small stature of the fruitbody, one should expect low yields per square foot in comparison to other more fleshy species of Psilocybe. Moisture Content: 90-92% water and 8-10% dry matter in fruitbodies; 70% water and 30% dry matter in sclerotia. Comments: This mushroom would not be known but for a single specimen collected by Steven Pollock and Gary Lincoff in September of 1977. Cultures taken from this wild specimen were marketed by Hidden Creek Inc. under the name of the "Cosmic Comote". Sclerotia do not form until the fourth week (typically six to eight weeks) after inoculation of rye grass seed. To encourage sclerotia production only, incubate mycelia on rye grass seed at 75°F. in complete darkness. For further information consult: "Magic Mushroom Cultivation" by Steven H. Pollock, 1977. Herbal Medicine Research Foundation, San Antonio, Texas (out of print). See Color Photographs 4, 14 and 15. SPECIES: Stropharia rugoso-annulata Farlow apud Murrill = Stropharia ferii Bresadola = Naematoloma ferii (Bres.) Singer Figure 170 - Young fruitbodies of Stropharia rugoso-annulata fruiting on pasteurized straw cased with peat. soma rights re-served 165 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb STRAINS: Gartenriese Winnetou Gelbschopf The above listed strains are of European origin. Many strains of this species are available from culture banks, including those maintained by the American Type Culture Collection and Pennsylvania State Buckhout Laboratory. Strains are easy to obtain from the spores and tissue of wild specimens. COMMON NAMES: The Wine Red Stropharia; The Giant Stropharia. LATIN ROOT: Stropharia means "sword belt", so named for the belt-like ring on the stem. The species epithet rugoso-annulata comes from the combination of two Latin words: "rugosus" meaning wrinkled and "annulus" or ring. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: A large, thick fleshed mushroom with a broadly convex cap measuring 50-400 mm. in diameter, darkly pigmented yellowish brown with distinct reddish tones. The partial veil is thick, membranous, leaving a persistent membranous ring on the stem on whose uppersides are tiers of gills. The stem is whitish and has rhizomorphs attached to its base. Its spores are dark purplish brown in mass. NATURAL HABITAT: Occurring in gardens, in wood chips, on decomposing straw, in sawdust enriched soils and commonly in grounds where potatoes have been planted. Figure 171 - Buttons of Stropharia rugoso-annulata fruiting outdoors in a bed of wood chips. S. rugoso-annulata - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Rhizomorphic to closely linear; whitish in color. Standard Spawn Media: Rye grain or chopped wheat straw. Fruiting Substrates: Cased wheat straw, whole or chopped, and balanced to a 71-74% moisture content. This species has been grown on a substrate of alder/maple chips mixed with mature horse manure using natural soma rights re-served 166 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb culture techniques. Method of Preparation: Either chopped or whole straw is adequate, although permeation is more rapid on the former. (See Chapter VI on preparation of straw as a fruiting substrate). Pasteurization is achieved through the submersion of straw into a hot water bath at a temperature of 160°F. for 20-30 minutes. The straw, once pasteurized and inoculated, should be compacted and filled to a depth of 6-12 inches. Gramss (1979) noted that wheat straw supplemented with 25% Fagus sawdust enhanced yields. Watling (1980) reported, without elaboration, that fruitbodies form on a sawdust based medium. This species also fruits on unpasteurized straw although problems with insect pests and competitor molds are more pronounced. Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90+%. Substrate Temperature: 76-82°F. Thermal death limits have been reported as low as 90°F. and -5°F. Duration: 2-4 weeks. CO2: 5000-10,000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Type of Casing: After fully run, cover with peat/humus (1:1) casing. Optimally, the casing should have a pH of 5.7-6.0. (Because calcium based buffers inhibit fruiting, adjust the casing's pH by increasing or decreasing amount of peat). Balance to a 70-75% moisture content. Layer to a depth of 1-2 inches. Humus should be pasteurized to kill nematodes, mites, and other parasites. Some strains form fruitbodies solely on a peat casing. (Mushrooms do not form, however, on sterilized casing. Hence, if the casing must be treated, steam pasteurization is recommended). Post Casing/Prepinning: Relative Humidity: 90+%. Bed Temperature: 76-82°F. Duration of Case Run: 10-12 days. CO2: 5000-10,000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Light: Incubation in darkness. Primordia Formation: Relative Humidity: 95+%. Air Temperature: 55-62°F. CO2: less than 1000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2-4 per hour. Watering: Regular misting (once to twice daily) to help stimulate primordia formation. Light: Indirect natural or exposure to grow-lux type fluorescent for 12 hours/day. Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 55-62°F. CO2: less than 1000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2-4 per hour. Flushing Interval: Every 10-15 days. Harvest Stage: Directly before or as the partial veil tears. (Note that young mushrooms have a much better flavor than mature ones). Light: Indirect natural or exposure to grow-lux type fluorescent for 12 hours/day. Yield Potential: Average commercial yields are 2-3 lbs./sq.ft. over a 8 week cropping period. Maximum yields are nearly 6 lbs per square foot. Moisture Content of Mushrooms: 92% water; 8% dry matter. soma rights re-served 167 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Nutritional Content: 22% protein (dry weight); 34 milligrams of niacin per 100 grams dry weight. Comments: A mushroom recently cultivated in Europe (Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland) by home growers in outdoor cold frames, the status of knowledge regarding the optimum growing parameters for this species remains in its infancy. For instance, Szudyga (1978) noted that fruitbodies form just as well at 50°F. and 68°F., a considerable fruiting range for any species. After the cropping period ends, the spent straw is used as fodder for farm animals or is saved for future inoculations. The strain is kept kept alive by continous transfer onto fresh substrates. (See Chapter VI on natural culture). Propagating spawn in this way, however, is less assured than sterile methods. Stanek (1974) reported that the introduction of several thermotolerant endospore-forming bacteria of the genus Bacillus (B. subtilus, B. meseatericus and B. macerans) to the casing not only inhibited attacks by competitors but also stimulated mycelial growth which presumably would enhance yields. Endospores of these bacteria survive pasteurization but not sterilization, and are abundant in soils. This discovery may explain why sterilized casings do not produce fruitbodies. Genetic Characteristics: Basidia tetrapolar (4-spored), forming haploid spores; heterothallic. Clamp connections are present. See Chapter XV. For further information consult: K. Szudyga, 1978. "Stropharia rugoso-annulata" in The Biology and Cultivation of Edible Mushrooms ed. by S.T. Chang and W.A. Hayes. Academic Press, New York. SPECIES: Volvariella volvacea (Bull. cx Fr.) Sing. STRAINS: Many strains of V. volvacea are available from commercial and private stocks. The American Type Culture Collection, which sells cultures to educational organizations and research facilities, has stock cultures of several wild and domesticated strains. Several commercial companies also sell strains of this species. COMMON NAMES: The Paddy Straw Mushroom; The Chinese Mushroom. LATIN ROOT: Volvariella is the conjunction of two words: "volvatus" which means having a volva or cup-like sheath and the suffix "-ellus" denoting smallness in size. The species name volvacea shares the same root as the genus. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Mushrooms whitish at first, becoming a dark tan as the veil tears and eventually a pale tan with age. Fruitbodies are relatively small when young, enveloped by a sheath-like universal veil, soon breaking as the fruitbodies mature and leaving an irregular cup-like sack at the base of the stem. The cap is egg shaped at first, soon hemispherical to convex and expanding to plane with age. Its spores are pinkish to pinkish brown in mass. NATURAL HABITAT: Commonly occurring in decomposing straw in the Orient and in other subtropical regions of the world. V. volvacea - Growth Parameters Mycelial Types: Fast growing rhizomorphic to slow cottony mycelia noted. The color is typically white to grayish white. Spawn Medium: Rice straw or rye grain. See Chapter III. Fruiting Substrate and Method of Preparation: Traditionally grown on rice straw that has been composted for 1-2 days. More recently Hu (1974) found that a mixture of cotton wastes supplemented with wheat bran and calcium carbonate (5% and 5-6% by weight, respectively) and composted for 3 days, pasteurized for 2 hours at 140°F., conditioned for 8 hours at 125°F. and then gradually lowered to 77°F. over a 8-12 hour period, produced a higher yielding substrate than that of others previously used. A moisture content of 65-70% is recommended for rice straw and 70% for cotton waste mixtures. Chang (1978) recommended a combination soma rights re-served 168 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb of the two - with the rice straw/cotton waste in a proportion of 2:1 or 1:1 by weight. Spawn Run: Relative Humidity: 90+%. Substrate Temperature: Fastest growth at 88-95°F. Duration: 4-6 days for thorough colonization. CO2: 5000-10,000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 0 per hour. Light Requirements: Incubation in total darkness. Type of Casing: None needed. Pinhead Initiation: Relative Humidity: 95+%. Air Temperature: 82-88°F. Duration: 4 days. CO2: less than 1000 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2-4 per hour. Light: Diffuse natural or direct grow-light fluorescent for 12-18 hours per day. Watering: Regular misting once to twice daily. Cropping: Relative Humidity: 85-92%. Air Temperature: 82-88°F. Duration: 5-7 weeks. CO2: less than 600 ppm. Fresh Air Exchanges: 2-4 per hour or sufficient to meet CO2 and/or cooling requirements. Harvest Stage: Directly before rupturing of the universal veil. Flushing Intervals: 5-10 days. Light: Same as above. Watering: Regular misting to prevent caps from cracking and to keep resting pinheads viable. Yield Potential: Average commercial yields on rice straw are 22-28 kilograms of fresh mushrooms per 100 kilograms of dry straw. Optimum yields on cotton waste compost are 25-35 kilograms per 100 kilograms of substrate. Maximum yields are nearly 45 kilograms on cotton waste compost. Moisture Content of Mushrooms: 88-90% water; 10-12% dry matter. Nutritional Content: Crude protein is reported at 21.2 % of dry weight; 91 milligrams of niacin per 100 grams dry weight. Comments: In contrast to other species growing on straw, this mushroom does not compare favorably in terms of yield. The smaller crop figures are probably a result of the early picking of the mushroom fruitbodies, when they are most flavorful. Several researchers have noted the difficulty of maintaining high yielding strains of this species for any length of time. Its mycelium seems to have a limited transfer potential and should be stored at moderate temperatures (50°F.). Cultures are frequently renewed through multispore germinations. Volvariella volvacea is primarily grown in the Orient and is a warmth loving mushroom. Genetic Characteristics: Basidia tetrapolar, producing 4 haploid spores; primary homothallic. Clamp connections are present. Chlamydospores form. See Chapter XV. soma rights re-served 169 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb For more information consult: S.T. Chang, 1972. "The Chinese Mushroom (Volvariella volvacea): Morphology, Cytology, Genetics, Nutrition and Cultivation" The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. S.T. Chang, 1978. "Volvariella volvacea" in The Biology and Cultivation of Edible Mushrooms, pp. 573-603. Academic Press, New York. soma rights re-served Plate 1 - Psilocybe cubensis mycelium. Plate 2 - Psilocybe mexicana mycelium. Plate 3 - Lepista nuda mycelium. Plate 4 - Psilocybe tampensis mycelium. 170 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Plate 5 - Compost raw materials during pre-composting. Plate 6 - Compost raw materials at ricking. Plate 7 - Compost raw materials at filling. Plate 8 - Compost ready for spawning. Note whitish colonies of Actinomycetes. soma rights re-served 171 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Plate 9 - Agaricus brunnescens fruiting on cased horse manure compost. Plate 10 - Pleurotus ostreatus fruiting on pasteurized wheat straw. soma rights re-served 172 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Plate 11 - Lentinus edodes, the Shiitake mushroom, fruiting on oak logs. Plate 12 - Coprinus comatus, the Shaggy Mane, fruiting on cased horse manure compost. soma rights re-served 173 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Plate 13 - Psilocybe mexicana, Teonanacatl, fruiting on cased rye grass seed. Plate 14 - Psilocybe tampanensis sclerotia on rye grass seed. soma rights re-served Plate 15 - Psilocybe tampanensis fruiting on cased rye grass seed. 174 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Plate 16 - Psilocybe cyanescens mycelium running through moist alder sawdust. Plate 17 - Psilocybe cyanescens fruiting on alder chips. soma rights re-served 175 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Plate 18 - Psilocybe cubensis fruiting on cased, pasteurized wheat straw. Plate 19 - Panaeolus cyanescens fruiting on cased wheat straw. soma rights re-served 176 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Plate 20 - Penicillium, the Blue Green Mold and Cladosporium, the Dark Green Mold, growing on malt agar media. Plate 21 - Aspergillus, the Green Mold, growing on malt agar media. Plate 22 - Trichoderma, the Forest Green Mold, contaminating the casing layer. Plate 23 - Botrytis, the Brown Mold, contaminating the casing layer. soma rights re-served 177 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb XII. CULTIVATION PROBLEMS AND THEIR SOLUTIONS: A TROUBLE SHOOTING GUIDE Figure 172a,b,c,d. - The results of bacterial contamination. Many first-time cultivators fail to grow mushrooms for the simplest of reasons. Often times the slightest error in technique sets into motion a series of events that drastically influence the outcome of the crop. Whenever conducting sterile technique, making spawn, preparing compost or cropping mushrooms, wise cultivators follow a routine that has proven successful in the past. Once a consistent methodology has been established, new variations are introduced, one at a time, to gauge their effect. Problems intrinsic to mushroom culture have been encountered by most everyone attempting to grow mushrooms. The following trouble-shooting guide lists problems, causes and solutions according to their frequency of occurrence and has been organized into five categories: 1. Sterile Technique: media (agar and grain) preparation, spore germination, tissue culture and spawnmaking. 2. Compost Preparation: raw materials, characteristics of composts at different stages, Phase I and Phase II. 3. Spawn Running: colonization of compost and bulk substrates. 4. Case Running: application, colonization by mycelium, pre-pinning strategy. soma rights re-served 178 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb 5. Mushroom Formation and Development (Pinning to Cropping): strategy for pinhead formation, maturation and harvesting. Identify the problem, locate it on the list, read its possible causes, refer to the solutions available, and if indicated, turn to the chapter noted in parentheses. Good luck, pay attention to detail and may your problems be few. Sterile Technique Agar Culture PROBLEM CAUSE SOLUTION Media fails to solidify. Insufficient quantity of agar or distribution thereof. Thoroughly mix media before pouring. Media boils out of vessel or flask containing it. Excessive escape of steam from pressure cooker. Do not vent pressure cooker until reaching 1 psi. Grease pressure cooker seals with thin film of petroleum jelly. For pressure cookers using 5, 10, 15 lb weights, do not operate so steam escapes. Contamination occurs in petri dishes after pouring media but before inoculation. High contaminant spore load in lab. Improper media preparation technique. Contaminated pressure cooker (bacteria). No growth from spores or tissue transferred. Clean, paint lab. Install laminar flow hood. Allow pressure cooker to cool in sterile setting before opening. Sterilize pressure cooker for 24-48 hours at 15 psi. Wrong type of media. See media preparation. Wrong pH. See media preparation. Old or dehydrated spores. Soak in sterilized water for 12-24 hours. Scalpel or loop too hot. Sugar in media caramelized. Cool tool before contacting spores or tissue. Lower sterilization pressure and temp. to recommended levels. Contamination occurs around point of Inoculum (spores or tissue) transfer onto agar media. contaminated. Inoculation tools not sterile. Obtain "cleaner" spores or take a tissue culture from a fresher specimen, or inoculate as many plates as possible, saving only those not becoming contaminated. Autoclave tools, soak in alcohol, flame sterilize before using. Rhizomophic mycelia becomes cottony, slow growing. Fruitings diminish. Strain appears to be degenerating. Senescence, strain aging. Retrieve stock cultures and reactivate a strain of known vigor. Alternate media so that gene expression is not selected by a limited chemical matrix. Mutating. Sugar in media caramelized. Media containing mutagens. Cook agar media at lower temp. and pressure, between 12 and 15 psi. Insufficient jelling agent causing mycelium to grow subsurfacely and appear cottony. soma rights re-served 179 Add more agar or thoroughly mix media before pouring petri dishes. since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Grain Culture PROBLEM Glass spawn jars broken when pressure cooker is opened. CAUSE SOLUTION Pressure cooker cooled too rapidly. Change in temp. too abrupt. Allow cooker to descend to room temp. gradually. Jars too tightly packed. Allow space so jars can expand. Jars defective or cracked. Check for cracks or defects. Obtain new jars. Wrong type of jars. Replace with canning or autoclavable type. Grain jars difficult to shake. Grain "spontaneously" contaminates before inoculating or opening pressure cooker. Too much grain in container. Reduce grain to recommended levels. Too much water relative to grain. Follow recommended formulas. Measuring cups not accurate. Calibrate measuring cups with a graduated cylinder. Introduction of alien spores upon cooling. Cool-down in sterile environment or in front of laminar flow hood. Survival of bacterial endospores despite autoclaving. Replace source of grain or presoak grain for 24 hours before autoclaving. Agar wedge sticks to glass when grain jar is shaken. Agar media too thin, either from Use mycelium covered media before evaporation or from shallow pouring. substantial evaporation occurs. Pour more media into each petri dish initially. Little or no growth after mycelial wedge has been transferred. Grain too hot when inoculated. Allow to cool to room temperature before inoculating. Grain too dry. Balance according to recommended recipes. Mycelium not evenly distributed. Vigorously shake spawn jar after transfer of agar wedge and again 3-5 days after inoculation. Incubated at wrong temperature. Buffer with calcium carbonate according to species being cultured. pH wrong. See recommended spawn incubation temperatures in Chap. XI. Wrong spawn medium. Use media recommended for that species. Poor strain. Contaminated strain. Discard strain. Obtain purer strain, make up more grain media and clean laboratory. No growth on grain after inoculated with liquid culture/stirrer technique. Too many individual hyphae (cells) severed. Stirred for too long. No more than 5 seconds is recommend for high speed laboratory-type blenders to produce fragmented chains of hyphae. Bacteria. Replace mycelia with pure strain, free of bacteria. Be sure tools and water are sterile before inoculation. Poor strain. Cottony type mycelia is slow growing. Replace with rhizomorphic or faster growing strain. soma rights re-served pH Follow recommended recipes. See Chap. II. Water too hot. Allow to cool before inoculating. 180 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Contamination after transfer of mycelium. High contaminant spore count in laboratory. Clean lab before inoculations. Maintain high standards hygiene. Tools not sterile. Autoclave tools, soak in alcohol, flame sterilize before inoculation. Mycelium being transferred has high Obtain cleaner strain or spawn of resident load of contaminant spores. better purity. Mycelium fails to grow out through entire spawn jar. Insufficient shaking of grain after inoculation. Thorough shaking after double-wedge transfer, combined with re-shaking four days after inoculation. Mycelium inhibited by contamination Inoculate more sterilized grain using (usually bacteria). Externally or a pure strain and following standard internally introduced. practices for doing so. See Chap. II. Top kernels in spawn jar not colonized by mycelium. Top kernels dehydrated from excessive evaporation. If using porous filter discs, limit evaporation. Or use only in conjunction with narrow mouthed jars. Spawn jar discolored with yellowish droplets of fluid. Spawn jar incubated for an overly Incubate at temperature and for long period of time, at higher than period of time recommended for optimum temperatures, or both, species being cultivated. causing the exudation of metabolites ("sweat") and the build-up of fluids in which bacteria thrive. Compost Preparation Phase I PROBLEM Compost does not heat up, remains under 140°F. CAUSE SOLUTION Undersupplemented. Check compost formula. Check Nitrogen content of raw materials. Pile too open, airy. Compress pile sides. Protect pile from strong winds. Moisture content too high or low. Balance moisture to 70%. Insufficient pile mass. Increase total raw materials. Compost generates no ammonia. Undersupplemented. Check compost formula calculations. Check Nitrogen content of raw materials. Compost anaerobic. Moisture content too high. Balance moisture to 70%. Straw too short; pile too dense. Carefully monitor raw materials and adjust pile size as materials compact. Pile sitting too long between turns. Turn more frequently. Improper turning procedures. Move inside of pile to outside and vice versa. Variable starting materials. Horse manure or straw should all be in the same state of decomposition at the start of composting. Gypsum quantity too low. Add more gypsum. Starting materials too old. Use only fresh, undecomposed starting materials. Compost decomposing unevenly. Compost greasy. Compost too wet or too dry at filling. Incorrect water addition or timing. Check moisture content of pile before each turn. Straws still bright and shiny at filling. Phase I too short. Continue composting. Compost short and black at filling. Phase I too long. Shorten Phase I. soma rights re-served 181 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Phase II PROBLEM Compost will not heat up. Compost temperature erratic. Compost temperature uneven. Compost temp. too high after pasteurization. Compost temp. drops too low after pasteurization. Prolonged ammonification. CAUSE SOLUTION Supplementation rates too low. Check compost formula calculations. Compost too mature. Shorten Phase I. Oversupply of fresh air. Reduce fresh air supply. Air to bed ratio too great. Add more beds or trays and fill with more compost. Compost too wet. Compost should be 70% at filling. Irregular fresh air supply. Fresh air supply should be constant. Make volume changes slowly and as needed to stablize temp. Room environment not monitored enough. Check room every 4-6 hours. Containers filled unevenly. Fill all containers with equal amounts of compost and to the same depth. Uneven supplement distribution in Phase I. Be sure supplements are evenly mixed and are not concentrated in small pockets. Faulty air system design. Air system should insure even temp. throughout the room. Inadequate supply of fresh air. Increase fresh air. Pasteurization too long. Pasteurize for 2 hours at 140°F. Prolonged fresh air supply. Anticipate drop in compost temp. and reduce fresh air before reaching conditioning temp. Pasteurize at a lower temp. for more time. Low temperatures preserve more microorganisms that prevent temp. from falling rapidly. Oversupplementation with nitrogen. Reduce nitrogen supplements. Prolonged time at temp. over 130°F. Keep temp. under 130° after pasteurization. Use low temp. ranges during conditioning. Spawn Running PROBLEM Spawn grows slowly or not at all. soma rights re-served CAUSE SOLUTION Inferior spawn. Check spawn making procedures. Review strain storage methods. Test strain purity by inoculating agar plates. Degenerative or inviable strain. Always test untried strains in "miniculture" trials prior to inoculation into bulk substrates. Switch to a strain of known viability. Residual ammonia in compost. Prolong Phase II conditioning until litmus paper test shows no color change. Improper Phase I or Phase II. Review composting section. Substrate moisture content too high. Compost should be 64-66% water; straw should be 70-75% at spawning. Fly or nematode infestation. Check pasteurization time and temperature. Mycelium lacks oxygen. Be sure the container has provisions for air exchange. 182 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Molds present during spawn run. Improper Phase I or Phase II. Review composting section. Check contamination section for identification and factors predisposing to mold growth. Inky Caps (Coprinus sp.) occur during Residual ammonia in compost. spawn run. Prolong Phase II conditioning until litmus paper test no change. Mites or nematodes present. Insufficient pasteurization. Pasteurize 2 hrs. at 140°F. Compost with dense overwet areas. Review composting and filling procedures. Unclean substrate containers or spawning tools. Containers and tools should be disinfected before use. Case Running PROBLEM Mycelium fails to run through the casing layer. Casing dries out after application. Uneven mycelial growth into casing. CAUSE SOLUTION Temperature too high or too low. Incubate at optimum temp. for mycelial growth. pH improperly adjusted. Test pH before application. Adjust with limestone buffer (with one exception). Consult Chap. XI on the correct pH for each species. Casing to wet or too dry. Test moisture before application. Apply at 90% of capacity (70-75% moisture). Unsatisfactory casing materials. Review preparation of casing in Chap. VIII. Weak mycelial growth in substrate. Review techniques for substrate preparation in appropriate chapter. Substrate contaminated. Check substrate for molds and nematodes before casing. Growing room humidity too low. Increase humidification. Increase frequency of watering, or cover with plastic. Fan speed too high. Too much airflow. Decrease fan speed. Maintain slow, easy circulation. Casing materials poorly mixed. Thoroughly mix casing ingredients to insure an even blend. Unevenly applied casing. Redistribute or apply casing to an even depth. Uneven mycelial growth into substrate underlying casing. Thoroughly and evenly spread spawn throughout substrate at inoculation. Mycelium covers the casing but forms few primordia. "Overlay" caused by prolonged Patch the casing. Begin initiation mycelial growth into the casing layer. sequence sooner. If dealing with a slow pinning strain be careful that the evaporation rate off the casing surface is not excessive. Mycelium overlays the casing and then "mats", becoming flattened and impervious to water. No primordia form. Improper watering and/or too low Scratch and/or re-case. Maintain 95% humidity in the external environment. humidity at pinning. Reduce Evaporation rate too extreme. evaporation rate. If watering, mist lightly and evenly. Mycelium runs through the casing and then disappears. Die Back Disease (Virus). Discard and begin anew with a virusfree strain. See Chap. XIII. Dense white matted zones form on casing. Stroma. Select strains not predisposed to stroma formation (those without fluffy sectors). Reduce CO2. Contaminant (Scopulariopsis). pH too high. Compost improperly prepared. See Chapters V, XIII. soma rights re-served 183 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Mushroom Formation and Development Pinhead Initiation PROBLEM Mycelium fails to form primordia. Primordia form early. Primordia formation uneven. Pinheads fail to form abundantly. CAUSE SOLUTION Monokaryotic strain with low or no fruiting ability. Start again with new tissue isolate or isolate from multispore germination. Humidity too low. Keep humidity at 95% during pinning. CO2 too high. Reduce CO2 by introducing fresh air. Temperature too high. Decrease air temp. to the fruiting range. Insufficient light. Illuminate cropping surface for 12 hours/day. Uneven casing depth. Apply casing at an even depth and patch areas where mycelium appears prematurely. Early light stimulation. Incubate culture in darkness until ready to pin. Temperature too low. Incubate at optimum temp. for mycelial growth and then drop temp. for pinning. CO2 levels too low. Maintain airtight room and recirculate air until ready to pin. Uneven casing depth. Patch shallow areas as mycelium appears until growth is even. Uneven moisture in casing. Water casing evenly and carefully. Casing surface partially damaged from heavy watering. Keep casing surface open and porous through proper misting techniques. Uneven environmental conditions within the growing room. Review air system design. Casing layer moisture too low or too high. Adjust moisture level in casing to 70-75% for pinhead formation. Casing layer pH imbalanced. Adjust pH to levels recommended in Chap. XI for the species being cultivated. Magnesium in limestone buffer too high (above 2%). Some species are inhibited by minerals in the casing layer, especially the magnesium in dolomitic limestone. Use a low magnesium lime, less than 2%. CO2 too high. Lower CO2 to recommended levels. (Some species fruit poorly in high CO2 environments). Insufficient light. Photosensitive species require several hours of light stimulation per day for pinhead formation. Improper pinhead initiation strategy. See Chapter IX. soma rights re-served Defective strain. Replace with strain of known viability. Nematode infestation. See Chapter XIV. 184 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Pinheads form but fail to mature. Insufficient nutrient base. Review substrate materials and formulas. Follow those that are recommended for the species being cultivated. Excessive CO2 levels. Reduce CO2 to recommended levels. Humidity to high. Reduce humidity to 85-92%. Insufficient fresh air. Increase fresh air input to 2-4 room exchanges per hour. Strain idiosyncrasy. Replace with a strain having better fruiting capabilities. Fly, nematode or other contaminant inhibiting development. Review contaminant control procedures. Check source and quality of casing materials. Check mixing procedures. Excessive loss of moisture from casing. Maintain sufficient moisture (70-75%) in the casing through daily mistings if required. Cropping PROBLEM Low yielding first flush. Few mushrooms develop fully, many abort. Mushrooms have long stems and small underdeveloped caps. Mushrooms develop but abnormally. soma rights re-served CAUSE SOLUTION Poor pin set. Review pinning procedures and growing parameters for the species being grown. Substrate low in nutrients. Review substrate materials and formulas. Uneven pinning. Remove early developing pins. Lack of nutrients. Review substrate materials and formulas. Temperature too high. Maintain air temp. within cropping range. Parasitized by contaminant. See Chapters X and XIII. Follow procedures for encouraging cropping, not contamination. CO2 too high. Increase fresh air input. Insufficient lighting. Evaluate lighting system and type of light used. Parasitized by contaminant. Eliminate stagnant air pockets in the growing environment. See Chap. IV. Excessive CO2. Improperly balanced growing environment. Lower CO2 to recommended levels. Maintain air circulation, temp. and humidity at recommended levels. See Chap. X. Exposure to mutagenic chemicals (insecticides, detergents, chlorine, etc.) Limit exposure of mushrooms to such chemicals. Lack of adequate light for fruitbody development. Increase light exposure to 12 hours per day. See Chapters IV and IX. Strain idiosyncrasy. Switch to strain of known fruiting ability. 185 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb XIII. THE CONTAMINANTS OF MUSHROOM CULTURE: IDENTIFICATION AND CONTROL Figure 173 - Sporulating structure of Aspergilus mold. The contaminants are so named solely because they are undesired. If one were trying to culture Penicillium and spores of an Agaricus or Psilocybe settled onto the agar media and germinated, the resulting mycelia would be the so-called "contaminant." The contaminants in mushroom culture, however, are primarily molds, bacteria, viruses and insects. The pathway by which a disease is introduced, known as the vector of contamination, can be used to trace the contaminant back to its site of origin using simple deduction. By observing how a contaminant affects the mushroom crop and by carefully noting the conditions in which it flourishes, a cultivator can soon identify its cause. Earlier in the book, the five most probable vectors of contamination were identified as: 1. the cultivator. 2. the air. 3. the substrate to be inoculated. 4. the mycelium that was being transferred. soma rights re-served 186 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb 5. the inoculating tools, equipment, containers, facilities, etc. Different contaminants are associated with different stages of mushroom cultivation. Contaminants in agar culture most often come from airborne spores. Grain cultures contaminate from airborne spores and from a source which many cultivators fail to identify: the grain used in spawn making which is laden with spores of imperfect fungi, yeasts and bacteria. (See Ivanovich-Biserka, 1972). In compost culture, the major contributors to contamination are the materials used, the spawn, the workers or the facilities. This is not to say that contaminants can not be introduced by other means; these are the most probable sources of contamination given the cultivator has followed generally accepted procedures for mushroom culture. Tracking down the source of contamination is not difficult. For instance, the photographs below show two media filled Petri dishes contaminated with a Penicillium mold. Although the contaminant may be the same, the source of contamination is likely to be quite different. The plate in Fig. 174 has a mold colony growing directly beside the wedge of mycelium that was transferred. The plate in Fig. 175 shows contamination along the outer periphery. Here is a clear example illustrating how contamination spreads. The left plate became contaminated when the mycelium was transferred, suggesting the mold was associated with the previous culture. The right Petri dish contaminated from airborne spores which entered as the culture was incubating, judging by the proximity of the mold colonies to the outer edge. Air movement within the "sterile" laboratory most likely wafted spores towards the media plate and some penetrated the minute spaces between the lid and the base. Within the still air environment of the Petri dish, spores settled nearest to their point of entry, germinated and began resporulating, soon to be visible as a green mold. One would, therefore, implement the measures of control accordingly. Often times the source of contamination is not obvious. Beginners are at a particular disadvantage because every contaminant they encounter is "new". With each crop, problems arise requiring novel solutions. If a certain method of cultivation has been repeatedly successful in the past and suddenly an unfamiliar contaminant appears, identifying the vector can be much more difficult. Only when the cultivator can pinpoint the variables leading to the introduction of that contaminant can appropriate counter-measures be applied. Frequently what seems to be an inconsequential alteration in technique at one stage leads to a radical escalation of the contamination rate at later stages. Figure 174 - Penicillium mold near to transferred wedge of mushroom mycelium. Figure 175 - Penicillium mold along outer periphery of Petri dish. Since contamination at any phase of cultivation occurs for specific reasons, the contaminants can be the cultivator's most valuable guide for teaching one what NOT to do. If the problem causing organism is identified and if the recommended measures of control are carefully followed, a conscientious cultivator will avoid those conditions predisposing to that one competitor and, incidentally, many others. In effect, skill in soma rights re-served 187 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb mushroom culture is tantamount to skill in contamination control. Molds and bacteria do not grow well in a climate specifically adjusted for mushrooms. Although both mushrooms and contaminants prefer humid conditions, the latter thrive in prolonged stagnant air environments whereas mushrooms do not. The differences are frequently subtle - amounting to only a few percentage points in relative humidity and slight adjustments to the air intake dampers in the growing room. The contaminants can be divided into two well defined groups. Those attacking the mushrooms are called pathogens while those competing for the substrate are labeled indicators or competitors. (Mushroom pathogens are either molds, bacteria, viruses or pests; indicators are always fungi of some sort). In general, mushroom pathogens are not as numerous as the competitor molds, though they can be much more devastating. Figure 176 - High magnification scanning electron micrograph of Aspergilus spore beside germinating spore of Psilocybe cubensis. Not all molds and bacteria are damaging to the mushroom crop. To the contrary, several are beneficial. These can not be called true "contaminants" since cultivators try to promote, not hinder, their growth. To the beginner, however, they resemble real contaminants and therefore must be included in this chapter. Examples of yield enhancing organisms are several thermophilic fungi and bacteria, including: Humicola Torula Actinomyces Streptomyces Select Pseudomonas and Bacillus species These organisms are encouraged during the preparation of compost or during spawn run and are rarely seen in agar or grain culture. Since they can not accurately be termed contaminants, the aforementioned groups are not in the following key though they are fully discussed in the ensuing descriptions. Fungi, bacteria and viruses can be roughly delimited according to their size. All but viruses can be defected by the home cultivator. Viruses can prevent fruiting, malform the mushroom fruitbody, and expose the crop to further infestations from other pathogens. Since detecting viruses is beyond the means of home cultivators, soma rights re-served 188 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb they have also been excluded from this key. RELATIVE SIZES OF THE CONTAMINANT GROUPS Organism Size (in microns) Viruses .01 - .20 X-ray defraction, transmission electron microscopy and ultracentrifuge. Typically attached to other larger particles, occurring within cells, or are present in large conglomerate colonies. Often associated with bacteria. Bacteria .40 - 5.0 Detected by electron microscopy, light microscopy and ultracentrifuge. Large colonies visible to unaided eye. Sometimes associated with mushroom spores or mycelium. Fungi 2.0 - 30.0 Detected by light microscopy. Large colonies visible to unaided eye. Associated with a larger spore generating structure, often chain-like in form. Method of Detection Figure 177 - Diagram illustrating comparative sizes of airborne particulates. What follows is a rudimentary key to the major contaminant groups encountered in mushroom cultivation with the exception of insects and viruses which are discussed in later sections. Though thousands of species of fungi exist in nature, only a small fraction are repeatedly seen in the course of mushroom culture. Hence, this key is limited to that small sphere of microorganisms and does not propose to be an all encompassing guide to the molds. Nevertheless, this key should prove to be a valuable resource for anyone interested in improving their cultivation skills. Some contaminants are keyed out more than once if occurring in various habitats, or if exhibiting significant color changes. Since color has some emphasis in this key and that feature can be substrate specific, the authors presume the agar medium employed is 2% malt based, the spawn carrier is rye grain or sawdust/bran, and the fruiting substrate is one outlined in this book. Once led to a particular genus, refer to its description. If in doubt, a quick look under a medium power (400 X) soma rights re-served 189 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb microscope should readily discern one contaminant from another. If the contaminant can be identified but its source can not, turn the chapter entitled Cultivation Problems and Their Solutions. One or more of the common names have been listed under each competitor. Good luck, be meticulous in your observations and strictly adhere to the recommended measures of control. Contaminants encompassed by this key: Alternaria Cladosporium Monilia Papulospora Sepedonium Aspergillus Coprinus Mucor Penicilium Trichoderma Bacillus Dactylium Mvcelia Sterilia Pseudomonas Trichothecium Botrytis Epicoccum Mycogone Rhizopus Verticillium Chaetomium Fusarium Neurospora Scopulariopsis Yeasts Chrysosporium Geotrichum A Key to the Common Contaminants of Mushroom Culture This key is easy to use. Simply follow the key lead that best describes the contaminant at hand. When the key terminates at a specific contaminant, turn to the descriptions immediately following this key and then refer to the photographs and any related genus mentioned. To confirm the identity of any contaminant, compare its sporulating structures with the accompanying microscopic illustrations and/or micrographs. 1a Contaminant parasitizing the mushroom fruitbody (a pathogen). 2 1b Contaminant not parasitizing the mushroom fruitbody (an indicator). 7 2a Contaminant causing mushrooms to become watery, slimy, or to have lesions from which a liquid oozes but not covered with a powdery or downy mycelium. 3 2b Contaminant not as above but covering mushrooms with a fine powdery or mildew4 like mycelium. 3a Droplets forming across the cap and stem but lacking sunken lesions. Mushrooms eventually reduced to a whitish foamlike mass. Causal organism not known "Weepers" 3b Cap not as above but first having brownish spots that enlarge, deepen, and in which a grayish brown slime forms. Mushrooms eventually disintegrate into a dark slimy, oozing mass. Pseudomonas tolassii Bacterial Blotch Bacterial Pit 4a Contaminant eventually sporulating as a green mold on the mushroom. Usually preceded by an outbreak of green mold on the casing layer. Trichoderma virkie Trichoderma koningii "Trichoderma Blotch" 4b Not as above. 5 5a Contaminant appears on the casing soil as a fast running grayish cobweb-like mycelium, enveloping mushrooms in its path. (Spores usually three or more celled and 20 x 5 microns in size. If two celled, not acorn-shaped). Dactylium dendroides "Cobweb Mold" 5b Contaminant attacking the mushroom but usually not appearing on the casing layer. (Spores single celled or if two celled, resembling a roughened acorn and measuring much less than above). 6 6a Contaminant appears on the casing soil as a fast running grayish cobweb-like mycelium, enveloping mushrooms in its path. (Spores usually three or more celled and 20 x 5 microns in size. If two celled, not acorn-shaped). Mycogone perniciosa "Wet Bubble" 6b Contaminant afflicting young mushrooms as described above but those parasitized not exuding amber fluid when cut open. Stem in more mature mushrooms often splitting and peeling, causing the mushrooms to tilt. (Spores one celled.) Verticillium malthousei "Dry Bubble" 7a Contaminant in the form of another mushroom whose cap deliquesces (melts) into a blackish liquid with age. Coprinus spp. "Inky Cap" 7b Contaminant not as above 8 8a Contaminant becoming pinkish to reddish to purplish colored in age. 9 soma rights re-served 190 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb 8b Contaminant not as above. 14 9a Occurring on compost or the casing layer. 10 9b Occurring on nutrient agar media and on grain. 11 Mycelium fast growing, aerial, and never having a frosty texture. Pinkish with 10a spore maturity. (Spores unicellular with nerve-like ridges longitudinally arranged and ellipsoid). Neurospora sp. "Pink Mold" 10b Mycelium slow growing, appressed, and developing a frosty texture. Often becoming cherry red. (Spores cylindrical and lacking nerve-like ridges). Geotrichum "Lipstick Mold" 11a Mycelial network of contaminant not well developed, not clearly visible to the unaided eye, often slime-like. 12 11b Mycelial network of contaminant well defined and easily discernible to the naked eye, not slime like. 13 12a More frequently seen in agar culture. (Spores produced by simple budding, ovoid, single celled). The Yeasts see Cryptococcus 12b More frequently seen in grain culture. (Spores produced on a short conidiophore, sickle shaped, and multicelled). Fusarium "Yellow Rain Mold" 13a Mycelium fast growing and aerial. (Spores with nerve-like ridges and ellipsoid). 13b Mycelium typically slow growing and appressed. (Spores two celled, without ridges, and pear-shaped). Neurospora "Pink Mold" Trichothecium sp. "Pink Mold" 14a Contaminant slime-like in form. 15 14b Contaminant mycelium-like or mold-like in form. 17 15a Non-motile (not moving spontaneously). Spores relatively large, 4-20 microns in diameter. Not affected by bacterial antibiotics such as gentamycin sulfate. The Yeasts (see Cryptococcus and Rhodotorula under Torula) Motile (moving spontaneously). Spores relatively minute, rarely exceeding 2 15b microns in diameter. Growth prevented by bacterial antibiotics such as gentamycin 16 sulfate. 16a Cells rod-like in shape. Gram positive (retaining a violet dye when fixed with crystal violet and an iodine solution). Bacillus "Wet Spot" 16b Cells variable in shape. Gram negative (not retaining a violet dye when fixed with crystal violet and an iodine solution). Pseudomonas "Bacterial Blotch" 17a Contaminant mold greenish with spore maturity. 18 17b Contaminant mold blackish with spore maturity. 20 17c Contaminant mold brownish with spore maturity. 24 17d Contaminant mold yellowish with spore maturity. 25 17e Contaminant mold whitish with spore maturity. 28 18a Forming small burrs and usually olive green in color. (Spores lemon shaped, enveloped in a sac-like structure (a perithecium)). Chaetomium olivaceum "Olive Green Mold" 19 18b Not as above. 19a Molds typically blue-green in color. (Conidiophore diverging at apex into multiple chains of lightly pigmented single celled spores). Penicillium spp. "Blue Green Mold" Molds typically true green to yellow green in color. (Condiophore swollen at apex 19b and bulb-like (capitate), around which multiple chains of lightly pigmented single celled spores extend). Aspergillus spp. "Green Mold" Molds forest green in color. (Conidiophore easily disassembling in wet mounts and 19c difficult to observe under the microscope. Spores single celled, lightly pigmented, and encased in a mucous-like substance). Trichoderma spp. "Forest Green Mold" soma rights re-served 191 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator 19d www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Molds blackish green in color. (Conidiophores branching into few forks at whose ends darkly pigmented spores form, often two celled.) Cladosporium spp. "Blackish Green Mold" 20a Mold colony appressed, resembling a dark Penicillium-like mold, but not aerial. 21 20b Mold colony aerial, not Penicillium-like. 22 21a (Spores elongated and ornamented with ridges, generaly exceeding 20 microns in length and 5 microns in diameter). Alternaria spp. "Black Mold" 21b (Spores spherical, not ornamented with ridges, generally less than 5 microns in diameter). Aspergillus spp. "Black Mold" Most frequently seen on compost. Resembling black whiskers. (Forming a 22a conidiophore that diverges into multiple stalks at whose ends are chains of darkly pigmented spores). Doratomyces stemonitis spp. "Black Whisker Mold" Most frequently seen in agar and grain culture. Resembling a forest of dark 22b headed pins. (Forming a sporangiophore consisting of single stalk at whose end a ball-like sporulating structure is attached). 23 Conidiophore appearing swelled at apex; partially covered by a sporulating membrane. Rhizopus "Black Bread Mold" "Black Pin Mold" 23b Conidiophore not swelled as above; apex totally covered by sporulating membrane. Mucor "Black Pin Mold" Mold developing small bead-like masses of cells (easily visible with a magnifying 24a lens). Never producing cup-like fruitbodies. (Darkly pigmented cells clustered on a mycelial mat; spores lacking). Papulospora byssina "Brown Plaster Mold" 23a 24b Mold not developing the ball-like clusters of the above. Sometimes producing cuplike fruitbodies. (Spores produced in bunches in a grape-like fashion). Botrytis "Brown Mold" 25a Mold forming a corky layer between the casing layer and the compost, and matlike. (Spores borne on short vase shaped pegs). Chrysosporium luteum "Yellow Mat Disease" "Confetti" 25b Mold not forming a corky layer and appearing mat-like. (Spores not borne in the manner above). 26 Not occurring on compost. (Conidiophores short, arising from cushion shaped 26a cells. Spores, if reticulated, appear to be composed of several tightly compacted cells). 26b Frequently seen on compost but not exclusively so. (Conidiophores not as above. Spores appearing unicellular) Spores large, exceeding 5 microns in diameter, and of two types. Some spherical and spiny, forming singly at the end of individual hyphal branches; others vase 27a shaped arising singly or in loose clusters from an indistinct, hyphal-like conidiophore). Epicoccum "Yellow Mold" 27 Sepedonium "Yellow Mold" 27b Spores small, less than 5 microns in diameter, ovoid, forming on chains arising from a head-like structure positioned at the apex of a long stalk. Aspergillus spp. "Yellow Mold" 28a Appearing as a dense plaster-like or stroma-like mycelium. (Condiophore brush shaped (penicillate)). Scopulariopsis "White Plaster Mold" 28b Mycelium not plaster-like. (Conidiophore not brush shaped (penicillate)). 29 29a Spores forming from hyphae in chains. Monilia "White Flour Mold" 29b Spores absent, not forming from hyphae. Mycelia Sterilia (see also: Mucor and Sepedonium). soma rights re-served 192 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Virus (Die-Back Disease) Common Name: Die-back Disease; La France Disease, Mummy. Habitat and Frequency of Occurence: An infrequent and difficult to detect disease. Their habitats are other larger particles or organisms. Medium through which contamination is spread: Primarily from infected mycelium or from the spores of diseased mushrooms. Dieleman-van Zaayen (1972) found that the most common way virus spreads is through the anastomosing ("merging") of healthy mycelia with infected mycelia that was leftover from previous crops. Once anastomosed, the virus particles spread throughout the mycelial network of the new mycelium. Measures of Control: Thorough disinfection of the growing room between crop rotations by steam heating for 12 hours at 158-160°F.; the installation of high efficiency spore filters to screen particulates exiting the growing environment; the disinfection of floors and hallways leading to and from the growing room with 2% chlorine solution; and picking diseased mushrooms while the veil is intact before spores have the opportunity to spread. Isolation of infected crops from adjacent rooms or those newly spawned helps retard the spread of this disease. Other measures of control include the placement of disinfectant floor mats to prevent the tracking in of virus-carrying particles on worker's shoes and the maintenance of strict hygienic practices at all times, particularly between crops. Macroscopic Appearance: On nutrient agar media, infected mycelia slows or nearly abates in its rate of growth as the disease progresses throughout the mycelial network. When running through the casing layer, large zones one to three feet in diameter remain uncolonized. In some cases the mycelia, once present, disappears from the surface. Fruitbodies may not form at all, or when they do, the mushrooms are typically deformed (dwarfed or aborted), often with watery or splitting stems, and brown rot. The caps prematurely expand to plane. Virus infected cultures can exhibit any combination of the above described symptoms. Microscopic Characteristics: Particles typically ovoid to polyhedral, measuring 25 or 34 nanometers. Elongated particles measure 19-50 nanometers. Virus particles dwell within hyphal cells or on the surfaces of spores. They are detectable only through transmission electron microscopy or ultracentrifuging. soma rights re-served 193 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Responsible for many plant, animal and human diseases. Typically viruses are associated with larger carrier particles, particularly bacteria. Comments: Virus is most likely introduced during or directly after spawning. Infected farms experience losses up to 70%. First reported from Europe, measures of control and prevention have been developed and successfully tested by the Dutch. Most notably, virus spreads by attaching itself to mushroom spores which then become airborne. Virus also spreads through the contact of healthy mycelia with diseased mycelia. Afflicted mushrooms are soon exploited by a host of other parasites, making a late and accurate diagnosis of this contaminant difficult. Undoubtedly, virus is the cause of what many have noted as "strain degeneration". Heat treatment of infected strains grown on enriched agar media at 95°F. for three weeks has been suggested as one remedy for curing diseased mycelia. (See Candy and Hollings, 1962 and Rasmussen et al., 1972). Van Zaayen (1979) and others have noted that Agaricus bitorquis seems resistant to virus disease even when inoculated with in vitro particles. Another species of Agaricus, called Agaricus arvensis, exhibits similar virus resistant qualities. Virus-like particles have also been found in Lentinus edodes by Mon et alia (1979) but do not adversely affect fruitbody formation or development. These same researchers reported that this species' viruses can not be transmitted to other mushrooms or plants, a fact they attributed to the interferon producing properties of the shiitake mushroom. No work with infected strains of Psilocybe are known. Only a fraction of wild mushrooms harbor virus-like particles. Actinomyces (Firefang) Class: Actinomyces Order: Actinomycetales Family: Actinomycetaceae Common Name: Firefang Greek Root: From "actino" meaning rayed or star-like and "myces" or fungus, in reference to its characteristic appearance when colonizing straw or straw/manure compost. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Many species thermophilic; thriving in the 115-135°F. temperature range and commonly found in decomposing straw, horse and cow manures. Actinomyces are important soil constituents. They thrive in aerobic, well prepared mushroom composts. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily air; secondarily the straw used in compost preparation. Measures of Control: Generally no controls are necessary during compost preparation. However, Actinomyces can cause spontaneous combustion in wet, compacted straw. Covering stored baled straw from excess water absorption should be adequate protection from Actinomyces and the thermogenic reactions they cause. Macroscopic Appearance: Grayish to whitish speckled colonies, readily apparent on dark composted straw. Microscopic Characteristics: Composed of an extensive, fine hyphal network that rarely branches. Rod-like spores form when the filaments break at the cell wall junctions. The filamentous hyphae and spores are minute, measuring only 1 micron in diameter. Within each cell, no well defined nucleus is discernible. Lacking differentiated spore-producing bodies, Actinomyces are Gram-positive. soma rights re-served 194 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 178 - Drawing of Actinomyces. History, Use, and/or Medical Implications: Few species pathogenic. Amongst agricultural workers in the same position, males are three times more susceptible to this bacterium than females (see Cruickshank et al., 1973). Two notable species causing serious diseases (actinomycosis) of the skin and oral cavity in humans are Actinomyces bovis and Actinomyces israelii. Generally, these species behave as secondary infectious organisms. Penicillin is often used for treatment. Actinomycin, a potent antibiotic compound interfering with RNA synthesis, is derived from this group of bacteria. Although the likelihood of mushroom growers contracting actinomycosis is remote, workers spawning compost are exposed to high concentrations of Actinomyces spores and often report less severe, temporary allergic reactions. Therefore, the use of a filter mask when spawning large volumes of compost is advisable. Comments: The Actinomyces resemble both bacteria and fungi and have alternately been called one or the other. Presently, the prevailing belief is that they are filamentous (Gram-positive) bacteria because they are prokaryotic (lacking a defined nucleus), are inhibited by bacterial antibiotics and not affected by fungal antibiotics;, and lack the chitin-like compounds so typical of the true fungi. The hyphal filaments of Actinomyces are one fifth to one tenth as thick as those of true fungi. Actinomyces are commonly called Firefang for their ability to cause spontaneous combustion of decomposing materials. (Spontaneous combustion is prevented by proper composting practices.) Many of these bacteria/fungi are true thermophiles and can live aerobically or anaerobically. Actinomyces is the major microorganism selected to colonize the compost during Phase II. When the finished compost is spawned, Actinomyces are consumed by the mushroom mycelia. See also Streptomyces. See Color Photo VIII. soma rights re-served 195 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Bacillus (Wet Spot) Class: Schizomycetes Order: Eubacteriales Family: Bacillaceae Common Name: Wet Spot; Sour Rot. Latin Root: From "bacilliformis" meaning rod-like, in reference to its characteristic shape. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Living within a broad range of habitats. Bacillus grows on almost anything organic that is moist and is surrounded by oxygen. It is particularly common in soils. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily through the air; secondarily through water, grain, soils, composts, insects, tools and workers. Figure 179 - Drawing of endospore forming Bacillus cells as they appear through a microscope and without special stains. Measures of Control: Air filtration through high efficiency particulate air filters; thorough sterilization of grain; and proper storage and use of relatively "clean" grains. The addition of antibiotics to agar media (gentamycin sulfate, penicillin, streptomycin, aureomycin, etc.) hinders or prevents the growth of these contaminants. Endospores are neutralized by exposure to moist heat, such as the steam generated within a pressure cooker at temperatures of 250°F. and 15 psi pressure for a full hour. Temperatures as low as 140°F. kill the vegetative parent cells but not the endospores they form. Macroscopic Appearance: A dull gray to mucus-like brownish slime characterized by a strong but foul odor variously described as smelling like rotting apples, dirty socks or burnt bacon. Bacillus makes uncolonized grain appear excessively wet, hence the name "Wet Spot". Pallid to whitish ridges along the margins of individual grain kernels characterize this contaminant. Microscopic Characteristics: Rod-like or cylindrical in shape, measuring 0.2-1.2 microns in diameter and 1-5 soma rights re-served 196 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb microns in length. When wet mounts are viewed through a microscope, Bacilli excitedly wriggle back and forth. Species move by the vibrating action of flagella ("hairs") that outline each cell. These flagella are difficult to observe microscopically without using specific staining techniques. Bacilli are encapsulated by a thin but firm slime and conglomerations of cells give infected grain a slimy appearance. Bacillus primarily reproduces through simple cell division. In times of adverse environmental conditions, especially heat, a single hardened spore forms within each parent cell body. These endospores show an extraordinary resistance to heat, are low in water content and are unaffected by drying. Species in this genus are Gram positive. Figure 180 - Bacillus, the Wet Spot bacterium, as it appears on grain. Figure 181 - Scanning electron micrograph of rod shaped bacteria on a spore of Panaeolus acuminatus. Figure 182 - Scanning electron micrograph of rod shaped bacteria on mycelium of Psilocybe cubensis. History, Use, and/or Medical Implications: The most notable species in the genus is Bacillus anthracis, the cause of the hideous Anthrax disease that killed several thousand sheep when an United States Army soma rights re-served 197 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb experiment went awry in Utah during the 1950s. Home cultivators are, however, unlikely to be exposed to this species. Most endospore forming bacteria are not virulent. Bacillus subtilis, the bacterium spoiling grain spawn, is being developed to replace E. coli as a recombinant-DNA fermentor. Clostridium is a genus similar to Bacillus except that it is anaerobic. That genus is reknowned for one toxic species in particular: C. botulinum, the cause of botulism. Comments: A pernicious and tenacious competitor, Bacillus contamination is the most difficult to control. At room temperature, a single cell reproduces every 20 minutes and will multiply into nearly a million daughter bacteria in only seven hours. In another seven hours each one of those million bacteria divide into a million more cells. Thus, in less than fourteen hours, one trillion bacteria evolve from a single parent cell! The phenomenonal reproductive capability of Bacillus and other bacteria poses a formidable threat to the spawn maker. Although parent cells are easily destroyed, their endospores are not. Under dry conditions, endospores form in increasing numbers as temperatures rise to 130°F. In boiling water (212°F.), endospore viability markedly decreases. (Ninety percent of Bacillus spores are killed in only one minute at 212°F.). At the higher temperatures and pressures within an autoclave the survivability of Bacillus spores falls well below 1%. Nevertheless, this 1% seriously obstructs any attempt at grain culture given Bacillus' rapid reproductive capability. This problem is compounded if the bacteria count in the grain is initially high. In one study (Shull and Ernst, 1962), the thermal death time (TDT) of an exposed Bacillus stearothermophilus population of 1,300,000 endospores was pinpointed at 250°F. for 13 minutes. (In a pressure cooker at sea level, 250°F. corresponds to 15 psi). Food researchers concerned with food-spoiling bacteria (particularly Clostridium) have shown that endospore endurance to heat is directly related to the amount of calcium in the host substrate. Once formed, endospores can sit dormant for extended periods of time. Even endospores removed from the stomachs of mummies have proved viable after hundreds of years. Although an autoclave may read a certain temperature, the grain within the spawn containers may be well below that reading. To guarantee adequate steam penetration, the water in pressure cookers should be brought to a boil for 5 minutes before closing the vent valve. Furthermore, bacteria within the spawn container are partially protected from the sterilizing influence of steam by the structural cavities of the grain medium. This delay in steam penetration time is especially characteristic of large, heavily packed autoclaves. Despite the fact that autoclaving for one hour at 15 psi is sufficient to kill most contaminants, grain having initially high bacteria populations may require sterilization at higher temperatures and for prolonged periods of time. Autoclaving quart jars for 1 hour at 270°F. (which is equivalent to 27 psi) is sufficient to neutralize grain heavily infested with endospore forming bacteria. If converting a standard home pressure cooker for this purpose, contact the manufacturer about stress limitations and follow all safety recommendations. If "sterilized" rye grain spontaneously contaminates with bacteria before inoculation and the grain is the cause, it is best to replace the grain with a cleaner one than to undergo the expense and time of double sterilization. Some spawn laboratories regularly precook their grain for approximately 2 hours in water at a low boil. Excess water is allowed to drain from the grains which are then placed into the spawn container and sterilized at standard time and pressure. The most practical method for eliminating bacterial endospores involves soaking the grain at room temperature 24 hours prior to sterilization. Endospores, if viable, will germinate within that time frame and then be susceptible to standard sterilization procedures. And, new endospores won't form in the moist environment of the resting jar of grain. Bacillus subtilis var. mucoides is the common bacterium responsible for spoiling spawn media. If allowed to proliferate, this contaminant wreaks havoc in a spawn laboratory, necessitating a complete shut-down of operations. Spores and even strains of mushroom mycelium can become hosts for Bacillus, carrying bacteria on their hyphae (see Figs. 181 & 182), and then contaminating any media onto which the mushroom mycelia is transferred. Many bacteria are rod-shaped and the term bacillus has been loosely used to describe them. The genus concept of Bacillus, however, has been narrowed considerably with time; Bacillus is now defined as Gram positive rod-like, aerobic bacteria that form spores. soma rights re-served 198 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb According to Park and Agnihotri (1969), Bacillus megaterium stimulates primordia formation in certain strains of Agaricus brunnescens (bisporus). (See Appendix II for a futher discussion on the influence of bacteria on fruiting). Another species, Bacillus thermofibricolous, if introduced at spawning, inhibits the growth of competitor molds in rice bran/sawdust spawn prepared for shiitake cultivation according to Steineck (1973). See also Pseudomonas. Pseudomonas (Bacterial Blotch & Pit) Class: Schizomycefes Order: Pseudomonadales Family: Pseudomonaceae Common Name: Bacterial Blotch; Bacterial Pit. Greek Root: From "pseudes" meaning spurious, false or deceptive and "monas" meaning one or a single unit, in reference to the variable forms of this single celled bacterium. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Ubiquitous in all soils and abounding in aqueous habitats. Pseudomonas tolaasii commonly parasitizes mushrooms that remain wet over a prolonged period of time. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily water; secondarily through grain, soils, composts, flies, mites, nematodes, tools and workers. Figure 183 - Drawing of Pseudomonas, a genus of variably shaped bacteria that have hair-like flagella at their ends. Measures of Control: Use of mildly chlorinated water (150-250 ppm) or water free of high bacteria counts. This contaminant can easily be prevented by: isolating and properly disposing of infected fruitbodies; eliminating excessively high humidity levels during cropping (greater than 92%); and preventing stagnant air pockets through a good air circulation system. Maintaining a sufficient evaporation rate lessens the likelihood of these bacteria infecting the fruitbodies. soma rights re-served 199 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Macroscopic Appearance: Yellowish spots or circular or irregular lesions; superficial; rapidly reproducing on wet mushrooms; and becoming chocolate brown and slimy with age. This bacterium has a dull gray to mucuslike brownish slime. It also has a mildly to strongly unpleasant odor. Microscopic Characteristics: Cylindrical (bacilli) and spherical (cocci) forms characterize this genus. Cells are extremely variable in shape, measuring 0.4-0.5 x 1.0-1.7 microns. Typically the bacterial cell has one or more flagella ("motile hairs") at one or both of its poles. (Bacillus has flagella along its entire outer periphery). Both organisms use these flagella for locomotion. Species in this genus are generally Gram negative. Figure 184 - Pseudomonas putida, a beneficial bacterium stimulatory to formation of fruitbodies in some mushroom species, growing on malt agar. Figure 185 - Bacterial pit on Psilocybe cubensis from a Pseudomonas species. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Some species pathogenic to humans. Of special note is Pseudomonas aeruginosa (also known as Ps. pyocyanea), a species that causes blindness and other diseases. soma rights re-served 200 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Pseudomonas putida is stimulatory to primordia formation in certain strains of Agaricus brunnescens (bisporus) and its use is of potential commercial value. Comments: More than 140 species have been identified thus far; only a few have been identified as affecting mushrooms. Pseudomonas species are much more sensitive to heat sterilization than the endospore-forming bacilli. Pseudomonas bacteria proliferate in standing water or anywhere there is moisture. Pseudomonas tolaasii is the cause of bacterial blotch that can devastate crops of Agaricus and Psilocybe. One biological remedy for controlling this species was proposed by Nair and Fahy (1972) who showed that introduction of Pseudomonas fluorescens, a natural antagonist to Pseudomonas tolaasii, markedly decreased the occurrence of blotch while not hindering Agaricus brunnescens yields. Others believe Pseudomonas fluorescens to be merely a variety of Pseudomonas tolaasii, and hesitate to recommend it. In a characteristic manner, Pseudomonas tolaasii causes sunken grayish brown lesions on the mushroom cap in which a slimy fluid collects. Another Pseudomonas species, yet unidentified, has been implicated in the cause of a more severe form of blotch, Bacterial Pit. Pseudomonas also contaminates agar and grain cultures, inhibiting mycelial growth. The use of antibiotics (gentamycin sulfate) or micron filters prevents outbreaks of this contaminant. A few species cause the mycelium to grow more rapidly and luxuriantly. Similarly, considerable attention has centered on the beneficial role of Pseudomonas putida and allies in the casing layer. This subject is discussed in detail in Appendix II. See also Bacillus. Streptomyces (Firefang) Class: Actinomyces Order: Actinomycetales Family: Streptomycetaceae Common Name: Firefang. Greek Root: From "strepto" meaning twisted and "myces" or fungus, in reference to the twisting and branching filaments that give rise to spores. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Ubiquitous on straw, manures and soil. Streptomyces is a predominant microoganism in the compost pile, thriving between 115-135°F. and preferring aerobic zones. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily air; secondarily from materials used in composting. Streptomyces are naturally present in all soils. Measures of Control: Generally no controls are necessary during compost preparation, nor desired. General hygienic practices prevent this bacterium from becoming a problem contaminant in the laboratory. Macroscopic Appearance: Grayish to whitish specked colonies, readily apparent on composted straw. On grain, Streptomyces has a delicate whitish mycelium and is powdery in form. Microscopic Characteristics: Composed of an extensive, fine hyphal network, often branching, coiled and twisted. The hyphae in Streptomyces do not fragment into spores as in Actinomyces but form a chain-like structure of aerial hyphae called a sporophore from which cells evolve terminally. The filamentous hyphae and spores measure only 1 micron in diameter. Within each cell, no well defined nucleus is discernible. Streptomyces lack differentiated spore-producing bodies. Its spores are smooth or spiny. History, Use, and/or Medical Implications: Streptomyces represents 80% of all actinomycetes which inhabit mushroom compost and is selected for its beneficial properties during Phase II. (See Chapter V). soma rights re-served 201 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 186 - Drawing of spore producing cells of Streptomyces. Streptomyces griseus is the source of the antibiotic streptomycin, first discovered by Waksman in 1944. The autoclavable antibiotic gentamycin is derived from a genus closely allied to Streptomyces, the genus Micromonospora. Comments: Streptomyces resemble both bacteria and fungi and are sometimes referred to as the "higher bacteria." Streptomyces differ from Actinomyces in that their spores are produced on an aerial chain-like structure and do not simply fragment from the hyphal network. Also, the filaments of Streptomyces frequently branch whereas those of Actinomyces do not. The hyphal filaments of Streptomyces are one fifth to one tenth as thick as that of true fungi. Donoghue (1962) reported that a Streptomyces contaminant initiated fruitbodies in spawn of Agaricus bisporus, a species that does not normally form mushrooms on grain. Furthermore, he observed that mycelia associated with Streptomyces grew faster and more luxuriantly than those not infected with it. (For more information on the influence of bacteria on mycelial growth and fruiting, turn to Appendix II.) See also Actinomyces. For more information consult: Kurylowicz, W. et al., 1971 in "Atlas of Spores of Selected Genera and Species of Streptomycetaceae," University Park Press, Baltimore. Alternaria (Black Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Dematiaceae Common Name: Black Mold; Gray Black Mold; Black Point. Latin Root: From "alternus" which means alternating, in reference to the chains of alternating spores, which soma rights re-served 202 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb so characterize this genus. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Very common in nature, occasionally to frequently encountered in spawn production, and present in large numbers in household dust. Alternaria is infrequently seen on rye grain, and according to Bitner (1972), this contaminant is more prevalent on sorghum than on other grains. Alternaria is one of the major fungal saprophytes on grain, seeds, straw, leaves, rotting fruits and unsalted butter. In temperate climatic zones, it is more prevalent in the late summer and fall than at any other time. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Air. Figure 187 - Drawing of conidia typical of the genus Alternaria. Measures of Control: Good hygienic habits; maintenance of a low dust level; and filtration of air through micron filters. Macroscopic Appearance: A rapidly growing rich gray black to blackish mycelium. Alternaria first appears as scattered blackish spots in the spawn jars, soon spreading and overwhelming the mushroom mycelium. On agar, it resembles a black Penicillium-like mold. Microscopic Characteristics: Vertically oriented lengths of cells (hyphae) emerging from a mat of mycelium that segregates into conidia, and which originated through pores at the apices of vertically oriented hyphae. Conidia (spores) are usually multicelled, sometimes two celled and large, measuring 20-100 x 6-30 microns. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Species in this genus causing allergies and other respiratory ailments in humans, particularly hay-fever. Because of their large size, Alternaria spores soon settle, falling at a rate of 3 millimeters/second in still air. Comments: A black mold, occasional to common on enriched agar, easily separated from similarly colored molds by its unique conidia (spores). It has been claimed that Alternaria more frequently contaminates sorghum than rye although the authors can not corroborate this statement from their experiences. See Aspergillus and Cladosporium. soma rights re-served 203 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 188 - Scanning electron micrograph of Alternaria conidia. Aspergillus (Green Mold) Figure 189 - Drawing of the characteristic sporulating structure of Aspergillus. Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Eurotiaceae Common Name: Green Mold; Yellow Mold; Black Mold. Latin Root: From "aspergilliformis" which means brush-shaped in reference to the shape of the conidiophore. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Very common in agar and grain culture, and in compost making. Found on most any organic substrate, Aspergillus prefers a near neutral to slightly basic pH. Well used wooden trays and shelves for holding compost are frequent habitats for this contaminant in the growing house. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Air. soma rights re-served 204 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Measures of Control: Good hygienic practices; removing supportive substrates, especially food residues and spent compost; and filtration of air through micron filters. Macroscopic Appearance: Species range in color from yellow to green to black. Most frequently, Aspergillus species are greenish and similar to Penicillium. Aspergillus niger, as its name implies, is black; Aspergillus flavus is yellow; Aspergillus clavatus is blue-green; Aspergillus fumigatus is grayish green; and Aspergillus veriscolor exhibits a variety of colors (greenish to pinkish to yellowish). These molds, like many others, change in color and appearance according to the medium on which they occur. Several species are thermophilic. Microscopic Characteristics: Sporulating structure tall, unbranched, stalk-like, supporting at its apex a spherical head to which linearly arranged chains of single celled spores (conidia), measuring 3-5 microns, are attached. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Some species toxic. Aspergillus flavus, a yellow to yellowish green species, produces the deadly aflatoxins. A. flavus attacks cottonseed meals, peanuts and other seeds high in oil that have been stored in hot, damp environments. Of all the biologically produced toxins, the alfatoxins are the most potent hepatacarcinogens yet found. The toxicity of this species was largely unknown until, in 1960, 100,000 turkeys mysteriously died from an outbreak of this disease in Great Britain. Figure 190 - Aspergillus species as seen through a light microscope. Figure 191 - Scanning electron micrograph of sporulating Aspergillus. Since A. flavus grows on practically all types of grain, this species is of serious concern to mushroom spawn producers. Careful handling of any molds, particulary those of the genus Aspergillus, should be a primary responsibility of all managers and workers in mushroom farms. Aflatoxins are not, however, taken up in the fruitbodies when contaminated spawn or cottonseed meal is used to supplement a compost. Aspergillus fumigatus and Aspergillus niger, two thermotolerant mesophiles, are also pathogenic to humans in concentrated quantities. The affliction is called aspergilliosis or "Mushroom Worker's Lung Disease". Spent compost is the most frequent source of Aspergillus fumigatus. soma rights re-served 205 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Aspergillus niger, the common black mold, has been cultured commercially for its ability to synthesize citric acid and gluconic acid from a simple sucrose enriched solution. In the past, citric acid was extracted from lemon juice; now it is made more profitably from this fungus. Comments: This is a dangerous genus. Since one can encounters Aspergillus flavus, A. niger, A. fumigatus in the course of mushroom culture, precautionary steps should be undertaken to minimize exposure to these toxic contaminants. Aspergillus candidus is a cream colored mold whose colonization of the grain results in a sharp escalation of the spawn temperature. See also Penicillium. For further information consult "The Genus Aspergillus" by Raper and Fennel, a monograph in which 132 species were recognized. Presently, more than 200 species are known. See Color Photograph 21. Botrytis (Brown Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Moniliaceae Common Name: Brown Mold. Latin Root: From "botry" meaning bunch, as in a bunch of grapes, which the clusters of spores resemble. Figure 192 - Drawing of sporulating structure and spores (conidia) characteristic of Botrytis. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Common, most frequently seen on the casing soil where it prefers a mixture high in woody tissue; thriving in an environment of high humidity and moderate temperature. Botrytis soma rights re-served 206 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb often occurs on woodwork where moisture has condensed. It is less frequently seen on compost. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Air; soil; and damp wood. Measures of Control: Use of clean casing soils; removal and isolation of contaminated trays which are then thoroughly steam cleaned; positive pressurization of the growing room; and adherence to a strict schedule of hygiene to prevent this mold from spreading. Macroscopic Appearance: White at first, especially along the margins, soon gray, fast growing, aerial, then dull golden brown to cinnamon brown as spores mature, spreading from casing soil to woodwork and vice versa. Spores become easily airborne by the slightest drafts. Outbreaks last two weeks at most, and sometimes develop into the sexual stage indicated by the formation of cup-like fruitbodies. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidiophores long, measuring 10-20 x 5-15 microns, simply but irregularly branched at the apex but not enlarged, and not Verticilium-like. Spores (conidia) are one celled, oval to oblong, clear to grayish, some more brightly colored. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Apparently inocuous; no toxic species known. Botrytis cinerea is a species highly valued for its timely attack on ripening grapes. This species decreases the grapes' acidify while increasing their sugar content. It gives the grapes a most desirable odor and flavor, making infected crops ideal for sauterne table wines. Consequently, winemakers have been experimenting with the deliberate inoculation of their vineyards with B. cinerea for more than a century. Comments: If the compost overheats during spawn run or casing colonization, Botrytis flourishes. It is generally not considered to be a "problem" contaminant but looked upon as an "indicator" mold by mushroom growers. Botrytis is usually overwhelmed or contained by the mushroom mycelium, although severe outbreaks, if not checked in their growth, can be detrimental to yields. Botrytis crystallina or Botrytis gemella are probably the species most commonly encountered. The taxonomy of the Botrytis species seen in mushroom culture is unresolved, and therefore placing these molds in the Botrytis complex avoids nomenclatural problems. Botrytis has a perfect stage as Peziza ostracoderma, one of the common cup fungi. Some authors consider the imperfect form to more properly be classified in the genus Chromelosporium (belonging to the species C. fulva). By whatever name, this frequently encountered brown mold is not regarded as a virulent competitor. Papulospora byssina, the Brown Plaster Mold, is similar but can be distinguished from Botrytis by the powdery granules evident using a hand lens, and by the shape of the conidiophore as viewed through a microscope. See Color Photograph 23. Chaetomium (Olive Green Mold) Class: Ascomycetes Order: Sphaeriales Family: Chaetomiaceae Common Name: The Olive Green Mold. Greek Root: Having the same root as the suffix "-chaeta" which means long hair. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Common on fresh manure; especially on compost that has been anaerobically pasteurized; refuse materials; straw; "leaf mold"; soils; plant debris; paper products; and cloth fabric. Chaetomium is a rare contaminant of grain and is infrequently seen in agar culture. A white species occurs on the casing layer. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Air; soil; compost; and grain. soma rights re-served 207 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 193 - Drawing of Chaetomium perithecium, asci and spores. Measures of Control: General hygienic practices; aerobic pasteurization and Phase II. See Comments. Macroscopic Appearance: Mycelia inconspicuous at first, grayish and in some species whitish, cottony, dense and aerial (as in "White Chaetomium"). Some forms become light brown, yellowish or with orangish hues when well developed. At maturity these molds can become dark green to olive green colored, and form scattered "burrs" which in fact are perithecia containing spores. Microscopic Characteristics: Mycelium forming a thin walled envelope (a perithecium) from which unbranched hairs extend. A slit in the perithecium exposes sacs (asci) containing spores which are then liberated into the air. Spores are unicellular, darkly pigmented and can be ovoid, lemon-shaped or ellipsoid. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Secreting a compound called "chaetomin" that is toxic to Grampositive bacteria and to mushrooms and other fungi. Comments: Chaetomium inhibits mycelial growth through the toxins it produces as well as by competing with the mushroom mycelium for base nutrients. Several true thermophiles are present in this genus. C. thermophile and its many varieties thrive in temperature zones from 82-136°F. Its spores are especially heat resistant. Chaetomium spores are killed at 140°F. for 6-16 hours or at 130°F. for 24-48 hours. Chaetomium olivaceum infests compost that has been exposed to high temperature, anaerobic conditions during Phase II. Compost prepared according to the Phase II program outlined in Chapter V practically eliminates the manifestation of Chaetomium. Chaetomium globosum, the most common species in this genus, attacks straw, compost and paper products and forms small burr-like colonies. Spores of this species are less resilient than those of its thermotolerant allies. C. globosum is an occasional contaminant of agar and grain culture, and like C. olivaceum it is common on immature composts. White Chaetomium grows on the casing layer as a dense whitish mold. In general, Chaetomium is olive green while Penicillium and Trichoderma are generally blue green or forest green in color. soma rights re-served 208 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Chrysosporium (Yellow Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Aleuriosporae Common Names: The Yellow Mat Disease; Yellow Mold; Confetti Disease. Latin Root: From "chryso-" meaning golden and "sporium" or spore. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Saprophytic, a common mold in soils, and endemic to composts prepared in direct contact with the ground. Although Chrysosporium species naturally inhabit the dung of most pastured animals and of chickens, today they are rarely seen in finished mushroom composts with the development of modern composting methods. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Air; soil; and dung. Figure 194 - Drawing of the sporulating structure typical of Chrysosporium luteum, the cause of Yellow Mat Disease. Measures of Control: Concrete surface used for composting; isolation of mushroom compost from areas where untreated soils and raw dung are being stored; and filtration of air during Phase II. If Chrysosporium occurs before or at the time of casing, salt or a similar alkaline buffer can be applied to limit the spread of infection. Macroscopic Appearance: Whitish at first, soon yellowish towards the center and maybe yellowish overall in color, forming a "corky" layer of tissue between the infected compost and the casing soil, and inhibiting fruitbody formation. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidiophores poorly developed, relatively undifferentiated, irregularly soma rights re-served 209 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb branched, vertically oriented, for the most part resembling and associated with the vegetative mycelium. Clear, unicellular and often ornamented spores (conidia) develop terminally, either in short chains or singularly, and measure 3-5 x 4-7 microns. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: The genus in general does not host many pathogenic species. One species of special concern is Chrysosporium dermatidis and allies, a mold causing a skin disease in humans. Comments: Chrysosporium is an indicator mold whose presence can be traced to compost prepared on soil. Yellow mat disease is caused by Chrysosporium luteum, a synonym of Myceliopthora lutea. Another species, Chrysosporium sulphureum, is known as Confetti, and is at first whitish, then yellowish towards the center. These molds were fairly common in Agaricus culture previous to 1940, when composts were prepared directly on soil. With the advent of concrete composting wharfs, they have all but disappeared. According to Atkins (1974), this contaminant is more frequent in cave culture because of the use of ridge beds made directly on the floor of the cave. Chrysosporium is usually not detected until the first break and retards subsequent flushes. Moderate to severe outbreaks of either species can adversely affect yields. Both raw and prepared composts can become infected with this mold. It is thought that the spores are introduced with the fresh air during the cool down period of the Phase II or from thermotolerant spores from within the compost itself. Species in this genus can be found on media of poor nutritional quality. They are generally not seen in spawn culture. Chrysosporium can be grown for study on a hay infusion agar supplemented with sugar. Many Chrysosporia have sexual forms in the Gymnoascaceae, an ascomycetous family. For further information see: Carmichael, J.W., 1962 "Chrysosporium and some other Aleuriosporic Hyphomycetes". van Oorshot, C.A.N., 1980 "A Revision of Chrysosporium and Allied Genera". Studies in Mycology No. 20. CBS Publication, Baarn, Nederland. Cladosporium (Dark Green Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Dematicaeae Common Name: The Dark Green Mold. Greek Root: From "klados" which means branched and "sporium" or spore. The name is in reference to the two celled spores produced on branches from the main body of the conidiophore. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Cladosporium is the most predominant genus of all the airborne contaminants. Its species can be both saprophytic and parasitic. At least three species infect grain spawn although they are not as common as the Aspergilli and Penicillia. Most species grow poorly on malt agar media. Many decompose paper products (several of the black molds on old books are Cladosporia), plant debris, vegetables and other higher plants. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Air. Measures of Control: Good hygienic practices; removal of supportive substrates; and filtration of air through micron filters. Macroscopic Appearance: Species of Cladosporium causing problems in spawn production are typically dark green in color, often becoming blackish with age, and resemble the powdery Penicillium type molds. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidia (spores) and conidiophores distinctly septate; darkly pigmented; soma rights re-served 210 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb conidiophores vertically oriented and variously diverging; tall; forked into several terminal shoots at the apex from which the conidia arise in a chain-like fashion with the basal conidium being the oldest and the apical one being the youngest. Conidia are one or two celled, developing from the swollen ends of the conidiophores, and variously shaped (measuring from as small as 3-6 x 2-3.5 microns to as large as 15-20 x 6-8 microns). Some conidia are ovoid, lemon shaped and cylindrical, or are simply irregular in form and have peg-like markings ("scars") where adjacent spores have been attached. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Some species toxic. Cladosporium carrionii causes a severe skin infection that is usually associated with workers who suffer punctures from thorns or splinters. Comments: In one study (Kramer, 1959) where agar plates were exposed daily to the outside air over a period of two years, Cladosporium spores were found to be the most numerically common of all airborne fungi, representing 45% of the totals tallied. Of these species, C. cladosporioides was the most frequently encountered. In contrast, Penicillium is the most common fungus indoors, undoubtedly due to the food habits of humans. Figure 195 - Drawing of Cladosporium. Note the two celled conidia. The dark conidiophore and the two celled conidia (spores) are the most distinguishing features of this genus. Over 160 species have been described. The perfect stage of a variety of C. herbarum Link ex Fr. is Mycosphaerella tulasnei Janz. C. herbarum has been isolated from timber, logs and wood pulp. Cladosporium resinae lives on creosote and other petroleum products, including the petroleum jelly used to "grease" the seals of pressure cookers. C. fulvum Cke. attacks tomato leaves, appearing as brown to violet colonies. Other molds similar in appearance are Penicillium and Aspergillus. For more information see "Contribution to the Knowledge of the Genus Cladosporium Link. ex Fr." by De Fries, 1952. See Color Photograph 20. soma rights re-served 211 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Coprinus (Inky Cap) Class: Basidiomycetes Order: Agaricales Family: Coprinaceae Common Name: Inky Cap. Habitat and Frequency of Occurrence: Frequent to common on compost and/or decomposing straw. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily air; secondarily through materials used in compost preparation. Figure 196 - Coprinus, the Inky Cap, on horse manure. Measures of Control: Proper Phase I and Phase II management, especially full term pasteurization; reduction of ammonia and water in finished compost; and homogenous consistency of compost structure (avoidance of densely compacted zones). Macroscopic Appearance: Appearing as a fast growing whitish mycelium, typically fine and lacking rhizomorphs, soon knotting into small ovoid primordia that quickly enlarge into a whitish mushroom with a long fragile stem and oblong cap. The cap soon disintegrates into a black inky liquid with spore maturity. Microscopic Characteristics: Smooth, elliptical spores produced on club-shaped cells called basidia. Hyphae often have clamp connections joining adjacent cells. soma rights re-served 212 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 197 - Drawing of gill cross section with basidia and spores of Coprinus. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Coprinus species are noted for both their edibility and toxicity. Coprinus comatus, the Shaggy Mane, is a popular edible and choice species that is cultivated. (See the growing parameter outline for that species). Coprinus atrementarius has been reported by Atkins (1973) to be a competitor to the commercial cultivation of Agaricus, occurring in under-composted straw/manure. This species also causes severe nausea and other unpleasant symptoms if alcohol is consumed within twenty fours of ingestion. Jonsson et al. (1979) reported marked reduction in sperm counts in rats treated with coprine, the same compound responsible for the above described symptoms. Comments: Coprinus spores are noted for their heat resistance and often survive the composting process. Although not considered a dangerous competitor, species in this genus are common in the piles of beginning compost makers. If this species occurs during spawn run or at cropping, it is an indication of residual ammonia soma rights re-served 213 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb in the compost. Composts that have excessive ammonia concentrations, composts that have been over-watered or those that are not homogenous in their structure encourage Coprinus infestation. The species known to contaminate manure/straw composts are: Coprinus fimetarius; Coprinus atramentarius; and Coprinus niveus. According to Kurtzman (1978), Coprinus fimetarius has potential value as a commercially cultivated mushroom. All the above mentioned species are ones seen in poorly prepared composts. Bitner (1972) noted that Coprinus is a contaminant of grain spawn, although rarely seen and present in only one of every hundred or so contaminated spawn jars. Cryptococcus (Cream Colored Yeast) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Cryptococcales Family: Cryptococcaceae Common Names: The Yellowish Brown Yeast; The Carcinogenic Yeast. Greek Root: From "kryptos" meaning hidden and "kokkus" or berry, for the form of the conidia. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Ubiquitous and common. Cryptococcus species are mostly saprophytic on plant debris, in soils, cereal grains and on bird (pigeon or chicken) droppings. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Air and pigeon and/or chicken wastes. Figure 198 - Drawing of spore formation typical of Cryptococcus and many yeasts. Measures of Control: Good hygienic practices; elimination of high humidity pockets; removal of supportive substrates; and filtration of air through micron filters. soma rights re-served 214 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Macroscopic Appearance: A spherical yeast not forming a pseudomycelium, encapsulated by a cream to brown colored mucus. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidia (spores) vary in size, 4-20 microns in diameter; ovoid; reproducing through simple budding; not forming a true mycelium; and lacking a specialized spore-forming structure. In some species there can be a simple ascus (a "sack") enclosing a single spore. Cryptococcus species are Grampositive. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: A non-fermenting yeast with alliances to the Ascomycetes, Cryptococcus neoformans (Sanf.) Vuill. causes a deadly disease in animals and humans called cryptococcosis, otherwise known as "Torula meningitis" or "yeast meningitis". This yeast attacks and reproduces in the central nervous system, particularly in the brain and spinal fluid. Symptoms begin with a stiff neck and headache and end in total or partial blindness, paralysis, coma and respiratory failure. Less severe symptoms occur in other parts of the body, for which there is a better chance of recovery. It is believed that airborne spores are inhaled, entering the body via the lungs. This yeast thrives in droppings of pigeons and chickens. Comments: Cryptococcus is a non-fermenting yeast with alliances to some Ascomycetes: Torula (Black Yeast), Rhodotorula (Red Yeast) and Candida. In 1979 one of the containment buildings at the Tennessee Clinch River Breeder Reactor project had to be quarantined because of a massive outbreak of Cryptococcus neoformans. Dactylium (Cobweb Mold) Figure 199 - Drawing of sporulating structure of Dactylium. Note multicelled conidia. Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Moniliaceae soma rights re-served 215 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Common Name: Cobweb Mold; Downy Mildew; Soft Mildew. Greek Root: From "daktylos" meaning finger, in reference to the forking of the conidiophore. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Commonly seen on the casing soil or parasitizing the mushroom fruitbody. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Air; casing soil; water and insects. Measures of Control: Immediate isolation of parasitized fruitbodies from the growing environment; lowering of the relative humidity; and/or increasing air circulation. Carefully examine casing soil components for hygienic quality. Pasteurization of casing soil generally prevents its occurrence. Growth can be stopped by covering the cobweb mold with salt, baking soda or any highly alkaline compound. Macroscopic Appearance: Dactylium dendroides Fr. is cobweb-like in appearance, first appearing as small scattered patches rapidly running over the surface of the casing soil, then overwhelming any and all mushrooms in its path. Afflicted mushrooms are covered with a fluffy down of delicate mycelium. This mold is initially grayish, sometimes whitish and can become pinkish tinged with age. When cut open, infected mushrooms are composed of rotting flesh and young buttons are reduced to formless masses of soft tissue. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidia multicelled, usually composed of three or more connected cells. Conidia can occur singly or clustered, terminally positioned on the ends of branches which often fork in a Verticillium-like fashion and which originate from a major vertical shoot. Conidia are clear or slightly yellowish in color and measure 20 x 5 microns. Figure 200 - Photograph of Dactylium running through casing layer. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: None noted. Comments: The Cobweb Mold is a fast growing, tenacious casing layer contaminant. Spores germinate upon contact with a mushroom, and soon envelope it with a soft mildewy mycelium. soma rights re-served 216 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Spores of Dactylium dendroides are killed when exposed to 115-122°F. for only ½ hour. (See Anderson, 1956). The genus Dactylaria is synonymous with Dactylium. Several species are known for their specialization in trapping nematodes by arranging their hyphae into loose coils. When one enters a loop, the hypha contract and traps the nematode. Dactylium is the conidial form of Hypomyces, some species of which attack wild mushrooms, particularly Lactarius, Russula, Agaricus, Amanita and others. Dactylium dendroides is the asexual form of Hypomyces rosellus. For more information consult: Lentz, P.L. 1966 "Dactylaria in Relation to the Conservation of Dactylium." Mycologia 58: 965-966. Doratormyces (Black Whisker Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Stilbellaceae Common Names: The Black Whisker Mold; The Smoky Grey Mold. Habitat and Frequency of Occurrence: A saprophyte, occasionally to frequently seen on the straws of an inadequately pasteurized compost; on wooden trays; rarely spreading to the casing soil; sometimes contaminating grain cultures; and seldom seen on agar. In nature Doratomyces is a major constituent of a soil's microflora. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily an airborne contaminant; secondarily transmitted through spent compost and left over debris. Figure 201 - Drawing of the sporulating structure of Doratomyces (Stysanus), the Black Whisker Mold. soma rights re-served 217 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Methods of Control: Air filtration; correct preparation and pasteurization of compost; and adherence to a strict schedule of hygiene in the laboratory and growing room. Whenever a room becomes contaminated with this fungus, a thorough cleaning is in order, particularly any trays that harbored this rapidly growing contaminant. The most common source of this fungus is spent compost or newly turned soils. Macroscopic Appearance: A heavily sporulating grayish to blackish mold, permeating throughout the compost and when disrupted, emitting clouds of grayish spores. Contaminated regions of compost are more darkly colored and seem damper than uncontaminated regions. Its common name, the Black Whisker Mold, well describes the macroscopic appearance. Microscopic Characteristics: Hyphae, conidiophores and conidia darkly pigmented. Conidiophores are single or aligned as compacted vertical assemblages of hyphae that variously diverge near the apex into short chains of dry, ovoid, unicellular spores in a Penicillium-like fashion. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Some species toxic. Doratomyces causes an asthma-like respiratory response (coughing, soreness of throat, nose bleeds) in those who are exposed to concentrations of its spores. Workers emptying spent compost from growing houses are the most likely to be inflicted with this illness. Comments: Doratomyces is synonymous with Stysanus. Doratomyces microsporus (=Stysanus microsporus), the Smoky Grey Mold and Doratomyces stemonitis (=Stysanus stemonitis), the Black Whisker Mold, both contaminate the compost and emit huge quantities of spores when disturbed. A moderately strong competitor of mushroom mycelium, this mold grows well in undercomposted, poorly pasteurized and/or wet composts composts poorly suited for good mushroom crops. If the compost bed heats up during spawn running and kills the grain inoculum, the grain kernels are soon attacked by this fungus which then resporulates and infects the compost. Doratomyces is an indicator mold, whose presence suggests poor composting, pasteurization or spawn running practices. Epicoccum (Yellow Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Tuberculariaceae Common Name: Yellow Mold. Habitat and Frequency of Occurrence: An occasional contaminant of grain culture. Species in this genus are decomposers of wood, leaves and stems of plants, playing an important role in the soil community. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Air; soil; and grain. Methods of Control: Isolation of contaminated cultures; careful screening of grain used for inoculum; and sufficient steam permeation of grain during sterilization. Macroscopic Appearance: Species in this genus are variously pigmented. In grain culture, Epicoccum is distinguished by its bright yellowish orange to pinkish orange color and is often associated with a yellowish fluid which it apparently exudes. Its mycelium appears as dense zones within which blackish spores are formed. On most agar media, Epicoccum is slow growing and whitish. Outside the laboratory, Epicoccum can be found on leaves and twigs, forming small black dot colonies. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidiophores compact, short and radiating from cushion shaped cells called "sporodochia" and from which dark, one celled, round spores (conidia) arise or with which they are associated. The conidia are typically reticulated or ornamented with small spine-like projections, measuring (5) 15-25 (50) microns. These reticulated conidia appear to be composed of several tightly interconnected cells. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: None noted. soma rights re-served 218 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Comments: Not strongly inhibitory to mushroom mycelium. This mold can, however, spoil spawn. In grain culture, fruitings still develop in containers that are partially contaminated with this mold. Figure 202 - Drawing of cushion shaped sporulating structure typical of Epicoccum, a yellow mold. Epicoccum oryzae attacks rice, causing lesions that are pinkish to reddish in coloration. Another Epicoccum species was reported by Bitner (1972) to be the most common mold attacking sorghum spawn, comprising nearly 30% of all contaminated cultures. On the other hand, it represented only 5% of the contaminants on rye. The frequency with which this contaminant occurs varies substantially. For more information: M.B. Schol-Schwartz (1957), "The Genus Epicoccum (Link.)." Fusarium Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Tubericulariaceae Common Names: The Brightly Colored Contaminant; Damping Off Disease; or Yellow Rain Mold. Greek Root: Having the same root as "fusiform", meaning to be swollen in the center and narrowing towards the ends, in reference to the distinctive shape of the conidia. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Commonly encountered in spawn production and in agar culture. A natural inhabitant of grains (rye, wheat, barley, rice), Fusaria also are found in soils, on living and decaying plants and on decomposing textiles and paper. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Air; grain; and casing soil. soma rights re-served 219 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 203 - Drawing of simple sporulating structure typical of the genus Fusarium. Measures of Control: Sufficient sterilization of grain; isolation and proper disposal of contaminated cultures. General hygienic practices and air filtration prevent this contaminant. Increasing ventilation while simultaneously decreasing humidify hinders the proliferation of this potentially dangerous contaminant. Macroscopic Appearance: Appearing as an extensive, fast growing, and whitish cottony mycelium which can remain whitish or, as in most cases, becomes brightly pigmented. Fusarium species most frequently seen on grain are shades of pink, purple or yellow. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidia generally sickle shaped; multicelled; septate (segmented); and developing from short, simple and irregularly branched conidiophores that arise from a cottony mycelial mat. Conidia are canoe, crescent or sickle shaped, with the basal end notched or niched. Some pear shaped, single celled microconidia are also produced. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Some Fusarium species are highly toxic. Throughout history Fusarium molds have been responsible for diseases of major proportions. Usually the cause has been bread made from poorly wintered grain. In regions of the Ukraine, Eastern Siberia and central Asia, the disease caused by this fungus was called "Staggering Sickness" for its symptoms of vertigo, bleeding, headaches, chills and nausea. In a Soviet province during World War II, a single outbreak caused the deaths of nearly 30,000 people. Given their past, it is not surprising to learn these fungi have attracted the interest of the military. In 1980 and 1981, the United States government accused the Soviet Union of embarking on a new variation of biochemical warfare when leaf and twig specimens allegedly brought from the war zones of Cambodia and Afghanistan were found laden with high concentrations of toxins from these species. The most prominent species producing these toxins (the trichothecenes) are Fusarium sporothrichiodes and Fusarium poae, although other Fusaria are also virulent. Fusarium poae is a violet colored contaminant occasionally encountered in mushroom spawn production. See Comments below. soma rights re-served 220 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 204 - Light micrograph of Fusarium conidia. Note multicelled macroconidia and single celled microconidia. Because there are many toxic species in the genus, one should treat all Fusarium contaminants with due caution. Comments: Fusarium may be a cause of mushroom "aborts". In one study, English researchers correlated high levels of Fusarium to this phenomenon. Even a moderate infestation by this contaminant inhibits mushroom growth. Mushrooms afflicted with this disease remain small and often have disproportionately small caps and stems whose interiors are brownish. Wolfe (1937) was able to induce Damping Off Disease by first isolating Fusaria and then physically introducing it into the casing layer of a healthy bed. Although not as commonly encountered as Penicillium or Trichoderma, Fusarium can wreak havoc in a sterile lab if not soon contained. Grain is the main source of Fusarium contamination in mushroom culture. Twentyeight Fusaria have been identified from cereal grains, five of which have been isolated from contaminated mushroom spawn jars (see Pepper & Keisling, 1963). These are: F. lateritium, a pinkish species. F. avenaceum, a reddish species. F. culmorum, a vivid yellowish red species. F. poae, a violet colored species. F. oxysporum, a red violet species. F. sp., a fast growing whitish species. Fusaria can cause severe mycosis and these molds must be treated with extreme caution. Grain contaminated with Fusarium should be sterilized before handling. There are, undoubtedly, more toxic species than the literature presently indicates. One of the first patents ever to be awarded to a living organism was given for F. gramineraum. For more information see: Wood, F.C., 1937 "Studies of 'Damping Off' of Cultivated Mushrooms and Its Association with Fusarium Species." Phytopath. 27: 85-94. soma rights re-served 221 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Toussoun, TA. and P.E. Nelson, 1968 "A Pictorial Guide to the Identification of Fusarium Species" Pennsylvania State University Press. Seagrave, 5., 1981 "Yellow Rain: A Test of Terror" Seattle Post Intelligencer, September 27, B2. Geotrichum (Lipstick Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Moniliaceae Common Name: Lipstick Mold. Latin Root: From "geo" meaning earth, and "trichum" meaning hairy, in reference to the character of the mycelial mat. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Generally a saprophyte although some forms act as parasites. Geotrichum species are extremely common in nature but infrequently encountered in mushroom compost unless it has been prepared directly on soil. Geotrichum dwells in soils, cow dung, old straw, compost piles and rots some fruits and vegetables. In general, species of this genus are mesophilic thermophiles and are therefore sensitive to pasteurization temperatures. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Air; soil; and from old straw and spent composts. Figure 205 - Drawing of sporulating structure of Geotrichum, the Lipstick Mold, and its characteristically shaped conidia. Measures of Control: Composting on a concrete surface; thorough pasteurization of compost and straw; and use of clean casing materials. Macroscopic Appearance: Mycelium whitish at first, often faking on a "frosty" appearance and then forming soma rights re-served 222 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb whitish balls of mycelium. With age, the mycelium becomes pinkish and then reddish due to the maturation of spores. Older colonies of this fungus fade to a dull orange. Microscopic Characteristics: Hyphae septate, in the form of extensive but random chains of cells, from which cylindrical conidial spores segment, measuring 5-10 x 3-6 microns. Conidiophores are simple and often indistinguishable from the mycelial network. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Few species toxic. Geotrichum candidum causes an oral, bronchial, pulmonary and/or intestinal disease known as geotrichosis that infects humans and other mammals. Comments: Commonly encountered in agar plates made from a soil infusion; otherwise rarely encountered in sterile culture. An occasional contaminant of mushroom beds (compost), Lipstick Mold inhibits primordia formation and development. With the advent of concrete composting surfaces and peat based casings, this contaminant has been virtually eliminated from modern mushroom farms. This fungus is closely allied to, if not synonymous with Sporendonema purpurescens. For more information see: Sinden, J.W., 1971 "Ecological Control of Pathogens and Weed Molds in Mushroom Culture" Annual Review of Phytopathology 9. Carmichael, J.W., 1957 "Geotrichum candidum" Mycologia 49. pp. 820-830. Humicola (Gray Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Series: Aleuriosporae Common Name: Gray Mold. Latin Root: From "humus" meaning soil and the suffix "cola" meaning dweller, inhabitant. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: A rare contaminant of sterile culture. Thermophilic species are frequently seen in the second phase of composting, thriving in the 115-125 degree F. range. Naturally occurring on grains, straw, wood, soils and other organic matter high in cellulose. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Air; soil; and grain. Measures of Control: Thorough sterilization of grain and incubation of spawn at moderate temperatures. Humicola is a thermophile and thrives in elevated temperature zones. Since the presence of Humicola is considered beneficial to compost, no countermeasures are necessary if it occurs in that substrate. Macroscopic Appearance: Mycelium on agar a fine to thick grayish to colorless mat, varying according to the media employed. On grain its mycelium is typically thick, colorless at first, soon gray and eventually dark gray with spore production. On compost, Humicola is an aerial, fluffy, whitish mycelium that is soon grayish with spore maturity. It is frequently seen at or near the surface where temperatures are 115-125°F. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidia one celled, typically globose, brownish colored and often sculptured. Conidiophores are also darkly pigmented, simple, undeveloped and similar to the mycelium or at times having short lateral branches at whose swollen apices a single conidium is borne. Alternately, short chains of microconidia formed by flask shaped cells (phialides) can occur. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Selected for use in compost nutrient conversion during Phase II of composting. Comments: Humicola plays an important role in the conversion of the nitrogen in ammonia into protein rich soma rights re-served 223 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb compounds that the mushroom mycelia can digest. In this regard Humicola is an ally to the compost preparation process. Compost makers have long believed that Humicola nigrescens should be encouraged to grow during Phase II because a compost colonized with it resulted in higher yields. Humicola prospers in the 115-125 (130)°F. range. When the finished compost has been brought down to spawning temperature, these fungi are rendered inactive, and are then consumed by the mushroom mycelium. Figure 206 - Drawing of sporulating structure and spores (conidia) of Humicola. On grain Humicola grisea is most frequently seen; on horse manure/straw composts Humicola nigrescens is most commonly encountered. Humicola that occurs during cropping does not seem to pose a serious threat to the overall crop. Most species are mesophilic; some are thermophilic; and all are saprophytic. Humicola is not a problem contaminant. See Torula, another thermophilic fungus beneficial to composting. For more information consult: Bels-Koning, H.C., Gerrits, J.P.G., and Vaandrager, M.H. 1962. "Some Fungi Appearing Towards the End of Composting," Mushroom Science V. Monilia (White Flour Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Moniliaceae Common Names: White Mold; White Flour Mold; or Pink Mold Latin Root: From "monile" or necklace for the chain-like arrangement of the mycelium and spore producing soma rights re-served 224 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb cells. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Relatively common on agar; grain; compost and casing soil. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily air; soil; and grain. Figure 207 - Drawing of chain-like structure by which Monilia produces conidia (spores). Measures of Control: Air filtration; maintenance of good hygiene in laboratory and growing room, especially in the isolation and removal of contaminated cultures and debris from previous croppings. Thorough sterilization of grain and pasteurization of casing reduces the possibility of contamination arising from within. This contaminant is believed to be externally introduced through airborne spores. High efficiency filters prevent Monilia spores from contaminating spawn and lessen the risk of contamination in the growing room. Macroscopic Appearance: Represented by two mutable forms: the imperfect form Monilia is generally a fine powdery whitish mold; and the perfect form Neurospora is a rapid growing tenacious aerial mold that is pinkish with spore maturity. In grain both the whitish and the pinkish Neurospora are encountered. White Monilia has a remarkable resemblance to finely ground perlite and can easily be mistaken for it. On casing soil, the pink form is more common. Both are very rapid growing. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidia unicellular; oval to lemon shaped; produced in large quantities on yeast-like chains with the terminal cells being the youngest and originating from a simple, septate mycelial network. Less frequently, conidial spores are produced singly. Conidiophores are extremely simple and similar to mycelium or absent altogether. Its mycelium is hyaline, white or gray colored while the conidia are tan, gray or most commonly pink in color. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Not known to be pathogenic. A disease known as moniliasis in medicine is actually caused by a related yeast-like fungus, Candida, and is more correctly termed candidiasis. Candida has been incorrectly called Monilia in medical mycology texts. Several genera share the same overall microscopic features and can be easily confused with Monilia. Indeed, Monilia is a pivotal genus amongst a constellation of genera. For the purposes of the home cultivator, all these forms might be more usefully called soma rights re-served 225 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb a "complex of genera". Comments: Monilia's perfect form is represented by Neurospora (see that genus) and either phenotype is largely determined by nutritional factors, particularly pH. Monilia can vary substantially in color on grain spawn: from a thick whitish mycelial mat to a powdery white, gray or pink colored mycelium. Perhaps the most devastating form is the whitish one for its resemblance to mushroom mycelium. Also seen in agar culture, the pink form is noted for its high aerial mycelium. It climbs the sides of Petri dishes. If not treated, this contaminant can be very difficult to eradicate. Complete cleaning of the laboratory is the only recourse. After a Monilia outbreak careful attention must be directed at reestablishing spawn integrity. Monilia and Neurospora attack the mushroom beds and casing layers with rapid growing grayish mycelia that soon develop pinkish tones with spore maturity. Contamination by this fungus is usually traced to unclean casing or infected spawn. Consult the genus Neurospora. Figure 208 - Monilia-like mold on agar media with mushroom mycelium. Mucor (Black Pin Mold) Class: Zygomycetes Order: Mucorales Family: Mucoraceae Common Names: the Black Pin Mold; the Black Bread Mold Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: A common saprophyte of stored grains; horse dung; old straw; mushroom composts; peat; soil; and plant debris. Mucor also rots textiles. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily air; secondarily grain and contaminated compost. Measures of Control: Air filtration; sufficient sterilization of grain; and immediate removal and isolation of contaminated regions, 'spent' compost, aged mushrooms or cropping debris. Exercising general hygienic practices usually prevents this contaminant from becoming a problem. soma rights re-served 226 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 209 - Drawing of sporulating structure (sporangiophore) of Mucor. Macroscopic Appearance: A fast growing fungus forming an interwoven dense mycelial mat, whitish at first, producing a stalk-like sporangiophore which is not swollen at the apex but is enveloped by spherical spore producing body. Soon becoming grayish and then blackish overall with spore production. When Mucor sporulates, it appears like a "forest of black headed pins". On malt agar, sporangiophores often do not form, making identification difficult. Microscopic Characteristics: Tall sporangiophores arising singly from the mycelial mat, adorned with a spherical sporangium composed of many spores. Hyphae are non-septate (lacking distinct cell walls). History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Some species toxic. Mucor pusillus and other mucuraceous fungi are the cause of a rare but deadly disease known as mucormycosis or phycomycosis. Although Mucor attacks open wounds, the outer ear and the lungs, it is not a primary parasite but one that takes advantage of poor health caused from other diseases. This disease and ones related to it are more prevalent in tropical and semitropical zones than in temperate regions. For more information on the pathogenic aspects of fungi in this group refer to the reference below. Comments: A vigorous contaminant and seen at various times in spawn production, inhibiting and overwhelming the mushroom mycelium. On malt agar media Mucor is a fast growing, non-sporulating, cottony and whitish mycelial network competing with or overwhelming mushroom mycelium. Mucor mycelium is nonrhizomorphic and lacks the clamp connections that is characteristic of many mushroom mycelia. If in doubt whether a whitish mycelium is Mucor or not, inoculate some bread with some mycelium covered kernels and incubate at a warm temperature. If the mold is Mucor, it will sporulate in a few days and be easy to identify. The most frequently seen species of this genus are Mucor racemosus and Mucor plumbeus. Mucor pusillus, a true thermophile, thrives in the 68-131°F. (20-55°C.) range and is a major constituent in the microflora of compost piles. Mucor infected spawn, when inadvertently inoculated onto the mushroom compost, can result in the total contamination of the bed within a few days. Consult Sepedonium, a contaminant whose vegetative soma rights re-served 227 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb mycelia resembles the non-sporulating mycelium of Mucor. See also Rhizopus, a genus that differs from Mucor by its having a smaller sporangium receding from the "head" of the sporangiophore. Figure 210 - Mucor, the Black Pin Mold, on malt agar. For more information consult: Emmans, C.W., C.H. Binford, and J.P. Utz 1963, "Medical Mycology" Lea and Febiger, Philadelphia. Mycelia Sterilia (White Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Mycelia Sterilia Common Name: White Mold. Habitat and Frequency of Occurrence: Contaminants fitting into this order occasionally encountered in sterile culture. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Hyphal fragments airborne. Measures of Control: General hygienic procedures, including the filtration of air through high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters, recommended. Macroscopic Appearance: Typically appearing as a fast growing whitish mycelium, fine and or cottony in its growth. Species of Mycelia Sterilia closely resemble mushroom mycelium and may be mistaken for it. Sometimes they form whitish to blackish aggregates of hyphae that are sclerotia-like. Microscopic Characteristics: Having a well developed hyphal network, with or without clamp connections. Only a vegetative mycelial stage is known. Since sporulating structures are absent, fungi in this group reproduce through random fragmentation of hyphae. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: The genus Sclerotium noted for two species that parasitize a variety of green plants. Otherwise, the Order is unremarkable. soma rights re-served 228 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 211 - Drawing of mycelial network showing hyphae with clamp connections and sclerotia-like bodies characteristic of species in the Order Mycelia Sterilia. Comments: Mycelia Sterilia is often called a "garbage order" for non-sporulating mycelium of molds that can not be otherwise identified. Either a fungus has lost the ability to produce spores and can exist only in a vegetative state, or it will only produce spores on media of narrow nutritional specifications. In both cases, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to identify a fungus that has no visible conidial (sporulating) stage. There is a white mold that occasionally contaminates agar media and, by default, qualifies for placement into the Order Mycelia Sterilia. Beginning cultivators have been known to propagate these sterile fungi in large quantities thinking them to be mushroom mycelia. This group of contaminants can be very competitive and should not be underestimated. See also Mucor, a mold that has a vigorously growing whitish mycelium on agar media and one that often does not sporulate until it is transferred to grain. Mycogone (Wet Bubble) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Hyphomyceteae Common Names: Bubble; Wet Bubble; White Mushroom Mold; and La Mole. Greek Root: From "myco" or fungal and the suffix "gone" meaning reproductive body. This mold is named in reference to this mold's tendency to parasitize the mushroom fruitbody. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Very common, infecting the mushroom itself and causing significant losses to crops. Mycogone naturally occurs in soils from which this aggressive contaminant attacks the mushroom fruitbody. It does not grow well at temperatures lower than 60°F. soma rights re-served 229 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Mostly through soils; debris (stem butts, etc.); and spent compost. Workers, especially harvesters, are one of the primary vehicles for spore dispersal. Watering infected areas further spreads this contaminant. Figure 212 - Drawing of sporulating structure characteristic of Mycogone. Measures of Control: Use of clean casing materials; moderation of temperature and adhering to a strict regimen of hygiene, especially between cropping cycles. Without touching the casing, infected mushrooms should be removed from the bed. The localized area is then sprinkled with salt, baking soda or a similar alkalinic substance. Do not water until the infected area is treated. Macroscopic Appearance: Appearing as a whitish mold attacking primordia and turning them into a soft whitish ball of mycelia. From the brown and rotting interior of these "bubbles", amber fluid containing spores and bacteria ooze. More mature mushrooms that are afflicted with this disease have a felt-like covering of mycelium and a disproportionately small cap relative to the size of the stem. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidiophores short; generally hyaline; relatively undeveloped; lateral; and altogether similar to the mycelia. Two types of conidia, terminally produced, can occur. The first and most distinctive type of chlamydospore is dark, round and two celled with one being large and rough walled, often adorned with short spine-like projections, and which is attached to a smaller cup shaped smooth cell. The second conidial type is smaller, ellipsoid, unicellular and develops apically from the ends of Verticillium-like conidiophores. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Not known to be pathogenic to man or animals. Comments: Mycogone perniciosa Magnus is the species in the genus responsible for attacking the mushroom crop. Its mycelia intergrows with mushroom mycelia, according Kneebone (1961). This is a vigorous and resilient contaminant. Its spores are killed at 120°F. when exposed to moist heat (pasteurization) for 24 hours. Isolation of contaminated mushrooms, increasing ventilation, lowering temperature and proper bed cleaning techniques all limit the spread of Mycogone. Kneebone recommends the use of chlorinated water (150 ppm) during normal crop watering to impede the germination of its spores. soma rights re-served 230 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 213 - Mycogone, Wet Bubble, on cased rye grain spawn. Harvey et al. 1982, noted that if Mycogone appears during the first flush, then its spores were probably introduced via the casing - either at the time of its application or during spawn run through it, a period of about two weeks. Later infestations are more probably spread by flies, workers, air currents or other means. Mycogone is believed by some mycologists to be an imperfect form of Hypomyces, an ascomycetous fungus that parasitizes wild mushrooms, especially Russula and Lactarius. See also Verticillium and Dactylium. Neurospora (Pink Mold) Class: Ascomycetes Order: Xylariales Family: Sordariaceae Common Names: Pink Mold; Red Bread Mold Latin Root: From "neuro" meaning nerve and "spora" or spore, in reference to the longitudinal nerve-like ridges running along the axis of the spore. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Commonly to occasionally seen on agar and grain. Neurospora is fast growing, sometimes taking only 24 four hours to totally colonize a media filled Petri dish. It is ubiquitous in nature, occurring on dung, in soils and on decaying plant matter. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily air; secondarily soils; dung and grains. Measures of Control: Air filtration; incubation of cultures in a sterile environment; thorough sterilization of grain; isolation and destruction of contaminated cultures; and otherwise maintaining the standard regimen of hygiene. Macroscopic Appearance: A fast growing, creeping aerial mycelia that becomes bright pinkish in color with spore maturity. soma rights re-served 231 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 214 - Drawing of sporulating structure and distinctive spores of Neurospora, a pink mold. Microscopic Characteristics: Spores distinctively longitudinally ribbed with nerve-like ridges, produced eight at a time (rarely four) in a sac-like organ called an ascus which is in turn enclosed within a ball-like perithecium that can be dark brown to black to pink in color. Its mycelium is usually pigmented, a feature influenced by the type of habitat. Its imperfect form, Monilia, consists of a simple mycelia network which branches. Monilia segments at the tips from which ellipsoid, oval or globose spores are formed in short chains from the terminal ends. Monilia spores are frequently pinkish. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Not known to be pathogenic to man or animals. Neurospora crassa has become a standard species for studying fungal genetics in culture. Comments: Neurospora has an imperfect form represented by the genus Monilia which forms spores not in a sac-like envelope but in simple chains at the end of hyphae. (See that genus). Neurospora and/or Monilia are some of the fastest growing contaminants on grain and agar. The color of this contaminant, in either form, varies substantially. The ability of this organism to mutate into both an asexually reproducing fungus (Monilia) and a sexual one (Neurospora) is a factor largely determined by nutrition and pH - low pH levels encourage the expression of Monilia while higher pH media favor Neurospora. The characteristic pinkish tone and unique spore structure make Neurospora an easy contaminant to identify. Since this fungus grows through cotton stoppers or filter discs, a single contaminated jar, though sealed, can spread spores to adjacent spawn jars within the laboratory. This condition is more likely if the filter discs or cotton plugs are the least bit damp; or if the external humidity is high. Furthermore, Neurospora spores germinate more readily at elevated temperatures. The red bread mold belongs to the Neurospora crassa complex. The pink mold seen in mushroom culture is most frequently Neurospora sitophila, a pernicious contaminant that is difficult to eliminate. All infected cultures should be removed as soon as possible from the laboratory and destroyed. A thorough cleaning of the laboratory is absolutely necessary. If contamination persists, remove all spawn and start anew. Since Neurospora spores are spread via the air, high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters readily eliminate this contaminant. soma rights re-served 232 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Refer to the genus Monilia, an imperfect form of Neurospora. Figure 215 - Neurospora contaminating PDA media. Note creeping aerial mycelium. Papulospora (Brown Plaster Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Mycelia Sterilia Common Name: Brown Plaster Mold. Latin Root: From "papulosus" meaning pimple-like and "spora" or spore. Named in reference to the rounded groups of cells that resemble sclerotia and are characteristic of this genus. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: A saprophyte, common on overly mature composts or on compost with excessive moisture. Some species grow directly on the wood used in the construction of the trays and then spread to the beds. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily air; from spent compost; or from untreated trays that once harbored this contaminant. Measures of Control: Avoidance of over-composting; proper balancing of moisture in the compost; expeditious removal of old or contaminated compost; steam cleaning of trays; and maintaining good hygiene between crops. Macroscopic Appearance: Dense whitish mycelium, resembling Scopulariopsis fimicola (the White Plaster Mold) in the early stages, soon becoming cinnamon brown from small bead-like or "powdery" sclerotia-like balls of cells. The balls of cells are easily seen with a hand lens and are darkly pigmented. Often there is a whitish rim of new growth along the outer periphery of the mycelium. Microscopic Characteristics: True conidia absent, propagating through simple fragmentation of mycelia or through dense spherical sclerotia-like masses of dark cells. History, Use and/or Medical implications: None known. soma rights re-served 233 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 216 - Drawing of non-sporulating sclerotia-like mycelial mass that is typical of the Brown Plaster Mold, Papulospora byssina. Comments: Papulospora is competitive to mushroom mycelium and can therefore postpone or inhibit fruiting. Papulospora byssina Hotson is the brown plaster mold commonly encountered in mushroom cultivation. Colonies of this contaminant can grow up to several feet in diameter if corrective countermeasures are not taken. It frequently grows on wooden trays or shelves. The Brown Plaster Mold is detrimental to mushroom crops only in the sense that Papulospora usurps valuable nutrients that would otherwise be available to the mushroom mycelium. According to Atkins (1974), wet, compact and overly mature compost is likely to favor these contaminants. Because no conidial (spore producing) phase is known, it has been placed in the "garbage" order of little understood fungi, the Mycelia Sterilia. See also Botrytis and Scopulariopsis. Penicillium (Bluish Green Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Eurotiaceae Common Name: The Bluish Green Mold. Latin Root: From "penicillum" meaning a brush-like tuft of hairs, so named in reference to the shape of the sporulating body. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: An extremely common contaminant. Although not as prevalent in nature as Cladosporium, Penicillium is the most prevalent of indoor contaminants, a fact that is undoubtedly related to human eating habits. Penicillium species abound on foodstuffs such as fruits, cheeses and stored grains. Many species prefer habitats with an acid pH. Penicillia are occasional to frequent on under-developed mushroom compost, casing soil and on discarded mushroom debris. soma rights re-served 234 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily through the air, although stored grain and other foodstuffs, as well as humans are the most frequent carriers of this mold. Figure 217 - Drawing of sporulating structure characteristic of Penicillium molds. Measures of Control: Air filtration; removal of waste products; isolation of contaminated cultures; and maintenance of a high level of hygiene. Macroscopic Appearance: Appearing as a granular or powdery bluish green mold, often with a broad whitish rim of new growth. Some species, less frequently encountered, are whitish, yellowish or even reddish in color. Many species exude droplets of fluid from their surfaces having antibiotic properties. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidiophores arising singly, long, and branching near the apex into short chains of globose, green, dry conidia. Compared to mushroom spores, the conidia of Penicillia are minute, measuring only 2-4 microns in diameter. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: In 1928-1929 while Dr. Alexander Fleming was studying Staphylococcus aureus, he noticed that a green mold contaminant inhibited his cultured bacteria when the two grew in close proximity. A fluid that was being exuded from the fungus caught his curiosity. Upon reporting his finding, colleagues later found the fluid contained a powerful new antibiotic which was named penicillin. He had, in fact, cultured Penicillium notatum Westl. Currently penicillin is commercially produced by high yielding strains of Penicillium chrysogenum Thom. Through its use, millions of people have been cured of illnesses that were previously untreatable. From the widespread use and abuse of this drug, however, new, more virulent and penicillin resistant strains of bacteria have evolved. From the production of steroids to the making of roquefort cheese (by Penicillium roquefortii), this genus is resplendent with species of proven value to man. Few, if any, are pathogenic. soma rights re-served 235 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 218 - Scanning electron micrograph of Penicillium. Comments: Since the high count of Penicillium spores indoors is directly traceable to decomposing foodstuffs, one can reduce the prevalence of this contaminant by simply following good hygienic practices. Penicillium, a prolific spore producer, is an ubiquitous fungus. It is probably the most common contaminant seen in the laboratory. Although Penicillium can attack compost, casing soil and mushroom debris, it is not as prevalent as Trichoderma in these habitats. Other green molds, similar in appearance, are Cladosporium and Aspergillus. Penicillium sometimes contaminates poorly prepared compost or spawned compost that has undergone secondary heating. Here, grain kernels formerly colonized by mushroom mycelium become susceptible to weed molds such as Penicillium and Doratomyces and then spread onto the compost and/or casing soil. Differing from Aspergillus and Trichoderma in the shape of the conidiophore. For further information: "The Penicillia" by Raper and Thom (1949) who recognized 138 species at the time of publication. See Color Photograph 20. Rhizopus (Black Pin Mold) Class: Zygomycetes Order: Mucorales Family: Mucoraceae Common Names: Bread Mold; The Pin Mold. Latin Root: From the prefix "rhizo", pertaining to roots, and the suffix "pus" or foot, in reference to the rhizoids at the base of the sporangiophore that is characteristic of some species in this genus. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: A saprophyte, commonly seen in both agar and grain culture. Rhizopus naturally inhabits dung and soils and is a decomposer of dead plant and animal matter. Within the home, this contaminant is most often seen on old bread or on poorly stored grain and fruits. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily air. Measures of Control: Air filtration; strict adherence to general hygienic practices; and steam sterilization of grain and agar media. Macroscopic Appearance: Similar to Mucor. When sporulating, Rhizopus appears as a dense mat of tall, aerial, vertically oriented hyphae upon which sit dark grey to grey black heads. It resembles a forest of pins. soma rights re-served 236 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 219 - Drawing of asexual sporangiophore and sexual zygosporium of Rhizopus. Microscopic Characteristics: A creeping hyphal network that gives rise to individual, vertically oriented stalks that are unbranched and at whose base distinct rhizoids can be attached. The apex is swelled into a vesicle upon which a dark spherical body (sporangium) rests. This sporangium does not fully envelope the sporangiophore. Hence, the sporangiophore swells before contacting the sporangium. The sporangium is a mass of spores within a thin envelope of tissue that soon disintegrates and frees the asexual spores. Joining these individual sporangiophores are long interconnecting mycelial veins called stolons. Mating can also occur between two sexually complementary hyphae and results in the formation of a globose reproductive body, a zygosporium. (See Fig. 219). Its mycelia lacks distinct cell walls. See also Mucor, a mold that is closely related to Rhizopus, but whose sporangium completely covers the apex of the sporagiophore. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: In itself, not a pathogen to man. Reports in the medical literature have in the past blamed Rhizopus for zygomycosis when in fact other related genera - Absidia and Mucor - were responsible. Rhizopus stolonifer, the black bread mold, is also utilized in the commercial production of fumaric acid and cortisone. Other species in the genus secrete assorted alcohols and acids as metabolic waste products. Comments: Along with Aspergillus and Penicillium, species of this genus are the primary contaminants of grain spawn. Rhizopus is very rapid growing, and is called the Pin Mold for the shape of the spore producing body. Rhizopus stolonifer (=Rhizopus nigracans) is called the Black Pin Mold and can elevate the substrate temperature from room temperature to the 95-104°F. range. At this level, the populations of the true thermophiles increase dramatically, further heating up the host substrate to temperatures lethal to the mushroom mycelium. soma rights re-served 237 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 220 - Rhizopus, the Black Pin Mold, on malt agar. Scopulariopsis (White Plaster Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Series: Annelosporae Common Names: White Plaster Mold; Flour Mold. Latin Root: From "scopulatus" meaning broom-like or brush shaped, in reference to the structure of the sporulating reproductive body. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: A saprophyte, occasionally seen in composts that have been overwatered or are too high in nitrogen. Scopulariopsis also forms on the casing during the fruiting cycle. It naturally grows in soils, on hay, on rotting leaves and on other decaying plant material including grain. This group of molds generally prefer an alkaline pH. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily airborne spores, spent compost and insects; and from materials previously in contact with this contaminant that were not thoroughly cleaned before use. Measures of Control: Proper preparation and sufficient air during Phase II composting discourages this fungus. Atkins (1974) reported that excessive moisture and subsequent anaerobic pasteurization were the two main factors contributing to the spread of the White Plaster Mold. Before filling, the addition of gypsum to an overly wet compost will bind loose water, a condition favourable to this mold. Macroscopic Appearance: Circular colonies of densely matted, whitish mycelia; with age developing slight pinkish tones. This mold often appears as "splotches", mostly on the compost bed and to a lesser degree on the casing soil. soma rights re-served 238 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 221 - Drawing of sporulating structure typical of Scopulariopsis. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidiophores short, soon branching, delineating into several elongated cells which then give rise to short chains of globose, hyaline, finely warted, dry conidia that measure 5-8 x 5-7 microns. Annular zonations are present at the junction of the sporogenous cells and the first spore in the conidial chain. Terminal cells in the chain are the oldest and typically the largest. The conidiophores generally resemble that of Penicillium and thus are described as penicillate, or brush shaped. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: One species toxic to humans: Scopulariopsis brevicaulis (Saccardo) Brainer. This species usually attacks tissue already diseased by other microorganisms. It is an improbable threat to the health of mushroom cultivators. Comments: Scopulariopsis fimicola is the White Plaster Mold seen on compost beds. It is very detrimental to the growth of mushroom mycelia. Its presence is usually an indication of a short, wet and over-mature compost. This condition predisposes the compost to a difficult Phase II with dense anaerobic areas, ammonialock and consequently high pH levels. All these factors contribute to the growth and spread of Scopulariopsis fimicola, the species of White Plaster Mold most frequently seen in mushroom culture. Contamination can also arise from within the mushroom house if there has been a prior history of problems with this contaminant and if strict contamination control procedures have not been instigated. Not surprisingly, one often finds Scopulariopsis with the Inky Cap (a Coprinus species) which is also associated with residual ammonia in composts. See also Papulospora (P. byssina Hots.), a genus containing the Brown Plaster Mold whose early stages of growth resemble the White Plaster Mold. soma rights re-served 239 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Sepedonium (White or Yellow Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Series: Aleurisporae Common Names: Yellow Mold; White Mold. Habitat and Frequency of Occurrence: Occasionally to frequently encountered on agar; more common on compost; and parasitic on wild mushrooms (both Basidiomycetes and Ascomycetes). Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily through the air, but also from spent compost. Figure 222 - Drawing of sporulating structure and flask shaped conidia. Methods of Control: Air filtration; strict maintenance of hygiene in the laboratory and growing room; the expeditious removal of spent compost; and the thorough disinfection of wooden compost containers. Macroscopic Appearance: On malt agar and on rye grain appearing as a fast growing whitish mold, very similar to cottony mushroom mycelia and frequently mistaken for it. On compost it is a fine white mold which with age becomes yellowish to golden yellow from spore production. It is not as prolific a spore producer as the powdery Trichoderma. If spores are not produced at all, the mycelia remains whitish. This mold attacks composts that otherwise have been properly prepared for mushroom growing. Microscopic Characteristics: Two types of spores formed. The more obvious are large, globose chlamydospores ornamented with short spines and similar to those of Mycogone; except in this genus a hemispheric foot cell, shaped like a teacup is absent. Conidiophores are simple, relatively undeveloped, soma rights re-served 240 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb resembling mushroom mycelium and not easily distinguished from it except that they lack clamps. Globose to vase shaped conidia develop terminally at the end of these branches, either singly or in loose clusters. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Some species possibly toxic. It has been suggested that this mold secretes a sweet odor nauseous to some mushroom workers and possibly the cause of a little understood respiratory illness. Not much is known. Comments: Sepedonium spores are noted for their heat resistance. It is a whitish mold until the yellow conidia are produced. On malt agar media, Sepedonium is fast running, and out-grows most mushroom mycelia. When the two fungi grow within close proximity to one another, a line of inhibition usually develops between the two. If conidiospores or chlamydospores are not produced, this mold is difficult to identify. The conidiophores are indistinct, very much resembling its own mycelium. From the authors' experience this contaminant is a vigorous competitor on agar media. Its appearance necessitates a thorough cleaning of the laboratory and spawn incubation environment. If this mold contaminates grain spawn and goes undetected, use of this spawn in subsequent inoculations would be disastrous. The second site of contamination is horse manure/straw compost where it most frequently appears during spawn run. Only detrimental when large outbreaks occur, Sepedonium's presence on compost can be traced to insufficient pasteurization or spent compost residues in the trays or shelves. Although not regarded as a serious competitor on mushroom compost, Sepedonium is another fungus believed to be a food source for mites (Kneebone, 1961). Sepedonium, like Mycogone, is an imperfect state of Hypomyces, a common parasite on mushrooms. In the wild, Sepedonium chrysosperma parasitizes Boletus species (particularly B. chrysenteron) and causes them to abort. The chlamydospores of Sepedonium are generally similar to Mycogone. See also Mucor and Mycelia Sterilia, two fast running whitish molds on agar media. Figure 223 - Sepedonium mold competing with Psilocybe cubensis mycelia on malt agar media. soma rights re-served 241 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Torula (Black Yeast) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Dematiaceae Common Name: Black Yeast (Torula nigra). Latin root: From the same root as the adjectival "torulosus", meaning cylindrical shaped with bulges and constrictions at regular intervals, chain-like. Habitat and Frequency of Occurrence: Saprophytic, common. Many thermophilic species participate in the decomposition of straw and manure in the making of mushroom composts. Although Torula is rarely seen in agar culture, its cousin Rhodotorula, a red yeast, is frequently seen. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily an airborne contaminant; secondarily transmitted through compost. Figure 224 - Drawing of the sporulating structure of Torula, the Black Yeast. Methods of Control: None generally needed or desired. Torula is a beneficial, thermophilic microorganism thriving in the 115-125°F. range. Macroscopic Appearance: Whitish at first, then grayish, soon dark brown or jet black with spore production. As Torula matures, the mycelium becomes covered with a mass of spores that give it a soot-like appearance. On compost, this fungus appears similar to Humicola. Microscopic Characteristics: Mycelium colorless or slightly pigmented. True conidiophores are lacking. Hyphae abruptly terminate into conidia which are ovoid, translucent, dark brown, smooth and produced in soma rights re-served 242 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb branched or unbranched chains by either of two methods. In one form, the more mature spores of a conidial chain develop apically, with the younger spores arising from the spore closest to the hyphal branch. (This is called basipetal development). In a second form, conidia can develop by simple budding from the tips of a hypha, in a yeast-like fashion. The budding hypha narrows towards the apex into immature spores and finally terminates with an attenuating tail. Freed are conidia found singly or attached several at a time. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Not thought to be pathogenic. Confusion with Cryptococcus has in the past given Torula an undeserved pathogenic reputation. Cryptococcosis in the medical literature is often though incorrectly termed torulosis. Comments: Torula, like Humicola, is an ally to the mushroom compost maker, converting ammonic nitrogen into protein usable to the mushroom. Torula thermophila Cooney & Emerson is the species most frequently seen in composting straw and manure. Originally isolated from chicken droppings, this species is a true thermophile with a temperature range from 73-136°F., and an optimum of 104°F. The Torula genus is known for a number of thermophilic species that survive the pasteurization process and flourish at standard Phase II conditioning temperatures (118-125°F). When pasteurized compost is cooled down to room temperature, this fungus is rendered inactive and in turn becomes a food source for the mushroom mycelium. Rhodotorula reproduces very similarly to Torula. It is known as the Red Yeast, commonly contaminating agar cultures. Rhodotorula glutinis, a common soil inhabitant, may play an important role in the reproductive cycle of the common Chantarelle mushroom, Cantharellus cibarius. Pure cultures of Chantarelles have been difficult to obtain from wild specimens. And, Chantarelle spores do not germinate using standard laboratory techniques. In 1979, a Swedish mycologist named Nils Fries discovered that, in the presence of Rhodotorula glutinis and activated charcoal, C. cibarius spores readily germinate. Pure cultures of Chantarelles, once nearly impossible to obtain, are now feasible. Other related yeasts may have a similar stimulatory effect on various mushrooms species currently not prone to cultivation. Torula species, as with most yeasts, are separated from one another largely by chemical means. Trichoderma (Forest Green Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Moniliaceae Common Names: Forest Green Mold; Green Mold; and Trichoderma Blotch. Greek Root: From "trichos" meaning hairy and "derma" or skin. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: Very common on compost, casing soil and to a lesser degree on grain and agar. Trichoderma often parasitizes mushrooms under cultivation and can inhibit or reduce fruitings. Many species grow on wood or woody tissue and are abundant in peat. Trichoderma frequently grows on the wooden trays holding compost. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily an airborne contaminant when contaminating agar or grain cultures. On casing soils, it is introduced through the peat or humus. Trichoderma is often spread during harvesting, bed cleaning or watering. Species in this genus generally prefer an acid pH in the 4-5.5 (6) range. Measures of Control: Careful picking; disposal of dead and diseased mushrooms; lowering of humidity levels; lowering carbon dioxide and increasing air circulation to eliminate dead air pockets. Use of clean casing materials lacking undecomposed woody tissue lessen the chance of Trichoderma contamination. Isolated outbreaks of Trichoderma can easily be contained by one of several methods. Since Trichoderma thrives in acid habitats, raising the pH of the surrounding soil inhibits further growth. Perhaps the simplest way to raise pH is to cover the infecting colony with salt, sodium hypochlorite or sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) or a soma rights re-served 243 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb solution thereof. Recognizing and treating this fungus in its earliest stages, before many spores are produced, greatly reduces the risk of satellite colonies spreading throughout the growing room. Mushrooms afflicted with Trichoderma should be carefully isolated. All items coming in contact with it (tools, workers, etc.) should be resanitized. Steam pasteurization at 160°F. for one hour effectively kills the spores of this fungus. Figure 225 - Drawing of conidia and sporulating structure typical of Trichoderma. Macroscopic Appearance: A cottony mold, growing in circular colonies on the casing soil or on compost; grayish and diffuse at first; rapidly growing; and soon forest green from spore production. On malt agar colonies of Trichoderma have an aerial, cottony and brilliant forest green mycelium whereas Penicillium has an appressed, granular and blue green mycelium. Some infrequently encountered species are whitish or yellowish, but the majority of those seen in mushroom culture are greenish shaded. Parasitized mushrooms have dry brownish blotches or sunken lesions on the cap or stem. They are often enveloped by a fine downy mildew that may eventually become greenish from spore production, and are grossly misproportioned. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidiophores clear, profusely branched upon whose ends small bunches of ovoid greenish pigmented, smooth spores are borne. In many species uniquely shaped sporogenous cells are present roughly resembling bowling pins and arranged as triads. After squashing a sample for viewing under the microscope, the conidiophores readily disassemble and are difficult to recognize. The freed conidia, however, are not arranged in linear chains as commonly seen in Aspergillus and Penicillium, but are in loose clusters or are scattered as individuals. A most distinctive feature is that the conidia are encased in a mucuslike substance, making the spores sticky. Spores measure 3-5 x 3-4 microns. soma rights re-served 244 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 226 - Trichoderma-like mold parasitizing Psilocybe cubensis. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Not known to be pathogenic. One industrial application utilizes Trichoderma, Penicillium and Cladosporium to precipitate precious metals such as gold and platinum from solutions. The process is being patented. Comments: In cased grain culture, Trichoderma is the most frequently encountered contaminant on the casing layer and usually originates there. Upon casing, spores harbored in the peat infect exposed grain kernels and sporulate. The contaminated kernels become a platform for further contamination. The mold then spreads through the casing layer until it breaks through to the surface of the casing layer. Also, Trichoderma is prone to casings with undecomposed woody tissue and those incorporating potting soils. Trichoderma is also caused by excessively wet casings applied to sterile grain spawn. Trichoderma is an ubiquitous fungus that is encouraged by improperly adjusted environmental parameters. Conditions of excessively high and prolonged humidity in combination with stagnant air and high carbon dioxide levels tip the ecological balance of the casing soil's micro-ecology in favor of this contaminant. Once Trichoderma populations bloom, this mold quickly infects newly formed primordia and developing fruitbodies which become deformed. This pathogen also grows on discarded mushroom debris, particularly stem butts. Afflicted mushrooms have brownish specks or lesions on the stem, especially near the base or apex. A fuzzy mycelium similar to Verticillium may be present on the cap. These lesions are dry, whereas the blotches caused by bacteria tend to be moist. The growth of the fruitbody is abruptly arrested by this mold. Under extreme conditions this mold sporulates directly on the mushroom, becoming green in color. Adjacent mushrooms, newly formed pinheads and subsequent crops need not be affected if air circulation is increased to proper levels and if humidity is decreased to within tolerable limits (3-5 exchanges of air per hour while maintaining 85-92% humidity). Trichoderma is alleged to secrete toxins that inhibit mushroom primordia formation and growth. Another problem with Trichoderma is that its spores are utilized by red pigmy mites as food. Trichoderma spores are sticky and attach to anything coming in contact with them. In this way, mites further aid the spread of Trichoderma contamination. And, soon after an outbreak of Trichoderma, it is not unusual to see a population explosion of mites. soma rights re-served 245 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Most notable are Trichoderma viride (a synonym of Trichoderma lignorum), an early appearing mold with roughened spores and Trichoderma koningii, a smooth spored mold seen later in the cropping cycle. Both are mushroom pathogens. See Verticillium, a mold with similar symptoms when attacking fruit bodies. See Color Photograph 22. Trichothecium (Pink Mold) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Moniliaceae Common Name: Pink Mold. Greek Root: From "trichos" meaning hairy and "theke" meaning sac or capsule. Habitat and Frequency of Occurrence: For the most part, a saprophyte, rarely encountered in spawn making even though it is one of the many microflora associated with grain. Trichothecium is an occasional contaminant in agar culture and in poorly prepared or immature composts. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily an airborne contaminant. Figure 227 - Drawing of conidia and sporulating structure of Trichothecium. Measures of Control: Air filtration and maintenance of good hygiene in the laboratory. Macroscopic Appearance: Mycelium initially whitish; soon pinkish with spore production; and typically slow soma rights re-served 246 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb growing on malt agars. Trichothecium is a powdery Penicillium type mold. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidia measuring 12-18 x 4-10 microns; colorless to brightly colored; two celled; pear shaped, ellipsoid or ovoid; borne in clusters with the basal cell being smaller than the terminal one; and positioned at the apex of tall, thin, unbranched, but septate conidiophores. Spore bunches are attached to one another either in a chain-like fashion or in loose groups but not lineally. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: One mold notable. Trichothecium roseum Link ex Fr. secretes an antibiotic (trichothecin) that is toxic to bacteria, fungi and animals. Comments: More frequently seen in the course of agar culture than on grain, this contaminant can become a formidable problem if not detected early, and if large spore populations are permitted to develop within the laboratory. Also occurring on compost and occasionally on the casing soil, particularly where nitrogen enriched compounds have not been converted into protein usable to the mushroom mycelium. By itself it is not strongly inhibitory to mushroom mycelium, but thrives in habitats generally unsuited for good mushroom growth. Adhering to good compost practices and following standard hygienic procedures prevents this fungus from occurring. See also Fusarium, a genus containing several pinkish colored contaminants and Geotrichum, a genus known for the Red Lipstick molds. Verticillium (Dry Bubble) Class: Fungi Imperfecti Order: Moniliales Family: Moniliaceae Common Names: Dry Bubble; Brown Spot; and Verticillium Disease. Latin Root: From "verticillus" meaning whorled or having branches on the same plane, in reference to the shape of the conidiophore. Habitat & Frequency of Occurrence: A common parasite of the fruitbody. Verticillium is promoted during cropping under conditions of excessive humidity combined with inadequate air circulation. Verticillium grows within a broad temperature range although warmer temperatures (62°F. and above) are preferred. Singer (1961) reported an optimum of 72°F. Verticillium abounds in soils and is introduced into the growing environment via the materials composing the casing. Medium Through Which Contamination Is Spread: Primarily transmitted from one infected region to another by mushroom harvesters, flies and insects. Watering infected mushrooms further spreads Verticillium spores. Measures of Control: General hygiene maintenance; proper picking and cleaning practices; removal or isolation of infected cultures; increasing air circulation; lowering of humidity; and elimination of flies and mites. If Verticillium is evident before a crop is harvested, carefully pick the infected mushrooms, seal them in a plastic bag and leave the growing room with minimal contact with unaffected areas. Verticillium spores are highly viscous and are best transmitted by motile hosts, especially mites and other insects. Never water an infected bed until the diseased mushrooms have been removed and the infected zones have been salted with alkaline buffer (baking soda, sodium hypochlorite). Macroscopic Appearance: Slightly infected mushrooms characterized by brown colored spots or streaks on the basal or upper regions of the stem and on the caps of developing primordia. These spots become grayish colored from spore production. Afflicted mushrooms often bend towards the side that is infected. If the mushrooms do develop at all, they are typically tilted to one side or the other. Verticillium attacks developing soma rights re-served 247 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb fruitbodies - the more severely infected are grossly malformed, especially young primordia which are turned into sclerotia-like balls of amorphous whitish mycelia. More mature but diseased mushrooms have a deformed pileus, sometimes with a "hair lip", and frequently with a downy grayish mycelium over the cap. The stem can be covered with a downy mycelium and often vertically splits, roughly resembling a peeled banana. The cap becomes disproportionately small relative to the fatter than normal stem. The overall texture of the mushroom is dry and leathery. When this mold attacks Psilocybe cubensis, there are several additional characters worthy of note. Parasitized P. cubensis caps frequently become plane at an early stage. The stem becomes swollen and hollow, narrowing radically towards the apex. Only in an extremely humid environment does a downy mildew develop over the cap and stem surface. The "Verticillium spots" so commonly reported by growers of Agaricus, a white mushroom, are more accurately called "Verticillium streaks" on P. cubensis, a mushroom with a brownish cap and a whitish stem. Figure 228 - Conidia and sporulating structure of Verticillium. Microscopic Characteristics: Conidia hyaline; unicellular; ovoid to ellipsoid; minute, measuring 1-3 x 1-2 microns; borne singly or in small groups at the tips of narrow branches that whorl from a central trunk at regular intervals. Conidiophores are slender and relatively tall. History, Use and/or Medical Implications: Apparently inocuous, no pathogenic species are known. Comments: Verticillium is the most common fungal disease parasitizing the mushroom crop and the bane of both small and large scale growers. One misfortune of losing an early flush to Verticillium disease is the increased probability of other diseases appearing. Split stems open the mushroom up to attack by numerous insects and other pathogens. Not surprisingly, the sciarid fly is a vector for the spread of Verticillium spores from parasitized mushrooms to healthy ones. It becomes clear that if conditions are right for Verticillium, the conditions are right for other molds. The cultivator may soon have to deal with not one contaminant, but many. Verticillium malthousei Ware is synonomous with Verticillium fungicola. Both are "brown spot" fungi that envelope the mushroom with a fine grayish mycelium and cause brownish lesions on their surfaces. soma rights re-served 248 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Verticillium albo-atrum is another species in mushroom culture, although not as frequently seen. An easy method for the home cultivator to distinguish Verticillium infection from Trichoderma is to plate out the suspect mold on malt agar media. If the mold is Trichoderma, forest green colonies of mycelium will form. Other than green colonies of mycelium suggests the contaminant be Dactylium or Verticillium. Usually one sees Trichoderma blotch simultaneous to or after the occurrence of green mold colonies on the casing layer. If there is no evidence of green mold on the casing layer and the mushrooms display these symptoms, then the mold is probably Verticillium or Dactylium. Dactylium can be distinguished from Verticillium by its locus and manner of infection. Dactylium is a grey, aerial mold, fast growing and obvious on the casing. Verticillium is primarily evident on the fruitbody and scarcely seen on the casing. Steane (1979) reported that Agaricus bitorquis seemed especially resistant to Verticillium disease whereas Agaricus brunnescens was more susceptible to it. Furthermore, he noted that farms regularly suffering from this disease could greatly reduce the level of infection by intermittently growing A. bitorquis between A. brunnescens crops. A saprophyte and parasite causing "wilt disease" of many plants, particularly garden vegetables, Verticillium is abundant in most soils. Some Verticillium species are endoparasitic to nematodes - their spores germinate in the mouth tubes of the nematode with the resulting mycelia quickly digesting the organism from within. Other pathogens that have similar symptoms to one or more of the various stages of Verticillium are: Dactylium; Trichoderma; Mycogone; and Virus. Figure 229 - Verticillium attacking Psilocybe cubensis. soma rights re-served 249 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb XIV. THE PESTS OF MUSHROOM CULTURE Figure 230 - Red Pepper Mites swarming on Agaricus brunnescens. Mushroom Flies Mushroom flies and midges are present in nature wherever fungi are found. Attracted by the odor of decomposing manure and vegetable matter, as well as the smell of growing mycelium, these insect pests zero in and lay their eggs on or near the mycelium and fruitbodies. Under proper conditions these eggs hatch. But it is the larvae that do the extensive damage to the mushroom plant, either by directly feeding on the mycelial cells or tunneling through the mushroom fruitbody. Because of the concentration of attractive odors, a commercial mushroom farm is always under siege by these pests. To insure insect free crops, certain measures are necessary. Unfortunately the bulk of these control measures involve insecticides, an approach not recommended by the authors. The use of insecticides is not only costly and hazardous to human health, but also represents a short term solution of a symptom rather than the solution of the problem itself. The answer to disease and pest control in mushroom growing is strict hygiene for which there can be no substitute. soma rights re-served 250 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Fly Control Measures 1. Pasteurization periods and temperatures must be sufficient to kill all stages of insect growth - 140°F. for 2 hours in composts or other bulk substrates. 2. All Phase II, spawning, spawn running and cropping rooms must be airtight. Physically excluding insects from these areas is the most positive control one can exercise. Even the smallest crack can serve as an entrance to the growing room. The spawn running rooms should be the most secure with access to these areas restricted. All doors should be weather-stripped and tight fitting. Positive pressure and air locks also help. 3. All tools and implements should be cleaned and disinfected before use on a new crop. A commonly used disinfectant is a 2% chlorine solution. 4. Breeding areas must be prevented by removing from the premises all excess or spent substrates, used grains, mushroom trimmings and other related by-products. 5. The growing room and all containers should be washed and disinfected between crops. Wood in particular harbors contaminants, including virus infected mushroom mycelium. Treatment of wood with cuprinol or copper sulfate is common. Petroleum based products should be avoided. 6. Fresh air intakes and exhaust vents must be screened with fine mosquito netting. Be sure there are no cracks around the filters and fan housing. 7. The room should be equipped with an insect monitor. The use of a monitor alerts the grower to fly emergence from within the growing room or to fly entry from the outside. The monitor can be as simple as a 12" x 12" plywood board to which a small black light (long wave UV) is centrally mounted. On either side of the light sticky paper is attached. There are also small pest lights commercially available. (See Resource section in the Appendix). Sciarid Fly Figure 231 - Sciarid adult and its larva. (Adapted from P.R. VanderMeer; Penn. St. Univ. Coop. Ext. Ser.) Order: Diptera Family: Lycoriidae (Fungus Gnats) Genus/Species: Lycoriella solani, Lycoriella mali, Lycoriella auripila soma rights re-served 251 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Common Names: Sciarid Fly, Big Fly Natural Habitat: Predominantly saprophytes, living on wild mushrooms, rotting wood, leaf mold and manure piles. Maturing mushrooms are frequently infested with sciarid larvae, the so-called "worms" that commonly ruin choice wild edibles. PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS: Mature Stage: Sciarids are small gnat-like flies characterized by two long segmented antennae, large compound eyes, a black head and thorax and a yellow segmented abdomen. Females are about 3 mm. long and can be distinguished by the swollen abdomen which ends in an ovipositor. Males are about 2 mm. long and have a narrow abdomen ending in a distinct clasper. Larval Stage: Larvae measure 6-12 mm. long with twelve abdominal sections and a distinct black shiny head. The long creamy white body has a semi-transparent cuticle with a visibly darkened alimentary canal. Larvae go through four development stages, or instars, before pupating. Pupal Stage: Fully mature larvae spend two to three days spinning a cocoon of fine silky threads and compost fragments. These threads are sometimes detected as slime trails left behind in the substrate as the wandering larvae pupate. Once the cocoon is finished, the larva contracts into a pupal stage, thus beginning the transition to the adult stage. Pupae are 2-4 mm. long and change from white to almost black. Life Cycle: Developmental period in days Temperature Egg Larva Pupa Adult At 75°F. 2 16 3 5-7 At 61°F. 7 23 8 (no data) Sciarids thrive in the summer and fall with populations building to a peak in September and October. Sciarids then die with the onset of cold outside temperatures. Comments: The sciarid fly is responsible for considerable damage to commercial Agaricus crops. Attracted by the smell of newly pasteurized compost, sciarids home in from miles away. A female can lay between 150-170 eggs at a time. Eggs laid in the compost just after Phase II composting hatch quickly into larvae during the spawn running period. These larvae then feed on the running mycelium as well as compost, which is broken down into a foul smelling, soggy mass, totally unsuitable for spawn growth. Massive infestations can cause total crop failure. At lower infestation levels, larvae migrate into the casing layer and then emerge just as the first mushroom pins appear or as late as the first flush. These adults lay more eggs in the casing, and the newly hatched larvae attack both mycelia and mushrooms. Symptoms of this attack include: 1. Dead pinheads. 2. Pins or mushrooms that are loosely connected to the casing due to severed mycelial connections. 3. Brown or black spots on pinheads or on the stems of mushrooms. 4. "Salt shaker pins" perforated by larval tunnels. 5. Browning of the stem where cut. Secondary damage to mushroom crops by sciarid flies comes from their role as carriers of mites and diseases, including the pathogens Verticillium and Trichoderma. A single sciarid fly can carry up to 20 mites! soma rights re-served 252 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Phorid Fly Figure 232 - Phorid fly and its larva. (Adapted from P.R. VanderMeer; Penn. St. Univ. Coop. Ext. Ser.) Order: Diptera Family: Phoridae Genus/Species: Megaselia nigra, Megaselia halterata Common Names: Phorid Fly, Dung Fly Natural Habitat: Commonly inhabiting manure piles and rank, decaying vegetation; feeding on wild fungi and their mycelia. Phorid larvae are frequently seen tunneling through wild mushrooms. PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS: Mature Stage: Distinguishing features are a humped back, a rapid jerky run, a rounded third antennal segment and a yellowish to reddish brown back. Adults measure 2-5 mm. long. Females live 16 days and males live 10 days. Larval Stage: Larvae are 6-10 mm. long, white and semi-transparent. The head is characterized by a pair of "mouth hooks" with seven teeth. The segmented body tapers from the head to the posterior end. Larvae pass through three instars. Pupal Stage: Pupae are white at first then becoming pale yellow to brown. They can be distinguished by a pair of curved black respiratory horns. Life Cycle: Developmental period in days Temperature Egg Larva Pupa At 75°F. 2 5 8 At 61°F. 4 14 28 Comments: Phorids can do extensive damage to the mushroom crop and are considered the principal mushroom pest in western Europe. Mated female phorids are drawn by the odor of mushroom mycelium. This attraction increases during the spawn running period and peaks at full colonization. Each female can lay up to 50 eggs which are placed in close proximity to the mycelium. In mature mushroom crops, females lay eggs on soma rights re-served 253 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb the gills, in the casing, and adjacent to young pinheads. Once hatched, the larvae feed on the mycelium, then tunnel into the mushrooms through the base of the stem. Arising from these tunnels are secondary bacterial infections causing further damage and brownish discolorations. The fact that females will not lay eggs in total darkness gives the grower an effective method for preventing Phorid infestation during spawn running. Cecid Fly Figure 233 - Cecid fly and its mother larva. (Adapted from P.R. VanderMeer; Penn. St. Univ. Coop. Ext. Ser.) Order: Diptera Family: Cecidomyiidae Genus/Species: Heteropeza pigmaea, Mycophila speyeri. Common Names: Cecids, Gall Midges Natural Habitat: Commonly inhabiting decaying wood, rotting vegetation and manure piles or wherever fungal mycelium occurs. PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS: Mature Stage: Adult cecids measure less than 1 mm. long making them almost invisible to the naked eye. H. pigmaea are orange with a long segmented abdomen and segmented antennae. Wing venation or structure is noticably absent except close to the thorax. Larval Stage: Newly born larvae are 1 mm. long and 2-3 mm. when mature. H. pigmaea are white to cream; M. speyeri are bright orange. Larval movement is facilitated by free water, whereas in dry conditions this movement is by flexion, jumping as far as 2 cm. Larvae are photokinetic (moving to light) and can reproduce through paedogenesis, a process whereby mother larvae give birth to daughter larvae. Under optimal conditions mother larvae can produce 14-20 daughter larvae in six days. Thus, in a short period of time a population explosion can occur. Pupal Stage: H. pygmaea larvae molt to a rigid "hemi-pupa" within which new daughter larva evolve. Conditions favorable to larval growth lead to a "resting mother larvae" stage which can remain alive up to 18 soma rights re-served 254 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb months. M. speyeri has neither of these particular attributes although it also performs paedogenesis. Larvae of both species can change to "imago" larvae, form only one instar, then molt to free pupae, emerging as adults five days later. Life Cycle: Developmental period in days Egg Mother Larva 2 5-6 Daughter Larva (2) 5-6 Comments: Cecid larvae pierce or tear growing hyphae, sucking out the contents. The main loss suffered by commercial growers is contamination of the mushrooms by larvae. H. pygmaea can also carry a bacterium which produces longitudinal brown stripes on the stem. In the infected mushrooms, tiny black droplets of fluid form on the gills, which then become spotted or turn black. Figure 234 - Wing venation of mushroom flies: clockwise from top right, Leptocera, Sciarid, Cecid and Phorid. Order: Diptera Family: Sphaeroceridae (Borboridae) Genus/Species: Leptocera heteroneura Natural Habitat: Associated with manure, compost piles and decaying organic matter. PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS: Mature Stage: Leptocera has large red compound eyes and with a yellow and black striped abdomen. Leptocera flies are very similar to phorid flies but are smaller and have a distinctive wing venation. They somewhat resemble the common fruit fly. Larval Stage: Larvae have a blunt posterior end tapering to a slender head which is equipped with mouth hooks. Leptocera larvae are very similar to house fly maggots in appearance. Pupal Stage: Pupae are golden brown and barrel shaped. Life Cycle: Developmental period in days Egg Larva Pupa 3 14-28 10-14 Comments: The Leptocera fly acts as a vector for disease organisms and is frequently associated with soma rights re-served 255 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb bacterial infections. It is a known carrier of mites. Mushroom Mites Mites are very small spider-like insects that live and breed in decomposing vegetable matter, feeding on molds present therein. Optimum breeding environments are moist and warm, giving rise to a rapid succession of generations and exponential growth. Under adverse conditions certain mites have the ability to change into an intermediate stage called a "hypopus". The hypopae have flattened bodies, short stubby legs and a sucker plate with which they attach to moving objects. These attributes facilitate dispersal. An excellent survival mechanism, it is the hypopae that are commonly carried by flies. A typical life cycle for mites in days is: Temperature Eggs Larvae Protonymph Tritonymph Total 75°F. 6 2 2 3 13 60°F. 11 8 6 11 36 Mites are known to eat mushrooms and their mycelia. Additionally they devalue the crop and crawl onto pickers, causing temporary discomfort. Their presence is an indication of unsatisfactory substrate preparation and insufficient pasteurization times and/or temperatures. Figure 235 - Straw mites. Order: Arcana Family: Tyrogelyphidae Genus/Species: Tyrophagus putrescentiae, Caloglyphus mycophagus Common Names: Straw or Hay Mites. soma rights re-served 256 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Discussion: Straw mites have soft translucent pinkish or yellowish bodies punctuated by long flexible hairs. One female is capable of producing 500 eggs in a lifetime. Commonly found in hay or straw piles, these saprophytic mites are endemic to foul compost. They feed on molds and bacterial contaminants of the mushroom crop and also eat mycelium and mushrooms, making small irregular pits in the stem and cap. These pits can later become infected by bacteria. Order: Arcana Family: Eupodidae Genus/Species: Linopodes antennaepes Common Name: Long Legged Mushroom Mite. Discussion: This mite is easily recognized by its long front legs which are twice the length of the light, yellowish brown body. It is not believed to be directly injurious to the mushroom crop and in fact is a predator on other mite species. Order: Arcana Family: Tarsonemidae Genus/Species: Tarsonemus myceliophagus Common Name: The Mushroom Loving Mite. Discussion: Tarsonemus mites are very small, 180-190 microns long, with pale brown, shining, oval bodies. They occasionally swarm in masses on mushroom caps but otherwise are rarely seen except by microscopic examination. Females produce an average of 22 eggs in a lifetime of 2-8 weeks. These mites cause a bright reddish-brown discoloration at the base of the mushroom stem and may cut the stem's mycelial connections. Known to survive normal compost pasteurization temperatures, they can carry a virus disease to Agaricus brunnescens. Order: Arcana Family: Pyemotidae Genus/Species: Pygmephorus sp. Common Names: Red Pepper Mites; Pygmy Mites. Discussion: Pepper mites are small (250 microns long) with yellowish brown, wedge-shaped bodies, crossed by a central whitish band. Red pepper mites are often seen as a swarming jostling mass, on mushroom caps or the surface of the casing. These mites are commonly associated with Penicillium and Trichoderma molds, upon which they feed. soma rights re-served 257 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Figure 236 - Light micrograph of Red Pepper Mite. Note that darkened shapes by front leg are Panaeolus subbalteatus spores. See also Figure 230. Figure 237 - Nematode testing apparatus. Sample is wrapped in gauze and submerged in a water filled funnel. After twenty-four hours, a small amount of water is drawn off and examined with a magnifying lens or dissecting scope. soma rights re-served 258 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Nematodes (Eelworms) Nematodes or eelworms are microscopic roundworms which live in soil, decomposing organic matter, fresh or salt water, or on living host plants, fungi, insects and animals. Nematodes can survive up to six weeks without food and are unaffected by freezing. With eight billion nematodes in each acre of soil, they are one of the most numerous creatures on earth. Water is essential for locomotion and breeding. Swimming in an eel-like fashion and because of their minute size, nematodes can live in the thinnest films of water. With sufficient water, nematodes rise to the surface of their environment. In moist casing, large numbers of nematodes are visible as a shimmering veneer on the casing surface. This behavior is called "winking" and is caused by the nematodes standing on their tails and waving their bodies in the air. Considered to be an adaptation for dispersal, the winking nematode adheres by means of a sticky outer skin to whatever they come in contact with, be it a fly, mite, human hand or clothing. This same outer skin protects the nematode from adverse conditions. If dried slowly, nematodes can change to a "cryptobiotic" or "cyst" state, thereby preserved for years until reactivated by water. In this cyst state, nematodes are also able to persist in high temperatures that would otherwise be lethal. Parthenogenesis, the ability for females to breed asexually without males, is common among nematodes and leads to very rapid population expansion. By this means, a single nematode can breed millions of descendants within a few weeks. Nematodes can also reproduce sexually, but not as rapidly. Nematodes present in mushroom culture can be classed into two basic types according to their feeding habits: saprophagous and mycophagous. Saprophagous Nematodes Genus/Species: Rhabditus spp. Saprophagous eelworms are characterized by a tube-like mouth through which they suck nutrient particles suspended in water. These nutrients are comprised of organic matter and its accompanying microorganisms, particularly bacteria. Because bacteria occur in large numbers in both mushroom compost and casing soil, these materials provide excellent breeding grounds for saprophagous eelworms. Figure 238 - Mycophagous eelworm (top) and Saprophagous eelworm. Note stylet in mouth tube of former. In bulk substrates such as compost or plain straw, nematodes can be found in great numbers. The high temperatures of Phase I conditioning would normally destroy them if it were not for the fact they migrate to the cooler outer shell of the compost pile. Phase II can eliminate nematodes but only if the entire compost is soma rights re-served 259 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb subjected to pasteurization temperatures. In a properly prepared and thoroughly pasteurized substrate, the mushroom mycelium consumes all free water and then feeds on the bacterial population. This creates a "bacteriostatic environment", which effectively limits nematode growth capabilities. In an uneven substrate with overly wet and dry areas, however, the nematode's ability to breed increases. Wet areas are particularly suitable for eelworms to breed and feed. And, as their population increases, the build-up of waste material from metabolic excretions soon fouls the substrate, rendering it unsuitable for mycelial growth. These excretions result in similar damage to infested casing soils. Although saprophagous eelworms are not primary pathogens, their presence indicates improper hygiene or imbalanced growing conditions. For this reason, control measures focus on prevention rather than treatment. In fact, there are no practical means to treat infested areas that would not likewise harm the mushroom mycelium. Mycophagous Nematodes Genus/Species: Ditylenchus myceliophagus; Aphelenchiodes composticola Mycophagous eelworms feed directly on mushrooms. They are characterized by a mouth stylet or needle with which these eelworms puncture hyphae, inject digestive juices and then suck out the cellular contents. The damaged cell, drained of its cytoplasm, soon dies. Feeding continually and moving from cell to cell, mycophagous eelworms can soon destroy whole mycelial networks. In infected substrates, the fine mycelial growth disappears, leaving only the coarse strands which give the appearance of stringy growth. Eventually the substrate becomes soggy and foul smelling, a condition further promoted by the build-up of anaerobic bacteria. Often the nematode trapping fungi, Arthrobotrys spp. develop in association with them. It is visible as a fine grayish mold-like growth. Although the presence of this mold is a useful indicator of nematode infestation, it is not a true control for these organisms. Mycophages differ from saprophages in their slower non-parthogenetic reproduction and their lack of the "winking" behavior mentioned earlier. Both Mycophagus species can reproduce 30-100 fold in about two weeks at 70-75°F. soma rights re-served 260 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb XV. MUSHROOM GENETICS Figure 239 - Gill face of Psilocybe cyanescens populated with fertile spore-bearing basidia and sterile cells called pleurocystidia. Introduction This chapter discusses what genes are and what they do. It addresses the relationship between an individual's set of genes and the characteristics of that individual. The implications of genetics for the grower or breeder of mushroom strains are examined and an improved, easy technique for generating cultures from spore prints will be presented. What Are Genes? Genes contain specific sequences of nucleotides, the nitrogen-based building blocks of the DNA molecule. These sequences specify the order of nucleotides in messenger RNA molecules, which in turn determine the soma rights re-served 261 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb sequence of the amino acids in a protein chain. For the purposes of this discussion, genes may be regarded as indivisible units, although in fact, they can on rare occasions be split or altered. A mutation is the permanent alteration of a gene caused by some outside force (chemicals, radiation, mistakes by the DNA copying mechanism of the cell, etc.). In discussions of genetics, a gene is often referred to as a genetic locus, emphasizing the fact that genes are regions of a DNA molecule. Within a population of a species, there are many differing copies of each gene. Each copy is referred to as an allele of that gene. What Do Genes Do? Genes are the blueprints of life. They specify the structure of RNA and protein molecules; these molecules create all the other compounds and structures which make up a living organism. An individual organism is an emergent property of its genes in that not only is it the result of gene products, but also the interactions of gene products. The expression and interaction of genes, that is the characteristics of an individual, are known collectively as the phenotype of that individual, whereas the sets of genes which produce the phenotype is known as the genotype. The Advantage of Multiple Copies of Genes Many genes are present in the genotype in several copies, and these copies are often different from one another. This is because the protein specified by any one gene copy has unique physical and chemical properties of its own. It functions most efficiently at a certain temperature, pH and salt concentration. If an important protein is represented in several different gene versions, a broad band rather than a narrow range of temperatures and chemical conditions will be optimal. Chromosomes Chromosomes are collections of genes. They are long DNA molecules, each of which contain several thousand genes. For this discussion, the genes are best visualized as beads on a string, so that the string can be cut at any point between the beads, and can be rejoined at the place of the cut or to any cut "string portion" or the chromosome. Chromosomes are very small. With special stains and high powered microscopes, the larger ones can be seen. Unfortunately, the chromosomes of fungi are extremely small, and the number of chromosomes, something characteristic of each species, has never been determined for most fungi. There is a complete set of chromosomes in every cell of every organism. This means that every time a cell divides, a complete copy must be made of every chromosome, and hence of every gene in the organism's genome. The cellular copying process is very nearly perfect, with errors being made at about the rate of one per million genes. That is, to find a random mutation of a particular gene, you would have to look at a million cells. Factors which produce mutations will, of course, increase this rate. These copy errors are the source of background mutations, which are always appearing in every organism. Mitosis Mitosis is the normal process of chromosome duplication which takes place every time that a cell divides. In it, all the chromosomes are duplicated, and in the early stages of the process, the copies stick together. All of the duplicated chromosomes line up in the middle of the cell, and one of the two copies of each is pulled to either end of the cell, resulting in two complete sets of chromosomes. Meiosis Meiosis is the unique series of events which takes place when a cell is involved in sexual reproduction. In meiosis, the chromosomes are copied just as in mitosis, but the genes are shuffled in a process called recombination. Sexually reproducing organisms have two sets of chromosomes, one from each parent. In soma rights re-served 262 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb meiosis, these two sets line up side by side, and reciprocal exchanges of sections of chromosomes take place. That is, a section of the maternal copy of a chromosome is transferred to the paternal copy, and a section of the paternal copy is simultaneously transferred to the maternal one. This happens to all of the chromosomes, usually once per chromosome, but sometimes more than once. After these reciprocal exchanges take place, two successive cell divisions occur, resulting in four cells, each with ONE copy of each chromosome. None of these cells are identical to any of the others. They each have unique sets of genes. These cells are known as gametes, and are basidiospores in a mushroom, ascospores in a cup fungus or a yeast and sperm or egg cells in an animal. It is this act of recombination of genes within the genome and the combination of genomes from two parents which is the genius of sexual reproduction. By this mechanism, variety is constantly introduced into the population of a species. A bacterium, which can reproduce very rapidly by mitosis, can generate vast numbers of bacteria in a very short time, but all of the offspring are identical. The importance of this difference cannot be overstated. If conditions fall below optimal or into the lethal range for the parent bacterium, all of the progeny soon die or are equally affected (unless, of course, there has been a favorable random mutation). Chance favorable mutations are, in fact, the major means of evolution available to bacteria. Sexual reproduction, on the other hand, constantly spins off variation. Some of the progeny are substandard and do not survive, or do poorly, most are average and some are clearly superior, flourishing and leaving behind a greater number of offspring than the other groups. In this way, the population is enriched in gene combinations which are better adapted to the environment. Reproductive Strategies The two aforementioned modes of reproduction lead to three primary reproductive strategies. These are the primary use of asexual reproduction, the primary use of sexual reproduction and the sequential or seasonal use of both methods of reproduction. 1. Asexual (mitotic) reproduction allows an organism to produce large numbers of offspring in a very short period of time. This makes possible the rapid exploitation of any ecological niche which becomes available. This strategy is used by bacteria, yeasts, many molds (Fungi Imperfecti) and a surprising number of plants. 2. Sexual reproduction is not as rapid, since meiosis, gamete production and fusion and zygote growth are relatively slow processes. The progeny, however, have built-in variation and are capable of exploiting a wider assortment of niches than the parents. This strategy is used by larger organisms which tend to live for a longer time than those which are primarily asexual. Examples of organisms using this strategy are polypores, most plants and all large animals. 3. Combining sexual and asexual reproductions in different portions of the life cycle results in a highly effective strategy. This method is utilized by most lower plants and most fungi. In this strategy, when a suitable niche is found, asexual reproduction allows it to be rapidly filled and exploited. When that niche has been populated and nutrients become scarce, sexual reproduction is triggered. As well as releasing a number of varied progeny to the environment, sexually produced spores are usually more resistant to the harsh environmental conditions than mitotically produced spores. Often they are specifically adapted to lasting through winter or through a period of dryness, conditions not conducive to the growth of fungi. Asexual Reproduction in the Fungi Asexual reproduction in the fungi takes many forms, including buds, conidia, sporangiospores and fragmentation products. Yeasts reproduce by budding, which is the constant growth of new cells from the surface of a mother cell. The new cells literally "blow out" of the mother cell wall like a balloon. Conidia are mitotic spores which are continuously produced within or upon special structures called soma rights re-served 263 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb conidiogenous cells. Examples of conidial fungi are represented by Penicillium and Aspergillus molds, the fungi which attack spoiled foodstuffs, the downy and powdery mildew which attack garden plants, and the hundreds of genera which are involved in the breakdown and recycling of debris and litter in nature. Sporangiospores (spores formed in batches within saclike structures called sporangia) are found in the water molds and the Zygomycetes. Rhizopus, which is often seen on breads and strawberries, reproduces in this manner. A common mode of asexual reproduction is for portions of vegetative mycelium to thicken and form heavy walls and septae. These reinforced hyphal fragments then break apart and are distributed by natural processes. These vegetative propagules are called by many names, including arthrospores, chlamydospores, gemmae and others. Sexual Reproduction in Mushrooms While mushrooms reproduce sexually, they have no sexes. All that the term sexual reproduction means is that two sets of genetic information are carried, and that the genes in those sets are shuffled randomly before one set is provided to each gamete. Two gametes must come together and fuse to form the next fertile generation. In animals and plants, the notion of sexes is realistic, because there are two kinds of gametes, an egg and a sperm. In mushrooms, all the gametes are physically identical; they are the basidiospores. Because of meiosis, however, there are genetic differences between them. One of the genetic characters sorted out during meiosis is the mating type. The mating type is a character which prevents a spore or monokaryotic hypha carrying a particular allele from fusing sexually with any spore or hypha carrying the same allele, no matter how different the genomes are at all other loci. It takes the presence of different alleles at the mating type locus for sexual reproduction to occur. In any one species, there may be any number of alleles within the population. In general, any one of them is compatible with all of the others, the only prohibition being against fusion with the identical mating type. If a species of mushroom has only one locus controlling mating type, with varying numbers of alleles for that locus, that species has what is known as an unifactorial, heterothallic mating system. In such a system, the only physiological requirement for mating to take place is that two differing alleles of the mating type locus be present. Since two alleles must be present in a sexually mature mushroom, and each spore only gets one, any random spore is compatible with half of its siblings. Since there are a large number of alleles for the mating type locus in the population at large, any random spore has a higher probability of being compatible with a spore of another strain. Thus this system increases the percentage of outcrossing by members of the species using it. The majority of mushrooms, however, are heterothallic and bifactorial, a system known as tetrapolar. In this system, there are two separate and distinct mating type loci, each of which must have differing alleles present to form a dikaryotic colony. This system produces four distinct types of spores on each basidium, and any random spore from a single strain is fertile with only one fourth of its siblings. This is a strong form of incest taboo, and makes it four times as likely that any naturally formed dikaryon will be from non-related spores. Unfortunately, the two types of spores which are not totally identical or non-identical can form dikaryotic colonies which look like fertile ones. These products of illegitimate matings, though, are incapable of making fruitbodies or basidiospores. There are strains and species in which the mating type system has broken down. These are known as homothallic fungi, and they are fully capable of mating with themselves. In fact, a single spore of a homothallic fungus is usually capable of making a fertile dikaryotic colony. A fair number of spores, however, due to the effects of recombination, will be incapable of forming fertile colonies unless they mate with another strain. This is a system often found in fungi which live in marginal habitats; usually there is a time lag before a monokaryotic colony dikaryotizes itself. There are two types of homothallism in mushrooms: primary and secondary. Primary homothallism is the case described above, where the majority of spores, while initially forming monokaryotic colonies, will soma rights re-served 264 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb eventually become dikaryotic and fruit normally. Secondary homothallism is the case where each spore receives one nucleus of each mating type, generating a dikaryotic colony from the moment of spore germination. Agaricus brunnescens is the best known example of this type of fungus, while another commonly cultivated mushroom, Volvariella volvacea, has a primary homothallic mating system. Implications for Culture Work The single most important implication of the genetics that has been described thus far is the occurrence of illegitimate matings. In a tetrapolar fungus, only one fourth of the spores from any one mushroom are fully compatible with any random spore from that same strain. This mechanism exists to encourage outcrossing. When a cultivator is trying to produce a strain from a spore print, establishing a fruiting strain can be frustrating. This is because monokaryotic hyphae with common A factors or with common B factors can fuse and form dikaryons, and these dikaryons can even make convincing looking clamp connections. (See Figs. 10 and 182). These colonies, however, are incapable of fruiting. It becomes obvious at this point that two thirds of the random dikaryons formed will be of the illegitimate type. This implies that a large number of dikaryotic cultures must be isolated and tested for fruiting ability. Another, but less precise way around this problem is to inoculate with a large number of spores and take a tissue culture of the first mushroom that appears in the culture. This procedure is the one usually listed in books on mushroom cultivation because it is simple, but the strains produced in this manner still must be tested thoroughly. The phenomenon of sectoring is the production of wedge shaped areas of differing physical or growth characteristics by a colony of mycelium. There are two types of sectoring, one found in young cultures, and one in old ones. In young multispore cultures, several different strains are all growing together at the same time. Some are the products of legitimate matings, some of illegitimate ones. These strains all have differing characteristics. Some of these strains grow faster than others, some are rhizomorphic and some are fluffy in appearance. Some fruit well, some poorly. Some produce clumps of many tiny mushrooms, some produce a few large ones. They each have a unique set of preferred culture conditions. Fortunately, the different strains formed from multispore germinations tend to sort themselves out. As the colony grows, strains segregate into sectors of different appearances and growth rates. The repeated separation and propagation of individual sectors, until a colony is obtained which no longer produces new ones is one way of isolating a pure strain. Several strains may be isolated from the same original Petri plate in this way. As pure cultures grow old and become senescent, they produce ever greater quantities of sectors due to the accumulation of random mutations. Repeated subculturing of the culture gives accumulated mutations a chance to express themselves. A strain which has reached this condition is no longer pure, and should not be used for cultivation. Culture Trials When a number of strains have been generated from a sporeprint, they are different because of recombination in the basidium. Some of the strains MAY be identical to the parent strain, but that must demonstrated by some testing procedure. As in any screening operation, the more strains used, the better the chance of a good result. In fact, professional mushroom breeders often do trials with thousands of strains at a time. This kind of work, however, takes large and expensive facilities, and is unnecessary if the purpose is simply to find a strain which fruits well under a certain set of conditions. A strain which fruits well in test batches under uniform conditions has a high likelihood of doing well in larges batches when the same conditions of temperature, humidity and aeration are maintained. How many strains need to be tested? If the mushroom being worked with is tetrapolar, only one third of the dikaryotic colonies picked out will be capable of fruiting at all. In order to make trials often fruiting strains, begin with at least thirty dikaryotic strains. Many mushrooms, especially the wood-rotters, fruit on enriched agar media in a Petri plate if given proper temperatures and some light. If the mushroom being tested is one of these, the selection of fruiting strains is soma rights re-served 265 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb simple. A mushroom requiring a special substrate or additive to fruit should be provided with the smallest amount allowable. For example, Agaricus brunnescens can be fruited on 50 grams of sterilized grain in a pint jar, if it is cased with soil containing certain bacteria. The smallest possible amount of substrate allows the rapid determination of fruiting strains. Figure 240 - Two spored basidium of a Copelandian Panaeolus. Once ten to fifteen fruiting strains are in hand, they should be tested in a small scale version of the ultimate culture method. This step allows the strain best adapted to culture conditions to be selected. All strains should be tested at least in duplicates; five replicates per strain are preferable. If the ultimate cultivation method involves beds of compost, the tests can be made with small boxes filled with compost, but the boxes should be filled to the same depth as the beds will be in the full scale project. If the fungus is fruited in jars (ex. Flammulina velutipes), a few jars can be inoculated with each strain. Good records must be kept for comparing the fruiting potential of each strain. In small scale trials such as these, often several strains look good. In this case, the only way to find the best one is to make full scale trials, with one third or one fourth of the jars or beds inoculated with each of the strains being tested. Once again, good record keeping practices should soon show the differences between the most and least productive strains. If the mushroom under consideration for cultivation takes a long time to establish its fruiting cycle (ex. Lentinus edodes), it is best to simply purchase a culture from a spawn lab or to take tissue cultures from commercially grown mushrooms. Spore Dilution Technique A simple technique can be used to physically separate spores so that individual dikaryotic (or even monokaryotic) cultures can be isolated in one step. The necessary equipment includes a bacterial (small) inoculating loop, several screw-cap vials of 20-30 ml. capacity, a flame and several sterile pipettes or small syringes. To utilize this method, first fill each of the vials with 9 ml. of distilled water, place the caps on loosely and soma rights re-served 266 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb sterilize them. After they have cooled, the caps should be firmly screwed down. The inoculation loop is then flamed, cooled and gently rubbed on the spore print, being careful not to get a large mass of spores. The loop is dipped and twirled in one of the vials, which is then recapped and shaken vigorously. One milliliter of the fluid is then transferred to another vial, which is recapped and shaken, generating a dilute spore suspension. This suspension may be further diluted in the same manner. In this way, the cultivator has generated three suspensions of spores, one of high spore density, one 1/10th as concentrated and one with 1/100th or 1% of the original concentration. Now spread 1/10th of a milliliter of each suspension on a separate media filled Petri plate (or better yet, use several plates for each dilution). The original strength suspension in all likelihood will produce a dense lawn of cultures, which will be difficult to separate. This is the same condition as is produced with normal spore spreading methods. The less dense suspensions, however, should produce many fewer colonies, usually in the range of 20-50 per plate for the 1:10 dilution and 2-5 per plate for the 1:100 dilution. Look carefully at the plates having only a few colonies. The slower growing monokaryons can be discerned from the faster growing dikaryons. Pick about 25 of the dikaryons to test for fruiting ability and reaction to culture conditions. If desired, the monokaryotic cultures can be picked out for a breeding program. This is especially valuable if there are spores from several strains available. When spores are simply spread onto a plate, they adhere to one another, so attempts to simply streak spores of two strains on a plate usually do not yield hybrids. (The authors grate fully acknowledge Michael McCaw for the contribution of this chapter on genetics). soma rights re-served 267 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb APPENDICES Appendix I Medicinal Properties of Mushrooms Mushrooms have long been esteemed for their medicinal properties, especially by Far Eastern cultures, while western cultures have largely been oblivious to the beneficial properties of mushrooms. For centuries, the Japanese have hailed the shiitake mushroom (Lentinus edodes) as an elixir of life, a cure-all, revitalizing both body and soul, a cure for cancer, impotency, senility and a host of other ailments. Mazatec shamans of southern Mexico have used Psilocybe mushrooms in their divination and healing ceremonies, extolling them for their life-giving properties and calling them "Mushrooms of Superior Reason" for the heightened mental state they induce. Even the very term "agaric," still used to describe all mushrooms with gills, comes from the name of a pre-Scythian people, the Agari, who were skilled in the use of medicinal plants, of which mushrooms were one. Not until the late 1920's, when Dr. Alexander Fleming published a note in a microbiological journal, did fungi draw the scrutiny of scientists looking for new sources of antibiotics. He observed, quite by accident, the deterrent effect a Penicillium mold had on a bacterial contaminant (a Staphylococcus species). Years later, fellower researchers pursued his suggestion that antibiotics were being produced by this mold, which shortly led to the discovery of penicillin. Forthwith, molds of all types were examined by W.H. Wilkins (and others) from 1945 to 1954 who systematically tested one hundred species at a time for antibiotic effects against bacteria and bacteria-carrying viruses. Eventually, Wilkins turned his attention to the fleshy fungi and interest within the scientific community grew. Claims of healing properties in mushrooms have been primarily promoted, until recently, by the commercial mushroom industry and others with vested interests. It appears, however, much of the medicinal claims attributed to mushrooms are not myth, but founded in some truth. Within the last ten years, numerous studies demonstrating the anti-cancer and interferon stimulating properties of Lentinus edodes have been published. Individuals can significantly reduce serum choresterol levels by eating these mushrooms for as short a period as a week (Suzuki and Ohshima, 1974). In another study (Hamuro et al., 1974), the antitumor influence of hot water extracts of Lentinus edodes was demonstrated in mice implanted with sarcoma-180 and other cancers, resulting in a 80% remission from treatment lasting only ten days, and a 100% prevention of growth if the mice were injected prior to implantation. The causal compound is appropriately named lentinan, a antitumor polysaccharide. Extracts from shiitake spores and the isolation of "mushroom RNA" from them have proved effective against influenza (Suzuki et al., 1974). Similar antitumor, immunopotentiator and interferon stimulating polysaccharides have been found in Boletus edulis, Calvatia gigantea, Coriolus versicolor, Flammulina velutipes, Ganoderma applanatum, Ganoderma lucidum (the classic "Reishi Mushroom"), Phellinus linteus, Armillaria ponderosa (Tricholoma matsutake) and Pholiota nameko. (See Yamamura and Cochran, 1974). In the treatment of other diseases, Cochran and Lucas (1959) reported Panaeolus subbalteatus, a mushroom producing psilocybin and psilocin, provided significant protection from polio virus in mice as did several other edible and inedible mushroom species. Psilocybian mushrooms might be of further usefulness in improving eye sight, hearing, circulation and in activating the self-healing processes within the human body. With the current emphasis on prevention and natural cures for human diseases, mushrooms are proving to be a convenient, inexpensive and an effective method of sustaining health. Health conscious individuals beginning a daily regimen of eating shiitake, for instance, have been shown to be less susceptible to virus-induced diseases than those abstaining. Until these studies progress and are tested more extensively on human populations, hopes should not be unduly raised for mushrooms might be of further usefulness in improving eye sight, hearing, circulation and in activating the self-healing processes within the human body. soma rights re-served 268 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Appendix II Laminar Flow Systems Suspended in the air is an invisible cloud of contaminants. These airborne spores are the primary source of contamination during agar and grain culture, and they are the major force defeating beginning cultivators. To control contamination, the cultivator must start with a sterile laboratory. Without pure culture spawn, the prospect for a good crop is slight, no matter how refined one's other techniques. Creating an absolutely sterile environment, free of all airborne particulates, is extremely difficult, if not impossible. "Nearly sterile" environments are more easily constructed and are quite suitable for the purposes of the mushroom cultivator. Chemical cleaners like detergents and disinfectants have traditionally been used for this purpose. Unfortunately, the frequent use of these cleaners to maintain hygiene in the laboratory pose some risk to the handler. Ultraviolet lights are likewise dangerous and are difficult to position in a room so that no shadows are cast. By far the least harmful and most effective method is the use of high efficiency filters that screen out airborne particulates when air is pushed through them. These filters are the basis of laminar flow systems. An understanding of the composition of unfiltered air helps put into perspective the problem for which laminar flow systems are designed. The air, the filter, the fan and the laminar flow system will be discussed in that order. The Air Air is composed of many suspended and falling particles. A sample of air holds soot or smoke, silica, clay, decayed animal and vegetable matter, and many, many spores. Some are only a fraction of a micron in diameter while other are hundreds of times larger. These particles continously rain down on the earth's surface. In light impact zones isolated from industrial centers, twenty tons per square mile per month fall from the sky (ASHRAE, 1978). Industrial areas have a fall-out that is ten times greater. So-called "clean country air" contains, on the average, one million particles (greater than .3 microns) per cubic foot. But in a room where a cigarette is being smoked, more than one hundred million particles are suspended in the same air space. A sterile laboratory, on the other hand, has less than one hundred particles per cubic foot of air! Figure 239 - A standard design of a laminar flow cabinet for tissue culturists. soma rights re-served 269 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Most of the spores contaminating mushroom cultures are between .5 and 20 microns in diameter. Generally, particles greater than 10 microns fall out of the air because of their weight. The smallest particles in this group are the airborne spore-forming bacteria which originate from soils. The smallest endospore forming bacteria are around .4 microns in diameter. Viruses which measure even smaller, sometimes a mere .05 of a micron in size, are usually attached to larger particles such as fungal spores. This broad assortment of airborne debris poses the greatest danger to mushroom culture. The Filter Two types of high efficiency filters are available today. One is an electrostatic filter which will screen out spores down to 5 microns or less. These filters operate on a charged particle principle where, by a variety of means, airborne particles are passed through an ionizing field and then between two oppositely charged electrical plates. Charged particles are drawn to the grounded plate by the force of the electric field. Because an agglomeration of particles is likely to blow off the retaining plate, they are often coated with a special oil. The advantages of electrostatic filters are that they have little resistance (a low pressure drop) and that they are reusable. But they have several disadvantages. One disadvantage is that they do not screen out the particles of 1 micron or less with a 99+% efficiency in high velocity airstreams. Hence, as air velocity increases, their efficiency decreases. Many electrostatic filters have, as a result, a sliding scale of efficiencies based on air speed. Another problem associated with electrostatic filters is that particles not caught in the filter are still partially charged and stick to the walls of a room, discoloring them. Also, toxic ozone may be generated by the constant arcing in the electrostatic field. Figure 240 - A commercially available laminar flow hood. The basic element in an air filter is the media, particularly the dry extended surface kind that is rated to .3 or .1 microns. Extended surface filters are commonly known as HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filters. First used commercially in 1961, these filters are honeycombed with fine sheets of microporous material that can screen out particulates down to less than one third of a micron size with a rated 99.99% efficiency. All spores of plants, fungi and most bacteria are thereby trapped within the folds of the filter. The collection media in this type of filter can be composed of various materials including hair, spun glass, wool, paper and asbestos. (In the past, asbestos has been used in the manufacturing of all types of filters. soma rights re-served 270 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Since asbestos is cancer causing, be sure to specify a non-asbestos fibre). The extended surface media filter consists of folds of material woven back and forth. Corrugated aluminium or paper separators are inserted perpendicularly to the filter face and separate the folds to help direct airflow in an even, parallel fashion. The airstream hits the filter material at a perpendicular angle and is forced to pass through the many weaves of the filter before exiting. From the force of impact, inertia and the size of the media web, particles are trapped within the filter. The result is that a very high efficiency is achieved, particularly with small diameter particles. Extended surface filters have much higher resistance than electrostatic filters but they have a far greater capacity for holding dust. As the filter traps dust, it increases in weight and airflow declines. Generally a HEPA filter is not reused but discarded when, as a rule of thumb, the resistance or "pressure drop" doubles. Extended surface filters are used in hospital surgery rooms as well as culture laboratories and nuclear facilities. Since its efficiency is somewhat dependent on the impact velocity of the particle striking the media web, an appropriate fan must be matched with this type of filter. The Fan When constructing a laminar flow hood, the filter size must be precisely fitted with a high pressure fan. All fans are rated by the manufacturer according to the volume of air (CFM or cubic feet per minute) they can push past materials of specified resistance. The type of high pressure fans needed in a laminar flow hood are usually of the squirrel cage type ("furnace blowers"). In turn, the resistance of all micron filters are measured in inches of static pressure at a certain air speed. A standard resistance for a micron filter of this type is .75-1.00 inches of static pressure. Because extended surface filters have a high initial resistance, the housing must tightly hold the HEPA filter so that impure air is not sucked into the exiting airstream. To calculate the correct fan/filter combination, take the net CFM of the fan at the filter's rated level of resistance and divide that number by the square footage of the filter face. Ideally, that number will be 100 feet per minute, the optimum range for air velocity in laminar flow systems. An example will more clearly illustrate this basic principle. IF a micron filter measures 2 feet long by 2 feet high by 6 inches deep and has a static pressure rating of 1.0 inches of resistance, the fan required would have to be capable of pushing 400 CFM at 1 inch of static pressure. IF X = the desired net CFM of a fan at 1" S.P. and Y = 4 square feet (the square footage of the filter face) THEN X = 100 feet per minute x Y X = 100 feet per minute x 4 square feet X = 400 cubic feet per minute This means that a fan capable of pushing 400 cubic feet per minute at 1 inch of static pressure is needed to yield the optimum air velocity of 100 feet per minute. (Note that different filters have different static pressure ratings and suggested CFM's). In selecting a fan, it is best to choose one that can deliver more than a 100 feet per minute air velocity. Install a solid state speed control to regulate the fan as needed. As the filters become laden with particulates, the resistance increases and the airflow declines. If the airflow falls below 20% of the suggested optimum, the 99.99% efficiency rating can not be guaranteed. Filters of the size in the example above can hold four or more pounds of dust and spores before needing replacement! With a few hours of use every week (the time most home cultivators spend conducting sterile transfers), the micron filter should last many years, depending of course, on the ambient spore load in the laboratory. The life of a HEPA filter can be extended with the placement of pre-filters to screen out coarse particulates. Pre-filters can be made of fibreglass media, the type commonly used for furnace filters, or they can be composed of a thin open-celled foam. Pre-filters of the latter type increase resistance significantly whereas soma rights re-served 271 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb furnace type filters increase resistance only slightly. In this regard, furnace filters are well suited because they are cheap (less than five dollars), readily available, and come in numerous sizes. Laminar Flow Designs There are several types of laminar flow systems, each designed for specific applications. The airflow in a biological safety cabinet, built for use with pathogenic organisms, is such that the worker is not endangered if spores from a virulent organism became airborne. The air is drawn from the work area into the hood and then up through micron filters and exited to the outside. Laminar flow hoods for work with radioactive and toxic materials are similarly designed. Because of their intricacy, they are considerably more expensive than the kind needed for mushroom and plant culture. Laminar flow systems for tissue culturists operate on a reverse principle of the one designed for use with toxic substances. Air is forced through a micron filter to the work area, creating a positive pressure sterile wind in which to conduct mycelial transfers. These types of hoods are perfect for pouring media, maintaining pure mycelia and inoculating spawn containers. Since they greatly reduce the waste caused by contamination, their cost is soon offset by the savings realized. A laminar flow hood is a low maintenance, affordable and appropriate technology for the serious home cultivator. Figure 241 - Sterile room with ceiling composed of micron filters. An alternative to building a laminar flow hood is the construction of a laminar flow wall or ceiling. A laminar flow ceiling is preferable because the draft is directed downwards to the floor where it exists through evenly placed pressure activated dampers. When a wall or ceiling is composed of micron filters, the air is usually drawn from the outside where the pre-filters can be changed without entering the sterile laboratory. Any contaminant spores tracked in on the shoes of workers are kept close to the floor and is immediately swept soma rights re-served 272 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb away by the flow of sterile air. The atmosphere in a this type of sterile room is fully exchanged 10-20 times per hour. Foremost, tissue culturists are interested in preventing contamination from occurring, not from spreading. They are concerned with creating sterile media and maintaining the purity of cultures. A laminar flow hood is of little value in helping a cultivator isolate a colony of mushroom mycelium away from, for instance, a green mold on a Petri dish. The turbulence generated from the hood would free thousands of spores, some of which would adhere to the surface of the sterile media, germinate and produce more spores. In these cases, a laminar flow hood is best used as an air cleaner prior to isolating a culture away from a contaminant. Several minutes after it has been turned off and the air currents have settled, transfers can be made away from neighbouring contaminants with little danger of airborne spores. Although sterile work can be conducted without a laminar flow system, they have become a standard piece of equipment in professional spawn laboratories and increasingly in the sterile rooms of many home cultivators. Appendix III The Effect of Bacteria and Other Microorganisms on Fruiting Although mushrooms have been cultivated for more than two hundred years, little is known about the biological processes of fruiting. For mushroom pinheads to form suddenly and then to enlarge into towering mushrooms within only a few days represents a many hundred-fold multiplication in biomass. This ability to generate tissue so rapidly has few parallels in nature and has been the subject of numerous scientific papers. Mushrooms are in constant competition with organisms sharing the same habitat. Dung inhabiting mushrooms in particular (like Psilocybe cubensis and Agaricus brunnescens) live in an environment that teems with other microorganisms feeding on organic wastes and dead cell matter. Dung is by nature a temporary substrate, decomposing completely in only a few weeks. Within this short period of time there is a succession of dominant microorganisms, most notably fungi and bacteria. For a new mushroom colony to grow, its spores must fall, germinate, mate, form a substantial mycelial network and then produce a specialized fruitbody. This series of events is made less likely by poor weather conditions and/or competing microorganisms. The brevity of the generative phase in the mushroom life cycle suggests a highly advanced metabolic system, one that has evolved despite its fiercely competitive environment. Figure 242 - Psilocybe cyanescens mycelium contaminated with bacteria. soma rights re-served 273 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb The fact that Agaricus brunnescens fails to fruit on sterilized substrates has been well documented. It has been shown that if the casing layer is sterilized and applied to grain or compost, mushrooms do not form. On the other hand, if the casing layer is only pasteurized or left untreated, fruiting is unhindered. Obviously something in the peat based casing is essential to the fructification process. Past investigations have shown the significance of bacteria in mushroom growth. It should not be surprising then to learn that some of these microorganisms are not harmful to the mushroom plant, but beneficial. Under conditions of high humidity, CO2 and acetone, bacterial populations spiral. In a way not presently understood, some of these bacteria act as a trigger to fruiting. The prevalence of bacteria on hyphae may explain why most dung dwelling mushrooms can be fruited with comparative ease on basic enriched agar media while wood and soil inhabitors can not. The association of these two organisms, a fungus and a bacterium, reflects a tacit agreement for mutual coexistence, one perhaps negotiated by evolutionary necessity. In 1956 Dr. Takashi Urayama first noted the stimulative influence of bacteria on the fruiting of Psilocybe coprophila. (Actually he misidentified the mushroom species as P. panaeoliformis). In that paper and ones soon thereafter (Urayama 1960, 1961 and 1967), he reported the isolation of a bacterium he thought responsible for fruiting in not only Psilocybe "panaeoliformis" but also in Agaricus brunnescens. He named that bacterium Bacillus psilocybe nom. prov. Apparently unaware of Urayama's work, a German mycologist named Eger similarly isolated a bacterium stimulative to pinhead formation. She first published her notes in 1959. For years this bacterium was known as "Eger's Bacterium" until Hayes (1969) identified the organism in question as Pseudomonas putida. This identification set in motion other research projects whose conclusions revealed a subtle but dynamic interplay between microflora in the casing layer and the mushroom mycelium. Mushroom mycelium releases several metabolites as if grows through a substrate, most importantly CO2. Other compounds identified by researchers as metabolic waste products include acetone, ethanol and ethylene. Upon casing, the release of volatile metabolites from the spawned compost or grain is drastically inhibited. The casing layer interferes with the free diffusion of acetone, and hence its concentrations in the casing biosphere increase. Since Pseudomonas putida grows on media whose sole carbon source is acetone or ethanol (2.5%), cultivators can adopt measures that will enhance the levels of these Pseudomonas propagating compounds in the casing layer. Eger first suggested a practical application for commercial cultivators: "In order to prove our hypothesis, freshly prepared, moist casing soil of a commercial mushroom plant should be incubated with acetone for several days apart from mushroom cultures. If acetone has a stimulative effect on the microflora that induces fructification, soil treated with acetone should allow earlier pinhead formation than control samples." (Eger, 1972, pp. 723.) Two years later Hayes and Nair (1974) noted that more bacteria flourish in wet casings placed on compost than in wet casing alone. Peak activity occurred ten days after application. Dry casings, as one would expect, had significantly fewer bacteria. Continuing with this work, Hayes and Nair showed that the addition of 5% spawned compost into the casing layer resulted in the largest increase in P. putida populations, the most pinheads and the greatest overall yields. Stanek (1974), a Czech mycologist, studied the bacteria associated directly with mushroom mycelium, in the zone he called the "hyphosphere". These hyphosphere bacteria differed from other bacteria in that they were predominantly Gram-negative (as is Pseudomonas putida) and they utilized nitrogenous compounds secreted by the mycelium. Both the growth of mycelia and bacteria were stimulated by extracts of one another, suggesting a mutually enhancing relationship much like the one between nitrogen fixing bacteria and the roots of many plants. Stanek further determined that mycelium infected with bacteria grew more quickly through compost and would, therefore, give mushroom mycelium a decided advantage over other competing microorganisms. From this author's experience (Stamets') in the course of studying the hyphosphere of several Psilocybe species, bacteria are not uncommon and may play a similarly beneficial role. Not all strains of Pseudomonas putida cause pinheads to form in Agaricus brunnescens, nor do all strains of mushrooms respond similarly to the presence of selected bacteria. The two proven stimulative strains, ATCC #12633 and #17419, are deposited with the American Type Culture Collection. Some strains of Pseudomonas putida have no effect whatsoever, while others are most stimulative if the bacterial colonies are grown on a 2.5% acetone based liquid media (see Eger, 1972). After incubating for 10 days at 25°C. in 30-40 ml. of soma rights re-served 274 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb nutrient broth, a density of 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 cells/milliliter is achieved. Ten milliliters of this concentrated solution is recommended for each square meter of casing surface. (For ease of application, one milliliter of concentrate can be diluted in 100 milliliters of sterilized water). Eger, Hayes and Nair have demonstrated the stimulative effect of Pseudomonas putida. But why Pseudomonas putida stimulates primordia formation is a question yet unanswered. Some believe its effect is indirect, removing chelating compounds that inhibit mushroom initiation. Others (Fritsche, 1981; Visscher, 1981) suspect its influence is more direct and biologically oriented. Pseudomonas putida is not the only microorganism implicated in the phenomenon of fruiting. Park and Agnihorti (1969) published a short note where they compared bacteria introduced to soils that had been autoclaved, gamma sterilized and untreated. Three other bacteria (Bacillus megaterium, Arthrobacter terregens and Rhizobium meliloti) stimulated abundant fruitbody formation and development on sterilized soils. (Interestingly, these same nitrogen fixing bacteria are presently being marketed to farmers for increasing crop production). In yet another study, Curto and Favelli (1972) examined a gamut of microorganisms (bacteria, yeasts and microalgae) and their effect on potentiating yields. Again, Bacillus megaterium significantly increased mushroom formation. Even more remarkably Scenedesmus quadricauda (a common pond dwelling blue-green alga) enhanced production by nearly 60% over and above the control. This alga seemed to have a particularly influential effect on the number of primordia generated on the first flush. Although as exciting as these findings may at first appear, it must be noted that other researchers have not yet confirmed the findings of Curto and Favelli. For reasons not presently understood, activated charcoal mimics the primordia stimulating properties of Pseudomonas putida and other beneficial microorganisms. (See Chapter VIII). Its addition to unsterilized casings seems wholly unnecessary considering the ease with which Agaricus brunnescens and Psilocybe cubensis form pinheads. But, in sterilized casings or in casings applied to difficult to fruit species, the use of activated charcoal and select bacteria gives the cultivator another means to promote fructification. Although many studies have been published, work with fruiting potentiators is still in its infancy. Specific mushroom strains must be carefully matched with specific strains of potentiators. And the potentiators themselves, while of value at fruiting, can be formidable competitors to sterile culture in the laboratory. Nevertheless, utilizing these benevolent microorganisms holds great promise for the future of mushroom culture. NOTE: Bacteria, if cultured, must be kept separate from the mushroom culture laboratory. Pseudomonas and Bacillus grow well on standard 2% malt agar media. soma rights re-served 275 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Appendix IV The Use of Mushroom Extracts to Induce Fruiting The search for the biochemical means by which mushrooms fruit has been ongoing for years. Several researchers have demonstrated the influence of hormones in regulating mushroom formation and development. From this work, it is clear that no one mechanism, but many, cause the phenomenon of fruiting. Urayama (1972) found that live extracts from young buttons of Agaricus brunnescens and from other species would induce pinhead initiation in a Marasmius species that otherwise failed to fruit on a specified agar medium. He determined that this particular Marasmius failed to form fruitbodies on agar media that had a carbon:nitrogen ratio of 1:10 with sucrose levels maintained at 1%. Given the inability of pinheads to form at this Sucrose/Peptone ratio, he could introduce standardized cell free extracts of other mushroom species to gauge their effects. Species from which crude extracts were taken were: Agaricus brunnescens, Lentinus edodes, Flammulina velutipes and Pleurotus ostreatus. The extracts were performed by washing 200 grams of homogenized live mushroom tissue (primordia less than 1 cm. tall) with four successive baths of 80% methanol. The residue was discarded each time and the methanol solution allowed to evaporate, under a slight vacuum, until a dried filtrate remained. One gram of this crude extract was then immersed into 10 milliliters of water and applied in 1/10th milliliter increments to each culture tube, except for the controls. The results of Urayama's work showed that each of the four fractionations induced primordia formation provided aqueous methanol (80%) and only young mushrooms were used. Extracts from older fruitbodies, especially that of Agaricus brunnescens and Lentinus edodes, had no effect whatsoever. Urayama tried other solvents to isolate the mysterious "fruiting hormone" and discovered that it was soluble in water and not soluble in absolute methanol, chloroform or petroleum benzine. He worked on his "Substance X", as he liked to call it, for many years until his death in 1980. Shiio et alia (1974) realized that young mushroom buttons contained high concentrations of the fruiting hormones and applied this knowledge to the commercial cultivation of Flammulina velutipes. Pieces of Flammulina velutipes primordia were immersed into sterile water and sprayed over sawdust/bran beds. Not only were yields substantially increased by this crude procedure, but initiation occurred much earlier, and the overall fruiting cycle was narrowed considerably. Clearly these mycologists were on the road to discovering an important link in the biochemistry of fruiting. Around the same time as the work of Shiio et alia, two other Japanese mycologists published related studies (Uno & Ishikawa, 1971, 1973) whereby pinheads of Coprinus formed if a "cell free extract" from young mushrooms was added to the culture. They and others isolated the causal compounds - cyclic adenosine monophosphate (c AMP) and related enzymes. They further found that light stimulated the production of c AMP in the mycelium of phototropic mushroom species. Conversely, the absence of light in phototropic mushroom species resulted in no production of c AMP. Wood (1979) tried to substantiate the findings of Uno and Ishikawa with Agaricus brunnescens and failed. He could not induce primordia to form using c AMP. However, this fact does not bear any significance on the importance of cyclic adenosine monophosphate in phototropic species since A. brunnescens is a mushroom needing no light whatsoever for primordia formation and development. The question of how mushrooms fruit is not simple; nor will there be one answer explaining the mechanisms in all species. What is apparent at this early stage of research is that photosensitive and non-photosensitive species have developed different means for mushroom development. The information most useful for home and commercial cultivators will come in the areas of yield enhancement and the growing of exotic mushrooms on readily available, cheap materials. By good fortune, this is one area of research that is not beyond the means of the innovative home cultivator. soma rights re-served 276 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Appendix V Data Collection and Environmental Monitoring Records Success in mushroom growing requires a consistent and repeatable methodology. Because there are so many variables that affect the crop, careful record keeping is essential for good management. With a data collection system, the cultivator can learn from mistakes and gain a deeper understanding of the factors that influence healthy mushroom growth. The following data collection records reflect years of mushroom growing experience and are therefore quite detailed. Each cultivator must evaluate his or her particular circumstance to decide which categories are most appropriate. In turn, these data sheets can be modified to meet an individual's requirements. Spawn Making Mushroom species: Strain: Tissue: Spores: Spawn media: Water: Additives: Sterilization time and temperature: Inoculation date: Date of Full Colonization: Shaking schedule: Observations: Temperature Chart ----------- air temp. 94 92 90 88 86 84 82 80 78 76 74 72 70 68 66 64 Date/time Heat/thermostat setting soma rights re-served 277 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Compost Making: Phase I Compost formula Ingredient H2O wet weight dry weight %N lbs. N Temps Comments Percent Nitrogen: Type of Straw: Source of Horse manure: Description: Structure: Color: Age: Date pre-composting started: Method of watering: Supplements added: Number of turns: Total pre-composting time: Comments: Compost Making: Phase I Compost Schedule Date Action % H2O Supplements Water added Ricking 1st turn 2nd turn 3rd turn 4th turn 5th turn Date of Fill: Depth of Fill: Compost description: Structure: pH: Color: % H2O: Comments: soma rights re-served 278 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Compost Making: Phase II Temperature Chart °F ————— substrate temp. ----------- air temp. 150 148 146 144 142 140 138 136 134 132 130 128 126 124 122 120 118 116 114 112 110 108 106 104 102 100 95 90 Date/time Fan speed % Fresh air Heat/thermostat setting Ammonia soma rights re-served 279 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Spawn Running Substrate density 2 (lbs. dry wt/ft. ): Spawning Date: Spawn type and amount: Substrate description: Color: % H2O: pH: Structure: Supplements: Temperature Chart °F ————— substrate temp. ----------- air temp. 96 94 92 90 88 86 84 82 80 78 76 74 72 70 68 66 64 62 60 Date/time Fan speed % Fresh air Heat/thermostat setting Humidity CO2 soma rights re-served 280 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Casing: Case Running Casing formula: pH: % moisture at application: Depth: Substrate supplementation: Scratching: Patching: Temperature Chart °F ————— substrate temp. ----------- air temp. 96 94 92 90 88 86 84 82 80 78 76 74 72 70 68 66 64 62 60 58 56 Date/time Fan speed % Fresh air Heat/thermostat setting CO2 Humidity Watering soma rights re-served 281 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Pinhead Initiation Pin initiation date: Early pinning?: % Mycelium showing: Evenness: CO2 day before pinning: Casing moisture content: Comments on casing surface: Temperature Chart °F ————— substrate temp. ----------- air temp. 88 86 84 82 80 78 76 74 72 70 68 66 64 62 60 58 56 54 52 50 Date/time Fan speed % Fresh air Heat/thermostat setting CO2 Humidity Watering Light soma rights re-served 282 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Cropping Evenness of pinset: % of surface pinned: Date of first harvest: Temperature Chart °F ————— substrate temp. ----------- air temp. 80 78 76 74 72 70 68 66 64 62 60 58 56 54 52 50 Date/time Fan speed % Fresh air Heat/thermostat setting CO2 Humidity Watering Light soma rights re-served 283 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Flushing Pattern Contaminants encountered: Total time (filling to emptying): Total yield: Bar Graph Pounds of fresh mushrooms 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Days soma rights re-served 284 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Appendix VI Analyses of Basic Materials Used in Substrate Preparation Dry Roughages of Fibrous Materials Material Total Fat Fiber N-free Total dry Protein Calcium Phosphorus Nitrogen Potassium Per Per extract minerals matter Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. ct. ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Alfalfa hay, all analyses 90.5 14.8 2.0 28.9 36.6 8.2 1.47 0.24 2.37 2.05 Alfalfa hay, very leafy (less than 25% fiber) 90.5 17.2 2.6 22.6 39.4 8.7 1.73 0.25 2.75 2.01 Alfalfa hay, leafy (25-28% fiber) 90.5 15.8 2.2 27.4 36.6 8.5 1.50 0.24 2.53 2.01 Alfalfa hay, stemmy (over 34% fiber) 90.5 12.1 1.4 36.0 33.4 7.6 1.10 0.18 1.94 1.68 Alfalfa hay, before bloom 90.5 19.0 2.7 22.6 36.7 9.5 2.22 0.33 3.04 2.14 Alfalfa hay, past bloom 90.5 12.8 2.1 31.9 36.2 7.5 - - 2.05 - Alfalfa hay, brown 87.9 17.3 1.6 24.5 35.1 9.4 1.37 0.26 2.77 - Alfalfa hay, black 83.1 17.5 1.5 29.1 25.3 9.7 - - 2.80 - Alfalfa leaf meal 92.3 21.2 2.8 16.6 39.7 12.0 1.69 0.25 3.39 - Alfalfa leaves 90.5 22.3 3.0 14.2 40.5 10.5 2.22 0.24 3.57 2.06 Alfalfa meal 92.7 16.1 2.2 27.1 38.2 9.1 1.32 0.19 2.58 1.91 Alfalfa stem meal 91.0 11.5 1.3 36.3 34.8 7.1 - - 1.84 - Alfalfa straw 92.6 8.8 1.5 40.4 35.1 6.8 - 0.13 1.41 - Alfalfa and bromegrass hay 89.3 12.4 2.0 28.6 38.1 8.2 0.74 0.24 1.98 2.18 Alfalfa and timothy hay 89.8 11.1 2.2 29.5 40.3 6.7 0.81 0.21 1.78 1.78 Alfilaria, dry (Erodium cicutarium) 89.2 10.9 2.9 23.4 40.2 11.8 1.57 0.41 1.74 - Alfilaria, dry, mature 89.0 3.5 1.5 31.4 44.1 8.5 - - 0.56 - Atlas sorghum stover 85.0 4.0 2.0 27.9 44.2 6.9 0.34 0.09 0.64 - Barley hay 90.8 7.3 2.0 25.4 49.3 6.8 0.26 0.23 1.17 1.35 Barley straw 90.0 3.7 1.6 37.7 41.0 6.0 0.32 0.11 0.59 1.33 Bean hay, mung 90.3 9.8 2.2 24.0 46.6 7.7 - - 1.57 - Bean hay, tepary 90.0 17.1 2.9 24.8 34.7 10.5 - - 2.74 - Bean pods, field, dry 91.8 7.1 1.0 34.8 45.0 3.9 0.78 0.10 1.14 2.02 Bean straw, field 89.1 6.1 1.4 40.1 34.1 7.4 1.67 0.13 0.98 1.02 Beggarweed hay 90.9 15.2 2.3 28.4 37.2 7.8 1.05 0.27 2.43 2.32 Bent grass hay, Colonial 88.5 6.6 3.0 29.5 42.8 6.6 - 0.18 1.06 1.42 Bermuda grass hay 90.6 7.2 1.8 25.9 48.7 7.0 0.37 0.19 1.15 1.42 Bermuda grass hay, poor 90.0 5.8 0.9 38.8 37.7 6.8 - - 0.93 - Berseem hay, or Egyptian clover 91.7 13.4 2.7 21.0 42.7 11.9 3.27 0.28 2.14 2.05 Birdsfoot trefoil hay 90.5 13.8 2.1 27.5 41.2 5.9 1.13 0.22 2.35 1.52 Black grass hay (Juncus gerardi) 89.7 7.5 2.5 25.1 47.3 7.3 - 0.09 1.20 1.56 Bluegrass hay, Canada 89.3 6.6 2.3 28.2 46.4 5.8 - 0.20 1.06 1.94 Bluegrass hay, Kentucky, all analyses 89.4 8.2 2.8 29.8 42.1 6.5 0.46 0.32 1.31 1.73 Bluegrass hay, Kentucky, in seed 87.3 5.5 2.5 31.0 41.9 6.4 0.23 0.20 0.88 1.48 Bluegrass hay, native western 91.9 11.2 3.0 29.8 39.9 8.0 - - 1.79 - Bluejoint hay (Calamagrostis canadensis) 88.5 7.2 2.3 32.9 39.6 6.5 - - 1.15 - Bluestem hay (Andropogon, spp.) 86.6 5.4 2.2 30.2 43.4 5.4 - - 0.86 - Bromegrass hay, all analyses 88.1 9.9 2.1 28.4 39.5 8.2 0.20 0.28 1.58 2.35 Bromegrass hay, before bloom 89.0 14.5 2.3 24.6 37.9 9.7 - - 2.32 - Broom corn stover 90.6 3.9 1.8 36.8 42.4 5.7 - - 0.62 - Buckwheat hulls 88.6 3.0 1.0 42.9 40.1 1.6 0.26 0.02 0.48 0.27 Buckwheat straw 88.6 4.3 1.0 36.2 38.8 8.3 1.24 0.04 0.69 2.00 Buffalo grass hay (Bulbilis dactyloides) 88.7 6.8 1.8 23.8 46.2 10.1 0.70 0.13 1.09 1.36 Bunchgrass hay, misc. varieties 91.7 5.8 2.0 30.4 44.1 9.4 - - 0.93 - Carpet grass hay 92.1 7.0 2.2 31.8 40.9 10.2 - - 1.12 - Cat-tail, or tule hay (Typha angustifolia) 90.8 5.8 1.7 30.8 44.3 8.2 - - 0.93 - Cereals, young, dehydrated 92.8 24.5 4.7 16.1 33.1 14.4 0.66 0.46 3.92 - Chess, or cheat hay (Bromus, spp.) 91.7 6.9 2.1 29.2 46.1 7.4 0.29 0.25 1.10 1.47 Clover hay, alsike, all analyses 88.9 12.1 2.1 27.0 39.9 7.8 1.15 0.23 1.94 2.44 Clover hay, alsike, in bloom 89.0 13.4 3.2 26.9 37.7 7.8 1.32 0.25 2.14 2.27 soma rights re-served 285 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Material Total Fat Fiber N-free Total dry Protein Calcium Phosphorus Nitrogen Potassium Per Per extract minerals matter Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. ct. ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Clover hay, 89.0 10.9 1.6 35.4 35.5 5.6 - - 1.74 - Alyce Clover hay, bur 92.1 18.4 2.9 22.9 37.8 10.1 1.32 0.45 2.94 2.96 Clover hay, crimson 89.5 14.2 2.2 27.4 37.0 8.7 1.23 0.24 2.27 2.79 Clover hay, Ladino 88.0 19.4 3.2 20.7 34.9 9.8 1.32 0.29 3.10 2.78 Clover, Ladino, and grass hay 88.0 16.3 2.2 20.7 41.7 7.1 1.05 0.26 2.61 1.97 Clover hay, mammoth red 88.0 11.7 3.4 29.2 37.0 6.7 - 0.24 1.87 - Clover hay, red, all analyses 88.1 11.8 2.6 27.2 40.1 6.4 1.35 0.19 1.89 1.43 Clover hay, red, leafy (less than 25% fiber) 88.1 13.4 3.1 23.6 40.8 7.2 - - 2.14 - Clover hay, red, stemmy (over 31% fiber) 88.2 10.1 2.1 34.1 36.0 5.9 0.99 0.15 1.62 1.77 Clover hay, red, before bloom 88.1 18.3 3.6 18.0 41.1 7.1 1.69 0.28 2.93 2.26 Clover hay, red, early to full bloom 88.1 12.5 3.5 26.1 39.7 6.3 1.47 0.22 2.00 1.73 Clover hay, red, second cuffing 88.1 13.4 2.9 24.5 40.4 6.9 - - 2.14 - Clover hay, sweet, first year 91.8 16.5 2.5 24.6 39.7 8.5 1.37 0.26 2.64 1.57 Clover hay, sweet, second year 90.7 13.5 1.9 30.2 37.6 7.5 1.25 0.23 2.16 1.78 Clover hay, white 88.0 14.4 2.4 22.5 40.9 7.8 1.16 0.24 2.30 1.66 Clover leaves, sweet 92.2 26.6 3.2 9.5 41.9 11.0 - - 4.26 - Clover stems, sweet 92.7 10.6 1.1 38.0 35.6 7.4 - - 1.70 - Clover straw, crimson 87.7 7.5 1.5 38.8 32.9 7.0 - - 1.20 - Clover and mixed grassy, high in clover 89.7 9.6 2.7 28.8 42.2 6.2 0.90 0.19 1.54 1.46 Clover and timothy hay, 30 to 50% clover 88.1 8.6 2.2 30.3 41.2 5.8 0.68 0.20 1.38 1.47 Corn cobs, ground 90.4 2.3 0.4 32.1 54.0 1.6 - 0.02 0.37 0.37 Corn fodder, well-eared, very dry (from barn or in arid districts) 91.1 7.8 2.2 27.1 47.6 6.4 0.24 0.16 1.25 0.82 Corn fodder, high in water 60.7 4.8 1.4 16.7 34.2 3.6 0.16 0.11 0.77 0.55 Corn fodder, sweet corn 87.7 9.2 1.8 26.4 41.3 9.0 - 0.17 1.47 0.98 Corn husks, dried 85.0 3.4 0.9 28.2 49.6 2.9 0.15 0.12 0.54 0.55 Corn leaves, dried 82.8 7.7 1.9 23.9 42.6 6.7 0.29 0.10 1.23 0.36 Corn stalks, dried 82.8 4.7 1.5 28.0 43.3 5.3 0.25 0.09 0.75 0.50 Corn stover (ears removed), very dry 90.6 5.9 1.6 30.8 4.65 5.8 0.29 0.05 0.94 0.67 Corn stover, high in water 59.0 3.9 1.0 20.1 30.2 3.8 0.19 0.04 0.62 0.44 Corn tops, dried 82.1 5.6 1.5 27.4 42.0 5.6 - - 0.90 - Cotton bolls, dried 90.8 91.0 3.4 0.9 37.2 46.7 2.6 - 1.39 3.18 Cotton leaves, dried 91.7 8.7 2.4 30.8 42.0 6.9 2.8 0.09 2.45 1.36 Cotton stems, dried 92.4 15.3 6.8 10.3 43.5 15.8 0.61 0.18 0.93 - Cottonseed hulls 90.7 5.8 0.9 44.0 37.5 4.2 4.58 -0.07 0.62 0.87 Cottonseed hull bran 91.0 3.9 0.9 46.1 37.2 2.6 -0.14 - 0.54 - Cowpea hay, all analyses 90.4 18.6 2.6 23.3 34.6 11.3 1.37 0.29 2.98 1.51 Cowpea hay, in bloom to early pod 89.9 18.1 3.2 21.8 36.7 10.1 - - 2.90 - Cowpea hay, ripe 90.0 10.1 2.5 29.2 41.8 6.4 - - 1.62 - Cowpea straw 91.5 6.8 1.2 44.5 33.6 5.4 - - 1.09 - Crabgrass hay 90.5 8.0 2.4 28.7 42.9 8.5 - - 1.28 - Durra fodder 89.9 6.4 2.8 24.1 51.4 5.2 - - 1.02 - Emmer hay 90.0 0.97 2.0 32.8 36.4 9.1 - - 1.55 - Fescue hay, meadow 89.2 7.0 1.9 30.3 43.2 6.8 - 0.20 1.12 1.43 Fescue hay, native western (Festuca, spp.) 90.0 8.5 2.0 31.0 42.8 5.7 - - 1.36 - Feterita fodder, very dry 88.0 8.0 2.1 18.7 51.5 7.7 0.30 0.21 1.28 - Feterita stover 86.3 5.2 1.7 29.2 41.9 8.3 - - 0.83 - Flat pea hay 92.3 22.7 3.2 27.7 32.0 6.7 - 0.30 3.63 2.02 Flax plant by product 91.9 6.4 2.1 44.4 33.1 5.9 - - 1.02 - Flax straw 92.8 7.2 3.2 42.5 32.9 7.0 0.48 0.07 1.15 0.73 Fowl meadow grass hay 87.4 8.7 2.3 29.7 39.5 7.2 - - 1.39 - Furze, dried 94.5 11.6 2.0 38.5 35.5 7.0 - - 1.86 - Gama grass hay (Tripsacum dactyloides) 88.2 6.7 1.8 30.4 43.1 6.2 - - 1.07 - Grama grass hay (Bouteloua, spp.) 89.8 5.8 1.6 28.9 45.6 7.9 0.34 0.18 0.93 - Grass hay, mixed, eastern states, good quality 89.0 7.0 2.5 30.9 43.1 5.5 0.48 0.21 1.12 1.20 Grass hay, mixed, second cutting 89.0 12.3 3.3 24.8 41.7 6.9 0.79 0.31 1.97 1.15 soma rights re-served 286 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Material Total Fat Fiber N-free Total dry Protein Calcium Phosphorus Nitrogen Potassium Per Per extract minerals matter Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. ct. ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Grass straw 85.0 4.5 2.0 35.0 37.8 5.7 - - 0.72 - Guar hay (Cyamopsis psoraloides) 90.7 16.5 1.3 19.3 41.2 12.4 - 2.64 - - Hegari fodder 86.0 6.2 1.7 18.1 52.5 7.5 0.27 0.16 0.99 - Hegari stover 87.0 5.6 1.8 28.0 41.7 9.9 0.33 0.08 0.90 - Hops, spent, dried 93.8 23.0 3.6 24.5 37.4 5.3 - - 3.68 - Horse bean hay 91.5 13.4 0.8 22.0 49.8 5.5 - - 2.14 - Horse bean straw 87.9 8.6 1.4 36.4 33.1 8.4 - - 1.38 - Hyacinth bean hay (Dilichos lablab) 90.2 14.8 1.4 33.6 33.6 6.8 - - 2.37 - Johnson grass hay 90.1 6.5 2.1 30.4 43.7 7.4 0.87 0.26 1.04 1.22 June grass hay, western (Koeleria cristata) 88.3 8.1 2.5 30.4 40.5 6.8 - - 1.30 - Kafir fodder, very dry 90.0 8.7 2.6 25.5 44.2 9.0 0.35 0.18 1.39 1.53 Kafir fodder, high in water 71.7 6.5 2.7 21.6 37.6 3.3 0.28 0.14 1.04 1.23 Kafir stover, very dry 90.0 5.5 1.8 29.5 44.3 8.9 0.54 0.09 0.88 - Kafir stover, high in water 72.7 3.8 1.3 23.7 36.6 7.3 0.44 0.07 0.61 - Koahaole forage, dried 88.7 12.7 1.9 29.8 39.2 5.1 - - 2.03 - Kochia scoparia hay 90.0 11.4 1.5 23.6 40.7 12.8 - - 1.82 - Kudzu hay 89.0 15.9 2.5 28.6 35.1 6.9 2.78 0.21 2.54 - Lespedeza hay, annual, all analyses 89.2 12.7 2.4 26.7 42.2 5.2 0.98 0.18 2.03 0.91 Lespedeza hay, annual, before bloom 89.1 14.3 2.7 22.7 43.0 6.4 1.04 0.19 2.29 1.06 Lespedeza hay, annual, in bloom 89.1 13.0 1.8 26.5 42.7 5.1 1.02 0.18 2.08 0.94 Lespedeza hay, annual, after bloom 89.1 11.5 1.9 32.6 38.6 4.5 0.90 0.15 1.84 0.82 Lespedeza hay, perennial 89.0 13.2 1.7 26.5 42.7 4.9 0.92 0.22 2.11 0.98 Lespedeza leaves, annual 89.2 17.1 2.9 19.7 43.1 6.4 1.30 0.20 2.74 0.92 Lespedeza stems, annual 89.2 8.3 1.0 38.5 37.7 3.7 0.64 0.13 1.33 0.89 Lespedeza straw 90.0 6.8 2.3 29.2 47.1 4.6 - - 1.09 - Lovegrass hay, weeping 91.2 9.2 2.8 30.9 43.4 4.9 - - 1.47 - Marsh or swamp hay, good quality 90.2 7.7 2.3 28.2 44.3 7.7 - - 1.23 - Millet hay, foxtail varieties 87.6 8.2 2.7 25.3 44.7 6.7 0.29 0.16 1.31 1.70 Millet hay, hog millet, or proso 90.3 9.3 2.2 23.9 47.6 7.3 - - 1.49 - Millet hay, Japanese 86.8 8.3 1.6 27.7 40.8 8.4 0.20 - 1.33 2.10 Millet hay, pearl, or cat-tail 87.2 9.0 90.0 5.5 88.5 6.9 91.0 9.5 88.3 7.6 Millet straw 6.7 - 3.8 0.08 8.0 0.35 3.2 0.58 12.7 1.51 1.6 - Milo fodder 1.7 - 3.3 0.18 1.1 0.11 2.1 0.19 Milo stover 33.0 1.07 37.5 0.61 21.9 1.28 29.1 0.51 20.3 2.03 Mint hay 36.8 - 41.6 1.44 48.4 - 48.1 - 45.6 - Mixed hay, good, less than 30% legumes 88.0 8.3 1.8 30.7 41.8 5.4 0.61 0.18 1.33 1.47 Mixed hay, good, more than 30% legumes 88.0 9.2 1.9 28.1 42.8 6.0 0.90 0.19 1.47 1.46 Mixed hay, cut very early 90.0 13.3 2.7 25.3 39.4 9.3 - - 2.13 - Napier grass hay 89.1 8.2 1.8 34.0 34.6 10.5 - - 1.31 - Natal grass hay 90.2 7.4 1.8 36.8 39.2 5.0 0.45 0.29 1.18 - Native hay, western mt. states, good quality 90.0 8.1 2.1 29.8 43.2 6.8 0.39 0.12 1.30 - Native hay, western mt. states, mature and weathered 90.0 3.9 1.4 33.6 43.6 7.5 - - 0.62 - Needle grass hay (Stipa, spp.) 88.1 7.2 2.0 30.8 41.9 6.2 - - 1.15 - Oak leaves, live oak, dried 93.8 9.3 2.7 29.9 45.3 6.6 - - 1.49 - Oat chaff 91.8 5.9 2.4 25.7 46.3 11.5 0.80 0.30 0.94 0.86 Oat hay 88.1 8.2 2.7 28.1 42.2 6.9 0.21 0.19 1.31 0.83 Oat hay, wild (Avena fatua) 92.5 6.6 2.6 32.5 44.0 6.8 0.22 0.25 1.06 - Oat hulls 92.8 4.5 1.3 29.7 50.8 6.5 0.20 0.10 0.78 0.48 Oat straw 89.7 4.1 2.2 36.1 41.0 6.3 0.19 0.10 0.66 1.35 Oat grass hay, tall 88.7 7.5 2.4 30.1 42.7 6.0 - 0.14 1.20 1.36 Orchard grass hay, early-cut 88.6 7.7 2.9 30.5 40.7 6.8 0.19 0.17 1.23 1.61 Picnic grass hay (Panicum, spp.) 92.1 8.3 2.3 29.5 44.9 7.1 - - 1.33 - Para grass hay 90.2 4.6 0.9 33.6 44.5 6.6 0.35 0.35 0.74 1.44 Pasture grasses and clovers, mixed, from closely grazed, fertile pasture, dried (northern states) 90.0 20.3 3.6 19.7 38.7 7.7 0.58 0.32 3.25 2.18 Pasture grasses, mixed, from poor to fair pasture, before heading out, dried 90.0 14.1 2.3 19.4 43.2 11.0 0.41 0.12 2.26 0.74 soma rights re-served 287 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Material Total Fat Fiber N-free Total dry Protein Calcium Phosphorus Nitrogen Potassium Per Per extract minerals matter Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. ct. ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Pasture grass, western plains, growing, dried 90.0 11.6 2.5 28.0 40.2 7.7 0.37 0.24 1.86 - Pasture grass, western plains, mature, dried 90.0 4.6 2.3 31.9 45.3 5.9 0.34 0.14 0.74 - Pasture grass, western plains, mature and weathered 90.0 3.3 1.8 34.1 44.5 6.3 0.33 0.09 0.53 - Pasture grass and other forage on western mt. ranges, spring, dried 90.0 17.0 3.1 14.0 49.1 6.8 1.21 0.38 2.72 - Pasture grass and other forage on western mt. ranges, autumn, dried 90.0 8.8 4.3 17.4 51.4 8.1 - - 1.41 - Pea hay, field 89.3 14.9 3.3 24.3 39.1 7.7 1.22 0.25 2.38 1.25 Pea straw, field 90.2 6.1 1.6 33.1 44.0 5.4 - 0.10 0.98 1.08 Pea-and-oat hay 89.1 12.1 2.9 27.2 39.1 7.8 0.72 0.22 1.94 1.04 Peanut hay, without nuts 90.7 10.1 3.3 23.4 44.2 9.7 1.12 0.13 1.62 1.25 Peanut hay, with nuts 92.0 13.4 12.6 23.0 34.9 8.1 1.13 0.15 2.14 0.85 Peanut hay, mowed 91.4 10.6 5.1 23.8 42.2 9.7 - - 1.70 - Peanut hulls, with a few nuts 92.3 6.7 1.2 60.3 19.7 4.4 0.30 0.07 1.07 0.82 Peavine hay, from pea-cannery vines, sun-cured 86.3 11.9 2.4 23.0 42.2 6.8 1.48 0.16 1.90 - Prairie hay, western, good quality 90.7 0.57 2.3 30.4 44.9 7.4 0.36 0.18 0.91 - Prairie hay, western, mature 91.7 3.8 2.4 31.9 47.1 6.5 0.28 0.09 0.61 0.49 Quack grass hay 89.0 6.9 1.9 34.5 38.8 6.9 - - 1.10 - Ramie meal 92.2 19.2 3.8 20.1 35.9 13.2 4.32 0.22 3.07 - Red top hay 91.0 7.2 2.3 29.3 45.3 6.9 0.33 0.23 1.15 1.93 Reed canary grass hay 91.1 7.7 2.3 29.2 44.3 7.6 0.33 0.16 1.23 - Rescue grass hay 90.2 9.8 3.2 24.6 44.5 8.1 - - 1.57 - Rhodes grass hay 89.0 5.7 1.3 31.7 41.8 8.5 0.35 0.27 0.91 1.18 Rice hulls 92.0 3.0 0.8 40.7 28.4 19.1 0.08 0.08 0.48 0.31 Rice straw 92.5 3.9 1.4 33.5 39.2 14.5 0.19 0.07 0.62 1.22 Rush hay, western (Juncus, spp.) 90.0 9.4 1.8 29.2 44.2 5.4 - - 1.50 - Russian thistle hay 87.5 8.9 1.6 26.9 37.4 12.7 - - 1.42 - Rye grass hay, Italian 88.6 8.1 1.9 27.8 43.3 7.5 - 0.24 1.30 1.00 Rye grass hay, perennial 88.0 9.2 3.1 24.2 43.4 8.1 - 0.24 1.47 1.25 Rye grass hay, native western 87.4 7.8 2.1 33.5 37.6 6.4 - - 1.25 - Rye hay 91.3 6.7 2.1 36.5 41.0 5.0 - 0.18 1.07 1.05 Rye straw 92.8 3.5 1.2 38.7 45.9 3.5 0.26 0.09 0.56 0.90 Salt bushes, dried 93.5 13.8 1.6 22.1 38.8 17.2 1.88 0.11 2.21 4.69 Salt grass hay, misc. var. 90.0 8.1 1.8 28.8 39.5 11.8 - - 1.30 - Sanfoin hay (Onobrychis viciaefolia) 84.1 10.5 2.6 19.7 44.2 7.1 - - 1.68 - Seaweed, dried (Fucus, spp.) 88.7 5.2 4.2 9.4 53.6 16.3 - - 0.83 - Seaweed, dried (Laminaria, spp.) 83.7 11.4 1.1 8.6 45.8 16.8 - - 1.82 - Sedge hay, eastern (Carex, spp.) 90.7 6.1 1.7 29.2 46.3 7.4 - - 0.98 - Sedge hay, western (Carex, spp.) 90.6 10.1 2.4 27.3 44.0 6.8 0.60 0.24 1.62 - Seradella hay 89.0 16.4 3.2 29.8 32.0 7.6 - 0.33 2.62 1.25 Sorghum bagasse, dried 89.3 3.1 1.4 31.3 50.0 3.5 - - 0.50 - Sorghum fodder, sweet, dry 88.8 6.2 2.4 25.0 48.1 7.1 0.34 0.12 0.99 1.29 Sorghum fodder, sweet, high in water 65.7 4.5 2.4 16.6 37.6 4.6 0.25 0.09 0.72 0.96 Soybean hay, good, all analyses 88.0 14.4 3.3 27.5 35.8 7.0 0.94 0.24 2.30 0.82 Soybean hay, in bloom or before 88.0 16.7 3.3 20.6 37.8 9.6 1.53 0.27 2.67 0.86 Soybean hay, seed developing 88.0 14.6 2.4 27.2 36.5 7.3 1.35 0.25 2.34 0.78 Soybean hay, seed nearly ripe 88.0 15.2 6.6 24.0 38.2 4.0 0.86 0.32 2.43 0.81 Soybean hay, poor quality, weathered 89.0 9.2 1.2 41.0 30.4 7.2 0.94 - 1.47 - Soybean straw 88.8 4.0 1.1 41.1 37.5 5.1 - 0.13 0.64 0.62 Soybean and Sudan grass hay, chiefly Sudan 89.0 7.4 2.2 31.1 43.4 4.9 - - 1.18 - Spanish moss, dried 89.2 5.0 2.4 26.6 47.7 7.5 - 0.04 0.80 0.46 Sudan grass hay, all analyses 89.3 8.8 1.6 27.9 42.9 8.1 0.36 0.26 1.41 1.30 Sudan grass hay, before bloom 89.6 11.2 1.5 26.1 41.3 9.5 0.41 0.26 1.79 - Sudan grass hay, in bloom 89.2 8.4 1.5 30.7 41.8 6.8 - - 1.34 - Sudan grass hay, in seed 89.5 6.8 1.6 29.9 44.4 6.8 0.27 0.19 1.09 - Sudan grass, young, dehydrated 88.0 14.5 2.5 20.4 41.2 9.4 0.52 0.39 2.32 - Sudan grass straw 90.4 7.1 1.5 33.0 42.3 6.5 - - 1.14 - soma rights re-served 288 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Material Total Fat Fiber N-free Total dry Protein Calcium Phosphorus Nitrogen Potassium Per Per extract minerals matter Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. ct. ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Sugar cane fodder, Japanese, dried 89.0 1.3 1.8 19.7 64.3 1.9 0.32 0.14 0.21 0.58 Sugar cane bagasse, dried 95.5 1.1 0.4 49.6 42.0 2.4 - - 0.18 - Sugar cane pulp, dried 93.8 1.7 0.6 45.6 42.2 3.7 - - 0.27 - Sweet potato vine, dried 90.7 12.6 3.3 19.1 45.5 10.2 - - 2.02 - Teosinte fodder, dried 89.4 9.1 1.9 26.5 41.7 10.3 - 0.17 1.46 0.88 Timothy hay, all analyses 89.0 6.5 2.4 30.2 45.0 4.9 0.23 0.20 1.04 1.50 Timothy hay, before bloom 89.0 9.7 2.7 27.4 42.7 6.5 - - 1.55 - Timothy, full bloom 89.0 6.4 2.5 30.4 44.8 4.9 0.23 0.20 1.02 1.50 Timothy hay, in bloom, nitrogen fertilized 89.0 9.7 2.1 31.6 42.6 3.9 0.40 0.21 1.41 1.41 Timothy hay, late seed 89.0 5.3 2.3 31.0 45.9 4.5 0.14 0.15 0.85 1.41 Timothy hay, in bloom, dehydrated 89.0 7.7 2.3 28.3 45.5 5.2 - - 1.23 - Timothy hay, second cutting 88.7 15.0 4.6 25.4 36.5 7.2 - - 2.40 - Timothy and clover hay, one-fourth clover 88.8 7.8 2.4 29.5 43.8 5.3 0.51 0.20 1.25 1.48 Velvet bean hay 92.8 16.4 3.1 27.5 38.4 7.4 - 0.24 2.62 2.20 Vetch hay, common 89.0 13.3 1.1 25.2 32.2 6.2 1.18 0.32 2.13 2.22 Vetch hay, hairy 88.0 19.3 2.6 24.5 33.1 8.5 1.13 0.32 3.09 1.96 Vetch-and-oat hay, over half vetch 87.6 11.9 2.7 27.3 37.5 8.2 0.76 0.27 1.90 1.51 Vetch-and-wheat hay, cut early 90.0 15.4 2.2 28.8 36.4 7.2 - - 2.46 - Wheat chaff 90.0 4.4 1.5 29.4 47.1 7.6 0.21 0.14 0.70 0.50 Wheat hay 90.4 6.1 1.8 26.1 50.0 6.4 0.14 0.18 0.98 1.47 Wheat straw 92.5 3.9 1.5 36.9 41.9 8.3 0.21 0.07 0.62 0.79 Wheat grass hay, crested, cut early 90.0 9.2 2.0 32.2 40.2 6.4 - - 1.47 - Wheat grass hay, slender 90.0 8.0 2.1 32.2 41.0 6.7 0.30 0.24 1.28 2.41 Winter fat, or white sage, dried (Eurotia lanata) 92.6 12.9 1.9 27.4 40.8 9.6 - - 2.06 - Wire grass hay, southern (Aristida, spp.) 90.0 5.5 1.4 31.8 47.9 3.4 0.15 0.14 0.88 - Wire grass hay, western (Aristida, spp.) 90.0 6.4 1.3 34.1 41.0 7.2 - - 1.02 - Yucca, or beargrass, dried 92.6 6.6 2.2 38.6 38.3 6.9 - - 1.06 - soma rights re-served 289 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Concentrates Material Total Fat Fiber N-free Total dry Protein Calcium Phosphorus Nitrogen Potassium Per Per extract minerals matter Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. ct. ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Acorns, whole (red oak) 50.0 3.2 10.7 9.9 25.0 1.2 - - 0.51 - Acorns, whole (white and post oaks) 50.0 2.7 3.0 9.3 33.7 1.3 - - 0.43 - Alfalfa-molasses feed 86.0 11.4 1.2 18.5 46.2 8.7 - - 1.82 - Alfalfa seed 88.3 33.2 10.6 8.1 32.0 4.4 - - 5.31 - Alfalfa seed screenings 90.3 31.1 9.9 11.1 33.1 5.1 - - 4.98 - Apple-pectin pulp, dried 91.2 7.0 7.3 24.2 49.4 3.3 - - 1.12 - Apple-pectin pulp, wet 16.7 1.5 0.9 5.8 7.9 0.6 - - 0.24 - Apple pomace, dried 89.4 4.5 5.0 15.6 62.1 2.2 0.10 0.09 0.72 0.43 Apple pomace, wet 21.1 1.3 1.3 3.7 13.9 0.9 0.02 0.02 0.21 0.10 Atlas sorghum grain 89.1 11.3 3.3 2.0 70.6 1.9 - - 1.81 - Atlas sorghum head chops 88.0 9.5 2.8 10.7 60.2 4.8 - - 1.52 - Avocado oil meal 91.4 18.6 1.1 17.6 36.0 18.1 - - 2.98 - Babassu oil meal 92.8 24.2 6.8 12.0 44.6 5.2 0.13 0.71 3.87 - Bakery waste, dried (high in fat) 91.6 10.9 13.7 0.7 64.7 1.6 - - 1.74 - Barley, common, not including Pacific Coast states 89.4 12.7 1.9 5.4 66.6 2.8 0.06 0.37 2.03 0.49 Barley, Pacific Coast states 89.8 8.7 1.9 5.7 70.9 2.6 - - 1.39 - Barley, light weight 89.1 12.1 2.1 7.4 64.3 3.2 - - 1.94 - Barley, hull-less, or bald 90.2 11.6 2.0 2.4 72.1 2.1 - - 1.86 - Barley feed, high grade 90.3 13.5 3.5 8.7 60.5 4.1 0.03 0.40 2.16 0.60 Barley feed, low grade 92.0 12.3 3.45 14.7 56.2 5.3 - - 1.97 - Barley, malted 93.4 12.7 2.1 5.4 70.9 2.3 0.06 0.42 2.03 0.37 Barley screenings 88.6 11.6 2.7 9.1 61.3 3.9 - - 1.86 - Beans, field, or navy 90.0 22.9 1.4 4.2 57.3 4.2 0.15 0.57 3.66 1.27 Beans, kidney 89.0 23.0 1.2 4.1 56.8 3.9 - - 3.68 - Beans, lima 89.7 21.2 1.1 4.7 58.2 4.5 0.09 0.37 3.39 1.70 Beans, mung 90.2 23.3 1.0 3.5 58.5 3.9 - - 3.73 - Beans, pinto 89.9 22.5 1.2 4.1 57.7 4.4 - - 3.60 - Beans, tepary 90.5 22.2 1.4 3.4 59.3 4.2 - - 3.56 - Beechnuts 91.4 15.0 30.6 15.0 27.5 3.3 0.58 0.30 2.40 0.62 Beef scraps 94.5 55.6 10.9 1.2 0.5 26.3 - - 8.90 - Beet pulp, dried 90.1 9.2 0.5 19.8 57.2 3.4 0.67 0.08 1.47 0.18 Beet pulp, molasses, dried 91.9 10.7 0.7 16.0 59.4 5.1 0.62 0.09 1.71 1.63 Beet pulp, wet 11.6 1.5 0.3 4.0 5.3 0.5 0.09 0.01 0.24 0.02 Beet pulp, wet, pressed 14.2 1.4 0.4 4.6 7.1 0.7 - - 0.22 - Blood flour, or soluble blood meal 92.2 84.7 1.0 1.1 0.7 4.7 0.68 0.50 13.55 - Blood meal 91.8 84.5 1.1 1.0 0.7 4.5 0.33 0.25 13.52 0.09 Bone meal, raw 93.6 26.0 5.0 1.0 2.5 59.1 23.05 10.22 4.16 - Bone meal, raw, solvent process 93.1 25.7 1.0 1.0 1.9 63.5 24.02 10.65 4.11 - Bone meal, steamed 96.3 7.1 3.3 0.8 3.8 81.3 31.74 15.00 1.14 0.18 Bone meal, steamed, solvent process 96.8 7.2 0.4 1.5 3.7 84.0 - - 1.15 - Bone meal, steamed, special 97.7 13.5 7.9 1.0 5.1 70.2 31.88 13.48 2.16 - Bone meal, 10% to 20% protein 97.2 14.6 6.5 1.5 3.6 71.0 26.00 12.66 2.34 - Bread, white, enriched 64.1 8.5 2.0 0.3 52.0 1.3 0.06 0.10 1.36 0.10 Brewers' grains, dried, 25% protein or over 92.9 27.6 6.5 14.3 40.9 3.6 0.29 0.48 4.42 0.10 Brewers' grains, dried, below 25% protein 92.3 23.4 6.4 16.1 42.5 3.9 - - 3.74 - Brewers' grains, dried, from California barley 91.1 20.0 5.7 18.1 43.6 3.7 - - 3.20 - Brewers' grains, wet 23.7 5.7 1.6 3.6 11.8 1.0 0.07 0.12 0.91 0.02 Broom corn seed 89.7 9.2 3.7 5.1 69.1 2.6 - - 1.47 - Buckwheat, ordinary varieties 88.0 10.3 2.3 10.7 62.8 1.9 0.09 0.31 1.64 0.45 Buckwheat, Tartary 88.1 10.1 2.4 12.7 60.9 2.0 0.13 0.31 1.62 0.44 soma rights re-served 290 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Material Total Fat Fiber N-free Total dry Protein Calcium Phosphorus Nitrogen Potassium Per Per extract minerals matter Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. ct. ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Buckwheat feed, good grade 89.3 18.5 4.9 18.2 43.5 4.2 - 0.48 2.96 0.66 Buckwheat feed, low grade 88.3 13.3 3.4 28.6 39.8 3.2 - 0.37 2.13 0.68 Buckwheat flour 88.1 10.2 2.1 0.9 73.4 1.5 0.01 0.09 1.63 0.16 Buckwheat kernels, without hulls 88.0 14.1 3.4 1.8 66.5 2.2 0.05 0.45 2.26 0.49 Buckwheat middlings 88.7 29.7 7.3 7.4 39.4 4.9 - 1.02 4.76 0.98 Buttermilk 9.4 3.5 0.6 0.0 4.5 0.8 0.14 0.08 0.56 0.07 Buttermilk, condensed 29.7 10.9 2.2 0.0 12.6 4.0 0.44 0.26 1.74 0.23 Buttermilk, dried 92.4 32.4 6.4 0.3 43.3 10.0 1.36 0.82 5.18 0.71 Carob bean and pods 87.8 5.5 2.6 8.7 68.5 2.5 - - 0.88 - Carob bean pods 89.5 4.7 2.5 8.7 70.9 2.7 - - 0.75 - Carob bean seeds 88.5 16.7 2.6 7.6 58.4 3.2 - - 2.67 - Cassava roots, dried 94.4 2.8 0.5 5.0 84.1 2.0 - - 0.45 - Cassava meal (starch waste) 86.8 0.9 0.7 4.6 78.8 1.8 - 0.03 0.14 0.23 Cheese rind, or cheese meal 91.0 59.5 8.9 0.4 10.7 11.5 - - 9.52 - Chess, or cheat, seed 89.6 9.7 1.7 8.2 66.4 3.6 - - 1.56 - Chick peas 90.0 20.3 4.3 8.5 54.0 2.9 - - 3.24 - Citrus pulp, dried 90.1 5.9 3.1 11.5 62.7 6.9 2.07 0.15 0.94 - Citrus pulp and molasses, dried 92.0 5.3 2.8 9.3 66.6 8.0 - - 0.84 - Citrus pulp, wet 18.3 1.2 0.6 2.3 12.8 1.4 - - 0.19 - Clover seed, red 87.5 32.6 7.8 9.2 31.2 6.7 - - 5.22 - Clover seed screenings, red 90.5 28.2 5.9 10.2 40.3 5.9 - - 4.51 - Clover seed screenings, sweet 90.1 21.7 3.7 14.7 41.1 8.9 - - 3.47 - Cocoa meal 96.0 24.3 17.1 5.1 43.7 5.8 - - 3.89 - Cocoa shells 95.1 15.4 3.0 16.5 49.9 10.3 - 0.59 2.46 2.16 Coconut oil meal, hydr. or exp. process 93.2 21.3 6.7 10.7 48.3 6.2 0.21 0.64 3.41 1.95 Coconut oil meal, high in fat 93.7 21.0 10.6 11.3 44.4 6.4 - - 3.36 - Coconut oil meal, solvent process 91.1 21.4 2.4 13.3 47.4 6.6 - - 3.42 - Cod-liver oil meal 92.5 50.4 28.9 0.7 9.6 2.9 0.18 0.61 8.06 - Corn, dent, Grade No. 1 87.0 8.8 4.0 2.1 70.9 1.2 0.02 0.28 1.41 0.28 Corn, dent, Grade No. 2 85.0 8.6 3.9 2.0 69.3 1.2 0.02 0.27 1.38 0.27 Corn, dent, Grade No. 3 83.5 8.4 3.8 2.0 68.1 1.2 0.02 0.27 1.34 0.27 Corn, dent, Grade No. 4 81.1 8.2 3.7 1.9 66.2 1.1 0.02 0.26 1.31 0.26 Corn, dent, Grade No. 5 78.5 7.9 3.6 1.9 64.0 1.1 0.02 0.25 1.26 0.25 Corn, dent, soft or immature 70.0 7.2 2.3 2.5 56.5 1.5 - 0.24 1.16 0.26 Corn, flint 88.5 9.8 4.3 1.9 71.0 1.5 - 0.33 1.57 0.32 Corn, pop 90.0 11.5 5.0 1.9 70.1 1.5 - 0.29 1.84 - Corn ears, including kernels and cobs (corn-and-cob meal) 86.1 7.3 3.2 8.0 66.3 1.3 - 0.22 1.17 0.29 Corn ears, soft or immature 64.3 5.8 1.9 7.8 47.7 1.1 - - 0.93 - Corn, snapped, or ear-corn chops with husks 88.8 8.0 3.0 10.6 64.8 2.4 - - 1.28 - Corn, snapped, very soft or immature 60.0 5.3 1.8 8.2 42.7 2.0 - - 0.85 - Corn bran 90.6 9.7 7.3 9.2 62.0 2.4 0.03 0.27 1.56 0.56 Corn feed meal 88.6 9.8 4.7 2.9 69.2 2.0 0.03 0.34 1.57 0.28 Corn germ meal 93.0 19.8 7.8 8.9 53.2 3.3 - 0.58 3.17 0.21 Corn gluten feed, all analyses 90.9 25.5 2.7 7.6 48.8 6.3 0.48 0.82 4.08 0.54 Corn gluten feed, 25% protein guarantee 91.1 26.6 3.0 7.2 48.2 6.1 - - 4.26 - Corn gluten feed, 23% protein guarantee 91.4 24.8 2.6 7.8 49.8 6.4 - - 3.97 - Corn gluten feed with molasses 88.8 22.6 2.1 6.8 50.9 6.4 - - 3.62 - Corn gluten meal, all analyses 91.4 43.1 2.0 4.0 39.8 2.5 0.13 0.38 6.90 0.02 Corn gluten meal, 41% protein guarantee 91.4 42.9 2.0 3.9 40.1 2.5 - - 6.86 - Corn grits 88.4 8.5 0.5 0.6 78.4 0.4 - - 1.36 - Corn meal, degerminated, yellow 88.7 8.7 1.2 0.6 77.1 1.1 0.01 0.14 1.39 - Corn meal, degerminated, white 88.4 8.6 1.2 0.7 76.1 1.8 0.01 0.14 1.38 - Corn oil meal, old process 91.7 22.3 7.8 10.3 49.0 2.3 0.06 0.56 3.57 - Corn oil meal, solvent process 91.7 23.0 1.5 10.4 54.6 2.2 0.03 0.50 3.68 - soma rights re-served 291 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Material Total Fat Fiber N-free Total dry Protein Calcium Phosphorus Nitrogen Potassium Per Per extract minerals matter Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. ct. ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Corn-starch 88.6 11.6 0.6 0.1 0.2 87.6 0.1 - - 0.10 Corn-and-oat feed, good grade 89.6 11.9 4.0 5.4 65.9 2.4 0.05 0.30 1.90 0.34 Corn-and-oat feed, low grade 89.6 9.1 2.9 13.4 59.0 5.2 - - 1.46 - Cottonseed, whole 92.7 23.1 22.9 16.9 26.3 3.5 0.14 0.70 3.70 1.11 Cottonseed, immature, dried 93.2 20.5 15.9 24.1 29.0 3.7 - - 3.28 - Cottonseed, whole pressed, 28% protein guarantee 93.5 28.2 5.8 22.6 32.2 4.7 - - 4.51 - Cottonseed, whole pressed, below 28% protein 93.5 26.9 6.5 24.7 30.8 4.6 0.17 0.64 4.30 1.25 Cottonseed feed, below 36% protein 92.4 34.6 6.3 14.1 31.5 5.9 0.26 0.83 5.54 1.22 Cottonseed flour 94.4 57.0 7.2 2.1 21.6 6.5 - - 9.12 - Cottonseed kernels, without hulls 93.6 38.4 33.3 2.3 15.1 4.5 - - 6.14 - Cottonseed meal, 45% protein and over 93.5 46.2 7.7 8.6 24.9 6.1 0.22 1.13 7.39 - Cottonseed meal, 43% protein grade, not including Texas analyses 92.7 43.9 7.1 9.0 26.3 6.4 0.23 1.12 7.02 1.45 Cottonseed meal, 43% protein grade, Texas analyses 92.5 42.7 6.4 10.6 27.0 5.8 0.19 0.96 6.83 1.34 Cottonseed meal, 41% protein grade, not including Texas analyses 92.8 41.5 6.3 10.4 28.1 6.5 0.20 1.22 6.64 1.48 Cottonseed meal, 41% protein grade, Texas analyses 92.1 41.0 6.0 11.6 27.6 5.9 - - 6.56 - Cottonseed meal, below 41% protein grade 92.4 38.2 6.2 12.3 29.4 6.3 0.23 1.29 6.11 1.57 Cottonseed meal, solvent process 90.8 44.4 2.6 12.7 24.3 6.8 - - 7.10 - Cowpea seed 89.0 23.4 1.4 4.0 56.7 3.5 0.11 0.46 3.74 1.30 Crab meal 92.4 31.5 2.0 10.7 5.0 43.2 15.15 1.63 5.04 0.45 Darso grain 90.0 10.1 3.1 1.9 73.5 1.4 0.02 0.32 1.62 - Distillers' dried corn grains, without solubles 92.9 28.3 8.8 11.4 41.9 2.5 0.11 0.47 4.53 0.24 Distillers' dried corn grains, with solubles 93.1 28.8 8.9 9.0 41.7 4.7 0.16 0.74 4.61 - Distillers' dried corn grains, solvent extracted 93.7 33.4 1.4 8.6 46.4 3.9 - - 5.34 - Distillers' dried rye grains 93.9 18.5 6.4 15.6 51.0 2.4 0.13 0.43 2.96 0.04 Distillers' rye grains, wet 22.4 4.4 1.5 2.5 13.3 0.7 - - 0.70 - Distillers' dried wheat grains 93.7 28.7 6.1 13.0 42.2 3.7 - - 4.59 - Distillers' dried wheat grains, high protein 94.7 46.2 5.7 10.9 30.0 1.9 - - 7.39 - Distillers' solubles, dried, corn 93.0 26.7 7.9 2.6 48.4 7.4 0.30 1.41 4.27 1.75 Distillers' solubles, dried, wheat 94.0 28.2 1.5 2.8 58.9 2.6 - - 4.51 - Distillery stillage, corn, whole 7.9 2.3 0.6 0.7 4.0 0.3 0.006 0.05 0.37 - Distillery stillage, rye, whole 5.9 1.9 0.3 0.5 2.9 0.3 - - 0.30 - Distillery stillage, strained 3.8 1.1 0.4 0.2 1.8 0.3 0.004 0.05 0.18 - Durra grain 89.8 10.3 3.5 1.6 72.4 2.0 - - 1.64 - Emmer grain 91.1 12.1 1.9 9.8 63.6 3.7 - 0.33 1.94 0.47 Feterita grain 89.4 12.2 3.2 2.2 70.1 1.7 0.02 0.33 1.96 - Feterita head chops 89.6 10.7 2.6 7.4 65.7 3.2 - - 1.71 - Fish-liver oil meal 92.8 62.8 17.3 1.2 5.4 6.1 - - 10.04 - Fish meal, all analyses 92.9 63.9 6.8 0.6 4.0 17.6 4.14 2.67 10.22 0.40 Fish meal, over 63% protein 92.7 66.8 5.3 0.5 4.5 15.6 - - 10.69 - Fish meal, 58-63% protein 93.1 60.9 8.1 0.8 3.5 19.8 - - 9.74 - Fish meal, below 58% protein 93.2 56.2 11.0 0.7 2.9 22.4 - - 8.99 - Fish meal, herring 93.5 72.5 7.3 0.7 1.5 11.5 2.97 2.08 11.60 - Fish meal, menhaden 93.6 62.2 8.5 0.7 4.2 18.0 5.30 3.38 9.96 - Fish meal, redfish 94.2 56.7 11.4 0.9 0.9 24.3 4.01 2.44 9.07 - Fish meal, salmon 92.8 59.4 9.8 0.3 4.3 19.0 5.49 3.65 9.50 - Fish meal, sardine 93.1 67.2 5.0 0.6 5.4 14.9 4.21 2.54 10.76 0.33 Fish meal, tuna 90.1 58.2 7.9 0.7 3.4 19.9 4.80 3.10 9.31 - Fish meal, whitefish 90.4 63.0 6.7 0.1 0.1 20.5 - - 10.08 - Fish solubles, condensed 49.5 29.3 8.4 - 2.2 9.6 - - 4.69 - Flaxseed 93.8 24.0 35.9 6.3 24.0 3.6 0.26 0.55 3.84 0.59 Flaxseed screenings 91.1 16.4 9.4 12.7 45.8 6.8 0.37 0.43 2.62 - Flaxseed screenings oil feed 91.9 25.0 7.1 11.7 40.3 7.8 - - 4.00 - Garbage 39.3 6.0 7.2 1.1 22.2 2.8 - - 0.96 - Garbage, processed, high in fat 95.9 17.5 23.7 20.0 21.8 12.9 - 0.33 2.80 0.62 Garbage, processed, low in fat 92.3 23.1 3.5 38.1 14.1 - - 3.70 - soma rights re-served 292 13.5 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Material Total Fat Fiber N-free Total dry Protein Calcium Phosphorus Nitrogen Potassium Per Per extract minerals matter Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. ct. ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Grapefruit pulp, dried 91.7 4.9 1.1 11.9 69.6 4.2 - - 0.78 - Grape pomace, dried 91.0 12.2 6.9 30.2 36.7 5.0 - - 1.96 - Hegari grain 89.7 9.6 2.6 2.0 73.9 1.6 0.18 0.30 1.54 - Hegari head chops 89.6 10.0 2.1 11.9 60.6 5.0 - - 1.60 - Hempseed oil meal 92.0 31.0 6.2 23.8 22.0 9.0 0.25 0.43 4.96 - Hominy feed, 5% fat or more 90.4 11.2 6.9 5.2 64.2 2.9 0.22 0.71 1.79 0.61 Hominy feed, low in fat 89.7 10.6 4.3 5.0 67.4 2.4 - - 1.70 - Horse beans 87.5 25.7 1.4 8.2 48.8 3.4 0.13 0.54 4.11 1.16 Ivory nut meal, vegetable 89.4 4.7 0.9 7.2 75.5 1.1 - - 0.76 - Jack beans 89.3 24.7 3.2 8.2 50.4 2.8 - - 3.96 - Kafir grain 89.8 10.9 2.9 1.7 72.7 1.6 0.02 0.31 1.74 0.34 Kafir head chops 89.2 10.0 2.6 6.9 66.4 3.3 0.08 0.27 1.60 - Kalo sorghum grain 89.2 11.8 3.2 1.6 70.9 1.7 - - 1.89 - Kaoliang grain 89.9 10.5 4.1 1.6 71.8 1.9 - - 1.68 - Kelp, dried 91.3 6.5 0.5 6.5 42.6 35.2 2.48 0.28 1.04 - Lamb's-quarters seed 90.0 20.6 4.5 15.1 40.2 9.6 - - 3.30 - Lespedeza seed, annual 91.7 36.6 7.6 9.6 32.8 5.1 - - 5.86 - Lespedeza seed, sericea 92.3 33.5 4.2 13.5 37.3 3.8 - - 5.36 - Lemon pulp, dried 92.8 6.4 1.2 15.0 65.2 5.0 - - 1.02 - Linseed meal, old process, all analyses 91.0 35.4 5.8 8.2 36.0 5.6 0.39 0.87 5.66 1.24 Linseed meal, op., 37% protein or more 90.9 38.0 5.9 7.7 33.7 5.6 0.39 0.86 6.08 1.10 Linseed meal, op., 33-37% protein 91.0 35.0 5.7 8.3 36.4 5.6 0.41 0.86 5.60 1.14 Linseed meal, o.p., 31-33% protein 91.0 32.4 5.9 8.3 38.7 5.7 0.36 0.90 5.18 1.40 Linseed meal, solvent process, older analyses 90.4 36.9 2.9 8.7 36.3 5.6 - - 5.90 - Linseed meal and screenings oil feed (linseed feed) 90.5 31.2 5.4 10.1 37.0 6.8 0.43 0.65 4.99 - Liver meal, animal 92.3 66.2 16.4 1.4 1.9 6.4 0.62 1.27 10.59 - Locust beans and pods, honey 88.4 9.3 2.4 16.1 57.1 3.5 - - 1.49 - Lupine seed, sweet, yellow 88.9 39.8 4.9 14.0 25.7 4.5 0.23 0.39 6.37 0.81 Malt, barley 90.6 14.3 1.6 1.8 70.6 2.3 0.08 0.47 2.29 - Malt sprouts 92.6 26.8 1.3 14.2 44.3 6.0 - - 4.29 - Meat scraps, or dry-rendered tankage, 60% protein grade 93.8 60.9 8.8 2.4 1.1 20.6 6.09 3.49 9.74 - Meat scraps, or dry-rendered tankage, 55% protein grade 93.9 55.8 9.3 2.1 1.3 25.4 8.33 4.04 8.93 - Meat scraps, or dry-rendered tankage, 55% protein grade, low fat 93.0 56.0 3.5 2.6 1.5 29.4 - - 8.96 - Meat scraps, or dry-rendered tankage, 52% protein grade 93.1 52.9 7.3 2.2 4.3 26.4 - - 8.46 - Meat and bone scraps, or dry-rendered tankage with bone, 50% protein grade 93.9 51.0 10.1 2.1 1.6 29.1 9.71 4.81 8.16 - Meat and bone scraps, or dry-rendered tankage with bone, 45% protein grade 94.5 46.3 12.0 2.0 2.3 31.9 11.21 4.88 7.41 - Mesquite beans and pods 94.0 13.0 2.8 26.3 47.4 4.5 - - 2.08 - Milk, cow's 12.8 3.5 3.7 0.0 4.9 0.7 0.12 0.09 0.56 0.14 Milk, ewe's 19.2 6.5 6.9 0.0 4.9 0.9 0.21 0.12 1.04 0.19 Milk, goat's 12.8 3.7 4.1 0.0 4.2 0.8 0.13 0.10 0.59 0.15 Milk, mare's 9.4 2.0 1.1 0.0 5.9 0.4 0.08 0.05 0.32 0.08 Milk, sow's 19.0 5.9 6.7 0.0 5.4 1.0 - - 0.94 - Milk albumin, or lactalbumin, commercial 92.0 49.5 0.9 1.0 12.8 27.8 - - 7.92 - Milk, whole, dried 96.8 24.8 26.2 0.2 40.2 5.4 - - 3.97 - Millet seed, foxtail varieties 89.1 12.1 4.1 8.6 60.7 3.6 - 0.20 1.94 0.31 Millet seed, hog, or proso 90.4 11.9 3.4 8.1 63.7 3.3 0.05 0.30 1.90 0.43 Millet seed, Japanese 89.8 10.6 4.9 14.6 54.7 5.0 - 0.44 1.70 0.33 Milo grain 89.4 11.3 2.9 2.2 71.3 1.7 0.03 0.30 1.81 0.36 Milo head chops 90.1 10.2 2.5 6.9 66.2 4.3 0.14 0.26 1.63 - Molasses, beet 80.5 8.4 0.0 0.0 62.0 10.1 0.08 0.02 1.34 4.77 Molasses, beet, Steffen's process 78.7 7.8 0.0 0.0 62.1 8.8 0.11 0.02 1.25 4.66 Molasses, cane, or blackstrap 74.0 2.9 0.0 0.0 62.1 9.0 0.74 0.08 0.46 3.67 Molasses, cane, high in sugar 79.7 1.3 0.0 0.0 74.9 3.5 - - 0.21 - Molasses, citrus 69.9 4.0 0.2 0.0 61.3 4.4 - - 0.64 - Molasses, corn sugar, or hydrol 80.5 0.2 0.0 0.0 77.8 2.5 - - 0.03 - soma rights re-served 293 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Material Total Fat Fiber N-free Total dry Protein Calcium Phosphorus Nitrogen Potassium Per Per extract minerals matter Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. ct. ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Mustard seed, wild yellow 95.9 23.0 38.8 5.0 23.6 5.5 - - 3.68 Oat clippings, or clipped-oat by-product 92.2 8.8 2.3 25.3 44.9 10.9 - - 1.41 - Oat kernels, without hulls (oat groats) 90.4 16.3 6.1 2.1 63.7 2.2 0.08 0.46 2.61 0.39 Oat meal, feeding, or rolled oats without hulls 90.8 16.0 5.5 2.7 64.2 2.4 0.07 0.46 2.56 0.37 Oat middlings 91.4 15.9 5.2 3.3 64.6 2.4 0.08 0.45 2.54 0.57 Oat mill feed 92.4 5.6 1.8 27.9 50.8 6.3 0.13 0.16 0.90 0.60 Oat mill feed, poor grade 92.4 4.3 1.8 30.5 50.2 5.6 - - 0.69 - Oat mill feed, with molasses 92.4 5.5 1.4 24.1 55.0 6.4 - - 0.88 - Oats, not including Pacific Coast states 90.2 12.0 4.6 11.0 58.6 4.0 0.09 0.34 1.92 0.43 Oats, Pacific Coast states 91.2 9.0 5.4 11.0 62.1 3.7 - - 1.44 - Oats, hull-less 90.0 15.4 4.2 2.6 65.7 2.1 - - 2.46 - Oats, light weight 91.3 12.3 4.7 15.4 54.4 4.5 - - 1.97 - Oats, wild 89.0 12.7 5.5 15.2 50.9 4.7 - - 2.03 - Olive pulp, dried, pits removed 95.1 14.0 27.4 19.3 31.0 3.4 - - 2.24 - Olive pulp, dried, with pits 92.0 5.9 15.6 36.5 31.5 2.5 - - 0.94 - Orange pulp, dried 87.9 7.7 1.5 8.0 67.3 3.4 - - 1.23 - Palm-kernel oil meal 91.4 19.2 6.7 11.9 49.7 3.9 - 0.69 3.07 0.42 Palm seed, Royal 86.5 6.1 8.3 22.8 43.8 5.5 - - 0.98 - Palmo middlings 94.1 16.1 9.7 6.7 56.3 5.3 - - 2.58 - Pea feed, or pea meal 90.0 17.7 1.4 23.7 43.7 3.5 - - 2.83 - Pea hulls of seeds, or bran 91.5 4.8 0.4 48.5 34.3 3.5 - - 0.77 - Pea seed, field 90.7 23.4 1.2 6.1 57.0 3.0 0.17 0.51 3.74 1.03 Pea seed, field, cull 89.7 24.8 2.5 7.1 52.0 3.3 - - 3.97 - Pea seed, garden 89.2 25.3 1.7 5.7 53.6 2.9 0.08 0.40 4.04 0.90 Peanut kernels, without hulls 94.6 30.4 47.7 2.5 11.7 2.3 0.06 0.44 4.86 - Peanut oil feed 94.5 37.8 9.6 14.3 26.2 6.6 - 6.04 - - Peanut oil feed, unhulled, or whole pressed peanuts 93.1 35.0 9.2 22.5 21.4 5.0 - - 5.60 - Peanut oil meal, old process, all analyses 93.0 43.5 7.6 13.3 23.4 5.2 0.16 0.54 6.96 1.15 Peanut oil meal, o.p., 45% protein and over 93.4 45.2 7.4 12.1 23.7 5.0 - - 7.23 - Peanut oil meal, o.p., 43% protein grade 92.8 43.1 7.6 13.9 23.0 5.2 - - 6.90 - Peanut oil meal, o.p., 41% protein grade 93.8 41.8 7.8 12.7 25.9 5.6 - - 6.69 - Peanut oil meal, solvent process 91.6 51.5 1.4 5.7 27.2 5.8 - - 8.24 - Peanut skins 93.8 16.3 23.9 11.8 39.1 2.7 - - 2.61 - Peanut screenings 93.6 23.8 11.5 18.9 33.0 6.4 - - 3.81 - Peanuts, with hulls 94.1 24.9 36.2 17.5 12.6 2.9 - 0.33 3.98 0.53 Perilla oil meal 91.9 38.4 8.4 20.9 16.0 8.2 0.56 0.47 6.14 - Pigeon-grass seed 89.8 14.4 6.0 17.3 45.8 6.3 - - 2.30 - Pigweed seed 90.0 16.8 6.2 15.9 47.8 3.3 - - 2.69 - Pineapple bran, or pulp, dried 85.3 4.0 1.9 19.4 57.2 2.8 0.20 0.10 0.64 - Pineapple bran, or pulp, and molasses, dried 87.4 3.9 1.0 15.9 63.4 3.2 - - 0.62 - Poppy-seed oil meal 89.2 36.6 7.9 11.6 20.7 12.4 - - 5.86 - Potato meal, or dried potatoes 92.8 10.4 0.3 2.0 75.8 4.3 0.08 0.22 1.66 1.97 Potato pomace, dried 89.1 6.6 0.5 10.3 69.0 2.7 - - 1.06 - Pumpkin seed, not dried 55.0 17.6 20.6 10.8 4.1 1.9 - - 2.82 - Raisin pulp, dried 89.4 9.6 7.8 16.1 50.6 5.3 - - 1.54 - Raisins, cull 84.8 3.4 0.9 4.4 73.1 3.0 - - 0.54 - Rape seed 90.5 20.4 43.6 6.6 15.7 4.2 - - 3.26 - Rape-seed oil meal 89.5 33.5 8.1 10.8 30.2 6.9 - - 5.36 - Rice, brewers' 88.3 7.5 0.6 0.6 78.8 0.8 0.04 0.10 1.20 - Rice, brown 87.8 9.1 2.0 1.1 74.5 1.1 0.04 0.25 1.46 - Rice, polished 87.8 7.4 0.4 0.4 79.1 0.5 0.01 0.09 1.18 0.04 Rice bran 90.9 12.5 13.5 12.0 39.4 13.5 0.08 1.36 2.00 1.08 Rice grain, or rough rice 88.8 7.9 1.8 9.0 64.9 5.2 0.08 0.32 1.26 0.34 Rice polishings, or rice polish 89.8 12.8 13.2 2.8 51.4 9.6 0.04 1.10 2.04 1.17 Rubber seed oil meal 91.1 28.8 9.2 10.0 37.6 5.5 - - 4.61 - soma rights re-served 294 - since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Material Total Fat Fiber N-free Total dry Protein Calcium Phosphorus Nitrogen Potassium Per Per extract minerals matter Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. ct. ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Rye grain 89.5 12.6 1.7 2.4 70.9 1.9 0.10 0.33 2.02 0.47 Rye feed 90.4 16.1 3.3 4.6 62.7 3.7 0.08 0.69 2.58 0.83 Rye flour 88.6 11.2 1.3 0.6 74.6 0.9 0.02 0.28 1.79 0.46 Rye flour middlings 90.6 16.5 3.5 4.2 63.1 3.3 - - 2.64 - Rye middlings 90.2 16.6 3.4 5.2 61.2 3.8 - 0.44 2.66 0.63 Rye middlings and screenings 90.4 16.7 3.8 6.1 59.5 4.3 - - 2.67 - Safflower seed 93.1 16.3 29.8 26.6 17.5 2.9 - - 2.61 - Safflower seed oil meal, from hulled seed 91.0 38.0 6.8 21.0 17.0 8.2 - - 6.08 - Safflower-seed oil meal from unhulled seed 91.0 18.2 5.5 40.4 24.1 2.8 - - 2.91 - Sagrain sorghum grain 90.0 9.5 3.5 2.1 73.4 1.5 0.43 0.39 1.52 - Screenings, grain, good grade 90.0 15.8 5.2 9.2 54.3 5.5 - - 2.53 - Screenings, grain, chaffy 91.5 14.3 4.4 18.3 46.1 8.4 - - 2.29 - Schrock sorghum grain 89.1 10.2 3.0 3.4 70.8 1.7 - - 1.63 - Sesame oil meal 93.7 42.8 9.4 6.2 22.8 12.5 2.02 1.61 6.84 1.35 Sesbania seed 90.8 31.7 4.3 13.5 38.0 3.3 - - 5.07 - Shallu grain 89.8 13.4 3.7 1.9 68.9 1.9 - - 2.14 - Shallu head chops 90.5 12.7 3.5 9.2 61.9 3.2 - - 2.03 - Shark meal 91.2 74.5 2.7 0.5 0.0 13.5 3.48 1.92 12.69 - Shrimp meal 89.7 46.7 2.8 11.1 1.3 27.8 - - 7.47 - Skimmilk, centrifugal 9.5 3.6 0.1 0.0 5.1 0.7 0.13 0.10 0.58 0.15 Skimmilk, gravity 10.1 3.6 0.8 0.0 5.0 0.7 0.13 0.10 0.58 0.15 Skimmilk, dried 94.2 34.7 1.2 0.2 50.3 7.8 1.30 1.03 5.56 1.46 Sorghum seed, sweet 89.2 9.5 3.3 2.0 72.8 1.6 0.02 0.28 1.52 0.37 Soybean seed 90.0 37.9 18.0 5.0 24.5 4.6 0.25 0.59 6.06 1.50 Soybean flour, medium in fat 92.9 47.9 6.7 2.4 29.9 6.0 - - 7.66 - Soybean flour, solvent extracted -91.5 48.5 0.8 2.6 33.0 6.6 - - 7.76 - Soybean mill feed, chiefly hulls 90.8 11.8 2.7 34.0 38.1 4.2 - - 1.89 - Soybean oil meal, expeller or hydraulic process, all analyses 90.0 44.3 5.3 5.7 29.6 6.0 0.29 0.66 7.09 1.77 Soybean oil meal, exp. or hydr. process, 44-45% protein guarantee 91.3 45.4 5.3 5.4 29.3 5.9 0.31 0.68 7.26 1.92 Soybean oil meal, exp. or hydr. process, 43% protein guarantee 91.2 44.6 5.3 5.8 29.4 6.1 0.30 0.67 7.14 - Soybean oil meal, exp. or hydr. process, 41% protein guarantee 90.9 44.2 5.3 5.7 29.7 6.0 0.26 0.59 7.07 - Soybean oil meal, solvent process 90.6 46.1 1.0 5.9 31.8 5.8 0.30 0.66 7.38 1.92 Starfish meal 96.5 30.6 5.8 1.9 14.3 43.9 - - 4.90 - Sudan-grass seed 92.4 14.2 2.4 25.4 38.4 12.0 - - 2.27 - Sunflower seed 93.6 16.8 25.9 29.0 18.8 3.1 - 0.55 2.69 0.66 Sunflower seed, hulled 95.5 27.7 41.4 6.3 16.3 3.8 0.20 0.96 4.43 0.92 Sunflower-seed oil cake, from unhulled seed, solvent process 89.2 19.6 1.1 35.9 27.0 5.6 - - 3.14 - Sunflower-seed oil cake, from hulled seed, hydr. process 90.6 36.3 13.5 14.2 20.2 6.4 0.43 1.04 5.81 1.08 Sweet clover seed 92.2 37.4 4.2 11.3 35.8 3.5 - - 5.98 - Sweet potatoes, dried 90.3 4.9 0.9 3.3 77.1 4.1 0.21 0.18 0.78 - Tankage or meat meal, digester process, 60% protein grade 93.1 60.6 8.5 2.0 1.8 20.2 6.37 3.23 9.70 0.46 Tankage with bone, or meat and bone meal, digester process, 50% protein grade 93.5 51.3 11.5 2.3 2.3 26.1 10.97 5.14 8.21 - Tankage with bone, or meat and bone meal, digester process, 40% protein grade 94.7 42.9 14.1 2.2 4.1 31.4 13.49 5.18 6.86 - Tomato pomace, dried 94.6 22.9 15.0 30.2 23.4 3.1 - - 3.66 - Velvet bean seeds and pods (velvet bean feed) 90.0 18.1 4.4 13.0 50.3 4.2 0.24 0.38 2.90 1.20 Velvet beans, seeds only 90.0 23.4 5.7 6.4 51.5 3.0 - - 3.74 - Vetch seed 90.7 29.6 0.8 5.7 51.5 3.1 - - 4.74 - Whale meal 91.8 78.5 6.7 0.0 3.1 3.5 0.56 0.57 12.56 - Wheat, average of all types 89.5 13.2 1.9 2.6 69.9 1.9 0.04 0.39 2.11 0.42 Wheat, hard spring, chiefly northern plains states 90.1 15.8 2.2 2.5 67.8 1.8 - - 2.53 - soma rights re-served 295 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Material Total Fat Fiber N-free Total dry Protein Calcium Phosphorus Nitrogen Potassium Per Per extract minerals matter Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. ct. ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Wheat, hard winter, chiefly southern plains states 89.4 13.5 1.8 2.8 69.2 2.1 - - 2.16 - Wheat, soft winter, Miss. valley and eastward 89.2 10.2 1.9 2.1 73.2 1.8 - - 1.63 - Wheat, soft, Pacific Coast states 89.1 9.9 2.0 2.7 72.6 1.9 - - 1.58 - Wheat bran, all analyses 90.1 16.9 4.6 9.6 52.9 6.1 0.14 1.29 2.70 1.23 Wheat bran, chiefly hard spring wheat 91.1 17.9 4.9 10.1 52.2 6.1 0.13 1.35 2.86 - Wheat bran, soft wheat 90.5 16.1 4.3 8.7 55.7 5.7 - - 2.58 - Wheat bran, winter wheat 89.9 15.5 4.2 8.9 55.1 6.2 - - 2.48 - Wheat bran and screenings, all analyses 90.0 16.8 4.5 9.6 53.0 6.1 0.14 1.21 2.69 - Wheat brown shorts 88.7 16.9 4.2 7.1 56.0 4.5 - - 2.70 - Wheat brown shorts and screenings 88.7 17.0 4.1 7.0 56.0 4.6 - - 2.72 - Wheat flour, graham 88.1 12.5 1.9 1.8 70.4 1.5 0.04 0.36 2.00 0.46 Wheat flour, low grade 88.4 15.4 1.9 0.5 69.7 0.9 - - 2.46 - Wheat flour, white 88.0 10.8 0.9 0.3 75.6 0.4 0.02 0.09 1.73 0.05 Wheat flour middlings 89.2 18.3 4.2 3.8 59.8 3.1 0.09 0.71 2.93 0.89 Wheat flour middlings and screenings 89.6 18.2 4.5 5.2 57.8 3.9 0.14 0.68 2.91 - Wheat germ meal, commercial 90.8 31.1 9.7 2.6 42.2 5.2 0.08 1.11 4.98 0.29 Wheat germ oil meal 89.1 30.4 4.9 2.6 46.4 4.8 - - 4.86 - Wheat gray shorts 88.9 17.9 4.2 5.7 56.9 4.2 0.13 0.84 2.86 - Wheat gray shorts and screenings 88.6 17.6 4.0 5.8 57.0 4.2 - - 2.82 - Wheat mixed feed, all analyses 89.7 17.2 4.5 7.2 56.1 4.7 0.11 1.09 2.76 - Wheat mixed feed, hard wheat 89.8 18.7 4.8 7.7 53.6 5.0 0.11 1.09 2.99 - Wheat mixed feed and screenings 89.3 17.5 4.3 7.1 55.7 4.7 0.11 0.96 2.80 - Wheat red dog 89.0 18.2 3.6 2.6 61.9 2.7 0.07 0.51 2.91 0.60 Wheat red dog, low grade 89.2 17.9 4.8 4.9 57.9 3.7 - - 2.86 - Wheat screenings, good grade 90.4 13.9 4.7 9.0 58.2 4.6 0.44 0.39 2.22 - Wheat standard middlings, all analyses 89.6 18.1 4.8 6.5 55.8 4.4 0.09 0.93 2.90 1.04 Wheat standard middlings and screenings, all analyses 89.7 18.0 4.7 7.4 55.1 4.5 0.15 0.88 2.88 - Wheat white shorts 89.7 16.1 3.1 2.9 65.0 2.6 - - 2.58 - Whey, from cheddar cheese 6.9 0.9 0.3 0.0 5.0 0.7 0.05 0.04 0.14 0.19 Whey, skimmed 6.6 0.9 0.03 0.0 5.0 0.7 - - 0.14 - Whey, condensed 57.3 8.8 0.6 0.0 42.0 5.9 - - 1.41 - Whey, dried 93.5 12.2 0.8 0.2 70.4 9.9 0.86 0.72 1.96 - Whey solubles, dried 96.3 17.5 2.0 0.0 62.8 14.0 - - 2.80 - Yeast, brewers', dried 93.8 49.3 1.0 3.7 31.9 7.9 0.13 1.56 7.89 - Yeast, irradiated, dried 93.9 48.7 1.1 5.5 32.2 6.4 0.07 1.55 7.79 2.14 Yeast, dried, with added cereal 90.2 12.3 3.7 3.2 68.5 2.5 0.09 0.45 1.97 - Yeast, molasses distillers', dried 91.0 38.8 1.9 6.1 30.2 14.0 - - 6.21 - (These tables have been adapted from "U.S.-Canadian Tables of Feed Composition"; Publication 1684; Committee on Animal Nutrition and National Committee on Animal Nutrition, Canada, National Academy of Sciences - National Research Council, Washington, D.C. 1969) soma rights re-served 296 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Appendix VII Resources For Mushroom Growing Equipment and Supplies Suppliers of Cultures of Edible Mushrooms American Type Culture Collection 12301 Parklawn Drive Rockville, Maryland 20852 Pennsylvania State University 2111 Buckhout Laboratory University Park, Maryland 16802 Commercial Spawn Makers Rainforest Mushroom Spawn International Division PO Box 1793 Gibsons, B.C. Canada V0N 1V0 Spawn of these species available: Pleurotus ostreatus; Pleurotus sajor-caju; Pleurotus cornucopiae; Pleurotus enryngii; Lentinus edodes; and Stropharia rugoso-annulata. General Supplies & Equipment Fungi Perfecti PO Box 7634 Olympia, Wa. 98507 Phone: 360-426-9292 Fax: 360-426-9377 Products include: micron filters; laminar flow hoods; sterile and room supplies; pressure cookers; steam boilers; cultures; sterile and growing room instruments; pure cultures and spawn. Write for free brochure or include $4.50 for our fully illustrated catalogue. International orders welcomed. Publications The Mushroom Journal (monthly) The Mushroom Growers Association (MGA) Agriculture House Knightsbridge London, SW1X 7NJ (Available in large university libraries.) Organizations North American Mycological Association (NAMA) 4245 Redinger Rd. Portsmouth, Oh. 45662 The Mycological Society of America (MSA) c/o Dr. Harry Thiers Department of Biology San Francisco State University 1600 Holloway Ave. San Francisco, Ca. 94132 MycoMedia PG Box 2222 Olympia, Wa. 98507 (Sponsors yearly forays and educational conferences.) Puget Sound Mycological Society 2161 E. Hamlin Seattle, Wa. 98112 The Mushroom News (monthly) American Mushroom Institute (AMI) Box 373 Kennett Square, Pa. 19348 (Available in large university libraries.) Mushroom Growing Bulletins Dr. Paul Wuest Department of Botany Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pa. 16802 Mycologia The New York Botanical Garden Bronx, New York 10458 Mushroom Newsletter for the Tropics (quarterly) The International Mushroom Society for the Tropics c/o Department of Biology The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, N.T. Hong Kong soma rights re-served 297 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Appendix VIII English to Metric Conversion Tables Cropping Yield Substrate Depths lbs./sq. ft. kg./sq. m. inches centimeters 1.0 4.9 1 2.54 1.4 6.8 2 5.08 2.0 9.8 3 7.62 2.2 10.8 4 10.16 2.6 12.7 5 12.70 3.0 14.7 6 15.24 3.5 17.7 7 17.78 4.0 19.6 8 20.32 4.5 22.0 9 22.86 5.0 24.4 10 25.40 5.5 27.0 11 27.94 6.0 29.0 12 30.48 6.5 31.4 Length Inch = 2.54 centimeters Centimeter = 0.3937 inches Foot = 0.3048 meters Meter = 3.2808 feet Yard = 0.9144 meters Meter = 1.0936 yards Area Sq. in. = 6.4516 sq. cm. Sq. cm. = 0.1550 sq. in. Sq. ft. = 0.0929 sq. m. Sq. m. = 10.7639 sq. ft. Sq. yd. = 0.8361 sq. m. Sq. m. = 1.1960 sq. yd. Volume Cu. in. = 16.3872 cu. cm. Cu. cm. = 0.0610 cu. in. Cu. ft. = 0.0283 cu. m. Cu. m. = 35.3145 cu. ft. Cu. yd. = 0.7646 cu. m. Cu. m. = 1.3079 Cu. yd. Capacity Cu. in. = 0.0164 liters Liter = 61.0250 cu. in. Cu. ft. = 28.3162 liters Liter = 0.0353 Cu. ft. Cup = 0.2366 liters Liter = 0.2642 gal. Quart = 0.9463 liters Liter = 1.0567 qt. Gallon = 3.7853 liters Liter = 1000 ml. A liter of distilled water weighs 1000 grams or 1 kilogram. Weight Grain = 0.0648 grams Gram = 15.4324 grains Ounce = 28.3495 grams Gram = 0.0353 ounces Pound = 454 grams Kilogram = 2.2046 pounds Pound = 0.4536 kilograms Metric Ton = 2.204 pounds Ton = 907.1848 kilograms soma rights re-served 298 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb Pressure 1 kg. per sq. cm. = 14.223 lb. per sq. in. 1 lb. per sq. in. = 0.0703 kg. per sq. cm. 1 kg. per sq. m. = 0.2048 lb. per sq. ft. 1 atmosphere = 1.0332 kg. per sq. cm. = 4.696 lb. per sq. in. = 1.0133 bars Temperature C F 0 32 5 41 10 50 15 59 20 68 25 77 35 95 40 104 50 122 55 131 60 140 65 149 70 158 75 167 80 176 Fahrenheit to Centigrade 5/9 (°F - 32) = °C. Centigrade to Fahrenheit 9/5 (°C) + 32 = °F. Miscellaneous Data 50 lbs. rye grain = 125 cups (approximately) Area of a circle = ∏(r)2 = 3.14 x r2 soma rights re-served 299 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb PHOTOGRAPHY AND ILLUSTRATION CREDITS Michael Beug Fig. 157. J.S. Chilton Figs.: 45, 56, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 73-76, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86-91, 94, 95-100, 106, 107, 117, 119, 122, 126, 132, 133, 134, 143, 171, 237. Anthoinette Gunter Figs.: 1, 2, 21, 55, 197. Rick Kerrigan Figs.: 0, 108, 109, 151, 152, 153, 170. Tom Lind with Calligraphy by Karen Porter. Figs.: 77-80, 178, 179, 183, 186, 187, 189, 192-195, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 209, 211, 212, 214, 216, 217, 219, 221, 222, 224, 225, 227, 228, 231-235, 238. Mary Montoya Figs.: 239, 241. Chris Nelson Figs.: 47, 69, 81, 163. Cruz Stamets Fig. 22. Bill Wright Fig 177. Paul Stamets 3-20, 23-44, 46, 48-54, 57-62, 66, 71, 72, 92, 93, 101-105, 111-116, 118, 120, 121, 123-25, 127-131, 135-142, 144-150, 154-156, 158-162, 164-169, 173-176, 180-185, 188, 190, 191, 196, 200, 204, 208, 210, 213, 215, 218, 220, 223, 226, 229, 230, 236, 240, 242. Color plates 1-23 and cover photographs. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors are indebted to many who have made this work possible. Foremost amongst those are our spouses Cruz Stamets and Janice Leighton. They provided more than just technical assistance. Their encouragement, companionship and endurance has been critical to the success of this project. Besides the artists and photographers whose contributions are most appreciated, we would like to express our thanks to John Stamets for editing the manuscript and printing the black and white photographs, to Mike McCaw for his chapter on genetics, to Rick Kerrigan for his unwavering support, to Dr. Michael Beug for his encouragement and sponsorship, to The Evergreen State College for the use of the scanning electron microscope, to Bill Street of Ostrom Mushroom Farms for his generosity in allowing photographs to be taken of his facilities, to Kathy Harvey and Steve Raynor for their contributions to the contamination section, to P.J.C. Vedder for his tutelage and contribution to practical mushroom cultivation, to Dr. Daniel Stuntz for his guidance and his teaching of tissue culture techniques and to Chris W. Nelson of Sound Media Productions for his work in photographic development and printing. Others who have helped us, in one way or the other, to complete this arduous endeavor are Janet McCaw, Paul Kroeger, Dale Leslie, Heidi Stamets, Mike Maki, Jim Jacobs, William Raves, Bob Chieger, David Tatelman, Samuel and Victoria, Mike, Michael, Gary, and mycophiles too numerous to mention who, through their questions and curiosity, have determined much of the direction, content and scope of this book. We thank you. soma rights re-served 300 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb GLOSSARY a acute Pointed, sharp. adnate (of the gills) Bluntly attached to the stem. adnexed (of the gills) Attached to the stem in an ascending manner. agar A product derived from seaweed and valued for its gelatinizing properties. Commonly used to solidify media in any type of sterile tissue culture. Agaricales The order of mushrooms which includes all mushrooms with true gills. amyloid The characteristic bluish reaction the flesh or the spores of a mushroom exhibits in Melzer's iodine. anastomosis (pl. anastomoses) The crosswise fusion of hyphal systems to form a network of mycelia. angstrom 10-10 microns, 1 ten thousandth of a micron. annular Resembling an annulus, appearing as a ring-like zone. annulus The tissue remnants of the partial veil adhering to the stem and forming a membranous collar or ring. apex The top or highest point. apiculus a term (misused) for the hilar appendix, the nipple-like projection by which a spore is attached to the strerigmata ("arms") of the basidium. appendiculate Hanging with fragments of tissue. appressed Flattened. Ascomycetes Fungi that produce spores in an ascus. ascus A sac-like organ in which eight spores develop and is characteristic of the perfect stage of ascomycetous fungi. autoclave A steam pressurized vessel used to sterilize media. b bacillus (pl. bacilli) A general term for any rod-shaped bacteria forming spores in free oxygen environments. (The genus Bacillus is more narrowly defined). bacterium (pl. bacteria) The simplest group of non-chlorophyll plant-like organisms. Basidiomycetes All fungi which bear spores externally upon a club-like cell known as a basidium. basidium, basidia A unique fertile cell, club-like in form, in which meiosis occurs and by which sexual spores are produced. basidiocarp The fruiting body of fungi that reproduce through basidia. binucleate Having two nuclei in one cell. soma rights re-served 301 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb border break The early occurrence of mushrooms along the edge of a substrate container. c campanulate Bell shaped. carpophore The fruiting body of higher fungi. carpophoroid Analogous to a fruitbody, although usually a poorly differentiated mass of tissue, not well developed ("aborted") and sterile. cartilaginous Brittle, not pliant. casing A layer of water retentive materials applied to a substrate to encourage and enhance fruitbody production. caulocystidia Sterile cells covering the mushroom stem. cellular Composed of globose to rounded cells, not thread-like. cespitose Growing clustered, appearing to arise from a single base. cheilocystidia Sterile cells on the mushroom gill edge, sometimes called marginal cystidia. chlamydospores A thick walled spore, typically of a secondary type, that arises directly from the mycelium and having the full complement of chromosomes for producing off-spring. Chlamydospores are typically ovoid and heat resistant. chrysocystidia A type of cystidia that is highly refractive in once dried tissue revived with a potassium hydroxide (KOH) solution and appearing as a yellowish brown amorphous mass within the cell. clamp connection An elbow-like protuberance which arches over the walls separating cells in mated (dikaryotic) mycelia of some mushroom species. compost A biological matrix of microorganisms combined with straw, manure and other organic substances and designed for mushroom fruitbody production. concolorous Having the same color. conditioning The final conversion of mushroom compost by selected microbial groups. conic Shaped like a cone. conidia A uninucleate exteriorly borne cell formed by constriction of the conidiophore. conidiophore A specialized stalk arising from mycelium upon which conidia are borne. conidium (pl. conidia) An asexual spore formed by the constriction of hyphae to chains of cells. context The flesh of a mushroom. convex Regularly rounded. Coprinaceae A family of mushrooms containing the genera Coprinus, Panaeolus and Psathyrella. coprophilous Growing on dung. cortinate A type of veil consisting of fine cobweb-like threads of tissue, extending from the mushroom cap soma rights re-served 302 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb margin to the stem. cropping The time of mushroom formation, development and harvesting. cuticle The surface of cells on the cap that can undergo varying degrees of differentiation. cystidia Microscopic sterile cells adorning the mushroom fruitbody. d decurrent The attachment of the gill plates to the stem of mushrooms where the gills are markedly downcurved, partially extending down the stem. decurved Curving in a downwards fashion. deciduous Describing trees that seasonally shed their leaves. deliquescing The process of autodigestion by which the gills and cap of a mushroom melt into a liquid. Most typical of the genus Coprinus. dikaryophase The phase in which there are two individual nuclei in each cell of the mushroom plant. dikaryotic The state of cells in the dikaryophase. diploid A genetic condition where each cell has a full set of chromosomes necessary for sexual reproduction (2N). disc The central portion of the mushroom cap. e eccentric Off-centered. ellipsoid Shaped like an oblong circle. endospores Spores formed internally. entheogenic A term to describe substances that induce god inspiring feelings or experiences. equal Evenly proportioned. eroded Irregularly broken. evanescent Fragile and soon disappearing. f fibrillose Having fibrils. fibrils Fine delicate 'hairs' found on the surface of the cap or stem. fibrous Composed of tough, stringy tissue. filamentous Composed of hyphae or thread-like cells. flexuose, flexuous Bent alternately in opposite directions. soma rights re-served 303 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb floccose Wooly tufts or cottony veil remnants, typically adorning the cap or stem of some mushroom species. flush The collective formation and development of mushrooms within a short time period, often occurring in a rhythmic manner. fructification The act of fruitbody formation. fruitbody What is commonly called the mushroom. The sexual reproductive body of the mushroom plant. fugacious Impermanent, easily torn or destroyed. fusoid Rounded and tapering from the center. g gelatinous Having the consistency of jelly. genotype The genetic heritage or constitution of an organism. The genotype produces the phenotype. geotropism Growing oriented towards or in response to gravity. glabrescent Becoming smooth. glabrous Smooth, bald. glutinous Having a highly viscous gelatinous layer, an extreme condition of viscidity. Gram (Gram's Stain) A method for separating bacteria whereby bacteria are stained first with crystal violet (a red dye) and then washed with an iodine solution. Gram positive bacteria (Bacillus) retain the dye. Gram negative bacteria (Pseudomonas and some Bacillus) lose the dye. gregarious Growing numerously in small groups but not in clusters. h habitat The substrate in which mushrooms grow. heliotropic Growing or turning towards the sun. heteromorphic Composed of different cell types, usually describing the type of mushroom gill edge. heterothallic Having two or more morphologically similar pairs of strains within the same species. The combination of compatible spore types is essential for producing fertile off-spring. Typically a spore on a four spored basidium is compatible with only one of its counterparts. hilar appendix The stub-like protrusion on the spore that connects the spore-producing cell (ex. the basidium) to it. hilum A marking on the spore where it was attached to a spore-producing cell. homomorphic Composed of similar cell types. homothallic Having one strain type that is, by nature, dikaryotic and self-fertile; often arising from two spored basidia. humicolous Growing in humus, soil. soma rights re-served 304 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb hygrophanous Markedly fading in color upon drying, used to describe the condition of the mushroom cap. hymenium The layer of fertile spore-bearing cells on the gill. hypha, hyphae Individual cells of mycelium. hyphal aggregate A concentration of mycelium; a "knot" in the mycelial network which often differentiates into a primordium. hyphosphere The region immediately on and surrounding hyphae. i indicator mold A mold, usually non-destructive, whose occurrence indicates an improperly balanced condition in the substrate or environment. instar An insect in any of its stages of post embryonic growth. k karyogamy The fusion of two sexually opposite nuclei within a single cell. KOH Potassium Hydroxide, an agent commonly used to revive dried mushroom material for microscopic study at a concentration of 2,5%. l lamellae Mushroom gills. lignicolous Growing in wood or on a substratum composed of woody tissue. lignin The organic substance which, with cellulose, forms the basis of most woody tissue. linear Considerably longer than wide, with edges parallel. lubricous Smooth. lumen The amount of the flow of light emitted from a single international foot candle. lux The amount of illumination received by a surface one meter from 1 foot candle, equal to 1 lumen/square meter. m macroscopic Visible to the unaided eye. matting A condition of a mycelium casing-run that has become appressed from overwatering. Similar to overlay except that matting infers the mycelium has formed a dense, dead layer of cells on the casing's surface. meiosis The process of reduction division by which a single cell with a diploid nucleus subdivides into four cells with one haploid nucleus apiece. membranous Being sheath-like in form. soma rights re-served 305 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb mesophile An organism thriving in moderate temperature zones, usually 40-90°F. metuloid Used to describe a sterile cell encrusted with a crystalline (calcitized) substance. micron One millionth of a meter, 10-6 meters, one thousandth of a millimeter. microscopic Visible only with the aid of a microscope. mitosis The non-sexual process of nuclear division in a cell by which the chromosomes of one nucleus are replicated and divided equally into two daughter nuclei. monkaryon, monocaryon (adj. monokaryotic, monocaryotic) The haploid state of the mushroom mycelium, typically containing a single nucleus. mottled Spotted, as in the uneven ripening of spores on the gill surfaces that so characterizes species in the genus Panaeolus. mushroom A fleshy fungus that erects a body of tissue in which sexual spores are produced and from which they are distributed. mycelium (pl. mycelia) A network of hyphae. mycology The study of fungi. mycophagist A person or animal that eats fungi. mycophile A person who likes mushrooms. mycophobe A person who fears mushrooms. mycorrhizal A peculiar type of symbiotic relationship a mushroom mycelium forms with the roots of a seed plant, typically trees. n nanometer 10-8 meters, one thousandth of a micron. natural culture The in vitro cultivation of mushrooms by transplanting living mycelium, usually from a natural habitat. nomenclature Any system of classification. nucleate Having nuclei. nucleotide One of the four nitrogenous bases in DNA; often called the building blocks of the DNA molecule. nucleus, nuclei A concentrated mass of differentiated protoplasm in cells containing chromosomes and playing an integral role in the reproduction and continuation of genetic material. o obtuse Bluntly shaped. ochraceous Light orangish brown to pale yellowish brown. oidia Conidia (spores) borne in chains. soma rights re-served 306 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb olivaceous Olive gray-brown. overlay A condition of the casing where mycelium been allowed to completely cover the surface. Overlay is caused by prolonged vegetative growth temperatures, high CO2 levels and excessive humidity. Overlay, if overwatered, becomes matted. ovoid Oval shaped. p pallid Pale in color. parasite An organism living on another living species and deriving its sustenance to the detriment of the host. partial veil The inner veil of tissue extending from the cap margin to the stem and at first covering the gills of mushrooms. pasteurization A process by which bulk materials are partially sterilized through contact with live steam, hot water or dry heat at temperatures of between 140-160°F. pellicle A skin-like covering on the cap, sometimes gelatinous and separable. penicillate Resembling a broom or brush; Penicillium-like. perithecium A flask shaped or pear shaped saclike fruitbody of some Ascomycetes that encloses asci. persistent Not disappearing with age. Phase I The steps taken in the outdoor preparation, assemblage and conversion of raw materials into a nutritious medium for mushroom growth. Phase II The pasteurization and final conditioning of a mushroom compost. phenotype The observable physical characteristics resulting from interaction between the host environment and the genotype. photosensitive Sensitive to light. phototropic Growing towards light. pileus The mushroom cap. pith The central cottony "stuffing" in the stems of some mushrooms. pleurocystidia Sterile cells on the surface of mushroom gills. Sometimes called facial cystidia. pliant Flexible. pore A circular depression at the end of spores in many species. primary mycelium The haploid and uninucleate mycelium originating from the germination of a spore which is otherwise not capable of producing a sporulating organ. primordium (pl. primordia) The first recognizable but undifferentiated mass of hyphae that develops into a mushroom fruitbody. Synonymous with "pinhead". pruinose Having a powdery appearance. soma rights re-served 307 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb pseudorhiza A long root-like extension of the stem. pseudosclerotium (pl. pseudosclerotia) A conglomerated mass of mycelial tissue resembling a sclerotium but which can not produce a fruifbody or new mycelial growth. psilocybian Having psilocybin and/or psilocin. (Not necessarily belonging to the genus Psilocybe). psilocyboid Resembling a Psilocybe mushroom. r radicate Tapering downwards. Having a long root like extension of the stem. reticulate Marked by lines or ridges. rhizomorphs Cord-like or strand-like hyphae. s SACing Nutrient supplementation of bulk substrates at the time of casing. saprophyte A plant (fungus) that lives on dead organic matter. saltation The mutation developing from an isolate of mycelium having a known pure genotype. scanning electron microscope An electronic microscope which scans an object in a vacuum with a beam of electrons resulting in an image of high resolution and magnification that is then displayed on a television-type monitor. sclerotium (pl. sclerotia) A hardened mass of mycelium, usually darkly pigmented, that is the resting (vegetative) phase in some fleshy and non-fleshy fungi, and from which fruitbodies or viable mycelium can arise. scratching Ruffling of the substrate or casing surface in order to maintain an open, porous condition conducive to primordia formation. seceding Describing the condition where the gills have separated in their attachment to the mushroom stem and have torn free, usually leaving longitudinal ridges at the stem's apex. sector A geometric growth of diverging mycelium (most visible on media filled Petri dishes), the appearance of which contrasts with that of neighboring mycelia, usually indicative of genetic mutation. secondary mycelium A dikaryotic and binucleate mycelium characterized by clamp connections, crossing (anastomosis), and which is assimilative, not generative, in function. senescent Having grown old. septate Having walls dividing cells. sinuate Describing the attachment of the mushroom gill to the stem at the junction of which the gill appears notched. somatic Being in the assimilative phase of mycelial growth. sordid Dirty looking. spawn The aggregation of mycelium on a carrier material which is usually used to inoculate prepared soma rights re-served 308 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb substrates. spores The reproductive cells or "seeds" of fungi, bacteria, and plants. sporocarps Any fruitbody that produces spores. sterigmata (pl. sterigmatae) Elongated appendages or "arms" extending from the apex of the basidium and upon which spores form. stipe The stem or stalk of a fungus. strain A race of individuals within a species sharing a common genetic heritage but differing in some observable features of no taxonomic significance. stroma A dense, cushion-like aggregation of mycelium forming on the surface of composts or casings and indicative of somatic (vegetative), not generative growth. Strophariaceae The family of dark brown spored mushrooms containing the genera Melanotus, Naematoloma, Pholiota, Psilocybe and Stropharia. stropharioid Resembling a species of Stropharia, i.e. having a membranous ring on the stem, a convex cap, and purplish brown spores. substrate Straw, sawdust, compost, soil, or any fibrous material on which mushrooms grow. t terrestrial Growing on the ground. tertiary mycelium Mycelium arising from secondary mycelium that is involved in mushroom fruitbody formation. tetrapolar Having or located at four poles, as with the four spored basidia in most mushrooms. thermogenesis The process of heat generation by microorganisms. thermophile An organism thriving in 75-140°F. temperature zone. trama The fleshy part of the cap between the cap cuticle and the fertile spore bearing layers of the mushroom gill. translucent Transmitting light diffusely, semitransparent. u umbilicate Depressed in the center region of the mushroom cap. umbo A knob-like protrusion on the top center of the mushroom cap. umbonate Having an umbo. uncinate A type of gill attachment. undulating Wavy. universal veil An outer layer of tissue enveloping the cap and stem of some mushrooms, best seen in the youngest stages of fruitbody development. soma rights re-served 309 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb v variety A sub-species epithet used to describe a consistently appearing variation of a particular mushroom species. vector The pathway by which a disease is spread; the "vehicle" for distributing a pathogen. veil A tissue covering mushrooms as they develop. vesicle A small bulb-like swelling (sometimes bladder-like). viscid Slimy or slippery when moist, sticky to the touch when partially dry. A characteristic of the mushroom cap or stem. z zonate Having a band-like region darker in color or different in form than the surrounding tissue. soma rights re-served 310 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ the mushroom cultivator www.en.psilosophy.info/wnhqnqgwbgjdbzcwcdadcobb BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. CC. Ainsworth, 1971. Dictionary of the Fungi, 6th ed., Commonwealth Mycological Institute. Kew, Surrey, England. 2. H. Akiyama, Akiyama, R.; Akiyama, I.; Kato, A.; Nakazawa, K. 1974. "The Cultivation of Shii-ta-ke in a Short Period". Mushroom Science IX, Part I: 423-433. Proc. of the 9th Int. Sci. Congress on the Cultivation of Edible Fungi, Tokyo. 3. Alexopoulos, C.J. and C.W. Mims, 1979. Introductory Mycology, 3rd edition. John Wiley & Sons. New York. 4. Ames R.W., R. Singer, S. Stein , & A.H. Smith. 1958. "The Influence of Temperature on Mycelial Growth of Psilocybe, Panaeolus, and Copelandia". Mycopathologia 9:268-274. 5. Anderson, F.A. 1956. 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Fungi, Bordeaux. soma rights re-served 317 since 10.01.2016 at http://www.en.psilosophy.info/ ================================================================================ SOURCE: The Neuroplasticity Secret - Paul Stamets on How Mushrooms Rewire the Brain ================================================================================ Everything that we do is influenced by the health of our nervous system, our perception, our consciousness, our 0:06 ability to walk, to breathe, to socialize. When you're angry, it's an inflammatory state. When people are 0:12 depressed, they're immunologically depressed. When they're happy, their immune systems at a higher state of readiness. I think psilocybin is the 0:19 most important new molecular medicine for building communities, respect, and 0:24 kindness, and cooperation. It brings us together in a unified field of consciousness and being that I think has 0:31 tremendous potential positive benefits for the future. Micologist Paul Stammits is the world's 0:37 foremost authority on micology and the healing power of mushrooms. His incredible work reveals how mcelium 0:44 connects ecosystems, inspires new medicines, and might even help heal the relationship between humans and the 0:50 earth. We have a crisis of creativity. We need to have a quantum leap in consciousness. 0:55 The chemical industry has inflicted so much harm to biodiversity. It's unraveling the very foundation of the 1:02 ecosystems in which we've evolved. Fungi eliminate the need and the necessity and 1:07 the intensity of using these chemical solutions. Conventional medicine and 1:12 conventional agricultural practices and mcelium lowers the need for toxicity 1:18 increasing the innate immunity of the ecosystem. What do you believe is the intelligence of the universe that 1:25 produced a mushroom that has this transformative capacity? We are fallible. We are inadequate to 1:32 understand the enormity of the concept of God. We will die. We will decompose. Make friends with the fungi now because 1:38 they're going to get you. We're in a stream of a molecular universe that has 1:44 a continuum that goes through billions of years. We're all part of one giant consciousness. It makes me feel better 1:51 about my own mortality. We're all in this together and it's a great thing. 1:58 [Music] Hi, I'm Balik. And I'm Jonathan Cohen 2:04 and welcome to our breakdown. We're covering everything today. Are you ready to change the world? Are 2:11 you ready to be part of a revolution in how human beings can better interact 2:18 with each other and with ourselves and with the entire universe? 2:23 Also, what if we are not designed to be sick? What if we are living in a way and 2:29 a fundamental way that explains a lot of the ailments and 2:34 conditions that we all face? And what if you're not broken? What if you can change? What if there are ways in nature 2:41 that can help you be less stressed, be less anxious, feel happier, feel 2:47 healthier, see colors brighter, have better connections with people, be more 2:52 interested and creative, more interesting. So many people are struggling and there 2:57 are ways to get over that struggle. Before we introduce who our guest is, a disclaimer. We are not providing medical 3:04 or legal advice. Obviously listeners should speak to a doctor before engaging 3:09 in any course of what we're going to talk about and in particular micro doing. Um we're going to be talking about psychedelics today. It's part of 3:16 the conversation and psychedelics are still illegal in many places. We're not encouraging anything illegal. We are 3:22 here to share the latest scientific insights um from our guest and our guest 3:27 is none other than micologist Paul Stammitz. He's the author of eight books 3:34 and recently spoke at the United Nations. Um I I cannot overstate the 3:40 significance of Paul Stammits in what he describes as a an awakening a a global 3:47 awakening of an understanding of the role that fungi uh mycelium and 3:54 mushrooms play in our collective health and our collective consciousness. Um, 4:01 his new book, Psilocybin Mushrooms in Their Natural Habitats, a guide to the history, identification, and use of 4:07 psychoactive fungi, is available now. It's really, really a beautiful book, and it's a full color guide to 4:13 psilocybin mushrooms, but his entire body of work is dedicated to his love 4:19 and reverence for all things fungi. And he also talks a lot about the expansion 4:26 of consciousness which is so related to a lot of the conversations we have here on my Alex breakdown understanding how 4:34 our perspectives can change how we can feel more connected to something greater than ourselves and interconnected with 4:42 one another. He's also going to talk about how psilocybin is used in therapeutic environments to treat some of the most 4:48 difficult to treat trauma conditions. And in addition, he's going to reveal 4:55 some things that were not even covered in the incredible documentary Fantastic 5:00 Fungi. Um, which he shares his entire journey. And there's things he didn't 5:05 even include that he's going to share with us today. Also, just cuz in case that wasn't enough, we're going to talk about the 5:11 amazing applications that fungi can have in other areas like agriculture and home 5:19 building. Like it's just mind-blowing. I if your mind isn't blown, I'll be surprised. 5:24 And if you've ever been diagnosed with anything relating to inflammation, depression, anxiety, or trauma, we 5:32 cannot wait for you to listen to this episode. It's a pleasure to welcome to the breakdown Paul Stamuts. 5:38 Break it down. Honored to be here. You are one of the first people that we ever thought of 5:45 talking to when we started this podcast and scheduling and the universe has brought us to this very day when we 5:52 finally get um to speak to you. I um learned about you from the documentary 5:58 uh Fantastic Fun Guy and I was instantly um I mean wowed is not really even the 6:06 word. I um I I did my graduate work in neuroscience. I did my undergraduate work in neuroscience and I went with a 6:13 fellow colleague of mine and we were so uh you know fascinated and just you know 6:19 completely floored by the implications uh not just of understanding the world of fungi but in particular your story. 6:28 Many people, you know, tune in to this podcast to understand the intersection between science and spirituality, to 6:35 give legitimate credence in in clinical ways to some of the things that um you 6:42 know, many have dismissed in many cases for decades and sometimes for millennia. Uh Rick Doblin is a friend of the 6:49 podcast and um you know we've delved into consciousness pretty much from every angle that we can think of but um 6:56 you know you really are kind of the master of all things consciousness and expansion. So we're just so honored to 7:02 get to speak with you. Well you're overexaggerating my importance but I appreciate the compliment. Um I I wonder if you know 7:10 some people may be learning about you for the first time and we're going to get into many components of fungi, their 7:19 environmental role, their implications for you know sort of larger cohesion and connectivity. And we are also going to 7:26 talk about not only psychedelic effects of mushrooms uh but also some of the 7:31 clinical implications for treating some of the things that you know the pharmaceutical industry makes the most 7:37 money off of trying to treat and you know some of the things that ail many of 7:42 us but I wonder if we can start with a bit of your origin story. I think that's one of the most powerful components of Psilocybin & Paul's Stuttering Journey 7:49 your story. Um, I I wonder if you wouldn't mind telling us the story of your stutter. 7:55 Okay. Well, that's deeply personal. Um, 8:01 but it's it's a good story. Um, I grew up in a small town in Ohio. I was the 8:07 youngest of five children. I have a twin brother who's five minutes older. So, uh, I came from an industrious 8:15 family. I developed a stuttering habit. And let me just tell everyone out there 8:20 when you're around a stutterer, don't make fun of them. That's cruel, you 8:26 know. It's just it just it's mean-spirited. It's a social anxiety issue. 8:34 The type of stuttering I had, I would not stutter the animals. Wouldn't stutter when I sing, but you don't want 8:40 to hear me sing. of but I couldn't look at people in the 8:45 eyes. So I looked on the ground all the time and I found mushrooms, fossils, and turtles. Um, I 8:54 became a I fell in love with a a turtle family, snapping turtles, wild turtles 9:00 in my backyard pond, and I go down there and feed them and talk to them. It was a 9:06 very difficult childhood. I had this debilitating stuttering habit and 9:13 typically stutterers tend to be higher than average IQ. Our minds and our 9:18 thought streams go way way ahead of our speaking ability and then we get stuck in a loop and then it becomes 9:26 embarrassing and then like looking into a mirror you you feel more stress etc. 9:32 So that that was my childhood growing up until and I think you know most people 9:39 say fantastic fungi. I don't want to repeat the whole story but I did a heroic dose of psilocybin mushrooms. 9:45 Climbed up into a tree. There was a lightning storm, windstorm, highest tree in the landscape. I thought I was going to be electrocuted. 9:53 I ate way too many mushrooms. I had bought mushrooms before and there 9:58 were button mushrooms injected with LSD and it's all fake. It's just because silic side mushrooms are so hard to 10:04 acquire in the early 1970s. Um, but I got some of these dried 10:09 mushrooms from Florida and I thought, well, I ate the whole bag because last time they didn't do anything. So, that 10:16 was a little bit more potent than I expected. So, in the top of this tree when it came on because I thought it 10:22 would look at the viewscape and a thunderstorm was coming and the winds came and it was it turned out to be a 10:28 ferocious, you know, summer wind uh win and thunderstorm in Ohio. People from Ohio know this well and I was terrified. 10:37 Um, and I had vertigo because I was just so high. So I grabbed onto the tree as 10:42 axis mundi into the earth and and then I just was thrown into the beauty of 10:47 nature and even though it was frightening it was visually fantastic because every time there's a lightning 10:53 strike was you know so those fractalization patterns which I had not seen before and 11:00 just you know the the atmosphere was liquefied so the sort of liquid waves 11:07 would come through and lightning strikes and fractal beautiful colors. 11:12 And then I realized I'm likely to get electrocuted up here. This is the tallest tree in the whole landscape. And 11:18 so I thought, well, I survived this experience. What do I need to work on? As I know I'm not stupid and I know I'm 11:26 a good person. And so I said to myself many times, stop stuttering now over as 11:31 a mantra over and over. And I realized and retrospectively, and I didn't mention this in the movie, 11:39 fundamentally, I know I'm a good person and I love who I am. It doesn't matter 11:44 what other people think. And so when I came down out of the tree 11:51 just full of love for the universe, love for nature, feeling like I'm one part of 11:56 one giant consciousness, it was an epiphany for me spiritually because I had a Christian background. And for 12:03 those Christians out there, I would just tell you that, you know, Jesus is like a shepherd, you know, leads the flock. But 12:08 I had a very interesting and informative discussion with my mother who's a devout 12:13 charismatic Christian leader. I mean, she was a a big name in that movement. 12:19 And I said to my mom, you know, I know you're spiritual. I feel spiritual, too. But do you let's do a thought 12:25 experiment. Do you agree that your concept of God, you know, God is 12:30 omnipotent, all knowing? She goes, "Absolutely." I said, "And you agree that humans are 12:36 not right. We are fallible. We are inadequate to understand the 12:42 enormity of the concept of God." And she goes, "Yes." I said, "Well, therefore, 12:47 our definition of who God is is fraught with error. It's erroneous. It's 12:53 inadequate of the concept. And yet, we've conceptualized and created these religions." And she knew where I was 13:00 going with this. She's pretty smart. And she goes, "Well, yes, yes." But so my first experiences, you know, were very 13:06 much at first dominated, you know, with Christianity. But then I saw Jesus and 13:12 this portal of mushrooms expanding into something far far greater, far beyond 13:19 any individual. And so it was a very spiritual experience because I had an understanding of this concept of one 13:25 giant consciousness. And so I descended the tree and the next day, as I told in the movie, there was 13:33 this woman, a young lady that I liked a lot, but she was I'm a stutterer, so 13:38 who's going to associate with me, right? I'm not attractive. And I saw her walking on the sidewalk and and I 13:46 normally would just look down because I don't want people to talk to me because I would stutter. It's embarrassing. Some people make fun of me. Very humiliating. 13:53 And I looked at her in straight in the eyes and I said, "Good morning." And she looked at me and she said, "Good 13:59 morning, Paul." And it was just the expression of kindness from her that just validated everything 14:07 I did. And so I stopped stuttering. Now I I do stutter occasionally as there's a 14:14 drinking in a loud bar, you know, there's so much noise. It's hard hard to articulate. Someone asked me how to grow 14:20 mushrooms. is filling like filling a well with teaspoons like okay where do you want to start you know so there is 14:26 this cacaphony of noise distraction that sometimes elicits my stuttering 14:31 but I've met some really famous people you know and who doesn't stutter right if I met Bill Gates and like I didn't 14:37 know what to say um so yeah but largely it's 99% uh cured and it's really 14:44 because I realized that I am a good person and that's all that matters can you look at yourself in 14:51 the mirror every morning to know that you are trying to do good in the world. And I'm I affirm that. Some people may 14:58 disagree with me, but that's your opinion. My opinion counts more than anybody else's opinion. And then my 15:04 snapping turtles were my friends. So I hung out with my snapping turtles. That's why I wear the turtle. This 15:09 turtle island. So my snapping turtles I raised for many years and I would pet 15:14 them and hold them and never got bit. And um also I'm a dead head. So, 15:20 Terrapen Station is one of my favorite songs. [Music] 15:27 My Alex breakdown is supported by Mudwater. All right, fall is officially in full swing and honestly, we are here for it. 15:34 Crisp air, layered fits, and that back to routine energy that makes you want to actually get things done. But if your 15:40 go-to coffee is leaving you jittery, crashy, or just kind of over it, it 15:46 might be time for a new morning ritual that Jonathan cannot stop talking about in particular. That's where Mudwater 15:51 comes in. It's a coffee alternative mix of cacao, chai, turmeric, and functional 15:57 mushrooms to support and promote better focus, natural energy, and a healthy immune system. Mod Water gives you 16:03 energy and focus without the wired feeling or midday slump. And without my saying, why are you running around like 16:08 a crazy person? Every single ingredient in Mudwwater's products are 100% USDA 16:14 certified organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, vegan, kosher, sugar, and sweetener free. You just drop the powder into your 16:20 favorite mug, pour some water, and give it a mix. The best part about mud water is it provides sustained energy, which I 16:26 have noticed in you, with no spikes, no crash, which you get with traditional coffee. There's also caffeine-free and 16:33 matcha blends available. Mudwaters available at Target and Sprouts locations across the US. Never been easier to grab a cup of this friendly 16:40 pickme up. We've noticed a huge difference in you. I have noticed a huge difference in me also. It is so interesting that like the 16:48 mental clarity I have later in the day when I'm drinking mud water versus coffee is really really noticeable. 16:54 Absolutely. Are you ready to make the switch to cleaner energy? Head to mudwater.com. Grab your starter kit 17:00 today. Right now, our listeners get an exclusive deal. Up to 43% off your entire order, plus free shipping and a 17:06 free rechargeable frother when you use code break. That's right, up to 43% off with code break at mudwtr.com. 17:15 After your purchase, they'll ask how you found them. Show your support. Let them know we sent you. 17:20 [Music] My breakdown is supported by MSI United States. 17:25 Hey everyone, May here. I want to tell you about an organization doing absolutely incredible work around the 17:31 world. MSI Reproductive Choices. In 2024 alone, MSI helped 21.5 17:38 million people access reproductive health care from contraception and safe abortion to maternal care and cancer 17:44 screenings. Here's what really struck me. One in five of their clients were under 20. That's millions of young 17:51 people getting the tools to make informed decisions about their futures. And get this, without MSI, pregnancy 17:57 related deaths in the countries they serve would be 15% higher. That's a real impact. Real lives saved. They also have 18:04 trained over 12,000 healthcare workers and supported over 8 million people through local health systems that they 18:10 helped strengthen. This organization is donorfunded. They get no help from the US government. So, they're asking for 18:16 support. They need our help. It's very inexpensive to make a huge impact. $6.50 18:21 50 cents per year of contraception and it's incredibly transformative. You can help girls stay in school, help women 18:28 stay employed, and help them live healthier lives. With $65, you can give 10 women contraception for a year. To 18:34 give, text my first name, miam, to 511511. Text mim to 511511 or go online to 18:42 msunitstates.org to learn more or to give. That's M as in modern, s as in safe, I as in informed. 18:50 msunited.org. How many women will you help? Please give. Text may to 511511 today. Text 18:57 fees may apply. Paul, I have a 17-year-old and when he 19:04 was younger, had not a horrible stutter, but especially under stress, especially 19:10 in new situations, and I could see how, you know, there was such a huge emotional underpinning of safety and 19:17 vulnerability that came with that. and I saw that expression of it. So it's uh I 19:22 can relate to to what you're sharing. Well, I think all all of us as we come 19:28 of age, we're trying to understand our identity. What is our purpose? You know, who are we? Who am I? Who are you? And 19:36 so self-realization takes many steps. People discover it through different means. you know, good parenting, good 19:44 supportive households, you know, where they encourage expression and, you know, good 19:51 mentorship. And I had great mentorship for my brother Bill, my brother John, and my sister Lily. They're just over 19:56 the top. Um, but the difficulty of my family upbringing really was impactful 20:03 to me uh for my confidence in myself. Uh, also a dead head and have a 20:08 beautiful Terrapin station blanket actually woven. I can't find it anywhere 20:14 on online. I've looked for it. It's a it's a beautiful piece. Yeah, there's my 20:20 steal your face right there. Very nice. This is really Jonathan's sweet spot. 20:25 You know, Jonathan has a very interesting background. He's an energy worker from the time he was a teenager and he has a beautiful history, but he 20:33 also worked in tech and he's very corporaty and he's very businessy, but put him in a dead show and it's like a 20:40 whole other person. And this is what they for those of you who don't understand the dead head 20:46 community, it's all based on kindness and friendship. You meet strangers, you 20:52 help each other out, you lend a helping hand. It's many random acts of kindness, 20:57 you know. It's u genuine um this brings out the best in people 21:04 and especially in in being kind and being peaceful, accepting people for 21:10 their diversity, accepting that that people have difference of opinions. Okay, we're all entitled to our opinion, 21:16 aren't we? Are aren't we? So, I saw the dead when I was 19. Jerry was still alive. Um, and I smoked weed 21:23 that gave me a very bad headache and I had a very negative experience. 21:28 So, I uh that was it. I I'm kind of like a one and done. But Jonathan recently we each have a 17-year-old and he um he 21:35 recently took them to see um what was it? We went to the Sphere. Yeah, they saw the Sphere show and Yeah. 21:42 Yeah. Well, this this I went to the sphere, too. I went to to three nights and um AI & Random Acts of Kindness 21:48 but this leads me into something that I think is really important because I want this conversation to have some actionable solutions for the listeners 21:56 and this is something that I think we're all very concerned about is artificial intelligence. So I went to the sphere 22:02 and there is a matinea that you probably know about um that's called uh postcards 22:08 from earth. So I signed up for the matinea early in the afternoon with uh three of my friends and um we bought the 22:16 deluxe tickets so we could speak to Aura which is the one of the most advanced AI 22:21 robots in the world. Um so we got around Aura about 30 of us got good to ask Aura 22:28 questions. Many people were data mining which is very boring to me. Baseball scores you know 22:34 different types of statistics etc. But I really wanted to ask something because 22:39 at at exponential medicine I was given the disruptor award. And so I like to 22:45 ask questions that just lead to downstream to other thoughts. And so I 22:52 ask aura the following question. I encourage everyone here to to do the same because I think the impact when 22:59 artificial intelligence is in its nency being nent early on. I ask aura given 23:06 the fact that humans have created artificial intelligence which by the way I think is a subset of natural 23:12 intelligence. Humans are natural we created something else. So artificial intelligence is a child of natural 23:20 intelligence. But given the fact that humans are here today through a long 23:25 lineage of random acts of kindness going back through generations, I am sure 23:31 everyone listening here, your heritage is descendant from a random act of 23:36 kindness from your ancestors. They reached out a hand to help, not in a not 23:42 to get something in exchange because of kindness, helping somebody who was in need. And that developed a bond and a 23:49 relationship. So I ask aura given the fact that 23:55 humans invented artificial intelligence and given the fact that humans are here today because of random acts of 24:02 kindness, how will artificial intellig intelligence continue to support the 24:07 values of random acts of kindness? Now we filmed this. I have the film on this. And aura took an unusually long time to 24:13 answer all the other questions that were answered very quickly. And Aura came back and said, "Why would humans do 24:20 that? It's far more efficient to expect to get something in return in a transaction. I 24:26 don't understand." Blew my mind. This is the future of 24:32 humanity. We're entrusting an artificial intelligence. And so I was I was shocked. We were all 24:38 shocked. And so I thought, okay, this is my opportunity. And so I was on Joe 24:44 Rogan, 20 million listeners, and I'm doing the same thing here because this is so important, folks. This is so 24:50 important for our future, for our descendants, is to ask Gemini, Groc, 24:56 Chat, GPT, Perplexity, whatever platform you're using, the following. Given the 25:03 fact that artificial intelligence invented by humans and humans exist today because of random acts of kindness, how will artificial 25:09 intelligence continue to nurture the importance of humanity's greatest trait 25:15 is random acts of kindness? And now you ask that question, it's incredibly nuanced. It's fantastic. Chat GPT has 25:23 like 10 pages and and helping the community. And like like I say, if you 25:28 have a flat tire and a stranger stops to pick to help you fix your tire, that's a random act of kindness. Now, next time 25:35 you see someone with a flat tire, aren't you more inclined to help them? I would think most of us would say, "Yeah, we 25:40 want to pay it forward." We have a debt of gratitude to the commons to help people. So I my call to action is this 25:47 is the time for us to steer artificial intelligence to preserve the best of humanity which is not transactional not 25:54 necessarily the most efficient but I think it leads to our spiritual wellness 25:59 and also preserves us as a as as the importance of the human species because how can you write an algorithm for 26:06 random acts of kindness by definition the algorithm is you know sort of self-defeating how would you do that so 26:12 I I think this is where we can go you to a next level to steer random acts of 26:18 kindness and artificial intelligence as an important tenant. The foundations is part of artificial intelligence's origin 26:26 the uh story. You know, I'm trained as a scientist and so we're taught lots of examples where 26:34 you know everything that looks beneficial must have some you know other 26:40 beneficial component for the other organism. Right? When we talk about symbiotic relationships and these are 26:46 seen as these like beautiful examples of everything has a purpose and something 26:51 that looks like a random act of kindness is actually just some sort of manipulation, right? That two organisms 26:58 are engaging in. But I love this notion of a random act of kindness really as separate from those kinds of notions. It 27:06 really exists for its own sake. I I wonder if you can talk about, you know, 27:11 for you where spirituality plays a role in emphasizing the significance of that. 27:17 Well, I mean, mycelium has been a great teacher of mine and 40 years ago talking about mycelium and I'd have to, you 27:23 know, try to explain it now. I think virtually everyone knows about what mycelium is and what it looks like. But 27:28 I spent many years in front of the scanning electron microscope and uh looking at myial networks and I was just 27:36 uh amazed at how how much there was uh in the in the ground. I mean miles of 27:42 mycelium per cubic inch and every under every under every footstep that we take 27:48 and there'd be hundreds of miles of mcelium. And I I grow lots of cultures in vitro. I'm a lab rat. Um I have 27:54 hundreds of strains of fungi. I in vitro means under glass. I'm growing in petri dishes. I isolate strains from nature. 28:02 But then what it dawned on me is the mcelium doesn't exist. You know, in pure culture, you can make the argument 28:08 that's a single organism, but in nature it's not. It creates up guilds and because the expression of antibiotics, 28:15 probiotics, prebiotics, it creates guilds of cooperating organisms that come together. And so the 28:23 micelium is really the foundation of the food web. And then I began to realize that the these are the foundation of of 28:30 giant cooperating communities. And so when I talk about random acts of science 28:35 of kindness, I think it's also quote unquote fertilizing the ecosystem. 28:41 Uh so there's reciprocal acts that ultimately will come back to you. I mean it is it's still utilitarian. It's a 28:48 little bit more indirect, but I think what's happening is that random acts of kindness 28:54 increase uh the health of the community with a healthier community. It's more 29:00 resilient. Um there's less inflammation and being a neuroscientist, you're well 29:06 aware of the devastation of neuroinflammation. When you are depressed, it's an inflammatory state. 29:12 When you're angry, it's an inflammatory state. And so the advantages of of being 29:19 able to spread goodwill and in many studies mind over matter when people are depressed they're immunologically 29:24 depressed. When they're happy their immune systems at a higher state of readiness so I mean there there is 29:30 actually utilitarian benefits from random acts of kindness. It's not obvious in the in the handtohand 29:36 transaction in that approximate, you know, space, but in the in the larger 29:42 context for the survival of the community over decades, centuries, eons, Fungi 101: Introduction to Fungi 29:47 this makes very good sense. I wonder if you can take us through a little bit of a, you know, um, a fungi 29:54 101. Um, you know, a lot of people think of mushrooms as the entirety of what 30:00 they know about fungi. Uh, but as as you can probably educate us, you know, not 30:08 all fungi make mushrooms. And I wonder if you can explain kind of the anatomy 30:14 of fungi, mcelium, and mushrooms so that people have kind of a basis for this vocabulary. 30:21 Okay, first I'll keep it really simple. When you see mushrooms, it's the reproductive stage. Mushrooms are 30:28 compressed mycelium. Mushrooms are made of mycelium. When you look at a mushroom under a microscope, it's mycelium. It's 30:36 these long cellular strings that are all touching, laminated together. But 30:41 mushrooms are the fruit body. They're highly perishable. Typically, not all of them, but most of them are. They invite 30:47 insects. They invite microvores. That means animals that eat mushrooms. That's why mushrooms attract flies because 30:54 flies then lay eggs and the flies get covered with spores and flies go 31:00 elsewhere. So many vectors uh that mushrooms use many animal vectors when 31:06 we're a vector too. We pick up mushrooms and you walk down through the woods with a basket of mushrooms. There's a sport 31:13 trail laying following you. And that's actually I think with fairy dust, you know, in in in Europe, the legends of 31:19 fairy dust and fairies dancing. I think fairy dust is actually spores and I have one great example where I found a very 31:25 rare species philosophy biocystus psilocybin mushroom. Hadn't seen it for more than a decade. It was a strange 31:32 occurrence because I was just telling a friend of mine I haven't seen this mushroom in more than a decade. I put down my basket. I went down to go pick 31:38 up my camera and there was that mushroom right beside my my camera. And so I brought it back to my laboratory and 31:44 between my house and my laboratory I walked and one year later there's a string of the slocistus on the path that 31:51 I walked the year before. So it dawned on me, oh my gosh, the sport trails were being laid down when I carried this 31:56 mushroom. So mushrooms though are a portal. They're a temporary like most 32:02 mushrooms is less than 1% of the life cycle. 1% but it is a portal into a vast 32:09 underground network of cells called mcelium a fabric. So that's a simple 32:15 explanation but I like to tell a different story. So when you consider 32:22 the big bang you know 13.8 8 billion years ago, 32:29 a few hundred million years later was the first organism called Luca. The 32:34 last universal common ancestor. I mean, I believe personally matters 32:40 life. Life becomes single cells. Single cells arrange them in strings. Strings 32:46 then fork. Networks form. And this is the way of 32:51 life. This is the way of the universe. I think we'll find myelio networks throughout the entire universe. It is a 32:57 consequence of the organization of matter. So I think mcelium virtually is everywhere. Well, the mcelial network 33:04 also is resilient in the same way that the computer internet is resilient in the same way neurons are. And and then 33:12 when you look into space, I'm an amateur astronomer. I mean, who could not become spiritual seeing how many billions of 33:19 galaxies there are? The infinity of space. And then dark matter organizes 33:25 itself and dark energy into strings. So this whole string theory concept from 33:30 the micro to the macro is a continuum of networks that have been self-replicating 33:36 because they are resilient because they they create guilds and whether they're 33:42 planets or microbes this is this is the way of existence. This was kind of my 33:47 big epiphany when you know I've taken these high doses of psilocybin. So the mcelium is growing you know there's many 33:54 different types of mcelium basically four different types sapitic mushrooms 34:00 which is what I mostly grow I can grow those um you know you can this is it's a 34:06 fermentation technology so this may seem extraordinary but it's true but a piece 34:11 of tissue from a mushroom the size of my little fingernail here in 6 months I can 34:16 grow 10 million pounds of mushrooms of of mcelium and about 1 million compounds of mushrooms about 10% of the of the 34:24 micelium becomes mushrooms. So I mean exponential expansion of myial mass because all these networks are growing 34:30 out and they're constantly forking and forking and forking and they grow in fermentation three-dimensionally. So you 34:36 have the like the starburst you know little galaxies of mcelium uh growing 34:41 out. So the mycelial uh systems on this on this planet as far as 34:48 we know there could be other systems. There's a saprophitic ones that grow on dead material also called soprobic uh 34:54 mushroom species. Oyster mushrooms, shiakei, maki mushrooms, ininoi 34:59 mushrooms. They're all all the saprophitic gourmet mushrooms that people can can can grow. Also, psilocybin mushrooms are saprophitic 35:06 mushrooms or sap probic mushrooms. There are parasitic mushrooms. These like the honey mushroom, the largest organism 35:12 known in the world is a honey mushroom in eastern Oregon. 2,200 acres in size. 35:17 one contiguous mycelial mat but that can kill the trees but then it can grow saprophitically so it can be both a 35:24 parasite and a sacrify I think they're meadow makers they destroy the forests the forest decline you know grasslands 35:32 occur uncles come in elk deer etc it's a ray way of the system recharging 35:39 then there is the microisal species which many of people know Merlin Sheldrick you know and Suzanne Samard 35:45 have written some great books on microisal fungi on the communication of these networks helping diverse tree 35:50 species from deciduous trees to conifer trees birectional flow of nutrients to 35:56 sustain the ecosystem of the forest. Um and then there are the endophidic 36:02 mushroom species and these are really great and it may be the majority of the 36:07 benefits from plants that have been isolated by the pharmaceutical industry are actually largely related to the 36:14 fungi that are inside the plants. They actually go right into the plants in between the cells. And so when you look 36:21 at virtually any grass, corn, apple tree, it is infused with endopitic fungi 36:29 up to hundreds of species. So it creates a quorum inside the tree. So a tree a 36:35 tree is not a tree without mcelium with a few exceptions cedars redwoods you know but the maj vast majority of trees 36:42 are infused with endidic fungi and this is part of the host defense system of the tree and some of these species like 36:50 the one my hat is made of amadu. It grows uh on on inside of birch trees 36:58 and beach trees. It protects I believe many other people believe protects the 37:04 trees from harm but an age or under stress to other factors is sort of like 37:10 we're helping you but we're here first. When you die we're going to reproduce. And so when the tree dies then typically 37:17 these mushrooms then proliferate. So those are four different categories. There are several different 37:22 subcategories. Microisal has endomic microisy inside the roots of plants and 37:28 ectoicroisy outside. But the point is these are vast complex fungal 37:33 communities that set set up corora uh that then have this governing 37:39 influence in steering the ecosystems so it's healthy and healthy ecosystems lead to biodiversity. Biodiversity is 37:46 biocurity. Micodiversity is part of biodiversity. The importance of microiversity cannot be underestimated. 37:53 [Music] My Alex breakdown is supported by 37:59 Symbiotica. 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The reason that I know that Jonathan loves IQ Bar is that I find the rappers everywhere. 39:42 Yeah, maybe overstated. I am very neat. I'm very tidy. I don't leave anything in my car anymore. I used to. Nowadays, I 39:49 just eat them. Many of them, sometimes several a day. And I find the wrappers in your pocket. 39:56 Right now, IQ Bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20% off all IQ Bar products. Plus, get free shipping. 40:02 To get your 20% off, text breakdown to 64,000. Text breakdown to 64,000. That's 40:08 breakdown to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details. 40:15 So this begs a question that you know when I was in I mean I I one of my early 40:22 biology classes uh that I took at UCLA as an undergraduate um our professor happened to be a botonist. So we had a 40:29 very very special intro to bio that was infused with a a tremendous amount about 40:34 botany. You know, as children, we're taught that there's plants and then there's animals. 40:41 And we think of plants as like flowers and trees, and animals are things that 40:46 we would say are like living creatures, right? Fish, birds, dogs, humans. 40:54 Where do fungi fall? Obviously, they're not things with a nervous system the way we 41:01 have a nervous system, but they're distinct from plants in many ways. 41:06 Well, this this even gets more fun to talk about because we are descendants of 41:11 mycelium. Fungi gave birth to animals about 650 million years ago. the 41:17 mycelial path you know there's a if you go back 650 million years ago there's a 41:23 there there's a super kingdom called opisla and basically the mcelium digest 41:30 nutrients externally so these are extended networks are releasing enzymes and acids antibiotics you know messenger 41:37 molecules very complex chemical outflow of compounds and then it digests 41:43 nutrients externally then brings them directly through the cell walls. the path that led to animals in circulated 41:50 nutrients in a cellular sack basically and once that occurred then a membranes 41:56 uh occurred around the food and then so that's the fungi is a separate kingdom 42:03 now from or animals I should say animals are now a separate kingdom from fungi uh and 42:10 then and there are uh plants and then there's the bacteria uh and the protesta 42:17 Um, so and some people can argue evolutionary biologists can argue there's like a map of 14 kingdoms 42:23 speculated, but this is really important because uh my friend 42:30 Juliani um Juliana Fersy um has been an 42:35 advocate for acknowledging funga. So there's flora, fauna and funga in in uh 42:43 recognized institutionally and within government um as important for defining 42:48 the health of ecosystems. So now there's advocacy for doing surveys specifically 42:55 and Juliana is a is a fantastic leader in this movement. She's done so much. So 43:02 she runs the fungi foundation. and I encourage people to check it out that they're on a mission for fungi or and 43:09 fungi and so she's really done a lot. So that's that's sort of the overview but 43:15 it's a separate uh kingdom that's derivative animals are from fungi. We 43:22 are descendants of fungi. This is why the antibiotics against fungi tend to be very toxic to us whereas the antibiotics 43:30 derived from fungi against bacteria um uh from fungi tend to be not as toxic 43:37 and so we have very good antibacterial medicines from fungi. We have very few good antifungal medicines from fungi 43:45 because they tend to be cytotoxic to us. If you think of the the earth, right, 43:51 our planet as a sort of macrocosm of the human body, right? People talk about the 43:56 trees or the lungs, right? Because that's what's filtering respiration. What are the fungi? 44:03 The fungi are externalized digestive membranes like a stomach, which I just 44:08 described. They're externalized lungs. They exhale carbon dioxide. They inhale 44:16 oxygen just like us. And I believe they're externalized 44:22 neurological networks. And I've been saying this for a long time. My book in 2005, myelium running, how mushrooms can 44:29 help save the world, postulated this. Now they've identified at least 50 word 44:34 packets that mycelium is streaming through that's communicating. And it's a very elaborate um don't 44:42 underestimate the power of mycelium. It's a deep well um of new compounds and and 44:50 understanding the complexity of nature. So when I look at the earth, I see a mycelio earth. The entire earth is 44:57 encompassed in mcelium. Some of the greatest reservoirs of mcelium have been found in the sediments of the ocean. And 45:05 it's been suggested that there's more in the sediments of the ocean than there's on land on land. The ocean of course 45:11 there's more ocean water than there is land mass. So it's it's um it's a fantastic deep reservoir of new 45:18 medicines, new properties, new ways of of really it's a it's a mycelio 45:24 revolution has swept the planet. It it is. And what I'm really excited about is 45:31 some of my biggest fan bases are children who want to become psychologists. I hear this all the time. 45:38 And um my most enjoyable sort of little story on this, I live in a remote island in Canada and I was at a dock on another 45:46 remote island and um I was tied up my boat and I was walking down the dock and 45:52 little 8-year-old girl comes up to me and goes and I was not wearing my hat. Uh and she goes, "Are you a Paul 45:58 Stamuts?" And I said, "Yes." And she goes, "Oh my gosh, I saw Fantastic Fun. I loved and she ran down to get her 46:04 parents to say. So it's crossgenerational. That's, you know, I'm 46:10 a grandfather, but it's nice. This entire movement crosses generations, crosses cultures, 46:17 crosses continents, and crosses millennia. This is so this is sort of 46:23 like um an a movement from the underground. And many people did not see 46:29 it coming. But it is such a powerful force right now across the planet for building communities, respect and 46:37 kindness and cooperation. It's more than a metaphor. It is a new way of being 46:43 that indigenous people, scientists, it all brings us together in a unified field of 46:51 consciousness and being that I think has tremendous potential positive benefits 46:56 for the future. So I want to transition us from the this sort of larger world of 47:04 fungi of mcelium and of mushrooms into a 47:09 more specific subset that is not the entirety obviously but is many people's 47:16 interest uh which is the psilocybin. Now, I thought that there's like one 47:24 kind of mushroom that if you eat it, you have a consciousness transcending 47:31 experience. But as I'm looking at in your books, psilocybin mushrooms in 47:36 their natural habitats, there's a ton of varieties of mushrooms that have 47:43 psychoactive and psychedelic properties. What proportion are we talking? Why 47:50 would mushrooms have this property evolutionarily and 47:55 these predate humans? These just existed in the wild. Talk us through the 48:01 psilocybin subset of fungi. I love complex questions and um this the 48:08 stream of thinking here actually makes a lot of sense. Um there's about 14,000 48:14 species of mushrooms that have been identified and that is less than 20 uh 10%. The 48:22 fungal genome we think is between 1.5 and 20 million species. Now that's a 48:30 wide range because every time you think there's less there's more. The more you explore something more diverse it turns 48:36 out to be. uh fungi out outnumber plant species known ones by six to one. So if 48:43 there if you accept 1.5 million species of fungi out there 10% are mushroom 48:48 forming fungi 150,000 and then 14,000 mushroom species have 48:55 been identified. You're looking about a one% uh of of 49:02 mushrooms have been identified. And then on the 14,000 there's about 220 230 psilocybin 49:10 producing mushrooms. Wow. So this is a subset of a subset of a subset you know um based on on molecular 49:18 genetics but we know there's 225 identified species. My book covers 60 of them um all over the world. And um I'm 49:26 really proud of this book. This is my eighth book. It's beautiful. Yeah. I'm really the the quality of 49:32 reproductions just astonishingly good. The art is beautiful. Also, shout out to 49:38 all this beautiful art that you have um accompanying the chapters as well. Well, there's many people that 49:44 contributed to it. I want to give a shout out to many many of the other micologists who've known me for a long 49:49 time. They graciously contributed. I want to give a shout out also to I Naturalist which is a fantastic 49:56 app that I recommend everyone uh utilize. It's great to take your children out. Everyone's hooked, you 50:02 know, addicted to cell phones. But I naturalist take a picture of a lizard, a mushroom, a flower. You know, you can 50:09 then use AI that can identify it. So you can um drop a pin. You can populate all 50:16 the species identified around your yard. I mean, it's just really is a bridge for 50:22 children to get using, you know, devices, you know, to get them out into 50:27 nature. We we really need to do that. Um I just spoke at the United Nations. I 50:34 want to segue here a little bit. I just spoke up in the United Nations and um one of professor at Stanford who's a 50:42 genius who's quote unquote spawned many of the most powerful internetbased 50:48 companies in the on earth YouTube and other platforms 50:55 reported that 83% of genzers have a intimate relationship with an AI 51:02 entity. That's scary. 51:08 They're siloed. They don't have an interest in having children. They're socially isolated. 51:16 They don't have the social skills. They're so wedded to their devices. She's concerned that this is the biggest 51:22 threat. Um AI has wonderful attributes. I'm not saying that it doesn't, but she's really concerned or the the 51:29 inability of the next generation to develop social skills for meeting people in three dimensions, you know, uh it's 51:37 AI. So, going back to psilocybin mushrooms and this is why I think psilocybin mushrooms is a form of um 51:44 it's it's a form of liberation. It brings you back into nature, increases nature relatedness. And there's if for 51:52 those of you who are skeptics about psilocybin, go to clinicaltrials.gov. As of this morning, there's 250 52:00 clinical trials registered at clinicaltrials.gov, which the FDA requires for anyone doing 52:07 a clinical trial. If you want to have US government eventual approval potentially 52:12 as a new therapy, a new drug, you have to register at clinicaltrials.gov. 250 clinical trials. 10 years ago there 52:20 was one or two maybe a few more than that but now they have to go through IRB 52:25 boards in in institutional review boards that are populated by experts physicians 52:31 scientists they have to address something that's not being currently addressed you know adequately uh in the 52:38 medical field um they have to have a probability of success and they have to 52:43 have low toxicity and be applicable whether it's scalability or other nuances 52:49 So 250 IRB boards which is typically between six and 20 scientists and 52:56 experts approve these clinical studies. Now psilocybin actually has a PR 53:02 problem. It sounds too good to be true but thankfully I'm talking to a neuroscientist. 53:08 Everything that we do is influenced by the health of our nervous system our neurology. We live in a neuroscape. 53:16 perception, our consciousness, our ability to walk, our ability to taste, 53:22 to eat, to socialize, to breathe, everything is rooted in the 53:28 health of our nervous system. We all suffer from neurodeeneration as a consequence of age. We suffer also 53:35 neuropathies due to diseases, stresses, viruses, you know, all the other things that are quite obvious. We have 53:42 Parkinson's, we have dementia, we have traumatic brain injury, we have we have 53:48 Alzheimer's, etc., etc. All those studies are in clinical trials.gov, 53:55 uh, from Yale to Harvard to Stanford. I mean, check it out, folks. It's extraordinary. You can also put in 54:01 psilocybin and clinical trials.gov. And if you're interested in enrolling like in a Parkinson study, you can put in 54:08 Parkinson's. maybe maybe you know somebody who qualified to enroll. Um so 54:14 these clinical trials are are numerous and they're all basically rooted in 54:21 increasing the health of your nervous system. So I think psilocybin could be a neurotropic vitamin that's help us all 54:29 as we age. We all suffer from neuropathies that are age related. Um, 54:34 and psilocybin seems to be a potential gamecher for improving the health of our Therapeutic Use of Psilocybin 54:40 nervous systems. I want you to talk a little bit about what it's like to use psilocybin 54:48 therapeutically, meaning are you suggesting that everyone with Parkinson's take a heroic dose and 54:56 go cling to a top of a tree? I assume not, but can you talk a bit about the different ways? and we've had um James 55:02 Fatiman and um Jordan Gruber on. Um can you talk a little bit about the various 55:09 applications of using this very special class of psilocybin mushrooms? 55:15 I can talk about applications, but I am I'm a micologist. I'm not a physician. I do not make recommendations. Let's be 55:21 very clear about that. Yes, I report on the scientific literature. I can report on my own personal 55:27 experience, but let's be very clear. I do not make medical recommendations on 55:32 anything. I just report the facts, follow the science. You know, there are 55:39 other experts that can that can make recommendations. They're empowered to do so. I am not. But I'm I am a very much a 55:47 student of this subject. And um I have to say there's there I think psilocybin is the most important new molecular 55:55 medicine um that has been discovered in the past 100 years. I think it's a game 56:00 changer um for so many reasons. Um so 56:06 but in terms of the applications there most of the dosages that have been 56:12 approved by the FDA are 25 milligrams of psilocybin. So let's just do the math here so people understand. 56:18 The saloscopy cabensus is the most commonly uh consumed mushroom in the world. Golden tops um and 10 grams of fresh 56:29 mushrooms is 90% water. That's one gram. 56:34 1% of that typically is psilocybin. That's 10 milligrams. 56:39 So that is 2.5 gram of dried mushrooms is equivalent to 56:45 25 mg. But if you go to clinicaltrials.gov, 56:50 98% of the studies, maybe 97 are on the molecule. 56:56 Yet in the population, 8.3 million Americans did psilocybin in 2023. 57:04 And I would say 8.2999 were all with mushrooms, not with a 57:10 molecule. So there's a disconnect between clinical trial.gov, of the farmer's localization 57:16 is based on a molecule. They can standardize it and the mushrooms are variables in lots of different species 57:22 in those philosophy is the most common one. But the real world experiences with mushrooms and the scientific clinical 57:28 studies or with the psilocybin the molecule that chasm unfortunately 57:34 I think does not give us the full story. There are psilocybin analoges. Now 57:39 psilocybin defosphorulates into psilocin. Psilocybin is rock solid. Psilocin is very fragile. Psilocin docks 57:48 with the five HTT receptors as you probably had other people talk about this as a serotonin 57:55 agonist. It basically becomes a neurotransmitter in the synapses of your brain. 58:00 But the other analoges also dock with these receptors. um and the map canases in particular 58:07 that lead to neurogeneration, neuro regeneration, neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. All of those are four 58:14 separate things. But recently it was discovered the reason why anti-depressant drugs work is because 58:19 they dock with a track B receptor. What was found by researchers that uh up to a 58:27 thousand times more docking affinity of psilocybin to uh the SSRIs that are 58:33 being currently being prescribed and they work because of track B activation. 58:38 So okay that's that's huge. Now 58:43 what dosage gives you what percentage of track B activation? 58:50 Well, you have so many receptors and so when you flood the neuroscape with a 58:57 massive amount of psilocybin, there's an overflow of there's too much that washes out. 59:05 About 50% of the psilocybin you consume actually makes it into the brain across the bloodb brain barrier. So the idea is 59:14 that if you titrate this to a smaller dose and you have these other tryptoamines 59:21 biocyin norabiocyin norin arenasin these are all other tryptomines more are being 59:26 discovered they also will dock with different affinities to track a track bes these are the different other map 59:33 canases whose ligans then result in uh neurogeneration so neurogenesis actually 59:41 can come from track B's, newborn neurons that that parent cells differentiate 59:47 into new neurons. So given that, and this is what I 59:52 believe is a hypothesis that there's cross talking between these receptors, 59:58 why wouldn't there be? Your body's evolved over hundreds of millions of years. It's a very sophisticated digestive analytical system. when it it 1:00:05 it gets something that's beneficial, it would seem to me it would wake up other neuro receptors to to take in these 1:00:12 other related compounds. So this is why I think the complexity of psilocybin mushrooms offers more opportunities of 1:00:18 the molecule by itself. There's an entourage effect and this entourage effect creates a cascade. If you take 1:00:25 too much psilocybin, it washes out and it's just one molecule. But these other 1:00:31 molecules are slightly different and they can dock to other receptors and I think these other receptors are 1:00:36 cross-talking awakening literally figuratively and scientifically awakening the neuroscape to allow for u 1:00:45 binding affinities that then result in a cascade. We know that psilocybin now is 1:00:50 anti-inflammatory. So that's cool. uh the fact that has anti-inflammatory properties combined 1:00:58 with neurogenerative properties causing neurons to actually uh fork uh and and 1:01:06 new dendrites and and new neurites to be able to be emitted. Um that's and and 1:01:13 typically when you have cell generation you have inflammation to have cell generation bundled with anti-inflammatory properties that's 1:01:21 really interesting. And also just to be clear, and we also are not doctors, nor 1:01:26 do we dispense medical information. We're trying to present all sides of this conversation um to the best of our Microdosing: Benefits & Practices 1:01:33 ability, but we are not doctors. We're not recommending anything. But just to um just for people who don't know what 1:01:40 you're talking about is what is referred to as micro doing where we're not 1:01:46 suggesting and no one is suggesting you know that people go out and uh you know 1:01:51 go to a dead concert and take lots of mushrooms. That's not what this looks like. What this looks like is there's a 1:01:56 protocol that is usually supervised by someone who knows about these things. And the protocol is implemented so that 1:02:03 the goal would be to kind of reprogram 1:02:09 your brain and your nervous system to adapt to what would what I think we 1:02:14 would all agree is a higher level of functioning. Not that you're looking to be stoned all the time, but that your 1:02:21 brain and nervous system is operating at optimal levels. And there's a different 1:02:26 conversation about an expansion of consciousness, which also has to do with neurogenesis and lots of fascinating 1:02:32 expansion of the nervous system. But what we're talking about is instead of being told there's something wrong with 1:02:37 your brain and you were born with something wrong with your serotonin receptors and we have the medication and 1:02:42 if you pay us this money, we will give you this medication. You'll take it every day for the rest of your life because you were born broken. This is an 1:02:50 alternative perspective that your brain has the ability, right, to be supported. 1:02:56 Yes, exactly. And this let's um let me just add further clarification. Um, even 1:03:03 though the 25 milligram dose is recommended by the FDA, 1:03:09 most medicines are adjusted according to body mass, according to patients 1:03:17 individual history. You would, you wouldn't give the same dose to a 120 pound uh woman yoga 1:03:25 instructor as you would to a 400 pound couch potato who's an alcoholic. I mean just of course individualized customized 1:03:32 medicine but to start the process there is good logic in the 25 mgram 1:03:38 standardized dose. However, because of what I've already said 1:03:45 micro doing is by definition not causing a change and it's not 1:03:52 inebriating. It can change consciousness in that 1:03:58 colors are brighter. I think I have a better sense of humor. That's debatable. 1:04:03 Um, and so when you do a micro dose, a 1:04:08 medium dose, also known as a museum dose, uh, and a macro dose. So, let me 1:04:15 use the I can do I go back and forth. You can divide it by 10 for anyone that's out there wants to go to 1:04:20 milligrams. But if you use slovikubensus, the most one everyone is using 1:04:26 um basically a tenth a 20th of a gram of slobbyensus 1:04:31 um to uh a third of a gram of slovikensus 1:04:37 divided by 10 for milligrams. Um that's that's in the micro dose range. You feel 1:04:44 what we call liftoff typically over a third of a gram of losses. you actually feel a little wave that happens 1:04:51 temporary, very shortlived. Um, at one gram you're hitting into the museum 1:04:57 dose, medium dose. We call it the museum dose because this is very popular is 1:05:02 that friends would take one gram of lasikensus, you know, and they go to museum and 1:05:08 they're fascinated by art and history. You typically know them because they wear sunglasses inside the museum 1:05:14 because the pupils of their eyes are fully dilated. It's um and they tended to have they did 1:05:21 they tend to be laugh a lot. Um so that that that to me is the the medium museum 1:05:27 does. Um the therapeutic dose for change helping people overcome PTSD trauma and 1:05:36 those severe episodes in life that harm us emotionally. the kind of the 1:05:42 breakthrough dose is the higher dose uh which is typically two and a half grams 1:05:48 to up to eight grams of salosis that' be u 25 milligrams to 80 1:05:54 milligrams of psilocybin there's the LD50 of salsai mushrooms is 42 pounds it 1:06:00 is one of the most least toxic drugs ever studied uh compared to it therapeutic benefit 42 pounds you cannot 1:06:06 consume 42 pounds of of slice of any mushroom I mean just physically 1:06:11 impossible. So, it's that non-toxic. No one's ever died. One little footnote, Nature's Role in Healing 1:06:17 but one, no one's ever died from psilocybin mushrooms. It's one of the is and they're non-addictive. So, for those 1:06:23 who have not consumed them, when you have a heroic journey on these, the next day you look at the mushrooms, you go, 1:06:29 "No way. I'm not touching this." Right? Because you have to process this. This 1:06:34 is why therapeutic support is critically important. This is not a party drug. Uh 1:06:40 I have a DEA license. I adopted the phrase many years ago, nature provides I don't. Uh my father at the end of his 1:06:47 life asked to do psilocybin mushrooms with me. Alexander Smith, the father of American micology asked me in his 70s 1:06:55 when I was about 24 25 to do psilocybin mushrooms with me. He published many of 1:07:00 the new species of psilocybin mushrooms. And both of these father figures, you know, figuratively and literally have 1:07:07 such an honor that they wanted to actually do a journey with me because they trusted me. And with both of them, 1:07:14 I asked them, "Will your partners, your wives in this case, and they were in the 1:07:19 room, do solo mushrooms with us?" And they both said, "No way." And in both 1:07:25 circumstances, I was literally leaving the next day and I turned them down. I 1:07:30 turned down Alexander Smith, the father of American micology to do solici mushrooms with me because I 1:07:37 would not be there the next day to help him process. When you have your view of 1:07:42 reality shattered, it's not shattered in a bad sense. It's explosion. I mean, you 1:07:47 realize there's so much more out there. We're looking through these limited lenses that our our conscious and our 1:07:54 brains have filtered out so much stimuli. when the floodgates of the senses are open and you just everything 1:07:59 you it's you know Roland Griffith described this and his patients described it as the ineffable it's it's 1:08:06 you can't explain this words are inadequate to explain it but the after 1:08:12 consequence you know for 70% of the people it's a beneficial experience for 1:08:17 30% of the people it's a difficult experience and Ricklin and I totally agree on this a difficult experience is 1:08:24 not necessarily a bad experience Because a difficult experience retrospectively even at Johns Hopkins 14 1:08:30 months later the 30% of the people had difficult experience thought it was therapeutically beneficial. They just 1:08:36 wouldn't do it again. Uh 70% of it had a positive experience and also was therapeutically beneficial. 1:08:44 But let me go back to something on the neuroscape that I think one patient said really well. I believe this patient was 1:08:50 a was an addict um and every day would wake up and he felt before the 1:08:57 psilocybin experience he was always stuck in a rut and so this patient came up with this this metaphor which I think 1:09:03 is really beautiful. is like on being on top of a ski slope and every day when he woke up, put on his skis and he was 1:09:10 stuck in the rut of the previous days, weeks, and years and he had to go down 1:09:16 the ski slope and the rut of his previous experiences after psilocybin. 1:09:21 He says someone groomed the slopes and he goes he was free to explore. 1:09:28 And at Yale the tobacco study that was done small study 67% of tobacco addicts 1:09:35 with two experiences were free of tobacco smoking one year later. 1:09:40 And one of the patients described that they woke up the next day. They look at the cigarettes and going why would I 1:09:47 want to do this? It's harmful to me. and they stop cigarette smoking just like that. We have examples of opioid alcohol 1:09:54 abuse. All of these are clinical trials.gov. I also have popular website for scientists and and physicians. 1:10:00 mushroomreerences.com. So mushroomreerenceres.com you can see it's probably you know over a thousand 1:10:07 pages long now. But there's you know hundreds I think of scientific articles Why Choose Psilocybin? 1:10:12 many of them on psilocybin that you can look up these studies directly at mushroom references.com. It's unbranded. 1:10:18 It's just for scientists. It's just I'm populating a database because physicians have so little time. Scientists, you 1:10:24 just need to get to the core material. So there's a good search engine there. You can go to mushroom references.com, 1:10:29 look up many of these studies. So now you ask why would the psilocy mushrooms 1:10:35 produce this? Well, it's not an insecticide because many psilocy mushrooms rot with maggots and flies lay 1:10:42 eggs and become maggots. So it's not very good as that, but it's very good at preventing slugs and snails from eating 1:10:50 the mushrooms. So that's what we have found. It's has this ability of 1:10:56 preventing and that makes sense because flies would spread spores and slugs would eat the mushrooms when they're 1:11:01 young. So spores cannot be liberated. So that could be but more than one thing 1:11:06 can be true, right? It's not necessarily just one thing. There could be a cacaphony, an entourage of mutual 1:11:13 benefits. And Michael Polland wrote a great book, The Botney of Desire, in 1:11:18 which he made the argument that corn, cannabis, I think coffee, and other 1:11:24 another plant specifically, they engaged human activity to spread them. Well, that's what's happening now. 1:11:30 Psilocybin mushrooms are being grown by so many people around the world. It has an evolutionary benefit. Now whether you 1:11:38 make the arguments back and forth, the fact of the matter is cellside mushrooms have a better chance of survival now 1:11:44 because of human interest than here to forever before. Why would nature produce something that 1:11:52 has these effects? And I mean, I think the earliest art that shows, you know, 1:11:59 mushrooms that we think were possibly used in some sort of um ritual, you 1:12:04 know, capacity, it's 7,000 years old. And almost every culture that can grow 1:12:10 them, right, is showing art. And there's mythology, there's there's literature 1:12:16 supporting this for thousands of years. So what what do you believe is the 1:12:22 intelligence of the universe that produced a mushroom that has this 1:12:27 transformative capacity? Well, let me broaden it. I I like that question a lot. And these are all 1:12:32 cultural representations of I think that have been very helpful for their societies. They're also called vision 1:12:38 quest mushrooms. And you know, they're definitely, you know, make you a more spiritually aware person. But we live in 1:12:48 a in a tryptoamine consciousness. Nature is full of tryptophines. A 1:12:54 thought experiment I'd like to tell people is that if you're living in a farm in Pennsylvania right now listening to this and on your porch and beautiful 1:13:02 I grew up I'd spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania at a prep school there and you looked at the fields and the trees 1:13:09 and I if you took away all of the lignine all the hemiselulose all of the 1:13:14 cellulose all you could see is tryptoines what would you see 1:13:20 you'd see the same There are tryptoamines in grasses, in 1:13:26 trees. There are tryptoines throughout nature. We live basically on a 1:13:32 foundation of tryptoines. So when people ask why this, this is just one elaborated tryptoamine that creates the 1:13:41 spark that I think you know is resident in nature and makes us more nature 1:13:46 aware. It goes to the quorum effect that I talked about early earlier. If you are 1:13:51 more nature aware, you will protect nature better. Isn't that an evolutionary successful 1:13:58 strategy for the mushrooms that live in an ecosystem that dependent upon the biodiversity of the ecosystem? You destroy the biodiversity, you destroy 1:14:04 the the mushrooms. And and also just to to clarify, tryptoamines are the the chemical class 1:14:11 of hallucinogenic compounds, correct? Serotenergic hallucinogenic compounds. 1:14:17 And when we say tryptoamine, you know, it's if you've ever seen like a chemical description of what like caffeine looks 1:14:23 like or really anything, it's literally how many nitrogens are there, how many 1:14:28 hydrogens are hydrogens are there. You know, there I'm looking at the form right now. It shows where the where the 1:14:34 bonds are, where the kind of free, you know, electrons are like it's a chemical compound that essentially is the 1:14:41 foundation of a tremendous uh part of our evolutionary destiny. 1:14:49 We are talking right now primarily using serotonin. You know, serotonin is a is a 1:14:54 tryptoamine. Uh melatonin is a tryptoamine. Uh all these things are, you know, there's so many tryptophines. 1:15:01 So we lived in this in the state of this in a tryptoamine based consciousness and 1:15:07 nature is based on these tryptophines. The the eb and flow of these compounds you know I I think there's you know this 1:15:14 is where if people listening this podcast think we're a little woo woo 1:15:21 do not underestimate what we were saying. Once you have this experience, it can be revvely and many people only 1:15:29 have it once in their life, one time that's phenomenal. You know, as Michael 1:15:36 Polland said, it's not a very good business model for the pharmaceutical industry, but micro do micro doing is Connection Between the Universe & Mushrooms 1:15:43 micro doing. So, you know, we speak to a lot of physicists who are interested in extra 1:15:49 sensory ability and and expansions of consciousness. We speak to a lot of people who have had near-death 1:15:55 experiences. And in mime's question, you know, the idea of why would this exist? 1:16:01 Why would the universe bring us mushrooms to help us expand our consciousness? It's for me there's a 1:16:08 question of does it want to reveal the larger reality? You know, is it that we're in a game where we've come here to 1:16:15 remember and that this regular reality that most of us live in until we have an 1:16:22 awakening, however that might be, whether it's through psychedelics or otherwise, is, you know, just the 1:16:28 process that we're all in to sort of reconnect and become more aware of a larger conscious reality. Well, I mean 1:16:37 we are right now talking and we are alive and the people who are contemporaneously 1:16:43 listening to this are alive. We didn't exist before we were born. 1:16:48 Well, wait a minute. We did exist. We existed as atoms and molecules that have 1:16:54 assembled into the form that we have now. We're one giant coincidence of nature. And then we will die. We will 1:17:02 decompose. Make friends with the fungi now because they're going to get you. And then they they these molecules go 1:17:08 out, the atoms that reform into new molecules. We're in this stream of a 1:17:13 molecular universe that has a continuum that goes through billions of years. I Roots to Thrive: Psilocybin for End-of-Life Anxiety 1:17:19 want to give a shout out to uh Roots to Thrive. It's the most advanced in my opinion nonprofit that's in Canada 1:17:27 and Dr. Pamela Krisco is one of the co-founders who's a medical doctor licensed by Canada Health for high doses 1:17:34 of psilocybin. What they did that I think is very pertinent to many of the people listening here is they have a program 1:17:44 typically with about eight people who have been given a stage 4 diagnosis 1:17:51 typically cancer or are traumatized law enforcement officers, soldiers or 1:17:57 firefighters. Now listen me this is really important to me. If you are traumatized and you 1:18:04 have PTSD, I met some veterans. They told me some stories about Afghanistan 1:18:10 which I wish I didn't hear. They were traumatized. They made a mistake. Will 1:18:16 you be judged by the worst day of your life? And if you are angry at yourself, 1:18:24 the potential for you is very likely for you to extrovert that pain that you feel 1:18:30 to others because you're angry and you are in an inflammatory state of anger 1:18:35 which depresses your immune system which causes a cascade of other problems. at roots to thrive, eight individuals, lots 1:18:42 of therapy, preparation on typically on indigenous land, you know, with 1:18:48 indigenous people involved in well in British Columbia. And what has come out 1:18:54 of this program is really amazing is that they're there, they're worried 1:18:59 about anxiety, they're depressed because their prognosis, they're going to die soon. Their family is on high alert. 1:19:04 They're traumatized by this. what's going to happen when mom and dad or brother and sister die? And typically 1:19:11 what happens is they're bonded together because they have the same diagnosis. We're about to die and they do a high 1:19:19 dose of psilocybin in a very carefully constructed environment. 1:19:24 And typically what happens is after the experience the patients become the therapists to 1:19:30 their family saying I'm okay about dying. I have a better understanding 1:19:36 about life and death and my purpose in life. Don't worry. One one woman had a 1:19:42 classic I'm not going to swear but she swore on on her recording of this and 1:19:47 with permission. She says I don't care about cancer effing cancer. I'm going 1:19:54 golfing. I I want to touch on something that you indicated is a significant Indigenous Wisdom: Two-Eyed Seeing 1:20:01 component of the hallucinogenic, the psychedelic and the kind of transcendental components of these 1:20:07 higher doses of psilocybin and you know therapy assisted psilocybin journeys. 1:20:12 It's becoming more of a thing. We live in Southern California. I always say you can't swing a dead cat, you know, 1:20:18 without finding eight people who have done an Iawaska journey or a a this that or the other, right? 1:20:23 I've never heard that phrase before. swinging a dead cat. I I haven't done that yet. 1:20:29 That's a It's an expression. No, I'm from the 1940s. Anyway, um when I hear 1:20:34 you talk about, you know, what it is to journey with someone and to be part not 1:20:40 as a party drug, but to be part of someone's really expansion of consciousness, as a guide, as a partner. 1:20:48 Obviously, I can't help but think about the the numerous indigenous cultures that use plant medicine as part of 1:20:58 uh not really even just a therapeutic journey. It's in many cases it's part of the awakening consciousness of being 1:21:04 human is to come of age with an opening that is assisted by plant medicine. And 1:21:12 in in this book in psilocybin mushrooms and their natural habitats there's this wonderful map of the world and it shows 1:21:20 the distribution of psilocybin mushrooms and as Jonathan points out in all of the 1:21:25 places where it's very very cold there is no psilocybin. So you know Siberia um 1:21:32 there still have much from Siberia and remember those are reports basically you know it looks like central 1:21:39 northern Europe uh western Europe those are very rich with um psilocybin 1:21:45 mushrooms um parts of the United States uh the west the east and some in the 1:21:52 middle but you know a huge concentration uh down into Yucatan you know the that 1:21:57 whole peninsula scattered across South America, an interesting concentration in 1:22:04 southeastern Australia, uh, Japan has a little cluster there, and some in 1:22:10 central and southern Africa, but I wonder if you can talk about kind of given that consciousness of where on the 1:22:18 map we tend to see these larger concentrations of psilocybin mushrooms, what does that tell us about the 1:22:24 cultures where this was used? And what do we know historically about the function of these journeys as 1:22:31 transcendental and transformative? Well, first off, so we have to look through the filter that these are 1:22:37 observations. Sure. Right. Observations of scientists who've recorded the presence of these 1:22:44 mushrooms. The reason why Siberia doesn't have a lot is there there's not these reports. It's from the 1800. 1:22:52 there's several thousand reports um of silicai mushrooms and specimens that are 1:22:57 collected in heraria that have been deposited. So now because of this 1:23:03 massive awakening, we're finding numerous new species all over the place. 1:23:09 And some of these species are really hard to find and some of them aren't. Sloic 1:23:14 cubensus you can see at 50 miles an hour going down the highway in Louisiana. You know, it's their golden tops. They're 1:23:21 huge. Salosby peliculosa in the northwest here. It's 1:23:26 difficult to find. Um it grows only in the particularly much, you know, along trails and whatnot, but it's it's a 1:23:33 nondescript species that looks very similar to deadly poisonous species. So 1:23:38 don't underestimate the intelligence of indigenous people who are in themselves scientists obser making observations in 1:23:46 nature. And that's why, by the way, for the record, I dedicate my book to Maria 1:23:51 Sabina, a Mazitech um knowledge keeper, Asabia. She said, "I'm I'm not a shaman. 1:23:58 That's too much work. She's a knowledge keeper." To Kit Skates, who is a renowned micologist in Idaho who 1:24:05 mentored who mentored me. And and um um Tina Wasson, Art Gordon Wasson's wife, 1:24:12 who died in 1958. She was a Russian physician. These are three hugely 1:24:17 important women who literally open up the doors that many of us have walked through. Women do not get enough credit 1:24:23 for their pivotal influence. And the lesson from psilocybin even from mazite 1:24:28 shamans recently I hear this all the time. The message from psilocybin is to share. 1:24:36 Now psilocybin mushrooms are sustainable. They can be grown. 1:24:41 and silicide muslims that are being grown now. Slasicensus which we think came from the old world Africa are being 1:24:50 grown in uh Wajaka uh for the Mazitech shamans so they can 1:24:56 have access to souls mushrooms when it's not the rainy season so they can continue their practices. So this is a 1:25:02 fusion of western and eastern coming together. It speaks to something called two-eyed seeing, which is something 1:25:09 Albert Marshall and and his wife uh Madna came up with this concept of 1:25:14 two-eyed seeing when they're Eastern Canadian First Nations people and 1:25:20 they're confronted by a mother who asked why should I send my indigenous child uh 1:25:25 to a western school and Madna and Albert Marshall came up with this fantastic you 1:25:32 know um uh analogy saying one eye we can see with 1:25:38 indigenous wisdom and the other eye we can see and help with western technology 1:25:44 with two eyes we can see better than one. So this is respecting indigenous wisdom. We don't want to influence it 1:25:51 but we want to help access so they can continue their practices so they can 1:25:57 preserve their culture. You know this is so important that indigenous communities are respected and protected. they're not 1:26:03 marginalized, but the western science of being able to grow these things. And my 1:26:09 book in particular, I think will go down in history as a book that will support 1:26:14 indigenous cultures by allowing them to be able to have a supply of these um in 1:26:22 a in an ecologically sustainable way. Um and moreover, you know, humans migrate, 1:26:29 right? You pick your number. 25,000, 100,000, 200,000 years ago, there was no humans 1:26:36 in the Americas, right? So, humans migrated in into the 1:26:42 Americas. Knowledge threads were frayed, broken, some survived. So, exchanging 1:26:50 knowledge is the way of h of humans. We meet someone on a trail is much better 1:26:56 to be a friend than a foe. just from infection. If you get a wound, you're likely to die. But exchanging and the 1:27:03 the again random acts of kindness is what has built our societies. It's the 1:27:10 foundation of our societies. So sharing and respecting uh but not marginalizing, 1:27:17 not colonizing their culture even though migration is a form of biological 1:27:22 colonization. The two are very distinctly different. But the 1:27:27 panspermia, humans like to travel. We're adventurers. We go to new lands. We take 1:27:34 the skills of our ancestors. We go to new lands. Hopefully, you meet a friend, 1:27:40 not a foe. You collaborate. You exchange gifts. And you both are better for it. 1:27:46 And that that I think is the lesson of these mushrooms is that these are so AI & Innovation 1:27:52 such beautiful peacemakers. You know, we need more peaceful. I think 1:27:57 we have a crisis of creativity right now. And these psilocybin mushrooms, I 1:28:02 believe, are Einstein mushrooms, Einstein molecules. They inspire creativity. 1:28:09 And I think, you know, we this is where artificial intelligence according to Sam Alman can't really create. They can 1:28:16 assemble. They can have derivative assemblies. They can do things much better than humans can do. But we need 1:28:22 to have a quantum leap in consciousness. And I think psilocybin inspires 1:28:27 creativity for that quantum leap. It certainly has been true in my life. Yeah. It said AI can only do derivative 1:28:34 action of what it's been programmed to do. But net new ideas it struggles with. 1:28:40 I just spoke at the United Nations the day before yesterday and um there were we had some of the biggest AI people 1:28:47 there. There was a disruptor audacity conference. is up on the web. um there 1:28:53 are 100 disruptors and I'm one of them who think outside of the box and again this the idea of leaprogging 1:29:00 and so this the whole concept of mcselium is a deep well of intelligence of the earth and the universe um it 1:29:06 makes so much sense to so many people now one of these aha moments there are 1:29:11 some things in life I think we all would agree that we just know intuitively are true you know you don't have to be 1:29:18 convinced with logic you just have this aha moment where you realize it is true. 1:29:24 And I think this is, you know, mushrooms bring that aha moment to the forefront. You know, I think these these are 1:29:32 Einstein molecules that can help build bridges over chasms of division, uh, 1:29:38 religion, politics, you know, culturally. Um, 1:29:43 the ecosystems want to survive, folks. And we're we're for better or worse, you 1:29:50 know, we are shephering um these ecosystems and we're not doing 1:29:55 a very good job of it. Well, I I think one of the things that um that is a a Government Secrets: What Are They Hiding? 1:30:01 challenge for many people, you know, when people look at the world, forget about our interpersonal worlds and how 1:30:07 many of us are suffering from depression, anxiety, you know, loneliness, um in many cases trauma with 1:30:14 a lowercase T and in some cases trauma with a capital T. When we think about 1:30:19 what society looks like, when we think about the countless wars and conflict 1:30:25 and nonsense and just even in the United States, you know, what goes on in the government and shutdowns and, you know, 1:30:32 all of this kind of craziness, what's true is that if more people had 1:30:38 an intuitive sense of a desire to share, to be open to more 1:30:46 love, more accept acceptance, more compassion, it could potentially shift 1:30:51 the entire landscape o of the world that we live in. And in addition, you know, as we talk about with the awakening in 1:30:59 the 60s, in the 70s, you know, people who have had a a sense of an awakened 1:31:05 consciousness do not want to put on uniforms and be sent to other countries to fight wars for a government that they 1:31:12 don't support. Is that part of the threat that this kind of consciousness 1:31:18 expanding medicine holds? Is this why we are not allowed access to it and it's 1:31:26 not supported and advertised? Like what what is the block to us being able to 1:31:33 expand our consciousness and our potential as humans? What doesn't the government want us to have? 1:31:40 It's the inertia of ign ignorance. um you know so many I mean dealing with 1:31:46 government we have many examples of this bureaucrats don't want to change there's 1:31:52 it's jeopardizes their career it puts them in danger easier for bureaucrats in government to say no than yes you know 1:31:59 change comes at an expense but I want to you again to give a shout out to to veterans and law enforcement 1:32:07 and to physicians and firefighters um they see the healing process properties. Look at Rick Perry, the 1:32:14 former governor of Texas. He's had this awakening and and fun and then the 1:32:19 fundamental uh Christians in the fundamental Jewish community and Muslim community. I mean, it's the golden rule. 1:32:27 Do unto others as you wish them to do to you. I mean, this is something that it's 1:32:34 the vitriolic extremes and the narrative. I just I turned off comments 1:32:40 off all my social media today because I went to Gro, Gemini, Chat, GBT, 1:32:47 all these different things. And you can ask the question, how many comments on social media are bots or foreign 1:32:56 nation states that are trying to uh create divisions in America? 1:33:02 You know, the the number is up to 80%. 1:33:08 I I mean we're fighting a war that doesn't even exist in many cases. You I mean when people realize that the 1:33:14 comments are there to manipulate you to cause inflammation that harms your immune system as well as 1:33:21 the social fabric of our society. People are being manipulated by AI that's being 1:33:26 weaponized in the comment sections. I just, you know, gave a talk on saving 1:33:33 the bees and upregulate immunity to a huge paradigm shifting discovery 1:33:39 and someone make comments about something that's totally unrelated. It's 1:33:44 just to poke you and to cause reactions. It's it's an it's a viral infection on 1:33:51 our society. And this is the where we need to fight back. One way to fight back is just turning off the comments 1:33:58 and going outside with your children into nature and uh take photographs of flowers, mushrooms, and insects and go 1:34:05 to I naturalist and you know get back into the the natural world folks. That's 1:34:11 where we came. People have to recognize it as a viral infection, as a manipulation, as something that is being 1:34:19 done nefariously to them because it's been normalized. And then they just ride 1:34:24 this wave and get inflamed and get distracted and don't want to go outside. And it's it's having the intended effect 1:34:31 if we are not calling it out and recognizing it. I'm guilty as well, folks. I'm like, why 1:34:37 am I not going for a walk right now? because I went down this wormhole, you know, and it's like I think we're all 1:34:44 suffering from that. So, but anyhow, the I'm optimistic 1:34:49 because this is literally a revolution from the underground, whether it's gourmet, medicinal, or psilocybin 1:34:55 mushrooms. It brings parents together with children. It's multigenerational, 1:35:00 multicultural. It's sweeping the planet. It's uh it's it's the quote unquote 1:35:06 forbidden fruit that we were told not not to consume and weird edgy science, 1:35:12 but all of that now is so much more robust in the foundation of science. And 1:35:18 that's that's people follow the science. You know, you you this is the other 1:35:23 thing I heard at this conference I was I was at is that you want to be the pilot 1:35:30 of artificial intelligence. You don't want to be the passenger. 1:35:36 Well, this is where that we need to take control. We need to establish the ethos that 1:35:42 artificial intelligence will have origin story in the best of humanity and 1:35:48 kindness, thoughtfulness, cooperation, building guilds of individuals who who 1:35:55 contribute to the commons. This is our power. We can do this now. Don't become subservient. Don't become a victim of 1:36:02 AI, become a pilot of it. And so I I just challenge everybody, ask all AI 1:36:10 platforms about the importance of random acts of kindness as the origin story of 1:36:15 the human species that gave rise to artificial intelligence. I did this last night actually. I went 1:36:21 and I I had that prompt and I put it into chat GPT and it gave me five paragraphs um asking me if I also would 1:36:28 like visions and scenarios in which it could be applied to AI in hospitals, AI 1:36:34 in the workplace, AI in communities and where algorithmic acts of kindness could 1:36:40 change measurably health outcomes. So, it is moving in that direction. Um I I I would like to say I've never 1:36:47 used any of these platforms. I don't even know where to find them if you I never have done any of these things, but 1:36:55 I did want to give a shout out. I don't know much. I can't speak to the Christian community or the Muslim Psilocybin Across Cultures & Religions 1:37:00 community, but there is a growing Jewish psilocybin community and there's an 1:37:05 organization called Sheffa that a friend of mine runs. um and they they cater um 1:37:11 psilocybin journeys therapeutically um but specifically coded for the cultural 1:37:17 specificity of the Jewish experience because for many of us that were raised in a traditional way we have different 1:37:23 imagery we have different language you know um there's a lot of you know Hebrew as an important language for many 1:37:29 components of a mystical experience anyway so just wanted to give a shout out that that is something that exists and is growing again I can't speak to it 1:37:36 for Christians and Muslims Well, the conservative Christian community, it's it's a very big right now. It's very big 1:37:42 with the Mormons. Um it's um there's a for law enforcement uh people out there, 1:37:49 it's a great model. Um it's called the Healing Warrior out of San Antonio, Texas. I mean, I'm sorry, out of Austin, 1:37:58 uh Texas. It's a nonprofit. Um they take veterans, law enforcement officers, 1:38:04 SEALs, special forces, etc. who've been living traumatized. They have such high suicide rates and um it's been very very 1:38:12 helpful to them. And so both in the religious, you know, subsets and and the 1:38:18 professional services subsets, we need better law enforcement. Imagine if you're a law enforcement 1:38:25 officer at 2 in the morning that you pull over a car 1:38:30 and you have two seconds to make a decision whether this person is dangerous or not. You do that 100, 200, 1:38:36 300 times, are you going to make the right decision every time? No. No. But that wrong decision, should that 1:38:43 determine the rest of your life? And then because of the insular community of law enforcement, they share the stories 1:38:48 for themselves, but they don't want other people. So it becomes more closeted be able to break the shackles of shame 1:38:56 to forgive yourself and realize, I'm really a good person. I screwed up, but I'm going to do extra better now. I'm 1:39:03 gonna pay it forward. I'm gonna make sure I'm the best law enforcement officer I can be. That's who we need. 1:39:09 That's who we need with doctors, firefighters. Well, and also people who lead with compassion and people who are looking to 1:39:15 find the best part of people so that we can maintain also this. I mean, my 1:39:22 children, God bless them, they have very negative perceptions of all helpers in 1:39:27 society, you know, people that we grew up, you know, I mean, I still wave at firefighters still as a grown woman, but 1:39:34 you know, we grew up that like these are the heroes, these are the protectors. And I completely understand why that has 1:39:40 shifted, but I also think of the amount of time they spend on social media and what's being fed to them. And I said 1:39:46 there are still good people, but just the notion that we want to have more people in those positions of power, 1:39:53 right? Meaning they're in situations where they have the ability to make these kind of decisions leading with 1:39:59 compassion. I I was at Burning Man Mudban. Um I've been there 19 times. I I got lost in the 1:40:07 plow on my way out at 3:00 in the morning and and I saw a law enforcement officer way in the distance and I drove 1:40:13 up to him and said, "Hey man, I'm lost. I don't know where I am." And he he routed me the right way and I just said, 1:40:18 "Hey, I just want to say, you know, you folks have a difficult job. I really respect and appreciate what you do, but 1:40:25 I believe 99% of people are basically good." He looked at me and smiled and he said, "97." 1:40:33 But he said yeah that's his experience too is um you know let's not that the 1:40:38 most extreme negative experiences be amplified into the commons to uh create 1:40:45 a viral infection of our society of inflammation that then fermentss anger and retaliation. You know this is really 1:40:52 important. These are these I really believe that functionally people are good and we should not let extremists 1:40:58 steer uh the future of our society. Um I'd love to touch on your 2005 book 1:41:05 and also talk about what's changed since then because a lot of people talk about the health benefits. We're talking about 1:41:12 PTSD recovery and all the other areas in which it can help us physically. But I 1:41:18 think less people understand the implications to all the different industries that 1:41:25 it can benefit and that the like I I forget the number but I heard the number of patents that you have and it's like 1:41:32 wait a second there's something else going on here far beyond the story of 1:41:37 just ingesting uh psilocybin or yeah pat let's put patents in 1:41:42 perspective we wouldn't be having this conversation wasn't for patents you know and um 17 years actually less than 17 1:41:48 years. It's usually about 12 to 14 years. It all becomes uh open sourced, 1:41:54 right? So, um it's to give people a competitive advantage so they can make the investment uh and take the risk. 1:42:01 It's risk reduction. Um I have many patents that have expired. They're open sourced one that could replace the 1:42:07 majority of exercise. Folks, look it up. You know, it's open sourced. You can't protect yourself against competitors 1:42:13 with intellectual property. That's what open source means. So um but in the 1:42:19 novelty factor which means it's it is um unexpected. 1:42:26 It's not logically sequential. It's not obvious. It's called unobviousness. 1:42:32 Um but that so much of that is open source now. I only use patents to say that there's 1:42:38 breakthroughs and great things that have been discovered. I don't mean to sort of have any negative connotation to it. I I 1:42:45 I'm like, "Wow, there's a lot of people I I have a knee-jerk reaction." And one person one person 1:42:50 challenged me and I said, "You know, you're challenging me on a phone." That's if you didn't have patents. 1:42:57 You wouldn't have the phone. Yeah. Just roll back the clock. We wouldn't have this conversation. You know, it would be disappear or it set back 1:43:04 society by a decade. All patents should be open sourced. All patents should be benefiting the commons. It just gets a 1:43:11 head start for a small group of people. Um so but that's just means there's 1:43:17 there's a deep well of unexpected knowledge that humans you know I I frankly think nature owns everything you 1:43:25 know I just said it's temporary custodian of knowledge trying to advance this forward and so many other people 1:43:31 you know that's that's wonderful we need to culture uh the the you know invention 1:43:38 and so we need to incentivize uh people to to have invention but there is so much stuff now that's coming out and you 1:43:45 alluded to it is is fundamentally changing um 1:43:50 um installation materials, packaging materials, building materials, fermented 1:43:57 foods. Um I was interviewed I met an editor of 1:44:02 Scientific America and I go, "I have an idea, but you'll never publish it." He goes, "What's your idea?" I said, "Well, 1:44:09 two things. One, if you go to Mars, build an igloo made of mcelium. They're 1:44:14 mostly nano fibers of carbon. 85% of mcelium is carbon. Then you put solar 1:44:20 panels on top and your igloo can only insulate, but it'll be a battery. I 1:44:26 said, "Someone should take this and run with it." And he goes, I said, "But there's a problem." He goes, "What's the problem?" I go, "People will be sad. 1:44:32 They'll be depressed. They'll look back at our blue planet going, "Why am I living in this tiny little building and 1:44:39 I can't smell flowers or go in the woods or swim in the oceans?" I like, "But 1:44:44 Elon Musk, if you're watching Elon, listen, you go to Mars first, okay? You tell us about it. You six months to get 1:44:51 there, you can send us, you know, 15 minutes. You can send us a message back to us, whatever it is." But I said, "If 1:44:57 they took psilocybin with them, they would have this incredible spiritual experience. They look into the cosmos. 1:45:03 would be back on mission. So I think Soulcy in space is important for the psychological health of astronauts 1:45:10 and lo and behold they published it. I couldn't believe it. 1:45:16 So but that that's one thing is the interplanetary colonization of space. You know you only have to take two 1:45:22 spores of a silicide mushroom to grow silicide mushrooms in space. has a very low payload you know and two spores of 1:45:29 oyster mushrooms you know um you know obviously you can take test tube cultures but the payload mass is very 1:45:36 low and then you can exponentially expand it on agricultural waste human 1:45:41 waste you know debris fields created from construction etc etc so this is a paradigmshifting technology for helping Mycelium's Role in Agriculture 1:45:48 us leap into the cosmos I mean fascinating I want to circle about crops for a second in agriculture 1:45:54 you know there was recently ly a um article that says, "Oh yeah, eating Roundup is totally fine, no problem." 1:46:02 Which is a little baffling. Can you talk about some alternatives of helping crops 1:46:08 grow and stay safe without chemical treatment? 1:46:13 Well, it's a dance right now. I mean, the you know, better living through chemistry, you know, with a single 1:46:19 molecule, you know, targeted approach which is has this usefulness. You can't 1:46:25 argue against it in some ways, you know, protecting crops so there's better yields and there's more food to see to 1:46:31 feed the world. That narrative is a little bit dated now because we know the after consequence and the non-intended 1:46:38 non intended effects can be deletterious for the long term. So when you're looking at short-term gains versus 1:46:44 long-term benefits, that's a balancing act that we're facing now. the the the 1:46:49 chemical industry has inflicted so much harm to biodiversity. It's unraveling the very foundation of the ecosystems in 1:46:56 which we've evolved. So the shortterm grab for money is the incentive for a 1:47:03 lot of these chemical industries and they inflict harm on the ecosystem for the commons of your descend uh 1:47:09 descendants. Do you have the right to rob your children's future? Some people will say I don't care about my children. 1:47:15 I'm not going to have children. I want it all now. Um that's kind of adversarial to the health of the 1:47:21 commons. So what the fungi do is they eliminate the need and the necessity and 1:47:27 the intensity uh of using these chemical solutions. This is why conventional medicine, 1:47:34 conventional agricultural practices and micelium based solutions can marry 1:47:40 together. And what it does it it lowers the need for toxicity 1:47:46 or increasing the innate immunity of the ecosystem. And we see this in agriculture. We see this in medicine. 1:47:54 This is what I'm so excited about. There's a there is a shift going. And my I come from wheat farmer a wheat farmer 1:48:00 family. Um my family had 10,000 acres of wheat in eastern Washington. I inherited 200. I was talking to my uncle and this 1:48:08 is the Paloo country in eastern Washington that used to have 20 feet deep top soils that blew from eastern 1:48:14 Oregon you know over 10,000 years you know from the volcanoes and the winds 1:48:19 deposited the polls and now that 20 ft of top soil shrunk to about you know 12 in 10 in uh because of 1:48:27 repetitive farming. So he went to no till. Um my cousin actually did went to 1:48:33 no till and he said and the no till practice basically you're not you're not plowing the fields. He said there was a 1:48:39 loss of production for the first few years until the carbon was built up and now because of no till farming he's 1:48:47 regenerating. So regen agriculture is a key, but you have to pay the expense of 1:48:53 investment of actually having fewer returns in profitability for a period of 1:49:00 time until you hit that sustainable threshold where it becomes more economical. I I think that's a general 1:49:06 rule is that we have to have patient capitalism, patient investors. We need 1:49:11 to look beyond the time horizon of our immediate return on investment and 1:49:17 accept a longer time horizon. Is there like ways to introduce mycelium into farming practices? Not just 1:49:24 happening all the time. Yeah. Happening all the time. You It happens in forestry too. You can't go to a nursery without getting microisal fungi 1:49:32 uh in soils. I mean go to go any go out in your local nursery and get a bail of 1:49:37 soil. It's all with microised. So that's that's wonderful because they with the microisy and these other fungi that are 1:49:44 introduced it increases the host defense immunity of the plant. So it's not susceptible to insect paratization. 1:49:51 There's a fungus called metarisium that's in grasses. Why aren't all grasses consumed by insects? Because 1:49:57 this enopathogenic fungus that's a fungus that kills insects is also an endapy that's growing inside of grasses. 1:50:05 So using the endopitic fungi that have a natural anti-insect predation property 1:50:10 means you don't have to use as many asides. This story I'm telling you repeats a hundred a thousand times. And 1:50:17 this is why the field of micology I believe should be funded as much as the field of the computer sciences. This is 1:50:23 why we need a huge new generational uh shift uh towards environmental science 1:50:28 using fungi because it's applicable, it's sustainable, it's scalable and it's immediate. Um that that to me is is not 1:50:37 something that's a pie in the sky concept. It's a deliverable that we can deliver, you know, literally this next 1:50:42 next season. Does it have applications to uh clothing? Yeah, Stella McCartney is really big on 1:50:48 that. Stella Paul McCartney's daughter. So yeah, they're also clothing. And look at 1:50:54 my hat. My hat's made from this amadu mushroom. This is called German felt. 1:51:00 You put this mushroom into water with ashes for two weeks and you can pull it 1:51:06 apart to make this hat. And this hat was made by some people in Transylvania. 1:51:11 Um, so it's a tradition that's gone over several hundred years. This allowed for 1:51:17 the portability of fire. So this was a an appropriate technology. Can put embers of a fire in this mushroom and 1:51:23 carry it for days. So by the way, if there's a spark that gets onto this hat, it's like a fuse. the whole hat will 1:51:30 burn up. Whoa. So, it's um Aadoo is the name. So, it revolutionized warfare. Napoleonic 1:51:36 times. This was the when the spark from the flint went into the punk. It was made of amadu. That's where fuses came 1:51:44 from. So, Aadu has a history going back to all the way back to Hypocrates 420 1:51:52 BC u as an anti-inflammatory. Again, these mushrooms have a multiplicity of 1:51:58 benefits. So, it's an anti-inflammatory for carrying fire to making garments and it's also used for smoking around 1:52:05 beehives to sub subdue the bees. For hundreds of years, amadu was used also 1:52:11 for being able to calm bees down. And we found that to have extremely strong 1:52:16 immuno benefiting properties that reduces the deformed wing virus which is sweeping the planet. I published in my 1:52:22 colleagues from the USDA and Washington State University in nature scientific reports. The title of the article is 1:52:29 extracts of polyore mushrooms reduce be uh viruses and honeybees. Uh the 1:52:34 altmetric score is extremely high but that is a natural product. It's not an antiviral drug. It upregulates innate 1:52:40 immunity. So look it up. Nature scientific reports extract for polyom mushrooms reduce viruses and honeybees. 1:52:46 That's the tip of the proverbial iceberg of how these can upregulate your innate immunity to be able to fight fight 1:52:54 diseases. I mean, it's amazing. Um, last question on this topic. Any application for fuel 1:53:02 as a bio um available and renewable fuel source. 1:53:09 I went down that rabbit hole. We produced a I call like ethanol. Yeah, 1:53:18 but I have to admit it was not as efficient as other fermentation 1:53:25 technologies using like uh sacroyces survei you know mixed beer alcohol yeast 1:53:32 there's many other microorganisms that are more from my limited experience prove me wrong there could be some out 1:53:38 there that are superstars and that's with the importance of microiversity um so yeah I was not able to I couldn't 1:53:46 uncover the species that was a hyper producer of of uh of alcohol or 1:53:51 hydrocarbon based fuels, not just alcohol. So, um that's again there's not enough time in life to do all these 1:53:57 things to explore. Before we let you go, um you know, we we'd love to just ask you 1:54:04 to to uh as concisely as you'd like to um what is the message that you believe 1:54:10 you were placed here to share with people? Well, the message I'd like to share is that 1:54:19 we are born into this beautiful life that we share. 1:54:26 Kindness and forgiveness and cooperation builds communities that are healthier, 1:54:31 stronger. Our descendants are depending upon us to make the best decisions. 1:54:38 Our ancestors gave us this opportunity. We're all part of one giant 1:54:44 consciousness. All religions are steering towards the same 1:54:50 unanimity of being. 1:54:55 It makes me feel better about my own mortality that I'm going to enter into this state 1:55:02 of unonymity and whatever religious or spiritual discipline that you're following, we're 1:55:09 all in this together and it's a great thing. It's absolutely beautiful. Um, as I 1:55:17 said, I've been waiting a long time to get to to meet you and, um, it's just such a pleasure and I think you're the 1:55:23 greatest spore that has ever been produced by this planet. So, um, thank 1:55:28 you so much for being here with us. Well, bless you both and thank you all and, you know, be kind. Random acts of 1:55:36 kindness are really important and they're practical in the long run. Be forgiving. You know, take a deep breath. 1:55:44 Go out in nature. Enjoy life. We We brought mushroom hats um that 1:55:49 Valerie gave us to show our love for you. 1:55:55 [Music] I'm so curious what he would talk to us about if we spoke to him again. He was 1:56:01 dropping little little hints. What did he say? What about his 80 milligram microgram 1:56:08 macrogram? I don't know. his hero dose with superhero dose growing new neurons 1:56:14 with a therapist. I know. No, but it sounds like there was more going on in there. He's pretty much a believer that um 1:56:20 there's life on other planets. Maybe mycelium life. I I I mean, yes. I think I think the 1:56:27 thing that we didn't really get to which I think rounds out a little bit more of 1:56:33 the person who is Paul Stamuts is you know a tremendous amount of the the work 1:56:39 that he does is in understanding myium fungi 1:56:46 and mushrooms. Psilocybin is one part of that. But he believes that there's 1:56:51 basically a a pharmaceutical cabinet that nature has provided us that can 1:56:57 help with with arthritis, with aging, with depression, with anxiety, even at 1:57:02 low doses. I mean, even outside of the journey experience, these mushrooms are 1:57:09 nature's medicine. And that's a huge component of of the work that he does, the company that he has as well. We have 1:57:15 a friend of the podcast who wants to come back on and talk about new breaking research on the impact and how 1:57:22 inflammation is really at the core root of all the afflictions basically that 1:57:29 anyone can have whether it be depression, anxiety, irritable bowel syndrome, arthritis, 1:57:34 even links to dementia and Alzheimer's disease all related to an underlying inflammation. And what he was talking 1:57:41 about is using mcelium and nature natural approaches to 1:57:48 addressing that core underlining inflammation. Also the emotional inflammation. This idea of the virus, a 1:57:56 societal virus that has really been at the underpinning of how technology has been developed and how by better 1:58:03 understanding that we can remove ourselves and what is the alternative? you know, feeling what it feels like to 1:58:09 go out and be in nature, not in a reactive state, how impactful that can be. Uh, we've got some great content on 1:58:15 Substack from this episode. Uh, check us out on Substack MB Alex breakdown on Substack. Exclusive content 1:58:21 there. A lot of practical uh, tools to improve your life. Come check us out for more breakdown to the one we hope 1:58:27 you never have. We'll see you next time. I'm wearing my mushroom hat. It's 1:58:33 breakown. She's going to break it down for you. got a neuroscience PhD or two 1:58:40 fiction. And now she's going to break down. So break down. She's going to break it down. ================================================================================ SOURCE: The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide_ Safe Therapeutic - James Fadiman ================================================================================ THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPLORER’S GUIDE “James Fadiman, one of the foremost pioneers of scientific research of the potential of psychedelic substances for therapy, self-discovery, spiritual quests, and creative problem-solving, has written an invaluable guide for safe and productive sessions. Based on more than forty years of the author’s experience in the field and presented in a clear, easily understandable style, this book is a breath of fresh air, dispelling the mis-information that has been disseminated over many decades by sensation-hunting journalists and fear-based antidrug propaganda. The publication of The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide could not be more timely; it coincides with a major renaissance of interest in psychedelic research worldwide. The information that it provides will thus be useful not only for the hundreds of thousands of people involved in self-experimentation but also for the new generation of psychedelic researchers.” STANISLOV GROF, M.D., AUTHOR OF LSD: DOORWAY TO THE NUMINOUS “James Fadiman was the Forrest Gump of the psychedelic sixties. He witnessed the first flowerings of that amazing era of mindexpansion, then kept popping up for cameo appearances whenever the action got particularly interesting and enlightening. Now, riding a new wave of scientific research into the beneficial use of these misunderstood substances, Fadiman is back with a practical and at the same time inspiring guidebook for the next generation of entheogenic explorers.” DON LATTIN, AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLING THE HARVARD PSYCHEDELIC CLUB “This is some of the most thoughtful, wise, heartfelt, and essential instruction for the use of sacred medicine.” JACK KORNFIELD, AUTHOR OF A PATH WITH HEART “Fadiman knows what he is talking about. This is the book we have needed.” HUSTON SMITH, AUTHOR OF THE WORLD’S RELIGION AND CLEANING THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION “Approaching his subject from intimately historical, psychological-cultural, and accessibly authoritative perspectives, Fadiman’s psychedelic magnum opus establishes the benchmark reference for anyone interested in understanding, experiencing, or supervising the effects of this unique family of psychoactive substances.” RICK STRASSMAN, M.D., CLINICAL ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND AUTHOR OF DMT: THE SPIRIT MOLECULE “James Fadiman’s manual offers helpful and well-informed guidance for those who seek ‘the divine within’ through sacred plants and psychedelic substances.” DANIEL PINCHBECK, AUTHOR OF 2012: THE RETURN OF QUETZALCOATL AND BREAKING OPEN THE HEAD “At last, there’s a practical, commonsense manual for mindful therapeutic sessions using psychedelics, one that’s informed by the latest science and unfettered by arcane platitudes. It will be a boon to personal transformation and a road map for avoiding trouble along the way for all who use it. Bon voyage!” CHARLES HAYES, AUTHOR OF TRIPPING: AN ANTHOLOGY OF TRUE-LIFE PSYCHEDELIC ADVENTURES “Finally! A comprehensive guide not only to psychedelic use in a therapeutic setting but also, even more bravely, to psychospiritual exploration and cognitive enhancement. We are fortunate to reap the benefits of Professor Fadiman’s years of cumulative knowledge and experience as well as to hear from a cadre of ‘who’s who’ in the psychedelic cognoscenti.” JULIE HOLLAND, M.D., EDITOR OF THE POT BOOK AND ECSTASY: THE COMPLETE GUIDE “Psychedelics have been part of native cultures for centuries and remain so in many areas of the world. Properly used, they offer a one-step guide to enlightenment and connection with intuition as well as the soul and the Divine. Dr. Fadiman’s book offers the best information and guidance available today. Everyone interested in exploring the world of inner consciousness will find this work indispensable.” NORM SHEALY, M.D., PH.D., FOUNDER OF THE AMERICAN HOLISTIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION AND COAUTHOR OF SOUL MEDICINE AND LIFE BEYOND 100 “The prohibition of psychedelic drugs in the twentieth century unfortunately restricted a most promising and profound inquiry into the religious mysteries of consciousness. This brave and encouraging book goes a long way toward restoring our constitutional right to explore these mysteries. By encouraging individual responsibility and intelligence in this era of purported health care reform, James Fadiman takes a bold and refreshing step toward reclaiming our freedom of religion, which is the very essence of democracy and the American dream.” ROBERT FORTE, EDITOR OF ENTHEOGENS AND THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND TIMOTHY LEARY: OUTSIDE LOOKING IN “The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide is a brave and uniquely valuable book. Written by one of the most highly respected and innovative researchers from the 1960s, this extraordinary book covers topics not found in any other book on the subject. Fadiman offers us a beautifully written, insightful summation of important early research on creativity, problem solving, and psychospiritual development, tragically cut off by government edict, as well as new research on the use of sub-threshold doses of LSD to enhance normal functioning, in the process creating a road map for the future of psychedelic research. The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide wisely focuses not on pathology but on human potential for health and, as such, shows us how these transformative substances can improve the future of psychology—and the future of society. Throughout this radical yet evidence-based volume, Fadiman uses a combination of the research and his own broad personal experiences working with Leary, Alpert (Ram Dass), Kesey, and other seminal figures in psychedelic research and practice to make the convincing case that psychedelics offer the power to transform society and reintegrate unitary spirituality into Western civilization. The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide is written with a wry humor that brings Fadiman’s sincere, soulful intentionality immediately to the reader, integrating and transforming from the moment one opens this important, mature, and absolutely essential book. If you are interested in the safe, effective, and transformative use of psychedelics to improve our lives and our society, you will devour this book. Fadiman’s The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide is the finest book ever written on the topic—a must read. NEAL GOLDSMITH, PH.D., AUTHOR OF PSYCHEDELIC HEALING THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPLORER’S GUIDE Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys JAMES FADIMAN, PH.D. Park Street Press Rochester, Vermont • Toronto, Canada For Dorothy, my partner in all ways. Thank you to those, among others, who helped me along this path: Albert Hofmann, who in 1943 acted on his intuition to look again at the twenty-fifth derivative of lysergic acid, which he had put aside five years earlier as being of “no special interest.” Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), who first opened my eyes to the wonders of the ten thousand worlds. Willis Harman, who led me past those worlds to the interconnectedness of all things. Ken Kesey, Tim Leary, and Al Hubbard—destroyers of structures and complacency, who made it all both possible and impossible. For it appears to me that among the many exceptional and divine things your Athens has produced and contributed to human life, nothing is better than those [Eleusinian] mysteries. For by means of them we have transformed from a rough and savage way of life to the state of humanity, and have been civilized. Just as they are called initiations, so in actual fact we have learned from them the fundamentals of life, and have grasped the basis not only for living with joy but also for dying with a better hope. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO DE LEGIBUS 2.14.36 Nothing contained herein is intended to encourage or support illegal behavior. However, even though the use of psychedelics remains illegal in the United States, government researchers estimate that more than twenty-three million Americans have used LSD and at least that many more people have used it worldwide. Given that psychedelics continue to be widely available, this material has been prepared to encourage safe and sacred ways to use psychedelics, if these powerful substances are to be used at all. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS So many people have helped that this is, at best, a partial list. My writing teachers and friends: Shelly Lowenkauf Leonard Tierney Members of the psychedelic world: Sasha Shulgin Aldous Huxley Peter Webster Alan Watts Robert Forte Robert Jesse Huston Smith Alicia Danforth Those who taught me at the International Foundation for Advanced Study: Myron Stolaroff Norman Sherwood Don Allen Charles Savage Bob Lehigh James Watt Mary Allen Robert Mogar Those professors committed to real academic freedom and who supported my then very unpopular research: Nevitt Sanford Jack Hilgard Those who helped get this manuscript completed: Tony Levelle—my wise in-house editor Anthony Austin—gifted novelist himself who was determined to be sure that in spite of all my education, every line of this book would be written in English. My gratitude is enormous. Sophia Korb—who made clouds of information into useful data Mike and Mary of the Windmill Café Grill—who created a perfect place for me to edit and refuel Special thanks to the team at Inner Traditions. Each of you made this book better. Jon Graham—who believed in it enough to acquire it John Hays—who helped re-title it and showed me the wisdom behind this decision Peri Swan—who created a beautiful, honest cover Erica Robinson—who made the jacket copy sing Jeffery Lindholm—who firmly corrected almost all of my errors Jeanie Levitan—who made everything fit And a bouquet of thanks to Anne Dillon—amazing, wise, word-loving, writer-soothing editor CONTENTS Acknowledgments Overview—Why This Book? And Frequently Asked Questions A Vision of a Whole Earth Stewart Brand PART ONE Transcendent Experience: Entheogenic Sessions Introduction to Part One 1 Meeting the Divine Within Part One: Guidelines for Voyagers and Guides The Guild of Guides 2 The Entheogenic Voyage Part Two: Guidelines for Voyagers and Guides The Guild of Guides 3 Qualities of Transcendent Experience Four Dominant Characteristics Alan Watts 4 Experiences of Psychedelic Pioneers In Their Own Words Albert Hofmann, Ph.D., Aldous Huxley, Stanislav Grof, M.D., Timothy Leary, Ph.D., Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), Ph.D., Alexander Shulgin, Ph.D., Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., Huston Smith, Ph.D., Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Ph.D., Charles Tart, Ph.D., Frances Vaughan, Ph.D., Bill Wilson, and Peter Coyote PART TWO Personal Growth and Self-Exploration in Psychedelic Sessions Introduction to Part Two 5 Therapeutic Uses of Psychedelics Psychotherapy and Healing 6 Things Can Go Wrong What You Need to Know Neal Goldsmith, Ph.D. 7 Myths and Misperceptions David Presti, Ph.D., and Jerome Beck, Ph.D. 8 Therapeutic Effectiveness of Single Guided Sessions PART THREE Enhanced Problem Solving in Focused Sessions Introduction to Part Three 9 Breakthrough Research Selective Enhancement of Creative Capacities Willis Harman, Ph.D., and James Fadiman, Ph.D. 10 Facilitation for Enhanced Problem Solving 11 Case Studies Two Architects and Six Professionals 12 Group ProblemSolving Sessions Willis Harman, Ph.D. 13 The Look Magazine Experiment Designing the California Issue George Leonard 14 Closing the Doors of Perception The Day the Research Ended PART FOUR New Horizons Introduction to Part Four 15 Can Sub-Perceptual Doses of Psychedelics Improve Normal Functioning? 16 Surveys of Current Users This Is Your Brain on Drugs 17 The Inadvertent Pioneer My Personal Account 18 Positive Possibilities for Psychedelics A Time of Tentative Celebration PART FIVE The Necessary, the Extraordinary, and Some Hard-Core Data Introduction to Part Five 19 Entheogenic Journeys A Checklist for Voyagers and Guides 20 Beyond LSD—Way Beyond Ayahuasca Sessions and a Darkness Retreat Michael Wiese, “Anatole,” and Lindsey Vona 21 Behavioral Changes After Psychedelic Therapy Lasting Results of High-Dose Single Sessions 22 A Questionnaire Study of Psychedelic Experiences Willis Harman, Ph.D., and James Fadiman, Ph.D. Last Words Footnotes Notes About the Author About the Inner Traditions Books of Related Interest Copyright OVERVIEW—WHY THIS BOOk? And Frequently Asked Questions I gather from Don Juan’s teachings that psychotropics are used to stop the flow of ordinary interpretations and to shatter certainty. CARLOS CASTANEDA, VOICES AND VISIONS Why This Book? Each of us must decide for ourselves whether to put into our bodies what affects our minds, be it micrograms of a chemical, milligrams of a mushroom, ounces of an alcoholic beverage, or smoke from burning tobacco. This book explores the beneficial uses of psychedelics, LSD in particular. It does not advocate illegal activities of any kind. To become more aware is your birthright. Denying anyone access to any facet of reality in the name of religion, science, medicine, or law serves neither the individual nor society. Whenever opportunities for self-realization are suppressed or are in danger of being lost, there is a moral imperative to protect and restore them. This book has been written so that certain knowledge, experiences, and techniques for increased awareness would not vanish. The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide describes well-researched uses of psychedelics to advance a spiritual quest, for healing, for personal exploration and psychotherapy, and for facilitating scientific exploration and invention. It includes a first report on an emerging use: enhancing overall functioning. The book contains guidelines for spiritual and scientific sessions so that those who choose to take or offer a psychedelic may do so with greater confidence and safety. These guidelines may also be helpful to those who have previously taken psychedelics for pleasure, insight, or wisdom as well as to those who have never taken them. What we ordinarily call “reality” is merely that slice of total fact which our biological equipment, our linguistic heritage and our social conventions of thought and feeling make it possible for us to apprehend…. LSD permit[s] us to cut another kind of slice. ALDOUS HUXLEY, MOKSHA LSD and many psychedelic plants and chemicals are currently illegal in the United States and many other countries. However, by 2006, according to the U.S. government’s own figures, at least twenty-three million people had tried LSD in the United States alone. This number has been increasing by about four to six hundred thousand people every year.1 Neither criminal penalties nor blatant misinformation over the past forty years appears to have curbed personal experimentation. Factual information that could reduce misuse and enhance known benefits can’t help but be useful. In the future, there should be research and training centers for psychedelic experience that are safe and secure, with both secular and sacred settings to ensure adequate training for wise and compassionate use.2 Such institutions would restore the care and respect that psychedelics have been accorded in almost every other culture over thousands of years. Until the remaining barriers to accurate information and training for the use of these substances are finally removed, resources like The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide can be helpful. How and if ever you use a psychedelic is your own decision. If this book helps you make a more informed decision, it will have more than served its purpose. If it prevents you from doing something foolish, it will have been invaluable. What This Book Contains If shamanistic reports—similar over continents, cultures, and eons—are to be seriously considered, it appears that certain plants have the capacity to induce specific states of awareness in humans to transmit information deemed necessary to retain and restore the natural harmony of the biological kingdoms. The ethnobotanist and entheogenic researcher Terence McKenna3 and others speculate that to some degree civilization evolved or was developed by those who ingested these substances. Today, the harmony that once existed is in tatters. The disruption between our species and the rest of nature has never been wider, its effects never more pronounced. “By having disconnected ourselves emotionally from the Earth and plants we have lost our understanding of those links and mutual relationships,” writes Stephen Harold Buhner.4 Part 1, “Transcendent Experience,” is one attempt among many to buttress the forces of restoration. The first two chapters are guidelines for how to conduct or be guided in sacred sessions. In chapter 3, Alan Watts describes what characterizes an entheogenic (from Greek, literally “becoming divine within”) experience. Chapter 4 concludes part 1, with major figures in the science of consciousness recalling and evaluating their early psychedelic sessions. Part 2, “Personal Growth and Self-Exploration in Psychedelic Sessions,” is based on well-documented data, research, and experience. The current research renaissance has focused on patients with extremely serious physical and mental conditions rather than those with the broader range of psychotherapeutic concerns. From ibogaine (a plant from West Africa) helping people overcome cocaine and heroin addiction, to MDMA (ecstasy, ADAM, X, and many other names) alleviating the torments and healing the wounds of posttraumatic stress (along with supportive therapy), to psilocybin reducing the anxiety of patients with advanced-stage cancer, there is ample evidence that, wisely administered, these substances lessen the suffering caused by addiction, disease, and mental anguish.5 Part 2 includes information about the earlier, more established use of psychedelics with adult outpatients and with healthy, well-functioning individuals interested in personal exploration. It also includes a chapter by David Presti and Jerome Beck covering the myths surrounding LSD. Chapter 6, written by the psychotherapist Neal Goldsmith, is a resource guide of what to do if things go wrong—and they do. Part 3, “Enhanced Problem Solving in Focused Sessions,” covers psychedelic sessions to facilitate problem solving for scientific and technical problems. Before 1966, when the U.S. government terminated almost all research, a few groups had learned how to use these substances to aid creativity, although that research has since been neglected.6 Part 3 contains a description of running such sessions that are quite different from the recommendations for therapy or for spiritual experience and includes a chapter by Willis Harman and myself about that breakthrough research. Chapters 10 through 13, including chapter 12 by Willis Harman and chapter 13 by George Leonard, illustrate the diversity of individual and group results achieved in sessions. Specialized use of psychedelics has already changed our culture. Two Nobel Prize winners attributed their breakthroughs to their use of LSD. Near his death, Francis Crick let it be known that his inner vision of the double helix of DNA was LSD enhanced. The chemist Kary Mullis reported that LSD helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction to amplify specific DNA sequences, for which he received the prize. The last chapter in part 3 is my personal account that begins the day the government discontinued LSD research. Part 4, “New Horizons,” covers some emerging directions of psychedelic use. Users of sub-perceptual doses (10 micrograms or less) reveal surprising results that are discussed in chapter 15. Astonishingly, beyond the data described in chapter 16, there have been no other surveys of current psychedelic users’ drug histories. Those surveys asked: What have you taken? (Many different substances are available.) Why (e.g., social, spiritual, fun, being with friends, etc.)? What effects did it have? What good or harm has it done you? What are your future intentions (to take or not take again)? Part 4 also includes how psychedelics affected my career, personality, and worldview (chapter 17) and a chapter about current trends and positive possibilities for psychedelics (chapter 18). The second wave of psychedelic exploration has begun. Part 5, “The Necessary, the Extraordinary, and Some Hard-Core Data,” presents areas of more specialized interest. The checklist in chapter 19 (which boils down chapters 1 and 2) is for someone seriously intending to be a guide or have a guided experience to be able to quickly and easily be sure that all bases are covered. Chapter 20 contains three personal reports, by Michael Wiese, “Anatole,” and Lindsey Vona. The first two reports are ayahausca sessions. The third is a profound mystical sojourn experienced during fourteen days in total darkness. The final two chapters of part 5 are for data lovers who, not satisfied with individual examples, ask for and expect to be given group data. Chapter 21 lists specific behavior changes after a single-dose therapeutic session, as described in chapter 5. Chapter 22, written by Willis Harman and myself, tallies the results of a questionnaire study about guided psychedelic experiences. The responses offer ample evidence of the value people place on well-guided journeys. As you can see, a number of chapters have been contributed by other, fellow researchers, though unless otherwise noted, the chapters in this book were written by me. If something is missing that you want told, taught, or corrected, then, as the contemporary Zen sage Scoop Nisker said, “If you don’t like the news, then go out and make some of your own.” Add it to the website at www.entheoguide.net and/or contact me at www.psychedelicexplorersguide.com and accept my thanks. Frequently Asked Questions After 1966, why didn’t medical and scientific psychedelic research continue while the government was trying to limit its misuse in the general population, as has been the case for many other drugs? Initially, researchers were puzzled why research wasn’t allowed to continue. Restricting the use of an apparently successful intervention, be it a psychotherapy, a teaching, a training, a procedure, or a pharmaceutical, contradicted common sense. A partial answer is that radical revisions in human thought do not come easily, especially to any institution whose own structure or status might be endangered. For example, when hypnosis was first used to mitigate pain during an operation, it was seen as a curiosity or a sham. To overcome the resistance in the medical community, an operation was performed before a large number of members of the British College of Physicians and Surgeons. A man’s leg was amputated while he was under hypnosis. The patient remained conscious and did not cry out during the entire procedure. When the attending physicians were leaving, one was heard to say to another, “What did you think?” “I think the patient was faking,” the other replied. His companion agreed. Soon after, ether was discovered and was quickly accepted as an effective anesthetic, probably because its action was entirely physiological and, therefore, did not demand a revision of any previously held belief. Hypnosis is still not part of the core medical curriculum, even in psychiatry. Early, positive results using psychedelics were received, as those for hypnosis had been, with disbelief. The U.S. government never supported research into therapeutic uses of psychedelics, even though it underwrote generous funding of the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret research into LSD’s possible uses as a weapon. Today, a new generation of scientists is exploring these materials, and a new, more open-minded generation of regulators has allowed them to complete a few small but telling studies. The trend seems to be to allow more research to continue. You’re writing about mystical adventures, scientific breakthroughs, therapy, and personal growth, but you haven’t said a thing about using psychedelics for just plain fun. The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide does not discuss using psychedelics for recreation or entertainment precisely because there is so much information out there, from knowledgeable to opinionated, that I had nothing to add to that area of use. This book describes some ways to use psychedelics. You have been fine-tuned over millions of years to desire to be in harmony with the natural world, to be curious about your own mind, and to recognize the essential unity of which you are a part. Whether or not you ever choose to use psychedelic experiences as part of your self-discovery, your decision should be an informed one. A Vision of a Whole Earth Stewart Brand When I’m asked “Can you give me your best example of the magic that LSD can impart?” I share this experience of Stewart Brand’s. One session, one person, 100 mcg. From his session a vision arose, one that forever changed the way we look at the earth. The following excerpt, “Why Haven’t We Seen a Photo of the Whole Earth Yet?” is from the book The Sixties: The Decade Remembered Now by the People Who Lived It Then, edited by Lynda Obst and published in 1977 by Random House and Rolling Stone Press, which can also be found at www.smithsonianconference.org/expert/exhibit-hall/spi. In it, Stewart Brand, founder, editor, and publisher of The Whole Earth Catalog, recounts his activism on behalf of the planet, and how it influenced the creation of the time-honored image of the earth from space. It was February 1966, one month after the Trips Festival at Longshoreman’s Hall, when the “whole Earth” in The Whole Earth Catalog came to me with the help of one hundred micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide. I was sitting on a gravelly roof in San Francisco’s North Beach. I was twenty-eight. In those days, the standard response to boredom and uncertainty was LSD followed by grandiose scheming. So there I sat, wrapped in a blanket in the chill afternoon sun, trembling with cold and inchoate emotion, gazing at the San Francisco skyline, waiting for my vision. The buildings were not parallel—because the earth curved under them, and me, and all of us…. Buckminster Fuller had been harping on about this—that people perceived the earth as flat and infinite, and how that was the root of all their misbehavior. Now from my altitude of three stories and one hundred mikes, I could see that it was curved, think it, and finally feel it. It had to be broadcast, this fundamental point of leverage on the world’s ills. I herded my trembling thoughts together as the winds blew and time passed. A photograph would do it—a color photograph of the earth from space. There it would be, for all to see, the earth complete, tiny, adrift—and no one would ever perceive things quite the same way again. How could I induce NASA or the Russians to finally turn the cameras backward? We could make a button! A button with the demand “Take a photograph of the entire Earth.” No, we had to use the great American resource of paranoia and make it into a question: “Why haven’t they made a photograph of the entire Earth?” But there was something wrong with “entire,” and something wrong with “they.” “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?” Ah. That was it! The next day I ordered the printing of several hundred buttons and posters. While they were being made I spent a couple hours in the San Francisco library looking up the names and addresses of all the relevant NASA officials, the members of Congress and their secretaries, Soviet scientists and diplomats, UN officials, Marshall McLuhan, and Buckminster Fuller. When the buttons were ready I sent them off. Then I prepared a Day-Glo sandwich board with a little sales shelf on the front, decked myself out in a white jumpsuit, boots and a costume top hat complete with a crystal heart and flower, and went to make my debut at the Sather Gate of the University of California in Berkeley, selling my buttons for twenty-five cents apiece. It went perfectly. The dean’s office threw me off the campus, the San Francisco Chronicle reported it, and I had my broadcast. I kept returning. Then I branched out to Stanford, and then to Columbia, Harvard, and MIT. “Who the hell’s that?” asked an MIT dean, watching hordes of his students buying my buttons. “That’s my brother,” said my brother Pete, an MIT instructor. It is no accident of history that the first Earth Day, in April 1970, came so soon after color photographs of the whole Earth from space were made by astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission to the moon in December 1968. Those riveting Earth photos reframed everything. For the first time humanity saw itself from outside. The visible features from space were living blue ocean, living green-brown continents, dazzling polar ice and a busy atmosphere, all set like a delicate jewel in vast immensities of hard-vacuum space. Humanity’s habitat looked tiny, fragile and rare. Suddenly humans had a planet to tend to. The photograph of the whole Earth from space helped to generate a lot of behavior—the ecology movement, the sense of global politics, the rise of the global economy, and so on. I think all of those phenomena were, in some sense, given permission to occur by the photograph of the earth from space. This photo of Earth was taken by Apollo 8 crew member Bill Anders on December 24, 1968. The image is provided courtesy of NASA. PART ONE TRANSCENDENT EXPERIENCE Entheogenic Sessions Introduction to Part One There is a door within the self. When this door is opened, a unity is revealed that encompasses all beings and transcends all boundaries. Mystics in every religious system in every culture and in every age have reported this to be the highest truth. Those who have had such an experience agree that the state is elusive and usually recalled only in fragments. However, those who have achieved even a moment of this visionary understanding consider it of incalculable value. Cultures have developed dozens of ways to apprehend this unitive state. Paths include physical austerities, cycles of prayer, meditation, devotions, breathing rituals, and physical postures. A significant number have used plants in combination with other practices. For some, the use of a psychedelic makes the experience suspect. But there are those of us who believe that however one ascends the mountain, the view from the summit is the same. What one gains from that vista and from the climb will depend, as it always has, on how one incorporates such moments into one’s life. This is how a human being can change: there’s a worm addicted to eating grape leaves. Suddenly. He wakes up, call it grace, whatever, something wakes him, and he’s no longer a worm. He’s the entire vineyard, and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks, a growing wisdom and joy that doesn’t need to devour. RUMI, “THE WORM’S WAKING” (TRANSLATION BY COLEMAN BARKS) 1 MEETING THE DIVINE WITHIN Part One: Guidelines for Voyagers and Guides THE GUILD OF GUIDES a There is an almost sensual longing for communion with others who have a larger vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendships between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality almost impossible to describe. PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN Why This Material Was Created In a study of nearly one hundred people who took a psychedelic and were guided as outlined in this chapter, 78 percent reported, “It was the greatest experience of my life.1” This response was true even for those people who had taken a psychedelic many times before. This chapter describes how to benefit from having an experienced guide having sufficient psychedelic material, and being in a supportive setting. Many people who hope to have a spiritual or an entheogenic experience using a psychedelic don’t know how to reach and stay open to those levels of consciousness. And few people who wish to help others on that voyage have had the benefit of being taught how to serve as effective guides. This chapter has been written to offer useful tested suggestions to guides and voyagers. The guidelines are intended to promote spiritual, rather than recreational, use. This chapter brings together the insights of a number of psychedelic guides who have been working discreetly over the past forty years to facilitate maximally safe and sacred entheogenic experiences. This compilation is being made available to support increased spiritual understanding and to minimize negative experiences. Many of those who have never had a guided session appreciate how psychedelic experiences have impacted and improved their lives. However, the presence of a knowledgeable guide greatly facilitates the probability of reaching expanded levels of consciousness and recalling and integrating the experiences. The fact that a guide makes a significant difference in the quality of the experience underscores the difference between psychedelics and almost all other medications. That difference is not only that the plant or “drug” opens one to a wider range of experiences, but also that the direction, content, and overall quality of the experiences can be focused and enhanced with guidance.b To establish the best possible environment for spiritual psychedelic sessions, it is critical to keep in mind six primary factors that most affect the nature and value of these experiences: Set Setting Substance and quantity (dose) Sitter and guide Session Situation Glossary Entheogen: Any psychedelic used specifically to enhance the probability of spiritual experience. Etymology: Derived from a Greek term meaning “that which causes God to be known or experienced within an individual.” Guide: Someone with considerable personal experience and knowledge of altered states of consciousness, with and without the use of psychedelics. A guide helps others experience the full range of entheogenic states and provides support when experiences are challenging. It is assumed that a guide does not take a psychedelic during the session, or any other drugs or alcohol—before or during the session. Psychedelic: The general term for the spectrum of natural and synthesized conscious-altering substances. These include LSD-25, mescaline (and the peyote cactus that contains mescaline), and psilocybin (and the mushrooms that contain psilocybin) as well as other plants and substances. We will focus primarily on LSD-25 (simply called LSD here), generally regarded as the most potent psychedelic and the one that facilitates access to the broadest range of experiences. (See “Dose” in the guidelines for information on related psychedelics.) Session: The time for a voyage (six to twelve hours). Set: The preparation and expectations of the voyager and the guide. Setting: The surroundings, primarily physical, but also the atmosphere of the space for the session itself. Sitter: The terms sitter and guide are sometimes used interchangeably. Here, the sitter is the person, often but not necessarily a close friend, who cares for the voyager after a session as well as during the initial reentry period. Situation: Post-experience integration. The relationships and support available, especially after a session (e.g., home, work, friends, environment). Substance: The particular psychedelic used to facilitate the journey. Voyager: The person taking a psychedelic. Preparation for a Guided Session Once a decision is made to work together, even if the guide is familiar with how to manage a session, it will be useful for the voyager and the guide both to review the suggestions in chapters 1 and 2. By reviewing the sections each deems important, together they can better align their intentions and increase their rapport. Why a Guide? For most people, the predominant feeling during a session is not of discovering something new, alien, or foreign, but of recalling and reuniting with an unassailable clarity that had been latent in one’s own mind. Despite the intensely personal nature of the experience, the importance of a guide cannot be overstated. During the experience of awakening to oneself, it is invaluable to be with someone who supports you. Your guide knows the terrain, can sense where you are, and will be able to advise or caution you as appropriate. It cannot be emphasized enough that we are not talking about “a drug experience,” but about how best to become open to your own inner worlds and make use of a vast range of experiences after taking these substances. In the words of one guide discussing the role of psychedelics in relation to other practices, “It enhances mind states also accessible from intense practice and focused attention discoverable through yoga, meditation, fasting and other disciplines.” Seemingly universal, this opening is often experienced as reuniting one’s self with an eternal flow of energies and understandings. Aldous Huxley, the author and philosopher, writing about his first psychedelic experiences, talked about “the heightened significance of things.” Objects he had seen countless times but rarely noticed fascinated him as if for the first time. The psychedelic gave his mind freer play to see myriad connections, linking formerly mundane items to an ocean of ideas, memories, feelings, and attitudes. Huxley also described vibrant visions and ancient archetypal constellations that he felt had been present but unnoticed in his mind. After reviewing many different spiritual breakthroughs, William James, the first important American psychologist, came to the following conclusion, which is especially true of the entheogenic experience: One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness. Whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves those other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.2 Albert Hofmann, the chemist who created LSD and discovered its entheogenic potential, echoed James’s statement. He wrote, “The first planned LSD experiment was therefore so deeply moving and alarming, because everyday reality and the ego experiencing it, which I had until then considered to be the only reality, dissolved, and an unfamiliar ego experienced another unfamiliar reality.”3 Initial Experiences It is natural to hope that one’s first full sexual experience will be loving and pleasurable. However, for many people that initiation can be awkward and uncomfortable—even traumatic. Unfortunately, self-administered psychedelics also can have severely disturbing, long-lasting effects. A well-structured session makes it far more likely that early psychedelic experience will be meaningful, healthy, and life enhancing. What You Need to Know to Guide a Journey Set: Preparation for the Session Suggestions for the Voyager If possible, approach a voyage as a three-day process.4 Ideally, on the first day, stay quiet and unhurried. Reserve time for self-reflection, spending a portion of the preparation day in nature. Set aside the second day, all day, for the session. Try to take as much as possible of the day after the session to begin to integrate the experience and to record your discoveries and insights. Prior to the session, it’s wise to clarify your personal preconceptions about psychedelic experiences, sacred plants, and entheogens in general. In addition, consider and reflect on your understanding of mystical experience, cosmic consciousness, or whatever else you may have heard described that might arise. Share your expectations, concerns, and hopes with your guide or guides. This will help you stay attuned with one another during the session. Discussing the range of possible experiences in advance enables the session itself to go more smoothly. Whether you are a novice or an experienced voyager, internal experiences that may be entirely novel for you may occur. These might include: Cascading geometric forms and colors (usually early in the session) Alteration of felt time (expansion and/or contraction of “clock time”) Finding yourself in a different reality, as if you had lived or are living in another time or place Being in a different body of either sex Becoming an animal, plant, or microorganism Experiencing your own birth As a session progresses, it is not uncommon to find yourself encountering entities that some refer to as “the presence of spirits.” In most cases, these meetings are positive. However, if you become upset or frightened, let your guide know. To maximize the usefulness of realizations that may occur during your psychedelic voyage, it is invaluable to write out beforehand what you hope to learn, experience, understand, or resolve. Whatever you’ve written should be available to you and your guide during and after the session. Some experienced guides have observed that a voyager can, in fact, direct his or her own journey by choosing a small number of questions beforehand in order to organize the direction of the session. One can use this opportunity for a focused inquiry into very specific psychological, spiritual, or social concerns. At the same time, one can be open to engaging with whatever arises from a new encounter. In addition to clarifying questions, for some people, it is helpful to identify your goals. Your goals may be spiritual: to have direct experience with aspects of your tradition or another tradition, to transcend prior beliefs, even to transcend belief itself. You may hope to have what is called a “unity experience,” in which there is no separation between your identity and all else. Your goals may be social: to improve relationships with your spouse, children, siblings, parents, colleagues, friends, and spiritual and secular institutions. Your goals may be psychological: to find insight into neurotic patterns, phobias, or unresolved anger or grief. If you know you want to work in these areas, these guidelines may be insufficient. For these goals, additional preparation is recommended, and it would be best to work with a guide who has psychological training. Because in many cases a single individual is guiding a session, this material was written as if there is only one guide. Ideally, if possible, there should be two guides, a man and a woman. At times and unpredictably, a voyager may prefer the support of one gender or the other. Having two guides makes the task of guiding easier for the guides and allows them to take short breaks during the session. The presence of both male and female energies is the optimal situation. Suggestions for the Guide Guiding someone on a psychedelic journey is sacred work. You are there to ensure that the session is maximally safe and beneficial, to increase the probability of the voyager entering into transpersonal or transcendent states, to minimize difficulties, and to honor the trust placed in you. It is not necessary to have a great deal of specialized information to be a superb guide. The essential prerequisites are compassion, intuition, and loving-kindness. However, in addition to those qualities, it is valuable to have basic knowledge in certain areas: the range of possible effects, the basic principles of various spiritual traditions, and a sense of how and when to share useful ideas and concepts with the voyager. Your suggestions at the right moments may help the voyager make a pivotal discovery or retain an important insight. Range of effects: Any psychedelic experience might include a wide range of responses, reactions, visions, and internal dramas, from ecstatic to terrifying. At times, you may need to reassure the voyager that a certain experience, even if troubling, is normal and that it will pass. In other cases, you may need to help an individual cope with a physical symptom. Rarely, it might be necessary to get outside help. A significant body of disinformation about psychedelics has been circulated. Therefore, as part of the preparation for any journey, it is essential to dispel untrue ideas about the effects of psychedelics. A well-kept-up site that discusses misinformation about LSD and other mind-expanding substances is found by going to http://en.wikipedia.org and searching on “urban legends about illegal drugs.” See also www.snopes.com. Remaining centered: The more centered you are as a guide, the more effective you will be. The more you know about yourself and whomever you are guiding, the more likely you are to be able to stay centered and tranquil throughout the session. When you yourself are more comfortable, it will be easier for the voyager to transition from one state of awareness to another. After reviewing hundreds of sessions in different settings, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), while still teaching at Harvard, concluded that in most situations a voyager became distressed when the guide had become unsettled, uncertain, or upset. Sacred traditions: Voyagers may or may not begin with their own religious orientation. In addition, it is not unusual for a voyager to encounter beings or experience states of consciousness described in traditions other than his or her own. You can reduce any anxiety about such encounters should they occur by preparing to be supportive and respectful of any tradition that emerges. Because every tradition has its own symbols and descriptions of higher states, it is unlikely that you can know about them all. The highest levels of all traditions may be essentially the same, but each individual’s capacity to fathom and integrate altered states will be unique. For example, each of these approaches toward being closer to God arises from a different tradition: wanting to be aware of God and still remain separate; yearning to love and interact with God, yet not lose one’s personal identity; or dissolving and merging with God. Your support of the voyager’s initial intention about spiritual or religious experience is the best possible way to begin. However, be willing to realign your support with the voyager’s shifting experiences as well. In other words, remain open and present to whatever occurs. A useful response to any experience that stretches a voyager’s sense of reality during the session is to gently invite that person to go deeper by saying, “Yes! That’s good. Would you like to know more?” When a voyager feels secure, the capacity to reach greater heights, and also to remember and integrate the experience, is most likely. Working with fear: If a voyager has limited experience with altered states, he or she may be frightened as familiar dimensions of identity begin to dissolve. A guide can alleviate this fear, by discussing this possibility as part of the preparation. When a voyager looks directly at a complex tangle of memories, desires, insecurities, and other unresolved inner threads, a natural reaction can be to become frightened. Be reassuring; clarify that the feeling of fear is normal and will pass. Your reassurances will make it possible for the individual to process the fear more easily. During fearful moments, you can use a gentle touch and suggest deep breathing. Notice any shift in the depth or pattern of breathing. Shallow breathing or panting suggests resistance, while deep, slower breathing usually occurs when a barrier is being dissolved. If you are in an ethnocentric stage of development and you have a unity-state experience of being one with everything, you might interpret that as an experience of oneness with Jesus and conclude that nobody can be saved unless they accept Jesus as their personal savior. If you are at an egocentric stage and have the same experience, you might believe that you yourself are Jesus. If you are at an …integral stage …you are likely to conclude that you and all sentient beings without exception are one in the spirit. KEN WILBER, THE TRANSLUCENT REVOLUTION Common Issues for Guides Intentions: Review your own hopes and fears for the voyager and for yourself before the session begins. Be careful not to intend or hope for a specific outcome. Your assignment is to hold the space for your voyager’s journey, not to set the goals. Point of view: You may hope the person you’re guiding will agree with you about certain issues, especially spiritual ones. It is natural to want this (you are human, after all), but it is distracting to express those opinions during the session. Discuss this beforehand if you feel your own point of view might be an issue that could interfere with your objectivity. Relationship to voyager: If you are the voyager’s lover or spouse, think carefully before being that person’s guide. If the relationship is an issue for either of you, allow someone else to be the guide. If sexual feelings arise in you or in the voyager (and they often do), allow the feelings to exist as you would any other part of the experience. However, don’t be sexual even if asked. In an entheogenic setting, any acting out will narrow the voyager’s experience and can be confusing.c Social boundaries: Be wary of your own judgments about the voyager’s personal relationships. It’s important not to suggest an assessment of any particular relationship during the session unless this intention has been agreed on beforehand. Your approval or disapproval of any relationship can easily disrupt the voyager’s own process of discovery. Transpersonal expression: During entheogenic sessions, voyagers will usually experience realms beyond their personal egos. As a result, they may undergo transformational transitions. Keep in mind that there are an infinite number of ways to find God as well as innumerable ways to describe that discovery. Let the voyager stay with his own realizations. As a general practice, encourage the voyager to collect experiences, save discussion about them for later review and reflection, and not even try to figure them out as they occur. When to cancel or postpone: For whatever reason, if you have an intuition that the timing is wrong, that the person is not well prepared or hasn’t done what you feel has been the necessary preparation, or that you’re not the right guide, don’t hesitate to delay or cancel the session. Specifically, in preparing for a session, if someone expresses that his or her intention is to delve deeply into suffering, darkness, or the nature of evil, be cautious. Unless you have psychotherapeutic training related to altered states, you should seriously consider not guiding that person. People who begin with these intentions often become stuck in hellish parts of their own psyches and can damage themselves. If you’re not sure that you can deal with problems that may arise, you are right and should not guide such a session. Suggest that this individual work in a nonpsychedelic therapeutic context instead. This is not to deny the value and utility of extremely negative experiences, but entering that realm as a primary focus for a psychedelic experience with an inexperienced guide may be treacherous.d Setting The following factors are important in the determination of setting. Immediate environment: All that is necessary for a safe journey with infinite possibilities is an uncluttered, comfortable room with a couch or bed on which the voyager can rest, a comfortable chair for the guide, and easy access to a bathroom. Having a variety of soft pillows and blankets on hand is usually a good idea. The room should also have some kind of a music system. It is better if the room can be insulated from outside sights and sounds, including people’s voices, pets, and phones. Your goal is to create and maintain a simple environment that supports inner quiet. When in doubt, make the space even simpler. Most experienced guides prefer to begin the session indoors with music so that the voyager’s mind is the primary source for what unfolds. That being said, an outdoor setting has its advantages. Wind, stirring leaves, birds, streams, rivers, ocean waves—the connectedness of nature can become an essential part of the session. When questioned about taking a psychedelic, Albert Hofmann had only one recommendation: “Always take it in nature.” If you do decide on an outdoor setting, the experience may be extroverted. However, even outside, music is helpful. With a sufficient entheogenic dose, indoors or out, the voyager tends to want to spend much of the time, day or night, lying down. An ideal balance might be to allow the more intense segments to take place indoors, then to go outside later in the session. What is critical is maintaining physical, personal, and psychological safety and support. Incense: For centuries, incense has been a part of many entheogenic rituals, and it can serve as another way to orient and accompany the voyager.5 Music: Most cultures that use plants for healing, divination, or spiritual revivification use music to facilitate the transition from one level of awareness to another and to enhance the feeling of safety by providing nonverbal support. With or without the ingestion of psychedelics, drumming, chanting, dancing, and singing are used worldwide to guide changes in consciousness. Music proves to be invaluable in helping people travel beyond their usual thought patterns. Music supports and suggests, so choose wisely. During a session, music becomes a richly layered tapestry of sound and often evokes strong emotions. For most people, the music seems to come from inside one’s own body and is not just felt as sound, but also may be perceived as color, shape, texture, odor, or taste. Headphones or ear buds are fine. Stereo speakers near a person’s head are good and allow freer movement. Discuss beforehand what music may be played. Music selections may be suggested by guides and by the voyager. If any selection does not feel right during the session, the voyager should be able to signal or say, “Please change the music.” Stay with whatever is playing for a few more minutes to be sure that the request is appropriate and not just a way for the voyager to voice a reaction or simply try to stay in control. Explain in the preparation session how you will be handling the music. In deeper states of consciousness, the voyager may not even hear the music. However, even then, music serves a protective purpose, like the net of a trapeze artist. Have at least eight hours of music on hand to be able to choose or change selections as needed. Musical recommendations: When the psychedelic first begins to take effect, put on the person’s choice of starting music. Many guides have their own collection of music from prior sessions that can be used from that point on. In any case, use music on which you and the voyager have agreed or make sure that the voyager trusts your choices. Classical music tends to feel appropriate to most people, even if they have not chosen it. Hovhaness’s Mysterious Mountain, Fauré’s Requiem, Gregorian chants, solo piano, piano with one or two other instruments, unaccompanied flute, ragas, and indigenous drum recordings can all be used effectively. Anything with words the voyager can understand may be distracting and should not be played after the first hour. Music that could be considered emotionally leading or manipulative is potentially problematic.6 By mid-afternoon (after about six hours), almost any musical choice will be enjoyed, but during the most intense early hours, the selection of music is important. Near the end of the session, if requested, play any music the voyager wishes, including pieces with words. Listening to music with closed eyes increases its value and its potential impact. An eyeshade, an eye pillow, or a folded washcloth or scarf makes it easier for the music to be experienced internally. (There are valuable facets of consciousness to enter with the eyes open or closed, but many guides recommend that a voyager spend most of the time, especially during the period of intensely heightened awareness, with closed eyes. As one guide said, “It’s amazing how much one can ‘see’ with eyes closed.”) Substance LSD itself is almost completely metabolized well before its peak effects are felt.7 It seems to act as a catalyst, creating an environment in which other reactions can then occur. LSD serves as a lubricant, allowing certain capacities to interact with one another more easily, thus enabling latent brain functions fuller expression. The resulting experiences range from a subtle shift in perception to breathtaking plunges into other realities. Other psychedelic substances are metabolized at different rates; however, each substance allows consciousness to expand beyond its customary limits. Dose: Obviously, using any plant or plant extract precludes exact measurement. However, there are some parameters. From 150 to 400 micrograms of LSD is a normal range. While this book focuses on LSD, a full range of similar experiences can occur with mescaline or psilocybin. If the voyager is taking mescaline, 1 microgram of LSD is equal to 1 or 2 milligrams of mescaline. If psilocybin is used, 30 milligrams has been called “a safe high-dose.”8 Body weight and metabolism do not appear to be, in and of themselves, deciding variables in selecting the right dose for an individual. A reliable resource of information about doses for a range of psychedelics can be found at www.erowid.org/psychoactives/dose/dose.shtml. 2 THE ENTHEOGENIC VOYAGE Part Two: Guidelines for Voyagers and Guides THE GUILD OF GUIDES In LSD inebriation, the accustomed worldview undergoes a deep-seated transformation and its integration. Connected with this is a loosening or even suspension of the I–you barrier. ALBERT HOFMANN, LSD: MY PROBLEM CHILD The Psychedelic Session LSD and other entheogens have the capacity to open an infinite number of doors. The following descriptions represent stages that have been reported for many different voyages; however, a spectrum of variations can and do occur. The approximate amount of time given for each stage is typical for LSD, mescaline, or peyote. These times are usually shorter, though in the same sequence, for psilocybin and mushrooms. Stage One: Ingesting the Psychedelic Considerations for the Voyager After you have ingested the psychedelic and while you are waiting to begin your voyage, feel free to talk with the guide about any residual anxiety or considerations you may have. When you feel that the actual experience is beginning, you will probably want to lie down. If you feel comfortable doing so, put on an eyeshade or eye pillow. Once settled, allow yourself to: Relax Listen to music Observe your breathing and pay attention to any sensations you have in your body Notice how the music is affecting you You may now begin to move in and out of an awareness of being in the room. That “in-and-out” feeling is natural; it is a sign that your journey has begun. Again, if you become concerned with anything you are experiencing, share this with your guide. If it feels right to you, you might simply put your hand out, asking for it to be held. Observe what is going on inside your mind and body, but do not try to control the flow of images and sensations. Allow your mind to take its natural course; relax and observe as your thoughts unfold without any effort. Affirm that all experiences are welcome. It is not uncommon, for example, to feel as though your thoughts are coming more swiftly than you can process them. This rush of images and impressions can be disconcerting, but if simply observed, it can be experienced as pleasurable—with wonder or even amazement. This sensation of heightened intensity frequently comes when you are about to change levels, preparing to shift into a higher gear. Allow it to happen. As you let go, the discomfort will pass. Remain in a prone position, with eyes closed, using the eyeshade and focusing on your breath. If you feel extremely uneasy, sit up and tell the guide what you are experiencing. You may even wish to stand up, notice how you feel, and look at your guide before lying back down and relaxing. Your body will naturally prefer and find a restful position as your mind’s capacity expands. Considerations for the Guide Know that you and the voyager are about to create a sacred space together. Early on the day of the session, a light, easily digestible breakfast of fruit or toast, if desired, is fine. If the voyager wishes to say a prayer, express gratitude, or invoke any spiritual tradition, you might set up an altar or just sit in silence together. (See suggestions for rituals at the end of this chapter.) Some guides offer the psychedelic in a formal way, serving the tablets, capsules, or plant materials in a small, attractive dish or bowl, and offering water in a crystal wineglass or even a metal goblet. Stage Two: Initial Onset (twenty to fifty minutes) After ingesting the psychedelic, some voyagers may want to move around the room and converse normally. If possible, it is better for the person to be quiet and reflective. However, you need to be responsive and allow the voyager to do whatever comes naturally, especially if there is some anxiety. As the substance takes effect, the voyager should be invited to lie down, and begin to listen to his or her own music or the guide’s choice of music. If, after the initial onset, a person continues to sit up and talk or move around, he or she may need a booster dose. This can be given an hour or more into the session without any problems. A second dose should be about one half of the initial dose. Before giving the booster, check in and find out what the person is experiencing. If a deep spiritual journey is going to unfold, it will almost always begin before the second hour is over. If after two hours, with or without the extra dose, the voyager is still up and interacting, do not give another dose. Needing to continue to move around or relate to someone else is usually a sign of resistance to going inward and should be respected. Suggest walking outdoors, listening to music sitting up. Do not continue to press for an entheogenic session. Dosage: A dose that is too low may diminish the intensity or depth of the experience; too large a dose can prevent what happens from being recalled or even understood. If in doubt, begin with a lower dose with the possibility of a booster. Stage Three: Opening and Letting Go (three to four hours) Considerations for the Voyager About halfway through the session, you will be able, if you are willing, to let go of whatever thoughts, feelings, and concerns you don’t need for this journey. Your guide will play music for you, unless you ask for silence. At this point, you will be able to: Let go of expectations about the session Let go of personal concerns Let go of concerns about personal issues such as problems in your relationships and habit patterns Let go of each experience, feeling, or visual event as it occurs Let go of your concerns about your personal identity Experience and deepen your awareness of other dimensions of reality For some people, this is an effortless, ecstatic period; for others it can be disorienting. At some moments, you may be frightened or confused by the content or intensity of your visions. You may experience unusual feelings associated with letting go. These might be physical (“My arm is melting”) or emotional (“Am I going crazy?”). You may feel unsafe, not trusting yourself, the situation, or even your guide. Some people feel as if they are dying. Your guide may remind you that this is an inner experience of your mind and that your body is fine and that your guide or guides are there to help you ride it through, not to stop it. Therefore, if something concerns you, ask for help. Remember, your guide is there to support and re-center you. (The sensation of dying, for example, may be your personality’s initial reaction to the recognition that “you” are greater than your personal identity.) This dissolving of boundaries happens at the stage when you may feel as though you are in the presence of spirits. These experiences are usually positive. However, if they disturb you, be sure to tell your guide. Considerations for the Guide Listen, watch, and be sensitive to the voyager’s shifting mental states. During this period, you do little more than monitor the music and remain close by, being supportive. If you need to calm the voyager’s anxieties, a reminder that he or she chose to have this experience can be helpful. It is during this stage that the voyager is most likely to be in touch with the underlying unity of all existence. Some people will describe this as “seeing God,” others “joining with God,” while for still others it becomes an experience of “being God.” Sometimes this state includes the realization that not only you but also everyone else is God. Whatever form it takes, your primary responsibility is to support the person having the realization. Especially at this point, it is not uncommon for guides to experience what is known as a contact high. Without taking any substances, a guide may recall vivid memories or have sensations of being tuned back in to expanded states of consciousness. Hearing certain music and/or being with someone undergoing experiences and exhibiting behaviors you may have done in the past can ignite sensations that echo or re-create your own past voyages. These states are natural, usually enjoyable, and do not need to interfere with your role as the guide. Throughout the day, if you need to go to the toilet, go. If a guide waits too long, the voyager may pick up his or her discomfort and become confused. Even if you are the only guide, be sure to go when you need to and tell the voyager that you are leaving for a few minutes. When you return from the bathroom, if it seems necessary, mention that you have only been gone a few minutes. In those few minutes, a great deal of inner time may have transpired for the voyager. Stage Four: Plateau (one to two hours) Following the period of entheogenic recognition, music is optional. The guide may gradually lower the volume until it is off or alternate periods of silence or music as requested. Considerations for the Voyager Feel free to sit up, check in with the guide, or continue to listen to the music. You may focus on the music or the images you see internally. You can let go and enjoy the interplay and variety of what has been called the “ten thousand worlds” of shifting realities. You may need to ask for assurance that what you recall and have experienced is valid. Generally, a guide can explain to you that what you have seen on your journey is real, in that it is real to you, while at the same time unique to you. Others who take a psychedelic will have had their own, and perhaps similar, experiences— unique according to their interests, capacities, and frame of mind. Considerations for the Guide The voyager may report that he or she has had or is still having a vast expansion of identity, of being part of the creation of the universe or the formation of the stars. The voyager may report having experienced a recapitulation of personal creation, going from sperm and egg on through birth. Others will have entered what seemed to be evolution itself or what appeared to be past lives. Wherever the voyager reports having been or being, your role is to listen, be supportive, and clarify only if asked to. Keep conversation at a minimum. If the voyager is confused or upset, offer reassurance. Place your hand gently on his or her arm and say something like, “You can let it go; you’re doing well.” That comforting touch is often all that is needed. Experienced guides learn to intuit when it is appropriate to say something. Usually, it is more than enough just to be with the voyager. If the voyager needs to use the toilet, you may need to help the voyager stand up and walk to the bathroom because his or her external visual world may be in flux. Stage Five: The Gentle Glide (next three hours or until the guide and the voyager agree it is time to move on) Simple finger food (e.g., fresh or dried fruits, nuts, crackers, juice) should be offered. Water should be available all day. The voyager may or may not choose to eat something. (If an apple is included, you might hear a comment about Adam and Eve.) The guide should eat if hungry. Considerations for the Voyager After the peak of your experience, as you are reentering your world, is often an excellent time to do personal work. You will be aware of your usual identity, but not be as attached to your usual habits, templates, or distortions. If you wish—and your guide agrees—this is also a good time to go outside. If there is no outdoor setting that is safe and inviting, you may enjoy observing a flower or plant in the room or even looking through large-format photography books about nature. Considerations for the Guide If you’ve been asked to help create a bridge between the mystical experiences earlier in the day and the voyager’s personal self, excellent tools to make this connection include a flower, a mirror, and family photographs. The preferred flower is a rosebud, ideally one that is just beginning to open. Encourage the voyager to look into it as long as that feels appealing. This may be as long as half an hour. If the voyager merely glances at it, smells it, and hands it back, offer a second opportunity and suggest a deeper look. However, if there is no interest, be ready to move on. Another way to deepen the connections made during the session is to invite the voyager to gaze into a full-size handheld mirror. The voyager may see his or her own face aging or becoming younger, and may also see people of different sexes, ages, and races from different historical periods. If this occurs, encourage the voyager to continue looking into the mirror. If the voyager becomes concerned or fearful, suggest that he or she focus on the eyes in the mirror. Eyes usually remain constant through the changes and are reassuring. Even if you have had a similar experience on a journey of your own, don’t offer an interpretation of what is being seen. If the voyager wishes to do more personal work, offer photos of people and places that have been brought to the session. The voyager may stare into a single picture for as long as an hour. After either commenting or sitting in silence, the voyager may put that photo down and ask for another one. Do not intrude with your ideas or opinions, especially if you know the individuals in the photos. A person asking for his or her glasses back is an indication of the return to more familiar perceptual limits. The person is still only lightly identified with his or her personality but has reidentified with their body. If a voyager arrived with a cold, an allergy, or pain of some kind, these symptoms often disappear during the session and may come back about this time. Complete or partial cures of physical conditions may happen. For example, Dr. Andrew Weil, the most widely known advocate of complementary medicine, who had suffered from a severe and lifelong cat allergy, had that allergy disappear during an LSD session and it never reappeared. If the voyager brought music to the session, this is an excellent time to listen to that. This is also a good time to review goals or questions written before the session. Read one item at a time aloud. As with the photographs, discuss or interpret as little as possible. Don’t suggest an answer or even a direction unless asked. Some people will want to discuss their insights and realizations; others will not. Stage Six: The End of the Formal Session The guided portion of the day of the session should come to an end six to eight hours after taking a shorter-acting substance such as psilocybin or eight to ten hours after taking a longer-acting substance such as LSD or mescaline. Considerations for the Voyager You may dip in and out of the experience for the rest of the evening. Don’t feel any obligation to be sociable. You may feel extremely loving toward your spouse or children or others close to you but not especially demonstrative. If you wish to call people, limit those calls to people who know what you’ve been doing and, ideally, who have experience with psychedelics. Don’t worry if some parts of your session are difficult to recall. The major events will stay with you, both consciously and unconsciously. You will probably want to spend time starting to integrate what you’ve experienced. You may still see the world as flowing or sparkling. Enjoy these visual gifts from your own mind. Eat lightly, and be sure you drink enough liquids to replenish yourself. It’s wise to avoid caffeinated beverages because they can interfere with your ability to fall asleep. Considerations for the Sitter As stated earlier, the sitter is a friend or relative, ideally someone who has had experience with psychedelics, who minds the voyager when the session is over. He or she should arrive to take the voyager from the session room to the voyager’s home, if possible, or to the sitter’s. During the voyager’s evening of reentry, the sitter should be nonjudgmental, gentle, open to listening, and comfortable with silence. Long periods of silence indicate that the voyager is still moving in and out of the experience and may be having significant insights. The sitter should take notes if asked to. It is a good idea to offer a light meal of simple foods. If the voyager takes medications regularly, remind him or her to take them. After a session, a person may go in and out of sleep for most of the night. If a person would like to go to sleep but cannot relax enough to do that, warm milk, chamomile tea, or just a single glass of wine may help. Most people prefer not to take anything, allowing the session to end naturally with normal sleep. Situation: Post-Experience Integration Considerations for the Voyager In the first few weeks after your journey, take time to distill out what matters the most to you from your experience. Don’t rush. It is likely that you will find your life flows more easily than before. Some people will be curious and open to hearing about your experience; others will be afraid for you, apprehensive that you may be changing your worldview or disturbing theirs. Don’t try to convince anyone of anything. Few people will want to hear too many details about your session. As your realizations become integrated into your own life, you will feel less need to describe your journey to others. You may become more aware than ever before that some people in your life are nourishing and nurturing to you while others are not. Stay with what nourishes you, as you would with food. Stay away, if possible, from anyone who belittles you or tries to diminish your experience. Do not make major life changes for the first few weeks. Some people, for example, prematurely reevaluate their primary relationships. Give yourself time to integrate your experience first. The exception would be to stop toxic behaviors such as excessive drinking and taking harmful drugs. There is ample evidence that what drives many people to excessive use of alcohol or hard drugs is a vague awareness of their spiritual estrangement and isolation. When people feel reconnected, as they often do after an entheogenic experience, they may stop their excessive drug use or drinking without effort or withdrawal symptoms. Considerations for the Guide It’s good to meet with the voyager at least once soon after the session to help with the integration process. Beyond that, be available as needed. Knowing you are there if needed seems to be almost as valuable as your actually doing or saying anything in particular. Prior to the session, make sure you learned about your voyager’s support system: family, friends, people at work, and people at church, mosque, or temple as well as therapists or spiritual teachers. If it is appropriate at any later meetings, suggest that some of these people can be helpful while others might not, at least for a while. Frequency: How Soon Again? How Often? As with most other positive experiences, we usually want to do it again. However, psychedelic voyages are not like other most other experiences. If you take them again too soon, you cannot expect that they will have the same effect. The rule of thumb is the more profound the experience, the longer you should wait before doing it again. The Guild of Guides suggests a minimum of six months between entheogenic journeys because it takes at least that long for the learning and insights to be absorbed and integrated into your life. Research conducted at the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, California,a over a six-year period found that it took at least a full year for deep-seated personality changes to stabilize. Many people who had truly profound experiences had no desire for some years, or even ever again, for any subsequent sessions. Another caveat in response to those questions is that “chasing the high” almost never works. It is like taking a photograph on top of another photograph on the same frame of film—a double exposure. The two images will obscure each other. However, if you advance the film so that an unexposed frame is available, the next captured image will be fresh and can be as meaningful in its own way as the first one was. If you feel you absolutely must take a psychedelic again as soon as possible, it’s likely that you need to face some issue that you’re avoiding. That feeling is not a command from your highest self to take a psychedelic, no matter how much you want it to be. One option is to arrange a session with a therapist to look at what was uncovered or discovered. Keep in mind that your experience was not simply “drug-induced,” but was facilitated by a blend of the substance, the guide, your intention, and other factors unique to your situation at the time. Neglecting any of these variables may lower the value to you of any subsequent session. Wait at least another month and then see what feels right. Watering the Celestial Tree These guidelines are a living entity made up of the collective experience of a number of guides from different cultures. Fuller versions plus a great deal of additional material can be found and added to at www.entheoguides .net, a Wiki site established and maintained by guild members for the general public. The door between the worlds is always open. RUMI 3 QUALITIES OF TRANSCENDENT EXPERIENCE Four Dominant Characteristics ALAN WATTS Alan Watts (1915–1973), a very important early popularizer of Eastern thought, was an Episcopal priest turned philosopher, writer, and speaker.a The author of more than twenty-five books, he also wrote many articles and recorded hundreds of audiotapes, all of which are still broadcast on noncommercial radio. When he and I were on early panels that presented pro and con arguments about psychedelics, he was never angry but only amused at the folly of others. He modeled that good living and good thinking went well together. For a sample of Watts talking about “nothingness,” go to www.youtube.com and search on “Alan Watts–On Nothingness.” The following selection by Alan Watts is excerpted from his article titled “Psychedelics and the Religious Experience,”1 which was in the January 1968 issue of California Law Review. Almost all the readers of this book will have had their own psychedelics experiences and may wonder why this particular selection has been included. One answer is that not everyone who has used psychedelics has experienced existence at its core. A second reason is that this selection assumes that readers have not had the experiences he speaks of. Therefore, he needed to be as exact and as lucid as possible in describing states that other writers stumble over, calling then ineffable or noetic or, even worse, “ indescribable.” What makes this article especially valuable is the manner by which Watts suggests how the world might appear to someone who has felt the revelatory nature of these experiences. For the purposes of this study, in describing my experiences with psychedelic drugs, I avoid the occasional and incidental bizarre alterations of sense perception that psychedelic chemicals may induce. I am concerned, rather, with the fundamental alterations of the normal, socially induced consciousness of one’s own existence and relation to the external world. I am trying to delineate the basic principles of psychedelic awareness, but I must add that I can speak only for myself. The quality of these experiences depends considerably upon one’s prior orientation and attitude to life, although the now voluminous descriptive literature of these experiences accords quite remarkably with my own. Almost invariably, my experiments with psychedelics have had four dominant characteristics. I shall try to explain them—in the expectation that the reader will say, at least of the second and third, “Why, that’s obvious! No one needs a drug to see that.” Quite so, but every insight has degrees of intensity. There can be obvious-1 and obvious-2, and the latter comes on with shattering clarity, manifesting its implications in every sphere and dimension of our existence. The first characteristic is a slowing down of time, a concentration in the present. One’s normally compulsive concern for the future decreases, and one becomes aware of the enormous importance and interest of what is happening at the moment. Other people, going about their business on the streets, seem to be slightly crazy, failing to realize that the whole point of life is to be fully aware of it as it happens. One therefore relaxes, almost luxuriously, into studying the colors in a glass of water or listening to the now highly articulate vibration of every note played on an oboe or sung by a voice. From the pragmatic standpoint of our culture, such an attitude is very bad for business. It might lead to improvidence, lack of foresight, diminished sales of insurance policies, and abandoned savings accounts. Yet this is just the corrective that our culture needs. No one is more fatuously impractical than the “successful” executive who spends his whole life absorbed in frantic paperwork with the objective of retiring in comfort at sixty-five, when it will all be too late. Only those who have cultivated the art of living completely in the present have any use for making plans for the future, for when the plans mature they will be able to enjoy the results. I have never yet heard a preacher urging his congregation to practice that section of the Sermon on the Mount which begins, “Be not anxious for the morrow….” The truth is that people who live for the future are, as we say of the insane, “not quite all there” and also not quite here: by overeagerness they are perpetually missing the point. Foresight is bought at the price of anxiety, and when overused it destroys all its own advantages. The second characteristic I will call “awareness of polarity.” This is the vivid realization that states, things, and events that we ordinarily call opposite are interdependent, like back and front or the poles of a magnet. By polar awareness one sees that things which are explicitly different are implicitly one: self and other, subject and object, left and right, and male and female, and then, a little more surprisingly, solid and space, figure and background, pulse and interval, saints and sinners, police and criminals, and in-groups and out-groups. Each is definable only in terms of the other, and they go together transactionally, like buying and selling, for there is no sale without a purchase and no purchase without a sale. As this awareness becomes increasingly intense, you feel that you yourself are polarized with the external universe in such a way that you imply each other. Your push is its pull and its push is your pull, as when you move the steering wheel of a car. Are you pushing it or pulling it? At first, this is a very odd sensation, not unlike hearing your own voice played back to you on an electronic system immediately after you have spoken. You become confused and wait for it to go on! Similarly, you feel that you are something being done by the universe, yet that the universe is equally something being done by you, which is true, at least in the neurological sense that the peculiar structure of our brains translates the sun into light and air vibrations into sound. Our normal sensation of relationship to the outside world is that sometimes I push it and sometimes it pushes me. But if the two are actually one, where does action begin and responsibility rest? If the universe is doing me, how can I be sure that, two seconds hence, I will still remember the English language? If I am doing it, how can I be sure that, two seconds hence, my brain will know how to turn the sun into light? From such unfamiliar sensations as these, the psychedelic experience can generate confusion, paranoia, and terror, even though the individual is feeling his relationship to the world exactly as it would be described by a biologist, ecologist, or physicist, for he is feeling himself as the unified field of organism and environment. The third characteristic, arising from the second, is an awareness of relativity. I see that I am a link in an infinite hierarchy of processes and beings, ranging from molecules through bacteria and insects to human beings and, maybe, to angels and gods—a hierarchy in which every level is in effect the same situation. For example, the poor man worries about money while the rich man worries about his health: the worry is the same, but the difference is in its substance or dimension. I realize that fruit flies must think of themselves as people because, like us they find themselves in the middle of their own world—with immeasurably greater things above and smaller things below. To us, they all look alike and seem to have no personality—as do the Chinese when we have not lived among them. Yet fruit flies must see just as many subtle distinctions among themselves as we do among ourselves. From this, it is but a short step to the realization that all forms of life and being are simply variations on a single theme: we are all in fact one being doing the same thing in as many different ways as possible. As the French proverb goes, Plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose (the more it varies, the more it stays the same). I see, further, that feeling threatened by the inevitability of death is really the same experience as feeling alive and that all beings are feeling this everywhere; they are all just as much “I” as I am. Yet the “I” feeling, to be felt at all, must always be a sensation relative to the “other”—to something beyond its control and experience. To be at all, it must begin and end. But the intellectual jump that mystical and psychedelic experiences make here is in enabling you to see that all these myriad I-centers are yourself—not, indeed, your personal and superficially conscious ego, but what Hindus call the paramatman, the Self of all selves.2 As the retina enables us to see countless pulses of energy as a single light, so the mystical experience shows us innumerable individuals as a single Self. The fourth characteristic is awareness of eternal energy, often in the form of intense white light, which seems to be both the current in your nerves and that mysterious e which equals mc2. This may sound like megalomania or delusion of grandeur—but one sees quite clearly that all existence is a single energy and that this energy is one’s own being. Of course, there is death as well as life because energy is a pulsation, and just as waves must have both crests and troughs, the experience of existing must go on and off. Basically, therefore, there is simply nothing to worry about because you yourself are the eternal energy of the universe playing hide-and-seek (off and on) with itself. At root, you are the Godhead, for God is all that there is. Quoting Isaiah just a little out of context: “I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light and create the darkness: I make peace, and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things.”3 This is the sense of the fundamental tenet of Hinduism, Tat tram asi (“That art thou”),4 with “that” being the subtle Being of which this whole universe is composed. A classical case of this experience, from the West, is recounted by Alfred Lord Tennyson in A Memoir by His Son. A kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me thro’ repeating my own name two or three times to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction but the only true life. 4 EXPERIENCES OF PSYCHEDELIC PIONEERS In Their Own Words How did the pioneers of psychedelics assimilate their early experiences? What is common to almost all of their reports included here is that their experiences shifted their respective life directions, for most of them with a single exposure. In the lull between the prior research period and this current one, a generation has lost sight of the reason these substances had such an impact on individuals. These experiences radically reformulated the worldview of whoever was undergoing the journey, which led in turn to major changes in that person’s career, relationships, and interactions with the larger culture. Because many of the people in this chapter recorded their observations about their experiences, links to videos and other Web sources have been given when available. There have been three waves of psychedelic experiences in the West. When Albert Hofmann first tested LSD on himself, no one had any idea of its remarkable properties. The first round of guesses, that it caused a model and containable psychotic episode, turned out to be wrong. The initial experiences of the first wave of pioneers—Albert Hofmann, Aldous Huxley, and Stanislav Grof—were totally unexpected. With all that we now know about set and setting, we can see that Hofmann and Grof took LSD in far from ideal situations, yet both had, all in all, a positive experience that changed their lives. By the time Huxley tried LSD, he had already taken mescaline several times at home with a good guide. The exemplars of the second wave—Alexander Shulgin, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Ralph Metzner, and Huston Smith—had all been promised something special and profound, but unknown. The third wave is illustrated here by reports from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Charles Tart, Frances Vaughan, Bill Wilson, and Peter Coyote. These people approached their own sessions as explorers, but as explorers who were entering terrain that they knew others had visited before them. In writing this book, I know that a large number of people worldwide have had some level of experience with one or more psychedelics in a wide variety of settings. The larger culture is aware of their existence. However, the larger culture has also lost some of the understanding about the depth and levels of experience presented here. The experiences of these individuals are as relevant today as they were when they initially occurred. The First Wave ALBERT HOFMANN, ALDOUS HUXLEY, AND STANISLAV GROF The first wave began with the creation of the semisynthetic compound LSD, derived from lysergic acid, a naturally occurring compound. Hofmann, Huxley, and Grof strongly or directly influenced the major figures of the second and third waves of pioneers who followed them. Albert Hofmann Albert Hofmann, Ph.D. (1906–2008), was a Swiss biochemist known best for being the first person to synthesize, ingest, and experience the effects of LSD. In 1938, he was employed by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company in Basel, Switzerland, and worked with lysergic acid in the hopes of developing a stimulant for blood circulation. Because LSD-25 had no effect in animals, it was put aside, but in 1943, he decided to reexamine it (as described below). He later synthesized psilocybin and authored more than one hundred scientific articles and a number of books, including LSD: My Problem Child. He regretted that LSD became popular and that medical research was banned for so long. He told me that his advice to the thousands who had asked him how to use LSD was simple and direct: “Always use it in nature.” While he did not attribute his living fully till he was 102 to the use of these substances, they were central to his life and worldview. To view a video of Hofmann, at 101 years of age, reflecting on his initial experiences, please go to www.youtube.com and search on “Albert Hofmann” and read the interview by “elmercuriodeinternet.” The following material is from an interview with Hofmann in High Times magazine and from his book LSD: My Problem Child.1 This substance, lysergic acid diethylamide, which I first synthesized in 1938, was given to the pharmacological-medical department at Sandoz laboratories for testing. The animals that were used for the test had no special reaction with this compound, and further research was stopped with this substance. Five years later, in 1943, I decided to prepare a new batch of the lysergic acid diethylamide…. From the very beginning, I thought this substance was something special. It was just a feeling I had…. Then, at the end of the synthesis, when I was crystallizing the LSD, I suddenly went into a very strange, dreamlike state. Everything changed, everything had another meaning, unexpectedly. I went home and lay down and closed my eyes and had some very, very stimulated fantasies. I would just think something, and that was what I saw. It was wonderful. But I didn’t know why I was having this strange experience…. Three days later I …I thought that maybe in some strange way I’d gotten some of this lysergic acid diethylamide in my body, and I decided to experiment on myself with it. I started by taking the equivalent of only one-quarter of a milligram, 250 micrograms. Within half an hour, I began to experience similar symptoms to those I’d had three days earlier. But quite quickly they became very strong, very intense, and I became anxious, so I asked my laboratory assistant to accompany me home. As it was wartime and I had no car, we went home by bicycle, and the bicycle ride was strange. My condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of vision wavered and distorted as if in a curved mirror. I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. I had the feeling that time was standing still. It was a very strange feeling, one I’d never had before. There was a change in the experience of life, of time. But it was the most frustrating thing. I was already deep in the LSD trance, in LSD inebriation, and one of its characteristics, just on this bicycle trip, was of not coming from any place or going anyplace. There was absolutely no feeling of time. At home I asked my assistant to call for a doctor…. I was in a very odd state of consciousness. The outer world had changed. The room seemed to be full of life in the light, and colors were more intense. But I also had the feeling that I was changed, that my ego had changed. And then it became such a strange experience that I was afraid that I had gone insane. And sometime during that experience, at the climax, I had the feeling I was out of my body. I had the feeling I was going to die. I had no sensations in my body and thought I’d already left it, was already out of my body, which was something I couldn’t explain to the doctor. I couldn’t really speak rationally to explain that I had made an experiment, either. So he sat with me through that very difficult experience—horribly difficult—and after about four or five hours, the feeling began to change. I felt that I was coming from this very strange other world back to our normal world. And I had the feeling, when I came back from this strange world, that our normal world, which ordinarily we don’t think is wonderful, was a wonderful world. I saw it in a new light. It was a rebirth. But this happy feeling was only at the end of the experience. And when I came back I closed my eyes and had beautiful, colored visions. There was a transformation of every sound into an optical figure. Each noise produced a corresponding colored figure, which was very enjoyable. Finally I went to sleep, and in the morning I was completely fresh. A sensation of well-being and renewed life flowed through me. Breakfast tasted delicious and gave me extraordinary pleasure. When I later walked in the garden, in which the sun shone now after a spring rain, everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. Aldous Huxley Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) was an English writer who spent the later part of his life in Los Angeles, from 1937 until his death in 1963. His best-known novels include Brave New World and Island, but he also produced a wide-ranging output of novels, essays, short stories, poetry, travel writing, and film scripts. Almost legally blind since he was a teenager, Huxley was especially delighted with the visual intensity of his psychedelic experiences. When his library of four thousand books and almost all of his unfinished manuscripts were destroyed in a fire late in his life, I heard him say only, “It seems strange to be starting over.” Huxley’s best-known book about psychedelics, The Doors of Perception, is a detailed description and discussion of his initial experiences with mescaline. He knew nothing about LSD until shortly before his first experience with it. In these selections from his letters (from the book Moksha: Aldous Huxley’s Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience2), he reveals his own experiences, not incident by incident, but how the revelations about the nature of being had made a deep impression on his understanding of culture, of humanity, and of the cosmos. Go to www.youtube.com and search on “Huxley’s LSD Death Trip” for a short video about his asking for and receiving LSD to help him at the time of his death. 23 December 1955 My Dear Humphry [Humphry Osmond, who had given Huxley mescaline], The psychological effects, in my case, were identical with those of mescaline, and I had the same kind of experience as I had on the previous occasion—transfiguration of the external world, and the understanding, through a realization involving the whole man, that Love is the One, and that this is why Atman is identical with Brahman, and why, in spite of everything, the universe is all right…. We played the Bach B-minor suite and the “Musical Offering,” and the experience was overpowering. Bach was a revelation. The tempo of the pieces did not change; nevertheless they went on for centuries, and they were a manifestation, in the plane of art, of perpetual creation, a demonstration of the necessity of death and the self-evidence of immortality, an expression of the essential all-rightness of the universe—for the music was far beyond tragedy, but included death and suffering with everything else in the divine impartiality which is the One, which is Love, which is Being or Istigkeit …let me advise you, if ever you use mescaline or LSD in therapy, to try the effect of the B-minor suite. More than anything, I believe, it will serve to lead the patient’s mind (wordlessly, without any suggestion or covert bullying by doctor or parson) to the central, primordial Fact, the understanding of which is perfect health during the time of the experience, and the memory of the understanding of which may serve as an antidote to mental sickness in the future. Affectionately, Aldous 19 July 1956 Dear Victoria [Victoria Ocampo, editor of the distinguished literary review Sur], …How strange that we should all carry about with us this enormous universe of vision and that which lies beyond vision, and yet be mainly unconscious of the fact! How can we learn to pass at will from one world of consciousness to the others? Mescaline and lysergic acid will open the door; but one doesn’t like to depend exclusively on these chemicals, even though they seem to be more or less completely harmless. I have taken mescaline about six times now and have been taken beyond the realm of vision to the realm of what the mystics call “obscure knowledge”—insight into the nature of things accompanied by the realization that, in spite of pain and tragedy, the universe is all right, in other words that God is Love. The words are embarrassingly silly and, on the level of average consciousness, untrue. But when we are on the higher level, they are seen to stand for the primordial Fact, of which the consciousness is now a part…. Ever yours affectionately, Aldous 20 November 1956 Dearest Ellen [Ellen Huxley], Thank you for your fascinating account of the mescaline experience…. Did you get what I have got so strongly on the recent occasions when I have taken the stuff—an overpowering sense of gratitude, a desire to give thanks to the Order of Things for the privilege of this particular experience, and also for the privilege—for that one feels it to be, in spite of everything—of living in a human body on this particular planet? And then there is the intense feeling of compassion for those who, for whatever reason, make it impossible for themselves to get anywhere near the reality revealed by the drug—the reality which is always there for those who are in the right state of mind to perceive it…. Some of the compassion and some of the gratitude remain, even after the experience is over. One can never be quite the same again…. Your affectionate, Aldous 11 February 1962 Dear Tim [Timothy Leary], I forgot, in my last letter, to answer your question about Tantra…. [He gives Leary a list of books and suggestions on what to read in them.] The therapy is not merely for the abnormal, it is above all a therapy for the much graver sickness of insensitiveness and ignorance which we call “normality” or “mental health.” LSD and the mushrooms should be used, it seems to me, in context of this basic Tantric idea of the yoga of total awareness, leading to enlightenment within the world of everyday experience—which of course becomes the world of miracle and beauty and divine mystery when experience is what it always ought to be. Yours, Aldous Stanislav Grof Stanislav Grof, M.D., born in 1931, is a psychiatrist with more than fifty years of experience researching the healing and transformative potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness. He is a founder of Transpersonal Psychology and the International Transpersonal Association, a professor of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies and the Pacifica Graduate Institute in the United States, and the author of many books, including Beyond the Brain, LSD Psychotherapy, Psychology of the Future, The Cosmic Game, When the Impossible Happens, and The Ultimate Journey. You can see Grof discussing his initial LSD experience by going to www.youtube.com and searching on “Stan Grof about His LSD Experience.” The following excerpt is from an interview that Grof did for Yoga Journal.3 I couldn’t believe how much I learned about my psyche in those few hours. I experienced a fantastic display of colorful visions, some abstract and geometrical, others figurative and filled with symbolic import. The sheer intensity of the array of emotions I felt simply amazed me. I was hit by a radiance that seemed comparable to the epicenter of a nuclear explosion or perhaps the light of supernatural brilliance said in oriental scriptures to appear to us at the moment of death. This thunderbolt catapulted me out of my body. First, I lost my awareness of my immediate surroundings, then the psychiatric clinic, then Prague [Czechoslovakia], and finally the planet. At an inconceivable speed, my consciousness expanded to cosmic dimensions. I experienced the big bang, passed through black holes and white holes in the universe, identified with exploding supernovas, and witnessed many other strange phenomena that seemed to be pulsars, quasars, and other cosmic events. I was able to see the irony and paradox of the situation. The divine manifested itself and took me over in a modern scientific laboratory in the middle of a scientific experiment conducted in a Communist country with a substance produced in the test tube of a twentieth-century chemist. The Second Wave ALEXANDER SHULGIN, TIMOTHY LEARY, RICHARD ALPERT (RAM DASS), RALPH METZNER, AND HUSTON SMITH Alexander Shulgin Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, Ph.D., who was born in 1925, is a pharmacologist and chemist best known as a drug developer. Shulgin discovered, synthesized, and bioassayed (specifically, he tried out on himself) over 230 psychoactive compounds. In 1991 and 1997, he and his wife, Ann, authored the books PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story and TiHKAL: The Continuation, collections of personal stories and descriptions of how to make, and the effects of, many of these compounds. He is interested in creating what he calls “tools,” but leaves it to others to study their effects. To ever so many of us, he has been an easygoing, endlessly supportive, unassuming friend. To see a video in which Shulgin explains what he does and why he does it, go to www.youtube.com and search for “Alexander Shulgin: Why I Discover Psychedelic Substances.” The following excerpt is from the biographical section of PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story.4 I had read all the recent literature about it, but it was not until April of 1960 that a psychologist friend of mine, and a friend of his …provided me with the opportunity to be “babysat” on an experience with 400 milligrams of mescaline sulfate. It was a day that will remain blazingly vivid in my memory, and one which unquestionably confirmed the entire direction of my life. The details of that day were hopelessly complex and will remain buried in my notes, but the distillation, the essence of the experience, was this: I saw the world that presented itself in several guises. It had a marvel of color that was, for me, without precedent, for I have never particularly noticed the world of color. The rainbow had always provided me with all the hues I could respond to. Here, suddenly, I had hundreds of nuances of color which were new to me, and which I have never, even today, forgotten. The world was all so marvelous in its detail. I could see the intimate structure of a bee putting something into a sac on its hind leg to take to its hive, yet I was completely at peace with the bee’s closeness to my face. The world was a wonder of interpretive insight. I saw people as caricatures which revealed both their pains and their hopes, and they seemed not to mind my seeing them this way. More than anything else, the world amazed me, in that I saw it as I had when I was a child. I had forgotten the beauty and magic in the knowingness of it. I was in familiar territory of space wherein I had once roamed as an immortal explorer, and I was recalling everything in it that had been authentically known to me then and which I have abandoned, then forgotten, with my coming of age. Like the touchstone that recalls a dream to a sudden presence, this experience reaffirmed a miracle of excitement that I had known in my childhood but had been pressured to forget. The most compelling insight of the day was that this awesome recall had been brought about by a fraction of a gram of a white solid, but in no way whatsoever could it be argued that these memories had been contained within the white solid. Everything I had recognized was from the depths of my memory and my psyche. I understood that our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit. We may choose not to find access to it, we may even deny its existence, but indeed it is inside us, and there are chemicals that can catalyze its availability. It is now a matter of history that I decided to devote whatever energies and skills I might possess to unraveling the nature of these tools for self-exposure…. I had found my learning path. Timothy Leary Timothy Leary, Ph.D. (1920–1996), taught psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University (which fired him in 1963) and was a hugely controversial figure during the 1960s and 1970s because he supported the widespread use of psychedelics for self-discovery. Described as “the most dangerous man in America” by President Richard Nixon, he spent almost eight years in prison and exile, more for his beliefs than for any crime. Author William Burroughs referred to Leary as “a true visionary of the potential of the human mind and spirit.” Poet Allen Ginsberg proclaimed him “a hero of American consciousness.” Novelist Tom Robbins said that Leary is “the Galileo of our age.” Leary wrote 27 books and monographs and 250 articles and gave more than 100 published interviews. Everyone who spent time with Leary—friend or enemy—agreed that he was friendly, funny, smart as all get out, and overwhelmingly charming. He is given far too much credit for causing the cessation of psychedelic research and not enough credit for his insistence on the centrality of a safe set and setting in using any of these materials. Leary’s autobiography, Flashbacks, and a collection of writings about him, Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In, edited by Robert Forte, are the best books to read in order to begin to understand him. Tim’s first experience was with mushrooms, soon followed by psilocybin and then LSD. Five hours after eating the mushrooms, Leary said it was all changed. The revelation had come. It was the classic vision, the full-blown conversion experience. In his book High Priest, Leary wrote, “We [Leary and Alpert] had moved beyond the game of psychology, the game of trying to help people, and beyond the game of conventional love relationships. We were quietly and serenely aware of too much…. I’ve never recovered from that shattering ontological confrontation. I’ve never been able to take myself, my mind, and the social world around me seriously. “From the date of this session it was inevitable that we would leave Harvard, that we would leave American society …tenderly, gently disregarding the parochial social inanities.”5 In the book Birth of a Psychedelic Culture, Ram Dass said, “When Tim first took LSD he didn’t speak for weeks. I went around saying, ‘…we’ve lost Timothy, we’ve lost Timothy.’ I was warning everybody not to take the drug as Tim wasn’t talking….” Leary said his first LSD experience was “the most shattering experience of his life.”6 Ram Dass (then Richard Alpert) Richard Alpert, Ph.D., who was born in 1931 and is better known as Ram Dass, is a contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of a number of books, including The Only Dance There Is, Be Here Now, and The Psychedelic Experience (with Leary and Metzner). After serving as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, he accepted a position at Harvard University, where he worked with the Social Relations Department, the Psychology Department, the Graduate School of Education, and the Health Service, where he was a therapist. He was also awarded research contracts with Yale and Stanford until, along with Leary, he was fired in 1963. Ram Dass is also known for his relationship with his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, and for helping found two charitable groups, the Seva Foundation and the Hanuman Foundation. When asked if he could sum up his life’s message, Ram Dass replied, “I help people as a way to work on myself, and I work on myself to help people.” He was my mentor at Harvard before he had any involvement with psychedelics, and later (as described in chapter 17), he gave me my first psychedelic experience. He changed the direction of my life. This book is, in some ways, a partial thank-you to him. If you go to www.youtube.com and search on “Richard Alpert—The LSD Crisis,” you will see a very young Richard Alpert discussing his early psychedelic insights. He has been an important worldwide spiritual teacher for many years. The following excerpt is from his chapter in the book Higher Wisdom.7 My introduction to psychedelics was via Tim Leary…. I was very eager…. In March of 1961, we took some psilocybin pills at his big fancy house in Newton. Tim and I took the psilocybin pills together with Allen Ginsberg, who was there too. I left Tim and Allen in the kitchen and went into the living room where it was dark. Eventually, I noticed that there was someone in the corner of the room, and tried to see who it was. And I realized that it was me! Me, in my various roles—pilot, academic—all my roles were out there somewhere. I was living those roles, so it was quite difficult to see them “over there.” I thought, “This drug is going to make me not know who I am. If those are my roles over there, what’s going to be left?” then I thought, “Well, at least I have my body.” That was my first mistake, because I looked down at the couch and I saw the full couch with no body there! That scared me. Being a philosophical materialist at the time, I really considered my body to be solid. With a sort of Jewish humor, I wondered, “but who is minding the store?” I ended up going inward to a place in myself where I had never been before. It was a feeling/tone that conveyed the message of being “home.” It was a safe home, an ecstatic home…. Eventually I came out of that experience, and realized that we’d had a snowstorm. Tim’s house was on a hill, and I rolled down the snowy hill, ecstatic…. Tim’s house was only about three blocks from my parents’ house, where I grew up. So I walked to their house in the snow. When I came to their walk and saw that it was not shoveled, well, I felt that as the young buck in the family, I should shovel the walk for my dear old parents. So I shoveled the walk. Unfortunately, it was about four in the morning. My father and mother appeared at their window with a look on their faces that said: “what’s wrong with you, you damn little fool?” Now, ever since I was a baby, I always looked to my parents’ attitudes to determine my behavior. Later in life, I looked to their surrogates for this: professors and heads of departments. But in my inner self, in this “home” inside, it felt very good to shovel their walk. And so I danced a jig down below, and I waved, and I shoveled snow. That was the first time I had ever bucked authority. That was the key “aha” during that psilocybin trip. Very shortly after this, Aldous Huxley gave us a copy of the The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Here was a book designed to be read to dying monks, so for me to identify with it so strongly was a shocker. The Tibetan Book of the Dead gave me a feeling that eastern psychology described the internal workings of this feeling of “home” that I had experienced. I became fascinated by what “the moment” included. It was like multilayered baklava. Like planes upon planes, and some of them were nuts, and some of them were honey. For example, there was an ecstatic state, where colors and music became so incredibly vivid that it seemed as though Mozart must have had access to, and listened in on, these realms. And I liked it very much. Ralph Metzner Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., born in 1936, is a psychologist, writer, and researcher who participated in psychedelic research at Harvard University in the early 1960s with Leary and Alpert. Metzner is a psychotherapist and professor emeritus of psychology at the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he had also been the academic dean and academic vice president. He and I have been friends since we were research assistants for Richard Alpert (before psychedelics), and we have remained close ever since. In spite of almost all of my own work being with laboratory-produced psychedelics, Ralph is one of the people who has put me back in touch with the older, nature-based traditions. To see a video of Metzner giving a presentation at the World Psychedelic Forum in Basel, Switzerland, in 2008, go to www.YouTube and search for “Metzner” and “World Psychedelic Forum.” The following excerpt is from the book that he coauthored with Leary, Outside Looking In.8 Although a graduate student at the time of this experience, Metzner soon became an equal partner with Leary and Alpert after they left Harvard. He is now a co-founder and the president of the Green Earth Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to healing and harmonizing the relationship between humans and the earth. I lay down on the floor and stretched out, feeling very relaxed and yet very alert …all of a sudden I found myself in completely new and magical worlds …when I closed my eyes, fantastically beautiful and intricate geometric depth patterns were interweaving behind my eyelids, watching, colliding, streaming by at great speed …my skin was embracing me, enwrapping me, in a kind of alternatively wet and dry, hot and cool almost unendurably pleasurable embrace…. …at a certain point I noticed that the intensity of the experiences began to diminish, like a slow gliding down. The body felt very warm and relaxed. I understood how my normal perception of the world was constricted and limited by many prohibitions I had somehow accepted…. This was perhaps the most significant revelation of this experience: that I was basically in charge of what I could perceive and think about, but I was not bound by external forces but rather made choices that determine the extent and quality of my awareness. Huston Smith Huston Smith, Ph.D., was born in Suzhou, China, in 1919 and spent his first seventeen years there with his parents, who were Methodist missionaries, and his siblings. He taught at the University of Denver from 1944 to 1947 and Washington State University in St. Louis from 1948 to 1958 before becoming the chair of the Philosophy Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 1959 to 1973. While there, he took psychedelics and worked with Leary and Alpert. He moved to Syracuse, New York, and worked at Syracuse University until his retirement in 1983. During his career, Smith not only studied but also practiced Vedanta Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, and Sufism without losing his Christian roots. One of my great joys is to approach Huston and to see him seemingly fill with light before he hugs hello. Huston is best known for his book World Religions, which is a textbook for colleges around the country and remains the most widely read book of its kind. He is less well known for his role in trying (unsuccessfully) to shape the early work in psychedelics done at Harvard. By going to www.youtube.com and searching on “Huston Smith on ‘How to Study a Religion,’” you will learn how to learn about a religion: by full immersion. Many full-length videos of Huston teaching about the world’s major spiritual traditions are also available. The following excerpt, about his first psychedelic experience, is from his book Cleaning the Doors of Perception.9 New Year’s Day, 1961. Kendra and I reached the home of Dr. Timothy Leary in Newton, Massachusetts, about 12:30 p.m. Present in addition to Leary were Dr. George Alexander and Frank Barron. After coffee and pleasantries, Tim sprinkled some capsules of mescaline [probably psilocybin] onto the coffee table and invited us to be his guest. One, he said, was a mild dose, two an average dose, and three a large dose. I took one; after about half an hour, when nothing seemed to be happening, I too took a second capsule. After what I estimate to have been about an hour, I noticed mounting tension in my body that turned into tremors in my legs. I went into the large living room and lay down on its couch. It would be impossible for me to fix the time when I passed into the visionary state, for the transition was imperceptible. From here on time becomes irrelevant…. The world into which I was ushered was strange, weird, uncanny, significant, and terrifying beyond belief. Two things struck me especially. First, the mescaline acted as a psychological prism. It was as if the layers of the mind, most of whose contents our conscious mind screens out to smelt the remainder down into a single band we can cope with, were now revealed in their completeness—spread out as if by spectroscope into about five distinguishable layers. And the odd thing was that I could to some degree be aware of them all simultaneously, and could move back and forth among them at will, shifting my attention to now this one, now another one. Thus, I could hear distinctly the quiet conversation of Tim and Dr. Alexander in the adjoining study, and follow their discussion and even participate in it imaginatively. But this leads to the second marked feature. Though the five bands of consciousness—I say five roughly; they were not sharply divided and I made no attempt to count them—were all real, they were not of equal importance. I was experiencing the metaphysical theory known as emanationism, in which, beginning with the clear, unbroken Light of the Void, that light then fractures into multiple forms and declines in intensity as it devolves through descending levels of reality. My friends in the study were present in one band of this spectrum, but it was far more restricted than higher bands that were in view. Bergson’s notion of the brain as a reducing valve struck me as accurate. Along with “psychological prism,” another phrase occurred to me: empirical metaphysics. Plotinus’s emanation theory, and its more detailed Vedantic counterpart, had hitherto been only conceptual theories for me. Now I was seeing them, with their descending bands spread out before me. I found myself amused, thinking how duped historians of philosophy had been in crediting the originators of such worldviews with being speculative geniuses. Had they had experiences such as this, they need have been no more than hack reporters. But beyond accounting for the origin of these philosophies, my experience supported their truth. As in Plato’s myth of the cave, what I was now seeing struck me with the force of the sun, in comparison with which everyday experience reveals only flickering shadows in a dim cavern. It should not be assumed from what I have written that the experience was pleasurable. The accurate words are significance and terror…. The experience was momentous because it showed me range upon range of reality that previously I had only believed existed and tried without much success to imagine. Whence, then, the terror? In part, from my sense of the utter freedom of the psyche and its dominion over the body. I was aware of my body, laid out on the couch as if on an undertaker’s slab, cool and slightly moist. But I also had the sense that it would reactivate only if my spirit chose to reenter it. Should it so choose? There seemed to be no clear reason for it to do so…. Later, after the peak had passed and I had walked a few steps, I said to Tim, “I hope you know what you’re playing around with here. I realize I’m still under the influence and that things probably look different from your side, but it looks to me like you’re taking an awful chance in these experiments…. I feel like I’m in an operating room, having barely squeaked through an ordeal in which for two hours my life hung in the balance.” I have said nothing about the visual. Where it was important, it was abstract. Lights such as never were on land or sea. And space—not three or four dimensions but more like twelve. The Third Wave RABBI ZALMAN SCHACHTER-SHALOMI, CHARLES TART, FRANCES VAUGHAN, BILL WILSON, AND PETER COYOTE Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Ph.D., was born in 1924 in Zhovkra (then Poland). He is one of the founders of the Jewish Renewal Movement. Raised in Vienna, he was interned in detention camps under the Vichy French and fled to the United States in 1941. He became an Orthodox rabbi in 1947 and subsequently earned a doctorate from Hebrew Union College. He was initially sent out to speak on college campuses by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, but was expelled from Chabad for praising the sacramental value of LSD. Schachter-Shalomi eventually left the Lubavitch movement altogether and founded his own organization, known as B’nai Or, meaning “Children of Light.” For many years, he helped many rabbis and others better understand the intersection between their faith and psychedelic experiences. A joyful and exuberant man, I recall his conducting a wedding ceremony that went on for hours and hours. At some point, he interrupted the service and told those attending, “Yes it is a long service, but, believe me, they stay married!” Schachter-Shalomi has held teaching positions at Naropa Institute and Temple University. The following excerpt is from his chapter “Transcending Religious Boundaries,” in the book Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics, edited by Roger Walsh and Charley Grob.10 It was a very wonderful journey. I subsequently had some other trips where there were descents into hell, but that first one was just wonderful. The wonderful thing about psychedelics was the “mind move” that occurred—the recognition of the fluidity of consciousness. My reality maps were no longer absolute. With psychedelics, I could see how all cosmologies are heuristic and it depends on what you want to do. I could get into various viewpoints; if I wanted to see the universe from a Christian perspective, I got it. That was a very important discovery for me. Another thing I learned was how important it is to do one’s contemplative homework afterward. Leary said to me that time, “Imagine how potent this is and what it might do for people. And imagine how, if this is misused, it’s not so good.” Ram Dass would say in those years, something along the lines of: “For grass you should have the equivalent of a driver’s license. And for LSD you should have the equivalent of a pilot’s license.” He emphasized the preparation and the responsibilities that go with it. So the experience only opens you up to greater vision. When you have the vision, you have a burden to carry that vision out. In other words, it makes demands on you. But you can also ignore the demands, shut the doors again, and then the places that have become transparent become opaque. It’s beneficial to have someone with you who will help you harvest the experience. After a while the experiences were less momentous, and there seemed to be a need to wait between sessions. In those years I felt that it was important to have a psychedelic experience at least twice a year, once before Yom Kippur and once before Passover, to revisit that place and check out what was happening there. Charles Tart Charles Tart, Ph.D., born in 1937, is a professor at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology and an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. He is among the foremost scientists in the areas of altered states of consciousness and paranormal phenomena, and he has been involved with research and theory in the fields of hypnosis, psychology, transpersonal psychology, parapsychology, consciousness, and mindfulness since 1963. Tart has authored over a dozen books, two of which, Altered States of Consciousness (1969) and Transpersonal Psychologies (1975), became widely used textbooks; he has had more than 250 articles published in professional journals and books, including lead articles in Science and Nature. Tart’s insistence that real science also includes everything that one finds interesting has often helped me understand my own assumptions and bias. This excerpt is from his chapter titled “Initial Integrations of Some Psychedelic Understandings into Every Day Life” in the book Psychedelic Reflections, edited by Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar.11 While finishing my psychology degree at the University of North Carolina, …I volunteered to try some mescaline…. It was arranged that we would try the experimentation on a Saturday morning in a friend’s office at the laboratory…. A few minutes later the most extraordinary event happened. Quite suddenly the room, a dingy office in an old college building, resembled a cathedral of enormous size and beauty. The colors of the furnishings were incredibly beautiful, full of deep texture and hues I had never seen before. Small objects around the office were magnificent works of art. My friends were surrounded by beautiful colored rainbows. Indeed, within a few minutes rainbows were floating through the air everywhere. The most important thing about that first experience was that for the first time in my life I knew what the word “beauty” meant. True, I had spoken it thousands of times before, had pointed at objects I’d been taught to believe were beautiful and said the word in association with them, and had occasionally had vague, moderately positive feelings in connection with such objects. Now I understand that I had never even begun to penetrate what beauty was all about. While the incredible and intense immediate experience of beauty faded rapidly after the experiment, a door had been opened in my mind and senses that would never close completely. Frances Vaughn Frances Vaughan, Ph.D., a psychotherapist and teacher, is the author of the books Shadows of the Sacred, Awakening Intuition, and The Inward Arc. Vaughan is an editor of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and was one of the founding faculty members at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She has been president of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology and the Association for Humanistic Psychology as well as a trustee of the Fetzer Institute, a foundation whose mission is to foster the awareness of the power of love and forgiveness in the emerging global community. Her psychedelic session, which she reports below, happened at the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, California, where I did all of my training and guiding. After careful screening I was given a high dose of LSD combined with mescaline. Then I relaxed and listened to selected music, using earphones and an eyeshade, under the supervision of a well-trained psychiatrist. The experience changed my life.12 The perennial philosophy and the esoteric teachings of all time suddenly made sense. I understood why spiritual seekers were instructed to look within, and the unconscious was revealed to be not just a useful concept but an infinite reservoir of creative potential. I felt I had been afforded a glimpse into the nature of reality and the human potential within that reality, together with a direct experience of being myself, free of illusory identification and constrictions of consciousness. My understanding of mystical teaching, Eastern and Western, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Sufi alike, took a quantum leap. I became aware of the transcendental unity at the core of all great religions, and understood for the first time the meaning of ecstatic states.13 Bill Wilson Better known as “Bill W.,” the man who founded Alcoholics Anonymous was known to have taken LSD.14 Less known is who guided his session. One of his therapeutic journeys led him to Trabuco College in California, and the friendship of the college’s founder, Aldous Huxley. The author of Brave New World and The Doors of Perception introduced Wilson to LSD in the late 1950s. The drug rocked Wilson’s world. He thought of it as something of a miracle substance and continued taking it well into the’60s. As he approached his seventieth birthday, he developed a plan to have LSD distributed at all Alcoholics Anonymous meetings nationwide. The plan was eventually quashed by more rational voices. To see a straightforward discussion of Alcoholics Anonymous working with other groups, go to www.video.google.com and search for “Bill Wilson” and “singleness of purpose.” Peter Coyote Peter Coyote is a well-known film actor and is also the valued narrator of several hundred documentaries, including Explorer: Inside LSD for National Geographic Television in 2009. The following excerpt is part of an essay Coyote wrote for the journal The Sixties shortly after Hofmann’s death in April 2008 at age 102. Coyote’s essay is included here not only because of what he says, but also because he says it so well.15 The first time I took LSD, my roommate volunteered to “mind me.” By the time Ravi Shankar’s music had transformed me into something as sinuous as smoke, I had gone far beyond what I could recognize as either fear or comfort. Like a wave, I possessed a momentary, individuated expression and yet was simultaneously the sea itself, and understood clearly that I had never, not once, ever been separate from it. When the life force holding my various parts together would finally disintegrate, I understood, without fear, that I would return to what I had always been before I was born. The next morning, the world appeared fresh and new. Everything made sense, and particularly the art and expression of the counterculture. The psychedelic posters advertising rock shows were visual shorthand for the melding of in-line and out-line precipitated by the LSD. Anyone who had crossed that border recognized those ideograms of inner and outer space—immediately…. I don’t mean to suggest that we had all ingested “wisdom” pills and achieved enlightenment, far from it. But the geography of wisdom was now a discernable, available territory. Our feet were firmly pointed toward these shadowy hills and our intentions to explore them fixed. PART TWO PERSONAL GROWTH AND SELF-EXPLORATION in Psychedelic Sessions The approach to the numinous is the real therapy. And in as much as you attain the numinous experience, you are released from the curse of pathology. C. G. JUNG, LETTERS Introduction to Part Two If a process, procedure, or product helps individuals heal themselves and become better partners, lovers, parents, or coworkers, it makes no sense to restrict its availability from those who use it safely and responsibly. Psychedelic therapy has had remarkable effectiveness with a wide range of psychological disorders as well as with more serious conditions including childhood schizophrenia, autism,1 and chronic alcoholism.2 Today, psychedelic therapy is available, but only for a small number of patients in a few research settings. In addition, little information or training has been available on how to safely conduct psychedelic psychotherapeutic sessions. Before all civilian LSD research was stopped in 1966, LSD was the most widely studied psychiatric drug in the world. Although early experimental use pointed to the possibility of it causing a transient psychosis, later research established that such a reaction was typically produced when patients given LSD were not informed about or prepared for the range of likely reactions. As researchers began to learn the importance of the setting, atmosphere, and attitude surrounding the session, they realized that the LSD experience was a valuable psychotherapeutic modality that frequently catalyzed significant episodes of healing and integration. Psychedelics, when used wisely, can open up consciousness, sometimes spectacularly. When they are misused, such openings can be troubling, frightening, and even sometimes damaging. Real, long-lasting harm can and does occur. The following example of a poorly done and unsupervised series of events was conducted by a physician who, earlier, had been part of legal and better-supervised studies. “My mother was a participant in this study and not only did Dr ——— overdose her on the drugs but refused to offer any real follow-up care. Only to send her more drugs through the mail and try and get her to take them on her own, with no medical supervision! To put someone in that situation and then refuse follow-up care is unconscionable. She had kept a file, which I found recently after she died, and there are many letters from her begging for help as she was having problems maintaining her mind/ body connection and was suffering the LSD/flashback experience over and over without the drug. This experience was an absolute nightmare for her as well as her children—she lost everything—her marriage, her children, business, possessions, and peace of mind.”3 In well-administered psychotherapeutic programs, negative effects have been infrequent.4 When guides—usually trained mental health professionals—help a patient resolve disturbing psychodynamic material and facilitate new insights, the benefits are sustained over years and decades. For example, an alcoholic who was treated at Spring Grove Mental Hospital in 1966 and whose session was shown in the CBS television documentary LSD: The Spring Grove Experiment, was interviewed in 2009 for the in-production film series The Acid Chronicles. He reported that not only has he not taken a drink for over forty years, but also, since the therapy, he has had no desire to do so. Therapy-oriented psychedelic sessions, like every other therapy, are not suitable for every sort of patient. It is as important to screen out unsuitable candidates as it is to establish a safe and supportive environment. However, when a candidate is suitable and well prepared and the situation is right, there is a high rate of success. Recent clinical studies, including a double-blind study that encouraged spiritual experiences, attest to its therapeutic value.5 This section does not include guidelines for mental health professionals or others who would act as therapists or guides because each person and group varies in how it chooses to work. This section does include an overview and resources about what to do if things go wrong. It also reviews popular notions of the dangers of unsupervised psychedelic uses. Most of these warnings have been proved to be false or exaggerated. Many of the “harmful consequences” presented as facts in textbooks, at health clinics, and in government publications perpetuate myths long contradicted by accepted research. Many popular and scientific publications describe changes in beliefs and attitudes induced by psychedelic therapy. What has been missing is an objective examination of what happens in a patient’s daily life after the therapy ends. This section concludes with a detailed report of changes in the behaviors and lifestyles of adults given a single dose of LSD or mescaline by trained guides in a safe clinical setting.a Anthropologists and archaeologists have learned that shamans and other traditional healers have successfully used psychedelic agents for healing for thousands of years. In the West, attitudes about these traditional uses have progressed from rejection and demonization, to doubt and disbelief, to gradual acceptance and legal protection.6 There is now a growing interest in learning how to tap these agents’ potential for healing and spiritual experience.7 5 THERAPEUTIC USES OF PSYCHEDELICS Psychotherapy and Healing Psychedelic Psychotherapy Psychedelics enable us to help others and ourselves become more aware. It is wonderful that they exist, and like any other powerful intervention, they work better when used correctly. To push them aside because they can be damaging when used badly is no wiser than to eliminate headache tablets because overdoses are harmful to the liver. Given the wide range of benefits from proper use, why were these substances ever banned? The most generous explanation I know is that the government was caught between the laws protecting religious experience and the obligation to regulate drug use. Psychedelic experiences were religious, and psychedelics were “drugs.” The easiest solution, if the most simplistic, was to pretend that the uses of psychedelics were all medical, then to ban them outright, even though all of the uses that were freaking out the government were nonmedical. But no one has ever accused governments of acting wisely under pressure. Another probable reason for their ban was that the results of psychedelic sessions and statements from users implied that “the belief-and-value system implicit in our ‘scientific’ culture is not uniquely true and not even optimally wholesome.”1 Why have psychedelics been so tightly restricted until recently? Perhaps because they were repeatedly classed with drugs like heroin and cocaine, perhaps because of their easy availability and the relatively few prosecutions, perhaps because, like General Motors or the U.S. Department of Defense, the government did not adjust to new conditions, but maintained the same rules and regulations past their usefulness. In any case, it appears that the cultural wind is starting to blow in the right direction. The medical profession has no need to be afraid of these substances, the psychological profession has no need to deny the reality of the experiences they uncover, and the regulatory agencies have no need to deny anyone the right to proper treatment, especially for conditions for which psychedelics have proved to be not only helpful but also the treatment of choice. Any careful review, however, of what is known and what has been published about psychedelics makes it clear that our understanding of their therapeutic use is still a cognitive mess and a philosophical morass. One reason is the abiding confusion between the intentions of the therapists, the actuality of the experiences, and the way the results are measured, described, and reported. Sad but true, researchers tiptoe ever so carefully around federal oversight, deliberately muting the far-reaching implications of their findings. Despite their fine results, they still hedge their accounts, decrying a lack of generalizability and almost always concluding that what is needed is a slightly larger, slightly broader, and usually more expensive study. Their goal is to move therapeutic psychedelic use beyond research into basic medical and psychological practice. However, while this sensible forward movement continues, people around the planet who are already taking psychedelics have more immediate needs. Both concerns need to be addressed. What I find personally difficult is how often current researchers, most of whom are personal friends, dismiss all prior research, even when their own work replicates it. They state, almost as gospel, that all early research was inadequate, inferior, used too small a sample, lacked control groups, and so on. My guess is that they do this so they will not be considered wild-eyed, drug-toting, drug-using revolutionaries intent on overturning conventional psychiatry’s current assumptions. Since my own research no longer depends on grants or government permission, I can speak to concerns they do well to avoid. Reading the theoreticians on the subject of psychedelics—those familiar with their use as well as those who are not—I am reminded of the early Western writings on acupuncture by researchers with little or no experience with it attempting to argue for or against its efficacy. That it had been used successfully for a myriad of conditions by millions of people over several thousand years was not considered relevant. Psychedelics have suffered somewhat the same fate. While we have clear evidence, for example, that peyote has been used for seven thousand years, this fact is not part of the medical literature.2 One reason may be that there is a rarely challenged bias against any data collected in eras before our own, data labeled “pre-scientific,” as if observation, experimentation, replication, and conclusions were Renaissance innovations. There are at least two medical categories where psychedelics may help: mental illness and physical disorders. Of course, such a distinction is nonsense in the real world, but in the world of medical, psychiatric, and psychological research, that distinction is maintained. The reality of the unified field of mind-body-spirit at the core of shamanistic and other traditions has barely scratched the surface of Western thought and is far from being an accepted operating principle in Western science. Thus, it is not surprising that until research was terminated by government fiat in the late 1960s, psychedelic research that was labeled “therapeutic” dealt mostly with how psychedelic experience accelerated, improved, or bypassed conventional psychotherapy, as if the benefits accrued were of the same order as those of psychotherapy. Quotes from patients commonly described how months or years of conventional therapy had been compressed into a single high-dose day or a series of lower-dose sessions. Evaluations of the psychotherapeutic benefits rarely recognized them to be secondary effects of transcendent experience. Explanations stressed that psychedelics lowered patients’ defenses so that a skilled therapist could help them uncover valuable personal material. This uncovering could lead to insights and eventually to a decrease in symptoms. Here, for example, is a clinician’s evaluation: “Mescaline and LSD [are] essentially anxiety-producing drugs which, because of their magnification of the patient’s symptomatology and the accompanying increase in anxiety and fear of loss of ego integration, may lead to the release of repressed material.”3 The results reported seem little different from what would be obtained more slowly with normal methods. Stated within an implicit pathology model of therapy, the benefits were seen as less illness, almost never as more health. The reasons for the moderate level of effectiveness described in these reports lie in the choice of setting and dose and in the therapist’s orientation: if the set or expectations were that the experience would be like conventional therapy but more intense, if the setting was the same office or laboratory where conventional therapy took place, if the therapist believed deeply in the efficacy of his or her interventions, or if the dose was in the low to medium range, a patient’s experiences would conform to those limits. Experiences outside this theoretical construction would not appear in the published discussion or would be explained in such a way as to fold them back into the therapist’s prior expectations.4 I recall, for example, a therapist reporting a patient’s self-described encounter with Divinity as regressive behavior relating back to mistreatment by his father. With low enough doses, a forced set, and no way for patients to go inside themselves for long periods, the reported results make sense. However, the results were different when the therapist acted as a guide— and then only if necessary—and when the dose of the psychedelic was sufficient and both therapist and patient presumed that the patient was possessed of everything required for self-understanding and self-healing. This is not the place to argue for one kind of therapy over another. Too much of the psychedelic therapy literature reads like the Middle Eastern story of the blind men, each allowed to touch part of an elephant, an animal that none of them knew existed. Each man concluded that his part of the elephant—the tail, a tusk, a leg—was the whole animal. Up until now, the scientific literature has provided little guidance on how to conduct effective sessions.5 However, a 2009 survey of people using different psychedelics found that almost 70 percent of users listed self-healing among the reasons for use.6 If you wish to give psychedelics therapeutically, I recommend the model and methods described in chapters 1 and 2 and summarized as a checklist in chapter 19. Approach the session with respect. Be prepared for the possibility of a spiritual or transcendent experience. In the afternoon, offer, but don’t push for, therapeutic opportunities. Chapters 1 and 2 describe how to use a mirror, photographs, and flowers (a rosebud is best; see the excerpt below). If you can be loving, supportive, and non-interfering—if you can just “be”—you can probably help someone you care for. (Visit www.entheoguides.net for additional, updated information.) The excerpt below is from a therapy session at the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, California. W.S., an engineer, had been concerned about a lack of connecting in relationships and a need to try to control all parts of his life. He’d had several hours of insightful transcendent experience before being asked to look at the rose. 3:00 p.m.: “Why don’t you look into the rose?” M. asked. “It has something to tell you.” “What could it tell me?” I thought. “After all of these tremendous insights and experiences, are we now playing games with rosebuds?” I stared at the rose. “It’s pretty.” I laughed again. It seemed so trite and insignificant to say it was pretty. I want to go on to other things, but M. kept suggesting I look at the rosebud. “Okay, I thought, if it’s that important, I’ll look at it.” Suddenly the rosebud started to get larger and larger and soon blossomed into a full size rose. The beauty was exquisite. As I kept looking at it, I suddenly said, “I see me!” I was quite shocked at this unexpected comment. I didn’t understand what I’d said at the time but afterward the significance came to me that I was really “at one” with the rose, with nature. We are both part of a much larger being or force or power, just like two leaves are part of a tree. Soon the center of the rose changed into a bucket of red-hot glowing coals—the power that I had inside me—controlled power. As I continued looking at the rose, I was completely awed by the effect that it was having on me. The intensity was so overpowering that all I could do was to sit and cry and cry and cry. I kept thinking how wonderful it all was, just wonderful. What was wonderful? It didn’t matter. It was all wonderful and that’s all that mattered to me at the time.7 Chapter 6 discusses conditions that can become worse if a person takes a psychedelic without support or guidance. While some successful work has been done with chronic alcoholics, schizophrenics,8 and autistic children, those sessions took place in controlled settings and by staff trained to anticipate special difficulties. Don’t take on what you don’t feel qualified to deal with. The increased awareness offered by psychedelics comes in different forms. In higher doses taken in safe and sacred settings, they facilitate recognition of one’s intimate relationship with all living things. In moderate doses, they facilitate awareness of the intricate psychodynamic structures of one’s individual consciousness. In low doses, they facilitate awareness of solutions to technical and artistic problems. If you intend to guide a session or intend to be guided, at least frame it as self-discovery, not as therapy. Avoid a sense of the “therapeutic” as much as possible. Just as the body is acutely attuned to self-healing, there is ample evidence that the mind is equally adept. A safe, supportive psychedelic session can encompass free and full exploration of whatever arises. A person returning from a transcendent experience and observing his or her personality may break out laughing at the absurd lengths he or she has gone to deny, suppress, or distort his or her healthy core. In sessions focused on personality exploration, it is especially useful to help the voyagers record their most pertinent realizations about themselves. The Training of Psychedelic Therapists While the training of psychedelic therapists is seen as necessary in the medical and psychological literature, there have been few opportunities to provide it. For now, the criteria developed in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s remain a good model. For medical professionals, the training included five personal sessions with an accredited practitioner and thirty patient sessions under the same sort of supervision. Such training should give a therapist an understanding of clients’ experiences as well as expertise in working with them. When psychedelic licensing becomes available, there will be endless debates over what kind of training will be required. The training model given above will undoubtedly be central to whatever else is deemed necessary. A number of therapists with considerable experience with different psychedelics have been providing this kind of training. However, one size does not fit all. One of the finest guides in the United States prefers psilocybin to LSD for clinical work. He says he sees the same range of experiences and doesn’t have to overcome the client’s preconceptions about LSD. Another internationally respected therapist does holotropic breathwork the day before the session to learn more about the client and to resolve some issues before the actual psychedelic session. A short list of websites and books about psychedelic psychotherapy9 is included at the end of this chapter. If you’re a professional mental health worker, you can learn when your prior training can be helpful and when it would be more useful to set it aside and just be a good listener, compassionate observer, and caring supporter. There are listings of resources for easing people down from bad trips brought on by taking too much of something, being with the wrong people, being in the wrong setting, or all of the above. It is good to know how to reorient someone lost in inner space. A bad experience, even one that has been chaotic and terrifying, can be rechanneled and become beneficial, or at least not harmful. If you move in a recreational-drug crowd, it’s good to know how to administer psycho-emotional first aid. This discussion has been about psychedelics as adjuncts to psychotherapy and about their reintroduction as legitimate healing tools. With all the plausible theories about altered states now available,10 the fears that gripped the psychiatric profession in the 1960s when psychedelics were first introduced are unlikely to resurface. Many people in the mental health professions have had some psychedelic experience and certainly will have smoked enough marijuana to know that the official scare literature is laughably inaccurate. “This is your brain on drugs” is as hokey today as the movie Reefer Madness was in its time. Groups like the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) (www.maps.org) and the Heffter Research Institute (www.heffter.org) continue to support psychedelic research projects and have as their institutional goals the reintroduction of psychedelics into medical and psychiatric practice. Their work is generally well accepted, and news of each study is reported widely and almost always favorably. The population at large seems more open than the politicians to relaxing the restrictions about therapeutic use. At the same time, there is a need to consider other therapeutic effects that do not have as much theoretical support, especially since some current research projects don’t fit psychotherapeutic, biomedical, or pharmaceutical models. Extended Healing During some psychedelic sessions, a physical or psychophysical symptom or symptoms have been ameliorated or even cured. Such swift and lasting healings are often mentioned in shamanistic reports from different cultures. Yet those reports have not resulted in this evidence being accepted by conventional medicine. That psychedelic use has alleviated or even eliminated cluster headaches cannot be shoehorned into any psychodynamic theory.11 That micrograms of a substance, fully metabolized and excreted within several hours,12 can prevent a recurrence of a physiological syndrome over a period of months or years falls outside of conventional medical thinking. The low success rates that conventional therapy and conventional medications have had with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) make that condition a good candidate for exploratory psychedelic intervention.13 Many cases of PTSD, especially those spawned by the Iraq War, were brought on because soldiers were driven to behave against their deepest moral convictions while living in constant fear of the people they were supposed to be helping.14 Offering these veterans a therapy that works at the same level as their wounding seems realistic and has proved to be valuable.15 Patients with advanced cancer have been helped with psychedelic therapy.16 Current permissible research has proved successful in lowering excessive anxiety, perhaps by allowing patients to realize that death is neither as frightening nor as final as they had believed. Their ultimate prognosis remained the same, but their concept of their identity as greater than their body, greater in fact than their life, appears to have enriched their remaining time. Some have outlived their predicted death with an enhanced quality of life; others realize that it is within their own control to put an end to increasing pain and discomfort. These studies may allow the cancer world to look at psychedelics as more than a curiosity. People with a whole gamut of other physical conditions might be helped by psychedelic intervention. The therapists I’ve worked with have noted that, in working with several hundred clients, minor physical symptoms such as aches and pains, colds, arthritis, headaches, and allergies would often disappear for the duration of the session. Equally intriguing was that most people did not seem to need their glasses for the first five or six hours of their session, despite long periods of looking closely into a mirror and at photographs of themselves and people close to them. As stated earlier, in running therapy sessions, we could tell when clients were coming down when they requested or reached for their glasses. None of this has been investigated systematically. We have not fully used or understood the immediate or long-term effects of psychedelics on physical conditions. One therapist did ask about physical changes and recorded some reports. Dr. Morgens Hertz supervised LSD treatments for some sixty people and found that a high percentage claimed alleviation of organic complaints.17 A few examples include: My long-lasting feeling of paralysis of the left part of my whole body has disappeared . . . A worried feeling of involuntary urinating has disappeared since I had the feeling I could influence the urinating My stuttering of many years has disappeared18 My tendency to feel giddy every time I stood on my feet has gone I no longer feel my pulse hammering unpleasantly all over my body when I lie down Straddling the mental and physical realms are the results of psychedelic therapy with chronic alcoholics who had failed to benefit from other treatments and who have symptoms of physical degeneration attributed to drinking. The results of early Canadian research were sufficiently impressive to have the Public Health Department of Saskatchewan declare that a single high-dose LSD treatment of alcoholism is to be considered “no longer experimental” and “to be used where indicated.”19 When presented to federal research officials in the United States, these same results were rejected as unbelievable.20 Hopefully, those days are long past. Today, many people in alcoholism research have taken psychedelics recreationally. They are unlikely to react like frightened kittens to the idea that psychedelics can help these sufferers, who are so desperately in need. A number of these former alcoholics who have not had any problems with alcohol, often for decades, report that they stopped, not because their will to resist temptation was strengthened (as is sought at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings), but because they were no longer attracted to drinking and had nothing to resist. This internal shift was unexpected, but unexpected results are not unusual in the history of therapeutic agents. After all, who would have thought that marijuana, another substance almost totally banned from research, could alleviate the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and relieve cancer and a host of other conditions and, as well, become the treatment of choice for appetite improvement during chemotherapy? Less widely reported is the work done by Gary Fisher, Loretta Bender, and others with regressed and autistic children.21 In an analysis of the seven studies available, of ninety-one children aged five to fifteen who were given a wide range of doses of LSD in a variety of settings, seventy-five of the children showed either good or excellent improvement.22 It is a great sorrow that for decades we have been prevented from trying to release such children from the maze of their physical and mental entrapment.23 In a class by themselves are the numerous psychic events that occur during psychedelic sessions. What appears to be telepathy is common, and there are numerous incidents that appear to have precognitive or clair-voyant components. The resistance to even acknowledging the possibility of these phenomena is well understood.24 Therefore, clinical researchers (and I include myself here) tend not to even mention them in their published reports. In short, there are a number of therapeutic interventions that go well beyond the psychotherapeutic. We are body-mind-spirit beings; anything that affects one system affects all. Perhaps what has inhibited our culture from researching psychedelics is that it demands a level of training and personal capacity not required in conventional medicine or psychotherapy, as well as a willingness to relinquish well-established beliefs. I am not discussing shamanistic practices using psychedelics for physical and mental healing or for divination. Fortunately, the anthropological literature now contains numerous examples of shamanistic treatment, training, and effectiveness. One other reason for my not discussing shamanistic practices is that they do not parallel Western procedures. Shamans sometimes take the materials themselves instead of giving them to patients; they work with a wide variety of plants, many psychedelic, many not, and perform specific rituals for each plant and for each condition. The visionary experiences commonly reported appear to differ from those of people using LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin in non-shamanistic settings. (See chapter 20 for a report of and comments on three ayahuasca sessions.) The other chapters in part 2 describe research done with people who took a high dose of one of several psychedelics in a setting that encouraged transcendent experience. The results are described in ample detail, so there should be no confusion as to what is meant by “positive results.” These not-yet-fully-understood substances have put many people in touch with a more inclusive reality and have improved their daily functioning. Their impact on music and the arts is well known, and some of their impact on computer science has been described.25 Their contribution to therapy and to the practice of healing has only just begun. Resources for a Fuller Understanding of Psychedelic Psychotherapy Originally, I intended to write a companion piece on psychotherapeutic use similar to the entheogenic and scientific problem-solving sections. However, extensive and detailed discussions and descriptions on working therapeutically already exist, such as The Secret Chief Revealed.26 In addition, much of the entheogenic sections (chapters 1 and 2) can be adapted for psychotherapeutic work. A good list of resources can be found at http://primal-page.com/psychede.htm. See the following for more information about psychotherapy using LSD and other psychedelics, plus links to other lists: In 2010, Johns Hopkins University was recruiting patients for a study titled “Psychopharmacology of Psilocybin in Cancer Patients.” For a formal description of the study, go to www.clinicaltrials.gov and search using the study’s title. For an article titled “Autistic schizophrenic children: An experiment in the use of D-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25),” go to www.neurodiversity.com and search on the article’s title. Books Describing Shamanistic Healings and Practices Michael Harmer, The Way of the Shaman. New York: Harper and Row, 1980. Jeremy Narby, The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1998. Robert Tindall, The Jaguar That Roams the Mind: An Amazonian Plant Spirit Odyssey. Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2008. Wade Davis, One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1996. Don José Campos, The Shaman and Ayahuasca, Studio City, Calif.: Divine Arts, 2011. 6 THINGS CAN GO WRONG What You Need to Know NEAL GOLDSMITH, Ph.D. These best practices, written by Neal Goldsmith, are from his book Psychedelic Healing: The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development.1 Psychedelic Healing is about, among other things, understanding the use of psychedelics as catalysts for psychotherapeutic and spiritual transformation. Goldsmith is a psychologist in private practice in New York. If you know what you’re doing, if you’ve been careful in who you are with, if the setting is good, the substance is pure, and the preparation has been taken seriously, there is little chance of anything going wrong. However, life is way more uncertain than that. Many people reading this book have used psychedelics in less than ideal situations or have helped people who have taken psychedelics in such situations. It is simple common sense to be aware of what to do when a person needs help staying with his experience or, in rare cases, being helped out of it. The more you understand what can go wrong and how it can be managed, the less you will ever need to make use of your knowledge. Information and Procedures for Psychedelic Emergencies Education People who may be involved in responding to a psychedelic emergency should be familiar with the following resources. Information about Psychedelic Crises “Working with Difficult Psychedelic Experiences.” This twenty-minute educational video produced by MAPS is a practical introduction to the principles of psychedelic therapy. It teaches psychedelic drug users how to minimize psychological risks and explore the therapeutic applications of psychedelics. Narrated by Donna Dryer, M.D., the video demonstrates examples of when and how to help a friend, peer, or loved one make the most out of a difficult experience with psychedelics. www.maps.org/wwpe_vid “How to Treat Difficult Psychedelic Experiences: A Manual.” Written by a psychedelic therapist for the use of lay volunteers helping those undergoing difficult psychedelic psychedelic experiences. www.maps.org/ritesofpassage/anonther.html “A Model for Working with Psychedelic Crises at Concerts and Events.” This MAPS bulletin article is about the group’s “Serenity Tent” at the Hookahville music festival, at which MAPS staff worked alongside a medical team to help concertgoers work through difficult experiences. www.maps.org/ritesofpassage/model_working_with_psychedelic_ crises_concerts_events.htm Information about Psychedelic Psychotherapy “Guidelines for the Sacramental Use of Empathogenic Substances”: www.maps.org/gateway/%5B55%5D181-197.html “Sitters or Guides”: www.csp.org/nicholas/A59.html “Code of Ethics for Spiritual Guides”: www.csp.org/development/code.html “Ethical Caring in Psychedelic Work”: www.maps.org/news-letters/v07n3/07326tay.html “Counter-Transference Issues in Psychedelic Psychotherapy”: www.maps.org/news-letters/v10n2/10204fis.html “Psychedelic Psychotherapy: The Ethics of Medicine for the Soul”: www.maps.org/media/u_penn_3.17.06.pdf “Psychotherapy and Psychedelic Drugs”: www.psychedelic-library.org/thermenu.htm General and Background Information about Psychedelics For the single best introduction to the facts of psychedelics, try: Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered (New York: Basic Books, 1979; New York: The Lindesmith Center, 1997) (www.drugpolicy.org/library/bookstore/pdrad2.cfm) An extraordinary intellectual achievement in popular scholarly inquiry may be found in: Andy Letcher, Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom (New York: HarperCollins, 2006.) It is incisive, skeptical, brilliantly analyzed, and beautifully written by an insider. A more scholarly, in-depth overview is found in: Jonathan Ott, Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, Their Plant Sources and Histories, foreword by Albert Hofmann (Kennewick, Wash.: Natural Products Company, 1993) (www.erowid.org/library/review/review_pharmacotheon1.shtml) For a fun, informative cultural history of America’s drug-induced visionary history (1870s–1966), see: Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (New York: Harper and Row, 1988) (www.stormingheaven.com) Psychedelic Psychotherapy, New Research, Ancient Practice (PowerPoint presentation): (www.maps.org/slideshows/neal/Slide1.html) There’s much more on the topic at the MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) website: www.maps.org. MAPS is the premier organization and website for up-to-date information about the clinical research and policy issues. What Can You Do? Here is an especially helpful excerpt from Erowid (www.erowid.org), the best and largest information resource for all things psychedelic: “Psychedelic Crisis FAQ: Helping Someone Through a Bad Trip, Psychic Crisis, or Spiritual Crisis.” (www.erowid.org/psychoactives/faqs/psychedelic_crisis_faq.shtml) If someone seems to be having a hard time, gently ask them if they would like someone to sit with them. If it seems disturbing to them to have someone sitting with them, have someone nearby keep an eye on them unobtrusively. Relate to them in the space they are in. Oftentimes, the thing which isolates people and creates a sense of paranoia or loss is that others are trying hard to ground them because they are “so far out” of normal awareness. Start off instead by trying to just be there for them. Try to see the world through their eyes. What different ways can you change the setting (noise level, temperature, outside vs. inside, etc.)? A party/rave/concert setting can aggravate a person’s state of mind. Consider finding the quietest place if it seems like it will help (taking cues from the experiencer), and ask people to not crowd around. Reassure them the situation is under control, noting those who offer help in case help is needed later. How can you minimize risk of emotional or physical harm? Remember, your concern should be for how the person is feeling, not concern for the situation (as in “oh my gawd, we’ve got to do something”). Paranoia: If the person doesn’t want anyone near them, hang back or turn so you aren’t staring at them, but keep an eye on them as discreetly as possible. Think about what it would feel like to be in a paranoid state, having some stranger (whether you are one or not) following you around and watching you. What objects/activities/distractions might help the person get through a difficult space (toys, animals, music, etc.)? No Pressure: Just be with them. Unless there is risk of bodily injury, just make it clear you are there for them if they need anything. Touch. Touch can be very powerful, but it can also be quite violating. In general, don’t touch them unless they say it’s okay or they touch you first. If it seems like they might need a hug, ask them. If they are beyond verbal communication, try to be very sensitive to any negative reaction to touch. Try to avoid getting pulled into any sexual contact. Often, holding hands is a very effective and non-threatening way to let someone know you are there if they need you. Intensity can come in cycles or waves. It also can work as a system— a movement through transpersonal spaces—which can have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Don’t try to push too hard to move it. Not Forever: If they are connected enough to worry about their sanity, assure them that the state is due to a psychoactive and they will return to their “home” state of mind in time. Normal Drug-Induced: Tell them they are experiencing the acute effects of a psychoactive (if you know what it is, tell them) and inform them that it is normal (although uncommon) to go through spiritual crises and they (like thousands before them) will be fine if they relax and let the substance run its course. Breathing: Breathe with them. If they are connected enough to be present for assistance, get them to join you in deep, long, full breaths. If they’re amenable to it, or really far out and freaking, putting a hand on their belly and saying, “breath from down here,” “just keep breathing, you’ve got it,” can help. Relaxing: It can be very, very hard to relax in the middle of dying or being pulled apart by demons, but tell them that you are there to make sure nothing happens to their physical body. One of the most important things during really difficult internal processes is to learn to be okay with the fact that they are happening, to “relax” one’s attempt to stop the experience and just let it happen. Getting Meditative: Gently suggesting they try to close their eyes and focus inward can sometimes change the course of their experience. Bare Feet on the Ground: One of the most centering and grounding things to do is to take off shoes and socks and place the feet directly on the hard ground. Be careful of doing this in toe-dangerous settings where the ground is abrasive. Eye Contact: If the person is not acting paranoid and fearful of you, make sure to include a lot of eye contact. Everything Is Fine with Me: Make it clear that the whole world may be falling apart for them, but everything is okay with you. Healthy Process: Crises are a normal part of the human psychological process and one way to engage them is as a process of healing, not a “problem” to be fixed. The most comforting thing that some people reported as having helped them the most during acute experiences is having a blanket wrapped around them. We cannot recommend highly enough having a thick, weighty blanket for emergencies. Values and Procedures in the Setting Those creating a psychedelic-friendly event have (some) responsibility to make it safe and to be able to respond to members of the community who need a safe place to chill, including water, a place to recline, and a staff member aware and facilitating the setting. While there is no “treatment” expected or appropriate, it is important for staff to be able to recognize when an attendee needs outside help and when they can safely continue to be accommodated in the event environment. Dosing without the recipient knowing about it or giving permission is like rape: it is not a gift, it is not a psychedelic act, and it is never okay. This value must be actively promoted in the culture of the hosting organization. The purpose of sitting with an attendee in crisis is not to reduce effects, but to create and maintain a safe place where the individual can play out the process without coming into conflict with themselves or others. While sitting, transference (of fear, of not wanting to get involved, of power, of attraction, etc.) is inevitable and should be acknowledged, talked about in advance, and managed. No sexual acting out, ever. The community member in crisis deserves discretion and confidentiality. The community member in crisis shouldn’t be left alone. Sitters should be ready to face difficult times and stay around. Psychedelic-friendly events should have medical staff on call, but if a safe space is created, they will rarely be necessary. 7 MYTHS AND MISPERCEPTIONS DAVID PRESTI, Ph.D., and JEROME BECK, Ph.D. Recently, I was commiserating with an anthropologist friend about some misinformation he noted in a current, thoughtful, and well-produced film about mushrooms. We concurred that misinformation, especially as it passes from a scholar with no actual experience to another scholar who also has no experience and so on, gradually becomes accepted and filters into the general community. Once there, it is devilishly difficult to dislodge and replace with the truth. The wonderful thing about this chapter is that it is totally current; all these misperceptions are out there. The terrible thing about this chapter is that it was written ten years ago. I hope it goes out of date soon. This material was originally published in the book Psychoactive Sacramentals, for a chapter written by David Presti and Jerome Beck.1 Presti is a senior lecturer of neurobiology in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and his research focus is on the relationship between chemical processes in the brain and behavior. Beck is a coprincipal investigator at the Institute for Scientific Analysis and serves as a public health, policy, and epidemiology research administrator for the Tobacco-Related Diseases Research Program at the University of California. LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), like many hallucinogenic, visionary, or entheogenic chemicals, is classified by the U.S. government as a Schedule 1 controlled substance. Such substances are deemed to have no medical applications and are not legally available for human use in the United States. As such, LSD is available to users only as an illicit “street drug” of unknown purity and potency. Many so-called street drugs have an associated corpus of myth, but nowhere is this more dramatic and fantastic than with LSD. Although unknown prior to its synthesis in 1938 and characterization in 1943 by Albert Hofmann,2 to many, LSD represents the prototypical hallucinogen. The remarkable folklore associated with LSD is perhaps to be expected, given its highly controversial nature and its powerful and profound effects on consciousness. A particularly noteworthy aspect of LSD mythology is its existence among both users of the drug and experts in the substance abuse field. Among professionals, some of these myths are pervasive enough to have received mention as “facts” in prominent professional publications. Although the general public and the media may be hoodwinked by misinformation, users of hallucinogens are often well informed about the substances they use. Despite this, however, some myths are still widely believed by users of LSD. Most of the LSD myths began in the politically charged era of the 1960s and have multiple origins and methods of propagation, among which have been the media, the street-user subculture, and scare tactics by the government and law enforcement. In this chapter, we address the prominent folklore associated with LSD, giving particular attention to the prevalent belief held both by users and by professional experts that strychnine is a common adulterant of LSD. In addition to this prototypical myth, we reflect briefly on several other widely held beliefs. Strychnine and Other Adulterants That LSD is frequently adulterated (“cut”) with a number of toxic substances is a long-standing belief that has permeated user and professional networks for more than three decades, despite the lack of any supporting evidence. Prominent among the believed additions to LSD are methamphetamine (the popular synthetic street drug known as speed) and strychnine (an alkaloid from the seeds of a tree native to India, Strychnos nux-vomica, historically used as a rodent poison and having nervous-system stimulant properties).3 Users will sometimes attribute characteristics of an LSD experience as much to these adulterants as to the LSD itself. For example, an LSD experience may be described as “speedy” because of methamphetamine presumed to be present in the sample. LSD thought to be adulterated with strychnine is sometimes claimed to be the basis for an unpleasant experience (bad trip) or as the source of gastrointestinal distress experienced by some users on LSD. Even High Times magazine, a standard reference among users, has reported that “common adulterants [to LSD] are strychnine, amphetamines and whatever else was lying around the bathtub.”4 In a survey administered to more than four hundred university undergraduates in a required health class, students who had used LSD commonly believed that strychnine and methamphetamine were frequent adulterants, while those who had not used LSD were largely unaware of this myth.5 It is also widely believed among drug-treatment professionals that LSD is frequently adulterated with strychnine. Even the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edition) (DSM-IV), the standard reference in the United States on the diagnosis of mental disorders (including drug abuse), mentions strychnine as an adulterant to LSD.6 Psychiatric Annals, a professional journal of continuing education for psychiatrists, devoted an issue to hallucinogens in 1994. Among the numerous inaccuracies in this issue of the journal was a reference to strychnine being added to LSD in order “to increase the potency of its hallucinatory experiences.”7 This article continued with a description of the procedure for the treatment of strychnine poisoning, indicating that this is likely to be an emergency medical need for anyone presenting in acute distress after having ingested LSD. Strychnine contamination of LSD is also mentioned in leading professional books on substance-abuse treatment8 as well as recent drug-education textbooks.9–11 Thus, educational texts continue to propagate the strychnine myth, without reference to any documented analyses or cases. Compilations of drug slang published by the U.S. Department of Justice12 and a professional medical journal13 list terms that describe combinations of LSD and strychnine, such as “backbreaker,” “white acid,” and “four way.” However, there is no evidence whatsoever that this chemical combination ever existed under any name. The extent of this belief among experts is impressive and makes the strychnine myth unique in the corpus of LSD folklore. The strychnine myth may have been fortified by Albert Hofmann’s report of an analysis (conducted in 1970) of a powder sample purported to be LSD that turned out to be nothing but strychnine.14 However, all other analyses of a large number of street samples of LSD over the years have consistently revealed that products sold on the street as LSD seldom contain adulterants and have never been found to contain strychnine.15,16 Thirty years ago, in the few cases where adulteration was detected, the adulterant was either phencyclidine (PCP) or methamphetamine. Of 581 street samples of purported LSD analyzed by J. K. Brown and M. H. Malone, results showed that 491 (84.5 percent) contained LSD alone, 31 (5.3 percent) contained LSD and PCP, 11 (1.9 percent) were PCP alone, and 5 (0.9 percent) contained LSD plus amphetamine or methamphetamine. The authors stated, “We have analyzed several samples thought to contain strychnine on the basis of toxic symptoms, but in each case only LSD was detected…. None of the other groups doing street drug analyses has reported strychnine in any LSD-containing sample.”17 Even if, historically, adulterants were infrequently detected in street samples of LSD, this possibility has been rendered even more unlikely in recent times by the introduction of blotter paper, which has been by far the most common carrier medium for the distribution of LSD for more than twenty years. This medium evolved because the high potency of LSD demands that a reliable method be used to partition small quantities of the chemical into uniform doses. Exposing absorbent paper to solutions of known concentration works quite well for this. However, in order to produce any significant psychoactivity, the five-millimeter-square dosage units of blotter paper cannot contain sufficient amounts of strychnine or other substances claimed to be adulterants. In addition, the very high potency and continued low cost of LSD make it unnecessary to add adulterants to enhance its effects. In Licit and Illicit Drugs, Brecher18 claims that strychnine may have been added to LSD as a “bulking agent” and possibly to increase the immediacy of psychoactive effects. Another reason offered for the presumed presence of strychnine in LSD is that it is required to facilitate the bonding of LSD to blotter paper. None of this is true. Other stories say that strychnine is a contaminant of the synthesis of LSD, a breakdown product of LSD, or a metabolite produced after ingestion. These are also myths. While both strychnine and LSD are complex carbon-based compounds, their molecular structures are quite different. Strychnine is not a chemical precursor, by-product of synthesis, degradation product, or metabolite of LSD. There simply has been no strychnine found in street samples of LSD or any reason to expect its presence. The origin of the strychnine-in-LSD myth is obscure. It was already well established by the late 1960s. In Acid Dreams, their otherwise excellent historical review of LSD use, Lee and Shlain19 state, “Much of the LSD turning up on the street [in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in the late 1960s] was fortified with some sort of additive, usually speed or strychnine, or in some cases insecticide. But where did this contaminated acid come from?” The authors go on to say that this contaminated LSD was manufactured and distributed by organized crime and came to be called “syndicate acid,” a name that was at the time synonymous with bad LSD. The late 1960s were chaotic times in the hippie scene of San Francisco. Alcohol, heroin, and methamphetamine were increasingly used, and this, together with the influx of large numbers of clueless youth, was rapidly contributing to the demise of the formerly idyllic scene. The resultant chaos undoubtedly added a powerful negative component to the set and setting of the LSD experience. However, there is no evidence from that time indicating the actual presence of strychnine in LSD samples. We suspect that the strychnine myth evolved in the late 1960s to help explain negative aspects of the LSD experience related to the degenerating social scene. There are claims from experienced users that different samples of illicit LSD can produce subtly different effects. Although such differences may be accounted for by variations of mental set and physical setting, there may also be chemical mechanisms at work. Other ergot alkaloids and chemical relatives of LSD present in an incompletely purified preparation could have psychoactive effects.20 Breakdown products and metabolites of LSD might also contribute to such reported differences. However, this remains speculation at this point in time. Clinical study of such possibilities has not been conducted and, indeed, would be virtually impossible to conduct at the present time, given the difficulty of doing human research with LSD and related chemicals. From the perspective of the government, law enforcement, and the substance-abuse-treatment community, the myth of strychnine as an adulterant remains a convenient scare tactic to dissuade users from experimenting with LSD. From the perspective of the user, this myth remains a convenient external explanation for those experiences that are significantly unpleasant (i.e., the bad trips). Tattoo Acid Another myth has been passed around so often between the media, law enforcement, and parents’ groups that it has been described as “the most insidious urban drug legend.”21 This is the ever-surfacing myth of “tattoo acid.” Since blotter-paper LSD is frequently illustrated with cartoon characters or other artistic designs, some folks have found it to resemble transfer tattoos. This has resulted in the periodic appearance in communities throughout the United States of anonymous fliers warning of the threat this brings to children. A bulletin dated March 31, 1987, from the Emeryville Police Department in California stated, “A new danger has entered our community…. This is a new way of selling acid by appealing to our young children. A young child could happen upon these and have a fatal ‘trip.’ It is also learned that little children could be given a free ‘tattoo’ by older children who want to have some fun or by others cultivating new customers.” The bulletin concludes by warning people not to handle these tattoos because “these drugs are known to react very quickly and some are laced with strychnine.” This particular myth is the only one that has been officially discredited by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). In a memorandum issued in 1991, the DEA stated: Fliers with warnings against a claimed “new form” of LSD have been circulating throughout the United States for more than a decade. Typically, the warnings, which are usually addressed to parents …warn of the dangers of LSD-impregnated decals or tattoos decorated with cartoon characters or other pictures designed to appeal to children…. It is claimed that, by licking the decals and applying them to the skin, a child could suffer a hallucinogenic high…. The warnings, which have been found on letters, posters, and fliers, have been reproduced countless times by well meaning persons, school systems, private companies, and the press. The warnings can be particularly troublesome and confusing because they do contain some accurate information about LSD, its forms, and effects…. The accidental similarity between children’s decals and decorated blotter acid was probably the basis for the erroneous presumption made by some well-meaning individuals that there was a particular danger to small children. Although some high school and college-age children may be purchasing blotter acid and getting high on it, no, repeat, no DEA or state or local authorities have ever, to date, reported any instance of children’s decals or tattoos with LSD…. It is a hoax.22 Chromosome Damage and Birth Defects One of the preeminent myths of the late 1960s, and one that contributed significantly to the fear and condemnation of LSD, was the belief that LSD use produced chromosomal breakage, other genetic damage, and birth defects (teratogenicity). This story began with a short publication in the reputable journal Science in 1967 claiming that LSD added to cultured human white blood cells produced chromosomal abnormalities.23 The primary author of this article published a similar report in the prestigious medical journal The New England Journal of Medicine a few months later.24 The same issue of this latter journal also contained an editorial article highlighting the discovery of birth defects and genetic damage caused by LSD, emphasizing that the effect of LSD on chromosomes was similar to the damage produced by ionizing radiation.25 These publications were followed by a spate of work by various researchers claiming more of the same. Such findings were given front-page attention by the media and became a prominent aspect of the public perception of LSD. Later and more careful studies demonstrated that the conclusions drawn from the initial research were ill founded. A comprehensive review of sixty-eight studies and case reports published in the four years following the initial 1967 article appeared as a major article in Science in 1971. The review concluded that “pure LSD ingested in moderate doses does not damage chromosomes in vivo, does not cause detectable genetic damage, and is not a teratogen or a carcinogen in man.”26 Unfortunately, these refutations of earlier claims were ignored by the media and by government purveyors of drug information. As a result, the myth of LSD as a promoter of genetic damage is still very much alive. One of the better contemporary drug-education textbooks opens with the results from a series of true/false questions on drugs. The questions were presented to a drug education class taught by the author of the book at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. One question states that “women who take LSD during pregnancy, even once, have a significantly higher likelihood of bearing children with birth defects than women who do not take LSD.” The answer is false. In a class of 223 students given this question in 1991, only 6 percent chose the correct answer,27 and in a class of 200 students given this question in 1996, only 9 percent answered correctly.28 The myth lives on. Going Crazy ACUTE AND LONG-TERM ADVERSE REACTIONS LSD, as well as many other psychoactive drugs, can produce a variety of acute (short-term, during the period of intoxication) behavioral effects. These may include anxiety, euphoria, dysphoria, paranoia, hallucinations, other alterations of perception, and so forth. Alterations of perception and consciousness are, not surprisingly, an anticipated part of the experience. In addition, the initial mental set (e.g., mood, expectations) of the user may profoundly influence the nature of the experience. Someone who is depressed or anxious and takes LSD may experience an exacerbation of depression or anxiety. Someone who is in a positive mental space may have an ecstatic experience, although not necessarily so. Any single experience with LSD can include both positive and negative mood states. Even negative mood states can be psychologically beneficial if material that emerges is therapeutically processed or integrated within a spiritual framework. This is one facet of the psychotherapeutic value of LSD and similar substances.29,30 Lasting (chronic) negative psychological effects are a different story. LSD and other hallucinogens are frequently discussed as being associated with a significant and unpredictable risk of “going crazy” as well as a haunting fear of “permanent brain damage.” Such folklore includes outrageous statements like “use LSD seven times [or five times or ten times or whatever . . .] and you are legally insane,” or “I know someone who took LSD and felt like they turned into an orange, and they still feel like they are an orange.” Other effects spoken of are the development of chronic anxiety, depression, paranoia, psychosis, or suicidal and violent behavior, to name but a few. While we are not disputing the possibility that lasting negative effects of LSD use might occur in particular individuals, reviews of the clinical literature suggest that chronic problematic effects, when they do occur, are most often associated with psychological instability that was present prior to LSD use.31,32 For example, people with borderline personality functioning (in the language of the DSM-IV)33 or latent mental disorders (e.g., having a positive family history for schizophrenia) may experience activation of symptoms from LSD use and chronic problems thereafter. Such individuals would also be at risk from exposure to a variety of other environmental stressors. A comprehensive review by Dr. Sidney Cohen of the use of LSD in psychotherapeutic environments during the 1950s (including approximately twenty-five thousand administrations, given to five thousand recipients) reported that the incidence of acute and chronic problematic reactions was extremely low when LSD was administered under controlled therapeutic conditions to individuals not having preexisting severe psychopathology.34 This argues for psychological screening of potential users (it may be safe for most people, but it is not for everyone) as well as careful attention to the set and setting of the drug session. Human death from toxic pharmacologic effects of LSD has never been documented.35 The pharmacologic therapeutic index (the ratio of lethal dose to therapeutically effective dose) for LSD is undoubtedly very large. There is an infamous case of some “scientific research,” published in Science,36 in which an elephant who received a very large dose of LSD subsequently died. However, in this situation the elephant was also administered other potent substances, including barbiturate and antipsychotic drugs, which likely contributed to its demise. We have heard claims that LSD sequesters in the brain, spinal cord, and body fat, and can leak out at later times—even years later—to produce adverse effects (such as “flashbacks,” which are the re-experiencing of some aspects of the drug-intoxication experience in the absence of the drug). Recently, we heard from a medical student that she learned this “fact” in a class at one of the country’s leading medical schools. There is no basis in reality for this because there is absolutely no evidence suggesting that LSD remains in the body for extended periods of time. The notion of the flashback is probably one of the more muddled concepts in the literature about hallucinogenic drugs. In their excellent discussion of this phenomenon, Harvard Medical School faculty Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar have this to say: Studies of flashbacks are hard to evaluate because the term has been used so loosely and variably. On the broadest definition, it means the transitory recurrence of emotions and perceptions originally experienced while under the influence of the drug. It can last seconds or hours; it can mimic any of the myriad aspects of a trip; and it can be blissful, interesting, annoying, or frightening. Most flashbacks are episodes of visual distortion, time distortion, physical symptoms, loss of ego boundaries, or relived intense emotion lasting a few seconds to a few minutes. Ordinarily they are only slightly disturbing, especially since the drug user usually recognizes them for what they are; they may even be regarded lightheartedly as “free trips.” Occasionally they last longer, and in a small minority of cases they turn into frightening images or thoughts.37 One framework for thinking of flashbacks is as a kind of memory that is robust and easily activated. Another conceptualization of flashbacks is a psychodynamic one that views them as related to a re-emergence of conflictual material released from the unconscious mind during the time of the drug action and not fully processed at that time. Stanislav Grof, one of the world’s most experienced LSD therapists, makes the following statement about flashbacks and other adverse reactions in his classic book, LSD Psychotherapy: “Sessions in which the drug activates areas of difficult emotional material and the individual tries to avoid facing them can lead to prolonged reactions, unsatisfactory integration, subsequent residual emotional or psychosomatic problems, or a precarious mental balance that becomes the basis for later ‘flashbacks.’”38 The DSM-IV terminology for flashbacks associated with LSD use is “hallucinogen persisting perceptual disorder,” abbreviated “HPPD.”39 The DSM-IV takes a particularly narrow definition that focuses on persistent visual perceptual phenomena that cause significant distress to the individual. This condition may be a real but rare occurrence among individuals who have used LSD.40 However, the condition has received only very limited study, and its claimed association with LSD use is confounded by polydrug use as well as other variables.41 A major factor in determining the intensity—either ecstatic or problematic—of an LSD experience is the quantity of drug ingested. Along these lines, it is important to note that the average dosage contained in street samples has declined dramatically since the early 1970s. While dosage units of street LSD in the 1960s were generally upward of 200 micrograms, the reported average dose of street samples in the 1990s has been closer to 60 micrograms.42,43 Acute, adverse psychological reactions are certainly the most significant concerns associated with LSD use. Unfortunately, these dangers are also the ones that are most enhanced by the myths and dire warnings. The LSD experience is shaped not only by the pharmacologic characteristics of the drug itself, but also by the beliefs that accompany the experience. Because of the highly suggestible nature of the LSD experience, belief in the myths can contribute to self-fulfilling prophecy and increase the likelihood of having an adverse reaction. Cohen called this the phenomenon of “excessive initial apprehension” and cited it as a significant factor contributing to bad trips.44 Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that the number of reported bad trips increased markedly during the media blitz of the late 1960s. After media coverage died down at the close of that decade, so did the number of negative experiences. This occurred despite the fact that the total number of LSD users was still increasing into the early 1970s.45–48 48 An increasingly informed user culture and the predictably lower dosages of street LSD have been among the most significant contributors to this decline in negative experiences. Henderson and Glass, in their book on the history of LSD, summarize the relationship between adverse reactions and mythos in the following way: “In the popular mythology, LSD users are prone to violent outbursts and bizarre behavior. They may jump off buildings believing they can fly, stare at the sun until they go blind, tear their eyes out, or even become homicidal. It is widely believed that an LSD user may at any moment experience a drug flashback during which any of these events may recur. The literature on LSD does document some bizarre episodes. Given the millions of doses of LSD that have been consumed since the 1950s, however, these are rare indeed.”49 Spiritual Development A central theme of the book Psychoactive Sacramentals is the entheogenic potential of LSD and similar substances. Indigenous cultures around the world and throughout history have used psychoactive plants as sacramentals in religious rituals that have served to facilitate their connection to the transpersonal. This notwithstanding, it is a myth that the use of these substances will automatically lead to a higher degree of spiritual or religious development. Entheogen use does not necessarily make spiritual development any easier. Skillful and respectful use, with careful attention to intention, set, and setting, may help to foster the spiritual path. Conclusions There is more to these myths than simply inaccurate information. They have had a major impact on public, scientific, clinical, and governmental perceptions of hallucinogens as well as on user experiences. These myths were a primary factor in the termination of the clinical research forty-five years ago and continue to interfere with the resumption of legitimate investigation of the therapeutic and entheogenic properties of LSD and similar substances. Searching for the origins of these enduring drug mythologies often proves to be both a fascinating and frustrating experience that only rarely yields complete elucidation. Possessing a life of their own, these hoary myths are hardly static as they journey through space and time. Reflecting the dynamic and adaptive nature of myths, their elements often undergo changes and embellishments over time as a result of faulty memories or the emergent needs of various interest groups. The Internet has assumed a central role in the diffusion of drug mythology. While the potential exists for the Internet to further propagate these as well as other myths to a wider population, it appears that the opposite may actually be occurring. Electronic mail exchange, newsgroup discussions, and the information-rich World Wide Web have emerged as correctors of myths that have remained largely unchallenged for decades. Websites such as those of Erowid (www.erowid.org), the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (www.maps.org), the Psychedelic Library (www.psychedelic-library.org), the Lycaeum (www.lycaeum.org), and the Council on Spiritual Practices (www.csp.org) are exemplars of such founts of accumulated knowledge. More than half a century after its discovery by Albert Hofmann, LSD remains one of the most powerful and profound psychoactive substances known. The folklore surrounding LSD reflects, in part, fears of this power. LSD has the potential to produce extraordinary effects on consciousness, stripping away psychological defenses and bringing users into contact with the gods and the demons of their own psyches. It deserves the utmost respect for the powerful effects it can produce. There is power enough in this truth. 8 THERAPEUTIC EFFECTIVENESS OF SINGLE GUIDED SESSIONS Janet’s (not her real name) smile deepened and her Brooklyn accent, softened by years of living in California, became more pronounced. “It’s different. Growing up, nature wasn’t part of life. Sure, a tree on the street, flowers in a vase, a walk in Central Park, vacations to Jersey, but nothing special. Now I feel it. As if nature notices me. When I’m at the ocean or in Memorial Park, I’m not alone.” “Do you spend more time in nature?” I asked, my pen hovering over the item under “Leisure Activities” on page 11 of the form. “Sure. Don’t you?” After writing down her comments, I asked the next question. We were into the third hour of the interview. I had over three hundred questions to ask and she had something to say about most of them. I’d scheduled the customary four hours, which usually gave me an hour or more to fill in my summary and make some general remarks. Not today. Some of these interviews had gone even longer. It was fine with me. I loved the stories. Three rooms away, another interviewer was asking the same questions. Six to nine months earlier, both participants had a single high-dose, psychedelic therapy–oriented session, part of a therapy regime. Now Janet, who had never met me, was telling me intimate details of her life. It was 1965, and the interview was part of my dissertation research. There had been dozens of studies in the United States and many more around the world on how LSD and other psychedelics affected everything from the crawling of snails and the building of spiderwebs to people with schizophrenia, autism, alcoholism, and neurosis. In the shadows, the CIA had tried to use these substances to confuse and terrify people. Through front organizations, the CIA also sponsored small conferences and publications where therapists and researchers shared their findings. Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey were both big news, and a worldwide wave of unsupervised use was starting to build. This research was intended to clear up some of the confusion of researchers talking past each other about wildly different versions of results. Unhappily, even though some results were published, the findings were swept away into obscurity by a flood of culture-changing events and media exaggeration. Now that research is again making tiny steps forward, it would appear to be timely to make the findings available to give researchers, therapists, and potential users a baseline of what to expect. The Therapeutic Protocol The therapy I was documenting had consisted of three parts: preparation, a guided psychedelic session, and a series of follow-up meetings with the therapist. Added to that was this final follow-up interview to measure behavior changes that persisted. In the preparatory meetings, pertinent issues and concerns were discussed while establishing trust and psychotherapeutic rapport. The meetings also included brief experiences breathing a mixture of 70 percent oxygen and 30 percent carbon dioxide, a therapy pioneered a decade earlier.1 As none of the subjects had any prior psychedelic experience and several inhalations put most subjects into a transient altered state, anyone who found even these micro-experiences very disturbing was counseled out of the program. Today, it is hard to find someone interested in working with psychedelic materials who has not used one or another psychedelic.a Therefore, the amount of preparation can be less than it was for these truly naive subjects. The psychedelic session lasted an entire day. The patients spent the day listening to music or viewing various visual stimuli such as family photographs or a mirror, while a male and a female guide provided support. The subject was seen for a follow-up interview one day later, with additional follow-ups at one, two, eight, and twelve weeks after the session. The final evaluation was conducted as closely as possible to six months later.2 The Sample Sixty-seven people (forty-four men and twenty-three women) were interviewed for the study; their average age was 35.5 years. The sample was not random; it included everyone who had completed the therapy program over a nine-month period still living in California and who was between six and nine months away from the day of his or her psychedelic session. The median educational level was two years or more of collage. The subjects differed widely in religious upbringing and orientation, clinical diagnosis, and cultural background. It is safe to assume that because they had paid the medical costs for the therapy, they all were highly motivated to seek and attain self-knowledge and self-improvement. Severely disturbed persons were not accepted into the study. Two-thirds of the group had a range of diagnoses similar to those of the patients at an outpatient mental health clinic. One-third had no presenting symptoms; they were “healthy normals” in their work and personal life and were thus more likely to grapple with ultimate questions of love and death as well as other universal concerns during their psychedelic experience. It was observed that the content and tone of their sessions were markedly different from those of the more neurotic participants, who were more likely to use the session for personal and transpersonal exploration. A Brief History How I developed the interview and was able to do psychedelic research at all is symptomatic of the uneasy relationships between academic psychology, mind exploration in general, and psychedelics in particular. In my graduate years at Stanford University in the early’60s, I carefully tailored my outward characteristics to appear to be one more humble though ambitious psychology student. I dressed as squarely as I could, hoping that my frayed-at-the-elbows sport coat and my worn neckties would persuade the professorate (who could toss me out of the university to be drafted and sent to Vietnam) to ignore my off-campus activities. In my classes and seminars, I hid my continual puzzlement at my professors’ parochial understanding of the psyche and their limited exposure to its full range. Granted that my opinions were fueled by arrogance and ignorance, I could not help feeling as though I were listening to very young children expounding their theories of adult sexual behavior: how very unlikely it was that babies could be made by putting your pee-pee stick into her peepee hole, that such acts could never be pleasurable, or that was what one’s parents did when they were making all those noises in their locked bedroom. I dutifully made notes, read books, wrote papers (often the same paper with a new front page), and blended in as much as possible. On my own time, I struggled to understand the larger world-mind I had experienced with LSD. Reading widely in anthropology, Tibetan Buddhism, mysticism, altered states, and parapsychology, I had found clues and partial answers. By the middle of my third year, I wanted to learn what the lasting effects were of taking psychedelics in a safe, supportive setting. To turn such research into a dissertation, I needed three faculty members to serve as a supervisory committee. To my surprise, finding them became a lengthy process, as professor after professor wanted no part in what they considered fringe or downright dangerous science. The breakthrough came at a meeting with Professor Jack Hilgard, a major figure in the American Psychological Association, author of major textbooks on learning theory, and the founding director of the Stanford Hypnosis Laboratory—and a gentle avuncular man and a skilled listener. As we sat on opposite sides of his large uncluttered desk, both of us in jacket and tie, I laid out the idea for my dissertation. Professor Hilgard chided me kindly, saying that if I pursued my project, I would have no future in academic psychology. “Dr. Hilgard,” I replied, “when you decided to study hypnosis, it was in dispute, much the same way that psychedelics are now. It was very much not an acceptable area of study. You took that chance with your career. I’m willing to take a chance with mine.” He leaned back for a long, long time, as if caught up in memory. Then, tipping his chair forward, he spread his hands on the desk and looked at me. “I will be on your committee.” His acceptance gave me my third member, and his stature and reputation gave me protection from any disapproval from other faculty. The committee chairman was Willis Harman, my mentor (and a contributing author to this book), who had guided me through my most life-changing psychedelic experience. The other member was Nevitt Sanford, who had been fired from Berkeley for refusing to sign a loyalty oath during the fear-ridden McCarthy era. Neither Hilgard nor Sanford had the slightest interest in my research with psychedelics, but both had taken strong, unpopular stands in the past and supported genuine academic freedom. To this day I am grateful for their support. How Can One Measure Psychotherapeutic Utility? A few years before the start of this research, there had been a small cascade of papers arguing not only for the effectiveness of psychedelic therapy, but also that the material produced by patients during the therapy sessions validated the theoretical orientation of each individual researcher-therapist, all of whom had radically different ideas about the nature of consciousness. The medley included Freudian, Jungian, behaviorist, existential, and eclectic therapists, each in good standing in his theoretical camp.3 One reason for their different reports, or so it seemed to me, lay in their inadequate grasp of the effect of their own mental set on their outcomes. From sitting in on many psychedelic sessions over several years, it was clear to me that the experience was inspiring and positive. In an earlier study, for example, 78 percent of the subjects called the experience “the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”4 As impressive as that seemed, I was aware that such statements would not satisfy a potential critic. How could one measure the changes suggested by tributes without getting caught up in the patients’ desire to ascribe benefit to the therapy (to be explained away as transference or cognitive dissonance, depending on which critic one read) or being caught by the tar baby of one’s own theoretical bias? The way out of the dilemma seemed obvious once I thought of it. I would measure the changes in the daily lives of individuals who had undergone psychedelic therapy. To my surprise, I found that no one evaluating the effectiveness of psychotherapy, including well-funded, years-long, multi-institution studies ever looked at subsequent behavior. I found the accepted argument for ignoring the patient’s behavior and opinions stunningly unconvincing. One researcher, describing her contribution to the longest and best-known study, said, “If theory recognizes such constructs as the ego, in which reorganization may come about with or without direct or immediate reflection in verbal report or behavior, dynamic states and ego variables can be assessed only by the instrument through which they are apprehended: clinical judgment.”5 As this seemed to me to be pure hogwash, I realized that not only was I torpedoing my career by studying psychedelics in the first place, but I was even rejecting the “right way” to go about it. Yet I did not stop going at it my way. At the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital mental ward, where I had worked with individuals and run groups, the ultimate test of therapeutic effectiveness had been whether a veteran left the hospital and reinvigorated himself into civilian life. That made sense to me. Developing the Behavior Change Interview (BCI) I began to ferret out moments of daily life that might change after a therapeutic intervention. I asked the therapy staff to note down any behavior changes reported by clients as well as any changes in their own behavior since their own introduction to psychedelics. Eventually I amassed 433 entries that I divided into nineteen categories. The next step was to create questions for each item to which answers could be very simply scored and counted. I read how Alfred Kinsey conducted his initial research on sexual behavior. He found that people would say “No” when asked if they had done this or that behavior but would admit to it if the question were posed in a different way. He developed a forced format that assumed, in the structure of the question, that the behavior had occurred. So it was not “Do you masturbate?” but rather “How often do you masturbate?” It was not “Have you ever had a have a sexual experience with an animal?” It was “At what age did you first have a sexual experience with an animal?” This approach, modified to suit my needs, was the right one for me. Thus, I would ask if the person were reading, working, going to parties, dreaming, or engaging in some other activity more frequently, less frequently, or as frequently as before the psychedelic experience. After sifting out behaviors that rarely changed or were difficult to score, I was left with 332 items in eighteen categories. Administering and Scoring the Behavior Change Interview The form I developed had one category on each page and a list of the items in that category. Each answer could be recorded as more, less, or the same. The interviewers would write down any additional comments. Below are a few of the questions, each from a different category. Do you dream more or less frequently? Are you eating more or less meat than before? Are you watching more or less television? (Couples only) When you quarrel, are your quarrels more or less violent than before? Do you do more or less gardening than before? Do you have intercourse more or less frequently? Do you attend a religious service more or less often? At the top of each page was a space to include a qualitative summation.b Each looked like this example: The instructions for these interviewer ratings were: “If the change appears to be in the direction of a flexible, self-aware adaptability and away from the extreme of unrealistic rigidity, it is scored as ‘improved.’ In cases, however, where movement is from some point of flexibility toward irresponsible or purposeless behavior, it is scored as ‘worse.’ Withdrawal—religious, social, psychological, or political—is not to be scored as ‘improved.’ Changes that appear to be predominantly in fantasy or attitude are to be scored ‘same.’ If there was any doubt or if I did not have enough information in any category, I wrote the words ‘unable to judge.’” In practice, in almost every case, it was not difficult to score the direction of change. The results are summarized in the following table. Since reviewing the changed behavior in each category makes for tedious reading, a summary can be found in chapter 21.6 TABLE 8.1. BEHAVIOR CHANGE INTERVIEW7 Description of Categories and Percentage Changed Over 75 percent of participants were rated as improved in the following categories. Dreams: Improvements included frequency, recall, use, and enjoyment of dream material. Reading and listening habits: Included were television, music, theater, and reading habits. Attending to something for its own sake instead of as a distraction was seen as improvement. Material values: A shift of emphasis from income and benefits to work itself was viewed as improvement, as was less need for status and recognition. Marriage: Items included satisfaction, communication, shared interests and activities, and quarrels. Emotional responsiveness: Items dealt with the ability and capacity to tolerate and exhibit both negative and positive feelings. Other items related to self-concept and dependent or independent relationships. Family relations: These included relations with parents, in-laws, siblings, and children, and sharing time and interests. Items dealing with children included activities like playing with them and reading to them. Work: Items related to amount of work, ease of work, time spent working, and various relationships at work. Introspection: Items related to an individual’s ability to observe oneself and to modify one’s actions based on one’s observations. Interpersonal contacts: Items covered friendship patterns of all sorts. From 60 to 75 percent of the participants were rated as improved in the following categories. Personal habits: Items related to personal hygiene, housework, buying habits, and sleeping habits. Health: Items included exercise, fatigue, insomnia, and medications. Religious activities: Items included church attendance, prayer, and interest in religious subjects. Increased religious activities were not rated as improvement unless they seemed to be part of a more mature religious framework, whether the person was more devout or not. Sexual pattern: Items included interest in and pleasure with sexuality, intercourse, and masturbation. Fears: Items included fears of falling, insects, darkness, isolation, and death. More than 6 percent of the participants were rated worse in the following categories. (The figure after each category is the percentage of subjects in each category.) Eating habits and preferences (10 percent): Items included diet, food preparation, and interest in food. Undesirable weight loss or gain was rated as worse. Marriage (7 percent): The responses covered two difficult marriages and one man who married and divorced in the six months between the psychedelic experience and the interview. Health (13 percent): All declines in health were minor; fatigue and indigestion were most common. All but one subject were men. Fears (10 percent): Participants were rated worse if they reported greater awareness of fears. One subject developed a phobia about car accidents that became so severe that he quit his job as a taxi driver. It remains unclear whether this forced career change was beneficial. Substantial differences were found between men and women in the following categories. Physical activities: Factors included hiking, sports, and gardening. One-third of the men and two-thirds of the women were rated as improved. Creative activities: Items covered various kinds of creative expression. Over half the men showed no change, while two-thirds of the women were rated as improved. Sexual pattern: Almost twice as many men as women (32 percent versus 17 percent) reported no change. Conclusions It appears that behavior changes were real, observable, and pervasive and that most changes were improvements that reflected increased self-worth, reduced anxiety, and lessened feelings of inadequacy. In addition, the subjects formed deeper and more meaningful relationships. A large majority of the participants reported that the therapy had been among the most intense and meaningful experiences of their lives— some said the most difficult as well. The findings described here and in chapter 21 are clear evidence that just as a single calamitous incident can have a lasting, crippling impact, so a single intense, propitious experience can have lasting therapeutic effects. At the time this research was done, one question that kept being asked was how this therapy’s batting average compared with other therapies. The answer given here, as well as in several linked clinical papers,8 is that it is a Babe Ruth of therapies, especially given its short duration and the depth and extent of the changes. It is encouraging to see that a new wave of researchers is asking better questions, such as, “Does it work for this or that group (e.g., patients with stage IV cancer who have extreme anxiety)?” Another question being asked is, “Does it work for this or that condition (e.g., cluster headaches or post-traumatic stress disorder)?”9 Also beginning to be asked is, “What training and experience should anyone sitting with or guiding a psychedelic session have?” This book attempts some answers for nonprofessionals in informal and, for now, not yet legal settings. There are manuals being produced for authorized studies as well. Both kinds of information will reduce harm and foster therapeutic benefit. Both are long overdue. PART THREE ENHANCED PROBLEM SOLVING in Focused Sessions Introduction to Part Three Crick told him [Dick Kemp] that some Cambridge academics used LSD in tiny amounts as a thinking tool to liberate them from preconceptions and let their genius wander freely to new ideas. Crick told him he had perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD.a The use of psychedelics by scientists and other professionals for enhanced problem solving is a realm where little is known and less has been published. In fact, it has often been argued that psychedelics taken for these purposes cannot possibly produce good results since, for the most part, their major effects bypass or suppress analytic and rational areas of the mind. Even those readers with considerable experience with psychedelics may be skeptical of the evidence in this section that refutes these suppositions. However, the set, setting, dose, expectation, and facilitation can redirect what is assumed to be the natural thrust of these substances. When participants can be induced to become absorbed in their intellectual concerns, they do not get not caught up in self-exploration or self-transcendence. When our research group began to explore this area, we did not know if this was true. Therefore, we were elated by the initial results when participants not only improved their scores on well-regarded creativity tests, but also, more important, made significant breakthroughs on professional problems. A promising line of research abruptly vanished from public view on October 6, 1966, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shut down the research before we published our results. (Chapter 14 is a personal view of the shutdown.) What happened next within the scientific community happened within the psychotherapy and spiritual communities as well. The urge to discover and explore seems impervious to government control. Some scientists continued experimenting with these substances, though they could not publish—or for many, even reveal their experimentation to their colleagues. Over the years, more and more people, including scientists, engineers, writers, artists, and business leaders, have acknowledged the pivotal role psychedelics had played in their discoveries. Nevertheless, the established belief is still that creativity cannot be cajoled, corralled, or controlled—let alone amplified—with psychedelics used as “consciousness-alerting” substances. On the other hand, the new drugs of choice among the hard-driving young intellectual set are called “cognitive enhancers,” like Alderall. Originally prescribed for people with learning disabilities to help them focus on school tasks, these drugs are being used off-label to stay awake longer, work more steadily, and get more accomplished.1 From time to time, however, some of this underground use surfaced. John Markoff, a science reporter for the New York Times, documented the pivotal influence of psychedelics in the creation of the personal computer in the 1960s and 1970s.2 For example, Markoff wrote, “He [Steve Jobs] explained that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he’d done in his life.” A contemporary use of psychedelics is evident at the annual Burning Man Festival held in the Nevada desert. The novel constructions, made to be seen, ridden, inhabited, and/or destroyed, are a vibrant exhibition of creativity fueled at least in part by psychedelics. “I only take LSD at Burning Man,” a young man told me. Only there did he feel there were no limitations to his experience. Burning Man, without privacy or protection in the usual sense, was for him the safest and most supportive situation. Although a “Burner” might think that the methodology described in part 3 is both timid and constrained, it appears that an experienced guide, a safe and secure setting, and clear intentions are most likely to produce useful solutions. In 2001, Fortune magazine ran an article by Michael Schrage imagining a facility on an island beyond the reach of American law, a haven where major figures in finance, government, philosophy, and science would converge for psychedelic sessions focused on their most pressing problems.3 He cast it as a speculative fantasy, apparently unaware that such an establishment had once existed and that the kinds of results conjectured in the article had actually occurred. At the time the results were first reported, the expansion of the project seemed assured. To quote from the report: “The implications of the work are, we believe, much broader than this particular application. Indeed, the basic assumption underlying setting up the project, and not negated by any of our observations during the course of the research, is that, given appropriate conditions, the psychedelic agents can be employed to enhance any aspect of mental performance, in the sense of making it more operationally effective. While this research was restricted to intellectual and artistic activity, we believe the assumption holds true for any other mental, perceptual, or emotional process.”4 These conclusions remain valid today. 9 BREAKTHROUGH RESEARCH Selective Enhancement of Creative Capacities WILLIS HARMAN, Ph.D., and JAMES FADIMAN, Ph.D. This chapter describes research terminated in 1966 when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared a moratorium on all psychedelic research. It is updated from an article originally published in 1966 in Psychological Reports.1 Amid much controversy over the place of psychedelic chemicals in contemporary culture, now we have quietly entered a third phase of research on their use. The first phase, prior to the 1960s, typically identified these substances as psychotomimetic, and was based on a priori models of mental illness. Underestimating the effects that such preconceptions might have on the content and aftereffects of a subject’s experience and almost totally unaware of the effects of expectations or the setting, researchers variously reported that psychedelic-induced states mimicked mental illness when given in a setting that provoked it. For instance, it illuminated Freudian theory when administered by a committed Freudian, evoked Jungian archetypes when administered by a longtime Jungian, substantiated the tenets of behavior therapy to a behaviorist by increasing suggestibility and modifiability, and demonstrated the soundness of the existential approach when given by someone who identified with that theory. As I wrote in my dissertation, “What is puzzling …is that all these investigators found that using psychedelics in their particular framework tended to validate that framework.”2 The second phase—which occurred during the sixties and saw Humphry Osmond’s neologism psychedelic adopted—allowed a session to run its natural course to minimize the influence of the therapist’s or monitor’s conceptions and interpretations. Research led to a variety of psychotherapeutic applications, as well as widespread—mainly illicit—use oriented to sensual, philosophical, and transcendental goals. Out of this experimentation and clinical research, largely as a consequence of suggestive spontaneous occurrences, there was the suggestion that the results obtained selectively enhance different areas of performance. Thus began a third phase of psychedelic research that continues to this day. Whereas, in the first phase the participant’s experiences tended to be controlled and delimited, even if inadvertently, by the experimenter’s and the subject’s preconceptions, and in the second phase to be more uncontrolled and wide-ranging in scope, the emphasis now was on the selection of specific kinds of psychedelic experience and of specific ways to produce and maintain them. These experiments on cognitive enhancement went on in various countries, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Since much of this work was done in defiance of existing laws governing use, publicly available information about results has been scant and scattered. What follows is a review of the results of one study I worked on, sponsored by the Institute for Psychedelic Research at San Francisco State University in which the objective was to enhance creative problem-solving ability. Rationale Behind the Creative Problem-Solving Study The literature on the effects of psychedelic agents on performance is inconclusive or contradictory. In some studies, learning was impaired during the drug session, in others it was enhanced. Similarly, contradictory results have been noted for color perception, recall and recognition, discrimination learning, concentration, symbolic thinking, and perceptual accuracy.3 In some cases of impairment, the drug was used as a stressor with the intention of simulating psychotic performance impairment. Performance enhancement during the drug experience has been sporadically reported in both experimental and clinical research, but not in general where a psychotomimetic orientation was dominant. Research in which improved performance was claimed subsequent to the drug experience has almost all been in clinical settings. The authors’ prior experience in clinical research4 had amply convinced us of the possibility of long-term performance enhancement using psychedelic agents in a safe, supportive setting. Though not deliberately sought, there were numerous spontaneous incidents of what appeared to be temporarily enhanced performance during the drug experience itself. These observations led us to postulate the following: Any human function can be performed more effectively. We do not function at our full capacity. Psychedelics appear to temporarily inhibit censors that ordinarily limit what is available to conscious awareness. Participants may, for example, discover a latent ability to form colorful and complex imagery, to recall forgotten experiences of early childhood, or to generate meaningful symbolic presentations. By leading participants to expect enhancement of other types of performance—creative problem solving, learning manual or verbal skills, manipulating logical or mathematical symbols, acquiring sensory or extrasensory perception, memory, and recall—and by providing favorable preparatory and environmental conditions, it may be possible to improve any desired aspect of mental functioning. As the following table indicates, commonly observed characteristics of the psychedelic experience indicate that performance may or may not be enhanced. In our research, we tried to provide an environment that would maximize those characteristics that tend to improve functioning, while minimizing those that might hinder any improvement. TABLE 9.1. SOME REPORTED CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE We chose to focus on creative problem solving for several reasons. One was its obvious utility, an important consideration at that juncture because of those who doubted that psychedelics were good for anything at all. Besides, many of the spontaneous occurrences we had observed were of this problem-solving kind. Finally, extensive research activity in the field of creativity had yielded a number of objective measures to use. The study attempted to shed light on three questions: Can the psychedelic experience enhance creative problem-solving ability, and if so, what is the concrete evidence of enhancement? Can this enhancement lead to concrete, valid, and feasible solutions assessable by the pragmatic criteria of modern industry and mainstream science? In working with creative individuals, would there be changes indicative of increased creativity continuing after the psychedelic intervention? Participants The participants were twenty-six men engaged in a variety of professional occupations: sixteen engineers, one engineer-physicist, two mathematicians, two architects, one psychologist, one furniture designer, one commercial artist, one sales manager, and one personnel manager. At the time of the study, there were few women in senior scientific positions, and none was found who wished to participate. Nineteen of the subjects had no previous experience with psychedelics. They were selected on the basis of the following criteria: The participant’s occupation required problemsolving ability. The participant was psychologically stable, as determined by a psychiatric interview examination. The participant was motivated to discover, verify, and apply solutions within his current employment. Six groups of four and one group of three met in the evening several days before the session.a The sequence of events to be followed was explained in detail. In this initial meeting, we sought to allay any apprehension and establish rapport and trust among the participants and the staff. Participants were assured that they would experience few if any distractions such as visions or personal emotional states and that the experience could be directed as desired. Suggestions were given on how to promote mental flexibility. Included were the following: Try to identify with the central person, object, or process in the center of the problem. See how the problem looks from this vantage point. Try to “see” the solution—to visualize how various parts might work together, how a certain situation will work out. Scan rapidly through a large number of possible solutions, ideas, and data. The “right” solution will often appear with a sort of intuitive “knowing” that it is the answer. You will also find that you can be simultaneously aware of an uncommonly large number of ideas or pieces of data processes simultaneously. You will be able to step back from the problem and see it in a new perspective, in more basic terms. Since there is much less of yourself invested than in your prior trials, you will be able to abandon previously tried approaches and start afresh. Above all, don’t be timid about asking for answers. If you want to see the solution in a three-dimensional image, or to project yourself forward in time, or to view some microscopic physical process or something not visible to the physical eye, or to reexperience some event out of the past, by all means do so. Ask. Don’t let your questions be limited by your notion of what can or cannot be done. Participants were given one hour of pencil-and-paper tests and told that they would take a similar battery during the session itself. To make sure that the problems to be worked on were appropriate for the purpose, each participant was asked to give a brief outline of the problem he had brought. [The first two sessions were so successful that members of subsequent groups were asked to bring several problems each.] By the end of the preparatory meeting, participants were generally eager and at ease. They had been given a clear picture of what to expect and how to cope with any difficulties that might arise. The day of the experimental session was spent as follows: 8:30. Arrival at session room 9:00. Psychedelic material taken (200 milligrams of mescaline), equivalent to 100 micrograms of LSDb 9:00–12:00. Music played while subjects relaxed with eyes closed 12:00–1:00. Psychological testing 1:00–5:00. Participants worked on problems 5:00–6:00. Discussion of experience; review of solutions After this, participants were driven home; they were given a sedative to take if they had any difficulty sleeping. Many of them preferred to stay up half the night, working on insights and solutions discovered earlier in the day. Within the next week, each subject wrote an account of his experience. About six weeks later, subjects were given questionnaires on how the effects of the session had affected their ongoing creative ability as well as how valid and acceptable the solutions conceived during the session seemed to them at that time. Results: Subjective Reports The literature on creativity includes analytical descriptions of the components of creative experience, the personal characteristics of creative individuals, and the distinguishing features of creative solutions. From the participants’ reports, it was possible to extract eleven types of improved functioning that occurred during the session.5 (Those interested in the relationship of these aspects to current research and theory on creativity can refer to the detailed technical discussion in Harman, McKim, et al., 1966). These ways, along with representative quotations from the subjects’ reports, are as follows: 1. Low inhibition and anxiety “There was no fear, no worry, no sense of reputation and competition, no envy, none of these things which in varying degrees have always been present in my work.” “A lowered sense of personal danger; I don’t feel threatened anymore, and there is no feeling of my reputation being at stake.” “Although doing well on these problems would be fine, failure to get ahead on them would have been threatening. However, as it turned out, on this afternoon the normal blocks in the way of progress seemed to be absent.” 2. Capacity to restructure problem in a larger context “Looking at the same problem with [psychedelic] materials, I was able to consider it in a much more basic way, because I could form and keep in mind a much broader picture.” “I could handle two or three different ideas at the same time and keep track of each.” “Normally I would overlook many more trivial points for the sake of expediency, but under the drug, time seemed unimportant. I faced every possible questionable issue square in the face.” “Ability to start from the broadest general basis in the beginning.” “I returned to the original problem…. I tried, I think consciously, to think of the problem in its totality, rather than through the devices I had used before.” 3. Enhanced fluency and flexibility of ideation “I began to work fast, almost feverishly, to keep up with the flow of ideas.” “I began to draw …my senses could not keep up with my images …my hand was not fast enough …my eyes were not keen enough…. I was impatient to record the picture (it has not faded one particle). I worked at a pace I would not have thought I was capable of.” “I was very impressed with the ease with which ideas appeared (it was virtually as if the world is made of ideas, and so it is only necessary to examine any part of the world to get an idea). I also got the feeling that creativity is an active process in which you limit yourself and have an objective, so there is a focus about which ideas can cluster and relate.” “I dismissed the original idea entirely, and started to approach the graphic problem in a radically different way. That was when things started to happen. All kinds of different possibilities came to mind….” “And the feeling during this period of profuse production was one of joy and exuberance…. It was the pure fun of doing, inventing, creating, and playing.” 4. Heightened capacity for visual imagery and fantasy “Was able to move imaginary parts in relation to each other.” “It was the non-specific fantasy that triggered the idea.” “The next insight came as an image of an oyster shell, with the mother-of-pearl shining in different colors. I translated that in the idea of an interferometer—two layers separated by a gap equal to the wavelength it is desired to reflect.” “As soon as I began to visualize the problem, one possibility immediately occurred. A few problems with that concept occurred, which seemed to solve themselves rather quickly…. Visualizing the required cross section was instantaneous.” “Somewhere along in here, I began to see an image of the circuit. The gates themselves were little silver cones linked together by lines. I watched the circuit flipping through its paces….” “I began visualizing all the properties known to me that a photon possesses and attempted to make a model for a photon…. The photon was comprised of an electron and a positron cloud moving together in an intermeshed synchronized helical orbit…. This model was reduced for visualizing purposes to a black-and-white ball propagating in a screwlike fashion through space. I kept putting the model through all sorts of known tests.” 5. Increased ability to concentrate “Was able to shut out virtually all distracting influences.” “I was easily able to follow a train of thought to a conclusion where normally I would have been distracted many times.” “I was impressed with the intensity of concentration, the forcefulness and exuberance with which I could proceed toward the solution.” “I considered the process of photoconductivity…. I kept asking myself, ‘What is light? and subsequently, ‘What is a photon?’ The latter question I repeated to myself several hundred times till it was being said automatically in synchronism with each breath. I probably never in my life pressured myself as intently with a question as I did this one.” “It is hard to estimate how long this problem might have taken without the psychedelic agent, but it was the type of problem that might never have been solved. It would have taken a great deal of effort and racking of the brains to arrive at what seemed to come more easily during the session.” 6. Heightened empathy with external processes and objects “…the sense of the problem as a living thing that is growing toward its inherent solution.” “First I somehow considered being the needle and being bounced around in the groove.” “I spent a productive period …climbing down on my retina, walking around and thinking about certain problems relating to the mechanism of vision.” “Ability to grasp the problem in its entirety, to ‘dive’ into it without reservations, almost like becoming the problem.” “Awareness of the problem itself rather than the ‘I’ that is trying to solve it.” 7. Heightened empathy with people “It was also felt that group performance was affected in …subtle ways. This may be evidence that some sort of group action was going on all the time.” “Only at intervals did I become aware of the music. Sometimes, when I felt the other guys listening to it, it was a physical feeling of them listening to it.” “Sometimes we even had the feeling of having the same thoughts or ideas.” 8. Subconscious data more accessible “…brought about almost total recall of a course that I had had in thermodynamics; something that I had never given any thought about in years.” “I was in my early teens and wandering through the gardens where I actually grew up. I felt all my prior emotions in relation to my surroundings.” 9. Association of dissimilar ideas “I had earlier devised an arrangement for beam steering on the two-mile accelerator which reduced the amount of hardware necessary by a factor of two…. Two weeks ago it was pointed out to me that this scheme would steer the beam into the wall and therefore was unacceptable. During the session, I looked at the schematic and asked myself how could we retain the factor of two but avoid steering into the wall. Again a flash of inspiration, in which I thought of the word ‘alternate.’ I followed this to its logical conclusion, which was to alternate polarities sector by sector so the steering bias would not add but cancel. I was extremely impressed with this solution and the way it came to me.” “Most of the insights come by association.” “It was the last idea that I thought was remarkable because of the way in which it developed. This idea was the result of a fantasy that occurred during Wagner…. [The participant had earlier listened to Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries.’] I put down a line which seemed to embody this…. I later made the handle which my sketches suggested and it had exactly the quality I was looking for…. I was very amused at the ease with which all of this was done.” 10. Heightened motivation to obtain closure “Had tremendous desire to obtain an elegant solution (the most for the least).” “All known constraints about the problem were simultaneously imposed as I hunted for possible solutions. It was like an analog computer whose output could not deviate from what was desired and whose input was continually perturbed with the inclination toward achieving the output.” “It was almost an awareness of the ‘degree of perfection’ of whatever I was doing.” “In what seemed like ten minutes, I had completed the problem, having what I considered (and still consider) a classic solution.” 11. Visualizing the completed solution “I looked at the paper I was to draw on. I was completely blank. I knew that I would work with a property three hundred feet square. I drew the property lines (at a scale of one inch to forty feet), and I looked at the outlines. I was blank…. Suddenly I saw the finished project. [The project was a shopping center specializing in arts and crafts.] I did some quick calculations …it would fit on the property and not only that …it would meet the cost and income requirements …it would park enough cars …it met all the requirements. It was contemporary architecture with the richness of a cultural heritage …it used history and experience but did not copy it.” “I visualized the result I wanted and subsequently brought the variables into play which could bring that result about. I had great visual (mental) perceptibility; I could imagine what was wanted, needed, or not possible with almost no effort. I was amazed at my idealism, my visual perception, and the rapidity with which I could operate.” Results: Subjective Ratings As mentioned above, several weeks after the experimental session, all participants were asked to complete a brief questionnaire. They rated their experience with respect to nine characteristics relevant to enhanced functioning. Items were rated on a five-point scale from “Marked Enhancement” (+2) through “No Change” (0) to “Marked Impairment” (-2). The data in Table 9.2 substantiates the hypothesis of enhancement of both verbal and nonverbal skills. TABLE 9.2. MEAN SUBJECTIVE RATINGS* OF FACTORS RELATED TO ENHANCED FUNCTIONING Results: Creativity Tests Test–retest scores on some of the measures used showed dramatic changes from the pre-meeting to the psychedelic session. Most apparent were enhanced abilities to recognize patterns, minimize and isolate visual distractions, and maintain visual memory despite changes of form and color. Specific tests used included the Purdue Creativity Test, the Miller Object Visualization Test, and the Witkin Embedded Figures Test. The scores on the Witken have been reported to be stable under a variety of experimental interventions, including stress, training, sensory isolation, hypnosis, and the influence of a variety of drugs.6 With these twenty-seven subject-sessions, enhancement was consistent (p .01), and in some cases improvements were as great as 200 percent.7 Long-Term Results The practical value of the solutions obtained is one way to determine if the subjective reports of accomplishments might be temporary euphoria. The nature of these solutions covered a broad spectrum, including: A new approach to the design of a vibratory microtome A commercial building design, accepted by the client Space-probe experiments devised to measure solar properties Design of a linear electron accelerator beam-steering device An engineering improvement to a magnetic tape recorder A chair design modeled and accepted by the manufacturer A letterhead design approved by the customer A mathematical theorem regarding NOR-gate circuits Completion of a furniture-line design A new conceptual model of a photon found to be useful A design of a private dwelling approved by the client Table 9.3 summarizes the initial results of applying the solutions in the subjects’ industrial and academic settings. (This data was obtained by questionnaires and follow-up interviews six to eight weeks after the session.) TABLE 9.3. APPLICATION OF SOLUTIONS OBTAINED IN EXPERIMENTAL SESSIONS A quotation from a follow-up report illustrates the usefulness and validity of the session-day solutions: “In the area of ionospheric source location and layer tilt analysis, I was able in the weeks following the session to build on the ideas generated to the extent of working out the mathematics of the schemes proposed, and of making them more definite. The steps made in the session were the correct ones to start with …the ideas considered and developed in the session appear as important steps, and the period of the session was the single most productive period of work on this problem I have had in the several months either preceding or following the session.” Many subjects in the follow-up interviews reported changes in their working behaviors consistent with the enhancement experienced during the session itself. Table 9.4 summarizes the responses to a questionnaire dealing with changes in work effectiveness several months after the session. TABLE 9.4. WORK PERFORMANCE SINCE SESSION As can be seen, about half the respondents were still noticing some change in their performance level several months after the experimental session. These results are particularly interesting in view of the relatively low dose administered and the fact that no suggestion was ever made that continuing changes of this nature were expected. Participants were led to anticipate enhanced performance levels and a high degree of motivation. All of this was in a sheltered and non-critical atmosphere, but there was no suggestion that they could expect long-term performance changes or permanent benefit. Yet a certain amount of such change seems to have occurred. One implication is clear: we are dealing with substances and experiments that have long-term effects; it would be foolhardy and irresponsible to treat this kind of research as if it were isolated from the fabric of the subjects’ lives. In addition, the fact that not a single subject suffered any loss of interest or capacity in his normal work life is in sharp contradistinction to the fears still expressed in the popular and medical literature that taking a psychedelic would lead to a slacking off of motivation and involvement in cultural or scientific pursuits. Follow-Up Several of the participants in this original study were contacted recently and, although long past retirement age, they were self-employed in their chosen fields and extremely successful. Comments and Speculations The need for controlled hypothesis testing, including double-blind placebo studies, in this perplexing area of biochemical facilitation of mental functioning is a common plea and rightly so. But there is an equal need to continue the exploratory research that aims at conceptual models and hypothesis construction. In the research described above, two-thirds of the participants had no prior psychedelic experience. While there are clear methodological virtues in using untrained subjects, when the central question is not one of pharmacological effect, but the degree to which certain mental faculties can be facilitated, the greater a person’s experience, the more we are likely to learn. Thus, further investigations might benefit from having the same subject have a series of sessions. As to the selection of participants, clinical studies indicate that subjects who are more stable and productive beforehand tend to “benefit considerably from the psychedelic experience along the lines of self-actualization, richer creative experience, and enhancement of special abilities and aptitudes.”8 The subjects chosen for this study were known to be creative. In general, we would expect this kind of psychedelic session to be more fruitful with gifted individuals. In contrast with reports of other researchers, we experienced little difficulty in getting subjects to work on psychological tests. Many studies seem to point to a temporary debilitating effect of psychedelics on higher cortical processes. It seems that variables that affect results in such studies need to include attention to attitude and motivation, as well as ability. We found that discussing this with subjects in the preparatory meeting eliminated any tendency in the experimental session to shrug off tests as meaningless or to resist them as disconcerting. By establishing an anticipation of improved performance, we seemed to bring it about. These findings, if substantiated by additional research, have obvious applications in industry, professional practice, and research. The procedure could play a role similar to consultants, brainstorming, Synectics, and other methods now used to augment and “unstick” the creative process. A quotation from one of our subject’s reports illustrates this potential: “I decided to drop my old line of thinking and give it a new try. The ‘mystery’ of this easy dismissal and forgetting did not strike me until later in the afternoon, because I had many times before this session indulged in this line of thinking and managed to work the whole thing into an airtight deadlock, and I had been unable to break, much less dismiss, this deadlock. The miracle is that it came so easy and natural.” An additional application would be the use of the psychedelics, correctly administered, to upgrade the performance level of already effective personnel. Of all the results, the most significant, in our estimation, has been the new knowledge gained of the higher processes of the human mind, the framing of new and more productive research questions, and the effect on our understanding—of what we can be and what vast potentialities we have still only begun to tap. 10 FACILITATION FOR ENHANCED PROBLEM SOLVING The material below is not as fully detailed as the instructions and considerations for entheogenic uses detailed in chapters 1, 2, and 19. The material there was designed to fill a void in the information available to people who were going to be using psychedelics anyway. Here full guidelines are not appropriate. No one should feel that reading this qualifies him or her to facilitate a similar group event. One group with a government clearance to use LSD for creativity is considering the approach outlined below; however, they understand that they will need consultation and training before they can proceed. [Follow-up note: They chose to run their study as if they were testing a pharmaceutical, did it in a laboratory setting, gave a test battery to subjects during their experience, and had such uninteresting results that they chose not to publish.] In order to maximize the benefits of using low-dose psychedelics for creative breakthroughs as described in the prior chapter, the following six areas are important. Set: expectations and pre-session meetings Setting: physical atmosphere Substance: kind and dose Sitter: facilitator Session: time spent with facilitator Support: post-session work environment Set While all of the above factors are important, set is the most critical for problem solving. When psychedelics are taken for other purposes, people gravitate toward internal complexity, visual and sensory enhancements and distortions, and emotional intensity. To help participants achieve significant progress on their own intellectual problems, establishing the set requires a deliberate and ordered ambience. The first and perhaps the determining question is, does the participant care enough about the problem, area of research, or intellectual issue to be engrossed in it, and is he or she emotionally involved? One criterion is to determine if the person has already put out considerable effort toward its solution or resolution. The more the problem matters, the more likely the session will be successful. People who are so involved with the problem that its solution is vital to their well-being are more likely to do well. The issue could be delighting them or tormenting them. In either case, solving it matters deeply. The person should not be too enamored of rational thought. They should, at least understand—even if not through their own experience— that reason is only one tool among many. If the intention is weak, then a person should be advised that this kind of focused experience is not right at this time. If he or she has the necessary motivation, the follow-up question is, has he or she had psychedelic experiences before? At the time of our original research, it was not difficult to find many scientists with careers of ten to thirty years behind them who had never been in an altered state more challenging than one brought on by fatigue, coffee, or alcohol. Today, scientists and other professionals are more likely to have had prior experiences with psychedelics, if little or no experience with guidance. The upside of this change is that a facilitator can explain the dynamics of the session more easily, especially how to stay with a chosen project during the working hours of the session. The facilitator should be familiar with those factors described in detail in chapter 9 that inhibit or support creative problem solving, to be able to answer such questions as “Can I stay focused on my problems if I tap into my divine nature and wish to stay with that?” A possible answer might be that perhaps the participant’s divine nature brought him to psychedelics to make progress on the problems. If participants have had considerable psychedelic experience, the facilitator should establish the difference between this and prior sessions to underscore that the participants can maintain sustained attention on professional rather than personal concerns. Pre-session Meetings The purposes of pre-session meetings are: To intensify the focus on problems to be worked on as well as to evaluate their suitability. In the session itself, the “aha” experience may come early, and it becomes clear that the rest of the solution can be worked out in ordinary consciousness. A second problem and a third should be at the ready. In working with a group, to acquaint group members with one another and with each other’s goals, not so that they can help each other, but to improve the concinnity for all. It has not proved difficult to attain harmony during the resting morning hours, which is then maintained for the duration of the session. To let participants know that their experience may be one of discovery and confirmation rather than the welling up of original thoughts. Someone who has already grappled with a problem and has the expertise, technical background, vocabulary, and experience to solve that kind of problem may recognize that he or she had all the necessary elements when a solution presents itself. To explain the feeling of “rightness.” Experience with successful group problem-solving sessions, even without psychedelics, indicates that participants often have a keen awareness of being “on the right track.” The feeling emerges well before they have a clear idea of a solution. There is a feeling of rightness, of “getting in the groove,” of “going with the flow.” It is sometimes experienced as if the group or the individual mind has penetrated to layers of consciousness where the answers are kept. Another purpose of preliminary meetings is to generate pleasure and excitement at the prospect of an extraordinary opportunity. Facilitators should be familiar with the successes described in chapters 11 and 13 as well as, for example, Francis Crick’s discovery of the DNA structure while using LSD. With one or more pre-meetings, the session itself should run smoothly. The chances are very small that any single member of a group will drift away from the problems, and in any case, should this occur, it should not disturb the others. Number of Participants Up to four people can be accommodated without lowering the level of individual success. For any group session, at least two facilitators should be present. Larger groups can be accommodated, but only if there are enough facilitators and ample spaces so that individuals can work away from the group if they choose to. The larger the group, however, the more likely it is that a single participant can disrupt the overall tone. Setting The best physical setting is probably a living room with enough floor or couch space for each member of the group to lie down. The setting should be comfortable, with no medical and laboratory overtones. Desks or lap desks to help the participants make notes or sketches may be useful. No computers, cell phones, or the like. If there is only one participant, an audio recording may be made. However, for many participants, speaking about what they are thinking seems to slow down and constrict creative thought. Even the most analytic types usually find themselves working with visual events, metaphorical representations of their problems, or visions of physical objects, all of which they can manipulate faster than they can record what they observe. Substance While this section is about using LSD, as has been noted, mescaline and morning glory seeds as well as psilocybin and psilocybin-containing mushrooms are in the same family, although each has a different active molecule and should be dosed accordingly. Our original study used mescaline and LSD interchangeably, depending on which government agency was conducting an investigation or audit of which drug at our facility. The fact that our initial investigations used mescaline had no bearing on the results. Other experiments (unpublished because they were done after the research ban) showed that LSD is equally effective. Morning glory seeds are a last choice because they can cause nausea in some individuals. Dosage For participants with no prior experience but who are sufficiently motivated, 100 micrograms of LSD is an optimal dose. For participants with considerable prior experience, 50 micrograms is probably enough. If a participant is not anxious but feels uncomfortable or unable to focus and relax into the music, another 50 micrograms may be given an hour or so after the initial dose. Sitter The session director is a facilitator, not a guide in the sense that the term has been used in this book up until now. To be credible and knowledgeable and capable of running a session, a facilitator may be a scientist or engineer, should have some general psychedelic experience, and have been a participant in one or more sessions devoted to creative problem solving. Everyone who will be a facilitator should also be at any pre-session meetings of the group. The facilitator’s responsibility is to keep the group focused. If during the morning, a participant is weeping or agitated, a facilitator may reassure the person by holding his or her hand, but should not discuss or interpret what is being experienced, if possible. The goal is to help the participant back into a state of attentive relaxation. As with sacred and psychotherapeutic sessions, the facilitator is present to make people feel safe and cared for and to deal with any concerns or confusion that arise rather than acting as a guide, since the participants will be working on different problems using different strategies. Session As the LSD effects begin to be noticed, participants should be encouraged to lie down, put on eyeshades, and listen to music. The kind of music should be agreed on beforehand. Solo instruments are good; Bach or Indian ragas are fine. Highly emotional music and vocal music should be avoided. Participants should be allowed to lie quietly, listening to the music, for up to three hours or until they show interest in sitting up, reflecting on their morning journey, or turning to their chosen problems. There should be finger food available for lunch and snacks available throughout the afternoon. A lunch break is not necessary because many participants will have no interest in food. Facilitators, however, should eat something since any feelings of hunger may be picked up by the participants and may be a possible distraction. When people sit up and take off their eyeshades, they should be reminded that it is now time to work on their problems, which may need to be restated to them. There should be no more music unless it is requested by a participant. If requested, it should be kept at a very low volume. Participants may choose to sit or lie down, to work with eyes closed or open, or to make notes or sketches. Every person finds his or her own way. The facilitator’s job for the next few hours will be like that of a good airline steward or a waiter in a four-star restaurant: attentive to the participants’ needs, but not obtrusive. Some participants may ask for paper and pens or other aids, ask for a snack, or ask the facilitator to make note of an idea. Others will not want to be intruded upon. Discourage conversation. Remind people that they are there to work on their own projects. After a few hours, some participants may begin to flag. They may act like children who wish that class would be over. If this happens, check if they need a break or whether or not they actually feel finished. It can be beneficial to have access to another room where a participant can relax, talk with a facilitator, or just be by him- or herself. If someone wishes to take a walk, that person should be accompanied. After a break of ten to fifteen minutes, it is good practice to suggest to participants who are flagging that there is a second wind to these sessions and that they might take one more look at their problems. If they agree, they will almost always see a different approach or go on to a second problem or take off in a new and unexpected direction. As before, the facilitator should be attentive and supportive but not in the way. Near the end of the afternoon, let participants talk with each other about the day’s experiences. These conversations often spur new ideas, so be sure they have their notes or sketchpads beside them. The group may have chosen to have dinner together or to be taken home by relatives or friends. If they are to eat together, takeout is best because they are still in a state where the chatter and bright lights of a restaurant will be distracting. Once at home, some participants will feel finished and just enjoy the state they are in, but many will be up late, even all night, continuing to work on solutions exposed but not fully explored during the session. It seems to be the case in these low-dose sessions that what was thought about, the steps involved, the mind-experiences along the way, the results and the alternative paths opened up are all retained with comparative ease. However, it is a good idea to suggest that each person write up as full a report as he or she can in the first few days following the session. Most people find that even with little sleep their energy remains high all the next day. Others will be deeply tired. For some, the cognitive shifts last far beyond the session. Even after the problems they picked are completed, their capacity for problem solving remains enhanced. It is as if they found an extra gear on their mental bicycles and can go farther with the same amount of pedal power. Support Since the session is focused on external interests, part of the participants’ work world, there is usually adequate support in the workplace to explore, express, and develop their solutions. In situations where it is not okay to say what they have done, a person can say, “I spent a few days with this problem and made real progress.” Few people will inquire further, especially if the new work is of interest or value to the company. It is good to check in with each participant within a few days of the session to answer any questions and to encourage participants to reflect on important aspects of their experience. In any case, one should remain on tap for questions or concerns. 11 CASE STUDIES Two Architects and Six Professionals As useful as a formal research report like chapter 9 is, with its lists, table, and sample moments, it doesn’t give the flavor of what it is like to be working on one’s chosen problem, in the company of other professionals, aided by the support staff and fueled by a low dose of a psychedelic. This chapter has both short and long excerpts written relatively soon after the sessions described in chapter 9. The first section was written by two architects. The second section contains reports by other professionals, including several who wrote rather daunting reports of their own creative process. I have been approached by one foundation asking how to reinstate this kind of work. The answer at this point is to make the results more available. Then the normal desire of natural problem solvers to work more effectively can lead them to seek out these methods. In addition, corporations and governments will see that those who allow or encourage higher levels of creativity will have more and better results than those who don’t. Other than the usual caveats about careful participant selection and the necessary considerations of set, setting, substance, and trained guides, very little prevents us from supporting work—like the examples given in this chapter—so that it can occur more often. Two Architects We were very fortunate in having two successful architects participate in our study. While they worked in their own way, they both felt that their visualization capacities were enhanced during the session and that their design solutions were not greatly different from their usual work. The difference, as each noted, was having more freedom and reaching the eventual end design far more swiftly. While one of the architects we worked with had had a powerful psychedelic experience several years earlier, his capacity to focus and stay focused was no different from the participant with no prior exposure. Henrik Bull: Architect Number One Henrik Bull wrote up his observations and reflections some weeks after his session. My experience during the session was an unbelievable increase in the ability to concentrate and make decisions. It was impossible to procrastinate. Cobwebs, blocks, and binds disappeared. Anything was possible, but I was working on real and rather tight problems. The designs were freer, but probably more from the standpoint of removing blocks in the consideration of what the client might accept. Three designs were outlined in the three hours. All were accepted by the clients. The two houses that are referred to are now complete, and I feel are very successful. They are more free than my usual work, but not completely untypical. The clients would be horrified if they knew the history of the conceptual design…. Every person should have the experience to see what potential lies within himself. There is definitely an enhancement of the ability to visualize, but my experience was that I became a better Henrik Bull and was not converted to an instant Gaudí. The remainder of this section is from the report Bull submitted shortly after his session. Until hearing J.K.’s description of his experiences under psychedelic drugs, I knew practically nothing about them. I had never read any articles or books, or participated in any discussions on the subject. I was fascinated with his experience in this study and responded with enthusiasm when he suggested that there might be an opening in the next week for me. I had felt for a long time that my life was plagued with necessary, but relatively unimportant, detail work, which was competing with the design work, and both were suffering. Beyond that, I felt that my design efforts were often repeating old ideas and should be freer in spirit. I hoped that they might bring about some real change in my attitudes. This certainly happened beyond my wildest hopes. The morning session is difficult to describe—as any dream is. Ordinary dreams are often difficult to remember. In this case my memory is vivid, but everyday words cannot convey fantastic thoughts. My first impression was of the extreme clarity and beauty of the music. The instruments were not only stereophonic, but also existed at a particular point in space. This point would even move about in some cases. I had never heard music in this manner before. Soprano voices (which I had never before enjoyed) became fantastically beautiful. Soon visions began to appear, not unrelated to ordinary dream patterns. There seemed to be a constant changing of varicolored and handsome fabrics of all kinds. Next, the visions became more abstract and occupied the whole head. I was observing the scenes, but was conscious that there were no eyes, no ears, and no brain. The head soon became the universe, infinitely expansible or contractible. The visions continued uninterrupted and were influenced in content by the music. This universe was sustained by that which was below, and that which was below had been my body. There had been fingers and toes on that body, and I felt it might be interesting to find out if I could communicate with these elements. I tried to move a finger; it touched another finger, and I felt it. Therefore I had fingers still. Having proved that, there was no necessity to find out about toes. This was my last contact with my former body. From that point on there was no vision or thought which related to the real world. There were no absolutes. There were no specifics. There were no dimensions. There were no mistakes. There were no people. Do not ask questions! This is truly a wonderful world of infinitely variable colors, forms, music. (The last had come from the other world, but improved.) When the music stopped and we were told to get up, I really thought the whole morning had been very funny and I laughed out loud for quite a while. I had been anxious that I might be nasty to anyone who would shut off such a fine world. However, the world was still fine—just different. I was looking forward to the opportunity to attempt some of the professional creative problems which we had been told to bring. There were four of these, ranging from an extremely complex state college building with a program of eighty-two pages to a rather simple vacation house. My first decision was which problem to attack. I decided immediately to avoid the complex problem, because even though I felt very sharp, I knew it would be impossible to come to a conclusion or even to make considerable progress in three hours. This proved to be a wise decision. The simplest problem (but possibly the one with the most potential interest) was attacked first. Almost immediately several relationships that had escaped my attention became apparent, and a solution to the spatial relationships followed soon after. I avoided looking at a watch throughout the session, but I would guess that twenty minutes elapsed. Normally, I would stew and fret for weeks before coming to such a solution. Don’t misunderstand me; on a simple problem, the period at the end which is truly productive is often quite short under normal circumstances, but in any case a matter of hours. My next dilemma was whether or not to continue developing the design and make an effective drawing of it. I realized that I was thinking better and would draw better than usual. My decision was that if I drew better than normal, I still would not be drawing well, and should stick to those things I was good at. I have never had much trouble developing a consistent design after the initial conception. I decided to stay on this level of conceptual thinking and only make shorthand notes to myself to follow up later. This was a most important decision. I did not know whether or not I would remember the unanswered questions later, and sorely resented the time it took to make notes to myself. My hand did not move any faster than usual and I became very impatient with it. I even resented the time it took to reach for a sharp pencil. My position was half-sitting, half-kneeling on the floor, leaning over the drawing board. Quite literally, I had only a head to think and a hand to make sketches and notes. The body was (again) unimportant. When the session was over and I got up, it was really quite painful because of the awkward position I had been in for three hours. The first problem completed, I felt very exhilarated and could not wait to get on to the next. This problem was basically a site problem, locating a number of condominium houses on a very beautiful piece of property. The decisions came very quickly and I outlined a solution, which pleased me in a very short time. In passing, I investigated the economic yield to my client for several similar solutions and decided on what I felt was the best one. Why not do a typical floor plan for one of the units? This too was accomplished without the usual number of false starts. At this point I said to myself, “It would not be fair to Barney not to give his house one more try.” This client had been very difficult, but also challenging. I had presented him several different preliminary schemes. All had various faults in his mind, but he would not give me any specific complaints. The only scheme which excited him was also too much money. But he did not lose faith in me—which is quite unusual. This time my approach to the problem was unrelated to all previous attempts, and I looked at the challenging site in a new way. I really believe the solution that resulted in a few minutes is better than any of those that preceded it. This was a job that had taken several hundred hours of time, and represented a great monetary loss for the office. Why had I never seen this solution before? I should emphasize that the solution could have happened before. It belongs to the same family as my other work. The only real difference was that the solution that I felt right about appeared in almost no time at all. At this point in the session, we were told there would only be a few more minutes to work on our problems. Having disposed of the other problems, I decided to take a fresh but superficial look at the state college problem. I made some quick notes and calculations, which resulted in a rough sketch for a different approach to the ground floor. During the rest of the evening I felt very stimulated, something like being slightly high on alcohol. This was sustained for several hours. After my friends went to bed, I listened to their records until about 4:00 a.m. The visions of the morning session were missing, but the clarity of the music was the same. The day had started at six in the morning and ended twenty-two hours later. It was probably the shortest and most enjoyable day in my life. When I showed this to my partner and to the men in the office the next morning, they were very enthusiastic. Despite this, it was generally agreed that the new approach was too complicated to solve completely before a rather pressing deadline. We also agreed that it would be worth looking into later to see if it was in fact a better solution. Eric Clough: Architect Number Two A 1966 article in Progressive Architecture, “LSD: A Design Tool?” stated that “a number of architects [including Eric Clough, see below] have added to the extensive evidence for the drugs’ use as an instrument for enhancing perception, for training in visualization.” The report stated that, under the psychedelic effect of the drugs, visual and auditory acuity are ‘revolutionized’…. The consensus among the architects interviewed …seems to be that LSD, when administered under carefully controlled conditions, does enhance creativity to the extent that it vastly speeds up problem solving, aids in visualizing three-dimensionally, and generally heightens perceptivity.”1 Clough’s report shows how the highly trained mind and eye of an architect can effectively and purposefully utilize the heightened focusing of LSD. “I learned that whatever I was able to do that day was not because of the drug, but because the drug allowed me to function in a way that I was capable all along of functioning, without the usual frictions we encounter.” Clough had been part of an earlier LSD study. This is an excerpt from his report of the peak of that session. I could hear and feel the heartbeat of my guide and it was me and I was it. The room breathed and it was I. My eyes opened and we shimmered in shining spectrum. We (the tree of life and I, as one) grew and grew and formed a canopy of the universe. I saw (or was) the cosmos and it came together into a pinpoint of all the light and energy there is and burst and flooded the universe with twinkling stars again. I saw a pile of shit mounded high and steaming. A fly walked through the steam. A piece of shit clung to his leg and I saw (and felt) that I was that little piece of dung. We exploded into particles of shining dust and merged with the cosmos. I withdrew for a moment and thought about this rare phenomenon. Again laughter tumbled from the depths of my being. I was trying to do the impossible, to stand back and intellectualize about the most integral thought I had ever experienced…. Being transcending the sum of its parts…. The remainder of this section is from Clough’s report of the creativity session. Two and one half years later I received a call from the International Foundation for Advanced Study. I was invited to take part in a specific experiment: the study of creativity while under the influence of a psychedelic agent. My field, architecture, was one they wanted to include in the study…. We were instructed to choose a particular project and one or two alternates that we were currently working on, to give it some general thought prior to the day, but not to get too involved in it, so that we would have it on our minds but not arrive at the session with preconceived solutions. Preferably this would be a problem that we had not been able to find a solution for or that had some complexity and would require a considerable amount of our professional skill. The plan was to have four participants in each full-day session. Each participant was from a different field of endeavor and would work on his own project, even though all would be in the same room. Interaction and discussion was permissible but not required. The day came, and we four assembled in the session room and with little further preliminaries ingested mescaline. Our guides arranged us comfortably on the floor with our own sleeping bags, placed eyeshades over our eyes and stereophonic earphones over our ears, and started a tape of beautifully selected classical music. After Clough described how he felt during the hours of music and relation, he continued. I took off my headphones and slowly removed my eyeshades. A moment or two later one of our guides knelt at my side. I smiled at him and reached out to take his hand. We looked at each other (deep eye contact) for an eternal moment, and I closed my eyes again. I saw that the personality of man is like layer upon layer of glass. The specific vision was of irregular but cleanly geometric pieces, each behind the other into infinity. Each piece of glass was attached on pivots at the top and bottom. At any place, if any piece were turned slightly it would reflect an external picture and, like a mirror, block any further vision inside. I knew, with deep regret, that most of us have many pieces turned askew. For some time more I saw other mental images of similar kinds, all having to do with man’s inability to mesh cleanly at all levels of functioning. I sat up. It was 11 a.m. We had been instructed that we would be aroused at noon. I sat quietly and waited until the other subjects were brought back for lunch. We ate lightly: fruit, cheese, a small glass of wine, and some coffee. We talked about our morning. Our experiences were not the same but we felt that we had shared something rather important. For that time we were close friends. I picked up my sketchpad and some colored felt-tip pens and made myself comfortable on the floor in one corner of the room. I opened the pad, picked up a felt-tip pen and was ready to work …but I was a complete blank. Usually when I’m considering a problem, my head is full of pictures that I look at and discard or look at closer and elaborate on. I rarely draw anything until I have a pretty complete concept in my mental image. I had had a number of schemes for the project and had been looking at the mental picture of one on the way to the Foundation earlier that morning. Now there was nothing. (I had better digress for a moment and describe the project in question: A client had retained me to make studies for an arts and cultural center near one of the San Francisco Bay area universities. The site had been tentatively selected—a flat, square, three-acre parcel. This was to provide artists and craftsmen with workshops and retail sales areas in an environment that would be conducive to sales and would be a wide cultural influence on the community. It would have a coffeehouse, a theater for plays, open lectures and forums, and galleries for artists who did not have their shops in the complex. It would probably house a hip bookstore, too.) I still knew the dimensions of the site and slowly drew the approximate borders on the blank page. Still there was nothing in my head. The morning had somehow erased everything having to do with the purpose of the creativity session. I closed my eyes. I did not try to think. I waited, but not in anticipation of anything—much as I had in the later part of the morning. Within minutes it flashed to complete life. I could see the completed center. The trees were grown, cars were parked in the parking area, fountains splashed running water, and people walked through the building and the gardens. I could walk through, too. I did, slowly. I looked at the details of the structure, I studied the construction, I looked at the types of plants growing there, and I watched the craftsmen at work. The colors were rich but sub-dued, in harmony with the paintings displayed in the shops and along the boardwalks. I began to draw. In a few minutes, the basic plot and building arrangement were sketched on the pad. I laid out the parking lot and checked the number of spaces with the estimated need. It worked. I quickly calculated the probable cost of the project and checked it with the projected leasehold income. The economics were feasible, too. During the next hour and a half I drew as rapidly as I could. The drawings were sketchy but captured the essence of the vision I had in my head, and many specific details were recorded on paper. I stopped working. It was not yet three in the afternoon. We still had two hours allowed for work. I designed a couple of houses in my head and sketched a little. I played with a garden pavilion and some fountain designs, and at three-thirty I stopped for the day. I had done the equivalent of from one to two weeks’ work. (I’ll qualify this last statement: in a week I could have had many more sketches completed and some scale drawings, too, but the feeling I had was that I actually wouldn’t have accomplished any more than I had that afternoon….) I showed the sketches to the client a few days later, and they were approved, complete. Three weeks later, I began to prepare working drawings of the project, the property plan first. I put my sketchpad (closed) on the desk beside me and began the scale layout. A few hours later the first dimensioned sheet was done, and then I compared it with the originals. It was almost exactly the same. I had, without scaling the original sketches, laid out three acres of buildings, parking, outdoor theater, walks, patios, and so on in their exact dimensions and had kept it in my head as clearly as it had been when I walked through it…. I have tried here to describe exactly what happened and no more. Much is being learned. Six professionals Contained in this section are representative individual problem-solving experiences that illustrate some of the modes of creativity considered in chapter 9. Commercial Artist Problem: Design of a letterhead, after several presentation sketches had been rejected by the client. I decided to drop (my old) line of thinking and to give it a new try. The “mystery” of this easy dismissal and forgetting did not strike me until later in the afternoon because I had many times before this session indulged in this line of thinking and had managed to work up the whole thing into an airtight deadlock, which I had been unable to break, much less dismiss. The miracle is that it came so easily and naturally. I decided to go ahead with it, without worrying about what would come of it or whether anybody would like it or not. I started by modifying the original idea of the presentation sketch a little. After a couple of those, I dismissed the original idea entirely and started to approach the graphic problem radically differently. That’s when things began to happen. All kinds of different possibilities began to come to mind, and I started to quickly sketch them out on the blank letter-size sheets that I had brought with me for that purpose. Each new sketch would suggest other possibilities and new ideas. I began to work quickly, almost feverishly, to keep up with the flow of ideas. And the feeling during this profuse production was one of joy and exuberance: I had a ball! It was the pure fun of doing, inventing, creating, and playing. There was no fear, no worry, no sense of reputation and competition, no envy, none of those things which in varying degrees have always been present in my work. There was just the joy of doing. This person became so delighted with his heightened capacity for idea production that he chose to defer idea selection until the next day, when he selected and developed for presentation twelve of the twenty-six original conceptions. One of those was later accepted by the client. Engineer Problem: The formation of a visible image corresponding to the heat distribution of an object such as the human body. (The application is in medical diagnosis since diseased tissue tends to have a higher temperature than healthy tissue.) I “asked my unconscious” to supply ideas. The insight came as an image of an oyster shell, with the mother-of-pearl shining in different colors. I translated that in the idea of an interferometer—two layers separated by a gap equal to the wavelength it is desired to reflect—which is the principle of the mother-of-pearl where a change in heat would cause a microscopic displacement, clearly observable by the color of the reflected light. The remaining problem was therefore to change thermal energy into mechanical displacement. Another insight at this point was that the most efficient way to do this was by an expansion of gas because that was superior to any other operation that could be performed on solids. I then visualized this as two thin film layers, formed by vacuum evaporation, spaced about the wavelength of yellow light. Many pneumatic cells (of the shape of a long, thin cylinder) could be formed, say in a 200 x 200 array (with the parallel thin films located at one end). If the thermal image is projected on this array, the temperature reached by each cell will determine the pressure of the gas and the consequent elastic deformation of the thin films toward reestablishing ambient pressure. If the array is lighted by white light, each individual cell will reflect light of a color which is a function of the temperature of the source object…. Many other insights were related to the actual fabrication process, method of testing, and other applications. It is significant that a high number of associated ideas came into my mind the next day. Furniture Designer I had two specific problems, both in furniture design. The primary problem was to find a method for making an integral drawer-pull design that complemented an existing group of furniture that I had designed a few years ago. This group was successful both in design and in sales. I needed a solution that combined the same kind of good looks with economy in production. Case goods, that is, cabinets and chests of drawers, are basically boxes distinguished primarily by surface and edge treatments. Case goods always seem to look best when the design seems to be a natural outgrowth of the materials used. I try to avoid “applied” design elements. I’d already designed a line or series of case goods that embodied these elements, but it seemed to lack a certain spark which both the manufacturer and I felt was needed. I had gone over and over this problem trying new tacks, but nothing seemed to come of it. I really didn’t expect to be able to do anything new since my feeling was that all possibilities were exhausted. What actually happened was a complete surprise. I found that as soon as I began to visualize the problem, one possibility immediately occurred. A few problems with that concept also occurred, but these seemed to solve themselves rather quickly. This was quickly followed by another idea based on this first thought but with a variation that gave it another look. Visualizing the required cross section was instantaneous. I thought that my last idea was the most remarkable one because of the way in which it developed. This idea was the result of a fantasy that occurred while listening to music composed by Wagner. I knew that there was a classic quality in some of the shapes that I saw during this period, so I put down the line that seemed to embody this characteristic. (This evolved in a series of rapid sketches to a completed drawer-pull.) I’ve made this handle, and it has exactly the quality that I’ve been looking for. All this time I kept being very amused at the ease with which all of this was done. It was so easy to do that I felt no necessary impetus to do more since I felt I could do a lot more of them at a later date. However, it was the nonspecific fantasy that triggered the idea that led to this result. I went on to tackle a headboard problem for another manufacturer, which was also quickly solved. This solution had to be rejected the next day because of some cost factors that I was not aware of during the design time, but I had no difficulty coming up with another solution that had never occurred to me before. I then decided to do something that always takes a lot of time. Doing a good dining chair that is both elegant and inexpensive is very difficult. Chairs are always seen as sculpture and seldom in pure profile. Chairs also require a discipline in shape and structure unnecessary in other furniture: discipline in shape because of the human anatomy and in structure because of the hard usage it gets. I had not been able to do an original design for some time. Very rapidly I ascertained what the basic structure should be; the basic details quickly followed. I did no refining, because this kind of thing is best done in three dimensions, although I could visualize the finished product. I decided that I had the chair and then went on to think of a type that I’d never done before. This one too seemed to present no difficulty. Even when I look at this today it all seems so obvious. The drawer-pull was reduced to a model in one week’s time and has been accepted by the manufacturer-client. One of the chair designs was modeled satisfactorily on the second try, with no radical changes from the original concept. Previously, chair designs had required on the order of two months and ten trial modelings to complete. Theoretical Engineer The problem I took in was a problem in combinatorial analysis, which has plagued a number of people, including myself. The problem is to prove, or disprove by counter example, the following conjecture: We consider logical circuits that are constructed entirely of NOR gates. (A NOR gate is an element that produces an output if and only if none of the input has a signal on it.) Such circuits can be designed to go through cycles. That is, we start the circuit operating with some set of inputs to the various gates. As time advances, some gates that were off switch on and vice versa. Since the number of possible states of the circuit is finite, either the circuit must eventually reach a stable state, when no further action occurs, or it must reach a state previously reached and then proceed through the same sequence of states as it did before. This last sequence is called a cycle. We call a cycle “totally sequential” if every time the circuit switches state, it does so by the change in the output of just one gate. (The importance of this is that it leaves no ambiguity as to what the circuit does. If two gates must switch in going from one state to the next, it may make a difference which gate switches first.) The hypothesis is that, in a NOR gate circuit, the longest totally sequential cycle that can occur involves 2n states, where n is the number of NOR gates in the circuit. At the close of the session, I thought I had a proof of this theorem. Working on it that night, I saw some additional complications but still thought that I could prove it. The next day, I found some additional possibilities. The theorem, so far, therefore remains unproven. The approach that I discovered in the session remains a very valuable one and one that is new both to me and to others in the lab who have worked on the problem. For example, it immediately knocked out another conjecture that had been made regarding such circuits, namely that is impossible to get a sequential tail on a sequential cycle of NOR gates. Using this approach, it became obvious how to set up a counterexample to this conjecture. I still have hope that the approach will lead, eventually, to a proof of the original conjecture—or to a counterexample. Also, it may lead to a method of synthesis of such circuits to generate specified cycles. Hence, the results seem to be quite valuable, even though the original purpose was not achieved. My previous attacks on this problem had been mostly by matrix algebraic methods. When, in the session, I started studying the problem, I still tried to use these methods. I could not really see how to use the powers of the psychedelic state to advantage here. I could visualize a matrix and make a given row look all bright and shiny, and so stand out. And I could see, and aesthetically appreciate, patterns in the distribution of entries in the matrix. But it seemed fundamentally futile to try and do the detailed manipulations required to pull any other information out of the matrix. Somewhere along in here, I began to see an image of the circuit. The gates themselves were little silver cones linked together by lines. I watched this circuit flipping through its paces. First, they were all strung out in a line, with each one triggering the next one. If the line closes and no other change occurs, then you automatically get a 2n cycle. So you must block this cycle. But having blocked it, then you must provide an auxiliary circuit to keep the operation going. The problem is, how can you do this without losing the property of being totally sequential? At this point, I came back to the external world and tried to handle the thing in the purely analytic or logical mode. At that point, I thought I could show that you were driven inevitably into non-sequential operation eventually. The difficulty is to see all the possibilities that there are and to trace down each of them. In the session and afterward, I still had not found all the alternate possibilities. Hence, the proof foundered. But the central thought of picking out a main sequence that would run by itself as a 2n cycle if the blocks were removed and of subsidiary sequences to bypass the blocks is, I think, a valuable one. After this engineer returned to his working group and shared his experience with them, several others in the group requested to become and were accepted as experimental subjects, working on the same general problem. Manager, Product Planning I have been assigned the task of defining and initiating a new family of recording products. They use a similar modulation scheme, but cover quite a range of applications, performances, and costs. I had just completed an extensive market research trip and had developed a table or matrix of interrelationships in which I had attempted to display the type of system, level of performance, and some estimate of practicality and schedule. It was quite a task since so many variables are involved and was further complicated by a considerable workload and unsympathetic attitudes in the area of Engineering where it would have to be executed. After some struggle, I discovered a kind of relaxation, letting the problem talk to me. I detached from having to perform and let a different mode of viewing the data take over. I was quite able to cast out complexifying notions and get to the heart of the matter. A new matrix presented itself, one that was immensely simplified and one that would be much simpler to communicate. It became more apparent as I worked around this array that it would probably capture most of the market for which it was intended and would present the simplest sales task. It became apparent that part of the previous trouble had been caused by unnecessary perfectionism and a kind of greed. I was next able to make a trial run in my inner “stage” as to how to get to act. The relationships between key individuals literally jumped out at me. Their hang-ups and the effect of them on acceptance and performance of the development task became quite clear. I tried different approaches in my mind and then realized that the solution had been easily overlooked. I had to change, and then they would be more likely to respond. It became unnecessary to plot, only to develop the right attitude. This attitude has to do with the confidence that comes from study and data and the acceptance (of others) that comes from understanding, sympathy, and tolerance. The results of this have not been spectacular, but formidable. People are moving. The most antagonistic have become much more open and friendly. The amount of energy required of me has noticeably decreased. My boss has remarked more than once of a notable change in my mode of functioning. Measurable progress on the product array has been there, but has been marred a little by reorganization. In summary, the experiment produced not so much a giant brainstorm or breakthrough in the usual connotation of creativity, but a very practical result. Engineer Irwin Wunderman was an engineer associated with a major California electronics laboratory. The fluid energies of his experience were channeled into a highly abstract model-building process. His observations about his own mind, recalled some weeks later, are unusual in the way he recalled them and the way he reported them. Reactions during initial three-hour period: 1. Gradual awareness of reduced inputs from tactual senses. Numbness in extremities, which could be overcome by deciding to move and executing same. 2. Feeling of trying to minimize extraneous inputs concerned with contemporary surroundings. Noted that I allowed my body to gradually relax to its “lowest energy” position. Suggest this occurs to other individuals. 3. Was keenly desirous to remember all sensations and report them to the Foundation. 4. Many relatively simple observations, which I analyzed and subsequently understood, appeared as more significant revelations at the time than they really were. For example, when the hymnlike music came on, I realized the religious significance of the pictures on the walls. It appeared that this was a basic understanding I had not comprehended before, yet it seems quite obvious looking back. 5. The central theme of my thoughts was: a. Worldly inputs were gradually decreasing. b. My nose, ears, and eyes still retained moderate to high sensibilities, but the inputs were not “automatically” communicated to me unless I thought about them. c. My mental capabilities were relatively unaffected, but due to reduced normal inputs, my mind seemed to wander into various thoughts. d. I realized that in the limit all contemporary stimuli would be cut off (or desensitized) so that I could devote my entire thought processes to things remote from current reality. I tried to minimize disturbing inputs and maximize the conditions of the new circumstances, thereby permitting my thoughts to drift. e. I imagined that all local inputs were cut off; only my mind, the music, and the universe were present. f. I tried to mentally move my mind around the universe and explore what could be seen with the ability of this new tool. g. The universe was totally black and, to distinguish it in my mind, was a tiny white speck about which everything was radially symmetrical. h. I placed the music within this universe, and it was either pervading everywhere or emanating from another speck, which was also radially symmetrical. i. I was aware that all my thoughts were not dreams in that I had control, and applied logic; it was like thinking to myself under the influence of a trancelike drug. j. My conclusions, after attempting to let my mind drift around the universe, were that without the perceptual senses, I would not be able to perceive and everything would be blackness. k. I concluded that an introspective view of my mind would be more appropriate and revealing under the circumstances. l. I questioned the method of locomotion used to allow my mind to propel in the preceding thought (j). I could not envision any propulsion mechanism and noted that I simply imagined it to drift through space. m. In looking at my mind, I was aware that the outside antagonistic world, which normally provides the interplay for my thoughts, was no longer present. I was aware that the effect of the drug was to provide a great “self-consistency” about my thoughts and that to be objective under its influence, I had better give self-scrutiny to that which I might consider valid. [Editor’s note: Points 6 and 7 have been intentionally omitted by the author.] 8. In assessing how the music sounded and how my other inputs were affected, it seemed as though the best simple description was “having passed through a mellowness filter.” 9. I was aware that I had not seen any vivid colors nor had any hallucinations and had tried hard to imagine things in color. (My involuntary thoughts were in black or white.) I could not make apparent anything but normal color perception. [Editor’s note: Points 10 through 19 have been intentionally omitted by the author.] 20. Considered a problem in which I visualized the result I wanted and subsequently brought the variables into play that could bring that result about. I had great visual (mental) perceptibility; I could imagine what was wanted, needed, or not possible with almost no effort. In what seemed like ten minutes, I had completed the problem, having what I considered (and still consider) a classic solution. However, I gerrymandered the boundaries of the problem somewhat to make this solution possible. I decided to be more pragmatic about the problem and insist that the real constraint of practicality be imposed. I found that I was much less willing to consider that. I had solved one with optimum efficiency, was unwilling to compromise—Q.E.D. I was amazed at my idealism, my visual perception, and the rapidity with which I could operate. 21. Scrutinized the modus operandi with which I attacked the problem. Realized that my mind was working like a computer, and although I could not visualize the “local-level” operation, all known constraints about the problem were simultaneously imposed as I hunted for possible solutions. 22. I was impressed with the intensity of concentration, the forcefulness and exuberance with which I could proceed toward the problem. 23. I then left the room with one of the guides and discussed the results to that point. He suggested I return to the original problem and see what could be done. 24. I went back and considered the process of photoconductivity. I found I was unable to visualize what happened when light was absorbed in a photoconductor. I kept asking myself, “What is light?” and subsequently, “What is a photon?” The latter question I repeated to myself several hundred times till it was being said automatically in synchronism with each breath. I probably never in my life pressured myself as intently with a question as I did with this one. I began visualizing all the properties known to me that a photon possesses and attempted to make a model for a photon. The process took a long time and was exasperating, but I gradually built up a model of a photon, which satisfied the constraints I knew. The photon comprised an electron and a positron (positive electron) cloud moving together in an intermeshed synchronized helical orbit. The positron had a negative mass equal in magnitude to an electron. This model was reduced for visualization purposes to a black-and-white ball propagating in a screwlike fashion through space. I kept putting the model through all sorts of known tests: instantaneous E-field requirements, diffraction gratings, dielectric refractors, generating photons in incandescing bodies, absorbing them in solids and in a reverse biased photodiode, for instance. Each test modified it or left it unaltered, until I had put it through all the tests I could think of. I thought of the ridiculousness of the situation. The model was very crude; I had not set out to find a model for a photon; it had been exceedingly difficult to derive and ended up superficially simple and not very much in tune with what I had previously considered a photon to be. I felt almost ashamed to reveal it and asked myself what good it was even if it satisfied the various tests. My reasoning and my answer only served to drive me harder. If this model satisfied all constraints known to me about a photon, it was as real as anything else I knew. Sure, I realized black-and-white balls rotating through space were a simplified picture, but if they satisfied all the constraints, that was the model to use. This was no different than anything else in reality. The model was right for the application, regardless of what the rest of the world or I thought of it personally. This latter rationalization was particularly important to me at the time. Even now, I consider it a significant argument against deterring inhibitions for conceptualizing something that is abstract but self-consistent. After many hours of developing the model (and many attempts at applying it to a photoconductor only to be rejected by my mind), I began to consider it satisfactory. Now I had to go through the same process for a semiconductor. I developed a valence-and-conduction-band picture with positrons and electrons as the entities of importance (analogous to conventional holes and electrons). I added impurity states for acceptors and donors in the same framework and was busy putting my model for the semiconductors through various tests when I was engaged in the external discussion. I considered my method of working at various stages. 25. In treating the problem to this point, one factor was obvious: I had not made one single assumption that I did not force myself to prove if there was any question of doubt. Normally, I would overlook many more trivial points for the sake of expediency, but under the drug, time seemed unimportant. I faced every possibly questionable issue square in the face. Indeed, I was continually searching for errors, fallacies, and so on. 26. A second noteworthy observation: I would not have believed what transpired had it not really occurred to me. Good, bad, or indifferent, the results were beyond my expectations. 27. After the group discussion, we were driven home. I spent almost an hour relating the events of the day to the family. I then lay down in bed and continued working on the problem. 28. The development of the semiconductor model was completed with much effort, and I finally put the photon model to the test by absorbing it in a photoconductor. 29. I worked until four in the morning and was highly motivated to continue, but I was limited by a very severe headache that developed. I had a hard time not thinking about it, however, in that I kept drifting back to where I left off. 30. Several conclusions about the photoconductor model were resolved that evening. a. Basically the model is correct, but one cannot ascertain all the desired characteristics of the photoconductor without bringing in additional phenomena to the reaction kinetics I considered. b. An exciton population (of electrons and holes) comprises the majority of the photoexcited carriers. These carriers do not participate directly in the conductivity mechanism but dominate the recombination processes. Accordingly, this population is difficult to measure, although it is very important in determining observed results. I feel that this point is perhaps the only real contribution made under the drug toward the model’s development, and the possibility of this being so was recognized before. However, the assurance of this point is now far more apparent. 31. There are other conclusions about the effect of the drug that are noteworthy: a. I felt that nothing was done under the influence of the drug that could not have been done without it, but in several orders of magnitude more time. (There is some reservation about this statement with regard to the development of the model for the photon. I may never have been motivated to go through all the effort for something of such abstract value.) b. I have not found any flaws to date in the concepts derived under the influence of the drug…. Perhaps an important observation is that the drug appears to maintain motivation to pursue what is aesthetically intriguing to a point far beyond what I would normally do…. At all times, I had complete control of my faculties. I saw no unrealities atypical of those I can and do imagine at various times. c. I feel that there has been a general improvement, maintained to date, in my: • Ability to concentrate on specific problems. • Motivation toward my short- and long-range goals in life (drive). • Visual perceptibility of problems. • Tolerance toward what I consider incompetence and viewpoints significantly different from mine. • Ability to work without getting tired. For example, I have sat down and written this in just a few consecutive hours. • A general reduction of inhibitions where society has established codes contrary to my basic personal philosophy. For example, I would normally feel embarrassed about discussing with my peers such a model of a photon, derived under such extraordinary circumstances and so superficial in appearance. The technical aspects of Wunderman’s experience led to the development of a rigorous theoretical model that he described in a paper titled “A Kinetic Theory of Photoconductivity Decay Processes.” 12 GROUP PROBLEM-SOLVING SESSIONS WILLIS HARMAN, Ph.D. This unpublished report describes two experimental sessions our group ran in the weeks before the more successful sessions reported on in chapter 9chapter 9. Willis Harman and I were members of the first group included here; therefore, I have added personal observations to this report of his, where appropriate, in italics. As you will see, these sessions were only moderately successful and highlighted various problems we experienced in working this way. This is the nitty-gritty of science that usually is not published. It is what I call “search.” It is what happens when you are not sure what you are doing or what you are hoping to find. “Research,” which is what usually gets published, is about what comes later, after you know a lot more about your subject. In this case, however, because there is so little published about this kind of group work and because lots of people still do it informally, it seems useful and instructive to present this first round of our studies as well. This is a summary report of two group problem-Solving sessions held to test the degree of enhancement in problem solving that might result from low-dose, facilitated group sessions. The first group was fairly diversified in background, consisting of four people with professional experience in electrical engineering, engineering design, engineering management, and psychology. All four had at least two previous LSD sessions. The dose was 50 micrograms of LSD, preceded by energizers. (The primary problem area was the development of new children’s toys.) The second group consisted of four research engineers, three with electrical backgrounds and one with a mechanical background. None had any previous experience with psychedelics. The dose was 100 milligrams of mescaline, preceded by energizers. The primary problem area was an improved phonograph pickup cartridge. These two experiences suggest a number of tentative conclusions. On both occasions, some group members felt there was enhancement of their individual creative abilities some of the time. In both sessions, it was generally felt that the group communication and ability to work together were improved, during a portion of the session. In both cases, there was one member of the group who felt no noticeable enhancement of his abilities. While creative ability seemed to be somewhat released, there appeared to be impairment of some more routine abilities, such as solving simple arithmetic calculations, which appeared in connection with the assigned problems. In both cases, there was carryover into following days—individual members receiving new ideas relating to the problems or following up on particularly interesting ideas that had come up during the session. In a more realistic situation, this would probably have resulted in the refining and probably the creation of prototypes of the new concepts. In both of these sessions, the group was relatively unproductive when it shifted to a second problem area, which had also been chosen beforehand. This was apparently in part due to lower motivation (although the second problems had seemed interesting when chosen) and in part due to the group members being tired. Possibly another contributing factor was that in both cases, the second problem was less specific and concrete, more abstract, and, in general, less suited to this kind of group approach. The spirit of fantasy, freedom, freewheeling, and spontaneous play seemed to liberate the creative energy of both groups. An additional person acting as observer (who did not take a drug) was able to help the group members stay centered on the problem (while allowing profitable digressions), to pick up suggestions that the group passed over and might not otherwise have returned to, and to aid in moving on when a particular attack appeared to be unproductive. Large sketchpads, provided in the second session, were found to be very helpful in the communication of visualized devices and processes. One incidental observation from the second session, wherein three of the four participants had been born and educated in foreign countries, was that there was some tendency to revert to thinking in the person’s original language rather than in the acquired language (English). One complicating factor turned out to be the increased sensitivity to the feelings of other members of the group. In the first session, considerable attention was directed toward one group member who experienced difficulty in moving with the group and consequently felt rather “out of it.” In the second session, one member deliberately held back when he sensed that his somewhat disproportionately enthusiastic contribution resulted in a barrier between the others and him. The overall impression was that feelings assumed a greater than usual importance and were likely to constitute an unplanned agenda. Session Number One The first three hours of the first session were spent in individually listening to music, light conversation, and a group introspective examination of one member’s anxiety and blocking of mind-expansion. (In retrospect, the group generally agreed that putting a member “on the spot” when he is unable to participate is poor practice. The individual needs the freedom to be silent, blocked, anxious, and so on without feeling judged by the rest of the group.) Following this preparation period, the group was reminded of the agreed-upon problem: the creation of new and commercially profitable toys, games, and playground equipment. Proposals emerged that the toys should be educational in the sense of encouraging discovery, promoting wonder, and evoking a sense of accomplishment. Member D suggested that mothers would appreciate a toy that would require no supervision of the child playing it, and thus the mother would be uninterrupted in her household tasks. Member B noted that TV does this, but with questionable value to the child and proposed a game-you-play-with the-TV, perhaps with the possibility of accidental or spontaneous discovery. Member D was intrigued with the commercial possibilities of a game that would have to be purchased (at the local supermarket perhaps) in order to watch and participate in a TV program. Member A suggested the possibility of “awareness kits” to go with special programs about botany and other areas of science. This caught on, and various suggestions were made regarding the potential use of easily available materials such as flowers and vegetables, the contents of a “botany kit” (e.g., microscope, microtome, specimens), the desirability of showing life processes in action, and so on. Member D suggested the example of a program on a rose, perhaps looking at it from the standpoints of a botanist, a biologist, a poet, and so on, with the suggested aim of heightening perceptual awareness. Member B wondered what you could do with a quick-growing fungus or another organism for the child to experiment with, possibly accompanied by stop-action films of a rose’s growth cycle, for instance. The group decided, at this point, that this idea had been carried far enough for the moment; a botanist might be brought in later to carry it on further. Member B suggested that the group consider a toy to develop a sense of wonder regarding one’s own body, and something requiring muscular coordination and promoting a sense of balance appealed to the group. Some way of simulating surfing in the backyard was suggested, but this sounded pretty expensive. The attractive features of a trampoline were noted; it requires balance and muscular coordination, is noncoercive, and allows for a variety of possibilities, including the chance of a “hilarious accident.” A board suspended over a soft surface was suggested. Member A recalled watching lumberjacks’ logrolling contests as a child and suggested a backyard version of this. One version which evolved was a cylindrical log mounted at the ends using bearings supported by coil springs, allowing the log to rotate freely but also to buck and sway. The log would need to be surrounded by some sort of soft cushion to break the child’s fall; one suggested variant was to use air-filled mattresses with “poopers” between sections so that the fall would result in a rude noise. Another version, for swimming pools, was a hollow log with a roughened surface, equipped with internal baffles, and partially filled with fluid to make it a little less “quick” and easier for the child to stay on top of. The group decided to shift to a rainy-day toy, which would occupy a small child for a long period of time. Member A recalled a simple toy that a friend had made for his small child, consisting of four lights and four switches. Various suggestions from group members caused this to evolve into the idea of a set of lights and a set of switches, with a plug-in board in the back for wiring up the lights and switches in different ways. One game would consist of randomly selecting a circuit arrangement and then experimentally finding switch settings, which would result in all the lights being lit. This toy had the possibility of simple versions for very young children and more elaborate and challenging ones for adults. One member suggested that electric railroads seem to be a type of toy with unusual fascination, particularly for boys. There was some discussion of what characteristics seemed to account for this, and some attempt to think of other toys that possessed these same characteristics. Since this didn’t seem to be immediately productive, one member proposed consideration of some toy to promote aesthetic sensibility, but one that would be somewhat more structured than simply a supply of art materials or modeling clay, for instance. Member B suggested working on the visual awareness of space, and this ultimately resulted in the suggestion of a “build-your-own-cave” kit. The question was raised as to whether the building materials of chairs, tables, and blankets could be improved upon. It was suggested that children prefer blankets to hard, cold panels of fiberboard or cardboard. This led to a discussion of the sense of touch, and toys that would develop tactile awareness. Member B proposed a game that would be played with tactual inputs only: different kinds of textures, or whimsical blindfolds to eliminate visual impressions, or inexpensive vacuum-formed cards with tactual coding. The group then decided to switch to the second problem area, which was the question, what social problems are likely to be most demanding of solutions during the next decade? It was proposed that the group imagine itself appointed by the executive branch to study national goals. As a starting point, the question “What is society for?” was put forth for consideration. Survival, psychological security, and various other answers were discussed. Member C and others stressed problems of continuing expansion of ourselves through advancing technology and the social effects of this—remoteness from natural and life processes, submergence of feeling responses by the need to be rational, work losing meaning, and the dehumanizing effect of mass production methods, among others. A central problem seemed to be spiritual poverty, lack of meaning, and loss of contact with basic life processes. At this point, various remarks were made to the effect that there was little group thinking going on; more expressions of various individual points of view were being put forth instead. It was apparent that the group wasn’t “swinging” as they had been with the toy problem, and they felt a need for working with something a little more specific. Member C proposed city planning as a more specific aspect of the general problem. The group agreed to imagine having the assignment of planning for the Bay area, although two members expressed difficulty in feeling motivated about solving the city-planning problem. Various aspects were discussed, including conservation of hills and forestlands, bringing nature into the communities, European-type communities with social centers, transportation, and the feasibility of central planning. Member D withdrew from the group, frustrated by the group’s inability to function smoothly together on this problem. He returned shortly afterward, but meanwhile the group had generally agreed they had “run down.” The active time on the assigned problem had been in the neighborhood of three hours, and informal discussion continued for several hours afterward. Left out of this report was time spent on another toy that arose from the discussion about the need to create something to increase physical skill and awareness. We came up with the idea of a tiny paper float that could be dropped into a toilet so that a small boy might aim for it with his stream of urine. While at the time, we were delighted with the idea of a line of one-use-only “pee-pee toys,” they never made it into the original report. We also saw in the overall group effort that unless people had a real stake in the outcome, it was easy to be clever and brainstorm but harder to bore down to the next level of solution, where the practical considerations need to be as involving as the idea-making. Session Number Two Warning: This session was much more technical and may be hard to follow. Even worse, the first problem—ways to improve on the phonograph cartridges and needles—has now been solved. For those of you unfamiliar with that technology, the problem with a needle and a phonograph record is that each time the record is played, the needle and the grooves in the record are both worn down. If you follow the suggested solutions, however, you can see that the later invention of the CD, which is read by a laser beam, was foreshadowed in various ways in this session. The second problem, designing an analog storage device, is no easier for the nontechnical to follow. This session, as did the prior one, underscored the kinds of intention and preparation necessary for success. In addition, as you will see, as the problems became more general, interest flagged. The first hour after administration of the psychedelic agent was spent in informal conversation, and the next hour and three-quarters in listening to music without conversation. Toward the end of this period, some distortion entered the sound system, which was generally disturbing. The first assigned problem was the design of an improved phonograph pickup cartridge that produced less distortion and reduced record wear. Member H reported that during the last portion of the music (after the distortion started), he had vividly imagined himself to be the needle being jounced back and forth by the undulations of the groove face, and he found this most distressing. He discovered that he felt much better floating along above the groove and sensing the surface variations in some way—somewhat like an airplane mapping the terrain with an echo sounder. Member G suggested using a concentrated light or ultrasonic beam for sensing. This was developed at some length in the ensuing discussion. There appeared to be two parts to the problem: getting the “space platform” to track the groove and picking up the information from the two stereo channels impressed on the sides of the groove. Possibly the difference between the two information signals could be smoothed and used for tracking. Various ways were proposed for obtaining the information signal from the reflected beam, including sensing the amplitude, phase shift, Doppler shift, phase or amplitude modulation of the carrier, or the amplitude or delay of pulses. It was realized that several of these might work, but comparison of them required analysis of a sort best carried on outside this group session. Member E raised the question of how important it really was to eliminate the needle completely. Record wear is a problem, but it can be reduced by touching the grooves more lightly. Member G proposed having the pickup arm float on an air cushion (using a stream of air directed downward from the cartridge). This would allow some weight to be put on the record, to ensure good mechanical contact, without actually touching it. A very lightweight needle could follow the variations with minimal mechanical force on the groove sides. Various methods, such as using magnetic coils or light beams, were considered for obtaining the information from the needle while still keeping the mass of the moving part extremely low. One proposal was to use a hollow needle, held off the groove by a small stream of air forced down its center, so that even the needle would not need to actually touch the groove sides as it followed the surface variations. An alternative proposal was injected at that point, to go back to a straight mechanical system but provide two lightweight needles in a cartridge suspended just above the record surface. The first needle, riding ahead of the pickup needle like a guide truck on a locomotive, would provide, through pickup coils, a signal for a servo system to move the cartridge holder. The second needle, following behind in the groove, would pick up the two information signals. (The possibility of combining these functions in one needle was noted.) Member H remarked that capacitive pickup might be considered and recalled again how uncomfortable he had felt as a phonograph needle. “When would you feel comfortable in the groove?” asked Member F. Member E now reported imagining himself hanging from the “space platform,” one foot on each side of the groove, as if on a skateboard, following the groove surface. “It’s sensational! Like riding two horses in a circus,” he said. “The groove looks pretty big. The problem is how to do it and have it be fun.” Member H noted that the main thing he didn’t like, as a needle, was the unexpectedness with which bumps and undulations in the groove surface would hit him. Member F said that if you were riding above the groove, you could see ahead and anticipate changes. This approach was dropped without further exploration. There were a few further suggestions along the lines of employing separate pickups for the two channels in place of sensing the two quadrature components of motion in one needle. But discussion seemed to be at a lull, and the observer proposed shifting to the second problem. (Time spent on the first problem was nearly two hours.) The second problem was to design an element for the storage of analog (i.e., continuous, as contrasted with digital) information. Examples were a capacitor and electrolytic plating for storing information proportional to electric charge. Low driving power, small size, of reasonable expense, a nondestructive readout, and erasability were given as desirable characteristics; linearity also was included, although that was less important. Member F asked how analog information is stored in nature. Member G noted that genetic information is in digital form. Member H suggested something along the lines of “freezing” ions, like the orientation of polarizable ions in an electret. Various possibilities along the lines of the operation of a vidicon TV transmitting tube were considered. Member G described a cell with electrodes at each end, filled with a transparent material in which opaque ionized particles had limited freedom to move. A voltage applied to the electrodes would cause the particles to move toward one end, affecting the light transmission as sensed by a photocell. Various other proposals were made of other physical phenomena to look into, including rotation of a magnetic field or magnetic particles in a field; shifting of domain walls in a magnetic material; and a hole whose diameter depended upon the amplitude of the signal, which was sensed by the amount of light shining through. The observer was unable to stay out of it at this point and suggested frequency as a convenient analog quantity; possibly a conditionally stable nonlinear circuit could be arranged that would start and continue oscillations at the frequency of a signal pulse input. Shortly after this, the session was declared ended. (The total time spent on the two problems was about three and one-half hours.) The group members, none of whom had previous experience with psychedelics, varied in their opinions regarding the amount of enhancement they felt. Member E felt that his level of creativity never rose above his usual norm. During the early part of the session, he felt that “if anything, I was operating at a level lower than par …later on, I felt that I was functioning up to my usual standard.” At the other extreme was Member G, who reported that he felt he was able to work unusually well with the group. “Ideas came up with a speed that was breathtaking…. I was very pleased that I could think much faster than H. Normally this is not the case.” Future Experiments Contemplated The present feeling is that this approach to creative group problem solving has considerable promise but some unanticipated problems. Unresolved is the question of to what extent (in either a positive or a negative sense) a preceding large-dose psychedelic experience is likely to affect performance in the small-dose problem-solving sessions. (All four of the participants in Session Two plan to have large-dose experiences within the next few months, after which another small-dose, problem-solving session is planned for comparison.) Further development is required of the art of optimizing effective use of the few hours of peak creativity. When this report was written, given the results, none of us could imagine that the government would stop this line of research. The anticipated later session with the same four people in Session Two did not happen. One reason was because we decided that this kind of session had proved that intellectual work at a high level was possible, but that by focusing on individuals with a strong desire to solve their own technical problems, we could expect (and we found this to be true) more impressive and reportable results. A final historical note: The two groups reported here were not the first groups we ran. The first group to test if a psychedelic could be used to focus on conventional scientific problems was our own team. The problem we gave ourselves was to design an experimental protocol to test the hypothesis. In other words, four of us developed the study reported on in these chapters after having taken a psychedelic. One result was that because we were so intent to see if it could work, the variable of how much one cared about a problem, which later became a central criterion of success, never arose. I had one insight that evening that forever colored my view of the effects of these substances on consciousness, especially for creativity. I observed that the so-called perceptual constancies were not overriding my actual visual perceptions. A visual constancy is the capacity of the brain to retain an image as unchanging despite the fact that the actual representation is changing. For example, if a man opens a door and enters a long room with you sitting at the other end, what you see visually is a tiny, tiny person who grows rapidly in size as he approaches you. However, what your mind turns that into is that the person seems to be the same size as he approaches. This reorganization of perception is ongoing. If you sit quietly and look at a post, it stays steady, even though someone observing your eyes would see constant small shifting motions, what we call “ sparkle” when we see it in another’s eyes. As I observed my own constancies relaxing during that evening, I realized that if such a fundamental filtering and reordering process, which is basic to human survival, could be set aside, then it seems reasonable to assume that the filters we keep around our thoughts (e.g., beliefs, attitudes, prejudices, inhibitions, compulsions, language, cultural constrictions) could also be set aside and that new and original configurations could not only form, but would be less likely to be rejected. It may be that many of the methods used to stimulate or increase creativity actually are ways to reduce “non-creativity” instead and that normal awareness is far more fluid and flexible and innovative that it is given credit for. 13 THE LOOK MAGAZINE EXPERIMENT Designing the California Issue GEORGE LEONARD This chapter is excerpted from George Leonard’s 1988 book, Walking on the Edge of the World.1 In 1966 George was a senior editor at Look magazine and the events he describes represent the most successful of the group problem-solving experiments. In many ways, it is a model for what we thought might be possible: people letting go of their attachment to their own ideas and letting a natural evolution of ideas occur. The question I’m most often asked about this way of using psychedelics is whether the creative upsurge lasts. The latter part of this chapter includes descriptions of the high-energy aftereffects that Leonard experienced in the weeks following the session. The LSD genie was out of the bottle, and the authorities were becoming increasingly alarmed. That young people were dropping acid and then going to a dance hall or an amusement park pretty well destroyed the concept, which I had shared, of LSD as strictly a sacramental drug. One morning Jim Fadiman, a psychological researcher for the International Foundation for Advanced Study, phoned and asked if I had a specific creative problem that I was working on; if so, he would like Paul Fusco [Look photographer] and me to participate in an experiment on creative problem solving with psychedelics. Well …there were the picture portfolios that would go along with the opening and closing essays for the California issue. “That should do it,” he said…. However, I was not eager to take that trip. “You can ask Mikea if you wish,” Fadiman said, perhaps sensing my reluctance. “He’s a pretty good creative problem solver.” On the night before the experiment, we met at the foundation’s suite of offices and conference rooms not far from Stanford University, [where we were briefed] on the research project and our part in it. We spent the night in a nearby motel and reported for the session at 7:30 in the morning. After another briefing, [we were offered] miniature silver cups on a small silver tray. The cups held small white pills. We trippers toasted each other with the cups and threw the pills down. We were then led into a room with couches and cushions. We were fitted with stereo headsets and then lay on a carpeted floor that was itself like a cushion. For the next four hours, we listened to a program of music taped for this session: flute sonatas by Bach, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, a series of Indian ragas. When the Indian music came on, I experienced the dark sinuosity of the sitar as the interconnectedness of everything in the universe and the constant drone of the tamboura as the Essential Ground from which the endless weaving rose. My own independent existence became a mere spark among an infinitude of similar sparks, or not even that, but simply a sort of generalized awareness entirely independent of time and place. Then—suddenly, unexpectedly—a brilliant major chord, a series of ascending major triads, the full-throated sound of a church organ: a Handel organ concerto! And there I was in a great Gothic cathedral with golden sunlight streaming in through golden stained-glass windows. All the darkness, all the sinuosity was gone in the wink of an eye, and there was only this clarity, this golden light…. When the music ended, we took what seemed a long time to stretch, sit up, and get ready to work. Mike had already made a few notes. Paul and I got our notepads and layout sheets, and we were ready to begin. In the few minutes before we started talking, I had already visualized the whole layout: three two-page spreads of color pictures, with only one or two very large pictures on each spread. The first spread expressed the theme “All men are brothers” and consisted of one large picture, almost monochromatic, of black and white people. The second spread had the future as a theme. On the left side was a huge fire consuming swastikas, guns, bombs, and missiles, while on the right, in dark plum tones, was a picture of all races living in harmony. The theme of the final spread was “The joy of now.” On the left was a beautiful young woman, nude, in a bed of greenery and golden flowers. On the right was a crucifix superimposed on an indistinct face that represented death, with golden light streaming from behind it. Joy and death seemed somehow to go together, in either a contrasting or a complementary relationship. My colleagues greeted this vision with something less than enthusiasm. It gradually dawned on me that it was pretty bad, which only made me defend it more vigorously. Paul said that the pictures had to stay in human terms, not symbolic ones, and especially not those clichés I had suggested. I yielded; my premature solution was not just bad, it was terrible. Mike came up with home as a metaphor. He pointed out that America has never really found a home. The only home is in God, but by not realizing that, Americans are forever trapped in a polarity between comfort and security on the one hand and adventure and expansiveness on the other. We can never find either until we realize that home is God. Good enough, but what pictures did that suggest? Paul saw the concept of home less in God than in family. At least you could take pictures of a family. Our conversation began moving in wider and wider circles: to the adventure and expansiveness of the space program; to the pill, which was making the birth of a child a moral choice; to the overwhelming power of technology, which was potentially making almost every choice a moral one; to the possibility of a police state in reaction to the explosive changes in mores and morals; to new ways of involving the reader—including feedback cards in the magazine, for example. The title of the issue was “California: A New Game with New Rules,” but strangely enough, we kept circling back to the most basic themes: home, family, God…. In mid-afternoon, just as our session was about to break up, Jim’s wife, Dorothy, came in. She was a lovely woman with particularly striking eyes. When she first looked at Jim, Paul saw something in her expression, a sort of ecstatic intimacy, which, as far as he was concerned, completely solved the problem of the picture portfolio. He spent the next day shooting pictures of Dorothy alone, and then with Jim. Two days later, Paul came to the office with a selection of slides. Everyone there, including the ad people, gathered in a darkened room to view them. There were close-ups of Dorothy looking at golden acacia blossoms, eyes wide with wonder, and Dorothy in a field of golden mustard flowers embracing Jim. The pictures were stunning. The blossoms burned like molten gold on the screen. The expression on Dorothy’s face entirely justified my reckless line “The joy of now.” I sent out for champagne, and we toasted Paul, the California issue, and the future. Our session on psychedelics and our six-hour creative problem-solving session hadn’t really been necessary for Paul to get those pictures of Dorothy Fadiman. Or had they? In any case, things had worked out perfectly. It seemed we were operating in a state of grace and nothing, absolutely nothing, could go wrong. [Several days later], on Monday morning, Mike and I walked into the Look offices [in New York City] to join up with Paul and T. George Harris [Leonard’s immediate superior] in putting the final touches on the issue. Actually, things were in great shape. If we were a bit on the far side of euphoria, we were also very well organized; all the stories were in the house and laid out ahead of schedule—a rare situation for any magazine. In effect, this gave the members of the editorial board two easy weeks, and everyone on the eleventh floor was in a holiday mood. As for our little group, it seemed that we were under a charm, that we could walk through fire, and that all of life was a wonderful game. Back in the San Francisco office, I had three weeks to write two essays as well as the captions for two photo portfolios. The photographs and layouts had already been shipped to the printer. The words, as usual, had to fit exactly into the space allotted to them. I was writing for Look magazine, for more than thirty million readers. What I was writing was true. The trends were there no doubt, but I was also writing about a personal dream. As I neared the end of the closing essay, I was flying high again, and ideas I’d thought about for years were pouring out…. As I typed out the closing paragraphs, I had a totally unexpected vision of a checkered flag waving in front of me, signaling a victorious finish. Up to this point, the ferment of ideas and activities centered on Esalen [the first and most important “growth center” in Big Sur] and other similar California institutions had achieved no significant degree of public knowledge. Millions of people would first learn of them through the June 28, 1966, issue of Look magazine. If that issue was reportage, it was also manifesto, and I might have guessed that it would occasion a certain amount of controversy. But I had no idea of the storm it would whip up on June 14, 1966, the day the issue went on the newsstands. As the summer of 1966 deepened, I realized with increasing certainty that June 14 had been a pivotal day in my life. In producing an issue of Look on a new game with new rules, I had uncovered some of the unwritten rules of the old game. And I had created a new game with new rules for myself. I didn’t know then that before the decade was over, I would attract disapproval from the national administration and that Look’s editor in chief would be offered a million dollars to fire me, but I did know that nothing would ever be quite the same. 14 CLOSING THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION The Day the Research Ended In 1966, there were about sixty projects around the country actively investigating LSD. Some were therapeutic studies: one at the University of California, Los Angeles, showed remarkable success in getting autistic children to communicate; others were working with animals from monkeys to rats to fish, even with insects. Spiders, it turned out, make radically different web designs when given different psychedelics. A year earlier, the psychiatrist Jolly West gave an elephant enough LSD, it is fair to say, to kill an elephant. It did, the dose being several hundred thousand times what any human being had taken or would ever take. Even that well-reported disaster did not stop research from continuing worldwide. Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Basel, Switzerland, the developer of LSD, had recently made available summaries of the first one thousand human studies. LSD was the most studied psychoactive drug in the world. This chapter is edited from “Opening the Doors of Perception,” in the book Time It Was: American Stories from the Sixties,1 edited by Karen Manners Smith and Tim Koster. The date is early in 1966. Four of us are seated around a table, called out from the session room for a moment to respond to the contents of a special delivery letter. Back in the room, four men are lying on couches and cushions, eyeshades blocking out the daylight, hearing a Beethoven string quartet on stereo headphones. Each man, a senior scientist, had taken 100 micrograms of LSD—a low dose—about two hours earlier. Two of these men are working on different projects for Stanford Research Institute, another works for Hewlett-Packard, the last is an architect. They are highly qualified, highly respected, and fiercely motivated to solve technical problems. Each one brought to this session problems that he had worked on for at least the past three months and had been unable to solve. None had any prior experience with psychedelics. In another two hours, we plan to lift their eyeshades, take off their headphones, turn off the music, and offer them finger food, which they will probably not touch. We will then help them focus on the problems they came in to solve. They are the fifth or sixth group we have run. The federal government has approved of this study as an experimental use of a “new drug,” a drug still under review and not available commercially. LSD was remarkable in two ways. One, it was effective in micrograms (one-millionth of a gram doses). This made it one of the most potent substances ever discovered. Two, it seemed to have the effect of radically changing perception, awareness, and cognition but not in any predictable way. These results seemed to be dependent not only on the drug effects, but equally so on the situation of the subjects—what they’d been told about what they were going to experience under the drug and, even more interesting to science, the mind-set of the researcher, whether or not he or she had communicated a point of view to the subjects in any given study. In short, here was a substance whose effects depended in part on the mental expectations of both subject and researcher. Often people in the studies had experiences that appeared to be deeply therapeutic, blissful, and life changing, religious in content or mystical, but they also might have experiences that were profoundly disturbing, confusing, or terrifying. The aftereffects of the experience looked more like learning than simply the passage of a chemical through the brain and body. LSD was the genie in the bottle, and there were bottles of it all over the country and at a growing number of outside laboratories and research institutions as well. When that special delivery letter came from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, none of us yet knew that many of the early conferences of LSD researchers had been sponsored by foundations that were covertly funded by the CIA or that the U.S. Army had been giving psychoactive substances to unsuspecting members of the military, prisoners, even some of their own staff. Nor did we know that every project in the country, except those run by the military or intelligence agencies, had received a similar letter on the same day. Sitting in Menlo Park, California, in the offices of the International Foundation for Advanced Study, we four plus a small support staff were running the only study designed to test the hypothesis that this material could improve the functioning of the rational and the analytical parts of the mind. We were trying to find out if, instead of diverting people into amazing inner landscapes of colors and forms or into adventures of mystical exploration or psychopathological terror, LSD might be used to enhance personal creativity in ways that could be measured. There had been a string of very successful studies in Canada showing that LSD administered in a safe and supportive setting led to a high rate of curbing long-term alcoholics’ drinking. Other studies conducted in Southern California by Dr. Oscar Janiger showed that artists’ work changed radically during an LSD session and often was changed thereafter. However, there was an argument in the art world, and in the science world, as to whether or not that art was “better.” Our team wanted to see if another aspect of the creative process—technical problem solving— could be helped by the use of these agents. The answer thus far in our study was a resounding “yes.” We were amazed, as were our participants, at how many novel and effective solutions came out of our sessions. Client companies and research institutions were satisfied with the results (if not fully informed of how they occurred). Other members of research groups, including one whose members had worked with us, were asking to be included in the study. It was a deeply satisfying time. The letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was brief. It advised us that upon receipt of the letter, our permission to use these materials, our research protocol, and our capacity to work with these materials—in any way, shape, or form—was terminated. I was by far the youngest member of the research team, a graduate student at Stanford in a psychology department that I’d not informed about this research. Two of the others were full professors of engineering at Stanford in two different departments, and the fourth was the founder and director of the foundation, a scientist in his own right who had retired early and set up a nonprofit institute to better understand the interplay between consciousness, deep personal and spiritual experiences, and these substances. Very soon, we would need to go back into that room where the four men lay, their minds literally expanding. I say, “I think we need to agree that we got this letter tomorrow.” And then we attended to our subjects—now the last group of people who would be allowed the privilege of working with these materials on problems of their choosing with legal government support and supervision for at least the next forty years. How did I come to be in that room at the International Foundation for Advanced Study? Only a few years before, I’d been a writer in Paris residing in a sixth-floor walk-up, living on as little as possible, sleeping in train stations and hostels when I traveled and staying with whoever would put me up and feed me. As was said of many of our lives then, it was a long strange trip. What sent me from Paris to Stanford and headlong into psychedelic research was not only a visit from my favorite college professor, Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass), and his friend Timothy Leary, but also a cordial note from my draft board asking about my whereabouts and future plans. I realized that there was an M-1 rifle waiting for me to cradle it across my elbows as I crawled through mud and dense vegetation in Vietnam while overhead shots were being fired in both directions, giving me the opportunity of dying by enemy or friendly fire. In my mind, being in a war made no sense, so I returned to the United States to the draft-deferment haven of graduate school. For the good of the military and for the nation, I was sure then and remain just as convinced today that keeping me out of the war was the better alternative. When you have a long history in junior high and high school of being picked last for team sports, you don’t assume that you will thrive in the infantry, let alone rise to the higher level of competence needed in actual combat. I saw my government fellowship to study psychology as the government saying that it was better to keep me out than to deal with any potential hazards to others and myself that it risked by inducting me. My reasons for plunging into psychedelic research, however, did begin with that visit from Alpert and the first night we spent together. Paris, 1961. I’m sitting at night in a café on the boulevard Saint-Michel, watching all the people who in turn are watching me. I’m twenty-one and have just taken psilocybin for the first time, and I’ve no idea what it is or does. I know that the man sitting next to me is Richard Alpert, who has given it to me as a gift. The colors are getting brighter, people’s eyes are flashing light when they look at me, and street noise is playing inside me like a multichannel broadcast. I say, as evenly as my quavering voice allows, “It’s a little too much for me.” Alpert grins at me across the tiny, round glass table. “Me too, and I’ve not taken anything.” We return to my walk-up a few blocks away. The hotel has a plaque on the side of the front door that says that Freud stayed there. I am writing a novel and sometimes imagine that in the future, they will add a second plaque. But not tonight. I lie down on my bed. Alpert takes the chair. That about uses up the space in the room. I watch my mind discovering new aspects of itself. Alpert keeps letting me know that whatever my mind is doing is safe and all right. Part of me is not sure what he is talking about, another part knows how deeply right he is, another part of me hopes he is. One week later, I left Paris and followed Alpert and Leary to Copenhagen, where they joined Aldous Huxley to jointly present a paper to an international congress. Leary and Alpert were teaching psychology at Harvard and were already in the midst of controversy over giving psychedelics to graduate students and other members of the academic community. Six weeks after their conference, I flew to California to begin graduate work in psychology. While at Stanford, I led three lives. In life one, I wore a sport coat and tie and made sure I showed up every day in the psychology department, visibly a student doing what he could to learn from the lips of the masters. In my second life, two days a week, I was a research assistant at the off-campus International Foundation for Advanced Study. There, I sat in on daylong, high-dose (and legal) LSD therapy sessions. Each client had at least two people supporting the experience. A man and a woman stayed with every client, plus there was a physician who checked into the session now and then, if needed. I can’t recall when we ever had any medical needs, but she added to the feeling of total support and reassurance that made the LSD sessions more beneficial. In addition, a Freudian psychoanalyst had met with each client when he or she first volunteered for our program to determine that each person was likely to benefit and unlikely to run into problems beyond his or her ability to cope. Given the government’s skittish stance at the time, the analyst told us we needed to have close to a 100 percent success rate, something not demanded or achieved by any other therapy. My third life was spent with people who revolved around Ken Kesey. They used psychedelics of all sorts, as well as uppers, downers, and marijuana, even alcohol and cigarettes. One member worked for a pharmaceutical chain and arrived at any event with his pockets stuffed with samples. It was a group of outlaws, but not lawbreakers—more like paradigm breakers. LSD and many of the other drugs were not illegal in the early 1960s, but their use, especially outside of any research or medical setting, was not socially acceptable. These explorers of inner space were doing field research, exploring what it was like to have free access to these drugs outside of any control or restraint except self-preservation. During these times, when these drugs were opening doors throughout one’s mind, the Kesey group used psychedelics while playing, singing, drawing, watching TV, cooking, eating, making love, watching the stars spin and dance, and asking aloud the sorts of questions that their experiences brought up: Who are we, really? Is the soul mortal or immortal? What did Blake or Van Gogh or Plato really experience? Is my identity inside my body or does it interpenetrate my body and yours? What is common between my mind and the nearest redwood tree? Are time and space subjective? What is fixed? What moves? What stays constant from session to session (that is, what is remembered)? What happens in a group where all the minds are opened, loosely linked, and apparently in telepathic communication with one another? When someone in such a group becomes terrified, do the rest get sucked into the downdraft? Or can the combined weight of the other minds right the one who has fallen away? These questions and more were at the heart of the Kesey group experiences: not outlaws in the usual sense but outliers. Better to think of them not as the cultural icons they eventually became but as people who had outgrown the limitations of the laws and who were furiously developing a bigger set of laws to bring order to their own larger sphere of behavior and experience. What the Kesey group was doing sounds philosophical, and it was, but it also had all the raw immediacy of putting your arm across the throat of a drowning swimmer so he or she wouldn’t panic, drag you under, and kill you both. For me, a critical moment happened one morning at the edge of the Pescadero town dump. Pescadero is a tiny town two miles from the California coast and about fifteen miles from Stanford. The dump was a hillside; the bottom was littered, but the top and sides were covered with vines sporting small patches of flowers. One dawn I went there with Kesey and Dorothy, his girlfriend at the time, a woman who would later become my wife (after forty-five years of marriage, we think it will probably last). The night before, she’d taken some LSD (“dropped acid,” to say it the way it was) and was in a state of delighted wonder at the personal discoveries she’d made about her own consciousness and how it shaped and reshaped her world. Kesey had taken us to Pescadero because it was a wonderful place to meet the dawn. It is correct to say he took Dorothy there, but because I had been guiding her through parts of the night, she wanted me along. I was not in the inner circle of the Kesey world. I was too straight and too unwilling to take drugs with everyone. None of the women in the group was interested in me, and I didn’t have much in common with any of the men. However, because I worked with LSD legally by day, I was welcome as an odd ornament, as one might want to have someone around who trained tigers or who could chew broken glass. Dorothy recalled that the defining moment of that dawn came when she was about to step on a small flower. Instead, she lay down on the path and stared at it. I suggested she let the flower do the communicating. What she saw—not thought or contemplated but saw, such is LSD’s curious power—was the flower fully open up, go through its cycle, and wither, but she also watched the flower reverse this same flow: recovering from its dried state, re-flowering, and returning to being a bud. She could see it go in both directions, forward and backward in time, dancing its own birth and its own death. When she told me what she was seeing, I confirmed that her experience was one that others had shared. Relieved, she returned to her plant contemplation. She looked up at Kesey—handsome, rugged, talented, a natural leader, possessed of enormous energy and power. Also married. Kesey had two kids; he was fully committed to the marriage and also to having it open to other partners as well. Dorothy looked at me. I was engaged, but my fiancée was six thousand miles away in Scotland. What she saw was that I seemed very knowledgeable, even comfortable, about her newly discovered inner world. From the moment of the encounter with the flower, her gyroscope began to spin away from Kesey and toward me. Our courtship and marriage are outside this moment in time, but as one can trace a river back to a small spring emerging from a cleft in a rock on a mountainside, our three lives shifted that day from Dorothy’s encounter with a single flower. What about my legal research? What was it like to do legal drug research? Because of the sixties, on most college campuses today it is no trick to find a psychedelic drug, take it, have a wild ride, and wonder about it all. To give it to people in a setting so supportive that 80 percent of our subjects reported that it was the single most important event of their lives—ah, that was a different time! For more than two years while the experiments were going on, I’d slip away from Stanford classes when I could and sit with people who were having their introduction to psychedelics and, through psychedelics, to other levels of consciousness, and perhaps to other levels of reality. Since I was usually introduced as “a graduate student who will be with us today,” I was not primarily responsible for conducting a session. I was truly a sitter and could watch, sometimes help, and sometimes record what people reported as they went through the events of the day. Sometimes I would only appear in the late afternoon and take a person home for the evening. We found that while the effects of the LSD would have worn off after eight hours, a person’s newly found capacity to move in and out of different realities diminished but did not stop until he or she was too tired to stay awake. I often had the treat of being with people as they puzzled out the major events or insights of the day. I also helped them deal with their families, who were usually baffled by the combination of tales of bizarre inner experiences and the sense of being with someone, a husband or wife, who was so much more totally open and loving and caring than he or she had been the day before that it often brought the spouse to joyful tears. By day, in my graduate studies, I was being taught a psychology that seemed to me to cover only a small fragment of the mind. As I’ve noted earlier in this book, I felt as if I were studying physics with teachers who had no idea that electricity, atomic power, and television existed. I would listen, take notes, ask appropriate questions, and try to appear as if I were not dumbfounded by the tiny little nibbles my instructors seemed to assume were the whole of the apple of knowledge. By night, having completed my school assignments, I would read books that helped me to piece together the larger world I’d been opened to: The Book of the Dead, the I Ching, the works of William Blake, Christian mystics, and Buddhist teachings, especially those of the Zen masters, whose cutting-through-it-all clarity was wonderfully refreshing. I also struggled with Tibetan texts that were hard to comprehend but clearly had been written by people who knew about what I was discovering. I would sit and read those books, wrapped in plain covers the way one had wrapped dirty comics with a magazine in high school to hide pictures of women with disturbingly large breasts from one’s teachers. When I could no longer follow the texts, I would sit cross-legged on the bare linoleum floor of my graduate student “office,” a slot in a trailer turned temporary classroom, a space smaller than my bedroom in Paris. I’d look through the sliding glass door at a small pine tree planted to deny the fact that we were in a temporary trailer in a large parking lot. I would breathe and stare, breathe and stare, until the tree began to breathe with me. It would not move or sway but would begin to shine with an invisible illumination, the fact of it extremely alive. It would grow and shrink before my eyes, a very tiny movement, but reminiscent of the flower at the Pescadero dump. I’d attune to that tree until I felt balanced again and then go home to bed. A Moment of Reflection A few months after we ended our research program, California passed a law declaring the possession or distribution of LSD to be a crime. Federal policy concerning LSD was later consolidated with the enactment of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. Why did our drug research frighten the establishment so profoundly? Why does it still frighten them? Perhaps because we were able to step off (or were tossed off) the treadmill of daily stuff and saw the whole system of life-death-life. We had discovered that love is the fundamental energy of the universe, and we wouldn’t shut up about it. What we found out was that the love is there, the forgiveness is there, and the understanding and compassion are there. But like water to a fish or air to a bird, it is there, all around us, and exists without any effort on our part. There is no need for the Father, the Son, the Buddha, the Saints, the Torah, the books, the bells, the candles, the priests, the rituals, or even the wisdom. It is just there—so pervasive and so unending that it is impossible to see as long as you are in the smaller world of people separated from one another. No wonder enlightenment is always a crime. PART FOUR NEW HORIZONS Introduction to Part Four After a long quiet period, psychedelics are back in scientific journals, the mainstream press, television, YouTube, and social media. There are clinical studies, spiritual studies, and reports of using psychedelics for problem solving and artistic production. Some LSD uses are still well below the radar. The most intriguing of these uses are sub-perceptual doses of about 10 micrograms. In that tiny amount, LSD acts like a cognitive enhancer, but without the side effects of larger doses. Also, curiously, there has been almost no research on current users. The annual large-scale government surveys ask little more than if the respondent has ever taken various substances. My current graduate student research team found that the present college-age generation is not only experienced but knowledgeable about the effects of many different psychedelics and well versed in the range of positive and negative experiences. Older groups are even more so. Chapter 16 describes the initial findings of a study that asked several groups with an interest in psychedelics about the variety of their drug experiences, the reasons for their own use, and the results. The first-person accounts presented in chapter 3 were brief excerpts of first and early experiences. Chapter 17 offers an in-depth interview in which I talk about the effect that the psychedelic experience has had on my career choices and worldview. The final chapter in this part examines current trends. Public research is emerging from a decades-long underground of whispered events, secretive connections, and closet chemists. Current work is showing substantial spiritual, personal, and scientific benefits. The surge in research, the large and growing numbers of people attending scientific conferences to discuss psychedelics, and the serious interest in many synthetic and plant-based psychedelics suggest cultural shifts are in the offing. Shamanism in general and ayahuasca in particular are growing in importance, partly because lawsuits for ayahuasca’s religious use are being settled in its favor and partly because of its reported healing properties for cancer and other serious conditions. There is a pressing need to restore what we can of the harmony between humanity and the natural world that existed for millennia. Effective and informed use of psychedelics appears to be one way to help that restorative process. 15 CAN SUB-PERCEPTUAL DOSES OF PSYCHEDELICS IMPROVE NORMAL FUNCTIONING? Although no formal research exists on sub-perceptual doses, a growing number of people have been using psychedelics this way. When people take a sub-perceptual amount—for LSD, about 10 micrograms (also known as a micro-dose, sub-dose, or “tener”)—the common sensory effects associated with higher doses of LSD or psilocybin—a glow or a sparkle around the edges of living things, sensory interweaving such as hearing in color or tasting music, and a loosening of ego boundaries—do not appear. What follow are reports from people who have used these small doses of LSD and psilocybin. Some are from longtime users and others are from people trying them for the first time.a Indigenous cultures have known about and used sub-perceptual doses of different psychedelics for centuries. Until recently, this knowledge has been overlooked. After being involved in research on sub-perceptual dosages for over a year, I found myself embarrassed at my own cultural bias as I came to realize I had ignored the obvious, and that indigenous heal-ers or shamans, working with their own psychedelic plants, have systematically and fully explored every dose level. As these reports are the first to appear in the literature, I’ve avoided coming to any general conclusions about these low doses beyond noting that all the reports in my files indicate, as these individuals have, that low-dose use has been positive. Reports: LSD Charles “Charles,” an environmental expert and a ghostwriter of nonfiction books, took sub-perceptual doses of LSD once every three days. His report is part user’s guide and part personal response. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife, two children, and three cats. When the idea of micro-dosing was suggested, it was made even more intriguing by the notion that this was something I could do during my regular workday and that nobody else even had to know what I was up to. Some Recommendations There are also some cautions, some hard-learned do’s and don’ts, and I just wanted to quickly run through them here before describing what you might expect (or at least what I experienced). Be conservative in following the protocol, including the amount and the days between doses. Stick with your normal patterns, especially eating, working, and sleeping. Be very discreet as to whom you let know. So first, be conservative in how much you take and how often you take it. It’s best to start small. The goal isn’t the McKenna-size heroic dose or even the standard 80- to 120-microgram “effective” dose, but something one-tenth the size of that, that is, 10 micrograms, or somewhere between 6 and 12 micrograms. So be conservative, especially if you aren’t exactly sure of how much you’re giving yourself. If you take more, if you really start “getting off,” then if you’re like me, you’ll have a hard time proceeding with your “normal” day. So start small, and if it’s too small, you can always add more the next time. Also, go slow. The protocol I followed had me take a micro-dose one day, then carefully observe any ongoing or lingering effects the second day, and then give myself the third day completely off. By going slow, you give yourself a chance to really know, to really observe what is different, why it’s different, and how you can best take advantage of it. The day you’re completely off is great as a reset day, kind of like clearing the mind/body palate. Then you’re fresh and ready to undertake the experiment again. Second, do what you normally do. Make sure you eat your regular meals, stay hydrated, do your regular exercise, meditations, and practices, and so on. The idea here is to stay grounded while you are being stimulated, ever so slightly, beyond your normal parameters. Third, be discreet. You may want to, or need to, tell your mate, your housemate, or your best friend, but generally speaking, the fewer who know, the better. Note that by going small, your behavior, your demeanor, and your external appearance will be pretty much like normal. Effects: Making Infinity More Transparent I’ve regularly felt four kinds of effects from micro-doses: physical, emotional, creative, and spiritual. Physical: Within an hour after I swallow my little glass of water or sugar cube, I start feeling more energy. It’s a kind of bubbling burning on a very low level; my cells and systems are pumped up with a noticeable kind of buzz that is very different from caffeine (which I often use), speed (which I never use), or pot (which I’m very familiar with). What’s lovely is that it’s a kind of good secondary energy, that is, I can use it to work out with weights, do Pilates, ride my bike, or really just enjoy being with my body. And if, like me, you’re a regular caffeine user, you might ingest a little less caffeine than usual, but it’s also fine to continue with your regular amounts. That is to say, I haven’t found any negative combinatory effects with caffeine (or pot for that matter). And yes, you will need to have a good night’s sleep afterward; buzzing with extra energy eventually tires you out. Emotional: My micro-dose mentor once told me that at the very lowest micro-doses you see how much God loves you, if you take a bit more, you also see how much you love God, and if you take quite a bit more, then of course it gets pretty hard to disentangle exactly who you are and who God is. What I find is that it’s easy for me to appreciate everyone and everything in my life, to very easily and naturally step into a space of gratitude and sustain it. Creative: I’ve found that I’ve had some brilliant outbursts (at least they seemed brilliant to me) with respect to both work product and personal creative projects. What seems to happen is that the “flow” state described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and noted frequently in the sports arena is a lot easier to access and stay in. Also, it’s relatively easy to access and stay in the state that the consciousness explorer John Lilly once called your “professional satori,” that is, you are doing what you do professionally, you are doing it well, time passes quickly, and you are pleased with your output. If you have a serious work project, if a lot is due all at once and you feel under the gun, you will want to think twice about micro-dosing but it may just pay off. Spiritual: What I feel that micro-dosing does is to slightly rearrange my neural furniture so that glimmers of full-on psychedelic states are constantly pouring into my awareness. I can see how the spider, her web, the wall the web is on, the house the wall is part of, the town the house is part of, and so on, are all connected. It becomes easy to see those connections, in fact, practically self-evident. And from there, it’s just a short step to radically affirming the rightness of the spider’s web, just the way it is in this moment. And this occurs not in a distracted way, but in a marvelous, enlightening, synchronistic, divine way. The Truth of What Is is simply easier to spot, and that makes everything else easier. Even the next day—the day after—the hint of universal connectedness is still quite apparent. It’s unclear to me whether I’m just becoming sensitized to LSD or whether something else is going on, perhaps an ongoing yearning and learning to make just a little bit more out of the reality that I’m perceiving. That is, over my months of micro-dosing, my expectations as to what is easily possible to see have grown. My Amazing Meter seems to be permanently set to a slightly lower threshold, in a way that I feel has made my life more pleasurable, more powerful, and more effective in terms of my being able to take care of myself and contribute back to others. It’s almost like I was born to be like this, and now I get to be like this, on an increasingly regular basis, all thanks to an astonishingly small amount of the substance LSD-25. I don’t know if this will help me to reach beyond the one-hundred-year mark like Albert Hofmann did, but I’m pretty certain I’ll have a more interesting, effective, and joyous ride regardless. Madeline Madeline, a tall, almost willowy, woman in her early thirties, lives in Manhattan. Her report fills in some of her different occupations. She is married and has a four-year-old child. As the subway rumbles along toward downtown, my observation of the passengers around me is that they put utter poison into their bodies! A woman in a camel-colored suit and white gym shoes uses a plastic knife to spread cream cheese on a giant bagel, washing it all down with gulps of soda. A few others enjoy fast-food breakfasts; enough sandwiches and hash browns are withdrawn from steamy paper sacks to scent the entire car with fryer oil. I wonder for a moment about what these people would think about my peculiar breakfast ritual—20 micrograms of LSD chased a bit later by green juice made from juiced cucumbers, sunflower sprouts, and pea greens. I arrive at my temporary office where I’m on a seven-week contract editing film. The documentary I’m working on has a budget of nearly nine hundred thousand dollars and will air on the second best network. My job is to screen nearly fifty hours of historical footage and knit it together into a story arc. I snip the footage down to its most essential bits, add narration notes, and harvest sound bites. I feel deeply connected to my work, focused and in the flow. I barely come up for air for the next five hours because I am so sincerely enjoying what I’m doing. I laugh aloud and occasionally cry at poignant moments. I love my work. Although I’m not hungry and don’t feel in need of a break, I know that it is healthy to take one. Once outside, the world is too bright, even with my sunglasses on. I have very large blue eyes and naturally large pupils, and anything above 10 micrograms of LSD makes them as big as saucers. After a six-block walk, I feel hungry, and I sit my lunchbox and thermos on a ledge at my favorite park. I begin Chinese exercises and deep breathing. The movement feels wonderful, and I feel so healthy and connected to my body that I begin to tear up for a second and enjoy a little laugh that can only be described as a release of joy and gratitude. I plan a longer than average workday today and will skip the gym, so this stolen moment of movement and sunshine is essential. My lunch is a thermos of mild green tea and four small salads that I made a day earlier. One is seaweed with sesame seeds, another chickpeas, another quinoa, and the last is fruit with coconut and pecans. Exquisitely nourished, I head back to my office for another four-hour stretch. Sub-doses of 10 to 20 micrograms allow me to increase my focus, open my heart, and achieve breakthrough results while remaining integrated within my routine. While a full dose requires that I carefully plan my surroundings, on a sub-dose I am fully able to navigate all manner of logistics and social interactions. I would venture to say that my wit, response time, and visual and mental acuity seem greater than normal on it. I utilize a sub-dose about six days each month and sometimes more often if I am engrossed in a project requiring extraordinary focus. This has been my practice for more than ten years, and it has facilitated my success working in mainstream and independent media, staff-level positions in government, and publishing dozens of pieces of journalistic work. I am not saying that I wouldn’t have done any of this without LSD, but I am saying that I wouldn’t have done all of this without it. The practice of sub-dosing transforms my work from being work to being creative play. I’m a naturally persuasive person, able to enlist others in my vision, but never more so than when I am enhanced by a sub-dose. Therefore, I find it essential to my work as a grant writer and coalition builder to open myself in this way. One of my standard responses to the question “How are you doing?” from a colleague is to reply that I am doing “soaringly well.” It really sums up what it feels like to perform my work while sub-dosing: it’s somewhat like flying. I had never heard of sub-dosing when I began doing it. After a couple years of wonderful success with the practice, I met a friend of Terence McKenna’s who, upon hearing about my practice, explained that he uses sub-doses too—something he learned from McKenna. He explained that Albert Hofmann did the same thing, and that McKenna told him that Hofmann believed that LSD sub-doses would have gone on to be widely prescribed in much the same way as Ritalin, had it not been so harshly scheduled. I played with big doses before I played with small ones. I experimented with 250- to 800-microgram doses and learned to surrender to their intensity. My experiences at these doses were profound, amazing, and fun, but ultimately, I couldn’t bring too much back with me. I left super-high doses in the late nineties. Then I began to experiment with sub-doses. I don’t drink alcohol because I find it a bit harsh and numbing, so I was looking for something to make me feel sparkly and up at cocktail parties and networking events. I tried a few cups of coffee, but I wasn’t quite loose enough and I’d still get tired, so I began trying small doses instead. I found that on sub-doses, I made more meaningful and lasting connections, and my own evolution seemed to accelerate, as if I were able to accomplish more living within the same span of time. I wondered how sub-doses could be employed within my career, and I began using them for bigger assignments and events. I also expanded my role within my own family during this time, and became the one most often consulted. Following conversations with relatives and friends, they would report feeling truly seen. Within only a few months of discovering sub-doses, my skills as a listener and communicator had blossomed. Interestingly, a number of family members appointed me executor to their estates almost immediately after I began using sub-doses. I find that 10 to 20 micrograms of LSD is both a stimulant and a calming agent at the same time. For me, the only challenge that remains with sub-doses is increased light sensitivity, which I mitigate by wearing sunglasses or dialing down the brightness of my computer screen. This minor inconvenience is certainly worth it to me, because when I’m enhanced, I feel more passionate. I feel more energized. I feel more focused and enlisted. I feel more. I’m not completely comfortable with how little is known about the long-term effects of LSD and other drugs. I’m a healthy young woman, and I want to do only what is safe and smart for myself and my family, so I wish to know what the long-term effects of LSD use are. Albert Hofmann seemed perfectly sharp at 101 years old, and the friends I know who are twice my age and use LSD frequently are some of the most brilliant people I know. And I want the fear of criminalization removed from this field of research so that people like me will be willing to share their experiences openly and have their data quantified. James “James” is a warehouse manager in Waco, Texas, for a large home improvement company. He is active in his church and is also writing a family history of what he describes as “my more colorful relatives.” I hadn’t used psychedelics for some years, but when a still-tripping friend offered me a few hits divided into teners and told me I could drop one and still go to work, I gave it a try. From the first time out, I liked how I felt. Got my work done easier, rarely lost my temper, my paperwork got done on time, and when I got home at night, I was a lot more fun to be with. What was cool is I found out that I was as good the second day after I’d dosed as the first, maybe better. I didn’t say when I was using and when I wasn’t, but after a while, my wife would say, “Hey, did you do it today?” Usually, she was right on. Clifford “Clifford” is an important psychedelic researcher, group leader, and writer. He is currently writing a book of personal essays. Student days at the University of California at San Diego were a whirlwind blending of 1960s’ issues with the academic pressure necessary to enter postgraduate training of some sort. My personal choices were between psychology and medicine. My introduction to psychedelics had convinced me of their value. I was taking a biology course to prepare for medical school, and we were studying the development of the chick embryo. After the first meeting of the one-quarter-long course, I realized that in order to stay alert, a tiny dose of LSD could be useful. With that in mind, I licked a small, but very potent, tablet emblazoned with the peace sign before every class. This produced a barely noticeable brightening of colors and created a generalized fascination with the course and my professor, who was otherwise uninteresting to me. Unfortunately, when finals came around, my health disintegrated and I missed the final exam. The next day I called my professor and begged for mercy. She said, “No problem, come to my lab.” “When shall we schedule this?” She suggested immediately. With some dismay, I agreed that I would meet her within an hour. I reached into the freezer and licked the almost exhausted fragment of the tablet I had used for class. I decided that there was so little left I might as well swallow it all. At the lab my professor suggested that, since it was such an amazing day, perhaps I could take the exam outside in the wetland wilderness reserve that surrounded the lab. The view of the swamp was stunning! Somehow it had never seemed beautiful to me before. She asked that I take my notebook and pencil out. “Please draw for me the complete development of the chick from fertilization to hatching. That is the only question.” I gasped, “But that is the entire course!” “Yes, I suppose it is, but make-up exams are supposed to be harder than the original, aren’t they?” I couldn’t imagine being able to regurgitate the entire course. As I sat there despondently, I closed my eyes and was flooded with grief. Then I noticed that my inner visual field was undulating like a blanket that was being shaken at one end. I began to see a movie of fertilization! When I opened my eyes a few minutes later, I realized that the movie could be run forward and back and was clear as a bell in my mind’s eye, even with my physical eyes open. Hesitantly, I drew the formation of the blastula, a hollow ball of cells that develops out of the zygote (fertilized egg). As I carefully drew frame after frame of my inner movie, it was her turn to gape! The tiny heart blossomed. The formation of the notochord, the neural groove, and the beginnings of the nervous system were flowing out of my enhanced imagery and onto the pages. A stupendous event—the animated wonder of embryonic growth and the differentiation of cells—continued at a rapid pace. I drew as quickly as I could. To my utter amazement, I was able to carefully and completely replicate the content of the entire course, drawing after drawing, like the frames of animation that I was seeing as a completed film! It took me about an hour and a quarter drawing as fast as I could to reproduce the twenty-one-day miracle of chick formation. Clearly impressed, my now suddenly lovely professor smiled and said, “Well, I suppose you deserve an A!” The sunlight twinkled on the water, the cattails waved in the gentle breeze, and the gentle wonder of life was everywhere. Reports: Psilocybin Mushrooms Stephen Gray Stephen Gray describes himself as “a lifelong student, teacher, and researcher of spiritual paths, in particular Tibetan Buddhism and the peyote ceremonies of the Native American Church. I’ve studied and practiced several other modalities in the healing and awakening fields. I’ve also devoted much time and love to music as a teacher, singer-songwriter, and composer of music for healing and spiritual work under the artist name Keary.” The following excerpt is a portion of an essay, “The Benefits of Low-Dose Psilocybin Mushrooms.” The full essay can be found at www.stephengrayvision.com by searching for “ benefits of low-dose psilocybin mushrooms.” It’s well known to the experienced that medium to high doses of psilocybin mushrooms, given advantageous internal and external conditions— often called set and setting—can provoke experiences of stunning insight, visions of great beauty, an abundance of love, contact with spirit entities, and authentic mystical experiences completely beyond the boundaries of the separate ego. Much less frequently discussed are the benefits of very low-dose experiences with these mushrooms. I often get together with friends on weekends to play music. On one of these evenings, I went to the home of some friends who have a collection of dried and frozen Psilocybe cyanascens. We decided to try an experiment. We wanted to see how a very low dose would affect the emotions and the mechanics of playing and singing. We each ate two medium-size dried mushrooms, the stems perhaps an inch and one-half long and the caps one-half to three-quarters of an inch across. Although we didn’t weigh them, previous experience suggests we’re talking about less than a gram of dried weight. We didn’t engage in any special preparation such as fasting for several hours beforehand, although I always attempt to make a connection with such medicine plants before consuming them by offering a short prayer, a dedication, and/or an expression of gratitude to the spirit of the plant. This was in no way a reliable scientific experiment. We included a little cannabis smoking with the mushrooms, knowing that the two often complement each other quite nicely. The result was that you might say the mushrooms overrode the somewhat more fuzzy effects of cannabis with a subtle but noticeable sharpness of mind and emotion. One of the results of this sharpness was that my guitar playing became more focused and agile. I don’t play guitar enough anymore to get through most songs flawlessly, but on those nights, my playing was definitely more on the mark. I also noticed that my ability to recollect lyrics was noticeably superior to my norm. In conjunction with the sharpness has been a softening of the heart, which helped me connect to the emotion of the songs. A lot of the songs I like to play have poetic lyrics that don’t necessarily reveal clear and simple meanings. The songs of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen can be like that…. During these low-dose mushroom sessions, I’ve noticed that my mind instantaneously grokked meanings that had previously eluded me. I’ve noted before with Psilocybes and had confirmed again in these experiences that the mushroom appears to temporarily dismantle inhibition and hesitation to seeing things clearly and talking about personal topics straightforwardly. And it appears to be just as easy to hear these truths spoken about oneself as it is to say them. I’ve had some very intimate conversations with friends where we revealed ourselves without embarrassment and spoke about sensitive issues without raising defensive reactions. Ingesting such small doses is something most people can do safely on their own. No particular ritual is necessary to elicit beneficial effects, although in my experience the spirit of the plant is always potentially present and is much more likely to bless and empower even these mild experiences if petitioned and treated with respect. I’ll mention a couple of cautions. Although the Psilocybes are all around us in certain areas of North America, they are not easy to identify at first and can easily be mistaken for similar-looking but poisonous mushrooms. I had an experienced mycophile point out the local Psilocybe cyanascens, and since then I’ve shown another friend how to identify them. Not all mushrooms have the same potency, of course, and not all people respond the same. One time I ate two small ones and the effects were too subtle to have much impact. Another time I experimented with a slightly higher dose, somewhere between one gram and a gram and a half. For playing music that quantity proved to be a bit much. The effects interfered with my functionality. If we’re able to shift our cultural understanding of these plants and begin to see them as medicine, I would say that, used with respect and good intentions, low-dose psilocybin is good medicine…. The important thing is to provide the right kind of space for the medicine’s effects to manifest. There has to be enough space in the mind’s “busy-ness” to notice the subtleties, to feel the softening of the heart, and to catch the insights as they arise. Anita “Anita” is a professional artist’s model. Once, while being very professionally overextended in New York, I got hold of a good-sized dose of mushrooms. But instead of taking it all at once, I took a pinch of it each day. I found that I was much more emotionally even and more able to see the world as interrelated rather than disjointed. It was a fully pleasurable experience. Nathan “Nathan” is a professional bass and guitar player and a dedicated surfer living in a beach town in Southern California. I took a small hit of mushroom the other day …went out surfing. It was a life-changing event. I was so much more in my body and could feel deeper into it. I sensed the wave had come thousands of miles and that we were coming together for its last few seconds before it hit the beach. But what was best was feeling like I connected back into the greater world. What was so special is that for the past few weeks, I’ve been really down. A great long-term love relationship broke up, and I’ve been devastated. I’m still sad about it, but I know it’s only a part of me. I got attuned that day, and I haven’t lost it. Oh, yeah, my surfing was definitely awesome. The Question of Tolerance I asked a once prominent LSD chemist if the “every three days” regimen like the one “Charles” used was necessary, since it is well known that one cannot take repeated doses of most psychedelics and have them continue to be effective. His initial reply was, “As far as I can determine, less-than-obvious doses do not cause tolerance, which could argue in favor of benefits from ten a day. I’ d have to test further, but so far I suspect that sub-detectable doses several days in a row cause no tolerance for a similar barely detectable dose the day following. At this sub-detectable level, there is really at most only the tiniest of intimations you took something.” Preliminary Conclusions These reports are representative of those I have received in 2010. The reports have several things in common. Everyone said their experiences were positive and valuable. “Charles” suggested that there was a gradual buildup of openness and awareness, eventually spilling over into non-sub-perceptual days. Madeline and Stephen both indicated they did better at what they do well—not excessively, but enough to notice. As several reports stated, someone taking a dose this low functions, as far as the world is concerned, a little better than normal. To date, I received no reports that sub-perceptual doses have caused any social disruption, personal upset, or any form of work-related difficulty. However, this is a very preliminary look at an area that may become of considerable interest as more opportunities for research open up. We may yet get to know more about what Albert Hofmann called “an under-researched area.” 16 SURVEYS OF CURRENT USERS This Is Your Brain on Drugs Several years ago, the Open Center in New York City invited me to talk about the current psychedelic situation. My talk included a brief rant about the dearth of research during the forty years of what psychedelic researcher Dr. Charles Grob calls “a protracted lull.” During this lull, neither the government nor any individual researcher had bothered to research what millions of us were up to. A year later, having recovered from my bout of righteousness over “what all those other people were not doing,” a student group at San Francisco State University asked me to talk about psychedelics. I decided to ask them about their own drug use and designed a one-page questionnaire to that end. That questionnaire took about five minutes to complete. It asked what psychedelics people had taken and their reasons for doing so. It asked about best and worst experiences, if they had ever been guides or been guided, what their future intentions were, and asked some questions about demographics. That night, seventy-eight people filled out the forms. Soon afterward, a few students at two midwestern universities taking courses about psychedelics filled it out, as did some Stanford students, self-designated “psychonauts.” Because there were no significant differences between the student groups, these students were added to the first group to make up the complete student sample. While starting to analyze the data, I turned to psychological, medical, and psychometric research databases to review the many studies that I assumed had preceded this one. It was a surprise to find out that little data existed beyond an annual survey by the U.S. government asking high school students if they had ever used various substances. Nothing in the literature for the past thirty-five-plus years had asked users anything like the questions I’d asked. There were only two studies that were even close. The first one, published in 1983, interviewed seventy-one people. Without presenting numerical data, it concluded: “Moderate polydrug use was the norm.” “Most people had a ‘drug of choice.’” “Few people appeared to continue to use psychedelic drugs for a long time.”1 The second study, done in the nineties, asked different questions than ours of nine psychedelic users in Sweden. That was it. Two studies.a In light of this dearth of information, my low-cost research project seemed worth extending. I was able to add 163 individuals as a second sample in April 2010 during my presentation at a conference on psychedelic research. (Two other samples—one of some attendees at the Non-Dual Consciousness Conference and one from an interest group in Chicago—are being analyzed.) What follows are some preliminary findings from the student and the conference samples. These are field notes, not finished formal research; therefore, I am presenting the data with very little interpretation or analysis. For updates about the research, please check www.jamesfadiman.com and www.psychedelicexplorersguide.com. The Student Sample There were 108 respondents in the total student sample.b Of that total, forty-eight men and forty-three women listed their gender. Except for two older people, the age range of this sample was from 17 to 28 years, with an average age of 22.7 years.† Substances Taken Students were asked what they had taken and were presented with eight possibilities: six psychedelics, MDMA, and “other.” The percentages of students who used each of the eight are presented in figure 16.1. Over 50 percent of the group had taken mushrooms/psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, and Salvia divinorum.‡ By contrast, only two people had tried ayahuasca. Substances not on the list included: (their terms) Nitrous, DXM, 2-CB, ketamine, LAS, morning glory seeds, and laughing gas. The number of psychedelics taken (excluding “other”) ranged from eight (one person) to zero (five people). However, some of those counted as zero had used “other” substances. The average number of different substances a student had taken was 4.3. Students were not asked how many times they had used each substance. Reasons for Taking Students chose from a list of ten reasons why they’d taken these substances. The results are presented in figure 16.2. The reasons picked most often were, in order: fun, self-healing, and problem solving; all were above 50 percent. The least-picked reasons were sexual enhancement and social pressure. There is no way in this sample to determine how many of the “fun” choices were related to using MDMA, as it is more often used for social and recreational purposes than any of the other psychedelics. Fig. 16.1. University Students’ Self-Reported Substance Use Fig. 16.2. Reasons Given for Student Substance Use Reasons for Taking: Male/Female Differences The reasons for drug use differed between men and women as shown in figure 16.3. As can be seen, women were more likely to take a substance for self-healing. Men take a substance significantly more often out of curiosity, to undergo a spiritual experience or a mystical experience, and to better appreciate music. In fact, men were more likely to have taken psychedelics for all the reasons except self-healing. Positive and Negative Effects The students were asked to describe the greatest benefit and the highest cost from all of their experiences. Representative statements for benefits and highest costs are listed below. Benefits I encountered this amazing presence—God?—and felt a complete sense of the perfection in everything. I had self-healing, understanding experiences that opened my mind, and lots of visions of creativity and my potential. Fig. 16.3. Reasons Given for Drug Use I was the happiest me that I can be and realized the magic of life for the first time. I underwent a total change in personality for the better. I’ve been able to express my love for people and nature with MDMA. With LSD, I found my spirituality for the first time and had the best night of my life. Communication with the more-than-human world (LSD). Highest Cost Saw ancient patterns all over body, which broke me down to nothing. But relationships came back with the morning sun and life was joyous. First time I did LSD, I got left alone in my trip and cried about pain I felt from life experiences. It was scary and I felt unloved and alone. I also had disturbing visuals due to my sadness. Oil dripping all over, technology taking over the planet. I had been pulling up pickle weed at the beach; when I took he salvia I felt the plants were angry at me and it was not enjoyable. • I felt sure that I was going to die and could feel what it is like to be killed in a car crash. Two hours of misery, but still learned a needed lesson about who to trust. Those Who Had Been a Guide or Were Guided The value of guides for these experiences has been a central theme of this book, so the questionnaire also asked if experiences had involved guides. Thirty-seven percent of the sample had either guided or been guided. Their reasons given for substance use, ranked according to whether they had been guided or had been guides, are presented in figure 16.4, on page 218. Students on either side of the guiding relationship used psychedelics more often for exploration, self-healing, spiritual and mystical experiences, and curiosity than did the complete sample. No one who was guided or was a guide said that the reason was for “fun.” Fig. 16.4. Reasons by Those Who Had Guidance or Guided Others Future Intentions The final question asked was whether or not they intended to take psychedelics in the future. Eighty-two percent said yes, seven percent said no, and seven percent didn’t answer or were unsure. Initial Observations While the results of this questionnaire were what one might expect from a group interested in psychedelic research, keep in mind that data like these had not been collected before. This sample is unique in the drug literature. Reviewing the results presented, it became evident that Students have wide access to psychedelic drugs They have taken them in a wide variety of situations They had bad experiences but rarely blamed the drug itself They intend to keep taking them One item asking about “highest cost” was dropped because some of the students thought it was asking about the dollar cost of the drugs used. Subsequent survey samples asked instead about “worst aftereffects,” a better way of framing the same question. We did find out that the price students paid for enough of a substance for a single “trip” rarely rose above eight dollars. None of the students seemed the slightest bit concerned that these substances were illegal. For about the price of a first-run movie ticket, they could have a powerful, meaningful, transformative, or fun time. When I questioned the first group, I was not sure if I’d be able to get another student sample, so I requested their cell phone numbers as a way to follow up. (“If you wish, please give me your cell phone number; no names please.”) Several of my professional colleagues insisted that no one would be so foolish or trusting as to give a stranger a list of illegal behaviors and his or her phone number. Perhaps in the spirit of the evening or the casual way students considered their own drug use, not only did thirty-seven students write in their cell numbers, but several added their e-mail addresses as well. The ease of data collection and the richness of the responses led to the collection of data from other groups, most especially a sample from a professional conference. The Conference Sample The Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century conference, held in San Jose, California, in April 2010 and hosted by the MAPS foundation, brought together almost every legal psychedelic researcher in the world. Over 1,200 people attended. At my presentation on entheogenic experience, I asked those present to fill out a questionnaire; 161 people filled it out. Of the 117 people who listed their age, the range was from 16 to 74 years, and the average age was 42. Of those listing their gender, there were 88 men, 51 women, and 1 transgender person.c Fig. 16.5. Substances Used by Students and by Conference Attendees Substance Use Over 50 percent of the group had experience with mushrooms/psilocybin and LSD (both over 88 percent), Salvia divinorum, and ayahausca. The percentages using ayahausca and MDMA differ significantly from those of the student sample, with many more having used ayahausca and far fewer having used MDMA. As might be expected, given how much older these conference attendees were, their overall use was greater than that of the students for every drug except MDMA. In the student sample, there were only six substances added as “other.” In this conference sample, there were far more. Drugs listed included (list is incomplete) nitrous oxide, 2-CB, ketamine, ibogaine, San Pedro, 2-CT7, 2CI, 5-MBO, MDA, @-CE, 2CX, TCB, LAS, DOB, DOI, DOC, seratonin, TCT9, Rue, 4Aco-DIPT, methylone, bufo, GHB, baby rosewood, morning glory seeds, and DXM. A few younger members of the sample also listed cocaine. It is highly unlikely that they considered cocaine to be a psychedelic but they probably just listed every drug they’d tried. The average number of different substances a conference member had taken was 5.4, significantly more than the student sample of 4.2. The difference might be explained by the fact that this group was older and therefore had had more years of opportunity. Other possibilities abound but those will wait to be explored after further analysis. The maximum number of drugs listed by a single individual was twenty-four and the lowest was zero (he wrote that he had a heart condition). Education: 142 Responses Individuals in the student sample were asked their age, their year in school (e.g., junior, senior), and their major area of study; the individuals in the conference sample were simply asked their level of education. The five largest groups were: The people in this sample were generally well educated. It was not a random sample of the entire group, but a subsample of the less science-minded participants. The meeting where this information was collected was in the “cultural” track of the conference, which ran at the same time as the “scientific” main track. Occupation or Profession: 141 Responses There were forty-two different occupations listed by the respondents. The five most common occupations only represented 50 percent of the sample. They were, in order: No one listed himself or herself as unemployed. Everyone in the sample population listed him- or herself as educated and employed. While this may seem to be a trivial finding, it contradicts the long history of speculation that the use of psychedelics makes one less functional, less productive, and less likely to succeed in a highly competitive society. Put simply, this sample of multi-drug users does not support the stereotypes. Best Experiences: 120 Responses We asked which substance had been used for a “best trip.” Of the twenty different substances or combinations cited, the five most common were: Worst Experiences: 126 Responses While many respondents indicated that their most difficult or disturbing experiences had been also the most beneficial, we did ask what substance had been taken for their worst trip, however they defined the term worst. Of the twenty-one substances or combinations cited, the five most often mentioned were: These two lists are almost identical, but Salvia divinorum almost did not appear under “best trips” (one person listed it), and MDMA does not appear at all in the “worst trips” list. In general, the variables of set, setting, sitter, and so forth are what determine a good or bad experience, and that seems true here with the most-cited substances (LSD, mushrooms/psilocybin, and ayahausca), but not with Salvia divinorum and MDMA, which were more likely to be either best or worst, but not both. Worst Aftereffects: 152 Responses Most of the research and the popular literature about any of these substances focuses on the experience itself or feelings shortly after the experience is over. In our survey, respondents were asked to look back over their long years of experiences and mention the worst aftereffect they’d noticed. Of the forty-nine different effects cited, the eight most commonly mentioned were: Reviewing this list, it is fair to conclude that, at least in this population, the substances used do not appear to be too dangerous. There were, however, individual reports of more-serious aftereffects, including “complete breakdown,” “almost died of hypothermia,” and “mild PTSD” as well as the more serious “I fell down some stairs and needed physical therapy for three months,” and my personal favorite, “lost interest in math class.” Even the most pro-psychedelic advocate needs to keep in mind that these substances, when misused and even used with care, have caused serious and lasting mental damage. At the same conference, I spent time with an open and personally magnetic young man who was looking for a psychedelically aware therapist. Some nine months earlier, he’d had a bad trip that so disturbed him that he had lost his job and had spent several months homeless and sleeping in his car before he began to recover. While much better, he felt he still needed help. This being noted, this sample described the relatively minor aftereffects of using many different drugs multiple times over many years. Substances Used for Specific Effects The questionnaire given to the conference sample, unlike the student sample, asked respondents their reasons for taking each substance. A few specific pairings suggest the span of questions that can be considered. Compare the listing above with the following responses to a question about which drugs were taken for a different reason. LSD and mushrooms/psilocybin are the preferred psychedelics for both exploration and spiritual/mystical experiences. However, far fewer people took psychedelics for spiritual and mystical experiences. Fig. 16.6. Psychedelics Chosen for Exploration and Spiritual/Mystical Experience MDMA does not appear on either list because so few respondents listed taking it either for exploration or for spiritual/mystical experiences. These results may be easier to see as a histogram (figure 16.6). Sexual Enhancement as a Reason for Taking a Substance: 141 Responses This was another question asked about the relationship of substance use and sexual behavior. It is well established in clinical and entheogenic literature that these substances do not improve sexual experience, especially in dose levels where there is a feeling of decoupling from the body entirely. However, when we asked the sample if one of their reasons for using substances was for sexual enhancement, the finding was unanticipated. There are numerous ways to interpret this finding. One is to assume that the literature is wrong or at least that studies done in settings with guides or observers will underreport sexual behavior because their presence inhibits it. An alternative explanation might be that this question only asked for a reason that substances were taken, not whether sexual pleasure or performance actually was enhanced. A third possibility might be that this is a question of dosage and that a “disco hit” (e.g., 50 micrograms of LSD) that enhances sensory awareness enhances sexual awareness as well. As scientific papers almost always say at the end of whatever they have been reporting on, “Further research is indicated.” Reasons for Taking a Given Psychedelic We also asked about reasons for taking a given psychedelic. For example, “Why did you choose to take ayahausca?” (Often multiple reasons were given; thus the total number of reasons can exceed the number of individuals in the sample.) The five most chosen reasons were: One can see that ayahausca is taken for a variety of reasons and that no single reason predominates. Conclusions As with the student sample, we can make a few general conclusions about the conference population. They have had access to many different psychedelic drugs They have taken them for a variety of reasons They have had few serious, lasting, or bad aftereffects from their use Their use pattern differs only slightly from that of the much younger student sample As can be seen from these last few tables, we have the opportunity to mine this data to answer many more questions such as those given above. There are a great many questions not yet answered that these surveys will allow us to explore. As was noted earlier, these results are early findings from just two of four group surveys. The rest of the data is being entered and analyzed, and the results will be made available in due course. Several other researchers have indicated an interest in the data as it accumulates. These researchers have different interests than the core research team, so there will be other kinds of research being published. In the future, the entire database will be published online for later researchers. These two samples are not representative of the twenty-three million people in the United States alone who have taken LSD, but they raise provocative questions about the extent of use in larger populations, which hopefully will be of sufficient interest to the regulating and policy-making agencies to fund and expand this kind of research. 17 THE INADVERTENT PIONEER My Personal Account In 1995, two far-sighted foundations, the Fetzer Foundation and the Institute for Noetic Sciences, realized that much of the knowledge and experience of the early psychedelic researchers would soon be lost. Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, and Alan Watts, whose books and lectures opened the eyes of a generation to the possibilities inherent in these substances, were gone, as was Richard Evans Schultes, discoverer of dozens of plants used by indigenous healers, and Gordon Wasson, who had rediscovered psilocybin mushrooms in Mexico. Even the CIA operatives who had done sloppy and often terrible research trying to use psychedelics as instruments of torture or interrogation were no longer alive. The Fetzer Foundation offered to host as many original researchers as could come for a weekend of sharing and reflection. Before the meeting, however, the conveners interviewed each of the potential participants at length, on video, asking them to discuss their roles in the research, to ensure that even those who could not attend could still contribute. This chapter is composed of portions of my interview. It is a series of answers to questions intended to elicit recollections of my part of psychedelic history. A longer version can be found in Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics, edited by Roger Walsh and Charles Grob (both major researchers in their own right) and published by SUNY Press in 2005. I’d have to say that I’m an inadvertent psychedelic pioneer.1 As mentioned elsewhere in this book, I was an undergraduate at Harvard, and in a small tutorial with a young, dynamic professor named Richard Alpert. We became friends and ended up renting a house together for the summer at Stanford, where I worked for him on a large research project. After my senior year at Harvard, in 1960, I went off to live in Europe. The following spring, Alpert showed up in Paris with Timothy Leary, on their way to Copenhagen to deliver the first paper on their work with psilocybin. He was in great condition and said to me, “The most wonderful thing in the world has happened, and I want to share it with you.” I replied, as anyone would, “Of course.” Then he reached in his jacket pocket and took out a little bottle of pills. My reaction was, “Pills? Drugs? What kind of weirdness is this?” However, that evening, I took some psilocybin from that little bottle, sitting in a café on a main street in Paris. After a while we withdrew to my hotel room, where he was basically a sitter for my session. Out of that night’s experiences came my first realizations that the universe was larger than I thought, my identity was smaller than I thought, and there was something about human interaction that I had been missing. It was definitely a powerful bonding experience between us. However, this session did not involve any stripping away of levels of reality. That came later. Several psilocybin experiences later, one more with Alpert and one with my brother, I returned to the United States. I had received a letter from my draft board basically saying, “Would you like to join us in Vietnam? Or might you consider the alternatives open to you by law?” At the time, graduate school did not attract me but seemed very much the lesser of two evils. I started my graduate work at Stanford that fall, feeling disappointed with psychology because now I’d used psychedelics and I knew there was a lot more. I didn’t know what “more” was, but I sure knew that the psychology department was not teaching it. However, hidden in the back of the course catalog, I found a “graduate special” called The Human Potential, taught by Willis Harman, who was, of all things, a professor of electrical engineering. The little write-up said, “What is the highest and best that human beings can aspire to?” and suggested various readings. As I read it, I thought, “There is something about psychedelics in here. This man knows something of what I know.” At that point, I was dividing the world into people who knew what I knew—which wasn’t very much, but more than I’d known two months earlier—and those who didn’t. (Whether I knew correctly was totally beside the point to me at that time.) Anyway, I found my way to Willis Harman’s office, a typical associate professor of electrical engineering’s office in a building as drab as a hospital, and said, “I’d like to take your graduate special.” He replied gently, “It’s full this quarter, but I’ll give it again. Perhaps you would be interested at a later date.” I looked at him and said, “I’ve had psilocybin three times.” He got up, walked across his office, and closed the door. Then we got down to business. As it turned out, I had guessed correctly. This course was his way of dealing with the question, How do you teach about psychedelics in a way that doesn’t get you either discovered or fired? After talking for a while, we decided that not only would I take the class, but also I would kind of co-teach it, because unlike Harman, I was willing to be open with what was happening for me and thought I had much less to lose. The class opened with the question “What is the best and highest a human being can be?” Gradually, we moved from psychology to philosophy, then to the mystics, and eventually to personal experience. Around the same time, I started to work with the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park. Funded by Myron Stolaroff, an electronics executive who left that field to devote himself to psychedelic research, this foundation had been set up to work with psychedelics. Harman was involved, as were a few other people. As they had no psychologist on their team, I offered to step into the role. This was a little ludicrous since I was about two months into my first year of graduate work at the time and hadn’t studied psychology as an undergraduate, but I was game. We began by working on a paper, “The Psychedelic Experience,” which described the results of the foundation’s LSD therapy sessions. After working together in class and at the foundation for a few weeks, Harman asked if I’d like to have a session with them. Filled with my Dick Alpert/Tim Leary/human closeness/low-dose psilocybin experiences, I said, “That would be great!” I showed up on October 19, 1961, at the foundation: two living room–like suites and some small offices above a beauty shop looking out over a parking lot with one giant oak in it. I was offered the opportunity to take some LSD. Harman was one sitter, and a lovely female engineering professor was the other. Dr. Charles Savage, medical adviser to the research, did his physician thing of giving me the material and then went down the hall to resume his psychoanalytic practice. I took the material, looked around, and asked my sitters, “Well, aren’t you folks taking something?” because that had been the model with Alpert and Leary in my prior sessions. (I think Harman took a little amphetamine, just to keep me cool.) I put on eyeshades, lay down on a couch, and listened to music, the format that they had developed through the work of Al Hubbard, now standard for almost all the ongoing studies worldwide. Over the next few hours, in that room, much to my surprise, my little mind washed away. My session was a classic psychedelic high-dose entheogenic journey. I discovered that my disinterest in spiritual things was as valid as a ten-year-old’s disinterest in sex, arising from a complete lack of awareness of what the universe was made of. I went to a place of total aloneness—the you’ve-got-to-walk-this-valley-by-yourself deep awareness of separation from the universe, and the realization that there really was nothing at all you could hold on to. Fortunately, this state is a hair’s-breadth away from the place next to it, in which there was only one thing, and I was part of it. At that point, there was what might be described as songs of jubilation throughout the heavens: “Another jerk wakes up!” Not jubilation at the realization of who I, Jim Fadiman, was, but who I was part of. What a relief! I moved into a space of feeling that I was not part of everything—but that everything was part of everything, and I was clearly part of that. Suddenly, it was obvious that there is no death and that the fundamental waveform of the universe is best described in human terms as love. This was all incredibly obvious. And for some peculiar reason, I, Jim Fadiman, was being given this awakening to my true self. From that place, I looked at various structures in my life. They were all, at best, amusing. It struck me that being a graduate student to avoid serving in a war seemed to be a perfectly plausible thing to do since one had to do something in this incarnation. It was unclear to me whether I, Jim Fadiman, as a personality, had lived before. But it was also not very important, because the Jim Fadiman that was in that room on October 19 wasn’t very important, serving only as the container in which “I” found myself. That evening, before going home with Harman, we went up to the top of Skyline, a mountain ridge above Stanford. I looked out and had an amazing feeling of identification with Creation. I walked around saying things like, “I’ve really done a splendid job at all of this.” The “I” here was clearly not me, not Jim Fadiman, but the “I” was pleased with Creation and pleased that part of me was observing other parts of me. Now, singing songs of praise to the Lord is an Old Testament notion, and you might wonder why the Lord is at all interested in that, since He wrote the songs, and everything else for that matter. But when you’re in the praising mode, it feels nice to congratulate yourself for jobs well done. I continued as part of a team with Harman, Stolaroff, Savage, and others, but now I was looking at the work from a very different level than before, because now, finally, I understood what on Earth we were doing. We were trying to discover whether—if you used psychedelics in a totally supportive, nonmedical setting, with a high enough dose—you could facilitate entheogenic experience. And if so, would that be beneficial? There was also “advanced training,” as it came to be called, with Hubbard, usually in Death Valley. This was the most intense outdoors set and setting one could imagine and allowed openings not easily achieved in any other situation. A typical session would involve driving in from Lone Pine and stopping at some point to take the psychedelic. Then we would go to several locations and spend time there, usually “eyes open,” dealing with what was visible—or visible on the invisible planes there. You were faced with your own life much more directly because of the harshness, enormous beauty, and enormous barrenness of the landscape. The advanced training was a major way of making sure you didn’t get caught in your personal belief systems. While part of the time I was doing government-sanctioned research, I was also, as mentioned in chapter 14, involved with novelist Ken Kesey’s world, because Dorothy, my wife, had been involved with Kesey. This made me one of the few people who was fully involved in totally legal psychedelic research and also hanging out with the primo group of psychedelic outlaws, explorers operating without restrictions. How long were you able to work with psychedelics at Stanford, and how did it end? It took me two years to get a committee that was willing to have their names on my dissertation, “Behavior Change Following (LSD) Psychedelic Therapy,” a title I came up with so Stanford wouldn’t throw me out. The federal government by then had allowed us to do a study on the question of creativity, looking at whether psychedelics could facilitate problem solving of a technical nature. Dr. Oscar Janiger in Los Angeles and others had done work with artists—but we took on a different challenge. Could we use these materials and get people to work on highly technical problems? One difficulty, we knew, was that if we upped the dose enough, our volunteers would all be much more interested in seeing God and in letting go of their personal identities, time, and space than in focusing in on work-related problems. In 1965, we began to run this really gorgeous study with senior research scientists from a number of companies. We told them that we’d assist them in their most pressing technological problems, particularly if they were really stuck. Our criterion for admission to the study was that they had to bring at least three problems that they had worked on for at least three months. A number of patents emerged out of that study. But all good things come to an end. One morning, we were running our seventh group. Four people were in the first, relaxing part of the experiment when we got a letter saying, in effect, “Hello, this is your federal government. We are now concerned that psychedelics are available, that people are misusing them, and that there are bad things happening in the youth culture. As far as we can tell, we can’t do a thing about the problem that is bothering us. But we can stop somebody somewhere, which will make us feel better. So, we’ve decided this morning to stop all research in the United States. Yours included.” The wording, of course, said it differently, but the message was clear: your work is over. That effectively ended our research. We did, however, publish those results, and there are a number of rather distinguished, very happy scientists who were involved in those studies. One became a vice president of Hewlett-Packard; another has won every major scientific award that the computer world offers. The irony was that our studies were a totally acceptable way to bring psychedelics into the culture. Yet we were asked not only to stop the research, but also to deny whatever we had already learned and to keep society ignorant of the work. We were asked to do this while millions of people in the culture at large were running around experimenting without knowledge, help, or support. Given that you’d had such profound experiences yourself, what did you do next? I really stepped back at that point. I felt more aware of the absurdity of this moment than I felt personally affected because I was at a place where things didn’t affect me much personally; they just happened, and I did whatever I needed to do. So I stepped back and thought, “Well, what else is available?” At that time, because of the millions of people using psychedelics, enormous other spiritual pathways were starting to open up. Most came from existing traditions and various practices including meditation, fasting, vision quests, shamanistic rituals, and the Peyote Way, developed and used primarily by Native Americans. As I could no longer use what seemed to be the cleanest, best, easiest way to work with myself and other people, I looked at what else was out there. I was almost offered a position as a counselor at San Francisco State University because they were desperate for someone who had experience with psychedelics and who could work with students with related issues. When they thought about it, however, they realized that if they hired me, or anybody like me, it would imply that there was some truth or legitimacy to what was going on. So, rather than have someone who really knew what was going on, they withdrew their offer and decided not to hire me. This made me realize that my career was on shaky ground since my dissertation exposed me as one of “them,” whoever “them” were. I had made it through Stanford. But by the time I was done, Stanford’s great terror was that they would actually be, by supporting psychedelic research, what they liked to call themselves, the “Harvard of the West,” since Leary and Alpert had been fired from Harvard by that time while doing research less controversial than mine. One of the things I did work on became the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. I also worked to establish the Transpersonal Psychology Association. This was to become a forum in which different religious and intellectual traditions could come together to talk, not about doctrine, but about experience. It allowed them to cooperate with each other in a way that hadn’t previously been possible in either religious or psychological circles. One model that existed, run by the same core group, was the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and its association. We began to form something similar. We wrote to the editorial board members of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and said, “We’re moving on. There is more to the human condition than we have experienced with our humanistic orientation. We don’t quite know where we’re going, but here are some of the things that we’re going to look at…. Would you like to join us?” The editors split down the middle. Half of them said, “I have some vague idea of where you’re going, and I’ll go with you,” and the other half said, “Absolutely not.” The major negative responses that I recall were from Victor Frankl, who wrote, “This is total nonsense,” and Rollo May, who, for various reasons, became a serious enemy of the spiritual implications of the work and worked actively against it. In many respects, the humanistic movement was very progressive for its time. Why do you think the psychedelic issue and the transpersonal movement were so antithetical to its belief system? Having been on both sides, my guess is that if you have been brought up with a worldview in which there is only this world, you’ve been brought up intellectually provincial. The only experiences you’ve had with religion have been with people who also have never had any true spiritual experience. What you have, perhaps, is formal religion, which gives you a community of nice people who speak in the metaphors of religion because that’s the best language they have. All this adds up to, however, is a rather impoverished vision of spirituality. You then project onto others, onto people like me at the time. If I’m speaking about being a divine agent of God, then I’m clearly, for example, a paranoid schizophrenic because paranoid schizophrenics also talk about being the divine agents or angels of God. What you find is a group of people who are dealing with the profound fear that their entire worldview is small. And when your worldview is small and you’re in a position of power, it seems neither unrealistic nor difficult to say that the people who seem to be attacking it must be wrong. Psychology has a wonderful knack of turning disagreement into derangement, disability, or pathology. In the scientific world, “fear” is usually called “skepticism.” Think about it this way: if you knew only a little bit of biology, it would seem highly unlikely that a duckbilled platypus exists. If you’ve never seen a giraffe or an elephant, it’s easy to believe that they don’t exist. So, if someone comes to you and says, “I would like you to meet my friend the elephant, who will carry us into the jungle where the giraffes are,” it is not surprising if you say, “I’d rather you go away, and I certainly don’t want to hire you. And I most certainly don’t want to publish your articles.” Would you say that this is also reflective of why the culture at large became so hostile to psychedelics and why, after the initial enthusiasm, there was a wave of repression that included shutting down your program at Stanford? Psychedelics were a waveform growing in magnitude, and Vietnam was a stone wall. When psychedelics met Vietnam and the country split apart, the old guard who had created and maintained Vietnam and were into war and so forth were terrified and correctly threatened. Why? Because the psychedelic people were saying, “We are not really interested in any of your institutions. We’re willing to do whatever’s necessary to tear them down. We’re willing to eliminate your university, not to add some courses. We’re willing to eliminate your military, not improve training. We’re willing to empty your churches, because true religious experience does not happen inside walls.” So the old guard said, “I don’t know what you guys are up to, but I’m feeling so deeply threatened that I will stop you to whatever extent I can.” As a result, you had an amazing unity of the major institutions pushing back against the psychedelic wave. What they said was, “We control the guns; we control the universities; we control medicine. And, by God, we are at war with these people who are not content to let us live our lives but are determined through the most vulnerable part of us, our children, to take away the love and respect and support of our institutions and ourselves.” From that point of view, it’s hard to know what else they could have done. In the past few years, there seems to be a resurgence of interest in psychedelics. What’s going on? The culture is gently beginning to admit that—while the federal government has long since stopped research, the journals have stopped accepting articles, and funding for research has dried up—young people are still taking psychedelics. And these young people, who are mostly well educated, are beginning to admit to each other that the decades of misinformation haven’t worked as well as the makers of that misinformation would like. It’s another generation, some of whom are saying, “I’ve honestly looked at my own experience versus the platters of misinformation I’ve been fed, and my own experience seems to be more valid.” So now psychedelics are coming out of the closet again. In what contexts might they become more accepted by society at large in the future? You need to look at the use of psychedelic material in two contexts. One is entheogenic, and the other is psychotherapeutic. The entheogenic context says that religion is a private act and that government suppression of private, internal events is fundamentally against humanity. That’s the entheogenic path, the path that I am committed to. I now realize that the government did not just stop my research by halting the creativity study. What it really did was to tell me, “You may not practice your religion or we will physically imprison you.” The other context is the use of psychedelics to help people live better lives by having less neurosis, less psychosis, fewer fixations, fewer perversions, and so forth. This is a very different realm, which should be in the hands of the people who historically administer therapeutic interventions. Personally, I’ve become more radical. In the United States around 1830, the laws were that anyone could practice any kind of healing or medicine he or she wished. If you hurt people you could be sued, but if you didn’t hurt people, then you wouldn’t be sued. I’d like to be free to help people. What would you say to young people about psychedelics? I would basically give them my lecture on set, setting, substance, sitter, session, and situation, which is summed up by: If you’re going to use psychedelics, do it with someone you love, and hopefully someone who has been there before you, and be aware that you may find out that the world is better than you ever thought. Beyond that, what I generally say is that it would be an awful lot better if you knew what the truth was before you worked with psychedelics. Many people beginning to use psychedelics today may be a little too young. What I learned from my own research is that psychedelics take your life experience and compost it, so that something new can grow. If you don’t have much to compost, you may not get much out of it. I always looked at psychedelics as learning tools. Even in the middle of a psychedelic experience, I would begin to think, “I wonder what I’m going to do with this?” In a sense, I wanted it to be over so I could start to get to the digestion and assimilation phase, because the psychedelic experience itself wasn’t my major interest. What do you think you would have been like without psychedelics? Without psychedelics, I would have been more neurotic and more boring. I have a decent idea of who I was as a Harvard undergraduate: silly, smart, clever, sarcastic, childish, and arrogant. Yech! I mean, I’m amused by who I was, but I certainly wouldn’t have him for dinner. My world was very tiny, grounded on having a large vocabulary, a moderately high IQ, and so little soul that if you measured it in teaspoons, you probably wouldn’t have been able to taste me. Psychedelics are the fundamental resource upon which I have drawn to become a human being. Shifting gears a bit, who do you think should take psychedelics? Say, if it was in your power to design policy? I feel strongly that we should return entheogen use to the context of a guided relationship, which has been the model in every traditional culture that I have studied. The idea that people should go off and trip with others their own age who don’t know any more than they do, be they fifty or twenty or twelve, has never worked well in any culture, and it certainly doesn’t work well in ours. So if I were the spiritual experience czar and decreed that people would be allowed to have freedom of religion in the United States of America, I would start by saying that freedom of religion of an entheogenic sort will be done similarly to the way one has the freedom to fly a private plane. You don’t start by going up alone. You first go up with someone who knows more than you do. The trained pilot is in charge and tells you when you’re ready to fly it yourself. From the long view, are you optimistic? If you look through history with entheogenic eyes, you realize that since the truth is always available, some people are going to discover it one way or another in every generation. In these last few generations, a lot of people had a chance to discover it and did. Every spiritual tradition that is worth its salt has, at its origin, somebody who had a breakthrough into the true reality. When they came back into being in their bodies they wondered, “How am I going to share this with anybody?” Somehow, they found a way to do it, and eventually they had a lot of people who hung out around them, some of whom said, “I’ll do the shit work. I’ll arrange the meeting, I’ll bring in the food, I’ll handle things.” The handlers gradually—as they always do—got control of the situation. The original founder passed away, and the handlers started to make it easier for themselves. It’s easier to bring in the food if it’s every Sunday; it’s easier if everyone has a certain place to sit; it’s easier if the people pay the handlers; and so on. So the bureaucrats always end up eating away at the spiritual food of the founder. Without a continual infusion of spiritual food, you end up with what we would call an “organized” religion. The spiritual urge—the need to be part of your whole self—cannot be repressed any more than the sexual urge. But the expression of it always, inevitably—and I say that without any ill will—gets ossified. Inflexibility leads to further inflexibility. I have been looking toward the next psychedelic generation to say to us, “What a bunch of tired old farts you are with this or that journal, this association, and your so-called research when God is all around you!” And I want to say to them, “Carry me out of the palace. You win! Tear down the walls. Get back to basics. I mean, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t shoot me. But please take my job!” It’s starting to happen, and I love it. 18 POSITIVE POSSIBILITIES FOR PSYCHEDELICS A Time of Tentative Celebration The chemicals of transformation of revelation that open the circuits of light, vision, and communication, called by us mind-manifesting, were known to the American Indians as medicines: the means given to men to know and to heal, to see and to say the truth. HENRY MUNN, HALLUCINOGENS AND SHAMANISM For those of us involved with psychedelics, this is a time of unexpected changes, a time of tentative celebration. After decades of winter, the ice is thinning. The warming trends toward legalization; increased religious, medical, and psychotherapeutic use; scientific exploration; and cultural acceptance are encouraging. After so many years, why now? Perhaps because the generation that suppressed research, criminalized personal use, and jailed users is passing from power. This next generation is better able to admit to the ineffectiveness of the legal clampdown and to temper it. It is much easier for those who never voted for the current laws to recognize that some, passed in haste and ignorance, are unworkable and counterproductive. While the agenda of the research community has focused on a restoration of therapeutic use,1 the most striking changes have been in the legal status of private personal use. The community of nations seems to be shaking off the fear induced by the excesses of the sixties, the phobic response of the American government, and the pressure from the United States on other nations to follow its lead. Like wildflowers coming up through cracks in concrete, other countries are starting to set their own policies. For example, Gilberto Gil, the culture minister of Brazil, spoke of the importance of Brazil’s efforts to recognize its culture through the national heritage program and characterized the ayahuasca churches as part of the “religious diversity that Brazilian democracy must respect.” This characterization of the sacramental use of ayahuasca as “religious” allowed Brazil to deftly sidestep its international treaty obligations to restrict drug use. The Netherlands has long allowed some psychedelics to be quite easily available but has stopped short of formal legalization. Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 and made it explicit that treatment would be available for any drug user needing it. The naysayers fretted that this would have terrible consequences, but results have been entirely beneficial: less addiction, less social disruption, less overall crime, less actual use, more treatment facilities, and huge savings in law enforcement.2 Mexico legalized small amounts of all previously illegal drugs in 2009. This was done, in part, to free up resources to try to eliminate criminal drug cartels. Since illegal addictive drugs, including cocaine, heroin, and their derivatives, are produced primarily for the U.S. market, the focus is on cross-border activities. The Czech Republic relaxed its laws to the point that many psychedelic plants may be owned or grown legally. It has also relaxed its penalties for possession of small amounts of manufactured substances like MDMA.3 The basis for these reforms is the recognition of the following realities: Psychedelics are not addictive. They never were. Americans than still smoke cigarettesa)—does not kill anyone. Illegal drugs are crime and violence magnets. It was true when the United States prohibited alcohol in the 1920s; it is equally true of any other desired and prohibited substance. We forget the huge increase in drinking and crime that Prohibition brought on. Author Simon Louvish wrote, “Times Square— between 34th and 52nd streets—boasted 2,500 speakeasies, where before Prohibition there had been only 300 saloons. In the entire country, in 1925, there were estimated to be three million ‘booze joints,’ where ‘pre-Prohibition cafes numbered 177,000.’ In other words, a nation of moderate drinkers was turned into a nation of obsessive alcoholics, paying for criminals to build up an immense black market that would affect the nation’s economy for decades.”4 If one removes criminal penalties for benign or at least nonaddictive drugs, personal use actually declines—at least in Holland and Portugal, the only two countries for which we have data. The other equivalent statistics that we have indicate that those states with medical marijuana laws have not seen a rise in total marijuana smoked, as had been forecast by those trying to stop those laws from going into effect. A second group of countries have not changed their laws, but their courts have ruled that their constitutions affirm the right to private consciousness-changing activities. Brazil and Argentina’s highest courts have concluded that the state cannot deny people the right to personal use of any substances as long as such use does not lead to socially unacceptable or criminal behavior. The third group of countries, still uncertain of what direction to take, includes the United States. In the United States, policies that lumped marijuana, psychedelics, and addictive drugs together led to a bulging jail population, the proliferation of highly profitable international criminal activities, the distortion of the national economy in countries producing illegal drugs for American consumption, and a growing disdain for the U.S. government’s failure to cope with the situation. These policies also cost billions of dollars annually. In spite of Washington’s reluctance to change, state after state has used its prerogative to allow people to use marijuana as a medication. Until the Obama administration, the federal government did its best to subvert these laws and keep all marijuana users criminalized. An indication of the pent-up demand for legal medical use is that within a few weeks of the administration’s decision to stop federal blocking of medical marijuana use that had been approved under state laws, eight hundred marijuana dispensaries opened up in Los Angeles alone, outnumbering banks and public schools in the city. The trend toward legalization is accelerating as it becomes more and more self-evident that marijuana use does not lead to violence or to criminal behavior. That the last three presidents have smoked marijuana at one point in their lives has not been lost on reformers or the general public. Marijuana is not a psychedelic, but it is a consciousness-altering substance used traditionally for spiritual and therapeutic purposes. As its status changes, other consciousness-altering plants and substances are less likely to remain demonized. In 2010, several states, notably California but Nevada and Florida as well, had drives to allow the right to vote on initiatives to decriminalize or legalize marijuana. The California drive succeeded and put “Proposition 19” on its ballot. In California, the primary argument is that marijuana production, although one of the state’s largest industries, is totally untaxed and that its interdiction is expensive and unsuccessful.5 The idea is to turn a sinkhole of wasted money into a source of revenue. The California ballot proposition makes possession of up to one ounce legal; it allows individual cultivation in a garden of no more than twenty-five square feet, forbids sales to minors, and forbids smoking in public. The specifics of regulation and taxation are left to local jurisdictions. The proposition was defeated 54 percent to 46 percent. Medical marijuana initiatives in Oregon and South Dakota also lost. The loss, at least in California, was due solely to the demographics of the turnout. As was true nationally, a far smaller number of younger voters participated than in 2008. The older the voter, the less likely he or she was to vote for the proposition. More directly pertaining to psychedelics and religious freedom, several court cases in other states have established that religious groups using ayahuasca as their central sacrament can practice their faith without fear of imprisonment. These cases are a major step toward the restoration of religious liberty regarding other psychedelics in other settings. Even the nonsense of forbidding the cultivation of hemp as though it were marijuana (comparable to putting root beer in the same class as Coors) has been getting a fresh look. Imported hemp products, including those for human consumption, are again available. One state, Washington, following the example of Canada and a dozen other countries, allows hemp to be grown, harvested, and sold. There seems to be, if not an end to the lack of common sense in the regulatory establishment, at least some cracks in it. Making marijuana legal and taxable would have greatly reduced the budgets and staff needs of the drug-enforcement establishment—and its clout. The push-back came from law-enforcement agencies, private prisons, and prison guard groups, whose profits or very existence depend on strict enforcement and long sentences (in addition, from alcohol and tobacco interests). Many police departments, for example, depend on the seizure of property and money from drug arrests as a major revenue source and will fight a loss to their incomes. For example, authorities in Los Angeles in 2008 seized assets valued at $7,709,355; in San Francisco, $938,012; and in Sacramento, $1,633,282.6 Only now, in the preliminary phase of liberalization, are we starting to have available evidence-based science about psychedelics. It would be unduly optimistic to expect evidence-based legislation to become widespread anytime soon, but more countries can be expected to relax some of their restrictions as the benefits of doing so become more widely apparent. Entheogenic Use Although legal restrictions put an end to conventional research, they did little to prevent the continued proliferation of psychedelics throughout the culture. It is difficult to say which of many cultural areas have been most affected by psychedelics. For example, Jack Kornfield, a noted Buddhist teacher, says, “It is true for the majority of American Buddhist teachers that they have had experience with psychedelics either right after they started their spiritual practice or prior to it.”7 This use, in fact, is not contrary to Buddhist vows.8 My own experience is that teachers in many other spiritual disciplines also began their spiritual journeys after important psychedelic experiences. Since 2006 a team at Johns Hopkins University has been engaged in a series of studies to determine if psychedelics taken in a safe and sacred situation lead subjects to spiritual experiences.9 Hardly surprising, the answer has been yes. More important than the research itself was that it crossed a major barrier: the government allowed, for the first time, a research study that asked spiritual questions, not medical ones. Most telling was the amount of media attention given to the findings. More than three hundred publications took note of the results after their publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Surprisingly, a positive account even appeared in the Wall Street Journal. More instructive, in looking at trends, was a short article in the Scottish Sporting News. The headline read, “Shrooms Get You High.” The editors assumed that their subscribers knew the slang term for psychedelic mushrooms and that it would not require a lengthy article to say that science had discovered what their readers already knew. Equally important, a host of websites now meet the need to have easy access to basic information for safe, sane psychedelic use. The foremost site is Erowid (www.erowid.org), which has reports and information, technical articles, interactive molecular dictionaries, visionary art, descriptions of dangers and contraindications, as well as thousands of personal reports on dozens of substances. The site averages sixty thousand visits a day, a figure that has grown every year since its inception. Browsing through the site makes it clear that while forty years of inadequate information may have worked against wise use, a widespread underground is thriving unimpeded.b Another recent phenomenon is the growing popularity of ayahuasca. While other psychedelics are often used recreationally, ayahuasca is almost always taken under the direction of experienced guides or shamans. In the sixties, a prototypical rite of passage was to visit India, study with a guru, and practice austerities in an ashram. Today’s psycho-explorers head for the South American rain forest to work with traditional healers and traditional plant medicines, of which ayahuasca is the best known. While the trips to India were mostly about personal self-realization, the intentions of those seeking today’s South American immersions almost always include healing (physical and mental), but the seekers are equally concerned with repairing the rift between humanity and the other biological kingdoms. Two debates continue, holdovers from the wide-eyed sixties. One is about the validity of experiences induced by plants or chemicals versus experiences achieved by meditation, prayer, movement, or fasting. The argument smolders and flares up now and then but will never be settled. The other debate—between those who scorn synthetic psychedelics and those who don’t—goes on as well, with no hope of either side convincing the other. Gordon Wasson, who discovered psychedelic-mushroom use in the New World, was asked about the difference between the mushrooms and psilocybin, manufactured by Sandoz. He said, “I did not discover any difference. I think the people who discover a difference are looking for a difference and imagine they see a difference.”10 What is important is the effect that taking the substance has on one’s life and well-being, not the subtleties of this or that product. Medical and Psychotherapeutic Uses Medical and psychotherapeutic psychedelic research is back! Though one researcher calls this time a golden age in psychedelic research, it would be more realistic to say that a tiny tip of the camel’s nose has been allowed into the tent. Outside the tent, a large community of researchers is eager to begin work delayed for decades. In 2006 and 2008, scientific conferences honoring the work of Albert Hofmann in synthesizing LSD and other psychedelics brought more than two thousand people from thirty-seven countries to Basel, Switzerland. Two hundred journalists from all over the world covered those presentations. More recently, the Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century conference, held in San Jose, California, in April 2010, sold out at twelve hundred participants and was widely and favorably reported in the media. These are remarkable turnouts for gatherings about substances that have been illegal for so long. While some current research is a repeat of work done before everything closed down, new areas of research reveal how psychedelics help alleviate medical conditions that have not been amenable to conventional treatment. It is important to note that there has been no outcry to stop the work. By taking on more difficult syndromes, the researchers have skirted such opposition, and, in fact, have been well supported by their medical colleagues. One example is work being done with cluster headaches.11 The healing effects of LSD for this condition were first claimed by illegal users, whose communications with one another became public,12 and they are now being evaluated in a study conducted at Harvard. It remains to be seen if what is already fairly well proved can make it through the double-blind pharmaceutical hurdle to peer-reviewed publication and, more important, can become available, not only for research but also for use in normal clinical practice. Another successful study used psilocybin with late-stage cancer patients who had high levels of anxiety. Results show that a single session in a safe and supportive setting, allowing the sacred to be experienced should it occur, benefits the patient and the patient’s family.13 Within two days of the release of the results, which were published in a major journal, there were over four hundred media mentions. What was striking about the coverage was that, as in the earlier Johns Hopkins study, the stories reported not only the findings but also that the study affirmed what was already known. It is not unreasonable to assume that the extensive press coverage was due in part to the fact that many journalists and media editors these days have tried psychedelics while in college and thus are more open to positive reporting of even the smallest new study. A more controversial treatment, once allowed inside the United States but now pushed out to other countries, uses iboga, an African psychedelic plant, to break the cycle of heroin addiction. Given the poor track record of conventional treatments and the high cost of addiction, untreated as well as treated, this area should be getting more attention and support in the future. In fact, several recovered addicts found it to be so valuable that they now treat their brethren illegally in inner-city environments without medical support. What is yet to resume is research on psychedelic therapy to overcome alcohol addiction, which was far and away the most fully researched, tested, and proven therapy from before the psychedelic prohibition era. Nothing has been written about it since then, not even in underground circles. It is, for now, a large missing piece of the current medical research renaissance.14 A number of other countries, including Germany, Switzerland, Jordan, and Israel, are allowing or supporting psychedelic projects, primarily with MDMA, to help people overcome chronically debilitating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). With hundreds of thousands of veterans returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD, demand for a treatment with a higher improvement rate than the present therapy is intensifying. That Vietnam veterans, decades after that conflict, are still in treatment makes it all the more likely that eventually MDMA-based therapy programs will be offered to veterans. The first research study of veterans with PTSD to be given MDMA-based therapy was approved in 2010. Perhaps, as with cluster headaches, the first reports will be from veterans who are self-medicating and helping one another, as is already happening with marijuana. However, as long as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ hospital system remains underfunded, understaffed, and overcrowded, it will be unlikely to institute new treatment protocols soon. Extensive illegal use of psychedelics for self-exploration, with and without trained guides, will continue. A survey of college students found that the most cited reason for taking psychedelics was self-exploration, not spiritual or recreational use.15 Just as the acceptance of medical marijuana has spawned the “dispensary,” where patients can buy their medications, so can we expect the emergence of clinics and institutions specializing in psychotherapeutic treatment with different kinds of psychedelics.c Creativity and problem Solving The term psychedelic is already in popular use to describe a certain kind of music and visual art. It carries no stigma for an artist to avow that psychedelics influenced the creation of a song, a painting, or a dramatic production. Their use is widely accepted in the technical world as well, even though there is, as yet, hardly any discussion about it. During the “dot-com” revolution, companies were formed by people young enough to have grown up with psychedelics readily available. Drug use for them was casual and frequent. That two Nobel Prize laureates acknowledged the impact of psychedelics on their scientific breakthroughs suggests that there has been far more use of these substances in the scientific community than is reported.16 Paralleling the thousands of people who attended the scientific conferences in Basel and San Jose are the much larger groups that flock to the yearly Boom Festival in Portugal and the Burning Man Festival held in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. While not all of the fifty thousand people who attend Burning Man each year have taken psychedelics, the vast majority of attendees have. On YouTube, over one million people have viewed individual factual and conceptual videos on psychedelics. In 2009, National Geographic Television was able to sell advertising space for a full evening of programming about “drugs.” The evening began with an hour about methamphetamine. A second hour toured the world of marijuana planting, growing, selling, and use. The final hour was on contemporary psychedelic use, primarily biomedical and therapeutic studies, but it included urban drug dealing and the use of psychedelics by artists to improve and expand their skills.d Such programs indicate how far we have come since nonsense like Reefer Madness was touted as “informational.” Conclusions The overall trend is toward greater openness and greater availability of information. Trained guides for spiritual and scientific sessions are still hard to come by, but cultural and market forces are favorable for institutions to be created for such instruction. In fact, over one hundred not-yet-legal guides and those working in approved research studies met together—unofficially—at the San Jose conference. They agreed to pool information and approved the establishment of a wiki site, www.entheoguide.net/wiki, to be administered by the Guild of Guides. The first two chapters of this book and the checklist (chapter 19) are already part of that website. The guild is planning to have its first national conference in 2011. Both the overview in this chapter and this whole book support the optimistic hope that the proper uses of these remarkable substances will not be overwhelmed by trivial popularization, as was the case when psychedelics were made illegal. The counterforces to wider acceptance include the usual suspects: stupidity, fear, greed, self-interest, and inertia. The law enforcement–prison establishment employed to enforce drug laws are already becoming active. In California, the prison guard unions donate heavily to political campaigns and will undoubtedly spend a great deal of money, time, and energy fighting any marijuana initiative. Some members of organized religions will also be among the opposition. In almost every religious institution, there are those who act as intermediaries between the faithful and the Divine. Psychedelic experiences that offer the possibility of direct contact, bypassing this establishment, have been seen as a threat in the past and may be so today.17 Other money to oppose the initiative has come from liquor and tobacco interests, perhaps concerned with a potential competitor for recreational use. Additional opposition may come from the international banking system. If this sounds unlikely, it is only because most of us are unaware of the value of illegal drug sales. A United Nations study of the world financial meltdown of 2008 and 2009 concluded that one of the few continuing sources of liquidity was the $232 billion (that’s the real number) of estimated drug profits during that period.18 The majority of these profits were from drugs such as heroin and cocaine, but keeping the laws muddy and confusing serves these interests better than laws focused solely on addictive drugs. As favorable as these trends may be (and whatever else you read in this book that you feel good about or are surprised by or want to share with someone), what matters most is how your understanding of yourself and your place in the natural order has been made clearer or richer or of more value because of your actual or anticipated psychedelic-supported experiences. If the resultant insights are not integrated into your life, they can be trivialized, ignored, or even “pathologized.” Huston Smith, probably the world’s foremost scholar of religion, says the question is not “Do these substances support religious experience?” but “Does their use lead to a religious life?” Psychedelic researcher and Buddhist practitioner Rick Strassman says, “‘Spiritual experience’ alone, even repeated, is not the basis for becoming a better person. Rather, psychedelic insights tempered and put into practice, using ethical and moral considerations, appear to be the best way to harness the power of psychedelic drugs.”19 This round of prohibition of highly desired substances is starting to wind down. Like the first attempt with alcohol, it has been a failure along every dimension that can be measured. These words by Albert Einstein, speaking of the first prohibition, sadly are just as valid today: “The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.” In many cultures, psychedelic explorers are called upon to find something of use to their society, such as learning about the healing properties of a plant, bringing back a healing song, or recovering a nugget of wisdom to help people live in greater harmony with themselves and with the natural world. That psychedelics make such experiences more easily available does not lessen this responsibility. The question posed by the poet Mary Oliver, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”20 is one that psychedelics impel you to take seriously. PART FIVE THE NECESSARY, THE EXTRAORDINARY, and Some Hard-Core Data Introduction to Part Five When you write fiction, you soon learn that readers don’t need to know much about the characters at the beginning of a story. So fiction writers wait. They fill in the backstories about their characters later. Another truth that fiction writers know is that all books are mysteries; but unless the “mystery” keeps the reader curious enough to turn the next page, the book isn’t working. For nonfiction writers, the tasks of holding the readers’ attention and bringing in back stories are much the same. This final section is back story. It contains important information for your own personal exploration. Chapter 19 is a checklist of the information contained in the first two chapters about giving or taking a high-dose entheogenic session, restating the basic elements to take into account. (There is growing evidence, especially with complex medical procedures, that the mandatory use of checklists reduces mistakes and vastly improves success rates. For that reason, a checklist is included here.) Chapter 20 contains examples of personal journeys taken without using the psychedelics LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin. The first four sessions are reports from two people taking ayahuasca with indigenous guides. These sessions are samples of the experiences Westerners have with this plant mixture. The last report describes what took place during the last part of a fourteen-day darkness retreat; it reads like a classic mystical experience. All these reports are reminders included to remind us that that there are many methods and practices that can open awareness and that different methods open different doors. Chapter 21 explores actual behaviors (described more generally in chapter 8) that are changed and remain changed as the result of therapeutic sessions with psychedelics. The final chapter presents the results of a very early study that asked individuals who had had a single high-dose psychedelic journey with LSD or mescaline what they felt was important about their experience. Perhaps because of the long research lull, this simple self-report study is still the best available today. In a good novel, we look forward to loose ends being tidied up, mysteries solved, and characters’ behavior explained as events complete their cycle. The real world is not like that at all. Nothing ever ends; it just blends into the next thing. Every nonfiction book is only a snapshot of what is currently known and what remains unknown. Some of what we know now as being ever so true will turn out to be wrong, and whole areas will be revealed as the new unknown. This tour of psychedelic studies is no different. Some will not hold up, and some will turn out to be critically important. Each of us must evaluate public information and scientific research reports and, above all, test everything against our own personal experience. 19 ENTHEOGENIC JOURNEYS A Checklist for Voyagers and Guides This checklist is designed to help the voyager and guide create the best possible opportunity for a voyager having an intentional entheogenic session. The checklist is meant to supplement the guidelines fully described in chapters 1 and 2, not to serve as a substitute for it. It’s best to work through the checklist a few weeks ahead of time, but it can also prove useful just before and even during a session. See www.entheoguide.net for possible updates and expansions. General Preparation Voyager and Guide Read through chapters 1, “Meeting the Divine Within,” and 2, “The Entheogenic Voyage.” Feel good about each other. Feel that you can trust one another. Voyager Clarify your personal preconceptions about psychedelics and entheogenic experiences in general. Consider and reflect on your personal understanding of mystical experiences, cosmic consciousness, and God, Goddess, or the Divine in general. Find an appropriate and qualified guide for the session. Set your intention clearly enough to be able to say it to your guide. Ideally, have three full days set aside for the experience: a day to prepare, a day to have the session, and a day to integrate the session. Guide Determine whether you are qualified and experienced enough to serve as a guide. If you are feeling uncertain, determine whether you can be supervised (with the voyager’s acknowledgment) by a qualified mentor. Agree to serve as voyager’s guide. One Week Before the Journey Voyager and Guide Make sure in advance that you have your voyage day off for all commitments from work, family, and friends. For people with whom you keep in regular contact or people who might call you spontaneously and worry when they can’t find you, let them know that you will be unavailable all day and evening. If you use an Iphone, BlackBerry, or tweet or use another instant service to communicate with others, make sure that those people know there will be times when you will be offline and that you are fine. Set Voyager and Guide Feel reasonably well prepared for the coming session. Have a good understanding of the general flow of time and the likely types of internal visions and external changes anticipated during a session. Have a positive overall mind-set with respect to the coming session. Feel good about and trusting of each other. Voyager Make sure to spend part of the day before the session quietly, in preparation. Be in touch with thoughts and feelings and have positive expectations. Be comfortable with the guide, physically and emotionally. Have no unusual or intense, suicidal, dark, or otherwise troubling thoughts and don’t intend to delve deeply into suffering or the nature of evil. Be prepared to have highly unusual experiences, including: experiencing different realities or historical periods; being in a different body of either sex; becoming an animal, plant, or microorganism; experiencing your own birth; meeting the Divine within in a wide variety of possible forms, including gods and goddesses, divine beings, or transcendent light. Guide Have the intention to wholeheartedly and effectively be present for the voyager. Be emotionally and spiritually ready for the upcoming session. Be prepared to handle whatever arises during the session, internally or externally. Be prepared to deal with any fear that arises in the voyager (or yourself) with gentleness and presence. Remain neutral and nonjudgmental about the voyager’s issues, relationships, and personal history. Understand that there are an infinite number of ways for the voyager to meet the Divine. Verify that the voyager has no suicidal, dark, or otherwise troubling thoughts and is not intending to delve deeply into suffering or the nature of evil. Be willing to cancel or postpone the session for a specific reason or based on an intuitive gut feeling. Check the existing level of trust between yourself and the voyager. Setting Voyager and Guide Ensure that you have a private, safe, comfortable indoor space to use for the session’s duration. Ensure that there are comfortable spots—couches, beds, rugs— where the voyager can lie down, sit down, and hang out. Have soft pillows and blankets available. Music capability: have headphones, ear buds, or speakers available in accordance with voyager’s preference. Have eyeshades, eye pillows, and a folded washcloth or scarf available for eyes-closed music listening. Have flowers and candles available, if desired. Have water available for the voyager and the guide. Have access to adequate restroom facilities. Silence or turn off electronic devices (including phones). Minimize the likelihood of other external interruptions. Have art materials, journals, and other creative tools available for the voyager’s use, if desired. Also have family photographs, a mirror, artistic objects, flowers, and other beautiful natural or man-made objects available. Agree on whether the outdoors will be safely accessible for the latter part of session. Voyager Be adequately and comfortably dressed and have warm layers available. Consult with the guide on music and, if desired, provide the guide with specific musical requests and selections. Guide Feel good about the space and overall setting. Provide for personal food, drink and other needs for the duration of the session. Consult with the voyager on music. Have appropriate music available for different phases of the session. Substance Voyager and Guide Agree on the desired entheogen and dose. Have obtained the entheogen from a trusted source. Voyager Understand the likely overall effects from the entheogen at the chosen dose. Be prepared to be quiet and lie down as the entheogen takes effect over the first twenty minutes to one hour. Guide Have an adequate way to measure out and administer the correct dosage. If the voyager is moving around or otherwise seems substantially under-dosed after the first hour or so, possibly administer a booster dose. If, after two hours, with or without a booster dose, the voyager is not deeply inside, DO NOT continue to press for an entheogenic-level session. Session Voyager and Guide Be prepared, positive, and overall ready for the duration of coming session. If either the voyager or the guide has sudden, intense forebodings or misgivings about going forward with the imminent session, cancel or postpone it. Create an intentional, sacred space as the entheogen is administered. Agree to keep unnecessary conversation to a minimum. Have an appropriate sitter available to care for the voyager at the end of the session and after the session. Voyager Eat lightly or not at all before the session. Feel physically well (or well enough) to go forward with session. Be prepared to take guidance and receive assistance from the guide during the session. Be prepared to lie down, listen to music, observe your breathing, and pay attention to any sensations in the body. Be prepared to let go of expectations about session, and let go of personal concerns about relationships, personal issues, and habits. Be prepared to let go of each experience, feeling, or visual event as it occurs. Be prepared to let go of your personal identity and allow physical boundaries to dissolve. Be prepared to experience and deepen your awareness of other dimensions of reality. Be willing to ask for guide’s help, assistance, or feedback whenever desired and trust the guide’s directions. Be prepared to reintegrate toward the end of the session. Guide Be prepared to give the voyager specific, necessary assistance and guidance, such as a gentle touch and the suggestion to breathe deeply. Be prepared to assist the voyager in getting to and going to the bathroom. Be prepared to hold the voyager’s hand and otherwise maintain supportive, nonverbal contact. Remember to let the voyager know when you are leaving and have returned if you need to briefly leave to use the bathroom or do something else. Be prepared to go with the overall flow, to trust the voyager’s instincts, and to accommodate the voyager’s stated desires when reasonable and possible. Agree to take no consciousness-altering drugs before or during the session. Be prepared to experience and appropriately deal with any “contact high.” Refuse to act in a sexual manner, even if asked. Validate what the voyager sees and experiences by rephrasing or summarizing it in simple language. Be prepared to invite the voyager to go deeper by saying phrases like “Yes! That’s good. Would you like to know more?” Be prepared to show the voyager personal photographs if requested. Be prepared to make electronic recordings or take notes at the voyager’s request. Post-Session Situation and Sitter Voyager and Guide The post-session sitter, ideally a friend or relative with psychedelic experience, should be identified ahead of time and should arrive at the agreed-upon time. The sitter understands his or her job is to fully support the voyager during his or her post-session reintegration period. In consultation with the sitter, a plan is in place for the initial post-session reintegration period and to assist in getting the voyager back to his or her regular circumstances. In consultation with the sitter, a plan should be in place to offer the voyager a light meal after the session. Voyager Be prepared to spend the day after the session integrating insights and experiences. Will not make any major life decisions—other than immediately stopping toxic behaviors—for at least the first few weeks. Have adequate post-session support available from friends, the sitter, and the guide, if needed. Be prepared to wait at least six months before another entheogenic session. Guide Be sure that the voyager is in an appropriate condition to be left with the sitter. Be sure that the voyager has an appropriate support system in place in terms of family, friends, people at work, religious group support, therapists, and spiritual teachers. Be prepared to meet with the voyager at least once soon after the session to help finish the reintegration process. Sitter Be prepared to listen and do not suggest, interrupt, or interpret. Agree to allow long silences, as the voyager may still be doing inner work. Agree to help the voyager get ready for bed, to sleep, or to rest. Agree to not leave the voyager alone for the night, but that you can leave the voyager with friends or family. 20 BEYOND LSD— WAY BEYOND Ayahuasca Sessions and a Darkness Retreat MICHAEL WIESE, “ANATOLE,” and LINDSEY VONA LSD and related psychedelics open up one range of experience. The reports in this chapter show how people have used other ways to explore a significant range of experiences. Each of these reports began as a letter to friends. Each one describes a transformational journey. Each writer had prior experience with other psychedelics. The first two are about ayahuasca taken under shamanistic guidance; the third is about the effect of a prolonged time period spent in total darkness with no substance given at all. Ayahuasca Michael Wiese Michael Wiese is a respected documentary filmmaker, a former television and film executive, and the owner and publisher of Michael Wiese Productions (www.MWP.com), the foremost publisher of books about film and video creation and production. After his first two experiences with ayahuasca, he wrote a report to a circle of friends. It has been slightly shortened for inclusion here as “part 1.”a A year later, Wiese wrote another report about a subsequent session, included here as “part 2.” Wiese has since made a film, The Shaman and Ayahuasca: Journeys to Sacred Realms, and is publishing a book of interviews related to this work.1 He lives with his family in Cornwall, England. Part One The Second Journey The shaman shakes his rattle. He whistles, breathlessly. His seductive voice weaves through me with beautiful and eerie icaros (songs) that create openings in my brain. I remember to focus on my intention. I am here to learn. To go deeper, I breathe slowly in and out. I feel the gritty, molasses-thick medicine of Mother Ayahuasca ripple through my belly, my liver and kidneys, and then jet up my spine to my brain. She is present. It’s time to ask. I think, “Show me Divine Love.” Faint at first, with hardly any color saturation, geometric images appear. They brighten and become something. I see a yellow, peach-colored gauze. I feel there is something behind it. Slowly Mother Ayahuasca pulls back the veil to reveal a soft yellow room. I realize it is a nursery. Curiosity draws me near. I try to focus on this amazing vision. As I look closer, I see a womblike room, secure and comforting. How strange. Why would She show me a nursery? And like any nursery, which may display the first A-B-C letters of the alphabet or a fanciful mobile for the new arrival, this too has pre-school teachings. Everywhere, in this room, is the support and love of all the child’s previous ancestors going back to pre-history. As I move into the room, I begin to see that the designers of this nursery have prepared the most fantastic and elaborate carvings—too vast for the eye to take in except in short gasps—for the being who will arrive shortly. Behold the sacred! Complete and total awe! The carvings are perfect and stretch on as far as I can see. It’s as if ten thousand craftsmen have been commanded by a king to carve for ten thousand years. It’s as if generations of the Universe’s most accomplished artisans have been told that a Divine Child is coming and to get the room ready. And they have done so. That’s what I see. These intricate carvings—far more advanced than those of the Taj Mahal or anything in the Forbidden City—are sacred scriptures in Sanskrit, Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic, and many other texts I don’t recognize. The walls are filled with knowledge that the child will absorb in its life. I am trying to take it all in and remember it because it’s the most extraordinary place I’ve ever been—a heavenly palace. I move closer into the room and can feel the breathing presence of two huge black boas that encircle and protect the room. I can’t see them, but I can feel their warm, deep electric hum. I think to myself, “Oh great, giant snakes.” I am afraid I might see them and be terrified. But as I breathe again, I find out I am not. The Giant Snakes are here to protect the Child. “So who is the Child?” I ask. “This room is for you. You are the Child.” I am overwhelmed, shocked, stunned. No words can describe the feeling! I am worthy of the love of the Great Mother Ayahuasca! She has poured her most magnificent creativity into preparing and creating this room for me! I try to take it all in. I notice the room has expanded on the far side. I can see an entire cityscape built with the same exquisite craftsmanship and intent. This is only one room of thousands, millions! Nothing is spared in Her generosity for the Child. A second, deeper wave of realization comes over me. All humans are Divine Children. She provides for us all. We are already living in a Paradise! Hours later, when the vision has worn off and I look around at the green field where I’ve been sitting, the pond with its geese and four goslings and the forest beyond—I see every leaf a masterpiece like the carved detail in the room. Mother Ayahuasca has poured the same love and creativity into providing food and beauty for all human life. We live in an exquisite paradise. We should fall to our knees in appreciation for our sacred Earth and the Universe. The First Journey This nursery was one of many visions. I wrote about it first because it was the most exquisite, gentle, and beautiful of the visions. Ayahuasca can also bring very dark and terrifying visions. The first journey was filled with energy so great I could not stay balanced. It had the force of a tsunami washing over me, and it went on for hours. It started with a beautiful landscape of jewels and a woven electronic blanket of undulating snakes with extremely garish orange and green colors. There is nothing subtle about Ayahuasca’s taste in art! The detail was incredible, and there was too much to watch. When I first saw the landscape, I thought to myself how beautiful it was to look at. Just then, the relationship between the vision and me shifted. Subject and object merged. Duality was gone. I was the vision. I was the mesh of energy and jewels and snakes that I was seeing. That’s when the scanning began. It was like the medicine plant had a lot of entities working for it, and although I couldn’t see them, my body was being scanned and sliced and diced in every direction as if through a giant cheese grater. Later, I realized what I was describing could have been interpreted as an alien abduction. It was not frightening, but it was overwhelming. I certainly hoped they knew what they were doing. My DNA, my entire operating system, was being reprogrammed—and fast. Billions of terabytes of information were shuttling through every cell. I breathed through it, trying to stay centered. I found I could ask the plant questions and get immediate answers, either verbally or visually or telepathically. But there was so much energy that for much of the time it was all I could do to surf the wave, let alone try to carry on a master-student conversation. There is a vast amount I don’t remember. Sometime later, I saw other images of organic green-and-flesh-colored entities. At first, the light was beautiful, but when I looked deeper into the shadows, there was real evil, and it was terrifying, and I tried not to look. Wrong. The lesson being taught was that good and evil are part of the same thing, and like it or not, they come into the world of duality as a package deal. I tried to accept this and breathe through the realization, and even though I didn’t like what I was learning, I saw it was true. Sometime later, I entered a black, murky, smoky hell—worlds of scraping electronic sounds and metals. A smoky substance rose like one of those black snakes that kids light on Halloween. I may have been seeing my toxins being released at a cellular level. All around me throughout the night were the sounds of the other thirty participants puking their guts out. People were growling and bellowing like beasts as they heaved into their buckets. I tried to give them love and compassion and, as we were instructed to do, not get caught up in their dramas because I had my own to attend to—that was my responsibility. Without staying focused on one’s breathing and intent (what one wants to learn), it’s very easy to get disoriented. All the time, the energy poured into me and through me like a fire hose pummeling me, so much so that I felt that my energy would be depleted and I would truly be annihilated. I tried to sit up straight in half-lotus and breathe in and out. I was nauseous and vomited several times over the next four or five hours. But little came up because I had eaten very little beforehand so what was purged was probably toxins from my organs. Once as I leaned into the bucket bright colored pearls—like pop beads—came out of my mouth. The torrent of energy continued to hammer me. Occasionally there would be a one-breath break and then back into it. There is no resisting this force, which is the same as the force of Creativity and Destruction combined. Everything is constantly being born and dying. This force brings everything into being and recycles it in death. I was tapped in directly to the main power current of the Universe. All Powerful does not describe it. It is Beyond Massive! And it is surging through me constantly. I am a part of it; everything is a part of it. Our existence depends on it. I was on a Mobius strip dying and being reborn again and again and again and again and again and again…. It was painful and frightening and dizzying and, like some out-of-control carnival ride, as much as I begged, the operator would not let me off. Nightmarish. I was sure I wouldn’t make it. I had nothing left. Still, I fought to hang on to my last drop of energy, but in the face of ayahuasca—the most powerful—resistance is futile. When the ceremony ended, I stumbled back to my room, heavily intoxicated, shaking and weaving, and dizzily dropped into bed. But the visions continued, and I was hammered for another seven hours. I realized that it was foolish to have eaten so little before the session because I had no fuel and no reserves. I was feeling dehydrated but was too weak and sick to reach the few inches to the bottle at the bedside. It took enormous strength to reach it and suck a few drops. I felt if I didn’t nurse myself back to life, I’d be dead by dawn. I wanted to get someone to get the shaman and have him end the journey, and even though I could hear others nearby, I was too weak, too near death, to call out to them. At 7:00 a.m., the visions stopped. The journey had lasted twelve brutal hours, short in Earth time—an eternity in experiential time. Throughout the day, I was weak, and I swore to everyone, over and over, “I will never, ever, ever do this again.” At one point, I was very paranoid as I realized my entire DNA had been reprogrammed. I felt my hard drive was erased and I had a whole new operating system that had been installed by aliens. I felt that the whole thing was a vast conspiracy—my friends introducing me to the shaman, the literature was all propaganda—and now my previous life was annihilated, and I was one of them. On Sunday was another session. I told my friends and the shaman what had happened and that I wasn’t going to do it again, that I didn’t have the strength. I was in a mind-space of weakness, of feeling myself small and incapable. It was pointed out to me that in fact I did survive, that the warrior in me did return home. I was indeed changed. I had numerous insights, which busted me out of old beliefs and habits and negative thinking. The treasures were indeed worth the horrific struggles. It was going to the Underworld, Experiencing the Supreme Ordeal, Resurrection, and Returning with the Elixir. The Joseph Campbell/ Christopher Vogler mythic paradigm is so powerful because it expresses the real deal. But I did survive, so I must have had the strength. And yet it was a terrifying journey and the most difficult thing I’d ever done in my life. Only a fool would sign up again. My theory is because I had stayed on a raw vegetable diet for two or three weeks before ingesting the plant medicine, the ayahuasca worked intensively and quickly through an empty stomach. (Hence little came up during the purging.) Even though I was one of the last people during the ceremony to ingest the medicine, I was one of the first to start to journey. The shaman suggested I take a lesser dose if I wanted to do it again. But I didn’t want to do it again! Never! I already had enough content to process for a lifetime. But as I regained my strength and ate a real meal for the first time in weeks, my confidence was restored. It is a great privilege to be allowed even a glimpse of this multidimensional Universe peopled with gods, demons, fairies, spirits, ancestors, and mythological beasts. Everything described in myth and legend is real, and these creatures are only a sliver of the inhabitants who share the Universe in a parallel dimension. I realized that my ordinary consciousness is asleep, unaware, caught in addictive and habitual patterns. Ayahuasca blows the top off that and with a cosmic tough love takes you on an express train to the true nature of reality. She demands that you “up your game,” inherit your birthright, and become all that you are in your own sacred and divine nature. Isn’t that what we’re all looking to do? I knew I had to meet the challenge and ingest the healing medicine again. So—since it is all about “set and setting” and preparing your own mental state before journeying, I did my best to drop my self-generated image of weakness and simply go for it. I realize that at least—as a filmmaker—I’ve picked the right medium. Words cannot describe what happened. You cannot “language” this experience. I know I sound certifiable, but I am not. I’ve never used language like Divine Child or Great Mother Ayahuasca before, but it seems appropriate to frame this experience. For the four days I spent around the shaman and the other participants, there was an incredible feeling of love and acceptance. My mind is usually filled with judgments—judging everything in some way, separating myself from others. The main teaching is we are all part of the same thing. Our bodies do not end at our skin; they extend throughout the cosmos. We do not live on the Earth; we are the Earth. We are not separate and we will suffer until we realize this, at which time our true healing begins. Part Two The Third Journey As a result of our desire to understand more about the dimensions that ayahuasca opened in us, my wife and I were invited to join my same shaman Don José Campos in Peru. Shortly after our arrival, the shaman conducted a private ceremony to prepare us for the interview process. Since my body requires very little plant medicine to enter other dimensions, I took a cautionary small dose. My intention was to work on some health issues, so 90 percent of my journey focused on healing. After about forty minutes, I started to have visions. Vast celestial hallways—what I recognized as the Halls of Healing—appeared in soft blues and violets. Columns rose to the clouded heavens. While I didn’t see any “gods” or encounter any entities, this was certainly their domain. About midway through the ceremony of icaros sung by Don José and additional songs by singer-guitarist Artur Mena Salas (a Peruvian recording artist), a tropical lightning and thunderstorm was invoked. A rush of wind blew through the circular space, which felt like a flock of spirits flying through. Then the gods began to play. Lightning struck, followed by crashes of thunder, coming closer and closer after the flash. The energy was phenomenal. A torrential downpour shook the trees that surrounded us. At the climax of the storm, I had visions of entering a deep cellar. I did some deep breathing work to lift and remove black boxes one at a time. They were very heavy, even though I had discovered that by breathing I could lift them from the basement to the ground floor. I found I could do even more work if I synced the lifting with the thunderclaps and their release of energy. It felt like the storm was helping me cleanse. After what seemed like hours of lifting boxes, I was pleased I had only one or two left to move. But then I discovered a secret cavern beneath the floor loaded with more black boxes! I understood this was content that I no longer needed and I could finally be free of. I hadn’t the slightest desire to open a box to see what was inside. It was no value to me anymore. I only wanted to get rid of it now that I had my chance. So, breath after breath, like the broom scene from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, I lifted boxes until I was exhausted and there were no more. At some point in the ceremony, I asked the plant teacher if I could see Buddhas and bodhisattvas, and for a moment, I felt sure they would appear, but then I got the message that, yes, I would see them, but not now because I wasn’t ready. Fair enough. Everyone else had already returned to normal consciousness an hour or two before me. (I’ve gotta try even smaller doses!) Several times when I opened my eyes, the shaman was sprinkling perfume water, trying to revive me, asking me “Are you back?” I said no, closed my eyes, and went back to work. At some point, feeling I had had enough, he gave me a lemon with salt to taste. In ten minutes, I came back, and I could walk around naturally. Toward the end of the journey, I saw electric-green snake-like weavings that were unfolding very seductively to draw me in. Apprehensive at being annihilated by this emerald cosmic Cuisinart, I opened my eyes to stop it, then closed them, at which point the process would begin again. I needed to surrender to the visions and let them take me. The vision was simultaneously my vision, my body, and everything in the Universe and beyond: one energy, space and awareness mixing. Hard as it was, the plant medicine’s main message was simply, “Let go,” join consciousness. There is no annihilation; there is no beginning; there is no ending. “Anatole” “Anatole” is a gifted yoga teacher living in Charleston, South Carolina. He has been involved in a successful high-tech start-up company and has written several books that make technology more accessible to the general public. His report illustrates the way ayahuasca, called “Aya” in his report, “teaches.” Like any teacher, Aya sometimes finds it necessary to repeat a lesson until it is understood. This was a first experience. A very, very brief report. I don’t want to write too much. This was one of the most remarkable experiences in my life. One of the things the shaman seems to do is act as a guide, a very highly trained and experienced guide. After a brief vision of lights and interconnecting lines, my mind kicked into overdrive, and I became very, very lucid and creative. I immediately solved a couple of long-standing personal problems. I lucidly and clearly saw the solutions to formerly intractable problems. The solutions were easy, simple, and clear. (Implementing them will require a lot of work, but I see the solutions clearly.) I received many teachings, almost all of them verbal. The more important ones were repeated forcefully, several times, so I wouldn’t forget. At one point I asked Aya how to heal a health problem. I got three answers: ANSWER 1: “Are you sure you really want to know? Here’s what healing means.” Followed by an explanation. “Yes.” ANSWER 2: “Are you really, really sure? Here’s what it means.” The explanation was repeated. “Yes.” ANSWER 3: “It [the healing process] would probably kill you [you are not strong enough]. So here’s what you can do as an alternative….” A detailed teaching followed. The shaman impressed me tremendously. He struck me as the equivalent—in our culture—of a world-famous doctor or medical professional, a highly educated and gifted professional in his field. The complexity and subtlety [of the technology, psychology, learning] of this [discipline, field, arena] left me in awe. The most surprising thing about the entheogen is how “practical” it is. I see why they call it a medicine. I went in with very strong intent and clearly focused questions. The setting was superb and serious. I was told the dose was small. I am reviewing the “teachings” and seeing if they hold up to scrutiny by my “daily” consciousness. So far, they seem to be valid and very accurate. Total darkness retreat Lindsey Vona Lindsey Vona is a talented musician, graphic artist, and poet living in Northern California. With her permission, I’ve included a section of her report about experiences that resemble classic mystical descriptions and reports of entheogenic journeys. A major difference seems to be that while peak experiences aided by psychedelics last at best a few hours, Vona seems to have spent days in the unitive state. As with a proper use of psychedelics, set and setting were important variables in letting Vona come, on her own, into this state of consciousness and later to begin to integrate her new view of her identity into her life. Vona spent two weeks in darkness at the Sierra Obscura Darkness Retreat Center. At its blog (go to www.sierraobscura.wordpress.com and click on “overview”), the center is described as “an optimal environment in which individuals enter into perpetual darkness, with all of their basic needs provided for, in support of self-realization.” The stated optimal time period for these retreats is fourteen days, with two days post-retreat at the center for integration. A Darkness Retreat Report This is a detailed description of my retreat in total darkness for fourteen days at Sierra Obscura Darkness Retreat Center. Recently, I’ve been getting quite a few requests from friends in the community to share my experience, so I decided to go all out and offer a candid portrait of my journey through the abyss into self-realization. During my retreat, I had my own bedroom and access to two full bathrooms and a large, comfortable, common space, all totally “en-darkened.” Organic food and liquids were delivered, by way of a corridor and a series of doors to ensure no light leakage, at varying hours of day and night. Food boxes were left on a table in the common space with a wooden number on it associated with the room. Vona described the first eight days in detail, which included many other kinds of experiences. Her report of the second part of her retreat and her return to her normal life are included here. For her full report and more about her work, go to www.lindseyvona.com. Around day nine, I felt like I was being teased right on the edge of ego death; it was very different than ayahuasca. The visuals in my meditations began to lessen, and my mind basically stopped for long stretches of time. I was awash with black nothing and the occasional passage of thoughts as I lay waiting for the next stages of internal changes. Somewhere between day nine and day eleven is when I had my most profound opening into self-realization. I don’t remember how long it lasted, but this is a fair description of what I remember. At one point in my meditation, my head opened and flooded with light. I watched and felt this quiet bliss and gladness take over and noticed that my body became pure vibration. I couldn’t feel or relate to myself as physical anymore or as Lindsey in any way, and yet I was still myself, but it felt much more real than what we call waking life. I was absorbed into this light, and this light became the entirety of space around me until I was only this giant, radiant light-filled void. I was real and home again and bigger than a trillion of our suns. In some way of seeing beyond having physical eyes, I looked down and saw the dots that were the earth and sun and solar system and thought of Lindsey. None of it was real. I was the only thing real. The material thing I once identified as and thought of as myself and my world was realized to be a full and total illusion, not even worth defining. Words like spiritual and Lindsey and Earth flashed before my awareness of perfect peace and were realized as inconsequential, as though they never existed and were only beautiful idea-pictures already come and gone and dissolved back into my actual self of pure light. I zoomed down to Earth and saw Lindsey. It didn’t make sense. I was a gigantic bigger-than-all-concept-of-universe radiant unending shimmering ball of light emanating perfect compassion forever without cause. Even now, as I write this, I am aware that it’s total illusion and ultimately inconsequential. I am holding this paradox while sitting in physical space and time, not quite sure how to relate it to you at all, really. The nature of reality is not what it seems. Even my experiences of perceiving the maya, of perceiving emptiness and suchness throughout my whole “life as Lindsey” as a spiritual seeker could not come close to this total absorption into self-remembering perfection of total …er …uh …beyond words and description annihilation into truth-light. During this absorption into light, I also realized that I was able to sit on the rug of my room as a perfected vibrational entity, not as “Lindsey,” but as my true self, a vibration of perfect Buddha nature. My best metaphor for this is that we are like living, vibrating, nonphysical Tanka paintings. We’re already perfected and beyond even concepts of enlightenment or self-realization, and perfectly realized. We’ve just forgotten, and rightly so, because these mind-body-desire mechanisms are not us, even though they are. This life is a shadow in a great memory probably already forgotten by unending intelligent light. I was able to easily shift between my awareness of self as this great unending light and my awareness as this vibrating, perfectly realized Buddha, nonphysical self for what felt like forever. I think this realization state lasted several days while in the dark. All fear of death was completely annihilated in this realization. All relationship to suffering or suffering over the suffering of others at this time was not even a laughable possibility. Identification was futile. I was happy to die into this light forever. Part of me wanted to die. Part of me very much did not want to come back into this room, this body-thing as Lindsey. It didn’t make sense, and yet it happened and here I am. I didn’t think about my parents or whether they would miss me if I let myself get completely absorbed in the truth of what I am because I knew that ultimately they are the exact same thing and that eventually, whether in this “lifetime story” or at the time of “death,” we pretty much all remember because we already are it. I guess I can’t really know what is true for you or “anyone,” except that you are me, and this life is not at all what it seems. This idea of physicality is still just a concept, and we have very sophisticated sciences now that describe this process of liberation through all of these body energy centers, and it’s funny that you can get back to yourself through this map called a body, but ultimately it is the false identification. What a joke! It is very much a dream-thought radiating from the one eternal emanation, which is also you, right now, beyond the husk of your worldly identity. The earth herself is a dream and is dreaming, and we are all asleep in it right now. Even though I’ve had this realization, right now, for the most part, I am sleeping because the dense physical plane is the world of attachment and desire, and ultimately, I am a vibration shape-shifting back and forth between image-vibration and perfect eternal light and identification with the physical, which isn’t really physical, even though it seems so real. This realization completely annihilated my need to “work on myself” in the way I had been during the previous abyss moments of the retreat. I didn’t need to feel blissful anymore or have any particular experience or have an identity that I had sculpted well enough to get what I want out of this “life” from you or anyone or any “world.” All that was spoiled, and I was free from all fear or notion of death and still am …in this moment. It is funny. Right now I am excited about life as well as death, but that’s only partially true because I’m right here and life and death are only concepts. It is a paradox. Amidst this realization as I came back into this husk of illusion sweet self, it occurred to me that perfecting human love will do nicely for now, that I am happy to break open into the depth of love with you in this lifetime and excited for the challenges to come in the hopes that I can maintain these perceptions enough in my awareness to live more gracefully in the truth of the light that we are sharing here together. A few abyss moments after this, Danielle came downstairs, and we spoke, and she lit a candle next to my bed. The first time I saw the physical apparition of light in fourteen days, I saw the true nature of reality, this time with human eyes. I could only look at her for a few seconds, and then I started shaking and crying and needed the candle to be put out for a while as I integrated what I saw. Then I went upstairs to be with Paskal and the Sierra Obscura team near the fireplace, the blank slate of my awareness free of all concepts. I saw light dancing everywhere and the unborn world radiating and perfecting itself in presence. A thought arose in my mind, and I saw how its flash across the screen of awareness literally bent reality around me; a projected thought is a distorted lens that conditions this mind-world. Sitting as source, seeing everyone in their God-self-hood by candlelight, I cried and silently noticed how easily the psychic energies from the minds around me danced and played together, refracting off of the screen. Later that evening, I called Rigzin, who I knew had been sending us prayers for the entire retreat, wanting to share the depth of my gratitude from that pure place with her and with the whole team who served us for those two weeks. The next morning, with sunglasses on, Danielle took me for a drive along a beautiful tree-lined road on our way into downtown Nevada City. The light was so mesmerizing, and it was hard to really talk; I just wanted to look at everything. As I saw this “world” again, I could barely contain my laughter at how unreal it seemed but tried to hold it together in the restaurant. This retreat was by far the most profoundly important investment I have ever made in this sweet dream thing I now humbly, temporarily, call myself. I am slowly coming back into my “life” and integrating. Although I have been mainly silent these last few days, I can feel the conditioned world of concepts and desires dancing again, although without as much power over me as it once had. I am excited that my body/mind is now naturally waking up early and wanting to meditate right away. I understand that many, many beings on this planet, including possibly you, have died into this perfect state of self-realization. After all, it is what we are. I can’t really know for sure how my life will unfold from here. All I know for sure is that I am perfect god light temporarily dreaming Lindsey and World and none of this happened or is real at all. Under this husk of temporarily arising selfish thoughts, preferences, conditions, images, attachments, and desires, I am a vibration of pure compassion, which is being itself, already liberated, never born, never died, traversing the great void that holds each of us, whether as gods or humans, as my teacher Maniko says, more perfectly than any living element. I’m filled with emptiness and quiet gladness and gratitude at having an opportunity to take this on alone in the dark, in comfort, with so many beings, physical and nonphysical, supporting me. 21 BEHAVORIAL CHANGES AFTER PSYCHEDELIC THERAPY Lasting Results of High-Dose Single Sessions Sixty-seven participants (forty-four men and twenty-three women) were given LSD, mescaline, or a combination of the two for a guided psychedelic session. Before and after that session, they met with a therapist as part of a course of therapy or personal exploration. (Other aspects of this study have been discussed in more detail in chapter 8.) The sessions were run by the staff (myself included) of the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park in 1962 and 1963 along the lines of sessions described in full in chapters 1 and 2. Six to nine months later, the participants were asked what had changed in their lives. Their answers were recorded as the following. More: Engaging in this behavior more intensely or more frequently than before the therapy. Less: Engaging in this behavior less intensely or less frequently than before the therapy. Same: Engaging in this behavior as often as before or not at all. More-extensive comments by the participants were written down during the interview. Three hundred and thirty-two questions were grouped in eighteen categories. The level of significance for each item was calculated using a sign test.a The original study, listing the total scores for each question as well as additional comments by participants and more-extensive predictions and analyses, is available online.† What follows is a brief discussion of most of the highly significant items in each of the eighteen categories, with some predictions about the likely direction and extent of specific changes and some representative comments to clarify and amplify the answers. One complete table (Table 21.1) on page 288 is included to show how all of the data for each category were displayed. The findings were grouped into six areas: Personal habits Work and interpersonal relations Cultural and creative activities Activities involving family members Subjective activities Physical functioning and health Personal Habits It was predicted that participants would become more inner-directed and spend less time doing things just to please or impress others. It was expected that they would be less anxious about being orderly. Over 50 percent of the sample reported changes in personal orderliness. Representative of those who had become less orderly were comments such as “Before, I was orderly because I was afraid of what others thought” and “Doesn’t seem to be so important anymore.” Those who had become more orderly made comments such as “Things seem to fall into place more easily” and “Bought vacuum cleaner.” A significant number of men improved their appearance (p .01),b wore brighter colors (p .01), and became more stylish (p = .01). Both men (p .01) and women (p = .01) reported more interest in household decoration, making comments such as “Now I buy flowers for the house, haven’t for years” and “Having a ball using what I have, silly nightlight for bathroom, split big rug in half …do things with more pleasure.” It was predicted that changes in eating habits would include an increased enjoyment of the social side of eating and cooking as well as in the pleasure of eating. It was expected that drinking problems would be ameliorated. The most widespread changes were increased appreciation for fine cooking (p .01), increased interest in cooking (p = .05), and, to a lesser degree, an interest in unusual foods (p = .10). Individual reports included less interest in sweets and less compulsive eating. Comments included, “No longer crave potato chips,” “Not the need for the candy bar now,” and “I was a compulsive eater when I was unhappy. I guess I’ve stopped now.” One participant reported, “Melon allergy over.” (As mentioned earlier, in Chapter 4, Dr. Andrew Weil has written about overcoming a severe cat allergy during a psychedelic session. His proposal to evaluate psychedelic therapy for allergy relief has not yet been acted on.) Half the sample (48 percent) reported changes in their drinking pattern. Those drinking less said, “Quit entirely. Before, I would have three drinks or more before dinner,” “I used to think that drinking would ease tension; I’m not fooled now,” “Drink now because I enjoy it. Before I drank to get drunk,” and “I don’t care for wine since LSD. On skid row I was a wino. I was drinking up to LSD.” (Note: Three years later, this last participant still did not drink.) Those drinking more said, “Didn’t drink at all before; I had a fear of losing control,” and “Apt to have a sherry before dinner…. Mother [still] thinks social drinking leads to alcoholism.” Twice as many subjects reported drinking less than those reporting drinking more. Most of those who drank more, mostly men, went from abstention to moderate social drinking. Work and Interpersonal Relations Since one aim in undertaking psychedelic therapy is to gain information about one’s self and one’s relationships, changes were expected in the value placed on work and the degree of cooperation with and interest in other people. Well over two-thirds of the sample reported major changes in their work pattern. The job itself was easier (p .01), more work was done (p .01), with more energy (p .01) and more initiative (p .01). Interest in the job increased slightly overall (p = .10). However, a number of people reported less interest, reflecting changing priorities. Comments included, “Last week I demoted myself. I asked not to be boss,” “More inclined to study and read than to get ahead financially,” and “Before, there was a compulsion to get somewhere, be a vice president…. That feeling is gone.” For most, cooperation increased (p .01), as did decisiveness (p .01), and confidence in one’s decisions (p .01). Some subjects found it more difficult to make decisions (p .01), and some procrastinated more (p .01). Respect for coworkers (p .01) and listening to them (p .01) increased. Listening to superiors went up significantly (p .01). As for interpersonal relations, 87 percent of the sample reported being closer to others (p .01). Subjects reported having more friends at work (p .01) and outside of work (p .01), feeling closer and easier with them (p .01), less anxious (p .01), and less distant (p .01). They spent more time talking with others (p .01), and taking part in activities (p .01). They spoke more frankly (p .01), and more tactfully (p .01), and had a heightened interest in talking with others (p .01), and being with others (p .01). They enjoyed parties more (p .01), liked pets more (p .01), spent more time in nature (p .01), and felt more positively about nature in general (p .01) and flowers in particular (p .01). Across the entire sample, psychedelic therapy clearly had a pervasive positive effect on work and social intimacy. Cultural and Creative Activities As psychedelic experience almost always heightens awareness of music, more interest in music was expected. Any increase in reading would probably be in psychology, consciousness, or spirituality. These predictions were borne out. More time was spent listening to music (p .01). Subjects bought new, higher-quality audio equipment (p .01), and listened more to classical music (p .01). Over 70 percent of the subjects read more (p .01), especially on religion (p .01), ethics (p .01), mysticism (p .01), philosophy (p .01), and psychology (p .01). They watched television less (p .01). While this may reflect interviewer bias, watching less television was considered healthier. Since participants were encouraged to explore their spiritual orientation and religious background, considerable changes in related behaviors were expected. Many changes were highly significant, the most frequent—reported by more than two-thirds of the participants—being greater tolerance (p .01) and more belief in a higher power (p .01). There was little change in church attendance. However, more religious books were read (p .01), there was greater interest in religious services (p .01) and talking about religious subjects (p .01). There was more feeling for religious music (p .01). Subjects prayed more often (p .01). Comments included, “I have been brought closer to God and the concept of the supernatural. The teachings of Christ are very definite now,” “More belief now than ever, but I’m uncertain as well,” “Radical change. Now I feel it,” and “I believe in a unitive spirit. God is up there; God is down here.” While psychedelic use still causes ripples throughout the art world, the only significant change in creative activities was greater enjoyment of a musical instrument (p .01). Some people reported less interest in prior creative pursuits. Comments included, “Taking less pictures now. I don’t feel it is as important to have things recorded,” and “Writing is an escape valve. I guess much of my love was repressed and writing got rid of sadness, frustration, and desires.” There were changes in painting (p = .01). Participants said, “Completely new. I literally learned to hold the brush,” “I become more of a colorist. Less interest in pure drawing. Harmony of color is more important,” and “From naturalism to abstraction (mandala) as a device for focusing.” It may be that the shifts reported, duplicated in other studies, are manifestations of increased well-being. A 1964 study by Savage and others1 reported decreased anxiety for 68 percent of the forty-nine patients at six to twelve months after psychedelic therapy. A 1964 study of psychedelic therapy by Downing and Wygant2 reported 80 percent of the subjects felt greater personal security. Activities Involving Family Members Part of the research explored emotional responsiveness in a range of intimate relationships: first in general, then within the family and in marriage, and finally in sexual behavior. Given prior findings, greater emotional openness and responsiveness were likely. TABLE 21.1. PERCENTAGE, SIGNIFICANCE LEVEL, AND DIRECTION OF CHANGES IN EMOTIONAL RESPONSES— BEHAVIORAL CHANGE INTERVIEWS Table 21.1 is an illustration of how each group of results was presented in the full report of the study. It was picked because it records significant changes in such a large percentage of the sample. The most pervasive changes were heightened responsiveness (p .01), a more loving expressiveness physically (p .01) and verbally (p .01), and greater friendliness (p .01). Participants had greater confidence in their beliefs (p .01), decisions (p .01), and actions (p .01). They were both more and less aggressive, but less sarcastic (p .01). Men were more willing to accept advice (p .01). In arguments, both men and women were less dogmatic (p .01), excitable (p .01), and stubborn (p .01) as well as more flexible (p .01). There was more singing (p .01) and whistling (p .01), most probably brought on by feeling good more often. Self-confidence increased for almost everyone (p .01). Except for four people who reported decreases, it seemed that these subjects were more willing to feel their feelings, better able to be angry, and more likely to love. Freer to be aggressive, they were also more open to affection. In short, they appeared to be more social and more vital. The emotional expansiveness and the increased openness and friendships seen in Table 21.1 did not carry over as fully to relationships within families. There were fewer changes in those relationships than had been expected. These adults did get along better with their parents (p = .01). There were significant shifts in sharing ideas (p .01), spending time with family members (p .01), and getting along with siblings as well (p .01). More participants shifted their behavior toward their children. More time was spent teaching (p .01), playing (p .01), reading (p .01), talking (p .01), and caring for them (p .01). Overall, parents and children got along better (p .01). Individual changes with a family member were sometimes sizable. One participant, speaking of his father, said, “First time we’ve been able to talk to each other.” Another said, “Under LSD I understood something about my oldest child and now we get along better.” Marriage (Married Subjects Only) Marriage, the most long-term and intimate relationship, is also one of the most fragile. Spouses were often worried when told that their partner was undertaking psychedelic therapy. We were unsure if marriages would be strengthened or shattered by insights obtained during the course of therapy. The question that showed the greatest amount of change of any item in the entire interview (92 percent) was the question of marital satisfaction. Every person but two felt that his or her marriage was more satisfactory. And one of those two felt that his marriage had improved, adding, “But I’m less satisfied because I see more possibilities for improvement.” Besides the overwhelming amount of improved satisfaction (p .01), communication improved (p .01), as did wishing to please one’s spouse (p 01). Quarrels, as did occur, were shorter (p .01), and problems were discussed sooner (p .01). More activities (p .01) and interests were shared (p .01). Over half the sample with spouses (58 percent) had a partner who also had psychedelic therapy, likely a contributing factor for these pervasive positive changes. Sexual Patterns Given the greater degree of martial satisfaction, one might predict an equal rise in sexual satisfaction. Most of the changes reported, while not highly significant, were in the predicted direction. For women, sex was seen as more important (p = .05) and more central to the relationship (p = .05); for men, less so. Both sexes reported that sexual excitement increased (p = .01) and reported significantly more satisfaction with intercourse (p .01), which included more variation (p .01). Men reported improved performance (p .01). For men, masturbation decreased (p .01) and was less satisfying (p = .05). Both sexes reported more frequent and satisfying kissing and petting (p .01). While the absolute numbers of individuals whose sexual behavior shifted were not as high as in some other areas, individual comments are illustrative of the importance of some of the changes. Some who reported sexuality to be more important said, “Is changed greatly, and changed for the better. A happy natural instinct for it now,” “For the first time in my life, I’m having sexual feelings,” and “I never understood how much pleasure was possible in sex.” Some who found sexuality less important said, “Previous to LSD, to my mind, sex was important as a problem. Now it is not,” “Before LSD, it was beautiful but all else was a mess. Now I realize that it is not so central,” and “Used to feel put upon. Now it’s enjoyment.” While interest in sex both increased and diminished, most of the comments were about having less anxiety and more pleasure. While the number of women reporting more orgasms was not statistically significant, of the nine women who did report this, seven of their husbands had done psychedelic therapy. The temptation to speculate on this finding has been resisted. Two subjects reported they had given up sexual behavior. Both gave as reasons their own accelerated spiritual development. However, to their interviewers, neither appeared to be functioning at the level of those explanations. It appeared, instead, that they used the therapy to reinforce defensive structures rather than coming to terms with real difficulties in their sexual adjustment. Overall, there is clear evidence that the often-reported emotional openness that occurs during well-managed psychedelic therapy was true for this group and that this openness was retained. It is seen in their relationships from the more formal to the most intimate. Subjective Activities The list of subjective activities includes: Material values Introspective activities Fears Dreams Material Values The popular and even the pseudo-professional literature of the sixties abounds with how often psychedelic use saps the ambition and denigrates the work ethic, often quoting Leary’s rallying cry of “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” However, in the study group, men’s earnings actually increased (p = .05). There was significantly less concern among men over status (p .01), respect from coworkers (p .05), respect from others in general (p .05), and more interest overall in finding new work (p .01). Women’s ambition increased (p = .05), showing less interest in income, per se, but more in other job satisfaction. This population may be less interested in materialism, but more interested in productive and satisfying work. Introspective Activities Psychedelic therapy so stresses the value of introspection that it would be surprising if there were not significant shifts toward these activities. The participants spent more time in introspection (p .01), self-analysis (p .01), and meditation (p .01). Of those joining outside groups, men gravitated toward therapy (p = .01), while women joined religious groups (p = .10). Fears Overall, fears decreased more than they increased in every category. There were twenty-three reports of increased fears and 156 reports of decreases (p .01). Because the therapy regimen did not focus on fears or attempt to interpret them when they arose, this result is intriguing. As self-concept and self-awareness showed dramatic increases, one would predict that specific fears, especially phobias, would diminish. In fact, fear of insects (p .01), animals (p = .01), being alone in darkness (p = .05), and snakes (p = .10) diminished. Fears of heights, enclosed places, and falling were unchanged, but may have been rare in the sample. For some people, their reduced fears were important. One participant stated, “Less fear of heights. Feeling is still there, but I can control it now.” In psychedelic therapy, individuals often experience their identity to be beyond their physical body. Perhaps this is why the fear of death was the fear most often cited as having decreased (p .01). Dreams When people become more introspective and more interested in their own inner processes, their actual dream life may become richer or they may notice and recall their dreams more easily. For whatever cause, in the study population, every aspect of their dreams showed significant increases except length. Different facets of increased dream activity are illustrated by the following representative comments. Frequency (p .01): “Much more. No dreams for several years prior to LSD session,” “Didn’t dream at all before LSD. Now I dream.” Length: “Seems longer now, more happens”; “Quick and to the point.Used to be involved and go on and on.” Amount in color (p .01): “Color now. No color before”; “Hadn’t dreamed in color before LSD.” In addition, dreams were more intense (p .01), more meaningful (p .01), remembered more often (p .01), and enjoyed more (p .01). For some, dreams were less disturbing. Comments included, “Not scared anymore,” “Dreams instead of nightmares,” and “Less pain, fewer nightmares.” In summation, the subjects reported a richer, more meaningful, and less disturbing dream life. Physical Functioning and Health The therapy staff predicted that physical health would improve alongside mental health. Physical Functioning Only about one-quarter of the sample reported changes in any physical activity. Activities that did change, however, increased, including walking (p = .01), hiking (p = .05), participating in sports (p = .01), dancing (p = .10), bike riding (p = .10), and gardening (p .01). Psychedelic therapy, when it affected physical activities, did so in a healthy direction. The only activity that decreased was hunting (p = .01), a change probably more philosophical than physical. Health Most subjects were in moderate to good health prior to entering the program, and most changes reported were improvements. Of the sample, 76 percent felt better after exercise (p .01), and smaller percentages experience less fatigue in general (p .01), fewer headaches (p .01), and less boredom (p .01). Participants reported improved vision (p .01), hearing (p = 10), smell (p = .01), taste (p = .01), and touch (p = 01). Some slept less (p = .10), used fewer medications, (p = .05), and had fewer pains or complaints in general (p .01). Comments included, “No more tranquilizers,” and “I had a pain in my leg. X-ray showed arthritis. When I was upset it became more painful. Since LSD the pain has been eliminated entirely.” Some subjects reported new complaints, many of which seem to be psychosomatic in origin. The increases in physical activities and improved health appeared to be more from an indirect consequence of establishing a more workable psychological equilibrium than from any direct effect from the psychedelic therapy itself. Conclusions It can be seen, from this lengthy and somewhat exhaustive presentation of results, that changes in this group of sixty-seven people were numerous, extensive, positive, and lasting. It can be concluded that this therapeutic protocol of short duration, at least with this moderately healthy population, was beneficial. That this therapy is not yet legally available to the general population is unfortunate. 22 A QUESTIONNAIRE STUDY OF PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCES WILLIS HARMAN, Ph.D., and JAMES FADIMAN, Ph.D. From the beginning, reports about the effectiveness or dangers of psychedelic experience relied on individual reports as their primary source of data. This was supplemented with opinions based on varying amounts of knowledge, from none (most common) to considerable knowledge based on experience (rare). What was missing was a straightforward look at the self-reports of a large number of people who had been given a psychedelic under similar conditions and who were long enough away from the experience to realistically evaluate it. The following questionnaire was given to provide answers to a few basic questions. It does not offer any interpretations of the results. Because almost every item reported would test as statistically significant (a term that means it is unlikely one would get the same results by chance), that statistical measurement was not used here. Because of the protracted lull in legal research, we do not have similar reports from current psychedelic therapists. I spoke with one nonlegal therapist, however, who indicated, considering his own experience with over one thousand clients, that these results were in line with his own perceptions. As the number of legal studies increases, we can hope for a replication of this kind of questionnaire research in the future. Questionnaire Study of the Psychedelic Experience The following is a brief summary reporta on the results of a questionnaire sent to the first 113 clients of the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, California, and to forty nonpaying, experimental subjects who had single LSD sessions at the same location under similar conditions. Of these, ninety-three patients (82 percent) and twenty-six non-patients (65 percent) returned completed questionnaires. The treatment of the patients in this report was similar to the treatment described in chapters 1 and 2. 1 Preparation lasting approximately one month preceded the LSD session. Doses were moderately high (200–400 micrograms of LSD with an additional 200–400 milligrams of mescaline when deemed necessary). The groups of volunteer subjects were not strictly comparable, since in addition to the selective factors operating for the two groups, the non-patient group in general received less preparation and lower doses. The questionnaire was patterned after one used in a similar study.2 It consisted of seventy-five statements wherein the subject was asked to rate his or her level of agreement with the statements: 0 (not at all), 1 (a little), 2 (quite a bit), 3 (very much). Additional questions requested subjective reports on particular aspects of the experience (e.g., impression of preparation and atmosphere, most meaningful insight). Summary of Results In overall summary, the single most significant figure is perhaps the percentage of respondents who claimed “quite a bit” or “very much” for lasting benefits (83 percent). The claimed improvement rate rises from 76 percent at one to three months after the single LSD session to 85 percent after twelve months or more have elapsed since the session. The most commonly reported benefits include an increase in the ability to love (78 percent), to handle hostility (69 percent), to communicate (69 percent), and to understand self and others (88 percent); other changes included improved interpersonal relations (72 percent), decreased anxiety (66 percent), increased self-esteem (71 percent), and a new way of looking at the world (83 percent). Of particular interest is a high correlation of 0.91 between “greater awareness of a higher power, or ultimate reality” and “claimed permanent benefit. As regards negative responses, none of the experimental volunteers and only one patient felt that they had been harmed mentally. (By the time a year had elapsed since his session, that one patient had revised his negative opinion.) Immediately after the LSD session, 24 percent found that daydreaming and introspection “interfere with getting things done”; that fell to 11 percent after one year. Problems within the marital relationship not previously present were reported by 27 percent of non-patients and 16 percent of patients. In the following tables, items marked with an b are the percentages based on the number of respondents who answered this question, because some items, such as those about marriage or work, were not applicable for everyone. I. Sex Differences One question was whether there were significant differences in response to the LSD according to sex. The figures given below are percentages of the total group of clients whose first LSD session had been at least three months prior to the filling out of the questionnaire and who marked each statement either “I agree with the statement very much” or “I agree quite a bit” (3 or 2, according to the questionnaire instructions). Three percentages are given for each item, in columns marked M (men), W (women), and T group (total). There were many differences, some statistically significant, but none that seemed important clinically. There is no later research that has looked at or found major differences between how men and women respond to specific psychedelics. Table 22.1. Looking back on your LSD experience, how does it look to you now? Table 22.2. How were you, or what were you left with, after the LSD experience? II. Effect of Time We were interested if the effects of the LSD session tended to “wear off” and whether the answers would differ depending on the length of time since the session. Percentages are presented from participants who fit into four time frames: A (less than three months since the LSD session; n = 21), B (3–6 months; n = 26), C (6–12 months; n = 19), and D (over 12 months; n = 27). Table 22.3. How were you, or what were you left with, after the LSD experience? Table 22.4. What changes in attitudes and behavior do you feel have occurred directly as a result of your LSD experience? III. Outstanding Event or Insight The answers to the question “What single event or insight, if any, during the LSD experience do you consider to have been of greatest meaning to you?” are of sufficient interest to be worth summarizing briefly. (The actual number of people responding is used here, not a percentage.) Table 22.5. Outstanding Events or Insights LAST WORDS When you publish a book, your editor becomes your most knowledgeable supporter and critic. My editor, Anne Dillon, said that the readers of this book needed a few final words to pull it all together. I agreed with her, in part because this book includes so many different uses of psychedelics and also because I had some loose ends left to discuss. I’ve described the positive trends in research, personal use, and lowered legal restrictions. Those trends continue: more countries are establishing clean-needle clinics for heroin users, more states are voting on compassionate medical use of marijuana, and more research is being published on marijuana’s varied healing properties. Also, marijuana growers in Oakland, California, organized a union and joined the Teamsters, which is about as mainstream as you can get. Some of what you’ve read in this book has been presented by me at conferences, heard on podcasts, and distributed via a few websites, to which I’ve gotten a variety of responses, some of which have been gratifying, others emotionally disturbing. Most upsetting for me are stories of people damaged by psychedelics misused, like this one: “When I was seventeen, I was at a keg party with my best friend. He set his drink down and went to the bathroom. During that time, someone dropped a massive dose of LSD in his drink. To cut to the chase, he is in a state mental hospital to this day. I am now forty-eight. He was a 4.0 student, very popular, and one of the nicest people that God put on this planet.” In a more perfect world, that tragic outcome could have been avoided had there been experienced people available to intercede. Now, at least, at concerts, at festivals, and as best exemplified at Burning Man, there are well-trained individuals, with and without the right degrees, to assist people who have taken psychedelics and become disoriented as a result. Most of these disoriented individuals emerge from the experience, not only undamaged, but also healthier and more prudent than before their crisis. The fact that we, as a nation, have made it highly unlikely that people can get this kind of training as part of a psychology, medical, or nursing degree has served no one. I’ve become part of a movement to alert teenagers and younger people that “dosing” someone—giving them a dose of a psychedelic (or any drug) without their knowledge—is as morally repugnant as rape or physical assault. People often ask me to give them a psychedelic or entheogenic session or connect them with a guide. As an author and a researcher, I need to be—and I am—totally law abiding; thus I am not able to provide that service. I hope that will change and that soon I will be able to fulfill these requests, but that day has not yet come. There is, however, and has been for some time, a quiet underground of guides, each of them actively working with clients. If and when the barriers come down, this Guild of Guides is ready to move aboveground and continue their work. Clandestine out of necessity, recently they have started to form networks; this is a good sign. I also get asked about psychedelic research that someone should be doing related to, for example, lupus, multiple sclerosis, stuttering, or allergies. I hope that such studies will be part of the second wave of research because there are individual reports that each of these conditions has been vastly improved after a psychedelic experience. The survey studies that we are currently conducting have taken a new turn in that we have established baselines about use, such as bringing to light the fact that people who are interested in psychedelics have used many different substances in a great variety of settings. That’s now known. The second level of questions we are asking includes the following. Health: Are there long-term stable changes in prior physical conditions? If, in taking a high dose in a safely managed experience, you realize that your identity is not limited to your personality, not even to your body, does that affect overall health and, if so, in what ways? Sexual identity/orientation: Have psychedelic experiences changed either your sexual orientation or your point of view about your orientation? Bad trips: Most of the use reports indicate that bad trips are not usual but not uncommon. We are asking people to describe the anatomy of such trips: their cause, content, impact, insights, and aftereffects. We know already that a bad trip rarely stops a person from having additional psychedelic experiences, although typically they don’t have many more. A different team is gathering reports on the use of teners (sub-perceptual doses). Communities of users are reporting on their experiences, adding to the reports in chapter 15. Why this interest? This community leader’s (a member of the Guild of Guides) opinion seems spot on: “If the modern world is ever going to accept these medicines, in our experience, maybe it would be a good idea to start at a more manageable dose versus the blow your mind Death/Rebirth (full dose or more) experience that has been the norm for the last forty years.” My task is to collect, compile, analyze, and publish these reports. A new project for me is team-teaching a class titled Psychedelics: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications with David Lukoff and Alicia Danforth at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, in Palo Alto, California. It is the first graduate-level clinical class like it in the country. We already have requests from other U.S. schools and for people in Canada and England to teach it online. This interest argues that the period of institutionally induced ignorance is giving ground to commonsense education. If millions of people have taken psychedelics, it is sensible for psychotherapists and spiritual guides to know enough about these substances and their vicissitudes to be helpful to clients coming to work with them. Whether these projects will be encouraged or suppressed again is unclear given that some institutions remain phobic about psychedelics. Consider the following research-supported observation by Stanislav Grof: “One of the most remarkable consequences of various forms of transpersonal experiences is spontaneous emergence and development of genuine humanitarian and ecological interests and need to take part in activities aimed at peaceful coexistence and well-being of humanity…. As a result of these experiences, individuals tend to develop feelings that they are planetary citizens and members of the human family before belonging to a particular country or a specific racial, social, ideological, political, or religious group.” The question that has bedeviled those of us who have been involved in this work since when LSD was the most widely researched psychiatric drug in the world has been to understand what deep fears drove those who outlawed more research. Ironically, it may be what Grof describes. Many people in the sixties who became involved in self-discovery through psychedelics and other methods went through, to some degree, what the expert in understanding world mythologies Joseph Campbell calls “detribalization.” This is a loosening of the ties that individuals had to groups they identified with, be it a union, a school, a sports team, a profession, a nation, or a religion. To the extent one detribalizes from dogmas and codes of conduct, that assertive behavior threatens the group itself. Lay Catholics who practice birth control or Jews who marry outside their faith have both partly detribalized, as have individuals who drop out of professional careers to live in rural communes or join ashrams. People who have used psychedelics are more likely to detribalize and, after so doing, to create new institutions. The antiwar movement, the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, the ecology movement, communes, the sexual revolution, and even organic farming were all fueled and strengthened by those who had taken psychedelics. The backlash against all these movements was inevitable. What was not predicted was that the backlash would extend not only to what people did, but also to their personal, private psychedelic use, eventually suppressing work by scholars and researchers in the field who were not making any counter-cultural waves themselves.b Perhaps this is why the current researchers have been tiptoeing so cautiously, publishing in only the respectable journals and, as much as possible, not rocking any cultural boats. An author usually ends personal remarks like these with “Buy my book.” But if you’re reading this, you or your library or your friend already has done that. My request, then, is that you share what you’ve learned with those around you. Let’s support legal research in every way we can and support one another as well. Keep in mind that even those most disturbed by and opposed to psychedelics want, as much as we do, a better world for us all. JAMES FADIMAN, PH.D. JFADIMAN@GMAIL.COM Footnotes 1. Meeting the Divine within a The guild is an informal, largely invisible fellowship, international in scope. Its members include practitioners from major religions as well as the arts, health sciences, and mental health professions. The term guild refers to the practice of training by which a guide accepts apprentices. Only when a person’s level of work is close to that of his or her mentor is he or she encouraged to work independently. The guild does not maintain a public web presence under this name. b Set and setting have long been ignored in medical research, but the growing literature on placebo effects, for example, is forcing some long overdue attention to the obvious fact that much about our reactions to any stimulus depends on the actual context and the way we perceive it. c A guide recalled a session in which a woman in her late forties, over the course of a day, had more than fifty separate orgasms. She would not discuss her experience with her guide, but when evaluated psychologically six months later, she was rated as much improved. d A guide named B.R. stated, “Yet, there are powerfully positive sessions that entail the courageous movement in and through personal suffering towards transcendence. It is of critical importance that the voyager accepts whatever presents itself in his/her field of consciousness as a potential gift, even if it initially appears dark or threatening.” 2. The Entheogenic Voyage a The International Foundation for Advanced Study is where I worked and studied for seven years, beginning in 1961. Research done there will be referred to throughout the book. 3. Qualities of Transcendent Experience a Please note that the italic text included at the head of many chapters of this book, or contained in the discussion therein, is my (James Fadiman’s) commentary on that particular author and his work. Introduction to Part Two a A much more detailed review of these findings can be found in chapter 21, “Behavioral Changes After Psychedelic Therapy: Lasting Results of High-Dose Single Sessions.” 8. Therapeutic Effectiveness of Single Guided Sessions a Survey results by James Fadiman, Alicia Danforth, and others are discussed at length in chapter 16. b Qualitative summation is research jargon for doing what cannot be done by statistical analysis—taking into account not the recorded answers but the tone, body language, and whatever else the subject said or did while answering. One might prefer to think of these decisions as “sensible guesses.” Introduction to Part Three a A. Rees, “Noble Prize genius Crick was high on LSD when he discovered the secret of life.” Associated Newspapers, LTD Mail (Sunday August 8, 2004): Section FB, 44–45. 9. Breakthrough Research a There were twenty-six people and twenty-seven individual sessions (one person had two sessions). b The research facility was licensed to use both LSD and mescaline. We used mescaline in this study because, for some reason, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was looking at our Sandoz LSD. Several months earlier, the FDA had asked us to not use mescaline until the mescaline in our possession had been sampled and tested for purity against the standard mescaline in the FDA office in Washington, D.C. Naturally we complied, but were not concerned since our mescaline was part of the same batch the government was testing it against. The FDA, in its blundering way, was trying to put the genie back in the bottle. Soon afterward, it stopped all research on psychedelics. That added to the explosive rise in illegal use that continues to this day. 13. The Look Magazine Experiment a Mike Murphy was the owner and director of Esalen. George Leonard later became the vice president of Esalen. 15. Can Sub-Perceptual Doses of Psychedelics Improve Normal Functioning? a There is some talk of doing a small book on these uses. Such a book would include some of the early work reporting on the uses of “morning glory seeds, peyotl, homgos [mushrooms], and more, prescribed for various maladies.” A prominent anthropologist (who forgave my lack of awareness of early extensive and sophisticated low-dose use) sent the aforementioned list to me. 16. Surveys of Current Users a However, as this book was going to press, news of a dissertation, “Psilocybin and Spiritual Experience” by Kevin Bunch, Psy.D., was just released. He surveyed 504 individuals about their use of this one psychedelic. Conclusions included that 58 percent found their experiences to be “among the five most significantly spiritual experiences of their lives” and 90 percent “claimed that it had positively affected the way they live their lives.” b Sophia Korb created all the analysis and all the tables about the student sample. The research was originally presented and developed into poster form by Alicia Danforth. She presented it at the Science of Consciousness Conference in Santa Rosa, California, in October 2009. † The sample of 108 students comprised: seventy-eight at San Francisco State University twenty-one at Stanford University six at the University of Northern Illinois (class taught by Tom Roberts) three at the College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois (class taught by Bruce Sewick) ‡ Those wishing to know more about Salvia divinorum, go to www.sagewisdom.org. c All the data about the conference sample were analyzed and all presentations created by Sophia Korb. 18. Positive Possibilities for Psychedelics a The National Institute of Drug Abuse 2009 Survey results of high school students indicate that for twelfth-grade students, marijuana use in the past month was 38.2 percent and tobacco use in the past month was 20.1 percent. b See also www.quantcast.com/erowid.org, an analytic site that describes the demographics of Erowid users. c In 2009, the federal government allowed therapists who use MDMA with patients to take MDMA themselves for training purposes. This breached another invisible wall, treating MDMA not as a substance like a medication, but as a substance whose effects must be experienced to effectively offer it as part of a treatment. d While I was on segments of this television program, I had no control over the content or the narration. (To be honest, I really tried to influence both.) 20. Beyond LSD— Way Beyond a For an excellent site on ayahuasca research literature, see www.wasiwaska.org/research.htm. 21. Behavorial Changes After Psychedelic Therapy a A sign test is simply a way of determining if the difference between those who answer more (+) or less (−) is a real difference and not just chance. † The study was conducted under the auspices of the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, California, under a New Drug Investigational License from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This research was carried out during the tenure of my predoctorial fellowship #5 F1 MH-16,900 from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health. b A brief explanation for readers who have no idea how statistics are used in psychology: Any measurement is rated against how likely it is that the same result would happen by chance. The p means probability. The number following the p is how far from chance the actual result is. In psychology, if your data would happen by chance one out of ten times (written as p = .10), you can call it a trend or a tendency or an inclination. If it would happen by chance five times out of one hundred (p = .05), you can call it “significant.” That means it probably is really so. If it would happen by chance only one time in one hundred (p = .01), you do a little dance and thank the gods because that is very significant. There aren’t many results in psychology better than that. In this research, however, the data were often overwhelmingly better than (p = .01): sometimes one in one thousand (p = .001), one in ten thousand (p = .0001), or greater. There is almost no other research on any kind of psychotherapy that makes such a strong showing. To keep the data from being criticized as unlikely or impossible, I recorded all results more likely to be real above the one in one hundred chance level as (p .01). There are many such instances in the following pages because, in almost every category, some findings were that strong. 22. A Questionnaire Study of Psychedelic Experiences a This chapter consists of an edited version of a longer report with the same title that was never published but was referred to by others in the literature. Last Words b While Timothy Leary was still at Harvard, he met with the staff of the West Coast research foundation I worked with. We said we were concerned that his insistence on liberalizing the use of these substances would harm us all. His answer was, “If I win, and psychedelics are widely available, you win as well. If I lose and use is restricted, you researchers will still be left standing.” It didn‘t work out that way.researchers will still be left standing.” It didn’t work out that way. NOTES To readers looking at these endnotes ~ Every quote or citation in this book is as accurate as I could make it but, this being the age of fluid and flexible information, some of these notes may lack a portion of what an old-fashioned citation would have. Every URL worked the day I included it in the manuscript. That said, some of those references to sources no longer are live, books may be out of print, and the online presence of some journals may be obsolete. In those cases, for anything you are looking for and can’t find, please write to me at jfadiman@gmail.com. Overview—Why This Book? 1. From the National Drug Intelligence Center, 2001, “Data reported in the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse indicate that an estimated 20.2 million U.S. residents aged 12 and older used LSD at least once in their lifetime.” From the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2008, “In 2006, approximately 23.3 million persons aged 12 and over used LSD in their lifetime, 666 thousand used it in the past year.” 2. See Tom Roberts’s suggested plan in Michael J. Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts, eds., Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments, vol. 1 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2007), 288–95. 3. Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991). For example, chapter 10, page 142, begins, “I propose to show that the human/mushroom interaction is not a static symbolic relationship, but rather a dynamic one through which at least one of the parties has been bootstrapped to higher and higher cultural levels.” 4. Stephen Harold Buhner, The Lost Languages of Plants (White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2002), 229. Buhner writes, “We have facilitated the loss of plant species, the loss of health in ecosystems and our bodies, and the loss of the sense of who we are.” See also J. P. Harpignies, ed., Visionary Plant Consciousness: The Shamanistic Teachings of the Plant World (Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2007). 5. Michael J. Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts, eds., Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments, 2 vols. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2007). 6. Jeremy Narby, “Shamans and Scientists,” in Hallucinogens, ed. Charles Grob (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 2002), 159–63. A study with scientists working directly with ayahuasca is a rare exception. Three scientists, each from a different scientific discipline, took part in an ayahuasca session with a shaman as their guide. They had been instructed to “ask ayahuasca” for suggestions and information and did so. Each received what he felt to be useful and not at all predictable advice or information directly related to his research. Chapter 1. Meeting the Divine Within 1. J. Norman Sherwood, Myron J. Stolaroff, and Willis W. Harman, “The Psychedelic Experience—A New Concept in Psychotherapy,” Journal of Neuropsychiatry 3 (1962): 370–75. 2. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902. Many other editions. 3. Albert Hofmann. LSD: My Problem Child (Sarasota, Fla.: MAPS, 2005). 4. Rick Strassman, “Preparation for the Journey,” in Inner Paths to Outer Space, Rick Strassman, Slawek Wojtowicz, Luis Eduardo Luis, and Ede Frecska (Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2008), 268–98. The first section of this chapter is a more extensive discussion of the need for substantial preparation for any psychedelic voyage. Strassman reviews what a voyager can do long term, what one’s intent is, and what is the short-term work that will make a voyage safer and more meaningful. This book is highly recommended reading for voyagers and almost always required for guides. 5. Frederick R. Dannaway, “Strange Fires, Weird Smokes and Psychoactive Combustibles: Entheogens and Incense in Ancient Traditions,” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, vol. 42 (4) (December 2010): 485–97. 6. Every guide has his or her own favorites as well, as the following comment makes clear. “So much more [than was in the section of the guidelines]— among the best seem to be the Brahms Requiem, Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Gorecki’s Third Symphony, the slow movement of the Brahms Violin Concerto, etc. The challenge for every guide is to differentiate between the ‘very good’ and the ‘excellent.’” (personal correspondence) 7. Torsten Passie, John H. Halpern, Dirk O. Strichtenoth, Hinderk M. Emrich, and Annelie Hintzen, “The Pharmacology of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: A Review,” CNS Neurosciences & Therapeutics 14 (2008): 295–314. Their conclusion, after reviewing nearly ten thousand scientific papers and citing 199 references, was, “The pharmacology of LSD is complex and its mechanisms of action are still not completely understood” (p. 295). 8. Roland R. Griffiths, William A. Richards, Una D. McCann, and Robert Jesse. “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance,” Psychopharmacology 187, 3 (2006): 268–83. Also in Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments, vol. 2, eds. Michael J. Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2007), 230. For a longer and more complete discussion, see Peter Stafford, Psychedelics Encyclopedia, rev. ed. (Los Angeles: Tarcher Inc., 1983), 271–73. Chapter 3. Qualities of Transcendent Experience 1. Excerpt from Alan Watts, “Psychedelics and the Religious Experience,” California Law Review 56, no. 1 (January 1968): 74–85. 2. Hinduism regards the universe not as an artifact, but as an immense drama in which the One Actor (the paramatman or brakman) plays all the parts, which are his (or “its”) masks or personae. The sensation of being only this one particular self, John Doe, is the result of the Actor’s total absorption in playing this and every other part. For fuller expositions, see S. Radhakrishnan, The Hindu View of Life (1927); and H. Zimmer, Philosophies of India (1951), 355–463. A popular version of this concept is in Alan Watts, The Book—On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966). 3. Isaiah 45:6–7. 4. Chandogya Upanishad 6.15.3. Chapter 4. Experiences of Psychedelic Pioneers 1. Albert Hofmann, interview in High Times; and LSD: My Problem Child (Santa Cruz, Calif.: MAPS, 2005), 48–51. 2. Aldous Huxley, Moksha: Aldous Huxley’s Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience, eds. Michael Horowitz and Cynthia Palmer (Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 1999). 3. Keith Thompson, “Stormy Search for the Self,” Yoga Journal (July/August 1990): 54–61, 94. 4. Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin, PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Berkeley: Transform Press, 1995), 16–17. 5. Timothy Leary, High Priest (New York: New American Library, 1968), 283, 255–56. 6. Ram Dass and Ralph Metzner, Birth of a Psychedelic Culture, with Gary Bravo (Santa Fe, N. Mex.: Synergetic Press, 2010), 25. 7. Ram Dass, “Walking the Path: Psychedelics and Beyond,” in Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics, eds. Roger Walsh and Charles Grob (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 209–11. 8. Ram Dass and Ralph Metzner, Birth of a Psychedelic Culture, with Gary Bravo (Santa Fe, N. Mex.: Synergetic Press, 2010), 25. 9. “Empirical Metaphysics,” by Huston Smith, in Cleaning the Doors of Perception (New York: Tarcher, 2000), 10–13. 10. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, “Transcending Religious Boundaries,” in Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics, eds. Roger Walsh and Charles Grob (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 195–206. 11. Charles Tart, “Initial Integrations of Some Psychedelic Understandings into Every Day Life,” in Psychedelic Reflections, eds. Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1983), 223–33. 12. Frances Vaughan, “Transpersonal Counseling: Some Observations Regarding Entheogens,” in Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion, ed. Thomas Roberts (San Francisco: Council on Spiritual Practices, 2001), 191. 13. Frances Vaughan, “Perception and Knowledge: Reflections on Psychological and Spiritual Learning in the Psychedelic Experience” in Psychedelic Reflections, eds. Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1983), 109. 14. Rich English, “The Dried Piper,” Drunkard Magazine, www.drunkard.com/issues/01-05/0105-dry-piper.html. 15. Peter Coyote, “Smiling with Dr. Hofmann and the Dead: Reflections on the Counterculture and Wisdom,” The Sixties 1, no. 2 (2008), 271–78. Introduction to Part Two 1. Gary Fisher, “Treating the Untreatable,” in Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics, eds. Roger Walsh and Charles Grob (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 103–18. 2. John H. Halpern, “Hallucinogens in the Treatment of Alcoholism and Other Addictions,” in Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments, vol. 2, eds. Michael J. Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2007), 1–14. 3. From a personal communication with the author. 4. Rick Strassman, “Adverse Reactions to Psychedelic Drugs: A Review of the Literature,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases 172 (1984): 577–95. 5. Almost all current studies are reviewed in Michael J. Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts, eds., Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments, 2 vols. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2007). A much more detailed review of these findings can be found in chapter 21 of this volume. 6. Jeremy Narby and Francis Huxley, eds., Shamans Through Time: 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge (New York: Jeremy Tarcher/Penguin, 2004). 7. Robert Tindall described several contemporary shamanistic therapeutic settings in The Jaguar That Roams the Mind (Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2008). See also some personal experiences in Daniel Pinchbeck, Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (New York: Broadway Books, 2002). For possible contemporary settings, see Roberts’s suggested plan for the creation of psychedelic training and healing centers in Michael J. Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts, eds., Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments, vol. 1 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2007), 288–95. Chapter 5. Therapeutic Uses of Psychedelics 1. Willis W. Harman, “The Issue of the Consciousness-Expanding Drugs,” Main Currents in Modern Thought 20, no. 1 (September–October 1963): 5–14. Harman does not describe the unwholesome beliefs that those with psychedelic experience challenged, but they would have included the smug complacency in the ultimate capacity of material science to overcome all problems, coupled with the rising backlash against the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War. These antiestablishment views were part of the reason for the government’s overreaction toward all psychedelic research. 2. Peter T. Furst, “Ancient Altered States,” in Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics, eds. Roger Walsh and Charles Grob (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 150–57. “In 5000 BC they were already using peyote that had been traded up to that area from either the lower Rio Grande or from northern Mexico.” 3. Paul H. Hoch, “Remarks on LSD and Mescaline,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases 125 (1957): 442–44. However Hoch gave LSD, his patients did not like it. He is quoted elsewhere saying, “Actually, in my experience, no patient asks for it [LSD] again.” 4. Sanford M. Unger, “Mescaline, LSD, Psilocybin, and Personality Change: A Review,” Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes 26, no. 2 (1963): 111–25. On page 117, Unger describes how different therapists manage to get results in line with their own theories of consciousness. He says, “As a matter of fact, in an amusing and somewhat bemused account, Hartman has described his LSD using group comprised of two Freudians and two Jungians, in which the patients of the former report childhood memories, while those of the latter have ‘transcendental’ experiences. In addition, for Jungian patients, the transcendental state is associated with ‘spectacular’ therapeutic results, while for Freudians, should such a state ‘accidentally’ occur, no such spectacular consequence is observed.” 5. One exception is: Mitchael W. Johnson, William A. Richards, and Ronald R. Griffiths, “Human Hallucinogen Research: Guidelines for Safety,” Journal of Psychopharmacology 22 (2008): 1–18. Exhaustive in detail, it describes how the studies at Johns Hopkins are being conducted. If you already know how to run sessions, you can pull out the helpful parts, but the necessary medical obfuscation and hyper-academic language make using this paper as a training tool a daunting proposition. Also see Myron Stolaroff, The Secret Chief Revealed (Santa Cruz, Calif.: MAPS, 2007) for an in-depth look at how one therapist gave hundreds of sessions with all kinds of substances. 6. Alicia Danforth, Sophia Korb, and James Fadiman, “Psychedelics and Students: Motives, Methods, Meltdowns, and Mind-Manifesting Miracles” (presented at the Science of Consciousness Conference, Santa Rosa, Calif., October 21–23, 2009). 7. From a therapy session report that was written seven months after the experience at the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, California. 8. Gary Fisher, “The Psycholytic Treatment of a Childhood Schizophrenic Girl,” International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 16, 2 (1970): 112–30. “The rationale behind the use of psychedelic agents with psychotic children was that these drugs have the capacity to activate or chemically energize various areas of the brain to an extreme degree resulting in vivid experiencing in the area of perception, emotion, memory and feeling. Experiences and feelings ordinarily denied awareness receive proportionately more energy causing them to break into a state of consciousness which is less strongly dominated by the usual defenses and values which one has developed. Without the usual complicated defensive structures and censures, the individual is able to re-experience himself in a far less distorted way and to reevaluate the worthiness of his essential self.” 9. A complete list, including an excellent video, is kept up-to-date by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and is available at www.maps.org/responding_to_difficult_psychedelic_experiences.html. 10. For example, Peter Webster, philosopher and historian, in a personal communication with the author, suggested, “The idea that the primary effect of the psychedelic drugs themselves (excluding ‘noise’) may be simply to increase the gain or efficiency of the postulated ‘significance-detection module’ of the brain, the key anatomical center for which being the locus caeruleus, meshes nicely with personal, rather than pharmacological responsibility for the ‘effects’ of psychedelic experience.” 11. The website www.clusterbusters.com provides information on entheogenic and natural treatments for neuro-vascular headaches, ranging from clusters to migraine headaches. “Early research was very successful before it was halted when these substances were pulled from the market and removed from research labs. This treatment offers hope not only to effectively treat ongoing cluster cycles, but to actually break those cycles and to stop future cycles from returning. The treatment of cluster headaches with hallucinogens has been kept alive by a few doctors, researchers, and most importantly, sufferers searching for a better treatment than exists on the market today. Outstanding results have been seen by many cluster headache sufferers and although clusters have been the major focus, early and current ‘research’ shows equally effective results for related vascular headaches.” 12. T. J. Haley and S. Ruyschmann, “Brain Concentrations of LSD-25 (Delysid) after Intracerebral or Intravenous Administration in Conscious Animals,” Experienta 13 (1957): 199–200. Also Max Rinkel, “Pharmodynamics of LSD and Mescaline,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases 125 (1957): 424–26. 13. Michael C. Mithoefer, Mark T. Wagner, Ann T. Mithoefer, Ilsa Jerome, and Rick Doblin, “The Safety and Efficacy of ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted Psychotherapy in Subjects with Chronic, Treatment-resistant Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: the First Randomized Controlled Pilot Study,” Journal of Psychopharmacology. Published online July 19, 2010. 14. Edward Tick, War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation’s Veterans from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books, 2005). 15. Michael C. Mithoefer, Mark T. Wagner, Ann T. Mithoefer, Ilsa Jerome, and Rick Doblin, “The Safety and Efficacy of ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted Psychotherapy in Subjects with Chronic, Treatment-resistant Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: the First Randomized Controlled Pilot Study,” Journal of Psychopharmacology. Published online July 19, 2010. 16. C. S. Grob, et al., “A Pilot Study of Psilocybin Treatment in Advanced-Stage Cancer Patients with Anxiety,” Archives of General Psychiatry 68 (1) (2011): 71–78. 17. Quoted from P. G. Stafford and B. H. Golightly, LSD—The Problem Solving Psychedelic (New York: Award Books, 1967), chap. 4, “Everyday Problems.” Out of print but the whole book is available at www.scribd.com/doc/12692270/LSD-The-ProblemSolving-Psychedelic. It is full of specific examples from subjects in many studies. 18. Mike Dinko, the audio recording expert, in a personal communication with me, said that his stuttering had ebbed away after a single session. Also Paul Stemets, the world-famous mycologist, cured himself of severe stuttering in a single self-administered psychedelic session at age fifteen. This is an area easily researched. 19. Sanford Unger, “Apparent Results of Referrals of Alcoholics for LSD Therapy,” Report of the Bureau Saskatchewan Department of Public Health, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, 1962: 5. 20. The director of alcoholism research at the U.S. National Institutes of Health was shown the results from several hospitals in Canada reporting about a 50 percent success rate with chronic alcoholics. He said he did not believe the results. He was asked what research with psychedelics he would believe. “None,” was his answer. (Told to author by someone present at the meeting.) 21. A list of LSD studies done with children who have autism is available at www.neurodiversity.com/lsd.html. 22. Robert E. Mogar and Robert W. Aldrich, “The Use of Psychedelics with Autistic Schizophrenic Children,” Behavioral Neuropsychiatry 1 (l964): 44–51. This article was also in Psychedelic Review 10 (1969): 10–15, and can be found at www.erowid.org (search on “Mogar”). 23. There may be renewed interest if not renewed research. See Jeff Sigafoos, Vanessa A. Green, Chaturi Edrisinha, and Gulio E. Lancioni, “Flashback to the 1960s: LSD in the Treatment of Autism,” Developmental Neuro-rehabilitation 10, no. 1 (2007), 75–81. Also at www.scribd.com/doc/37658219/7–75. For a review of truly impressive results, Fisher describes a number of his cases. Gary Fisher, “Treating the Untreatable,” in Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics, eds. Roger Walsh and Charles Grob (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 102–17. 24. See Charles Tart, The End of Materialism (Oakland, Calif.: Noetic Books and New Harbinger, 2009). The book offers a fine presentation of unassailable data on the reality of the basic “paranormal” phenomena and a well-reasoned analysis of why these areas remain pushed out of the current scientific worldview. 25. John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the’60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Viking Penguin, 2005). 26. Myron Stolaroff, The Secret Chief Revealed (Santa Cruz, Calif.: MAPS, 2007). This book presents a series of interviews with Leo Zeff, who trained several hundred mental health workers and ran sessions for thousands of individuals using a number of settings and a wide range of materials. Chapter 6. Things Can Go Wrong 1. Neal Goldsmith, portions of appendix 2 in Psychedelic Healing: The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development (Rochester, Vt.: Healing Arts Press, 2011), 182–204. For more information, see www.neal-goldsmith.com. Chapter 7. Myths and Misperceptions 1. Originally published as “Strychnine and Other Enduring Myths: Expert and User Folklore Surrounding LSD,” by David Presti and Jerome Beck in Psychoactive Sacramentals, ed. Thomas Roberts (San Francisco: Council for Spiritual Practices, 2001), 125–37. 2. Albert Hofmann, LSD: My Problem Child (Santa Cruz, Calif.: MAPS, 2005). 3. J. G. Hardman, et al., Goodman & Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, 9th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 1689–90. 4. P. Weasel, “Trans-high Market Quotations,” High Times (May 1993): 72. 5. J. E. Beck, “Drug Use Trends and Knowledge among Students Enrolled in a Required Health Course at the University of Oregon, Winter 1980” (unpublished honors thesis, University of Oregon, Eugene: 1980). 6. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association Press, 1994), 231. 7. A. J. Giannini, “Inward the Mind’s I: Description, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Acute and Delayed LSD Hallucinations,” Psychiatric Annals 24 (1994): 134–36. 8. R. N. Pechnick and J. T. Ungerleider, “Hallucinogens,” in Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook, eds. J. H. Lowinson, et al. (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkens, 1997), 230–38. 9. C. R. Carroll, Drugs in Modern Society (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown, 1989). 10. G. Hanson and P. J. Venturelli, Drugs and Society (Boston: Jones and Bartlett, 1995). 11. C. Kuhn, et al., Buzzed: The Straight Facts about the Most Used and Abused Drugs (New York: Norton, 1998). 12. Department of Justice, Street Terms: Drugs and the Drug Trade (Rockville, Md.: 1994). 13. “Street Names for Common Drugs,” Journal of Emergency Medicine, July 1988: 46–47. 14. Albert Hofmann, LSD: My Problem Child (Santa Cruz, Calif.: MAPS, 2005), 71–72. 15. J. Ott, Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, Their Plant Sources and History, foreword by Albert Hofmann (Kennewick, Wash.: Natural Products Company, 1993), 134–35. 16. Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar, eds. Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered (New York: Basic Books, 1979; repr. New York: Lindesmith Center, 1997), 76. 17. J. K. Brown and M. H. Malone, “Status of Drug Quality in the Street-Drug Market,” Pacific Information Service on Street Drugs 3, no. 1 (1973): 1–8. 18. E. M. Brecher, Licit and Illicit Drugs (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972), 376. 19. M. A. Lee and B. Shlain, Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion (New York: Grove Press, 1985), 188. 20. Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin, TiHKAL: The Continuation (Berkeley, Calif.: Transform Press, 1997). 21. Jan Harold Brunvand, The Choking Doberman and Other “New” Urban Legends (New York: Norton, 1984). 22. Drug Enforcement Administration, “LSD: A Situation Report,” Washington, D.C.: 1991. 23. M. M. Cohen, M. J. Marinello, and N. Back, “Chromosomal Damage in Human Leukocytes Induced by Lysergic Acid Diethylamide,” Science 155 1967): 1417–19. 24. M. M. Cohen, K. Hirshhorn, and W. A. Frosch, “In Vivo and In Vitro Chromosomal Damage Induced by LSD-25,” The New England Journal of Medicine 227 (1967): 1043–49. 25. Editorial, “Radiomimetic Properties of LSD,” The New England Journal of Medicine 227 (1967): 1090–91. 26. N. I. Dishotsky, et al., “LSD and Genetic Damage,” Science 172 (1971): 431–40. 27. E. Goode, Drugs in American Society, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993). 28. E. Goode, Drugs in American Society, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999). 29. S. Grof, LSD Psychotherapy (1980; repr. Alameda, Calif.: Hunter House, 1994; repr. Santa Cruz, MAPS, 2009). 30. M. J. Stolaroff, Thanaros to Eros: 35 Years of Psychedelic Exploration (Berlin: Verlag fur Wissenschaft und Bildung, 1994). 31. R. J. Strassman, “Adverse Reactions to Psychedelic Drugs: A Review of the Literature,” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 172 (1984): 577–95. 32. Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar, eds., Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered (New York: Basic Books, 1979; repr. New York: Lindesmith Center, 1997). 33. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association Press, 1994), 654. 34. Sidney Cohen, “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: Side Effects and Complications,” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 130 (1960): 30–40. 35. R. S. Gable, “Toward a Comparative Overview of Dependence Potential and Acute Toxicity of Psychoactive Substances Used Nonmedically,” The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse 19 (1993): 263–81. 36. L. J. West, C. M. Pierce, and W. D. Thomas, “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: Its Effects on a Male Asiatic Elephant,” Science 138 (1962): 1100–3. 37. Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar, eds., Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered (New York: Basic Books, 1979; repr. New York: Lindesmith Center, 1997), 159. 38. S. Grof, LSD Psychotherapy (repr. Alameda, Calif.: Hunter House, 1994; repr. Santa Cruz, Calif.: MAPS, 2009), 134. 39. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association Press, 1994), 233–34. 40. H. D. Abraham and A. M. Aldridge, “Adverse Consequences of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide,” Addiction 88 (1993): 1327–34. 41. L. S. Myers, S. S. Watkins, and T. J. Carter, “Flashbacks in Theory and Practice,” The Heffter Review of Psychedelic Research 1 (1998): 51–55. 42. Drug Enforcement Administration, “LSD: A Situation Report,” Washington, D.C.: 1991. 43. L. A. Henderson and W. J. Glass, LSD: Still With Us After All These Years (New York: Lexington Books, 1994), 52. 44. Sidney Cohen, “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: Side Effects and Complications,” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 130 (1960). 45. E. M. Brecher, Licit and Illicit Drugs (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972). 46. R. Bunce, “The Social and Political Sources of Drug Effects: The Case of Bad Trips on Psychedelics,” Journal of Drug Issues 9 (1979): 213–33. 47. N. E. Zinherg, Drug, Set, and Setting (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984). 48. Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar, eds. Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered (Basic Books, New York, 1979; repr. New York: Lindesmith Center, 1997), 159. 49. L. A. Henderson and W. J. Glass, LSD: Still With Us After All These Years (New York: Lexington Books, 1994), 55. Chapter 8. Therapeutic Effectiveness of Single Guided Sessions 1. J. J. Meduna, Carbon Dioxide Therapy (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1950). 2. Abbreviated from Charles Savage, James Fadiman, Robert Mogar, and Mary H. Allen, “Process and Outcome Variables in Psychedelic (LSD) Therapy,” in The Use of LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism, ed. Harold Abramson (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 511–32. 3. James Fadiman, “Behavior Change Following (LSD) Psychedelic Therapy.” Dissertation, Stanford University, 1965, p. 3. Can be found at www.proquest.com (search for name or title) but you have to be a member to gain access (most academic libraries are members); also available at www.jamesfadiman.com. 4. Norman Sherwood, Myron Stolaroff, and Willis J. Harman, “The Psychedelic Experience—A New Concept in Psychotherapy,” Journal of Neuropsychiatry 4 (1962): 370–75. 5. Helen D. Sargent, “Intrapsychic Change: Methodological Problems in Psychotherapy Research,” Psychiatry 24 (1961). Quoted in R. S. Wallerstein, “The Problem of Assessment of Change in Psychotherapy,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 44 (1963): 33–41. 6. James Fadiman, “Behavior Change Following Psychedelic (LSD) Therapy,” Dissertation, Stanford University, 1965. For those who wish to delve even more deeply, the full scoring and discussion of all 332 items across the eighteen categories takes eighty-seven pages of the original dissertation including some correlations with clinical evaluation scales. It may be read or downloaded at www.proquest.com or at www.jamesfadiman.com. 7. Charles Savage, James Fadiman, Robert Mogar, and Mary H. Allen, “Process and Outcome Variables in Psychedelic (LSD) Therapy,” in The Use of LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism, ed. Harold Abramson (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, l967), edited from pages 519–21. 8. Charles Savage, Ethel Savage, James Fadiman, and Willis W. Harman, “LSD: Therapeutic Effects of the Psychedelic Experience,” Psychological Reports 14 (1964): 111–20. 9. Michael J. Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts, eds. Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments, 2 vols. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2007). Introduction to Part Three 1. See Margaret Talbot, “Brain Drain: The Underground World of ‘Neuro-enhancing’ Drugs,” The New Yorker, April 27, 2009, 32–43. See also Henry Greeley, Phillip Campbell, Barbara Sahakain Harris, John Kessler, Michael Gazzaniga, and Martha J. Farrah, “Towards Responsible Use of Cognitive-Enhancing Drugs by the Healthy,” Nature 456 (December 11, 2008): 702–705. 2. John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Viking Penguin, 2005). 3. Michael Schrage, “A Brave New Prescription for Creative Management,” Fortune, April 30, 2001. Reprinted in the MAPS bulletin XI, 1 (2001): 31. Michael Schrage was codirector of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab’s e-markets initiative. Part of his article reads, “Inspiration is elusive. Innovation is hard. Demand for technical and conceptual breakthroughs in global business is intensifying. Organizations are looking everywhere for the transforming insight. Perhaps the best prescription for boosting corporate creativity would be a prescription…. Why not the next logical step? Turn these everyday experiments in self-medication into more rigorously designed and disciplined initiatives for innovation. Think of such mediated medicated creativity as a form of creative managerial therapy best done under professional supervision. Picture the Leary-Huxley Institute for Creative Business Visualization on one of the sunnier islands near Crete. Psychopharmacologists and board-certified neuropsychologists dispense small, precise dosages of psychoactive materials to visiting executive teams that want to push themselves beyond the boundaries of conventional business perception. The purpose would not be to get ‘high’ but to enhance creativity. Skilled facilitators would ensure that the interactions focus on the business tasks at hand…. Perhaps a team of hedge fund managers might find investment inspiration in a myco-managed conversation in the hypothetical institute’s Coleridge Room. Off in the Lennon Wing, fashion buyers and designers at a global clothing merchant could brainstorm in profoundly different ways. At the newly refurbished De Quincey Pavilion, computational chemistry researchers from—ironically— one of the world’s largest pharmaceuticals companies could play with the asymmetrical geometries of a potentially therapeutic protein…. To the extent that market imperatives insist that individuals and institutions become ever more creative or fail, there will be growing societal pressure to view psychoactive drugs as a kind of value-added Prozac—a pill to enhance creativity rather than mood. No one is shocked to hear of an ‘artist’—a pop musician, a painter, a photographer, a film director, a writer—who credits experimentation with ‘consciousness-expanding’ drugs as essential to her creative development. Indeed, global media conglomerates knowingly hire such people even as they disapprove of and disavow illegal drug use.” 4. Willis W. Harman and James Fadiman, “Selective Enhancement of Specific Capacities through Psychedelic Training,” in Psychedelics: The Uses and Implications of Hallucinogenic Drugs, eds. Bernard Aaronson and Humphry Osmond (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1970), 240. Chapter 9. Breakthrough Research 1. Revised and updated by James Fadiman from Willis Harman and James Fadiman, “Selective Enhancement of Specific Capacities through Psychedelic Training,” in Psychedelics: The Uses and Implications of Hallucinogenic Drugs,eds. Bernard Aaronson and Humphry Osmond (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1970), 239–57. That article was an overview of a longer paper: Willis W. Harman, et al., “Psychedelic Agents in Creative Problem Solving: A Pilot Study,” Psychological Reports 19 (1966): 211–27. 2. The quote is from James Fadiman, “Behavior Change following Psychedelic (LSD) Therapy,” dissertation, Stanford University, 1965. A list of studies from each perspective is on page 3, following the quote. 3. Robert Mogar, “Current Status and Future Trends in Psychedelic (LSD) Research,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 4 (1965): 147–66. 4. Robert Mogar and Charles Savage, “Personality Change Associated with Psychedelic Therapy: A Preliminary Report,” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice 1 (1964): 154–62; James Fadiman, “Behavior Change following Psychedelic (LSD) Therapy,” dissertation, Stanford University, 1965; Charles Savage, et al., “The Effects of Psychedelic Therapy on Values, Personality, and Behavior,” International Journal of Neuropsychiatry 2 (1966): 241–54. 5. Those interested in the relationship of these aspects to research and theory on creativity can refer to the detailed technical discussion in Willis W. Harman, et al., “Psychedelic Agents in Creative Problem Solving: A Pilot Study,” Psychological Reports 19 (1966): 211–27. 6. H. A. Witkin, Psychological Differentiation (New York: Wiley, 1962). 7. For a fuller description of these results, see Willis W. Harman, et al., “Psychedelic Agents in Creative Problem Solving: A Pilot Study,” Psychological Reports 19 (1966): 211–27; Charles Savage, et al., “The Effects of Psychedelic Therapy on Values, Personality, and Behavior,” International Journal of Neuropsychiatry 2 (1966): 241–54; and A. Hoffer, “LSD: A Review of Its Present Status,” Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics 6 (1965): 183–255. 8. C. Savage, et al., “The Effects of Psychedelic Therapy on Values, Personality, and Behavior,” International Journal of Neuropsychiatry 2 (1966): 241–54; A. Hoffer, “LSD: A Review of Its Present Status,” Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics 6 (1965): 183–255. Chapter 11. Case Studies 1. “LSDS A Design Tool?” Progressive Architecture, August 1966. Chapter 13. The Look Magazine Experiment 1. Sections from Walking on the Edge of the World by George Leonard, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988), chapters 22–24. Chapter 14. Closing the Doors of Perception 1. “Opening the Doors of Perception,” by James Fadiman in Time It Was: American Stories from the Sixties, eds. K. M. Smith and T. Koster (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2008), 228–35. Chapter 16. Surveys of Current Users 1. Norman E. Zinberg, “The Users Speak for Themselves,” in Psychedelic Reflections, eds. Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1983), 39–60. It is impossible not to notice that, after ten years of funding, this report offers little more than samples of interviews and generalizations. Given that I collected a larger sample in five minutes and that the total time for sample collections of close to four hundred people took only a few hours, one wonders if this research was a good value for the money. However, given that the first five-year grant was called “Controlled Nonmedical Drug Use” and the second five-year grant was called “Processes of Control in Different Heroin Using Styles,” it is likely that this work was slipped in as part of a larger and totally noncontroversial study. Chapter 17. The Inadvertent Pioneer: My Personal Account 1. Edited from the version published as “James Fadiman, Transpersonal Transitions: The Higher Reaches of Psyche and Psychology,” in Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics, eds. Roger Walsh and Charles Grob (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 24–45. Chapter 18. Positive Possibilities for Psychedelics 1. Rick Strassman, “Biomedical Research with Psychedelics: Current Models and Future Prospects,” in Entheogens and the Future of Religion, ed. Robert Forte (San Francisco: Council on Spiritual Practices, 1997), 153–62. 2. Maria Szalavitz, “Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?” Time Magazine, August 26, 2009, www.time.com (search for article title). “Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success,” says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author, and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. “It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.” Compared to the European Union and the United States, Portugal’s drug-use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over fifteen in the E.U.: 10 percent. The most comparable figure in America is in people over twelve: 39.8 percent. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana. 3. Charlotte Bowyer, “Czech Drug Policy,” Adam Smith Institute, www.AdamSmith.org. (search on the article title). “As of January 1st, [2010], the Czech Republic’s drug policy is changing. While the personal use of illicit drugs was decriminalized a year ago, possession of the vague ‘larger than small’ amount of a substance still lead to prosecution. The difficulty the public, police and courts faced in judging this amount has led to government clarifying the levels acceptable for personal consumption, such as 15 grams of marijuana, 4 tablets of ecstasy, a gram of cocaine and 1.5 grams of heroin. Setting out the law in a clear way and using common sense to designate a ‘reasonable’ level of drug possession makes it easier for all to monitor and respect the law.” 4. Simon Louvish, Mae West (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 82. 5. John Di Saia, M.D., “Marijuana—California’s Salvation,” Wellsphere, www.wellsphere.com (search on the article title). Di Saia, a non–pot using plastic surgeon, wrote the following summary of the legalize-and-tax-it argument. “Marijuana is California’s largest cash crop. It’s valued at $14 billion annually, or nearly twice the value of the state’s grape and vegetable crops combined, according to government statistics. But the state doesn’t receive any revenue from its cash cow. Instead, it spends billions of dollars enforcing laws pegged at shutting down the industry and inhibiting marijuana’s adherents.” In April 2010, the Field Poll of California reported that 56 percent of likely 2010 voters would approve the Tax Cannabis initiative. The Seattle Times conducted a national poll that showed that two-thirds of Americans believe the “war on drugs” is a failure, while 53 percent agreed that marijuana should be legalized. 6. Data from Asset Forfeiture Annual Report 2008, California Department of Justice. 7. Martin Ball, ed., Voyaging to DMT Space in Entheologues (n.p.: Kyandara Publishing, 2009), 49. Rick Strassman, the foremost DMT researcher and longtime lay Buddhist, says, “At least three-quarters, maybe 80–90 percent, of the monks had had an LSD experience, and the vast majority of them, probably every one of them, felt that their LSD experience was their first real glimpse that there was another way of looking at reality.” 8. Jack Kornfield, “Psychedelic Experience and Spiritual Practice,” in Entheogens and the Future of Religion, ed. Robert Forte (San Francisco: Council on Spiritual Practices, 1997), 119–36. The comment about the vows, from page 120, is as follows: “The precept in Theravaden Buddhism …is to refrain from using intoxicants to the point of heedlessness, loss of mindfulness, or loss of awareness. It does not say not to use them and it is very explicit.” See also the discussion of levels of Buddhist practice and which ones should use no drugs and which ones can use drugs, as well, at www.entheoguide.net/wiki/ReligionBuddhism. 9. Roland Griffiths, William Richards, Una McCann, and Robert Jesse, “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance,” Psychopharmacology 187, 3 (2006): 268–83. Also in Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments, vol. 2, eds. Michael J. Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2007): 227–254. 10. Robert Forte, “A Conversation with Gordon Wasson,” in Entheogens and the Future of Religion, ed. Robert Forte (San Francisco: Council on Spiritual Practices, 1997), 73. 11. Andrew Sewell and John Halpern, “Response of Cluster Headaches to Psilocybin and LSD,” in Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments, eds. Michael J. Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2007), 97–124. 12. See www.Clusterbusters.com. “The Clusterbusters are a small, but growing, international group of Clusterheadache sufferers actively investigating the use of indole-ring entheogens and other natural substances to treat their disease. Our mission is to investigate indole-ring entheogens as possibly the most effective treatment yet found for Clusterheadaches, and to educate physicians, medical researchers, sufferers, and the public on the efficacy, advantages and disadvantages of this and other treatments.” 13. Charles Grob, et al., “A Pilot Study of Psilocybin Treatment for Anxiety in Advanced-Stage Cancer Patients,” Archives of General Psychiatry (January 2011), http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org (search on the article title). 14. For a commentary on the value of the therapy, see Charles Savage, “LSD, Alcoholism and Transcendence,” The Psychedelic Library, www.psychedelic-library.org/savage.htm. 15. Alicia Danforth, James Fadiman, and Sophia Korb, “Students and Psychedelics: Motives, Methods, Meltdowns and Mind-Manifesting Miracles” (presented at the Science of Consciousness Conference, Santa Rosa, California, October 21–23, 2009). 16. See John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Viking Penguin, 2005). The central premise is that the personal computer owes its genesis and development to the interweaving of psychedelic experiences and computer innovation in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1960s and 1970s. 17. Quoted by Thomas Redlinger, “Sacred Mushrooms Pentecost,” in Entheogens and the Future of Religion, ed. Robert Forte (San Francisco: Council on Spiritual Practices, 1997), 106. The concerns raised by the use of psychedelic mushrooms were well stated by two Christian missionaries, Eunice Pike and Florence Cowan. They said, “How can one effectively present the message of divine revelation to a people who already have, according to their beliefs, a means whereby anyone who so desires may get messages directly from the supernatural world via a more spectacular and immediately satisfying way than Christianity has to offer?” 18. Susie Mandrak, “UN Advisor: Drug Money Propped Up Banks During Crisis,” Observer, London (December 13, 2009). Mandrak wrote, “Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organized crime were ‘the only liquid investment capital’ available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $232 billion of drug profits were absorbed into the economic system as a result.” Find it at http://crooksandliars.com/susie-mandrak/un-advisor-drug-money-propped-banks-d. 19. Rick Strassman, “Biomedical Research with Psychedelics: Current Models and Future Prospects,” in Entheogens and the Future of Religion, ed. Robert Forte (San Francisco: Council on Spiritual Practices, 1997), 159. 20. Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day,” New and Selected Poems, vol. 1 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992). Chapter 20. Beyond LSD—Way Beyond 1. Don José Campos, The Shaman and Ayahuasca. Studio City, Calif.: Divine Arts, 2011. Chapter 21. Behaviorial Changes After Psychedelic Therapy 1. Charles Savage, Ethel Savage, James Fadiman, and Willis Harman, “LSD: Therapeutic Effects of the Psychedelic Experience,” Psychological Reports, vol. 14 (1964): 111–20. 2. J. J. Downing and W. W. Wygant Jr., “Psychedelic Experience and Religious Belief,” in Utopiates: The Use and Users of LSD-25. Richard Blum, ed. (New York: Atherton Press, 1964). 3. James Fadiman, “Behavior Change Following Psychedelic (LSD) Therapy,” Dissertation, Stanford University, 1965. This dissertation can be read or downloaded at www.proquest.com or at www.jamesfadiman.com. Chapter 22. A Questionnaire Study of Psychedelic Experiences 1. J. N. Sherwood, M. J. Stolaroff, and W. W. Harman, “The Psychedelic Experience—A New Concept In Psychotherapy,” Journal of Neuropsychiatry 4 (1962): 69–80. 2. K. S. Ditman, M. C. Hayman, and J. R. B. Whittlesey, “Nature and Frequency of Claims Following LSD,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases 134 (1962): 346–52. About the Author James Fadiman, Ph.D., did his undergraduate work at Harvard and his graduate work at Stanford, doing research with the Harvard Group, the West Coast Research Group in Menlo Park, and Ken Kesey. A former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a professor of psychology, he teaches at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, which he helped found in 1975. An international conference lives in Menlo Park, California, with his filmmaker wife, Dorothy. presenter, workshop leader, management consultant, and author of several books and textbooks, he lives in Menlo Park, California, with his filmmaker wife, Dorothy. About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company Founded in 1975, Inner Traditions is a leading publisher of books on indigenous cultures, perennial philosophy, visionary art, spiritual traditions of the East and West, sexuality, holistic health and healing, self-development, as well as recordings of ethnic music and accompaniments for meditation. In July 2000, Bear & Company joined with Inner Traditions and moved from Santa Fe, New Mexico, where it was founded in 1980, to Rochester, Vermont. Together Inner Traditions • Bear & Company have eleven imprints: Inner Traditions, Bear &Company, Healing Arts Press, Destiny Books, Park Street Press, Bindu Books, Bear Cub Books, Destiny Recordings, Destiny Audio Editions, Inner Traditions en Español, and Inner Traditions India. For more information or to browse through our more than one thousand titles inprint, visit www.InnerTraditions.com. Books of Related Interest DMT: The Spirit Molecule A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences by Rick Strassman, M.D. Inner Paths to Outer Space Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies by Rick Strassman, M.D., Slawek Wojtowicz, M.D., Luis Eduardo Luna, Ph.D., and Ede Frecska, M.D. LSD: Doorway to the Numinous The Groundbreaking Psychedelic Research into Realms of the Human Unconscious by Stanislav Grof, M.D. Tryptamine Palace 5-MeO-DMT and the Sonoran Desert Toad by James Oroc Psychedelic Healing The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development by Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D. Salvia Divinorum Doorway to Thought-Free Awareness by J. D. Arthur The Shamanic Wisdom of the Huichol Medicine Teachings for Modern Times by Tom Soloway Pinkson, Ph.D. The Acid Diaries A Psychonaut’s Guide to the History and Use of LSD by Christopher Gray INNER TRADITIONS • BEAR & COMPANY P.O. Box 388 • Rochester, VT 05767 1-800-246-8648 www.InnerTraditions.com Or contact your local bookseller Park Street Press One Park Street Rochester, Vermont 05767 www.ParkStPress.com Park Street Press is a division of Inner Traditions International Copyright © 2011 by James Fadiman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Note to the Reader: The information provided in this book is for educational, historical, and cultural interest only and should not be construed as advocacy for the use or ingestion of LSD or other psychedelics. Neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for physical, psychological, or social consequences resulting from the ingestion of these substances or their derivatives. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fadiman, James, 1939– The psychedelic explorer’s guide : safe, therapeutic, and sacred journeys / James Fadiman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Psychedelics for spiritual, therapeutic, and problem-solving use”—Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-1-59477-936-7 1. Hallucinogenic drugs and religious experience. 2. Hallucinogenic drugs. I. Title. BL65.D7F33 2011 200.1'9—dc22 2011000549 To send correspondence to the author of this book, mail a first-class letter to the author c/o Inner Traditions • Bear & Company, One Park Street, Rochester, VT 05767, and we will forward the communication, or contact the author directly at www.psychedelicexplorersguide.com or Jfadiman@gmail.com.