So the core idea was, psychedelics are this unitive, mystical state — you realise we’re all connected, and we have more in common than different. Then, politics changes. That was the animating vision. The antidote to genocide, to environmental destruction, was the sense of connection. Not just the idea of it, but the felt experience of it.
I was coming to these ideas right around the same time that the moon landing took place. Then you get some of these astronauts talking about how when they saw the Earth from space, they changed their views. So it’s a lot easier and a lot less expensive to give somebody LSD than to shoot them up in space.
What was your first ever drug experience?
Well, I’m unusual in a couple of ways about drugs. My dad was a paediatrician. Back in the olden days, he would have to do a lot of house calls in the middle of the night. So I grew up watching him drink, like, 12 cups of coffee a day. I thought, “Oh, my dad’s addicted to coffee. I’m never going to do it.” So I’ve never had a cup of coffee in my whole life. The first time I ever tasted carbonation, I was like, that’s horrible. I don’t like that. So I have never had a Coca-Cola. Then my parents didn’t drink. So I didn’t grow up in this culture. At college, I did try to get drunk really fast just to see what it was like. I hated the taste of alcohol. The first time I did it, I mixed grape Tang — which was this powdered drink mix the astronauts get — with vodka. I passed through the fun stage and just got sick. So consequently, I don’t drink.
Also, in this formative stage of life for me, during the protest for Vietnam, there was this divide: if you’re a hippie, you smoke pot, and you’re against the war. If you’re in favour of the war, you’re a drinker. So, the first drug that I ever really did was marijuana. And I didn’t even do it until my senior year of high school, and then I only did it once. We didn’t have any rolling papers, so we rolled it in a newspaper. [laughs] My friend put on Santana. The first time we ever got high, we were listening to Carlos Santana. That was great. Then the very next thing for me was LSD.
Wow, big jump.
Yeah. [laughs] Really big jump. So I’m pretty limited in what I’ve done. I’ve done a lot of the psychedelics, I’m happy to say.
How soon after experimenting with LSD did you realise the potential for mass mental health? Because, from my understanding, you went to New College in Florida, and then you took 10 years off, and then came back?
Yeah, and the reason I took 10 years off is because I had done so much LSD and mescaline, in particular, and a little bit of psilocybin mushrooms, that I was really lost. I wasn’t able to really open up. I had a lot of resistance. I went to the guidance counsellor, and the guidance counsellor gave me Stan Grof’s book [Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research], and reading that, I said, yes, this is what I got to do. This makes sense.
I was a draft resister, and thought I was going to go to jail for Vietnam. My parents were like, you’ll never be able to have a real job, because you’re going to be a felon, and you can’t be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. So at 18, I started doing these psychedelics. This is after the backlash. That’s important. I learned about MDMA before the backlash, but I learned about LSD after the backlash.
Πηγή άρθρου : www.gq-magazine.co.uk
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