The text read “made it to cancun. pick up for pyramids is 7am tomorrow! i’ll bring zucchini bread.” I reluctantly stumbled out of bed on only a few hours sleep. Yuck. I was in Tulum, Mexico. Beautiful. Katherine MacLean, a former researcher at Johns Hopkins, turned farmer, had arranged a tour of the Mayan pyramids at Cobá. The van was almost here. Coffee first. Please.

I climbed into the van and met Alan Kooi Davis, a psychedelic researcher at Johns Hopkins Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit. For the next few hours, as we walked the forest ruins, and drove back to our Airbnb in Tulum eating zucchini bread, we talked about the state of psychedelic science. We focused on issues that affect the community, and social questions about psychedelic science rather than the science itself. Personally, I believe we should be talking more about these issues, so I found the conversations quite refreshing.

Alan recently shared a post from Source Research Foundation (SRF), which awards grants to students researching psychedelics. SRF didn’t come up during our pyramid adventure, but I did remember hearing about it while in Mexico. I’ve been wondering for a long time when a non-profit was going to offer grants to help college students studying psychedelics, rather than pump more dollars into medical research. Spending money on medical research is necessary, but it’s insufficient for sustaining the future vitality of the field. I shot an email over to Alan to learn more about what the Source Research Foundation was up to.

So what inspired you to start Source Research Foundation?

Honestly there wasn’t anything in the space that I was aware of providing student grants for psychedelic research. Having graduated in 2016, I had recent experience of wanting to find funding to support my research at the graduate level and there wasn’t any. I remember reaching out to every possible player in that field, which was Beckley, Heffter, and MAPS at the time. When I reached out first in 2012, through 2016 when I graduated, the answer was always, “We can’t because all the money is going to the big clinical trials”. It was fine, I understood it. It was my experience that lead to thinking we need to change this. It led to asking the question: How can we change the trajectory and enhance the trajectory of students who are going to be the future leaders and investigators in this field if there’s no money to support that?

Right.

More importantly, beyond the money, which is critical, it’s about connection, inspiration, and developing a network of students and professionals. Not only helping students fund their studies, but also connecting them with professionals in the field. I feel like there’s so much that can come from these students being connected in a formal way.

What do you hope to accomplish?

It took about a year to get things up and running. During that time our vision started to expand. We’re starting off with a grants program for students. Ideally, we’d be able to provide grants that are more involved in terms of funding bigger projects for students or connecting students across institutions for collaborative projects. We believe that can expand at the rate with which we’re able to develop financial support.

We had enough funding for the first year of student grants, and we have enough for our second year which is next summer. We’re going to look at figuring out a way to go beyond that and find the support through donations, or possibly other mechanisms.

One exciting thing that we’ve been talking about is creating a community grants program. We could provide grants to non-students who are interested in psychedelic science who want to translate something about psychedelic science that they’re interested in into a community project, which could look like a thousand different things.

I was inspired recently after spending the last couple days up at COSM. It occured to me that there are all these people volunteering their time to help create that space. Wouldn’t it be really interesting if we had the capacity in this community grants program to fund an artist to go there for the summer and contribute to that space? Or maybe it’ll be a community member in San Francisco who wants to translate something from science into harm reduction; a public talk, or integration spaces. I feel like there could be so many cool things that are outside of the student and research realm that I’d love to see SRF get into. The development of that obviously depends on our capacity to become a financially viable organization in the long-term.

You’re on the right path with that. There’s a huge need for non-research projects too. To me the field is stuck in a research-only mindset.

We’re reaching a critical mass. Obviously there’s still work to be done. There’s so much money going into research, even though there’s still not the big money of government funded projects. There’s still a lot of money that’s gone into this space recently. We need to start thinking about the rest of the community and how to connect these processes. They should be dynamic and we should figure out a way for them to enhance each other. It shouldn’t just be in one direction: science to community. There should be another direction: community to science. How can we connect the processes so that people in the community can have more of a voice in science? I think that historically that’s been completely cut off, and recent developments in this research space only highlight how disparate they are right now.

I think that’s absolutely correct. It’s encouraging to hear. A lot of the points you’re hitting on are the sore spots for a lot of people. What’s the reception been like?

It’s been really positive. We’re still new so I don’t know how many people know about us yet. It’s still building. For the first year it was all talk like “Oh we’re gonna do this.”

Now that we’ve actually achieved this first grant season, we can demonstrate that we’ve done this and here are the students, “Oh, they really are doing what they said they’re gonna do.” My take on it, at least from the people I talk to about it, is that people’s reaction are like yours, “Wow this is really cool. This is needed.”

I think people are excited because of how we are going about creating the organization. We’ve attracted people on the board of directors from all areas of this field. A lot of them have been in the science community because that made sense to get started. But now we’re also looking to expand the board. We’ve recently appointed  Lauren Padgett from Students For Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) to the board of directors. We also will always have a minimum of two student members on the board of directors. As we create the community grants program we want to have equal representation from professional science, students, and community. The hope is that people from all areas can help direct the review of applications and figure out how we want to support people. I’m trying to create these bi-directional processes as part of the process.

Yes it’s good. You’re baking that into the cake instead of retroactively making changes that should have been done in the first place.

Absolutely.

What do you think about the current state of psychedelic science?

One of the things that constantly bothers me about the state of psychedelic science is the dearth of representation from women and minorities. Obviously, it’s a current issue right now, but it’s integral to an investigative career where the questions that we ask as investigators are completely determined by our own biases, from our own culture, and our own perspectives in life. That’s obviously governed by things like sex, gender, age, and ethnicity.

I’ve felt very much that not only do different parts of the community need to be communicating in these processeses, but with SRF the whole point is to try to include as many differing voices as possible in the process. We’re being very thoughtful about trying to create a space where voices can be heard; where students can get access to the resources they need, and eventually community members as well.

I feel like there needs to be an example. We don’t have any good examples right now of what it actually looks like when an organization tries to do this. At least not in this space.

Yeah I agree. I think it’s important to have diversity of thought and life experience off the bat, and to be open minded and have differing opinions. I’ve seen a lot of monolithic thought in this psychedelic mainstreaming process. It seems a lot of decision-making tends to be left to an individual or an individual surrounded by people with very similar points of view. That’s my experience anyways.

That’s definitely been my experience as well, which is something that I’m struggling with a little bit; how to be a voice, and I guess a representative, of SRF but at the same time recognizing that’s not the structure we’ve created. There’s a legal, mandated structure of how organizations operate that have to involve a hierarchy, but trying to cultivate an atmosphere where it’s more inclusive than the hierarchy required by law. For example, Brooke Arterberry, our Vice President, will be representing SRF at the Women’s Forum in Psychedelics at CIIS in November, and Dawn Davis and Rafel Lancelotta recently helped represent SRF at several conferences. We want as many of our board members as possible to feel ownership over the creation of our work.

What students should apply?

Any student! We’ve had mostly graduate students apply in our first round. We did have a couple undergraduate students apply, which surprised us. We assumed it would be mostly graduate students. Clearly there’s undergraduate interests. We want it to be open. It’s open to any field people are studying. We’ve had everything from anthropological programs, to clinical psychology programs. We had one in a mix of psychology and music. The four people we ended up funding were a mix of clinical psychology and anthropology, but we don’t think that things need to be limited to that. We’d like to get the word out to people in neuroscience, or basic clinical labs. We don’t want to discriminate any field of this work, wherever students are at. We want to be as encompassing as possible.

What grants have you awarded so far?

We have awarded four grants this year.

The first is a master’s student studying medical anthropology. She’s really interested in looking at ibogaine-assisted addiction treatment; in digging into the qualitative phenomenology of ibogaine-assisted addiction therapy, and looking at the actual treatment that occurs, but then also looking at the after-care processes and seeing what happens after treatment and how people are supported. What comes next after that? She’s going to be connecting with both the actual clinic where the treatment is done, as well as an after-care clinic, where people can connect post ibogaine.

Another student is looking at a long-term follow-up of the NYU cancer trials. She’s following up with all of the people who were in the cancer study to ask about the long-term effects of psilocybin treatment. That’s exciting because we have limited information about how that affects people long-term.

Our third grant went to a student who’s doing a prospectus study where he’s looking at ayahuasca effects on personality in people who use ayahuasca in ceremonial spaces. He wants to see if personality changes over the course of using ayahuasca in ceremony. If it does in what ways does it change?

The fourth student is looking at ayahuasca-assisted therapy for mental health, but she’s interested in the processes that are being used in Peru, and how people with mental health issues are coming down there to be treated through ayahuasca-assisted therapy. So she’s looking at different components of that question by talking to providers, people involved in the treatment, as well as the people going through the treatment to see the dynamic interactions between the providers and patients. How does that look in terms of people’s outcomes?

All four students are doing cool things that are otherwise unknown to the scientific community right now. Not only were we surprised at the cool things these students were doing, but we were surprised that they were doing them at the universities they’re at. We had not previously associated that there were any psychedelic things going on at those universities. “Oh my gosh wait a second. There apparently are universities and faculty members who are quite supportive of students doing psychedelic studies!” It spoke to the fact that in the next couple of years we’re going to see a lot more institutions pursuing these topics and looking at more nuanced topics both in and outside of the clinical utility question.

We hope that as that happens we can start to network with even non-clinical studies. There have to be programs where people are starting to spend more time examining consciousness and spirituality from a ‘healthy’ perspective.

I would love to see the field move more into consciousness studies. More weirdo studies. Not the paranormal, but something other than healing or medicine.

Yeah really. Haha. Absolutely.

No 5-MeO grants yet?

Nobody applied. That’s something personally of interest to me, so yeah, that’d be great. I’d be excited about people who might want to study things that aren’t on the radar right now, like you’re talking about, or substances that aren’t well understood.

SRF came together because Joseph Barsuglia, Rafael Lancelotta, and I came together to do a 5-MeO study virtually from three different places in the country. It sparked this idea that maybe we could do this in a formal way with students. We’re definitely continuing to create those processes.

We’ve got another study starting right now with Dawn Davis from the Native American Church, who’s on the board of directors of SRF. We connected with researchers in the Netherlands and in the Czech Republic. We’re replicating  the 5-MeO survey, but with people who ingest mescaline, and we’re going to look at people who use peyote, san pedro, and synthetic mescaline, and compare the effects. We don’t know a lot about people who use peyote. We’re really hopeful that we can inspire students to start thinking about all of the things we don’t know yet about these molecules.

On your homepage you make it clear that you support the Statement on Open Science. Why is this important to you?

That’s important to me because I believe very strongly that there’s more to this work than personal gain and notoriety in this space. I don’t think that that’s consistent with the actions and values I’ve seen from other organizations. My guiding value in all of this–whether it’s personal or professional–my consistent value is connection and pursuing the good through that connection. By definition, connection is open and inclusive and inherently curious.

Source Research Foundation (shown in featured image) is: Alan K. Davis, PhD., Mariana M. Cajaiba, MD., Joseph P. Barsuglia, PhD., Lynnette A. Averill, PhD., Dawn A. Davis, MS, Brook J. Arterberry, PhD., Lauren Padgett, Rafael L. Lancelotta MS., and Kathleen A. Davis.

I’ve been friends with Adam Strauss ever since hearing about The Mushroom Cure back in 2016.

At the time, I was aware of some psychedelic success stories for less mainstream use cases, like psilocybin or LSD for cluster headaches or stuttering, but I had never heard about psilocybin being used to help treat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I was intrigued and wanted to know more and see the show.

Adam and I banter on the phone fairly often. Generally, about the overall gossip within the psychedelic community and what future comedy projects we could collaborate on. Before I met Adam I didn’t really know anyone with OCD. It was just an abstract concept to me. Like most people, I had the image of the stereotypical germaphobe who obsessively scrubs their hands in a futile attempt at washing the thousands of bacteria away. It wasn’t until I sat down to watch his roughly 90 minute monologue that I understood the acute struggle that people with OCD face every day.

 

What’s life in San Francisco like? 

I don’t know what life in San Francisco is like because I am not there specifically, I’m in Marin County in San Rafael and it’s just gorgeous here. You have mountains, I call them mountains, a lot of locals might consider them hills. You have these peaks and ocean and this incredibly rugged coastline. It really highlights for me what I’m missing being in New York, first and foremost is nature.

How has the reception of The Mushroom Cure in San Francisco been different than New York? 

It hasn’t been that different from one place to another. One thing that I’m doing here is a lot of talk backs after the shows. We’ll have various researchers, advocates, I had Ethan Nadelmann, Emanuel Sferios, Bob Jesse is coming on June 29th.

You had someone from Stanford recently too right?

Yes. We had Carolyn Rodriguez from Stanford. She heads up the Rodriguez Lab (Translational Therapeutics Lab) and that was one of my favorite ones for a couple of reasons. She’s working with ketamine for OCD. (You can find their OCD research here.) She’s the only person in the world who’s researched it and the results are … so she’s only completed one study and it was a small pilot study but the results were extremely promising and now she’s undertaking a significantly larger study where they’re not only going to measure treatment outcomes but they’re also going to put people, OCD patients, on ketamine in FMRI machines and get some insight as to what’s happening in the brain.

What’s so exciting about that is not only will that shed insight I think on how ketamine works for OCD and probably in general, but it’ll also shed insight on OCD. That’s one of I think the values of psychedelic research is it gives you sort of a different lens to look at phenomena with.

Terence McKenna talks about part of the significance of the psychedelic experience is that it allows you to triangulate reality. Because without psychedelics he says we just have two states. We have normal waking consciousness and we have being asleep. And with two data points you can’t really triangulate. You can’t really nail down a position. But with three data points, and he maintains that psychedelics are the third data point, you can as he puts it, triangulate reality. It’s sort of a typical McKenna, brilliant but also a bit far out and hard to pin down.

Yeah I have no idea what you’re talking about. 

Yeah let’s just cut the McKenna stuff out.

Let me get back to ketamine quickly. What’s so fascinating about this is you learn more about any brain state if you can observe it through different facets. So, putting people in an FMRI who have OCD is going to tell you some things. Putting people in an FMRI who have OCD and are on ketamine is going to tell you a lot more. Not just about the ketamine effects but about OCD in general.

https://www.facebook.com/adamjstrauss/videos/1946836918674478/

 

Have you used ketamine for your OCD? 

No I haven’t. I’ve only had a couple high dose ketamine experiences years ago and they were intranasal. So, I can say I wasn’t necessarily looking at it for OCD relief and it was a while ago. I don’t remember specifically if my symptoms changed. I have not spoken to anyone who’s used ketamine specifically in that way.

You have two Mushroom Cure shows in LA on June 20-21. 

Right. Yup. Yeah. I’m looking forward to that because I’ve never brought the show to LA before. There’s obviously a fairly large healthy psychedelic community there. People have been asking me to bring the show there for years so I’m excited to finally make that happen.

You recently opened up for Michael Pollan in San Francisco. How’d that go?

It was a lot of fun. I wasn’t doing anything from The Mushroom Cure. I was just doing psychedelic stand up. That was great. I love doing those sorts of shows. You’ve seen me do some. I’ve done some for Psymposia. I did one at Psychedelic Science last year just because I do talk about psychedelics to some degree when I’m just performing you know, generic comedy in a comedy club, but you can’t go too deep because people just don’t have the baseline knowledge.

That is changing. Now even in a comedy club I can talk about ayahuasca and I can be pretty confident that …

You don’t just get crickets? 

You don’t just get crickets, but you do get some crickets. Some people don’t know what it is, and I’ll give em a quick one sentence synopsis. I can get away more and more with psychedelic comedy in just plain old comedy clubs but performing for a psychedelically savvy audience is just a lot of fun. I think what’s so fascinating about these experiences is, well a few things. Part of it is they can be simply bizarre and just extreme, but there can be something kind of universal about those experiences. The specifics may vary but a lot of people have had broadly similar experiences on say mushrooms, you know, potentially that ego death experience, some of the visual experiences.

So talking with an audience that has actually experienced that stuff allows you to do a lot of “in jokes” and talk about things where I think part of the excitement of the audience is they haven’t really heard people talking about this stuff in a comedic context. There can be a tendency to take this stuff seriously and it should be taken seriously in some context. But I think it’s ripe for humor and it hasn’t been mined much for humor.

Some people that I know have OCD and I say “Hey my friend Adam Strauss has this amazing show called The Mushroom Cure. He had OCD and he…”

Sorry you cut out. The last part I heard you say was he has an amazing show. So we can end the interview right there.

Um. So. “…It’s about him trying to cure his OCD with psilocybin.” I’m sure you get people who come up to you and say “Hey I want to try this.”. What do you tell them? 

Yeah, it’s changed over time but what I tell people, and I’m actually going to make a short video.

Well because I’m quite certain that you’re pushing this potential treatment way more than the original study. Nobody knows about that. I think they know about your show now. So you’re kind of like the promoter of psilocybin for OCD. 

I would push back on the term promoter just because, you’ve seen the show more than once and without giving it away, it’s not a clear cut like, yeah, I took mushrooms and everything was better.

Right

That’s one reason. It’s not a panacea. It’s not a silver bullet. But do I think psilocybin was helpful? Absolutely. Do I feel it was potentially even necessary for the recovery I’ve had? Yes. Though I’d say just psilocybin by itself wouldn’t have been sufficient.

There’s so many factors. This is one of the tricky things about working with psychedelics. If you take ibuprofen it’s going to have a fairly reliable effect. It may change a little bit depending on how much food is in your stomach but it’s basically going to affect you the same way. There’s so many factors that go into the experience that I think ultimately influence the outcome you’re going to get when you’re trying to treat a condition.

When people ask me for advice I usually start out with a pretty strong caveat, which is this stuff is incredibly promising not just based on my own experience, and not just based on that study I read out of the University of Arizona but also based on all the research that’s happened subsequently for PTSD et cetera. But this stuff is inherently unpredictable in a way that other drugs slash medicines are not.

It’s not here take 30mg of psilocybin and call me in the morning. It’s in the context of a very carefully controlled experience where there’s a lot therapy administered before ..

And when you went into this you had a very carefully controlled setting correct…?

No. I definitely did not. I don’t know if that was sarcasm…

I did it in a pretty stupid way. In my defense I’ll say I was desperate. I wanted relief. I needed relief. My broad approach, if you even want to call it an approach, was I took a lot of different drugs in uncontrolled contexts at varying doses. Some of them I took with my girlfriend at the time who’s in the show, who was sort of my unofficial guide. Some of them I took alone. As you know some of them did not turn out well at all. There were brushes with law enforcement et cetera.

How would you do it differently now? 

I would work with a guide. I actually did recently have my first truly guided psychedelic experience three or four weeks ago. It was a very different experience.

Did you feel it was more beneficial? 

I’m still unpacking it.

You didn’t call 911?

Right. The cops did not get involved. So that was a win right there. What came through very clearly to me is oh this is a very different way to do it. You asked if I felt it was more beneficial and the reason I hesitated is…how can I put it? When I was doing this stuff at the time my baseline was so bad, my OCD was so bad, my general suffering was so acute that there was a lot of room for improvement. I’m a lot better now. I’m not a perfect specimen of enlightened humanity but I don’t suffer to the same degree or frequency or anything like it that I did then, so I think the improvements I would expect to see now would by definition be a lot more subtle.

So that’s why I hesitate to say if it was more beneficial. But what I can say without hesitation is I think had I had that experience, that container of a guided experience when my OCD was awful, and I was trying to cure it, I think I would have had a better outcome.

I think now there’s the benefit of, unfortunately it’s underground, but there is a network, and a growing network of these sort of underground therapists, trained people, most of them are trained, they’re psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers, who have also trained in the art and science of guiding people on psychedelic experiences. There’s fairly rigorous underground training programs out here in the Bay Area that kind of model a medical education. You learn, you train, you have the experiences yourself, you practice with more experienced guides.

If I were to do it again, if I could go back in time I definitely would have found a guide. Though I will say it probably wouldn’t have made for as good a story. So there is that upside. If you’re going to talk about something on stage, pain and suffering and terror are ironically your friends there.

Neill Franklin is the Executive Director of the LEAP, Law Enforcement Action Partnership (formerly Law Enforcement Against Prohibition). Before joining LEAP, Neill spent 34 years at the Maryland State Police and the Baltimore Police Department. Now he’s dedicated to making communities safer by confronting issues of drug policy and criminal justice reform

Tell us about the newly re-launched LEAP

In a nutshell, the re-launch of LEAP as Law Enforcement Action Partnership is about positioning ourselves to do a better job of connecting the war-on-drugs dots for people. By talking about the many byproducts of the war on drugs (over incarceration, civil forfeiture, police militarization, poor police community relations, overdose deaths, immigration, etc.), we can paint a correlation for people. This reformation also creates an atmosphere for increased recruitment of more law enforcement professionals, which is an absolute must for communicating our message. As cops educate more cops and prosecutors educate more prosecutors, the sooner the madness ends.

Why did you join the police?

My older brother became a state trooper while I was still in high school. Seeing the job through his experiences seemed interesting, so I gave it a shot.

What’s a day in the life like for a major investigating narcotics in the Maryland State Police?

Well, as a major you don’t do much investigating. I was the northeast regional commander for nine drug task forces. Now, when I was a narc back in 1980, that was a different story. Hanging out at bars and other places befriending people for the purpose of hooking an unsuspecting pot user. Once you hook someone for smoking a little weed, you put the screws to them and get them to rat on someone else. So much for the golden rule.

How many drug busts did you do a week on average?

It wasn’t like what you see in cities like Baltimore today, sweeping corners in drug dragnets. Our cases took much more time and effort in the 80s. Although I don’t agree with our drug prohibition laws, my arrests back then were solid arrests, never violating anyone’s constitutional rights and never losing a case in court. So, to get to your question, only one or two.

Many people are surprised when they first hear about civil asset forfeiture. What was it originally intended to do? How has asset forfeiture been abused since its inception?

Yes they are surprised. There are two types of people when it comes to civil forfeiture: those who hate it and those who don’t know what it is. The intent of civil forfeiture policy of the 1980s was to go after the illegal profits of major drug dealers and kingpins. After we took down the major community dealers, we turned these policies loose upon the unsuspecting small-time drug user and the innocent traveler carrying cash.

What’s the biggest abuse you’ve seen in civil asset forfeiture?

Personally, the biggest abuse I’ve seen was on the eastern shore of Maryland. We would seize the cars of “suspected” low-level dealers and sell them back for a few hundred dollars when they begged for it, needing their car for commuting to and from work. For those who could not recover their cars and motorcycles, the Salisbury Chief of Police was selling them to his friends at greatly reduced rates. This did not end well for him.

What do most police officers really think about the war on drugs?

Eighty plus percent of police chiefs admit that the war on drugs has failed, but as a chief, you must tow the mayor’s party line of prohibition. Even though they believe that the WOD has failed, most do not support legalization of all drugs. I believe that maybe half support legalizing marijuana. Most of the men and women on the street get it. They see the damage done first hand on many levels.

If you could say one thing to police officers who are true believers of prohibition, what would it be?

It would be a question or two. What are the positive aspects of the war on drugs? Are there fewer drugs available to kids? Has violent crime been greatly reduced? Have we experienced a decline in overdose deaths? Is it saving the country money? Think about it!

Michael Wood talks about the “police problem” as a management problem. You’ve talked about the need to change police incentives. Tell us about that.

The performance problems of employees in any profession are owned by management. Hire the best people for the job, train them as best as you can, lead from the front, hold folks accountable, and fire them when they don’t measure up. It’s not rocket science. As for incentives, establish the right metrics. Use a metric of the absence of crime, not the evidence of crime. Arrest numbers (quotas) should never be a metric of success.

How much money a year can a police officer make in overtime from investigating small-scale drug crimes? Is this one of those incentives that needs to be changed?

This should be changed. Not just for drugs, but all arrests should be turned over to the oncoming shift. It’s very easy to almost double your pay in many departments by making drug and other low-level arrests.

Are you seeing more police chiefs come around on prohibition and the war on drugs?

Very slowly because of politics as mentioned above.

Can you comment on violent crimes going unsolved because the police are too busy focused on small-scale drug sales?

Nationally in the late 60s, we solved 90 percent of all murders. Today that number is 60 percent. We have experienced a similar decline with rape, robberies, and burglaries. Today, 40 percent of murders go unsolved, along with 60 percent of rapes and 75 percent of robberies. This drastic change came about when we began the war on drugs in the early 70s.

What are the problems associated with decriminalization, and why do you support legalization instead? What are the potential problems you see associated with legalization?

Decriminalization, ending criminal penalties for possession only, leaves the violent illicit trade in tact. Kids are still recruited by drug dealing gangs and crews, and adulterated products continue being sold because there are no quality control standards. As for legalization, whatever problems you see in the alcohol industry are potential problems for any legal drug market, and they would vary in line with policy differences.

When I mention legalization for all drugs to someone, they generally laugh and shake their head and say something like “OK so you think heroin should be available to anyone?” Comment on this. What’s your most convincing argument for why drugs should be legalized?

First, heroin should not be available to everyone. It should not be available to kids. My argument is to end the prohibition of consensual adult behavior because prohibition causes more societal harm than drug use ever could. Prohibition has failed with every consensual adult behavior: tobacco, coffee, alcohol, sex, etc. Prohibition policies have transformed the land of the free into the world’s number one incarcerator. It has made our communities extremely violent, and it is responsible for the growth of violent gangs that recruit our children. It is responsible for highly potent drugs flooding our communities causing high overdose death rates. And it is responsible for the rift between police and poor black communities. By the way, it has cost us more than 1.5 trillion dollars over the past five decades.

If heroin, cocaine, meth, etc. were legalized overnight, what would that regulated system look like?

It could be a number of things. The best I can recommend for you is this book of many possibilities. Read the summary.

In your opinion, as a country, what do we do about cartel trafficking and abuse associated with pill culture and the over-prescription of painkillers? Can it be prevented? If so, what’s the most effective way?

End prohibition, and the cartels go away. The pill culture, alcohol, tobacco, etc. is all about education and health. The number one contributor to drug abuse is mental health in nature. Educate kids and treat mental illness.

How could we put money spent fighting the war on drugs to better use?

See my prior answer, education and mental health. We can also rebuild the poor communities that have been devastated by the war on drugs. We spend billions rebuilding other countries after a war, now it’s our turn.

What motivated you to defect sides in the drug war?

Education. True education begins at the moment you realize the vastness of your ignorance.

I woke up to the carnage of competing gangs due to the amount of money available. I learned that it was all because of prohibition policies, which made drugs more valuable than gold. I want the killings to stop. That’s my main motivator.

What’s the worst thing you saw as a police officer?

The abuse of kids. From assaults to sexual abuse to neglect, kids cannot defend themselves, relying 100 percent upon others to protect and provide for them. That’s where we, the police, should be focusing our limited resources, protecting the children.

If you had the power to remake the criminal justice system, what would it look like?

We wouldn’t need one. We would embrace restorative justice models. Our criminal justice system has done more damage to families than any other policy. As such, when you dissect the family unit, you create unhealthy neighborhoods and communities. When families are intact, communities are healthy and they work. As such, so would restorative justice models. No prisons, only health-based systems for dealing with mental health concerns. When folks act out or up, the community holds them responsible in ways that do not involve incarceration, and there is a process where they actually learn from their negative behavior, always being encouraged to be better citizens. I know, it’s quite idealistic, but you must always strive for what others believe to be impossible.

What can we do today to make positive steps toward this vision?

Just believe that it can be done.

We got the chance to interview Cosmo Feilding Mellen, the director of The Sunshine Makers. It’s a movie described as being a real-life Breaking Bad for the psychedelic set.

The documentary tells the story of Nicholas Sand and Tim Scully, the unlikely duo at the heart of 1960s American drug counter-culture. United in a utopian mission to save the planet through the consciousness-raising power of LSD, these underground chemists manufactured a massive amount of acid, including the gold standard for quality LSD, ‘Orange Sunshine,’ all while staying one step ahead of the Feds.

Why’d you make the The Sunshine Makers?

I wanted to make a film with big and important ideas couched in a really engrossing story. I love crime movies, so a rise-and-fall drug dealer movie that also deals with the ideas of expanded consciousness, social transformation, and idealism ticked all the boxes.

Did you get to try Orange Sunshine while making the film?

I asked around, but I don’t think it exists anymore.

Tell us how you met Tim Scully and Nick Sand.

I first met Nick when I was 16. I live in the UK, and Nick came to dinner with my parents―my mother runs the Beckley Foundation, which does scientific research into psychedelics and how they work in the brain. Nick is one of those really cool guys who was really easy to talk to as a teenager. He even offered me some chemistry tips, which I thankfully declined…

Anyway, then a few years later my family and his family all ended up going to Burning Man together, and that’s when I really got fascinated with his story.

I only met Tim once I was developing this film project, through Connie my co-writer. I went to stay with him and his partner Alice in Mendocino. They live in the most beautiful spot.

Their goal was to make a quarter billion hits of LSD. How close did they get?

In terms of sheer numbers they didn’t get that close. They made millions of doses, but their plan was to scale up each run, and they calculated they would have the full 750,000,000 made within a couple of years…but obviously unforeseen obstacles prevented that from happening.

A recurring theme in the film is the role of LSD in changing the world. Nick recalls a trip where he was told, “Your job on this planet is to make psychedelics and turn on the world.” Tim later comments, “I still believed that LSD was a good thing, but I was no longer convinced that it was the solution to the world’s problems.” What’s your take on this?

There’s no doubt that LSD is an incredibly powerful substance and has the potential to bring about fundamental changes for the better in people who take it. But these substances need to be treated with great caution and respect. I hope that one day we will see psychedelics medicalized so that people can have access to psychedelics in an extremely safe and controlled environment. It doesn’t sound as fun as a Grateful Dead concert, but it would be a lot safer. And now the scientific evidence is really building up to make a great case for using psychedelics to treat a huge array of mental health problems.

How much money did they make?

I don’t know exactly. But less than you might imagine. They really weren’t in it for the money. I’m pretty sure Tim made more money from designing software than he ever did from making acid.

Scully was sentenced to 20 years in prison but got out in three. How?

Back then the prison system was actually a lot more forgiving than it is today. There was actually a big campaign to get Tim out of prison because he was such a peaceful man and brilliant scientist. They somehow managed to get his sentence cut in half to 10 years, and he was allowed out after only three due to good behavior.

If any cynics are asking: he definitely didn’t rat anyone out!

Nick Sand gets sentenced to 15 years in 1974, serves two, gets out on the loophole appeal, flees to Canada, manufactures LSD for another 20 years, get busted in 1990, flees again, gets busted again in 1996 for having 43 grams (430,000 doses), and serves 6 years. Was he the biggest LSD manufacturer at the time? Is he done?

I don’t know if he was the biggest in the world at that time, but he was caught with enough LSD to turn on the whole of Canada two times over, so he was pretty damn big in any case.

And yeah. Nick’s a law abiding citizen these days. He’s paid his dues and fought the good fight. He deserves a peaceful retirement.

What was their relationship like? Nick seems like a flamboyant Dionysian sex-pirate, Tim an introverted chemist. They seem unlikely partners.

Yes. The thing I love about this story most is how Tim and Nick are the most unlikely friends. They are kind of forced into a marriage of convenience based on their shared idealism that LSD can save the world, but apart from that, they have zero in common. And I find it particularly interesting to see how the two of them react differently to their ideals being put to the test.

What’s your favorite scene that was cut from the film?

You know what? There are SO many. Tim was the sound man for the Grateful Dead during the Acid Tests with the Merry Pranksters. That was amazing to learn about.

But I think my favorite scene was after LSD is banned and Owsley, Tim, and Nick all tried to make STP―a new designer drug that was still legal. Tim tries it with Owsley and takes far too much of it. He thinks he’s in Vietnam and can see helicopters flying over head. He tries to drive home but can’t handle it. Pulls over, drops his keys on the floormat, and then it takes him eight hours to find them again!

Then Nick makes loads of STP and sells it to the Hells Angels. But they then get angry with him because they thought they were buying LSD, and they chase him with a gun…the stories go on and on.

In your opinion, how much was them wanting to change the world, and how much was them wanting to be acid kings?

There’s no question that ego played a part, and it probably played a part in different ways and to different extents for each of them. But I honestly believe that both of them were deeply committed to psychedelics changing the world for the better.

Nick was obviously more of a natural outlaw, so he was probably more comfortable in that world, but I still really believe his heart was in the right place.

Was Orange Sunshine LSD or ALD-52? Was this the legal loophole Scully found to briefly get out of prison?

No. That was a loophole that he tried to use in the trial, and it actually got him a worse prison sentence because he was lying to the court!

Your mom Amanda Feilding is leading the way with LSD research at the Beckley Foundation. Can we assume you had a psychedelic-positive upbringing? What was that like?

Haha. Yeah, I guess I did, and I’m extremely grateful to my parents for that. They were always open about the potential benefits of psychedelics as long as they are treated with great caution and respect. I think it instilled in me a much safer attitude to drugs than a lot of people I know.

Although it was also kind of weird at school being known as the kid with the drug-campaigning parents! I remember when I was 15 our school had a drug education questionnaire to fill out, and one question asked “what do you think of when you think of LSD” and half the school put “Cosmo’s mum!”

Duncan Trussell is a stand-up comedian and host of The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, known for its blend of humor, fringe ideas, eclectic guests, and great interviews. In addition, Duncan has appeared on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time, Funny or Die’s Drunk History, and is a frequent guest on the Joe Rogan Experience.

I first met Duncan in April at his You Are God show in Boston at the Wilbur Theater. Duncan and Mikey Kampmann, the tour emcee, were gracious and let Psymposia display our psychedelic propaganda at their merch table. Afterwards, we hopped on the You Are God bus to record this podcast with Rick Doblin.

In October 2017 Psymposia hosted Psychedelic Stories with Duncan Trussell in Brooklyn, and then grabbed drinks and watched the second debate…This conversation picks up around there.

 

Brian: You actually gave Ram Dass a Trump shirt.

Duncan: Yes!!!! It said “Be Trump Now” and had Trump’s face in something akin to the Be Here Now cover.

Not to get too nerdy here, but one of my favorite moments in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy is when they happen upon Tom Bombadil who is this eternal god-like being that lives in the center of a mystical forest. When Bombadil holds up the ring of power, this terrible cursed item capable of destroying the normal way of things in Middle Earth, he just laughs at it.

He thinks it’s funny and not funny in a sarcastic, ironic way but actually funny. This is what awakened beings do with all negative phenomena. They convert it from a lower density to a higher density, and they do it instantaneously and effortlessly. So giving Ram Dass a Trump t-shirt was like giving Tom Bombadil the ring of power.

Just watching him laugh at it transformed its ugly voodoo power into something far less frightening.

Update: President Trump. Still laughing?

YES!!! But it’s a nervous laugh.

What now?

The same thing!

How has watching sports helped you cope with this trauma?

I’ve recently become addicted to World Of Warcraft. Not sure if that’s related.

What’s the nicest thing you have to say about Trump?

Trump is a foreshock coming from the impending technological singularity. He’s a blast of novelty resulting from a relatively brand new technology—emails—being hacked and exposing Hillary Clinton’s shadow side, which scared the shit out of people. If you’re afraid of Trump then strap in because as technology continues its exponential acceleration we’ll see things that make a Trump presidency seem like the most normal and natural thing that could have ever happened.

I guess Bernie would have won huh?

Who knows! Impossible to say.

Accepting some Trump supporters is the greatest example ever and the definition of radical inclusion in my book. 

Inclusion and permission are not the same thing. You include your child as a member of your family, but that doesn’t mean you let him do whatever he wants. As Ram Dass says, never kick anyone out of your heart. This doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to resist them; it just means that you need to figure out a way to lovingly resist. For more info on this, study MLK.

Be honest, did you think he could really win? I swear I’m not being snarky.

For a long time I’ve thought that the political system was completely rigged, so I definitely thought Hillary would win no matter what. The Trump victory is like watching a dart trap set up by the Founding Fathers spring into action. For better or for worse the system worked. A massive group of disenfranchised people who feel ignored or pissed off at the status quo peacefully revolted against an entrenched political class. In one night the Democratic Party was peacefully conquered. It’s breathtaking.

Looks like your polling methods were off, and your endorsement for Bag of Tarantulas for president didn’t mean shit.

Some say Hillary was just too out of touch with most of America. I don’t buy it.

According to the latest polling data Bag Of Tarantulas and Bag of Scorpions have a clear lead over @HillaryClinton and @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/okZ3B8BnRX

— Duncan Trussell (@duncantrussell) October 14, 2016

What do you think of the vampire costume she wore during her concession speech?

I think she was completely out of touch.

Read the Steve Bannon Hollywood Reporter interview and you’ll get it straight from the horse’s mouth. Trump’s campaign recognized that the DNC had become an echo chamber and used this to leverage a victory. They were so out of touch that in one of the Wikileaks emails they talk about using Trump as a “Pied Piper” candidate who they thought Hillary would easily defeat. They completely fucked up.

With emphasis on the set part of set & setting, my recommendation is that people stay away from psychedelics at the moment to treat their political depression for fear of seeing horned demons pouring through a dark portal in the White House. Do you agree or disagree with this assessment?  

Disagree. Under Obama people were getting slaughtered by drones, illegal immigrants were being deported, medical marijuana dispensaries were being raided, we continued the longest period of war in US history, we entered into an age of mass surveillance through the NSA, Guantanamo Bay stayed open, African Americans were getting shot by the police on a weekly basis, drugs remained criminalized, and as I write this, cops are spraying water on Native Americans in Standing Rock.

I can’t think of a period in my lifetime where contemplating the government on psychedelics ever created a peaceful mindset. Why? Because when you fixate on the government in a paranoid way, you fall out of the present moment and forget the good news that comes from the psychedelic realm. “Everything’s going to be OK. Even if you die, you’re still going to be fine.” Or as Martin Luther King put it:  “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Touché.

Your thoughts on #Calexit?

I haven’t researched it.

The Duncan Trussell Family Hour is like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood meets The Twilight Zone. Was this the plan?

Outside of wanting to record conversations with interesting people, I don’t think I had any plan.

Shit! Failed attempt at humor!

Welcome to my world!!!

I’ve always thought Tolkien was hip to mushrooms. Their meeting with Tom Bombadil comes after the chapters: A Short Cut to Mushrooms > A Conspiracy Unmasked > The Old Forest.

Yep! Hobbits love mushrooms. And Bombadil was pals with the mushroom farmer Frodo used to steal mushrooms from as a young hobbit.

Have you ever read The Silmarillion by Tolkein?

NOT YET.

Why’d you decide to be a comedic philosopher and not a clown?

I barely consider myself a comedian or a philosopher. I would LOVE to be some combination of the two. That would be so great. I would STRUT into coffee shops and just emanate this palatable field of dangerous energy like some cross between Kierkegaard and Carlin. I would have volumes of amazing books that sliced apart all cultural paradigms while inducing high level belly laughs from all who read them. I would make love to Parisian university professors… The sad truth is that I’m really not sure what I am.

Good. Who cares?  I’m sure you have an impressive library though. What are some of your treasured books?  

My FRANK books by Jim Woodring.

What’s your psychoactive toolbox look like?

It’s made of the skulls of Tibetan monks and when the moon is full, secret repositories fill with liquid LSD which drips out of the silver proboscis of a golden butterfly bee sculpture that sits atop the toolbox. Each drop contains approx. 20 micrograms, which I ingest in the morning with my coffee before I sit down for a day of thinking about what to write.

So you have experimented with microdosing?

Yes I have! I highly recommend it.

Back to what you said about Ram Dass and transforming negative energy. Transforming negative energy and fear in this way is the true essence of rebellion.

Magic is real.

It leads to powerful results you can’t see at the time. I had to do it over the period of 3 years after my mother passed and I was raided for growing marijuana and mushrooms. So thanks for sharing that insight with Ram Dass.

Wow. Wow wow. Well here’s a paragraph from Martin Luther King’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail:

“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws.

One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all.”

You went to Burning Man for the first time and had a very meaningful experience at the Temple. Can you talk a little bit about that?

When my Mom died, we never gave her the funeral that she deserved. We went down to Georgia where she grew up, and my uncle delivered an old school fundamentalist Christian eulogy that went something like “Deneen was a psychologist. I wonder if she’s up there trying to psychoanalyze God…” It was really awful and condescending and just rotten. Then a few days after that my brother and I scattered her ashes and it was really sweet, but there was just us three there. No human community.

So at Burning Man I went into the temple, and all of this sweet grief came pouring out of me, and it felt like I was being supported by all the people who were in there with me, both embodied and disembodied, and it felt like I was given another chance to say goodbye to my Mom and to really honor who she was. It was supremely healing. God bless Burning Man!

The following consists of excerpts from The Most Beautiful Death, a letter written by Laura Huxley, wife of psychedelic pioneer Aldous Huxley, to his brother Julian, about his experience with LSD on his deathbed and leading up to his final moments on November 22, 1963.

There is so much I want to tell you about the last week of Aldous’ life and particularly the last day.

What happened is important not only for us close and loving but it is almost a conclusion, better, a continuation of his own work, and therefore it has importance for people in general… It seemed obvious and transparent that subconsciously he knew that he was going to die. But not once consciously did he speak of it.

This had nothing to do with the idea that some of his friends put forward, that he wanted to spare me. It wasn’t this, because Aldous had never been able to play a part, to say a single lie; he was constitutionally unable to lie.

During the last two months I gave him almost daily an opportunity, an opening for speaking about death, but of course this opening was always one that could have been taken in two ways – either towards life or towards death, and he always took it towards life.

We read the entire manual of Dr. Leary extracted from The Book of the Dead.

He could have, even jokingly said don’t forget to remind me his comment instead was only directed to the way Dr. Leary conducted his LSD sessions, and how he would bring people, who were not dead, back here to this life after the session.

It is true he said sometimes phrases like, “If I get out of this,” in connection to his new ideas for writing, and wondered when and if he would have the strength to work. His mind was very active and it seems that this Dilaudid had stirred some new layer which had not often been stirred in him.

“If I die.” This was the first time that he had said that with reference to now. He wrote it. I knew and felt that for the first time he was looking at this. About a half an hour before I had called up Sidney Cohen, a psychiatrist who has been one of the leaders in the use of LSD.

I had asked him if he had ever given LSD to a man in this condition. He said he had only done it twice actually, and in one case it had brought up a sort of reconciliation with Death, and in the other case it did not make any difference. I asked him if he would advise me to give it to Aldous in his condition.

I told him how I had offered it several times during the last two months, but he always said that he would wait until he was better. Then Dr. Cohen said, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. What do you think?” I said, “I don’t know. Shall I offer it to him?” He said, “I would offer it to him in a very oblique way, just say ‘what do you think about taking LSD [sometime again]?’”

This vague response had been common to the few workers in this field to whom I had asked, “Do you give LSD in extremes?” Island is the only definite reference that I know of.

I must have spoken to Sidney Cohen about nine-thirty. Aldous’ condition had become so physically painful and obscure, and he was so agitated he couldn’t say what he wanted, and I couldn’t understand.

Then I don’t know exactly what time it was, he asked for his tablet and wrote, “Try LSD 100 intramuscular.”

Although as you see from this photo static copy it is not very clear, I know that this is what he meant. I asked him to confirm it. Suddenly something became very clear to me. I knew that we were together again after this torturous talking of the last two months.

I knew then, I knew what was to be done. I went quickly into the cupboard in the other room where Dr. Bernstein was, and the TV which had just announced the shooting of Kennedy.

I took the LSD and said, “I am going to give him a shot of LSD, he asked for it.” The doctor had a moment of agitation because you know very well the uneasiness about this drug in the medical mind. Then he said, “All right, at this point what is the difference.”

Whatever he had said, no “authority,” not even an army of authorities could have stopped me then. I went into Aldous’ room with the vial of LSD and prepared a syringe. The doctor asked me if I wanted him to give him the shot – maybe because he saw that my hands were trembling.

His asking me that made me conscious of my hands, and I said, “No I must do this.” I quieted myself, and when I gave him the shot my hands were very firm. Then, somehow, a great relief came to us both. I believe it was 11:20 when I gave him his first shot of 100 microgrammes.

I sat near his bed and I said, “Darling, maybe in a little while I will take it with you. Would you like me to take it also in a little while?”

I said a little while because I had no idea of when I should or could take it, in fact I have not been able to take it to this writing because of the condition around me. And he indicated “yes.”

We must keep in mind that by now he was speaking very, very little. Then I said, “Would you like Matthew to take it with you also? And he said, “Yes.” “What about Ellen?” He said, “Yes.”

Then I mentioned two or three people who had been working with LSD and he said, “No, no, basta, basta.” Then I said, “What about Jinny?” And he said, “Yes,” with emphasis. Then we were quiet. I just sat there without speaking for a while.

Aldous was not so agitated physically. He seemed – somehow I felt he knew, we both knew what we were doing, and this has always been a great relief to Aldous. I have seen him at times during his illness very upset until he knew what he was going to do, then even if it was an operation or X-ray, he would make a total change.

This enormous feeling of relief would come to him, and he wouldn’t be worried at all about it, he would say let’s do it, and we would go to it and he was like a liberated man. And now I had the same feeling – a decision had been made, he made the decision again very quickly.

Suddenly he had accepted the fact of death; he had taken this moksha medicine (LSD) in which he believed. He was doing what he had written in Island, and I had the feeling that he was interested and relieved and quiet.

After half an hour, the expression on his face began to change a little, and I asked him if he felt the effect of LSD, and he indicated no. Yet, I think that a something had taken place already.

This was one of Aldous’ characteristics. He would always delay acknowledging the effect of any medicine, even when the effect was quite certainly there, unless the effect was very, very strong he would say no.

Now, the expression of his face was beginning to look as it did every time that he had the moksha medicine, when this immense expression of complete bliss and love would come over him.

This was not the case now, but there was a change in comparison to what his face had been two hours ago. I let another half hour pass, and then I decided to give him another 100 mcg. I told him I was going to do it, and he acquiesced. I gave him another shot, and then I began to talk to him.

He was very quiet now; he was very quiet and his legs were getting colder; higher and higher I could see purple areas of cynosis.

Then I began to talk to him, saying, “Light and free.”

Some of these thing I told him at night in these last few weeks before he would go to sleep, and now I said it more convincingly, more intensely – “go, go, let go, darling; forward and up. You are going forward and up; you are going towards the light. Willing and consciously you are going, willingly and consciously, and you are doing this beautifully; you are doing this so beautifully – you are going towards the light; you are going towards a greater love; you are going forward and up.

It is so easy; it is so beautiful. You are doing it so beautifully, so easily. Light and free. Forward and up. You are going towards Maria’s love with my love. You are going towards a greater love than you have ever known. You are going towards the best, the greatest love, and it is easy, it is so easy, and you are doing it so beautifully.”

I believe I started to talk to him – it must have been about one or two o’clock. It was very difficult for me to keep track of time.

The nurse was in the room and Rosalind and Jinny and two doctors – Dr. Knight and Dr. Cutler. They were sort of far away from the bed. I was very, very near his ears, and I hope I spoke clearly and understandingly. Once I asked him, “Do you hear me?”

He squeezed my hand. He was hearing me.

I was tempted to ask more questions, but in the morning he had begged me not to ask any more questions, and the entire feeling was that things were right.

I didn’t dare to inquire, to disturb, and that was the only question that I asked, “Do you hear me?” Maybe I should have asked more questions, but I didn’t.

Later on I asked the same question, but the hand didn’t move any more. Now from two o’clock until the time he died, which was five-twenty, there was complete peace except for once. That must have been about three-thirty or four, when I saw the beginning of struggle in his lower lip.

His lower lip began to move as if it were going to be a struggle for air. Then I gave the direction even more forcefully. “It is easy, and you are doing this beautifully and willingly and consciously, in full awareness, in full awareness, darling, you are going towards the light.” I repeated these or similar words for the last three or four hours.

Once in a while my own emotion would overcome me, but if it did I immediately would leave the bed for two or three minutes, and would come back only when I could dismiss my emotion.

The twitching of the lower lip lasted only a little bit, and it seemed to respond completely to what I was saying.

“Easy, easy, and you are doing this willingly and consciously and beautifully – going forward and up, light and free, forward and up towards the light, into the light, into complete love.”

The twitching stopped, the breathing became slower and slower, and there was absolutely not the slightest indication of contraction, of struggle. It was just that the breathing became slower – and slower – and slower, and at five-twenty the breathing stopped.

I had been warned in the morning that there might be some upsetting convulsions towards the end, or some sort of contraction of the lungs, and noises. People had been trying to prepare me for some horrible physical reaction that would probably occur.

None of this happened, actually the ceasing of the breathing was not a drama at all, because it was done so slowly, so gently, like a piece of music just finishing in a sempre piu piano dolcemente.

I had the feeling actually that the last hour of breathing was only the conditioned reflex of the body that had been used to doing this for 69 years, millions and millions of times. There was not the feeling that with the last breath, the spirit left. It had just been gently leaving for the last four hours.

In the room the last four hours were two doctors, Jinny, the nurse, Rosalind Roger Gopal – you know she is the great friend of Krishnamurti, and the directress of the school in Ojai for which Aldous did so much. They didn’t seem to hear what I was saying.

I thought I was speaking loud enough, but they said they didn’t hear it. Rosalind and Jinny once in a while came near the bed and held Aldous’ hand. These five people all said that this was the most serene, the most beautiful death. Both doctors and nurse said they had never seen a person in similar physical condition going off so completely without pain and without struggle.

We will never know if all this is only our wishful thinking, or if it is real, but certainly all outward signs and the inner feeling gave indication that it was beautiful and peaceful and easy.

And now, after I have been alone these few days, and less bombarded by other people’s feelings, the meaning of this last day becomes clearer and clearer to me and more and more important. Aldous was, I think (and certainly I am) appalled at the fact that what he wrote in Island was not taken seriously.

It was treated as a work of science fiction, when it was not fiction because each one of the ways of living he described in Island was not a product of his fantasy, but something that had been tried in one place or another and some of them in our own everyday life.

If the way Aldous died were known, it might awaken people to the awareness that not only this, but many other facts described in Island are possible here and now. Aldous’ asking for moksha medicine while dying is a confirmation of his work, and as such is of importance not only to us, but to the world.

It is true we will have some people saying that he was a drug addict all his life and that he ended as one, but it is history that Huxleys stop ignorance before ignorance can stop Huxleys.

Even after our correspondence on the subject, I had many doubts about keeping Aldous in the dark regarding his condition. It seemed not just that, after all he had written and spoken about death, he should be left to go into it unaware.

And he had such complete confidence in me – he might have taken it for granted that had death been near I certainly would have told him and helped him. So my relief at his sudden awakening at his quick adjusting is immense. Don’t you feel this also?

Now, is his way of dying to remain our, and only our relief and consolation, or should others also benefit from it? What do you feel?

Dorion Sagan is an award-winning science writer, and has co-authored, contributed to, and edited over thirty books including: What is Life?, Death & Sex,  Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution,  Into the Cool: Energy Flow Thermodynamics and Life,  Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature, and Cosmic Apprentice. He’s also written for Wired, Whole Earth Review, The New York Times, and Psymposia.

I met Dorion in 2014 after the first Psymposia event at UMass Amherst where I was completing my BS in Plant, Soil, and Insect Science. We first met at a bar during the after-party where he was enjoying the inebriating effects of his favorite drink, Kentucky bourbon and soda. We kept running into one another at the local café, and over the next year we rolled many cigarettes and had many conversations and bullshittings about life, science, deep time, plants, drugs, philosophy, symbiosis, and evolution. He was a big inspiration for Psymposia early on.

She often debated with Richard Dawkins. He’s been making videos about the hate mail he receives.  Is he still being selfish with his genes?

Lynn had a famous debate with Richard Dawkins in Oxford in 2009, sometimes called “The Battle of Balliol.” The debate was moderated by Denis Noble, one of Dawkins’ professors and on his thesis committee. Dawkins and the neo-Darwinists with their Selfish Gene Theory made important contributions but prematurely mathematized the science, giving what British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called “misplaced concreteness.” Although they now accept that we and all life forms are “symbiotic monsters”—vast collections of cells many of which themselves have multispecies bacterial symbiotic ancestry—they still cling to the notion that symbiosis is rare in evolution. This is hardly true, although the origin of eukaryotic cells (ameba-like cells of the type we and all plants, fungi, and animal tissues are made) is notable for marking a radical upgrade in surface life’s basic module of organization.

For example, it is now known that new species of insects evolve depending on their associations withWolbachia bacteria. This may be why there are so many beetles. When we consider that animals as different as termites and cows can only digest their food (wood and grass, respectively) because of the microbes they contain, it should not surprise us so much.

The most immediate and important influence for Dawkin’s Selfish Gene theory was William D. Hamilton. Dawkins called Hamilton, “my intellectual hero,” and the “nearest equivalent we have to Darwin in the 20th century.” At a meeting on the evolution of sex Lynn Margulis referred (fearlessly, as usual) to neo-Darwinists as “puerile numerologists.” In the strange math of merging symbiotic bacteria, or a sperm and egg cell for that matter, 1 + 1 does not = 2. No, 1 + 1 = 1 : one organism is the result of the merger, in which the new organism acquires the genes of both “parents.” This is lateral genetic transmission and huge in evolutionary theory – so huge that it is really incorrect to think of life on Earth as a “tree” – the “roots” are too entangled, and they continue to grow into one another on a crowded planet.

The language of life is chemistry, not mathematics, Lynn emphasized. Genes cannot be selfish (I once said, and she repeated the comment), because genes are not selves. The earliest detectible self is the cell, or the organism made of cells. Nascent selves are represented at a more nebulous, but still very real level by termite mounds, bee hives, and technoscientific humans organized into warring nation states.

In The Narrow Roads of Gene Land, Volume 2, William D. Hamilton calls Margulis “a high priestess” (perhaps getting her back for her numerology comment). But tellingly, late in his life he collaborated on scientific articles on the Gaia hypothesis, which studies Earth’s geochemistry, its own nascent physiology, which shows aspects of active stability – for example, regulation of atmospheric chemical composition and planetary temperature regulation over time spans of hundreds of millions of years – reminiscent of the physiology of an animal.

Hamilton imagined clouds as ways for microbes to spread themselves, and he wanted his own body to be returned to the Amazon rainforest. A true naturalist, he spent many hours in the wilderness with organisms; and his contraction of the protists (ameba-like cells) Giardia and the protist Plasmodium (which spreads via mosquito-born malaria) were with him for his entire life; I would argue that alone shows the folly of thinking of organisms too exclusively as mathematizable “individuals.”

Adam Strauss (@atomstrauss) is an actor, comedian, and creator of The Mushroom Cure. Inspired by a scientific study showing that hallucinogenic mushrooms can potentially cure obsessive-compulsive disorder, he embarked on a program of vigilante psychopharmacology.

As he uncovers an underground community of clandestine chemists, falls in love with a brilliant psychologist who takes him on as her unofficial research subject, and decamps to a remote island accompanied only by his geriatric pug dog and formidable pharmacopoeia, Adam’s relentless pursuit of his unorthodox cure is at once hilarious, harrowing, and heartrending.

What was it like having severe OCD?

Most people think of OCD as excessive washing, and while that’s certainly a fairly common form, there are many others. My OCD revolved around decision making: I’d agonize over even the most trivial choices (say, what shirt to wear), and as soon as I did decide, I would feel an overwhelming compulsion to reverse my choice. When I gave into that, I would suddenly realize my first choice was really the right one, and reverse again. I’d lose hours every day on these sorts of minor decisions, and bigger ones (say, choosing which apartment to move to) could completely incapacitate me for weeks.

Did you have any prior experience with psychedelics before you embarked on this vigilante psychopharmacology?

I’d tried LSD, MDMA, and mushrooms, but only once each. The LSD and MDMA had zero effect beyond mild stimulation – I now know that’s because I was on high doses of SSRI anti-anxiety medication, which often negate psychedelic effects. Mushrooms had a moderate effect.

Why did you decide to try and treat your OCD with mushrooms?

Utter desperation. By the time I read about the Moreno study*, I’d tried over a dozen different medications, seen a multitude of therapists, experimented with all sorts of holistic approaches and fringe therapies, but the OCD just kept getting worse. This is actually quite common: research shows that about half of OCD sufferers have no real response to medication, and those who do respond generally see only moderate symptom reduction. Therapy can work wonders for some, but many others are like me deemed “treatment-resistant”, which basically means, psychology and psychiatry can offer little help. Sometimes in those cases they’ll actually do psychosurgery, permanently destroying certain brain regions, even though the benefits are variable and the procedure can cause irreversible cognitive impairment and occasionally paralysis.

Read: Safety, Tolerability, and Efficacy of Psilocybin in 9 Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder investigated by Francisco Moreno, MD at the University of Arizona, Tucson in 2006. There have been no follow up studies.

How many times did you experiment?

Well, if you see the show, you’ll learn that I only had one real mushroom trip. At the time, for whatever reason, mushrooms were very difficult to find, at least in New York. But then I discovered mescaline containing cacti (specifically, Bolivian torch cactus, Echinopsis lageniformis, and San Pedro, Echinopsis pachanoi).

The first time I tried these it had almost no effect, and I realized I would have to get off the SSRIs, which I did (not easy by the way, talk about withdrawal!). But even after that, I still had a very high tolerance, which I attribute to residual effects of being on SSRIs for almost 15 years. With cacti there’s a limit to how much you (or at least I) can choke down, so I could never really get beyond a mild trip.

But then I met Hamilton Morris – not through the drug world, but through comedy – we were both working the same club. (Hamilton doesn’t do stand up anymore, sadly, as he was one of the most naturally gifted comics I ever worked with. I’ve tried to prod him to get on stage again to no avail.) And through Hamilton, the wonderful world of research chemicals. I went pretty far down that rabbit hole, trying at least a dozen different synthetic tryptamines and phenethylamines. All in all, I tripped a lot – perhaps 30 experiences over the course of a year. The technical term for this is “being an idiot” – I was trying to force a certain outcome, but of course that’s antithetical to the psychedelic experience: you have to allow things to happen.

If you look at the research coming out now, you’re seeing phenomenal results with just a single experience. But the key thing is, none of the study protocols are just “take this drug and report back.”

A lot of the research happening now is not on psychedelics, it’s on psychedelic-assisted therapy, and that’s a huge difference. Clearly, the way to use these chemicals/tools/medicines/drugs (whatever your preferred term is) is embedded within a very carefully designed therapeutic context. When that happens, negative outcomes are drastically reduced and positive outcomes drastically enhanced.

What was the experience like? What were your insights?

Well, there were many experiences and quite a few insights. But let me try to sum up the most valuable experience from a therapeutic perspective.

OCD is all about control: trying to ensure things are perfect; precisely the way we think is best. It’s that attempt to control, to eliminate uncertainty, that causes all the suffering. Because, of course, we actually control so little, and certainty simply doesn’t exist – it’s like “nothing”, a vague concept that can’t be found anywhere except the human mind. It’s that compulsive need to find certainty that drives OCD. (E.g., the need to be certain you’re perfectly clean drives hand washing compulsions.)

Now, I recognized all this intellectually, but the OCD was so ingrained, that insight didn’t alter my behavior. Under psychedelics, for the first time, I viscerally (and even that word’s not quite right, but anyone who’s tripped hard will know what I’m referring to: a realization that exists more in body than mind) saw that I wasn’t in control, and therefore, I had nothing to lose by letting go of trying to control everything. (And the letting go itself was visceral rather than intellectual.) Once I was able – or willing – to do that while tripping, I gradually learned to do it while sober. And that changed everything.

What was your set and setting?

It varied. At first I was tripping in Manhattan; I realized soon enough that was not optimal, so I tried to have these experiences in nature. My favorite spot would be a secluded beach.

I hadn’t heard about treating OCD with psychedelics until we arranged this interview. Did it have lasting effects? 

The short answer would be: Yes, but not in the way I thought it would. I was hoping for a silver bullet, a quick and painless elimination of the OCD. The reality is that I still have obsessions (i.e., repetitive thoughts) and compulsions (i.e., urges to take action to eliminate those thoughts). The difference, though, is that I rarely actually engage the compulsions. So while I still have anxiety over decisions, I generally don’t get trapped in these cycles of making and reversing decisions. And that’s fucking huge.

Because the anxiety isn’t so much the problem, it’s the behaviors that consume your life. And of course, those behaviors create massive anxiety – if you haven’t left your house in days because of OCD, if you’re losing career opportunities, friendships, etc. you’re going to be anxious about that, which in turn just feeds the OCD.

You premiered the performance at the New York Fringe Festival. How has the reception been?

Haha I love this question – you’ve set me up perfectly to cite my reviews without seeming like I’m boasting!

Time Out New York said the show was “a true-life tour de force” and named it a Critics’ Pick, The New York Times said I “mine a great deal of laughter from disabling pain” (they also called me awkward, which I think is fair), and we won the Fringe’s Overall Excellence Award for Solo Performance.

But truly, the most gratifying response was from people who were touched, either because they have OCD, they know someone who suffers from it, or simply because the central struggle I recount is really universal: we all engage in behaviors to avoid pain that actually just create more pain, for ourselves and others. We all have addictions. We’re all unconscious, to some extent.

How do you see psychedelics affecting mental health in the next decade?

Profoundly. If you really look at the data on psychiatric drugs, it’s pretty abysmal. There’s some evidence the antidepressants help severely depressed people, at least for a bit, but for people with moderate depression, the best meta-analysis really doesn’t show clear benefit over placebo.

I’ve already mentioned the inadequacy of current therapies for OCD. With schizophrenia it’s now clear that the newer antipsychotics that were hailed as wonder drugs actually aren’t any better than first generation antipsychotics, which is to say, not very good.

So the point is, psychiatry doesn’t have really good tools to help most people. Meanwhile, the early data on psychedelic-assisted therapy is phenomenal. You’re getting results that are orders of magnitude greater than what’s coming out of pharmaceutical companies. MAPS is predicting FDA approval of MDMA within five or six years. I suspect psilocybin will be the next to receive approval. So within a decade, I think/hope that these drugs will be readily available to those with medical conditions (probably not a prescription you’d pick up, but administered in a clinical setting). And if they are, I think they’ll be very widely utilized simply because the other options suck in comparison.

What do you hope to accomplish with The Mushroom Cure?

One word: groupies. But really, while of course I want personal success and acclaim and validation, I have two slightly less selfish goals.

First, I want to increase general understanding of OCD. I’ve had quite a few people who’ve contacted me after the show to say they didn’t realize they had OCD until they saw The Mushroom Cure. They’d been suffering for decades without really knowing what was going on. OCD is generally depicted in a very narrow and stereotypical way in popular culture, but in my experience I’d say at least half of OCD sufferers don’t have the classic contamination fears.

Second, I want to increase awareness of the potential of psychedelic therapy. Obviously your readers are already aware of this, but hopefully my show is also reaching people who aren’t familiar with this world. A key to getting people to be open to psychedelics is knowing people who’ve used them in a positive way, and by the end of the show, anyone in the audience knows me quite well. 

How did you get linked up with MAPS?

I’ve been a great admirer of what they’re doing for years. I really don’t think there’s a more important organization out there. To be sure, there are more urgent problems facing humanity (war, starvation, epidemics – take your pick) but those are complex problems that many, many people have been trying to solve for many, many years. Whereas, the solution to the current lack of psychedelic research is very simple: more funding. And really, not even that much more. If you look at what MAPS is accomplishing with an annual budget of $4 million, it’s astounding. Pfizer spent over $200 million just to market Cialis last year.

You have the last words.

I’m really happy Psymposia exists. The proliferation of psychedelic reform groups is a tremendously encouraging indication of how deeply and quickly the psychedelic renaissance is proceeding.

I really think we’re at the point of no return, and that’s a wonderful thing. Shit needs to change, and I don’t think there’s anything else that has the same potential to catalyze rapid, profound, and (when used intelligently and respectfully) positive transformation.