Ram Dass once recalled the first time Hollingshead gave Leary LSD. Leary, Ram Dass (who was then still Richard Alpert), Ralph Metzner, and others from their group were staying at Millbrook and continuing their research with psylocybin that they'd started at Harvard when Hollingshead turned up and offered Leary LSD. Leary at first turned his nose up at LSD, but eventually tried it.
Then, Alpert reported, Leary did not speak for days. Everyone in the group was scared, and Alpert told everyone to stay away from the LSD while they waited for Leary to come back to them. After five days Leary finally spoke and the first word out of his mouth was "Wow". Then they all tried it.
I can't find it now, but I also remember hearing an episode of the Psychedelic Salon[1] podcast where Lorenzo Hagerty talks about how he came across an old letter of Myron Stolaroff's where the latter warned another psychedelic luminary about Hollingshead, calling him a consummate liar and saying that he shouldn't be trusted.
Incidentally, Stolaroff was deeply hurt by being conned by yet another psychedelic luminary, Al Hubbard, another legendary and mysterious Johnny Appleseed of LSD.
Psychedelics certainly do seem to attract tricksters (perhaps because they also attract naive idealists, who are irresistibly ripe pickings for the tricksters). Hollingshead, Leary, and Hubbard were all tricksters, as was Sasha Shulgin, who was very fond of practical jokes.
There was an interesting "psychedelic reunion" between Leary, Hubbard, Humphrey Osmond (who coined the term "psychedelic"), Sidney Cohen and others at Oscar Janiger's home in 1979.[2]
I found the video of this reunion fascinating because it seemed that all these larger than life psychedelic pioneers, who'd probably all done psychedelics hundreds if not thousands of times seemed quite ordinary, uncomfortable, unenlightened, and even gruff and sour to one another.
For instance, Leary seemed to desperately need to be the center of attention and Hubbard seemed extraordinarily uncomfortable and taciturn while Leary needled him. Later I learned that Hubbard absolutely detested Leary. That explained it, and provided evidence (if any more was needed) that psychedelics didn't inevitably turn people in to saints or enlightened beings who love everyone and who's feathers couldn't be ruffled by anything.
A couple other interesting recordings were the "Lone Pine Stories" with Myron Stolaroff [3], where he talks about being given LSD for the first time by Hubbard, and a Q&A session[4] by Stolaroff and Gary Fisher, who'd treated schizophrenic children with LSD.[5]
> inevitably turn people in to saints or enlightened beings who love everyone and who's feathers couldn't be ruffled by anything.
I'm thinking that enlightened states are not inherently stable; they're sharp peaks with shallow troughs. It takes active work to stay in them, and that it's getting habitual at becoming enlightened that we call enlightenment.
The main inspirations for this are the temporary experience of enlightenment present in many psychedelic experiences, and the number of koans about "suddenly, they were enlightened" that now make more sense; they're realizing they have a habit of maintaining the enlightened state.
In addition to this, I think people in general are really good at deluding themselves, and a lot of people have very underdeveloped critical faculties (especially in regards to themselves and the revelations they have), which lead them to believe they really are enlightened when they're not.
Paradoxically, ego inflation is a very common effect of psychedelics.
What's difficult to ascertain about all of this is meta-cognition in general.
Is this really measurable past fleeting binary states self-awareness about your own self-aware state?
Past that, I like your connection between naive idealist + self delusion, however I think you have described the human condition of curiosity, in which our conscience mind is able to imagine future states. Then, while we reverse engineer how to possibly do that, we create an ad hoc hypothesis (conscience or not) to end up in that future state. Therefore delusion is almost a necessity, as the mind has little way to tie this hypothesis causation to the ad hoc hypothesis.
If a conscience mind accepts the imaginary future state of enlightenment as being one that they ought experience. The following question is ... how? This moment is exactly how I see your point fitting in especially with psychedelics.
There's a concept in yoga of taking your practice "off the mat" with you. The enlightened stated that psychedelics can help you reach has a similar mechanism requirement for learning; in order to take yoga off the mat with you and back into "regular life" - means you can't be practicing yoga all the time. This also means that there's work to do outside of the psychedelics if you're wanting to bring that enlightened state back with you. I see many people who become dependant on psychedelics aren't putting the work into other areas of healing themselves and healing, understanding, past trauma, and start to depend on the temporary release and excitement the psychedelic state brings them. A simple example of care that many people don't do a thorough enough job is cleaning up their diet to no longer eat food as entertainment, a distraction from their feelings, likewise to figuring out what foods irritate their nervous system and to stop eating those so they can be more grounded in their body, more fully connected to their nervous system.
Hubbard was a true pioneer, known as the Johnny Appleseed of LSD. He would go around just giving it away to people, trying to get them to open their minds and improve their lives. He was also a trickster in his youth and a true man of adventure - he sold the IP for a new type of battery he built as a teenager (which was never used), and was involved in gun/liquor running during the prohibition.
Leary was clearly on some kind of power trip and was much more selfish/egotistical with his research into acid and its potential.
Hubbard disliked Leary because Hubbard viewed acid as a way to dissolve the ego, a selfless endeavor of healing that he wanted to spread to his friends and influential individuals in the US.
Leary jeopardized this amazing potential medicine with his attention-seeking, selfish, and flamboyant behavior, which was definitely a major factor in it getting outlawed
This is what I gleaned from "How to Change Your Mind" by Pollan, at least.
The conventional narrative is that Leary was to blame for making psychedelics illegal by irresponsibly popularizing their use outside of medicine and academic research.
While Leary certainly deserves much of the credit for popularizing psychedelics, he was far from the only one who did so.
The interest in psychedelics was already widespread before he got involved, with Wasson's report in the enormously popular Life magazine about the use of the sacred mushroom, with Huxley's influential Doors of Perception, and before that many exposes on the psychedelic experiences of hashish. Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters were also great popularizers of LSD, with their Acid Tests, as were the Beatles, the Grateful Dead and other musicians and artists (we seem to forget that, but they were hugely influential).
Leary has been charged with encouraging irresponsible use of LSD, but that's not really true either, from everything I've been able to find on him. He always urged the responsible, careful use of LSD, with a clear understanding of its risks, and also made clear it wasn't for everyone. His ideal set and setting was in small groups, in quiet settings, in safe spaces and in nature.
The kind of use he advocated was actually quite similar to what the ideal set and setting is today, though of course back in the early days they didn't know as much about it as we do now, so it wasn't always ideal. They were still experimenting and researching, which was really what Leary wanted to focus on himself, but he didn't want to limit its use to just research and medical settings, as he saw great potential in psychedelics catalyzing positive societal transformation, which was really part of what at the same time scared the powers that be, who wanted to keep the status quo where they were in control and in power.
The ones who encouraged reckless, irresponsible use of LSD (though they hardly ever get even a fraction of the blame Leary does) were really the Merry Pranksters, who would do things like to give people massive doses of LSD without their knowledge and try to freak them out, and had thousands of people participating in their Acid Tests. It's a testament to how safe these substances were that many more people didn't have lasting negative damage despite such less than ideal circumstances.
Much more to blame for the eventual illegalization of LSD and other psychedelics were the mainstream media, politicians, and the general public who were whipped up in to a frenzy by what they saw in the media and heard from politicians. Both the mainstream media and politicians loved to focus on the minority of bad experiences people had sensationalize the hell out of them, facts be damned. They really bear the overwhelming brunt of the blame, in my eyes.
There were, of course, some horrific events like the Manson murders, which were blamed by the media on LSD. Art Linkletter's daughter committed suicide, and he blamed it on LSD. The media ate all this up and hyped it up, so no wonder people were scared, even though events like these were in the very tiny minority compared to the millions upon millions of times that LSD had been used by that time.
In to this sort of hysteria Leary stepped in and thumbed his nose at authority and said stuff that upset the powers that be, but really he was more of a convenient and willing scapegoat, who loved to be in the limelight and loved to play the role of the rebel, guru, pied-piper of youth, and the media and politicians lapped it up.
The underlying thing this all revolved around, and which so upset people in power and the general public was the youth culture, the counterculture, and the anti-war movement. All of these were tied up together with psychedelics and cannabis, which were opening the eyes of the youth to what they saw as injustices and also potential ways of doing things differently and better (such as dropping out of the rat race and trying alternative ways of living on farms, in nature, or in communes, or getting involved in the nascent environmental movement, or getting involved in the peace movemenent) which all seemed crazy to the mainstream.
Revolution was in the air at the time, and to the people who preferred the status quo (and who happened to be in power) that had to be stopped, so outlawing psychedelics, cannabis, and other drugs used by minorities (who also seemed to be on the verge of insurrection) seemed to be a good way to get control back.
And it seemed to work, at least partially. Protests died down, the youth stopped using psychedelics and started using speed, coke, and heroin (still not sure exactly why myself.. perhaps it was the media, or maybe they were just bored with psychedelics, which were no longer trendy and seemed to be more of a thing of the past, or maybe they were just burnt out), quit the communes, got jobs on Wall St, and voted for Reagan.
I'm still scratching my head about the U-Turn a lot of the youth from the 60's wound up taking in the 70's and 80's.. perhaps the opposition from the dominant culture and the lure of money and a safe, secure life was too great.
Anyway, sorry for straying from the topic of Leary himself, but I think this all ties together and it's hard to make sense of it without knowing how many of these pieces fit together. There's much more to say about this too. I recommend the book Acid Dreams for a good introduction.
Agree with all you've written, just wanted to call out how Pollan painted the tension between Hubbard and Leary specifically. I'll check out the book Acid Dreams and I just ordered Electric Kool Aid Test to get a better understanding of the merry prankster scene.
I believe some of the 60's and 70's youth found sustainable ways to live outside the mainstream, but many of the communes/alternative living situations were volatile and corrupt. Take for example the Rajneesh community out in Oregon [1]...so much energy and potential channeled into a corrupt and ultimately destructive/pointless enterprise. The corporate way is the safe way in America, and I think many people were looking for safety in a confusing time when many alternatives looked bleak.
That said, this is just conjecture, I was born in the 90s so I have no first hand experience.
Religious leaders in general, especially ones that are all but worshipped by their devotees, have a really bad track record throughout history, and it's not limited to the 60's or psychedelic-inspired interest in alternative communities.
What was different in the 60's and 70's is that more and more people started to be interested in Eastern religion, philosophy, and ways of life, and that interest was partially influenced by psychedelics.
But plenty of non-Eastern alternative communities (particularly the apocalyptic, us-vs-them isolationist kind) have their own issues that have nothing to do with psychedelics or the 60's and 70's.
Then, Alpert reported, Leary did not speak for days. Everyone in the group was scared, and Alpert told everyone to stay away from the LSD while they waited for Leary to come back to them. After five days Leary finally spoke and the first word out of his mouth was "Wow". Then they all tried it.
I can't find it now, but I also remember hearing an episode of the Psychedelic Salon[1] podcast where Lorenzo Hagerty talks about how he came across an old letter of Myron Stolaroff's where the latter warned another psychedelic luminary about Hollingshead, calling him a consummate liar and saying that he shouldn't be trusted.
Incidentally, Stolaroff was deeply hurt by being conned by yet another psychedelic luminary, Al Hubbard, another legendary and mysterious Johnny Appleseed of LSD.
Psychedelics certainly do seem to attract tricksters (perhaps because they also attract naive idealists, who are irresistibly ripe pickings for the tricksters). Hollingshead, Leary, and Hubbard were all tricksters, as was Sasha Shulgin, who was very fond of practical jokes.
There was an interesting "psychedelic reunion" between Leary, Hubbard, Humphrey Osmond (who coined the term "psychedelic"), Sidney Cohen and others at Oscar Janiger's home in 1979.[2]
I found the video of this reunion fascinating because it seemed that all these larger than life psychedelic pioneers, who'd probably all done psychedelics hundreds if not thousands of times seemed quite ordinary, uncomfortable, unenlightened, and even gruff and sour to one another.
For instance, Leary seemed to desperately need to be the center of attention and Hubbard seemed extraordinarily uncomfortable and taciturn while Leary needled him. Later I learned that Hubbard absolutely detested Leary. That explained it, and provided evidence (if any more was needed) that psychedelics didn't inevitably turn people in to saints or enlightened beings who love everyone and who's feathers couldn't be ruffled by anything.
A couple other interesting recordings were the "Lone Pine Stories" with Myron Stolaroff [3], where he talks about being given LSD for the first time by Hubbard, and a Q&A session[4] by Stolaroff and Gary Fisher, who'd treated schizophrenic children with LSD.[5]
[1] - https://psychedelicsalon.com/category/people/myron-stolaroff...
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-sfDEEcMQ8
[3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMZ-oopMBog&list=PLCB4ED9E98...
[4] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMUO0dP77rI
[5] - http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v07n3/07318fis.html
I'm thinking that enlightened states are not inherently stable; they're sharp peaks with shallow troughs. It takes active work to stay in them, and that it's getting habitual at becoming enlightened that we call enlightenment.
The main inspirations for this are the temporary experience of enlightenment present in many psychedelic experiences, and the number of koans about "suddenly, they were enlightened" that now make more sense; they're realizing they have a habit of maintaining the enlightened state.
Paradoxically, ego inflation is a very common effect of psychedelics.
Is this really measurable past fleeting binary states self-awareness about your own self-aware state?
Past that, I like your connection between naive idealist + self delusion, however I think you have described the human condition of curiosity, in which our conscience mind is able to imagine future states. Then, while we reverse engineer how to possibly do that, we create an ad hoc hypothesis (conscience or not) to end up in that future state. Therefore delusion is almost a necessity, as the mind has little way to tie this hypothesis causation to the ad hoc hypothesis.
If a conscience mind accepts the imaginary future state of enlightenment as being one that they ought experience. The following question is ... how? This moment is exactly how I see your point fitting in especially with psychedelics.
similarly, having a really good gun doesn't turn anyone into a warrior.
the point being that psychedelics can certainly help yet they aren't indispensable nor the only way.
Leary was clearly on some kind of power trip and was much more selfish/egotistical with his research into acid and its potential.
Hubbard disliked Leary because Hubbard viewed acid as a way to dissolve the ego, a selfless endeavor of healing that he wanted to spread to his friends and influential individuals in the US.
Leary jeopardized this amazing potential medicine with his attention-seeking, selfish, and flamboyant behavior, which was definitely a major factor in it getting outlawed
This is what I gleaned from "How to Change Your Mind" by Pollan, at least.
While Leary certainly deserves much of the credit for popularizing psychedelics, he was far from the only one who did so.
The interest in psychedelics was already widespread before he got involved, with Wasson's report in the enormously popular Life magazine about the use of the sacred mushroom, with Huxley's influential Doors of Perception, and before that many exposes on the psychedelic experiences of hashish. Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters were also great popularizers of LSD, with their Acid Tests, as were the Beatles, the Grateful Dead and other musicians and artists (we seem to forget that, but they were hugely influential).
Leary has been charged with encouraging irresponsible use of LSD, but that's not really true either, from everything I've been able to find on him. He always urged the responsible, careful use of LSD, with a clear understanding of its risks, and also made clear it wasn't for everyone. His ideal set and setting was in small groups, in quiet settings, in safe spaces and in nature.
The kind of use he advocated was actually quite similar to what the ideal set and setting is today, though of course back in the early days they didn't know as much about it as we do now, so it wasn't always ideal. They were still experimenting and researching, which was really what Leary wanted to focus on himself, but he didn't want to limit its use to just research and medical settings, as he saw great potential in psychedelics catalyzing positive societal transformation, which was really part of what at the same time scared the powers that be, who wanted to keep the status quo where they were in control and in power.
The ones who encouraged reckless, irresponsible use of LSD (though they hardly ever get even a fraction of the blame Leary does) were really the Merry Pranksters, who would do things like to give people massive doses of LSD without their knowledge and try to freak them out, and had thousands of people participating in their Acid Tests. It's a testament to how safe these substances were that many more people didn't have lasting negative damage despite such less than ideal circumstances.
Much more to blame for the eventual illegalization of LSD and other psychedelics were the mainstream media, politicians, and the general public who were whipped up in to a frenzy by what they saw in the media and heard from politicians. Both the mainstream media and politicians loved to focus on the minority of bad experiences people had sensationalize the hell out of them, facts be damned. They really bear the overwhelming brunt of the blame, in my eyes.
There were, of course, some horrific events like the Manson murders, which were blamed by the media on LSD. Art Linkletter's daughter committed suicide, and he blamed it on LSD. The media ate all this up and hyped it up, so no wonder people were scared, even though events like these were in the very tiny minority compared to the millions upon millions of times that LSD had been used by that time.
In to this sort of hysteria Leary stepped in and thumbed his nose at authority and said stuff that upset the powers that be, but really he was more of a convenient and willing scapegoat, who loved to be in the limelight and loved to play the role of the rebel, guru, pied-piper of youth, and the media and politicians lapped it up.
The underlying thing this all revolved around, and which so upset people in power and the general public was the youth culture, the counterculture, and the anti-war movement. All of these were tied up together with psychedelics and cannabis, which were opening the eyes of the youth to what they saw as injustices and also potential ways of doing things differently and better (such as dropping out of the rat race and trying alternative ways of living on farms, in nature, or in communes, or getting involved in the nascent environmental movement, or getting involved in the peace movemenent) which all seemed crazy to the mainstream.
Revolution was in the air at the time, and to the people who preferred the status quo (and who happened to be in power) that had to be stopped, so outlawing psychedelics, cannabis, and other drugs used by minorities (who also seemed to be on the verge of insurrection) seemed to be a good way to get control back.
And it seemed to work, at least partially. Protests died down, the youth stopped using psychedelics and started using speed, coke, and heroin (still not sure exactly why myself.. perhaps it was the media, or maybe they were just bored with psychedelics, which were no longer trendy and seemed to be more of a thing of the past, or maybe they were just burnt out), quit the communes, got jobs on Wall St, and voted for Reagan.
I'm still scratching my head about the U-Turn a lot of the youth from the 60's wound up taking in the 70's and 80's.. perhaps the opposition from the dominant culture and the lure of money and a safe, secure life was too great.
Anyway, sorry for straying from the topic of Leary himself, but I think this all ties together and it's hard to make sense of it without knowing how many of these pieces fit together. There's much more to say about this too. I recommend the book Acid Dreams for a good introduction.
I believe some of the 60's and 70's youth found sustainable ways to live outside the mainstream, but many of the communes/alternative living situations were volatile and corrupt. Take for example the Rajneesh community out in Oregon [1]...so much energy and potential channeled into a corrupt and ultimately destructive/pointless enterprise. The corporate way is the safe way in America, and I think many people were looking for safety in a confusing time when many alternatives looked bleak.
That said, this is just conjecture, I was born in the 90s so I have no first hand experience.
[1] great documentary on the Rajneesh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Wild_Country
What was different in the 60's and 70's is that more and more people started to be interested in Eastern religion, philosophy, and ways of life, and that interest was partially influenced by psychedelics.
But plenty of non-Eastern alternative communities (particularly the apocalyptic, us-vs-them isolationist kind) have their own issues that have nothing to do with psychedelics or the 60's and 70's.