The Substance: Albert Hofmann's LSD (2011)

1. The fraction

2. of a milligram and everything changes.

3. A molecule that alters our perception.

4. Once experienced, it can never be forgotten.

5. It began on the 16th of April,

6. 1943 in Switzerland.

7. Undisturbed by the terror of the Second World War,

8. chemist Albert Hofmann, was exploring medicine

9. for blood circulation.

10. This young father had found his job

11. of a lifetime at the Basel Sandoz Company.

12. But on that day in April, he must have come

13. into contact with an unknown substance.

14. Three days later, Albert Hofmann decided

15. to experiment on himself.

16. Being a cautious scientist, he took a very weak dosage.

17. But this substance was far stronger

18. than anything known in science research to date.

19. His first self-experiment was a trip into the unknown.

20. I believe

21. that every healthy person should try it.

22. What happens to you when you take a dose

23. of this strange new drug called LSD?

24. In less than two hours,

25. LSD will be (background noise drowns out other noise)

26. Now, as a volunteer testing subject,

27. his training is worthless.

28. Albert Hoffman worked

29. in his natural science laboratory with ergot.

30. It's a black fungus that grows mostly on rye.

31. Ergot has been known in natural medicines

32. since the Middle Ages.

33. But one of the new substances he isolated did not affect

34. the circulatory system as expected,

35. but the human psyche instead,

36. lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD,

37. After first clinical tests in Switzerland,

38. Sandoz decided to release LSD for production,

39. and the novel drug attracted enormous interest

40. from psychiatrists all over the world.

41. - Sandoz saw the opportunity to offer something

42. quite amazing to the psychiatric

43. and psychological circulars, so they were

44. actually sending samples of LSD

45. to universities' research institutes,

46. individual therapies, and they were asking,

47. "Would you work with it and give us feedback

48. "if there's any legitimate use for this substance?"

49. So it came to The Psychiatric Clinic in Prague.

50. My first LSD experience was extremely powerful.

51. It really completely changed my life professionally,

52. and also personally.

53. And I said, "This is by far the most interesting thing you

54. can do when you're a psychiatrist is to study

55. these non-ordinary states of consciousness."

56. So this is what happened in the last

57. over 50 years.

58. Whatever I did professionally, in one way or another,

59. was related to these non-ordinary states.

60. As I was sitting in session after session with artists,

61. with professionals, and writing the reports.

62. In the early years of the experimentation, we thought

63. about the LSD session as experimental psychosis.

64. That somehow pharmacologically we create some kind

65. of phantasmagoria that happens to be similar

66. to what psychotic patients experience,

67. so it was a model of psychosis.

68. And if we can somehow identify what's happening there,

69. we'll be able also to find a substance

70. that would neutralize it, so that people have

71. a test tube solution for

72. the most important problem

73. in psychiatry, you know, schizophrenia, and other psychoses,

74. which would be like a Holy Grail in psychiatry.

75. - Three drops of

76. this colorless, odorless tasteless liquid

77. would put you out of your mind for hours.

78. If you haven't heard of LSD, you will.

79. Impregnating sugar cubes is a common black market form.

80. Sometimes a dose for a dozen is counted invisibly

81. in a piece of blotting paper.

82. An effective dose is incredibly small.

83. These cubes contain only 150 micrograms.

84. Why are you taking it?

85. - To get high.

86. - Expanded consciousness. More awareness.

87. - How does it compare with getting high on alcohol?

88. - I've never been high on alcohol.

89. - It's the opposite. It just seems to block you.

90. - It opens you up.

91. - You can get more aware of things.

92. - Everything.

93. - Are these people getting revelations

94. from outside themselves or are they wallowing

95. in delusions brought about by the drug's distortion

96. of normal brain parts and processes.

97. How permanent is it, and is it reflective in behavior?

98. - Colors.

99. Just colors. Just colors?

100. Is it moving colors?

101. Yes. No, it's not patterns.

102. What kind of color are you seeing at the moment?

103. - Green, orange, everything centered around orange.

104. - No.

105. - When I moved into clinical work

106. our approach was called psycholytic therapy, which was

107. basically use of the

108. small or medium dosages,

109. but a whole series of sessions.

110. The process was more like a sort of gradual penetrating,

111. like a kind of a chemo-archeology in the psyche layer.

112. Then I found out that there was tremendous variability

113. of the sessions, not just inter-individual,

114. but if you take it repeatedly, each session

115. will be significantly different,

116. and there was a progression.

117. So I started thinking about something like LSD

118. as a capitalist so that it doesn't create

119. these experiences, but it makes them accessible.

120. With this kind of understanding, LSD becomes comparable

121. to what the microscope is for biology or medicine,

122. or what the telescope is for astronomy.

123. We don't think that the microscope creates worlds

124. that are not there.

125. The something is already there,

126. but we cannot study it without the tool.

127. Same thing with the telescope does not create

128. all the billions of galaxies.

129. Obviously, they have been there.

130. They are there, but we need the telescope to study them.

131. Coordinated with the United States

132. and the Canadian governments, that that

133. warning screens has been warned of an approaching enemy.

134. It not only the security of the United States,

135. but the security of the whole free world.

136. During the Cold War, other groups

137. became interested in the new wonder drug.

138. LSD attracted the attention

139. of international secret services.

140. In the fore was the American CIA.

141. - The Central Intelligence Agency was interested

142. in LSD because it sought to develop a truth serum,

143. an interrogation weapon for questioning

144. enemy spies suspected of disloyal people within the CIA,

145. any occasion that might require soliciting information

146. for people against their will, in order to gain

147. an advantage to loosen their tongue to pry into their mind.

148. This was the idea that the CIA had.

149. Where are you?

150. They knew it was very powerful.

151. They suspected it could be very helpful,

152. but they didn't know much about it.

153. So they turned to outside institutions,

154. outside experts, to conduct research.

155. Some of this research turned out to be pretty nasty.

156. There was a special case up in Canada

157. at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal,

158. where people were essentially used as guinea pigs

159. for a terrible experiment.

160. The idea was you break a person's mental patterns down

161. by giving them high doses of LSD.

162. When that phase was over, they would put them to sleep

163. for a long time using a sedative, and then engage

164. in a process called psychic driving,

165. where they'd have the same message piped in

166. over and over again, thousands of times,

167. to see if they could instill this idea

168. in terms of creating a new personality.

169. It was classic brainwashing.

170. The CI wanted always a certain result.

171. They wanted to be able to predict what would happen,

172. and then do something to make that prediction come true.

173. LSD didn't always work that way, and they found

174. they ran into problems because it was an unpredictable drug.

175. The US Army had more grandiose ideas

176. about what they could do with LSD.

177. In essence, the US Army wanted to develop LSD as a weapon

178. of war, as a psycho chemical weapon

179. that they could spray over a city.

180. It would make everybody crazy for a temporary period,

181. and the enemy soldiers were helpless to resist

182. because they were under the influence of LSD.

183. A war without death, a LSD warfare was the idea.

184. Here is a group of normal soldiers

185. responding correctly to a series of routine drill commands.

186. After receiving a small does of LSD,

187. they're confused and undisciplined.

188. - The idea of being able to subdue, like say, the enemy,

189. without harming them or killing them, was very appealing.

190. LSD was of interest because

191. it was the most powerful drug

192. available at that time to treat people with

193. with psychedelic effects and so on,

194. or to alter their behavior, which the CIA

195. was interested in doing, and we weren't interested

196. in either of those things.

197. We were interested in finding something

198. that would impair performance in the battlefield.

199. Because LSD made some volunteers uncooperative,

200. we wanted to have a small contained space where

201. we could have the individual sit, and we could televise him,

202. as well as the psychiatrist asking him questions.

203. You find the sensation unpleasant?

204. - No, great.

205. - Very much.

206. - When you see things, where do you see things most clearly?

207. In the central part of your vision, or—

208. - Left, about the ends of my triple vision though,

209. this stuff drives ya crazy.

210. - Nothing's going on, a whirr.

211. - Yeah, way in the outer core.

212. - Oh, fine.

213. - Take seven from 92.

214. Tried.

215. - Individuals react to the stress of LSD in various ways.

216. Here's a subject who succumbs to what has been called

217. cosmic laughter, as he realizes his predicament.

218. - Let's get going. I need a cigarette.

219. Ah, come on, I'm serious now.

220. If I can you.

221. - We didn't think that was the kind of result we wanted

222. to produce in a battlefield situation.

223. It would probably be dangerous for us.

224. We might end up on the receiving end

225. of an ill-advised bomb

226. or heavy-duty weapon,

227. and we were not interested in provoking that.

228. - This is Delta One, over.

229. Delta One, this is Alpha One.

230. It is now one, two, three, two hours.

231. - Well, an important thing about psychedelic experiences is

232. that they take you way beyond anywhere

233. that psychoanalysis or some related schools

234. can actually reach, and that's where most

235. of the emotional psychosomatic problems are coming from.

236. They're also mechanisms of healing and transformation

237. that are much more powerful than anything you can do

238. on the level of biographical material.

239. We have also talked to a number of people who

240. had years of psychoanalysis,

241. and they say they didn't even come close

242. to where the first or second session took them.

243. At the end of the 1950s,

244. LSD had found its place in psychiatry.

245. It was regularly used in many clinics

246. in Europe and North America.

247. Because people believed that LSD increased creativity,

248. more and more artists and intellectuals

249. became interested in the substance.

250. - I'm going to give you this cup

251. that contains lysergic acid 100 micrograms.

252. Will you drink it?

253. I would like to ask you to describe your profession.

254. - I'm an artist.

255. - That's true. Yes

256. 12:17.

257. - No, it happens to be black.

258. You see purple?

259. - Yes.

260. - Well this is just a charcoal. Look at it, see.

261. Why do you do that now?

262. - Well, the square is the ordinary rectangle, you see.

263. It's one of the perfect means.

264. - I know, but are you trying to reassure yourself

265. that you're capable of—

266. - Yes, I think that is what I would like to do.

267. I'd like to find out what reality I'm in.

268. - 2 o'clock.

269. Anyhow, what I would like you to do now is

270. to draw another picture of Paul.

271. Do you still have that pleasant feeling

272. that you described before?

273. - Yes, I still have it. I'll never get over it.

274. - This is a general feeling,

275. when you look it on yourself, is that correct?

276. Look at the picture now.

277. Look at the picture.

278. Oh, come on, now. Concentrate.

279. That's just about right.

280. Let's suppose you take a look at these two pictures,

281. and compare them, and let's see if you have any comments.

282. Do you see any big difference?

283. - Not really, the eyes, for example,

284. are the same to me, and the line of the nose is the same,

285. and the mouth is still a sweet mouth.

286. - 2:48. He's now flying high.

287. - I feel these lovely colors vibrating all over me.

288. Aww, it's lovely.

289. - No.

290. - Just like the shimmering water, you know?

291. - 'cause you have tears in your eyes.

292. Is that a beautiful experience, would you say?

293. I would say yes.

294. - Describe it again.

295. - Oh, I should know.

296. - It's just giving of—

297. - You're doing fine. Just try to describe it.

298. - Oh, just, you don't know, you.

299. You want to give yourself.

300. You want to give yourself as much as you can.

301. In the mid-50s, the American researcher,

302. Gordon Wasson, made a mysterious discovery

303. in the highlands of Mexico,

304. an inconspicuous mushroom, swallowed as a sacrament

305. during religious rituals to contact the world of the Gods.

306. Gordon Wasson took some samples

307. of the mystic mushroom home to New York.

308. While analyzing the Mexican magic mushroom,

309. Albert Hofmann dared to perform another self-experiment.

310. In doing so, he and his team were able

311. to isolate the active ingredient for the first time,

312. psilocybin, a chemical closely related to LSD.

313. The American took him to Maria Sabina,

314. an old highly respected healing woman

315. in the land of the Mazatecs.

316. The two researchers wanted to test

317. their psilocybin tablets on her.

318. In california, a group of young people

319. started out across the country,

320. the Merry Pranksters.

321. Among them, was the author, Ken Kesey.

322. Since his best seller, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,"

323. he could afford an independent life.

324. Kesey's novel was inspired by his LSD experience

325. as a voluntary tester in a Californian clinic.

326. - Psilocybin, mescaline, LSD.

327. The government was doing experiments there,

328. and the drugs began to get out into the world.

329. Ken had a wide circle of friends.

330. I loved parties, but the alcohol was ruining it for me.

331. I can't drink.

332. And when LSD came along, you know, hooray!

333. Here's another direction to go in.

334. We had some LSD that was in a package,

335. and we had to create doses out of it,

336. and that was very difficult to do.

337. We wanted to make small doses, not so big.

338. Well, that was really hard to do.

339. In trying to create a way to distribute this

340. to other people, we sort of got very deep into it ourselves,

341. sort of Magic Carpet Rides inside of our own minds,

342. and couldn't help but talk about these things.

343. The minute you start to talk about this,

344. everybody wants some.

345. Wherever the old school bus stopped,

346. the LSD parties got bigger.

347. The acid test, a right of passage

348. into a new psychedelic lifestyle.

349. Millbrook, on the American East Coast.

350. In the vacant country house of a rich patron,

351. former Harvard lecturer, Timothy Leary,

352. founded a psychedelic commune.

353. - Well, the first experience I had was

354. with seven little mushrooms in Mexico. For

355. the five hours after I ate these mushrooms,

356. I learned more about psychology than I had

357. in the preceding 16 years as a psychologist.

358. And since that time, I've done almost nothing

359. but attempt to study, to learn more about how

360. these experiences are produced,

361. and how they can be used for man's benefit.

362. At Harvard, Leary put the study

363. of hallucinogenic drugs on the curriculum.

364. That was the beginning of the end

365. for the ambitious professor

366. and his team at the elite university.

367. - The one thing that it differed from

368. the accepted social paradigm is that we took

369. the drug ourself, 'cause Leary now would be

370. lacking behaviors paradigms, he wouldn't do that,

371. and the chairman of the department

372. was pissed off at us for doing that,

373. and that was unscientific.

374. And they said, "If you do these studies quietly,

375. it's gonna be okay,"

376. but that was not Leary's vision.

377. It was a democratic vision, egalitarian.

378. This is too good not to share with everybody.

379. Who are we to say?

380. Tim Leary and his entire team were

381. eventually fired from Harvard.

382. His new headquarters, Millbrook,

383. the place for contemplation and adventure alike.

384. - Well, I had a great time at Millbrook.

385. I mean, it was a place to introduce people

386. to the psychedelic experience

387. in the most beautiful way possible.

388. It was a stead for people to come from every walk of life

389. from the highest aristocrat and noble,

390. and royal person down

391. to the dirtiest hippy.

392. Everybody came. It was a mecca for psychedelics.

393. LSD was a tremendous leveler.

394. No matter what level of society you came from,

395. when you turned on to someone from another member

396. of society, that classed vision did not cloud your vision.

397. You could see that person clearly,

398. and you could see them as a friend.

399. - Any moment is a mighty, feeling condition.

400. - The place was beautiful.

401. It was 2600 acres

402. of Northern New York scenery,

403. and you just walk out there high,

404. and no one was going to bother you.

405. You were miles from the main gate.

406. My experience at Millbrook was not about curing ill people,

407. but making what well people weller,

408. about moving into the cosmic understanding

409. of our existence here on life.

410. We're not just dumbies brought to walk

411. in one path all of our lives.

412. We are here to fly.

413. Doctor Leary, what are you up to here?

414. - We teach the science and art of ecstasy.

415. We teach people how to turn on,

416. or how to go out of their minds.

417. By turnin' on, we mean tune in

418. to get beyond your routine ways

419. of thinking and acting and experiencing.

420. We often say that we're teaching people

421. how to use their head.

422. The point is that in order to use your head,

423. you have to go out of your mind.

424. You have to go out of all of the static symbolic ways

425. in which you think.

426. - Leary was a provocateur. Yes, he liked being provocative.

427. He liked saying things in a little way

428. that got people to turn.

429. He didn't care if they misunderstood.

430. He said, "Think for yourself."

431. - America today is an insane asylum.

432. The American people are completely hung up

433. on material acquisition, on power, on war-making.

434. It's an insane asylum over here.

435. And it's our goal to lift the spiritual level

436. of the American people.

437. We're gonna try to bring about a religious renaissance

438. and a spiritual revolution.

439. In the next five or 10 years, we expect that

440. between 20 and 30 million Americans

441. will be using LSD regularly in their spiritual development

442. and in psychological growth.

443. Haight-Ashbury, previously a run-down district

444. in San Francisco experienced another hay day.

445. - It was sort of a very exciting time in the Haight-Ashbury.

446. It was lovely.

447. There was a very good community spirit.

448. The little stores were opening down on Haight Street.

449. People were very friendly with each other.

450. We all knew each other in the neighborhood.

451. And they would come up with wonderful ideas,

452. like, "Let's have a party in some corner of the park."

453. So the band would come out and bring their instruments.

454. The band called The Grateful Dead

455. have announced they will make music in the park.

456. And the crowd moves along,

457. - In the 60s, LSD was important because

458. it reinforced a sense that change was possible,

459. because if you can be one way one minute,

460. take a tiny little chemical called LSD,

461. and in an hour be at another dimension

462. of universe, of seeing fantastic things,

463. feeling things that you didn't even know you could feel,

464. hearing things you didn't know could be heard that way.

465. If you can do that to your mind with

466. this tiny little pill, anything's possible.

467. - We tell young people today, "Drop out of school,"

468. because school's education today

469. is the worst narcotic drug of all.

470. Don't politic. Don't vote.

471. These are old men's games, impotent and senile, old men;

472. They want to put you onto their old chess games

473. of war and power.

474. Drop out. Tune in with natural things.

475. Take off your shoes.

476. Get back in tune with God's harmony.

477. Surround yourself with beauty and sacred objects.

478. You can't get caught in the conforming,

479. rote lockstep, which we call American society.

480. - So then, at Millbrook,

481. when our supplies were cut off,

482. Timothy said, "We're all psychologists here.

483. "Nick's the only one with a chemical background.

484. "Why don't you start making the sacraments."

485. I said, "Okay, I'll give it a try."

486. My training was anthropology, but I had been involved,

487. growing up in a laboratory my whole life

488. because my father was a chemist.

489. So all of this was familiar and easy for me.

490. I studied, and I became a chemist.

491. We gathered the equipment and the materials

492. before we actually could work.

493. Basically, it broke down into making

494. an underground laboratory.

495. So where am I going to do this?

496. Well, I started out working in my mother's attic,

497. and then I moved down to the basement.

498. Then I rented a small industrial place.

499. Then I rented a larger industrial place.

500. And then I moved to California,

501. and so we rented another industrial property

502. in San Francisco, 4000 square-foot warehouse.

503. There are syntheses of LSD that take seven seconds,

504. and it's done, boom.

505. You got everything ready. It takes a few hours.

506. Put it all together. You add it together.

507. You stir it for an hour. It's done. You have your LSD.

508. Now the question is, "How do you get it out

509. "with starting materials that have been left over

510. "with the isomers and byproducts, and how do you get

511. "that all out so that you'll have

512. only 99.9% LSD?"

513. So that means you have to recycle that material again,

514. and so you recycle, and recycle, and recycle,

515. and the process of making very pure LSD

516. is extremely tedious.

517. We were making large amounts,

518. and we were able to purify in large amounts

519. to 100-gram crystallizations.

520. That's a million doses.

521. On the street, LSD, or acid,

522. was initially tolerated by the police.

523. Consuming the fashionable drug wasn't prohibited at first.

524. - San Francisco is where LSD was first marketed,

525. where it is most readily, and cheaply available.

526. In the park, a little bright afternoon,

527. there is a hipping wedding.

528. The preacher is a man called Teddy Bear.

529. He is a dope dealer.

530. LSD washed down with wine is the only sacrament.

531. There are no vows.

532. She will be his woman for as long as they feel like it.

533. - Do you take Kathy to be your woman, your wife?

534. You're married before God's poor people.

535. - What obviously was happening in people

536. who were taking psychedelics, particularly

537. the young generation, is that they could not agree anymore,

538. was the standards of the society that was around them.

539. They develop a whole different system of values,

540. a different life strategy, and so on.

541. Part of it certainly was very strong anti-war feelings

542. because when you have,

543. what I call transpersonal experiences,

544. where you feel ascential oneness with other people,

545. even with the animals species, with nature, and so on,

546. it has very significant implications for how you feel

547. about war, people killing each other.

548. So psychedelics became a very, very important

549. instrument of transformation,

550. a change of a world view in a way

551. that was very challenging the old, conservative values.

552. - I was just doing this for my heart out of faith

553. that this was the right thing to do,

554. and everywhere I went, I gave it away,

555. and I saw what it did to people, and I said, "This is good."

556. 5,000 doses of the Orange Sunshine was

557. a little, teeny bag like that.

558. You know, that's a whole division of soldiers.

559. We sent hundreds of thousands of tablets

560. to Vietnam for free.

561. We were supporting all the war protesters,

562. so why not support our brothers and sisters,

563. the same age, but have been drafted

564. and dragged almost in chains to be killed in Vietnam.

565. Why not give them the same medicine

566. that was causing the movement.

567. - A companion peace demonstration brings out 50,000 marchers

568. in downtown San Francisco, pacifists and hippies together.

569. - Bombs in Vietnam exploded—

570. - The rebellion in the 1960s, I think psychedelics were

571. a part of it, a very significant part, but I don't think

572. they were the cause of what was happening.

573. First, he became a symbol

574. of all that was going on that was frightening,

575. of all that seemed to be wrong.

576. It was an easy scapegoat, easy target

577. for people who wanted to denounce the youth rebellion,

578. denounce the anti-war movement,

579. very easy to denounce the drug, or the drugs

580. that were associated with those movements.

581. The things that were said about LSD

582. in the 1960s were in many ways, ridiculous.

583. - It's not always easy to undo what I've done.

584. - LSD, I've heard about it.

585. I can see through the walls.

586. - God, help!

587. Help me!

588. - Nothing was not extreme with LSD.

589. It was projected in a way that made

590. it very provocative, very loyal.

591. Well, gee, is this drug gonna send me to the grave,

592. the mental institutions, prison, and to the gates of heaven,

593. and I'll have the best sex I ever had in my life.

594. Well, that's pretty interesting.

595. - KRON TV has governor, Ronald Reagan,

596. to comment on the problem.

597. - Well, I am terribly frightened by the problem of LSD.

598. I think there's been a great deal of misinformation

599. by those who seem to see no harm in it.

600. But as a parent and as a citizen, and certainly now

601. in this position, I am greatly concerned.

602. There is nothing smart.

603. There's nothing a grownup

604. or sophisticated in taking an LSD trip at all.

605. They're just being complete fools.

606. Anyone that would engage in this,

607. or indulge in this is just a plain fool.

608. After public debates about the dangers

609. of LSD became increasingly acrimonious,

610. the state of California eventually reacted in October 1966.

611. The substance was prohibited.

612. - And we're moving from legal to illegal,

613. and my status changed from one who is

614. a minor criminal to one who was a serious felon.

615. I mean, I've been convicted many times.

616. I've spent time in 14 different prisons.

617. All of this has happened to me

618. as a result of my devotion to psychedelics.

619. So, am I a criminal?

620. Of course, I'm a criminal.

621. Shortly after the prohibition of LSD,

622. over 20,000 people gathered in the Golden Gate Park

623. in San Francisco.

624. The hippies, the oppositional students,

625. the most diverse sections in the protest movement

626. brought together, and went on an enormous demonstration.

627. - Six words:

628. turn on, tune in,

629. drop out.

630. The sound of the youth movement

631. concurred the major TV studios.

632. The new mass media spread the hippies' message

633. across the entire globe.

634. - The city of San Francisco has been warned

635. of a hippie invasion come summer

636. in numbers almost too staggering to comprehend.

637. Some estimates run as high as 200,000 young people

638. from all parts of the country, and be expected

639. to invade the city, and the influx will affect

640. primarily, the Haight-Ashbury.

641. - The media put in a big story

642. about the Haight-Ashbury,

643. and it was this lovely place to go,

644. and you might see John Lennon, or you know, perhaps—

645. Anyway, they created a monster for us.

646. And within a few weeks, it changed.

647. People came from all over America by the hundreds,

648. and then the thousands, and by early summer,

649. there must have been 10,000 people sleeping

650. on the sidewalks and in the park, and in every alley,

651. hungry, and homeless, and it was crazy.

652. - Here, San Francisco, Haight Street,

653. and all the dance floors, and you had

654. 2,000 people all taking 500 micrograms of LSD.

655. I thought, "This was gonna be madness."

656. I though this would have been madness in all context.

657. I couldn't see how that could work.

658. How would you handle bad trips?

659. 1967.

660. The psychedelic movement in full bloom. Summer of love.

661. - To the demons and America combined

662. and put it together, okay?

663. - Come on American folks, sing it with me.

664. There is a steady flow

665. in the San Francisco hospitals of young people

666. who have freaked out and been picked up

667. by the police in a state of desperate terror.

668. Where are my friends?

669. Do my friends know I'm here?

670. Where am I

671. Where am I?

672. - You're in the hospital here. Come on.

673. - I'm Doctor McLain.

674. The bad trip

675. is a frightening thing to witness.

676. It must be far more terrifying to experience.

677. Where am I?

678. - Come right around here to the—

679. You're in the hospital.

680. - Your hands are cold.

681. - Joan.

682. - I don't wanna be here. Where are my friends?

683. - The greatest pushers in this country today

684. are the missionaries who make and distribute LSD

685. because they are convinced it's a wonderful way,

686. as that poisonous, evil man, Doctor Timothy Leary,

687. has said, it is a way to turn on, tune in, and drop out.

688. Timothy Leary was pronounced

689. by President Nixon, to be the most dangerous man in America.

690. A short time later, he received a draconic prison sentence

691. for possession of two joints.

692. - What happened with Leary, who made the psychedelics

693. much more dangerous than they would be in responsible hands,

694. certainly increasing the risks and minimizing the benefits,

695. and literally killed the legitimate research.

696. Albert Hofmann's magic drug

697. became his constant worry.

698. LSD ended up where it had started, in psychiatry,

699. where it is still tolerated in some clinics.

700. - When I came to the United States and I joined the team

701. at Spring Grove, we were using an approach that is

702. now known as psychedelic,

703. where a dose is significant.

704. It's between 300 and five, 600 micrograms.

705. We asked the patients to keep their eyes closed.

706. We were literally were using eye shades.

707. We were using headphones, hi-fi music,

708. and the talking was done beforehand and after.

709. That was a much more effective approach to the therapy

710. in terms of personal transformation.

711. Dean Colweather is arriving for his third LSD session.

712. Cancer of the bowel gave him almost constant pain,

713. but this was controlled for over six months

714. as a result of his previous session.

715. As well as that, the drug has helped him come

716. to terms with his condition,

717. and even enjoyed the life he knows will end soon.

718. - When we were doing the work with cancer patients,

719. the basic assumption was that they would somehow,

720. very radically, change their concept of death.

721. - Every drop.

722. - It's for people whom knew that they could die

723. in a matter of weeks or months,

724. and they were able to be reconciled,

725. and their way of being actually

726. in the world from day to day changed dramatically.

727. It was a very, very successful study besides being

728. very moving a study, as you can imagine.

729. People come first programmed by our culture,

730. that we are basically our body,

731. and suddenly comes an experience that shows you

732. that you are something much larger,

733. that you are not really just your body.

734. So you start looking at death as something that's death

735. of the body, and you get a sense

736. that death is a kind of an adventure

737. in consciousness and there is a sort of a large

738. dimension there that you actually knew nothing about.

739. After the special authorizations finally expired

740. in psychiatry, LSD disappeared underground

741. as an internationally outlawed drug.

742. Research in hallucinogenic substances

743. seemed to fade into oblivion.

744. - These cop outs were so demonized.

745. The whole area was so discredited

746. that we had this phenomenon which,

747. for better than 30 years,

748. the consensus opinion was

749. this research was too dangerous, or too edgy, to be done.

750. - We started our work with psilocybin in about 2000.

751. It was difficult, but we got approved.

752. People who are eligible for our trial

753. are people who have anxiety, and or depression,

754. secondary to their cancer diagnosis,

755. and they are struggling with these existential questions

756. of life and death, and their own psychological discomfort.

757. They go through two days of screening,

758. in which they receive a physical exam,

759. extensive psychiatric

760. and psychological testing.

761. So after preparation, the volunteers schedule

762. for their psilocybin sessions.

763. What we would want and hope for them

764. is that they have an experience that's uplifting

765. and alters their perceptual set

766. in a way that makes the remainder of their life

767. and their struggle with their disease process

768. something that's really quite manageable for them.

769. - The prognosis was very poor.

770. There were so many treatments, and since I have

771. a scientific background, I got very preoccupied

772. with researching everything, you know, micromanaging.

773. So my life just kind of got narrower and narrower.

774. I got more exclusively focused on the cancer.

775. I became more withdrawn.

776. Finally my daughter and friends

777. sort of told me that I needed to do something.

778. But I had no previous experience with psychedelics,

779. so I didn't know what to expect exactly.

780. - Looks like this is for you.

781. - A high proportion of volunteers have what's called

782. a primary, mystical type experience.

783. And they're absolutely sure that this experience is

784. more real than everyday waking reality,

785. and it's that element, I believe, that imprints

786. this experience into people's consciousness

787. in a way that has huge value going forward.

788. - In the beginning of the effects,

789. starting in about 10 minutes,

790. and it's like your brain is going offline,

791. one part at a time.

792. And I tell people this story to make it a little clearer,

793. since I do a lot of sailing, and if you're out

794. in the open ocean, and you were to fall off your boat,

795. you turn around and the boat's gone,

796. and then pretty soon the water's gone, and then your gone.

797. You don't have any sense of self anymore.

798. - That's good.

799. - Okay, now let's put some headphones on you, okay?

800. - Okay.

801. - Remember to let us know how the volume is

802. if you want it higher or lower.

803. - For the first hour and a half,

804. it was pretty frightening because I was fighting it.

805. I was resisting.

806. I wanted to open my eyes

807. and make things snap back into place.

808. If I didn't have the help of the people there,

809. I would have left the room and tried to walk around

810. and get things to focus back in again,

811. to look familiar again.

812. So the supervision, I think, is very important.

813. After about an hour and a half, I calmed down.

814. At one point, I thought I might be in a cathedral,

815. and I thought that it might be

816. a good chance to talk with God.

817. So I, just in my mind I said, "Well, if there was ever

818. "a good time, this is it, so talk to me,"

819. and nothing happened.

820. I did it again, and nothing happened.

821. There was just an experience of familiarity,

822. or tranquility, and during that time,

823. I could pull up past relationships

824. or current relationships, and look at them in great detail.

825. It was as if I was—

826. Sorry.

827. The depression itself lifted.

828. I might fall into a depression,

829. but I can pull myself out of it pretty easily.

830. It fundamentally changes the way you approach the world

831. so your opening out instead

832. of narrowing down into a negative spiral.

833. It's almost unbelievable that after one day,

834. and not any followup medications or anything,

835. that this could happen.

836. - I have had in my psychedelic sessions,

837. quite a few experiences where I

838. actually felt that I've already died,

839. that I wasn't around for the beyond death.

840. It was very, very convincing,

841. and I was very surprised when I actually returned

842. to the situation, where I took the substance.

843. I considered it very plausible that there is a

844. experiential world where we go into after the body dies,

845. but of course, you will never know until you get there,

846. but it's like a very, very

847. interesting journey.

848. - Well, right here is where it was painted, "Nothing lasts."

849. That's what it said.