I was online recently. I have a Google News [that is] tuned to psychedelic as a word,
and so I read interesting things on Shroomery and Bluelight and Nexus,
and there was a wonderful comment. The question was,
"do psychedelics turn your brain to mush?" And there was a fairly active debate,
but down in the comments was this: "the info I've had seems to show that drugs alone"
"aren't all that's at work in the sort of mind-expanding and creative experience people have."
"That's why when outsiders try other cultures' drugs without the rituals and cultural context,"
"they often fail to achieve the same sort of insight."
"In some lab experiments they found directing people back toward the specific task or problem"
"really can help. So like most things, it's a tool that has to be properly used to be effective."
I'd say that's probably the best summary of what I'm going to talk about [that] I've ever read.
And particularly, I love that understanding of set and setting in the somewhat different way
of talking about cultural set and setting. And as you all know, the cultural set and setting
for creativity is that it's wildly successful for artistic creativity, whatever that means,
but from the research side, it's very hard to get anyone to agree that the paintings
you did afterwards were so much better than the paintings you did before,
let alone having art critics agree on anything else.
But if you think about it, it's maybe not an accident or coincidence that the rise of the
personal computer, which gave rise to the creation of Silicon Valley, out of which emerged Burning Man,
was concurrent with psychedelic use and research.
A relative of mine working for a small company during the "we'll hire anybody to do anything" boom,
that bubble of companies, he approached his boss and said,
"I'd like this particular bunch of days off," and his boss looked at him and said,
"See you on the playa." [laughter]
But what we do know [is] that using these materials for enhanced problem-solving
is not well-understood, and a very under-researched area.
But there are established methods using psychedelics that open minds to useful solutions
to real and solidly scientific problems.
I was part of a group that established the basic guidelines of set and setting,
substance, dosage, as well as whatever [else] was necessary.
Really, to dissolve the barriers to problem solution, that looks like what was the fundamental issue.
[It] is what's in the way, what's between you and a solution when you are
a serious scientist in the particular area of interest.
So again, it's not "take psychedelics and you can understand quantum mechanics."
But if you understand quantum mechanics and you take psychedelics,
you may really understand quantum mechanics. [laughter]
So I'm going to just go through it and describe some of the ways in which we worked,
and then give you, hopefully, some cases, some remarks by individual participants,
which is really where the action is.
So...if I had a PowerPoint here it would say "how can psychedelics be used to facilitate problem-solving?"
And if you look at the creativity research, there's lots of creativity research,
and there's lots of theories and there's lots of methods, many of which are actually good.
What's fascinating is, [the] useful, good methods are remarkably under-used.
Things we know work for almost every form of creative problem-solving,
that can make groups work better and so forth, are unbelievably under-utilized
in education, industry, government, [the] medical world, and even in the military.
See, the military is a kind of place where a lot of research can go on because nobody can stop them. [laughter]
So they're the above-ground version of what a lot of you are doing.
I got interested, with some other people, in problem-solving, which is really narrowing the scope.
A problem is something, in this case, that can be measured, proved, built, patented, manufactured,
so we're talking way into the material world. We are definitely not talking about
answering the problem of why does God exist and those things which you worry about.
And so our [criterion] was, "is the problem solved, at the end of the day"
"is the problem solved or closer to a solution?"
"Has an obstacle been overcome? Was the intervention, in this case psychedelic set and setting,
"the reason for the solution?" Because over the years, people have said,
"Well, I've looked at your research, and how do you know that it was the intervention that you did"
"that was responsible for a creative breakthrough?" And my answer was,
"Maybe it wasn't; do it some other way."
I'm not going to fight you.
Because there are always the people that say, and you've heard it,
"Well, aren't there natural ways to do this?" and I think, "What's unnatural about a plant?"
"What's unnatural about something that someone produced in their laboratory?"
I mean, are there unnatural molecules?
Anti-atoms? [laughter] Come on. But when we were looking at this in the late '60s,
no one had tried to use psychedelics for this kind of hard science problem.
And if you went into the indigenous traditions, there was nothing there, really, either.
Most of the indigenous traditions were using their psychoactive substances for
diagnosis and divination, an almost always the major works was done by the shaman,
not by the person coming in with a problem.
What we had going against us was the possibility that this really couldn't work,
because what we do know, and think of your own experiences:
Diminished capacity for logical thought processes, is that fair?
During the time of use? Reduced ability to direct concentration, inability to control imagery,
anxiety and agitation, sometimes, constricted verbal and visual communication abilities:
"What's happening?" [happy seal noise, laughter] "Woo!"
"Thank you for sharing." [laughter] Tendency to focus on inner events or personal issues:
"Let's talk about social justice." [curious monkey noise]
In 100,000 years, is that going to be an important issue? No. Okay. [click consonant]
Lessened ability to describe your experience, tendency to become absorbed
in the visual complexity and visions, and if you say to someone,
"Would you be interested in solving this real-world problem," there's a tendency
to regard this-world tasks as trivial. And therefore, why would you waste
good psychedelic substance time on the trivia that dominates the rest of your life?
Well, on the other hand, there's increased access to unconscious data,
there's more fluent free association, there's increased ability to play spontaneously
with hypotheses, paradoxes, transformations etc.
There's a heightened ability, obviously, for visual imagery and fantasy,
heightened relaxation and openness, that's the opposite of anxiety.
Either you're uptight or you're in bliss, that's the continuum.
Obviously, sensory inputs [click consonant] way heightened,
heightened empathy with external processes, objects and people.
You know, when you fall in love with a rock, and you kind of get that it likes you. [laughter]
So there's heightened awareness of experience, and in the problem solving realm,
there's also...it turns out, an enhanced sense of rightness, the ability to see through false solutions
and phony data, as well as lessened inhibitions and reduced tendency to censor ideas
by premature judgment or negative judgments.
And even in the MDMA world, that's just fundamental, relaxation, where things can be
fully experienced and reviewed and looked at, and in a sense, take that over into
that hard science area and you can see where there's the advantage of that kind of lowering of, again,
emotional barriers. There's also heightened motivation promoted by suggestion and right set.
Some of you have heard me say [that] one of the reasons that my work has all been with synthetics
is that synthetics are more easily...set and setting can be more important.
You really can't tell ayahuasca what you want it to do, because it says, "I'm so much smarter than you." [laughter]
"And I've been around so much longer. Just throw up and listen." [laughter]
But when you're using LSD or mescaline or psilocybin from the lab you have some advantages.
And so the only variable (hard science here), the only variable we could meddle with was
the heightened motivation promoting suggestion in the right set. So that's what we did.
Now, how did you get into one of our studies? Actually,
how did you get into the only study we were able to do, because the government said,
"Well, you're doing interesting work; stop." [laughter]
The problem had to matter. Okay, a lot of people have asked me,
"Gee, I have some problems I'd like to solve," and the answer is "how important is it?"
And you really had to be pretty obsessed to get into our study, and you had to have
the necessary technical knowledge for such a problem. One of the ways of testing that is,
"are you being paid to solve this kind of problem?"
And that suggested to us a reasonable level of competence.
You've worked several months on the problem and failed. That was one of our, really...
because when you fail on a problem, and you're smart and you've spent 10 years in graduate school,
that's hard. And you're getting paid for it. Now, you get extra credit if you're angry at yourself,
your company, or the client. [laughter] Because what we were really look at is people who ...really wanted
to solve that problem. That was their issue. Okay? It's a little bit like people who go down to Peru
and they have a serious disease. Their motivation is really clear. They are not there
to have a good time, they are not there to have a pleasant experience.
They are there to save their lives. That's the kind of motivation, you know, we weren't quite at that level,
but we were pushing. Now, what kind of problems did ...our scientists come in with?
Let me just give you a quick list...a sample.
Photo conductivity decay processes. Hold your excitement. New design of a vibratory microtome.
Space probe experiments to measure solar properties. Improvement, (this is the '60s)
improvement to magnetic tape recorder. [laughter] Dining room chair design.
It turns out in the furniture design world, dining room chairs are the hardest,
because they are seen from all sides, and they have to be incredibly durable.
So it turns out that's a good difficult problem.
Mathematical theorems regarding NOR gate circuits. This is something that's used in chip design.
A conceptual model of the photon. And then we had a couple of wonderful architects:
design of a commercial building, design of a private home.
And again, they had to have been working on it; in the architecture ones the client had been refusing things.
The private home, what he said is we'd spent hundreds of ours, our office was losing money
hand over fist with this client. It met our criteria.
We had 44 problems attempted, and no solution for 4 of them. Okay?
Then I want to read you a little bit from the description of what people were doing.
Now, basically, all this is taken from my book, and there's lots more in the book.
That's not, well, it is promotional, okay. [laughter] But what I'm saying is that if you are
seriously interested, there's a lot more of what I'm talking about.
Particularly with these much, much longer descriptions [of] what people were literally doing,
as they reported to us later. And this is from one of the architects:
"My experience during the session was an unbelievable increase in the ability"
"to concentrate and make decisions. It was impossible to procrastinate."
"Cobwebs, blocks and binds disappeared. Anything was possible."
"But I was working on real and rather tight problems. The designs were freer,"
"but probably more from the standpoint of removing blocks, in the consideration of"
"what the client might accept. Three designs were outlined in three hours."
"All were accepted by the clients." Okay? That little wow is all of you that deal with such things.
"The two houses referred to are now complete, and, I feel, very successful."
"They're free than my more usual work, but not untypical. The clients would be horrified"
"if they knew the history of the conceptual designs." [laughter] Then. I think, right now,
the clients would say, "oh, that's cool. Let me join you and let's both go over the design." [laughter]
"This is definitely an enhancement of the ability to visualize, but my experience was"
(and this is the name) "that I became a better Heinrich Böll and was not converted"
"to an instant [architect Antoni] Gaudí." So what he's saying is, he really did a better job of being himself.
Another piece, here: "The simplest problem was attacked first. Almost immediately,"
"several relationships that had escaped my attention became apparent and a solution"
"to the spatial relationships followed soon after. I avoided looking at a watch,"
"but I would guess about 20 minutes elapsed. Normally, I would stew and fret for weeks"
"before coming to such a solution. Don't misunderstand me. On a simple problem,"
"the period at the end which is productive is often quite short, but in any case, a matter of hours."
And then, later on in the afternoon, having made some solutions, he said,
"At this point I said to myself, "It would not be fair to Barney not to give his house one more try."
That was the bad client. "The only scheme which excited him was too much money,"
"but he didn't lose face. This time my approach to the problem was unrelated to all the previous attempts,"
"and I looked at the challenging site in a new way. I really believe the solution that resulted"
"in a few minutes [was] better than those that preceded it. This was a job that had taken"
"several hundred hours." So, good, right? And again, "I showed the sketches to the client"
"a few days later; they were approved. Three weeks later I prepared working drawings."
"But I put my sketchpad," he had made a huge number of sketches during the afternoon,
"I kept my sketchpad closed on the desk beside me. A few hours later, after the first dimensional sheet"
"was done, I compared it with the original. It was almost exactly the same."
"I had, without scaling the original sketches, laid out three acres of buildings, parking,"
"outdoor theater, walls, patios, in the exact dimensions, and kept it in my head"
"as clearly as it had been." What happened is [that] he actually saw the whole building completed,
so much that he walked around in it. He went out and counted the parking spaces,
which were totally correct. He went out and looked at the beams had been laid and what size bolts, it was that level.
So what he says is, "I had kept it in my head as clearly as it had been when I walked through it."
So he didn't use any of the sketches to do the hard drawings, because he'd been in the building.
Here's a different one: "I decided to drop my old line of thinking and give it a new try."
"The mystery of the easy dismissal and forgetting did not strike me until later,"
"because I many times had managed to work the whole thing into an airtight deadlock"
"that I had been unable to block." See, this is why we like these people, because
there's an emotional component there that's very important.
They cared, they had suffered. "I dismissed the original idea entirely and approached it differently."
"Then things began to happen. All kinds of different possibilities came to mind,"
"and I quickly sketched them out, each new sketch for other possibilities and new ideas."
"I began to work quickly and almost feverishly to keep up with the flow of ideas." Okay?
You're getting, I want you to get the texture of this rather than the content.
This is one from an engineer..."The formation of a visual image corresponding to the heat distribution"
"of an object such as the human body. Application: for medical diagnosis, since disease"
"tends to have a higher temperature than surrounding tissue."
"Another insight at this point was the most efficient way to do this"
and some of you may not follow all of this, "an expansion of gas that was superior"
"to any other operation. I visualized the two thin film layers formed by a vacuum evaporation,"
"spaced at about the wavelength of yellow light. Many pneumatic cells of this shape"
"can be formed this way. If the thermal image is projected on the array, the temperature reacted"
"by each cell wall will determine the pressure of the gas and the consequent elastic deformation"
"of the thin films." I want you to get the level of complexity, of intellectual thought,
that was going on. This is the way he thinks.
[Let] me skip a little here.
So from a lovely man, "Scrutinized the modus operandi with which I attacked the problem."
You just got to love people like that. "Realized that my mind was working like a computer,"
"and although I could not visualize the local-level operation,"
"all known constraints about the problem were simultaneously imposed"
"as I hunted for possible solutions." I think that's pretty good.
So that's what we were doing, and there's lots more of that.
What we were demonstrating is that if you're interested as a culture in doing good work,
would you not use things that make it easier to do good work?
And quoting Julie Holland, a wonderful phrase that I recommend to all of us,
"It is unethical not to be doing psychedelic research." It is unethical, and that's where we are. [applause]
So now you have your kind of elevator sentence about all this.
And the question is, if we look at what are the great breakthroughs in science that have
changed the world, and were any of those related to psychedelics, the answer is yes.
Biology: DNA, double helix, [Kary] Mullis's work on the reproduction of a tiny amount of biological material,
and in the science area, what we would call, basically, the computer revolution.
There's a wonderful book, What the Dormouse Said, which is saying,
"Why did all the computer breakthroughs happen on the west coast of northern California,"
"When all the computer heavies were on the east coast?" And he makes the case
that if you take a place called Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park,
and you take a one-mile radius, what you find is there was this overlap
of psychedelics and scientists. And he makes a very strong case that
that was what made the revolution happen. This is before Steve Jobs told us about himself and so forth,
and before all those companies went to Burning Man for a week and hung out with each other.
So there's a lot, in a sense, going on in the culture, and what I'm doing with this kind of work is bringing back
the notion that we can maximize the successful nature of creative problem solving
in the hard science areas if we understand, really, how powerful and effective set and setting is.
I said, remember, [that] we could manipulate that. We had no idea that this would work.
We just...one of us, which is Willis Harman, full professor of electrical engineering at Stanford,
said he hoped it would work and he was the force behind it.
And people like me thought, "man, everybody's just going to trip."
I love it when I'm wrong. But we told everybody, [in] the first group,
"This is going to work, this will be fantastic, you're going to have the best time of your life,"
we did everything we could to push set and setting. We got them excited, and...
of our 28 people, I think 26 had had no psychedelic experience.
Well, this was the '60s; you could be a scientist and not have psychedelic experience. [laughter]
It's harder, I'll tell you. We also administered some psychological creativity tests.
Summing up that, everybody did better; nobody ever cares about the results of any of those,
but you know, you got to have a measurement. So, we no longer think you have to have a measurement;
you just have to have a success. They had some terrific breakthroughs and we thanked them
and they were taken home by their sitters, and we all danced around the room, saying,
"It really worked! It's really true!" Everything we told those guys was exactly spot on.
And then the other groups were really easy, particularly because we began to have people
calling us and saying, "my lab buddy was in your study last week,"
particularly, this is the group doing the NOR gate mathematical stuff,
and don't ask me a question [afterward,] what I'm talking about, because I don't know.
But that group said, "he came back so excited and with so many interesting ideas; can I sign up?"
And I think we also had a couple more of those guys through.
Let me hold off here; we have some time for questions and answers.
Those of you who are seriously wanting Q&A and are willing to not rush off to find
someplace affordable outside of the hotel for lunch are welcome to stay a little longer
and we'll do that. So, Q&A, please. Let's see what we can do. [applause]
It's a little hard with the light. Okay, question and you'll be given a mike. Okay, yes please.
Q: You said that the research that you did was mostly with psilocybin and LSD, is that right?
A: We actually were using, the question was, what did we use. We were using LSD and mescaline.
Q: Oh, and mescaline.
A: Somewhat interchangeably.
Q: Did you find either more effective than the other?
A: No; that's why we used them interchangeably.
Q: Okay.
A: But of course, we believed they were interchangeable. Set and setting.
We used to believe that mescaline was harder to use because people would get stomach upset,
and then as our guides got better that all stopped.
Q: Jim, your work has fascinated me for many years. This is [an] acute effect, stimulation of creativity.
A: Right.
Q: What about subsequent?
A: "This was an acute effect; what about subsequently?" And let me
just give you doses because I'm talking to you all.
We used 100 [micrograms of LSD] or 200 mg of mescaline.
What we found from the reports of the scientists is [that] they had a period
of from one to eight weeks, where they felt they were generally more creative.
So that's a partial answer. The other thing that some of you know I'm working on [is] microdosing,
and it looks like that's another way in which creativity can be enhanced
with less of the set and setting. But the important thing, again, [is that] for problem solving
it is actually how much you care, not how much you take.
Q: So you talked about [how] you have to already know what's going on, you have to
know quantum physics in order to do good quantum physics, but have you done any research
with trying to learn something, a new subject, while under, like reading a math textbook or something?
A: The question is [is there] any research on learning something [in] new subjects.
Well, I have some reports. The reports were people taking exams.
My favorite report, and thank you because you are in the room,
is about taking an exam, I believe it was in developmental anatomy, something like that.
This person was stuck with the after-exam, you know, they missed the exam,
and their teacher just gave them this incredibly hard exam and looked at this guy and said,
"well, you know, that's what we do when you miss the exam."
And he had taken his last hit of acid, because he used to take a little bit of acid before every class, [laughter]
and after going into deep despair, he closed his eyes and the first diagram that she had put on the board,
the first slide from the first day was there, and then, he could see all of them.
So he just kind of enjoyed himself doing this exam for a couple of hours, blew the teacher's mind entirely,
and as he remembers, at the end, the little grasses that he could see out[side] her office
were really lovely. [laughter]
There's a letter from Jack Kerouac to Tim Leary saying that he took some substance
and he suddenly had an understanding, I think it was, like, of the Tang Dynasty.
He was recommending that this should be a university course, of helping people recover information,
maybe that they'd had in their heads, and maybe it was from [the] collective unconscious.
So, the answer is, and if any of you want to send me your stories about learning new information,
that would be fine. So that's the best I could do with that. Yes, please. Somebody has the mike.
Q: I heard you mention sort of jokingly about the impracticalities of using ayahuasca at that time,
Q: and I'm wondering, I'm studying shamanism in the Amazon right now, and I'm wondering,
Q: in all seriousness, how you think that, I mean to me it seems it would work pretty well for something like this...
A: Well the nice thing is, my book has one serious limitation; it's limited to what I know something about.
I've got other books. Being an academic, you're usually not limited by that. [laughter]
But I have recently, and just actually yesterday saw some footage of someone,
a teacher of anatomy in the Amazon who came to ayahuasca to stay for a number of weeks,
as he says, "to learn to draw the invisible anatomy," which is, the anatomy, you know.
I can't see the way this joint really holds together because I've got a shirt and an arm on top of it.
But that doesn't mean I can't see it from another place. What was interesting in that footage,
and it's very exciting, is that his capacity to draw clearly the visions he was seeing kept improving,
and he indicated that that was because he was both in the hands of an expert guide
and that ayahuasca basically liked the idea. And he begins to draw more and more
cellular and molecular things and there were some just remarkable breakthroughs.
But what we were getting was, here it was being used with the full acknowledgment of a shaman
in a traditional setting but this young man had arrived from France with this in mind
and it was being used that way. So the answer is, like almost everything else in this conference,
give us a little bit of time. Remember we've had a 40-year-lull in the no-research area,
and I'll give you a better answer in a year or two by quoting somebody else who's been doing it.
But that's a good start.
So the answer is probably, with again set, setting, intention, and as you listen to
this young man on the video I saw, that's what he wanted to do. He was not there for
personal growth. He does mention that he gets reborn and a few other things, but...[laughter]
that isn't what he's there for and it's wonderful to see because he says,
"Here's the diagram of what I looked like when I was a tree. And then, here is a cell mechanism,"
and then someone who is a professional in the area says, "That's what we would draw for our textbook,"
"that you have seen just from inside, and with no background."
Someone over here. Remember, [your] question is short and has a question mark at the end.
Q: Yeah, hey Jim, I have experience with microdosing. What I would be more interested in is set and setting
Q: without a guide. I know you talk about sort of the time frame of letting them have sort of freedom,
Q: but then you get down to work.
A: Set and setting without a guide, that's kind of like saying, "how about AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] meetings without meeting?"
from my point of view. ...Don't use the word guide because that suggests someone's controlling you.
Use the word designated driver, which is someone who's there should you need anything,
such as, "Does anyone remember where the bathroom is?" or "Is that food?" or...things like [that] [laughter]
Do not eat the plate, or put it on your head. The purpose a guide is so that you can do more
of what you came to do. Period. So people say "well I don't want a guide," it's fine.
As you know, you can make love without another person. [laughter] It's not bad.
But certain things, other people are helpful. So, I love being in this crowd and I'm the right-wing fanatic.
[laughter] See, in my early research we did a kind of review of the first hundred clients, and about ...
Eighty-nine, ninety-one percent said this was the single most important experience of my life.
Well I think, if that's going on, is it so bad to have a guide?
Now if you're saying, "well man, I've been dropping [acid] at concerts for twenty years"
"and I've never gotten hurt," the answer is, I'm not going to change your life,
but I don't have much I can tell you because you have more experience than I do.
One of the things [which is] nice about my book is there is zero about recreational use,
because if I said anything, a number of you would just come up and hit me, [laughter] because I would get it wrong.
So, as I say, limiting it to what I know, yes, of course you can do scientific problem solving without a guide.
That's why there are a lot of companies in silicon valley that are worth a skrillion dollars.
Do I know much about how to suggest that? My basic feeling is, I know something, I think, that's more useful,
and more fundamentally to the point. And there's nothing wrong with not being guided,
except if you get in trouble. And those of you who [have] had more trips
than you would ever admit to your parents usually have some very challenging
and difficult experiences in there. And almost always when someone says [something about a] bad trip,
I say, "do you know what caused it?" and they say yes.
What they say is, set, setting, I was with people I didn't trust, police came.
My favorite is "everything was going fine until the car burst into flames." [laughter]
I have a lovely one: A 16-year-old was driving home somewhere in New Mexico, you know, long distances.
She said, "I began to realize that I didn't know what a car was." [laughter]
"And then I didn't know what a road was."
"So I pulled over." I said, "did you get home?" and she said, "Yes, my younger brother,"
"who was also stoned drove us home." [laughter]
So...that's a kind of good, safe story, but not one that I suggest we repeat.
You know, it's wonderful to be able to be conservative in this crowd. Thank you. [laughter]
Somewhere there's a mike and person. Yes.
Q: Hi. Just a question on the guides again, I assume with this scientific problem solving situation,
Q: the guide would be not using any of the substance, but are there other situations
Q: when you feel like it's better when the guide does take some of the substance?
A: Okay, should guides take some of the substance? There are two points of view, yes and no. [laughter]
That's the nice thing...And on the yes side, can you take just a little so you track better?
And the answer is it depends on how much you are able to track. See, the guide, also,
good guiding, when I really have done wonderful guiding, I bring something to read.
Because, particularly in the morning we use this standard
which is now the standard in all the research, I hear, which is: lie down, headphones, music, nice room.
During that "headphones, nice room," guiding has nothing to do with it.
A guide is a little bit like on safari. You know, you're on safari
and we're taking this ten-mile walk and suddenly the guide said,
"You see this rhinocerous running towards us? ...It's your trip, you paid for it, but personally,"
"I would stand behind a tree." [laughter]
So guiding, at best, is minimal. So the question of "should you have a substance with that"
is really a matter of skill level. And in the shamanistic world, sometimes everybody but the shaman
takes material, sometimes the shaman takes a little, sometimes the shaman takes a lot
and you all take a little. It really depends on the knowledge and skill and set and setting.
As I [said], the work that I've done, and the work I prefer, is [where] the guide simply is
able to be in tune enough, but not likely to drift off into just a lovely little space for a while
and miss a cue from one of the participants. Okay?
So that's my kind of right-wing response. Yes please. I'm sorry, I'm not in control of my life or this.
Q: Hi. I walked in a bit late, you may have already touched on this. From your experience
Q: with these substances and the creativity and the problem-solving abilities that it gives you,
Q: is it only specific to the actual hallucinogenic experience, or does it have
Q: lasting effects into the future? Does it make you more creative in general,
Q: even when you're not on hallucinogenics?
A: Was that a question?
Q: Yeah. I'm curious to know.
A: Give me it again.
Q: Okay, so with the creativity and the problem-solving ability that you're referring to
Q: from these substances, it's enhanced while you're on the trip.
A: And for four to six weeks thereafter.
Q: Okay. Thank you.
A: And I've talked to some of the people. One of the people [who was] in the studies is, I don't know, 82.
He recalls it vividly, he basically has become a serious artist, which he wasn't,
but using the same material skills that he had, and he remembers it vividly and he never had any interest
in taking a psychedelic again. ...I think Heinrich said it very well, I didn't, I became a better Heinrich Böll.
That, you can retain.
Two, three hours?
Five minutes?
Sure. Okay, five minutes more and then we'll do whatever we do next.
Okay.
Q: Do you have a vision of what our society would look like if psychedelics were legal
Q: and healthfully or not, integrated into society?
A: Question, what's my vision? Under what substance at what dose?
The answer is honestly I haven't really thought much of it through, because the nice thing is...
the suggestions that are being made is how can we make that, whatever that vision is, sooner.
And the answer is to let everyone know that you've attended this conference, that you know.
You don't have to say anything about it, just say you attended this conference.
What's nice is, when you're...I'm across the street, so there's strangers in the elevator.
And I flash my badge, and almost everybody says something like, "that's cool, man." [laughter]
Now, some years ago they'd say "what's that?" and in the '60s they'd say,
"Oh, you're one of those bad people." So we're in a cultural shift, the vision is already happening.
I think we owe an incredible debt, which we will have in the future to them,
to the medical marijuana and the Students for Sensible Drug Policy,
who are indeed getting the camel's nose under the tent.
When the first medical marijuana work was going on, people said,
"This is simply a device to eventually legalize marijuana."
And we all said, [innocent face indicating concealment of mischief] "no it's not." [laughter]
"We just care for sick people." But then, as someone pointed out, why is it
that I have to have [PTSD or be] dying of cancer or have cluster headaches in order to have a safe
and potentially sacred session? That's why I think Julie's really got it,
and your applause I will pass on. Actually Julie, you're probably here so I hope
you're feeling good about giving us our new slogan.
Those of you who happen to be in the business of making creative breakthroughs for a living,
do they let you have coffee at work? I mean if you're at Google, they feed you 24 hours a day.
If you're at certain law firms in Palo Alto [California] they feed you 24 hours a day.
They do anything to keep you happy and productive.
This is simply something that is useful, and my vision is, there is a possible alternative culture
that I would like to live in. I would like to also live in a country where freedom of religion,
freedom of science and freedom of personal exploration is considered fundamental,
not something you have to go to the Supreme Court every year for. [applause]
So that's my vision. And I think we are the Frodos carrying our little ring, and yes,
the forces of Mordor are everywhere. However, so are we. So the more we get visible,
the more we out ourselves, the more we allow our colleagues to accept us,
and find out that half of them will out, the sooner things will be changing.
Since the government declared LSD illegal, 24 million people have taken LSD in the United States.
[applause] And for those of you who say, "where could he get such a figure?" U.S. government.
[laughter] And if you think...they got everybody...[laughter]
"Here's a government form, please list the illegal activities you have done in the last month."
[laughter] So the culture is much closer. This is the next round of the '60s,
only there's an awful lot of people in power that won't stop us.
That's why MAPS is doing such wonderful work in so many areas, because they simply kind of find,
who are the people who are grown-ups, probably had psychedelic experience and won't say so,
or are simply genuine scientists who say science means you get to investigate the universe,
and you guys might be able to help people who can't be helped otherwise.
So I think the vision is already well underway. And no, I don't know what happens if, you know,
my third-grader's given a little ayahuasca like kids in South [America], like the Daime get,
I don't know, but I think it's probably going to be better than the way we're doing it.
Shall we agree? Okay. [applause]
