
Psychedelic Pioneer and Confidence Man - prismatic
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/psychedelic-pioneer-and-confidence-man/
======
pmoriarty
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]

[1] - [https://psychedelicsalon.com/category/people/myron-
stolaroff...](https://psychedelicsalon.com/category/people/myron-stolaroff/)

[2] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-sfDEEcMQ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-sfDEEcMQ8)

[3] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMZ-
oopMBog&list=PLCB4ED9E98...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMZ-
oopMBog&list=PLCB4ED9E989E17EF6)

[4] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMUO0dP77rI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMUO0dP77rI)

[5] - [http://www.maps.org/news-
letters/v07n3/07318fis.html](http://www.maps.org/news-
letters/v07n3/07318fis.html)

~~~
RangerScience
> 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.

~~~
pmoriarty
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.

~~~
gunshai
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.

