
Why Were Early Psychedelicists so Weird? - anythingnonidin
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/28/why-were-early-psychedelicists-so-weird/
======
xkcd-sucks
Early psychedelic associated people who were not weird: \- Alexander Shulgin,
chemist who discovered and ate whole families of psychedelics over a long
life, and who was always described as being practical, grounded, warm, and
human \- The CIA employees who were exposed to LSD during that era, remarkably
few of whom went off the deep end \- Owsley Stanley, pioneering sound engineer
and production scale LSD chemist who also was not into woo-woo crap \- Albert
Hofmann, the guy who discovered it

The "weird" ones cherry-picked in the article didn't do much except loudly
promote extravagant claims about said drugs and push their own personal
brands-- They were the instagram influencers of the era, in a sense.

~~~
colecut
Owsley moved to Australia because he was convinced a super cyclone was going
to freeze all of north America and that would be the safest spot.

He also pretty much ate only 100% meat, and blamed the cancer that formed in
his throat in his later years on the few vegetables his parents made him eat
as a child.

But no woo woo crap =)

Interesting thoughts by Owsley:
[http://www.thebear.org/essays.html](http://www.thebear.org/essays.html)

Info about the storm he predicted: [http://worldnewstrust.com/ice-ages-cause-
of-glaciation-a-the...](http://worldnewstrust.com/ice-ages-cause-of-
glaciation-a-theoretical-treatment-owsley-bear-stanley)

~~~
DrScump
For those unaware, Owsley was the focus of the Steely Dan song "Kid
Charlemagne".

------
Strom
Psychedelics permanently increasing your _openness to experience_ sounds true
to me based on my own experiences, however not in the way that the author
seems to be fearing.

It's not some subtle unconscious change. It's a conscious choice to be more
open, in certain ways, based on the new insight gotten from your emotional
psychedelic experience. It's a freshened perspective on life.

As for the examples of believing in astrology, aliens, doing yoga, or
constructing models of consciousness. How weird are these really? To me these
seem like viewpoints that regular Joe will discuss in a pub. Some, e.g.
modelling consciousness, aren't even irrational, but I've personally found
that almost everyone has at least one irrational pet idea anyway.

Psychedelics could certainly amplify your own beliefs, but I'm not convinced
it can easily create new ones. It can make you more open to the idea of being
honest about your thoughts, including sharing your alien theories.

~~~
castle-bravo
Right? For me it was like: MOLY SHEET! I don't /know/ _anything_. What do you
do with _that_ dropped on your head? You can't rule anything out on the basis
that other people would find it hard to swallow. If you've got a few extra
watts of processing power in your head, you can take some wild ideas really
far before you even have the chance to bounce the idea off someone; it's very
likely that you might actually transmit the kooky memes you've been gestating,
especially if you're a charismatic like Leary. Anyway, a sizable fraction of
those crazy psychedelicists ended up having fun as happy cult leaders - who
can fault them if they haven't caused harm?

------
reilly3000
What, is being a Ron Paul supporter in the new DSM? I’ve never tried
psychedelics myself, but I find OP’s descriptions of weirdness to be feeble at
best.

Quantum consciousness as far out? I earnestly believe that it’s irrational to
thing something that so greatly impacts and is impacted by the physical world
as conciousness is somehow not bound by physics. It’s perfectly rational and
proven with multiple experiments that quantum particle pairs act synchronously
across space(time). If conciousness is based in physical reality, then it is
an emergent property of quantum mechanics.

At times my spouse and I have experienced an undeniable and unexplainable
shared thought or emotion without communicating with the 5 senses. We have
commingled so very much matter together that it’s most reasonable to assume
some entangled particle pairs get split between us. I’ve encountered a
plethora of antecdotes from others along similar lines- really without seeking
them out.

Does constructing that type of argument ensure that I am ‘weird’ like the
article suggests?

Maybe I ought to try some mushrooms and see what other weird ideas I’m missing
out on?

~~~
JabavuAdams
> At times my spouse and I have experienced an undeniable and unexplainable
> shared thought or emotion without communicating with the 5 senses. We have
> commingled so very much matter together that it’s most reasonable to assume
> some entangled particle pairs get split between us. I’ve encountered a
> plethora of antecdotes from others along similar lines- really without
> seeking them out.

It's a common experience, but that's not a maximum likelihood explanation.
I've often been able to trace this kind of synchronicity to the both of us
having just seen something in the environment, that then triggered similar
thought patterns.

There are so many possible explanations that fixating on some quantum mumbo
jumbo (without being able to do the math, or create a statistically meaningful
test) is just magical thinking.

~~~
wc23
I think you hit the nail on the head. At our core humans are pattern
recognition units, we're solving environmental puzzles all the time, and
sometimes we solve this puzzle in the same way as the person next to us, and
both have a similar leap of logic that seems to defy rationality.

------
sunkencity
clearly the author is not hip to _The Human Evasion_ by Celia Green. Those
guys were just all OK with choosing a slightly different reality, because the
mainstream reality tunnel is also equally flawed, and less interesting

    
    
      Human beings live in a state of mind called 'sanity' 
      on a small planet in space. They are not quite sure 
      whether the space around them is infinite or not (either 
      way it is unthinkable). If they think about time, they 
      find it inconceivable that it had a beginning. It is 
      also inconceivable that it did not have a beginning. 
      Thoughts of this kind are not disturbing to 'sanity', 
      which is obviously a remarkable phenomenon and deserving 
      more recognition.
    

[http://www.theabsolute.net/minefield/humevas.html](http://www.theabsolute.net/minefield/humevas.html)

------
chillingeffect
> In fact he tried 1000 micrograms of it, one of the biggest doses I’ve ever
> heard of someone taking.

If this is at the threshold of your knowledge in this area, there's a heck of
a lot more to learn. This whole article, with some interesting facts about a
few cherry-picked researchers, emanates naivete.

~~~
dokem
It's also funny that the author mentions Ram Dass who tells the tale of
tripping on LSD for several weeks at a time in his book 'Be Here Now. In his
biography 1000ug is painted as child's play for some of the early explorers.

~~~
sunkencity
1000 ug aka "Heroic Dose".

------
truculation
Innovators are weird to begin with. Otherwise they couldn't resist the social
pressure to be normal, get a 'proper job' and so on. Living on the edge keeps
their minds active and creative. Plus they expect pushback for their
innovations. So they're going to be militantly weird in some areas, maybe
compensating for this by concealing their proclivities elsewhere.

(This makes sense if you consider that the greater part of being normal is
trying hard to _appear_ normal.)

Now psychedelics are personality-altering substances. As such they have the
potential to make you considerably more weird or less weird than you were to
begin with.

It follows that _psychedelic innovation_ entails a double whammy of weirdness.
It would have been enough to push a proportion of the pioneers over the edge.

------
sevenfive
OP forgets that Kary Mullis did most of his acid binging in the 70's and
invented PCR in the 80's. So even if it did turn him into a crackpot, it
didn't prevent him from doing useful work.

------
azhu
I offer an anecdote: as a young person I struggled with many of the self-
actualization how to be happy type problems that young people do. I was
depressed. I was never formally diagnosed, but I would wake many days and
simply have no desire to assert any form of existence. I would just not get
out of bed because there was no point.

I would then later have an LSD trip where I would "trip out" and lose touch
with reality. During this, while tripping out, I would get into an altercation
involving five police officers in rural Georgia and be arrested and sent to
jail and charged with resisting arrest, battery against a police officer, and
numerous other charges. The ramifications of this in my personal life were
great. While I was being arrested in reality, in my trip I would also
encounter many personal emotional demons. At one point I was tased in reality,
and in my trip I interpreted this to be death and I would think to myself
"this is all that I have become by the time of my death?" In my trip I would
feel the physical sensations of being dragged away by my arresting officers,
and I would experience this as the arms of Satan dragging me to hell as
payment for all of my past sins. As I would be cuffed in the back of the
police car being toted off, I would hear the laughter of everyone in my life
who I had ever cared about echoing through the cosmos, ridiculing me for my
ultimate failure.

Once I awoke, I could not recall any of this. But, as I came to wrapped in a
prison blanket with my head resting on a drain set in a cold concrete floor
next to a metal toilet, I could certainly perceive the seriousness of the
situation I'd landed myself in. This forced me to consider the events in my
life that had led me to this. Eventually, stoked by the story of the tow truck
driver who towed the car I'd driven into a ditch that initially caused the
police to arrive, of the epic Jackie Chan figure who waged war with five
lumbering policemen, my recollection began to form. I realized that the demons
I'd encountered in my trip were "real", insofar that they were amplified
mental manifestations of constructs that had already been there. This much was
not new information, at least not on all levels. What was different about this
encounter with those demons, in addition to their relevance to my
circumstances of being charged with five serious crimes, was that I had the
context of my drug induced shifted consciousness. Any previous attempts to
change these behaviors had proven too feeble to be effective, my methods used
were too shallow to reach towards the roots of my problems.

With the benefit of knowing that my sober reality was not the only possible or
perceptible version, I began to deconstruct the thought processes, patterns,
and software that ran my cognitive experience. It was this realization that
enabled me to rewrite my code to better serve my greater goals. Today, I am a
confident and successful engineer with only a single misdemeanor (lawyers, a
good one is worth it), who is bounds happier and who feels much more in
control and in touch with what he wants and how to attain it, and who believes
in his ability to actualize. I will spare you further corny details of my
current improved state and let you form your own judgements. In writing this
post a fitting metaphor strikes me — a psychedelic trip is much like allowing
someone with an entirely different set of opinions to do a radical (and
temporary) rewrite of your personal software. When running it, it will confuse
you. Everything will seem novel. But you will begin to see the other ways in
which code can hang together. It is a rearchitecting. And if you have only
ever been exposed to and developed using a single paradigm of architecture,
then well I shouldn’t need to explain the benefits of this. But be wary,
because in this temporary rewrite, it is possible you will forget the product
spec to which your software is built and be unable to distinguish between a
feature and a bug. Another metaphor that fits is that for personal growth a
psychedelic trip is much like a car for a physical trip — it is not necessary
to travel the distance and it will help if driven correctly.

~~~
joejerryronnie
That's a crazy intense trip story. Glad it ultimately lead to some positive
self actualization. You should expand on the experience and post it to
erowid.org.

------
mancerayder
While I'm intensely skeptical across-the-board, why is it that the psychedelic
examples in this article (aliens and so forth) are outrageous and signs of
insanity... but commonplace beliefs like, and this is my personal pet peeve,
astrology, is a norm? And I apologise if I offend someone in advance, but what
about religions? Guys come back to life, angels, prophets. All that stuff is
in the same category. And yet, that's not lunacy. But Ram Das is.

Here's a thought that isn't novel: societies dictate what's sane and what's
not. Not rationality. Thank (insert deity) for science and its methods.

------
dx7tnt
I think this article is unfair in dismissing Robert Anton Wilson offhand. RAW
was an interesting character who created a body of interesting work. He
definitely punches above his weight in cultural impact, and was certainly
'open to experiences' which the writer seems to be somewhat astounded about.
Indeed, some of his best work could be considered as a guide to how one can
programme oneself to become more 'open to experiences' whilst developing a
healthier sense of scepticism and discernment about those experiences.

------
hprotagonist
a companion post: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/05/is-pharma-research-
wors...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/05/is-pharma-research-worse-than-
chance/)

 _Here’s one hypothesis: at the highest level, the brain doesn’t have that
many variables to affect, or all the variables are connected. If you smack the
brain really really hard in some direction or other, you will probably treat
some psychiatric disease. Drugs of abuse are ones that smack the brain really
hard in some direction or other. They do something. So find the psychiatric
illness that’s treated by smacking the brain in that direction, and you’re
good.

Actual carefully-researched psychiatric drugs are exquisitely selected for
having few side effects. The goal is something like an SSRI – mild stomach
discomfort, some problems having sex, but overall you can be on them forever
and barely notice their existence. In the grand scheme of things their side
effects are tiny – in most placebo-controlled studies, people have a really
hard time telling whether they’re in the experimental or the placebo group.

Nobody has a hard time telling whether they’re in the experimental or placebo
group of a trial of high-dose MDMA. I think this might be the difference. If
you go for large effects – even if you don’t really care what direction the
effect is in – you’ll get them. And if you go for small, barely perceptible
effects, then you’ll get those too. The dream of the magic bullet – the drug
that treats exactly what it’s supposed to treat but otherwise has no effect at
all on you – is just a dream. The closest you can come is something with
miniscule side effects but a barely-less-miniscule treatment effect._

------
tw1010
You could ask the same question about all people from a long time ago. Why are
William S. Burroughs or William F. Buckley so weird (in our modern eyes)?
They're not really weird. They were perfectly normal in their historical
context and environment. We are going to look weird to people in the future,
unless they're wise enough to avoid dismissing our ideas just because they
don't mesh well with their culture.

~~~
bobcostas55
I'm pretty sure being a heroin addict and shooting your wife in the head was
not "perfectly normal" even in the 50s.

------
qwerty456127
I wouldn't call Ram Dass weird, but the others certain are. Especially that
"amplified DNA of deceased famous people like Elvis Presley" stuff. So why
exactly did they went this loon? Too high dosages? Or did they just realize
they can imagine wildly and market that for profit?

------
tboyd47
It could also be that there were just weirder ideas floating around at that
time, too.

------
acct1771
Two things were less stifled/eradicated: creative thought, and pure drugs.

------
briga
Because they scrambled their brains by taking too many drugs in the name of
'spiritual enlightenment'. I've personally have friends--previously really
smart rational people--who've gone off the deep end after taking a few too
many hits of acid.

Psychedelics can be great and all, and though I've never indulged myself I can
see why someone might benefit from doing so. Your neuro-chemistry is altered
in such a radical way that you're bound to see yourself and the world from a
radically different perspective. The problem with prolonged use, I think, is
that that radically altered state eventually becomes your normal state and you
lose touch with reality.

~~~
leesec
I think this is a wholly unfounded post. Please provide sources if you're
going to make bold assertions like:

"Your neuro-chemistry is altered in such a radical way that you're bound to
see yourself and the world from a radically different perspective."

Anecdotally, on my end: I have seen and been involved with many similarly
smart people, who were also heavily, heavily involved with psychedelics, to no
ill affect.

~~~
scottlocklin
I don't think it is unfounded at all. Over the years I've known many victims
of psychedelics. There's a guy in my apartment building who lost his shit on a
bad acid trip 10 years ago and hasn't been a productive member of society
since then.

I've used them, but it's really impossible to say whether or not I have
suffered ill effects. No control subject. The author of the original linked
essay points out that they produce large permanent changes to personality.
That's a really big deal, and potentially very bad.

------
alan-crowe
The article assumes a two way split: normal versus weird. I think we need a
three way split: solid-normal, cozy-weird, out-there-weird. If you grow up
with something you treat it as normal, as do the people around you, and some
of them work for main-stream-media, so you see it on TV too, treated as
normal. And some of the stuff that falls into that category is really weird,
you just cannot see it.

For example, I was reading an article in The Economist about food distribution
in India. Back in the early 1950's there was a famine and hoarding. Fucking
hoarders! So they banned ware-houses and cold-storage to stop hoarding. Not
completely, but enough to cause trouble. Obviously that is a bit of a
disaster. Agriculture is notorious for having good years and bad years and you
need plenty storage to smooth things out and make sure people don't starve.

Here is where it gets weird. You'd think I was going through the archive,
reading a story from the late 1950's about the repeal of the anti-storage laws
(complete with little box explaining about how such a totally whacked out law
got passed in the first place). No, the article was from June 27th 2015 and
was lamenting that the law was still in place.

So it is not just weird. It is cozy-weird. People are trying to combat the
volatility of agricultural production with laws against warehousing and cold-
storage and it has become normal, just the way you do it.

Second example: Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome were born to
a virgin, Rhea Silvia, who had been forced join a virgin priesthood. Her
wicked uncle Amulius had stolen the throne from her father Numitor, and didn't
want any grandsons turning up to reclaim their grandfather's throne. So no sex
for Rhea Silvia. The God Mars helps out and soon Romulus and Remus are born to
a virgin.

Well, shit! I'd always imagined that when Christianity was getting popular in
300 A.D. it was a case of "virgin birth, wow, like man, that is so totally
amazing, nothing like that ever happened before. That is sooo cool, count me
in, I'm a believer!". Now I've learned a little more history. The Christian
Virgin birth is looking like a me-too story. "Our hero-founder was also born
of a virgin, so there :-P". Let's abandon concerns about me having to change
my mind again when I learn another little bit of history. The story so far has
virgin-birth as cozy-weird not out-there-weird in 300 AD. (Which neatly gets
me out of voicing an opinion on whether it is any kind of weird in 2016.)

Example three: People believe that if a scientific result is statistically
significant at the p=0.05 level, then the probability that it is true is 95%.

I'm feeling really proud of myself for providing three examples of cozy-weird.
If you think about it, I shouldn't be able to give any examples of cozy-weird
at all. I say "X is cozy-weird" and every-one dog piles on top of me insisting
that X is normal and every-one agrees that X is normal :-)

Anyway, there is a two way split normal(2) and weird(2). There is a three way
split solid-normal(3), cozy-weird(3), out-there-weird(3). Here is how they
line up

    
    
        weird(2) = out-there-weird(3)
    
        normal(2) = solid-normal(3) union cozy-weird(3)
    

For some psychonauts an important motivation taking LSD is the hope that one
can break through to reality in the sense of becoming able to see what is so
strange about the cozy-weird.

SSC asks "Why were Early Psychedelicists so out-there-weird(3)?" (my
translation).

That seems like a really tricky question because it is so hard to see what
happened to the cozy-weird. Lets define weird(3) as the union of cozy-weird(3)
and out-there-weird(3). Suppose some-one trips on LSD and realizes that you
should respond to the volatility of agricultural output with laws that favour
ware-housing and cold-storage. Suppose it goes further and they think that
alien space bats are attacking Earth with stupidity rays and that is why there
are laws that oppose ware-housing and cold-storage. That is a solid helping of
out-there-weird, and a worthwhile reduction of cozy-weird. Did total weird(3)
go up or down?

The previous paragraph ends with a hanging question. I've no idea whether the
early psychedelicists had any success with seeing the strangeness of the cozy-
weird. Time for a case split.

Case I, the early psychedelicists had no success with seeing the strangeness
of the cozy-weird. If so, this is in itself a reason not to take LSD. Seeing
the strangeness of the cozy-weird is one of the motivations. If others have
already tried it and it didn't work, then it is time to try something else.

Case II, the early psychedelicists had some success with seeing the
strangeness of the cozy-weird. Then there is an upside to balance the downside
of perhaps becoming out-there-weird. Also there is an extra contender for why
the early psychedelicists got so weird. Seeing the strangeness of the cozy-
weird is mentally destabilizing. You can still share solid-normal(3) stuff
with normal(2) folk, but the cozy-weird(3) stuff is a barrier between you,
making each think that the other is a bit daft. What happens when you are cut
off like this? Does the loss of social anchors set you adrift and at risk of
becoming out-there-weird. Does the experience of seeing the strangeness of the
cozy-normal directly unsettle you, making it hard to know what to trust and
how to judge things? The existence of the cozy-weird makes things very
complicated.

~~~
scottlocklin
I guess it's worth noticing the author of the essay is pretty weird himself in
any number of ways.

