Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
You believe Frank Zappa when he says he only tried LSD twice? *;-)
  

    
I sure do.  In fact I'm surprised he took it the second time.
  

    
Did you have personal contact with Zappa on which to base that view?
My sense is that his "I don't take drugs myself" posture was more than
a little bit disingenuous (albeit self-protective).
 
  

    
More broadly, however, I must say I am finding this discussion very
interesting. I knew Tim reasonably well, having first met him in the
fall of 1961, when the Harvard Psychedelic Project was just getting
under way, working out of his office at 5 Divinity Avenue. I had many
very interesting visits at his (rented) house on Homer Street in
Newton, MA and our paths crossed many times later on. Tim stayed with
us here in Duxbury the night of his 64th (as I recall) birthday (I'd
run into him at the Harvard Club in Boston and invited him to come down
for the night rather than stay in his hotel), on which occasion he
gave me a copy of Bill Burrough's "Western Lands" that Bill had given
him not long before that (it has an inscription from Bill to Tim as "an
old comrade in arms" and Tim's marginal notes when he read it). I also
used to visit him fairly regularly in his house on Sunset (which
really was not in Beverly Hills but just over the line back into LA).
I've been thinking about him a good bit lately. My opinions of him have
evolved quite a bit over time.

On the notion, however, that Tim (et al) somehow 'ruined' psychedelic
research, you are spot on. That is total rubbish. And, in any case,
psychedelic research is actually doing very well these days, thank you,
and is undergoing a quite remarkable renaissance. The boring old,
person as merely a thing, behavioristic pseudo-psychology that Tim so
abhorred seems finally to have (mostly) run its course. Developing
neuro-science (etc.) is creating a new and more interesting period
where study of consciousness is steadily coming back into fashion, even
in the most hide-bound academic environments. The '60 were fun and
very interesting, but the next decade or two have even greater
potential. Luckily, we really still do live in interesting times!

*;-)
  

    
Correction, the street was not Sunset. But it was something like that
and was not far north of Sunset Boulevard. Even then I kept mucking up
the name of it. But it was just up the road from the Beverly Hills
Hotel.
  

    
A biography of Zappa that I read said he tried acid twice. A woman I
knew who may have been in the (ahem) position to know told me he did it
more than that...  I may believe the biographer a little bit more.

More later...
  

    
"Did you have personal contact with Zappa on which to base that view?"

Yeah.  Two weeks on tour with him.  If music hadn't called to him, he 
could have made it as a hedge fund manager.
  

    
Zappa's disdain for drugs was well known, and he claimed he never
dropped acid. I don't really get the comment that "...his 'I don't take
drugs myself' posture was more than a little bit disingenuous (albeit
self-protective)." 
  

    
What don't you get? I am simply saying I do not believe his claim. I
think Zappa did his fair share of tripping but denied it publicly cuz
he did not want to risk getting busted. That's all.
  

    
If I may ask, what makes you think so? 
  

    
I certainly didn't know Zappa, but everything credible I've read is in
accord with <rik>'s experience.  

And yeah, Leary didn't ruin psychedelic research.  He only ruined it
for about 40 years.
  

    
Not that I'm bitter or anything...
  

    
I think some people who tried LSD were terrified by the experience,
intellectuals included. A lot of people who didn't try it were
terrified as well.
  

    
On average, people who did not try it were much more terrified than
those who did! LOL!
  

    
She who tastes, knows! *;-)
  

    
As Tim said, "Psychedelic drugs cause panic and insanity in people who
have never taken them."  As I recall, McDee, your preference runs
towards Vicodan and beer.
  

    
I think the question is less whether psychedelic drugs (and maybe the
context in which they're consumed) cause real problems, vs whether
they're consistent with personal goals for consciousness development.
I.e. I think there's always a question whether psychedelics escalate
perception showing greater Truth, or fiddle with perception causing
greater Delusion. I suspect they can do either depending on context and
personal will (or lack thereof). Does this align in any way with
Leary's thinking? Would he tell me (typing all caps, per my
recollection of his online habit) that I'm spot on, or full of it?
  

    
One little sidelight to this fascinating discussion:

LSD was instrumental in the discovery of antidepressants. Back in the
late 1940s, when Sandoz was distributing LSD to doctors, it included a
package insert suggesting that they take it in order to understand
their patients' psychoses. So word was out pretty quick about just what
kind of drug LSD was. At around the same time this was happening,
there was a resurgence of interest in serotonin, a chemical first
identified in the cephalopod gut in 1930s. A young woman biologist,
Betty Twarog, theorized that serotonin was a neurotransmitter and that
it would be found in the human brain. this was a triple heresy: 1. for
forty years or so, the orthodoxy held that there were only 2
neurotransmitters, acetylcholine and adrenaline; 2. the orthodoxy held
that impulses in the brain were mediated not bt chemicals but by
electricity, i.e., that sparks jumped across the synapse like they do
across the electrodes of a spark plug; and 3. she was a woman. By 1853,
through a series of ingenious exp0eriments Twarog proved it all
(excep0t the third, which was self-evident, although furtehr proof
ensued when her paper was held up so a man could claim to have amde
this discovery first).

IN the meantine, the LSd was working its way into the highest, so to
speak, echelons of the biologists looking at the brain, including John
Gaddum at University College in London. Gaddum took careful notes of
his trips. He also noted taht serotonin and LSD were closely related
chemically. He theorized that LSD was replacing serotonin at the
synapse; it was close enough to have an affinity for the receptors, but
not close enough to produce the same effect. He went on to explore the
LSD/serotonin connection, using the drug in the old-fashioned way: to
elucidate a biochemical process. Meantime, a group of scientists in th
U.S. took it one step further. Serotonin was a neurotransmitter, they
said, and LSD, which was related to serotonin, caused profound changes
in consciousness, therefore a surplus or lack of serotonin was what
caused mental illness. None of this turned out to be exactly true, but
nonetheless thus was born the psychopharmacological era. 
  

    
Wow. That is interesting.  Psychedelics continually pop up as a method
of understanding the brain, in situations where getting high is beside
the point. 

As to Jon's question...  I note in the book that psychedelics seem to
both enhance and exaggerate pattern recognition (pattern imagining?). I
think Timothy saw the whole "I'm the reincarnated princess from
Atlantis" type of tendency as a harmless frivolity that at least made
some people's lives less boring. Hippies were somewhat silly, premature
 mutants, signs of the future, in Leary's 1970s version of things.  
As for the more harmful types of delusional reactions... he would
probably pin most of that on a bad set and setting in society-at-large;
secrecy... and sexual repression and paranoia related to secrecy,
illegality and thus the lack of social institutions to follow up on
tripper's insights and the places where they get into trouble; a lack
of sophistication and bad education,  (about psychedelics and
generally) and the effects of cognitive dissonance (he was a Bob Wilson
friend and fan)in a weird civilization that precedes and surrounds the
tripper.

He also said psychedelics weren't for everybody, which he could have
certainly made a bit clearer during the '60s. 

Did he REALLY SPEAK IN ALL CAPS WHEN HE CAME ON THE WELL?  Such an
annoying thing, but I think a lot of newbies do it. I did it
occasionally.  

 
  

    
I SPOKE IN ALL CAPS EVEN BEFORE I CAME ON THE WELL.
  

    
Hey!  I'm trying to get some sleep here, dammit.
  

    
We'll be launching a new conversation later today. We don't have to
stop this one, but since Ken's commitment was for two weeks, this is a
good time to say thanks for the Leary book and the extended
conversation here. We should have a broader discussion sometime about
consciousness expansion via psychedelics, meditation, music, light,
etc. What would the world be if we all made an exponential jump or two?
  

    
I'll check in to see if people are still yakking. Meanwhile, a
reminder that the book itself is at TimothyLeary.org and the electronic
version is FREEEEEE!!!

Here's a segment of text by Leary that I included in the book.  Seems
relevant, if not entirely 100& spot on, to the current historical
moment...


Excerpt from
“Secrecy,” by Timothy Leary from Neuropolitics, 1977 (originally
written in 1973)

Secrecy is the original sin. The fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The
basic crime against love. The issue is fundamental. What a blessing
that Watergate has been uncovered to teach us the primary lesson. The
purpose of life is to receive, synthesize and transmit energy. 

Communication-fusion is the goal of life. Any star can tell you that.
Communication is love. Secrecy, withholding the signal, hoarding,
hiding, covering up the light is motivated by shame and fear, symptoms
of the inability to love. Secrecy means that you think love is shameful
and bad. Or that your nakedness is ugly. Or that you hide unloving,
hostile feelings. Seeds of paranoia and distrust.

Before the FBI there were no secret police. Before World War II there
was no CIA and America was much less concerned with secrecy. The hidden
sickness has become lethally epidemic in the last forty years. They
say
primly: if you have done nothing wrong, you have no fear of being
bugged.Exactly. But the logic goes both ways. Then all FBI files and
CIA dossiers and White House conversations should be open to all. Let
everything hang open. Let government be totally visible. The last… the
very last people to hide their actions should be the police
and the government. 

We operate on the assumption that everyone knows everything, anyway.
There is nothing and no way to hide. This is the acid message. We’re
all on cosmic TV every moment. We all play starring roles in the
galactic broadcast — This is Your Life. I remember the early days
of neurological uncovering, desperately wondering where I could go to
escape. Run home, hide under the bed, in the closet, in the bathroom?
No way. The relentless camera “I” follows me everywhere. We can only
keep secrets from ourselves.

None of the legal experts get the point of Watergate. The Special
Prosecutor for the Watergate scandal chasing leaks from his own staff. 

We recall the political scandals involving secrets. The heroic figures
around whom Washington now revolves: Dan Ellsberg and Tony Russo.
Brave Russian dissenters uncovering the secrets that everyone knows
about Soviet repression.

Now comes the electronic revolution. Bugging equipment effective at
long distance. I laugh at government surveillance. Let the poor,
deprived,bored creatures listen to our conversations, tape our
laughter, study our transmissions. Maybe it will all turn them on.

Concealment is the seed-source of every human conflict. Let’s forget
artificial secrets and concentrate on the mysteries.
  

    
Thanks! 

I love this:

"I laugh at government surveillance. Let the poor, deprived,bored
creatures listen to our conversations, tape our laughter, study our
transmissions. Maybe it will all turn them on."
  

    
Thanks, interesting discussion on a valuable contribution to the
literature.