Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

  CHAPTER 10. PETER MILLE

  A few years after I had left Dole and taken the initially rather scary step of setting myself up as a scientific consultant, I had completed the creation of my own small laboratory in what remained of the basement of my parents' original home on this gentle hill; the house had burned down during one dry August, leaving only a few charred pine trees and the big stone basement room with its fireplace. I covered the room with a roof of 2x4's and aluminum sheeting, then moved in a solid table that was my chemical workbench. Next came water by way of plastic pipe. Finally, I built a rack of cross-hatched tubing out of inexpensive gas pipe from the local hardware store. The laboratory quickly became, and has remained, a place of exploration and excitement, resembling - according to Alice - one of those late-night-movie laboratories in which a mad scientist with wild hair and blazing eyes attempts to wrest from the gods that which no mortal can be allowed to discover, et cetera. She says the only difference is that there are no piles of dried leaves on the floor in the movie labs. There certainly are in mine.

  Not long after I'd put the lab together, I received a call from a colleague in Sweden who said that he was currently the scientific organizer of an international symposium on marijuana, to be held in Stockholm. He said that he would love to have me come and present a paper on my work. As modesty has never been one of my strong points, I gave dark and subtle hints that of course I had successfully tied the marijuana world to that of the phenethylamines (this was the substance of the Trinidad adventure aboard the Chusan). However, I told my caller, I just didn't have the money needed to accept his offer.

  I was unaware of the fact that the Swedish Government had just nationalized the pharmacy industry, and one of the rationalizations they had advanced for this heavy-handed action was that now the profits from this health-industry could be directed towards research and education. "Research" included such things as sponsoring international meetings on drug-related projects. And "drug-related" included such things as marijuana.

  I received a call back in a couple of days saying that a round-trip ticket was on its way, that hotel reservations for a five-day meeting had been made for me, and that they were looking forward to my research report on nitrogen analogues of marijuana. I was screwed.

  So, for the next two-score days, I squirreled myself away in the lab thinking up, making, and tasting new compounds that could be seen as nitrogen analogues of marijuana. I didn't want to rekindle the in-the-ring structures which had been the principal actors in the A.R.L. and Frantic Freddie circus, so I designed a new class of analogues with the nitrogen atom outside of any ring. These would be THC-like compounds with the phenethylamine chain hanging off the aromatic ring. I put together a series of furanyl and pyranyl analogs and wrote it all up as a paper to present in Stockholm. None of the compounds had any activity, so it had to sail on its chemistry, and that was frankly not too well polished.

  As with most such ventures, the real reward came from an unexpected direction. After I had given my paper, I was approached by a middle-aged gentleman, wearing a tie and expensive clothes, who spoke excellent English. He said that he was most appreciative of work such as mine, in part because it had been carried out in a private laboratory, without outside financial support.

  I acknowledged his appreciation and volunteered that, should he be in the United States some day, he might like to visit my place. He accepted my offer, but then told me that he had a lab of his own, and would be most honored if I would visit it. Alarm bells rang; I did not really wish to be caught in the basement of some brownstone residence outside of Stockholm, admiring a bubbling flask filled with LSD.

  Well, I said, someday maybe, eventually, next time, when we are all under less social pressure. No problem, my well-dressed gentleman said; now was the perfect time.

  So here I found myself, being swept out of the conference room and into his car. We dropped by the Karolinska Institute to visit my friend and colleague who worked there. He knew my companion, so I had my very first hint that his invitation was on the up-and-up. We left the institute and drove on into the center of the city, and the next thing I knew, we were pulling up in front of a two-storey building in downtown Stockholm. A guard ran out to the car, opened the door for us, and let us into the building that was surely a block by a block in size. A little while later it all became clear. I had just been given a midnight tour of the Swedish equivalent of the FBI laboratories. My host was Peter Mille, the head of the Narcotics Lab in Stockholm, and what he had called "my own little lab" was the state Big Thing! I had never seen so many instruments, so much equipment, so many reference samples and such a professional dedication to excellence. There were instruments which would document indentations from scratch pads, and which could lift fingerprints from Styrofoam cups. There were the spectra of dust from carpet sweepings, and the chromatograms of the fumes from arson cases. But I was especially taken by a display of drawer after drawer of tablets, pills and capsules which he showed me. In Sweden, he said, there are, or have been, some 70,000

  varieties of items that have been legally available for health purposes. Here, he said, embracing the entire collection with a flourish of his hand, is a reference sample of each. I was totally seduced. When I finally got back to the United States, I vowed that I would make such a collection, from the prescription world, from the over-the-counter shelves in the local drug store, and certainly from the health food suppliers and supermarket outlets that were, after all, the major distributors of our popular medicines. Get one of everything. I found out that we had in the United States, not thousands, but millions of different types of pills and capsules easily available. I have collected and organized a few thousand of them, but my collection is far from being complete, and I now know that my project is too large to ever be completed. The numbers are immense. We are truly a nation of drugs.

  The personal treasure of the experience was Dr. Mille's invitation afterwards to come to his house, meet his wife Celia, and share dinner. After a modest but excellent meal, I went upstairs to Celia's private quarters where there was a piano and several musical instruments.

  Peter lowered a canoe-like structure from the ceiling and lit a large number of candles in it. I tuned up the violin that their daughter had left behind when she went off to school, and Celia and I played Mozart violin sonatas for several hours while Peter listened quietly from the downstairs living room.

  Years later, I did indeed have the pleasure of showing my friend Peter my laboratory, here on the Farm. It was certainly more modest than his, but no less loved by its owner.

  CHAPTER 11. ANDREW

  One evening, in the late 1950's, I was invited to a musical soiree at an old, comfortable home in the Berkeley Hills. I brought my viola with me, as there was a promise of some string quartet sight-reading. The only person I remember from that evening was a handsome, proper gentleman with a small gray moustache and the residues of an English accent. During coffee, after the music playing was over, he struck up a conversation. He asked me if I had ever heard of the Owl Club, in San Francisco?

  I had not, so he began painting a picture of a rather fascinating group, with many interests in all areas of art, drama and music. He mentioned that there was a need for a viola in their symphonic orchestra, and would I want to sit in for a couple of evenings (they met once a week for a little bit of rehearsal, a lot of talk, and too much gourmet food and wine) to see if I liked them and they liked me. It sounded like quite an adventure, so I readily said yes.

  The Club proved to be a group of gentlemen from a broad array of political and professional backgrounds, leaning somewhat towards the political right and the well-to-do. The regular members carried the major share of the operating expenses, but for the actual participants in stage and concert shows, playwrights and composers, those who contributed time and effort to Club activities such as the orchestra, a couple of bands, and a chorus, the costs were largely subsidized by the Club itself. I found the camaraderie to be extraordinar
y. The modest time investment was completely rewarding, and I developed a number of close friends.

  On my first evening at the Club, I met a Dr. Andrew Walker Scott, who proved to be an interesting collection of contradictions. Among the rituals attendant upon joining this group of rather conservative gentlemen - with whom I still regularly break both bread and Bach - was the indoctrinating lecture explaining the rather rigid behavior patterns expected of new members. Andrew was appointed my pater familias. He was a retired member of the medical community and had the stern, authoritative demeanor necessary to thoroughly intimidate a young, impressionable neophyte.

  I eventually saw the human side of Andrew. One year, at the summer Owl Encampment (which takes place in a quiet forest preserve about two hours from the Bay Area and lasts two weeks), he came up to me (I had been in the Club for a few years, by then, and although still relatively young I was not the neophyte anymore) and asked if I would like to play a Beethoven quartette.

  "Sure!" I knew he was a dedicated amateur (in both the English and American senses of the word) second violin player, but had in recent years been finding fewer and fewer volunteering co-quartetters with whom to share his enthusiasm, possibly because he was not the world's best violinist, to put it gently. He often explained that the difficulties he was having were due to the fact that he was sight-reading the music (for non-musicians, this means you're seeing it for the first time and playing it as you read).

  I grabbed my viola and we were joined by two others for a little chamber work.

  "What shall we play?" he asked.

  "Whatever you'd like, Andrew," I replied, "Perhaps one of the middle quartettes?"

  "No," he said, "Since I've never seen those quartettes before, maybe better an early one; it's probably easier. How about Opus 18, Number four? I just happen to have the music here with me."

  "Sounds good to me," said I. We started sawing away, and about halfway through the first movement, during a brief lull, I glanced at his music sheet and saw that all the bowing and fingering had been carefully written in for the second violin part, and in Andrew's very own hand. Sight-reading indeed! I was careful not to let my eyes stray in that direction again, but found myself smiling at the thought of this very proper old gentleman's little pride-saving maneuver.

  But I also had the pleasure of seeing his innocent side.

  With my mother's death and the year's stay with my father, wife and son in Europe, I had arranged an extended leave of absence from the Club which, as it worked out, evolved into a period of several years. This was, in effect, tantamount to a resignation.

  During these years, I was uncertain as to just how I should carry on my research work in the area of the psychedelic drugs. There were good arguments for remaining above-ground, publishing everything, and staying in intimate touch with the positives and negatives of the scientific community. There were also good arguments for going underground - the political climate being what it was - suffering isolation from fellow scientists, but never again required to explain, justify or defend my interests. I had not yet made my decision.

  About this time/1 received a request to give testimony to Representative Claude Pepper's traveling road show, the House Committee on Crime in America, which was holding a series of public forums across the country. Did I say "request?" I should have said that I received a subpoena to present myself and answer questions. It was my first, and presumably my last, opportunity to get a close-up view of the body politic in full function.

  I had the pleasure of meeting the investigating counsel in his office ahead of time. He sat behind a desk in an anteroom to the public hearing chamber (all this was on one of the top floors of the Federal Building in San Francisco), and as I sat there, an aide brought him a mountain of papers. I guessed that they had something to do with me. The lawyer began leafing through the stack. A court reporter sat nearby with fingers poised over the keys of his magic machine. I watched and waited.

  He raised his head and glanced at me, "You know that you have the right to have a lawyer present with you?"

  "Why would I need a lawyer?"

  He didn't bother answering; I hadn't expected him to. With an efficient sweep of head and hands, he returned again to browsing through his paper mountain, while the secretary tap-tap-tapped, recording these priceless comments for history.

  A photograph came out of the mountain. It was handed to me; a picture of the already rather famous Augustus Owsley Stanley, being led in handcuffs from his Orinda LSD lab in a recent arrest.

  "Do you recognize this man?"

  "I believe that is the picture of Mr. Stanley which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle a few days ago, in conjunction with his arrest."

  "Why would you invite a known felon to your home?"

  "Who?"

  "Mr. Stanley," said the lawyer.

  "Mr. Stanley has never been to my home," I said calmly and truthfully.

  Our eyes met. The only sound was the tapping of the court reporter's keys. Then another paper from the stack. This one was not shown to me, and there was no way I could see it.

  "Why would you turn down six million dollars to set up a lab in Jamaica?"

  Well, well, well, thought I. The question had brought back an interesting memory. A few years earlier, when I was still employed at Dole, I'd had a visit from a couple of rather young entrepreneurs, one small and dark, the other tall and red-bearded. They told me they were interested in setting up a "legal" laboratory for the production of psychedelic drugs known and unknown, and they were offering me the chance to do the setting up. It would be on the island of Jamaica, and I was to be paid three million dollars now and three million more upon completion of an operational lab.

  When I asked who was proposing to pay for this venture, my visitors said that it was a group of businessmen. They didn't volunteer names, and I didn't ask for any, since I wouldn't have recognized them anyway. I didn't have much information about the world of business. But I did have instincts, and they were telling me that there was something not exactly kosher about either the young men or their proposal.

  Although Barbarossa tried to convince me that this was the chance of a lifetime, I declined, very politely. I had a perfectly fine job, I said, with a very good chemical company, and didn't really want to relocate to another country right at the moment.

  Not until now, staring across the desk at the hard-faced lawyer, had I been given a clue as to the true source of the offer! I wondered what department of the government had set up what was probably some sort of "sting", and what exactly they had expected to accomplish.

  My reply to the lawyer was simple, "What would I do with six million dollars?"

  The flavor of my forthcoming testimony had been established.

  The actual hearings were well attended, but I suspect that the audience was not completely unbiased. This was San Francisco, after all. The act directly ahead of me was the testimony of the famous Art Linkletter, at that time widely regarded as an expert on LSD use, due to the tragedy of his daughter's death, which - although it had occurred some time after her taking of the drug - was blamed by her father and the press on an experiment with LSD.

  I was nervous and didn't pay much attention to his testimony, except for an exchange concerning hippies and long hair.

  Mr. Linkletter asked the Congressmen if they knew why all hippies had long hair, held tightly with a rubber band?

  "No," replied a suddenly interested Honorable Claude Pepper, "I've often wondered about that."

  The audience sensed something dramatic about to happen, and began quieting down.

  "It is really rather straightforward," said Mr. Linkletter, "It has to do with psychedelic drugs."

  The audience was completely quiet now.

  "When the hippie gets high, he can undo the rubber band, let his hair loose in all directions, and shake his head vigorously - ," here Mr. Linkletter shook his head energetically from side to side, in view of perhaps 200 fascinated listeners, some half
dozen Congressmen, and one attorney, " - to unleash the windmills of the mind."

  Laughter erupted across the room, and the gavel pounded for order. I was to be the next witness. Quite an act to follow.

  My testimony began with some brief formalities, such as birth, education, and employment history, then quickly got to the subject most dear to their hearts: drugs. Much of the question and answer exchange has been lost to memory; I was in a sort of shock and responding from an instinctive urge to survive. Eventually, at one point, the lawyer asked me a question that was reasonable, but he asked it in a way that gave me control.

  "How can you call yourself a scientist," he demanded, "And do the type of work you do?"

  Never ask a witness on the stand a question that requires more than a yes or no answer. It is called "giving the witness the chalk." He can then suggest to the magistrate (or chairman, judge, member of Congress) that to give a meaningful answer, a little background would be needed, and ask for a bit of extra time, and he will almost always receive it. I suggested, asked, and received.

  I started at the beginning. I talked about the family burdens of schizophrenia, the social costs of the hospitals and the welfare costs associated with depression and alcoholism, and I might even have talked about the heartbreak of psoriasis, although I don't specifically remember. A tear for every eye. Then, on I went to tell how recent research with the neurotransmitters was starting to bring understanding of the mental processes. And how an understanding of drugs that affected the integrity of the human brain in a controlled way might give insight into the processes of mental illness which are defined by just this type of disruption. I asked that this and that paper published in the scientific literature be entered into the record. I was just getting into the actual answer to the original question itself, when a recess was called.

  I had no way of knowing what was discussed during the break, but when the hearing was reconvened, I was quickly thanked for my contributions and told that my testimony had been completed.