A second study of the potential therapeutic use of psilocybin was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin in the fall of 2003. This study, headed by Dr. Charles Grob at Harbor-UCLA examines the use of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy in treating anxiety and pain in terminal cancer patients. It was inspired by research in the late 1960s and early 1970s in which LSD-assisted psychotherapy was administered to cancer patients, after which significant reductions were reported in the amount of narcotic pain medications that the patients required. Dr. Grob’s psilocybin research project is being funded by the Heffter Research Institute.
MAPS is sponsoring research into the use of psilocybin and LSD in the treatment of cluster headaches. Cluster headaches are a rare, severely painful form of headache that is related to but different from the more common migraine. John Halpern, M.D., and Andrew Sewell, M.D., McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, are initially analyzing and organizing responses to a questionnaire posted on www.clusterbusters.com, an organization run by and for people with cluster headaches. Medical records are also being gathered to supplement questionnaire reports. Preliminary data suggests that psilocybin and LSD do provide significant relief in some people for whom available alternative prescription medicines provide little or no relief. These reports and records will be used to design a randomized, dose-response study of psilocybin and LSD in people with episodic cluster headaches. The goal of the research is to explore the use of psilocybin and LSD both in interrupting an ongoing cluster headache cycle and as a prophylactic (cycle-interrupting) treatment for cluster headaches.
NONTHERAPEUTIC STUDIES
There are also on-going nontherapeutic psilocybin research projects taking place in other countries. One project studies the effects of psilocybin on binocular depth inversion, binocular rivalry, neuropsychology and synaesthesias. It is headed by Dr. Torsten Passie, M.D., at the Medical School of Hannover, Germany. The study involves the use of medium doses of psilocybin to examine the effects on neuropsychological measures (attention, reaction time, etc.), perceptual changes, and subjective effects.
Subjects participate in one session, which lasts most of the experimental day. To reduce the psychological discomfort of the subjects, the subjects are largely free of experimental procedures so that they may experience the psilocybin state in an open and relaxed manner. This study is being funded by the Medical School Hannover, Department of Clinical Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, and by MAPS.
Another study, funded by the Heffter Research Institute, is headed by Dr. Franz Vollenweider, University of Zurich. It involves a series of examinations of basic physiological parameters and information processing strategies. This team has completed a five-dose, dose response psilocybin study in about seventy individuals. Dr. Vollenweider is also in the development phase of a study of the potential psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy in the treatment of subjects with eating disorders.
For more information on these projects, see: http://www.maps.org/research
8
THE INITIATION OF THE “HIGH PRIEST”
TIMOTHY LEARY
Timothy Leary’s first mushroom trip takes him into our storied past and the fathomless depths of evolutionary remembering. From this classic visionary voyage he came back a changed man and started a revolution in consciousness.
I was first drugged out of my mind in Cuernavaca, August 1960. I ate seven of the Sacred Mushrooms of Mexico and discovered that beauty, revelation, sensuality, the cellular history of the past, God, the Devil—all lie inside my body, outside my mind.
In the days of Montezuma this town called “horn-of-the-cow” was the center of soothsayers, wise-men, and magicians. Cuernavaca is the southern anchor point of a line running from the fabled volcanic peaks Popo and Iztaccihuatl over to the volcano of Toluca. On the high slopes of the volcanoes, east and west of the capital grow the Sacred Mushrooms of Mexico, divinatory fungi, teonanácatl, flesh of the gods.
In the summer of 1960, Cuernavaca was the site of considerable activity by American psychologists—soothsayers, medicine men, would-be magicians—from the North—vacationing on grants and working in the lush valley of Morelos in sight of the snowy peaks of the legendary volcano. A (certain) villa served as summer headquarters for four American psychologists: Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert of Harvard, Frank Barron of California, and Richard Dettering of San Francisco.
The happenings of that summer in quiet Cuernavaca were to set up reverberations that have echoed now for years. Many of the scientists who were working and vacationing there that season have had their lives dramatically changed, and none of them will ever completely escape from the mysterious power, the challenge, the paradox of what started to unfold. The setting, the surrounding, is a key factor in the outcome of any visionary voyage, whether you use mushrooms or marijuana or LSD or Ary beads, and in this regard the Cuernavaca mushroom-eaters were fortunate.
The Spanish-style villa . . . was a rambling white stucco house with scarlet trim, surrounded by gray stone walls. Down below was a sloping lawn ringed by flowers. Next to the upper terrace was the swimming pool, lake blue, and the lawn fell away downslope to a lower green terraced lawn. The villa had been built by Mexican Moslems and remodeled by Mexican Viennese. It was colorful, open, and lush.
Summer days . . . swimming trunks before breakfast . . . ontological discussions . . . the cold grapefruit eaten by hot poolside . . . clear hot sun burning tanned skin . . . the startle value of iced drinks . . . the shouts of Jack Leary and Pepe, the Mexican boy, chasing ducks on the lower lawn . . . thunder and earth . . . the sudden cooling splash of the evening rain . . . the sky over the volcanoes . . . candles at dinner.
A frequent visitor was Gerhart Braun, anthropologist-historianlinguist from the University of Mexico. With him would come Joan, his girlfriend, and Betty, who wrote poetry and cracked jokes.
Gerhart had been studying the Aztec culture and translating old texts written in Nahuatl, the language used by Aztecs before the conquest. He had discovered repeated references to the use of Sacred Mushrooms by Aztec soothsayers on ceremonial occasions to predict the future, to feel better, to solve mental problems. His curiosity aroused, Gerhart had asked around about the mushrooms and discovered they grew on the volcanic slopes near Mexico City . . .
So we drove up to the village of San Pedro near the volcano of Toluca and walked around the marketplace asking about the Sacred Mushrooms. There was much thoughtful shaking of the heads by the shopkeepers—and conversations in low Spanish in the back rooms. Old Juana was the one to see. She would come to the market. Wait right here under the arch. She’ll come soon.
We stood there for an hour while the sandaled, market-day crowds padded by. An old woman, back bent, gray stringy hair, black shawl, eyes down, creaking stiffly: Senora Juana. She brushed by us, not responding to our hail. On the outskirts of town Gerhart caught up with Juana. She stopped and they began to talk. We stood back and waited and watched.
Gerhart returned to us, smiling. Okay. It’s all set. She’ll get the mushrooms next Wednesday and I’ll meet her in the marketplace next Thursday.
The following Thursday Gerhart phoned, excited. He had met Juana in the market. He had asked her if she was sure they were safe. She popped two of them in her mouth before his eyes. The mushrooms were resting now on the shelf of his refrigerator. See you Saturday.
The day of visions dawned sunny and clear. Gerhart and his group arrived and I met them on the lawn. We stood in a welcoming circle, (eight of us: myself, Gerhart, Joan, Ruth and Dick Dettering, Mandy, my girlfriend, Whiskers, and poet-Betty). Gerhart lectured us on the trance-giving mushrooms, pushed out of history’s notice until the last decade when they had been discovered by Weitlinger and Shultes and the American mycologists, Valentina and Gordon Wasson. By now they had been eaten by a few scientists, a few poets, a few intellectuals looking for mystical experiences. They produced wondrous trances.
There were two kinds, females and males. The lady mushrooms h
ad the familiar umbrella shape, but black, ominous, bitter-looking. The males’ anatomy was so phallic there was no reason to ask why they were called males.
We moved out to the pool. The mushrooms were in two large bowls, male and female separate, on the table under the huge beach umbrella. Gerhart was lecturing now about dosage. Six males and six females. The effect should begin after an hour. Then he stuffed a big, black, moldy-damp mushroom in his mouth, made a face and, chewed. Gerhart was voyager number one.
I picked one up. It stank of forest damp and crumbling logs and New England basement. They tasted worse than they looked. Bitter, stringy, filthy. I took a slug of Carta Blanca and jammed the rest in my mouth and washed them down.
Everyone was listening to his own stomach, expecting to be poisoned. Quite a picture, six of us sitting around the sunlit terrace in our bathing suits, waiting, waiting, asking each other how many did you take? Males or females? Do you feel anything?
Two people did not partake: Ruth Dettering was eager to eat, but she was pregnant. She had been a nurse and I was glad she was going to be out of trance. I talked to her about how to call for an ambulance and stomach pumps. Whiskers was a friend of a friend, a sensitive logician, hesitant, pedantic, dressed in bathing trunks over flowered undershorts, and green garters and black socks and leather shoes and a silken robe. He had been appointed scientist and was taking elaborate notes of Gerhart’s reactions.
Suddenly
I began
to feel
Strange.
Going under dental gas. Good-bye.
Mildly nauseous. Detached. Moving away
away
away
From the group in bathing suits
On a terrace
under the bright
Mexican sky.
When I tell this the others scoff
Hah, hah. Him. Power of suggestion.
Skepticism? Of my mind? Of me? Of mind? Of my?
Oh, now no. No matter.
Dettering says he feels it too.
Oh my friend. Do you feel tingling in the face?
Yes.
Dental gas?
Yes.
Slight dizziness?
Yes. Exactly.
Whiskers making notes. Rapid whiz pencil.
Lips obscene gash brown stained beard.
Flowered underpants peeping out from bathing trunks,
green socks,
black shoes
thin shoulders
Bending over note pad
Viennese analyst.
Comic. Laugh. Laugh. Laugh. Laugh. Can’t stop.
Laugh. Laugh.
All look at me.
Astonishment
More laugh laugh laugh laugh
Whiskers looks up, red tongue flicks from shrubbery.
Lick lips.
Stomach laugh. So funny that I . . .
Laughing, pointing . . .
The rabbi! Psychoanalytic rabbinical rabbit!
Convulsed in laughahafter.
pomposity of scholars
impudence of the mind
smug naïveté of words.
If Whiskers could only see!
Stagger in hahahouse. Roaring. Into bedroom.
Fahahalling on bed
Doubled in laughahafter.
Detterings follow, watch curiously, maybe scared.
Funnier.
Then
Dettering begins to lafhahahaf.
Yes, he laughs too.
You see, Dickohoho? The impudent mind?
Comedy? Yes.
Only Ruth standing there grinning quizzically.
Starting back to terrace
My walk has changed
Rubber legs
Room is full of water
Under water
Floating
Floating in air-sea
Room
Terrace
People
All
Under
Water
BUT NO WORDS CAN DESCRIBE
Out on terrace
Trance has hit the others.
Gerhart
Sprawling on chair, staring up at umbrella
Eyes popping, big as melons
Gone
Gone
Gone
Babbling.
No, see Whisker pencil flying
Hear Gerhart voice
an orange spot, I should say twenty
centimeters in diameter, now changing
to purple, now being approached at an
angle of forty-five degrees by an
alternating band of yellow and red . . .
Scientists at work
Funny, funny too.
Long, lanky Gerhart in straw sombrero
Gleaming, staring, eyes fixed in space
Tufted goatee bobbing up and down as he tapes
out visions.
Dettering swims up.
Point to Gerhart
We lafhafhafhaf
Swim to poet-Betty
On the beach by flowers.
Face turns up
Gone, gone, gone.
I took nine.
Nine, she sighs.
Betty makes hissing noise.
Eyes tender. All woman inviting.
Ruth Dettering standing by the door.
Swim to her through water, suddenly
Ominous.
Have you ever swum
On moonless night
In southern sea
Where sharks may be?
And felt that dread
Of unknown
Black peril?
Swimming in ocean of energy
With no mind to guide.
Look, Ruth. I can tell you that this
thing is going to hit me real hard.
Harder than anything that has ever
happened to me. And to the others, too.
Ruth listens hard, nodding her good
nurse head. You may have six psychotic nuts
on your hands. I think you should send
the kids downtown to the movies, and
the maid too, get her out of here, and lock
the gates and for god’s sake stay close
and keep your eyes on things.
How do you feel having all this
Going on around you?
Ruth grins.
So envious I could
Scream.
Sitting on chair
Feeling cold doom
Sky dark, air still
Soundless like
Ocean
Bottom
World stops spinning
Somewhere
The big celestial motor
Which keeps universe moving
Is turned off and the whole business
Terrace, house, lawn, city, world
coasting
coasting
dropping
through space
without
sound
Mandy floats from beach chair
Swims by, I watch her go
Inside door loosens hair
Falls down over shoulders
Looks out in bikini wet tresses falling
Mermaid eyes see far away.
Old Dettering floats over
sea-toad face
bloated
purple-green warts
froggy
We stand looking down over
allgreen grass blade leaf petals in
focus sharp clear shining
changing waves color
like
floodlight slides
at summer dance hall
kaleidoscope.
Mandy and I lie side by side on beach chair
her knee hits mine they merge
Sacred Mushroom of Visions Page 18
