New Search Engine Studies Psychedelics
April 30th, 2009 by Russ
Nearly 40 years have passed since luminaries like Timothy Leary and Alan Watts have used LSD and psilocybin in a rigorous exploration of human “inner space.” Now, a new academic research tool called PsyComp will continue their work and boldly go where no search engine has gone before.
PsyComp seeks to be the first online resource to aid students searching for ‘educational pathways into psychedelic research.’ It is currently compiling a searchable database of undergraduate-level, psychedelics-related courses in such fields as pharmacology, cognitive science, and botany.
While institutional support for such scholastic projects remains sparse, a few intrepid PhDs have laid the groundwork for future forays through the doors of perception. In his essay, So, You Want to be a Psychedelic Researcher? [Warning: .pdf] Dr. Andrew Sewell offers the following cautions to potential future students.
First, examine your motives for entering psychedelic research. Is it because psychedelics are novel and cool? While Dr. Timothy Leary, perhaps the most famous of the psychedelic researchers, found it a route to enduring fame and hot sex with large numbers of young women, he did this primarily though his showmanship rather than his scientific research. If such a lifestyle is appealing to you, there are shorter routes to this goal than decades of scholarly study.
Despite the warnings, Sewell acknowledges that many great minds have come by history-making discoveries via altered brain states.
Scientists such as Ralph Abraham, Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, Andrew Weil, and Nobel Prize winners such as Francis Crick, Richard Feynman, and Kary Mullis have found psychedelics valuable tools in formulating their great discoveries… [Also], the discovery of LSD was what sparked interest in the serotonin system and prompted the explosive growth of modern psychopharmacology that continues today.
And now, it seems, these potential pathways to knowledge and enlightenment will be made available to the internet public, at large. It’s a Brave New World Wide Web out there.
Leary’s Ex-Wife Attests to “Guantanamo-Like Torture”
April 30th, 2009 by Russ
According to a legendary psychedelics activist, the Bush Administration did not write the book on extraordinary rendition and government-sponsored torture. Joanna Harcourt-Smith, former wife of mind-expansionist Timothy Leary, recounted her experiences at the mercy of CIA-sponsored Afghan prison in a radio interview with Doug Rushkoff.
As the hipster legend tells us, Leary constantly raised the ire of President Nixon with his public endorsements of illegal psychotropics and affection for underground prankster groups, such as the Weathermen. Nixon called him “the most dangerous man in America” at one point. After escaping from prison where he was held on a trumped-up weed possession charge, Leary and Harcourt-Smith fled the country.
In the radio interview, Harcourt-Smith recounted the events of his October 1972 abduction by Afghani officials (presumably at the behest of the CIA). Upon their arrival in the country, these officials stole the couple’s passports, and took them to the ‘Plaza Hotel Prison’ where they were held by a cadre of armed guards.
While held in the prison, Leary was subjected to week-long stretches of solitary confinement and intense interrogations. For her own part, Harcourt-Smith was forcibly strip-searched upon her visits to her husband. Harcourt-Smith believed that Nixon’s CIA was trying to extract intelligence on the domestic prankster groups with whom Leary had been affiliated.
While Leary was later blamed for his (presumably coerced) assistance to law enforcement in the pursuit of psychedelic prankster groups, Harcourt-Smith does not believe he played a critical role.
She recalled:
Mainly, I saw very clearly that Timothy Leary had been scapegoated. And I became the scapegoat of the scapegoated.
Tune in, Turn on and Drop it
November 5th, 2008 by Perry
In a 1966 chat with Dr. Timothy Leary, a pioneer of the acid trip, Leary espouses ideology, and societal reflections in a recorded audio clip turned podcast.
Even if you have no interest in acid or trips whatsoever, Leary’s philosophical meandering may seem obtuse but provides insight all these years later on what was going on during one of the most tumultuous times in American history.
Additionally, he was an integral part in changing the public perception of counter-culture and the rejection of mainstream acceptance.
Leary said:
I think it wouldn’t be hard to prove my point, that most Americans are involved in a meaningless, robot, assembly-line series of activities. They don’t really know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, but they’re just pushed off to this assembly-line and off they go.
Leary goes on to explain his famous quote in less abstract terms, which makes it no less confusing.
[By drop out] we mean drop out of the meaningless and tune in to the productive.
Not clear enough for you?
You have to go out of your mind to come to your senses.
You’ve done got schooled Leary-style.
