Rosemary Woodruff Leary is remembered—if she’s remembered at all—as a muse, fugitive, and heavily indicted co-conspirator in Timothy Leary’s psychedelic revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. But her story is far more complex than that. A true believer in the mind-expanding potential of LSD, a master of the elusive art of “set and setting,” and a woman determined to live a remarkable life, Rosemary was a countercultural icon in her own right.
Susannah Cahalan is the author, most recently, of The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Countercultural Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary. In June, Cahalan joined The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie to discuss Woodruff—what drove her to begin experimenting with psychedelics, what she saw in the tumult of postwar America, and why her legacy deserves more than a footnote in someone else’s story.
A: As much as I hate to start with Timothy Leary, we are starting with him—she was [his] third or fourth wife, depending on who you ask. She was a seeker. She was a behind-the-scenes character who was propping up Leary, working with him on his speeches, sewing his clothing, helping him create an image.
She was also very much a true believer in the role that psychedelics could play in not only expanding consciousness but actually making society better. She was called the Queen of Set and Setting—the mindset that you bring into a trip, and the environment. Rosemary was very good at making people feel grounded and supported.
Q: What drove her to move to New York and start experimenting with drugs? What was she seeking that she wasn’t getting in her hometown of St. Louis?
A: She had always talked about herself in these mythic terms. She saw herself as someone who was going to live a great life—with a capital G, Great. She wasn’t going to find that in St. Louis. She was attracted to “great men”—these genius archetypes. That’s what she found in New York. Through being in this scene, she was able to express some of those sides of herself.
Q: What was going on in postwar America where this type of thing was even taking place?
A: I think there’s a lot of overlap with today. There was a sense of insecurity. Some people responded to that insecurity and fear by having a lot of children, being very family focused. And other people started questioning the nature of their reality and the role of society.
They were still kind of caught up. Rosemary described how Timothy—despite all of his talk of revolution of the mind and [how he] was going to upend society—was the kind of man who put his hand out and expected to have a martini glass put in it.
Q: And that was part of the function that she served, right? She kept the rooms clean, helped organize, fed people.
A: It’s been an interesting thing, talking about Rosemary in today’s culture, where there seems to be this idea that either you have to be a tradwife or a girlboss. She wasn’t either of those. Yes, she was stuck with a position that oftentimes she resented. But she actually did really enjoy taking care of other people. She was genuinely really good at taking care of people and beautifying spaces, too.
Q: What is the message that you might bring to a contemporary person reading this?
A: The thing I hope people take away from it is that she was complicated. She doesn’t fit into these ideas of what a woman should be or how she should use her power. She was more like all of us, who are complicated. We sometimes pick people who aren’t great for us. Or we love people who are damaged and damaging. And that doesn’t make her any less worthy of a biography.
This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.
I’d long forgotten the enlightening words I heard from the depths of my mind on an lsd trip as a young man. I was upon a sailing ship in the vacuum of space when a tidal wave of cosmos crashed down and pitched the boat around. The words, “your greatest joy will be furthest from shore” rang out.
Autism Spectrum Disorder is a very serious developmental issue that affects and impairs someone’s ability to communicate and interact. Fortunately, researchers have identified that there might be a positive relationship between psychedelics and autism.
In order to fully understand this relationship, the Marijuana Doctors team will attempt to examine Autism Spectrum Disorder and how psychedelics can affect it.
Autism Spectrum Disorder can start manifesting before the age of 3, and most people with ASD often have issues communicating and interacting with people. People with ASD can either have restrictive or repetitive behaviors, and their way of life may be different from those without ASD.
Psychedelic Effects
Psychedelics belong to a drug class known as hallucinogenics. These classes of drugs have been saddled with the effect of triggering non-ordinary mental states, which can provide a change in perception, thoughts, emotions, and auditory senses.
The most common examples of these classes of drugs are LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), psilocybin, and ayahuasca. A lot of research has been done regarding the use of psychedelic substances to aid personal and mental development like anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the results have been fairly positive.
Psychedelics and Autism
Although psychedelic drugs have been used to treat personal and mental illnesses or disorders, their use in treating autism has been limited. However, researchers are trying to branch out fully into this area to extensively realize the connection and safety implications of psychedelics and their effect on autism.
Benefits Of Psychedelics On Autism Spectrum Disorder
Based on the limited data on the use of psychedelics on autism, we will be taking you through a few of the most significant benefits of psychedelics on autism.
It Can Help Modulate Serotonin Receptors in The Brain
Serotine is a neurotransmitter that actively works in regulating human emotion, mood, cognition, and other physiological functions. Psychedelics have been said to help modulate similar neurotransmitters, such as serotonin receptors, in the brain.
The interaction of the psychedelic with the serotonin receptors in the brain can help autistic people who have similar symptoms to those of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Neurochemical Effects
With the little research available on psychedelics, reports on it have shown that they tend to promote neuroplasticity. This is the ability of the brain to reorganize and form new neural connections on its own. These neural connections can explain the therapeutic feeling gotten from people who have conditions like anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
This will also have the potential to give this therapeutic effect to people suffering from autism.
It Helps Increase Brain Connectivity
The frequent use of psychedelics has been shown to help increase the functional connection between all of the brain regions that seem not to be strongly connected. This may help people with autism experience a more holistic and strong interconnected experience of consciousness.
Possible Risks and Side Effects of Psychedelics on Autism
Before anyone decides to use psychedelic substances to treat autism, the first thing that needs to be done is to research possible risks and side effects associated with it.
Here are some of the possible side effects associated with psychedelics:
Psychological or Mental Distress
The use of psychedelics can alter or induce one’s emotional and mental health. The drug aims to work on these emotional experiences, and can sometimes intensify their feelings of confusion or anxiety. This might even be more dangerous for people with autism because they tend to be extremely sensitive in these areas.
It Can Cause a Change in Communication Patterns
Many people with autism already struggle with speech disorders and sometimes find it difficult to communicate effectively with others. Although one of the benefits of psychedelics on autism is to help improve communication skills, it can also be an issue.
Psychedelics work differently for everyone. For some, it helps with communication. For others, it can further increase their difficulty in expressing themselves.
Increased Sensory Perception
The psychedelic effect works to help effectively heighten your sensory organs. This might cause a huge change in auditory and visual perception, which can be pretty overwhelming for people with autism because of their sensitivity to sensory stimuli.
Due to the limited research on the effects of psychedelics on autism, there’s nothing much we can offer at this point, but it is advisable to approach psychedelics with caution. Additionally, it should be under professional supervision.
Interactions Between Psychedelics and Other Drugs
As a person with autism, your first step before using psychedelic substances is to check how well they interact with the drugs that have been earlier prescribed to you by your medical professionals.
You must visit your doctor to be sure of how well your autism drugs and psychedelic drugs work together, as some interactions might have very negative effects.
The Future of Psychedelics and Autism
For now, we are only exposed to limited data on the research of psychedelics and how they particularly affect Autism Spectrum Disorder. However, moving forward, we are hoping that there will be more comprehensive research surrounding this topic.
This research will further focus on how exactly it works while monitoring their symptoms and the duration it takes to work. While this is important, making sure that these psychedelic treatments are made accessible and affordable to people suffering from autism should be of utmost importance.
There also needs to be proper sensitization of the public about autism. Providing information about autism, its causes, and how psychedelics have been developed to help tackle it to the public will further help healthcare professionals in their professional capacities. It can assist with how they approach people with autism spectrum disorder moving forward.
Final Words
Studies about psychedelics and their effects on autism are still in the early stages. A few reports have shown that there might just be a very positive correlation between them. However, approaching it needs a little caution. While evaluating the potential benefits, you should also take a look at the potential side effects to make sure that you’re on the right path.
Continuous research on this subject will be beneficial to individuals who have Autism Spectrum Disorder, and this might help improve their way of life making it easier for them to function among other people.
The Drug Enforcement Administration is expected to approve a rescheduling of marijuana, which is currently categorized with Schedule I drugs such as LSD and heroin, to Schedule III alongside Tylenol and steroids, which would allow it to be purchased nationwide. What do you think?
“What’s even the point of having glaucoma now?”
Huxley Pollard, Volunteer Helper
Study Finds LSD Highly Effective At Ruining Nephew’s Baptism
“What’s it classified as for white people?”
Genevieve Plant, Ceiling Tiler
“Biden must be desperate if he’s resorting to giving the American people what they want.”
CHICAGO — A person was hospitalized on Saturday afternoon after a double-decker bus crashed into a viaduct in the Loop.
According to Chicago police, the crash happened around 3:30 p.m. in the 100 block of North Lake Shore Drive when the bus attempted to exit Lake Shore Drive and turn onto Lower Randolph. During the turn, the bus hit the viaduct.
Authorities say the crash caused damage to the roof of the bus and one passenger suffered lacerations to their head.
The passenger was taken to the hospital in fair condition and no other injuries were reported.
Authorities say no citations were issued and it is unclear if the viaduct suffered any damage during the crash.
Guinness World Records—the definitive list of world records of both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world—recently posted a eulogy to Tusko the elephant, who was tragically given an extreme dose of LSD, for science.
LSD research was conducted on animals such as dolphins or cats, starting in the ‘50s and ‘60s, with goals ranging from mind control to animal communication. A team of researchers in the early ‘60s came up with the brilliant idea of dosing a hormonal bull elephant with a massive dose of LSD, and lo and behold—the outcome was tragic.
Tusko was a male Indian elephant located at the Oklahoma City Zoo in Oklahoma. Tusko was a victim of the poor treatment of animals, and he did not survive the experiment.
But before his tragic end, Tusko earned a spot in the Guinness World Records. Other notable instances of massive LSD doses include a case study of an accidental dose during September 2015, when a woman took 55 mg of LSD—550 times the normal dose. But this animal was given 3,000 times the normal dose of LSD.
Within an hour and a half, and after several doses of barbiturates to kill the trip, the elephant was dead.
The Procedure
Beginning on Aug. 3, 1962, (1963 by some accounts) the researchers dosed an elephant. Researchers injected nearly 300 mg of LSD into Tusko.
Doctors West and Pierce attempted to induce Tusko into a state known as “musth”, an aggressive, hormonal surge that bull elephants get, causing them to secrete a sticky fluid between the ears. It’s critical for the reproduction of elephants as their testosterone levels rise to 60 times the normal amount.
“By way of a dart gun shot into his right buttock,” Guinness World Records writer Sanj Atwal wrote, “Tusko was injected with 297 milligrams of the hallucinogenic drug LSD. Almost 3,000 times greater than the normal human recreational dose, this remains the largest single dose of LSD administered ever.”
This ingenious plot was whipped up by two ambitious psychiatrists, Dr. Louis Jolyon West and Dr. Chester M. Pierce, along with the Oklahoma City Zoo’s director at the time, Warren Thomas. The experiment took place amid a surge in mind control experiments conducted by government agencies.
That’s when things went terribly wrong.
Five minutes after the injection, Tusko trumpeted once, fell over, and defecated.
He then suffered a serious seizure; his eyes rolled back and closed, his legs became stiff, he bit his tongue, and he struggled to breathe. It didn’t take long until the elephant was dead.
“Given that a human dose is around 25 milligrams, it comes as no surprise to hear that Tusko trumpeted once, ran around his enclosure then suffered a crippling seizure,’ Atwal continues. “He was administered a large dose of the antipsychotic drug promazine hydrchlroride, then the barbiturate pentobarbitol sodium, but died after 80 minutes, the victim of the largest single dose of LSD ever administered.”
“Dr. West was, put simply, an evil scientist,” Atwal writes. “He was a documented experimenter in Project MKUltra, an illegal human experimentation programme designed by the CIA to identify methods of brainwashing, psychologically torturing, and forcing confessions from people during interrogations.”
LSD Experiments Involving the Government
Beginning in 1953, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched Project MKUltra, a human drug experimentation involving hallucinogens, intended to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to force confessions. The CIA attempted to develop more effective truth serums.
“These methods included sensory deprivation, hypnosis, isolation, sexual abuse, the covert administration of psychoactive drugs, and various other forms of torture,” Atwal writes. “One of the most famous experiments overseen by Dr West occurred in 1959, when Peter Tripp, a radio DJ, attempted to break the record for the longest time to stay awake. Tripp went without sleep for eight days and nine hours, causing his mental state to temporarily deteriorate into what doctors labeled ‘nocturnal psychosis’.”
Shortly after, drug experimentations would involve animals as well.
After the experiment on Tusko, West continued his work for the CIA, Guinness World Records reprots. Also in 1963, he was appointed as the psychiatrist to Jack Ruby, who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald two days after Oswald allegedly assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
West suggested that Ruby be interrogated under the influence of sodium thiopental and hypnosis in order to get the real story.
Pierce on the other hand went on to become the founding president of the Black Psychiatrists of America and spoke frequently about racism in the U.S., and he even coined the term “microaggression.”
A fitting end for a disturbing experiment at the expense of a rare Indian elephant.
In the event of a bad psychedelic trip, you may be better off riding it through than taking additional drugs to extinguish the trip—which can actually be more dangerous.
In a new study, doctors are warning about so-called “trip-killers,” or drugs used to counteract the effects of a psychedelic trip. What they found is that over half of anecdotal recommendations online call for benzodiazepines, antipsychotics, alcohol, and other remedies, but found that trip-killers are often more dangerous than the psychedelics themselves. This LSD Reddit thread, for instance, has trip-killer recommendations. Less than 2% of recommendations they found were for CBD or cannabis to lessen a trip.
The study, “Trip-killers: a concerning practice associated with psychedelic drug use,” was published in Emergency Medicine Journal on Dec. 19. It was announced in a news release the same day.
There’s no Narcan to end a psychedelic trip, but people have tried various drugs to do just that. Researchers found that drugs such as benzodiazepines and antipsychotics are the options most frequently recommended, but warnings about their potential side effects are rarely included, they noticed.
Benzodiazepines or benzos, are central nervous system (CNS) depressants primarily used to treat anxiety. Benzos are dangerous in numerous ways—notably there’s a risk of overdose, and also a risk of powerful dependence that can lead to dementia. Like fentanyl, benzodiazepines can stop breathing, and there are few ways to reverse a benzo overdose.
The intensity of a psychedelic trip can lead to distress, agitation, and psychosis, and researchers cited recent data indicating that more than 8% of drug-related trips to emergency rooms in Europe involve psychedelic drugs.
The study was led by Manchester-based Dr. Gregory Yates, in the U.K., who thinks there is a huge lack of peer-reviewed research showing how these drugs are being used and the risks involved.
Instead of going to a doctor, which is pretty much impossible to do during a trip, psychonauts are turning to Reddit.
“There are multiple ways to control a ‘bad trip’ and avoid hospitalization. One is to take psychedelics under the supervision of a ‘trip-sitter’—a non-intoxicated friend who can provide psychological support. Another is to use additional psychoactive drugs—‘trip-killers’—to attenuate or prematurely end the psychedelic experience. Trip-killers are not new, but have received increased attention on social media in recent years.”
“Information on trip-killers is not available through drug advice services, despite the probable risks they pose,” researchers wrote. “To our knowledge, no relevant papers have been published in the medical literature. It was the aim of our study to gather descriptive data on the use of psychedelic trip killers by analysing posts made on Reddit, a publicly accessible, anonymous social media website.”
Researchers analyzed posts on social media platforms like Reddit, and found 128 threads created between 2015 and 2023, with a total of 709 posts.
“The most recommended trip-killer, with 440 recommendations, comprising nearly half (46%) of all the trip-killers mentioned in posts, were benzodiazepines, known for their sedative effects and physical dependence. Benzos were followed by several different antipsychotics (171;18%).
One in 10 recommendations were for antidepressants, while 1 in 20 were for alcohol. Opioids, antihistamines, herbal remedies, such as camomile and valerian, and prescribed sleeping pills, attracted 3% each. Cannabis and cannabidiol each took 2% of the vote share.”
Trip-killers were mostly discussed in reference to countering the effects of LSD (235 recommendations), magic mushrooms (143), and MDMA, popularly known as ecstasy (21).
Trip Sitters in Europe
Set and setting are so important when it involves psychedelics and hallucinogens. Not observing set and setting, or disregarding the profound nature of psychedelics can lead to bad trips, which can be terrifying.
Much like the United States, leaders in Europe are currently figuring out how to incorporate psychedelic therapy into its healthcare landscape most effectively.
A European lobby group representing developers and professionals within the industry advocates for including seasoned practitioners as integral members of a multidisciplinary advisory body.
Seasoned practitioners—i.e. trip sitters—would serve as a guiding authority, offering essential insights to regulators and healthcare practitioners regarding optimal practices as the field expands and changes. This effort comes from the European Psychedelic Access Research and European Alliance (PAREA), as reported by Politico, as per a briefing document slated for submission to the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
The document reads that people with actual experience with psychedelics should have say-so over the dos and don’ts of psychedelic trips. This aligns with the idea that those with an actual relationship with the substance, rather than simply a desire to profit from it, makes for better business, as seen in the cannabis industry as well.
If psychedelics are taken with better care, often with a trip-sitter involved, bad trips would be less common and people would be less reliant on so-called trip-killers.
“I never pictured a world where marijuana would be anywhere close to legal, and it’s mind-blowing to me that mushrooms are being decriminalized everywhere,” says Shane Mauss, a comedian who tours the country discussing his psychedelic experiences. For the 2018 documentary Psychonautics, he consumed a wide variety of substances on camera, from ayahuasca to LSD to ketamine to DMT, a smokable drug known to provoke especially strong hallucinations in which users sometimes encounter cartoonish “entities.” Mauss also hosts a science podcast called Here We Are, where he shares his thoughts about the mainstreaming of psychedelic drugs, the surprising pace of legalization efforts, and the role that podcaster Joe Rogan and other public figures play in normalizing psychedelics.
In June, Reason‘s Nick Gillespie caught up with Mauss at the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference in Denver. Attended by a reported 13,000 people, the conference was organized by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a nonprofit that is in the final stages of gaining Food and Drug Administration approval for the use of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD.
Reason: What does the psychedelic renaissance mean to you?
Mauss: I don’t know what the psychedelic renaissance means to me. I can tell you that as someone who was born in 1980 and experienced much of the Reagan-era “just say no to drugs,” early ’90s PSAs, the frying egg and this-is-your-brain-on-drugs stuff, I never pictured a world where marijuana would be anywhere close to legal, and it’s mind-blowing to me that mushrooms are being decriminalized everywhere.
Even when I started my science podcast eight years ago, the [only] organization even attempting to jump through all of the regulatory hoops to just test psychedelics in any way at all was MAPS, which was much smaller even eight years ago. And now there’s Johns Hopkins and Stanford and a zillion universities are getting into it.
What do you think changed?
I don’t know if this is just what progress looks like and it’s inevitable? I know I didn’t see this coming. Maybe the war on drugs was such a horrible policy in the first place that it was never going to last.
What do you like about psychedelics?
Psychedelics just changed my life. I did them as kind of a goof when I was a teenager, to be a rebel or whatever. I had smoked weed and laughed about it and thought it was great, but psychedelics were something more meaningful for me. I always had pretty serious depression issues from the age of 10 years old, and [psychedelics] were something that really helped with that. Mushrooms were my all-time favorite, my go-to for a very, very long time. And I think if it weren’t for DMT, I probably wouldn’t have a science podcast. I was always interested in how the mind worked.
Can you describe your experience with DMT?
I was raised in a strict religious household. I didn’t fit into that. I was always an atheist, especially in my younger years. I was a very angry, bitter atheist. To have a DMT experience, it seems like you’re talking with entities or in some other world. Or is this the afterlife? Or is this some other dimension? That is the subjective feeling of a lot of experiences. It made me go: “How could I perceive something like that?” By the end of it, I actually don’t think I was in some other dimension. I think it was in my brain.
So then the question is, how would a brain make a perception that is so different from this conscious experience? It just got me really digging into how the subconscious mind works in neuroscience, and it was incredibly impactful for me over and over again. I started doing ketamine a few years ago and other than falling and scraping my face, it’s been nothing but really interesting. [Gestures at red marks on his face.] This looks much worse than it is.
If anyone watches my documentary Psychonautics, they’ll see I think I have a balanced take on psychedelics. I have a lot of inherent disclaimers. You can look at this face and go: “Well, maybe I should pause before doing ketamine outside of a nightclub so I don’t fall over.”
What are the parts of the psychedelic community that you like the most?
I did psychedelics alone for a very long time until I started experimenting with doing a psychedelics show. I think 2015 was when I first started doing a few of those. Once I started meeting the people that would come out to a psychedelic comedy show, they weren’t the cliché—burned-out, dreadlocked hair, and their only hygiene was a sound bath—type. It was never like that. Sometimes I’d have like one table of burnouts, a bunch of clichés, but you would just meet the most interesting, intelligent people.
I’ve been doing science shows for years, and it can be tough sledding sometimes, getting people to have the attention span to listen to jokes about biology. I remember the very first time that I did a show about psychedelics, the engagement was overwhelming. Afterward, there was a line of people. I’ve been a successful comedian since 2004 and I’ve been on Late Night and everything else. If you do a psychedelic comedy show, there is a line of people that has a million questions and they’re meeting each other in line and connecting. The psychedelic community is just so inquisitive and so open.
What are the parts of the psychedelic community you find objectionable?
I did a 111-city psychedelic comedy tour that ended in 2017. It was the greatest tour of my life. I loved meeting people every show. I loved going to festivals. Then COVID happened. As someone who interviews virologists and epidemiologists, the insane, not just conspiracies, but anger and harassment that I saw anyone doing any kind of science face, it certainly opened my eyes to some of the problematic errors in thinking within the community, some of the magical thinking, and a lot of the grifting in the space. Granted, this is the internet and you’re seeing the worst of the worst cases.
There’s a lot of pretty dubious supplements and things like that are being peddled and treatments and telling people you can cure their cancer with coffee enemas and stuff like that.
Is Joe Rogan a purveyor of psychedelic misinformation?
Absolutely. I’ve been on Joe Rogan’s show. I find him to be a good interviewer and a nice guy. And Alex Jones is one of his best friends. It’s just his shtick: “Oh, did the aliens make the pyramids?” It’s a little discouraging for someone who likes science [that when] I watch Animal Planet, Finding Bigfoot is the most popular show. Or when I try to watch the History Channel to learn something, Ancient Aliens is the most popular show on there.
On Joe Rogan’s show, a way to get on there is to have some big controversial idea or something like that. I think that he ends up subjected to a lot of grifters and a lot of people that are telling him what he already wants to hear and dressing it up as some sciencey-sounding thing.
Do you think the psychedelic community is more open to conspiracist thinking or anti-science thinking?
I find the psychedelic community to be very intelligent. I would say that because of the nature of it being such an underground thing, I think it has drawn people that are unconventional, that maybe don’t like authority as much, which is great. I think we should absolutely be questioning science and authorities and laws all of the time. I very much support that.
Sometimes it’s like a race to see who can have the most far-out idea because there are a lot of creative people in the space, and you want to get attention for your ideas and advertise your ideas. Some of those more far-out ideas are sexier and more tantalizing than reality for some people. I think reality is very interesting. Some people think reality is very boring.
Are psychedelics becoming normalized in our culture?
I started comedy in 2004. I was like a typical late-night, short-joke, absurdist comedian. I’ve always been interested in psychedelics, so even back then I would sprinkle in a few psychedelic jokes here and there. I found that if I did a regular comedy club, I could do five minutes of psychedelic jokes and it would be funny. Usually they were goofy ones, like I ate too many mushrooms. And if I talked about them too much more than that, you would start getting funny looks.
I had all of these deals potentially in the works and ran into all sorts of barriers at Showtime and HBO not wanting to anymore. They didn’t have a problem talking about drugs; they had a problem talking about potential benefits. It was talking about psychedelics as medicines that was very taboo to them. They wouldn’t touch it. When Michael Pollan’s book [How to Change Your Mind] came out, that was the first time there was a psychedelic book on the front of almost every bookstore in the country.Pollan’s book opened the doors for others. And for all of my criticisms of people like Aaron Rodgers, or someone that might be peddling a bunch of anti-science nonsense, it’s still awesome to have someone huge, like a [future] NFL Hall of Famer, praising psychedelics. There are pros and cons to it.
What do you think the benefits would be to society where psychedelic use is just normalized?
That’s a really interesting question because I’m not exactly one of those people that’s like, “If you just put LSD in the drinking water and everyone did LSD, the world would be peace and love.” I’ve seen the negative effects of psychedelics. I’ve been to a psych ward twice myself. I know that psychedelics aren’t perfect. The very things that can help some people’s mental health can hurt others. I have mixed feelings on making everything legal, but the war on drugs is a horrible failure. I don’t know what else there is to do but just get rid of the absurd laws around them.
It will make me nervous when people are doing psychedelics more and more willy-nilly because there’s unexpected things. I mean, marijuana changed my life. I no longer like the stuff. But I had such a beautiful few-year run with marijuana. I loved it. I never saw marijuana being legalized. I was thrilled, even though it’s no longer my cup of tea. Thrilled to see it go so legal and get so popular. My grandma, I think, did CBD. My God, I never saw that coming.
Are you worried about the psychedelic community as it becomes more mainstream?
I’m not about being the cool kid hipster about psychedelics. I’m thrilled to see more and more scientific organizations getting to be a part of it. I have more pause about some of the influencer community out there and some of the wellness community.
If you project 20–40 years into the future, where things have been psychedelicized, what’s that world look like?
I think that people [will] have more options, even to just escape reality, responsibility, or whatever, even in more reckless use of things than just drinking their faces off every day. I think there’s a correlation between younger people not drinking as much, and I think part of that has to do with marijuana and some of these other substances becoming more normalized. There [are] lots more alternatives for people. Even the lowest bar of that is less drunk driving, less alcoholism. I think there will be a lot of excitement for a while, and hopefully 40 years from now this will just be commonplace.
This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.
Creating music, running triathlons and being a dad to three sons, Diplo is news. To show off his street cred, he hotfooted Burning Man by slogging through 6 miles of mud, hitchhiking, and walking barefoot to a jet which flew him to DC for a 3-hour set where he rocked it with the crowd. Born in Tupelo, Mississippi (the birthplace of Elvis), he parlayed hard work, talent, a cheeky personality and good looks into a $50 million fortune. Now we want to know, does Diplo smoke weed.
The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape Diplo’s production style. When attending the University of Central Florida he started DJing. Moving to Philadelphia he starting drawing attention. By 20, Diplo moved to India. Returning he met up with fellow DJ Low Budget. The two began throwing parties under the “Hooked on Hollertronix” Philadelphia.The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, which brought him national fame.
He is an American DJ, songwriter, and record producer based in Los Angeles, California. He is the co-founder and lead member of the electronic dancehall music project Major Lazer and a member of the supergroup LSD. And he is entering the cannabis industry.
When sharing he ran the Los Angeles Marathon in under four hours, he revealed he had more than water, he had a bit of LSD in his water bottle.
“Yeah, I did acid. I didn’t trip out while I was running. I put it in my water bottle,” Diplo shared “I’ll put it like this: I take acid a lot when I’m working, and when I’m waking up. I don’t want to do too much caffeine, and I don’t want to drink alcohol, so I put a little bit, a little drop sometimes.”
Diplo is a fan of psychedelic and marijuana. Living unabashedly, he shares his drug use with no judgement and no shame. He is a fame of the cannabis to the point he started a new company to add to his various business interests.
“I dig the low-dose weed drinks, it’s something new and different,” says says Thomas Wesley Pentz, better known for his artistic name, Diplo, talking about his new THC-infused selzers. “I can drink a few and just chill.”
“I’m sure I’ve gotten a blowjob from a guy before… For sure,” he said to actress and model Emily Ratajkowski on her podcast High Low. “I don’t know if it’s gay unless you like may eye contact while there’s the blowjob happening.”
Last month, the pop star released the single “Eat the Acid”, but appearing on iHeartRadio’s “Elvis Duran and the Morning Show”, she revealed she’s never actually done the drug.
“I also heard working with [producer] Rick Rubin is an experience in itself, basically an acid trip all by itself. Is that true?” asked co-host Medha Gandhi.
“I’ve never taken acid,” Kesha immediately admitted.
“It’s funny you should say that, because one of my first songs that came out is called ‘Eat the Acid’, so I was having this psychedelic experience right in the midst of COVID, and I took it to Rick and it was like a psychedelic, surreal experience. Every day I’d think, ‘Am I in the right dimension,” she continued. “So, probably. But I’ve never taken acid.”
Kesha also talked about the genesis of her upcoming album, Gag Order, which is drawn from a lot of personal experience, including going through the COVID pandemic.
Describing her headspace at the time as “terrible,” the singer explained she had just put out an album, but the pandemic forced her to cancel her tour and other plans.
“I was having so, so, so much anxiety,” she said, going on to describe a “spiritual experience” she had one night when she couldn’t sleep and her cat brought her headphones to meditate and help her through it.
“He’s not just a cat,” Kesha said. “He’s a genius.”
She ended up having a positive experience that felt like an acid trip, “Even though I’ve never taken acid, that was my though. Where just the whole entirety of the world made sense.”
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, September 15, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– The Microdosing and Meditation Study, led by Beckley Foundation in collaboration with Psychedelic Data Society and Quantified Citizen (QC), seeks to observe how meditation skills evolve over three months of regular meditation practice and whether, how, and for whom microdosing (the repeated use of low sub-perceptual doses of psychedelics) may impact these skills.
‘Enhancing Mindfulness’ was reported as the most widely endorsed motivation for microdosing (Rootman et al., 2021) in the largest microdosing study to date, Microdose.me, which was conducted by Quantified Citizen in collaboration with University of British Columbia and Maastricht University. The study was launched in 2019 and is still running with over 20,000 participants to date. Despite the growing evidence of overlap between the neurophysiology and phenomenology of psychedelic drug-induced states and contemplative practices, no research to date has specifically assessed the effect of microdosing on meditation practice.
“In my opinion, psychedelics can be used as tools to get into a higher state of awareness, which, rather like a farmer preparing the ground for seeding, can help achieve a more fertile ground for either meditation or creative thinking. No research has been conducted so far on the effect of microdosing on meditation practice, and I am very curious to find out if regular meditators do experience measurable benefits from microdosing,” shares Amanda Feilding, director of the Beckley Foundation.
The results of this study will help guide future research and improve understanding of the effects of microdosing. Ideally, this will lead to better safety and insight into potential benefits and risk factors.
Why should you participate?
This study will help you (whether you use psychedelics or not) engage in a useful self-reflexive process, where you can evaluate, through a protocol carefully designed by a psychology researcher and meditation expert, the ways in which your meditation practice evolves over time, and whether, and in what way, microdosing interacts with this practice. You may also help increase the current scientific understanding of the effects of psychedelic microdosing on meditation.
Who can participate?
The study will gather data from all meditation practitioners, whether or not they use psychedelics.
How to participate
To join, please enroll in the Microdose.me study on the Quantified Citizen app. Microdose.me shares standardized assessments with the Microdosing and Meditation Study to avoid repetition. After this first step, you will unlock the Microdosing and Meditation onboarding process.
Quantified Citizen is a citizen science-powered health research app. It has a growing library of studies on interventions, techniques and emerging trends.
To fuel further growth and development of new study capabilities, Quantified Citizen is currently in the process of raising its Seed+ round of funding.
