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Timothy Leary

In: Social Issues

Submitted By sunnyg2003
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PLAYBOY: How will this psychedelic regime enrich human life?
LEARY: It will enable each person to realize that he is not a game-playing robot put on this planet to be given a Social Security number and to be spun on the assembly line of school, college, career, insurance, funeral, goodbye…Man is going to have to explore the infinity of inner space, to discover the terror and adventure that lie within us all.

This quote by Timothy Leary is very interesting. Leary clearly believes that LSD will help people have a better understanding about life in general. Timothy Leary obviously was a firm believer that Psychedelics can be used for good. He was a writer known for advocating research into psychedelic drugs. I would agree with his positions regarding this question in the interview. Dr. Albert Hofmann was a research chemist at Sandoz Labs in Basle, Switzerland. In April of 1943, the chemist accidentally ingested a small amount of a compound he had synthesized five years earlier from a rye fungus ergot. 'I experienced fantastic images of an extraordinary plasticity. They were associated with an intense kaleidoscopic play of colors. After two hours, this condition disappeared,' Dr. Hofmann later stated. His extraordinary discovery was labeled d-lysergic acid diethyl-amide tartrate or LSD-25. A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The scope and content of the experience is unbounded. In the 1950s, investigators from various scientific disciplines began to use LSD as a research tool. Psychologists reported that LSD could greatly facilitate the process of psychotherapy. Others declared that it was of no positive use whatsoever and was, in fact, dangerous. The topic is extremely controversial, but some would say the discovery of LSD marked one of the three major breakthroughs of the 20th Century. In psychology, the psychedelics have provided the key to the unimaginable vastness of the unconscious. When taking LSD, the universe is perceived in its entirety as eternal, natural and perfect, and when you see it in this way you have no wish to question it or probe the ineluctable beauty at its core. It opens your mind in an entirely new way. This is what I believe Timothy Leary is trying to say. The drug does not produce the transcendent experience, it merely acts as a

chemical key, it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. You see things for what they really are, a whole new sense of reality is brought upon you. Our egos, our concept of ourselves and reality, the social system, how people interact with each other and the entire society is full of problems brought upon by ignorance. Einstein spoke and wrote of the 'feebleness of the senses.' The genius believed that humans were virtually blind and did not see the true universe. Einstein knew of the Electro-Magnetic Spectrum which lay beyond visible light. The true universe is not static or stationary, it constantly moves. I believe the LSD experience can have a positive effect on people who have an open mind and want to use it to learn about themselves and this world. Leary had different ideas than the norm. He didn't believe in the typical therapist-patient relationship or the typical teacher-student relationship, each of which involves an authority type figure with power or expertise over another person. These are unequal relationships which Leary thought were ineffective and doesn't work. He wanted people to think freely for themselves and not to be manipulated by fear. Some of the decisions Leary made has had a long range effect on the country. People were experienced and knowledgeable about mind-opening, consciousness-expanding drugs.

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