We meet at the home of one or another of the group, and each of us brings food or drink of some kind. In most cases, the host is prepared for everyone to stay overnight, and we bring sleeping bags or mats. There must be sufficient room to allow for any one of us to separate from the rest of the group if he or she wishes to be alone for a while. The homes we use have garden space where any of us may go to spend time among plants in the fresh air. There are music tapes and art books for whoever might wish to make use of them during the experience.
There are only two procedural demands enforced. It is understood that the words, "Hand in the air," (always accompanied by an actual raising of the speaker's hand) preceding a statement means that whatever is stated is a reality-based concern or problem. If I call out, "Hand in the air," and then go on to state that I smell smoke, it means I am genuinely worried about a real smell of smoke, and not playing some sort of word-game or pursuing a fantasy of some kind. This rule is re-stated at the beginning of each session and is strictly observed.
The second is the concept of veto. If anyone in the group feels discomfort or anxiety about a particular proposal concerning th way the session might go, the power of the veto is complete and is respected by all. For instance, if one person suggests the playing of music at a certain time in the experiment, and is joined by others who like the idea, it is understood that the vote must be unanimous; one person feeling uncomfortable about hearing music insures that it won't be played. This rule doesn't give rise to the problems one might expect, because in most houses which are large enough to acommodate a group of eleven people for such an experiment, there is usually an extra room in which music can be played without disturbing the quiet of other rooms.
"Here is 3.032 milligrams, exactly," he said, adding, "And it's slightly bitter."
"How do you know?" asked I.
"After I weighed out the psilocybin, there was a trace of dust on the spatula, so I licked it off. Slightly bitter."
I asked him, "Did you read the label carefully?"
"It's the vial of psilocybin you just received, isn't it?" he asked, looking at the funny-shaped tube still in his hand. He read the label. It said Lysergide. He said, "Oh."
We spent the next several minutes trying to reconstruct just how much LSD might have been on the end of the spatula, and decided that it was probably not more than a few score micrograms. But a few score micrograms can be pretty effective, especially in a curious but conservative analytical chemist who is totally drug naive.
"Well," I said to him, "This should damned well be a fascinating day."
And indeed it was. The first effects were clearly noted in about twenty minutes, and during the transition stage that took place over the following minutes, we wandered outside and walked around the pilot plant behind the main laboratory building. It was a completely joyful day for Burt. Every trivial thing had a magical quality. The stainless steel Pfaudler reactors were giant ripe melons about to be harvested; the brightly colored steam and chemical pipes were avant-garde spaghetti with appropriate smells, and the engineers wandering about were chefs preparing a royal banquet. No threats anywhere, simply hilarious entertainment. We wandered everywhere else on the grounds, but the theme of food and its sensory rewards continued to be the leitmotif of the day.
In the late afternoon, Burt said he was substantially back to the real world, but when I asked him if he thought he could drive, he admitted that it would probably be wise to wait a bit longer. By 5:00 PM, he seemed to be happily back together again, and after a trial run -- a sort of figure-eight in the almost empty parking lot -- he embarked on his short drive home.
Burt never again, to my knowledge, participated in any form of personal drug investigation, but he maintained a close and intimate interest in my research and was always appreciative of the slowly evolving picture of the delicate balance between chemical structure and pharmacological action, which I continued to share with him while I remained at Dole.
One periodically hears some lecturer holding forth on the subject of psychedelic drugs, and you may hear him give voice to that old rubric that LSD is an odorless, colorless and tasteless drug. Don't believe it. Odorless yes, and colorless when completely pure, yes, but tasteless, no. It is slightly bitter.
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.
"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.
Also at the meeting was the well-known and respected botanist, Richard E. Shultes of Harvard, and I had heard from him that he had never experienced these particular types of visual images with Ayahuasca.
I had the pleasure of introducing them, and mentioned their common interests. Claudio opened the conversation:
"What do you think of the jaguars?"
"What jaguars?"
A small silence.
"Are you personally familiar with authentic Banisteriopsis caapi?" asked Claudio, his voice slightly strained.
Richard looked at him closely. "I was the person who assigned it its name."
Claudio went on. "Have you ever taken the plant decoction itself?"
"Perhaps fifteen times."
"And never jaguars?"
"Sorry, only wiggly lines."
Claudio turned away. To my knowledge, they have not talked since.