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The Center of the Universe
William S. Moxley
1. Beginnings
MEXICO, EARLY IN 1968. With a few friends of
similar disposition, I have left the deteriorating summer-of-love
counter-culture scene of New York City on an adventure destined
to occupy the next quarter-century of my life. We follow in the
footsteps of many other seekers, both professional and amateur,
who have sought to know more about the astonishing collection of
psychoactive plants indigenous to the tropical and semi-tropical
regions of the New World. Native Americans had discovered these
plants many thousands of years before, and almost without
exception they came to be of major importance for the tribes and
civilizations which grew to prominence long before the arrival of
the white man.
Each of us has his own reasons for embarking on
such a voyage, the immediate and conscious reasons each would
have stated having perhaps little to do with underlying
motivations that would be seen as important only from the distant
future. One friend has come along, offering to assist me in my as
yet vague project of finding and experimenting with some of these
mysterious plants. Another is to meet a friend who has
established a modest trade with rural farmers who grow the famed
variety of cannabis known as Acapulco Gold. Another seems merely
to be along for the ride. And of course we are all in that stage
of youth where little risk is perceived in launching into the
most uncertain or unplanned projects with little more than a
total faith in one's ability to improvise. From the wisdom of
middle age, this could only be seen as a recipe for disaster;
from the perspective of youth, it is the essence of opportunity.
But, at least for myself, the hidden catalysts
which propel me in this uncertain direction are not altogether
undiscovered. There is a war going on, I'm supposed to be
fighting it. I'm supposed to be a member of a society which has
been shaped so skillfully with regard to democratic principles
and respect for freedom that it is not only unnecessary, but
indicative of some mental or spiritual pathology to question the
fundamentals of this system which now finds itself living up to
the worst travesties it had imagined of its arch-enemy just a few
years before. My fifth grade teacher had impressed me with the
fact that the reason I didn't know what propaganda was, was that
we simply didn't have that sort of thing here in America. But the
Russians...
And then there are these persistent ideas
surfacing in my mind about Native Americans, for I had been doing
my homework reading about the many ways in which it could clearly
be seen that, despite all current mythology, it had been the
Native Americans who had had the superior culture and wisdom at
the point of contact between themselves and the European
invaders. It was the white man who had played the role of
barbarian on that sad stage of conquest and slaughter, and it was
now the white man who continued in his supreme arrogance by just
recently outlawing not only the use, but even further research
with these so-called hallucinogenic drugs so important to the
indigenous peoples of the conquered land. According to the
official doctrine, the effect of these drugs is to mimic
psychosis or model something akin to schizophrenia, with the
ever-persistent risk of permanent psychological impairment and
even suicide. Each one of us has had several experiences with a
psychedelic drug and to us it is not the drug experience but the
official doctrine that is psychotic and symptomatic of a severe
collective psychological impairment in society itself. Never, we
feel, was there a successful society so easy to be alienated
from, so absurd in its pronouncements and ongoing policies of
unending conquest.
The enormity of the Great Sin of European
Civilization enters into our conversations only briefly,
obliquely, for these areearly days and we are more attuned to
"what if" than to what was. I have brought along some
rudimentary laboratory equipment and my assistant and I install
ourselves in a little rented bungalow on the outskirts of
Guadalajara. We plan expeditions into the countryside both near
and far to look for the psychedelic plants which beckon like some
species of holy grail oh so unholy to that society we so readily
left behind. At the public market buying oranges we discover we
have already succeeded in our first objective, for on the upper
level there is an entire wing of the market devoted to stalls
selling traditional medicines and shamanic items of the most
diverse character. Peyote cacti are suspended in rows along the
shop windows, and are hawked to gringos passing by. It is
difficult to judge whether the twinkle in the eye of the shamanic
apothecary at the prospect of daily increasing sales of such a
common item is even greater than that in the eye of the
prospective rebel from American Ignorance about to embark on the
most ancient voyage of mankind.
We negotiate for a fifty kilo sack of peyote
cactus to be delivered the next day and depart. To say that our
spirits and anticipation are high captures only the most
sublunary aspects of the moment. Over glasses of orange juice, my
assistant and I review our plans for isolation of a total
alkaloidal extract of the sacramental plant, a preparation that
should produce the exact effect of peyote taken the traditional
way, without the nausea and discomfort produced by the high
content of soap in the raw plant material. The active psychedelic
fraction of the plant we know contains several closely related
alkaloids, and we want to experiment with the hypothesis that
this blend of alkaloids produces a psychedelic experience
superior to that of synthesized mescaline, the principal alkaloid
of the mixture. We have both taken the synthesized alkaloid in
New York on one or more occasions, and although the resulting
experiences were complex, mysterious, highly instructive, and
certainly intense yet gentle, we feel that there was a certain
lack, difficult to put your finger on, of the sense of
spirituality described by those anthropologists and other
researchers who had undergone the experience with the natural
product during the Native American ceremonies. The ritual and
setting of such ceremonies play a major role we know, but our
intent is to test the effect of the psychedelic preparation
itself in determining outcome.
The next few days are occupied with slicing,
preparing, and drying the cactus tops, and we even replant the
conical tuber-like remains so that they have a chance to
regenerate the parts we have amputated. A two-liter Osterizer
blender facilitates a primary extraction with aqueous alcohol,
and a series of liquid-liquid extractions to separate the soaps,
chlorophyll and other miscellaneous impurities results in our
proud possession of a small flask containing an amber,
semi-crystalline syrup, practically odorless but having the
characteristic taste of synthesized mescaline sulfate. From here,
chromatographic or other simple processes would be capable of
separating the mixture into its component alkaloids, but we are
interested in this natural blend and load several double-zero
gelatine capsules with two hundred milligrams of the syrupy
elixir. From this vantage point, the prohibitionist fanaticism of
the land we left only a few weeks ago seems as remote as home
probably seemed to those first barbaric explorers who pillaged
this land and tried to eradicate forever the knowledge of the
mysterious substance we have just bottled. How different our
intentions from those of our ancestors! The sense of triumph over
the collective stupidity of centuries, even on such a small,
fragile, and local scale, perfuses the laboratory and even though
it is very late, we have trouble postponing what we know will be
a twelve hour visionary experience until the morrow.
Anyone who has tried to write an account of even
a mild psychedelic experience will know the minimal power of
words to describe that which is not only indescribable, but
beyond language itself. Language seems to me as merely a sort of
resonance to experience, coming somewhat after the fact, and
capable of dealing with only the established habits and routines
of thought and perception. The totally novel experience, if such
a concept be allowed, can have no ready-made language patterns to
activate. And perhaps the reverse is true as well: in meditation,
we are told by its adepts, the quieting of the inner dialogue
leads to a purified perception of reality, unsullied by the
categorizing imperatives of language. Freed from such
restrictions, every experience is potentially unique. Even
the most trivial of everyday situations has its originality, but
it is the learned, devastatingly efficient habits of the mind
which cause one to feel that it is necessary to cope with
reality rather than celebrate it. Hence boredom at the apparent
sameness of the events of daily routine displaces the inescapable
but elusive magic of even a moment of life lived with true
freedom.
Somehow the peyote extract we took the next day
produced such a freedom from the known; pure experience seemed to
flow from some mysterious source to which the resonance of
language was not only lacking, but completely superfluous. Those
of us who sat together during that voyage sensed this astonishing
reality not with fear, nor despair at the inability of normal
conscious processes to analyze or explain this strange way of
perceiving, but rather it seemed that this state of mind, this
method of perceiving reality, was aboriginal, the way things
happened long ago when humankind was only beginning his long
journey into civilization. And what was more, we clearly realized
that this aboriginal mode of perception was not at all primitive,
nor limited in its ability to deal with modern life; on the
contrary, it utilized and required the entire capacity of
one's being, it was in fact larger and more comprehensive than
normal everyday, routine consciousness. It seemed that this was
the way the mind would work all the time if it were not being impeded
by the narrow forms mankind had imposed upon himself through the
establishment and maintenance of certain styles of civilized
societies. From that point of view, it was obvious that Western
Man had, step by step, backed himself into a spiritual corner
from which, although he had achieved impressive control of the
mundane, physical aspects of reality, he had lost something not
primitive, but essential. Thus it seemed that the Native
Americans, who had used these miraculous plants as existential
medicines since the beginning, had kept possession of that
something which the white man had long ago lost, and the Native
American societies that resulted were by comparison ecological in
the true sense of the word, having a balance and corresponding
lack of destructive contradiction both within their societies and
also in relation to the environment.
During the next few days, I began to realize
that with the new restrictions on research with psychedelic
agents, and the continued marginalization of the remnants of
Native American societies, Western Civilization was attempting to
drive the final nail in the coffin of a vast body of psychedelic
knowledge, the culmination of a 500-year-old process designed to
eliminate an embarrassment to the conviction that wisdom and
progress were the rationale behind the spread and hegemony of
European Civilization to every corner of the earth. And not only
the rationale: Western Civilization now appeared to claim to be
the sole possessor of the very concepts of wisdom
and progress. Anything that could be done to dampen this
enthusiasm to ignore, vilify, and destroy everything that was not
Modern, not Capitalism, not Democracy, not Advanced, not
Scientific, not Civilized, not US, I saw as not only a worthwhile
project, but as an undertaking one would be required to do
on the basis of simple moral principles. I had no alternative but
to apply any modest talents or abilities that I might possess to
discovering the mechanisms by which these psychedelic chemicals
produce their effects not only on the brain, but on the mind and
spirit; to finding the link between the widespread use of such
substances among the most ancient tribes of men, and what that
might indicate about the evolution of the human species; to
understanding what the current fanatical attempts to prohibit the
use of these substances and even stifle further research by
qualified scientists indicated about the underlying psychology of
the Modern American Attitude; to discovering whether knowledge
about these and other aspects of psychedelic use might provide a
key so badly needed by the whole range of the sciences of man to
overcome widely recognized limitations of these sciences not only
to explain but above all to improve the deplorable condition of
human social interaction in this century of holocaust. Were these
the medicines of a long-lost age, of no further use to humankind
in his now modern world, or could we discover that they might
still be useful, perhaps essential for a future which did not
include the suicide of the species?
The moral imperative that I perceived then,
combined with the normal predilection by youth for daring deeds,
left me with little doubt as to my future course of action. The
probability that I would find it necessary to become an outlaw
was of no great consequence to me, it was an exciting concept
that it might be possible to be an outlaw from American
Civilization and be morally justified in doing so. In fact, I was
already an outlaw, a draft-evader, and I had just been dabbling
with forbidden fruits in a most serious way, as a
scientist practicing his art in defiance of the law of the land.
How rare the opportunity to be able to practice a forbidden
science in this day and age! The concept itself put paid to many
arrogant assumptions about the rationality of the American Way of
Life and its justification for eliminating any and all
competition to its oxymoronic Philosophy.
I cannot pretend that the work in which I
engaged over the next several years was serious research on a par
with what our modern academic institutions would accept. But in
light of the severe handicaps that have always been the limiting
factor for progress in the understanding of controversial or
forbidden subjects, I think I may have nevertheless achieved
something of value toward a broadly based theory of psychedelic
experience. Of course there were others, many others, in fact,
who were working on threads of the puzzle presented by modern
man's rediscovery of the ancient psychedelic medicines. Some
researchers who had, previous to the newly instituted
restrictions, been working on the most diverse and interesting
aspects of the effects and uses of psychedelics both therapeutic
and esthetic, continued their work in diminished, or at least
different ways. Although they were forbidden to give a
psychedelic drug to any patient or (more importantly) research
volunteer whatsoever, substitute methods for activating a
psychedelic state were used, sometimes with reasonable success.
Some other workers continued with theoretical work based on
previously accumulated data, and a very few obtained permission
to continue with biochemical experiments with psychedelic drugs
given to various laboratory animals. Sadly, permission for such
work seemed much easier to obtain when the proposed research
might show that the psychedelics were harmful, broke chromosomes,
or lived up in some way to the irrational fears of the
prohibitionist elements in American institutions. But even if
some of these experiments were little more than overdose parties
for rats, they produced, valuable data on, for example, the sites
of action of psychedelics in the brain.
Even more tragically, however, some very gifted
workers left psychedelic research entirely, unable to continue
meaningful work. Prohibition of the use of some substance, like
alcohol, tobacco, tea, cannabis, opium, or anything else you can
name, is historically so easily shown to be self-defeating, that
it bewilders the rational mind to attempt to understand the
philosophical outlook of those otherwise intelligent humans who
propose that man can be protected from folly by the simple
expedient of the passage of law. One would have to hypothesize
ulterior, perhaps unconscious motives on behalf of those who
propose and maintain prohibitions, or conclude that they are not
rational human beings at all. It is several orders of magnitude
more difficult to understand the philosophy of prohibition of an
avenue of scientific research. This is not to say that there
should be no control whatsoever of scientific research activities
by publicly-elected government. If over-enthusiastic pursuit of
profit by biotechnology companies seems to be leading to
dangerous situations such as widespread release of bio-engineered
organisms into the environment, safeguards must be installed: the
biotechnology enterprise is not simply eradicated by fiat.
Government authorities and legislative bodies have not seemed
unduly worried about proven deleterious world-wide effects of
research on nuclear energy or weapons. The prohibitions on
psychedelic research may well indicate ulterior motives and
hidden agendas by those at the center of power. More importantly,
if more difficult to analyze, the prohibition must indicate some
inherent collective psychological conflict at the very core of
the belief system of Modern Western Civilization. It is as if,
collectively, we have no greater fear than that engendered by the
rediscovery of a most ancient, important, and healing practice
and phenomenon, the psychedelic experience. This is most curious,
and I shall return to the topic in chapter 8.
In the wake of repression then, there arose
another group of psychedelic researchers, which like other groups
down through the history of acts of repression by the powerful,
was effectively driven underground to an at least temporary
obscurity. In the middle ages we had the alchemists, purportedly
looking for ways to make gold from something less valuable, a
project which certainly would meet the approval of the
acquisitive ecclesiastical authorities of the time. The true
alchemical quest, if we can believe some modern interpretations,
would not at all have met the approval of an authority
proclaiming its monopoly on spiritual matters. No one today would
deny the historical existence of the underground aspect of
alchemy in the middle ages, a science which of course bordered on
witchcraft, wizardry, and sometimes sheer lunacy caused perhaps
in some cases by exposure to toxic heavy metals such as lead and
mercury, favorite substances for the alchemists. Nor will the
modern historian of science deny the influence and importance of
much of the work of the alchemists for the succeeding generations
of researchers who made the beginnings of a modern science out of
a diverse collection of arcane experimental data. But the
existence of underground science today, practiced by a fraternity
of no less colorful and sometimes equally as crazed individuals
as the alchemists, must be dismissed as a fairy tale by those
authorities who have been instrumental in bringing about the very
situation from which underground science must necessarily grow.
Underground science has many limitations and
difficulties which the establishment scientist never need suffer.
There are no universities and publicly financed institutions
allowing research to flourish and researchers to enjoy a
reasonable standard of living including the respect of society
and sometimes even fame and fortune. Under severe repression,
underground scientists have little chance even for peer review of
their work, not to mention journals for publication of their
papers, or conferences, research grants, awards, and always the
threat of moderate to severe penalties meted out by the
Inquisitors, which today includes not burning at the stake, but
languishing incommunicado for periods of time that might make
some wish for a return to the fiery methods of medievalism. With
increasing calls for the application of the death penalty (in the
United States) in cases of "major trafficking", we may
yet achieve or surpass the medieval traditions.
To be fair, there do exist a few journals, and
some excellent books that have been published during the thirty
years of Inquisition, and even a few conferences have brought
together luminaries in the field of psychedelic research. Since
the late 1980's, a very few limited research projects with humans
have been approved using some types of psychedelic drugs in
treatment programs for addiction or other psychological problems,
or in metabolic studies. But the scope and extent of such
research has not even begun to approach that seen already in the
1950's, and certainly the continuation of important and
productive research of the 1960's, for example on creativity, or
philosophical and religious aspects of the psychedelic
experiencxe, has not even been suggested to government
authorities for approval. And so the fact remains that for the
most important and interesting uses of psychedelics, no one may
give a psychedelic drug to a volunteer human being and then
publish the results without drug police knocking on, and today
often smashing down, the door. Even the time honored tradition of
self-experimentation is cause for arrest, and if one is in the
wrong place at the wrong time with a few bucks not instantly
traceable to justifiable and tax-paid income, civil forfeiture of
all moneys and properties by the defendant (still under the
presumption of innocence) ensues.
If this seems an exaggerated or surrealistic
view of today's world, then the reader is certainly in the
establishment camp. For as an underground scientist who has had
the pleasure of knowing a few other individuals similarly
motivated, I can attest that the fears are real and certainly not
the result of paranoia. I have known several who have languished,
forfeited, or both. I myself am no stranger to enforced
languishing. And it is with a certain caution that I now attempt
to reveal my findings while hoping to retain an intact front
door.
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