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The Center of the Universe
William S. Moxley
2. Models and Theories
LATER ON THAT YEAR. We have slowly been building
up a stock of seeds of the "Heavenly Blue" morning
glory, Ipomoea violacea, which grows widely in this area
of Mexico. A short drive out of the city in any direction leads
to the discovery of some extensive stand of the plant, and we
look for groups of boys playing and gather them 'round for a
short lesson on economic realities. It seems that we offer hard
pesos for anyone who will gather these funny little black seeds
for us, and be here on this spot in exactly one week. Returning
after a week we usually find only one or two of the boys has
taken us seriously and actually collected even a coffee-can full.
But when the scales come out of the back of the pickup, and hard
cash changes hands for what would seem to all excepting gringos a
worthless commodity, eyes widen with dreams of transistor radios.
Mexico is a tragically poor nation, and our harvest of seeds has,
upon last inventory, attained rather amazing levels with very
little expense.
Our peyote experiments have been a resounding
success. We have sent capsules of our extract to several
aficionados of psychedelic preparations, and received very
positive reports comparing the natural alkaloidal blend favorably
with both synthesized mescaline and other psychedelics.
Institutional researchers would of course immediately dismiss our
results as anecdotal and subjective, and we certainly have not
troubled ourselves to do "double-blind" experiments as
would be expected for "scientifically" legitimate
results. The legitimacy of our results is, for better or for
worse, not dependent on institutional acceptance, but upon the
opinions of those whose wisdom we have come to respect. A peyote
shaman, asked to perform a double-blind ceremony using our
preparation, would be as correct to ridicule our idea as the
institutional scientist for criticizing the lack of such
protocol. We quite enjoy the eclecticism of the middle ground we
have staked out for our research paradigm.
The modern institutional requirements for
acceptance of research have been sometimes accused by even
notable scientists as not only too strict and exclusive, but also
as being ignorant of the methods of a great deal of exceptional
and ground-breaking science before the present period. (See for
example the reference in footnote 5, below, for a criticism of
the requirement of "blind" and "double-blind"
techniques.) Single-case studies, subjective reports, experiments
which are not, in principle, repeatable, and other (according to
modern dogma) "non-scientific" methods we are free to
use and interpret with our own guidelines. When an unrepeatable,
subjective experiment leads us to an heuristic or empirical model
and thus provides a component for a theory which then accurately
predicts and points the way for further research, criticism based
upon the nature of the original experiment sends the distinct
message that the critic has "his eyes in his pocket and his
nose on the ground". And in the field of psychedelic
research, more than any other we know, trying to achieve the
"hardness" of results that academics insist is so
important is often like "trying to catch the wind". (I
will presently have more to say about our concepts of models and
theories and how they relate to both "hard" science and
to the "softer" disciplines such as our own. And in the
next chapter I will deal with the multitude of purported
"effects" of the psychedelic drugs and why
experimentation has so often led to confusion when the
presumption of classical cause and effect relationships is the
guiding paradigm of experiments.)
The one significant disappointment of the peyote
extract is that it is unstable. Within even one week, a 500
milligram dose is just perceptibly less potent, and within a
month the potency of the dose is significantly reduced. Since the
stability of the dried cactus tops or "buds" has been
reported to be exceptional, a noted authority on the subject
calling the buds "practically indestructible", it is
obvious that the "impurities" we have removed in our
process are essential to preserving psychedelic activity of the
raw alkaloidal mixture. This result, combined with the necessity
of processing large volumes of material to produce enough extract
for even twenty or thirty doses, make any practical use of the
product prohibitive. It is expensive to produce and ephemeral. In
addition, we feel that any attempts to produce a stable
preparation by further processing would probably nullify the
advantages of the broad-spectrum alkaloidal extract principle
that we have tested. We have therefore turned our attention to
preparing and experimenting with extracts of the morning glory.
At least two species of morning-glory seed have
been used since antiquity as divinatory agents by the Amerindian
shamans of Mexico. The Ipomoea violacea we have collected
seems to grow just about everywhere, and is, in fact, the exact
same plant that horticulturists have introduced in Europe and the
U.S., the ornamental "Heavenly Blue" morning-glory
vine. The second psychedelic species, Rivea corymbosa, we
have found only further south, but in the scientific literature
its reported habitat is the entire coastal area of the Gulf of
Mexico. We obtained about a kilo of seeds from a local source,
but did not seek out larger quantities since our supply of Ipomoea
violacea was quite sufficient, and of the two species, was
also the most potent. (1)
An interesting page in the history of the
biochemical study of alkaloids was recorded the day in 1960 when
Albert Hofmann presented his findings about the identity of the
alkaloids of the morning-glory to a symposium in Melbourne,
Australia. Until that day, it was believed that the only natural
source of the lysergic acid alkaloids was the parasitic fungus of
grasses, ergot. In the plant kingdom there are extremely diverse
plants, from primitive fungi to the highest species of flowering
plants, that produce the biochemical substances known to chemists
as alkaloids. These natural plant substances are widespread, and
so diverse in their nature that no simple or unique reason for
their evolution can be postulated. And their diversity and
complexity is such that it is rare to find the same alkaloid in
two different plants even if they are close evolutionary
neighbors. When Dr. Hofmann announced that the alkaloids of the
morning-glory vine (a plant far removed on the evolutionary tree
from the primitive ergot fungus) were also derivatives of
lysergic acid, many in the audience of scientists were plainly
incredulous. Despite the impeccable reputation of Dr. Hofmann and
the Sandoz Laboratories of which he was a director, more than one
group of scientists attempted to disprove the findings. One group
thought that the seeds used must have been contaminated with some
species of ergot-like fungus and published a paper to the effect.
Painstaking further work in which seeds were carefully dissected
and shown not to be infected with any type of fungal spore or
growth finally proved the location of the alkaloids to be
concentrated in the embryonic material of the seeds.
We had obtained reprints of all the relevant
scientific papers in New York and were now ready to prepare a
large sample of the morning-glory alkaloids for further
experimentation. As with our peyote extraction, we wished to
obtain a total alkaloidal extract of the seeds even though it had
been postulated by some that only one alkaloid of the group was
the active psychedelic component. Hofmann had shown that probably
four or five lysergic acid derivatives were active: lysergic acid
amide, isolysergic acid amide, lysergol, elymoclavine and perhaps
ergometrine. We thought it of great significance that the first
two of these compounds, and the last as well, have a structure
practically identical to LSD. The fact that the use of LSD-like
psychedelic agents had been as significant as of the peyote
cactus or the psilocybin mushrooms, at least in this area of the
world, made claims that LSD was a modern, synthesized, and
therefore "unnatural" psychedelic drug seem rather
ill-conceived. (2)
Hofmann and his co-workers had made several
tests of the psychedelic activity of their own extracts, both as
broad spectrum mixtures and also of the separated alkaloids, but
their self-administered dosages had not reliably produced much
more than minor effects. Our first goal would therefore be to
obtain an extract which, when taken in a dose roughly equivalent
to that used in native ceremonies, produced some effects of
significance. We based our extraction procedures both on
published analytical work, on generally accepted routines for
chemical extraction of alkaloids, and gave some consideration as
well to the methods used by the shamans in preparing seeds for
their ceremonies. In tribal use, the seeds are first ground to a
fine flour, then soaked in cold water. After a short time, the
liquid is filtered off and drunk. This would indicate firstly
that the active components were readily soluble in water, and
secondly that other components of the seed, not so readily
soluble, might possibly interfere with the psychedelic effects or
produce diverse effects of their own. Such a hypothesis might
explain the inconsistent results of some workers who had
experimented with Ipomoea or Rivea seeds and found
them lacking in activity.
A second goal for our work would be to try to
obtain pure lysergic acid from the seed extracts by chemical
hydrolysis. A rather large industry had evolved since the turn of
the century which produced the alkaloid ergotamine from a
laborious process of growing the ergot fungus on rye grass.
Ergotamine had been a widely used lysergic acid alkaloid for
decades, but recently other derivatives of lysergic acid had been
found to be more useful, and to produce them, the ergotamine
yield from ergot was first hydrolyzed to lysergic acid, then
appropriately reacted with various amines or other compounds. It
was work of this type that had led Hofmann to synthesize LSD by
reacting pure lysergic acid, via an intermediate, with
diethylamine. We intended to evaluate the possibility that
morning glory seeds might someday provide an alternate, or even
better source for lysergic acid than the ergot/rye process. (3) We would at the
same time be determining if it were possible for an underground
chemist, using morning glory seeds instead of ergotamine (which
was tightly controlled and difficult to obtain), might produce
small amounts of LSD with very little risk. I say small amounts,
because the alkaloid content of morning glory seeds had been
assessed at barely 0.06%, and assuming normal losses and other
factors it would therefore be necessary to process perhaps a
hundred kilos of seeds or more to produce even a gram of LSD.
Still, due to the vanishingly small effective dose of LSD, such a
process was far more a practical possibility than that
necessitated by the required minimum dose of peyote extract, more
than two thousand fold that of LSD.
With a view to obviating any objections that
publishers, general readers, or various drug control authorities
might have concerning the description of processes used to
produce forbidden substances, I will not further discuss here our
experiments along these lines. Any competent underground chemist
will certainly, in any case, already know quite enough to
formulate his plans for the future. And it should already be
evident to the reader what my evaluation of the prohibition of
psychedelics signaled about my own intentions. To me, it was one
of the greatest absurdities ever perpetrated that persons of
reasonable attitude and situation, and with proper guidance,
might not have access to substances which had proved not only
valuable, but essential to so many societies of man down through
the ages. If societies that we ignorantly called primitive could
use these medicines to advantage, where was the logic in the
belief that suddenly these same substances presented some kind of
grave threat to man in the Twentieth Century? One of the top
prohibitionist agitators of the time had made the preposterous
statement that LSD was "the greatest threat facing the
country today...more dangerous than the Vietnam War."(4) If certain excesses
and unwise use of the psychedelics were appearing in American
society it was not very difficult to see that if one single thing
could be designated a cause of the problem, it was the
prohibition itself. And how could a society purportedly so
grounded in the logic, rationality, and intellectuality
illustrated by its great scientific achievements come to be so
hoodwinked, so deprived of its rationality, so easily led
into absurdity, when it came to the subject of "drugs"?
One clue came from the observation that it
seemed necessary to have had some personal experience with the
substances. This very same problem had been observed in the early
days of psychedelic research, before Prohibition. Almost without
exception, the researchers who had themselves taken psychedelic
drugs produced much more intelligible and significant work than
those who had abstained, for one reason or another. But soon the
abstainers were publishing accusations that personal exposure to
the substances had caused researchers to be biased, even that
they had suffered permanent deformations of personality, were
delusional and no longer competent to judge the results of their
own experiments. Two researchers, Cole and Katz, went so far as
to flatly state in a paper that "only claims made by
therapists who have not themselves taken LSD are valid"(5). As Osmond wryly
observed, the same critics who were accusing enthusiastic
researchers of having suffered permanent personality changes due
to their use of psychedelics, were at the same time denying
that such personality changes could be brought about in
experimental subjects or patients!
It seemed to us that if such irrational battles
were raging in the halls of academia, the only hope for the
common man to see behind the curtain obscuring the wisdom of the
ages was to be persuaded by a friend to find out for himself. The
knowledge of psychedelics was then something that would have to
pass from hand to hand among friends of mutual trust and respect;
that same knowledge would be met publicly only with outright
rejection, or worse: a situation of superb medievalism right here
in modern America. Despite the apparent confidence of Modern
Civilization that it was the very epitome of rationality, the
issue of the prohibition of psychedelics had to be diagnosed as
indicative of grave underlying contradictions in the paradigms
and beliefs of that civilization. And the nature of these
contradictions could only be understood by viewing them as a
collective psychological phenomenon, a view which took on a
certain forcefulness and poignancy from within the psychedelic
experience itself. What a privilege to be party to such
knowledge! And it was more than mere knowledge, it was Wisdom for
it made you weep to see it thus, and to realize the odds against
counteracting or curing the situation, even on the simplest of
levels. To correct one's own metaphysical outlook in the
midst of such confuision was already an unlikely achievement for
most, even with psychedelic assistance.
I should now briefly discuss the meanings of
certain terms I have been using. Models, theories, paradigms,
hypotheses, even data, knowledge and wisdom can be thrown about
rather loosely in today's writing, their meaning more dependent
on the intended audience of a book than on precise definitions.
If the definitions I will now give are not acceptable to all,
then at least I will be saying what I, personally, take these
terms to mean, and what they should be considered to mean when I
use them here.
At the beginning, in those early days in Mexico,
I certainly had no idea of searching for a theory of
psychedelic experience. In retrospect, after the passage of many
years, I see that the work that I did and the experiences I
gained, combined with further study that has occupied a large
part of my time ever since, fit into a pattern the structure of
which now seems to constitute a rather interesting and
multi-faceted theory about the psychedelic experience, its
place in anthropology and evolution, the mechanisms of its
functioning, etc. Thus a theory is a broad and explanatory view
of a panorama of topics united by a central fact or aspect of
reality. A theory is a theory of something, although it
may deal with the most diverse subjects in the explaining of that
central something. But it falls short of being a paradigm in the
Kuhnian sense, (6)
because it is an expressed, conscious and explicit structure,
continually in the state of further refinement and development.
The paradigm is rather a theory or set of theories that has
become transparent to the community or society that employs it in
their world view. It is a set of implicit principles and views
that are so taken for granted that individual components of the
paradigm are often quite difficult to discover, so enmeshed are
they in the view they represent. A paradigm is also static, or
nearly so, it is not normally developing with the addition of new
experimental evidence. This is why it is found that a paradigm
becomes obsolete, and is replaced by a new paradigm. A
theory in development, on the other hand, may evolve in such
complex ways that it arrives at a point which may be radically
changed from its original form. Thus I do not claim that my
theory is in any way a paradigm, or a revolution in the
underlying assumptions and world-view now reigning in Western
Civilization. But the theory may, in combination with other
theories, eventually contribute to such a revolution, as I hope
it will.
The elements which make up a theory are models,
and may take many forms. A model may be logical, deductive,
mathematical, and completely abstract as in the description of a
certain process or phenomenon by an equation or set of equations.
Einstein's mathematical description of curved space is a good
example: no exercise of the imagination can produce a concrete
vision of how empty space might be curved, curvature is
always in our experience a curvature of something, and if
empty space is anything, it is nothing, not something, according
to the common sense way our minds work. The mathematical model of
curvature of space makes up a part of the general relativistic theory
of the structure of the universe.
Other models may be practically photographic in
their imaginability. The planetary model of the atom with its
discrete orbiting electrons around a hard little nucleus of
another flavor of "stuff" is still a quite useful way
of picturing matter at this level. Notice in this example, that
the model may be useful, at the very minimum as a teaching aid,
even when the "reality" the model describes has been
shown to be something quite more complex and nebulous. In
"reality", the quantum-mechanical model of atomic
structure indicates that electrons are far more like probability
clouds or waves than little hard individual particles. Thus a
model such as the planetary one may be strictly analogical,
metaphorical, perhaps even an outright "lie", and still
retain some usefulness in representing aspects of a theory. The
theory of chemical combination of atoms into compounds, as in the
reaction of sodium and chlorine to form common salt, for
instance, can still profit from the planetary model of the atom.
And when we get to the study of life sciences,
where "hard" data is often difficult to come by, a
model may even fall short of the imaginable metaphor; it may
simply be the result of a process of curve-fitting and
extrapolation of seemingly random points on a graph, the
extrapolation and predictions of the model executed with little
more than sheer intuition. Thus a model may range from the
logical and deductive hardness of a precise mathematical
equation, to something as fleeting and a-logical as a sudden
inspiration or intuition about the object of study and how it
might behave under various conditions.
Here we might note that a model, no matter how
precise it may appear, is never a complete or "true"
picture of reality, it is merely a temporary device used
to form hypotheses about what kind of experiments to perform.
Thus a model can be something as simple as an assumed viewpoint
taken just to see what that viewpoint might lead to; it functions
as an heuristic aid toward the formation of testable ideas, ideas
which have a high probability of being relevant, either
positively or negatively, for the formation of a theory.
A model is thus a device helping to form
hypotheses which are then tested experimentally. The results of
experiments then can be used to form an improved model, or an
alternative model, and this circular process may proceed at great
length until a summation process has suggested the outline of a
full-fledged theory. But the theory that results is more
than just another model, or collection of models, for it is more
than just a device: it is something complex, an intricate pattern
of relations which in a very significant way is more than just
the sum of its parts, because a good theory will have many
implications and ramifications beyond those which are immediately
evident, or those which took part in its formation. A good theory
provides a framework around which further modeling and
experimentation falls into place almost spontaneously, rather
like the growth of a crystal around a small seed particle
immersed in a supersaturated solution. It is perhaps like a
nearly-completed jigsaw puzzle, which although was fitted
together from pieces which at times only seemed to fit
approximately, the overall intelligibility of the emerging scene
lends great weight to its probable accuracy and applicability,
and further pieces of the puzzle seem to fall into place almost
effortlessly. A bad theory, by contrast, tends to accumulate
ever-increasing anomaly and counter-argument against it, and it
winds up being defended by its last remaining protagonists using
the most spectacular of intellectual gymnastics, to no avail.
Thus a good theory may contain among the many
models used to construct and support it models which, considered
alone, are difficult to accept, or even completely unbelievable
in light of previously accepted theory and paradigms. Many of the
models or pieces of the theory I will now describe will certainly
fall into this category for some readers, particularly those with
established professional viewpoints to defend. In the next
chapter, for example, I am going to attack the currently accepted
model that psychedelic drugs cause a wide range of unpredictable
and multi-faceted effects. Most people would not even call this a
model, they would call it simple observation! The alternative
model I will propose is deceptively simple, if somewhat tricky to
explain, and to support it I have had to create new models of
psychological functioning replacing some current models which
themselves are so generally transparent and accepted that their
status as models would be questioned. Here is the process
described above where anomaly leads to an alternate model of some
phenomenon, which leads to experiments, further models, further
experiments, and so on until an entire theory begins to take
shape. If in those early days in Mexico I hadn't the least
inkling that I was working on a theory, I was
consciously searching for models which made my experiences and
experiments begin to conform to a tentative pattern. And at that
stage of creative work, it is of advantage to dream up even the
wildest and most unlikely models along with the more obvious
ones; only once a theory is consciously in the making is more
rigorous selection warranted. (This process of the evolution of a
theory parallels what we see in biological evolution: in the
early stages, the wildest and most bizarre life forms are tried.
Later on, after disastrous extinctions have wiped out entire
phyla, the course of evolution is found to be much more
conservative).
Once the outline of an emerging theory is in
place, research may begin to scan widely in many areas. Research
may at times consist largely of reading about and re-interpreting
results of experiments performed by others, from the new
viewpoint represented by the maturing theory. New ways of
organizing and explaining data in areas as yet unexamined by the
theory begin to show that the theory either has wide
implications, or is not as comprehensive as previously thought.
This process of testing the theory against many new areas of
understanding is what finally yields the most interesting
results. For example, just recently I began reading about the new
research on brain function now made possible by the latest
methods of brain-scanning techniques such as PET and MRI.
Interpreting much of the data collected in terms of the
psychological and cognitive models I had invented for the
psychedelic theory was not only possible, but led to a further
refinement of those models and a strengthening of the theory as
well. It was especially interesting to note that some of the
brain-scan results which had so far only been interpreted in very
tentative ways, could be explained rather well using the
psychedelic models of brain function versus cognitive process
proposed by my theory.
Now that the background has been constructed, it is with
pleasure and relief that I launch my theory of psychedelic
experience into certainly turbulent waters. If it be based on
delusion and self-deception the sinking will be so rapid as
to be unnoticed, saving me intense embarrassment; if there is
a glimmer of truth therein, the violence of the storm in
which it must survive might sink it as quickly. I can only
grease the ways well and hope I have not left any gaping
holes in its structure!
References
(1). For further information on the
two species of morning-glory and their use by Mexican Amerindian
tribes including a few isolated groups still today, the reader is
referred to the Botanical Museum Leaflets of Harvard
University, November 22, 1963, Volume 20, No. 6. This issue
contains an important article by R. Gordon Wasson, a luminary and
one of the originators of the science of ethnobotany, and another
article by Albert Hofmann, inventor of LSD, and discoverer of the
active principles both of the morning-glory and the Psilocybe
mushrooms of Mexico. (back)
(2). As further work by Wasson and
Hofmann was later to show, there is a strong probability that an
LSD-type psychedelic preparation was also, over a period of two
millennia, an important and integral part of religious and
intellectual life in an area of the world much closer to our
Western Civilization, ancient Greece. See The Road to Eleusis,
Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries, by Wasson, Ruck, and
Hofmann, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. (back)
(3). We were unaware at that time
that two pharmaceutical companies, Sandoz and Farmitalia, were
perfecting a method to grow the mycelium of ergot fungus in
stirred vats filled with nutrients. This process was able to
produce high yields of an alkaloid much easier to use for further
synthesis than ergotamine, paspalic acid. With the introduction
of this method, other processes depending on production and
harvest of either ergot or morning glories would be of little
comparative utility. (back)
(4). A statement by C.W. Sandman,
Jr., chairman of the New Jersey Narcotic Drug Study Commission. (back)
(5). see "Criticisms of LSD
Therapy and Rebuttal" in The Hallucinogens, Hoffer
and Osmond, Academic Press, 1967, pp197-205. Humphrey Osmond is
one of those rare scientists who is equally at home in the
research institute as in an Amerindian peyote ceremony, and his
research is illustrative of the open-mindedness yet scientific
rigor which go hand in hand to produce great scientific advance.
Dr. Osmond was the one to introduce Aldous Huxley to
psychedelics. (back)
(6). See Thomas S. Kuhn, The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Second Edition, 1970,
The University of Chicago Press, for the introduction of this
term into the modern vocabulary concerned with the history and
philosophy of science. (back)
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