Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

by Timothy Leary

  Confident Youth and Fearful Age

  Bernie Ganser, a reporter for Associated Press, told me a story today which depressed me. He said that on the plane coming out here, he decided to do a little consumer research survey. He asked the stewardess to ask the pilots and the other stewardesses and some of the passengers on the airplane what they thought of LSD and what questions they would like to be raised at a LSD conference of this sort. The pilot sent back the message, “How do you kick it?” The main concern of these middle-aged persons was how punitive should the laws be to control it. But to young people the word “drug” means something quite different. If you say “drug” to a young person, he says, “What kind? You mean alcohol that my parents lush up on every weekend? Do you mean heroin, that hang-up? Do you mean pep pills that I use before exams? Do you mean pot to make love?” The word “drug,” of course, refers to an enormous range of human experience, from the Buddhist despair of the drug addict, from the hopelessness of the alcoholic, through a wide variety of positive terms—energy, fun, religious revelation, sexual enhancement, aesthetic kick, ecstasy, accelerated learning, and so forth. There is one factor in the formula to predict a person’s reaction to LSD and marijuana. There is one variable which, if known, will predict better than anything else a person’s reaction. It is age.

  About 6 weeks ago I was on a Boston radio program. I talked for a while, and then people phoned in questions. The station censored the calls to a certain extent. They wanted to keep a balance of positive and negative questions. The first 10 callers were all positive. They were all young people, and they were asking serious, jolly questions about dosage, about oriental philosophy and psychology, about pharmacology, about scientific aspects of treatment and so on, except for one of these 10, who was an Indian philosopher from Boston University who said, “What the hell is going on in this country?” I couldn’t answer that question.

  But then, after a short break, the unfriendly and critical calls came. It was very obvious, the difference in ages. Tremendously concerned and deeply sincere quavering voices of the middle-aged and the elderly accused me of being a devil. A father of teen-age children said (in a heavy whiskey voice) that the station’s license should be taken away. It was a rather eerie moment, and for the first time in the 6 years that I had been working with psychedelic drugs, I felt an animal sensation of fear running along my back at the anguish and the panic and the anger that was aroused in these aging minds.

  The Eerie Power of Drugs

  Now, why is there this fear, concern and hope centered on the word “drug”? I want to suggest some answers.

  Consciousness is a biochemical process. The language of our nervous systems, the language of our sense organs, the language of our cells, the language of the genetic code, the language of memory, is chemical. We all instinctively know this. Somewhere deep in our DNA memory banks there is this intuitive knowledge that chemicals are powerful, that chemicals can change, that chemicals are the key. I think it’s no accident that in so many myths passed down from generation to generation there is this theme of the magic potion. The myth is, of course, cellular wisdom. Symbols change, cultures rise and fall, but as long as human beings have had these kinds of bodies, living on a planet of this sort, certain myths keep appearing and reappearing. And many of them refer to the magic and wonder of the sacred drug. At some point in the historic quest there comes the old crone with the potion. The old wizard with the elixir of life. Or it may be a frog or an animal or a witch with a cauldron or maybe a fruit or vegetable or a root or vine.

  Corollary to this is the fact that control of chemicals which change the mind has always been a source of social tension. He who controls the mind-changing chemicals controls consciousness. He who controls the chemical can twist your mind, can alter your personality, can change you and your concept of the world. That’s why there has always been this tension throughout history. The alchemist in his laboratory was a source of both wonder and fear. The man who can turn you on always stands there in the background of history. The aged kings of Europe sent their vessels out looking for that chemical. Ponce de León in Florida, seeking the elixir of life.

  Everyone Wants to Control LSD

  In our time the straight fact of the matter is that everyone wants to control LSD for his own purpose. The researchers will tell you, “Yes, LSD is a promising drug but clearly should be the property of investigators only.” The physician will say, “Well, as a physician I will say that only the medical profession has the experience and responsibility to prescribe these chemicals for other people.”

  Then the religious people (and there are thousands of them who are involved in psychedelic drug research) tell you, “Well, there’s no question that the psychedelic experience is basically a religious experience, but I’m concerned about all these youngsters taking it, because it’s got to be given only by people with the most serious and religious motives in a place which is designed for the sacred experience.”

  Or the hippy looks at the scientists with amazement and says, “What are you trying to map and study and predict all this stuff for? Just turn on, man! Enjoy it!”

  Of course, even the people who do not want to use LSD want to control it and want no one else to use it.

  About two months ago I was in Washington testifying before a Senate committee. I was preceded on the stand by one Captain Trembly, who is head of the narcotics bureau of the Los Angeles Police Force. Captain Trembly is a good man and a sincere man, but he doesn’t know what he is talking about. He is a classic example of the communication barrier between the generations. Let me give you three examples of the breakdown in communication.

  Did You Say, Give LSD to Her Mother?

  I came to Washington on this occasion with my two teen-age children. Captain Trembly told a story of a bizarre and dangerous LSD experience that went something like this. “On February 18, our agents arrested seven teen-agers taking LSD. We took them to the station. One fifteen-year-old girl wished to go home in order to give LSD to her mother in her coffee cup so that they could reach a higher level of communication.” MOTHER! DRUG! Senator Dodd looked agape at Senator Kennedy. “Did you say, ‘Give a drug to her mother?’ ” Drug. Dope. Drug. Doctor. Disease. Drug. I looked over at my son and daughter, and we nodded. The person who has had a positive LSD experience naturally wants to share it with his loved ones. Of course this daughter wants to turn on her mother.

  In Defense of Eating Bark off a Tree

  Captain Trembly told a second story. He said his agents arrested two men on a lawn in Hollywood. They were eating grass and bark off a tree. Senator Dodd said, “Eating grass! Bark off a tree!” Captain Trembly said, “Yes, and one of them was a Princeton man.” Well, I know that to any of you who have not taken LSD this sounds pretty bizarre. You think of these two men with a knife and fork and a plate dining on grass and bark. Actually, anyone who has been in communication with his cells realizes that from the standpoint of your DNA code this business of eating meat is really a fad that has just developed in the last few hundred generations, and that actually the DNA code in every cell in your body has been designing grass and bark eaters for about a million generations, that plastic steaks from Safeway still don’t make sense to my cells. Very often during an LSD session a person does take a flower, take grass, take bark and reflectively chew it and relive the past. It looks bizarre, but it makes a lot of sense to your cells.

  The Fuzz Holds the Drug

  Captain Trembly then did a third thing which was extremely interesting. At one point he reached in his bag and he held out a bottle and he said, “This is LSD.” Perhaps some of you saw the UPI wirephoto picture. As he did that, I was led to speculate. The facts of the matter are that Captain Trembly was the only man in the room who was legally allowed to do that. There were no doctors in the room with that special public health permit to give LSD in a mental hospital with a government grant. There was no one in the room with a legal right to stand there and hold that bottle. Senator Do
dd could not do it. Even Senator Kennedy! Police power!

  Anything which changes consciousness is a threat to the established order. This is one issue on which the entire spectrum of political opinions agrees. There’s one place where you can get a John Bircher to vote side by side with a Communist. There’s one place where right and left agree. Anything which expands consciousness is out! You have the strange phenomenon in California of both Governor Brown and Ronald Reagan rushing over each other to be the first to denounce our current key to the spiritual experience.

  Chemicals Are the Keys to Changing Consciousness

  Before you can understand or discuss the politics of ecstasy, you have to understand the anatomy and pharmacology of the different levels of consciousness. Consciousness is energy received and decoded by a structure. There are as many levels of consciousness in the human body as there are anatomical structures to receive and decode energy. Since consciousness is a biochemical process, chemicals are the keys to the different levels of consciousness.

  This is the dizzying discovery of the psychedelic age. There are as many distinct levels of consciousness as there are neural, anatomical, cellular, subcellular structures within the human body. And chemicals to turn them on.

  The mystical visionary experience no longer need be ineffable, undescribable. Consciousness (energy) is based on physical and physiological structure.*

  My equating consciousness with energy is based on my own psychedelic laboratory observations. I have been interested to note that in Tantric Buddhism and Tantric Hinduism the key term unam par ses pa (or vijnana) can be translated “consciousness,” “energy,” “discrimination.” Cf. Agehananda Bharati’s profound text, The Tantric Tradition, pp. 84–85.

  The explosion of the psychedelic age is directly symmetrical with the multidimensional expansion of external science. Five hundred years ago man’s perspective of the outside world was unidimensional—the macroscopic world of the naked eye, clearly visible or dimmed by fog or smoke. Then the invention of magnifying lenses brought into focus new levels of reality. Each new magnification structure required a new science, a new language to deal with the new level of reality (formerly invisible to the naked eye). Microscope, telescope, electron microscope, radio telescope.

  Psychedelic chemicals perform exactly the same function for inner vision. Each class of drug focuses consciousness on a new level of energy. Each level of drug defines a new science and requires a new language.**

  It will be obvious to the alert reader that this is a restatement of the ancient Hermetic-alchemical formula–“What is without is within.” Each level of energy which man has discovered outside exists within his body and is available to conscious discrimination.

  I have suggested in an earlier chapter that there are 7 broad levels of consciousness, each brought into focus by specific chemicals and each centered on structures within the body.

  1. Solar (soul): Awareness of energy transactions among molecular structures inside the cell—triggered off by large doses (300 gammas) of LSD.

  2. Cellular: Awareness of energy transactions within the cell—triggered off by moderate doses of LSD, large doses of mescaline, peyote, psilocybin.

  3. Somatic: Awareness of energy transactions within the neural plexes mediating organ systems—triggered off by moderate doses of mescaline, psilocybin, MOA, small doses of LSD, large doses of hashish.

  4. Sensory: Awareness of energy transactions within endocrine systems and neural networks concerned with sense organs—triggered off by marijuana.

  5. Symbolic: Awareness of energy transactions within the endocrine systems and cortical areas mediating conditioned learning—triggered off by seratonin, coffee, tea, nicotine, meth-amphetamines.

  6. Stupor: Awareness of energy transactions within the endocrine systems and precortical CNS areas mediating affect and emotion—triggered off by alcohol.

  7. Silence-sleep: Unconsciousness triggered off by chemicals (narcotics) which affect endocrine systems and precortical CNS areas mediating sleep and coma.

  Seven new sciences of psychedelic psychology are thus defined:

  1. Molecular psychology (psychophysics)

  2. Cellular psychology (psychobiology)

  3. Somatic psychology (psychophysiology)

  4. Sensory psychology (sensory physiology)

  5. Learning psychology (psychoengineering)

  6. Emotional psychology (psychopolitics)

  7. Psychology of the unconsciousness (psychoanesthesiology, psychoeschatology)

  These levels of consciousness and the relationships between certain drugs and each level of consciousness are, of course, hypothetical. Psychedelic pharmacology and psychedelic neurology will refine and revise these speculations. The value of these hypotheses is that they are cast in operational, concrete, objective language. Take, for example, the statement: “Marijuana alters the biochemistry of the neural plexes mediating sense organs.” This is a heuristic statement, i.e., it suggests a specific set of experiments. My language and my hypotheses are superior to the current language of psychopharmacology, which is bogged down in vague prescientific abstractions such as “Marijuana is an intoxicant” or “Cannabis is a euphoriant.”

  I don’t care if my hypotheses are confirmed. I do care that pharmacologists and neurologists abandon their superstitions, moralistic language, and start studying the specific relationships between neural centers and different psychedelic drugs.

  My task is not to be found “right” but to found the right sciences with appropriate linguistic sophistication to relate external events to systematically defined inner observations.

  In the near future, each of these psychedelic sciences will be as complex and will involve as many scholars, technicians, educators as biology, physics, engineering.

  Molecular psychology, studying the interactions between the nervous system and molecular events inside the body, will be as important as physics.

  Each of these seven broad classes of inquiry will be divided into the obvious subclasses. Sensory psychology, for example, will include the following divisions:

  psychedelic—optics

  psychedelic—acoustics

  psychedelic—tactics

  psychedelic—olfaction

  psychedelic—gustation

  psychedelic—kinesthetics

  Students will specialize in these fields. Enormous industries will be devoted to the production of the precisely formulated external energies which are required by the tutored sense organs of a turned-on populace.

  In our present primitive state we have industries devoted to the production of the state of consciousness which I call level 6: emotional stupor. The liquor industry manufactures the chemicals and then sponsors the appropriate art form—TV shows which are perfectly tuned to emotional stupor. Aggressive, competitive athletic and political spectacles comprise the art form for the stuporous level of consciousness. The consumer is guaranteed a show of violence—heady sadistic victory for the winners, masochism for the losers, and another beer all around.

  Is it, therefore, so far out to predict that in the near future a billion-dollar marijuana industry will sponsor art spectacles which will stimulate and coordinate with level 4—sensory awareness? The sensor-consumer will light up and then be entranced by mixed-media television art shows with erotic-meditative-Zen patterning designed for level 4 reception.

  The cellular level of consciousness tapping the 2-billion-year-old pool of DNA memories will involve the most complex form of intellectual challenge and artistic involvement. You pop your level 2 pill, turn on your genetic memories, and take a specified reincarnation trip guided by a carefully worked out, multichannel, multisensory, MV (multivision) show, sponsored, of course, by the Minnesota Mescaline Company.

  Each level of consciousness will require its own art form. The 7 fine arts of the future will be:

  1. Soletics—atomic-nuclear dramas

  2. Genetics—evolutionary dramas

  3. Som-aesthetics—bod
ily dramas

  4. Aesthetics (erotics) —sensory dramas

  5. Ascetics—intellectual dramas

  6. Athletics (politics) —emotional dramas

  7. Anesthetics—escape dramas

  Psychedelic Science

  During the next few hundred years the major activity of man will be scientific exploration of and education in the many new universes of awareness which have been opened up by psychedelic drugs. Man’s inner fabric, his moist cellular terrain, his 2-billion-year-old unfolding pattern, is exactly as complex as the outer world.

  Just as the instruments of external discovery have revolutionized society, so will the instruments of inner discovery.

  Psychedelic Work

  The key concept of the psychedelic revolution is work—ecstatic work. This central point is missed by enthusiastic acidheads as well as horrified burghers, each deluding the other with the notion of escape and naughty pleasure.

  The ancient paradox remains. The more freedom, the more responsibility. The more energy released, the more structure is required.

  Psychedelic drugs require much more discipline and know-how than turn-off drugs.

  Narcotics are escape drugs. They require no disciplined training. Anyone can shoot up and nod out. Narcotics are blindfolds.

  Alcohol requires little training. Very quickly each person learns what booze can do, where it can take him. Each person develops a crude emotional repertoire tied to his drinking. In any case, drink a quart of whiskey and you’ll be flat on your back. There are 7 million alcoholics in the United States and 14 million more Americans who lurch through each evening in a heavy emotional stupor. Alcohol is like dark glasses.

  Coffee, tea, nicotine, methamphetamine require no training for use. These drugs do provide more physical energy to play the conditioned chess game of reward and punishment. Heavy use of stimulants produces a jagged, irritable state of mild paranoia. The coffee-drinking, chain-smoking housewife paces the floor, twisting, twisting the black threads of her mental marionettes. “Speed” guns the heavy mental truck faster, faster down crowded highways to the next empty city.