A Really Good Day(41)

On December 11, 1965, the day I celebrated my first birthday, one of Kesey’s Acid Test parties took place in Muir Beach, the bucolic town in which I am writing these very words. I wonder if the elderly couple from whom Ian and his wife bought the little homemade cottage they have lent me attended that Acid Test so many decades ago. If so, did they drink the spiked punch? Did they dance all night on the sand? And how did they make it up the steep stairs from the beach to their little shack clinging to the side of the hillside? I can barely manage it sober.

I am so not “merry,” so opposed on principle to “pranksters.” Nothing in this world irritates me so much as a “free spirit.” I can’t abide when people shirk their responsibilities, when they act without contemplation of the consequences, when they prioritize fun and freedom above all else. Don’t even get me started on people who just won’t stay to their right while ascending and descending perilous public staircases. For a Jewish girl, I’m quite a puritan. Though I’m enough of a libertarian to believe people have the right to ingest whatever they want, in whatever asinine way they choose, I believe that it is best to experiment with psychedelics thoughtfully and carefully. I can’t think of anywhere I would have less liked to be than one of Kesey’s parties. And, yes, I know that, given the extent of my antipathy, it is more than a little ironic that I ended up doing my own private electric Kool-Aid acid test.

It is also ironic—given how disparaging I am of those who use drugs in a manner I consider careless, and how uncomfortable I am being associated with them—that the scientists currently doing FDA-and DEA-sanctioned research on the benefits of psychedelic drugs by and large feel the same way about me.*10 Though many psychedelic researchers agreed to be interviewed for this book, few would let me quote them, even anonymously. Most feared that any association with a “personal experiment” with illegally sourced drugs would tarnish their hard-won credibility.

Their concern, by the way, is not unfounded. Drug-policy reform organizations have, in my experience, also worked very hard to distance themselves from the specter of psychonauts like Leary and Kesey. When I was a consultant for the Drug Policy Alliance, my colleagues were rigorously analytical attorneys, many of whom had never even tried illegal drugs. They were activists on the issue of drug policy reform because American drug policy has been a catastrophe for poor people and people of color, because they were patriotic devotees of the United States Constitution, and because they believed that the power to dictate what a person does with her consciousness should never belong to the government, even if the only thing they themselves had ever done to alter their consciousnesses was to attempt to come to grips with the rule against perpetuities. The students in my seminar on drug policy were by and large similarly motivated, as was my co-instructor. Certainly, the various organizations and individuals on whose behalf I have written amicus briefs on a wide range of drug policy issues have been models of propriety. All these people are fighting for your right to party, not their own.

Many of the standard-bearers of the fight for the reform of the laws pertaining to psychedelics are similarly thoughtful, reasonable, and circumspect. Jim Fadiman is, in my experience, a lion of good sense and levelheadedness. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which is, like the Heffter Research Institute, a prominent and well-known funder of psychedelic research, has the most reasonable of mission statements. It reads: “We envision a world where psychedelics and marijuana are safely and legally available for beneficial uses, and where research is governed by rigorous scientific evaluation of their risks and benefits.” The founder of MAPS, Rick Doblin, has a Ph.D. from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government*11 and has done thorough and critical follow-up studies of early psychedelic research.

Though Fadiman, Doblin, and others are open about having used psychedelic drugs, this does not, to my mind, render them unreliable or discredit their work. True, their interest in the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs stems from their own transformative personal experiences,*12 but I imagine the same can be said of psychotherapists, most of whom have themselves gone through therapy as part of their training. All the practitioners by whom I’ve been treated have made personal use of the skills they taught me. My mindfulness-based therapist meditated, my cognitive behavioral therapist cultivated her own psychological flexibility, redirected her thoughts and behaviors, and used nonviolent communication. I have no idea if my psychopharmacologist took psychiatric medications, but with all those samples lying around, how likely is it that he never tried a little something?

Still, for every sober and sensible Jim Fadiman or Rick Doblin, there’s someone like Amanda Feilding, the countess of Wemyss and March, one of the most important funders of research into the therapeutic uses of psychedelics, who in 1970 cheerfully drilled a hole into her skull.

Amanda Feilding believed that trepanation, the opening of the skull to reveal the dura mater, the membrane surrounding the brain, could cure all manner of ills. Boring such a hole, she wrote, increases cranial blood volume, allowing access to a higher state of consciousness. Feilding was such a firm believer in the beneficial powers of trepanation that she made a movie of herself drilling a hole in her skull with a dentist’s drill. Her guru in this madness? One Bart Hughes, a librarian by trade.

And yet the countess, wearer of floppy hats, owner of fluffy dogs, and survivor of DIY brain surgery, created and funds the Beckley Foundation, named after her estate. This charitable trust devoted to drug policy reform has done tremendously important work, supporting scientific research and initiatives, including studies at University College London on the potential therapeutic effects of cannabis, and at Johns Hopkins University on the usefulness of psilocybin in treating nicotine and other drug addiction. At Imperial College London, the Beckley Foundation is currently funding a study using BOLD (blood-oxygen-level dependent) fMRI to measure the effects of psilocybin on brain activity. Though horrified by the holes in Feilding’s head, I’m impressed with her foundation’s endeavors, and with her persistence in pursuing the scientific study of psychedelics. I believe that, without her tenacity, we would not currently be experiencing the resurgence of interest in studying the benefits of these drugs. She has, in addition to perseverance, the gift of convincing others to join her efforts. An open letter from the Beckley Foundation calling for an end to the global war on drugs was signed by dozens of people, including, among others, Nobel Prize winners and presidents from around the world.