Inventors, entrepreneurs and CEOs alike are recognizing the benefits as well. Several well-known brands, businesses and discoveries can be attributed to one great trip.
LSD: One of the Best Things Steve Jobs has Ever Done
Steve Jobs has never been shy to talk about his LSD habits. "One of the two or three most important things I have done in my life," Jobs is quoted in the book What the Dormouse Said, Written by New York Times reporter John Markoff.
And just before he died, LSD creator Albert Hoffman reached out to the Apple genius to help turn his "problem child" into a "wonderful child" (Hoffman often referred to LSD as his problem child).
According to the letter, Hoffman specifically asks Jobs to fund research being proposed by Peter Gasser, a Swiss psychiatrist, and he directs Jobs to Doblin's Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
Hoffman, at 102, has since passed after writing to Jobs in 2007.
The Huffington Post reports that the letter led to roughly 30-minute conversation between Doblin and Jobs, says Doblin, but no contribution to the cause. "He was still thinking, 'Let's put it in the water supply and turn everybody on,'" recalls Doblin, who says he still hasn't given up hope that Jobs will come around.
DearSteve -
America's First President: Suspected Pothead
I know some of you new-age junkies are thinking: "Not as cool as Jobs." But to think that the man who ran our country first is a suspected pothead is pretty cool. In a letter to Dr. James Addison in 1794, Washington writes "The artificial preparation of hemp, from Silesia, is really a curiosity." In the same letter, he went on into more detail about Indian hemp, saying he hoped to "have disseminated the seed to others."
August 7, 1765 diary entry, Washington "began to separate the male from the female (hemp) plants," describes a harvesting technique favored to enhance the potency of smoking cannabis, among other reasons.
Thomas Jefferson was a hemp farmer, Benjamin Franklin was a paper maker, Washington was clearly the chemist. It's no wonder they were able to construct the Declaration of Independence - they where high. All of these men had celebrity status and worldly travels. Some argue that their progressive attitudes and experiences afforded them ample opportunities to "try new things."
Drop Acid, Discover Life
Francis Crick dropped acid, discovered the meaning of life, and won a Nobel-Pice Prize for doing so. The legendary scientist is known as the father of genetics, and was also outspoken about using LSD while making the revolutionary double-helix discovery of DNA.
Crick was a believer in Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception. Huxley, who was never really appreciated, wrote that a sober mind had social restrictions that limited full creative thought. These social restrictions are the ones that jolt us out of a daydream before we walk into a wall. Huxley and Crick both thought that using drugs lifted these barriers.
So instead of dropping acid and staring at the table cloth for three hours, Crick discovered the meaning of life. Allegedly, Crick took some acid and ran over to his artist wife, Odile, and had her draw the image to the right which has since become one of the most replicated image in science. Then, Crick, his partner James Watson, and Odile, who had no idea what she had drawn at the time or why there was a need for celebration, went out and got drunk.In the late Sixties, Crick founded Soma, a legalize-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New World. He even put his name to a letter to The Times in 1967 calling for a reform in the drugs laws.
Scientology on Drugs
The controversial religion that got Tom Cruise into some weird shit may have been founded while under the influence. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the drug-hating religion Scientology, is rumored to have been a heavy drug-user.The most ironic bit: according to humanitarians, drug rehabilitation methods of L. Ron Hubbard are presently employed in some seventy nations and credited with the salvation of a hundred thousand terminal addicts. L. Ron Hubbard methods have further meant a drug-free life for a million or more recreational users, and still more suffering ill effects of medicinal usage.
In 1983, three years before Hubbard’s death, Hubbard’s son, Ron Jr., told a Penthouse reporter he recalls his father as a “a hard-drinking, drug-abusing father who would mistreat his mother and other women, but who, when, under the influence, would delight in telling his son all of his exploits.” Ron Jr. also said that his father would use drugs as means to be closer to Satan. Although Scientology can arguably be the world’s most useless discovery, speculators still cite its findings on hardcore drugs. It cannot be argued, however, that when Hubbard died, he was on psych-meds, a big no-no for avid Scientologist. The religion teaches that all drugs inhibit spiritual freedom.
Took a Rock to Create Rock
There's no denying that the King of Rock had a problem with drugs. Elvis is by the one of the leading entertainers ever, and used cocaine and other uppers and downers to maintain the glory. People who knew him best said the last years were the worst, but that didn't stop his fans. According to The Rolling Stone, Elvis would come into the recording studio, clearly high, unprepared and slurring his words on disc, and the single would still hit the top of the charts.
Close to his death Elvis began pushing people away and giving more to strangers. He was known to buy expensive gifts and cars for people he hardly knew, but also pushed away and abused bodyguards and friends. Elvis was always pleasant with the media, responding with simple yes or no when clearly strung out.
On August 16th, Elvis was having trouble falling asleep in his Graceland home. His wife, Ginger, told The Rolling Stone that he took a book into the bathroom, after being up for hours reading it. It was no secret that Elvis had a massive supply in the bathroom, and the coroner's report states Elvis had at least 10 different drugs running in his system at the time of death. No one knows if Elvis took anything moments before his death, but as he fell to the floor, Ginger quickly realized what happened.
Coke for Brains
Sigmund Freud wanted to impress a girl, so he started to do cocaine. See, Mary, the girl of Freud's dreams, had up-tight parents who didn't think Freud's then fascination with sea creatures was a correct fit for their daughter (Freud actually was the first person to find the genitals of an eel, though he was doing research on its brain).Freud found the new drug and began to rant to the science community. Not only did the drug cure hunger, thirst and melancholy, it made him feel fantastic. Freud published "On Coca," filled with errors, misspellings and inaccuracies, the text was supposed to spotlight the benefits of cocaine. Basic thesis: cocaine rocks.
Freud was so impressed by the drug, he wanted to share it. He sent some to Mary, along with the following note, obviously coked up:
"I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are forward you shall see who is the stronger, a little girl who doesn't eat enough or a big strong man with cocaine in his body. In my last serious depression I took cocaine again and a small dose lifted me to the heights in a wonderful fashion. I am just now collecting the literature for a song of praise to this magical substance."
Not only was the founder of psychoanalysis a coke head, he was a sex fiend.
Louise Berger of the California Institute of Technology has speculated that without coke, Freud would be another lab geek who would rather play with eel genitals than discuss people's daddy issues - not in so many words. Basically, being introduced to cocaine eased up a tense Freud.
Freud was less keen on cocaine once the scientist that directed him towards the discovery of psychoanalysis, Fleischel, died from cocaine usage.
DNA Science is Built on LSD
During Kary Mullis' interview for BBC's Psychedelic Science documentary, he states"What if I had not taken LSD ever; would I have still invented PCR?" He replied, "I don't know. I doubt it. I seriously doubt it."Apparently to make any advancements in DNA, one must be tripping. Mullis, a Nobel Prize laureate, holds is award for the development of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), a technique to amplify a single or few copies of a piece of DNA across several orders of magnitude, generating thousands to millions of copies of a particular DNA sequence.
Like our friend Krick, Mullis makes no secret when giving credit to LSD for his discovery. In the September, 1994, issue of California Monthly, Mullis said, "Back in the 1960s and early '70s I took plenty of LSD. A lot of people were doing that in Berkeley back then. And I found it to be a mind-opening experience. It was certainly much more important than any courses I ever took."
The Coke in Coke
Yup, it's true. Coca-Cola once contained cocaine. In the late 1800's, cocaine was a prime ingredient in many wines, but in 1885, Atlanta banned the sale of alcohol. John Styth Pemberton saw this as an opportunity, dropping the alcoholic ingredient out of his beverage, creating Coca-Cola. The drink was good, but not great, so Pemberton sold today's most valuable brand for a mere $2,300. The name Coca-Cola came from its two supposedly medical ingredients: “Coca” came from the coca leaf which is used to create the cocaine also found in the drink, and “Cola” from the Kola nut, which provided the Coke's caffeine. The presence of cocaine in the popular drink was not a secret, as displayed in the ad to the right.
In 1903, the brand caught some heat from The New York Tribune in an article explaining the harmful effects of cocaine, the article cited Coke as having “similar effects to cocaine, morphine and such like.” The company then decided to drop cocaine out of the mix, but still leaving some remnants.
Still wanting to be Coca-Cola, the company decided to use unsynthesized coca leaves instead of full-blown cocaine.
And, today, Coke still contains coca leaves. Coca-Cola includes extracted coca leaves into their syrup; the leaves are provided by the only company in America that can legally import coca leaves, Stepan. The leaves come from Peru. After the leaves are handled by Stepan, they're passed to Mallinckrodt, the only US company legally allowed to use cocaine in medicine, and then the "spent" leaves are passed into your beverage.
Partying Makes Laughing Gas
Laughing gas, or nitrous oxide, was created in 1772, but it's surgical benefits were not noticed until 1884. Before that time, laughing gas was used recreationally. People realized that taking a little would make you laugh and be the life of the party, and taking a little more would knock you out. It never occurred to anyone that this could be used for another purpose until 1844.Dentist Horace Wells was at a party watching a friend dance after a few gasps of laughing gas. When the friend fell causing a deep gash in his leg and continued to dance, Wells noticed that his friend was in no pain at all as a result of being on laughing gas.
Wells tried the experiment on himself. After knocking himself out with the laughing gas, he asked one of his colleges to remove a rotten tooth. When he came to, his rotten tooth was gone and he had no recollection.
In this not so happy ending, when Wells tried to show the medical world of his discovery, he didn't realize the time it took for the laughing gas to actually knock-out a patient. While showcasing his findings to medical professionals, Wells' patient woke up, screaming in pain. Wells left the profession, was arrested for being high on chloroform, and later killed himself. In 1864, the American Dental Association formally recognized him for his discovery.
Absinthe makes Art
After Toulouse Lautrec painted a portrait of Vincent van Gogh sitting with a glass of absinthe, speculation that the famed artist's drug use was cleared up. Today, many scientists have written about the effects of absinthe and other commonly abused drugs of the day might have shaped van Gogh's art, for instance by causing him to hallucinate the halos and aurorae that often surround light sources in his paintings.Scientists such as Dr. Paul Wolf have gone as far to attribute van Gogh's liking of yellow to absinthe. Before he died, at his most vulnerable point, many of van Gogh's paintings were primarily yellow, his house was yellow and he wrote how How Beautiful Yellow Is. Dr. Wolf Explains "speculations exist that his yellow vision was caused by overmedication with digitalis or excessive ingestion of the liqueur absinthe." He goes on to explain that the "chemistry of the effect of digitalis and thujone (absinthe ingredients) resulting in yellow vision has been identified."
LSD for Everyone!
It's important to point out that even though there are a number of success stories of people dropping copious amounts of drugs and doing wondrous things, there are more people shaking in an alleyway with a needle in their arm. Most of our genius inventors were on the brink of finding something incredible and revolutionary and just need a little push (or snort, or drop, or puff... whatever).
Don't expect to drop some acid and become the next Steve Jobs, or even Washington - it's not happening. Unless, of course, you were on the edge of something revolutionary. Then, of course, cite this post as your reason for whatever you invent.
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