- I have done psychedelics,
less now, but once a lot.
- Yeah, I have exactly zero
experience using psychedelics.
- Reality is distorted somewhat,
and there's a lot of laughing.
- [Narrator] Psychedelic
drugs have impacted humanity
for as long as
there've been people
who wanna get their minds blown.
- There has been
hardly any society
that hasn't used some kind
of psychoactive substance.
- It's been used
ritualistically,
it has been used
therapeutically.
- [Narrator] They can cause
shifts and perspectives
that can be terrifying
or revolutionary.
- I definitely think
psychedelics played a role
in changing the status quo.
- Women went from the
kitchen to the boardroom,
people of color from the
woodshed to the White House.
g*y people from the
closet to the altar.
The one ingredient in the
recipe is social transformation
and change is that millions
of us laid prostrate
before the gates of awe,
having taken a psychedelic.
- [Narrator] These
substances are so powerful
that the tiniest amount
can make a big difference.
- Two hundred and
fifty micrograms.
- Two hundred and fifty.
- Like, let's say you
take 350 micrograms,
then what happens?
- Two hundred and fifty.
- Two hundred and
fifty micrograms,
that's gonna change everything.
- [Narrator] Such a
tiny amount can change
not only the way
we see the world,
but change the world itself.
This is a psychedelic history
with trippy numbers
that are groovy, man.
(upbeat music)
Let's begin at the beginning
and start with the number one.
Psychedelics like
magic mushrooms and LSD
are a class of drugs that
alter the user's cautiousness
They can cause hallucinations
and ecstatic feelings
of communion.
- Psychedelics are popular now
because they help us have
experiences and thoughts
beyond what is considered
common or normally acceptable.
And people often really
enjoy those experiences.
- [Narrator] Or they can cause
fear, paranoia and confusion.
- Bad trips are really bad.
The hallucinations takeover,
paranoia sets in,
and a person dissolves
into the experience and
are essentially assaulted
by the images, sounds
and hallucinations.
- [Narrator] Which is why,
according to the U S
Drug Enforcement Agency,
psychedelics are a
controlled substance
and a schedule 1 drug.
But if you're not a
government agency,
being number one is
sometimes the whole point.
Take Steve jobs.
- Steve Jobs is the entrepreneur
and co-founder of
Apple computer.
Before that, he was a hippie.
- We started Apple because we
wanted the product ourselves.
- [Narrator] Job said
that using psychedelics
was a profound and positive
life changing experience.
- But I don't think it's
because of the experience
of LSD that Jobs was creative,
but I think happened was
that people like Jobs,
rewrote the meaning
of computers,
turned them from tools
of cold w*r industry,
into tools of
personal exploration.
- [Narrator] At the same time,
turning Apple into the number
one company in the world.
- A lot of people that I
know doing psychedelics
are not inventing
any iPhones or iPads.
- The iPhone is the ultimate
toy for somebody who's high.
- Drug use is
fantastic for ideation.
It's not great for
actually working on things
and implementing them
being functional.
- [Narrator] Admittedly, Steve
jobs was one in a million
or perhaps one in 32 million.
Ten percent of the adult
population in the United States
has used psychedelic
drugs at least once.
That's 32 million people.
It's a psychedelic Renaissance.
And surprisingly, it
puts the 1960s to shame.
Today's millennial might not
look like yesterday's hippie,
but if you're in your thirties,
you are 10 times more
likely to use psychedelics
than the flower
power generation was.
- [Comical voice] Groovy.
- [Narrator] LSD,
the psychedelic of
the hippie generation
was discovered as a
result of 25 trials
and one tiny error.
It's 1943 in Basel, Switzerland.
Albert Hoffman is
doing medical research.
- [Comical voice]
Ah, very interesting.
- [Narrator] And he is just
about to accidentally kick off
the modern psychedelic era.
- Hoffman from a young age
was a mental explorer.
He was very spiritual.
His friends were surprised
when he decided to
become a chemist.
- Nineteen forty three,
working on ergot,
this curious fungal parasite,
Hoffman had made on a whim,
the 25th of a series
of indole alkaloids
when suddenly he got dizzy.
- [Narrator] A tiny trace has
found its way onto his skin.
As little as 20
millionths of a gram.
- As he put it, he felt quite
sick, but not unpleasantly.
- [Narrator] Hoffman
scientific curiosity
is aroused by this
one tiny mistake.
And on April 19th, he
ingests a higher dose,
250 micrograms,
then decides to head home.
- He was riding his
bike back at home
and he end up going
on the most momentous
bicycle ride in history
Because the
substance was LCD-25.
He went on the world's
first acid trip.
- Can you imagine riding home
on your bicycle hallucinating,
seeing, you know, purple
rings around the lights,
seeing the traffic going by
and making strange
cenesthetic sounds.
Tsh, tsh, tsh, tsh, tsh, tsh.
I don't know whether it
would've been terrifying,
delightful or both.
- He was watching
the road one minute.
And then the next second,
the whole thing turns into
an episode of the Simpsons.
- If I'm tripping ba*ls,
I don't want to be operating
any sort of a vehicle.
I can't even
operate this vehicle
by putting one foot
in front of the other.
- You made it home safe,
that's all that mattered.
- [Narrator] This
is an electrifying
experience for Hoffman
who believes he has
discovered a sacred drug,
a drug so powerful that
this magic bike ride
is fueled by an absolutely
teeny weeny dose.
- Two hundred and
fifty micrograms
is 10 times lighter
than a human hair.
- Two hundred and
fifty micrograms
is a pretty small amount,
but it can have
a massive impact.
Neuro-transmitters are already
relatively small molecules.
So it wouldn't take a
whole lot of lysergic acid
to completely reorient
the way you see the world.
- [Narrator] So what exactly
does this minuscule dose
do to Hoffman on his
famous bike ride?
- Shuts down parts of
your prefrontal cortex.
So there was parts of yourself
that associate your identity
with how you look,
how you dress,
what you're capable of.
All those regions go off-line.
You're no longer
so associated with
your identity,
that you can only see your
existence through your lens
at that time.
- [Narrator] Hoffman presents
his LSD findings to Sandoz,
the pharmaceutical
firm he's working for.
But they consider it of no
practical use and shelve it.
Ten years later,
Hoffman's moldering joy
drug will be dusted off
by the unlikeliest of customers.
It's the 1950s an agricultural
scientist, Sidney Gottlieb,
is living in a rural cabin
without any running water
when he's recruited by the CIA
in the fight against communism.
- We're trying to
invent faster than them,
we're trying to invent more
destructive devices than them.
We're trying to
impact, politically,
more countries than they are.
So it's literally a two-country
fight for world domination.
- We're locked in a cold w*r
and American state
officials were terrified
that there were these
secret communist forces
slipping into our society.
- Do you have any evidence
of any claim to win the case
if there's any subversive
amongst these young men.
(b*mb exploding)
- [Narrator] The U
S has a stockpile
of around 1,000
nuclear warheads,
but that's not nearly
enough weapons for the CIA,
which wants a
thousand times more.
And Gottlieb is the
man to get them.
- [Woman narrator] The
CIA taps him to come in
and research potential
poisons for warfare uses
and Gottlieb ends up
getting the nickname,
the black sorcerer.
- [Comical Voice] The
sorcerers' on the case.
- [Narrator]
Gottlieb thinks way,
way outside the box.
Later in his career,
he will try to take
down Fidel Castro.
- [Comical voice]
Viva la Revolution.
- [Narrator] And he's not
above using slapstick comedy
to do it.
- [Comical voice] Ouch.
- [Narrator] He
attempts to k*ll Castro
with a poisonous cigar,
and exploding conch shell,
and a pair of radioactive shoes
designed to make Fidel
Castro's beard dropout.
- The U S was really desperate
to find any kind of weapon
that would allow them
to one up the Russians,
whether that's a warhead
or some sort of chemical weapon.
- [Narrator] When
Gottlieb hears about LSD
from an operative
in Switzerland.
- [Comical voice] Hello.
- [Narrator] He spies a one
in a million opportunity.
- The CIA, one of the
things they were looking for
was some sort of truth serum,
and they were hoping that
LSD would provide that.
- [Narrator] Gottlieb
wants to corner the market
before the Soviets can get
to this powerful new drug.
So he agrees to pay $240,000
for what he believes is
the world's entire supply,
100 million doses.
He not only keeps the drug out
of the hands of the Russians,
but he also becomes
the unwitting drug mule
who brings LSD to the states.
- There were already rumors
of Chinese mind control
being experimented
on American soldiers
during the Korean w*r.
- [w*r Narrator] Then there've
been talk of brainwashing.
wasn't brainwashing a big
thing with the Chinese?
- [Narrator] In 1953,
the CIA appoints Gottlieb
as head of project MK-Ultra,
a program that will
test drugs like LSD
on unsuspecting members
of the American public.
Gottlieb will head
MK-Ultra for 20 years.
- [Comical voice]
That's a long time.
- [Narrator] In that time,
he will oversee 149 mind
control experiments,
more than 25 of
these experiments
involve administering LSD
to thousands of
non-consenting victims.
One test subject was given
LSD for 174 consecutive days.
But much of MK-Ultra's research
is carried out in
broad daylight.
- The subjects of MK-Ultra
with which I'm most familiar,
were college students
and young people
here in Northern California
administered as a
standard drug trial,
just as any other drug
trial would have been.
- [Narrator] For all
the time and effort,
the extensive
MK-Ultra experiments
failed to produce any
practical applications.
- I really don't think LSD
would make a great truth serum.
You're still capable
of lying on acid.
- They gave acid
to Ted Kaczynski,
a brilliant mathematics
student at Harvard,
and then subjected him to
a traumatic experience.
Guess what gave the
world the Unabomber?
It's like, that's
so inconsiderate.
- I don't know what type of
truth you're going to get.
It might be somebody's own
truth, which is I am a tree.
- I don't think LSD worked
as a truth serum at all.
I don't see any
evidence for that.
I think more recently,
LSD has been shown to offer
a sense of interconnection.
With MK-Ultra was not
looking to help people
feel more peaceful and
happy with one another.
MK-Ultra was looking
to stave off communism.
- [Narrator] The CIA's truth
serum has zero success,
but it will prove to
be a game changer.
Thanks to 14 tie dye t-shirts.
The CIA's MK-Ultra program had
some unintended consequences.
They were trying to root out
subversive elements in America.
But for many of the
participants of the experiments,
LSD opened their eyes to a
new way of seeing the world.
The CIA gave the gift
of LSD to the 1960s,
creating a whole new class
of subversive weirdos,
beat poet, Allen Ginsburg,
and Grateful Dead
lyricist, Robert Hunter,
had their first experiences
with LSD in these experiments.
- This is a program designed
to produce the truth serum,
but it ends up energizing
the counter-culture.
- [Narrator] In the late 1950s,
Ken Kesey is a young writer
who was working in
a psychiatric ward
and volunteering in drug trials
to make some extra money.
- Ken Kesey was in
the process of writing
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
and he participated in the
MK-Ultra studies in 1959.
He said he suddenly cracked open
and became a different
kind of person.
- [Narrator] He formed a group
of 14 psychedelic adventurers
called the Merry Pranksters.
And fits them out with a
vehicle designed to travel
into the cosmic
heart of America.
- Imagine if you would,
the same school bus to
pick you up everyday
as you went to school,
covered in swirling pinks
and greens and yellows.
- [Narrator] On the front,
they paint their destination.
- [Comical voice] Further.
- [Narrator] This becomes
the name of the bus,
as well as the mission statement
for the Merry Pranksters.
- They become kind of
1960s Instagram influencers
going around and putting
on artistic shows,
sharing LSD with people
and living #vanlife.
The kind of free
artists lifestyle
that is very aspirational today.
- [Narrator] They drive
from California to New York,
a 12-day hallucinogenic odyssey.
When the bus swerves off an
Arizona highway into a swamp,
they pour paint into the
water and dip their clothes,
inventing the classic
uniform of the 1960s.
- [Comical voice]
Love the colors.
- [Narrator] The
tie dye t-shirts.
And whether antics attract
the attention to the police.
- [Comical voice]
Groovy ticket, baby.
- [Narrator] They skate
away without consequences
because in 1964, LSD is
still completely legal.
The Merry Pranksters
create the template
for the hippie movement,
freedom, spontaneity,
and communion with
art and nature.
It's all an alternate universe
that's unlocked with LSD.
A substance that is still legal,
but finding a source
for the stuff is tricky.
- Owsley Stanley or Bear
was famous for being the
live mixing board operator
for the Grateful Dead,
but he was also the
one that made the LSD
that was given to dozens of
musicians from the time period
that we associate
with psychedelics.
- [Narrator] Between
1965 and 1967,
Owsley Stanley produces
500 grams of LSD,
more than 5 million doses.
He produces so much, in fact,
that Owsley is added to the
Oxford English dictionary,
meaning an extremely potent
high quality form of LSD.
But the sixties will be a
decade split down the middle
by the number 23.
Owsley calls his
acid, white lightning,
and Ken Kesey and the pranksters
begin to distribute it
at a series of 23 parties
they call, acid tests,
multimedia events
that celebrate LSD.
- You would've have
seen flickering lights.
You would have heard the
music of the Grateful Dead.
You would've seen DayGlo paint.
There's just an
enormous dance party
and people are tripping
and they are forming
a new kind of society
connected by the sensation
of shared consciousness.
- [Narrator] Tales
of Kesey's acid tests
spread like wildfire.
LSD becomes a rite of passage
for the baby boom generation.
But the party suddenly
stops on May 30th, 1966.
Enter Donald L Grunsky,
Senator for California's
23rd district,
whose bill will make LSD
ill*gal in the state.
- [Comical voice]
Uh, bummer, man.
- [Narrator] But the genie
isn't going back in the bottle.
Legal or not, LSD is
part of a cultural shift
that's sweeping America,
a shift that's defined
by six simple words.
It's January 14th, 1967,
Timothy Leary is a 47
year old psychologist
who has been fired from
Harvard for his work on LSD.
And he's become a full-time
evangelist for the drug.
He is about to
address 25,000 hippies
who have gathered at San
Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
Many of them are naked.
- The Human Be-In was a
festival in Golden Gate Park.
People came from
all over the city.
They put flowers in their hair.
- [Narrator] A parachuter
throws free doses of LSD
to the crowd.
The local chapter
of the Hells Angels,
mellowed by LSD,
are the security.
- They listened to
music by Janis Joplin
and Jefferson Airplane.
They hear Alan Ginsburg
chanting Hare Krishna.
- [Narrator] The hippies
are confronting the darkness
in their country with love.
- [Comical voice]
Make love not w*r.
- This is during
the Vietnam w*r.
This is in the
wake of race riots
that are occurring
around the United States.
The Human Be-In
offers us a glimpse
of a different America,
an America that could be
based around peacefulness.
- [Narrator] Timothy
Leary takes the stage
and utters six words that
will define a generation.
- Turn on,
tune in,
drop out.
- Turn on, take LSD.
Tune in to the secret
system of vibrations
and currents that LSD revealed,
and drop out of mainstream
bureaucratic society.
They thought that if they did,
society as a whole would change,
we'd have a new America.
- You know, telling kids
to just tune in, turn out
and drop out, seems
pretty negative,
especially from a teacher.
Never encourage my
students to drop out.
- I'm going to pass on to my
psychedelic co-religionists
the lessons that we have
learned over the last six years.
- I think many young
people, even today,
connect to with the phrase,
turn on tune in and drop out,
because it suggests a
spiritual connection
between us and the
larger universe.
- [Narrator] The Human Be-In
was the dress rehearsal
for Woodstock,
a three-day music festival
in upstate New York.
That includes a tent to help
people navigating bad trips.
- Four hundred thousand people
showing up in the same place
to share an experience,
to receive a message and to
commune with one another.
- [Narrator] Well, what
the hippie generation
doesn't realize is that they're
late for their own party.
Approximately 9,000 years late.
In 1955, Gordon
Wasson is a banker,
but more importantly, he's a
mycophil, a mushroom lover.
And he'll be one of the
first Americans to discover
there was more than one
way of getting high,
more like 200 ways,
sprouting up all
over the planet.
But he wouldn't have found out
if it had not been
for the number 58.
- It's important
to remember that,
whereas the era of Timothy Leary
led to the complete
popularization of
these substances,
up until 1960,
those who studied these
plants were really remarkable
at collecting
handful of scholars.
- [Narrator] Gordon
Wasson has a theory
that there are cultures
who use mushrooms
for their religion.
- [Comical Voice] Hmm, I wonder?
- [Narrator] So when he
learns from a pen pal
that the people in
Oaxaca have a mushroom,
they call Teonanacatl,
God's flesh.
He gets there as fast as he can.
- The Mazatec people were
not the only indigenous group
that used psilocybin,
but he was the
one that he found.
- [Comical voice] Ola.
- [Narrator] Wasson meets
a woman named Maria Sabina,
who knows about Teonanacatl.
- Maria Sabina was a
traditional Mazatec healer.
In many ways she was just
one among other healers.
She was very humble,
poor local woman.
- [Narrator] Gordon
Wasson pretends to be sick
and persuades Maria
to let him attend
one of her all night Veladas
or healing ceremonies.
He is the first outsider
to ingest this mushroom
in a sacred context.
And he photographs it.
- He wrote it up
for life magazine,
an editor picked a snappy title,
Seeking the magic mushrooms.
Timothy Leary had
a subscription.
He made his own
beeline to Cuernavaca.
The psychedelic
gold rush was on.
- [Narrator] Suddenly
the whole world knows
that if you want
magic mushrooms,
Maria Sabina is
the woman to see.
- Maria Sabina got
to be really famous,
but she also experienced
the cruelties of that fame.
- [Narrator] Maria's village
is overrun with hippies,
scientists and all kinds of
scumbag who just wanna get high.
- [Comical voice]
Hey, you know where
I can score some shrooms?
- [Narrator] To the police,
she's a drug dealer.
- Her house was burnt,
there was a lot of tragic
episodes in her life.
- [Narrator] Maria's life is
shattered by the attention
from the outside world.
Wasson on the other hand,
had a terrific Mexican
adventure paid for,
as it turns out by the CIA
as MK-Ultra sub-project 58.
When he was done,
he sent samples of the mushrooms
to his pal, Albert Hoffman.
- [Comical voice] You see,
it's all connected, man.
- From that point forward,
Americans became
fascinated by mushrooms.
You don't have to synthesize
them in a laboratory,
like LSD or MBMA.
You can just go in
the field, pick them,
dry them, and eat them.
- [Narrator] No one knows
how many species of mushroom
there are.
Though it's estimated there
may be as many as 3.8 million.
Of these, more than 200
are psilocybin mushrooms.
Psilocybin is the magic
part of magic mushrooms.
The chemical that causes
psychedelic effects.
Psilocybin mushrooms grow
across six continents.
There aren't any
mushrooms on Antarctica.
Mexico is the global hotspot,
home to 53 species
of magic mushrooms.
- Do mushrooms count?
Oh, then I have been
high on psychedelics.
- I like shrooms more,
if we're going to be
talking about drugs.
It's like acid with a
seatbelt, so it's nice.
- We don't realize that
in order to find out
what you can eat,
that people literally
had to try things
and make people aware
that this is something
you want to stay away from.
Or Hey, this mushroom right
here, it's nourishing.
And it gives you an interesting
perspective on life.
- [Narrator] And as
we're discovering,
people have been getting an
interesting perspective on life
for the last 9,000 years.
- Probably our very
earliest evidence
that people were using mushrooms
for reasons other than a food
is from the site of Tassili
N'Ajjer in Algeria .
We have a depiction
of a humanoid figure
who has a bee or insects' face,
but they're also surrounded
by an aura of mushrooms,
which suggests to us
that this is about a
religious experience.
- [Narrator] People have
been finding different ways
to alter their minds
for a long, long time.
And it's not just mushrooms.
They've been using flowers,
cacti, vines, and even toads.
- Of the 120 or so
recognized hallucinogens,
several of which
are questionable.
Fully 90% of them are from
the American hemisphere.
- It turns out Albert
Hoffman and Gordon Wasson,
not to mention Sydney Gottlieb,
weren't discovering
anything new,
which begs the question.
Why did it take the
west so long to catch on
when psychedelics can be
found almost everywhere?
One answer can be found hiding
somewhere in the number 548.
For many cultures,
psychedelics aren't drugs,
they're religious or
ritual sacraments.
- The use of psychedelics,
particularly,
has been really influential
for indigenous peoples
across the Americas,
but not only in Americas,
all over the planet.
- Indigenous people have
used these substances
for thousands of years and
having no drug abuse problems.
How did they do it?
Well, first they recognize
the use of these substances,
a legitimate thing to do.
They use their plants
in natural form,
which is pharmacological safer,
and critically, they
envelop the user
in a protective cloak of ritual
that insulates him or her
from the sometimes
dazzling psychological
and psychic power
of these substances.
And so that's the
path we should follow,
the path of the shaman.
- [Narrator] Standing at
just half an inch high,
the Psilocybe mexicana
magic mushroom
packs a psychedelic punch.
By contrast the Amazonian
psychedelic vine,
Banisteriopsis caapi,
is 2,352 times bigger
at 98 feet long.
But as Explorer, Manuel
Villavicencio, finds out,
size doesn't matter.
It's all about how you brew it.
In the 1850s,
Manuel Villavicencio is
following the path of the shaman
across Ecuador and in
the remote Eastern part
of the country,
he becomes immersed in the
traditions of the Jivaro people.
- He studied the Jivaro,
the Jivaro were famous and
a little bit exoticized
for the practice of shrinking
heads and things like that.
- [Narrator] Manual
Villavicencio watches
as the Jivaro
shaman brews a drink
from the bark of a giant
vine boiled for 12 hours.
By firelight, the shaman drinks
and hands it to Villavicencio.
He takes a swig and
suddenly he's swimming
or is he flying and
tastic birds glide by
and speak to him.
- [Comical voice] Hey,
man, how's it going?
- [Narrator] And then
he plunges to earth
to be consumed by
unimaginable horrors.
Manuel Villavicencio
has taken Ayahuasca,
one of the most potent
hallucinogens on the planet.
- Ayahuasca is a very
traditional sacred
plant of the Amazon
that has been used by more
than 17 indigenous groups.
Ayahuasca, it means
vine of the soul.
- The people of the
actual Northwest Amazon
say you're sucking at the
breast of Jaguar woman
when she tears you from her tit
and throws you in
the pit of vipers.
It's about getting
to the other side.
- [Narrator] Villavicencio
writes one of the first accounts
of Ayahuasca in his book,
Geografia Republica Del Ecuador.
- It was only
published in Spanish.
So it didn't get a
lot of visibility.
- [Narrator] It's one of the
most powerful psychedelics
known to humankind.
But Villavicencio's
obscured geography textbook
is no bestseller.
And the secret of
Ayahuasca will lie hidden
somewhere inside it's 548
pages for a hundred years.
But if Ayahuasca was one of
the best kept psychedelic
secrets of the last
century, it isn't anymore.
- Today, living in the bay area,
the Uber driver knows
about Ayahuasca,
the person who grow food
knows about Ayahuasca.
- [Narrator] But for
rookie Westerners,
this is not a substance that
should be taken lightly.
- The few people that I
know who've tried Ayahuasca
describe it as
physically really rough.
It makes you very
nauseously vomit.
- [Comical voice] Blaargh.
- Traditionally is considered
some kind of purging substance,
like having a medicine
that cleans you up.
- And then you have a
series of hallucinations
that are very much a kind
of religious experience,
almost a kind of psychosis.
- [Narrator] It's a
psychosis best explained
by the number 13.
Ayahuasca's powerful
effects can be attributed
to its main active ingredient
dimethyltryptamine or DMT,
a chemical in the brain
associated with near
death experiences.
- People often describe
leaving the experience
as a feeling reborn.
And so to be reborn,
one must die in a
spiritual sense.
And this is a common
description that we see
even in people recently
who've tried Ayahuasca.
- Because end of the day,
we're talking about the
great mysteries of life,
and we still have a lot
of existential questions.
- [Narrator] In a
recent scientific study,
out of 13 volunteers, given DMT,
all 13 have out of
body experiences.
- [Comical voice] Hey,
has anyone seen my body?
- [Narrator] Sixty six
percent report meeting aliens,
robots were elves
during their trip.
- [Comical voice] Oh,
not the probe, again.
- [Narrator] And 80%
reported their experiences
under the influence are more
real than their waking lives.
- Whether you're talking
about the Siberian shaman,
who traveled through the trees
and go up into the spirit world,
or whether you're talking
about the Peruvian shamans
who do the same with the
vine of the soul, Ayahuasca
there is the sense of traveling
through some sort
of spirit world
that cuts across psychedelic
rituals across the planet.
- [Narrator] But indigenous
peoples are not the only ones
who've had their culture
shaped by psychedelics.
It turns out, so was the west.
If you've ever counted how
many days till Christmas,
you've been waiting for
one of the patron saints
of psychedelia.
- There is speculation
that Santa Claus
was a mushroom,
Amanita muscaria,
because it is a red and
white buttoned mushrooms.
- He goes on a trip across
the sky with flying reindeer,
a species that also incidentally
loves to eat mushrooms,
especially Amanita
muscaria mushrooms.
- A dude's going to
come into your home
and not steal your things,
but he'll give you
things, you know,
like, all he asks is milk.
- You have all sorts of
characters dealing drugs.
You got Santa Claus,
apparently, leprechauns,
my old college roommates.
- [Narrator] But Santa
isn't the only trace
of psychedelics in
Western culture.
One of the active ingredients
in LSD is nothing new.
It's called, Ergot,
a fungal parasite
that develops on crops, such
as oats, rye, barley, and rice.
Hoffman thought he was the first
to go on the trip of a lifetime.
It turns out he was more
like the 6 millionth.
Let's rewind 2,500
years to ancient Greece.
Socrates, yes, that Socrates,
was one of 6 million men were
inducted into a secret society
known as the
Eleusinian mysteries,
a multi-day ritual with
a psychedelic conclusion.
- We know that people were
pilgrimaging for multiple days,
praying, chanting in
these large groups
and at the very
end taking a drink
that cause them to
have experiences
that were incredible,
but we don't know what
exactly the elixir they take
at the end to hallucinate, was.
- [Narrator] This
elixir was called Kykeon
and no one knows what the
active ingredient was,
but psychedelic scholar,
Gordon Wasson, remember him?
He had a theory.
- He suggested that wasn't
in fact psychoactive
and that it was based on ergot,
which of course years
later, Albert Hoffman,
would be working with
when he discovered LSD.
- [Narrator] Ancient
Greece was not the first
or last culture in the
west to tangle with ergot,
which has proved to
be both a blessing
and a curse to humanity.
- Remember the
adage of Paracelsus,
the difference from
a poison, a drug,
and hallucinogen and
narcotic, is just dosage.
- [Narrator] In the middle ages,
ergot was both a
poison and a drug.
Midwives used it
to aid childbirth,
but a tainted loaf of rye bread
could cause temporary
madness or worse.
- Ergot, this curious
fungal parasite
that caused St Anthony's fire
when entire medieval towns
would go crazy and
fingers would go necrotic
and noses would fall off.
- Lots of people in medieval
Europe and in the Americas
understood not to eat ergot,
and to remove it from the rye.
But sometimes people didn't know
and it can decimate a village.
- what is a hallucinogen?
What is a poison?
I mean the key thing is
whether or not a culture
is able to use a plant
substance in helpful ways.
- [Narrator] How can you
tell the difference between
psychedelic good
and psychedelic bad?
In 17th century, New England,
the number 24 will show
just how bad it can get.
It's 1692, a nine-year-old Betty
Parris is not feeling well.
After she and her friends
dabble in fortune telling,
she develops a fever.
But soon she is hiding
under furniture.
(Evil laughing)
Then she barks like a dog.
(dark barking and howling)
She has uncontrollable
screaming fits,
and then the condition
spreads to her friends.
(Kids screaming)
- We're talking about
a very restricted
conservative society.
Any sort of strange behavior,
especially on the
part of young girls
would have been
viewed as heresy.
- [Narrator] The local minister
believes she's bewitched
and it will end badly in
the Salem witch trials.
(child screaming)
- I remember watching
Salem witch trial movies
when I was in
junior high school.
And it was just put forward
that these witches
had gone crazy.
More recently,
there is speculation
that they might have been
eating tainted bread with ergot.
- What she was experiencing
may have been in her mind,
or it may have been LSD.
We have many examples
in the past of ergotism
impacting entire communities.
And even fairly
recently in the 1950s
that occurred in France
And in 2001 in Ethiopia,
this is not something
relegated to the past.
- [Narrator] During
the Salem witch trials,
over 200 people are
accused of witchcraft.
Thirty are found guilty.
Nineteen are hanged.
Four die in prison.
And one is crushed to
death under stones.
That's a total of 24 deaths
and countless ruined lives.
Betty Parris was lucky.
She survived the witch hunts.
But 300 years later,
a new kind of witch
hunt is taking place.
Remember Woodstock in
the summer of 1969?
Well, 400,000 party-goers
are about to come up against
the power of the number one.
- LSD and the hope for society
based on benevolent
shared consciousness
is bumping up against
the reality of our crimes
in the Vietnam w*r
and the race riots
and the racial
tension here at home.
And it becomes clear that
LSD can't fix that stuff.
What's more, LSD starts to
look like a source of crime.
- [Narrator] At the
same time as Woodstock,
a gruesome mass m*rder in
Hollywood shocks America.
These seven murders
were committed by a
g*ng of hippie th*gs
known as the Manson family.
Charles Manson is
said to have used LSD
to control his followers
and reshape their sense
of morality and reality.
- When it came to
the Manson trial,
that was everything
the government needed.
People take this, they
commit acts like this,
and that was extremely
powerful anti LSD advertisement
right there.
- There was a lot of hysteria
about people painting LSD
on door knobs or putting
it in Halloween candy.
There was never any documented
evidence of this occurring,
but this really scares
a lot of Americans.
- [Narrator] LSD has
already been classified
as a schedule 1
controlled substance,
the same legal
category as heroin.
- I am glad that in
this administration,
we have increased
the amount of money for
handling the problem
of dangerous drugs, seven fold.
- [Narrator] In 1971, President
Richard Nixon goes further
and declares drugs to be
public enemy number one,
putting psychedelics
squarely in U S law
enforcement's crosshairs.
Then in the 1980s,
Nancy Reagan spearheads
the w*r on drugs with her,
Just say no, campaign.
- It's never been because
the drug is bad for you.
It's always been a way to
target the community using it.
You have marijuana
in the early 1900s,
which target Mexican laborers.
Then you have the
criminalization of cocaine,
which was targeting the
African-American community.
- Prohibition is about
a hundred years old
and it's a kind of anomaly
in the history of humankind
if you look in the
bigger picture.
- The w*r on drugs has
gone on now for 50 years,
it's cost a trillion dollars.
A trillion dollars is
a stack of dollar bills
that would reach a quarter
of the way to the moon.
And today, there are more
people in more places
using worst drugs in worse
ways than ever before.
- [Narrator] The
number of Americans
arrested for drug possession
has tripled since 1980.
Every 25 seconds,
somebody is arrested
for drug possession in the U S.
In 2015, there are
1.3 million arrests.
That's the equivalent of
one in every 252 Americans,
Twenty percent of the
prison population,
or 456,000 individuals are
serving time on a drug charge.
That costs the Federal
Government $9.2
million every day
or 3.3 billion annually.
- w*r on drugs, that's
just not gonna work.
- It feels like a failure, yeah.
- To be honest with you,
I think there's other
bigger battles to fight,
w*r on poverty, how about that?
- [Narrator] ill*gal or not,
new drugs keep
coming into fashion.
In the 1990s, a
whole new generation
experiences their
version of psychedelia.
So how many letters
does love have?
The answer turns out to be 29.
Methylenedioxy methamphetamine
is a 29 letter word
that shortened to MDMA.
And as otherwise
known as ecstasy.
- MDMA both encourages
the release of serotonin,
but also inhibit the
uptake of serotonin.
So people get really flooded
by this feel-good
neurotransmitter.
It makes them want to
dance and hug,
and it's like receiving
the best news of your life
when nothing really
has happened.
- [Narrator] Known
as the love drug,
It is the fuel for rave and
electronic dance music culture
that starts in the eighties
and is only getting bigger.
It's not hard to see
the allure of a pill
that promises ecstasy.
But MDMAs blast of bliss
can put users in
dangerous situations.
A handful of MDMA
deaths by dehydration,
set off a moral panic in
Britain, in the 1980s.
- There were some
deaths because of it.
What happened in the 1980s,
especially in the UK,
was that MDMA was used
at very early raves.
And some of these clubs
were turning off the taps
in the bathroom and then selling
cups of tap water for $15.
There was no ventilation
in the dance clubs.
They were overheating
on the MDMA
and they weren't realizing it
because they were having
such a serotonin-based
blissful experience.
- [Narrator] More recently,
the psychedelic spotlight
has returned to California.
This time it's not naked
hippies or groovy Hells Angels.
It's the digital denisons
of Silicon Valley
who are hacking the
technology of their own bodies
by microdosing.
Remember Albert Hofmann
and what 250
micrograms did to him?
Well, what if you took
something smaller, much smaller,
say 10 micrograms,
what would happen then?
- Microdosing is taking
very small amounts of LSD
that will not produce the
kinds of hallucinations
that a larger dose
would produce.
But might produce a mood shift.
- People are taking
very minute doses
much less than you
would take to get high
and using that instead of
mood stabilizing drugs.
And considering how many bad
side effects are associated
with the current pharmacology
around treating
depression, anxiety,
this may be a really
great solution.
- Microdosing is like
a sneaky, fancy way
to use drugs at work.
But like if you
work at a startup,
I feel like the company
just gives you some
on your first day.
- If it actually
helps people, great.
So, yeah, I think
it's worthy of study.
- [Narrator] After decades
when it was impossible
to study psychedelics legally,
therefore is to
follow the same path
that cannabis took
to legalization.
First medical then recreational.
And now billions of
dollars of investment
is pouring into the
psychedelic startup sector.
In the last two decades,
the number of people
using LSD in the U S
has increased by over 200%.
And you're more
likely to be a user
if you have a college degree,
are single, divorced
or separated,
and you're in your late
thirties or forties.
The middle class is the
new psychedelic generation,
sorry hippies.
In the USA, 17
states have legalized
the recreational
use of cannabis,
36 have legalized it's use
for medicinal purposes.
One state has taken
this a step further
into the realm of
the psychedelics.
- Just this last year,
Oregon voted to
openly allow the sale
and distribution of
psilocybin mushrooms.
I hope to see for the
future of psychedelics,
that there's more openness
to researching their
possible uses in humans.
- On the positive side,
I see psychiatry embracing
psychedelic therapy,
but the money behind it
is going to drive false
claims about psychedelics.
And you're going to
see more and more
that the medical industry is
going to push psychedelics
into places where they
might not necessarily fit.
- I do think certain
psychedelics will become legal,
especially for medical reasons,
but it is still ill*gal.
I do not promote it.
I do not encourage
anybody to do it.
- Without dough, substance
like ecstasy is ideal
for couples therapy.
It's ideal
for post-traumatic stress.
A substance like the
tryptamines mushrooms,
I can see being extremely
valuable for palliative care,
for hospice care, for
end of life counseling.
- I think it's important
to really understand
that psychedelics is not
a panache for everything,
not a magic solution.
And it's not for everybody.
- Hey, kids don't do drugs,
but if you do do drugs,
picture you'd have snacks.
- Oh God, my parents are
gonna watch this and be like,
oh my God, my son
is a drug addict.
They need to do shrooms.
- I've had some ideas
that I've written down
when I was on psychedelics
and they weren't so good.
- That's why I
don't tend to mess
with those kinds of things
'cause I'm like, a
small amount of that
can do irreparable damage.
I just want to know that
I can do basic arithmetic
when I come back.
(upbeat music)
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01x07 - Psychedelics
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This series is loaded with mind-blowing factoids and stats, entertaining expert interviews, and infographics injected with cheeky humor.
This series is loaded with mind-blowing factoids and stats, entertaining expert interviews, and infographics injected with cheeky humor.