I have been listening to the audiobook of Michael Pollan's How to Change your Mind recently and it reminded me of a lot I had forgotten about the modern history of psychedelics.

It inspired the thought that perhaps a good way to to introduce myself and start to get know you all would be to hear what aspects of this heritage people are most drawn / the figures that they find most interesting.

For me I think mainly because of what was popular when I came into this world it has to be Terence McKenna. In my 20's I did a lot of food delivery driving and I have many fond memories of listening to his talks while driving around while at work.

Who is the elder that you are most drawn?

This is an excellent question!

If I had to pick just one, I'm probably gonna have to go with Richard Evans Schultes. Dood was the real life Indiana Jones, father of ethnobotany, he catalogued over 30,000 herbarium specimens which we are still learning about today. He was taking peyote with the Kiowa and mushrooms and ololiuqui with the Mazatec in the 1930's. He spent the 1940's and 50's exploring the Amazon, living with various tribes, taking them seriously, and cataloguing their rituals and botanical wisdom at a time when exploring the Amazon was truly a heroic undertaking. From the 1950's to the 1980's he was a professor and botanical curator at Harvard. He published 10 books and over 450 journal articles and served as editor and board member for multiple scientific journals.

What an amazing human being.

Nick Sand, hands down. Both for his contributions to underground chemistry, and for the two articles he wrote on DMT, which I believe articulate what the DMT experience really is far better than any other account I have heard of.

Amazing dreamer! Does he have any writings of personal experiences of transcendance?

A flower for Unbounded Spirit, the good teacher of enlightened speech 🌼

In my Pantheon of Psychedelic Saints I think the one that warms my heart the most was Alfred Matthew Hubbard, AKA "Captain Trips" and "The Johnny Appleseed of LSD". Al Hubbard reportedly introduced something like 6000 people to LSD in the 50's and early 60's, among them Captains of Industry. He was a man on a mission and believed LSD to be a sacrament.

https://en.wikipedia.org...i/Alfred_Matthew_Hubbard

http://www.fargonebooks.com/high.html

Excerpt from the second link:
Hubbard's secret connections allowed him to expose over 6,000 people to LSD before it was effectively banned in '66. He shared the sacrament with a prominent Monsignor of the Catholic Church in North America, explored the roots of alcoholism with AA founder Bill Wilson, and stormed the pearly gates with Aldous Huxley (in a session that resulted in the psychedelic tome Heaven and Hell), as well as supplying most of the Beverly Hills psychiatrists, who, in turn, turned on actors Cary Grant, James Coburn, Jack Nicholson, novelist Anais Nin, and filmmaker Stanley Kubrick.

That's actually a very interesting topic. He always remained very humble and grounded in his approach regarding these experiences. He was pretty avidly against the whole mid to late 1960's psychedelic and hippie movement that Tim Leary was spearheading there at Harvard. Despite the fact that in the early to mid 1950's he kept a basket of peyote buttons outside his office on the Harvard campus for any student that wanted to gain extra credit by eating some and writing a paper on it.

The most illustrative and famous example I think is the exchange between him and William Burroughs, the beat author. Borroughs had found yage and went to the Amazon to try this "ultimate kick" hoping it would help him finally kick opiates. After taking it he was going on abut how this is the most powerful, transcendental, magical and wonderful substance he's ever encountered. True to form, Schultes reply was "That's funny Bill, all I saw was colors".

Huxley has a place in my heart, not only because he wrote part of my literary bus driver manual, but because of his downright dedication....
Huxley's "death trip"

I do not realy have a favorite psychedelic figure, but when i think of public figures who took psychedelics and who had a positive impact on the world that is somehow related to taking psychedelics, i always think of the beatles: they started out as a fairly mediocre rockband with songs like "i want to hold your hand", and eventually became true pioneers in popmusic with albums that made a lasting impact on western music.

And none of them went mad like brian wilson or sid barret, or died from an overdose like jimi hendrix. Wich is also positive ofcourse.

Theres a lot of people I take wisdom from the things they say. Id have to say Alan Watts is one of my favorites. He makes me think and question a lot of things.

Hubbard was a really interesting fellow. His background is murky at best. Definitely some high level classified stuff going on there, yet he did so much to spread the gospel (good word) of sacred and ritualized use. He pretty much singlehandedly developed the idea of set and setting and the therapeutic approach. He is more or less the single figure most responsible for creating the cultural revolution of the 1950's and 1960's by getting the materials and methodologies to the real movers and shakers of the era.

Big up to Captain trips and his magical bag of tricks.

Thank you all for chiming in! It is amazing to me all the exploration that happened before the scientific and medical establishment slammed the door.

Hopefully we are entering into a new era of expansion in that regard.

What a person he sounds like! Any suggested reading from/about him? Although I can't imagine much of it not being fascinating .

Saw a lot about Michael Pollan in recent months. Tuning into psychedelic news and such on social media. Wow is it booming!

To answer your question though I would have to say Alan Watts due to how levelheaded he seems to me at least in terms of how he views psychedelics. I think they are tools to help one investigate oneself with and perhaps look more deeply into the nature of things and the universe (yes I also believe in a multiverse but I digress) however if one doesn't need a tool...

I was going to say more about why I choose him (too biased) but that being said I don't agree with someone like Timothy Leary today (correct me if I am wrong) about unreservedly "turning on" with copious amounts of drugs.

Neat! I mean FRIGGIN RADICAL!

I wanted to become an anthropologist once and study tribes this is certainly not far from what I find most worthwhile.

Having missed this thread the first time round, now's the time to put in a word for my favorite psychedelic uncle and personal hero... Alexander 'Sasha' Shulgin. Without going into too much of a biography, his work with synthetic mescaline analogues laid the foundation for today's understanding of structure-activity relationships in serotonergic phenethylamines

In this way he has inspired, for better or worse, countless underground chemists and a number of his creations have rocked the party for innumerable people the world over.

Albert Hoffman and alexander Sasha shulgin , I loved how these guys were so level headed and had roots in both everyday society and psychedelic culture

And of course their brilliant discoveries and experiments changed the world

Terence McKenna is probably my favorite, because of the ways he articulated the Gaian Mind, the Divine Feminine, his archaic revival ideas and alchemy. I haven’t really gotten into his timewave thing, or some of his other ideas, yet his articulation of the Goddess, the archaic revival and alchemy has really touched my life. As well as his thoughts about language.

Rick Doblin. The man seems to be doing more for psychedelics in my eyes than any other figure has ever accomplished. I don't have a man crush either, just how I see his work with MAPS.

Neal Cassady. Merry Prankster and driver of the Further bus, among other pursuits.

This. Also the hundreds of researchers and doctors around the world who have been working and advocating for psychedelic medicine.

Also a huge fan of Paul Stamets, his new documentary Fantastic Fungi was amazing. Tons of cool science presented in there.