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Joe Rogan Experience #2183 - Norman Ohler

Norman Ohler is an author and screenwriter whose books include "Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany," "The Bohemians: The Lovers Who Led Germany's Resistance Against the Nazis," and "Tripped: Nazi Germany, The CIA and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age." www.normanohler.de

Norman OhlerguestJoe RoganhostJamie Vernonhost
Aug 1, 20243h 2mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 4:49

    From “Blitzed” to “Tripped”: discovering Nazi psychedelic experiments in archives

    1. NO

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. (drumbeats)

    2. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) There we go. Pleasure to meet you.

    3. NO

      I'm very happy to be here. I'm actually quite thrilled.

    4. JR

      I'm quite thrilled to have you here.

    5. NO

      (laughs)

    6. JR

      Uh, this is your book. It's called Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age. First of all, how did you get involved in studying this?

    7. NO

      Well, this had a lot to do with my previous book, which is called-

    8. JR

      Blitzed.

    9. NO

      ... Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich. And, um, I mean, the Nazis were really into meth basically. They were the first ones to understand that methamphetamine can be... can change the war effort. They, they basically doped their soldiers. So that was an interesting story that I told in Blitzed and also, uh, I, I spoke about Hitler's consumption, which is quite outrageous actually. And while I was doing the research, I was in many archives because, um, I'm not a historian. I, I, I usually write novels. I started out writing three novels and then suddenly I became a nonfiction writer. I, I, I was, I was trying to understand what does that mean, and I, I thought it meant to do historical writing, to actually go into archives and look at original documents and not just lean on other books, which is what many historians actually do, which I found out later. They just read books from colleagues and then make up their own shit.

    10. JR

      Mm.

    11. NO

      But to actually go into the archive is very time-consuming, but I thought everyone does that. Actually, no one does that.

    12. JR

      (laughs)

    13. NO

      So I was looking at all the archives, and at one point I was in the archive of the memorial of the concentration camp of Dachau, so a very serious archive because they host like all the documents, what the SS did in Dachau. And so it's a, it's an intense experience to go to that archive and actually look at... Because they, they wrote down everything, like every experiment the, the Nazis did in concentration camps was like written down because it was like pseudoscience. So I found documents while I was researching Blitzed relating to tests with psychoactive substances, and that was like... That was not what I expected because the Nazis had been, you know, enthusiastic about methamphetamine, but I'd never... That was the first time I saw like something that related Nazis and psychedelics, and I thought that, that's quite strange, that's quite interesting obviously.

    14. JR

      Mm.

    15. NO

      I need to get to the bottom of this, so I asked the archivist, "Can I see like all the, all the documents? What did the SS actually do with psychedelics? Which ones did they use? Why did they test them? What were they looking for?" And he said, "Well, I'm very sorry, but all documents are in America," because when American military liberated Dachau, one of the things they do is they take a lot of documents, and they took all the psychedelic research done by the Nazis with them. So I knew I had to go to America, probably to the National Archives in, in College Park close to Washington, biggest archive in the world, find it there, but I didn't have time while I was doing Blitzed, and Blitzed was also already a complete story. So I thought, I save that, that psychedelic theme for another book, and this other book is now being published as Tripped.

    16. JR

      Wow. So before this, you'd had no understanding that the Nazis had used psychedelics, you d- you only knew that they... We, we all know that the, the meth thing and we've seen Hitler at the '36 Olympics where he's rocking back and forth or he's looking, he's jacked out of his mind.

    17. NO

      I mean, the joke about Blitzed is that I was actually the first one to write about this. I mean, now we all know about it, but before that no one knew about it. Before 2015 when this book was published in Germany, the Nazis were still seen globally and also in Germany as this like pure movement that was... Like I spoke to my grandfather when I was a teenager, and I, I was, you know, obviously criticizing him for his involvement, I wanted to know what did he do, and he did some shit, and then he always said, "Under Hitler, everything was in order," like he praised that law and order aspect. And that law and order aspect of the Nazis obviously doesn't correspond to like a drug-using society. So no one knew that the Nazis were taking drugs until I found out, w- until I found documents for Blitzed. So, um, but this, so I was not surprised to s- to s- to find more and more stuff what, what they were doing with drugs, but then I, I, I was surprised that they actually also used psychedelics because psychedelics were totally new, you know? '43 LSD was invented-

    18. JR

      Right.

    19. NO

      ... so it was, it's kind of... I really was wondering were the Nazis already getting their hands on LSD, which was just so, so new that hardly anyone in the world knew about this. So this is, this is the story of Tripped.

    20. JR

      So Hofmann, he synthesized LSD in '43.

    21. NO

      Correct.

  2. 4:49 – 12:21

    LSD’s origin story: ergot, Sandoz, and Albert Hofmann’s “bicycle day” era

    1. JR

      Right? So was there any evidence of anyone using something similar to LSD before that? I know they, they've studied some of, um, ancient pottery from Greece and they found ergot in it, and ergot which contains a very similar compound to LSD.

    2. NO

      Well, ergot is the alkaloid, uh, of, of, of the fungus, uh, which, which grows on rye. And, and, and, and so, so LSD, uh, LSD, uh... Like th- this erg- from ergot LSD is made basically, so actually LSD is not a synthetic drug as many people believe but it actually is based on, on a fungus extract which grows on rye.

    3. JR

      Mm.

    4. NO

      And the Swiss, the Swiss, uh, company Sandoz, they produced only ergot-based medicines. Like they started, uh, after, um, the First World War. It was like a startup. Sandoz was a color manufacturing company and they made a lot of money after the war because everything had to be rebuilt in Europe, stuff had to be repainted, so companies that made paint made a lot of money, so they invested in a pharmaceutical branch. And they hired one guy to kind of, uh-... come up with an idea how to make money in the pharmaceutical world. This guy was Arthur Stoll. He later became the CEO of Sandoz. And Arthur Stoll was the first one to crack ergot, because this fungus is, is quite poisonous actually. In the Middle Ages this created mass hallucinations in Europe un- you know, unwittingly people were eating, like, contaminated bread.

    5. JV

      Right.

    6. NO

      Were having, like, h- horrific visions. Actually limbs fell off because this ergot is very, very poisonous alkaloid. But as we know from Paracelsus, the dosage makes the poison. So if you ... That was Stoll's idea. You take a very poisonous thing, the ergot, and you extract, like you, you're, you're still able to use the, the force that's within it as a medicine. This is how biochemistry, that's basically the f- the foundation of biochemistry. So Stoll was able to crack the ergot, and the first medicine he made was a, was a migraine medicine, which, which came out I think in 1923 by Sandoz. Very successful, so he immediately hit the jackpot.

    7. JV

      Wow.

    8. NO

      He became like the ergot god of the pharmaceutical world. So he developed more and more medicines with ergot. One of them, for example, is still used today when ... in childbirth. It contracts the, the, the blood vessels after the birth so you can stop a bleeding. Otherwise, I guess the bleeding would go on much longer in childbirth. So Sandoz made the first effective medicine because ergot kind of makes you con- makes the blood vessels con- contract. Yeah.

    9. JV

      Weren't they trying to develop a drug to induce labor when they initially created LSD? Or was Hoffman-

    10. NO

      Yeah. This w- this is, this is all the ergot kind of research.

    11. JV

      Mm.

    12. NO

      I mean, the whole company was just doing ergot. So they were looking at all kinds of things that ergot could be good for, just to, you know, make ... have new products on the market. So-

    13. JV

      Wow.

    14. NO

      And, and ergot before ... I mean, this is a company based in Switzerland, which is now Novartis, uh, something like the fourth-biggest pharmaceutical company in the world or something. I mean, f- very successful company still. They, they bought Sandoz and now it's Novartis, but it's, it's kind of the same thing. So Sandoz at one point needed so much ergot that they started manufacturing it in Switzerland. Like they went into a specific region called the Emmental, which was famous for its cheese. And it's, it's also famous for its bad weather, so mold grows on rye anyhow, so they thought this is the right area to industrialize, um, the, the ergot, uh, uh, manufacturing, like the, the growth of ergot. And the farmers were like, "We, we're always trying to get away from the ergot. The ergot is poisonous." And suddenly they had to make it. And, and the Swiss company paid 20 francs I think a kilo, 20 francs a kilo, and rye was only like seven francs a kilo, so the, the farmers switched to basically producing poison. (laughs) And then s- I mean, not poison-

    15. JV

      Right.

    16. NO

      ... but a very poisonous mushroom you could say.

    17. JV

      Right, right.

    18. NO

      Like a fungus. Like you don't want to eat this thing, you know? You don't wanna ... That was the problem. You harvest rye, you make bread out of it, and then there's like a little bit of ergot because on some of the, o- of the, of the rye, uh, ergot grows, and then the bread is poisonous. That was the problem in the Middle Ages. So-

    19. JV

      Right.

    20. NO

      ... farmers don't like it. Now they had to produce it. And suddenly, Sandoz in Basel, Switzerland, had, um, huge amounts of ergot in their storage and they needed to make more and more products to, you know, use the raw materials that they had so expensively produced in the Emmental. So Stoll hired further chemists. One of them was Albert Hofmann, the famous discoverer of LSD. So he was not looking for, like, a mind-blowing drug or anything. He was looking for actually a stimulant because this was late '30s in Germany, Nazi Germany. A stimulant, um, that was made from the nicotine acid, nicotine acid diethylamide. No, it was actually a Swiss product, but from a, from another company. Nicotine acid diethylamide was, I don't know the brand name. It had a brand name and it was quite successful medicine. And he thought, "If I take lysergic acid diethylamide, lysergic acid being the acid within the ergot, maybe we'll also have a potent stimulant." But they didn't ... They weren't looking for a stimulant actually for the mind. They were looking for a physical stimulant, like something like Pervitin, like meth, like something that keeps you going. I mean, this was, this was at a time when stimulants were, you know, sought after, not e- they didn't have coffee like we have today. We just go, we drink a coffee in the morning. They didn't really have that. That's why methamphetamine was so successful in Germany, because you could just, you know, buy it anywhere and you take a tablet in the morning and it's like drinking, like, it's like being on coffee the whole time, you know? So the, the stimulant was, was, was, was what he was looking for. And then like s- he ... Something came into his bloodstream. It's a, it's a, it's a bit, you know, he tries later, he tried to make it a bit s- mythical-sounding, like somehow the substance got into his bloodstream and he felt like weird sensations and different ... He saw different colors. So he thought, "This is actually s- a very different type of thing." Like, "What is this lysergic d- uh, acid diethylamide, LSD? What is it?" So he, he did then a first self-experiment, which was kind of normal at the time. He took a very, very low dose, what he thought 250 micrograms. But as we know today, that's actually quite a high dose of LSD. So he had an ex- an extremely strong experience and he told this to Stoll, the CEO. He said, "I just took this like 250 micrograms." Eh, I mean, this is a Swiss chemist in a Swiss lab, and suddenly he's like full on tripping. He tried to get home somehow. His assistant like brought him home on a bicycle. He was at his house and the walls started, you know, collapsing onto him. And the doctor came and he said to his doctor, "I, I think I'm going mad, you know. I, I, I'm p- I poisoned myself. I don't know what's going on." The doctor was like feeling his pulse. Pulse normal, like eyes normal. Like on LSD you, you don't have a strong physical reaction, but you have a very strong mental reaction. So he had this ... And the doctors just couldn't see it. And before actually, Hofmann had tested LSD, uh, on, on mice, uh, at, at Sandoz and the mice also didn't show anything because you can't-... they didn't, like, run around excitedly. Like if you ga- give mice cocaine, they're like, they... n- you can see the difference. But if you give them LSD, you can't see it because you can't get into their mind. Maybe they don't even have a trip-

    21. JV

      Hmm.

  3. 12:21 – 14:58

    Early optimism: the “intoxication room,” first therapeutic signals, and ‘what went wrong?’

    1. NO

      ... because they don't have a conscious like us, but certainly on humans, it works very potently. And so he communicated this with his CEO and the CEO was like, "I don't believe you. I think you made a mistake with the dosage." Then they re- they repeated it. And then they actually created at Sandoz... And I think this is kind of funny. If you picture, like, a conservative pharmaceutical Swiss company in the late 40s in Basel, they, they created an intoxication room. Like they made a nice room within the company. They didn't... They called it Rauschraum, Rausch meaning intoxication in German. And Hofmann said, "I had a very strong rausch with this stuff. I don't know what this is." So they invited like, uh, secretaries and bookkeepers and chemists and people working in the cafeteria, they all could come into this room and take LSD. Like, the secretary is actually sitting there typing what they would, what they would relate, and they all had a great experience. That's the funny thing, because they had never had any bad... They d- Today, when we take LSD, we have so much, uh, discourse about LSD in our mind automatically. They didn't have that. They just took a strangely named substance like LSD-25, they took like 50 micrograms and they wrote down... I, I, I write about this in Tripped, like, "I... For the first time, I feel connected to my human, to my h- to my fellow human being." Some looked out and saw the clouds and s- like, had like ideas about, uh, connectivity and how we are part of the, of the universe, basically. Like these kind of hippie LSD thoughts that we classically associate with L- They, they had them like very purely, like from... The- they, they just had them.

    2. JV

      Right.

    3. NO

      So this was all noted down. And then they were thinking... And this was in 1943. Imagine the situation in Europe in 1943. It's at the height of the, of World War II. People are dead, injured, traumatized. So they, they thought at Sandoz, "Maybe this is gonna be like a blockbuster," you know? "We give this..." Then they tested it also on sick people in a, in a, in a hospital in Zurich. They gave it to like a depressed patient, like a de-... I also studied these, uh, reports. Like, a depressed Swiss farmer was like chronically depressed. He takes LSD, and he took it like three times and he could... They, they released him out of the psychia- psychiatric ward, uh, because he was cured. He was, he was good. He said, "I'm fine. I, I rea- I'm, I'm not depressed anymore." So Sandoz really thought they had a blockbuster. They thought this is... LSD is going to be the big thing. And, um, the big question of... obviously is what went wrong, you know? That is what interested me-

    4. JV

      Yeah.

  4. 14:58 – 20:18

    Personal catalyst: Alzheimer’s, microdosing, and the working title “LSD for Mom”

    1. NO

      ... in Tripped, what happened? Because also why I researched LSD and I... I had been interested in LSD for a long time, but then I decided to write a book and I researched it and I found a study by a company called Eleusis, which is an American company, their name referring obviously to the Greek ritual. And they had done, um, low dosage tests with LSD on Alzheimer patients and they found that the very same receptors that Alzheimer degenerates and kills, these receptors are being stimulated by LSD. So they... their study, which I then discussed with an Al- leading Alzheimer researcher in Germany, and he also... He's looking at this white paper and he said, "This is actually quite good." And I said, "So when is it going to happen?" He said, "Well, this is a bit more complicated than you think, you know, because LSD is illegal." It's not even... 'Cause in America, I guess you have, like... universities can do research, but this is also a new thing, you know. When Nixon il- illegalized LSD in 1966, all the research was illegalized, so couldn't even research whether it's as dangerous as, you know, the government-

    2. JV

      Right.

    3. NO

      ... said it would be. So let me just finish, finish this thought. Uh, I, I bring this white paper to my father because my mother suffers from Alzheimer and I s- I'm saying to him, "I'm writing this book, as you know, and I found this, and shouldn't we have a look at this?" Because he's... he takes care of my mother and he's quite frustrated that there's no potent medicine available to him, that his doctor basically says, "Sorry." Um, and he's a former judge. He was quite a high judge in Germany. He sent people to prison for drugs. So for him to even consider giving an illegal drug to his wife is a big leap for him. But, you know, he's a rational thinking man, so he looked at this white paper, he studied it and he said, "You know what? In court, when I was in court as a judge, I always... You don't know what is the truth, but you, you know what is a good story, like a credible story. That's how I determined as a judge what I believe. If someone tells something that rings true to me, and right now I'm having a study that LSD is helpful, but also I'm having the law that it's illegal. Can you please find out the true story now? What is LSD? Why is it illegal?" So from that point onward, I did the research that is in Tripped, which was supposed to be called LSD for Mom, actually. That was my working title for the book.

    4. JV

      Wow.

    5. NO

      And I think it's a better title.

    6. JV

      That's a good title.

    7. NO

      Yeah, it's a great title. So, LSD for Mom, that was my... I was-

    8. JV

      Who, who picked Tripped? Did the editors pick Tripped?

    9. NO

      My German editor didn't want LSD für Mama, which is the German translate- which I think is the perfect title. It's not even... It's even better in German, LSD für Mama. He somehow convinced me to use a different title in Germany and all... You know, this is translated into many different countries and they always go to the German. If the Germans would have called it LSD für Mama, it would be called LSD for Mom in America, LSD pour Maman in France. But because in Germany a different title was, was chosen, The Strongest Stuff, which is a little bit different in German, Der Stärkste Stoff, then every country was like thinking, "What sh- how should we call it?" And I guess they called it Trip because of the success of Blitz. They wanted to-

    10. JV

      Hmm.

    11. NO

      ... have... But I think LSD for Mom-... is a better title.

    12. JR

      I like it.

    13. NO

      Yeah, it's great. Um, because it's true, you know? I was then really researching for my father and my mother, and I came back after all this research, uh, with the Swiss company, and it's the Nazi connection which we'll come to, I guess, in a second. I came back to my father, and I presented him this story, and then he decided to actually try it because he said, "I understand now that LSD is not illegal because it's dangerous, that there are different reasons why it's illegal." And these different reasons I explained in Tripped. So we, we gave... We spoke obviously to my mother also because you have to get consent, uh, so, uh, she gave her consent, and she started using LSD once in a while, you know? Not, not chronically obviously, um, but like twice a week or maybe the next week only once. Only low dosages. And my father also took them. He never felt anything because in microdose, you're not supposed to feel a trip or an intoxication. It just works in your brain. Um, but my mother actually did feel it because her brain is attacked by Alzheimer's. So for her, that was like... Her cheeks became redder. She would look at us. One time, um, we also then did mushrooms which is a very similar c- uh, molecule. Actually, psilocybin is very similar to, uh, the LSD molecule. On Mother's Day, we gave her a, a, a little piece of mushroom chocolate, and she took it, and there was a newspaper on the table. And she hadn't even, you know, looked at newspaper as an object of desire for her for about a year, my father then later told me. And she picked up the newspaper when the chocolate was working and started reading the headlines. And my father was like, "This is a medicinal miracle." And my father's really like a, a rational, skeptical guy, you know, but it was... it was amazing. So that is also what I, what I write about in Tripped aka LSD for Mom.

  5. 20:18 – 24:29

    Dementia as a looming crisis: diet, neuroinflammation, and why research is blocked

    1. JR

      But it's so fascinating there are so many people suffering from Alzheimer's in the world, and it's illegal basically everywhere except for countries like Portugal that have decriminalized everything. But yet-

    2. NO

      I mean, uh, dementia is like the pandemic of the future, if I want to use that ugly word pandemic.

    3. JR

      Yeah.

    4. NO

      But, uh, to not allow our scientists to examine this properly... For example, the pan- in the pandemic, a lot of, um... During the pandemic, like regulations in regards to developing medicines, a vaccine especially, were lowered because we wanted, the government, the society wanted a vaccine quick. But... So this is what has to happen with psychedelics now because we are, we are moving... Like in 2050, I read the numbers, they're also in the book, like a lot of people will have dementia. Like we will all know someone or we'll have it ourselves or our... It's going to grow, uh, exponentially or at least a lot. So I think our society should actually shift its focus towards preventing that because I, when I spoke to the Alzheimer expert, he said, "Yeah, of course this could be. You could, you, you could prevent Alzheimer if you would know like how to stimulate the brain." And so far...

    5. JR

      By 2050, 153 million people are expected to be living with dementia worldwide-

    6. NO

      Mm-hmm.

    7. JR

      ... up from 57 million in 2013-

    8. NO

      Mm-hmm.

    9. JR

      ... in 2019 rather, largely due to population growth and population aging. Um, don't they believe that Alzheimer's has something to do with diet as well? Isn't that what they're calling type 3 diabetes?

    10. NO

      Yeah, and I think it could be true. Um, I mean, the reason for Alzheimer is, you know, we have to see it separately from the cure, you know. The reason, the reason I think... I, I've come actually to the conclusion that sugar is quite bad for you, and, uh-

    11. JR

      Yeah.

    12. NO

      ... I have... I was quite a sugar addict. I really was. Like I could not put down a, a, a bar of chocolate. I could not eat one piece. I just couldn't because I love it so much. But then I just realized it's not good, and I stopped it, and it's actually possible to stop. I eat li- ni- now like a little bit, and it's actually no problem. Um, so I, I think... Well, there's, there's a few reasons for, for dementia. One is also the, um, the so-called neuroinflammation of the brain. And that could be caused obviously by sugar, um, by, by, you know, by, by imbalances in, in, in, in, in, in, in the sugar, uh, um, diet, I think. Um, and the inflammation of the brain, and that is scientifically proven, is being decreased if you take psychedelics. So if you take psychedelics, every time you take psychedelics, your neuroinflammation goes down. So that is something that needs to be examined. Like maybe we should all take maybe once a week a low dosage of let's say LSD or psilocybin. Maybe we could prevent like 50% of dementia. I mean, it's... I, I, I think it's quite plausible, and I think not to look into it is not very smart by a society because the costs of dementia, I mean the human costs. My father suffers quite a bit. My mother of- obviously she has the disease, she suffers. The family suffers. If someone in the family has Alzheimer's, the, the whole family suffers. And of course our, you know, medical system is, is very expensive to treat, you know, dementia, like put them in homes, whatever. So I think we're making a, a big mistake by not examining this.

    13. JR

      Absolutely. Well, it's just a stunning amount of ignorance on our part. All the at least anecdotal evidence of the positive benefits of some of these things, particularly in microdose usage.

    14. NO

      Well, it's just not a focus of politicians-

    15. JR

      Right.

  6. 24:29 – 30:15

    How prohibition took hold: Harry J. Anslinger, racism, and targeting culture

    1. NO

      ... like-... to legalize drugs s- has not become a very popular meme among politicians in the 20th century. This is also what I examined in Tripped. I kind of looked at where did, where did it actually start? Where does this prohibitionist approach come from? Because it's kind of weird. As a child, I watched, uh, Star Trek. It was a TV, an American TV show, even on German television. It was called Raumschiff Enterprise in German, like, Spaceship Enterprise. And I was always very touched by the beginning when they say, "Boldly go where no man has gone before." Like, that was for me, the American d- like, the Western philosophy to, to always transcend where you are, and, uh, and- and- and- and, uh, and that is, that totally contradicts our prohibitionist policies. Um, it's like a, it's like a chemical wall that the government is setting up in our brain saying like, "You can go this much with stimulating your brain, but you're not allowed to go further." Like, "You're not allowed to use, uh, LSD, which does stimulate the H2TA receptors." You're not a- you know, it's- it's- I think it's contr- it contradicts the Western philosophy. And actually also I think it contradicts the idea of democracy, which, uh, I- which I always, uh, you know, was hot for, you know. I was always, I was, uh, uh, I grew up in a small town in, in West Germany, which was actually occupied by American forces. So I was very much connecting with, with American culture early on. And I- I- I, I always like, uh, associated Western culture with freedom and transcendence and boldly going where no man has gone before. That is for me the strength of the West. And that is, you know, what, this is, for example, not what Islam offers. Islam says, "You're not allowed to intoxicate. You can only believe in this. You cannot go further." This is actually the problem of all monotheistic religions. But for me, the West was always like going beyond that. So, uh, I was curious, how did this happen, this prohibition? Like who, uh, w- was there one person that decided, "No, people cannot use this anymore?" And there's- there is, there actually is one person, and his name is Harry J. Anslinger. I'm sure you're familiar with the guy. So I- I, for this, for- for Tripped, I also went to the Harry J. Anslinger Archives at Penn State University, which was quite interesting because you can see in the archive and in the way like it smells and what, what he collected and the letters he wrote and the language he used. You can, it's a very closed mindset. And he was actually able to convince Democratic and Republican presidents. He was like serving under, he was bipartisan basically. So his anti-drug regime that he was, that he was able to create, and he created it because the alcohol prohibition failed. And his Federal Bureau, uh, of Narcotics was about to be extinct because he had completely failed with the alcohol prohibition. And then he thought, "I have to find a new enemy." And the new enemy for him was marij- was actually cannabis. And he coined the word marijuana.

    2. JR

      Right.

    3. NO

      Because marijuana sounds foreign, it sounds Mexican, it sounds something that we don't want in our clean, uh, white American society.

    4. JR

      Well, it was a Mexican wild tobacco. It was a slang for a Mexican wild tobacco. It wasn't cannabis.

    5. NO

      Yeah, right. Uh.

    6. JR

      Yeah.

    7. NO

      So that is, uh, (laughs) uh, uh, so basically what we could say is that, and unfortunately Anslinger was quite a racist. He was, like he, he openly used words to describe, uh, Afro-American colleagues that shouldn't be used by white men, I guess, in like memos. This went all the way up to the president.

    8. JR

      Wow.

    9. NO

      So sh- but they st- they always kept him because he was the man that defends America from the scorch of foreign influences, which is drugs in this case, from China, the opium, from Mexico, the marijuana. So he was, he, he was very good politician, basically like a anti-drug lobbyist that, you know, everyone in Washington, um, loved. And so the reasons for the, for the, for the prohibition in America is not that this Anslinger was actually studying LSD and finding out that this is actually dangerous and or marijuana is dangerous. That's, we really, even though we're free in our society, we have to, you know, we have to curb this. We have... Like, this is not how it went. This was like he wanted to attack the jazz scene, and he knew that the jazz musicians were smoking a lot of weed. So he's, you know, it's, it's very hard to make it illegal to play jazz, but you can make marijuana illegal and then you can, you know, target jazz musicians. So it is kind of racial profiling.

    10. JR

      Why were they going after jazz musicians? (laughs)

    11. NO

      He hated jazz. He thought that-

    12. JR

      (laughs) .

    13. NO

      He thought that, uh, um... I think he wa- he had a, I think, I think it's a sexual thing actually. He, because he actually said once, "When Black men smoke reefer, they think they're as good as white men and they're going to sleep with our women," or something like that. Like, that was kind of the world that he was living in.

    14. JR

      So was it because the jazz musicians were on stage and people loved them?

    15. NO

      Yeah, they were cool.

    16. JR

      They were cool.

    17. NO

      Yeah.

    18. JR

      So-

    19. NO

      And they, they were only cool because they smoked the weed, you know. That gave them that, that diabolical power, like over the audience and like the groove, you know.

    20. JR

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    21. NO

      And if you take the weed away from them, they're just, they're going to be like boring people, you know.

    22. JR

      (laughs)

    23. NO

      That- that- that, so that guy, that guy really did a lot of damage in my mind to the American society.

  7. 30:15 – 36:50

    Hemp vs. Hearst: industrial motives behind cannabis demonization

    1. JR

      Yeah. It's just stunning that 90 years later we're still dealing with the aftermath of that, you know, and also hi- in conjunction with his, uh, union with William Randolph Hearst.

    2. NO

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      William Randolph Hearst, who owned Hearst Publications, had a, a vested financial interest in keeping marijuana illegal or making marijuana illegal because of hemp.... right? You know the whole story about the decorticator?

    4. NO

      Hmm. Yeah. Are you talking about the wood now, that you-

    5. JR

      No. Decorticator was a, a device that was manufactured. It was created in the early 1930s, and it was on the cover of Popular Science magazine. When they called it, they said, "Hemp, the new billion-dollar crop of the future."

    6. NO

      Oh, right.

    7. JR

      So, because hemp was a very difficult plant to take the fiber and convert it into paper and convert it into textiles and things like that-

    8. NO

      Uh-huh.

    9. JR

      ... they used slave labor for the most part.

    10. NO

      Right.

    11. JR

      Until the cotton gin came along. When the cotton gin came along, that became more effective to use cotton than to use hemp. It was easier. Then in-

    12. NO

      Uh-huh.

    13. JR

      ... the early 1930s, they came out with the decorticator. Now, the decorticator was this machine ... See if you could get a, get a version of that, Jamie. Um, so the decorticator allowed them to effectively ... That's the decorticator. So this machine, they would run the hemp stalks through it, and it would break them down, uh, far more, uh, economically, vu- much, much easier, mar- more effectively than the way they would do it by hand previously.

    14. NO

      Oh, right.

    15. JR

      So, hemp, the new billion-dollar crop.

    16. NO

      Hmm.

    17. JR

      So, hemp, you know, s- find the cover of that magazine. So, hemp, um, was a far more effective paper. It's much more durable. Like, if you take hemp, very difficult to tear. In fact, um, the earliest v- drafts of the Declaration of Independence were on hemp. So, there's-

    18. NO

      Yeah, right.

    19. JR

      ... hemp, the billion-dollar crop. So this was Popular Science magazine, and, um, William Randolph Hearst didn't just own Hearst Publications, he also owned paper mills.

    20. NO

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      Um, so he had thousands and thousands of acres of trees and forests that they were-

    22. NO

      Hmm.

    23. JR

      ... converting into paper. And now, all of a sudden, there was this new product that was going to destabilize his industry. And so-

    24. NO

      Oh, I mean, yeah. Hemp is a disruptor, you know?

    25. JR

      Exactly. So, when they made marijuana illegal, a lot of the people that were voting on this didn't even understand they were making cannabis illegal. They didn't understand that it was the same thing.

    26. NO

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      They didn't understand that it was the same literal textile that created canvas, all the great works. Like, if you look at, you know, L- Leonard da Vinci's paintings-

    28. NO

      It's on hemp.

    29. JR

      ... it's on hemp.

    30. NO

      Mm-hmm.

  8. 36:50 – 43:00

    “Stoned sapiens”: drugs, language, and a new global narrative

    1. NO

      I mean, I thought about this, uh, you know-... writing, having written Blitz and Trip both on drugs and history, I was, um, now trying to r- come up with a m- with a more, with a larger narrative. And I'm, I'm, I mean, we, at your sh- in your podcast, a lot has been talked about the stoned ape theory, right?

    2. JR

      Yes.

    3. NO

      I think it's very interesting, and I think it's time for kind of a new, uh, a new world history as you may. I think because we, I think we actually are stoned sapiens. I think that this cognitive revolution that happened in Africa, it's, it's, uh, as Stamets said, it's not a theory, it's a, what is it? A, uh, a theory is when there's already proof. It's, it's a hypothesis. It's a hypothesis. But I think that a lot speaks for this hypothesis. Um, I think it makes sense if you see that early humans were, for example, depicting mushrooms in drawings, that these mushrooms have some kind of relevance to them.

    4. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    5. NO

      And, um, our edge, uh, which is something that Harari writes about, over other, uh, homos, like the Neanderthals or also just monkeys, large monkeys, our edge was that we, that we had this cognitive revolution, that we had a neocortex forming and that we suddenly had an understanding about time, so we're not just living in the moment, wh- we know there's a past and there's a future. So that creates a different language, and the, uh, the, the different language, a more abstract, more complex language than, for example, the apes. You know? Apes can organize up to like a hundred. Then their language kind of fails them.

    6. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. NO

      Th- but humans suddenly ... or not suddenly, I mean, this is over long periods of time, could, could develop a language that enabled them to form larger groups. That's how they became dominant, also dominant o- over other, um, homo species like the Neanderthals. And, um, we know today that they had, um, uh, these plants, uh, at their availability. So it, it makes sense to imagine that actually we found maybe it was a mushroom, maybe it was iboga, which is something still used, uh, in African societies and which now is again being examined as the new psychoactive, uh, hot drug. Uh, it c- it could be a mixture, or some groups could have had this, others could have had that. But it seems to be pretty clear that like the founding moment of our race is actually this transcendence, like suddenly you realize this moment where I'm in is not all, there is more. Like I, I-

    8. JR

      Right.

    9. NO

      ... there's a future, there's a past. That is what transcendence is. So we are basically, um, that's why I call our species the s- ... we're stoned sapiens.

    10. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    11. NO

      Like we were stoned from the start. So drugs, which tr- uh, transferred into language, into also music, into rituals, because we wanted to keep the drug also secret from others who were not, you know, from, from apes or Neanderthal. So rituals e- uh, start existing, like a person who kinda has the drugs and hands them out. So this is at, this is at the beginning, um, of, uh, of our race. So I think, uh ... And, and we were s- we were so powerful because we could, we could develop that larger language. Then the apes would only organize up until a hundred. And now we have the problem, uh, we poor stoned sapiens, that we have created global problems, but we don't have a global narrative, like we're falling into the Western camp. We have China. We have R- ... like we have-

    12. JR

      Right.

    13. NO

      ... we, we, we don't have a global narrative. Like our narrative usually stops within the national context. Like there's the American narrative. There's the Western narrative, which also includes Europe. There's the German narrative. But there's no human global narrative. And that's what I intend to change with my book Stoned Sapiens, which will be the next book and kind of conclude the trilogy of these, like how are, how are drugs and humans kind of symbio- symbiotic in a way.

    14. JR

      Well, there's a, for lack of a better term, there's a consciousness that exists in mushrooms. There's something that you interact with, and we don't necessarily understand what's going on. But if you could imagine a lower primate interacting with a higher consciousness on a regular basis and then adapting, I mean, this is the theory-

    15. NO

      Yeah.

    16. JR

      ... of why the human brain size doubled over a period of two million years. And if you ever listened to Dennis McKenna describe this, Dennis McKenna describes it brilliantly because he's an actual scientist in the way he explains the effects of psilocybin, how it ha-

    17. NO

      Mm-hmm.

    18. JR

      ... you know, what effects it would have on the mind in terms of developing language and, uh, just expanding our creativity, expanding our ability to see things, uh, i- it makes better eg- edge detection, makes ... you have better visual acuity, makes them more, um, more horny. They're gonna-

    19. NO

      Mm-hmm.

    20. JR

      ... more likely to breed, more community. There's, uh, there's also this potential for a type of, you know, for lack of a better term, uh, uh, a type of mind melding. You know, there's a, there's a, a type-

    21. NO

      Mm-hmm.

    22. JR

      ... of consciousness expanding-

    23. NO

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      ... energy that happens that it seems to be connected in a, in a, uh, in a way that we can't measure, where human beings interact with each other without words. You know, telepathine was exactly what they, what they, when they first-

    25. NO

      Uh-huh.

    26. JR

      ... found harmine-

    27. NO

      Yeah.

    28. JR

      ... they, when they found some, certain trees that were part of the, uh, components of ayahuasca, they, they tried to call it telepathine. But due to-

    29. NO

      (laughs) Yeah.

    30. JR

      ... the rules of scientific nomenclature, it, that, that substance had already been identified as harmine.

  9. 43:00 – 51:18

    What psychedelics do in the brain: default mode network and neuroplasticity

    1. NO

      Well, (instrumental music plays) I became very interested in that question that you just, um, uh, articulated, what actually happens in the brain because that is quite hard to figure out actually how do they work and what actually changes in the brain. And there's one researcher in Zurich, again, in Switzerland, they're really experts on psychedelics actually, because they didn't sign all the UN treaties because they're, like, a neutral – more neutral country than others, so they actually have a little bit more freedom for research. And, um, there is a professor called Franz Vollenweider at University in Zurich, and he was able to start in the early '90s giving his patients, uh, psilocybin and LSD and DMT, and then he put them in, like, examined their brains in brain scanners, like imaging, like, high-tech, you know, imaging technology. And he found that actually s- that you can actually measure it, you... or you can see the changes that happen in psychedelics. And what happens is that the so-called default mode network, that is a term that brain scientists use to describe what Freud would des- des- would call the ego, like the center in our brain, like the boss in our brain, like the, the guy I guess it would be, um, or the woman in our brain that, like, says, "Now I'm on the Joe Rogan podcast and everything's cool and, you know, I, I'm a, I'm a writer," whatever, "and you..." Like this is, this is, like, we have always this controlling force within us, otherwise we would go-

    2. JR

      Yes.

    3. NO

      ... basically insane.

    4. JR

      Right.

    5. NO

      Like, "What's going on here?"

    6. JR

      (laughs)

    7. NO

      "Is this, is this cool? Am I in danger?" You know, basically-

    8. JR

      Right.

    9. NO

      ... "Am I in danger?" Like, there's a... this thing, the ghost with the, with the, with the rifle is going to shoot, like...

    10. JR

      (laughs)

    11. NO

      So the default mode network makes sure that this doesn't happen, that we function and it makes a lot of sense. And actually under psychedelics, he could measure that this part of the brain gets a little less energy so it's a little... it's, it's not switched off completely. I mean, if you take a lot of psychedelics, it might sw- be switched off completely, then you have what's called, like, a full immersion experience. But if you take a little, it's also switched off like a li- like, gets a little less energy and that other parts of the brain, peripheral parts that are usually, like, following the main guy, they, they can communicate more on, on psychedelics. So what happens in your brain is actually... it is actually a change in, you know, the brain chemistry and what also happens is what is called the neuroplasticity is enhanced. Neuroplasticity is the term for basically the brain is not obviously like a, a fixed, like, uh, non-moving object like my fist or something. It's a con- it's constantly kind of moving the brain, you know? And neuroplasticity describes that, um, that ability to constantly adapt to, like, the situation and, you know, uh, be flexible, be, you know, make new connections. That's neuroplasticity. And he could also measure that neuroplasticity is enhanced when you take psychedelics. That's why also it could become dangerous if it's enhanced too quickly and you're not experienced. I mean, we're on the Joe Rogan Experience so we are, we're, we're all experienced so I hope you have a, an experienced audience. But if you're unexperienced, that could be too much, you know? Then, then the, the stimulation of your brain or the change or the disruption of your day-to-day way of thinking could be overwhelming.

    12. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    13. NO

      But if you, if you handle it properly, it's actually, uh, that, that is, that is, I guess, what is the beneficial aspect of the psychedelic experience. You enhance neuroplasticity in a way... I don't know if becoming smarter is the right term, because what is smart, what is intelligence? But we... it's a fact that neuroplasticity is enhanced and because of this, kind of orthodox thought forms, like depressed people always think the same thing, like, "I'm not worthy," or, "I can't..." You know, d- d- depression is a loo- is a loop, uh, or loops in your brain of always this... and LSD, especially psilocybin, they disrupt that because, you know, other parts of the brain suddenly then, uh, come into play and the default mode network which has, you know, this disease of depression suddenly is not, you know, the calling the shots anymore. That's why psychedelics have proven effective against depression. The first study that showed this clinical study was done in 2015, actually in America at Johns Hopkins, uh, University that psilocybin helps against, you know, very severe depression when nothing else, um, helps. So we know a little bit about what happens in the brain, but obviously the brain is still a black box. That's why so many scientists, when LSD came out, um, in the, in the late '40s and early '50s, especially in America, were enthusiastic. They thought finally we have a tool with which we can, you know, shine like a torch shining into the black box of the brain-

    14. JR

      Mm.

    15. NO

      ... because it works in such small quantities. There was actually a lot of hope in the beginning that original, uh, enthusias- enthusiasm by some of us that I talked about when they thought we have a game changer, we have a blockbuster, that everyone will become, you know, will heal from LSD. Um, that... many scientists actually believed that and th- the interesting question is... and we're, like, making a long circle now, what went wrong? Like, why wasn't it developed into a medicine that you can get at your dispensary like you can get cannabis products now, for example, in the state of California? Uh, why-

    16. JR

      Well, you can get them here too, which is weird.

    17. NO

      Okay.

    18. JR

      You get them here. Like I said, there's, like, different deltas so we can get legal cannabis here.

    19. NO

      Society-

    20. JR

      They sell it.

    21. NO

      Society is still very insecure-

    22. JR

      Yes.

    23. NO

      ... when it comes to drugs because we have been bombarded with the-

    24. JR

      Propaganda.

    25. NO

      ... drugs are horrifically dangerous propa- you know, this propaganda.

    26. JR

      Well, when I was in high school was, "This is your brain on drugs." You know, it was, uh, "Just say no," Nancy Reagan.

    27. NO

      Yeah.

    28. JR

      E- everyone was just saying no.

    29. NO

      Yeah. I was, I was also in America actually in high school, I graduated from Flint Powers Catholic High School in Michigan, class of '88.

    30. JR

      Wow.

  10. 51:18 – 1:03:20

    The Nazi ‘truth drug’ project: mescaline, Dachau experiments, and the Sandoz link

    1. NO

      'Cause that's the core story because when I had found these SS records that they had used ... Because you asked before, was there another psychedelic substance? Yes, there was mescalin.

    2. JR

      Mm.

    3. NO

      Mescalin was already kind of investigated by scientists since the '20s. It was also a German ... There was a German, um, scientist called Behringer. He was really ... He was at the University of Heidelberg and he was really into mescalin. And he was, like, doing it with his students and making tests and how does it change consciousness and what happens. So he was a- he was basically one of the pioneers of psychedelic research, you could say. So the Nazis knew about mescalin and the Nazis wanted to find a truth drug. Hitler was a paranoid person. He always thought, and it's actually true, that people are conspiring against him. There, there were quite a lot of assassination attempts on his life. He survived them all. But there were a lot of people who didn't like him. I mean, Germany was a totalitarian dictatorship and most people supported Hitler but there were also people who did not. You know, there were people in the resistance, even within, you know, the army, who thought he was an idiot, uh, high-ranking officers who were like, were like a bit more brilliant than him and who knew that he was running things to the ground. So he wanted ... He gave the order, uh, to find a truth drug. Like, it's the wet dream of intelligence. You give someone a substance and then you can control that person.

    4. JR

      Right.

    5. NO

      You can extract secrets from that person. You can kind of ... Y- y- you ... That ... Y- y- you can control a person. And the Nazis, the S- the SS even with their torture methods had been unable to ex- extract all the secrets they wanted to extract from prisoners, especially Polish, uh, resistance fighters had been very resistant even against SS torture. Like, they wouldn't say, "I got the job from the British Intelligence," or what ... You know, they, they just wouldn't talk even when you tortured them. So Hitler wanted this, the drug that would solve this problem. And, um, one man that was put in charge with this is a chemist called Richard Kuhn, Richard Kuhn, um, who actually received a Nobel Prize for chemistry. He was a brilliant mind but he was a Nazi so he didn't ... Like many scientists left Germany or writers left, Thomas Mann left Germany when the Nazis took power. But some people stayed. Some writers stayed, sci- some scientists stayed. And this Kuhn actually became ... You know, he's really working for Hitler. He was developing a nerve poison, um, sarin, which was deadly for Hitler. He was ... And if you worked for Hitler as a scientist, obviously you got all the, the re- the grants you need, the money you needed. You were, you know, you had a great time basically if you sold your soul to the devil. So Richard Kuhn was in charge, um, with, uh, finding the truth drug. And, um, and then ... (laughs) And then the interesting thing is, um ... 'Cause I was in the Novartis archive, uh, of Sandoz because I wanted to find the link between a Swiss pharmaceutical company who develops LSD and then the SS who tests it in Dachau. Like, how did, how did the SS know?

    6. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. NO

      Like ... And did they really test S- uh, LSD also in Dachau or was it just mescalin? 'Cause they write in the reports that are then found in the US, "Mescalin and another odorless, colorless substance was being used."

    8. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    9. NO

      And LSD is that famous odorless, colorless substance. Like, I could put a, put a drop of LSD in your coffee, you wouldn't even m- notice it.

    10. JR

      Right.

    11. NO

      Which is good for seek- for intelligence service. You wanna, uh, dose someone without that person knowing it. So LSD was kind of perfect. But how did the Nazis ... Did, did they actually know about LSD? Was it LSD? That was kind of what I wanted to find out.And when I was in the archive of Sandoz, I wanted to find, like, papers, like did they sell LSD to the SS? And I, I wa- I was curious to find something. And the archivist, um, he was very skeptical of me because he sensed that I was onto something. Like, he was protecting basically the archive because the archive at Sandoz is not a public archive. If you go to the National Archives of the United States or the Federal Archive of Germany, it's a public archive. The archivists want you to find the information. They re- reveal, like, the find book, which, like, has ... Like, it's a database. It has ... It shows you everything that's in the archive. So you have a ... It takes sometimes days or weeks to actually figure out what's all there, but you have, theoretically, an overview of everything that's in the archive. But a company archive like Novartis archive, there was no find book. The archivist said to me, "Just tell me what you're looking for, and then I will find it for you," which is basically shit, you know? 'Cause in a way you have to h- ... It's basically under his control, the documents that he gives to you, you know? You have no ... You don't even know what's in the archive behind that guy sitting in front of you. Um, but ... And I wanted to see, like ... I knew that Albert Hofmann wasn't a Nazi. Like, I had lear- ... I had known a lot about Albert Hofmann and he ... I never heard anything about him having Nazi connections and, like, giving LSD to Richard Kuhn or something. But I wanted to see what his boss, Stoll, the one we talked about before who had the whole, like, the Ergot god. Like, who is this guy? Because he, as the CEO, called the shots for Sandoz, the pharmaceutical company. And then, um, uh, the archivist didn't want me really to see these papers. I could sense that. And, uh, I wanted to come again to the archive-

    12. JV

      How could you, how did you sense that?

    13. NO

      Well, the first time I was there, um, he said, "Why is everyone always so interested in LSD? You know, we have so many beautiful products here." And there was, like, a, a showcase with all the products that, uh, Sandoz has made and LSD wasn't one of them. I said, "LSD is actually missing from that showcase here?" And he said, "Well, it was never a product." I said, "It was a product. It actually had a name, it was called Déluzit. That was the brand name of LSD. It existed, you know?" And he's like, "Yeah, you know, but we are not so ... You know, it's illegal." And so they don't ... They have a, a difficult relationship with LSD. Um, and, um, what ... The only thing he gave me were the original lab books of Albert Hofmann. And it's very easy to flatter ... Like, it stuns you. Like, if you're interested in LSD, you see, like, the original lab book, you see, like, his handwriting, when he for the first time takes LSD, and then his handwriting, like, he can't hold the pen anymore and you see, like, this line on the paper. That's exciting, you know?

    14. JV

      Yeah.

    15. NO

      But it's not new, you know? People have seen that before, but ... So he kinda tricks you into, like, you see that, you say, "Oh, great. Thank you. Bye-bye," like, after. You go home. But then I was in this Swiss mountain, I was actually visiting a scientist that had researched this Ergot producing in, in, in the Emmental. I visited this guy on the mountain. He showed me the former fields of Sandoz. Uh, and then I had the idea, "I must go back to the archive and look at the papers of the CEO because the CEO calls the shots. Why wasn't the CEO able to turn this potential game-changer into a lucrative medicine?" What, what went wrong was probably on the, on the CEO level of the company, not on, like, the chemist level of the company. Uh, so I wrote, uh, a- an email to the archive and said, "I'm going to come back tomorrow and I want to look at the papers of the CEO." And then he wrote back to me, "Well, sorry. Tomorrow I have too much work. You cannot come anymore." Kind of like that. But I just showed up. I just showed up at the archive, and he opened and he said, "Well, you're here. Uh, I don't have any time." And I said, "Well, I'm here. You know, it's a archive, I can use it." And then I was sitting there and I was thinking, "What can I do?" And I actually ... At the time I had some LSD with me because I already, I wa- I was already getting it for my mother. Like, (laughs) so I had it with me and I, I said to him ... I, I suddenly had an idea and I said to him, uh, "Have you ev- ever actually seen LSD?" And he's like, m- in his Swiss accent, like, "No. Uh, it's illegal. I have not seen it." And then I asked him, "Do you want to see it?" And he said, "Sure, I would like to see it, but where could I see it? It's ... No one has it anymore." And I said, "Well, here, here, here you go. This is, this is LSD." And he's, like, studying it. He was quite interest- ... Like, suddenly became interested, like-

    16. JV

      Right.

    17. NO

      ... "Oh, this is actually LSD. That's how it looks?" And the LSD I ha- I had received had printed on it, like, these papers, the old logo of Sandoz. So, like, the chemist who had made this e- actually in Basel, it was made in a black lab obviously, kind of made a joke and, and b- and put, like, the logo of Sandoz on it. And sh- ... And he said, "This is the logo of our old company? How is this possible?" And I said, "Well, maybe it's, like, an homage by the chemist who made these." I said, "Do you want one?" And he said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, I give you one as a gift, you know? You've been so helpful to me." And he's like, "Oh. This ... Like, but this ... Uh, yes. Okay, I'll take one." And I ga- gave him a trip. And, um ...

    18. JV

      Uh, what is the dose?

    19. NO

      That was, like, 100 micrograms, which is quite strong, you know? I said to him, "Take-"

    20. JV

      Legit.

    21. NO

      It's legit. I th- I said to him, "Take it, like, when you're in the beautiful Swiss mountains, like, you're on a walk, you know? Then maybe it's a good time." And he's, like, interested, yeah. And then he gave it back to me. He said, "I can't, I can't ... For legal reasons, I don't think I can accept this." I said, "Okay, fine." Took it back. And then he said, "But is there something you want to see maybe today in the archive?" Because he was f- ... You know, we ha- we had formed a connection suddenly.

    22. JV

      Right, right, right.

    23. NO

      And I said, "Yeah, actually I would be interested in seeing the, the paper of the CEO, of Arthur Stoll." He said, "That's not a problem at all." And he just went and he brought me the folder. And as I'm looking through the folder, I can see that there's one man that Stoll was communicating with all through his career.And that one man, uh, he, Stoll himself had learned under Willstätter. Willstätter was the Jewish-German master of biochemistry who was later by the- s-, uh, he had to leave Germany, you know, the Nazis were prosecuting him also because he was Jewish. And Willstätter was this genius who also received a Nobel Prize and who had, uh, found out that, you know, Stoll's idea from potent plants you extract and then you make medicines from plants basically because plants are very powerful obviously. Um, so Willstätter was like the f- the scientific father of Stoll. And Stoll had one other prodigy child and that was Richard Kuhn who, by then, had been the leading Nazi biochemist. So Kuhn and Stoll, which I saw then in the letters in front of me, had been best friends because they had the sa- had had the same, like, you know, teacher. They had exchanged already in the '20s all their research, in the '30s, especially the ergot research. Kuhn was very interested in it. So now he has the job by Hitler to find the truth drug and then Stoll says, "We found this almost magical substance that even in microgram dosages has this strong effect on the mind," and Kuhn obviously became very interested in it. And I found a letter, um... Maybe we can pull that one up, I don't know if you can find it, from 1943 October where Kuhn... And I found this in the archive. This was the smoking gun basically, where Kuhn thanks, uh, Stoll for sending ergotamine, which is the precursor to LSD. It's like from ergotamine you do one step and then you have LSD and he received ergotamine in October 1943 from the Swiss company and then, um, you know, the Nazis had their hand on LSD. And then it becomes very interested- interesting what happens when the Americans find out about that because when the Americans liberated Germany from national socialism, uh, when they, when they won the war basically, um,

  11. 1:03:20 – 1:12:24

    From WWII to the Cold War: ALSOS, CIA adoption, and the birth of MKUltra

    1. NO

      certain units had, uh, attached to them the so-called ALSOS unit, A-L-S-O-S. And the ALSOS unit was responsible for finding German, uh, nuclear scientists and interviewing them about their research for the nuclear bomb in Nazi Germany because Nazi Germany was also trying to develop a nuclear weapon. And the Americans thought they're probably quite far ahead because they're good in science, like everything they do. They fucking rock. Um, which in this case actually probably wasn't true. I don't think the Nazis were so advanced. It's still a bit obscure like how far the Nazis really were with, uh, nuclear technology. Uh, but this ALSOS was in place and the second job of ALSOS was to find out about biochemical weapons because they also thought, rightly so, that Hitler had biochemical weapons. So one of their first scientists they interviewed was Richard Kuhn because Richard Kuhn was a leading Nazi biochemist. So in the spring of 1945, in liberated Heidelberg after World War II, Kuhn is being, you know, interviewed, you know. And for Kuhn it's a question of will I cooperate with Americans or will I go to the Nuremberg trial as like a war criminal? Because he could've ended up on the, on the bench for developing sarin and nerve poison. So he, you know, decided to rather extend his career. He later came to America, was teaching in America. Um, so he told them about LSD. He said, "We were very interested in LSD." And those experiments in Dachau could not be finished because there was not enough time. Dachau was already liberated. They were in the middle of, you know, finding out if I give a psychedelic to a prisoner can I extract his secrets? Can I fully control him? These, these tests take a bit of time, you know. You have to do it with several... Yeah, you know, it's, you don't do it like in a, in a day. So that these, these tests were not finished yet but these findings then were very interesting to the American, uh, military because after the war what started immediately the next war, the Cold War against the Soviet Union which was what this... Then CIA was, was founded, which CIA called, the CIA Director Dulles he call it, "This is brain warfare. It's a totally new type of war and we have to know, we have to get ahead of them and they probably are working on brainwashing techniques, um, so we have to be, you know, ready to defend ourselves against the Soviet onslaught with their brainwashing techniques." So the, the Americans learned actually a lot from the Nazis. I, I once met in Florida on the beach, uh, together with my father, uh, an SS marine. That was in the '80s when I was an exchange student in Flint, Michigan. We took a vacation, met my, my parent, my German parents in Florida and we s- we spoke with this marine and he said, "Yeah, we learned so much from the SS." And it's true. You know, the SS, the German system was a very... It was a evil system obviously, but it was, it, it was a very functional system, you know. There was a lot to be learned from them in terms of warfare, you know. Um, so the Americans because the Nazis were so interested in this truth drug thought this must be... you know, this must be interesting. We have to look at this. So they started now, first the American military then the CIA started now to investigate can LSD actually be the truth drug? Can it be like, uh, a pharmaceutical weapon? So this is, this is actually what went wrong. So what went wrong was the Swiss CO sending samples to the German Nazi biochemist. From him it, the knowledge goes to the American, you know, military and then intelligence apparatus that LSD could be abused as a weapon. This is what really put LSD on the wrong f-... a foot in a way.

    2. JV

      Mm.

    3. NO

      Because there was, there was also at the same time in the early 50s a lot of hopeful research at universities in America. Like brain scientists were, they were looking at LSD. It wasn't illegal yet, you know. It was, it was an interesting thing but the, at the... Then the CIA took over, um, the military research. First it was the M- US military. They had a professor at Harvard University called Beecher. Beecher was like the drug expert of the American, uh, Army. He had also been in the war and then he, like, he looked at the SS reports from Dachau and he made a report called Report on Ego Depressant Drugs which he sent to Washington. So he was kind of the knowledgeable guy that would interpret, you know, how could, uh, psychedelic, uh, molecules be used as drugs. And then when in '47 the CIA was founded, basically the CIA took over this truth drug research from the, uh, from, from the military, and then Beecher was sending his reports to the CIA. This was done by a guy called Sidney Gottlieb. I don't know if you've heard-

    4. JV

      Mm-hmm.

    5. NO

      ... that name. He was the head of MKUltra. MKUltra is basically, uh, a program first to see whether LSD could be used, um, as a weapon. And Gottlieb traveled to Basel, Switzerland because he had heard that Sandoz was also selling LSD to the other side of the Iron Curtain. There was rumor that the Soviet Union had purchased like 20 million dosages of LSD. So he flew to Basel with a suitcase, uh, full of cash and put it on the table of Stoll, the CEO, and said, "I want the whole, the world supply of LSD. I'm here, I'm hereby buying the world supply of LSD."

    6. JV

      (laughs)

    7. NO

      Uh, which was, he said, uh, "Your supply..." Like his intelligence like told him that, uh, Sandoz had produced something like, I don't know. It's in the book. I forgot the number. Like four kilograms of LSD and he said, "I want to buy the whole..." You know four kilograms is quite a lot, you know, because it's already potent in microgram dosages. And Stoll said, "Well, we only made 400 grams so far." (laughs) They, they hadn't even made that much, you know. But so he bought the 400 grams and he set a mechanism in place that Stoll would always inform... Stoll would not sell to the other side of the Iron Curtain. That's what, uh, Sandoz had to, you know, basically assure him. And of course, the payback is Sandoz can still sell its all the other medicines in America. It doesn't have problems with the FDA and the American-

    8. JV

      Right.

    9. NO

      You know, that's, that's the, that's the pressure.

    10. JV

      Yeah.

    11. NO

      Um, and, and, and then like s- uh, Gottlieb takes, uh, you know, the 400 gram back to the States and is now from now on always informed when like a scientist in an American university acquires, uh, LSD from Sandoz because they would not sell it openly in the beginning. They would only give it away basically to scientists. They were still in the product development phase because they still weren't sure what can LSD... Like what do we write on the package basically? What is, what's the indication? So, um, Gottlieb was basically in the driving chair of LSD at that time. He got all the information from Basel, Switzerland, who had LSD in the country. He had the most LSD and then he had the idea to really look at how LSD can be used to manipulate people basically. That was, that was like the big goal. And that's not an easy thing to achieve and, uh, the way he did it was he let all the universities in the country, I think over like, over 60 institutions, like, you know, the big universities of this, uh, big country, he let them all, you know, in their, in their special, you know, uh, uh, uh, um, uh, departments investigate LSD but these tests are expensive. And what Gottlieb, the idea Gottlieb had was... University tests are often funded by foundations, let's say the Rockefeller Foundation. Like a university wants to make like some pharmaceutical, you know, test series that goes over two years and in- in- in- involves all these, uh, uh, people that, you know, have to be paid and it's, it's, it's expensive. Like it costs like let's say $200,000 to make like one serious clinical test. So that money comes from the Rockefeller Foundation, for example and the money first goes from the CIA to the Rockefeller Foundation. So he used not only the Rockefeller Foundation but also the Rockefeller Foundation but other a- other foundations as like go-between. So he gave them money and they would finance, uh, uh, research done in universities which are supposed to be, I guess, neutral, like tr- just trying to figure out like what is... You know, science is... You know, you don't want a CIA guy to finance your science and then kind of manipulate through that money how your research is being done and especially all the results going back to the people, you know, bringing the money. So that he was, he was, uh, he was very efficient in setting up this program which then I guess was called MKUltra and, um, but that's also, that's, that's, that's, that's how LSD really... That's what really went wrong with LSD.

    12. JV

      MKUltra?

  12. 1:12:24 – 1:26:56

    Unethical experimentation and backlash: safe houses, Midnight Climax, and cultural suppression

    1. NO

      Yeah. Because it dominated a controlling force over the research and, uh, a lot of research then was tailored to... Like there was crazy stuff happening like there was... Even in Canada at a university, uh, I, I, I, I write about this in, in Tripped. This guy, and it sounds a bit like a Stanley Kubrick movie, like he, he put people on constant LSD and then had, uh, speakers under their pillows which would tell them like single sentences. Like he was, he was trying to see can you break... can you like really drive someone mad with LSD, for example? Can you deprogram a brain with LSD? So these, these are very creepy experiments. These are actually human experiments. In a way, they were a continuation of the what the SS started, um, in Dachau but much more sophisticated and they were done on American, uh, citizens. Like the M- part of MKUltra were so-called safe houses. The safe houses, there was one in, um-... the West Village in Manhattan, one on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. Um, and in these safe houses, people would be, you know, would be approached on the street or in bars, uh, in, in, in Lower Manhattan and, you know, invited to, like, a party. "Come, we want to come to, to my pad. You know, I have booze." And, and, and it was like a cool apartment and ... But there was one large mirror and behind the mirror, sa- an operative who was filming and listening in and recording. And then they checked, like, what happens to a person if they receive unwittingly a dosage of LSD. You know, so this, this is a quite unethical, um, work that-

    2. JR

      Yeah.

    3. NO

      ... was done.

    4. JR

      They also did Operation Midnight Climax.

    5. NO

      Yeah, that's in Telegraph Hill in San Francisco.

    6. JR

      Yeah. So that was a brothel.

    7. NO

      Yeah. It was ... It was an apartment. They called it The Pad. Uh, but they hired, um, sex workers, which then, you know, got an additional fee from the CIA for giving their clients from them. Also, they received a fee, obviously, and then giving them LSD. But it was kind ... I think it was a stupid, actually, uh, experiment. I mean, it's kind of spectacular. Operation Midnight Climax looks great in a film, I guess.

    8. JR

      Sounds good.

    9. NO

      Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's ... It just show ... It's ... But it wasn't very effective, you know.

    10. JR

      Right.

    11. NO

      What do you ... What do you gain? What do you see? Like-

    12. JR

      Right.

    13. NO

      Someone, of course, has a little bit different sex on L- I guess, I don't know, sex, sex on, on LSD. But it's, it's kind of stupid and it never led anywhere. Basically, Sidney Gottlieb wasted a lot of tax money and he brought a lot of suffering to people who were subjected to these unethical tests-

    14. JR

      Yeah. I-

    15. NO

      ... and he had no result at the end.

    16. JR

      It's definitely not a good thing that they did. But if you put your mind into their perspective back then, trying to understand the effects of these drugs, they probably had limited resources. And, and without making these things legal and without, like, opening up the research to everybody, to this potentially powerful life-changing drug ... I mean, this drug could be something that c- could be used by foreign governments. It could be used against us.

    17. NO

      Right.

    18. JR

      So they, they're probably-

    19. NO

      Yeah, yeah.

    20. JR

      ... very secretive in their approach. I mean, we, we kind of had the benefit of, of, uh, you know, 20/20 hindsight 'cause we're looking back.

    21. NO

      I mean, yes, it was the Cold War and, um, I think that they really believed that there are these threats from the Soviet Union, and there were threats from the Soviet Union-

    22. JR

      Sure.

    23. NO

      ... obviously. And, um, brainwashing is a, is a specialty of communism, you know.

    24. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    25. NO

      So it's, uh, it's, it's clear that they wanted to be, um ... From his perspective, it makes sense, you know.

    26. JR

      Right.

    27. NO

      So, um ... But it didn't help LSD to become a medicine because that was a time when there were no antidepressants yet developed and no antipsychotics. So I think LSD would have had a chance to actually become a very helpful medicine instead of being kind of an, an unhelpful dr- weapon because it never worked as a weapon. So ...

    28. JR

      Right. No, it's definitely unhelpful what they did.

    29. NO

      Yeah.

    30. JR

      And I-

Episode duration: 3:02:58

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