Creative Uses Of LSD When It Was Legal

Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago.
The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co-researcher James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to the nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had discovered the secret of life.Crick, who died ten days ago, aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.Despite his Establishment image, Crick was a devotee of novelist Aldous Huxley, whose accounts of his experiments with LSD and another hallucinogen, mescaline, in the short stories The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell became cult texts for the hippies of the Sixties and Seventies. In the late Sixties, Crick was a founder member of Soma, a legalise-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New World. He even put his name to a famous letter to The Times in 1967 calling for a reform in the drugs laws.It was through his membership of Soma that Crick inadvertently became the inspiration for the biggest LSD manufacturing conspiracy-the world has ever seen the multimillion-pound drug factory in a remote farmhouse in Wales that was smashed by the Operation Julie raids of the late Seventies.Crick's involvement with the gang was fleeting but crucial. The revered scientist had been invited to the Cambridge home of freewheeling American writer David Solomon a friend of hippie LSD guru Timothy Leary who had come to Britain in 1967 on a quest to discover a method for manufacturing pure THC, the active ingredient of cannabis.It was Crick's presence in Solomon's social circle that attracted a brilliant young biochemist, Richard Kemp, who soon became a convert to the attractions of both cannabis and LSD. Kemp was recruited to the THC project in 1968, but soon afterwards devised the world's first foolproof method of producing cheap, pure LSD. Solomon and Kemp went into business, manufacturing acid in a succession of rented houses before setting up their laboratory in a cottage on a hillside near Tregaron, Carmarthenshire, in 1973. It is estimated that Kemp manufactured drugs worth Pounds 2.5 million an astonishing amount in the Seventies before police stormed the building in 1977 and seized enough pure LSD and its constituent chemicals to make two million LSD 'tabs'. The arrest and conviction of Solomon, Kemp and a string of co-conspirators dominated the headlines for months. I was covering the case as a reporter at the time and it was then that I met Kemp's close friend, Garrod Harker, whose home had been raided by police but who had not been arrest ed. Harker told me that Kemp and his girlfriend Christine Bott by then in jail were hippie idealists who were completely uninterested in the money they were making.They gave away thousands to pet causes such as the Glastonbury pop festival and the drugs charity Release.'They have a philosophy,' Harker told me at the time. 'They believe industrial society will collapse when the oil runs out and that the answer is to change people's mindsets using acid. They believe LSD can help people to see that a return to a natural society based on self-sufficiency is the only way to save themselves.'Dick Kemp told me he met Francis Crick at Cambridge. Crick had told him that some Cambridge academics used LSD in tiny amounts as a thinking tool, to liberate them from preconceptions and let their genius wander freely to new ideas. Crick told him he had perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD.'It was clear that Dick Kemp was highly impressed and probably bowled over by what Crick had told him. He told me that if a man like Crick, who had gone to the heart of human existence, had used LSD, then it was worth using. Crick was certainly Dick Kemp's inspiration.' Shortly afterwards I visited Crick at his home, Golden Helix, in Cambridge.He listened with rapt, amused attention to what I told him about the role of LSD in his Nobel Prize-winning discovery. He gave no intimation of surprise. When I had finished, he said: 'Print a word of it and I'll sue.'

http://www.hallucinogens.com/lsd/francis-crick.html
 

VIDEO John Cleese: Creativity, How To Be Creative

Spring Raises Happiness Levels!

 “When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.” Ernest Hemingway, “A Moveable Feast.”

It’s springtime and for most people that means getting outside and seeing everything bloom, including us. Spring offers warmer days and lighter and longer evenings, which means we are more inclined to exercise and spend outdoor time and activities with friends.

My question today is, “How much are you doing to increase your happiness to match the renewal time of spring?

For me, I am looking at this because as crazy as it sounds, I forget sometimes to focus on what will make me happier, like being outside and seeing the amazing flower and tree blossoms right outside my door. When I am busy focusing on business and other daily tasks, I might miss that extra hour or two that I could be walking my dog on the trail. Of course work and daily eating and exercising can add happiness, but when we focus on what can bring more happiness this springtime, it can inspire us to take action on planting that garden or planning that vacation or reaching out to friends to go have more outdoor fun , or buying that new bike to take out on trails.

What is Your Gross National Happiness?
I believe Bhutan has it right. In the 1970's their 4th King mandated the state to create an environment for all citizens to pursue their ultimate goal, happiness, and declared that instead of focusing on gross national profit, focus on GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS!

I believe this spring we can have even more profit if we focus on GNH for ourselves and all the people we work, live and play with too.

According to Feng Shui, Spring Equinox March 20 begins the season of Chen relating to Family, New Birth and Fresh Beginnings.

To align with this, here are a few tips:

1. Think spring and ask, “ What do I want to grow?”

Perhaps it's to rejuvenate your garden or redo your office or spiff up your website?

2. Plant some fun activities into your life.

What can you sign up for this spring? Perhaps it’s a tennis clinic or a hiking club?

3. Make More Time For Friends and Family.

Ask who you haven’t seen all winter that you would like to get out with and renew your relationship?

Spring forward my friends!

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-in-body/201303/spring-raises-your-happiness-levels

 

7 Strange Uses Of Hypnosis

Hypnosis has many faces, which is part of its fascination as a career. It is conceivable that a single hypnotist could cover all of its facets. Some hypnotists actually combine hypnotherapy with a career on the stage but one of the most incredible things about hypnosis is all its unusual uses.
1. Hypnosis can effectively enhance memory recall, allowing subjects to experience past events very vividly, even to the point of believing that they are consciously present at these events. How far can this go? And as you may have heard, some people think hypnosis can recover memories from a past lifetime.

2. Forensic hypnosis has been used often in enhancing the memory of participants in criminal court cases, primarily with victims or witnesses to enhance the memory of the event. It was used in the cases of Ted Bundy, Sam Shepherd and Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler. In the case of DeSalvo, it was used with the defendant himself.

3. Hypnosis can induce a partial or almost complete state of anaesthesia, making subjects or patients oblivious to the surgeon’s knife, a state presumably similar to that of an Indian fakir, who can stick needles into his arm or lie on a bed of nails without experiencing pain.

4. Another, scientifically verifiable aspect of hypnosis is the ability to create positive hallucinations. When I was in elementary school, I read a book on hypnosis that claimed that the hypnotist had created, for himself, a little pink elephant that followed him around all the time. The trouble was that he couldn’t get rid of it right away. He had forgotten to suggest the possibility for removal of that little pink phantom. That really impressed me as to the potential of hypnosis.

5. Hypnosis can be used to create relaxation during contractions in childbirth. It also helps to create a positive, trusting attitude toward the labor and birthing processes. Stress hormones are eliminated that are fundamentally responsible for the pain in childbirth. Instead, wonderful endorphins that are your body’s natural pain relievers (and nature’s love drug) are elevated, thus keeping the laboring mother in a state of relaxation and having a sense of well-being.

6. One extraordinary use of hypnosis is involved with overcoming specific phobias. Phobias are deeply held unconscious fears which affect a person’s whole life and psychological well-being.

7. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of hypnosis is its ability to suggest and influence courses of action to people both inside of and outside the hypnotic trance. A suggestion given within a state of hypnosis that will have effect outside is called a post-hypnotic suggestion. These types of suggestions can have a profound and meaningful effect when trying to influence discordant habitual behaviour like smoking or gambling.

http://selfhelp.thecassiopeia.com/UsesForHypnosis.html

Psychology Of The Practical Joke: April Fools

Keep it above the belt, stop short of total humiliation and, if possible, mix in some irony, some drama, maybe even a bogus call from the person’s old flame or new boss. A good prank, of course, involves good stagecraft. But it also requires emotional intuition.
 “You want to play on people’s weaknesses or dislikes, but not go too hard,” said Tommy Doran, a fireman and paramedic in Skokie, Ill., who as a rookie in Montgomery County, Md., was lured into the station’s kitchen and blasted with multiple cream pies. “For me it’s just the sort of dark humor we use to cope with the job and each other. Nothing dangerous or illegal.”

Psychologists have studied pranks for years, often in the context of harassment, bullying and all manner of malicious exclusion and prejudice.

Yet practical jokes are far more commonly an effort to bring a person into a group, anthropologists have found — an integral part of rituals around the world intended to temper success with humility. And recent research suggests that the experience of being duped can stir self-reflection in a way few other experiences can, functioning as a check on arrogance or obliviousness.

The 1960s activist and prankster Abbie Hoffman reportedly divided practical jokes into three categories. The bad ones involve vindictive skewering, or the sort of head-shaving, shivering-in-boxers fraternity hazing that the sociologist Erving Goffman described as “degradation ceremonies.” Neutral tricks are more akin to physical punch lines, like wrapping the toilet bowl in cellophane, depositing a massive pumpkin on top of the student union building, or pulling some electronic high jinks on a co-worker’s keyboard (though on deadline this falls quickly into the “bad” category).

What Hoffman called the good prank, which humorously satirizes human fears or failings, is found in a wide variety of initiation rites and coming-of-age rituals. The Daribi of New Guinea, for example, have children make a small box and bury it in the ground, telling them that after a while a treasure will appear inside but they must not peek, according to Edie Turner, a professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia.  Invariably the youngsters succumb to curiosity — only to find a sample of human feces.

The Ndembu of Zambia have an adult in a monstrous mask sneak and scare the wits out of boys camping outside the village as part of a coming-of-age ritual in which they are showing their bravery.

“These kind of tricks are very common,” Dr. Turner said, “and they are really a way to put a person down before raising them up. You’re being reminded of your failings even as you’re being honored.”

Jonathan Wynn, a cultural sociologist at Smith College, said pranks served to maintain social boundaries in groups as various as police departments and sororities. “And you gain status by being picked on in some ways,” he said. “It can be a kind of flattery, if you’re being brought in.”

In a paper published last year, three psychologists argued that the sensation of being duped — anger, self-blame, bitterness — was such a singular cocktail that it forced an uncomfortable kind of self-awareness. How much of a dupe am I? Where are my blind spots?

“As humans, we develop this notion of fairness as a part of our self-concept, and of course it’s extremely important in exchange relationships,” said Kathleen D. Vohs, a consumer psychologist at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Vohs and her co-authors, Roy F. Baumeister of Florida State University and Jason Chin of the University of British Columbia, propose that the fear of being had is a trait that varies from near-obliviousness in some people to hypervigilance in others.

The researchers had 55 men and women play a computerized cooperation game and demonstrated that participants who felt they had been burned would go over the experience in their heads, playing out alternative versions of how they might have behaved.

“Being duped holds up this mirror to people,” Dr. Vohs said, “and may in fact show them where they are on the scale” — too trusting or too vigilant. Paranoia, too, has its costs, and it can sour relationships.

Running back the tape mentally, in this case meditating on how an embarrassing event might have turned out otherwise, is known to psychologists as counterfactual thinking. “The feeling of ‘I should have known better’ is the sort of counterfactual that serves to highlight your own shortcomings,” said Neal Roese, a psychologist at the University of Illinois. “A good deal of research has shown that these counterfactual insights can kick-start new behaviors, new self-exploration and, ultimately, self-improvement.”

Those observations may not leap to mind if you just showed up in go-go boots and an Elizabeth Taylor wig to a bogus 1970s cross-dressing party. Or if you fell for the e-mail message announcing you had won an award and should forward a draft of your acceptance speech to a supervisor.

But a good prank is, in the end, a simulation of a crisis and not the real thing. And it serves as a valuable reminder that not every precious box contains precisely the treasure you might expect.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/health/01mind.html?_r=0