Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 629: Norman Ohler

Episode Date: August 4, 2024

Norman Ohler, author, novelist and screenwriter joins the DTFH! You probably know Norman from his books, including Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany. Check out his website, NormanOhler.de, for his full catalog! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg and Duncan Trussell. This episode is brought to you by: Bilt - Earn points by paying rent right now when you go to joinbilt.com/DUNCAN Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/duncan and get on your way to being your best self.

Friends, next weekend I'm going to be at the Helium Comedy Club in Buffalo, New York. Hare Krishna, thank you God. I can't wait to see my Buffalo heads. I'll be there Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Come see me. Friends, and welcome to the DTFH. Today's guest is the author of this awesome book, Tripped. Norman Ohler. And whoa, this book blew my mind. You know, I thought that I knew the history of LSD roughly. Gets synthesized by Albert Hoffman at Sandoz Laboratories, gets bought up by the CIA,

tested in universities, and then just sort of flows into default reality and shapes the minds of so many maniacs and philosophers and artists that there's too many to name. But whoa, but whoa, after this conversation with Norman, I realized that I'd missed a very dark piece of the LSD story. Sandoz Laboratories had a pretty insane skeleton in their closet, and it looks like Norman Oehler is bringing that skeleton into the light. You're gonna find out this incredible part

of the history of LSD on today's conversation and also you should definitely check this book out. It's incredible tripped Nazi Germany, the CIA and the dawn of the psychedelic age. It's everywhere and you should order it. The writing is just amazing and Norman is so freaking cool. So everybody welcome to the DTFH Norman Ohler. Norman, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's a great pleasure actually to be here and have this long time to talk about stuff, I guess. I'm excited. You have written, like it's as though

God contacted you and said write a book for Duncan Trussell. This covers everything and It starts off Mentioning somebody who had a massive influence on me not philosophically not intellectually but chemically Picard, Pickard. He manufactured 90, what, 94% of the LSD during the 80s, 90s. And so if you were taking acid... It's probably Pickard's. Is it Pickard or Pickard?

I have been saying Pickard. Your audio book narrator says Pickard. Oh. And it confused me. No, it's it Pickard or Picard? I have been saying Picard and it's hard your audiobook narrator says Pickard Oh, and it confused me. No, it's Leonard Pickard That's how I always remembered because of Star Trek, but had to be an homage. This is also a man who goldly Boldly goes where no man has gone before. I know that can't be an accident the essence of LSD basically exactly and What a beautiful way to start this book because you also in your book talk about how insane it is that a man who did nothing more than manufacture a substance that at one point we thought was going to transform the planet for the better was given to life sentences for doing nothing and for helping me and God knows how many other people who are going through the divorce boom and needed some kind of transcendent mystical experience that maybe wasn't accessible to those of us out in Hendersonville, North Carolina or

wherever we happen to be. And so can you talk to me a little bit about the origin of this book and your inspiration? Well I mean Nietzsche said that once you've written the book you should not talk about it. Oh my god really? I'm very sorry we can't talk about it. Oh but no actually I'm... That He was an asshole. He had syphilis. His brain was cheese by the end. I mean, Nietzsche is an interesting character, but we don't have to follow him by the letter. So we will talk about Tripped.

And the big story of Tripped is that it actually was supposed to have a different title. And the other title was LSD for Mom, which in German is LSD for Mama, which was the incentive to writing this book. Because I had, I mean, I have been interested in LSD for, since 1993, when I first took it by accident in a way, and we can talk about that a bit later on. Because it's quite interesting. And it happened on an American soil in New York City. But I never thought about writing a book

on LSD. I don't know why would you write a book on LSD? I mean, right now everyone's talking about the psychedelic renaissance, so maybe it's a good idea to write an album about LSD. But I was never so pressed to do it. And then I, because there's like so many topics you can write about, but I always thought LSD is extremely interesting. So it was always like a hobby of mine somehow to take LSD once in a while or to think about it. But then I read a study from an American startup company, Illusus, I never know how to pronounce that name. I think it's Illusus, which refers to the Greek city of Illusus and the ritual of Illusus, which was the defining ritual of ancient Greece.

And a lot of people claim that hallucinogenics were used during that ritual. So that company that the American startup trying to develop psychedelic compounds into medicines, made it named elusus, self named elusus, made a clinical study that showed that low so called micro dosages of LSD are engaging with patients who suffer from Alzheimer in a positive way because it was found that LSD actually stimulates the same receptors, it's the 5H2A receptor I believe. The very same receptor stimulated by LSD that Alzheimer degenerates. So actually and this was interesting to me because my mother unfortunately suffers

from Alzheimer. I'm sorry. I mean it's a tremendous change for a family. Let me tell you that. So my father decided to and he was a former judge, he had a high position in the judiciary system in Germany and he was the typical, you know, he's very nice, liberal thinking or leftist thinking man in Germany who have a little bit different terms. But he was never really engaged in the household because he was working and my mother was the housewife

and it was a very traditional setup in a way. And now he decided to take care of her. And so he does the household, he takes care of her. Like he does everything. How old were you when this happened? How old were you? This was about nine years ago when she started the disease. And now it's obviously progressing.

The biggest frustration of my father was that there's no medicine he can give to his wife because there is none. And then when he saw that clinical study that I brought to him he said well I mean if it's so effective why isn't it available in the pharmacy? Because he believes in the system you you know, he's a law man, he's a judge, former judge. So I said, well, I'll bring you the story. And then we can decide whether you know, you want to maybe talk with mama about, you know, using LSD microdose against her Alzheimer. And he said, yeah, okay, bring me that bring me the story. And he and then he explained to me that as a judge, when he was still

working active as a judge, he's now 81, retired for some time, but he knew when he was still working in the state court. He said, you never know actually what's the truth, you know, you can't see it see it you know you only hear stories you hear story from you know lawyers and defendants and everyone witnesses they all tell a story and you as the judge you have to make like you have to understand what is the most true sounding story what is what is probably you know you have to develop an ear for story yeah so he said you better bring me a good story on LSD. And that's what brought me to this journey

of this book, Tripped. So originally the project for me was called LSD for Mama because it was all the research was all about explaining to my father why he can't give a potential medicine to his spouse. So it was quite an intense research journey that led me through archives and meetings with very interesting, also very strange people.

So that is the book trip. I love it. This thing you went through, or are going through, is sadly very, very common. When my mom was dying of cancer there had been Sorry about that. Thank you. There had been a research about CBD helping with cancer, helping with the pain, and in those days it was still illegal. CBD, now it's not. They changed the laws. But so I would have to smuggle CBD to, um, yeah, that's weird. You just want to help somebody. You're just trying to help. And she would take it and say, oh, thank you. This is

making me feel so much better. And the frustration that you are feeling is not just because anybody who has a mom who's sick wants to help their mom. the frustration you're feeling is bigger than that because you are experiencing something that is completely unjust, completely wrong, that makes no sense. And for a lot of us that just leads to a kind of confusion. The first time you take LSD, if you have a great trip, which I did when I was in high school and suddenly You know if you had a tumultuous upbringing you're experiencing peace you're experiencing Bliss maybe for the first time in your life

Well, and then you think this is illegal This this will put you to in jail five years mandatory minimum and it is such a mind fuck to have to like have an interiorized Experience that illuminates What at least to me seemed like a kind of Conspiracy that the power doesn't want us that the power doesn't want us to be this happy, this healthy. And that can send you on a real paranoid spiral. Well I call it the chemical wall in the brain that the government set up.

So there was once a wall in Berlin, now we have a wall in our brain. The government says we can only go to this point, but you cannot go further. Which actually completely contradicts the intro of Star Trek, which I quoted before, boldly go where no man has gone before. That was for me always like the Western, the free, the democratic philosophy basically. So the prohibitionist laws totally contradict that. It doesn't make sense that it's a weakness within our society because it's a contradiction that actually affects so many

areas of that society and so many people on a personal level. My father also was very very much surprised when suddenly he was at the doctor and then his neighbor called to the doctor and said, you have to come home. There's police in front of your door. And he's like, yeah, this is probably related to it. Like someone had touched his car the day before. He said, that's related to that. I don't need to come home for that. No, no, no. They insisted you come home. So he said he went home and they were actually investigating him for giving LSD to his wife, because I write about it in in the in Tripp, obviously. And he had been on national German television talking about it. Wow. But he knows he you know, he was informed, you know, he knows

the consequences. He's a man of the law. So he made that choice to be open about it. So he challenges the law. I also said, how can you as a judge challenge the law? And he said, I'm a human being. I can challenge any law that I think might be unjust. I'm willing to pay the price. so these four policemen were there and they were very very embarrassed because he's like the he's like the elder statesman of that small town kind of the local celeb you know they were like dr. Ola very sorry we have to ask you we have but we actually have a search warrant for your property okay that's OK, can I see that? Yes, that's correct.

So please come in. Came in, like sheepishly looking around. And they said, well, you said in this interview or in the book that you stored it in the fridge. Could we see the fridge? And he had just nothing in his fridge that day. So he opened the fridge and he had just he had nothing in his fridge right that day so we opened the fridge they were like okay that's enough that's enough and they retreated and then they actually they actually closed the the file again like

they dropped the case right drop the case and he was actually unhappy about it he said I was secretly hoping that I would go to court and stand on the other side. Wow. Yeah, he would have loved it because he's such an expert in the court room, you know, he's good in the room, you know. So he wanted, he really, I mean, we could, you know, that could be fictionalized actually.

It's an interesting, that could be like a short story. What a hero. Yeah, he's pretty. That's an interesting, that could be like a short story. What a hero. That's a hero. That is so heroic. What are the, in Germany, what are the laws about LSD? It's not as strict as in the US, which is kind of, US is kind of on Philippines level, so it's kind of third world shit here.

I mean, German, but still Germany follows the prohibitionist laws that were, you know, whose origins are actually a connection of Nazi Germany and the US. So we're kind of on the same level here. But at the moment in Germany, it's not as bad, I would say I, I, I wouldn't know if someone is in prison for LSD probably probably probably yeah, so it's still bad You know yeah, and my father himself had sent people to prison for drugs mostly heroin Which I think you know it's also ridiculous. You know the German that the prison there's a prison in my hometown. It's Filled with prisoners and most of them are drug offenders right the same in America. What a stupid idea to like put your put like I don't know 1% of the population behind bars or

something. Oh yeah. It's crazy. I mean it's crazy. Yeah it's madness and it's yeah but then you you this must change. We must have a revolution, a psychedelic revolution. Absolutely and you know I think it is going to change and it's going to change not in the way the ways that the hippies imagine which was that You know it would like the brotherhood of eternal love the sort of missionary LSD cultists going around giving acid to anyone This is this will open your mind. They would travel through India. You know, one of my friends India. You know, one of my friends was in India with Ram Dass, the spiritual teacher, and they were so excited whenever the Brotherhood of Eternal Love would come through because they would give, just give away LSD and they had the best asset. Or Ram Dass, the time Richard Alpert,

the LSD he brought to India to give to gurus and was created by Owsley. That was a special batch of acid that Owsley made for him. But what I'm trying to get at here is, these are academics who realized in the experience that there was something here that was maybe brand new, at least the newest iteration of something that humans have been using for a long time, that was a healing substance.

I think they thought that it would naturally spread through the world and shift consciousness or whatever. But I think the reason you're right about the psychedelic revolution is because it's going to make so many people rich. Because now that they have allowed some research to happen and they are starting to understand this could be a prescribable medication for a variety of conditions, that there's money and profit behind it. I think there would be a flowering of culture and enterprise around psychedelics that would probably transform the society and probably be very profitable for the national economy. Yeah, and that's it.

The first country that will become like a psychedelically free operating market system will have huge gains probably. Huge gains. Not only commercially, but I think especially culturally, because it will lift off a veil. Yeah. It's like on us right now that these things have always to be taken in secrecy.

So I mean, there's also something set to secrecy. And I think it actually is a human thing, because I was thinking about the other day how we originated and obviously the stoned ape theory is interesting. Do you ever feel like you're stuck in this infinite loop of rent payments just watching your money vanish into thin air? It's time to turn that rent game around and start earning some serious rewards. That's where Built Rewards comes in.

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Build points have been consistently ranked the highest value point currency by the points guy and bank rate. Earn points by paying rent right now when you go to joinbilt.com forward slash Duncan that's join B I L T dot com forward slash Duncan thanks built I lost my train of thought no well may I have I'm not on drugs what what did I where was I going this is where you're going I think where maybe where you were going. Right, the secrecy. I mean, the homo sapiens, which I call the stoned sapiens, which is actually the title of my next book. Yes! It's a New World History. The stoned sapiens, we as homo sapiens we do we'd found something that led us to have a cognitive

Revolution which took quite a long time, but we actually Created a frontal cortex and we had we had a better wiring than some of the other like the Neanderthals Yeah, or or you know apes we we became smarter over time and I think I mean then the stone ape theory says this is because we the homo sapiens found for example a mushroom this was in Africa for sure it happened in Africa yeah so what plants grow in Africa would they they also grew back then so mushroom would be plausible because with a psychedelic mushroom your consciousness does change. The wiring in the brain changes.

And if that is a known thing to a group over time, that group can have an evolutionary advantage. You know, that's a very, it makes a lot of sense to imagine it that way. So if you have other groups like the Neanderthals, which you obviously wanna keep away from the drug, you don't share that information with them. So the drug creates a cult that will be like a shame and that protects it.

And he only gives it to, you know, sapiens. If like Neanderthal is like in the line, like, you know, he couldn't be part of that ritual. So there is something said to secrecy of drugs. They have their LSD because it's secret, illegal since 1966. It has created another aura, which is an aura that is interesting. But I think it's time now that a new era actually starts where these things become legal and we can actually look at, you know, from a neutral, rational, I guess, scientific, you would call it standpoint, like people, you know, brain, like neuroscientists are actually allowed to and pharmaceutical entrepreneurs and engineers actually to work with these compounds in a beneficial way, I think that would actually be better than keeping it a cult.

Here's my cynical take on what you just said and why I think maybe never right now, maybe never, maybe always a cult. And sadly the difference between the underground that we've all experienced and the underground, in your case the anti-neanderthal mushroom underground, is that in the Eleusinian mysteries and all of the initiatory systems that had apparently some psychedelic involved in it, is there was an intentionality there, an awareness that this will open up parts of your consciousness that you have never experienced. And then an intentionality.

We're opening that up to connect you with the divine, to bring you into the next phase of your personal evolution, whereas the underground that we've all experienced was not engineered by some mystic, but it's just a byproduct of some kind of pharmaceutical fascism meaning that we're not being invited into the labyrinth or something by robed figures were were Being invited into a labyrinth by people with guns on their belts who will you will search your dad's Refrigerator because he tried to help your mom. So to me the reason I think that if there is some sort of revolution, we have a lot of fighting to do, is because one of the qualities of LSD is it seems to melt away the conditioning,

the propaganda. And you know, I don't just mean state propaganda, I mean corporate propaganda. You've ever made the wretched mistake of turning the TV on when you're on acid and you land on the news. Suddenly you see how garish and insane the whole thing is, how crazy the people delivering the bad news are or a commercial comes on and you look at it and it feels blasphemous. It feels like idiocracy or something and it's because all of what you've gotten used to has just been melted away and you're seeing things before you are conditioned and I think they've put a lot of money into the conditioning

and that conditioning holds default reality as we understand it together. And that default reality is what makes the economies of the world function in the way they do. And that's a lot of centralized power that I don't think they want to let go of. That's my cynical take on it. I mean, it would be a complete transformation actually of the society. Yes. I think in the end, society would be more healthy and more wealthy, both.

Yeah. So I don't think it's bad for capitalism. I think it might be bad for certain unhealthy structures of capitalism. So actually, we really need the psychedelic wind kind of sweeping through that. Yes. Because psychedelics, I mean I was curious because I'm also skeptical about things like, sayings like, that's what like Leary said, you drop acid and then you're like a good person

basically. So that's kind of a moral, it brings something moral into the equation. I think you can be like actually a Nazi and take acid and still be a Nazi. I agree with you 100%. Yeah. So it's not, it doesn't, there was actually one study done, but I didn't follow it whether it was so serious. And they said that they showed that psilocybin actually reduces what they called fascist behavior.

And I mean, I was curious in these things, like what actually happens in the brain. And I was fortunate enough to meet for a trip Professor Franz Vollenweide from the University of Zurich, who's in my mind, one of the leading, if not the leading, LSD scientists, because being in Switzerland, Switzerland not having signed some regulations coming from the United Nations,

also regarding to drugs and drugs research, so he could do LSD research early in the early 90s at the University of Zurich and he did brain scans of people who were using, who had just consumed LSD and psilocybin. And then he found that you call it the default reality. Well, there's a part in our brain that some brain scientists call the default mode network. It's kind of like the boss in the brain, or like the organizer in the brain, which is important. We need that to function. That's why it's there.

But we don't need it like all the time. Obviously, actually we don't need it all the time, but because what he found is that LSD decreases the energy flow to that center. So like the boss is like, just the volumes turned down like a little bit. If you take like a lot of LSD, it's like, there's

no more ego. I know. So that's, but that's quite rare. I mean, that doesn't happen. Like, if it's not like you take LSD, and you always like dissolve your ego. I mean, I have dissolved it in a lot of trips, like very, very few times, you know, you LSD is not such a crazy drug, actually. I mean, if you super, we could say overdose it, then you might have a really strong experience where you see like how the cosmos was created,

but that's not, you know, usually it doesn't happen like that, so it's a much more milder thing. So also for my mother, these effects that this Dr. Professor of foreign writer found out, they actually worked in her, even though she only took micro dosages. So micro doses you don't really feel it but you still kind of feel it and she did feel it because what she felt was, I mean, she felt that stimulation of those receptors that had been under attack by Alzheimer and suddenly her cheeks would be redder,

she would talk with us in coherent ways which she hadn't been able to do so before. And my father's like, I kind of expected it because I'm like a believer in LSD in a way but he certainly wasn't, you know, he's a man of the law. But when I came back with a story of Tripp and we decided to give the LSD to my mother and she also consented. He saw that the story is true in a way. LSD is not prohibited because it's dangerous. It's prohibited for very different reasons which we will talk about. So what actually happens in the brain? Fallenweider finds out the default mode network is lowered down and the effect of that is that other parts of the brain become more are able to become more active you know so there's also

communication between parts of the brain that usually don't communicate directly with each other they always go through the boss yeah so it's it's a very it's a very neutral thing to describe your brain is just operating a little bit differently and that creates different, like you have more sensations, you have different thoughts basically. So it's not actually an improvement of your consciousness like it but because it's a different conscious like it maybe a little bit different, very very different but you're still you you know but you suddenly

realize there's more ways to see things you know there's more ways to think about something so i would say just from looking at fallen viders work it i think it does prove and he would certainly agree i mean it proves that so called neuroplasticity is enhanced neuroplasticity is the the term used to describe like the ability of the the fluidity of the brain and the con it's constantly like Read networking the brains like constantly alive, you know, it's always looking checking out, you know learning getting nutrients It's like a living orgasm. So he Orgasm. Yeah

So I lost my train of thought again because of the orgasm. No, seriously, neuroplasticity is enhanced. That is a fact through psychedelics. And that, I mean, you could also call it healthy, you know? You just call it healthy. Or you could also say the neuroplasticity is enhanced. I mean, it's just good for the brain. It's like yoga for the brain or sports for

the brain. So and in my mother, I could like see it, she would take a drop 10 micrograms of LSD in her coffee. And then she would just be cognitively more, you know, there, yeah, certainly. And there were no after effects. I mean, the next day when you know, we didn't give it every day because you don't do that. Just with like antidepressants, I think you give it every day.

Every day. So that LSD actually comes before all this, you know, pharmaceutical shit, which obviously is one of these unhealthy structures we talked about. So once the psychedelic medicines make their way into the mainstream, you know, these medicines will lose and a lot of people who have like stock in companies, but these companies, you know, they should

also, you know, go into psychedelic medicine. That's how they can balance, you know, what they're gonna lose on the conventional side. Well, hopefully the dream here would be that the same thing happens to them that happens to any person who decides he's going to start selling LSD. The LSD dealer, I read about this, the DEA, on the DEA's website, they were talking about how you could follow the flow of LSD every year into the United States by the Grateful Dead's tour schedule. Because like the Grateful Dead, so much acid was sold and transported

from the dead heads following the dead. Like acid gypsies roll into a town. I don't think you say gypsy anymore. Whatever the right word for it, that's what I meant. They roll into a town and they sell acid to all the people who come to the shows. That acid, the sheets of acid make their way into the small towns, into the high schools, into the colleges. But what happens in the system of distribution as compared to like cocaine or meth or whatever, is the distribution system begins to break down because the dealers are getting high on their own supply. And the more they're taking it, the less they care about making money and they just wanna give it to people. And so it starts melting down our understanding of value and what matters.

And so accruing cash becomes less important than turning people on, waking people up, because they begin to recognize that there's this is this the same thing that all of us have recognized. So my hope would be that some pharmaceutical company starts testing what Hoffman said, which is, you know, he if LSD had not been made illegal, he thinks that lower doses would have been the adderall, because it apparently, he thought, it does pretty much the same thing that ADHD meds do, at very very low doses. So that's the idea.

Maybe they get lured in by the prophet and then just by it suddenly being accessible to everyone as a medicine, this natural shifting of values happens, which would bring us into the dream that we all share if we've ever had a love affair with acid. And so maybe that's the avenue. I don't know. But I don't know, but I don't want to I Have to tell you what this what blew my mind with your book and what I somehow didn't know is that the Nazis procured

LSD from Sandoz now this Sandoz being the pharmaceutical company that Hire that Hoffman worked at who synthesized LSD for the first time. Can you tell me about that? Because that really melted my brain. For some reason my version of it was Hoffman synthesizes LSD and then LSD I skipped World War II and went straight to Harvard, straight to the CIA. But could you tell me a little bit about the Nazi experiments with LSD? Yes, of course. I mean, that is actually what got the book started or what really, like, for the first time attracted me to LSD as a topic for a book was when I was researching another book

I wrote called Blitz, which is about drugs in the third Reich, which focuses mostly on methamphetamine for the German army and on Hitler's crazy drug abuse with opioids. So it was totally different categories of drugs that I was interested in. And I visited many archives for this book. And one of them was the archive of the concentration camp of Dachau and there

the archivist showed me tests, experiments done by the SS on inmates using psychedelic, hallucinogenic substances as they called it, like mescaline and then this and one other tasteless and odorless substance. tasteless and odorless substance. I was kind of interested in it and seeing the files because in Germany everything is written down also, you know, people who torture, they will write down exactly what they did basically. That's the German law for bureaucracy, I guess.

So for me, you know, I'm not a historian, but I'm I was actually a fictional writer before I started writing nonfiction. I kind of benefit from that because I go to the archives and you actually find the documents and then you're as close to the truth as you can get, I guess. But the archivist said, sorry, these psychedelic experiments by the SS here in the concentration camp of Dachau you know it's super interesting what happened there he said there in America because America

when liberating the camp um in spring of 45 you know confiscated all you know the the paperwork basically or like a lot of it because you know that is a normal thing to do I guess as a conqueror you kind of take it yeah because they wanted to start because the Nazis had this nimbus as like Germany had this like Americans thought Germans are very good in science like they have they and they did have top scientists you know for sure and the Nazi system was also you know kind of geeky about, you know, science and technology, obviously. So Americans thought that the Germans would be quite advanced in certain things, you know, also in bad things, you know. Also America learned a lot from the bad things that the Nazis developed, obviously, because they were immediately again in a war, in the Cold War against the Soviet Union, which was

not a fun war. You know, it was never became a hard war, but it was like a tense, intense conflict that way. So what was your question? I'm so sorry. So no, it might. I haven't even had a coffee. I just want to ask. We are stone sapiens.

Yes. So we all take drugs the whole day. Is it coffee? Is it sugar? And I am rude. We always need something. I should have brought you a coffee. No, no, no. That's totally fine. Or I told you to get a coffee at the hotel. You just have to tell me what I was talking about.

I can't imagine doing a podcast without any coffee. I feel like a monster. I feel like I'm the one doing the torture experiment. I should be taking notes. But what we're talking about. I was very interested in these experiments, obviously. But there was no time to find these documents because I had to go to the US. I had to finish the book Blitz. So I thought this is a new book. This is going to be, I'm just going to focus on this research. And I going to be, I'm just going to focus on this research. And I found the documents later on in America, but they're also scattered. It's a bit sketchy, you know. But what is interesting was to me, obviously,

the question that other odorless taste of substance, what was it? And I was kind of thinking, will I be able to find a connection between the Swiss Sandos company and the Nazis? Did they sell LSD already to Germany? Because they developed it in, like Hoffman found it in 38, but he didn't really realize what it was and the mice didn't notice anything. Because I mean, the mice were just chilling on LSD

and like at sundown they didn't see any effects so LSD was actually shelved first and then 43. He does it again. So how did the Nazis get it? How did they find out about it? Hoffman never had any Nazi connection. Hoffman is pretty much written about. He's world famous, you know, he's Albert Hoffman.

So when I visited the Novartis archive to find out, you know, is there a Nazi link or, you know, did they buy it? Maybe just from Sundance. I wanted to see, I wanted to find that out. The archivist was a bit skeptical because he was like kind of protecting his archive. So and he doesn't like you know, his company to be in bad, you know, to have like bad things written about which is weird because all for example, the German Bayer company openly says yes, we invented heroin, we marketed it and then we were you know,

yeah, so they are open about it. But Sandro's Novartis. But the archives, you know, still I could use it and I saw many things he gave me like the original lab book of Albert Hoffman with his handwriting in it and that's obviously very impressive and you see like when he takes the first self dosage of 250 micrograms because he's curious what this is you know and at the time they took you know the chemists took it themselves yeah so he takes the lowest dose he can imagine where he would have any effect and that's actually quite a high dose Oh, because he didn't know how potent it was So then his marker kind of like his pen and it goes down like he can't write the left like he wanted to like

Accurately write about what happened like the self experiment documented and then he couldn't so that's fun to see But I I thought then I went up on the mountain at night to visit a Swiss scientist who lives in the mountains and who specialized on the topic of where did Sondos actually get the ergot from because Sondos was making all its medicines from ergot, an anesthesia ergot based medicine or compound you could say. So they actually started in the late 30s to grow ergot in the Emmental in Switzerland which was kind of insane because ergot had been like the enemy of the farmers because it poisons the rye.

It's very poisonous you know if you if you harvest rye there was some ergot in it there were mass poisonings in the Middle Ages in Europe when people didn't realize yet that ergot is so dangerous. So Sundus was actually making this ergot professionally to produce its ergot-based medicines. And they made a lot of money with like a migraine. Ergot is very potent. You can make great stuff from it.

LSD being one of them, but you can also make like a migraine medicine. And there was a medicine against bleeding in childbirth. So they made a lot of money actually on ergots. That's why they had to manufacture it in Switzerland and convince the farmers to now grow the poison basically. And at night I was there with this guy, we were talking about LSD,

and then I realized I have to go back to the archive because I need to see the papers of the CEO obviously, because the CEO calls the shots, not the chemist. The chemist's not gonna have the connect. You know, he's just the chemist, he made LSD. You know, it's a product of the company. So I went back to the, and I wrote at night an email to the archivist, and he replied

that I shouldn't come the next day. Wow. You know, because he was busy. Oh, shit. Yeah, and he, you know, it has to be taken seriously in Switzerland. If someone is busy, he's busy. Right. He has an important thing to do.

Right. And I should please respect that. Very important. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by my dear sponsors at Squarespace. Friends, Squarespace is a toolbox that you can use to make a beautiful, powerful website like DuncanTrustle.com. Go check it out. For seven years in a row, it has won the global Golden Apple website beauty pageant. Every year, some website thinks they're going to beat it and they don't and they cry. But thanks to Squarespace, I get to have a pageant site. I get to enjoy showing my children my

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It's squarespace.com forward slash Duncan use offer code Duncan to get 10% off your first order of a website Or a domain. Thank you Squarespace And I didn't respect it. I thought, no, I thought art is more important. Yeah. And I went there and I, you know, I was at the archive and he was like, but you're here again. No, what are you doing here? And then, um, I mean, I sat down and he gave me other stuff to kind of distract me. Like he gave me the letters, the exchange between Alters Huxley and Albert Hoffman, which is, you know, great. You know, I have these letters, like these between Alters Huxley and Albert Hoffman, which is great. I have these letters, like these two people talking

about LSD, but it's not what I wanted to see. I wanted to see like CEO stuff. But he said, no, sorry, I can't pull that up. That's too time intensive, whatever. And then I had to pee and I went through the archive and there was an old flag of Sandos hanging on the wall. Now the company is called Novartis obviously but you know it's basically they swallowed Sandos and another company so the old logo of Sandos was still hanging

on the wall and it reminded me of something because a day before a friend of mine had given me LSD in Zurich and like the design on the LSD that he gave me was exactly that same old logo. Yeah. Like the chemist in Basel, who had also been made in Basel, was like paying an homage to Sandro Zanés, put that on there. I was like, okay, wait a minute. And I went to the archivist and I said to him, have you actually ever seen LSD?

And he's like, no, I have not. It's illegal. And then I said, well, here it is. You can see it. And he's like, whoa. This is, but why does it have the old logo on it? I don't know. For him, it was like, became very interesting all of a sudden.

It's so funny. And then I said, would you like to have some of it? And he said, but I don't know. I said, you can archive it, I said, would you like to have some of it? And he said, but I don't know. I said, you can archive it, I said. Then he was laughing. But he couldn't take it for legal reasons. But suddenly the ice was broken. And he didn't think anymore that I was like,

because he has a lot of weird researchers there. They're all focused on LSD. And some might be a bit over- focused, conspiracy theorists, whatever. So he's a but then we kind of we kind of had a struck a chord and so and then he said do you want to do you want to see something? I mean you came again you know and I said sure I want to see the papers of your CEO of Artur Stoll. It's not, yeah, I can do that. I still have time. And then he brought me the papers and then I looked through the papers

looking for the smoking gun, what did the CEO do? Why wasn't he able to put LSD on the market? Because when LSD was developed within the company, they were very optimistic about it. I mean, they didn't know what it was in the beginning, obviously, you know, because no one knew what it was. Hoffman was surprised himself suddenly to be tripping because, you know, this was the first trip, so how do you know it's a trip, you know, he thought he

would go insane, you know, but then, and you don't know when you're coming down. He does not get enough credit for that because anyone who's taken acid at some point will think I'm never coming down. and if you're with someone who's taking acid they'll say don't worry you'll come down. The first LSD trip you don't know you don't know what you've done to yourself you don't know. Yeah that's a problem because we don't have education about it I mean this should be taught in high school. Yes. LSD trip takes this long you're not supposed to take it if you have these and these conditions be very careful. Yes. MaybeSD trip takes this long. You're not supposed to take it if you have these and these conditions.

Be very careful. Yes. Maybe even the teacher should take it with them. I don't know. Maybe it should be 18 years old. Favorite day in class, acid day. Maybe that should be a public acid day actually in the United States.

People just chill out for a moment. This nation is so tense. It needs so bad like a trip or a massage or like a vacation. And a trip a trip a massage a trip would be a trip would be very good a trip would be very good. So um I mean I was looking and I finally had it in front of me the papers of the CEO and I was looking through it and um I was looking through it and then I realized that there's one person that he communicated with the most and that person's name is Richard Kuhn. He's a German biochemist and they had been such good friends because they had had the same teacher that was Wilstetter, Jewish-German God of biochemistry in the early 20th century and receiver of the Nobel Prize, Wilstetter, Jewish-German god of biochemistry in the early 20th century and receiver of the Nobel Prize, Wilstetter.

He was this bearded gentleman that was like the brainiac, knew everything. His idea was you can do synthetic chemistry obviously, but you can also do organic chemistry. So he was for that. He said that the plants have such potent alkaloids in them. That's where we get the best medicines. And both Kuhn and Stoll, they both learned this from their master. And Stoll did this at Sandos.

Like he said, the plant I'm going to focus on is ergot. And he made all these. Novartis today is based on ergot. It's based on Stoll's ergot research. And Kuhn was today is based on ergot based on stolz ergot research and kuhn was also very interested in ergot you know they they were communicated a lot about about it because it's complicated research because ergot is so poisonous like to extract really to really get you know to really turn it into a potent medicine is not easy and still was the first one to be able to do so and you know kuhn helped him a lot because they were both geniuses having learned from the genius.

And the thing with Kuhn, the problem with Kuhn was that he decided to stay in Germany when Hitler became the Fuhrer. A lot of scientists left. Jewish scientists basically had to leave at one point in time, or they were put in camps. But also non-Jewish Germans, a lot left. Also artists left, like Thomas Mann, he got the fuck out of there. He was at the time when Hitler took power, not in Germany.

I think it was in Switzerland. He didn't even come back because he would have been, he didn't want to end up in a concentration camp. And in the beginning, the concentration camps were filled with leftist intellectuals. So it was... But Kuhn decided to stay because he loved Hitler. That was a movement that he supported.

It was a new national movement that he thought would be good. And I guess he was also an anti-Semitic because national socialism is always obviously anti-Semitic, openly anti-Semitic. So if you are a Nazi, you're basically an anti-Semitic, openly anti-Semitic. So if you are a Nazi you're basically an anti-Semite. So I guess he was one, which you know many were I guess at the time. He was just one of them. So he worked for the system, you know, he was quite successful obviously because he got funding and he he ended his, like when he gave a lecture to students at university, like he

sometimes would end with like Heil Hitler, which was started like when he gave a lecture to students at university like he sometimes would end with like heil Hitler which was started like so he would be also a bit open about it like not super open but he would like show that he was part of the system. Heil Hitler is pretty open. Yeah but he wouldn't say like all the time like there's. Once is enough. Yeah once enough he's a Nazi basically Yeah. Once enough. He's a Nazi. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Once enough. Yeah. Absolutely right. Uh but for this wasn't a problem like Stolk continue to communicate with with the Nazi scientist

and also sharing the knowledge and then when in forty-three they had the most potent substance ever found up until this day that works on the mind, not on the body. I mean, Sanders was interested in finding medicines for the body, basically. They didn't even think about the mind. And one of these ergod medicines suddenly was for the mind. It was LSD25, lysergic acid diethylamide. mind. It was LSD 25, lysergic acid diethylamide. And 25 was because it was the 25th like ergot medicine in that in that series. And so then it ends up in a concentration camp. I mean that is the this well. No, no, no, that that's exactly what happens because I see them that they they discuss this this very potent substance and then I see a letter dated I

Think I sent that to you. Maybe we can pull it up Or maybe no, I did send that you sent some PDFs for sure Well, it's a smoking gun basically showing that Richard Kuhn received From The Swiss company Ergotamine and right agota means a precursor to a st. That's a bit weird like And Ergotamine is a precursor to LSD. That's a bit weird. Like Stoll didn't send LSD, he sent Ergotamine.

So Kuhn could make his own LSD. Maybe he wanted that, I don't know. Probably wanted it. I mean, I spoke to Leonard Picard about it. I said to him, I asked him in New York in a cab, what do you think Richard Kuhn did with Ergo Thammin in 1943? Because 1943 was a year when the Nazis were feverishly searching for a so-called truth drug.

Because Hitler was paranoid, obviously. He thought anyone would want to kill him, basically. And there had been many people, many assassination attempts against Hitler. By the way, shout out to Blitz this is the book before this where you give this incredible history of meth Nazis and how Hitler we everyone knew Hitler was like on something but like I don't think anybody until they read your book knew how high Hitler was all the time. you how high Hitler was all the time. Yeah, I mean, I studied the notes of his personal physician, which are in the Federal Archive of Germany. And these, these notes are very extensive, like Morel, that was the name of the

personal physician, was also a bureaucrat. Like he wrote down every, you know, not every, but most injections he gave to Hitler and also describing Hitler's mood and mood change and change in thinking and what decisions he took after like taking cocaine and stuff. It's quite interesting and it's very strange that no one had ever really examined this, you know. Basically anyone can find this who goes to the archive and says, I want to see the papers of the doctor

But I can last 40 years like only four people checked it out even though even though Hitler is the most researched person Right in human history. So that was That that's kind of the story of blitzed. Yeah, which we didn't bring today. We should have brought it also, but people can find yeah But let's let's stay let's stay with with Tripp and what what actually went down. So I asked Leonard Picard, what do you think he did with Ergo Tamin Kuhn that he received? He received quite a lot. And Picard said he would only do LSD. I mean, that's it's very easy to make. And the Nazis were looking for the truth drug, because they wanted to identify who might be a traitor, who might plot against Hitler. They also wanted to extract secrets from prisoners.

Especially Polish resistance fighters had been resisting torture by even the SS and the Gestapo. They couldn't get to the information. So the idea was maybe there will be a drug and when Stoll reported from Switzerland we found the most potent, which is you know LSD is extremely potent, it became very interesting to Kuhn you know and so I conclude that other odorless and taste the substance that was used because then they set up the tests in Dachau was LSD, which was not named to keep it secret. Right. It's mescaline and another stuff and he just received that from the company that makes it, you know. So that is the Nazi...

It's kind of the Nazi chapter of this strange being called LSD. Like it was a Nazi. Like it was, you know, what they did was in Dachau, they slipped it into coffee. And it also had, LSD has the advantage over mescaline, which they also use. Mescaline is bitter. So the inmate or the test subject that drink, it's hard to give it unwittingly.

Like, why is my coffee so bitter? But with LSD, you don't notice it. So LSD is the perfect, in that sense, the perfect drug for a police officer or intelligence officer. But the thing is, then I read one report of what one prisoner said when he had a trip in Dachau. I mean, imagine being a concentration camp inmate, tripping on something that someone gave you without really telling you. Because they would give it to you and then the SS guy would say like after half an hour I know that your mind is like he would fuck with his mind basically. So they developed, they try to develop kind of this kind of brainwashing like really evil. evil you know yeah that was that was that was the SS experiments in Dachau in

response to was Kurt Plötner that's the name of the SS doctor for him it was just science you know yeah like he wasn't a taught he didn't think of himself as torturing like he was you know but they were using your inmates not they didn't consider them human you know right it was subhumans yeah so that's that's very grim that's these are uneth you know, they were subhumans. Yeah. So that's, that's very grim. That's these are unethical experiments and they were supposed to be tried also included in the Nuremberg trial. But in the end they weren't which is also what I talk about in Trip.

Why weren't they? Because something happened when the Americans liberated southern Germany, they liberated Bavaria, Dachhausen, Bavaria, close to Munich. They found the SS reports. And then they moved higher up and they liberated Heidelberg. And in Heidelberg was Richard Kuhn. And American forces had special units with them called ALSOS and they were responsible to capture and interrogate or interview you could say or talk to German scientists in regards to the German nuclear bomb because America thought Germans would have probably been quite far being such good scientists as they are. And they had a nuclear program, but it's still kind of obscure how far they were, actually were.

But the Americans didn't know that, so they created this Alsos unit to find those people. And they interviewed them, and some of them then came to America in Operation Paperclip. So this kind of starts with Alsos. And Alsos also had to look for scientists who were knowledgeable about biochemical weapons. So Richard Kuhn became like a prime target for them. And you know, these were probably very, you know, nice conversations as we are having them now. They were like, tell us all about it.

What did you work on? And if you tell us what you worked on, you're not going to be put on the in the Nuremberg trial seat, you know, that you can maybe even continue your career in America because we value People with a mind, you know, so that's that's that is so dark That's the mind fuck of the Americans with them with the Nazis, you know, and a lot of scientists obviously, you know took it You know and Kuhn took it and he spilled the beans also many things like biochemical like he developed a nerve poison So you know tell you know how that is made, you know, so he was very valuable client. And then when he talked about LSD immediately, a general, his name is mentioned

in trip, but I don't remember his name or don't, but doesn't really matter. He came flying from the US. Heidelberg was the headquarters of the United States forces because it's so beautiful and it's in the center of Germany. It was undisturbed. They didn't bomb it because they wanted it to make it there, you know, the new like fairy tale Germany, which it is, you know, so that's an interesting time, the Americans in Heidelberg. So he comes to Heidelberg, speaks to Kuhn, Kuhn tells him what LSD immediately takes a train not to Basel but to Bern, which is the capital of Switzerland, which I think is a bit strange.

But maybe he didn't want to meet Stoll in Basel at Sanders. Maybe he wanted to be like a little bit away from it. He also was dressing in plain cloth, which was quite unusual for a general at that time to do that. Very weird. His wife kissed him goodbye at the station, like why are you wearing plain clothes? He received LSD not from Arthur Stoll, the head, the CEO, but from his son, Werner Stoll, who had become by the time an LSD researcher,

and who had done like a therapist. He had given LSD for the first time to patients in a psychiatric ward at Zurich University with very good results like he cured like people of depression and all these reports I also studied for tripped so he was like an LSD expert his father, you know head of the company He does LSD research So he meets the general file his father didn't meet the general. And he gives the general LSD, so America then has LSD,

like the actual LSD. Nuts. And then the American military becomes somewhat interested in it, also as a truth weapon. But I mean, there was a lot of things going on at the time, but they were interested in it, and they hired a Harvard professor called Beacherer. Yeah Beecher. Beecher. Beecher who did work with Kaczynski who became the Unabomber. That Beecher right? Beecher. I don't know

I'm not a Unabomber expert. Oh my god it fits into your it fits into this timeline in the most sinister way ever because and I could be wrong Beecher was working with the OSS and Beecher In the OSS was interested in the exact same thing that the Nazis were apparently which is how do we interrogate people? Yeah, what's a good interrogation? They were using sodium penethol, but they this so whoa This is the missing link for me. So this is nuts Yeah, this is a missing link that I tried to present and tripped because we all know there's LSD and suddenly it's with the CIA But what happened? Oh my god, this is bigfoot. This is because because it's so crazy because Beecher Kaczynski's in Harvard. He got there on a math scholarship and

that he Somehow gets enlisted by Beecher who is doing experiments that I don't think he revealed to anyone especially not Kaczynski that these are being funded by the OSS and the experiments probably and this is pure speculation but after hearing what you said, were taken from Nazi research that they had already discovered. Anyway, it was about humiliating people, potentially, we don't know for sure, but potentially giving them LSD and deconstructing their personality. Kaczynski goes on to become the Unabomber.

Like so many people left Harvard during that time who went on to become notorious people and It's this is the it's crazy when you think about that this the the the trajectory of LSD moves out of Dock out to Harvard to Beecher to Kaczynski to Leary to Al, to Beecher, to Kaczynski, to Leary, to Alpert, to all of us. And wow. I mean, this Beecher, he had been like the drug kind of expert of the military also in the war.

And then they sent him these SS papers from Dachau. He was the man to evaluate them. And what he did was he basically continued. He continued in Harvard with Americans. And he wrote reports that I also studied. One was called Report on Ego-Depressantant drugs because that's what it was all about to depress basically destroy your ego which is you know the beautiful thing that LSD does that is what that it lowers the the default mode network thing but that is that is

something you do voluntarily you know right so the idea to use it as a weapon is like enticing for a warrior or a bad person or whoever, you know, an American cold warrior at the time or in the system, you know. So it's interesting for them to really look at this LSD. And but the military, you know, they were into it. But then who really was into it was actually then the CIA. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by BetterHelp. I don't think people realize that when they go on social media, it's a little bit like taking a big cup of water from a river out in the forest when you're camping. Maybe it'll be okay, or maybe you'll be shitting your pants for the next four months.

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash Duncan to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dotcom slash Duncan. Thank you, Better Help. Then comes another character onto the stage which really gets fascinated by LSD and this is Sidney Gottlieb who was working for the CIA and who was the head of the infamous MKUltra program, which has been written about,

but I still kind of looked into it because I wanted to you know to you know understand what actually come what did he do that comes from the Nazis like how is that like that that's like that origin yeah you know of the evil LSD research you know kind of also when also kind of informs then your understanding of what Gottlieb did and I mean It's pretty crazy that he would do these unethical human experiments Then not only at Harvard like he expanded it to the whole of the country Yes, like he created safe houses in New York and San Francisco where like people were invited to midnight climax

Yeah stuff like that. So that's Yeah, I mean it's interesting Interesting this is crazy because here's okay here's what I'm so I'm an LSD nerd I guess you could say but this fills in so many blanks for me because we know that the story before your book that this is a story probably most of us have heard Hoffman Synthesizes the LSD LSD gets shelved. He self ingests bicycle day bicycle day The then it just jumps right to the United States skipping over Concentration camps and in the story about it jumping. I mean it's Hoffman's decision also because he wrote a biography,

autobiography, LSD, my problem child. My problem child. And he doesn't talk about this. He jumps also because he doesn't want to get into it because it's very political and he was in a constant fight with stole about this basically I don't blame him because I think he recognized his problem child was gonna grow up to be a very like wonderful person but and so he didn't want to darken it even more but I think it's so important this this piece of the puzzle but it was already sinister anyway. I mean, come on. Here you have this incredible ego-depressant, as they were calling it, reduces or eliminates

the default mode network. And then, you know, if you look at Leary's Circuits of Consciousness, a lot of people aren't even aware that Tim Leary was like a great scientist and wrote some very interesting theories about the evolution of human consciousness. You know, and so Leary's, and this is paraphrasing, because I'm an idiot so I have to paraphrase everything. You know, people say, let me dumb this down for you. That's all I can do is dumb things down. But Leary's idea was essentially the mind is like, in Game of Thrones, the king sends the letter, stamps his seal into the wax. This is the brain, the neuroplasticity,

stamped into the wax of the human brain, of any of us, is the imprint of our parents, our culture, and a lot of propaganda. LSD melts the wax allowing for a new imprint, so meaning that the integration period was very important because after an LSD trip your brain is like waxing. Well it's the neuroplasticity that goes on for quite some time after the trip. Yes. The trip doesn't stop, basically. Your brain is still.

Right. This is why, after a great LSD trip, don't watch Charles Manson interviews on YouTube, which I like to do on acid. And I do recommend that. But my point is, based on that, and this is, I don't think anyone is like, other than Leary, has written about it.

No one's tested that theory in the way Leary probably would have liked it, like a test. I don't know. But based on that, you really do have a very desirable substance if you are interested in mind control. Because if I can not just interrogate you, but re-imprint your mind with some new system, then I can now control you. I could theoretically let the fish go, let you go back into your culture wherever, and this is where the Manchurian-Canadian-born identity bullshit comes in. as the continuation of some of the most horrific unethical fucked up experiments that are on record in a concentration camp. Wow! What a shadowy

history, what a skeleton in the closet that you have discovered here. Right, it's LSD skeleton in the closet. Woo! I mean, really before, people at Sandos, they opened what they called a Rauschraum, which was an intoxication room for their employees to try out LSD. And they didn't have any negative conception of it. For them, it was something that our colleague, Albert Hoffman, has developed. And so they of it. For them it was something that our colleague Albert Hoffman has developed. And so they took it. They were sitting there and they were talking about their experiences to a secretary. These reports are all there. I quote some of them in Tripp

and they were like, this is so great. I feel relaxed. I understand myself better. So that they... This is in Dachau. No, this is in the this is in Basel in the in the in the company. Oh, I'm so sorry. I got confused. I thought you said in Dachau. They had this trip room. And well, I mean, actually, it's good that you mentioned because what happened in Dachau and then I'll go back to Sandor's at first we finish with Dachau that story. This Kurt Plötner, this SS doctor was actually not so happy with his LSD tests because like the one report I read was the guy who had received it and it's a very bad setting to be in a concentration camp.

The worst. And a very bad set also, you know, it's a very... Set and setting. So it's not good to take a trip there. But he still had a good trip, this inmate, because he was suddenly like he understood, you know, there's something greater than what I experience right now. There's a future. I'm connect... even when I die, he lost his fear of death. Wow. So he had a good trip in the concentration camp. Wow. Which was obviously not what the SS wanted.

They didn't want the inmates to become like self-fulfilled human beings. Yeah. So it's kind of funny that, and kind of telling also, this report by this inmate. And similar was, and these self-t tests were done by employees

by sanders around the same time actually around the same but obviously they didn't know anything about the concentrate i mean they knew that there's bad things happening in germany but they didn't know their psychedelic experiments in the concentration obviously didn't know they were there you know they were you know switzerland was you know not involved in World War II. There's the island of peace in the middle of total chaos. So they find LSD in 1943 and then they give it to the bookkeepers and secretaries and came in. They could all come to this Rauschraum, this intoxication room, which is kind of funny

to imagine how it looked. I couldn't find a description. Like did they have maybe a vase with flowers on there? But like one guy looked out the window and he saw the clouds and he said, so beautiful. I've never realized how beautiful the world is. And so they all had very good experiences. That's why Sandor thought this is a game changer.

Like this could really help, especially in a situation where you have a global war, which will, you know, at one point end and will have so many people traumatized, you know, obviously. So then what do you need when you're traumatized? You need help, you know, therapy. You know, they thought, you know, maybe this is a therapy that you can just take, you know, which it is, you know, at least, you know, now we kind of tend to think that this actually is is like that and and Hoffman so Hoffman was very enthusiastic about the psychedelic compounds I found a memo in the archive of Novartis where he writes to Stoll it's like one and a half pages it's quite elaborate like how he wants to transform the company of Sandos he wants to transform it into a psychedelic

Pharmaceutical company that will examine you know not only LSD but other molecules other can you know? Everything the whole field we gonna We're gonna be the creators of these new types of medicines that will basically heal the world With the power of a pharmaceutical you know giant you know and still rejected it oh Stoyle Stoyle what the fuck man you're sending it off to the Nazis you're like fuck you Hoffman I think I mean in my book stoll is the evil character I guess or the antagonist ah and I don't know I mean he was doing weird he apparently he was not taking LSD himself. Clearly. So he was not understanding.

He was not feeling it, I guess. For him it was just a liability. And he had been visited by the CIA by Gottlieb, who had, you know, when Gottlieb received the report from Beecher on ego-depressing drugs, because Gottlieb's job was to win the brain war. And CIA, CIA director Dulles had declared this is the biggest threat at the moment,

Soviet Union Cold War, brain warfare, war of minds basically, which was the free world against the communist world basically. So, and when Godlieb read the report on ego-depressing drugs that you know you can really you know fuck with a person like that's what Beecher you know concluded after his human experiments exact words in Harvard he really he really thought it's dangerous that a

Swiss company makes the stuff like we don't have control over them they might even sell it to the Soviet Union. Then there was the rumor, which never proved true, that the Soviet Union had purchased like 20 million dosages of LSD from Sandoz. So Gottlieb got very, he was alert, you know, what if they really develop before we do it basically. So he flew with a Suitcase full of cash. He flew to Gaza. I think it was

$200,000 not that well, it's quite a bit in 1950 or something and he put it on the on the table And he said I want to buy the world's your world supply. Just give me everything You have made like the head in for me you have made like four kilograms that's that my you know that I think you know let's do it and then story said no we haven't made four kilos we made 400 grams only your numbers are not correct here I'm sorry and then I said well then give me the but we can increase production for you so I said we can make 400 a week if you, if you need it. So Stoll and Gottlieb, they came to an agreement and I'm pretty sure that Gottlieb also used a bit of, you know, using, you know, the, the, the, the, the strong ties between the CIA and the FDA the FDA being the body that you know allows for any company To have like a medicine on the mark like it's good to not be against the CIA if you want to make business in America

Hey, so star understood that that was for him more important. He because he was the CEO sure He's not a psychedelic. You know, he didn't believe in Hoffman's idea. He didn't want to save the world. He wanted to make money Yeah, so he said let's just you know, L, let's just, you know, shove it to the side. You know, let's, let's not make trouble with this, with our LSD that, that's a crazy Hoffman, we're going, we're going to do our normal business and they made very successful business. It became, it was an affluent working company. So Stoll was a businessman.

Right. So that's the, that's the old school capitalism capitalism I guess. Well yeah, old-school. Do you think Hoffman knew that the CIA that they came and purchased all that? He must have known right? Probably, I think so. Especially if they ramped up production, you would have known. I mean that I visited the company now. Now it's a big company but they also showed me like the original building where the LSD production was. And the whole company was much smaller in the 50s. So everyone knew.

I mean, not everything, but I don't have proof that Hoffman knew this, but I think it's quite weird. He doesn't mention it at all in his book. I think he kind of just collapsed in front of this. He was fighting a lot for it actually for quite some time. I mean, they wanted to put it on the market. They were thinking of what should be the brand name, so he was making suggestions.

And he was very into it. He was devastated when LSD, his greatest invention was shelved basically. I mean, they still, and Sandos would still supply it to researchers. That's what they did until 66 when President Nixon illegalized LSD. Yeah. Until 66, researchers could request LSD from Sandos and would receive it. But the CIA requested that they were always in the know of, you know,

Who? Gottlieb. Godlieb was sitting in his office in, I think first Washington CIA was first in Washington before it moved to Langley. So he was sitting there and he basically knew the story. Like he knew who was researching what, you know. Well, okay. This is something I've heard about the CIA,

which is really quite interesting that that so you're at a university and Suddenly there's funding for something now. It's coming from a company You know with some acronym for a name you don't know too much about it But there's a lot of funding to do this study or that you have no idea you're working for the CIA You just think it's so you it's a company company. That was Godly's genius idea, actually. Right. His evil, like his devilish idea, was to manipulate American universities, which

should be for free. You should do free scientific research, but I guess that's an illusion, that scientific research is free because there's money behind it. It's the same with movies. You have money behind it, so you can't make actually what you want to make. That's right That's a bit of literature. You can write whatever you want

But you don't you don't need a producer to write a book. This might be getting a little too esoteric But this is what your story reminds me of Persephone Persephone get this is LSD Persephone is has to spend like what is it? Like half a year with Hades in the underworld and then spring comes. This is LSD. It spent some time in the underworld in Hades in the power structure and you know because it represents you know Persephone at least spring it doesn't matter how dark and dead things may seem eventually the flowers start growing and this is the story of LSD it they couldn't suppress it They that's the paradox of Nixon. That's the paradox of all of this is that the

The intent of all of the men who were manipulating lying deceiving who were manipulating, lying, deceiving. It wasn't strong enough to control this thing. They got into the universities and then suddenly just like, it's like on a national level, the power structure experiences what they experienced in Dachau, which is like, wait, what the fuck? Like no, this isn't't this wasn't our intent We wanted to find a way to white people's Yeah, psyche or

Interrogate people and now you have Tim Leary marching around saying turn on tune in turn on drop out now You have people saying money doesn't mean anything and God help us all people are saying like love is the most important thing Fuck this and then Nixon Nixon steps in and Creates the psychedelic dark ages right now. It was Nixon unfortunately Wow, I mean His aid later said that they were really trying to go against the peace movement because they were doing a war in Vietnam. I'm against the peace movement. Imagine saying that. They said we couldn't really arrest someone for going to a rally because it's kind of a democratic right.

But we could make drugs illegal that those people would use and then we could arrest them. Right, exactly. And because of the... And we're still at this place, unfortunately. You know, in book burning, the Nazis did book burning. Anytime book burning is happening, the censoring of information, anyone with any sort of clear rational mind sees that as like the beginning of fascism. You eliminate the data set. If you eliminate the data set, then theoretically whatever was threatening you in that data set will just disappear. But because we have yet to acknowledge that LSD, mushrooms, all of these things, what does it, McKenna call them? Oh my god, it's the best. Again, dumbing it down.

A communication from nature. A communication from the planet that mushrooms, that marijuana is, cannabis is in fact one of the ways that the plant, the vegetable kingdom communicates with humans and knowing that LSD has its roots in biochemistry and something growing on wheat that used to be a basically basically a mushroom basically a mushroom uh so to me um the prohibition on of LSD was really a kind of national book burning.

It was a book burning, but not of an obviously of a book, but of a data set stored within that compound that has its roots in nature. And so they burned the books that these people were reading that was inspiring a lot of the peace movement. It was censorship, but because it was making a chemical illegal, nobody saw it as that. And it was more tolerable that you could just say, oh yeah, that chemical is bad. If it were a book about love and peace, it would be a different story. Yeah, I never thought about it as a book burning.

It's a fucking book burning, man. And they're still doing it and they're burnt they they they're blocking the authors in jail Pickard Picard you know that's a he wrote a lot of books that many of us read and they threw him in jail yeah I don't think I don't think democracy and prohibitionist laws go very well together well not if it if it's a real democracy, but if you want to pretend you have a democracy, I guess if you want to do make-believe, ren-fair style democracy. Maybe in a pseudo-democracy. Pseudo-democracy, yeah, then it all makes sense. But in an actual democracy, and especially, I would imagine. But how do we get to that point with that political system? It's very difficult.

Well, I think it's like, you know, this is the most lazy hippie way to answer that question, but how do you make spring happen? You know, how do you end winter? Spring just fucking happens. The flower grows from the concrete. You know, maybe this is what we can at least like place our dreams on.

And then simultaneously keep writing books like this, illuminate the story of why. Just give the why, and everything else will follow. Because once people, my god, don't you remember? You probably didn't experience the propaganda we did in the West. But there was something floating around in high school. If you take LSD more than three times,

you will go legally insane. Now what the fuck that even means no one knew. But this is the kind of propaganda that we are getting. And so eliminating the propaganda by showing why that propaganda appeared, I think that puts us in a step in the right direction. And Norman, now you really do have to go. Friends, this is my dream book and thank you for writing it and thank you for coming on this show. It was so nice

getting to chat with you. It was a great pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank you. That was Norman Oehler, everybody. You should also check out his conversation with Rogan. I got lucky because he was in town to do the JRE and he had time to do my podcast. But if you want a long form conversation with Norman, he just went on Joe's show and you should definitely check it out.