Mark: I just ordered Broca's Brain and will happily add it to the, like, 30+ titles I'm currently reading.

I couldn't agree more with you that pumping beats and bods can be a portal to an altered state. (And lucky you, the Detroit scene had such a good rep for ecstatic ritual.)

In a preface to a book about E and the rave scene, Douglas Rushkoff writes about the dance floor and the "loved-up" feeling and how everyone became part of something big and collective, like the cells of coral reef. While he was talking about both dance and drug, I have most certainly experienced Coral Reef Awareness with only dance.

Actually, for a few months, I've been mulling over a story on a particular style of dance and its effects on body, brain and community. I can't yet speak in specifics as I haven't mentioned the idea to the person I hope to write about, who teaches and dances this ass-shaking magic.

I love what you said about jumping from art school to physics, and about scientists whose dreams are bigger than one particular field of research. And about "squares" too. I mean, I really value my seasonal, ritualistic gatherings in the woods, during which nonordinary states of consciousness are achieved through a variety of methods. But far more of my year is spent surrounded by too many books, parsing the words of others and trying to spit out a few of my own.

You don't have to drink the Kool Aid, electric or otherwise, to advocated for the intelligent use of psychedelic substances.

Also, feel free to continue this thread here, or to email me at alchemicalfix@gmail.com.

Really awesome swapping thoughts with you, Tim

That said, there's no denying that plenty of people did and do have fairly profound, life-altering, solutions-garnering learning experiences simply by ingesting psychedelics (though, of course, they took substantial risks by doing this).

It seems that "set" -- the personality and learning that we have, as well as our cultural background and expectations of what we can expect from the psychedelic experience -- play an entirely significant role in not just for the nature of a trip, but also for the creative process in general. In addition, the scientists or others attempting to use psychedelics for creativity seem to have to really be strongly motivated to solve the specific problems they work on prior to ingestion.

The scientists in James Fadiman's study were primed to believe they would be better problem solvers through the use of psychedelics. (Or course, by today's standards of study, the proper way to do this would have a control group and variable, give both this sort of encouragement and only one the psychedelics. It'd be a great study -- but, good luck with the approval process.)

Art and science are not so dissimilar as they are often made out to be. They both rely upon many of the same sources for effective creation: the ability to imagine new possibilities, to establish parameters for those possibilities and then to run that initial spark through those parameters, and to (often painstakingly) repair and tweak and redact and surge and try again -- until, if successful, a certain flow based on logic, aesthetics, the properties of electricity, etc. has been established.

There are no shortages of innovators in the humanities and the hard sciences that have spoken about the positive influence of psychedelics on their respective projects. To that end, I want to quote some tech innovators in a roundabout fashion. A friend gave me a new book by Stanislav Grof, who probably guided more people on legal psychedelic trips than anybody in the world, called Healing Our Deepest Wounds. I randomly opened it up before bed last night to p.222, and found that he was speaking about a book I'd cited in my story, What the Dormouse Said, written by NYT tech reporter John Markoff.

What follows is going to be me, retyping Grof who's speaking about Markoff who is quoting some incredibly influential innovators situated in what would become Silicon Valley. (This is hardly what I would do for an article, but hopefully it works here.)

"Douglas Engelbart, who invented the computer mouse, also explored and experimented with psychedelic drugs. Kevin Herbert, who worked for Cisco Systems in the early days, once said: 'When I'm on LSD and hearing something that's pure rhythm, it takes me to another world and into another brain state where I've stopped thinking and started knowing.' Mark Pesce, the co-inventor of virtual reality's coding language, VRML, agreed that there is a definite relationship between chemical mind expansion and advances in computer technology: 'To a man and a woman, the people behind virtual reality were acidheads.'"

So okay, none of this proves definitely that LSD -- or some other psychedelic -- led directly to virtual reality software and aesthetics. But can't we agree that something interesting seems to be going on here, and wouldn't it be great if researchers were allowed to run rigorously peer-reviewed studies to explore what that something was?

If psychedelics work so well for people who are quite sick, needless to say, they will work for those of us who are relatively healthy, too. I do not think that, of all the healthy people in the world, only elite researchers should be granted legal access to psychedelics.

It seems that to legalize all psychedelics tomorrow might be a bit of a leap for our society today. But there is international precedent for reasonable polices that can begin to at least remove the unjust and draconian penalties associated with psychedelic drug use, such as the decriminalization measures adopted 11 years ago in Portugal. (Note: decriminalization is not the same as legalization). http://www.businessinsider.com/portugal-drug-policy-decrimin...

As to what happens after tomorrow: If you're interested, I could probably find links and such to some of the more visionary thinkers who posit how of psychedelics could be safely integrated into Western societies - including the recurring idea to legalize regional facilities where people are carefully screened and then permitted to experience guided psychedelic voyages.

I'm not sure how best to do that, so perhaps I should just say, if any one has any questions for me regarding the story, some of the ideas in it, etc., I'll do my best to answer them.

Best, Tim