How about dripping lysergic acid into the drink of negotiators in the Russian-NATO standoff over Ukraine? It sounds crazy, but something like this has already been tried — and there is logic in the argument that starting a war there, today, amounts to a much, much crazier idea.
The incredible story appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and involved giving MDMA (ecstasy) to Soviet officials in 1985. The tip came from physicist and colleague Cássio Leite Vieira (no relative), one of the best science journalists in Brazil, now a refugee in Buenos Aires.
The plot has as its central character Carol Rosin, who had been an expert at the aerospace company Fairchild Industries and later founded the Institute for Security and Cooperation in Space. Working as a consultant in Washington (DC) for 37 years, she went to Moscow for the Ronald Reagan administration’s nuclear negotiations with Russian scientists and military personnel.
Rosin carried a bag of MDMA pills in her luggage. It was the basis of the plan developed with Rick Doblin, a psychedelic enthusiast he had met at the Esalen Institute in California. A regular on this blog, Doblin is now leading the most advanced research to regulate a psychedelic (MDMA) as a treatment for a mental disorder (post-traumatic stress disorder).
Rosin took hundreds of pills to friends’ apartment in the Russian capital. They arrived with dozens of vials of medicine, filled the vials and were responsible for distributing the tablets among researchers and military personnel who would participate in the nuclear negotiations.
“It was the most loving and wonderful experience anyone could possibly have,” Rosin told Robert K. Elder for the newsletter. “It wasn’t about getting high, it wasn’t about having a party. No. It was about peace, love and healing — and spreading that around the world.”
It is unknown how many traders actually ingested MDMA, if at all. There are those who doubt, as journalist Michael Pollan told the bulletin, that American envoys took the drug on hostile terrain, which sounds even beyond improbable – as does the prospect that this could have decisively influenced the course of negotiations.
On the other hand, it is undeniable that the compound MDMA, also known as bullet, molly and Michael Douglas, predisposes anyone to listen to others and to dialogue peacefully. This is because it causes a flood of empathy in those who take it, as this journalist has already witnessed.
“The idea was that if they [negociadores] could work through their fears and traumas and feel their connection to humanity, then that could help,” Doblin argued to Elder. of life, peace and love.
It sounds naive today, with the world smothered in backbiting, cancellations, fraudulent news and hate spread across social media. It is worth remembering, however, that consciousness-altering drugs (marijuana, LSD and psilocybin ahead) formed a defining part of the so-called counterculture, the hippie movement of the 1960s/70s that contributed to burying the Vietnam War in 1975.
It wasn’t just the counterculture, of course, but the progressive revelation of military failures in Southeast Asia (not to mention atrocities such as the use of napalm and massacres like the one at My Lai). A fatal blow to the military campaign image had come with the revelation of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, and here, too, psychedelics may have had a marginal effect.
Documents showing that four American presidents had misled the public about the war and its aims were leaked to the press by Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg now identifies himself as a “psychedelic person,” as Adele Meyer reports in the Lucid News newsletter.
The former employee of the Rand Corporation, where he had copied thousands of pages of the compromising report, does not hide that he took LSD hundreds of times. He was even sued for the leak and risked 115 years in prison, but the charges were eventually dropped.
In the first of three parts of the interview that Lucid News began publishing on Jan. 24, Ellsberg claims that LSD had no direct bearing on the decision to leak the report. His first lysergic trip had taken place in 1960, and he went on to copy the papers eight years later. In the meantime, he spent two years in Vietnam.
On the other hand, acid was common in the peace circle he frequented. Even today Ellsberg says he believes that a profound shift in consciousness is necessary for the world to improve and face the climate crisis, among other scourges, but he is not sure that this will happen or that psychedelics can accelerate the transformation.
“Acid perception, I think, confirms one side of what Albert Einstein once said, that there are two ways of looking at the world. One is that miracles don’t exist,” Ellsberg told Meyer. “The other is that everything is a miracle. I think a very classic perception of acid is that what we’re involved in, what we’re immersed in, you know, everything is miraculous.
For the man who gave the world the Pentagon Papers, things we can’t even imagine actually happen, it’s true. They are like miracles, which fortunately occur: “Obviously, it’s very easy to believe in miracles under acid. And acid itself is a miracle!
The way things are going badly around Ukraine, a miracle would come in handy.
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To learn more about the history and new developments of science in this area, including in Brazil, look for my book “Psiconautas – Travels with Brazilian Psychedelic Science”
Chad-98Weaver, a distinguished author at NewsBulletin247, excels in the craft of article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a penchant for storytelling, Chad delivers informative and engaging content that resonates with readers across various subjects. His contributions are a testament to his dedication and expertise in the field of journalism.
