Bill Richards | How I Got Involved in Psychedelics
Bill Richards of Johns Hopkins Medicine shares the story of how he first got involved in psychedelic research in 1963
Psymposia Psychedelic Stories @ Breaking Convention 2017
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.
[00:00] Would you tell a story I thought yeah well I must have a few and then I thought oh you know I've only been doing this over 50 years I guess but I thought that what I might share with you which also kind of illustrates a lot in the history of psychedelic research is just how a nice guy like he ever got involved in this field and in my book sacred knowledge which some of you know I kind of give an outline of this but I'll give you the more comprehensive story and that's goes back to 1963 when I was at Yale Divinity School believe it or
[01:03] Not they have three-year theological training program and for my second year I decided to go to the University of göttingen in Germany to study theology fascinating you're all the interesting stuff was going on in the School of Medicine I found the School of Theology and unbearably pedantic as a whole but anyway in the backyard of where I was living was the university psychiatric clinic for a house Carroll owner one of the probably the primary European researcher was psychedelics was doing his research and two of my new friends participated in a research project he had going one it was alleged that he had some drug that helped you remember early childhood and the name of the drug was
[02:05] Psilocybin but I had never heard I hadn't even heard the word psychedelic at that time and one of my friends regressed to childhood and experienced himself sitting in his father's arms and his father had been killed in the war and it was just profoundly therapeutic for him and the other one saw visions of assessment marching in the streets that he called a hallucination yeah I've never seen a hallucination that might be neat you know so I went over the screening was did I get drunk very often and did I consider myself in decent health no to the first yes to the second so they led me to a little basement room just a little cot and an end table with a narrow window looking out over the hospital garbage cans and they gave me
[03:06] An injection of psilocybin and left me alone you know they didn't know any better in those days and liner had just written a book called the experimental su cosa the experimental psychosis and how these paranoid States happened so reliably and so on so I grew up Methodist and I decided God would be with me if I had to relive any deep secrets about my oedipal complex and so I went in with kind of a decision to trust and to my absolute amazement this incredibly profound transcendental experience opened up which I didn't even know was possible and all of a sudden the best way I can put it into words my
[04:08] Consciousness was some in some eternal place looking back on history and totally awestruck and in the middle of that the research assistant gerhard there came in to test my nywhere reflexes and he had me sit on the edge of the cot and he was hitting my knee with his little hammer he was wearing a white coat and jogging down this important scientific data and I remember sitting there with arms outstretched feeling compassion for the infancy of science no idea what was going on how incredibly awesome this was and finally it the drug
[05:09] Wore off I tried to express a few words and I went back to my dorm and lay down prostrate like a monk before the altar on my floor and just was overcome with gratitude and awe and then that led to being a volunteer in lawyer's clinic I was an interesting American who had the mystical experience which for some reason was very rare I think because it was low dosage and there was no support most people just had very mild psychodynamic experiences why I had the mystical experience I didn't know if it was I was just under a lot of stress or I was close to being schizophrenic or who knows but it certainly happens so
[06:10] Then I became this volunteer in the clinic and you have to remember in these days 63 psychedelics were legal there was no controversy it was a perfectly rational thing to give a psychedelic to a graduate student if especially if they wrote a good report you know this is just education what's the big deal you know I don't want to go on too long here how am I doing can I have five more minutes okay the research design interestingly enough it actually wasn't the full substance c36 psilocybin there was a two derivative cz 74 in Cey 19 and you agreed to receive it four times so it was the two derivatives in two doses so I had signed
[07:13] Up for a series of four experiments and the next three even though the dose went up we're not mystical at all they had some interesting philosophical rumination and I remember at the end of the fourth one saying my gosh was I just go about your I'd just exaggerate what happened what was it's really just sexual pleasure and I decided it was mystical you know not that sex can't be mystical and at that point Walter panky came through and we met in the clinic and became friends and he went to Lauren he said like we give bill Richards a little higher dose and let's take him out of the basement into a room with some plants and sunlight and let me hang out with him in case he might want to hold a hand during the day and this was the discovery if
[08:16] You will of supportive set and setting in Germany you know and needless to say that fifth experience I would say it was one of the most profound of my life and it completely validated the first one and I never doubted the significance of this field since and then of course that led to a career in psychedelic research which continues at johns hopkins and all indices are that were we're going strong so I think that's enough
