2007 - Casey William Hardison - (A Brief History and) Motivation of an Entheogenic Chemist.pdf - Psychedelic Chemistry 3 - Eroza800

(A Brief History and) Motivation of an Entheogenic Chemist

Casey William Hardison - POWd (Civ)

Abstract

Casey Hardison was arrested spring 2004 for the production of psychedelic-type drugs, i.e., LSD, 2C-

B and DMT. In the three years since, not one person from ‘authority’ had bothered to ask him what

motivated him to synthesise psychedelic drugs. It was as if the a priori assumption that ‘all illegal

drugs are bad’ had provided the answer. Hence, the Judge asserted that Hardison did it for “that basest

of human emotion, greed” as though the psychospiritual benefits of an alchemical path dedicated to

expanding consciousness and personal transformation, through insights integrated into action, upon

which he had expounded at great lengths during trial, were some elaborate “portmanteau defence”,

just some ruse to get him out of the dock. It was not, it was a committed stand for ‘cognitive liberty’

and for a world full of people who understand the fine line between alone and all one.

MINDSET

I was born in Washington State on the edge of Western exploration in the New World in

the summer of 1971. I came of age in and around the communal rooms of AA, NA, ACA,

Alanon and Alateen throughout the Pacific and Mountain West. My father is 33 years

sober. His father died 14 years sober in 1982.

I too wrestled my psychospiritual demons through alcohol and Cannabis which gratefully

led me to the rooms of AA and NA where, at the age of 14, I declared myself an

alcoholic and an addict. I delved headlong into the 12 Steps and promptly saw that I had

wrapped myself in a shame-bound identity (‘ism’ - internalised shame manifested). Upon

recognising this, I had the promised spiritual awakening of the twelfth step. I then sought,

via being of service to other addicts and alcoholics, to maintain this awareness.

Eventually, I came to a point where I just didn’t feel I belonged in AA. I felt that what I

had come to learn had been learned. I was no longer afraid to be alive nor was I willing to

hide. I had recovered from my shame-bound self. In short, I got tired of pretending that

there was something wrong with me, I had become a spiritualized being living a

predominantly joyous and fulfilling life.

So, on October 31 st 1993, on the eve of my 8 th AA birthday, I ended my inflexible ‘once

and always’ identification with alcoholism and drug addiction. This came about in an

“All Hallows Eve” ritual which had a ‘spiced wine’ component. I had requested of my

partner that my wine be heated to remove the alcohol. This was done.

As we journeyed through the ritual, I pondered the rigid way in which I had insisted on

having the alcohol removed from my ‘sacrament’. I had recalled seeing a heart-rate

monitor flat-line. Life had pulse, it had cycles, and a flat-line meant only one thing:

death.

In a flash, I realized the most important insight: Life is transformation. Life is a cycle of

death and rebirth, renewing itself each day. Upon recognising this, I declared to my

companions in a choked up teary-eyed expression, “I am recovered.” My future

uncertain, my world of illusion shattered, I ventured forth into unfamiliar territory. The

ritual had worked.

About three weeks later, a friend of mine, John, was coming to visit me in Idaho. He and

I had met in Yosemite Valley, California, at an AA meeting. We had been sober and

travelled together for six years; he had ended his tour of AA with much the same

realization as I had. We chose to celebrate his arrival by drinking our first beer together.

Absolutely nothing happened, we didn’t foam at the mouth or go into fits of obsessive

compulsive behaviour, nothing.

Another three weeks passed and John and I rented the video, The Making of ‘A Brief

History of Time’ by Stephen Hawking (Hawking, 1992). As it started John said, “Oh hey,

did I mention to you all, I have some Liquid LSD that ‘the Lorax’ made.” I knew ‘the

Lorax’ was a mad, old-school chemist and I trusted and respected him. I had also heard a

few stories of peoples’ spiritual adventures with LSD, peyote cacti and ‘magic’

mushrooms; not least of which were told by many ‘Deadheads’ I had known whilst being

a ‘clean and sober Wharf Rat’ on Grateful Dead tour. I also knew that Bill Wilson, the

co-founder of AA, had consumed LSD with spiritual intent (Wilson, 1984). With all this,

I was curious.

SETTING

On a cold night in December of 1993, I ingested approximately 250 micrograms of LSD.

Although, I was borne into a global ‘War on (some people who use some) Drugs’, I was

unaware that I had just ingested the forbidden fruit, or at least the modern-day variant.

I ‘tuned in’ somewhere in the midst with Stephen Hawking philosophizing about the

origins of the universe. About an hour or so in, I wanted to go outside. After discovering

that I could still don my foul weather gear, tie my shoelaces and otherwise perform with

dexterous ease, I stepped out for a snowy night-time walk through the woods to the

lakeshore; damn, the world was breathlessly bright and I awoke into a childlike wonder!

INSIGHT

Several hours later, whilst it lightly snowed on my face where I lay buried in the pea-

gravel of the lakeshore, I recognised ‘I’ was still and yet my experience was vast:

complete absorption; self had vanished. This was my first glimpse of a possible ‘Land

without Evil’.

Two hundred years earlier William Blake wrote, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

(1793), “I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses

discover’d the infinite in everything”. Transformed by my ineffable LSD experience, I

knew what he meant; there was no going back.

In less than eight hours I had been shown a rare glimpse of the power of the human mind

to shape reality. I saw that my limited neurotypical consciousness was only one plane,

level or aspect and that there were infinite new things to discover. I found new

perspectives on birth, death, and the nature of mind and consciousness as the field of

creation. The experience of the oneness of all things replaced the myth of separation.

Perennial wisdom dawned and my heart burst forth in praise, gratitude and love, rooted in

a mindset of compassion for self and other.

INTEGRATION

In absorptive reverie, I began to integrate these insights whilst a deep desire welled up

within me to study consciousness and its intersection with mysticism, the creation of

religious belief systems and man’s place in this great biosphere. Some hours later, I was

roused by the bells ringing out at the local community college a mile across the water; I

had never noticed them before. It was time to go to school!

Later that morning, still reeling from the profound transformations of the previous 13

hours, innocent, humbled and hungry for wisdom, I went down to the local community

college and, in tears, I begged them to let me in. I was 22, I had not graduated high

school and I was determined to do what ever it took to understand what had just

happened to me, to validate my experience and to find others who had tasted these

forbidden fruits.

At school I refused to hide. I boldly declared to anyone who would listen that I was intent

on studying psychedelics, psychoactivity, consciousness and its interconnection with

religious belief systems. Several professors, friends and family attempted to steer me

from my path concerned that I would end up in prison. They were right but I was willing

to pay the piper if the monkey showed up with the cup; indeed, Martin Luther King Jr.

had said (King, 1963):

“[A]n individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly

accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community

over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”

Here, those in power had drawn a line in the sand on the shores of a Rubicon which I had

already crossed; so, I knew and accepted my possible futures and pasts. Hell, after

promising certain death, all God could think to do was throw Adam and Eve out of the

Garden for eating the forbidden fruit. If that is the worse that can happen, so be it.

In school I learned that not only has mankind been intentionally consuming psychoactive

substances to alter mental functioning for a proverbial eon or two, we also consume

plants rich in alkaloids as an important source of nutrition and energy for survival,

particularly in stressful environmental conditions. This suggests an evolutionary purpose

for ‘drug’ taking and illustrates our symbiotic relationship with plants evident in our

shared chemical communicants.

I also learned that in the last twelve thousand years or so there has evolved a priest-class

hell-bent on maintaining control of these substances as a way of enforcing the artificial

divide between orthodox and heretical experience (Council on Spiritual Practices, 1997).

I recognised this artificial divide as the crux of the ‘War on (some) Drugs’ that continued

an ancient ‘pharmacratic inquisition’ which had begun sixteen hundred years earlier

when Alaric’s Goths sacked the sanctuary at Eleusis ending a two thousand year old

Mystery religion which centred on the ingestion of a sacred potion, the kykeon ; where

individuals permitted to imbibe saw ‘ ta hiera ’, ‘the holy’ (Ott 1993, 1995). It has been

suggested that the kykeon is derived from the Ergot fungus, Claviceps, which grows on

many cereal grains, synthesises the biochemical precursor of Lysergic Acid

Diethylamide, LSD, and, is the source of Ergotism also known as ‘St. Anthony’s Fire’

(Ruck, Wasson & Hofmann, 1978; Schultes, Hofmann & Rätsch, 1979, 2001).

COMMITMENT

On learning this, I made a commitment to myself that I would synthesise Albert

Hofmann’s ‘Problem Child’, LSD (Hofmann, 1979). I had completed the requisite

undergraduate chemistry courses, so, I knew I was capable of synthesising most

psychedelic-type drugs, but I was not yet ready; I was experiencing the adage “when the

student is ready the master will appear”. So, after some pedagogical meandering and

whilst continuing to experiment with various psychedelic compounds, I fixed on

biochemistry and medical anthropology as the paradigmatic backdrop upon which I

would unite my conscious studies and psychospiritual development.

ACTION

Central to therapeutic efficacy, as described by an interdisciplinary Medical

Anthropology, is the power of declaration either made by the sufferer or the healer that is

listened by the sufferer with credibility or faith (Csordas & Kleinman, 1996); this

especially holds in the magico-religious context outside of Western Biomedicine and

married nicely to my insights from AA’s 12 Steps, the use of psychedelics, meditation

and the personal empowerment paradigm I had engaged in as a participant of Landmark

Education. Crucially, I was able to apply this to myself.

As I matured and my insights began to consistently manifest in new ways of being which

produced measurable results, I engaged in lively philosophical transactions within the

scholastic community and followed my intellectual curiosity until, after 11 semesters, the

public funding ran out.

Conveniently, during my last school semester, I managed to talk the Anthropology

department Head into giving me a grant and credit to attend the spring 2000

Entheobotany Seminar in Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. All I had to do was present a slide

show, talk and a paper when I got back.

Entheobotany is the study of plant entheogens. The neologism entheogen derives from an

obsolete Greek word meaning “realizing the divine within” - the term used by the ancient

Greeks to describe states of poetic or prophetic inspiration - and now used to describe the

entheogenic state which can be induced by sacred plant-drugs. (Ott, 1993, 1995)

In Palenque, I was in an indefatigably good mood as I had found validation of my path

and true community with which to resonate. I was no longer a lone psychonaut. I had

arrived and just in the nick of time. Suddenly, I was immersed in a diverse community of

those who were on the path of the entheogenically inclined. I was ecstatic to say the least.

I took notes and photographed the main speakers for my slideshow. I tried to absorb as

much of the proceedings as I could whilst I sampled a veritable variety of other

entheogenic entities, i.e. psychedelic-type drugs. In so doing, I noticed a number of

individual conference participants had subjectively bioassayed 2C-T-7, an entheogenic

phenethylamine substantially similar to the mescaline found naturally in peyote cacti

(Shulgin & Shulgin, 1991).

Recognizing this as an opportunity to further the understanding of 2C-T-7 through

anecdotal experiential accounts and to lend credibility to the scientific methodology of

the subjective bioassay, I transformed insight into action, prepared and administered a

written survey and, with gratuitous grace, the Multidisciplinary Association of

Psychedelic Studies agreed to publish the results in their forthcoming summer 2000

Bulletin, 10 (2).

Upon returning to the States, I knew my life was never going to be the same. I presented

my slideshow to about 50 people from the University, about half of whom where

professors. I received the credit, a serious cheer, and respect. What a confirmation of my

path.

OPENINGS

I wrote up the 2C-T-7 article whilst under the influence of 2C-T-7 and to this day no one

has noticed that I classically forgot to count myself and ‘K-dog’ in the 48 bioassays.

Shortly thereafter an individual who had just renewed his subscription to the MAPS

Bulletin, which had lapsed for some years, got his first new issue.

I received a cryptic letter from him. He told me he had studied for 20+ years the

phenethylamine and tryptamine families of psychedelic-type drugs until the 1986 US

Controlled Substances Analogue Act came into force. He said he had seen my article in

the MAPS Bulletin and thought I might want to communicate; mysteriously, I ignored his

letter.

Later that fall he wrote again. This time more direct and to the point. He was serious. He

wanted to give me his lab and years of research notes. He wanted someone to pick up his

torch. Was the student ready? Had the master appeared? Knowing from direct experience

the profound impact of these molecules to facilitate healing and shatter epistemological

paradigms, I wanted to be of service and thus I was more than willing. So in spring 2001

I picked up his torch and began the slow process of assembling the materials for a

sufficient laboratory.

I recognised my bench practice was limited but I had worked in the biology and

chemistry labs throughout university. I cold-called Sigma Aldrich Chemical Co., danced

through their questions, ordered the chemicals and purchased, via the Web, more used

glassware.

I began by making mistake after mistake until I succeeded finally in making a viable,

purified molecule: 2C-D, another psychedelic phenethylamine. I chose 2C-D because I

had a fantastic recipe and the precursors and reagents to start four steps back thereby

improving my skill and avoiding detection. 2C-D has a very gentle dose-response curve

2007 - Casey William Hardison - (A Brief History and) Motivation of an Entheogenic Chemist.pdf

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