At Dinner With Carl Sagan the
Only Drug Was Wine, But That Is Not News.
(Marijuananews note: The story about the late
Carl Sagan’s use of marijuana has received extensive news coverage, but much of it
missed a key point.In the spring of 1995, Allen St. Pierre, now the Executive Director
of the NORML Foundation, and I had dinner at a small French restaurant in Georgetown with
Sagan and his wife and collaborator, Ann Druyan, who had joined the NORML board a few
months before.
Sagan, a man of the left, spent a good part of the evening questioning me about my
Libertarian political philosophy. It was all in good fun, and both Allen and I recall it
as one of the most intellectually stimulating evenings we have ever enjoyed.
Of course, we also hoped that Carl would decide to join Ann on the NORML board, but just a
few months later he would be stricken by a rare blood disorder that would claim his life
the following year.
Now that Sagan has been dead for a few years it has been revealed that he not only
liked marijuana, but also found it intellectually useful. As they say in Hollywood,
"Now it can be told??"
Of course, it is not surprising that in 1971 Sagan had to use a pseudonym, but 24 years
later he still was hesitant about joining NORML’s board. Think of the fact that the
world’s most famous scientist, wealthy and with academic tenure, was afraid to come
out of the closet.
See
"The marijuana
revolution will never succeed as long as the vast majority of pot smokers refuse to go
public.
Allen St. Pierre executive director of NORML likens the effort to our forefathers fighting
for independence by sending King George letters from 'anonymous in Philadelphia.'"
Great Column!
We had wine with that dinner, but no one would find it exceptional that one of the
greatest minds of our time would enjoy a few glasses of drug that causes organic brain
damage. On the other hand, the thought that he could use marijuana intellectually had to
wait until he was gone.
The essay described below ends with a declaration that is not likely to be widely
quoted:
"[T]he illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full
utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and
fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.")
August 22, 1999
From The San Francisco Examiner
letters@examiner.com
http://www.examiner.com
By Keay Davidson
(Marijuananews note: Sagan's biographer, Keay Davidson is a writer
for the San Francisco Examiner. Sagan: A Life is due out in October.)
BILLIONS AND BILLIONS ... OF '60S FLASHBACKS
For young people of the '60s and '70s, marijuana use was a rite of passage.
To the very youngest, smoking the illegal drug was the boldest way to rebel against
parental and governmental authority. But many young adults used "weed" too.
The term "groves of academe" took on a new meaning in universities, where the
spiky-leaved plants grew vigorously and covertly under ultraviolet lamps in dormitory
closets. Carl Sagan had been a regular marijuana user from the early '60s on. He believed
the drug enhanced his creativity and insights. His closest friend of three decades,
Harvard psychiatry professor Dr. Lester Grinspoon, a leading advocate of the
decriminalization of marijuana, recalls an incident in the '80s when one of his California
admirers mailed him, unsolicited, some unusually high-quality pot.
Grinspoon shared the joints with Sagan and his last wife, Ann Druyan. Afterward Sagan
said, "Lester, I know you've only got one left, but could I have it? I've got serious
work to do tomorrow and I could really use it."
Grinspoon's 1971 book "Marihuana Reconsidered" included
a long essay by an unidentified "Mr. X," who described his happy experiences
with the drug. The essay identified Mr. X as "a professor at one of the top-ranking
American universities" but disguised his identity by saying he was "in his early
forties."
In my interview with Grinspoon, he revealed that Mr. X was Sagan (who turned 37 the
year the book was published by Harvard University Press).To Grinspoon, Sagan's use of the
drug is dramatic disproof of the popular wisdom that pot diminishes motivation: "He
was certainly highly motivated to work, to contribute."
See
American
Journal Of Epidemiology Report That Long-Term Use Of Marijuana
Does Not Lead To A Decline In Mental Function Got Minimal Coverage,
Perhaps Because Scores Actually Fell More Among Non-Users Than Among Heavy Users!
Mr. X's essay is of interest not merely because it reveals Sagan's use of an illegal
drug but also because it offers a glimpse of feelings he rarely shared. Portions of the
account follow, beginning with Sagan's drug-induced version of Plato's myth of the cave.
It all began about ten years ago. I had reached a considerably more relaxed period
in my life - a time when I had come to feel that there was more to living than science, a
time of awakening of my social consciousness and amiability, a time when I was open to new
experiences. I had become friendly with a group of people who occasionally smoked
cannabis, irregularly, but with evident pleasure. Initially I was unwilling to partake,
but the apparent euphoria that cannabis produced and the fact that there was no
physiological addiction to the plant eventually persuaded me to try.
My initial experiences were entirely disappointing; there was no effect at all, and
I began to entertain a variety of hypotheses about cannabis being a placebo which worked
by expectation and hyperventilation rather than by chemistry. After about five or six
unsuccessful attempts, however, it happened.
I was lying on my back in a friend's living room idly examining the pattern of
shadows on the ceiling cast by a potted plant (not cannabis!). I suddenly realized that I
was examining an intricately detailed miniature Volkswagen, distinctly outlined by the
shadows.
I was very skeptical at this perception, and tried to find inconsistencies between
Volkswagens and what I viewed on the ceiling. But it was all there, down to hubcaps,
license plate, chrome, and even the small handle used for opening the trunk.
When I closed my eyes, I was stunned to find that there was a movie going on on the
inside of my eyelids. Flash...a simple country scene with red farmhouse, blue sky, white
clouds, yellow path meandering over green hills to the horizon. Flash...same scene, orange
house, brown sky, red clouds, yellow path, violet fields... Flash...Flash...Flash.
The flashes came about once a heartbeat. Each flash brought the same simple scene
into view, but each time with a different set of colors...exquisitely deep hues, and
astonishingly harmonious in their juxtaposition. Since then I have smoked occasionally and
enjoyed it thoroughly...
I smile, or sometimes even laugh out loud at the pictures on the insides of my
eyelids," Mr. X/Sagan wrote.
Even so, he remained the astute scientific observer:
While my early perceptions were all visual, and curiously lacking in images of
human beings, both of these items have changed over the intervening years.... I test
whether I'm high by closing my eyes and looking for the flashes.
They come long before there are any alterations in my visual or other perceptions.
I would guess this is a signal-to-noise problem, the visual noise level being very low
with my eyes closed.... [Flashed images resemble] cartoons: just the outlines of figures,
caricatures, not photographs.
I think this is simply a matter of information compression: it would be impossible
to grasp the total content of an image with the information content of an ordinary
photograph, say 108 [100 million] bits, in the fraction of a second which a flash
occupies.
"I find that today a single joint is enough to get me high.... in one movie
theater recently I found I could get high just by inhaling the cannabis smoke which
permeated the theater." Pot enhanced his pleasure in music and food. ("A potato
will have a texture, body, and taste like that of other potatoes, but much more so.")
In sex, too: marijuana "gives an exquisite sensitivity, but on the other hand
it postpones orgasm: in part by distracting me with the profusion of images passing before
my eyes."
"I find that most of the insights I achieve when high are into social
issues," he added. "I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with
my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in
terms of gaussian distribution curves.
(Marijuananews note: Gaussian distribution is simply normal
distribution. Tonight I will think about it in the shower.)
It was a point obvious in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew the curves in soap on
the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end
of about an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written 11 short essays on a wide
range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological Topics...I have used them
in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books....
"...If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing
me that there is a world around us which we barely sense, or that we can become one with
the universe, or even that certain politicians are desperately frightened men, I may tend
to disbelieve; but when I'm high I know about this disbelief.
And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say
"Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!"
Sagan added: "I have on a few occasions been forced to drive in heavy traffic
when high. I've negotiated it with no difficulty at all, although I did have some thoughts
about the marvelous cherry-red color of traffic lights."
(Marijuananews note: For the full Mr. X interview see Dr.
Grinspoons' site:
http://www.marijuana-uses.com/examples/Mr_X.htm
)also see http://ahemp.org/sagan.html
Supported