Bonus Episode 40 PREVIEW: A Thing That Will Make the Algorithm Mad at Us

That's that's the guy.

Um, yeah, that's that is the face of a maniac.

Wow, PowerPoint messed this one up, too.

Oh, well, I mean, hold on,

oh no, he died at 102.

Good lord, we'll get to his life.

Um, but the text in the background says, I can only show that molecule so many times, Lol.

Um,

so the 25th of his experiments was a combination between ergodamine and diethylamine.

Uh, it was labeled LSD25 for lab tests.

It didn't really work as anybody hoped.

The animal testing only resulted in the test subjects becoming restless.

Normally, what would happen when tests went nowhere like this is the formula would be thrown out and forgotten.

Nobody would ever give a shit ever again.

But Hoffman, quote, liked the chemical structure, unquote, and held on to the formula because he thought there was more potential than they first saw.

So like he did that thing with like Donkey did at the start of Shrek and he's like, I like that molecule.

That's a nice molecule.

Hoffman had always been kind of eccentric.

He had initially thought about studying the humanities and becoming an artist, but he ended up going into chemistry not because he was going to take some hardline rational view of the world, but because he wanted to explain the mystical experiences he had as a kid.

Quote, mystical experiences in childhood, in which nature was altered in magical ways, had provoked questions concerning the essence of the external material world, and chemistry was a scientific field which might afford insights into this.

Unquote.

I bring that up because, next slide.

Hey, bicycle day.

Oh, yeah.

You love bicycles?

Oh, yes.

Bicycles are good, period.

About five years later, in April 1943, Hoffman out of nowhere had, quote, a peculiar presentiment, unquote, that he should recreate LSD-25 and continue studying it.

His lab safety, though, evidently wasn't great because he accidentally absorbed an unknown amount of the substance which hadn't been tested on humans before.

He only found this out when he was, quote, interrupted in my work by unusual sensations.

Unquote.

I love to be interrupted in my work by unusual sensations.

Yeah, in the chemistry lab on LSD.

Oh boy.

Oh, yeah.

Oh boy.

And what am I doing with my hands?

Well, so like remember, this is in the West before anybody had ever, you know, really understood psychedelics.

So

he felt kind of dizzy, restless, and sensitive to light.

He went straight home.

He lay down on his couch in, quote, in a dreamlike state with eyes closed.

I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense kaleidoscopic play of colors.

Unquote.

Next slide.

Obviously, being a scientist, his first reaction to this is, I need to do it again for science or whatever the technical term is.

Yes.

Doing it again for science.

On April 19th, 1943, I think maybe I was supposed to say on the last slide there, but that's fine.

No.

Yeah.

Anyway, same day as the Warsaw Uprising, April 19th, 1943.

He dosed himself with a quarter of a milligram of LSD.

That's 250.

Oh, boy.

No, don't react yet.

Sorry.

No, you're good.

Audience, that is 250 micrograms.

And let's put that into perspective.

You can get energy drinks these days that have 300 milligrams of caffeine.

Your strong ibuprofens are going to have like 100 milligrams, maybe 200.

So like, you know, you're, those are like in the range of a thousand times the active ingredient that Hoffman took.

You know, like, this is a very conservative dose in theory.

What we later found out, though, is that LSD is ludicrously powerful and in some circumstances can be felt in doses of less than 25 micrograms.

Hoffman had already made history with the world's first acid trip and he was going to make history again with the world's first bad acid trip.

Oh boy.

As it comes on, he gets uneasy and eventually descends into what he thinks is irreversible madness.

He thinks he's poisoned himself and thoughts on acid come-ups tend to be kind of self-fulfilling prophecies.

If you think, oh, I'm having a bad time.

Yes, you are.

He gets some help from his lab assistant getting home on a bike, which is why April 19th is now bicycle day.

Imagine being that lab assistant.

Yeah, yeah, that would be

interesting.

I mean, it's like wartime Switzerland.

They didn't have gas, which is why they rode the bike.

It's being rationed.

Yeah.

And I mean, the incredible potency is why, hey, kids, you want to pull a fun prank, synthesize a gallon of LSD and throw it in a reservoir.

Oh, Thomas.

Ross.

Please, no, do not do this.

To quote Joe Casabian, hold that thought.

Okay, not literally, but not far off there.

So he said, quote, familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms.

They were in continuous motion, animated as if driven by an inner restlessness.

Unquote.

He underwent ego death and said, quote, a demon had invaded me, had taken possession of my body, mind, and soul.

I jumped up and screamed, trying to free myself from him, but then sank down again and lay helpless on the sofa.

Unquote.

Finally, the doctor arrived and checked his vitals.

They were all completely normal, and the only obvious symptom was dilated pupils.

And like as soon as as Hoffman heard this, like, it completely changed the character of the trip because of like how suggestible you are on psychedelics.

Like, if somebody tells you you're okay, you're going to feel better.

He eventually came down into what he called and has been since called an afterglow.

Quote, everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light.

The world was as if newly created.

All my senses vibrated in a condition of the highest sensitivity, which persisted for the entire day, unquote.

So this would have been after many hours, because LSD lasts a long time,

depending on the dose, eight to 18 hours, sometimes more on the extreme end, and it interferes with your sleep.

According to a study published in Cell Press in 2017, because I'm getting this citation right, this is because well done.

This is because LSD makes a serotonin receptor, or the

5-HT2AOC, as we know it, fold in on itself like a lid.

The receptor and LSD are eventually kind of pulled into the cell to be broken down, which I guess is kind of why you feel weird afterward, because the receptor isn't there.

Something that I want to add is you can get some really, really good replications of psychedelic visuals from a YouTube channel called Symmetric Vision.

It's the most realistic depiction I've ever seen.

It's still not quite as good as the real thing, but if you want to see what

being on acid really looks like go check out that youtube channel i would assume you'd prefer to also have the other effects as well as the visuals yes um but you know the visuals are are neat they are better in combination with the others um next slide

big sip

hoffman came to believe that lsd had found him and that these events uh these events are now held in reverence within the psychedelic community just because like they're so weird uh he also believed the drug could be useful for studying schizophrenia and psychosis.

In the early days, LSD was marketed by Sandos as a drug called delicid, like you see on the screen.

They called it a psychotomimetic because they thought it could simulate psychosis.

This became a big field of study in the 1950s.

It was used in psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and experimentation with the arts.

There were hundreds of papers written, dozens of books, international conferences.

Acid and other psychedelics were considered a new frontier psychiatric study.

This, I believe, was the decade that Time magazine did its article on, you know, these mushrooms that make you have visions from Mexico, which ultimately kind of fucking ruined

Mexican village.

But one of the major customers for LSD in 1953 was, next slide,

a group called the Central Intelligence Agency

heard of these guys yeah yeah I know these guys are bad things

and we're about to hear more bad things because they were doing something called project mk ultra

um the cia

bought the world's entire supply of lsd at this time um they wanted to know if it could be used for mind control or interrogation how how much was the world's entire supply?

I did not.

Either I didn't write that down or it wasn't documented.

It's more likely that I didn't write it down.

But, like, probably enough to dose millions upon millions of people.

I'm just thinking, like, this is like a water bottle full.

Oh, like, the world's supply of antimatter.