A history of drug counter-culture and the rise of the fake guru’s.

The hippy era was completely manufactured by military intelligence.

See also my report on Mk Ultra and Alcoholics Anonymous

and Terrance McKenna admits he was CIA

Work in progress

Dr. Stephen Szára (born 1923) was a Hungarian biochemist and psychiatrist. Although DMT was first synthesized in 1931 by Dr. Richard Manske, Dr. Szára was the first person to uncover its psychotropic qualities.

Dr. Szára earned his DSc and medical degrees from the University of Budapest. In 1953, he helped establish a research laboratory at a local psychiatric hospital.

According to a 2007 publication of his, Dr. Szára’s interest in psychoactive drugs was inspired by the discovery of LSD, and Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception (1954), and new theories on a biochemical basis of schizophrenia.¹ Dr. Szára ordered LSD from Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, wanting to see what the drug could illuminate about schizophrenia. In his book, DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Rick Strassman wrote that Sandoz declined Dr. Szára’s request due to concern about the substance being in the possession of a person in a Communist country. Without access to LSD, Dr. Szára pivoted his investigations toward other psychoactive substances. Curious to experience mescaline’s effects first hand, Dr. Szára took 400mg on Christmas Day in 1955. 

He extracted it from Mimosa hostilis and injected himself and his Budapest laboratory colleagues with it.³ Dr. Szára immigrated to the United States after the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. In 1957, he began work at St. Elizabeth’s hospital with Joel Elkes at the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), then worked for two years in Julius Axelrod’s laboratory.

In 1968, Dr. Szára joined the Center for Studies of Narcotics and Drug Abuse where he served as Chief of Clinical Studies and conducted research on marijuana and THC. When NIMH expanded to create the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in 1974, he became Chief of NIDA’s Biomedical Branch.

More about Dr. Szára’s work can be found on his ResearchGate profile and in a video interview by the late Leo Hollister, professor emeritus of pharmacology and psychiatry at the University of Texas Medical School and Stanford University School of Medicine. 

Richard Helmuth Frederick Manske (1901–1977)

Dr. Richard Manske was a German-Canadian chemist who was the first person to synthesize DMT.¹ He was born on September 14th, 1901 in Berlin and immigrated to Canada with his parents in 1906.

Dr. Manske earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Queens University in Ontario in 1923 and 1924, respectively. He went on to study alkaloids at the University of Manchester, earning his PhD in 1926. During his research there, he identified the structures of psychoactive alkaloids harmine and harmaline, and synthesized them.² 

After some years working in the US, including as a research chemist for General Motors and a research fellow at Yale, Dr. Manske returned to Canada to work at the National Research Council.

He also synthesized rutaecarpine, as he liked to recall, by accident. Another fortuitous experiment was his discovery of the use of hydrazine in the hydrolysis of phthalimides. He also collaborated at this time with A. Lapworth in one of the pioneering studies of physical organic chemistry. 

 Manske also undertook, in collaboration with Leo Marion, an examination of the Lycopodiaceae native to Canada. Delphinium and Aconitum

Before, DMT was found in natural sources in 1946 by the Brazilian microbiologist Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima. He called it nigerine, when he isolated 0.51% of the alcaloid from a root-bark of Mimosa tenuiflora, which he had collected at the town Arcoverde in the state Pernambuco Its discovery as a natural product is generally credited to Brazilian chemist and microbiologist Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima (1908–1989) who, in 1946, isolated an alkaloid he named nigerina (nigerine) from the root bark of jurema preta, that is, Mimosa tenuiflora. However, in a careful review of the case Jonathan Ott shows that the empirical formula for nigerine determined by Gonçalves de Lima, which notably contains an atom of oxygen, can only match a partial, “impure” or “contaminated” form of DMT. It was only in 1959, when Gonçalves de Lima provided American chemists a sample of Mimosa tenuiflora roots, that DMT was unequivocally identified in this plant material. Less ambiguous is the case of isolation and formal identification of DMT in 1955 in seeds and pods of Anadenanthera peregrina by a team of American chemists led by Evan Horning (1916–1993). Since 1955 DMT has been found in a host of organisms: in at least 50 plant species belonging to 10 families, and in at least 4 animal species, including one gorgonian and 3 mammalian species 

In 1957, American chemists Francis Hochstein and Anita Paradies identified DMT in an “aqueous extract” of leaves American ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes (1915–2001)  in 1965 by French pharmacologist Jacques Poisson who isolated DMT as sole alkaloid from leaves, provided and used by Aguaruna Indians American researchers led by pharmacologist Ara der Marderosian.  Cashinahua Indians

.the first person to smoke it was purportedly underground chemist Nick Sand somewhere around 1961.. Nick Sand became interested in psychedelics during his stay with the Mazatec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico after a few trips guided by Mazatec shaman Maria Sabina. in 1962 or 1963, he joined the League for Spiritual Discovery, (L.S.D.) a legal religion dedicated the use of psychedelic sacraments. At this time psychedelics were legal.

Nick at this time was one of the “guides” who took people through their first trips at the headquarters of the L. S. D. at the commune in Millbrook, New York state. Millbrook connects him to Leary’s basecamp and the stream of military intelligence agent gurus that directed the counter culture before it relocated to Cali.

Sands was the official chemist for all the groups, from L.S.D. to B.E.L. to the C.I.A.. In 1973, Nicholas Sand, a chemist for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love (BEL, as in Ba’el, or Lucifer), was arrested in St. Louis for operating two LSD laboratories. Indictments in California around the same time also named Ronald H. Stark, who allegedly operated an LSD lab in Belgium. In the book Acid Dreams, the authors name Stark as being a CIA informant.

(Schultze & Hoffman) The names of these early pioneers include William James, Hermann Hesse, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Ralph Metzner, Peter Stafford and many others.

My practical chemical investigations on the active principles of the sacred mushrooms of Mexico came to an end after the article on the modifications of psilocybin and psilocin was pub­lished in 1959. This work was carried out with my colleagues F. Troxler and F. Seeman

famous curan­dera Maria Sabina in 1955 had initiated Wasson, expressed her thanks for the gift, saying that she would now be able to serve people even when no mush­rooms were available.

In 1915, the American ethnobotanist W. E. Safford advanced the daring hypothesis that the hallucinogenic mushrooms had never existed, that the Spaniards had mistaken peyotl Dr. Blas Pablo Reko, a pio­neering ethnobotanist in Mexico. Reko declared that he did not accept Safford’s thesis, and began to search for the remains of the ancient cult in the mountains of Oaxaca.  Reko’s work attracted Richard Evans Schultes, then a young graduate student at Harvard University. Schultes had worked on the ethnobotany of peyote in Mexico, and so was familiar with Safford’s theory regarding the mushrooms. In 1938, Schultes and Reko traveled to Huautla de Jimenez, and obtained the first identifiable botanical specimens of teonandcatl.

These were deposited in the Farlow Her barium at Harvard (1936- Robert J. Weitlaner had become the first outsider to handle the mushrooms. In 1939, Weitlaner’s daughter Irmgard and anthropologist, Jean Bassett Johnson, became the first outsiders to attend a velada (literally a ‘night vigil,’ the Spanish word used by the Mazatec Indians to describe a mushroom ceremony) (34). The Johnsons’ ve!ada took place in Huautla. Although they observed the use of the mushrooms, they did not partake of them. Reko sent dried mushroom material to C. G. Santesson for chemical study. He observed a ‘half narcosis’ in frogs and mice following administration of extracts of the mushrooms but this intriguing lead was not pursued.

Johnson was killed m combat m North Africa, and Schultes was diverted to South America. Santesson died in 1939, and Reko applied himself to other studies until his death in 1953.

The naming of psycho-themed terms. This was the situation in 1952, when the American ethno­ mycologists Valentina and Gordon Wasson first learned of the Mexican mushroom cult. The Wassons had by that time been studying the cultural role of mushrooms ‘ethnomycology’ for over 25 years. Their studies of the field they named ‘ethonomycology’ had led them to surmise that our primitive ancestors worshipped mushrooms. They knew not which mushrooms nor why they were wor­shipped, but they had been led to their conclusion by the peculiar connotations of mushroom names in Europe, and the dia­metrically opposed attitudes toward fungi that these names con­veyed. The Wassons learned that all Eurasian peoples were emotional about mushrooms, either loving them or hating them, so they devised the words ‘mycophilia’ and ‘mycophobia’ to describe these contrasting attitudes

study of the fieldwork of Reko, Schultes, and Johnson, the Wassons, with the assistance of Robert W eitlaner, made their first expedition to Mexico in the summer of 1953.

on June 29, 1955, Gordon Wasson was able to collect a large quantity of Pstlocybe caerulescens and was that same day introduced to Maria Sabina, in the home of Cayetano Garcia, they were served 13 pairs with chocolate.

Valentina Wasson, a physician, also ingested the mushrooms. Later, she reported her reactions in This Week magazine.

The Wassons teamed up with the prominent French mycolo­gist Roger Heim, who accompanied them to Mexico in 1956. Heim returned to Paris with specimens and cultures of the Mexi­can sacred mushrooms. Heim was able to identify 14 species of divinatory mushrooms, 12 of which were new to science. He was able to grow many of these species in his laboratory in Paris (27). Heim sent cultured specimens of Psilocybe mexicana to the world-famous discoverer of LSD, Albert Hofmann of the Swiss pharmaceutical firm Sandoz. Self-experimentation by Hofmann and his assistants determined that the psychoactive effects were caused by two unique indole alkaloids, designated psilocybin and psilocin, which were expeditiously synthesized.

* Heim, Wasson, and Hofmann summarized their research in Les Champignons Hallucinogenes du Mexique (27), the most complete and authoritative interdisciplinary study of any drug plant every published.

In the May 13, 1957 issue of Life magazine article, “Seeking the Magic Mushroom,” described _the modern cult and its history . The title, chosen by the editors of Life, as ‘magic mushrooms.’ timed the publi­cation of his article to coincide with the release of Mushrooms, Russia and History, which he coauthored with his wife Valentina. This detailed of study of the field the Wassons named ‘eth­nomycology.’ Starting with European mush­room names, led to the shrooms of Mexico. In this book, they presented their initial observations on the modern cult of teonandcatl, and included a thorough review of its history of a once mighty cult. In every case where ritual use of the mushrooms was encountered, the beliefs sur­rounding the cult were mingled inextricably with Christian con­cepts. The mushrooms were personified as Jesus, and rites were celebrated before crude wooden altars bearing icons representing the baptism in Jordan and baby Jesus.

Timothy Leary journeyed to Mexico In 1960, Cuernavaca. Leary obtained a supply of synthetic psilocybin from Sandoz Laboratories, and began. his experiments at Harvard which led to his dismissal from the faculty. Leary then began work­ing with LSD, and in 1968, Leary published High Priest, a chronicle of hallucinogenic drugs (and his experience of the mushrooms in Cuernavaca, and contained marginalia excerpted from Wasson.  Leary’s book was instrumental in introducing the mushrooms to the American public, especially to users of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs. 

Public consciousness further expanded in 1968 of The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda (7). Castaneda described his appren­ticeship to an aging Mexican sorcerer, Juan Matus, who allegedly smoked dried specimens of Psilocybe mexicana. Castaneda’s book became a bestseller as well despite the fact that he presented no information on mush­rooms. Wasson met him twice. In spite of Wasson’s prompting, Castaneda was unwilling ( or unable) to procure specimens of the mushrooms for reliable identification. Moreover, certain disconcerting inconsistencies in Castaneda’s accounts defy credi­bility, and it has even been suggested that Castaneda invented Don Juan from Mushrooms, Russia and History for his ideas. The archetype.Its ironic