#PsychedeRx Episode 1 - Psychedelics: The Fun, The Fantastical & the Facts!

05/11/21 • 75 min

1 Listener

Where were you on June 18, 1971? Did you know that was when Richard Nixon, the United Nations, and other world leaders changed the course of popular culture, scientific experimentation, and mind exploration for the next five decades? Did you know that substances that have the potential to change the way we treat myriad diseases and conditions - ones that have little or no reliable treatments today - were fated on that day to be imprisoned like Hannibal Lecter?

Join us for the first of a series of Skraps Original episodes as we explore the use, misuse, and history of psychedelics. In this episode, we will cover the most important question of what these substances are, and begin to question why they were lumped in with other addictive substances by exploring the history of how curiosity-induced exploration on one side clashed with religious single-mindedness. This manifested itself in how these plant-based substances were viewed then and for centuries later, in the eyes of the western world.

PsychedeRx will cover the ancient history of plant-based psychedelics including their religious, ceremonial, tribal uses and the dangers imposed by the European views of those uses. We’ll experience murder, mayhem, executions, displacement, and more. We’ll talk to psychedelic historian Mike Jay to get the full story of the full journey - one that started long before Nixon and other world powers set their limited, short-sighted fear loose upon the world.

Subscribe to SKRAPS on your favorite podcast platform to make sure you don’t miss a minute of this riveting journey.

Subscribe to SKRAPS on your favorite podcast platform to make sure you don’t miss a minute of this riveting journey.

Previous Episode

#PsychedeRx - Trailer

This is PsychedeRx - A SKRAPS original podcast series detailing the journey of an improbable drug class (Psychedelics) and its journey - past, present and future.

Next Episode

#PsychedeRx Episode 2: Mescaline: The OG of Psychedelics

Peyote crosses the border and causes a riot. Drug companies want their taste, and psychedelics reach the social elite. What could possibly go wrong?

In episode two of PsychedeRx, Peyote comes north to the good old US of A. And it’s not just for religious ceremonies anymore, either. Spanish conquistadors and European explorers, seeking to dominate the indigenous tribes, used Peyote to show force by banning its use and denying the tribes their spiritual practices. And we all know what happens when prohibitions are imposed - the use doesn’t stop, it just gets moved underground. James Mooney, an ethnographer dispatched by the Smithsonian Institute, is one of our best resources for this era. He committed to his diary first-hand accounts of the use of and backlash against peyote in tribal rituals.

As Peyote moved north, albeit underground, it became the catalyst for a series of events that were bloodier than an episode of Dexter. Wovoka and the Ghost Dance were the turning point. The execution of Sitting Bull led to the massacre at Wounded Knee - and it was all over peyote and freedom of religion - ain’t that an ironic twist?

Episode two also sheds light on the earliest interventions of the drug companies like Merck and Parke-Davis and their part in our little psychedelic drama. Arthur Heffter separates the resins from the alkaloids and isolates the first real information on dosing. We get a close-up look at how the psychiatrists and psychologists got involved - where they got it right, and where they got it all wrong. Psychedelics also make their way into the world of the social elites through folks like Aldous Huxley and Ken Kesey.

We’ll close out this week with our first peek at LSD. So remember to “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.”