Norman Ohler, the German writer whose book Blitzed documented systematic methamphetamine use in the Third Reich, recounts how the project began. A Berlin DJ friend told him the Nazis had used drugs, having found and swallowed 1940s Pervitin tablets left in a medicine cabinet in an East Berlin apartment. Ohler located a single academic paper arguing there would have been no blitzkrieg without methamphetamine, then worked in the German military archive at Freiburg and found the Wehrmacht's use largely unwritten. He had intended a novel; his publisher pushed him toward nonfiction with a full source apparatus, a choice he says was right. The conversation also covers self-publishing and the origins of LSD, and closes with Bernardo Kastrup's argument that scientific materialism has been superseded by analytic idealism, which Pinchbeck says he broadly accepts.
Guest: Norman Ohler
In brief
- Ohler says West German schooling and postwar historiography omitted Nazi drug use entirely, partly because wartime propaganda about Hitler's abstinence outlived the regime.
- Ohler traces the book to a friend's discovery of 1940s Pervitin tablets that still produced a stimulant effect some sixty years later.
- Ohler says the military archive at Freiburg held extensive documentation of the German army's systematic methamphetamine use that essentially no historian had worked through.
- Ohler says his publisher was right to demand nonfiction over the novel he had spent two years on, because a sourced apparatus gets closer to the truth than fiction can.
- Pinchbeck endorses Bernardo Kastrup's analytic idealism as a more coherent philosophy than scientific materialism, which he treats as obsolete.
- Pinchbeck argues that on an idealist foundation, ideas such as reincarnation become tractable rather than absurd.
Full text
That was quite a kind of a weird story obviously like methamphetamine during the so-called Third Reich. So I just went online and I Googled a little bit and there was like hardly anything to be found but there were some traces and there was one academic paper by a professor from a southern German university who had researched a little bit this methamphetamine topic and his conclusion was without methamphetamine there would have been no blitzkrieg which is quite a statement you know let's let's talk a little about our, you know, our most obvious area of overlap because that's probably the most the biggest common denominator, you know, in our audiences or whatever, which is sort of drugs, uh, consciousness and so on. Um, you had a sort of breakthrough book with Blitz. Uh, before that you'd been doing more like novels, fiction. Um, how did you get into writing Blitz and what's it about for people who don't know?
I was just clueless what my next novel could be. I had written three novels and um I asked a friend of mine, a DJ from Berlin, DJ Alex Kramer, who's DJ at cover visionaries in Berlin underground kind of electronic music club and he said I should write about Nazis and drugs and I replied there's nothing to write about because they didn't use any drugs because I was educated like everyone else in West Germany about the Nazi regime pretty extensively but drugs never played a role like historians had never written anything about that and also in our school books there was no mention of Nazis taking drugs. I mean what you would read from time to time is that they were like u that Hitler was like a tea totler like Hitler would never you know not even drink coffee not smoke like there's this uh there's this propaganda uh episode where he like throws away his pack of cigarettes into the Danube River and since then from that moment on he's like toxin free and he's becomes this pure vessel for the German nation And so this is like an important part of Nazi propaganda. And somehow it was, you know, believed also in the in the in post-war West Germany that, you know, that the Nazis were these like, you know, they did horrible things, but they were law and order. They were for discipline.
So like secondary secondary things that um uh that could be attributed to them uh were still, you know, known or like the propaganda somehow survived. So I said to Alex, "Well, but the Nazis didn't take drugs." He said, "Well, they did because a friend of mine who was an antique dealer uh just bought," and this was in 2010, an old medicine cabinet in a in an East Berlin apartment, like a well, not bought, he just when he emptied an apartment for old furniture. He found this thing and there were tablets from the 40s in that cabinet labeled Pvitine. And my friend Alex who's a DJ and drug connoisseur, he read on the package that it it well it said contains methamphetamine. So he became interested because he's not a only a psycho he's more actually a drug person than a psychedelics person.
So he's really into kind of habit forming substances and uh and also empetamines. He likes empetamines and he took these old 60 year old pills. Wow. And uh he said that they still worked very well and um that yeah the first one kind of gave him a buzz and then he was curious. He took a second one after like 30 minutes and he felt high and then he took a third one because he's an excessive guy. And he pointed, we were standing at the river uh in my in my writing space in Berlin. It's as above the river and he pointed at a big ship that was coming by and he says it was like the engine of a big ship were turned on and I felt this this kind of he said the German word shoop which means like you know push of a a large push of an engine.
That was quite a kind of a weird story obviously like methamphetamine during the so-called Third Reich. So I just went online and I Googled a little bit and there was like hardly anything to be found but there were some traces and especially was one there was one uh academic paper by a professor from a southern German university who had researched a little bit this methamphetamine topic and uh his conclusion was without methamphetamine there would have been no blitzkrie which is quite a statement you know because no one's ever made that statement or ever talked talked about that. So, I traveled down to east to southern Germany. I kind of took my Alex's advice to now write about Nazis and drugs because I realized there's something there. And I met this guy and he said, "Yeah, there's actually a lot more.
I just didn't have the time or the interest to to go through the military archive which is in Fryborg town in in Germany. So I went there and he gave me the signature so I could look very like I I I knew where to look and it was actually a treasure trove of information how the German army was using methamphetamine in a systematic way and I realized that no one's ever really written about this except of except this one guy and he only wrote like two pages there was like a lot more. So this then formed a formidable novel where I'm telling the you know an invented tale with true facts in it obviously but then my publisher said these facts are actually what's fascinating me. I don't care about the invented characters that you you know care so much but I I really care about the fact so he suggested to to me to write a non-fiction book which then became the book Blitz. So, I kind of threw away a novel that that I had been working on for 2 years still sitting in my desktop.
Who knows if it's good or bad, but he said the good thing would be to write a non-fiction book that actually shows the facts. So, this is what this is what Blitz is. And he was right. You know, the publisher was right for once. Sometimes it's good to not self-publish to actually have a publisher. I mean, we might talk about self-publishing, too, which I think is a fascinating topic. No, in this case it was a conventional publisher that said do a non-fiction book and the readers that you know I think thanked me for or thank him for it because in the non-fiction book you can actually it has an apparatus it has a source sources it's different to read this the truth or at least you know what could be the truth I mean it's as close to the truth as you can get I I would say much closer than in a novel obviously and in this case I think it was the right choice.
I mean the uh along with speed I think the Nazis also developed methodone right when they were looking for ways to control kind of their uh their people and so on. I think you mentioned this in 2020. I don't know if you remember that when we we were on a podium together in Kat in Austria. Oh right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's when we met actually and you you mentioned that methadone and I had to admit that I had not done proper methodone research. I mean I know that they did invent invented because the problem was that the opium fields at one point during the war were blocked for Germans like they couldn't access the raw material anymore to to make uh proper opiates.
So I guess methadone does it does it have does it have opium in it or is it pure it's purely synthetical right I believe it's synthetic yeah yeah it's synthetic so that was that's why they developed methadone because they wanted to have a painkiller that you know that is independent of the natural source of the of the poppy flower I guess that was that was how it how it came about to develop methadone what was what was your favorite discovery or new new idea when you when you when you wrote Blitz. I was I I went back to that military historian and I said I I research now a lot about methamphetamine in the army and I think it's fascinating but I would like to also expand my research to Hitler himself because I had also seen online that he had this crazy doctor which gave him drugs and Ian Kershaw the number one Hitler biographer wrote in his 10,000page biography on Hitler like one sentence or like five sentences about this doctor theo moral that he gave Hitler a staggering amount of drugs but he never goes into the subject matter because I I think I kersaw just like all the other historians is not a drug expert unlike us. So I was curious you know what drugs did he give Hitler does that play any role and also the guy who wrote about meth he said this is not important this is just you know yellow press kind of writing why would be interested in Hitler's drug intake but when I went to the federal archive and actually found the original um documents by this doctor by Theo Morurell like his his original book where he wrote like every day when he met Hitler he wrote in his handwriting. What happened last days? I've seen that book.
Yeah. Where did you see that? Wait, does he talk about psychoanalyzing Hitler? No, he only talks about giving drugs to Hitler. He's not into psychoanalysis because that's a Jewish practice. At least that's what the Nazis said because it was developed by Freud. I don't think Hitler would have been would have allowed anyone to psychoanalyze. Where do you get that from? I'm going to have to remember where I found this weird old book on on on in a in a in a library in somebody's bookshelf and I was blown away because it was talking about um Hitler and drugs and Hitler and psychoanalysis. Well, the allies somehow tried to to analyze him from the distance.
So there was a psychoanalyst I think working for the for the British army kind of trying to do an anal an analysis of the character of Hitler because I think Britain tried to get ideas on how the war could you know evolve if they would know enough about Hitler's personality. So that could be interesting. But I I that was a different book that the book that I found was actually the medicine book by Theo Morell where it just wrote like October 10th, 1942, the war is going bad where Hitler is like not Hitler, he called him patient A. Uh patient A is nervous and uh in a very bad mood, bordering on depressed. He discusses with me what to give him that day.
we decide on giving him that opioid and that vitamin together in a super injection and stuff like that. And when I read that, I thought this is this is great, you know. Yeah. I mean this is this is this is this was a story that was suddenly you know captivating me as I was sitting in the archives kind of actually being a fly on the wall in the in rooms where you where no one was present you know but Morel actually was present because he was giving the drugs and he was writing it down but no one had looked at these notes really that's but that was quite surprising I could see in the archive the history of uh of the usage of that material And it was had been checked out by like three people since the end of World War II even though Morell was like with Hitler every day. So historians have had completely overlooked this very rich source material.
So when I saw it I thought this is great. So this was like the my this was my moment like sitting there in the archive thinking this is cool and I never arive really before. This was Sure. Sure. Then you found out that Hitler's use of this stuff became more and more heavy as time went on and as he approached the uh the ending. Yeah. Which makes sense, you know, but it it's actually true. Um and I presented this to Hans Moms, the late Hans Moms, like leading historian, German historian on national socialism. Um and they kind of looked at the material and he said this finally explains Hitler's um Hitler's uh shift like he was not shift um he was very effective in taking decisions up to a certain point personal decisions and also military decisions and then there's a there's a there's a moment when he kind of becomes a bad or I mean bad in in relation to Hitler is a weird word like an ineffective military leader.
He makes like wrong decisions and that's the moment when his drug intake increases. So you can see a correlation and it's not that his well his decisions on the one hand became worse because of the drugs because the drugs he took created like a tunnel vision and remove you can see that the drug intake of opioids and cocaine makes his comes at a point when his decisions are not as good anymore. So I think they do create a tunnel vision and they remove him from re they remove him from reality. So he's less able to make decisions that are you know affecting reality in in in the way that he would like reality to develop cuz that's you know war is very real reality. You know you have to make precise decisions and if you don't accept what's going on on the ground anymore if you're like living in a fantasy world it becomes very difficult actually to make these decisions.
On the other hand, because he made because the war was going worse and worse for Germany, he took more and more drugs because that charisma that he once had that like, you know, being so sure that he's right, that history is going his way, that became, you know, that conviction became shattered because his generals came back and he said, "Well, actually, you're not right. You know, it's going going really bad on the battlefield." So he would take more to convince himself and then to convince others that he's still on the right path. So it was a downward spiral. And I think you can only explain this if you explain if you understand his drug intake, the opioids he used, oxy oxycodone he used cocaine and no one had explained this before. So in a way Blitz has become the most accurate Hitler biography which is weird.
you know, I I I suddenly became a Hitler expert without ever wanting to become really a Hitler expert. So, I kind of it was like kind of in a Don Dilo novel. I'm suddenly I'm suddenly number one Hitler expert without wanting to to do that. Like at one time I got a call like from a live Colombian radio station, an interview and they asked me I was like in Berlin like opening the door of my car letting my kids get into the car and this radio woman asked like totally excited. So please tell us did Hitler survive the war? Did did he live in in in Argentina or did he not?
We really want to know it now from you because and I said no he died in the bunker. I mean I had no idea if he really did die in the bunker. It just seems like he died in the bunker and then she said, "Okay, then we can rest assured that he's actually dead." Yeah. So, it's it's it's a bit absurd, you know, but it's also, you know, it's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I guess I I like to take on the role, but so I I I also have a life outside of that, obviously. Sure. I mean uh you know discussing the topic of this book for a lot of Americans and I saw a comment on this in the chat.
It's going to trigger questions around what's happening now with this sort of like authoritarian movement and if it's being fueled by the same drugs or other drugs. I mean we know for instance that you know Elon Musk has been like deep in the ketamine uh hole and so on. There's rumors that Trump is uh you know takes a lot of aderall. Um there's like close-ups of like white bits of powder shooting out of his nose and so on. Um yeah, I mean um I guess you know larger question around how drugs kind of mediate uh social consciousness, you know, like we probably never would have had the French Revolution and started the modern world if it wasn't for coffee, right?
So like suddenly there were all these like cafes in France and everybody started drinking coffee and then talking to each other about what was happening and then they realized that it was terrible and so you know they had a revolution you know so um yeah there's always that question of how drugs mediate you know social reality or or accelerate or you know amplify certain aspects you know I mean and certainly in America you know we're a wash with all sorts of psychoactive drugs right now. I mean that's really I think your expertise also and I would be curious to hear what you think about the current role of drugs especially psychedelics in the US. Are they are they changing the society for the better? Would it be great if RFK would legalize psychedelics or would that possibly lead into you know even deeper into an authoritarian state? What do you think?
Yeah, I mean my perspective has has toggled. When I wrote Breaking Open the Head, my first book, I was much more uh optimistic about um the value of a lot of you know psychedelics flooding into society. And um I don't I've lost that uh you know naive optimism that that they're definitely going to produce you know positive effects on a societal level. Um, and yeah, the studies I think, you know, there's been st some studies. I mean, you know, do psychedelics actually make people more empathic or more aware? Maybe they do in some ways, but I think it's it's a more complicated situation than than we thought at first.
And, you know, there you know, we know there people call them non-specific psychic amplifiers. So, you know, they amplify whatever you have um already kind of like going on. I spoke with this about this with Israeli neuroscientist Leo Roseman from he he works in London and he actually said that psychedelics don't bring about peace but they could energize a peace movement and I but I guess they could also energize like a right-wing movement you know cuz psychedelics can also make you believe even more in your you know belief system. So they are really I mean I always thought that I mean that Timothy Liry just thought we all need to take you know drop acid we all become like good people and I thought that also for a long time but it doesn't seem to be the case at all even though I do think there's a tendency um to become a quote unquote better person when you take psychedelics because it does connect areas of your brain that are usually not connected in such and such a way. So it does you know create creative thought processes.
So overall I would say it is it is a it is a positive force and I think if we're looking at a different future model for our society like a an egalitarian planetary society if you would agree I don't know know if you would agree that that is a that that could be a utopian society then it would be clear that psychedelics would have to be legalized. Yeah. Um yeah, I just think it's you know it's it's it's turned out to be much more complex and yeah definitely I think you know I mean when people first do like something like Iawaska or mushrooms they often you know feel much more you know connected to nature and they become aware that their subjectivity is is often like programmed or conditioned by ideologies and social force and there reasons you know there's all the reasons why the mainstream establishment you know kind of cut them off in the 60s they were kind of scared of people abandoning visiting the corporate culture and going back to the land and starting communities and joining you know social justice movements and so on and then it's been you know so that was like that that door was closed tight you know in the early '7s when they made all these substances you know schedule one and so on and now the door is kind of opening sort of slowly but it sort of feels more and more I mean as America moves more more and more towards a right-wing thing that a lot of you know kind of right-wing people are moving into the psychedelic world and sort of trying to sort of capture the energy of of psychedelics. um either for some kind of Catholicism or kind of you know it's all about you know innovation or entrepreneurship for corporations micro doing you know or it's really just about the individual having these like healing realizations that allow them to be super effective you know in in business or or in corporate or something um you know rather than which is what I wrote about and what my hope had been when I wrote my first books was that the the insight from psychedelics would lead people to kind of analyze the structural basis of the society and the systems of exploitation and domination and would would tend to lead people into more of a uh alternative uh modes of uh response and resistance. Uh and I you know that has happened with some what's that maybe it depends how much people take if you take very high dosages which come with ego dissolution maybe also your Yeah.
Well, I also like Jamie Wheel in that talk. I think we were at that talk together Denver. I can't remember. Did you come to uh in the Denver psychedelic science conference? My friend Jamie Wheel gave a talk and I wrote about he talked about the sort of 8020 rule that actually like 80% of the benefit one gets from psychedelics is from like the first handful of big experiences and then after that going back to it you know because those experiences are so amazing and ecstatic but it's never quite you know like those first experiences where you get like a new imprinting and and a you know repatterning and floods of insight and so on.
Uh, so, so, so we we talked about Blitz a little bit and you had a more recent book came out called Tripped. Do you want do you want to tell us what that was about? Well, Tripped, um, Tripped is a book about the early history of LSD. And with early history, I really mean like the first days and months and years within the company Sandos in Basa, Switzerland. Um the question behind this book is a question that my father asked me and um the question came after we discussed in our family whether we should use LSD and micro doses um against the Alzheimer's disease of my mom.
I had read a report by an American startup company called Gilus that LSD might help um in low dosages micro dosages. Um there was a clinical that was a the first phase uh clinical test that had been done and my father then he my father had been a a judge quite a high judge in Germany. where he said what you know if this is beneficial why is it then illegal you know it doesn't make sense to me there must be something wrong with what you're telling me or it's something I don't understand so I said okay I'm going to research why LSD actually did not become medicine was it really for health reasons or was it for different reasons so I I I became interested in why the company was not able to put it on the market because when they developed it in 43 Um they did the first tests within Sundos. They created an intoxication room within the company and company employees could use uh the compound and they didn't know anything about LSD. No one knew anything about it at the time.
So they were just taking this novelty compound in different dosages and everyone absolutely loved it and you know they were some depressed people working for Sanders at the time or you know bored people or melancholy people and they all like suddenly had a new interest in life and they were happy and this was at a time when World War II was really destroying you know so many lives and so many you know hopes everything you know it was a hugely traumatizing event for Europe and the world. So, Sandos actually thought that, you know, if our people in peaceful Switzerland already react so positive positively to LSD, what maybe this could really help a lot of people. This could really become like a big seller for the company. Makes a lot of sense to think that way. So, why what hap what went wrong?
Basically, this is the question that my father then wanted to the answer for. And what went wrong? It took me quite a while. I I went to the the archives of Sundos which are in Basel which are now in with the company Novatis who bought Sundos in the '9s. They have a company archive and anyone can use it but in contrast to a public archive. You don't get a find book. So you don't get an objective overview of what's in the archive. So you cannot really demand I want to see this or I want to see that. you you kind of have to talk your you have to sweet talk the archivist who's employed by this company Novatis he's noas employ employee and um you know his job is not really to reveal the dark secrets of the company you know his job is to kind of whitewash the company's history and by pretending they have this this archive that anyone can use to find all the facts about you know medicine development at at Novartis and Sundos So it was a bit tricky to actually, you know, figure out what went wrong.
Um, but there was a point when I was able to bribe the archivist and I bribed him with actual LSD that I h happened to have with me. So we were like talking and I said I, you know, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to find and I wanted to find I wanted to read the papers of the CEO, not the papers of Albert Hoffman who the chemist who actually discovered LSD. I mean I had read them before and they're interesting and but they they they have been written about before you know we all know or at least there's the you know the story about the bicycle ride and how he self-administered LSD and what happened to him but this is not the answer to the question that my father asked. So I wanted to see the papers of the of the CEO at Stol is his name. And the archist was quite reluctant to show me these papers.
But then I suddenly said, "Do you I have something I I have I have something for you actually. I brought some LSD. Do you want to see it?" He's like, "Never seen LSD." Which he actually had never seen. And I said, "This was a product of your company." And he was kind of flatter kind of interested. So he took it and and then he said, "Okay, what what do you want to see now?" uh and he was became more open like LSD actually opened the doors for me in the archive and I said I want to see the papers of Atro the CEO and he said okay I'll I'll look what I can find and I he went inside and he got the he got you know came back with the archival stuff and you I already knew then this was this was going to be a book you know just the scene alone was like was like really in was funny you know I like to write about it and I then then I looked at through the papers and I found the smoking gun.
Then I really knew that this was a book or this was the answer to my father's question because I I I could clearly see that at Sto's CEO had been best friends with a guy called Rishad Rishad is a Nobel Prize winner for chemistry and he had been a Nazi basically. He had a German um biochemist who had stayed in uh Germany when the Nazis took over and arranged you know himself with the regime would open his lectures with H. Hitler and stuff like that got funding from the state and he was best friends with the Swiss CEO since the 20s. So they because they had had the same uh mentor which was a Jewish German chemist Rishad Viltetta. They had both studied under Viltetta.
Mitch said I had kind of developed biochemistry which means you we take potent alkaloids from plants and and create medicines from that which is different than syn synthetic chemistry which is you know ketamine is a synthetic stuff but you know he was biochemistry taking plant plant potent plant alkoids. So this was what they both worked on. for the Nazis for Sandos and they always exchanged their research. Uh since the 20s they had both done urgot research which is the you know the plant that the fungi not a plant but a mushroom a fungi that LSD comes from. Now in every LSD trip is urgot you know natural compound.
LSD is not synthetic. It's a it's it's a it's a half synthetic uh drug because erggo is always in it. Um so they had exchanged always this knowledge. I read about that and uh I I that was fascinating. And then I like which like the letters became more and more interesting as you know the dates on top of the letters became closed in on 1933. And then you know 1940 1943 they would still exchange everything. And then wrote to look we found this incredibly potent urgot based uh compound. We call it LSD25. We don't really know what it is but it works so powerfully on the mind.
And at the time was working on a so-called truth drug for the Nazis. So he was researching what compounds could be used in interrogations to bring out the truth from people who don't want to talk. You know, even after torture, they don't want to talk. So maybe we give them a drug and then they will talk. So he thought maybe it's LSD. And was um taking part in organizing SS uh tests in the concentration camp of Dhau. First these tests were done uh with masculine. They were done on inmates. So SS guy, his name was Plura, would give an inmate a cup of coffee with some masculine in it and then you know ask appropriate questions once the masculine kicks in in order to see if he can extract secrets and then but masculine tastes bitter.
Um it's more expensive. It's it's not so easy to make synthetic masculine and for have synthetic mas or from from cacti it's also hard you know how do where do you get the cacti from in Germany so LSD was a much better choice for them so they did tests um they the SS doesn't write LSD in the reports they just write like an odless tasteless substance um and then when the US military liberates Dhao in April 1945 they find these reports and at the time the US military immediately becomes interested in doing truth drug research themselves because they find themselves now in a cold war with the Soviet Union where it's all about you know extracting secrets from the other side who's on our side who's on who's our you know who's a sleeper this was like the the paranoid um uh vibe of the cold war from the start so a truth drug is of vital importance at least if you're you know have the mindset of a of an intelligence officer. So first US military gets interested by these Nazi experiments and then CIA founded in 1947 gets interested and then program MK Ultra is being developed because of that or at least you know putting a strong emphasis on LSD uh research which basically continues from Nazi Germany in in the United States on un unwitting Americans and this is kind of the story of trip and this is also the story the answer to my father's question when I go back to him They look LSD is not illegal because it's dangerous for your health. It might be obviously if you you take it in the wrong setting and too much whatever but it's illegal for different reasons for ideological reasons. And that was actually that's actually when we decided in the family to to to to trust that white paper that I had read and to give LSD and micro doses to my mother and with great benefits cognitive enhancements of my mother.
Um it didn't stop or reverse her Alzheimer's disease but it did slow it down. At least that's what my father thought after a while. So that's why I wanted to call the book actually LSD for mom which I think is much better title than tripped but uh the publisher wouldn't agree to that but that's the book in a nutshell. Yeah. The first book might have been called patient a is very nervous. Well we thought about calling it high Hitler. Hi Hitler. Hitler. Yeah. But my German publisher thought that was too too I'm glad you like I'm glad you like the nerd reich by the way. It's a it's a good little pun.
The nerd rag is a great um that would be a great book title, but it's already taken I heard. Yeah. Someone someone's writing a subst. Yeah. Um and um okay, so you wrote all this stuff about drugs and then I mean you were in Berlin. Were you always exploring like psychedelics and that kind of stuff yourself or was that more recent that you got interested? No, I I when I lived in New York in the early 90s and I wrote my first novel, I had a girlfriend named Anna and one day she said, "I why don't we try LSD together?" And I basically never even smoked pot.
So I I had no idea. I was like a total newbie to drugs and she gave me the strongest LSD trip I've ever had. and I walked uh on a Saturday night in the Lower East Side and it was just um the most intense experience on LSD I've ever had. And since then, not a really good trip, actually. I mean, a very good trip, but a horror trip, but Albert Hoffman said the horror trips are the best cuz they teach you the most. I just thought I would go crazy because I had no idea what this stuff was. I was completely uneducated, which uh you know is the state of our society.
We we are uneducated about drugs. I mean now you and me and a lot of other people are writing about it which I think is important because the government is actually not informing us properly about drugs to the contrary it's ridiculous the government should have a certain you know role and you know a certain responsibility which they completely you know lack to to exercise um so what was your question what u I lost the thread um just ask you about your own psychedelic use oh yeah so so since then I have been actually interested did in psychedelics because that was so fascinating this LSD trip would happen in my mind. So I I I I did after my first shock receded, I I tried it again and I I've I've had LSD I don't know maybe 100 times or 200 times, which is probably quite a lot for the average person, but you know, it's not that much, you know, in the last like 30 years. I and I I I I do think for me personally it's good and I can evaluate the risks and um I I kind of like to integrate that into my life but I never thought about writing about it until I then you know read that paper and discuss it in my family and suddenly we you know we were I was on this real like journey what actually is LSD and why was it why did it become illegal? Why did it like why was it thrown under the bus by like government authority?
Yeah. So, but I've always been fascinated by also the Nazis and drugs. I could not really have written that book without certain drug experiences also with like negative experiences of like addictive drugs like amphetamine. I'm really not a fan of amphetamine, but I also tried amphetamine and I think it was important for me to try it in order to write about it. Um, but I did not take all the drugs that Hitler took. I think that would have been my a friend of mine who designed the cover for for Blitz, the German cover, Douglas Gordon, a Scottish artist, he said we should do a an art experiment and put someone in a gallery in Berlin and give him exactly the same drugs quantities that Hitler took, but that really would be we it would be hard to find someone who would who would do that.
Oh, no, it wouldn't. I know I know some very hardcore drug takers. That's reminds me of this thing somebody did on Instagram. He uh takes the diet of different political figures then lives like they live for a week and he so he lived on Donald Trump's diet for a week and he almost do it and nearly killed him. It was like gallons of diet coke every day, Doritos, Big Macs, Kentucky Fried Chicken and um maybe one little fried shake. How do we know how do we know actually what he what he eats every day? I guess the guy does the research. you know, you read the biography is, you know, you you know, his his schedule is pretty pretty available.
Um, but yeah, the guy could almost not do it for more than a week. It was it was it was too brutal. You know, we look at the files what drugs Trump takes in like 20, 30 years. How is the law here in the US? Do you know? I have no idea. I I have absolutely no idea. No. Would also be interesting to see what like for example JFK took. He took a lot of drugs. I mean, every president probably takes a lot of drugs and it's an interesting field. I mean, the theory about Trump right now is that he's suffering a level of um, you know, cognitive deterioration.
His uh, his father sort of disintegrated cognitively at around his age and he might have a little bit of like frontal lobe dementia. And when you combine that with the narcissism, it can lead to somebody really like sort of their their instincts and their impulses kind of being completely um yeah, there's like no there's no there's no blockage anymore, no obstruction. So, and it seems like the way he speak he's acting is is very much like that right now. Another Dondilo novel of a president becoming Yeah. like get dementia and suddenly like making random decisions and the you know at the there would be a point when the system would have to try to remove him but that also would be like a very problematic you know procedure.
So this seems to be what we're moving to what we're moving towards. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I'd say it's more lunatic than any like Don Dilo or JG Ballard kind of a novel because you know they also have a whole a lot of the people around him are Christian fanatics and they actually have a ideology where they see him as part of the prophecy like he's the sort of you know the king who comes before the uh the you know revelation and the messianic return and so on. That's like you know even Peter Teal is talking a lot about the antichrist right now. Um, just the beginning.
What's that? Trump is just the beginning of something that will come afterwards. It feels like it gearing up for I mean, who knows? I mean, um, it's touch and go right now in America and Norman. We just don't know where we're where we're headed at the moment. But yeah, what can we do? What can we do to stop it? I mean, it's uh that's that's a huge long discussion. I mean, it's something I've been think trying to think about and writing a lot about. I mean there are movements that people can join like the Sunrise Movement and Indivisible that are you know pretty intelligent in how they're organizing protests.
I'm not I I feel there needs to be a lot more speaking out uh and a lot more discussion like a lot more face toface community meetings. Um yeah, so I'm I'm looking for ways to plug in uh but I'm I'm not a very good joiner but I'm but I'm trying to figure out what to join right now. Uh, I know there's also mutual aid network starting in in New York. Uh, Tomkins Square Park where I live right around here has a mutual aid network. So, I've been on their mailing list and hopes to join that at some point. But, um, yeah, it's a it's a wild uh it's like a whole new ball game right now uh here.
Um, but um yeah, it's like actually I went to a talk last night. I don't think I told you about it, but it was from a genetics guy about polygenic embryo um kind of uh choosing basically. Now, it's not exactly like genetic engineering, but you know, you can have a bunch of fertilized embryos and you can test their genes and you can be like, oh, like this one is not going to develop that disease and this one will be more intelligent and this one will have blue eyes and be six foot tall or whatever. So they're they're they're offering this as a service to people for $50,000 where you can like choose the better embryo. And it felt like as you were mentioning Don Dilo, I felt like I was in the prequel of Brave New World by Aldis Huxley like that, you know, we can see that we're just you know you know at this incredible spa pace kind of moving into these various dystopian you know sci-fi realities in a way.
I have nothing to add. Uh well, let's talk a little bit before we before we close off for today about your uh recent EBOGA experience. I don't know if you know that was a major catalyst for my own journey of like discovery. Uh I um I I read the first pages of your book. Yeah. I was in my late 20s. I was very depressed. Maybe it was early 30s. Can't remember. And I got an assignment from a hip-hop magazine to go to Gaban in West Africa and it was really uh before this was maybe like 1999 or something. So it was really before this whole new wave of psychedelic movement had started and there was a a South African botnist who was working with this indigenous group and uh it felt yeah very edgy.
Uh the shaman was like yelling at us demanding more money from us during the ceremony and stuff. Uh but the experience of Imoga was really tremendous and I was you know I'm really happy that I did it you know in the sort of proper context wearing like the initiation ro you know outfit and they had us lying on the cold ground. They didn't want us to have like a blanket or a pillow or anything. You're really supposed to just be in this very hard situation for a while but um and I you know it was a transformative experience for me. Then I did it again many years later down in in Mexico in Rosarita Beach.
How was it for you? I thought it was amazing. Uh I did it in a clinic called Ambio in Mexico and it was very luxurious compared to what you experienced in Gabon which is in a way bad because it's a bit more it's totally westernized in a way. Um but then again not comparing and just looking at it at its what it was it was very good because it was a very high dosage of ibo gain which is the magic or you know the number one alkoid I would say or probably the most potent alkaloid wi within ibogga. So I I received a very high dosage of ibo gain and um when it started to to work on me after about two hours after I swallowed these four capsules, I just laid down and I closed my eyes and I could see how my brain goes into repair mode and how the ibo gain flows into my brain and around the brain and finds all the spots that needs you know adjustment or reconnection.
And I I from the first moment on I I had the feeling that this medicine is friendly and is helping me and is really uh healing me quote unquote healing me. Um and this is exactly what happened. And I was lying there for 10 hours kind of experiencing how this magic compound that comes from a the root bark of an African plant, probably one of the oldest plants on the planet because it does grow in a region that has not been touched by the ice age. So the iboga plant is actually growing in western uh and central Africa uh for about 500 to 100 million years. So it's really a very old plant that has tremendous power and um I was happy of all this power being unleashed uh in my brain.
Um I just I just felt that it's doing me good and um also it was funny you know I could ask I gain any question I wanted and the the ibog would just know. So I I'm I'm still unsure whether because it's impossible that the Iberane knows you know how would the Iberane know about my life. I mean maybe it's possible you know but it's I I I had that experience my second trip also. What was the most extraordinary Q&A that you had was well and then I thought maybe it just unlocks my own capabilities of answering these questions. you know maybe our consciousness is so much more intelligent than what we are in our day-to-day operations.
So that's I don't know what what you think is uh is is the answer. Is it I gain that knows or is it us that knows? But for sure I gain makes it possible that we know that we know more during the IBA game. So I could like I wanted to know why I'm so tense. You know, it's it's kind of a mundane question, but it really is of importance to me because on a cellular or like, you know, physical level, I always tense up and I do this as long as I can remember. So, there must be reasons for it that you tense up in situations where there's no need to be tense, you know, and it's much better to be relaxed because it saves you energy to be relaxed.
It's it's lifep prolonging, you know, it's it's very beneficial. And it actually go went back into you know the pregnancy of my mother and I could see exactly the situation. I I don't want to go into the detail now because very personal but it was very re very interesting at least you know what happened between my parents when my mother was pregnant how their relationship changed how that changed their relationship or their how that formed their relationship to me as an infant as a small child. And I mean it's like classical kind of psychoanalysis but to understand this in a talking therapy I don't think you could ever get there you know so I kind of brought me there I thought that was amazing the same experience yeah the same type of experience yeah but then I could also ask it uh very uh very contemporary questions like what should my next book be and I will just told me you know it just told me what my next book project is and I I I don't want to talk about it now. I don't want to spill the beans, but yeah, because I'm still working on it, but it was very it was very cool, you know, for a writer to be able to ask, "What's your next book?" and then get the answer.
And it's actually an answer like there's some drug trips where you have like extreme revelations during the trip. You might not even remember it when the trip's over or you do remember it and you think, "Yeah, well that was actually it felt extremely profound during the trip, but afterwards it's just you you you know, okay, whatever, you know." But with Ians, it's different. It really it really sticks and it really has a profound truth. So I do believe that at least for me, I gain is the best medicine that I have so far encountered. And um I'm actually going to do it again. Uh Oh, wow.
Yeah, I'm going to do it again. I mean, it's not it's not a drug that you take like every week, you know, but maybe a few times in your life. I think it could be quite beneficial. Well, now that you told me that you got a book idea from it, I'm I'm thinking maybe I should take it again. Sure. I mean, you everyone should take I seriously Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm not promoting it, but I think it's a it's a it's a good thing. It's a and where it comes from. This story is so interesting. I mean, you wrote about in your book about where it comes from.
It's it's fascinating. Totally. Totally. I'm curious. Um, I have a sense of you as more sort of like, you know, existentialist, uh, you know, kind of maybe not such a spiritual person somehow, but, you know, maybe but now maybe you're changing or segueing a little bit into having more of a esoteric or mystical kind of like vibe. Is that was that is that true or that's just my perception? No, I mean I started as an existentialist writer smoking uh cigarettes and reading kamu and satra when I was 20. Uh but through actually the psychedelics I became an esoteric uh esoterically influenced or interested person which was quite intense in the beginning because it was so new to me.
So I became really esoteric and I was wearing Egyptian robes uh and um you know meditating a lot and only doing yoga on LSD and stuff like that. So I I kind of I kind of progressed uh and I move I move forward but I still you know I I I I'm actually quite spiritual to be be honest because I think I think there's a bigger story out there. Now this is the spirituality that I believe in. I think the universe has a narrative that is a cosmic consciousness or many cosmic consciousness but certainly something there's something out there I believe in that and we can we can sometime some sometimes grasp you know become understand the bigger narrative and I think that's spirituality to be that we understand you know what it's all about what is it trying to tell us what is this unity that we're living in you know at the same time being separated not being fully conscious even though we are inside of our conscious we are actually fully conscious so yeah I'm very spiritual actually that powers my my writing that informs my my writing and hopefully also my life you know educating my children you know being a good partner I think that's all that's what it really that's what really counts in life I think beautifulential but I also like the existential vibe. Oh, I mean, Kimu was like fantastic.
I'm both You might be interested in this Rudolfph Steiner stuff I'm I'm working on right now. We're actually doing But you're leaving in New York. We're doing a thing in New York uh on Saturday. No, I want you but I want you to tell me a little bit about that Rudolfph Steiner because obviously he's known in Germany, but why are you interested in him and what are you exactly doing about him now? Um yeah, I'll answer that. Um, somebody asked, "Can you recommend places for bogga?" There's a number of places in Mexico and Costa Rica where I think it's quite legal. Uh, there's the one that you went to, what was the name of it?
Ambio, you said? Ambio. Yeah, Ambio. In Tijuana. There's another one in um I'm trying blanking on the name right now. Um, beyond in Cancun. Yes. Exactly. Right. Right. Right. Right. The mission The Mission Within in in Tijuana. Mission Within and Ambio and Tijuana. Very good. Especially if you live on the west coast. You just have to go to San Diego. They pick you up. Yeah. Do the fiveday ritual with you, bring you back to San Diego. It's quite convenient. Or you go to beyond in Cancun, which is I haven't been there, but it's probably also not bad at all. You know, they'd actually offered me a free I'm friends with Tanya for many years.
Maybe I'll take take her up on it. I was just not sure that I wanted to do it again. But actually, as you're talking about it, she was going to give me a good book idea. I would definitely go for it right now. um lie there and it happens to you. You don't have to do much, you know, I did it twice. Yeah. Actually, three times. I did it twice when I was in Africa. But but anyway, with uh Rudolph Steiner, so you know, one of my ideas, I guess, is um you know, over the last 60 years, people in the west discovered this kind of spiritual hunger and this like emptiness and so on.
And so we went on a search you know starting maybe in the 50s60s 50s with the beats and the hippies the ' 60s and we discovered kind of eastern metaphysics and yoga and Tibetan Buddhism then we discovered indigenous you know South American shamanism and sort of indigenous cultures in North America and so on but we we sort of like you know didn't really go into the kind of western esoteric tradition as much I mean Crowley was a little bit popular Geraf and so on but of all the western occult people of the modern era, Rudolph Steiner is, I think, the most important and kind of the most um kind of misunderstood or kind of like suppressed. He has a sort of fusty sort of fuddy duddy quality to to to him, but actually when you get into the teachings, it's really I mean very very powerful and very useful. And I guess one way I look at it is um I mean I I'm an idealist or it's a philos philosophical perspective where you believe that consciousness is you know much more likely to be the foundation of the universe rather than anything material or physical. Um there's like a philosopher Bernardo Castro who's a who's a analytic idealist and and Steiner was also a monistic idealist and his first book actually philos freedom was a reputation of contian dualism. He's just a very fascinating character.
He was having like you know natural clairvoyance when he was a kid. He he realized that nobody else had this kind of ability. So he didn't talk about it until he was like 40 and had gotten a doctor of philosophy and was kind of credentialed and he was studying Gerta's like science papers which also had a lot of significance for him and then he be ultimately became the head of theosophy in Germany. Then he left theosophy and started anthroposophy. He realized that the the sort of you know the sort of preg ground for the Nazis was this kind of occult movement thool and he be he realized there was a sort of dark occult thing that was gathering and he wanted to create like a a white occult movement or positive anyway.
Um yeah, I just think um he is just a very profound thinker and um very nourishing and actually I mean he you know I think also that you know some sometimes you could see the value of Steiner um and by the way if people are interested in this course uh it runs we just did the first one in Saturday and I'll go for the rest of the month and they can learn more about it at at my website liinalol. news. Um but yeah, I mean um you know somehow you can see that he had value and that he created these things these these institutions that have become very enduring like the Waldorf schools or the Campill villages for treating people with um you know disabilities or um you know biodnamic farming and essentially he would give all these incredibly you know complex esoteric lectures. Then then eventually like a group of educators would come up to him and they be like how do we apply your ideas to education and he'd be like oh like you can do this and this and this. They would create the Waldorf school system or farmers would come up to him and they how do we apply these ideas to farming and then they developed biodnamic farming which was based on like ancient folk ideas and so on.
And then then you get into the whole esoteric side of him. And so for instance, he claimed that the the mission of his life on earth as far as he understood it was to bring the knowledge of reincarnation back to the to the modern west that we lost that when we shifted from you know paganism and and back into monotheism and so on. And that not only did human beings reincarnate again and again. Then he actually wrote these books where he would take different individuals like it could be like Friedrich Engles or Gerta or Mozart and he would kind of track them back to their past lives based on what he experienced in his visionary states but also the the earth itself was was reincarnating and humanity was like differently constituted in every new incarnation of the earth. Uh anyway, it's just um it's a mind-blowing complex esoteric cosmology.
And I think what's difficult is to find the right relationship, which is what we're trying to do in this course, which is like not be too literal, not not sort of collapse it into into sort of a literal thing, but uh find the right sort of like um yeah, the right approach which allows you to really get benefits from and I I see, you know, one thing that interests me is like I don't know if you know Rupert Sheldrake and the whole idea of like morphinogenic fields and so on. So there's kind of like um you know we're westerners, we come from this European culture which had like alchemy and nasticism and the hermetic tradition so on. So that's like strongly in our morphinogenic field as people from this type of traditional background you know more so than you know eastern mysticism or South American shamanism. So it's it's you know not to say those things aren't amazing and we can't explore them but I think we also really need to reclaim our own esoteric lineage and that really goes from like you know you know back to the gnostics like Basil Valentinius to middle ages people like a Grippa and Jacob Boem and Swedenberg and you know um Paracelis and so on and then Steiner really being like the modern kind of like culmination in a way you know maybe young to a certain extent also. So yeah, I just think he really if we're gonna uh escape because now we kind of have like a situation where on the one hand there's kind of um you know scientific materialism and atheism is still sort of the dominant trend in the force in like themies and so on.
You know, somebody like Bernardo Castroup would say that scientific materialism has actually now been kind of refuted in a way and and that it's an obsolete ideology and that actually analytic idealism is a much more coherent philosophy and makes a lot more sense with everything we've discovered from quantum physics and so on. And um yeah, I kind of think that that that's true. And that and then you know, so on top of that kind of analytic idealism, then we can weave, you know, other ideas that that make sense. And you know, there's approaches to things like reincarnation which actually make a lot of sense and there's even evidence for them in different domains and so on. So yeah, so so that's that's my my my spiel on that.
He's also just by reading one of his books. Super interesting. Yeah. So, having said so much, you and me today. Yeah. I think I will now go to Central Park and relax in the sun. I think I might go at least to Tomkins Square Park, if not all the way to Central. Where Where are you staying? Which neighborhood? Uh, in the Lower East Side, but I have I have friends, they just messaged me that they're in Central Park, so I might head up head up. Amazing. Cool, buddy. It was great to hang out. Uh good to get a chance to to chat and let's hang out again before you before you leave New York if it works out.
Yes. And thank you for everyone listening in. I'm also happy that some new people from your community are in touch now with my community and otherwise. And let's each follow each other and continue the exchange because I think it's very vital and important in these dire times that we keep in touch. and you and me maybe we have a coffee these days. Sounds good, buddy. Have a great time at the park and thanks everybody for joining us. Uh have have a great afternoon.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.