Why I wrote Project Nirvana

By Pyotr Patrushev

© 2007

rustran@gmail.com

www.russiantranslation.org

One Billion Deaths From Tobacco – and you are worried about some silly mushrooms?

In the October issue of the journal Nature Cancer Reviews, Penn State science historian Robert Proctor predicts that, left unchecked, tobacco products will cause up to one billion deaths by the end of the 21st century.

Tobacco is the second major cause of death in the world. It is currently responsible for the death of one in ten adults worldwide (about 5 million deaths each year). If current smoking patterns continue, it will cause some 10 million deaths each year by 2020. Half the people that smoke today -that is about 650 million people- will eventually be killed by tobacco.

Some people thought after reading the first edition of Project Nirvana that I advocated legalisation or decriminalisation of some or all existing plants or drugs. This was not my intention at all. This article is written to explain my position and the intent of Project Nirvana. Nirvana is a book about human consciousness, political power, control of the mass consciousness, and the dual nature of science. It is also about our choice to either destroy life on Earth or to create viable and sustainable communities. Drugs and plants are just a means to explore these themes. I could have chosen the power of the censorship or the weapons of mass destruction.

I first thought about writing Project Nirvana

in the 60's when I arrived in Australia as a refugee from Russia . One of the first books that I read in English was Arthur Koestler's The Ghost in the Machine. I was inspired by Koestler's description of the conflict between our new "thinking cap" and the old mammalian and reptilian brains that drive us to love and hate, to kill and to defend our territory.

I escaped from Russia partly because of my resistance to military service. I lost my father in the war almost at the time of my birth. The Soviet Army in the 50's was already engaged in the suppression of popular movements against Communism in Eastern Europe and in a struggle for domination against the West. I thought that while a war of defence was acceptable, the industrial war machine that was being built around "defence" was a monstrosity that could imperil not only the economic wellbeing of the Russian people (it did) but ultimately the survival of life on Earth (it still does).

In 1970 I became a science correspondent for Radio Liberty in Munich, West Germany. I authored a program called The Future of the Planet Earth (the first such program on any Russian foreign radio station) and another program called The Inner World of Man. During the years that these two weekly radio series were broadcast I explored many themes, including the writings of Henry David Thoreau, Yevgeni Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Stanislaw Lem. The utopian and anti-utopian books of these writers made me think of a fictional resolution of what Arthur Koestler called "the predicament of man." The Inner World of Man explored the psychological and spiritual dimensions of life, from popular Western psychologists to Russian Orthodox saints, from teachings of fashionable Hindu gurus to the writings of Carl Gustav Jung.

Why I chose drugs, plants, and alcohol as a theme

There was a personal reason to my choice of drugs and alcohol as a metaphor for Project Nirvana. Since my arrival in Australia, smoking and alcohol became a problem for me. My father and my brother were both alcoholics. Many of my Russian friends drank excessively. Although in Russia I never smoked or drank alcohol at all, I began to drink and smoke while in solitary confinement in a Turkish jail, where I was detained and interrogated after my escape. I was aware of the tremendous influence that alcohol had exercised on the Russian mind, body and spirit. I broke my drinking habit by starting to meditate. I struggled with smoking for many years and finally gave up tobacco when it became clear that it would destroy my heart and kill me if I continued to smoke.

All these strands of thought and experience came together when in the late eighties and early nineties I began working as an interpreter and consultant at the Esalen Institute, located on the West coast of California. The Esalen Institute was and still is one of the leading institutions of psychological training and holistic medicine in the United States. Over the years tens of thousands of people from all over the world attended Esalen seminars and went through long term live-in volunteer programs. During the late 80's and early 90's Esalen had a very active Soviet-American exchange program. Under its aegis well-known Soviet and American scientists and writers were allowed to interact in a free and uninhibited manner (see http://patrushev-publications.com for a description of one of the seminars: "The Health Race: Finding a Cure for Isolation"). These seminars were not only intellectual, but also experiential. The scientists took part in shamanistic and rebirthing sessions and indulged themselves in the world-famous Esalen massages and spas. One of the scientists whose work was important for Project Nirvana was Dr Stanislav Grof, a Czech-born psychiatrist who in the sixties conducted pioneering experiments with alcoholics using LSD-25. When the use of LSD became restricted Stan shifted his work to what he called "holonomic integration," which involved rapid breathing and evocative music to provoke LSD-like experiences in his subjects.

Another participant in the seminars was Dr Andrew Weil who has now become probably the best known holistic doctor in the United States. At the time he was involved in the exploration of psychedelic plants and their effects on human consciousness. A Harvard graduate, he taught medicine at the Arizona Medical School, and even had a species of mushroom Psilocybe weilii named after him. In 1972 he traveled to a Mexican village where, under the guidance of a local curandera (a native Mexican woman-shaman), he participated in a healing ceremony. In this ceremony he consumed twenty-two specimens of Psilocybe cubensis ("magic mushrooms") and later reported that the curandera considered the mushrooms to be the gran remedio cure (the great healing substance). My discussions with Dr Weil and Dr Aron Belkin (more on him later) during a trip to a scared American Indian place in the Arizona desert (see photo in the book) had a profound influence on my thinking.

I was an avid yoga and meditation practitioner in those years and was against the use of any drugs, plant or otherwise. However, as I lived and worked as a radio correspondent in California, drugs were all around me. Dr Alexander (Sasha) Shulgin was my neighbour in Berkeley. One day he dropped a vial of pills into our kitchen table, saying that this is something we might enjoy taking. Shulgin is now credited with popularising of MDMA (street name "ecstasy"), especially for psychopharmaceutical use and the treatment of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder . Sasha was a leading psychopharmacologist who worked both for the government and for large pharmaceutical companies. He told me that MDMA and similar drugs could open people's hearts, and may even bring peace on Earth. I took his claims with a grain of salt I particularly distrusted all chemicals.

Meeting Dr Aron Belkin – a maverick Russian psychiatrist

But the strongest influence that finally made me sit down and write Project Nirvana were my meetings and conversations with Dr Aron Belkin, director of the Moscow Center of Psychiatric Endocrinology who also conducted research into drug addictions.

He told me about a project they had discussed at the Institute. The project was to rescue the native inhabitants of the Kamchatka peninsula, on the Far Eastern seaboard, from being wiped out by vodka. Kamchadals, as the natives of Kamchatka are known, were in the past avid consumers of the psychedelic mushroom Amanita muscaria, also known as Fly agaric. R. Gordon Wasson described in great detail the effects of this mushroom on the natives of Siberia and Kamchatka in his book Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. The mushroom is intoxicating, and appeared to boost endurance of the natives, who would, for example, run faster and for longer distances after their sleds. The shamans used mushroom in order to experience visions that allowed them to see more deeply into the psyche of their patients and the spirit world. Such practices persisted since times immemorial among Siberian and Far Eastern natives. No harmful effects were observed or reported. Even deer were seen to be fond of the mushroom, which they imbibed by trotting up and eagerly drinking the urine, containing a residue of the mushroom, whenever their riders would stop to relieve themselves.

When vodka was introduced, the native tribes in Siberia and the Far East were devastated by alcohol. Vodka had also caused such excessive mortality and disease among the general population of the Soviet Union that one of the first reforms that Mikhail Gorbachev introduced when he came to power was to restrict the sale and production of alcohol. However, the economic damage from this reform (sales of alcohol being traditionally an important element in the Russian economy) and the resistance of the population were such that the reform was hastily abandoned.

Dr Belkin thought that it might be a good experiment to restrict supplies of vodka to an isolated population in one of the villages on Kamchatka and provide them instead with their trusty mushroom. When he mentioned this idea, half-seriously, half-jokingly, to his superiors at the Institute (who were of course members of the Communist Party), he was told to forget all about it if he did not want himself and the rest of the Institute staff to be sent to a prison camp in Siberia.

There was another personal connection to the Amanita cult for me. My maternal uncle, Mikhail Leshchin, who was an NKVD officer until his enforced retirement on the Kamchatka Peninsula, due to some incurable skin disease, healed himself with Amanita after spending some years with the natives. He has learned their lore and healing methods and became a prominent holistic health advocate who was lauded by the Pravda newspaper for his work. Unfortunately, towards the end of his life, he started mixing Amanita decoctions with vodka. A bitter and disillusioned Communist, he died crippled by alcohol and diabetes.

However, busking in the warm Californian sun and submerged in the sulfur-infused hot springs at the Esalen Institute, we forgot about the Soviet realities and gave vent to our fantasy. We speculated what would have happened if the idea of replacing vodka with a plant decoction was accepted and implemented throughout Russia.

Are Plants Experimenting with Humans?

The early drafts of Project Nirvana were written some years later. With the passage of time the problem of drug and alcohol abuse became to be recognised as one of the principal health problems throughout the world. The famous "war on drugs" was declared, costing billions of dollars, leading to the imprisonment of tens of thousands of people, yet producing few visible results (see my article in the Sydney Morning Herald: "Are Plants Experimenting with Humans?" on www.patrushev-publications.com for my brush with the "war on drugs", and the latest statistics on http://www.drugwarfacts.org ).

As more chemical "designer drugs" and even natural plants were banned in many countries, new sources of supply were found and new substances were invented and made available to larger and larger populations. The number of people taking illegal drugs worldwide rose by 2004 to 200 million (the UN annual drugs report). The value of the global drugs trade, which the report says is about $320 billion in US dollars, is higher than the gross domestic product of 90% of the world's nations. No really effective treatment for drug addiction was offered by the medical profession and a number of new and relapsed users kept growing worldwide.

Be afraid of mushrooms – be very afraid…

At the same time, there was a realisation that legal drugs, such as tobacco and alcohol had a far more damaging effect on the general population, compared to which the effect of illegal drugs was almost negligible. In the US, tobacco killed 435,000; poor diet and physical inactivity 365,000; alcohol 85,000; adverse reactions to prescription drugs 32,000; while all illicit drug use, direct and indirect, killed 17,000, with marijuana killing 0 people (www.drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm ). In March 2007, Medical Research Council in the UK determined alcohol and tobacco to be far more harmful than most street drugs, with exception of heroin and cocaine. Ecstasy, LSD and marijuana – drugs causing thousands of arrests and imprisonments, were way down the list (http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0,,2040886,00.html ). Ecstasy was one of the safest drugs available, causing hardly any deaths despite of millions people taking it every weekend. With tens thousands of deaths from alcohol, tobacco and prescription pills, the picture of police chasing and imprisoning a few hippies for picking "magic mushrooms" (the toxicity of which is around half that of caffeine) looked ridiculous. Despite all of this, "magic mushrooms" are currently treated by law in most countries the same as heroin and their possession and cultivation can result in heavy jail terms. "We have to treat these problems as social and health matters and stop pretending we can arrest and imprison our way out of drug problems - drug law enforcement absorbs most of the money targeted at this drug," said the director of emergency at St Vincent's Hospital, Gordian Fulde, speaking of an epidemic of "ice" abuse in Sydney. However, in 2006 laws against "magic mushrooms" were instead strengthened in Holland and the UK, so that only fresh mushrooms could be sold legally, while drying mushrooms was interpreted as "preparation of narcotic substances."

The paranoia and lack of knowledge of the medical profession is telling. The first documented magic mushroom experience in Britain occurred in London's Green Park in 1799. A man who had been picking mushrooms for breakfast accidentally sent his whole family on a trip. The doctor who treated them described in the Medical and Physical Journal how the youngest child was "attacked with fits of immoderate laughter." Such dangerous symptoms could of course not be ignored and, with the fashionable label of a "laughing hysteria," the family was no doubt treated with emetics and hospitalised (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=395143&in_page_id=1770 ). The situation is hardly different today.

The unreasonableness of the current approach became even more evident recently. Due to the obesity crisis and the resultant host of degenerative diseases such as diabetes, realisation is growing that saturated fat, sugar and excessive animal protein are probably bigger killers than even tobacco, alcohol and prescription drugs.

Starting with the sixties researchers at leading American universities began to look at the problem of addiction in an evolutionary context. In 1989 Dr Ronald K. Siegel of the UCLA published his book Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise in which he described the natural drive to alter consciousness among most animals, including man. Calling it "the fourth drive" (after hunger, thirst and sex), Dr Siegel argued for the development of non-addictive substances that would replace the current generation of harmful natural and man-made intoxicants.

There is little doubt that such work is being conducted right now in the laboratories of large pharmaceutical companies, as well as at some university laboratories, to take advantage of the situation when public awareness catches up with the scientific evidence. As profits of the Internet-based companies selling legal and semi-legal artificial and plant-based substances grow, commercial interests and governments will no doubt want to jump on the bandwagon. As the population in the developed countries ages, the governments will become increasingly concerned about the damage that the current generation of legal and illegal intoxicants (including the revenue-producing tobacco and alcohol) are inflicting on the lives of the shrinking cohorts of young adults, without whom the global economy would simply grind to a halt. In Australia, the expenditure on prescription drugs is projected to increase sixfold in the next forty years – the largest growth in any expenditure category. We will need to get our oldies off their antidepressants and sleeping pills, off shrinking medical budgets, and make them as happy and productive as they can be. Any government that will not develop an effective "happy pill" for them and will not follow the scientific advice of Dr Siegel and his colleagues would find itself accused of gross fiscal mismanagement.

The universal prevalence of drugs – “High Society”

This and similar themes are explored in detail in Ben Elton's lively book High Society. Even the respectable journal The Economist recently joined the discussion by reporting (July 15^th 2006, p. 70) on research led by Roland Griffiths of John Hopkins University that had shown that Psilocybin – the active component in magic mushrooms – induced mental states similar to the highest religious experiences. The placebo given to the control group had no such effect. The experience was shown to have a lasting positive effect on those who took part in the study. Two months after the trial eight people out of ten reported increased sense of wellbeing and satisfaction with life. Such positive changes in subjects' attitudes and behaviour were confirmed by independent assessments made by friends and family. Psilocybin, as well as most other natural substances, is not addictive. Other studies show that plants such as Ibogaine and Hyawaska can be used to combat addiction to drugs, including alcohol.

As more people become aware of the damage done by the legal drugs such as antidepressants (note the recent information about diabetes-producing effects of a popular antipsychotic drug Zyperexa), the search for more effective non-addictive (and cheaper) plant-based substances will intensify. Such drugs would not only artificially alter brain chemistry but also make the individuals aware of why they are taking drugs at all and give them insight into the their own psyche and their personal relationships.

A woman patient with a terminal breast cancer received LSD (whose effect is similar to psilocybine but stronger, with a longer-lasting "trip") to relieve her pain and anxiety. Coming out of her first session she breathed deeply and said: "You know, for the first time, I can breathe again." Later she described her impressions:

I cannot remember the logic of the experi­ence, but I became poignantly aware that the core of life is love. At this moment I felt that I was reaching out to the world — to all people — but especially to those closest to me. I wept long for the wasted years, the search for identity in false places, the neglected opportunities, the emotional energy lost in basically meaningless pursuits... The denial of the right to die in dignity and to make sense of life in the moment of death for those who wish to have such an experience is the insult to human free will and an indication of callousness mascarading as care for the terminally ill. How much more humane the end of life would have been for Remy, the hero of the Oscar-winning film The Barbarian Invasions, had he been allowed to die not under the heroin's influence but from some enlightening plant concoction. Aldous Huxley, a humanist par excellence and an intellectual leader of a generation, on his deathbed, unable to speak, made a written request to his wife for "LSD, 100 µg, i.m." He died peacefully on November 22, 1963. Huxley would have probably preferred a plant, akin to his fictional soma, had such a plant been readily available. Soma in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World had "All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects."

The Pursuit of Artificial Paradise

In the past, psychedelic plants were utilised in traditional "sets" and "settings," supervised by knowledgeable native guides and supported by the community; similar guidance and acceptance will be necessary to derive a maximum effect from plants which, though mostly harmless and non-addictive, might still be misused. Traditionally, healing ceremonies are conducted only infrequently in a person's lifetime, to give enough time to assimilate the insights.

Not all plants are the same and some of them have a degree of toxicity that could produce undesirable physical and psychological consequences, although most ill effects observed are usually mild and are mostly due to the negative "set and settings," including fear of the unknown (for novel users), fear of prosecution by police, or disturbed mental state of the individual. All relevant plant substances need to be studied in clinical and research settings, with large groups of subjects so that designer drugs (possibly genetically engineered) were adapted to particular groups of people and psychological and genetic types. There is no doubt that such research needs to be initiated urgently to replace the current generation of damaging intoxicants, antidepressants, and other psychotropic drugs.

While it may seem that almost nothing can be worse than the current drug situation, with millions of people being addicted to deadly tobacco, alcohol and legal and illegal drugs, it is obvious that the powers-that-be will demand near-perfection from any reform proposal that would challenge the status quo (see my paper Drugs, Medicines and Power on www.patrushev-publications.com. The paper also contains suggested books, articles and websites for further reading). Some argue that the development of the new designer drugs will be only a temporary "technological fix" for humanity's problems. Yes, but so are cars and penicillin.

Project Nirvana is essentially a thriller which introduces these ideas in a light-hearted and fictionalised form. It is a work of fiction (albeit in the "science truth" genre) whose purpose is to entertain and to open up new vistas of awareness and imagination.

There is no doubt its subject matter is becoming more and more topical. At the time of this writing the Academy of Medical Sciences of the UK is canvasing public opinion about future drug policy in the UK (www.drugsfutures.org.uk). You can find my answers to the survey on www.patrushev-publications.com .

If fact, in the current political climate and level of awareness of the general public, I consider the limited policies expounded by the NSW Greens as being progressive and achievable (http://nsw.greens.org.au/policies/drugs-and-harm-minimisation). I see the problem of drug abuse (including food abuse) as an evolutionary problem, arising from the drive among many animal species to alter their mood or consciousness through ingestion of intoxicating or mood-altering substances. The problem acquired the current epidemic proportion because of the great mismatch between the environments in which we lived during most of our existence and the highly stressful and/or monotonous environments in which many people live now. Science and human ingenuity contributed to the problem by inventing a myriad of concentrated and toxic substances that are completely unknown in nature.

Some could also argue that modern ideologies and religions no longer satisfy our urge to answer deep spiritual and existential questions. Yet the urge to reclaim the proverbial "lost paradise" seems to be still alive in the hearts of many people. Perhaps people living in highly stimulating, emotionally satisfying, stable and productive environments under the guidance of enlightenment political and/or religious leaders would have no need for any substances that could give them a glimpse, however illusionary, of artificial paradise.

Magic mushrooms are linked to religious ceremonies at the root of many religions. Aztecs called them "God's flesh." Tales of flying witches could have been inspired by mushroom "trips." Magic mushrooms could have influenced Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland. What else could he mean by a hookah-smoking caterpillar who urges Alice to eat pieces of mushroom which has the effect of making her body grow and shrink? Women, as opposed to men who wield power in science and society, generally have more liberal attitudes to psychedelic plants. It is not an accident that Gaia, a Greek goddess personifying the Earth with its plants and creatures, is a female.

Looking into the more remote future I can see how new generations of enlightened scientists working together with their plant allies could develop the sort of consciousness that would at least partially heal the age-old rift in the human brain and our "racial memory" and synchronise it with the intelligence of all other life forms on Earth as well as beyond.

Instead of simply developing hybrid green cars that may or may not save us from man-made tsunamis, we could, with time, develop photosynthesising human/plant hybrids that would have no need of fossil fuels or animal flesh to sustain themselves. Not just our hot water heaters but our own bodies will then draw nourishment form sunlight and be in tune with the cosmos.

Alas, this day is yet far away… Far from advocating any kind of utopian panacea, the ending of Project Nirvana is rather realistic, provocative and unexpected.

So, let us grapple with the pressing problems of today. And to do that we have to join Swami, Glavni, Alfred and Alfa in their battle for the soul of Russia. Or is it the Earth's soul, no mater where we live?

And to get us into the mood for my largely humorous novel, here is a verse, written by Joseph Malins in 1895, that portrays the bitter divide between the prevention and the cure in many areas, including drug addiction:

The Ambulance Down in the Valley

'Twas a dangerous cliff, as they freely confessed,
Though to walk near its crest was so pleasant;
But over its terrible edge there had slipped
A duke and full many a peasant.
So the people said something would have to be done,
But their projects did not at all tally;
Some said, "Put a fence 'round the edge of the cliff,"
Some, "An ambulance down in the valley…"

But the sensible few, who are practical too,
Will not bear with such nonsense much longer;
They believe that prevention is better than cure,
And their party will soon be the stronger.
Encourage them then, with your purse, voice, and pen,
And while other philanthropists dally,
They will scorn all pretense, and put up a stout fence
On the cliff that hangs over the valley.

Better guide well the young than reclaim them when old,
For the voice of true wisdom is calling.
"To rescue the fallen is good, but 'tis best
To prevent other people from falling."
Better close up the source of temptation and crime
Than deliver from dungeon or galley;
Better put a strong fence 'round the top of the cliff
Than an ambulance down in the valley.