History
PT311 – William Leonard Pickard – LSD, Fentanyl, Prison, and the Greatest Gift of All: The Natural Mind
April 19, 2022
In this Bicycle Day edition of the podcast, Joe had the honor to sit down in-person with chemist and researcher, William Leonard Pickard. In 2004, Pickard was famously convicted for the alleged manufacture of 90% of the world’s LSD – the largest case in history – scoring him two life sentences in a maximum security prison. Prior to his conviction, Pickard was a drug policy researcher at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and deputy director of the Drug Policy Research Program at UCLA.
In this Bicycle Day edition of the podcast, Joe had the honor to sit down in-person with chemist and researcher, William Leonard Pickard. In 2004, Pickard was famously convicted for the alleged manufacture of 90% of the world’s LSD – the largest case in history – scoring him two life sentences in a maximum security prison. Prior to his conviction, Pickard was a drug policy researcher at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and deputy director of the Drug Policy Research Program at UCLA.
Pickard discusses his prediction of the current fentanyl crisis (warnings which fell on deaf ears) and watching it all unfold and desecrate lives across the globe from behind bars on the televisions of the Tucson, Arizona Penitentiary he found himself in. With new and dangerously addictive substances like fentanyl being produced carelessly at staggering rates, he believes that it’s incredibly important that we be stronger than any substance, while cautiously asking: will there soon be a drug that is stronger than the will of man?
He talks about the unfair and ongoing sentence of Ross Ulbricht; the alchemy in drug manufacturing; the Fireside Project; what made LSD special; substance overuse and what he saw when volunteering in an ER; the inhumanity of prison and the coping mechanisms of prisoners (like making pets out of ants); 2C-B; NBOMe; LF-1; LSD (of course); and perhaps the most sultry devil of them all, caffeine. And he shares his stance on why it’s okay to be drug-free: how the natural and unaltered mind is the greatest gift of all, and how it’s actually a sign of great respect to the sacraments to finally put them down after you’ve received the message you needed to hear.
Happy Bicycle Day from Psychedelics Today! If you’re celebrating, please be safe and respectful.
Notable Quotes
“I do think that it’s important to remember that these powerful drug experiences that people have had (psychedelics or otherwise) are not the end-all and be-all – not a religion in themselves but simply a place that points to a greater realization; a greater purity of life and practice. And in the end, you don’t need the drug. That’s one of the beauties of psychedelics, I think, is that they tend to be not only non-lethal (at least the classical hallucinogens: mescaline, LSD, largely psilocybin), but they also are self-extinguishing; that is to say, after a number of long nights of the soul, one may realize that one has learned everything that this particular sacrament can teach and it’s time to put it down. It’s not necessary to go chasing after analog after analog, after different drug experiences with hundreds, soon to be thousands of things available on the net. It’s not necessary to be continually stoned on a different analog every weekend. …It would be respectful for these particular sacraments to put them down and, in honor, say farewell, and simply go about a healthful life of caring, loving one’s friends and families, [and] doing good work in the world. It’s okay to be drug-free. And that’s one of the beautiful things that these particular compounds teach us.”
“I believe that the nobility of ourselves, the dignity of ourselves, is that we are stronger than any substance. We are stronger than heroin. We are stronger than cocaine. We are stronger than methamphetamine. We are stronger than fentanyl and carfentanil or sufentanil or any of its analogs. We are stronger than alcohol or nicotine. And that must always be true or the world will be enslaved to a substance.“
“The problem children of the future are not developed by rogue underground chemists. There are few of those and most are not well-trained. The problem children of the future, drug-wise, comes from Big Pharma [and] their relentless tweaking of molecules.“
“When I first was released, … the first thing that happened when the government van drove away and suddenly, for the first time in twenty years, I’m standing alone with no inmates or officials or anything around – I’m alone for the first time in twenty years – the first thing I did was I saw a flower on a growing tree and went to stare at the flower for about twenty minutes. It was quite beautiful.“
Links
The Future of Fentanyl and other Synthetic Opioids, RAND Corporation, 2019
Freeross.org: Free Ross Ulbricht
The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, by Roger Penrose
The Rose of Paracelsus: On Secrets & Sacraments, by William Leonard Pickard
Psychedelics Today: PT247 – Julian Vayne – Magic, Prohibition, and New Models for Legality
The Brotherhood of Eternal Love
Bicycledaysf.org: Conference/Festival Joe is attending in San Francisco
About William Leonard Pickard
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