Geniuses that use psychedelics

Smart people love drugs… It is science-literally! After 40+ years of research, a team of British scientists were surprised to learn that people with higher IQs are much more prone to experiment with drugs. The conclusion(s) of this particular study dismantled the previous belief that those who use drugs were typically ‘not smart’ or uneducated.

That being said, we are going to be looking at geniuses of both the present and past that use/used drugs. More specifically, we will go over geniuses that use psychedelics.

Albert Einstein is likely one of the most famous scientists in all of history. He had a very peculiar way of looking at the world around him, which helped him along with his discoveries and accomplishments.

While there were a lot of questionable facts about him and how he lived his life outside of his work, there is one fact about him that isn’t as surprising; he did a lot of drugs. Specifically, he experimented with psychedelics. While he openly smoked cannabis recreationally, he also enjoyed an array of hallucinogenic drugs.

Dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT, was found in his body during his autopsy! Knowing that this genius used psychedelics, such as DMT (perhaps the most profound of them all), connects a lot of dots.

The pathologist who was tasked with examining his brain after his death ended up stealing his brain and kept it in hiding for more than 20 years, hoping to find the source of Einstein’s genius, only to be unsuccessful. Maybe the source of his genius could be found in the many psychedelic experiences he embarked on!

Bill Gates is a famous American software developer, author, investor and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft. In 2017, he was labelled as the ‘world’s richest man’, which gained a lot of media attention.

While there were many speculations about his history with drugs, he let out some evidence of experimenting with LSD in a 1994 Playboy interview, making it quite clear that the accusation of him using LSD in his younger years was correct.

While he wasn’t very open about this particular experience, a different genius certainly was…

Steve Jobs was a lot less conservative when conversating with others about psychedelic substances. In fact, Jobs believed that using LSD was ‘‘one of the two of three most important things’’ he had done in his life!

Unlike Gates, he is very open about his psychedelic experiences, which occurred mostly in the 1960s/1970s. While I am at it with the comparisons between Jobs and Gates, there was a funny mention of Gates in Steve Jobs’s published biography.

He went as far as to associate what he interpreted as Bill Gates’ ‘dearth of imagination with a lack of psychedelic experimentation’… Shots fired!

John C. Lilly is a neuroscience and pioneer in the field of electronic brain stimulation. He is extremely well known in the science community for his many accomplishments and discoveries, helping us understand the brain and consciousness further. Lilly was the first person to map both pleasure and pain pathways in the brain.

Another interesting fact about Lilly is that he founded an entire branch of science that explores interspecies communication (eg, between humans, whales and dolphins). He also invented the world’s first sensory deprivation changer. Lastly, he was known to conduct extensive personal experimentation with reality-altering substances such as LSD and Ketamine!

Not only that, but his interspecies communication, sensory deprivation and personal psychedelic usage often overlapped. What a legend!

Francis Crick was most famously known for his remarkable accomplishment of discovering the structure of DNA! But how could someone reach such a remarkable discovery? Yup-you guessed it… psychedelics! Specifically, LSD. Amazingly enough, he actually discovered the DNA structure during an LSD trip.

Many individuals who take LSD and other psychedelics hope to find ‘the meaning of life’ along their way. Francis, on the other hand, managed to find the secret structure to life… LSD isn’t the only thing that brought him to this Nobel Prize-winning discovery.

Before his discovery was made, he was already well on his way to finding the DNA structure and had dedicated countless frustrating hours to his work. However, LSD was the perfect tool he needed to wrap up his work, helping him discover the 2nd strand of DNA.

Do psychedelics make you smarter?

So, all of these brilliant minds have experiences psychedelics, which is believed to take some credit for their work-but why? Do psychedelics make you smarter?

Psychedelic trips can promote unique brain activity, allowing us to ‘think outside the box’, which can result in extraordinarily creative thinking. Aside from having actual psychedelic trips, there is one thing all of the geniuses above (excluding Bill Gates) have in common. They were all known to practice microdosing LSD.

LSD is one of the world’s most popular and well-known psychedelics. This substance falls into the category of lysergamides. Thanks to the brain scanning images we have of the human brain on LSD, we know a bit more about what happens up there when we take this complex compound.

Not only do different parts of the brain light up more than usual but parts of the brain that do not communicate begin to communicate when LSD is ingested!

This substance is known to have brain-boosting effects and a positive impact on cognitive function(s) both in high and low doses (microdoses). We have so much to learn about this compound, the different applications of it and the benefits that follow.

However, it seems that taking a large dose of LSD has some powerful effects, just as taking a microdose does.

For those of you who do not know, microdosing is the act of ingesting a micro-amount of a psychedelic substance. This dose is so tiny that it offers no psychoactive effects, however, it does offer your brain some benefits.

These geniuses have showed us that not only large doses of LSD can help you make new discoveries and rewrite the path for the future of science, but small doses may also have a positive and noticeable effect on the brain and its many miraculous functions.

Albert Hofmann, the man who invented LSD, was a huge advocate for taking both large and small doses. He was the first in the community to talk openly about the concept of microdosing and the benefits that may follow.

He urged for research funding to study microdosing so we could learn more about it and optimize our use of it. Sadly, shortly after the discovery of LSD came the prohibition of psychedelics, putting a halt on all psychedelic research.

Nowadays, some lobbyists are allowing the scientific study of specific psychedelics to take place in specific locations, under specific circumstances.

As a whole, we are opening up to the possibility that psychedelics have a much wider range of benefits than we may have once previously thought. A lot of early studies on psychedelics were conducted with the motive of ‘brain control’. That being said, I am so relieved that the current studies on these substances are with better intentions.

Perhaps these geniuses above are/were truly onto something. Maybe the psychedelic journey can open your mind, allowing you to bring your otherworldly discoveries back to this world and make it a better place.

“LSD is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be.” Quote by Albert Hoffmann, inventor of LSD.

“Through my LSD experience and my new picture of reality, I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom. I became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us.” Quote by Albert Hoffmann, inventor of LSD.