Griffiths had told Schuster a little about his spiritual practice and
confided in him his growing discontent with conventional drug research.
“You should talk to this guy,” Schuster told him. “They have some
interesting ideas about working with entheogens,” he said. “You might
have something in common.”
• • •
WHEN THE HISTORY of second-wave psychedelic research is written, Bob
Jesse will be seen as one of a pair of scientific outsiders in America—
amateurs, really, and brilliant eccentrics—who worked tirelessly, often
behind the scenes, to get it off the ground. Both found their vocation in
the wake of transformative psychedelic experiences that convinced them
these substances had the potential to heal not only individuals but
humankind as a whole and that the best path to their rehabilitation was
by way of credible scientific research. In many cases, these untrained
researchers dreamed up the experiments first and then found (and
funded) the scientists to conduct them. Often you will find their names on
the papers, usually in the last position.
Of the two, Rick Doblin has been at it longer and is by far the more
well known. Doblin founded the Multidisciplinary Association for
Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) all the way back in the dark days of 1986—
the year after MDMA was made illegal and a time when most wiser heads
were convinced that restarting research into psychedelics was a cause
beyond hopeless.
Doblin, born in 1953, is a great shaggy dog with a bone; he has been
lobbying to change the government’s mind about psychedelics since
shortly after graduating from New College, in Florida, in 1987. After
experimenting with LSD as an undergraduate, and later with MDMA,
Doblin decided his calling in life was to become a psychedelic therapist.
But after the banning of MDMA in 1985, that dream became
unachievable without a change in federal laws and regulations, so he
decided he’d better first get a doctorate in public policy at Harvard’s
Kennedy School. There, he mastered the intricacies of the FDA’s drug
approval process, and in his dissertation plotted the laborious path to
official acceptance that psilocybin and MDMA are now following.