Famous Modern Psychedelic Drug Users

Who Pioneered Psychedelic Drug Use?

Although psychedelic drugs have been used for thousands of years, there are most certainly modern pioneers of psychedelic drug use in Western culture. Many of these famous psychedelic users, have admitted (or it is completely obvious) that psychedelic drug use had significantly altered the course of their life in a major way. Many times this life-changing epiphany occurred even after a single psychedelic experience. The experiences that one can have on a psychedelic drug are capable of completely reconfiguring one’s entire worldview. Many of Western cultures psychedelic drug pioneers and famous psychonaut enthusiasts, have generously and abundantly recorded their experiences.

There are some pioneers who legitimately have tried a hallucinogen for the first time, though in modern times these are typically synthetic substances. There are pioneers who helped to bring psychedelic drug use to mainstream culture. There are also pioneers who helped import or export certain psychedelic drugs. And of course there are pioneers who actually invented hallucinogenic compounds. Most of the time pioneers of psychedelic drugs face insane levels of criticism, doubt, and other negative stigma associated with their experiments, experiences, and preachings…at least in the present time of the pioneer.

Modern History of Famous Psychedelic Drug Users

Some of the pioneers and famous psychedelic drug users are more significant of an influence than others. These psychedelic substance pioneers, famous psychonauts, and other substantially influential figures in the psychedelic drug world, have contributed a wide range of valuable information and activity of varying skill sets and results. These psychedelic pioneers are in alphabetical order by legal and last name.

Ram Dass (Aka Richard Alpert)

Born 1931; Still Alive Today

Born Richard Alpert, but later changing his name, “Ram Dass” is a spiritual teacher and author of a number of spiritual and psychedelic-related books. He has worked as a professor at the University of California and at Harvard University in the Social Relations, Psychology, Graduate School of Education and the Health Service departments. He has worked as a therapist. He is also known for a number of research projects through Yale and Stanford, and is very commonly associated with Timothy Leary, whom he frequently worked with. Unfortunately, he was fired from his Yale and Stanford projects in 1963. He helped found two charity groups.

Dass’ life’s work relates to the advancement of psychedelic drug research. He has described his experiences on drugs like LSD and the Psilocybin from Magic Mushrooms. He was responsible for the dissemination of much psychedelic research, experience and materials around the world through his teachings and his writings. Still, to this very day, people use his interviews, lectures, teachings and writings as guidance responsible for changing the course of their lives forever.

Stanislav Grof

Born 1931; Still Alive Today

Grof is a prominent psychiatrist who has more than half a century of experience. Grof is mostly known for his development of techniques which allow users to achieve psychedelic experiences without drugs. He has used his own experiences on drugs like LSD, to help pioneer the research of the brain and its change of state when exposed to psychedelic drugs. He has hypothesized that several psychedelic experiences have been mapped in the brain during their fetal experiences, and that these experiences can be accessed through breathing techniques and other maneuvers. He has, however, also researched the effects of several psychedelic substances.

Grof has long preached about the incredible knowledge that can be gained from an LSD or psychedelic experience. He has claimed that he could not believe how much he learned about himself, specifically his psyche, on his first LSD trip. He describes the trip as “cosmic” and including phenomena such as quasars and a variety of dimensional travels (black holes, white holes)…even the beginning of the Universe in form of the Big Bang. His documented experience was conducted in a clean, modern science laboratory.

Albert Hofmann

Born 1906; Died 2008

Although it is possible someone else synthesized it and never recorded the experience, Albert Hofmann, a biochemist, is often considered the first person to synthesize and ingest LSD. The year was 1938, the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company needed someone to work out a blood circulation stimulant from lysergic acid, and Hofmann took the job. Soon thereafter, he had synthesized LSD-25. LSD-25 did not have effects on animals, and was discarded. Many years later (1943) he took another look at LSD-25 and realized that it had incredible worldview-widening and enhancing properties. Many people caught on, and took to experiencing LSD themselves, to whom he advised “Always use it in nature.”

Hofmann lived to be 102 years old. He never attributed his drug use or LSD to his living so long, however, he has absolutely credited his self-exploration, the way he viewed life and his worldview to his LSD use. Hofmann first realized the psychedelic effects of LSD by complete accident. He had prepared the batch again in 1943, without understanding its hallucinogenic properties and got a little in his system somehow during they crystallization process. He experienced a mild LSD trip, something so euphoric and pleasant that he decided a few days later to begin human trials…on himself. He began with only 250 micrograms and excitedly began noticing the same types of euphoric symptoms as days prior. His bike ride home that day was more interesting than any before!

By the time Hofmann got home, he had full-on hallucinations, everything in his vision being distorted and curved. He was completely inebriated, in a trance and seeing brilliant colors. This was followed by an out of body experience and visits to what seemed like strange worlds. His “coming back to” was described as though it were his rebirth, literally.

Aldous Huxley

Born 1894; Died 1963

Huxley was an English writer, until his immigration to the United States in 1937. He is most well known for his novel Brave New World, but he has produced many other novels, essays and articles of all types (even poetry and film scripts). Unfortunately, he had been almost legally blind since he was a teenager, this partly contributing to his excitement when experiencing psychedelic imagery. Many of his writings have gone on to change the world, even being found in classrooms to this very day.

Until Huxley actually tried LSD, he knew very little about the substance. His experience with the drug changed his perception of all things, being described as revelations. He was very interested post-LSD with the way the Universe fit together, the cosmos, all of humanity and culture in general; and after using the drug, he felt he understood these things much better. He has vouched for the use of music in order to enhance an LSD experience. His recordings of his experiences and his investigation into other people’s experiences on various drugs (from LSD to Mescaline), has been extremely substantial and helpful in the continued educational pursuit of complete psychedelic knowledge. He is also known to have requested LSD on his deathbed, to help ease his passing.

Timothy Leary

Born 1920; Died 1996

Timothy Leary has been a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University (where he was fired in 1963). He was one of the only professional psychonauts to stand up so strongly for the use of psychedelics. He preached about using psychedelic drugs for their consciousness-exploration and self-discovery properties. He was considered a controversial figure in the 1960s and 1970s, hence being let go by Harvard. He was actually jailed around the time of Richard Nixon’s “War on Drug.” He has been compared to the Galileo of modern time, as his incarceration was mostly due to his belief system and outspoken nature. Nixon had in fact, called Leary “the most dangerous man in America” at one point.

Most psychonauts consider Timothy Leary to be a hero, a pioneer, and a true visionary. People who knew Leary called him a happy, intelligent, fun and fully sensational person to be around. History has had him wrong for many years, attributing many of the psychedelic drug use-related problems today, to Leary. In reality, Leary’s dissemination of information and his belief that LSD and psychedelics should be used for self-exploration were almost always accompanied by responsible advice, such as selecting a safe setting. He has completed many books and writings, and has well-documented his psychedelic revelations which he achieved through his experiments, research and his own self-exploration.

Ralph Metzner

Born 1936; Still Alive Today

Metzner is a well-respected psychologist and author. He has researched alongside Leary and Das (Alpert) at Harvard University in the early 1960s. He has done a lot of work as a psychotherapist and a professor at California Institute for Integral Studies. He has also served as a dean and academic vice president at said university. He is well known for coauthoring a book with Leary, and for his outspokenness about using psychedelics and sharing experiences.

Metzner has well-documented his own experiences on psychedelics. He has explained how deeply his perception changes after taking a psychedelic. He describes the ability to “choose fully” what he wished to think about, what he wished to see, and more specifically, not being limited by the normal prohibitions of reality. He has outlined the difference between the two states of awareness, normal consciousness and consciousness while experiencing psychedelics. He has been seen in some pretty important places, making some pretty important speeches, most recently at the World Psychedelic Forum in 2008 (Basel, Switzerland). He was even featured in a documentary in 2006 about entheogens.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Born 1924; Died 2014

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi has a Ph.D, is the founder of the Jewish Renewal Movement, and was in a detention camp in Europe until fleeing to the United States (1941). He officially became a Rabbi in 1947. He was expelled from the Lubavitcher Rebbe for preaching about LSD being of sacramental value, and a sacred substance. He is one of the few spiritual leaders who stood up to make a connection between faith and psychedelic substances. The people who knew the Rabbi would call him a pleasant, joyful, happy person, who they were always happy to be around.

Schachter-Shalomi is well known for his psychedelic experiences, as he has been very open about his psychedelic drug use. He has explained some of his trips as very pleasant, wonderful journeys…but others as realistic trips to hell. He has explained psychedelic use as a way of recognizing full fluidity of consciousness. He has explained the much larger worldview while using psychedelics, even making references to the cosmos. He has explained having immense empathy during a trip, understanding other people’s worldviews, even from other religions. He has never preached about the use of LSD without also explaining the great responsibility that comes with preparing and using the substance.

Alexander Shulgin

Born 1925; Died 2014

Shulgin is a pharmacologist and chemist. He is very well known to be a drug developer and had a Ph.D.. He has been responsible for synthesizing and investigating more than 230 psychoactive compounds, and completed a few books. His first powerful psychedelic experience recorded being Mescaline in 1960. He claimed to have extremely sharp, vivid memory of that experience, in its kaleidoscope of color. In fact, Shulgin described the trip as providing him access to an entirely new, more intricate array of colors that far exceeded the hues available in the natural rainbow.

Shulgin describes his mescaline experience as though he were immortal, spiritual traveler. He believed that the psychedelic chemicals were able to open pathways in the mind to “fully experience” the Universe. He believed the Universe was inside each one of our minds and that these psychedelic substances allowed the ability to better understand its fabric and how to unwind it.

Huston Smith

Born 1919; Died 2016

Smith was born in China, his parents being there as Methodist missionaries. He has a Ph.D and has been a professor at the University of Denver and Washington State University. He has also served as the chair of the Philosophy Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Smith explored psychedelics himself and had a few projects with Leary and Alpert during his time at MIT. He spent the remainder of his career teaching at Syracuse University, retiring in 1983. He has tried to continue the efforts on psychedelic research from Harvard, but is also very well known for his book, World Religions.

Huston had a close enough relationship with Dr Timothy Leary, to the point he spent New Year’s Day in 1961 at Leary’s private residence. He details his experience of mescaline (or maybe psilocybin, as records are not clear), at Leary’s residence that night as being a truly visionary state. He actually is documented having quite a “terrified” state of mind during the experience, however, ultimately had used the experience and other experiences to draw many theories and conclusions.

Charles Tart

Born 1937; Still Alive Today

Tart has a Ph.D and works as a professor at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, and the University of California. He has been regarded as one of the most prominent, modern-day scientists in the field of altered state of consciousness. He has composed a good handful of books, of which some are well-known text books including Altered States of Consciousness (1969). He has been widely published in a variety of books, journals and articles.

Tart describes his first experience with Mescaline in a controlled University experiment as the first time he had truly understood what the word “beauty” meant. He explained that this small, cramped and undesirable looking office room had transformed into a huge, beautiful cathedral. He vouched that while the experience did not last but so long, a permanent door had opened in his mind.

Last Words About Famous Pioneers of Psychedelic Drugs

Any modern psychonaut, as well as those of the future, owe a tip of the hat to the pioneers of the days long passed. The psychonauts of the past come in varying levels of experience, areas of expertise, and personalities. They are from different backgrounds, study different things, and have sometimes produced different results. Ultimately, any field or industry is advanced by experience, experiments and trial and error. The psychonauts and psychedelic drug pioneers of the past have paved the first paths for research, making the research of today and tomorrow more efficient, more informational, and more valuable in almost every way. These diamonds among the rough will go down in psychedelic substance and psychonaut history for their experiments, record keeping and other contributions. And many would argue the most exciting outcome of the prominent psychedelic pioneers of the past are the psychedelic exploring heroes who now follow in their footsteps and will for years to come.