Carl Sagan and the marijuana

Carl Edward Sagan, the astronomer and astrophysicist, one of the most important and recognized science promoters of the last century, had a clear vision of marijuana use: he defended the use of the herb and wrote an essay to defend his perspective.

In the book "Carl Sagan: A Life", Keady Davidson reveals that the scientist was an avid and secret consumer, who not only enjoyed "the participation of the sacred herb", but believed that it gave him creative and scientific ideas.

One of his great friends, professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, published the book "Reconsidered Marijuana" in 1971. This includes an essay by a Mr. X ", later, in an interview with Davidson, revealed that the author of the writing, was Sagan.

The grass helped him to understand, through an "existential perception" that humanity was full of hypocrisy. According to him, there was a myth about "travel", that the user had the illusion of a great introspective, but did not survive the scrutiny the next morning.

However, he did not agree with that statement, for however devastating the introspectives were, they were real. The only problem was to "position them in a form acceptable to the different 'I' that we are once down the other day."

In essence, marijuana was able to increase the pleasure of eating or enjoying music: "a potato can have the taste, texture and body of other potatoes, but much more."

As for sex, marijuana gives an "exquisite sensitivity", but postpones orgasm, in part because it distracts with the profusion of images passing in front of the eyes. Also, the drug managed to improve his appreciation of art, a subject he had never focused on before.

He found that most of the thoughts he accessed when using marijuana related to social issues. He recalled one occasion when he had ideas about the origins of racism: at the end of the "journey" he had written about eleven "short essays" dealing with a wide variety of social, political, philosophical, human, and biological issues.

Sagan said that in spite of the efforts he made to find difficulties in particular regarding current problems in his field of study (science and astronomy), but he never found them. He even claimed that the grass worked "to some extent"

Although Carl never proclaimed himself a religious person, he recognized that travel had a religious tinge: sensitivity stimulated in all aspects and areas gave him a sense of communion with his surroundings, whether animated or inanimate objects.
And most importantly, he managed to "reconcile" some crazy data, something he would never have achieved without being on a marijuana trip.