Without the creative application of psychedelic drugs, it is very possible that the iPod would have never been invented and DNA may have never been discovered. Francis Crick, the scientist credited with discovering DNA, was taking psychedelic drugs when he made his groundbreaking revelation.The London-based periodical Mail on Sunday reported that after Crick’s death in 2004, “The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co-researcher James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to the nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had discovered the secret of life.Crick, who died ten days ago, aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD, then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle’s warm beer that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.”
Years later, another scientist and LSD user by the name of Kary Mullis advanced our knowledge of DNA even further with the development of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, a process that made it possible for scientists to better study how DNA works.
In his book, Dancing Naked in The Mind Field, Mullis said:
“A person who loved playing with chemicals as much as I did just couldn’t help but be intrigued by LSD. The concept that there existed chemicals with the ability to transform the mind, to open up new windows of perception, fascinated me. I considered myself to be a serious scientist. At the time it was still all very scholarly and still legal. There was no tawdry aura over it. People weren’t blaming their kids’ problems on it yet. Hippies had just started to differentiate themselves from beatniks and the difference seemed to be fewer years and more hair on the hippies. And they stayed in college.”
Steve Jobs, the mind behind the first Apple computers, iPods, iPhones, and other revolutionary technology, frequently said his experiences with psychedelics were among the most important events in his life.
His biography quoted him on the matter:
“Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”Steve Jobs wasn’t the only technological pioneer who used psychedelics to boost creativity. Douglas Englebart, the inventor of the computer mouse,
was also a psychedelic user.
