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What was LRH's drug history?

TomKat

Patron Meritorious
John McMaster told me that on the ship Hubbard had a refrigerator of street drugs, and he had "everything." When I asked "cocaine?" he repeated "everything." A former drug user and boyfriend of Quentin said that the Phoenix Lectures seemed influenced by marijuana, and that OT3 seemed like an LSD story. There are PABs where he recommends Benzedrine for running engrams. I also heard that in the 80s when he was on his ranch near San Luis Obispo that someone from the San Fernando Valley brought him illegal drugs. Maybe with testimonials we could compile a DRD list for LRH?
 

betskand

Patron with Honors
John McMaster told me that on the ship Hubbard had a refrigerator of street drugs, and he had "everything." When I asked "cocaine?" he repeated "everything." A former drug user and boyfriend of Quentin said that the Phoenix Lectures seemed influenced by marijuana, and that OT3 seemed like an LSD story. There are PABs where he recommends Benzedrine for running engrams. I also heard that in the 80s when he was on his ranch near San Luis Obispo that someone from the San Fernando Valley brought him illegal drugs. Maybe with testimonials we could compile a DRD list for LRH?

This would be really interesting. I recently heard that tape where he babbles on and on saying "extreemlah somethinglah" about 1000 times and talks faster and faster and makes less and less sense.

I'm not someone who has frequented the drug world, but the only times I have heard anyone talk like that they were way gone on coke or speed. The thing that amazes me is that the whole listening group didn't jump up, tackle him, and lock him into a closet (Lisa McPherson Rundown, you know.)
 

Udarnik

Gold Meritorious Patron
There are first hand reports all over this board. As I finish compiling all the first hand reports, I'm going to break things out by subject, and this is going to be one of the subjects. Try Alan Walters's posts, phenomenon has some recollections, and Face may as well.

It's obvious he started on speed in WWII or before. Uppers, downers, coke are documented. He apparently did not like weed.

Rum was also a favorite.

But the curious thing is that he seemed to kick the habit in old age. Cowboy says there were no signs of drug use, and he had no privacy on the Ranch. I believe him.

I wonder when he kicked the habit, and why.
 

betskand

Patron with Honors
There are first hand reports all over this board. As I finish compiling all the first hand reports, I'm going to break things out by subject, and this is going to be one of the subjects. Try Alan Walters's posts, phenomenon has some recollections, and Face may as well.

It's obvious he started on speed in WWII or before. Uppers, downers, coke are documented. He apparently did not like weed.

Rum was also a favorite.

But the curious thing is that he seemed to kick the habit in old age. Cowboy says there were no signs of drug use, and he had no privacy on the Ranch. I believe him.

I wonder when he kicked the habit, and why.

Well, I can hardly speak for Elron, but I can tell you from my own experiences and those of my coevals that after 60 or so the fun part of drugs gets smaller and smaller and the "feeling like shit" part gets larger and larger. That's why a lot of psychoactive drugs like antidepressants have different, smaller doses indicated for people past a certain age. Even helpful drugs like morphine following an operation often cause hallucinations -- not fun ones -- in elderly people. After a heart attack, some strokes, many cases of pneumonia and probably chronic bronchitis and other side issues Elron may just not have found psychoactive substances to be as entrancing as they once were. This goes for alcohol too, because even healthy people's livers decline in effectiveness with age. That means a great many more unmetabolized toxins floating around in your blood and trying to fight their way through your decreasingly useful kidneys. I would think it would be like having a terrible hangover that doesn't come on the next morning, but rather about an hour after you start drinking.
 
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Udarnik

Gold Meritorious Patron
Well, I can hardly speak for Elron, but I can tell you from my own experiences and those of my coevals that after 60 or so the fun part of drugs gets smaller and smaller and the "feeling like shit" part gets larger and larger. That's why a lot of psychoactive drugs like antidepressants have different, smaller doses indicated for people past a certain age. Even helpful drugs like morphine following an operation often cause hallucinations -- not fun ones -- in elderly people. After a heart attack, some strokes, many cases of pneumonia and probably chronic bronchitis and other side issues Elron may just not have found psychoactive substances to be as entrancing as they once were. This goes for alcohol too, because even healthy peoples' livers decline in effectiveness with age.

Despite the fact I'll have been married 20 years in a month or so, I've still got quite a ways to go before 60. I guess I'll have to drink my beer now, when I can enjoy it. :yes:
 

betskand

Patron with Honors
Despite the fact I'll have been married 20 years in a month or so, I've still got quite a ways to go before 60. I guess I'll have to drink my beer now, when I can enjoy it. :yes:

That's the spirit! Enjoy things while they are still enjoyable! Or while you still have any capacity for enjoyment left...(I am following this dictum as we speak.)
 

Veda

Sponsor
John McMaster told me that on the ship Hubbard had a refrigerator of street drugs, and he had "everything." When I asked "cocaine?" he repeated "everything." A former drug user and boyfriend of Quentin said that the Phoenix Lectures seemed influenced by marijuana, and that OT3 seemed like an LSD story. There are PABs where he recommends Benzedrine for running engrams. I also heard that in the 80s when he was on his ranch near San Luis Obispo that someone from the San Fernando Valley brought him illegal drugs. Maybe with testimonials we could compile a DRD list for LRH?


Here's a partial collection of information on Hubbard's drug and alcohol outlook and use.

From 'Terra Incognita: The Mind':

"The best stimulant is Benzedrine. In its absence an overdose of coffee will do."

Benzedrine_inhaler_for_wiki_article.jpg



__________​


From 'Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health' (1950):

"Opium is less harmful [than alcohol], marijuana is not only less physically harmful but also better in the action of keeping a neurotic producing, phenobarbital does not dull the senses nearly as much and produces less after effect..."


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From a 'Philadelphia Doctorate Course' lectures (1952):

Lecture 27: "The body - He has never used it. He's taken care of it."

Lecture 33: "There isn't any reason it shouldn't drink all the liquor it can hold... be perfectly free to use the body in any way he chooses."


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Ron Jr. from 'Messiah or Madman?' (concerning the 1950s):

"My whole life I've always marveled at his capacity to consume alcohol and remain upright and coherent. A fifth of Myers dark run was like two aspirin to dad...

"He [Hubbard Sr.] would sit at his typewriter late at night and boost up on drugs and hit way at the top, and just write like crazy. He could type 97 words a minute with four fingers. That was the maximum the old IBM electric typewriter would go. When he got into one of these drugs trips, he'd write until the body just collapsed.

"That's the way he worked. Usually what he had written in a burst would then be allowed to trickle out to the public, the classes he taught. It just wouldn't show up right away."


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Hubbard's bottle a night at St. Hill, and how it was discreetly discarded the next morning: http://www.forum.exscn.net/showpost.php?p=72911&postcount=11


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From 'Keeping Scientology Working' (1965):

"We will not speculate here on... how I came to rise above the bank."


A few excerpts from the John McMaster interview in the book, 'Messiah or Madman?' (McMaster was "the first real Clear"):

"...In all the years of working for him I found that he absolutely despised people for being Scientologists."

McMaster commented on an encounter with Hubbard at St. Hill, when he urgently needed to relay a message:

"Well, it was about mid day. He was just getting up. He was a night owl. Anyway, I got up there and he was in his bathroom, which was attached to his bedroom. He came out and I was surprised at the color of his body. It was grey. He came out nude.

"And there on the table was one of those enormous bottles of Gin."

On the Apollo, McMaster witnessed Hubbard's drug supply, "It was the largest drug chest I had ever seen. He had everything!"


_________​


From Aleister Crowley's 'The Book of the Law':

"We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit; let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of Kings: stamp down the wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world.

"...I am the snake that giveth knowledge and delight, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs. They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self...

"...The Kings of Earth shall be the Kings forever: the slaves shall serve.

"Them that seek to entrap thee, to overthrow thee, them attack without pity or quarter; and destroy them utterly."

The 'Law of Thelema' is "Do What Thou Wilt." For Crowleyites, its "Bible" is 'The Book of The Law'. http://www.lawbright.com/logdos/crow.jpg

From one of Jack Parsons' letters to Aleister Crowley, re. Hubbard: "He [Hubbard] is the most Thelemic person I have ever met..."

And from Jack Parsons, Hubbard's "Magic(k)al partner" for a time in 1946. Parsons wrote this poem, which appeared in 1943, in the 'Oriflamme' Journal of the O.T.O:

"I hight Don Quixote, I live on Peyote, Marijuana,
"Morphine and Cocaine,
"I never know sadness, but only a madness,
"That burns in the heart and the brain.
"I see each charwoman, ecstatic, inhuman, angelic, demonic, divine.
"Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon
"That burns with ambrosial wine."


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Some more links re. alcohol and drugs (Rum, Pinks and Greys, etc.):

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/OTIII/bts-or-dts.txt

http://www.holysmoke.org/dp000/16.htm


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Excerpts from a post from Challenge from 2009 (Elsewhere Challenge recalled smoking a joint with Hubbard in Phoenix, circa 1953/54, but also added that Hubbard didn't like the taste. Understandable, as Hubbard was a smoker of mentholated KOOLs.):

"LRH used drugs. He did not enjoy Marijuana. He said it gave him bad breath... He preferred chemicals. All kinds, mixed up together. That includes prescription meds. I don't know their names. Tuinal might be one, or it could have been 2-in-all. Either way, it was Cocaine and Heroin mixed together.

"Cocaine was in use. Peyote. Lsd. Mr Hubbard preferred Amphetamines, such as Dexedrine and Benzedrine..."


There's much more.
 

Dave B.

Maximus Ultimus Mostimus
Hubbards bad teeth could indicate a lot of amphetamine use over a long period of time.
 
John McMaster told me that on the ship Hubbard had a refrigerator of street drugs, and he had "everything." When I asked "cocaine?" he repeated "everything." A former drug user and boyfriend of Quentin said that the Phoenix Lectures seemed influenced by marijuana, and that OT3 seemed like an LSD story. There are PABs where he recommends Benzedrine for running engrams. I also heard that in the 80s when he was on his ranch near San Luis Obispo that someone from the San Fernando Valley brought him illegal drugs. Maybe with testimonials we could compile a DRD list for LRH?

Not based on personal experience, but I do know he did use to use opiates. As he was a pulp/Beat writer (and a very good one at that---if he hadn't gone on his Scn track, he could have become famous and rich too, for B:E and Typewriter in the Sky!), I know he used amphetamines as well. Back in the day, they were an over the counter drug ("Benzedrine brand of Amphetamine Inhaler") and you'd crack them open, take the little strip of paper inside, and drop it in your morning cup of tea.

====

I've used Benzedrine (they stopped making the inhaler, but the tablets still exist as Dexedrine) too. It works, believe me, but you'll end up with a dry mouth and a bad headache.
 
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