Stoned Scientists

Cannabis Culture has a great piece up right now on some of the world's greatest scientific minds and how the use of mind altering substances inspired their best work. From Harvard Professor Stephen Jay Gould who lived 20 years longer than expected thanks to the use of cannabis to control his cancer to Carl Sagan who credits the herb for his ability to think outside the box, many of the last century's greatest minds used drugs responsibly.

Further debunking the theory that drugs damage your thinking, Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman used LSD, as did Nobel prize winning chemist Kary Mullis and leading mathematician Ralph Abraham. Freud used cocaine and the well known naturopath Andrew Weil admits to having used every drug known to man at one point or another.

Weil claims that there's an innate need for humans to alter consciousness, and that there is no such thing as good drugs and bad drugs, merely that some individuals have good or bad relationships with these substances.

Oddly, the man most associated with LSD, Timothy Leary, accomplished the least academically however, he went on to live an extraordinary life, inspiring a whole generation of young people to expand their consciousness as well.

It's worth reading in full.