Drop Acid on the Planet

A Peace fable

It was the year 2032. Soldiers assigned to combat in war zones refused to fight.

On all sides of multiple conflicts.

Many claimed they had experienced “mystical enlightenment”. At many Court-martials drone pilots, infantrymen, and tank commanders testified they could no longer kill other human beings. “I had seen the interconnection between all living things.” One claimed, “I saw the madness of tribalism.” World leaders were confounded and issued many “No comments at this time.” Many urged their citizens to remain calm.

Little did they realize their citizens were experiencing life transforming transcendent states of consciousness. Religious leaders were divided on the question of what exactly what was taking place.

Mass epiphanies?

Enlightenment on an end times scale?

A spiritual transformation beyond human understanding?

Cable news picked up stories about a number of notorious televangelists who renounced their jets and wealth. They all asked for forgiveness, embraced poverty and with tranquil spirits of “sublime grace and humility” began living and working for the betterment of all humanity.

A former terrorist who surrendered said, “I no longer saw any difference between myself and all living creatures.” A field General complained, “my entire infantry unit has turned into a bunch of Goddam hippies.”

In hot spots around the globe insurgents came out of their urban hiding places holding white flags, renouncing their revolutionary tactic of violence, laying down their weapons and embracing their captors as “brothers and sisters”.

The world press caught it all on camera.

Billions were mystified, watching the shelling and slaughter stop across the globe as conflict by conflict guns fell silent, prisoners were freed, and hostages and refugees were granted safe passage home where they found their former enemy soldiers treating all who were injured and rebuilding safe refuges among the rubble they had created in spirits of bloodlust, vengeance and rage that had mysteriously vanished. The vast military forces of the planet’s nations, devoted to destroying rail lines, roadways and shipping lanes, were now devoted to rebuilding bridges and upgrading food supply lines, ensuring that no child went to sleep hungry in any corner of the earth no matter how remote and no matter how devastated.

The Blue Peace Brigade

The following day a group calling itself the Blue Peace Brigade posted this message on every social media platform imaginable: “We take full responsibility for our act of anti-Terror. We are the Blue Peace Brigade. Peace.”

The war makers were furious and flummoxed. World leaders demanded the Blue Peace Brigade members reveal themselves. What were their motives? The industrial weapons manufacturers were in a cold panic as their profits and stock values collapsed. How did the Blue Peace Brigade accomplish this worldwide transformation? The death merchants renounced their trade. And on one Spring day in 2028 there were no military funerals reported anywhere across the planet. Not one bugle was taken from its case. Taps was not heard anywhere. Flags were not folded and offered to widows. No orphans were comforted. Mothers received no visits from messengers in uniform.

The President of the United States noted that all these strange events reminded her of a TV show her grandfather enjoyed when he was boy that he said began with the narrator describing a world beyond imagining.

Blue Peace Brigade posted a second message. “We are acting to transform humanity with Psilocybin. You have nothing to fear but transcendent understanding. Peace”

Thousands of members of the press gathered outside John Hopkins University. It had become the global epicenter for research into Psilocybin and mystical experiences.

Funding exploded a decade ago when Professor Roland Griffiths, the world’s most famous psychedelics researcher, published his initial findings that “magic mushrooms” could help treat anxiety, depression, addiction, and grant transcendent peace to the dying. Before his death in 2023 Professor Griffiths’ scientific methodology and his findings, questioned by many of his contemporaries in the psychoanalytical community, were highly controversial.

Griffiths claimed a fair number of the participants in the famous first study had mystical experiences they described as the most meaningful of their lives. Many reported experiencing a sense of the interconnected nature of all life, granting them a profoundly pacifist perspective.

Many dissident experts noted the psychedelics also came with “unpredictable” risks. Questions about the risks of such “wonder drugs” were drowned out by the world’s enthusiastic embrace of the wonder drugs.

The press was curious to know about the Peace Brigade and their methods. And reports of outbreaks of psychosis. Who were they? Did they have any links to Hopkins?

No comment. The FBI’s investigating. Hopkins was investigating.

How did the Peace Brigade distribute psychedelics to so many individuals? Through water supplies? Powder? Liquid? Aerosols? How?

No one knew. All the press was told was that it was synthetic Psilocybin produced on a vast scale.

Somewhere.

The press was hearing reports of outbreaks of acts of unspeakable violence in regions that had just days before had experienced peace and cooperation on a historic scale. What was happening?

The answer was chilling. Ensuing rigorous studies revealed some who were given Psilocybin experienced suicidal ideation and psychotic episodes.

Within a day the identity of the members of the Peace Brigade came to light when one of the founders had a psychotic episode and went on a killing spree, slaying four of her fellow scientists before taking her own life. Interpol concluded the surviving members, twelve scientists and peace activists, had disbanded and disappeared.

In many regions the peace agreements held despite outbreaks of random acts by those few suffering psychotic episodes. The UN passed a resolution calling on all nations to fund additional research into these mood-altering drugs, and to legalize them in controlled therapeutic settings.

The construction of bridges continued.

Tribalism was abandoned. Equality and diversity became prized. Borders came to be viewed as absurd primitive constructs. Crime plunged. Democracies flourished. Nations shifted from spending their wealth on military expenditures to spending on public works, upgrading infrastructure and creating health care systems to serve all of their citizens. And billions celebrated their birthdays with therapist guided trips to “refresh their spirits” and to rekindle their positive mystical understanding of existence.

Within the year many on the planet felt connected to all life. Within the year many on the planet felt profound empathy for the planet itself moving countless millions to join forces across old divisions to launch vast collective efforts to mitigate global warming and to preserve what greenbelts and endangered wildlife remained.

Occasionally a citizen of the world would experience a psychotic episode and would rise up with delusions of reversing these gains. Such anomalies would be recognized by the enlightened masses immediately.

Such troubled souls, overcome with paranoia and deranged narcissism, would insult and assault strangers, call for division and violence. One or two claimed they were messianic saviors. One even painted his face orange and was found injecting himself with Lysol. All such broken beings were viewed with pity and sorrow by the masses. and would receive the comprehensive mental health care and intensive psychotherapeutic care they needed.

Others, refusing treatment, would wander the world, ignored and alone and tragically lost within their psychosis.

Some say they are out there still.

Coming Friday:

The only Trump headlines that will draw me to read about him from here on out

References

TED talk: Roland Griffiths

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKm_mnbN9JY

The Psychedelic Evangelist, New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/21/health/psychedelics-roland-griffiths-johns-hopkins.html