-Caveat Lector-
AL HUBBARD, THE ORIGINAL "CAPTAIN TRIPS"
by Todd Brendan Fahey
High Times, Nov. 1991
<cont'd>
Hubbard abandoned his uranium empire and, for the next
decade, traveled the globe as a psychedelic missionary. "Al's
dream was to open up a worldwide chain of clinics as training
grounds for other LSD researchers," says Stolaroff. His first
pilgrimage was to Switzerland, home of Sandoz Laboratories,
producers of both Delysid (trade name for LSD) and psilocybin.
He procured a gram of LSD (roughly 10,000 doses) and set up shop
in a safe-deposit vault in the Zurich airport's duty-free
section. From there he was able to ship quantities of his booty
without a tariff to a waiting world.
Swiss officials quickly detained Hubbard for violating the
nation's drug laws, which provided no exemption from the
duty-free provision.
Myron Stolaroff petitioned Washington for the Captain's
release, but the State Department wanted nothing to do with Al
Hubbard. Oddly, when a hearing was held, blue-suited officials
from the department were in attendance. The Swiss tribunal
declared Hubbard's passport invalid for five years, and he was
deported. Undeterred, Hubbard traveled to Czechoslovakia, where
he had another gram of LSD put into tablet form by Chemapol --a
division of the pharmaceutical giant Spofa-- and then flew west.
Procuring a Ph.D. in biopsychology from a
less-than-esteemed academic outlet called Taylor University, the
captain became Dr. Alfred M. Hubbard, clinical therapist. In '57,
he met Ross MacLean, medical superintendent of the Hollywood
Hospital in New Westminster, Canada. MacLean was so impressed
with Hubbard's knowledge of the human condition that he devoted
an entire wing of the hospital to the study of psychedelic
therapy for chronic alcoholics.
According to Metcalfe, MacLean was also attracted to the
fact that Hubbard was Canada's sole licensed importer of Sandoz
LSD. "I remember seeing Al on the phone in his living room one
day. He was elated because the FDA had just given him IND#1,"
says one Hubbard confidante upon condition of anonymity.
His Investigational New Drug permit also allowed Hubbard to
experiment with LSD in the USA. For the next few years, Hubbard
--together with Canadian psychiatrist Abram Hoffer and Dr.
Humphry Osmond-- pioneered a psychedelic regimen with a recovery
rate of between 60% and 70% -- far above that of AA or Schick
Hospital's so-called "aversion therapy." Hubbard would lift
mentally-disturbed lifelong alcoholics out of psychosis with a
mammoth dose of liquid LSD, letting them view their destructive
habits from a completely new vantage point.
"As a therapist, he was one of the best," says Stolaroff,
who worked with Hubbard until 1965 at the International
Federation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, California, which he
founded after leaving Ampex.
Whereas many LSD practitioners were content to strap their
patients onto a 3' x 6' cot and have them attempt to perform a
battery of mathematical formulae with a head full of LSD, Hubbard
believed in a comfortable couch and throw pillows. He also
employed icons and symbols to send the experience into a variety
of different directions: someone uptight may be asked to look at
a photo of a glacier, which would soon melt into blissful
relaxation; a person seeking the spiritual would be directed to a
picture of Jesus, and enter into a one-on-one relationship with
the Savior.
But Hubbard's days at Hollywood Hospital ended in 1957, not
long after they had begun, after a philosophical dispute with
Ross MacLean. The suave hospital administrator was getting fat
from the $1,000/dose fees charged to Hollywood's elite patients,
who included members of the Canadian Parliament and the American
film community. Hubbard, who believed in freely distributing LSD
for the world good, felt pressured by MacLean to share in the
profits, and ultimately resigned rather than accept an honorarium
for his services.
His departure came as the Canadian Medical Association was
becoming increasingly suspicious of Hollywood Hospital in the
wake of publicity surrounding MK-ULTRA. The Canadian Citizen's
Commission on Human Rights had already discovered one Dr. Harold
Abramson, a CIA contract psychiatrist, on the board of MacLean's
International Association for Psychedelic Therapy, and external
pressure was weighing on MacLean to release Al Hubbard, the
former OSS officer with suspected CIA links. Compounding
Hubbard's plight was the death of his Canadian benefactor,
leaving Hubbard with neither an income nor the financial cushion
upon which he had become dependent.
His services were eventually recruited by Willis Harman,
then-Director of the Educational Policy Research Center within
the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) of Stanford University.
Harman employed Hubbard as a security guard for SRI, "although,"
Harman admits, "Al never did anything resembling security work."
Hubbard was specifically assigned to the Alternative
Futures Project, which performed future-oriented strategic
planning for corporations and government agencies. Harman and
Hubbard shared a goal "to provide the [LSD] experience to
political and intellectual leaders around the world." Harman
acknowledges that "Al's job was to run the special [LSD] sessions
for us."
According to Dr. Abram Hoffer, "Al had a grandiose idea
that if he could give the psychedelic experience to the major
executives of the Fortune 500 companies, he would change the
whole of society."
Hubbard's tenure at SRI was uneasy. The political bent of
the Stanford think-tank was decidedly left-wing, clashing sharply
with Hubbard's own world-perspective. "Al was really an
arch-conservative," says the confidential source. "He really
didn't like what the hippies were doing with LSD, and he held
Timothy Leary in great contempt."
Humphry Osmond recalls a particular psilocybin session in
which "Al got greatly preoccupied with the idea that he ought to
SHOOT Timothy, and when I began to reason with him that this
would be a very bad idea ... I became much concerned that he
might shoot ME ..."
"To Al," says Myron Stolaroff, "LSD enabled man to see his
true self, his true nature and the true order of things." But, to
Hubbard, the true order of things had little to do with the
antics of the American Left.
Recognizing its potential psychic hazards, Hubbard believed
that LSD should be administered and monitored by trained
professionals. He claimed that he had stockpiled more LSD than
anyone on the planet besides Sandoz --including the US
government-- and he clearly wanted a firm hand in influencing the
way it was used. However, Hubbard refused all opportunities to
become the LSD Philosopher-King. Whereas Leary would naturally
gravitate toward any microphone available, Hubbard preferred the
role of the silent "curandero," providing the means for the
experience, and letting voyagers decipher its meaning for
themselves. When cornered by a video camera shortly before this
death, and asked to say something to the future, Hubbard replied
simply, "You're the future."
In March of 1966, the cold winds of Congress blew out all
hope for Al Hubbard's enlightened Mother Earth. Facing a storm of
protest brought on by Leary's reckless antics and the
"LSD-related suicide" of Diane Linkletter, President Lyndon
Johnson signed into law the Drug Abuse Control Amendment, which
declared lysergic acid diethylamide a Schedule I substance;
simple possession was deemed a felony, punishable by 15 years in
prison. According to Humphry Osmond, Hubbard lobbied
Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, who reportedly took the cause of
LSD into the Senate chambers, and emerged un-victorious.
"[The government] had a deep fear of having their picture
of reality challenged," mourns Harman. "It had nothing to do with
people harming their lives with chemicals -- because if you took
all the people who had ever had any harmful effects from
psychedelics, it's minuscule compared to those associated with
alcohol and tobacco."
FDA chief James L. Goddard ordered agents to seize all
remaining psychedelics not accounted for by Sandoz. "It was
scary," recalls Dr. Oscar Janiger, whose Beverly Hills office was
raided and years' worth of clinical research confiscated.
Hubbard begged Abram Hoffer to let him hide his supply in
Hoffer's Canadian Psychiatric Facility. But the doctor refused,
and its believed that Hubbard sent most of his LSD back to
Switzerland, rather than risk prosecution. When the panic
subsided, only five government-approved scientists were allowed
to continue LSD research -- none using humans, and NONE of them
associated with Al Hubbard. In 1968, his finances in ruins,
Hubbard was forced to sell his private island sanctuary for what
one close friend termed "a pittance." He filled a number of boats
with the antiquated electronics used in his eccentric nuclear
experiments, and left Daymen Island for California.
Hubbard's efforts in his last decade were effectively
wasted, according to most of his friends. Lack of both finances
and government permit to resume research crippled all remaining
projects he may have had in the hopper.
After SRI canceled his contract in 1974 Hubbard went into
semiretirement, splitting his time between a 5-acre ranch in
Vancouver and an apartment in Menlo Park. But in 1978, battling
an enlarged heart and never far away from a bottle of pure
oxygen, Hubbard make one last run at the FDA.
He applied for an IND to use LSD-25 on terminal cancer
patients, furnishing the FDA with two decades of clinical
documentation. The FDA set the application aside, pending the
addition to Hubbard's team of a medical doctor, a supervised
medical regimen, and an AMA-accredited hospital. Hubbard secured
the help of Oscar Janiger, but the two could not agree on
methodology, and Janiger bowed out, leaving Al Hubbard, in his
late 70s, without the strength to carry on alone.
Says Willis Harman: "He knew that his work was done."
* * *
The Captain lived out his last days nearly broke, having
exhausted his resources trying to harness a dream. Like the final
fleeting hour of an acid trip --when the edge softens and a man
realizes that he will NOT solve the secrets of the Universe,
despite what the mind had said earlier-- Hubbard smiled
gracefully, laid down his six-shooter, and retired to a mobile
home in Casa Grande, Arizona.
On August 31, 1982, at the age of 81, Al Hubbard was called
home, having ridden the dream like a rodeo cowboy. On very quiet
nights, with the right kind of ears, you can hear him giving God
hell.
Copyright (c) 1996-1998 Far Gone Books
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