Carl Sagan Also Smoked Pot Decades Ago. Here’s What He Had to Say About It.
“The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before,” he wrote. “The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse.”
Sagan went on to explain in intricate detail how his experiences listening to music, eating food and even having sex were all heightened while high.
His essay also included some classic Saganesque poetry:
I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of gaussian distribution curves. It was a point obvious in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of about an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written eleven short essays on a wide range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics. Because of problems of space, I can’t go into the details of these essays, but from all external signs, such as public reactions and expert commentary, they seem to contain valid insights. I have used them in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books.
Sagan ultimately concluded that it was easy to use marijuana in moderation. For that reason he wrote that “the illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.”
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