Cannabis and Creativity: Scientist, Carl Sagan

When you hear the name Carl Sagan, you probably think about his work as a prolific scientist or science fiction writer or as the creator of the Emmy- and Peabody-winning television series, “Cosmos,” but did you know that he was a regular cannabis user? In fact, Sagan actually credited cannabis with a lot of his creative and ingenious ideas. In 1969, Sagan penned an anonymous essay under the pseudonym “Mr. X” for the publication Marihuana Reconsidered (1971). In this essay, Sagan says,

“I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs.”

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But how does this altered perception work exactly? How could a genius such as Carl Sagan produce such influential and field altering work while simultaneously being a pothead? Sagan explained this enhancing effect perfectly when he expounded on the thoughts of Robert Ornstein of the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco in his 1977 book, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence (1977). In this analogy it is pointed out that while the stars still…