"And I tell them not to be so paranoid," she adds with a laugh. Her nervous giggle is a very self-confident one.
Most of the people who go to see Miss Bieberman at PIC, however, just want to take drugs for kicks. "They consider themselves irresponsible, self-defeating, naughty," she says. "They take drugs too often, and without planning and forethought. So the insights they gain when they're 'up there' are quickly dissipated. They don't stay together after their sessions to discuss their experiences. These people may have unpleasant experiences when they take psychedelics in the wrong environment, going into it with the wrong attitude. It all depends on the attitude you go into it with."
One of her first doses of morning glory seeds made her extremely miserable for about half the time, she says, because she had thought the effects were supposed to last for only eight hours, whereas they lasted 16 hours. She is skeptical of doctors who report that LSD may aggravate schizophrenic tendencies or have other harmful psychological effects.
"LSD in itself does not do anything to a person. The effect depends on the individual's preparation and motivation," she says. She complains that people like Dana L. Farnsworth, Director of University Health Services, are not very helpful. "He only mentions the cases that turnout badly," she says, "and does not mention cases in which psychedelics can be used constructively."
Miss Bieberman firmly believes that psychedelics can be put to "constructive" use, and that is the kind of use she is so intent upon bringing out into the open. "It's hard to explain to people who have not taken the drugs just what these good effects are," she says, "but they can give you a new perspective on the way you are living, and an increased sensitivity. You look at life in a completely different way when you're up and the important thing is to be able to apply this new perspective to your life when you come back down." She "goes up" only a few times a year, in order to have time to think over her last experience and relate it to her life "down here." "Each time I take a dose," she said, "I plan it carefully, because I have new problems to deal with, and I forget after a number of months just what it was like." She feels that if one takes a drug more frequently and under less planned conditions, the experience can be meaningless.
To combat this meaninglessness, Miss Bieberman plans to do research in the field of psychedelic drugs. "I want to find out how to help people reach what I call "The Psychedelic Experience" and not the unpleasant one--how to make them remember it, hang onto it, and make it applicable to their daily life."
She says there is a possibility that psychedelics could be used in psychotherapy, but adds: "There's something not quite appropriate in idea. The psychedelic experience not like a sick man going to get cured--it is so subjective--you do it yourself. All another person can do is create the setting, and help out a little." This is the role Miss Bieberman would like to play for "people who want to get turned on in a good environment," she plans to set up in the future a center for this purpose. But she realizes that most of the people she has delt with only want to "turn on" and hardly care about the "good environment" and whether or not it exists. She is idealistically dedicated to a cause whose adherents she feels are irresponsible and whose goals she is not sure are possible, but she tries fiercely to believe in them.
A recent visitor to PIC told Miss Bierberman that he had not taken LSD in a month, and she replied to him take she had not taken it in four months. "But that's because you like it down here," he replied.
Does she like it "down here"? Miss Bieberman's stapling was interrupted