Dr. Andrew Weil has always been a good boy with bad intentions.  In fact, he may turn out to have been the most dangerous hippy of them all. Not because he wanted to hurt anyone or blown up any buildings.  No, he wanted to explode something far more heavily protected than a bank.  Andrew Weil’s dream was to blow straight peoples’ minds!  He wanted to slip past their defenses by impressing them with his credentials (university and medical degrees from Harvard University, medical residency at Mass General Hospital – known as the most selective in the U.S.A.,  researcher at the National Institutes of Health, publisher of many books and articles, student and friend of Richard Evans Shultes [see last month’s profile in this space], and so on).  Once accepted as a trusted and admired colleague, he’d quietly plant the bombs.
This pattern was obvious in his early years.  He wanted to study medicine at Harvard.  But did he begin by focusing his studies on chemistry or biology, like everyone else?  No, his undergraduate degree is inbotany.  While the study of plants may seem an obvious preparation for a shamanic healer, it was highly unusual at Harvard in the early 60s.  But with his characteristic blend of intelligence, hard work and charm, Weil was successful in doing things his own way.
When Weil decided to research the effects of marijuana, he was the first scientist to use the double-blind methodology (where neither the subject nor the investigator knows who has taken the drug and who has taken the placebo).  Although this procedure was already considered standard in those days, sloppy scientific methods were acceptable when studying illegal drugs – as long as the results confirmed the authorities’ assumptions.  The combination of strictly scientific methodology and novel experimental designs led Weil to uncover some fascinating data concerning the effects of marijuana, and to get his paper published in Science (December, 1968) – while still a medical student! In a chapter called What No One Wants to Know About Marijuana, from his first book (The Natural Mind), Weil discusses his results, which included this: “In some cases, the performance (of regular smokers) even appears to improve slightly after smoking marijuana.”  What kind of science is this? Weil had reasoned that it was not rational to test people who were experiencing a particular altered state of consciousness for the first time and then generalize these findings (as all previous researchers had done).  So he used some subjects who were familiar with the effects of marijuana and gave them the opportunity to practice various tasks while stoned!  Then he tested them and compared the results.  Perfectly logical.  Excellent science.  Extremely subversive!
That was the beginning of a career that has included the study of altered states of consciousness (Marriage of the Sun and the Moon, 1980), drugs of all kinds (Chocolate to Morphine, 1983) native healing techniques and more recently, integrative medicine (Spontaneous Healing, 1995).  Andrew Weil is now the most famous doctor in the United States and has done more than anyone else to change the medical establishment there.  He’s still a dangerous hippy!  Thank God he’s on our side!