Carl Sagan: how cannabis deepened his creativity, empathy and state of mind

Carl Sagan is one of the best-known and most admired scientists of the 20th century. As a planetary scientist, he offered visionary insights into the atmospheres of Mars, Venus, and Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. As the host of the documentary series *Cosmos*, he took millions of viewers on a guided tour of the universe. Sagan wrote on a wide variety of topics, including the need for truth in public discourse, world peace, and climate change—issues that remain relevant today.

As an advocate for cannabis, he was also decades ahead of his time.

Yet he wisely kept his pro-cannabis views to himself, given the prevailing «war on drugs.» In small groups, however, he professed his love for the plant with passionate eloquence—even going so far as to write an anonymous essay (under the pseudonym «Mr. X») for the book Marihuana Reconsidered from his friend Lester Grinspoon in 1971, which you can find translated into French here.

Much of Sagan’s correspondence regarding cannabis has only come to light in recent years, revealing a long-hidden facet of this man’s complex life—a facet in which Cannabinoids helped him to reconnect with memories from his early childhood, to come up with new mathematical ideas, to broaden his appreciation of art and music, and to deepen his empathy and love for his wife, Ann.

New Levels of Perception

Sagan’s first experience with cannabis turned out to be somewhat disappointing. Around 1959, according to his anonymous essay, he had reached a «period of relaxation in his life» after years of intensive scientific work. During this time, he befriended a group of people who smoked cannabis «occasionally, but with obvious enjoyment.» For months, Sagan politely declined every joint that came his way, until one evening, he finally decided to give it a try.

After about half an hour, Sagan felt «no effect.» However, his friends« »euphoric” sessions convinced Sagan to keep trying—and on his sixth or seventh try, the magic happened:

«I was lying on my back in a friend’s living room, idly examining the pattern of shadows cast on the ceiling by a potted plant… I suddenly realized that I was looking at a miniature Volkswagen with intricate details, clearly outlined by the shadows… When I closed my eyes, I was astonished to find that a movie was playing behind my eyelids… a simple countryside scene with a red farmhouse, a blue sky, white clouds, and a yellow path winding through green hills toward the horizon… hues of exquisite depth, and surprisingly harmonious in their juxtaposition.»

Although he clearly understood that he was hallucinating, Sagan remained «convinced that there are authentic and valid levels of perception associated with cannabis.» ” He quickly became a regular—albeit relatively light—smoker and would remain so for the rest of his life.

While he continued to write popular science books and host special television programs, Sagan pursued his own line of research in the utmost secrecy, diligently documenting the extraordinary mental phenomena he experienced under the influence of cannabis.

Moments of Self-Reflection

Sagan’s travelogues sometimes read more like software manuals than spiritual texts, but that is a large part of their unique appeal. Above all, Sagan was a clear and precise science communicator, and that’s the perspective he brought to his cannabis journeys. What other human being, for example, would describe the visions he experienced with his eyes closed in such terms?

«Another interesting aspect of information theory is the prevalence… of cartoons: just the outlines of figures, caricatures—not photographs. I think it’s simply a matter of information compression; it would be impossible to capture the full content of an image with the information content of an ordinary photograph—say, 108 bits—in the fraction of a second that a flash takes.»

And then there was the time he took a shower while high, and ended up drawing statistical diagrams with soap on the shower tiles—and then turning those ideas into academic essays:

«I had an idea about the origins and flaws of racism in terms of Gaussian distribution curves… I drew the curves in soap on the shower wall, and then I went to write down the idea. One idea led to another, and after about an hour of extremely hard work, I discovered that I had written eleven short essays on a wide range of social, political, philosophical, and biological topics related to humanity.»

Of course, cannabis wasn’t the only factor behind these works. According to Sagan, the plant helped facilitate the intellectual cross-pollination among the various scientific and mathematical disciplines he had studied in college.

Sagan was particularly eager to refute the « a common myth about this type of high : »The consumer has the illusion of great insight, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny the next morning.« He was »convinced that this is a mistake, and that the... insights gained while high are real.".

The main problem, in his view, was to «put these ideas into a form acceptable to the completely different self that we are when we come ashore the next day.» He solved this problem by recording his « highdeas »in great detail, and then analyzing and refining the good ones in the days that followed.".

Sagan's prodigious memory, curiosity, and rationality provided the raw materials, while cannabis brought them together and shaped them into meaningful achievements.

Art, music, empathy, and love

As stimulating as Sagan’s scientific achievements may be, some of his most moving travel accounts focus not on rational calculations but on emotional and aesthetic experiences: discovering music, exploring art, reliving childhood memories, and forming a deeper connection with his wife through the magic of cannabis.

For much of his life, Sagan was—by his own admission—quite ignorant when it came to music. But with the help of cannabis, he wrote: «For the first time, I was able to hear the different parts of a three-part harmony and the richness of the counterpoint.»

In the same vein, he writes: «My experience with cannabis has greatly enhanced my appreciation of art, a subject I had never really appreciated before. » He discovered a new ability to translate scenes from the real world into colorful abstract paintings in his mind—an ability he had never imagined, much less tried to develop, before cannabis awakened it in him.

His view on cannabis is similar to Aldous Huxley’s view on psychedelics. Both men believed that psychotropic drugs could alter our perception and shift us from our usual, survival-oriented mode to one that allows for unique sensory perception and reflective thought patterns that society and our psychology are structured to keep at bay. Huxley wrote an entire book, The Doors of Perception, on this phenomenon, which he called «Mind at Large.».

Sagan also discovered that, thanks to cannabis, he could «delve into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, toys, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a bygone era.» He discovered that he was able to «reconstruct the actual events of his childhood that he had only half understood at the time.» ” In other words, cannabis allowed him to relive his childhood memories in minute detail, from the perspective of the adult he had become, shedding new light on half-forgotten episodes of his life.

«Cannabis gives us a sense of awareness that we spend our entire lives being trained to ignore, forget, and push out of our minds.» – Carl Sagan.

Perhaps even more profoundly, Carl Sagan discovered that cannabis increased his empathy for the people around him, particularly for his wife Ann—a cannabis user and advocate for legalization—with whom he spent many happy hours «sharing conversations, insights, and humor.» In the bedroom, they discovered that the Cannabis enhanced sex «an exquisite sensitivity» that also strengthened their physical bond. In those moments, Sagan writes, cannabis allows her to «give her full attention to every sensation» and to stay focused on the present.

For all these reasons, Sagan was firmly convinced that «the serenity and insight, sensitivity, and camaraderie» fostered by cannabis were «desperately needed in this increasingly crazy and dangerous world.».