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Little Known Fact: Astronomer Carl Sagan Was A Stoner

4:00PM October 8, 2009 | Rosa Golijan

We keep our noses clean here at Gizmodo, so we’re finding ourselves a bit surprised that someone as upstanding as Carl Sagan, astronomer extraordinaire, was a stoner. It does kinda explain the obsessions with all things shiny and starry though.

In 1969, under the name of Mr. X, Sagan contributed to a book called Marihuana Reconsidered. Some time later he as revealed as the man behind statements like this one:

When I’m high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time. Many but not all my cannabis trips have somewhere in them a symbolism significant to me which I won’t attempt to describe here, a kind of mandala embossed on the high. Free-associating to this mandala, both visually and as plays on words, has produced a very rich array of insights.

We’re definitely not saying that getting stoned will turn you into a space-studying stud, but instead we just wanted to share a little known fact about a cool dude. [Boing Boing]

Comments

  • Water Bear

    October 8, 2009 at 7:37 PM

    Bong on.

  • Just Legalize It

    October 9, 2009 at 7:43 AM

    Well known fact in the cannabis community…. its good to see someone spreading the news outside of it.

  • jaime green

    October 9, 2009 at 7:49 AM

    had the pleasure of smokin with Dr during his visits to Santa Barbara

  • Dropbear9

    October 12, 2009 at 3:38 PM

    “…surprised that someone as upstanding as Carl Sagan, astronomer extraordinaire, was a stoner” ?

    So Gizmodians think that only low life types would dare indulge in the green stuff?

    Some of science’s greatest thinkers have done so by way of altered thinking from the use of various substances.
    It’s not just artists and writers who benefit from an altered perception.

    I bet you guys all quaff substantial amounts of caffeine. You think this has no effect on how you think?

    Try a little green, chill out, and see guys.. :-)

    Then again, maybe the weed was responsible for some of the wacky ideas he had in “Contact”.
    The book.. not the movie. Zemeckis is obviously no scientist.

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