Two hundred milligrams of mescaline was the agent used to facilitate the altered state. Creative performance was evaluated in three ways: (a) an analysis of score changes on tests of creative ability given several days before and again during the acute phase of the experimental session; (b) a content analysis of subjective reports for evidence of generally recognized components of the creative process and distinguishing features of the creative solutions; (c) subjection of the solution derived during the session, including theories, designs and inventions, to pragmatic scientific and industrial testing.

The tentative conclusions derived suggested that if given according to a carefully structured regimen, psychedelic agents seem to facilitate creative problem-solving, particularly during the "illumination phase." There is also the suggestion that various degrees of increased creative ability may continue for at least some weeks following a psychedelic problem-solving session.³²...Experiments with the drug MDMA (34-methylene- dioxy-methamphetamine) indicate that it is quite useful in aiding communication and producing clarity, promoting insight into problems, increasing creativity, expanding mental perspective and insight, and promoting transcendent experiences.³³

Psychologist Roger Walsh, in his book Psychedelic Reflections, indicates that many highly creative people privately acknowledge that psychedelic agents have played a vital role in advancing their understanding of projects that they were working on.³⁴

A poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, created one of his most famous poems, "Kubla Khan," during a dream-like state brought on following the oral administration of an opium-containing medication, Laudanum. According to Coleridge's description, he immediately fell asleep and composed no less than 200 to 300 lines without any sense of effort. Upon awakening he perceived himself to have a distinct recollection of the entire poem. Shortly after he began recording the lines of the poem he was interrupted by a person on business, which precluded his finishing the poem until an hour later. By then he had only a vague recollection of the contents of the vision so that the finished product was only 54 lines long.³⁵

Various other substances have also been associated with creative ideas, including alcohol, coffee, marijuana and other drugs. However, these have been used only as triggering mechanisms. In most instances creativity is preceded by sheer hard work.

Transformative experiences can be intentionally triggered in many ways. However, all share a common quality. They focus awareness on awareness.³⁶...Ferguson has listed four stages of transformation. The first stage is the entry point, which can be brought about by any spontaneous mystical or psychic experience, or can be precipitated by a psychedelic drug. According to Ferguson, "It is impossible to overestimate the historic role of psychedelics as an entry point drawing people into other transformative technologies.... The changes in brain chemistry triggered by psychedelics cause the familiar world to metamorphose. It gives way to rapid imagery, unaccustomed depths of visual perception and hearing, a flood of `new' knowledge that seems at once very old, a poignant primal memory.... [P]sychedelic awareness is not fuzzy but many times more intense than normal waking consciousness."

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