Psychedelic Salon Host Lorenzo Hagerty's Introduction

Greetings Steemers!

It's good to be here with you.

I am best known as the host of the Psychedelic Salon podcast series. I began publishing podcasts in 2005 and now have posted over 550 of them. However, during the past 75 years (that's right, I was born in 1942) I have done quite a few other things. Here are the headlines:

• Electrical engineer
• Movie stunt man
• Officer in the U.S. Navy
• Lawyer in Texas
• CEO of a computer company
• Motivational speaker
• "Internet Evangelist" for Verizon
• Writer
• Grandfather

As you can tell, I've been more or less a jack-of-all-trades but a master of none. So, you may ask, how did this strange career path lead me to producing a podcast about psychedelics? Well, I'm not really sure, to tell you the truth. I hope to figure that out through our conversations here in Steemit. You see, I do know why I am now becoming involved in Steemit.

Why the Steemit community is a good fit for me

Although I realize that I am a lot older than the vast majority of the Steemit community, during the past 12 years, as the host of a podcast about psychedelics, I have discovered that when it comes to learning about the importance of psychedelic plants and medicines that age doesn't seem to matter. In fact, unless I look at my reflection in a mirror I still feel much like I did when I was 30. My guess is that the same thing is true for most of us old guys. Years ago, when the Internet was just beginning to become popular, there was a famous cartoon featuring a dog sitting in front of a computer monitor and who was looking down at another dog on the floor and talking to it. The caption read, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." Hopefully, as we interact here on Steemit, you won't think of me as old :-).

Since 2005, when I first began podcasting, I have had the pleasure of exchanging email with many of the people who listen each week. As the years have gone on, I often am asked for recommendations about what talks that I've featured are "the best" or are my favorites. Now, some 550+ programs later, it is hard for me to even remember some of the earlier podcasts that I've done. So what I would like to do here in Steemit is to begin posting some of my earlier programs along with my comments about how/why I selected each program.

As you know, iTunes only lists my most recent 300 programs, and so I've been looking for other ways to share some of my earlier programs with new listeners. Granted, I provide RSS feeds providing links to all of my podcasts and that can be used on aggretators other than iTunes. But Steemit provides an even better option for me. To be honest, I can't say that every one of my early programs is worth listenening to. And so I plan on posting only what I consider to be my better podcasts here on Steemit. This means that as we go along here, your comments and suggestions will ultimately be guiding my selection of programs for which I'll take you behind the scenes in the salon and tell you why I decided on a particular program to highlight.

In particular, after the 2007 fire that destroyed Terence McKenna's archive, I focused on preserving as many of his talks as I could. Many people, including Ralph Abraham, his partner in the famous Trialogues, gave me their cassette tapes of Terence to digitize and play in the Psychedelic Salon. There are now over 250 McKenna programs on the salon, and the first things that I'll be posting here are some of my favorite talks of his. Hopefully, you and I will be able to exchange some thoughts about these Terence McKenna talks here in Steemit. And if you are already familiar with my podcasts, perhaps you would like to request that I play talks by, and give my thoughts about, Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, Myron Stolaroff or other psychedelic elders featured in other programs that I've produced as well.

My interest in blockchain technology

Early in 2014 I began receiving donations to the salon in the form of Bitcoin, and so I quickly became enamored with blockchain technology. I'm sure that I don't have to tell anyone in Steemit how revolutionary this technology truly is. In fact, on Flipboard I've been curating a little magazine called Blockchain News.

I was fortunate to have been involved in the personal computer business when it first began. Later, I wound up becoming involved in the rise of the Internet as an engineer at the company now known as Verizon. Having experienced, first hand, the launch and growth of the personal computer industry and of the World Wide Web, I feel qualified to give my opinion that when it comes to changing our societies in fundamental ways, that blockchain technology is going to become even more revolutionary than the technology that supports it: computers and the Internet.

Social media and the Internet

A long time ago, my youngest son convinced me to get an account on Facebook, where he already had several hundred followers. I did, and before long, thanks to my large podcast audience, I had acquired several thousand "friends", most of whom I had never met. But after about a year I became increasingly alarmed by the fact that some of my friends were tagging me in their photos even though I wasn't actually in them. Quickly I realized that my reputation, when data mined by the intelligence services, was going to be indirectly tied to a lot of people and activities that I'd never been associated with. So I deleted my Facebook account (as best I could) and dropped out of their constant collection of data that would be sold to marketers or passed to the government. In any event, I decided to get out of that particular electronic fence.

But from what I see, Steemit is a completely different kind of social media. For one thing, all of the information lives in a blockchain rather than in some billionaire's server farm. That is something I can trust. For another thing, at least as far as I can tell, we aren't going to be spoon-fed advertisements. Of course, since I'm new here, you already know a lot more reasons to participate in Steemit than I do. What I can tell you is that I'm here for the long haul and am looking forward to participating in the ever-expanding world of Steem.

A little more about me

Personal details: I'm married and live in Southern California. I have three children and five grandchildren.

While I have posted a somewhat detailed c.v. on my Website, it quite frankly isn't all that interesting to read. The best way to get a handle on the trajectory of my life is from a little 15 minute video that I created to show at a workshop Bruce Damer and I lead at the Esalen Institue in June of 2012. It's titled "From Larry to Lorenzo: The first 70 years". You can see it here, but you may want to read the rest of this page first before getting sidetracked with a video.

My first experience with drugs

I won't spend a lot of time on this topic, because if you know me from my podcasts then you already know the story. But, briefly, for anyone who is learning about me for the first time, here is the short version. If you want to hear the story of how I first became involved in the psychedelic community in more detail, you can watch the 30 minute video below. It is an interview that I did in conjunction with a movie being made about the famous Starck Club in Dallas, Texas during the 1980s.

Basically, at the time I first used a non-prescription drug, I was a 42 year old, Irish, Catholic, Republican, lawyer living in Dallas, Texas. I was a Viet Nam vet and yet had never even tried cannabis (marijuana). At the time, MDMA, which was called Ecstasy on the street, was still legal, otherwise I never would have tried it. I was a very straight-laced, follow-the-rules kind of guy at the time. However, after that first night of an MDMA experience, everything changed for me. I still resonated with my Irish heritage, but before long I had discarded much of the rest of the social baggage that I had been carrying around since childhood. However, MDMA wasn't a "gateway" drug for me. My gateway drug was alcohol, as it still is for most teenagers. If you want a few more details about how Ecstasy first hit the U.S. streets in a big way in Dallas, of all places, then you may enjoy hearing my story in the following video interview.

The Palenque Norte Lectures

There is one more thing that I'd like to mention right now, and that is the Palenque Norte Lectures that are held at the Burning Man Festival each year. In 2003, my wife and I launched a lecture series on the playa that continues today. My last trip to Black Rock City was for the 2007 burn. Today, the lectures are being hosted at Camp Soft Landing, and continue to be produced by a group of volunteers who believe in continuing to promote the truth about the importance of psychedelic plants and medicines. The video below will give you an idea of the quality of these lectures in the desert. And for those who can't make it to Burning Man, I play recordings of many of the lectures on my podcasts. Over time, I'll also be telling some stories about the background of some of my favorite Palenque Norte Lectures and play them for you here.

Let's get started

Well, that should be more than enough about me. Now I want to get working on my first non-introduction post. I'm looking forward to interacting with you here in Steemit, and I hope that we can have some interesting conversations about some of the things that we have in common.