Author: ayslblog

1. Compared to traditional medicines used by us for thousands of years, synthetics have only 150 years of human use history – a tiny fraction.  However, being made from toxic petroleum, they are inherently toxic and the scientific tests (in vitro, in vivo, in small animals, etc.) are meant to see how toxic they are before subjecting them to clinical trials in humans;
2. Petrochemicals are not the same as plant and animal substances our ancestors tested over countless generations to learn what was edible or medicinal. Many of them people died during that process. Yet some argue that because petroleum is natural, chemicals derived from it are therefore not toxic. I am not aware of any ancestral tradition based on people safely consuming petroleum and passing down that experience.
3. Few, if any, of us have also addressed the issue of purity of synthetic drugs.  World pharmacopoeias usually list up to a few %.  But even 1% of an impurity in synthetics can spell serious trouble if that chemical is particularly strong-acting or highly toxic.  For example, if 1% of LSD is added to psilocybin, a normal dose of the latter containing the LSD would make its psychedelic effects double because LSD is up to 200x stronger acting than psilocybin.  Regardless, how many studies of synthetic psilocybin over the past 25 years had unknown strong-acting or toxic impurities therein without the researchers’ knowledge?  These would  have obviously distorted our research data.  How much of our research literature over the past several decades was based on unsure test objects (drugs), meaning useless resulting data?    Plenty! Because I have encountered this quite often myself. 
4. Antibiotics (penicillin), steroids (testosterone & cortisone), and opioids (morphine, heroin & fentanyl) are some of the most useful and then abused drugs we have.  The fields have turned from a few life savers to increasingly more new drugs being abused along with new diseases that require more new drugs to treat, thus perpetuating the vicious cycle (VC).   And treating drug abuse is itself a booming industry!  
5. No one mentions that our modern drug-therapy process with synthetics is not scientific.  Its initial testing on in vitro and in vivo cell systems is scientific, so may be in animals with limited life span (whose results cannot be directly translated to humans).  Then, when clinical trials are done on humans for increasingly shorter time before approval, we still have to go through the trial-and-error process in patients – the same process used by our ancient ancestors thousands of years ago.  So, our modern drug development and testing process is not complete (lacking science and/or human wisdom) without using the trial-and-error step along with its essential time element – millennia, not just a generation or two.

Psilocybin(P)     Norbaeocystin(N)    Baeocystin(B)    Aeruginascin(A)     Serotonin(S)  

2 methyls         no methyl   4-OH          1 methyl              3 methyls            no methyl  5-OH 

Although this post specifically lists the closest analogs simultaneously to psilocybin and serotonin, the vicious cycle (VC) applies to them as well.  The PBN Naturals mycelia, especially the B therein when dephosphorylated in the brain becomes an unidentical twin of serotonin.  Will it help serotonin perform its brain functions when needed among others in the rest of our body?  Thus, norbaeocystin with its phosphate removed becomes 4-hydroxytryptamine  that is practically a twin of 5-hydroxytryptamine (also called serotonin). 

In my last post of June 2, 2026, I again stressed the vicious cycle (VC) when using synthetic chemicals.  Unlike herbal medicines, they are brand new to our planet and all have inherently toxic effects because they have no long-term contact or interactions with humans.  The longest for synthetics is 150 years while for natural medicines it is countless years or, say, 150 millennia!   Nothing has been done with this twin since it was ‘born’ 60 years ago!

Despite our recent forebears’ invention of scientific tests to try synthetic drugs first on cells and animals, eventually clinical trials in humans, we still must go through the same trial-and-error process our ancient ancestors used in developing our traditional medicines.   Am I that wrong with my scientific thinking or is it that our system of healthcare is entrenched by greed?   Regardless, our modern drug-therapy process using synthetics which includes trial and error of traditional medicines is obviously NOT scientific; it is faux science.   But sensibly combining the two would resolve our current VC problems, especially if our country abandoned its failed capitalistic system to be more like the socio-political system of Canada or Scandinavia whose governments handle their people’s healthcare.  

Hence, in the USA, the VC is owned by drug and insurance companies.  They have all the incentives to keep it private and ongoing in perpetuity, as it has already been doing for several decades.  Which is why we have so many ill people and the world’s highest drug costs.   For years we have not been ranked among the world’s 30 or 40 healthiest nations, despite we are the richest and most scientifically advanced, both now debatable.   

Since rejoining the psilocybin movement six years ago, I have published many online posts, mostly on my work in psychedelics:   PBN = Psilocybin Baeocystin Norbaeocystin

However, from late 1967 to early 2020 when I rejoined the psychedelic space, I had not participated in any activities involving magic mushrooms for over fifty years.  But during the past six years, I have been trying to start a PBN Naturals Worldwide Consortium.   It is to afford completely natural fungal mycelial products at reasonable prices to fellow humans who suffer the illnesses and side effects caused by synthetic drugs.   Our Consortium will be for minimal profits because a nonprofit has too many restrictions for me to handle by myself.

After I completed my teaching assistantship, my advisor and mentor, Dr. Ara G. Paul, assigned me the Psilocybe project and secured a four-year Lilly Foundation fellowship for me. This allowed me to devote nearly all my time to research. I then spent more than a year analyzing tryptamines and indoles related to psilocybin and psilocin using thin-layer chromatography (TLC). Today, high-performance TLC (HPTLC) is more common in America, but the basic operating principle is the same. A key feature of both TLC and HPTLC is the Rf value, which measures how far compounds in a mixture travel across the adsorbent on a plate as solvents carry them upward by capillary action. Among the 36 tryptamines and indoles I studied, psilocybin had the lowest Rf value in numerous solvent systems.  After I had begun analyzing extracts of Psilocybe species, I noticed Ps. baeocystis extracts consistently showed a smudgy unclean psilocybin band.   So, I did 2-demensional runs on them.  Which showed more than three extra spots next to psilocybin.  That has led me to the discovery of two new psilocybin analogs, that I named baeocystin (B) and norbaeocystin (B).  I suspect another analog is aeruginascin but I didn’t pursue it because it would have taken me another 6 months to finish my PhD.

B and N are the closest analogs simultaneously to psilocybin and serotonin.   Since 4- hydroxytryptamine (dephosphorylated N) is the un-identical twin of 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin), an important hormone and neurotransmitter present throughout our body, why has no one studied any of them, especially the twin?   I suspect one or both of the following two issues play a role:

1. The vicious cycle (VC) is a common element caused by synthetic drug therapy which I have been describing for years.  It is a goldmine for drug makers and their interdependent associates.  While they perpetually get filthy rich the rest of humanity get poorer and sicker.

I doubt I would have discovered the psilocybin analogs if I had not used the simple TLC for my analyses.    Just consider the fact that it has been almost 60 years since  I got my PhD from Michigan and published my work, no one has succeeded in growing Ps. baeocystis or any other psychedelic mushroom and produced mycelia that contained natural psilocybin and/or analog(s).     Considering I am never interested in making money by exploiting or restricting others, I’ve found it unusual to see so many ‘goldrush’ entrepreneurs after I rejoined the psychedelic movement only about six years ago.   One  particular group was first a non-profit organization getting free advice from well-known experts, but then went for-profit by themselves and got most of the moneyed investors.  They are all sticking to synthetic psychedelics and seem unaware of the VC.  If allowed to continue, Americans will continue to suffer from the toxic side effects and new disease inherent in the VC.   The only way to resolve this situation is to bypass the VC.  That is exactly what our Consortium plans to do.

When I was still actively traveling, 15 or even 20 years ago, I used to comment on the ‘third-world’ status of our airports compared to the ones from which I left European, Asian, and other foreign cities to fly home.   I have not done this for close to 10 years now.  Regardless, from my world travels to different locations, I have seen modern high-speed trains  and magnificent bridges, especially in China that we used to consider backward and some of us still do.  Thus, compared to our own country over the past few decades, we have had few visible advances.  Instead, we have plenty of homeless people in major cities, many of whom are veterans.  Maybe the funds for correcting some of these disgraceful happenings have disappeared quietly into the pockets of a few,  especially those of the ones who were cowards and had avoided serving America in our armed forces.

The root cause of our country’s decline in health and health science is our failure to clearly define the science we use in our therapy of illnesses using synthetic drugs.   Since these drugs are made from toxic petroleum, they are brand new to our planet, never been tested, and thus are inherently toxic.   Our recent forebears at least had the foresight of subjecting them to in vitro, in vivo, in small animals, up to human clinical trials until they are proven safe and effective.  Then, they are  declared ‘scientifically’ ready for patient use, and the trial-and-error process used by our ancestors begins anew.  However, unlike the traditional medicines our ancient ancestors had developed eons ago with their accumulated experience and wisdom, synthetic drugs have no more than a few generations of experience.  So, we are stuck with modern medicines that are not scientific nor consistent, and have no experience with humans.

For more than 3 generations now, no one seems to have paid attention to our use of synthetic drugs in therapy.  My smart science colleagues all seem to be interested in their own pursuits, digging deeper and deeper holes without surfacing above ground to view the scenery (i.e., acquiring specializations without ever considering their relevance to our health and environment).  So now, we have all these specializations with their own complicated jargons, what do we do with them?  Just make a living for ourselves, and to hell with our health being perpetually ruined by synthetic drugs with their side effects and more new diseases caused by them, which require more new drugs to treat, leading to the vicious cycle (VC).  This VC is our demise – it supports different industries in helping to treat our illnesses.   Yet most patients helped by this drug therapy are sickened by the new drugs in the VC.  Do you see any end to this?  I understand it would be very difficult for my colleagues to understand this dilemma.  But we can’t simply let this VC remain.   We need to deal with its root cause that lies in its toxic ingredients generated in the synthetic process from fossil fuels.  The synthetic chemicals are brand new and contain also impurities that are brand new and most likely also toxic.  How much attention have we paid to them?  Or do we assume and hope they are not that toxic, 1% or 2% would not be too much  or harmful?  Regardless, their toxic effects may not show up immediately, or in a day or even months.   Haven’t you noticed the general poor health of our fellow Americans in the past 30 to 40 years most of whom routinely take drugs (OTC or prescription) and/or ingest junk foods and colored and sweetened drinks, all loaded with synthetic additives?

All our specializations may look impressive, perhaps making you tons of money.   But they don’t improve our health.  The only way to avoid or bypass specializations based on the VC of using toxic synthetic chemicals is not to use them whenever possible.    That is something I have special insight and plan to do. 

I spent 3 years at graduate school analyzing tryptamines/indoles related to psilocybin and psilocin using HPTLC, followed by growing psychedelic mushrooms in liquid culture.  I isolated 2 psilocybin analogs from Psilocybe baeocystis and named them baeocystin and norbaeocystin.  They are the closest sister compounds simultaneously to psilocybin and serotonin.  I am not sure if I used other analytical techniques would have led me to discover such close analogs.  When dephosphorylated, norbaeocystin becomes 4-hydroxytryptamine; it is a non-identical twin of serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine).  The latter is an important hormone and neurotransmitter responsible for various important brain and body functions.   Yet 60 years after I published the papers on them, no scientists have repeated my work.   No one knows what serotonin’s twin, 4-hydroxytryptamine, can do.   I have written about this issue over the past decades.  Yet most scientists (or most likely the ‘businessmen faux scientists in charge’ of their outfits) are too blinded by greed or ignorance to notice anything unusual when they work on these psychedelic tryptamines.  And for 60 years!?  Why are we wasting our research money on token research or research using the wrong science or wrong approach that I call faux science?

Talking about faux science used in especially psychedelics research, I am bringing up the vicious cycle (VC) again.  I have a feeling the current goldrush companies are run by businessmen who think they are also technical, thus wasting our money in suppressing real talents in chasing the wrong things.  I know because over my long career, I have repeatedly bumped into people like that, mostly in the psychedelics field.  The most recent one was only a few years ago.  He was probably the third or fourth such fake business/faux scientists that I have run into.  Like the other fakes, he probably thought I was clueless after meeting me for the first time (without knowing a thing about me) and then persuaded his smart computer-savvy partner to do without me as their partner.  I still feel sorry for the latter – my potential young computer partner.  His business partner didn’t know my technical history, and probably only noticed my inattention/ADHD.  Please read on:

In all my over 50 years of diversified career, I only applied for one government contract and one government grant.   The contract was with NCI around the mid-1980s and the grant was from NCCAM at the beginning of 2000.  I won both, 5 years apart.  They were 5 years apart because after we (my one-man company & a new computer startup named Ketron as my subcontractor) won the contract, but we didn’t get funded because it was government cronyism – the contract RFP was written for my competitor, the world-famous NAPRALERT database group!  I was so disgusted that I swore not to deal with the cronyism in government again.  Then a friend and colleague persuaded me to go for the NCCAM grant around 2000.   By then, I already had a competent staff, manufacturing facility, and lab.   Both projects are described in my book, My Life & Rollercoaster Career:  “Chapter  8.  David vs. Goliath: NCI SBIR Phase II Database Contract, What if…?”   and  “Chapter 12. What is Wrong with Drugs and Herbal Supplements?”

Now, I am a one-man company again after I came back from retirement to rejoin the psychedelic movement 5 or 6 years ago, because I can see it is heading the same direction towards the vicious cycle (VC) of synthetic drug therapy and herbal supplements.  This VC, per my definition, is going to perpetually ruin our environment and most Americans’ continuing poor health.  It only financially benefits Big Pharma and its interdependent associates like insurance companies, promotors, advertisers, and crooked politicians, but at the expense of most Americans. My plan is to initially start with our totally natural psychedelic mycelia, to bypass or remove the toxic elements of their synthetic counterparts!  This should be our first effort.  One small step at a time.

It shows a practical example of a natural chemical drug, levodopa, can have impurities without unknown brand-new toxic and never-tested synthetic chemicals present.    It is reprinted from My Life & Rollercoaster Career.  “Chapter 4.  Adulthood in America,” below:

“LEVODOPA EXTRACTION AS EXAMPLE OF THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

It was around mid-1970 when I was working for Dr. Madis Laboratories that has since changed hands a few times.  The owner, Dr. Madis, had hired a new plant manager Mr. Guy Riccardi. Guy brought with him a process for making levodopa (l-DOPA) from velvet beans. For your information, levodopa was a new drug for treating Parkinson’s Disease (PD) at that time. But it had some serious toxic side-effects that were allegedly caused by impurities present in the synthetic chemical which could not be removed during its purification process. According to Guy, Dr. George C. Cotzias, a pioneer in using levodopa in treating PD, had done some preliminary study with natural levodopa from velvet beans and found it to have much fewer side-effects than its synthetic counterpart; and he was interested in a source of the natural levodopa.

Guy’s process made use of the reverse osmosis (RO) process to purify this product. The RO process involves the use of a membrane (like a microscopic sieve) of appropriate size through which water and small molecules like levodopa can pass but not large chemicals like protein and carbohydrates, among others. The water solution/filtrate that contains the levodopa can then be easily purified. At that time, RO machines were very expensive. So Dr. Madis asked me to look into an alternative method of isolating levodopa from the beans. I started with literature search and found a couple of patents but none of them worked. One of the better ones actually ended up making a soup and it was very complicated to separate levodopa from it. So, I designed a few experiments for my chemist to try. At the time the only chemist I had was Bob Noll. He was basically an analytical chemist, and a good one. After a few failures playing with messy ‘soups’ an idea came to me. Why try to separate levodopa from the protein and starch soup? Why not fix or trap the big molecules within the beans before even starting to extract the beans with water so that we would have only water and smaller chemicals without proteins or carbohydrates to deal with. So we didn’t mill the beans. Instead, we simply cracked the beans into pieces or a very coarse powder and thoroughly wetted and mixed the beans with acetic acid to denature the proteins. That mixture was simply a damp mass not a mash or suspension. Then, when we poured water into the vessel with the beans and warmed them up to fix the proteins in the beans, there was no more mess. What we got was a regular extract and not a bean soup. After we filtered and concentrated the extract for crystallization, we tested the crystals of levodopa. What we found was a very pleasant surprise. The purity was already over 90%. The time we spent on this project was maybe only three weeks. Since the beans are known to be toxic only because they contain the levodopa, the chances that the purified natural levodopa containing a highly toxic chemical other than levodopa would be slim as opposed to a synthetic levodopa produced from unnatural chemicals reacting with one another to produce totally unknown and potentially highly toxic intermediate compounds that may have never existed in nature before. During my 55 plus years of working with chemicals, the conventional wisdom among chemists is that the synthetic version and the natural version of a chemical are the same as long as they are both pure. But how pure? 98.0% or 99.9%? How about the remaining 2.0% or 0.1% containing a tiny amount of some highly toxic unknown chemical? The USP/NF specifies the purity of levodopa to be containing 98.0% to 102.0%, depending on the analytical methods used. It doesn’t specify 100.00% or even 99.99% (absolute purity or close to it) because the analytical techniques available are not that precise. So, a ‘pure’ chemical always has impurities in it. The impurities in natural chemicals are not brand new to our environment. But those present in synthetic chemicals are totally unknown to us and have absolutely no history of interacting with us. I think you should be aware of these facts.

I suggested to Dr. Madis that we patent this process. He agreed and I wrote up the process. My memory is that at that time you couldn’t put just any person’s name on the patent. This person had to actually have taken part in coming up with the idea or had worked on developing it, not just being the owner of a company and you are then automatically entitled to put your name on the patent application. Otherwise, the patent would be disallowed if others contested it. So, since Dr. Madis’ name was not on the application, he simply shelved it. And I have never heard anything more about this project since. However, Guy knew about this process and the simple rationale behind it.

After I was later fired from Dr. Madis Labs for another matter, I heard rumors that Merck had started a levodopa production facility in Brazil to make the product from velvet beans. I was aware that Guy had been in touch with Merck. But I don’t know if the reason of his contact with Merck was for levodopa production or for seeking employment. I always wonder if the rumors were true, and if so, whether Merck used Riccardi’s RO process or my protein-fixing process. If it is true, I bet it is the latter – a much superior and simpler process.

I have described traditional Chinese herbal medicine more than once or twice before as rich sources of natural cosmetic ingredients in this memoir, in my Newsletter (LCHN) to be republished simultaneously with my memoir, in my Encyclopedia, and elsewhere. In the Encyclopedia, I actually added a whole section on Chinese cosmetic ingredients in its 2^nd and 3^rd editions published in 1996 and 2010 respectively. For people who never had experience or knowledge of Chinese herbs, many of them are turned off by the use of esoteric language in describing their properties. But if you know Chinese herbs and also have been trained in the sciences dealing with them, you can correlate archaic or esoteric language with modern scientific (including pharmacologic) terms. I did just that and figured out some secrets hidden in that ‘mumbo jumbo.’

Hence, during my last consulting period between 1970’s and 2000’s, I consulted for many cosmetic and drug companies, including Avon, Estee Lauder, Roche, and L’Oreal, among others. The most memorable experience was with Avon. Its new facial treatment cream contained retinoids (related to Vitamin A). It was one of its best sellers; but it had a problem. It caused rashes and needed that fixed naturally and fast. There was no time to perform basic R&D. There were some big names in the industry at the time, including a well-known dermatologist Dr. Kligman and a Ph.D. in Pharmacognosy known around the world (see Chapter 8: David versus Goliath: NCI SBIR Phase II Database Contract – What if…?). So Avon started interviewing consultants. As far as I was told, it only interviewed three altogether – the above two, plus me.

In my presentation, I told them I could first give them five herbal extracts for them to test against rashes, and one of them should work. So, I was given a 3-year contract. Probably the conservative thinking of Avon’s technical staff that that research would require years and not months. However, in only weeks, I gave them the five extracts. One worked. It was a magnolia flower bud extract. Avon wanted it right away. Since I was not an approved vender at the time, we had to go through one of Avon’s approved vendors so that there would not be any delay in supplying them with the extract. That seemed to have solved everyone’s problem. Avon was happy; so were its approved vendor and I.

They all use the VC to describe drug addiction as due to  our weak will power.   The drugs are addictive and once we take them, we start being addicted to them.    There is a whole industry built on addiction.  I have no idea whether it has so far made a dent in relieving the addiction they describe. 

The VC I  describe is not restricted to addictive drugs.  It applies to all synthetic drugs used in therapy because, being made from toxic petroleum, they are brand-new to our planet, hence inherently toxic.   Natural herbs and traditional medicines have no manmade chemicals in them.  Whatever chemicals therein have been with us since we appeared on this planet eons ago.  And our traditional medicines have been developed by our ancestors through trial and error over generations based on keen observation,  experience, and accumulated wisdom. 

Hence, modern synthetic drug therapy (with its scientific deficiencies) and traditional medicines developed by our ancestors (without a dose of ‘forced science’) can be used together with complementary benefits.  

The United States of America may be still the richest country in the world, and we believe we are still the world’s most advanced in health sciences, yet our health in recent decades has not ranked even among the world’s healthiest 30 or 40 nations.  Don’t you think with our wealth and advanced sciences, we should at least rank 2^nd or 3^rd or even 5^th among the world’s healthiest nations?  But 40^th or further down?!

Maybe over the past several decades, we have become less educated and less civilized than most other modern and democratic countries like Scandinavian, European countries, and Canada.  Being ‘educated and civilized’(?), our legislators have voted themselves all the benefits, (incl. free healthcare), but excluding us citizens they are supposed to serve.  They also voted themselves lifelong service. When did they do all these?  Also, when did they allow the gazillionaires who own our drug therapy’s VC (a perpetual fountain of gold for them) and for their interdependent industries (like insurers, promotors & advertisers) to openly push their drugs  on us on our living-room TV and exploit our already  poor middle class, not to mention our dirt poor?  What happened to our country?  It is obviously not democratic anymore.

As patriotic Americans, we should each try our best to do our relevant part.  That’s why for years I have been advocating improving our health using practical ‘scientific’ modern synthetic drug therapy (with deficiencies), combining it with our tried-and-true traditional medicines, to make us well and whole again.  Either one won’t do it because synthetic drugs are always toxic while traditional medicines are not specific chemical-based to be deemed ‘scientific’ by our drug scientists in charge.  In fact, some of my drug-trained colleagues used to call them non-scientific or even voodoo.  None seemed to be around anymore because I don’t hear anyone denigrating traditional medicines or herbs in recent years.   Younger than me, the handful of them must have died (or no longer lucid) some years ago, succumbing to the prolonged debilitating effects of synthetic drugs and additives that they had been taking.

Synthetic drugs.

These chemicals used in therapy are never totally pure, like 100.000% or more.  In most pharmacopoeias, like the USP/NF, ChP, and BP, they all allow a small % of impurities (like 0.5% to 2.0%) to be present.  I don’t think all these  impurities are tested.  Thus, if 1% LSD (100-200x stronger than psilocybin) is  present in a dose of psilocybin, the psilocybin will have double its psychedelic effects.  Does anyone know if all the research done over the past few decades on psilocybin had only used pure psilocybin (98% or 99% pure )?   Likewise, if a non-psychedelic drug is used together with another much stronger-acting chemical (say, 200x stronger) present as an impurity, we would have some serious toxicity issues.  Isn’t this all routine now?   And we seldom know what we are using scientifically?

            The reason I have brought this up is because synthetic chemicals are brand-new to our planet.  They are made from toxic petroleum or other fossil fuels.   Hence, they are inherently toxic, because no humans have interacted with them for more than 150 years, mostly for a couple of decades tops, via our ‘scientific testing’ in vitro, in vivo, etc. until clinical trials in humans, followed by approval for patient use.  Only then, the non-scientific testing begins, which our ancestors used eons ago when developing our traditional medicines.  It is a trial-and-error process typical of traditional medicines.  ,

Traditional medicines or natural herbs.

These multichemical natural herbs carry no brand-new and inherently toxic synthetic chemicals.  Whatever chemicals therein have been with us since time immemorial.  No need to subject any of them, as we do with brand-new synthetic chemicals, to ‘scientific testing’ (in vitro, in vitro, in animals & humans through successful clinical trials) and then go through the same process of trial and error used by our ancient ancestors.  Unlike synthetic drugs, natural medicines are already tried and true after thousands of years of use, no pregnant women taking them would give birth to deformed babies as with Thalidomide in less than a decade during the 1950s and 1960s.

Do you know of any drug that has no toxic side effects?  I don’t.   They appear over time surely and regularly, some right away while many others after decades, as with synthetic additives in foods and drinks.  There are huge highly profitable businesses built around the VC of synthetic drug therapy (drug companies, insurers, auxiliary healthcare companies, advertising companies, crooked politicians, etc.)

The impurities present in natural chemicals have been there together with the herbs since ancient times when we started using them for our health.  Unless we used some toxic new chemicals  or solvents to extract  them or produce them by biotechnology involving the same, giving us similarly unknown brand-new chemicals, traditional natural chemicals don’t have toxic impurities.

In my next post, I’ll discuss more about the damages synthetic chemicals (drugs & additives) have been doing to our health and environment.

During my teenage years in high school at the English Section of St. Louis, I taught myself Spanish with the British “Teach Yourself…” series at around 13 or 14 years old.  That was after overhearing my family talking about sending me to Havana, Cuba, to learn my grandfather’s business and take it over.  But the pending Cuban revolution killed that idea.  Regardless, I taught myself to read and write Spanish in less than a year.  The only person with whom I could say a few words was Father Ma (Machuy from Mexico) whenever he visited our school.  He later became the principal of the Salesian School in Shau Kee Wan on the East side of Hong Kong island, an hour’s streetcar ride from St. Louis School.  Then, I flunked out of St. Louis (failing over 3 subjects) during my third year because of family financial problems.  Since I was good in the major subjects, I skipped a year and passed the entrance exams to a newly accredited school.  Which means its senior students can take the unified School Certificate Exams with supervisors from the Education Department present.  With that certificate one was officially a high school graduate and could get a government job or attend college.  I  barely passed the minimum of 5 required subjects, but with 4 credits (honors).  Father Ma hired me to teach seniors chemistry at Salesian right away.  Besides Spanish, I taught myself French and German as well, but only to read.  Because in those days, PhDs required 2 foreign languages.  That saved me from attending language classes for at least a semester each.  The following episode is the last one which wraps up this chapter, including the areas appropriate to this post.      

TO GRADUATE SCHOOL IN AMERICA!

For my graduate studies, I only applied to two universities, the University of Washington and the University of Michigan. Michigan offered me a teaching assistantship sight unseen, probably based on my English test (at that time administered by the University of Michigan). I got a 97% in the test that included writing an essay on some topic assigned on the spot, conversation (for maybe 3-5 minutes), and also some reading comprehension tests, but I am not sure.

I was plain lucky to be able to go to college and then graduate school. The University of Hong Kong was very expensive and there was no chance I would go there. Since my chances of going to Cuba to learn my grandfather’s business were also nil because the Cuban revolution was brewing, the only choice for my higher education was to go to Taiwan. That was at the insistence of my father, even though we really had no steady income from Cuba anymore. That was when Uncle Siu stepped in to help out. He supported my five college years in Taiwan by sending me 10 USD per month which was sufficient for all college fees (education, housing, and books, among others) with extra for weekend entertainments (e.g., coffee house, movies, concerts, eating out, & snacking). [see Chapter 3: Uncle Siu & Aunt Pauline …]…

…Looking back at my childhood-to-college years in Asia, I feel very lucky under those circumstances. I somehow ended up finishing high school and college and was going to start a new life in America. First, being admitted to the graduate school of the University of Michigan was not easy with academic records of barely a B-average like mine. And then, being offered a teaching assistantship sight unseen was to me like a miracle. I didn’t realize how lucky I was at the time, but I do now. Without the financial support of Uncle Siu and Auntie Pauline, I would not have gone to college, period, let alone finished it with a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy. And without the teaching assistantship from Michigan, I would not have become a pharmacognosist, specializing in herbal medicine, writing to you today, trying to tell you and the world about what is wrong with our drugs and ‘herbal’ supplements. They can be made much better if we start doing something about them, especially by resetting our priorities towards the less fortunate by forgoing at least part of the excessive profits.

In first or second grade, I was detained after school because I had written my name of 3 characters too large, covering the whole exercise book.  My family had to send my sister, Mai, to fetch me. 

The other time was when I was a couple of years older at the Chinese section of St. Louis School.  I was expelled because I did not pay attention in class and disturbed other children.  That was what the prefect priest told my mother when she begged him to take me back.  After that was not successful, my parents put me in Chung Cheng Middle School (named after Chiang Kai Shek’s other name).  That school was halfway up the hill, which allowed me and three of my classmates to play ‘battle’ with rocks during lunch hour.  We had fun until one of the kids got hit on the head.  I don’t remember what happened next and how we explained his bloody head to our teachers.  But we never did this again. 

Regardless, the above was just background of my preteen and early-teen years. 

The life-changing episodes are the following from Chapter 1. Growing up in Asia (pp. 27-44) of my newest book, My Life & Rollercoaster Career (my Memoir + Newsletter) published in 2018 by CreateSpace/Amazon.

The following are the life-changing episodes reprinted:

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE STARTED MY SERIOUS QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE

During the year when I was attending the Chung Cheng Middle School with fun-filled lunch breaks while they lasted, my parents hired an English tutor for me. She was a chubby Chinese girl in another Terrace (To Li Terrace) perpendicular to ours who was maybe three years older than me and a student at a well-known English girl’s school run by Maryknoll nuns. She was a good teacher. Finally, I seemed to have found my calling, and I picked up English fast and was at ease with it. For some reason, I felt like a new door to the world had been opened to me. And I actually enjoyed reading English books on my own. It seemed I had struggled all my life (all thirteen years of it) with the Chinese language and finally it was great to find something that came easily for me and learning was fun…

MY HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE YEARS

After my year at Chung Cheng Middle School, I passed the entrance exam to the English section of St. Louis School (about a mile from home) and now I was on my way to be a good, and eager student! Life was much simpler in the 1950’s, no computer databases to cross check ‘trouble-makers’ like me. The English section might have no idea that I was expelled only a year earlier from the Chinese section. Yet I recognized the same prefect who refused to take me back when my mother pleaded.

I loved my new English school at St. Louis where all the instructions were in English, except Chinese subjects. My favorite subjects were the sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, math, and geography) and of course, English too. Right from the beginning, I found myself in the A class, out of classes A, B, C and D, with A being the best academically, each up to 45 students. I excelled in all science subjects and math. Then, after one summer break during which I read 30-35 abridged versions of English classics by authors like Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, H.G. Wells, and many more, I went back to school and found myself excelling in English as well. However, reading so many books, sometimes late into the night on dim light, ruined my eyesight…    Soon, I had to start wearing glasses.

Although that summer of intensive reading had ruined my eyesight, it made me one of the best in English ‘overnight’ in my grade from Form 1 to Form 2 (comparable to Grade 8 to Grade 9). During my last year (Form 3) at St. Louis, I was selected along with a classmate called Tong Yuen-Yao to represent our school at the Hong Kong Catholic Schools/Students’ Press Club, or something like that, as I can’t remember the exact name; nor can I remember what magazine or newspaper they published. Tong was consistently the Number 1 student at our class, while I was somewhere between 2 and 10 or a little further down there, because some boring subjects dragged my overall grades down. Last time I heard, probably twenty-five years ago, he was married to a Quebecoise and was a professor in Quebec somewhere…