Early Life and Formative Experiences
Richard Elliot Doblin was born on 30 November 1953 in Skokie, Illinois, the oldest of four children in a Jewish family. Growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust and the Cold War, Doblin developed an early preoccupation with suffering and the possibility of its alleviation. He has described psychedelics as offering a path toward what he calls "a spiritualized humanity."
Doblin first enrolled at New College of Florida in Sarasota in 1971 but dropped out after a single semester. During the following years, he explored various paths, including construction work and psychedelic self-experimentation. He eventually returned to New College and completed a bachelor's degree in psychology. A formative experience came during a month-long workshop with Stanislav Grof at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. There, a fellow participant named Debby Harlow told him about a substance then known as "Adam" that was being used in therapeutic settings. That substance was MDMA, and it would become Doblin's life's work.
