Ibiza: The Brief Adventure of Amnesia
In the mid-1970s, Escohotado lived through one of the episodes that has most fed his legend: the opening of the Amnesia nightclub in Ibiza. The venue grew out of a farmhouse built in the late eighteenth century, where the Planells family had worked the land and built a mill for five generations. When the family moved to town in 1970, the property passed to a widow of aristocratic origin and, almost without intending to, became a meeting point for the island’s hippie community: live music, all-night dancing, grass, and LSD.
In May 1976, Escohotado rented the farmhouse with Manuel Sáenz de Heredia for 20,000 pesetas a month (about 120 euros in today’s money) to set up a club. His first idea was to call it “Taller del olvido” (Workshop of Forgetting), in the conviction that people go out at night to leave their problems behind and immerse themselves in a world different from their routine. He soon realized that a single word summed up that intention better: “Amnesia.” He sold the business barely a year later; over time it would become one of the most famous nightclubs on the planet. For some, that handover symbolically marked the end of Spanish flower power, a claim that says more about the mythology built around Escohotado than about the facts themselves.
More Essay Than Pure Philosophy
The Ibiza period did not slow his intellectual output; if anything, it redirected it. In 1975 he had published De physis a polis. La evolución del pensamiento griego desde Tales a Sócrates (From Physis to Polis: The Evolution of Greek Thought from Thales to Socrates; Anagrama), still cited in university departments as an introduction to the pre-Socratics. That text was in fact an appendix to a larger ontology project that, after successive rewrites, would see the light as Realidad y substancia (Reality and Substance; Taurus, 1985). From then on he moved away from academic philosophy toward social phenomena: Historias de familia (Family Stories; Anagrama, 1978), an essay on the sociology of gender that he would expand years later in Rameras y esposas (Whores and Wives; 1993).
Back to Madrid and the University
When he felt Ibiza had nothing more to offer him, he went back to Madrid. A vacant position at the UNED—assistant professor of Ethics and Sociology—brought him back to teaching. There he would teach Law, Philosophy, Sociology, and, finally, Philosophy and Methodology of Science, alongside his friend Carlos Moya.
The reunion with the institution was not a friendly one. In 1983, when thousands of assistant professors were promoted to tenured positions, Escohotado was among the few who were failed: a panel of full professors gave him seven zeros despite his record and publications. He appealed the grade, asking that the scores be justified, and after a year of waiting without a salary, he received a terse “5” with no explanation at all. Read today, that episode illustrates the tensions between a heterodox intellectual and the corporate dynamics of the Spanish university of the time. It was then that he decided to move to the Sociology department.
Four Times in Prison
A defender of what he called “pharmacological enlightenment,” Escohotado kept up an openly conflictive relationship with anti-drug legislation throughout the 1980s, which cost him four stays in jail. The case most relevant to his work was the sentence handed down in 1988 by the Provincial Court of Palma: two years and one day for an alleged drug trafficking offense. Escohotado himself recounted that those who offered to buy and sell were police officers or people close to them, and that the judge reduced the sentence after considering the offense “an impossible attempt.” Even so, he preferred to serve it without delay and entered the Cuenca prison.
The fact should be placed in context with some critical distance: the account of the events itself comes mostly from the convicted man, and many of the details in circulation come from his version. What can be verified is that this confinement became, paradoxically, the place where his most ambitious work took shape.
The Making of His Masterwork
His best-known book, a history of drugs published in three volumes by Alianza starting in 1989, began to be written in prison itself: according to the author, he wrote four-fifths of the whole there. The part devoted to describing the substances appeared under different titles over the years—El libro de los venenos (The Book of Poisons; 1990), Para una fenomenología de las drogas (Toward a Phenomenology of Drugs; 1992), and Aprendiendo de las drogas (Learning from Drugs; 1995)—until it was folded into the single-volume edition, Historia general de las drogas (General History of Drugs; Espasa-Calpe, 1998). An abridged version also circulates, Historia elemental de las drogas (Elementary History of Drugs; Anagrama), along with other titles such as Las drogas: de ayer a mañana (Drugs: From Yesterday to Tomorrow) and La cuestión del cáñamo (The Hemp Question).
The project had earlier roots. Between 1983 and 1984, while working as a freelance translator for the United Nations, he gained access to the holdings of the former Narcotics Division in Vienna. That direct access to the sources of the international prohibitionist regime proved decisive in a field then dominated, in his words, by sensationalism and misinformation. Escohotado treated drugs as a legitimate object of knowledge, starting from the idea that the real danger lies in ignorance.
Albert Hofmann, a Foundational Friendship
Those trips also gave rise to his bond with Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who first synthesized LSD. Taking advantage of a stopover in Switzerland, Escohotado decided to write to him in order to meet him, and a close relationship formed between the two. He came to speak of Hofmann almost as a father figure—he had lost his own parents early—and visited the scientist’s home in Rittimatte, near the French-Swiss border, on several occasions. Hofmann, for his part, traveled to Spain several times to give lectures.
A Critical Reading
The Historia general de las drogas remains a reference for anyone who wants to approach the history and uses of psychoactive drugs: broad, well documented, and a pleasure to read. It should, however, be read with an awareness of its context and its author. Escohotado was a passionate polemicist, and his work combines erudition with a militant position in favor of liberalization; acknowledging that bias does not detract from the work, but it helps separate historical fact from ideological argument.
A good share of the biographical episodes—especially the legal ones and those concerning Ibiza—come from his own account and from sources close to him, so they deserve the usual cross-checking that any autobiography does. From the standpoint of responsible education, recalling the framework does not mean repeating the old discourse of fear, but maintaining an informed view: neither demonization nor apologia. Escohotado’s figure matters above all as a gateway to a broader conversation about why and how we decide to prohibit, and what is lost when knowledge is held hostage by taboo.
(To be continued in a future installment.)
