| Title | Apple Pioneer Bill Atkinson Was a Secret Evangelist of the ‘God Molecule’ | |
| Date | Thursday October 23, @03:54AM | |
| Author | hubie | |
| Topic | ||
| from the people-said-he-was-visionary dept. | ||
Bill Atkinson was a computing pioneer who, in the 1980s, effectively made Apple computers usable for everyday people by transforming code into windows, menus, and graphics.
But few people know that later in life he was a secret advocate of what's widely considered the world's most potent psychedelic: 5-MeO-DMT.
The hallucinogen, also called "the God molecule," is a compound found in the venomous secretions of the Sonoran Desert toad named Incilius alvarius (it's commonly called Bufo alvarius) and is known to bring about ego death, a total dissolution of the senses, and a euphoric feeling of existential connectedness, all in a roughly 20-minute trip. Atkinson, who died from pancreatic cancer on June 5 at the age of 74, was a member of a close-knit, private online community of 5-MeO-DMT enthusiasts called OneLight, where he went by the alias "Grace Within."
Several of Atkinson's friends and fellow psychonauts tell WIRED their "beloved" Atkinson played a key role in helping people access smaller doses of 5-MeO-DMT, which can be made synthetically, as he believed it would maximize the benefits of the potentially dangerous drug while minimizing harm. "The same creative mind who affected personal computers so profoundly continued to influence human evolution through his efforts to make the miracle of 'bufo' safer and more manageable," says friend Charles Lindsay, an artist who has worked with the SETI Institute, which works to find signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. "He truly pushed boundaries. That requires a willingness to consider what might easily be deemed ridiculous." Or, he adds, "risky."
[...] Wishing to spread the gospel about how to use the drug more responsibly, six sources confirmed to WIRED that Atkinson was behind a pseudonymously published manual that contains step-by-step production photos detailing how to produce lower-dose 5-MeO-DMT vape pens known as "LightWands." The guide was published online, on the psychedelic educational nonprofit Erowid. It was first posted in 2021, before it was updated in the month before Atkinson's death. Atkinson collaborated with the makers of the pens—also members of OneLight—to help refine the manufacturing process and make the vaporization process safer, friends say.
"My deepest gratitude goes first to this amazing molecule and to all those who have given of their heart, mind, and courage to bring it to our world," Atkinson wrote pseudonymously on Erowid, outlining how "many of the most beautiful and healing insights are found at lower levels of Jaguar." (Jaguar is the name given by psychologist and psychedelics pioneer Ralph Metzner to 5-MeO-DMT.)
Atkinson—who was also a keen nature photographer—first smoked 5-MeO-DMT in 2012, according to OneLight member Axle Davids, but his relationship with psychedelics goes back much further. In 1985, Atkinson took LSD. He wrote about that experience in 2020: "For the first time in my life I knew deep down inside that we are not alone." He explained how his LSD trip inspired him to develop HyperCard, a Mac application that wove text, graphics, and sound together in a format that predated the World Wide Web and popularized hyperlinking. "I thought if we could encourage sharing of ideas between different areas of knowledge, perhaps more of the bigger picture would emerge," he wrote.
In his final years, he gave away up to 1,000 LightWand kits containing low- to medium-dose 5-MeO-DMT pens and mentored other creators in the OneLight community, according to Davids. Giving people access to lower doses is important, particularly because some are "hypersensitive" to 5-MeO-DMT, he says: "They can lose consciousness. They can purge and choke on their vomit. They can lose their shit entirely."
[...] Atkinson's use of "the God molecule" appeared to contribute toward a spiritual shift and an interest in the search for extraterrestrial life, says MacNiven. "Bill was a completely non-spiritual guy in the beginning," he says. "Then he became extremely spiritual, talking about past lives and future lives."
According to a "Request for Prayers" Atkinson posted on the OneLight forum in November 2024, revealing his identity to the wider community and disclosing he had terminal cancer, he said he had taken the intense African psychedelic iboga in 2017 and that it helped him accept death. "From my Iboga experience seven years ago, I know for certain that my consciousness will continue after I leave my body behind," Atkinson wrote, signing off the letter with his name instead of his pseudonym. "I have no existential fear of death. Actually more anticipation and curiosity."
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printed from SoylentNews, Apple Pioneer Bill Atkinson Was a Secret Evangelist of the ‘God Molecule’ on 2026-01-25 02:28:39