Chapter 4

INTENSE DRUGS AND PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT

    To begin to truly understand that doctors and psychiatrists were reason behind why Aum went the way it did, then the following data is vitally important. The following data must be considered when trying to understand the scope and quantities of mind altering drugs used, and the extent of treatment that Aum leaders went to so as to control people's minds.

    1. Chizuo Matsumoto, the leader of Aum, was reported to have planned to get 30,000 members by using drugs.41

    2. A woman who tried to leave was locked in a small room, Dr. Katahira injected her and she remained there drugged for 24 hours, listening to sutras and speeches of Chizuo Matsumoto.42

    3. The police prosecuted 12 Aum members for manufacturing psychiatric drugs and sleeping drugs and stimulants.43

    4. Matsumoto, Asahara, was reported to have decided the posts of members, and the opinions of members after, and only when, they took LSD and experienced the drug. Matsumoto was prosecuted for the crimes of manufacturing stimulants, methsamphetamines, LSD and mescalline.44

    5. Aum manufactured 1,700 gm. of thiopental, I IS gm. of LSD, 3,000 gm. of Mescaline and 227 gm. of stimulants. Aum used thiopental as a spy-check method of maintaining security of members, and they gave LSD to between 1,600 - 1,700 members, and gave mescaline to 1,000 members.45

    6. Dr. Hayashi used anesthetics (thiopental) on members who were suspected of being spies, and he gave electric shock to remove their memories. Fifty members received this drug from morning until night and they studied Aum materials during this same time. This was termed "sleep-study" by Aum.46

    7. Six members were imprisoned in a room. Police had found that these members had been given the powerful anesthetic drugs pentvelviteal and zoviclon - a powerful sedative and tranquilizer which has severe withdrawal symptoms. Pentvelviteal is a psychiatric drug used for sleeping. Dr. Hirata and Dr. Katahira (psychiatrist) were overseeing the imprisonment. There were other Aum members in varying states of having been drugged.47

    The police arrested Dr. Satoro Ozawa for kidnapping and giving drugs to an ex-self defense official.48

    9. Seven people were reported to have died in one and a half years at the Aum hospital from September 1993 to the beginning of 1995.49

    10. Dr. Takahashia was wanted by police because a 76 year old woman was found in a coma and she had been brought there from her home, and Aum members had removed between 4 to 5 million yen from her bank account. She had been heavily drugged.

    11. There are numerous reports of LSD being found 50, escapees being found with stimulants in their bloods, psychiatric drugs being manufactured such as thiopental 52, mescaline being used 53, and stimulants being used in Aum ceremonies 54. The first reports were that at first Aum bought psychiatric drugs in the market place, but that eventually they had to manufacture their own drugs due to the quantities they needed. 55 Other psychiatric drugs reported as being used were triazoram (halcion), fullnitrorazepum 56, amoviteals 7 and amphetamines 58. 12. Aum spent 163 million yen in making LSD, psychiatric drugs and sleeping drugs.59

    While the above reports may be true, it is the individual who suffered the crimes. Reports from individuals, often in magazines, were much the same as those reported by the police which appeared in the major daily papers. While it must be acknowledged that these reports are from exmembers of an organization, and in general ex-members are not reliable witnesses, the reports are consistent with police reports. One ex-member described his initiation ceremony as: "Before I received this initiation, I changed into no-sleeves and put on a diaper. So I wondered what was going to happen. Asahara sat down on the sofa on the third floor at Satian No. 2. Ikuo Hayashi (doctor) was standing at the side of Asahara. He had a wine glass with a yellow liquid. I drank the liquid in one gulp. Then I went down to the second floor and went into a room like a cell. They called this room 'shield', or 'lithliat'." The ex-member heard screams and crying and writhing from the other rooms. He also stated, "I lost consciousness after 4 or 5 hours. I was bound with my hands behind my back and I was transmitted to. When I came to my senses there was a chamber pot near my head." 60

    While the following does have its limits as an authoritative text, as Dr. Ikuo Hayashi is the doctor named as perpetrating the crime, the book "Aum and I"61 written by Hayashi still contains very similar data to other reports. Hayashi has been jailed for his crimes and has sworn that he is no longer a follower of Chizuo Matsumoto, Asahara. In his book Hayashi lent support for what was happening at Aum. Aum leadership could only be described as a large social psychiatric experiment running out of control. As a single example, Hayashi cites moue (ex-member and in jail) as attesting in court that Asahara (Chizoe Matsumoto) asked another staff member, Ishikawa, how could they make the staff commit terror without the staff knowing about it. (Ishikawa is now no longer in prison, but now studying medicine.)

    Further in the book Hayashi explains how they used the psychiatric drug isomitral. An Aum member would be given the drug, he would be relaxed and then slip into a drugged hypnotic state. The member would then willingly give answers to questions that an interrogator would ask for. Hayashi notes that his first experience of this is when he had suggested to one member in such a state that the member should give up smoking. The member, under the influence of the drug, agreed to do so. At this point Hayashi realized that this was a form of hypnotherapy. It was not long before Aum members were being given this hypnotic drug and then while under its influence were being questioned by Chizuo Matsumoto as well as him giving them suggestions. Any suggestions would later, when the person returned to his drugged state, act upon the member as a post hypnotic command from which the member may never be able to totally free himself. If Hayashi's account is true, then at this stage Asahara could theoretically develop a team of soldiers that would do anything that was demanded of them.

    It is also plausible that even the Aum doctors and executives themselves could have been victims of this treatment. Dr. Ikuo Hayashi was described as, "an emotionless person, very much like a robot."6z And for the ex-member, Yasuda, who strangled his co-conspirator Uchida after their failed rescue attempt, he explained that it was

    impossible for him, Yasuda, to refuse the order of Asahara to murder. And thus he murdered. Inoue, the Aum so called Intelligence Minister said, "I cannot stop regretting that I was unable to refuse Asahara's orders. "63 Or as another ex-member said, "I wanted to flee but concluded that I could not survive on my own. "6a The stories of those who could not break the bonds with the group have similarities.

    The Japan Times, 28th March 19966x, wrote that the believers were given medical drugs to induce meditative states, and they were placed in several large containers which were normally used in refrigeration. These were near the Satian No. 10 building. They were divided into small windowless sections of about one tatami mat in size. There was a small opening for placing in food and withdrawing waste. There was no lighting.

    Some members did not survive the initiation. Yoshiro moue, stated, "...and how many followers were killed in hallucinogenic drug ritual initiations?"

    As a senior executive of Aum admitted during a trial, "I want Aum believers to know this was the result of taking drugs. "66 Council also said, "Aum's crime was an unusual crime that took advantage of a belief which was controlled by drugs."

    But it was not simply a matter of putting the experience of Aum down to drugs. This would be too simple. There was a manual used for what was going on, and the psychiatric technology being used was over thirty years old and more developed that just giving people drugs.

    Dr. Hayashi explained in his book, Aum and I, that after he took over Dr. Nakagawa's work, he would select those members that could pass a polygraph test about whether the member would throw his life away for Asahara, and whether he would even kill his parents for Asahara. Per Hayashi, Nakagawa had explained that he had been using the tests for some years. Hayashi also explained that Dr. Nakagawa worked very closely with Dr. S.

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