The story is told of a young chemist who, one evening, accidentally ingested a droplet of an unknown fluid from one of his test tubes, the leftovers of a past experiment.
Within minutes his mind went reeling and he was subjected to not only the wildest hallucinations, but also what he felt were world-altering insights into the nature of the universe.
The next day, after the drug had worn off, he tried to describe his experience to his colleagues and friends, but could not find the words to do it justice. Everyone he spoke to shrugged it off as a particularly vivid dream and went about their daily chores.
Frustrated, the next evening he placed a larger drop on his tongue, intentionally this time, and entered into a mental state beyond his imagining; he seemed to grasp, with no effort on his part, the very nature of existence. He not only saw God, he realized that he was and always had been part of God. He understood holistically and simultaneously every scientific axiom and principle — including ones that had not yet been discovered — as all being aspects of a single unified theorem of the cosmos, a theorem which he could inspect at his leisure, as if he were holding it in his hand.
But the next morning, once again, he could not remember the specifics of his insights, and his attempts to recount his breakthrough fell on deaf ears; his fellow scientists could not make heads nor tails of what he was saying, and his friends remained unmoved at his futile ramblings about God and the universe.
The young chemist was convinced down to the deepest recesses of his soul that he was perceiving a new level of reality, and vowed to record his new awareness and bring it to the world, thereby ushering in a glorious new age for humanity. So on the third night he locked himself in his lab with a large notebook and his favorite pen, and pledged to write down all his insights as they occurred.
He took another drop. His mind expanded. And he started writing.
It was glorious! His visions and realizations were even deeper than those of the previous night, but this time around he was able to describe it all in real time as it was happening. His pen flew across the page, words tumbling from him like a waterfall, delineating in lush detail everything he saw and grasped. He laughed in ecstasy with each new brilliancy, and sobbed in gratitude that he was able to preserve it forever and thereby change mankind for the better.
When he woke up the following morning, he once again had forgotten the details of his experience, but this time it would not be lost. He leapt up and found his notebook on his desk. Heart pounding, so excited that he was short of breath, he opened the cover and began to read.
But the first page was blank.
As was the second.
Frantically, he began flipping through the pages: they were all blank, until he got to the very last page. There, in his own distinctive handwriting, but so small and cramped that he could barely read it, was the only sentence he had written all night:
The stench in here is terrible.
Bollocks.
Bollocks indeed. Been there done that…. Al Gore is not my savior(nor is that nut the planets savior either), and I like Broccoli….. be still my beating heart! Heh.
On a side note… I am kinda’ pisseded with my dealer years (decades ago), I was s’posed to have flashbacks.
Thats why Al Gore is an acid freak! Acid is illegal. Acid is mind destroying. Acid perverts ones perspectives. Acid erases inhibitions. Acid is ugly and evil. Licking acid is like a fire-eater gargling with kerosene.
Well,Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates famously pitched a no hitter after dropping acid…after taking it a couple of times myself,I would describe it as ‘grape jelly for the brain’…you can expect anything you want to after taking it,but personally,I wanted cartoon time…and that’s what I got…the trips were amusing,entertaining,always jaw droppingly graphic color wise,and probably just an outward manifestation of my own subconscious mind somehow…but I never had a bad experience with either ‘purple haze’,or ‘Mickey Mouse blotter’..wouldn’t mind having some more in fact
If you thought that was a tale worth telling, you might want to check out The Beatles’ notebooks instead. Just saying.
a. The Lennon/McCartney songwriting team was brilliant from 1961 to 1966 — after which things started falling apart. So they started taking acid at the exact moment the quality started dropping off.
b. McCartney never said that he composed songs while tripping. So in what way could we attribute his creativity to the drug?
Well, I guess you’d know then.
Wow. Great response. You sound a little emotionally over-invested, Doc.
Of all the inane slang expressions to come out of the great, uneducated morass that is today’s youth culture, this is probably the most unintelligent.
In fact, I think it qualifies as anti-intelligent.
But then, most of the “youth culture” qualifies for that designation.
How about “Like” when it’s used every other word, or “Ya know what I mean”, how about ” Baby Daddy” and “Baby Momma”
Well I don’t know about words of wisdom from acid trips or trippers. I heard two axioms that I always keep in mind:
1. It’s always colder than you think.
2. Home is where you can dump in safety.
Far out, man.
The first time I ever saw Paul Williams, the diminutive pop singer, I was high on acid – it was the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
The first time you ever see Paul Williams should not be on acid.
LMAO!!!
It is well known that Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison/The Doors performed while high on LSD. Great tunes.
“Today young men on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one conciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only dream, and we’re the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather.” Bill Hicks
PERFORMED while high on acid — exactly.
Songwriting while high on acid is an entirely different kettle of fish, however.
And so everybody is the same? Did everyone have the same trip? You might just as well say the opposite is true. Many great songs were written on acid and many bad performances were done. However, it can be a performance enhancer for some people. Absolutely. I have not a doubt in my mind. Anything you can do on water, you can do on acid. Probably just a tad better.
Everyone should remember that a lot of people took stuff called LSD that actually wasn’t. And let’s face it. Some people can’t hold their liquor either.
The Hicks quote was perfect though. He also unfortunately died way too early. I’ve tripped “several” times and used several different types of halucinegenics. The only things I saw that stick with me today were fireflies on a warm May evening at dusk by a pond in the mist. Their lights along with the chirping and croaking of the frogs was intensely beautiful and hypnotic. That and I climbed the cliffs at Palos Verdes after the midnight showing of ‘Wizards’…the waves, the surfers in the morning and of course the hum you hear and feel in your body…again…pretty intense. HOWEVER, trying to teach someone how to play ‘Manic Depression” on guitar when your fingers are 2 inches wide and the frets are 1/8inch wide is problematic. So is “seeing God” –he looked exactly like he did on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel only he was pissed at me– while tripping on mushrooms in stranger’s house on New Years eve.
So all I learned from my experimentation is:
1. Fireflies in the mist looks cool.
2. California surfers are crazy.
3. God looks better on the ceiling than he does when he’s pissed at you…
4. Bagels are good(another adventure).
“It is well known that Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison/The Doors performed while high on LSD. Great tunes”
However well reputed these incidents of drug use by Hendrix and Morrison may have resulted in great tune, the only fact that ties both these guys together, despite their contemporaneous mutual existence and that they were both musicians, is that they were both dead before the age of 30.
Who’d have believed in the 60′s that the libertine values toward drugs and free love prevailing at the time would morph into AIDS and crack cocaine?
Anyone with an ounce of sense, that’s who.
While the specifics of AIDS and crack cocaine weren’t, the general degradation of society that followed WAS predicted by many.
There was no mystery to it; no prescience required.
To be fair, the general degradation of society is at all times predicted by many.
The only creative product I know of was a song written by a guy who was on acid at the time. The title? “Acid Makes My Face Break Out.” Not exactly profound.
“That’s what LSD does to your mind. You think you have insights and wisdom…”
Some people might have thought that, or so they said.
I just did it for kicks. And, it was hella fun too…but, that’s all it was.
Good article.
That’s the kind of honesty I appreciate.
LSD as a recreational drug? Fine. Because that’s basically what it is.
But LSD as God in a sugar cube? Fuggetaboutit.
Set and Setting – a valuable insight still used in drug psychology today.
It was interesting, but I and my friends were always aware that we were seeing/hearing things, we always had a safe place to sit and relax,
“Enter the Dragon” was fun,OTOH I’m glad I put that stuff away long ago
Crick and Watson attribute some of their insights into the structure of DNA to their frequent use of small doses of LSD.
Steve Jobs attributes some of his computer/ software insights to LSD as did a number of researchers at Stanford Research Institute.
The promiscuous large scale use of LSD was a mistake promoted by clowns like Leary and his gang.
Unfortunately their irresponsibility meant the end of all legitimate LSD research in the US.
From the point of view of harm reduction LSD is a safe drug in the right environment and does not cause organ damage.
It was successfully used to treat what we know call PTSD as well as Depression, Alcoholism, Cancer pain, Migraine– etc—but all that research and treatment became illegal.
Owsley Stanley was, in fact, a major methedrine/ speed dealer before he started selling LSD–speed more dangerous drug.
Intoxication is a fools quest—but humans have always followed it–and always will
Better that they use non addictive non organ damaging substances, like LSD, rather than heroin, tobacco, booze etc.
Steve Jobs never really had many “computer/ software insights” — Wozniak was the tech guy, while Jobs was the salesman and the businessman. After they turned a profit, they hired software engineers to do the actual coding, and designers to do the actual designing. Saying stuff like “Make it look sleek” does not require LSD enlightenment. Besides, by his own description Jobs only took LSD around 1974, long before he even founded Apple.
As for Francis Crick — from this site:
Doesn’t sound like much of an acid-head to me. Nor does Watson.
I am not opposed to research using LSD (or any chemical) to address problems like depression, pain etc. If it works to alleviate those problems for some people, properly dosed, why not? I’m not arguing against it as a possible medicine, I’m just pointing out that the mythology surrounding LSD as a pathway to creativity and spiritual enlightenment is overblown.
Crick and Watson’s insights into the structure of DNA were due to playing with Tinkertoys and the hard work of Rosalind Franklin, the person who probably should have received the Nobel – except she died before it was given. From Wikipedia:
“Franklin’s role in the discovery of the structure of DNA remains controversial. She recorded a photograph of a DNA molecule that another researcher at King’s College, Maurice Wilkins, showed to James Watson and Francis Crick without her knowledge or permission. This image helped Watson and Crick construct a model of DNA, which enabled them to fully understand the molecule’s structure. Wilkins, Crick and Watson were awarded a Nobel Prize jointly, some years later, after Franklin’s death.”
So went female scientists in the 1950s.
Both Steve Jobs and Wozniak as well as the design team for Apple used LSD extensively.
Willis Harman an engineering professor at Stanford and SRI used LSD with leading US executives to promote creativity in strategic planning–the program went on for years and was very productive.
Bill Wilson–the guy who started AA used LSD extensively and promoted it as a cure for alcoholism.
The Macy Foundation Conferences, which invented the term Cybernetics, were soaked in LSD– used by leading professors from MIT, Stanford Cal Tech etc.
LSD was used widely and effectively to treat Holocaust survivors in Israel and Europe for decades from the early 50s.
It is still used for interrogation and conversion of terrorists, –discretely.
LSD is a very useful drug which is perfectly safe in the right set and setting.
Unfortunately Soviet agents and fellow travelers, like Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead, RD Laing and the group at the Mental Research Institute–in Palo Alto, California–promoted LSD as a means of trying to create a Soviet/ Socialist revolution in the West through the ” New Left”
That is why the US cracked down so hard on LSD–encouraged by James Jesus Angleton-head the CIA at the time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Jesus_Angleton
Because the casual use of LSD by CIA and DIA employees was undermining their effectiveness.
The USSR was a major promoter of casual LSD use in the US and Europe to undermine the West during the Cold War–according to Angleton and others.
We threw the baby out with the bath water.
Zombie said, speaking of Francis Crick:
> Doesn’t sound like much of an acid-head to me.
I can’t say. But in a small social gathering when Crick said he’d taken acid a few times, his wife said:
“Oh Francis—you’re a regular demon for the stuff”
“…clowns like Leary and his gang.”
My Dad grew up with Leary in Springfield, MA. From everything he’d ever said about him, he was a loon when he was younger too.
On my third acid trip, circa 1969, I exteriorized and walked around something which I did not know existed at that time. I walked around the edge of a black hole. Two months later a news magazine had a artists rendition of what they thought a black hole looked like. It was quite like what I walked around. Maybe you did not experience much because there was not much to work with? Not judging, just saying.
Zombie, I am afraid that both you and Ed Driscoll are just dead wrong about this—both acid and Owsley.
You are essentially engaging in the same behavior as lefty sites that bring up the most moronic staetments by anybody on the right to make it appear that we are all bitter clingers, racists, etc.
I think that LSD had a lasting effect on the culture that was quite positive, not unlike an evolutionary hormone. For obvious reasons, those that have found it useful to their creative processes stay silent, while various morons speak up. PJM readers who would like a balanced view might want to consult “Storming Heaven:
LSD and the American Dream” by Jay Stevens, or “LSD: my Problem Child” by Albert Hoffman.
I am a great admirer of both your work and of Ed’s, but Augustus Owsley Stanley III was both more brilliant and made a greater contribution to civilization by at least an order of magnitude than either of you. And I think very highly of both of you.
You are out of your mind kind sir.
Trangbang,
You are not the first person to suggest that I’m out of my mind, but its good of you to suggest that I’m kind.
Civilization is both advanced and retarded by people who are out of their minds.
As to religion? I’m surprised no one has brought up the Native American Church.
Great!
No discussion of LSD would be complete without this clip from The Producers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkYBJId7WZs
I remember in health class at school we were taught about the dangers of drugs, I even remember there was a poem about heroins’s seduction, you only have to ‘try it once’, and you will be hooked. I remember the instructor ‘touching’ on LSD but true LSD was no longer ‘legal’ nor available. Pot, cocaine and a few other recreational drugs were out and about then… I remember the stress that was put on not ‘using’ drugs. That science does not know the long term effects of LSD (or any of these drugs)later on down the road genetically speaking, with respect to the people who did these drugs and when they ‘decide to have children’. What can happen to those not yet born… I remember my classmates and I were envisioning people have kids with no arms, 2 heads, one leg, mentally retarded, psychotic, it’s funny when I think about what ‘we’ thought would happen. Maybe ‘some’ of these things ‘did’ happen?
I had a long conversation not long ago about how screwed up people today are, I mean really problematic…mentally, depression, spiritually, morally, drugs, ethics, criminally, destructive, authority, respect – the list goes on and on … I look back to the counter culture of the 60′s… by the looks of it, an out of control generation. In my conversation we wondered if a lot of what we see in people today (screwed up people) stems from this generation? And don’t forget these are the same people who are now teaching our kids…another generation… Just my perception. There’s a lot more to it, I know it becomes a very complex issue … but, overall drugs are never the answer..
Don’t misconstrue, there are a lot of really good, productive, and socially responsible people from this generation who have created another generation who is the same…
I, like Zombie, am always tripping out on the mind-blowing intoxicant of Life.
Sometimes I stare for hours at blank walls, attempt to move my pinkie finger in as small increments as possible, or try forcing myself to associate colors with letters of the alphabet so strongly that I see rainbows when I read.
I attribute this not to mental illness or special creativity, but instead to a childhood spent without a TV or a computer. I have never felt the need for drugs, nor do I expect I ever will.
It’s so sad that everyone in my generation (in my late teens currently) seems to look so much to external forces to entertain themselves. Good on Zombie for calling these idiots on their close-mindedness and normalcy.
Several months ago, I heard on Pacifica Radio a woman from a “wisdom circle” proclaiming with great excitement that the stars were coming into alignment to usher in a fabulous new era of expanded wisdom in San Francisco. In fact, the propitious celestial conditions were the same as those under which LSD was discovered. (Never mind that LSD was not discovered in San Francisco. The enlightenment which followed flowed from San Francisco)
Wonder what enlightening new discovery it was this time? When will its tremendous power to increase the wisdom flowing from the Bay Area be revealed?
One of my husband’s high school acquaintances decided, while high on LSD, to sit on the freeway and watch the lights coming toward him. Hope the enlightenment was worth it.
“When will its tremendous power to increase the wisdom flowing from the Bay Area be revealed?”
On the day Nancy Pelosi ISN’T re-elected!
Zombie, thank you for that.
I did LSD for a few years. Probably 30-40 times, total, between my graduation year of 1989 and, say, 1995. It is something I would not recommend to anyone, and you are entirely correct: one cannot point to any significant invention or idea or discovery that was ever, in all of history, made while under the influence of hallucinogens.
Aside, sort of: I used to, in my just-post-High Shcool days, write and perform raps for parties at my trippin’ buddy’s house. As a white guy, I never did the Vanilla Ice thing, insted choosing to rap about what I knew and how I lived. Thus, all my rhymes were about marijuana, LSD, and alcohol. I had about six complete, song-length rhymes written, of which I can remember maybe two. All were about how harmless and good these chemicals were ——
—–but all were written after being completely pot- and LSD- free for months.
Last time I did it was Y2k, New Years’ Eve. Never again.
—-
LSD is nothing but an intentional (most times, Russian Roulette-style) short-term chemically-induced psychosis. Who the F would want to get psychotic, LITERALLY, for 8-12 hours??! I did. Not smart at all.
I’ve never been able to comprehend why anyone, at any time, would want to alter their mind, whether by LSD or by C2H5OH.
But then, I suppose if it’s not much good in the first place, there’s not much to lose in altering it.
Kary Mullis attributed his invention of polymerase chain reaction(PCR), in my opinion the second most important discovery in molecular biology during the 20th century(behind only the structure of DNA, listed above), to LSD.
“What if I had not taken LSD ever; would I have still invented PCR?” He replied, “I don’t know. I doubt it. I seriously doubt it.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis#Use_of_LSD
So I don’t know if I can agree with your premise here, because I use PCR daily, and my job would not be possible without it.
From the very link that you provided:
So, he took LSD in the late ’60s. Then 14 years went by during which he had several other careers. Then, 14 years sober from LSD, he invented PCR.
Which is exactly my point — he didn’t do any of his creative work while on LSD.
In fact, bragging later in life that LSD helped him invent PCR 14 years after taking it just seems like someone trying to seem cool. If LSD realy was his inspiration, then why did he drop out of chemistry for a long time and then wait 14 years to manifest his inspiration?
So basically, what you’re claiming is that unless an entire piece of work is done under the influence of a drug, that drug cannot be an influential part of the process? LSD is potently psychoactive, I have little doubt that for many people, even a singe usage is enough to permanently alter neural biochemistry and thought processing.
To be honest, it’s easier for me to take his assertion at face value, over your psychic intuition that he was just “trying to be cool”. Besides which, Taq polymerase wasn’t discovered until sometime in the 70′s iirc, so it’s not like the necessary tools would even have been available during the 60′s.
Is it really so hard to put down the shovel and admit that what you were mistaken?
The principles of PCR were proposed by another molecular biologist whose name I forget in the early ’60s, long before Kary Mullis tuned in, turned on, and dropped out. Mullis had been accused of ripping him off, but it didn’t really matter since Mullis was the one who reduced the technique to practice. And you don’t need a thermostable polymerase to do PCR, as long as you add fresh enzyme after each denaturation step, which is how PCR was initially done, before Taq was widely available.
Since I’m pretty lazy about doing research for forum comments, I’m going to quote wiki here(oh no).
“A concept similar to that of PCR had been described before Mullis’ work. Nobel Prize laureate H. Gobind Khorana and Kjell Kleppe, a Norwegian scientist, authored a paper seventeen years earlier describing a process they termed “repair replication” in the Journal of Molecular Biology. Using repair replication, Kleppe duplicated and then quadrupled a small synthetic molecule with the help of two primers and DNA-polymerase. The method developed by Mullis, however, incorporated the use of thermal cycling, which allowed the rapid and exponential amplification of large quantities of any desired DNA sequence from an extremely complex template.
The suggestion that Mullis was solely responsible for the idea of using Taq polymerase in the PCR process has been contested by his co-workers at the time, who were embittered by his abrupt departure from Cetus.[11] However, other scientists have written that “the full potential [of PCR] was not realized” until Mullis’ work in 1983,[17] and that Mullis’ colleagues failed to see the potential of the technique when he presented it to them.[13] As a result, some controversy surrounds the balance of credit that should be given to Mullis versus the team at Cetus.[2]”
Your suggestion is akin to claiming that Leonardo da Vinci invented the helicopter because he made sketches of them hundreds of years ago. Is it really so hard to just give the man some credit, and take him at his word in regards to his inspiration? He came up with the key aspect that made the process as useful as it is, which is why he received the Nobel for it.
When I read “And after five decades, LSD has basically nothing to show for itself. The world is not a better place as a result of LSD.” despite the fact that it has received attribution for one of the critical scientific insights of the 20th century, which has opened the doors for all kinds of medical treatments, I think to myself, “A rare miss for Zombie”. The next article may as well be about how the drug caffeine has not made the world a better place, despite its contributions to many different areas of human endeavor.
That being said, I agree in general with Zombie that LSD is not a magical superdrug that will solve the world’s evils and allow humanity to transcend, I just don’t like broad statements which are factually inaccurate.
Your emphasis upon actually being on LSD at the time of inspiration is not logically valid. Therapy, for example, has aided me enormously in both my personal and professional life. Did I get a raise while in therapy? Did I propose to my wife while in therapy? Did I do my job productively while in therapy? Well, no–of course not. Another example would be dreams, which have inspired not only artists and spiritual practitioners of various sorts, but also mathematicians, scientists, engineers… Did they actually do anything while dreaming? No–they were just sleeping. But would you then deny that the discrete experience of dreaming had no part in the larger creative process? I think the problem with your argument is that you view the creative process as not a process at all, but as a singular, temporally discrete act unconnected so someone’s life as a whole.
In other words, for your argument to be valid, you need to be able to demonstrate two things:
1. A single experience cannot profoundly affect the way in which someone thinks, desires, and acts at a later date–even decades later.
2. An individual is not capable of accurately ascribing influence to such a singular experience; that is, you are more capable of deciding whether or not a given experience decisively shaped a person’s later creative act than the person him/herself is.
Owsley Stanley.
May the Lord have mercy on his miserable soul.
As someone who often played stoned (but never tripping) in my college band back in the day, I found that the secret to a good performance was having a stoned audience as well. Otherwise, not so groovy.
BTW, those who want a really good account of a trip (first and last) should read the section called “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” from “Younger Than That Now — A Shared Passage From the Sixties,” beginning on page 170. The author also gives a hilarious account of Thanksgiving dinner at her deep-South home in 1970 — made particularly memorable by her northern hippie radical boyfriend’s decision to “drop” acid beforehand.
Never tried it. Never wanted to. People still did LSD in the 90′s? Who knew?
Fascinating video included with the article. I wonder if the lady was damaged by her being a test subject.
Zombie, you and Richard Fernandez are two of the most interesting writers on the net.
Since when did conservative mean authoritarian? Statist?
Owsley was a true libertarian when it really meant something.
What are you, “Zombie,” besides an angry contrarian? Do you have a libertarian bone in your safely-anonymous body?
Where exactly in my essay do I express an authoritarian or statist sentiment?
Are you misreading my essay as saying that LSD should be illegal? Or that users of it should be punished?
Point to the passage where I say that, or anything implying that.
All I said was that acid is not the miracle-drug it was (and is) promoted as being. I didn’t say anything about my preference as to its legality.
I also think that smoking oregano is a waste of time and that snorting Drano is dangerous. But that doesn’t mean I think either oregano o Drano should be outlawed.
Since when is it authoritarian or contrarian to express an opinion about a chemical?
And besides, I never claimed to be a libertarian either, so I don’t have to live up to some strict libertarian litmus test.
Nice spankin’ Zombie.
Wonder if meeting God in REALITY was as good as it was on LSD???
For most, it will be much worse, and the experience won’t just go away when some drug wears off.
The author makes it impossible to rebut his claims. He’s unaware of any great X created on acid. Well, how can anyone prove that? Research the entire universe of subjectively important stuff and conduct a posthumous drug test? The fact that he ascribes hour long guitar solos as mediocre makes me question his taste.
I used LSD a couple times. The insights I had honestly led me to completely altering my life choices. Maybe that would have happened anyway. But I remember just thinking stuff I never thought before. Had I not, I would not have accomplished much.
Is it some panacea? No. It isn’t something that is a functional drug. I can definitely see creativity being enhanced. But, from a personal utilitarian perspective, I’d certainly place it above organized religion or the government, say. Neither one of those institutions could get me to have any useful insight.
On the other hand, sometimes LSD was just fun to go hiking on.
The bottom line — presuming all works of everything to be made not on LSD in the last 35 years or whatever is arbitrary. I can shift that presumption and say, I am not aware of anything not done on LSD that was great. You say X. I say, X is not great. Next.
Great article, zombie. This part needs to be bolded:
I did acid probably about 40-50 times when I was younger, in my twenties and thirties. Most of the experiences were quite pleasant and I don’t regret it a bit. But you make an excellent point about there being no lasting, life-changing results. I hadn’t really thought about it before now, but you’re right.
I did it in the 70s and 80s and I suspect that I didn’t have the same high and pure doses that were apparently common in the 60s. I don’t recall having vivid hallucinations. There was one time when I was sitting in my car and seeing prisms in the raindrops on the windshield. But that’s not really an hallucination; it’s a physical phenomenon that I should be able to see any time that the lighting is just right and if I’m paying close attention.
There was another time when I drove home after a concert. I usually managed to avoid having to operate heavy machinery while under the influence and was a bit apprehensive about it. I waited around after the show as long as I could to take the edge off. I had to drive about 35 miles on I-95 in the wee hours of the morning. Every time I looked down at the speedometer the needle was glued on 55, and every time I looked out the windshield I was dead center in the lane. It was like I was riding on rails. It was sort of like Dock Ellis’ no-hitter.
Here’s the box score, in case anyone is interested. He walked eight and hit a batter. But hey, a no-hitter is a no-hitter.
I’ve done lots of LSD. I agree with most of what Zombie is writing on a societal level, particularly about the arts. I know about this, because I am a musician who can play fine concerts, but couldn’t play a lick on acid. But aside from this, there are plenty of very wise people who have used it, and for whom the LSD experiences were actually profound and life-changing for the better. The pioneering books about the structure of the brain and its physiologic processes by Dr. Stanislav Grof, an early LSD experimenter, come to mind as good describers of deep psychic experiences. Back in the 1960′s when my mother was dying, she (who was afraid of an aspirin) took part in a research protocol using LSD for terminal cancer patients. I can report that her experience changed the last year or so of her life from a time of desperate depression to a more loving and gentle letting go of life.
I have never used LSD to have “a good time.” I have only used it to “work,” meaning going in to the deepest recesses of my mind, identity, physical structure, ego defenses, etc. that I can. I don’t believe that I have fooled myself into believing that I have done something worthwhile for myself. I know that I have. I am able to describe my experiences afterwards. And I don’t know why other people cited here can’t.
And last, in terms of LSD users being spacy or out of touch with reality, I did not vote for Obama, believe that Israel is not only crucial strategically but also is a moral light, tend to agree with SultanKnish, VDH, David Solway and Mark Steyn. War is war, and if we need to fight we should win, even when it means being ruthless (which I suspect we will need to do sooner or later with iran).
LSD or not, the issue is to find one’s way to look reality in the face. Reality. Not ideology. Not wishful thinking. LSD was great for me to learn to be able do that.
Those who furnish illegal drugs need be concerned, not with global warming; but with eternal warming. Substance abuse is a pebble in a pond- its ripples spread wider and wider across the lives of uncountable persons. The usual response of those foolish enough to be sympathetic to this criminal behavior is denial. Take a look at Timothy Learys’ son for an exemplar of an acidhead.
My organic chemistry teacher at the U of D confessed in class one day in the ’70s that he had produced under contract the LSD that was used by the CIA and military for research. His reason for confessing then was that someone had finally published the results of those studies, which included some deaths due to the psychoses induced in unwitting subjects (they were not volunteers and yes people jumped out of windows).
A common experience from that time and earlier and incomprehensible to me was being unwittingly dosed with LSD or something far worse by hippies or the like because they knew what was best for you – those fuckers now are the tyrants in the government who are trying to rule you today, because they failed to grow up and still maintain the immature belief that they know what is best for everyone else.
I don’t know what was more amusing, Zombie’s article or the comments. When I was in high school in the early to mid-70s pot was ubiquitous and LSD was usually readily available. Pot was the “daily drug” for kids too young to drink. LSD was that occasional “trip to the circus” drug you did once in a while on a weekend. I agree with Zombie that those “acid insights” are only relevant while one is actually high on acid. I remember one instance of looking at my hand and swearing I could see all the vasculature working in real time. Years later, while taking human anatomy I realized that what I had imagined I had seen while high on acid as a teenager was actually just about dead-nuts accurate. Maybe it does provide insight, but I suspect it is dose-duration limited.
I would be scared to death to take acid today. Hell, I quit smoking pot altogether over 30 years ago when I realized that I didn’t really like the buzz. LSD was a blast as a teenager. I remember all the colors, patterns and trails but what mostly sticks out in my memory was the giggling fun it was. Mostly Zombie is right, LSD never offered much to mankind except a rare opportunity of giddy fun for a lucky few who happened to be born at the right time.
I took Owsley Purple Flats in August 1967 in New York state with other novices. As the drug came on we encountered a bus load of retarded kids. We began laughing uncontrollably. Their teacher retorted “You’re the ones to be
laughed at not them” . How right she was. A year later I was in Viet Nam and spent ten more years on the wrong end of addiction and chaos. One of my co-
Merry Pranksters died of a heroin overdose three years later and another spent
25 years a drug addict and committed suicide, a wreck of humanity. “Let me take
you down/cause I’m going there…Strawberry Fields forever..and all that crap.
Owsley Stanley is just another dead end kid from the sixties.
PTSD my friend. People will do anything for relief. Including heroin. Now pharma heroin is a pretty benign substance when taken under a doctors supervision. But that is illegal. And supplied through commercial channels it is relatively cheap. And not allowed.
Many of the ills you describe are caused by prohibition not the drugs. And if you really want to do something about drugs why not look into the root cause of much drug use. PTSD. You can start with child abuse: beatings and sexual molestation.
You might want to look up the work of Dr. John Marks in England:
The Drug Laws: A Case Of Collective Psychosis by John Marks
http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/polin/polin082.pdf
LSD is not only bad because it’s worthless, as the article mainly emphasizes. It’s also bad because it can cause bad trips. I took LSD in college a good 37 years ago and had a freakout. It was an experience of indescribable suffering, by far the worst in my life, and they had to take me to an emergency ward. After that I had to deal with PTSD for about a year. I never again touched any mind-altering substance, nothing beyond booze. Do not go near LSD and similar drugs, unless you want to risk experiencing torture.
I have no experience with intoxicating substances, legal or illegal, aside from one weekend where I got high on marijuana, but I have known several people who did use drugs very heavily. I remember one such acquaintance telling me that acid (LSD) was the one drug that he stayed away from (aside from heroin) because he said acid worked like a power amplifier: if you were a little bit happy, it boosted the power enormously and made you euphoric. Conversely, if you were a little bit unhappy, it would make you profoundly depressed, even suicidal. That observation always stuck with me and made it surprisingly easy to resist the temptation to use intoxicants.
Alcohol is a really evil drug and can cause some very bad trips. It is the only drug qua drug that is statistically associated with violence.
We should ban it.
That’s one of the sillier pro-drug statements in this mess of comments.
“We should ban it”
“Like” Prohibit?
I don’t think an inability to explain something equates to the experience being gibberish. For example, a chemist or mathematician may stumble if expected to place some of their ideas into plain english, and if they are struck by the futility of doing so while they are doing it then maybe it would look like some of those video clips. Different modalities/languages and all.
That being said, I am not trying to say the ramblings of acid users are worth etching in stone either.
LSD use, like the imbibing good scotch or Bible study, works
best when blessed by conscious moderation and introspection.
For all the younger Conservatives out there, a history lesson:
Tommy Hall (leader/songwriter of the first U.S. psychedelic
rock & roll band “The Thirteenth Floor Elevators”) was actually
a young Goldwater Conservative at The University Of Texas.
And let’s not forget that psychedelics were not illegal substances
in the United States in 1964/1965, so no laws were actually broken.
Hippies and their Marxist handlers and enabalers came a little later.
I usually enjoy reading Zombie’s essays because they are intelligent and creative, but unfortunately this essay is an exception to the rule.
Zombie is using a misleading argument by judging the value of LSD (creative, spiritual, etc.) by whether a person on LSD has the same motor skills to be productive as a person who’s not on LSD.
It’s incontrovertible that without LSD and/or other psychedelic drugs, our culture would lack much great literature, music, art, poetry, film, and even science and commerce directly inspired by psychedelic experience.
Zombie’s personal disdain doesn’t diminish in the least the value of cultural treasures contributed by William Blake, Lewis Carrol, the English Romanticists, Aldous Huxley, Richard Brautigan, Philip K. Dick, Surrealism, the Beatles post-1966, the Doors, DNA, Quantum Theory, etc., etc.
Likewise, many cultural contributions were inspired by dreams, and it would be foolish to argue that dreams have no creative, spiritual, or cultural value merely because a person has to wake up first before building on their inspiration.
LSD is similar to many other pharmaceuticals that have the potential to be used to enhance a person’s quality of life, or to be misused and diminish a person’s quality of life. The result is much more a function of the individual than the drug.
William Blake, Lewis Carroll, and the English Romanticists took LSD? Where exactly did they procure it — a time machine?
Neither the Beatles nor the Doors ever said they composed songs while on LSD. And the Beatles never performed while high either. And the Doors live performances (as well as the live performances of the Greatful Dead, etc.) were apparently just as good (or bad, depending on the viewer) when they were sober as when they were not.
“DNA” and “Quantum Theory” were not discovered as a result of LSD, despite all the wishful thinking in the world.
I’m not arguing against dreams or other pharmaceuticals. I’m not even arguing “against” LSD either — only pointing out that the claims made for its effectiveness as an intellectual booster are vastly overstated.
Zomb, you missed my point. To be clear, I’m also not defending LSD, which is just a synthetic form of the toxic ergotomine fungus growing naturally on wheat that frequently ignited villages into anti-witchcraft insanity in Europe during the Middle Ages. Folktales aside, if a kettle contains rocks and water, the gift of fire isn’t going to make soup.
Why is your judgment being decided solely on the basis of whether it’s possible to have motor skill control to perform work simultaneously while in a different state of mind? A famous example disproving that hypothesis was Andrew Wiles’ solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem in a dream. Obviously, Wiles didn’t have motor skill abilities to work and transfer the epiphany into written equations until after the epiphany was over and he was no longer in a dream state. Leonardo DaVinci was also often inspired by dreams.
The “psychedelic” experience (LSD being only the most infamous member of a larger set of natural and synthetic chemicals producing altered mental states) is so pervasive in the foundations of both ancient and modern culture, that it’s easy to miss its influence if you don’t recognize its signature. BTW, the intellect isn’t necessarily the faculty most strongly affected by a “schizomimetic” experience.
I can’t *prove* that “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band” was directly inspired by psychedelic experiences that triggered a tsumani wave of “altered consciousness” resulting in a paradigm-shift to the landscape of mainstream cultural awareness.
However, if somebody with nothing better to do were to trace the media “Richter readings” from 1967 – 1969 and forward to 2011, I believe a reasonable case could be made for a pattern of strong aftershocks radiating outward from that cultural earthquake.
First of all I bet that basketball story is an urban legend hence why you cannot the remember the name.A cocaine high(so I am told:)) only last 20 maybe 30 minutes so by the time he snorted it and warmed up it would be over. Kind of like the rest of this article. I am neither pro or con LSD but can anyone really ever explain any type of transcendental experience? And no LSD never did a thing for me but I would not mind trying some now or some mushrooms.
LSD has profoundly influenced our culture. A huge amount of the rubbish we think and do and believe has come from acid experiences and perceptions. It has completely, radically, changed “society”. LSD does open doors. Not doors that should really be opened because we cannot truly handle that in an honest, truthful and realistic manner. One is opening perception into heaven and to hell and the honesty required to deal with that is more or less beyond human capability.
In fact the closer we get to getting it all “sussed” probably the greater danger we are in.
We need to examine what we know, first, and draw the obvious conclusions that we avoid.
“LSD does open doors. Not doors that should really be opened because we cannot truly handle that in an honest, truthful and realistic manner. One is opening perception into heaven and to hell and the honesty required to deal with that is more or less beyond human capability.”
So what “truths” do we live with? The truth of the Bible, the Constitution, the market, history…what? I am curious about what you are trying to say here.
The truth of the Bible
There are some very crazy ravers in that book.
Dwight, many things that we live with every day and take for granted but that are fairly mind blowing.
Such as: If the universe is infinite, and I am a part of that universe, then am I not also physically infinite?
Or. Have you ever tried defining time? Is it simply the sequence of events to which we have applied a measurement? Those events, as they occur, occur now. Events only happen in the present, not in the past or future. Does time really exist, as we understand it?
Most significantly to me is a question that does not seem to get an answer: Can order occur spontaneously in randomness? One can say it is all random and what appears to be order is the occasional bunching up of randomness that happens. And so what we think of as order is actually randomness.
But there does seem to be something happening. And, as far as I have thought, for anything to happen at all, for there to be any structure or force (difference, potential) there has to be order. From where did it come?
The natural is for things to dissipate, not come together.
OK, I follow what you are saying, but don’t see how this fits in with the warnings about LSD perceptions, which you said lead us to “truths” which should NOT be faced, because we are too weak to face them. Did you mean the kinds of things you are talking about here, which you have obviously thought about, or some other truths?
I might agree that we have to live our lives as if they did have some personal meaning, even if said meaning is not perceivable when one gazes the infinite universe, or the infinity of time. One has to step back from that yawning abyss; most of us fall in love, raise families, work, try to achieve something, whether or not we can see it making a difference in the big picture. Religion give meaning and enemies give meaning. For many here, their meaning seems to come from stopping Obama and the progressives, or carrying a gun, or in my case, Spring planting. Mine seems more hooked into the infinite, but, different stokes for different canoes.
I mean one needs to get to grips with the basics of what one takes for granted, what is truly believed, to honestly accept reality to the best of one’s ability, before going joy riding in a realm that is way beyond competence to deal with.
Can one ever be competent to deal with it?
I don’t think so but at least one can have a better understanding of limitations and so hopefully not go too far.
Back in 1965, before the LSD scares, in fact before many people knew about LSD, a brilliant friend who lived in Israel’s Negev Desert told me that there were about 40 different psychotropic plants growing in that otherwise almost green-less ecosystem. I have since then suspected that Moses’ Burning Bush which was not consumed by fire was plausibly a poetic way of suggesting that Moses ingested one of these psychedelic plants, and hence the Bible.
Well, Butpygmie, I certainly blew my self over the edge, what these days would be called reiko energy and all that, and, indeed, it was not until I accepted Jesus as my Saviour that I found peace and stability.
There are more to things than meets the eye that has been trained not to see them. One does not have to be preoccupied with it all but if one is looking for logical answers much of what we take for granted has big rational holes in it. Unfortunately a lot of searching for reality has also been turned into cheap junk worthy of the most superficial understanding, as well.
“LSD has profoundly influenced our culture. A huge amount of the rubbish we think and do and believe has come from acid experiences and perceptions. It has completely, radically, changed “society”.”
Then the sh_t should be outlawed. Ever read a newspaper or watch the news?
Maybe Black Friday is just a bad LSD trip!?
LSD has therefore made a planet of morons into a morose mass of meeses!
Enforcement doesn’t really work and is not really appropriate except in extremes as an emergency measure.
The control has to come from within a person, and it would seem a big problem in the world is that we are drifting ever further from that.
I very much agree with the libertarian ethos of individual freedom and individual responsibility.
The alternative is a society tending towards a lot of mindless thugs or idiots only controlled by external laws.
LSD + The Worst Generation = Barry Obama
It’s no accident of history that the worst president in US history was the first to be born in the 1960s.
“I’ve tried meditation and prayer. It didn’t cause me enlightenment. However, such religious practices have been responsible for vast confusion and tumult.
It’s worthless.”
Thus goes the reasoning of the atheist. Yet what we choose to believe about the religious dimensions of life cannot change their truth or their falsity. Atheists are taking a limited subset of anecdotes (some of which are apparently fictitious) and, using these as fixed logical propositions, generate a “logical” inference to a definite conclusion about spiritual insight.
This is a result of both shoddy education of logic, and an inappropriate application of logic to prepositions.
The religion of the 60′s misunderstood how our souls and minds are, to an extent, capable only of that which they are normally capable. There is no shortcut to insight or awakening. Suitable gymnastic, study and musical training can lead the prepared mind to be opened in it’s horizons. Indolence, LSD and indulgence in physical pleasures don’t create enlightenment.
I warn the careful observer that it would be unwise to thereby denounce moderate leisure as antithetical to wisdom.
I would hope that bad logic and good prejudices do not sway us beyond their capacity to demonstrate the truth.
Zombie Wrote:
“That’s what LSD does to your mind. You think you have insights and wisdom”
Think carefully on your own argument: The fact that you have been given LSD made you think you have insights and wisdom about LSD, but you do not.
“I usually managed to avoid having to operate heavy machinery while under the influence…”
Same here. When your eyeballs are melting and running down your chin, this is not a good time to be operating a bulldozer.
Ever try electrical repairs at a concert on a live 220 line?
“LSD does open doors.”
Yeah, it does. It opens up the door to being high. Unfortunately there’s nothing else in the room except being high.
If you think you’re going to find God, attain spiritual enlightenment, or transform society by tripping…you be dreaming.
There’s no more “truth” in an acid trip, than there is in a three day drunk.
At least, that’s my judgement.
Never been drunk for three days.
I’m no saint when it comes to recreational drug use when in my youth but it is THEE reason why concerts, festivals became a drag in my twenties.
Between the trustfundarians/rastafarians trying time and time again to pimp their ditch weed, X, acid and other paraphernalia at each show.. I prefer and am thankful for the live shows on DVD or YouTube.
As for the discussion of acid ‘improving one’s creativity or experience’, take a good look at the folks/friends who habitually use such drugs. Their faces look like a well used catcher’s mitt and their eyes have a dead look to ‘em. In my experience at the least..
In the late sixties I took LSD as a recreational drug. One night at home with my then husband and another couple we were quite stoned and I suddenly had a great insight that I wrote down on some paper. The next day I read it and laughed my a## off. To wit:
“Oh narc so blue, Oh how I love you, you are so true, what can I do. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we were picked up by the patrol.”
Wow — you had a “The stench in here is terrible” experience in your own personal life! So you know exactly what I’m talkin’ ’bout here.
I’m quite sure that the vast majority of preserved LSD “insights” are similarly banal. Those few that were memorable or worthwhile were undoubtedly created by people who were talented and/or geniuses to begin with.
Look up creativity and mild schizophrenia.
Ans while you are at it you might want to look up my missing comments as well.
Zombie, I’ve heard that the English poet Coleridge wrote the first 16 lines of his famous poem, Kubla Khan, shortly after they came to him in an opium dream. Wikipedia confirms this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubla_Khan but acknowledges that the truth of this claim cannot be verified. (And yes, I know that Wikipedia has dubious credibility on some things but I’d heard about Coleridge and his opium dream long before Wikipedia first saw the light of day.)
I’m not trying to undermine your thesis about drugs not giving real insight or creativity. In general, I strongly suspect they don’t. But virtually every hard and fast rule has an exception or two.
It’s amazing how many people mistake biology for spirituality.
If you put a chemical in your brain, it can alter your perception of reality and change your life forever. If you put an electrical probe in your brain, it can alter your perception of reality and change your life forever. If you put a 9mm bullet in your brain, it can alter your perception of reality and change your life forever. If you put a railroad spike in your brain, it can alter your perception of reality and change your life forever.
So why is the perception of reality produced by this particular chemical, LSD, assigned such special significance? How do you know you didn’t experience God when the railroad spike went through your head?
How do you know you didn’t experience God when the railroad spike went through your head?
You generally don’t live to tell about it. Thus LSD is safer than a railroad spike through the head. That probably goes for the 9mm too.
Put it another way: If you put crappy gas in your car and your car starts making unusual noises, that doesn’t mean your car has become more than a car and is trying to talk to you. If you put LSD in your brain and your brain starts making unusual noises (or lights, colors, out-of-body experiences, oceanic feelings, visions of the Divine), that doesn’t mean your brain has become more than a brain and is trying to impart cosmic wisdom to you.
As a lifelong Mormon I’ve never tried coffee, cigarettes and beer, much less LSD. However I voted against the cigarette ban when it came up a couple of years ago in my home town. I think it’s been demonstrated over time that while LSD may not live up to its mythology, it’s much less harmful than some other drugs. While having my wisdom teeth out I had a weird experience with the drugs they gave me, where I had three levels of consciousness simultaneously. When I came out of it I was groggy and weary but I still quipped “so THAT’S why people do drugs.”
Never felt the slightest desire to try it again for recreation; 3 generations of perfection with forbidden substances is nothing I feel like messing with. Still, I can understand how people might enjoy that kind of thing. It doesn’t matter to me whether it’s legal, as I won’t be partaking anyway, but I have to wonder if many of the drug laws aren’t really just a part of the infantilization of the citizenry.
Drug bans were promulgated by progressives originally (the real ones, not the petite fascists who call themselves progressives today), but the problem with law is that it’s the least powerful of reasons to avoid something. Religious beliefs and tradition are far more powerful, and have a much greater influence over human minds. If you look at religion, what it really is, in almost every case, is a series of stories that purport to reveal truth. The stories bring the truth to the mind in a way that only stories can. One does not have to believe the Bible is literally true to understand the value of the stories, i.e. not only Christians may use the term ‘Good Samaritan.’
Leftists especially hate tradition, and pretend to eschew it completely, but LSD is just another example of a tradition being created. Not that it’s traditional to take LSD, but that the whole 60s/psychedelic/counter-culture thing has been mythologized and has become the traditional belief system of the left. It’s impervious to reason and evidence because it’s a tradition, which is by far the most powerful motivator around. They may pretend it’s not, they may claim that they arrived at their conclusions by exercise of reason, but they fool only themselves. After all, the belief that they are on the side of science and reason is another traditional belief, impervious to evidence. And that one goes back a couple of centuries. The whole romanticist movement is predicated on a rejection of the older traditions in favor of new ones.
I think the way to go with the drug ban is to void all federal laws. Let the states, counties and municipalities decide for themselves. The war on drugs is over, let federalism prevail. Federalism is one tradition worth reviving.
I’ll drink to that!
Great comment. Many conservatives support hardline anti-drug policies, seemingly unaware that they were originally promulgated by progressives.
“Cursing the dead, who can’t answer them back…”.
Sorry guys, but the stench in here is terrible.
ANTI-EULOGY FOR OWSLEY
This former pot smoking, pill popping, acid dropping hippy has this to say on the occasion of Owsely’s departure from this world: May you suffer miserably for all the lives you ruined and minds you destroyed with your psychedelic snake oil. May your journey through the afterlife be a bad trip through hell.
I have to agree that LSD had a disastrous effect on art — it abetted the contemporary avantgarde project of erasing the distinction between art and life exemplified in Happenings. Everybody went around repeating a statement credited to a Balinese that “we have no art, we just do everything as well as we can.” If a real quote, it must have come from somebody in a small village where they just couldn’t afford the professional temple dancers, shadow puppeteers, wood cavers, etc. so characteristic of Indonesia.
Have to correct the news report that Owsley Stanley believed there would be an ice age “caused by global warming.” He did not believe in global warming: http://www.thebear.org/essays2.html#anchor506010
He was an odd duck, for sure, but he wasn’t crazy in commonplace ways.
If one has a conversion experience and is born again, sometimes old things pass away and all things become new, and sometimes they don’t. If one has the proper motivation and context in which to build the new life, be it the Bible, a community of believers, a literary tradition, the genius and/or work ethic to create things from the experience, then we say that the seed fell upon good ground.
One’s personal context and discipline is everything. Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan character was fictional, but the idea of the chemical being controlled by a certain discipline of being a warrior, or whatever is relevant here. The burst of insight, epiphany, ecstasy is finally only as good as the fruit it bears. The conscious mind eventually has to mediate the ecstatic experiences and make decisions about how to control them, use them, or end them. Some people have the talents to make something valuable from this and some don’t.
And eventually our vices can become habits. It is all about managing the whole package, isn’t it?
Wow, the Ping Pong Tongue is really trippin’ here.
Is that the multi-dimensional Lucy In The Sky model with Diamond sandpaper? Or has the tweed induced reality of the Lounge Lizard Liberal boarded the Crystal Ship, bound for the Elysian Fields of Public Pensionville, which now may be oh so out of reach, much like a 50mcg laugher?
D-White is just one more Pick It on the Collective Fence But of…
Yeah, it’s the effort that counts.
Reds, vitamin C and pension.
As usual, the question is, what do YOU have to contribute apart from critiquing moi? Possibly I am an important enough figure so that your function justifies itself. Who knew?
D-White, are you getting a contact high from being around yourself? Are the flashbacks like kinda sorta like a looped 8-track cassette playing Spiders From Mars backwards?
And wow Mr. Kotter-Fence BUT, where the hell did you get that tie dyed tweed outfit? Oh, you were finger painting your intellectual study. Far out. Love the pink goatee with tire tread sandals. What’s in that pouch dangling from your hipness? Palin toe nail clippings? Precious! Remember, just do a half and see how it comes on.
And the riot squad they’re restless,
They need some place to go
Well, I guess you are getting your history out there, even if only by indirection. Good boy. I like the tire tread sandals, though. Did I ever tell you about schlepping my bike down the Ho Chi Minh trail? Ever read “Dispatches?”
“Well, I guess you are getting your history out there, even if only by indirection.”
Well gosh darn D-White, with that standard in mind, you must be one of the authors of the Federalist Papers.
That would take about 500mcgs, and man, that Ping Pong Tongue would really be pinging. Hey, you may even abandon the D-White Picket It Fence BUT! Think of it D-White, unlike Mr. President, you may even be able to pick a pair of shoes tomorrow morning.
Speaking of shoes, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, there must be a little tread left on those special sandals. Why not organize a March on Madison? The tweedy air about you will get somewhere, maybe a 2 min slot on Hardball. Your expertise is sorely needed there. And the Pink Rainbow Beard, why, young professional Portland based protester girls may even toss you an inviting glance. Think of it. Turn them on to your stash of Palin toe nail clippings too! Wow!!!! Beyond the Valley of the Dolls! Bring a wet suit.
How long did the last toe nail trip last? Alaska…
Give me some milk
Or else go home”.
No tweed to speak of; a lot of denim and chinos (if you want to get your book right.) Your images, sharp as they may be, are off just enough to make them essentially irrelevant. Eight track tapes? Nah. Palin’s nail clippings? Er that would be YOU, but keep typing away.
But here’s some music for you: Procul Harem’s “A Salty Dog” the Moody Blues’ “Timothy Leary’s Dead” Neil Young’s “After the Goldrush,” and Buffalo Springfield’s “Expecting to Fly.” “There I stood on the edge of my feather…” Maybe that’s the picket fence for you, old pal.
.
or was it Procol Harum? That looks more like it.
A New England English Liberal Lounge Lizard teacher tweedless? Madonna is “Like” a virgin too.
Yeah, the tire tread sandals were only a phase for you D-White. And you were one of the few guys to be still be wearing Birkenstocks.
Want me to write some material for you Ping Pong Tongue? No need to tell anyone. You’ll have these “blathering” conservatives dancing on a pinhead. Yours.
You try so hard
But you don’t understand
Birkenstocks? Colder and colder.
Reading this article brought a heightened sense of reality to my consciousness. I started seeing colors more vividly as Zombie’s words entered my mind.
It’s not just LSD. I’ve written down great insights while stoned on pot, only to read utter nonsense the next day. And one time while using nitrous oxide, I had the brilliant observation that the insane people are actually the wise ones, and we keep them in asylums in order to have access to their wisdom!
Yeah, I’m glad I stopped using decades ago. Screwing with your brain chemistry doesn’t enhance anything. But then again I only ever used drugs for recreational purposes, not for enlightenment.
What did the Dead Head say when the acid wore off?
“Who is this band? They really suck.”
This is more a personal account than a joke.
Along these same lines, I have long understood why young folks had to invent new drugs for ‘rave’ music since it is as creative as a metronome.
Along those same lines, I’ve also heard that kids are dropping aspirin into their Cokes at the Sock-Hops! From what that music sounds like, they’d be better off plugging their ears with them.
It’s a lonely world now that everyone has forgotten the Fox-Trot.
Ya got trouble,
Right here in River city!
With a capital “T”
And that rhymes with “P”
And that stands for Pool!
My girlfriend Sue Ann introduced me to the Dead at the Santa Rosa Library in CA. About ’68 IIRC. Working Man’s Dead. I’m still a fan esp the drum solos. Not found much on their albums. You have to look into the live tapes.
YouTube has a nice selection of Dead stuff including some nice live versions of “Uncle John’s Band”.
Me too–the blue bar on my browser is a lot more intense than when I started.
Seriously: there’s a reason that scientists start researching LSD and that is because the symptoms were so similar to schizophrenia, there was hope that it might lead to some insights into the causes of schizophrenia. But it turned out not to be connected.
One of my cousins took LSD a couple of times–and said that he would never touch it again. He said that while on it, he was back on patrol in Vietnam (1st Air Calvary)–but he said it was more intense and more frightening than actually being on patrol. Another person I know took acid, and years later, experienced a flashback in which he had to have someone else shift the gearshift in his Beetle, because his hands had melted into the steering wheel, and he could not remove them.
The collection of great ideas and art created on LSD is probably about as big as the collection of great ideas and art created while collecting welfare checks. There probably are a few examples, but not enough to justify the risks.
“Another person I know took acid, and years later, experienced a flashback in which he had to have someone else shift the gearshift in his Beetle, because his hands had melted into the steering wheel, and he could not remove them.”-Clayton
Yeah, that’s why I don’t drive Volkswagens anymore.
Once your hands sink into the steering wheel, it takes hours to get them back out again.
It’s a real pain in the ass.
The best thing about LSD was it made watching all 3 hours of 2001: A Space Odyssey not only bearable but actually enjoyable.
This article is just warmed over anti-drug screed. A trip down memory lane; it’s like I’m havin’ a déjà vu, man.
I took LSD at least 50 times and maybe 100. I wasn’t counting. It was a lot of fun. The Cadillac of highs. I never really had a bad trip. Those were far more common in anti-drug literature than in my real life experience. I really was a Hippie as were all my friends in my teens – early 20s. My experience includes much first hand exposure to LSD and other drugs common in those days. There were a lot of people having a good time and no horror stories of the type common in anti-drug articles or in the testimonies of the reformed.
I did everything from spend a day at Zion Canyon, to a rock festival, to watching a Moon landing on TV with a room full of tripped out friends, to sex with young hot babes on acid, and a lot of just sitting around with friends listening to music, talking, and passing joints around. Some of the best times of my life. I never once regretted doing it. Too bad you missed out on the fun. I’d try and explain it, but you had to be there to get it.
In what way is it an anti-drug screed?
Never do I say that LSD (or any drug) is bad for people in general, or that you shouldn’t take it.
I was merely pointing out that LSD is not the creative super-drug that it is promoted as being. A fact that you confirmed by recounting your recreational experiences without mentioning any lasting creative insights — other than the obvious “I had fun.”
“In what way is it an anti-drug screed?”
How about we start with the title? Obviously “fair & Balanced”.
You managed to hit two of the usual clichés; demanding proof it enhances creativity or insight, and the dragging out a tape of someone loaded on LSD making as much sense as the average person loaded on LSD usually does.
I do have to admit the other standard screedisms; it led to a life of drugs and deprivation from which I was only saved by, Jesus/AA/yoga/acupuncture/Tantra/whatever, and the usual list of tall tales of people who got hurt doing stupid things on LSD were in the comments.
So, upon further reflection, I’d like to change my comment on the piece to, “Isn’t this special”, and credit much of the screedian flavor to the commenters.
Yeah man, far out!
“…he had to have someone else shift the gearshift in his Beetle, because his hands had melted into the steering wheel, and he could not remove them.”
I hate it when that happens.
(C’mon, you just KNEW someone was going to say that!)
“I looked down at the hotdog, and there was a face on it!”
The horror.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSmu_JDtzVM
Both Steve Jobs and Wozniak as well as the design team for Apple used LSD extensively.
Willis Harman an engineering professor at Stanford and SRI used LSD with leading US executives to promote creativity in strategic planning–the program went on for years and was very productive.
Bill Wilson–the guy who started AA used LSD extensively and promoted it as a cure for alcoholism.
The Macy Foundation Conferences, which invented the term Cybernetics, were soaked in LSD– used by leading professors from MIT, Stanford Cal Tech etc.
LSD was used widely and effectively to treat Holocaust survivors in Israel and Europe for decades from the early 50s.
It is still used for interrogation and conversion of terrorists, –discretely.
LSD is a very useful drug which is perfectly safe in the right set and setting.
Unfortunately Soviet agents and fellow travelers, like Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead, RD Laing and the group at the Mental Research Institute–in Palo Alto, California–promoted LSD as a means of trying to create a Soviet/ Socialist revolution in the West through the ” New Left”
That is why the US cracked down so hard on LSD–encouraged by James Jesus Angleton-head the CIA at the time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Jesus_Angleton
Because the casual use of LSD by CIA and DIA employees was undermining their effectiveness.
The USSR was a major promoter of casual LSD use in the US and Europe to undermine the West during the Cold War–according to Angleton and others.
We threw the baby out with the bath water.
All intoxicants should be kept away from those under 21 yrs old, because their brains are still developing and vulnerable to irrevocable damage–there is clear evidence that nicotine and THC etc permanently alter key brain structures if taken in adolescence.
Once citizens are over 21 then need informed consent–among all the intoxicants out there–LSD and Khat are the most benign, also nicotine from snus or gum is very safe–smoking anything is very damaging.
I knew the scene in Bezerkeley pretty well back in the day and the Communists were always complaining about the drugged out hippies being apolitical.
Lots of personal opinion -without allowing for the 10 or 50 thousand year history that is in the literature.
There are many many diametrically opposed points of view (with full academic reference library) that directly contradicts all of his talking points.
Fair and Balanced?
Or vengeful with agenda?
You can make that call for yourself.
Zombie,
I can see how growing up in Berkeley and being dosed when you were 14 would affect your attitude. Moreover, I am happy that you can spontaneously enter transcendental states without taking acid. For some of us, LSD revealed aspects of reality that were not previously apparent, and these insights informed our creative work for subsequent decades. Like many other things in life, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. If anthing, acid puts you closer to reality—too close for some.
Finally, in honor of Trangbang who suggests above that I’m out of my mind, here is something I wrote elsewhere:
I think Owsley was a genius. I say that because he did two two things that needed doing when others did not see their necessity. His two
signal achievements were supplying fuel for the psychedelic revolution exactly when it was needed, and also providing electronic amplification for the Warlocks, soon to be the Grateful Dead. The latter
achievement was the result of mystical instructions received while tripping, which does not reduce the genius component one bit. It is similar to Blake learning his engraving method from his dead brother
(the engravings looked great), or God telling Isaiah to point out to Ahaz that asking Tiglath-Pileser II for help against Israel and Aram was an extremely unwise idea (cogent politico-military advice regardless of the source). Owsley was more influential than nearly
all scientists by several orders of magnitude. Even if it is generally unrecognized, I think Owsley had a major positive effect on cultural and maybe civilizational history.
“And this one is for our sound man Owsley…we hope he’s listening somewhere out there tonight”
Bob Weir introducing ‘That’s It for the Other One’, Fillmore West 7/2/70
It’s nice to see the occasional poster who actually knows what he’s talking about, literally as well as figuratively.
For years, Stanley was the only person in the world manufacturing LSD on a large scale
Uh. I wouldn’t be so sure about that.
As to insights? Kerry Mullis. And others.
Also look into PTSD and MDMA. Lots of work in that area.
Or alcoholics and LSD.
59. Victor,
Early photos of the Microsoft team are instructive,
http://www.adrianblog.com/miscellaneous/microsoft-team-1978.html
Wow, a knockdown-dragout on PJM starring all the old 60′s burnouts and scoundrels pontificating on the finer points of losing your face. Who knew?
Dragons? I knew immediately that they were lizards, very BIG lizards.
My goodness!
Did they have their Banning Sticks with them?
Will no one rid us of these troublesome hippies? They still think they’re the center of the universe and that the sun shines out their asses.
Or as I said to my bother some 40 years ago when he was stoned out of his mind and revealed to me “You know why it’s dark?” “It’s because there’s no light man”, “there’s no light!”, To which I responded “You’re a F#*cking genius Einstein!”
Fantastic story!
It’s clear that exceptional intelligence runs in your family.
Here’s another, but it won’t do you any good.
In the 80′s my good friend Kai, was a successful up and coming architect. His grandfather, father and uncle were all naval architects of some renown. He decided, after dropping some acid at a GD concert to chuck it all and follow them around the country for the next few years.
He’s now an middle-aged anarchist living a hand to mouth existence in Seattle, the very definition of fail. So much for the enlightenment to be had from LSD. The world could have used another competent architect, another addled brain hippie-wanna-be who’s convinced of his singular worth to the world, not so much.
Totally lame writing on LSD. I took it many times in the late 60′s. Then I quit. Powerful stuff. It did change me. I did get insight. Some good, some not.
This article was just a waste of my time. He forgets to mention the role of the CIA in this.
He forgets to mention the role of the CIA in EVERYTHING.
Have a cookie, but watch out for that strawberry-flavored milk.
I still suspect that Leary was CIA all the way. I have so evidence. except circumstantial – MKUltra was LSD & CIA – Leary was LSD.
In many ways, Leary would have been an ideal CIA operative, but I can assure you that he wasn’t. Think, “loose cannon.” You’ll just have to trust me on this.
And he inspired one of my favorite Moody Blues songs.
There are intelligent discussions of the benefits of psychedelics. Unfortunately, this is not one of them. You might read, for example, Huston Smith’s book Cleansing the Doors of Perception. No one claims that everyone should ingest these substances, and no one claims that anyone should do so all the time. However, that some people have benefited from occasional use is undeniable. The connection to religious experience is well-documented for anyone who cares to do minimal research, and the benefits for psychotherapy (as in Stanislav Grof’s LSD Psychotherapy) are becoming even more apparent do to a revival of research: http://dana.org/news/features/detail.aspx?id=31024
Years ago, I heard Aldous Huxley speak positively on the subject during a presentation of his book, “The Doors of Perception.” Of course, what else would you expect from a dirty, patchouli-smelling hippy like him? I kept interrupting his talk by screaming “TAKE A BATH!” and “TELL IT TO YOUR COMMIE MASTERS!” until I was somewhat forcibly removed from the university lecture-hall by brain-washed security personnel. Soon after, Huxley died, so I figure I won that round, big time.
LOL (touche!)
However, in the end, you’re the zombie and I’m okay. Ha ha. Seriously, dude, I don’t quite understand your … um … erection on this issue. You’re chewing on a dead leg.
I liked LSD, haven’t done any in a long, long time but it never did me any harm (I can play guitar like an S.O.B. and I wrote some good songs, too). Now, I’m a neocon. Oh wait …
Did a lot of acid. A lot.
Never paid any attention to the hippies garbage about how it was ‘transcendental’ or how you’d see god or all that other nonsense.
Always saw it with a film analogy–you normally percieve 35 frames per second–but there’s more to percieve, each frame requires some time to create. Acid ups your frame rate, say to 80 or 100 frames per second–consider that the first effects of LSD revolve around ‘brighter’ colors, ‘sharper’ sounds, and other sensory intensifiers. Unfortunately, it ups it past where you can actually percieve, so, in order to make sense of the additional information, your brain tries to fit it into concepts you can understand–hallucinations. It’s why the best times on the ‘trip’ are right before asnd after ‘peak’, when your perception rate is just at, rather than above, maximum.
Lest this seem foolish, consider that we have much evidence that there is ‘more to be seen’ already–in mundane things like HDTV, as well as in scientific things like the fractal edges of objects or even on microscopic scales.
You can create, on acid, if you spend enough time at that state that it becomes relatively normal, but you always run the risk of finding most of the effort is left outside the standard perceptual range.
Because you don’t bring it back.
Acid is fun, it’s not god.
There are apparently still people who couple “enlightenment” and “the Sixties” together? Wow.
It’s pretty clear that, culturally speaking, a lot of things started crapping out permanently in the Sixties (which lasted into the Seventies, of course).
If one’s idea of enlightenment is Sgt. Pepper’s whatever, though–there’s no accounting for tastes, I guess.
When you take crystal meth you feel like Superman.
When you take heroin all your problems evaporate.
When you smoke pot everything is amusing.
When you take LSD you think you can see reality for the first time.
When you drink alcohol you become freed from personal and social inhibitions.
When you take Ecstasy you love everyone.
And then…
…the drugs wear off. And the world is just the same as it was before. So are you.
The wise ones realize that the drug experience was just an illusion, and seek instead to recreate it in real life, so that all your problems really do evaporate, you really can appreciate reality, you really are empowered, etc.
The foolish ones give up on trying to change real life, and go back to take the drug again, simply to get that illusion once more.
And again. And again.
The end result of repeated use is, depending on the drug:
Ruined health (meth)
Addiction (heroin)
Wasted life (pot)
Ruined relationships (alcohol)
A delusional sense of self-importance (LSD)
Every second you spend on drugs, you could be helping someone in need, or raising a child, or benefitting the world.
But no. You are selfish. You want to feel good. So you withdraw into your drug-induced amusement, and eventually become a burden for the rest of us, or at best become someone who squandered life’s precious opportunities.
Interesting exercise in binary logic.
Also, you forgot cigarettes.
As well as the danger of using the rhetorically meaningless “you” and giving your readers that you’re basically talking to yourself exactly like a burnt-out substance abuser.
Well excuuuuuse me for using logic, binary or otherwise.
You speak as if “binary logic” was something pathetic and embarrassing, used only by those so unsophisticated as to not grasp the clever levels of logic employed by LSD users.
See point 5 above: “A delusional sense of self-importance (LSD)”.
1+1=2 is also an “exercise in binary logic.” Does that make it incorrect, or laughable?
Yes, I “forgot” cigarettes. I also “forgot” ketamine, magic mushrooms, Quaaludes, and countless other drugs as well. For my point to be valid, am I required by your special rules of logic to list every drug in existence, lest, after an exhaustive list 700 paragraphs long, you retort with, “Ah, but you forgot about banana peels, therefore your argument is invalidated.”
If it helps:
When you smoke cigarettes, you feel sophisticated, and relaxed.
The end result of repeated use is:
Lung cancer and emphysema.
Nice to know that the word “you” is rhetorically meaningless. I’ll have to note that down in the margins of my dictionary.
After so many inane comments, someone refreshingly grounded. LSD can inspire, but the real work is on the ground, is gritty, and requires perspiration more than inspiration.
PIMF: …and giving your readers the impression that…
There is a bit of a disconnect in Zombie’s article and nearly all the comments. There is only one documented statement on dosage (that I could find), “In the case of LSD, for example, you only need 150 micrograms to have all these funny experiences”, and so we have to take Crick’s take on a 150mcg dose at face value.
For all the many trips good, bad or whatever related in the comments, no one really has accurately stated what their dosage was (if they even could), or the range of the dosages experienced. LSD will have different effects on different people with the same dosage for sure, but the range of reports on the effects cannot by accounted for solely by difference in personal makeup, setting, etc. That with the fact that “street” LSD varies widely in strength as shown by analysis by those with an interest. (law enforcement, that Bay Area KSAN radio drug report that that was on in the ’70′s, and some state agency reporting), not to mention the lack control on the manufacturing process.
With widely different dose per product available, one never knew what would happen exactly with first time use of an unknown variety. Relatively weak doses produce a sense of giddiness, and there can be a total lack of hallucinations. Relatively strong doses can produce a complete disconnect from one’s surroundings. These are very different experiences, almost to the point of not having much in common.
There is everything in between from light hallucinations to warpage of everything around, but still knowing that you are high on something. People react to these different situations differently, with most handling the light end quite well, but with many becoming disorientated and disconcerted on the heavy end. Setting has more effect with stronger doses. Once the dose is strong enough to put you beyond the “conscious of surroundings” level, the personal experience variations are magnified. Previous experience with LSD of other hallucinogens can play a major role in what the experience will be as dose is increased.
As for Zombie’s experience of being dosed without prior knowledge/consent, this goes a long way towards producing a not very enjoyable experience. With stronger doses, and lack of prior knowledge/consent, this situation will invariably not turn out well.
You want dosage? I’ve seen a friend eat so much (very high quality) acid, over several days, that he started complaining about the quality because it had “stopped working”. Proving, apparently, that LSD is non-toxic and, unlike other “drugs”, you can only get so high. In the end, enough LSD is exactly like no LSD. If you can wrap your head around that, you’ll be getting some where. It may not “be God” but if the Lord made anything better, He isn’t letting on.
I’d rank foie gras and a vintage Sauternes as a close second.
“…(very high quality)…” How did you determine this?
And, will 50mcgs have the same effect as 500mcgs on the same subject?
I enjoyed LSD immensely, especially for dancing. I remember one night at the old Fillmore when the Dead went into China Cat Sunflower while Owsley’s sound system spun the music around in circles in combination with a light show Salvador Dali would have loved. My Army brat buddies and I had driven up from Seaside and were peaking on some very good Strawberry Sunshine. Fun, fun, fun. Acid and pot are to enjoy. I learned early on you had to rewrite anything you wrote while high. Once I got into vipassana meditation I lost interest in psychedelics. And pot is no good for dancing. If you want to develop a balanced mind and more joy, nothing beats meditation practice. Acid is what it is. I don’t knock it.
You comparison of psychedelic drugs to meditation is interesting.
When I was a devout Christian I would meditate and pray often. I had vivid transcendental moments where I felt that I cut through illusions and encountered God. These instances were extraordinarily vivid and intense, but impossible to convey because I had no words to express the sensations I felt.
I had similar experiences when discussing philosophical or theological points with someone else. This experience is something which both Plato and Aquinas describe and analyze.
LSD sounds awfully similar.
I can sympathize with LSD-enthusiasts who think that the drug could change the world for the better; participants in a religious revival feel the same way. It’s like reading a motivation book: you resolve to drop all your bad habits and become a better person.
But Enlightenment does not change one’s habits or personality. I do not think that my religious experiences made me a better person, though I think that my meditations (which sometimes produces religious experiences) helped reduce stress and made me calmer and nicer.
Interestingly, Thomas Aquinas stopped writing after one of his religious experiences. He derided his Summa Theologica (which is the best exposition of Christian theology ever written) as “straw”, and never wrote again. Overwhelming experiences can therefore be both inspirational AND destructive.
butpygmies wrote:
“Back in 1965, before the LSD scares, in fact before many people knew about LSD, a brilliant friend who lived in Israel’s Negev Desert told me that there were about 40 different psychotropic plants growing in that otherwise almost green-less ecosystem. I have since then suspected that Moses’ Burning Bush which was not consumed by fire was plausibly a poetic way of suggesting that Moses ingested one of these psychedelic plants, and hence the Bible.”
I write:
Interesting and possibly plausible.
Timeline: Moses eats psychedelic bush; Starts trippin’; Staff turns into snake; experiences plagues of blood,bugs,beasts,hail,murder of first borns; parts the sea of reeds or red sea (however you want to interpret it); sees burning bush that tells him the ten commandments; forgets to write it down; makes up the ones we all know; pisses god off and made to wander desert for 40 years. Yup, Moses was a tripper.
I’d like to see this headline in the newspapers when this is finally acknowledged by the religious scolars “Bad Bush Ruins Man”
I hope God’s got a sense of humor.
Bill Walton was the coked-up basketball player who made a fool of himself that game.
Thanks — I’ll look into that.
“Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is,
Do you, Mr. Jones?”
Many have opinions on LSD but most have less than no idea what they are talking about. Pure LSD and whatever someone was told they’d taken were very often not the same thing. Apart from “bad acid” and “set and setting”, I’ve never heard of a truly bad trip on pure LSD. At least not any worse than someone put on a carnival ride that they hated.
I think it could be a very useful tool. It’s a shame it can’t be experimented with or used therapeutically.
Good article, as usual. I’m not sure if LSD has never enhanced creativity, though I agree the societal view of their correlation is extremely overblown.
I did a fair amount of acid when I was younger enchanted by the perception of enlightenment, not knowing that’s all it was: perception. I’m just glad I stopped before I went full wingnut.
Aldous Huxley wrote “Doors of Perception” and “Heaven and Hell.” Both long essays were the result of his LSD experiences. They are philosophical classics.
The artwork that came out of the psychedelic era, both visual and musical are memorable and will last many generations. In comparison, the pop art and music today aren’t even mediocre.
Zombie was way too young when he twice experienced LSD and it was immoral and dangerous both times that he was not informed of what he was given at the time. His experiences as a youngster do not inform a more adult mind what the LSD experience can be.
Believe it or not, like it or not, there was often a spiritual depth and content to that era that is totally lacking today. I am 60 so I remember the period well and I know this is an accurate observation.
LSD is not a way of life. It does have dangerous effects as well.
Terminally ill patients have been better able to face their imminent demise as a result of insights gained on LSD. This is also true of victims of emotional trauma.
LSD is not, obviously, for everyone.
Native Americans also have rites and philosophies based on ingestion of psychedlic plants, peyote buttons and psilosybin mushrooms.
Altered states have their place: Infrequent and in the right setting approached with some background on what they are and what can be experienced and gained.
I am really amazed that nobody has recounted making love under the influence.
You guys couldn’t be more wrong (I’d expect nothing less at this site). Here’s a corrective from Bill Hicks.
This reminds me of something a comic artist wrote, actually.
It was in “A Mess of Everything” by Miss Lasko-Gross. Apparently she had used a number of illegal substances, in addition to smoking and drinking, while she was a teenager. When her parents find out, she attempts to justify it by saying she “needs” them to feel better or be more creative, but after thinking about it, she realizes that nothing she does while high holds up when she’s sober.
Funny how two different people can come to the same conclusion decades apart.