What do we now know about LSD (spoiler: it doesn’t destroy your DNA, and it probably won’t make you think you can fly)
during my first year of college, towards the end of the year (spring, 1979) a person who is still a good friend of mine (now, 30-plus years later) and i were having a discussion about drugs. at 19, i was still getting a handle on how i felt about drugs in general (after having been staunchly anti-drug throughout my childhood), although i was already an inveterate consumer of cannabis. my friend asked me about “acid” and i said that the only things i had heard about acid were that art linkletter’s daughter had “thought she could fly” and fell out of a 3rd story window to her death “because of LSD”. and, to be honest, i couldn’t imagine how people could enjoy dripping “battery acid” on their skin in hopes of getting high. after having a hearty laugh at my ignorance of the subject, my friend suggested that if i liked cannabis, then i would love LSD, and proceded to get me a hit of blotter to prove it.
i don’t remember much about that trip, apart from meeting another friend of mine somewhat later on, and commenting on how everything seemed hyper-real…
but my friend was right, i learned to love LSD, although these days i much prefer it’s precursor, psylocybin. in fact, according to my estimation, i have taken more acid than all of the other people i know, COMBINED. there were several years where i took LSD two or three times a week, all year around. it got to the point where i would take five hits, get a headache and go to sleep — although, to give some comparison, the first time i took five hits (and several hundred mushrooms, at the same time) i didn’t sleep for 5 nights, and, among other things, had an intimate, revealing conversation with the engine of my girlfriend’s truck.
the last time i took acid, with my wife, we spent a very enjoyable day on the beach in central oregon, with our dogs… i have pictures around here somewhere, but they are actual photographs, taken with actual film, so i would have to find them and scan them before i post any here… i got entranced by the patterns of waves in the shallow water, and i took a whole bunch of really interesting pictures… 😎
i collected some psylocybe semilanceata a couple of years ago, and have been storing them in an airtight container in the freezer… and ever since i found that article about mushroom-induced brain rewiring being the key to fighting mental illness, i have been trying to find myself in a situation where i had the required 3 days to trip (one to prepare, one to trip, and one to “come down”)…