I find it fascinating that there are studies afoot that would
have you micro dose with LSD at work. We did that back in the day while out to
sea and thought nothing of it Somehow we were trail blazers and didn’t even
know it!
I first became acquainted with psychedelics as a youngster
in the comfort of my parent’s home. No, I didn’t eat a tab in their living room
back then. I found out all there was to know about drugs through the magazines they
subscribed to. Life magazine, for a young man growing up in a conservative Catholic
household, was the ultimate in-color, photographic portal to the outside world.
Everything I needed to know about politics, the Vietnam War, hippies, the
counterculture and current events was all right there in graphic detail,
delivered weekly to our mailbox. I can still remember reading an article they
printed about LSD back in 1966. Looking at it now, I have a hard time wondering
why folks back then wouldn’t be just a touch interested in trying it out. All I
know is at the time the article freaked me out and kept me in that state for a
long time.
Life magazine wasn’t alone in that propaganda war. Schools
were dispensing pamphlets all the time to students to warn them about the evils
of marijuana, pills and heroin. All to the good as I was a pussy cat when it
came to even the idea of using drugs. I couldn’t even fathom why anyone would
want to “trip out” or stick a needle in their arm or smoke marijuana. I couldn’t
even take cigarettes. Thanks to my mom I grossed out on tobacco at an early age
and thanks to my dad I thought that beer was the devil’s brew. Sure, I changed
my tune when I got to be a teen (weren’t we all supposed to be rebellious?) but
at the time I couldn’t care less about getting high, peer pressure or not. As a
kid my world was already fraught with enough peril, mischief and a latent sort
of psychedelic madness that would have kept a commune’s worth of hippies stoned
for a year. All I know for certain is that I couldn’t have handled drugs any
sooner than I did.
1975, ’76 changed all that. Cigars, beer, Boone’s Farm, all
thanks to family members and relatives. Mota thanks to school pals. Speed (“Crosstops”)
and PCP (“Cannibinol”) “thanks” to folks who I thought were there to score me
some bad ass weed. In our ignorance we were all “gateway” kids. And don’t let
anyone fool you. The only way I would have ever started my way down that merry
path was all thanks to the legalized forms of fun that swirled endlessly around
me. Schlitz beer, thank you! Cheap wine? Thanks a lot! And Camel cigarettes?
How cool you made me look, and I wasn’t even close to being cool yet!
It was the winter of 1977 that I really launched into the
stratosphere. I was attending data processing “A” school in San Diego, at the
now defunct Naval Training Center. Back then the most drug fun I could hope for
was in the form of cheap watered down beer at the enlisted men’s club on base.
The Navy didn’t mind us drinking and smoking cigs, but man, were they hell on other
forms of drugs! We could even get away with drinking in our bachelor’s enlisted
quarters, so long as we didn’t get caught. But one fateful night, after writing
a letter to a long lost girlfriend in my dorm room, a roommate asked me if I
wanted to go to the off base quarters of some classmates to party. Why not, I
thought. Weeks into my coursework I was doing fine, even if what I was learning
(punch card wiring) wasn’t quite what I expected to get out of a five-year
enlistment contract.
As we piled into a taxi for our cross town drive, my
companion (Rizzo was his name, no shit) asked me if I wanted to take “a hit”.
Well, I was experience with mota, had indulged in other forms of chemical
pleasure, what did I have to lose? So, good cook that he was, he upped the
recipe and gave me two tabs of mighty fine San Francisco blotter to ingest. I
had no idea what I was in for and if I had I am sure that I would have backed
away. But, in the end, I began what I still consider the finest and most
insightful trip I ever took. I won’t bother sharing with you the details of the
experience I had that night because, as we all know, there is nothing more boring
that hearing the delights of someone else’s psychedelic journey. But I must say
that, for a first time psychonaut, I was very lucky that evening, indeed. The quality
of the LSD was high. The house I went to was big, old, colorful and
comfortable. The guys I spent that evening tripping around were gracious,
hospitable and kind. I was able to roam around the house, fed even though I
wasn’t hungry and given the latitude to stay up and trip, even though it was a
school night for all of us.
I know that I had to have been a handful, considering
it was my first time on real true hallucinogens, but the sailors I hung with
that night made sure that I was safe, not fucked with and allowed to enjoy myself
to the fullest. What I remember more than anything was the sheer wonder of it
all. The word “WOW” was uttered by me a million times that night, I am sure. The
colors were brilliant, the auditory sensations incredible and the patterns one
of a kind. Everything in the house was a marvel, even the television set. It
was only at the end of the evening, as the colors began to fade back to shades
of purple and brown, that I discovered that the tv that I had been watching was
not a color one at all, just an old black and white set.
I became an aficionado of psychedelics from that day on. I
searched out what could be found on the streets, through friends and strangers
for many years. My love of hallucinogens took me through a veritable and
sometimes highly questionable drug pantheon but nothing quite matched the
quality and spirit of what I took that night back in ’77, nothing, that is,
until I stumbled upon the joys and wonderment of magic mushrooms, another story
all together.
These days you can go online and find all the information in
the world about psychedelics and for that I am glad. There is a lot of good to
be had with them when handled well. I think of how much we abused them back in the
day. I know that if I had better guides and teachers back then I would have gotten
a lot more out of the experiences, I am sure. Some of them were outrageous and
bold, some scary as hell, some took me backwards not only in appreciation for
the drug but in my spiritual growth. All of them, looking back, were insightful,
challenging and life altering. My life changed for the better through my
introduction and use of them and I look forward to more civilized times when
they can be better studied, understood and utilized for all their goodness and
human potential.
In the meantime I will be content with my micro doses of
cannabis. No micro doses of LSD at work for me! I know that for the time being
that mota will have to be the limit of my tripping. But if there should ever
come a time when true high quality LSD becomes available I think I would be
mighty pleased to cut out an afternoon or evening and trip away again. I know
that the doors to perception were blown open ages ago but I would be forever
grateful to be able to trip through them once again.
Salud!
Life article, Magic Mushrooms
R Gordon Wasson wiki bio
Robert Gordon Wasson Life article, different source (color
photographs)
Wasson’s First Voyage
https://erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_article5.shtmlWiki article on LSD!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide
Washington Post: Smarter and happier, nothing wrong with that!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/01/lsd-could-make-you-smarter-happier-and-healthier-should-we-all-try-it/?utm_term=.63403f65220c
Thanks, Cary Grant, for giving me permission to drop!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/11/29/lsd-sophia-loren-living-bachelor-hall-things-didnt-know-cary/
Microdosing LSD at work! Wow!
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/lsd-microdosing-drugs-silicon-valley
Pnt Saint Esprit, the French village driven mad by CIA LSD experiments!
http://altereddimensions.net/2013/pont-saint-esprit-mass-insanity-hallucination-ergot-cia-secret-poison-town-lsd
http://www.tootlafrance.ie/features/the-idyllic-french-village-that-went-insane
http://ahrp.org/1951-pont-saint-esprit-the-devils-bread-or-a-disastrous-cia-lsd-experiment/
Ergotism...St Anthony's Fire!
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=14891
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