"Early exposure to LSD had a profound effect on the way I saw the world and continue to see the world. It changed the way I looked at myself, reality, and the world I lived in. I think, unlike most drugs, which are taken to kill pain or to numb you, I took LSD for all the right reasons. It was like sailing away on a pirate ship for me."Anthony Bourdain
I had a friend ask me if I knew where he could get some psychedelics the other day. Beats me, I said.
As a child of the 1970's I had certainly been to the party before but honestly, not in decades. This was not the first question like this I have heard of late. Evidently some people are interested in tripping again. Trump or trip?
And with the state of current events, it actually makes some sense. I believe that people are maybe ready for some consciousness expansion and healing.
Of course talking about psychedelics these days is somewhat akin to admitting that you belong to the Manson family, it is still completely socially unacceptable. Better to admit to being a repentant murderer, if you belong to the right church there is probably less stigma and social approbation.
Something I just can't quite understand. I was wondering just how many people in this country ever experimented with psychedelics and did a little research. This National Center for Biotechnology Krebs study from 2013 says over 30 million. Roughly 17% of the people aged 21 to 64.
A whole heaping helping of folks who remain mostly very quiet about their past experience. Presumably many of them living nice, productive, responsible lives. Have been able to even get good christian republican friends to fess up to a dabble or two.
I have to be honest, I loved the stuff. Made me more of what I am than the malto meal did, that is for sure. Not for everybody of course but for every Diane Linkletter that failed her flying lesson there were 100 Steve Allans, Cary Grants, Steve Jobs or Robert Sommers that did just fine. But it was nothing that I needed to continue doing. Learned what I needed to learn and moved on.
When I was a young pup a 300 to 500 microgram dose of Orange Sunshine cost five dollars. The dosages went down to 75 to 125 mikes in the 1970's and the price stayed pretty near the same. The psychedelic sacrament was never about money. More like a rite of ascension; see Eleusinian Mysteries. Many cultures throughout time had similar rites and activities. Psychonauts.
Today who even knows if ergotamine tartrate, the base chemical of acid, actually still exists or is available? Not me.
Now as a kid with authority problems in general and whose consciousness was tempered in the grizzled haunts of St. Marks in the East Village of New York and Winterland, I find this sort of expensive pay to play thing preposterous, needless, usurious and bordering on bad religion. Rubs my anarchy bone the wrong way. Take the training wheels off people, you can still do this. Without a middle man or priest.
And it indeed may be time.
1 comment:
I found that I never needed any help with various hallucinogens, one supposes that I was already far gone anyway. My only bummer was the extreme disappointment that was felt due to the fact that I could never get to the place that 4 top-hats and some opiated hash took me the first time, no matter how hard I tried.
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