I would have made the world’s worst drug addict. Every time I tried smoking pot I’d lapse into a severe (and very uncool) coughing jag. If I did get high, I’d become paranoid and hyper-sensitive and withdraw into a corner of the room, examining the palm of my hand like some clichéd scene out of “Go Ask Alice.” The one time I tried “magic mushrooms” (psylocibin) with my girlfriend Julie I saw colors emanating from the top of her head and freaked out, thinking she was about to spontaneously combust. I never tried cocaine but I’m sure if I had I would have recreated the scene from “Annie Hall” in which Woody Allen sneezes on his friend’s stash, blowing the expensive powder all over the room.
Part of me longed to join the long-haired druggie clique at my high school. They were cool and hip and didn’t seem to get upset about anything. There was only one problem—to be a druggie you actually had to do drugs. I fantasized about taking that drug-induced portal into the world of psychedelia and expanded consciousness but it was not to be. On top of everything else, I was too much of a goody-goody to actually risk getting in trouble. The real druggies at our school didn’t care if they were caught getting high in the school bathroom or congregating in glassy-eyed stupor on the playground. They were frequently sent to the principal’s office or the school counselor. They barely got by in their classes and were often suspended or expelled. The only time I had ever been in the principal’s office was when I fell face down on the cement in elementary school and Dr. Stanek stuck her hand in my mouth to check for loose teeth.
Truth be told, there was also a fair amount of addiction in my family and I became convinced that I was genetically predisposed to the dark side of drug use. I worried that the slightest dabbling would automatically lead to a sordid life in a flophouse with a dirty hypodermic needle sticking out of my arm. But I secretly envied the kids who were tripping out daily, thus escaping the tedium of life in the Chicago public schools.
Yesterday was the 100th birthday of Dr. Albert Hoffmann, the Swiss scientist who is best known as the man who invented LSD. The fact that Dr. Hoffmann is still alive to celebrate his 100th birthday (and looks damn good) seems to prove the early adherents’ claim that LSD is a breakthrough drug that can help users achieve profound insights and spiritual renewal. Hoffmann described his invention as “medicine for the soul” and became very frustrated when the drug was demonized after being used quite successfully in psychoanalysis.
When I first read about Hoffmann’s 100th birthday, I thought surely he must be related to Abbie Hoffmann, political activist and founder of the Yippies, who when he was in court during the Chicago Seven trial famously suggested that the judge try LSD and offered to set him up with a dealer he knew in Florida. But there is no familial connection between the late Abbie Hoffmann and the still-ticking Father of LSD. In truth, the elder Hoffmann had little patience for the likes of Abbie or his pal Timothy Leary, despite Leary’s attempts to educate people about the psychological benefits of LSD. It was Leary who coined the phrase “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.”
Another famous advocate of LSD was movie star Cary Grant who dropped acid more than 100 times under the supervision of his shrink. Grant had this to say about his experience with the drug:
“All my life, I've been searching for peace of mind. I'd explored yoga and hypnotism and made several attempts at mysticism. Nothing really seemed to give me what I wanted until this treatment…I had to face things about myself which I never admitted, which I didn't know were there.”
Cary Grant was one of many celebrities who promoted the use of LSD in the 1950s and 60s. The range of famous people who enjoyed the benefits of d-lysergic acid diethylamide back then included Anais Nin, Allen Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley, Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, and, of course, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
Albert Hoffmann is celebrating this landmark birthday by attending a three-day symposium on LSD that begins today in Basel, Switzerland. I can only hope to be that vibrant and “with it” if I ever reach that age. Hoffmann still takes daily walks in the countryside and says that we are all too reliant on technology and not observant enough of nature’s own beauty. Right on, Al!
I no longer secretly wish to be a druggie but I do think it would be great to have a way to be less uptight, remove my inhibitions, express myself more creatively, and experience enlightened insights into human consciousness.
Oh wait—isn’t that what blogging is supposed to do?
So, Danny, is reading your blog as good as dropping acid? I think it might be...I always laugh, feel enlightened, and a little less uptight when I read your posts. Cool, right on...thanks for the high!
Posted by: cruisin-mom(Randi) | January 12, 2006 at 05:03 PM
It's never too late to try :)
I haven't done LSD in years. It's fun, crazy, wild... I think it is better when you are young though. The last time I took it, it was way too strong. I watched The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe and it was in COLOR. I will never forget that. A substance that makes you see color in a black and white film? What could be wrong with that once in a while?
Posted by: Shannon | January 12, 2006 at 06:28 PM
Danny, Abbie Hoffman only has one "n"! I have a bumper sticker with a quote from him on my car. It says, "You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." When I was in high school (1987-1991), I read every single thing I could about the 1960s -- everything from JFK's election to Woodstock. But I didn't actually try drugs until college. I did acid a few times and it was interesting, but I think I've had more mind-expanding results from reading poetry.
Posted by: Heather | January 13, 2006 at 04:33 AM
Oh yeah, Heather! I guess I subconsciously added that extra "n" because I wanted them to be related! And how great that someone who went to high school when you did cared so much about the ideals of the 60s!
Posted by: Danny | January 13, 2006 at 04:52 AM
This was such an amazingly adorable post I had to de-lurk and say thanks!
I was embarrassed to be a substance-free teen and college kid in the swinging years - but my mom and her mom were both alcoholics and my mom was a devotee to "mother's little helpers" and I figured I'd join the ranks (after all, if there were a bag of Oreos around I'd have to eat them till they were ALL GONE) if I got started.
I figured: if I start, I'll become an alcoholic or an addict - then I'll have years of misery and worry the people around me and destroy everything (I'd read plenty about this) - then I'll have to quit and not drink or take drugs anymore. So why not skip the years-of-misery part and go directly to the sober part? That was my path, and the story I told hundreds of times when pressed to partake.
I still had the years of misery, but at leaset I got through them stone sober.
I really love your blog.
Posted by: Melinama | January 13, 2006 at 04:57 AM
For some reason, your blog never shows up in my blogroll as having been updated!
Posted by: The Retropolitan | January 13, 2006 at 07:59 AM
Maybe that's because I write about the past so much that your blogroll is judging me. It wants me to update all my references.
Posted by: Danny | January 13, 2006 at 08:03 AM
I'm on the straight and narrow, never did touch any kind of drug. Never was interested to.
I think I was about 14 before I realized what marijuana smelled like. When I was about 20, I went to a Billy Joel concert and came out of there with my clothes stinking like a joint -- I tried sniffing my sleeve, and getting high on that! A few years later I had a one-date wonder with a weirdo, and he told me that in high school he and Mary Jane were pretty close -- I had no clue what he was talking about and thought that Mary Jane was his non-Jewish girlfriend.
Maybe it IS time for me to smoke a joint and discover what I've been out of the loop with for all these years!
Posted by: Pearl | January 13, 2006 at 08:03 AM
Oh, I just noted what you said about the 3-day LSD symposium in Basel. I suppose that would be as good a place for me to start -- and finish -- my education in LSD. After all, I've got Swiss citizenship by way of my mother, who was born in...Basel!
Guess we'd have to call the adventure: "Goin' Back To My Roots."
Posted by: Pearl | January 13, 2006 at 09:05 AM
Pearl, I don't want to be responsible for your raving addiction. We'll then have to schedule a blog intervention. Just say no!
Posted by: Danny | January 13, 2006 at 11:56 AM
I tried pot for the first time when I was 36 years old. I have only smoked 4 times in my life but truth be told, I did enjoy all four experiences. I love your blog, Danny, and, yes, I was one of the geeky kids who didn't want to mar my "permanent record" with drug use. At some point, I'd really like a peek at that file.....there's probably nothing but a single blank sheet of paper.
Posted by: Sanora | January 15, 2006 at 09:50 AM
very interesting...
Posted by: justin kreutzmann | January 15, 2006 at 05:29 PM
I plead the fifth on drug use. But I will say that one night in college, the picture of a cartoon beaver family on a bag of potato chips was the funniest thing ever created in the history of mankind.
Posted by: The Retropolitan | January 16, 2006 at 06:20 AM
The whole point of the movie 'Altered States' is that drugs don't make you play and work well with others. At the end Wm. Hurt says that only you - without any third party assistance - can get into your own head to create you're own mystic crystal revelations that will lead to your mind's own liberation.
The same is undoubtedly true for blogging.
I lived in Boulder, CO when 'Altered Sates' was in first run where the ending was always very loudly and roundly booed.
Posted by: pops | January 16, 2006 at 09:44 AM