Hiking Newlyweds Who Took LSD Rescued After Wife Has Bad Reaction

Fox News ^ | 08/19/09

[Ronin]

I smoke a bunch of dope when I was a kid, but never did any acid, coke, speed or any other chemicals.

The only thing dope ever did besides get me stoned was give me mega-munchies.

[R. Scott]

Seizures and being admitted to hospital in "serious condition" are not associated with use of LSD per se. They might be associated with reactions to contaminants in the acid (e.g. strychnine).

You're right - but pure LSD is a rarity these days. Today contaminates and illegal drugs go hand in hand.
There was a time when makers took pride in their product, back in the days of Osley and Purple Haze. That changed when commercialism took over. Quality was no longer a concern. It was no longer made in proper collage labs but in kitchens and garages. To use your alcohol analogy, think of moonshine run through a car radiator instead of a proper clean copper worm.

[R. Scott]

1970 was a turning point.
That was the year the hippies I knew gave up using LSD and started growing their own pot - and experimenting with selective breading. That was the year most hippies disappeared and the streets were overrun with “freaks”.

[TheOldLady]

One day in 1982 or thereabouts, some “friends” of ours came over with some brownies. They never said a word about their being laced with pot. I was dieting and didn’t partake, but they let Hubby eat a whole one. We were so innocent and naive. He passed out, they left, and our relationship was never the same.

[calex59]

I'm not saying folks should drop acid. I'm just saying that the chemical itself is NOT the cause of the problems that the media like to associate with it. It's people's actions, and the circumstances in which the people act and react. It's no different with a six-pack of beer. You can sit at home and drink a couple of beers, talk with a few friends, have a good time, and toddle off to bed. Or you can have those beers at a wild party and decide to do something stupid like shoot firearms and drag-race your car. The beer is not the cause of your injuries and arrest, your actions are. Millions of people dropped acid over the years with no adverse reactions, because they did so in safe surroundings with friends who helped keep them from doing stupid things. What you say about the ER is certainly true. But it's not the chemical compound at fault, it's the people. Blaming personal irresponsibility and stupid actions on a drug (whatever the drug) is a cop-out. If one is so weak that one can't take responsibility for oneself, and one doesn't have friends to help out, then one should not do drugs, any drugs. Unfortunately, as you correctly point out, a lot of people do, who shouldn't.

You are hilarious.

Everything you say is contradictory. You say the acid, and beer also, is not the cause of "bad reactions" but the surroundings are, when in reality if they had not taken the acid or drank the beer(or other drugs)they wouldn't have to worry about their reactions to it, would they? To say the drugs are not the root cause of their "bad trips" and sometimes physical damage caused by both the acid and the beer is just slightly hypocritical.

I can't believe you can type the sh** you have with a straight face. How self deluded you are.

[metmom]

No kidding.

[humblegunner]

At 6'4" 230lbs one small joint was enough for me to see that.

What a lightweight!

[humblegunner]

experimenting with selective breading.

The breading is the best part.

[Fire_on_High]

Anything *can* happen as far as odd allergies. Out of the blue I developed an allergy to a common OTC painkiller I’d used for years when I needed, fortunately not severe enough to warrant not taking it but very annoying.

if all of a sudden I’m itchy and overly sensitive from a couple ibuprofen, why couldn’t someone be flat out allergic to pot? or LSD?

[Salamander]

I spent my honeymoon in Asbury Park NJ.

That’s as close to an “hallucinogenic experience” as I ever care to get.

:]

[dayglored]

> You say the acid, and beer also, is not the cause of "bad reactions" but the surroundings are, when in reality if they had not taken the acid or drank the beer(or other drugs)they wouldn't have to worry about their reactions to it, would they? To say the drugs are not the root cause of their "bad trips" and sometimes physical damage caused by both the acid and the beer is just slightly hypocritical.

I'll try to clear up the confusion.

Acid is an incredibly powerful psychoactive drug. In my opinion it surpasses all other drugs in the regard that it is not for everyone, indeed most people probably should avoid it, because it will likely change their point of view about their lives, and most people can't handle questions like that.

That said, a huge number of people have taken it, with relatively few adverse reactions, percentage-wise. So here's an attempt to reconcile our positions, which actually are not far apart.

1. The vast majority of people who drink beer, or drop acid, do not get into bar fights or suffer bad trips every time they do so. Unlike, say, drinking bleach, which will sicken or kill everyone who does so, every time.

2. A person is responsible for their own voluntary actions, including drinking beer, dropping acid, standing in a strobe light, etc. It's a personal responsibility to avoid doing actions that cause trouble. And as you pointed out above, if the person didn't take the drug, they wouldn't have had the adverse reaction to it.

3. Most people can drink beer without getting into a fight, most people can watch a strobe light without a seizure, most people can drop acid without a bad trip.

4. There will always be some people who react badly to any given drug, or food, or drink, or light. In the case of acid, that number of people is very small, percentage-wise.

5. The "cause" of an adverse reaction is that -- as you correctly pointed out above -- THE PERSON TOOK THE DRUG. The drug itself, which most people can take without that ill effect, did not cause the reaction while it was just sitting on the table.

Consider: Most people can drink red wine without a problem. But red wine gives me bad headaches. I learned this by noticing my reaction pattern whenever I drank red wine. So I stopped drinking red wine.

Now, if I drink red wine, and get a headache, what is the "cause" of my headache? MY ACTION OF DRINKING THE WINE. The wine, sitting in the bottle, didn't give me a headache. And it didn't suddenly jump out of the bottle and force itself down my throat. If I drink the wine, it's my own damn fault when I get a headache.

You can, if you wish, believe that "it's the drug's fault", but to me, that's shifting responsibility for a person's actions away from the person and onto an inanimate object.

Other than that distinction, it appears to me that we agree.

[Uncle Miltie]

"started growing their own pot - and experimenting with selective breading"

I prefer the panko-crusted pot myself.

;-)

[Vigilantcitizen]

Was that in the mid 1980s? Maybe 1983 or 1984?

I know nothing. ;^)>

[aragorn]

...Cadillac Bar in Houston

That got some old synapses firing! My name is (well, probably was) on the wall in that place. Loved the Shooter Lady!

(though I understand it is not the place it used to be...)

[dayglored]

> Anything *can* happen as far as odd allergies. Out of the blue I developed an allergy to a common OTC painkiller I’d used for years when I needed, fortunately not severe enough to warrant not taking it but very annoying. if all of a sudden I’m itchy and overly sensitive from a couple ibuprofen, why couldn’t someone be flat out allergic to pot? or LSD?

I suppose it's possible. I've had allergies (pollen, dust, grasses, animals, molds, etc.) since I was a kid in the 1950's, and over the years they have changed, come and gone, and either responded to or resisted various treatments.

Frankly the single most important factor in my case is stress, both physical and psychological. If I'm in good physical shape and healthy attitude, and not under a lot of stress, I hardly notice them. When I'm stressed-out about work or personal stuff, or my attitude is shot, they flare up.

So it's possible the bride in the story is allergic to acid. But given the extremely low incidence of such reports, when used by hundreds of thousands of people over many decades, I have to think it's unlikely, and that something else caused her bad trip. Assuming it was a bad trip -- the story isn't clear, and she might have had an argument with her groom, or just done something stupid and injurious while tripping. That happens a lot more often than spontaneous bad trips, per se. We just don't know what really happened.

[MaxMax]

Don’t eat the brown acid!

And don't lick strange looking frogs.

[dayglored]

Oops, in my comment above (#91) I missed an edit — point #1 and point #3 are essentially the same, I meant to remove point #3 before posting. Sorry....

[dayglored]

Good rant. I'll just address a couple points.

> you don't need to lecture me on psychedelics

Apparently not, but I didn't mean to do so anyway, sorry.

> if you're recommending LSD as something as casual as aspirin or even xanax then you are either way ignorant or have never taken much real sidney.

I'm not recommending acid, not generally, and certainly not casually. My personal experience is not something I want to record here, but take my word that any that you've heard a name for from the late 60's and early 70's is in there, plus some USP lab-grade in sealed ampules (don't ask) that was the best of all. Let's not get into a pissing match, we'll both get soaked. ;-)

> i was tripping back when you were still in yer teen pappy’s tadpole resevoir... you are so young... Millsaps college...1973

If you were in college in '73, we're probably about the same age. And by '73 my experimentation days were already winding down.

> some sure as hell are not harmless and LSD is one of the most potent psychoactive drugs known to man..maybe the most

I agree completely.

[Manic_Episode]

Poor guy, he really went off the deep end bad and will never be the same.

I have a bipolar Sis-in-law who went off just as bad and she never touched a drug in her life.

I made some very poor decisions when I was young and feel very fortunate that I am not only functional but very blessed as well.

[ansel12]

By 1969 I knew that the hippie thing was over, few freepers will understand but hippies were not the yippies (political activists), or the kids that were getting stoned and stealing tape decks from cars, and they were not people that left their college dorms for the weekend to visit the hippies that had truly dropped out from the system, hippies weren’t the people that went on to get PHDs and Law degrees and run America’s institution like Hollywood likes to portray.

By 1970 almost all the pure drugs were gone and parts of urban and suburban America was immersed in a dopers world of crummy street drugs and crummy dopers but 1965 through 1968 was a very unique window of where we had a few people that did live the life of hippies, by 1970 and 1971 many hippies had and were still escaping to rural areas to escape the harshness of what their previous haunts had become. Mother Earth News was launched in 1970 and any conservative today can look at it’s early years and approve of it’s back to the land, self sufficiency message of building things and hunting and which shotguns to buy.