He openly declared that acid messed up his mind. He said he was never the same after.
“He openly declared that acid messed up his mind. He said he was never the same after”
Yes, he certainly said that. The truth of the statement, on the other hand, is anyone’s guess. Whether it really was the acid or the high-grade hash or the amphetamines or, later, the cocaine... who really knows? He’s an enigma. He could tell you that he did acid in 1965 and destroyed his mind, and then you listen to tapes from him in the studio from 1966 or interviews from 1967 or 1968, and he’s completely cogent and articulate and certainly doesn’t sound like someone with a destroyed mind. And then someone will say, well, he cracked up in 1969 and went to a mental hospital and maybe did shock treatement for depression and was never the same again. Maybe. But then someone pulls out a radio interview from 1972 or something, and there he is again completely cogent and articulate and certainly not sounding like someone with a destroyed mind.
At what point did he really become severely impaired? It seems like it happened in the ‘80s, under Gene Landy. Landy got him off overeating and recreational drugs but he also pumped him so full of psychotropic meds that that’s when he started slurring his speech and acting confused. But who knows...