Lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD is a mystery to the common person walking down the street. Acid as it has become known over the decades creates a unique and thought provoking experience for the user. At times it can also create quite a harrowing and completely unexpected psychological response. If you've never done acid there is literally no way to have someone who has tried it explain the experience to you. The words "hallucination" and "trip" or someone claiming they saw faces and color waves do not do the entirety of the experience any justice what so ever.
Watching movies and reading books in which the character "drops" acid can only allow the slightest of glimpses in to the actuality of a trip.
In the cultural consensus on hallucinogenic drug use most would assume that the hay days were the late 60's. That the summer of love was the peak of LSD use in America and around the world. I would argue that people who believe this are romanticizing an era beyond it's actual scope. I believe there are more people using LSD today than ever before. The reason the late 60's will be linked to acid use for the rest of eternity is that this was the period that usage sky rocketed and society became aware of it. Similar to the way people think the crack epidemic ended in the 80's when in reality it is worse than ever.
Thousands upon thousands of people experience counter culture in one way or another, whether they're going to Coachella or Bonnaroo, visiting a "hippie commune", surfing Erowid and Basement Shaman, living more or less on any college campus in America, trekking to Burning Man, spending a week in the woods with the Rainbow Gathering, or just happen to have a friend who has journeyed to the furthest realms of their mind and wants to share the experience. Tons of people are trying acid for the first time each and every year.
The conservative folks who refuse to do anything outside of the box and think that those who do are degenerate wastes of life will fight to the bitter end to create the illusion that taking LSD makes you crazy and causes delusions. We all remember the Miami cannibal story from a few months ago, the guy who ate someones face on the side of the road. All of the initial news stories have him high on LSD, then Cocaine, then Bath Salts. Guess what, when the drug analyses came in, the guy was completely sober! You'll never hear that in the news though, "Sober guy eat's someones face".
A headline like that is to scary, it says that anyone can commit this horrible crime, the news would rather you believe that only someone tripping out would do something that insane. In reality someone tripping out is probably the last person in the world who would stoop to devouring human flesh. The thought alone is enough to send someone on acid in to a massive internal debate. Someone on acid is very unlikely to be so "high" that they are unaware of their actions. As a matter of fact normally they are highly aware of every thought and action that is going on in their nervous system.
This brings me to the reason LSD is in the news the past few days. A college student who had just left a music festival in Mobile Alabama after consuming LSD showed up back to campus, stripped down, pounded on the campus police headquarters door, and was then promptly shot and killed. The student was naked, had his arms out stretched revealing that there was nothing in his hands and walking towards the police officer. Without taking any other precautionary steps , such as, oh I don't know, tackling the student, taking a few steps back, or pretty much any assortment of physical actions that could have subdued him, the officer opened fire and killed him on the spot.
The news will portray this as a crazed student pursuing a officer whose only option was to kill him or be killed. This 18 year old might have eaten the officers face off if given a chance, so getting any closer to him to subdue him was out of the question. Not to mention the officer most likely did not want to touch a naked boy, that's pretty gay right? So. shoot him, that's a viable option.
I pray and wish and hope that this officer gets life in prison. This is manslaughter, not self defense! It's one thing if this were happening in a dark alley where the assailants identity was completely unknown, but now we're going to allow campus police to gun down the youth of America? I hate to speculate but I'd bet money that this student had also consumed a ton of alcohol, which in my opinion was actually the determining factor behind his actions. The LSD didn't make him walk around naked, it was the fact that he was drunk as all get out and had very lose inhibitions as well as a unstable state of mind to begin with that brought him to the front of a campus police station naked.
So every time a frat party goes south and there's a half naked pledge stumbling towards an officer the first thing they're taught to do is open fire? I truly hope not.
In somewhat related news another fellow tripper was stun to death in Australia this week as FOUR officers attack him with their tasers at once and stopped his heart.
But the guy was high on LSD so this was obviously their only option.
Fox News
Washington Post
PoliceOne
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