I liked George Harrison's take on it, from the Beatles Anthology dvd:

"You know, I went to Haight-Ashbury, expecting it to be this brilliant place, and it was just full of horrible, spotty, dropout kids on drugs. It certainly showed me what was really happening in the drug culture. It wasn't what was I thought of all these groovy people having spiritual awakenings and being artistic. It was like the Bowery, it was like alcoholism, it was like any addiction. So, at that point, I stopped taking it, actually, the dreaded Lysergic. I had some in a little bottle, it was liquid, and I put it under a microscope, and I looked at it, and it looked like rope, just like old rope, and I thought I'm not going to put that in my brain any more."

LSD is no party for me, but it always gave me something to chew on for weeks.

NOT CRAP

Pure L wrote:What was up with those gas pains that came about 8 hours into the trip?

Just a guess, but probably your digestive system rejecting the chemicals right along with the rest of your body.

Not Crap for painful laughing sessions with my friends.

Not Crap for enhacing what I'm pretty sure was a so-so Front 242 gig.

Not Crap for all the fucking weirdness.

It's a drug, and nothing more. Would never do it again, but for all of the many, many, many, many, many fun times I experienced it...Not Crap. I never found out anything about myself that I already didn't know (even that one time I was listening to Ministry's "Thieves" and I could've sworn this one sample said "and Randall's a faggot"), and I never found out anything about the world around me. And, believe me, I used to eat a lot of acid. I mean, a lot.

Crap for all of the getting-to-know-you-crap. Crap with a light waffle, I guess.

i tripped a bit in order to get through days in high school. drop first period, all square by 8th. this was over ten years ago though, and i have not done it since. at the time i can recall it being my most favorite drug...albeit one of the only ones i did other than the marijuana. still. it was fun. bad trips are really bad though... the last time i tripped i wigged out when i was peaking and threw up after jumping outside of a ford escort stuffed with like 5 kids during lunch. never saw any totally crazy shit like some of my fellow trippers would claim... they would see skulls and stuff (of course coming out of the mouth of a gothy person, that seems too typical to be fer reals)... i just came up with amazing ideas and revelations that i would forget by the very end. most of these had to do with how jurassic park was totally viable. anyway... talk to ya later! nc! waffle for my age and that i probably wouldn't do it again!

Okay. So I am a long time admirer of Mr. Albini and I am a long time reader of this message board. I was compelled to join after reading all this LSD stuff. People were just getting so worked up over it...good stuff.

I did it once. Madison has a legendary Halloween party every year (though this year it was rather weak). Last year I took acid. I won't bore you with the details (because apparently details are boring). I will say that my friend who came up from Chicagoland that year fashioned a crude "costume" from a wife beater and many socks and was flipping out severely before we took him home and put some clothes on the poor kid (you could see the outline of his cock and his ass was sorta exposed to the elements [though you wouldn't know it by looking at his costume]). I guess it was not very potent acid (but how the hell should I know how good or bad it was) but I had a fine fucking time on State Street watching all the crazy ass people and the obscene legions of cops.

Like Tipcat, I thought drugs were really stupid for a very long time, but when I finally started smoking pot freshman year of college, I was able to clearly see what a douchebag I was (NOT implying that you are a douchebag Tipcat). Marijuana allowed me to enter an ego-less state for the first time. Mushrooms (we had a veritable farm of the stuff not too long ago) had a similar effect on my ego...but nothing was ever nearly as powerful in terms of making me a non-doucher (and stepping outside of myself) as those first 20 or so times smoking weed. I suspect that ANY drug would have probably caused me to be able to recognize and shed those dickheaded parts of my persona...but weed just happened to be the first drug to reach me.

I'm trying not to smoke as much because I have a show on Saturday with a band I highly respect (don't want to tear up the old voice, ya know?) but I find myself bored without it. I smoke way too much weed. Drugs really are a funny thing...they're bad but they're really fine. Everyone has their vice(s) I guess. Some days I realize how much they fuck you up and then other days I smoke up before my black music lecture and remember why I love them [drugs] so much. Say what you will about Nirvana, but I think it comes down to what Kurt Cobain said: "I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasm I once had as a child." Drugs provide this "enthusiasm" by confusing my world once in a while. It should be duly noted that the Cobain quote is from his suicide note. LOLZ!

You can philosophize until the cows come home, but it's difficult to understand how drugs affect your ego/your perspective until you take them. But as some other dude said, "that's drugs for you." I find that wall to be a bit of a cop-out, but what do I know? Nobody molested me as a child or anything, so my first "trips" or whatever came in college.

In conclusion: I wish I knew where to find some fucking acid, but it'd probably make me even wackier than I've already become. A very cautious NOT CRAP.

Check out this sweet ass band too...like Unwound, the Chameleons UK, New Order, the Jesus Lizard (<-the Lizard is a stretch but unraveling their sounds was a similar experience for me): http://www.myspace.com/thehatparty

P.S.-Can anyone tell me how to post a picture? The aforementioned costume is even funnier than that clown picture. And I hope no one on the board rips me a new dickhole.

Pure L wrote:What was up with those gas pains that came about 8 hours into the trip?

That was also fun when you're with good pals.......

I remember being told multiple times that the cause of the cramps was strychnine-perhaps a byproduct of the manufacture, I can't remember why it was supposed to be in there-and to eat a lot of vitamin C to prevent them. I always bought a couple of boxes of liquid filled Vitamin C candies when I dropped and never really had cramps that bad at all. Regardless of whether they prevented cramping or not, I was always happy I had them and Vitamin C is good for you. A word of caution though: avoid keeping a pocketful of the more potent chewable C dietary supplements. Shitting yourself inside out will instantly return you to reality and you'll be out five bucks.

The times when I thought I had gone completely insane and was about to die were not so much fun. The times when everything was absolutely bloody fucking excellent were. Ended up with a bit of a reputation for it which I didn't know about until a good friend let me write my new phone number in his phone book and he had me in there as 'Acid John'. This was when I was eighteen. I'm thirty four now and apart from one dose at a squat party in London a few years ago I haven't touched acid for well over a decade - it just isn't around. But I think I've had my fill anyway. One of the last times, my friend Watson and I were walking round the streets and he was going "look at it! None of this stuff should be here!" And I told him that if we were in a natural state of nothing but trees and fields we would construct things like houses made of bricks with electricity and running water and gas ovens and that we'd end up with this stuff that he was saying didn't need to be here. I think that was the point at which I outgrew LSD.

Not crap though.

A waffle factor of considerable magnitude for the fact that one of the people that's been closest to me in my life was once an absolutely amazing drummer with a love for the noise, who has for the last fifteen years been a frightened, lizard-believing, jew-suspecting, messiah-complexed god freak who just wants to play mellow guitar in a world-changing band that he can't get together and nobody would like anyway; a person very close to me who I can't be around anymore. That fucking sucks and I miss him.

this thread has its moments...

...for me, acid isnt about getting fucked up and having a good time. the thing i love about acid is that it humbles you in a very intimate and personal way. ive used every drug on the planet repeatedly in my youth, but....acid was never a "party" drug...nor should it ever be considered as such.

acid was something that me and a couple close friends would hole ourselves up somewhere and experience together. we would light candles, smoke cigarettes, listen to music, play music, cry, laugh, remember the past, dream about the future, compare goals and ideals, talk about life and what happens when you die...etc.

it was rarely about dosing and being dumb just for the sake of being dumb. it was about feeling connected on a higher level with each other....with the rest of the world in some surreal way.

i dont think everyone should use acid. i dont even think most people should use it. i think the majority of the time the people that should use it probably end up using it at one point or another and the ones that dont need it simply dont use it. personally, im glad i used it . maybe towards the end i used it more than i should have, but that doesnt take away the beautiful memories i have of it.

still not crap, for me.

i can understand the people that have never used it thinking it is crap, though.

cervixFORaHEart wrote:...for me, acid isnt about getting fucked up and having a good time. the thing i love about acid is that it humbles you in a very intimate and personal way. ive used every drug on the planet repeatedly in my youth, but....acid was never a "party" drug...nor should it ever be considered as such.

Try it with E before you make that judgement, sir.

Chapter Two wrote:

cervixFORaHEart wrote:...for me, acid isnt about getting fucked up and having a good time. the thing i love about acid is that it humbles you in a very intimate and personal way. ive used every drug on the planet repeatedly in my youth, but....acid was never a "party" drug...nor should it ever be considered as such.

Try it with E before you make that judgement, sir.

"Before you judge a drug to not be a party drug, take it with another known party drug."

Brilliant!