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Reminded me of this article:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/7b7kv4/mark-mccloud-collects...
Mark McCloud has about 30,000 tabs of LSD. He collects them, frames them, and catalogues them in his San Francisco home, which is why Mark gets periodically arrested by the DEA.
He's a fascinating character. Erik Davis (author of this piece) collaborated with McCloud's Institute of Illegal Images to produce his new book on Blotter tabs: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262048507/blotter/
(full disclosure: i work for the MIT Press)
> Should everyone take acid?
> No, because you have to ask the right question to take it. Do you want a one-on-one with your maker?
too bad images links are broken
> Mark McCloud has about 30,000 tabs of LSD.
Hopefully he won't take all of them like these guys: https://notsoprofound.com/the-unforeseen-lsd-overdose-of-197...
He was also a psychedelic jazz musician - his Secret Sauce album from 1975 was rereleased recently:
This is fantastic, one of my favorite jazz forms. Thanks for sharing it!
Wow that's very nice
Sounds awesome!
Psychedelicatessen is an awesome name for a headshop. :-)
Agreed. Inspired by your comment, I did a Google map search, and there appear to be no places currently sporting that name, though there was a bagel shop in Troy NY with it, closed down in 2019.
So, you know, there is a vacuum waiting to be filled. Could be filled by a head shop, could be by anything…
It also maps beautifully with many available TLDs:
https://i.imgur.com/pP1TjeI.png
Not sure which I like best, .love, .info, .net, .pro or .me :-)
That's pretty neat packaging, but it is unclear if the text about LSD would be visible from the outside. I imagine it would have to be completely invisible to be considered any sort of stealth. It's neat that the 5x20 design implies that it was rectangular, probably designed to mirror the size and shape of film. Each package shipped with 1,000,000 micrograms.
Finally, it's pretty incredible that something like this survived. Most people follow a "dispose of the evidence" protocol when it comes illicit drug packaging.
I think it was inside based on this excerpt: “Opening Ghost’s package, purchasers would discover a handy information sheet that today gives us a sense of how some underground purveyors understood and promoted their wares.”
> Each package shipped with 1,000,000 micrograms
Woah there buddy. 100 droplets at 1,000 μg each = 100,000 μg.
I was a little surprised to learn that they didn't just dilute it a bit more and soak the entire sheet.
LSD doesn't show up on piss test.
It's somewhat unique in that.
Something to keep in mind.
People with light iris colours may not wish to rely on that.
The story I heard was that LSD is detectable in piss; but it's all been excreted in half an hour, before the trip comes on.
It shows up in blood tests for about 24 hours though, IIRC. But you'd have to be testing for LSD specifically.
More like it's just not tested for, I don't think a urine test exists for LSD.
Wow, is this what the Paul Simon song called Kodachrome is actually about? (Please don't make fun of me if this was already a known thing.)
That's a great folkexplanation but the wikipedia page makes it sound unlikely:
Great article, makes me want to finally read the author’s Techgnosis book which has been on my shelf forever.
Erik Davis is awesome. I took a class taught by him in the early 2000s. It was inspiring.
TechGnosis took three tries, but in the end it was worth it IMO.
"cited as a cure for homosexuality"
Always a bit hurtful to be reminded of stuff like that.
If you ever get the chance of taking LSD on a good set and setting (don't even try otherwise) and your family has no history of mental ilness, go ahead and take it. It's gonna be one of the most interesting experiences in your life, to say the least. There's nothing like a psychedelic experience, I can't even put it to words.
Relative of mine got schizophrenia and bipolar disorder after taking psychedelics. No family history before then. Now he has to be continually drugged up and is a shell of his former self.
Unless you are trying to treat some other illness it isn’t worth the risk until we better understand the mechanisms behind why psychedelics can trigger mental disorders.
I would bet most people who have used it would wish its use were more universal, say by politicians or corporate executives -- anyone with power.
I think the specific type of mental illness to worry about is schizophrenia/psychosis. I have DID, but am autistic and have never been able to cause psychosis or anything like it, so LSD has turned out to be really safe for me so far. I have other friends who react much differently, so maybe it has something to do with neurotype.
It's gonna be one of the most interesting experiences in your life, to say the least.
I am always fascinated by this conundrum. A lot of people say it's a life-altering experience, yet it generally doesn't seem to make them a worse, better, or even different person (unless they have a mental illness ).
Agreed. It's annoyingly hard to come across though for me, and for most people I'd imagine.
Our friend group occasionally dropped acid in high school.
There were a couple kids we didn't know well that went schizophrenic/psychotic break.
My closest friend got too much in his early twenties at an early burning man, went schizophrenic/psychotic and after a year or so in and out of jail, committed suicide by cop. There was nothing that could be done for him as he was an adult and didn't want help.
This was a college educated, elementary school teacher.
I haven't touched the stuff since.
You do you, but don't tell people there aren't risks.
Reminder. Psychedelics can also lead to extremely traumatic experiences:
https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=23788
This doesn’t get mentioned in the current “psychedelics as a cure-all” hype wave.
Aren't people always talking about set and setting, after-trip integration, not taking them if there is a history of mental illness, not being on SSRIs, etc? If anyone at any time is telling people that something doesn't come with some sort of risk, they're either lying or ignorant. Especially true when it comes with the mind.
Also, reading this linked person's comment, they were on DMT and it sounds like they have some strong ideas about how the universe works (they mention having been to "heaven" before and keep mentioning hell and evil and devils as if they are real). Yes, people should be careful, especially when they have issues with mental health.
That's not been my experience, warnings about set and setting and being in the right headspace are pretty typical. It might not be mentioned in popsci articles but they're not expecting you to go out and actually take any.
The second time I took LSD, I had visions of rending flesh, falling endlessly into a vortex of gore. That was the mandala that time. This was mixed with dreamscape fantasies of conquest and rape on grandiose scale, a Roman emperor, slicing down hordes, restructuring time in a slash of blood, a ball of divine destruction held in potential, ready to be unleashed at any time. It was sexually arousing.
Some might rationalize this, as getting a better grip on one's Jungian shadow. I sometimes view the experience that way, but sometimes I wonder if it slightly loosened some important retaining bolt. I'm pretty sure negative vibes can come out of the Pandora's psychedelic box, too. Also, this variability in effect hinders using it therapeutically. It's hard to "guide" a trip, and no one really trips in the same way twice.
I cannot upvote this enough. Having a bad trip is plainly one of the most horrible experiences of my life
In general, LSD is something that I wouldn't recommend to just anyone because the outcome of a trip depends on your mental strength. You can definitely rewire your brain, which can be a good or bad thing depending.
There are plenty of tips online, but two that have stuck with me are:
* remember that it will end
* have something with you that you've had for a long time, because it'll be an anchor.
Neither of those thoughts/things may matter until they do.
> Opening Ghost’s package, purchasers would discover a handy information sheet that today gives us a sense of how some underground purveyors understood and promoted their wares. Rather than hippie mysticism or revolutionary cant, Ghost’s text presents LSD as a scientific product of a modern research lab run by a pharmaceutical corporation.
Without more information, that conclusion seems to be going too far.
The package is a parody of a commercial product, and it would be totally unsurprising to me that the parody extended to the attitude of the text. Kodak almost certainly presented its contemporary film as "a scientific product of a modern research lab" in a similar way.
> It has been cited as a specific cure for frigidity, impotence and homosexuality
Startup concept: a conversion camp where you take religious peoples' money and host LSD retreats for queer kids
Never forget the articles about the impact of LSD on early Cisco/Networking...
See previous thread here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38970587
(and the menlo park studies... LSD is intrinsically linked to the development of silicon valley)
Funny to see so much admiration for psychedelics from universities such as MIT.
Has there ever been any objective -strong emphasis- of the efficiency of LSD to improve cognition, creativity or consciousness? Because I definitely never see LSD listed in the category of "doping" substances. The main advocates are users themselves who think they had a revelation - but how much of it is self-delusion? I'd hasard it's a lot - if not all there is to it.
(I would be fun to imagine a plant of fungus whose evolutionary niche would be to seduce animals/humans they need it - leading to it being cultivated)
If I never saw another psychedelic-related link on Hacker News again it would be too soon (just my opinion)