Acid Age

5/31/12

5/29/12

Miami Acid Zombie

The cocaine problem in the United States is really because of me. There was no cocaine before Easy Rider on the street. After Easy Rider, it was everywhere. - Dennis Hopper

Excited Delirium

Excited delirium is a brain disorder.

This disorder is usually drug-related (cocaine or "crack", PCP or "angel dust", methamphetamine, amphetamine), but can occur in non-drug users as well.

The presentation of excited delirium occurs with a sudden onset, with symptoms of bizarre and/or aggressive behavior, shouting, paranoia, panic, violence toward others, unexpected physical strength, and hyperthermia. Hyperthermia is a harbinger of death in these cases.

Neurochemical systems in the brain are abnormal in this disorder. At the molecular level, excited delirium is characterized by dysregulated dopamine transporters (hyperdopaminergic state), elevated heat shock proteins (hyperthermia), and immediate early gene activation as a marker of paranoid aggression (c-fos protein). These molecular changes serve as biomarkers of the disorder.

While many factors are associated with sudden death in individuals requiring restraint for excited delirium, these individuals develop a disturbance in thought, behavior and mood, and become agitated and violent. This abnormal behavioral state is due to CNS mechanisms which are the cause of lethality. The brain controls the heart and respiration. Abnormal brain activity leads to the psychosis and sudden death

http://www.exciteddelirium.org/

bath salts, LSD?

A witness says a naked man chewing on the face of another naked man on a downtown highway ramp in Miami kept eating and growled at a police officer who fatally shot him to make him stop. One officer told Miami television station WSVN the attacker had likely taken a new potent form of LSD. An emergency room doctor theorized bath salts, a drug with amphetamine-like chemicals nicknamed after the product it resembles, may have induced the violent behavior.

5/24/12

5/23/12

5/21/12

"The schizophrenic is a leap ahead that failed." —Philip K. Dick

Early Acid

EVEN NICE GIRLS CAN BE NAUGHTY

HOW DOES IT WORK?
Masque utilizes natural taste masking ingredients that block the flavors associated with oral sex on men, especially of semen (salts, bitters, and proteins). These masking ingredients are microencapsulated into an orally dissolvable, flavored strip.

WHAT FLAVORS DOES MASQUE COME IN?
Mango, Strawberry, Watermelon and Chocolate. Each has a hint of mint which is intended to prevent tasting that occurs in your nasal passages.

5/18/12

here's what I'm looking for

5/17/12

December 21, 1958
Had a transcendental storm of colour visions today in the bus going to Marseilles. We ran though a long avenue of trees and I close my eyes against the setting sun. An overwhelming flood of intensely bright colours exploded behind my eyelids: a multi-dimensional kaleidoscope whirling out through space. I was swept out of time. I was out in a world of infinite number. The vision stopped abruptly as we left the trees. Was that a vision? What happened to me?

Brion Gysin, diary entry, 1958

excerpt from On Acid: A Field Guide to Altered States (p. 50-51)

(more)

5/16/12

5/15/12

The only time I ever had a bad trip was on dxm. Friends of mine in high school theater were into it. A few of them took it semi-regularly: I heard stories of dxm experiments conducted by their small group, in a secluded location, at a rural residence owned by someone's parents. Sometimes they videotaped the proceedings: in one instance, a boy felt himself transformed, under the influence of the drug, into a worm, and behaved like one while the others watched.

They explained the drug to me, its effects, and the proper method of extraction. Dextromethorphan. I repeated the name numerous times in my head, as if learning a foreign language. You had to extract it from cough syrup. Cough syrup, you see, had just a bit of DXM in it, and as well as a separate chemical called an expectorate, which made you throw up if you drank too much. The expectorate was a buffer against recreational abuse of the cough syrup, above all the trippy effects of dxm.

I was told that it was safe, and I counted those dxm experimenters as reliable friends. With a self-assured air, they told me that ten percent of the human population lacked the capacity to digest the chemical, and that ingesting it would in this case be hazardous. It quickly become clear, empirically clear, that I in fact belonged among these ten perecent: the experiment proved it.

We drove downtown, south from the suburbs, to the Rio Motel, where someone had rented a room. There was a small party, attended by degenerate teenagers like ourselves and recent high school graduates, and fuelled by drugs and alcohol, which had been obtained with much effort, and were now being trotted out steadily like prize game.

I don't remember taking the pill, which was said to contain the dxm you'd find in ten cough syrup bottles put together. I do remember being violently ill, incapacitated, heaving and vomiting, being in the bathroom, being in the front passenger seat of a large automobile full of partying teenagers, which had to be pulled over occasionally so that I could vomit again, and I remember convalescing, like the victim of some sudden, unpredictable, debilitating trauma, on a strange couch, the couch at a friend's parent's house. I asked that my parents be called and I felt in that moment that they were my only real source of refuge.

Once I was back into their care, I didn't hesitate to confess what I'd been up to: I knew they did not harbor any drive towards petty, uninformed moralizing, and cared only for my well-being. The letters DXM still hold for me a kind of rancid, toxic connotation, and a tinge of trauma passes through me when I read them, as if I am a small child, and happen to glance upon the stove where only yesterday I had placed an ignorant hand.

eBay sale: Leary's Floatation Tank

A rare piece of psychedelic history, Timothy Leary's floatation tank is currently up for auction on eBay in a special charity listing. 100% of the sale price will support MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. MAPS is a leading organization in promoting psychedelic research and progressive drug policy. This unit was given to Leary by John C. Lilly, the scientist and consciousness explorer who first developed the isolation tank in the 1950s.

Auction bidding starts May 17th and ends May 27th.

[eBay listing]

(thanks to Ian Brown for the tip)