Speaker 1: Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And Hey, Elizabeth Saron, how are you doing?
Speaker 3: I'm well, how are you?
Speaker 2: You look? Well? You look really well rested.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: You have a glow to you.
Speaker 3: So do you?
Speaker 2: Thank you? I'm I'm feeling like a pregnant woman. I
Speaker 2: got a glow to me.
Speaker 3: You look fantastic.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I got a question for you another one
Speaker 2: second one. Actually I haven't asked you one yet, so
Speaker 2: I guess this is my first question. I like strike
Speaker 2: that from the record. The question is this, do you
Speaker 2: know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 3: I do. I do know what's ridiculous. I want to
Speaker 3: just establish something first though, that we have maybe not
Speaker 3: all that. We don't like all the same things.
Speaker 2: You and I.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they compliment each other.
Speaker 2: I would agree with that.
Speaker 3: You like Josh allenback and you like Snickers bars.
Speaker 2: I love Snickers bars.
Speaker 3: And I like sauces. Stop it go on.
Speaker 2: No, I'm gonna have an open mind.
Speaker 3: Well, open up because Snickers is teaming up with Josh Allen.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's not bad as a mashup.
Speaker 3: To make sauces. I know, I really was. So there
Speaker 3: are these dipping sauces barbecue.
Speaker 2: Sauces for Snickers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for Snickers. So there are three flavors.
Speaker 2: I dip my Snickers in this.
Speaker 3: Snickers caramel or caramel Buffalo sauce. So Parade Magazine, which
Speaker 3: is my favorite source, says a sweet and spicy buffalo
Speaker 3: wing style sauce with cayenne level heat and a vinegary sharpness,
Speaker 3: versatile enough to be used on chicken, pizza, baked potatoes,
Speaker 3: et cetera.
Speaker 2: Okay, I was about ask is this for my chicken
Speaker 2: or for my Snickers?
Speaker 3: It's for your chicken. Then there's Snickers chocolate barbecue sauce thick, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I would hope. So, a thick chocolate based sauce with
Speaker 3: a complex barbecue flavor profile and end notes of cocoa.
Speaker 3: The most interesting of the bunch would probably pair well
Speaker 3: with brisket. And then the last of the triplets Snickers
Speaker 3: peanut teriake sauce, a creamy and nutty sauce similar to
Speaker 3: setee with chunks of Snickers peanuts. Recommended pairings include chicken,
Speaker 3: rice noodles or crisp and cold crispy and cold lettuce.
Speaker 3: Just pour it on the lettuce. Apparently there's an issue
Speaker 3: where the holes in the in the containers are too small,
Speaker 3: and it gets all jammed up with the peanuts in
Speaker 3: the taste trials for Parade Magazine. Oh, they scooped it
Speaker 3: out with a knife. Now here's the thing. I know
Speaker 3: you want some, Sarah. You can't go to the store
Speaker 3: and get them. It's part of a special promotion. You
Speaker 3: get it for free if you purchase a package of
Speaker 3: Snickers Minis from them during the halftime of the one
Speaker 3: pm Eastern NFL games on Sundays in September.
Speaker 2: And why do you do this to me and my football?
Speaker 3: Well, it looks I was gonna sign you up for
Speaker 3: some of course, but it's it's very confusing to me.
Speaker 3: I have a small god, and I know you get
Speaker 3: irritated with me. No, I know the mashups. I don't
Speaker 3: get mad at me, get mad at Mandy Hodge because
Speaker 3: Mandy Hodge sent this to us.
Speaker 2: And did this to me.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: I forgive you, man.
Speaker 3: I am, but the messengers Aaron. This is all out
Speaker 3: in the universe, and I just want you to know I.
Speaker 2: Got nothing but love for you. Mandy. I forgive you
Speaker 2: for this, this micro aggression, but not me, No, not you.
Speaker 2: I got to kill the messenger, right. The saying goes
Speaker 2: it don't kill the messenger, whatever it says.
Speaker 3: Kill Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: Wow, wait, way to really just start this one off?
Speaker 2: Nick Hay football season to me, huh right, Well, Lisabe,
Speaker 2: I got a question for you, and this is a
Speaker 2: fun question.
Speaker 3: I like fun.
Speaker 2: Well, it's actually not a question. I lied to you,
Speaker 2: it's a statement.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: You know there are a number of famous acid trips
Speaker 2: that change the world. Sure there, Well a few of
Speaker 2: them are the stories I want to tell you today.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
Speaker 2: and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and
Speaker 2: one hundred percent ridiculous. Yes, Elizabeth, I know, I know.
Speaker 2: I've told you a few drug based stories on this show.
Speaker 2: Usually it's about cocayene because cocayene often leads to drug
Speaker 2: capers and ridiculous crimes.
Speaker 3: Not of crime.
Speaker 2: Today, I have something I think I've only talked about once,
Speaker 2: which is acid aka a LSD. Okay, At the moment,
Speaker 2: magic mushrooms and LSD are kind of having well a
Speaker 2: moment because they're being reconsidered for their therapeutic benefits right
Speaker 2: right right in the Silicon Valley. Microdosing is a buzzword.
Speaker 2: And when it comes to LSD, if you can believe it,
Speaker 2: the current FDA has, according to the Associated Press quote
Speaker 2: designated psilocybin MDMA. And now LSD has potential breakthrough therapies.
Speaker 3: That's what I understand that it is with the proper
Speaker 3: associative therapies and you know condition guide, Yeah, for stuff
Speaker 3: like PTSD and anxiety.
Speaker 2: That's a hell of an about face. When it comes
Speaker 2: to psychedelics, yeah, yeah, that said. As you well know,
Speaker 2: doing acid is still illegal, Yes it is. It's a
Speaker 2: federal crime actually, and as I checked on the Department
Speaker 2: of Justice website, they are only too happy to inform
Speaker 2: you the quote LSD is illegal. LSD is a Schedule
Speaker 2: one substance under the Controlled Substances Act, which means in California,
Speaker 2: where we live, where a Silicon Valley is, LSD is
Speaker 2: still one hundred percent illegal. Now, if you were caught
Speaker 2: with LSD in California, and I mean LSD that's not
Speaker 2: for sale, I mean you have some LSD on your
Speaker 2: person or perhaps in your bloodstream, the penalties are a
Speaker 2: possible misdemeanor. Yeah, but if you are convicted by a
Speaker 2: judge for possessing a small amount of LSD, the punishment
Speaker 2: can result in up to one year in a county
Speaker 2: jail cell, along with a seventy dollars fine.
Speaker 3: Should I should I call a tip line? No, you
Speaker 3: should not call a pard like Palo alto go to.
Speaker 2: Facebook's meta headquarters. Now, obviously this varies from state to state.
Speaker 2: If you're caught with acid on federal lands, like say
Speaker 2: a national park, then you can face federal penalties. For instance,
Speaker 2: for your first defense, the punishment is quote a fine
Speaker 2: of at least one thousand dollars in a prison sentence
Speaker 2: of up to one year. If it's your second federal
Speaker 2: charge for acid, it's quote a fine of at least
Speaker 2: two five hundred dollars and fifteen days to two years
Speaker 2: in prison. And if it's your third strike, you're looking
Speaker 2: at quote a fine of at least five thousand dollars
Speaker 2: ninety days to three years in prison.
Speaker 3: Doesn't it seem like a waste of time and resources?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You don't, Yeah, you're asking me, Yes.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I mean, if you're dropping acid in like a
Speaker 3: for a national forest, who cares.
Speaker 2: You know, my rule and stuff is if you aren't
Speaker 2: harming anybody, shouldn't be a crime, and that they argue
Speaker 2: that you're harming yourself and therefore we have to set
Speaker 2: you know, protect you from yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you can buy as much alcohol as you want.
Speaker 2: Well, you know they don't have strong lobbyists for LSD
Speaker 2: until now, until I get on the state, Like I'll.
Speaker 3: Be the lobbyist who's never taken LSD and loby forre it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that'd be a good one. Yeah, Like as
Speaker 2: a straight I want to tell you now you may
Speaker 2: be wondering, Zaren, if there's a possibility of going to
Speaker 2: state or federal prison for a year or more just
Speaker 2: for possessing acid, why would anyone risk it?
Speaker 3: Why would anyone risk it?
Speaker 2: Good question, Elizabeth, Thank you, And because as I can
Speaker 2: tell you firsthand, LSD can be incredible. Equally, it also
Speaker 2: can be a brutal bad trip, an everlasting nightmare for
Speaker 2: like six to eight hours or more. And Elizabeth, you
Speaker 2: just said you've never done acid novel once, right, not
Speaker 2: even micro dosed it with your Silicon.
Speaker 3: Valley friends, not that I know of.
Speaker 2: Well, since you don't know the LSD experience. Having never
Speaker 2: done it, I have some first hand accounts for you.
Speaker 2: Celebrity acid trips, yes, thank you, and because those are fun,
Speaker 2: even if they're not fun for the celebrities. Some good,
Speaker 2: some bad stories, but I promise all of them are ridiculous.
Speaker 3: I like it now.
Speaker 2: Netflix has a documentary called Have a Good Trip, Adventures
Speaker 2: and Psychedelics. It features a few great acid trip stories
Speaker 2: to get us started. It also has interesting commentary if
Speaker 2: you check it out, from a range of folks, from
Speaker 2: doctors who study LSD to Deepak Chopra who is just
Speaker 2: a casual acid fan. Oh really apparently so. One of
Speaker 2: my favorite interviews in this doc is with Carrie Fisher. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have celebrity drug stories. Carrie Fisher is gonna
Speaker 2: be a go to resource. So she says that she
Speaker 2: was introduced to acid by her one time boyfriend John Belushi.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I thought starting out, it's so good already, and.
Speaker 2: It turns out Carrie Fisher liked it. So by the
Speaker 2: time she's doing acid, she's already famous as Princess Leah.
Speaker 2: So she can't just drop a tab of acid and
Speaker 2: bounce around in la which means as she recalled for
Speaker 2: the documentary, she'd schedule acid trips in foreign look house.
Speaker 2: In foreign look that's what we call acid Chica, is
Speaker 2: Carrie Fisher put it quote, I would organize trips around
Speaker 2: to places in the world simply to take acid there.
Speaker 2: I would do these things and forget I look like
Speaker 2: someone named Princess Leah or whatever I was. For people then,
Speaker 2: and so it's not a brilliant idea to then take
Speaker 2: acid and go running around.
Speaker 3: Oh no.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine You're out to dinner with your friends,
Speaker 2: like in Bali, and all of a sudden, Princess Lea
Speaker 2: comes bounding by with a headful acid. Then she comes
Speaker 2: up to your table and tells you that your soul
Speaker 2: is radiating around your body like an undulating rainbow colored
Speaker 2: snake or whatever. I mean, acid or no acid, That
Speaker 2: just be trippy. Anyway, back to carry Fisher and her
Speaker 2: international Acid v cas. But yeah, I went to the
Speaker 2: Seychelles and we took acid. Oh my god, I was
Speaker 2: on the beach and there was no one else on
Speaker 2: the beach, and so I'm with my super eight movie camera.
Speaker 2: That's when this was all right, and I'm filming my
Speaker 2: friend and as this was going along. Suddenly, I since
Speaker 2: there'd been a disturbance in the forest, don't put that
Speaker 2: in They put it in Elyza because I just quoted
Speaker 2: it right now. I mean, how could you not if
Speaker 2: you're that documentary filmmaker. She made a psychedelic Star Wars joke. Okay,
Speaker 2: back to Kerry Fisher. We turn around and there is
Speaker 2: a bustload of Japanese folk that have just derived. And
Speaker 2: it turns out where we are is where they bring
Speaker 2: the tourists to have lunch from all the hotels. So
Speaker 2: this load of Japanese tourists, we're faced with a semi
Speaker 2: nude princess Leah and you just never see that coming
Speaker 2: as a tourist.
Speaker 3: Well, that's your job of the hut.
Speaker 2: Now. In that same documentary, the comic and fellow podcaster
Speaker 2: Mark Maron, he tells the story of him having a
Speaker 2: bad trip at wait for it, A Grateful Dead Show.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, that's like next level bad trip. Can you
Speaker 2: imagine having never taken acid? That is Mark Marin tells
Speaker 2: it quote, I'm literally just falling in my mind and
Speaker 2: I'm like, I gotta go to the emergency room. I
Speaker 2: can't handle this anymore. And there's this one of those
Speaker 2: dudes sitting in front of me. You used to see
Speaker 2: him at dead shows. They've clearly been on too many trips.
Speaker 2: They sort of move at a different frequency than other people.
Speaker 2: They're like, hey, man, like they've got this weird you know,
Speaker 2: like they can just like So what I'm doing is
Speaker 2: when words fail at him, that's when he's doing with
Speaker 2: these snake dance with his fingers before his face like
Speaker 2: a man. So Mark Barron then finishes this story about
Speaker 2: his bad trip by saying, how next. So I just
Speaker 2: tap him on the shoulder and I look at him.
Speaker 2: I go, you know, pretty soon Jerry's gonna come out
Speaker 2: and him and his guitar are gonna be like one thing.
Speaker 2: And this guy just looks at me and goes, just
Speaker 2: hang on, man, and he turns back around, and I'm like, okay.
Speaker 2: And that was like the best advice I ever got
Speaker 2: and I use it to this day. Yeah. So there
Speaker 2: you go, Elizabeth. If you ever decide to do acid,
Speaker 2: or someone like me ever secretly doses you, they think
Speaker 2: you know, they slip you acid while about without telling you,
Speaker 2: try to remember Mark Maren's words, because it actually is
Speaker 2: really good advice.
Speaker 3: Just hang on, man, I'm going to use that acid
Speaker 3: or no acid. That's why I need that every Just
Speaker 3: hang on right.
Speaker 2: That's how I heard Mark Maron saying it. This wasn't
Speaker 2: acid specific advice.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what we said to the little kitten
Speaker 3: hanging from the branch in the motivational poster. Just hang
Speaker 3: in there, hang in there, baby.
Speaker 2: Good deep pull thank you so fun fact, do you
Speaker 2: know which famous band known for their advocacy of LSD
Speaker 2: and also having a psychedelic period of their music were
Speaker 2: dosed the first time they took acid. You want to hint, please,
Speaker 2: I'll give you a hint. My name is John, and
Speaker 2: I also play guitar and sometimes play.
Speaker 3: The fool Oasis exactly.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was Oasis, so forgive my terrible impression of
Speaker 2: John Lennon, but it was the Beatles. So as George
Speaker 2: Harrison once told Dick Cabot, when we took the notorious
Speaker 2: wonder Jog LSD, we were having dinner with audentists.
Speaker 3: Well, you just have dinner with your dentist, Yes, and.
Speaker 2: Their dentists dosed them without them knowing. The first time
Speaker 2: John Lennon and George Harrison did acid it was when
Speaker 2: they were secretly dosed by their dentist at a dinner party.
Speaker 2: Doctor so As Georgia also recalled and he put it
Speaker 2: in a coffee and never told us and we'd never
Speaker 2: heard of it.
Speaker 3: That is assault, right, he literally is a crime.
Speaker 2: I cannot believe the Beatles dentist was just like my
Speaker 2: man Mark Defriest, the prison who dosing coffee with LSD.
Speaker 3: He's the fifth out of the dentists. The rest of
Speaker 3: them are recommending tried it.
Speaker 2: He's like in coffee, so like, I mean, that's just
Speaker 2: not cool to do to someone, even if you're trying
Speaker 2: to escape prison, but especially not cool if you're a
Speaker 2: dentist having dinner with the Beatles.
Speaker 3: And I fantasized, like I said before, about dosing the
Speaker 3: faculty is a faculty meeting. That was just daydreaming.
Speaker 2: No, you would never actually act on that.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to live out those spiraling thoughts. I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna he.
Speaker 2: Thought it was so fun to dose the like two
Speaker 2: Beatles and then took him out to a club. Well anyway,
Speaker 2: back to George Harrison to finish the story of his
Speaker 2: first trip. It's a good job that we hadn't heard
Speaker 2: about it because there's been so much paranoia created around
Speaker 2: the drug that people now if they take it, they're
Speaker 2: already on a bad trip before they stop, which is
Speaker 2: actually kind of true. He's basically pointing out that like
Speaker 2: the state of mind that you bring to acid or
Speaker 2: an acid trip is really indicative of the type of
Speaker 2: trip you will have.
Speaker 3: That is what has kept me from taking it, because
Speaker 3: I know I have such a thin like I feel
Speaker 3: like there's like a very thin veneer between me and
Speaker 3: absolutely losing it. You think, so, here is it? If
Speaker 3: I took a psychedelic like that, I would break my
Speaker 3: brain and not be able to come back.
Speaker 2: That's what's funny. That often is the cases that when
Speaker 2: people first do acid, they have this thought, am I
Speaker 2: always going to think like this? Am I never going
Speaker 2: to be normal again?
Speaker 3: I wouldn't even have that conscious question. I would just
Speaker 3: be like, like could be gone. You know, I have
Speaker 3: a hard time holding it to together m hm. Daily.
Speaker 3: I don't need to. I don't need to chance it.
Speaker 3: I don't I don't want to feel like. I don't
Speaker 3: go on roller coasters because I don't like the feeling
Speaker 3: like I'm gonna die. Yes, I like to play it safe.
Speaker 2: You don't watch horror movies either, do you know it's stupid.
Speaker 3: I don't want to feel I don't want to feel scared.
Speaker 3: I can do that in real life.
Speaker 2: That is so true. Well, that's our intro to what
Speaker 2: it's like to be on acid, to be given acid,
Speaker 2: and to be having a bad trip. Next up, we'll
Speaker 2: get into how acid became illegal and delve into the
Speaker 2: experiences of the first famous psycho. Not there ever was
Speaker 2: mister carry Grant, whoa Yes, let's take a break, and
Speaker 2: after these consumers Slogan's men will be back to trip
Speaker 2: the life and Angle and we're baby, you're ready to
Speaker 2: get sideways with the Beatles again?
Speaker 3: Please?
Speaker 2: Because I also happened to find in my research the
Speaker 2: story of the second time they took acid.
Speaker 3: They think they're all well documented.
Speaker 2: No, actually, surprisingly not, because I think they did it
Speaker 2: multiple times. Yeah, there's a lot of stories, especially for
Speaker 2: George Harrison. Well, the second time the Beatles ever took acid.
Speaker 2: After that first time with John and George getting dosed
Speaker 2: by their dentist, the next time they both took acid together,
Speaker 2: John and George they were in Hollywood. Fittingly, they were
Speaker 2: with Peter Fonda of Easy Rider fame. Sure right, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: Dennis Hopper to make it really fun. But yeah, so
Speaker 2: the two So the two Beatles, John and George just
Speaker 2: staying in la at a ranch house with Peter Fonda
Speaker 2: and the Band of the Birds. Oh, I thought you
Speaker 2: would like this. This was in late nineteen sixty five
Speaker 2: or early nineteen sixty six, when David Crosby was still
Speaker 2: in the group, And you know, David Crosby must have
Speaker 2: been a wild person to drop acid with.
Speaker 3: Oh God, I can only imagine.
Speaker 2: For whatever reason, John Lennon starts to have a bad trip,
Speaker 2: so Peter Fonda tries to like help him out, but
Speaker 2: everything he's saying only makes things worse, because apparently Peter
Speaker 2: Fonda was like getting in his face and telling John
Speaker 2: Lennon stuff like, oh, I know what it's like to
Speaker 2: be dead man, you know. So, and then it gets
Speaker 2: worse because then he pulls up his shirt to show
Speaker 2: John Lennon where he had shot himself. No, but not
Speaker 2: with a real gun, Elizabeth. He'd shot himself with a
Speaker 2: babie gun when he was a kid.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I've done that as an adult, but
Speaker 3: I show people.
Speaker 2: Somehow he thought this would help pull John Lennon out
Speaker 2: of his bad trips. Eventually, things get so bad for
Speaker 2: Lenin that he kicks Peter Fonda out of their little
Speaker 2: hazard party like you've got to go. Yeah, of course,
Speaker 2: And I guess Peter Fonda was such a bummer for
Speaker 2: the acid trip. John Lennon eventually did what songwriters do.
Speaker 2: He wrote a song about it.
Speaker 3: Oh, he did.
Speaker 2: There is a song that the Beatles like sing and
Speaker 2: put on a record that's about Peter Fonda giving him
Speaker 2: a bad trip on the Beatles album Revolver. Yeah, the song,
Speaker 2: she said, she said, And it's about his Peter Farness shape,
Speaker 2: which just goes to prove that acid won't always inspire
Speaker 2: great art because that song is not one of their best.
Speaker 2: But anyway, Elizabeth, how did acid become illegal?
Speaker 3: How did it become illegal?
Speaker 2: Fantastic question? Thank you for asking.
Speaker 3: You asked the best questions.
Speaker 2: LSD was accidentally discovered by the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty six, but at first he didn't do
Speaker 2: anything with it, but not for lack of trying, because
Speaker 2: in fact, he synthesized LSD twenty five times. That's why
Speaker 2: LSD is known as LSD twenty five.
Speaker 3: Oh is it?
Speaker 2: It was the twenty fifth batch he created.
Speaker 3: Like WD forty.
Speaker 2: Basically, No, it's the same like numbering system. So you see.
Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty six he was working at Sando's laboratories
Speaker 2: in Switzerland. That's the lab where saccharin was discovered. Oh interesting,
Speaker 2: and at the time, young Albert Hoffman was working with ergot,
Speaker 2: which is a fungus that grows on rye. You know
Speaker 2: as a baker. Yeah, one of the active compounds created
Speaker 2: by this fungus is lysergic acid. That's where we get
Speaker 2: the ls for LSD. That's what he was working with
Speaker 2: when he was trying to create his lysergic acid compounds.
Speaker 2: As he wrote, I had planned the synthesis of this
Speaker 2: compound with the intention of obtaining a circulatory and respiratory stimulant.
Speaker 2: The new substance, however, aroused no special interest in our
Speaker 2: pharmacologists and physicians. Testing was therefore discontinued. So LST was
Speaker 2: almost doomed to sit on a shelf, forgotten in some
Speaker 2: Swiss laboratory, never to see the light of day. But Hoffman,
Speaker 2: he just couldn't stop thinking about this LSD stuff. So
Speaker 2: years later, in nineteen forty three, he synthesized a new
Speaker 2: batch of LSD twenty five. Apparently he was working kind
Speaker 2: of sloppy that day, because some LSD twenty five, about
Speaker 2: twenty micrograms or so, gets onto his skin and his
Speaker 2: body absorbs it. Then he noticed about thirty and forty
Speaker 2: minutes later, these strange effects of this compound. Being a
Speaker 2: good scientist, Hoffman notes that he'd planned to experiment with
Speaker 2: his odd new compound. He's like, this stuff is crazy,
Speaker 2: I gotta try this again. So a couple days later,
Speaker 2: on April nineteenth, nineteen forty three, he experiments on himself.
Speaker 2: He doses himself, but don't worry. He had an assistant
Speaker 2: there to like baby sit his trip.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So at precisely four to twenty pm, just coincidental. On
Speaker 2: April nineteenth, again just coincidental, Hoffman diluted two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty micrograms of crystalline LSD twenty five and do ten
Speaker 2: c seeds of water. Forty minutes later, he's fully tripping,
Speaker 2: as he recorded in his lab notes. Beginning dizziness, feelings
Speaker 2: of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh,
Speaker 2: these are wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So then with his head full of acid, he decided
Speaker 2: it would be a good idea to ride his bike.
Speaker 2: Homb So sometime between six and eight pm he hops
Speaker 2: on his bike, accompanied by his assistant and who by
Speaker 2: the way, is not on acid, and he starts peddling
Speaker 2: his giggling ass home. Yeah, and he has a wild
Speaker 2: bike ride because, as he recalled in his lab notes
Speaker 2: and later a book he wrote about his LSD discovery quote,
Speaker 2: kaleidoscopic fantastic images surged in on me, alternating variegated opening
Speaker 2: and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding and
Speaker 2: colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux. It
Speaker 2: was particularly remarkable how every acoustic perception, such as the
Speaker 2: sound of a door handle or a passing automobile, became
Speaker 2: transformed into optical perceptions. Every sound generated a vividly changing
Speaker 2: image with its own consistent form and color. Hmm, right,
Speaker 2: so this is the world's first acid trip. Acid trip,
Speaker 2: Like he actually got himself off, not just like enough
Speaker 2: to microdose as he did the first time, And this
Speaker 2: time he's like doing pride men to double what the
Speaker 2: recommended dosage is. But it wasn't all rainbows and kaleidoscopic
Speaker 2: visions and engrossing sounds. It turned into trippy visuals because
Speaker 2: Hoffmann also had a bit of a bummer. He also
Speaker 2: had the world's first bad acid trip. Yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 2: he recalled how for part of that first acid trip
Speaker 2: he believed he was somewhere at the outer reaches of hell.
Speaker 3: Oh. What I mean, he says, is like anxiety and
Speaker 3: para paralysis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds terrible and you have no expectations of
Speaker 2: what it's going to be like, right, But thankfully the
Speaker 2: next day, Hoffman, when he wakes up, he's super pleased
Speaker 2: to find that his hellish trip had ended, as he
Speaker 2: felt once again himself. And that, as I said, that's
Speaker 2: the thing about your first acid trip, when you were
Speaker 2: in the thrall of LSD, you think, am I always
Speaker 2: going to be like this? Am I always gonna think
Speaker 2: like this? And will it ever be normal again? Luckily
Speaker 2: acid trips.
Speaker 3: Eventually end, yeah, you would hope.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, So there is I did find in my
Speaker 2: research is one guy who took acid and his trip
Speaker 2: never ended. He's been on it.
Speaker 3: That would be me. That would be me.
Speaker 2: That was pretty scary.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm afraid of. You. You saw me once
Speaker 3: eat an entire gummy.
Speaker 5: Yes, it was very low THC sure, and it was horrible.
Speaker 5: You're a very giggly was nonsense, aga, But I remember
Speaker 5: I had to keep sitting there saying this is going
Speaker 5: to be over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was holding onto the couch. At some point,
Speaker 3: this will be over. I tried taking him for like
Speaker 3: insomnia anxiety. I have to take like a little nibble.
Speaker 2: Like an ear off of.
Speaker 3: Micro doose ta gummies that are already the lowest percentage possible,
Speaker 3: and I just, oh, nothing anxiety inducing. I already produce
Speaker 3: them that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think you're chemically like already like
Speaker 2: leaning towards that.
Speaker 3: To keep telling yourself this is going to be over,
Speaker 3: This will end, this will be over. It's not fun. Well,
Speaker 3: you know for me.
Speaker 2: Now for the next decade. LSD twenty five it becomes
Speaker 2: this quiet kept secret amongst those in the know, And
Speaker 2: so there were folks who were They start experimenting with it.
Speaker 2: They go to the sand Dos laboratories, they order up
Speaker 2: some LSD pills they haven't sent over even to the America,
Speaker 2: to the States, and right away these folks on the inside.
Speaker 2: They see the potential for LSD as a therapeutic, as
Speaker 2: a way to treat certain mental illnesses personality complexes. And
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty seven, this British psychiatrist named Humphrey Osmond
Speaker 2: who was experimenting with LSD twenty five and he's all
Speaker 2: hyped on his potential for how acid can rewire the
Speaker 2: human brain. Right, so he goes to his friend, this
Speaker 2: writer named Aldus Huxley and he tells him all about it,
Speaker 2: all right, yeah, and obviously that leads to the doors
Speaker 2: of perception. But also he asked all this Huxley to
Speaker 2: help him come up with a term to describe this potential.
Speaker 2: Huxley suggests the word phanao thyme or phanrothyme, which is
Speaker 2: derived from the Greek words for the Greek roots rather
Speaker 2: for to show and for spirit, but to show spirit.
Speaker 2: The psychiatrist Ozma was like, yeah, no, thanks for playing
Speaker 2: all this, and he said he went with his own
Speaker 2: idea psychedelic, which comes from the Greek roots for soul
Speaker 2: and to make visible, So psychedelic means to make your
Speaker 2: soul visible. Now. The dude even came up with a
Speaker 2: little rhyme for his new word to fathom hell or
Speaker 2: sore angelic, just take a pinch of psychedelic.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, not a beatle. But now we associate these
Speaker 2: early days of acid with the hippies in nineteen sixties
Speaker 2: San Francisco, or perhaps Timothy Leary and his early acid
Speaker 2: tests back east at Harvard. One of the first big
Speaker 2: psychedelic advocates was living in la in the fifties and
Speaker 2: he was super famous. His name is Carrie Grant.
Speaker 3: I cannot believe this.
Speaker 2: Turns out Cary Grant was a super early psychedelic explorer,
Speaker 2: like starting in nineteen fifty eight or nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2: There's some discrepancy to when he started. But every Saturday morning,
Speaker 2: Carry Grant would have his driver take him over to
Speaker 2: the Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills. There he would sort
Speaker 2: of sneak in the back doors and know and saw
Speaker 2: him constantly going to this institute since he was so famous.
Speaker 2: And once inside, he'd go to this small room where
Speaker 2: there were easy chairs and a sofa and a record
Speaker 2: player to set the vibe, and Carry Grant would get
Speaker 2: sideways on LSD twenty five. He would take five pills
Speaker 2: shipped over from the Sandos Laboratory in Switzerland, and then
Speaker 2: he'd do a round of therapy with his psychiatrist, doctor
Speaker 2: Mortimer Hartman. Together they delve deep into Carry Grant's psyche,
Speaker 2: his past, his rough childhood back in Bristol, England.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sometimes when he was like listening to the classical music
Speaker 2: he really favored Chopin and Rockman and off, Carry Grant
Speaker 2: would break down in tears and just sob for hours.
Speaker 2: Other times he would just laugh and giggle and laugh
Speaker 2: some more as he reframed his past traumas. And sometimes
Speaker 2: he would do both.
Speaker 3: He's way out of his time completely.
Speaker 2: I mean like he's like a true psycho knot like
Speaker 2: an explorer, Like, yeah, he went to the moon before
Speaker 2: everyone else.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So when he was all done, his driver would then
Speaker 2: take him back home and he'd still be tripping, and
Speaker 2: then he would just be gazing out of the car
Speaker 2: windows as the weird and wonderful world was passing by. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he did this more than one hundred times. It
Speaker 2: lasted until nineteen sixty two, and Carry Grant said that
Speaker 2: LSD saved his life. That's a direct quote from him.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Now, Also Carry Grant didn't stop taking acid. In nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty two, he just stopped going to his psychotherapists for it, okay,
Speaker 2: but by then he'd stockpiled his own stash of acid,
Speaker 2: so he would just get twisted in the comfort of
Speaker 2: his mansion and he kept on tripping at home for
Speaker 2: like another decade. I'm talking well into the nineteen seventieses.
Speaker 3: I just recently read the memoir by John Perry Barlow,
Speaker 3: who's one of the Grateful Dead songwriters, sure, and he
Speaker 3: dropped an incredible amount of acid over his life. And
Speaker 3: he talks about how the your first trip, and he
Speaker 3: writes it really beautifully and how mind expanding it was,
Speaker 3: and how you know this incredible, beautiful experience, but that
Speaker 3: every subsequent trip is just like a riff off of that,
Speaker 3: Like he really opened the doors on the first one. Yes,
Speaker 3: so you think about carry Grant has like gone through
Speaker 3: this in the in like what I would think would
Speaker 3: be for me. The only kind of acceptable setting is
Speaker 3: like that kind of control around it. But so he's
Speaker 3: got it, he's opened those doors, and now he's able
Speaker 3: to just replicate it on his own. It's like when
Speaker 3: they say in therapy, well, now you have the tools.
Speaker 3: He has the tool.
Speaker 2: He definitely had the tools. He could like you know,
Speaker 2: hallucinate the tools in his hands and get to work.
Speaker 2: So the wild part for what he was doing, carry
Speaker 2: Grant was like and when he's doing acid, he didn't
Speaker 2: keep the secret in the fifties. In fact, quite the opposite.
Speaker 2: He talked about it in interviews with Time Magazine and in
Speaker 2: Look magazine the Washington Post. Carry Grant told Look Magazine
Speaker 2: about his acid trips and his state of euphoria about
Speaker 2: my self discoveries. He told their readers also about how
Speaker 2: during one trip, my mind seemed to leave my skull
Speaker 2: and visit out a space. Yeah. So not only that,
Speaker 2: carry Grant also told the readers of Ladies Home Journal
Speaker 2: and how great LSD was recommending that the housewives maybe
Speaker 2: get in on and this as well because at the
Speaker 2: same time they're also recommending MDMA for housewives. So this
Speaker 2: was not the only like substance and dexadene. Yeah, tofinitely,
Speaker 2: but these were ones that are supposed to like, you know,
Speaker 2: challenge things, not just help them like you know, clean
Speaker 2: faster or whatever. Now this is also, by the way,
Speaker 2: way before the hippies got ahold of acid, Carry Grant
Speaker 2: was Johnny Appleseed for LSD. Yeah, I mean he was
Speaker 2: like Johnny Apple LSD. Yeah. Now, meanwhile, his doctor, doctor
Speaker 2: Mortimer Hartman, he starts his own psychedelic psychotherapy in Beverly
Speaker 2: Hills for his rich clients who also wanted to see
Speaker 2: outer space with their mind's eye and like heal their
Speaker 2: traumas too. So as a result, unfortunately, this guy's medical
Speaker 2: license gets suspended in nineteen sixty one by the California
Speaker 2: Board of Medical Examiners because although at first LSD twenty
Speaker 2: five was seen as another like post war example of
Speaker 2: better living through cast, by the early sixties it becomes
Speaker 2: banned as a therapeutic. More on that in a second. Now,
Speaker 2: there was another major early California proponent of the psychological
Speaker 2: benefits of acid trips, when Claire Booth Loose, the daughter
Speaker 2: of the founder of Time in Life magazine, Henry Loose. Now,
Speaker 2: she was a Broadway playwright, later the ambassador to Italy
Speaker 2: appointed by Eisenhower. Then she becomes a Republican congresswoman for California,
Speaker 2: and in nineteen fifty nine she started to take an
Speaker 2: acid right around the same time as Carrie Grant, and
Speaker 2: also under the supervision of doctor Hartman. Well, his colleague
Speaker 2: actually is Sidney Cohen. Now, one of my favorite anecdotes
Speaker 2: is how during her very first acid trips she received
Speaker 2: a phone call and she answered the phone call, which
Speaker 2: I would not recommend if you're on acid, and there
Speaker 2: on the other end of the line was Richard Nixon.
Speaker 3: Oh you're kidding.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine your first time on acid? And suddenly
Speaker 2: Richard Nixon is in your ear, disembodied Richard Nixon. And
Speaker 2: by the way, Nixon desperately wanted something from her. He's like, no,
Speaker 2: just look, I just need a little flavor from you.
Speaker 2: Oh god, exactly. He Basically what Nixon was saying is
Speaker 2: he wanted her support for his upcoming run for president
Speaker 2: against jfk in nineteen sixty But Claire Lewis she couldn't
Speaker 2: handle a phone call in asses, so she told, you know,
Speaker 2: mister VP, I'm gonna need to call you back.
Speaker 3: So yeah, first, busy right now, totally I'm all.
Speaker 2: The sideways mister Nixon's, but firstually for her and Carry
Speaker 2: Grant and all these other rich folks in LA who
Speaker 2: were secretly taking acid for psychotherapy. In nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 2: the FDA began to ban access to LSD twenty five,
Speaker 2: which meant board certified physicians psychiatrists were no longer willing
Speaker 2: to risk their medical licenses to offer their clients LSD,
Speaker 2: which is why Kerry Grant secured his own stash and
Speaker 2: started doing acid at home. And then in sixty three
Speaker 2: there was the Harvard LSD scandal that involved Timothy Leary.
Speaker 2: That's when he gets kicked out of Harvard because there
Speaker 2: were ethical concerns.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then at that same time, the CIA was also
Speaker 2: experimenting with LSD as part of their super secret mk
Speaker 2: Ultra program, and they also stopped working with LSD for
Speaker 2: ethical concerns because they were trying to use it as
Speaker 2: a mind controlled drug. Now, in sixty three, things changed
Speaker 2: dramatically and the whole cultural combo about LSD starts to shift.
Speaker 2: As a result, the press changes its tone. No longer
Speaker 2: do you have carry Grant in Ladies Home Journal, So
Speaker 2: no more funding articles, right, And then in sixty six
Speaker 2: the FED banned LSD access all together as a medicine,
Speaker 2: so now you can't do any research experimentation. So forth.
Speaker 2: Two years later, in sixty eight, the fed's label LSD
Speaker 2: as a Schedule one drug, which put it in line
Speaker 2: with like freebase and crack cocaine and heroin, which is
Speaker 2: where it has remained to this day. And that Elizabeth
Speaker 2: is how LSD became an illegal street drug. But soon enough,
Speaker 2: thanks to the hippies openly defying the government and so
Speaker 2: they could just continue to drop acid or actually really
Speaker 2: start dropping acid. This is when acid becomes the star
Speaker 2: of a moral panic. Enter Ken Kesey, the writer of
Speaker 2: a novel One Flew Over the Cucko's Nest. You're familiar
Speaker 2: with his work now. He'd been a subject in the
Speaker 2: CIA's secret program MK Ultra, and specifically he was part
Speaker 2: of their legal experiments with LSD as a mine control drug.
Speaker 2: So he had first hand experience with LSD and he
Speaker 2: liked it. So after he gets out of the ultra
Speaker 2: secret CIA mind control program, and after he leaves the
Speaker 2: mental hospital which was his novel was based on, and
Speaker 2: then after he got rich and famous for the book
Speaker 2: he wrote about it, Yeah, the One Flew Over the
Speaker 2: Cucko's Nest, Keesy decides to help spread the gospel of LSD.
Speaker 2: This is nineteen sixty four, so this is just before
Speaker 2: LSD was banned and later labeled a Schedule one drug,
Speaker 2: but it was still in the limbo period. Keesey wants
Speaker 2: to go on this cross country acid pilgrimage to spread
Speaker 2: the word from sea to shining Sea. His plan buy
Speaker 2: a school bus loaded up with freaks like him and
Speaker 2: drive from his ranch in La Honda, California, across the
Speaker 2: country to where the nineteen sixty four World's Fair in
Speaker 2: New York City show up over the headful acid at
Speaker 2: the World's Fairs will love that. So he buys a
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine Harvester school bus, like one of the
Speaker 2: classic big yellow school buses. Then he asked Jack Kerouac's
Speaker 2: inspiration for his care directer Dean Moriarty from his book
Speaker 2: On the Road One, Neil Cassidy, to be the bus driver.
Speaker 2: Neil Cassidy's like, I ain't got anything to do right now.
Speaker 2: He eagerly accepts, and so they then name this bus
Speaker 2: further and then they call the folks who load up
Speaker 2: onto the bus the Mary Pranksters. The writer Tom Wolf
Speaker 2: he wrote a whole book about this and bust in
Speaker 2: the trip. It's called the Electric kool Aid Acid Test.
Speaker 2: There's also, by the way, a documentary film that recorded
Speaker 2: this whole epic road trip, and like ken Kesey brought
Speaker 2: like his four year old son on this trip. It
Speaker 2: is like a really irresponsible psychedelic trip. But you can
Speaker 2: see Neil Cassidy right the spirit of the Beat generation,
Speaker 2: all hopped up on amphetamines because that's what the Beats preferred,
Speaker 2: just like the jazz musicians who they revered like they're
Speaker 2: popping uppers and playing all night. So that's what he's doing.
Speaker 2: He's popping uppers and driving the bus, and then he's
Speaker 2: talking also that poetic beat talk the whole time. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the spirit of the hippies is being born right behind
Speaker 2: him on the bus because you can literally see one
Speaker 2: subculture pass the torch to the new subculture. It's wild.
Speaker 2: So at one point, Neil Cassidy he drives the bus
Speaker 2: off the road in Arizona, and this leads to like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's just while we're stuck here, have an impromptu acid party.
Speaker 2: So ken Kesey doses everyone with LSD, some people not
Speaker 2: knowing it, and together they all decide, let's paint the
Speaker 2: school bus. And that's where we get the look and
Speaker 2: the aesthetic of the psychedelic hippie thing like that bus
Speaker 2: trip literally launches the look and the spirit of the
Speaker 2: psychedelic Sextys, exactly everything you would associate with like Hate
Speaker 2: Ashbury nineteen sixty seven. It's on the side of that bus.
Speaker 2: And then came the first early ken Kesey inspired acid tests.
Speaker 2: When they get back to the California in sixty five.
Speaker 2: That's where you'd have like a whole party drop acid
Speaker 2: and a band would play and such as one of
Speaker 2: your favorite bands you mentioned them earlier, the Grateful Dead.
Speaker 2: They spontaneously would create a live soundtrack for these so
Speaker 2: called acid tests. But you know, soon after he starts
Speaker 2: this at ken Kesey has to skip out out of
Speaker 2: the country. Yeah, and he misses out on the whole
Speaker 2: summer of love. He doesn't see any of it actually
Speaker 2: occur because he had to flee the country and hop
Speaker 2: the border over to Mexico in nineteen sixty six, one
Speaker 2: step ahead of the law after they were after him
Speaker 2: for marijuana charges. Anyway, back to the Grateful Dead and
Speaker 2: their role in the acid test in sixty five, there
Speaker 2: was this first house party acid test, right, so the
Speaker 2: band not yet known as the Grateful Dead, they play
Speaker 2: their that first acid test. One week later they changed
Speaker 2: their band name to The Grateful Dead.
Speaker 3: See it was an inspiration, I.
Speaker 2: Have to assume as a result of the LSD, probably right.
Speaker 2: And so then they played the second acid test. It
Speaker 2: was in santase in the backyard of what would become
Speaker 2: the Silicon Valley. So the Grateful Dead were so into
Speaker 2: this new acid scene that they start playing acid test
Speaker 2: house parties for the next full year. Yeah, a whole
Speaker 2: year of acid and just playing soundtrack in parties. This
Speaker 2: creates the popularity, like the underground cool of this scene
Speaker 2: that then it kind of creates and promotes this new
Speaker 2: spirit in the Bay Area specifically. Then it takes hold
Speaker 2: in the hate Ashbury where they have a house, and
Speaker 2: then that bursts forth in the Summer of sixty seven
Speaker 2: as aka the Summer of Love in San Francisco, and
Speaker 2: that's when the rest of the world is introduced to
Speaker 2: hippies and psychedelia. Now is a both know nothing lasts forever,
Speaker 2: and so that fun, buoyant, experimental spirit of the Summer
Speaker 2: of Love, it doesn't last. It eventually gives way to
Speaker 2: back to the land communes, which kind of often turn
Speaker 2: and devolve into cults and some other weird behavior, and
Speaker 2: then this whole spirit it gets swept under the cocaine
Speaker 2: fuel disco scene of the nineteen seventies. So it really
Speaker 2: only lasted for three years, maybe four, depending on how
Speaker 2: you want to count them. But there you go. That's
Speaker 2: how LSD became illegal. Take a little break, drink some
Speaker 2: orange juice to keep this trip going, man, And so
Speaker 2: we listen to some more consumeris ads. Brother. When we
Speaker 2: get back, we'll dip back into some more epic acid
Speaker 2: trips and as I as I told you, these will
Speaker 2: be from celebrities like Keith Richards and John Lennon. They
Speaker 2: took an acid road trip together.
Speaker 4: What yes back in two and two?
Speaker 2: Elizabeth, are you enjoying the psychedelic kick very much?
Speaker 3: I'm enjoying it very much.
Speaker 2: I figure it's a Bay Area story largely. It's also
Speaker 2: just something that I'm not sure how familiar you are
Speaker 2: with all this stuff. I know you know about the
Speaker 2: Grateful Dead. You read the book by the songwriter, so
Speaker 2: you're very familiar with the LSD culture. Yeah, But like
Speaker 2: I just wasten really fascinated by all this in my
Speaker 2: research was fascinating, especially the Albert Hoffman stuff. I didn't
Speaker 2: know any of that, nor did I. So Okay, so
Speaker 2: far I've tried to convey to you the fullness of
Speaker 2: the appeal and the dangers of acid.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now are you ready to hear a wild one about
Speaker 2: the medical possibilities of LSD?
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 2: There's this woman who once accidentally took five hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty times the normal amount one would take of acid.
Speaker 2: It sent her into one hillacious trip. Yeah, and when
Speaker 2: she came out of it, her lime disease was cured.
Speaker 2: I got true story. The woman apparently had contracted lime
Speaker 2: disease in her twenties, and then the disease gave her
Speaker 2: this like debilitating pain in her like legs, her feet,
Speaker 2: her ankles. Yeah, she lives with this pain for decades
Speaker 2: until one day in her forties. And this was in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen. Okay, she takes a bunch of acid with
Speaker 2: some friends, like, way, way too much.
Speaker 3: Took that much.
Speaker 2: No, the guy who gave them the acid, it was
Speaker 2: liquid acid. He misread the dosage for how much pure
Speaker 2: crystalline LSD twenty five, So instead of a reasonable recreational dosage,
Speaker 2: she took fifty five milligrams, So five hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: times the normal dose of acid.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Also, by the way, she didn't expect it to be acid.
Speaker 2: She thought the crystal she was taking was cocye en.
Speaker 3: Wait wait, okay, stop.
Speaker 2: So she thought she was taking like the coke and
Speaker 2: Ted turned to tink. Sure, yeah, I guess. So, I
Speaker 2: don't know how some people like they put it in
Speaker 2: like they can't snort it anymore, so they put it
Speaker 2: in juice or the Yeah. Instead, it's don't judge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm judging over here.
Speaker 2: So what happens when.
Speaker 3: I mean, I got the robe in the gavel?
Speaker 2: I noticed that, and you got the wig on. Where
Speaker 2: are you from?
Speaker 3: It's England?
Speaker 2: So what happens when she takes five hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: times the normal dose of acid? She explodes, No, the
Speaker 2: answer is nothing, good, nothing.
Speaker 3: But it had been like like an MRI or a
Speaker 3: CT scan going at this oh at the.
Speaker 2: Same time, Well, the medicine does get involved.
Speaker 3: Scan would be cool.
Speaker 2: That'd be had to watch it as it's happening, see
Speaker 2: the holes in her brain form or exactly so. At first, though,
Speaker 2: she she blacks out that's her body in response, and
Speaker 2: then when she comes to, she just starts to puke
Speaker 2: her brains out, like because.
Speaker 3: She redlined every system in her body.
Speaker 2: Completely bodies like reverse course eject eject. And then this,
Speaker 2: by the way, her puking or her like long pukethon,
Speaker 2: it lasts for the next twelve hours, for twelve hours,
Speaker 2: head full of acid. She just keeps puking. God this
Speaker 2: and then during the next twelve hours after that, still
Speaker 2: deep in her pukefon, puking up what little you know water,
Speaker 2: she has her BiH. Yeah, she finds that this hillacious
Speaker 2: part had kind of passed and now she was quote
Speaker 2: pleasantly high apparently, and other than of course the constant vomiting,
Speaker 2: so you know, there's that pagombini od acid. I just
Speaker 2: can't imagine how that would be horrendous. But anyway, ten
Speaker 2: hours after this, she's finally able to utter more than
Speaker 2: a few random words of gibberish. Soon enough, she's able
Speaker 2: to listen to her roommate and her eyes stop lolling
Speaker 2: around in her head, and then she starts being able
Speaker 2: to spit out like more than just a few random words,
Speaker 2: but she's actually able to like hold a conversation until
Speaker 2: Finally she's able to come down, and then she's able
Speaker 2: to fall asleep.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: The next day she wakes up and she discovers shocker
Speaker 2: of all shockers, her debilitating pain from the lime disease gone.
Speaker 3: Wow, her feet.
Speaker 2: And ankles no longer ached. Then she found that after
Speaker 2: three days the pain it did come back, but she
Speaker 2: could treat it by popping a low dose of morphine
Speaker 2: and a microdose of LSD.
Speaker 3: Sure, the morphine's going to help the pain.
Speaker 2: She'd been taking a high dose of morphine for her pain.
Speaker 2: She just ratcheted down to a low dose and then
Speaker 2: the micro dose of LSD. So she keeps this regimen
Speaker 2: up for two years, and then she weans herself off
Speaker 2: of the morphine and then just stops microdosing LSD. By
Speaker 2: January of twenty eighteen, totally pain free. The LSD had
Speaker 2: cured her lyme disease. Wow, that's said. There was a
Speaker 2: bit of a trade off, because she did experience an
Speaker 2: increase in her anxiety, her depression, and her desire for
Speaker 2: social withdrawal. So there is that. So now she can dance,
Speaker 2: but she doesn't want to dance near anybody she's got.
Speaker 2: There's always something, So it wasn't a perfect cure.
Speaker 3: All what I seemed to have some suffering.
Speaker 2: Aren't we all? That's what the Buddhists tell me exactly. Now,
Speaker 2: to be clear, I'm not saying anyone should take mega
Speaker 2: looads of acid to try to cure their product pain.
Speaker 2: But I am saying is that, like Albert Hoffman believed,
Speaker 2: LSD twenty five is a strange wonder drug and quite
Speaker 2: possibly has many therapeutic uses for human being. Yeah, we
Speaker 2: just don't know what they are because people aren't allowed
Speaker 2: to experiment with acid.
Speaker 3: That's the worst part of that.
Speaker 2: Now, unlike many other street drugs, there's never been a
Speaker 2: documented fatal overdose of LSD. Okay, this woman got the
Speaker 2: closest that we are ever. Yeah, but she lives because
Speaker 2: apparently scientists they theorized it's possible. They think that fourteen
Speaker 2: thousand micrograms is the likely threshold for a fatal overdose
Speaker 2: of acid, which, if you're keeping scores, about two and
Speaker 2: a half times what this woman took. The lime disease sufferer,
Speaker 2: she was right like almost redlining fatal dosage.
Speaker 3: It feels like a total CSI episode. Yeah, that someone
Speaker 3: gets a fatal dose of Ells.
Speaker 2: He watched CSI I used to have, like you didn't
Speaker 2: even go to like house or like some of the
Speaker 2: funner medical It's like.
Speaker 3: A kind of yeah, it's like a silly, campy thing.
Speaker 2: I mostly know it from like the memes and like
Speaker 2: my mother telling me she was watching it. So I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I don't really know CSI. I do know the beginning
Speaker 2: where he puts the sunglasses on.
Speaker 3: That's the Miami one I never watched.
Speaker 2: Oh that's the Miami one. That's not the og No.
Speaker 3: That's a vague. Oh, actually the Vegas.
Speaker 2: I take it all back. You were like deep in
Speaker 2: the cut.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically all the time.
Speaker 2: Now I mentioned earlier, and we haven't quite gotten it
Speaker 2: to this yet, but we can't skip over it. Where
Speaker 2: does Keith Richards fit into all this acid top?
Speaker 3: That is the question on my mind right.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks for keeping me on track, Elizabeth, no problem.
Speaker 2: Like I said up top, one time, John Lennon and
Speaker 2: Keith Richards took an acid road trip together. We know
Speaker 2: this because Keith Richards wrote about it in his twenty
Speaker 2: ten memoir Life Now. This happened in neither nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: seven or nineteen sixty eight. Keith Richard doesn't exactly remember
Speaker 2: what year it was. I mean, can you blame the man,
Speaker 2: but we do know he was deep in a psychedelic space.
Speaker 2: So it was in that period. Now, Elizabeth, it may
Speaker 2: surprise you to hear that John Lennon and Keith Richards
Speaker 2: would do acid together. Since they weren't exactly known to
Speaker 2: be big fans of each other. He kind of actually
Speaker 2: had like, you know, like a falling out like a
Speaker 2: long time. But at least they would snipe each other
Speaker 2: in the press. Yeah, right, But that all comes later,
Speaker 2: because in sixty seven or sixty eight they were still friendly,
Speaker 2: and so they had with them a quart of acid
Speaker 2: liquid and they decided to take a road trip together.
Speaker 2: They could have so much coffee. So by then John
Speaker 2: Lennon had already been dosed by his dentist and he
Speaker 2: had endured the bummer bad trip at Peter Fonda, so
Speaker 2: you know, he knew what he was in for, and
Speaker 2: surprisingly he was still willing to get sideways with Keith Richards. Now,
Speaker 2: in his memoir, Keith says that their epic acid road
Speaker 2: trip was an episode of such extremes that can barely
Speaker 2: piece together a fragment, right, he doesn't remember any of it.
Speaker 2: The story goes, though, he actually had to go and
Speaker 2: like talk to someone else who was on the trip
Speaker 2: with them, be like what do you remember, so he
Speaker 2: could get the stick piece together his fragmented memory. So
Speaker 2: the story goes, the two weren't together in London at
Speaker 2: a nightclub in Hyde Park when the idea came to them.
Speaker 2: It was like in the small hours of the morning,
Speaker 2: like two three in the morning, when the idea was like,
Speaker 2: we should take a bunch of acid and drive across England,
Speaker 2: and like that's when that sounds like a good idea
Speaker 2: in the small hours of the morning right now. So
Speaker 2: there's Purple out just before dawn when their adventure begins,
Speaker 2: there's John Lennon and Keith Richards, and with them is
Speaker 2: also Carrie Anne Mohler. I don't expect you to know
Speaker 2: who that is, no, but if you're wondering, she was
Speaker 2: the wife of Mick Jagger's younger brother, Chris Jagger.
Speaker 3: Chris Jagger, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Why is Chris Jagger's wife going on a road trip
Speaker 2: with Keith Richards and John Lennon. I just kind of
Speaker 2: freaky like that. I don't know. I won't judge. That
Speaker 2: would be my turn not to judge. So they also
Speaker 2: had Keith Richards driver his chauffeur with them. Thank god
Speaker 2: they had a show. So because Keith Richards remembers it,
Speaker 2: it was one of those cases of John wanting to
Speaker 2: do more drugs than me.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you right, that's serious that if you
Speaker 2: want to outpace Keith Richards on drugs like danger danger
Speaker 2: ye flash the lights yea. So also, by the way,
Speaker 2: I should point out, they had quite a drug stash
Speaker 2: with them, as Keith tells it, they had a.
Speaker 6: Huge bag of weed, a lump of hash and acid
Speaker 6: court so they get tuned up on the acid.
Speaker 2: They're smoking the hash and the weed and they're like,
Speaker 2: let's hit the road. Their first place they decided to
Speaker 2: go is John Lennon's place, and at this time he
Speaker 2: was married with his with his wife Cynthia, and they
Speaker 2: lived in a rural country manor. So, as Keith tells it,
Speaker 2: they popped out to Lennon's country home and said hi
Speaker 2: to Cynthia. So perhaps it was to get permission for
Speaker 2: John Lennon to disappear for like three days or something.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I guess she gave him the green
Speaker 2: flag to go because boom, now they're off on their
Speaker 2: merry way.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Heads full of acid, they tell the shrif for drive
Speaker 2: them to their next proposed stop on their magical mystery tour,
Speaker 2: which was Carrie Anne Muller's mother's place.
Speaker 3: Why, like the extended family tree on this is amazing, right, there's.
Speaker 2: Like, hey, we should go see my mom. She's always
Speaker 2: wanted to meet you, John, So they go. I guess
Speaker 2: it made sense at the time. Who knows her mother
Speaker 2: lived at the English seaside in this little town, and
Speaker 2: they planned to show up unannounced, twisted on acid and
Speaker 2: arrived just in time for breakfast. What a treat that
Speaker 2: would be, right, Or, as Keith tells it, what a
Speaker 2: nice visit for her mother.
Speaker 6: A couple of flying acid heads who've been up for
Speaker 6: a couple of nights.
Speaker 2: We got there about dawn. Yeah. So, however, Keith means
Speaker 2: their mother's little seaside town because before they show up
Speaker 2: at her mother's house, they decide to stop at a cafe. Why.
Speaker 2: Once again, I have no idea. Maybe they wanted to
Speaker 2: coffee to kind of sober up. Maybe they just wanted
Speaker 2: some bangers in mash who knows no idea. Maybe I
Speaker 2: wanted English breakfast, you know, put some beans on my plate. No,
Speaker 2: so they decide, you know, but well, rather than speculate, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: let's just dive into this weird little moment of rock history.
Speaker 2: I'd like you, if you'd be so kind to Elizabeth, I'd
Speaker 2: like you to close your eyes. I'd like you to
Speaker 2: picture it. It's early in the morning. I'm talking super early,
Speaker 2: which is unfortunate because you're up. Why because you're a
Speaker 2: cafe cat, you know, like one of those cats that
Speaker 2: lives in a cafe and the type of gets to
Speaker 2: wander around because customers find you charming. Plus you're well behaved.
Speaker 2: You don't hop up on the customer's tables, you don't
Speaker 2: break glasses or crockery. Like I said, you're well behaved.
Speaker 2: And at the moment, you're working on a saucer of milk.
Speaker 2: As you lap it up, purring to yourself. Happy in
Speaker 2: your early morning moment, you sense a disturbance in the force.
Speaker 2: You look up from your saucerful of milk and you
Speaker 2: see the lone waitress for this early morning shift of
Speaker 2: regulars staring out the window. She has stopped flat footed
Speaker 2: and is gawking at something outside the window. One of
Speaker 2: the early morning regulars calls over to her and asks
Speaker 2: for a fresh cup of tea. He taps a tea
Speaker 2: spoon against his cup that brings the waitress round. She
Speaker 2: walks over to his table, teapot in hand. Her shoes
Speaker 2: squeaks softly against the freshly cleaned floor. She apologizes for
Speaker 2: the awkward pause at the window and pours a fresh
Speaker 2: cup of It's English breakfast. It's always English breakfast. The
Speaker 2: din of conversation is a pleasant backdrop. As you return
Speaker 2: to your attention of the saucer of milk, you laugh
Speaker 2: up the heavy cream deliciousness, enjoying each tongue ful. That's
Speaker 2: when you hear it. The bell over the cafe door chimes.
Speaker 2: The door sweeps open, and standing there in the doorway
Speaker 2: are three young folks who immediately stop dead in their tracks.
Speaker 2: They stand there in the open doorway. The moment seems
Speaker 2: to last interminably long. You watch them, and all of
Speaker 2: the morning regulars in the cafe stop what they're doing
Speaker 2: to turn and watch them. The cafe is now silent,
Speaker 2: until without any reason that you can detect the three
Speaker 2: young folks who are grinning like idiots and look like
Speaker 2: they've been up all night. They all burst out laughing.
Speaker 2: They practically fall over themselves with a wicked case of
Speaker 2: the giggles. They find something who knows terribly funny, but
Speaker 2: no one in this cafe shares the joke. After the
Speaker 2: three young folks stop laughing, they step through the open doorway,
Speaker 2: first the young woman with the crazy messed up hair,
Speaker 2: then the young men. The ganglier of the two young
Speaker 2: men steps through first. He's followed by the second young man,
Speaker 2: the one wearing glasses that look like he borrowed them
Speaker 2: from his grandmother. The three laughing idiots take a seat
Speaker 2: at the counter. They jostle each other as they get situated,
Speaker 2: some more titters of laughter. The one wearing his grandma's
Speaker 2: glasses pipes up, boy, can we get a spot of service?
Speaker 6: Love?
Speaker 2: That sends the three idiots into another laughing fit. The
Speaker 2: waitress rolls her eyes and walks over to them. She
Speaker 2: brings with her the pot of English breakfast teeth. She
Speaker 2: greets them with no love in her voice. Something funny
Speaker 2: to you lot. The ganglier one with the shaggy hair,
Speaker 2: he pipes up, you know you don't need to be
Speaker 2: on about us. We just want an English breakfast. Mom.
Speaker 2: The waitress screws up her face into a look of
Speaker 2: serious disdain. She didn't wake up this early to be
Speaker 2: talked to like this by a bunch of young, shaggy
Speaker 2: haired mop tops. And that's when it hits her. She
Speaker 2: knows the one who looks like he's wearing his grandma's glasses.
Speaker 2: It's that mouthy beetle John what's his name? He sees it,
Speaker 2: He sees the moment of her recognition, and you see
Speaker 2: the laughter drain out of him. His face changes in
Speaker 2: an instant. The waitress says, you're that loud mouth lad
Speaker 2: from the Beetles. That you you, John Lennon. He breaks
Speaker 2: eye contact with the waitress. You don't know the term,
Speaker 2: but if you did know the term, you'd say she's
Speaker 2: fully harshed his mellow. Or perhaps you might say she's
Speaker 2: bummed out as high. Either one would work. She's not done,
Speaker 2: She says, yeah, that's you, all right. You're that pissy
Speaker 2: little wink on the radio. The other young felle speaks
Speaker 2: up to as h he recognized me, love. The waitress
Speaker 2: gives him the stink eye and says flatly, now, who
Speaker 2: are you? That brings him right down to earth, just
Speaker 2: the same as the one in his grandma's glasses. The
Speaker 2: young woman doesn't say anything until finally she asks, is
Speaker 2: that English breakfast tea? Before the waitress can answer, the
Speaker 2: one she recognized, the beatle John Lennon stands up and announceays,
Speaker 2: come on, Keith, come on, carry Anne. I can't be
Speaker 2: anymore this place gives me the no goodies. The ganglier
Speaker 2: one agrees, yeah, mate, let's piss off, And just like
Speaker 2: that they all stand up. The morning regulars will watch
Speaker 2: them go. The bell over the door chimes once more,
Speaker 2: and the door closes behind them, and then someone says,
Speaker 2: what a bunch of daft, And now it's the regular's
Speaker 2: turn to all laugh at them. So there you go, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: the no goodies.
Speaker 3: I've got the new goodies.
Speaker 2: So there you go, Elizabeth. That's when Keith, John Lennon
Speaker 2: and Mick Jagger's little brother's wife, Carrie Anne all realized
Speaker 2: precisely just how high they were. According to Keith Richards,
Speaker 2: when they walked into that cafe, not only was it
Speaker 2: like throwing cold water in their faces. You have to
Speaker 2: keep in mind This is at the tail end of Beatlemania,
Speaker 2: and so John Lennon never knew when people would lose
Speaker 2: their minds in his proximity. So can you only imagine
Speaker 2: how wild it must have been to be a beetle
Speaker 2: and be on acid in public.
Speaker 3: Oh if people just in your face, making faces and screaming.
Speaker 2: Wanting things from you, having all these opinions about you,
Speaker 2: trying to grab stuff from you. Yeah. So at this point,
Speaker 2: not only did three of them on their magical Mystery
Speaker 2: Tour acid road trip realize how twisted they were, they
Speaker 2: all realized what a bad idea it would be to
Speaker 2: go to Carrie Anne's mother's house in the state they were. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So instead they popped over to a beach. I'm there.
Speaker 2: They enjoyed the rest of their acid trip on their own, or,
Speaker 2: as Keith tells it, that palm trees.
Speaker 6: So it looks as if we like sat on the
Speaker 6: Tolkay palm lined esplanade for a great many hours, engrossed
Speaker 6: in a little world of.
Speaker 2: I own smart right. Non Surprisingly, Keith Richards is an
Speaker 2: unreliable narrator for his own life because he doesn't remember
Speaker 2: what else they did for the next day or so.
Speaker 2: After they laid about on the esplanade at that shore.
Speaker 2: But he sums it up like.
Speaker 6: This, there follow therefore some missing hours because we didn't
Speaker 6: get back to John's house until after dark.
Speaker 2: Now I am happy to report though, as Keith finished
Speaker 2: up his tale of their acid road trip, we got
Speaker 2: home and so everyone was happy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know that is the measure of success.
Speaker 2: Did you make it home? And did you have everyone
Speaker 2: with you?
Speaker 3: And were they happy?
Speaker 2: Yeah? O good point and so. And also their chauffeur
Speaker 2: was there, I think, kind of like as their trip babysitter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so helpful.
Speaker 2: We can also hear the story, but we never do
Speaker 2: hear this story from John Lennon's perspective because he never
Speaker 2: spoke of it publicly, because why would he. But John
Speaker 2: Lennon also had even less of a memory of the
Speaker 2: chain of events of this road trip than Keith Richards did,
Speaker 2: because I remember he was doing more drugs, right. So,
Speaker 2: as Keith tells it.
Speaker 6: Johnny and I about this sometimes he is later in
Speaker 6: New York and he would ask what happened on that trip?
Speaker 2: So there you go. That concludes our little acid field
Speaker 2: trip through the world of LSD twenty five. What's a
Speaker 2: ridiculous takeaway here, Elizabeth, I wanted.
Speaker 3: To keep away from the no goodies, right.
Speaker 2: I think that's just true in all things acid or
Speaker 2: no acid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what about you? Oh wow?
Speaker 2: Thank you for asking. As somebody who's done his fair
Speaker 2: bit of acid when I was a much younger man,
Speaker 2: I will say, don't feel any compulsion to do it
Speaker 2: because you know, take in mind all these bad trips
Speaker 2: these people have, but also don't be afraid of it.
Speaker 2: But it is what you bring to it, So you know,
Speaker 2: try to be like Keith Richards, unafraid, fancy and open
Speaker 2: minded and foxy. Yes they do. So you're the mood
Speaker 2: for a talkback to race away all of this acid.
Speaker 3: Hangover ice most certainly, am day.
Speaker 2: Can you favors the one? Oh god?
Speaker 7: I hi, Elizabeth and Jaren. I just heard my talkback
Speaker 7: about the cours Bear smuggling from California to Chicago. Just
Speaker 7: wanted to clarify that was on a Navy P three aircraft,
Speaker 7: So the Navy was helping us smuggle Couris beer from
Speaker 7: California to Chicago.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 7: I think that's even more ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Hell, yes, smoking the bandit in the skies on Navy
Speaker 2: aircraft way more ridiculous. Good dude, I love our dudes.
Speaker 2: Thank you guys for these are the talkbacks kill us.
Speaker 2: We were really very much looking forward to listening to
Speaker 2: what you guys have out there, and this that's an
Speaker 2: excellent one. Thank you, brother huh. As always, you can
Speaker 2: find us online Ridiculous Crime on social media, and we
Speaker 2: now have our account, Ridiculous Crime Pod on YouTube. Go
Speaker 2: check it out, leave a comment like subscribe, Tell your mama,
Speaker 2: your daddy, you greasy, greasy granny. We also have our website,
Speaker 2: Ridiculous Crime dot com. And uh, you know, Elizabeth, I
Speaker 2: found out recently T Shirt Makers of America have nominated
Speaker 2: on our website for the website of the Year for
Speaker 2: T shirt makers.
Speaker 3: You're kidding, I know.
Speaker 2: And because we have merch on there, it was a
Speaker 2: really big deal. I was like, wait, we're a T
Speaker 2: shirt maker. We weren't nominated for T shirt making. We
Speaker 2: were dominated just.
Speaker 3: For the websita. I'll take what I can get.
Speaker 2: But anyway, if you like our if we want some merch,
Speaker 2: go check out the website. We got a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 2: That's where you get a sloth T shirt. Now, obviously,
Speaker 2: as I said, We love your talkback, so go the
Speaker 2: iHeart app, download it, record a talkback, reach out to us,
Speaker 2: and maybe you'll get to hear your voice on here.
Speaker 2: We'd love to hear it. And what else. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: it's Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. We'd love your
Speaker 2: emails also, so please go TYPEE, type type and then
Speaker 2: people pop up and send it right off to us,
Speaker 2: and the interns will hand us over the emails and
Speaker 2: be like, oh laugh. Maybe we'll read it on the air.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe.
Speaker 2: So that's all I got for you, but uh, we'll
Speaker 2: be back next time and we will catch you next crime.
Speaker 2: Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett,
Speaker 2: produced and edited by the Groovous Dude on This Psychedelic
Speaker 2: Bus maybe Ave Coustin, and starring annals Rucker as Judith.
Speaker 2: Research is by Keith Richards ghostwriter Marissa Brown. Our theme
Speaker 2: song is by our Resident Grateful Dead cover band The
Speaker 2: Hopeful Alive Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. The host wardrobe
Speaker 2: provided by Bontany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by
Speaker 2: Sparkleshock and mister Andre. Executive producers are Neil Cassidy's beat
Speaker 2: poetry beat boxer Ben Bolin, and Ken Kesey's backup bus
Speaker 2: driver Noel Brown.
Speaker 3: Red Why Say It one more Time? Geek Yes Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.