What I Was Wrong About (a multipart series)

"Acid is good for you"

Wrong.

Back when drugs were good for you I used to think that if only everybody would drop a little acid the world would be a better place. There would be no more wars, no strife since everyone would feel the interconnectedness of being that makes us all one. I didn't figure on Moonies, Manson, Hare Krishnas, Jesus Freaks and Scientologists arisng out of the drug addled brew of the Sixties. You loose your anchor to reality often enough and any kind of structure starts to look pretty good. I used to say that everyone should try acid "at least once". I'm not so sure. Some people have natural schizophrenic tendencies and are already halfway round the bend and a little drug induced pareidolia might just send them all the way around the benderer. I think all the great religious traditions started with a little charismatic paranoia, maybe helped along with a few mind altering substances.

As for me, I figured that if a little acid, once in a while, could give me a little insight, a lot of acid, all the time, would give me a lot of insight. A word of warning for you late blooming hippies out there: if you drop acid 3 or 4 times a week for an entire semester, your school work may suffer. Do you know what it means when you walk into a room and turn around and watch yourself walk into yourself, when the sky splits open in the middle of the day and you see stars and the devil's in the tree and your friend is Jesus and you're St. Paul and you look into the eyes of your soul mate and realized you are tied together for all eternity in a neverending ascending and descending mirror universe, living out all your past, present and future lives simultaneously with the backdrops changing as you move through time caught in the instant of perfect love?

Well, it means you got ahold of some pretty good acid. It also means that you might want to tone it down a bit, for you might find, as I did, that when you start to emerge from that chaotic internal funny farm that you have created for yourself, that your friend isn't Jesus, you're not St. Paul and your soul mate just isn't that fond of you after all.