My Modest Drug Years

I was never a true hippie, though for several years in the late 60s (that would be the 1960s; the “60s” now can also refer to my current age) I was something of a faux participant in the movement. I played in a couple of rock and roll bands and several folk groups. I dressed in costumes of varying hilarity that mimicked the album covers – leather, tie-dye, paisley, sandals or boots, army surplus (for irony, not to mention cost). I worked briefly at a college/hippie bar and wrote for the mimeographed Wichita Free Press. I drove all night to hear Jimi Hendrix play at Red Rocks in Denver. I participated in several anti-war demonstrations during the Vietnam War (though mostly for the social benefits they offered). I spent the summer of 1969 in something of a commune in Berkeley, though it was in a million dollar mansion in the hills, with a cleaning woman and a gardener (but that’s another story). I was tear-gassed at a People’s Park demonstration that summer. And that summer was also the first – and only – time that I took LSD.

I took (we used to say “experimented with”) a variety of drugs for roughly a ten-year period from the mid-60s through the mid-70s, or high school through college: marijuana (of course), Hashish (once maybe laced with cocaine), speed, peyote, psilocybin, amyl nitrate, and LSD. But except for the pot, I only “experimented” one or two or a few times with each of the drugs. One of the reasons for this is that I never saw much reason for doing it. Sure, it fucked your mind up, sometimes in interesting ways, sometimes in frightening ways. The first time I took LSD in Berkeley was a pleasant experience of mindless incoherence. But the second time was a night of seeing demons in a candle, thoughts of flying off a balcony, and shivering in a fetal position in bed while imagining this must be death. But other than that, most of my drug experimentation led only to my belief that our perception of reality, and perhaps life itself, is little more than chemical reactions in the brain (a common insight brought about by even moderate drug use).

My ambivalence toward drugs is supported by the fact that during this decade of occasional usage I never once paid for any of the substances I partook of. All of the drugs that I ingested were given to me by roommates, girlfriends, friends of the band, or hapless party-goers at some college/hippie soiree. But I never wanted drugs. If they were there, and offered, I’d most likely try them out, unless I’d tried them before and had a bad experience, or a “so what?” experience. I guess I was something of a pragmatic druggy. Why pay for something that I didn’t want or need – and that I could usually get for free? And as I think about it, I’ve carried that attitude, perhaps learned during my modest drug years, throughout my life since. So I guess drug use can, after all, provide a positive life lesson.