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