Much of the recent Woodstock nostalgia has included accounts of how there were all these kids having “bad trips” and “freaking out” after having taken some of the “bad acid” that had been going around.
But I’ve always been skeptical that there’s any such thing as “bad acid” in that sense. LSD is a very powerful drug, and a dose is a very small amount. If a dose turned out to to be bogus or contaminated or the result of a sloppy lab process that failed to properly synthesize the chemical, then you would up taking a very small amount of something that is not LSD, therefore not a very powerful drug, therefore not having powerful druggy effects.
Perfectly good acid can give you a scary, anxiety-laden experience, especially in crowded, chaotic circumstances, especially if you take too much, and especially if you have a particularly fragile psyche.
But what do I know? By now there must be enough data either in the research or among hippiedom to address the question of weather historical adverse reactions to LSD use resulted occasionally from dangerous impurities in the drug or were inherent in the drug’s potential, given the uncontrolled circumstances under which it was administered.
Did the infamous “brown acid” at Woodstock freak you out? Or merely rip you off?
According to my drugloving SO, merely being convinced you’re gonna have a bad trip will make you have a horrible trip. So according to her, broadcasting “don’t take the brown acid, you have been warned” was probably the dumbest idea ever, since it probably made a lot of people freak the hell out for no reason.
Well, there are a couple of chemicals similar to LSD in effect, some of which might (though I don’t know that for a fact) conceivably have a higher probability of inducing ‘bad trips’; I believe at least ergine/LSA has been used as ‘cheap LSD’, though that’s just hearsay. Other ergoline alkaloids have similar effects, and might conceivably be left over in impure samples – LSD can be synthesized from ergotamine, which is derived from the ergot fungus and causes ergotism. So I’d say that ‘bad acid’ is not that implausible.
What you’re saying makes sense for acid that’s in blotter or windowpane form. If it’s in the form of a tablet (Orange Sunshine, microdots, etc.), who knows what else is in that tablet. I don’t know if tabs of acid exist anymore, but back in 1969, they were pretty common. I don’t know what form the “brown acid” was in, though.
I was considering something along these lines as a possibility. It partly depends on how potent these precursors are liable to be given the tiny amounts present in a dose.
James E Perone’s Woodstock: an encyclopedia of the music and art fair makes it seem that the number of “bad trips”, considering the size of the audience, was pretty low.
Check here and look at LSD, Hog Farm and Freak Out Tents for the gist of it.