I freely confess to the typos. I have large fingers and often hit two keys when I aimed at one, and I don’t catch all the errors before I hit the Submit button. “Dipiction,” however, cannot be excused that way.
As for the Dragnet episode, whose official title is “The LSD Story,” I have that on video. The writer credit is “John Randolph,” a pseudonym for Jack Webb (born John Randolph Webb).
And I sense that your information on the episode itself is second-hand. I’ve seen it several times. Blueboy was painted up blue-and-yellow at the start of the episode (he says “Red…red red…red…” I don’t think he mentions “blue” other than to say “Blueboy,” but I can check…); another man had the brush in his mouth near the end. In fact he told the cops Blueboy was not around: “He split the scene, man.”
The bit I saw on the news about goofballs was from the early 1960s, as you’ll see if you look at my posting.
That you sneer at school information about drugs as “propaganda” suggest your preferred source is something else; The Medellín cartel, perhaps, eh wot?
It would have been especially hard for you to know that since he didn’t die as a direct result of abusing LSD. dougie_monty was saying that he thinks the bad trips from LSD the man experienced 30 years before caused (or partially caused, at least) him to go down the path that led to his demise. That it was a gateway, in other words.
So, if you don’t accept school “information” about drugs as pure truth, you must prefer to get your information from drug dealers, is that it? Talk about your false dilemmas.
Well, you tell me! You are dismissing school education (and DARE, for that matter) as “propaganda.” Is it too much for me to ask for you to lay your cards on the table? Or shall I get your answer by means of osmosis?
I, for one, prefer to get my information from independent scientists, rather than government pamphlets.
Yes, you got me. I have been misspelling “depiction” for years - YEARS, I TELL YOU!! There’s simply no way it could have been a typo - nope, no way whatsoever. Touché, good sir!! :rolleyes:
I haven’t seen it in a few years, I’ll admit. But I certainly remember the “I’m a tree” and the bark eating scene. Not that your nitpicking has anything to do with anything, of course. Unless you think your description of the episode somehow makes it a more accurate portrayal of tripping. :dubious:
Absolutely, since if I don’t believe the information I receive from Dragnet or classroom lessons from 40 years ago, I’m in bed with drug dealers. :rolleyes:
Oh, and the fact that you offer no apology for your little “How dare you” bullshit tells me all I need to know about you. Shine on you, crazy diamond! ::shoots up::
Shaddup, Dooku, and pass me yer rig.
What the fuck ya cookin’ up here, anyways? Ferget it, I don’t care. Just pass it over, dude.
Anybody got a couple ‘ludes for my man d_m over here? Sucker’s hurtin’.
Care to provide some documentation?
Oh…and, Dooku, no, I don’t intend to apologize; The man who died at 44 was one of a family of five. Three of the five are dead now–I attended all three funerals and I was even a pallbearer for the mother. That this man–whom I’ll call Alex here–had the inclination to try things like LSD was tragic, to my way of thinking. (The fact that my father drank heavily and died at 66, and that my mother smoked for about 40 years until the biopsy and mastectomy, were tragedies to lesser degrees.)
My point is that I was outraged that those posting to this thread after I brought the matter up, and replying thereto, seemed to me to be trivializing the matter.
As for “venting one’s bladder,” yes, I originally heard that phrase with “spleen,” as in “He vented his Spleen at the Lubber.” I substituted “bladder” because I intended to make a harsher expression.
Thanks for clearing that up. My opinion of you has been solidified.
Not much of a point when you in no way indicated that his death had anything whatsoever to do with drug abuse. (And I’m still not convince that it did). How can we have trivialized the matter when we had no idea what the matter was?
And then you use my innocuous post about an over-the-top, unrealistic freakin’ Dragnet episode to shame me into somehow thinking I’ve belittled this family’s tragedy? And you still have no concept of why that’s out of line?!
I see no reason why I should continue to respond to you. Wait - let me think. I’m thinking. Tell you what - if I can think of any reason whatsoever why I should regard you any further, this will not the be the last sentence of this post.
I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you muster some of the documentation I requested in my repy to Mr. 2001’s post? That would be likely the most objective thing you could do at this point.
“Alexander” was the only person I knew personally who had taken LSD and had bad trips. He provided the best reason I could come up with to avoid LSD and such things, as my father did with liquor and my mother did with smoking. For me to pair Alex’s situation with “responsible use of drugs” is pure Doublethink. 
Well, let’s see. An excellent, if now somewhat outdated, source is the Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs, the complete text of which is available online at that link (I wish I’d known that before I paid $25 for a hardback copy from abebooks.com!).
The site hosting it, the Shaffer Drug Policy Library, is an excellent source of information on drug policy and for basic factual information on drugs as well. For instance, information on the (in)effectiveness of the DARE program can be found here.
The Vaults of Erowid, mentioned before, is another great resource, including plenty of medical and scientific articles as well as first-person reports of the effects of a wide variety of drugs.
The Lycaeum is another good resource similar to Erowid.
In book form, From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs, by Weil and Rosen, is a pretty thorough guide to the subject, presented in a very readable and entertaining form.
I’ve heard good things about Solomon H. Snyder’s Drugs and the Brain, but I haven’t gotten around to reading my copy yet. It looks interesting, from skimming it.
Okay, that’s off the top of my head. Obviously there are a lot more resources out there – the links from the above sites are often good resources as well. All of these resources are much less scare-mongering than the kind of thing you’d hear from a school drug program, but they don’t shy away from the dangers. You’re not likely to read about chromosomal abnormalities and brain damage from LSD use. On the other hand, you will hear about how, say, ecstasy or PCP can cause the overheating and death of some neurons.
Dooku, if you are referring in any way to someone you knew who was unfortunate enough to die from using any such drug, I was grossly out of line to refuse an apology. You may accept that as an expression of my contrition if you see fit.
The issue with Alex is another matter. I was close to the family for years and he had a slew of other problems–and I am amazed he survived as long as he did. I might have commented that there were plenty of other things Alex did, and could have avoided; and I would bridle just the same at a third party who questioned my conclusion, as was done in this thread.
Oh–and Chorpler, thanks for your answer. As time allows I will follow links you have given me.
A local celebrity in my town is “The Orange”. Story says he was at a shindig where many people were doing acid and… acting accordingly. He took off all of his clothing, fell asleep on a sheet of many stamps of LSD(Forgive me if I misused any jargon or am completely off. Blame it on generational differences.), the drug was absorbed through his skin. He now sits on a lawnchair in his watching traffic and intimidating everyone meeting his gaze.
The most widely-known rumor is that he thinks he is an orange, but apple, banana, cod, and many other things are tossed around.
I’d never seen the Snopes article mentioned, but it resembles the story of our local so much it disavows our silly rumors that much more.
I’ve heard stories of people attempting to query the man and/or his caretakers(his parents, I believe), but always unsuccessfully as he is gone completely and the caretakers aren’t willing to dispense with any information.
It just makes you sound like you don’t know the expression you’re trying to use - “to vent one’s spleen” comes from the medieval medical tradition associating the spleen with anger, since it was thought to produce the humor (I forget which one in particular) that led to anger.
The bladder has no such association, and neither phrase makes sense in the context you used it.
I’ve heard countless variations of this theme, and I’m quite convinced at this point that it’s pure UL. You’ve got your run-of-the-mill villiage nutbar, and eventually rampant speculation about the origins of this person’s affliction dredge up the “Orange” story, and voila, another Orange is born.
Probably every college and universty in the US has some version of the story, always opened with the preface “My R.A. knew a kid who knew a guy who talked to this other guy who said that…”. My very own school had “a guy” who fell asleep with a sheet of acid tabs in his pocket. He got sweaty in bed, the acid soaked through his clothes into his skin, he had the Mother of All Trips, and now lives his days as the Human Celery Stick in some unnamed mental institution.
When I was a young boy growing up in Bakersfield there was an older woman, called “The BB Gun Lady” who owned a Daisy pump and had lots of cats. She’d shoot birds in her trees for the cats to eat. One shot, every time. This is not a UL, she didn’t hide and all us kids saw her a lot of times. She was crazy, though, or put on a very good act to keep us away. She was crotchety but not mean. The county eventually came and took away her cats and her BB gun, so she starved herself to death. Us kids actually missed her, quite a bit.
The reason I mention this is that it was pre-LSD. The only drug she abused was drinking tons of coffee all day.
BTW; she cussed like a sailor. We loved that, of course. 
IIRC, her name was Mrs. Sharron.
Excalibur, I read the phrase in a late-eighteenth-century story printed in my junior English reader in high school. The writer, a young woman, said that a man in her party asked for directions; the bystander told them to go by “Uncle Sams Lott.” The man in her party “vented his Spleen at the Lubber.” (The “Lubber’s” remark was as ridiculous as “approach a three-story gray house that burned down” (from H. Allen Smith).
My ‘vent-the-bladder’ phrasing was meant to be in a similar vein to “poison-pen letter” (complete with inkwell bearing a skull and crossbones).
Here’s the link to the Snopes article about Diane Linkletter.
In the article, for example, it says that Ms. Linkletter was not on LSD or any other drugs when she jumped to her death.
How could you know for sure in such a case LSD did this to such a man? Many people develop schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses every year who have never used LSD or any other psychedelic drug. Commonly schizophrenia develops in adolescence or young adulthood, which is also when most people who use psychedelics start using them. Correlation doesn’t prove causation.
Also, while not well researched there is some evidence that suggests mentally ill people tend to be more likely attracted to psychedelics than average. Might make some sense in that if one’s state of mind is normally unpleasant, they’d be drawn to mind altering drugs as a form of escapism. Thus it could logically be possible that it isn’t LSD that tends to make people crazy, but instead already crazy people are drawn to using LSD.
…and quite late, I must confess. :o
On The Channel 2 News in Los Angeles, in 1984, the late commentator Bill Stout had this to say about Judith Belushi, John’s widow, who spoke her mind on the book Wired:
"But even that is topped by the widow of comic actor John Belushi. He died of drugs. [Judith] says the new book about him is unfair because, in her words, it doesn’t say that ‘drugs can be fun.’
“For an all-time low in widows’ tributes, Judith Belushi is an easy winner–it’s given with no joy–of our ‘Turkey of the Month’ for May.”