My Life As a Criminal

I lived as a criminal for 14 years. I was a soft drug dealer who mostly sold pot and sometimes psychedelics. I didn’t deal with cocaine that much because as soon as that drug came out, it started getting a sleazy reputation and you ended up selling to addict types, which would make me feel guilty. Your buyers buy from you but resent you because you are the “cause of their drug addiction” because you get the stuff from them. Also the coke dealing scene was way more violent that the soft drug scene. The psychedelic dealing scene was very nonviolent.

I don’t feel bad about my past at all because we were hippies who thought the world would be a better place if everyone smoked pot and dropped acid sometimes. It was the Righteous Dealer thing. In addition, I wasn’t victimizing any innocent people because I can’t do that. I’m also quite proud of never getting caught. The rush you get committing a crime right in front of police (by, say, driving by police with a pound of pot in your car and them looking at you none the wiser) is hard to put into words.

I can also tell you that sometimes we got our pot straight from the police. And I had a relationship with narcotics detectives and turned in lousy people every now and then. I suspect they knew what I was up to, but if you turned in a scumbag now and then, they left you alone.

To tell you the truth, I’m such a good boy nowadays that I am terrified when I think of my past. I can’t believe I took the risks I did especially with the sentences they are handing out nowadays. I doubt if I would ever take risks like that again, or at the very least, I’d have to think about it real hard. Also I have far more to lose now than I did then. I did get arrested a couple of times on very light charges, but I’ve only spent six hours in jail, and it was long enough that my attitude is, “I ain’t going back.” I also sort of brought it on myself a bit by being an asshole and taunting and fighting with the cops like an idiot. I thought I was a badass back then.

It’s hard to describe how traumatizing it is for a middle class White boy to spend even a few hours behind bars. Plus some of the cops are really mean when they arrest you and some of the jailers are too. These cops were basically sadists in my opinion. Perhaps you have to be a sadist to be a cop. I have no idea. But I would think that non-sadist cops would be better than sadistic ones. My record is clean though. I only have one chickenshit conviction and I got it expunged. Summary probation is a joke, too. It’s not even real probation.

Jimi Hendrix, “Purple Haze”

Jimi Hendrix Experience, “Purple Haze,” off their debut album, Are You Experienced? Look at him. He’s dressed like a hippie! Look at the album cover below? They’re all full-blown hippies. It was released in May 1967, only a month before the famous Summer of Love centered around the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco. This was peak hippie right around this time.

Album cover for Jimi Hendrix Experience, “Are You Experienced?” May 1967

I’m not quite sure what the lyrics are about, but Purple Haze was definitely a very strong brand of LSD that was going around at the time. You want  to know what “acid rock” was that all the parents back then were ranting about? Here you go. Acid rock, baby!

I believe Jimi Hendrix was a serious acidhead as were the other guys in his band. I knew a man who used to hang out with Hendrix and his entourage in the Seattle area where he came from. It was a group of about 200-300 people, mixed men and women, all full-blown hippies. Most of them were doing quite a bit of LSD too.

Black hippies were a thing back then, and Hendrix was absolutely a Black hippie. I’m sorry we hardly have any Black hippies around anymore. Either through self-selection or the general culture, Black hippies didn’t behave much worse than any other male hippies. This was the era of “Peace, Love, dope,” remember? Hippies freaked out if you even looked like you were getting angry. They tried to live their whole lives as free from “bad vibes” which included all forms of aggression and violence as possible. All of that was considered very “uncool.”

There were also some “Black hippie chicks” as we used to call them. Same thing, they acted pretty good too for whatever reason. The men and women both wore their hair in Afros. No Black women straightened their hair back then. An Afro was perfectly acceptable. The Black hippies lived hippie lifestyles, all the way down to the soft drug (pot and psychedelic) drug use.

I still have fond memories of Black hippies. This was a period when a group of both Blacks and Whites lived the same lifestyle without much bad behavior or racism. Racism was very frowned upon – keep in mind that all fellow hippies were your “brothers.” I don’t really like Black people having a separate culture. They’re not assimilating as long as they are doing that. And I would date a woman who was heavy into Black culture. All her friends and acquaintances will be Black and everywhere you go with her, it’ll be nothing but Black people and you’re the only White person around. Also I think assimilated Blacks act a lot better than the less assimilated, sort of like Jews in that regard.

I have no idea why Black people wish to have their own separate culture. I don’t get it. Isn’t ours good enough for y’all?

Lyrics:

Purple haze all in my brain Lately things don’t seem the same Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky

Purple haze all around Don’t know if I’m comin’ up or down Am I happy or in misery? Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on me

Help me Help me Oh, no, no

Hammerin’ Talkin’ ’bout heart ‘n’ s-soul I’m talkin’ about hard stuff If everybody’s still around, fluff and ease, if So far out my mind Something’s happening, something’s happening

Ooo, ahhh Ooo, ahhh Ooo, ahhh Ooo, ahhh, yeah!

Purple haze all in my eyes, uhh Don’t know if it’s day or night You got me blowin’, blowin’ my mind Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?

Ooh Help me Ahh, yea-yeah, purple haze, yeah Oh, no, oh Oh, help me Tell me, baby, tell me I can’t go on like this You’re makin’ me blow my mind, mama N-no, nooo No, it’s painful, baby

LSD and the LSD Manufacturing Underground in California, 1965-1990

Doses were pretty strong back in the day. The stuff around nowadays,  if you can even find it, is pretty weak.  It comes on blotter paper with some goofy caricature on it and it’s usually around 50 micrograms. Sure, you get a trip, but you get a much heavier trip when you start upping the dose up to 100 micrograms.

LSD back  then used to range from 250-500 micrograms. The famous Orange Sunshine LSD had 500 micrograms per pill. I took 125 micrograms one time, and that was plenty enough, thank you very much. I think I did take 250 micrograms once. That was one Hell of a trip, man.

Orange Sunshine was all manufactured by Timothy Leary’s group in Laguna Beach called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, situated mostly in Laguna Canyon. My friends used to go down there and they said there would be these hippie guys sitting way up high in the eucalyptus trees. They were lookouts. The Brotherhood distributed millions of tabs of that variety of LSD, and they made a ton of money off of it.

Most LSD around this time was being manufactured by a man named Owlsley. I don’t think they ever caught him. I saw a documentary on TV about LSD in 1990.

The DEA agent said 9

LSD is quite difficult to manufacture and you almost need a Chemistry degree to make even one batch. I’m told that making it is pretty crazy because when you do, the stuff gets all over you, and you end up ingesting the stuff the whole time you’re making it. So you’re frying the whole time you make a batch, a process that could last a month or so. I don’t think I could handle a month-long trip. An 8-hour trip was bad enough.

Alt Left: Blacks and Hispanics Get Arrested at Disproportionate Rates, and That’s Not Due to Racism

I used to drive an ice cream truck as I noted in a previous jokes. I sold dope, cannabis, out of my truck to supplement my income. Remember the jokes and memes about ice cream truck drivers selling dope out of their trucks? Weren’t there Dragnet episodes about that? Well, it’s not an urban legend.

A lot of the other drivers sold it too. Buy pot, roll joints out of it, and sell joints for $1 apiece, mostly at parks and particularly on weekends. At the end of the day, standing in line waiting to get paid (that’s how it worked),  the other drivers and I would talk about how the drug dealing went that day.

Some days the pot-sellers would bring in $100/day selling jays. This was good money back in 1978, equivalent to $350/day today. I made $1,000/month, equivalent to $3,500 month or $42,000 year now, which ain’t bad for such a dumb job.

I sold hash in addition to ice cream. Very quietly, mind you, but I did sell it at $10 a gram. I was selling some really good red Afghan hash out of that truck at one point. I was also selling this crappy, tar-like homemade hash that sort of sucked.

I think I bought a 1/4 pound of the Afghan hash and sold ounces, 1/4 ounces, and grams. It came into the port of Long Beach in the hulls of oil tankers. We knew a guy who bought the cannabis right off the ships and that’s how we got it. In all the years we bought from this guy, the ships never got caught.

I even sold that Afghan hash at university in my classes right under the eyes of professors. We had a trick way of doing it. I sold LSD right in the middle of class too via the same method. Lots of giggles all around as we did that.

All the other students knew we were obviously selling drugs in class, but no one cared as this was 1979-1980, and literally no one cared about “soft drugs” (pot and psychedelics). The hard stuff? A different story.

We were onto cocaine as a dirty, nasty, ugly drug real quick and I never actually dealt it because it was too sleazy.  We were already onto that stuff all the way back in 1979 before everyone else does. Coke is ultimately a shitty drug. I used the stuff for 13 years. Don’t take it, it’s junk, and it’s really bad for you.

I lived as a criminal for 14 years as a (mostly) soft drug dealer of pot, hash, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, and even mescaline and peyote once in a while. I know about the life of The Street and The Petty or Victimless Crime Underground. Suffice it to say that the Criminal Underworld is very moral in a sense and you don’t burn other criminals. That results in something called “paybacks.” And as the saying goes, “Paybacks are a bitch.” Dylan was right when he sang:

In order to live outside the law, you must be honest.

– Bob Dylan

Before pot legalization, I used to see these Mexicans in my town standing in the parking lots of their apartment complexes selling pot. Geniuses!

Actually I used to buy from them, so I’m sort of an idiot too, right?

Blacks stand right out on the street selling dope too. Brilliant!

Then the SJW’s scream that Blacks and Hispanics take just as many drugs as Whites but they get busted way more. Unfair! Discrimination against non-White criminals! Not fair to crooks! Racist, discriminatory law enforcement! Evil racist cops oh noes!

I laugh every time I read this because I know that Blacks are Hispanics get busted for dope way more than Whites do because non-Whites are so stupid about how they sell and use drugs.

POC Genius 1: “Hey I got a plan to be drug dealers and never got caught!”

POC Rhodes Scholar 2: “Yeah, what is it?”

POC Genius 1: “Let’s stand right out in the open in public selling and using drugs! Cops think most people hide indoors to do that stuff, so this way we’ll never get caught!”

POC Rhodes Scholar 2: Good plan! Why didn’t I think of that?!”

It’s practically a Polack or blond joke.

My dealer friends and I were very, very smart about dealing.

We had all sorts of tricks. I can’t list them all here. I personally maybe 5-10 completely different outfits posing as different members of society to sell quantities of drugs. There was suit and tie businessman dude with the dope in a nice suitcase (natch) doing deals in the office worker part of town, gym dude with gym clothes and a gym bag doing deals in health club parking lot. There were others

I never got caught and neither did my friends. Why? Because we weren’t morons who stand out in public and sell dope in full view of the cops and everyone else and expect to not get caught, that’s why! I mean how smart do you have to be to literally do this stuff out of site

The Myth of Illegal Drugs Frying Your Brain and Permafried People

In response to Jason’s post here about drug use frying your brain, I have written this response. In general, the notion that the use of illegal drugs will fry your brain or make you permafried even after you quit is nonsense. In general, once you quit you go back to the intelligence and sanity level you were at before you started. Few people get permanently lowered intelligence or permanent mental illness from former drug use.

Most illegal drugs do not cause any permanent damage to your brain that would affect you permanently after you quit.

In all of my years using drugs, I have met 10,000’s of drug users and I never met one person who had used so much drugs that they were “fried” in the sense that they were permanently stupid or crazy after they quit using.

Cocaine

There may be some consequences far down the road – say, with Parkinson’s.

Jason’s article discusses an increased risk of Parkinson’s in former cocaine users. But it’s not really due to brain damages so much as changes in a certain receptor that make someone more vulnerable to a toxin. That’s not the same thing as having a fried brain.

I knew a heavy cocaine user who appeared to have neurological problems from the drug. But I am not sure if it persisted after he quit, if he ever did quit. But he’s the only person I’ve ever met like that, and even he wasn’t fried at all. He was still very intelligent and completely sane. However, he did appear to have some sort of brain damage. Whether it was permanent or not is not known.

LSD

I have known people who took LSD up to 700 times, and I know a number who took LSD 300 times. LSD doesn’t damage your brain anyway. It can cause some changes in the visual system due to permanent changes in serotonin receptors, but that just causes some perceptual problems, and this is mostly in people who have taken it 50+ times. It doesn’t change effect you in any way that changes the way you think or feel, in other words, it doesn’t make you stupid or nuts.

There are some very heavy former LSD users who seem to have permanent hallucinations, but those people took a lot of acid over a short period of time – like way, way too much acid. It’s not known what’s going on with them, but I suppose they are permafried in a sense.

LSD is a dangerous drug.

Cannabis

I know many people who have been smoking pot for 10, 20, or even 30 years, and there’s nothing wrong with any of them. You wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with them if you met them. They’re not damaged at all.

The pot lowering IQ discussed in Jason’s piece is only for use before you are 18. If you start using at age 18 or after, there’s no effect on IQ. People under 18 need to be very careful about pot because it can indeed lower their IQ’s a bit.

Pot doesn’t give you schizophrenia, period. The most it can do is trigger it if you are already vulnerable, but even then, most of those people would have gotten it anyway. But it can definitely bring it on sooner than it would have otherwise.

The rate of schizophrenia has been flat for 60 years, all through the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 2000’s and 2010’s, and all sorts of drug use rates for different drugs skyrocketed at various times in that period. In other words, neither cannabis nor any other drug is going to give you schizophrenia with one exception discussed below.

MDMA

MDMA is a very dangerous drug and it can definitely cause physical damage to your brain. It permanently lowers scores on a few aspects of intelligence tests such as vocabulary, but you mostly can’t notice any changes and there do not appear to be any changes in mental stability. In general, it doesn’t make you stupid or nuts.

However, there are some people called e-tards out there who took a lot of MDMA very frequently over relatively short of periods of time, and these people appear to be permafried. Mostly they seem a bit stupid.

However, I have heard that even these effects of MDMA go away after ~7-8 years if you stay away from the drug.

 

Speed is another matter but even that tends to clear up after you quit. There are some very heavy methamphetamine users, especially people who shot the drug, who have developed an illness that looks a lot like or possibly is paranoid schizophrenia.

There are some recorded cases out of Japan, and a friend told me about another case here in California. This is not a common outcome and even with all the heavy meth abuse that is going on nowadays, you don’t hear much about people being permafried in the sense that they become permanently mentally ill with paranoid schizophrenia.

Heavy Polydrug and Alcohol Abuse for Decades (30 years)

I have heard of one person who used huge amounts of drugs and drank very heavily over many years, starting as an adolescent. They are now off of everything, and they have a rather poor short-term memory and forget stuff a lot, but other than that, they are still extremely intelligent.

They are also a bit suspicious and paranoid, but not at the level of a paranoid psychosis. I suppose this man is permafried in a sense, but if you met him, you would not appear stupid or crazy.

Conclusion

Bottom line is a lot of that stuff can mess you up pretty bad while you are on it so you seem stupid, crazy, or even brain damaged. But most if not all of that tends to clear up when you quit. Permafried people who are permanently stupid or nuts from heavy drug use must be awfully rare because I haven’t met one in my entire life. The fried brains and permafried nonsense is mostly mythology.

Where is LSD in the United States Made, and Who Makes It?

Answered on Quora. After the arrest of Picard, there has been an LSD shortage in the US. Nevertheless, it is still made in the US. Most LSD in the US at the moment is being made in small labs in Southern or South Central California. They make batches every 3–5 years. In Canada, most LSD is presently being made in Southern Ontario. The available LSD has been of very poor quality since the 1990’s. However, with the advent of the Dark Web, LSD has undergone a renaissance. There is one site in particular on the Dark Web that sells a lot of LSD. In addition, there are people on the Dark Web who test and review various batches of LSD. The result has been a lot of competition, increasing demand, and slowly increasing quality. The days when pure white crystalline LSD was available are long gone.

LSD, Flashbacks and HPPD

Man with OCD here. I’m taking medication for it. I will take LSD for the first time in a few weeks. What are the possibilities of having HPPD? You’ve said you got visual disruptions, what does it feels like? Is it the same thing which is called “flashbacks”?

I am not even sure what flashbacks even are, and I am not sure if I have experienced them. After I first took LSD at age 16, my marijuana trips changed dramatically. It was like the LSD had altered my brain and changed the pot trips. The pot trips became way weirder, more colorful and rather frightening, but I sort of enjoyed them anyway in the way that you enjoy the very scary rides at the amusement park. They scare the crap out of you, but you love it. Plus it was like journeying to another planet every time I smoked pot. About six months after I had taken LSD, I went to look in the mirror. To my shock and horror, my entire face was deep, dark blue almost like someone who has had a heart attack. I flipped out and ran upstairs to my parents room and looked in their mirror. Now my face had changed and it had a slight reddish tinge to it. I ran down to the downstairs bathroom again and looked in the mirror again and all that was left was a faint greenish tinge over my face. I think I ran back to my parents’ bathroom instead and looked in the mirror again. I have no idea why I was running from mirror to mirror, but my instinct just old me that there must be something wrong with the mirror. Thinking about it now, it seems so idiotic, but that is what I felt at the time. This time all of the colors were gone. The whole thing could not have taken more than a minute or two. I happened one more time a few months later in the same mirror. This time it was a very deep dark red, as deep and dark as the blue-purple had been. I did the same thing of running from bathroom to bathroom and mirror to mirror, and after a minute or two, it went away. I always thought for some reason that thee were LSD flashbacks, though I never had those colored faces on LSD. I do not know why I thought it was an acid flashback. I suppose I could not think of any other reason. It never happened again, and to this day, I have no idea what caused it. I never worried about it although it was a hallucination. I never worried that those hallucinations meant that I was mentally ill or brain damaged somehow. I simply shrugged them off. Non-mentally ill people can hallucinate and even hear voices at times. The occasional hallucination is not big deal and nothing to fret over. You guys can call me insane all you want to because I had couple of hallucinations. See if I care. I doubt if many people get HPPD from one use of LSD, but perhaps it is possible. I have dated some women lately who are or were LSD users. One ~50 year old woman had taken LSD 350 times. Another much younger woman had taken it maybe 30 times and was definitely a current user. These are only two heavy users that I have met in recent years. Neither woman had any HPPD symptoms at all. I know many people who have taken LSD, including folks who have taken it many times, and I never met anyone who had HPPD. I think it is not common. However, a recent survey of university students found that of those who had taken LSD 50 times or more, 4 I took LSD nine times and other psychedelics (mescaline, peyote, LSA, Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds, psilocybin) about another 20-30 times, so maybe ~30-40 trips total. I have not taken psychedelics since an acid trip in 1987, 29 years ago. I am a bit worried about doing psychedelics now. I figure I am nuts enough as it is, so why take psychedelics and risk making myself even crazier than I already am? I am not sure when the HPPD hit, but it is not very bad. On some occasions, I get very bright colors. I rarely get them anymore, but sometimes if I have taken a lot of caffeine or the drug Benadryl, I get the colors again. Actually the world looks much better all lit up Technicolor like that. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It only bothers me if I start freaking on it and thinking, “Why is the world all lit up this? Is there something wrong with my brain?” If I just relax and accept it, it’s not a problem and actually is rather fun. I called up an eye doctor once and complained about my symptoms, and he busted out laughing over the phone. “Oh! The colors are getting better, huh? Well that’s great! Hope you enjoy it! We only care when the colors are getting worse. What you have is not a problem.” Apparently he was referring to loss of color vision.

People Are Getting High on Bath Salts

Here. Actually it is some kind of designer drug being sold over the counter as a bath salts or plant food. Apparently you can use them for those purposes and they work just fine and don’t get you high. You sniff it inject it or smoke it. The drugs in question are mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, also known as MDPV. Apparently these are stimulants something like methamphetamine, but I don’t know much about them. Looks like a pretty crappy and evil drug, I would say. It’s mostly in Louisiana right now for some reason, and the state has banned the sale of the drugs. But the Feds have not banned them yet since they are not marketed for human consumption. Banning them will take some time. Most users are apparently meth users looking for a new high. I increasingly agree with the Neurosoup girl on Youtube. She hates meth, cocaine, PCP and heroin. She comes right out and says that they are crappy and evil drugs.She doesn’t like alcohol either. She’s up on marijuana and what she calls entheogens, which is something like hallucinogens. If a lot of the people using coke, meth, alcohol and heroin started using pot and entheogens instead, our society would look a lot different. I would say that the damage from drugs would go way down. The hallucinogens are somewhat self-limiting in use. They are so strong, and people are so afraid and paranoid of them that people tend to only use them for a short period of time. People want a drug they can get high on regularly. My generation promoted the use of coke and to some extent speed. I would say we screwed up bad on that one. Those drugs are just crap. One thing I always hated about drugs were the anti-drug morons. They’re still everywhere; in fact, they’re the majority. Instead of being sensible like the Neurosoup Girl and dividing recreational drugs into different classes, the anti-drug morons just lump them all into one great big mess. They’re all the same. They’re all dope, and they’re all evil. Weed is meth is heroin is coke is LSD is mushrooms. It’s nuts. I had to deal with this all the time while growing up as a pothead. As a pothead, I was said to be “into drugs” and was lumped in with PCP users, cokeheads, meth freaks and heroin addicts. It was all the same. To some extent, this was true of drug users too. They weren’t so stupid as to think all drugs are the same – no user is that stupid – but since pot was illegal, and you had to deal with illegal drug users to get it, a lot of pot users were also using and promoting the use of other stuff, often along the lines that the other drug was as easy and safe as pot. Pure pot users were quite rare. Legalizing pot would put it in the class as alcohol. How many people have you met who drink, often a lot, but won’t touch any “drugs” (LOL)? Lots. Making weed legal would increase the number of pure pot users who don’t mess with other stuff. One thing I noticed that is people, often the older generation, will talk about someone who ruined their life on drugs, often the son or daughter of a friend. Often I will ask, “What kind of drugs?” A legitimate question, right? After all, I’m an old drug fiend, so I’m very interested in details like that! I always get this frustrated response, “I don’t know!” as if it doesn’t matter. Ok, so they got into weed, is that right? Is that how they ruined their lives? This is more of the, “All drugs are the same,” BS. Very frustrating dealing with this moronitude.

Risks of LSD Use

Commenter Nobody questions what the risks of LSD use are:

RL: There are good reasons not to do acid, but fear of being permanently mentally ill is not one of them. Nobody: What are those reasons, in your mind? I’ve done acid and have my own ideas, but I’m curious what you have to say about it.

Use of LSD can cause permanent visual disruptions called Hallucinogen Post Perception Disorder. I have it myself, but it’s not bad. Others have it very bad. It can also cause a temporary psychosis or mental breakdown, not because it did any physical damage to the brain, but simply via psychological mechanisms like panic and whatnot. It can also cause long-term psychological trauma via the same mechanism, not through physical damage to the brain but due to psychological trauma, upsetting experiences, unpleasant unconscious stuff coming to the forefront, etc. It’s similar to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I’ve known way too many people who have taken LSD 100+ times who were totally normal in every way, shape and form. One guy took it 700 times and was completely normal. On the other hand, there are folks who have taken LSD many, many times, like over 1,000 times and especially 2,000-4,000 times. Timothy Leary comes to mind. Tim Leary was one of the few drug cases I can think of who did seem to be damaged somehow. He wasn’t really nuts; he just seemed sort of fried. I’m not sure if it was the acid, but I’m worried. There are other folks who have taken LSD 1,500-4,000 times and are now permanently mentally ill. Some of them fade in and out of it. The diagnoses vary. At the same time, there’s no evidence that these folks suffer from any kind of brain damage, so the facts are confusing. Nevertheless, taking LSD 1,000 times or more seems to be a pretty risky endeavor in terms of your mental health, even though the reasons for why are not known.

The 50 Craziest Rock Stars Ever

Here. This article is pretty damn funny. A lot of rockers are or were seriously nuts! I’m having a hard time figuring out dx’s for a lot of these people. It seems to be something towards the more extroverted end. I suspect a lot of them are acting this way on purpose, sort of like a lot of artists act “deliberately insane.” I only see a few who were obviously psychotic: Syd Barrett, Peter Green, Roky Erikson, Brian Wilson, Jim Gordon and Skip Spence for starters. I’m familiar with all these cases. They all had schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. It’s commonly said that they are all drug burnouts, but I doubt it. For one thing, LSD does not appear to cause permanent psychosis. I’ve known too many completely normal folks who have taken it 100-300 times. It’s not even proven to damage your brain. The worst that can be said about it is that very heavy users sometimes do go psychotic and have to be hospitalized. Typically, they get better, but they often go back to heavy LSD use and become mentally ill again. No one has any idea how LSD even makes you temporarily insane. All of these people simply developed schizophrenia. LSD can trigger schizophrenia, but no one knows how that works either. LSD-induced schizophrenia looks just like the rest of schizophrenia and it responds to the same drugs too. Since acid doesn’t damage your brain, I can’t see how it could cause schizophrenia. There are good reasons not to do acid, but fear of being permanently mentally ill is not one of them. For the rest of them, dx’s are difficult. Some seem to have issues with narcissism and borderline personality disorder. Some were just seriously whacked out on booze and dope, often cocaine and/or heroin. Ike Turner used cocaine for some 45 years until it killed him at age 76. Sly Stone spent years on cocaine, even living on the streets smoking a crack pipe. No one quite knows what is up with Sly these days. He shows up at occasional performance, acts very strange, walks off stage in mid-show, gets on his motorcycle and rides away. Rick James spent a good 15 years on a crack pipe. Whitney Houston is ruined and is heavy into cocaine. David Bowie went nuts on coke in the 1970’s, became full-blown psychotic and embraced Nazism. Ol’ Dirty Bastard is on crack. John Frusciante almost killed himself on heroin and coke. Ozzy Osborne, Jerry Lee Lewis and Liza Minnelli were alcoholics. Keith Moon was a drunk and a pillhead who liked to blow up toilets with dynamite for fun. Elvis was a hardcore pillhead who apparently went insane from all the tablets. Arthur Lee of Love spent 20 years abusing drugs heavily, became homeless, set buildings on fire and shot up his neighbor’s house. Carlos Santana used acid heavily, then 20 years ago met up with an angel named Metatron who looks like Santa Claus who has been guiding his life ever since. He communicates with Miles Davis, a dead person, on a regular basis. Miles Davis (while he was alive and not talking to Santana) spent years shooting heroin, beating his wife and just acting weird. Little Richard spent years binging on cocaine, having sex orgies and sucking cocks in men’s restrooms. James Taylor was a depressive and a heroin addict. Some were suicidal. Wendy O Williams sawed instruments in half with a chainsaw, then retired and blew her brains out. Ian Curtis recorded some of the most depressing music ever made, then hung himself on the night of his US tour. Adam Ant is a depressive. Mariah Carey assaulted staff and reporters and slit her wrists. Some like Courtney Love and Britney Spears simply cannot seem to function as adults. Sinéad O’Connor is just a kook. Lou Reed’s main problem is that he’s a terminal asshole. R. Keely is just a weirdo with a taste for underage girls. Sid Vicious assaulted fans, carved up his chest onstage, murdered his girlfriend, then OD’d on heroin as a grand finale. Jaz Coleman, George Clinton, Captain Beefheart and Julian Cope are unclassifiable. No one knows what’s up with Sun Ra. GG Allin was just nuts, dx’d as narcissistic, Borderline PD and masochistic. Michael Jackson was one of the weirdest of all. No one seems to know what was wrong with him. He seems to have been a homosexual pedophile. I’m familiar with most of his weird antics, but I never knew that he said he had fathered 2 “Aryan” babes named Prince 1 and Prince 2. Weird! Just because you aren’t psychotic (and most of these folks are not) doesn’t mean you’re not nuts. You can be plenty nuts without being psychotic, plenty.

Dope Makes You Act Intoxicated

Repost from the old site.

Reduces your performance in every way, is incapable of enhancing performance, and other lies.

This is one of the biggest lies of all about dope, and it needs to be challenged head on.

Most, if not all, non-users believe that all drugs make the user obviously intoxicated and reduce performance in all areas. I’ve tried to explain to them that drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine are stimulants, and hence don’t make you “fucked up.”

Instead, in the short term, they improve mental and physical performance. If you take a test on meth or coke, you will probably do better. The jury is still out on physical performance, but for at least some things, you will do better on coke or speed.

In the Valley here, farm workers are using meth to help them do their jobs. They’re able to work harder, pick more crops faster and work longer before they get tired on meth.

I’ve never driven a car on meth, but I have driven a car on amphetamine tablets. Works great. You can drive just fine on cocaine too. I don’t see why it’s illegal to drive under the influence of these drugs. Might as well make it illegal to drive under the influence of coffee.

Non-users only experience with drugs is with alcohol. Alcohol makes you obviously intoxicated as a general rule. But the other drugs don’t necessarily. Non-users find this clear fact almost impossible to comprehend.

I decided to ask Doperman about this:

Hi Bob, Doperman here. Thanks for letting me post here. Every time I took psychedelics (LSD, LSA, psilocybin, peyote), I assure you I knew completely what was going on.

I even drove a car once for 15 hours on a nice straight highway on a head full of acid. Another time I drove to Mexico with my brother, went to Tecate, cruised around a bit, and went back to the US and stayed at Cuyamaca State Park.

On the 15-hour trip, I don’t think I was normal, because I drove by the Owens River, and there were all these guys fly-fishing there, and they all looked up at me driving by like “What the fuck is with you man???!!!

I went into stores a few times and bought stuff, and at the end of the voyage, and stopped and got a motel room near the Nevada border at 1 AM. All flying on a head full of LSD.

I can act totally normal on any of those drugs.

Problem is you get these huge saucer eyeballs and it’s verging on a bust right there to be walking around in public. But people on acid don’t necessarily act all that different. You can’t even really tell that they’re on a drug if you see them. They’re not obviously intoxicated.

I once threw a party and at least 200 people showed up. At least among those who showed up at the beginning, a lot of them were on LSD. At the start, there was a house full of people high on acid. It wasn’t really obvious, and no one acted really weird or did anything crazy or stupid. Only a relative few LSD users act stupid or crazy or have to be hauled off by the cops. Most of them make it through the trip acting fairly normally.

Coke is the same way. The coke user is not obviously intoxicated either. You can’t even usually tell if someone is high on coke, because people don’t act all that much different when they are on it.

I don’t think people act all that different on speed either. I’ve seen a lot of people on that stuff and they typically don’t appear intoxicated.

It’s often the case that you cannot tell when someone is high on marijuana.

In my mid-20’s, I was living at home and getting my college degree. I was stoned out of my mind every night. I lived in the basement and had a separate entrance and a separate phone. My living at home included unwritten contracts stating that I could smoke pot and drink all I wanted to, and have visitors over until all hours of the night.

The folks were sleeping two floors up, so we had to turn down the music late at night. I didn’t have the right to fuck women at home, but I fought hard for that one. My Mom wouldn’t budge on that one. I used to violate it anyway. I had a separate entrance, and could sneak women in no problem.

My Mom even heard about the women I sneaked in and fucked, and if they were knock-dead gorgeous (some of them were) she was quite proud of her son in a perverse way. I’ll never be able to match Sexmaniacman (Who can?) but I did my best.

But my Mom could always tell when I was stoned, and she hated it. So if you’re around it a lot, maybe you can tell.

I’m an experienced pot smoker for 35 years off and on, and I typically don’t have the faintest idea if someone is stoned or not. How can you tell anyway?

Lies About the Drug Burnouts

Repost from the old site.

Dope fries your brain, and all ex-dopers are “permafried,” or damaged by drugs. This condition is both immediately obvious and permanent.

This is one of the staples of the anti-drug line, and it appears that the vast majority of Americans have bought into it, including most drug users and former users.

I think it’s utter nonsense, so I’m going to take it on head-on here in this post.

Simply put, I don’t really think that “drug burnouts” exist anymore than “alcohol burnouts” do. The notion comes from the idea that illegal drug use damages the brain. Hence, after years of use of this, that, or various substances, the brain is permanently damaged, and the person is odd, strange, weird, bizarre, permanently spacey, “permafried,” crazy, nuts or mentally ill in some way or another.

The theory is very appealing in that unfortunately, it is starting to look like most of these drugs, at least in heavy use, are capable of damaging the brain. The jury is still somewhat out on cannabis, but even that does not look really encouraging for heavy long-term users.

The theory is typically used to abuse users of hallucinogens and psychedelics, probably because these are the most feared drugs of them all. There is a serious problem with the “fried brains acidheads” line: the hallucinogens are one of the very few drugs that look pretty clean as far as brain damage goes.

When you come out and say that LSD does not cause general damage to the brain, as I am doing now, people tend to get really upset. After all, if anything damages your brain, it must be LSD! After all, if acid, the ultimate evil drug, doesn’t mess with your brain, then surely nothing does.

The truth is much more strange. It’s now clear that the most popular drugs of all, like cocaine and methamphetamine. can damage the brain, often pretty quickly.

Cocaine begins to cause demonstrable brain damage after as few as 12 uses (constriction of the arteries of the brain). After a few grams a month for a few years, clear brain damage shows up on the P300 test (a general slowing of the EEG). There is now evidence for serious changes in white and gray matter with heavy cocaine use.

Meth is much harder to pin down, but heavy current users often appear scattered and damaged. After 1.5 grams a week for 1-2 years, clear signs of damage start showing up. I believe that damage is also starting to show up on white and gray matter tests.

I can’t emphasize strongly enough what bad news these white and gray matter tests are – they indicate destruction of the neurons themselves and the connections between them.

The damage from meth seems to be to dopamine neurons and their connections and is observable with brain diagnostic imaging tools. Whether or not damage occurs at lower doses over shorter periods of time is not known, but meth is starting to look like nasty stuff for your brain.

I still say you can take meth at least a dozen times or so (and possibly much more!) without any permanent damage. At some point though, you are going to start damaging your brain, and we don’t really know what that point is. Want to try to find out when the damage begins? Don’t bother!

Ecstasy or MDMA, formerly up in the air as far as brain damage goes, is looking worse all the time. The best we can say now is that one dose probably does not cause damage. More than one dose almost surely does, and the damage is cumulative. The drug damages serotonin neurons in certain parts of the brain by killing the connections (axons) between the neurons. The neurons themselves are not killed.

It is a common falsehood about drug abuse and the brain that “drugs kill brain cells.” In truth, actual neuronal death is hard to pin down for a lot of these drugs. Instead of killing brain cells outright, drugs often just damage them so they don’t work quite so well. With MDMA, the serotonin axons grow back, but they do not grow back correctly.

I never did MDMA – it was after my time.

Even heavy cannabis use is looking suspect.

Drinking more than two drinks a day over a period of time causes shrinkage of the brain. The shrinkage increases as the drinks per day does up. Periodic heavy drinking depresses brain cells for up to two years, and chronic heavy drinking actually kills neurons.

Now on to the psychedelics. The hard facts are that we do not have good evidence that LSD, peyote, psilocybin and similar drugs damage the brain in any way that would that reduce your intellect, make you odd, strange, weird, bizarre or crazy, or effect your ability to think and feel rationally.

It is true that LSD, psilocybin and MDMA are capable of causing HPPD. That is hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. The result is visual aberrations persisting into the period when one is not using the drug. LSD seems to be the worst offender, but some cases are caused by psilocybin. Until a cure or prevention is found, HPPD is an excellent reason to avoid using psychedelics, LSD in particular.

There is a board on the Net for HPPD sufferers, and if you go there and tell them that you are still using acid, they are going to give you a piece of their mind. They aren’t anti-drug ignoramuses or holier than thou moralistic types. They’ve just been there and done that and don’t want to see you in the same boat as they are.

No one has any idea what is causing HPPD, but a Dr. Abraham in Massachusetts has the notion that it is related to damage to the visual system. All LSD users show damage to the visual system. It’s not apparent to most of them, but it shows up on tests. It has to do with how fast you can adjust to from a totally light environment to a totally dark environment. LSD users do poorly on that.

It’s interesting to note that although all of the tests for LSD and brain damage in animals were negative with the exception of very high doses that would be about the equivalent of 1,000 50 mcg. hits at once, LSD was shown to be hypotoxic to the optic nerve in the bird.

These negative findings for brain damage and LSD go back to the 1950’s. We now have over 50 years of negative tests for LSD and brain damage in animals as well as humans.

LSD does some pretty bizarre things to animals. If you give it to a cat and put the cat in an enclosed area with a rat, the cat will cower in terror of the rat, which it normally would try to kill. Strange.

All tests of intellectual function damage for LSD users have come up negative. Some suggested temporary damage on visual function tests (the Trail-Making B Test), but as the HPPD data above suggests, LSD may indeed damage the visual system. Even this finding cleared up one year post-drug

Damage to the visual system would logically cause HPPD. Would it make a person weird, strange, odd, bizarre, insane and stupid? Why would it? The visual system effects vision. It doesn’t effect psychological stability or the ability to think or feel in a normal way.

That said, there is anecdotal evidence that very heavy LSD is somehow bad for your brain. It seems to go away if you quit, but it’s there nevertheless. There are reports on the net of users who used LSD very heavily – several hits, several times a week, for a year or so. Afterward, they had symptoms of brain damage.

They could no longer do the intellectual work that they could formerly do, and they had a hard time reading. After a year or so off the drug, their intellect seemed to return. The users were not mentally ill at any time.

The notion of mental illness from the use of LSD is very controversial. It seems almost impossible to understand how a drug that has no permanent brain effects outside the visual system could make a person weird, strange, odd, bizarre, crazy, nuts, insane, or mentally disturbed in any way at all. Surely, if it did so, the etiology could not be from actual brain damage but must be in purely psychological terms: psychogenic.

Nevertheless, we continue to get reports of mental illness after LSD use.

The most frightening to me are reports of mental illness after very heavy use. We have reports of individuals who used LSD very heavily (several times a week at high dose) for a year or two. After that, they became mentally ill and had to be admitted to a hospital. They got better and were released and seemed OK on the outside. But then they got into heavy LSD use again and had to be readmitted.

There are other reports of folks in their 40’s and 50’s who used LSD maybe 2,000-3,000 times. They are reported to be mentally ill to some degree or another.

We don’t yet have any good theory to explain cognitive problems or mental illness in extremely heavy LSD users, but nevertheless, based on anecdotal evidence, one ought to avoid this sort of high-risk behavior.

Timothy Leary probably used LSD between 1,000-2,000 times. I have to admit he looked pretty fried the last few times I saw him on TV. He also used all sorts of other drugs.

As a good general rule though, I haven’t met one person yet who is “permafried” from any kind of drugs. My perception has been that if you quit using, after a while you become normal again. Most of the so-called permafried types are still using drugs heavily. It seems to me that no matter how damaged people seemed, if they quit and sobered up, they seemed to be quite OK once they were clean.

I’ve met some folks who seemed damaged from very heavy dope use, but in the one case I can think of, he wasn’t really strange or weird. He could be socially inappropriate, and his basic problem was he didn’t give a damn about anything. You will find this personality syndrome in a lot of very heavy users that otherwise function pretty well – they seem like they don’t care about much of anything.

He couldn’t hold down a job because he was so damaged that he couldn’t even make change. Yet I was at a party with him once and he picked up this gorgeous young blond ten years his junior and fucked her brains out that night. How nuts can you be if you can pull off something like that?

I met another fellow like that on the streets of San Francisco 15 years ago. Smart guy, Masters Degree from a good university, lived off a trust fund, traveled the world, partied his brains out, in his 40’s.

He had that “I don’t give a fuck” attitude, but I don’t consider that mental illness. Hell, I don’t consider most stuff mental illness! He wasn’t ready for corporate America, but he didn’t want to be either, and I didn’t consider him mentally ill in any way, shape or form.

But then I think the whole notion of “crazy” is horribly abused against people who aren’t even nuts at all.

I’ve known many individuals who used drugs heavily for years who are now more or less sober, although some continue to use cannabis. For the life of me, I can’t see how even one of them has been permanently damaged by their drug use. I haven’t met a permafried person yet, but I guess there’s always a first.

I keep meeting people who used cocaine very heavily for 5-10 years, or so heavily as to have to go into drug treatment, or took LSD up to 300 times or so, or have been smoking pot for 20-30 years and still are, now heavily, in their 40’s. For the life of me, I can’t see anything wrong with them now. Some of them have very good jobs and make $100,000/yr or so.

Despite a lot of theoretical support for the “permafried” notion (in that many of these drugs are now being found to actually damage your brain), I haven’t seen much of it in my life. If anyone knows any “permafried” individuals who are now clean and have been clean for a while, let me know in the comments.

Until then, I think the whole notion is ridiculous.

Dope Sucks

Repost from the old site.

At the time I was into getting high, roughly 1973-1988, there wasn’t a lot of good information that most of that stuff was bad for you, or certainly that it was bad for your brain. There was a lot of information that said that drugs could be used recreationally in moderation without problems. That was the spirit of the age. It’s dead and gone now, maybe forever.

I keep thinking that if I knew then what I know now, I would not have gotten into drugs as much as I did. The drugs all seem so much worse now because our information is greater. My use was really a product of an era as opposed to just some general degenerate tendency of mine.

Cocaine.

Towards the end of the period, cocaine had turned from the Yuppie Party Drug into the Evillest Drug of Them All. A lot of us were still using it, because we couldn’t seem to make sense of how this drug had gone from White Status Symbol to Black Slum Drug. I guess we just didn’t believe it. We still thought we could use the drug recreationally.

Over a 13 year period, I probably did about 16 grams of cocaine by myself. Most non-dopers are horrified when I tell them that; they assume that anyone who used for 13 years is automatically an “addict”. But if you know anything about coke, you know a little over a gram a year is nothing more than dabbling, and it’s not really serious cocaine use at all. Further, of course you can do coke for 13 years without getting addicted. I did so myself.

But just about everyone I knew who got into coke at least to the extent that I did turned into an addict. Sooner or later, sniffers move on to smoking or shooting, because it’s simply a more economical way to take the drug.

I’m convinced that cocaine is a great big drag. For instance, I’m such a dabbler that I would actually save up coke. I’d get some out for the evening, lay out of a few lines for everyone in attendance, then sit back and drink Heinekens with everyone else. Coke is such a stupid drug that you can’t just give people a little bit of it and then put it away. If you do, you’re risking a riot.

After an hour or two, they start bothering you for more. You tell them that you’re saving it for later. Now they start getting belligerent.

I’ve had people swear right to my face that they were going to come back when I wasn’t home and steal my coke. The very idea of “saving coke” from one night to the next was considered to be the ultimate in stupidity, and they were going to punish me for being a moron.

So, really, coke sucks. It’s no fun. Even if you can somehow stay a dabbler like me, everyone else turns into an addict, and when they do, they’re actually dangerous to be around.

The addict idiots would come over, excuse themselves to go to the bathroom, and then shoot up in there for the next thirty minutes. We’d be out in the room steaming away. When the guy came out, we’d confront him and tell him to quit shooting up in the damned bathroom, but they never would quit. Addicts don’t take no for an answer.

Other coke addicts stole from me, then had the nerve to blame it on the coke, then told me flat out the money was never coming back. No problem, as long as you stay the Hell away. But they wouldn’t. They rip you off, then they keep knocking on your door and coming around.

I kept banning the worst ones, but they would come back, like males who batter their wives, bearing gifts and apologies. Soon they were back into their abusive manipulative addict game again.

One of the reasons I moved to Central California was to get away from some of these morons. I’d banned them over and over, but they kept coming back. I’d known them for many years, and they were still friends with all of our friends. Sometimes to cut yourself off from these idiots, you might just have to pack up and move away from them.

The addict has a personality. The personality is that of a callous, manipulative prick. There are some decent or classy addicts out there, but those are mostly dealers who deal to afford the habit. If they’re not doing that, they’re hungry for cash and all sorts of other stuff all the time, and probably mooching off or using others. The addict is a user. He doesn’t care about you or anyone else. The only thing he cares about is dope.

Speed.

Speed has got to suck even worse than coke. I did meth around three times in my whole life. When I tell this to non-users, they get a snarl of contempt on their face. But I’m comfortable with it. Three times is basically nothing; it’s experimental use. Why should I feel guilty about it because some annoying Puritan shit wants me to be?

The reason I only took it three times is because that’s how long it took me to realize it’s one of the most awful drugs on Earth. The high is excellent. You’re smart, in control, sane, happy and confident. You feel warm and friendly and talk all night with your wonderful friends. You don’t act wild or crazy or insane or anything like that. Your mind is sharp as a pencil, and your emotions are controlled. It lasts a good 18 hours.

The next day you feel like you got hit by a freight train. First it feels like your IQ just dropped 10 points. The stupid feeling gradually goes away after about a week. Your body feels like a sack of bones. It feels like someone took a vacuum cleaner and sucked all the energy out of you. That lasts a few days too.

So 18 hours of high is followed by up to one week of crash. Who needs this?

PCP.

PCP is a really strange drug, and I took it about a dozen times, mostly unwittingly. When I tell that to non-users, they get this wild, horrified look in their eyes, but it’s no big deal. A dozen trips is experimental use, and I don’t regret a thing.

Back in the 70’s, scumbag PCP users were common. They were evangelizing, and the way they did it was to pass PCP joints around masquerading as pot joints and not tell you.

You could always figure it out real quick due to the bizarre minty metallic taste, but you were still mad at the dusters for being so dishonest. The first time was out of this world; the rest of the trips were unremarkable. I’ve certainly heard of people doing strange things on the drug, but I’ve never seen it much myself.

I remember once I was at a party in downtown Huntington Beach in 1976. There was a band playing, then people started passing joints. At some point, the dusters sneaked theirs in too. By the time I realized it, I was flying, so I just kept taking hits off the PCP jays.

This was a party of around 20-30 young folks, most around age 18, and everyone was high on PCP. Not one person was acting weird in the slightest. Non-users don’t get it. Even crazy drugs like PCP typically don’t make most folks act nuts.

LSD and psychedelics.

Acid and all the other psychedelics suck because just about everybody on Earth despises them and the people who take them. We were never in the stage of psychedelic acceptance when I was using them from 1974-1988, and I’m not sure if we ever will be.

Nothing strikes terror, rage and disgust into the heart of the non-user like the word LSD.

In truth, psychedelics are probably my favorite drugs of all. I took them about 40 times and never really had a bad trip.

Once on mushrooms on got on a bit of a bad trip – sort of an anxiety – awkwardness – nerd trip where I suddenly felt like the biggest geek on Earth. I was with a tripping partner and he wasn’t cool about me being transformed into Ultra Nerd.

So I turned the trip around. There were bad nerd vibes with strange deep blue colors and energy fields running through my body like waves of electricity. Those were the shitty nerd vibes. The rest of you might refer to them as an emotion. The fascinating thing about psychedelics is the way your feelings actually become extremely electric and even colorful. Joy has one color, sadness another, on and on.

Well, I decided I was going to turn this trip around. It took me about 45 minutes, but I was able to do it. I took the bad nerd electricity, changed it from blue to red and changed its direction. It was going from my skull down all through my body and out my feet in a big fat blue-purple electric drag feeling.

I changed it by reversing it. A new red electricity feeling would start at the toes and go up, fighting the perennial 18 year old vibe in a sort of battle of the feelings. It took me a good 45 minutes to get the good feelings going in an excellent flow that didn’t hang up on the bad stuff on the way up. Then the trip was turned around and a really crappy trip was turned into a fantastic trip.

You know that, you bad trippers? A lot of you can do that. You can change your trips, turn them around, make them go this way and that way. It’s just a drug. You’re still generally steering the ship you call your mind.

I often would buy a hit of LSD and just keep it in my drawer for months or even years until I felt that I was ready to take it. I would wait until a period in my life when I was feeling happier, more together and more mentally healthy and centered than I had in a while. Sometimes I might have to wait a while until I felt my head was ready for it.

That’s really the only way to take LSD. Never take it when you’re out of sorts in any way at all, in a bad mood, or in a bad, down or stressed out phase in your life. That’s how bad trips happen.

I haven’t taken a psychedelic in 20 years. I probably won’t take one ever again.

You really don’t get any credit for being a casual, recreational or responsible doper. It’s hard to do with most drugs anyway, but you can do it with pot and possibly psychedelics.

But you don’t get any credit. If you take a hit off a joint once a year, you’re the same as some guy slamming a gram of coke a day. The non-users hate all dope and all dopers, and that’s one of the sad rules of the game.

With booze, people are pretty sane. If you drink lightly, say no more than 1-2 drinks a day, most non-drinkers are sane enough to recognize that that’s not a problem.

Not so with dope. If you don’t use, you hate it, and you hate people who use it. I’m not sure if I’ve ever met a non-user who was tolerant towards any kind of kind of drug use. Ex-users are pretty much the same way. I’m not sure if I’ve ever met an ex-user of even marijuana who was willing to tolerate it in anyone else. Once they put on that ex-doper crown, they get up on that high horse and never get off.

It’s for all of these reasons that I think dope sucks.

Drinking is fun in part because it’s socially acceptable. Things that aren’t socially acceptable are a drag. You’re always paranoid about who to reveal your drug use too, and you’re always running into morons who think that heroin and weed are one and the same.

Not because dope is bad for you or you’re evil or immoral if you use it, but more that the whole scene around it, and the ridiculous non-users, is a great big gigantic drag. If even pot ever gets to the point where non-users can accept it the way they accept social drinking, maybe it might get fun again.

Sexmaniacman On Borderline and Schizotypal PD

Repost from the old site. The following posts will figure a fellow named Sexmaniacman, who is a friend of mine. He either wrote these posts himself and sent them to me via emails or else I am transcribing them based on conversations he had with me.

A commenter notes on the Personality Disorders

Schizotypal was always the odd-man-out personality disorder — both literally and figuratively.

Sexmaniacman thinks he had a gf once who was both a Borderline and a Schizotypal:

Hi Bob, this chick was so nuts, man, oh man oh man. She had a dx of “Borderline Schizophrenia” and was a serious acidhead.

She proudly said, “I’ve always been crazy.” Her Mom was schizophrenic and had tried to stab her in the back and kill her when she was 4 years old. Her life was desolate, and she would move back and forth between all these different personalities that you could not keep track of.

She lived in Hollywood, was a fag hag and was always getting picked up by guys and abused. She let groups of guys gangbang her and all sorts of crazy shit. She was always telling stories about guys or groups of guys picking her up, tying her up, torturing her, having sex with her, and threatening to murder her.

The stories seemed almost too weird to be true, but she was an extreme submissive who obviously was giving off “hurt me” vibes that a lot of sicko dudes might have picked up on and acted on.

She was also a bit bi and had sex with women sometimes. But she liked young girls, like 14 years old! Whoa! She also liked young boys, like 13 years old, and she loved to entertain me with stories about breaking in 8th graders. She was an old pro at this. I thought it was just plain weird.

We were going to go a lesbian bar in Hollywood and try to pick up a girl to take home with us (that was real easy to do in LA, which is full of all kinds of gays, bis and swingers), but she was so weird, I figured we would never be able to pick up any decent women.

Her idea of a good time was going to a gay bar and hanging out there all nite. I said pass.

She literally ate acid by the handful, five or eight hits at a time.

I took her to a Cure concert and for some weird reason, all these Goth chicks were grabbing me and trying to molest me the whole time at the concert, even when I was with her. While we were walking around, while we were sitting at the concert, the women just wouldn’t leave me alone. The whole thing seems like a hallucination now. It was 1983. She was flying on a handful of acid.

I took her to see Pink Flamingos, we watched Divine eat dog shit off sidewalk, and she thought that was hilarious. We went to see The Story of O, which I thought was weird, but she insisted was the story of her life.

She kept wanting me to inflict pain on her in all these different ways (A LOT of women are into pain! Is that weird or what?) but I wasn’t really into being a sadist too much. I did inflict some pain on her, but I didn’t really enjoy it. She sure did! Damn right! But it was the weirdest joy, a joy in a bottomless sadness. I couldn’t relate.

We went at forever, and she was a real screamer. One night she turned me in the middle and said, “You know what, Sexman?”

“What?”

“You’re a good fuck.” She repeated that a few times.

I’d just been turned into a complete sex object by a woman, and I didn’t even care.

I’d leave her place at the end of the weekend. Her Hollywood apartment complex was full of all these Guatemalan and Mexican illegal aliens. It was 1984 and the invasion was well under way. I guess the guys had been listening to her sexual opera performance all weekend because as I walked out, the Hispanic guys would all stand up and start clapping for me and raising their beers.

Cheers to the Master Fucker! She would drink, take acid, smoke pot, do speed, and then grab a bottle of antidepressants and start taking pills and downing them with a glass of booze.

“Whoa!” I said. “What do you think you’re doing!”

“You don’t know the pain I’m in Sexguy,” she whimpered and started crying. “You have no idea what it’s like. I need this, Sexdude.”

I shrugged and hoped she didn’t die on my watch. Who wants to deal with a dead chick and cops?

She was schizotypal in that she used language in really weird ways, and even though she insisted she had all these friends, she seemed really isolated. Plus she was just flat-out fucking weird in a way that Borderlines simply are not. Like she was on another planet, an alien. Invariably, she accused me of being a fag too for some reason like all of her faggot friends, and that pissed me off.

I will say she had more insight into my personality at the time than most other women have ever had.

She used to regale me with stories about her gay friends. Her gay friends were all these seriously weird masochist dudes into the leather scene.

Her eyes got really wide.

“My friend Jim, he’s not satisfied until the welts are this big.”

That’s one of her sicko masochist gay friends. Every time she talked about them, I told her to shut up as she was grossing me out.

She stretched her fingers to make about a one inch measurement. In her eyes, she was trying to shock me and I know it turns her on. She wanted one-inch welts too. Obviously. Like Hell you’re getting ’em from me, you sick bitch, I thought.

She called me one time but I wasn’t home. A woman I knew was over at my place in my absence and answered the phone. “Tell Sexman it’s just me,” she sighed wearily into the phone. “It’s just me. Just V.” Her self-esteem was 80,000 leagues under the sea under an anchor. The woman hung up the phone.

Later the woman said: “That’s the woman you’re dating, Sexguy?”

“Yeah,” I sigh.

“Wow, she seems like she thinks she’s the biggest zero on the face of the Earth. How sad.” The woman shook her head, and an incredible sadness came over her face too, a hundred years’ worth.

“I know.”

I broke up with her.

“Can…you…at least…give me a reason, Sexcat?” V. whimpered into the phone.

“You’re just too nuts for me. I mean, I’m nuts, but I’m neurotic. You’re way more crazy than I am, and I just can’t deal with you. It’s like dealing with someone from another planet. I can’t handle you. Good luck in the rest of your life.”

She called me a few days later, crying.

“After you broke up with me, Sexbro, I put my fist through a wall, I was so mad. Now I have a hole in my wall.”

“Over me? You did this over me? Why? Don’t bother, V. Don’t smash walls over me. I’m not worth it. Smash walls over someone else…Look, I can’t handle this, this is way too nuts.”

I got a new girlfriend, K., pretty soon, and V. had given me VD like most sluts do, something called Trichomonas with no symptoms in the male. I immediately gave it to the new girl, and it causes four days of misery in the female. The new woman was pissed.

I said the only thing you can say when you give your girlfriend VD.

“Hey, don’t ever say I never gave you anything.”

I thought that was pretty funny.

She sure didn’t. Icy eyes shone at my across the room.

“That’s not funny, Sexman.”

“Yeah it is.”

“No it isn’t.”

I saw V. again two years later. She came down to visit me, an hour’s drive. I saw her on my porch like a lost poppy, the most forlorn thing you ever saw. We went inside and had some wild sex for a couple of hours. She got pissed at the way it ended and left in a huff.

I never saw her again.

I assume she’s dead, probably long ago. The way she was, she couldn’t have lasted long.

My Hero

I wanna be this guy.

Iggy Pop at age 40. The picture of radiant health. Damn he's in good shape.
Iggy Pop at age 40. The picture of radiant health. Damn he's in good shape. Fuck all you young punks. When my generation retires, so help me God, our retirement communities will be full of all-night parties playing rock music, people coming and going all night long. You will hear the most insane and ought-to-be-illegal rock music all day long.

Look at how great he looks at age 40 here. I saw him in 1981, or yesterday, at the Palladium in Los Angeles. I’d been drinking, smoking dope and sniffing coke, and I was high as a fucking kite. There were beautiful women and young chicks everywhere, real friendly too.

The concert opened rather suddenly. I was with a friend of mine, or my worst enemy, or someone…

I was working as an editor of a magazine at the time. I told some of the girls in the office that I was going to see Iggy Pop, and one girl wanted to go with me. She asked if she could go with me.

Then she took it back, “No way. My boyfriend will kill me.” He was a redneck macho fucker with a great big truck. The office girl was hot, 24, big tits, nice looking. Her best friend was screwing the magazine artist, F. They would go out for two-hour lunches every day and come back with big smiles on their faces.

My boss was a faggot who kept trying to fuck me. He kept buying me lunches all the time. I got my paycheck and tried to pay him back, and he flipped out and started screaming and yelling. “I didn’t buy you those lunches so you could pay me back!” I guess he wanted me to pay him back on my knees or something. The perverted asshole eventually fired me because I wouldn’t suck his dick or whatever he wanted me to do to.

He was sure I was queer for some stupid reason. It was sort of my fault for doing the Mick Jagger (No wait! Iggy Pop-androgynous) thing I guess. If he had eyes, he could have figured out I wasn’t.

Fags don’t look at women. This is the dead giveaway for queers everywhere. There were all these beautiful women in the office hanging coming around my cubicle all the time for this and that. The queer acted like they were part of the walls or the floor or the furniture. They may as well have not even been there. Furthermore, the fag looked at me like I was a Filet Mignon medium rare.

There was another guy in the office, from Europe, macho but sort of faggy in some weird way. He acted like he would screw anything if he was loaded enough. He was dating some Black chick. Sometimes he was my best friend, sometimes he was tearing me up and insulting me to my face. In other words, a typical hyper-competitive super-aggressive young male weenie. He used to trash-talk me for being a pothead. Then he would come buy pot off me. What an ass.

One time in the lunchroom he took me aside and told me the best high of all was speed, injected directly into your arm, preferably after 9 or 10 drinks. This guy wore a jacket and tie to work in an office every time. I tell ya, dopers are everywhere. This guy shoots fucking speed after drinking himself under the table, but I’m a loser for smoking dope.

As you can see, young males are sort of hopeless, so, assuming chicks like you, just shine on the Y chromosomes and hang with the ladies.

After a while, I quit eating with the fag and the other idiot males in the office and just ate lunch with the office girls every day. Back in those days, I was said to be very good looking (male model type). Now I’m old and ugly, but it was fun at the time.

If you’re a guy and you look that good, and if you’re very pretty, most people just assume you’re a fag anyway. You can try to screw your way out of your public image, but even after scores of hot chicks, it’s kind of useless. Usually you get this wonderful consolation prize called, “Wow! Now we know you’re bisexual and we really love you for that!” Damn. I will return that prize, thank you.

Back in those days, a lot of guys always seemed like they either wanted to have sex with me or kick my ass, or a lot of times, oddly enough, both at the same time. I’m telling you, we’re Cavemen. Strip off the Calvin Kleins, give us a bearskin and a club, and we’re the same.

If you’re like that, you may as well learn to love women (They’re not that bad after all) and just hang around chicks all the time. Young men are idiots anyway. All they want to do is fight and fuck, and they often aren’t getting enough. Just hang around chicks all the time, and pretty soon, the less idiotic of the guys will try to make friends with you just so they can join you hanging with the chicks.

What could go wrong hanging around with chicks all the time? Nothing really.

Only a couple of things you need to know. One, make the ground rules clear. No woman, not one, is ever safe with you, not even for one minute. You’re a million times better than her faggot friends who she loves for their harmlessness. In order to differentiate yourself from them, you must be dangerous. Sexually dangerous. At all times. And don’t ever let em forget it.

In addition, I would be mysterious. If you’re out of luck, don’t ever let them know you aren’t getting any. Just be Mr. Mystery With a History. As soon as they find out you aren’t getting any, none of them will want you. If they ask, say, “None of your Goddamned business,” and laugh at them. Say, “Well, I’m not a virgin,” “There’s usually a woman or two in my life. Sometimes one, sometimes more than one, sometimes none. Life is interesting.”

If they ask why you don’t talk about your dates, say, “I’m a secretive guy. I don’t talk about that stuff.” Then when you start dating someone, don’t tell them. Just act the same as ever. If you have a good history of good game, talk about it in the past tense, as if you are talking about drinking water or something, very calm and non-bragging, as if you are embarrassed.

You just need to learn how to act around chicks. You can even talk dirty to them, touch them, grab them. But you need to learn to read body language. Know when the lights are red, yellow, green and changing, and act accordingly.

…It was November 1981, or long ago in another world, and I was wasted at the Palladium. There were all these hot, barely legal rock and roll chickies in Spandex and not wearing a lot of anything. It wasn’t exactly a punk crowd. It was more of a Runaways crowd.

Suddenly there was movement on the stage. Spiderman! Spiderman was running around the stage with a mike, singing something. Who the fuck was that? No one knew.

“That’s him!” I shouted to my friend, who was way more wasted than I was, and was also just starting to recover from the throes of a violent manic-depressive psychosis…

…A few months earlier, he had burned holes in his arm with a cigarette.

“Don’t do that!” I had screamed.

“I can’t feel pain. I feel no pain,.” he had shrugged, shaking the shaggy, puppy-dog hair out of his eyes.

I had accompanied my buddy to a meeting with his psychiatrist. He wanted some moral support.

“I live off hate,” I said. It was the punk era, and that was a cool thing to say. “I love hate. It gives me energy. It makes me live. Makes me get up in the morning. Gets me right out of bed. Gimme some of that hate! It’s life juice!” I almost leaped up in the shrink’s office. The shrink was looking at me like I was seriously disturbed.

My friend jumped up. “See? Even my friends are sick! Look at how sick they are! And they call me sick!” He pointed to me: “He worships the Devil!” Then he jumped out off the couch and ran out of the mental health center and across six lanes of heavy traffic at 3 PM, dodging cars all the way.

The shink looked at me with these eyes, like wells, with thousands of years of sadness in them. Neither of us knew what to say.

I told the shrink I had a Kabbalah Tree of Life on my wall and black candles on the shelves. Weirdest thing about that Tree of Life. Everyone who walked into the room stopped in their tracks and stared at it.

I got my buddies together and chanted evil curses against my enemies and carried magic talismans, like amulets, ankhs and crosses, in my pocket. I rubbed them all the time, took them out and flashed them in chicks’ eyes to freak them out and spellbind them, to spread the magick around, brainwash chicks and try to get laid.

“I’m not nuts. I’m just into magick. Is that ok?” The shrink nodded his head solemnly.

The diagnosis of my friend was “manic depression with schizophrenic overtones.” This was the era of “Family Systems Therapy,” and the family was making my friend nuts. Really the guy’s brain was having some sort of a brownout or hard drive crash. Either that or there was spaghetti code in his brain that needed a serious rewrite.

A month earlier my buddy had smashed a bathroom window at his parent’s house and climbed in the window. He was bleeding and wrote Helter Skelter on the mirror as a joke to freak out his folks.

His folks called me, alarmed. I told them  it was a joke. They didn’t believe me. Cops were getting called all the time. There were wild fights in the living room. Hell, it must have been a barrel of laughs at that place!…

…”No way! That’s Spiderman!”

“That’s him! That’s Iggy Pop! Iggy Pop is Spiderman!” I was laughing so hard I almost fell over.

Indeed, the maniac was running around the stage, dressed in a Goddamned Spiderman suit. It was Iggy Pop! This was the Party tour, and Iggy was 34 years old. I don’t remember much else about it, but the show was great.

Back then, Iggy Pop was still extremely underground. No one had really heard of him all that much. He was pretty subversive, underground, druggy and forbidden.

He’s always been one of the best. Party was a great album. So is The Idiot and Lust For Life. The Stooges, Fun House and Raw Power are all great albums. Raw Power is one of the best albums ever made.

Metallic K.O. is insane; it’s a total mess. You can hear beer bottles flying and all sorts of insane stuff. It’s pretty cool though in a bizarre way. The Stooges were extremely underground, even in the early 1980’s. They were always one of those love em or hate em bands. Most people had just never heard of em.

Iggy Pop at age 60, once again an amazing picture of vitality somehow. And he's in great shape too. This is what rock n roll is all about, not being a walking corpse like Keith Richards or a rotting beached whale like Marianne Faithful.
Iggy Pop at age 60, once again an amazing picture of vitality somehow. And he's in great shape too. This is what rock n roll is all about, not being a walking corpse like Keith Richards or a rotting beached whale like Marianne Faithfull. When I'm 60, I wanna look like this guy. Take your "dirty old man", "old man" comments and slurs and shove em up your ass, kids! I'm thumbing my nose at you young fucking punks! Come get me manchildren!

At 60, Pop has several injuries in his body. He dislocated his shoulder and has lost a lot of cartilage in his hip. Both knees are near shot. He was cramped on economy air flights all the time, and then he took a fall dancing on a fucking amplifier. Now his spine is twisted.

The drug days are in the past. When the Stooges were being formed, around 1969, the 22 year old Pop and the rest of the band was frying on acid all the time. It was the era, you know. Later, in the mid-Seventies, Pop was on heroin, as was the rest of the band. So he spent much of his 20’s on heroin, from 1970-1975 at least.

The drug days mostly ended 20 years ago, around age 40. By age 51, in 1998, he had snorted his last line of coke and smoked his last jay. The heroin was over by age 36, in 1983.

He has an exotic light-skinned Black model babe for girlfriend like his old friend David Bowie. She’s half his age of course. He lives in Miami Beach where he tools around in a Rolls Royce. He’s got life dicked, as my surfer-stoner friends used to say, growing up on the beach.

In an interview at age 56, his model-babe girlfriend was 31, and he was fucking her 10 times a week. Hell with this “dirty old man” shit! Down with Viagra jokes. You tell em, Iggy!

Iggy met his girlfriend 12 years ago in Miami Beach, in 1998. He was tooling along, and he saw her with a friend, both knockouts. The went into a pizza joint and Iggy went into the joint next door to look at them. Iggy admits he has no game when it comes to picking up chicks. He can only get them once they figure out who he is, then they all line and take numbers up to fuck the big hot shot rock star.

Iggy was in his car and they came out of the pizza joint, and he asked them if they wanted a ride. They’ve been together ever since.

He was 48 and she was 23. You see, if an ordinary 48 year old guy makes a play for a 23 year old woman, United Cunts of America, millions of cunts strong, stands up and screams that he’s a pervert, a creep, a weirdo and a dirty old man.

But if Iggy Pop does it, it’s suddenly ok because he’s a millionaire. In which case, I guess a lot of the legions of United Cunts of America seamlessly morphs into United Whores of America and lines up to screw the Ig.

Iggy has a great big huge dick, not that I’m interested. It was legendary. He wore pants that showed off the boa constrictor as part of his image. He used to whip it out on stage for various reasons and non-reasons. Once he laid it on top of an amplifier and let the amp vibrate it. Another time a fan leaped up on stage during a show and gave him a blowjob. The stories never end.

Back in the day, Iggy needed a stick to fight them off. After a typical show, Iggy would have five girls with him heading back to his place. He would call women up, give them a time to come over. They would show up, he would have sex with them, and he would tell them to leave. They would leave, smiling. Some guys have it tough.

The Pedophile Mass Hysteria Losers may be interested to know that of course Iggy is a Pedo too, like many fine upstanding citizens. At age 21, he married a 14 year old girl. Then he knocked her up and had a kid with her. Nowadays, that qualifies for Pedophile.

A bit before that, maybe around age 18-19, he had a 13 year old girlfriend, and yes it was consummated. Now he’s a fucking Pedo for sure! Iggy gets the Roman Polanski Seal of Approval for that starring role.

Despite what you think of rock stars, Iggy was frequently Impotent during much of the 1980’s and 1990’s. He doesn’t give a reason. Interesting that even famous guys often Can’t get it up.

Pop has published an article in a journal of classical scholarship, Classics Ireland (1995). I always knew he was a brain. Just like Mick Jagger and David Bowie, you just know those guys have high IQ’s.

One more thing! Anti-Semites, this means you! Iggy Pop is not Jewish. Old legend, due to his name, James Osterberg. He’s actually Norwegian.

Cannabis and Brain Damage: Cannabis Compared to Other Drugs

The original post in its native form was far too long, so I broke it up into seven different posts, in addition to this post. The separate sections are listed below. The original post, what is left of it, is here. For an examination of the evidence of whether or not cannabis causes actual structural damage to brain cells, axons or dendrites, see here. For an analysis of neuropsychological batteries of cannabis users to determine whether or not they suffer brain damage, see here. For an analysis of EEG testing of cannabis users to discover evidence of brain damage, see here. For an analysis of studies looking at cerebral blood flow in cannabis users, see here. For an admittedly impressionistic analysis of whether or not cannabis causes schizotypal symptoms in users, see here. For a summary of the findings of cannabis and brain damage, see here. LSD and psilocybin, while not causing permanent brain damage (that we know of so far), can cause HPPD (Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder), a long-term perceptual disturbance of unknown etiology. I have HPPD myself from using hallucinogens about 40 times, but “suffering” from HPPD once again is an interesting concept, at least in my case. All I get are brighter colors, mostly in neon signs and store displays, and only at certain times. Maybe lots of people would love to have this effect, as the world looks so much better this way. I called up an ophthalmologist about it and he laughed me off the phone, saying he doesn’t treat people whose colors improve. It is only my continuing neurosis that causes me to view these changes as frightening instead of integrating them. LSD does have a deleterious effect on the visual system of the brain – it is hypotoxic to that area in lab animals, for instance, birds – but it doesn’t cause any generalized brain damage at all that we know of, and we have been studying LSD’s effects on the brain for about 50 years or so now. LSD does cause reductions in 5-HT2 receptors on serotonin neurons. But this is a case of these receptors retreating back into the cell due to LSD’s assault on those receptors. After about a week, the receptors to poke back out of the cell again. The most recent evidence also indicates that psilocybin (mushrooms) and mescaline (peyote) also do not cause any generalized brain damage, although psilocybin can cause HPPD. Due to the risks of HPPD, this blog unfortunately does not recommend that anyone use LSD or psilocybin even one time, unless maybe if you are dying. Ecstasy (MDMA) produces comparatively dramatic harm to the brain after only a handful of doses (2-10 doses), with the effects increasing with continued use. The drug causes degeneration of serotonergic axonal terminals, which afterwards do not grow back correctly, if at all. There are suggestions that there may be hippocampal damage. On intelligence tests there are deficits in working memory, declining vocabulary, impairments in verbal learning, associative learning and attention and increased distraction. There also seem to be some mood changes. Perfusion deficits and increased delta waves on EEG have also been found, but the same study did not find these in cannabis users. Impairments were also found in the ability to drive a car in Ecstasy users, even after they were abstinent. However, a recent study found no persistent effects from one dose of Ecstasy. Therefore, it appears that using Ecstasy one time is possibly safe. However, taking Ecstasy as few as an average of 3.2 times causes noticeable damage in verbal memory. Ecstasy should be taken no more than once in a lifetime, if at all. Evidence strongly suggests that the heavy use of PCP, ketamine and DXM may cause permanent brain damage and can often cause schizophrenia-like symptoms which may be related to that damage. The theorized damage involves the vacuolization of neurons (basically a hollowing out and death of the neuron) in various parts of the brain. The evidence comes from rat studies and the dosages have been criticized, but humans are far more sensitive to the effects of dissociatives than rats are, so the differential doses are probably about right. The rat evidence has now been challenged by monkey studies, so the matter is far from settled. But until it is, extreme caution, if not outright avoidance, seems to be the best policy for these drugs. PCP can probably be used up to a dozen or so times in life with no permanent damage. Beyond that, things get a lot touchier. Heavy users show an extremely high rate of schizophrenic and psychotic symptoms, along with symptoms of brain damage. There seems to be some recovery with abstinence, but full recovery is by no means assured. Evidence indicates that ketamine can be used at least once with no permanent consequences at all to the brain. Beyond that, it is up in the air. Ketamine can surely be used at least a dozen times with no risks to the brain. Beyond that, things get hazier. Heavy DXM users have reported a very high rate of psychosis and schizophrenia-like symptoms, along with symptoms of organic brain damage. Users should approach DXM use with caution, and heavy use should be ruled out. Heavy methamphetamine use has been proven to cause permanent damage to dopaminergic systems, especially in the striatum, caudate and putamen (at ½ gram a day, 5 days a week, and 2 years of use). Studies have also shown degeneration of axons on serotonergic neurons and loss (cell death) of up to 1 In the study above, there was some recovery of the dopaminergic system with abstinence, but it was only partial. Meth can probably be used a dozen or so times without any permanent damage. Beyond that, no guarantees. There is some suggestive evidence of chronic psychosis, depression and anxiety directly related to heavy methamphetamine use (over 10 years of heavy use). Impairments in learning, processing speed, and working memory, along with delayed recall, are found in meth users. Brain dysfunction is often readily apparent in heavy meth users. This is one category of drug user, in contrast to most other drug users, that does sometimes appear “fried.” Much of this “fried” appearance seems to clear up with abstinence. Methamphetamine can probably be used up to a dozen times or so in moderation without any permanent consequences to the brain. Nevertheless, some users have reported permanent effects from only 2-3 weeks of very heavy use. Meth is nasty stuff, and it’s best to keep away from it. Heavy drinking can depress neurons for up to two years. With continued heavy drinking, at some point, there is organic damage, which in many cases is permanent, although there is often significant recovery with abstinence. The case of the “wethead” and “dry drunk,” the former alcoholic who is still damaged, psychologically or cognitively, is well known. Heavy use of barbiturates over many years causes a damage syndrome that looks like chronic alcoholism and that does not completely recover with abstinence. Even chronic Valium use causes long-term EEG changes of unknown significance. Sniffing glue has been proven to be possibly the worst thing you can do to your brain short of putting a bullet in it, and the effects do not recover completely with abstinence. Cocaine, unfortunately, seems to be capable of causing brain damage with as few as 11 doses (constriction of vessels in the brain). At three years of using several times a week, there is slowing on the P300 event related potentials test, that may not recover fully with abstinence. Recent studies have also shown that chronic heavy cocaine use causes reductions in gray matter in various parts of the brain. This means that heavy cocaine use causes an actual loss of brain cells in parts of the brain. It may also cause white matter reductions, which means a loss of connections in the brain. There are also impairments in attention, learning, memory, reaction time and cognitive flexibility in cocaine users. It is not known whether these clear up with abstinence. This blog recommends that lifetime use of cocaine be limited to 10 times or less. Even there, there is a slight risk of sudden death due to perturbations in the heart’s electrical rhythms. These perturbations can cause a sudden heart attack or even possibly a stroke. Vasoconstriction is probably involved. In many of the above cases, there is some recovery with abstinence, but often not to the previous level. Experimental use of PCP, ketamine, cocaine and methamphetamine (use up to a dozen or so times for each one) probably does not cause significant permanent damage. Beyond that, you play with matches. Compared to other drugs of abuse, such as Ecstasy, PCP, Ketamine, DXM, cocaine, methamphetamine and alcohol, the effects of cannabis on the brain are dramatically less deleterious. In terms of its effects on the brain for heavy users, cannabis is surely by far least damaging intoxicant of them all, for what that is worth.

Philip Garrido's Blog

Here is the very strange blog of Philip Garrido, titled Voices Revealed. Philip Garrido is the California pedophile, rapist, kidnapper and sex offender who abducted Jaycee Lee Dugard off the street in 1991 when she was 11 years old and kept her in a tent in his backyard in Antioch, California until she was finally discovered this year at age 29. She had had two children by him, both girls, named Angel and Starlite, one 11, the other 15.

Angel (left), 11 and Starlite (right), 15, at a neighborhood party several days before Garrido's arrest. After his arrest, they were set free.
Angel (left), 11 and Starlite (right), 15, at a neighborhood birthday party thrown by Cheyvonne Molino for her 16 yr old daughter several days before Garrido's arrest. After his arrest, they were set free. This is the only known photo of the girls on the Web that I could find.
Garrido was apprehended when he appeared at UC Berkeley to try to make some bizarre public demonstration. He was passing out strange flyers and had two young girls with him. The girls appeared “robotic” and the officer become suspicious. The cop ran Garrido’s name and found out he was a registered sex offender. She contacted his parole officer and it turned out he was violating parole. An investigation of his home revealed Dugard, whom everyone had assumed was dead, and the two girls she had had, now 11 and 15, both by Garrido. Garrido’s wife was in on the whole mess as an accomplice (she was in the car when he abducted Jaycee 18 years ago. Curiously, cops had been called to the house several times in the past by suspicious neighbors, but they had never bothered to look in the backyard. Over the years, Dugard came to see Garrido as her husband and fell in love with him. Garrido got a record when he was 25 years old when he abducted a casino worker, Catharine Calloway Hall, in the parking lot of the casino where she worked in South Lake Tahoe. He took four hits of acid and her to a warehouse which he had set up as specifically for his sexual fantasies . There was wine, porn, sex aids and stage lights. He kept her in their for some time, raping her, until a cop making a routine check noticed lights on in a warehouse. The cop drove up, knocked on the door and Garrido appeared. A naked woman then ran out screaming. Garrido was arrested and sentenced to 50 years in prison but he was released early. He married his second wife, Nancy, in Phil Garrido and Nancy Bocanegra at the wedding in 1981. Nancy was born in the Bexar, Texas, to a Mexican-American family in 1955.
Phil Garrido and Nancy Bocanegra at the wedding in 1981. Nancy was born in the Bexar, Texas, to a Mexican-American family in 1955..
Three years after his release, he abducted Dugard. After his release in 1988, he stalked his former victim at her casino job, freaking her out . Rapists come in all varieties, but Garrido was particularly creepy. Abducting a victim and transporting her somewhere in your car, especially to weird warehouse set up for sex crimes, is a particularly dangerous escalation beyond the usual rapist stuff. Keep in mind that lots of guys rape women, in this country and all over the world. We can’t kill all convicted rapists (We’d be executing 1000’s or over 10,000 guys every year) and we can’t even keep them up all locked up forever. I’m no expert on rape, but I assume that most rapists don’t re-offend, since if they did, the statistics would be much higher. For instance, I’m familiar with the guys on the local sex offender list (and I know a few of them). In all the time I’ve lived here, I’m not aware that any of them re-offended. However, serial rapists and certain rapist subtypes are particularly dangerous. The type that abducts women and takes them off to strange places is particularly dangerous – these guys can turn killer. Setting up a place especially for your weird sex games in a serious escalation – once again, these guys can go killer too. Phil Garrido was Christine Marie Perreira, had a Portuguese last name. She describes him now as a monster. There are also quite a few Spaniards in this part of California.
Garrido's mugshot from his 1976 arrest in Lake Tahoe. He's definitely a White man, not an Hispanic like commenters are saying. I think he's Portuguese.
Garrido's mugshot from his 1976 arrest in Lake Tahoe. He's definitely a White man, not an Hispanic like commenters are saying. I think he's Portuguese.
At age 7, Garrido was exposing himself to neighbor girls, so he got an early start in the sex offending game. By high school, he had already been accused of raping a teenage girl.
Phil Garrido in high school. He was already a rapist at this time.
Phil Garrido in high school. He was already a rapist at this time.
This is a pretty typical childhood for these guys. They start young – kids or certainly adolescents. By his teenage years, he had a bad motorcycle accident and suffered a serious head injury.
Philip Garrido as a handsome young man.
Philip Garrido as a handsome young man.
He had to have brain surgery, and afterward, he was completely changed . After that, he began using LSD very heavily, every day for a long time. At some point, he become psychotic and said he was hearing voices. He continued to hear voices for the rest of his life. Although articles and his family are blaming the acid, I’m dubious. It appears that the acid just triggered schizophrenia in Garrido. It’s dubious that LSD causes long term or permanent mental illness in anyone due to damage to the brain for the simple reason that 60 years of testing have yet to find any damage to the brain from LSD, either in humans or any other animals. It does appear hypotoxic to the visual system, and HPPD seems to be the only proven long-term effect from LSD (I have it myself, and I only took LSD 9 times, which isn’t very much). If LSD doesn’t damage the brain, how can it give you permanent schizophrenia or any other mental illness? It can’t. On the other hand, some individuals who have taken LSD many, many times seem to be mentally ill. In some cases, the mental illness was permanent. If Garrido took acid every day for 5 years as he says, that’s a lot of acid – 1,825 trips. For the next couple of years, he took lots of acid, but not every day. It looks like Garrido took acid maybe 2,200 time or more. Further, he often took multiple hits when he fried – up to 4-10 hits at once. Timothy Leary probably took LSD over 2,000 times in addition to using many other drugs. In interviews with him in the 1980’s, I felt that he appeared damaged. A woman who took LSD over 4,000 times is still chronically mentally ill 30 years later. A man who took acid every day or nearly every day for a couple of years became mentally ill and had to be hospitalized. He recovered, but soon began very heavy LSD use again and had to be rehospitalized. We still lack a proper theory or explanation for these bad reactions, as the drug does not appear to damage the brain, as noted above. Until we know more, very heavy LSD use seems like a very bad idea. Looking at Garrido’s blog, there is only one possible diagnosis based on an examination of his writing: chronic paranoid schizophrenia. Garrido functioned very well, running a printing business, marrying, owning a home, but he’s clearly ill. From 1969-1975, Garrido was often dropping acid every day. It’s said you can’t do this since the effect wears off, but actually you can. The high is different, but it’s still there, just much more subtle. By 1976, he had been drinking, smoking dope, sniffing coke and dropping acid every day for several years. He was also jerking off compulsively (often in public – in restaurants, bars, drive-in movies and outside windows of homes) and spending lots of time hanging out in front of schools watching the schoolgirls. He specialized in girls aged 7-10. Once again, this is pretty much classic behavior for a quite dangerous type of sex offender. It looks like he’s a pedophile, and 7-11 or so is AoA (age of attraction) but it also looks like he’s non-preferential in that he also loves sex with older girls and grown women. The guy’s just a first-class weirdo. His neighbors in Antioch called him “Creepy Phil” because he was also ranting about what a drag it was to be a registered sex offender and talking about the voices that he heard. Police now suspect that Garrido threw wild orgy parties in which he offered up Dugard to his drunken buddies. At one time he tried to gouge out his first wife’s eyeball with a safety pin.

Damn Right We Are

And screw you if you don’t like it. Baby Boomers Still Getting High, Agency Says. I’m not sure when I last smoked pot. I think it was less than a year ago though for sure. I started smoking it again, and it was one of the best things I’ve done lately. I have an anxiety disorder called Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I don’t talk about it much on here because no one wants to hear about it, and this isn’t a “Crazy Blog.” Stigma is still an insanely (Joke!) huge issue, and I have enough problems as it is. Crazy Blogs are the ballooning number of sites where folks with mental dx’s (usually way worse than mine, like Manic-Depression, Major Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder, Asperger’s, Schizophrenia, etc.) mostly write about their mental stuff. I take meds for OCD – an SSRI called Lexapro. I’ve gone off many times, but I relapse slowly but surely every time. Thing is, I started smoking pot again a few years back on a whim, and it worked great for OCD! Unfortunately, folks like us have to deal with fools called “psychiatrists” and “psychologists” sometimes. Psychiatrists sometimes to get the meds. Psychologists for therapy, which I’ve had years of anyway and don’t really need anymore, as it doesn’t do that much for OCD, and I’ve already learned enough about myself and my life as I need to know. This whole field, including all of the psychiatrists and psychologists, is insanely (Joke!) dead set against this thing called “drugs,” despite the fact that they shovel them out all the time as a way of getting their fat paychecks. Plus the dope that the psychs dish out is way worse in terms of side effects than any kind of cannabis. One particularly annoying thing that these idiots do is the minute you meet some new psych-fool, and they learn you have both a dx and a drug history (even if deep in the past), they immediately make the extremely helpful suggestion that your dx was caused by getting high! Wow, thanks a lot! A dx that developed like 27 years ago, and I’m supposed to feel guilty for the rest of my life about causing it! I feel so much better now! I see why they call it the “helping professions!” Even though in my case there seems to be zero evidence that this is the case. As an obsessive, I’ve thought this issue to death 50,000 times in multi-hour mental vicious circle sessions. And drugs never really made it worse or better anyway in the past. Though sometimes coke would make OCD better, usually with plenty of booze too (I also did great creative writing on coke and lots of booze – great combo!) and one time when I was on LSD, I had 1-2 hours free of a particularly horrific obsessive thought that had locked into my brain 24-7, 365 for about a year or so. That was the only couple hours of peace I had had in that whole year. That’s why acid is evil, you know. Because it helps mental illnesses sometimes. Anyway, if you admit to drinking at all (I drink two glasses of red wine a night) or taking any drugs other than the evil junk the p-docs write scripts for, you get shoveled out of all the programs immediately towards some bull called “Drug Treatment.” Yeah, that’s right, if you admit you take one hit off a jay once a year, you go to local equivalent of Betty Ford. Lame or what? This is because recently the mental health idiots (not the people with the illnesses, they’re the smart ones), meaning the morons who “treat” us, decided to split “mental health” and “drug treatment.” Nowadays most of the former are dopers too, so this doesn’t make sense, but the whole motto nowadays is never the twain shall meet! So if you have any dx at all, even fulminant schizophrenia I guess, you get shunted to the Synanon clowns, and the mental guys won’t even talk to you until you get “drug treatmented.” Only then you go into mental health, but only if you get “clean.” What if you never go clean and keep using? I guess mental health says go away until you come clean. This is based on the somewhat lame idea that you can’t treat anyone with a psych dx as long as they are “using.” There’s no evidence that this is true as a general statement, and in a lot of cases, it’s just stupid. The local medical treatment folks are much the same. I use a public facility, so this may be the problem, but I bet privates are just as insane (Joke!). If you tell them you are smoking weed, even for good reason (like it’s medicine, duh) they freak out and remand you to “therapy.” Then you go to the Therapist Lady who knows little about dope and less about medicine, and she tries to force you to quit smoking dope. Mind you, this is in California, where cannabis is legal to use medically as long as you have a card! I can imagine what things are like in South Carolina. Unfortunately, this anti-drug societal meme, which is profound even here in the middle of a California barrio, has taken a hold of me lately, and I even haven’t been stoned in a while. I take exception to the standard crap line about drugs. I’m extremely happy that we Boomers are continuing to get high. The typical line is that drugs are evil life destroyers, and everyone who takes them is an evil scum to be avoided and shunned. In terms of my life experience, my position is that drugs are fun. Drugs are a blast. Drugs are oodles and oodles of kicks and endless good times. That’s been my experience. I never got addicted or totally messed up on dope like it seems every other user did. I’ve been using off and on for 35 years now, and I’m not any the worse for it. That’s because I was always just a recreational user. Everyone I tell this to is like, “No way! What’s that? No such thing as a recreational user!” This is because, you see, all users are either very casual experimenters or addicts and screwups with a life-wrecking problem. But really. The only drug I ever used regularly was pot, and even if you use it daily, it usually doesn’t screw you up that much. I used coke for 13 years and never got addicted. I did probably less than an ounce of coke in 13 years, maybe a gram or so a year. I’d just tickle my nose now and then. I only did speed 3 times, and I never got into heroin, although I admit to very much a liking for codeine these days, which is killer good for OCD too for some weird reason. I did hallucinogens for 14 years (40 times overall). These drugs actually act against addiction in that they are so overwhelming that it’s almost impossible to take them regularly. I took psychedelics maybe 3-4 times a year, never had a serious bad trip, and I don’t think I have any serious consequences from it other than really bright lit up colors sometimes, which I think is HPPD. I’ve known many folks who took LSD anywhere from 1-700 times, and I can’t say I’ve ever met one person who was messed up from taking the stuff. I’ve known folks who have been using pot daily for 20-30 years, and they are psychologically normal in every way, shape and form. Those that were not, I saw them quit pot, and in general, they didn’t get any healthier psychologically. Sometimes they even started back up again, and still not much changed. I concluded that pot in general doesn’t seem to have much to do with psychological issues one way or the other. The notion of the permafried pothead or former acid user is largely a myth as far as I can tell, or at least it’s uncommon. Most of the really psychologically messed up folks I’ve met weren’t using anything. I always thought maybe they could have used some weed to mellow them out a bit. Oh yeah, one more really evil thing pot does to me. Sometimes it makes me laugh. For hours and hours, off and on. And, even after the high wears off, it still makes me laugh, even for days afterwards, even out in public (where I do try to suppress my giggles). I don’t care if people think I’m nuts for laughing in public. The sane people will just figure I’m thinking of something funny, which is exactly why I’m laughing. So you see, that’s one more reason cannabis is so evil. It makes people laugh, sometimes on and off for hours and days on end. We can’t have any of that now, can we?

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