Amazingly, almost unbelievably, I’ve never used illicit drugs and don’t feel I’ve missed anything on that account. I think much of this stems from a 1962 term paper I wrote on LSD (make that “about LSD”) while a student at Tufts. What about the elephant killed in a 1962 LSD experiment funded by the CIA and published in Science? Then there were Harvard’s Alpert and Leary, looking for participants at Tufts (LSD was legal until 1966) when their subjects had already founded a church/meditation center for the drug’s use and were known to be wacky losers. I was a serious runner then, and the athletic scene was totally different from today. Athletics were a prime motivator AWAY FROM drug use. The athlete’s diet was protein based, with carbo-loading just before a race. Performance enhancing drugs were not in the picture, and cigarettes and alcohol (the drugs of choice at the time) were known performance diminishers. There were two views regarding the relationship between drugs and sex. It helped; it didn’t help but folks were so stoned they didn’t know the difference. Without experimentation, I sided with the latter (besides, who needed the help?).
Incidentally, Alpert was a Tuft’s graduate, and I heard Leary speak at Princeton and spoke with him briefly there. So have some yogurt and chanterelles, in memory of Tusko the 7000 pound bull elephant (RIP).
p.s. Fran and I are amateur mycologists, but we avoid the psychedelic ones.
While some may bemoan the sexual freedom of today, this can be contrasted with the inexperience and naiveté that many older adults experienced not that long ago. The first naked woman I ever saw was my former wife. There is a need for a range of options appropriate to the individual’s character and wishes. I eventually had enough experience, sexual and otherwise, so that when I met Fran, I felt confident that I had a sense of what was happening and what I wanted to happen (as much as one ever can know such things). I am a romantic, but my operational motto is “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
Comment by admin — October 27, 2009 @ 2:31 pm