Eight tabs really does sound like a completely insurmountable, totally crazy amount of acid. Well, it did, but I'm coming to realise that most I've been told or have come assume about hallucinogenic drugs is ridiculous horseshit, pure unadulterated garbage and not even in the ballpark of a vague approximation of being anywhere close to correct. They've lied to you. Lied and lied and lied.

Back in the day, when Berkeley chemists slaved many hours over a hot stove and churned out the stuff by the barrel-load, I can imagine downing eight tabs would be quite the achievement. Indeed, all those stories about the guy who “took too much” and ended up in a pink padded cell in the psych ward thinking he was an orange fruit and screaming endless that “THE JUICER! THE JUICER!” was coming for him sound almost plausible in the 60's. The acid got weaker, but the price and people's perceptions stayed the same. This wouldn't be a problem if it was as cheap as the states, but here in New Zealand it's thirty to forty dollars a tab, you can't just gobble back a ten strip and float off into fairyland. Even obtaining that much LSD was a significant effort, let alone the cost involved.

Kids today take one tab and think they're tripping, it's a joke. First tab I took I expected leprechauns - and all I got was high. My friends tell me it's self-destructive, that I'm gonna fry my brain with this shit. Brother, sister, unless you've seen the things I've seen, trod the roads I've travelled, you got absolutely no idea. I want to crawl to the edge of the pit and look over. As any investor will tell you, risk and reward are directly related. Ain't no gold without a few dead miners.

As for the trip itself, good, yeah, but with a tiny kind-of hint of disappointment. I felt like I could have handled more. All those cheesy psychedelic effects you see in the movies when someone gets fucked up on some rotten hallucinogenic drug, that's actually what it's like. We walked through the pine forest, watched the trees twist into fractals, built a bonfire on the beach, stared at the flames and talked.

I always wonder why it's illegal, it just makes me so goddamn furious. Everyone should try acid, go on psychedelic holiday and get the hell out of dodge for a while. “Trip” is an extremely appropriate term, like skydiving or swimming with conceptual sharks: scary, exhilarating, but afterwards it's over and you feel like you've really lived, returned from some strange bizarre planet with brand new alien technology—mixed shit up a little. Imagine the headlines: “Man takes LSD! Nothing bad happens, has some interesting ideas”. Unfortunately I can't see that making the frontpage of the local newspaper. Makes me want to go kick a conservative lawmaker in the teeth.

As for me, I'm gonna do something interesting.

As for me, I'm off to bend the iron of the world.