On this day in 1965 LSD was declared illegal in the United States. Precisely how illegal has shifted over the years. It is now a schedule 1 drug as defined in the 1970 Controlled Substances Act. Which as far as I’m concerned adds in the assertion that drugs on this list have no potentiality for medical use. A bizarre category in the bizarre field of drug control.
As someone who came of age in the late 1960’s in the San Francisco Bay Area, and someone caught up in the alternative spiritual scene, it would probably be a bit surprising if I was not personally intimate with LSD. And I’m not unusual in that regard…
Today for the most part when asked I say that my psychedelic experiences provided one, if a quite valuable lesson. That is the world is not constructed as I had thought it was. That is, quite valuable.
For most who used psychedelics in the nineteen sixties and seventies and who continue to as a recreational drug, there isn’t going to be much more to be gleaned out of the experience. So, drugs are no longer part of my life-style. Well, I do have this thing for coffee, and probably the less said about chocolate, the better…
As for my blanket assertion about the spiritual possibilities in drug use, I make exceptions for those shamanic cultural practices such as found within the Native American Church. I believe with context and critically with some kind of elder who can check one’s spiritual work, then who knows what value there might be using drugs of one sort or another? I certainly don’t claim to have a handle on this complex aspect of human spirituality and have no desire to stand in the way of those who find it compelling…
And, of course today is about when LSD was made illegal.
I think that was a serious mistake. I think our cultural war on drugs is a serious mistake. I for one believe all drugs should be legal with the major caveat that minors be protected.
Were we to embrace this view I believe we could nearly empty our prisons and redirect ample resources currently squandered in policing and prison in ways that might actually be useful to limit the damage to individuals and society at large.
And, spiritually, who knows? Probably a lot of deadends and a few blisteringly beautiful possibilities. Rather like the rest of the religious scene…
Still, as I enter the beginnings of old age my childhood memories are becoming more selective and at the same time those fewer images more vivid.
And I recall that time when I found the world fresh and new and believed some new age genuinely was dawning, parochial and foolish as so much of it really was, with more affection than disdain…
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