From: [a--dr--w] at [cubetech.com] (Andrew Loewenstern)
Newsgroups: alt.drugs
Subject: Letter to Ann Landers
Date: 14 Jun 1993 00:43:08 -0500

Hi, this is a letter that I am posting for a friend.  It is also being
sent to Ann Landers...

---------------------------
Dear Ann and others interested,

I know you'll be getting many letters about LSD use that are pro-LSD.
Many people will be claiming to have had all sorts of beneficial
experiences due to their LSD use, but few will give concrete details.
Perhaps my story will be appreciated by you and your readers.

Other than a little alcohol in my senior year, I used no recreational
drugs while in high school.  I started as a freshman believing the
propaganda that had been fed me in my elementary and junior high
classes.  By the time I was done with High School, I had learned that
many of the claims the government had been spreading were simply lies
(reports of chromosome damage, urban legends of people staring at the
sun under the influence of marijuana, dope-peddlers getting rich
selling to elementary school kids--there's a well-heeled clientelle).
I swung fairly hard in the opposite direction and believed almost
NOTHING I was told.

I took LSD and was quite interested by my initial experiences.  I
continued to take LSD and became less concerned with discretion since
my first few trips were quite normal by LSD standards.  However, one
time I did take several "hits" and through a stroke of fate, I was
separated from the straight people I was with.  Unfortunately, while
removed from anyone who knew what was going on, I had "a bad trip".  I
wasn't unhappy, I was just VERY out of touch with reality.  So far out
of touch, that I did in fact wander out to an intersection in Boston
and jump on top of cars that had come to stop at an intersection.
Some of them rightly accelerated very quickly, leaving me to drop on
the pavement.  I'm very lucky that I wasn't badly hurt, although a
dozen years later I still have a small scar on my hip.

When I came to my senses I was able to put together what had happened
and I realized that I came close to losing my life.  Still, I tried
LSD a few more times after that and "severely lost touch with reality"
each time--once even resulting in arrest.  I eventually decided that
LSD was not something that *my* brain could handle, although I didn't
know why so many people I had talked to were totally puzzled by what
had happened to me.

Now here's the tricky part.  A few years ago my mother, a Professor in
a state university, began acting weird.  At the time, I was living
over a thousand miles a way, but my sister kept me aprised of the
situation.  Interestingly enough, many of my mother's delusions struck
me as similar in nature (although not in content) to those that I had
on my "bad trips."  This was during a very stressful time for my
mother.  She had just published a textbook and was anxiously awaiting
the reception it would get from critics and even more difficult was
the fact that she was up for tenure.

As she started "weirding out" she sought help from a _psychologist_.
The psychologist had my mother discussing various events from the past
and various current events, but wasn't suggesting medication or that
my mother seek help from a psychiatrist.  During this time my mother
was sufficiently confused that she would beg me to help her resign at
from the university.  This was doubly peculiar: in an unimpaired
capacity she would not need my helpto do such a thing for her.  She
certainly earned her Ph.D.  without my help.  In addition she enjoyed
her work and was thought highly of at the University.

My experiences with LSD were sufficiently close to what my mother was
going through that both my sister and I INSISTED she see a
psychiatrist.  By then she was such a basket case that she really
couldn't even resist.  She was diagnosed with a chemical imbalance and
prescribed medication.  She has done very well since then.  If she had
been left in her psychologist's hands, she never would have gotten the
treatment she needed.  Her behaviour was so erratic and bizarre that
if I hadn't already been seen something similar, I might have written
my own mother off as an incurable loony.

So now, it looks like there may be a slight chemical imbalance running
in my family.  At the time I was taking LSD I was also spending
inordinate time playing with and programming computers, sometimes not
sleeping for forty-eight hours at a time.  So adding LSD temporarily
pushed me over the edge for a few hours, while my totally straight
mother took no LSD but had much worse and longer "trips".

I honestly think that had I not been lied to so much in my youth, that
I'd have been more responsible with my use of LSD, but even though I
had some major troubles with it, I'm glad that I had the experience to
recognize what was happening to my mother.  I now live in the same
town that she does and we both keep tabs on one another.  She got
tenure and I have my own company (I program computers and employ
others to do the same).  In fact, I'm writing this letter as I wait
for the computer to finish some tasks that I've requested so that our
next product can be distributed for testing.

From all the reading I've done on the subject, and from all the
discussions I've had with people who have used hallucinogens in the
past--including a woman who participated in a well regulated
governmental sponsored clinical exploration of hallucinogens--I know
that my case is rare.  Perhaps that will explain why you are bound to
get deluged with letters saying "People on LSD don't do goofy things
like jumping out of windows".  Had more credible information been
available to my friends and me, I don't think my bad experiences would
have been as bad.  However, I blame no one but myself.

I'm not ashamed of my drug use, but mental illness has a sufficient
stigma that I've sent this to a good friend of mine in another state
so that he can post it to a bulletin board that's been discussing your
LSD article and so that he can forward it to you for your reading.  My
mother certainly doesn't need any more grief.

I know it's longer than you will print, but hopefully there are enough
specific details in it to be credible, even in the absence of a
signature.  You may want to summarize this letter with something like
"one reader even claimed that his LSD use helped him recognize when
his mother was having chemical imbalances that almost caused her to be
institutionalized" even if you remain skeptical.

Sincerely,
a concerned reader
-- 
[a--dr--w] at [cubetech.com]      | "We cannot dwell in the time that is to come,
Andrew Loewenstern       |  lest we lose our now for a phantom of our
Cube Technologies, Inc.  |  own design." - Erendis      FYEO Public Key:
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