Remember when you were young?

As I wrote in a previous post my old friend Alice came back into my life recently. So as I was off work today I thought why not? and chewed up four small squares of imported LSD and wondered where the trip would take me.

Not very far was the answer. Either I have delusional memories of acid or the tabs I got was of lesser quality than the gear I used to get back in the day.

And it's not like I'm talking about the sixties when the average acid tab contained 100 micrograms of pure Lysergic acid diethylamide, I'm talking about the mid-late eighties when the average Strawberry tab only contained around 50 micrograms of lysergic acid if you were very lucky. The only way to get the good shit was if you knew the main source for the best acid.

I was fortunate in that respect. I knew one of the bigger dealers during the days of all night raves organized in secrecy that would make the CIA look like amateurs and he always supplied me with the best gear money could buy. My friends and I often spent a lot of money stocking up for a weekend bender so The Man was always happy to see us parking up outside his flat.

Those were days of madness. Every weekend for about two years I ate acid for fun. During those days my ritual was a few joints and a hit or two from the bong and something to eat to keep the fuel levels up before I got into the acid.

When I first started tripping I'd have a half a strawberry and save the other half for a couple of hours later. After a couple of weeks I was eating two strawberry's to begin with and would eat another four when I felt the first tingle of the acid work it's way up my spine. Within six months my acid intake was something like six tabs to start and another eight when it began to kick in.

After one particularly crazy session I counted up how many tabs I had ate over the course of the weekend and I discovered that I had eaten something in the region of fifty tabs. Which made my dealer remark at the time that I should calm down for a bit. So I did. I called it a day. Cold turkey was all I ate for six months.

Until... One night when The Man told me he had laid his hands on some acid that would make your eyeballs turn inside out and make you think you were shaking hands with god. My will crumbled quicker than a rich tea biscuit in a cup of coffee and I swallowed the tab he handed me.

Two hours later I was a fucking mess. I was raving and jabbering, sweat was pouring off me and I had no idea where I was or who I was. I damn near screamed The Man's house down as he tried to calm me down while his girlfriend tried her best to keep the neighbor from phoning for the cops.

I eventually calmed down after The Man had the idea of putting a video of cartoons on and telling me to watch the TV. The neighbor stopped threatening to call the police and The Mans girlfriend made cups of tea for everyone. Meanwhile I sat laughing at the TV like a demented loon.

But that was then and this is now. Times have changed, as has Acid.