Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 18, 1993 TAG: 9303170158
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JIM URBAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THE RETURN TRIP/ LSD, IS BACK AND NOT JUST FOR THE ACID HEADS OF THE '60S-
THREE decades after LSD defined the flower-child generation, the mind-altering hallucinogenic drug has seized a new set of users in college dorms and suburban high schools.That's right. Acid. The drug that causes some people to hear colors, see sounds and jump out of windows thinking they can fly is making a return trip with a generation that never heard of LSD maven Timothy Leary.
"Some people will try it and have bad trips and not try it again, but most people like it," said John, 18, a University of Pittsburgh freshman who wanted his last name withheld. He saw LSD at his suburban Philadelphia high school last year and even more when he got to college.
"It's become more acceptable, not as much as pot, but it is heading in that direction," John said.
National studies show alcohol, marijuana and cocaine use by young adults has decreased while LSD use has increased. The most startling figure pertains to male high school students in predominantly white suburban neighborhoods, where hallucinogen use in 1991 was 18.9 percent, or about one of every five, according to the Parents' Resource Institute for Drug Education or PRIDE.
Among all young adults, about one of 10 have experimented with acid, LSD's common street name, statistics indicate.
"The word is out that there are advantages to taking LSD that are not present with cocaine," said Dr. Henry Abraham, director of psychiatric research at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Boston, who has studied disastrous LSD cases since 1971.
"It's not addictive and it's cheap," Abraham said. "These kids think, `Hey, it's not cocaine, you can really party with this drug.' And you don't have to go into hock or become a hooker to feed a habit."
A 1991 survey of 15,000 high school seniors found 8.8 percent had experimented with LSD, up from 7.2 in 1986. Cocaine usage fell from 16.9 percent in 1986 to 7.8 percent in 1991, below that of LSD.
The same study, conducted jointly by the University of Michigan and the National Institute for Drug Abuse, found 5.1 percent of college students had used LSD in 1990. That compared with 3.4 percent in 1988. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus one percentage point.
The PRIDE study of 26,000 high school students released in 1992 showed drops in marijuana and cocaine use, but a 20 percent jump in LSD use since 1989.
Today's doses, known as hits, are about half as powerful as those in the '60s, researchers said. But many users develop a tolerance and soon increase the number of hits to attain the LSD high that some say blows away cocaine and marijuana.
"It just twists every perception that you have," said Alice Holopirek, a former user who now counsels young users in Larned, Kan.
"You see sounds, you see music, you hear colors," Holopirek said. "It's a complete distortion of the way we receive things in our senses. Some people told me they would see things that weren't there, but I never had that. I would tend to see things there that were very distorted - like a wall melting. Or I'd look across the street and see waves in the asphalt."
That's what makes the drug dangerous, Holopirek said. She knows of a user who hallucinated having bugs under his skin and tried to cut them out with a knife.
There are also side effects like flashbacks and panic attacks. And some users suffer from protracted prolonged psychoses in which they lose touch with reality for two to three days and sometimes weeks, said Abraham, the Boston researcher.
"Use of LSD is really like playing Russian roulette with chemicals," Abraham said. "You can spin the chamber and maybe five times you get away with it. Maybe the sixth time you blow your brains out. Instead of bullets, they are using drugs. God bless 'em."
LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, is derived from a fungus that grows on rye and other grains. It is easily produced in clandestine labs, mostly in California, and commonly disseminated in the form of drug-permeated blotter paper decorated with cartoon characters.
"There is a degree of expertise needed for manufacturing, but you don't have to be a scientist," said Ken Jones, who heads a team of narcotics investigators for the Postal Inspection Service in Pittsburgh.
The distribution network is much like those for other drugs. Street dealers buy in bulk from mid-level suppliers, who buy in even greater bulk from the manufacturers. Missing is the drug cartels or mob families that dominate cocaine distribution.
LSD is an entrepreneurial drug with "big money" at stake, Jones said.
A rite of passage
Users place a hit on their tongue or chew on the paper to get a high that lasts about six hours. The experience is called tripping.
During the '60s, tripping was practically a rite of passage for many who smoked marijuana, tuned in Jimi Hendrix and the Doors, protested the Vietnam War and became sexually liberated. By tripping, they showed disdain for the establishment.
"A lot of people in the '60s who were at all into the drug scene dropped acid sooner or later. There is no question about that," remembers Joe White, an associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh who spent 1962 through 1967 at a counterculture hotbed, the University of California at Berkeley.
Today, experts say a lack of spending money, the passing of time and marketing of the '60s counterculture have combined to fuel LSD's resurgence.
LSD hits run about $3 to $5 in most areas of the country. The price is higher in some places, but it's still more cost-effective than the other "party drugs" such as marijuana and cocaine. A gram of cocaine will run about $100. Marijuana costs about $65 for a quarter-ounce.
"When you compare one hit of LSD to a gram of coke, LSD gives you a much longer high," said Jones, the postal inspector. "You don't have the intense high for a short time and then a falloff. You get a lot more bang for your buck with LSD."
Another reason for increased LSD usage is the focus upon cocaine and its derivative, crack, in the drug war. LSD has been out of the public eye for years, and so have the horror stories about bad trips. But young kids have been bombarded with commercials that assail cocaine and crack use.
"It's been long enough now that LSD doesn't have the same reputation among young people as it did in the '60s or '70s, when young people were reading articles about people flying out of windows while tripping on LSD," said Jonathan Caulkins, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who researches drug trafficking.
LSD use is also part of the '60s nostalgia being revived today. Tie-dyed clothing re-emerged several years ago. Bell-bottoms were the rage in this year's spring fashion shows. The Doors, the innovative '60s rock band with outrageous front man and drug addict Jim Morrison, was the subject of a 1991 Oliver Stone film.
"The rise in LSD and other hallucinogen use is part of the '60s psychedelia culture being heavily marketed once again to young people," said Marsha Keith Schuchard, a PRIDE researcher.
Unlike marijuana and cocaine, LSD is hard to spot because students can carry hits around in textbooks or send it to friends inside greeting cards.
Drug-sniffing dogs have a hard time detecting it, so suppliers traffic it to street dealers via the U.S. Mail.
"If you're in California and are considering sending 5,000 hits of LSD to Pittsburgh, you're spending $1 postage, and within two or three days, it is hand-delivered," said Postal Inspector Andy Weber.
While maintaining their focus on crack and cocaine, police and federal agents are starting to investigate LSD sales and are buoyed by tough federal sentencing guidelines. If acid and the blotter paper it is on weighs more than 10 grams, about the weight of 10 paper clips, a dealer faces a minimum of 10 years in prison.
No spiritual leader
LSD's popularity seems greatest in sleepy suburban communities that are a far cry from hip San Francisco or Los Angeles.
Last year, investigators broke up an LSD ring in two Medford, N.J., high schools. Prosecutors obtained a guilty plea from a Lafayette, Ind., teen-ager who spiked his teacher's soda with acid. And a 21-year-old suburban Pittsburgh man, convicted in December of drug trafficking, had received 20,000 hits of LSD each week from California, postal inspectors said.
Some researchers remain unconvinced that LSD use is a major problem today. Saul Shiffman, a professor of psychology at Pittsburgh, said agencies should remain focused on efforts to contain drinking and marijuana smoking among young people.
"You have to pick your battles," Shiffman said.
The one thing missing from this generation of LSD users is a spiritual leader - a '90s version of Leary, the former Harvard professor who promoted LSD in the '60s by telling followers to, "Tune in, turn on, drop out."
Leary still stands by the drug, saying bad trips gave it a bad rap.
He defends most of what he has done. He needed to take drugs, he says, to learn about the mysteries of the mind that could be gained no other way.
But Abraham, the Boston researcher, said LSD users who say the drug hasn't harmed their minds are in for a surprise.
"It's not that they are lying. They just haven't looked closely enough for a side effect," Abraham said.