Advanced Clinical Trials

Advanced Clinical Trials
By David Glenn Cox

The FDA recently paved the way for clinical trials of LSD to treat patients with migraine headaches and also to relieve anxiety in cancer patients. Having been a participant in advanced trials around thirty years ago I think that it will do well.

I have to give a disclaimer here. I don’t want to, but you know how these types are when you piss them off, so basically I have to. I’ll give it, but I don’t want to. I want you all to know that as I do it I’m making a sarcastically funny face, because I don’t mean a word of it.

“Drugs are bad! Don’t do drugs! You hear me? I mean it now! Every word!” There, the first time I did acid we were in our teens; we scored four four-way hits of windowpane acid. We needed someplace to go, so I called a girl who lived close by that I knew was having a party that night. At first she was hesitant, but then she relented, warning, “Ok, but no drugs!”

“Alright, you can trust me!” I explained.

There would be four of us attending the party; that’s why we scored four hits. Before leaving we each did half of a four way hit, and then we smoked a joint and listened to a record. As the time went by we started wondering if we hadn’t just been ripped off by the guy up the street.

About the time we had devised the proper manner of death for the guy up the street for ripping us off, my friend Dave says, "You know what? Fuck it! I’m going to take the other half." Dave was our leader; whatever Dave did we all did. So we all took the other half. Those of you in audience who are older and know how this story is going to unfold, please don’t spoil it for the rest of the crowd.

It had been almost an hour and we still felt nothing except our rising anger at the guy up the street. We left for Sherri’s house for the party, the four of us walking through suburbia. I felt a twinge as if someone were tickling my spine but I didn’t mention it because it was too personal and too much information for teenaged guys. I noticed that my mood was better and I was actually looking forward to a party full of people I barely liked.

When we arrived at Sherri’s house the party was all ready under way. We knocked and Sherri came to the door and she welcomed us in, only because I think she had the hots for my friend Dave. But again, I got the warning. “No drugs. You promised!”

Suddenly that was a very funny statement, and I nodded in agreement as I passed, trying not to laugh. First we made the rounds of the party where there were chips and dip and Coca-Cola and all that kind of stuff. Normally I would grab a handfull of chips and a Coke, instead I was repelled by them and walked to the other side of the room to avoid them. We said our hellos and made polite conversations, but we drifted towards the living room with the lights down low and the stereo playing.

We all sat on the couch, and Dave bumped my shoulder and said, “Look at me.” As I looked at him he says, “That’s what I thought!” And instantly I knew exactly what he meant by that, because I could look at his face and see it, too. We were all ripped out of the frame. And always, with the first time, there is some degree of apprehension. Am I going to be able to handle this? Am I a future "Dragnet" episode?

There was a record playing and one of the guys asked, “What’s that playing? It sounds pretty good.”

I reached over for the jacket and read it. “It’s Three Dog Night, man.”

So the guy says, “Oh wow, I get it now! You can sell shit if everyone does enough acid! I mean, lousy shit sounds good." Then he pointed to the sky like Buddha and said, “If lousy shit sounds good then what does good shit sound like?” Of course by this time we were all giggling like idiots.

We pawed through the albums trying desperately to find something good in the collection of a teenage girl who really wasn’t very cool. No Deep Purple or Black Sabbath, but then Gary pulled the Beatles “White Album” out of the stack. We had a back and forth discussion on the album’s merits, but at that point we would have a back and forth discussion on the merits of having ten fingers.

From the first track we were all absolutely mesmerized, pushed back in our seats. Our minds running a hundred miles an hour, and yet listening intently to the most amazing musical performance I’d ever heard.

I don’t remember if the fight broke out first or it was the wine that got spilled on the pool table. But it was way before the two guys started wrestling and the ashtray got broke. To the four of us it was the most amazing, live, 3D broadcast in the history of the world. We laughed until tears rolled down from our eyes; we just stood on the stairs and watched the teenage mayhem unfold in the basement until the watchees started watching back! Uh, oh!

We had been exposed; we were silly stupid and we were having the best time of anyone at the party. Dave, our leader, was a master of timing. Just as the crowd began to seriously wonder about us, Dave announced to the room, “I’m going out front to smoke a joint; anybody who wants to come along is welcome!” From the crowd came the cries of “Me, too!” Almost the entire party was headed upstairs, except for Sherri who had an unhappy look on her face.

There were too many of us to just stand on the porch so we broke up into groups to walk around the block. I took the first hit off of that joint and my life changed; the white halo effect of the city lights began to take on a purple hue. My closer vision in the dark made the images looked like digital pixiles, decades before its invention. As we finished the joint I was tripping my balls off.

I saw a tree with a broken branch and a strange fluid was pouring out that was a deep aqua blue that was almost neon. Inside of it there were what looked like the letter C interlocked with other Cs that were backwards and they were red and orange and were just puddling up on the ground. At that moment I knew perfectly well that I was looking at a hallucination. But, man, what a hallucination. And when was the next time I would get to see something so beautiful, something generated chemically inside my brain?

It made me wonder, so I sat down to watch and to contemplate it. Dave says, “No, no, no, no, nobody's sitting down or we’ll be here all night.” But when we got back to the party it was all ready starting to break up. As we looked at each other in the glow of the porch light it was obvious that we four were wasted far beyond human recognition.

We would have to go get some Visine before we could think of going back to Dave’s house. That meant about a three-mile hike across open snowy fields to the twenty-four-hour Walgreen’s. Would our intrepid foursome make it? It was a legitimate question considering our condition. But without, really, a choice we began our march. We reached the highway and decided that due to all the cars having mile-long tail lights we would walk to the crosswalk and use the light.

We were messed up, so messed up that we knew that we were so messed up! We watched out for each other and made sure that none fell behind. We talked about bullshit for hours, our parents our lives, our dreams. We trudged through foot deep snow on a quest to make us appear half human. Between the four of us we knew maybe three other people with cars so when a car went by blowing its horn we flipped them off.

But it was the second car really that really scared me. All I could think was it's the cops and realized “Oh, wow, that really would be a bad trip.” But it was a friend of ours offering us a ride. As we all piled in the dome light came on and our friend John said, “Wait a minute,” and turned the dome light back on after the door had closed.

“Holy Shit!” he said. “You guys are wasted. I thought you were just stoned, walking in a zig zag pattern in the snow, but you guys are fucked up!”

We explained the particulars and our destination and John said, “That’s cool, but I promised to pick up McDonald’s first for my parents.” Richard, who had been the quietest of the four, began to talk about French fries. He wanted French fries and couldn’t wait for, you guessed it, French fries. We laughed hysterically as John placed the order through the call box. It was the first time I realized how mindless and disconnected from humanity that was, “Like, talk to the box, man!”

Richard got his French fries and he held them in front of himself and laughed at them until he cried. The only thing funnier in the whole wide world was when he threw them out the widow a minute later. He didn’t really want French fries, he just liked the concept of French fries. Steaming hot shoestring potatoes fried in grease and served in a paper sleeve.

We arrived at Walgreen’s and we were all repelled by the bright lights; it was like walking in backstage at the sun. Our eyes adjusted as we stepped on the mat that opened the little gate to let you in at Walgreen’s. But this time it didn’t swing open; it vanished before my very eyes. My friends were more concerned with telling me to shut up about the gate and to help look for the Visine. We found the Visine and we made the trip back to the house and escaped unscathed.

But we weren’t finished. After listening to the stereo with the lights off, we couldn’t sleep so at three a.m. we hiked to Dunkin Doughnuts, or as we called them in the day, Flunkin Duncan. We were coming down to the point that food sounded appealing again. We again battled the bright lights on our way in and ordered coffee and doughnuts to top off the windowpane.

There were other young people there, and the thought did not elude us as we began wondering why they were also at Flunkin Duncan at three a.m. It was almost with a knowing smile; it was logical and would stand to reason that we would all take it around the same time, and that we would all come down about the same time and end up ordering doughnuts at three a.m.

But then the cops walked in! Two, for real, gun-toting cops! And here we were, the zombie brigade; so what could we do?
We all got real quiet and no one said a word to anyone. We froze on our stools, but the cops got their doughnuts and coffee to go. We waited as they walked out of the shop. Then we waited until they had put the police car in reverse and turned it around, headed for traffic. Then we laughed our asses off yet again. Me, my friends and the people across the doughnut shop, strangers sharing a moment.

We fell asleep around dawn with the TV on and when I awoke I kept hearing the guy doing the falsetto “Soooul Train!” I wanted to get up and destroy the television but my head hurt too bad to move. I felt as though I was hung over and had been dipped in motor oil. Taking a shower felt like washing in oil, as well, but was worth it to feel clean again.

I knew at the time that that shit was dangerous. You could really mess yourself up on it. It was a hard trip and like any trip you were tired from it so you don’t do it again until you are ready. Just like drinking shots of Tequila every night would kill you, acid was no different. I enjoyed the high and the therapeutic effects of what appeared to me to be a refocusing of my efforts by the elimination of self doubt and mind clutter.

It was a hard and dangerous drug, but when compared to today’s crack and meth it seems almost like a Junior Mint. It wasn’t addictive; the very idea of driving repulsed me. Not at gunpoint could I be forced to drive a car while on acid. I didn’t even like riding in a car on acid, too much movement! The idea of someone committing a crime on acid is almost comical. “Hey, give me your wallet, man, or I’ll... ah, fuck it, man, I was just kidding. I don’t really want your wallet. I really don’t know why I said it. I need a few bucks, man, so do you think you could help me out? That would be far out, man.”

Maybe I'm missing something here, but if I had anxiety about dying I think the last thing I would want is to experience a bad LSD trip where I got to meditate on my fears of dying.

And yes I have taken LSD and had a good trip and a bad trip. A truly bad trip is not something I would wish on anyone. (well maybe some people)

I really hope that they are tinkering with the doses so that they just get a little body high. Maybe if they give them just the tiniest amount than they can get that euphoric body high without completely tripping balls.

I have had all kinds of bad experiences in life. Three people have died at Disneyworld this year.

it would put dying into perspective, that it's not that big a deal.

It's hard to explain unless you've been there.

I did the 60s whole hog, so I've been there.

I don't think it'll do much for migraines. It did nothing for mine.

However, it's been useful in things like PTSD.