An interview with a Hippie....

What is it?
Mostly known as acid, LSD (d-lysergic acid diethylamide) is the most powerful mind-altering substance known to man. Normally only used for having fun, this psychedelic drug comes from a very bizarro fungus called ergot. Measured in micrograms (millionths of a gram), it would only take a half a kilo to send every single man, woman and child in the country off to the land of vibrating rainbows.
LSD is colourless, tasteless and odourless, that's why it comes soaked into little squares (tabs) of paper with with lame hippy designs like sunflowers, strawberries or rockets on them.
Street LSD varies massively in quality (anywhere between 40 and 150 micrograms). Heat, air and light all degrade the tiny amounts involved, so you can never be sure how much you are actually taking until it's too late, and like it or not, you're on your trip.
As you might expect, this powerful and often unpredictable drug is against the law in India.

How does it feel?
Taking acid is described as 'a trip' because it can last as long as 8 to 12 hours from start to finish. Kicking in anywhere between 20 minutes and two hours after taking, the first signs are a sense of euphoria and expectation, along with a tingling body. Once you start to feel these effects, you'll be peaking within half an hour to 45 minutes. At this stage it's pretty common to feel a bit sick.
The actual peak lasts anywhere from two to five hours. A lame tab might make you feel relaxed, laughing, a bit like being stoned but with super hero vision; colours may seem brighter, patterns on the surface of things more eye-grabbing. Take a better tab, and you'll have rich visual hallucinations; colours will seem more vibrant, flat surfaces may ripple and shimmer. You may notice tiny details on objects. Music sounds better and louder. At the same time, you might feel blissed out, have flashes of insight into yourself or the world, feel yourself dissolving, or see objects merging into one another.
LSD works by diddling with, or completely removing the normal filters your mind creates between it and the outside world. With these filters down, more information comes in: You sense more, think more, and feel more. At higher doses, the rush becomes a flood, and your senses actually begin to merge until you can see sounds or smell colours. The experts (a bunch of very experienced 'travellers') have recognised four levels of trip. The strength of the tab is the biggest factor, but how relaxed and comfortable you are also plays a big part.
+One: Strong visual hallucinations. Bright colours stand out, objects appear to ripple or breathe. Coloured patterns behind the eyes are vivid, more active. Moments of reflection and distractive thought patterns. Thoughts and thinking become enhanced. Creative urges. Euphoria. Connection with others, empathy. Sense of time distorted or lost.
+Two: Very obvious visual effects. Curved or warped patterns. Familiar objects appear strange as surface details distract the eye. Imagination and 'mind's eye' images become vivid and three dimensional. Some confusion of the senses. Some awareness of background mental processes such as balance systems or auditory visual perception. Old memories becomes accessible. Images or experiences may rise up. Music is powerful and can affect your mood. Sense of time lost.
+Three: Very strong hallucinations such as objects morphing into other objects. Intense depersonalisation - the barriers between you and the universe begin to break down. You feel you have connection with everything around you. You can experience contradictory feelings simultaneously. Some loss of reality. Time meaningless. Senses blend into one. Feeling of being born. Multiple splitting of the ego. Powerful awareness of your own mental processes and senses. Highly symbolic visions when eyes are closed.
+Four: A very rare experience. Total loss of visual connection with reality. The senses cease to function in the normal way. Total loss of self. Merging with space, other objects, or the universe. The loss of reality becomes so severe that it defies explanation. Pure white light.

Comedown
The trip wears off gradually after 8 to 12 hours, but you might continue to feel a bit messed up and weird until you get a full night's sleep. Physically, you can feel tired and drained right into the next day. Psychologically, any thoughts or feelings you had during your trip will stay with you. A positive experience can give you a kind of happiness lasting hours, days, or even weeks afterwards. A bad trip could freak you out for the same length of time.

Problems
As an actual drug, LSD is amazingly safe. It has no known physical side-effects, other than fatigue and a lingering sensation that your head has been messed with. However, as you will have guessed by now, acid is a powerful mental amplifier. That means that if you are feeling bummed or uptight, or deeply pissed off with commercial radio thrashing the same songs over and over, you should probably stay away from acid.
Most people who have a bad trip never touch the drug again. Experienced users and serious trippers accept that bad trips as part of the territory. Flashbacks can happen (where you temporarily feel like you're out of it again), days or even months afterwards, although this is not that common.

Addiction
LSD has zero physical addiction potential. It's not physically addictive and it's not a drug that you will want to do again right away. But, as with any substance, people can and do become psychologically addicted to LSD, and it can become very hard to function if you are taking acid on a regular basis. That, by the way, is the understatement of the fucking century.

Tolerance
This builds up rapidly with LSD, so that the same amount the next day will be noticeably less interesting. This wears off after three to four days, but to be honest, you're not going to be that keen on tripping so soon again anyway.

Mixing
LSD is powerful and unpredictable, so it's not such a good idea to use it with other mind-altering drugs, especially if you're a newb, or far from home.

Benefits
Apparently, LSD has been successfully used in some countries to treat serious drug addiction. Of course, the boffins don't just hand over a few tabs and say 'good luck'; like other experimental drug treatment programmes , everything is strictly controlled and monitored with lots of counselling included.

Tips for using more safelyIf you are new to LSD, or just want to be a bit sensible, check out these main points.

First timers - try taking a quarter or half a tab; as with all drugs, it's better to go easy than have a full on freak-out the first time you take it.
Because LSD makes you very, very sensitive to your environment, you should always be in a safe, comfortable space, preferably with a friend you trust. The higher you fly, the softer the landing pad should be.
Be in a nice place: No phone calls. No visitors. Sorry to sound like an old hippy, but see if you can be near nature, or surround yourself with nice plants, pictures, fruit etc.
Have a selection of nice, cruisy music within reach. This will help you relax and bring on a good trip.
Trip on an empty stomach. This will help you avoid feeling sick at the acid starts to take effect.
Don't do it alone: An experienced and trusted friend should either be your tripping partner, or stay sober to help you if you get into black spider land.
If you are taking with a group of friends, make sure you all take the same amount, at the same time, in full view of everyone else. This will decrease any chance of paranoia and ensure you are all on the same level.
Wait - always hang back at least two hours before deciding a tab is not working. The come-up period can sometimes take this long. Do not take another tab as you may well end up in the asteroid belt.
Remember, you really don't want to have a bad trip, so always try to follow this advice as much as possible.

Why take a Job

Today I’d like to talk about some of the notions in our society which are misleading our young people and causing a lot of unnecessary misery. Firstly, the idea that you must earn a living. Within the notion of “having to earn a living” is the assumption that you don’t automatically deserve to be alive. For some reason this tends to make people feel somewhat depressed. I have it on the highest authority, however, that the only way to really earn a living, once and for all, is by being born (and I’m talking here about physical birth, not any religious metaphorical mumbo-jumbo). After that you deserve to relax.

Another misguided concept that I’d like to shoot down is the belief that you should be responsible. This whole idea puts people under tremendous strain, because you end up feeling responsible for all your imperfections. Society holds us accountable if we don’t comply with its definition of our responsibilities. You don’t choose your genetic make-up or the conditions in which you grow up, yet all the unfortunate things that happen are your fault. It’s time we let go of this burden of false responsibility.

What we are really talking about here is that strange phenomenon called masochism. It is my belief that we are a deeply masochistic society. A prominent politician recently said “if it isn’t hurting, it isn’t working”. This statement was calculated to appeal to our need for the type of dogma that insists we must suffer. Any belief which maintains that it’s our duty to endure pain, is guaranteed to be popular.

All of this is against the natural order of things. If God wanted us to have a hard time, why did he give us such an enormous capacity for pleasure – our brains are juicy pleasure organs, not guilt machines. The divine doesn’t talk to us in terms of duty and effort – it whispers peacefully to us of fulfilling our deepest longings and desires.

Why Google needs Orkut

In all the discussion of Orkut I've seen so far, most folks are busy comparing Orkut to every other social networking web site around, typically they mention Friendster ("it's so much faster!"), but as we all know these sites are a dime a dozen these days. At least it seems that way.

What surprises me is that nobody has looked at it the other way around: What problems might Orkut solve that Google would otherwise find significantly more challenging?

Those that do seem to speculate about "applying your social network to search" and other exotic stuff, but I'm thinking of something far more basic than that: users.

That's right, users.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "Google has millions of users!" Of course they do. How much do they really know about those users? Do they really have a user database from which they can mine interesting data? If they have one, it must pale in comparison to what Yahoo, AOL, and MSN have.

Rather than try to convince users to start "registering" for Google, why not piggyback on one of the most viral fads going around: a social network application? And, for added effect, make it an invite only system so that you feel special once you're invited.

Just think about it for a few minutes. If you've been thru the Orkut registration process, you know that it attempts to collect a ton of data about you. The kind of demographic data that marketing folks drool over. And right now there are lots of folks dying to get that special invite and begin the sign-up process.

Still with me? Good.

Let's assume that Google internationalizes Orkut and lets it run to the point that it has millions of users registered and active. That's not an unreasonable thing to expect. Then, one day down the road, they quietly decide to "better integrate" Orkut with Google and start redirecting all Orkut requests to orkut.google.com.

Bingo!

Suddenly they're able to set a *.google.com cookie that contains a bit of identifying data (such as your Orkut id) and that would greatly enhance their ability to mine useful and profitable data from the combination of your profile and daily searches.

Of course, we know that the "big three" already do this sort of thing to some degree or another. But Google's lack of intimate knowledge of their users is surely holding them back from doing some of the things they'd love to do. Many folks think it's just a matter of time before they try to get "real" users signed up.

Could this be the start of that?

The Creator

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Friend, O Friend;
Come to me when you are dumped;
When life is heavy,
When times are not so high,
When luck ain’t steady,
When you need a sigh;
Come to me Friend;
Friend, O Friend.

Friend, O Friend;
Come to me when you are dumped;
When wife cheats,
When sons lie,
When daughters freak,
When you need a sigh;
Come to me Friend;
Friend, O Friend.

Friend, O Friend;
Can You think who I am?
Pondering why I need You?
But. I am the selfless one;
I am … THE ONE;
Just a Friend, Just a Parent.

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