Dr. LSD to Steve Jobs: How was your trip?

http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/07/09/dr-lsd-to-steve-jobs-how-was-your-trip/

by DavidSJ • 17 years ago

80 30 17 years ago

apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com

zimbabwe• 17 years ago

Dr. LSD lived to be 102? Wow.

I've always been curious about Jobs's relation to LSD. I know his famous "Bill Gates should have dropped acid" line, but I'd like to see how he related hallucinogenic use to his outlook on design.

sethjohn• 17 years ago

There is something about the silver-blue glow of a Mac and it's zippy lines that seems to borrow from the hallucinogenic experience. Certainly, I've never seen while on halluginogens anything as garish, discordant, and downright ugly as the Windows primary-color scheme.

Of course, there's also the experience of seeing the world turned upside down and inside out that, in small doses, is probably good encouragement for creativity.

runinit• 17 years ago

I'm pretty sure Gates did LSD ..

rms2• 17 years ago

PLAYBOY: Ever take LSD?

GATES: My errant youth ended a long time ago.

PLAYBOY: What does that mean?

GATES: That means there were things I did under the age of 25 that I ended up not doing subsequently.

PLAYBOY: One LSD story involved you staring at a table and thinking the corner was going to plunge into your eye.

GATES: [Smiles]

PLAYBOY: Ah, a glimmer of recognition.

GATES: That was on the other side of that boundary. The young mind can deal with certain kinds of gooping around that I don't think at this age I could. I don't think you're as capable of handling lack of sleep or whatever challenges you throw at your body as you get older. However, I never missed a day of work.

http://beginnersinvest.about.com/od/billgates/l/blbillgatesi...

petercooper• 17 years ago

It's a bit of an aside, but.. I love that guy's handwriting! You don't get handwriting much like that anymore.

profquail• 17 years ago

Or people who would actually take the time to hand-write a letter and mail it to someone.

cracki• 17 years ago

writing by hand might actually be the lazier option, apart from it being more personal...

blhack• 17 years ago

I remember being a teenager, and hearing a lot of rumors that made it sounds like some big time engineers were pretty serious LSD advocates.

From what I was hearing, most of the top scientists and engineers in the world had either used LSD, or were still actively using it.

How common is that? Was this all just a bunch of BS? I know there are some really really fantastic coders that hang out here, do any of you guys actively use psychadelic drugs?

As somebody that tries to stay away from any sort of drug (except alcohol. I have a weak spot for beer) as much as possible (including over-the-counter things etc.), has using these things benefited you in any way?

The way that I have heard LSD etc. users describe its affects, it sounds like it would be anything BUT beneficial.

il3• 17 years ago

I think everyone should try psychedelics at least once in their life. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it can be a life-changing, very positive experience that will persist long after the effects of the drugs have worn off. It will give you clarity and peace. It's very much the opposite of alcohol- alcohol clouds your mind and dulls your senses, psychedelics enhance your senses and open your mind.

And if you think LSD can have damaging effects, look at Dr. LSD- he lived to be 102, and he took LSD in mammoth doses. The first time he took LSD(when he discovered it), he did not realize how small its active dose is, so he took something like 100x the standard dose(several milligrams). LSD is completely safe physically, it's impossible to overdose or cause brain damage of any sort.

greyboy• 17 years ago

Hmmm, a sample size of one, eh?

sgoraya• 17 years ago

I agree with most of your comment, though take exception to:

" LSD is completely safe physically, it's impossible to overdose or cause brain damage of any sort."

During my college years, I met a couple of people that were very much affected, in a negative way, by LSD. There are some folks, possibly a minority, that can not handle the affects of psychedelics like LSD or mushrooms. So in not so many words, IMHO, LSD is not 'completely' safe and can indeed be harmful for people who are not mentally capable to handle the intensity of the experience. (I know you stated 'safe physically' and my point skews towards 'mental' safety; though the people I am referencing were physically and mentally disheveled, and to an extent, blamed their 'bad' trip(s).)

Sure, they should/could use smaller doses but the way LSD is distributed makes this very hard.

yan• 17 years ago

"or cause brain damage of any sort"

I'm sorry but that's not the case. In high school I ended up emailing David Nichols (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._Nichols) to clear up something they mentioned in health class. I couldn't believe it when he replied with a two page sized email to a high school student. I don't have it saved anymore unfortunately, but he said that physically, it is fairly safe, but if you have existing predisposition to mental disorders such as schizophrenia, it can push you over the edge and aggravate it immensely. So while it's physically safe as far as I remember, it has the potential turn predispositions into actual disorders.

rms2• 17 years ago

It's physically harmless in normal doses or even normal overdoses, but I guarantee that if you inject a couple grams you'll drop dead or at best into a months long catatonic state. It's not realistic, I'm just saying that everything has its lethal dose.

wheels• 17 years ago

On bicycle day he took about double the standard dose (250 µg), not 100x. I don't believe there's any documentation of him later taking mammoth or very frequent dosages of LSD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_LSD#Bicycle_Day

kanshaku• 17 years ago

"it's impossible to overdose or cause brain damage of any sort."

I really don't think that's true. Excitotoxicity is a distinct possibility. 5-HT2A and 2C agonists enhance glutamatergic currents. Glutamatergia involves calcium cation influx into neurons. Calcium cations promote the release of proteolytic enzymes - and other catabolic enzymes - which damage the cytoskeleton and destroy mitochondria releasing reactive oxygen species into the cytosol.

xinsight• 17 years ago

Psychedelics can be beneficial in that it can help with the "big picture" type of insights, along the lines of "people don't buy drills, they buy holes". It allows you to see and question things that you previously just assumed were the truth. Some insights lead to business ideas, others might turn out to be less interesting the day after. There is also the chance of losing your grip on reality completely i.e. going insane.

felipe• 17 years ago

I recall one passage in the book "What the Dormouse Said" mentioned in the article about a company (I'm not sure but I think it was Ampex, by 101 towards San Jose) where a high-level executive actually asked his product managers to take LSD to get new product ideas.

shorely3• 17 years ago

Sounds like a terrifying lawsuit waiting to happen.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

Well, it doesn't solve problems for you. In a nutshell, by lowering the firing threshold of your neurons (especially within the visual cortex) it's as if you've had everything amped up and given an echo. This makes pretty much everything appear novel and different - when I used to go to a lot of raves, you could often tell who the first-time acid users were because they would spend extra time looking at their hands, and with good reason.

If you've taken the right-sized dose, it's not unlike having the novelty factor of childhood combined with the intellectual development of adulthood. Much also depends on your mood, flexibility of mind and so forth. It doesn't combine well (for me, anyway) with directed activity like coding or trying to record (rather than play) music since you space out continually. If you try to push too hard in a specific mental direction, it'll push back and you may get frustrated or confused, which can lead to upset.

If you just go with the flow, on the other hand, all kinds of new perspectives and insights will pop up. These are not all equally good, qua the oft-repeated stories of people jumping off balconies in the belief they can fly and so forth. These do have some basis in reality, though generally the people involve tend to be massively loaded, sometimes on more than 1 drug. Unless you have one of those Jekyll & Hyde personalities where you turn into someone completely different when you get drunk this is probably not an issue, but you do need to be responsible to yourself and considerate of other people - there is nothing more irritating than an acid asshole that thinks the world should adjust to their trip rather than the other way around. The right way to handle is to store your insights (your memory will wok fine) without getting overly caught up in them - some will turn out to be purely frivolous others can have deep lasting value.

Having said all that, the scope of the experience is very hard to articulate. It's like the difference between experiencing a videogame as a player vs. firing up the level editor and/or reading the source code. On the other hand, you might go from wondering who moved your cheese to concluding that you are a lab rat in some bizarre cosmic experiment. Or indeed, both at the same time.

dmix• 17 years ago

> Jekyll & Hyde personalities where you turn into someone completely different when you get drunk

I know someone who fits this bill 100%, after he downs 3 drinks its like talking to a new person (usually not in a positive way).

Is this a common phenomenon?

shorely3• 17 years ago

There are a lot of ways to hack your mind. (Kind of like kernal hacking perhaps.) There are entire universes of phenethylamines (mescaline, 2c-, mdma, methylone), tryptamines (lsd, lsa, -dpt (mushroom-eques), dmt) not to mention far more exotic molecules under psychedelic-umbrella. As well as many other universes outside of serotonin, but their waters can be far more "enticing" to the point of personal endangerment.

The nature of these compounds tends to be "deconstructionist", which can definitely be a harnessable energy when used in proper context. (Most users are not "psychonauts", and take such compounds just to see "fucked up shit". These people are the script kiddies of the psychonautical universes.) If nothing else, a long strange duration in these either-places will teach your more about your neurotransmitters than you ever wanted to know...

Ultimately BEWARE!! When you break the disclaimer, you do void your factory warranty; and you have taken your mind's life into it's own hands. (Though you really don't have to worry about the jumping through windows bullshit, it's called propaganda, unless maybe if you're chilling with indole rings.)

;)

coffeeaddicted• 17 years ago

I have only tried mushroom a few times in the past (a decade ago) which are told to be similar to LSD (but weaker). And while I acted mostly just stupid while I was high I wouldn't want to miss the experience. I learned a lot how much my thoughts are shaped by the way I see the world. Some of it could be simulated without drugs - like playing with the visual or hearing stimuli by some technology. For example watching everything through a camera which has some strange image-filters for a few minutes might give you an idea of some of the effects. But the image-filters would have to be pretty advanced sometimes, like for example a filter which makes the whole world look like painted from Rembrandt. But other parts - I just don't know any other way to experience them. Like mind-states which are so different from normal thinking that you can't even recall them until you get high the next time.

I can't really tell you about concrete benefits and I think even LSD has its dangers. But it is a whole different experience from alcohol. _If_ you ever try it then make sure to read up on it first. Like Timothy Leary said: "The nature of the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting." So your expectations (the set) will influence the trip and being more informed will make you feel better so the trip will be better.

weegee• 17 years ago

while a senior in high school myself and my friends took LSD and while it was certainly not lab-grade acid, just street acid, it was a fascinating experience. We repeated it a couple times more and by the end of the third trip, I felt that there was nothing more to learn from it so I stopped. They kept on for a few more years. I read as many books as I could get my hands on from the library, including a fascinating book called "Acid Dreams" which told how LSD was used by the CIA for research into a possible truth serum. While I would not recommend LSD to anyone for recreational purposes now, it is important that we can learn more about how the brain works by having the chance to use LSD as a learning tool. I think it can be used to help people with various disorders, if used by a qualified physician/counselor and in a good safe environment. Cary Grant was an LSD user and he felt it helped him a great deal late in his life.

Dr. LSD to Steve Jobs: How was your trip?

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