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Sound Engineer Accidentally Dosed With LCD While Repairing Vintage Instrument

Jay Barmann — Fri, 24 May 2019 00:15:44 GMT

The Bay Area's counterculture forebears have left behind a lot for us to read, listen to, and sort out. But in the case of one KPIX employee who also happens to be a hobbyist repairer of old electronic instruments, the counterculture came rushing back in the form of some actual, vintage acid.

The station reported Wednesday night on the "long, strange trip" taken by operations manager Eliot Curtis when he was working on the restoration of a modular, analog music-making device that had been gathering dust in a closet in the music department at Cal State East Bay.

The instrument was commissioned by Professors Glenn Glasow and Robert Basart, both pioneers in the avant garde music scene of the 1960s and 70s, and it was built by the late Don Buchla of Berkeley — whose other electronic creations sell for thousands on the internet. KPIX interviewed one of Buchla's students, Suzanne Ciani, who still creates electronic music, who explained that Buchla used a lot of LSD and was friends with local acid king Owsley Stanley, who is also famous for creating the Grateful Dead's sound system.

The instrument, called the Buchla Model 100, also notoriously made it onto Ken Kesey's acid-test bus.

But while taking apart one of the instrument panels on the machine, one that was colored red, unlike the others, Curtis found a crystalline substance that he attempted to move with his finger and clean with a solvent. That was all it took to send him tripping about 45 minutes later, and the trip lasted nine hours.

It's unclear how the drug got there, but the story seems to confirm an urban legend among electronic musicians that there was an instrument that was dipped in acid, and musicians only needed to touch it and lick their fingers to go on a wild ride.

You can hear Curtis's account in the video above, and that of his wife, who witnessed this happen.

As Ciani amusingly sums it up, "It’s a bit like time travel. If you could go back that would be the way to go there."

Teen LSD Party In Mill Valley Turns Into Marin County Blood Ritual

Andrew Dalton — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 12:20:04 GMT

An all-night, LSD-fueled party in Mill Valley, California went wildly out of control early Sunday morning, requiring law enforcement officers from no less than five nearby towns to bring everyone back down to earth.

Things started to turn south around 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning, when paramedics received a call that a boy had started suffering from seizures after taking acid. EMTs from the Southern Marin Fire District arrived at the scene to find a 16-year-old boy covered in blood and using "superhuman strength" to block their entrance. The boy became increasingly violent until the paramedics called for backup, bringing in everyone from the Marin County Sheriff's Department to Mill Valley and Tiburon police. A second call for help brought in additional officers from around the area.

Authorities trying to control the scene had to contend with the original blood-covered boy and his 18-year-old girlfriend who also turned violent and began spitting blood on firefighters. Police found a total of eight partygoers inside the supposedly vacant home, many of them covered in blood. In addition to what police think must have been a bad batch of acid, they also found a stash of marijuana, cocaine and "another designer drug resembling ecstasy."

Investigators later determined the blood on everyone's hands belonged to the violent 16-year-old boy, who apparently injured himself while completely tripping balls. The boy, his girlfriend and another 18-year-old male were all charged with resisting arrest, being under the influence and assaulting emergency workers. All three were taken to a nearby hospital to come down and are expected to be booked into Marin County jail or juvenile hall.

A 16-year-old girl whose family owns the vacant party pad was also hit with a misdemeanor under the county's Social Host Accountability Ordinance, which is usually used to hold parents accountable for hosting teenage drinking parties.

KTVU has the video report:

[KTVU]
[Bay City News]

RIP: Father of LSD, Albert Hofmann

Brock Keeling — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:59:20 GMT

Speaking of Santa Cruz, the inventor of LSD, Albert Hofmann, died on Tuesday at his Switzerland home. He was a ripe 102.

The Swiss chemist happened upon lysergic acid diethylamide-25 way back in 1938 "while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains." By accident, or so we're told, Hofmann became LSD's first guinea pig after accidentally dipping his finger into the trippy substance back in 1943. The substance didn't gain worldwide infamy until two decades later when Harvard professor Timothy Leary--after enjoying the drug's fruity bouquet and smooth oaky finish--told young boomers to "turn on, tune in, drop out."

Since the only drug SFist gets high off of is life, we can't tell with any accuracy what the journey of LSD is like. Please, SFist readers, fill us in on your own personal acid-infused trips. We're dying to know.