The Acid King (2001)

58 pointsposted 9 months ago
by udit99
(rollingstone.com)

49 Comments

dang

9 months ago

Related:

LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23947157 - July 2020 (375 comments)

The "Acid King," Serving Life Without Parole - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12211097 - Aug 2016 (25 comments)

Other (more loosely) related threads:

The LSD Museum (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36673288 - July 2023 (25 comments)

Owsley Stanley: The King of LSD (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32651502 - Aug 2022 (57 comments)

Nick Sand, Orange Sunshine LSD chemist, has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14207957 - April 2017 (82 comments)

Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12395737 - Aug 2016 (211 comments)

leesalminen

9 months ago

I had the pleasure of recently meeting Leonard and spending a couple weeks together. What a unique and interesting person. I think he’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. His stories are captivating. Could spend a very long time chatting with him.

cypherpunks01

9 months ago

Has he been doing well?

I'd read he met Ross Ulbricht in USP Tucson when they were both serving life without the possibility of parole. I hope they can reconnect now that they're both free.

leesalminen

9 months ago

Yes, he’s living life to the fullest!

The most active 80 year old I’ve seen. Lots of travel, speaking at conferencing, networking in his professional circles.

Believe it or not, he’s a fairly conservative person. He’d never done yoga, breath work, sauna, cold plunge, saline IVs. I had the honor of pushing him out of his comfort zone a bit with the hippy health stuff.

He’s speed run learning how to use a smartphone and loves using it to connect all the people he meets together.

I think that was the most intriguing part of Leonard- his ability to pick up a new concept in minutes and apply it expertly. We were discussing modern cryptography and he was able to grok it in < 5 minutes.

Yes, he and Ross are still friends today. If I understand correctly they recently met up for the first time outside of prison.

Thorrez

9 months ago

>He’d never done yoga

Huh, the article says he did Yoga.

cypherpunks01

9 months ago

That's so cool to hear! Thanks for sharing

Aurornis

9 months ago

I’m kind of perplexed by the way Ross Ulbricht is held up as a hero after he was caught spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire hitmen to murder multiple people. Usually when I bring this up people try to change the subject to the FBI agent who tried to steal crypto or they suggest that there wasn’t enough evidence to support the claims (the court found that by a preponderance of the evidence he sent the messages). There are also claims that because they didn’t pursue those charges they do t “count” despite the preponderance of evidence. Some people just aren’t aware at all.

It’s a strange internet phenomenon where people seem to want him to be a folk hero and they’re willing to ignore or use mental gymnastics to wash away the fact that he was spending a lot of money to murder several people.

ty6853

9 months ago

The jury is out on whether the accounts linked to the hiring of the 'hitmen' was exclusively under the control of Ross Ulbricht.

The 'preponderance' was found by a judge, not a jury, so it's a different threshold than say demanding a jury in a civil suit where the jury would make a finding on preponderance. You effectively have a jury of one, where that jury member is highly intertwined with the same federal government that is prosecuting the crime, in a way that would surely eliminate them in voire dire for an impartial jury.

Aurornis

9 months ago

This is what I’m talking about: There was apparently a preponderance of evidence that messages were sent and money was transferred to have people killed. There was motive. There was evidence. A court reviewed it. It was introduced in a trial.

Yet there’s this desire to downplay it or wish it all away as a conspiracy against him. You have to suspend belief and assume that someone else sent the messages or that they were fabricated. It’s all really hard to believe unless you’re in the mindset that he’s a hero and you need to explain away the inconvenient parts of his history that detract from the person people wish he was.

yapyap

9 months ago

Ulbricht tried to put out hits on people, this man made a drug banned by governments. Both illegal but only one highly immoral.

3dsnano

9 months ago

Prior to the LLM age, I found it very difficult to program while on LSD or psychedelics. I just could not sustain the logical inference needed to keep track.

However, using a voice dictation program combined with a usb foot pedal and cursor, I have overcome this impasse in an interesting way.

What was once the Ballmer peak, I should perhaps rename the Pickard Pinnacle. What a time 2B alive.

codr7

9 months ago

Computers and hallucinogenics are a lousy combo in every possible way. Even if you manage to interface, they're still digital, which just limits your experience.

My advice is to write/draw your ideas while tripping and save the digital stuff for later.

Trees and flowers is a much better focus, animals; as analog, natural and physical as possible. Playing instruments is nice if that's your thing.

Take or leave.

Bayart

9 months ago

That's just your personal preference. There's no "right" way of tripping balls, just ways that fit more people. I love very digital environments, with neon lights and 70s prog synth music or 90s techno. At a certain point it becomes organic.

Bayart

9 months ago

My personal experience is that anything that forces you to focus on details and anchors you runs counter to what you're getting out of psychedelics. Not just precise logical thinking but even things like focusing on letters. Writing becomes challenging when the letters are fractals flying everywhere.

0_____0

9 months ago

It's a bit shocking to me that one would try to program on LSD - can you say a bit more about what you're up to?

Personally I feel I save the experience for when I have a question of life and would benefit from a perspective shift. Or might enjoy a different experience of being in nature.

nlawalker

9 months ago

Previously on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=654168

0_____0

9 months ago

Found this one anecdote in that thread and I'm pretty sure this would be me as well.

> I tried to code on shrooms once.

> I ended up writing a C++ program that just made the internal speaker beep in an infinite loop, and tried to compile it with a C compiler.

> I started laughing hysterically and I became quite scared that the C compiler was going to get angry with me, so I went outside and stayed away from my computer in fear.

Mizza

9 months ago

What does the foot pedal do? On/off for the recorder?

financetechbro

9 months ago

What kind of programs are you churning out under this mental state?

empath75

9 months ago

I think people might under appreciate how easy LSD was to get in the US in the 90s and early 2000s.

I was living in a fairly boring suburb, and was a complete nerd and had access to as much LSD as I wanted at less than $5 a hit when I was in high school in the mid 90s, and it continued to be easy to find well into the early 2000s.

SoftTalker

9 months ago

I’m assuming it’s always been easy, if you’re looking. I had no clue where or how to buy drugs when I was in high school.

psyclobe

9 months ago

Indeed, I did a lot of it during those years as well; introduced so many friends to it. What a time to be alive.

GuinansEyebrows

9 months ago

Strychnine will do that :(

Edit to add: i'm just talking about the rash of strychnine poisonings related to LSD usage in the early 2000s. it put a real damper on the party for a long time and for a lot of people.

nanolith

9 months ago

It never happened. I've heard varying versions of this urban legend from the late eighties through to modern time. The reality is that an LSD trip can cause physical discomfort, especially toward the end. Sometimes this discomfort is stronger than other times. For some reason, people have confused this with strychnine.

There is no avenue in synthesis or purification in which LSD and strychnine would come into contact. There is no benefit to cut LSD with strychnine. The amount of strychnine necessary to have any effects on humans is too close to the lower end of lethality to be a useful cutting agent.

That being said, there are side-products in LSD synthesis or purification from natural substances (e.g. ergot fungus cultures) can leave related substances as impurities. These can cause vasoconstriction, which is unpleasant. This isn't strychnine, and it's unlikely to be dangerous as small amounts of impurity. It doesn't feel very nice, and it can cause bruising. Or, people tripping can just bump into things and be clumsy. Either way, the explanation that this comes from strychnine is and has always been bunk.

It should be obvious, but please don't confuse any of this with an endorsement of the drug. That's a separate topic. The most I'll say here is that I don't recommend it.

GuinansEyebrows

9 months ago

well, it's too late for me to edit my comment, but whether they happened is beside the point. the rumors were enough.

nanolith

9 months ago

In some local areas where these urban legends were retold, that may be the case. My understanding is that the main reason why LSD usage faded was because the supply went down. There are plenty of factors here: reduced access to precursors, different classifications of certain pharmaceutical precursors, different farming techniques that prevent other "natural" resources, retirement and arrest of major suppliers, and a shift in taste toward other drugs that reduced demand and fouled the risk / reward calculus for doing a synthesis run.

Here in Florida, back in the eighties and nineties, an old timer with a background in organic chemistry used to make it. He was a fascinating fellow. He didn't make it for the money, and allegedly if you were introduced to the guy, he'd practically give it away. By the mid-2000s, he was no longer gifting folks his "samples" or even talking about his hobby. I'm sure he has long since passed on.

psyclobe

9 months ago

He was released in 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard

KingFelix

9 months ago

yeah wild story, surprised Netflix hasn't done it yet. I've got his book on my shelf too I will start one day, The Rose Of Paracelsus: On Secrets & Sacraments

leesalminen

9 months ago

It’s a very, very hard read. His vocabulary is insane. I had to look up so many words. Very rewarding to make it to the end though.

vik0

9 months ago

What kind of a book is it, genre-wise? Was it interesting? I'm deciding if I should read it someday or not

atommclain

9 months ago

My understanding is that it’s a loose autobiography.

I read through two thirds of it during Covid. I think it’s has an unfair reputation of being a challenging read; yes you’ll encounter new vocabulary, but the narrative itself is really interesting and clear.

vik0

9 months ago

Thanks. I'll check it out

richrichardsson

9 months ago

I'm not sure where they get the idea that 20mics is a "dose". Microdose perhaps, but I've always been under the impression a modern "dose" of acid is 100mics, so the premise that they're less than in the 60s etc. still holds.

standardUser

9 months ago

I used to sell acid in the 90's and I couldn't even guess at the actual content of LSD per hit we were selling. Every sheet or vial was different, and if my dealer was ever telling me "X micrograms" I probably ignored it the same way I ignored every drug dealer's marketing pitch. For us, it came down to understanding the amount of this particular acid needed for a trip. I've taken 5+ hits at a time that were weaker than single hits from different origins.

aradox66

9 months ago

Ah, yes, the ol "it was just one tab, but it's very strong/pure."

user

9 months ago

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