Why I’ve never been interested in drugs

I just finished reading a Zombie post about Owsley Stanley, the man who popularized LSD.  The post reminded me why I’ve never been interested in drug culture.  Back in 1974, when I was an impressionable young teen, my father, a very old-fashioned German man, went back to school to get his Masters in English.  There, he met a true Berkeley free spirit.  She’d hit Berkeley in 1964, right along with the Free Speech Movement, and become completely involved in the counter culture.  By the time she met my Dad, she was withdrawing from that same culture, and her wit, intelligence, and vivacity were why this young Hippie and the middle aged German man became friends.

As I mentioned, this gal was pulling out of the drug culture when we met, and she told me why.  She and her friend got extremely stoned one night and — yes — they discovered the secrets of the universe.  So impressed were they with their mind-expanding wisdom, they dragged out a tape recorder to memorialize it.  The next day, they discovered that they’d recorded an hour long tape filled with long silences, punctuated by one or the other say, “Like, wow, man….”  She said she pretty much stopped smoking after that and I, hearing that story, decided never to start.