The Dead

Augustus Owsley Stanley III has died. He was 76.

Augustus Owsley Stanley III was born on Jan. 19, 1935, to a patrician Kentucky family. His paternal grandfather, for whom he was named, was a congressman, governor of Kentucky and United States senator. (Somewhat prophetically, given his grandson’s future pursuits, the elder Mr. Stanley was a vigorous public foe of Prohibition.) 

Young Owsley, whose adolescent hirsuteness caused him to be known ever after as Bear, was sent to a military preparatory school in Maryland. He was expelled in the ninth grade for furnishing the alcohol that, as he told Rolling Stone in 2007, had nearly all his classmates “blasted out of their minds” on homecoming weekend.

And from there, young Owlsey went on to mass produce earth shattering acid. How earth shattering? John Lennon had him on a life-long retainer. The Grateful Dead parted company with him when his personal practices got too weird.

So kids...let's have a chat about drugs, shall we?

I've certainly done my fair share drugs. Not an extraordinary amount by any means. But I would say that compared to the general population, I've probably done more than most and quite a bit, quite a bit less indeed than a sizable few.

So my advice on drugs?

Probably, you should avoid them. It's your own call ultimately of course. Frankly, I don't think that what anybody chooses to ingest into their body is any of my business. And certainly, the fact that there happens to be a pretty strong consumer demand for drugs might mean that I just don't get the appeal. That's nothing to do with anything though. If you like them, have at them. It's your own look out as far as I'm concerned.

But I just don't really dig them that much. I always found that the circumstances involved in taking drugs (a crazy couple of weeks with a pair of necrophiliacs and some heroin for example), always proved much more interesting than the drugs themselves.

Hi Mom and Dad. I'm sure you're reading.

Ultimately, drugs just always seemed so very boring to me. Maybe I just never did them right. I dunno. They just never seemed nearly as interesting by themselves as whatever was going on around me.

Which leads me to acid.

In my opinion, acid is probably the most lauded bridge to nowhere in the history of pharmaceuticals.

Every time I hear or read someone describe it as somehow "mind expanding" I think back to all the time I spent getting lost in the cereal aisle of a supermarket or staring at my hands waving back and forth before my face or listening to power lines hum as though they might impart a special wisdom.

Who knows? Maybe they do.

But for me, it's just a cavalcade of embarrassing recollections.

So ultimately...Do whatever drugs you want. Smoke crack, shoot heroin, smoke pot, pop pills, lick toads, go to church. Whatever works for you. Just accept that if and when you are drooling on yourself, you're not having a profound experience. You're embarrassing yourself.