Psychedelics in popular culture

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There exist many examples of Psychedelics in popular culture. The psychedelic experience has had a strong effect on many genres of popular music, and psychedelic drug references are common in movies, books, and in popular music.

Contents 1 DMT 2 LSD 3 Mescaline 4 Psilocybin/Psilocin 5 Further reading

[edit] DMT

• The plot of the movie Blueberry (based on the comic Blueberry) touches DMT practices of Native Americans. The movie also features scenes of a DMT induced psychedelic experience. Recent web discussion with the creator of the film has indicated that the visions are meant to represent the use of various plants, the classic ayahuasca mixture being one of these. In addition, Datura and Mescaline related visions are conveyed.

• At the start of chapter 15 of the book The Black Angel by John Connolly (copyright 2005), DMT is referenced as a drug used to control people through instilling and then relieving fear via hallucinations.

• The first letters of Shpongle's "Divine Moments of Truth" track from the Are You Shpongled? album stand for DMT.

• Paul Simon's "Spirit Voices" (from The Rhythm of the Saints) poetically describes his journey in rural Amazonia to find and drink ayahuasca, the famous DMT-laden brew.

• Singer/Songwriter Tori Amos has admitted to being a fan of ayahuasca/DMT, as have Sting and Oliver Stone.

• Writer Warren Ellis mentions DMT in several of his works (including Global Frequency).

• William S. Burroughs's The Yage Letters, co-authored with Allen Ginsberg is concerned with their search for ayahuasca.

• The late Terrence McKenna was a longtime champion of DMT and wrote several books based on his experiences. The compilation "Noizemaker" of psychedelic trance by Lukasz includes a track with a sample of Terrence McKenna saying "I remember the first time I smoked DMT". The song "DMT" by 1200 Micrograms also includes this same sample.

• In the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the character "Truth", a drug dealer, offers DMT to another character along with several other drugs.

• The Tool song "Rosetta Stoned", off of their album 10,000 Days, tells of a person who takes DMT and ecstasy, claiming to have been visited by aliens that give him an important message to mankind.

• Danny Carey, drummer of the band Tool, is known to use DMT along with meditation.

• The song "Severed Hand" by Pearl Jam involves DMT usage.

[edit] LSD

• The Beatles song "Tomorrow Never Knows" is a musical take on Timothy Leary's analogy between the LSD experience and the passage from death through to reincarnation described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

• The Beatles song "It's All Too Much." In 1980 George Harrison said: "'It's All Too Much' was written in a childlike manner from realizations that appeared during and after some LSD experiences and which were later confirmed in meditation."

• The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." is said to be about LSD. The first letters of the words "Lucy", "Sky" and "Diamond" spell out LSD.

• The Tool song "Sweat" from their Opiate EP is a song about tripping on LSD.

• The book Go Ask Alice centers around a teenage girl involved with LSD

• The France Gall song "Teenie Weenie Boppie" is about LSD.

• The First Edition song "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)". Said to be Jimi Hendrix's favorite song.

• Famous writer/journalist Hunter S. Thompson, renowned for his productive drug use, has the characters of his book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, on a variety of drugs, focusing mainly on LSD and mescaline.

• A bad trip on LSD is a key aspect of the film Harvard Man.

• The film The Trip, with its tagline "A Lovely Sort of Death" is about a man who has a strong LSD experience.

• In the film and book of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , both main characters Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo takes LSD with various results.

• The outcome of the film Easy Rider features a long LSD trip.

• LSD is said to be the drug that caused Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett descent into madness. His first ever acid trip was recorded on video, and is available on YouTube.

[edit] Mescaline

• In Beavis and Butt-head Do America, Beavis eats a rather large (softball sized) peyote cactus in an attempt to stave off dehydration in the Mojave Desert, and proceed to have psychedelic hallucinations.

• In the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode The Desert, Sokka cuts open and drinks water from a desert cactus and subsequently goes into a psychedelic trance, believing such things as fellow travelers being lit on fire, and everyone standing in the middle of the ocean.

• The 2002 Glassjaw album Worship and Tribute included a song titled "Two Tabs of Mescaline".

• In the movie The Matrix the main character Neo asks a friend "Have you ever had that feeling, when you're not sure if you're awake or still dreaming?" who answers him "Mm, all the time. It's called mescaline. It's the only way to fly." These lines were also sampled in the song "Arabian Knights On Mescaline" by GMS.

• Roland Deschain (AKA The Gunslinger), Although a fictional user - Roland's use of Mescaline is prevalent in the first book of the Dark Tower cycle. Roland uses the drug in order to commune with a Demon in a stone circle, and protect the child Jake.

• In the film, The Royal Tenenbaums, the character Eli Cash admits to using Mescaline in a nonchalant manner. At the end of the film, it is possible he used Mescaline when he crashed his car into the Tenenbaums' house.

• In the film Domino, the bounty hunters have their coffee spiked with Mescaline as they attempt their escape.

• In the novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and its film adaptation, Raoul Duke uses Mescaline.

[edit] Psilocybin/Psilocin

• The American stand-up comedian, satirist and social critic, Bill Hicks, has used his psilocybin experiences as themes in his act. The track "Time To Evolve"[1] from Rant in E-Minor is one of several such examples.

• Terence McKenna has written extensively on the psychopharmacology of psilocybin, as well as authoring a popular and authoritative growing guide, Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide ISBN 0-932551-06-8, written under the pseudonym Oss and Oeric.

• Comedian Lewis Black talks about a psilocybin experience in his 2005 album Luther Burbank Performing Arts Center Blues.

• The film Super Troopers features a scene in which a young male character ingests a large quantity of mushrooms and cannabis after a sheriff car pulls up in the lane beside the car he's in. The car is pulled over moments later and he tells the sheriff, "I'm freaking out, man!" one of the more notable lines from the movie.

• The American rock band Finch featured a song called Dreams of Psilocybin on their 2005 album Say Hello to Sunshine.

• The American rock band Incubus features a song called Psychopsilocybin on their 1995 album Fungus Amongus. Both the song title and the album title are references to psilocybin, and a picture of one species of hallucinogenic mushroom is on the album cover. The mushroom that appears is a 'fly agaric' mushroom (Amanita muscaria) which does not contain psilocybin, but however is one of its psychoactive relatives[2].

• The stoner rock band Nebula features a song entitled "Fields of Psilocybin" on their 1999 album To The Center.

• The Slim Shady LP by Eminem, features several tracks that refer to magic mushrooms, including "My Fault" a song in which Eminem accidentally gives a girl he meets at a party, a large quantity of the drug.

• The episode "Mushroom Samba" of the anime series Cowboy Bebop features the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms by the entirety of the crew.

[edit] Further reading

• Shapiro, Harry. (2003). Waiting for the Man: The Story of Drugs and Popular Music. ISBN 1-900924-58-7
• Starks, Michael. (1982). Cocaine Fiends and Reefer Madness: An Illustrated History of Drugs in the Movies. ISBN 0-8453-4504-4 (hardcover) ISBN 0-914171-12-7 (paperback)