I’m slowly devouring Cameron Crowe’s archive of interviews, and came across this fine nugget from David Bowie:
CROWE: Did you ever get into acid?
BOWIE: I did three times. It was very colorful, but I thought my own imagination was already richer. Naturally. And more meaningful to me. Acid only gives people a link with their own imagery. I already had it. It was nothing new to me. It just sort of made a lot of fancy colors. Flashy lights and things.
This helps confirm my long-held suspicion that illicit drug use only tends to medicate psychologically injured people (with ailments ranging from simple stress to childhood trauma) and/or to make boring people seem more interesting to themselves. I don’t begrudge anyone their drug of choice; I just hope they know what they’re doing – that they’re not hiding from something they need to deal with, or that they’re not using drugs as a crutch to get them somewhere that they could get to on their own.
If only Nancy Reagan had said “Just say ‘meh’ to drugs.”