From: mason@dante.uucp (Mason Jones)
Subject: Re: LSD and TV complaint rejected
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 92 16:18:57 GMT
Organization: Charnel House

civl097@csc.canterbury.ac.nz writes:
: I would really appreciate any *informed* comment on any of the statements made
: below. Thanks to all those people who mailed me info. to help prepare my
: original complaint.  
: 
: First it considered your comment that the line of script which read "bad trip 
: often goes very wrong indeed" was an unreasonable exaggeration of the hazards 
: of LSD. 
: 
: The Committee noted that the following entry is found in Black's Medical 
: Dictionary (34th Edition): 
: 
: "(LSD)..produces distortion of perception, visual and emotional changes, 
: emotionally charged fantasies that may induce extreme states of panic, 
: feelings of omnipotence or bodily and mental dissolution, panic reactions 
: or transcendental calm and psychotic or near psychotic reactions".

I'd recommend to you that you examine some other Medical reference guides,
because Black's is clearly based on fiction.  I've known a lot of people
who've used LSD, and none of them has ever experienced anything remotely
like omnipotence or psychotic reactions.

:On your comment that 'Ibad trips happen in a minority of casesll the Committee
:noted that the programme gave no opinion on the frequency of bad trips. 
: 
:However, the Committee wa$ told that because the potency of each dose of LSD 
:varies tab to tab, its use can be likened to Russian roulette. Death or mental 
:damage is a possibility every time the drug is used. 

I was going to note the patent nonsense here, since the percentage of
deaths caused by LSD use (per use) is far, far less than that of alcohol.
But then the quotes later from the program indicate that they're using
records which must be considered utterly false, and hence it's going to
be very difficult to convince them of that.  I'm afraid I don't know of
any references for the above, but perhaps someone else here does.

: Again the Committee referred to Black's Medical Dictionary in an effort to 
: discover whether the cliff-jumping might have been an extreme case, or whether
: equally horrifying examples of LSD use are on record. These examples from the 
: Medical Dictionary convinced the Committee that Crimewatch was justified in 
: drawing attention to the potentially disastrous consequences of using the drug: 
: 'I...a youth of 20 who leapt from the roof of a chapel after taking LSD 
: thinking he could fly; a youngster who, in a state of agitation after taking 
: a derivative of LSD, drove his car at 100 miles an hour into a house at 
: the foot of a hill; a man allegedly under the influence of LSD who raped 
: the 9-year-old daughter of his mistress in the belief that the child was his 
: mistress....~'.

To fight them, you're going to have to check all of these references.
I suspect you'll find very scant evidence in every case implicating LSD
use.  Odds are you'll find most of them to be complete bullshit, and in
the others you'll probably find other drugs being used as well (most
likely alcohol).  The old 'thinking he can fly' urban legend has been
demonstrated over and over to be nonsense.

My guess is your best bet would be to cite numerous other references,
since they're consistently using only Black's.  I've never looked at
Black's but it sounds to me like a work of fiction.

: The Committee is of the view that you are confusing this experience (where 
: subjects remain in reasonable control of themselves) with the more clinical 
: use of the term "flashback" by health workers to describe the terrifying and 
: total re-experience of a mind-changing trip. 

Find a health worker who'll describe a "flashback" as a "total
re-experience" of a trip and you'll find an idiot.  It is no such
thing.

Best of luck to you.  The fact that they're relying on one single
piece of reference is your best chance to prove the absolute nonsense
that they're trying to sell.


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