7 ms·
The Acid King (2001)
- psyclobe 1y agoHe was released in 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard
- KingFelix 1y agoyeah wild story, surprised Netflix hasn't done it yet. I've got his book on my shelf too I will start one day, The Rose Of Paracelsus: On Secrets & Sacraments
- leesalminen 1y agoIt’s a very, very hard read. His vocabulary is insane. I had to look up so many words. Very rewarding to make it to the end though.
- vik0 1y agoWhat kind of a book is it, genre-wise? Was it interesting? I'm deciding if I should read it someday or not
- atommclain 1y agoMy understanding is that it’s a loose autobiography. I read through two thirds of it during Covid. I think it’s has an unfair reputation of being a challenging read; yes you’ll encounter new vocabulary, but the narrative itself is really interesting and clear.
- vik0 1y agoThanks. I'll check it out
- linuxguy2 1y ago[2001]
- dang 1y agoAdded above. Thanks!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dang 1y agoRelated: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23947157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23947157 - July 2020 (375 comments) The "Acid King," Serving Life Without Parole - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12211097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12211097 - Aug 2016 (25 comments) Other (more loosely) related threads: The LSD Museum (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36673288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36673288 - July 2023 (25 comments) Owsley Stanley: The King of LSD (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32651502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32651502 - Aug 2022 (57 comments) Nick Sand, Orange Sunshine LSD chemist, has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14207957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14207957 - April 2017 (82 comments) Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12395737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12395737 - Aug 2016 (211 comments)
- udit99 1y agoHey dang, unrelated question but.... I posted this a couple days ago and it seemed to have resurfaced somehow. Never seen that happen in any past submissions. Is this a new HN feature? Slow news day bumps up some potentially overlooked posts?
- josephcsible 1y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
- udit99 1y agoThanks, TIL
- aspenmayer 1y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
- richrichardsson 1y agoI'm not sure where they get the idea that 20mics is a "dose". Microdose perhaps, but I've always been under the impression a modern "dose" of acid is 100mics, so the premise that they're less than in the 60s etc. still holds.
- standardUser 1y agoI used to sell acid in the 90's and I couldn't even guess at the actual content of LSD per hit we were selling. Every sheet or vial was different, and if my dealer was ever telling me "X micrograms" I probably ignored it the same way I ignored every drug dealer's marketing pitch. For us, it came down to understanding the amount of this particular acid needed for a trip. I've taken 5+ hits at a time that were weaker than single hits from different origins.
- aradox66 1y agoAh, yes, the ol "it was just one tab, but it's very strong/pure."
- leesalminen 1y agoI had the pleasure of recently meeting Leonard and spending a couple weeks together. What a unique and interesting person. I think he’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. His stories are captivating. Could spend a very long time chatting with him.
- cypherpunks01 1y agoHas he been doing well? I'd read he met Ross Ulbricht in USP Tucson when they were both serving life without the possibility of parole. I hope they can reconnect now that they're both free.
- leesalminen 1y agoYes, he’s living life to the fullest! The most active 80 year old I’ve seen. Lots of travel, speaking at conferencing, networking in his professional circles. Believe it or not, he’s a fairly conservative person. He’d never done yoga, breath work, sauna, cold plunge, saline IVs. I had the honor of pushing him out of his comfort zone a bit with the hippy health stuff. He’s speed run learning how to use a smartphone and loves using it to connect all the people he meets together. I think that was the most intriguing part of Leonard- his ability to pick up a new concept in minutes and apply it expertly. We were discussing modern cryptography and he was able to grok it in < 5 minutes. Yes, he and Ross are still friends today. If I understand correctly they recently met up for the first time outside of prison.
- cypherpunks01 1y agoThat's so cool to hear! Thanks for sharing
- Thorrez 1y ago>He’d never done yoga Huh, the article says he did Yoga.
- yapyap 1y agoUlbricht tried to put out hits on people, this man made a drug banned by governments. Both illegal but only one highly immoral.
- empath75 1y agoI think people might under appreciate how easy LSD was to get in the US in the 90s and early 2000s. I was living in a fairly boring suburb, and was a complete nerd and had access to as much LSD as I wanted at less than $5 a hit when I was in high school in the mid 90s, and it continued to be easy to find well into the early 2000s.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agoStrychnine will do that :( Edit to add: i'm just talking about the rash of strychnine poisonings related to LSD usage in the early 2000s. it put a real damper on the party for a long time and for a lot of people.
- krispyfi 1y agoDo you have a source for that? Wikipedia says it's an urban legend. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_legends_about_drugs?searchToken=aeozz1mza04ueiucub2arj9bn#Strychnine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_legends_about_drugs?se...
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agoNot really but urban legend or not, it scared a lot of people off the stuff for a while.
- nanolith 1y agoIt never happened. I've heard varying versions of this urban legend from the late eighties through to modern time. The reality is that an LSD trip can cause physical discomfort, especially toward the end. Sometimes this discomfort is stronger than other times. For some reason, people have confused this with strychnine. There is no avenue in synthesis or purification in which LSD and strychnine would come into contact. There is no benefit to cut LSD with strychnine. The amount of strychnine necessary to have any effects on humans is too close to the lower end of lethality to be a useful cutting agent. That being said, there are side-products in LSD synthesis or purification from natural substances (e.g. ergot fungus cultures) can leave related substances as impurities. These can cause vasoconstriction, which is unpleasant. This isn't strychnine, and it's unlikely to be dangerous as small amounts of impurity. It doesn't feel very nice, and it can cause bruising. Or, people tripping can just bump into things and be clumsy. Either way, the explanation that this comes from strychnine is and has always been bunk. It should be obvious, but please don't confuse any of this with an endorsement of the drug. That's a separate topic. The most I'll say here is that I don't recommend it.
- e6quisitory 1y agohttps://archive.ph/8Nb80 https://archive.ph/8Nb80
- lukasb 1y agoAccording to this he predicted the the fentanyl epidemic in the 90s: https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/people/affiliated-researchers/william-leonard-pickard/ https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/people/affiliated-researc...
- 3dsnano 1y agoPrior to the LLM age, I found it very difficult to program while on LSD or psychedelics. I just could not sustain the logical inference needed to keep track. However, using a voice dictation program combined with a usb foot pedal and cursor, I have overcome this impasse in an interesting way. What was once the Ballmer peak, I should perhaps rename the Pickard Pinnacle. What a time 2B alive.
- 0_____0 1y agoIt's a bit shocking to me that one would try to program on LSD - can you say a bit more about what you're up to? Personally I feel I save the experience for when I have a question of life and would benefit from a perspective shift. Or might enjoy a different experience of being in nature.
- nlawalker 1y agoPreviously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=654168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=654168
- 0_____0 1y agoFound this one anecdote in that thread and I'm pretty sure this would be me as well. > I tried to code on shrooms once. > I ended up writing a C++ program that just made the internal speaker beep in an infinite loop, and tried to compile it with a C compiler. > I started laughing hysterically and I became quite scared that the C compiler was going to get angry with me, so I went outside and stayed away from my computer in fear.
- Mizza 1y agoWhat does the foot pedal do? On/off for the recorder?
- financetechbro 1y agoWhat kind of programs are you churning out under this mental state?
- 1y ago
- Deprogrammer9 1y agoACID KING https://youtu.be/QWQuXi4ZIA4?si=qGfmMz2oiXDDKDfq https://youtu.be/QWQuXi4ZIA4?si=qGfmMz2oiXDDKDfq