Could someone tell me how this could possibly be green-related?

This only serves to cast an unfavorable light on the majority of us who are not former wasted trippin' hippies.

If you posted this in jest, the joke is on us who are trying to distance ourselves from a demeaning stereotype. I'm sure the anti-treehugger sites will have a field day with this!

Al says it should never have been banned but instead made a highly conrolled substance so that legit research could take place. He also disdains Leary and the counterculture that Leary promoted. Finally, he said publicly he long ago realized there was nothing to be gained from taking it and so stopped the novelty. In short, he is objective and quite "counter" the counter culture.

I, too, am curious as to how this relates to green living. As a post-hippie environmentalist, I have tried very hard not to get painted with the "burnt out drug user" brush. I think the posting of this article only serves to feed negative sterotypes, and it a slap in the face to those of us who have either moved beyond the drug culture, or who were never part of it.

I, too, am surprised and slightly offended by this post on Treehugger. This isn't the sort of thing I expect from you

while i don't agree 100% with carl:

a) the name is treehugger. it's reclaiming the stereotype, just lke other pejorative terms have been reclaimed, ((and i'm not going to mention them here so JL doesn't have to edit them out later :p

b) you of all people, carl, with your ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS DESIGNS and amazing attidtude, ought to be aware that a completely new model is being cut out (ok i don't do this often, but look at a post yesterday in my blog; in one day alone, how many newspapers are all-up-in-it about ecofashion? you do not have to worry about contact-buzzkills from a post like this, really.

c) You gotta respect your elders a little, if it werent for trippig wasted hippies things like RAN (Michael K, the guy who made the non wood guitars for the grateful dead founded it) woudln't exist, let alone greenpeace..

But i do agree with you too-- because a) i don't want to be pigeon holed myself, nor considered a wasted hippie... and b) lloyd, i am pretty much amazed that after the boatloads of tips i've sent and placed in the comments sections, that one small refernce (to you being more acid tongued in your critique of a gross road warrior behemoth) becomes the first place I am thanked since... oh jeez, since like last year.

Come on guys, you're killing my buzz.

What better way to get out there and fix the world's problems, than by sitting around and getting wasted?

...one last thing about hippies psychedelics and rainforests: long before Sting went into the jungles, the people who brought out the whole issue of the rainforest to the mainstream was, unlikely as it sounds, the grateful dead.

sure hippies may have smelled funny, but please dont throw the baby out with the bongwater

you are an idiot loyd

I did make a mistake in voicing resentment towards hippies in general. That generation of progressive people deserve great respect, but I resent their (and by extension, myself) being identified with a symptom of having to live in a crappy reality - getting stoned.

The co-opting of negative words doesn't always work. Most people still consider the 'N' word as very derogatory. The term "treehugger" doesn't have such a long and cruel history behind it, so it's got better chances for a turnaround.

I think this post should be removed, it's not in line with tree-hugger's principals (no modern aesthetic, no environmental benefit).

I have thought about removing this post but feel there is value in the comments- I have certainly learned from them. I apologise if I have offended people- we often do lightweight posts that attempt at humor and this one obviously misfired.

To distance yourself from the modern shaman is only further proof that the government has trained you all very well to deny alternate states of mind and perspectives of minority groups. So continue to write about nothing more than the blind obedience to government sanctioned commercialism under the guise of being "GREEN", more like yellow running down your legs out of fear of judgment by your peers like a bunch of 12 year old girls. These fears of judgment have led you to judge others as living in a crappy reality as if all of you are paragons of virtue. This only demonstrates the level of respect you all have for Nixon and the juvenile behavior he utilized to neutralize the peace loving hippies you all abhor in "GREEN" groups. All this ignorance and bias the government has sown has led to the banishment of sacramental plants and the utter destruction of the environment under the dictate of your Kings.
FOLLOW THE LEADER ALL WHO ARE OFFENDED IT'S EASIER NOT TO THINK FOR YOURSELF HAVE OTHERS DO IT FOR YOU.

Thank you Loyd for keeping your mind NATURALLY open.

P.S. And yes Acid is dangerous but not as much as ignorance and BIAS has demonstrated to be for all of recorded history.

But allow anon to call Lloyd an idiot fairness I think not "YELLOW not "GREEN".

I have nothing to do with this post (or drugs), but I want to react semi-coherently to the controversy:

Treehugger.com is not a big corporate site where content goes through a lot of layers to make sure that it is "clean" and targets the lowest common denominator, offending nobody, etc. That's a good thing.

But it also means that sometimes we will be wrong, sometimes you won't agree with us and sometimes - like now - we will post stuff without really thinking enough about it; it's okay, we can learn, recognize our mistakes and change our mind.

Hopefully, we will be right, interesting and on target most of the time BECAUSE we are not a big corporate site weighted down by bureaucracy, hierarchy and such. What I'm trying to say is that we're just human and will make mistakes, but I greatly prefer that to the "inhuman" model that tries to make everything sound like neat PR-speak and that can't move fast enough to keep with with the world.

What we ask is that you tell us when you like and dislike things - like now - so that we learn from you and improve; this web experiment needs to stay a two-way conversation.

So yeah, this LSD post doesn't really fit, and I think it's great that we can talk about why. We learn more by doing that than by censoring it and acting like it never existed. We think our readers are smart enough to not read into it stuff that isn't there (fact: we're not hippies or druggies and trying to pin these labels on us because we mention the inventor of LSD is just kneejerk bad faith and doesn't change reality one iota).

Does that make any sense at all?

I'm glad this was posted. Without acid, mushrooms, pot, or whatever, very beautiful and wonderful things would have never come into exsistance. I think it is a very programed way of thinking to assume only hippies have ever tried drugs and that every drug experiance is bad. I have had wonferful experiances and plan on having more in the future. i am not a brain dead hippy, but a professional with a successful business and I can state for a fact I wouldn't be in this successful place had it not been for a few mind expanding experiances. People please try to undo some of the programing and judgements you have.

Let us celebrate the birth meth and black tar heroin!
heeyah!

It sure would be keen if I could let my son read this website without me prescreening it. I thought the 'Fuck for Forest' post would be an isolated incident. Guess this place is still not for 'general audiences'.

I don't have any problem with this post, but I do have to say one thing. LSD doesn't kill brain cells ;)

But not so yellow that I can't use my REAL name. Or are those oppresive also?

I don't know about you guys, but I've had some of the most fun and best hug-Gaia experiences high on acid... it was a real earth conscious eye opener for lots of people... we reconnected, because we were disconnected, because we'd been sucked in by the blue meanies maya men... (I see some of'em still lurk here...) Some of my best friends are little green men... who are begging us to save the planet! Is someone here prejudice against all the other intelligences we share this space with?

No your name is not oppressive just further evidence of your cookie cutter society. Continue to focus on the superficial Carl and avoid the substance of your blind obedience to your governmental and corporate masters.

I'm wondering how someone would be offended by hearing about a historically significant person having a one hundredth birthday...

Anyway, LSD isn't inherently bad or good, it's just a chemical that happens to fit nicely with our brain receptors. If you don't like it, don't use it. If you do, please be responsible about it. OK?

Oh, and apparently, the Hoffman's first acid trip was on a bike. And biking is most definitely Treehugger!

Holy Hot Botton Issue, Batman!



I wonder if any of you caught the Hofmann interview in the NY Times this past week, wherein it was said:



- - - - - -



“As the years accumulate behind him, Mr. Hofmann's conversation turns ever more insistently around one theme: man's oneness with nature and the dangers of an increasing inattention to that fact.



‘It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature,’ he said, ‘In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans,’ he said. ‘The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature.’ And, yes, he said, LSD, which he calls his ‘problem child,’ could help reconnect people to the universe.



…his bright eyes flash with the recollection of a mystical experience he had on a forest path more than 90 years ago in the hills above Baden, Switzerland. The experience left him longing for a similar glimpse of what he calls ‘a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality.’



‘I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature,’ he said…He said any natural scientist who was not a mystic was not a real natural scientist. ‘Outside is pure energy and colorless substance,’ he said. ‘All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings.’



He became particularly fascinated by the mechanisms through which plants turn sunlight into the building blocks for our own bodies. ‘Everything comes from the sun via the plant kingdom,’ he said.



It was as he was synthesizing the drug on a Friday afternoon in April 1943 that he first experienced the altered state of consciousness for which it became famous. ‘Immediately, I recognized it as the same experience I had had as a child,’ he said. ‘I didn't know what caused it, but I knew that it was important.’



’LSD spoke to me,’ Mr. Hofmann said with an amused, animated smile. ‘He came to me and said, 'You must find me.' He told me, 'Don't give me to the pharmacologist, he won't find anything.' ‘



Mr. Hofmann calls LSD ‘medicine for the soul’ and is frustrated by the worldwide prohibition that has pushed it underground. ‘It was used very successfully for 10 years in psychoanalysis,’ he said…’It should be a controlled substance with the same status as morphine,’ he said.



When asked if the drug had deepened his understanding of death, he appeared mildly startled and said no. ‘I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that's all,’ he said.



- - - - - -



Does it get more TREEHUGGER than that? I realize that shamanism, and the idea that ingestion of psychoactive plant compounds can alter human consciousness, are scary to a lot of Western minds. Please, TH team – do not be scared away from future posts of this nature. And please do not cave in to the ‘moral values,’ ‘now-I-can’t-let-my-kid-read-this-site’ crew. Please!



Sorry this post is so long. You’ve struck a nerve on this one.

what proGrrl said!! mAn...i FEElig sooo grUEvEe rite nowoo I kaNn LeiK BarLee TyPeee!!!!

seriously, never did lsd and not interested but happy birthday dude!

and it's nice to have posts every once in a while that aren't ostensibly 110% on topic.