Blumenfeld, L. The acid kids: If you think LSD is history, what happens at this suburban teenage party may blow your mind. (1991, August 18). The Washington Post, p. F1.

OVERVIEW

Do adults know what is happening with kids and drugs these days? Montgomery County, just outside Washington D.C., is a model community—its kids point toward leadership of the next generation. In the summer of 1991, Laura Blumenfeld of The Washington Post asked the leaders of the county’s schools and communities about the resurgence of hard drugs among teenagers:

(The presence of LSD) is infinitesimal. It’s not something the kids are doing; it was never something high school kids did...There’s no LSD use by any kids in any school.
—Ed Masood, director of the Board of Education’s division of health and physical education

(An acid party) would seriously surprise me. We hear nothing of kids using LSD.
—Lt. Thomas Evans, commander of the drug enforcement sector of the Montgomery County police

Kids and some teachers (who sense an alarming rise among wealthy white students) know better. So do national experts.

Maybe these local authorities (like many parents) just are not listening. Nationally, the Drug Enforcement Administration reports that LSD-related "emergency room episodes"—nationwide admissions for psychotic reactions, self-mutilation, unconsciousness—have increased 100% since 1985. Most victims are white and under age 20. More than one quarter of those are 17 or under.

This Washington Post reporter was given permission to attend a suburban acid party of Montgomery County high school students on the condition that she would not reveal the identities of participants.

Valory is the host of the 12-hour acid trip. Held in Valory’s home, the event celebrates a friend’s seventeenth birthday. Valory, herself 17, wears embroidered jeans, maintains a 3.5 grade point average, and calls herself "Miss Activities" at school. She sees herself and her peers as lacking an identity. With no great war, no Watergate, no great issue, and being born the year Gerald Ford took office, today’s world defies understanding. Here is how they explain themselves, according to Valory:

Tripping has a natural kind of ‘60s image and that’s really in today...We always have conversations about society. It makes no sense. The government makes no sense. School makes no sense. Why don’t people have enough to eat? Why do we have to stress ourselves out and kill ourselves with jobs?

(Kids who don’t try acid) are like sheep...They’re like, ‘Mommy says no. Society says no.’ They don’t have the guts to question authority. (And then Valory offers the most common reason given as to why kids are taking LSD.) It was something new to do that sounded neat.

Valory claims to have a good relationship with her parents (her father is a doctor) but considers them a little strict. She endured the usual lecture before they left on vacation with an understanding that there would be no smoking, beer, or boys. Valory has uses her own judgment for the party, posting rules on the wall near the bathroom door.

• No smoking in the house.
• Put all trash in cans.
• Must share all beer, alcohol and drugs with occupants of the house.
• Must not drop/drink/smoke and drive.

Someone has already crossed out "not." As she issues a further instruction, "No one allowed to take more than three (doses) at my house, the kids scatter. "I’m taking four!" Jim yells. A friend outbids him, "I’m taking six!" Soon there will be smoking, trash, and bragging about driving while high.

Robert is a Washington lawyer’s son. While sulking—his mother dropped him off too late to get in on the first string of hits—he remembers how much fun it is to trip and drive. "The lights come at you real fast...My father would kill me if he found out."

Seventeen-year-old Greg brags about being a veteran tripper who has done 50 hits of acid in three years. He explains the real story of lysergic acid diethylamide.

I heard that after seven hits, you’re legally insane...It takes your brain cells, throws them up, and when your mind comes down, it’s in little pieces...It’s like turning up the power in your mind, like turning up the volume in your head.

The LSD business works like this in Montgomery County. Greg has a 21-year-old friend who does business with a phony video company in California. He sends them $3,000 and receives 100 sheets each with 100 hits of acid. High school kids sell it at $5 a hit—for $47,000 profit. Even the high schoolers have made 1000% profit selling a sheet of LSD.

Greg’s friend, Marty, sought to avoid manual labor and to impress his father by investing $120 from his savings account with two Bethesda (Maryland) 11th graders making LSD in their basement. Marty had tried acid twice ("it’s good for exploring") but is generally against drug use. Both parents have Ph.D.s; his father is a successful businessperson. When he had run his profits into four figures, he bought himself his first razor, a tie at Banana Republic, and flowers for his mother. When he showed the bank book’s evidence of his entrepreneurial skill to his father, he was surprised by dad’s negative reaction.

It didn’t really seem illegal...I was underage and it would be my first offense...I thought, who are the cops going to trust, a preppie dude like me or some acid freak, deadhead deadbeat? I’m a good boy...There was no guilt factor here. I thought if I’m not doing it, someone else will capitalize on it.

But my dad called me a hoodlum and a drug dealer. He used the word ‘disappointed’ with me, and that’s the worst word.

Marty was sent to his room, and his father would not speak to him for weeks.

James calls himself an acid baby and brags:

I saw God! (And when asked what he looks like) I saw Him in the woods. He’s like a tree spirit; He’s like the Earth...I dropped two around lunch, and by the time I got to English, the teacher was wearing this black and yellow outfit—I thought she was a bumblebee! (But by now no one is listening.)

At the party he is exuberant about LSD and one of the first to feel the effects of the first hit:

Oh wow! I’m starting to feel it...This tripping is (expletive) awesome! My body feels like a rubber band!

Awhile later, he looks in the hall mirror and sees himself as a wolf. James has talked to his mother about his doing acid. Both of his parents used acid in the ‘60s. Now, however, she does not approve—some of her friends had their brains fried—but knows no way of stopping it. James’ mother shares:

Besides...It’s put my son and I [sic] on the same wave-length. It changed his perspective, opened up his mind...Kids today see it glamorized. There’s a kind of a hero worship when they realize, ‘Oh, my parents were at Woodstock; I want to experience some of the things they did.’

They think they’re immortal—drinking, driving fast, swimming in deep water—kids do all kinds of stupid things. (I just hope James will stop) before he loses his faculties. When you’re a parent you say a whole lot of prayers.

What is the party like?

They wait for the new doses to kick in. They paint each other’s faces with fluorescent markers. They make statures out of multicolored clay. They play board games. They watch music videos. They stare at a painting of a girl and argue about what they see in it:

A mermaid grabbing trees.

A panther.

A dove. No, a dragon.

It’s a pink and purple and orange planet.

I see a lady strangling her cat.

There’s a baby with an evil screaming face.

A downside is the appearance of Jay. At a party two weeks ago he had a bad trip, went into convulsions and passed out. No one called 911, because they were embarrassed. Among the trippers, there is fear and anger toward Jay, who almost blew their cover. Most of them have had bad trips themselves.

James has seen his best friend die. Greg has seen snakes wrapped around his ankles. Robert was once pinned to his car, paralyzed. Another was summoned from a tree branch by the Grim Reaper.

As the night slithers away, the kids get quiet—and plan another party for the week before school starts.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Do you agree that after a decline in hard drugs during the 1980s there is a rise in the 1990s?
2. What has been your experience about drug abuse among teenagers?
3. Why do parents and school officials so often deny what youth leaders and teachers know is going on among teenagers?
4. What most impresses or depresses you in this article?
5. How else could the father, a lawyer in capitol area, have dealt with his young son getting into the drug business?
6. What do you see of the spirituality of contemporary suburban teenagers in this article? How are they seeking transcendence and the meaning (or celebrating the meaninglessness) of life and death?
7. What do you see in today’s media (commercials, news, music, movies) that reflect or influence what you find in this acid scene?
8. How would you interact with young people such as those described who see nothing so bad about LSD and think that they have it under control? To what extent is peer pressure the issue?
9. What might you say to parents, school, and community leaders in a town like this?

IMPLICATIONS

1. Teenagers need to think about chemical use and abuse in terms of the values and power of their various peer groups.
2. Busy and preoccupied parents must not assume that all is well as long as school or police are not complaining. The values and goals, feelings and opinions, of each son and daughter must be explored year by year.
3. Teachers are negligent when they see teenagers as merely math, science, or history students-or just crazy kids. Some "A" students may be committing rape, struggling with past issues of abuse or an impending divorce, or escaping into drugs.
4. Discussions of articles like this one have a place in every youth group. The "whys and wherefores," the "what would you say to a friend like this" questions must be processed with young people. Many youth see acid as a legitimate spiritual experience within one’s faith commitment.