Hacker News Books

Peter passed years ago, brought down by alcohol. Lesson in there somewhere. I think it's the 2nd edition that has a thank you to my father in the forward. My father ran a graphics arts photography house that I worked in all through my youth. I did most the halftones for the 2nd edition. "A Friend With Weed is A Friend Indeed" was definitely in the book it's also in one of the compendiums of clip art, I think that is where Peter found it. My favorite was the spider webs where they fed various drugs to orb weavers and see what effect it had on the webs and the near perfection of the LSD web. One year Peter gave drug talks. Each week would have it's subject be a single drug. I went to the MDMA talk. A bunch of us took the drug then answered questions and shared our experiences as the talk went on. To this day I am shocked the authorities let him get away with it. Peter Stafford was a trip. Brilliant guy but goofy as hell. He was tall and lanky and talked like goofy the Disney cartoon character. Picture goofy explaining graduate level organic chemistry, strange and wonderful at the same time.

I first did LSD on a warm rock in a babbling brook in Aspen. The next few were in the fore mentioned Nisene Marks. A state park and redwood forest. It had been clear cut in the late 1800s and has mostly grown back with fairy circles of redwood trees surrounding the huge stumps of cut old growth redwoods. If ever there were places for me to get mystical, those two would be at the top of my list. I also read Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan during that period, so I am familiar with the idea of mysticism with Psychedelics. In my and my friends case it just never took for whatever reason...