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I Believe I Can Fly! (Dangerous Drug Delusions; Acid Casualties)

M

Mattattattatt

Gone But Not Forgotten
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As everybody knows, children and drug addicts are stupid. So stupid, that at times, they will apparently try and fly like birds.

I seem to remember in the mid-80s, reports of kids leaping off roofs, convinced that they were in fact sons of Krypton, influenced by superhero comics.

Also, as I *think* portrayed in the much touted film "Reefer Madness"(?), people can get so high on cannabis, that they will sometimes be tempted to leap off buildings. I also remember people on various other drugs portrayed in TV drama doing the same. I suppose the drug most likely to make you think you can fly is LSD (apparently!).

BUT... has this ever actually been documented, in either case?
 
There was a series on BBC2 a couple of years ago that documented US testing of hallucogens on military personnel.

Amidst fascinating footage of Marines on PCP attempting to traverse a course, a tale was told of one ex-testee who had leapt to his death from a window under the impression that he could fly. The testing - with LSD, I believe - was supposed to have left him in a state of permanent psychosis.

Of course, whether this tale was itself true, or the mere repetition of a "well known fact", I couldn't say...
 
Yo Skellyboy.

Aye I remember way back when I was first at college one of my sociology classmates saying that someone she knows was high on LSD and leaped off a block of flats, breaking most bones in his body.

However whether it was a friend, or a friend of a friend, I couldnae tell you.
 
I think this UL has crossed the pond a few times and I think the original story came out of San Francisco in the late fifties early sixties and involved a criminal taking far too much PCP (Very different to LSD) and when approached by the police was forced on to a roof and rather than go to jail (logic suitably adjusted by the PCP), jumped.

Personally I would question the mental stability of any of the so-called jumpees. Having experienced (with positive and fantastic results) different types of halucinagen i have come to the conclusion that those who think that they will have a bad time generally do.

I've heard all manner of drug UL's including the famous "oh my hand/face/foot's turned into an orange/banana/egg, i think i'll peel it" resulting in various horrific injuries. All of which are repeated buy open minded folk based on well informed, non-sensationalist fact.

Before the back lash starts I am not pro drugs but i am pro education and pro choice.
 
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When I was in my late teens I met someone who jumped of a multi-story car park after an LSD induced hallucination.

Apparently, he suffered a state of psychosis where he believed he was being stalked by something that resembled Murnau's Nosferatu. Evidently, in a fit of panic he decided that flinging himself off the top of a four-story car park was the only way to escape eternal damnation.

He then went on to say that he remembered hearing a large number of people cheering and clapping as he went down.

Fortunately he survived the fall, but along with his other injuries, he broke his back, and is now confined to a wheelchair. The last I heard of him, he was touring various schools warning kids against drugs.

A few other drug-induced hallucinations he experienced included one where he chased a garden gnome around the local woods. Another was at the Reading Rock Festival, where whilst in a loved-up state, he spotted a crusty sitting next to and stroking a very tame fox. Deciding that it's very rare to see such a tame fox, he sat down and joined the crusty in petting the fox, only to discover a few minutes later, that the fox had morphed into a very good-looking, but confused redhead - the crusty's girlfriend.
 
I knew a guy who got chased home by a gorilla, then, whilst making toast on his return, got spoken to by the bread as it popped up :s
 
Acid Casualties

I'm with Bill Hicks on this one - if someone takes psychedelics and jumps to their doom its a case of 'Good - another stupid person's dead.'

Don't get me wrong, like Hicks, I think psychedelics can be a positive force. Its just that if you're stupid enough to forget that your drug-induced experiences are just that, or stupid enough to take drugs and go near any sort of hazardous environment, then you'll likely pay the price.

BTW - I speak as someone who used/abused psychedelics on a regular basis when I was young.

Another perennial LSD horror story is of the hippies who, tripped off their faces, stare into the sun so long they go blind. I'm pretty sure this was exposed as a hoax by anti-drugs campaigners.
 
There are at least a few cases, where people who have taken LSD, have tripped out again, days or weeks after the first trip without apparently taking a further tab.

A sudden, new trip, has lead to injuries as the person hallucinates often unawares & without any warning.
 
as far as i can remember i think only 1 person has died of cannabis and i dont think they directly attributed it to pot in the end

long live the leaf (and the bud ; ) )
cas
 
casio said:
as far as i can remember i think only 1 person has died of cannabis and i dont think they directly attributed it to pot in the end

long live the leaf (and the bud ; ) )
cas
Click to expand...

:spinning The only confirmed death from Cannabis I've ever heard of was someone who had a crate of the stuff fall on his head whilst loading a ship!
 
I've talked to guys on acid about their experiences (I'm too much of a coward to try it, never going further than black tar heroin [a long time ago, I assure you]), and they usually say there aren't much more than optical effects: colors glowing brighter than usual or stripes on the floor wavering. I asked if anyone's turned into Satan or anything (which I probably shouldn't have asked), since a girl I knew said she'd experienced this; yet, most say it's not nearly as bad as the legend around it. Is this fairly accurate?
 
Jack... that Drug Myths Test is a little biased. To get full marks you need to answer the same to every question...

So remember kids: "Just Say No" ;)

Niles
 
Niles> Oh yeah... I just took the anti-anti-drugs line and got nearly full marks!... Just shows that the myth of LSD making you want to fly is kinda widespread, though...

And back to the original question, Kids thinking they're Superman... Not only do I remember hearing of kids leaping off roofs in a vain attempt to fly, but also shooting themselves in the chest to see if they could repel bullets - anyone got any light to shed on that one?
 
None drug related I'm afraid, only the obligatory "african wizard blessing their leaders gun" routine. The leader, thinking themselves invincible, asks to be shot repeatedly in the head.

Most of the time, the people don't really seem particularly suprised that the spell didn't work, after all, the wizard "had a pretty bad week".

:rolleyes:
 
-oracle- i think your right i think that was the one but im not too sure


if you want any reports on peoples experiences while on drugs or want any general infomation about drugs try the link below

ADULTS ONLY

cas

ps this is a very interesting read (was for me anyway)
 
David said:
There are at least a few cases, where people who have taken LSD, have tripped out again, days or weeks after the first trip without apparently taking a further tab.
Click to expand...

Acid flashbacks are pretty well documented and can actually occur years later especially to those who have used the drug heavily in the past, however I'm not sure that anyone actually understands the processes by which they occur. There is also an apparent correlation between heavy use of LSD and the development of
schizophrenia. Having said that I think you have to take into account the possible agenda of anyone, pro or anti, stating "facts" about drugs. The only thing you can really say with any confidence is that there are as many different responses to
hallucinogens as there are shades of emotion in the human experience - from terror to joy. Like alcohol most drugs share common symptoms but can induce very different emotional and physical reactions some positive and some negative.

I wouldn't be too quick to write off the flying thing as a piece of anti-LSD propaganda as from what I can see it's pretty well documented. Having said that it doesn't mean it's experienced by all or even many people who take the drug. It's also worth remembering that many older drugs induced sensations of flight and were in fact often known as flying ointments, notably aconite, belladonna and henbane.

I believe there was a case (I think in France) where many injuries and some fatalities occured due to an apparent mass delusion of the power of flight. I think this was eventually put down to the acid-like hallucinations inspired after several members of the population had eaten bread contaminated with some sort of outside agent, ergot possibly.
 
Yes Spook, there was a case France in I belive the 1950's of delusions caused by ergot of rye.

Also, I have seen a few cases of peple who claimed that their flashbacks, were due to using acid in the past, BUT I nolonger know what the truth is in either case!!!
 
The 1969 book The Day of St. Anthony's Fire by John G. Fuller
has been on my must find and read list for years. It details
the 1951 ergot poisoning epidemic in the village of
Pont-Saint-Esprit. The symptoms were nightmarish delusions
of blood running down walls, tigers in the walls and exploding
flowers! The first flower-power?

Hundreds of inhabitants were affected. One Joseph Puche
believed he was an aeroplane and leapt from a second storey
window. Bleeding, he rose on his two broken legs and ran
fifty yards down the road! :eek!!!!:

This fairly well-known case may be the main source of the
association of ergot alkaloids with jumping from buildings.:rolleyes:
 
there are a load of thing s like this on the link i posted

cas

also just thinking there may be some accounts of stuff like that on newsgroups i have a looksie in a bit
 
David said:
Yes Spook, there was a case France in I belive the 1950's of delusions caused by ergot of rye.
Click to expand...

There was a TV documentary not so long ago, postulating that ergot was the cause of the things seen by the girls who made the accusations in the Salem Witch trials.

Carole
 
St Anthony's Fire

Its true that the people in Pont-Saint-Esprit did have terrible hallucinations, but they were not aware that they'd inadvertently taken a mega-dose of a substance which was not just psychedelic but also had very unpleasant physical effects.

I'm still dubious as to whether anyone with any common sense who'd taken psychedelics voluntarily would be unaware that any hallucinatory efffects were drug induced.

Thats not to say that psychedelics aren't potentially dangerous, I've written elsewhere that a good analogy is electricity, which is dangerous if you don't use it according to rules that acknowledge the way it behaves, but used in a controlled way is very useful.

As for psychedelics (I use this term because its generally unsure what chemical you actually get in illicit drugs) and schizophrenia, it could easily be that one of the symptoms of the onset of schizophrenia is an urge to take psychedelics.

Believe it or not, one of the diagnostic criteria for potential schizophrenia is being unduly interested in schizophrenia!!

I've met people who appeared to go schizzy because of involvement in the occult, but I've never been sure if their occutism was a cause or a symptom.
 
Yes but hallucinations can be so real. I can remember a bloke who had schizophrenia, who hallucinated about snakes, he hated snakes & even in the early stages of an attack when he knew the things he was seeing were not real, they still scared the S**t out of him!!!
 
I had a friend,who after taking speed for three days,decided to take some acid.He ended up on top of a tall building and had to be talked down by police.ended up in a psych hospital for weeks.
Also copped a public nuisance charge.He still has problems with the telivision talking to him.
 
I have heard that the guys who work with virtual reality, (that dreadlock guy and his group) has trouble with people going a bit psychotic from it. Apparently their brain can't cope with their senses not telling them the same thing. So you could imagine that drugs that give hallucinations could cause the same effect. That it wasn't the actual drug that was harmful, it was the hallucinations it gave.
 
On the subject of children injuring themselves while pretending to be superheros. My Uncle John once told me that when he was a child he jumped off the roof of the chicken shed while prending to be superman. He caught one of his feet on the fence and fell face first into a large patch of nettles.

Mind you, my Uncle John is fairly smart now but he was a dumb kid.

Cujo
 
I read somewhere a while back about a French Foreign Legionaire that tried to commit suicide by smoking and eating his way through two ounces of hash in one session (don't ask me why he chose this particular way to top himself - the article didn't say) He ended up in hospital, slept for 2 weeks and woke up feeling fine but peckish. Got a bit of a ring of UL about it, though.
 
cujo, remember the old saying

if your going to be dumb you gotta be tough





cas
 
My mate Dave in the early 70s dropped some acid on Xmas day. All went well until Big Meal Time, when he saw the turkey leap up off the serving tray, run round the table, jump on the floor and leg it out the doorway. He heroically chased and rugby-tackled it just as it reached apparently open but actually closed heavy oak door. He spent the rest of Xmas in hospital with concussion.
 
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