Yeah, Bill Burroughs only made it to 84 or something, so acid clearly pwns skag.
But considering the man's lifestyle, it's pretty extraordinary that he would live to 84. Excellent interview
here where Burroughs says psychedelics are more dangerous than heroin. Kind of weird to hear that from someone who was probably one of the first hundred or so Westerners to try ayahuasca. The Black Market scene in
Naked Lunch, maybe the best 'routine' in the novel, was written on ayahuasca. And if you've tried ayahuasca, you know LSD pales in comparison. Not even close.
Concerning Hoffman, not only did he bring this great thing into the world (and I still consider LSD a great thing, acid casualities notwithstanding), but he was one of the few people who could speak intelligently about it, its social and cultural dynamics and so on. That first generatation of researchers, pre-Timothy Leary, got it. I mean Hoffman, Huxley, the various scientists and so on, before Leary and others turned it into a pop culture fad. You could even throw Walter Benjamin into the mix, "On Hashish" etc. Hashish was certainly producing something akin to a psychedelic experience for him.
Not that I have anything against Leary. The books he wrote in the 70's are pretty spectacular, like
Exo-Pyschology. The
post-larval circuitry and all that jazz.
Incidentally, I found an online version of the Burroughs/Gysin Dream Machine:
http://www.netliberty.net/dreamachine.html
As good as if not better than the Wachowski Brothers'
Speed Racer on IMAX!
