When I was seventeen I took a job in McDonalds. I wish that I hadn’t, I am embarrassed to admit it, but I did. It was in Peterborough, a dull city a half hour train journey from my dull home town. I worked there for only a couple of weeks until they sacked me, during the time that I was taking lots of LSD at Patrick's house.
I made friends with a fellow crew member called Tejeb (This may be misspelled, pronounced 'tay-web,') who had mutual friends in my home town I think. I don't remember too much about him. He had long hair, dearly loved the band Felt and shared my enthusiasm for LSD. We were in a pub in the city centre in the late afternoon after I had finished work one day and he gave me a tab. I thought, since we had been talking about taking the drug together, that we were to do so then and there, but it turned out that he was about to start a shift and had only given it to me to try some other time. Unfortunately I discovered this just after I swallowed it. So the trick now was to get back to Patrick's house before I lost my marbles.
I remember, an hour later, sitting on the train and asking a woman, trying to sound as reasonable as possible, "Is the train moving? You see, I have the sensation that we have been travelling for a very long time but perhaps we are still at Peterborough Station? I have taken some LSD you see and it's bothering me a bit." The kind lady assured me that the train had not yet started moving, invited me to the other side of the carriage to join her if it made me feel more comfortable and shared an orange with me.
I can't remember arriving at Huntingdon Station. I would have been taking the short cut to the side of the town which leads to Patrick's village, Godmanchester, because I clearly recall many policeman waiting for me on the other side of the field, on the ring road. I pulled myself together and realised that there had been a traffic accident. Still, it wasn't a pleasant experience walking past them.
Half an hour later I arrived at Patrick's house and he gave me tea and reassured me. I did well to get back so quickly because it was then that the effects of the drug increased a great deal. No doubt, whatever I got up to fascinated me.
I think of myself as being quite fortunate to have taken so much LSD at this time, every few days over a couple of months, and not have badly affected my mind. It is thought to trigger schizophrenia in some. At one point I went complaining to Kevin, the young boy (younger than me at the time) who sold it to me that he had sold me duds. "But Graeme," he explained, "you've taken it every day for four days in a row, you've built up a resistance" so that evening I took two and a half.
I got lost in LSD thought. I recognised that there was a whole new way of thinking, and I felt inclined to return again and again. It was always present when I was sober but I couldn't quite place it and it took me a few years until I stopped being preoccupied with and comparing the two states of mind. During those years I felt quite sad and objects, especially curtains, patterns and plants, would undulate if I stared at them. But the price was a small one to pay, they were the most interesting experiences of my life. The morning after the second occasion that I had taken it was a huge revelation. I sat on a bench in a small, ugly park near the town centre and I felt overwhelmed. Every thing, life, that I had known since birth was suddenly so new, with so many hidden facets revealed. I saw people as they were but I also saw how they moved within the wider context of society. Habitual ways suddenly stood out. People not seeming to be fully aware what they were saying or who was saying it fascinated me. I felt that I began to see more clearly how many people have a lack of self awareness but it also made me empathise with people effortlessly.
The trouble with LSD though is that you just can't be sure of anything. I wrote a song about this for my band The Projects called Planets and I like the line 'you think you know things but you know you may be wrong and you'd like to do things but you cannot get things done.' Mira and I sing on it. Mira suggested that it might be fun if we take mushrooms together and it could be a lovely experience but I am concerned that I might find my having MS too unpleasant.
I think it worked out well. I am a creative person, I’m full of ideas, I write, I make music, I seem to get along with people, I'm self confident and I'm rational and I think that I have LSD to thank for these things in some small part. I would say that the doses that I took were too high. I think taking small doses, as Francis Crick did to ‘help him think,’ to help him envisage the DNA double helix, is not a bad idea but I am not sure that I will ever take it again in any dose.
But I can definitely thank LSD for my being sacked by McDonalds. It makes knowing that I allowed them to employ me a bit easier to deal with. One morning, late for work, I was still under the influence from the night before. I was marvelling at the patterns of the tiles as I walked through the shopping centre and, for a short time, I thought that I was actually in Brent Cross Shopping Centre in North London where my mother would take me as a child. I finally got to work. It was a very quiet midday morning and I was alone behind the till. Someone ordered a strawberry milkshake and so I turned the machine on and wondered off somewhere and became fascinated by something and before I knew it there was a disturbing sea of strawberry milkshake on the floor. A manageress came in from the back room, saw the mess and, quite rightly, sacked me then and there.
I made friends with a fellow crew member called Tejeb (This may be misspelled, pronounced 'tay-web,') who had mutual friends in my home town I think. I don't remember too much about him. He had long hair, dearly loved the band Felt and shared my enthusiasm for LSD. We were in a pub in the city centre in the late afternoon after I had finished work one day and he gave me a tab. I thought, since we had been talking about taking the drug together, that we were to do so then and there, but it turned out that he was about to start a shift and had only given it to me to try some other time. Unfortunately I discovered this just after I swallowed it. So the trick now was to get back to Patrick's house before I lost my marbles.
I remember, an hour later, sitting on the train and asking a woman, trying to sound as reasonable as possible, "Is the train moving? You see, I have the sensation that we have been travelling for a very long time but perhaps we are still at Peterborough Station? I have taken some LSD you see and it's bothering me a bit." The kind lady assured me that the train had not yet started moving, invited me to the other side of the carriage to join her if it made me feel more comfortable and shared an orange with me.
I can't remember arriving at Huntingdon Station. I would have been taking the short cut to the side of the town which leads to Patrick's village, Godmanchester, because I clearly recall many policeman waiting for me on the other side of the field, on the ring road. I pulled myself together and realised that there had been a traffic accident. Still, it wasn't a pleasant experience walking past them.
Half an hour later I arrived at Patrick's house and he gave me tea and reassured me. I did well to get back so quickly because it was then that the effects of the drug increased a great deal. No doubt, whatever I got up to fascinated me.
I think of myself as being quite fortunate to have taken so much LSD at this time, every few days over a couple of months, and not have badly affected my mind. It is thought to trigger schizophrenia in some. At one point I went complaining to Kevin, the young boy (younger than me at the time) who sold it to me that he had sold me duds. "But Graeme," he explained, "you've taken it every day for four days in a row, you've built up a resistance" so that evening I took two and a half.
I got lost in LSD thought. I recognised that there was a whole new way of thinking, and I felt inclined to return again and again. It was always present when I was sober but I couldn't quite place it and it took me a few years until I stopped being preoccupied with and comparing the two states of mind. During those years I felt quite sad and objects, especially curtains, patterns and plants, would undulate if I stared at them. But the price was a small one to pay, they were the most interesting experiences of my life. The morning after the second occasion that I had taken it was a huge revelation. I sat on a bench in a small, ugly park near the town centre and I felt overwhelmed. Every thing, life, that I had known since birth was suddenly so new, with so many hidden facets revealed. I saw people as they were but I also saw how they moved within the wider context of society. Habitual ways suddenly stood out. People not seeming to be fully aware what they were saying or who was saying it fascinated me. I felt that I began to see more clearly how many people have a lack of self awareness but it also made me empathise with people effortlessly.
The trouble with LSD though is that you just can't be sure of anything. I wrote a song about this for my band The Projects called Planets and I like the line 'you think you know things but you know you may be wrong and you'd like to do things but you cannot get things done.' Mira and I sing on it. Mira suggested that it might be fun if we take mushrooms together and it could be a lovely experience but I am concerned that I might find my having MS too unpleasant.
I think it worked out well. I am a creative person, I’m full of ideas, I write, I make music, I seem to get along with people, I'm self confident and I'm rational and I think that I have LSD to thank for these things in some small part. I would say that the doses that I took were too high. I think taking small doses, as Francis Crick did to ‘help him think,’ to help him envisage the DNA double helix, is not a bad idea but I am not sure that I will ever take it again in any dose.
But I can definitely thank LSD for my being sacked by McDonalds. It makes knowing that I allowed them to employ me a bit easier to deal with. One morning, late for work, I was still under the influence from the night before. I was marvelling at the patterns of the tiles as I walked through the shopping centre and, for a short time, I thought that I was actually in Brent Cross Shopping Centre in North London where my mother would take me as a child. I finally got to work. It was a very quiet midday morning and I was alone behind the till. Someone ordered a strawberry milkshake and so I turned the machine on and wondered off somewhere and became fascinated by something and before I knew it there was a disturbing sea of strawberry milkshake on the floor. A manageress came in from the back room, saw the mess and, quite rightly, sacked me then and there.
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