HW: Isle of White 1970 - Huw freaked on acid

[Doug Pearson]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2000 14:35:10 GMT, M Holmes <fofp at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK> wrote:
>Melvyn Vincent writes:
>
>> ...  Huw Lloyd
>> Langton gulped back a few mouthfuls not knowing that it had been
>> spiked with something like 5 shots of liquid acid/LSD.  No laughing
>> matter....as it very nearly killed the guy.  Huw was hospitalised and
>> did actually 'die' at one point...
>
>I thought it was impossible to overdose on LSD in the sense of actually
>causing physical harm? Does it really have an LD50 dose?

I'm not aware of anyone being killed as a direct result of the *physicial*
effects of LSD.  If it *could* happen, it surely would have at some point
in the sixties when people (especially in the Bay Area) were dosing the
unsuspecting like mad or manufacturing the stuff under non-cleanroom
conditions (remember, Albert Hoffman was sent on his first trip by handling
lab equipment - test tubes and the like - that had held LSD).  At some
point when researching the pharmocological effects, I remember reading
about how an Elephant (?!) had been fed several grams (standard human
dosage is a fraction of a milligram), which actually killed it.  Although
if that's true, I'd think it more likely that the poor creature literally
"freaked out" to death (along the lines of an anxiety-induced heart attack
- they're fairly high-strung, easily agitated creatures) from the
psychological, rather than physiological effects of the drug.

>> The dose he got was so high that it
>> took him a period of 6 months to 'come down' from the effects.  One
>> does wonder what long term affects such an overdose could have on a
>> person.

This is certainly a well-known reaction to extreme LSD intake.  One could
easily come up with a list of at least a dozen musicians that this happened
to ...

        -Doug
         ceres at sirius.com