One Pill Makes You Smaller

Last week, during an otherwise free-wheeling morning chit-chat before I rushed out the door to work, my wife made this provocative suggestion: "I heard that Steve Jobs was a real acid-head." This generated a number of responses in my mind. Perhaps these were the flashbacks that I was warned about back in my hippie days. I avoided most of them and asked for clarification.
"Where did you get this tidbit?"
She told me that she had been discussing Mister Jobs' legacy with our son's substitute English teacher who seemed uniquely qualified to discuss such matters because he had a grey ponytail and was wearing a tie-dye shirt. The idea that psychedelics would open doors of perception and creativity is not a new one. Carols Castendada and Aldous Huxley may not have been there first, and Timothy Leary certainly wasn't the last, but I don't know if personal computing and iPhones are a direct byproduct of expanding one's mind with drugs.
I'm not saying this for any Nancy Reagan, "this is your brain on drugs" reason. I am merely reflecting personal experience. Even though I can say that I am pleased and happy that I came back from all the trips I ever took with a little better understanding of my place in the world, along with memories of my college apartment turning into the Copacabana, I don't believe that my most creative moments occurred under the influence of psychedelics. From time to time, it came to me in a flash that I should be writing some of this stuff down, rather than simply staring at the carpet. One such impulse generated an open letter to Victoria Principal: "Dear Victoria, Meet a nice guy. Settle down."
That was it. The world's problems solved, or at least Ms. Principal's dating woes. Other times, my friends and I would sit in front of the television, watching skits by Monty Python, certain that all the members of that troupe must have been tripping hard when they wrote and filmed those episodes. It was only after years of calm reflection that I realized that the precise wordplay and timing would have been impossible in the wobbly world of psychedelics. Inspired by moments of drug-addled hysteria? Possibly. But the actual production of movies, TV, music and the arts beyond almost certainly required a clear head.
Then there's this: A letter from LSD inventor Albert Hoffman to Steve Jobs. It would seem that Mister Jobs was never coy about his own drug use. He called his LSD use "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." The cynic in me wonders what he might have produced if he had remained drug-free. The bitter me wonders if there is some chromosomal connection between pancreatic cancer and the use of mind-altering substances. The fellow tripster wonders what Steve was scribbling on his pad when he was eight miles high. I'll bet he had a much better solution to Victoria Principal's love life.