[HN Gopher] The Acid King (2001)
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The Acid King (2001)
Author : udit99
Score : 28 points
Date : 2025-05-09 21:30 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rollingstone.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rollingstone.com)
| psyclobe wrote:
| He was released in 2020:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard
| KingFelix wrote:
| yeah wild story, surprised Netflix hasn't done it yet. I've got
| his book on my shelf too I will start one day, The Rose Of
| Paracelsus: On Secrets & Sacraments
| leesalminen wrote:
| It's a very, very hard read. His vocabulary is insane. I had
| to look up so many words. Very rewarding to make it to the
| end though.
| vik0 wrote:
| What kind of a book is it, genre-wise? Was it interesting?
| I'm deciding if I should read it someday or not
| linuxguy2 wrote:
| [2001]
| dang wrote:
| Added above. Thanks!
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23947157 - July 2020 (375
| comments)
|
| _The "Acid King," Serving Life Without Parole_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12211097 - Aug 2016 (25
| comments)
|
| Other (more loosely) related threads:
|
| _The LSD Museum (2021)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36673288 - July 2023 (25
| comments)
|
| _Owsley Stanley: The King of LSD (2011)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32651502 - Aug 2022 (57
| comments)
|
| _Nick Sand, Orange Sunshine LSD chemist, has died_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14207957 - April 2017 (82
| comments)
|
| _Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12395737 - Aug 2016 (211
| comments)
| udit99 wrote:
| Hey dang, unrelated question but.... I posted this a couple
| days ago and it seemed to have resurfaced somehow. Never seen
| that happen in any past submissions. Is this a new HN feature?
| Slow news day bumps up some potentially overlooked posts?
| josephcsible wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
| udit99 wrote:
| Thanks, TIL
| richrichardsson wrote:
| I'm not sure where they get the idea that 20mics is a "dose".
| Microdose perhaps, but I've always been under the impression a
| modern "dose" of acid is 100mics, so the premise that they're
| less than in the 60s etc. still holds.
| standardUser wrote:
| I used to sell acid in the 90's and I couldn't even guess at
| the actual content of LSD per hit we were selling. Every sheet
| or vial was different, and if my dealer was ever telling me "X
| micrograms" I probably ignored it the same way I ignored every
| drug dealer's marketing pitch. For us, it came down to
| understanding the amount of _this_ particular acid needed for a
| trip. I 've taken 5+ hits at a time that were weaker than
| single hits from different origins.
| leesalminen wrote:
| I had the pleasure of recently meeting Leonard and spending a
| couple weeks together. What a unique and interesting person. I
| think he's the smartest person I've ever met. His stories are
| captivating. Could spend a very long time chatting with him.
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| Has he been doing well?
|
| I'd read he met Ross Ulbricht in USP Tucson when they were both
| serving life without the possibility of parole. I hope they can
| reconnect now that they're both free.
| leesalminen wrote:
| Yes, he's living life to the fullest!
|
| The most active 80 year old I've seen. Lots of travel,
| speaking at conferencing, networking in his professional
| circles.
|
| Believe it or not, he's a fairly conservative person. He'd
| never done yoga, breath work, sauna, cold plunge, saline IVs.
| I had the honor of pushing him out of his comfort zone a bit
| with the hippy health stuff.
|
| He's speed run learning how to use a smartphone and loves
| using it to connect all the people he meets together.
|
| I think that was the most intriguing part of Leonard- his
| ability to pick up a new concept in minutes and apply it
| expertly. We were discussing modern cryptography and he was
| able to grok it in < 5 minutes.
|
| Yes, he and Ross are still friends today. If I understand
| correctly they recently met up for the first time outside of
| prison.
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| That's so cool to hear! Thanks for sharing
| yapyap wrote:
| Ulbricht tried to put out hits on people, this man made a
| drug banned by governments. Both illegal but only one highly
| immoral.
| empath75 wrote:
| I think people might under appreciate how easy LSD was to get in
| the US in the 90s and early 2000s.
|
| I was living in a fairly boring suburb, and was a complete nerd
| and had access to as much LSD as I wanted at less than $5 a hit
| when I was in high school in the mid 90s, and it continued to be
| easy to find well into the early 2000s.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| Strychnine will do that :(
|
| Edit to add: i'm just talking about the rash of strychnine
| poisonings related to LSD usage in the early 2000s. it put a
| real damper on the party for a long time and for a lot of
| people.
| psyclobe wrote:
| Indeed, I did a lot of it during those years as well;
| introduced so many friends to it. What a time to be alive.
| e6quisitory wrote:
| https://archive.ph/8Nb80
| lukasb wrote:
| According to this he predicted the the fentanyl epidemic in the
| 90s: https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/people/affiliated-
| researc...
| 3dsnano wrote:
| Prior to the LLM age, I found it very difficult to program while
| on LSD or psychedelics. I just could not sustain the logical
| inference needed to keep track.
|
| However, using a voice dictation program combined with a usb foot
| pedal and cursor, I have overcome this impasse in an interesting
| way.
|
| What was once the Ballmer peak, I should perhaps rename the
| Pickard Pinnacle. What a time 2B alive.
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