Sometimes, in life, you think you’re going to a Bob Dylan concert, only to end up awash in a sea of Deadheads swaying and staring intently at their hands, because Bob Dylan was touring with Phil Lesh at the time. That’s what happened to your author, and while it was an, um, interesting turn of events, it was also instructive, as it provided a lesson on what several thousand people all taking hallucinogens at the same time looks like.
Overall, it was a pretty chill scene, but there’s always the possibility of a trip going bad. That’s something that the members of the Grateful Dead understand well enough to prepare a document for the security teams at its shows explaining how to handle audience members who are getting into some dark headspace. The document was recently leaked on Twitter, presumably by someone involved with the Dead’s current run of ”Fare Thee Well” shows in Chicago:
The instructions are pretty vague, but overall seem sensible, except for that thing about LSD being absorbed through skin-to-skin contact. If that was true, all anyone would have to do to trip balls would be for one person to eat a couple tabs of acid, gather all their friends, and go around touching their foreheads like some sort of psychedelic Jesus. Hippies would love that. Unfortunately, we do not live in such a utopia.