Patton Oswalt on What He Learned Taking LSD

Whenever a comedian tells you how dangerous and edgy they are, like, the fucking ocean, like, he's not edgy or dang, like, you shouldn't have to say that. He's gonna have nonsense. He's gonna say nonsense I've already heard before. Yeah, like, David Tell never tells the audience, hang on. That's just how he thinks. Exactly. He's got fine feet, which makes him ten times edgier. That might be the lamest thing comedians do, is tell you they're edgy. I used to see that all the time. It's the worst. There was a guy, he would go on stage, he would sit backwards in the chair, he would go, welcome to the inside of my mind. No! That man needs some mushrooms. Oh, so bad. You need to just wake up after it's over and go, oh my god, I gotta change everything. Who am I? I'm so glad for all the LSD trips I took back in the 90s, because you come out of it and just go to go, oh yeah, okay, maybe I need to... Anything to shrink yourself in the universe and make you more secure with, oh, this is actually vast and I'm tiny in it. Knowing how tiny you are actually gives you more strength and freedom. Because you're like, if everything I do is insignificant, then I can do anything. If it's ultimately all crumbles, just do whatever you want. Well, sometimes when I get really high and I feel real vulnerable, I feel like there's almost like there's magic in the world. Whereas when I'm sober, everything seems sort of... It's like standard. Everything's just as it always is. I'm accustomed to all these paths and I'm accustomed to getting in my car and driving. But when I'm high, the whole thing is magic. It's like, this is madness. This whole thing is crazy. And there's possibilities. Yes, too many. Both good and bad possibilities, but they're there. That's what I like. That's when people say they pot makes them paranoid. I'm like, that's my favorite part. Because that paranoia, I need it. For me, it's giant. It helps me a lot. It really does. It's responsible for a lot of my activity. Some people say that it makes you lazy. It's not, I'm not getting lazy. I'm getting scared. And then because of that, I go. I gotta go. Gotta do something. Yeah, it was... I remember Harlan Ellison, who was very anti-drug, very anti-drink, but he was putting together an anthology and he had Philip K. Dick's story, Faith of Our Fathers in it. And he was like, I've never advocated the use of psychedelics or drugs. But my God, if I could write on this level, maybe I would totally gobble them. Because he's operating on a different level right now. Yeah. Well, I think people are scared of him because, for rightly so, because we've all heard stories of people losing everything, lose their mind. You know, we were talking yesterday about this O'Farrell theater sign that Hunter S. Thompson had given this couple on their wedding anniversary, or their wedding day. He stole from San Francisco. He stole this... I know it's off at Geary Street in O'Farrell. Yeah. He stole the sign outside. And it was a sign that said, you know, if you are scared of sex acts or whatever. It's on... There's a guy I follow on Instagram, the Jacka underscore Lope, and he's a Hunter S. Thompson enthusiast. And he posted this. Hunter gave it to this couple along with 20 hits of acid. And the woman took all the acid and was immediately checked into a mental institution and never got out. So on the day of their wedding, Hunter S. Thompson ruined it. There's the photo. I don't know if you could see it. You could see it there? Yeah. Oh, there you go. Yeah. So, but the story is so crick... Scroll to the story, Jamie, on that side. Yeah. So you can see where it said, gave it to his friend along with 20 hits of acid as a wedding gift. The bride took the acid, was committed to a mental institution, never came back. Oh. Well, by the way, look, I am very for people, if you want to experiment with psychedelics, but I'm also very for set the correct stage for it. Also, don't take all 20, you fucking... Crazy bitch. Take one hit. What the fuck? I won. See what, where it goes. But also, even if you do one, don't do it on the roof of a building with Tom Petty's free falling, playing on a boombox, like, lie in a hammock somewhere. The first time I did acid was the night that Bill Clinton won the presidency. This is in 92 and I was in Matt Weinhold's apartment in San Francisco. And Matt Weinhold and his roommate, this illustrator named Derek Robertson, Marvel illustrator, great comic book guy, did Transmectropolitan. He illustrated Warren Illes' Transmectropolitan and The Boys for Gar-Tennis. They owned every action figure in the world. And they had them all on little shelves. The walls were nothing but action figures. I'm sitting there and, you know, the patterns in the table started to melt and move a little bit. And then that Fleetwood Mac song, Don't Start Thinking About Tomorrow. Remember they were all dancing to that on stage when they were fours in the Clintons. I looked over at the wall and the figures weren't going crazy. But as the music played, they were all just kind of subtly, like just kind of bounce. Like they were in line outside of like a sound check, just listening to music. And it gave me this feeling of such absolutely like, oh, like everything in the world is like bouncing to a better beat right now. It felt really, really good. It was a perfect time to take LSD.