Acid by Accident

Because of its special hallucinogenic potency, LSD holds a particularly sinister terror for most Americans. Acid has been the villain in several bizarre and well-publicized incidents: there was the hoax that six Pennsylvania students were blinded by staring at the sun while stoned, the near death of a 5-year-old New York girl who innocently munched an LSD-laced sugar cube from the family refrigerator, the suicide of Art Linkletter's daughter Diane, 20, after a bad trip. Now a new chapter has been written in the grim folklore of LSD. Somebody slipped some acid into the potato and corn chips at a swinging singles party in the Marina del Rey section of Los Angeles, and nearly 40 of the 200 guests tripped out.

When sheriff's deputies arrived, the scene resembled a Bosch vision of hell. "Some of them were staring," said one. "Some were unusually happy. Some were sick. People were screaming. Some said the walls were moving. One man cried that his hands were getting bigger and bigger. It looked like a madhouse."

Psychiatrist Louis Lunsky, who treated many of the trippers, called the Marina del Rey incident the first documented case of mass hallucinogenic poisoning. "The frightening thing is," he adds, "that it could happen again." These days, if an American escapes being hijacked in an airplane, mugged in the street or sniped at by a man gone berserk, he apparently still runs the risk of getting accidentally zonked by the hors d'oeuvres at a friendly neighborhood cocktail party.

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