The Eternal Party by Kristina Hagman

Author:Kristina Hagman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466888340
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

12

LSD Trips of Another Kind

WITH DALLAS DAD EVENTUALLY PROVED he had what it took to mold a show into something everyone would be riveted by. But his determination to perfect I Dream of Jeannie and make it the best show on television almost ruined him. Between his constant complaints to the producers about bad scripts and his erratic behavior due to amphetamine withdrawal and pot smoking, things eventually, and perhaps inevitably, spun out of control. I didn’t understand what really happened at the end of Jeannie until years later when I read, in Dad’s own words, about how he had gone berserk on the set. It happened when the show was in its fifth year. One of those endless rehearsals that Dad insisted on was taking place on a particularly hot day. The air conditioner on the set was so loud the actors couldn’t hear each other’s lines. Dad asked the technicians to turn it off. When they didn’t, he repeated his request and then repeated it again. When they still did nothing, he stormed over to where the fire retardant and an axe hung on the wall, then picked up the axe and pounded it into a giant cord. Everything went dark. He’d meant to shut off the air conditioners; instead he’d cut the cord that supplied electricity to the entire soundstage. When the lights went out, he knew he had blown it. Working on Jeannie was never the same after that day. He was afraid he would never work again; he knew he had gone way too far.

His then best friend, Ted Flicker, who directed some episodes of Jeannie, insisted that Dad see a psychiatrist who could help him get things into perspective. Dad agreed even though he was never interested in talking about his problems. As Dad always told it, after a few sessions, the psychiatrist told him he needed to see that he had an amazing life and then suggested he take LSD. It’s another one of Dad’s stories that may or may not be true. I’ve often thought he was curious about LSD and more comfortable with the idea of experimenting with it if the green light for doing so came from his therapist.

Right about this time, Dad’s friend Peter Fonda took him to a Crosby, Stills, and Nash concert and afterward took him backstage where he met David Crosby, who gave him some very high-quality LSD.

Having read The Joyous Cosmology, Dad hoped that LSD would open the door to enlightenment. Talk therapy was not going to take him where he wanted to go. And so he turned to LSD to help him allay his anxieties and find that always-elusive balance between work and life.

Over the next few weeks, Dad proceeded to get ready to take his first trip. Unlike many people at the time who were dropping acid casually, my father planned this trip as carefully as he prepared to do a pratfall on the set. He talked to a lot of people who

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.