“I’ve told a lot of people: don’t take psychedelic drugs. … It’s mentally dangerous to take. I regret having taken LSD. It’s a bad drug.”
That sobering advice doesn’t come from an obscure drug user who survived a harrowing bout with hallucinogens. It was an admonition from music legend Brian Wilson, founder of the Beach Boys, in a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone magazine.
Wilson, who died this week at 82, was immersed in the drug culture during his tenure atop the music world in the 1960s and ’70s. He also was haunted and tormented by mental illness, no doubt exacerbated — perhaps caused — by his drug use. As the Wall Street Journal noted in its obituary of the rock legend Wednesday, Wilson had been placed under a conservatorship a year ago due to what his physician called a “major neurocognitive disorder.”…