What A Long, Strange... Oh, You Know

Back in the day, the Grateful Dead, and the various hangs-on and Merry Pranksters that surrounded them, often took the opportunity to "dose" unsuspecting friends and acquaintences. Dosing was the practice of spiking someone's drink, or food, with LSD. The victim would soon feel the beginning effects of an unsolicitedacid trip, and would have no choice but to spend the next 18 to 24 hours restraining themselves from self-defenestration and observing nearby faces melting. It is a small yet well-known chapter in the long, storied history of the Grateful Dead.

This past weekend, dosing of an entirely different kind altogether occured at the 930 Club in Washington, DC. On Friday evening, the venue hosted a show by Grateful Dead tribute band Dark Star Orchestra, a long-running and HIGHly (get it?) successful group that not only covers Dead classics, but also performs properly setlisted entire shows from throughout the Dead's history. The appeal to Dead fans is easy to see: close your eyes and you could be at a classic Dead show from '74, or '77, or '69, or even '87.

Obviously, one could easily get caught up in all of the excitement of such a performance. And, just as obviously, there is a danger, as there always is when euphoria and alcohol are together in the same place, that "things" can go "too far." Which, on Friday evening, is precisely what happened to Steven Lipski, a Jersey City, NJ councilman. Lipski, apparently a Dead fan, was at the show and enjoying the tunes when he decided to have a drink. Then a second drink. Then another.

Many people, of course, can handle a few drinks. Some, however, cannot. And Lipski, a man who had not touched a drop of alcohol in two years, fell off the wagon. Hard.

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