When it comes to LSD, I have to confess: I inhaled. But I inhaled like so many other denizens of the 1960s and early ’70s, whether they actually took the drug or not. I inhaled because you couldn’t fail to inhale. LSD  its aura if not its substance  was a component of the air we breathed. This hallucinogen infused the exhalations of musicians, philosophers, advertisers and activists.

There seemed nothing “counter” about this culture; it was prevalent. At the time there seemed to be as many head shops in New York as there are Starbucks now; acid rock played in those darkened spaces to acid heads, as beams of black light caused DayGlo Op-Art images to shimmer dizzyingly. Typefaces ballooned and swooped, melting across posters and album jackets in drug-induced swoons. Lucy was in the sky with diamonds, the Byrds were eight miles high, the Magical Mystery Tour was overbooked; Carlos Castaneda played out his fantasies.

The era’s hallmark drug was championed with as much messianic fervor as the era’s countercultural politics. And I, and seemingly everyone else I knew, ingested that culture even if not the drug itself, not even realizing how strange that culture was.

It seems even stranger with the passing of time. So while the death at 102 last week of Albert Hofmann may have tempted some to resurrect tales of spiritual adventures under the influence, or to invoke the now familiar quip that if you can remember the ’60s you weren’t there, there are other flashbacks  LSD-induced or not  to consider.