HAVE A GOOD TRIP: ADVENTURES IN PSYCHEDELICS
Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET
DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE: Netflix is describing this debut film by comedy writer and producer Donick Cary as a documentary, but it seems assembled and intended more for entertainment than elucidation. Hosted by Nick Offerman, it’s basically a parade of celebrities telling of their personal experiences with LSD, mushrooms, peyote and other hallucinogenics, starting with Sting, and continuing with everyone from Sarah Silverman (who describes the foamy and bubbling hot chocolate served to her while on an acid trip as “too alive to drink”) and Deepak Chopra to Andy Richter and Lewis Black. Some of the tales they tell are accompanied by animation, as with PBS’s StoryCorps TV shows. Others come with comic re-enactments, appropriate visuals, and other psychedelic approaches. Two of the interviewees telling their histories with acid trips, Anthony Bourdain and Carrie Fisher, have since died, and some others, including Black and Offerman, look much younger, so it’s likely Have a Good Trip has a lengthy production history. The result is like a druggie version of Drunk History: It’s entertaining, but it’s almost embarrassing, and a little troubling, to admit it. And while this may be construed as a recommendation to watch this program, it is in no way an endorsement of hallucinogenics. No way. I dropped half a tab of acid once, as a teenager, as my one and only illegal drug experience, and never did or would do anything like it again. But I’ll save the details of that story, which involve a blue shag rug I feared I would drown in, in case Cary invites me to participate in a sequel.