Surely being the target of a 130-person Disneyland Paris manhunt is enough to expand one’s consciousness? Hopefully, a Swiss man who fell in one of the amusement park’s lakes on Friday night, shortly after ingesting LSD with his girlfriend, thinks so.
Pirate’s Beach in Adventureland was the site of the debacle, which began when a 32-year-old did not come back to the surface when his partner saw him fall into the water feature, which also houses Captain Hook’s ship and Peter Pan landmark Skull Rock. The girlfriend, understandably, freaked all the way out and alerted the authorities that the happiest place on earth was no longer feeling that way for her, having potentially witnessed her boyfriend’s death by hallucinogen-induced drowning.
A large search ensued for the poor, tripping soul, with 30 firefighters, 10 divers, 10 policemen, 80 park employees, and a police helicopter with a thermal-imaging camera enlisted to track the guy down. Disneyland Paris, you see, was also disinterested in being the site of a hallucinogen-induced drowning.
Happily, no one had perished, and the tripping man was found relatively quickly if not completely safe and sound. He was picked up by a driver, who found him completely naked and walking down the side of the road a mile away from Disneyland Paris at around 1 a.m. on Saturday.
“He had scratches on his legs and arms,” the driver told French newspaper Le Parisien. “He did not remember anything.” The driver kindly gave the nude man a ride back to the amusement park where his not-so-great trip had began.
Any Consequences for Tripping at the Happiest Place on Earth?
Will the man go to Disneyland Jail? Le Parisien says that he and his girlfriend were detained and subsequently released by the actual police. In France, drug policy dictates that people can technically be sentenced to up to a year of jail time, but also can be released with a caution and the directive to attend a drug awareness course.
Disney has been quite clear that they are not open to certain drugs being part of people’s theme park experience. In 2017, it announced a complete ban on all cannabis products, even after Florida instituted a medical marijuana program. Earlier this year, a 69-year-old woman was locked up for 12 hours when Disneyland security guards found that she was carrying a bottle of CBD oil.
How to avoid falling into a similar state as the hapless, near-drowned and naked Disneyland-goer? You may wish to consult Sophie Saint Thomas’ recent guide to taking LSD, which counsels one to “cultivate a space in which you feel happy and safe.” But it also—and this is key if you feel you’re prone to crowd-induced panic attacks—advises “starting slow” with the setting. That may not indicate tripping at one of the world’s best loved, most expensive, and least-friendly-to-drug-use places on earth.
