Memorial

Listings

260 Psytrancers DEAD as Hamas attacks party in Isr...

Moment by Moment - CNN Multimedia A Statement from Tranceam and Gilles Clement of Synthetic Sadhus In this time of sadness it gives me no small joy that Gilles Clement, ...

Abbie Hoffman

November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989 Revolutionary, author, cofounder of Yippies Wikipedia He was depressed about the conservative 80s. He sadly killed himself right before the revolutionary 90s began ...

Abel Fernando Ramirez Torres

April 7, 1983 to September 10, 2011 (One day before 9/11) Abel threw a lot of trance parties with international acts in Juarez, Mexico. He dated Kati before she moved ...

Akin (Disu Akinpelumi Oshodi AKA Sonix Park)

d. Feb 19, 2024Akin was a Nigerian psytrancer in New York. He was one of the gentlest, kindest people I have ever known. Always had a smile. He was friends ...

Akshaya Kubiak Part 1: The Leadup to the Murder of...

Go to Page 2: Murder and Aftermath UPDATE June 15, 2024New series "Deadly Influence - The Social Media Murders" - Akshaya Kubiak from our scene, airs on Episode 1. Watch ...

Akshaya Kubiak Part 2: Murder and Aftermath

Continued from Part 1 It's the house to the right; that top floor is where it happened. The Murder Video of arrest from Las Vegas Review-Journal On July 16, 2020, ...

Alan Watts

6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973 Alan Watts on Wikipedia ...

Albert Hofmann

January 11, 1906 – April 29, 2008 Discoverer of LSD. Wikipedia Here he is, age 100, at a trance party in Switzerland: ...

Aldous Huxley

July 26, 1894 – November 22, 1963 author of Brave New World and The Doors of Perception."Only when the doors of perception can one see the universe for what it ...

Alex Kazam

D. Late July 2022 https://www.facebook.com/alex.kazam.7 ...

Alexander Shulgin

Alex Grey - BIO Shulgins June 17, 1925 – June 2, 2014 Russian American chemist, author, and MDMA pioneerHusband of Ann Shulgin Wikipedia I will not even attempt to summarize ...

Amelia Katherine Arroyo

March 21, 1983 - 2010 Part of the seminal first trance music wave in NYC of the late 90s-early 2000s. Amelia dated my friend British Max, and a kind heart ...

An Otherworldly Lineup

There are enough people gone to make a huge festival in the sky A reminder of who we have lost, and just how many they actually are. A serious thought ...

Andrey Korneyev

April 2, 1980 - July 29, 2020 July 31, 2020: Andrey Korneyev (pen name Andre Welsh) has passed. Tragically, both his parents passed away recently, within a week of each ...

Ann Shulgin

March 22, 1931 – July 9, 2022 Psychedelic Author; co-author of TIHKAL and PIHKAL (known affectionately as "Tickle" and "Pickle")Wife of Sasha Shulgin WikipediaNew York TimesEconomist ...

Anne Saturnia

d. December 15, 2021American Psytrance DJ This was also her channel "I've struggled to put into words this post…Once upon a time Anne Saturnia was among my closest friends in ...

Anton “onTy” Toom

August 1, 1975 - April 10, 2019 Computer Programmer, Flushing and BrooklynOrganizer of Art Thou artist group Arthou.orgLinkedInYoutube Channel From Rectified Youth Collective Facebook Group:It has come to our understanding ...

Aron Clark

d. February 2, 2021 A wonderful soul who will be missed on this earth. We enjoyed many dance floors together over the years from Goa Gil to World Bridge and ...

Ashawna Hailey

October 8, 1949 - October 14, 2011 Tech innovator. Hailey created the HSPICE program which large parts of the worldwide semiconductor industry use to simulate and design silicon chips) and ...

Asia2001/Toirés/Gilbert Thevenet/Martin Cooper

Died February 7, 2021 to Parkinson's Disease Pull out your hookah and crank it up: Asia 2001 is a Goa trance music project from France. Behind Asia 2001 was Gilbert ...

Austin Blaise DiStefano

November 28, 1972 - August 6, 2011 When I knew Blaise in the late 1990s in Manhattan, he was a handsome playboy drug dealer. We both ran in pretty fast ...

Avicii (Tim Bergling)

September 8, 1989 - April 20, 2018 Swedish Producer He had it all. Swedish good looks, fame, fortune. Reminds me all too much of friends I have had - young, ...

Avihen Livne (Cosma)

1979- February 10, 2003 Israeli Producer who died in a motorcycle accident in Goa. His music was the soundtrack to our mid-2000s bridge parties.Facebook Back to Memorial ...

Barbara Galdo

April 15, 1955 - February 20, 2016 The Fruit Lady of Philadelphia. She was amazing. Her daughter is a pagan princess.Barbara's FacebookPhotos Back to Memorial ...

Baruch Jean “BJ” Thaler

August 16, 1968 - November 7, 2024 Baruch Thaler was a beloved and dedicated Lubavitcher whose least of many accomplishments as it pertains to this website (I can totally imagine ...

Beka Stewart

d. 22/12/05- Turbo Trance Rec From Australiens site:"Beka's interest in the psychedelic trance scene developed in early '97 near Byron Bay in Australia. At the end of that year, she ...

Benjamin Llewelyn Hyder

1977 - April 2, 2003 San Francisco Goa Trance DJ Benjamin Llewelyn Hyder in passed away after a long battle with cancer. He had come to CA from England to ...

Biana Libertine Shekhets

April 27, 1990 - July 18, 2017 NYC personality, died of asthma. Biana's Facebook Because when the dust settles, only the strong ones will be remembered. - Maks Fedotov Back ...

Big Nick Robertshaw

d. Monday October 29, 2007 Beloved British - Gaian Mind San Francisco/NYC fixture. A real character, he was known to be head to toe fluorescent. "The terrible thing about dying ...

Bill Hicks

December 16, 1961 – February 26, 1994 Check out Voice of Cod's excellent Bill Hicks "It's Just a Ride" music video, top left.I always thought it was a cosmic irony ...

Bob Wallace

May 29, 1949 - September 20, 2002 DanceSafe/psychedelics benefactor, formerly of Microsoft Software pioneer. From ABC News, 2000: "In fact, most of DanceSafe’s funding comes from Internet professionals. “In the ...

Bonky – Onno Borgen

September 5, 1962 - January 4, 2003, Doof Records. Bonky died in a diving accident in Bali. Check out this amazing track! WikipediaBack to Memorial ...

Brian James Parsons

DJ Kalyx from Growroom, AKA Muskie January 22, 1974 - October 24, 2019 Amherst, Massachusetts DJ and organizer, Brian taught Gavin from Spectra how to DJ, and first brought him ...

Bruno Isidro

Sangoma Records 1984 - February 21, 2019PsynewsDiscographyBruno's Facebook Back to Memorial ...

Cary Grant

January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986 Actor whose life was saved and enriched by LSD WikipediaCary Grant: how 100 acid trips in Tinseltown 'changed my life' ...

Chad Jonosky

d. ~February 17, 2024 Chad was a legend in the psytrance scene with a diverse background. Everyone loved him. Devoted father. And from chasing solar eclipses to skydiving, his life ...

Charly Psydrack

d. Dec 29, 2021 Mexican organizer, DJ Charly was from Guadalajara, Mexico, and had been up in New Jersey and was a steady DJ and promoter for RET. Started working ...

Chay – Daya Cayung – Ricard Junjungan ...

b. 1968 - December 9, 2016. Sumatra/Batak/Indonesian ArtistDied from either fatal complications after taking an antibiotic (Ciprofloxacin) to treat a urinary tract infection, or Sporadic Fatal Insomnia see also BBC ...

Clarence Brandley

September 24, 1951 - September 2, 2018 ‘He Never Got an Apology’: Death Row Exoneree Clarence Brandley Dies at 66Clarence Brandley was a black janitor wrongfully railroaded into death row ...

Commander Tom (Thomas Weyer)

d. June 12, 2022German Trance DJ "A sad news for historical trance music lovers arrives this evening unexpectedly: the German DJ and music producer Thomas Weyer, known by his pseudonym ...

Corey Daniel Felsman

September 15, 1990 - January 4, 2023 Corey was a popular and beloved event organizer and DJ in NYC throughout the 2010s. This is his story. Update June 7, 2023: ...

Corey Marlow McWhirter

December 5, 1982 - July 7, 2023 Iowa Psytrancer Succumbed to addiction After just seven months, another Psy Corey down. Corey had been caught up in the Fractalfest bust in ...

Craig Baker (Akabak)

d. ~2017 Craig Baker lived in the Philadelphia area. From what I gather, he didn't really gel with the Philadelphia crew, because the scene was more casual and intimate, so ...

D. M. Turner (Joseph Vivian)

New - WikipediaOctober 5, 1962 - December 31, 1996 Author and Psychonaut. Writer, Essential Psychedelics Guide. "D.M. Turner (born Joseph Vivian; 5 October 1962 – 31 December 1996) was an ...

Dan Bro-Be

March 19, 1984 - March 16, 2024 Dan's Facebook Dan was from Kearny, New Jersey. Although he was way too young to witness the golden age of psytrance in the ...

Dan Carpenter

1963-2005 Author, A Psychonaut's Guide to the Invisible Landscape: The Topography of the Psychedelic Experience, a book about DXM. I had written a long-winded diatribe about this, but after a ...

Dan Novin

Born November 8, 1980, St. Petersburg, Russia. Died in Philadelphia, September 5, 2021 His favorite quotes:"I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or State, to my circle of friends or ...

Daniel Zimanyi

d. March 17, 2018 Ozora Festival Founder In Memoriam: Daniel Zimanyi – producer of O.Z.O.R.A. Festival, owner of the festival grounds O.Z.O.R.A was born under the 1999 total eclipse sun ...

David Allen Aragon (DJ Kiva)

d. January 15, 2022, Auto accidentAmerican Psytrance DJ and Organizer "Horrible news rocking the SoCal Psy family to its core. RIP David Aragon (Kiva) I always enjoyed our chats and ...

David McCole

The Leprechaun King February 15, 1958 - 2019 Dave was a generous soul who was kind and comedic with all around him. He worked in film with props, doing the ...

Dennis Tapper

Hux Flux November 18, 1974 - May 15, 2018. Dennis was instrumental in bringing a sci-fi sound into psytrance. Part of Sweden's Hux Flux, they played at Gaian Mind in ...

Dima Klimov – Asha’man Psyberia

b. 1987 - d. June 1, 2023 Russian crypto enthisiast and DJ. Obsessed with Hunter S. Thompson. Update June 12, 2024 Good day to you! I am a fellow Psytrance/EDM ...

Dimitris Pantelides/Uriel – Δημήτριος Παντελ...

d. February 2023 Greek psytrance producer, active 1998-2008Dimitris is to the left in the picture above'Dimitris aka Uriel is no longer with us. Thank you for all the great moments ...

Dock Ellis, Jr.

March 11, 1945 – December 19, 2008 American professional baseball player who pitched a no-hitter reportedly under the influence of LSD Wikipedia Back to Memorial ...

Don Barry Mason

1950-2006 Founder of the Psychedelic Shaman Institute Wikipedia Back to Memorial ...

Donna Parsons

September 27, 1996 - May 17, 2018 How's this for cool relatives - Donna Parsons, a professor of the Beatles at University of Iowa. RIP. Donna was a brilliant academic ...

Eyal Yankovich

August 15, 1971 - October 10, 2017 One of the giants in Israeli trance Managing Director of HOM-Mega Productions. His roster included Astrix, Infected Mushroom, Xerox, Cosma, Juno Rector, PsySex, ...

Felix Stöver

1972 – 2010 German Visionary Artist Felix was a Hamburg-based fluorescent painter who was recognized in the goa and trance music scene from the early 90s, painted deco-art for festivals ...

Frank Kozik Memorial and Art Gallery, from a fan o...

January 9, 1962 - May 6, 2023 Psychedelic flyer artist; Suicide.Kozik started his career in designing flyers Austin in the late 80s, and graduated to mainstream success with work such ...

Gary Toro

d. March 2020 Today while doing my monthly searches for long-lost people, music, and videos, I ran across some sad news. Gary was a popular guy in the early 2000s ...

Goa Gil: A Tribute to a Psychedelic Trance Pioneer...

1951 - October 26, 2023 Goa Pioneer Goa Gil on Wikipedia Rolling Stone India Gil and Albert Hofmann!! "October 2023 will long be remembered as one of the heaviest most ...

Has New York City lost its soul? And what is a so...

Since returning to New York City a year and a half ago, I keep having this eerie feeling that the city has, in some profound yet ineffable sense, lost its ...

How Do Psytrancers Under 60 Die? A Chart Outlinin...

This is gonna skew American which is a very small sample size and it's obviously going to be a little different for other countries. Rate of death compared to population ...

Humphry Osmond

July 1, 1917 – February 6, 2004 Doctor, psychedelic researcher, invented the word psychedelicWikipedia Return to Memorial ...

Hunter S. Thompson

July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005 - Writer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and many othersWikipedia Quotes:When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.I wouldn’t recommend ...

Igor/Irogli

d. ~2010 Irogli was a Russian youth from the Brighton area. He sold Ketamine, and was arrested. He committed suicide in jail. Back to Memorial ...

Jason Kim Woodman

d. November 23, 2013 Computer programmer. Adopted. Jason was a kind and gentle soul. He didn't know very many people when I first met him, but by the last I ...

Jeanne Louise Calment

February 21, 1875 - August 4, 1997 28 when the Wright brothers first flew, and lived to see the world wide web. Three years short of living in three centuries ...

Jeroen Van Garling (Synchro)

Born in 1964 - passed away October 1, 2024 from medical complications. I had just sent this live set to Synchro earlier this year 2024. It’s a digital copy from ...

Jerry Bousquet

February 18, 1960 - September 26, 2020 Naugatuck/Waterbury, Connecticut "I'm pushing it towards the light. The road is the destination." October 3, 2020:"Jerry Bousquet died this past weekend….His wake is ...

John Lilly + Jon Torn Interview

January 6, 1915 – September 30, 2001 Ketamine pioneer. Proof that old K heads eventually die too, it just may take a long time. Update 2023 Ketamine pioneer John Lilly ...

John M. Phelan, Jr.

November 12, 1952 - March 2020 Owner of Echo Lake "It's truly a sad day in the USA psytrance community! Our friend John Phelan has passed. He was the owner ...

John McAfee, Software Pioneer turned New Age guru ...

Ask yourself, can I live a life to the fullest like McAfee did?* *without the bath salts and murder parts Links CNBCNew York TimesThe VergeWikipediaUpdate: The Creepy Far-Right Plot to ...

John Perry Barlow

October 3, 1947 – February 7, 2018 American poet and essayist, a cattle rancher, Grateful Dead lyricist, and an anarcho-cyberlibertarian. Active in internet freedom issues in the 1990s, Wired magazine, ...

John-Emmanuel Gartmann

August 24, 1950 - May 7, 2020 Actor, Publicist, and Event Organizer, Switzerland & New York With Tsunami, pioneer of the first large-scale Goa trance events in the Western Hemisphere ...

Josef “Bansi” Quinteros from GMS

December 8, 1976 – June 19, 2018 Spanish trance keyboardistAt one point, Bansi had the whole world in his hands. He shot to the top, and stayed there.Like me, Bansi ...

Joshua Aaron Baker

July 7, 1982 - September 19, 2015Hawaii, NYC. Ex-military. Josh was a wounded warrior with PTSD who found peace with the trance community after military service but sadly succumbed to ...

Jun Sogabe – Organix/Matsuri

1968 - August 7, 2012, pancreatic cancer.Visionary Japanese artist. Designed Koxbox's The Great Unknown (above)DiscogsArticle submitted to Dream Creation in 1997 about the Issey Miyake Fashion Show in ParisJun designed ...

Katusha Mishka

September 18, 1985 - December 28, 2022 Katusha Mishka was originally from Astana, Kazakhstan. She went to F.I.T in Manhattan, and CUNY Kingsborough and ASA Institute in Brooklyn, Her passion ...

Ken Kesey

September 17, 1935 - November 10, 2001 Merry Prankster, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, documented in Tom Wolfe's Electric Koolaid Acid Test, driver of the psychedelic bus ...

Krisztina Végh

July 29, 1975- Saturday, May 11, 2002 A Hungarian beauty who, alongside Gilles Clement, was one half of Synthetic Sadhus, by far the most amazing and high budget trance spectaculars ...

Larry Hagman

September 21, 1931 – November 23, 2012 Actor who said all politicians should take LSD Wikipedia See also: Larry Hagman discusses the Starck Club in Dallas ...

Larry Harvey

January 11, 1948 – April 28, 2018 Burning Man founder dies at 70 (Above photo, my ex girlfriend Lisa gives Larry a good talking-to at the Lunatarium in Brookln around ...

Lee “Scratch” Perry

March 20, 1936 – August 29, 2021 Jamaican Dub Pioneer Way too much story to recount here. My favorite story is when he recorded at the Swiss castle of the ...

Let’s Lay Flowers

Art by Rado Javor (Slovakia) Native Americans and Celts both celebrated the falling of the leaves with honoring the dead through Day of the Dead and Halloween, respectively. Most cultures ...

Marcia Moore

May 22, 1928 – January 14, 1979 Proponent of reincarnation, astrology, and Ketamine. Her husband was a prominent anesthesiologist. Got FDA approval to do experiments. Author of Journeys into the ...

Marita Lorenz our friend Mark’s mother, Fide...

August 18, 1939 - August 31, 2019 German-born American woman who had an affair with Fidel Castro in 1959 and in January 1960 was involved in an assassination attempt by ...

Mark Harris

TONIGHT Tuesday July 13, 2021: Slacker Reunion at the Paramount, Austin This featured art at the top of this page is a play on "Bob" from the Church of the ...

Mark Johnson (Dr. Mojo)

October 30, 1968 - October 3, 2021 NYC video projectionist - Mojo Video Tech, died of COVID - Facebook Page - Website - ISF Industry Acclaim From VJ Bookling:"Doctor Mojo ...

Mayur Rajgopal

June 2, 1983 - November 14, 2015 Mayur was a Sadhu who died tragically young. It has taken me several years to write this - I was devastated by all ...

Mike “Rizzer” Donahue

~1980 - December 31, 2006 Founder, Smi2le.biz, Nootropics & health food company in Spring Lake and Weehawken, New Jersey. It has taken me years to summon the nerve to write ...

Missing White Woman Syndrome

She is Missing.jpg With all due respect toward the dead, but the last few weeks in the news left a bad taste in my mouth. The media focus is very ...

Neil Peart

September 12, 1952 - January 7 2020 Drummer, Rush Once in 1983 I found a stray textbook in the freshmen building with a long essay written in it by some ...

New Ash Armand/Akshaya Kubiak article | Refinery 2...

They Took Mushrooms Together. They Meditated Together. How Did It End In Murder? - New Article on Akshaya Kubiak by Hallie Lieberman!Excellent article! Check it out! Here is mine. I ...

New series “Deadly Influence – The Soc...

See trailer above.Original articleTalos Films put him in Episode 1. It's magnificently done. It focuses more on what he became as Ash Armand in Vegas than where he came from ...

Nick Sand

May 10, 1952 - April 24, 2017 Most famous for the Orange Sunshine brand of LSD distributed by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Nick Sand was responsible for the manufacture ...

Niki Mighty – Vladimir Lukyanchuk

February 26, 1981 - August 1, 2017 Quinn Records Vladimir Lukyanchuk: One year ago, our beloved son Nikita passed away. It was happened in the middle of the job, in ...

Nina Graboi

December 8, 1918 - December 13, 1999 "Dr. Ruth" of PsychedelicsWikipedia Back to Memorial ...

Ollie Wisdom

March 1958 - August 2021 Australian music producer, DJ, and founder of Spacetribe. Rumor has it he got COVID while DJing in England, but it was reportedly cancer that got ...

Omar

"Omar was the one of the sweetest and gentle human beings I have ever met. Yes we all danced our asses off with Omar!" - Narrotam"Omar was the best! So ...

On Michael Alig

Michael Alig just died of a heroin overdose.I have zero room to talk. In 1993 I led a film crew from the syndicated TV tabloid, American Journal, into Club USA ...

Oscar Janiger

February 8, 1918 – August 14, 2001 Experimental psychiatrist and psychedelic researcher. Gave LSD to many Hollywood stars such as Cary Grant. Wikipedia Return to Memorial ...

Owsley Stanley III

January 19, 1935 – March 12, 2011 was an American audio engineer and clandestine chemist. He was a key figure in the San Francisco Bay Area hippie movement during the ...

Patrick McAndrew

March 12, 1980 - August 26, 2021 11:40 a.m.AKA Mindkiller. Hacker, music enthusiast "Had dreams about pat all morning. We were at the beach on a different planet, not together ...

Paul Hrisko

April 17, 1967 - January 29, 2012 Network Engineer "Paul Hrisko was born in Ossining, New York in 1967. He died in the Philippines in 2012. Between these two dates ...

Paul Krassner: Merry Prankster & Yippie

April 9, 1932 - July 21, 2019 Yippie and Merry Prankster WikipediaNew York Times Obituary Back to Memorial ...

Polyphonia

d. July 18, 2010 Greek psytrance producer.Polyphonia is Romolo Cheri, a psy-trance DJ and producer from Thessaloniki, Greece. Romolo started producing electronic music in 2003 and has been listening to ...

PSA: Fentanyl now has a Vaccine

ArticleFentanyl isn't going anywhere. It's too cheap to make. Everyone who does white powder should get this when it's available, presumably free. But a lot of them won't. Even heavy ...

Ram Dass – Richard Alpert

April 6, 1931 – December 22, 2019, also known as Baba Ram Dass, was an American spiritual teacher, academic and clinical psychologist, and author of many books, including the seminal ...

Rebecca Alice D. Felsman

d. September 8, 2015 Beloved organizer of the Futterwacken events. See also Corey Felsman's memorialfor a more full story (when it publishes).Rebecca's Facebook Rebecca's GoFundMe with Charly Psydrak (also RIP) ...

Rediscover the Spirit of the Trance Scene: Finding...

All the people who have died in the trance scene... all those missing decades of starting families, growing old, reminiscing about the good old days, all those tears shed by ...

RIP Eddie Van Halen and Viktor Zolotorenko

RIP Eddie Van Halen... and also Viktor Zolotorenko "Zolod" of Parasense... made this 20 yrs ago and they're both gone now. Handel's Messiah Eruption by Van Halen Mobile Love by ...

Robert Concina (Robert Miles)

November 3, 1969 – May 9, 2017 Pancreatic Cancer Wikipedia Back to Memorial ...

Robin Williams

July 21, 1951 - August 11, 2014 He said hello to Cap'n Crunch once at a party. Wikipedia This was in the Dead Poet Society OST, right before the kid ...

Ronen Dahan (DJ Perplex)

1974 - June 23, 2019 Israeli DJ Contrary to Israeli media, shot while DJing in Mexico after sleeping with (let's just say) some drug lord's girlfriend https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-dj-said-killed-in-shooting-at-mexico-music-festival/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/suspect-arrested-in-murder-of-israeli-dj-during-show-in-mexico/ Facebook 2009 ...

Sangam Pande

September 14, 1963 - June 16, 2010 I was good friends with Sangam since the early to mid 90s, when he worked at Morgan Stanley where he developed financial software ...

Sasha Chislenko

December 2, 1959 - May 8, 2000 Academic Cyberpunk, Transhumanist at MIT, active raver and techno enthusiast. Died from GHB overdose, had called friends desperately asking for help, to no ...

Saying Goodbye to the Dead

A new collage, of our lost ones, with our beautiful, Amelia included. Thank you Jason for helping me make this complete. And to Colleen for providing a more glowing picture ...

Sergei Zaloukaev

Avon, North Carolina d. September 3, 2001 Sergei was a psytrancer was well known within the New York Russian community including Alphatrance. He died in a shark attack in Avon, ...

Simon Carman

d. 1998. Co-founder of Phantasm Records, aka Sundog and also an original member of Mindfield. Died of Leukemia. Discogs Back to Memorial ...

Stefan Hakakian

April 26, 1978 - October 25, 2019 Stefan's Facebook DeKompression was his music and art Facebook page. This was his last posted music: And his last posted quote, which is ...

Steve Jobs

February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011Technology PioneerWikipedia"By his senior year of high school, Jobs began using LSD. He later recalled that on one occasion he consumed it in a ...

Steve Lavell aka Steve Psyko

Australian producer active in the first wave of goa trance. "Steve Psyko, who currently spends six months of each year recording in Sweden, recalls (in Cole 1996b, p. 7) attending ...

Steve-O – David Wyeth

1965 - November 14, 2019 American Artist Steve's Photo GalleryMemorial GoFundMe To know Steve O was to love Steve O. He was a beloved son, a reliable brother and for ...

Suddenly Last Summer: If you snort white powder, e...

On the left, a lethal dose of heroin; on the right, a lethal dose of fentanyl. 5 milligrams. It is also FAR cheaper than heroin or any other white powder ...

Terence McKenna

November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000 Psychedelic visionary, speaker, and author. He once spoke in New York and he was bemused when I asked the question "What will happen ...

Their spirits endure

From some of my acquaintances from the old trance scene, to my slowly mentally degrading father: the hardest, coldest reality is when I stop being angry at the random negativity ...

Timothy Leary

Somehow, Midsommar-y "Arrival" by Abba is appropriate here October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996 LSD Visionary. I met him in Austin in 1988 and he was very gracious, commenting ...

Tony Citro (DJ Tony Unorthodox) in jail for killin...

Update December 15, 2022: Tony sentenced By request of the victim's family, this post has been reduced to a few links and some photos.Morristown Daily RecordNJ1015.comThis GoFundMe is worthy:Help the ...

Trevor Moore

April 4, 1980 – August 7, 2021 Comedian; psychedelic and drug proponent - yet he died of blunt force trauma to head after falling off his balcony while intoxicated from ...

Upload: Matrix 4 Resurrected but with a Better Son...

Watch the original first: And now, chemically enhanced, dedicated to Dan Novin: An Oral History of “We Built This City,” the Worst Song of All Time (GQ) "It has been ...

Vangelis (Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou)

March 29, 1943 - May 17, 2022 Vangelis, famed film composer and synth pioneer, dead at 79 Wikipedia There is only one hope for humanity - the synthesizer ...

Viktor Zolotorenko “Zolod” (Parasense)

March 11, 1981 - January 4, 2006 Zolod was a psytrance musical innovator who played under the bridge in NYC. One half of Parasense, my all-time favorite band in the ...

Vladimir Voevodsky

June 4, 1966 - September 30, 2017 Gifted award-winning mathematician, renowned for founding entirely new fields of mathematics and creating groundbreaking new tools for computers to confirm the accuracy of ...

Why Disclosing Cause of Death in Memorials Matters...

As I have written many memorials by now, with presumably, many more to come, and I have wasted too much time dealing with a couple hysterical individuals who were angry ...

William “Bill” Putt

From the artists lofts in Jersey City to a nootropics startup in south Brooklyn, two threads converge.The owner of the smart drug company mentioned in this story, Mike Donahue's obituary ...

Wilson “Butch” Leary

May 3, 1966 - September 15, 2006 - Wilson was a great friend and good person. Although he was the infamous Timothy Leary's nephew, he carved out his own legacy ...

Zoe7

April 5, 1966 - July 15, 2013 Ecuadorean author, neuronaut, mind machine enthusiast Along with D.M. Turner, Zoe7 was a well-known figure in the early Internet psychedelic world. His experiments ...

AI-driven facial animations

All Memorial Photos

How Do We Die?

If a cause of death is not included for someone local to the scene, you can be sure that they died ignominously by overdose or suicide.

Commentary

After writing so many obituaries I’m started to live in a Quantum state of seeing people as alive and dead at the same time. And not just “either–or” but also seeing the gradients between, such as them is a baby them as a toddler them as a youth but also them as pushing 90. An added benefit is increased empathy, appreciating innocence, and tolerance for them being stupid.  Not everyone gets the Kurt Vonnegut treatment and not right away but experience has shown me that we are not frozen in time, but all transitory icicles in the Sun.

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!’
–Hunter S. Thompson
Sounds fun. Go out with a bang!
But this is small consolation to those left behind, who have to pick up the pieces and try to make sense of a universe that really does not care.
It really doesn’t.
You can build up all these happy hopes of just how wonderful everything is going to be when you die, playing a harp in heaven, being reincarnated as a Buddha, but no. You’re gone.
Dust.
The only thing that remains is your friends and family.
It is in them that the sum of your entire life, all your hopes and dreams, lives on.
Consider them, and thank them on your way out.
Better yet, thank them well before.

Whenever I would go back to my family’s ancestral home town in Iowa, my grandmother would always be sitting around her circle of elderly friends. She would always start the conversation with, in a very square Midwestern accent as flat as the cornfields stretching off into endless prairie and clouds,
“So. Who’s died?”
I remember cringing at that, with my impatient, pretentious, disapproving, twentysomething ears. How morbid and depressing, I thought.
I don’t cringe anymore.
If you look and see people here, and feel remorse for not doing more, try channeling that into being more thoughtful and considerate to those still alive, and above all, appreciating every miraculous day we have on this planet.
Be kind every day.
And, if you can, avoid things that kill you.

Every friend that passes, my little speech here gets slightly harsher and angrier.
Depending on the circumstances, after a mourning period has passed, I will usually include the actual cause of death, if known, as I see no point in the long run of hiding the truth of what happened.
Most people in the trance scene do not use drugs that end life quickly, such as alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines of all types, and/or opiates of all types.
With the exception of alcohol, which is, of course, ubiquitous everywhere, all of these narcotics are greatly frowned upon in the scene, as they should be. They are killers. They take our friends away forever.
Sadly, as in the general population, if they die young, with rare exceptions, it is almost always drugs or suicide. Thus, most of these young people above stepped outside the scene to die.
But they may have first learned to do drugs excessively in the trance scene, with so many opportunities and compatriots. They might learn to press that button in their brains to feel good, and flew too close to the sun, like Icarus:

This must never be downplayed nor forgotten. But everyone is ultimately responsible for their own destiny.
We fly so close to the sun in life and sometimes we get burned.
… but it was, and is, all still worth it.