A covert word for LSD. The word's origins are believed to be from the San Francisco Bay Area,
ca: 1972. Gumboplex is a combination of
two root-word forms. 1) Gumbo is a soup or stew, or alternately a very
slick mud. This word invokes the soupy (or alternately slippery) nature of perceptions under the drug’s psychotropic influence. 2) Plex, the second part of this compound word derives from perplexed. This part also relies on its similarity to the word
flex, as in flexible. The word play on perplexed and flexible underscores the highly subjective and variable nature of emotions and perceptions attendant to the LSD experience. Gumboplex is a noun that can be “verbed”.
I seem to remember that he'd had some gumboplex and showed up at that concert with big black
shiny pupils.
I remember this
time when we were completely gumboplexed at the
beach and spent hours looking at starfish in the tidepools.