[HN Gopher] Owsley Stanley: The King of LSD (2011)
___________________________________________________________________
Owsley Stanley: The King of LSD (2011)
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 46 points
Date : 2022-08-30 15:20 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rollingstone.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rollingstone.com)
| ipnon wrote:
| If you find clandestine chemistry interesting, then listen to
| Hamilton Morris' podcast. He has interviewed many clandestine
| chemists, mostly retired. They're a class of prohibited
| scientists, hellbent on advancing psycho-chemical knowledge
| against all the odds.
|
| A sample of recent episodes: "Interview with a clandestine MDA
| enantiopurifier" "The psychedelic supply chain" "The True Story
| of the Penis Envy Mushroom"
|
| Stranger stories are hard to find.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| "The Hamilton Morris Podcast" (hamiltonmorris.buzzsprout.com)
| for those intrigued by the above comment like myself.
| [deleted]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Pretty weak on background. The introduction of LSD to America was
| mostly thanks to the CIA's search for a 'truth serum' which
| involved farming out their collection of powerful hallucinogens
| and other substances to a variety of institutions, from prisons
| to army bases to prostitution brothels to universities (along
| with research into things like sleep deprivation, electroshock,
| sensory isolation, etc.). While it's unlikely the CIA wanted to
| help kickstart a socially disruptive psychedelic movement (which
| was notably anti-authoritarian in nature), that was the
| consequence. The closest the article comes to mentioning this is:
|
| > "In Berkeley, as well as across the bay in Palo Alto, young
| people seeking a new way to live had begun using LSD to break
| down conventional social barriers. Until then, the drug had been
| available in America only to those conducting serious medical
| research. In 1959, the poet Allen Ginsberg took LSD for the first
| time, at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto. A year
| later, the novelist Ken Kesey was given acid at the Veterans
| Hospital in Menlo Park as part of a federally funded program in
| which volunteers were paid twenty dollars a session to ingest
| hallucinogens."
|
| As far as the psychedelic movement in general, LSD was only one
| of several substances, such as mescaline and psilocybin, that
| came to popular attention via a variety of routes, such as Aldous
| Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" (1954), and R Gordon Wasson's
| 1950s-era research into traditional psychedelic mushroom use in
| Mexico (a research program also secretly funded by the CIA's MK-
| ULTRA program).
|
| Apparently the members of the CIA's hallucinogen program used to
| dose each other all the time in the 1950s, until they found it
| would cause unpredictable behavior in some people - like a sudden
| attack of psychedelic-inspired moral conscience, see the Frank
| Olson incident for example. Sort of a 'while tripping my brains
| out I suddenly realized that manufacturing biological weapons was
| wrong!' type of story:
|
| https://wariscrime.com/new/scientist-frank-olson-killed-by-t...
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| > R Gordon Wasson's 1950s-era research into traditional
| psychedelic mushroom use in Mexico (a research program also
| secretly funded by the CIA's MK-ULTRA program).
|
| I don't think Wasson had anything to do with MKUltra. Any
| source?
| dwater wrote:
| "Wasson's 1956 expedition was funded by the CIA's MK-Ultra
| subproject 58, as was revealed by documents obtained by John
| Marks under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents
| state that Wasson was an 'unwitting' participant in the
| project."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Gordon_Wasson
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Thanks for posting, I appreciate it. However... Makes no
| sense to me. I just don't understand how they would fund
| his trip--let alone secretly. Also, he discovered magic
| mushrooms the first time-- none of the ethnobotanists had
| yet. How did they know? I will remain skeptical till I get
| to primary sources.
| Sin2x wrote:
| See here: http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/mk
| ultra/mkultra... (58-2)
|
| This document states, however, that Wasson had three
| expeditions prior to CIA involvement.
| lioeters wrote:
| Apparently this topic is a deep rabbit hole. Here are
| some very questionable "fringe" theories.
|
| http://www.gordonwasson.com/
|
| https://logosmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject
|
| https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6FBA86B0-0C57-9FCA-5
| CF9...
| dwater wrote:
| Let's not forget perhaps their most famous alumnus, Ted
| Kaczynski aka the Unabomber [1]. It's not clear whether or not
| they dosed him with psychedelics, but the records of the
| research done to him were sealed [2], so we only know for sure
| that they inflicted significant psychological trauma on him.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard...
|
| [2] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2000/7/14/murray-
| center-s...
| keepquestioning wrote:
| In my youth, I used to think psychonauts were cool. Now I
| realized it's a bunch of pseudoscience that puts the brain and
| sanity, our most precious resource, at risk.
|
| My advice to young people is: Do not screw around with this
| bullshit. Eat well, sleep and try to accomplish things without
| mind altering chemicals. Old age will thank you for it.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Have you had negative or unimpactful experiences with
| psychedelics? -- I rarely if ever hear that when people think
| back to their experiences.
| smm11 wrote:
| College girlfriend of mine was way into LSD and magic
| mushrooms. Twenty-plus years on I ran into her, and to
| describe her as paranoid does not even begin to touch it.
|
| I mentioned something I remembered, and suddenly I was The
| Man, who was I working for, what was I trying to learn?
|
| Maybe not related at all, and I'm just one person, but just
| night and day difference. I changed my email address and
| phone number. Had to.
| mikrl wrote:
| I think Owsley was involved with the Grateful Dead's wall of
| sound (not to be confused with Spector) too.
|
| If you look into the technical details, it's was quite a clever
| hack. I studied physics and don't think I could have come up with
| that!
| quercusa wrote:
| Which part - the double microphones?
| mikrl wrote:
| Yep, it's so simple but still crazy IMO but maybe it's just
| because I'm not a sound engineer.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/wnnayb/the-wall-of-sound
| bmismyname wrote:
| 2 books I recommend for anyone interested in the history of this
| stuff are "Acid Dreams" and "How to Change Your Mind". The latter
| is a bit more pop-sciency, and the former is probably more
| factually accurate (though who can say, it's a lot of he-said-
| she-said). For a fun read on the topic, "The Doors of Perception"
| is a classic.
| realce wrote:
| Acid Dreams is great
| driggs wrote:
| Paywall-bypassing archive: https://archive.ph/B0R2k
| michaelwww wrote:
| "The Sunshine Makers" (2015) is good. It's the story of Nicholas
| Sand and Tim Scully, who trained under Owsley Stanley and made a
| lot of "Orange Sunshine" in the Bay Area. They were funded by the
| same wealthy man who sponsored Timothy Leary at Millbrook.
|
| _Tim Scully first met William "Billy" Mellon Hitchcock, grandson
| of William Larimer Mellon and great-great-grandson of Thomas
| Mellon, through Owsley in April 1967. They became friends and
| Billy loaned Scully $12,000 for the second Denver lab in 1968.
| The product from the lab was distributed by The Brotherhood of
| Eternal Love; Scully was connected with the Brotherhood via Billy
| Hitchcock._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Scully
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sunshine_Makers_(2015_film...
|
| The Brotherhood of Eternal Love story was interesting, a violent
| motorcycle gang who dropped acid and decided to become gangsters
| of love and LSD distributers.
| gavinray wrote:
| If you find psychedelics interesting, obligatory recommendation
| to read PiHKaL and TiHKaL:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PiHKAL
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiHKAL
|
| Rest in Peace, Sasha.
| standardly wrote:
| One of my favorites was his account of the chemical DIPT, which
| produces only auditory hallucinations. He wasn't able to listen
| to his favorite music, everything was out of tune. Wild
| feet wrote:
| DiPT is a strange and fascinating one, I hope we can learn
| more about the mechanism of the auditory hallucinations in
| the near future
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-01 23:01 UTC)