Owsley Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s icon of acid escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget. He left searing flashbacks in his wake. (But only of the healthiest kind.)
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold standard against which all other acid was measured. One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun "Owsley" as "an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD."
The King of Acid counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
About a year ago, I posted my obit on Digital Journal. The last time I checked, it was still there and with a bit more art and a linked YouTube video. Follow the DJ link and see if the obit is still online. Worried that at some point it might be taken down, I've reclaimed most of my little piece and reposted it below.
Cheers.
Rockinon!
Oh, two more things. I found a great piece on Owsley in Rolling Stone. Or go here, http://concen.org/forum/thread-47267.html, and do a page search for Owsley Stanley. You will find a picture of Owsley, possibly in his later years.
Obit
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf
1"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for. What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote: "The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die." ______________________________________________________________ Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more folk through his influence on music than through his production of illicit acid. In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead. According to The New York Times, at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer, pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog. It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible. Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others. Music history from the '60s era and the psychedelic sound owe much to the genius of Augustus Owsley Stanley III.
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for. What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote: "The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die." ______________________________________________________________ Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more folk through his influence on music than through his production of illicit acid. In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead. According to The New York Times, at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer, pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog. It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible. Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for. What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote: "The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die." ______________________________________________________________ Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more folk through his influence on music than through his production of illicit acid. In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead. According to The New York Times, at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer, pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog. It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible. Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for. What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote: "The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die." ______________________________________________________________ Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more folk through his influence on music than through his production of illicit acid. In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead. According to The New York Times, at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer, pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog. It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible. Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for. What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote: "The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die." ______________________________________________________________ Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more folk through his influence on music than through his production of illicit acid. In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead. According to The New York Times, at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer, pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog. It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible. Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I dropped my friends off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles, who popped the school pusher's entire acid inventory. He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed from school by ambulance. "He'll be just fine," everyone said with quiet confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid." Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
His friends were right not voicing concern. If it actually was Owsley acid dropped by the freaky art student, it was pure and unadulterated LSD. It was the good stuff, the real deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
 | |
| Owsley arraigned for making 1.25 million plus hits of acid. |
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a little more than a dozen hours, he came down. He was tuckered but no worse for wear. No one was surprised except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near drug death experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a frat boy on returning to school.
The Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs confirmed that the faith acid takers had in the safety of LSD was not misguided. The report said this on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been recorded."
Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise. Because of all the scare stories associated with acid, it is only recently that it has become possible for medical researchers to renew their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and not just as treatment for closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for. What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the one making the laws are different."
Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote: "The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die."
(The image of Owsley is from the San Francisco Chronicle and was posted on Wikipedia. I thank them for the image as Wikipedia claimed: "it is believed that the use of this work (is acceptable) to illustrate the subject in question."
_____________________________________________
Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more folk through his influence on music than through his production of illicit acid.
In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead.
According to The New York Times, at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer, pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for pioneering the practice of taping their shows — a practice that has preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog.
It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible.
Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
Music history from the '60s era and the psychedelic sound owe much to the genius of Augustus Owsley Stanley III.
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for. What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote: "The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die." ______________________________________________________________ Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more folk through his influence on music than through his production of illicit acid. In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead. According to The New York Times, at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer, pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog. It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible. Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others. Music history from the '60s era and the psychedelic sound owe much to the genius of Augustus Owsley Stanley III.
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for. What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote: "The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die." ______________________________________________________________ Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more folk through his influence on music than through his production of illicit acid. In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead. According to The New York Times, at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer, pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog. It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible. Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others. Music history from the '60s era and the psychedelic sound owe much to the genius of Augustus Owsley Stanley III.
Owsley Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago
the '60s' icon of acid escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he
could not escape his past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a
hard man to forget. He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for. What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote: "The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die." ______________________________________________________________ Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more folk through his influence on music than through his production of illicit acid. In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead. According to The New York Times, at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer, pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog. It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible. Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others. Music history from the '60s era and the psychedelic sound owe much to the genius of Augustus Owsley Stanley III.
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