RTimScully

I was delighted to see the research done with x-ray crystallography that explains the duration of LSD trips. I certainly believed that hyper empathy and ego destruction of acid could bring people together; that's what led me to want to make LSD and give it away. But I don't know whether micro dosing has those effects. Back in my day we took relatively large doses compared to what's usual now.

Realistically I think the path forward is going to involve medical research first. I hope that medical research can include applications such as death and dying. I also hope that if the many possible medical uses of psychedelics are eventually accepted that then some progress can be made on what healthy people can do with psychedelics for self-improvement or exploration.

I don't think that everyone is a candidate for taking LSD. I don't think it's a good idea for young people to take LSD before their personalities are fully formed. I think people with mental health issues should only consider taking psychedelics under appropriately skilled medical supervision.

I believe that the broader culture's beliefs about psychedelics have as much influence as the individuals personal mental set and the physical setting and I think that our culture's beliefs are in many cases wrong. It appears to me that psychedelics have been most successful in societies where there are belief systems that support appropriate use of them and rituals that help reinforce those beliefs.

The Orange Sunshine we delivered was LSD 25. ALD 52 was an ill-advised desperate defense strategy that failed miserably. I recommend that anyone who is guilty should stay off the witness stand; I wish I had followed that advice.

The story of Orange Sunshine is complicated by the fact that The Brotherhood distributed LSD from more than one manufacturer as Orange Sunshine. Nick and I made the original Orange Sunshine in Windsor. That was the last lab I worked in making LSD. Ron Stark managed several LSD labs in Europe and most of his output was tableted and sold as Orange Sunshine. At least some of the LSD that his labs made was not pure.

I believe what it would be very difficult to design a good experiment to compare the influence that different batches of LSD have on the quality of trip that people have since there are so many other factors that also influence the trip. At the 1966 Point Richmond lab Owsley, Don Douglas, Melissa and I divided a 10 g batch of pure crystalline LSD into 5 equal piles. These were dyed different colors and buffed (diluted) with lactose and calcium phosphate to make powder suitable for tablet triturates. The five different colors of tablets that result were identical except for color. But soon after they hit the street, stories were flying around the San Francisco drug scene: one color was said to be very laid-back, another was rumored to have speed in it, and one was said to be far more spiritual than another.

Yes, with hindsight 300ug was more than necessary. The high dose led to many emergency room admissions because people got frightened.

Back when I first took LSD I believed that making it widely available would produce many positive social changes. With 2020 hindsight it appears to me that the positive social effects weren't as strong as I had hoped they would be and there appear to have been some negative social side effects. I say appears because I believe it's very difficult to prove a cause and effect relationship. So you'll have to take what I'm writing here as being my personal opinions and speculations.

One of the apparent side effects that makes me uncomfortable is the all too common incidence of magical thinking and rejection of logic and science. Some people who've taken a lot of psychedelics tend to all too easily believe in conspiracy theories and to reject mainstream science. Thus I know too many people who believe in chemtrails, 9/11 as a conspiracy, are anti-vaccination, anti-fluoridation, etc.

Being able to think outside the box is very useful but it's also extremely useful to be able to think inside the box using logic and science. Being stuck in either state is not a good thing. Mental flexibility should be a goal.

It's very difficult to separate the effects of spreading LSD to the 4 winds from the sexual revolution which was happening at the same time. So it's hard to know whether the weakening of the nuclear family that took place subsequent to widespread LSD use is in any way related to it.

One of the pitfalls the Haight-Ashbury scene fell into was the all too widespread use of bad drugs such as cocaine, amphetamines, and opiates. Too many people decided that if LSD was okay or if smoking pot was okay all the other drugs must be okay too. That's a very dangerous fallacy.