mr peabody
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2016
- Messages
- 5,714
1/30/2017
Q: What are your thoughts on the new research being done on the binding and behavior of LSD in the brain with the serotonin receptor? Also do you feel the hyper empathy and ego destruction of acid could bring people together through microdosing and/or recreational doses?
Scully: 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 could bring people together; that's what led me to want to make LSD and give it away. 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.
Q: I was wondering how your first experience with LSD went? What situation were you in? What made you want to try it?
Scully: I took LSD for the first time in my living room with a close friend, Don Douglas, who was studying oriental philosophy. We sat in front of the fireplace in a quiet setting. If you see the movie you'll get a pretty good idea of what the setting was like. My friend Don Douglas convinced me to take LSD by turning me onto Aldous Huxley's writings, particularly Heaven and Hell, Doors of Perception, and Island.
Q: What are your thoughts on Silicon Valley using micro-dosing as a job enhancer? The research for this is minimal, do you think micro-dosing could help workers increase productivity?
Scully: I'm sorry but I don't have any first-hand experience with micro dosing; the closest experience I have is from working in a lab where I was repeatedly exposed to a lot of LSD and built up a tolerance. I believe that the state that I was in at that point might be somewhat similar to the result of micro dosing. In any case I'm skeptical that Silicon Valley companies would openly advocate micro dosing while it's illegal. And they might be happier if their employees are sober during working hours so they can focus on the job at hand. But I've been retired from there for more than 10 years so my beliefs might be out of date. I used to think that the best use of psychedelics drugs was as a rare and unusual experience. If micro dosing ever becomes legal during my remaining lifetime, I'll give it a whirl and then maybe I'll be able to have an informed opinion.
Q: I spent a month trying to figure out this algorithm. All it took to finally get it was a small dose of a psychedelic and I was able to comprehend just exactly how to do it. Psychedelics in small doses not only help me to comprehend things, they make otherwise nasty jobs fun to do.
Scully: I believe that. But I'd still be more inclined toward doing it outside of office hours.
Q: What do you think the larger social implications would be of cultural normalization of psychedelics? Would it create a more creative, open, and empathic society or are people who believe this already predisposed to be open and empathetic people? What would you suggest to people who have tried LSD or might try it in the future to get the most therapy and possibly live changing experiences possible?
Scully: 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.
Q: How much LSD were you making at a time at the peak of your operation? How many other large-scale producers were working at the time, and did you know each other, discuss the craft, stuff like that? How do you think your prison sentence was so small compared to William Leonard Pickard's?
Scully: I don't think that I ever produced a single batch larger than 40 or 50 g. I didn't know all of the other large-scale producers who are in operation during the years when I was making LSD. I only found out about them later when I started researching the history of underground LSD manufacturing. Nick Sand and Owsley Stanley and I were all in communication.
My prison sentence was relatively modest compared to Len Picard's for a number of reasons. Penalties have steadily escalated, and under the current sentencing system repeat offenders get longer sentences. I got 5 felony convictions all at once which that stacked consecutively to create a 20 year sentence which fortunately was eventually reduced to 10 under the old rule 35 which allowed sentences to be reduced for community service other than snitching. I had a regular adult (a.k.a. old law) sentence that made me eligible for parole in one third of the sentence. The legal system has been drastically changed since I was prosecuted. Now it's very easy to get a life sentence.
Q: Were you ever interested in synthesis of other psychedelics, like DOM, DMT, psilocin or even some more exotic ones like mescalin derivatives? Did you know about Alexander Shulgin already at the time of producing orange sunshine?
Scully: I never met Sasha Shulgin but Bear knew him in 1967. For a while in 1967 Bear was very enthusiastic about the mescaline analogues. After Don and I set up the first Denver lab Bear asked us to try what later came to be called STP and then told us that he thought we should try making some because he didn't think the time was right for processing the rest of his lysergic acid. He gave me a 3 x 5 note card with 4 lines of text on it sketching a process for making STP. Don and I weren't very enthusiastic but on the other hand Bear had all the lysergic acid (raw material for making LSD). So we went back to Denver and I figured out how to make STP eventually. Neither Don or I believed that it was a very good psychedelic at any dose although it was certainly better at low doses than high ones. The first dose Bear gave us was 30 mg which was clearly too much.
Thankfully Bear did eventually bring the lysergic acid and we finished processing it all into LSD in the first Denver lab. He distributed a little bit of STP. And he asked me to show Nick Sand how to make it after Nick was busted in Colorado on his way moving from New York to California. That led to Nick setting up D&H Custom Research in San Francisco which you saw in the film and where he made large quantities of STP. That lab financed the Windsor lab where we made Orange Sunshine. Bear eventually became disillusioned with mescaline analogues and toward the end of his life believed that all of them were not good drugs. Both Don and I regret our involvement of STP. I think we both agree that LSD is a far superior psychedelic.
Q: What are some of your favorite books?
Scully: I read a lot of fiction for relaxation and I was raised on Robert Heinlein's books; I like all of his books. Nevil Shute is another of my favorite authors. Theodore Sturgeon's novel More Than Human. I like Zena Henderson's stories. My favorite novel about the 60s psychedelic scene is a 3-volume epic by Pamela Johnson - A Nation of Mystics.
Also check out "Round the Bend"; Wilmar H. Shiras - "Children of the Atom"; Frank Herbert - "The Santroga Barrier"; Eric Frank Russell - "Wasp" & "And Then There Were None"; Chester Anderson - "The Butterfly Kid"; John Brunner - "Dreaming Earth"; Aldous Huxley – "Island"; nonfiction Steve Silberman – "Neurotribes"; Ram Dass - "Be Here Now", and Eckhart Tolle - "The Power of Now."
Q: You hear a lot of propaganda about LSD but you also hear from past users who did a lot of LSD and now struggle to think clearly and rationally and refer to themselves as acid casualties. Do you believe that LSD can have such a negative effect (apart from causing psychotic breaks in the already mentally ill)?
Scully: Many people who've taken LSD have contacted me. The vast majority of them had positive experiences but there certainly have been people who had difficulties. Some of the people who had a rough time with LSD have told me that they spent years in therapy afterward to deal with the consequences. I don't know enough about any of those people's individual circumstances to be able to tell you if they had mental health issues before they took LSD. But I do believe that it's possible for a small number of people to have negative consequences from taking LSD without having a psychotic break.
Q: I've read books on the acid movement such as the Electric Koolaid Acid Test. These institutions resembled cults almost, even though they were pretty harmless. How did it feel to be part of such a seemingly important and strange movement? Did you see it as a protest of the social system, if so did you see yourself as a ring leader in a way with a political desire to upend it?
Scully: My friend Don and I were uncomfortable with some aspects of the acid test particularly the fact that they dosed unwitting people. I was there because there was no way that Owsley was going to let me become his apprentice to work in a lab unless he came to trust me. So I did electronics work for the Grateful Dead and traveled with them and the acid test for a while. I thought of it as an extended job interview for the job I really wanted as his apprentice in the lab.
I didn't think of making LSD as being primarily political. It's true that we believed that most people who took LSD became relatively distrustful of politicians and large organizations such as corporations. But the main thing I was hoping was that people would feel more empathy for each other and for the natural world.
Q: After you got caught and stopped taking/making LSD and hanging around like minded people how did your perspective shift? Would you do it all again?
Scully: I'll try to answer your 2nd question first. I don't think I'd choose to scatter LSD to the 4 winds again. Although most people had good experiences, many used psychedelics in what I think of as relatively frivolous ways. There are enough negative experiences and people who were injured one way or another to leave me with regrets. If any positive social changes can be attributed to the work I did they weren't nearly as strong as I hoped they'd be and if you can attribute positive social effects then we also have to take the blame for some of the negative social changes that have happened. I wonder if people like Huxley and Al Hubbard had the right idea when they thought that it was better to turn society on from the top down instead of from the bottom up.
Making LSD is rather addictive because you get a lot of positive feedback in terms of status in the community (even if you have a low profile), willing women, and a sense that you're doing something vitally important. I kicked the habit in the summer of 1970 by turning to making brainwave biofeedback instruments with the idea of turning on people with alpha brain waves. Thus, although I wasn't hanging out with people who are making drugs, I moved from there to hanging out with people who are interested in altering their consciousness through biofeedback training and with people who were skilled at altering their consciousness through meditation or yoga or whatever who wanted to find out how their practice affected their brain waves.
My perspective has changed repeatedly over the years since I quit making LSD. I was tangled up in the legal system most the time from 1969 until the early 1980s when I finally got off parole. When I got out of prison I put a large space between me and the drug scene and after spending some time telling stories about the 60s into a tape recorder I moved on and tried to focus my attention firmly in other directions, mainly psycho-physiology and software development. In 1997 I got involved with a film project started by a young filmmaker, Rico, who wrote a screenplay about our adventures on speculation. He showed it to me and I discussed some of the factual errors in it with him and eventually introduced him to Owsley. Owsley involved Phil DeGuere, a successful motion picture producer, and a lengthy correspondence by email developed between Owsley, Don Douglas, Phil, Rico and me in which we exchanged stories about the old days. The film project eventually petered out but I was left with a desire to gather and preserve the history of underground LSD manufacturing in the form of documents and oral history.
As I got into looking into the history of underground LSD manufacturing I was happy to see that there were other people who are motivated by altruism who got involved but I was saddened to see how many people either eventually became more interested in money or in some cases who got involved in the first place out of greed. When I looked into what happened to people that I'd known back in the 60s, I was happy to see that many of their lives had developed well, but saddened to see that some of my friends got into deep trouble with drugs.
Q: Your PhD was about EEG and consciousness, and obviously with your involvement with Aquarius electronics. Have you followed any of the new neuroscience of consciousness and the effect of hallucinogens on the EEG?
Scully: Not as closely as I would like to. There just aren't enough hours in the day. But I'm very glad that there is some ongoing research.
Q: Are you in regular contact with Nick these days? Any plans for a speaking tour?
Scully: Nick and I occasionally exchange emails. I don't have any plans for a speaking tour. My partner Alice has medical issues that make travel difficult for her and in any case I tend to be a homebody. I am working on a memoir.
Q: As I am particpating in this AMA I received my copy of The Rose of Paracelsus, by William Pickard. Did you know him and even if not, have you read the book?
Scully: Yes, I met him at the 1973-4 trial where he was a spectator. I correspond with him now. I've read The Rose. I liked parts of it.
Q: What is this 7-second LSD synthesis that Nick Sand speaks of? In your opinion would you say that AL-LAD, LAD, ETH-LAD is ordered in the following way - laid back, medium, speedy?
Scully: I don't know the details of the newer LSD syntheses that Nick has spoken of; my first-hand experience was all with the Garbrecht method. I haven't tried all of the drugs that you listed so I can't express an informed opinion, I'm sorry. With 5 felony convictions I've been keeping my distance from any illegal drugs since I was released from prison.
Q: Have you tried the acyl halide, or the PBr3 method of synthesis?
Scully: The only LSD synthesis I ever used was the Garbrecht method.
Q: How long does it take to make LSD? How big the lab should approximately be? Just curious about how hard could it be. Do you really have to be a top-level chemist?
Scully: I don't recommend trying to make LSD these days. The chances of you getting busted are extremely high since all of the materials and equipment that you might use are watched. And the penalties have become extremely draconian. When I said in the movie "don't try this at home" I wasn't kidding. If you don't care about purity and you don't care about yield and are willing to be very sloppy even back in my day when the technology was fairly crude it was possible for someone who is not very skilled in organic chemistry to make LSD. But to make LSD with high purity and in good yield involves a great deal of lab technique, at least using the methods that I'm familiar with.
I realize that technology has marched on and that there are some improved synthetic methods out there. But lysergic acid compounds remain very fragile and require careful handling. It's more a matter of understanding the necessary lab technique and special conditions than it is a matter of having a deep understanding of theoretical chemistry which I certainly lack. Owsley and I both considered ourselves to be cooks rather than chemists. Owsley was an exceptionally fine cook. We used to run a recycling loop to recover iso-LSD and mother liquors and racemize them back to 88% normal and 12% iso and then run the result back through chromatography and crystallization. Because of this recycling loop you could keep running a lab for a long time as you recover the last dregs.
Q: Do you think the Internet and Virtual Reality (environments like Second Life, VR, AR) are nowadays providing experiences similar to what psychedelics do? Are they capable of providing similar insight? Can they provide or provoke experience of ego-loss and total giving up? Psychedelics seem to affect the subjective (sense of me) as much as the objective (perceptions, the world "out there") - can today's electronic environments do likewise?
Scully: I don't think that today's electronic environments produce the same changes in consciousness that LSD does. The visual effects of LSD are far less important, in my opinion, then ego loss.
Q: I understand that that you are currently writing a book on the history of LSD. Could you maybe expand on it? As well as, if you potentially have a publishing deal? I've heard that Nick had written a few books during his time in prison that he's had no luck getting published. I feel like it would be an amazing read and hope to see it on a shelf someday.
Scully: I've been working for quite a few years to gather and organize the history of underground LSD manufacturing. At the moment that's not in the form of a narrative. It consists of a large collection of massively hyperlinked PDF files each of which is a chronological collection of factoids hyperlinked to source documents. I set aside that larger history project temporarily to work on writing a memoir which is a linear narrative. I've specifically avoided looking for a publisher while I'm working on writing a memoir because I want to avoid having a deadline. I have some medical issues that require me to keep stress low in my life and my partner Alice has medical issues that require me to be available to help her out in various ways. But I expect to eventually get the memoir done. I'm trying to write it with some academic rigor and I hope to be able to get a University press to publish it eventually. My current draft is about 50% narrative and 50% very detailed end notes. Once I get my memoir done that I may start trying to extract some narrative books out of the larger history project. I'd like to write a biography of Ron Stark, for example, and I spent a great deal of time researching his life.
Q: What is the highest dose of LSD you remember taking? And have any of your old buddies taken any higher that noteworthy?
Scully: I think the highest dose that I deliberately took was 300 µg. I think that in a lab accident I probably got a higher dose accidentally but I have no idea how large. The dose I most commonly took was 150 µg.
Nick Sand and many of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love tended to be somewhat macho about taking large doses of drugs. Several of my brotherhood friends routinely took 1000-microgram or 1500-µg trips. I know the least 2 cases where people talk as much as 100,000 µg. Fortunately for them LSD is one of the few drugs which has a very wide range between the effective dose and a physically toxic dose. Most drugs have a much narrower range between the effective dose and the lethal dose and is not a good idea to play Russian roulette by trying to outdo your friends with mega-doses. When it comes to LSD, I'm of the opinion that 300 µg is plenty.
Q: I believe I read that you made DOM at one point, did you ever try it, and if so, in your opinion did you enjoy it or LSD more (ignoring safety profiles)? I've personally only tried it once, and it was great, but honestly it just lasted a little too long for me.
Scully: Bear Stanley (Owsley) got some DOM from Sasha Shulgin in early 1967. He didn't tell us where he got it, to protect Sasha. He was initially excited by the idea of psychedelics that were so new that they weren't yet illegal and he had in mind making first one and then another as each became illegal. So after Don and I set up the first Denver lab and came to him to get the rest of his lysergic acid, instead of giving it to us he gave each of us 30 mg of DOM to take. He said that he thought the time wasn't right for making the rest of his LSD and that we should retool the lab to make this new drug.
We all found that 30 mg was too high a dose to be comfortable. We tried 20 mg and then we tried 10 mg and eventually decided that we liked 5 mg. But neither Don nor I ever felt very good about what by that time was being called STP. The trips that we had with it just didn't have, for us, the same spiritual quality that LSD did. We just couldn't convince ourselves that STP would produce the same positive changes that we expected from LSD. Both of us were happy when Bear finally brought the rest of his lysergic acid to Denver.
Q: Do you have any further comment about extensive Sasha's relationship with several generations of underground chemists was? His connections with Bear, Pickard, etc. and in particular GT Skinner's weird ravings to that effect do lead one to wonder about his mentorship role.
Scully: I don't believe that Bear met Sasha until long after he started making LSD and I don't believe that Sasha was Bear's mentor. My best guess is that they had a collegial relationship. There is another interesting connection between them; Sasha served as the defense chemical expert witness at Bear's trial for the Orinda bust. It didn't take very long for Bear to lose interest in DOM/STP. And in later years he believed that all of the mescaline analogues were bad drugs and he was rather outspoken in trying to discourage people from taking them. As far as Skinner is concerned, I'm convinced that he's a habitual trickster and con artist in addition to being a kidnapper and torturer. He told people he was giving them ALD 52 for example and you can color me very deeply skeptical about that.
Q: I didn't mean to imply Sasha was a mentor to Bear, just that he definitely continued to loom larger than life in the clandestine synthesis scene through the years, and I would imagine he knew a fair number of the players despite being un-involved on a co-conspirator level. (I.E. a mentor to Pickard, helping him get a job w/ Nichols, his associate Lemaire giving Hardison his lab, etc.)
Scully: I gather that Sasha liked to socialize; his Friday Night Dinners were famous. I never attended one.
Q: How did Nick only do 6 years after being busted with the lab in Canada?
Scully: Nick started out with a 15 year regular adult (old law) sentence from our trial in 1973-1974. That sentence required him to serve a minimum of 5 years before being eligible for parole. Then after he jumped bail he was charged with bail jumping which could've added another 5 years to his sentence. And finally he was busted in Canada in 1996, living under an alias.
After he'd been in prison in Canada for a while in the American authorities had figured out who he was and started extradition proceedings, his very clever Canadian lawyer made a deal with the Canadian and American governments. On Nick's behalf he argued that it was a waste of Canadian money to keep back in prison for years when they could just send him back to the United States for he'd serve a long sentence. Then he turned to the Americans and offered to waive extradition, making it much easier and faster to get him into the American prison system, in exchange for giving him American credit for the time he served in Canadian prison. He was returned to the United States with that deal facing the remainder of the 15 year prison sentence minus credit for the time he spent in jail in Canada and then was brought in front of Judge Conti again where he was tried and convicted and sentenced to an additional 5 years for bail jumping.
He appealed the bail jumping conviction and won his appeal on the basis that he was never given a specific date on which to appear in court and thus had never failed to appear. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his bail jumping conviction leaving him just with the 15 year sentence. He appeared in front of the parole board and was eventually paroled after serving 6 years. Needless to say he was very fortunate.
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