William s. Burroughs and lsd-6

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

There are references to LSD, LSD25 and LSD6 in the both the Burroughs Letters books of 1945-1959 and 1959 - 1974. The first is in a letter to Ginsberg in 1956 in the context of his (Ginsberg's) mother's schizophrenia. It is refered to as LSD. In 1957 (to Alan Ansen) he writes "The LSD6 people are clamming up". (Though he did get an evasive reply from a Dr Tait in Scotland). In 1959 he sends a clipping to Ginsberg from the Herald Tribune and quotes that during withdrawal "..substances similar to LSD 6 are released in the body." And, a month later, refers to LSD6 both in the context of a cancer treatment and of a magnetic phenomena that is not clearly described but may be to do with scrying using a mirror ball whilst under the influence. However, in August 1960, to Brion Gysin, he talks of a trip to Amsterdam . "They have the new hallucinogen there and I have made tentative arrangements to try it. Also LSD-25." (He doesn't say what the "new hallucinogen" is but it is clearly not an LSD). In September , again to Gysin, he writes "I am scheduled for LSD this week under sign of Beaverbrook Press..." This is probably a reference to a very un-scientific drug session out of which some kind of sensationalist piece of journalism was going to be produced (and paid for). At the end of December that year he tells Ginsberg "I did make an LSD6 scene in London and some other more potent hallucinogen that has to be injected..."
This doesn't really help in establishing the difference between -6 and -25, but it does seem to indicate there were two different substances. What I'd like to know is what the "...more potent hallucinogen .." was. As anyone come across Prestonia ? Or Dr Tait?

There is also a letter where Burroughs writes about splitting a dose of Mescaline with Gysin in October of 1959. But he does not really write about the drug experience. So maybe he did not take it? Or the dose was not really that effective? Or maybe he traded it to someone for opiates?

 

[Enzime]

There is somewhat of an assumption in this discussion that LSD-6 refers to a lysergic compound somehow different to or competing with LSD-25, and after that assumption debating the existence of other LSD compounds and then further debating if Burroughs knew what he was talking about.

I present some plausible alternatives as to what LSD-6 was and why it's become "lost" to modern drug culture:

1) LSD-6 refers to a 'street brand' of LSD that Burroughs preferred over others, due to a dosage strength he was personally appreciative of. As these street brands, like "Black Sunshine", "Chocolate Bunny" etc., are regionally specific and refer to a particular dealer's 'brand', the name will have faded from popular memory as the brand was overtaken by market issues, legal reasons, the chemist's retirement, etc. etc.

2) LSD-6 refers to a 'street brand' of mixed psychedelics, a combination of LSD-25 and another drug or drugs. Reasons for it fading out include those above, but also it may not have actually been very good. I presume Burroughs told Weller it was "a horsepill of insanity" because it was particularly unpleasant.

3) LSD-6 is not acid at all, but another psychedelic. The dealers may have called it 'LSD-6' because it produced an LSD-like experience, or simply because LSD was a better known psychedelic at the time and sold this other substance as 'bootleg LSD'. LSD-6 faded out once the actual psychedelic itself became popular or widely available, or once people worked out it was awful.

In regards to Letter from a master addict to dangerous drugs, Burroughs did indeed author it and it was published in The British Journal of Addiction in 1957. A scan of the original is in Wiley's database here, and the text is widely available on the internet and in various editions of Naked Lunch.

The latter two are inconclusively supported by the annotation to Letter: "Since this was published I have discovered that the alkaloid of Bannisteria are closely related to LSD6, which has been used to produce experimental psychosis."

So it's possible LSD-6 may be a combination of LSD and ayahuasca. Given that both can be unpleasant in high doses, a combination of both at what may have been an ill-advised dosage level could have been incredibly unpleasant. (Note that 'experimental psychosis' is not indicated here as being laboratory experiment.)

LSD-6 may also have just been ayahuasca itself, which would have supplanted the 'brand' LSD-6 when people, such as Burroughs, who had experienced both recognised it as such and simply began referring to it by the common name instead, which will have seen LSD-6 disappear from popular vocabulary.

This last point is supported by some more inconclusive hypothesising. Burroughs' letters on LSD-6 noted by Jim above are from the late fifties. His Yage Letters are from the early fifties. With these dates in mind, the quote "since this was published I have discovered that the alkaloid of Bannisteria are closely related to LSD6" suggests that between authoring Letter in 1956 and the annotation being made (uncertain if this is in the original or if it was added before wider republication), Burroughs was able to track down LSD-6 and try it, and found the experience similar or the same as ayahuasca.

 

[spacejunk]

It should be noted that according to Ted Morgan's excellent biography of William Burroughs, Literary Outlaw, that despite his experimentation with psychedelics, and their influence on his work and presence in his correspondence, Burroughs concluded that he did not like hallucinogenics.
Remember that information outside of sections of the pharmalogical and medical establishment, information on these experimental new substances would have been exceedingly hard to come by in the 1950s.
Pre-internet, kids! No erowid.org et al back in those days.
For that reason alone i dont take much of what Burroughs reported in regard to so-called "LSD-6" at face value.

 

[Enzime]

It should be noted that according to Ted Morgan's excellent biography of William Burroughs, Literary Outlaw, that despite his experimentation with psychedelics, and their influence on his work and presence in his correspondence, Burroughs concluded that he did not like hallucinogenics.
Remember that information outside of sections of the pharmalogical and medical establishment, information on these experimental new substances would have been exceedingly hard to come by in the 1950s.
Pre-internet, kids! No erowid.org et al back in those days.
For that reason alone i dont take much of what Burroughs reported in regard to so-called "LSD-6" at face value.

He did repeatedly say that he disliked psychedelics, but that statement has to be taken in the context of a constant fact of his entire life - he was clearly deeply ambivalent about basically everything.

He professed to be homosexual, yet was an active womaniser in the 40s, and was still sleeping with women at least into the 60s. He deemed women to be a mistake of evolution and was happily (sort of) married to a woman he, by all accounts, deeply loved and with whom he had a hyperactive sex life, and many of his closest friends were women. He hated heroin, and anything he termed as 'junk', and stated it the purest form of Control, which was his enemy, and yet he was still taking heroin until at least the late 80s, and was still on methadone when he died. He denied being in love with Allen Ginsberg, but his love letters to him are public record. He was a Scientologist for almost a decade (and 'cleared' most of the levels available to members at that time), yet denied ever having been formally a part of the organisation or having more than an intellectual curiosity in it. He even said he hated the Word, yet he worked as a writer nearly every day of the last forty years of his life. Everything he loved he also hated.

The main source on his negative opinion of psychedelics seems to come from a handful of interviews in the late sixties and seventies, which, in true Burroughs style, are reprinted and reused ad nauseum and integrated into larger, later works, be it his own or articles and biographies about him. Despite saying he disliked them, there's plenty of mentions in various sources he was taking hallucinogens even after he moved to Kansas, and that he was still using them as occasional sources of inspiration on his writing or painting.

Much of Burroughs' dislike of any given thing had as much to do with the personalities around it as it did the thing itself. Despite having got on well with Timothy Leary initially, Burroughs grew to dislike him intensely and thought his attitude to psychedelics was idiotic. Given that the two were probably the most famous drug users (or at least famous for using drugs) on the planet at about that time, I suspect the interviews given in the late 60s/early 70s were as much a reflection on what he felt about Leary and that we was held in a similar countercultural position as Burroughs, as whatever he felt about hallucinogens.

 

[spacejunk]

Yeah, i definitely agree that on many levels Burroughs was a pretty contradictory figure.
Leary was a pretty compromised individual in many people's eyes after he snitched on the Weathermen that busted him out of prison (even though he claimed not to have divulged anything the feds didnt already know) but i think Burroughs was suspicious of his motives in a lot of ways - he certainly didn't help the cause for psychedelic research with a lot of his media hyping and attention seeking, IMO. Never was a big Leary fan, myself.

One theory i've heard regarding Burroughs' ambivalence towards psychedelics was that he took unnecessarily high doses (as was reportedly the case with Leary's psilocin pills that he took to Tangiers in the early 1960s). This may have been due to his intake of narcotics - that can reduce the effects of such drugs - or just a cavalier attitude towards them. Not much use in speculating, really, but i've always assumed talk of "LSD-6" was a mistake that has been repeated and perpetuated into this weird myth.
I freely admit i could be completely wrong about that.

 

[Dooofus]

Hi, long time lurker here

There's always been that debate about different batches of LSD having different effects, even back in the 90's when acid was pretty much always real acid. I always wondered about that. I sampled from many different batches back in the 90's that did seem to vary in effects, but it all still seemed more or less like acid. More visuals vs bodyload vs mindfuck vs euphoria etc. And it was consistent enough that I wouldn't attribute it to set and setting.

I wonder if there are more lysergimides and if people have been taking them for longer than we realize. Perhaps some of that LSD in the 90's was something more like LSZ or AL-LAD or other ones we've never even heard of. I wonder if some of the less skilled chemists were cooking up random LS-X's, and even possibly believing that their end product was real LSD. I don't know how realistic any of this is because I don't know my chemistry.

I have to figure though... there must be plenty of sketchy amateur guys, cooking up weird things and tasting them. Lots of those guys probably never did any kind of final test on their end product to determine what it actually was. And lots of them probably never reported their findings on bluelight or even kept any kind of records of their discoveries/creations.

 

[spacejunk]

I dunno, LSD is not the kind of drug synthesised by amateurs.
There has long been speculation of various analogs doing the rounds though.

 

[Dooofus]

Right, but would it be possible for a less skilled guy to botch an LSD synth and wind up with some other kind of L-XXX? I don't really know, I'm honestly asking.


And when I said "sketchy amateur guys," I didn't mean like some hillbilly cooking up meth or crack at home. I meant more along the lines of a sketchy Gordon Todd Skinner type of character, who clearly knows his stuff quite well, but still isn't of the same caliber as a Leonord Pickard.

I dunno, just something I've always wondered about.

 

[Enzime]

One theory i've heard regarding Burroughs' ambivalence towards psychedelics was that he took unnecessarily high doses (as was reportedly the case with Leary's psilocin pills that he took to Tangiers in the early 1960s). This may have been due to his intake of narcotics - that can reduce the effects of such drugs - or just a cavalier attitude towards them.

Yeah, both seem very likely to me, also.

As you said above, he wasn't relying on any available information - in fact Master Addict was published precisely because it was a lucid account of the user experience of drugs that were neither common nor well researched at the time. Certainly he took what turned out to be an extremely high dosage of yage and had one of the worst experiences of his life. After finding the right dosage from a shaman who wasn't a quack (or possibly gringo-pranking him, which is the version I like) he enjoyed it enough to take a suitcase full home with him to ingest at his leisure.

 

[Enzime]

I dunno, LSD is not the kind of drug synthesised by amateurs.
There has long been speculation of various analogs doing the rounds though.

Well, when I lived on the outskirts of Nimbin I knew one amateur who succeeded at synthesising LSD. The lab tests showed it was too weak to have any market value, so he got off.

Definitely hillbilly stuff. Very definitely contraindicated.

 

[spacejunk]

Dodgy ergot derivatives sound like a very dangerous category of substances to play around with...!