They earned the name “windowpane” because, as rumor has it, underground chemists or distributors used fluorescent light diffusers as molds for gel tabs. Windowpane acid can come in flat sheets, like the colored gels that fit over theatre stage lights to change the tone of the scene, pyramid-shaped squares. This particular LSD preparation was perhaps more popular in the 1980s and 90s than it is now. Unlike blotter paper, which is either swallowed or spit out, the gelatin-based windowpane acid can dissolve like a semi-hard candy. Nowadays, windowpane tabs are often referred to as gel tabs or jellies.
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We talked with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love about the idea that we needed to turn the whole world on. The Brotherhood kept going, but I quit because the risk-benefit ratio was out of whack. My second lab in Denver was the one that got busted by federal agents while I was off getting materials and equipment. That felt really scary and they eventually caught up with me and had to go to court proceedings for that, looking at possibly 56 years in jail.
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For a while, they were America’s foremost counterculture outlaws, dubbed the “hippie mafia” by Rolling Stone. But the organization ultimately fell prey to greed, back-stabbing and legal heat. And when it was gone, it barely registered an acid flashback, even after biographers, documentarians and Madison Avenue began to strip mine the hippie era for material. It seemed like a reasonable idea at the time — the brotherhood had been founded on a shared belief in LSD’s transformative effects. But somewhere along the line, the spiritual message was squashed by thousands of kilos of smuggled marijuana and hashish. Ashbrook planned to sell that weed, then use the money to buy an even bigger load of Afghani hash—like three or four tons—and sail the boat from Honolulu harbor to Karachi, Pakistan, and back with the load.
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A group of surfers in Laguna Beach who discovered LSD in the early 60s dedicated themselves to the cause and created a tight-knit family of friends to get the dose out. They evolved into the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, an underground group that helped manufacture, smuggle, and distribute L (more commonly called back then) to people before and after prohibition. The Brotherhood’s name and actions have been sensationalized ever since, and over 50 years later, William A. Kirkley tells their story in the feature documentary film, Orange Sunshine. Drug chemists on popular cable crime shows may talk about “cooking” (Owsley once called himself “a master of fine mental cuisine”). It’s not about panache but the boring stuff like precision, punctuality, and fastidious cleanliness. LSD is lysergic acid diethylamide, a semi-synthetic derivative of ergoline, an alkaloid first isolated from a range of gnarly plant and grain fungi.
The Brotherhood Of Eternal Love
So that takes us to Windsor in California, where we made Orange Sunshine. That was exciting; it was the largest scale lab I ever worked in. We thought that it would produce really good social changes and had a lot of hope about that and went to distribute it.
But for a great many others, these medical and clinical interventions are just new forms of the same psychedelic rituals, in which LSD has always served as a sacrament. In an effort to turn the world on to LSD, first synthesized by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in 1938, they often gave the drug away for free, paying their bills by the cash earned from smuggling hashish into the country. Sunshine was created at some stage by Anton Verloc, likely so that he could work unhindered by the side effects of Joy whilst still appearing as if he was on the drug. Sunshine is known about by the Executive Committee and some of the populace; it’s implied to be illegal, and its use is frowned upon by Wellies. A piece written by the “O” Courant that can be found in Gemma Olsen’s House dismisses Sunshine as “some kind of nasty prank”. The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs had been watching the pair, and arrested 23-year-old Scully in 1969 for a lab he’d started in Colorado prior to meeting Sand.
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When finally arrested in Canada in 1996, Sand had more than $500,000 in cash and gold and approximately 430,000 doses of LSD, according to newspaper accounts. Five decades ago, a small group of hippie zealots worked feverishly in an old Windsor farmhouse to create Orange Sunshine, an especially pure form of LSD that would become one of the iconic drugs of the late ’60s. A famous batch of LSD circulating through the late 60s in California called Orange Sunshine was long believed to be made from ALD-52. These exceptionally potent blotter tabs were synthesized by legendary psychonauts of the time, Nick Sands and Tim Scully. In the United States, ALD-52 isn’t specifically mentioned on the list of prohibited substances. However, due to the Federal Analog Act, ALD-52 is illegal because it’s an analog of LSD (Schedule I drug).
Less than a week later, the ranch was raided—resulting in five more arrests and the seizing of large quantities of pot, hash, and LSD. Then on August 3, tragedy struck again when the Brotherhood’s 26-year-old hippie messiah Johnny Griggs died suddenly of an accidental overdose of synthetic psilocybin. The Brotherhood’s plan was never to get rich from selling acid, but rather to facilitate an evolution of human consciousness by giving it away to as many people as possible. But to turn on the masses, they’d need to produce hundreds of millions of hits of acid—and to do that, they’d need money. The best way to fund their revolution, they decided, was by smuggling marijuana and hashish.
These pills are typically round with dosage and strength information embossed on them. But plenty of generic Suboxone versions exist, and some manufacturers make pills that contain just buprenorphine without naloxone. Asbrook was eventually arrested on October 16, 1980, at Houston International Airport on a flight to the Cayman Islands carrying around $270,000 in cash. According to Ashbrook, Hendrix only played three songs at the show before walking off stage and back to his tent. With a crowd of 10,000 plus high-ass hippies growing restless, Travis tried to persuade Hendrix to get back on stage by offering him some crystal acid. Hendrix was reluctant, so to show Jimi it was “no big deal,” Travis snorted a big line of the crystal.
ALD-52 Vs LSD
Scully soon learned that Owsley Stanley possessed a large amount (440 grams) of lysergic acid monohydrate. Owsley and Scully finally met a few weeks before the Trips Festival in the fall of 1965. The 30-year-old Owsley took the 21-year-old Scully as his apprentice3 and they pursued their mutual interest in electronics and psychedelic synthesis. Ronald Stark was operating a secret laboratory in Paris, with the British scientist, Richard Kemp, as his chief chemist.
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- It’s worth noting, however, that tabs are not the only way to consume acid.
- From the available research, this compound appears to share the same safety profile as LSD.
- In their heyday, “Brothers” smuggled surfboards inlaid with LSD and hash worldwide.
- In less than two decades of activity, Angels had racked up more than 800 felony arrests—for sexual aberrations, drug charges, assault, and even attempted murder.
- His girlfriend would arrive with a mouthful of drugs hidden in a balloon and kiss them over.
I’m glad that the film makes our story accessible to everyone, so they can have some sense of what we were up to. We were trying to do something good — it may not have worked out, but we had good intentions. Still, he noted, the museum doesn’t shy away from talking about the area’s illegal booze production during Prohibition. He said the museum has to tread a fine line to avoid sounding like it’s promoting a drug, especially considering that fourth-graders visit the museum on school trips. When it was apparent his drug record would prevent him from teaching, he started working as a consultant to a software computer corporation, joining a techie world where LSD use is not necessarily seen as an automatic disqualifier.
ALD-52 is illegal in most parts of the world, but you can buy it online in places like Canada and Denmark, where it hasn’t been banned. Both compounds are primarily converted to LSD, with a few secondary metabolites — none of which have been found to have harmful effects. In Germany, ALD-52 is illegal under the NpSG (New Psychoactive Substances Act). The same situation is found in Austria, Latvia, Poland, and other European countries. There hasn’t been much research on ALD-52, despite how long it’s been around.
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When Owsley Stanley’s LSD California lab was shut down by federal agents, Sand and Scully stepped in, driven by their beliefs that acid could save the world. However, this run-in with the law took a huge toll on their ability to work, and they were essentially starting from scratch. At Millbrook, Sand experienced his first LSD trip and was introduced to George Gurdihieff’s writing. He eventually moved his lab to the basement to scale production but was forced to move it again after a chemical fire. While in college, Sand came across literature about psychedelic substances and met with intellectuals who used them as a tool for personal growth.
