Wednesday, October 29, 2008

the exploding inevitable



Well, well. It appears our last jaunt to the trip receptacles secured little in the way of favourable comment. Or any comment at all, in fact. Since I am nothing if not contrary, I don't for one second intend to allow that to impede us from alighting on a third trip.

Look on it as you might an especially intrusive flashback.

This one is not from the vaults of the Trip Receptacles. Rather, let's revisit Timothy Leary's notorious 1967 call to alms, "Turn On, Tune In, Drop It", fellow siblings.

Leary, of course, famously taught psychology at Harvard and from as early as 1960 advocated the unfettered use of natural hallucinogens in addition to the then perfectly legal synthesised compound, LSD. Less well known is the controversial nature of his earliest experiments; these initially targeted prison inmates as a control group well before he gained sufficient confidence to engage directly in self-experimentation.




ESP 1027.

Leary - alongside colleague, Richard Alpert - was dismissed from his faculty in May 1963 for allegedly distributing controlled substances to the student body. The official line, however, was his failure to attend contracted lectures. Undaunted by this and subsequent pressures from the FBI, Leary founded the "League For Spiritual Discovery" as a registered faith in 1966; an attempt to secure legal status for LSD as the holy sacrament underpinning their constitutional right to "freedom of religion". The government disagreed. On October 6th, 1966, LSD was effectively made illegal throughout the United States.

On January 14th, 1967, Timothy Leary made an invited appearance at the Human-Be-In in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, with a gathering of some 30,000 individuals attendant on his word. The phrase "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" was officially born.

Rejoice. Engineered by David Hancock.

"All Girls Are Yours" ? If you say so, Timothy.

DR. TIMOTHY LEARY: TRIP; ALL GIRLS ARE YOURS from "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" LP (ESP) 1967 (US)

PURCHASE TURN ON, TUNE IN, DROP OUT

5 comments:

said...

They were passing out 'Tim Leary Black Acid' at the Be-In. It was synthesized by wizard Dr. Hoffman for Sandoz Pharm. It was some of the last ergot-based LSD25 available. It was phenomenal, from my personal viewpoint. After that there was Owsley, which was synthetic, but also phenomenal. According to the WHO, ergot of rye has been eliminated from the planet, however Sandoz allegedly still has a couple vats growing for...future use??? We can only hope. But, as the olde hippie saying goes, "There's no hope without dope." There's no dope without hope. Acid indigestion, check your source.

ib said...

Thanks, nate. This post was crying out for some observations based on direct personal experience. Incredible that rye ergot has been eradicated; historical accounts of its natural formation and, often, wholly accidental ingestion - sometimes allegedly affecting entire communities - are legendary and fascinating.

said...

Those were crazy daze at the height of Haight. I could tell tales, I could. One of my most 'what if?' memorable moments was when I needed to get away from SF for a while to 'clear my head'. I hooked up with The Diggers who were transporting burn-outs & communards alike to Morningstar Ranch in Occidental,CA outside of Santa Rosa, owned by Lou Gottlieb of The Limeliters.

Heres what the wiki sez:
"In the 1960s, Gottlieb had a house & ranch in rural Sonoma County called 'Morningstar', where a lot of hippies would come to stay. Many people will remember fondly 'The Digger Farm' as it came to be called."

Well, I didn't 'clear my head'. At the time I arrived, the drug of choice at Morningstar was jimson weed seeds, or datura. It grew wild around the property & the hostesses of the festivities were a coven of datura-crazed hippie chicks who would later that summer hop on the Volkswagen van that Deane Moorehouse had traded to one Charles Manson, & ride off into infamy. Susan Atkins was hiding/hanging out at Morningstar after some 'minor' problems with her mentor/pimp Satanick Church founder Anton LaVey. The datura madness was heavily Satanick in overtones, but great fun...& I did go back to San Fran with a better frame of mind. Had my eighteen-year -old's search for enlightenment at the time been outward rather than inward, who knows what alternate universe I may have inhabited. My motto is, "Always be ready for the nextus nexus & alway be ready to jump!"

ib said...

While you were typing this comment, quite unbeknownst to me I might add, I was busy leaving a comment at your place.

Datura. They don't call it Devil's Weed for nothing. I have never tried it, but I know of someone who tracked down a pharmaceutical foot powder which contained datura as an active ingredient in sufficiently large quantities to convince him to make up a foul brew of some kind of tea. The consequences were deeply unsettling and longlasting. Very weird.

You met Susan Atkins during that period ? Very crazy sounding shit!

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