On December 21, 1967, the day of the winter solstice, as the sun reached its southernmost point, light was falling on the Summer of Love.
In a modest apartment in California, just east of Berkeley, six young men, residents of a hippie milieu, were finishing breakfast. They ate portions of steak, scrambled eggs and drank black coffee — no granola. They needed more nourishing food to support their hard work: the mass production of LSD.
It was a peaceful winter morning, marred by an unexpected noise outside: the shouting of police officers! «Open the door!» — they shouted. Before anyone could react, law enforcers burst into the house. Heavy sleds broke down the front door; a group of police officers also rushed in from behind. One of the officers broke a window. As a result, pill production came to a halt, leaving behind micro-pellets of hallucinogenic dust glistening in the chilly winter morning.
Court documents described the Orinda house as a «small LSD factory». In reality, it was a small workshop where locally synthesized crystalline LSD was pressed into pills for distribution. The feds got there thanks to a weak link in their chain that accidentally sold a substantial supply of acid (worth $3,400) to an undercover cop. As a result, the entire operation collapsed. In this sleepy Contra Costa neighborhood, the police broke up a cohesive team by trying to get the participants to betray each other. But their loyalties remained strong — no one mouthed off.
Six people were arrested: four men and two women — one in Guatemalan tribal dress, the other in a bear fur vest. The value of those arrested was then estimated at nearly $10 million dollars. Mostly, it involved 217 grams of acid, which, with standard doses of 100 micrograms, yielded about 2,170,000 «hits» — doses that sold for between $3 and $5 apiece. But these doses were heroic — about 270 to 300 micrograms, making Owsley's acid the most potent and pure LSD ever produced underground.
It was Owsley Acid, created in the 1960s, by one of the most colorful and eccentric figures of the American underground, Augustus Owsley Stanley III, also known as «The Bear». Vibrant, hairy, and a proud carnivore, he was not only the sound engineer who designed systems for the Grateful Dead, but also the creator of the band's iconic skull-and-lightning bolt logo and «Dancing Bear» mascot. As a chemist, he led a team of young «flowers» that produced some 5 million doses of LSD, inspiring musicians such as Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon. Some speculate that Owsley's acid, smuggled from the Bay Area to Britain, may have impregnated the Beatles' psychedelic movie Magical Mystery Tour.
In a modest apartment in California, just east of Berkeley, six young men, residents of a hippie milieu, were finishing breakfast. They ate portions of steak, scrambled eggs and drank black coffee — no granola. They needed more nourishing food to support their hard work: the mass production of LSD.
It was a peaceful winter morning, marred by an unexpected noise outside: the shouting of police officers! «Open the door!» — they shouted. Before anyone could react, law enforcers burst into the house. Heavy sleds broke down the front door; a group of police officers also rushed in from behind. One of the officers broke a window. As a result, pill production came to a halt, leaving behind micro-pellets of hallucinogenic dust glistening in the chilly winter morning.
Court documents described the Orinda house as a «small LSD factory». In reality, it was a small workshop where locally synthesized crystalline LSD was pressed into pills for distribution. The feds got there thanks to a weak link in their chain that accidentally sold a substantial supply of acid (worth $3,400) to an undercover cop. As a result, the entire operation collapsed. In this sleepy Contra Costa neighborhood, the police broke up a cohesive team by trying to get the participants to betray each other. But their loyalties remained strong — no one mouthed off.
Six people were arrested: four men and two women — one in Guatemalan tribal dress, the other in a bear fur vest. The value of those arrested was then estimated at nearly $10 million dollars. Mostly, it involved 217 grams of acid, which, with standard doses of 100 micrograms, yielded about 2,170,000 «hits» — doses that sold for between $3 and $5 apiece. But these doses were heroic — about 270 to 300 micrograms, making Owsley's acid the most potent and pure LSD ever produced underground.
It was Owsley Acid, created in the 1960s, by one of the most colorful and eccentric figures of the American underground, Augustus Owsley Stanley III, also known as «The Bear». Vibrant, hairy, and a proud carnivore, he was not only the sound engineer who designed systems for the Grateful Dead, but also the creator of the band's iconic skull-and-lightning bolt logo and «Dancing Bear» mascot. As a chemist, he led a team of young «flowers» that produced some 5 million doses of LSD, inspiring musicians such as Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon. Some speculate that Owsley's acid, smuggled from the Bay Area to Britain, may have impregnated the Beatles' psychedelic movie Magical Mystery Tour.
In recent years, psychedelics have gained a new reputation, thanks to research by respected universities — Harvard, Johns Hopkins, London. Legislation has become more lenient toward substances like MDMA and psilocybin, allowing for a resurgence of interest in psychedelics. The free-spirited counterculture was replaced by a culture of lab scientists and pharmaceutical companies. Michael Pollan, author of How to Change Your Mind, said efforts were being made to «save psychedelics from the ‘60s». But the story of Owsley's acid shows that these stories are inextricably linked, and that many of the lessons of that era — both chemical and spiritual — continue to inform modern clinical research and investment.
To this day, there is a direct link between LSD produced in clandestine laboratories and modern clinical trials conducted as part of the resurgent science of psychedelics. With minor modifications, Owsley's acid has moved from the underground to the pharmaceutical mainstream — like a vine protected by generations of chemists. It was synthesized, transformed, and protected by an entire family of talented illegal chemists using the tried-and-true methods of Bay Area home labs since the 1960s. This expertise has been passed down from generation to generation and has connected artists, criminals, rock stars, scientists and amateurs.
Junkie chemists on popular TV shows may talk about «cooking» (Owsley once called himself a «master of fine mental cuisine»). But synthesizing drugs is more like baking: it requires precision, accuracy and cleanliness. LSD — lysergic acid diethylamide — is a semi-synthetic alkaloid first isolated from fungi and plant parasites. By modifying its molecule, adding or removing groups, completely new substances can be obtained.
In the places where drugs are sold — in underground markets, in clubs, on the Internet — the origin of a substance is linked to its history and the experience of its users. But for Owsley's acid, purity is not just molecular impeccability, but a philosophy, an ethos. And today, as LSD is used in medical research, its journey — from counterculture to clinic — shows how criminalized compounds have taken on a new life, used to treat addiction, anxiety, and other severe conditions. It's a story of shifting attitudes and cultures, and how far people go to maintain access to the best LSD.
«Ours was 99.9 percent clean! We had the best!» — says Roni Giessen Stanley. As a young girl, she was arrested in Orinda — wearing a bear fur vest — but was never charged. She was a friend of Owsley's, though she never married him. She has a son by him, Starfinder, now a cattle veterinarian. Roni is now 76, bright and flashy, petite. Over a cup at the café, she rejoices: «I'm eating nutritionally! I follow Bear's diet — not just meat, but carbohydrates. He was brilliant at so many things». She orders a crab benedict.
Before meeting Owsley, she learned about LSD in 1965 while a student at Berkeley. In her 2012 memoir, she writes that an ex-boyfriend brought her a capsule from a pharmaceutical vial and declared that it was «Owsley's acid the best». They sat by the sea listening to Bob Dylan. Soon Owsley himself appeared, delivering a rare German microphone to an ex-boyfriend who had also taken Bear LSD. He was charismatic and quick to share drops of his potion from an old Murine bottle hidden in his pocket. In the underground labs, Roni worked as an assistant: overseeing the chromatography process, washing dishes, and placing plates. Proud to have helped acid Owsley.
A key figure was Tim Scully, a Berkeley mathematician who created his own LSD empire. He believed that LSD could change minds and the world for the better, and strove to produce the drug as pure as possible, which to him was an expression of good intentions. «Producing a pure product is part of expressing purity of intention» — he notes.
Scully first took LSD on April 15, 1965, with childhood friend Don Douglas when they were in their early twenties. That trip caused what he called a «quantum» shift in perception and understanding. Scully said at the time that they could have something meaningful.
Now he lives in a secluded cabin near Mendocino, working on his memoirs and collecting material about underground chemistry — in the form of giant hyperlinked PDFs that he plans to give to universities. He has Asperger's syndrome, but acid has liberated him. «For a while I felt like a poet, an artist, a whole world of perception opened up» — he recalls. It was Owsley's acid that was the catalyst, and he met its creator himself. Owsley showed up at his house one day to talk to a woman renting a room from Scully. There, Scully bonded with him, helping with electronics for Dead concerts and Ken Kesey parties. He calls it a «long interview».
In the winter of 1966, Scully and Douglas traveled to Los Angeles, where they set up a laboratory in a mansion dubbed the «Pink House». Scully handled electronics and helped with LSD, while Douglas was in charge of transporting large shipments of acid. There they learned from other figures, Beara and Melissa Cargill, another arrested in Orinda. Cargill, a quiet person, started a new life as a teacher, hiding her past.
Her story is one of many: she met Owsley in 1964 at Berkeley when she was looking for electronic scales. In their lab on Virginia Street in Berkeley, the «Green Factory», they began making LSD in the bathroom. She is described as a sweet, intelligent girl. She didn't get a degree, but became an important figure in the underground production.
Stories about Cargill are often reduced to her being Stanley's co-conspirator and assistant. Some believe she was the «brains» behind the production. Arrest documents refer to her as a chemistry expert who allegedly helped create the acids. Her role is controversial. It is known that Owsley had many ideas — from electronics to health benefits — but even he could not have synthesized LSD on his own without training. Cargill is said to have been the main person behind it.
She and Stanley had children together: she had a daughter, Redbird, and he had a son. Their friendship included breastfeeding each other's children, and in prison Stanley saw his children passed on to her and others. According to Rooney, Cargill was more interested in chemistry than revolution. «She had a lovely quality» — she says, but she wasn't a revolutionary.
Tim Scully was obsessed with the revolutionary potential of LSD. After the Orinda crackdown and Stanley's arrest, he decided to continue producing and distributing acid, filling a void in the underground market. He was called Bear's «successor». He teamed up with another underground chemist, Nick Sand, an alumnus of Timothy Leary's groups known as the Spiritual Discovery League. Unlike the street bikers, Scully and his crew operated more gently, creating a «model» mafia, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. They imported hashish from overseas, grew popular varieties of cannabis, and even helped free Timothy Leary from prison.
In 1968, they put Scully and Sande in a farmhouse in Sonoma, where they produced Orange Sunshine, the legendary LSD based on Stanley and Cargill's recipes. In Owsley's absence, LSD prices soared, but the Brotherhood sought to lower them and spread their product. Scully claims to have used the same advanced methods as Stanley's — with the same dosage and purity.
Although Scully and Sand remained in the shadows, their activities attracted the attention of law enforcement. In 1973, federal authorities arrested one of their main financiers, Gulf Oil heir Billy Hitchcock, who was funding the operations. In 1974, Hitchcock confessed and turned them in to save himself. The press said they had organized a «conspiracy» to produce and sell millions of doses of LSD. Scully was sentenced to 20 years, Sande to 15. Scully fought long in the courts but eventually accepted prison time, while Sand fled to Canada. The drug remained a legend — it is estimated that they produced and distributed over 150 million doses of Orange Sunshine, flooding the underground.
American culture came to the Netherlands with a delay. In the 1970s, Amsterdam became a center for wandering hippies. There, in 1972, 20-year-old Pieter van der Heijden had his first taste of Orange Sunshine. The experience opened new perceptual horizons for him. He wanted to understand how such profound experiences were possible in tiny doses. «I was very interested in these molecules» — he says. «It seemed like a miracle that someone had created something like this».
Now in his early 70s, his serious look hides years of adventure. He dreamed of meeting the creators of Orange Sunshine, and it came about through a chance encounter in a lab. He secretly manufactured his own batch of LSD and passed it around to friends. In 1996, in Vancouver, he met Nick Sand, who lived there and worked freely. They set up an underground lab where Van der Heijden studied with Sand. One day he was arrested — 43 grams of synthesized LSD and other substances were seized. He was sentenced to 10 months and Sand to 14 years in the US. Van der Heijden retired from the business, but years later returned to psychedelic chemistry, founding PsyGen, a company that produces legal drugs for clinical trials.
In 2019, he created the first fully legal batch of LSD, reaching 99.96% purity — so pure a substance few people have tried. He hopes future research will provide insight into how LSD affects the brain.
The heroic power of Owsley's acid was seen as a reflection of his own power. For Scully and his team, purity meant the sincerity of their intentions: they believed they were distributing not just a drug, but a sacred cultural tool. The cleaner the production was, the deeper and more transparent the trip was. If research continues to progress, van der Heijden hopes to analyze the «imprint» of pure LSD on the brain. For now, he uses it medicinally, to combat depression and anxiety.
In the 1950s and 1960s, LSD was studied in the clinic to treat neuroses, schizophrenia, and alcoholism. Some, like Bill W. of Alcoholics Anonymous, believed that LSD could stimulate spiritual awakening. But because of the counterculture associated with it, the drug remained «problematic» for a long time — in Hoffman's words. Today, despite new interest in psilocybin, MDMA and other substances, LSD is still seen as a pariah. However, scientists are returning to its research — with caution and respect.
Dr. Suresh Muthukumaraswamy worked his way to LSD through academic science. After getting his PhD in New Zealand, he worked in Wales studying the effects of psychedelics on the brain. He now works at the University of Auckland, where he receives funding to research the effects of LSD on concentration, mood and the treatment of depression.
In 2019, he launched a clinical trial of microdosing — about 10 mcg — which showed 60% remission of depression symptoms after eight weeks, significantly better than conventional antidepressants. Its drugs are manufactured by PsyGen, adhering to strict standards. In 2022, he produced the first legal batch of LSD with a purity of 99.96%, confirming his commitment to quality. These studies show that LSD is re-entering medical practice — and while attitudes remain cautious, the potential for its use continues to grow.
Overall, the story of LSD is a journey from underground to clinical, from counterculture to science. It is a story of transforming perception and culture, of people willing to go for access to a pure and powerful drug. Van der Heijden, for example, dreams of continuing research and developing legal production to help people fight serious conditions. Time shows that even the most potent and mysterious substances can find their place in medicine and society.