⚗️ alembic

Search

SearchSearch

598 - A Conversation with Nick Sand

Mar 19, 2019, 72 min read

Program Notes

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com
https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagerty
Guest speaker: Nick Sand

Lorenzo at home with Usha and Nick Sand

Today’s podcast features an interview given by legendary chemist Nick Sand, the creator of Orange Sunshine LSD. In this interview, given a few years before Nick’s untimely death, we hear him explain what led him to become a psychedelic chemist as well as the many trials and tribulations he suffered over many years of incarceration as a prisoner in the War on Drugs.
Nick Sand’s
Underground Cannadian LSD Lab
Podcast 037
“Imprisonment & Liberation Aspects of Consciousness”

Download a free copy of Lorenzo’s latest book
The Chronicles of Lorenzo - Volume 1

Previous Episode

597 - Terence McKenna on Art Bell Part 2

Next Episode

599 - The Psychedelic Hospice Movement

Similar Episodes

Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic

00:00:23 ►

Salon.

00:00:23 ►

This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:31 ►

As you know, this coming weekend I’ll be on Orcas Island with about 350 of my new best friends,

00:00:35 ►

where we will all be participating in the Imagine Convergence.

00:00:42 ►

And even though the event is now sold out, you can still buy a $45 live stream pass,

00:00:45 ►

and that gives you access to all of the main hall sessions,

00:00:48 ►

which features about 18 different presenters.

00:00:51 ►

And you’ll also be able to access the recordings of those events for 15 days after the end of the conference.

00:00:54 ►

So you don’t have to be tied to the schedule during the conference

00:00:57 ►

if you want to live stream it.

00:00:59 ►

And once I return from this event,

00:01:01 ►

you’ll be hearing a lot more about it,

00:01:02 ►

but if you want to attend via the live stream, you’ll find the link in today’s program notes, which are available at psychedelicsalon.com.

00:01:11 ►

Now, before I introduce today’s program, I would first like to thank Samuel G. and Ian W. for their recurring donations to the salon.

00:01:20 ►

And an extra big thank you goes out to Owen M. B. from the UK, who surprised me by mailing what I consider to be a wad of cash.

00:01:29 ►

And it couldn’t have come at a better time, because I’d been trying to figure out how to put together a little spending money to take on my trip this week.

00:01:36 ►

So, Owen, you will be in my thoughts all week while I’m on Orcas Island. Thanks again.

00:01:41 ►

Also, I would like to thank my fellow salonners who have been supporting me on Patreon.

00:01:46 ►

After almost two years now, we seem to have stabilized at around 400 supporters.

00:01:52 ►

And over that time, another 45 have come and gone,

00:01:55 ►

but it now looks like we’ll be able to reach my goal of 500 supporters by the end of this year.

00:02:00 ►

And if you’re interested in joining the live version of this salon,

00:02:04 ►

which I host for my supporters on Patreon every Monday evening

00:02:07 ►

well it only costs one dollar a month

00:02:10 ►

and beginning in April I plan on featuring special guests on many of those nights

00:02:15 ►

for example on Monday April 1st

00:02:17 ►

and by the way that is April 1st of 2019

00:02:21 ►

for any time travelers who are joining us here in the future

00:02:24 ►

but on April 1st of this year,

00:02:27 ►

our guest will be one of the most interesting people that we’ve featured here in the salon

00:02:31 ►

in the past. He is Peter Gorman, and besides being an Amazonian adventurer who none other

00:02:38 ►

than Terrence McKenna pointed out as the real deal, well he was also the publisher of High

00:02:43 ►

Times Magazine for several years.

00:02:46 ►

And in the weeks following Peter’s appearance, there will be other guests who I’m sure you’ll

00:02:50 ►

also be interested in asking questions of yourself. So I hope to see you there.

00:02:55 ►

Now, for today’s program. Originally, I planned on playing the next of Lex Pelger’s fascinating

00:03:01 ►

interviews, but when the news reached me that Ralph Messner died three

00:03:05 ►

days ago, well, I was once again taken aback by a death that I hadn’t anticipated. Even though

00:03:12 ►

Ralph was a bit older than me, well, it was still a shock to hear of his passing. And it made me

00:03:18 ►

think of how many others of my friends and acquaintances have slipped out of this life

00:03:22 ►

before I was ready to say goodbye to them.

00:03:31 ►

People like Dr. Tom, Dale Pendell, Daniel Jabbour, Fraser Clark, Noah, John Perry Barlow,

00:03:35 ►

Carla Higdon, Kyle, and Linda Rosa, among others.

00:03:41 ►

And since they were all younger than me, their deaths surprised me more than the deaths of my good friends like Gary Fisher, Myron Stolaroff, and Nick Sand.

00:03:46 ►

And while you can still listen to some of their words of wisdom that I’ve preserved here in the salon, I still don’t feel as

00:03:51 ►

if I’ve done enough to keep their accomplishments in focus for those of us who continue to do the

00:03:56 ►

work. Now Nick Sand’s death was a really big shock to me, mainly because I still had several things

00:04:02 ►

that I planned on discussing with him. However, I kept putting that conversation off until a more convenient season, and well,

00:04:10 ►

and then the opportunity was gone. About a week or so after Nick died, which is almost two years

00:04:16 ►

ago now, one of our fellow salonners sent me a recording of an interview that Nick gave several

00:04:21 ►

years before his death. At the time, I was, well, I was just too sad

00:04:25 ►

to even listen to it, and then it slipped away in the clutter of all the cargo that I’ve been

00:04:30 ►

carrying around. During my recent move, however, I came across that recording once again, and

00:04:35 ►

after listening to it, I realized that the best way to keep Nick’s spirit alive in each of us is

00:04:41 ►

to play that interview and let Nick tell us about his life’s journey in his own words.

00:04:47 ►

The conversation with Nick’s hand that I’m about to play for you took place on a podcast called The Opium Den.

00:04:54 ►

Now, as best I can find out, it was hosted by Daniel Williams,

00:04:57 ►

but since I couldn’t find Daniel and since I didn’t know much about this recording that I’d been given,

00:05:03 ►

I figured that it would be easier for me to have to beg for forgiveness

00:05:06 ►

after the fact for having podcast this interview

00:05:08 ►

than it would be to ask permission first.

00:05:12 ►

And that’s an old trick I learned when I was a lawyer, by the way.

00:05:16 ►

So, Daniel, I hope that it’s okay for me to podcast

00:05:18 ►

this wonderful interview that you did with Nick.

00:05:21 ►

And if you learn about the Salon’s live podcast,

00:05:24 ►

and should you ever want to join us one Monday evening, we would love to have you for with Nick. And if you learn about the Salon’s live podcast and should you ever want to join us one Monday evening,

00:05:26 ►

we would love to have you for a guest.

00:05:28 ►

In fact, I’m sure that your stories

00:05:30 ►

are actually as fascinating as Nick’s.

00:05:33 ►

Anyway, now here is a long-forgotten conversation

00:05:36 ►

with the legendary alchemist

00:05:37 ►

and the creator of Orange Sunshine LSD,

00:05:41 ►

Nick Sand.

00:05:44 ►

Nicholas Sand, good afternoon.

00:05:46 ►

Welcome to the Opium Den.

00:05:49 ►

Thank you for having me, Daniel.

00:05:51 ►

Glad to be with you.

00:05:53 ►

Well, I’ve got a lot of listeners out there that are pretty excited about hearing from

00:05:59 ►

what most people consider you to be the most legendary LSD chemist to ever make LSD.

00:06:09 ►

So I really appreciate you coming in.

00:06:12 ►

And how I’d like to start off, if you don’t mind,

00:06:15 ►

I’d like you to take us back to when you first became aware and interested in psychedelics

00:06:21 ►

and how you walked that path.

00:06:24 ►

and interested in psychedelics and how you walked that path.

00:06:30 ►

Well, okay, I guess we’re going to have to go back to the early 60s. I was studying anthropology at Brooklyn College,

00:06:33 ►

and I had become fascinated by cultural revitalization movements.

00:06:40 ►

This is when a culture has been destroyed by another culture,

00:06:44 ►

say the white man coming and destroying the American Indian cultures, that caused an uprising of the use of peyote, which managed to allow them to rid themselves of white man sickness and alcoholism and to cure their inability to function by combining the cultural values of both their native indigenous values

00:07:16 ►

and the maturation stages of growing up with the American white one, which had impinged and basically destroyed their cultures.

00:07:29 ►

But peyote managed to allow them to bridge that gap

00:07:33 ►

and find new integration.

00:07:35 ►

So I found this really fascinating.

00:07:38 ►

And then speaking to Tim one day,

00:07:41 ►

he said, oh, there’s this woman down in Oaxaca.

00:07:44 ►

Now, Tim, are you meaning Tim Leary or Tim Scully?

00:07:47 ►

Pardon?

00:07:48 ►

I didn’t mean to interrupt.

00:07:49 ►

Tim Leary, actually.

00:07:49 ►

Tim Leary, okay.

00:07:51 ►

And so I decided on my own to take a group, and we went down and we studied and were initiated by Maria Sabinas of the Mazatec Indians in the use of the psilocybin mushroom.

00:08:09 ►

And that was a very enlightening experience for me.

00:08:12 ►

My first thing had been mescaline,

00:08:16 ►

and I did it according to the rituals of the Kiowa Indians.

00:08:23 ►

And I needed some sort of framework and it was after these two experiences

00:08:31 ►

which had been the mesclun trip was an amazing trip for me i sat the whole night nude in the

00:08:37 ►

lotus position looking into the fire feeling my chakras sending lotuses into the fire, which exploded into all of

00:08:46 ►

the vast potentials I had in each center of my being.

00:08:51 ►

And this was such a transcendent experience.

00:08:54 ►

It caused me to take off a year just to integrate it all, because I realized I’d gone from

00:09:00 ►

someone who had very low self-esteem to someone who realized there was nothing I couldn’t do

00:09:06 ►

if I applied myself with positive energy.

00:09:09 ►

So this was a real breakthrough.

00:09:11 ►

So I went and studied with Maria and had more breakthroughs and more realizations.

00:09:17 ►

And when I came back, I decided at the encouragement of a guy working at a chemical company as a lab tech

00:09:27 ►

that we should make some psilocybin.

00:09:29 ►

Well, that was an extremely ambitious project, which failed.

00:09:33 ►

But in the process, the analogous procedure for making dimethyltryptamine, DMT,

00:09:40 ►

was the same up to the last step where I had failed.

00:09:44 ►

So by simply switching starting materials, I was able to make a whole lot of DMT,

00:09:49 ►

and I started turning people on to DMT, which was changing a lot of people’s lives around.

00:09:56 ►

And then one night I went to attend a lecture with Richard Albert,

00:10:07 ►

I went to attend a lecture with Richard Albert, now Ram Dass, living in Hawaii,

00:10:10 ►

a good friend of mine for over 40 years.

00:10:22 ►

And after the lecture, a group of us went up to chat with him further, ask questions, and so on.

00:10:28 ►

And the third group thinned out, and eventually it was only me and the lab tech left.

00:10:33 ►

I was manufacturing DNT in the basement of my mom’s house at the time.

00:10:41 ►

And I took Richard home, and I showed him my little lab, and I showed him what I was studying, and I was very inspired by D&T,

00:10:45 ►

which has also given me one life-transforming realization after another.

00:10:51 ►

So he said, why don’t you come up to Millbrook?

00:10:53 ►

And I said, I’d love to come up to Millbrook.

00:10:55 ►

Now, tell everybody what Millbrook was.

00:10:59 ►

They may not understand, right?

00:11:01 ►

Right.

00:11:01 ►

Okay.

00:11:08 ►

not understand right right okay well when uh richard albert uh now called ramdas and timothy leary were professors at harvard they entered into a series of experiments with psilocybin

00:11:13 ►

and they formed a group in newton center massachusetts but then they got fired from

00:11:20 ►

harvard and they decided to move and they were given a gracious refuge by

00:11:26 ►

Billy Hitchcock who was the snitch and my sunshine child but he was up to that

00:11:34 ►

time a good friend of mine and one of my tripping buddies and I began to be introduced to the concept of set and setting.

00:11:47 ►

And this is the thing mostly that I would really like to talk about.

00:11:54 ►

Now, Millbrook was a large house on a mansion,

00:11:59 ►

and many people came there, celebrities, authors, editors,

00:12:07 ►

even a few politicians came there, celebrities, authors, editors, even a few politicians came through.

00:12:17 ►

And it was our joy to turn them on in a guided session with the proper accoutrements,

00:12:22 ►

sound of running water, fish swimming, something over 500 years old.

00:12:28 ►

It’s in a poem that Timothy wrote called During the Session.

00:12:37 ►

And so the set and setting concept was really developed and refined to a very high degree at Millbrook, which was a psychedelic center,

00:12:42 ►

which became the home of the Castalia Foundation and the League for Spiritual Discovery,

00:12:49 ►

which was an incorporated religion.

00:12:52 ►

And we thought we were protected because of the First Amendment rights that allows us to worship in any way we want.

00:13:00 ►

And to our chagrin, a few years later, we found we found out that no we didn’t have those rights

00:13:06 ►

and that we were being turned into criminals but during this time there was no fear of being

00:13:15 ►

arrested because nothing we were doing was illegal near the manufacture the distribution the turning on or the use or possession. So set and setting is such an important part.

00:13:27 ►

Now, set is what you bring to the session, your feelings at the moment.

00:13:35 ►

So if you’re going to create a good set, it’s good not to eat heavily before a meal.

00:13:43 ►

It’s not have a meal before the session.

00:13:47 ►

If you’re robust physique, probably good to fast a day or two, completely just drink water.

00:13:55 ►

You’ll get the most out of your session that way.

00:13:58 ►

Setting is the environment.

00:14:01 ►

At that time, the environment at Millbrook was a beautiful 2600 estate in a 70-room mansion.

00:14:08 ►

It was built around the turn of the century.

00:14:10 ►

It was gorgeous and surrounded by hundreds of acres, thousands of acres of forest and lakes and rivers.

00:14:17 ►

It was an ideal setting.

00:14:29 ►

similar to Albert’s vision of having a place with lakes and swans and temples where people could be initiated in the para-musical world.

00:14:33 ►

So the set and setting was really critical.

00:14:35 ►

You know, we found that if we could make the setting beautiful with flowers

00:14:42 ►

and everybody clean and dressed and prepared for

00:14:47 ►

the trip, that it was much better.

00:14:49 ►

The setting, the aesthetics and beauty with which you surround yourself before the trip

00:14:55 ►

is often more difficult in a traditional home.

00:15:01 ►

So many people have resorted to going out into the wild and relating to

00:15:05 ►

nature directly, which is another way of creating a beautiful setting.

00:15:11 ►

But this all changed in 1965 and 1966, and I began to notice at the psychedelic gatherings

00:15:18 ►

that people were taking barbiturates and wine, and people weren’t dancing anymore the joy of freaking freely in the

00:15:28 ►

california dionysian scene uh became very muted and the the effect of psychedelics is that they

00:15:38 ►

are so uh sensitizing to everything that’s in you they put put you in touch with your DNA. They put you in touch with the cosmos.

00:15:47 ►

Then to have this terror that someone’s going to kick in your door,

00:15:52 ►

knock you down, chain you up, and drag you away

00:15:54 ►

for having a religious experience

00:15:57 ►

really changed the entire ambience of the united states at this time because there was no way to turn on anymore

00:16:08 ►

without knowing back in your mind somewhere that you’re now a criminal doing this and so our

00:16:15 ►

religious freedoms were um uh we were relieved of our religious freedoms at this time. And as a result, millions of people have been prosecuted and tortured

00:16:27 ►

and put into jail over the last 40 years of this drug war.

00:16:32 ►

And you being a prominent one who was arrested and thrown into jail.

00:16:40 ►

Moving from Millbrook, where did your mind and experience take you from Millbrook?

00:16:49 ►

Where did you go next?

00:16:52 ►

Well, there was a very beautiful girl at Millbrook and someone who came from California who was living on a 300-acre ranch.

00:17:03 ►

from California who was living on a 300-acre ranch.

00:17:10 ►

And we moved there, and I had my child there.

00:17:19 ►

And this was in California, northern California, in Cloverdale.

00:17:21 ►

And we formed one of the first psychedelic communes,

00:17:27 ►

and we were all into going back to the land and to feel nature and to form a family tribal unit that could share the psychedelic experience.

00:17:36 ►

So that’s what I did, and I ran into Owsley at Millbrook,

00:17:40 ►

and he invited me also,

00:17:42 ►

and he became a strong critic of the purity of my

00:17:47 ►

psychedelic sacraments and gave me a few verbal boots in the ass about it.

00:17:56 ►

And so I endeavored to produce something that was finer than even pharmaceutical grade,

00:18:04 ►

and I succeeded.

00:18:06 ►

And that’s why the onset of the LSD that I made is always so smooth.

00:18:14 ►

Not always, because some people don’t have the right setting.

00:18:17 ►

But if they do, it is very smooth, because LSD is a magnifying intensifier.

00:18:24 ►

And so if there are other impurities in it, even though they wouldn’t normally have any

00:18:30 ►

effect on you, you can see them under this microscope and macroscope that you experience

00:18:37 ►

during the LSD experience.

00:18:39 ►

So LSD not made in Owsley’s tradition and in Tim Scully’s tradition of making absolutely pure,

00:18:49 ►

doubly crystallized chromatographed LSD, if you don’t have that, you will have a good experience,

00:18:57 ►

probably, but it won’t be as good and it won’t be as smooth, but it will still work.

00:19:08 ►

as smooth, but it will still work. Well, Orange Sunshine was the first LSD that I ever took back in the early summer of 1970. And I must agree with everyone else that I’ve ever met that took

00:19:16 ►

the drug back then in that time was that Orange Sunshine was the most pure and the best LSD I’ve ever taken, and it still remains in the minds of many as the very best LSD ever produced.

00:19:32 ►

So thank you for me and probably millions of others who experienced such a pure pharmaceutical grade of LSD. Did you get a lot of feedback at the time with regards to what you were making,

00:19:50 ►

or were you just too busy?

00:19:53 ►

Well, yes, busy running the commune, busy running underground laboratories,

00:19:58 ►

which are very elaborately, you know, because of the security and, you know,

00:20:09 ►

you know, because of the security and, you know, the observation of any place where you can source equipment or chemicals.

00:20:20 ►

So we had to stage these almost like quasi or paramilitary operations, you know, like little spy units, little groups that would go out. But what happened was that when the orange sunshine came out, and it was a whacking

00:20:31 ►

good dose, and it has been verified to me personally by one of the head forensic chemists

00:20:38 ►

of the DEA, that he was amazed that when he analyzed my LSD, the orange sunshine,

00:20:45 ►

that every tablet, every tablet he analyzed had precisely 300 micrograms.

00:20:51 ►

Pharmaceutical tableting and stuff has a 1% to 10% variation that’s allowable.

00:20:58 ►

So this was even better than pharmaceutical grade.

00:21:02 ►

better than pharmaceutical grade.

00:21:15 ►

But the groundswell that occurred from the release of that LSD that Tim and I made, Tim Scully, who was my partner in the Orange Sunshine Project, was so powerful, it caused such a tsunami from Washington, became very frightened

00:21:31 ►

at a force that could stop the Vietnam War in its tracks, to which I think Orange Sunshine

00:21:37 ►

did play a role.

00:21:38 ►

Yes, it did. was so disrupting.

00:21:46 ►

It destroyed our commune.

00:21:47 ►

They stole our land.

00:21:50 ►

We had all worked very hard,

00:21:52 ►

and over the years we had saved up enough money,

00:21:55 ►

but everybody was so terrified they couldn’t come forward.

00:21:58 ►

So I took the rap, and using tax evasion,

00:22:01 ►

things like they did with Al Capone,

00:22:03 ►

they managed to wrangle a 15-year sentence for me in front of a judge

00:22:09 ►

who was appointed to spearhead the war on drugs.

00:22:14 ►

And so I didn’t get any feedback.

00:22:20 ►

I had to run.

00:22:21 ►

I was arrested with five shotguns to my head.

00:22:27 ►

I’m a total pacifist.

00:22:28 ►

I’ve been a yogi since I was 15,

00:22:30 ►

and this whole thing was so bizarre and Kafkaesque

00:22:34 ►

that it was all happening to me,

00:22:36 ►

and there I was being taken from one venue to another

00:22:39 ►

in chains and shackles.

00:22:44 ►

It’s basically torture. They want you to cop a plea and they will

00:22:48 ►

torture you until they get one from you and you have the worst facilities as long as you’re

00:22:53 ►

fighting your case and it prolongs the time in jail which is extremely uncomfortable uh it’s

00:23:00 ►

meant for short-term you know processing but usually winds up being years and years of torture.

00:23:07 ►

So many people broke.

00:23:09 ►

I fought my case to the bitter end.

00:23:11 ►

I did not want to give in to that whole thing.

00:23:16 ►

And I finally got out on appeal bond after being sentenced to 15 years.

00:23:22 ►

At this time, I had a choice to make. I had a young daughter who I was completely

00:23:27 ►

in love with, and I decided that I could not be separated from my daughter. I was always

00:23:35 ►

teaching her at home to read and write and all of this, and she was the joy of my life,

00:23:43 ►

and I said, I am not going to lose this.

00:23:45 ►

And I took her and my wife, and we fled to Canada, where we joined a network of peace activists,

00:23:55 ►

draft dodgers, and drug fugitives, mainly psychedelic and marijuana.

00:24:01 ►

And that’s where we lived for 20 years years using false ID that was very well made.

00:24:10 ►

And we went all over the world. I went to India. I lived in ashrams and studied yoga

00:24:15 ►

and meditation. So by the time I got back to Canada and started a new laboratory, I still had no idea. It wasn’t until I appeared

00:24:27 ►

in front of the mind states in Berkeley that I realized how many people came up to me and

00:24:39 ►

said, ìYou have changed my whole life. Iíve been wanting to meet you for 20 or 30 years.

00:24:46 ►

And, of course, this was amazing to me.

00:24:50 ►

This was in 2001.

00:24:52 ►

So this was the 2001 Minds Days.

00:24:55 ►

I think it was in May, late May.

00:24:58 ►

And so after I made that appearance, it was like since 1970 until 2001, I had no idea

00:25:11 ►

the effects of what I was doing.

00:25:12 ►

I did it sheerly on my own personal experience and how important it became to me through

00:25:21 ►

all of my visions that everybody must get stoned, as Dylan used to say,

00:25:27 ►

and that it’s a really good thing, at least once in your life, to take a look into your inner self

00:25:35 ►

and see that listening to everybody above you, around you, is okay for surviving. But if you want to have a deep spiritual

00:25:45 ►

experience and know God,

00:25:48 ►

you must look within

00:25:49 ►

because it doesn’t exist

00:25:51 ►

but inside of

00:25:54 ►

you. That’s exactly

00:25:55 ►

right. Those are my sentiments.

00:25:58 ►

Share with me

00:25:59 ►

and our listeners

00:26:00 ►

the lab that

00:26:03 ►

you put together in Canada

00:26:06 ►

and how you eventually were found out and arrested there

00:26:11 ►

and then extradited back to the U.S.?

00:26:14 ►

Well,

00:26:15 ►

well,

00:26:16 ►

when I was in Canada, someone came up to me.

00:26:34 ►

And they said, you know, a few people found out who I was and what I could do.

00:26:41 ►

what I could do.

00:26:47 ►

And I just basically was mining a little gold and farming up in northern Canada,

00:26:51 ►

living a peaceful life.

00:26:53 ►

And they prevailed upon me to open a laboratory

00:26:57 ►

and teach them to make psychedelics,

00:27:00 ►

which I agreed to do.

00:27:02 ►

And we got it together, and we did it, and we produced very fine MDMA, DMT, LSD, arrested through the

00:27:26 ►

cowardice of another

00:27:28 ►

psychedelic chemist

00:27:29 ►

named Leonard Enos

00:27:31 ►

who now works for the DEA

00:27:33 ►

so that was very disappointing

00:27:37 ►

the laboratory was extremely

00:27:39 ►

beautiful

00:27:40 ►

it was a work of love

00:27:43 ►

and it worked perfectly, and we produced superfine

00:27:48 ►

sacraments for people to take. A lot of ecstasy, a lot of pure ecstasy, better than pharmaceutical And I was arrested, and then I was taken back.

00:28:08 ►

The laboratory was one of the finest laboratories that had ever been discovered,

00:28:13 ►

and it was so fine a laboratory that the Health Canada official in charge of the taking down of the laboratory

00:28:21 ►

said that they didn’t have anything like this anywhere in Canada not even in their own RCMP and lab laboratories in Ottawa and

00:28:31 ►

he was very impressed with what we had and so they made a little full-length

00:28:38 ►

video of it which I’ve got a copy of it It’s kind of depressing to see them destroy something.

00:28:49 ►

They didn’t really destroy it, but they just made a movie of what was there.

00:28:53 ►

But the atmosphere, of course, is very sad, very terrorizing.

00:28:58 ►

Many people of our groups who have seen this say,

00:29:03 ►

I don’t want to see that again. It’s just too depressing.

00:29:05 ►

But there’s

00:29:06 ►

a full screen version of

00:29:08 ►

a full length film of the

00:29:10 ►

laboratory being

00:29:12 ►

entered and filmed.

00:29:15 ►

So that does exist.

00:29:17 ►

But I think one of the

00:29:18 ►

things I would like to say

00:29:20 ►

about MDMA,

00:29:23 ►

which we haven’t hit yet,

00:29:24 ►

is that I think it’s very important, and I think that

00:29:28 ►

LSD, you know, in the deconstruction of a paradigm that is beginning to be dysfunctional,

00:29:34 ►

such as United States policies and hypocrisies, that you need to start to deconstruct the mental set that you’ve been programmed with.

00:29:50 ►

LSD is about deconditioning, and all the psychedelics are about deconditioning and superseding.

00:29:59 ►

All of the programs that we reflexively react to everything, we can’t say certain words with certain letters.

00:30:07 ►

Like if you say the F word, whoa,

00:30:09 ►

well, that’s really so far cry from what you could do

00:30:14 ►

if you could just get out of all that.

00:30:16 ►

And that’s what we were doing,

00:30:18 ►

getting out of the constraints of the mental programming that we had been

00:30:27 ►

uh… subjected to

00:30:29 ►

and which is still of course going on

00:30:32 ►

uh… with

00:30:33 ►

you know uh… like on steroids

00:30:36 ►

and

00:30:38 ►

but no one was really ready because we could make uh… any batch of md a

00:30:44 ►

which is a little rougher than MDMA, but it’s

00:30:47 ►

still a love-hug drug and one where people can relate very intimately with each other.

00:30:54 ►

And our commune at that time was looking to just restrict the starter materials on all

00:31:00 ►

levels for making LSDs.

00:31:02 ►

So we were waiting to make underground connections to get our starting materials.

00:31:08 ►

And in the meantime, we tried to make other things which were legal

00:31:11 ►

to get around the criminalization aspect.

00:31:16 ►

And we made some MDMA, some MDA, and we took it.

00:31:21 ►

And it was like, well, it’s kind of nice, love-hug drug.

00:31:25 ►

It only lasts four hours, and we had sort of been preconditioned to expect a 12-hour trip.

00:31:31 ►

But I don’t think we were ready for it.

00:31:34 ►

I think that 20 or 30 years after the LSD experience,

00:31:40 ►

the population was now ready to go to a deeper level because all the parts really originate

00:31:49 ►

from feelings and feelings are more powerful than thoughts

00:31:53 ►

so after we had

00:31:54 ►

you know culturally deconstructed bit by bit

00:31:58 ►

uh… through the changes that have been happening in the last forty years

00:32:02 ►

in the eighties suddenly MDMA was rediscovered,

00:32:05 ►

which was a great mystery.

00:32:07 ►

Why did MDMA suddenly become so relevant and so important?

00:32:14 ►

And it was because we all need love.

00:32:16 ►

And all the youngsters that take it should also realize that set and setting

00:32:21 ►

with MDMA is also very important and again I’m not gonna

00:32:27 ►

go through this division the East Coast Apollonian everything must be very

00:32:34 ►

strict and religious and do everything that does produce a very beautiful

00:32:38 ►

visionary trip but there’s also a way to dance to God, to walk into the fields and make love and all of that.

00:32:48 ►

And that’s sort of more the Dionysian take.

00:32:50 ►

Well, I think you need both.

00:32:53 ►

And I think we need bridges to both.

00:32:56 ►

And I think the psychedelics such as mescaline, psilocybin, and LSD are the ones that are more mental.

00:33:10 ►

and LSD are the ones that are more mental, and MDA and MDMA are the ones that activate the heart.

00:33:18 ►

And it’s so important for the youth and the young people taking it to understand that this is a sacrament,

00:33:28 ►

and you can have way better trips by doing it in a sacred and private situation instead of at parties where people are drinking booze and stuff like that. That, to me, is kind of sacrilegious.

00:33:33 ►

Oh, I agree with you. That is sacrilegious to mix alcohol or even other drugs, barbiturates, amphetamines with either LSD or any of the psychedelics, MDMA,

00:33:47 ►

to mix chemicals is not a very good thing.

00:33:52 ►

But what I don’t want to bring you down, so to speak,

00:33:56 ►

but I would like our listeners to hear about your trials and tribulations

00:34:01 ►

once you were extradited back to the United States and where you stood

00:34:06 ►

trial and were put in jail. So give us your thoughts on how that went down and who betrayed

00:34:15 ►

you and how you came through it all. Because like I said, when I met you in Basel, Switzerland,

00:34:22 ►

you were just the sweetest, nicest man I’d ever met,

00:34:25 ►

and to know that you had been through such a hassle

00:34:29 ►

gave me hope that others can do the same thing.

00:34:33 ►

So give us your view on your prison time

00:34:37 ►

and how all that came to pass.

00:34:41 ►

Well, the prison time was actually rather interesting.

00:34:44 ►

It happened in two phases. The first was when I was arrested. Well, the prison time was actually rather interesting.

00:34:45 ►

It happened in two phases.

00:34:47 ►

The first was when I was arrested.

00:34:49 ►

I had a very beautiful laboratory in St. Louis, and I that, 74.

00:35:08 ►

It was 74, yep.

00:35:10 ►

So at the end of 73, I think I was at the,

00:35:13 ►

shortly, I was in the beginning, January 70,

00:35:17 ►

January 74, I was arrested in Missouri.

00:35:21 ►

I was held there for a while.

00:35:24 ►

They hadn’t done the arrest correctly and the case was thrown out

00:35:28 ►

for my laboratories in

00:35:30 ►

St. Louis. So I was then transported

00:35:35 ►

to California in a chain

00:35:38 ►

and shackled and driven on

00:35:43 ►

sometimes flies flown to San Francisco,

00:35:47 ►

where I was put into the San Francisco County Jail.

00:35:50 ►

Now, the San Francisco County Jail is a pretty rough jail,

00:35:53 ►

and for a city that likes to consider itself enlightened,

00:36:00 ►

it is really a cancerous ulcer on the morality of the people that allow such a system to go on.

00:36:11 ►

I witnessed guards taking out mentally sick people and practicing karate on them,

00:36:19 ►

and I actually got two guards fired for doing that because my lawyer was very close with Hongisto, who was the sheriff.

00:36:27 ►

And I told him what happened and, you know, why the guy wound up in the hospital.

00:36:32 ►

And he transmitted to Hongisto, and those guards were fired.

00:36:37 ►

So I did a little good there, and I eventually avoided being raped, beaten, and everything by the people who have been disenfranchised from the wealth of our society.

00:36:51 ►

I’ve become thieves and whatever, all the people you find in jail.

00:36:58 ►

At that time, there were very few people in for drugs.

00:37:01 ►

It was mainly robbers and people beat people up

00:37:06 ►

and murderers and things like that.

00:37:10 ►

So that was a really heavy experience.

00:37:12 ►

It was very depressing.

00:37:13 ►

It was very scary.

00:37:15 ►

And eventually I got out of the tanks

00:37:18 ►

and became a trustee

00:37:20 ►

because they needed someone smart enough

00:37:22 ►

to run the control center

00:37:26 ►

because the guards couldn’t really deal if they were not computerized at that time.

00:37:31 ►

The jail experience was pretty heavy, but I learned a lot there.

00:37:38 ►

And as soon as I was convicted, they sent me up to mcneil island and that you know i don’t know that we

00:37:49 ►

will still put the same architect who did

00:37:52 ►

alcatraz

00:37:53 ►

which is such a nice or such a shame

00:37:56 ►

to serve with the club that they had to shut it down

00:37:59 ►

so they put me up into one just like it

00:38:02 ►

located in the blog, fugitive sound,

00:38:06 ►

in a place where prisoners were routinely killing themselves.

00:38:11 ►

As I was booked into the prison,

00:38:13 ►

they were dragging body bags out for people who had committed suicide

00:38:17 ►

from being in the hole too long.

00:38:20 ►

And a whole lot of stuff was going on then.

00:38:23 ►

That is still going on on you know uh at an

00:38:26 ►

accelerated rate i mean it’s tens probably tens of millions of people just for marijuana have gone

00:38:33 ►

through this system in the last 40 50 years and that’s just criminal. How can you make a plant illegal?

00:38:54 ►

So personally, in that phase, I did not do very well, to be frank with you.

00:38:55 ►

I managed to survive.

00:38:57 ►

I managed to get out.

00:39:07 ►

I became an operating room technician working during surgery with visiting surgeons to the prison.

00:39:11 ►

And then I continued to do that when I got out on appeal bond.

00:39:18 ►

But when it came time for the appeal, it was denied. And I didn’t have any confidence that I would get any relief from the Supreme Court of the United States.

00:39:30 ►

So I just quietly vanished, and it was quite an exciting time.

00:39:36 ►

I was living in a houseboat in Sausalito, pretty much just waiting to see which way the cookie was going to crumble.

00:39:46 ►

And Nikki Scully came over, and she said, we’ve got to get you out of here.

00:39:55 ►

Your appeal’s been denied.

00:39:57 ►

So she drove me to another friend, and that friend took me to Oregon, where I met another

00:40:02 ►

friend from prison, and I hid out there until I got enough ID to cross into Canada.

00:40:09 ►

I made it into Canada, no problem, and I started to live in Canada until I went.

00:40:15 ►

When I established my Canadian ID, I then went to India, where I studied meditation and worked in an ashram for three years.

00:40:28 ►

Then I returned to Canada, and I continued with the same master in Oregon.

00:40:36 ►

Then when that communion broke up in 1981, I went back up and did a variety of things,

00:40:41 ►

farming, beekeeping, gold mining, just being in nature and keeping my head down.

00:40:49 ►

Until, again, I came to the part where I made the laboratories in the, I was over 93, 94, 95, 96,

00:41:02 ►

and was arrested on September 28, 1996,

00:41:07 ►

held there until we worked out all the details of being transferred back into the United States,

00:41:14 ►

at which time I was held in the same jail that I’d been in,

00:41:18 ►

in San Francisco County Jail, for five months,

00:41:30 ►

jail for five months till my trial for bail jumping was where they managed to get the same hanging judge to do my case.

00:41:34 ►

And so we went for a bench trial instead of a jury trial because it was a technical issue

00:41:38 ►

and he had not done the procedure correctly. So Conti, the judge, was overruled 3-0 by a buried panel on the

00:41:49 ►

Ninth Circuit, which allowed me to get bail. This whole process took a couple of years,

00:41:56 ►

during which time I was transferred from one jail to another, and then finally to Terminal Island and then from there to Lompoc. During this time of incarceration

00:42:09 ►

and arrests, I think I counted 73 bed changes, 14 different institutions, and being black-boxed,

00:42:19 ►

chained, shackled, belly-chained, handcuffed, and made to travel that way for days and days.

00:42:25 ►

It’s extremely difficult to go to the bathroom like that.

00:42:30 ►

So the whole system is, you know, based on torture.

00:42:33 ►

They make no distinction between someone who got caught smoking a joint

00:42:37 ►

or someone who just, you know, murdered 10 babies.

00:42:40 ►

I mean, they treat you all the same.

00:42:42 ►

And there’s no distinction.

00:42:44 ►

You’re just basically tortured.

00:42:47 ►

Now, when did you get out of prison for the last time?

00:42:54 ►

And obviously you’ve stayed out, but when did you get out of prison, and what did you do?

00:43:01 ►

What did you do?

00:43:12 ►

Well, I mean, basically, when I, I think I need to go back a little bit further. So eventually I was transferred to Terminal Island.

00:43:16 ►

And in Terminal Island, I had a choice.

00:43:20 ►

I could be miserable or I could turn it by mental intention into a yoga camp.

00:43:30 ►

And everybody said, oh, you’re not going to be able to do that.

00:43:34 ►

You’re going to have to hook up with some gang because someone’s going to have to protect you in prison.

00:43:38 ►

I said, I don’t think so. so I got one of those 20 minute day jobs

00:43:45 ►

eventually

00:43:46 ►

after taking care of the roses

00:43:48 ►

which I liked doing very much

00:43:50 ►

and

00:43:51 ►

then I went and worked

00:43:55 ►

as an orderly in one of the units

00:43:57 ►

and I walked 5 miles

00:43:59 ►

every day, I did 2 and a half hours

00:44:01 ►

of yoga and meditation

00:44:02 ►

and I wrote, I wrote a book

00:44:04 ►

a manual on how to use psychedelics.

00:44:08 ►

I wrote articles on different trip experiences,

00:44:11 ►

and I was successful in not letting the prison experience really bring me down.

00:44:17 ►

Now, of course, the food is out of date and of very low quality and not very nourishing,

00:44:23 ►

so my health did begin to deteriorate a bit from that.

00:44:29 ►

I’ve recovered by now.

00:44:32 ►

So I think I did the jail experience a second time way better, you know,

00:44:37 ►

using the lessons from the psychedelics about set setting.

00:44:41 ►

But at this time, even a more advanced concept that is intention how you can set

00:44:47 ►

your intention in your life to be joyous to be open-handed or to be closed fist uptight

00:44:57 ►

and miserable and we all have this choice every day when we wake up, misery or joy, misery or joy.

00:45:08 ►

And some people say, well, I want to be real and I’m miserable.

00:45:16 ►

But misery and joy on a certain level of consciousness are both illusory.

00:45:22 ►

So if you put on the joyous mask for a while, sometimes it becomes second nature and becomes natural. If you put the misery mask on, the same thing occurs.

00:45:27 ►

So you really have a simple choice.

00:45:30 ►

I stayed in prison until December 20, 2000.

00:45:40 ►

And at this time, everyone said,

00:45:43 ►

don’t expect to get parole.

00:45:45 ►

You’re old law, but you’re not going to get it because nobody got it.

00:45:48 ►

But my behavior was so exemplary.

00:45:51 ►

I got complimentary release, early termination from Washington,

00:45:57 ►

at which time I started working in a jewelry store,

00:46:03 ►

started editing my book, and then I went to the halfway house.

00:46:10 ►

That’s right.

00:46:13 ►

When I got out of prison on the 20th of December, my time was still not up.

00:46:32 ►

not up. And the cafe house, I stayed in for about four months, and I was not allowed to sleep anywhere else. But then after a while, they started giving me weekends at home with

00:46:38 ►

Usha, and then they gave me home home confinement and it was during this period

00:46:45 ►

uh… transition

00:46:47 ►

uh… to so-called normal society

00:46:51 ►

but i was invited to speak at the mines

00:46:54 ►

and it was at that time that i had to think credible

00:46:58 ►

just shock

00:47:00 ►

standard for the six hundred people

00:47:02 ►

uh…

00:47:03 ►

that the producer said

00:47:06 ►

he had never seen anyone

00:47:07 ►

get a standing ovation from everyone

00:47:09 ►

from the talk I gave.

00:47:11 ►

I still have copies of that talk

00:47:13 ►

should anyone want them.

00:47:14 ►

Eventually I’m going to organize a website

00:47:17 ►

and put it all up there

00:47:18 ►

for everyone to read.

00:47:19 ►

Just haven’t gotten to it yet.

00:47:23 ►

Does that answer your question?

00:47:24 ►

Yes, it does.

00:47:25 ►

And I think it answers it very well.

00:47:28 ►

So tell us, I’ve got a couple more other questions here, but I’d like you to tell us what you’ve

00:47:34 ►

been doing since 2000.

00:47:36 ►

What has the last nine years of Nick Sand’s life been like?

00:47:42 ►

It’s been very, very, very beautiful.

00:47:49 ►

life’s been like? It’s been very, very, very beautiful. Usha waited for me for years and years while I was in prison. And we wrote dozens and dozens of, you know, many-paged letters where we

00:47:57 ►

worked out, you know, our love. And when I got out, we began to live life together here in California, doing organic gardening.

00:48:09 ►

I was working in a jewelry store for years until I retired.

00:48:14 ►

And just in California, it was a very beautiful place.

00:48:19 ►

And we live in a gorgeous little spot in the woods.

00:48:23 ►

And it’s just been very peaceful, lots of yoga, meditation, walking in the hills, and being in love.

00:48:32 ►

Well, being in love is the greatest thing any one person can do with another.

00:48:40 ►

And take us back just a little bit.

00:48:44 ►

and take us back just a little bit.

00:48:47 ►

Tell us, you know, there’s been a lot of controversy about Timothy Leary, whether he screwed the pooch on LSD, was good for LSD or bad.

00:48:55 ►

What’s your opinion of Timothy Leary,

00:48:58 ►

and how do you think his legacy should be written?

00:49:04 ►

Well, okay. his his legacy should be written well okay um typically comes from um you know an older paradigm

00:49:11 ►

baseball and beer and his contact with psilocybin you know, so strong from this older paradigm.

00:49:33 ►

And he was an intellectual.

00:49:36 ►

He was not a spiritualist.

00:49:37 ►

See, this is the difference between him and other people like rama

00:49:45 ►

who you know it became spiritual journey for him that then brought him to india

00:49:51 ►

and then probably baba

00:49:53 ►

where he studied meditation

00:49:55 ►

so there were two ways to go but timothy

00:49:58 ►

was brilliant

00:49:59 ►

absolutely brilliant

00:50:01 ►

quick silver mind

00:50:04 ►

one of his great psychological techniques was to invent these slogans

00:50:11 ►

that had incredible effects on people.

00:50:16 ►

And so it worked very well.

00:50:18 ►

I mean, he would be going out and saying, tune in, turn on, and drop out,

00:50:23 ►

which basically means

00:50:25 ►

hear the DNA singing in your blood.

00:50:30 ►

Drop out of restricted life where there’s no love and there are bad choices that are

00:50:37 ►

the only ones that are presented to you, and do this by turning on.

00:50:43 ►

and do this by turning on.

00:50:48 ►

And so, in a way, he and I were a team,

00:50:52 ►

even though he and I really didn’t get along that well.

00:50:55 ►

I still loved and respected him.

00:51:01 ►

And I think his legacy should be remembered as the man who was the snake oil salesman.

00:51:06 ►

He’s the guy who went out and said, we have a cure-all here, and I want everybody to hear about it.

00:51:12 ►

So it was Timothy’s work as a publicist and a philosopher for LSD and turning on the youth.

00:51:24 ►

Without his work, there would have been much less interest in it.

00:51:28 ►

And when I was introduced in Basel, the man who introduced me said,

00:51:33 ►

there are two people at this conference who have really turned on the world.

00:51:39 ►

One is Albert Hoffman, and the other is Nick Sand.

00:51:42 ►

And even though I was not invited to speak in Basel,

00:51:46 ►

he gave me his spot

00:51:47 ►

and allowed me to tell my

00:51:50 ►

story. That was Bob

00:51:51 ►

Porky. He was a good friend

00:51:53 ►

and a very generous person to where

00:51:55 ►

I just barely met at the time.

00:51:57 ►

Who felt, I think, in many

00:51:59 ►

ways the same way you do.

00:52:04 ►

So, where would you like to go? So, your belief that the same way you do.

00:52:06 ►

So where would you like to go?

00:52:11 ►

So your belief that Timothy Leary’s legacy should be that he was the publicist and the Pied Piper,

00:52:18 ►

for lack of a better term,

00:52:19 ►

and that on balance what he did was good?

00:52:28 ►

I don’t really think in terms of good and bad.

00:52:36 ►

I do think that psychedelics are good. Everyone makes mistakes. We’re all experimenting if we’re living life, and we learn by our mistakes. We all learn by our mistakes. And those mistakes were very important and nothing to feel bad about.

00:52:48 ►

People make mistakes and they should not condemn themselves for it.

00:52:53 ►

They should love themselves and realize that the mistake is showing them a new way to do

00:52:58 ►

things that’s better and often is the beginning of an invention. So Timothy really was the person that spread the idea of turning on to the whole world,

00:53:13 ►

while the intellectuals and the medical profession were threatened and disappointed

00:53:19 ►

because his popularization led to many changes in the basic culture,

00:53:26 ►

which then brought the government in and restricted all LSD research.

00:53:31 ►

So naturally these researchers were very frustrated,

00:53:35 ►

and they had to change their entire tactics,

00:53:38 ►

and they too had to go underground if they were going to continue using LSD

00:53:43 ►

and other psychedelics as psychotherapists.

00:53:46 ►

So it’s been a long hiatus since the time when psychedelics could be used for, you know,

00:53:54 ►

legally for research until now when it’s just starting to occur again.

00:54:00 ►

And I think that what Timothy was getting at was self-realization.

00:54:07 ►

And that is what it’s all been about for me, too.

00:54:10 ►

Self-realization and the sharing of the love, the sharing of the light,

00:54:15 ►

which is a side effect of having a positive experience on any of the psychedelics or pathogens.

00:54:24 ►

So his role was very important, and I think

00:54:30 ►

his role was to support the spiritual umbrella, over which all these other little disciplines

00:54:36 ►

like psychology, psychiatry, harm reduction, all this kind of stuff, wants to say, well,

00:54:43 ►

we’re going to do it legally, we’re going to do it right,

00:54:45 ►

and it’s going to be done according to government regulations.

00:54:48 ►

And right there, it’s kind of like, we’ll destroy your setting.

00:54:52 ►

But we’re managing.

00:54:54 ►

And I’m in charge of all the people that are using psychedelics legally, and their work is excellent.

00:55:02 ►

But I think we have to keep in mind the medical model is superseded

00:55:07 ►

by the transcendent spiritual model,

00:55:09 ►

which is the deepest level that you can go to in life

00:55:13 ►

and should not have the restrictions of the medical model.

00:55:17 ►

That is very well put, Nick.

00:55:20 ►

That’s exactly my thoughts on the issue,

00:55:23 ►

and I couldn’t have said it any better.

00:55:26 ►

I do a lot of – I give a lot of lectures on college campuses about drugs and drug policy,

00:55:32 ►

and I’m encouraged by, one, the responsibility of young people in wanting to know exactly what it is that they’re ingesting into their systems. But I have found, to my surprise and comfort, that there is still a very tremendous interest in psychedelics,

00:55:53 ►

specifically LSD, and there’s a lot of mushrooms being consumed.

00:55:58 ►

So always a great interest, and they love to hear about Albert Hoffman and, and name and people like you that were responsible for allowing them to, uh, to discover their, their inner beauty

00:56:11 ►

and, uh, stretch their minds. Um, what I, what I have found though, and I, and I want, I’d like to

00:56:17 ►

get your comments on this over the past, maybe 10 or 15 years. Um, what the, the LSD that I’ve been able to find seems to be of a much smaller dose level than the

00:56:30 ►

original days of orange sunshine, white lightning, and some of the others.

00:56:35 ►

Do you sense that? Or is that just something that’s just an anomaly for my search? Or do you think that the LSD experiences that people are having today

00:56:47 ►

with the lower dose levels are somehow less satisfying or less enlightening

00:56:56 ►

than the early days when 300 micrograms would literally blow your mind

00:57:00 ►

and you would see God and commune with nature?

00:57:03 ►

What are your thoughts on that?

00:57:07 ►

Well, in part, I think I’m responsible for it.

00:57:13 ►

And in part, I think it has to do with the terrorism of the war on drugs and on the people

00:57:21 ►

it’s supposed to protect.

00:57:23 ►

and on the people it’s supposed to protect.

00:57:32 ►

And when I was in Canada, I realized, you know, the incredible tsunami I had started with 300 mics,

00:57:35 ►

because in those days, people really didn’t know about set and setting.

00:57:37 ►

I think they know more about it now.

00:57:40 ►

And I think they could handle higher doses. But at that time, I was concerned for, you know, my personal safety. And I decided,

00:57:47 ►

well, let’s just tell everybody what it is, how much it is. And if they want to get to

00:57:53 ►

100 mic level, take one square, making it on a blotter then, or take two squares if you want to

00:58:01 ►

have a really nice trip with the hallucinations begin, and three

00:58:05 ►

if you want to see God.

00:58:07 ►

And so we began to manufacture it in 100-mic doses, and that went very well.

00:58:17 ►

And when the RCMP interviewed me, I said to them that, do you have any idea

00:58:27 ►

how much LSD has gone out

00:58:29 ►

into the Vancouver area

00:58:31 ►

and they said no

00:58:33 ►

and I said

00:58:35 ►

you have access to

00:58:37 ►

all the data that comes from

00:58:39 ►

drug abuse cases

00:58:41 ►

and medical emergencies

00:58:44 ►

in the emergency rooms and you’re up with

00:58:48 ►

that aren’t you because I was talking to major investigator and Health Canada

00:58:52 ►

official and they said yes we know very well and I said okay how many casualties

00:58:59 ►

from LSD use have you observed in the emergency room reports?

00:59:06 ►

And they said, none.

00:59:08 ►

And I said, do you know how many doses of LSD I produced here in Vancouver

00:59:12 ►

and distributed here?

00:59:13 ►

And they said, no.

00:59:14 ►

I said, 10 million.

00:59:18 ►

They were flabbergasted.

00:59:20 ►

Well, it must have gone somewhere else.

00:59:21 ►

It couldn’t have been here.

00:59:22 ►

And I said, no, it didn’t.

00:59:24 ►

Most of it did get here.

00:59:25 ►

Some went to Montreal, but mainly it was all consumed right here in Vancouver.

00:59:29 ►

I would not allow anyone to take it to the U.S. because I was afraid to, you know, knock on that door.

00:59:37 ►

So I didn’t allow it to go to the U.S.

00:59:40 ►

I just distributed it in Vancouver.

00:59:42 ►

And it caused, you it caused a great deal of

00:59:46 ►

enlightenment

00:59:47 ►

in the general population there.

00:59:50 ►

Do you think that… I’m sorry.

00:59:52 ►

Go ahead. I’m going on a little bit

00:59:53 ►

further here. What has happened is

00:59:56 ►

it’s become more and more and more difficult

00:59:58 ►

to get decent starting materials,

01:00:00 ►

decent equipment, and decent

01:00:02 ►

chemicals. The restrictions have become

01:00:04 ►

so tight that people get whatever they can from whatever they can,

01:00:07 ►

and they make batches of stuff.

01:00:09 ►

They’re so running and hiding doing this kind of manufacture

01:00:13 ►

that they don’t have the inspiration, they don’t have the knowledge,

01:00:20 ►

they don’t have the understanding anymore of how important a really pure psychedelic is.

01:00:28 ►

So not only have the dosages become, you know, in many cases, disco dosages.

01:00:33 ►

I think Arrowhead and some of the other sites who have analyzed average doses will say they would be 25 and 50.

01:00:43 ►

So, and it’s probably not a high-quality LSD.

01:00:47 ►

It is LSD, but it’s a very low dose.

01:00:50 ►

So what people do to compensate for that is they take a strip of them,

01:00:54 ►

five or ten at a time, and they have good chips.

01:00:59 ►

A little rougher than if the LSD were made with great care

01:01:03 ►

and double recrystallized and all that.

01:01:07 ►

But that is sort of how the dosage levels evolved.

01:01:14 ►

The terrorism is responsible for it, and the government is responsible for all of the drug tragedies that occur,

01:01:23 ►

because criminalization is insane and all it’s doing

01:01:28 ►

is bankrupting our country and it’s not working and everyone agrees the war on drugs is not working

01:01:35 ►

yet it persists so this is just you know um a typical insanity that we live with among all the other insanities.

01:01:46 ►

Well, do you think that we’ll ever get back to a situation

01:01:49 ►

where much higher quality and higher microgram dose levels will be produced?

01:01:57 ►

What you said about the impurities are not quite as good as the old days, I guess.

01:02:04 ►

And I’ve noticed that, too.

01:02:05 ►

The transition seems to be just a little rougher,

01:02:11 ►

a little less smooth than some of the original acid back in our time, I guess.

01:02:18 ►

So do you see potential?

01:02:20 ►

Do you see that changing, or is that just going to be the way it is?

01:02:24 ►

potential? Do you see that changing, or is that just going to be the way it is?

01:02:32 ►

Well, when I go to the psychedelic gatherings to give talks and stuff like that, I hear that there are many interested college students who can understand these concepts, and when

01:02:40 ►

I was manufacturing LSD, it was an extremely complicated procedure until some more simple procedures were invented and discovered and found to be relevant.

01:02:52 ►

So I think people are starting to understand the importance of this, the difficulty of manufacturing pure psychedelics in a terrorist society is extremely difficult.

01:03:08 ►

And so mistakes are made, shortcuts are taken that shouldn’t be taken,

01:03:15 ►

that are, in my view, unethical.

01:03:18 ►

But, you know, when you’re a rat, you know,

01:03:21 ►

being chased by a bunch of rednecks shotgun blasts out you’re in a wood pile

01:03:25 ►

sometimes you know you can’t pick up every little stick and you’ve got to pick up every little stick

01:03:32 ►

to produce a fine psychedelic but it’s very difficult in these conditions as though you

01:03:39 ►

want to produce fine wine but you know the government is spraying the lands, running highways through your orchards,

01:03:46 ►

power lines

01:03:48 ►

over, well, you can’t produce

01:03:49 ►

a good wine that way,

01:03:52 ►

and you can’t produce a good psychedelic

01:03:54 ►

under those circumstances

01:03:56 ►

either. So, yes,

01:03:58 ►

I am hoping that there will be a

01:04:00 ►

groundswell of interest.

01:04:02 ►

The information is available

01:04:04 ►

everywhere. Pical, PCAL, there’s

01:04:07 ►

all the newest formulas, and they all work. And I think and feel that on a groundswell

01:04:16 ►

level, because it never goes top-down. It’s always from bottom-up where change occurs,

01:04:23 ►

because we are the base of the pyramid of power.

01:04:27 ►

We are the ones that support it.

01:04:29 ►

As soon as we can get out of the conditioning of supporting this pyramid of oppression and spiritual restriction,

01:04:38 ►

the pyramid will come down, and we can form something new where we can start treating this planet like the paradise

01:04:47 ►

it is and develop our DNA to the point where we can use it not as some kind of strange

01:04:57 ►

genetically modified thing, but as a way of evolving to higher levels.

01:05:03 ►

I think this change is occurring.

01:05:05 ►

I’m sure it’s occurring.

01:05:07 ►

We’re going to go through a bad patch this year, for sure, at least,

01:05:11 ►

and maybe a few more.

01:05:12 ►

But, you know, you can’t make omelets without breaking eggs,

01:05:15 ►

and I just would recommend everybody hold on, meditate,

01:05:20 ►

and do whatever you can to keep your sanity,

01:05:23 ►

because it is through fear that people are controlled.

01:05:28 ►

And if you want to be free,

01:05:30 ►

you have to find the source of your fear,

01:05:33 ►

go into it, accept it, love it, and transcend it.

01:05:39 ►

That’s very true.

01:05:40 ►

And along those lines,

01:05:43 ►

as far as the future for not only psychedelics, but for drug policy in general, do you think that there is any reason to be hopeful with Barack Obama as president?

01:06:04 ►

I’m a little skeptical about Barack Obama.

01:06:07 ►

He disappeared out of nowhere and suddenly became a senator,

01:06:13 ►

and then suddenly he’s been sort of like he’s been just, well, let’s pick this one,

01:06:17 ►

polish him up, you know, pretty him up, and put him forward and look like we’re, you know, the first country who’s elected a black leader

01:06:21 ►

out of a white population.

01:06:22 ►

elected a black leader out of a white population.

01:06:31 ►

But the fact that 14 of his cabinet members are trilateral commission members,

01:06:38 ►

and the fact that he’s still talking about sending 400,000 troops to Afghanistan,

01:06:45 ►

which is a war of invasion and will always initiate guerrilla warfare. It’s always a matter of how long it will be before

01:06:48 ►

the invaders are either

01:06:49 ►

acculturated into that land

01:06:52 ►

or driven out.

01:06:54 ►

No one has ever held Afghanistan

01:06:56 ►

for very long.

01:06:57 ►

The Afghanis have a hard time doing it.

01:07:00 ►

No, I’m not really

01:07:02 ►

happy with what I’m hearing from

01:07:03 ►

Barack Obama, but if he does manage to keep his election promise of decriminalizing marijuana, I would say that’s a positive step.

01:07:13 ►

But it hasn’t happened yet.

01:07:14 ►

And the FBI figures for marijuana arrests since 2003 to 2007, I think was the last ones Normal reported on.

01:07:25 ►

And it’s been gone like 450,000 to 2003 to 525,000 to 600,000.

01:07:39 ►

Yeah, we just had our 20 millionth arrest per year as of, I think it was 2007.

01:07:46 ►

Right.

01:07:47 ►

So even though there are states legalizing medical marijuana and stuff like that,

01:07:52 ►

and this is, of course, you know, non-carcinogenic, non-harmful,

01:07:58 ►

been proven six ways to Sunday to be absolutely benign medicine.

01:08:06 ►

And it’s still illegal.

01:08:17 ►

And he could have, in one moment, signed an executive order legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana and forbidding any judge anywhere to throw someone in jail for marijuana.

01:08:22 ►

He hasn’t done it.

01:08:24 ►

And it was one of his campaign promises.

01:08:28 ►

So am I thrilled by Barack Obama?

01:08:31 ►

No, not yet.

01:08:33 ►

If he does something besides continue, you know,

01:08:37 ►

backing all the war material manufacturers,

01:08:42 ►

I mean, the United States lives off of war manufacture.

01:08:47 ►

The amount of war material we produce

01:08:50 ►

is twice as much as all the combined

01:08:54 ►

military spending of every other nation

01:08:57 ►

in the world.

01:08:58 ►

I just read it in the Wall Street Journal

01:09:01 ►

the other day that the total, just the

01:09:04 ►

cost overruns, the money that

01:09:06 ►

we pay on top of what we’ve been paying to the military complex, just the cost overruns are over

01:09:12 ►

$350 billion a year, which is more than all of the other Western societies and a few non-Western

01:09:22 ►

societies spend combined on their military budgets.

01:09:25 ►

It is just insane.

01:09:27 ►

It’s inhumane.

01:09:28 ►

And it boggles the mind that we can blow, essentially blow more money

01:09:33 ►

than the rest of the world actually spends on military armaments.

01:09:39 ►

Three billion dollars would make the world have fresh, clean, healthy water.

01:09:48 ►

Exactly.

01:09:51 ►

And for 15 billion, it could probably feed the whole world.

01:09:58 ►

The fact that we’re spending billions of dollars in these wars

01:10:04 ►

and the cost in the end is trillions of dollars

01:10:07 ►

is utterly insane and criminal.

01:10:12 ►

We have to find our own inner peace

01:10:15 ►

and if we can’t do anything about it outwardly,

01:10:19 ►

at least we can do something inwardly.

01:10:23 ►

If we can bring ourselves into a state of love and look at our own inner terror

01:10:28 ►

and how afraid we have been, you know, made by the government.

01:10:34 ►

And I can tell you they can hurt you real bad.

01:10:37 ►

They do hurt you real bad when you go against them.

01:10:41 ►

And I did it.

01:10:42 ►

I went through it.

01:10:44 ►

And I think it was worth it.

01:10:45 ►

Well, I think you came out on the other side very, very well. And as we close out today,

01:10:52 ►

this is our conversation. Again, I want to say how happy and fortunate I am and all of our

01:10:59 ►

listeners are to hear from Nick Sand, the legendary orange sunshine chemist.

01:11:05 ►

But I want you to comment on a conversation

01:11:07 ►

I had with Albert Hoffman

01:11:09 ►

when my wife and I had the good fortune

01:11:11 ►

to visit he and Anita in 2003.

01:11:14 ►

We were talking about the medicine,

01:11:17 ►

the spiritual value of LSD as a medicine.

01:11:20 ►

And I said, well, I asked Albert,

01:11:21 ►

I said, well, on a medicinal level,

01:11:24 ►

what would your recommendations be for someone throughout their life as far as taking LSD?

01:11:29 ►

And he said that he felt the first experience should be in your 20s to establish a worldview, to give you opposing view thoughts, opposing views and thoughts.

01:11:39 ►

And then he thought in the middle age would be the second time.

01:11:46 ►

middle age would be the second time, and then in your twilight years to take it a third time and reflect upon how your worldview evolved over those years. What would you say,

01:11:54 ►

if it was in medicine and that was the only way we could get it, what do you think would be a proper

01:12:00 ►

medicinal dose, I guess, and how it should be done.

01:12:08 ►

Well, I think first of all you have to realize that for psychedelics to work,

01:12:13 ►

there’s a certain threshold level for when they start to really become psychedelic.

01:12:20 ►

And with LSD, I think it’s 200 to 300 micrograms.

01:12:23 ►

With mescaline, it’s 400 to 500.

01:12:28 ►

The burgeoning use of ayahuasca is, of course, very difficult because of its herbal nature,

01:12:34 ►

but it has been very important for curing a lot of people.

01:12:40 ►

You know, it seems that the youth, as they hit their adolescence and they’re starting to form, if it’s not done right, it can be irrelevant to their development.

01:12:57 ►

It’s just another drug experience.

01:13:14 ►

But it does seem to be very important to a lot of teenagers, older teenagers, 50 and 16, 17, but even as young as 12, I’ve met many groups of 12-year-old runaways who took LSD.

01:13:17 ►

Did they do it right all the time? No.

01:13:20 ►

But was it better than what they ran away from? Yes.

01:13:28 ►

So, I mean, in an ideal world, yes, Hoffman’s idea is very good.

01:13:36 ►

But the reality on the ground is people need to take more trips than three trips in their life.

01:13:39 ►

Some people will get it on one trip.

01:13:43 ►

Some people need to take it a lot. I had come from a very difficult childhood, and I needed to take psychedelics.

01:13:50 ►

I think I’ve taken DMT and LSD and mescaline and gave you a total of 2,000 times in my life.

01:13:57 ►

So would I limit myself to 20, 40, and 60?

01:14:01 ►

No, I don’t think so.

01:14:03 ►

If everything were perfect in the world, that would probably

01:14:06 ►

be adequate. But I think it’s entirely up to the individual and how far they want to

01:14:12 ►

go. A lot of the conclusions that Hoffman came to are the same ones I came to. Three

01:14:21 ►

years of experience, set in setting, having beautiful lands and temples

01:14:26 ►

where people could be entertained by guides and sitters

01:14:30 ►

who would take them through their trips and help them, not out of their sickness,

01:14:36 ►

but to go from wellness to even more wellness.

01:14:41 ►

This whole thing of the medicinal effect of it it to cure something that’s not right,

01:14:50 ►

once that happens, then you can go from there to things that are more brilliant.

01:14:57 ►

And after you’ve done your integration,

01:15:00 ►

sometimes if you’re too young when you take it, it can scramble you a bit,

01:15:04 ►

especially if you’re doing young when you take it, it can scramble you a bit, especially if you’re doing it in a street setting

01:15:07 ►

where there’s no way you can really find a peaceful place

01:15:14 ►

because you don’t want to do it at home

01:15:15 ►

because you’re afraid of your parents drug testing you or whatever.

01:15:20 ►

But I think it’s important to take taken early enough for you to develop this worldview

01:15:27 ►

and to understand the value of the psychedelic.

01:15:31 ►

On the ground, it happens a lot younger because people in their teens are already seeing that something’s not right

01:15:40 ►

and something’s not satisfying and something’s’s not working, and they need information.

01:15:45 ►

And that information can be gathered through psychedelics.

01:15:49 ►

Well, you mentioned that you had taken hallucinogens close to several thousand times, and I’ll

01:15:59 ►

be honest with you, I’ve never met anybody that’s done it that much.

01:16:02 ►

My experience is around a couple hundred times.

01:16:06 ►

But do you still enjoy psychedelics, or have you moved on into a different plane?

01:16:14 ►

Well, you know, I’ve just come through experiencing a rare blood disease

01:16:20 ►

and having a heart attack and so on and so right now basically all I’m

01:16:27 ►

doing is fast walking yoga meditation and pan the arm and switch to an entirely

01:16:38 ►

vegetarian diet and I read a very important book called The China Study by T. Colin Campbell,

01:16:46 ►

who was a government nutritionist and has written a book, which I think is very important.

01:16:53 ►

And basically it says everything that you can get from a meat-based diet,

01:16:58 ►

an animal-based diet can be gotten way better from a plant-based diet,

01:17:02 ►

and he has 500,000 studies to back him up in peer-reviewed

01:17:06 ►

journals.

01:17:07 ►

So I think we’re heading toward vegetarianism.

01:17:10 ►

I think we’re headed toward meditation.

01:17:13 ►

I think we’re headed toward self-realization.

01:17:17 ►

And there are many tools for doing that.

01:17:19 ►

As you get older, you don’t need so much anymore.

01:17:22 ►

As you get older, you don’t need so much anymore.

01:17:27 ►

And since, of course, I am elderly now,

01:17:33 ►

I am a little more limited with all the medicines I’m having to take. So meditation and the remembrance of the state,

01:17:39 ►

which has been so thoroughly imprinted on my mind is carrying me now and I’m realizing that

01:17:47 ►

there’s truth which is the first thing you need to discover and then when you

01:17:55 ►

begin to understand the truth about yourself and everything around you you

01:18:00 ►

can move into love and that love connects you with all of that.

01:18:11 ►

And there’s still yet something above love, and that is the direct perception of beauty.

01:18:16 ►

And I have just discovered a whole new level of that,

01:18:21 ►

and that’s that everything around us is imbued with preciousness. And I think if we can keep moving from truth

01:18:26 ►

to love to beauty

01:18:28 ►

to preciousness,

01:18:30 ►

everything around us

01:18:31 ►

becomes sacred.

01:18:34 ►

And that’s what I would like

01:18:35 ►

for everyone listening to this

01:18:37 ►

to understand.

01:18:40 ►

It is your birthright.

01:18:42 ►

No one can take it away from you.

01:18:44 ►

You are free. You are free.

01:18:46 ►

You are free forever.

01:18:48 ►

Just drop your chains and stop carrying them because someone told you to.

01:18:55 ►

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.

01:19:02 ►

Even though I thought I knew a lot about Nick, there were several new things that

01:19:06 ►

I learned about him when I was listening to this interview with you just now. And one of the things

01:19:11 ►

that surprised me was when he said that it wasn’t until the Mind States conference in May of 2001

01:19:16 ►

that he realized what a celebrity he was and how important orange sunshine had been to the

01:19:21 ►

psychedelic community. In fact, I didn’t realize this,

01:19:26 ►

but I was one of those people who came up to him and gushed my thanks for all that he had done,

01:19:31 ►

and I remember very clearly that he seemed somewhat taken aback when I said that.

01:19:36 ►

You see, Nick had just come backstage to congratulate me on the talk that I’d just given.

01:19:41 ►

As it was, Nick’s MindStates talk that year followed the one that I gave,

01:19:46 ►

and you can hear the talk of mine in Psychedelic Salon podcast number one. And as was said in that

01:19:52 ►

old movie, well, this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Nick and I.

01:19:57 ►

By the way, if you want to see that video of Nick’s Canadian drug lab, it’s on YouTube,

01:20:02 ►

and I’ll link to it in today’s program notes, which you will find at

01:20:05 ►

psychedelicsalon.com. And should you want to listen to that 2001 Mind States talk that Nick gave,

01:20:12 ►

it too is available as the Salon Podcast number 37, which Nick titled,

01:20:18 ►

Imprisonment and Liberation Aspects of Consciousness. At the time that Nick gave this talk,

01:20:24 ►

he was still on parole and living

01:20:26 ►

in a halfway house, so how he got permission to speak at a psychedelic conference I still don’t

01:20:31 ►

understand. But for sure it was a historical milestone in the war on drugs. As you can tell

01:20:37 ►

after listening to this conversation with Nick, he was the genuine article. And once I got to know

01:20:43 ►

him, it became clear to me that,

01:20:45 ►

unlike some of the wannabes in the West Coast scene,

01:20:48 ►

Nick sincerely believed what he was saying.

01:20:50 ►

There wasn’t a pretentious bone in his body.

01:20:54 ►

At least, that’s what I observed in the times that we were able to have a few adventures together.

01:20:59 ►

And now, it’s time for some new adventures with some new friends.

01:21:03 ►

Nick and all of the others who have

01:21:05 ►

blazed this psychedelic trail before us have set us on a powerful course. Now it’s our turn, so

01:21:10 ►

press on. And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space. Be well, my friends. Thank you.

Graph View

Backlinks