So, as it turns out, the Orange Sunshine LSD and hash oil I took in the 1960’s almost certainly came from The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which was based in Laguna Beach CA. The original members were greasers who stole LSD at gunpoint from a Hollywood producer. They tripped in the canyons, saw God, embraced Hippie, vowed to never use guns and violence again, and returned the LSD. This was back when LSD was still legal in California. When it became illegal in 1966, the Brotherhood moved big-time into dealing psychedelics, weed, and hash.
The Brotherhood created Orange Sunshine and Maui Wowie weed, and smuggled hash in vehicles from Pakistan and in surfboards from Hawaii. Timothy Leary joined them for a while and they helped break him out of prison in San Luis Obispo by funneling $25,000 to the Black Panthers who gave it to the Weathermen, who organized the breakout. Yes, the 1960’s were tumultuous times…
One of the Brotherhood members has lived as a monk in Nepal for decades. He says “We thought we could change the world and the world changed us.” More than anything, greed and money are what killed the idealism of the 1960s. Many members of the Brotherhood went to prison after a coordinated federal bust in the early 1970’s which was the start of the failed war on drugs.
Nicholas Schou tells their tale in Orange Sunshine, and spoke at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas last night. He also wrote Kill The Messenger about Gary Webb, the journalist whose life was destroyed after he wrote a series of articles exposing CIA and Contras selling crack cocaine to Freeway Rick in South Central Los Angeles. This led to many lives being destroyed, to the crack epidemic, and the rise of street gangs.
Mass media slimed Webb and he committed suicide. At the talk, Schou said a shadowy ex-cop named Ronald Lister was involved in Contras, CIA, heavy weapons sales worldwide, consulted to death squads, and was central to much of this. Lister eventually confided in Schou, saying Webb was right but didn’t know when to stop.
I asked Schou about rumors I’d heard that the Hells Angels were the top rung in LSD distribution in the 1960’s. He confirmed they were. The Brotherhood bought from The Hells Angels.
Weird scenes inside the gold mine, indeed.