I've seen unopened vials of sandoz LSD from the early 50s...
I would love to get my hands on some of owsley Stanley's original "white lightening", Stanley was a sound engineer for the dead, and in the early days the dead were closely connected to Ken kesey, being the house band for the acid test parties for a period of time, so it's fairly obvious where the LSD for the acid tests was comming from... (Though there are stories claiming that after kesey volunteered for psychedelic studies at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Menlo Park, CA involving AMT,LSD, and mescaline, that the hospital was robbed of their entire supply of these substances, which coincidentally showed up on "furthur" after...)
When Nick sand was charged for producing "Orange sunshine" he claimed that his product was not lysergic acid diethylamide but 1-acetyl-lysergic acid diethylamide (ALD-52), now, this may have been a legal tactic to avoid prosecution (though it failed), or there's a chance that orange sunshine really was ALD-52, I guess you would have to ask Mr. Sand personally.
There's some display of universal karma when looking at the clandestine LSD manufacturers, so it doesn't surprise me that sand is free, and people like pickard (who I have heard terrible things about) ended up serving two life sentences...
Though pickard did study at Purdue under David E. Nichols for a short time, and knew his chemistry well, he may have even distributed LSZ (Lysergic acid 2,4-dimethylazetidide) under names such as "diazedine" and "λ" before Nichols and his team at Purdue were able to publish, technically he could have pilfered Nichols work for analogues to distribute clandestinely, though it seems that aside from the LSZ rumors this did not happen much...
Nick sand was said to be the first clandestine chemist to synthesize DMT, and has wrote some great papers regarding DMT
Moving Into the Sacred World of DMT, by Nick Sand - Psychedelic Frontier
Just a Wee Bit More About DMT, by Nick Sand - Psychedelic Frontier
If I could take some preserved LSD from the past, For history's sake I'd say I would want either some of Nick sands Orange sunshine or owsley Stanley's white lightening...(Stanley designed the "steal your face" logo for the grateful dead, the logo is an obvious representation of white lightening LSD)
...sorry for the rambling, just got thinking about LSD that I'll never get the privilege to sample...thank God people are still keeping the spirit alive, Casey William Hardison is a perfect example of a clandestine chemist that I think was justified in his actions, I've listened to hardisons reasoning, and feel his motivations are just, we should be holding Entheogenic chemists in the highest regards, so long as their motives are correct, not imprisoning them.
Alexander shulgin, David E. Nichols, Daniel Trachsel, etc...these are the chemists I look up to most, however I hold Nick sand, owsley Stanley, Casey Harrison, etc...in the same high regards, mckenna makes the comment
In the Middle Ages, the church forbade dissection of human bodies, and medical students would visit battlefields and the gallows at night, and steal the bodies of victims of war and executed prisoners, in order to learn human physiology. Where that spirit of scientific courage has gone, I don't know; but there is very little of it left. Now, people feed at the trough of government grants and enormous corporate research budgets, and the idea of actually pursuing truth, or attempting to understand the phenomenon in an unbiased fashion, divorced from its commercial, social and political dimensions, is unheard of.
The spirit which mckenna is referring to is not dead, people like Nick sand, Casey Harrison, bear Stanley, and even Alexander shulgin are keeping it alive, and I respect them for it.
I've gone way too far off topic and will draw this to a close...
-eg
