Re-Creational Use 10
After Hofmann's first high-dose trip, those originally involved had erred perhaps on the side of caution, using LSD in the earliest studies in amounts little over the threshold of psychological perception. Hoffer and Osmond, studying the effects of LSD on alcoholics, were possibly the first again to see value in the use of substantial doses -- trying to give their subjects an overwhelming experience and thinking that their hardcore alcoholic patients needed about twice the dose of normal individuals to achieve comparable effects. This concept of using a large amount had been carried to Hollywood Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, which offered a week-long LSD experience for $500, and then was promulgated to many by Al Hubbard, including those at the Palo Alto research center.
On the East Coast, the first trip taken by Hollingshead and Beresford had flowed from their each eating half of the wax paper on which they cut their gram of acid with icing sugar. They undoubtedly took a substantial amount. The following is Leary's description of what happened, as he heard it from Hollingshead: "The effect hit suddenly, and for five hours the two of them lay back paralyzed on kitchen chairs, their eyes bulging, completely severed from their bodies, from their minds, from normal reality. Helplessly spinning through cosmic landscapes, unable to speak or move, communicating only by shining powerless eyeball contact, like two astronauts drifting helplessly through space, or two men caught in diving suits miles below the surface."
At any rate, when Hollingshead went to Harvard the group studying psilocybin there had already escalated doses of that drug in their research program well above the recommended 10 mg. and were fully aware that increasing amounts brought on even more fantastic and meaningful consequences. Hollingshead took much the same attitude toward LSD, hardly hesitating to spoon out a teaspoonful when a good deal less would definitely get someone off. When the Harvard group eventually settled in Millbrook, New York, they established a kind of psychedelic mecca. It did not take long before they became casual about the use of LSD. In his book The Man Who Turned On the World, Hollingshead described many comical results that must have been duplicated elsewhere, as in the following selection:
"As most of the household had taken LSD anywhere up to 200 times, we did not see fit to store it surreptitiously. For example, some liquid LSD was poured into a half-empty port bottle and left on the top floor, usually out-of-bounds to visitors. A Canadian TV crew came to record a Weekend Experimental Workshop for a programme called 'Seven Days on Sunday.' The head of the CBC crew, a large man of about six feet, eight inches, began to wander about the house on his own. When he saw the bottle of port, he guzzled down a few slugs. Within twenty-five minutes he was on a very high LSD trip, something he was not prepared for. We were sitting in the dining-room when this huge man lumbered in with one shoe off, his tie half undone, his jacket buttons ripped off . . ."
By 1967, however, experimentation with large doses became common, with many thousands of people doing so deliberately. Some of this occurred on Owsley acid, but many more instances involved Sunshine, the product of the second major underground manufacturing that took place in the late 1960s. Tim Scully, one of the principal chemists involved, was an apprentice to Nick Sands, who took over for Owsley when he was busted. Scully claimed that 35 million doses of this acid came from Europe by way of Ronald Starks -- then a fugitive -- and that an additional amount was made in the U.S. in the form of ALD-52 (an LSD homologue, which turns into LSD upon contact with water). This tremendous amount probably only represents some of what was then appearing, because many others were also offering their wares. There were Orange Wedgies, Purple Buckets and many other forms of LSD available in those days. It was not uncommon for some to take 10 tabs at a time to see what that would do.
