The Second Psychedelic Revolution (Part One) The End Of Acid [View all]

[Bennyboy]

he first of a 5-part series examining the state of contemporary psychedelic culture through the contributions of its principal architects: Alexander 'Sasha' Shulgin, Terence McKenna, and Alex Grey.

In November of 2000, a DEA sting dubbed ‘Operation White Rabbit’ arrested William Leonard Pickard and Clyde Apperson while they were moving an alleged LSD production laboratory from a renovated Atlas-E missile-silo in Wamego Kansas to an undisclosed location. Many questions remain regarding the case and the involvement of the DEA’s informant Todd Skinner[1], and the DEA now claims that no LSD was ever produced at this silo. But both statistical analysis and anecdotal street-evidence agree with the DEA’s claim that this one ‘bust’ resulted in a 95% drop in the world’s LSD supply at that time, making it seem possible that there might actually be ‘An End to Acid’.

A year later almost to the day (Nov 10th, 2001) LSD’s original Merry Prankster, Ken Kesey, died. With Timothy Leary’s ashes already orbiting in outer space and the Grateful Dead disbanded for more than six years following Jerry Garcia’s death, one could have been tempted to believe that the Psychedelic Revolution that had begun somewhere in the mid-1960’s – with the widespread societal introduction of LSD – had finally come to an end. The world had been changed in many ways thanks to the rediscovery of psychedelics. But like most revolutions, its dreams were never fully met, and its heroes were passing into legend[2].

Ironically, as disrupted and antiquated as the ‘Psychedelic Movement’ may have appeared to be at that moment, the seeds of ‘the Second Psychedelic Revolution’ were already planted more than a decade earlier. These seeds bloomed in the desert of that LSD drought.

This was a profound example of how ineffective prohibition can be at extinguishing interest in a potent substance. The possibility of a world without acid inspired a younger generation to seek out a plethora of alternative psychedelics — some old, some new. In the process, they rediscovered and reclaimed the original entheogenic experience — the mystical taste of the Other, the FLASH outside of space and time — that LSD had provided for the 1960’s pioneers[3].

MOAR!: http://realitysandwich.com/216613/the-second-psychedelic-revolution-part-one-the-end-of-acid/