http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2010/07/22/book_review_orange_sunshine_nicholas_schou
Drug War Chronicle Book Review: Nicholas Schou, "Orange Sunshine: The
Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and
Acid to the World" (2010, St. Martin's Press, 305 pp., $24.99 HB)
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #641, 7/23/10
by Phillip S. Smith, Writer/Editor
As a teenager in remote South Dakota in the late 1960s and early
1970s, I had friends who traveled to Southern California and returned
bearing strange gifts indeed: Orange Sunshine brand LSD, hash oil
called "Number 1," Thai sticks. I had no clue at the time I was
becoming a participant in a messianic drug-selling venture that
spanned the world from its headquarters in Laguna Beach, but it turns
out I was. That stuff my friends brought back from California was all
thanks to the efforts of a group of Orange County surf bums and
trouble-prone working class kids who took acid, got religion, and set
out to change the world.
They ended up calling themselves the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and
"Orange Sunshine" is their story. And what a story it is! Led by a
charismatic Laguna Beach street-fighter and troublemaker turned
acid-washed mystic named John Griggs (who later died after taking a
massive dose of synthetic psilocybin), the Brotherhood adopted as its
mission the turning-on of the whole planet. What is shocking is how
far they came in achieving their goal.
By the time the Brotherhood went down in flames in a massive federal
bust in 1972, it had manufactured and distributed untold millions of
doses of its trademark Orange Sunshine, it had pioneered the
smuggling of Afghan hashish to the US, it had smuggled massive
amounts of Mexican weed into the US, it provided a strong impetus for
the formation of the DEA, and, strangely enough, it had made possible
Maui Wowie and the Hawaiian pot boom of the 1970s.
The story of Maui Wowie is worth recounting, given that it
demonstrates the scope of the Brotherhood's operations and the
avidity with which its members went about their business. Wanting to
finance another massive Afghan hash deal, Brotherhood members bought
a boatload of Mexican weed and took it to Hawaii to sell before
heading on to Afghanistan for the second part of the deal. Trapped in
an endless, drug-fueled party on Maui, the Brotherhood never
completed that deal, but someone there crossbred the Mexican weed
with some Afghan pot plants and -- voila! -- Maui Wowie was born, and
so was the Hawaiian pot industry.
Relying on interviews with Brotherhood members and the police who
chased them, as well as court and newspaper records, OC Weekly writer
Nicholos Schou spent four years tracking down the story of the
legendary group and telling it in a rollicking, page-turning fashion.
In so doing, he also opens a window on the beginnings of the acid era
and the cultural turmoil of the late 1960s.
What jumps out at contemporary readers is the naivete and innocence
of the time. Griggs and the other Brotherhood members really believed
that LSD could change the world -- it certainly changed their world
-- and set out with missionary zeal to make it so. Yes, there was
money to be made, but for the idealistic Brotherhood, money was not
an end, but a means. In fact, the Brotherhood bragged that it had
knocked the bottom out of the Southern California hash market
intentionally, because prices were too high.
Of course, idealistic zeal could hardly compete with cash, and before
long, the Brotherhood and its members were acting like any other dope
dealers, more interested in the bottom line than in blowing minds.
Such a trajectory seems preordained today, but at the time, the
holiness of LSD was supposed to lead us past such materialistic
traps. That it didn't hardly seems surprising now, and I suppose that
shows how far we've fallen.
Idealistic zeal also had a hard time dealing with pressure and
betrayal. While Brotherhood members stayed remarkably loyal for
years, one of them eventually cracked under police pressure (and
because of disaffection with a group that had drifted from its noble
goals), allowing the feds to roll up their operation in 1972. And
Timothy Leary, the apostle of acid, whom the Brotherhood worshipped
and who stayed with the Brotherhood in Laguna Beach, also turned on
it, spilling the beans to the feds after being arrested in
Afghanistan. What made Leary's betrayal sting even more painfully was
the fact that the Brotherhood had financed the successful
Weatherman/Black Panther effort to break Leary out of prison after he
had been busted in Laguna Beach.
"Orange Sunshine" is full of great stories, but my favorite has to be
the Laguna Beach Christmas party in 1970, when 25,000 hippies headed
for Laguna Canyon for a Woodstock-style event. On Christmas day, a
cargo plane hired by the Brotherhood flew over the gathering and
bombed the crowd with several tens of thousands of hits of Orange
Sunshine. Now, that's what I call a party!
But all parties must come to an end, and that was true for the
Brotherhood as well, although, despite bold pronouncements from the
feds that they had broken the group in 1972, individual members of
the Brotherhood kept at their dope-dealing trade for years
afterwards. All in all, "Orange Sunshine" is an eminently readable
trip down memory lane to the beginning of the contemporary drug
culture and a fascinating look at how a small group of high-minded
kids ended up changing the world.
--
summary:
In the late 1960s, a small group of California surf bums and teenage
working-class troublemakers took LSD, found God, and set out to turn
on the world. Nicholas Schou's "Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of
Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the
World," from St. Martin's Press, is their story.
.
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