This topic led me to think of a type of LSD from the late 1960’s called Orange Sunshine. This acid was developed and produced in large quantities by a fellow named Nicholas Sand and was introduced into San Francisco in 1967. My peak acid use was 1968-1973 and I distinctly remember getting some of the drug in small orange, barrel-shaped doses that I think may very well have been Sand’s Orange Sunshine. If so, this was considered to have been some of the purest and best acid ever made and Sand cranked out millions of doses. That some of it made its way to the Midwest is totally believable. I was at that time living in Champaign-Urbana and attending the University of Illinois.
I cannot honestly say it was the orange barrels that were the best acid I ever had. I indulged in various types of the drug with colorful names such as Purple Haze, Windowpane, and various forms of blotter acid. Considering my tripping history is it any wonder that I was at the U of I for 5 years earning over 120 hours of semester credits and no degree. I changed majors numerous times and perhaps this inability to focus was in part due to my LSD usage but who knows. There were certainly many political, social, and cultural currents at the time that I was swept up into. Demonstrating against the Vietnam war certainly took up a lot of time and could easily have occupied as many hours as did tripping my brains out. I did spend a fair amount of time worrying that I would be drafted and end up dead in a rice paddy. I was though protected from that fate by a high draft lottery number and was never called.
Mr. Sand, again the creator of Orange Sunshine, took his first dose back in the mid-60’s when LSD was still legal. Per an article in the LA Times written in 2017 shortly after his death at age 75, he spent his first trip sitting naked and crossed-legged in front of a fire and supposedly heard a voice telling him that his job on the planet would be to produce LSD for the masses. He was successful at this making per his own estimation 140 million hits of the drug, again per the LA Times story.
Sand was a true believer in psychedelics and their power to change the world. He did three years in prison following a raid of his lab in 1996 in Canada claiming that the authorities confiscated enough acid to turn on every Canadian twice.
He claimed to have provided doses for soldiers in Vietnam hoping to end the war and prisoners in jail among many countless others including most likely yours truly. Sand honestly believed that psychedelics could change the world for the better. Who knows perhaps it was this Sunshine that led me to Denver and into a four decades-plus career in nursing?
Link provided for the LA Times Story from 1977:
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-nicholas-sand-20170516-story.html