Considered by many as one of the legends of the Sixties counterculture, “Bear” Owsley Stanley III denies his heroic status. Bear was a minor participant in the Acid Tests of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and supplied the acid for their events. He was the first underground cook to produce high-purity LSD in 1965 when it was legal, including the famous White Lightning and Monterey Purple, and by giving much of it away for free he helped catalyse the hippie movement. He is renowned for his contribution to sound engineering, particularly working for the Grateful Dead and perfecting the idea of on-stage monitors and high-quality PAs. A tireless archivist, he kept a ‘sonic-journal diary’ of his front-of-house mixes, including hundreds of Grateful Dead performances, a number of which have been released by record labels. “Bear” Owsley Stanley died in a car accident in 2011.
Bear’s rants were the stories he laid on the tribe, and this book seeks to weave them together and present them as a whole tapestry. It is less a traditional biography than a gonzo bio-memoir that relays some of his last recorded public speeches, blending themes from previous interviews and public statements, sometimes in long transcription style. In such I have attempted to create a clear narrative flow that communicates Bear’s theories in his own words, as much as possible, and embeds them in the context of a life lived deep and true.
Here on this page we invite you to download the free, non-commercial ebook collecting Bear's words and thoughts. We also present eight choice extracts from the book as stand alone articles to dip into the pool of wisdom. They include some transcriptions and edits bringing together some of Bear's main theories around The Ice Age and the coming superstorm; Psychedelics in general; Ending the War on drug Prohibition; and an unpublished historical document his Letter to Tim Leary.
WHITE LIGHTNING:
OWSLEY ‘BEAR’ STANLEY’S LAST TRIP
Bear’s theories were bold, sometimes controversial, and pointed towards a new way of looking at our culture from a whole systems perspective.
This book asks the question: What if Owsley Stanley, affectionately known as ‘Bear’, acid cook, entrepreneur and genius set loose on the psychedelic culture of the 1960s, who always had an opinion about everything, what if his crazy, hyperdetailed theories were in fact, right? Or at least, pointed towards some meaningful truth? What then? What would it mean to the psychedelic community and to the world at large?
Articles
Considered by many as one of the legends of the Sixties counterculture, “Bear” Owsley Stanley III denies his heroic status. Bear was a minor participant in the Acid Tests of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and supplied the acid for their events. He was the first underground cook to produce high-purity LSD in 1965 when it was legal, including the famous White Lightning and Monterey Purple, and by giving much of it away for free he helped catalyse the hippie movement
According to Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, authors of Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond, there was over a decade of legal and illegal testing of LSD by the CIA on it’s own men, from 1953-1966, when they dosed unsuspecting doctors and servicemen to see if the chemical would make an efficient brainwashing mechanism.
