Inside the Long, Strange Trip of the World’s Best LSD

It was the namesake of Augustus Owsley Stanley III, as eccentric a figure as has ever proweled the American underground. Wiry, furry, and proudly carnivorous, he also answered to “Bear.” He was ostensibly known for his work as an audio engineer, having designed sound systems for the Grateful Dead. (He also designed the band’s iconic skull-bisected-by-a-lightning-bolt logo, and inspired the Dead’s just-as-ionic “dancing bear” mascots.) Equally crucial to the band’s creative output was Owsley’s work as a chemist, leading a piebald crew of flower children who cranked out some 5 million doses of LSD into the world, turning on everyone from Jimi Hendrix to John Lennon. Even the reports of the Orinda bust doubled as both a coronation and premature abdication. “Stanley is known throughout the west,” one paper reported, making him sound like some neurochemistry cowboy, “as the King of Acid.” The bust was followed by months of prolonged legal rigmarole. Read more about it here.