The Peculiar Truth about the Acid Millionaire

• December 21, 1967: A few days before Christmas, authorities raided a home in Orinda, CA, forty miles east of San Francisco. They found lab equipment for manufacturing LSD. That police action shut down the operations of the most notorious acid chemist in the West.

• His name was Augustus Owsley Stanley III. He went by Owsley or his nickname, Bear. Few people had his impact on the Sixties counterculture.

• Owsley came from one of Kentucky’s most famed political families. His great grandfather became governor. So did his grandfather who was also a US Senator. His father served in WWII.

• Owsley’s parents divorced in his teens, and then he entered a military academy. There he began a life-long all-protein diet and acquired the nickname Bear for his hairy chest. He dropped out of high school.

• Owsley’s adult life became chaotic. In and out of the military. In an out of different colleges. Married and divorced twice, each time having children. Working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Studying Russian ballet. His lifestyle matched his manic personality.

• 1964: At the University of California at Berkeley, he met a chemistry student who introduced him to LSD. Although he liked the drug, he thought he could make it better… despite having no chemistry background. He succeeded.

• May 1965: Owsley began selling his own high quality acid. Among his early buyers was Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, the pioneers of the acid-dropping counterculture. Kesey didn’t care for Owsley but couldn’t deny his superior product. The drug made Owsley wealthy. Estimates suggest he made over 1 million doses in two years.

• December 1965: He heard the Grateful Dead perform for the first time. Later, he and the band dropped acid. Bassist Phil Lesh told Owsley that they needed a sound engineer. Shortly after that, he joined the group as their sound man.

• Owsley ruffled feathers by being a control freak and perfectionist. But he was bankrolling the band.

• 1966: The Los Angeles Times named Owsley Stanley as “Mr. LSD.” He hated that, but the Dead jokingly wrote a song about it called Alice B. Millionaire.

• 1967: Owsley provided LSD for the Human Be-In event in Golden Gate Park where Timothy Leary famously told participants to turn on, tune in, and drop out. He also gave away “purple” acid at the Monterey Pop Festival.

• Owsley wasn’t on hand, though, for the Summer of Love. San Francisco scene makers considered it too commercial. Then later that year in Orinda, police confiscated his drug lab.

• While out on bail, Owsley continued bankrolling and doing sound for the Grateful Dead. He continuously taped the band live. Those bootleg recordings furthered the group’s reputation.

• January 1970: Owsley finally went to prison. While behind bars, two separate girlfriends gave birth to his children. A year later, the Dead performed at his penitentiary. Two years later, he was released and returned to the band.

• 1974: Ever the perfectionist, he developed the group’s signature Wall of Sound - a massive high quality speaker system. Owsley traveled with them for most of the decade.

• 1984: Owsley Stanley moved to Australia, married, and settled there for the rest of his life.

• After surviving cancer, the former Acid Millionaire died in a car accident in 2011.

• ALSO:

• Steely Dan wrote their 1976 song Kid Charlemagne about Owsley Stanley.