Tim Scully

Last updated
Tim Scully
Tim Scully and his cat Merlin, writing software for Autodesk, December 24, 2000.jpg
Tim Scully and his cat Merlin, fixing AutoCAD bugs for Autodesk December 24, 2000
Born
Robert Scully

(1944-08-27) August 27, 1944 (age 80)
United States
Occupation(s) Psychologist, chemist, computer engineer, software developer

Robert "Tim" Scully (born August 27, 1944) is an American computer engineer, best known in the psychedelic underground for his work in the production of LSD from 1966 to 1969, for which he was indicted in 1973 and convicted in 1974. [1] His best known product, dubbed "Orange Sunshine", was considered the standard for quality LSD in 1969. [2] He was featured in the documentary The Sunshine Makers .

Contents

Early life

Scully grew up in Pleasant Hill, which is across the Bay from San Francisco. In eighth grade, he won honorable mention in the 1958 Bay Area Science Fair for designing and building a small computer. During high school, he spent summers working at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory on physics problems. In his junior year of high school, Scully completed a small linear accelerator in the school science lab (he was trying to make gold atoms from mercury), which was pictured in a 1961 edition of the Oakland Tribune . Scully skipped his senior year of high school and went directly to U.C. Berkeley, majoring in mathematical physics. After two years at Berkeley, Scully took a leave of absence in 1964 because his services as an electronic design consultant were in high demand. During this period, he first took LSD on April 15, 1965.

LSD production

1965: Apprentice to Owsley

Scully knew the government would move quickly to suppress LSD distribution, and he wanted to obtain as much of the main precursor chemical, lysergic acid, as possible. Scully soon learned that Owsley Stanley possessed a large amount (440 grams) of lysergic acid monohydrate. Owsley and Scully finally met a few weeks before the Trips Festival in the fall of 1965. The 30-year-old Owsley took the 21-year-old Scully as his apprentice [3] and they pursued their mutual interest in electronics and psychedelic synthesis.

1966: Point Richmond lab and "White Lightning"

Owsley took Scully to the Watts Acid Test on February 12, 1966, and they built electronic equipment for the Grateful Dead until late spring 1966.

In July 1966 Owsley rented a house in Point Richmond, California and Owsley and Melissa Cargill (Owsley's girlfriend who was a skilled chemist) set up a lab in the basement. Tim Scully worked there as Owsley's apprentice. Owsley had developed a method of LSD synthesis which left the LSD 99.9% pure. The Point Richmond lab turned out over 300,000 tablets (270 micrograms each) of LSD they dubbed "White Lightning". LSD became illegal in California on October 6, 1966, so Owsley and Scully decided to set up a new lab in Denver, Colorado.

1967: 1st Denver lab and STP

Scully set up the new lab in the basement of a house across the street from the Denver zoo in early 1967. Owsley and Scully made the LSD in the Denver lab. 100,000 tablets (270 micrograms each) of Monterey Purple were made in Denver for the Monterey Pop Festival. Later Owsley started to tablet more of the product in Orinda, California but was arrested before he completed that work. Owsley and Scully also produced a hitherto uncommon psychedelic amphetamine in Denver which they called STP. 5,000 20 milligram tablets of STP (which was initially synthesized as "DOM" by Alexander Shulgin in 1963) were initially distributed at the Golden Gate Park summer solstice festival in 1967; however, the substance quickly acquired a bad reputation due to the excessively high dose and slow onset of action. Owsley and Scully made trial batches of 10 mg tablets and then STP mixed with LSD in a few hundred yellow tablets but soon ceased production of STP. Owsley and Scully produced about 196 grams of LSD in 1967, but 96 grams of this was confiscated by the authorities; Scully moved the lab to a different house in Denver after Owsley was arrested on Christmas Eve 1967.

1968: 2nd Denver lab and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love

Tim Scully first met William "Billy" Mellon Hitchcock, grandson of William Larimer Mellon and great-great-grandson of Thomas Mellon, through Owsley in April 1967. They became friends and Billy loaned Scully $12,000 for the second Denver lab in 1968. The product from the lab was distributed by The Brotherhood of Eternal Love; Scully was connected with the Brotherhood via Billy Hitchcock. The second Denver lab was discovered in June 1968 by the police while Scully was in Europe searching for a new supply of precursor chemicals. His lab assistants were arrested there when they returned a few days later. Scully was not arrested at that time. The search was eventually ruled illegal and the case was dropped, [4] but the lab had cost approximately $25,000 to set up and now Scully was looking for a new lab in addition to precursor chemicals.

1969: Windsor lab and "Orange Sunshine"

In December 1968 Nick Sand, an LSD chemist from The Brotherhood of Eternal Love in Orange County, California, purchased, through an intermediary, a farmhouse in Windsor, California, where he and Tim Scully set up a large LSD lab. Tim Scully and Nick Sand produced, by the summer of 1969, over 3.6 million tablets (300 micrograms each) of LSD they dubbed "Orange Sunshine", named after the LSD that The Brotherhood of Eternal Love distributed.

Investigation, arrest, and trial

In May 1969 Tim Scully was arrested in California for the 1968 Denver lab. The search was eventually ruled illegal, but Scully decided to retire from clandestine chemistry and pursue electronic design instead. In 1969 Scully formed his own corporation, Aquarius Electronics, and he was president and sole designer from 1971–1976.

The government had been building a case against Nick Sand, Tim Scully's partner in the 1969 Windsor lab, since late 1971. In early 1973 Billy Hitchcock was threatened with 24 years in prison for tax evasion if he didn't help the government convict the prime movers of the LSD cartel. Hitchcock provided evidence and testified against Scully and Sand, and they were both indicted in April 1973. Scully's defense was that he was producing ALD-52, which was legal, and not the controlled substance LSD-25. [5] Scully lost the case and was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1974. Scully's appeals ran out in late 1976, so he sold his stock in his company and began serving prison time in early 1977.

Scully spent his time in prison helping design and build biofeedback and interface systems for the non-vocal handicapped. He also received a Ph.D. in psychology from the regionally accredited Humanistic Psychology Institute in 1979. Following the reduction of his sentence to ten years, he was released from prison on parole in August 1979.

Later life

Following his release from prison, Scully was a lecturer in parapsychology at John F. Kennedy University (where he co-taught a course on psychotechnology and computers) and held a part-time appointment as an assistant research psychologist in the psychophysiology laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco's Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute. As the founder of Pacific Bionic Systems (reformed in 1980 as Mendocino Microcomputers, with Scully continuing as president and chairman), he consulted with such diverse entities as the Esalen Institute and the Children's Television Workshop on database management and computer games. He has published eight articles on the topic of biofeedback and as many on technical computer topics.

He has retired from his career with Autodesk as an AutoCAD dealer (1983-1987), consultant (1987-2000) and senior software developer (2000-2005) and is currently researching a book on the underground history of LSD.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LSD</span> Hallucinogenic drug

Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD, and known colloquially as acid or lucy, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages, LSD manifests primarily mental, visual, and auditory hallucinations. Dilated pupils, increased blood pressure, and increased body temperature are typical.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timothy Leary</span> American psychologist (1920–1996)

Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. According to poet Allen Ginsberg, he was "a hero of American consciousness", and writer Tom Robbins called him a "brave neuronaut". During the 1960s and 1970s, Leary was arrested 36 times. President Richard Nixon called him "the most dangerous man in America".

<i>Furthur</i> (bus) Ken Keseys Merry Band of Pranksters 1960s hippie-bus

Furthur is a 1939 International Harvester school bus purchased by author Ken Kesey in 1964 to carry his "Merry Band of Pranksters" cross-country, filming their counterculture adventures as they went. The bus featured prominently in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test but, due to the chaos of the trip and editing difficulties, footage of the journey was not released as a film until the 2011 documentary Magic Trip.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Leonard Pickard</span> American convicted felon

William Leonard Pickard is one of two people convicted in the largest lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) manufacturing case in history. In 2000, while moving their LSD laboratory across Kansas, Pickard and Clyde Apperson were pulled over while driving a Ryder rental truck and a follow car. The laboratory had been stored near a renovated Atlas-E missile silo near Wamego, Kansas. Gordon Todd Skinner, one of the men intimately involved in the case but not charged due to his cooperation, owned the property where the laboratory equipment was stored.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2,5-Dimethoxy-4-methylamphetamine</span> Chemical compound

2,5-Dimethoxy-4-methylamphetamine is a psychedelic and a substituted amphetamine. It was first synthesized by Alexander Shulgin, and later reported in his book PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story. DOM is classified as a Schedule I substance in the United States, and is similarly controlled in other parts of the world. Internationally, it is a Schedule I drug under the Convention on Psychotropic Substances. It is generally taken orally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Owsley Stanley</span> American sound engineer and chemist (1935–2011)

Augustus Owsley Stanley III was an American-Australian audio engineer and clandestine chemist. He was a key figure in the San Francisco Bay Area hippie movement during the 1960s and played a pivotal role in the decade's counterculture. Under the professional name Bear, he was the sound engineer for the Grateful Dead, recording many of the band's live performances. Stanley also developed the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound, one of the largest mobile sound reinforcement systems ever constructed. Stanley also helped Robert Thomas design the band's trademark skull logo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of LSD</span>

The psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was first synthesized on November 16, 1938, by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in the Sandoz laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. It was not until five years later on April 19, 1943, that the psychedelic properties were found. Today, the discovery of LSD is celebrated worldwide during the annual Bicycle Day holiday, serving also as the day celebrating the psychedelic revolution in general.

The Psychedelic era was the time of social, musical and artistic change influenced by psychedelic drugs, occurring from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. The era was defined by the proliferation of LSD and its following influence in the development of psychedelic music and psychedelic film in the Western world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David E. Nichols</span> American pharmacologist and medicinal chemist (born 1944)

David Earl Nichols is an American pharmacologist and medicinal chemist. Previously the Robert C. and Charlotte P. Anderson Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology at Purdue University, Nichols has worked in the field of psychoactive drugs since 1969. While still a graduate student, he patented the method that is used to make the optical isomers of hallucinogenic amphetamines. His contributions include the synthesis and reporting of escaline, LSZ, 6-APB, 2C-I-NBOMe and other NBOMe variants, and several others, as well as the coining of the term "entactogen".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ALD-52</span> Chemical compound

ALD-52, also known as 1-acetyl-LSD, has chemical structural features similar to lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), a known psychedelic drug. Similarly, ALD-52 has been reported to produce psychoactive effects, but its pharmacological effects on humans are poorly understood. Given its psychoactive properties, it has been reported to be consumed as a recreational drug, and the purported first confirmed detection of the substance on the illicit market occurred in April 2016.

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was an organization of drug users and distributors that operated from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s in Orange County, California. They were dubbed the Hippie Mafia by the police. They produced and distributed drugs in hopes of starting a "psychedelic revolution" in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Sand</span> American clandestine chemist

Nicholas Sand was a cult figure known in the psychedelic community for his work as a clandestine chemist from 1966 to 1996 for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Sand was part of the League for Spiritual Discovery at the Millbrook estate in New York, has been credited as the "first underground chemist on record to have synthesized DMT" and is known for manufacturing large amounts of LSD.

Walter Norman Pahnke was a minister, physician, and psychiatrist most famous for the "Good Friday Experiment", also referred to as the Marsh Chapel Experiment or the "Miracle of Marsh Chapel".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">League for Spiritual Discovery</span> 1960s spiritual society advocating for the legalization of LSD

League for Spiritual Discovery (LSD) was a spiritual organization inspired by the works of Timothy Leary, and strove for legal use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) for the purpose of meditation, insight, and spiritual understanding. It was in existence during the mid-to-late 1960s, and eventually closed by Leary. The New York Center for the League of Spiritual Discovery, in existence for around a year, was co-founded by Timothy Leary and Nina Graboi in 1966. The center was the first LSD-based meditation center in Manhattan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Acid Tests</span> LSD experiments/parties in the 1960s

The Acid Tests were a series of parties held by author Ken Kesey primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area during the mid-1960s, centered on the use of and advocacy for the psychedelic drug LSD, commonly known as "acid". LSD was not made illegal in California until October 6, 1966.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Hofmann</span> Swiss chemist (1906–2008)

Albert Hofmann was a Swiss chemist known for being the first to synthesize, ingest, and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hofmann's team also isolated, named and synthesized the principal psychedelic mushroom compounds psilocybin and psilocin. He authored more than 100 scientific articles and numerous books, including LSD: Mein Sorgenkind. In 2007, he shared first place with Tim Berners-Lee on a list of the 100 greatest living geniuses published by The Daily Telegraph newspaper.

LSD art is any art or visual displays inspired by psychedelic experiences and hallucinations known to follow the ingestion of LSD. Artists and scientists have been interested in the effect of LSD on drawing and painting since it first became available for legal use and general consumption.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harris Isbell</span> American pharmacologist

Harris Isbell was an American pharmacologist and the director of research for the NIMH Addiction Research Center at the Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky from 1945 to 1963. He did extensive research on the physical and psychological effects of various drugs on humans. Early work investigated aspects of physical dependence with opiates and barbiturates, while later work investigated psychedelic drugs, including LSD. The research was extensively reported in academic journals such as the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Psychopharmacologia, and the AMA Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry.

Psychedelic film is a film genre characterized by the influence of psychedelia and the experiences of psychedelic drugs. Psychedelic films typically contain visual distortion and experimental narratives, often emphasizing psychedelic imagery. They might reference drugs directly, or merely present a distorted reality resembling the effects of psychedelic drugs. Their experimental narratives often purposefully try to distort the viewers' understanding of reality or normality.

<i>Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America</i> 2016 non-fiction book by Jesse Jarnow

Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America is a 2016 non-fiction book by rock journalist Jesse Jarnow. The book describes American psychedelics counterculture in the second half of the twentieth century.

References

  1. Inmate Named Man of the Year at The Hour , February 2, 1979
  2. Waiting for the man: the story of drugs and popular music , by Harry Shapiro, 1988, Quartet Books
  3. William Pickard's long, strange trip / Suspected LSD trail leads from the Bay Area's psychedelics era to a missile silo in Kansas from the San Francisco Chronicle , page 2, June 12, 2001, by Seth Rosenfeld: "There was a break, and I walked out into the hall, and he introduced himself as a fellow chemist," recalled Scully, once an "apprentice" to Augustus Owsley Stanley III, the most infamous psychedelic sorcerer of the '60s."
  4. Walker, Chris (2017-10-31). "Acid Trip: Denver's Secret LSD Labs Fueled the Psychedelic Revolution". Westword. Retrieved 2020-05-22.
  5. United States v. Sand at Open Jurist