11 ms·

Nick Sand, Orange Sunshine LSD chemist, has died

285 points by Alex3917 10y ago

bdrool 10y ago
> The mother of his godson Aidan remarked, "Nick didn't care about the stupid politics shit, he'd just laugh at it." Jon Hanna said Nick "became a criminal as a matter of principle and as an act of civil disobedience." https://youtu.be/_Wy0k3j_a7E https://youtu.be/_Wy0k3j_a7E [Note: that's actually him (Nick Sand) in the video clip above.]
- mceoin 10y ago
  “We got the whole prison stoned, this is what freedom is really about. It’s not about not being in chains, it’s about not having your mind enslaved,” Nick declared.
- kakarot 10y ago
  I like how the narrator emphasizes billion like he didn't just say "1/4 billion". I guess "250 million" doesn't have the same level of shock value.
themgt 10y ago
Beautiful quote from him in the article: When I began to navigate psychospace with LSD, I realized that before we were conscious, seemingly self-propelled human beings, many tapes and corridors had been created in our minds and reflexes which were not of our own making. These patterns and tapes laid down in our consciousness are walled off from each other. I see it as a vast labyrinth with high walls sealing off the many directives created by our personal history. Many of these directives are contradictory. The coexistence of these contradictory programs is what we call inner conflict. This conflict causes us to constantly check ourselves while we are caught in the opposition of polarity. Another metaphor would be like a computer with many programs running simultaneously. The more programs that are running, the slower the computer functions. This is a problem then. With all the programs running that are demanded of our consciousness in this modern world, we have problems finding deep integration. To complicate matters, the programs are reinforced by fear. Fear separates, love integrates. We find ourselves drawn to love and unity, but afraid to make the leap. What I found to be the genius of LSD is that it really gets you high, higher than the programs, higher than the walls that mask and blind one to the energy destroying presence of many contradictory but hidden programs. When LSD is used intentionally it enables you to see all the tracks laid down, to explore each one intensely. It also allows you to see the many parallel and redundant programs as well as the contradictory ones. It allows you to see the underlying unity of all opposites in the magic play of existence. This allows you to edit these programs and recreate superior programs that give you the insight to shake loose the restrictions and conflicts programmed into each one of us by our parents, our religion, our early education, and by society as a whole. --- Very much in line with what recent neuroscience results are finding: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep46421 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep46421 http://www.nature.com/news/brain-scans-reveal-how-lsd-affects-consciousness-1.19727 http://www.nature.com/news/brain-scans-reveal-how-lsd-affect...
- badosu 10y ago
  Surprisingly similar to what Lilly wrote in 1968: "PROGRAMMING AND METAPROGAMMING IN THE HUMAN BIOCOMPUTER" [0] A very good book, even though you should not take it literally, quote from the preface: Eventually the cerebral cortex appeared as an expanding new highlevel computer controlling the structurally lower levels of the nervous system, the lower builtin programs. For the first time learning and its faster adaptation to a rapidly changing environment began to appear. Further, as this new cortex expanded over several millions of years, a critical size cortex was reached. At this level of structure, a new capability emerged: learning to learn. [0]: http://nekhbet.leary.csoft.net/biocomputer.pdf http://nekhbet.leary.csoft.net/biocomputer.pdf Edit (further context): To avoid the necessity of repeating learning to learn, symbols, metaphors, models each time, I symbolize the under- lying idea in these operations as metaprogramming. Metaprogramming appears at a critical cortical size-the cerebral computer must have a large enough number of interconnected circuits of sufficient quality for the operations of meta- programming to exist in that biocomputer. Essentially, metaprogramming is an operation in which a central control system controls hundreds of thousands of programs operating in parallel simultaneously.
  - eip 10y ago
    This is the best book to read on LSD. Only a little bit though otherwise your pupils will dilate too much to read. Obviously.
    - kordless 10y ago
      I already need readers, so putting on my visor magnifiers will probably do the trick!
    - cnp 10y ago
      The one you really need to read by him is "The Center of the Cyclone" ;) It is truly, truly incredible. This guy was a real-deal scientist. I first discovered him through reading this https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/the-ketamine-secrets-of-segas-ecco-the-dolphin-347 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/the-ketamine-secrets-of-s... and then went on to read every one of his books except for his last, which I want to save for the right time. This guy has had a profound effect on my life and I cant recommend his work highly enough.
boardwaalk 10y ago
There's a recent documentary about his... entrepreneurship called The Sunshine Makers. I'd recommend it. It's on US Netflix.
- Alex3917 10y ago
  There's another one called Orange Sunshine also that just came out. I haven't seen either, but they both get 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
jongold 10y ago
Orange Sunshine (the recent documentary) was absolutely excellent. a++ http://www.orangesunshinemovie.com/ http://www.orangesunshinemovie.com/
- Alex3917 10y ago
  Glad to know it's actually worth watching. I really wanted a print of their movie poster, but for whatever reason they only made them in 11 x 17: http://belhistory.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/0/7/19079917/1580041.png?446 http://belhistory.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/0/7/19079917/158004...
seoguru 10y ago
Great interview of Nick Sand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxiK827_rX8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxiK827_rX8 parting words: "If we can keep moving from truth to love to beauty to preciousness, everything around us becomes sacred"
- soineuh 10y ago
  What was he trying to encourage with those words, exactly? Give up on reality and at the same time somehow force yourself to care deeply about things? Didn't humanity throw out this garbage philosophy thousands of years ago? Or is this instead some strange drug-fueled process I'm not meant to reason about but only experience?
ShannonAlther 10y ago
I'm pretty sure Nick Sand's arrest in 1996 was the cause of the sudden scarcity of LSD on the market 20 years ago. According to Erowid ( https://erowid.org/culture/characters/sand_nick/sand_nick_biography1.shtml https://erowid.org/culture/characters/sand_nick/sand_nick_bi... ), the RCMP tested samples from his lab and found their purity to be >100%, suggesting that their reference samples had degraded.
- eip 10y ago
  "According to court testimony, Pickard's lab produced up to a kilogram of LSD approximately every five weeks for short periods. Despite criticism for their methodology, the DEA contends that following their arrest there was a 95% drop in the availability of LSD in the US in the two years following the arrest.[1] Pickard himself has long denied these claims. In his 2007 paper "International LSD Prevalence — Factors Affecting Proliferation and Control", Pickard suggests that since the 1960s LSD production has always been de-centralized. As to a turn-of-the-century decline in availability due to his own arrest, Pickard highlights the fact that LSD availability had been on the decline since 1996, a fact which he correlates in part with the exponential growth of availability and demand for MDMA and other hallucinogenic drugs.[8] The actual quantity of LSD seized by the DEA remains unclear, with figures ranging from 198.9 grams to 41.3 kilograms." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard
swayvil 10y ago
Speaking as a meditation enthusiast, he probably did more to expand human consciousness than a thousand meditation enthusiasts.
- nnfy 10y ago
  I'm curious, have you ever combined meditation with psychoactive substances? I've found that marijuana and amphetamines both make it substantially easier for me to meditate and calm my mind. I'm not particularly experienced though- just a handful of times a month for a few years...
  - benevol 10y ago
    I'd recommend combining microdosing (10 micrograms) with meditation. It can subtly take you to another level. It doesn't however render the "pure" meditation experience inferior.
    - try_it 10y ago
      And I recommend higher doses. But be familiar with both.
      - benevol 10y ago
        Oh I didn't intend to exclude those. I absolutely agree - 150 micrograms (and up, for experienced users) can absolutely have life transforming effects, if used with the right attitude and careful preparation.
  - swayvil 10y ago
    ya, I have.
nnfy 10y ago
These people arguably changed the world. Early psychonauts and LSD use are tied to the beginnings of the electronic frontier foundation, and the concept of an open information space and an alternative reality for all of humanity to use freely. There is a documentary which shows in interviews that these ideals were at least partially inspired by LSD use. I hope someday to conquer my anxiety to a degree sufficient to explore beneficial LSD use without fear of so called bad trips. Having tried a small dose, there is without question a power in LSD (and other psychedelics, e.g. shrooms) as a tool.
- try_it 10y ago
  Bad experiences give light to possibly unrecognized problems. As someone who likes using psychedelics, nothing has pushed me more into good experiences and away from bad ones than having a good understanding of the arising and ceasing of mental phenomena as taught in buddhist teachings of meditation. Whats so scary about bad thoughts if you have a place where they arent there?
  - nnfy 10y ago
    I fear that a particularly difficult experience could leave me with a permanent worsening of some problems. I recognize that this is an unlikely case, however during my light trip I experienced a seemingly inexplicable sudden anxiety attack which was difficult to control. I feel like LSD is a toss up between potential euphoria/enlightment and dysphoria/mental illness. Granted, I did experience a substantial tranquility following the attack and in the days after the trip, and I believe that cubensis provided me with a substantial months long relief from existential depression, and helped me realize the depth of the hole into which I was already aware that I'd fallen. So I probably just have a few self imposed walls to break down.
    - Broken_Hippo 10y ago
      I can understand where you are coming from. I can always feel the anxiety coming back when I've taken them, and can see how that would make folks uncomfortable. I've a friend that won't take them because of this, in fact. For me, having taken more psychedelics than one would like to admit, it just mellowed out over time. Those walls broke down some and i got more comfortable with that bit of myself. And oh, the depression lifting has been a real effect for me as well. Of course, mine didn't reach anxiety attack level either, and I think that would have scared me off.
soineuh 10y ago
Are the rest of you just too polite to knock a soul only looking for a saviour? Why are these comments exclusively basket-cases fawning over the 'world-changing' meditative power of an objectively useless and destructive drug? I'll preempt the obvious response. Yeah, it doesn't kill you, but it irreparably alters your personality in a completely senseless way, turns you into Tim Leary, or someotherway spits in the face of the delicate and exhaustingly intentional intellectual and emotional process that has produced every genuine, valuable human insight in history. I haven't encountered a single LSD advocate that wasn't conspicuously unstable and self-hating, and we don't say a word when they encourage others to risk everything that matters to a functional person in exchange for fake spiritual nonsense. Now they'll suggest I take some to free myself from the confines of the emotional equipment that grounds any reasonable value system. As an exercise, read the responses carefully. For nothing, they've bargained away their ability to argue this point with me, and they want me to join the club. edit: As anticipated, this comment is unpopular. However, no one has yet attempted to articulate a criticism. I welcome any effort, and will try to respond with care.
- soineuh 10y ago
  If this Nick Sand guy's most notable work is synthesizing large amounts of LSD, I celebrate his passing and hope with the best intentions that his legacy dies with him too.
  - batushka 10y ago
    Others would say he created culture. But culture of what? Culture of addiction and spiritual coaches, who are just vagrants in many cases? Enlighten me too.
- jaaames 10y ago
  Sounds like you need to try out some LSD bro.
  - soineuh 10y ago
    There it is, ladies and gentlemen. He frames it as a joke, but he probably believes it.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

285 points by Alex3917 10y ago

> The mother of his godson Aidan remarked, "Nick didn't care about the stupid politics shit, he'd just laugh at it." Jon Hanna said Nick "became a criminal as a matter of principle and as an act of civil disobedience." https://youtu.be/_Wy0k3j_a7E https://youtu.be/_Wy0k3j_a7E [Note: that's actually him (Nick Sand) in the video clip above.]

mceoin 10y ago
“We got the whole prison stoned, this is what freedom is really about. It’s not about not being in chains, it’s about not having your mind enslaved,” Nick declared.
kakarot 10y ago
I like how the narrator emphasizes billion like he didn't just say "1/4 billion". I guess "250 million" doesn't have the same level of shock value.

themgt 10y ago

Beautiful quote from him in the article: When I began to navigate psychospace with LSD, I realized that before we were conscious, seemingly self-propelled human beings, many tapes and corridors had been created in our minds and reflexes which were not of our own making. These patterns and tapes laid down in our consciousness are walled off from each other. I see it as a vast labyrinth with high walls sealing off the many directives created by our personal history. Many of these directives are contradictory. The coexistence of these contradictory programs is what we call inner conflict. This conflict causes us to constantly check ourselves while we are caught in the opposition of polarity. Another metaphor would be like a computer with many programs running simultaneously. The more programs that are running, the slower the computer functions. This is a problem then. With all the programs running that are demanded of our consciousness in this modern world, we have problems finding deep integration. To complicate matters, the programs are reinforced by fear. Fear separates, love integrates. We find ourselves drawn to love and unity, but afraid to make the leap. What I found to be the genius of LSD is that it really gets you high, higher than the programs, higher than the walls that mask and blind one to the energy destroying presence of many contradictory but hidden programs. When LSD is used intentionally it enables you to see all the tracks laid down, to explore each one intensely. It also allows you to see the many parallel and redundant programs as well as the contradictory ones. It allows you to see the underlying unity of all opposites in the magic play of existence. This allows you to edit these programs and recreate superior programs that give you the insight to shake loose the restrictions and conflicts programmed into each one of us by our parents, our religion, our early education, and by society as a whole. --- Very much in line with what recent neuroscience results are finding: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep46421 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep46421 http://www.nature.com/news/brain-scans-reveal-how-lsd-affects-consciousness-1.19727 http://www.nature.com/news/brain-scans-reveal-how-lsd-affect...

badosu 10y ago
Surprisingly similar to what Lilly wrote in 1968: "PROGRAMMING AND METAPROGAMMING IN THE HUMAN BIOCOMPUTER" [0] A very good book, even though you should not take it literally, quote from the preface: Eventually the cerebral cortex appeared as an expanding new highlevel computer controlling the structurally lower levels of the nervous system, the lower builtin programs. For the first time learning and its faster adaptation to a rapidly changing environment began to appear. Further, as this new cortex expanded over several millions of years, a critical size cortex was reached. At this level of structure, a new capability emerged: learning to learn. [0]: http://nekhbet.leary.csoft.net/biocomputer.pdf http://nekhbet.leary.csoft.net/biocomputer.pdf Edit (further context): To avoid the necessity of repeating learning to learn, symbols, metaphors, models each time, I symbolize the under- lying idea in these operations as metaprogramming. Metaprogramming appears at a critical cortical size-the cerebral computer must have a large enough number of interconnected circuits of sufficient quality for the operations of meta- programming to exist in that biocomputer. Essentially, metaprogramming is an operation in which a central control system controls hundreds of thousands of programs operating in parallel simultaneously.
- eip 10y ago
  This is the best book to read on LSD. Only a little bit though otherwise your pupils will dilate too much to read. Obviously.
  - kordless 10y ago
    I already need readers, so putting on my visor magnifiers will probably do the trick!
  - cnp 10y ago
    The one you really need to read by him is "The Center of the Cyclone" ;) It is truly, truly incredible. This guy was a real-deal scientist. I first discovered him through reading this https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/the-ketamine-secrets-of-segas-ecco-the-dolphin-347 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/the-ketamine-secrets-of-s... and then went on to read every one of his books except for his last, which I want to save for the right time. This guy has had a profound effect on my life and I cant recommend his work highly enough.

boardwaalk 10y ago

There's a recent documentary about his... entrepreneurship called The Sunshine Makers. I'd recommend it. It's on US Netflix.

Alex3917 10y ago
There's another one called Orange Sunshine also that just came out. I haven't seen either, but they both get 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

jongold 10y ago

Orange Sunshine (the recent documentary) was absolutely excellent. a++ http://www.orangesunshinemovie.com/ http://www.orangesunshinemovie.com/

Alex3917 10y ago
Glad to know it's actually worth watching. I really wanted a print of their movie poster, but for whatever reason they only made them in 11 x 17: http://belhistory.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/0/7/19079917/1580041.png?446 http://belhistory.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/0/7/19079917/158004...

seoguru 10y ago

Great interview of Nick Sand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxiK827_rX8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxiK827_rX8 parting words: "If we can keep moving from truth to love to beauty to preciousness, everything around us becomes sacred"

soineuh 10y ago
What was he trying to encourage with those words, exactly? Give up on reality and at the same time somehow force yourself to care deeply about things? Didn't humanity throw out this garbage philosophy thousands of years ago? Or is this instead some strange drug-fueled process I'm not meant to reason about but only experience?

ShannonAlther 10y ago

I'm pretty sure Nick Sand's arrest in 1996 was the cause of the sudden scarcity of LSD on the market 20 years ago. According to Erowid ( https://erowid.org/culture/characters/sand_nick/sand_nick_biography1.shtml https://erowid.org/culture/characters/sand_nick/sand_nick_bi... ), the RCMP tested samples from his lab and found their purity to be >100%, suggesting that their reference samples had degraded.

eip 10y ago
"According to court testimony, Pickard's lab produced up to a kilogram of LSD approximately every five weeks for short periods. Despite criticism for their methodology, the DEA contends that following their arrest there was a 95% drop in the availability of LSD in the US in the two years following the arrest.[1] Pickard himself has long denied these claims. In his 2007 paper "International LSD Prevalence — Factors Affecting Proliferation and Control", Pickard suggests that since the 1960s LSD production has always been de-centralized. As to a turn-of-the-century decline in availability due to his own arrest, Pickard highlights the fact that LSD availability had been on the decline since 1996, a fact which he correlates in part with the exponential growth of availability and demand for MDMA and other hallucinogenic drugs.[8] The actual quantity of LSD seized by the DEA remains unclear, with figures ranging from 198.9 grams to 41.3 kilograms." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard

swayvil 10y ago

Speaking as a meditation enthusiast, he probably did more to expand human consciousness than a thousand meditation enthusiasts.

nnfy 10y ago
I'm curious, have you ever combined meditation with psychoactive substances? I've found that marijuana and amphetamines both make it substantially easier for me to meditate and calm my mind. I'm not particularly experienced though- just a handful of times a month for a few years...
- benevol 10y ago
  I'd recommend combining microdosing (10 micrograms) with meditation. It can subtly take you to another level. It doesn't however render the "pure" meditation experience inferior.
  - try_it 10y ago
    And I recommend higher doses. But be familiar with both.
    - benevol 10y ago
      Oh I didn't intend to exclude those. I absolutely agree - 150 micrograms (and up, for experienced users) can absolutely have life transforming effects, if used with the right attitude and careful preparation.
- swayvil 10y ago
  ya, I have.

nnfy 10y ago

These people arguably changed the world. Early psychonauts and LSD use are tied to the beginnings of the electronic frontier foundation, and the concept of an open information space and an alternative reality for all of humanity to use freely. There is a documentary which shows in interviews that these ideals were at least partially inspired by LSD use. I hope someday to conquer my anxiety to a degree sufficient to explore beneficial LSD use without fear of so called bad trips. Having tried a small dose, there is without question a power in LSD (and other psychedelics, e.g. shrooms) as a tool.

try_it 10y ago
Bad experiences give light to possibly unrecognized problems. As someone who likes using psychedelics, nothing has pushed me more into good experiences and away from bad ones than having a good understanding of the arising and ceasing of mental phenomena as taught in buddhist teachings of meditation. Whats so scary about bad thoughts if you have a place where they arent there?
- nnfy 10y ago
  I fear that a particularly difficult experience could leave me with a permanent worsening of some problems. I recognize that this is an unlikely case, however during my light trip I experienced a seemingly inexplicable sudden anxiety attack which was difficult to control. I feel like LSD is a toss up between potential euphoria/enlightment and dysphoria/mental illness. Granted, I did experience a substantial tranquility following the attack and in the days after the trip, and I believe that cubensis provided me with a substantial months long relief from existential depression, and helped me realize the depth of the hole into which I was already aware that I'd fallen. So I probably just have a few self imposed walls to break down.
  - Broken_Hippo 10y ago
    I can understand where you are coming from. I can always feel the anxiety coming back when I've taken them, and can see how that would make folks uncomfortable. I've a friend that won't take them because of this, in fact. For me, having taken more psychedelics than one would like to admit, it just mellowed out over time. Those walls broke down some and i got more comfortable with that bit of myself. And oh, the depression lifting has been a real effect for me as well. Of course, mine didn't reach anxiety attack level either, and I think that would have scared me off.

soineuh 10y ago

Are the rest of you just too polite to knock a soul only looking for a saviour? Why are these comments exclusively basket-cases fawning over the 'world-changing' meditative power of an objectively useless and destructive drug? I'll preempt the obvious response. Yeah, it doesn't kill you, but it irreparably alters your personality in a completely senseless way, turns you into Tim Leary, or someotherway spits in the face of the delicate and exhaustingly intentional intellectual and emotional process that has produced every genuine, valuable human insight in history. I haven't encountered a single LSD advocate that wasn't conspicuously unstable and self-hating, and we don't say a word when they encourage others to risk everything that matters to a functional person in exchange for fake spiritual nonsense. Now they'll suggest I take some to free myself from the confines of the emotional equipment that grounds any reasonable value system. As an exercise, read the responses carefully. For nothing, they've bargained away their ability to argue this point with me, and they want me to join the club. edit: As anticipated, this comment is unpopular. However, no one has yet attempted to articulate a criticism. I welcome any effort, and will try to respond with care.

soineuh 10y ago
If this Nick Sand guy's most notable work is synthesizing large amounts of LSD, I celebrate his passing and hope with the best intentions that his legacy dies with him too.
- batushka 10y ago
  Others would say he created culture. But culture of what? Culture of addiction and spiritual coaches, who are just vagrants in many cases? Enlighten me too.
jaaames 10y ago
Sounds like you need to try out some LSD bro.
- soineuh 10y ago
  There it is, ladies and gentlemen. He frames it as a joke, but he probably believes it.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]