When people hear the word LSD or the phrase "turn on, tune in, drop out," a couple images likely come to mind. One is Timothy Leary, the most publicized advocate of LSD. Another is a group of spaced-out hippies in psychedelic clothing (often optional) at a "be-in." What probably doesn't come to mind is a smuggling operation responsible not only for bringing tons of marijuana into the country from Mexico, but manufacturing LSD and smuggling hashish from Afghanistan. Yet as Nicholas Schou explores in Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World, those were among the main activities of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love.
The Brotherhood stemmed from a concept of a man named John Griggs. Griggs was a marijuana dealer in Laguna Beach, Calif., in the mid-1960s when he discovered LSD. Griggs quickly became an evangelist. Despite his somewhat shady background — and many members of the Brotherhood would have criminal records — Griggs quickly came to believe that LSD was the path to enlightenment, a sacrament by which to discover and commune with God. In fact, when Leary later took up with the Brotherhood, he called Griggs "the holiest man who has ever lived in this country."
Griggs gathered a tribe of followers who engaged in communal acid trips. Originally about a dozen members, the group grew, dubbing themselves the Brotherhood of Eternal Love and actually forming a church by that name. Griggs and a number of others were serious about spreading peace and love through acid. "We were experiencing a whole new viewpoint of life that was so beautiful and loving and caring of others and the whole world. We felt connected to the source of all life," one early member relates in the book. But opinions differed. Owsley Stanley, one of the first and best known of the freelance makers of LSD, cursorily dismisses the Brotherhood, calling its members a "bunch of loose cannons on a ship of fools."
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