Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World

by Nicholas Schou

Few stories in the annals of American counterculture are as intriguing or dramatic as that of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Dubbed the “Hippie Mafia,” the Brotherhood began in the mid-1960s as a small band of peace-loving, adventure-seeking surfers in Southern California. After discovering LSD, they took to Timothy Leary’s mantra of “Turn on, tune in, and drop out” and resolved to make that vision a reality by becoming the biggest group of acid dealers and hashish smugglers in the nation, and literally providing the fuel for the psychedelic revolution in the process. Just days after California became the first state in the union to ban LSD, the Brotherhood formed a legally registered church in its headquarters at Mystic Arts World on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, where they sold blankets and other countercultural paraphernalia retrieved through surfing safaris and road trips to exotic locales in Asia and South America. Before long, they also began to sell Afghan hashish, Hawaiian pot (the storied “Maui Wowie”), and eventually Colombian cocaine, much of which the Brotherhood smuggled to California in secret compartments inside surfboards and Volkswagen minibuses driven across the border. They also befriended Leary himself, enlisting him in the goal of buying a tropical island where they could install the former Harvard philosophy professor and acid prophet as the high priest of an experimental utopia. The Brotherhood’s most legendary contribution to the drug scene was Orange Sunshine, the group’s nickname for their trademark orange-colored acid tablet that happened to produce an especially powerful trip. Brotherhood foot soldiers passed out handfuls of the tablets to communes, at Grateful Dead concerts, and at love-ins up and down the coast of California and beyond. The Hell’s Angels, Charles Mason and his followers, and the unruly crowd at the infamous Altamont music festival all tripped out on this acid. Jimi Hendrix even appeared in a film starring Brotherhood members and performed a private show for the fugitive band of outlaws on the slope of a Hawaiian volcano. Journalist Nicholas Schou takes us deep inside the Brotherhood, combining exclusive interviews with both the group’s surviving members as well as the cops who chased them. A wide-sweeping narrative of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll (and more drugs) that runs from Laguna Beach to Maui to Afghanistan, Orange Sunshine explores how America moved from the era of peace and free love into a darker time of hard drugs and paranoia.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Drugs, Crime, Philosophy, Counter Culture, Music

304 pages, Hardcover

Published March 16, 2010

Reviews

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading this I suggest watching the newly released documentary by the same title. The way the film presents the characters highlights their passion and mission in a way that the book couldn't. For instance, the love story between Carol and Michael is lovely and a real tear-jerker, and I could see that more apparently through the doc. The stories are stunning, albeit insane and often stupid.

[Katey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting as a historical document, though pretty disjointed as a story.

[Beer Bolwijn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non-fiction reporting books almost never tell a balanced story, and neither does this one. I think Schou did a great job with the possibilities handed to him, and so long after the facts. These people were all in their 60s at least! The objective style of writing was comforting, and made for an easy read. I loved how the hippies thought the universe aligned when people showed up with limber and built a stage in the canyon, while the cops assert that it was undercover guys that did it to prevent chaos from erupting :-)

The story of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love ultimately did not match the expectations set by me. I set the bar pretty high I suppose. Still, I wish there was more about the manufacturing of Orange Sunshine, and more stories of how the Brotherhood tried to spread Peace, Love and Acid. Although the Maui period was amazing, I can't wait to see the movie "Rainbow Bridge" with Jimi Hendrix. And the book suffers from the omission of voices like Johnny Gale.

In the end, this is a great prologue to Joanna Harcourt-Smith's "My Psychedelic Love Story".

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

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."

Schou, a reporter for the OC Weekly , did a feature article on the Brotherhood in 2005. With Orange Sunshine he delves more deeply into the group, interviewing not only about a half dozen of the original members, several later members and law enforcement officers. Even if spreading peace, love and LSD to the masses was the Brotherhood's goal, Schou leaves little doubt that its criminal activity was equally, if not more, widespread. Members of the group smuggled tons of marijuana in from Mexico and distributed millions of hits of acid. In fact, starting in 1967 the group would be responsible for the manufacture and distribution of millions more hits of a form of LSD with 200 times the regular dosage, an LSD tablet Griggs would call "Orange Sunshine," Several members of the group also made repeated trips to Afghanistan to smuggle tons of hashish into the U.S. The book also suggests that members of the Brotherhood who ended up living on Maui after smuggling tons of marijuana into the state were responsible at least in part for the development of a strain of marijuana that came to be known as "Maui Wowie."

Some of the smuggling reflected a blend of two California cultures. Many of the prominent Brotherhood members were surfers. Surfboards often became the mechanism for smuggling marijuana, hash or LSD across borders. In fact, not only does one of those surfboards appear in the Jimi Hendrix film Rainbow Bridge that was shot on Maui, members of the Brotherhood appear in the movie.

Orange Sunshine seems less focused than Schou's prior book, Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb but there are a few reasons for that. First, this is a far broader subject involving dozens and dozens of individuals. Additionally, many who were involved in the Brotherhood remain reluctant even today to talk about it and its activities. In fact, it is perhaps surprising how many people agreed to be interviewed by Schou, although as the book occasionally notes, the arrangements for some interviews were rather unique. Yet all this leaves the book feeling a bit amorphous at times and it is at times difficult to track the various alliances within and associated with the organization.

Whether the Brotherhood was as massive a drug smuggling operation as its members claim or the book suggests, there is little doubt it was a major cartel. Law enforcement cracked down on the Brotherhood on August 5, 1972, arresting 57 persons associated with it and confiscating two and a half tons of hash, 30 gallons of hash oil and 1.5 million tablets of Orange Sunshine. Following the busts, Rolling Stone called the group the "Hippie Mafia." Since its inception, the Brotherhood had clearly moved from its goals of enlightenment to to a commercial drug dealing enterprise. In some ways, that transformation could be viewed as mirroring the transition of the 1960s to the 1970s, Certainly, the cry of ""turn on, tune in, drop out" had already rung hollow by then.

Orange Sunshine may not be the definitive book on LSD culture of the 1960s. Still, it provides insight into an aspect of that milieu and counterculture with which few are familiar.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie)

[audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I went into this book thinking I was prepared. And I was not remotely prepared. First of all, I thought from the book's description that this was a short history of some dudes who espoused acid as a fun recreational drug, during the 1960s. Like, some philosophy and drug-taking and weird Californianity.

Instead, this is a short history of some dudes who espoused acid above every other thing, believing it to be the *only* path to enlightenment, a fact that then justified lying, cheating, infidelity, smuggling, assault and non-consensual drug use, including to minors.

(Hi! I'm a content note. So... we're going to talk about the child abuse in this book for a second, but we're going to do it behind a spoiler tag for anyone who needs to hop off for a quick moment...There is, obviously, a ton of dodgy parenting that went on among this crew, but the book is very up front in including anecdotes about how all the Brotherhood's children, ages 3-9 primarily, took acid all the time as kids. Regardless of your stance on recreational drug use, that is not okay. There was also apparently a craze for burying your drugs around town, and that was in fact, a recipe for disaster when combined with kids who run wild and dig holes.
...and we're back.)

But the SCOPE of the non-consensual drug use, y'all.

I'm struggling to describe it and trying not to perseverate on it but holy moly. These dudes believed in their acid so much that one of them walked down the street pushing tabs of it into stranger's mouths as he went. These dudes operated an organic juice stand at an all-ages music festival and put unannounced acid in all the juice. These dudes apparently went to Altamont (yes, that Altamont) and seeing the Hell's Angels security getting drunk and roughing people up, thought it would be a good idea to give them all acid-spiked wine to "calm things down".

History tells us it did not calm things down one bit.

Also, these dudes loved acid so much, they decided that the conventionally available illegal acid wasn't remotely strong enough, so they engineered their own, "Orange Sunshine", to be TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY TIMES STRONGER.

Whaaaaaaat, in the actual whatwhat is what. I am flummoxed by this.

The strength of this book comes from the fact that the events depicted therein nearly beggar belief. They're so wild and so excessive that you have to keep reading, even while you're like, no, oh no... ohhhh no. Especially when their leader decides to mix his turbo-acid with mushrooms and face-plants into a campfire. Like, no one saw that coming? It's a functional account of an incredibly wild time and some seriously hare-brained schemes and a whole lot of drug use.

Not convinced I'm any the better for having read it, though.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

To give you a reference point I graduated high school in the west side of Los Angeles in 1973. I have 2 older cousins, one of whom is one of the original hippies who lived in the Haight, Berkeley, and Bolinas. I lived in Manhattan Beach, only a few miles from the location of this book. I may or may not have been exposed to or involved in some or all of the aspects in this book.

With that being said, this book was a complete flash back! It is as if I was reliving a portion of my life that seems to be somewhat hazy. It completely (well, almost) filled in the holes, explained some of the seedy haze and gave me a foundation to move forward with a sense of positive closure.

If you are familiar with any of the aspects discussed in Orange Sunshine - read this book!!

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-researched page-turner. If the full title sounds up your alley, it is.

[David Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World by Nicholas Schou (Thomas Dunne Books 2010)(363.45) tells the story of an organization known as The Brotherhood of Eternal Love which served as one of the principal distributors of LSD in the United States in the 1960's and 1970's. The BEL also was the first outfit to import and distribute hash from Afghanistan into the U.S. The BEL was a collection of surfers and drug-dealing hippies in Laguna Beach, California. It appears (for purposes of this book anyway) that the source of all of the acid sold by the BEL was Tim Scully, who is best known as a sound man for the Grateful Dead and an organic chemistry apprentice to the legendary producer and purveyor of LSD (as well as being a Grateful Dead sound engineer) Augustus Stanley Owsley. This book barely mentions Owsley (or Tim Scully, for that matter) and instead focuses on the long-term contribution of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love to the spread of psychoactive chemicals. It's a fascinating story. I don't know why the book failed to further explore the roles of Owsley and Scully, without whom the 60's may well have fizzled (or at least failed to sizzle). I'd like to think that the full story can't yet be told because of the possibility of exposing those who have apparently gotten away with their roles in the project. Or not: upon further review, the book provides evidence on page 61 that Owsley dismissed the Brotherhood as a bunch of wannabees when Owsley described them as "...a bunch of loose cannons on a ship of fools." Orange Sunshine , p.61.
At any rate, I highly recommend this book to students of the 1960's. My rating: 7.5/10, finished 1/25/13.

[Timothy Hallinan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific look at a group of 1960s dopers who set out to change the world, one tab at a time. In the wilds of Laguna Canyon, even then a refuge for artists and eccentrics, a band of marijuana connoisseurs formed a brotherhood to smuggle the best dope available in from Mexico and make it widely available at low prices. Meantime, across the country, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were getting kicked out of Harvard for experimenting with LSD, and on the West coast, Owsley and others were beginning to manufacture it in wholesale batches.

The Brotherhood itself remained secret for many years, although lots of dope dealers with stronger profit motives claimed membership, and eventually it disintegrated in a cloud of confusion, greed, and acrimony as colder and more addictive drugs, such as cocaine began to claim the scene. John Griggs, the spiritual center of the Brotherhood (Leary called Griggs his guru) comes across as a hazy saint who made promises he couldn't keep. and Leary was clearly an egomaniac of global proportions.

The writer, Nicholas Schou, may take the spirituality of the early brotherhood a bit too literally (I was sort of there, at a remove, and all doper groups had good people and bad, with the bad usually ascendant because they were better focused, almost always on money), but this is an elegant piece of after-the-fact reporting, and how he got some of these people to talk is beyond me. The tales of Afghan hash smuggling alone are worth the price of admission, and the long sequence about Maui Wowie, Jimi Hendrix, and the filming of "Rainbow Bridge" is drop-dead hilarious.

Anyone with any curiosity about the sixties or where the DEA came from (it was formed to deal with the Brotherhood) will enjoy this book.

[Adam Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Story goes back to surfers in California who became idealistic after trying LSD and started the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. They then tried to "turn on the world" by dealing hashish from Afghanistan and LSD. They operated a store front as a cover in Laguna Beach where they sold exotic goods. This group pioneered drug smuggling through airports, surfboards, Mexico, cars shipped from other countries, etc. They also started the cannabis strain maui wowie in Hawaii when they attempted to start an island hub or base of operations for the drugs and an idealistic environment to "drop out" of mainstream society. They also befriended and followed to a large degree Timothy Leary and even helped break him out of prison and allowed him to live on there ranch in California with his family. The LSD they gave out was usually free and at one point was dropped on concert goers from a plane. There acid was used by the Manson family, Hells Angels, Grateful Dead concerts, Jimi Hendrix, and more. The book after describing the groups origins and antics later describes the groups fall from the creation of the DEA specifically to fight the Brotherhood and the move to selling harder drugs brought them down because of greed. Overall a really good book to help describe the rise of the 60's counterculture and its later demise.

[Inanna Arthen · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far, this book is an absolute trip (if you'll pardon the expression :) ). As you can see from my "read" shelf, I've already gone through a whole pile of books about the 60s and drugs specifically, so I recognize lots of the names and references. At the same time, this book fills in huge amounts of back-story and sidebars that the others did not, so it's not at all redundant. The descriptions of the drug-smuggling operations from and/or through Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and so on are mesmerizing, not least because of the contrast between what those places were like in the 1960s as opposed to the situation now. I'll have to expand this review after I finish the book, I'm just past the middle now.

[Jaky · Rating 3 out of 5]

An engaging read, if you are interested in some of the big players and events of the 60's counterculture and how we (partially) have ended up where we are in regards to drug culture. Something about this book is sad, though. The Brotherhood reminds me of many religious organizations that started out with good intentions, but soon became overrun with greed (and in the Brotherhood's case, pure hedonism) and lost the vision. It also does not endear one to Dr. Timothy Leary, who is portrayed as an egotistical, spotlight seeker — a man who exploited and abused the sacredness of psychedelics for his own engrandizement.

[Nick Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

None of the characters are significant enough to make this anything more than a period piece (save ol' Tim Leary, who's much better documented in, among others, Storming Heaven). I liked the pictures of undercover officers (beards and big, friendly, lethal smiles! tricky!); I'd like to see a serious (preferably at the level of policing textbook) study of drug interdiction techniques. Anybody know one?

[Tom Hamrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and the way the writer writes. I will now get his titles from before. It was fascinating that some do good have fun loving hippies just wanted people in orange County in the 60's to be High and have a great experience, but then as in any group or business greed plays a role and it became a multi million dollar operation which then brought problems. I was so into the stories that I can't wait until january when I'm in that part of Cali. so I can spot some of the places from the book. Best book I have read this year by far.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read, 11/2018: This is still an interesting, but disjointed, story. Long on sensationalism and short on a more serious lean towards the culture of LSD in the sixties, it’s a good fluff piece in the realm of psychedelic literature.



overall, this is a pretty middle-of-the-road book as far as 60's and drug culture-related non-fiction goes. it certainly tells an interesting story, but tends to be pretty disjointed at times. all in all, a good supplement to other books about lsd, especially storming heaven and acid dreams.

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some interesting info - like, now I know where Maui Wowie came from. The Brotherhood is largely absent in other books, such as Storming Heaven. They were, however, pivotal in a lot of key branches of the drug underground - both good and bad.

Orange Sunshine barrels were around in the 70's, and they were definitely one of the standards by which we measured other acid. If you are or have been on the bus, you should read. This book is now in a new category for me - must buy.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not know that Timothy Leary ran (briefly) against Ronald Reagan for Governor of California. Until I read this book. It's a wild ride. A sad, interesting, and unbelievable tale about the intersection of idealism, enlightenment, commerce, surfing in the Southern California. It's hard to believe it all took place in the span of about five years. I wonder what happened to all of the characters - the ones that didn't die or end up in padded rooms. I imagine I'll find out when I finish.

[Kurt Reichenbaugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of hoods and street racers from the 50's turn to pot and acid in the 60's and discover a lucrative career in smuggling drugs from Mexico and Afghanistan under the guise of a religious philosphy based in Laguna Beach. Along the way they bamboozle Timothy Leary into their scheme of a psychedelic tuned-in Utopia while kickstarting the bad-vibes, cynicism and let-down of the 70's. Interesting read about the times.

[David Given Schwarm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very great history of Orange County! The early Laguna Drug Days stuff if fantastic hippie nirvana wild ride read stuff. The Ending Cocaine Crash is predictable and tough--but never-the-less a fun read. I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in Orange County Counter Culture--a must read.

[Murat Aydogdu · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a nice distraction from stuff I normally read. A recommendation from the owner of the video store that I go to (yes, they do exist still!), I decided to read this since I trust his taste. An interesting insight into hippie/surfer/spiritual-religious/drug-dealer folk in California right around 1970, the book flows well. And the story itself is quite amazing which helps the narrative.

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Later on Christmas Day, a propeller airplane flew low over the crowd. As people scanned the heavens, thousands of pieces of paper floated down toward them: the remainder of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love's Orange Sunshine invitation cards, air-dropped party favors for the already-tripped out audience." (238)

[J.M. Rosenberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tells the story of the "the secret hippie mafia" of the 60s and 70s in fascinating detail. Not as vibrant in language as say, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, but still fun to read; this book takes a more journalistic approach in its attempt to cover a wide range of happenings, truly grand in scope, but with plenty of meat.

[Barry Hammond · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well-written true crime book about the group of California hippies who became one of the largest drug-smuggling operations in the world. With a colorful cast of characters ranging from Timothy Leary, Jimi Hendrix, to the acid-chemist Owsley, it's a stranger-than-fiction tale that spans two-generations and the whole world. - BH.

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gave me some insight into the 60's and hippie culture. I forgot that LSD had been promoted as something that would bring people together and solve problems. Could have been much shorter but I gather the author wanted to use large portions of his interviews.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is made to be a movie

[Stacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boy. We were so dumb in the 60's. What a bunch of fools.

[scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Acid, surfing, Leary, Afganistan. This book has it all and it's all true!

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

adventurous read of hippies, acid and hash smuggling

[Beatrice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think I'll ever refer to myself as a hippie again. Just kidding, but it's a heavy book, man!

[Dianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the story but thought it read like a textbook.