Life Flash: 2009-06-07

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Alexander Shulgin

Interview With Alexander Shulgin

Publish at Scribd or explore others: School Work Humanities Books art jobs

Peter Stafford's wake was LSD

Friend of Dog's.

RIP Peter Stafford;

author of Psychedelics Encyclopedia

A quick blurb from Vision Thing:

Peter Stafford (1939-2007) author of Psychedelics Encyclopedia, and LSD in Action died last night in Santa Cruz, California... Peter died of an accidental fall from a ladder while climbing down from a loft where he lived. He is survived by his son Sasha who saw him last Sunday before leaving on a vacation in New Zealand. When his son returns, a memorial celebration remembering Peter's life will be held in Santa Cruz California where he lived for 43 years.

More on Peter and his life at Vision Thing...

I realize this post is late, but I missed this while on vacation. Having met Peter a few times, I can honestly say I never though he would go by falling from a ladder.

LINK : www.bruceeisner.com

Huxley

Unanswered Questions from Huxley's Experiments
by Peter Stafford

Editors Note: This essay was first published in Blotter No. 2, in early 1978. The newsletter was the work of The Psychedelic Education Center/Linkage, a Santa Cruz based group that organized two psychedelic conferences and met regularly from 1977 to 1982. The main writings of Aldous Huxley

Speculations and explanations provided by Huxley are based on wide-ranging inquiries he undertook after having been greatly energized by that initial experiment. Most of this seems fresh today. How odd it seems, for example, to hear him describe the work of John Lilly with dolphins, or that of those accumulating death and dying accounts -- and to realize that this was written more than a quarter century ago!

What struck me, reading through this compilation, most forcefully was Huxley's questioning (mainly of Osmond). Here are some of those questions, which yet deserve clear answers:

# How many of the current ideas of eternity, of heaven, of supernatural states are ultimately derived from the experience of drug-takers?
# Do Galtonian visualizers react in a different way from non-visualizers? Again, is there any marked difference between the average reactions of extreme cerebrotonics, viscerotonics and somatotonics? Do people with a pronounced musical gift get auditory counterparts of the visions and transfigurations of the external world experienced by others"? How are pure mathematicians and professional philosophers affected?
# The inexplicable fact remains the nature of the visions. Who invents these astounding things? And why should the not-I who does the inventing hit on precisely this kind of thing?
# What those Buddhist monks did for the dying and the dead, might not the modern psychiatrist do for the insane?
# My old friend, Naomi Mitchison writes from Scotland, after reading the Doors, that she had an almost identical experience of the transfiguration of the outer world during her various pregnancies. Could this be due to a temporary upset in the sugar supply to the brain?
# Have you ever tried the effects of mescalin on a congenitally blind man or woman? This would surely be of interest.
# Can you tell me in a line or two what was the nature of the experiences induced by being shut up in silence, in the dark? Were those visions of a mescalin-like kind?
# Why should gems ever have been regarded precious? What has induced men to spend such enormous quantites of time, trouble and money on the finding and cutting of colored pebbles?
# Did I tell you that my friend Dr. Cholden had found that the stroboscope improved on mescalin effects, just as Al Hubbard did? . . . And anyhow, what on earth are the neurological correlations of mescalin and LSD experiences? And if neurological patterns are formed, as presumably they must be, can they be reactivated by a probing electrode, as Penfield reactivates trains of memories, evoking complete vivid recall?
# Who, having once come to the relization of the primoridal fact of unity in Love, would ever want to return to experimentation on the psychic level?
# Who on earth was John Sebastian? Certainly not the old gent with sixteen childen in a stuffy Protestant environment. Rather, an enormous manifestation of the Other -- but the Other canalized, controlled, made available through the intervention of the intellect and the senses and emotions.
# How and why is heaven turned into hell?
# Can we with impunity replace systematic self-discipline by a chemical?
# Is a mescalinized person hypnotizable? If so, can hypnotic suggestions direct his new found visionary capacities into specific channels -- e.g. into the realms of buried memories of childhood, or into specific areas of thought and imagery? Can we suggest to him, for example that he should see an episode from The Arabian Nights, or from the Gospel, or in the realms of archetypal symbols or mythology?
# How strange that we should all carry about with us this enormous universe of vision that which lies beyond vision, and yet be mainly unconscious of the fact! How can we learn to pass at will from one world of consciousness to the other? . . . The supreme art of life would be the art of passing at will from obscure knowledge to conceptualized, utilitarian knowledge, from the aesthetic to the mystical; and all the time to be able, in the words of the Zen master, to grasp the non-particular that exists in particulars, to be aware of the no-thought which lies in thought -- the absolute in relationships, the infine in finite things, the eternal in time. The problem is how to learn that supreme art of life?
# Did you get what I have got so strongly on the recent occasions when I have taken the stuff -- an overpowering sense of gratitude, a desire to give thanks to the Order of Things for the privilege of this particular experience, and also for the privilege -- for that one feels it to be, in spite of everything -- of living in a human body on this particular planet?
# Human beings will be able to achieve effortlessly what in the past could be only achieved with difficulty, by means of self-control and spiritual exercises. Will this be a good thing for individuals and for societies? Or will it be a bad thing?
# If we have a meeting of this highly pickwickian organization, what (aside the pleasure and interest of meeting a number of intelligent people interested in the same sort of thing) will be gained? . . . Would there be ulterior advantages? . . . Couldn't the same results be attained more simply and cheaply by discussing matters at a meeting, or by correspondence, and dividing up the work among the various experimenters?
# Is it possible for a powerful drug to be completely harmless?
# Most of us function at about 15 percent of capacity. How can we step up our lamentably low efficiency? . . . Will it in fact be possible to produce superior individuals by biochemical means?
# To think of people made vulnerable by LSD being exposed to such people is profoundly disturbing. But what can one do about the problem? Psychiatry is an art based on a still imperfect science -- and as in all the arts, there are more bad and indifferent practitioners than good ones. How can one keep the bad artists out? Bad artists don't matter in painting or literature -- but they matter enormously in therapy and education; for whole lives and destinies may be affected by their shortcomings.
# Have you any idea why some people visualize and others don't?
# If you were having a love affair with a woman, would you be interested in writing about it?
# What's happening in the brain when you're having a vision? And what's happening when you pass from a premystical to a genuinely mystical state of mind?
# To what extent are our thoughts, beliefs and actions the products of our inherited physique and temperament, and of the fluctuations, in response to internal and external events, of our body-chemistry? Just how valid is a philosophy based upon a state of mind (say the conviction of sin) which can be radically changed by the prick of a needle or a small daily dose of Ritalin? And what about those experiences induced by Dr. Hofmann's physically harmless mind-changers -- experiences of a world transfigured into unimaginably loveliness, charged with intrinsic significance, and manifesting, in spite of pain and death, an essential and (there is no other word) divine All-Rightness? Yes, what about them?
Peter Stafford lives in Santa Cruz, California and is the author of three books including LSD: The Problem-Solving Psychedelic written with Bonnie Golightly (1967, Award Books), Pychedelic Baby Reaches Puberty (1971) and Psychedelics Enclopedia (First Edition, 1977, And/Or Press, Second Edition, J. P. Tarcher Books, 1983 and Third Edition to be publsihed by Ronin Publishing, Winter, 1992). Peter first took peyote in the early 'Sixties and was an editor of Crawdaddy, the first rock magazine. about psychedelics and the visionary experience have now been gathered into a single volume -- entitled Moksha, Stonehill Press, edited by Michael Horowitz and Cynthia Palmer. Though more than a quarter century has passed since Huxley's death, this material resurrected from letters, talks and articles is timely today. For as the law and public reassess psychedelic questions via the door of medicine, nowhere will they find a more profound study of implications and of the questions raised.

In 1931, Aldous described his delight upon coming upon an unpromising looking, ponderous work by a German pharmacologist -- "a thick book, dense with matter and, in manner, a model of all that literary style should not be." He read this from cover to cover with a growing interest in "how the story of drugtaking constitutes one of the most curious and also, it seems to me, one of the most significant chapters in the natural history of human beings." But it wasn't until 22 years later, after he had published 39 books concerning human nature, that Huxley tried a psychedelic -- 400 mg. of mescaline sulfate, administered at about 11 am on May 6th, 1953 by a young Canadian psychiatrist named Humphry Osmond.
In one of several remembrances of Aldous appearing in this volume, Osmond comments that the finest praise one could receive came in his expression, "How absolutely incredible!" Well, after about an hour and a half into the experience, Aldous noticed he was "not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation -- the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence." (In a letter to Chatto & Windus just after this mescaline experience, Huxley writes: "It is without any question the most extraordinary and significant experience available to human beings this side of the Beatific Vision; and it opens up a host of philosophical problems, throws intense light and raises all manner of questions in the fields of aesthetics, religion, theory of knowledge . . .")

Over the next decade, there were to be nine other tries -- two more with mescaline, one with morning glory seeds (8 of them), two with psilocybin and four with LSD. This may not be considered by some that much experience. But Huxley and his colleagues -- mainly Osmond -- were unusually sensitive to and articulate about what was at stake here. In an important sense, they have affected the way in which we see the issues.

In the first of his two short books about psychedelics -- The Doors of Perception -- Huxley remarked that the "untalented visionary may perceive an inner reality no less tremendous, beautiful and significant than the world beheld by Blake; but he lacks altogether the ability to express, in literary or plastic symbols, what he has seen." Aldous, by way of contrast, by the time of his first contrived mystical experience had already spent a long lifetime as a student of the curious and mystical, and of English prose. Writing first about psychedelics at the age of 60, he was able to give (quoting from the above passage again) "some hint at least of a not excessively uncommon experience."

I mean by this that the exploration of inner space is at least as vast and mysterious a study as that of outer space -- and that in the former we were lucky to have had an Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond aboard as investigators. It is as if we had sent poets that first time to the moon!

It took Huxley 70 pages to describe what had happened on that first trip, to give some hint of this "not excessively uncommon experience," as when he wrote that "All at once I saw what Guardi had seen and (with what incomparable skill) had so often rendered in his paintings -- a stucco wall with a shadow slanting across it, blank but unforgettably beautiful, empty but charged with all the meaning and the mystery of existence." Compare just this fragment with the total remaining report from the Harvard Psilocybin Project invesigators -- when Huxley took 10 mg. psilocybin, and was observed: "No. 11 sat in contemplative calm throughout; occasionally produced relevant epigrams; reported experience was an edifying philosophic experience."

There is much truth to the claim that to get the Aldous Huxley mescalinized experience you had to be Huxley -- especially if talking about the bringing back of souvenirs. Aldous Huxley, blind at the age of 20, after regaining his sight was probably not by accident to become the most listenable of all as to the content of the contrived visionary experience. That appeared principally in his two books on the subject, after only two or three experiments. What he thought of the rest -- which were quite different -- is here, in what should stand as an unparalleled guide to investigators.

Dr. Albert Hofmanns speach in 1977 at UCSC

The Discovery of LSD In October of 1977, while a nundergraduate studying psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, I brought Dr. Albert Hofmann, the remarkable Swiss Chemist who discovered both LSD and psilocybian, to my school for a “colloquium” with the professors of my psychology board. Over 5000 people turned out for the free lecture, in an auditorium which held 500 people. The occasion served as a catalyst for the first psychedelic conference of the ‘Seventies and the academic examination of these important compounds resumed after a decade long hiatus.

The following transcript by Peter Stafford of Hofmann’s talk first appeared in Blotter #1,, a publication of the Psychedelic Education Center , Santa Cruz, CA. Only the first portion of Dr. Hofmann’s talk, given October 15, 1977, concerned with his discovery of LSD is reprinted here, due to space limitations. The later portion of his talk dealt with the magic circle of compounds which Hofmann discovered , including lysergic acid in Ololiuqui seeds of Mexican morning glories and Psilocybian in the magic mushroom.

Alexander Shulgin: I wish to welcome you all to this Colloquium tonight, and I feel very honored to have the opportunity to introduce Dr. Albert Hofmann to you. I really can’t imagine that there’s anyone here who really needs to have him introduced, so in a sense it’s sort of an exercise in futility to introduce you to the audience.

So I think in fairness it might be something of more interest to introduce the audience to you. We are a very manied group here -- many of us are artists, either with pen or with brush, and many of us have looked into the area of chemical change of state as a means of perhaps learning some of our own techniques. Many of us are sociologists and have worked very closely with people who have been involved in drug use and drug abuse, and as such they are aware of your work and are very appreciative of it.

Many of us in a sense are philosophers, are lookers to our inner self and work with ourselves as individuals. And I think you will find that a large number of the people present -- I’m introducing them to you as chemists, who have taken many of your starting spots and have gone on in other ways and chemical structures and in other chemical mysteries. Many of us are biochemists, and have looked at how these materials have acted in the body. And many of us are pharmacologists and toxicologists, who have looked as to their behavior induction in animals and in man. So there are many ways in which we are very, very different from one another, and yet are tied together in this one single thread.

And yet in many ways we are of a single thought and of a single mind in the way that we are all, indeed, students in this area of change of consciousness, and are very keenly aware of the fact that these are tools that can be used as ways of finding our own methods and our own procedures of our own mind. The second way in which we are all in common is we all bear a very, very deep respect and a deep reverence of your work and your contributions in this field.

And we are introducing ourselves to you, and I am very proud to introduce you to our audience. Dr. Albert Hofmann.

Albert Hofmann: Thank you very much, Dr. Shulgin, for a very nice introduction. And I should like to thank also Professor Bridgeman and Professor McGlothlin for their invitation to give this talk. And finally, I would like to express my best thanks to Bruce Eisner -- who was my guide, and who was coordinating this meeting.

You may be disappointed. You may have expected to meet a guru, and you meet just a chemist. If I am going to tell you in what context LSD was synthesized, and how its psychic action was discovered, I realize that I am presenting an old story. But this may be justified by the fact that quite fantastic versions of how LSD was found are current, even in professional circles. You may be interested, therefore, to hear also the true story.

It is frequently stated in the literature that LSD was discovered by chance. The following account will show that LSD was not just the fruit of chance discovery, but the outcome of a more complex process which had its beginning in a definite concept, and was followed up by an appropriate experiment during the course of which a chance observation served to trigger off a planned investigation. This then led to the actual discovery. Such a train of events may often be found to underlie what is said to be a chance discovery.

LSD had been synthesized as part of a chemical and pharmacological investigation on ergot derivatives, which I carried out in the early ‘30s in the Sandoz Laboratories which were headed at that time by Professor Stoll. Ergot is the produce of the fungus Claviceps purpurea, which grows on rye and ergagram in the air. It is a rich source of valuable medicinally useful alkaloids.

Most ergot alkaloids are derivatives of lysergic acid, and there are two types of ergot alkaloids -- alkaloids in which lysergic acid is combined with a precyclic peptide distart. As is the case in the so-called alkaloids of ergotamine and the ergotoxin group.

And there are other simple types of ergot alkaloids, where lysergic acid is combined with a simple amine -- as is the case in the alkaloid ergonomine or ergometrine, where lysergic acid is combined, connected with propylamine.

My first investigations in this field were directed toward the synthesis -- the partial synthesis -- of this compound. By means of a so-called Kirzius procedure, it became possible to recombine lysergic acid with these simple amines. By this way, when I combined lysergic acid with propynolamine, I received this compound which proved to be identical with ergometrine.

Ergometrine is oxytoxic, specific oxytoxic principle of ergotamines -- a principle which acts on the uterus, and which is used medicinally in obstetrics to stop post-partum hemorrhage. Then I did change the side-chains of this natural ergot alkaloid, using instead of propylamine, butylamine -- and then I got another compound, a new compound, named metrogine, which is used today throughout the world in obstetrics for the arrest of post-partum hemorrhage.

Whereas most of these investigations were directed toward the synthesis of oxytoxic agents, I had prepared also other compounds which -- on the basis of their structure -- could have been expected to possess other, different properties. First among other compounds, I synthesized the diethylamide of lysergic acid -- this compound -- with the intention to prepare an analeptic. That means, a compound with circulation stimulant activity.

This compound might have been expected to possess analeptic properties because of its structural relationship with the well-known circulation stimulant Nicatamide -- here -- and because the B ring, as all well-known chemists can realize, is a tetrahydranicotimic ring. And here Nicatamide is a iocylamide of Nicatinic Acid. Do you see the structural relationship?

A number of pharmacological experiments were carried out by Professor Ernst Rothlin at the Sandoz laboratory with these compounds -- with lysergic acid diethylamide -- which was given the laboratory code name “LSD-25,” because it was the 25th compound of the lysergic acid amide series. These experiments revealed a fairly marked uterotonic action, which was not unexpected in view of the close chemical relationship between LSD and the oxytoxic drugs ergometrine and metrogine.

But the compound did not seem to be of further pharmacological interest and work on LSD then fell into abeyance for a number of years. As I had a strange feeling that it would be worthwhile to carry out more profound studies with this compound, I prepared a fresh quantity of LSD five years later, in 1943.

In the course of this work, an accidental observation led me to carry out a planned self-experiment with this compound. The following is an extract of my original report on this experiment, addressed to the head of the pharmaceutical department -- at that time, to Professor Stoll. “Last Friday, April 16th, ‘43, I was forced to stop my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and to go home, as I was seized by a peculiar restlessness associated with a sensation of mild dizziness. On arriving home, I lay down and sank into a kind of drunkenness which was not unpleasant, and which was characterized by extreme activity of imagination.

“As I lay in a dazed condition with my eyes closed, I experienced daylight as specially bright. There surged up from me an uninterrupted stream of fantastic images of extraordinary plasticity and vividness and accompanied by an intense, kaleidoscopic-like play of colors. This condition gradually passed off after about three hours.”

The nature and the cause of this extraordinary disturbance raised my suspicions that some exogenic intoxication may have been involved, and that lysergic acid diethylamide -- with which I had been working that afternoon -- could have been responsible. I had separated two isomeric forms which are produced by the synthesis -- namely, lysergic acid diethylamide and iso-lysergic diethylamide.

However, I could not imagine how this compound could have accidentally have found its way into my body in a sufficient quantity to produce such symptoms. Moreover, the nature of the symptoms did not tally with those previously piously associated with ergot poisoning.

In order to get to the root of the matter, I decided to conduct some experiments on myself, with the substance in question. I started with the lowest dose which might have been expected to have any effect, namely with 0.25 milligram LSD.

The note in my laboratory journal reads as follows: “April 19th: Preparation of 0.5% aqueous solution of d-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate.
“4:20 pm: 0.5 ml., corresponding to 0.25 mg. LSD, ingested orally. The solution is tasteless.
“4:50: no trace of any effect.
“5:00: slight dizziness, unrest, difficulty in concentration, visual disturbances, marked desire to laugh . . .”
Next slide, please. You see here crystals of lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate. Next slide. Here is a photocopy of the original inscription in my laboratory journals which I just have read in English. At this point the laboratory notes are discontinued. The last words were written with great difficulty. I asked my laboratory assistant to accompany me home as I believed that I should have a repetition of the disturbance of the previous Friday. While we were cycling home, however, it became clear that the symptoms were much stronger than the first time, and I had great difficulty in speaking coherently. My field of vision swayed before me, and objects appeared distorted like images in curved mirrors. I had the impression of being unable to move from the spot, although my assistant told me afterwards that we had cycled at a good pace. Once I was at home, a physician was called. By the time the doctor arrived, the peak of the crisis had already passed. The following were the most outstanding symptoms: Vertigo, visual disturbances. The faces of those around me appeared as grotesque colored masks. Marked, moderate unrest alternating with paralysis, intermittent heavy feeling in the head, limbs and the entire body as if they were filled with lead. Clear recognition of my condition -- in which state I realized, in the manner of an independent, neutral observer that I shouted sometimes or babbled incoherent words. Occasionally I felt as if I were out of my body, and wondered if I had already died. In contrast to my subjective feelings, a doctor found only a somewhat weak pulse -- but otherwise quite normal circulation and physical condition. The sixth hour after ingestion of the LSD, my psychic condition had already improved considerably. Only the visual disturbances were still pronounced. Everything seemed to sway and their proportions were distorted like the reflections in the surface of moving water. Moreover, all objects appeared in unpleasant, constantly changing colors -- the predominant shades being sickly green and blue. When I closed my eyes, an unending series of colorful, very realistic and fantastic images surged upon me. A remarkable feature was the manner in which all acoustic perceptions -- for example, the noise of a passing car -- were transformed into optical effects, every sound evoking a corresponding colored hallucination, constantly changing in shape and color like pictures in a kaleidoscope. At about one o’clock in the night, I fell asleep, and awoke next morning feeling perfectly well. This was the first planned experiment with LSD -- a rather dramatic one -- a horror trip, as one would say today. Because I did not know if I would return from this very strange world! Subsequent experiments on volunteer colleagues of the Sandoz laboratories confirmed the extraordinary activity of LSD on the human psyche. This showed that the effective oral dose of LSD in human beings is 0,03-0,05 mg. In spite of my caution, I had chosen for my first experiment five times the average effective dose. LSD is, by far, the most active, and most specific hallucinogen. It is about 5,000-10,000 times more active than mescaline, which produces qualitatively nearly the same symptoms. The extremely high potency of LSD is not just a curiosity. It is in many respects of the greatest scientific interest. For example, it lends support to the hypothesis that certain mental illnesses, which were supposed until then to be of purely psychic nature, had a biochemical cause. Because it now seemed feasible that undetectable traces of a psychotomimetic substance produced by the body itself might be the cause of psychic disturbances. LSD was quite unique with regard to its extremely high hallucinogenic potency, but it was not new with regard to the quality of its hallucinogenic property. As already mentioned, it produces qualitatively the same psychic effects as mescaline, a hallucinogen known long before LSD -- mescaline being the active principle of one of the ancient magic plants of Mexico.

Albert Hofmann is the retired director of research for the Department of Natural Products of Sandoz, Ltd. the pharmaceutical firm in Basel, Switzerland. Besides LSD, he has synthesized the active constituents of medicinal plants, such as ergot of rye, squill, rauwolfia, and the Mexican magic drugs. He has a doctorate in chemistry and is the author of numerous chemical and pharmaceutical research books, several books on psychedelics including LSD: My Problem Child, and has two honorary doctorates.

Timothy Leary in 1977

Psychobiology A psychobiologist may compare the unfamiliar imprinting behavior in goslings to the early attachment behavior in human infants and construct theory around these two phenomena. BoyPuppy experiments

Enhancing neural function
Psychopharmacological manipulations - A chemical receptor agonist facilitates neural activity by enhancing or replacing endogenous neurotransmitters.

This was wgere the LSD and BZ came in.

In 1977, Bruce Eisner moved from Los Angeles to Santa Cruz, California. He became one of the leaders of a group of psychedelic movement activists. That group known as Linkage brought Albert Hofmann to UC Santa Cruz in 1977 for his first public lecture in the US at a conference called "LSD: A Generation Later." The conference was attended by both counterculture figures such as Timothy Leary Ph.D, Alan Ginsberg, Ram Dass, Stephen Gaskin and Ralph Metzner Ph.D as well as early psychedelic researchers including Oscar Janiger, MD, William McGlothlin, Ph.D, Stanley Krippner, Ph.D, Claudio Naranjo, MD and Willis Harman Ph.D

Long Ways

data by InfoUSA
Avoid Highways cannot be used for routes over 250 miles.
Total Time: 36 hours 24 minutesTotal Distance: 2452.44 miles
A: 301 E 5th St, Clare, MI 48617-1515
1: Start out going WEST on E 5TH ST/US-10 BR toward HEMLOCK ST. 0.2 mi
2: Turn LEFT onto N MCEWAN ST/US-127 BR. Continue to follow US-127 BR. 0.6 mi
3: US-127 BR becomes N MISSION RD. 2.7 mi
4: Turn RIGHT onto E STEVENSON LAKE RD. 6.0 mi
5: Turn LEFT onto N VANDECAR RD. 1.0 mi
6: Turn RIGHT onto W COLEMAN RD. 1.0 mi
7: Turn LEFT onto N WINN RD. 11.0 mi
8: Turn RIGHT onto W REMUS RD/MI-20. Continue to follow MI-20. 11.9 mi
9: Turn LEFT onto MI-66/30TH AVE. Continue to follow MI-66. 11.8 mi
10: Turn RIGHT onto W HOWARD CITY EDMORE RD/MI-46/EDMORE RD. Continue to follow MI-46. 17.8 mi
11: Merge onto US-131 S via the ramp on the LEFT. 34.1 mi
12: Merge onto I-196 W via EXIT 86B toward HOLLAND. 76.6 mi
13: Merge onto I-94 W toward CHICAGO/NILES (Passing through INDIANA, then crossing into ILLINOIS). 81.0 mi
14: Merge onto I-80 W via the exit on the LEFT toward WISCONSIN-IOWA/IL-83/TORRENCE AVE (Portions toll) (Passing through IOWA, NEBRASKA, and WYOMING, then crossing into UTAH). 1402.0 mi
15: Merge onto I-80 W via EXIT 308 toward RENO/S.L. INT'L AIRPORT (Passing through NEVADA, then crossing into CALIFORNIA). 694.0 mi
16: Merge onto I-680 S via EXIT 40 toward BENICIA/SAN JOSE. 58.4 mi
17: Take the MISSION BLVD WEST exit, EXIT 12, toward I-880/WARM SPRINGS DISTRICT/UC EXTENSION. 0.5 mi
18: Merge onto MISSION BLVD/CA-262 W. 0.7 mi
19: Merge onto I-880 S toward SAN JOSE. 13.0 mi
20: I-880 S becomes CA-17 S. 26.3 mi
21: Merge onto CA-1 S toward WATSONVILLE/MONTEREY. 1.1 mi
22: Take EXIT 440 toward MORRISSEY BLVD. 0.2 mi
23: Turn LEFT onto FAIRMOUNT AVE. 0.0 mi
24: Turn RIGHT onto MORRISSEY BLVD. 0.4 mi
25: Turn RIGHT onto WATER ST. 0.1 mi
26: Turn RIGHT onto CATALPA ST. 0.0 mi
27: End at 112 Catalpa St Santa Cruz, CA 95062-1519
B: 112 Catalpa St, Santa Cruz, CA 95062-1519
Total Time: 36 hours 24 minutesTotal Distance: 2452.44 miles

BoyPuppy

The things we do to find ourselves are nothing compared to the things we do to lose ourselves. BoyPuppy mistaken youth.

BoyPuppy Babs CH2

To tell this story you have to know Babs first. She was my first girlfriend. Not my first sexual experience. We were friends. Babs was unusual from the get go. She she was born with a fetus in fetu. A fetus in fetu (or fœtus in fœtu) is a developmental abnormality: a mass of tissue inside the body that more or less resembles a fetus. It was not discovered until the age of eleven and to make matters worse (for her), she was a fully developed woman by that age. That is how they discovered it. So she had problem with guys. Men mostly that liked to fuck little girls. To make matters worse her family was Amish and they saw it as a sign of evil so she was banished to a big farmhouse to herself. She went to my school, irregularly like my self and we would hang out quite a bit and do drugs. I like her. Still do even though she ids dead. She had a certain perceptive quality about her and was totally uninhibited. Needless to say this relation did not strike well with my recently recovered and mayor elected father or mother so I was banished from the house and live on the farm with Babs. She was Barbara at the time. The doctors to her she would never get pregnant. But she did and we raised a son named Sean still being teenagers ourselves.

Sean was blond, smart, cute and completely free. He liked the outdoors and slept with us always. He was the third person. So he was growing up faster than his parents who by then did not go to school. I managed to graduate by having connections in a small town, But for Barbara, I was her connection and I know now how I failed. I regret I did not love her for her mind or emotions. She was sexy, liked to trip and take care of me. Treated me like her baby brother. She was older. It seemed like such an age difference then but when I buried her at 38. I realized she was just a baby.

Barbra's greatest fascination was sex. Of course, it wasn't her fault and it wasn't my disappointment. It would however share in our own individual downfall. She liked male lovers and she liked female lovers. She didn't particularly like to share but her lovers did. Not very subtle or loyal. Looking for what everyone looked for in Barbie (her acid queen name). Long legs, large breasts and a shapely ass. Funny thing was, she was a real homey kind of person and liked to cook. I found her very nurturing when we would wind down.

Like all manic/depressives she was absent when she was wound up. But she always brought home good stuff. Weed mostly and drunken young guys. She knew her game. Liked to double up. So we would swing in her manic phase. But we had a child too so I liked to keep it somewhat level.

I always knew without Barbie there would have been no BoyPuppy. She eventually split with a cute little lesbian lover, Sean went to live with his aunt and I started doing my own thing. I was glad actually. She was too controlling. I wanted to get involved in school and I had no idea how much time would go by before I saw Sean again.

In fact, it was on her way to Colorado to pick him up in November 1978 that she was kidnapped at a bus station in San Jose. No cell phones then. I thought she was on her way. But she was being repeatedly chocked and sexually assaulted for a week.

I got a call at 3:30AM November 11. I didn't even know who it was but I knew she was in trouble. "Please Justin, please help me." Little did I know how those words would change the course of all three of our lives.

I never could help her. I tried but we regressed into very psychotic war play. Not really play though. Rough stuff. meant to hurt. I know Sean got the worst of all. It's very hard to discuss Barbara. She's buried not to far from where I live now and sometimes I feel her ghost in agony. This is where she sleeps now. Sleep well my Baby.

But we are well ahead of our story. This was February 1989. A lot happened in the meantime.

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BoyPuppy Going Left Ch1

It had been a long trip to the left coast. Mohamed, Justin and some guy that wanted to find a girlfriend and commit suicide, hopefully without her. This was not to be the first or the last trip Justin made cross country but it seemed relatively moderate considering the previous ventures. Hitchhiking alone at 15 was a real trip sleeping outside eating cans of beans and cheese was preferable to spending the night with the strangers that had a thing for boys. Mostly male. This was 1970 so most of them were tripping and ready for a bit of don't ask don't tell. Like any of that shit mattered anyway. Justin grew up in Upstate Michigan and always had a thing for hitchhiking so he learned how to pack a knife and sleep with it under a pillow.

Such are the ways a persons learns not to go unconscious or asleep. But for sure, he liked the drugs. All kinds. Never made him paranoid. He learned long before that people were weird, so it didn't matter. He also tripped out to California with a girl named Kim (quiet and alluring) and his sister Sue (total crazy knockout) at 17 on the premise of peyote, which they did mange to do plenty in the Boulder Creek Mountains.

No, this trip was going to UCSC. Psychobiology studies. Why? How many course could you enroll with Tim Leary as a professor. Sure to be a lot of acid. Besides, as he had learned from his relationship and travels with Kim it was all an experiment. The drugs, sex, travel and intrigue. Anything goes. 1970 Right?

Anything goes with me. I'm Justin case. I would not have remember any of this in 2009 but for the fact that my life flashed before me in slow motion. I saw every detail one more time. And I remember why I fragmented it out of my mind with a little from my “friends”.

So we traveled the 1-80 in 1977. This time was it. I was going to go to school in Santa Cruz and live like a slicked bohemian bisexual. That's what you would call it at 22 when everything was out and nobody cared. Nobody died from sex anyway. They died from loneliness. I figured it could pull it off since my emotional stickiness was about six weeks. Longer than most people I knew.

Including Babs but we had known each other forever and did not have any secrets as I remember. Good sex too. Good drugs. A child. Not much else in common, including lovers. Although Babs had a thing for younger guys so there were a few times when even that line was crossed.

Santa Cruz for real. Was I ready. Was Santa Cruz? Never know until you get there has always been a motto. To be sure these were chilling times in the Cruz known as the murder capital of the world. In 1977. But I had been through all that before. I was older now. I didn't need to carry a knife. I was carrying a pound of mushrooms and that seemed to keep everyone mellow.

I never knew me and Babs would become part of the story. She was already in Santa Cruz. Waiting to be kidnapped in less than a year and murdered in a dozen. But that's the way it was with her and me. Not stable but always interesting. I got lucky. I lived. Some luck.

Shortly before Three Mile Island, Jonestown, Moscone, Milk and AIDS. Armistead Maupin

was serializing Tales of the City in the San Francisco Chronicle. Who could forget Sylvester. It all seemed easy and disconnected from anything I had done. So gay was ok by me. And Babs too, who I was scheduled to meet up with when I got there.

Santa Cruz was to be s stepping stone to the City. But, instead, it turned into a very surreal millstone.