Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of my Heart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, Heed, as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today's guest is
Speaker 1: somebody who's both a remarkable historical figure but also very
Speaker 1: much active and in the present. Her birth name was
Speaker 1: Carolyn Adams, but she's much better known for the last
Speaker 1: fifty years or so as Mountain Girl or MG Mountain
Speaker 1: Girl Garcia, you know, the woman who was part of
Speaker 1: the Married Pranksters, was a partner and co parent with
Speaker 1: Ken Kiss of the Mary Pranksters and Jerry Garcia the
Speaker 1: Grateful Dead, and has continued to play a role in
Speaker 1: this world really over the last fifty years or so. So, MG,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining me on Psychoactive. Oh well,
Speaker 1: you're welcome. It's it's nice to be here on this
Speaker 1: foggy day in Oregon. You grew up, right, It was
Speaker 1: at Poughkeepsie, New York, and then moved out west and
Speaker 1: you're about eighteen or so, that's correct. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: an upstate New York kid, went to school there and
Speaker 1: you know, eventually got kicked out how that goes. And
Speaker 1: then I went to California with my brother. Were you
Speaker 1: doing drugs in high school before even went to California
Speaker 1: or was it when you talked to California AJ teen
Speaker 1: that you started, uh doing all that stuff? Now? I
Speaker 1: was just I was just a prankster in high school.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's a prankster? Always a prankster? So I
Speaker 1: was pulling pranks and they got onto me and and
Speaker 1: got mad at me. But but no, I didn't discover
Speaker 1: the choice of ingestible substances until I was a little
Speaker 1: bit older and had been working. And the job that
Speaker 1: I got out in California was a very unusual job.
Speaker 1: Based on my ability to read and write about science.
Speaker 1: I was hired by Stanford University to come and work
Speaker 1: in the mass spectrometer lab at Stanford University's Organic Chemistry building,
Speaker 1: which was a very unusual job for an eighteen year
Speaker 1: old kid. Yeah, no kidding, right, eighteen years old working
Speaker 1: in the lab at Stanford without any kind of college
Speaker 1: education or yeah. Just I was so smart though, because
Speaker 1: I had read all this. I had read everything. You know.
Speaker 1: My parents were scientists, so I was good on science.
Speaker 1: So when they interviewed me, I I apparently aced the
Speaker 1: interview and it aid really well, you know, it was
Speaker 1: one of those jobs, you know, for an eighteen year
Speaker 1: old getting a job like that was really great. But
Speaker 1: I was on the night shift, which was kind of
Speaker 1: weird because I had to ride my bicycle around through
Speaker 1: Powell also after dark a lot. And and you were
Speaker 1: talking nineteen sixty four, huh is that right? Yeah, sixty four,
Speaker 1: It seems like so long ago. Now, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: it is a big change. I mean, to come from
Speaker 1: from an East coast in a prep school like I did,
Speaker 1: and to just jump into a community on the other
Speaker 1: side of the country was pretty interesting. But I really
Speaker 1: liked it. I thought I thought it was beautiful. I
Speaker 1: thought California was just heaven. So you're in the lab
Speaker 1: at Stanford, hanging out there at night, and I imagine
Speaker 1: you get your hands on some of the psychedelic drugs
Speaker 1: that are lying around Stanford in those days. Is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. And no. I was actually asked to process
Speaker 1: a sample that was labeled very cautious with this sample,
Speaker 1: and I ran into trouble with it. I had trouble
Speaker 1: with the mass spectrometer that night and wound up with
Speaker 1: a half used sample. And I'm sitting there with this
Speaker 1: sample and me and it's you know, eleven o'clock at night,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to m hmmm, Okay, you know there's
Speaker 1: still more in the in the little jar. I'll just
Speaker 1: eat this one and see what happens. You know, because
Speaker 1: I've been reading, I've been reading about psychedelics and gotten
Speaker 1: really interested because, of course, even as a young person,
Speaker 1: I was a scientist. I was raised by scientists, and
Speaker 1: my science mind just looked at the stories about psychedelics
Speaker 1: and said, I want to know what this is. So
Speaker 1: I realized there was only one way to know, and
Speaker 1: that was to partake. But in your case, if I
Speaker 1: read this quickly, it was an LSD. Was it began,
Speaker 1: Actually it was. It was the only people I know
Speaker 1: who was introduced to all of this you know through
Speaker 1: I gain LSD your mushrooms or something like that. That
Speaker 1: must have been a challenging experience. Well, it was very challenging.
Speaker 1: Getting home was really hard on the bicycle, you know,
Speaker 1: at like four in the morning, I had to ride
Speaker 1: my bike backed across town and that was like a
Speaker 1: mystery tourycle trip. It does. Yeah, I had to like
Speaker 1: re remember everything all the time, re remember, re remember,
Speaker 1: re remember this corner that corner, like. But I made
Speaker 1: it back and by the time I got there, I
Speaker 1: was pretty messed up. So I had to like lie
Speaker 1: down and go to sleep or try to go to
Speaker 1: sleep for a long time. And I don't remember it
Speaker 1: being any fun. I remember it being an ordeal because
Speaker 1: it was an unrefined sample of a e boga from
Speaker 1: West Africa, so it was just a little blob of
Speaker 1: green good and I mean a small blob. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty small little blob and uh yeah, and
Speaker 1: it just it really messed me up, frankly, and I
Speaker 1: take it the job at Stanford did not last much
Speaker 1: longer there, you know, the problem being that it it
Speaker 1: messed with my mind in a very overt way. I
Speaker 1: can't recommend it. I really can't and uh, this is
Speaker 1: not this was not a good idea on my part,
Speaker 1: although heck, what can I say now? Yeah it's a
Speaker 1: bad idea. How much there after was it that you're
Speaker 1: like hanging out in some cafe or something in Palo
Speaker 1: Alto and get picked up by Neil Cassidy. That was
Speaker 1: like about a month later. And for our listeners, just
Speaker 1: you know who don't know Neil Cassidy is he was
Speaker 1: a key figure in the in the Beach generation. You know,
Speaker 1: somebody hooked up with Jack Carroll act and in fact
Speaker 1: the basis of the character Demoyarty in On the Road,
Speaker 1: which was basically the key character and on the Road
Speaker 1: but also friendly with William Burrows and and Alan Ginsburg
Speaker 1: and all those And now he meets you in this
Speaker 1: cafe and Palo alter you're all of what eighteen years old? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What happens? Then? Well, it's late at night and I'm
Speaker 1: my boyfriend who I had been staying with his his
Speaker 1: mom had come and gotten him that day and taken
Speaker 1: all of his stuff out of the house, and suddenly
Speaker 1: he was gone and like completely gone, and I didn't
Speaker 1: have a place to be, so I thought I'd just
Speaker 1: pedal on over to St. Michael's and get a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee and think things over. And I'm sitting there
Speaker 1: with my big cup of coffee and in walks Neil
Speaker 1: Cassidy and his sidekick Bradley, and they sit down at
Speaker 1: the table right next to me, and there, look, there's
Speaker 1: nobody else in the place. Meanwhile, the guy serving the coffee,
Speaker 1: who is kind of a famously annoying fellow, turns out
Speaker 1: to be Bob Hunter. In later years I found out
Speaker 1: that that was actually Bob Hunter who wrote the songs
Speaker 1: for the Grateful Tet. Oh, he's the key were and
Speaker 1: he was the guy behind the counter at St. Michael's
Speaker 1: alley that night. So, um, that's a tidbit I didn't
Speaker 1: pick up from all the reading I was doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so amazing to me that this happened. So anyway,
Speaker 1: so these two guys say, hey, you know, we're trying
Speaker 1: to score some Benny's. You want to want to go
Speaker 1: out with us and try to score some Benny's? And
Speaker 1: I'm going Benny's. Okay, yeah, right, okay, Ben Citrine and
Speaker 1: these guys look good. I said okay. Because I had
Speaker 1: nothing else to do, I said, okay, let's go. And
Speaker 1: we drove around all night, visiting all of Neil Cassidy's
Speaker 1: friends houses around Palo Alto and up up in the mountain,
Speaker 1: the San Bruno Mountains, and failed to score even a
Speaker 1: single Betty, to his great dismay, because he had just
Speaker 1: come back from the famous bus trip, which I knew
Speaker 1: nothing about. I knew nothing about these people. And he
Speaker 1: winds up. We go all the way down the hill
Speaker 1: on the far side of San Bruno Mountain towards the coast,
Speaker 1: and he pulls in. He had to take the car back.
Speaker 1: He was driving ken Casey's car. So I wound up
Speaker 1: in ken Casey's parking lot wait at four in the morning,
Speaker 1: and that was okay. So now we got to back
Speaker 1: up for audience for a second, because some people know
Speaker 1: exactly who he is. But let's fill in this history, right.
Speaker 1: So Ken Kesey was the person who first became famous
Speaker 1: for writing One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, and it
Speaker 1: immediately catapults him into the you know, the echelons of
Speaker 1: the great up and coming American writers, and then becomes
Speaker 1: the movie with Jack Nicholson and all this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And so Ken KSI. Some years before you had your
Speaker 1: I began experience is doing you know, LSD as part
Speaker 1: of the MK ultra Cia experiments to investigate the potential
Speaker 1: uses of LSD for military and intelligence purposes, and gets
Speaker 1: into LSD in the early sixties, starts using it, then
Speaker 1: begins to create a group called the Mary Pranksters, and
Speaker 1: then has this trip across the country to New York
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four to go see the World's Fair
Speaker 1: and do other things like that that ultimately becomes famous
Speaker 1: when Tom Wolfe, the novelist and non nonfiction writer as well, writes, uh,
Speaker 1: the Electric kool Aid asset test. So this is you know,
Speaker 1: Ken KISSI has taken this bus trip in sixty four.
Speaker 1: He's got this growing gang of people with him. LST
Speaker 1: is very much part of their world. Now we're in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five and you show up at his door, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so take it away. Just to clarify, Yeah, the reason
Speaker 1: Neil was out looking for Benny's was because they had
Speaker 1: just come back from the famous bus trip. In other words,
Speaker 1: they had only been back in the Bay Area for
Speaker 1: a few hours when I met Neil, and he had
Speaker 1: borrowed Kent's car to go look for look for some
Speaker 1: benditry and it couldn't find it. Had to bring the
Speaker 1: car back because it was time for Ken's kids to
Speaker 1: go to the first day of school that they were having.
Speaker 1: So I'm standing around in the parking lot and nobody's
Speaker 1: up yet. It's really quiet. Neil is wandering around somewhere
Speaker 1: and Ken comes out and I meet him and we
Speaker 1: make a nice contact, you know, and uh, suddenly the
Speaker 1: car's gone, and I realized, oh, I'm here, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm stuck here. So Neil wanted to get back to
Speaker 1: go to work, so he hitchhiked away. And I got
Speaker 1: to meet Ken and Faye that very morning. So this
Speaker 1: was Mrs Kesey and and and their kids and their dogs,
Speaker 1: and they had docsins who came out and bit me
Speaker 1: on the ankle. But it was, you know, it was
Speaker 1: so sweet. There was so sweet to me. But what
Speaker 1: I really got to see was the bus itself, which
Speaker 1: was standing sitting there in the yard. Is huge old
Speaker 1: school bus, you know, with the low ceiling that you
Speaker 1: have to duck and you have to like walk along
Speaker 1: with your head down because you're too tall for the bus.
Speaker 1: And it's just completely painted and decorated all over with
Speaker 1: stuff glued to it. And I mean, honest to God,
Speaker 1: I wrote the bus when I was a kid to
Speaker 1: school every day and back and I was a bus monitor,
Speaker 1: and to look at this bus was like such such
Speaker 1: a radical twist on the concept of transportation. I was
Speaker 1: completely knocked out by it. So I had to like
Speaker 1: look at it for a long current on the top
Speaker 1: or something. So yeah, on the top of you blast
Speaker 1: out music or even or even magnify the sounds that
Speaker 1: were from outside the bus and all this sort of.
Speaker 1: It had speakers up top, and then there was a
Speaker 1: they had built an area to what you'd think they'd
Speaker 1: put luggage up there in a big luggage truck, but
Speaker 1: actually there was mattress, two mattresses up there, and you
Speaker 1: could lie down as the bus was going down the road,
Speaker 1: which was really pleasant. And they cut a hole in
Speaker 1: the roof for a turret so they could close it
Speaker 1: up if it was raining, but you could climb in
Speaker 1: and out on a ladder and get up on the roof.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking at this thing, right, it's just getting light,
Speaker 1: and I could see it, and I'm looking at it
Speaker 1: and I'm walking around it going Holy moly, because it
Speaker 1: was just covered with globs of paint and pictures and
Speaker 1: you know, it was like a total art project. And
Speaker 1: I come around to the front door, and the front
Speaker 1: door is kind of hanging off the side of the bus,
Speaker 1: you know, the little door you walk through to climb
Speaker 1: up into the bus to go to school. And it
Speaker 1: says on the top of the door says, nothing lasts.
Speaker 1: And I just burst out laughing. I thought that was
Speaker 1: the funniest thing I ever see. Oh yeah, nothing less.
Speaker 1: And that was like their motto, you know, for the
Speaker 1: for the Hall Prankster Enterprise, nothing less and the bush
Speaker 1: further further f you r t h you are, which
Speaker 1: is a little different from for with an e er
Speaker 1: further is more of a sense of putting things in motion,
Speaker 1: but you know, giving giving reality a shove of some sort.
Speaker 1: You know. So you then what do you actually start
Speaker 1: living up there? Then? Fairly soon at this in La Honda,
Speaker 1: I think outside of Palo Alto. Yeah, so there was
Speaker 1: a beach, you know, like ten minutes away, and it
Speaker 1: was a beautiful redwood trees, like it's just huge redwood
Speaker 1: trees out in the yard. I was fascinated, and these
Speaker 1: were such nice people, you know, they were all just
Speaker 1: as nice as they could be. And when I finally
Speaker 1: met all the rest of the pranksters, I realized that
Speaker 1: not only was I safe with these people because they
Speaker 1: weren't going to attack me or whatever, you know, that
Speaker 1: I was really a lot like them, you know, I
Speaker 1: looked at things from a different point of view, and
Speaker 1: so did they, and we we bonded, you know, within
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, there was a pretty strong bond
Speaker 1: getting set up. So here I'm just going to quote
Speaker 1: two passages MG from Tom Wolves Electric Kool Aid Acid Test,
Speaker 1: and the one and the one is page fourteen where
Speaker 1: he first introduces you as a character, and he says,
Speaker 1: Mounted Girl is a tall girl, big and beautiful, with
Speaker 1: dark brown hair falling down to her shoulders, except that
Speaker 1: the lower two thirds of her falling hair looked like
Speaker 1: a paintbrush dipped in cadmium yellow from where she dyed
Speaker 1: at blonde in Mexico. And then pages later, Mounted Girl
Speaker 1: was a big hit with the pranksters from the very start.
Speaker 1: She seemed always completely out front without the slightest prompting.
Speaker 1: She was one big, loud charge of vitality. Here comes
Speaker 1: mounted girl, And it was the thing that made you
Speaker 1: pick up as soon as you saw her mouth broadened
Speaker 1: into a grin and her big brown eyes open, open, open,
Speaker 1: until they practically exploded like sunspots in front of your eyes.
Speaker 1: And you knew that wonderful country vide voice was gonna
Speaker 1: sing out something that was a nice description by Tom Wolf.
Speaker 1: Yeah he liked me, he did. Yeah. Did you think
Speaker 1: of him? Oh? He was okay, I mean he he
Speaker 1: interviewed me extensively and then wrote his own version of
Speaker 1: what I said. Right, But I thought he was somebody
Speaker 1: who lived in a in a greenhouse on the top
Speaker 1: roof of a New York skyscraper. You know. He seemed
Speaker 1: somehow not to know very much about anything. He had
Speaker 1: grown up in a vacuum of some sort. You know
Speaker 1: that he just he was an open invitation to tell
Speaker 1: him stuff, you know, But he didn't ever give you
Speaker 1: anything back, you know what I mean. It was all input.
Speaker 1: He had very little output except just kind of as
Speaker 1: a nice guy. And I and the Mary Pranksters had
Speaker 1: become quite well known, like in the Bay are in
Speaker 1: the West Coast, but would probably never achieved the fame
Speaker 1: they had nationally, but for Tom Wolves writing about it
Speaker 1: an electrical aid asset test. I mean, to the extent
Speaker 1: that fame served the interests of the pranksters, Wolf was
Speaker 1: great for them, and to the extent of the pranksters
Speaker 1: provided material for Wolf to become, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: nationally highly regarded all writer. It worked out in that regard,
Speaker 1: and you know, in observing his writing, you know, and
Speaker 1: reading it years later, I'm going like, Wow, this guy
Speaker 1: was a really gifted writer, and he honestly didn't know
Speaker 1: what he was writing about. Really, you know, he refused
Speaker 1: to get high. He didn't want to sully his magical brain,
Speaker 1: which I have great respect for him because he managed
Speaker 1: to get the job done and he did a great
Speaker 1: job with it. It's still a really fun read. So
Speaker 1: let me see, there's another quote that I found. You
Speaker 1: said somewhere. You said about the Pranksters. They didn't know
Speaker 1: they were starting the sixties, obviously, but they knew they
Speaker 1: had a big secret and they were going to exploit
Speaker 1: it to the full, that's right. And what was the secret?
Speaker 1: The secret was LSD that Ken had copped from the
Speaker 1: mental health place where he was working at Stanford at
Speaker 1: some point earlier in the year. But then then it
Speaker 1: kind of came on the underground market in the early sixties,
Speaker 1: it began to leak out and he managed to find some.
Speaker 1: So we had we had LSD that came from Sandos,
Speaker 1: from the Swiss chemists, and that was what Ken had
Speaker 1: picked up in Palo Alto, which is a very clean
Speaker 1: and beautiful high actually, and people should know, until late
Speaker 1: nineteen six is LSD actually become illegally get scarce because
Speaker 1: Sandos the pharmaceutic companies in handing it out the way
Speaker 1: they did in late fifties early sixties. But you know,
Speaker 1: people could not get busted for it at that point,
Speaker 1: right it was unknown. It was an unknown drug, and
Speaker 1: if you could keep your behavior under control when you
Speaker 1: were high, you can get away with it, of course,
Speaker 1: but it does it does have a tendency to change
Speaker 1: people's behavior. And you know, you'd say so. Plus we
Speaker 1: were clueless about dosage at that time, you know, we
Speaker 1: were we were experimenting. So basically, some LSD would go
Speaker 1: into a big picture of kool aid and you drink
Speaker 1: some of it. So how much LSD did you have?
Speaker 1: You had some, but I mean for all you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about, you know, a hundred
Speaker 1: micrograms being a kind of fair not light does it's
Speaker 1: a real If you think about that's just okay, solid dose.
Speaker 1: But if you think about two D fifty or more
Speaker 1: being what you might call a heroic dose, but you're
Speaker 1: drinking it in kool aid, I mean, you have no
Speaker 1: idea if you're getting fifty micrograms or five micrograms. I
Speaker 1: guess the flight of faith faith is a strong, a
Speaker 1: strong contender forgetting it in and out of trouble. But
Speaker 1: you know, uh, I feel like I did take too
Speaker 1: much one time, but I just went and gotten my
Speaker 1: sleeping bag and stayed there, And which is the best
Speaker 1: thing you can do if you've had a had a
Speaker 1: little bit too much. And were the other drugs I mean,
Speaker 1: was mescaline and psilocybin. Mushrooms also a big part of
Speaker 1: your life. Not so much those days, no, because they
Speaker 1: were rare. These were things. By the way, are you
Speaker 1: still are you still doing it this year? I haven't
Speaker 1: taken any this year, but I usually take it three
Speaker 1: or four times a year. Mh. So listen, let's go
Speaker 1: back to the pranksters for a second. Here, now, which
Speaker 1: is that, you know, I'm reading about them, and I'm
Speaker 1: recognizing a lot of the names, and I was just
Speaker 1: real off a few. And then there was Stewart Brand
Speaker 1: who then comes up with a Whole Earth catalog, which
Speaker 1: is a major phenomenous seventies. There's Jim Fattiman, who has
Speaker 1: now become sort of the godfather of micro dosing. Robert
Speaker 1: Stone who shows up, who's the novelist who wrote Dog Soldiers,
Speaker 1: a kind of award winning book about drug dealing during
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War days that became the movie Whole Stop
Speaker 1: the Rain. Larry McMurtry, who also famous novelists, right sixty novels,
Speaker 1: including Lonesome Dove, one of the most famous, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of novelized series on TV. Paul Krasner, founder of
Speaker 1: the Yippies, and of course Neil Cassidy. So you're hanging
Speaker 1: out with this remarkable cast of character. So so I mean,
Speaker 1: just tell us about, you know, who is your favorites
Speaker 1: among this group. I think my favorite among that group
Speaker 1: was Alan Ginsburg. So Ginsburg was a special friend of
Speaker 1: Neil Cassidy's, and he came out and stayed for like
Speaker 1: a week and a half at Ken's and I just
Speaker 1: thought he was absolutely charming, interesting guy. So for our audience,
Speaker 1: so that you don't know, Alan Ginsburg is one of
Speaker 1: the most famous American poets of the of the second
Speaker 1: half of the twentieth century, and he's a e pivotal
Speaker 1: to the Beats generation. Of course I'd heard about him
Speaker 1: before he got there. But but what a lovely guy
Speaker 1: Ginsburg was. He was just he was the sweetest fellow,
Speaker 1: just delightful and kind and Jewish, which is important, you know.
Speaker 1: That categorizes him to me as as somebody with a
Speaker 1: with a good intellect and a grasp on who he
Speaker 1: is and what he's doing. And I thought he was
Speaker 1: the only Jewish guy in the in the Beats generation,
Speaker 1: among the prominent ones. I say, is that right, Well,
Speaker 1: he think so, because Carol A. Cassidy a bunch of Catholics,
Speaker 1: you know, So it's yeah. So Ginsburg was a revelation
Speaker 1: to me because he was he was somebody gifted with
Speaker 1: a lot of pace and calm. He had calmness and
Speaker 1: patience that just flowed out of him. I had never
Speaker 1: read his poetry before, being clueless, and I read this
Speaker 1: stuff and I'm going, Wow, this is kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: but I don't really understand it. I had cognition problems
Speaker 1: with some of the stuff these guys were doing because
Speaker 1: I had not I had not lived their lives, you know,
Speaker 1: I had not lived in their shadow either, so I
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about them. But I found them all
Speaker 1: really interesting and fun to get along with. And Neil
Speaker 1: was Neil Cassidy was the connector here. He was the
Speaker 1: spark that brought all these people together and brought them
Speaker 1: out to California. And we had a number of very
Speaker 1: lovely gatherings featuring Ginsburg and his friends, and it was
Speaker 1: just it was a whole literary experience that was never
Speaker 1: expecting and and very exciting. We'll be talking more after
Speaker 1: we hear this ad, so m I gotta as see
Speaker 1: these things. It's very much a guy's world, right. All
Speaker 1: the famous characters are almost all of them are guys.
Speaker 1: You're probably the most famous of the women who are
Speaker 1: associated with it. But obviously with the pranksters, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people different. You know, people sleeping not just
Speaker 1: with their wives and husbands and all sorts of people.
Speaker 1: And you get pregnant at what the age of eighteen,
Speaker 1: He's baby but meanwhile you're hanging out with him and
Speaker 1: his wife, Faye and their three kids. So just explain
Speaker 1: a little bit more about what was that, you know,
Speaker 1: the community like then, and also to what ways did
Speaker 1: LST shape the nature of that community. Well, I think
Speaker 1: one of the ways l shapes a community like this
Speaker 1: is that a trust is a big issue. So we
Speaker 1: learned to trust each other other and to recognize what
Speaker 1: the boundaries are of what what we were doing, which
Speaker 1: was basically becoming like a family, but not really a family.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like the beginning of of living together
Speaker 1: in a non familiar situation where you're you're just good friends.
Speaker 1: And I think that just good friends describes the whole thing.
Speaker 1: We were good friends. We worked on projects together, it
Speaker 1: was fun, you know it. We cooked and ate together,
Speaker 1: and to me it felt it felt like family. But
Speaker 1: it was different from my my natal family because these
Speaker 1: people were as weird as I was, or weirder. And
Speaker 1: I was learning from Ken all the time about writing,
Speaker 1: about reading. He would hand me stuff to read, he
Speaker 1: would hand me some of his writing to edit. He
Speaker 1: actually got me to edit a couple of things. And
Speaker 1: I was already somebody really interested in writing, so I
Speaker 1: was fascinated by his process, and then I the poets.
Speaker 1: The poets started coming in with their writing. So it
Speaker 1: was an enormous learning opportunity for me about how to
Speaker 1: manage words and how to manage your expressions to you know,
Speaker 1: properly fill in the blanks about what it is you're
Speaker 1: trying to say. You know, how to color it up basically,
Speaker 1: how to make it resonate. And I think I picked
Speaker 1: up some of that. Let me read another passage from
Speaker 1: Tom Wolfe and tell me if he got it right
Speaker 1: or not. Okay, he was. I doubt if any of
Speaker 1: the pranksters truly understood Mounting Girl, except for Casey. Most
Speaker 1: of the time, when she was so one out front,
Speaker 1: coming on loud and clear and candid as a mack truck.
Speaker 1: It never occurred to anybody the whole side of her
Speaker 1: was hidden except for Kessy. As I say, sometimes Kessy
Speaker 1: and mount and Girl would disappear into the backhouse and
Speaker 1: lion mattresses and just talk Kesy rapping on about how
Speaker 1: he felt about all sorts of things like fate. Nobody
Speaker 1: was closer to Kessys, Amount and Girl, not even Faye
Speaker 1: off and seeing but there it was Kesey. Kesey was
Speaker 1: essential to Mount and Girl's whole life with the pranksters.
Speaker 1: Did you get that right part of it from you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say it was pretty right. I was interested
Speaker 1: in Ken. You know, he was a writer. I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a writer. You know. I kept finding his
Speaker 1: notes scattered around on the floor and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And I would find this stuff and look at it,
Speaker 1: you know, his notes to self. You know, he he
Speaker 1: kept a lot of records of what his thoughts were.
Speaker 1: He would just right, he would just kept his hand
Speaker 1: moving a lot. And I realized pretty soon that that
Speaker 1: was the key to being a writer, was you write
Speaker 1: shipped down right, You keep keep notes, you constantly be
Speaker 1: leaving the trail for yourself. Because nobody can remember that
Speaker 1: great thought that you had five minutes ago. You have
Speaker 1: to write it down, you know it really do. And
Speaker 1: so I I think I picked up something from him.
Speaker 1: But I was really interested in this process. I didn't
Speaker 1: really get to see him right very much. He would
Speaker 1: write at four in the morning, you know, on his
Speaker 1: little typewriter, So I didn't really engage with him on
Speaker 1: that level. But by that time I had become friends
Speaker 1: with the keysies and baby sat for them a little
Speaker 1: bit and generally tried to make myself useful because I
Speaker 1: thought this was the most interesting couple I had ever met.
Speaker 1: And so did you and Fain not have to deal
Speaker 1: with significant issues of jealousy or stuff like that when
Speaker 1: you know, you get pregnant with her, you know, her husband.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was understand you stayed friends for decades thereafter,
Speaker 1: so obviously you made things work. But what was that
Speaker 1: like at that point? Well, it was uncomfortable for both
Speaker 1: of us. But but if these things happen and you
Speaker 1: don't really mean for them to happen, however, that the
Speaker 1: results were good, so that complaints. You know, I have
Speaker 1: a beautiful daughter named Sunshine who is now in her fifties.
Speaker 1: For crying out loud, So the water onto the bridge
Speaker 1: has flowed into the ocean long ago, and Face is
Speaker 1: close by here in Eugene and loves to see in
Speaker 1: our grandkids and the family and stuff. So we're you know,
Speaker 1: we still see each other occasionally, but it's just you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're getting old, you know what I'm saying. We'll
Speaker 1: get that. We'll get to that at the end of
Speaker 1: this At this conversation, tell tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about the acid tests. I mean, these become famous gatherings,
Speaker 1: and then there's the big Trips festival, and it seems
Speaker 1: like a lot of the creative juices that can KISSI
Speaker 1: and the pranksters are doing at that point involves putting
Speaker 1: on these festivals, and you're integral to these things. So
Speaker 1: what was the thinking behind that. Was it about introducing
Speaker 1: the broader San Francisco or Caligarnian communities to to LSD.
Speaker 1: I think that's actually you're quite accurate there. That was
Speaker 1: the point. The point was to get more people who
Speaker 1: were smart enough to have read about it an opportunity
Speaker 1: to try it in a in a situation where there
Speaker 1: were other people around. I think one of the worst
Speaker 1: things people can do is take psychedelics by themselves if
Speaker 1: they've never had any before. This is not something you
Speaker 1: want to mess around with fires. You want to be
Speaker 1: with experienced people who can can walk you through some
Speaker 1: of the tricky parts of exploring your your other brain.
Speaker 1: You know that other brain you got that you don't use.
Speaker 1: I feel like he he already understood all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Ken already understood the mechanics of getting high and what
Speaker 1: was going to happen to people, and he could lay
Speaker 1: it out for you in a good way and keep
Speaker 1: you out of the dark places. He was very good
Speaker 1: at that. And that meant music, that meant you know,
Speaker 1: friendly banter, that meant reading comic books, you know, various
Speaker 1: things that would propel the lighter side of life rather
Speaker 1: than the darker side. And that was a prankster ethic,
Speaker 1: and that was something that he taught and encouraged and
Speaker 1: kept it going, you know. That was his His ethic was, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's important information, but we want it to be at
Speaker 1: least moderately entertaining, you know, so that at the same time, right,
Speaker 1: the prankster model was ever trust to prankster. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was his thing. I never quite got that because I wasstworthy.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was Yeah. I didn't invent that one. I
Speaker 1: don't know where they got off with. I think it
Speaker 1: was part of the the jokes on you concept that
Speaker 1: Ken liked. You know, he was an amateur magician among
Speaker 1: other things, and could do sleight of hands and he
Speaker 1: has a very interesting skills that he had worked on
Speaker 1: since his youth, and a lot of it had to
Speaker 1: do with with tricking people and so LSD was tricky too,
Speaker 1: and I think one of the reasons he liked it
Speaker 1: so much was that it had that prankster equality to it,
Speaker 1: you know, where you get kind of silly and funny
Speaker 1: and get outside yourself of your day to day self.
Speaker 1: You come outside of yourself and play. So in order
Speaker 1: to rediscover play, you know, that was something he really
Speaker 1: liked to do. And the Ascetists were basically these multi
Speaker 1: media events. Then it was sound and poetry and reading
Speaker 1: and everything whatever it is. It was whatever it is
Speaker 1: we could pull together. And what was it called acid tests?
Speaker 1: That was Ken's idea. That was an old term, you know,
Speaker 1: it was an old farmers term. I'm not sure it
Speaker 1: had to do with charging batteries or something like that,
Speaker 1: that you would have to put acid in the old
Speaker 1: tractor battery and you have to test the test the
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know where that came from,
Speaker 1: but anyway, that's what got used. And we called them
Speaker 1: acid tests, which I thought was pretty out there, but
Speaker 1: it worked and people came and people drank the kool aid,
Speaker 1: and we didn't put very much in at first, you know,
Speaker 1: it just was. It wasn't till later that that other
Speaker 1: helpers showed up and clandestinely would add more to the
Speaker 1: kool aid, which was not fair of them, but that
Speaker 1: did happen. Um. So the first couple were very mild
Speaker 1: in nature. They were easily done. People had a good time.
Speaker 1: That music was played. We had a couple of different
Speaker 1: bands that played. Uh there was Mother mccree's Uptown Jug Champions,
Speaker 1: which was the early Grateful Dead before they were a
Speaker 1: Great Dead. And then there was a couple of skiffle
Speaker 1: bands and uh proto bands that became became better known later.
Speaker 1: But these were nice parties, you know, where we looked
Speaker 1: after people. We made sure people didn't get lost on
Speaker 1: the way to the parking lot. You know, it was
Speaker 1: a little bit of hand holding from the folks that
Speaker 1: were doing the parties. And um, the whole point was
Speaker 1: to introduce people to a rather weak solution of LSD
Speaker 1: in these jugs of kool a and so they wouldn't
Speaker 1: get they wouldn't get overloaded. But that turned out to
Speaker 1: be super fun. You know, that was just very lively
Speaker 1: fun and we realized, oh, this is gonna work now.
Speaker 1: One thing that Kissy and that you've shared in common
Speaker 1: was the fact of the illegality. I mean, some of
Speaker 1: this LSD was in yet illegal, but marijuana was illegal
Speaker 1: and sometimes punishable by quite serious things, seriously, and he
Speaker 1: gets busted twice and I think you're there for one
Speaker 1: of them offered take the fall for the thing. So
Speaker 1: was it like dealing with the cops in the mid sixties, Well,
Speaker 1: they were. They really had a wonderful time chasing us around.
Speaker 1: I mean they they worked at it, and they had
Speaker 1: an informant on the ground there too that we didn't
Speaker 1: know about until later. So we we were being very,
Speaker 1: very cautious because we had gotten the message from the
Speaker 1: Cosmos that this was happening, that we were being investigated,
Speaker 1: and so we hid absolutely everything and you got it
Speaker 1: off the property before the cops came. But somehow one
Speaker 1: little stash au got found that nobody knew about, and
Speaker 1: it was some suspicion that it had been planted, but
Speaker 1: we couldn't prove anything. So they marched us all off
Speaker 1: to the San Mateo County jail for a little visit,
Speaker 1: but it didn't really amount too much. Ken obviously took
Speaker 1: the hit because he was the one that got fined.
Speaker 1: You know, every time he would get some whopping fine
Speaker 1: that he'd have to pay, and it really impoverished the
Speaker 1: Keisies because they had to pay for our fun and
Speaker 1: it wasn't fair. Just you know, they were the they
Speaker 1: owned the property, and it was it was just the
Speaker 1: way things were. And the cops used to park an
Speaker 1: empty cop car out front, you know, on the weekends,
Speaker 1: just to give us something to worry about. So it
Speaker 1: was it was uncomfortable. We all wanted to get out
Speaker 1: of the discomfort zone. And uh that was part of
Speaker 1: the reason that the bus left and why Ken had
Speaker 1: to leave that property because the San Mateo County sheriffs
Speaker 1: were hot for him. They wanted to arrest him, and
Speaker 1: he lands up spending some time in jail, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did. He did some months. Uh, I think he
Speaker 1: did about seven months, and fleeing in Mexico for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the bus and all this thing, this one out
Speaker 1: to New York but to Line or something, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we went down to actually all the way down to
Speaker 1: us at Line and then we decided that wasn't far
Speaker 1: enough away and we went on to Manzanillo, which is
Speaker 1: less of a tourist town at that time and moreover
Speaker 1: just a residential fishing town, and we found a little
Speaker 1: place to live on the beach there and with not
Speaker 1: quite finished house that we rented, and for six months,
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of us lived there and uh, just
Speaker 1: definitely evaded anymore interactions with the police. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I'm sure we were being watched pretty closely
Speaker 1: by the locals, and we had a nice vacation on
Speaker 1: the beach. I loved it there. It was so nice,
Speaker 1: and the Mexicans were just great with us. They thought
Speaker 1: we were cool. They knew we were cool in fact,
Speaker 1: and so they treated us really well. They liked us,
Speaker 1: so you know when you come back. I mean, so
Speaker 1: we're getting into sixty seven or someple And then there's
Speaker 1: two ways we could take this. I mean, one is
Speaker 1: obviously the hippie scene. I mean, the way in which
Speaker 1: the pranksters are described as the link between the Beats
Speaker 1: and the hippies. As you get the Summer of Love,
Speaker 1: you get hate Ashbury, you get that stuff. Becoming this
Speaker 1: incredibly dynamic cultural cultural countercultural community I think is kind
Speaker 1: of out of hand in a way. And then the
Speaker 1: other part, which I think I'm more interested in pursuing
Speaker 1: you right here, is about the Grateful Dead. And you know,
Speaker 1: here's these young musicians, Jerry Garcia and a band called
Speaker 1: the Warlocks at that time. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: hanging out with the pranksters, and you fall in and
Speaker 1: connect with Jerry Garcia. And at this point, well, you
Speaker 1: have a young baby, you're only what twenty one or so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's start back at the beginning of that thought.
Speaker 1: So Keisy invited this rock band that he'd heard about
Speaker 1: to come down and play at one of his last
Speaker 1: parties there at La Honda. And so these guys come
Speaker 1: in and it's it's the band. It's the band that
Speaker 1: we now know and love. It's it's Jerry and Phil
Speaker 1: and Bob and pig Pen. And we're looking at these guys.
Speaker 1: I've never seen them before, and uh, I'm looking at
Speaker 1: these guys and I thought, Wow, what a scurling, scurvy
Speaker 1: bunch of rats. You know, they just they just look
Speaker 1: like But they played great. So they lined up in
Speaker 1: Ken's living room and you know, without any p A
Speaker 1: or any of that kind of stuff. We did have
Speaker 1: a couple of little microphones that kind of worked. But
Speaker 1: they played for hours and had a wonderful time they
Speaker 1: partook of the tea, the special tea being being served there,
Speaker 1: and they had, as it turned out, they had all
Speaker 1: fiddled around with LSD already in Palo Alto, and uh,
Speaker 1: we're knew what they were doing, and we're very solid customers,
Speaker 1: we thought, very solid, very likable. And so when when
Speaker 1: Ken came up with the brilliant idea of doing acid tests,
Speaker 1: which we all giggled at, they were the ones we
Speaker 1: called and and they said, sure, we'll play. I don't
Speaker 1: think we even had to pay them very much. They
Speaker 1: just wanted to play. Is he conceivable to you that
Speaker 1: they could have become who they were if they had
Speaker 1: never encountered the pranksters? No, I don't think they would have.
Speaker 1: I don't think they would have. I think they would
Speaker 1: have gone their own ways. This cemented them. This brought
Speaker 1: everybody together in that very personal high way you know,
Speaker 1: where you're You're connecting with your brothers and sisters in
Speaker 1: this mental realm of LSD in a whole new way.
Speaker 1: It makes things weld, even meld and then weld together.
Speaker 1: And I think that welded the grateful dead um and
Speaker 1: made them much more of who they were. But you
Speaker 1: gotta remember Bob Weir was like fourteen during all of this,
Speaker 1: you know, he was fourteen or fifteen years old, and uh,
Speaker 1: I remember going up to the Peninsula school where he
Speaker 1: was in high school and picking him up for a
Speaker 1: show one time. He was like, I think, fifteen years
Speaker 1: old at the time, but he could play and sing
Speaker 1: and he was good. So these were all developmental, developmental
Speaker 1: steps that we were taking trying to get to the
Speaker 1: point where we could do an asset test and have
Speaker 1: it really be good and fun. So uh that they
Speaker 1: were an essential piece of the action. We needed that music,
Speaker 1: We needed the the pressure of the music to keep
Speaker 1: people up and not wandering off, and that really really worked.
Speaker 1: And they would play these sometimes very abbreviated sets, depending
Speaker 1: on their level of inebriation, but usually it worked out
Speaker 1: and they would play these long, rambling tunes and they
Speaker 1: would just get longer and longer, like you know, violently
Speaker 1: blues could go for half an hour and they'd get
Speaker 1: so spaced out. But we loved them. They were wonderful.
Speaker 1: They were so game, they were ready for whatever we disstout.
Speaker 1: They seemed to be able to absorb and work with,
Speaker 1: which was impressive, really it took them a little while
Speaker 1: to trust each other enough that they could just that
Speaker 1: they could just zoom out to the outer universe that
Speaker 1: way and and stay there for a while with each other,
Speaker 1: and it didn't seem to hurt the show at all.
Speaker 1: In fact, the audience loved it. So, you know, they
Speaker 1: got good feedback from taking those excursions, taking stuff outside
Speaker 1: the menu of songs that they had laid out for themselves.
Speaker 1: Because they always worked with a set list. You know,
Speaker 1: they'd write the set list and they take it to
Speaker 1: the mics, and everybody knew what changes they had to
Speaker 1: do to get into the next two. But sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: once they had given themselves permission to extemporize, they would
Speaker 1: just riff and wander out into outer space, which was
Speaker 1: heavenly God. They got great. They got huge applause for this.
Speaker 1: You know, this is the stuff that people really really
Speaker 1: wanted to do. They wanted to let go of the
Speaker 1: format and just wander in space with music. It was delicious.
Speaker 1: I read this question is no one ever came close
Speaker 1: to Jerry Garcia in terms of manifesting the LSD experience. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's a nice quote. Whether that's true or not.
Speaker 1: I don't know that was in that person's experience probably,
Speaker 1: but Jerry took LSD often without realizing it when he
Speaker 1: got dosed, often at shows and stuff like that, so
Speaker 1: he he really probably had more of than he wanted often,
Speaker 1: But he managed to perform through that because there was
Speaker 1: a lot of this going on in those days. Or
Speaker 1: somebody would hand you something it and say, you know,
Speaker 1: try this, and I'm like, what, Well, what is it?
Speaker 1: After you've tried it, then you ask what it is.
Speaker 1: But anyway, he seemed to be able to still find
Speaker 1: the right finger positions to play the music, although he
Speaker 1: said sometimes it was really really hard, especially if he
Speaker 1: couldn't see the neck of his guitar because it was
Speaker 1: too dark and he was too high, he would have trouble.
Speaker 1: But mostly his ear was so good that he could
Speaker 1: he could keep going through all that, and he would
Speaker 1: just play until his hands just swelled up like crazy.
Speaker 1: He would play for hour when he was high, and
Speaker 1: the band would just keep going and keep going and
Speaker 1: keep going. And there's the other band members were presumably
Speaker 1: sometimes high as well. Oh yeah, definitely, what goes around
Speaker 1: comes around, as they say, So I know that Bill
Speaker 1: the drummer used to just get completely wiped out. He
Speaker 1: would be he would be a basket case, play for
Speaker 1: four hours straight without a break. You know they would
Speaker 1: do that. They were our heroes, you know. They made
Speaker 1: they made the foundation hold together for the asset tests
Speaker 1: like nobody else could. Let's take a break here and
Speaker 1: go to an ad. Okay, so here you are, your
Speaker 1: with a young baby, UM with kN Casey, and you
Speaker 1: and Jerry fall in love and stay together for six
Speaker 1: or seven years or something like that and have a
Speaker 1: couple of kids. Yeah, what can you share about because
Speaker 1: it doesn't come up as much in the interview. You're
Speaker 1: talking about you you guys falling in love? Oh about that?
Speaker 1: So when we came back from Mexico, UM, I didn't
Speaker 1: have any place to go except to move in with
Speaker 1: my brother Gordon, who was living in an apartment in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. I didn't have any options. Really, I with
Speaker 1: a baby. There was no way I was going back
Speaker 1: down into the woods at Ken's. I couldn't do that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't practical. It's too hard to find services and stuff.
Speaker 1: So my brother said, well, you can stay with me,
Speaker 1: and so that worked out, but it also made me
Speaker 1: available to go over and visit at Grateful Dead house
Speaker 1: on Ashbury Street, which I promptly did. We were very
Speaker 1: familiar with each other. Really, I love the band. I
Speaker 1: love those guys so much. They were such cool people.
Speaker 1: So I trotted right on over to their house at
Speaker 1: seven ten Ashbury Street and made myself known, and and
Speaker 1: and Jerry just latched on and and was driving me
Speaker 1: all around town with a couple of his friends. Within
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, we were exploring the possibilities of
Speaker 1: being a couple. And uh, within a couple of months
Speaker 1: he asked me to come and move in with him
Speaker 1: over at and I did, and then realized that a
Speaker 1: lot of that had to do with cooking dinner. They
Speaker 1: needed more people to to to feed them. And that
Speaker 1: was fun. But he's essentially your first long term boyfriend. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was too weird for most people. You know. I
Speaker 1: was just too smart, too crazy. I had a kid,
Speaker 1: I mean, I had a lot of I had a
Speaker 1: lot of strikes against me as far as being a
Speaker 1: domestic partner. But once I had Sunshine, I had to
Speaker 1: sort of like change my wild ways and let go
Speaker 1: of my motorcycle and you know, become a mom and
Speaker 1: he was comfortable with that, which was really sweet, and
Speaker 1: he took us in and we had a great time together.
Speaker 1: We really really did. And it was to him it
Speaker 1: was I guess important. And he becomes more the dead
Speaker 1: to your daughter's sunshine than even Ken is, oh much more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he was hands on, because we lived together and
Speaker 1: ken Ken was living elsewhere by that time. He had
Speaker 1: to get out of California and he moves back up
Speaker 1: to Oregon eventually. Yeah, he had to get out of
Speaker 1: California because the cops were mad at him for ever
Speaker 1: more things. So I'm sort of like, you know, prepping
Speaker 1: for this, and I'm thinking, you know, there's a few
Speaker 1: things that Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia had in common
Speaker 1: apart from the commitment to LSD, But they were also
Speaker 1: obviously creative geniuses, each in their own way. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: and maybe more uniquely, they were both leaders and teachers
Speaker 1: who had a commitment to not being perceived as the
Speaker 1: leader and others who were kind of anti Even as
Speaker 1: you had to have some hierarchy to function, they saw
Speaker 1: themselves as being anti hierarchical, and I think Kessy called
Speaker 1: himself the anti navigator and Garcia. He's obviously such a
Speaker 1: teacher for his other bandmates, but there's an element in
Speaker 1: which he doesn't want to assert that power or role
Speaker 1: or doesn't want that focus on himself. And so what
Speaker 1: they did was they assigned pig Pen the role of
Speaker 1: the leader of the bands, which he didn't want that
Speaker 1: role at all, so he was very grumpy about it.
Speaker 1: But it was just a matter of being singled out
Speaker 1: as the person who could talk really well, which Jerry could.
Speaker 1: I mean, he always had something to say about anything,
Speaker 1: and I think most of the rest of the band
Speaker 1: members were a little bit less inclined to kick out statements,
Speaker 1: you know, and kick out words. Jerry was was really
Speaker 1: good at that. And because he played the guitar and
Speaker 1: he did a lot of the singing, he was seen
Speaker 1: as body who needed to be interviewed frequently. Oh, the
Speaker 1: interviewers would just make a bee line for Cherry and
Speaker 1: he'd have to say, I'll talk to you, but but
Speaker 1: I don't have time for anybody else. And that was
Speaker 1: all he could do, really, And how much are you
Speaker 1: going out on the road with him? I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: you're having a couple of kids with him, so you've
Speaker 1: got three young girls. Eventually after a few years and
Speaker 1: he's coming home periodically. But how much are you out
Speaker 1: going to concerts on the road, whether without the kids
Speaker 1: or well? I did. I did many times. I went
Speaker 1: out lots of times until I kind of got tired
Speaker 1: of it. It's a grind, let's face it, you know,
Speaker 1: you it's motels, it's taxis, it's airplanes, and it's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're not the performer, if you're not
Speaker 1: the performing person and don't have a role on stage,
Speaker 1: it's difficult. It's difficult to go out on the road
Speaker 1: if you don't have a job. Okay, so I didn't
Speaker 1: have a job. I just didn't really like being out
Speaker 1: there because I didn't have anything to do. I just
Speaker 1: kind of they'd be doing a sound check and I'd
Speaker 1: be wandering around, you know, banging into doors and stuff
Speaker 1: with with no role. So that that wore me down
Speaker 1: pretty quick. But I just think that they worked so hard,
Speaker 1: and I can't really tell you how hard they worked,
Speaker 1: but it was really hard to get their sound right,
Speaker 1: to get their instruments working right. You know, all this
Speaker 1: stuff was like crucial in that four or five hours
Speaker 1: before a show, and you just didn't even want to
Speaker 1: be around them during that period. You know, they were
Speaker 1: focused on what they were going to do, so it
Speaker 1: was difficult to just lounge around and watch them struggle
Speaker 1: with all that stuff. So I didn't really like like
Speaker 1: going out that much. And you'd have the girls with
Speaker 1: you as well at a very young age. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: tried not to do that. That was just too much
Speaker 1: to deal with. You gotta remember, they were standing in
Speaker 1: motels and funky hotels. You know. It took a long
Speaker 1: time for them to reach an income level that would
Speaker 1: yield a more comfortable trip, so it was pretty bare
Speaker 1: bones that first ten years. Meanwhile, I just got to
Speaker 1: ask you this, So back at home in Poughkeepsie, what
Speaker 1: do your parents think about what you're up to this
Speaker 1: whole time with the Preisters and the dead and Keithsi
Speaker 1: and Garcia, And what's their take on and how's your
Speaker 1: relationship with him during these years? Because they seemed like
Speaker 1: they were great parents growing up. They were very good parents,
Speaker 1: and I got a great education from them and with them,
Speaker 1: but they did not approve of anything that I did
Speaker 1: after I was a certain age, so it was difficult
Speaker 1: to visit them and bathe and disapproval, so I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't visit them very much until I was about
Speaker 1: thirty and could bring home my kids and let them
Speaker 1: see that I actually was a mother that had nice children.
Speaker 1: You know. That seemed to work better for them than
Speaker 1: the than the crazy lady that that I was when
Speaker 1: I was nineteen, you know, so they liked me better
Speaker 1: that Okay, So another question. You get to a point
Speaker 1: then around seventy three seventy four, and I guess a
Speaker 1: couple of things happened then. One is I think that's
Speaker 1: the point more or less when you and Jerry split up.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's still showing up as as the father
Speaker 1: of kids and all this, and then meanwhile you start
Speaker 1: to see cocaine and heroin and other drugs much becoming
Speaker 1: much more part of the grateful dead scene and Jerry
Speaker 1: getting into using those drugs. What was going on to
Speaker 1: take Jerry first and foremost, because he was the fact
Speaker 1: of the leader. Why did he get so much into
Speaker 1: cocaine and then get into heroin in a way that
Speaker 1: he struggled with for you know, the rest of his
Speaker 1: life to one degree or another. Well, I can't answer
Speaker 1: that because I don't really know I think he thought
Speaker 1: cocaine made him play better or longer, or which was
Speaker 1: really not true either. You know, you know how coke is.
Speaker 1: It makes you think you're better than you are. And
Speaker 1: I can't I can't speak to the heroine thing because
Speaker 1: because I don't really know, except that he would get
Speaker 1: really tired. He would get really tired and need to
Speaker 1: sleep and not be able to sleep. And somehow Heroin
Speaker 1: worked into that. But he didn't overtly use in my
Speaker 1: presence because he knew my attitude towards that stuff. So
Speaker 1: he was secretive as he got into it, you know,
Speaker 1: as he became addicted, he became very secretive. But it
Speaker 1: was also obvious that something was terribly wrong because his
Speaker 1: behavior changed. But how he got into it and and why,
Speaker 1: I think it's the dangers of the road. You know,
Speaker 1: people are handing you stuff. You go out there and
Speaker 1: people are hand you, handing you a beautifully rolled joint,
Speaker 1: they're handing you a little pile of coke, you know.
Speaker 1: And I just happened to be that person that didn't
Speaker 1: like cocaine at all and I thought it was weird
Speaker 1: and rather have a benny. Now I can relate on
Speaker 1: the same way more, or rather take a benny as
Speaker 1: anybody got a benny. You know, benz Atrien was much
Speaker 1: better as far as I was concerned. But you know,
Speaker 1: there it was, and it was going around. It was
Speaker 1: the cool thing to give to the rock stars, I guess,
Speaker 1: and because I didn't go out on the road with
Speaker 1: him every time, I went out once in a while.
Speaker 1: But this was all going on where I couldn't see it,
Speaker 1: and I didn't really know about it until until I
Speaker 1: started hearing about it from people, because cocaine was not
Speaker 1: overt behavior changer, you know, it's subtle. It's a subtle drug,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't I couldn't read it in the room.
Speaker 1: I couldn't feel its presence, you know. So it was
Speaker 1: something that I struggled with for a while and realized
Speaker 1: that no matter what happened or whatever drugs Jerry took,
Speaker 1: I still loved him. That didn't change the situation. It
Speaker 1: just meant that he was different, you know, he was
Speaker 1: different in his behavior and his actions, and he was
Speaker 1: also at risk. So I electured him about the risk
Speaker 1: and he didn't take that will but I kept I tried,
Speaker 1: but it just you know, he was already doing what
Speaker 1: he did. This a little more forward that maybe a
Speaker 1: lot more, which is that when part of this is
Speaker 1: about your reflections now looking back. But the first thing
Speaker 1: I want to ask you, So, there was an interview
Speaker 1: in one of the came across, maybe from late nineties
Speaker 1: or something, and maybe this is one of your daughters
Speaker 1: and let me just read you here. You kids should
Speaker 1: do drugs. Jerry Garcia used to tell the Sensible Daughters quote.
Speaker 1: It was sort of a running family jokes at Annibal
Speaker 1: Garcia McLean then twenty six, one of four daughters of
Speaker 1: of Jerry Garcia. She said her mother would also say,
Speaker 1: why can't you kids be more like us? We tell
Speaker 1: her mom, no, we don't want to. We learned from
Speaker 1: you guys by don Annabelle is a jokester. She's a
Speaker 1: prankster through and through. That is just that's her entire creation.
Speaker 1: She she would come up with stuff like that just
Speaker 1: to make us squirk, you know, just to make me squirre.
Speaker 1: Michael like, no, come on, really, so so very funny
Speaker 1: ha ha Okay, okay, so let me frame it this
Speaker 1: way now now and the psychedelic renaissance we're in and
Speaker 1: Michael Pollen's book and the tremendous influence of maps and
Speaker 1: all the wonderful media attention. Everybody's very focused on harm reduction,
Speaker 1: whether it's in a dance scene or whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: and and doing it all right. And I think whereas
Speaker 1: our parents were afraid that we would do things that
Speaker 1: they had never done, I think our generation is oftentimes
Speaker 1: afraid that our kids will do the same dumb things
Speaker 1: we did do but they won't be so lucky. That's
Speaker 1: entirely possible, yes, because you know, think of the variety
Speaker 1: of substances out there now well exactly, but also think
Speaker 1: about when you were taking you know, LSD of unknown
Speaker 1: potency or purity back in the day, or like the
Speaker 1: whole notion of taking LSD, like with stroll lights out
Speaker 1: in a concert. Like I tell my daughter and her
Speaker 1: friends that, you know, if they're gonna do stuff, don't
Speaker 1: do it at a concert, do it in a more
Speaker 1: safer environment or with friends you trust, not where you're
Speaker 1: surrounded by thousands of strangers and don't know where the
Speaker 1: exits are and all this sort of stuff. But back
Speaker 1: in the day, you were part of a scene. In fact,
Speaker 1: the acid tests were all about taking acid and being
Speaker 1: this crazy multi media environment, taking some unknown amount of
Speaker 1: acid in an unknown amount of you know, kool aid.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you look now from the kind of
Speaker 1: responsible harm reduction frame of the psychedelic renaissance back on
Speaker 1: that day, what do you think. Well, I think we
Speaker 1: were taking a big risk, you know, with the but luckily,
Speaker 1: you know, nobody died, nobody jumped out a window. We did.
Speaker 1: We did okay, because we kept the concentration pretty freaking
Speaker 1: low in those those buckets of kool aid. It was
Speaker 1: it was low dose all the way. Now, some people
Speaker 1: would bring their own stash to the thing and re
Speaker 1: up the kool aid. Other people would just use their
Speaker 1: own stash and not touch the kool aid. So it
Speaker 1: was really a free choice affair. And we felt that
Speaker 1: this was this was something that was an American right
Speaker 1: to get a little high and and adjust your own dose.
Speaker 1: If you drink one cup, you're gonna get you're gonna
Speaker 1: get fifty mics. If you drink too you're gonna get
Speaker 1: an hundred, you know, so be ready for that. And
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of about where we were at
Speaker 1: with it was about thirty microgams for a for a
Speaker 1: full Dixie cup of cool. You know, it was low dos,
Speaker 1: but as the evening progressed, of course people would come
Speaker 1: back and get a little more. So it was cumulative.
Speaker 1: And so it's hard to it's hard to figure how
Speaker 1: everybody survived the asset tests without a single catastrophic event.
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't ever have anything bad happened, so
Speaker 1: it was it. There was no reason to stop. In
Speaker 1: other words, no disaster appeared on the horizon. Let me
Speaker 1: ask you this. So you got called made, whether it's
Speaker 1: a grandkid or a friends kid or somebody and they're
Speaker 1: you know, they're late teens or early twenties and they're
Speaker 1: going to their first they're going to burning Man for
Speaker 1: the first time, going to something that resembles them okay test,
Speaker 1: they're saying, Hey, MG, like I'm going you know, I've
Speaker 1: tried it a few times. But what's your advice to
Speaker 1: me and going into this environment where I definitely want
Speaker 1: to be tripping, but I also want to come home. Fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the first advice is go with a friends
Speaker 1: who you trust and care about and that cares about you.
Speaker 1: That's number one. Number two is, you know, make sure
Speaker 1: your shoes are and shoes and socks are in good order.
Speaker 1: And number three is take a low dose. If you're
Speaker 1: gonna be offered something, to go for the low dose
Speaker 1: because you could always take more later, you know. But
Speaker 1: it's really really good to be safe by going low
Speaker 1: and feeling, you know, people get people will grow their
Speaker 1: wings bit by bit. You don't have to go for
Speaker 1: the whole thing all at once, because that puts you
Speaker 1: in harm's way. And because you need to learn how
Speaker 1: to fly. You need to learn how to take off
Speaker 1: and fly safely before you take the big flight you
Speaker 1: really do. You need to check it out delicately. Be
Speaker 1: sweet to yourself. I think it's about how do you
Speaker 1: treat yourself? Be sweet to yourself and and go low.
Speaker 1: That's what I say to people. Yeah, that sounds like
Speaker 1: good advice. But another thing you did right. You created
Speaker 1: something with some friends called the Women's Visionary Concoct a
Speaker 1: number of years ago. In fact, I think one last
Speaker 1: time I saw you was closing Paths at one of
Speaker 1: those events, which even though is the Women's Visionary Congressmen
Speaker 1: who are welcome to calm, But what was the vision
Speaker 1: behind that and what is uh, you know, the mission
Speaker 1: of it and the importance of it. Well, my my
Speaker 1: two friends Anne Harrison and Hidden Mountain were instigators of
Speaker 1: this and they approached me as a as a co conspirator,
Speaker 1: and I thought such a wonderful idea. So they were
Speaker 1: basically women's gatherings that involved discussions around psychedelics and about
Speaker 1: alternative lifestyles, about thinking about alternative lifestyles besides just the
Speaker 1: American style of high school, college, grad school, job you
Speaker 1: know that that that that that uh in a in
Speaker 1: a in a quick series as so it was really
Speaker 1: aimed at younger women that wanted to experiment a little
Speaker 1: bit with with some psychedelics in a safe setting, with
Speaker 1: carrying people around, and that was what it was really
Speaker 1: all about. Most people that came to those were mostly
Speaker 1: in it just for the discussion, So the discussions were
Speaker 1: deep and varied. You know, women's circle is a very
Speaker 1: revealing thing to do. To set up a women's circle,
Speaker 1: you don't know who you're going to get, you don't
Speaker 1: know what their stories are going to be, but you
Speaker 1: find out an awful lot about about what women's issues are,
Speaker 1: you know, and they revolve around parenting, lifestyle and consciousness razing.
Speaker 1: So we tried to be mentors I think the whole
Speaker 1: idea was to be mentors for younger women that were
Speaker 1: we're seeking a safe path to enlightenment of a type
Speaker 1: of enlightenment, you know, about life. Yeah, you're making me
Speaker 1: think of a friend of mine who may be a
Speaker 1: friend of yours as well, who I think has organized
Speaker 1: years ago a grandmother's circle to get together for a
Speaker 1: number of days doing different psychedelics. That's a lovely idea, Yes,
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, so as women, as
Speaker 1: as people that have babies and are bringing along the
Speaker 1: next set of humans. You know, there's a special role there,
Speaker 1: not just for grandmothers, but for for mothers and daughters
Speaker 1: to perpetuate what women know and some women need to learn,
Speaker 1: and that those things can be shared in a women's
Speaker 1: circle setting in a really good manner, you know, a clear,
Speaker 1: clean manner without interference or interruption or or dogma. You know,
Speaker 1: we're trying to like get the dogma out of the discussions,
Speaker 1: you know, trying not to hang on to old ideas.
Speaker 1: Let's just look at this clearly from a scientific point
Speaker 1: of view and a social consciousness point of view, and
Speaker 1: that seems to work in general, It really does, and
Speaker 1: young women were really grateful. And also it's a hook up.
Speaker 1: It's a place to meet people you can hang with
Speaker 1: and go get high with, you know. So these are
Speaker 1: these are valuable, valuable things, and I haven't been involved
Speaker 1: in in a couple of years, but I would like
Speaker 1: to be. M h, are you working on a book
Speaker 1: these days? I'm supposed to be, but right now I'm
Speaker 1: talking to you, And uh, there's there's certainly a lot
Speaker 1: to finish in my life. I have to finish stuff,
Speaker 1: and I don't feel like i've finished yet. I'm nowhere
Speaker 1: near finishing. So that and how's your career in the
Speaker 1: cannabis industry venue? Oh pretty much? That say, go way back, right,
Speaker 1: you wrote a book on cannabis cultivation, you know, way back.
Speaker 1: That's true. I wrote a book called Primo Plant, which
Speaker 1: is still in print and I still have copies. It's
Speaker 1: a book that you can get at your bookstore. They'll
Speaker 1: order it for you. But it's just a quick manual
Speaker 1: on how to grow pot because there wasn't one. There
Speaker 1: was only complex manuals on how to com to grow
Speaker 1: pot that kind of I thought, rambled all over the
Speaker 1: place and weren't really useful. So coming from a gardening family.
Speaker 1: I knew how to write that thing, so it was
Speaker 1: a best seller. I've sold over a hundred thousand copies
Speaker 1: of that thing, and I hope everybody's happy. I am well,
Speaker 1: listen empty. I have loved this conversation. It's just the
Speaker 1: time is just flowing. Okay. I just want to say
Speaker 1: one more thing. I want to say, big shout, big
Speaker 1: shout out to Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm. I
Speaker 1: hope everybody's having a great time this summer, and everybody's
Speaker 1: healthy and good, and that life is life is doing
Speaker 1: what it's supposed to do, which means having fun with
Speaker 1: the kids. I just want to put that out there
Speaker 1: to Camp Win a Rainbow and all the good that
Speaker 1: they've done for people's kids over the years. Fantastic. That
Speaker 1: is a nice note to end on Blue MG. Thanks
Speaker 1: ever ever so much for joining me. It's been fun.
Speaker 1: Thank you. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your friends
Speaker 1: about it, or you can write us a review at
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We love
Speaker 1: to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to share
Speaker 1: your own stories, comments and ideas, then leave us a
Speaker 1: message at one, eight three three seven seven nine sixty
Speaker 1: that's eight three three psycho zero. Or you can email
Speaker 1: us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com or find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Ethan natal Man. You can also find
Speaker 1: contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by
Speaker 1: me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by Noam Osband and Josh Stain.
Speaker 1: The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus
Speaker 1: and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt
Speaker 1: Frederick from My Heart Radio, and me Ethan Naedelman. Our
Speaker 1: music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to
Speaker 1: Avi Brio, s F Bianca Grimshaw and Robert BP. Next
Speaker 1: week I'll be talking about Jews and cannabis with Eddie Portnoy,
Speaker 1: Senior researcher and director of Exhibitions at EVO, the Yiddish
Speaker 1: Institute for Jewish Research, where he just put together a
Speaker 1: fascinating exhibit on exactly that subject a few years ago.
Speaker 1: I happen to see online really kind of beautifully sculpted
Speaker 1: glass bong in the shape of him An lura for
Speaker 1: the holiday of Hanukkah, and I thought, this manura bog
Speaker 1: is something that's representative of Jewish material culture. This should
Speaker 1: be in our collection. And as it sat at my desk,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself why would anyone smoke eight bowls
Speaker 1: of weed at a time. But the second thing I
Speaker 1: thought was could I feasibly make an exhibit on Jews
Speaker 1: and cannabis. Subscribe to Cycleactive now see it, an't miss it.