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In his book My Problem Child (1979), Albert Hofmann – the Swiss chemist who discovered acid’s awesome capabilities – recalled the concerns he’d had during the 1960s about the spread of what he called ‘black market’ LSD. Even though Hofmann believed LSD could help modern society resolve its spiritual crisis, he was worried that ‘the huge wave of inebriant mania’ sweeping ‘the Western world’ would inevitably result in unauthorised, unregulated and potentially dangerous acid hitting the streets. Hofmann was convinced that most black-market LSD was ‘unreliable when it comes to both quality and dosage’ and prone to ‘decompose in the course of a week or a few months’. Though detailed information about how to brew your own acid had been widely available since the early 1960s, Hofmann was alarmed by ‘claims that LSD might be easily prepared, or that any chemistry student in a half-decent laboratory is capable of producing it’.
Hofmann knew better than most that LSD was an extremely volatile substance to deal with. A fractional shift in atmospheric conditions or clumsy handling could ruin an entire batch. As Hofmann explained, LSD could be ‘destroyed by the oxygen in the air and is transformed into an inactive substance under the influence of light’. As a result, synthesising LSD was a delicate balancing act and required the sort of intuitive and instinctive reactions more usually associated with art than science – a magician’s touch. What Hofmann failed to anticipate was the emergence of truly gifted individuals – like Tord Svenson and the Brotherhood’s chief chemist Nick Sand – who were capable of mastering these difficulties.
Hofmann was also sceptical about the chances of any aspiring acid-maker being able to source the ‘special equipment’ required to safely distil and store LSD. But the Swiss sorcerer underestimated the ingenuity and resourcefulness of Sand and his brethren. The alchemists assembled their labs piece by piece, buying from a number of different companies, modifying the component parts and reconditioning their working environment as required. When it came to manufacturing the legendary Orange Sunshine, Sand had the best of both worlds, thanks to the assistance of a respectable middle-aged Professor of Chemistry at Case Western Reserve University who gave Sand access to the college labs. The professor was genuinely curious about Sand’s experiments and stood to earn a substantial sum if he lent a hand. While the bulk of the work was done in a DIY lab secreted in an isolated house, the pristine university facilities allowed Sand to concentrate on the fine details, to modify, elaborate and fashion his Orange Sunshine into something distinctive.
Stark’s labs in Paris were not quite as sophisticated as this, but were more than adequate for Kemp’s requirements. But Kemp had not yet proved that he was capable of making the grade, so Stark called on Sand’s expertise to help get him over the line. Sand and his assistant – the helpful chemistry professor – flew to Europe in the spring of 1970 and the four of them met in Switzerland. Over the next few days, Kemp was given a crash course in how to create premium acid, including Sand’s own formula for Orange Sunshine scribbled on a piece of paper. Stark thought Sand’s notes were so valuable that he put a copy of them in a safety-deposit box in Rome.
All this preparation, however, was useless unless they could lay their hands on the base material of LSD, an alkaloid called ergotamine. Alkaloids are nitrogen-based organic compounds – mostly found in plants and funguses – that possess a remarkable range of pharmaceutical and medicinal properties, and have given rise to a wide range of pain-killers and mood-enhancing drugs, including morphine, nicotine, coffee and cocaine. Ergotamine, an alkaloid by-product of the fungus ergot that grows on rotten rye and other cereals, was separated from its host in 1918 by chemists working for the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz. But it wasn’t until the 1930s – after staff at the Rockefeller Institute in New York found that lysergic acid could be synthesised from ergotamine – that Sandoz paid closer attention to its various properties.
In 1938, the young Albert Hofmann was assigned the task of examining lysergic acid to see what chemical compounds could be extracted from it. The twenty-fifth substance he found was lysergic acid diethylamide, which he christened LSD-25. For the next five years, he was focused on other tasks, but in the spring of 1943 Hofmann went back to LSD. On 16 April, during ‘the purification and crystallisation of lysergic acid diethylamide’ his ‘work was interrupted by unusual sensations’ such as a ‘remarkable restlessness, combined with slight dizziness’. Hofmann had accidentally absorbed a tiny trace of LSD through his fingertips. Unsettled, he headed home and lay down in a ‘not unpleasant, intoxicated-like condition, characterised by an extremely stimulated imagination’ and saw ‘an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures’. The whole experience lasted about two hours, and afterwards he was determined to repeat it.
Three days later, at 4.20 p.m., Hofmann took a diluted dose of LSD and waited to see what happened next. Forty minutes later, he was disorientated, anxious and overwhelmed by the ‘desire to laugh’. The world’s first full-blown acid trip had begun, all the more disconcerting because it was so totally unexpected – what on earth was happening to him? Alarmed, Hofmann asked a colleague to escort him on his bicycle ride home, during which ‘everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a fun-house mirror’. Once indoors, he was overwhelmed by a succession of terrifying images. However, once the nightmarish visions had passed and a doctor had been called, he began to relax into it and enjoy some of the sensations: he was treated to a riot of ‘unprecedented colours’ and swirling ‘kaleidoscopic … images’, while every sound, no matter how trivial, took on a unique shape and form, dancing in front of his ‘closed eyes’.
Having managed to sleep, Hofmann woke feeling rested, refreshed and without any noticeable hangover from his nocturnal adventure. Pleasantly surprised, Hofmann calculated the amount of LSD he’d ingested and was astounded by how little was needed to trigger such a profound response. What startled him even more was the fact he ‘could remember the experience of LSD inebriation in minute detail’. Exhilarated and full of wonder, Hofmann bashed out a report and gave it to his colleagues who couldn’t believe what they were reading. Once several of them had tried LSD, ‘all doubts’ about what Hofmann had described ‘were eliminated’. Following standard procedure for testing a new substance, Sandoz went ahead with animal trials. The main difficulty with this approach was the fact that no animal can articulate what is happening in their brains. As a result, Hofmann and his colleagues would only be able to observe LSD’s effect on them if it produced ‘relatively heavy psychic disturbances’.
But to get anywhere near such an intense state, the different animals had to be subjected to a vastly higher dose than humans. Even then, the results were inconclusive. Mice showed some ‘motor disturbance’ and ‘alterations in licking behaviour’; cats and dogs both displayed signs of ‘the existence of hallucinations’; fish adopted ‘unusual swimming postures’; on a low dose, spiders weaved ‘more precisely built’ webs; and a group of chimpanzees reacted very badly when one of them was given LSD and began behaving erratically. Overall, none of the animals suffered damaging physical side-effects. Work on humans could safely continue. Further tests conducted by Hofmann and his colleagues – plus positive feedback from the handful of psychiatrists and psychologists who were the first recipients of Sandoz acid – led to excited company executives authorising production.
From then on, Sandoz supplied governments, universities, medical facilities and private citizens. Everyone from Solomon to the CIA benefited from its stockpiles, until the company stopped making it altogether. On 23 August 1965, one of the firm’s directors issued a statement explaining why Sandoz had decided to abandon acid. Though previously ‘cases of LSD abuse have occurred from time to time’, its widespread use and growing popularity had multiplied the risks to such an extent that in ‘some parts of the world’ LSD was now ‘a serious threat to public health’. As for Hofmann, he spent the rest of his life wrestling with his conflicted feelings about what he’d done and worrying about the fate of his ‘problem child’.
Until it shut down its operations, Sandoz had been the main global supplier of the all-important ergotamine tartrate (the industry-standard preparation of the alkaloid ergotamine involved rendering it in the form of a tartrate – a rock salt – which made it easier to manipulate), and the firm’s cessation of production caused a collapse in availability. Though there were still some small chemical traders dotted about who were able to exploit loop-holes in the laws governing LSD – and the Czechoslovakian firms manufacturing acid for state-sponsored research programmes continued to export ergotamine tartrate – it was extremely difficult to get enough of it to produce the vast amount of LSD Kemp was expected to make.
The problem was solved by Nick Sand and Billy Hitchcock, who had already addressed this issue when they were putting together the original deal with the Brotherhood. Back then, they’d turned to Charles Druce, an Englishman they’d run across at Millbrook. Druce was a London-based chemical trader who’d established a lucrative arrangement with the UK outlet of a Czechoslovakian company dealing in acid and its component materials. Druce spotted a gap in the market and started an international LSD mail-order business. On a trip to the US in 1965, he appeared at Millbrook and Leary persuaded him to become their supplier. Once LSD was illegal, however, Druce got cold feet and shut up shop.
Next, Druce embarked on a new venture, teaming up with Ron Craze – a British employee of the Czech chemical firm that Druce had patronised – to form Alban Feeds Ltd, with the aim of selling animal feed to developing countries. But to get off the ground, they needed an injection of cash. At the same time, Hitchcock and Sand were wondering where they were going to find the ingredients for the acid production run they’d organised with the Brotherhood. Hitchcock remembered Druce and suggested they give him a try. On 23 June 1968, Druce and his business partner Craze landed in San Francisco and were whisked straight to Hitchcock’s luxury pad in Sausalito. Though Craze was nervous about what he might be getting into, Druce had no reservations about taking Hitchcock’s money. A $9,000 advance allowed Druce and Craze to set up Alban Feeds Ltd. Sand then placed a $100,000 order for 5 kilos of lysergic acid and around 12 kilos of ergotamine tartrate. Once converted, the resulting LSD would have a street value of $5 million.
To cover his tracks, Hitchcock transferred the funds earmarked for Alban Feeds Ltd from his holdings in the Bahamas to his Swiss bank, then moved them into Sand’s Zurich account before depositing them in Druce and Craze’s bank in London. Under the Alban Feeds Ltd banner, they purchased what their investors had ordered from a firm in Hamburg, and the ergotamine tartrate was flown straight from there to Canada and smuggled across the border to New York. Everything went reasonably smoothly and, once Kemp was signed on to produce LSD for Stark and his Brotherhood colleagues, the acid consortium contacted Druce and asked for 9 kilos of ergotamine tartrate. But Druce was in no mood to co-operate. An LSD lab in America had been busted and some of the materials found there were traced back to Alban Feeds Ltd. A Scotland Yard detective showed up on Druce’s doorstep and advised him to stop playing with fire.
By mid-May 1970, Druce’s failure to deliver the goods was beginning to jeopardise Kemp’s mission. Stark decided to exert some pressure. He gave Kemp the keys to his brand-new red Ferrari and, with one of Stark’s underlings as an escort, Kemp raced off to see Druce in person. When Kemp and his passenger arrived at customs in Dover, Kemp had to admit that the car wasn’t his. Stark’s man – a UK citizen – immediately took responsibility for the vehicle. Suspicious, the customs officer ran a check on his passport, which showed that he was a registered heroin addict with a criminal record. A team of customs men spent several hours taking the Ferrari apart piece by piece, but their search was fruitless. The car was clean and Kemp and his companion were free to continue their journey. Luckily for them, the officers had ignored Kemp’s briefcase, which was full of documents about purchasing ergotamine tartrate. In the end, they returned to Paris from their London meeting with Druce with a piece of essential laboratory equipment and some empty promises: Druce had prevaricated, made excuses and apologetically sent them on their way. But he’d got the message; these people were not going to leave him alone. Unable to take the heat, Druce dropped out of sight, leaving his partner Craze on the hook for the ergotamine tartrate. By now Craze had grasped the true nature of the business he’d been involved in and wanted nothing more to do with it.
Stark had other ideas. He knew that Craze had a big cache of ergotamine tartrate stored in Hamburg. He also knew that Alban Feeds Ltd was in financial difficulties and Craze was looking to sell it all to balance the books. So he set a trap. Stark invented a fictitious company called Inland Alkaloids, contacted Craze through an intermediary and informed him that Inland Alkaloids was interested in buying up his stocks. Given that Alban Feeds Ltd was on the verge of going under, Craze leapt at the offer. But before any money had changed hands, Stark’s minion – who’d driven to the UK with Kemp – waltzed into the Hamburg warehouse, told them he was from Inland Alkaloids, handed over the relevant paperwork and walked out with the ergotamine tartrate. When payment still didn’t appear and it was obvious Inland Alkaloids didn’t exist, Craze started to panic. He wrote to Sand and Hitchcock demanding an explanation. Worried that Craze might betray them, Sand and his assistant confronted Craze in London and suggested that it would be better for him if he forgot the whole thing. Craze was not ready to back off and hinted that he was prepared to go to the police. At which point, he received an invitation from Stark for afternoon coffee and biscuits at the Oxford and Cambridge Club.
One of Stark’s many talents was his ability to pinpoint people’s strengths and weaknesses, and he quickly realised that hiding behind Craze’s indignant rhetoric was a scared man. He also knew exactly what persona to adopt to suit the occasion and his reassuring manner and air of professional competence disarmed Craze. He remembered that Stark was ‘polite and pleasant’ and willing to ‘do everything he could … to help’. Yet Craze left the club none the wiser and resigned to the fact that he would never recover his money. Stark’s more subtle approach had done the trick and Craze quietly faded from view.
Meanwhile, Kemp was putting the ergotamine tartrate to good use in Stark’s Paris lab, located in a former perfume factory. With Sand’s formula as a guide, Kemp worked flat out as he began to master the art of creating acid. Late one night, at the end of another long shift, he decided to put some LSD solution in the fridge rather than leave it at room temperature as he normally would. Next day, Kemp was delighted to discover that refrigerating it had actually sped up the crystallisation process. Here was a safe and easy method of getting to the end product a lot faster, which brought obvious advantages. By the time he finished, Kemp had generated a kilo of pure LSD – a staggering ten million doses worth of Orange Sunshine – half of which went to Stark, the rest to the Brotherhood. Kemp had shown that he was capable of matching the standards set by the other alchemists. Over time, he would surpass them all.
Given the resounding success of their collaboration, Stark was keen to keep Kemp on the payroll. The Paris lab was still ready and available, but Stark decided to relocate operations to a crude, run-down outbuilding on a dismal industrial estate in Orléans, some 80 miles from the capital. Though it is not clear why Stark made this move, various sources suggest that he’d received a tip from the Brotherhood that the Paris lab had come to the attention of the authorities. At first, Stark commissioned Kemp to revert to where he’d started with Solomon a year earlier, trying to synthesise THC – an ultimately frustrating and thankless task. Stark shrugged off the lack of progress on this front and proposed that Kemp return to LSD. But by then Kemp had run out of patience with the primitive working conditions and Stark’s high-handed treatment of him.
Neither Kemp nor Stark ever discussed their relationship in any detail and it’s hard to imagine them becoming friends. As a rule, Stark didn’t do friendship and Kemp was not the most open or sociable character. Yet they had more in common than their wildly different backgrounds – the bespectacled working-class lad from the north of England and the burly hustler from Brooklyn – might suggest. Both had travelled a long way from where they’d come from and neither would ever be able to return to the world they’d left behind. Both were fairly self-contained and self-possessed. Both of them believed that LSD would bring about social revolution. And, though Kemp never called himself an anarchist, his politics were closer to Stark’s philosophy than to the more conventional Marxist Left.
Where they differed most significantly was on their attitude to personal relationships. Kemp was not a promiscuous individual. The sexual experimentation and free love ethos of the era held no attraction; Bott was the only woman for him. Stark, on the other hand, didn’t have a monogamous bone in his body. There is no evidence Stark ever had a long-term partner, male or female: a diet of no-strings-attached sex was sufficient for him. His voracious appetite and predatory instincts, combined with his open bisexuality, troubled Kemp and he began to worry that he was the object of Stark’s desires, especially during a brief excursion to Morocco. This tension undermined their partnership, but in the end it was Kemp’s commitment to Christine Bott that broke it apart.
In July 1970, Bott was one of the 483 female students across the UK who completed a degree in medicine. Next came two years of intensive and demanding training to qualify as a doctor, and Bott chose to do it at a hospital on the Isle of Man. Perhaps she opted for such a remote yet beautiful setting – with jagged coastlines, windswept mountains, open plains, undulating hills and wooded valleys – because she was tired of urban life after five years in Liverpool and wanted to rediscover her countryside roots and enjoy the benefits of a more rural environment. Not that the Isle of Man was all peace and quiet. The hospital where Bott was doing her training was in Douglas, the capital city and home to nearly half the island’s population. Overlooking the sea, and at the confluence of two rivers, this busy port welcomed thousands of tourists every year. Visitors filled the boarding houses and local resorts, the promenade was lined with fish and chip shops; there were pubs, cinemas, variety shows, dance halls and high-end gambling at the casinos.
Despite the distance between them – and the fact that most of her energy and time would have been consumed by her hospital duties – there was no indication that Bott’s relationship with Kemp had cooled off. He was bored of his work, tired of the enforced separation and missing her terribly. Plans were made for a reunion. But Stark was fanatical about security and had refused to let Kemp have any visitors. Kemp ignored his wishes, invited Bott over to stay and, during their time together, she took LSD for the first time. When Stark found out, he was livid. The two of them had an almighty row, which led to Kemp quitting and returning to Britain. Their falling out, however, was only temporary. Stark had no intention of squandering his investment in Kemp or the knowledge the young chemist had acquired. Kemp, on the other hand, wasn’t about to abandon the LSD business. He’d found his vocation and felt capable of making the best acid on the planet; he could hardly afford to ignore what Stark had to offer.
In 1970, the Home Office published a report by the Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence, which surveyed all the data it could muster about the LSD trade. According to its findings there was some LSD being produced in the UK, but ‘the bulk of it is smuggled from the USA’. The report also noted that ‘users preferred the American LSD and regarded the English product as inferior’. Thanks to what Kemp had achieved while under Stark’s wing, that was all about to change.