The Best Psychedelic Contact Sheet in the History of the World

The Best Psychedelic Contact Sheet in the History of the World
While working at High Times for a long time from 1986 through 1997, and then again in 2001 and 2002, I needed to make contact with a lot of people from the underground/the psychedelic movement/the marijuana legalization and hemp movements/the medical marijuana movement. Getting contacts for those people was not always easy. There is a story that goes with almost every name in my rolodex.
    Today, someone asked me to get in touch with Jonathan Ott and so I spent some time looking for my old--and I mean 21 year old--psychedelic contact sheet and unforgivably, Ott was not on it. If you read this, Mr. Ott, please get in touch because someone is trying to reach you.
    But in looking over the sheet, it's pretty amazing. I'm sure others have even better ones, but my contact sheet--and that means I spoke with each of these people and recorded them and have those recordings, reads like this. A lot of these names were culled when Bill Weinberg and I--Bill was my partner in writing the Highwitness News section of High Times for several years--were putting together a special called LSD at 50! which celebrated the 50th anniversary of Albert H. discovering it and taking his famed bicycle ride.
   Here's the amazing list--without contacts, of course, and in no particular order, just the order in which I reached them.
Howard Lotsof--the man who discovered the heroin interruptive properties of Ibogaine.
John Perry Barlow--Songwriter for the Grateful Dead
Mickey Hart--Dead Drummer and participant in the Acid Tests
Wavy Gravy--The clown from Woodstock who told us all to hug the 30-50 mean motorcyclists who crashed Woodstock and tried to force their way to the front of the stage.
Ken Kesey--Author of One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest and the original Merry Prankster who ran the school bus FURTHER across America doling out LSD.
Albert Hoffman--the man who discovered LSD by accident and the very straight-laced father of the Psychedelic movement.
Nina Graboi--Writer and early participant in LSD sessions
Terence McKenna--Psychedelic Pioneer on a lot of levels
Oscar Janigar: The man who turned on Cary Grant to LSD
John Beresford: A psychologist who got one of the "magic grams" from Sandoz laboratories and treated a lot of Hollywood people with it.
Stan Grof--LSD phychotherapist who worked at Spring Grove, New York and later developed the famous Grof breath work.
Sasha Shulgin--Chemist/researcher/writer who has brought a lot lot lot of material to the attention of the world. While he didn't invent Extasy, he was the one who reinvented it and spread the word.
Peter Stafford--Writer of the Psychedlic Encyclopedia
Marty Lee--Co-Author of Acid Dreams, the book that exposed the US government's work with the material on unsuspecting hippies and others
Rabbi Salman Schacter--Took LSD at Spring Grove with other healers and spiritual people in the early 1960s.
Allen Ginsberg--Poet/author of HOWL, the book that announced the Beat movement and an early user of LSD and Ayahuasca.
Hunter Thompson--Out of his mind drug abuser who invented Gonzo journalism--and was very freaking good at it.
Laura Huxley--Wife of Aldous, and a writer and psychedelic explorer in her own right.
Stanley Krivner--headed the Dream Lab at Maimonides Hospital.
Cat McKenna--wife of Terence and a brilliant researcher on her own.
Mountain Girl--Jerry Garcia's wife and a famed psychedelic explorer.
Ram Das--Richard Alpert, Leary's associate, the man who wrote Be Here Now, and a spiritual/psychedelic leader for 50 years.
Rick Doblin--Founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
Claudio Naranjo--Writer, makes the ayahuasca connection with LSD with ayahuasqueros.
David Smith--The man who ran the Haight-Ashbury Clinic during the halcyon years in San Francisco.
Ronald Sandison--British psychitrist who used LAD with patients from 1952 through 1964
Humphrey Osmond--The man who invented the word "psychedelic" and a researcher with LSD
Ken Babbs--One of the original Merry Pranksters
Tim Leary--The man who passed the word.
Ron Bivert--Photographer for the Merry Pranksters
And then there are a dozen others who, because they could be vulnerable, I'm not mentioning. And I've eliminated their old contacts from my page for precisely that reason.
    But is that a freaking all star line up or what?????? AND I GOT TO TALK WITH ALL OF THEM! You have any idea what a treat that was? I'm glad someone was looking for Mr. Ott today to remind me of that list. My head has been buzzing with their ideas all freaking day. Thanks Universe for letting me be alive!