Owsley and Me: My LSD Family

I expected to like this book, but I liked it even more than I expected. That's also what I said about BEAR: AUGUSTUS OWSLEY STANLEY III. Both books are excellent and can be read together for a more complete view of the man. Rhoney Gissen Stanley and Tom Davis have produced an easily readable but highly interesting book. I find that Grateful Dead biographies barely touch on the relationship the band had with "Bear" but he was a very interesting fellow, and one of the many unique characters to emerge from the 60s. Owsley was a major factor in what went down in those few years when LSD was legal and available (and a bit beyond), but the two books combined paint a picture of a complicated and passionate man who was definitely human. It's sad he's not still with us, along with so many others! Thanks, Bear, for your wonderful courage and generosity!

Partly out of necessity, Owsley Stanley was an enigma. This book reveals him to be both more ordinary and more unusual than I expected. I've read plenty of books about the counterculture surrounding the 60s San Francisco music scene, and none comes from anywhere near this angle. It's as intimate a portrait of a man and an era as one can get -- a little too intimate at times, as some of the sex left me cringing a bit. But I suppose that was a big part of what was changing in America at the time, so maybe it is essential to the story. Owsley's ways were unlike anyone else's before or since, without even considering that he lit the world with his perfect microchemical electricity, changing it forever when the third eye caught a glimpse of the possibilities. I had my own e-conversations with him years ago, and they would have been a lot more interesting had I read this book first. (It was published after his death.) RIP Tom Davis, the first celeb Deadhead I knew of. RIP Bear. Sorry you missed the new Ice Age.

I just finished the book. What a great way to start the summer! I loved all of it- the 60s, and the connection to India at the end. I loved hearing Rhoney Stanley's voice. I laughed a lot and also realized some deep things about my own life experiences. I think as hippies (and people who were raised by hippies) we do have kind of the same blood and we are all part of a family in some ways. This book connected me to the joy and love of the hippie community and inspiring me to creat more of a sense of that community in my life. I've also been inspired to listen to new music mentioned in the book such as Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan in concert 1972. Definitely transformative! This book opened up many doors of pleasure.

There are a lot of suspect and/or just plain bad publications emerging recently purporting to be insider accounts of this remarkable period in history and, since the subject matter is dear to my heart, I manifest an immediate initial skepticism each time a new offering emerges. Co-author Tom Davis also wrote a recently released bio of SNL which was justifiably panned, which just increased my apprehension.Happily, I can say "Owsley and Me" has exceeded all expectations by a wide margin. Rhoney Stanley was not only an Owsley familiar for decades, but also an accomplished chemist in her own right who writes with intelligence and exactitude about the alchemical laboratory scene which vaulted Owsley into preeminence in the psychedelic universe. Personal details are not overlooked, and the tone of the book so perfectly captures the Zeitgeist of the era I found myself transported back to those remarkable times as if conveyed by a time machine!The prose itself is quite competent. Odd little chronological hiccups and non sequiturs do occur, as has been noted by other reviewers, but these are minor in nature and barely interrupt the continuity of the narrative.I could go on, but, please, just get the book!! What a welcome chronicle to the period!

Excellent account of a special time, one I was immersed in deep enough to appreciate the accuracy and depth of information in the account.

If you want to know what the psychedelic scene was like for an insider in the 60s, this is the book to read. You'll recognize many big names from rock and get a good glimpse of life as a wild endless ride of tripping parties, lots of sex, and of course rock n roll. Owsley Stanley is presented with warts and all, brilliant, creative, eccentric, controlling, and difficult, especially in his relationships with women.You'll get an inside look at the early Dead scene, with the "family" the author was part of, as well as backstage realities. While the tales presented here are fascinating, the writing leaves much to be desired. Incidents and people are abruptly introduced, then disappear without explanation. The narrative is often disjointed and events seem to occur at times without cause. However, despite the writing flaws, I enjoyed this book, and if you're a fan of the 60s, or want to get close up and personal with some of that decade's famous names, you will too.

indispensable

Brilliant and unique. The telling of a familiar story from a very female perspective is fantastic. For anyone who who has read all the other biographies of this time this is a true revelation. Just wonderful but tinged with a sadness of knowing that, born even ten years later, Rhoney's story might have been so much different, a highly intelligent woman maybe not having to deal with the rampant sexism and disempowerment afforded to 1960s 'rock chicks'.A must read though for anyone interested in those times.

A witty, beautiful and charming account of Owsley, the chemist that seeded the psychedelic 60's. Augustus Owsley Stanley III was a unique, opinionated, brilliant amateur chemist who produced extremely high quality LSD and distributed it in generous doses to seminal gatherings that launched the psychedelic revolution at the core of Hippiedom.The story of this era is told from the fascinating viewpoint of his love partner and chemistry assistant Rhoney. The book provides excitement, deep insight, belly laughs and tenderness to the story of a counter-cultural genius. Owsley was an alchemist, his compounds facilitated insights and perspectives that guided the era of peace and love in the face of demands for a surrender to fighting the meaningless war in Vietnam. Unfortunately the abiding pacifism, powerful music and loving ideology of this era is still repressed by governments obsessed with protecting citizens from terrorism by abridging their rights and freedoms.As a legitimate researcher with LSD during a slightly later era, I highly recommend this book as a way to gain perspective on the dreams and wishes of those at the core of the psychedelic movement of the 1960's.

Even though I was too young to go to San Francisco for the summer of love, I love reading about the people and events of the time. When I visited the area in 2009 a trip to Haight-Ashbury and the Grateful Dead's house was mandatory for me. Must have been magical to be a part of it in the 60's.

Just finished reading Owsley and Me, a hippie memoir written by Rhoney Stanley, Owsley's long time on off lover. It's highly unusual for psychedelic memoirs to be written by women, which make this book quite important.Rhoney helped Bear make acid and boy did she like to trip. Rhoney had high level access to the Dead family (they salaried her when Owsley was doing time) and knew everyone and anyone who was on the SF scene. Her tales of life with Owsley give a unique women's perspective on those times and insight into Owsley himself, who comes across as a bundle of opposites, who while happy to turn milions of people on and to be responsible for the acid scene in the mid 60s was perhaps only really interested in himself and his own power.Perhaps that's how you have to be when you're an Acid King? I image he was the sort of guy you either really loved or really hated. Bill Graham's analogy about licorice and the Grateful Dead sprang to mind. It's also the first memoir to give a women's eye point of view about the notion of 'free love' and unusual relationship set ups of those times. Rhoney comes across as intelligent, over awed by Owsley and very slightly naive but that's not a criticism.I had some email communication once with Owsley at the time I was researching for my book on the history of LSD in Britain, Albion Dreaming. He was argumentative and irrascible, but equally honest and clear. I was just impressed that a major figure in psychedelica's history would take the time to engage in email correspondence with someone he'd never met and didn't agree with!Owsley and Me is well written, has more photos of Owsley than you ever thought existed and is yet another view on that strange scene in California, the drugs, music and culture of which is still reverberating through our synapses and which continues to fascinate with each new set of revelations.