Monday, December 23, 2013

More on "the missing link"







 INMATE DAVIS: I started in 1965. 
INMATE DAVIS: Mescaline...Psilocybin.
 INMATE DAVIS: Very seldom. Sometimes some stimulants. 
INMATE DAVIS: No. Methamphetamine."










Suze said...

Patty, do you really believe that a 17 y.o. girl was entrusted with the Hawaii connection (if it was real) ?

Robert Hendrickson said...

OK Patty! So how does Helter Skelter fit in that scheme of things?

Did Charles Manson, at the time, realize that "Belladonna" could be an important $$$$ drug of the future? Drug companies were already catching on to it. It was included, very mildly, in "Contact" cold capsules - until the Feds demanded it be REMOVED from the capsules. Kids discovered how to extract just the Belladonna from the capsules and were thus making Belladonna (Deadly Nightshade) the new thing.

IF so - maybe that's why the Family was moving out to Death Valley - IT grows wild out there and Gypsy knew how to brew it just right so as to make for a potent sleep relaxant - without any side effects.

IF MK used her brew instead of that deadly shit, he would likely be alive today.

OH! there's a new book out that exposes how Richard Nixon and BILL CLINTON used the Southern Stratagy to declare WAR on drugs. They both created new drug laws that mostly cause MINORITIES to be incarcerated. That's why the prisons in America are half full of Black and Brown minorities. Look out - Helter Skelter!

Panamint Patty said...

Ruthie was not your average 17 year old girl. Patty was watching "locked up abroad" last summer. Most of those who got caught and locked up were "mules," and many of them were very young when it happened. Case in point: Billy Hayes of Midnight Express.

Panamint Patty said...

Robert, Patty has always been confused about the Belladonna thing. Is it Belladonna amaryllis or Atropa belladonna that is the psychoactive one?

Panamint Patty said...

and would the derivative of this plant create a high like "synthetic mescaline," or psilocybin, or...? Patty'd better go back to Erowid and read some more.

Chris B said...

An article about Scopolamine, of interest because..."Reuters states that victims become so docile that they have been known to help thieves rob their homes and empty their bank accounts."

Scopolamine is found in Atropa belladonna.

Panamint Patty said...

Thank you, sir. Patty is doing a little reading...seems that scopolamine is in Rohypnol, the notorious date rape drug. It is also used in interrogations, and can be extremely dangerous in high doses. She was hoping that it would look a bit like the MDA cluster, or even like psilocybin, but it does not. Still good food for thought.

Hey...speaking of food...looks like Psilocybin is a tryptophan derivative. Maybe that's why they make Patty pass out cold?

CarolMR said...

Thanks for the interesting reading, Patty.

CarolMR said...

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

CarolMR said...

Thanks for the interesting reading, Patty.

starship said...

Hi, everybody, Merry Christmas and all.

This post is really terrific and has much food for thought. The BEL and the investigation is indeed intriguing. I do not want to rehash old arguments and ruin anyone's holiday season, but the story of Col Tate and the bikers gets my gander up, and it's already been fought at this blog in the past so if anyone really wants the details they could find them. But the timeline has problems for it to have any meaning and the dogs wouldn't have been Sharon's anyway, probably the police dogs that LK commented on when Bugliosi had her revisit the scene, etc.

I personally don't believe the story at all, as much as I would like to.

starship said...

Thanks. Merry Christmas to all.

Unknown said...

Patty I know you are studying chemistry, so you are probably Right and I am probably Wrong. But I always thought Rohypnol was flunitrazepam only and didn't contain scopolamine. Combining a benzodiazepine and an anticholinergic in one medication seems kind of counter-intuitive to me, but maybe there is a medication out there that has both active ingredients. It might make sense, actually, since benzos, opiates, and anticholinergics all potentiate each other, which is why they are sometimes put in the same medication at reduced dosages (i.e. promethazine/codeine cough syrups).

I have tried scopolamine. Ingesting scopolamine (called hyoscine here) is honestly one of the most unpleasant and regrettable things I have ever done to myself. It makes you extremely drowsy, and exceedingly and horribly thirsty. The entire time I was on it I not only felt physically sick/poisoned, but had a feeling of impending doom. I spent an entire night in my bed kicking at my sheets because I thought it was full of snakes. The next day I kept hearing voices whispering at me, hallucinated putting clothes out on the washing line when I did no such thing, and saw a picture of the Spanish Prime Minister in a magazine talk at me. The worst thing about this drug is that when these terrible things happen, you forget you are 'high' and think they are real. Imagine all the fun of being delirious (there is none), then magnify that by, I dunno, 10 million billion.

I haven't tried atropine, but from my understanding (I have tried dimenhydrinate, which is synthetic but very similar, i.e. equally fucking horrible) all anticholinergics have basically the same effects. They suck the big one, so if anybody really thought this was the 'new thing' in drugs they were severely brain-damaged.

The military, however, totally did think anticholinergics were the 'new thing':

Unknown said...

Oh, and Merry Christmas everyone.

Panamint Patty said...

Okay, granted, this is from wikipedia, but it is footnoted: "About one in five emergency room admissions for poisoning in Bogotá, Colombia, have been attributed to scopolamine.[21] In June 2008, more than 20 people were hospitalized with psychosis in Norway after ingesting counterfeit Rohypnol tablets containing scopolamine.[22]"

So its counterfeit Rohypnol? See this is interesting because colloquially something can be called one drug but actually be something else. We keep seeing this over and over.

PS the WORST drug experience Patty ever had as a "kid" was Robitussin. Ugh...gross.

Panamint Patty said...

Hey. Wait. Sherm, did you say "impending doom?" The feeling that it's coming down fast, all helter-skelter like?

Unknown said...

Never did belladonna but I knew people that had. From their accounts and everything I've ever read by other people that have used it, it sounds pretty nightmarish.

Unknown said...

Haha Patty, yes, like it was "coming down fast". My heart felt like it was going helter skelter, anyhow, especially when there was a sudden noise or something moved out of the corner of my eye. Really, really nasty stuff.

And, to counterbalance your Hideous Propaganda (j/k), many of my best drug experiences came from Robitussin. :) Although as I was addicted to dextromethorphan for 6 years, you could probably also say it was my worst drug experience too, in a way.

Here's a kicker- I had friends who used to COMBINE large doses of Travacalm (scopolamine/dimenhydrinate/caffeine tablets) with Robitussin. Imagine that; or, preferably, don't. They were a bloody mess.

Unknown said...

Btw my mind is still reeling from the fact that Sandy had a sister who was BFFs with the Grateful Dead. Nice sleuthing!

Panamint Patty said...

Patty read today that a recent analysis of several samples of "molly" showed at least some proportion of methamphetamine. It is marketed to the kids as a purer form of MDMA, but apparently it's just more of the same old shit.

schumne said...

Someone should research if there was any correspondence between Nixon and Bugliosi.

Nixon had called Tim Leary "the most dangerous man in America". Nixon also wanted the death penalty for possession of LSD. Nixon also called Manson "guilty" before Manson was even tried.

People have wondered why Bugliosi went for the "Helter Skelter" motive rather than the much more obvious one of trying to get Beausoleil out. -- The Manson trials were not really a trial of Manson -- they were a trial of LSD and hippies, who Nixon thought were going to destroy "his" country.

"Hey Dick --
whatever you think of us is totally irrelevant,
both to us now and to you,
we are the present,
we are the future,
you are the past,
pay your dues and get out of the way" -- Jefferson Starship, "Mau Mau" -- "Blows Against the Empire" -- 1970

Buona Fortuna said...

Just thought I might add here that I read one of 'Tex' Watson's psych reports from when he was first arrested the other day. He describes the plants they took to get high as 'belladonna' but then as 'white trumpet flowers - with spiky balls/seeds and big heart shaped leaves. This would be datrua he is describing that perhaps someone at the time told him (and everyone else) was belladonna...

Chris Till said...

I'm all for thinking outside the box, but I still don't see anything here compelling or convincing about any significant link between the BEL and "the Family." Sure, both were based in California in the late 1960s. Both moved around California. One made acid and had messianic opinions of it. The other took acid and may have sold some. "The Family" probably took some of the BEL's legendary Orange Sunshine, but so did perhaps millions of other Americans. I'm just not seeing much of a link with the evidence yet presented. That said, one aspect of the BEL that doesn't make much sense is the death of its leader, John Griggs (aka 'the holiest man in America,' according to Leary). Supposedly he overdosed on, or was poisoned by, psilocybin in early August 1969? Who's ever been killed by psilocybin? Nobody, right? Doesn't make sense. PS: Maybe you were just being funny, but Phil Kaufman's friend was the great Gram Parsons, not Graham Parsons.