Early Life
Beahm had a troubled childhood; His older brother died of a drug overdose and he grew up believing that his biological father left the family. When in his teens, his sister revealed in an argument that his biological father was really a Swedish sailor named William Björklund. Beahm lived with his mother for much of his life, but their relationship was tumultuous. The accounts given of her in Mullen's Lexicon Devil portray her as having a mental illness, which caused her to behave erratically and be verbally abusive toward her son.
Beahm attended IPS (Innovative Program School), a school within University High School in Los Angeles. The IPS program combined elements of est large group awareness training and Scientology.
Though Beahm was charismatic and had intellectual potential, he did not take the IPS program seriously. As students in the IPS program were given the liberty to form their own classes, Beahm and fellow student Georg Ruthenberg made a class for themselves called Fruit Eating in which they would go to a market, eat fruit for an hour, then return to school. Frequent users of LSD, Beham and Smear developed a following of other IPS students who would also use the drug. The two were accused of brainwashing the other students and causing them to behave subversively, which led to the dismissal of Beahm and Smear from the school in 1976.
Read more about this topic: Darby Crash
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