Nicholas Sand - Background

Background

Sand grew up in Brooklyn, New York and by his late teens he was already aware of the LSD scene developing around Greenwich Village. While attending Brooklyn College, Sand became interested in the teachings of Gurdjieff, the study of different cultures, and various Eastern philosophers. Graduating in 1966 with a degree in Anthropology and Sociology, Sand followed Leary and Alpert to Millbrook and became a guide to the psychedelic realm for many of the people who came to Millbrook. During this time Sand also began extracting DMT in his bathtub.

Sand later started a perfume company as a front for the production of Mescaline and DMT. During this time Sand began to attract the attention of the police due to his lengthy visits to Milbrook and chose to move his lab to San Francisco after Owsley visited Milbrook in April 1967. Sand's San Francisco Lab was operational by July 1967. Sand wanted to make LSD but was lacking the necessary precursors. Owsley had given him a formula for STP and would tablet Sand's product from his own lab in Orinda.

In 1968 Sand was introduced to fellow chemist Tim Scully, who had been training under Owsley Stanley until Stanley's legal troubles in 1967.

In December 1968 Sand purchased a farmhouse in Windsor, California, at that time a small town in rural Sonoma County. There he and Scully set up a large LSD lab. Here they produced over 3.6 million tablets of LSD that was distributed under the name "orange sunshine".