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The Brotherhood of Eternal Love

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American organization of drug users and distributors

Criminal organization
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The Brotherhood of Eternal Love
Founded byJohn Griggs[1][2]
Founding locationOrange County, California, United States
Criminal activitiesDrug use, manufacturing and distribution

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was an organization of drug users and distributors that operated from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s in Orange County, California.[3] They were dubbed the Hippie Mafia by the police.[4] They produced and distributed drugs in hopes of starting a "psychedelic revolution" in the United States.[5][6]

History

In the mid-1960s, John Griggs and others were members of a car gang called the Street Sweepers in Anaheim, California.[7] In 1966, they robbed a Hollywood producer at gunpoint and stole a large amount of LSD from him.[7] Griggs then proceed to try the LSD that they had stolen.[7] With this experience, Griggs underwent a transformation that dramatically changed his life.[7] He renounced violence, threw away his gun, and even apologized and returned the stolen goods to the Hollywood producer.[4][7] He and the other Street Sweepers became psychedelic evangelists and reincorporated themselves as the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.[4][7] This included registering as a tax-exempt religious organization.[7]

The organization was started by Griggs as a commune,[8][9] but by 1969, had turned to the manufacture of LSD and the importing of hashish.[10][11][12] Appearing in 1968 as an orange tablet measuring about 6 mm across, "Orange Sunshine" acid was the first largely available form of LSD after its possession was made illegal. Tim Scully, a prominent chemist, made some of these tablets, but said that most "Sunshine" in the USA came by way of Ronald Stark, who imported approximately thirty-five million doses from Europe.[13]

In July 1969 Charlene Almeida, a friend of Timothy Leary's daughter, drowned in a pond on the Brotherhood's ranch (near Idyllwild, California) while under the influence of LSD. Leary was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and five members of the Brotherhood were arrested on marijuana-related charges. A month later Griggs died from ingesting a crystallized form of psilocybin, likely containing adulterants.[14][15][a] Lee writes that after Griggs' death a new element assumed leadership of the organization, with a "more competitive and cutthroat" approach to the business. Robert ("Fat Bobby") Andrist took control of the Brotherhood's hashish distribution operation, while Michael Boyd Randall and Nicholas Sand managed its LSD business.[16]

In 1970, The Brotherhood of Eternal Love hired the radical left organization Weather Underground for a fee of $25,000 to help Leary make his way to Algeria after he escaped from prison, while serving a ten-year sentence for possession of marijuana.[17][18][19][20][21][22]

Their activities came to an end on August 5, 1972, when a drug raid was executed on the group where dozens of group members in California, Oregon and Maui were arrested.[23] Some who had escaped the raid continued underground or fled abroad.[5] More members were arrested in 1994 and 1996, and the last of them in 2009;[3] Brenice Lee Smith served two months in jail before pleading guilty to a single charge of smuggling hashish, and then was released after being sentenced to time served.[24][25][26][27][28][29][30]

In film

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love feature in the fictional films Rainbow Bridge (1971)[31] and Mr Nice (2010), as well as the documentaries The Sunshine Makers (2015) and Orange Sunshine (2016).[5]

Notes

  1. ^ Lee writes instead that Griggs died of a PCP overdose.[16]

References

  1. ^ Schou, Nick (July 7, 2005). "Lords of Acid". OC Weekly. Archived from the original on 23 June 2015. Retrieved 3 July 2021.
  2. ^ R.U. Sirius (19 October 2018). "Tripulations 1968 - 1969: Excerpt from Timothy Leary's Trip Thru Time". Mondo 2000. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 3 July 2021. In 1966, a notorious working class gang of tough marijuana dealers from Orange County invaded and ripped off a Hollywood party over a pot deal gone bad. Among the items they grabbed was a bunch of LSD. They didn't even know what it was — except that it was obviously a drug. One day, the gang leader, John Griggs tried it. "This is it!" he told his followers. "A religious experience." He threw his gun into the ocean. In nearly an instant, the Street Sweepers gang became a religious psychedelic commune. And the skills they'd learned smuggling marijuana from Mexico… well, that still fit the profile. They added acid and hashish to their sales repertoire and became such a successful underground operation that they would eventually get dubbed "the hippie mafia."
  3. ^ a b Schou, Nick (Nov 12, 2009). ""Hippie Mafia" Hash Smuggler Arrested". Archived from the original on 23 November 2010. Retrieved 22 July 2010.
  4. ^ a b c Ramm, Benjamin. "The LSD cult that transformed America". BBC Popular culture. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2021. The drug had a similarly profound effect on the petty criminals who would become the Brotherhood, two-thirds of whom had already had run-ins with the law. Their founder, John Griggs, was high on heroin when he robbed a Hollywood producer at gunpoint – but after taking LSD for the first time, he renounced violence, apologised and returned the stolen goods....Brotherhood members, christened the 'Hippie Mafia' by the police, used multiple identities to evade detection, but remained socially and politically influential....The group's celebrity also inspired one of the strangest films ever made, Rainbow Bridge (1972)...Owsley Stanley, who made LSD into tablet form for the acid tests of writer Ken Kesey, described the Brotherhood as "loose cannons on a ship of fools". Richard Alpert, who renamed himself Ram Dass ('servant of God') after meeting his guru in India, was wary of the group's ambition: "They were rebellious and wanted to use psychedelics to challenge the government. They had the tiger by the tail".
  5. ^ a b c Schou, Nick (7 June 2007). "Eternal Sunshine". OC Weekly. Archived from the original on 16 July 2018. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  6. ^ Black, Bobby (30 October 2020). "Hashish, Hawaii & The Hippie Mafia". Cannthropology - World of Cannabis. Velleman Beheer B.V. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2021. Part of a local hotrod gang called the Street Sweepers, "Farmer John" Griggs was a notorious boozer, brawler, and heroin user. But after robbing a stash of LSD from the home of a Hollywood producer, he tripped out for the first time and had a spiritual epiphany. Overwhelmed by his experience of "God-consciousness," Griggs returned the stolen acid, gave up his gangbanger ways, and devoted himself to proselytizing on behalf of LSD. He began taking small groups out into the woods every Sunday and leading them on guided trips. Travis had also experienced "death of the ego" moments while tripping before, but it wasn't until he accompanied Griggs on these excursions that he began to find meaning in the experience. Believing that LSD was the ultimate tool for human enlightenment, Griggs—along with his wife Carol, friends Michael Randall, Ricky and Ron Bevans, Chuck Mundell, Travis, and a number of others—made it their sacred mission to turn on the world.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Almond, Elliott (21 May 1989). "The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, 'Psychedelic Evangelists' or Street-Smart Drug Dealers?". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
  8. ^ Schou, Nick (July 7, 2005). "BLAST FROM THE PAST". OC Weekly. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 3 July 2021. Just how did the Brotherhood spread the word? Posters announcing the event were distributed up and down the coast of California, and then there were the Christmas cards. The cover of each invitation featured an illustration of—depending on how you looked at it—a butterfly, a sunset or a profile of the face of Buddha. Inside each card was the message "Let Sunshine Do," and instead of R.S.V.P., the initials "LSD….300 micrograms." A hole in the card revealed a tab of Orange Sunshine. According to Blind Faith gallery owner Kent Kelly, who provided us with his card—minus the tab of acid—thousands were sent out across the country.
  9. ^ Robinson, Rita (8 April 2016). "Film 'Orange Sunshine', Trippy LSD Love Story". Laguna Beach Independent. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2021. John Griggs founded the Brotherhood of Eternal Love in 1965 and was decreed by avid LSD-advocate and defrocked Harvard professor Timothy Leary as his spiritual guru. Griggs was a tough-guy malcontent from Anaheim who "saw God" the first time he took LSD in 1963. After stealing the drug from a Hollywood producer at gunpoint, Griggs and his buddy drove back to OC, popping pills along the way. "They took a lot," Kirkley said, and Griggs ran for miles in the middle of the night to tell his wife and high-school sweetheart, Carol, how much he loved her and that LSD was the antidote to hate and war. "He was completely transformed," said Kirkley, from thug to flower child with one whopping dose. As the Brotherhood grew, Griggs careened his gang into a tax-exempt church anchored by the headshop Mystic Arts
  10. ^ "1966 – Move to Modjeska Canyon". Orange Sunshine of Eternal Love. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2021. Per Carol, "we moved to Mojeska Canyon, as a group, from our individual dwellings in Anaheim, Long Beach, and Garden Grove…". Per Los Angeles Times (May 21, 1989): In October, 1966, they moved from their Anaheim haunts to Modjeska Canyon, where they became "psychedelic evangelists", says Dion Wright, who befriended Griggs in Laguna Beach 20 years ago.
  11. ^ Japenga, Ann (27 October 2008). "Palm Springs History - Timothy Leary Fobes Ranch Hippies Drug Culture". Palm Springs Life. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2021. The next time you're driving to Idyllwild, watch for the turnoff to Fobes Ranch. Amid trophy properties and grazing colts, the LSD revolution flamed out. In the late 1960s, Fobes Ranch was the hub of an international, multimillion-dollar LSD operation. The distributors were the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Orange County surfers who sprinkled around acid like psychedelic Johnny Appleseeds. Their figurehead drug king and former Harvard professor, Timothy Leary, lived in a teepee near the apple orchard.
  12. ^ Senn, Evan (13 August 2015). "Mystic Arts World: Laguna Beach's Original Psychedelic Gallery". KCET. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2021. Curator and art historian Bolton Colburn's new exhibition, at Coastline Community College Art Gallery, displays work by artists shown at Mystic Arts World,....Colburn's exhibition features more than 40 different artists who showed at Mystic Arts World during its tenure, and the variety of styles and techniques of art is vast, ranging from welding and ceramics, to light work, drawing, printmaking, painting and assemblage. "Most of the artists in the show are artists that I was not familiar with, and I've been involved in the art world in this area for 15-20+ years. So, for me it was a revelation," Colburn says....Although Mystic Arts World wasn't the only place in the state for psychedelic art and experimentation, it really was a hub for Southern California's counter culture. Offering yoga, art, clothing, jewelry, health food, books and a meditation room, the small storefront on Pacific Coast Highway turned into a thriving center for the community. "While it lasted, Mystic Arts World was a focus of seminal, sometimes cosmological, and always super conscious art. What you see in this exhibition is a collection of surviving works of that wild period," says Wright, the maitre d' of presenting "far out, outta sight" art.
  13. ^ Stafford P (1992). "Chapter 1 – The LSD Family". Psychedelics Encyclopaedia (3rd ed.). Ronin Publishing. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-914171-51-5.
  14. ^ Taylor, Jonathan (2010-09-01). "Review » Orange Sunshine by Nicholas Schou". Erowid Library. Erowid. Archived from the original on 2 March 2013. Retrieved 2 July 2021. Yes this question always comes up every time someone mentions Griggs' death. Although it's not in the book since I only talked to [Brenice] Brennie Smith after I turned in the manuscript, he was there the night Griggs died and confirms that he died of a toxic reaction to a crystallized form of psilocybin as stated in my book. Who knows what else was mixed in with it, but by all accounts, it was poisonous in the extreme in so far as Griggs ingested far too much of it, according to Smith as well as other Brotherhood members who weren't there but got that story straight from those who were present. Nobody I interviewed for the book who was in the Brotherhood and on the scene when he died have any confusion that this is how he died. It was widely known among the Brotherhood that this psilocybin was making the rounds, see where I mention Ed Padilla mentioning Griggs' enthusiasm for the stuff the last time he saw Griggs. Some speculate that Griggs choked on his own vomit on the way to the hospital, but Smith says this is not the case and backs up the version in my book.
  15. ^ Ramm, Benjamin. The LSD cult that transformed America. BBC. January 12, 2017.
  16. ^ a b Lee, Martin A. and Bruce Shlain. Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion. Grove Press. 1992. Page 239.
  17. ^ SCHOU, NICK (2009-09-17). "How the Brotherhood of Eternal Love Is Connected to the Weather Underground Via the Black Panthers". OC Weekly. Archived from the original on 19 August 2010. Retrieved 3 July 2021.
  18. ^ Brian Flanagan (2002). The Weather Underground. The Free History Project. Event occurs at 0:59:00. Archived from the original (mp4) on 2009-09-27. Retrieved March 2, 2012.
  19. ^ Rudd, Mark (2009). Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen. New York City: William Morrow and Company. pp. 225–7. ISBN 978-0061472756.
  20. ^ Johnson, Ashley (June 29, 2021). "When the Most Dangerous Man in America Lived in Laguna Beach". stunewslaguna.com. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2021. Leary, a former Harvard lecturer who held a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, became an evangelist for the use of LSD. In late 1967, he moved to Laguna Beach to spend time with The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a group of counterculture hippies who lived together in the Woodland Drive area (known by the police as "Dodge City") and manufactured LSD nicknamed Orange Sunshine....After noticing the car smelled of marijuana, Purcell called for backup and searched the vehicle. The search yielded two roaches found in the ashtray, a pound of marijuana, two ounces of hashish and some tabs of LSD. Leary claimed the drugs were planted by the police.
  21. ^ "Chapter 5: New Morning". Crooked Media. Retrieved 2025-03-17. Bill Ayers: "The Brotherhood of Eternal Love got in touch with us through Michael Kennedy, and Michael was our lawyer and he was also their lawyer. We met with Michael one day and he said, These folks are interested in getting Tim Leary out of prison, and they wondered if you all would be interested in helping if you had any capacity to do that."
  22. ^ Minutaglio, Bill; Davis, Steven L. (2021). The Most Dangerous Man in America: Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and the Hunt for the Fugitive King of LSD. Great Britain: John Murray. p. 40. ISBN 9781529328202.
  23. ^ Schmidt, Dana Adams (6 August 1972). "JOINT FORCE RAIDS COAST DRUG CULT". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2021. Fifty-seven persons connected with Timothy Leary's sex and drug sect, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, were arrested or indicted and large quantities of LSD, hashish, hashish oil, cocaine, mescaline and marijuana were seized in dawn raids in California, Oregon and Hawaii today, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs announced....Included in the arrests were two of the leaders of the group who had previously been targeted by agents. They were John Charles Gale, who was arrested in San Diego County, and James Leroy Crittendon, who was arrested in Mariposa County....LSD produced by the Brotherhood Laboratories, known as Orange Sunshine, has turned up in the drug subculture in all 50 states, Canada and Australia officials said. A man arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, on May 26 had 500 of the Orange Sunshine tablets.....In October, 1966, Leary and his followers applied to the state of California for corporate status. On Oct. 26, 1966, the brotherhood became a legal corporation in California, with tax-exempt status, because of its religious nature....In Afghanistan, the bureau said, the brotherhood dealt with Amanullah Salem Tokhi and his brother, Hayatullah Tokhi, who are among those indicted in the alleged narcotics smuggling enterprise.
  24. ^ Schou, Nick (Dec 3, 2009). "Case Closed on "Hippie Mafia" Smugglers". Archived from the original on 23 November 2010. Retrieved 22 July 2010.
  25. ^ SCHOU, NICK (2009-10-22). "Was Brotherhood Member Brenice Lee Smith a Felonious Monk?". OC Weekly. Archived from the original on 19 August 2010. Retrieved 3 July 2021.
  26. ^ Schou, Nick (28 October 2009). "Why is Brenice Lee Smith Still Behind Bars, Awaiting Trial?". OC Weekly. Archived from the original on 31 October 2009. Retrieved 3 July 2021.
  27. ^ Schou, Nick (2009-10-29). "Lawyer for Jailed Brotherhood Figure Demands Dismissal of Case". OC Weekly. Archived from the original on 24 August 2010. Retrieved 3 July 2021.
  28. ^ Schou, Nick (2009-11-20). "Fugitive Buddhist Monk Pleads Guilty, Goes Free Tonight, Brotherhood Case Finally Closed!". OC Weekly. Archived from the original on 12 August 2010. Retrieved 3 July 2021.
  29. ^ SCHOU, NICK (2009-12-10). "Distant Karma Catches Up With the Brotherhood's Brenice Lee Smith OC Weekly". OC Weekly. Archived from the original on 19 August 2010. Retrieved 3 July 2021.
  30. ^ S, N (July 9, 2009). "Mike Hynson, Co-Star of 'The Endless Summer,' Resurfaces With Tales of the Brotherhood". OC Weekly. Archived from the original on 27 July 2012. Retrieved 3 July 2021.
  31. ^ Ram, Benjamin. The LSD cult that transformed America. BBC. 12 January 2017.

Further reading


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