Peter Stafford Author and Psychedelic Investigator Dies -- Memorial to Be Held August 25 in Santa Cruz

Updated August 3: A Memorial Celebrating the Life of Peter Stafford will be held in Santa Cruz on August 25. Lynn Fancis, who is organizing the event has asked that you send your remembrances or thoughts about Peter to be read during the memorial.

I will update this page with more information as it becomes available.

Links for this Post:

Peter Stafford's Psychedelics 101

Peter Stafford on Wikipedia

Updated Sunday July 22: Peter died of an accidental fall from a ladder while climbing down from a loft where he lived. He is survived by his son Sasha who saw him last Sunday before leaving on a vacation in New Zealand. When his son returns, a memorial celebration remembering Peter's life will be held in Santa Cruz California where he lived for 43 years. When I get more information as to the exact date and place, I will post it as an update.
______________________________________.

Peter Stafford (1939-2007) author of  Psychedelics Encyclopedia, and LSD in Action died last night in Santa Cruz, California. Peter was a friend of mine since we met in Canada back in 1971 and I will miss him.

Update: As I started to write about Peter, I suddenly remember that I actually had not met Peter in 1971 but rather in 1973 (it was right around the time of the Watergate scandal). I had been invited to Regina, Canada for a presentation at the Northern Institute of Psychotronic Research by Professor Duncan Blewett, sometimes called the "Timothy Leary" of Canada for his transpersonal psychological perspective, which is described in his book, New Realms of Being. It was there that I met one of the heroes of my youth, a genuine East Village, acid-dropping, pot-smoking, book publishing then youthful appearing psychedelic writer named Peter Stafford.

At the opening meeting of the conference, held in an abandoned sanitarium in Fort San near Regina, I was introduced mistakenly as "Dr. Bruce Eisner" and the crowd was informed I would be giving a talk on the "enlightening effects of LSD. " Peter approached me enthusiastically, but because of  his short hair, unusual in a day when long hair denoted "being cool," and a T-shirt which read "US Narcotics Squad," I was put  off at first.

But when Peter introduced himself as" Peter Stafford," I immediately knew that he was "cool."  Peter's first book, LSD - The Problem-Solving Psychedelic (published in the Shaffer Library)  had served as a guidebook for my psychedelic first experiences.and I was probably Peter's biggest fan, I had even written him a fan letter afer finding his Stuyvesant Station Post Office Box listed at the end of an article he wrote called "Yage in the Valley of the Fire",  which first appeared as a bright colored tabloid newspaper in the East Village and was later published in Humprehy Osmond's anthology, Psychedelics.

Peter who always like to describe himself as a Psychedelic Investigator took LSD while a student at Reed College in the early Sixties and became the archetypal hippie. He moved to New York in 1964 and began hanging out in the East Village, editing the first rock publication, Crawdaddy, together with author Paul Williams. It was there he wrote LSD The Problem-Solving Psychedelic which was publshed in 1967.  His co-author was Bonnie Golightly, a writer of pulp fiction who was portrayed as Hollie Golightly in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. The book came out in England as LSD in Action in 1969  in England and became a best seller there as the psychedelic movement was all the rage on Carnaby street that year.

Living in California, I had visited Santa Cruz a wonderful town filled with trees and beaches many times. I began regularly traveling to work with Peter on various writing projects, including my  "LSD Purity, Cleanliness is Next to Godliness" and his Peter's third book, Psychedelics Encyclopedia. It was Peter's first book, LSD - The Problem-Solving Psychedelic, which had served as a guidebook for my  first psychedelic experiences. I started working with Peter as apprentice and researcher on what people now call "the bible of psychedelics." Certainly it contains a lot of useful information on the subject, and remains to this day the best source of information on a variety of the psychedelic compounds.  If you would like to preview most of the book in PDF form, please visit this link.

Also during that time, Peter and I wrote an article which was part of a series I was doing for a magazine which had started up in New York that year, High Times. We called the article Who Turned On Whom -- a history of the psychedelic "turn on."

During the last few years of the Sixties, I had turned on, tuned in and dropped out of college. In early 1977,  I moved to Santa Cruz to abandon my goal-less hippy life to study psychology. I was 28 when I started college again at Kresge, an experimental college of the university which then comprised eight colleges.  Ten years older than the freshman at the dorms, I quickly got tired of the noisy life here and  moved into an old Victorian house which I shared with Lynn Francis and Peter. During the eight months I lived there, Peter’s father who had lived in a convalescent hospital in Santa Cruz for most of his life came to live with us. He died while I was there and  his son Alexander (Sasha) Stafford was born. My VW bus served as the ambulance for their ride to the hospital.

In October of that year, I collaborated with Peter and Lynn on brining Albert Hofmann who discovered LSD and who I had met the previous year in Basel to Santa Cruz. We put together the first psychedelic conference since the Sixties called LSD a Generation Later.  It was Hofmann's first public account of the discovery of LSD, which had served as a catalyst of the Sixties counterculture. The conference held at the University of California in October of 1977 was the first event focusing on psychedelics since 1967.  The turbulence and hysteria of the Sixties had made it almost impossible for scientific meetings to be held on the subject. It brought together many of the scientific researchers and counterculture figures for the first time. These included Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Ralph Metzner, Albert Hofmann, John Lilly, Oscar Janiger, Allen Ginsberg and many others.

That was literally and metaphorically a high point of my life and all of it never would have happened if I had not met Peter. I could tell you many more stories, maybe someday I will. Right now my thoughts are with Peter. He had his dark side as most of us do but was as close as I have ever got to meeting a saint or holy man. He was friendly to a fault and helped me and many others in numerous large and small ways and I know that most of those who met him are feeling sad now that he is no longer with us.

Comments

[Mark Frauenfelder]

My condolences, Bruce. I only met Peter, once, briefly, but I enjoyed our time together. I'm saddened by this news.

[Justin]

I worked with Peter at the Homeless Garden Project in the 90's. I've always remembered that he taught me that, "You can't make an ugly bouquet."

Thanks for sharing the news~RIP Peter.

[Tyler Warrender]

What does this say, I know it's english, but I don't understand a word of this? My brain got lost half way through the first sentence of this blog, your brain was probably a long time before this.

Were you high when you wrote this? Try doing something more constructive than writing gibberish about a druggie.

[viola]

I have not met Peter, but am going to mention him on my BLOG.

[Manuel]

@Tyler Warrender:
1. Troll
2. Learn English

RIP Peter.

[Alan Dickson]

I knew peter in the late 70's early 80's, and he was an intellegent copassionate person. It is uncanny, that I was speaking to someone about him last night. I had not seen him, or been in conntact since 1984. I told a student from bulgaria to look up his site psyc. 101. One fine memory of Peter is the night MDMA became illegal. We posted signs all over Santa Cruz to be the first ones to break the law. We entered a large gatering naked and gave away doses of MDMA arr..the good old days. To greater understanding of the human psych..Alandickson

[Alan earth]

Peter was a great human being. I first met him in the early 80's when I was developing chips for stereo sat. tv. The day MDMA became illegal we went around Santa Cruz and put up posters.. Be the first ones to break the law at our party. We arrived and entered naked. We handed out Adam as we called it then, for free. I had not thought about him for quite a long time, and out of the blue I googled his name this morning. I was sad to learn of his death last night. With LOVE Alan

[Dennis J. McKenna]

My condolences to you, Bruce, and to all in the psychedelic community who knew Peter. I never had the opportunity to know him well, and only met him once that I recall. But he was a nice fellow, and his contribution to psychedelic literature and scholarship stands on its own. Another legendary figure from back in the day passes from the stage; and he will be missed.

[RX Libby]

According to Capote, Bonney Golightly was not an inspiration for the character although she sued Capote for invasion of privacy and libel and lost. "I have never met nor seen this lady . . . It's ridiculous for her to claim she is my Holly. I understand she's a large girl nearly 40 years old. Why. it's sort of like Joan Crawford saying she's Lolita.'- Truman Capote

[Mitch Earleywine]

Thanks for a moving blog. Peter touched a lot of lives. I'm sad, but it's nice to know I'm not the only one.

[Lucinda Skye]

I believe, if we take the habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an adventagious comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.
-- Abraham Lincoln

R.I.P. Dear One

[Faeden]

R.I.P Peter. I know your up there looking down on us now. You came here and enlightened many and done your job well. You helped others understand so much about the mind. Strangely enough the first time I heard about you was on the day you passed over, when I took home your book ‘Psychedelics‘, and I finished it in one day, as it was so fascinating I could not put it down. Even though I am new to your work, its already brought me a lot of understanding and clarity on this subject. Keep up the good work where ever you may be now.

Faeden

[Dave Pate]

Bruce--Please remove the entirely ignorant and considerably stupid comment of "Tyler Warrender". Your additional removal of both this request and the "Manuel" critique would then complete the restoration of a peace that Peter ultimately sought.

[Bruce Eisner]

I'm not going to remove Tyler Warrender's comment because he was half right. The original version of this post had a lot of typos and I cleaned them up slowly.

Peter used to edit everything I wrote until about 7 or eight years ago. He worked as a typesetter for years and had a good editing eye.

I have a difficult time proofing my own work and Peter used to say that it wouldn't be sm authentic Eisner essay without at leas two or three typos a page.

So there was some problems with readability that later readers do not see.

The reason I say that he is half right is that I was not "drugged up" when I wrote the post. I'm sure Peter would be smiling when he ssw the guy catch me for typo proness.

[Neal]

Peter was a happy and friendly person, as well as intelligent. As one might conclude from reading the diverse commentaries here, Peter was a true egalitarian and libertarian, little 'l', of course.

He was warm and friendly to everyone I ever saw him with, exuded charisma and championed free thinking. Peter was constantly turning over every stone of the absurd he could find and exposing the underbelly.

[Michael Keller]

The first time I met Peter a mutual friend took me over to his apartment in Santa Cruz. Peter opened the door wearing nothing but a huge feathered headress. We had several nice conversations over the next few days, and attended the Sacred Elixirs conference together. I'll never forget that weekend... I did not know his son was named Sasha, mine is as well!