The Summer of Love Venice Beach
Drug-crazed hippies or
brave explorers?
I needed to know because it shaped me, and it's shaped the last two generations. Is there a distinction? Do psychedelic drugs open doors to possible realities and, in a way, allow no choice but to enter?
What was it like for them? What has it been like for me, given LSD, cannabis, and psilocybin from six on? Some of my siblings were still younger.
Follow our ten-year journey across the US and Europe in the hope of reaching India to study with enlightened masters and start a utopian civilization on an island in Fiji.
My Mom and Stepdad's
Venice Beach Wedding 1968
Book Blurb
This story chronicles the improbable adventures and misadventures of my family. My mother, Annie, a stunning, intelligent, yet deeply wounded woman from Alabama, escapes the south after kidnapping my three siblings and me (all from different fathers) from foster care. She heads to California, hoping to find her people. Having been given LSD as an experimental treatment for migraines, Annie decides it is the salvation the world needs. She gives it to her children to keep us pure and free from societal conditioning. I was six.
It spans (1965-1976) life in a psychedelic commune, Venice Beach, Central Park Love-ins, seven years in Europe, and a substantial prison sentence for my parents. I come of age in the Amsterdam of hash bars, junkies, and live sex shows. We get a stepdad, and three more babies are born on the road. Celebrities we interact with along the way, including the Beatles, Timothy Leary, and Princess Grace, are sprinkled with ordinary and not-so-ordinary sinners and saints.
The central conflict is the difficulty of going against culture and the mistakes made when charting new territory; family dysfunction and violence; permissiveness around sex that crosses the line; and drug experimentation that borders on abuse. The redemption is in the loving innocence of my family, the courage of conviction of my parents, and the generous support of strangers at every turn. Through it all, I matured beyond my years and learned to use my looks and street smarts to save myself and my siblings
The book can best be described as what would happen if you mixed Glass Castle with Educated, threw in some The Chronology of Water, and then added a pinch of Lolita.