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The Acid King (2001)

In this 2001 feature, William Leonard Pickard, a major player in the LSD underground, told his story for the first time.

A lab can be set up quickly and broken down easily, and it only takes about ten days to perform a series of complicated chemical reactions that produce a sizable batch of the drug — enough, once diluted and dipped onto blotter paper, for hundreds of thousands of hits. It was a time, he says, of “naked moonlight swimming, endless campfires and theology in the High Sierra, refinement of the soul in the vast deserts, finding what was of true value in the world and what was proper conduct among others.” In 1974, Pickard formally returned to school, enrolling at Foothill College, in Los Altos Hills, California, to study biology and chemistry. Though Apperson was quickly captured, Pickard scampered off into the night, sprinting across snowy ground into the woods, two highway patrolmen half his age in hot pursuit, a chase that was eventually joined by DEA agents, helicopters with infrared scanners and tracking dogs.

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