Bear Stanley: Reflections on Life, LSD and DMT

Considered by many as one of the legends of the sixties counterculture, Bear Stanley denies his heroic status, and spends his days working on various sculptures and writing essays on subjects such as the importance of carbon dioxide, the primary and only 'plant food', to the expansion of food crops and life on earth, fair and equitable taxation (equal and low percentage on all 'income'), a proper run-off method to determine the results of elections and how to unify and balance law making. 

Writing laws in ordinary language rather than legalese. Including 'sunset clauses' to allow change to adjust to the rapid changes in today's world-- amongst others. He is renowned for his contribution to sound engineering, particularly working with live gig iconoclasts, the Grateful Dead, and perfecting the idea of on-stage monitors and high quality PA's. 

A tireless archivist, he kept a 'diary' of his front-of-house mixes, including hundreds of Grateful Dead performances, and has seen the release of a number of albums from his "sonic journal" tapes of PA mixes. Bear was a minor participant in the Acid Tests of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. He was the first underground cook to produce high-purity LSD in the 1960s, when it was legal, including the famous White Lightning and Monterey Purple. 

Stanley believed that the natural human diet is a totally carnivorous one, thus making it a no-carbohydrate diet, and that all vegetables are toxic. He claimed to have eaten almost nothing but meat, eggs, butter and cheese since 1959 and that he believed his body had not aged as much as the bodies of those who eat a more "normal" diet. He was convinced that insulin, released by the pancreas when carbohydrates are ingested, is the cause of much damage to human tissue and that diabetes mellitus is caused by the ingestion of carbohydrates.

Stanley received radiation therapy in 2004 for throat cancer, which he first attributed to passive exposure to cigarette smoke at concerts, but which he later discovered was almost certainly caused by the infection of his tonsil with HPV. He credited his low carb diet with starving the tumor of glucose, slowing its growth and preventing its spread enough that it could be successfully treated despite its advanced state at diagnosis.Stanley died after a car accident in Australia on Saturday, March 12, 2011