The Microdot Gang: The Rise and Fall of the LSD Network That Turned On the World

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Fielding, Leaf (2011). To Live Outside the Law: Caught by Operation Julie. Serpent’s Tail. ISBN 978-1-84668-796-9. But our experience locally was dealing with young kids ending up in mental institutions through LSD use. We had incidents in Llandeilo and Tregaron of people tripping out and getting involved in all sorts of nasty situations.

There were mixed feelings on the other side of the law. Despite his pride in the men and women who had broken one of the biggest drug rings in history there was sadness too as Dai Rees watched those he had brought to justice sentenced. In the 1950s both the CIA and MI5 experimented with LSD as a mind-control drug, with limited effect. But as a mind-expanding drug, writers like Aldous Huxley and Arthur Koestler began to evangelise its apparently miraculous powers. While Dai Rees was grappling with the drug issues of west Wales in the early 70s, Richard Kemp had stumbled upon a method of creating the purest LSD the world had ever seen. In 2021, Catherine Hayes self-published Christine Bott's memoir The Untold story of Christine Bott. [16] As a result of this, Richard Kemp broke 45 years of silence, and Hayes self-published the follow-up book After Julie: The Kemp Tapes. [17] Styles said the key for her came when she found a copy of a doctrine written by Richard Kemp, the brilliant chemist who produced the LSD from his remote cottage, where he lived with his partner, Christine, a doctor and goat breeder. “He was saying 40 years ago that temperatures will soar, waters will rise, that we’re consuming too much. We’re on the edge of all that now.”A new six-part BBC Sounds podcast uncovers the gripping story behind Operation Julie, one of the world’s biggest ever drugs busts. Forget Breaking Bad – when it comes to surreal drug-ring stories truth can be stranger than fiction. And the most bizarre drug tale of all took place 40 years ago in the heart of rural Wales.

The figures of Operation Julie are as mind-blowing as a hallucinogenic trip. As is the fact so much of this war on drugs took place on the deeply unlikely frontline of Tregaron, Carno and Llanddewi Brefi.Episode two of the LSD saga about an attempt to start a revolution of the mind, from a Welsh farmhouse. He and David Solomon recruited two others, Henry Todd and Leaf Fielding, to convert the LSD into tablet form and handle the distribution.

A raid on the organisation’s London HQ netted enough LSD crystal to make a further 2.5 million microdots. In a safety deposit box in Christine Bott’s name in Zurich police discovered cash, a gold bar and 2kg of ergotamine tartrate. Comedian Paul Merton recalled Operation Julie as the inspiration behind his "Policeman on Acid" sketch in his autobiography Only When I Laugh. [11]Narrated by Rhys Ifans (House of the Dragon, Notting Hill, Harry Potter) and starring Hannah Murray (Game of Thrones, Skins), Acid Dream is written by Welsh playwright Tim Price and features original music from Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys. Whilst on remand in Her Majesty’s Prison Bristol, in 1977, Leaf Fielding, LSD distribution manager, met LSD chemist, Richard Kemp: The biggest drug bust in British history occurred in the early hours of 25 March 1977: 800 officers made 120 arrests and seized a staggering 6,000,000 tabs of LSD. The raids focused on two acid manufacturing centres: one hidden in an isolated farmhouse in deepest Wales, the other in a suburban house on a leafy residential street in south-west London. Between them they supplied acid to most of the UK, Europe, America and beyond. Tabs bearing their logo were recovered as far away as Australia.