Q & A with Sam Love

• Where were you in the Sixties?

I grew up in Alabama and went to school at Mississippi State. The irony is that my home town, Aliceville, was only 60 miles from MSU and yet they always considered me an “outsider” because I was from "out of state." In 1968 I was elected editor of the student newspaper, “the Reflector”. We published enough controversial material the University made the editor’s position appointed, rather than elected, a few years later. One of my big coups is that I exposed a secret political machine, similar to Yale's Skull and Bones, that had essentially controlled campus politics since the turn of the century. (We’re not talking 2000 here) Many prominent Mississippi politicians started their careers as part of this secret fraternity they called the “Group”.

In 1968, I was in Chicago as a member of the historic Challenge Delegation that unseated the segregationist Mississippi Democratic Party. I also actively supported the “Kudzu”, Mississippi’s underground newspaper, did voter registration, and attended more anti-war rallies and concerts than I can remember.

• Why did you write a book like “Electric Honey” that doesn’t fit into any boilerplate marketing category like mystery or romantic fiction?

This culture needs to loosen up, and revisiting the magic of the late 1960’s seemed like a good way to get some historical perspective. I personally am tired of the formulas where the publishers want you to start with a murder and then hold the reader in suspense until it is solved.

Also, I find a lot of curiosity about the 1960’s among young people; yet many baby boomers are afraid to talk about their exploits and cultural rebellion. I think its time we come clean. There is so much hypocrisy now. I don't know anyone from the 1960's who really believed Bill Clinton's claim he didn't inhale.

• Why did you give your lead super patriot character a problem with his big gun?

From having lived in Washington for three decades, I became convinced that most social conservatism comes out of sexual repression and insecurity. I thought it might be fun to reveal that a big macho man like Colonel Billy had a secret weakness. It also was fun to research male stimulants in an age before Viagra. Frankly, “Electric Honey” could be a catalog for folk remedies for the male “problem”.

• So is your book advocating drug use?

No. But it doesn’t matter because this is the most drugged culture in history. Look at the amount of money the pharmaceutical companies make. Unfortunately most of the drugs are designed to suppress creativity not enhance it.

I also tell my sons that the consequences of getting busted are higher today so it is more dangerous. The anti-drug war has raised the stakes. Getting caught with a small amount of drugs can screw up your life because the penalties are now so stiff in most places. Also today’s drugs can be lethal. There is nothing consciousness raising about meth, heroine or cocaine.

LSD was a sledgehammer approach to opening the “Doors of Perception.” What if research had continued on drugs that could advance us to the next stage of evolutionary consciousness? Instead the drug companies make more money on drugs like valium that depress awareness.

Today I prefer meditation to drugs. My meditation experiences in India or Mind Mirror training work with George Pierson exceeded anything I’ve ever experienced with drugs.

• Is Electric Honey real?

The book “Electric Honey” is pure fiction, but it is fascinating to realize that bees could steal THC from the marijuana. The book has even inspired a song by Tom Pacheco, "Big Jim's Honey". He's performed it live in concerts and hopefully he will release it soon.

There are numerous references on the web to THC-laden honey. Some articles describe Middle Eastern farmers who place bee hives near pot farms and sell the honey for its special properties. The technical article The Delphic Bee: Bees and toxic honeys as pointers to psychoactive and other medicinal plants by Jonathan Ott in Economic Botany 52(3):260 -266,1998 contains the following paragraph:

"So at least three categories of psychoactive phytotoxins-indole and tropane alkaloids and glucosides-occur in toxic honeys, and likewise in nectars from which such are made (Vide: reviews of non-sugar floral-nectar chemistry: Baker 1977; Baker and Baker 1983). Psychoactive cannabinoids occur in bee pollen of marijuana, cannibinaceous Cannabis Sativa L. ( Paris, Boucher and Cosson 1975). Pollen toxins could be sequestered by bees in honeys, as are nectar or honeydew toxins. Cannabis nectar likely also contains cannibinoids, explaining a common belief of marijuana growers, that marijuana honeys are psychotropic."

Bees stealing THC is also hard to document because standard practice described in the pot growers literature is to neuter the male plants by removing the flowers.

• Were you into Sixties music?

Oh yeah, I loved it. For a very brief time, the record companies found they could make money with music that actually had a cultural critique. Now, a great song writer like Tom Pacheco can’t get air play or a recording contract in America because he is “controversial”. The radio stations and music companies are all owned by large corporations which don’t think it is good for the bottom line to stir things up.

Thank goodness the internet provides some hope that unfiltered messages can move like info-viruses through the culture.

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