An Interview with Jenell Kesler: Psychedelic Alchemist on Life, LSD, and the Stories That Rewire Reality – A Conversation with Mark Craig About The Alchemist Letters
Jenell Kesler is a name you won’t forget once you dive into her latest book, The Alchemist Letters & Other Chemical Romances.
A nurse-turned-underground chemist who crafted some of the purest LSD in the American Southwest during the late ’60s, Jenell’s story is as wild as it is profound. In an unforgettable interview with Mark Craig for Psychedelic Baby Magazine, she opens up about her past—serving in Viet Nam, crossing paths with rogue CIA agents, tripping in Oputo, and yes, even a million bucks possibly stashed in an AirStream. Her new book is a blend of memoir, fiction, and psychedelic reverie, weaving together tales of chemical love, counterculture freedom, and cosmic introspection. It’s as much about the acid as it is about the emotion behind it. Jenell doesn’t glorify the past—she illuminates it with poetic honesty and a wink. If you’re into raw, radiant storytelling that dances with the psychedelic unknown… Jenell unspools tales of spiritual collapse and psychedelic rebirth like some postmodern acid-shaman channeling Burroughs through a Grateful Dead bootleg. This ain’t nostalgia—it’s survival. Read it, and let the molecules rearrange you. The Alchemist Letters is a trip worth taking.
“LSD is about perception and perspective”
Mark Craig: I read a story here in Psychedelic Baby entitled “Pharmacopious” by Jenell Kesler that blew my mind. I instantly knew that I needed to speak with this woman and spent a number of years attempting to find her. While I didn’t wish to infringe on her privacy, after a few months of emails, she accepted my invitation for lunch, and then said that she’d be delighted to sit for an interview—where, to that end, I found myself face to face to face with one of the few outlaw women chemists from the late 1960s and early ’70s who created small, yet very pure batches of lysergic acid diethylamide … LSD.
Mark Craig: Jenell, I hope it’s alright if I begin at the beginning, you’re a nurse, you served in Viet Nam during the war, then when you came home, you spent a few years in New Mexico creating some legendary acid.
Jenell Kesler: I don’t know about legendary, but I tell you true, that was all some 55 years ago, yet sometimes (laughing) it feels like yesterday. First time I did acid was in 1965, when it was legal, Sandoz Blue, straight from Switzerland, and while it wasn’t essentially legal, if one knew the right people, a vial of liquid could be had.
Mark: I don’t mean to interrupt you, but if I’m doing my math correctly, that would have made you what, 14 or 15 years old?
Jenell: I was a precocious kid, my grandmother (Grams) had me emancipated, meaning I could make my own legal decisions, as my father was, let’s just say he wasn’t cool. I graduated high school at 15, had my nursing degree at 18, though in the 60’s there was much one couldn’t do if they weren’t 21, one of those was working in a hospital, though the Army stepped up and offered me a job, which I took, a job that landed me in Quang Tri, Viet Nam, where for 26 months I learned more than I would have stateside in a dozen years.
Mark: I thought that LSD was deemed illegal in 1968?
Jenell: LSD, the drug, was certainly illegal by 1968, though the powers that be hadn’t yet outlawed the precursors, so if one of of a mind, and I was, a good recipe was all that was needed, and I, being related to Owsley (Augustus Owsley Stanley III) had the very best. Even today, some of the necessary glassware is completely illegal to own, unless it’s being used by a certified laboratory.
Mark: I thought I read that you were from Philadelphia, how’d you end up in the wilds of New Mexico?
Jenell: On my way home from Viet Nam, I stopped in Santa Fe to find a woman I served with, though while I never did find her, I fell in love with the freedom of New Mexico. I managed to get a gig at a very very small hospital there, and that of course was the key to opening all sorts of doors.
Mark: You wrote a small book call “Pharmacopious,” how’d that come into being?
Jenell: “Pharmacopious” regards stepping out of one’s life and giving yourself over the LSD and all it has to offer. I visioned it as a companion to William Burroughs’ “The Innerzone,” though pleasant, expansive and socially rewarding, a grin, the story was accepted well, still makes me smile to this day.
Mark: Have you written anything else?
Jenell: Yes, there’s “Ghosts In The Tree Line,” about my time in Viet Nam, I have a “Noir” series and a new book about chemical romances called “The Alchemist Letters”.
Mark: Would you expand on “The Alchemist Letters”.
Jenell: “The Alchemist Letters & Other Chemical Romances”, is a collection of three books folded together. “Alchemist Letters” revolves around a series of postcards and letters my now husband and I exchanged while I was in New Mexico enlightening myself. “Pharmacopious” has been re-imagined with additional material, and then there’s the “Epilogue” which fancifully brings things up to date in the here and now. It’s all very autobiographical in a manner of speaking, the story of my life revealed in and around some serious adventures … part fact, part fiction, all true.
Mark: One of the most fascinating chapters was your visit to Oputo in Mexico, how’d that happen?
Jenell: Oputo, how’d I know you were gonna bring that up? Oputo is difficult to find, far off the beaten trail, but worth the effort, worth a visit, though I was fortunate enough to have found Isabella, well, truth be told, she found me, and took me for a ride. Isabella was one of those people who knew things she shouldn’t have known. Oputo is a throwback in time, a dusty one horse town dedicated to those who’ve been visited and taken by aliens, not cheesy like Roswell, everyone is very serious there, almost in a spiritual manner. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, and after all this time it’s all started to get speculative at best for me too, though I assure you, if you’d been there with me, your mind would have been opened as well.
Mark: Jumping to another section, let me get this straight, are you contending that there is still a million dollars hidden in an AirStream camper?
Jenell: HA! Yeah, far as I know the camper may still around, with the million dollars my mother hid in the walls for safe keeping. My dad sold AirSteams, he had a lot filled with them, gave her the money to hide, then she came down with a rapid onset of Alzheimer’s, and that money was lost for all time. Crazy isn’t it, I can’t see an AirStream today without a head-turning memory.
Mark: And who were these rogue CIA agents who seemed to weave in and out of your life, almost protecting you?
Jenell: (Jenell seems reflective, lost somewhere out the window) If you’re talking about Sam (Samatha) and Eddie, I can’t tell you anything for certain. I had an aunt and uncle, huge jazz fans, took me to jazz shows in small clubs in NYC during the 1950s, where we were the only white people in the room, hey, Miles Davis sat me on his knee once. The family was very hush-hush about them, though I did later learn that they indeed worked for the CIA, then just up and vanished in the fall of 1969, funny thing is, they became just as enamored with country music. My uncle taught me all about stereo electronics and necessity of taking care of your vinyl. Sam is still alive, she’s in her 90s, I manage see her from time to time. All four of them sort of protected me when I needed some serious protection.
Mark: Have you any personal thoughts on psychedelics?
Jenell: I’m going to paraphrase someone here, and I can’t remember the person’s name, but they said, and I am paraphrasing, “The biggest misconception about LSD is that you hallucinate actual things; dinosaurs in cars, cherry trees in the living room. You don’t, LSD is about perception and perspective. You don’t necessarily see large things that aren’t there, you see what’s always been there in a multitude of new ways, with patterns emerging and flowing through everything. Your mind manages to emphasize what it used to ignore, leaving reality to become amplified to a staggering degree.” Of course the artist Andy Warhol said, “Once you see a fire hydrant on acid, it’s impossible to ever see it the same again.” Mind you Mark, psychedelics are not for everyone, they are not a cure for all psychiatric issues, sure they’re fun, though they should be used with mindfulness.
My personal thoughts would go something like this: In the lost uncharted moments of my lysergic dreams, the spirit of ecstasy is here, there and everywhere, it permeates and irradiates, subsumes and consumes with a lucid drowsiness, dozy heaven scented hovering bliss, made intoxicatingly dizzy by a heightened shared sense of vulnerability, where in the end it’s all too much, like staring into eyes whose pupils have turned to liquid, warm and dilated, lustrous, languorous illusions, all wrapped up in an inchoate weathered book of cozy delightful phantasms that spiral endlessly on, played out across a delicate bed of stars, covered by a frayed patchwork blanket laced with an emancipated ever-present wondrous flow of wasted glittering melodies that sway and dance around half forgotten windswept memories of breathless heartfelt radiant longings that morph and splash, floating downstream with aching swells of love, emphasizing what the uninitiated mind has come to ignore.
Mark: Wow … let me take a breath! And music Jenell, how would you describe good psychedelic music?
Jenell: Good couchbound psychedelic music should entice you to be nostalgic for things that never happened, that never existed.
Mark: Have you any idea how much lysergic you created?
Jenell: Other than on two occasions, I turned out well under forty thousand hits at a time, the other two ventures were around a million, but that’s scary, never liked bringing that much to life, always felt me feeling out of control, like a job, and for those times it was.
Mark: I was privileged to read “The Alchemist Letters & Other Chemical Romances” prior to its publication, and I’ve got to say, it’s a mighty tasty read. What inspired you to write it after all this time?
Jenell: Time is slipping by, I thought that the story needed to be put out there before I too vanished into the ether. Getting older is strange, I’m still young in my head, and after some reflection, it seemed the thing to do. The book’s just shy of one hundred thousand words, 280 pages, it’s a snapshot of my life, some things have been re-envisioned, read it, see what you think.
Mark: Jenell, there’s so much more I want to ask you about, like the small crashed plane filled with hash, the dead body behind a billboard, your experience with Jack Kerouac, the medicine man who disappeared into the sun, the Easy Rider road trip, the black desert phone booth, and of course that ever-present silver bracelet of yours, but alas, there’s just not enough time. Thanks for allowing me into your space and home.
Jenell: You’re most welcome.
Mark: Writer at large on contemporary subjects.
Post Script: Jenell is not at all what I’d have imagined, she’s tall, agile and responsive, she creates posters for bands and does her own large scale black & white photography that’s totally original. I hope you find your way to this book, it will set you back about $35, but that includes shipping, sorry, within the United States only, though if you’re outside of the States or inside and can’t find a copy, perhaps you could contact Jenell through Psychedelic Baby.
Mark Craig
The Alchemist Letters by Jenell Kesler is available for order here!
