Warren Anderson wasn’t the only surfer to fund an expansive lifestyle by running dope, but few were as successful or charismatic. Nor could they claim to be amongst the first crew to ride Grajagan’s shimmering walls. Yeah, Warren Anderson aka ‘Abdul’ was an unapologetic drug smuggler and scammer who raked in millions of illegal dollars between the late 60s and mid 80s, but there’s no denying he had an interesting life.
John Ogden’s engaging biography on Abdul outlines an intriguing family and historical context for his upbringing. We soon learn that Abdul was the son of an Australian model and a US fighter pilot on R&R in Sydney during the second world war. The Andersons moved to Los Angeles, where Warren was raised in an upper-middle class suburb; his parents intent on shaping him into an upstanding, patriotic American through a steady dose of boy scouts, marching bands and music practice. However, when young Abdul discovered surfing, he could smell a spirit of rebellion that aligned with his already simmering desire to reject any kind of conventional path.
As Warren hit adolescence, the US was rolling into the 60s. Fueled by post-war prosperity but full of ant-Vietnam sentiment, the baby-boomer generation was embracing rock music, political radicalism and eastern philosophies. Meanwhile a controversial psychologist named Timothy Leary was leading an LSD revolution – convincing American teens and college kids that consuming acid was the path to enlightenment. As ‘Stone Free’ notes, Leary also famously claimed “surfers were the throw-aheads of mankind… the futurists… leading the way to where people want to be.” ‘Stone Free’ makes frequent reference to these spicy snippets of counter-culture history that overlap with surfing. We hear about Mickey Dora crossing paths with Charles Manson and the Beach Boys, while some of Abdul’s first dope customers at high-school went on to become better known as the band, Fleetwood Mac.
Abdul was no Leary acolyte, but he was living in Laguna Beach in 1963, shortly after Leary moved there and subsequently helped turn it into the “drug capital of southern California”. In Laguna, Leary’s hosts, and the primary players in the rapidly evolving dope smuggling business, were the ‘Brotherhood of Eternal Love’. The brotherhood was a collective of seekers who believed salvation could be found through a medley of religious ideals and the regular consumption of potent LSD. Many surfers ended up amongst their ranks, including Mike Hynson who famously played it a little straighter in his suit and tie for his starring role in ‘Endless Summer’. Although Abdul was not a Brotherhood insider he worked the fringes, selling dope for them. However, after some farcical but fully committed draft-dodging and a series of minor busts, Abdul soon became a small-time fugitive, escaping to India in pursuit of eastern philosophies and reinvention.
In India we learn that Abdul threw himself into meditation, underwent a period of sexual abstinence and embraced vegetarianism, but when he got bored and the money ran out, he returned to what he knew best – running dope.
Initially Abdul’s smuggling heists were a means to perpetuate an alternate lifestyle. However, the handsome, calculating and charming American soon realised he had a natural gift for the illicit trade and the stakes invariably got higher, with Abdul travelling everywhere from Nepal to Afghanistan for the big score. By the early 70s he’d already made a sizeable chunk of cash, enough to follow the Hippy Trail to Bali and set himself up. The book portrays Abdul as a figure who is motivated as much by the thrill and the risk as he is by the money; his chief ambition was to live beyond the restraints of regular society.
When Abdul landed in Bali in 1972, Kuta was still a sleepy village, the echoes of the Suharto’s communist purges could still be heard and Svengali American, Mike Boyum was marching around, dunking magic mushroom milkshakes and behaving like he owned the place. As Ogden explicitly puts it in ‘Stone Free’, if this true tale has a villain, it’s Mike Boyum. You’ll have to read the book to find out exactly why, but the animosity between Abdul and Boyum encompasses everything from drug swindles to Real Estate deals and wave discoveries. While Boyum is credited with creating the original camp at Grajagan the bragging rights for surfing it first belong to Abdul, who led a Hobie Cat expedition there in June of 1973 alongside Ray Lee and Bob Jones. While others have made somewhat dubious claims about being there earlier, Abdul’s 1973 trip is well-documented and ‘Stone Free’ outlines the trip in compelling detail.
Surfing undiscovered waves in remote Indonesia, may have been a fringe benefit of the lifestyle, but Abdul was a smuggler at heart and much of the book focuses on providing specifics about his various ventures across south-east Asia through the late 70s and 80s. This was the era when the ‘Thai-stick’ emerged as strand of marijuana most sought after by Ganja connoisseurs. Abdul had a whole team set up in Thailand to provide a steady supply to a customer base that stretched from the USA to New Zealand and beyond. Outsmarting an increasingly well-resourced DEA was part of the game, but this was also a time when drug routes through the region might also put couriers at risk of being taken prisoner by the notoriously violent Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.
Not surprisingly, Abdul’s escapades bring him into contact with a network of nefarious figures, who, like him are determined to make their money by hustling large quantities of dope. This was a period when restrictions were much looser, heavy violence was not synonymous with the drug trade, and a renegade surfer could make millions if they were crafty and kept their head down. Of course, almost everyone gets caught at some point.
In its latter stages, ‘Stone Free’ chronicles the emergence of the DEA (US Drug Enforcement Agency) as it hunts down the criminal web of intersecting characters who run the gear. Eventually the DEA dragnet goes global, and it was through its pursuit of figures like Abdul and the fabled Coronado company (with whom Abdul became entangled) that the DEA made a name for itself as an organisation with far reaching tentacles and legal clout. Before cocaine became more popular and the drug trade descended into chaotic violence between cartels and law enforcement, the DEA was chasing the big dope smugglers, many of whom were surfers – but as ‘Stone Free’ illustrates, everyone from ex-schoolteachers to retired soldiers were in on it at a high level.
‘Stone Free’ walks a fine line, drawing just short of romanticising or glorifying the life of Abdul, an unapologetic drug scammer, who operated on an elaborate scale. When you read the facts about Abdul’s high anxiety life on the run and lengthy spells in prison, it’s hard to envy his chosen path. However, he certainly has a worthy tale to tell; one which traverses the curious relationship between drug smugglers, drug enforcers and government anti- drug propaganda.
Ultimately ‘Stone Free’ is a character study of Warren ‘Abdul’ Anderson, someone who didn’t want to follow the predictable ‘Apple Pie’ American path that was laid before him. Abdul wasn’t as concerned with getting ‘out of it’ as he was with getting out of the mainstream. The drugs were just his exit strategy from society. He manifested circumstances that allowed him to stumble upon Grajagan, while making it his perennial quest to see just how much he could get away with if he really tried.
