Photo by Jennifer Ulrich, NYPL

Jennifer Ulrich is the archivist in charge of processing the Timothy Leary Papers at the New York Public Library, their new home. She’s been blogging about the entire process, and providing a few peeks inside at a few goodies while she’s at it.

Jennifer’s latest post provides documentation directly from the archives that will correct misinformation and enhance the information we already have. She discusses how Tim liked to annotate documents in his archives, and sign them, just as he was dedicated to revising and updating his books whenever a new edition was in the works.

Jennifer’s second post explains in more detail what the project involves, and what kinds of archival resources will be accessible online when it is completed.

Her first post gave us an introduction to the current goals of the project, and some interesting history about Tim’s Starseed period, which began when he was in Folsom prison in 1973, to serve out the rest of his sentence, plus five years for the escape.

Terra II, referenced on page 63 of Tim’s Annotated Bibliography, is “a manual for space colonization” (and secondarily, a prison escape fantasy connected to the approach of Comet Kohoutek), written in Folsom Prison by Leary and co-prisoner Wayne Benner, with illustrations done by another prisoner, Harold Olson.

From the bibliography:

“The subject of the work is the evolution/migration from Terra I (Planet Earth) to Terra II (an orbiting space colony between Earth and the Moon)…Like the monographs Neurologic and Starseed, the proceeds of the sale of Terra II were intended to help pay expenses of costly legal appeals by Leary to win his freedom from prison.”

Such legal appeals did not work, and Leary wasn’t released until he was pardoned by then and now California Governor Jerry Brown, on April 21, 1976.

In Leary’s own words:

“Terra II…defined migration from the planet as the goal of our species. To me this was the ultimate escape plot.”

In some copies of the book there was inserted as a promotional bookmark, “Ticket to Ride,” designed by Michael Horowitz and Disney artist Dana Reemes who appropriated R. Crumb’s drawing of Tim from El Perfecto Comics (1973).

These were given away to the audience at the “Wake-Up for Timothy Leary,” an event held in Berkeley in 1975 to bring attention to the fact that Leary was being held deep in the federal prison system for many months without anyone having access to him.

At age 53 he was serving a 10-15 year sentence in California and threatened with a 75-year federal sentence, after being labelled the”Hippie Godfather” for his connection to the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. (More details about this in a futher post.)

Dr. Timothy Leary and Anonymous at New York City's Liberty Plaza, Day 13

Michael Horowitz, Tim’s longtime friend and archivist, claims he overheard the following imaginary conversation:

Tim: I like your mask. I had one like that I wore at the Swiss Mardi Gras back in 1972, when Nixon’s agents were chasing me across four continents.

Anonymous: We Are Anonymous.

Leary: I should have been more anonymous, but it wasn’t in my DNA.

Anonymous: We Are Everywhere.

Leary: There are probably almost as many cops in riot gear and plainclothes FBI agents with cameras as people actually protesting here. But you know what? A hundred million people are watching this on their computers and iPhones, or are seeing it on Al Jazeera TV and other progressive websites.

Anonymous: We are not slaves. We are not beaten. We will not lay down and take this any more.

Leary: This is the best possible image the U.S. can put out to the rest of the country and the world right now.

Anonymous: This is what democracy looks like. We Are the 99%.

Leary: Especially to the young people in the Middle East — or anywhere people are rising up to try to get some control over their own futures. Greece, Spain, Toronto, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Madison!

Anonymous: We Are Global.

Leary: Twitter is the most important invention since movable type. Everyone has a global voice. Remember McLuhan?

Anonymous: The medium is the message.

Leary: This is the Twitter revolution. Tweets are to the 21st century what the Gutenberg Bible was to the 15th.

Anonymous: We do have the power. We do have a voice. We are legion.

Leary: They are broadcasting to the world via hand-held digital cameras, smart phones and live streaming video, while the obsolete mainstream media ignores them. Calls them hippies! How about that!

Anonymous: They will hear us, but we have to speak loud.

Leary: This is the wake-up call.

Anonymous: This is our chance America.

Leary: Turn On, Tune In, Take Over.

Anonymous: Expect us.

From Timothy Leary’s Chaos and Cyber Culture (1994), original version published 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall:

It has finally happened: the inevitable and long-awaited climax of the youth revolutions. The next uncontrollable 15 years (1995-2010) will accelerate this dizzying explosion of mind power. The fragmentary remnants of the old centralized social systems of the feudal and industrial civilizations are crumbling down. The 21st century will witness a new global culture, peopled by new breeds who honor human individuality, human complexity, and human potential.

They will be the creative implementers of the new technologies for communicating at light speed. Change-oriented, innovative individuals who are adept in communicating via the new cyber systems.

Follow Occupy Wall Street at: livestream.com/globalrevolution.

Here’s a theme for Occupy Wall Street/Anonymous, “Re-occupy/Expect Us” -  by Lisa Rein.

Special Thanks to Carolyn Ferris for her Graphics Magic!

Occupy Wall Street Photo - Courtesy of Anonops.Blogspot.Com

Michael sez:

“1966 was the year LSD was banned, Millbrook was raided, and Tim was sentenced to 30 years for the Laredo border bust. Here is evidence that even the comics were on his case.

These two strips are all I have of the story that went on at least a couple of weeks. If anyone can unearth the rest of the strips from approximately the first two weeks of Dec., 1966 please get in touch so we can post the entire story and find out whether Rex Morgan busts Arrodine, if Jack grows to enjoy his flashbacks, and whether he and Veronica drop out of college and go to San Francisco.”

Mr. Arrodine is the Leary-like villain in this very popular mid-1960s comic strip that was syndicated all across the country. “Rex Morgan, M.D.” is still in syndication after 60 years.

Interestingly, it was a psychiatrist who came up with the character of Dr. Rex Morgan, a fictional doctor who solves cases of foul play involving medical issues, including drug abuse.

Sporting a Mephistophelean goatee and cravat (a look more that of Alan Watts than Tim Leary), Arrodine is presented as a brilliant and cultured man who has gone downhill from too many LSD trips. He claims that without psychedelics we are living in the Dark Ages and speculates that even our greatest phllosophers could have benefited from using LSD. Does that sound like someone we knew?

In the first strip below, two college students have come to seek advice from Arrodine, a noted authority on LSD. Veronica’s boyfriend Jack is undergoing flashbacks from a bad acid trip. Arrodine doesn’t see this as a problem: “I so wish it would happen to me!” (Note: the words “All I do is shave and comb my hair!” are not part of the original strip.)

Click on the picture to see a larger version of this comic strip.

In this next strip, they are in Arrodine’s study, with books lining the wall and an adjoining hothouse, suggestive of a future growroom. The comic strip writer might have had the Millbrook Estate in mind when he chose the setting.

Arrodine is holding an orchid which he describes in Learyean language, and is also reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s description of flowers experienced under the effects of mescaline in The Doors of Perception.

Arrodine’s statement about the “limited wisdom of the ages” is exactly the kind of verbal grenade Tim would casually toss to shake up his listeners and show them how to think for themselves.

Click on the picture to see a larger version of this comic strip.

From the archives of Michael Horowitz.

Clipping from the Village Voice, December 1969 - The Electric Circus Presents: Dr. Timothy Leary

The Electric Circus (formerly the Dom) was THE venue of the hip heads of the Lower East Side during the mid to late 1960s.

Lots of  60′s rock bands played there. Andy Warhol staged his Exploding Plastic Inevitable there. The Velvet Underground was, for a time, the house band.

Tim headlined three nights there in December 1969.

The joint rolling imagery of this ad tied in with Tim being sent to prison four months later for possession of two marijuana roaches. He was given ten years for that, but escaped inside of six months.

From the archives of Michael Horowitz.

Jerry Rubin (left), Rosemary Leary (top), Abbie Hoffman (right)

Michael Horowitz thought we might enjoy a few tidbits from his own personal archives…

This picture on the left was published on March 25, 1970. We’re not sure what the publication was.

From Michael:

“Rosemary did a benefit for Tim after his bail was taken away in an Orange County courtroom. Tim was jailed, and soon to be sent to California State Prison.

The benefit, called a “Conspire-In Blowout,” took place in Manhattan, with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin protesting the “silencing” of Tim.

The Chicago Seven Conspiracy Trial had just ended a month earlier, with Abbie and Jerry free on bail while appealing their sentence of five years for “inciting a riot,” whereas Tim’s bail had been revoked, and he was facing ten years.

Rosemary herself was on probation at the time, for possession of a couple of hits of acid.”

From the archives of Michael Horowitz.

Ralph Metzner and Timothy Leary - Harvard Days (1960-61)

Here’s Ralph’s post on his own blog about the last few weeks of press on the archives.
Ralph was a graduate student at Harvard, working on his Ph.D in Clinical Psychology, which he received.  He took graduate classes with Leary and Alpert, was introduced to psilocybin mushrooms, and became a research assistant on the Harvard Psilocybin Project started by Tim and Richard.   While continuing to study for his Ph.D, he became a central figure in the research project, participating in all the experimental work, first with psilocybin and mescaline, and later with LSD and DMT.

He co-authored the key research papers, was the editor of “Psychedelic Review” (the first journal devoted to psychedelic drugs) through much of its run, and co-authored the seminal text of the era, “The Psychedelic Experience,” based Upon the “Tibetan Book of the Dead.”

After getting his Ph.D from Harvard, Ralph moved to the Millbrook Estate and continued to be a central figure in the Psychedelic Movement, well into the ’60s, performing in the psychedelic celebrations, and co-starring with Tim and Rosemary in the feature film, “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.”  He also published one of the earliest anthologies of people’s psychedelic experiences, “The Ecstatic Adventure” (1968).

Ralph and Ram Dass recently published a book on these seminal years, “The Birth of the Psychedelic Culture.” We worked with Ralph placing many photos from the archives in the book, which also has a nice introduction by John Perry Barlow.

Of particular interest in this post by Ralph, is his comment to David
Presti’s blog post published on June 23, 2011:

“Thanks for this sensitively nuanced appraisal of my former colleague and dear friend Tim Leary. Your statement that “the role of Timothy Leary in the early days of contemporary psychedelic research and his impact on society during the second half of the 20th century are far from having been fully explored” is right on target.

I think in retrospect his pioneering contributions will be recognized and appreciated, while his flamboyant and provocative style of self-presentation will be forgotten. More books about him are coming out all the time – the most recent being Peter Conners’ White Hand Society – The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg.

He was the funniest man I’ve ever known. When asked about Nixon’s judgement of him as “the most dangerous man in America” he said “It’s true – I’ve got America surrounded.”

This piece keeps an open mind about the potential benefits of this research finally being published and made publicly available.

Acid tests: Research into hallucinogenic drugs begins to shake off decades of taboo

Excerpted from the article:

“These papers will be interesting not only culturally, but also scientifically, as they reflect what happened between the early medical promise of hallucinogens and their subsequent blacklisting by authorities around the world…”

“Which was a pity because, like many other drugs the authorities have taken against as a result of their recreational uses, hallucinogens have medical applications as well. But time heals all wounds and now, cautiously, study of the medical use of hallucinogens is returning.”

“Psilocybin has shown promise in treating forms of OCD that are resistant to other therapies, in relieving cluster headaches (a common form of chronic headache) and in alleviating the anxiety experienced by terminally ill cancer patients. The first clinical study of LSD in over 35 years, also on terminally ill patients, is expected to finish this summer. Peter Gasser, the Swiss doctor leading the experiment, says that a combination of LSD and psychotherapy reduced anxiety levels of all 12 participants in the study, though the statistical significance of the data has yet to be analyzed.”

It’s hard to believe that the paragraph above, and the one below, came from the same article (although the piece resumes its optimistic tone at the very end).

From the article:

“It may, of course, be that LSD has no clinical uses. Even when no stigma attaches to the drugs involved, most clinical trials end in failure. But it is worth seeing whether LSD might fulfill its early promise. And if the publication of Leary’s archive speeds that process up by exorcising a ghost that still haunts LSD research, then the New York Public Library will have done the world a service.”

Dr. Timothy Leary (1920-1996)

As these research papers are gradually made available to the public, it will become clear that the majority of them did not end in failure.

Early research pointed to the use of various psychedelics, in a supportive* environment, with trained professionals, was effective in assisting in the successful treatment of alcoholism, depression in terminally-ill people, pain relief in cancer patients, for breaking the mind-set of imprisoned repeat offenders, for producing authentic religious experiences, and for unblocking creativity.

The concept of “guides,” an idea that came from the Huxleys (Aldous and Laura), was a central part of Leary’s experimental design.   At least one member of the Leary team would remain undosed, and the member tripping with the subject would take a smaller dose.  But usually the researchers relied solely on their own prior experiences to be effective guides.

*Editor’s Note: We say a “supportive” environment rather than a “controlled” environment (sterile clinic rooms, no other trippers, no music or amenities,  doctors hovering over with note pads) because Leary and his team quickly learned that these sort of environments were part of the reason for the bad trips. Also, few of those docs (in the “controlled” environment studies) had ever taken LSD or Psilocybin themselves. Or had only taken one trip, at a very low dosage, in order to keep scientific detachment. In contrast, Dr. Leary and his colleagues quickly realized this was one area where the doctor had to experiment with the drug themselves in order to truly understand what the subject was experiencing.

The New York Magazine writer who covered the recent acquisition of the Timothy Leary archives by the New York Public Library seems to have a morbid interest in descriptions of the worst moments of people’s psychedelic trips.  With only a couple of exceptions, the excerpts presented from the original reports deal solely with the confusion and irrational fears that manifest during the onset of effects in people given LSD or psilocybin for the first time.

This highly selective editing ignores the fact that, lo and behold, these same folks in the middle and later stages of their trips, and upon reflection afterwards, concluded it was one of the most uniquely insightful and glorious experiences of their lives.*

Most went on to further investigate, write and speak of the personal and potential societal benefits of these compounds.

This is not to say that psychedelic drugs cannot provoke freakouts, although it should be noted that standard dosages in those days were considerably higher than they are today. Leary and his team innovated the design of a supportive environment with attention  to dosage, set and setting–the parameters that were used 50 years later by the investigators at Johns Hopkins who recently released a followup to their study of a year ago that largely validated the findings of the Harvard researchers.**

*38% described it as “very pleasant” and 32% as “ecstatic.”  See:  Leary, Littwin, Metzner, “Reactions to Psilocybin Administered in a Supportive Environment” (1963)

**Fourteen months after participating in the study, 94% of those who received the drug said the experiment was one
of the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives; 39% said it was the single most meaningful experience.
See: http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/16/magic-mushrooms-can-improve-psychological-health-long-term/

Here’s the NY Magazine piece: How Was Your Trip, Allen?
Acid commentaries from Timothy Leary’s just-revealed archive.

The numbered footnotes in the excerpt below link directly to the relevant Johns Hopkins University research study.

Oh boy oh boy, do we have a lot of Johns Hopkins University research studies to talk about!

Here’s an excerpt from David’s lovely blog post:

“Timothy Leary was a visionary.  He explored ideas 50 years ago that psychological research may productively return to in the coming 50 years.  He was deeply interested in the nature of the human mind and in human behavior.  He conducted psychedelically-assisted psychotherapy with prisoners, hoping to have positive impact on their rehabilitation.  He carried out studies of psychedelic substances demonstrating that, with careful preparation and attention to set and setting*, life-transforming mystical experiences may take place.

This finding has recently been replicated and extended by exquisitely designed studies conducted at Johns Hopkins Medical School (4,5), the latest installment of which just appeared a few days ago (6).  Shamans may have known such things for a very long time, but in contemporary biomedical science it helps to have demonstrations with controlled studies conducted at prestigious institutions.

Other recent work has demonstrated the therapeutic efficacy of psilocybin in relieving anxiety and improving mood in terminal cancer patients (7), and the efficacy of a very different kind of psychedelic substance, MDMA, in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (8).  These are all clinical studies of profound importance and, if the trend continues, research like this will continue to expand (9).”

*Editor’s note: “dosage” is often left out of the “set and setting” equation, but it inevitably plays a key role in the experience, as the Johns Hopkins study shows.

Time Magazine has just announced an exciting new study recently released from Johns Hopkins University.

Here’s a link to the full report in the Journal Psychopharmacology.

Michael Horowitz (Tim’s personal archivist) sez:

“The acquisition of the Timothy Leary Archives by the New York Public Library represents a turning point in the academic acceptance of the value of the psychedelic research done by Dr. Leary and his Harvard colleagues in the early 1960s.

The announcement comes within days of the news from Johns Hopkins that, in a 14-month follow-up review of their investigation of the effects of psilocybin taken under optimal conditions of dosage, set and setting, the percentage of subjects describing it as “the best or one of the five best experiences of their lives” climbed from 83% to 94%.  This study virtually replicates the design and results of the investigation carried out by Leary and his associates under the auspices of the Harvard Psilocybin Project nearly half a century ago – which nonetheless led to Harvard giving Leary and Alpert their permanent exit papers from Academia.”

Read the article: ‘Magic Mushrooms’ Can Improve Psychological Health

Excerpt from article in TIME:

Begin excerpt: “The important point here is that we found the sweet spot where we can optimize the positive persistent effects and avoid some of the fear and anxiety that can occur and can be quite disruptive,” says lead author Roland Griffiths, professor of behavioral biology at Hopkins.

Giffiths’ study involved 18 healthy adults, average age 46, who participated in five eight-hour drug sessions with either psilocybin — at varying doses — or placebo. Nearly all the volunteers were college graduates and 78% participated regularly in religious activities; all were interested in spiritual experience.

Fourteen months after participating in the study, 94% of those who received the drug said the experiment was one of the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives; 39% said it was the single most meaningful experience.

Critically, however, the participants themselves were not the only ones who saw the benefit from the insights they gained: their friends, family member and colleagues also reported that the psilocybin experience had made the participants calmer, happier and kinder.” — end excerpt.