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The Case for Intelligent Drug Use
Maclean's
As the man who popularized LSD during the 1960s, Timothy Leary inspired a whole generation with his infamous catchphrase, "turn on, tune in, drop out." Popularly known as the "high priest of LSD," Leary's experiments with mind-altering drugs finally led Harvard University to dismiss him from his position of professor of psychology in 1963. First convicted of drug possession offenses in 1969, Leary spent a total of 42 months in U.S. jails. He escaped from the Men's Colony in the San Louis
Mclean's: Why did LSD become so popular? Was it because of the times, or did the drug act as a catalyst to speed the process of cultural change and its own acceptance?
Leary: The demographic situation was that you had 76 million baby boomers in the United States who happened to be the first members of the information society.
And you had Marshall McLuhan, television and the beginning of computers. The use of drugs, which are brainchange instruments, perfectly synchronized with home television, home stereo, home computers, home yoga and home medicine. McLuhan forecast this. In an information-intelligence-knowledge society naturally the drugs that alter states of consciousness are going to be an integral part of it. The drugs did not cause the cultural change but they were an inevitable byproduct of it. And it is no accident that I am now inundated by requests from computer companies to act as a consultant. The younger generation involved in computers recognizes the positive aspects of the consciousness movement of the 1960s and sees me sympathetically.
Maclean's: How do you explain the decline in the use of LSD. Is it not a dead drug?
Leary: Actually, police seizures of LSD have gone up 1,000 per cent in Los Angeles County in the past year. But there was a downward trend, and I applauded it. In the 1960s and 1970s there were seven million people taking it, but there was not that much good LSD around. And bad LSD is the ultimate pharmaceutical disaster. So it was realistic to back away. The LSD that is around now is much purer and packaged in smaller doses.
Maclean's: What do those changes indicate?
Leary: That people are more concerned about the practicalities of their life and less with philosophic discovering. There are times when it is good to scan and scope widely, and there are times when it is necessary and appropriate to fine-tune and become more practical. In pharmacology there has been a tremendous development of new drugs-XTC, for example-that have tremendous vogue in intelligence-increased circles. XTC is a form of MDA, the love drug. It is neither legal nor illegal-sort of the same category as LSD before it was outlawed. In New York they call XTC bliss.
Maclean's: How does XTC affect you?
Leary: It does not have the quick reality change, the hallucinatory Niagara of perspectives of LSD. Those drugs give you a very clear, quiet, deeply affectionate experience. There are varieties of the drug called Eve, Venus Adam, all minor variations on the molecular circle. For instance, Venus is the love drug; it, has more genital-stimulation properties.
Maclean's: Does the renaissance of psychedelic drugs signal an eventual return to a time when people wig become more inner-directed? Are we going in cycles?
Leary: Not cycles, predictable stages. It is predictable that the first wave of baby boomers is now getting positions of responsibility in laboratories and research centers. It is inevitable that they would bring back research on improved psychoactive drugs. It is absolutely archaic and barbaric to be limiting ourselves to alcohol, marijuana and cocaine. We are going to have entirely new families of drugs, which will have the best aspects of the earlier generation but with improvements in safety and precision.
Maclean's: With all the negative publicity on the use of drugs, have you changed your position on the use of any of them?
Leary: I am continually experimenting. For example, I was off caffeine and now I use it selectively. The same with other drugs. I am much more selective and precise and intelligent in the timing of how, why and when I use a drug. I am 100 per cent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs and l000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD. And drugs are not central to my life.
Maclean's: Did your work as a psychologist have any lasting impacts on the field ?
Leary: During the 1950s there was a group of orthodox psychologists who were the founders of what could be called the Third Force or New Psychology-Rollo May, Abraham Maslow and others. I consider myself among that number. We brought about a very quiet, genteel revolution in psychology, which led to the consciousness movement in the 1960s, which led to the personal growth movement. However, institutional, trade-union psychology, which is the masters and PhD people in our universities, has not really changed that much.
Maclean's: After you emerged from jail in 1976 you were discredited. In Flashbacks, you describe your situation as being "56 years old with no home, no job, no credit and little credibility." Now you are trading on the reputation you developed in the 1960s. How is it going?
Leary: I find that to keep alive and fresh and changing is an incredible challenge, a rejuvenation technique and a continual stimulation. I simply cannot relax. I do not want to. It is a wonderful life position to be in. I have to be out there on the front of the wave. I have no choice.
Maclean's: Did prison make you regret what you had done?
Leary: I regretted my stupidity.
Maclean's: You are now working with the baby boom generation on projects that will affect the future. What happens when the next generation, the whiz kid generation as you term it, takes over?
Leary: That is the most exciting and optimistic development in human history. Kids now are more sophisticated than the baby boom generation or older generation. They are changeable, so they are realistic. Ronald Reagan is unable to change. He is frozen, which leads him to be unrealistic. My 10-year-old has an incredible range of options, just in cable television or in videogames. A generation brought up with such options will insist on selectivity. It is simply unrealistic, for example, to continue the Cold War. There are dozens of options beyond giving in to the Soviets, which Reagan thinks is the only other option, or crusading against them.
Maclean's: What do you think your epitaph will be?
Leary: I would resist being put in one line on stone. For my epitaph, I would like to have a computer scroll of epitaphs that would feature the epitaph of the week, which could be any of the following ex-Harvard professor, ex-convict, ex-acid head, former disc jockey, former computer game consultant.
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Obispo, Calif, jail in 1970 and fled to Algeria, then to Europe. Leary, now 63, chronicled his adventures in Flashbacks, his picaresque memoirs published last fall. Maclean's correspondent Michael J. McRae talked with Leary in his Hollywood Hills home in Los Angeles, where he lives with his 35-year-old wife, Barbara, and his 10-year-old stepson, Zachary.
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