Timothy Leary: the story of “the most dangerous man in America”
“Turn on, tune in, drop out.” It’s one of the key phrases, capturing the attitude of the 1960s countercultural sphere as mind-altering substances and a swing towards pure hedonism took hold. To the followers spending their time relaxing and floating downstream in the lazy river of LSD and psychedelic experimentation, Timothy Leary, the man who coined the term, was a hero. To the government, he was “the most dangerous man in America”.
It was Allen Ginsberg who assigned Leary legend status as he declared him “a hero of American consciousness”. As another key figure from the time period when counterculture saw drugs, art, literature, music and beyond all merge into one buzzing ball of society, Ginsberg was just one of the many leaders in his own field who saw Leary’s work as not only inspirational but vital.
Leary was an author, but more importantly, he was a psychologist who controversially promoted the use of psychedelic drugs. At the same time as when author Ken Kesey began holding acid tests in San Fransisco, gathering hippies into a room, giving them LSD and then witnessing its effects on them alongside music and light shows, Leary was not only dabbling in the drug, but was using his qualifications to strong advocate for it.
With a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and a job as a psychologist at Harvard, Leary was scary for exactly the reason why he was successful – he had genuine qualifications to back up his claims. This wasn’t just a musician or hippie cult leader or social rebel trying to encourage the kids to do drugs. This was an intelligent, educated man genuinely claiming that illegal substances could change or improve people’s psyche.
Naturally, right at Leary began to show a clear interest in the topic of psychedelics and psychedelic experiments following a trip on magic mushrooms that prompted him to launch the Harvard Psilocybin Project to research drugs; he was swiftly fired. As questions began to be raised about his research topics, the validity of his findings and the methods used, including giving psychedelics to his students, Harvards tried to quietly get rid of him by terminating his contract over something less incriminating, like him missing his own lectures.
But after the scandal got out in 1963, the news of Leary’s advocacy terrified parents and squares but opened up the world of acid to the countercultural kids looking for a kick. Somehow, in an attempt to protect their institution, Harvard managed to make the knowledge of LSD, its effects and possible impacts common knowledge, and the hippie world thought it sounded like fun.
After that, Leary’s stage was set to be the ultimate divisive hero of the drug world – the man the government feared and tried again and again to bring down, but the leader of the countercultural set only listened to more as they tried to silence him. As he publically promoted acid, writing books and sharing his philosophy that encouraged people to “think for yourself and question authority”, he was the ultimate voice in positioning LSD as a mind-opening drug, leading to an influx of artists delving into the psychedelic world to expand their creativity.
In 1969, in the final throes of the decade and its drug-fuelled hedonism, Leary even tried to run for governor of California against future president Ronald Reagan. With the slogan “Come together, join the party” and a cast of figures like John Lennon and Yoko Ono campaigning for him, he genuinely tried to put his acid-fuelled philosophy into office, opening up a whole host of daydreams about what America might look like now had he have been granted any genuine power.
But he wasn’t, and maybe that was for the best. Not only did the 1960s reach a dark end as events like the Manson Family murders and the Altamont festival deaths proved the point that what goes up must come down, leading to a violent conclusion to a hedonistic age. People also had concerns about Leary’s motivations. No one really knows whether he was at all aware of the dangers of the life he was promoting.
But as the man made a fortune and made a name for himself through promoting illicit substances and encouraging people to drop out of society into a stage of drug-fuelled disconnect, Leary’s legacy was definitely a sign of the times for better or for worse.
