by Don Lattin
Like I said, this book is not about me. It’s about four men who can help us figure out what it all means. Was it madness? Was it mysticism? What did it all mean? And what does it have to do with the way we lived the rest of our lives? Like many of us, Leary, Alpert, Weil, and Smith were transformed by their psychedelic revelations. Each in his own way discovered how to best bring those powerful experiences into his life. Like us, they stumbled along the way, but in the end, after the ecstasy, they found new meaning and new direction.
So, in the end, perhaps this book is about me. It might also be about you. It’s the story of four men whose lives provide a kind of master narrative—a template through which some of us may hear our own stories and, in the process, learn a little something about ourselves.
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NOTES ON SOURCE MATERIAL
CHAPTER ONE—FOUR ROADS TO CAMBRIDGE
Seeker—This section is drawn from author interviews with Richard Alpert on Maui on January 29–31, 2008, and with Jim Fadiman in Palo Alto, California, on June 18, 2008. Other source material comes from Alpert’s Be Here Now.
Trickster—Drawn from author interviews with Ralph Metzner in San Rafael, California, on February 20, 2008, and with Herbert Kelman, by telephone, on June 18, 2008. Other source material comes from the San Francisco Chronicle, October 23, 1955; Leary’s autobiography, Flashbacks; Robert Greenfield’s Timothy Leary: A Biography; and Robert Forte’s introduction to his Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In.
Healer—Drawn from author interviews with Andrew Weil in Vail, Arizona, on November 28, 2007, and by telephone on December 4, 2008. Other material comes from The Natural Mind; Dr. Andrew Weil’s Mindbody Tool Kit Workbook; Discover magazine, August 1999; the New York Times Magazine, August 24, 1997; remarks by Weil at a lecture in Oakland, California, on February 9, 2009; and a 1998 Weil interview posted on the Web site of the Academy of Achievement (http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/wei1int-1).
Teacher—Drawn from author interviews with Huston Smith in Berkeley, California, on January 10, 2002, and December 12, 2007, and an interview with Kendra Smith in Berkeley on February 5, 2009. Other source material comes from an early draft of Smith’s 2009 autobiography Tales of Wonder; Sybille Bedford’s Aldous Huxley: A Biography; Susan Cheever’s My Name Is Bill; and Forte.
CHAPTER TWO—TURN ON
Trickster—This section is drawn from Leary’s accounts in High Priest and Flashbacks.
Teacher—Drawn from author interviews with Smith, along with Huston’s account in Cleansing the Doors of Perception. Other material comes from Forte’s interview with Smith and a tape recording of Humphrey Osmond’s account from remarks made at the Esalen Institute in May 1976.
Seeker—Drawn from author interviews with Alpert.
Healer—Drawn from author interviews with Weil and Alpert, along with an interview with Ronnie Winston conducted in Santa Barbara, California, on March 9, 2008. Some of the Leary quotes at his meeting with Weil and Winston were actually drawn from comments Leary made in a speech before the American Psychological Association on August 30, 1963. Other material comes from Weil’s account in The Natural Mind.
CHAPTER THREE—SINNERS AND SAINTS
Trickster—This section is drawn from author interviews with Metzner and Alpert. Other material comes from Leary’s accounts in Flashbacks; Osmond’s speech at Esalen; Metzner/Alpert conversations in Birth of a Psychedelic Culture; and Greenfield and Doblin (1998). The account of Bill Wilson’s UCLA trip is from Betty Eisner in Walsh and Grob.
Teacher—Drawn from author interviews with Metzner and Smith; with Paul Lee in Santa Cruz on April 9, 2008; and with Harvey Cox in Cambridge on May 10, 2008. Other material comes from Leary’s 1983 remarks at Harvard; Smith’s account in Cleansing the Doors of Perception; and Doblin (1991).
CHAPTER FOUR—CRIMSON TIDE
Healer—This section is drawn from author interviews with Kelman, Lee, Weil, and Winston. Other material comes from author interviews with Robert E. Smith in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 14, 2008; and with Joe Russin and Bruce Paisner by telephone on May 29, 2008. Alpert’s comments at the meeting are partly based on his letter of May 29, 1963.
Seeker—Drawn from author interviews with Metzner and Alpert, and from author interview with Peggy Hitchcock by telephone on February 18, 2008. Other material comes from Birth of a Psychedelic Culture.
CHAPTER FIVE—TROUBLE IN PARADISE
Trickster—This section is drawn from author interviews with Metzner, Alpert, and Hitchcock. Other material comes from Flashbacks and Birth of a Psychedelic Culture.
Seeker—Drawn from author interviews with Lee, Alpert, and Metzner, and from remarks by Leary and Alpert at Harvard in 1983. Other material comes from Flashbacks and John Bryan’s Whatever Happened to Timothy Leary?
CHAPTER SIX—IF YOU COME TO SAN FRANCISCO . . .
Trickster—Drawn from author interview with Robert Forte in Santa Cruz on June 7, 2008. Other material comes from the San Francisco Oracle of January and February 1967; the San Francisco Chronicle of May 19, 2002; the New Yorker of August 17, 1968; Gene Anthony’s book The Summer of Love; and Playboy, September 1966.
Seeker—This section is drawn from author interviews with Alpert and from an author interview with Caroline Winter, via e-mail, on May 26, 2008. Other material comes from Greenfield, Leary’s Neuropolitique, the San Francisco Oracle of January 1967, the San Francisco Chronicle of October 29, 1964, and November 3, 1965, and the Boston Globe Magazine of June 7, 1970. Additional details came from Jay Stevens’s Storming Heaven and Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain’s Acid Dreams.
Teacher—Drawn from author interviews with Lee and Smith, and from works cited in text.
Healer—Drawn from an author interview with Weil; the San Francisco Chronicle of December 19, 1968; The Natural Mind; and other works cited in text.
CHAPTER SEVEN—PILGRIMAGE AND EXILE
Seeker—This section is based on author interviews with Alpert; with Mirabai Bush in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, on May 13, 2008; and with Wes Nisker in Berkeley, California, on July 7, 2008.
Other material comes from the San Francisco Chronicle of May 28, 1968, and March 25, 1973, and the Boston Globe Magazine of June 7, 1970. Additional details come from Be Here Now and Alpert’s remarks at the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco in February 1970 and from his interview in Walsh and Grob.
Teacher—Drawn from author interview with Smith. Other material comes from an early draft of Smith’s 2009 autobiography; his 2003 book, Buddhism: A Concise Introduction; and Smith and David Griffin’s book Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology.
Healer—Drawn from Weil’s accounts in Spontaneous Healing and The Marriage of the Sun and Moon.
Trickster—Drawn from author interviews with Nisker and from author interviews with Brian Barritt, by telephone, on July 18, 2008, and with Dieter Hagenbach, by telephone, on July 11, 2008. Leary’s accounts come from Confessions of a Hope Fiend and Flashbacks, with other details from Bryan and Greenfield.
CHAPTER EIGHT—AFTER THE ECSTASY . . . FOUR LIVES
Healer—This section is based on interviews with Weil, and on an interview with his business manager, Richard Baxter, by t
elephone, on December 15, 2008. Other material comes from Time magazine, May 12, 1997; the New York Times Magazine, August 24, 1997; and the New Republic, December 14, 1998.
Seeker—Drawn from author interviews with Alpert and Bush, and from the San Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 1991. Other material comes from a 1985 Ram Dass interview in Inquiring Mind; his interviews with Mark Thompson, Alan Davidson, and Eliot Jay Rosen; and Michael Rossman’s New Age Blues.
Trickster—Drawn from author interview with Forte. Other material comes from the San Francisco Chronicle of June 2, 1973, Greenfield, and Forte.
Teacher—Drawn from author interview with Smith. Other material comes from Tales of Wonder and Why Religion Matters.
CONCLUSION—HEALER, TEACHER, TRICKSTER, SEEKER
The section on early LSD research in the United States was based on the author’s interview with Philip Slater in Santa Cruz on June 8, 2008, along with material from Stevens, Forte, and Lee and Shlain. For more details on the statistics about LSD use in recent decades, see This Is Your Country on Drugs by Ryan Grim.
Index
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