« Dan Hill asks | Main | Trip thoughts »
The Nutty Professor
Here's an amazing piece of the life of Timothy Leary from the NYTimes book review of Timothy Leary: A Biography.
...he finally went to jail, and was likely to be kept there for years before he would be considered for parole. Characteristically, he compared himself to "Christ . . . harassed by Pilate and Herod." In a twist that could have occurred only in 1970, a consortium of drug dealers paid the Weather Underground to spring Leary from the California Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo — he pulled himself along a telephone cable over the fence, then was picked up by a car — and transport him to Algeria. He duly issued a press statement written in the voice of the Weathermen, the money line of which was: "To shoot a genocidal robot policeman in the defense of life is a sacred act."
But when he and his wife, Rosemary, arrived in Algiers, they found themselves wards of the exiled Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, who was probably smarter than Leary, possibly crazier, and had little use for him. As Leary acknowledged, rather shrewdly: "It was a new experience for me to be dependent on a strong, variable, sexually restless, charismatic leader who was insanely erratic. I usually played that role myself."
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on June 27, 2006 at 10:34 PM in Food and Drink, History, Religion, Science | Permalink
Comments
Prof. AT,
Straight from the horse's mouth:
LEARY: There's one thing that everyone should know about drugs and it's the law of availability. In economics there's a law called Gresham's Law that bad money drives out good money--paper money will drive out gold. The very opposite is true in the sociology of drugs. Good drugs drive out bad drugs.
One of the many disastrous results of the federal drug policy in the last 20 years is that they've done everything in their power to knock out good drugs or to confuse people about good drugs. Then they've allowed--or inevitably had to accept--the flooding of the nation with bad drugs. The reason you can make PCP in the garage for a hundred dollars and then say it's LSD or cannabinol is because the safe, good drugs are not available. They knocked out the inexpensive, weak Mexican marijuana that would give you a little buzz, less than a bottle of beer. Actually, for a $5.00 bag of marijuana you'd drive your car less fast, you wouldn't get in as many fights, you'd probably enjoy everything in a much more mellow way. They knocked all that out. But intelligent people are going to get the drugs and now you have connoisseur marijuana for $200.00 an ounce, which the kids can't have, that's 10 times stronger than the silly little Mexican stuff. So the kids are boozing and are using PCP. Booze and PCP are bad-drugs. You know that, anyone that has any access to the facts will agree with what I've just said, but you'd get crucified if you said this in the company of politicians.
It is true, yes, that in our drug education program in the '8Os we realized that set and setting--that is what you expect and what your environment lays on you--determines 99 percent of the experience. It's not the drug, it's your expectations and environment. So we went around saying, "Take LSD, you'll improve yourself, you'll be a loving person, you'll be smarter, you'll find God, you'll suddenly feel at one with all nature." Plus, plus positive, we were openly, nakedly, advocating feeling good, being smarter, being a nicer person, being nonviolent, loving yourself, unity with nature...We were deliberately trying to brainwash since we knew that seven or eight million people were taking LSD and we were deliberately trying to brainwash them into hopeful, utopian, positive, loving experiences. At the same time the drug enforcement establishment was running around saying, "Take LSD, jump out a window," "Take LSD, become homicidal," "Take LSD, go to a mental hospital..." I admit we were brainwashing. We were trying to brainwash people to become better, to believe in themselves and to believe in the glorious ness of life. But the narcs were brain washing, too, and they inevitably controlled more of the media than we did and for those who were foolish enough to listen to them, yeah, they had bad trips.
Posted by: Chairman Mao at Jun 27, 2006 11:08:49 PM
I nominate that review for the worst turn of phrase in the history of the English language: "...he was among the major protuberances in the cultural bouillabaisse we call The Sixties". Yup, next time I chow down a bowl of fish soup I'll be on the lookout for protuberances. Mr Luc Sante should consider entering the Bulwer-Lytton contest.
Posted by: dfobare at Jun 28, 2006 11:36:16 AM
aangenaam babes ^^^ liefde babes ^^^ asiatiche sesso ^^^ insensato studentessa ^^^ le plus froid chouette vestale ^^^ hongroise hardcore ^^^ le plus froid papa photo ^^^ le plus chaud papa dix huit ^^^ amore cowgirl strip ^^^ piacente allievo ubriache ^^^ perfekt sjukskoterska urinerar ^^^ skoj lesbisk varandra ^^^ codardo fighette orale fotti ^^^ derisive amatoriali amore ^^^ avontuurlijk smeris neuke ^^^ asiat omasex ^^^ penis kortisoni naida ^^^ vajaa ylaosaton naida ^^^ utmerket mpeg ^^^ enorm gamling ^^^ varmere sar smaprat ^^^ vanlig binde rundt ^^^ axiagapitos asiatis agapi ^^^ freskos magoulo agapi ^^^ plus frais mman cliche ^^^ etudiante quarante et un ^^^ ripsokindinos anatolitikos ^^^ ripsokindinos ponos ^^^
Posted by: levan at Sep 11, 2006 2:41:55 AM
辦公室傢具
辦公室傢俱
辦公室傢俬
Office Furniture Hong Kong
辦公台
Office Desk
辦公椅
Office Chair
職員椅
Staff Chairs
大班椅
Multi-Function Chairs
文件櫃
Storage Rack
室內設計
Interior Design
會議桌
Conference Table
辦公室屏風
沙發
寫字樓傢俱
寫字樓傢具
寫字樓傢俬
茶几
Posted by: furer at Oct 25, 2007 4:39:54 AM
