The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America

The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin, is a fascinating look at how three Harvard University professors, and a graduate student came together in the early sixties to turn the world onto mushrooms, mescaline, and LSD-25.For Timothy Leary, the journey began on the afternoon of August 9th, 1960, when he ingested some psilocybin mushrooms. That trip changed his perception of reality, and convinced him psychedelic drugs would soon become an essential tool in the psychologist's toolbox.Huston Smith had written the book on world religions, The Religions of Man, later republished as The World's Religions. He was introduced to Leary by Aldous Huxley, another Harvard Man, who'd written The Doors of Perception, a book based on his experiments with mescaline. Leary introduced Smith to his "magic mushrooms" on New Year's Day in 1961. It was a bad trip, but it opened him up to the possibilities of what Huxley called these "heaven and hell" drugs.Richard Alpert was late to the party. By the time he arrived in Mexico, the "magic mushrooms" were gone, and no one knew how to find more, so he had to wait for his conversion. He took his first trip in early February of 1961.After he was turned onto psychedelics, Leary got the crazy idea the drugs would revolutionize the way we see ourselves. The only thing he was certain of at the time was, psychedelics weren't for everyone. He wanted to feed them to the best and the brightest - graduate students, poets, philosophers, and men of science. People he was sure would be enlightened by the experience. Among those he recruited to his project were Allen Ginsberg, Maynard Ferguson, William Burroughs, and Alan Watts, all noted artists in their fields.By the spring of 1961, Leary had named his project the Harvard Psilocybin Project, and taken a complete 360 degree turn on who could benefit from his "magic mushrooms." He worked out a deal with Concord State Prison, and began doping prisoners in an attempt to retrain their brains, by essentially washing away their criminal tendencies. It was a good idea, but the results weren't that impressive. Leary claimed 75% of those taking his mushrooms, never returned to crime upon their release. Prison officials believed the numbers, but not the reason. They were sure the reason the prisoners didn't return to a life of crime was the attention they received, not the medicine.In the summer of 1963, Leary turned to a stronger drug for his research - LSD-25.Andrew Weil was the graduate student who brought down the Harvard Psychedelic Club. He wrote a story for the Harvard Crimson that denounced Leary's research. He also convinced the father of Harvard student, Ronnie Winton, to tell school authorities Leary and Alpert gave him psychedelics against the University agreement not to include undergraduate students in their research project.As a result of Weil's article, and Winton's confession, the project was shut down, and Leary and Alpert were booted out of Harvard.It was a wild ride.Leary went to Mexico, and continued his experiments with LSD. Eventually he would be thrown out of Mexico, and removed from several Caribbean Islands for throwing his wild drug parties.Leary and Alpert's next move was to a commune in Millbrook, New York.But, to find out the rest of the story, you'll need to read the book.Like I said at the beginning of this review, it's a fascinating look at Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Huston Smith, Andrew Weil, and how they helped turn the world onto mushrooms, mescaline, and LSD.Along the way, you will be introduced to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, their Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, the Grateful Dead, and Dr. Max Rinkel and Dr. Robert Hyde, the men who conducted the first CIA tests of LSD-25 in the early 1950s.The author's final take was,"Timothy Leary did not inspire the war on drugs all by himself. Yet he was largely to blame for the crackdown on responsible psychedelic drug research in the United States."It's not the whole story, but it's enough to make you want to learn more. For anyone who grew up in the sixties and early seventies, it's an interesting look back.

I was going to rate this book four stars with deference to over all readership, knowing why I liked it so much and thinking how my wife for instance wouldn't be as riveted or even choose it over other material, but then this is my review and I ripped through the book in less than a day and I don't read that fast. In reading these reviews I feel some folks expect too much. This book is entertaining and useful. I'm no judge of whether this is a scholarly work, but it has a place of great value as a window into the history of an era which is difficult to really capture. From my biased perspective, Mr. Lattin seems to have done journeyman's work capturing the times.H.P.C. was informative both historically and anecdotally with regard to both the potential benefits and the hazards of psychedelic drug use. It gave a back story which entertained me as a person who road that there horse and got some bruises before I lept from the saddle to safety. I will never take back what I learned from my psychotropic encounters but my first acid trip was at age 14 ( in 1969) and I must say one shouldn't try to kill their ego before it's not fully formed. In that respect I seriously consider this book a useful handbook for any youth who is drawn to experimenting with psychedelics and I recommend the book to parents in that context, especially those who are not initiated but worry for their own kids. I've been honest with our children to the point of telling war stories because I am still in awe of having survived my own youth ( or have I?), but in doing so risk glorifying stupid behavior, so I view this as a a very useful tool for objective education.I liked Lattin's idea to bundle these four stories together. I only knew of Weil as that bearded guy on PBS lectures. After this read I'm no more impressed with the man, but I am glad to have a better knowledge of Weils works and their context in the culture. Only last year I found myself in a Berkeley restaurant where I strained to eavesdrop as a very old and frail Huston Smith regaling a couple seated with him, with great Huston Smith stories. What a treat. As a casual student of religious philosophy and what is truly useful about the psychedelic experience, Smith has become my hero and go to guy, and that notion is happily re-enforced by this book. What a neat guy, and now a sweet old man. To me as a young "seeker", Richard Alpert, AKA Ram Dass, Baba Dick, Dick Das, etc. was a hero and icon, and somebody whose path I have crossed a time or two. But with time I've taken the man off his pedestal. I know the guy has done some great work with SEVA foundation etc, but I was blown away that after all that mentoring by his guru, even Ram Das struggles with forgiveness when it comes to Andy Weil ( see the book for details). Referring back to "death of ego" touted by Leary and company, if Lattin's descriptions of Leary are right ( and those in the new book "Orange Sunshine" which align with Lattin's telling) Leary's ego was such a fortress as to be impervious to the atomic bomb that is LSD. Even Ram Das laments in the book that on his death bed Leary was unable to really embrace his physical death at the end. How ironic since early LSD experiments were on patients who were dieing. Was all that LSD actually wasted on the guy! Shee-it!

I haven't enjoyed a book in the past few years as much as I have enjoyed this one.Probably it's because Timothy Leary and Ram Das were so prominent in the 1960's when I was in college and their psychedelic message touched and tempted nearly everyone I knew then. Like Dylan, The Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, the Vietnam war/protests, and the ever-present specter of the draft, they were part of the inescapable background hum of those times that influenced the whole college-aged culture. And though we thought we knew what was going on and who Leary and Alpert were, we really didn't know anything. Now we know, from this book, a lot more of the reality and the characters that influenced that time and the years that followed. It’s clearer now that as smart and influential as these two guys appeared, they had huge flaws, giant egos, outlandish dreams and self-centered life styles (and plenty of money) and despite their claims of enlightenment and universal love, they could hold petty grudges for years and be real jerks. But charming.Just as fascinating as these two were, it was just as amazing to read about some of the side characters who were part of the Leary/Ram Das story who are well-know today--Dr. Andrew Weil, Huston Smith, Dan Millman, Alan Watts, Eldridge Cleaver, Jerry Garcia, Ken Kesey, Houston Smith. And, as interesting, was watching the non-people characters of LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and marijuana move from Harvard-government approved mental health and spiritual awaking possibilities to dead ends and finally to illegal substances.If "'60s", "psychedelic," and "hippie," and "Be Here Now" mean anything to you, this is your book!

Don’t let this book’s appearance fool you. At first glance, it looks more like a textbook than the stunning piece of investigative non-fiction that it is, but it’s eminently readable and a lot of fun to boot.This book tells the story of four influential people – Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil – and promises to show you how they “killed the fifties and ushered in a new age for America”. It delivers on that promise, and it’s interesting to see how the formation of the Harvard Psychedelic Club rocked the establishment.Of the four of them, Leary is the most well-known for psychedelia. He’s one of the primary people that helped to popularise the use of LSD in the 1960s, but the others all had their roles to play too. It’s interesting to see how their lives converged and then separated again, and while the majority of the action takes place in the 50s and 60s, it still takes you pretty much right up to the present date.Because of that, it takes you on a journey through time that allows you to see how the actions of these four fascinating men changed the world – not just for the sixties but for good. And there’s no pretension – Lattin covers it impartially but passionately, and that’s just fine by me. Overall then, it’s the perfect read for people with varied interests

Awesome.Really awesome.If one wants to really understand "where that 60s university psychedelic movement came from", this is one book to read, in my opinion.

exellent

The title and subtitle say it all when it comes to Lattin’s controversial thesis that four individuals who were at (or -- in Smith’s case -- “near / working with”) Harvard University single-handedly (octa-handedly?) gave birth to the sixties’ counterculture through their research and advocacy of hallucinogenic substances (first psilocybin and later LSD.) Before I obtained a copy, I was perusing the reviews, and one overarching criticism stuck out amid a sea of generally complimentary comments. Having now read the book, I’d have to agree with both that criticism and much of the praise.The criticism is that Lattin arbitrarily lumps four individuals together and emphasizes their connection to the prestigious Harvard University in order to support a [subtitular] claim whose reach exceeds its grasp. Now, some critics may be defending their alma mater. No matter one’s perspective, Harvard gets a black eye from the story of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (a.k.a. Ram Dass.) For some people, that black eye results from the fact that the pair of psychologists were able to carry out such wild and woolly experimentation in the first place. For others, it results from the fact that the university ultimately fired the two and ended research into the benefits and hazards of hallucinogenic substances [and how to tap the former without succumbing to the latter] -- a line of research just starting to show results. (To be fair, the CIA’s shenanigans with hallucinogen experimentation [i.e. MK ULTRA] likely did more to kill this line of research than did the firing of Leary and Alpert.)As one can see, tying the stories of Leary and Alpert together is reasonable. They were faculty members who worked together, were ultimately fired together, and for a while after said firing they continued to work together to advance their agenda outside the constraining halls of academia. Smith and Weil have roles in this story, but presenting them as though they were working shoulder-to-shoulder to advance psychedelic substance use is a bit of a stretch. While Weil’s work eventually suggested that marijuana wasn’t particularly harmful and could be beneficial, as his story intersects with the Leary / Alpert story his role was adversarial. As an undergraduate and writer for the school newspaper, Weil was the one who broke the story that Leary and Alpert were giving at least some undergraduates hallucinogenic substances (a big no-no as per their agreement with Harvard.)Huston Smith’s story is yet more tenuously connected. While he was on faculty at MIT, he worked with Leary and Alpert on a study with divinity students to determine how psychedelically-induced mystical experiences compared to ones that weren’t influenced by mind-altering substances. While Leary followed his own advice to “drop out,” becoming a counterculture / hippie bad boy, and Alpert went on to pursue the mystical life of a spiritual seeker under the alter-ego of Ram Dass, Smith had a long career as a mainstream academic – retiring as Professor Emeritus from Syracuse University. Weil had some karma pains early in his career, being marginalized by his colleagues for his work with controlled substances as Leary and Alpert once had been, but ultimately he became a health food / holistic medicine celebrity and co-director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona.While I agree that Lattin overstates his case on the book’s cover, once one delves into its pages, I think he does some intriguing and honest reporting of the stories of these four men. It’s certainly a story with a lot of tension. There’s the strained relationship that ultimately develops between the polar-opposite partners of Leary and Alpert. The two psychologists’ differences were complements in some ways, but the partnership was ultimately doomed. Of course, both of the above men had a problem with Weil, and the latter’s attempts to reconcile with them is integral to the post-Sixties part of the book. As suggested above, Smith’s is a side story that exists outside this drama, and only really has the one point of intersection.This book kept me reading. Timothy Leary and Ram Dass were only vague pop-culture references to me, and I knew nothing of Weil or Smith before reading, but the overarching story (as well as the individual ones) is a fascinating one. While these four men may not have birthed the Sixties into being, they did have interesting stories while living through an interesting time. I’d recommend this book if you want to learn about the early civilian (i.e. transparent) research into hallucinogens (note: there is only a small reference to the parallel, secretive, government-sponsored work on LSD, and this isn’t the book to learn about that subject.) It’s also a good book to get a view of how the sixties unfolded, and the states of mind that led to it. As I said, these four men weren’t particularly integral to the Sixties being what it was. Aldous Huxley’s essays were out there; the Vietnam War, political mistrust, and other ingredients of the counter-cultural tide were all present. But, while the Sixties might have transpired without a glitch if none of these men had ever been born, they did have front row seats to what was going on, and one sees in their actions (drug use, spirituality, radicalism, etc.) the era in miniature.

Vale la pena leer este libro si te interesa entender el tema de los psicodélicos, quiénes fueron los personajes que comenzaron su investigación ( a veces no tan científica) pero que abrieron a occidente esta y otras prácticas que han cambiado la manera de ver las satanizadas drogas.