I Have America Surrounded

The Six Wives of Timothy Leary - reviewed

2007-11-22T07:30:00.000-08:00

I was kindly invited along to the press night of this play yesterday, and got to meet the cast and writer afterwards. All very enjoyable. My review follows. I never expected to be writing theatre reviews here; perhaps one day there'll be Tim Leary: The Musical...

THE SIX WIVES OF TIMOTHY LEARY

Etcetera Theatre, Camden High Street London, until Dec 9^th

As any Learyphile will tell you, you get the Timothy Leary you deserve. Such is the ever-shifting nature of his character that he is almost impossible for a writer to depict without revealing far more about themselves than about him. Over the last couple of decades he has defeated many a Hollywood screenwriter who has tried but failed to crack the illusive ‘Leary script.’ All of which makes the achievement of first-time dramatist Philip de Gouveia all the more impressive, for his approach to the story is the simplest, smartest and most original that I have ever come across. Simply put, he ignores Tim and tells his story through his wives.

The structure of the play is to give a monologue to each of the six wives, which are then linked by (fictitious) scenes of the women meeting at Timothy’s wake. The women are all very different, and hence unable to avoid comparing themselves with the others, in an effort to try and understand why the same man was drawn to such different people. We then get to appreciate all his complexities and contradictions through seeing him from these six different angles. Leary is physically absent from the play but his presence hangs, Godot-like, throughout the theatre, like a spark in a vacuum. The audience is trusted to form their own image of him from the actresses’ dialogue and emotions, a highly satisfactory process that allows everyone to confirm their own prejudices and opinions in a way I’m sure Leary would have understood and approved of immensely.

That said, the writer can skew this process as much by what he omits as by what he presents, and there were some surprising omissions in the information that we are given about his life. There was no indication that Leary was booted out of Harvard, escaped from jail or was a fugitive in Africa or Europe, for example. The result is the Leary that the play paints seems strangely passive. It appears that, once jailed, he idly waited as the years went by and Rosemary was replaced by Joanna. There are a couple of mentions of being captured in Afghanistan but in the context of the other information given these seem likely to be interpreted as his original arrest. It may be that the writer considers little details more telling than grand adventure, but this does tend to disguise his largeness of character which attracted so many people to him.

You would also never know from this play that Leary was a writer or philosopher, as there is no mention of any of his books or ideas. The sole exception is the phrase “Tune In, Turn On and Drop Out”, which is explained here – as it is in most places – in a vague and slightly inaccurate manner which does little to suggest that Leary had anything useful to say. There is also little evidence of his humour or optimism. A play like this is no place to go into detailed explanations, of course, but it seems strange that this side of him was not acknowledged. The overall effect is to paint him as a reckless opportunist philanderer with bad taste in shoes, which of course he was, although this alone doesn’t fully explain why all these women were attracted to him, or on what levels he connected to them.

All of that, of course, relates to how Leary is perceived these days – a subject that I have an unhealthy interest in, and not something of such importance for the rest of the audience. What is far more important is how it works on its own terms; as a play. In terms of what matters here – dialogue, direction and acting – everything succeeds with an easy confidence that it is almost unseemly for what was only the play’s second ever performance. From Marianne’s opening monologue at a 1950s party – a terrific piece of writing given the note-perfect performance it deserved – the play instantly engages and is well paced to the end. The shifting time periods were suggested nicely and the casting is uniformly excellent with Nena, in particular, having what appears to be an uncanny family resemblance to her role. Rosemary’s wardrobe may not have captured her sense of style, but her monologue, delivered as a speech at a ‘Free Tim’ rally, more than makes up for this and is one of the highlights. The depiction of Joanna as written is perhaps a little caricatured as ‘the neurotic bitch’, but she does get the best lines in compensation, and the actress is able to give her more empathy during the later scenes at the wake. There was however a subtle suggestion that Joanna may have been involved in the FBI’s capture of Tim in Afghanistan, which irked me partly because I consider that bollocks, but mainly because the historic origins of that rumour were fairly misogynistic and that for me did not sit well in such a female-focused play.

If there is a more significant criticism to be made, then it is the tone of the final scenes. The play turns dark during Joanna’s monologue – set during a visit to Tim during his darkest hours in Folsom – but then doesn’t then move on from that bleak, sombre tone when it covers the remainder of his life. The wake itself reminded me of Mike Leigh’s ‘Abagail’s Party’ in places, being terribly English where perhaps it should have been more Irish, with tears and a good fight to clear the air and lift the mood. Again, this may be down to my own prejudices and my expectation that you can’t tell Leary’s story without some laughs and joy among the aftermath and chaos. Having met the cast afterwards, however, there does seem to be an awareness of this and it may well be addressed in the future.

So, overall, a great success that bodes well for the play having a life beyond this first run. LSD-evangelists and those who hold Tim up as a personal hero may not get the Leary they prefer but, with this cast, Philip de Gouveia has realised his own personal Leary more stylishly than anyone.

And for another review, this one from The Stage, click below:

http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/18938/the-six-wives-of-timothy-leary

The Six Wives of Timothy Leary

2007-10-30T04:54:00.000-07:00

The Six Wives of Timothy Leary

This play sounds pretty interesting:

The Six Wives of Timothy Leary

Now, I'm not sure I really recognise Tim or his partners from that brief blurb, but I'm eager to go along and find out where they're coming from. It's certainly a great idea for a play.

For all you London-based theatre goers, it will be on at the Etcetera Theatre in Camden from Nov 20th to Dec 9th.

Leary Biographer Dies

2007-02-14T14:39:00.000-08:00

No, not this one, I'm still around and waltzing. I'm referring to John Bryan, who died on Feb 1st, aged 72.

Bryan published Whatever Happened to Timothy Leary? in 1980, and it remained the only full Leary biography for 26 years. It is not, unfortunately, an easy book to find. Bryan's editor at Harcourt books died just before the book was finished, and his successor had no interest in the manuscript. Bryan published it himself and sold it through the underground and outside Tim's lectures. I personally spent months searching eBay etc trying to find a copy, but with no luck. The copy I now have fell apart during the writing of my book, and exists only as a loose collection of pages.

Bryan was a true counter-culture figure, and the book portrays Leary in the confused, contradictory and often judgmental light in which he was perceived by the American counter culture in the late seventies - people who loved Tim in 1967 but who were increasingly uncomfortable with the directions he took during the seventies. I've been told Tim hated it, and to my mind a number of sections in his 1983 autobiography seem written to deliberately correct or contradict it (which is not to imply that Flashbacks is the more accurate book!) But it's a very important book precisely because it is a genuine report back from those times. Bryan interviewed many people who are no longer around and he reproduced their comments at length, and the book really shines when he gives first hand accounts of events at which he was present (the press conference of People Against Leary's Lies springs to mind here.)

There is much in the book that would have been lost in time if Bryan had not recorded it. It's also a fun read, rich in period language and playfully written. Here's hoping that whoever owns the rights to it makes it available again - even if only through a print-on-demand press, such as Lulu.com.

For more on Bryan and his many other achievements, see:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/11/BAGKGO2O6K1.DTL

Comet Envy

2007-02-13T12:57:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in the book, when Leary died the greatest comet in twenty years appeared in the sky. This was known as the "great comet of 1996", or C/1996 B2 Hyakutake to it's friends. This was a nice touch on the part of the heavens, considering Leary's obsession with the comet Kahoutek whilst in jail.

Well, the comet that was in the sky when Robert Anton Wilson died last month puts Leary's comet to shame. It went by the name of C/2007 P1 McNaught, the brightest comet for over forty years, and was soon given the name of - yes - "the great comet of 2007" by Space.com.

Have a look at it, it's a magnificent thing.

http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/apod/ap070115.html

http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/apod/ap070118.html

Online course in Tim Leary

2007-02-13T12:45:00.000-08:00

One of the benifits of writing the book was discovering that time spent getting your head around Tim Leary is a really useful thing to do on many levels - it's something I'd recommend to anyone. Well, an online course in exactly that is starting on Feb 26th, over at RAW's Maybe Logic Academy, in the capable hands of R.U. Sirius. Look, it just sounds good on many levels.

More info here:

http://www.maybelogic.org/courses.htm

Timothy Leary - CIA agent?

2006-09-16T14:58:00.000-07:00

One subject that I didn’t cover in my book was the accusation that Timothy Leary worked for the CIA. This was, I felt at the time, a pretty obscure and unconvincing conspiracy theory that was not worth going into (it is not to be confused with Leary’s dealings with the FBI, which I cover in great detail). However, I’ve noticed the subject cropping up online quite a bit recently, and I’ve had two emails on the subject in the last week alone, so I guess it needs to be covered.

As examples of the theory, see http://www.markriebling.com/leary.html, Or

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/07/12/more-leary-cia-stuff/

But in brief, it is bollocks.

Much of the supporting facts that are used to support the idea are perfectly valid, of course. The CIA were all over psychedelic research in the 50s and 60s, and a memo has been released in which CIA operatives were asked to report any information or contact with Leary, Richard Alpert or anyone in their organisation (IF-IF). Leary did have an affair with Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was the ex-wife of the CIA’s Cord Meyer. There’s no doubt that the CIA were very interested in Timothy Leary. But all of this is very different to Leary actually working for the CIA.

There are a few variations on the subject as to ‘why’ the CIA would employ Leary. Usually it is claimed that the CIA ordered Leary to promote LSD in the belief that widespread psychedelic use would undermine the anti-Vietnam war movement. A quick glance at the timeline of the anti-war movement and Leary’s actions should be enough to discount this idea. Others have argued that the CIA employed Leary to discredit psychedelics. Well, I can’t even begin to detail how out of character this would be! Instead, let’s look at the evidence to support the claim.

As far as I know, there is just one piece of genuine evidence that is used to support the idea, and that is interviews Leary did in the late 70s. To my mind, however, these are classic examples of people failing to get Leary’s sense of humour.

In these interviews, Leary makes claims about knowing that he was always working for intelligence agents. (Tim Boucher has a quote in this vein on his site: http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/07/10/leary-admitted-cia-involvement/). This needs to be put this in context. At the time Leary was writing a book called ‘The Intelligence Agents’. The basic idea of the book was that he (and many others) were agents working for the GIA, the Genetic Intelligence Agency, and they were obeying their genetic DNA in promoting the next evolutionary step – a change in human awareness. Their enemies were the CIA (the Counter-Intelligence Agency), who's mission was to keep everybody stupid. When Leary claimed to be working for ‘intelligence agents’, he was riffing on the interviewer’s pre-occupation with the CIA, and on his belief that he was obeying nobody but his own genes. Tim – who sounds a little high in that interview – was basically fucking with an interviewer who had not understood the ideas that he was advocating. And not for the first time!

The whole story is, I believe, a classic example of “counterculture math” (ie 2 + 2 = 5). Personally, I think the idea of Timothy Leary as a CIA agent would make a hilarious TV show. But I don’t believe that he was ever employed by the CIA.

Top 10 Psychedelic Non-fiction

2006-08-10T09:33:00.000-07:00

I wrote a top 10 list of non-fiction psychedelic books for the Guardian last week. I have to say that I've not been pleased by the reaction. Everyone has been remarkably nice and appreciative. Surely that's not the point of top 10 lists, is it? They are supposed to get people shouting loudly about how wrong you are, and what were you thinking to miss out X, Y or Z? So, in an effort to get a better reaction, I present it here, in the hope that someone will call me a wrongbrain. My list:

1. The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
Huxley's account of his experiments with mescaline in the 1950s make psychedelic use sound like a perfectly reasonable and admirable pursuit, which would bring credit to any middle class gentleman. Huxley never wrote a dull sentence in his life and this is certainly one of his best works. If its influence of the likes of Timothy Leary or Jim Morrison is considered, then it could easily be his most culturally important book.

2. The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is usually considered Thompson's best work, but I much prefer The Great Shark Hunt. It's a huge book, a collection of the best of his journalism from the 60s and 70s, and it shows that Thompson had a far greater range than his later reputation suggests. His essay about Hemingway's death, in which he tried to understand why such a once-vibrant man ended up blowing his brains out in small town America, is particularly poignant following Thompson's suicide.

3. The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
This is Wolfe's account of life with Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters and the birth of the American west coast psychedelic movement. Wolfe knew that a detached, even-handed journalistic approach could never really explain what was happening, so he gave his book the same psychedelic viewpoint as his characters. The result is a wonderful piece of writing. For those of us who weren't born in the 60s, this is probably the closest we can get to experiencing it.

4. High Priest by Timothy Leary
Leary was a prolific writer, producing over 30 books and hundreds of essays and papers. I've chosen his autobiographical High Priest (1968) for this list as I think it is one of his most accomplished pieces of writing. It captures both the drug experience and the sense of discovery so well; the moment a scientist realises that the implications of their work are so huge that their life will never be the same again.

5. Sisters of the Extreme: Women writing on the drug experience by Cynthia Palmer and Michael Horowitz (eds)
Psychedelic use is split fairly evenly between the men and women, but the desire to write about and try to explain the experience is a predominantly male trait. Certainly every other book in this top ten is from a male author, which is why this book so important. It sheds light on the otherwise hidden half of the psychedelic experience.

6. The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia by Paul Devereux
Devereux's impressive and thorough trawl through prehistory will be an eye-opener for anyone who thought drug use was a modern phenomenon. Devereux demonstrates that this point in history is a strange quirk in the human story, a rare time where we don't have a structure for incorporating psychedelic use into our society. If nothing else, it will make you view your ancestors in a different light!

7. DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman, MD
The medical profession has written little about psychedelics since Timothy Leary, which makes this book all the more valuable. DMT, a natural chemical produced by the human brain, is a hallucinogen so powerful that it makes LSD look like lager shandy. DMT throws up some very big questions about the workings of the brain, consciousness and about the world at large, and Strassman does not shy from these. For those who think that one day science will have all the answers, this book shows just how clueless we still are.

8. Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati Volume 1 by Robert Anton Wilson
The usual medical warning about psychedelic use is that it is dangerous for anyone with latent or undiagnosed neurotic or schizophrenic disorders. Perhaps a more important warning would be that psychedelic use can trigger an onslaught of utterly weird synchronicities which leave the user in a world that has seemingly gone totally crazy, while they still feel perfectly sane. Robert Anton Wilson describes this situation better than anyone, and this sanity-bashing account of his personal journey through what he calls 'Chapel Perilous' is one of his best works. Anti-drug campaigners should distribute this book in schools, and ask children if they could handle that much madness.

9. Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution by Kevin Booth and Michael Bertin
Psychedelics are often thought to have faded in influence after the mid 70s, but this is not the case. Instead, they became more subtly integrated into people's lives, to the degree that they didn't overshadow an individual's other interests or achievements. Bill Hicks is a good example. Although he frequently talked about his psychedelic use on stage he is not generally labelled as just a 'drugs comic', and I suspect that my inclusion of this book in this list will surprise a few people. This honest biography by his close friend Kevin Booth shows how integral psychedelics were to his life and, ultimately, his legacy.

10. What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry by John Markoff
This is significant because it is one of the first books to look at the legacy that the psychedelic movement of the 60s left behind. Many people will be surprised by the debt the idea of a 'personal computer' owes to psychedelics, the significance of the geographical location of Silicon Valley on the San Franciscan peninsula, or why Steve Jobs would say that taking LSD was one of the "two or three most important things" he has ever done. An impressive account of recent history.

11. The Road of Excess by Brian Barritt
A psychedelic top 10, of course, goes up to 11, which allows me to include Barritt's autobiography. One of Timothy Leary's lovers recently told me that she thought this book had the greatest descriptions of acid trips ever written, and she may well be right. This is a piece of literature that has clearly never been within a hundred yards of a copy editor, and it is all the better for it. Words just spill forth with no interest in grammar, coherence or where the narrative is going, but it possesses such an innate wit and swagger that it is a complete joy from start to finish. Psychedelia in its purest form, studded with flashes of brilliance.

UK government advisors say alcohol is more harmful than LSD

2006-07-31T08:25:00.000-07:00

I'm sure much will be made of today's report by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee - which recommends replacing the current system of classifying drugs based on the penalty for possession (Class A, B, or C) with a classification based on the harm that drugs do. As a result, current Class 'A' drugs such as LSD and Ecstasy suddenly become near the bottom of the scale, way behind legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco - and even behind cannabis. There's more about this here, including a link to the report itself. Saying that LSD is less harmful than alcohol is bound to cause a stink in certain circles, but ultimately if you look at the science, rather than the politics or media, it should be a fairly uncontroversial statement.

But what is interesting is the way the report doesn't hold back when attacking the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). For example, see the following excerpt that looks at the recent law regarding magic mushrooms (p26 on), which I thought worthy of putting online for all to see. There's much more like this in the report - it's very interesting, well worth a read (see report for footnotes).

Magic mushrooms

54. Magic mushrooms contain psilocin and psilocybin, naturally-occurring compounds with hallucinogenic properties. Psilocin and psilocybin were designated Class A drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, apparently on account of their hallucinogenic properties. Psilocin is also listed under Schedule I, the highest level of prohibition, under the UN’s Convention on Psychotropic Substances 1971.94 Sir Michael Rawlins, Chairman of the ACMD, told us: “I have no idea what was going through the minds of the group who put it in Class A in 1970 and 1971 […]It is there because it is there”.95 The Home Office has admitted that it has never conducted any research into psilocin use and that there is “no clear evidence of a link between psilocin use and acquisitive or other crime”.96

55. In the past a legal loophole meant that fresh magic mushrooms were not treated as controlled drugs, providing that they had not been ‘prepared’ (i.e. dried, packaged, cooked etc.). Section 21 of the Drugs Act 2005, which came into force on 18 July 2005, makes it an offence to import, export, produce, supply and possess with intent to supply magic mushrooms in any form.97 Because the decision to place magic mushrooms in Class A was a clarification of the law rather than a reclassification decision, the Government was not obliged to seek the advice of the ACMD in the usual manner. Nevertheless, the Government told us that it “did write to the ACMD, and ask for its views on [its] proposals before the Drugs Bill was introduced”. 98 The ACMD endorsed the move, telling us: “in March 2004 the Technical Committee heard that, over recent years, there had been a substantial increase in the number of retail outlets selling ‘fresh’ magic mushrooms. In fact HM Customs and Excise estimated the importation of 8,000–16,000 kgs during 2004”.99 However, the ACMD did not conduct a full review of the evidence in arriving at its decision. The Government’s use of a clarification of the law to put fresh magic mushrooms in Class A contravened the spirit of the Misuse of Drugs Act and meant that the ACMD was not given the chance to consider the evidence properly before responding. We also note the admission by the Home Office Minister Paul Goggins that “the Home Office received no submissions in favour of the clarification of the law in respect of magic mushrooms prior to the Drugs Act 2005 being granted Royal Assent on seven April and four submissions against”.100

56. In fact, we encountered a widespread view that the Class A status of magic mushrooms does not reflect the harms associated with their misuse. The RAND report concluded that the Government’s decision “was not based on scientific evidence”, noting that “the positioning of them in Class A does not seem to reflect any scientific evidence that they are of equivalent harm to other Class A drugs”.101 The RAND report pointed out that “National Statistics show that for deaths in which drug poisoning (listed on the death certificate) was the underlying cause of death, between 1993 and 2000 there was one death from magic mushrooms and 5,737 from heroin” and that “The lethal dose for humans is about one’s own body weight in mushrooms”.102 Professor Blakemore was also of the view that “if one could look at all the evidence for harm available now, including social harms, one would say [the classification of magic mushrooms] is wrong”.103 The Government’s own ‘Talk to Frank’ drug information website states that “Magic Mushrooms are not addictive in any way”.104 The drugs charity Release told us that “There was little transparency as to the reasoning behind this policy”, describing it as “an unacceptable situation”.105 Paul Flynn MP was also of the view that “The policy appears to have been driven by something other than evidence” and warned that “other more dangerous mushrooms, not covered by the current law, could be substituted for those that are prohibited”.106 Recent press reports, and data from the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), suggest that substitution with legal hallucinogens – including potentially lethal mushrooms of the Amanita family – is already happening.107,108

57. We were, therefore, surprised and disappointed to hear Sir Michael Rawlins, Chairman of the ACMD, tell us that “it was not a big issue” whether magic mushrooms were in the right Class. In Sir Michael’s view: “there are bigger, more important issues to worry about than whether fresh mushrooms join the rest of the other things in Class A”.109 The Chairman of the ACMD’s attitude towards the decision to place magic mushrooms in Class A indicates a degree of complacency that can only serve to damage the reputation of the Council. Martin Barnes, Chief Executive of DrugScope and a member of the ACMD, did not share Sir Michael’s nonchalance. He told us that he was “not aware that the full council were asked to deliberate on this” and that “it was wrong for the Home Secretary to seek to enact [the change] in primary legislation without properly consulting the ACMD and giving it time to deliberate on it”.110 Mr Barnes was also of the view that “the evidence has indicated that [magic mushrooms are] in the wrong classification”.111 The ACMD should have spoken out against the Government’s proposal to place magic mushrooms in Class A. Its failure to do so has undermined its credibility and made it look as though it fully endorsed the Home Office’s decision, despite the striking lack of evidence to suggest that the Class A status of magic mushrooms was merited on the basis of the harm associated with their misuse.

And if you're wondering, these are the top 20 harmful drugs, as decided by a team of independent researches looking at physical harm, dependency and social harm.

In reverse order...

20 Khat
19 Alky Nitrates
18 Ecstasy
17 GHB
16 Anabolic Steroids
15 Methylphenidate
14 LSD
13 4-MTA
12 Solvents
11 Cannabis
10 Buprenorphine
9 Tobacco
8 Amphetamine
7 Benzodiazephine
6 Ketamine
5 Alcohol
4 Street Methadone
3 Barbiturates
2 Cocaine
1 Heroin

Anti-Leary Sentiment Discussed in a Nice Italian Restaurant

2006-07-19T14:10:00.000-07:00

Timothy Leary is scum, a worthless despicable arsehole, and that must be true for it says so in the papers. You don’t even need to read the bodies of the reviews of Robert Greenfield’s recent book about Tim to find this out, even their titles hate him – see for example ‘Timothy Liar’ (LA Weekly), ‘The Nutty Professor’ (New York Times) or ‘Timothy Bleary’ (LA Times).

Now, it’s not really my place to comment on Greenfield’s book, but I don’t think it’s unprofessional of me to mention that it somewhat on the negative side, and that it has made a lot of people who knew Leary extremely upset. Many have decided that it is best not to detail their complaints publicly, hoping this will help starve the book of the oxygen of publicity (although there have been some exceptions, such as Zach Leary’s eloquent letter in the New York Times). Nevertheless, I thought the following recent conversation was interesting enough to report.

I recently had a meal in London’s Soho with Joanna Harcourt-Smith and Brian Barritt, two people who had lived with Leary long enough to really know him and be under no illusions about what he was like. Both have good reason to be 'anti-Leary' - particularly Joanna. But both recognize that he was responsible for connecting people to a much larger world, and that such an ability is so rare and precious that all the complaints about him don’t even begin to eclipse it. It was not long before the conversation turned to the subject of just why is it that some people hate Tim so much. And it was the ‘hate’ that was interesting, for anti-Leary sentiment is rarely a simple mocking dismissal, it is usually much a stronger emotion than that.

Joanna thought it was significant that bulk of the vitriol seems to come from men of a certain age. Was it the case, she wondered, that these were men who’s lives had gone very differently to how they wanted, and that the sheer strength of their hatred for Tim reflected an awareness that he symbolizes something that they have lost and need to deny that they had ever even glimpsed? This possibility reminded me of the Jungian interpretation of the type of story classed as ‘tragedy’, in which the people that the doomed protagonist destroys are personifications of the very elements of his own psyche that he is failing to integrate into his life, and in doing so is prevented from ‘becoming whole’ by integrating his ego into the Self.

To which Brian replied that this was all very well, and could well be true for all he knew, but it doesn’t change the fact that some people are basically fucking idiots.

Brian Barritt has a way with words, it must be said. I wonder if I can persuade him to start a blog?

Don't mention Leary!

2006-07-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

Poor Doctor Leary! A team of academics were finally brave enough to replicate - and validate - some of his early work. But not only does he not get any credit, he gets dismissed by a researcher with a few sarky comments!

The worldwide press have reacted positively to the work of a team from John Hopkins University - examples are here, here and here. Their research showed that under certain circumstances psilocybin - the active ingredient in magic mushrooms - can be used to create a spiritual epiphany, which will have a long lasting and positive effect on the lives of those who experience it. It's not hard to see why the press took such an interest in this - it's pretty amazing stuff. Genuine religious epiphanies are pretty rare in our Western culture and the ideas of scientists being able to create them at will has epic implications.

For the psychedelic research community, this is a major achievement - but not because of what the research demonstrated. That information was already widely known. What is significant is that a team was able, after 40 years, to legally and officially return to Leary's work. The experiment itself replicated the work he did at Harvard with his colleague Walter Pahkne from the Harvard Divinity School, and it showed that Leary's and Pahkne's results were both correct and replicable. Their experiment, which was also done under the same 'double-blind' parameters, became known as the 'Good Friday experiment' or the 'March Chapel experiment' because of the date and place it was carried out. It showed - for the first time - that religious experience could be triggered by psilocybin if it was administered in the correct environment.

Leary is mentioned in a many press reports, but only in the context that his name is always dropped whenever the press mention psychedelics. Neither he nor Pahkne are given any credit for their original work. The nearest I could find in the press coverage was a quote from Rick Doblin at MAPS, reported by ABC news, where he links the research to the 1962 Good Friday experiment and says it was carried out "by a minister and doctor." Doblin is a well-respected figure who knows full well who this minister and doctor were, for he carried out a follow up study on the participants of the Good Friday experiment in the 1990s. It seems likely that Doblin fears that mentioning Leary's name would damage the reputation of the team or their work. But why is this? If the work is scientifically solid, then why is it so damaging to note where the original ideas came from? Is it that the name 'Leary' has come to symbolise how a respected scientist can somehow go 'off the rails', and end up with a reputation that is academically worthless - the ultimate fear for those trying to make a living doing scientific research? Is this why many in this field shudder with horror at his name - despite their frequent use his ideas?

This is hinted in the only quote about Leary from the researchers themselves, that I'm aware of, at Medpagetoday.com. Here Dr Griffiths remarks that "We are conducting rigorous, systematic research with psilocybin under carefully monitored conditions, a route which Dr. Leary abandoned in the early 1960s". Now, Leary also prided himself on the 'rigorous, systematic research with psilocybin under carefully monitored conditions' which he was undertaking at the time. But Leary was not unique in being changed by studying these things. Many psychedelic researchers cling on to the belief that they are pillars of respectability, even as the gulf between them and their straight colleagues begins to widen, and despite their willingness to label others who have pursued identical work as irresponsible crazies. But the fact is, research in psychedelics does take people to some very strange places. Time and time again, researchers have moved away from the detached, objective viewpoint and stated that a subjective, experience-led approach is the only way to get a grip on things. And from that point on, their relationships with their scientific credibility will almost certainly hit a rocky patch. You get a sense that it is the subject itself which is the problem, and not the baggage of the name 'Leary', in the statement that NIDA put out. Here they distance themselves from this work, despite the fact that they co-funded it, and despite that (as far as I know) there hasn't even been any adverse publicity or criticism yet.

So you have to wonder, if this team keep replicating Leary's work and keep finding that it is still valid, just how long their respectability will last. It may well be that with a combination of hindsight and some major new idea they will be able to come up with a whole new avenue of respectable research. But if not, they should be careful - if they keep following Leary's ideas, they will shortly be in some very strange territory indeed. And if things get so out of hand that any of these researchers find themselves escaping from jail, then I just might write a book about them!

Wal-Mart and the Acid Smiley

2006-07-13T05:52:00.000-07:00

In the wake of all the fuss about Wal-Mart trying to copyright the yellow smiley face symbol, I was reminded of the reaction of some Americans who had seen the British cover of my book. A few were unsure about the inclusion of a smiley badge symbol. This is because the symbol has taken on different meanings in the UK and the USA.

In the USA - correct me if I'm wrong - the symbol is seen as a bit vapid or brainless, a vaguely moronic symbol of empty-brained happiness, regardless of whether or not the link to acid house music is known. One difference between the UK and the USA, of course, was that the UK was not inundated by a tsunami of branded tat featuring the face in the early seventies, like the USA was. But the biggest difference was that the Acid House movement became a political issue in the UK, following the Conservative governments efforts to crack down on alternative lifestyles. This led, ultimately, to the mass protests against the Criminal Justice Bill, which effectively outlawed free festivals. It also led to those in the travelling/festivals/rave scene become politically active.

As a result, the acid smiley symbol became a symbol of defiance, an image of the unbroken spirit in the face of oppression from dark forces who no longer got the joke. You can see this is in the work of an artist such as Banksy, for example, such as:

For this reason, when the US issued this stamp in the late 1990s, there were many in the UK who found it extremely funny.

Anyway, Wal-Mart are now going to court to claim ownership of the symbol in the US. To be fair to Wal-Mart, they claim they have been forced into this by the actions of the Frenchman Franklin Loufrani, who is seeking US copyright of the symbol on the grounds that he used it in a newspaper in 1968 to denote a positive story. To be less fair to Wal-Mart, this is a pretty poor excuse. It is widely accepted that the symbol was invented by a guy called Harvey Bell in 1963, who used it to promote an insurance firm, and that they symbol then fell into the public domain before he could copyright it. It must take a certain shamelessness to come along afterwards and try to seek legal ownership of what is, essentially, an archetypal image that all children draw at the age of 3 or 4. It is like someone claiming, with their hand on their heart, that they own all the stickmen ever drawn. But you know what lawyers are like.

But where this gets interesting is how the symbol came to be associated with acid house. Like the coining of the name acid house itself, there are many conflicting stories, but a common strand of these is the involvement of acid house pioneer Genesis P-Orridge and his band Psychic-TV. Genesis was a friend of Leary and Learys influence is obvious on tracks such as Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out, which samples Tim, or the Tablet of Acid series of albums. This is interesting because in the mid-Sixties, following advice from Marshall McLuhan, Leary made the conscious decision to use his own smile - a classic shit-eating grin if ever there was one - as the marketing brand for LSD. This is why he always smiled when cameras were around, and that smile, especially when seen against the dead faces of law enforcement officers taking him away in handcuffs, was a wickedly clever and hugely successful method of promoting his beliefs and lifestyles. So this is why whenever I see the acid smiley face, I see Tim.

And this is why I have to laugh when I read about Wal-Mart's court case. It looks to me like they are spending a fortune on lawyers in order to legally be allowed to dress every member of staff with a large portrait of Timothy Leary on their back.