4. Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary was an American psychologist and writer best known for exploring the potential of psychedelic drugs under controlled conditions. Most famously, during the period in which LSD and psilocybin (better known as magic mushrooms) were legal in the United States, he conducted experiments under the Harvard Psilocybin Project. In this project, started in 1960, Leary worked alongside Aldous Huxley and others to study the effects of psilocybin on human subjects. As the study progressed, Allen Ginsberg shared Leary’s enthusiasm and the two wanted to help people “turn on” to discover a higher level of consciousness. Together, they introduced several intellectuals and artists to a variety of psychedelics.
It was in March 1962, when the project first became an issue. Members of the Centre for Research in Personality believed drug experiments were being conducted in an irresponsible and unscientific manner. Leary and Alpert pledged not to give drugs to undergraduates, and the Massachusetts Food and Drug Division ruled that drugs could be administered only in the presence of a physician. By May 1963, both Leary and Alpert left Harvard. Harvard allegedly fired Leary for failing to give his required lectures and absenting himself from the university area without permission. Meanwhile, Harvard fired Alpert for giving psilocybin to an undergraduate in an off-campus apartment.
Leary adamantly believed that LSD showed great potential for therapeutic use in psychiatry. He populated some of the phrases that characterised the 1960s: “Turn on, tune in, drop out”, “set and setting”, and “think for yourself and question authority”. He also advocated other psychedelic drugs as well as marijuana. Leary, funnily enough, also created the “Leary biscuit”! A briefly microwaved snack cracker with cheese and a small bud of marijuana. He objected, however, to drugs that he believed dulled the mind. This included morphine, heroin, and heavy alcohol use.
Leary most certainly held some interesting views on drugs and their effects. In September 1966, in an interview to Playboy magazine, Leary claimed that homosexuals could use LSD to cure their ‘disease’. Later, however, he changed his view and no longer characterised homosexuality as an illness in need of a cure.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the police arrested Leary so often that he saw the inside of thirty-six prisons worldwide. His first arrest came in December 1965 when the police arrested him for possession of marijuana. Like many other figures in the era, he ran away to Mexico. On their return, officials found marijuana in his daughter’s underwear. Leary took responsibility for the controlled substance and found himself sentenced to thirty years in prison, psychiatric treatment, and a fine of 30,000 USD. Over time, courts sentenced him to prison again and again, and he continued to escape. In a 1969 court case Leary v the United States, Leary successfully appealed his 1965 case. The Supreme Court ruled that the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 unconstitutional as it required self-incrimination. This overturned his 1965 conviction. Sadly, Leary died in January 1995 after doctors diagnosed him with inoperable prostate cancer.