The Last Word

The Beat Goes On!

After the four big preceding spurts - about Huxley as novelist, why we get high, about tribal wisdom and why a master chemist would publish psychedelic formulations, I happen to get the last word. And I am, once again, impressed by the drum beat! In my heart of hearts, I do believe we will overcome. The thaw that John Beresford predicted seems to be coming along via new psychedelic studies, and in renewed use.

Summer Reading.

Lots of books emphasizing psychedelic usage have seen their way through the press since last publication of this journal. I especially recomment for young readers Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut, Paul Krassner's rollicking account of the '60s-'90s sex and drugs and politics (formation of the Yippies, etc.) and Timothy Leary's Chaos and Cyberculture, which Jas. Morgan describes as "sane, sweeping and latitudinarian...a star-studded tour of the cognitive galaxy with some of Leary's best scientific and philosophical musings."

Two others you might want to consider are Psychedelic Shamanism by Jim DeKorne, which provides much reliable information about cultivation, preparation and extraction from psychotropic plants, and Jonathan Ott's Ayahuasca Analogs, a follow up to his monumental Pharmacotheon.

50 Years of LSD Studies is the title of yet another recent book, proceedings of a conference sponsored by Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. Some think it's a bore, however I am ravenous for its contents.

From Thanatos to Eros, Myron Stolaroff's fascinating account (title above meaning from `death drive' to `life force') of being earlier really uptight...to later heading the best study to date of psychedelics and creativity (350 subjects).The context is "35 Years of Psychedelic Exploration", his subtitle, and many reports appear here on experiences made accessible by new phenethylamines (psychoactives related to the mescaline molecule). You can get this book for $20 via Box 742, Lone Pine, CA 93545.

LSD: Still With Us After All These Years. Here's another recent publication that some might consider rather boring. It's based on the National Institute of Drug Abuse Studies on the Resurgence of Contemporary LSD Use and it says pretty much what a lot of people have long known, ("We have no informed opposition," says Robert Forte) namely: that in the '90's more high school students report use of psychedelics than in the '80s; that it never went away but is like "an endemic...disease that continuously circulates at low levels in (the) population."

And that LSD dealers really aren't in it for the money. According to one narcotics investigator: "None of them have jobs, never want jobs. They don't think of things like getting a house and a family and a car... I invest in assets, in money and gold jewelry. LSD dealers could care less...none of them, they don't have credit cards, they don't have jewelry. It's just a...free life-style."

What about D.M. Turner's The Essential Psychedelic Guide?

What about Chris Conrad's Hemp: Lifeline to the Future?

How 'bout Terence McKenna's Archaic Revival? Or his Food of the Gods? Or his True Hallucinations? Or the reprinting of that classic he wrote with his brother Dennis - The Invisible Landscape?

What about the paperback publication of Omar Stewart's definitive compendium Peyote Religion, the fruit of 50 years of ethnographic and ethnohistorical native American studies?

Oh, and don't forget to stick Morgenthaler & Joy's Better Sex Through Chemistry in your picnic hamper!

Gathering Minds at Chapman College, and Elsewhere.

Those attracted to psychedelics do really seem to have a wonderful time congregating. Bruce Eisner has already mentioned the conference at Chapman College - a Christian school in Orange County while Nixon lay nearby in a casket, no less! - and a more detailed report on what transpired there appears in Psychedelic Illuminations #6, along with much about DMT and other `exotics.'

This winter's MAPS Bulletin reports on the Second International Congress for the Study of Modified States of Consciousness that took place in Lerida, Spain, as well as on the 14th Telluride, CO Mushroom Conference and Festival, along with details of Ibogaine and renewed LSD and MDMA experimentation.

...and last, but by no means least:

Timothy...

Earlier this year, Bruce Eisner went to moderate a panel at the San Francisco Whole Earth Expo, with Timothy Leary as a panelist, and invited me to come along.

I had heard from a couple of sources that Timothy might have inoperable prostate cancer. This might perhaps be a final opportunity to say farewell to someone who had strikingly affected his age. Leary's been much like Voltaire - a rapscallion who could be thought of as a time-traveler back from a later epoch. Voltaire and Leary had both known all the fantastic people of their time, had pushed their flesh about as far as they possibly could, had colored over an entire epoch. Anyone who doubts this about Timothy should have another read of Flashbacks, his autobiography.

I had seen Timothy when we both spoke at Chapman College in Orange County. He had looked gaunt then, his face splotched with red. It occurred to me even that he might have AIDS. When it was his turn on stage, he introduced Eileen, a woman, he said, who had most influenced him. She made an impassioned talk to the effect that she had AIDS, an experience that she insisted had greatly enlivened her existence.

So I was all for going to the Expo, especially since Timothy had been so influential on my own thinking.

While he had been in jail - 46 prisons actually as it eventually turned out - Lynn Francis and I had gathered together most of his papers up till that point and presented them to him when he was released. Shortly thereafter he published Changing My Mind, Among Others, in which he wrote lengthy reconsiderations of most of the major pieces alongside the originals.

We arrived at the Expo just in time for the panel on The Future of Consciousness Acceleration. When Bruce got around to introducing Leary, he mentioned that on one occasion, while he was visiting, Leary had handed him the just-then-published Annotated Bibliography of Timothy Leary that had been assembled by a trio headed by Michael Horowitz (Leary is godfather of Michael's daughter, Wynona Ryder). This is a 300-plus-page volume in small print which itemizes some 60-70 major interviews, 30 or so books, videos, recordings, even buttons and bumperstickers that had by then come from Leary.

It reminded me of the complaint of John Beresford, an early LSD researcher, who said that "Tim had a lot of good ideas he was incapable of turning off the stream - which he was impatient to see work. There were prisoner projects, divinity student projects, projects for radicalizing the Psychology Department, for starting a journal, for flooding the world with propaganda extolling the power of the love pill...")

When Bruce saw this Annotated Leary he said "There are many millions of words you have written!"

Leary said, "Yes," and, according to Bruce's recollection, added something to the effect that three quarters of them "were right."

In Leary's opening remarks, he objected a bit to Bruce's recollection that he was claiming to be three-quarters correct.

He said that some of his outpourings hadn't been all that prescient, that about half was stuff all kinds of people talked about...but that maybe another quarter amounted to something he could probably be proud of. This struck me as a more reasonable way to view his work; I always think he manages an unusual but yet useful perspective.

When it came time for Leary's workshop, I headed for it.

Leary has always been fascinated by the effects of graphic overload and was showing a video that a group of artists had produced. He was talking over it. He still has his mesmerizing voice. Art Kleps once had observed this, saying that even if Timothy were to just read aloud the telephone directory, many people would still sit there in awe and rapt silence.

Leary had already commented that he was now 75, that his memory wasn't anything like it once had been, that he was essentially getting high on senility. Then he said that some three months earlier he had been diagnosed as having cancer of the prostate, which was now spreading throughout his body. Someone asked if his eventual intention was to get into a long-term care hospital, or to stay at home. What a question!

Timothy talked about having a Living Will and expressed astonishment about how few in the audience did after he asked them whether they, too, had made such provisions.

He really got into how he had made arrangements for his brain to be cryonically salvaged. I recalled an item that had recently made at least one paper - that Leary had left specific instructions not to be resurrected "during a Republican administration."

His theme was that he was keeping all of his options open and, in fact, his final words were that, at the very end of his life, he might well decide, "Fuck this freezing business, just stick me in the blender."

(He did add that he hoped in another 50 years or so, we might all meet again for a luncheon or such.)

Peter Stafford, Psychedelic Investigator, Storyteller and Chronicler, took LSD while a student at Reed College in the early Sixties and became the archetypal hippie, hanging out in the East Village, and editing the first rock publication, Crawdaddy, together with author Paul Williams. He also published the first two of his three books: LSD The Problem-Solving Psychedelic (with co-author Bonnie Golightly), and Psychedelic Baby Reaches Puberty. In l974 Peter migrated to Santa Cruz, California, where he still resides. There he authored Psychedelics Encyclopedia, considered by many the one book that is essential reading on the subject, now in its 3rd edition.

He is in the process of completing a manuscript described as "a personal account of politics, sex and psychedelics during the 2,000 days before the next millenium" (interested publishers can reach him at 408 427-2607).