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

by Don Lattin

It is impossible to overstate the cultural significance of the four men described in Don Lattin’s The Harvard Psychedelic Club. Huston Smith, tirelessly working to promote cross-cultural religious and spiritual tolerance. Richard Alpert, a.k.a. Ram Dass, inspiring generations with his mantra, “be here now.” Andrew Weil, undisputed leader of the holistic medicine revolution. And, of course, Timothy Leary, the charismatic, rebellious counter-culture icon and LSD guru. Journalist Don Lattin provides the funny, moving inside story of the “Cambridge Quartet,” who crossed paths with the infamous Harvard Psilocybin Project in the early 60’s, and went on to pioneer the Mind/Body/Spirit movement that would popularize yoga, vegetarianism, and Eastern mysticism in the Western world.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Psychology, Biography, Drugs, Science, Spirituality

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 5, 2010

About the author

Don Lattin is an award-winning journalist and who covers alternative and mainstream religious movements and figures in America. His work has appeared in dozens of U.S. magazines and newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, where Lattin covered the religion beat for nearly two decades. He is also the author of six books.

Reviews

[Eh?Eh! · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was firstreads-less for a year because I wasn't able to review the first firstreads I had won (after writing a 'review' about why I hadn't reviewed it earlier, bam, I win my 2nd firstreads book). Just in case lacking a review prevents one from winning again, I'm sticking this filler in for now.

Real review forthcoming...if the weather doesn't thwart the postalperson from delivering the book this time.

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I'm one of the few people who have never been high or stoned (or even drunk). The 'recreational' substances have never sounded very fun to me and I don't know much about them other than what I picked up in passing on the playground and health classes. As a child in the '80s, I got the message pounded into me that 'drugs are bad.' Just say no! The D.A.R.E. officer would drive that dorky car (looked like a stationwagon with the back roof cut away) to my school every year for his presentation on drugs. I blame him for my confusion about LSD, when he described it as having the appearance of a "pencil eraser" with "fancy designs." But he also told us to tug on the stripe on the side of his pant leg to get his attention (this was when I was of an age where I was below waist-height, about five), and I thought he wanted us to "pants" him (I'm sorry, officer, I just wanted to get your attention!). Still cracks me up.

All the useless autobiographical trivia was meant to frame how I came to this book, with only a general knowledge of drugs and that decade associated with psychedelics. I hope I get the facts right: This book briefly describes each man's background, maybe a couple pages per, skimming up to the year 1960 when Timothy Leary tried psilocybin mushrooms. Leary and Alpert ostensibly began their psilocybin and LSD experiments with the intention of benefiting society in some way, such as by reducing recidivism in criminals on the hypothesis that a feeling of 'connectedness' would cause good behavior. Mainly, they tried to see if the high would intensify the religious experience and lead to increased spirituality. To this end, Huston Smith was brought in as an expert in world religions, to try to interpret the trips from the perspective of faith. This obviously all got sidetracked. Leary was too cocky, Weil played the role of villain, Leary and Alpert were ousted from Harvard, and experiments continued at Millbrook. As word got out, LSD attracted crowds of those just looking for a good time. The early emphasis of having the right set and setting for the positive and spiritual was lost. By the time they all reached San Francisco, it was a party with LSD fuel. Leary did crazy things. Alpert and Weil had perspective-changing experiences in India. Many years later, they all look back.

I wish there had been more detail with the experiments, Millbrook, and disillusionment, but the book was pretty short, about 200 pages with largish font. Much of the book seemed to be based on personal interviews with all living key characters. It certainly reads sort of disjointedly, a little bit as if written by drug-addled stories from memory. That's not entirely fair, but I was getting aggravated by the chronology – an event would be described, but oh, it was rooted in this thing from 10 years ago which was followed by this thing 3 years later but 5 years prior this happened and that leads to...huh?

Other things I didn't like:
2) The 4 main figures were given names like a RPG – The Seeker, The Healer, The Teacher, The Trickster – and I found this a little distracting (my mind continued the list: the Druid, the Rogue, the Archer, the Orc, the Harkonnen…). Each chapter had a section on each man and,
3) I have doubts that Andrew Weil should have been given equal weight, though he was key in kicking events into motion, so to speak, and later in life became well-known. It felt like he was included so that the team would have 4 members before the quest began.
4) The author did research, which is good and required and expected, but he seemed unable to pare it down to the important parts. Up until I turned 6 and was faced with a jigsaw puzzle piece that I couldn't fit, I would find a likely place and pound it down with my fist...the author pounded little anecdotes into place like a 6 year old, unable to wait to find a better place to tell them or let them go. I remember having that problem when I tried to write research papers in school, piecing together all that information collected with so much effort. It must be even more difficult with a story told to his face in person by Smith or Alpert. But geez, for a publication it would’ve been nice if he’d exerted himself a little more.

Maybe not the best book about this subject, but not bad for someone ignorant about the subject like me. It was free! The bibliography lists some books to follow up on, for more depth.

I've been asked why I never do drugs or drink. It relaxes, everybody does it, don't you want to fit in, are you a narc...I used to try to excuse myself by saying that I was afraid I would turn out to be an angry drunk/stoner and then everybody would suffer when I used my kung fu (that I learned by watching kung fu movies). This book gives a better explanation, when it quoted Alpert's Indian guru - these highs can allow you "to visit the consciousness of a saint but won't let you stay there" (pg. 152). Why go for the temporary artificial when you can work on the permanent reality, whether it's a spiritual path or just general happiness or something else. I'm not preaching abstinence, just that I choose no for my own self (plus I'm idiotic enough w/o chemical enhancement). And I bet I could kill with my little finger when drunk. I keep sober for everyone else's good.

[Shirly · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's funny, something about Andrew Weil always repelled me. If this journalist is to be believed, at all, there's good reason for it. He is an ambitious, conniving RAT in the ugliest sense of the word. His being a rat may have been related to the fact that he was the fat (but equally smart and probably more talented) kid who was rejected, while the pretty boys got to join the party, which is something for our culture to consider.

It always interests me how "Harvard Men," for example, think that they're the first to understand the potential implications of practices that have been in place for as long as human history has been recorded. "We" have discovered the possibility of human transformation.

John Lennon got the irony that he was reported to be more influential than Jesus.

I'm also enjoying that Lattin isn't afraid to dabble in the most extreme conspiracy theorists' accusations (JFK was shot because he was getting acid from an heiress via Leary and was "learning too much.") As good a theory as any.

Too few are the humorous insights into Leary & Ram Dass getting a hold of their CIA files after the Freedom of Information Act (I'm guessing that has been repealed, not officially, but de facto, by the Dept of Homeland Security, which is having so much fun observing my neighbors, "the Moroccan barber is cutting hair. The Moroccan barber then crosses the street and has coffee which is made by the Egyptian who owns the Egyptian coffee shop," as reported by CBS News. (they have tapes!) But there is a good bit about the parallels between G. Gordon Liddy & Leary. Ultimately, who was the criminal?

But isn't it amazing, that a few guys (the girls were there because their trust funds paid the way), introduced the mainstream West to the ideas of altered consciousness about the time I was born. When I was in elementary school, another Harvard Man figured out that this meditation bit, (which the psilocybin crowd came upon through their research), really IS good for you in a way that IS measurable via Western scientific methods, and indirectly the 1960's "drug culture" opened the doors to the West's gradual understanding that while medical technology can be miraculous, so can our ability to heal ourselves, given the appropriate tools and support and education. Ideas understood in the East through countless generations of experiential learning.

"Turn on, tune in and drop out" may have been a terrifying and controversial statement, but how wonderfully provocative. Especially if considered from this millennium by those of us who grew up hearing this mantra at the same time we learned "Twinkle, twinkle, little star." How appropriate these words are without any reference to drugs: illegal, prescribed or from the corner store. Turn on, tune in and drop out would fit easily into the books I've been reading by Buddhist monks, or the columnist for the NYT, or the trendy yoga stylists at the big festivals.

I'm old enough to have dropped acid at Grateful Dead shows, and I find the fact that, now, these events are about "yoga" ironic. Same model, some of the same people, but now an Andrew Weil-style money making machine is the goal, and it has become as conformist as an LA TV programmer. "Well, how about if the "X-games met yoga? Then we could really make some money."

I was interested that a gentleman I met at Kripalu years ago, who told me that one of the worst things he'd ever done was to introduce Timothy Leary to LSD, did quietly appear in the book. While not quoted directly, and no one was identified as having been the person who gave the psilocybin king his first acid, I did find my own little private trip to transcendence reference in there.

It would seem that this book was written in installments for a periodical. The author so often repeats himself from chapter to chapter that it appears there were different editors for each chapter. This didn't bother me as I tend to gloss over the details and have to go back and reread earlier references, but I would imagine this frequent repetition would drive some readers crazy. It also interested me that he felt the need to add an almost confessional afterward about his own drug experimentation. It was implied by his bio. Those of us who know, knew. Those who don't, wouldn't be reading this book.

[Marvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The definitive book of the psychedelic movement of the 60s has yet to be written. Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test comes awfully close. But while it succeeds in capturing the mood and times, it doesn't give you a sense of where the movement came from and where it went. The best book as yet to get that information may be The Harvard Psychedelic Club. Don Lattin focuses on four of the most important personages of the time and how their involvement defined the 60s. He describes the roles quite accurately as The Trickster (Timothy Leary), The Seeker (Richard Alpert aka Ram Dass), The Teacher (Huston Smith) and The Healer (Andrew Weil). Lattin, again quite accurately, comes from the assumption that these men and their idea changed the way we look at the world. Whether you see these men as villains or heroes, or something in the middle as Lattin does, the world from the 60s on was never the same. The author never vilifies or idolizes these men but portrays them in their humanness complete with betrayals and backstabbing as well as idealism and vision. Lattin captures the time quite well but his real gift is showing not only where these amazing ideals sprung out of the 50s but also how these four men's call to action was transient and flawed yet introduced to a generation certain truths that transforms our reality even today.

[Jessaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book because I wanted to learn more about Richard Albert aka ROM Dos. I found that this book was exactly what I wanted to know. Richard Albert was a psychology professor at Harvard, and he and Timothy Leary started giving graduate students LSD. This led to a whole generation of LSD users. I really do not know if people are still taking LSD but Richard Albert does not recommend it because it can cause psychosis. Also, the mystical experiences are not that lasting and they did not have the same effect on people as a true mystical experience.
When I lived in Berkeley, I tried one magic mushroom, and the trip was interesting, but I would say it was spiritual and not mystical. I also saw God in this vision, but I always knew that it was not real. Now I learned that LSD is the synthetic form of mushrooms so I can say I took LSD once big deal.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the content of The Harvard Psychedelic Club was certainly intriguing, Lattin made poor use of his resource material and produced a mess of a book. A generous portion of text is invented dialogue and Lattin seems undecided about whether he is writing a history of 60's counertculture or a chatty biography of Timothy Learly and his fellow participants. One feels as if Lattin originally planned to write a much longer book, produced 250 pages of notes and bibliography, then decided he was approaching deadline and promptly wrote a concluding chapter and sent the manuscript in unedited. The result is a poorly plotted book that jumps forward and backward in time as it attempts to follow the interconnected lives of several of the big names of the 1960's drug and social countertculture; Timothy Leary, Andrew Weil, Ram Das and Huston Smith.

What does emerge is Lattin's consuming interest in Leary, who was himself obsessed initially with the effects of psychedelics on the mind and society, and later on with the Cult of Leary. Leary dominates the material, despite Lattin's personal interviews with Ram Das and Andrew Weil. Huston Smith, the most interesting figure in the book to my mind, receives scant attention. Lattin attributes much of the development of sixties counterculture to Leary, conveniently leaving out such large factors as the effects of popular music outside the San Francisco/Height Ashbury scene and the effects of the Civil Rights movement.

What got the undivided attention of this reader was the administration of psychedelics to faculty and graduate students being incorporated into the curriculum of the Harvard Department of Psychology. Ironically, Leary, LSD's biggest cheerleader, hastened the banning of LSD, not yet illegal at the time of the Harvard experiments, by his escalating antics.

His conclusion as far as I can tell is the question, "What happens after the ecstacy?" My answer would be to take it up with Huston Smith, whose psychedelic experiences allowed him to expand his spiritual life and provided some insight into the mysticism he was studying.

Despite its many shortcomings the book was interesting, especially the revelation that at the same time Leary & Co. was tripping at Harvard the CIA was experimenting on US troops. I would recommend this book to anyone with the patience to read what might have made a decent Rolling Stone article but turned out to be a book-length run-on sentence.

[Brendan]

Overall, this book provides a decent introduction to the story of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert's involvement with LSD and other psychedelic drugs. If you haven't read any other book on Leary, Alpert, LSD or psychedelic drugs, this would provide a relatively solid and accurate introduction to the topic. However, I do have quite a few complaints with the book itself. First and foremost, the inclusion of Andrew Weil and Huston Smith to the cast of main characters adds little to the story. Andrew Weil's main role in the narrative development seems to center around the fact that, after being the main cause behind Leary and Alpert's dismissal from Harvard, he realized the error of his ways. This hardly, in my opinion, gains him entry into the so-called "Harvard Psychedelic Club." I feel the same about Huston Smith's role in the story. Plenty of famous intellectuals, such as Aldous Huxley and Allen Ginsberg, were just as involved in Leary and Alpert's experiments at Harvard as Smith seemed to be, yet are only afforded very brief mentions in the text. That Smith was a member of the "club" and these people were not seems to be nothing more than a completely arbitrary decision on the part of the author. This, combined with a few informational errors (Bernadine Dohrn, not Bernadette Dohrn being the most glaring error that even the most menial of fact-checkers could have fixed) leaves me feeling not-so-great about this book. For a most basic introduction to the world of psychedelics, this is a perfectly fine and relatively entertaining introduction, but if you'd like a more detailed history, I recommend reading both Acid Dreams and STorming Heaven.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subtitle of this book is especially revealing; "How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America"....

That about sums up the thesis of the book. I was familiar with Ram Dass(Richard Alpert) and Tim Leary, but I was unfamiliar with Weil and Smith's role in this historical change in America's consciousness. Timothy Leary is "The Trickster". He even said that one gets, "The Timothy Leary that one deserves". He was both liar and extreme truth teller, and it kind of depends on the 'prism of the viewer' as to how one sees this interesting and confounding character. Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) was the son of wealth and power and he became the 'Religious Seeker' of the bunch. A closeted bisexual, and kind of a curmudgeon especially as he got older, he helped to promote the various Eastern Theories that became so prevalent in the decades to follow. Huston Smith was The Teacher. This man was a life-long student of religious thought, and became a prolific author who profiled the world's major religions, and in the 50's he even had a show on TV about basic concepts in Eastern Thought. And, finally, there is Andrew Weil. He was a ring leader of a conspiracy to have Leary and Alpert ousted from Harvard for their drug experiments on the Harvard campus in 1962. Weil was working for The Crimson, and broke a story about their experiments to expand human consciousness by using psychedelic drugs. What Weil failed to mention in his article, is that he too was part of the nefarious'drug ring/conscious expansion plot'. I don't think that Alpert ever really forgot or forgave Andrew Weil. However, Weil went on to become one of the most notable health, diet, food, and aging experts in the country, and, many years later, he was also a proponent for drug reform. The book was very even-handed, and presented a balanced and fair depiction of these men, and I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in this particularly volatile time in American history. I especially loved the presentation of Leary and Alpert's, 'Good Friday Experiment' of 1962 with the divinity students on the Harvard campus. Twenty students, and ten got the LSD, and ten got a kind of 'speedy' placebo. However, within an hour, it was completely obvious who got the 'real' stuff. And, all during the experiment, they were downstairs in the chapel basement listening to the Easter church service which was going on upstairs. Wild....

[Mariah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing! Wow I would definitely put this in my top 10 books of 2019. I loved how even though it was rather biographical it read almost like a fiction. It was entertaining yet provoked thoughtful questions about psychedelics. I found it really interesting how the journeys for both Alpert and Leary differed as they both began the same way. I would recommend this book for anyone who is interested in “the sixties,” counter-culture, or psychedelics. It’s a good intro book into the topics, and it takes note of many prominent books that relate.

[Bob Schnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don Lattin presents us with the story of the early days of psychedelic research as seen through the lens of the Harvard Psilocybin Project conducted by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass). Also there were Huston Smith who became an internationally renowned expert on world religions and Andrew Weil who came to fame promoting homeopathic medicine and herbal supplements. Individually and as a group, these pioneers helped to usher in the social and political sea change known as The Sixties.

"The Harvard Psychedelic Club" is not a long book and it covers a lot of territory. Each person's career is followed up to the new Millennium, showcasing highlights and turning points in their lives. However, it is an excellent introduction to the topic of mind-altering drugs and the role they played in bringing the world out of the industrial/atomic age into the Age of Aquarius and even the digital boom that followed. There is an extensive bibliography for those who want to dig deeper.

[Dr. Tobias Christian Fischer · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting Revolution that is described of four researchers trying to expand their knowledge by taking drugs. Well-described and well-documented. Interesting read. #blinkist

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Don Lattin discusses the impact that key participants in the 1950's Harvard LSD studies had on today's culture through four biographies. He shows how the lives of each of the four intersected and how each followed his respective passion.

New ideas on nutrition and medical treatment advanced by Andrew Weil and perspectives on religion advanced by Huston Smith and Richard Alpert/Ram Das, once considered unorthodox are now mainstream. The most famous participant of them all, Timothy Leary, was a "Trickster" bringing only trouble for himself and a backlash against the drug he was promoting.

The story of LSD research starting with the CIA (the Unabomber was a participant!) to the famous Leary/Alpert tests was fascinating, as was the story of the termination of the study and its two professors. Their immediate lives after Harvard were period pieces, and somehow, though few people lived this sort of life, are considered emblematic of the 60's.

Besides the commonly identified Leary circle (Ginzberg, Burroughs, etc,) interesting to me was the variety of "household names" that flew into the Leary orbit: E Gordon Liddy, Aldous Huxley, Uma Thurmon (could she be called a step daughter?) Harry Winston (through his son Ronnie), Maynard Ferguson (name kept popping up), Bill W (founder of AA), Eldrige Cleaver, Bill Ayers (now again famous via Fox News) and (mystery woman) Mary Pinchot Meyer.

A small point, for a book with a generally smooth read, was the interchangeable use of first and last names. This works for those in the title, (i.e. sometimes it's Huston, sometimes Smith) but for those who have small "parts" it interfered with the read, since I had to flip back.

While this is a good book and each of the men profiled achieved, I don't buy the thesis about the depth of their impact. While each made a mark, there was a lot going on. The old ways of thinking were severely challenged by the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and later the Women's Movement. These forced changes in thinking that have influenced everything including health and religion far beyond any impact of these four men. For instance, while I can't prove it, I think that the very publication in of "Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth with its straight talk on birth control, childbirth and menopause" was far more influential in changing the thinking/practice of medicine than any of the natural food/healing advocates. While, for me, the thesis was weak, the book the book was an interesting read.

For an excellent book on the impact of the 60's I recommend: "The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy"

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable read about culture, competition and experiences of radical-non-duality. Some of these things are easier to write about than others - to paraphrase a music critic's truism, writing about mysticism is like dancing about architecture. I would've loved more time with Huston Smith, and a little less with Leary. What can I say - that guy just gives me the creeps. Clearly, he was the most wrapped up in psychedelic culture, and it was interesting to find out about his time on the run, and the oil money that funded his glass bead game. Still, I was hoping for a little more of an ensemble film, especially since Lattin didn't interview the late, great drop-out for the book.

Some of the narrative jumps were puzzling, and I got the sense that Lattin was trying too hard in some sections to draw parallels between the men's paths. Still, I appreciate his efforts here to create not a report but a story, even one that can't help but feel a little reductive. Giving the four scholars titles was an interesting choice - it rubbed me the wrong way at first, but, as the book went on, I understood his logic. Trickster, Healer, Teacher and Seeker make for a sort of psychedelic morality play that, in the end, taught me a thing or two about my own inner archetypes.

[Bert Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

As readers we often discover books by reading reviews, on line blogs, referenced by other writers or recommended by friends. This book, The Harvard Pyschedelic Club, I discovered while reading the New York Times recent obituary marking the death of Baba Ram Dass, a spritual and cultural figure I had followed and been inspired by for many years. First known as Richard Alpert, a bright and ambitious student of psychology he gained initial reknown as Timothy Leary's partner in extensive reasearch of hallucinogenic drugs in the early 1960s at Harvard University.

Don Lattin, a writer and journalist, has written a fascinating often wild, funny account of those times. Leary and Alpert became major cultural figures who helped foster a revolution which could easily be described as expanding consciousness.

At the time they started their research and experiements two other key figures, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil, were also on the Harvard Campus and became key players in the ongoing story. Huston Smith was a famous eduactor whose book, The Religions of Man, sold millions of copies and became a key text for thousands of college students. His initial interest in spiritual experience via hallucinogenics came about through his association with Aldous Huxley and Bill Wilson (the founder of AA). Andrew Weil at that time was a Harvard premed student whose undergraduate status prohibited his participation and his disappointment led to his spreading stories that resulted in Leary and Alpert's being fired from the university. As Weil progressed through his own education and development he tried to understand his guilt and attempted to make amends. That he became a leading figure in the connection between body and mind, alternative and integrative medicine can be viewed as ironic and illuminating.

Many other famous people populate the book as it chronicles those times of discovery and cultural upheaval: Allen Ginsberg, John Lennon, Keith Richards, Eldridge Cleaver, Alan Watts, Maynard Ferguson, The Grateful Dead all interacted with Timothy Leary and Baba Ram Dass.

The book is filled with unique insights and stories: John Lennon's, "Come Together", written after Tim Leary visited he and Yoko at their Peace bed protest in Toronto- at the time Leary was engaged in a quixotic run to be Governor of California.

All four men: Leary ("The Trickster"), Alpert, ("The Seeker"), Smith ("The Teacher") and Weil ("The Healer") are given full examination. That these key important figures were so entwined reminds one of other groups of artists, creators and scientists who come together to create a special time and leave indelible marks on history.

[Dane Cobain · Rating 4 out of 5]

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

[Phil Cotnoir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lattin tells the compelling story of four pioneering figures who shaped not only the 60s counterculture movement but also American society since then. Their lives were, on the whole, chaotic. Their relationships? Enlightened and harmonious, of course, glowing with the unity that psychedelic revelations of universal oneness has enshrined in their souls. Actually, not quite. Their relationships were fractious and troubled; all too human.

The book is well written and researched, with copious insights and quotes coming from Lattin's own interviews with the subjects of the book. Lattin's journalistic prose is very easy and pleasant to read. And although he puts his cards on the table in the Afterword--as a baby boomer former psychonaut still quite positive on psychedelics--I always got the sense he was playing it fair with his portrayals of people and events.

In a time when pro-psychedelic writing often has a strong bias driven by a sense of mission to advance the cause, this book was not at all like that. It helped me tremendously to understand the 60s better.

I can remember being asked a question about the Good Friday experiment and Timothy Leary and barely being able to cobble together two coherent sentences in response. What I've learned from this book has left me much better informed and prepared to answer that kind of question.

[Lucas Sierra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Documentos e invitaciones (Comentario, 2025)

No sabía nada, absolutamente nada, de esta historia, así que aquí encontré una gran manera de acercarme a ella. Al comienzo creí, porque la introducción tiene un par de momentos grandiosos, que el tono iba a ser más literario (¿qué carajos quiero decir con eso?), pero en realidad fluye con un buen tono divulgativo, expositivo al máximo, documental. Se deja leer sin sobresaltos, eso es tan bueno como es malo, pero asumo que cumple su propósito.

Ahora, lo que sí, es que saqué un puñado de invitaciones a otras obras que espero pronto poder tener en mi baúl de pendientes (que es un clóset, y un cajón del escritorio, y un cajón de una cristalera): las dichosas puertas de Huxley, y las religiones del mundo, y el manual de uso de psicodélicos, y un buen montón de otros textos que van más o menos sobre la misma pregunta trascendental con variaciones.

¿Acaso mis treinta y cinco años activaron la pregunta teológica? ¿Dejé de tenerla en algún momento? ¿Deja alguien de tenerla? Animalito trascendental que soy, quizás de ahí mi gusto por la lectura, quizás de ahí esta compulsión de escribir. Palabras, palabras, palabras. No en vano cuando las ponemos una tras otra en español las llamamos oraciones.

[David Harestad · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best things, promoted by some of the worst people, catalyzing the war on drugs.

"We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.” -Hunter S.Thompson

[Peacegal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well everybody's dancin' in a ring around the sun
Nobody's finished, we ain't even begun.
So take off your shoes, child, and take off your hat.
Try on your wings and find out where it's at.
Hey hey, hey, come right away
Come and join the pa-aaa-arty ev-er-y day!
-The Grateful Dead, "The Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion"

This was a weird, cool, and enlightening trip back to the dawn of the 1960s counterculture and the very different paths taken by four of its well-known personalities. I enjoyed the name-dropping of so many musicians and personalities of the era as they crossed paths with "the Harvard psychedelic club."
The aftermath of Leary et. al.'s quest to remake society, ranging from positive to downright ugly, is also explored here--including its effects of the author himself.
All in all, CLUB is a fun and informational book that will be greatly enjoyed by fans of this time in history.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers a very different perspective on the birth of the psychedelic era in contrast to other more famous offerings. Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Hunter Thompson's Hell Angels, Dennis McNally's writings about the Grateful Dead, autobiographies by Bill Graham, Ken Kesey, Peter Coyote and other accounts focus on the social components - the Hippies, Haight Ashbury, Be-Ins, the Acid Tests. But The Harvard Psychedelic Project traces the academic roots of hallucinogenic drugs in the careers of Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Andrew Weil and Huston Smith. The clinical drug tests in the early 60s at Harvard, the early findings of the above academics, the religious implications and the studies of potential benefits of drug therapies for alcoholism, incarceration and rehabilitation harken back to a more innocent era. One is reminded that LSD, mescaline and psilocybin used to be legal. Lattin assigns names and identities to each of the players - The Seeker, The Trickster, The Teacher. He traces the trajectories of each figure, how they intermingled, what drove them apart and how they ended up. Interesting details surface about each individual. The sole survivor (at least as of this writing) has become a very prosperous advocate of organic living and alternative medicine. The recent surge of interest in the potential benefits of psychedelic drugs in the wake of widespread cannabis legalization makes this book a very relevant and interesting read.

[Bogi Takács]

Fascinating while disillusioning! A lot of 20th century historical figures come across as jerks. Even though the book was based on interviews with many of them, and I guess they were at least semi-OK with the content...

I would have enjoyed it more if it had fewer jumps back in time sometimes right in the middle of chapters. I think the author was doing this to tie the parallel life stories together, e.g., to talk about everyone's travels to non-Western countries at the same time. But it made the story quite confusing in places, for me at least. Not everything needs to be plotted like a RPG storyline (see also naming characters like Andrew Weil = "the Healer", Timothy Leary = "the Trickster" etc. :/ ).

Source of the book: Bought with my own money (KU bookstore 75% sale)

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful read. Informative and entertaining, this book will have you turning page after page as you find yourself learning about the men discussed as well as topics ranging from LSD to religious transcendental experiences. Would highly recommend

[Brett Barker · Rating 4 out of 5]

The narrative wandered about at times (a propos I suppose), but overall a fascinating read. I knew many of the individual parts in this book, but I had never known the connections between all of of those parts, and had never heard the Andrew Weil part previously. A very enjoyable read.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let us not make similar mistakes now that psychedelics are making a comeback in the vest again.They are certainly not for everyone and they do not 'solve' life.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 3 out of 5]

The real title of this book is a long one: 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. It's a good book if you're into this sort of thing, easily readable and it raises a lot of questions for further exploration.

Lattin's central thesis is that these four men, "three brilliant scholars and one ambitious freshman," who were all together at Harvard University in the early 1960s, were able to transform not only their own lives but much of American culture as well, stemming from their involvement (or in one case, non-involvement) in a psychedelic drug research project started by Timothy Leary. He notes that these people, collectively the Harvard Psychedelic club, "each in his own way" led Americans to think about themselves from an inner point of view regarding mind, body and spirit. And it all started in 1960, when Leary, on a summer vacation in Mexico with his son Jack, tried some psilocybin mushrooms known as "flesh of the gods" along with a bottle of beer.

The book goes on to sketch out the lives of these four men and their involvement with Leary and his mind-expanding research. Timothy Leary, whose slogan "turn on, tune in, drop out" would become a catchphrase for the counterculture movement of the 1960s, was a Harvard professor of psychology in 1960. Along with Richard Alpert, who had a PhD in psychology and did research into human consciousness (and who later went to India and was reborn as Ram Dass), he started the Harvard Psilocybin Project (which ultimately became the "Harvard Psychedelic Project as mescaline & LSD were introduced) at the university's Center for Personality Research, where participants would take controlled doses and report their experiences. Huston Smith (author of The World's Religions) was a friend and admirer of Aldous Huxley, whose mystical experiences with mescaline became the basis of his famous work The Doors of Perception. Smith met Leary through Huxley, and was talked into taking part in the psilocybin project because Leary wanted someone who knew "something about mysticism" and religion to experience the drug and then analyze the reports in terms of the mystical. The fourth member of the group, Andrew Weil, a student (now a well-known advocate of alternative medicine & wellness), tried to get involved in the Psychedelic Project by the time LSD was drug of choice in mind-expansion research, but was turned down due to his undergraduate status. Weil's roommate was befriended by Alpert and let into the program, and in revenge, Weil became a whistle blower and basically shut down the project and got Leary and Alpert ousted from Harvard. That's when everything really started, and when LSD and Leary started making their way out into the public, away from the confines of the ivied halls.

Lattin quickly traces these four people from their beginnings through the whole hippie and counterculture movement on into the present, and his book makes for really interesting reading for many reasons, not just because of the whole drug thing. Now here come the buts:
1)I'm still not sure why Huston Smith is included as a major player as a member of the Harvard Psychedelic Club. He did have some early involvement in the psilocybin project, but wasn't so much known for his advocacy of mind-altering drugs but for interfaith understanding as a step toward peace in the world. Huston had actually begun to slowly disassociate himself from Leary some time later.
2) There were already movements afoot for changes away from the status quo going on already in the 1950s leading into the 1960s: poets and writers were already taking steps in moving toward nonconformity, the civil rights movement was already drawing young college students into action, and Jack Kerouac and other members of the beat movement were looking for something new within themselves, urging others to follow. It doesn't seem just that Lattin would place Leary's ideas of consciousness expansion through the use of mind-altering drugs as the cornerstone of change from the 1950s to the 1960s.
3) While I understand that the author would have to interject some of Leary's autobiographical material into his work, my guess is that some of the information gleaned from it was probably fabricated or at the very least, ramblings from a disturbed mind. Leary was probably so far gone in 1983 by the time the autobiography came out that it would be difficult to trust a lot of what he said. Let's just say he may be an unreliable narrator at some times.

Lattin's book on the whole is interesting, and it's a good read if you're interested in the psychedelic revolution and its proponents in the 1960s and the whole counterculture that existed and grew at the time. A lot of space is also given over to what happened as these people moved on in life as attitudes changed. It is an extremely readable book and made me want to explore this time period a bit further, and any author that can pique my curiosity like that is okay by me.

[Ümit · Rating 5 out of 5]

A different perspective for the LSD revolution.

[Jung · Rating 5 out of 5]

An entertaining story at the heart of consciousness and counterculture.

As America entered the 1960s, societal values were shifting. Young adults were growing tired of the conformity of the 1950s and the paranoia of the Cold War. New, more modern values were creeping in. Optimism, experimentation, innovation were becoming the guiding principles of the next generation.

At Harvard University, a group of professors and students embraced these values wholeheartedly as they set out to test the unknown effects of mind-altering substances like psilocybin and LSD. The group was led by two professors, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, who were joined by Huston Smith, a religion studies professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On the outside was a Harvard undergrad, Andrew Weil, who had ambitions of his own.

This is the story of how they met, and the very different impacts they had on the topic of spiritual enlightenment and consciousness expansion.

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A Meeting of the Minds at Harvard University

In some ways Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were alike. They were both born in Massachusetts, and they both earned doctorates in psychology that led them to becoming Harvard University professors. But in other, very crucial ways, they were also quite different.

Alpert was a sexually conflicted young man from an upper class Jewish background. His father wanted him to be a doctor, but Alpert was always drawn to psychology. While he struggled academically for a while, he eventually pulled himself together and got accepted into a doctorate program at Stanford University. This was around 1958, and given the university’s close proximity to San Francisco, Alpert was introduced to the nascent counterculture scene and its drug of choice at the time, marijuana.

Not long afterward, Alpert got a job working at a new program at Harvard University called the Center for Personality Research – part of the school’s Department of Social Relations. The man who got Alpert that job, David McClelland, was also the man who brought Timothy Leary to Harvard.

Leary was born into a chaotic, alcoholic family. After being accepted into the West Point military academy, his own drinking nearly got him kicked out. He managed to get an honorable discharge from the Army before he immersed himself in the field of psychology, eventually earning a doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley in 1950.

For a while, Leary settled into a job at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, California and produced a well-respected book in 1957 called The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality. Leary’s star was on the rise, but at the same time his personal life was in tatters.

His first wife committed suicide in 1955 and, after publishing his book, he took his kids to Europe in 1958. They ended up in Florence, but Leary was on the verge of becoming penniless when, in a stroke of luck, he was introduced to David McClelland, who just happened to be vacationing in Italy at the time. McClelland had read Leary’s book and thought he would be a fantastic addition to the team at Harvard’s Center for Personality Research.

This is how, in the fall of 1959, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert came to be colleagues at Harvard, working out of a drafty old mansion in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

However, before Leary had left Italy, an old friend from UC Berkeley had stopped by and told him about an amazing experience he had after taking “magic mushrooms” in Mexico. Leary was skeptical, but in the summer of 1960, he traveled to Mexico to find out for himself.

Sure enough, his friend wasn't exaggerating. After taking the mushrooms, Leary went on an expansive journey. Around him were undulating, swirling plants, bejeweled caverns, temples and flaming emeralds. It was life-changing. He came back to Harvard and immediately pushed for McClellan to start up a new research project on the potential for these mushrooms – or, more precisely, the active ingredient: psilocybin.

A few months afterward, Alpert had his first trip, and he too was amazed by the existential experience. He saw different versions of himself made manifest before him. There was also a moment where he left his body, looked down on himself sitting on the couch, and felt some serious existential panic. But then, the fear turned to compassion and joy, and he felt, for the first time, as though he knew his true soul. He finally understood who he was. Alpert then ran out of Leary’s house and danced blissfully in the snow.

It was the winter of 1960 when Alpert had this initial experience. By that time, Leary had already brought in some others, including the poet Allen Ginsberg, his friend, the writer William S. Burroughs, and the jazz musician Maynard Ferguson.

But there was one other important figure on board in those early days: Huston Smith, a professor from the neighboring college, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Smith was on his own unique journey as well. He was born in China to parents who were Methodist missionaries. But despite his strict religious upbringing he had an insatiably curious mind. In the 1950s, he became one of the pioneering figures in the field of comparative religion. His 1958 book The World’s Religions quickly became a fundamental text for courses on religious studies. He even hosted a series of popular television shows in the mid-to-late 50s.

Smith was also friends with Aldous Huxley, a popular British writer and philosopher whose research on theology and mysticism was a big influence on Smith. In 1954, Huxley would publish The Doors of Perception, a book that chronicled his own experiments with the psychedelic drug mescaline, and which served as a touchstone for just about everyone involved in the Harvard experiments.

Smith told Huxley about his interest in having the kind of drug-induced spiritual experience that the author had written about. Huxley told Smith that he should get in touch with Leary. After all, he was working right down the street from MIT.

Smith did just that. And when he took the psilocybin pill, he found the kind of awe-inspiring, enlightening experience he was looking for. So he quickly signed up to become a third leader in the project over the next few years.

For now, Smith, Leary and Alpert were more or less on the same page when it came to their views on how these drugs could potentially benefit society – in the realm of psychology, spirituality, or both. But as we’ll see in the next sections, these views would soon diverge.

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Professors No More

In 1960, Leary and Alpert’s psilocybin project was given the go-ahead by Harvard administration. All research subjects who took the drug were expected to write a two- or three-page detailed report describing their experience. There was an important stipulation however: undergraduate students could not be used as test subjects.

This caveat would essentially lead to Leary and Alpert’s downfall. And it would be due in large part to the actions of one jealous undergrad named Andrew Weil.

Like Smith, Weil had also traveled around the world, experienced different cultures, and was deeply influenced by the writing of Aldous Huxley. When he arrived as an undergrad at Harvard in 1960, he asked his sociology professor about the possibility of writing a paper about American society’s attitudes towards mind-altering drugs. The professor steered Weil towards the school’s Center for Personality Research.

Weil visited the Center with his friend, Ronnie Winston, and they asked Leary about the possibility of becoming subjects for the research program. Both of them were quickly informed that no undergrads were allowed. Weil also tried to approach Alpert on a different occasion but was given the same answer: sorry, but no.

Weil was determined, however. So, he and Winston went ahead and launched their own research project. Using some Harvard stationary, Weil was able to get a drug manufacturer to supply him with doses of mescaline. Soon, Weil and Winston were operating their own undergraduate version of Leary and Alpert’s research program.

But then, as time went on, Weil noticed how his friend Winston had been granted access into Richard Alpert’s social circle. Outside of school settings, the two had begun to hang out. Alpert even took Winston for a ride in his private plane. Perhaps worst of all, as a token of his friendship, Alpert had given Winston some psilocybin. Weil felt hurt and betrayed.

In 1963, Weil’s jealousy finally got the better of him. While researching an article for the Harvard Crimson about the program, Weil accused Alpert of giving drugs to undergrad students. Weil’s witness to corroborate this allegation? His old friend Ronnie Winston. Even though Winston told the university dean that taking the drug was the most educational experience he had at the school, both Alpert and Leary ended up being fired.

To be fair, in the years that followed, Weil did feel guilty about what he’d done. But Alpert never forgave him.

Oddly enough though, taking Leary and Alpert out of the confines of Harvard didn’t exactly hurt their careers. In fact, it was going to make them more famous than ever.

-

Going their Separate Ways

Officially, only Richard Alpert was fired over the “drug scandal” at Harvard. Timothy Leary was fired for “leaving Cambridge and his classes without permission.” In some ways Leary had already moved on. By the summer of 1963 he was back in Mexico and shifting his attention to LSD.

LSD had actually been discovered back in April 1944, at Sandoz Labs in Switzerland. It took some time before LSD became more well known in the States, even though the CIA funded research on LSD at Harvard University in the 1950s. It wasn’t until 1961 that Leary took his first dose. And given how little it takes to produce a powerful effect (it’s two to three thousand times stronger than mescaline), LSD became the drug of choice when Leary and Alpert decided to continue their experiments after leaving Harvard in 1963.

Fortunately, the two former professors never had a shortage of friends like Peggy Hitchcock, who was an heiress to the Gulf Oil fortune. With Hitchcock’s help, Leary and Alpert were able to relocate to Millbrook, in upstate New York, where an old mansion provided an ideal location for what would become a psychedelic compound, packed full of friends, associates, and hangers-on. But this would be where Leary and Alpert would part ways.

Alpert was finding diminishing returns in his experiments with LSD. After pushing the boundaries he discovered that one's tolerance could simply go up. Maybe there was a limit. Maybe taking more didn’t expand your mind any further. In fact, after Alpert and a group of friends took megadoses of LSD every four hours for two weeks, the group just turned bitter and angry toward one another.

Indeed, Leary was turning on Alpert – taking issue with his homosexuality, and accusing him of trying to seduce his teenage son. Alpert was hurt. He knew he was a better parent to Leary’s children than Leary was himself. The two former professors ended up parting ways in 1965.

Over the next few years, Leary only became more vocal in his proselytizing for the general use of LSD, and he gained a lot of media attention in the process. He made headlines when he famously told a generation to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” Meanwhile, Alpert went on his own speaking tour and advised a more temperate and responsible approach.

As for Huston Smith, after leaving the Harvard project he worked on a paper called “The Religious Significance of Artificially Induced Religious Experience.” He delivered this paper at a 1966 academic conference in Marin County, California – located just across the bay from San Francisco. When Smith arrived, he was shocked to see what was the beginning of the hippy movement. The so-called Summer of Love was just around the corner. At the time, LSD was still legal, but a negative public perception was already taking hold in the mainstream. The drug was considered a dangerous threat to society and in a matter of months it would be outlawed in California, with the federal ban happening two years after that.

But at the conference, The Grateful Dead played, and LSD was being handed out like free candy. Still, Smith was there to tell the crowd what he learned: that drugs like LSD could indeed lead to feelings of euphoria and spiritual bliss. But there was little evidence that these sensations would last once the drug wore off.

In a way, Smith’s findings were close to Alpert’s. Richard was feeling burned out and ready to look elsewhere for more lasting enlightenment. So, in 1967, he traveled to India and had a chance encounter with a guru known as Maharaji. It was another life changing experience for Alpert, but this time it would be a name-changing experience as well. Alpert stayed with the Maharaji for eight months and returned to the US as Ram Dass, a name that translates to “servant of God.”

In his new incarnation, Ram Dass would become a guru himself. In 1971 he published a bestselling book called Be Here Now and it led to millions of Americans gaining an interest in yoga and Eastern spirituality.

Andrew Weil also had a major impact on American minds. After getting his degree from Harvard Medical School, Weil floundered for a while before gravitating back toward his first love: botany. He traveled, explored, spoke with healers from other cultures, and proceeded to write a series of holistic health books, many of which became bestsellers.

By the 1990s, Dr. Weil was a national brand. Books like Spontaneous Healing gained him the attention of Oprah and other media spotlights. Eventually, Weil established an online empire of vitamins, organic face cleansers, nut bars, juicers and even frying pans.

As for Timothy Leary, in 1968 he was arrested for possession of marijuana and sentenced to jail time at minimum security prison. Leary escaped, got a fake passport under the new name of “William McNellis.” He then flew to Algeria, where he spent some time with the Black Panthers, before moving on to the neutral zone of Switzerland.

Things in Switzerland were anything but idyllic. Leary had little money and was being pressured to write his memoirs. At the same time, The Rolling Stones were recording their album Exile on Main St. in Switzerland, and Leary fell into a debilitating heroin habit while hanging out with the musicians. This, in addition to his steady diet of LSD, cocaine, Quaaludes and marijuana.

While the Swiss government wouldn’t extradite Leary to the States, they didn’t want him to stay, either. So the wanted man was forced to travel to other countries, resulting in his getting kidnapped by US authorities in Afghanistan. Despite his prodigious drug intake, Leary still scored a genius level on his IQ test when he was brought to trial in 1973. But he lost a lot of friends when he decided to become an FBI informant in order to avoid more serious jail time.

He officially joined the Federal Witness Protection Program in 1976. Years later, he would emerge now and then to try and rekindle some of his former notoriety, even joining Ram Dass on stage for some speaking engagements in the eighties. In 1995, he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, and he passed away the following year.

In 1964, Leary and Alpert co-authored a book called The Psychedelic Experience, which laid some of the ground rules for taking psychedelic drugs, such as finding a peaceful environment, and only having trusted friends around. As Aldous Huxley wrote back in 1954, these drugs can show you either heaven or hell. They can bring out your best or your worst. Each member of the Harvard experiments found this out in their own way. Psychedelics didn’t provide a simple answer or a shortcut to enlightenment, but they did reveal a whole new life-affirming and life-changing reality that none of them would ever forget.

-

Four unique individuals were brought together at Harvard University at the start of the 1960s. While they were united in their shared interest in the consciousness-expanding potential of psychedelic drugs, they each went their own way after their research at Harvard was abruptly ended. Timothy Leary became an outspoken advocate for the broad use of LSD. Richard Alpert became Ram Dass and turned millions on to Eastern spiritualism. Huston Smith became convinced that psychedelic drugs could only have a fleeting spiritual effect on people. And Andrew Weill went on to become a popular holistic health guru.

[Jack Barnett · Rating 4 out of 5]

"That would not stop the research nor would it stop the party."
For as much good as they did, these guys probably stuffed drug research for 20-40 years. Seemed they were more interested in getting rekt than the actual science of it.
Well written and researched, very interesting.

[Carlo Leroux · Rating 5 out of 5]

in another universe where we existed in the late 60s this definitely happened to me and Drake. i have no doubt in my mind that we’d have made it into harvard, became professors, got fired, started an LSD cult, traveled to india, became enlightened, and fled the country a few times seeking political asylum. in fact there’s still time in this universe…

[Colleen Hugo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a page-turner. My only gripe is that it could've delved more into the 60s counter-culture associated with LSD (it wasn't very left-wing considering the content). Still really good though

[Bean · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine retelling of these stories consolidated into a brief synopsis. I appreciated learning more about Huston Smith.

Got me interested in re-reading some RD.