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

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars | 509 ratings

Price: 18.5

Last update: 11-02-2024


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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, aka 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 counterculture 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 '60s and went on to pioneer the mind/body/spirit movement that would popularize yoga, vegetarianism, and Eastern mysticism in the Western world.


Top reviews from the United States

Roberto L
5.0 out of 5 stars Flashbacks from a memorable era
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2010
The story of Ram Dass/Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary is well-documented. But the new news in this extremely readable and enjoyable book is how the psychedelic tendrils that emanated from Cambridge in the early 1960s also included an MIT professor who would become the foremost expert on comparative religion (Huston Smith) and an ambitious Harvard freshman who would become the most successful exponent of alternative medicine -- Andrew Weil. How these four lives intersected, how they supported and betrayed one another, makes for fascinating reading. But what gives this book its heft is the fact that Lattin lets us know what happened to these men in the subsequent 50 years, how they feel now about what they went through then, and what the social and political implications are of the revolution they helped to foment and promote.

Lattin understands that the key conflict in the 1960s wasn't so much between those who took LSD and those who didn't, but rather between those who felt that the revolution would occur if enough people took psychedelics and re-calibrated their perceptions; as opposed to those who felt that change would happen only if enough people agitated and protested, radically altering political and social structures. Lattin also understands that among those who took a great deal of LSD, there were two main outcomes: having been exposed to mystical/psychotic experiences, you either looked for ways to change your life according to what you'd seen and learned while on psychedelics; or you got hooked on the high itself, trying to repeat that experience as often and intensely as possible.

The Harvard Psychedelic Club is a wonderful book, full of insight and compassion. It also casts a cold eye on what those events mean when looked at now, 50 years after they occurred.
Becca Lunel
4.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening and funny
Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2024
This is fun, it’s superficial about a serious subject< still a good read. The introduction of mind altering drugs to the young educated population of the USA & other countries in the 60’s led to an amazing upheaval that was greatly needed for critical thinkers. Big thanks are owed by all (even those who do not recognize the importance of these mind altering drugs ) to Leary & Alpert. No thanks to snitch Andrew Weill who felt left out & stabbed those in the back to whom he remains the uncool kid. Great fun to read and good laughs on a serious subject.
Nick Vulich
5.0 out of 5 stars The Harvard Psychedelic Club, How Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Turned on the World
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2016
The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin, is a fascinating look at how three Harvard University professors, and a graduate student came together in the early sixties to turn the world onto mushrooms, mescaline, and LSD-25.

For Timothy Leary, the journey began on the afternoon of August 9th, 1960, when he ingested some psilocybin mushrooms. That trip changed his perception of reality, and convinced him psychedelic drugs would soon become an essential tool in the psychologist's toolbox.

Huston Smith had written the book on world religions, The Religions of Man, later republished as The World's Religions. He was introduced to Leary by Aldous Huxley, another Harvard Man, who'd written The Doors of Perception, a book based on his experiments with mescaline. Leary introduced Smith to his "magic mushrooms" on New Year's Day in 1961. It was a bad trip, but it opened him up to the possibilities of what Huxley called these "heaven and hell" drugs.

Richard Alpert was late to the party. By the time he arrived in Mexico, the "magic mushrooms" were gone, and no one knew how to find more, so he had to wait for his conversion. He took his first trip in early February of 1961.

After he was turned onto psychedelics, Leary got the crazy idea the drugs would revolutionize the way we see ourselves. The only thing he was certain of at the time was, psychedelics weren't for everyone. He wanted to feed them to the best and the brightest - graduate students, poets, philosophers, and men of science. People he was sure would be enlightened by the experience. Among those he recruited to his project were Allen Ginsberg, Maynard Ferguson, William Burroughs, and Alan Watts, all noted artists in their fields.

By the spring of 1961, Leary had named his project the Harvard Psilocybin Project, and taken a complete 360 degree turn on who could benefit from his "magic mushrooms." He worked out a deal with Concord State Prison, and began doping prisoners in an attempt to retrain their brains, by essentially washing away their criminal tendencies. It was a good idea, but the results weren't that impressive. Leary claimed 75% of those taking his mushrooms, never returned to crime upon their release. Prison officials believed the numbers, but not the reason. They were sure the reason the prisoners didn't return to a life of crime was the attention they received, not the medicine.

In the summer of 1963, Leary turned to a stronger drug for his research - LSD-25.

Andrew Weil was the graduate student who brought down the Harvard Psychedelic Club. He wrote a story for the Harvard Crimson that denounced Leary's research. He also convinced the father of Harvard student, Ronnie Winton, to tell school authorities Leary and Alpert gave him psychedelics against the University agreement not to include undergraduate students in their research project.

As a result of Weil's article, and Winton's confession, the project was shut down, and Leary and Alpert were booted out of Harvard.

It was a wild ride.

Leary went to Mexico, and continued his experiments with LSD. Eventually he would be thrown out of Mexico, and removed from several Caribbean Islands for throwing his wild drug parties.

Leary and Alpert's next move was to a commune in Millbrook, New York.

But, to find out the rest of the story, you'll need to read the book.

Like I said at the beginning of this review, it's a fascinating look at Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Huston Smith, Andrew Weil, and how they helped turn the world onto mushrooms, mescaline, and LSD.

Along the way, you will be introduced to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, their Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, the Grateful Dead, and Dr. Max Rinkel and Dr. Robert Hyde, the men who conducted the first CIA tests of LSD-25 in the early 1950s.

The author's final take was,

"Timothy Leary did not inspire the war on drugs all by himself. Yet he was largely to blame for the crackdown on responsible psychedelic drug research in the United States."

It's not the whole story, but it's enough to make you want to learn more. For anyone who grew up in the sixties and early seventies, it's an interesting look back.
Barbara R. Saunders
5.0 out of 5 stars An Original Vision on a Difficult Subject to Tackle
Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2010
The psychedelic movement suffers from a public relations problem. Hallucinogens have been lumped into the sloppy category "drugs." Thus, the history the author recounts has been buried under generic rhetoric about the ways misguided people use chemicals in their attempts to "escape" from "reality." Tripping is viewed as comparable to indulging in three-martini lunches, cultivating a deadly crack or heroin habit, or taking prescribed pharmaceuticals to make a high-stress grind tolerable. Apparently it took a religion journalist to state the obvious: misguided or not, at least some users of psychedelics are on a quest to find reality not escape it.

I just finished the book and was struck (though not too surprised) to see reports of formative episodes in the lives of authors and others whose work has influenced me. It was a big "a-ha" to see Jon Kabat-Zinn, Dan Millman, Daniel Goleman, writers who I don't immediately associate with psychedelics, and Mirabai Bush, who led a training I attended, tied to the Fab Four protagonists. The twin lenses of biography and religion are used very effectively. This text paints a vivid picture of how people blessed and cursed with extraordinary intellects responded to the question, "Is this all there is?" when graced with the means to explore it, and how they shared the results of their inquiry with the rest of us mortals. The writing is sharp, fun, and clear with a strong narrative arc. Highly recommended.

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