Timothy Leary

"He briefly joined the army, only to be drummed out for bad behaviour. He went to the University of Alabama, where he discovered psychology, James Joyce's Ulysses and was himself discovered one night in the women's dormitory, for which he was expelled. During the war he rejoined the army as a psychologist, and after he went to Berkeley [begins doctoral studies September 1946 --ed] where he was awarded a doctorate in clinical psychology. After that, he joined the Oakland's Kaiser Hospital as director of research, married, had two kids, and settled down to what could have become a life of domestic, bourgeois respectability.

"Then, when he was 35, his wife committed suicide. The tragedy prompted Leary to give up his job and take off to Europe with his children. There he wandered aimlessly between lecturing jobs, fetching up in Florence where an old Berkeley friend, Frank Barron, came to see him with a bottle of whisky and news of some mushrooms...

"It was at Harvard, more precisely the Center for Personality Research, that Leary was to embark on the experiments that were to turn him into one of the key figures of the 1960s. Using psilocybin,... Leary, together with Barron, embarked on a series of experiments designed to discover the psychoactive effects of such drugs, and the otherwise hidden regions of the mind they seemed to reveal." --Benjamin Woolley (in Virtual Worlds , 1992).

Coined the phrase "Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out".

March 1966 -- Leary busted at Millbrook (charged with possession of illegal drugs) by G.Gordon Liddy (who would later himself be busted for his break-in and theft of documents at Watergate). Case dropped after the Supreme Court's 'Miranda' decision.

February 1970 -- Leary convicted of marijuana possession... jailed at Lompoc minimum-security prison in California.

12 September 1970 -- Escapes from prison, aided by the Weather Underground... (apparently funded by Ronald Stark and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love).

October 1970 -- Timothy and his wife Rosemary fly to Algeria... visit Eldridge Cleaver.

May 1971 -- Timothy and Rosemary escape to Switzerland.

18 January 1973 -- confined in a California state prison.

1978 -- Freed from prison.

During the 1990s, Leary became a strong advocate of virtual reality.

1992 -- Leary appears (as himself) in the film Roadside Prophets .

1993 -- Appears in an ad for The Gap.

1995 -- Timothy Leary dying of cancer. Channel 4 (UK) documentary about Timothy Leary, The Enthusiastic Death of Timothy Leary , broadcast 5 December 1995.

"Timothy Leary has published books on subjects ranging from drugs, to the nature of human consciousness, to literary criticism." [publisher's bumpf in Storming the Reality Studio edited by Larry McCaffery, 1991]

Died friday 31 May 1996.

Goddaughter: Winona Ryder. [if you're fascinated by this lady, check: Patrick's Winona Ryder Page... external link]