New York City, seventeen years later... a small package from Switzerland arrived in my mail one morning containing one gram of Dr. Hofmann's acid, which I had arranged to be sent to me. There was also a bill for $285. I had first heard of LSD from Aldous Huxley, when I had telephoned him at his home in Los Angeles to inquire about obtaining some mescaline, which he had recently been using. His information also included the name of Dr. Albert Hofmann and a caution, subsequently unheeded, to take great care if ever I should take any of the stuff: 'It is much more potent than mescaline, though Gerald (Heard) and I have used it with some quite astonishing results really.'
There had been no difficulty obtaining even one gram of LSD—I simply asked an English doctor friend of mine to write the order on a sheet of New York hospital letterhead saying that I needed this ergot-derivative as a 'control' drug for a series of bone-marrow experiments.
Eagerly I unwrapped the package. The acid was in a small dark jar marked 'Lot Number H-00047', and in appearance looked a bit like malted milk powder. My problem was how to convert the loose powder into a more manageable form. One gram would make 5000 individual doses and I was obviously going to need to measure it out in some way. I decided to randomise it by mixing it into a stiff paste made from icing sugar.
I cleared the kitchen table and set to work. First I poured some distilled water into a bowl, and then mixed in the LSD. When all the acid had dissolved I added confectioner's sugar until the mixture was a thick paste. I then transferred my 'divine confection', spoon by laborious spoon, into a sixteen-ounce mayonnaise jar, and, by what magical alchemic process, the stuff measured exactly 5000 spoonfuls ! In other words, one teaspoon of the stuff ought to contain 200 gamma (millionths of a gram), which would be sufficient for an eight-to ten-hour session, and a pretty intense one at that.
I should add at this point that I had, like all good chefs, been tasting the preparation during its making with my finger, and must have absorbed about the equivalent of five heavy doses before I finally screwed the lid on the mayonnaise jar, which left me somewhat unprepared for what was to follow......
....September 1961
Cambridge, Massachusetts... The New England Fall was just beginning, and the leaves on the trees were changing colour; the air was fresh and clear, like Vichy water, and Cambridge seemed an altogether nice place to be. I didn't know anybody, so I rented a couple of rooms in a house on Brattle Street, and moved in.
My object in coming to Cambridge was to meet Dr. Leary to discuss LSD, or more exactly, to seek his advice about what I should do with the some 4975 trips I had left in the mayonnaise jar. The next day I telephoned him at his office on Divinity Avenue and arranged to meet him over lunch at the Faculty Club.....
... I said that I'd never taken psilocybin, but it interested me and I'd like to try it, if that could be arranged. I then told him a bit about my first acid experience, and how I had been taking it on average about once a week since then, and was now more baffled than when I started using it. I felt LSD was probably more confusing than illuminating.
Leary said there was still a lot of work to be done in the field. He had not himself yet taken LSD, but he imagined its effects on the mind to be similar to those he had experienced under psilocybin. The main problem was one of communication: how to verbalise an essentially non-verbal experience in such a way as to make sense to people living in the ordinary game-reality who anyway thought of these drugs as mysterious rather than mystical. Here we were talking of temporary alterations of the human consciousness brought about by these extraordinary substances—which cause a by-passing of automatic programming in human speech and action, making possible direct awareness at higher-than-normal levels of intensity and in other-than-utilitarian worlds of experience. These drugs, if properly used, could be the source of energy that is to transform the human mind. But for the majority of his behaviourist colleagues, these drugs were a threat to their game. They tend to hide their mediocrity behind 'scientific' models and mechanical designs of the human organism which are by definition mediocre, generating triviality and error. As a consequence, they veer easily into paranoid fantasies about the subjective nature of the psychedelic experience, probably thinking anyone using these drugs is pretty crazy anyhow....
....There was in those days no popular voice speaking for marijuana, although it was considered by the 'in' crowd to be the last word in status symbols. It was also illegal, a fact that made Tim feel a bit paranoid about people smoking it in his house. He did not use it himself. He took nothing stronger than a few micrograms of psilocybin. And of course wine and whisky, which he believed were 'indispensable luxuries'.
One evening the subject turned to LSD. They discussed acid in terms of a fluent flow of neologisms, jazz slang, and weird verbal formulations. They treated the subject lightly, as they also would marijuana and getting stoned in general. And it became apparent to me that they had never actually tried it.
Later, when they heard that I had some, they suggested that we all have an acid session together, including Tim. Tim excused himself, saying he had some papers to mark. But said we were welcome to take it if we wished.
I brought down the mayonnaise jar and gave Maynard and Flo a teaspoonful of the confection. I also took one myself. We then settled comfortably around the blazing log fire, lit some candles and incense, and prepared for take-off. Tim had been fussing about in the room while all this had been going on, trying not to let his curiosity take him away from whatever other business he was engaged in.
After about thirty minutes, Flo, who until that moment had been lying fully reclined on the sofa, sat up, suddenly, her face one huge smile, and started waving her arms at Tim. 'You gotta try this, Tim, baby. It's f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c!'
'Yeah, really, Tim,' confirmed Maynard, his face glowing like an electric toaster. 'It really gets you there—wow—it's really happening, man.... '
Perhaps Tim was impressed by the evidence of his two friends, who were after all pretty hip and experienced in using drugs. Perhaps he saw that we were all having a great time, and he wanted in. Whatever it was, something finally decided him and he took a spoon of the acid.
What happened to him next was the subject of a chapter in his book, High Priest, which he published several years later. As Tim described it in his book:
'It has been five years since that first LSD trip with Michael Hollingshead. I have never forgotten it. Nor has it been possible for me to return to the life I had been leading before the session. I have never recovered from the shattering ontological confrontation. I have never been able to take myself, my mind, and the social world around me seriously. Since that time five years ago I have been acutely aware of the fact that I perceive everything within the around me as a creation of my own consciousness.
From that day... I have never lost the realisation that I am an actor and that everything around me is a stage prop and setting for the comic drama I am creating... LSD can be a profoundly asocial experience. Since that first trip with Michael I was never able to commit myself to the game of proselytising for LSD itself. Nothing that doesn't ring true to my ancient cell wisdom and to that central vibrating beam within can hold my attention for very long. From the date of this session it was inevitable that we would leave Harvard, that we would leave American society and that we would spend the rest of our lives as mutants, faithfully following the instructions of our internal blueprints and tenderly, gently disregarding the parochial social inanities.'
[ T. Leary, High Priest, The New American Library, New York: 1968.]
