Comments on: Blacklisting Myself Excerpt: A Night With Timothy Leary

By: Wadeusaf

Wadeusaf — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:51:00 +0000

I should add…,now I have to read the book.

By: Wadeusaf

Wadeusaf — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:37:21 +0000

I have never been able to make any sense, or justify the lives of those who immersed their soul in drugs. Retrieving the humanity seemed always to leave a part of oneself behind, and more inclined to stupidity than prior to the engagement. A reverse ignorance, if you will.

Mr Leary it is my impression did start out quite brilliant and with quite a bit of promise. Too bad he spent it all chasing a sale, selling himself for what? A Waste.

By: happy1ga

happy1ga — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 13:31:29 +0000

Very interesting story, Mr. Simon. I think what drew me in was the first sentence or so, when you reference Wavy Gravy! I had a friend who was a massuese, and she was very good friends with Mr. Gravy. Neat insight into Leary, also.

By: Blackwater

Blackwater — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:56:52 +0000

Anyone who does hard drugs is retarded. I don’t care if you’re experimenting or whatever. It isn’t hard to say no. I feel the same way about smokers and alcoholics. I just don’t get how someone could get addicted to things that obviously screw up your body.

By: Donald Roth

Donald Roth — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:07:10 +0000

Roger,
I’m reading your excerpts here. I’m reading your excerpts in Commentary. Please talk your publisher into putting out a Kindle edition.

Regards,
Don

By: Charles Perry

Charles Perry — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:56:05 +0000

Actually, he did that too. For part of the “Death of the Mind” tour, Leary’s stage musician was a friend of mine with impressive hippie credentials (he was also an artist and designed the Grateful Dead’s skull-and-lightning logo). My friend was shocked to see Leary eat steak and drink cocktails at his commune in Millbrook, N.Y. (secretly; all the resident hobbits would have been shocked beyond all help).

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:25:59 +0000

Damn, why didn’t he just drink and gorge himself to death like a good ol’ boy?

By: jaime

jaime — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:26:49 +0000

In 1961 I was in Mexico City when Leary arrived. I was living in a compound of six houses, one of which was rented by a painter of some promise from Philly. Because I had friends in the medical profession the painter asked me to obtain some psylocybin a Sandoz Pharmateutical product and join him and Leary in a jaunt to Xijuatanejo, then a very primitive coastal village north of Acapulco. I checked it out with a psychiatrist friend who had worked in New Jersey and had experimented (unsuccessfully) with the drug. As it turned out Leary was able to get all the drug he wanted over the counter in Mexico City. He and the painter went to Xijuatenejo and when the painter returned to his family he psychotic and never really the same person he was. In fact, his talent was gone. That scared the hell out of me; and Leary scared the hell out of me ever after.

By: daddy

daddy — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:04:44 +0000

Saw him at a college lecture in 74 or 75. He said he thought ourselves from the future had invented the ability to travel through time and that they had come back through time to create us.

By: Linda in California

Linda in California — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:03:58 +0000

A neighbor from Laguna Beach told me “When I was in grade school Timothy Leary moved in next door. My parents freaked. They put out house up for sale and put me in Catholic school.”

I guess they weren’t into the Brotherhood of Eternal Light!!