Trove of files to shed fresh light on LSD guru Leary

A trove of Timothy Leary files, much of it previously unpublished, could shed new light on the LSD guru, his controversial research into psychedelic drugs and the emergence of the ’60s counterculture.

The New York Public Library, which acquired the vast archive for an undisclosed sum from the Leary estate in 2011, is making the material available for the first time to scholars and the public.

The archive “is the missing link in every attempt to piece together an account of research into Timothy Leary and the emergence of scientific research into psychedelic drugs and popular drug counterculture,” said Denis Berry, a trustee for the Leary estate.

Leary coined the phrase “turn on, tune in, drop out”. He advocated the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psychedelic mushrooms. Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, Jack Kerouac, and other noted figures frequently visited Millbrook Estate in upstate New York where Leary continued to conduct his psychedelic experiments after being fired as a psychology lecturer at Harvard University.

He spent several years in prison and lived in exile for several years in the 1970s. He died in 1996.

The files “will force a reworking of the current narratives on Leary, his role in LSD research” and the counterculture, Berry said.

In one letter, Ginsberg described his first use of psilocybin — psychedelic mushrooms taken in pill form — for the first time with the Harvard professor in 1961.

“I lay down and drifted off into a reverie about the origin of the universe which involved the visualisation of a sort of octopus of darkness breaking through out of the primal void,” he wrote.