Author Don Lattin speaks at Merritt Bookstore

MILLBROOK — Author Don Lattin made a visit to the Merritt Bookstore Saturday afternoon, Jan. 16, to talk about his newly released book, “The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America.�

Attending the talk and book signing were village residents like John Kading, former owner of the Corner News, who remembered when Leary and Alpert lived in Millbrook at the Hitchcock Estate on Route 44 in the 1960s. Kading recalled Leary saying, “Some day Millbrook will build a monument to me.â€�  

Lattin began by informing the audience, “It is not true that there are 250 micrograms of LSD implanted in the corner of page 108 of my book.�

Lattin’s fourth book has received a good deal of attention, and a review in the New York Times described the book as “rollickingâ€� and “packed with vibrant details.â€�  

Lattin explained the relevance of this story today by listing the influence of the psychedelic revolution on current American culture — yoga studios, the invention of the computer mouse, organic produce, the environmental movement, meditation, AA, the human potential movement, and, of course, the sexual revolution.  

Lattin also spoke frankly of his own early interest in psychedelics nurtured by Aldous Huxley’s book, “Island and The Doors of Perception,â€� which he said,  “sparked my desire to alter consciousness,â€� and to do a lot of “profound and terrifyingâ€� experimentation with drugs.

The book begins in 1960 with the creation of the Harvard Psilocybin Project by two young Harvard psychology professors, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later to become known as guru Ram Dass). The goad was  to study what positive impact the project had, according to Huston Smith, a respected MIT professor who was an authority on the world’s religions and who acted as a theological consultant to the project. “What a way to start the ’60s,â€� the 91-year-old Smith reportedly said recently.

Drugs were given to prisoners to see if recidivism could be reduced. Graduate students took drugs and recorded their religious experiences. The psychology project came to an end when Andrew Weil, now the ubiquitous proponent of alternative medicine, acted as a spy for the university administration and wrote an article in the Harvard Crimson exposing Leary and Alpert for giving drugs to undergraduates in the spring of 1963.  The two were immediately fired.

The former professors Leary and Alpert arrived at the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook in the fall of 1963 to continue their experiments.  Lattin talked about the Leary/Alpert occupation of the 64-room mansion and their attempts to “imprint new ideasâ€� using drugs.  

In one experiment participants took LSD every four hours for two weeks. Guests were shocked when breakfasts of green eggs and black milk were served.  Meditation workshops were held in the empty rooms.

In the end, Lattin observed that the “test subjects hated each other rather than changing the world.â€�  

After returning to Millbrook from a sojourn in India, Leary found the mansion filled with “idiots and punks.â€� Leary kicked out Alpert, saying “Uncle Dick is evil,â€� even though he had functioned as a father to Leary’s children.  Alpert’s response was reportedly, “You must be psychotic!â€�

Leary, whom Nixon described as “the most dangerous man in America,â€� went on to become the messianic leader of the drug counterculture of the 1960s. He famously said, “Tune in, turn on and drop out.â€� Alpert would go to India in 1967 and return as Ram Dass, a spiritual teacher who enjoyed pornography.  

The upstairs audience at the bookstore joined in the conversation with Lattin. Kading said he had morning glories growing in front of his corner newsstand, and people thought he was supplying hallucinogens. Another person talked about the EMT squad taking young people from the estate to the emergency room. “Every weekend there were 75, 80, 70 kids driving up here,� a participant recalled.

There was a discussion about Jack, Leary’s son, who went to school in Millbrook. Everyone agreed that it must have been very difficult to be a child under the conditions at the mansion.

Kading also remembered when Leary was first arrested, and Lattin mentioned that Gordon Liddy was the Dutchess County prosecutor at the time. Later, after serving a term in jail as a Watergate plumber, Liddy and Leary appeared together to promote their books. Lattin said, “Everything was a game to Leary.  Nothing mattered.â€�

The audience was fascinated with Lattin’s presentation, and at least a few bought signed copies of the book, including Helen Avakian of Pleasant Valley, who is Ram Dass’ niece.