Timothy Leary and the Madmen of Millbrook

For a year-and-a-half during the turbulent 60s, the author lived at the Millbrook, NY commune established by Timothy Leary and his fellow Harvard Psychedelic researchers to study the effects of LSD and other psychoactive drugs. Told from the inside, against the backdrop of turmoil raging around the country, this autobiographical memoir is constructed as a faux novel, and describes the conflicts at Millbrook as a mirror of the greater conflicts going on all around it, from race riots to Vietnam.

The Psychedelic Revolution ultimately failed, and its own internal contradictions are told with candor and humor in this description of the "Love Children" coming face-to-face with the realities of the world; from mere social disapproval to police brutality - but mostly, their own personal demons.

In addition to Leary's League for Spiritual Discovery, two other spiritually oriented organizations shared the 10 sq.mi.of the estate owned by the young and wealthy Hitchcock family, early supporters of Psychedelic research.

The Neo-American Church was the brainchild of Arthur Kleps, a brilliant, but alcoholic psychologist, who styled himself as the Chief Boo Hoo, and used humor as the means to enlighten his followers about the absolute idiocy of religion in general, and the absolute necessity of Psychedelic drugs for finding the God within.

The Sri Ram Ashrama had been founded by Yoga guru Dr. Rammurti Mishra, and, after he left the country to found Ashrams elsewhere, a rag-tag bunch of his former heroin addict followers, led by the enigmatic but powerful personality of Bill Haines, moved into the compound at Millbrook.

They all shared space in a luxurious fifty-room mansion, until their differences finally forced them to split up into three distinct principalities, each with its own living area on the estate.

Internal conflicts minimized by this move, the community was next subject to inundation by the "Flower Children" and hippies who brought, in their wake, prosecution by the authorities, who mounted midnight raids on the property.

Ultimately, this put an end to the experiment, but not without a bit of bloodying of the authorities in their turn, as the traditional religious and spiritual communities in the vicinity, as well as the fine and ordinary citizens of Millbrook Town, rallied around and came to the aid of the embattled commune.

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