The Harvard Psychedelic Club (by Don Lattin)
The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin provides a history of Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass), Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil and their contribution to the use of psychedelics in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The book is structured in which each chapter focuses on one of the four key players at a time. There is a clever rotation so that I didn’t get bored learning about one person for too long before the author altered my attention.
It’s fascinating to learn how each of these men were on their own individual path and how their shared interests eventually brought them all together. As a student of Ram Dass, I am very familiar with his early years at Harvard with Timothy Leary. I recently became aware of Andrew Weil’s work with holistic approaches to health and aging. Weil is the Harvard student who spied on Leary and Alpert’s clinical studies of psychedelics that led to them being fired. The only person I had no prior knowledge of was Huston Smith.
The Harvard Psychedelic Club tells the history of the reasons why these men were seeking to know more; to be enlightened. They were and are amazing, brave seekers of other realms of consciousness. They are inspiring leaders of alternative ways of thinking and living. This book touches on so many areas relevant to the topic of psychedelics and the men who explored it; culture, politics, spirituality, religion, mental health, and more. I appreciated the chronology of the book. Don Lattin started at the beginning, and took me through the entire journey of psychedelics, up to the time this book was published.
I purchased the audiobook from Audible. The narration by John Pruden was really good. While listening to the audiobook, I couldn’t help remember watching the movie, Dying to Know, about Ram Dass and Timothy Leary. It’s an excellent visual for the portions of this book that centers on these two. It addresses Ram Dass’ relationship with Leary and their quest to reveal the spiritual experiences through the aid of psychedelics. Andrew Weil is also interviewed in this documentary. It’s excellent! Below is a YouTube trailer.
The Harvard Psychedelic Club enlightened me about Timothy Leary’s life. I am intrigued and want to learn more. Fortunately, there were repeated references to his autobiography, Flashbacks. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be in print anymore; however, I found used copies available on Amazon.
As a student of Ram Dass, I have previous book review blog posts and an adventures blog post from a retreat I attended that you can check out below.
I recently read a couple of Andrew Weil’s books. Those book review blog posts are linked below for your convenience.
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