Timothy Leary was a big name back in the 1960s and 70s.  He was one of the leading lights of the psychedelic culture and the New Spirit's esp-conscious Peaceful Revolution which had its semi-culmination in the news with the Love Generation.  This turned to Jesus Hippies and that tended to be the last that was heard of it.

“Turn on, tune in, drop out,” Leary said.  What have been the results?  Mostly social anarchy and cultural uncertainty.  At a certain point in time Leary was mass-arrested and put in a federal penitentiary.  He  broke out of jail and made it to where amnesty was the thing and thereafter conducted a losing battle with the anti-peace-thing culture, during which he attempted to merge  cultural ends in a peaceful way.  This interview, done in the late seventies, serves to recall the man.  It was done for Gannett news services and is mostly unrecalled, not being all that impressive or significant, and besides it occurred during the hush-up.

Question: How have psychedelic drugs changed your life?

Answer: The first time you have a sexual experience your life is changed because you see that there's a whole other reality there.  I use that as an example of the first time I had the psychedelic experience.  You discover multiple realities.

Question: Do you ever regret that you perhaps unwittingly encouraged some people to do themselves harm?

Answer: I have always been against or at least neutral on the use of all drugs except psychedelics.  I certainly regret that I wasn't able to be more forceful about planning and preparations.  I regret that I got so involved in the pressures of the times that troubles resulted.  I came home and looked in the mirror and asked, “Am I getting respectable?”

Question: Recently you were interviewed about the possibility that JFK took LSD.  Do you really think that happened?

Answer: It's my hunch, and I've heard this from others, he was experimenting with psychedelics.

Question: Do you think the spirit of the 60s is still around?

Answer: It's pervasive. I think that the born-again Christian movement is a byproduct of the drug culture.  The very concept of born-again is change, the notion of turn-on.

Question: Who were the most influential people of the 60s?

Answer: The musicians.  They were like an enormous swarm of wonderful, multicolored flying objects that changed everything.

Question: You've been called a “megalomaniac”.  Are you one?

Answer: I think everyone should be allowed a half hour of megalomania every week.  I'm in favor of high standards.  At times you have to boast a little.

Question: You've written a lot about space migration.  Is it really right to think in terms of using up and discarding our planet?

Answer: Why did we leave Ireland?  Did we use it up?  No, the Irish immigrants set out to find something better.  Why do the bees leave the hive?  Why do the termites leave the old colony?  Because it's time to move on.  Don't worry, people will continue to live in America, although some of us move on.  When a beehive gets too big and when a queen flies off and starts another one, now, is that leaving the world?

Question: I guess you'll be on the first available spaceship.

Answer:  …No!...like… Eh, spaceship?  I don't care about that.  I love it down here.

     A generation lost in space?  Well, perhaps, as Leary suggests, they're doing better than they would have been doing otherwise.