Why read The Harvard Psychedelic Club?

Book cover of 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

Book description

This book is the story of how three brilliant scholars and one ambitious freshman crossed paths in the early sixties at a Harvard-sponsored psychedelic-drug research project, transforming their lives and American culture and launching the mind/body/spirit movement that inspired the explosion of yoga classes, organic produce, and alternative medicine. The…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Harvard Psychedelic Club as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Cody Johnson

Author

Growing up in small-town America, I learned that psychedelics were evil poisons that would rot your brain and seduce you into addiction. As I grew older I learned about the opposition to the establishment’s War on Drugs—the punks, hippies, stoners, and other countercultural miscreants who downed ecstasy tablets like candy and flew their freak flags high.

What I did not know, and what shocked me when reading The Harvard Psychedelic Club, was that these opposing factions had once been united. In the 1960s, people were hopeful about the potential of LSD and other substances, and researchers were conducting promising research…

From Cody's list on exploring psychedelics without taking any.