many of his colleagues, Hubbard strongly objected to Leary’s do-it-
yourself approach to psychedelics, especially his willingness to dispense
with the all-important trained guide. His attitude toward Leary might
also have been influenced by his extensive contacts in law enforcement
and intelligence, which by now had the professor on their radar.
According to Osmond, the Captain’s antipathy toward Leary surfaced
alarmingly during a psychedelic session the two shared during this period
of mounting controversy. “Al got greatly preoccupied with the idea he
ought to shoot Timothy, and when I began to reason with him that this
would be a very bad idea . . . I became much concerned he might shoot
me.”
Hubbard was probably right to think that nothing short of a bullet was
going to stop Timothy Leary now. As Stolaroff put the matter in closing
his letter to Leary, “I suppose there is little hope that with the bit so
firmly in your mouth you can be deterred.”
• • •
BY THE SPRING OF 1963, Leary had one foot out of Harvard, skipping classes
and voicing his intention to leave at the end of the school year, when his
contract would be up. But Alpert had a new appointment in the School of
Education and planned to stay on—until another explosive article in the
Crimson got them both fired. This one was written by an undergraduate
named Andrew Weil.
Weil had arrived at Harvard with a keen interest in psychedelic drugs
—he had devoured Huxley’s Doors of Perception in high school—and
when he learned about the Psilocybin Project, he beat a path to Professor
Leary’s office door to ask if he could participate.
Leary explained the university rule restricting the drugs to graduate
students. Yet, trying to be helpful, he told Weil about a company in Texas
where he might order some mescaline by mail (it was still legal at the
time), which Weil promptly did (using university stationery). Weil
became fascinated with the potential of psychedelics and helped form an
undergraduate mescaline group. But he wanted badly to be part of Leary
and Alpert’s more exclusive club, so when in the fall of 1962 Weil began
to hear about other undergraduates who had received drugs from Richard