Today's guest is Susannah Cahalan, whose new book is The Acid Queen, a biography of Rosemary Woodruff Leary—muse, fugitive, and heavily indicted co-conspirator in Timothy Leary's psychedelic revolution.

She talks with Reason's Nick Gillespie about hippie communes, outlaw drug smuggling, the war on drugs—and how the '60s counterculture, in its best moments, ran experiments in radical individualism, using personal freedoms to build voluntary communities rooted in altered consciousness and aesthetic liberation. The Acid Queen helps explain how the personal became the political, why libertarians should care about the messy legacy of the counterculture, and what comes next in drug policy, especially regarding psychedelics.

This conversation was recorded at a live event in New York City. Go here to find out about upcoming events. Go here to sign up for Reason's NYC events newsletter.

0:00—Introduction

1:15—Who is Rosemary Woodruff Leary?

7:02—How did Rosemary meet Timothy Leary?

9:57—Why America was ready to experiment with psychedelics

15:12—Rosemary's connection to John Lennon and Yoko Ono

16:11—How Rosemary and Timothy Leary became outlaws

21:07—The jailbreak of Timothy Leary

28:45—The political speech of Timothy Leary

31:45—Why Rosemary and Timothy split up

35:31—The final years of Rosemary

40:08—The reconciliation of Rosemary and Timothy

42:54—The common thread between Cahalan's books

46:18—Labeling in mental health

48:34—Cahalan's experience with psychedelics

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: This is The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie. Thanks, everybody. We're at the Psychedelic Assembly, which co-sponsors this event. Susannah Cahalan is the author, most recently, of The Acid Queen: The Psychedelics, Life, and Countercultural Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary. Susannah Cahalan, thanks for talking to Reason at the Psychedelic Assembly.

Susannah Cahalan: It's such a pleasure to be here—and especially at a place that Rosemary would have loved so much.

Yeah, this has her vibe all over it. Why don't you, just very briefly, tell us who Rosemary Woodruff Leary is?

Sure. So, Rosemary Woodruff Leary—as much as I hate to start with Timothy Leary, we are starting with him—she was the third or fourth wife, depending on who you ask and how seriously you take divorce records from Mexico. She was a seeker. She was someone who was very much a behind-the-scenes character who was propping up Timothy Leary, working with him behind the scenes, on his speeches, sewing his clothing, really helping him create an image.

She was also very much a true believer in the role that psychedelics could play in not only expanding consciousness but actually making society better. She was called the Queen of Set and Setting.

Explain what set and setting is. Because when you're talking about Timothy Leary and set and setting, that carries a wallop. Explain that for us.

It does. One of my favorite things that Timothy Leary wrote about—this is pre-Rosemary—was the concept of set and setting. I'm going to reduce it very much down to its essence, but it's the mindset that you bring into a trip and it's the environment. Rosemary was very good at making people feel grounded and supported. She was great at beautifying spaces. She knew what colors to make the throw pillows, to position people properly to make sure they channeled and augmented their trips. That's why she earned that moniker.

Leary was born in the early '20s. She was born in 1935 in California and then ended up in New York?

She was born in St. Louis.

Oh sorry, in St. Louis. Then she is in California at some point, right?

Yes.

In any case, she shows up kind of at the end of the Beatnik scene—or the Beat scene—in New York. What was going on there? Who was she? We'll get to how she meets Leary and how they become the king and queen of Millbrook—the upstate estate where Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert - who became Ram Dass - and Ralph Metzner really created the text that started the '60s version of psychedelia. But what was she doing in New York?

She was born in 1935, as you said, from St. Louis. High school dropout, very beautiful. Was in an abusive marriage at 17, and left that, after she lost a baby, boarded a train to New York with no money in her pocket and no degree. Was recruited and spotted by Eileen Ford and began modeling.

Of Ford Models?

Of Ford Model Fame. And she then did what was like the second-sexiest occupation you could do at the time: airline stewardess, which was apparently harder to get into than Harvard. You had to be less than 120 pounds, x, y, z. So she fit the bill, and there she met her second husband, who was a jazz accordionist and a Holocaust survivor.

She knows how to pick them.

Oh yeah. He was an intense guy, I've heard. I did not meet him myself, but I interviewed several people who said he really didn't take anyone's shit, and people respected him—especially Miles Davis, who was a big fan of his.

Interestingly, I've actually listened to his work. You can find Matt Matthews on Apple Music, I think, and it's really good—shockingly good, jazz accordion. She met him and married him, and was instantly involved in the jazz scene that was going on in mid-'50s in New York City. And ...