Leary Hallucinogic Drug Tests on Inmates in 1961 Reported

Timothy Leary, the 1960s drug guru, gave inmates at a Massachusetts prison doses of hallucinogenic drugs in tests to see if it would stop criminal tendencies, the Boston Globe said Saturday.

The Globe reported that Leary, who was overseeing the 1961 tests as a faculty member at Harvard University, was fired by state officials after the hallucinogenic tests had been under way for some time because he was seen as inciting inmates to rebellion.

“He was disruptive to the system,” said one unidentified former Massachusetts prison official. “We knew that he was creating more strife and internal stress than could be contained.”

Leary, famous for encouraging Americans in the turbulent 1960s to “turn on, tune in, drop out” was fired two years later by Harvard after his wide-ranging drug experiments became public knowledge.

The prison tests involved giving inmates at Concord State Prison psilocybin, a narcotic with many of the same hallucinogenic properties of the better-known LSD, which is formally known as lysergic acid diethylamide.

Psilocybin can cause hallucinations, perception distortion and psychosis and can be psychologically addictive.

Leary claimed the drug did reduce criminal tendencies and tried to pursue the Concord tests on grounds that “no other method of reducing the crime rate exists,” the newspaper said.

An unnamed ex-prison official told the Globe that testing on the inmates using hallucinogenic drugs was not perceived as negative at the time.