text: Timothy Leary, a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University, was the most prominent pro-LSD researcher. Leary claimed that using LSD with the right dosage, set (one's emotional mindset at time of ingestion), and setting, preferably with the guidance of professionals, could alter behavior in dramatic and beneficial ways. Leary began conducting experiments with psilocybin in 1960 on himself and a number of Harvard graduate students after trying hallucinogenic mushrooms used in Native American religious rituals while visiting Mexico. His group began conducting experiments on state prisoners, where they claimed a 90% success rate preventing repeat offenses.
  Later reexamination of Learys data reveals his results to be skewed, whether intentionally or not; the percent of men in the study who ended up back in prison later in life was approximately 2% lower than the usual rate. Leary was later introduced to LSD, and he then incorporated that drug into his research as his mental catalyst of choice. Leary claimed that his experiments produced no murders, suicides, psychotic breaks, or bad trips. Almost all of Learys participants reported profound mystical experiences which they felt had a tremendously positive effect on their lives. While it is true that Leary's experiments did not lead to any murders, he willfully chose to ignore the bad trips which occurred, as well as the attempted suicide of a woman the day after she was given mescaline by Leary.
  By 1962, the Harvard facultys disapproval with Learys experiments reached critical mass. Leary was informed that the CIA was monitoring his research (see Government experiments below). Many of the other faculty members had harbored reservations about Learys research, and parents began complaining to the university about Learys distribution of hallucinogenic drugs to their children. Further, many undergraduate students who were not part of Learys research program heard of the profound experiences other students had undergone and began taking LSD for recreational purposes, which was not illegal at the time . Leary described LSD as a potent aphrodisiac in an interview with Playboy' magazine. Leary left the university for an extended amount of time during the spring semester, thus failing to fulfill his duties as professor. Leary and another Harvard psychologist, Richard Alpert, were dismissed from the university in 1963.
  In 1964, they published The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which argued that the psychedelic experience paralleled the death/rebirth experience described in the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead). Leary and Alpert, unfazed by their dismissals, relocated first to Mexico, but were expelled from the country by the Mexican government. They then set up at a large private mansion owned by William Hitchcock, named after the small town in New York State where it is located, Millbrook, where they continued their experiments. Their research lost its controlled scientific character as the experiments transformed into LSD parties. Leary later wrote, "We saw ourselves as anthropologists from the twenty-first century inhabiting a time module set somewhere in the Dark Ages of the 1960s. On this space colony, we were attempting to create a new paganism and a new dedication to life as art."
  A judge who expressed dislike for Learys books sentenced him to 30 years in prison for possession of half a marijuana cigarette in violation of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. However, this decision was reversed in the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case Timothy Leary v. United States (395 U.S. [https://supreme.justia.com/us/395/6/case.html 6]) on the grounds that the Act required self-incrimination, thus violating the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Publicity surrounding the case further cemented Learys growing reputation as a counter cultural guru. Around this time, President Richard Nixon described Leary as "the most dangerous man in America." Repeated FBI raids instigated the end of the Millbrook experiment. Leary refocused his efforts towards countering the tremendous amount of anti-LSD propaganda then being issued by the United States government, popularizing the slogan "Turn on, tune in, drop out."  Many experts blame Leary and his activism for the near-total suppression of psychedelic research over the next 35 years.