TIMOTHY LEARY

This generat~on of baby boomers is 76 million strong. They con do whate~er they want.

_45 TffE/ormer
so-ca~led LSD
guru, ~at do ~u th~n' of ~Var~y
Reagan's ad~ice on drugs - "Just

sa' r~o"?

	Our kids should be better
rnannered ehan tharl We should
tell them, "Just say, 'No, thank
you.' " Any blankEt ''Jusr say
no" is a negative appraach to
life, which is typical of the Rea-
gan a~ninistration.

	So ~VI1 ~sagree - 5 the Imge an-
i~g c~npaign?

	I'm totally opposed to nan-
adults using any drug. However,
the use of drugs by hds should
be easily handled in a family in
which there is trust and com-
munication. The fact that kids
in thc gheeto use drugs is
viewed rhe wrong way. The
problem is nor the drugs; rhe problern is the ghetto
farnilies where there are no models, there is no com-
municarion, no education.

	SO ~5 ok~ to ~d c&Hren to s~, ~No, ~ - ." H~
about ~e rest of us?

	Shall we break the news? Adult American9 are sup
posed tO make their own decisions about personai mat-
ters. I am constitutionally opposed to govel.~..ent pro-
hibitions againsr my using any drug I war~r ro. Addicts
pase a different problerm They are, ky definition, sick
poople. If you love an alcoLolic or a druggie or a gun
freak, intervene. People who abuse drugs or booze or
money or gLms should be prevented from acting irre-
s~ponsibly. But runety percent of adults can and do use
drugs prudentiy and e$imendy.

Ho~ do you feel ~ raD!e tesng?

I have no problems with testing people who operate

P H O T O G R A P ~ B Y w 1 L L I A M C O ~ P O N

dangerous rnachinery or who run nuclear plants. I don't
want the ptiot of rny plane hallucinating. But intelligenr
individuals are not going to work for companies tRat
would force them to do demeaning things like pee in a
bottle. Goci 3cnows what they wouid want nex~ t

	In retrospect, w/x~t ~as ffx ssgnic~nce pf ~e Su~ies ~g
cu~re?

	There is a strong taboo discouraging experimenta-
tion with the human brain. Before the Renaissance9
there was a strong religiaus taboo against discovering
how the body worked. This held back progress in
medicine and biology for centuries; ToHay a sirnilar
challenge faces the human species. We must learn how
the brain works That's whac we were doing at Har-
vard and Millbrook during the 1960s. The psychodelic
mo~ment was a rnind~ ploration movement. None of
us really understood what was h~ppening when we took

psychedelic drugs, because we
~arl to use the mysucal language
of the past - Hindu terms like
sator' and samhadi, occult terms
like l~a~ and lzanste~f.
We didn't have the scientific
metsphors to understand what
we were cliscovering

And we ~ sww?

	Yup. We had to have a per-
sonal-compurer movemen'to
help us understand the brain.
You see9 we can ouly understand
our inner worlcings in terms of
the external, mechanical or eech-
nological models that we build.
We never ~derstood ehe arcu-
lation of ehe blood unril we had
hydraulic sysrems moving water
around. We didn'r understand
merabolism until we had mas-
eered ehermodynamics with ehe
steam engine and understocd how coal and oil procluee
power and energy. Oniy ~hen could we figure one how
carbohydrates and proteins worL Coming from an in-
dustrial, mechanical culeure, how could we possibly un-
derstand the brain? Uneil recently we thought the brain
was a rnachine lilce a big telephone sysrem. This is a
completely inadequate metaphor. The psychedelic-
drug movement of the Sixties and the personal-com-
puter movement of the Eighnes are u~ner and outer
reflections of each other. Yo simply cannoe under-
stand psychedelic drugs, which aceivate the brain,
unless you understand something about computers.
It is no accident that many of the people in the com-
puter movement had experimented with [SD.

Anl ~f~ w~u kamed?

	Every person who took acid has his or her own st~
ry to tell That's the besutifill thing about it. Certainly

