Tim Leary on the lam

1970 Psychonaut Dr Timothy Leary escaped from prison with the help of his wife Rosemary, and Weatherman, a radical offshoot organization of the Students For Democratic Society (SDS).

Targeted by the Nixon administration as a dangerous subversive, the former Harvard professor had been imprisoned in February of that year for possessing a single marijuana joint (he was convicted of possession under the Marijuana Tax Act and sentenced to a preposterous 30 years in jail). Curiously, when he entered prison he had been required to submit to the Leary psychological evaluation test which he himself had designed while working in academia.

Leary made his way to Algeria where he met up with exiled American Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and was given asylum in the Black Panther ‘embassy’. The pro-violence Maoist Panthers thought he was the crazy one, so the welcome wore out fairly quickly ...

(Pictured: Dr Leary under arrest)

Tagged: biography, usa, law, legal, entheogens, drugs, crime