THE
DIVINE
RASCAL
The Story of the Man Who Turned On the World with LSD and the People Who Erased Him
created by:
Jeanne Heaton &
Vanessa Hollingshead
LOGLINE:
After a penniless British writer trips on LSD, he launches a mission to turn on the world—but when he ignites the 1960s psychedelic revolution and captures the imagination of an entire generation, the CIA closes in forcing a brutal choice: save his movement, save his family, or save himself.
SYNOPSIS
The Divine Rascal is a dramatic and darkly funny psychedelic thriller about my father—Michael Hollingshead—the charming, chaotic renegade who single-handedly started the counterculture revolution.
Inspired by his memoir, "The Man Who Turned on the World," this series reveals the untold origin story of LSD—where idealism, obsession, and anarchy collide.
A psychedelic descent into one man’s desperation for transcendence, The Divine Rascal is a gripping exploration of the beautiful madness that lives at the edge of genius.
Set against a rapidly changing America, with civil rights erupting and Vietnam looming, we follow Hollingshead, armed with 5000 hits of pure LSD stashed in a mayonnaise jar and a belief he can save the world.
Seeking minds as bold, he heads to Harvard and captures the most radical academics:
Dr. Timothy Leary, the bad-boy psychology professor torn between academic prestige and anarchy, who becomes a counterculture legend...
And Leary's doting assistant, Dr. Richard Alpert, a scion of old money searching for his place in the world, who later transforms into the famous guru, Baba Ram Dass.
Dr. Timothy Leary
Michael hollingshead
Dr. Richard Alpert
One "Lovin’ Spoonful" from Hollingshead's jar is all it takes to blast Leary an Alpert out of their Ivy League minds and into a kaleidoscopic frontier— where science, mysticism, and delusion collide.
Now bound by newfound purpose and chemical possibility, the trio ignites a revolution that transforms a restless generation, desperate to burn the old conformity of 1950s America to the ground.
Leary -
ryan gosling
Hollingshead -
Benedict Cumberbatch
Alpert -
Timothée Chalamet
But when their god-sized chemical collides with their god-sized egos, power struggles erupt. Trust erodes. And their once-united revolution collapses under the weight of fame, ambition, and prestige.
And in the shadows, the CIA watches. To them isn’t about enlightenment, it’s a threat, terrorizing the youth of America. And threats must be neutralized.
And just like that, my father, the wild-eyed revolutionary who started it all, is eliminated. His name, his vision, his identity, forgotten. Barely even a footnote.
This series evolved out of my need to find out the truth of who my father really was and why he was erased from history.
IP:
"The Man Who Turned On The World"
by Michael Hollingshead
Published 1973
©All Rights Reserved
WHAT'S LSD
WHO IS HE?
With a glass of scotch in one hand and a mayonnaise jar full of LSD in the other, the Divine Rascal is one of the most mysterious and overlooked figures in psychedelic history.
A Zelig, a genius, a writer, a trickster, a con man, an alcoholic, a raconteur, a magician, a father—Hollingshead is all of it, all at once.
Without him, there is no Tim Leary. No cultural awakening. No spiritual insurrection. No summer of love. No psychedelic revolution that reshapes the political and cultural landscape of the twentieth century... yet no one knows his name.
WHY ME?
"My dad did so much LSD, psilocybin, blue blotter, purple haze that we used to go on family trips together without ever leaving home. When I was five, he left a tray of acid-laced sugar cubes on the kitchen table. I ate nine of them. I don't have childhood memories; I have flashbacks."
That was the first joke I ever told. Because it was true.
I was born the same day my dad tripped on LSD for the first time. His heart blew open. His mind expanded. And suddenly, I wasn’t just his daughter; I was his competition—competing with the most profound experience of his life.
For years I asked myself, why was LSD more important than me?
But as I dug deeper, I realized that this isn’t just my story. It's a missing piece of the most radical, transformational time in American history—and one that needs to be told.
While Leary and Alpert were becoming psychedelic icons, my father was being erased. Why? What did he know? And who betrayed him? Was it Leary? Alpert? The CIA? Or something even more sinister?
Unapologetically human and darkly hysterical, The Divine Rascal is a search for the man who tried to raise me, abandoned me, and ultimately shaped me.
A battle for the soul—the show lives in the tension between transcendence and addiction, the spiritual and the self-indulgent, and the divine and the rascal in all of us.
Vanessa Hollingshead
THE WORLD
SERIES OVERVIEW:
Act One:
NEW YORK CITY - THE '60s
Haunted by a violent and abusive childhood, penniless writer Michael Hollingshead flees England’s oppressive class system and sets sail for the creative chaos of Greenwich Village.
At The White Horse Tavern, where the Beatnik poetry gods of angst hold court, Hollingshead—with just the right amount of madness and British wit, earns himself a seat next to Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Aldous Huxley.
But when he meets Sophie, the sultry jazz pianist and fierce civil rights activist stuck in a loveless marriage, they fall in love and she gets pregnant.
Sophie
Natalie Portman
But with no job, no money, and a soul-crushing case of writer’s block, the pressure of supporting a young family becomes too much for Hollingshead.
Desperate and unraveling, he drinks around the clock, spiraling into oblivion.
Then, like an apparition, literary icon Aldous Huxley appears. But not with pity. With a strange suggestion: an untested hallucinogen called LSD. Untested. No science. No safety. Just a volatile chemical that could reignite Hollingshead’s creative genius, or possibly annihilate it—and him—completely, if only he can get his hands on it...
I move to the rooftop, and all is chaos. Kaleidoscopic images surge powerfully in on me. Violent. Beautiful. Strange. My body is numb. Lifeless.
Am I dying?
Beneath me, the rooftop shifts. Clinging to the edge of nothingness, a bolt of lightning splits me through. From the depths, the dark sludge of my childhood rises—and I am face-to-face with a violent and alcoholic father. Fists flying. Eyes drunk with rage. He grabs me by the throat and pushes me off the ledge.
I am dead.
Screaming into the void, my ego shatters—blown apart—like ash in a cosmic wind. But then—wings, woven from stardust, suddenly catch me, and I am lifted up. Beyond thought. Beyond reality. Into a realm of impossible light where the "I" of "me" no longer exists.
I am risen.
I am one with the Divine. One with the Creator. One with the Universe.
I am God.
While Hollingshead is being reborn, Sophie is alone and terrified, giving birth to Vanessa.
Still reeling from revelation, he storms the hospital and promises her a fresh start. But not with a new job. Or finishing his book. He's going to turn on the world with LSD.
Act Two:
Hard left to Harvard University
Erratic. Intense. Hollingshead shows up clutching a mayonnaise jar like it’s the Holy Grail.
Inside: 5,000 hits of pure LSD suspended in a sugar paste.
To pull off a mission this bold, he needs an ally. Someone with credibility, power, and a platform.
Enter Dr. Timothy Leary: Harvard's rebellious and magnetic star psychologist, dangerously convinced of his own destiny.
Leary isn’t just admired; he’s worshipped. His lectures are performances. With students ready to follow him anywhere.
For Hollingshead, Leary is key. The gatekeeper. The man who can launch his mission out of West Village obscurity and into academic world power.
But when he tells Leary of his mission, Leary dismisses him as just another drug-addled zealot—until Hollingshead threatens to kill himself.
The threat stops Leary dead in his tracks. His wife had taken her own life not long ago. So he lets Hollingshead turn him on... and takes the trip.
But what follows isn’t transcendence; it’s decimation. Twelve hours of psychological freefall, grief and terror ripping through his bones. He doesn’t just lose himself. He dies.
And then, something in the silence... a voice. A calling. Utterly transformed, he does the unthinkable: he opens the gates of Harvard and invites Hollingshead and his jar of LSD inside.
Leary & Hollingshead
But as their bond deepens, Leary starts to see the cracks:
"Hollingshead isn’t giving me LSD out of love. It's a compulsion. He has to do it. He needs me to feel the weight of his own cosmic and terrifying loneliness.”
To stabilize Hollingshead and anchor his own fragile awakening, he recruits his devoted assistant, Dr. Richard Alpert: a Harvard misfit with a bottomless trust fund and his own desperate need to be loved.
Dr. Richard Alpert
Now complete—a madman, a messiah, and a misfit—the trio persuades the Harvard Board to let them test the drug on Leary's grad students.
At first, it’s contained. Scientific. Methodical. And with shockingly positive results.
But LSD refuses to stay in the lab. It leaks into faculty mixers, dorm rooms, and late-night debates, rewiring minds and the very soul of the campus.
The counterculture revolution has officially begun.
Spreading their psychedelic gospel, the trio become both rockstars and pariahs in equal measure.
But when they break Harvard's cardinal rule by giving LSD to undergrads, a serious no-no, outrage erupts. Parents flip out. The press circles.
What was once brilliance is reckless, and they are cast out of the proverbial Garden of Eden.
Now branded dangerous radicals, they land in the crosshairs of the U.S. government.
MK-Ultra, the CIA’s secret program weaponizing LSD for mind control, has no patience for wildcards. It needs silence and Hollingshead is loud. They see him as the biggest threat and the weakest link.
They put him at the very top of their watchlist.
How much is one man willing to sacrifice to save his glorious revolution?
His little girl, Vanessa
Act Three:
Which brings us to Millbrook Mansion—a 64-room dilapidated baroque castle in upstate New York
A chaotic mix of research lab, monastery, and madhouse, the trio, now known as The Lords of the Revolution, move in.
With reckless abandon and oblivious to the Feds watching, they dive deeper into their experiments.
And at the center of it all: Hollingshead. Electric. Mesmerizing. Part showman. Part shaman. Millbrook is where he hones his skills, earning the reputation as the greatest trip guide of all time.
Artists, rockstars, and celebrities travel from all over the world just to have him guide their trips.
The Mansion becomes the beating heart of the 1960s pop-art revolution—inspiring The Beatles to go from "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to
"I Am the Walrus."
McClure, Dylan & Ginsberg
Lennon & McCartney
Andy Warhol &
Edie Sedgwick
Salvador Dali
William Burroughs
As the revolution explodes, so do the egos. Leary wants to be king. Alpert seeks truth. And with the CIA closing in on Hollingshead, he wants to drink: a bottle of booze in one hand, LSD in the other, he's wrecked, wired, dangerous.
And then it happens: one night Hollingshead leaves a tray of acid-laced sugar cubes on the kitchen table, and five-year-old Vanessa eats them all.
When she almost dies, Sophie cracks. Alpert takes off for India. The FBI storms the place. And Leary goes to jail.
Mysteriously, Hollingshead is nowhere to be found.
Spy? Double agent? Scapegoat? Or just the smartest one of them all—Hollingshead finds himself aboard the luxurious QE1, sailing for England, a free man. His greatest trick yet.
Little does anyone know: he has over 10,000 hits of Czech LSD hidden in a bar of soap—enough to turn on London ten times over and still have a hell of a stash left for himself.
And with London on the edge of its own cultural awakening, the stakes are high. Hollingshead’s promise to turn on the world is no longer fantasy; it’s reality. But this time, he’s not hiding in the shadows. This time, the whole world is watching.
Enter: Season Two.
WHERE DID YOU GET IT?
THE ANTAGONISTS:
On a parallel track and just blocks from Hollingshead’s acid-soaked "Happenings" in the West Village, another kind of trip is taking place—stripped of color, mercy, and soul.
In an unmarked brownstone, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the sadistic mastermind and director of the CIA’s top-secret MK-ULTRA drug program, is operating a covert, government-sanctioned horror show.
With muscle from the mob and federal protection, Gottlieb hunts down the disposable—jazz musicians, junkies, and prostitutes. He straps them to wooden gurneys and floods their veins full of massive amounts of LSD.
His mission is simple: dose them with enough LSD that it to rips their minds from their skulls. And then build what’s left into a living weapon—assassins who kill without question and have no memory of ever doing it.
Black-and-white scenes of bodies in straitjackets writhing in chemical torment cut hard against Hollingshead’s colorful world of music, love, laughter, and light.
One trip chases the higher Self. The other, state-sanctioned madness.
But when friends disappear, paranoia creeps in.
The trio suspects infiltration, but not just from the outside.
Rumors swirl that the CIA is inside their movement, turning their ideals against themselves. And among all the noise and chaos, people easily disappear.
And then there's Hollingshead, with his manipulation and power growing out of control, so are his mysterious connections. His eyes are different. His energy is off.
Leary isn't sure if Hollingshead is being used, under surveillance, or crossed some other kind of line no one can see.
One drug. Two experiments. With one inevitable collision.
WHY NOW:
The time is ripe for another counterculture revolution
It’s 2025, and the same civil rights my father fought for are being stripped away, systematically, one by one.
Mind control is coded into algorithms. Anxiety is rampant. Loneliness, an epidemic. We’re medicated but not healed. Stimulated but not awake. Disillusioned. Disconnected. We are not well.
And into the void, psychedelics have returned.
No longer fringe, therapists prescribe LSD for PTSD, addiction, and depression. Mushrooms are marketed as quick-fix, Instagrammable wellness hacks. Microdosing in Silicon Valley has gone mainstream. Everyone is desperate for a way out. A cure.
Enter The Divine Rascal—a television series that dramatizes where and how it all began.
But this isn't just a story about whether LSD “works." It's an examination of what happens after. When the trip ends and you come back down. And the mountains are still the mountains, the job is still the job, your friends and family are no different, but YOU are.
The Divine Rascal lives in that brutal in-between. Between knowing everything and knowing nothing. Between infinite love and unbearable loneliness. Between breakthrough and breakdown.
A character study wrapped in a psychedelic thriller, it asks the question that continues to consume our culture today: Can a drug really deliver lasting transformation? And if so, what’s the cost of waking up in a world that's more asleep and rigged against us than ever before?
Hollingshead had the right drug in the wrong decade. But he was never wrong about the power and controversy it would have for generations
to come.
MAIN CHARACTERS
MICHAEL HOLLINGSHEAD - THE DIVINE RASCAL
Raised by a raging and violent alcoholic father in the unforgiving North of England, survival isn't a skill for Michael; it's pure instinct.
Beneath his British charm and clever wit lies an insatiable need to be adored.
Born into poverty and never college-educated, Michael is a natural-born shapeshifter who can persuade intellectuals, seduce aristocrats, and disarm the powerful. A natural-born chameleon, he moves effortlessly between the working class, the academic elite, and the ultra-wealthy—belonging everywhere, anchored nowhere.
As a teenager, he was thrown into a reform school for delinquent, troubled boys. His father cared little for his intelligence and even less for his potential.
But in the end, it doesn’t matter if he’s the smartest one in the room or how much love and applause you throw his way—the demons of his horrifically abusive childhood are always close behind.
With Michael, you risk losing your mind, your money, or possibly both. He's the guy everyone can’t wait to get to the party—and the one they can't wait to leave. Women, drugs, and booze fill his God-sized hole... until they don't and he sabotages everything.
But the greatest tragedy of all is that the enlightenment he so effortlessly guides others to find he never finds for himself again. He will spend the rest of his life chasing that first rooftop trip to oblivion.
Before LSD
After LSD
DR TIMOTHY LEARY - THE HIGH PRIEST
The alpha male antithesis to Hollingshead's flamboyant peacock, Tim doesn’t ask for power; he takes it.
He’s the psychology professor everyone wants to teach their class or take to bed. His rampant womanizing and promiscuity—with both men and women—lead to tragedy when his wife kills herself, leaving him with two children and a guilt he’s desperately trying to outrun.
His first trip—he’s not just transformed—he's obsessed. His mission: prove that a twelve-hour trip on LSD achieves what twelve years of psychotherapy can't.
He's not just hoping others experience it; he’s staking his soul on it. No longer content with the title of professor or researcher, Leary crowns himself prophet and will do whatever it takes to get the world to follow him.
The “High Priest” of LSD, he preaches “turn on, tune in, and drop out,” while at the same time Nixon labels him "The Most Dangerous Man in America."
When asked if he regrets ruining an entire generation of 72 million people, he smirks, "Yeah, but only a hundred thousand thanked me for it."
Before LSD
After LSD
DR RICHARD ALPERT - BABA RAM DASS
A brilliant psychologist and seeker at heart, Dick brings an unrequited love to Leary. He's his right-hand man until Hollingshead shows up.
Born into extreme generational wealth, he bankrolls the revolution—from the experiments at Harvard to the expenses at the Mansion and even Hollingshead himself. He hopes his devotion will win Leary's love.
But it's not easy being a gay man in the 60s. No matter how much he gives, he remains forever on the outside looking in. A longing that becomes his undoing.
The first time he trips, instead of seeing God, he spirals into a full-blown panic attack, and the chains of conformity are not removed.
He heads for India in search of lasting transformation that psychedelics deny. There, under the teachings of the Hindu mystic Maharaj-ji, he is transformed. Reborn. And without a drug. He becomes the famous spiritual guru, Baba Ram Dass.
His best-selling book, Be Here Now, will sell over 8 million copies. Yet beneath the white robes and mala beads, he still can't get free. He won’t come out as gay until 1997.
Before LSD
After LSD
SOPHIE HOLLINGSHEAD - ACTIVIST
The gorgeous, sultry jazz pianist with a femme fatale allure, Sophie commands the clubs of the West Village with every note. She doesn’t just play the room; she owns it.
A fierce civil rights activist, she fights for her fellow Black musicians, fearlessly standing up to racism and mob violence.
Stuck in a joyless marriage, Michael catches her eye. Their romantic, forbidden affair—volcanic and raw—explodes. But like a moth to a flame...
Michael’s writer’s block and incessant cheating will slowly destroy her wild, untamed spirit—the very spirit he fell in love with in the first place.
When she gets pregnant with Vanessa, she's forced into a life she never wanted: the suffocating role of a 1960s housewife.
When five-year-old Vanessa eats the nine acid-laced sugar cubes and nearly dies, Sophie will make decisions that irreversibly change their lives forever.
Before Michael
After Michael
