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:
In 1959, when a down-and-out British writer desperate for fame and fortune, arrives in New York City and "trips" on LSD for the first time, his experience is so profound that he goes on a mission to "turn on" the world with it, but when his mysterious and troubled past catches up with him, he becomes an easy target for the CIA, and the world "turns" on him.
INTRODUCTION:
Based on his book, The Man Who Turned on the World, THE DIVINE RASCAL is a dramatic and darkly funny television series about my father, Michael Hollingshead, the man who gave the infamous Harvard professor, Dr. Timothy Leary, his very first hit of LSD and how together, they launched the most significant 1960s counterculture revolution of our time.
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Michael hollingshead
Dr. Timothy
Leary
IP:
"The Man Who Turned On The World"
by Michael Hollingshead
Published: 1973
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 laying out on the kitchen table and I ate nine of them. I don't have childhood memories, I have flashbacks.
But what if, in those flashbacks, your inept father was also an advocate for drug use? And what if he advocated for drug use in such a way that changed the world for the better?
In fact, what if, without him, the entire social, cultural, and political uprising of the 1960s never would have happened?
The complex relationships my father had with LSD, the remarkable people he "turned on" with it, and the impact that they had on the sixties generation has never been dramatized in a dramatic television series before, until now."
Vanessa Hollingshead, Comedian
& Michael Hollingshead's daughter
LSD blasts its way onto the postindustrial, 1950s Norman Rockwell scene. It shatters America's materialistic and puritanical view of the world and opens the curtains of the mind.
"With my LSD, I will create the worlds first bloodless revolution." Michael Hollingshead
WHAT'S LSD ANYWAY?
WHO IS HE?
Of all the figures in LSD history, none are more mysterious and unfathomable than THE DIVINE RASCAL, Michael Hollingshead. A Zelig, a genius, an acid-guru, a con-man, a fool, a trickster, a confident, an alcoholic, a junky, a father, a secret agent, and the man without whom Timothy Leary and the entire psychedelic revolution never would have happened -- the Divine Rascal is all these things and more.
WHY NOW?
"To fathom hell or soar angelic take a pinch of psychedelic."
Today, with psychedelic-therapy centers opening all over the world, LSD is back in the zeitgeist and hipper than ever before. Doctors and scientists are currently using LSD to treat depression, PTSD, addiction, Alzheimer's, alcoholism, cancer, and
end-of-life care.
In fact, doctors and scientists have picked up researching psychedelics exactly where our main characters; Hollingshead, Leary, and Leary's assistant, Dr. Alpert, left off 60 years ago -- before the US government shut them down.
Dr. Timothy Leary
Michael Hollingshead
Dr. Richard Alpert, Ram Dass
However, The Divine Rascal is not a documentary. Instead, it is a dramatic and gripping narrative, set in the '60s, that follows the personal and public sagas of these pioneering Harvard academics.
With the right drug, in the wrong decade, they fervently believe their LSD will expand consciousness, shake up the status quo, and transform the entire world into a place of peace, love, and understanding.
Joaquin Phoenix
as Leary
Benedict Cumberbatch as Hollingshead
Bill Skarsgård as Alpert
But as the story unfolds, their grand aspirations ultimately fall apart. Told linearly with dramatic tripping sequences and flashbacks, The Divine Rascal not only examines LSD's origin story but it challenges the truth of its impact on an entire generation, whether for better or worse:
Vanessa Hollingshead, 1965
SERIES OVERVIEW:
Part One
In 1959, the British writer, Michael Hollingshead, leaves a troubled past behind and arrives at the West Side Docks in New York City.
He heads for the Whitehorse Tavern in the West Village where his literary idols -- Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Aldous Huxley -- all hang out. Disguising his coarse Northey accent with a refined Oxford one, he easily slips into the hip and cool American Beatnick scene.
Michael Sophie
Sophie
Sophie & Vanessa
But when he meets the talented jazz pianist, Sophie, she gets pregnant, and Vanessa is born.
Aldous Huxley
Suffering from debilitating writer's block and unable to pay the rent, Michael turns to the famous author Aldous Huxley for help. "Hux," who's experimented with the unknown drug LSD to help unlock his own writer's block tells Michael to find a way to get a hold of some and to take a bunch of it.
So Michael immediately cons a doctor-friend into writing him a phony prescription, saying he needs it for a series of "bone cancer" treatments. Michael then sends the bogus script to LSD's inventor, Albert Hofmann, and four weeks later...
THE INCITING INCIDENT:
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A package arrives. Michael opens it and one gram of pure LSD falls out. Not sure what to do next, he mixes it into a thick powdered sugar paste. As he spoons it into an empty mayonnaise jar, he licks the spoon. But with no clue about "dose" or "potency," he is completely unprepared for what happens next...
"I moved to the rooftop, and all is CHAOS. My mind is in a whirling state of confusion. Kaleidoscopic images overwhelm and I am gripped by a terror of losing my sanity. My body is numb. Strange. Lifeless. I am dying. Am I dying? Cautiously, I step to the rooftop's edge, crossing an improbable realm of where my deep-rooted unworthiness, spawned by my vicious and cruel alcoholic father, shatters. I am now in some other land of unlikeliness, no longer a simple mortal but a glorified being. I am Sir Lancelot guiding five blazing chariots across the heavens. I am one with the universe. I am one with God. I am God."
A lifelong atheist, Michael's rooftop trip is so profound that he abandons his tired aim of writing the next great "American" novel and replaces it with a new one: to "turn on" the world with LSD. But how?
Part Two
Our story takes a hard left into Harvard academia...
Where Harvard psychology professor, Dr. Timothy Leary and his assistant, Dr. Richard Alpert, are researching the effects of psychedelic psilocybin mushrooms on graduate students.
Dr. Leary
Dr. Alpert
When out of the blue, Michael, armed with just his mayo-jar full of LSD, barges into Leary's office.
He begs Leary to let him "turn him on," but Leary is leery of this unhinged, penniless, stranger and wants nothing to do with him or his "man-made chemicals."
But Michael is a man on a mission, determined to convince Leary his LSD "will run rings around those silly little mushrooms." But Leary still won't budge. So Michael threatens to kill himself. In the face of such a dire threat, and since Leary's wife did actually kill herself, Leary has to give in.
Michael scoops one "lovin' spoonful" into Leary's mouth, and over the next fourteen hours Michael guides Leary on the most electrifying trip, one that blows pscilocyban mushrooms out of the water.
Leary's mind is so blown that he gives Michael his car to go to NYC, pick up Sophie and baby Vanessa and move into his attic in Cambridge. The only caveat is that Michael must bring that jar of LSD with him.
Michael returns and Leary christens him with the name, "The Divine Rascal," and the Harvard LSD clinical trials officially begin. Michael is thrilled to be the one at the center of Harvard's most elite academic scene.
But over two years of promising, dramatic and chaotic research they begin consuming too much of their own supply and start giving LSD to undergrads--a serious no-no. When rumors also surface that they're having sex with them. And then, when two of them die, Harvard fires them all.
Part Three
Which brings us to Millbrook Mansion, a dilapidated 64-room baroque castle in upstate New York.
Located on 2,500 acres of breathtaking farmland, the disgraced Harvard clan moves in. As chaotic and immense as their psychedelic ambitions, the villa becomes a sprawling encampment of over forty psychedelic voyagers, their kids, and, thanks to Michael, a plethora of exotic animals.
"A cross between a country club, a madhouse, a research center, a monastery, and a Fellini movie set," Millbrook is where Michael hones his skills as "the greatest trip-guide of all time." Celebrities, poets, scientists, artists, and musicians travel from all over the world just to have him turn them on.
William Burroughs
Andy Warhol &
Edie Sedgwick
Jefferson Airplane
Michael at Millbrook - 1966
Lennon & McCartney
McClure, Dylan & Ginsberg
Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
Michael's morphs his mind-bending trips into public theatrical shows that he puts on at The Village Vanguard. With lines around the block, these immersive psychedelic "Happenings" catapult him to the forefront of the country's most elite art set. His avant-garde performances earn him a glowing review in The New York Times, solidifying his ascent as a rising star.
But there's one thing missing: his five-year-old little girl, Vanessa.
Michael uses his newfound "fame" to convince his now-estranged wife, Sophie, to let Vanessa come and live with him at his real life wonderland; The Mansion.
But one night, when an extremely "high" Michael leaves a tray of acid-laced sugar cubes lying on the kitchen table, Vanessa mistakes them for, well, sugar cubes and eats them all.
What follows is utter chaos: a little girl's trip turns terrifying as she runs wide-eyed through the mansion's psychedelic madhouse. With each room, sinister shadows warp with exotic animals, and snakes emerge from the floors and walls. Michael chases her in vain through the acid-soaked halls. When he finally catches her, he realizes that she is the one who ate the LSD.
Terrified she's going to die, he rushes her to Richard Alpert, who gives her a shot of Thorazine in her butt. As her hallucinations subside, so does Michael's hard-earned chance to prove that he could be a good father.
When Sophie finds out, she immediately whisks her back to a "much safer" place: their roach-infested, filthy apartment in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.
Sophie
A few days later, the county DA, Gordon Liddy, raids the place and arrests Leary and his teenage son, Jackie, on trumped-up drug charges. Fortunately, Alpert's away in India "becoming Ram Dass," and weirdly enough, no one lays a finger on Michael, which is a complete mystery to everyone -- well, everyone except the FBI, the CIA, and Michael himself.
But with no hard evidence, the DA has to let Leary and his son go. When they get back to the mansion, police are surrounding the place and strip-searching anyone who comes in or out.
When a robe-clad Alpert, now named Baba Ram Dass, returns from India, the county DA turns up the heat on Michael to either flip on his psychedelic family or else. And the "or else" for Michael is harrowing. As the noose draws tighter, Michael tries to play both sides -- a very dangerous game indeed.
But Leary and Alpert know Michael is the informant, so fearing he'll destroy everything and put them in jail, they try to convince him to go back to London and spearhead a "second Millbrook" there. But Michael knows what they're up to, and so after a drunken tirade, he packs his bags and takes off.
As the cab pulls away, a relieved Leary quips to Alpert, "Well, that writes off any hopes for a British psychedelic revolution for the next ten years, man."
But little do they know, Michael has over 10,000 hits of pure Czech LSD hidden in a bar of soap --- enough psychedelic leveage to free himself from the CIA, fund a first-class ticket back to England, and still have a hell of a stash left to light up all of London ten times over.
When immigration brings him to the docks to board the ship, they allow him to make one last call -- to Vanessa. Sobbing and brokenhearted, she begs him not to leave her. Choking back his own tears, the phone gets cut off -- and neither one of them know if they will ever see each other again.
THE ANTAGONISTS
Throughout the series, sinister scenes of the CIA's "MK-Ultra Program" using massive amounts of LSD on unwitting and non-consenting minorities to erase and control their minds are told throughout. These chilling MK-Ultra experiments lead to insanity, death, and ultimately, Michael.
Children tortured with LSD
CIA MK-Ultra Headquarters
When President Nixon declares "LSD as the greatest threat to America's youth," he orders Sydney Gottlieb, the CIA's "Poisoner in Chief," to begin round-the-clock surveillance of Millbrook Mansion and to recruit Dutchess County's DA, Gordon Liddy.
Sydney Gottlieb - Head of CIA's
MK-Ultra mind-control program
Captain Al Hubbard of the CIA
Gordon Liddy of the FBI
Does Michael become a secret double agent, working for the CIA? Does he rat out his psychedelic family and lose everything dear to him, including Vanessa? Does the man who "turns on" the world become the man who "turns" on the world?
THE WORLD:
Set against the 1960s turbulent backdrop of racism, sexism, and the Vietnam war...
Uptight college kids take Michael's LSD and they trade their briefcases in for knapsacks. Hopeless drunks take it and become recovered alcoholics. Hardened prisoners become productive upright citizens, and indoctrinated Harvard divinity students become loving spiritual priests.
Bill Wilson -- Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous
Allen Ginsberg
Salvador Dali
The Rolling Stones
And when Michael turns on The Beatles, they go from
"I Want to Hold Your Hand" to "I Am the Walrus."
WEEK TO WEEK
Each week spotlights a different character's trip with an immersive and visually stunning, stand-alone set piece. Similar to the self-contained tripping sequences in Gilliam's
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream," our trips unfold through the lens of each character's unique storyline and propel the overarching narrative forward. Their trips also serve as perfect vehicles for flashbacks from their childhoods and traumatic pasts to expose the primordial wounds that drive their current-day missions. With each episode, we're on pins and needles, wondering whose trip will lead to a spiritual epiphany or plunge them into madness.
MAIN CHARACTERS
MICHAEL HOLLINGSHEAD - THE DIVINE RASCAL
Born to a violent and abusive alcoholic father in the poverty-stricken North of England, Michael has an insatiable need to be loved and adored. Both a sinner and a saint, he’s the guy everyone can’t wait to get to the party and the one they can’t wait to leave. He wants nothing more than to father the psychedelic revolution and his daughter, all at the same time. Alcohol, women, and drugs fill his internal need for love and distract him for a while till they don't, and he winds up sabotaging everything. Beneath his surface seethes a raging belief: that since his father is disposable, so is everyone else. When you fall under his spell, you risk losing your mind, your money, or possibly both. But the greatest tragedy of all is that the liberation he so wisely guides others to find, he never finds for himself again. He spends the rest of his life chasing that first roof-top "trip"-- to oblivion. Even when it means losing the one he loves the most, Vanessa.
Before LSD
After LSD
DR TIMOTHY LEARY - THE HIGH PRIEST
The alpha-male antithesis to Michael's flamboyant peacock, Tim is the Harvard psychology professor that everyone wants to teach their class or take to bed. But because of his promiscuity, with both men and women, his wife commits suicide, leaving him to raise their two kids all on his own. Guilt-ridden, he throws himself even harder into his psychedelic work, with one overwhelming need:
to scientifically prove that LSD can accomplish in twelve hours what it takes twelve years of psychotherapy to do. But with his relentless womanizing, his insatiable need to be in the limelight and preaching to the youth of America to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," he goes from LSD’s "High Priest" to Nixon’s "Most Dangerous Man in America." When asked about how he feels about "ruining an entire generation of 72 million people," he says, "Yeah man, but only a hundred-thousand thanked me for it."
Before LSD
After LSD
DR. RICHARD ALPERT - BABA RAM DASS
Dr. Alpert is Leary’s right-hand man, until Michael shows up, that is. A respected Harvard psychology professor, he brings an unrequited love for Leary along with the money they need to pay for all of their projects--one which ends up being being Michael himself. Richard (Dick) desperately wants to fit in, but how, when you’re a gay man in the ‘60s. His desire to be with Leary and win his romantic love, at any cost, is his undoing. The first time he trips, instead of seeing God, he has a full-blown panic attack, erection, and the chains of conformity are NOT removed for him. His search for lasting enlightenment will take him to India, where he transforms into the famous Guru, Baba Ram Dass.
Before LSD
Before LSD
After LSD
After LSD
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This trio becomes known as "THE LORDS OF THE REVOLUTION," with storylines that are limitless. Initially fueled by their virtuous intentions for LSD, their lust for money, power, celebrity, and prestige erodes any sense of morality and sabotages everything. But the damage they inflict on their children is nothing short of criminal.
Vanessa
Jackie Leary
Susie Leary
SOPHIE HOLLINGSHEAD - WIFE & MOM
A great jazz pianist, Sophie is a complicated woman who follows her own compass. Initially she supports Michael’s fledgling writing career, but with his "acid-work," his inability to pay child support, and his continuous adultery, they split, and she and Vanessa move back to NYC. But when her love for Michael never dies, that hurt drives her to eventually stop caring for everyone and everything -- well, except for grass, amphetamines, and Vanessa, in that order. Broke, she and Vanessa end up living in the slums of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, where she endures assaults, loses her teeth, and eventually, her mind. She reminds Vanessa on a daily basis: "When I met your father, I hated all men; after I married him, I hated everybody."
Before Michael
After Michael
VANESSA HOLLINGSHEAD - DAUGHTER
When Michael leaves Sophie to "turn on" the world, he leaves Vanessa in Sophies care--a woman who has no idea how to be a mother. Overwhelmed by Vanessa's "terrible twos," Sophie makes a heart-wrenching decision to put Vanessa in a foster home that turns out to be extremely abusive. When Michael learns about the situation, he comes back and rescues her. Faced with the reality that he can't bring her back to Boston, he reluctantly gives her back to Sophie, but with strict conditions. But all Vanessa wants is to be with her father, but how when he's too busy fathering the dawn of the psychedelic revolution. When Vanessa does finally get to be with him, he sabotages everything by leaving that tray of sugar cubes out and she almost dies. Vanessa represents an entire generation of kids left out of the 1960s vacuous promise of peace, love, and understanding.
After LSD
the comedy of
anessa
V
HOLLINGSHEAD
Today
Similar to Nicole Fosse's character as the real-life little girl in the series "Fosse/Verdon," Vanessa's acid-laced orphan storyline appears as little snippets throughout, to remind us of where her father's come from and what he's left behind.
THE DIVINE RASCAL
reveals, with a matchless degree of intimacy, both the conflicts within and between the brilliant minds of The Lords of the Revolution and how we survive their collateral damage. Over the course of the series, we will solve the mystery of who Michael Hollingshead really was and why the tripping subculture was so swiftly stamped out.
SOUNDTRACK
SAMPLE PILOT OUTLINE
"Welcome Back My Friends, to the Show that Never Ends"
The teaser opens with a kaleidoscopic flash-forward to 1966 London, where our Divine Rascal, Michael Hollingshead, at his "World Psychedelic Center," has the world by the psychedelic balls.
Decked out in his racoon coat, pink sunglasses, and Tibetan beanie, he's in the middle of guiding over fifty devoted followers on another one of his infamous LSD trips.
Under the pulsating strobe lights and the hypnotic rhythm of Indian music, he raises a perfume bottle aloft, the letters "LSD" gleaming with it's iridescent glow.
As he sprays his liquid gold all over the hot, braless, hippie chicks anxiously waiting at his feet, he recites the how-to, "Set & Settings," tripping instructions from the manual, "The Psychedelic Experience."
Suddenly we spot, hidden amongst the crowd: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Roman Polanski, Gregory Corso, Alex Trocchi...
When Michael steps back to bask in his psychedelic brilliance, Scotland Yard busts in and arrests him.
At the same time, in 1966 upstate New York, Dr. Timothy Leary is in the middle of guiding one of his own kaleidoscopic LSD trips at his world famous psychedelic Mansion.
Reciting the same "Set & Setting" instructions from the same manual, we see Andy Warhol, Charlie Mingus, Maynard Ferguson, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg...
When Leary steps back to bask in his own psychedelic brilliance, twenty FBI agents bust in and arrest him.
Now they're both in jail.
ACT ONE:
On the London cement prison floor, Michael detoxes a serious drug addiction and flashes back to 1959 New York City, where our story begins, with his arrival on a lower-class passenger ship at Manhattan's Westside docks.
With just a duffle bag over his shoulder, he traipses the bohemian streets of Greenwich Village searching for The Whitehorse Tavern, the rumored hangout of all of his literary idols, the Beatniks.
Passing places he's only read about in books, he stops outside The Open Door jazz joint and peeks inside. When hr locks eyes with the gorgeous jazz pianist, Sophie Reisner, two mobsters push up behind him. Before he can figure out what's going on, he can only watch as Sophie fights them off. After almost killing her husband, who happens tobe the owner, the mobsters abscond with four black musicians out the back.
Simultaneously, from his own prison cell in upstate New York, Leary flashes back to 1959, San Francisco, where his story begins, at Kaiser's Psychological Research Program. Celebrating his 35th birthday, as he blows out the candles, his boss announces Leary as the new director of Kaiser's drug program.
That night, Leary's wife throws him a dazzling "Mad Men"-style surprise party. But when she catches him screwing her best friend in their son's bedroom, she goes out to the garage, starts up the car, and gasses herself to death.
ACT TWO:
Meanwhile, Michael, still disturbed by what he just saw at that jazz club, carries on down the block.
Right above him, we pan to a brownstone, where those same mobsters are now dragging those same black musicians inside. A CIA "safehouse," these "agents" are in the middle of dosing minorities, alcoholics, junkies, and prostitutes with near-fatal amounts of heroin and LSD. And these four men are next.
Michael finally finds The White Horse and when he walks in, he can't believe his eyes. Sitting at the bar are Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs...
But when he sees renowned British author, Aldous Huxley -- the one whose books were a lifeline when he was a kid confined to a British juvenile delinquent center, he is overcome.
As the drinks flow, these hopeless romantics can't help but to welcome Michael into their scene. But with no money or a place to stay, Michael turns on the British charm, hoping to convince a very drunk and belligerent Kerouac and a high-on heroin Burroughs to let him crash on the floor of their tiny, disgusting tenement on the Lower East Side.
Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, Leary, grieving the suicide of his wife, is desperate for a new start, so he quits his job, uproots his kids, and moves to Italy. But while trying to write another book on his groundbreaking research with the mentally ill, he can't stop sleeping with hookers, contracts an illness involving nasty blisters and wild hallucinations, and almost dies.
When his old friend, the Dean of Harvard's Psychology Department, hears about his dilemma, he brings him back to the States to present this new and radical research at a forward-thinking psychology conference at Harvard. Harvard is so impressed that they offer him a teaching position.
Harvard professor Dr. Richard Alpert is also so taken with the brilliant and sexy Leary that he begs to be his assistant.
ACT THREE:
Meanwhile, back in NYC, Michael is hellbent on proving to his new literary friends that he is just as talented as they are. But with still no job or money and now falling in love with that gorgeous married jazz pianist, he suffers from crippling writer's block.
As his drinking spirals out of control, he turns to his mentor, Aldous Huxley, for help. "Hux" tells him that this little-known drug, LSD, cured his own writer's block and that he should get some. But he also warns Michael to be very careful since very little research has been done with it on humans.
So Michael convinces a doctor-friend to write him a prescription. They concoct a lie, saying Michael has bone cancer and that he needs a large amount of LSD for research purposes during an "extensive series of bone marrow transplants."
On a wing and a prayer, they send the bogus script to the inventor of LSD, chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann, at Sandoz Labs in Switzerland.
Meanwhile, Leary, feeling like an outsider and struggling to fit in within the academic Harvard world, mirrors Michael's.
Initially praised for his pioneering psychological methods, Leary's unconventional one-on-one approach with his patients and students, along with smoking too much pot, begins to lead to conflicts with Harvard's "Board of Overseers."
As Leary explores Eastern spirituality, mysticism, and meditation, he is invited to Mexico to research the effects psilocybin mushrooms have had for thousands of years on the Mayans. But there's just one problem: the Harvard bigwigs will not approve.
ACT FOUR:
Dr. Sydney Gottlieb, the sinister leader of the CIA's MK-Ultra drug program, continues organizing his alliance with organized crime. With Cold War tensions high, Gottlieb and his minions, often compared to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, secretly administer lethal doses of LSD to minorities to control and even erase their minds with the goal of turning them into unwitting spies against the Russians.
ACT FIVE:
As we delve deeper into Michael and Leary's existential turmoil, their inner yearning for a spiritual awakening reaches a crescendo. Will Leary go to Mexico and research psychedelic mushrooms? And will LSD's inventor send Michael all that LSD?
Cut to: Switzerland, where Dr. Hofmann, at Sandoz Labs, receives Michael's prescription. and flashes back to 1943 -- the day he discovered LSD.
Flashback: Trying to find a cure for migraines, Hofmann synthesizes a poisonous fungus called lysergic acid that grows on rye seeds. When he accidentally ingests a small amount, the effects blow his mind. Knowing the fungus is so incredibly poisonous and definitely kill him, he does what any mad scientist would do: he deliberately doses himself with 250 micrograms.
As the "poison" courses through his veins, he gets on his bicycle and makes the "trip" home. As the LSD kicks in, he experiences a psychedelic journey beyond all comprehension. His perception begins to slowly warp and twist into a beautiful and colorful, mind-bending spectacle -- yet is also filled with the horrific and terrifying images of losing his ego and the crush of his entire existence as he knows it. Teetering on the edge of the profound and the profane, the divine and the diabolical, his first LSD trip and the first of all time is so mind-blowing and life-altering that Sandoz Labs shuts him and his research down.
As the flashback ends, we return to Hofmann, in his lab, holding Michael's letter, weighing the personal consequences against the scientific if he were to send Michael the drug. He types a letter.
Dr. Albert Hoffman
Dr. Albert Hoffman
TAG:
At Boston airport, Leary and his assistant, Dr. Alpert, sit on the tarmac, in Alpert's private jet, ready for takeoff.
In New York, in his West Village apartment, Michael receives a package. When he opens it, a small jar labeled "LSD Lot Number H-00047" falls out with a bill for $285.00 and a letter warning Michael of the drug's deadliness if overdosed. In the PS Hofmann adds how important it is that Michael report back to him with the the scientific results of LSD's efficacy on his bone cancer treatments.
Michael tosses the bill and the letter in the trash, opens the jar, and finds a malted, milk-like powder substance, which he has no idea is the equivalent of 5,000 hits of pure LSD.
Oblivious to the power of what he holds in his hands, Michael is unprepared for what is about to happen next -- setting us up for a fabulous psychedelic opening for Episode Two.
