Latest news with #psychedelics
Condé Nast Traveler
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Condé Nast Traveler
Where Was Nine Perfect Strangers Filmed?
The Alpine setting of the second season of Nine Perfect Strangers is a far cry from the California wellness resort portrayed in season one. This new season, currently airing weekly on Hulu, continues the unorthodox efforts of Masha Dmitrichenko (Nicole Kidman), who hopes to heal her unwitting guests using psychedelics. This time, she moves on from Tranquillum to a mountainside resort called Zauberwald. 'Masha is a person who has to evolve,' explains executive producer Bruna Papandrea. 'The move was a natural progression for her as a character, but also to be in this incredible environment and have her guests come there is a very natural story element that we always anticipated doing for a second season. What we felt was that a winter setting was both slightly ominous, but also incredibly beautiful and also luxurious.' To film season two, the cast temporarily relocated to Munich, where they lived for six months. Shooting took place around Austria and Germany, as well as on a soundstage. Locations included Salzburg, Hallstatt, Alpendorf, Leopoldskron Palace, and Gradonna Ski Resort. 'We really did get to do a lot of very cool bopping around to some crazy locations that I don't think we would have ever found ourselves in otherwise,' notes Annie Murphy, who plays Imogen, one of Zauberwald's guests. To film season two of Nine Perfect Strangers, the cast temporarily relocated to Munich (pictured), where they lived for six months. Getty Images On set, the actors became especially close, and Christine Baranski, who plays the wealthy Victoria, encouraged their bonding. In the series, Murphy plays Victoria's estranged daughter, Murray Bartlett plays former children's TV host Brian, Henry Golding plays rich kid Peter, and musician King Princess plays a struggling pianist who travels with her girlfriend Wolfie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers). Below, Papandrea, Murphy, and King Princess speak to Condé Nast Traveler about their experiences filming Nine Perfect Strangers. What vibe did you want Zauberwald to have? Bruna Papandrea: What we all really wanted was the sense of history, because Masha has history with this place and there is that incredible sense of the old that you get throughout Europe. But [it has] been redone to be very luxurious and very opulent. Soho House does it brilliantly all over Europe. That was one of our references for how you take something incredibly old and historical and update it and make it really beautiful and new. We wanted it to feel very warm and very beautiful, and to have elements of any luxury wellness retreat. To achieve a luxurious and opulent feel for the locations of Nine Perfect Strangers, the team turned to Soho House locations in Europe for inspiration, according to the show's executive producer Bruna Papandrea. Udo Kramer Was the exterior of Zauberwald an actual resort? King Princess: The exterior was Franz Ferdinand's hunting castle, Schloss Blühnbach. Annie Murphy: The reason we shot in Germany in the first place is because they wanted such a stark difference between season one and season two, and they wanted season two to be this beautiful snow globe-y winter wonderland. Then cut to it being the hottest winter on record for decades and decades. These poor ski towns that make their entire annual income from tourism, everything ground to a halt. In so many shots of us in our parkas and our hats and our mitts we're just pretending to have chattering teeth and we're sweating underneath there. Behind the scenes, the crew was there was shoveling like snow that had been trucked in and was slowly melting. But one day at Blühnbach there was the most glorious snowstorm—it's a scene where we're all snowshoeing. But then it snowed so much that we got snowed in and had to wait to be shoveled out.
The Independent
27-05-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Trump's surgeon general pick says magic mushrooms helped her find love
Dr. Casey Means, a Stanford-educated surgeon and wellness influencer with no active medical license, is President Donald Trump's pick to become the next U.S. Surgeon General. But what you might not know is that she is also a fan of the psychedelic drug called psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms. Means says that she first took psychedelic mushrooms in 2021, the Associated Press reports. Means attributes psychedelics to helping her find love, and said the drugs can be 'a doorway to a different reality that is free from the limiting beliefs of my ego, feelings, and personal history.' She also wrote in a recent book that people should consider psilocybin-assisted therapy, according to the AP. The drug is federally illegal. However, the Food and Drug Administration has approved psilocybin to be used as a 'breakthrough' drug. This designation helps accelerate the development and review of medicines that have been shown to improve treatment for illnesses. Clinicians study psilocybin in carefully-controlled experiments. However, a peer-reviewed study published last month shows usage has skyrocketed, particularly among adolescents and people over 30. In 2023, more adults used magic mushrooms than other recreational drugs such as cocaine, LSD, methamphetamine or illegal opioids, the study found. Dr. Albert Garcia-Romeu, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, spoke to The Independent about the rise of psilocybin — and what researchers are still trying to figure out. What do researchers know so far about magic mushrooms? Psilocybin has been studied for its physical and psychological effects by researchers in medical settings. Garcia-Romeu's own research explores how psilocybin can aid addiction treatment. The psychedelic medication showed 'really good success rates' in helping people quit smoking when combined with therapy, he told The Independent. Psilocybin has also been shown to treat depression, Garcia-Romeu said. The treatment is particularly effective in treating depression and anxiety in cancer patients who are approaching the end of their life, he added. While psilocybin is known for its psychological effects and can treat mental health disorders, it also shows promise in treating a variety of physical illnesses. Studies have shown the drug can help patients suffering from migraines, the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia and Lyme disease. What do we still have to learn? There's still a lot we don't know about psilocybin's effects on the body. Researchers still aren't sure how exactly psilocybin works, Garcia-Romeu said, and don't know how or why psilocybin treats certain mental health conditions. Scientists also don't know how it causes certain biological changes, such as reducing inflammation, according to Garcia-Romeu. 'We don't really know how or why one dose of the drug can have an antidepressant effect that lasts anywhere from six weeks or longer,' he said. Researchers are also working to understand who these drugs are best able to help. 'Who's going to be a person that responds well, and who's going to be a person that won't necessarily have a good treatment response?' Garcia-Romeu said. 'Who is at risk of potentially developing problems after receiving these types of treatments?' What are the dangers of taking magic mushrooms? While psilocybin can't cause you to overdose in the same way as drugs like fentanyl, alcohol and Xanax, it can trigger serious mental illnesses, especially in large amounts. 'It can cause very intense psychoactive effects, so when people are under the influence, they can become disoriented, they can become paranoid, they can become delusional,' Garcia-Romeu said. Psilocybin can also unlock mental illnesses that haven't come to the surface yet, like schizophrenia or Bipolar I disorder, Garcia-Romeu explained. This typically happens in patients with a personal or family history of these disorders. 'It could trigger these ongoing problems for weeks, months, or even years,' Garcia-Romeu said. 'They could then end up having to deal with this sort of latent mental health issue that was underlying.' There's also many different species of mushrooms, and getting them from a non-clinical environment can also mean not knowing exactly which type of mushroom you're ingesting. What is the legal status of magic mushrooms? At the federal level, psilocybin is considered a 'Schedule I' drug. That means it has no accepted medical use and has a high potential for abuse. But, thanks to the FDA's 'breakthrough' designation, researchers are learning more about how it can treat certain illnesses every day. Garcia-Romeu expects it could be widely legalized for medical use under a doctor's supervision within a decade. Many people who report using it recreationally also have chronic pain or mental health conditions, and it's believed the use is part of self-medication and management. But widespread legalization isn't going to happen any time soon, he said. 'Legalization to the point where people would be able to go out and buy this like they would alcohol at a liquor store, I don't think that's going to happen in this country probably in our lifetime,' he said. There are also evolving policy conversations about psilocybin use for religious and cultural purposes. Psilocybin has been used by Indigenous communities for centuries. 'Long before Western science or medicine knew anything about these drugs, they were being used as part of the spiritual and religious lives of Indigenous cultures in Central, South and North America,' Garcia-Romeu said. 'That's something that will probably lead to more debate and policy discussions, and it's unclear how exactly that's going to shake out,' he added.
The Independent
25-05-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Trump's Surgeon General pick credits magic mushrooms with helping her find love. Here's what to know about the psychedelic drug
Dr. Casey Means, a Stanford-educated surgeon and wellness influencer with no active medical license, is President Donald Trump's pick to become the next U.S. Surgeon General. But what you might not know is that she is also a fan of the psychedelic drug called psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms. Means says that she first took psychedelic mushrooms in 2021, the Associated Press reports. Means attributes psychedelics to helping her find love, and said the drugs can be 'a doorway to a different reality that is free from the limiting beliefs of my ego, feelings, and personal history.' She also wrote in a recent book that people should consider psilocybin-assisted therapy, according to the AP. The drug is federally illegal. However, the Food and Drug Administration has approved psilocybin to be used as a 'breakthrough' drug. This designation helps accelerate the development and review of medicines that have been shown to improve treatment for illnesses. Clinicians study psilocybin in carefully-controlled experiments. However, a peer-reviewed study published last month shows usage has skyrocketed, particularly among adolescents and people over 30. In 2023, more adults used magic mushrooms than other recreational drugs such as cocaine, LSD, methamphetamine or illegal opioids, the study found. Dr. Albert Garcia-Romeu, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, spoke to The Independent about the rise of psilocybin — and what researchers are still trying to figure out. What do researchers know so far about magic mushrooms? Psilocybin has been studied for its physical and psychological effects by researchers in medical settings. Garcia-Romeu's own research explores how psilocybin can aid addiction treatment. The psychedelic medication showed 'really good success rates' in helping people quit smoking when combined with therapy, he told The Independent. Psilocybin has also been shown to treat depression, Garcia-Romeu said. The treatment is particularly effective in treating depression and anxiety in cancer patients who are approaching the end of their life, he added. While psilocybin is known for its psychological effects and can treat mental health disorders, it also shows promise in treating a variety of physical illnesses. Studies have shown the drug can help patients suffering from migraines, the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia and Lyme disease. What do we still have to learn? There's still a lot we don't know about psilocybin's effects on the body. Researchers still aren't sure how exactly psilocybin works, Garcia-Romeu said, and don't know how or why psilocybin treats certain mental health conditions. Scientists also don't know how it causes certain biological changes, such as reducing inflammation, according to Garcia-Romeu. 'We don't really know how or why one dose of the drug can have an antidepressant effect that lasts anywhere from six weeks or longer,' he said. Researchers are also working to understand who these drugs are best able to help. 'Who's going to be a person that responds well, and who's going to be a person that won't necessarily have a good treatment response?' Garcia-Romeu said. 'Who is at risk of potentially developing problems after receiving these types of treatments?' What are the dangers of taking magic mushrooms? While psilocybin can't cause you to overdose in the same way as drugs like fentanyl, alcohol and Xanax, it can trigger serious mental illnesses, especially in large amounts. 'It can cause very intense psychoactive effects, so when people are under the influence, they can become disoriented, they can become paranoid, they can become delusional,' Garcia-Romeu said. Psilocybin can also unlock mental illnesses that haven't come to the surface yet, like schizophrenia or Bipolar I disorder, Garcia-Romeu explained. This typically happens in patients with a personal or family history of these disorders. 'It could trigger these ongoing problems for weeks, months, or even years,' Garcia-Romeu said. 'They could then end up having to deal with this sort of latent mental health issue that was underlying.' There's also many different species of mushrooms, and getting them from a non-clinical environment can also mean not knowing exactly which type of mushroom you're ingesting. What is the legal status of magic mushrooms? At the federal level, psilocybin is considered a 'Schedule I' drug. That means it has no accepted medical use and has a high potential for abuse. But, thanks to the FDA's 'breakthrough' designation, researchers are learning more about how it can treat certain illnesses every day. Garcia-Romeu expects it could be widely legalized for medical use under a doctor's supervision within a decade. Many people who report using it recreationally also have chronic pain or mental health conditions, and it's believed the use is part of self-medication and management. But widespread legalization isn't going to happen any time soon, he said. 'Legalization to the point where people would be able to go out and buy this like they would alcohol at a liquor store, I don't think that's going to happen in this country probably in our lifetime,' he said. There are also evolving policy conversations about psilocybin use for religious and cultural purposes. Psilocybin has been used by Indigenous communities for centuries. 'Long before Western science or medicine knew anything about these drugs, they were being used as part of the spiritual and religious lives of Indigenous cultures in Central, South and North America,' Garcia-Romeu said. 'That's something that will probably lead to more debate and policy discussions, and it's unclear how exactly that's going to shake out,' he added.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Chris Perkins: Ricky Williams has one regret about his Dolphins career
MIAMI — A measly 301 yards. That's all that separates astrologer Ricky Williams, who is No. 2 on the Miami Dolphins all-time rushing list, from Hall of Fame running back Larry Csonka, who is No. 1. A mere 301 yards. Advertisement Csonka has 6,737 yards, Williams has 6,436. That bothers Williams a bit. Does that news surprise you? Well, it's true. Williams considers himself an astrologer nowadays. And a businessman. Williams is back in South Florida for a cannabis festival — Cannadelic Miami, a two-day event at the Miami Airport Convention Center. Williams was a speaker on an intriguing five-person panel entitled, 'The Psychedelic Locker Room.' Panelists discussed how methods such as plant medicine like as cannabis, psychedelics such as ayahuasca, and hyperbaric chambers can help the body heal, open awareness and lead to a better life in many ways and on many levels. Advertisement I spoke to him afterward. I reminded Williams of a chat we had back in maybe 2009 or 2010 about him reaching 10,000 yards rushing, which was an unofficial Hall of Fame stepping stone at the time. Williams said he had two paths he could have taken regarding the Hall of Fame. 'One path would have taken me closer to the Hall of Fame, one path would have taken me away from it,' he said. 'And I consciously chose to go with the one that was away from it, and I'm glad that I did because of all that I've gotten in return. 'The one thing that I do cherish is my time here,' Williams continued, 'and the only real regret that I have, honestly, is that I didn't finish my career here, because if I would have played my last year I probably would have been Dolphins all-time leading rusher.' Advertisement What was most obvious talking to Williams, who started his 11-year career in New Orleans and ended it in Baltimore, is how much he treasures his seven years with the Dolphins. 'It's where I had the most success as a professional, and I made a name for myself,' he said. 'I can say the ups and downs that I played 10 years plus, I ran for a thousand yards multiple times, and I was the NFL leading rusher and an All-Pro. All that happened in Miami.' Don't get it twisted. Being the No. 2 rusher in Dolphins history doesn't haunt Williams on a daily basis. He's moved on to another stage of life. 'Primarily I'm an astrologer,' he said. 'I do consultations, I write code for my app (Lila), and I teach.' Advertisement One of the things I most enjoyed about covering Williams, and that I enjoyed about talking with him, is that he never fails to enlighten. Football is only part of Williams' story. He's always known he had to go deeper, much deeper. 'I've always had a destiny to touch people,' he said. 'But football, it wasn't enough because the way I touch people, yeah, they'd be inspired, and their team won, or their fantasy team won or whatever, but it's like right after Sunday, after Tuesday or Wednesday, when the hype of the last weekend's game died off, I've got to do it all over again. 'That's not really sustainable.' Advertisement Williams is always seeking more, which brings us to another reason that he was in town. Cannadelic Miami is a combination cannabis and psychedelic conference and expo that unofficially started Thursday with a golf tournament that Williams hosted. The event features products and exhibitors, and includes guest speakers such as Williams, doctors, former athletes, legal experts and entrepreneurs, and includes wellness retreats that include breathwork, sound healing, yoga, integration circles and more. Williams is launching a cannabis line, 'Highsman.' Get it? It'll be featured locally at Goldflower, a dispensary opening in Miami on June 14. Advertisement Williams spends a good amount of time speaking and appearing at events such as Cannadelic Miami and exploring ways to help people find awareness. It's among the many things that make Williams unique even in his post-playing days. Listen to him speak about plant medicine and psychedelics. 'The plants and the medicine are tools that are giving us potential to study what's going on with consciousness,' he said. 'And I think as more people are willing to use these tools to expand their consciousness, we'll be able to study how consciousness works. And we're going to learn a whole lot.' For years it's been hard to pigeonhole Williams as a football player. Advertisement He's taught meditation at Nova Southeastern University. He went to the foothills of the Himalayas to study the origins of cannabis. As part of being an astrologer, he's got an app, Lila, that calls itself 'Timely food for thought' and says it 'is designed to help even novice users better understand themselves and their relationship needs using insights derived from astrology.' On Friday, just as he was in 2002, when he was traded to the Dolphins from New Orleans in a blockbuster deal, just as he was in 2004, when he shocked the NFL world by abruptly retiring on the eve of training camp, and just as he was in 2009, when he was named team MVP, Williams was captivating. Advertisement I asked if he had it to do all over again, considering the failed drug tests and suspension for the 2006 season, would he have smoked cannabis during his career? Williams doubled down. 'If I had to do everything all over again, I would have advocated more,' he said. 'I think it's easy to say in this day and age, but back then I didn't realize how many advocacy groups were out there, that if I consciously said, 'I want to make a strong case for this,' I was in a position at my level in the NFL that I could have started that conversation.' Williams' sudden 2004 retirement remains a sore spot for a segment of Dolphins fans. It might not be that way for players, though. Advertisement Tim Bowens, the former Dolphins defensive tackle who was inducted into the team's Ring of Honor in October, said he wasn't mad at Williams for retiring on the eve of 2004 training camp, and he said neither were most players. 'We were probably more confused than anything,' Bowens recalled Friday via phone, adding, 'But I didn't really have any hard feelings about it. Most of the guys were probably on Rick's side, man.' But Bowens thinks Williams, a daily cannabis user, might have been ahead of his time when it comes to cannabis as a healing agent. 'Rick is a smart man,' Bowens said. 'Everybody thinks Rick is a certain way. But, man, Rick's got a pretty good head on his shoulders. He's highly intelligent.' Advertisement One thing that was obvious talking to Williams, who remains as mellow as ever, is that for all of the attention he attracts for being a proponent of cannabis and psychedelics, he still has that competitive fire that all great athletes share. Being the best, being No. 1 means something. It always will. He wanted to be the Dolphins' all-time leading rusher more than rushing for 10,000 yards. He's proud that he rushed for 10,009 yards. He just wishes he'd have stayed one final year with the Dolphins instead of going to Baltimore for his final season in 2011. 'The 10,000 yards would have come with it,' he said of playing one more year with the Dolphins. 'I got the 10,000 yards, but I didn't get the all-time (record in Miami). I think just all the ups and downs with the Dolphins, to be on top of that list at the end of my career would have been better for me. 'That's the only regret, that I didn't play my last year here.' ____
Telegraph
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Drugs, prison, wild affairs – welcome to marriage to the king of LSD
Even before meeting and marrying Timothy Leary, the self-styled prophet of LSD, who urged America to 'turn on, tune in, drop out', Rosemary Woodruff had displayed a distinct propensity for choosing unsuitable men. Her first husband, an air force pilot, whom she married at 17, beat her so often he caused a miscarriage. Her second was a Dutch jazz accordion player, who taught her 'how to snort, smoke and inhale', and according to one friend 'treated her like s--t'. The daughter of a magician's assistant and serial debtor, Woodruff had abandoned her job as an air stewardess and was living with yet another jazz musician, and a junkie when, in 1965, she met Timothy Leary. Having been dismissed as a lecturer from Harvard, where he was pursuing research into the mind-expanding qualities of psychedelic drugs, Leary had established himself at Millbrook, the rambling estate in upstate New York owned by the oil heiress Peggy Hitchcock, and founded the Castalia Foundation (named after the intellectual colony in Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game), undergoing a transformation from tweed-clad professor to self-styled high priest of what William Burroughs would dyspeptically describe as an LSD fuelled 'religious do-good cult'. Arriving with a friend for a guided LSD session, Woodruff was swept off her feet by – as Susannah Cahalan writes in a new biography – 'the alluring silver-haired psychologist', who had 'high cheekbones on a handsome face that projected a high IQ'. 'You remind me of someone I once loved,' he told her. The practised inventory of pick-up lines, and the fact that Leary's first wife had died by suicide, might have sounded a warning note. In most histories of the psychedelic 1960s, and of Leary himself, Woodruff is largely overlooked. But The Acid Queen, an eye-widening account of the madcap melange of drugs, radical politics and idealism, and the quixotic search for kicks and deeper truths that made up the 1960s, places her centre stage in Leary's life as collaborator and inspiration at a time when his evangelism for LSD led to him being being described by Richard Nixon as the most dangerous man in America. Leary was a brilliant, charming trickster, whose initially sober scientific research into mind-expanding substances had become cloaked in messianic fervour. According to Leary, LSD connected the user to 'the long telephone wire of history that goes back two million years' – 'a key evolutionary touchstone for humanity… one of the most important discoveries of the century, up there with the atomic bomb'. (There was much more of this kind of stuff.) Woodruff was 15 years younger than Leary. But she found 'unbelievable alchemy' between her sun in Taurus and his in Libra, their shared moons in Aquarius and ascendants in Sagittarius. What could possibly go wrong? Under Leary's spell, Cahalan relates, 'the superficiality of Rosemary's life before became impossible'. Among the hipsters and well-heeled bohemians at Millbrook, she was quickly established as Leary's 'first lieutenant', 'wearing smock dresses cut from fabric she found in the communal clothing heap… a sublimely gorgeous, blissed-out model of earthly transcendence'. Life was less transcendent for Leary's two children from his first marriage. 'No-one is real until they have children,' Leary pronounced, but his son Jack would later recall that he would 'moan about us being millstones around his neck'. Following Leary's advice to drop out of school, Jack spent much of his adolescence at Millbrook, subsisting on peanut butter sandwiches, getting high on LSD and DMT, and endlessly playing The End by the Doors – no doubt paying particular attention to its theme of patricide. He would subsequently cut Leary completely out of his life. Leary's daughter Susan, meanwhile, was sent off to boarding school. On a family trip to Mexico she was busted at the border after trying to conceal Leary's drugs from the police, and sent to prison; her mental health deteriorated and she attempted suicide. She would die that way in 1990, hanging herself in a Los Angeles prison, where she was being held after shooting her boyfriend. Leary became a figure of public fascination and notoriety. He toured lecture theatres and television talk shows, the PT Barnum of acid, describing himself as 'the wisest man of the 20th century' and talking blithely of 'turning on' everyone in America. Woodruff, the 'blissed-out model of earthly transcendence' stayed at home, cataloguing the lectures she had helped to write, 'smoking hash, doing yoga and cleaning up mice droppings'. In 1970, Leary was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for possession of marijuana, a sentence that reflected the threat he was perceived to present to the nation's youth rather than the magnitude of the crime itself. Woodruff collaborated with the far-Left terrorist group the Weather Underground to spring him from prison, and, adopting a new identity fled with him to Algeria, where Eldridge Cleaver, the leader of the Marxist revolutionary Black Panthers, had also been given sanctuary. Cleaver, a former jail-bird and self confessed rapist – who, bizarrely, would later market his own range of trousers featuring a grotesquely exaggerated codpiece, with the slogan 'you'll be cock of the walk' – would, not surprisingly, prove to be a less than congenial host. Scornful of Leary's love-and-peace philosophy, he ordered them to undertake political orientation classes, 'lending them five volumes of Kim Il-sung's biography'. Broke and in fear of their lives, they duly obliged, with Leary now urging audiences to 'off a pig who threatens your life or freedom' and Woodruff talking of wanting to 'go back to Amerika… and blow things up'. Freed from Eldridge's malevolent grasp by an international arms dealer, Leary and Woodruff found refuge in Switzerland. From the outset, it seems, Woodruff had been torn between her emotional dependence on Leary and a growing realisation that he was an egomaniacal grifter, concerned only with perpetuating his own myth, and always ready to put his interests before hers. Finally abandoning him in 1973, she fled to Sicily, taking up with a count who, Cahalan writes, 'looked like a Roman emperor crossed with Serge Gainsbourg'. They 'made love in a secret grotto by a waterfall, drank grape brandy and helped raise chickens'. Accusing her of betrayal, and now co-operating with the American authorities to secure his own freedom, Leary turned his attention to the socialite Joanna Harcourt-Smith. 'Perhaps she will not feel, as I do,' Woodruff wrote, 'that she was duped into supporting something that was less than human.' Woodruff made it back into America, but was forced to live under an assumed name. She was working at a bed and breakfast establishment in San Francisco when, in 1992, out of the blue, she received a letter from Leary. who had been left by his most recent wife, telling her 'you are very dear and radiant in my memory banks.' They reconciled, as Leary put it, as 'best friends, not husband and wife'. He arranged a lawyer who managed to get all the outstanding charges against her dropped. After 24 years on the run, she was free to become Rosemary Woodruff once again. Leary, meanwhile, reinvented himself as a guru for the cyberspace age, lionised by a new generation, appearing in ads for Gap, and talking of having his head cryogenically frozen. He called his announcement in 1995 that he was dying of cancer 'the best publicity move I've ever made'. Cahalan tells an incredible story, but The Acid Queen is an odd book. It's part psychedelic Mills and Boon – Leary, we're told, 'had a kind of animal magnetism – a hot heat'; is there any other kind? – part paean to the psychedelic movement, and part morality tale. One finally leaves it with the thought that Woodruff, smart, and in her own way courageous, was less 'a psychedelic pioneer', than a victim of Leary's manipulation. Leary died at the age of 75 in 1996; Woodruff died in 2002 at the age of 66, leaving behind an unpublished memoir from which large parts of Cahalan's book are drawn. Late in life, she confessed to a friend that after hundreds of acid trips, she 'hadn't learned a thing'.
