Turn on, tune in, drop dead.

Shades of innocence, the undisturbed, 
the pouting wonderment, 
the bruised and battered innocence.
The rose tint of flower power 
lending color to the intervening haze, 

A smog intermingled with 
twining curling snakes of 
hashish smoke, flower tops, 
the corners of a mouth 
turned up in an ironic smile.

We blew out our heritage,
Replaced it with an uneasy vacancy:
A seductive set of values, introduced
by a grinning shrink from Harvard
with his new book of the dead.

Timothy Leary persuaded me that all my role models were phony and American society was worthless. “Dropping out” was the answer, and I could do that by hitting a disconnect switch in my own mind.

His breakthrough technology was “ego death,” which meant simulating body death with drugs and taking a spiritual journey formerly reserved for people who had actually died. It involved a series of elaborate hallucinations, suggested by the words of his “guidebook,” a loose interpretation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

The goal was abandonment of your former life and everything you had cherished.

It was a CIA operation.