Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 12, 1995 TAG: 9509120003
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID COLKER LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. LENGTH: Long
Timothy Leary has cancer. And to hear him talk about it, he's ecstatic.
``When I found out I was terminally ill, and I know this can be misinterpreted, I was thrilled,'' says the ever-elfin Leary with enthusiasm. ``I was now entered into the real challenge of how to live an empowered life, a life of dignity.''
Leary, 74, sits at the breakfast table of his Beverly Hills home, drawing on the first of the many cigarettes he will smoke in the next hour. Although he has always cut a trim figure, he is now painfully thin.
In January he was told he had prostate cancer and that it was too far along for surgery.
``How you die is the most important thing you ever do,'' he continues. ``It's the exit, the final scene of the glorious epic of your life. It's the third act, and you know, everything builds up to the third act.
``I've been waiting for this for years.''
This jaunty stance from the former Harvard psychologist who became a celebrity in the 1960s for extolling the use of LSD does not seem to be manufactured solely for the public. Shortly after the cancer was diagnosed, Leary contacted his old friend Ram Das, author of the seminal counterculture spiritual handbook, ``Be Here Now.''
``I got a phone call from Timothy and he said, `I have two wonderful pieces of news,' '' says Ram Das, speaking from his home near San Francisco. ``I can't remember what the second one was, but the first was that he had cancer that had metastasized and that he was dying.''
In his first interview about his current condition, Leary never wavers from the enthusiastic demeanor that has been his public persona for three decades.
Actually, it is more a salon than an interview. As friends and business associates drop by, Leary, never one to turn down an audience, eagerly beckons them to sit at the table and join in the conversation about his pending death.
``This is wonderful,'' he says, looking around the table and smiling broadly. ``This is such a taboo topic, and here we are talking about it.
``I grew up in a culture where you never talked about how much money you made or anything about death. I love topics the Establishment says are taboo.''
Although Leary says he feels no pain, he wears soft slippers to protect his feet and the cushion of his chair is further padded by a pillow. He sometimes has sores on his hands and face, caused by a bacterial infection.
Timothy Leary's dead
Oh no he's outside, looking in
- The Moody Blues, 1968
Leary is still a household name, but he would probably not be welcome at the breakfast tables of many Americans because of his unwavering promotion of psychedelic drugs as a way to expand consciousness.
But Leary - who in addition to being an ex-college professor, has also been a West Point cadet, actor, gubernatorial candidate, lecturer, software developer, stand-up comedian and convict - relishes his stance as an outsider. There is no surprise that even in death, he plans to go his own way, at the time of his own choosing.
``I use the term `voluntary dying,' '' says Leary. ``It's a nice way of saying `killing yourself.' ''
Leary was on a traditional, professorial career path in the psychology department at Harvard in 1960 when, after an experience with a psychedelic mushroom in Mexico, he began a series of experiments with mind-altering drugs. This led him to contacts with the literary and hip set of the time - Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Charlie Mingus, to name a few - and to his being pressured into leaving Harvard.
But in the mid-1960s, as the hippie movement spread, his fame grew to international proportions. The fame diminished during the 1970s, much of which he spent either in prison on drug and prison escape convictions, or on the run in Africa and Europe.
Leary found success in doing a national tour of debates with his former arch-nemesis, Watergate figure and ultra-conservative commentator G. Gordon Liddy. The two men became unlikely friends, even though Liddy in his days as a law official had arrested Leary twice.
``He called me when he was diagnosed and talked about how he was handling it,'' says Liddy, from his home outside Washington. ``I promised myself I would get out there to see him, and I will, soon.''
Asked what is the basis for their friendship, Liddy says, ``Well, we're both Irish.''
That notion is not so far-fetched, according to Ram Das.
``It's the Irish always rebelling against the English and everybody,'' Ram Das says. ``Tim is a fighter, he is always going up against authority.''
At the beginning of this year, after an arduous lecture tour, Leary contracted pneumonia. ``It was the first time in my life I was ill,'' he says. ``I asked for a complete physical exam, and it came back that I had prostate cancer.''
Soon after getting the news, Leary began to formulate a personal, ``quality of life'' document to spell out just when he considered life not worth living.
``I have certain fears of losing my dignity,'' he says. ``Having to be diapered, losing whatever is left of my mental agility.
``I'm tremendously frightened. The only thing I've ever been frightened of in my life is that stage of total, undignified, vegetable passivity.''
He says he would like to die at home, with friends present, but he is undecided on many of the details. On one of his wrists is a metal bracelet with the name and phone number of a firm specializing in cryonics.
On his other wrist is a bracelet with the name and number of a rival cryonics firm.
``I want to keep my options open,'' Leary says with a laugh.
He says it is a ``real possibility' that he will take a dose of LSD before he dies, but that is undecided, too.
``I like options,'' he says. ``You're as young as the last time you changed your mind.''
The options do not include a conventional burial. ``I went past that veterans' cemetery in Westwood the other night, with all those stones in perfect rows, and it just gave me the creeps,'' he says. ``It looked like they were all index cards.''
His friends say that although they sometimes find it difficult to talk about Leary's death, they are glad to be included in the process. ``If Tim were shielding me from this experience, I think it would make losing him really hard,'' says Vicki Marshall, one of the editors of his latest book, ``Chaos & Cyber Culture'' (Ronin Publishing Inc., 1994).
In the meantime, there is work to be done. Leary now finds it difficult to travel, but he does occasionally lecture. His main goal is the organization of his archives. In his garage are hundreds of boxes of writings and other materials.
Leary does not have much trouble, his friends say, in the role of patient. ``He has no trouble accepting help,'' says his manager, Sioban Cyr. ``Tim likes to be pampered. He likes women hovering around him, dressing him and doing his hair.''
The search for an ideal death has helped keep Leary vibrant. ``I've been thinking about this for so many years, and now it's real,'' he says with gusto.
Leary pauses to draw on his cigarette and then laughs.
``When you think about it,'' he says, ``there's nothing to lose.''
by CNB