Life as a Trip

First husband: the childhood sweetheart who turned into a violent maniac. Second husband: a jazz musician who got crazy with every passing siren. Third husband: Timothy Leary, the LSD Prophet and the biggest enemy of the US (depends on whom you ask). At the age of 64 Rosemary Woodruff Leary, the woman who sought new worlds through drugs, is looking back at her life.

Anyone who meets Rosemary Woodruff Leary today, would find it hard to believe that the lady in front of them is the was Timothy Leary's partner  in the 60s, when he was called LSD Prophet by his supporters and Public Enemy No. 1, by his opponents. Woodruff Leary is an articulate woman who chooses her words very carefully,  her manners and pleasance might recall woman who was raised in a noble palace and not the rebel hippie she actually was who, saught new worlds through drugs. It seems like the hardships and the suffering she  endured after separating from Leary did not leave any mark on her. Rosemary Woodruff Leary is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met, even if she isn’t very healthy. We meet at her beautiful house in Aptos, California, a beautiful wooden house watching over a valley. Her white living room is full of pictures and souvenirs of Timothy.

“It was the LSD that gave me a sense of belonging to this world because before my first psychedelic experience I didn’t have a feeling of belonging anywhere, even not in my own body”, she opens up the interview. WL was born in the American mid- west, a synonym of provinciality and conservativeness. “I always felt I was an alien. The first touch of recognition that the planet might be a comfortable place for me to be was when I fled to New York at the age of 17”.

She got there after short marriage to her childhood sweetheart. “I found myself in the desert, pregnant, escaping him, because he turned out to be a violent maniac. I lost the child and went to New York. In New York I could be the star of my own movie. Not that I always did, but I could be in different movies, not the same boring movie all the time”.

The new movie of her life included marrying a Dutch Jazz musician. WL: “In WW2 he had been in a concentration camp, and freak out every time there was a siren. But my scene at New York at that time was the Jazz scene”.

He played in a club called Kathy Society Down Town’ where there was a huge Rhythm-n-Blues group, with lots of musicians, all in costume, very flashy, quite wonderful, and of course great music. Occasionally Charlie Parker would show up there from time to time. The club named after Charlie, Birdland, still exists”.

At that time she worked as a model and stewardess for El Al. “I would finish my shift at Kennedy and head with my boyfriend to the Jazz club. It was an amazing period. I met then Jack Keroak, Philip Lamentier and more poets and writers who read their works. It was the wife of one of the musicians in the band that introduced me to the works of Gourdief and Ospansky [1] and I discovered other women explorers, and I felt that I was like them, an adventurist. I sensed that women who went for esoteric and spiritual adventures were my kin”.

This intuition turned out to be right afterwards, but meanwhile, young Woodruff was far from these travels. Reading had given me power and motivation to continue. “I’d get my salary and buy more books”.

30 Years in Jail

In 1965, at the age of 30, she met in Millbrook, a town in upstate New York, Timothy (Tim) Leary. Leary lived in a forest property, of [2]2,500 acres with friends and companions. Millbrook estate held Psychedelic seminars at weekends for people who were interested in the effects of drugs on the body and soul. “We would walk nude in the woods which I did, in feeling a total safety” she smiles in longings. “That was before newspaper reporters started walking into the woods. We were totally disconnected from reality. Outside the gates of Millbrook the Vietnam War was going on, men were drafted and got killed every day, and there were guerilla groups in the cities. We became aware of reality only when the police raided the place”.But that happened only later. When she just got to the estate, it was still quiet. ”My friends insisted that I had to try the LSD”.

What did you feel on your first trip?

It was revelatory. I felt part of the universe. I felt at home, comfortable in my skin, I was familiar to the experience because of something that happened to me when I was 7, I just saw everything as a whole. That sense was fading from me, until the first time I experienced LSD. It was part of my journey back home, you can say, and it was only the beginning”.

Did Millbrook have spiritual events, practicing this Here and Now feeling?

“We were playing with Buddhism, Hinduism. We looked for revelations. Even the way we made decisions was experimental. We didn’t have any guides to tell us what to do and we used I-Ching, and other methods. There were all kinds of theories, like that one that claimed Jesus was a mushroom. It sounds foolish today, but it all started then and people took it seriously. It was quite a popular book in the 60s”. Leary’s copy was recently sold in an auction.

Leary and Woodruff met and fell in love instantly. “He was still married. “He  married in December (this was his second marriage. His first wife committed suicide at 1961. DGP[DP1] ), but everybody knew that marriage was over. I was still involved with the musician”.

In august, three months after they met, Woodruff finally (as much as it could be “final”) moved to Millbrook. “There was a great clearing out of the Millbrook group. Some went to Europe, some followed the Grateful Dead. We planned to take the children, who were teen agers and go to Yokatan, in Mexico, and become bond as a family unit. On the US- Mexico border, on the Mexican side we tried to cross the border, and one of the border police discovered Marijuana seeds on the car floor, and arrested us. We returned to Millbrook. Tim was found guilty, was sentenced for 30 years in jail, and to a $40,000 fine. All our efforts went into raising money for the lawyers”.

“At a certain stage, the District Attorney led a raid on Millbrook, during a seminar weekend. The house was full of people, kids and reporters. There were about 40 armed policemen who expected an orgy or something. They took Tim away. They’ve cut our telephone line, so I couldn’t call a lawyer. They called me as a witness and I refused to testify. They put me in a jail in Pokipsee and told me they could give me 28 days in jail on every unanswered question. I didn’t have a choice. I had to come out and witness in front of the jury, who were, of course the rubber stamp of the DA. I testified about Mandalas and all kinds of esoteric things”

Why? Did they think you were a cult?

“They thought we were into sex. They were going to charge us with adultery, because we weren’t registered at that time. The questions were about how often Tim and I slept together, what drugs did we used. But the end, they dropped the charges against Tim”.

The Most Dangerous Person on Earth and His Wife

At that stage Woodruff and Leary decide, as a step in the struggle against the government, to form a religious group. WL: “Tim was right. As a philosopher, he had a clear position, that nobody had the right to tell you what or whom you can put into your own body. We fought by lecture tours and saw the audience growing, and reacted very enthusiastically, sometimes really in a very primal way, howling. Of course the things Tim said were pretty outrageous: `Don't vote, don't go to Vietnam, drop out of this mice race and try to find your own way`. He of course didn’t invent this. It was already happening”.

What did you do in those shows?

It was a multimedia show, using projections. We used a slide projector, a back projector. I had a show, The Reincarnation of Jesus Christ. I used six projectors[3], back projectors and music.  I got huge slides of all the annunciations from the great museums, and Dali’s crucification and we were doing backflips with it. I used Hieronimus Bosch triptych, and the pope visit to New York, which we covered with our hands. It was sort of  comment on Christianity. We’ve done one on the Buddha and on Steppenwolf of Hermann Hesse. We took this on the road and did it in Chicago and San Francisco, and raised money. We traveled a lot. It was a very exciting time to be alive.

Tim was an older father figure who was permissive, unlike adults, teachers and preachers, all around that said to young people: `You gotta go to school, to do this, to do that`. Tim said: `Do no good until you feel good.`”

Timothy Leary was arrested again in 1968, as a menance to society, and the judge used his interviews in the media to imply he didn’t deserve to be free. “We  were back to the days of raids again” recalls WL. “They called `Public Enemy No. 1`. When we were on honeymoon on the beach, they took pictures of us and the caption was: `The most dangerous man in the world in a honeymoon on the beach”. I was feeding the seagulls, you know”.

The couple got married in 1967 at three wedding ceremonies. “One was at the top of a mountain in Joshua Tree National Monument, performed by an American Indian medicine man. There was an Indian family who was living in our house in Berkeley, and one of them had the right to perform Hindu ceremonies. It was a very special wedding. I was dressed in a sari, had a dot on my forehead, and had a line of red powder in my hair. The second one was at our Berkeley home, performed by an Indian fakir. And the third one, the legal one, was held in Millbrook.

A legal one? With a judge? A priest?

“No, no. It was held by an ordained guru who had the right to marry in the state of New York. Leary’s religious group, The League for Spiritual Discovery, had no such authority”.

Why three weddings?

It seemed like a good idea at that time. We used to go to Joshua Tree all the time, and it seemed like a wonderful place to get married. We were very influenced by eastern philosophies. The east had given us new ways, and there was an influx of gurus from the east at that time in the US. And of course, we wanted to get married in Millbrook, with our friends and family”.

The honeymoon was not long. “The police had planted Marijuana in an ash tray. I know that, because the women carried the Marijuana. It was part of the patriarchal system. Women are delicate creatures, and of course nobody is gonna bother them”.

I realized I would not become a mother

Leary was convicted for 10 years. WL was prohibited to leave the country. WL: “Tim was in jail in spite of protests and petitions of thousands of people. We flew from the US and found refugee in Algeria, with the Black Tigers. At first, the Algerian thought that we were an Afro American black psychiatrist and his wife, or something of the sort. They didn’t really know who Tim was and were very surprised when they heard who we were. We were there for nine months, insulated, with only each other. They suggested him to teach, but it wasn’t likely. Algeria was becoming xenophobic, against the French education. They had students riots, but in quite the different way of the western countries”.

The Learies left for Swizerland, and where about to go to Denmark, where Tim was offered a job, but they were told it’s an American trap, that is meant to get them back to the US. They remained in Switzerland, which gave them political asylum. When the Americans demanded Leary, it turned out the offence he was charged in America wasn’t considered so gravely in Switzerland and they refused extradition. ”Allen Ginsberg and other writers” recalls WL, “wrote a letter to the Swiss government, and I believe they paid attention to it.

You separated then. Why?

“We wanted a child. I needed an operation for my fertility and there were no western countries we could go to, because we were fugitives. It was only third world Moslem or Communist countries that would recognize us, and they would not practice fertility problems. Tim was arrested again, and I had to raise money to free him. Since we’ve been together we’ve been arrested many times, we’ve been  in courtrooms and trials. I just had an operation, and with all the pressure in Algeria, when I discovered I wouldn’t be a mother, I decided I needed to reevaluate what I want to do with my life. At that point the publicity started chasing us again, and I decided I wanted to get away for a while. I went to Sicily. It was in 1972”.

A year later, when she stayed as fugitive in the Caribbean’s, WL learned from the National Herald Tribune that Tim had divorced her. “It was painful to learn about it that way,” she tells me, and I can recognize the pain in her voice even after all the years that have passed since then. “Especially to know that I was helpless to do anything about it”.

But she hasn’t been alone all this time. During the time she spent in South America, making a living from agriculture and raising bulls, she had a companion, of whom she didn’t care to speak. She had to leave the states were she stayed every three months, since she didn’t have a longer visa. Her Spanish was bad and “finding a store that sold books in English was always a first priority”’ she describes how much alienated she felt.

  Stupidity and Fate Guided My Life

 In 1976 she decided to do it, and flew on a speed boat, wearing a bikini, pretending to be a tourist who went out for a cruise. She took her I-Ching book, which she never left, two suitcases, and some foreign coins “I was ready to drop over board any moment”.

When she reached Cape Cod, Massachusetts, she parted from her companion, whom she has been for the last couple of years. “It was the first time since I was 13 that I wasn’t emotionally involved with someone. I found it a very significant time in my life. I also came from a place where I lived in an intense fear and paranoia coming back to the US, which I found quite, altered from when I had left. When I had left it was really a question of us and them, and now things seemed a lot more homogenized, there didn’t seem to be much separation and the country was much quieter”.

Cape Cod was a comfortable place for outlaws like Rosemary Woodruff Leary. “It’s a little piece of land into the Atlantic Ocean. It’s were the pilgrims first landed on the Mayflower, so it’s very rich in history and has a rich tradition of independent people, isolated, free thinking, and rebellious people. At the turn of the century it was a community for many artists and writers, like Eugene O ‘ Neil, among others. It was a place for people who wanted to live freely and change their lives. I was one of the people which they called “The Washedashores”. It was a perfect place for me to be, plus the sea was very healing. I was living alone, for the first time in my life. I had to learn how to deal with people on an even level. I wasn’t in the publicity, and I learned how to negotiate my life again. I found a rewarding work in the community, I was a sales director in a resort hotel, and I had a job that I loved of raising money for a community radio station. It was a way of keeping active, I felt I was worthwhile member of the community”.

During this time she used her maiden name, Woodruff, and false first names, which she had chosed according to Kabalistic numerology. This way she managed to sneak from the government, who wasn’t keen to find her as before. Woodruff Leary lived 14 years in Cape Cod, “The longest I lived anywhere”. In 1990 she moved to California, where she lives until today, close to her mother and her brother, “the only family I have”.

Did you do drugs after separating from Tim?

It would have been too frightening to try and use drugs under those circumstances. I think, one of the reasons I was able to heal and to come back to a kind of sanity, freedom from fear and regain some optimism about my life, was because I was not using any type of drug at that time. Not because I opposed it, but because it wasn’t the right thing for me at that time. I couldn’t even smoke grass anymore, cause it made me too fearful. The time for all of that was over, that was pretty clear”.

However, even today WL believes that government shouldn’t try to control what or whom people put into their bodies. To her opinion, the drug policy is hypocritical and insane just like racial devide. Today, after regaining her freedom she’d rather not to be active in the community. “I still feel somehow, that they are gonna get me”.

It happened in 1994, when she gave herself to the police. In the trial she said that she was a victim of Leary. “If this is the price I had to pay, it was worth it”. Today, surrounded by loving friends, she is writing her memoirs and short stories.

Do you regret anything?

I feel that stupidity and fates were guiding my life. I recognized in Algeria, that I couldn’t blame anyone for the predicament I was in, that was based upon choices that I have made. I was out of my country, facing totally unfamiliar culture, in a dangerous situation, without anyone to come to my aid and totally alienated from my government, who wanted to put me in prison. I had no-one to be angry at, but myself and the laws of my country. There were lessons to be learned there. I try not to regret anything in my life. I can assume that the things that happened to me had a purpose. I believe that there was connection between Tim and myself, that was very very deep, and that is continue to be part of my life, to my surprise. It was the one relationship I couldn’t shake off or forget. I’m still dealing with the implications of this relationship, still governing my life to some extent.

Even now, 4 years after his death?

“Well, I’m the trustee for his estate, I’m dealing with his archives, his copyrights and royalties and for that matter, his reputation. So, yes, he is still part of my life today”.