Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary

Book excerpt: Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary is a scathingly honest and breathless autobiographical memoir by Joanna Harcourt-Smith, the British Jet-Set "hippie heiress" scapegoat for Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychologist "Pied Piper" of the Sixties generation. Between 1972 and 1977, Joanna was his lover and voice to the outside world while he was in prison for three-and-a-half of those years. Tripping the Bardo is a missing piece of the Sixties puzzle. Joanna Harcourt-Smith knows. As an eyewitness, she was right at the heart of it. From the Rolling Stones and Andy Warhol to the relentless FBI harassment of the political Left, Tripping the Bardo moves at the fast pace of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll that the Sixties were known for. The author's voice is that of a spoiled and damaged socialite but with an unrelenting sense of humor and ability to bring to life an outrageous set of characters – aristocrats and drug dealers, rockers and poets, crime lords and double agents. As Hermann Hesse said: I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.