“Now it can be told – the amazing story of one of the great escapes of all time!
“This unbelievable but true personal account could not have been published before now.
“Dr. Timothy Leary, international Pied Piper of the connter-culture, tells his own hair-raising story — escape from an American prison — underground adventures fleeing the U.S. for sanctuary in Algeria — imprisonment by Eldridge Cleaver and the Panthers — flight from Africa to temporary safety in Switzerland, only to be caught again.
“CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND reads like a thriller. Here is the fully authenticated account of what happened to Timothy Leary, the headline hero who dared to gamble with his life.”
Timothy-Leary_Confessions-of-a-Hope-FiendWhen the rat no longer cares about the electric shock, then the study can no longer continue.
Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2015
September 20, 2015
Book Review by Michael Richardson
Confessions of a Hope Fiend
by Timothy Leary
1973
The majority of books written by Timothy Leary are instructional, philosophical, pseudo-scientific, or political in nature. Confessions of a Hope Fiend is instead a short autobiographical account of Timothy Leary’s escape from prison, flight from authorities, and failed attempts to seek asylum while under the custody/kidnapping by the Black Panthers in Algiers.
The first part of the book deals with his court trial, introduction to the jail system, and his plans for escape. My immediate impression of these first few chapters is that Timothy Leary is a watch-and-learn kind of person. Either that or he has omitted important parts of his personality and feelings from this book. His participation in the court trial seems minimal. He had a “show up and see what the lawyers have to tell me” attitude. He expresses very little about his feelings, other than his straight forward desire to not go to prison and general uncertainty. I know that if I was under the same circumstances as him, I would have been afraid, nervous, and constantly questioning everything. I would want to participate in my defense and make sure that every legal option was taken. In Leary’s case, he seems to have just accepted it all and rode the wave of chaos straight from the court room to the prison cell. Not that I judge him in that I think he could have done better, but that he didn’t seem to resist much.
This theme of non-resistance would carry through the entire book until the last page. And I think that is a defining characteristic of Timothy Leary during this episode of his life. And the reasons for it are likely his roots in psychedelic experimentation. His prior writings make it clear: In order to do psychedelics, one must let-go of the ego and accept death. One must be fearless and open to every experience. It could be said that the best preparation for prison might be having experience with psychedelics. After all, psychedelics teach one to give-up control, to accept things as they are, and above all, to not fear the void or the passage of time. As Timothy Leary might say, his DNA was wired for the entire trip from the beginning.
His time in prison is unremarkable in my opinion. He doesn’t get into any fights. He isn’t raped. He isn’t beaten by the prison wardens. In fact, it’s rather boring. He is quiet, keeps to himself, reads, and generally lets time pass until he has adequate plans to escape. Perhaps I have watched too many dramatic prison movies and expected a brutal prison confrontation or a daring escape with bullets flying and explosions. Or perhaps the times have changed significantly since 1970 when he was incarcerated. Perhaps prison wasn’t as fearful and restrictive back then as it is now. I think that might say more about where society and the prison system has gone in the past 45 years. He also writes that he had sympathizers in the prison system helping him, both from inmates as well as guards. And during his search for asylum, he seemed to have always had people caring for him wherever he went. Perhaps it was in 1966 when John Lennon of The Beatles wrote the song Tomorrow Never Knows based on Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert’s landmark book The Psychedelic Experience (1964) that the world was introduced to LSD and Timothy Leary. The writings and personality of Timothy Leary was very influential during this relatively short amount of time. He was very charismatic. I think it was his overflowing fountain of charisma and powerful ties to celebrities that lead to his incarceration. After all, if Timothy Leary could convince The Beatles of anything, authorities knew that The Beatles could convince the world. Timothy Leary’s message was always clear: Turn on, tune in, and drop out. He was anti-authority, anti-United States Government, and anti-establishment. So to prison he went. And with a little help from his friends, he escaped.
The actual escape wasn’t particularly exciting by modern movie standards, although it must have been quite the adventure for him at the time. His +10 charisma skills got him sent to a low security prison. Partly because of his connections, but also because the prison system was, at the time, using a personality exam to determine prisoner work placement that Timothy Leary himself wrote. He answered in such a way to present himself as least threatening as possible and got to work as a gardener, which was a necessary position for him to be in for his escape. With help from The Weathermen, a notorious underground anti-government group, he was able to sneak out of the prison and embark on a world-wide journey to escape the reach of The United States and Interpol.
As soon as he was on the outside he soon learned that he only went from one kind of prison to another. During his flight he was constantly under the control and influence of the anti-establishment groups The Weathermen and the Black Panthers. His time with the Weathermen was short lived. They did their job and got him out of prison and out of the country. He eventually found his way into the hands of the Black Panthers, specifically under the control of ex-leader Eldridge Cleaver and into Algeria. This “flight” period from the US to Algeria was more of Timothy Leary just riding the wave and accepting all that was going on around him. He shaved his head into a crew-cut and changed his appearance to avoid detection. He laid-low, didn’t argue, and allowed the wave of chaos carry him over the seas into what he thought was asylum but ended up being just another prison run by the Panthers.
While in Algiers, Timothy Leary enjoyed an odd mix of slight freedom and restriction. Eldridge Cleaver dictated much of what he was allowed to do. His passports were confiscated and his travel greatly restricted. He was under constant watch by the Panthers and there was an ever looming threat upon him, although it never actually came to blows or physical punishment. Instead it was more or less a psychological prison. He was sometimes allowed to meet with friends, foreign dignitaries, political leaders, but he had to ask permission first or suffer the consequences. And those consequences usually meant isolation and inducing fear of the unknown, shuffling him from one place to another without being told where he is going. This behavior by the Panthers shows how absolute power corrupts absolutely. The primary agenda of the Black Panthers is freedom for black people, freedom from oppression of the white man. And within their own power-circle, the Panthers turn the tables and become the oppressors. Perhaps this is what led to their downfall. Their biggest mistake seems to have been to ignore the basic premise that all forms of governance need checks and balances. Eldridge Cleaver had no one else to answer to within the Black Panthers in Algeria, and the Algerian Panthers transformed into the very kind of system they were trying to destroy. But Leary, always quick-witted, stated his feelings about this time rather appropriately: “Our four days in prison [under the Panthers] were nothing compared to four hundred years of Afro-American slavery.”
There was a point near the end of his stay in Algiers where Timothy Leary stopped being so accepting of his situation. While he didn’t openly rebel, he simply did as he wished and without regard to how the Panthers might react. He met with people he wasn’t allowed to and eventually, through the right channels, was able to get out from under the custody of the panthers, get passports, and finally board a plane en-route to Switzerland. And that is where the journey ends.
Ever true to his own words, Confessions of a Hope Fiend is a story about dropping out. His non-participation in many of the events in this book is a real-world example of how to drop-out with the broad implications of what it is exactly it is that a person should drop-out from. Many people of that era mistakenly thought “drop-out” was a direct reference to school and American education, perhaps because of his exile from Harvard University. It was never meant to be that specific. Dropping-out means no longer being a part of a situation you find unacceptable. It could mean school, employment, religion, governance, or even dropping-out from under the influence of another person. Unfortunately for groups like the Black Panthers and the Weathermen, they interpreted “dropping out” to mean open rebellion and war. Timothy Leary never advocated that. He was clear that a separation needed to be made. The United States government had become corrupt as well as all of the institutions contained within. The younger generation should not trust their fathers, their leaders, their political representatives, the authority figures, and above all, the system of media and education that teaches everyone to accept it.
His answer was to drop-out, to stop participating in it, but not to try to force a change with open rebellion. He knew that it was a losing battle to fight it in traditional terms. This was expressed in his 1966 record album Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out (not the same as his better known 1967 motion picture soundtrack of the same title), in which he spoke to the younger generation and asked that his words not be shared with anyone over 40 years of age. He saw a war beginning and knew it was asymmetrical, that direct confrontation would lead to their downfall, and that it must be fought on their own terms. His earlier education in Harvard must have taught him that once a person no longer responds to control, when the rat no longer cares about the electric shock, then the study can no longer continue. And in that total commitment to dropping-out, there is much freedom to be had.