via Timothy Leary Archives
I knew Al Jourgensen and Dr. Timothy Leary were friends. Leary’s voice opened the Revolting Cocks’ Linger Ficken’ Good (see below), and when I saw Ministry at the Hollywood Palladium a couple weeks before Leary’s death in ‘96, Jourgensen announced from the stage that Tim was in the building. Jourgensen writes in his memoir that at the Palladium, he and Leary “hung out with Joe Strummer and Captain Sensible, and the four of us did more cocaine than you can fit onto a picnic table.”
But I was unprepared for the revelation, dropped as casually as a handkerchief two-thirds of the way through the same book, that Jourgensen lived with Leary for two years in the mid-90s, during which time both he and Gibby Haynes were test subjects for Leary’s experiments with psychedelics.
In the context of the book, this comes as a piece of good news, because at least Al is getting something like a doctor’s care. Fix, the depressing documentary filmed on Ministry’s Filth Pig tour (or “Sphinctour”), leaves no doubt as to the severity of Al’s multiple drug problems during this time, and the corresponding chapters...
Oh, hey… don’t get me wrong. I’m pro-drug, or anti-war-on-drugs, or whatever. Drugging people without their consent is fucked up. Doing anything to people without their consent is fucked up.
I just think the phrasing implying some scientific method is funny.
“Tested a variety of drugs.”
That’s a hoot of an interpretation. I tested a variety of drugs on myself, when I was younger, too. “No, officer; I’m not on drugs. I’m testing some.”
Timothy Leary, god love him, was a wonderful soul and the patron saint of acid heads. His scientific method was… questionable.
Do you think the CIA had a better method?
Oh, hey… don’t get me wrong. I’m pro-drug, or anti-war-on-drugs, or whatever. Drugging people without their consent is fucked up. Doing anything to people without their consent is fucked up.
I just think the phrasing implying some scientific method is funny.