John Higgs - I Have America Surrounded

Tim set off to Dominica, on an ultimately futile journey to seek a suitable location in the Caribbean. That he was starting to become a little desperate was shown in his attempts to settle here, for he considered the location to be far from the idyllic paradise demanded by the laws of set and setting. At night the black sands and thick jungle seemed oppressive and sinister. The island was poverty-stricken and dependent for survival on the foreign corporations that ran the banana industry.

Initial approaches to the island’s officials were highly favourable, however, until a sudden change of mind further up the chain of command led to being told to leave. Tim has claimed that this was because of an approach to the island’s governor by the CIA. He left the island and headed to Antigua, where he met Richard Alpert. Alpert was still in the process of travelling to Dominica and was furious that Tim had got himself thrown off the island before he had even arrived. They set up in an old seafront bar called the Bucket of Blood, which was deserted and almost devoid of furniture, in order to investigate the possibility of establishing themselves in Antigua. They were now about $50000 in debt and Richard had taken to selling his antiques and his Mercedes to support their efforts. The pair began to fight during a group acid trip. ‘There were, like, 14 people sitting around us in a circle,’ Alpert recalled, ‘and Tim felt that what we were really fighting about was sexual in nature and so he took off all his clothes and offered himself to me, really. And the whole thing was totally bizarre. So we rolled around on the floor and then worked it out and we all went swimming the next morning. There wasn’t any real sex between us; not that time or ever. Tim was threatened by homosexuality. I think he’d had some unpleasant episodes in his life that he wanted to forget.’ 9

One of those present, a man called Frank Ferguson, who was working as Tim’s secretary, had a psychotic episode during the trip. The group was attempting to befriend the leading psychiatrists on Antigua in order to gain support, and one of these was known to be a specialist in lobotomies. As the IF-IF members had come to view the brain as an almost sacred organ, they viewed performing a lobotomy as an almost evil act. Ferguson was troubled by the ethics of dealing with this man. While under the influence of LSD, he decided that the only thing to do was approach the unsuspecting doctor and offer to be voluntarily lobotomised himself, as a sacrifice. 10 This he promptly did and the resulting scandal wiped out any hope of IF-IF being accepted in Antigua.

Their luck didn’t improve when they flew back to the USA. Their LSD was in a mouthwash bottle in Alpert’s luggage, and he saw his bag fall to the ground whilst being loaded into the cargo hold. The bottle was smashed, and the drug soaked into his white linen suit. Obtaining new supplies of LSD was difficult now that it was regulated by the FDA, so for the next few months they were reduced to nibbling the suit when they wanted to trip. 11

Fortunately, their luck improved considerably once they returned. They found the base that they had been searching for.

The house at Millbrook was a 64-room Gothic mansion in Duchess County, New York, about 80 miles north of Manhattan. The grounds covered 2500 acres across landscape where Rip Van Winkle, the stories said, had once encountered the Dutch elves. There were orchards, hills, pine forests, a waterfall, a three-storey gatehouse and a separate bungalow. It was empty and deserted when Richard first saw it, exploring its labyrinth of rooms by candlelight, and despite it being an ‘exquisitely horrible house’, he knew that they had found their home.

The house had recently been bought by Billie and Tommy Hitchcock, two grandchildren of William Larimer Mellon, the founder of Gulf Oil. The Hitchcocks were young businessmen, and their trust funds alone give them an income of around $7 million a year each. Their sister Peggy had been a strong supporter of Tim’s since Harvard, and she arranged for Richard to introduce Billie to acid in order to convert him to the cause. Once enlightened, he agreed to allow Tim, Ralph, Richard and a fluctuating group of between 10 and 20 of their friends and families to set up a communal home at Millbrook for a nominal rent.

It was a fitting home for the history-shaping research that they intended to pursue. ‘Big houses with intricate floor plans figure prominently in the drama and fantasy life of individuals and races,’ wrote a Millbrook resident, Art Kleps. ‘One expects, quite reasonably, on the basis of experience, personal and vicarious, that if one is destined to perform noble deeds or to encounter great and mysterious figures, that such a setting will be provided. We do not expect history to be made in hovels.’ 12

And so began the story of the experimental commune at Millbrook. Their presence was at first cautiously welcomed by the local town people, for the new residents were friendly, kept up a respectable academic demeanour and spent a lot of money in the local liquor store. Initial concerns were minor. The estate ‘once employed several dozen gardeners’, one newspaper commented, ‘but has not been manicured lately’. 13 Only slowly did stories about the lifestyle within start to circulate, and the realisation that the new ‘lords of the manor’ were dedicated to strange drugs, group sex and the most un-Christian interpretation of religion imaginable. It did not help matters that the grounds backed onto those of Bennett College, a private girls’ school.

The Millbrook estate was quickly declared ‘out of bounds’ for the pupils, who were informed that any visits could result in their expulsion. This, the president of the college declared, was just ‘a precautionary measure’.

Once installed at Millbrook, Tim adopted a public persona that was, for him, surprisingly cautious. Plans to open IF-IF centres across the country were shelved as legal access to LSD had become too difficult. Instead he focused on the religious dimension of the psychedelic experience, and explored ways to communicate this to people without the use of any psychedelic drug. ‘Chemicals are only one psychedelic method,’ he told Newsweek. ‘There are hundreds of others we can employ here—diet, fasting, dance, breathing exercises, sensory withdrawal, Zen, photography, archery’ 14 He announced that Millbrook would host a series of drugless consciousness-raising seminars each weekend. ‘The Beats come, they see a straight scene, and they go away,’ he claimed.

These drugless seminars were unusual events. Guests paid $60 a head for the weekend, and would find themselves meditating alone in empty rooms while cards containing written instructions were occasionally posted under the door. The guests had to dress in togas and eat meals together in total silence. A voice would intermittently read ‘bright sayings’ over a Tannoy system, or a gong would be hit. For the full-time residents of Millbrook, who gobbled endless LSD tablets and giggled away in the background, the whole thing was completely ludicrous.

Tim kept up the ‘drugless’ angle for at least the next three years, when he went out on the road and performed ‘Psychedelic Religious Celebrations’ in theatres across the country. These were multimedia events, an hour and a half in length, which attempted to create a sense of spiritual awareness in the audience through light shows, prayers and the stories of Christ and the Buddha. 15

The irony of this drugless stance is that by the time Tim arrived at Millbrook it was already too late to stop the swelling interest in LSD that would erupt into the mainstream during 1967’s ‘Summer of Love’. His advocacy at Harvard and Zihuatanejo had gained enough publicity that the existence of LSD was now public knowledge. Curious people wanted to know more, so they started to investigate the subject themselves. The establishment of an underground drug infrastructure that would eventually produce enough LSD to supply an estimated seven million Americans was now under way. Tim could talk about meditation and yoga all he liked, but nothing would put this genie back into its bottle.