(2018-05-01) This Magical Drug Mansion In Upstate New York Is Where The Psychedelic 60s Took Off

This magical drug mansion in Upstate New York is where the psychedelic ’60s took off

Owned by one of America’s richest families, Millbrook hosted Tim Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Mingus and more

Billy Hitchcock’s country estate in Millbrook, New York, was occupied by Timothy Leary and his followers during much of 1967

In January of 1963, Billy thought it’d be a smart investment to spend half a million dollars on 2,500 acres of land two hours north of New York City on the outskirts of the sleepy village of Millbrook.

the estate had fallen into disrepair, the dilapidated mansion an afterthought. That is, until Peggy Hitchcock, his impossibly hip 28-year-old sister who turned him onto acid, asked him for a favor.

Drs. Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, the partners in crime behind the ill-fated Harvard Psilocybin Project, were in bad shape in the summer of 1963

$50,000 in debt.

But then along came Peggy Hitchcock, who Leary introduced to LSD the year before and with whom he had a brief affair

Peggy was considered the most innovative and artistic of the Andrew Mellon family.

In September of 1963, Alpert, Leary, and Ralph Metzner (their colleague at Harvard) moved in, along with thirty or so of their followers.

Jazz musicians like Charles Mingus and Maynard Ferguson tested their improvisational skills while playing bass and trumpet high on the roof.

The ringleaders were still academics at heart

But as the months passed, Millbrook started to lose its scientific bearings

2am on Sunday, April 17, 1966, when the newly-appointed assistant district attorney G. Gordon Liddy — yes, that G. Gordon Liddy — led a nighttime raid on the Millbrook estate, search warrant in hand, a climax to months of surveillance.

officers found a small amount of cannabis, but no acid or other drugs

John Perry Barlow, a regular at Millbrook during its final days who’d later write lyrics for the Grateful Dead, co-found the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and write the famed Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace manifesto, said Leary and others had “found Dr. Alpert’s manias so alarming they’d sent him packing off to India.” Alpert would return in 1969 bearded, wearing a dhoti and calling himself Ram Dass

Demand for acid was high, and Billy Hitchcock, enterprising as ever, sensed an opportunity. He introduced Nicholas Sand, a Millbrook regular and aspiring underground chemist, to Tim Scully, a whizz kid chemist from Berkeley newly-arrived on the estate. With Hitchcock bankrolling the operation, the two chemists moved to California, set up a lab, and synthesized 3.6 million hits of Orange Sunshine — 250 micrograms of pure LSD bliss that hit the San Francisco streets right on time for the Summer of Love. Hitchcock soon followed his latest venture to the Bay Area, but not before evicting everybody from the estate he was now certain was his.