TIMOTHY LEARY was surrounded by friends and family as he lay dying. According to a friend, he popped up and said. "Why not? Why not?". Then he sighed. "Yeah."
The American counter culture drug guru who advised the world in 1967 to "turn on, tune in and drop out," died yesterday at his home in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, a family friend said.
Ms Carol Rosin, a friend from the 1960s, said Leary was on light painkillers when he died. Friends filmed the event.
Leary, who was 75, had been suffering from prostate cancer and had been planning his own death, wanting to chart his progression toward oblivion. Ms Rosin and other friends were working last night to get the footage on the Internet.
She said he had been "mind travelling" over the past few days and would occasionally get "sneak previews".
"When we asked him what he saw or what he was feeling he would just smile," she said. "It looked like he was seeing and feeling things that were quite beautiful."
A portion of Leary's ashes will be launched into space in a satellite owned by Celestis Inc of Houston, Texas.
Leary's advocacy of mind altering drugs made his name. President Nixon described him as the most evil man in America. As an actor, gubernatorial candidate, stand up comic and convict, he became synonymous with the excesses of the 1960s.
Three decades later, the former Harvard professor, psychologist, author and lecturer became fascinated with the latest in new technologies.
Born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1920, Leary's father, an alcoholic dentist, abandoned his family when Timothy was 13. Leary joined the US army and took a degree at the University of Alabama while still in the service. He got into trouble at West Point cadet school and the university for sexual escapades and heavy drinking.
At Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Oakland, California he began psychological research work with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), derived from a fungus that grows on rye, offered by the Swiss pharmaceutical company, Sandoz.
At Harvard he embarked on controlled experiments with mind altering drugs and was fired in 1963 for using undergraduate students in the tests. Then he ran a hippie retreat at Millbrook, New York.
During the 1970s he was jailed con convictions for drug charges. After a number of jail breaks he fled to Africa and Europe. He later turned up in Hollywood and became a regular on the party circuit.
Leary was married at least three times. His first wife, Marianne, committed suicide in 1955. In 1990 hiss daughter. Susan, hung herself in prison after being found mentally unfit to stand trial for shooting her boyfriend.