TRIBUTES TO LEO ZEFF

Sara Zeff - A daughter's tribute Spring 2003
I knew as a youngster that my father was involved in extraordinary and unique work. As I grew into my teens, he shared more of the specifics of the work and the need for keeping it quiet. He also offered me the opportunity to experience the world of hallucinogens whenever I felt I was ready.

At about the age of 18 he and I both decided the time had come for me to know, first-hand, the wonders of the psychedelic realm to which he was devoting much of his life. And so I was inaugurated into the inner sanctum of his world. I met and became friends with many of the people with whom he worked. They were all very committed to using these substances in thoughtful, therapeutic ways, yet most of them also delighted in the joy and fun the experiences offered. Leo increasingly surrounded himself with others who were dedicated to the work, people with whom he could share anecdotes and personal notes from their own trips or the trips of others.

As an adult, my life diverged from my father's, yet we remained close and he continued to share with me the work he was doing and the people he helped ­ the people whose hearts were so open after a trip that their worlds were forever altered in ways no talk-therapy could ever have achieved. Here are some of the more remarkable stories I remember. (The names have been changed.)

One of the first stories he told me was that of Chandler, a 60-year old man whose body was riddled with cancer. In 1965 there was only a primitive kind of chemotherapy available and after everything possible had been done, they sent him home to die. Being already part of Leo's "family," he was able to spend many weekends with the group he loved, tripping and opening his heart. In one of his post-diagnosis trips he experienced his own death. This is not an unusual phenomenon with hallucinogens, but for someone staring death in the face, it must have delivered a considerable emotional punch. In the aftermath, the group lovingly helped him go deeper into the experience by planning and carrying out his (mock) funeral.

The epilogue to the story of Chandler is that he didn't die of this cancer. The tumors disappeared. His is one of a handful of miraculous cancer turnaround stories that medical science cannot explain. At the time, the dumbfounded Chandler, his biological family, and Leo's family speculated that it had something to do with the psychedelics. It may have - or not - and he lived to enjoy many more years with a very open heart.

Somewhat less dramatic than Chandler, yet life-changing, was Benjamin. Ben was a homely, shy Jewish man in his late 40s when he began traditional talk therapy with Leo in the early 1950s. He had been born with a deformed leg, which gave him a nasty limp and an ongoing level of pain that was worsening as his muscles got older and stiffer. Ben was an elementary school teacher. He had no surviving family, a very poor self-image, never married, and his only sexual experiences had been with prostitutes. His students disliked him and ridiculed him behind his back, making his job very unpleasant. He was, in Leo's words, a miserable, joyless man.

By 1966, Ben had been in therapy with Leo for almost ten years, without so much as a modest breakthrough. For Ben, "Dr. Zeff" was someone he could talk to; not much else happened. As Leo gained confidence in the administration of the substances (then primarily LSD), he began to consider Ben for a trip. He talked to him about it and Ben, now in his 50s, agreed that it might be worth a try.

In his very first trip Ben broke through years of misery, cried for the first time in decades, and shared a hug - also his first - with Leo.

By the time I was inaugurated into "the family" and met Ben, he had been a member for many years. Although he was still in some pain and presented himself as a cautious, serious man, he was also quick with a hug and a smile. The group truly was his family, the only one he had ever known, and he joined them once a month to trip and to open his heart.

My father was passionate in his zeal for helping people overcome addiction. In the late 1960s, Leo and other practitioners began to discover that some of the substances held great hope as cures for addiction. That news traveled fast and Leo's friends and colleagues began a steady stream of referrals of alcoholics and drug addicts.

Some of the referrals could not pass Leo's rigorous screening and therefore could not participate in the work. But there were many who did pass and one of them was Peri. Peri had tried to kick her alcohol habit many times, but always returned to it when life got rough. Leo agreed to give Peri a trip. Through it she experienced feelings that she had previously deadened with liquor. Over time, with Leo's help, Peri took many trips and learned to accept those feelings, and with that acceptance came less reliance on alcohol. That pattern repeated itself over and over again, with alcoholics and people addicted to a wide spectrum of other drugs.

Chandler, Ben and Peri were only three of the hundreds of amazing stories my father told me over the years - stories of ordinary people who made life-altering breakthroughs in their ability to lead happy, productive lives and relate more lovingly to the people who shared their world. There was never a doubt in my mind that he was doing good work. I have rarely known anyone who had as much passion for his work as he did. All he ever wanted from his life was the ability to help people lead happier lives. He enjoyed the occasional recognition that came his way in later years, but no accolade or honor ever meant as much to him as a single human being telling him how much his knowledge, wisdom, and willingness to do this work had changed their lives. He surely left the world - and me - richer for having known him.

Henry Zeff ­ A son's tribute August 2003
As I sit to write this, I am looking at a photo of Leo with his full beard, at the height of his Guru stage. I don't know of any one else, personally, more qualified to wear the title of the Secret Chief. He was always a friend to anyone, at any hour of the day or night.

I remember many times, when I would be visiting overnight, the phone would ring with a late night call from a friend or a member of his extended family, in the middle of some personal problem, a bad trip, or whatever. Leo would answer, always with a soft voice no matter what the hour, and then with wisdom, humility, compassion, and Yiddish sayings. He was a master at work, rarely anxious, always patient and kind -- to patients, friends, family and strangers alike.

My brother-in-law and his dad hadn't spoken a word in many years due to child/parent disagreements. Then at my sister-in-law's wedding, Leo spoke with the father for maybe a half hour and the father and son were able to converse as if they were old friends. The miracle at the wedding, I call it.

I don't know how many people's lives Leo touched like this and a thousand other ways throughout the years, in his profession as a psychologist, with and without the "materials" he used, and as a friend and caring person to all he knew.

His eagerness and excitement over each new material that became available was amazing. He was like a true scientist ever ready to check out another way to do the needed job.

His life was an amazing collection of experiences, from growing up dirt poor to finding a home in scouting and then the Army. To college and his degree in psychology, to the wild and crazy 60s, and then his version of a more peaceful, saner 60s. Then the 70's and the new materials of that age.

He was ever humble and quiet about his work and experimentation, even when he began to see the fruits of his work. He had to stay quiet; to be famous in his time was to cease to be able to help.

It is sweet to see Leo finally get some credit for the mark he made on the world of his time and the world to come as well. He truly was a Secret Chief.

"Andrew" - An underground MDMA guide trained by Leo, early 2003
In the 1970s, I was living in California and was interested in personal, social, and spiritual paradigm change. So I asked somebody who was a role model for me in those regards, "Where can I have an experience with LSD?" She replied, "Oh, I thought you would never ask."

She introduced me to Leo. The protocol was not to volunteer information to people who might be interested. But if somebody asked and you sensed that the motivation was appropriate, you asked Leo for permission to share information in a more specific way. After recounting your personal experience to the person, they then might be introduced to Leo. I did a solo trip. LSD was the material during your introductory solo session. If you were a "good tripper" who could stay self-contained during your trip, then you might be invited to join the family. This meant that you could trip in a group of eight to twelve people on a weekend.

There were all kinds of people: doctors, lawyers, merchants, and marginal kinds such as a pornographer. But you had to have enough money to pay him, and you had to know somebody who was on this path to introduce you. You would pay a therapist's fee for the private introductory interview. You paid a couple hundred dollars for your initial trip, and the group trips cost less. Materials cost an additional ten to thirty dollars. Leo's model was to pay separately for the materials so people did not get greedy, thinking that more was better. People had to be told that after a certain dose they were going to get undesirable side effects rather than increased benefit. Some people needed to learn about that.

There were people in the family who had a harder time coming up with money. They participated on a work exchange basis. They did thorough housecleaning before the other participants arrived. The aesthetics of the setting were important to Leo. He thought if somebody opened their eyes during a bad trip and saw a lot of dust, that might not support the development of their soul as much as seeing flowers and a fresh candle.

Actually, Leo was not as visually oriented as me. When he was working in his disciple's house, there was a girlie calendar on the wall in the kitchen. I was the first person who said, "You know, this doesn't contribute to making me feel safe for tripping." We didn't talk about it at length, but he took it down.

There were a variety of materials that were available: mushr ooms and mycelium, MDA, and ibogaine. We originally tripped at night because that is how indigenous people do it. For urban people that was quite a hardship. We did not have much time before and after a weekend. So Leo developed this daytime format so you would have time to come back from your trip in a completely rested state. People then had increasingly positive experiences. Now, a positive experience by Leo's standards was not what you experienced on the day of the trip. Leo believed the value of the medicine was what happened to your quality of life during the period that followed.

He made MDMA available to the group after he had experienced enough of it with Sasha Shulgin. By then, they felt confident that it was reasonable to introduce it to people like ourselves who were willing to experiment. Leo said every time that we are all experimenters. He emphasized that we did not know everything about these medicines, and although he was telling us the best that he knew, in fact nobody knew everything about them. One of my earliest trips was a mushroom trip. While coming down from the trip in that family setting, I got the very clear message "Do this every three months. Keep coming back even if you do not remember why." So I actually did it every three months for about five years.

Leo's groups had a consistent format. We sat around on Friday night in a talking circle. One by one, everybody told what was going on in their lives. If they had tripped before, they described what had happened to them since their last trip. You heard about a dozen stories, different issues that people were dealing with in their lives. You came to the realization that the nature of being human is to feel these struggles, contradictions, curiosities, longings, and pleasures.

Leo would review the instructions and the agreements. You were not to repeat to anybody where, when, or with whom you had this experience. You were not to leave the room without explicit permission from the facilitators. You would not do anything harmful to yourself or anyone else.

There was to be no sex with anybody else. The final agreement was Leo saying, "If I should at any time during the trip tell you to do something that you are not doing, or to stop something that you are doing, you will." He would look the person in the eye, and each participant would have to say "yes". Then Leo used to say "That means that if I told you to jump out a window, you would." He did not want it to seem like it would have to be something that would be clearly in our best interests, because in our tripping state it might seem like something that was against our best interests. So if he said, "Go fly now," we would say "Yes" without question.

Many people reported afterwards that it occurred to them during their trip to do inappropriate things. Then they remembered that they agreed not to do harm, and that they had agreed to do whatever they were told by the leader. Therefore, they would remember this and censor themselves. That turned out to be part of the freedom, not a restriction.

Not every group leader warrants being given that degree of trust. This sort of agreement was very delicate and strong. Then Leo would say to the group "I want you to know that I have never had to call on that, I have never invoked it, but you still need to agree to it because it is one of the agreements." Participants knew beforehand that every time they came they had to reaffirm the same commitment to the agreements. So the beginners in the group and the repeaters all came on a common playing field.

Then Leo gave advice. "If you don't know what to do and your mind wanders, then listen to the music. If you go into heavy judgments against yourself, then listen to the music." He instructed us not to interfere with other people's trips. This was altered for groups on MDMA, because Adam (MDMA) facilitates communication and compassionate connection.

After a lot of people in the family had experienced Adam, some people wanted to use it with softer agreements. There was a smaller group that met about once a month, just to take Adam. The MDMA group was less tightly structured than the family trips. For example, MDMA can have such sensuous body awareness that people wanted to be freer to be in each other's faces with the relational part. Participants in MDMA groups would have to ask a facilitator in order to have contact with anybody else. The facilitator would then ask the other person to see if it was okay for both people to communicate at that time. So there was physical (without being overtly sexual) as well as verbal contact between people in the MDMA group.

Leo looked at his notebook while going through this procedure each time. (Later I also used a notebook when I ran my groups.) The group could see they were in a carefully protected environment. This standardized routine enabled participants to be confident that they could go as deeply as possible into their trip, without having to keep part of their attention focused on their own safety or what was going on outside them.

There was also a small ritual to taking the medicine. We stood in a line waiting for Leo and his assistant to send us off, one by one, with a bon voyage hug. Leo gave good hugs. He was not in any hurry. He said he did not know how it worked, but people claimed they got something profound when he hugged them. He would say, "I've got plenty of it, so take all you need." It was an energy transmission, like recharging your battery. It was based on his confidence, his clarity, and his generosity. There was a humor about him. Yet at the same time he seemed like the group's father. He reminded me of my father, and he made us feel safe. At the end of your send-off hug, he said the same words year after year. He would say "Have a wonderful trip!" Then you took your medicine and you were on your own. You went to your place. You got your pad and your comforts ready. Some people were on ayahuasca, others mushrooms, others MDMA, or whatever.

When you started to come out of your trip in the afternoon, Leo served his homemade chopped chicken liver dish as the first food you would eat. He was an older Jewish man from a n Eastern European background, and he thought chopped chicken liver was the healthiest thing for you. He came around like a waiter with a platter of liver offering it to everybody. With a shorter acting material, like MDMA, some people were back by mid-day. Other people were still flat on their back and not yet ready to eat by supper. We were told not to talk about our trip that day. Everybody shared dinner. Then we went to bed.

Sunday morning there was a ritualized circle. Participants took turns describing what had happened during their trip. We would describe what we felt and did, in the manner of recounting a dream. But it was not about interpreting, except so far as the interpretation of it was part of the trip itself. Each participant would witness this incredible array of individual experiences that had occurred in the same room. You might see common threads and identify with someone else. Or somebody might seem uniquely different from you. Someone might even say "I can not remember anything because I have amnesia for my trip." This was the range of the human condition.

People would often be less judgmental toward themselves when they heard other people's stories. Similarly, people might learn new possibilities by looking at the variety of other people's experiences. When there was a sharing of experiences, somebody might come back three months later and say "When so-and-so said such-and-such in that circle, I took that home with me as part of my trip." Then Leo would say "Well yes, you were still in a somewhat altered state, even though you felt primarily returned, and it was part of your trip then."

We spontaneously used each other's learning. Certain experiences can be potentiated in a group setting, even while you are having your own inner journey. This is separate from any psychic ideas about shared tripping and group consciousness. Leo always encouraged people to have their own individual trip, although I know that some other groups got together with the purpose of working on group projects.

During the period when I was tripping regularly, I had a profound sense of community even with people I had never met, knowing that all over the world there were others who also knew that everything is connected. Bonds were made as our group developed. People fell in love and got married. Leo would say, "You don't want to make any life-changing decisions until at least three weeks after the trip. You don't want to move. You don't want to quit a job and take another one. You don't want to leave a relationship and start a new one. Just be with it a while. See what pertains to the trip itself and what is meant to be actualized in your life." That always seemed like good advice.

When somebody entered the family, they were given a small chalice. The glass cup had relief designs of blooming flowers on the silver stem and base. In the early days, Leo gave these to somebody who did the solo trip. They were from Mexico, and later they were not available anymore. Then a flat rolled silver version was distributed. So if you ever saw one of these cups in someone's house, then you knew they were in the same family. It was a symbolic way of recognizing when you were in the home of a family member. I later ran a group that had a comparable thing we distributed. After five years in Leo's group, I brought in my partner. While he valued the experience he did not like that particular setting. We both had facilitator skills and immediately wanted to share this process. The first time we hosted a group MDMA trip was in 1980. My partner asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I replied that I wanted to take MDMA together with some intimate friends. We chose about six people who we were close with or wanted to be closer to. He made the arrangements. The group went well. We had already developed a workshop circuit doing other kinds of personal development activities over in Europe. Therefore, we had access to a network of Gestalt therapists. Although they were not particularly interested in MDMA, they connected us with psychologists who we trained in West Germany. After getting to know and trust a few German psychologists, we told them about this new thing called MDMA. We invited them to share this experience with us. Then they wanted to invite some of their friends the next time that they came.

Our MDMA groups were this beneficial contribution that just sort of happened without planning. We were doing this regularly, primarily in Germany, but also Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. We started gradually in 1981. By the next year it really got going. We really had quite a community. Many participants returned at three-month intervals. Some brought along people who were significant in their lives.

There are a lot of retreat centers in Europe. Sometimes the p e o p l e who provided these sites knew about our work and participated. Other times they had no idea what we were doing. We sat for about twenty groups of twenty people per year. That was 400 trips a year. Two thirds of those people were repeaters w h o were coming back. This continued until we stopped this work in 1988.

Our weekend workshops were completely based on Leo's model. There were only two changes to his protocol. First, we used only MDMA. We lived in America, but frequently visited Europe, so we would not be there to provide care afterwards. Therefore, we only used MDMA because it has a low incidence of prolonged reactions. If you sit for thousands of sessions, you do see some rough experiences.

The other change was that we did not personally interview everybody before the trip. The new people got cleared by the person who had been there before. If there were any concerns about the appropriateness of the new individual, such as health problems, then we would say, "No, we cannot take the risk." About a dozen psychologists from different cities became interested in starting their own groups. They seemed sufficiently mature, so they informally apprenticed with us. Once MDMA became freely accessible, I heard of people working with it who I wished were not. Still, I still think the lack of official control was more good than bad.

After experiencing MDMA, one of our clients talked for the first time to her parents about their experiences during World War II. This is a very big issue in Germanic Europe, with that older generation dying out with this great silence about the war. Another of our German clients was the daughter of a Nazi officer. She spent a lot of her childhood locked in a closet because he was a sadist, or did not know how to properly raise children. She was born with normal vision, yet became completely colorblind after prolonged isolation in the closet. As an adult she worked as an artist without being able to see color. She came to trip with us many times when she was in her thirties. She tripped hard, which is unusual on MDMA. She would vomit. She was terrified. She would think about suicide. One time while she was tripping, she decided that she wanted to die because it was too difficult.

That was the only instance in my experience when the quality of the sitting was extremely important for the outcome. I did not tell her not to kill herself; I just really stayed with her. She sometimes had a sense of breakthrough. Memories from childhood would come back to her. She returned to trip again three times a year for a year or two. We would ask her why she kept coming back if it was so unpleasant. She replied that she felt that she was, millimeter by millimeter, making progress. At one point while tripping she said, "I can see color!" From then on, her color blindness was cured.

"Katherine" ­ July 7, 2003
I'd like to report a great experience I enjoyed in 1970 at Leo's home. In those days, if you were very lucky indeed, you m i g h t have been invited to participate in what was called a "guided trip." The idea was that under supervised conditions, psychedelics could provide an experience that mystics might work for years to be able to have.

On arrival, my husband and I were asked to do "withholds," an exercise that was meant to dispel any negative "charge" that we might have toward each other. Then Leo gave us some guidelines: we were not to leave the house, for our safety. We were not to engage in sex -- that wasn't what this was about. We were each to have our own experience, and not disturb the other. We were there to take a look at the contents of our own minds, perhaps in a new light.

Well, all this sounded interesting and only mildly alarming, since Leo was a well-known and trusted friend. We lay on mats with blankets in front of his fireplace on his soft brown carpeting, looking up at a lovely bronze chandelier supported by a ceiling of natural wood. The large windows in the room looked out on his gardens, mostly big white shasta daisies. A stereo played soft popular music. Leo gave me a capsule containing large doses of both LSD and mescaline.

In a few minutes I felt myself relax and sigh, and it seemed the whole house sighed. The appearance of the room seemed to soften, and the chandelier took on the appearance of a glowing jewel. Tiny dust motes seemed to shine like diamonds in the air. I had never understood my early religious training; I just didn't understand what was meant by "God," and had no concept of what was holy at all. But now it seemed my surroundings had taken on new meaning, and shone with an inner light that seemed self-evidently sacred.

Later I seemed to pass through other gateways and worlds, some terrifying (I thought I was drowning in blood, and seemed to experience a friend's violent and terrible suicide) -- and some oddly just disgusting: things appeared vulgar, sordid, and sort of plastic.

As I was struggling with this ugly world, Leo came over to me and he said simply "When you've come to the end of your rope, just let go."

I didn't just let go. I threw that rope from me, and leaped, I knew not to what!

Instantly I was transported into a state of utter bliss. I seemed to be able to look at this silly creature that was myself -- forever setting traps for myself, stepping into them, and then actually being surprised! From my delightful distance, all this seemed hilarious in the extreme, and I laughed with real delight until Leo began to look at me anxiously again. He looked, with his gentle brown eyes, like a worried seal, and I laughed some more. Then I worried I might have hurt his feelings and stopped.

I went back to enjoying my surroundings. Jacob had put on some music that related to my Christian upbringing, and I enjoyed the hymns with some nostalgia. I amused myself by creating pretty visual effects and then changing them. I think at this point I was returning to "normal." After a time I realized I was "back," with considerable regret; I did not ever want to leave that joyful place.

Leo kindly helped us to shower, and we slept comfortably. I believe that I had a truly religious experience. For the first time I understood the nature of Heaven -- being freed from my miserable self at last. Christ had said not to look for Heaven because it is all around us if we could only see it. Now I know what he meant -- I've been there.

I think in psychedelic circles this is known as the experience of ego death. How odd that we should cling to something that is only a source of Misery.

P.S. While I can't really judge how much this experience changed my life, I'm sure I'm much happier for it.

"Rachel" ­ December 29, 2003
Leo, his wife, and his children were friends of my husband's mother from the synagogue up in Berkeley. My husband is the one who turned Leo onto marijuana.It was around May 1 of l965 when we went to Leo's home, joined a group of other people, and had a group experience for the first time. My husband and I were the youngest people there. He was 30 and I was 25. It was a very interesting experience. I realized right away that most of the people were there to "get well" and there were some people with some severe problems. I did not have any that I knew about. I wanted to experience what was going on, and I did. One of the most interesting things that happened that night was we were all laid out in front of the fireplace downstairs and we had our earphones on and our eye shades on and then all of a sudden my husband sat up and called for Leo to come over. He said, "There is a woman upstairs way in the back. She's in trouble." Leo did not doubt him at all. He just went upstairs right where he said and that is where the woman was. She was in trouble. So we realized the power of what was going on. This was a powerful thing that we knew about but we had never experienced close up like that. That is how we met this woman, with whom we have been friends ever since.

There were things we wanted to know and that we wanted to experience. We felt we were perfect the way we were which included the potential for change. So Perfection is where we were coming from. We did not have it that we needed fixing. We had it that there were things we did not know -- things we had not experienced that we wanted to. When I first came into this program, I had some doubt as to whether there was some getting well to do or not. As I experienced more of these trips, I realized that there was not. Then I came to the realization that there was more to do, more to experience, more to have, more to give. It was just more, and at the same time, there is only what there is right now. It is a funny juxtaposition. My favorite medicine without question was yage (ayahuasca). Yage and acid. That was my idea of a good time. It was a primitive sort of beast. You talk about dancing and the music becoming energy in your body -- that is yage. I remember seeing power, tribal, witchcraft sort of things on that drug specifically. One time I was a lion and I looked down and saw this lion's paw. It was huge, I just felt the power of that lion in my paw, and I just knew how strong a lion was. It is primitive, quite basic and primal.My husband and I used the psychedelics as a way to experience more sensuality. I was able to feel a lot more pleasure from the use of psychedelics. It became a rule in Leo's work that there would be no sex taking place. I respected Leo for putting together a situation where you could have a large group of people on the medicine in a safe way. By having a set, a setting, a structure that people adhered to, it made it safe. I had an experience on mescaline and I remember that was all he had. I worried my way through half of the trip that I was going to waste the trip but then I settled down and I got with it. Then this music came floating through the air. I could see the notes and the clefs and then it just came. I was really going with it, then it started to go toward my crotch, and it turned into this snake. I snapped my legs shut, sat up and resisted it, which turned my life to shit. I just had the experience of resisting pleasure as not being a good thing and then I got back into my trip. I tried to get the snake back to make friends with the snake. Then the snake turned into an octopus. It was beckoning me. It took me down into the water and wanted me to come in a cave. I was scared but I went with it. He just wanted to show me where he lived. I also used LSD in the groups to break through my sensuality barriers, whatever they were, to have more sensuality. I have spirituality tied up with sensuality. We met in that realm. I always believed in God. I always had this secret kind of pleasure knowing that Leo was Jewish too. I felt that it was a very highly spiritual experience. All of it. I did not think you had to be sick to have spirituality. Many of those people did. One of the goals of the group was explained to us this way. America is a new country. It was only a couple of hundred years old and we have come a long way as a country. He and other people wanted to know if psychedelics would enable people to deal with rapidly changing realities. Could problems be solved quicker or more efficiently?

There were people in mathematics and architects brainstorming. There were tests going on about people who were stuck in places in their careers. Mathematicians, architects, chemists, artists, writers, and people who were stuck were given huge doses of mescaline and many of them just broke right through. So there were all kinds of things like that going on. Maybe this could be used for our country to go on in an efficient manner.Up until a few years ago, my husband and I would refer to Leo jokingly as the guy who ruined our lives. We were kidding. He had a lot to do with our lives. I would be a differ ent person if I had not experienced what he had to offer. I feel blessed.

"Julia" ­ October 3, 2003
For my first experience, Leo had set the stage in his office. He changed that office into a bank of flowers with every symbol you could think of in there -- the crucifix, the Star of David, the Hindu symbols, everywhere you looked there were symbols but mostly there were living, beautiful flowers all around. When I took the medicine, I lay back in this ordinary spot which he had made very comfortable for me with a little foam rubber mat and the ceiling was phony squares of insulation and they began to sparkle. Then I began to dissolve, then I'd come back around again. I died 10,000 times. At some point the dying stopped and I was in a neighborhood. I was in a place that was highly manicured and ordered. Nothing was happening. The lawns were cut, the shrubs were trimmed, the houses were perfect. There were little iron fences outside the windows. Nothing. It was dead as a doornail. I was trying to get out of that area because I did not like it. At that moment Leo lifted up the eye mask and said, "Where are you now?" Now in reality he could have been doing his office work and his bills at his desk there while I was going off some place, but he did check in and I said, "I'm stuck in the Midwest someplace and I can't get out." He said, "That's the way it should be. You should be there. Do not try to get out. Be there. Be there with it. Don't try to get out." At that moment the music changed from his usual warhorse scene which was romantic --Tchaikovsky to Handel's water music -- and the conjunction of what he said and the music may have made a difference. I found myself on a hill overlooking a sparkling harbor and a city beneath it. I was dressed in tails and a top hat. I took my hat off of my head and made a big gesture over my head with my hand and lifted it off. Out of the hat came the most beautiful spray of stars you would believe. I laughed, and laughed. It was the beginning of change for me from being terribly depressed to another option.

I once overheard him say, "I became so sick of these people coming in with their depressions and their problems and offering other options and they're not being able to take any of them. I became so tired of that." Leo said he wouldn't say this until we were well into him and knowing the process.

In my group, people did seem to take other options. Most of them made significant changes. They were professional people. They didn't change really. When you meet them on the street you wouldn't see any changes, but in their lives they made different choices. When I was with Leo I was involved with a guy that I was bored with but he was good to me. My experience changed everything. I just couldn't take the boredom anymore. I still keep in touch with some of them. They are like family.

You know when you go home for Thanksgiving you've got those aunts and uncles. You know how they don't really fit in your life but they're there. That's family. At that time we were not the only people that were experimenting with this kind of thing. There were a lot of people out there experimenting and we all had this kind of bond. There was something beyond that was momentarily apparent and it led to a huge openness.

Leo made a difference in those people's lives - a big difference. Sure made a difference in mine, but it's interesting to be asked now because it's so integrated that it's hard to separate it and it's been so long ... Leo was such a leader. He had that military experience but he'd also had the experience of being a psychologist, being a Jew, being a Buddhist and being who he was and that combination made him such a fabulous leader. He provided some very strenuous structures on some people.

There was one woman who just could not stop talking. She'd engage you and then you'd be engaged and slowly you'd recognize that this thing was to go on for the next half hour. She was going to be right there in your face talking. It was never loud but terribly engaging and he saw it. He stayed with it for a couple of trips and then he finally said, "On this trip you are not allowed to talk at all." She was mad at him but she made some fabulous changes. She went from cosmetics to opening a massage school in San Francisco and became internationally known. She traveled all over the world with this business. My experiences with Leo affected my relationship with my own family as well. I would never have reunited with them in the same way. Leo started us off with pictures of ourselves before we ever took the medicine. In doing so, I had to write my mother and ask her for the pictures, and she sent me a whole suitcase full of these things from infancy all the way up to being a teenager. It gave me a window into her eyes and I saw my father holding me in a proud way. I've had a lot of differences with my father. They didn't end but it opened a door to beginnings.

"Laura"
My experience with Leo and his group intertwined with events that were part of the historical era itself and with other group experiences I had. I dropped LSD once before I met Leo and certainly would have found some other way to experiment with hallucinogens if I had not met him, as I was living on the cusp of the New York beatnik and California hippie worlds when I arrived in the San Francisco Bay area in 1965.

Leo's unique contribution to my life was his creation of a group within which it was possible to get agreement on what I experienced on hallucinogens. For this I am eternally grateful.

I first saw Leo after my first acid trip. I had arranged for a friend to "sit" with me. The trip started very well ­ I had read books about the psychedelic experience in preparation for my first trip, and my trip followed the experience as described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead by Leary, Alpert, and Metzner. However, my friend was not prepared to allow me the time and space to examine my own experience inwardly, and the end of the trip felt uncomfortable for us both. My friend referred me to Leo, and talking to him helped me to integrate the experiences of that first trip.

Leo's group trips added to the reality that seeing Leo alone had given me. The group setting nurtured a scientific approach to examining inner human experiences. The group gave me many opportunities to observe the experiences of others from the sidelines as well as through more intimate interactions. The group also gave me opportunities to have others tell me their observations of my trips, and provided opportunities to safely explore "hallucinations." For example, I saw a snake on a mat, knew intellectually that there was no snake, but had to get up and touch the spot that appeared to be a snake in order to have the "hallucination" end.

Leo's record-keeping gave me the opportunity to make scientific observations of the effects of different chemicals on perception and consciousness. We explored different doses, different substances and combinations of substances, taking "boosters " at various times during a trip, and, also using nonpsychedelics such as Valium, Ritalin, and marijuana. I got to be expert enough to identify the type and combination of substances taken by observing my own experience and the behavior of others.

Beyond the "scientific" aspects, I experienced personal gratification in the areas of spirituality and musical awareness. I loved using earphones and appreciated the wide variety of music we listened to. In my profession at that time, social work, I became more attuned to the internal experiences of other people. Also, the weekends were just plain fun!

What is the aftermath of my experiences with Leo? For almost 40 years I, along with two friends I met at the group, have lived as part of a community. Within this last year one of my two friends died. I am at peace with death. This peace comes from having the reality of my own perfection and of the perfection of the universe I've created.