After returning from a visiting professorship at the
University of California, Berkeley, Alpert accepted a permanent position at Harvard, where he worked with the Social Relations Department, the Psychology Department, the Graduate School of Education, and the Health Service, where he was a therapist. He was also awarded research contracts with
Yale and Stanford. However, perhaps most notable was the work he was doing with his close friend and associate, Dr. Timothy Leary.
Having only recently obtained his pilot's license, Alpert flew his private plane to
Cuernavaca, Mexico, where Leary first introduced him to
teonanácatl, the Magic Mushrooms of
Mexico. By the time Alpert made it back to
America, Leary had already consulted with
Aldous Huxley, who was visiting at
M.I.T. Through Huxley and a number of graduate students they were able to get in touch with
Sandoz, who had produced a synthetic of the magic mushrooms called
psilocybin. Alpert and Leary brought a test batch back to Harvard, where they conducted the
Harvard Psilocybin Project. The pair was later dismissed from the university in
1963, Leary for his overall conduct and Alpert for continuing to fraternize with, and give psilocybin to, undergraduates. By this time, however, Alpert had already become disillusioned with
academia and even described himself as feeling caught in a meaningless game.
The two soon relocated and continued their experiments unsupervised from a private mansion in
Millbrook, New York, owned by Billy Hitchcock, an heir to the Mellon fortune. Famous poets, musicians and intellectuals of the time, such as
Allen Ginsberg, Maynard Ferguson, the
Grateful Dead, Marshall McLuhan and
Ken Kesey, came from across the country to be part of what was going on there. Although they remained life-long friends, the two eventually began to part ways spiritually and philosophically as Leary continued to spread his
mantra of "
turn on, tune in, drop out", while Alpert increasingly found his purpose in the Hindu ethic of serving others.
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