The Acid Queen: Rosemary Woodruff Leary, The Invisible Woman Of Western Psychedelia

They wrote to each different successful code.

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Timothy Leary, nan precocious leader of acid, had sent her letters each azygous time he sat successful California authorities prison—sentenced to a adjacent life for a fistful of marijuana. THE BRIEF was nan escape. LAND DEEDS were nan documents needed to skip town. ARIES was nan codification sanction for their lawyer who had connected them to governmental radicals who would thief smuggle them retired of nan country.

During their last meeting, Timothy and Rosemary firmed up nan specifications of his situation escape.

“I tin beryllium free,” Timothy said.

“On appeal, nan lawyers….” Rosemary responded, urging patience— moreover now.

“No,” Timothy said. “If you do what I show you, you tin free me.”

“My thief could magnitude to quality sacrifice.”

“Stay present then. And divorcement me.”

“Divorce you? What astir nan cognition and our child?”

“You tin person that successful Europe, France, Switzerland, anywhere.

“Just do what I show you. It’ll beryllium fine.”

“Yes, but will I be?”

Her mobility hung successful nan air, unanswered. After their meeting, Rosemary bought a blond bouffant wig, orange‑pink lipstick, a skirt suit, and stockings. Her caller name, Sylvia E. McGaffin, came from a dormant baby’s commencement certificate.

She sent him 1 past connection via telegram, giving nan go‑ahead, utilizing her fertility room arsenic a codification connection for nan situation break.

This was her signature magic trick—making herself disappear.

*

Rosemary Woodruff Leary is everyplace and nowhere. There’s a bully chance you’ve seen her look dozens of times without ever registering her existence. In 1 of nan astir iconic images of nan twentieth century, Yoko Ono and John Lennon singing “Give Peace a Chance” successful a edifice room furniture successful flowing achromatic robes protesting nan Vietnam War.

If you let nan oculus to wander, you will notice—perhaps for nan first time—a striking brunette successful nan foreground. She sits beside nan silver‑haired Timothy Leary, who smiles wide, clapping, afloat consumed by nan moment.

Unlike her husband, Rosemary stares consecutive astatine nan camera—at you, nan viewer—lips pursed together successful a knowing grin, enigmatic and unruffled. She appears to beryllium extracurricular nan scene, commenting connected it, an due look for a female who stood unnoticed connected nan separator of nan world stage.

Her sanction deed nan newspapers successful 1965, aft her first apprehension pinch nan fired Harvard scientist Timothy Leary, astatine nan Mexico border. The media didn’t cognize what to do pinch nan thirty‑year‑old, truthful they dubbed her “the Woodruff woman.” When she joined Leary successful 1967, she became “the cleanable love” to her husband; “the erstwhile administrative assistant” to nan media; and world goddess—nurturing, sensual, and otherworldly—to his followers.

Two years later she remade herself erstwhile again into a one‑named media heroine—Rosemary, nan acerb queen— who championed her husband’s causes arsenic he languished down bars. For nan liking of her cleanable emotion she became a fugitive forced to look nan limits of her state and her marriage.

Fading into obscurity astatine nan extremity of her life, she served arsenic a footnote, an afterthought, successful bid to sphere nan bequest of her ex‑husband, who changed nan world pinch his still infamous motto “Turn on, tune in, driblet out.”

Timothy Leary and his supporters person dictated astir of what has been written astir Rosemary since. The immense mostly of takes liken her to a beautiful accessory, an costly leather container that completes an outfit. But nan contradictions abound.

She was much governmental than her husband, immoderate person argued, driving him insane capable pinch jealousy to flight situation and onshore successful nan arms of revolutionaries. To others, she was a whore who “hadn’t worn a bra successful years,” arsenic 1 caller book alleged, simply “the wide successful [Leary’s] bed,” arsenic a antheral modern described her. “As beautiful arsenic she was, she wasn’t nan brightest prima successful nan sky,” different antheral memoirist wrote.

She had 2 imaginable parts to play successful nan Leary saga: advocator aliases interchangeable woman. As clip passed, and less group recognized nan sanction Timothy Leary, nan world settled connected nan latter. When Rosemary died successful 2002, fewer group extracurricular nan insular psychedelic underground bothered to separate her from nan 4 different women successful Leary’s life.

Consequently, Rosemary offers america an unfamiliar benignant of hero’s journey. She was nan cleanable hippie who was a procreation older than nan babe boomers. She was muse and protégée; worshipper and defier.

While she was ambitious, she chose to sublimate her ain greatness by shaping a mythology that didn’t person room for her successful it. She was an flight creator whose superior creation was herself. She was a female who tasted fame and recovered it some repulsive and intoxicating and who desperately wanted to beryllium seen while hiding from moreover her closest friends.

She was a personification betrayed who returned to her betrayer, a female of awesome integrity who besides happened to beryllium a criminal, a fugitive whose bravery helped sphere a cardinal portion of American history. Hardly anyone knew—or still knows—the indebtedness owed to nan female down nan so‑called psychedelic guru, whom nan authorities viewed arsenic a threat to democracy.

The thread of her self‑sacrifice entangles itself pinch nan precocious echelons of modern American civilization and politics, including 3 U.S. presidents. These are conscionable nan flashiest waves successful nan Rosemary butterfly effect, but location are quieter reverberations crossed a beingness of interconnected figures, immoderate of whom proceed to style our realities, particularly for group who usage and study mind‑altering drugs.

Members of nan psychedelic movement, who cognize of Rosemary’s activity down nan scenes, telephone her a pioneer, whose unacknowledged sacrifice helped safeguard an underground movement. Her devotion to psychedelics—despite consequence of imprisonment and ostracism—is particularly applicable today. A taxable that was erstwhile verboten is now apical of mind for PTSD sufferers, open‑minded psychiatrists, and Silicon Valley tech companies that want to patent nan experience.

To many, psychedelics are medicine—chemicals that tin beryllium utilized to heal aliases hack nan psyche. But Rosemary’s perspective, uncommon successful nan male‑dominated 1960s milieu, illuminates our ongoing attraction to mind‑altering chemicals that extends acold beyond nan clinical. She believed that these substances, which person been successful usage for thousands of years, provided relationship to nan awesome cosmic mysteries.

This ineffability calls us, arsenic it did Rosemary, though afloat succumbing to that telephone requires a level of sacrifice. At almost each pivotal constituent successful her biography, Rosemary ran—from home, from reality, from her husbands, from nan law, from her past—and astatine each measurement she made herself anew. As Rosemary herself said, “I’ve lived nan aforesaid type of life arsenic everyone else, conscionable successful much exotic places.”

Whether this is existent aliases not, who among america cannot, astatine immoderate constituent successful our lives, subordinate to nan driving desire to bury, aliases moreover destroy, nan personification we erstwhile were? Or are.

Rosemary reveals nan very quality costs of nan pursuit of specified transcendence. No nett will drawback america erstwhile we take to leap into nan void.

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From The Acid Queen by Susannah Cahalan, to beryllium published connected April 22, 2025 by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a section of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Susannah Cahalan.