From Stanford overview and Winter Quarter 1966
Unfortunately, I don’t remember much about my exit interview from Stanford, now over 50 years ago. My recollection is I made an appointment with the university’s psychiatrist to explain that my LSD adventures made me lose interest in academics. I wanted to take a leave of absence to go exploring, but I wanted to do it properly so I would be free to come back if and when I wanted. He told me yes, that would be ok.
According to the chronology which I started nine years later in a moment of lucid recall, I had taken LSD three times, smoked DMT twice, and smoked a lot of marijuana in the months before the interview. The interview itself was probably shortly after the two successive weekends when the Vipers played at the Fillmore and I attended the Big Beat Acid Test.
I waxed enthusiastically about the liberative wonders of LSD. I have no idea what went through the mind of my listener. It’s fairly likely that he knew nothing about the acid subculture that was then in its earliest stages of formation. It didn’t seem to pique his curiosity at all.
The only evidence I have is the word LEAVE on my official transcript for Winter Quarter 1965-6 (January – March 1966). The beginning of my “lost year”.
The above was written in December 2017. I just found what I wrote in 1976 about the same event, about 40 years closer to the exit interview.
“The people who gave me validation for leaving the university included Dr. Stone and Dr. Paulson, university psychiatrist. After taking LSD at Big Sur, I told him I couldn’t concentrate in the classroom and needed to be outside, where I felt my only real learning would take place. He gave me the psychiatric leave of absence that I asked for, although he told me he definitely thought I wasn’t crazy, he only gave it because I asked for it.”
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