X-Message-Number: 6834
Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 15:14:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <>
Subject: Tim Leary

Tim Leary was an interesting guy. He was not, however, the 20th
century's greatest or most important thinker, and at the end of his
life he was not always operating with all four wheels in contact with
the pavement. On the couple of occassions I met him (I admit to not
having interacted very much), he appeared to be an incoherent shadow
of his reputed former self, which is not entirely unexpected given his
age and the sheer quantity of drugs he continued to take on a daily
basis. (A complete Leary pharmacopeia was available on his own web
site, out in the open. I must admit that I was pretty surprised by it
-- I myself can't see the appeal of abusing drugs like Ketamine -- but
thats a matter of personal decision.) The interview I read with him in
"Liberty" sounded very much like the Tim Leary I saw -- moments of
interesting lucidity surrounded by a general fog.

In the end, Tim Leary decided, for what I consider to be stupid
reasons, not to get frozen. He made his decision largely because the
idea of getting frozen, especially when it was a remote thing that
involved on inconvenience and that willing fools were happy to pay
for, was far better than a reality of having to cope with cooperating
with the proceedure and all that implied. It was stupid of him, but it
was his decision, and it happened in spite of lots of Cryocare people
working very hard to make sure that he got the best care
possible. Maybe superhuman folks willing to suffer vast amounts of
personal suffering could have done better, but frankly, who cares? No
one should expect others to sacrifice themselves to save your life so
that you can avoid being annoyed. Anyway, Dr. Leary made his decision,
and it was his, and that was that. It was *his* life, not ours.

Tim Leary is now dead and gone. Some people who were close to him see
it as a tragedy. Others, however, see it as an opportunity to continue
pointless sniping. Among these people are Carlos Mondragon and his
wholely owned subsidiary, Dave Cosenza, though there are others.

Might I suggest that you folks stop it? There is plenty of ugly
commentary that could go around. People could hurl accusations all day
and all night, but its totally pointless. I know that some of you are
poorly socialized and have few things in your lives to do other than
carry on a silly war that has no purpose, but the rest of us have
better things to think about and aren't particularly amused.

Perry


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