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Terence McKenna; 53, flies; By DOUGLAS MARTIN Terence McKenna, who so playful- ly and persistently pressed his mes- Living on the wild sage that psychedelic drugs are mankind's salvation that Timothy side ofa wild Leary himself christened him "the Timothy, Leary of the 90's," died on generation, hestill Monday at a. friend's home in San Rafael, Calif. He was 53 and lived on wrote five books. the South Kona Coast of HawaiL The cause of death was brain can- cer, said a publicist for his books. Chinese book of divination. "If psychedelics don't ready you The package he pushed struck a for the great beyond, then I don't chord, at least among the usual sus- know what really does," Mr. McKen- pects. of the Grateful na said in December in one ofhis last Dead called him "the only person . public speeches, at the Esalen Insti- who has made a serious effort to tute. Death, he said then, felt close. objectify the psychedelic experi- Mr. McKenna combined a lepre- ence." . chaun's wit with a poet's sensibility But experts on drug treatment at- tobrew a NewAge stew with ingredi- tacked Mr. McKenna for populariz- ents including flying saucers, elves ing dangerous substances. "Surely and the . The essential sea- the fact that Terence McKenna says soning was the psychedelic mush- that the mushroom 'is the rooms that transformed his life and megaphone usedby an alien, interga- that he recommended - in "heroic lactic Other to communicate with doses" -- for virtually everyone. mankind' is enough for us to wander He lived on the wild side of a wild if taking LSD has done something to generation. He dropped acid in San his mental faculties," Judy Corman, Francisco in the 1960's, smuggled vice president of Phoenix House of hashish in India and searched the New York, a drug treatment center, jungles of the Amazon for the magic said in a letter to The New York mushrooms. He told interviewers Times in 1993. . that he had smoked marijuana every Still others hadbig trouble with his dayfrom thetime he was a teenager. self-consciously cosmic literary In the 1990's, Mr. McKenna gained style. "I suffered hallucinatory ago- fame by deliveringhis drugpitch to a nies of my own while reading his newgeneration at nightclub "." shrilly ecstatic prose," Peter Conrad "My real function was to give peo- wrote in in a ple permission," he said in an article 1993 review of Mr. McKenna's book to appear in the May issue of Wired "True Hallucinations," published by magazine. "Essentially, what I exist- Harper San Francisco. ed for was to say, 'Go ahead, you'll But many marveled at his stream live through it, get loaded, you don't of novel thoughts. "To write him off have to be afraid."' as a crazy hippie is a rather lazy In lectures, in recordings and in approach to a man not only full of five books, Mr. McKenna made his fascinating ideas but also blessed case for illegalsubstances that many with a sense of humor and self-par- experts consider highly dangerous. ody," Tom Hodgkinson wrote in The Hehad a grand theory : that psyche- New Statesman and Society in 1994. . delic mushrooms are the missing Terence Kemp McKenna was born link in the story of . on Nov. 16, 1946, in a Colorado cattle Not until our ancestors be- and coal town, Paonia. He was a gan eating hallucinatory psilocybin youth given to memorizing passages mushrooms, he contended, did they of and reading "Carl begin to acquire human qualities. Jung's "Psychology and ," Mr. McKenna, a lanky man with a and his main satisfactions percolat- salt-and-pepper. beard and deep-set ed from his fertile imagination. eyes, also professed to know exactly "I think my first encounter with when the world would end: Dec. 22, psychedelics was looking at Colorado 2012. He came to this conclusion and trying to understand that it was through a mathematical construct once the shores of an ocean with he.based on the I Ching, the ancient hundred-foot-long sauropods tromp-

E NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARIES SUNDAY, APRIL 9, 2000 Patron, ofPsychedelicDrugs ing through the mangrove swamps," Hallucinations," they were "Food of he told Details magazine in 1993. the Gods" (Bantam, 1992) ; "The Ar- He found his way to San Francisco chaic Revival" (Harper San Fran- in 1965. According to 'the April 1993 cisco) and "Trialogues at the Edge issue of Details magazine, Barry of the West," written with Ralph Melton, the guitarist for Country Joe Abraham and & the Fish, introduced him to mari- (Bear & Company, 1992). juana in 1965. Soon he tried LSD. Mr. McKenna met his wife, Kath- ' He enrolled in the University of leen Harrison, in in the at Berkeley that year and mid-1970's . They settled in Occiden- was accepted,into the Tussman Ex- tal, a small town north of San Fran- perimental College, which empha- cisco. They had'a son, Finn, who now sized self-direction. After the two- lives in Jersey City, N.J., and a year program, he embarked Qn trav- daughter, Klea, of Santa Cruz, Calif. els around the world. He is also survived by his brother, In 1971 he and his brother, Dennis, Dennis, who lives in Minneapolis. journeyed to the Amazon jungle in After a divorce in 1992, Mr. Mc- search of psychedelic plants. In a Kenna moved to Hawaii, where he tiny mission settlement in southern and his former wife owned property. , they encountered, for the Mr._ McKenna built a modernist first time, what drug enthusiasts call house, which is topped with a huge "magic mushrooms." . antenna dish for the Internet com-. In 1972, Mr. McKenna returned to munications with which he berame Berkeley to.finish college. He com- enamored. pleted a self-tailored degree in ecol- "Without sounding too cllche, the ogy, resource recovery and shaman- Internet really is the birth of global ism. His mind was focused on, and mind," he told Wired "That's what a certainlyby, mushrooms. No one had god is. Somebody who knows more yet figured out how to cultivate the than you do about whatever -you're mushrooms in the United States, but dealing with." the McKennas brought the South When he fell ill last May, Mr. Mc- American secrets home. They pub- Kenna was enjoying a new life with lished them, and in .the 1980's were Christy Silness, a young- woman he growing 70 pounds every six weeks. had met the year before at an ethno- Term= The operation ended when a friend botanical conference in the Yucatan. Terence McKenna, shown in 1993, was quoted as saying, "Esm was arrested for his fungi farm. He had medical treatment for gliob- what I existed for was to say, `Go ahead, you'll live through In 1975, the two brothers published lastoma multiforma, a rare form of loaded, you don't have to be afraid ."' their first book, "The Invisible Land- brain cancer, while friends and fol- scape : Mind, Hallucinogens and the I lowers added more esoteric touches. Ching." Mr. McKenna began to lec- A self-styled "grand kahuna of many others, wondered whether a "So what about 35 years ture both to old.hippies and converts Polynesia" biked up the mountain to lifetime of drug use might be to dope smoking?" he askec to the emerging . meditate at his bedside. A Nevada blame for his . pointed td studies suggest] According to Wired, he drifted into disk jockey, , asked his 13 "So what about'it?" he asked his . may shrink tumor. the role of "charismatic talking million-listeners to send good vibra- doctors. "You want to hammer on "Listen," Mr. McKenna to. head." He wrote four books in the tions. me about that?" They assured him "if cannabis shrinks tumi early 1990's. In addition to "True Wired said Mr. McKenna, like there was no-causal link. . wouldn't be having this disci