The acid queen: Inside Rosemary Leary’s life of sex, free-thinking and lots of LSD

One hundred miles north of Manhattan in the heart of the Hudson Valley lies the grand Hitchcock Estate, a property currently listed for a record-breaking $65 million. 

The Hitchcock Estate’s 2,000 acres are known less for its tony accommodations — a bowling alley, two main houses, a tennis pavilion — than for its far-out history as an incubator of the counterculture movement of the 1960s. 

The property, its real estate listing reads, “is shrouded in mystique, the subject of curiosity.” 

And no wonder. It was once home to Timothy Leary, the ex-Harvard professor turned LSD-evangelizing high priest of the late 1960s who coined the era’s mantra, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” 

Leary spent seven years there, renting the estate from its oil-heir owners William Mellon “Billy” Hitchcock and Tommy Hitchcock III, for $1 a year starting in 1963. 

In an excerpt from the new book “The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary,” out April 22, author Susannah Cahalan details the day-to-day life in the infamous acid commune through the eyes of its most intriguing and mysterious resident, Leary’s third wife, Rosemary Woodruff Leary.

As charming as Timothy Leary was, when he invited her to stay with him at his experimental retreat in Millbrook, New York, Rosemary Woodruff initially refused. 

But a few months into the summer of 1965, after the two-time divorcee had turned 30 and aged out of her job as an airline stewardess, Woodruff decided to give it a go upstate.  

Leary picked her up in his beat-up Jeep. There was champagne to drink on the road. A full moon lit their way as they drove through the ornate entryway gates of Millbrook’s Hitchcock Estate. 

The four-story Queen Anne Victorian contrasted majestically with the acres of gardens and dark virgin woods. When they got closer, she noticed the disrepair and decay that managed to add to the estate’s grandeur. 

Once inside, there was more for her eyes to take in: the carved woodwork shipped in from German masters, fading tapestries on the wall, ceilings inlaid with wooden panels, a giant bell on the stone terrace, plus harem- style low couches surrounded by pillows, a bed on the floor under a statue of Ganesh, the space covered in books and records. A place, as Leary would write, where one could “learn how to use psychedelic drugs to create a heaven on earth.”

Children jumped on the trampoline set up outside on the porch. Women sauntered by in bikinis or with their tops off, perky breasts bouncing as they headed to the waterfall. Most hailed from the upper middle class — children given enough rope to feel comfortable throwing away all the bourgeois trappings that their parents had worked so hard to attain.

Rosemary moved into the estate and Leary’s bed the next day. 

Leary schooled her on his experimental commune. They practiced communal child rearing and experimented with vegetarianism and gardening, while also studying the effects of ritualized psychedelic use. There was almost always a session going on when a dozen or so people dropped acid simultaneously with a guide. 

The Millbrook philosophy incorporated aspects of neuroscience with Eastern religion, along with Leary’s psychological research at Harvard. In the Third Floor Experiment, a person would pick a room and sleep with whoever else chose to share their bed. In another experiment, people drew straws and had to spend a week dropping acid alone or with another randomly chosen person. 

Communal living arrangements like this were still unusual in 1965. Scientists, philosophers, and artists in residence worked to challenge the psyche to change behavior and transform the self. They believed that this work would reshape the­ community — and, eventually, the world.

To make money to support the group, Leary hosted weekends at Millbrook, where rich New Yorkers would spend $75 ($700 today) to stay (without access to psychedelics). The visitors would discard their social roles by replacing their clothes with bedsheets and do chores around the property — everything from cleaning toilets to cooking dinner. 

Some of the tasks were taken seriously; others were dreamed up by the Millbrook group only for the wealthy visitors, who didn’t realize they weren’t in on the joke.

But the real work happened when the visitors weren’t there. Leary trained Rosemary on the art of “set and setting” — a term that he had popularized — to help shape and prepare one’s mindset and environment in the best way before tripping. 

Under his tutelage — and the wisdom he learned from over 200 acid trips — Leary made Rosemary into the queen of “setting,” her warm and comforting demeanor grounded those in the throes of even the most challenging trips. 

She let her hair grow long and sewed her own clothing, wearing smock dresses cut from fabric she found in the communal clothing heap. She made items for Leary, too, and helped style him during his appearances, replacing tweeds with breezy unbuttoned linen shirts, if he wore a shirt at all.

But the tide soon turned. Though the Millbrook locals initially embraced Leary and his Harvard bona fides, they bristled at the number of freaks and hippies descending on the hamlet. Allen Ginsberg showed up with his wild hair and unkempt beard, wearing robes. A woman shopped in a fur coat and heels, with nothing underneath. 

Then Rosemary, Leary, and his two teenage children, Jack and Susan, were arrested at the Mexico border for marijuana possession. 

The Poughkeepsie Journal devoted wall-to-wall coverage to the arrest and the goings-on at the estate. A resident historian penned an op-ed for the local newspaper, arguing that the drug addicts would pillage and rape the community. The president of Bennett College, a prestigious all-girls school five minutes from the estate, threatened to expel any student who visited.

The community gave the DA a directive: Get rid of Leary and his crew. 

There was a roiling. Something had to happen.

A series of busts followed. Undercover agents. Random stops. And then a full-on raid, headed by G. Gordon Liddy, the Poughkeepsie assistant district attorney, who would later earn notoriety of his own for his role in the Watergate break-in. 

Though the busts were a bust — very little contraband was found on the property — the Millbrook magic was fading. Communal life had taken a toll. Big jugs of red wine sat beneath statues of Buddha. Children as young as nine were given apple cider laced with acid, some against their will. 

“There was something nasty in the feeling of the place, something furtive, sarcastic, and hostile,” Rosemary wrote. 

This was especially true for women, who faced the double standard of the era’s free love ethos. Sure, you could sleep with whomever you wanted, but you’d still be expected to make dinner. 

The dream of utopian psychedelia had ended. After three more raids, Bill Hitchcock, the owner of the estate, decided to close the psychedelic commune. 

Timothy and Rosemary left for California. Many followed. The more obstinate of the bunch moved into the woods.  “Leary retirement thrills Millbrook,” one headline in the Poughkeepsie Journal read.

The experiment had ended.  

For the past 60 years, the estate has remained in the Hitchcock family surrounded by “No Trespassing” signs and barbed wire. Now it’s waiting for a new owner to take on its hefty $65 million price tag and heavy history. 

From “The Acid Queen” by Susannah Cahalan, to be published on April 22, 2025, by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Susannah Cahalan.