“I should have known better,” said Savinelli.
At the time, Pickard was renting a house on the outskirts of Aspen—a Colorado resort town with high tolerance for recreational pharmaceuticals.4 He told Savinelli he was experimenting there with mescaline synthesis—nothing illegal, though an overly-curious narc might not see it that way.
Like Savinelli, Leonard had taken a shine to northern New Mexico, with its Rocky Mountain highs, artsy ambiance, and New Age tolerance. Pickard thought he might move his operation from Colorado and become Savinelli’s neighbor. As 1995 wound to a close, Savinelli and Halpern had become two of Leonard’s closest compadres, though neither get a single mention in The Rose of Paracelsus.
When Pickard travelled to Amsterdam on Nov. 26, 1995, Halpern and Savinelli tagged along. They were there for the annual Cannabis Cup, where more than 100 growers competed among 1,500 connoisseurs, who fly in from all over the world to toke the finest weed in Europe.
“You pay $100 and are given several different types of marijuana,” explained John Wilson, a stoner from Waco, Texas. “You smoke it and rate it on taste, smoothness, quality, potency. These guys have spent years crossbreeding into hybrids.”
Although technically illegal, marijuana and hashish flourished in the Netherlands during the 1990s. Some 2,000 cafés openly sold baggies and bongs as frequently as they did lattés or beer. Amsterdam was an excellent venue for mingling with fellow psychonauts. That was why the three amigos were there.
“After that trip, I started to feel like Pinocchio coming back from the island of the bad boys,” said Savinelli. “I was in way over my head and realized I had to re-evaluate the clique I’d fallen into.”
Following John Halpern’s disastrous ayahuasca episode in Savinelli’s living room, the trio had bonded over Pickard’s quest to uncover new and legal psychedelics. In much the same vein as Sasha and Ann Shulgin, Leonard carefully skirted Schedule One prohibitions. He kept away from forbidden compounds. He’d learned his lesson and would not cross the line. He’d made many friends there, but had no wish to return to Terminal Island.
Savinelli was as open to mind expansion as Halpern or Pickard. In addition to participating in Rick Strassman’s DMT trials, he’d gone so far as to visit northern Mexico in search of Sonoran toads that were rumored to secrete a hallucinogenic enzyme. Largely through Savinelli’s efforts, a whole new branch of psychedelic tourism eventually brought dozens of toad milkers to Sinaloan pueblos in search of amphibian discharge.
His attraction to Amsterdam, however, was the same as Pickard’s: locating like-minded psychonauts.
“Leonard was cultivating contacts in the Netherlands,” said Savinelli. “He met with a number of professors, some German, some Middle Easterners. I remember we ate sushi one night. These unsavory types show up. Leonard knew them. They take one look at me and ask, ‘Who’s this Jesus Christ looking guy?’ I ignored ‘em, but Halpern’s gotta show that he’s a free-thinking American. He sparks up a doobie. Those guys were not amused.”
Savinelli didn’t mind a spliff now and again, but not on so public a display and not among thugs. Pickard didn’t indulge in cannabis at all.
“While I have visited many coffee shops in Amsterdam, I have never smoked in them,” he said. “In some settings of drug users, I have feigned use to be accepted (but) I have never had a positive drug test, in prison or elsewhere.”
If Leonard had any addictions, they were of a different order.
“My lab assistant Stewart went to Amsterdam with him once,” recalled Dave Nichols. “Leonard took him to the red-light district. Stewart thought it was just part of the sightseeing, but the prostitutes knew Pickard by name. They trailed him down the street yelling: ‘Leonard! Leonard!’”
Three months after their Amsterdam visit, Pickard invited his two traveling companions on another European jaunt, this time for a February weekend in Heidelberg. The Second International Conference of the European College for the Study of Consciousness attracted an even stranger crowd than Amsterdam. Psychonauts galore. Distinguished academics mixed with goths sporting green Mohawks. Grunge rock and voodoo blues supplied the soundtrack. The occasion was the launch of the so-called Heidelberg Declaration:
NO JAIL FOR DRUGS
We condemn . . .
the often brutal methods of criminalizing, detaining and even sentencing people to death for the use and trade of drugs in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the US and other countries. These are irrational acts of social control without general preventive effect that violate human rights. Drug problems cannot be solved criminally, but only preventively therapeutically. So it’s an overall social task. The same applies to the use of addictive and toxic drugs such as heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, etc. . . .
The guest of honor at the conference was Dr. Albert Hofmann. Acid’s inventor was among the first to sign the declaration. Halpern snapped Pickard’s selfie with the original psychonaut—a treasure Leonard had framed when he got back to Cambridge, where he seemed to be spending less and less time.
Pickard turned the rest of 1996 into an unofficial sabbatical, beginning with a spring ceremony in New Mexico where he officially graduated from Zen novice to Buddhist priest.
“I was visiting with Kōbun and his family at a little retreat in Taos where he practiced formal Japanese archery and skied Taos Mountain,” Pickard recalled. “Kōbun was quite the man.”
Kōbun Chino Otogawa was a legendary roshi (master) who’d instructed Steve Jobs5, among others. On April 8, 1996, Kōbun ordained Leonard Pickard in a ritual staged at the Arroyo Seco zendo on the outskirts of Taos.
“Leonard asked me to be his sponsor,” said Savinelli. “I stood at his right side while he took the vows.”
“Kōbun and I were both robed,” Pickard recalled, “surrounded by Zen students and visitors in an austerely elegant Japanese ceremony.”
Dispatched in the early sixties by his own Japanese Zen masters, Kōbun immigrated to California and originated the Zen practices
