A Return Trip to Timothy Leary’s Psychedelic, Day-Glo Mexico

Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers.

Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds is a film by The Beatles.

Imagine yourself in a room by an ocean with trees and skies. Imagine being surrounded by guides who give you a hallucinogen every 72 hours or so to expand your consciousness and strip you of your ego.

At least 50 day-trippers went to the Hotel Catalina Beach Resort in Mexico for two summers in 1962 and 1963. The first known Western retreat was organized by the soon-to-be-fired Harvard psychology professor Timothy Leary and his partner in mind-expansion studies, Richard Alpert. They called themselves the International Foundation for Internal Freedom.

This little beach resort was once used to accommodate people who wanted to learn how to use drugs.

The Catalina is the oldest resort in the area. The city now has dozens of hotels and villas, many of which are Mexican-owned, but it still feels like an anti-Tulum. The laid-back beach city is not as developed as the Yucat Peninsula town.

There are direct flights to the nearby airport from American cities, including Houston, but the area is still sleepy enough to host four species of turtles. Coffee, sea salt, and other locally grown goods are on offer at market stalls and outdoor cafes. A growing number of restaurants serve fresh seafood.

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Most visitors to the area come for sun and sand, whale watching, and to participate in the popular baby sea turtle releases. They are probably unaware of the resort city's past with Leary and his 1960s experiments in consciousness expansion.

The Catalina hotel is at the center of a crescent of sand called the Playa la Ropa, and it is the only sign of the ecstatic time when nearly all the IFIF participants have died.

The stepson of the man who leased the hotel is the owner. It took Alexander Bergtold an hour to walk to school from the hotel grounds when he was a boy.

The jungle vibe is unchanged despite the resort having three times more bungalows. The Mexican plumeria tree has a pheasant-like bird called the chachalaca on it. pelicans aim at fish in the waves The sound of water on sand lulls the mind into a meditative state.

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The goal of the IFIF Psychedelic Training Center was ambitious. A group of psychologists, graduate students, occasional actress, businessman and curious interloper would sequester in a paradisal place, tune out mushroom-cloud-haunted midcentury America, and tune in to an expanded consciousness they believed was once.

During World War II, a Swiss chemist hallucinated for hours after a drop from one of his experiments got on his skin. The C.I.A. was testing it as a potential mind control weapon while psychiatrists were experimenting with its potential as therapy for mental illness and alcoholism. The 20th-century British writers Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts were both fans of the class of drugs, including the mushrooms.

People who underwent clinical tests strapped to metal beds under harsh lights could be affected by the drugs. Hallucinogens could work as therapy if set and setting were carefully managed.

In the 1960's, the setting of Zihuatanejo appeared to be ideal. It would take 14 hours to travel by air from New York or Los Angeles. There were no paved roads. The homes were lit with fuel. The only hotel in town, the Catalina, had a single four-wheel drive truck that guests could use to get to and from the airport. Fishermen, farmers, children and dogs went from one end of town to the other on the beach below.

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The Catalina's owner leased the whole place to the Americans for the summer, which is low season for tourists. They charged participants $200 a month for their room and board after they were selected from a reported 5,000 applicants.

The aim of the transpersonative community is to liberate members from their webs so that they can soar, at will, through the infinite space of their consciousness or throughout the infinite time/space of the energy fields surrounding them. IFIF has traveled 4,000 miles to get away from you. There are people here who are not interested in playing the game of YOU. Don't feel bad. Climb out of your web and go after them.

The most scientific assessment of the operation was left behind by the California psychiatrist. He concluded that the drug improved the brain.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is an adaptation of Leary's book that was used to fortify participants before their ego deaths. The goal was psychic rebirth. The lysergic acid diethylamide, or lysergic acid, was administered by the leaders in varying amounts. The group leaders hid the drug in a glass container under the water.

Drug ingestions were to be watched by guides. One of the scientific taboos that ultimately provoked Leary's expulsion from the academic community was tripping themselves.

Among the few living participants of the IFIF experiment, one of the most vivid recollections was by a psychologist and management and leadership consultant.

Aztec symbolism and traditions added to the appeal of these upper middle class trippers. He wrote in his memoir that he became aware of the jungle when he took a drug in Mexico.

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The view from the high terrace at the Catalina is essentially unchanged today. Birds shimmer in the bougainvillea. The ancient Aztecs believed that the souls of babies who died are carried by the hummingbirds.

At the dawn of the atomic age, the goal was to create a community to remake human psychology. The drug made a sense of the possible in those areas.

It wouldn't be paradise without ejection. IFIF was not going to last through the summer.

The Mexicans and Americans were never kept in the dark about Leary's project. Even after Harvard fired him for failing to attend his scheduled lectures, he invited major American media to visit. Press coverage of the retreat was not very positive.

Their Mexican neighbors were amused. The community in the 1960s thought the American trippers were insane. He remembers older teens attending fiestas that IFIF hosted on the beach. Some people smoked marijuana, but the IFIF people didn't share it with the locals.

The rise of the narco-trafficking that has wreaked havoc on Mexico was decades ago. The rule of IFIF was that people on the drug were not to leave the compound.

According to a Saturday Evening Post article published in 1963, one or two individuals ended up in Mexico City hospitals with mental health issues.

The Mexican government gave the group 20 days to leave the country. Mr. Aburto said that they were breaking the law when they were expelled. According to the Saturday Evening Post, the group was deported after Leary read a paper at the Institute of Biomedical Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The director protested to the Mexican government after deeming his talkabsurd, confused, and valueless.

The group faced a bigger challenge than the Mexican federales. The group was made up of 60 percent males and Dr. Downing noted that it was characterized bymarital instability.

The psychologist brought his wife to the community and was one of the few who had their marriage survive.

Did the project achieve its goals? The intent was to form a more concentrated network, a more concentrated group who could carry on the work. How naive we were to think that we could change the world overnight.

It was not re-made. The scientific community did not carry on with the experiment. Hallucinogens were banned in the United States.

The seeds were planted. Hallucinogenic therapy is having a resurgence after years of legal and scientific exile. There are clinics in major cities that offer the party drug MDMA, better known as Molly, and the tranquilizer ketamine, which has been shown to be helpful in treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Young creatives and tech workers are interested in microdosing themselves with mushrooms as a cure for depression or a creativity booster, although the science is still unclear.

Travelers looking to change their minds through hallucinogenic drugs have been attracted by an increasing number of tropical psychedelic retreats around the world.

The town gained popularity after the trippers were kicked out. John Wayne liked to sail his boat. The Rolling Stones had vacations there, as did the actress Lauren Hutton. A burst of tourism development in the 1980s increased the population from 8,000 to 126,000.

A lifeguard tower with a room draped in Indian prints has been gone for a long time. It was referred to as the "soul" of the IFIF community. Mr. Bergtold said his family has worked to preserve the atmosphere of an isolated tropical garden, even as villas light up the night on what used to be dark jungly mountains nearby.

Mr. Weil, who has been practicing tai chi for more than 50 years, never lost touch with that other period of his life. He dropped back in after being a long time abstainer from the drug. In the past year he has occasionally taken a dose of the drug in his office in the mountains outside of Boulder. He said it helps him process trauma.

A new generation of psychedelic therapy enthusiasts have been calling on him recently to share his wisdom. He said after 10 or 15 minutes that he didn't need a guide. It comes back like riding a bike.

A journalist and author, she is the author of Virus: Vaccinations, the CDC and the Hijacking of America's Response to the Pandemic.