Turn on, tune in, drop out

"Turn on, tune in, drop out" is a counterculture-era phrase popularized by Timothy Leary in 1966. In 1967 Leary spoke at the Human Be-In, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and phrased the famous words, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". It was also the title of his spoken word album Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out recorded in 1966. On this lengthy album one can hear Leary speaking in a monotone, soft-spoken voice on his views about the world and humanity and describing nature, Indian symbols, "the meaning of inner life", the LSD experience, peace and many other issues.

In a 1988 interview with Neil Strauss, Leary stated that slogan was "given to him" by Marshall McLuhan during a lunch in New York City. Leary added that McLuhan "was very much interested in ideas and marketing, and he started singing something like, 'Psychedelics hit the spot / Five hundred micrograms, that's a lot,' to the tune of a Pepsi commercial of the time. Then he started going, 'Tune in, turn on, and drop out.'" The phrase was used by Leary in a speech he delivered at the opening of a press conference in New York City on September 19, 1966. It urged people to embrace cultural changes through the use of psychedelics by detaching themselves from the existing conventions and hierarchies in society. It was also the motto of his League for Spiritual Discovery. The phrase was derided by more conservative critics.

In his speech, Leary stated:

Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present — turn on, tune in, drop out.

Leary later explained in his 1983 autobiography Flashbacks:

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