OPERATION WHITE RABBIT: The True-Life Adventures Of Lenny and the Psychonauts

OPERATION WHITE RABBIT: The True Life Adventures of Lenny & the Psychonauts, the rollicking true crime tale of the man known as The Acid King, the legendary Leonard Pickard, a brilliant self-taught chemist turned LSD manufacturer and trafficker, whose lifelong crusade to keep psychedelics alive ended in the Wamego bust, with a haul in lysergic acid so huge that the DEA estimated that the arrest led to a 95% drop in the availability of LSD in the US for the next two years.

The narrative core of Operation White Rabbit traces Pickard's mind-boggling, harrowing Jekyll and Hyde existence from the day he walked out of Terminal Island Federal Prison in 1992 on parole after his first drug conviction to his arrest and re-imprisonment for life as the Acid King eleven years later.

Pickard did change his life in that initial stint in prison. Now both a Buddhist and vegan, he emerged as a born again adversary of drugs. He became a man with a new mission. For the first three years following his parole, he studied neuropharmacology, intent on reclaiming his early promise as a scientific prodigy. To a large degree he succeeded. One year short of his 50th birthday, he was admitted to Harvard's prestigious Kennedy School for Public Policy and was simultaneously awarded a generous research fellowship at Harvard Medical School. He gave serious thought to becoming a physician. But he never truly abandoned psychedelics or his belief in the psychological and spiritual benefits of tripping. When the University of New Mexico sponsored a clinical study of DMT, a hallucinogen even more potent than LSD, Pickard volunteered and the rest is history.

Pickard's personal story is set against a fascinating chronicle of the social history of psychedelic drugs from the 1950s on. The earliest self-named “psychonauts” ranged from literary converts like novelists Aldous Huxley and Ken Kesey, to scientists like DNA pioneers Sir Francis Crick and Kerry Mullis, not to mention tripper-in-chief Dr. Timothy Leary. Bill W., founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was a psychonaut, as were actors Cary Grant, Rita Moreno and Jack Nicholson. Steve Jobs, Paul Allen and Bill Gates launched the computer revolution while tripping. Crooner Andy Williams and Ethel Kennedy treated their clinical depression with LSD.

Interest in LSD and its history is growing, especially the focus on “micro-dosing,” for enhancing mental wellness and boosting creativity, as depicted in novelist Ayelet Waldman's recent best seller, A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage and My Life.

This is a project bursting with narrative energy that takes the reader into unexplored pop history through the wild – and sobering – adventures of a complex and charismatic lead character who could have walked out of a movie – outlaw, visionary (Pickard accurately predicted the opioid crisis 20 years ago), father, con artist, chemist, poet and Harvard-trained diplomat, scholar and ordained Zen priest – and currently Federal Inmate #82687-011.

Investigative journalist Dennis McDougal is the author of twelve books. In addition to Dylan: The Biography, his works include: Five Easy Decades: How Jack Nicholson Became the Biggest Movie Star in Modern Times (Wiley, 2007). A staff writer for two decades with the Los Angeles Times and frequent contributor to the New York Times, McDougal has been honored with more than 40 awards, including Stanford University's John S. Knight Fellowship, the Anne Sperber Award for the nation's best media biography, a nomination for the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award, and the George Foster Peabody Award as co-producer of the 2009 PBS American Experience documentary Inventing L.A. based on McDougal's bestselling, Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the Los Angeles Times Dynasty (Perseus, 2002).