Primero es Basilea, en los años cuarenta. El doctor Albert Hofmann está llevando a cabo ensayos clínicos con su última creación, el ácido lisérgico, un revolucionario compuesto químico destinado a poner patas arriba el mundo de la cultura. Después es Harvard, a comienzos de los sesenta. Fitzhugh Loney, estudiante de psicología, y su mujer Joanie van a la fiesta que ofrece Timothy Leary, renombrado psicólogo y abanderado de las drogas psicodélicas. Aquella noche cambiará sus vidas. Allí tendrán su primer contacto con el LSD y se embarcarán en un viaje alucinante que los sumergirá en el corazón de la era lisérgica en América, en la que las puertas de la percepción se abrieron a una generación ávida de emociones auténticas y los hippies se entregaron a la fiebre psicodélica. Así, lo que en un principio parecía una simple dinámica de grupo acabará convirtiéndose en el inicio de una vida comunal con los devotos de Leary, que nos conducirá hasta México y terminará recalando en una mansión en el estado de Nueva York, donde tendrá lugar para ellos una última experiencia tan terrible como definitiva.

In 1943, LSD is synthesized in Basel. Two decades later, a coterie of grad students at Harvard are gradually drawn into the inner circle of renowned psychologist and psychedelic drug enthusiast Timothy Leary. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology Ph.D. student and his wife, Joanie, become entranced by the drug's possibilities such that their "research" becomes less a matter of clinical trials and academic papers and instead turns into a free-wheeling exploration of mind expansion, group dynamics, and communal living. With his trademark humor and pathos, Boyle moves us through the Loneys' initiation at one of Leary's parties to his notorious summer seminars in Zihuatanejo until the Loneys' eventual expulsion from Harvard and their introduction to a communal arrangement of thirty devotees--students, wives, and children--living together in a sixty-four room mansion and devoting themselves to all kinds of experimentation and questioning. Is LSD a belief system? Does it allow you to see God? Can the Loneys' marriage--or any marriage, for that matter--survive the chaotic and sometimes orgiastic use of psychedelic drugs? Wry, witty, and wise, Outside Looking In is an ideal subject for this American master, and highlights Boyle's acrobatic prose, detailed plots, and big ideas. It's an utterly engaging and occasionally trippy look at the nature of reality, identity, and consciousness, as well as our seemingly infinite capacities for creativity, re-invention, and self- discovery.-- Publisher's description.