THE
DIVINE
RASCAL
The Story of the Man Who Turned On the World with LSD and the People Who Erased Him
created by:
Jeanne Heaton &
Vanessa Hollingshead
LOGLINE:
In 1959 New York, a penniless British writer, armed with 5,000 hits of pure LSD ignites the 1960s countercultural revolution—but when egos clash and the movement spins out of control, the U.S. government comes crashing down on him, forcing a brutal choice: save the revolution—or save himself.
INTRODUCTION
THE DIVINE RASCAL is a visceral, dramatic, and darkly funny TV series about my father—Michael Hollingshead—a charming and defiant outsider who single-handedly started the psychedelic revolution.
Inspired by his cult memoir, "The Man Who Turned on the World," the show rips the veil off the '60s hippie-era mythology to expose the never-before-told origin story of LSD and the radical counterculture it unleashed.
Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing America, the series follows Hollingshead as he infiltrates the heart of Harvard's academic elite—with nothing but 5,000 hits in a sugar paste.
There, he seduces the minds of two of the university’s most brilliant rising stars:
Dr. Timothy Leary, the swaggering bad-boy psychologist, straddling the line of academic prestige and cultural anarchy—
And his wealthy, devoted assistant, Dr. Richard Alpert—a spiritual seeker destined to become the famous guru, Baba Ram Dass.
Dr. Timothy Leary
Michael hollingshead
Dr. Richard Alpert
One hit of his "Lovin’ Spoonful" blows Leary and Alpert out of their Ivy League minds—into a realm where science, mysticism, and madness collide.
As powerful as the atom bomb, his acid explodes through the hallways of Harvard’s ivory tower-while at the same time he's flooding New York’s smoke-filled, jazz-drenched Beatnik cafés with visions, verse, and raw rebellion.
Together, the trio becomes a psychedelic force of nature—twisting minds inside out and igniting a generation hellbent on starting a revolution that will torch the hollow, plastic culture of 1950s America to the ground.
ryan gosling -
Leary
Benedict Cumberbatch -
Hollingshead
Timothée Chalamet -
Alpert
But when their god-sized chemical collides with their god-sized egos, the revolution turns on itself.
Power struggles erupt. Trust erodes. What began as a bold and sacred mission to tear down the old world spirals into infighting, paranoia, and betrayal.
And in the shadows, watching their implosion is the U.S. government—patient, calculating and ready to strike. The FBI and CIA's MK-ULTRA moves in to crush, what they believe is a monumental threat.
And just like that, my father—the wild-eyed visionary set the entire revolution in motion—is all but erased from history. His name, his vision, his legacy—forgotten. Disappeared. Barely even a footnote.
A psychedelic thriller, The Divine Rascal is a result of my obsession to uncover the truth of who my father really was—and why he was erased from his own story. But it’s not just about finding the truth. It’s about what happens when the truth finds you.
IP:
"The Man Who Turned On The World"
by Michael Hollingshead
Published 1973
© All Rights Reserved
WHAT'S LSD
WHO IS HE?
With a glass of scotch in one hand and a mayonnaise jar full of LSD in the other, the Divine Rascal is one of the most mysterious and unfathomable figures in psychedelic history.
A Zelig, a genius, a writer, a trickster, a conman, a raconteur, an alcoholic, a junkie, a magician, a father; Michael Hollingshead is all of it, all at once. Without him, there is no Timothy Leary. No psychedelic revolution. No mass awakening that challenges the status quo and reshapes the cultural, political, and spiritual fabric of the world. Yet no one knows who he is.
WHY ME?
"My dad did so much LSD, psilocybin, blue blotter, purple haze—that we used to go on family trips together without ever leaving home. When I was five, he left a tray of acid-laced sugar cubes on the kitchen table. I ate nine of them. I don't have childhood memories; I have flashbacks."
Vanessa Hollingshead
That was the first joke I ever told. Because it was true.
I was born on the same day my dad tripped on LSD for the first time. His heart blew open. His mind expanded. And suddenly, I wasn’t just his daughter; I was his competition—competing with the most profound experience of his life.
For years I asked myself: Why was LSD more important than me?
But as I dug deeper, I realized this isn’t just my story. It's a missing piece of the most radical, transformational time in American history—one that's never been dramatized.
While Leary and Alpert were becoming icons, my father was eliminated. Why? What did he know? And who betrayed him? Was it Leary? Alpert? The CIA? Or something more sinister?
Unapologetically human and darkly hysterical, The Divine Rascal is a search for the man who tried to raise me, abandoned me, and ultimately shaped me.
A battle for the soul—it lives in the tension between the spiritual and the self-indulgent, between transcendence and addiction, between the divine and the rascal in all of us.
SERIES OVERVIEW:
Part One:
NEW YORK CITY - THE '60s
Haunted by an abusive and violent childhood, penniless writer Michael Hollingshead flees England’s oppressive class system and sets sail for the creative chaos of Greenwich Village.
At The White Horse Tavern, where the Beatnik poetry gods of angst hold court, Hollingshead—with his razor-sharp wit and the right amount of madness—earns himself a seat next to Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Aldous Huxley.
When he meets Sophie, the sultry jazz pianist and headstrong civil rights activist trapped in a loveless marriage, they fall in love. And she gets pregnant.
Sophie
Natalie Portman
But with no job, no money, and suffering with debilitating writer’s block, the burden of raising a family becomes too much for Hollingshead.
Drinking around the clock, he spirals into an alcohol-soaked oblivion, ready to end it all.
Just in time, iconic writer Aldous Huxley steps in and tells him about a mysterious hallucinogen that promises, not only creative salvation, but a total rewiring of the soul.
"I move to the rooftop, and all is chaos. Kaleidoscopic images surge powerfully in on me. Violent. Beautiful. My body is strange. Numb. Lifeless.
Am I dying?
The rooftop shifts. Clinging to the edge of nothingness, lightning strikes, splitting me open as time collapses. From the depths, the primordial ooze of my being surges forth and I am crushed by the monstrous fists of my violent, alcoholic father. He grabs me by the throat and hurls me off the ledge.
I am dead.
Screaming into the void, my ego disintegrates like ash scattered in a cosmic wind. Suddenly, woven wings of stardust catch me and lift me up. Beyond thought. Beyond reality. This heavenly realm delivers me to a place of glory. Where the "I" of "me" no longer exists.
I am risen.
One with the Divine. One with the Creator. One with the Universe.
I am God."
While Hollingshead is chasing rebirth, Sophie is alone and terrified, giving birth to Vanessa.
Still tripping, he storms the hospital, his mind on fire with revelation, and promises her a new beginning. But not with a job. Or finishing his book. He's going to turn on the world with LSD.
Part Two:
Hard left to Harvard University
Off the word of Huxley, Hollingshead arrives with his 5,000 hits of LSD in a sugar paste, stashed in a mayonnaise jar.
But he’s not just carrying a drug—he’s carrying a myth. The holy grail. The magic ring. The genie in a bottle.
He will need an ally to pull off a mission this big. A believer with credentials, power, and a stage.
Enter Dr. Timothy Leary: Harvard's golden boy psychologist. Part visionary, part heretic, he's got a God complex and a lab full of young minds to mold.
But Leary dismisses Hollingshead and his "ominous jar" as just another drug-addled zealot. Until Hollingshead threatens to kill himself.
The threat cuts deep. Leary’s wife had recently done the same. So this isn’t theory—it’s personal. Leary agrees to take the trip.
Twelve hours of psychological freefall. Screaming grief. Cosmic terror. Leary doesn’t just lose himself—he "dies." And then—suddenly, a flicker of light.
Out of the ashes, a mission crystallizes: partner with Hollingshead and bring LSD into the heart of Harvard.
Leary & Hollingshead
But as their bond deepens, Leary begins to realize that "Hollingshead isn't giving me LSD out of love or glorification. It's a compulsion. He has to do it. He's desperate to share with the world the immobilization of his own cosmic and crushing loneliness.”
To anchor Hollingshead and his own fragile awakening, he recruits his devoted assistant, Dr. Richard Alpert—a Harvard misfit with a huge trust fund and his own desperate need to be loved.
Dr. Richard Alpert
Now complete—a madman, a messiah, and a misfit—the trio persuade Harvard to greenlight LSD experiments on Leary’s grad students.
At first, it’s science: clinical, contained, and shockingly effective.
But LSD doesn’t follow the rules. It leaks out of the lab, into faculty mixers, dorm rooms, and midnight consciousness-expansion debates.
The counterculture revolution has officially begun.
Spreading their psychedelic gospel, they become both rockstars and pariahs in equal measure.
But when they break the cardinal rule by giving LSD to undergrads, a huge no-no; outrage erupts. Parents flip out. The press circles. And Harvard fires them all.
Branded "dangerous radicals" and already under government surveillance, the CIA moves in. MK-Ultra, which uses LSD to shatter minds, erase identities, and turn human beings into programmable machines, places Hollingshead at the top of their watchlist.
How much is one man willing to sacrifice to save his glorious revolution?
Vanessa, his daughter
Part Three:
Which brings us to Millbrook Mansion — a 64-room dilapidated baroque castle in upstate New York
A chaotic mix of research lab, monastery, and madhouse—The Lords of the Revolution move in.
Oblivious to the Feds lurking, they carry on their LSD experiments with reckless abandon.
And at the center of it all: Hollingshead. Electric. Mesmerizing. Part showman, part shaman, Millbrook is where he hones his skills and earns a mythic reputation as the greatest trip guide of all time.
.
Artists, rock stars, writers, and celebrities travel from all over the world just for him to guide their trips.
The Mansion becomes the beating heart of the radical 1960s pop-art revolution—inspiring The Beatles to go from "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to "I Am the Walrus."
McClure, Dylan & Ginsberg
Lennon & McCartney
Andy Warhol &
Edie Sedgwick
Salvador Dali
William Burroughs
But as the revolution now explodes across America, so do their egos. Leary wants to be king. Alpert seeks truth. And with the CIA zeroing in on Hollingshead, he drinks. Drunk and tripping around the clock—he can barely keep it together.
And then it happens: one night Hollingshead leaves a tray of acid-laced sugar cubes on the kitchen table and five-year-old Vanessa eats them all.
When she almost dies, Sophie cracks. Alpert takes off for India. The FBI storms the place. And Leary goes to jail.
And mysteriously, Hollingshead is nowhere to be found.
Spy? Double agent? Scapegoat? Or just the smartest one of them all—Hollingshead finds himself aboard the luxurious QE1, sailing for England, a free man—his greatest trick yet.
But little does anyone know: he has over 10,000 hits of Czech LSD hidden in a bar of soap—enough to turn on London ten times over and still have a hell of a stash left for himself.
And with London on the edge of its own cultural awakening, the stakes are high.
Hollingshead’s promise to turn on the world is no longer a fantasy—it’s reality. But this time, he’s not hiding in the shadows. This time, the whole world is watching.
Enter: Season Two.
THE ANTAGONISTS:
On a parallel track, hidden in secret labs and safe houses, Sidney Gottlieb—the sadistic director of the CIA’s twisted MK-Ultra drug program—is weaponizing LSD as a form of psychological torture.
On Gottlieb's orders, CIA operatives are injecting prisoners, addicts, and prostitutes with near-fatal doses of LSD. No warning. No mercy. No escape.
As nefarious as it is chilling, Gottlieb’s plan is simple: obliterate the human mind and psyche, and in the void, build the perfect assassin. One who will kill Russian spies on command, with no remorse and without a trace.
These morally bankrupt LSD experiments lead to madness, death, and eventually Hollingshead.
WHY NOW:
The time is ripe for another counterculture revolution
It’s 2025, and the same civil rights my father fought for are being stripped away, systematically, one by one.
Mind control is coded into algorithms. Anxiety is rampant. Loneliness, an epidemic. We’re medicated but not healed. Stimulated but not awake. Disillusioned. Disconnected. We are not well.
And into the void, psychedelics have returned.
No longer fringe, therapists prescribe LSD for PTSD, addiction, and depression. Mushrooms are marketed as quick-fix, Instagrammable wellness hacks. Microdosing in Silicon Valley has gone mainstream. Everyone is desperate for a way out. A cure.
Enter The Divine Rascal—a TV series that dramatizes where and how it all began.
But this isn't just a story about whether LSD “works." It's an examination of what happens after. When the trip ends and you come back down. And the mountains are still the mountains, the job is still the job, your friends and family are no different, but YOU are.
The Divine Rascal lives in the brutal in-between. Between knowing everything and knowing nothing. Between infinite love and unbearable loneliness. Between breakthrough and breakdown.
A character study wrapped in a psychedelic thriller, it asks the question that continues to consume our culture today: Can a drug really deliver lasting transformation? And if so, what’s the cost of waking up in a world that's more asleep and rigged against us than ever before?
Hollingshead had the right drug in the wrong decade. But he was never wrong about the power—and controversy—it would have for generations to come.
MAIN CHARACTERS:
MICHAEL HOLLINGSHEAD - THE DIVINE RASCAL
Raised by a raging and violent alcoholic in the unforgiving North of England, survival isn't a skill for Michael; it's pure instinct.
Beneath his British charm and razor-sharp wit lies the insatiable need to always be at the center of attention.
Born into poverty and never college educated, Michael is a natural-born shapeshifter—able to persuade intellectuals, seduce aristocrats, and disarm the powerful. A chameleon, he easily moves between the working class, the academic elite, and the ultra-wealthy; belonging everywhere, anchored nowhere.
But in the end, it doesn’t matter if he’s the smartest in the room or how much love and applause you throw his way—the demons of his horrifically abusive childhood are always right behind.
With Michael, you risk losing your mind, your money, or possibly both. He's the guy everyone can’t wait to get to the party and the one they can’t wait to leave. Women, drugs, and booze fill his God-sized hole until they don't and he burns it all to the ground.
But his greatest tragedy is that the enlightenment he effortlessly guides others to find he never finds for himself again. He will spend the rest of his life chasing his first rooftop trip to oblivion.
_edited_edited.jpg)
Before LSD
After LSD
DR TIMOTHY LEARY - THE HIGH PRIEST
The alpha male antithesis to Hollingshead's flamboyant peacock, Tim doesn’t ask for power; he takes it.
He’s the psychology professor that everyone wants to teach their class or take to bed. His rampant womanizing and promiscuity—with both men and women—lead to tragedy when his wife kills herself, leaving him with two children and a guilt he’s desperately trying to outrun.
His first trip, he’s not just transformed; he's obsessed. He wants to scientifically prove that twelve hours of LSD does more than twelve years of psychotherapy ever could.
And he's not just hoping others experience it; he’s staking his soul on it. No longer content with professor or researcher, Leary crowns himself prophet and will do whatever it takes to get the world to follow.
As the “High Priest” of LSD, he preaches to America’s youth to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” At the same time, Nixon targets him as the "Most Dangerous Man in America."
When asked if he regrets ruining a generation of 72 million people, he smirks, "Yeah, but only a hundred thousand thanked me for it."
Before LSD
After LSD
DR RICHARD ALPERT - BABA RAM DASS
A brilliant psychologist and seeker at heart, Dick brings an unrequited love to Leary. Doting and loyal, he's his right-hand man until Hollingshead shows up.
Born into extreme generational wealth, he bankrolls their revolution—from the experiments at Harvard, the expenses at the Mansion, and even Hollingshead himself. He hopes his devotion wins Leary's love.
But it's not easy being a gay man in the 60s. No matter how much he gives, he remains forever on the outside looking in. A longing that becomes his undoing.
The first time he trips, instead of seeing God, he spirals into a full-blown panic attack, and the chains of conformity are not removed.
Disillusioned, he heads for India in search of a lasting transformation that psychedelics deny him. There, under the teachings of the Hindu mystic Maharaj-ji, he is transformed. Reborn. Without a single drug. And he becomes the famous spiritual guru, Baba Ram Dass.
His best-selling book, Be Here Now, cements his legacy. Yet beneath the white robes and prayer beads, he is still unable to get free. He won’t come out as gay until 1997.
Before LSD
After LSD
SOPHIE HOLLINGSHEAD - JAZZ PIANIST & ACTIVIST
A gorgeous, sultry, femme fatale jazz pianist, Sophie commands the smoky clubs of the West Village with every note. But she doesn’t just play the room—she owns it.
A fierce civil rights activist, she fights for her fellow Black musicians, fearlessly standing up against racism and mob violence.
Stuck in an unhappy, joyless marriage to the owner of the Open-Door jazz joint, she catches Michael's eye. Their romantic and forbidden affair—volcanic, raw, sensual—explodes. But like a moth to a flame...
Michael’s writer’s block and his incessant cheating destroy her wild, untamed spirit—the very spirit that made him fall in love with her in the first place.
Now pregnant with Vanessa, she's forced into a life she never wanted: the suffocating role of a 1960s housewife.
When five-year-old Vanessa eats the nine acid-laced sugar cubes and nearly dies, Sophie must make decisions that will irreversibly change the rest of their lives.
Before Michael
After Michael
