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Don Lattin's 'Distilled Spirits'

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Author Don Lattin poses for a portrait. (Photo courtesy Deanne Fitzmaurice)

Veteran journalist Don Lattin writes in his new memoir that he spent years “worshiping at the altar of drugs and alcohol” — not the type of devotion you might expect from a religion writer. The book “Distilled Spirits” intertwines Lattin’s own story with biographical sketches of three others who mixed spiritual seeking with mind-altering substances: “Brave New World” author Aldous Huxley, Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson, and philosopher Gerald Heard. Lattin joins us in the studio.

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Find out more about Don Lattin and his book "The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age in America" at his website.

Guests:

Don Lattin, author, freelance journalist and former religion writer for the San Francisco Chronicle; and writer of his latest book "Distilled Spirits: Getting High, then Sober, with a Famous Writer, a Forgotten Philosopher and a Hopeless Drunk"

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