Nina Graboi

Born Jewish in Vienna, Austria in 1918, Graboi fled the Nazis and spent three months in a detention camp in North Africa.She and her husband came to America as refugees in 1941, and they later had two children. Dissatisfied with her life in Long Island as a society hostess, in the 1950s Graboi plunged into the study of esoteric subjects and became an avid practitioner of meditation. She went to a seminar given by a Tibetan teacher, and joined a weekly spiritual group. As she learned about comparative religions, she became more interested in Buddhism and Hinduism. Her private studies continued through the early 1960s.During this time period, she also ran a successful theater group.

After learning about Walter Pahnke’s 1962 “Good Friday Experiment,” in which theology students were given psilocybin as part of psychedelic research under the supervision of Leary and Alpert, Graboi longed to experience what the divinity students had experienced. She realized there was more to these drugs than the media had let people know, and it was the first time she had heard of an experiment with exceptional states of consciousness.

Graboi’s breakthrough came in 1965 at age 47 at Millbrook, Timothy Leary’s communal estate in upstate New York, after she left her husband.Graboi frequently spent time at Millbrook with a group gathered around Leary to study the mind-expanding effects of LSD.Her first trip there was at the Meditation House. She and Leary developed a close friendship in 1966 after Graboi gave him her paper Evolution in Search of a New Breed of Man

Graboi then became involved with the Bay Area counterculture. While visiting Alan Watts on his Sausalito houseboat in 1966, during a week long LSD conference in San Francisco, she and Watts were taken to a party in Marin by Paul Lee. Lee - one of the founding editors of the Psychedelic Review along with Leary - spoke about the party at the conference in a talk titled “Psychedelic Style.” The Grateful Dead had thrown the party, with Owsley Stanley handing out his acid to anyone who wanted it. Graboi had taken LSD there in the company of Watts.

Later that year, in October 1966, LSD use became illegal. Leary announced the Millbrook community had incorporated as a religious group named The League for Spiritual Discovery.The League for Spiritual Discovery was incorporated by Leary as a religious organization in New York State.Although the Millbrook group viewed psychedelics as a primary key to the mystical experience, they continued to search for non-drug ways to reach it.

Graboi co-founded the League for Spiritual Discovery Center in Manhattan with Leary in 1966, and Leary gave free weekly talks at the center.The nonprofit organization, influenced by Leary’s writings, operated to help and educate people engaged in exploring the potential of psychedelic consciousness.In 1967 Graboi became director of the New York City center after Leary asked Graboi to head it. Graboi accepted the position as director to disseminate information about the use and misuse of psychedelics, in order to minimize their ill effects.

In 1968 LSD was added to the list of Schedule 1 substances, which made it illegal to possess, manufacture, or use for any purpose.

In 1969 Graboi moved to Woodstock, a few months before the Woodstock festival, and opened a boutique where she sold her crafts. She founded the Woodstock Transformation Center, and taught New Age-related classes.

Graboi moved to Santa Cruz, California in 1979, where she worked for UC Santa Cruz mathematics professor Ralph Abraham. She also gave talks in Santa Cruz and at conferences on the relationship between the psychedelic experience and the spiritual quest.She wrote her autobiography, One Foot in the Future, in 1991. Terence McKenna described it as "an extraordinary tale of humor and hope.” Graboi died at age 81 from lung cancer.

Graboi wrote, “We must learn to treasure the unity in our diversity, or we are lost. But it's best to start with Buddhism-the only religion that never caused blood to be shed. Ultimately, I hope, all religious dogma will be replaced by direct, personal experience…The main benefit I derived from the psychedelics is that they taught me that ‘I’ am not my body but an evolving consciousness, clothed temporarily in a body.”