"He really understood my generation. He called us "free agents in the Age of Information." What I learned from Tim didn't have anything to do with drugs, but it had everything to do with getting high. His die-hard fascination with the human brain was not all about altering it, but about using it to its fullest. And he showed us that that process-that journey-was our most important one. However we did it, as long as we did it. "You are the owner and operator of your brain," he reminded us. Tim was a huge influence on me-not just with his revolutionary ideas about human potential, but as someone who read me stories, encouraged me, took me to baseball games-you know, godfather stuff. He was the first person outside my family-who you never tend to believe while growing up-to make me believe I could do anything. He had an incredible way of making you feel special and completely supported. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a letter to his daughter in which he said that he hoped his life had achieved some sort of "epic grandeur." Tim's life wasn't "some sort of" epic grandeur. It was flat-out epic grandeur. It's easy sometimes to get lost in all the drug stuff that Tim's famous for all the "Turn on, tune in, drop out" stuff, especially in a society that loves a sound bite. But it wasn't Tim's only legacy. It was his vitality, enthusiasm, curiosity, humor, and humanity that made Tim great and those are the real ingredients of a mad scientist."