Barry Beyerstein: We Have Lost One of the Best

(reprinted from The Trebach Report)

When I say one of the best, I mean that in every sense of those words. Barry, who just died at the young age of 60, was a superb scholar, teacher, social activist, and human being. He was wise, compassionate, and kind to everyone with whom he came in contact. I cannot remember in all of the years I knew him -- almost half of his life -- any action on his part that was not gentle and caring and very, very wise.

My condolences to his wife, Susie, and his children, daughter Lindsay and son Loren. Thanks to Ethan Nadelmann and Kevin Zeese for telling me about this sad but important news.

Here are my reflections, somewhat meandering but that is how I am feeling this morning -- that and traumatized and a bit pissed at the sometimes cruel vagaries of fate.

It has been easy to follow Lindsay's progress because she has become one of the new breed of internet experts or bloggers, affiliated with, I believe, Google. Why do I remember those years ago, when a much younger Lindsay intrigued a visiting scholar from France because the French she learned in school and in which she was fluent -- was, well, classical and a modern French person rarely heard it anymore? Barry and Susie chortled as they told me that story. I am sure I do not have it exactly correct and hope I will be straightened out soon.

I first met him and his wife, Susie, when they attended one of my comparative drug policy seminars in London at Imperial College. This must have been in the early 80s or late 70s. My memory is not the best but I recall quite well that Bruce Alexander was also at the seminar. At any rate, I can recall that we had great Canadian professionals in attendance and that we all stayed in student housing at Imperial in the heart of London, or close to the heart. It was a fine time and we kept in contact ever since. By then I am sure that I had completed my first monograph on drug policy, The Heroin Solution. It covered the comparative history of drug control in the US and the UK -- and of course the history of heroin. Soon I went to work on the next one, which dealt with the then-current situation in the US, with a bit of comparative info on Canada and also of course on Britain. I wanted to title it The War on Us. The frontispiece quote would be "We have met the Enemy and it is Us." I am sure Barry liked that idea. My publisher convinced me to title it The Great Drug War. Even today, I do not particularly like that title. The biggest point here is that I could count on Barry and also Bruce to react to every twist in my research and to read all of the manuscript. What dedication and what enormous help! I quoted Barry extensively in an important footnote in that book.

Barry and Bruce were quite helpful as I later went about the process of setting up the Drug Policy Foundation, with the constant close help of Kevin and my wife, Marjy. Both Barry and Bruce were on the Advisory Board and provided wonderful guidance.

My family considered Barry and Susie's family an extension of ours, even though we did not keep constantly in touch. When our middle son, Paul, married Joanne Hughes in Seattle, Barry and Susie were in attendance.

Barry's interests went far beyond drug policy and in more recent years he was heavily involved in the skeptical inquiry/paranormal arena. This is a field beyond my ken and I cannot talk sensibly about it. However, I will attach links to other comments on him and I plan to write more about him in the near future. I will also issue corrections when anyone sends in information contradicting my chancy memory.

In closing this rambling memoir I recall a note Steve Jobs just sent out to the effect that we are all going to die and while we are here we damned well better live our lives so that we do that which is closest to our hearts and our souls and to our personal sense of ethics. All that -- and I would say without fear. Of life or of death. I would also say that Barry did just that, all of it.

Arnold Trebach