It seemed a foregone conclusion. Beal — with an ancestor who signed the Declaration of Independence, Beal, a founding member of the Youth International Party (Yippies) along with the legendary Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, Beal, who’d been involved in every major social justice movement since the early 1960s — was going to be spending some time in the Big House. His sentence was a “half and half,” where he’d have to serve the first 2.5 years and be paroled for the second half.

But Dana’s life has never been, and probably never will be, a boring one, from the 1960s to being in his 60s. In 1967 he was charged with trying to sell acid to an undercover cop; he went on the run but eventually ended up serving a year on that rap. In 1972 he founded, then edited, the Yipster Times (later to become Overthrow) which published until 1979. His efforts to promote the use of ibogaine to cure addiction to heroin, cocaine and alcohol through the organization Cures Not Wars have resulted in thousands of people being able to walk away from hard drugs.