My friend ‘Kate’ – referenced in Exfold – introduced me to an idea. It came in the form of a borrowed book and a couple of unassuming conversations. Through her, I became more familiar with the band Wookiefoot, whose name I had at least seen before. She made a rambling comment about the band one day- something about the relationship of bands evolving from the Grateful Dead to the present, which made me more curious about the 60’s.

The borrowed book was The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe. It was hard to get into at first because it all still didn’t make much sense and I guessed that the stream of consciousness style had to do with the acid, but it wasn’t making much sense at first.

After finishing Acid Test, and understanding those actual events I began to wonder even more about the connection that reportedly occurs between people who use psychedelics together. It seemed something like a hive mind was occurring in those parties where the Dead and Ken Kesey did the Acid Tests.

Even though I knew the 60’s had been tumultuous, I never really understood what it meant. This was really my first holistic look at what happened in the 60’s. I learned that the ‘counterculture’ certainly wasn’t confined to the 60’s, and it had everything to do with WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, the Beat movement, then the 60’s and hippies, and the age of Aquarius, and so on.

Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, and the Diggers are, in my opinion, the main progenitors of the counterculture. They were the only ones that seemed to actively exhibit and also hyperbolize their new lifestyle. They exhibited that even a high degree of living and questioning beyond the parameters of the normal American life was possible and could generate what seemed to be true happiness. They showed that life could be better than expectations. Or at least that which was uncomfortable or unsustainable in this new lifestyle could be made up by sheer joy and vitality.

Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters are most famous for their cross-country bus trip following the release of Kesey’s first major written work, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest . Their trip was notable because they made very loud and boisterous passes through American cities, purposefully generating a spectacle, high on acid the entire time. Unknowingly advertising a new way to live.

There were a lot of people who played big parts in the counterculture at the time. On the east coast was Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Tim Leary, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), and Neal Cassady.

Ken Kesey, the Pranksters, and the Grateful Dead were generally centered around the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in the Bay Area, and up in La Honda, north of the bay.

Kesey ran to Mexico in 1965 for a marijuana charge, but when he was caught when he came back to the U.S. He cleverly devised a public statement that denounced the use of LSD as per the feds’ request, and claimed that people need to graduate from the acid. What was implied, but not said, is that one must take acid to graduate from acid, for which he had planned the Acid Tests, which proceeded without Kesey, mostly.

Kesey had done all kinds of things with LSD, and distributed it freely (which was probably not the wisest thing to do at the time) before it was illegal. He was popular and drew a lot of attention back then because he funded the parties, Acid Tests, and bus trip all himself. His own generosity with his finances to fund his ‘tests’ and experiments and parties is, I think, the single greatest factor that propagated LSD and a new way of living.

Ken Kesey was interesting. He was really on to something, but the resolve of the the government – especially when Nixon came around – was set in and he realized that his cause was lost. Weed had already been illegal in the U.S. for some time, and in 1969, I think, LSD was made illegal as well. And the U.S. wasn’t messing around. But Neal Cassady was really interesting; he didn’t make sense to me. He was a major part of Jack Kerouac’s novel, On the Road . Neal and Allen Ginsberg had been lovers for a time. So when he showed up at Kesey’s place in 1964, he volunteered to be the bus driver for the road trip Kesey had been planning.

Neal drove the entire way to New York on LSD and/or speed while Kesey and the Pranksters went on a massive acid trip – all without a single incident. When they got pulled over, they claimed to be working artists – and it usually looked like it with their wild clothing, and bizarre behavior – which was convincing enough for the police, especially when the cameras came out.

It seems like Neal Cassady was some divinely placed self-destructive prophet that ushered the great thinkers ‘together’ to create the spark for the counterculture. It’s sad, yet beautiful and innocent. He lived fast and hard and only for himself. It may have made him a hard person to love, but it brings me peace knowing the spark for the counterculture came from his own selfish wants from the world around him. Because really, that is the kernel embedded deep within the counterculture: think for yourself, but take care of each other.

I think Leary had too much faith in LSD as a holy grail, and his advice to drop out gave cause to young Americans to try LSD indiscriminately. Psychedelic drugs are not a holy grail, though we do know that psychedelics have very effective applications on people with trauma.

Through Kate, I learned the practical definitions and uses of the common psychedelics that were around in the 60’s. I watched how she reacted to the various drugs she was taking and through my own reading on the physiological effects and descriptions of trips I formulated my own assessment of their relative safety.

Kate was Neal Cassady for me. She was a force of pure neurological chemical input. Not just drugs, but whatever made her happy. She was my reminder that I can literally do anything I want and make it work – that lifestyle is of your own choosing, and the goal is much bigger and better than we have been trained to believe. It’s about a change in behavior.

And the revolution in the 60’s was a powerful one, but it is stumbling. I don’t think that revolution quite made it to the full understanding that drugs aren’t the solution, policy change and political action aren’t the solution (but it’s good), but changing personal behaviors and interactions are what change the world.

The drugs and the music may have helped the counterculture figure out how to love one another and be nice to each other, but it was not drugs that would sustain that revolution – it can be done in a completely clear state of mind.

Kesey, the Pranksters, and other outliers of that group all seemed to report having a sort of extrasensory perception or very intense and clear non-verbal communication. People often report seeing vibrations and highly intricate geometrical patterns on psychedelics, and I wondered why. I wanted to know ‘where’ people went. If it was all just happening in our brains, what were our brains doing? If the phrase ‘expand your mind’ has ever meant anything, it could surely be that sensation that comes with weed use or psychedelic experience. So where does our mind expand to?

I think I have an answer to that.