Think of the word “psychedelic” and what is apt to come to mind? Most likely you conjure images of long-haired, bell bottomed, barefooted hippies, of course some tie-dye thrown in for good effect. Music that ran the gamut from acid rock, to folk songs, to more classic and iconic rock-n-roll. And interwoven through all of it: drugs. LSD to weed, the flower children comprising a generation living in ostensible defiance were open to anything. In fact, the sixties in many ways started to normalize some of these mind-altering substances—particularly marijuana.
Especially in the latter half of the decade, pot became not merely a recreational drug, but it stood for a way of life, a movement toward freedom from authority, freedom from heavily regimented obsolete ways of thinking, freedom from the stifling confines that a mind trained by polite society sometimes imposed.
Timothy Leary encouraged those comprising this pot smoking counterculture to “turn on, tune in and drop out.” And...
