How were psychedelics involved in the consciousness of activism and protest?
Were they a necessary part of the equation? Psychedelics served as one tool – along with Zen meditation, chanting (if the universe is infinite, the paths to connect with the universe are also infinite) – to unite the left and right lobes of the brain, to make an intermingling between the conscious and the subconscious. Acid enhanced the senses. You could see the color of music and you could taste ice cream in your toes. Making love became a sensuous art rather than wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am. The CIA had hoped to use LSD as a means of control, but a whole generation of young people used it instead to help deprogram themselves from mainstream culture, reprogram themselves with a natural, humane value system, and then live their alternative, whether that was to be as a member of a commune or to march in antiwar protests or both. And because of this unpredicted countercultural phenomenon, the CIA’s plan backfired. Beneath the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, there was at the core a spiritual rev
