The End of the Psychedelic Era
The downfall of the psychedelic movement came from a lack of interpretation and reflection. The younger generation got too entangled in the experience and stopped trying to understand how it could help them understand reality. George Harrison explains in The Beatles Anthology, “And then I started finding that there were people who were just as stupid as they’d been before, or people who hadn’t really got any enlightenment except a lot of colours and lights and Alice in Wonderland type of experience” (179).
By the end of the 1960s the drug experience had become more about fun and rebellion and less about personal transcendence and enlightenment. Pop culture icons and scholars alike began to pull away from hallucinogenic drugs, and mainstream culture followed suit. On October 31st 1966 the Merry Pranksters hosted the ‘Acid Test Graduation,’ during which diplomas were handed out to pioneers of the psychedelic movement and an era of natural transcendence was proposed by Ken Kesey. The Pranksters and others like George Harrison began to reject the commercialization and popularity of LSD and boasted of natural means by which to arrive at the same state of consciousness. With the start of a new decade LSD went from the front page of newspapers to the back of peoples’ minds, and the craze was considered over by the end of 1969, leaving only the psychedelic arts to represent a time of ‘consciousness expansion.’
It is doubtful that America will ever again experience a decade like the 1960s. However, reflection on the era will never end. It was a time when a generation could explore altered states of consciousness openly and without refute. The emergence of hallucinogenic drugs created the ability to search the depths of human consciousness and achieve a greater Understanding of the reality in which one lives life. Aldous Huxley ends The Doors of Perception with a glimpse of what will become of the hallucinogenic drug user:
But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend. (79)Although a new understanding, and ultimately a new reality, can spawn from an experience in psychedelic drugs, the world in which one enters with hallucinogenic drugs is not one which is foreign to us but rather a state that we have become familiar with in our dreams. Although hallucinogenic drug use will not result in the same experience for everyone, and perhaps is not intended for use by all, understanding our minds in terms of different states of awareness and knowing the brain chemistry that persists in those conscious states can fundamentally help us understand how our minds work and how we can use altered states of consciousness to benefit our normal waking lives.
Read more:
Dreaming and the Psychedelic Experience
Psychedelic Literature
What is the Psychedelic Experience?
It's all about the Brain: Hobson's Theory
Drugged up dreamy testimonies
The End of the Psychedelic Era
About the Author and Further Reading