NOTABLE DEATHS IN THE 1960s DUE TO DRUGS: Believe it or not Janis Joplin (heroin overdose) and Jimi Hendrix (asphyxiation on vomit) didn’t die in the 60s but in the early 70s. And harmful use leads to overdoses and deaths. Other more harmful drugs followed: cocaine, heroin, amphetamines and barbiturates, and the idea of using mind-expanding drugs to gain insight into the world gave way to plain recreational, often harmful use. People who were involved with drug use in the 60’s also began looking to religious ceremonies of Native Americans where peyote and mescaline were used, to references of marijuana use for spiritual and medicinal purposes in ancient texts, and to books like Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, where Huxley writes of his experimentation with mescaline in Mexico. By the mid-sixties, seemingly overnight, marijuana and LSD use was common across the country, especially among the young. LSD gained widespread recognition as a result of the very public exploits of so-called acid gurus, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey. During the 1960s “beat” ideas and attitudes were absorbed by other cultural movements, and those who practiced something akin to the “beat” lifestyle were called “hippies.”)Īnd, LSD, which was virtually unknown to American society in the early sixties and was still legal until 1966. Among those associated with the movement were the novelists Jack Kerouac and Chandler Brossard, numerous poets (e.g., Kenneth Rexroth, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gregory Corso), and others, many of whom worked in and around San Francisco. In literature they adopted rhythms of simple American speech and of bop and progressive jazz. The beats sought immediate expression in multiple, intense experiences and beatific illumination like that of some Eastern religions such as Zen Buddhism. Essentially anarchic, members of the beat generation rejected traditional social and artistic forms. (Beat generation, is a term applied to certain American artists and writers who were popular during the 1950s. Today, we are going to talk about the history of drug abuse and one of the biggest changes in the 60’s which was the widespread use of illicit drugs, primarily hallucinogens such as marijuana and LSD.īefore this time, drugs, specifically marijuana was primarily used by jazz musicians and hip characters in the inner cities. An entire book could be written on the changes that happened in the 60’s and many books have been written.

The 60’s were characterized by change not just in civil rights and the protests against Vietnam but also in music and the use of illicit drugs. At least for those who were involved with the counterculture, beat generation and were “hippies”. I don’t want to generalize this decade as a decade of sex, drugs, and rock &roll, but that is probably an accurate description of it. “But I would not feel so all alone, everybody must get stoned.” – Bob Dylan (Rainy Day Women #12 & 35)

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