The Drug Years

While surfing the other week I came across the VH1 documentary series on The Drug Years. It was well done and tried to hit the high most important points. As I was watching I made some notes

When you dropped acid in the 60s you were expected to have a religious experience. In the 70s you were just looking to get messed up. In 60s- the word was idealism. There was this self-absorbed yet naive hopefulness to the drug culture that was growing among young people. One often was looking to go "beyond oneself."

Yes, in spite of the triple deaths of Joplin, Hendrix, and Morrison at the young age of 27 people kept believing that maybe things were still going to be okay. Janis, Jimi, and Jim were caught up in the celebrity mode and that's what killed them- it wasn't really the drugs. Then again, Woodstock was followed by Altamont.

But what no one really knew or understood in this flower-power culture was that mood-altering chemicals are more than just a good time. They are more than just mind-expanding. They are more than going beyond oneself into a new consciousness. The new consciousness is often self-destructive.

It is called addiction.

That is the completely unpredictable nature of mood-altering chemicals. That is the nature of the substances as they work on the human brain. It is not something we can just say, "Oh, I won't let that happen to me. I'm in control. It won't do that to me." We don't know- and we don't have that particular choice. It works on chemical, cellular, and even perhaps molecular levels of the body and brain. It IS beyond our control. We DON'T have a choice after a certain point.

In other words, to me today, as a survivor of those years, as a recovering person myself, and as an alcohol and drug counselor, it is all quite clear. (Ain't hindsight and expanded education great?) People got addicted and culture was transformed in very scary ways. As they said on the documentary, the bill was coming due. It all switched from simple escape or recreation to numbing, an anesthetic. Escape became profound and even fatal.

We didn't know that at the time. We were immortal. We were rebelling. We were to be different from our parents and their generation. Well, we were and we weren't. We just changed the names and ways we did things to make us feel like it was ours. In the end, well, in the end we were as naive and blind as our parents thought we were.

Has anything changed? Aren't we still in The Drug Years? Unfortunately the Baby Boomer Drug Legacy continues. No, not for mind expanding but for getting messed up. Not for bringing peace or improving the world. (It's a Baby Boomer living in the White House.) Alcohol use is as significant as ever. Drug use goes up and down (and currently seems to be on a slight increase again in some places.)

Anyway, it was interesting to watch the series. It brought back a lot of memories- and some embarrassment at how naive we really were. It gave me some insights into where things are today (in both conservative and liberal camps, by the way) and why passions can still be so flammable.

[By the way- For you youngsters out there, there was some truly great music produced in those "psychedelic" days. None was better than Jefferson Airplane. I just found a big bunch of their videos on YouTube. Go to this one- a jam from the Dick Cavett show- and surf from there. Music! Aahhh.]