"Turn on, tune in, drop out."
That quote by counterculture icon Timothy Leary became the mantra of the 1960s hippie movement. Living out that idea usually involved psychedelics, popular hallucinogenic drugs of the era. In recent decades, as the sun has set on the summer of love, the popularity of hallucinogens has waned in favor or cocaine, meth and prescription painkillers.
However hallucinogens may be making a comeback. Acid, LSD, mushrooms – these retro drugs are cropping up again in pop culture. The new Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson talks about Jobs’ experimentation with LSD, an experience the computer wizard called “profound” and “one of the most important things in my life.”
TV characters are also showing a certain nostalgia for LSD. In the most recent season of Mad Men, ad man Roger Sterling and his young wife go to a psychotherapist's apartment and take LSD during one episode. During his trip Sterling has several hallucinations and emerges from the experience with the feeling that his marriage is over.
In a more futuristic take the sci-fi series Fringe shows characters taking LSD as a way to enter the mind of Olivia, played by Anna Torv, and save her from a foreign consciousness, played by sci-fi vet Leonard Nimoy. Animation adds to the episode’s “trippy” take on hallucinogens.
There are no clear statistics that show these pop culture references to LSD are translating into a new generation tripping out, but, if it is true that there is no such thing as bad publicity, it may only be a matter of time.
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