All is One...
This research paper is fairly important to me, it
describes the reality we live in, and show how we humans believe almost any lie
we come up with in our heads. I
want to talk about the most obvious yet most dangerous thing society has to
offer, drugs. The reason why I
want to talk about drugs is too simply to see if we can learn from our
mistakes. We have grown accustomed
to drugs being part of society that we have forgotten about how it slowly
destroys us from the inside out, and this isn’t propaganda against drugs
either. I just want to demonstrate
what happens when you abuse it, and you use it for pleasure.
I guess you can consider this a fairytale, but with a terrifying ending
(thats if you read this with an open mind)…
It all started with the boring 50’s, with everybody wearing plain white
T-shirts, same style and haircuts, and girls getting kicked out of school for
wearing pants. That was the
suburbs, or better known as“squares-vile” with their boring traditions. At the bottom of it all were the beat
necks, jazz scene and folk music.
This was the breakthrough of it all, and the one who really stuck out
were Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, beat neck writers (stoners and peyote heads)
who tried to break beyond that Eisenhower era. They tried to live and describe just
how the jazz musicians played there music. It was this sense of freedom, a freedom
of ideas and speech, becoming original and
unique.
Many jazz musicians were reefers as well; they would get high and play,
making it a doorway to the world of marijuana. This influenced the audience just as
much as the beat neck writers. It
wasn’t until folk music came around when marijuana started to be distributed
more to the audience. People
became interested, it was something new, and you can pretty much say that
society spontaneously exploded into new cultural ideas.
It was just a very small community of young people, who were rebelling,
just like any other youngster would.
By 1960, you have very popular bands smoking weed, and of course, band
were in a way influential. But let
alone the bands, this was the year were that “breakthrough” of the boring 50’s
really started to take motion.
There was the free speech movement in 64; it was students insisting on
freedom of on-campus political activities, and academic freedom.
Then you have Johnson getting involved in Vietnam the following year,
which made the youth who were eligible for the draft, get an apocalyptic
fear. That same year Malcom X is
assassinated, and the riots in Watts L.A. take place, bringing the whole place
up in flames. Both Malcom and the
riots were important, hence were part of the black community, which also was in
motion, creating chaos in the United
States.
Pot had a lot to do with this, it was the thing that kept everybody
connected, and was, in a way, a political stance against all that was going on
around them. Many people would say
that Marijuana was a gateway drug for heroine at the time, but what it really
lead to was LSD, which quickly caught on the rebellious
youth.
LSD at the time was being researched for medicinal purposes; Albert
Hofmann (the creator of the substance in 1938) was looking for a treatment on
migraines. He figured that this
was way more important than just a medicine. He decided to dose himself and take a
bike ride through the Swiss countryside for the first acid trip in history. Scientist saw two sides of the
substance, one, they used it for treatment in mental hospitals and
alcoholism. The other side was to
simulate creativity, and scientist took it to heart.
They would take low doses of it and do interactual problems.
Francis Crick was one of those scientist, and it’s believed that when he
made the most important discovery of the 20th century of the double helix, he was
dosed a small portion of LSD.
Timothy Leary was a psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of
psychedelic drugs. During the time when LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments
at Harvard
University under the Harvard Psilocybin
Project, resulting in the Concord Prison
Experiment and the Marsh Chapel
Experiment. Both studies produced useful data, but
Leary and his associate Richard Alpert were fired from the
university. He made revolution
with these drugs, and then teachers and students start tacking these drugs,
causing a massive controversy.
Leary made many famous quotes, such as “Turn on, tune in, drop out” which
pretty much caused the expansion of the
mind.
Ken Kese was also a big part of this, he was an important figure in the
counter-culture than was caching on quick. He was the author of many books, and the
book One Flew over the Cuckoo's
Nest really made an impact.
He went with Merry
Pranksters and got a bus that they called further, and left to New York
for his requested presence. On
their bus ride, when all of them would be stoned, they would refer to it as
Group Mind, so when they got back home, they took this concept and tried
to apply it to society. He took it
to heart, so he decided to do the“Acid test” which was the first mass multimedia
experience. These acid test were
parties that influenced people into tacking the drug and surviving the sometimes
horrors. Kesey believed that
personal fears should be confronted with hallucinogenic
drugs. He often pushed the limits,
since most of the time these parties would have physiological disasters, but he
eventually managed to push it to the public in events such as Longshoreman's
Hall, Muir Beach, or musical events at Bill Graham's Fillmore
West.
It was till the Haight and Ashbury era in 65, for the counter culture
aspect really grew. Slowly people
started coming into the Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco to set up
psychedelic shops. All of this was growing, and rapidly,
you have a group of people called the diggers, who were activists encouraging
people to live the hippiesm, they would supply you with second hand clothes, and
free food. All of this was the
results of the beat necks moving into the area. Shrouded in
a mystique of anonymity, the Diggers took their name from the original English
Diggers (1649-50) who had promulgated a vision of society free from private
property, and all forms of buying and selling. The Diggers combined street
theater, anarchy-direct action, and art happenings in their social agenda of
creating a Free City.
Owsley Stanley came into the scene, and became a very important and
well-known figure. He was the
first big distributor of LSD, and probably the only one who knew how to make it.
He was the one who shaped
the hippie scene in San Francisco by making the Haight and Ashbury area the acid
capital of the world. He
distributed a mass quantity between 1965 & 1967, producing more than 1.25
million doses of LSD. He was
always very discrete of this; he wanted to keep the matter quiet for the obvious
reason of police.
It smart for Owsley to keep it discrete, in October of 1966 the
government decided to make LSD illegal.
But this didn’t stop the counter-culture; instead the first major
psychedelic took place. It was the
first Human Be-In, and more than 30,000 people showed up.
The governments idea of making LSD illegal was pretty much throwing
gasoline into the fire. This
became a big deal, because now you have bands basing their music off this drug,
which all it was were acid heads talking to acid heads.
Being the “new”thing for the youth, it spread worldwide, and soon after,
they get the validation from the London scene. Bands start coming in and joining this
nationwide cultural change, it just wasn’t there imagination anymore, it was
becoming real.
In 1967, John Phillips decided to have Monterey California held the first
annual pop festival, which held the international platform for musicians. At this festival, many bands became
idols, there was The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, and the list goes on
and on. People at this moment start
looking up to the bands, and the record companies catch that quickly. After this festival you start seeing
these bands all over the place, on T.V. the radio cloths and such.
Now that this music is going main stream, more youth start to tag along
to the counter culture, and everybody is doing drugs.
To the traditional American, it looks as if it was the end of
civilization, so of course there bound to do something about
it.
1967 was probably the most significant year, it was the year that the
counter culture really was doing what it had intended to do. This year held the
summer of love, and the psychedelic scene more than ever.
This ends up going nationwide, there access to the media for youth like
never before, you listen to the radio, and its nothing but encouragement to do
drugs. The most important message
of them all though, was the one where they told you to go San Francisco. All the attention was focused on Haight
and Ashbury. Everybody loved to be
there, some describe it as a community where you will be embraced and loved.
News reporters flooded the scene and once you know it, it explodes, and all of
this becomes the center of attention.
After all of this was dying, you start seeing the youth start entering in
depression, and most stay away from the pressure of the
establishment.
It doesn’t take long until you start seeing the appearance of hard drugs
like speed and heroine. This was a
big downfall for the counter culture, everybody started to lock themselves
indoors, nobody who was on speed wanted to be overwhelmed with the huge crowd of
people. All the animals that would
run around wouldn’t be seen anymore, from all the speed freaks catching them and
eating them, that’s how bad it was.
So the traditional Americans use this to attack the counter culture,
mostly the conservatives and elders.
They would use what was going on to scare votes, which was making the
counter culture look godless and communistic. This also fires the first shot to the
cultural war, which until today is being
fought.
The police start enforcing the law with the activist, they would get
tipped off and go knock on doors to make arrest. More and more youth start to flood the
courthouses but they see no effect, so they decide to go for their leaders. Who where their leaders? You got keasy,
Leary and Ginsburg. After Leary
was arrested and charged for Marijuana, he was vulnerable.
He feels as if all the propaganda was attacking him, so he started to
make his own propaganda. It
consisted of telling kids to drop out of school, not listening to their elders,
it was a mess.
Bands start getting arrested on drug charges as well; the traditional
people attacked the counter culture hard.
Soon the entire drug related subjects are banded from television and
radio. The counter culture soon
joins the band wagon, and they make the bands more than just idols, but their
leaders. The youth was influenced
by these bands, and where ever the band went, so did the youth.
This became a problem with the authorities; a lot of the activity in the
counter culture was illegal. At
this point you start seeing more police at the festivals and shows they
have.
The media starts making shows to exploit the counter culture.
The most popular show was Dragnet; they would rip shows directly from the
newspaper headlines.Dragnet is a radio and television crime drama about the cases of a dedicated Los
Angeles police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, and his partners. The show takes its
name from an actual police term, a "dragnet", meaning a system of coordinated measures for apprehending criminals
or suspects. The show had been on
and off; it was also on the radio. It
was a very dis-informal show though; the episodes would be so stilted and
self-righteous. People would
actually find these shows funny, and would continue getting
high.
This same year the war in Vietnam was getting bit, and so did the
anti-war movement. The war
escaladed and got bigger and bloodier as well, there was 5,000 service men
coming back every month in body bags.
It began taking this dire sense of an apocalyption for the youth, so the
anti-war movement just flourished.
Contention of the war emerged from another festival of the human
being. This fed the psychedelic
activist to mobilize, and all the protest were against the
war.
Shortly after, there cam this new anit-war movement called the
Mobilization, also known as The
Mobe. The mobilization act was
aiming for the pentagon, which to them was a symbol of evil.
They would gather around the pentagon daily in protest, and they would
gather as many people as they could.
All the people present would join hands and with chanting and
supernatural powers they would levitate the pentagon and perform an
exorcism. The Mobe also gave birth
to flower power.
Flower power began at the steps of the pentagon; it depicted a utopian
world, full of peace.
Flower power was a slogan used by the American counterculture
movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s
as a symbol of passive
resistance and non-violence ideology.
It is rooted in the opposition movement to the
Vietnam War.
Hippies embraced the symbolism by dressing in
clothing with embroidered flowers and vibrant colors, wearing flowers in their
hair, and distributing flowers to the public, becoming known as flower children. This is where the famous pictures of
the youth putting flowers in the gun barrels took place. Though this didn’t really mean anything
to the government, the draft
continued.
1968 marked the beginning of the end; they had a democratic convention
where they decided that the police should step it up.
Police start attacking demonstrators with more violence, and it was a
perfect example of what was going wrong.
Even though this pretty much took down the counter, the fashion was able
to stick. Corporations start using
the same psychedelic propaganda for their commercials, and the cloths are
similar to what the hippies would wear.
This can be seen even out on the streets, with all the advertisement on
the billboards, not to mention the television.
Another part was the movies that started to come out, they would reflect
the drug culture, and praise it in a way.
A very popular movie was easy rider, it was made with very little budget,
but was able to make millions with the simple fact that drugs were
involved. It was also a significant
movie because it was very humble in a lot of ways. What made it most humble was
the fact that the actors admit the end of the counter culture, and how they lost
the battle against the establishment.
This began to mark the end of the counter culture in general.
This was only the beginning though, there were more events that ensueded
that would demolish the counter
culture.
By 1969, the new group of kids tried to follow this idealism, and in a
way imitate what was going on in the early 60’s. The biggest impact these kids made was
Woodstock. The festival was
intended be like the Human Be-In, but the difference was that there were more
than 1.5 million people. This
festival was intended to show that this way of life worked, and so far, they
were doing a good job of it. As a
response to this, there was another festival at Altamont.
This Greatfull dead suggested to have the Hells Angeles as security, and
have no outside influence allowed hence being the establishment.
This was a wreck; there were a lot of alcohol and heavy drugs. The Hells Angeles being security were
doing drugs, drinking and fighting.
There were reports of security stabbing somebody in the crowd, supposedly
they had pulled out a gun and pointed it at the stage.
This festival brought death to the innocence of the 60’s.
This showed a major sense of failure, which proved it was devastating for
the youth, and there demonstration that it could be
done.
The dark side that finally came out of the counter culture was when
Charlie Manson did the murders.Charles Milles Manson, who led what became known as the Manson Family, was also part of this
counter culture. He was convicted of the murders through the joint-responsibility rule,
which makes each member of a conspiracy guilty of crimes his fellow conspirators
commit in furtherance of the conspiracy's object.
So pretty much they knew he basically brained washed his followers into
killing people. Manson would say
that the bands would speak to him threw music and send him messages that he
would interpret. Manson believed
in what he called "Helter Skelter," a term
he took from the song of the same
name by The Beatles. Manson
believed Helter Skelter to be an impending apocalyptic
race war, which he described in his own version
of the lyrics to the Beatles' song.
Manson's death sentence was
automatically commuted to life imprisonment when a
1972 decision by the Supreme Court of
California temporarily eliminated the state's
death penalty.
California's eventual reinstatement of capital punishment did not affect Manson,
who is currently incarcerated at Corcoran State Prison.
All these events lead up to the end of the 60’s, and then you have the
deaths of important band members, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison,
all at the young age of 27. Not
only are these famous idols dying, so are the people who are tacking these
drugs, there is an uncontrollable abuse.
All these last festivals were just a failure trying to revive the counter
cultures downfall, especially with the deaths of these celebrities from
drugs. Even though the counter
culture had a terrible end, it was able to make and overall impact.
Everything that had happened in this decade was so significant, just
because it was so complex and yet alone profound.
This decade shaped and made a massive commercial drug culture that to
this very day still exist.
Like I said, the decade of the 60’s made a huge impact, and there was a
major leakage into the 70’s. There
was an enormous difference, in the 60’s, it was all about spirituality, and in
the 70’s it was all about abusing it.
Nobody cared or even mentioned, yet alone thought of idealism, and the
consequences were, people started to get addicted.
This was the time where there was a high price for wisdom, and this is
because everybody was focused on getting as high as they could.
There was no stage of enlightenment, there was only an escape, and drugs
were now used as anesthesia. Most
the stoners had their own culture, they would go to light shows and they even
got their own comedians. Another
big thing was that all of the soldiers in Vietnam were using drugs as well, and
for them, it was super easy access.
In the spring of 1970 you start hearing about people overdosing in
Vietnam, there were two people overdosing a month.
By fall of that same year, you start hearing of two overdosing a
day. Overseas, one in four became
addicted to heroin, and it was only to not feel the pain of the war.
Heroine was smuggled back to the US mainly in body bags, and the main
ones to do it was the CIA. The CIA
was probably the most responsible in bringing back the heroin.
There excuse was that they were paying back the warlord for helping them
out turning in the service men who were buying there drugs; it was actually a
dumber idea. Now back at home,
you got more heavy drugs on the streets, and it was direct correlation from
heroin and crime. Obviously, this
got the presidents attention, so Nixon decides to do something about this as
well.
He constituted the DEA in 1973 which was designed to take down any drug
usage or distribution around the country.
What Nixon really intended to do was turn back the tide of mass popular
drug use. Even though all this
anti-drug movement was going on, there was massive activity in the drug
world. At this time there is way
more marijuana available than ever before. It wasn’t like in the 60’s were pot
came from a certain place, marijuana came from everywhere now.
There was not pounds anymore coming in, there were tons, by planes,
ships, speed, boats, anything. Richard Stratton was one of the first
ones to start smuggling marijuana from other countries.
For over 10 years he had been
running an international drug smuggling operation, bringing tons of marijuana
and hashish into the United States and arranging for its distribution. He was part of the so called hippie
mafia, but then in 1982 he was convicted of operating a Continuing Criminal
Enterprise under the kingpin statute of New York State.
He then became an author about his experience on drug dealing. Allen long decided he wanted to make a
movie out of these events, so he joins up with some smugglers to film it, but
then he gets caught up. He began
to start smuggling himself, and him alone with his partners smuggle in more than
972,000 pounds of marijuana. And
this was just one guy, while there were plenty more out
there.
The hippie mafia controlled most of the marijuana in the nation, and they
figured it was the quality, not the quantity. So this sent all of the smugglers out
for better pot, and that’ how the High Times magazine was born.
It was intentionally made to distribute pot, and to influence marijuana
on the society. This was the
fastest growing magazine of its time, and it marked the golden age for
marijuana. By the late 70’s
cockaine comes to scene and people start to get greedy. This is where the entire
disco happened, since both cocaine and disco made perfect “harmony”.
Cocaine got so big everybody would be doing it, school teachers, lawyers,
journalist and business men, even High times went on a three year binge on
it.
Then you get the production of all these harder
drugs like freebase and crack (which is the equivalent to freebase) for the rich
and poor. Crack was the drug that
brought in a lot of gang violence, everybody would distribute, and then you
would have turf wars. Since crack
was sold to almost anybody in the ghetto, the dealers would have enough money to
keep buying the drug, but also buy weapons. Soon even the rappers themselves start
going against this, because this is how bad it got, the city of Los Angeles was
basically turning into a battlefield, with gang members and
police.
At the same time all this is happening, you have the Regan’s war on
drugs, which turned out to be the most affective administration America has had
with dealing with drugs. This, in
a way, provoked violence in Miami, being the South America on American soil; it
was a financial drug center in the United States.
The “cocaine cowboys”really started to market cocaine down there in
significant quantities. It breed a
culture of flash, excess, extravagance, but it also breed a culture with
violence. The initial idea of
making Scarface was to show exactly what was going on, even though it was a bit
exaggerated, that was pretty much what had
happened.
Personally I feel I learned a lot from this research I did, I have seen a
few things before about all this, and it caught my attention.
It was only because I was doing drugs myself back then, but know that I
am sober, I can think things through better. To me this paper shows one person’s
life, even though millions were involved threw out the decades, it’s pretty much
just one person. In my experience I
can see that happening to me, at first all I would say it’s just a little pot,
but what had it lead me to? My
life happened just like how I describe it in this paper, but I was stopped soon,
before hitting the hard drugs. I
don’t know where I would have ended up; all I know for sure though is that it
probably wasn’t a pretty place, being emotionally damaged.
Personally I can see myself in this paper, I am that spiritual life
seeking person, I am the addict, I am the greedy one, I am dangerous to myself
and others, but in the end...
I’m only human.
www2.lib.virginia.edu
wikipeadia.com
youtube.com
druglibrary.org
describes the reality we live in, and show how we humans believe almost any lie
we come up with in our heads. I
want to talk about the most obvious yet most dangerous thing society has to
offer, drugs. The reason why I
want to talk about drugs is too simply to see if we can learn from our
mistakes. We have grown accustomed
to drugs being part of society that we have forgotten about how it slowly
destroys us from the inside out, and this isn’t propaganda against drugs
either. I just want to demonstrate
what happens when you abuse it, and you use it for pleasure.
I guess you can consider this a fairytale, but with a terrifying ending
(thats if you read this with an open mind)…
It all started with the boring 50’s, with everybody wearing plain white
T-shirts, same style and haircuts, and girls getting kicked out of school for
wearing pants. That was the
suburbs, or better known as“squares-vile” with their boring traditions. At the bottom of it all were the beat
necks, jazz scene and folk music.
This was the breakthrough of it all, and the one who really stuck out
were Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, beat neck writers (stoners and peyote heads)
who tried to break beyond that Eisenhower era. They tried to live and describe just
how the jazz musicians played there music. It was this sense of freedom, a freedom
of ideas and speech, becoming original and
unique.
Many jazz musicians were reefers as well; they would get high and play,
making it a doorway to the world of marijuana. This influenced the audience just as
much as the beat neck writers. It
wasn’t until folk music came around when marijuana started to be distributed
more to the audience. People
became interested, it was something new, and you can pretty much say that
society spontaneously exploded into new cultural ideas.
It was just a very small community of young people, who were rebelling,
just like any other youngster would.
By 1960, you have very popular bands smoking weed, and of course, band
were in a way influential. But let
alone the bands, this was the year were that “breakthrough” of the boring 50’s
really started to take motion.
There was the free speech movement in 64; it was students insisting on
freedom of on-campus political activities, and academic freedom.
Then you have Johnson getting involved in Vietnam the following year,
which made the youth who were eligible for the draft, get an apocalyptic
fear. That same year Malcom X is
assassinated, and the riots in Watts L.A. take place, bringing the whole place
up in flames. Both Malcom and the
riots were important, hence were part of the black community, which also was in
motion, creating chaos in the United
States.
Pot had a lot to do with this, it was the thing that kept everybody
connected, and was, in a way, a political stance against all that was going on
around them. Many people would say
that Marijuana was a gateway drug for heroine at the time, but what it really
lead to was LSD, which quickly caught on the rebellious
youth.
LSD at the time was being researched for medicinal purposes; Albert
Hofmann (the creator of the substance in 1938) was looking for a treatment on
migraines. He figured that this
was way more important than just a medicine. He decided to dose himself and take a
bike ride through the Swiss countryside for the first acid trip in history. Scientist saw two sides of the
substance, one, they used it for treatment in mental hospitals and
alcoholism. The other side was to
simulate creativity, and scientist took it to heart.
They would take low doses of it and do interactual problems.
Francis Crick was one of those scientist, and it’s believed that when he
made the most important discovery of the 20th century of the double helix, he was
dosed a small portion of LSD.
Timothy Leary was a psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of
psychedelic drugs. During the time when LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments
at Harvard
University under the Harvard Psilocybin
Project, resulting in the Concord Prison
Experiment and the Marsh Chapel
Experiment. Both studies produced useful data, but
Leary and his associate Richard Alpert were fired from the
university. He made revolution
with these drugs, and then teachers and students start tacking these drugs,
causing a massive controversy.
Leary made many famous quotes, such as “Turn on, tune in, drop out” which
pretty much caused the expansion of the
mind.
Ken Kese was also a big part of this, he was an important figure in the
counter-culture than was caching on quick. He was the author of many books, and the
book One Flew over the Cuckoo's
Nest really made an impact.
He went with Merry
Pranksters and got a bus that they called further, and left to New York
for his requested presence. On
their bus ride, when all of them would be stoned, they would refer to it as
Group Mind, so when they got back home, they took this concept and tried
to apply it to society. He took it
to heart, so he decided to do the“Acid test” which was the first mass multimedia
experience. These acid test were
parties that influenced people into tacking the drug and surviving the sometimes
horrors. Kesey believed that
personal fears should be confronted with hallucinogenic
drugs. He often pushed the limits,
since most of the time these parties would have physiological disasters, but he
eventually managed to push it to the public in events such as Longshoreman's
Hall, Muir Beach, or musical events at Bill Graham's Fillmore
West.
It was till the Haight and Ashbury era in 65, for the counter culture
aspect really grew. Slowly people
started coming into the Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco to set up
psychedelic shops. All of this was growing, and rapidly,
you have a group of people called the diggers, who were activists encouraging
people to live the hippiesm, they would supply you with second hand clothes, and
free food. All of this was the
results of the beat necks moving into the area. Shrouded in
a mystique of anonymity, the Diggers took their name from the original English
Diggers (1649-50) who had promulgated a vision of society free from private
property, and all forms of buying and selling. The Diggers combined street
theater, anarchy-direct action, and art happenings in their social agenda of
creating a Free City.
Owsley Stanley came into the scene, and became a very important and
well-known figure. He was the
first big distributor of LSD, and probably the only one who knew how to make it.
He was the one who shaped
the hippie scene in San Francisco by making the Haight and Ashbury area the acid
capital of the world. He
distributed a mass quantity between 1965 & 1967, producing more than 1.25
million doses of LSD. He was
always very discrete of this; he wanted to keep the matter quiet for the obvious
reason of police.
It smart for Owsley to keep it discrete, in October of 1966 the
government decided to make LSD illegal.
But this didn’t stop the counter-culture; instead the first major
psychedelic took place. It was the
first Human Be-In, and more than 30,000 people showed up.
The governments idea of making LSD illegal was pretty much throwing
gasoline into the fire. This
became a big deal, because now you have bands basing their music off this drug,
which all it was were acid heads talking to acid heads.
Being the “new”thing for the youth, it spread worldwide, and soon after,
they get the validation from the London scene. Bands start coming in and joining this
nationwide cultural change, it just wasn’t there imagination anymore, it was
becoming real.
In 1967, John Phillips decided to have Monterey California held the first
annual pop festival, which held the international platform for musicians. At this festival, many bands became
idols, there was The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, and the list goes on
and on. People at this moment start
looking up to the bands, and the record companies catch that quickly. After this festival you start seeing
these bands all over the place, on T.V. the radio cloths and such.
Now that this music is going main stream, more youth start to tag along
to the counter culture, and everybody is doing drugs.
To the traditional American, it looks as if it was the end of
civilization, so of course there bound to do something about
it.
1967 was probably the most significant year, it was the year that the
counter culture really was doing what it had intended to do. This year held the
summer of love, and the psychedelic scene more than ever.
This ends up going nationwide, there access to the media for youth like
never before, you listen to the radio, and its nothing but encouragement to do
drugs. The most important message
of them all though, was the one where they told you to go San Francisco. All the attention was focused on Haight
and Ashbury. Everybody loved to be
there, some describe it as a community where you will be embraced and loved.
News reporters flooded the scene and once you know it, it explodes, and all of
this becomes the center of attention.
After all of this was dying, you start seeing the youth start entering in
depression, and most stay away from the pressure of the
establishment.
It doesn’t take long until you start seeing the appearance of hard drugs
like speed and heroine. This was a
big downfall for the counter culture, everybody started to lock themselves
indoors, nobody who was on speed wanted to be overwhelmed with the huge crowd of
people. All the animals that would
run around wouldn’t be seen anymore, from all the speed freaks catching them and
eating them, that’s how bad it was.
So the traditional Americans use this to attack the counter culture,
mostly the conservatives and elders.
They would use what was going on to scare votes, which was making the
counter culture look godless and communistic. This also fires the first shot to the
cultural war, which until today is being
fought.
The police start enforcing the law with the activist, they would get
tipped off and go knock on doors to make arrest. More and more youth start to flood the
courthouses but they see no effect, so they decide to go for their leaders. Who where their leaders? You got keasy,
Leary and Ginsburg. After Leary
was arrested and charged for Marijuana, he was vulnerable.
He feels as if all the propaganda was attacking him, so he started to
make his own propaganda. It
consisted of telling kids to drop out of school, not listening to their elders,
it was a mess.
Bands start getting arrested on drug charges as well; the traditional
people attacked the counter culture hard.
Soon the entire drug related subjects are banded from television and
radio. The counter culture soon
joins the band wagon, and they make the bands more than just idols, but their
leaders. The youth was influenced
by these bands, and where ever the band went, so did the youth.
This became a problem with the authorities; a lot of the activity in the
counter culture was illegal. At
this point you start seeing more police at the festivals and shows they
have.
The media starts making shows to exploit the counter culture.
The most popular show was Dragnet; they would rip shows directly from the
newspaper headlines.Dragnet is a radio and television crime drama about the cases of a dedicated Los
Angeles police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, and his partners. The show takes its
name from an actual police term, a "dragnet", meaning a system of coordinated measures for apprehending criminals
or suspects. The show had been on
and off; it was also on the radio. It
was a very dis-informal show though; the episodes would be so stilted and
self-righteous. People would
actually find these shows funny, and would continue getting
high.
This same year the war in Vietnam was getting bit, and so did the
anti-war movement. The war
escaladed and got bigger and bloodier as well, there was 5,000 service men
coming back every month in body bags.
It began taking this dire sense of an apocalyption for the youth, so the
anti-war movement just flourished.
Contention of the war emerged from another festival of the human
being. This fed the psychedelic
activist to mobilize, and all the protest were against the
war.
Shortly after, there cam this new anit-war movement called the
Mobilization, also known as The
Mobe. The mobilization act was
aiming for the pentagon, which to them was a symbol of evil.
They would gather around the pentagon daily in protest, and they would
gather as many people as they could.
All the people present would join hands and with chanting and
supernatural powers they would levitate the pentagon and perform an
exorcism. The Mobe also gave birth
to flower power.
Flower power began at the steps of the pentagon; it depicted a utopian
world, full of peace.
Flower power was a slogan used by the American counterculture
movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s
as a symbol of passive
resistance and non-violence ideology.
It is rooted in the opposition movement to the
Vietnam War.
Hippies embraced the symbolism by dressing in
clothing with embroidered flowers and vibrant colors, wearing flowers in their
hair, and distributing flowers to the public, becoming known as flower children. This is where the famous pictures of
the youth putting flowers in the gun barrels took place. Though this didn’t really mean anything
to the government, the draft
continued.
1968 marked the beginning of the end; they had a democratic convention
where they decided that the police should step it up.
Police start attacking demonstrators with more violence, and it was a
perfect example of what was going wrong.
Even though this pretty much took down the counter, the fashion was able
to stick. Corporations start using
the same psychedelic propaganda for their commercials, and the cloths are
similar to what the hippies would wear.
This can be seen even out on the streets, with all the advertisement on
the billboards, not to mention the television.
Another part was the movies that started to come out, they would reflect
the drug culture, and praise it in a way.
A very popular movie was easy rider, it was made with very little budget,
but was able to make millions with the simple fact that drugs were
involved. It was also a significant
movie because it was very humble in a lot of ways. What made it most humble was
the fact that the actors admit the end of the counter culture, and how they lost
the battle against the establishment.
This began to mark the end of the counter culture in general.
This was only the beginning though, there were more events that ensueded
that would demolish the counter
culture.
By 1969, the new group of kids tried to follow this idealism, and in a
way imitate what was going on in the early 60’s. The biggest impact these kids made was
Woodstock. The festival was
intended be like the Human Be-In, but the difference was that there were more
than 1.5 million people. This
festival was intended to show that this way of life worked, and so far, they
were doing a good job of it. As a
response to this, there was another festival at Altamont.
This Greatfull dead suggested to have the Hells Angeles as security, and
have no outside influence allowed hence being the establishment.
This was a wreck; there were a lot of alcohol and heavy drugs. The Hells Angeles being security were
doing drugs, drinking and fighting.
There were reports of security stabbing somebody in the crowd, supposedly
they had pulled out a gun and pointed it at the stage.
This festival brought death to the innocence of the 60’s.
This showed a major sense of failure, which proved it was devastating for
the youth, and there demonstration that it could be
done.
The dark side that finally came out of the counter culture was when
Charlie Manson did the murders.Charles Milles Manson, who led what became known as the Manson Family, was also part of this
counter culture. He was convicted of the murders through the joint-responsibility rule,
which makes each member of a conspiracy guilty of crimes his fellow conspirators
commit in furtherance of the conspiracy's object.
So pretty much they knew he basically brained washed his followers into
killing people. Manson would say
that the bands would speak to him threw music and send him messages that he
would interpret. Manson believed
in what he called "Helter Skelter," a term
he took from the song of the same
name by The Beatles. Manson
believed Helter Skelter to be an impending apocalyptic
race war, which he described in his own version
of the lyrics to the Beatles' song.
Manson's death sentence was
automatically commuted to life imprisonment when a
1972 decision by the Supreme Court of
California temporarily eliminated the state's
death penalty.
California's eventual reinstatement of capital punishment did not affect Manson,
who is currently incarcerated at Corcoran State Prison.
All these events lead up to the end of the 60’s, and then you have the
deaths of important band members, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison,
all at the young age of 27. Not
only are these famous idols dying, so are the people who are tacking these
drugs, there is an uncontrollable abuse.
All these last festivals were just a failure trying to revive the counter
cultures downfall, especially with the deaths of these celebrities from
drugs. Even though the counter
culture had a terrible end, it was able to make and overall impact.
Everything that had happened in this decade was so significant, just
because it was so complex and yet alone profound.
This decade shaped and made a massive commercial drug culture that to
this very day still exist.
Like I said, the decade of the 60’s made a huge impact, and there was a
major leakage into the 70’s. There
was an enormous difference, in the 60’s, it was all about spirituality, and in
the 70’s it was all about abusing it.
Nobody cared or even mentioned, yet alone thought of idealism, and the
consequences were, people started to get addicted.
This was the time where there was a high price for wisdom, and this is
because everybody was focused on getting as high as they could.
There was no stage of enlightenment, there was only an escape, and drugs
were now used as anesthesia. Most
the stoners had their own culture, they would go to light shows and they even
got their own comedians. Another
big thing was that all of the soldiers in Vietnam were using drugs as well, and
for them, it was super easy access.
In the spring of 1970 you start hearing about people overdosing in
Vietnam, there were two people overdosing a month.
By fall of that same year, you start hearing of two overdosing a
day. Overseas, one in four became
addicted to heroin, and it was only to not feel the pain of the war.
Heroine was smuggled back to the US mainly in body bags, and the main
ones to do it was the CIA. The CIA
was probably the most responsible in bringing back the heroin.
There excuse was that they were paying back the warlord for helping them
out turning in the service men who were buying there drugs; it was actually a
dumber idea. Now back at home,
you got more heavy drugs on the streets, and it was direct correlation from
heroin and crime. Obviously, this
got the presidents attention, so Nixon decides to do something about this as
well.
He constituted the DEA in 1973 which was designed to take down any drug
usage or distribution around the country.
What Nixon really intended to do was turn back the tide of mass popular
drug use. Even though all this
anti-drug movement was going on, there was massive activity in the drug
world. At this time there is way
more marijuana available than ever before. It wasn’t like in the 60’s were pot
came from a certain place, marijuana came from everywhere now.
There was not pounds anymore coming in, there were tons, by planes,
ships, speed, boats, anything. Richard Stratton was one of the first
ones to start smuggling marijuana from other countries.
For over 10 years he had been
running an international drug smuggling operation, bringing tons of marijuana
and hashish into the United States and arranging for its distribution. He was part of the so called hippie
mafia, but then in 1982 he was convicted of operating a Continuing Criminal
Enterprise under the kingpin statute of New York State.
He then became an author about his experience on drug dealing. Allen long decided he wanted to make a
movie out of these events, so he joins up with some smugglers to film it, but
then he gets caught up. He began
to start smuggling himself, and him alone with his partners smuggle in more than
972,000 pounds of marijuana. And
this was just one guy, while there were plenty more out
there.
The hippie mafia controlled most of the marijuana in the nation, and they
figured it was the quality, not the quantity. So this sent all of the smugglers out
for better pot, and that’ how the High Times magazine was born.
It was intentionally made to distribute pot, and to influence marijuana
on the society. This was the
fastest growing magazine of its time, and it marked the golden age for
marijuana. By the late 70’s
cockaine comes to scene and people start to get greedy. This is where the entire
disco happened, since both cocaine and disco made perfect “harmony”.
Cocaine got so big everybody would be doing it, school teachers, lawyers,
journalist and business men, even High times went on a three year binge on
it.
Then you get the production of all these harder
drugs like freebase and crack (which is the equivalent to freebase) for the rich
and poor. Crack was the drug that
brought in a lot of gang violence, everybody would distribute, and then you
would have turf wars. Since crack
was sold to almost anybody in the ghetto, the dealers would have enough money to
keep buying the drug, but also buy weapons. Soon even the rappers themselves start
going against this, because this is how bad it got, the city of Los Angeles was
basically turning into a battlefield, with gang members and
police.
At the same time all this is happening, you have the Regan’s war on
drugs, which turned out to be the most affective administration America has had
with dealing with drugs. This, in
a way, provoked violence in Miami, being the South America on American soil; it
was a financial drug center in the United States.
The “cocaine cowboys”really started to market cocaine down there in
significant quantities. It breed a
culture of flash, excess, extravagance, but it also breed a culture with
violence. The initial idea of
making Scarface was to show exactly what was going on, even though it was a bit
exaggerated, that was pretty much what had
happened.
Personally I feel I learned a lot from this research I did, I have seen a
few things before about all this, and it caught my attention.
It was only because I was doing drugs myself back then, but know that I
am sober, I can think things through better. To me this paper shows one person’s
life, even though millions were involved threw out the decades, it’s pretty much
just one person. In my experience I
can see that happening to me, at first all I would say it’s just a little pot,
but what had it lead me to? My
life happened just like how I describe it in this paper, but I was stopped soon,
before hitting the hard drugs. I
don’t know where I would have ended up; all I know for sure though is that it
probably wasn’t a pretty place, being emotionally damaged.
Personally I can see myself in this paper, I am that spiritual life
seeking person, I am the addict, I am the greedy one, I am dangerous to myself
and others, but in the end...
I’m only human.
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