Editing Psychedelia (section)

==History==
{{Missing information|section|the origins of psychedelic culture available for copy at [[Acid rock#Origins and ideology]]|date=January 2017}}

From the second half of the 1950s, [[Beat Generation]] writers like [[William Burroughs]], [[Jack Kerouac]] and [[Allen Ginsberg]]<ref>J. Campbell, ''This is the Beat Generation: New York, San Francisco, Paris'' (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), {{ISBN|0-520-23033-7}}.</ref> wrote about and took drugs, including [[cannabis (drug)|cannabis]] and [[Benzedrine]], raising awareness and helping to popularise their use.<ref>R. Worth, ''Illegal Drugs: Condone Or Incarcerate?'' (Marshall Cavendish, 2009), {{ISBN|0-7614-4234-0}}, p. 30.</ref> In the same period [[Lysergic acid diethylamide]], better known as LSD, or "acid" (at the time a legal drug), began to be used in the US and UK as an experimental treatment, initially promoted as a potential cure for mental illness.<ref>D. Farber, "The Psychologists Psychology:The Intoxicated State/Illegal Nation – Drugs in the Sixties Counterculture", in P. Braunstein and M. W. Doyle (eds), ''Imagine Nation: The Counterculture of the 1960s and '70s'' (New York: Routledge, 2002), {{ISBN|0-415-93040-5}}, p. 21.</ref>

In the early 1960s, the use of LSD and other hallucinogens was advocated by proponents of the new "consciousness expansion", such as [[Timothy Leary]], [[Alan Watts]], [[Aldous Huxley]] and [[Arthur Koestler]],<ref>[[Anne Applebaum]], [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/26/did-the-death-of-communis_n_435939.html "Did The Death Of Communism Take Koestler And Other Literary Figures With It?]", ''[[The Huffington Post]]'', 26 January 2010.</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://pages.cthome.net/tobelman/The_Out-Of-Sight_SMiLE_Site.html|title=''Out-Of-Sight!'' SMiLE Timeline|access-date=30 October 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100201234435/http://pages.cthome.net/tobelman/The_Out-Of-Sight_SMiLE_Site.html|archive-date=1 February 2010}}</ref> their writings profoundly influenced the thinking of the new generation of youth.<ref>L. R. Veysey, ''[[The Communal Experience: Anarchist and Mystical Communities in Twentieth-Century America]]'' (Chicago IL, University of Chicago Press, 1978), {{ISBN|0-226-85458-2}}, p. 437.</ref> There had long been a culture of drug use among [[jazz]] and [[blues]] musicians, and use of drugs (including cannabis, [[peyote]], [[mescaline]] and LSD<ref>T. Albright, ''[[Art in the San Francisco Bay Area (book)|Art in the San Francisco Bay area, 1945–1980: an Illustrated History]]'' (University of California Press, 1985), {{ISBN|0-520-05193-9}}, p. 166.</ref>) had begun to grow among folk and rock musicians, who also began to include drug references in their songs.<ref>J. Shepherd, ''Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Media, Industry and Society'' (New York, NY: Continuum, 2003), {{ISBN|0-8264-6321-5}}, p. 211.</ref>{{refn|group=nb|New York folk musician [[Peter Stampfel]] claimed to be the first to use the word "psychedelic" in a song lyric ([[The Holy Modal Rounders]]' version of "[[Hesitation Blues]]", 1963).{{sfn|DeRogatis|2003|p=8}}}} In the UK rock scene, some notable users were groups such as the [[Rolling Stones]], [[the Beatles]] and [[the Moody Blues]].<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Gilmore |first=M |date=25 August 2016 |title=Beatles' Acid Test: How LSD Opened the Door to 'Revolver' |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/beatles-acid-test-how-lsd-opened-the-door-to-revolver-251417/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201203211257/https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/beatles-acid-test-how-lsd-opened-the-door-to-revolver-251417/ |archive-date=3 December 2020 |access-date=12 December 2024 |magazine=[[Rolling Stone]]}}</ref>

By the mid-1960s, the psychedelic life-style had already developed in California, and an entire [[subculture]] developed. This was particularly true in San Francisco, due in part to the first major underground LSD factory, established there by [[Owsley Stanley]].{{sfn|DeRogatis|2003|pp=8–9}} There was also an emerging music scene of folk clubs, coffee houses and independent radio stations catering to a population of students at nearby [[Berkeley, California|Berkeley]], and to free thinkers that had gravitated to the city.<ref name="Unterberger2003pp11-13">R. Unterberger, ''Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock's Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock'' (London: Backbeat Books, 2003), {{ISBN|0-87930-743-9}}, pp.&nbsp;11–13.</ref>

From 1964, the [[Merry Pranksters]], a loose group that developed around novelist [[Ken Kesey]], sponsored the [[Acid Tests]], a series of events based around the taking of LSD (supplied by Stanley), accompanied by light shows, film projection and discordant, improvised music known as the ''psychedelic symphony''.<ref name="pc41">{{cite web|url=https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19800/m1/|title=Show 41 – The Acid Test: Psychedelics and a sub-culture emerge in San Francisco. [Part 1&#93; : UNT Digital Library|author=Gilliland, John|year=1969|author-link=John Gilliland|work=[[Pop Chronicles]]|publisher=Digital.library.unt.edu|format=audio|access-date=6 May 2011}}</ref>{{sfn|Hicks|2000|p=60}} The Pranksters helped popularize LSD use through their road trips across America in a psychedelically decorated school bus, which involved distributing the drug and meeting with major figures of the beat movement, and through publications about their activities such as [[Tom Wolfe]]'s ''[[The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test]]'' (1968).<ref name="Mann2009p87">J. Mann, ''Turn on and Tune in: Psychedelics, Narcotics and Euphoriants'' (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2009), {{ISBN|1-84755-909-3}}, p. 87.</ref>

Leary was a well-known proponent of the use of psychedelics, as was [[Aldous Huxley]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Al Hubbard furnishes Aldous Huxley with LSD on December 24, 1955. |url=https://www.historylink.org/File/23062 |access-date=2024-12-11 |website=www.historylink.org}}</ref> However, both advanced widely different opinions on the broad use of psychedelics by [[State (polity)|state]] and [[civil society]]. Leary promulgated the idea of such substances as a [[Panacea (medicine)|panacea]], while Huxley suggested that only the cultural and intellectual elite should partake of entheogens systematically.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Evans |first=Jules |date=2023-11-15 |title=Happy 70th anniversary of your first trip, Aldous Huxley |url=https://julesevans.medium.com/happy-70th-trip-anniversary-aldous-huxley-fca7bacc52d1 |access-date=2025-03-19 |website=Medium |language=en}}</ref>

In the [[counterculture of the 1960s|1960s]], the use of psychedelic drugs became widespread in modern [[Western culture]], particularly in the [[United States]] and [[United Kingdom|Britain]]. The movement is credited to [[Michael Hollingshead]] who arrived in America from London in 1965. He was sent to the U.S. by other members of the psychedelic movement to get their ideas exposure.<ref>{{cite book|author=Wilson, Andrew|title=Summer of Love: Psychedelic Art, Social Crisis and Counterculture in the 1960s|year=2007|publisher=[[Liverpool University Press]]|location=Liverpool|edition=8|chapter=Spontaneous Underground: An Introduction to Psychedelic Scenes, 1965–1968|editor=Christopher Grunenberg, Jonathan Harris|pages=63–98}}</ref> The [[Summer of Love]] of 1967 and the resultant popularization of the [[hippie]] culture to the mainstream popularized psychedelia in the minds of [[popular culture]], where it remained dominant through the 1970s.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://theconversation.com/the-summer-of-love-was-more-than-hippies-and-lsd-it-was-the-start-of-modern-individualism-77212|title=The Summer of Love was more than hippies and LSD – it was the start of modern individualism|website=[[The Conversation (website)|The Conversation]]|date=July 6, 2017|access-date=September 27, 2019}}</ref>