MusePaper
January 20th, 1998:
Drugs, Consciousnesses,
and Generational
Cultures
by Mickel
Adzema
PART ONE: GENERATIONAL
CULTURES
A question I have never seen addressed is the relation between particular
drugs, with each their own unique effects on consciousness, and the generation
that uses them . . . or, one might say . . . between the prevailing drug
use of a time and the generational culture that is created. Some salient
facts:
Drunken Adolescents at
War
The Hundred Years’ War between England and France during the Middle
Ages was fought by adolescents whose primary beverage was wine. In
fact, there was one campaign in which England was raiding and advancing into
France which turned into a precipitous retreat back to England. Because
the French turned them back, stopped them? No. There was little
resistance to their advance. However, they did run out of wine!
Unable to acquire the needed wine in France (for what reason, I do not know),
they could not continue. History also reports that The Hundred Years’
War was ordered and commanded, oftentimes, by royalty and kings in their
teens, who considered a daylong, somewhat intoxicated state to be normal;
and it was fought by drunken adolescents and teenagers for the most part.
World-War-Two Generation
Fact number two: The World-War-Two Generation grew up in a time
in which alcohol use was considered fashionable and elegant. It was
common and acceptable for men to carry in their shirt or coat pockets flasks
of potent whiskey or other hard liquor, from which they could publicly imbibe
a swallow here and there throughout the day. When the World-War-Two
Generation came of age, cigarette smoking also became fashionable.
We can see evidence of both of these in the movies that were produced in
the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties. Any unpleasant occurrence or announcement
could be followed by "I need a drink" or "Sounds like you could use a drink."
And offering a drink of hard liquor was considered the first rite in the normal
ritual of hospitality. Also, offering someone a cigarette and/or offering
to light another’s cigarette were considered a normal part of genteel behavior.
Elegant accouterments accompanied these rituals
as well. Ornate, elegant, and often finely crafted metal flasks were
purchased and used. In the same way, elegant crystal and glass containers
for holding the liquors as well as elaborate and ritually designed glasses
into which the alcoholic beverages were poured were commonly owned and used
in genteel culture. It was considered fashionable to have a "bar" area
in one’s living room containing these liquors, each in separate crystal containers,
and the glasses for serving them. And many a conversation in the movies
of the era were shown to be conducted at or near these home bars, following
upon the alcoholic bonding ritual of pouring and imbibing the drink.
This ritual conversational imbibing of a beverage has its analogies in the
water-cooler, coffee klatch, and coffee/espresso-house rituals of other eras
and subcultures.
Pointing out the normality and ritualizing of alcohol
use in this era is important because it is an indication of the pervasiveness,
at any time of day, of the state of consciousness — i.e., intoxication — that
this potent drug produces. Since this cultural behavior is still somewhat
with us so that its anomalous quality may not be readily apparent, it may
be helpful to keep in mind that current drunken driving laws of nearly all
states would apply to everyone of that era involving themselves in only a
modicum of that alcoholic ritual. I.e., those folks, imbibing only one
drink, would be considered "drunk" by our standards today, and sufficiently
into an altered state of consciousness as to warrant their receiving severe
criminal penalties, including jail time, should they put themselves into the
driver’s seat of a car. Yet in that era, normal cultural, business,
and social intercourse was often conducted in such a state. Heady decisions
concerning war, peace, and everything else were influenced by this culturally
accepted drug use.
World War Two, therefore, was conducted and fought
by a generation who grew up to believe that alcohol and cigarettes (nicotine)
were an acceptable answer to unpleasantness — whether inside or outside of
themselves. Alongside this and supporting it were an attitude and beliefs
that negative (i.e., unpleasant) emotions and feelings were harmful and should
be kept out of consciousness. Thus, denial was the predominant defense
in use; and it is no coincidence that "positive thinking" (popularized by
the late Norman Vincent Peale), which is the keeping out of negative thoughts
and the striving to focus always on positive ones, became such a rage near
the end of their era — the Fifties, early Sixties.
1
The "Beats"
The "Beat Generation" of the Fifties used marijuana and caffeine, predominantly.
Their culture included the rise of existential belief, the glorification
and poetification of angst, and the belief that their contemporary society
was characterized by alienation, conformism, inauthenticity, and, most tellingly,
"phoniness." The normal life of the World-War-Two Generation was seen
as a "rat race," motivated by such high ideals (sarcasm intended) as "keeping
up with the Joneses," and pervasive materialism and consumerism. Yet
activism was not the Beat Generation’s response to this perceived negative
social context, as it would be only a generation later. Passivism,
apathy, pessimism, and defeatism were the most common attitudes expressed.
More about the "why" of this later. Nonetheless, art was deemed a weapon,
however impotent, with which to rail against what seemed an overwhelming,
huge mainstream ignorance or unconsciousness. So the only apparent
activism of that time is found in rebellious poetry, folk music, and fine
arts of all kinds, especially literature, theater, painting, and some film.
Vietnam-Era Generation
The Vietnam-War, or Baby-Boomer, Generation was noted for their use
of a number of drugs. Marijuana, wine, "speed" (amphetamines), "downers"
(e.g., "ludes" or qualudes, also "reds" — i.e., barbiturates), LSD, other
hallucinogens such as mescaline, "magic mushrooms," psilocybin, and peyote
were all in use. It was a culture of experimentation in all areas,
including drugs, which grew out of beliefs (following in the footsteps of
the Beat Generation) that normal life/people were characterized by phoniness
(plastic was the Vietnam-era Generation’s word for
it), alienation, conformism, robotism, and lack of feelingness . . . and
hypocrisy.
Though the Sixties Generation (another term
used for this generation) experimented widely with drugs, their predominant
drugs of choice were "pot" (marijuana) and LSD. Alongside this
sort of drug use were attitudes of activism, free love, love as the ultimate
value and/or as equivalent to God, pacifism in regards to the war, the valuing
of openness, authenticity, "real" communication, and passion and/or feelingness,
including sensory awareness or heightened perception of the physical world.
On the negative side, there was sometimes apathy and defeatism, like the Beat
Generation. More later about the connections between these generational
characteristics and their drugs of choice.
Yuppy-Kay-Yo-Kay-Yay
The Big Lie
The Eighties saw an epidemic of use of cocaine. This was commonly
attributed to Yuppies, which is the popular term for the Young Upwardly-mobile
Professional character of this era and is contrasted with the idealistic,
activist, and anti–Vietnam-War Yippies (Youth International Party,
whose founder and most famous member was Abbie Hoffman). Yuppies came
in at the same time as Ronald Reagan into the White House and, indeed, exemplified
much of what Reagan stood for. They were seen as greedy, over-achieving,
materialistic, narcissistic, and societally and environmentally insensitive
careerists.
They were portrayed in film; one in particular
that sought to delineate the attitudes of this character type was "Wall Street,"
in which Michael Douglas plays the role of the Yuppie, portraying complete
self-centeredness, insensitivity to the ways his Machiavellian strategies
harms others or the environment, and driven solely by a value that "Money
Is Good!" -- a slogan completely the opposite of the previous generation
whose attitudes were expressed in lyrics like "I don't care too much for money;
money can't buy me love" and "Love is all you need"; who bought and lived
by books with titles such as How to Live on Nothing, The Greening
of America, and Back to Eden; and whose most famous slogan was
"Tune in, Turn on, Drop out" (or it was sometimes said, "Turn on, Tune in,
Drop out" -- I'm not sure anyone in the generation knew which was
the "proper" way to say it).
In any case, another term used for the Yuppie
Generation was The "Me" Generation. Thus it was that
from the late Sixties, early Seventies (the height of Vietnam-Era Youth's
influence on society and culture) to the late Seventies and most of the Eighties
-- within a period of a mere decade --
the prevailing, media-amplified cultural values of our society swung, pendulum-like,
a hundred-and-eighty degrees from where they had been.
This change had a great deal to do with the efforts of the World-War-Two
Generation -- in total horror at the way their sons and daughters
seemed to be reversing the values they had lived,
and fought, for -- to "take back" society. The WWII Generation
did this by putting pressure, as well-to-do alumni, on universities and colleges
across America to turn their curriculums away from liberal arts and toward
job-oriented curriculums, and by using their positions of power in the media
to influence the flow and content of the information to be fed to the mainstream
public. For example, in the early Seventies, the WWII Generation's
money and power directed the press to declare that a "conservative backlash"
was occurring in America, when in fact the opposite was occurring.
But eventually their "Big Lie" tactics won out
so that people began to believe and then to create what they had been repeatedly
told . . . the opposite view having, as part of the strategy, been censored
in the media. (The events and statistics about this concerted effort
are detailed in my book-in-progress titled The Once and Future Generation:
Regression, Mysticism, and "My Generation" . . . stay tuned.)
Thus, the Yuppies were the creation of the WWII Generation in their attempt
to reverse the course of society that their own daughters and sons, as "Sixties
Youth," had put it on.
Coinciding with and supporting the strategy just
described, and because the World-War-Two Generation during the Eighties were
still in their Triumphant Phase — a psychohistorical term meaning
they were at the stage of their life in late adulthood in which they had
pretty much gained control of the reins of society — they furthered their
cause by managing to plant a fantasy in the collective consciousness of American
culture concerning the origins of Yuppies which persists to this day.
In obvious denial (again, their predominant defensive posture) of the fact
that they had helped to "create" the Yuppies and so of the similarities between
their own values and those of the Yuppies, as exemplified by the similarities
between the (World-War-Two-era) Reagan-Bush political agenda and that of
the Yuppies -- who indeed helped elect Reagan and
Bush -- yet aware of the criticism that their very own values, taken
to the Yuppie extremes, was generating in the independent press as well
as the negative publicity there about the cocaine use of the Yuppies, the
World-War-Two Generation saw an opportunity not only to defeat but also to
"get back" at their opponents, the Sixties Generation, by ridiculing them.
In the predominant World-War-Two Generation fashion
of scapegoating (the accompaniment of denial), which they had been directing
from the outset at the Sixties Generation (who had of course incurred the
wrath of the WWII Generation by opposing and confronting them on the Vietnam
War in sometimes harsh and hostile ways), the Yuppies, with their cocaine
use, were portrayed in the WWII-Generation-paid-for media as former Sixties
hippies who had simply grown older but — consistent with their alleged "narcissism"
— were still selfish, only now, materially so, thus the appellation, The
"Me" Generation. So the Vietnam-era or Sixties Generation
began being denigrated in the press with the accusation, "The 'Me' Generation,"
and Sixties values were also denigrated -- the scapegoating of the
Sixties Generation continuing -- despite the fact that it was a different
age group in society, the younger Yuppies, who were actually the ones triggering
the attack. The hypocrisy of the charge becomes even more blatant when
considering that the values of the Sixties Generation included such selfless
acts as risking, sometimes incurring, violence and personal harm, jail time,
and a lower standard of living for the sake of their idealistic beliefs in
peace, environmental restoration and preservation, and selfless communitarian
living, among others.
Despite the success in our society's collective
consciousness of the fantasy of Yuppies being former hippies -- once
it had been planted in the popular culture by the WWII Generation sitting
comfortably in front of American society’s steering wheel -- the
truth is that these Yuppies were predominantly the generation that shadowed
the Sixties generation, arising as youth in the aftermath of the Sixties
cultural revolution. Their values become understandable, then, not
only in that they were in universities during the Seventies when the "Conservative
backlash" Big Lie was being promulgated and universities were cutting back
funding from courses in liberal arts, philosophy, psychology, literature,
politics and government, and the like and were turning themselves into career-factories
dedicated to producing compliant business persons, engineers, physicians,
and scientists who were not being educated to think for themselves but how
to achieve and make money in a culture the World-War-Two Generation was comfortable
with; but the values of the Yuppies are understandable, furthermore, in that
they were the sons and daughters of a generation between the World-War-Two
and Baby-Boomer Generations, who have not been identified, as far as I know,
in the media at all. We might call this overlooked generation the
Fifties Generation, or the Eisenhower-McCarthy Generation, or
the Elvis Generation . . . a more cumbersome but more accurate term
for them would be the War-Born Generation.
The media tends to focus on the big trends and
to ignore or miss the lesser ones. The way our recent history was portrayed,
you would think that just because there was a huge number of babies born in
the decade and a half after World-War-Two's end -- the much discussed
Baby-Boomer Generation -- that there were no babies born
during the War . . . almost as if every man in America was overseas
fighting or that, when home on leave or whatever, they simply would not or
could not conceive!
However, of course these ridiculous notions are
not true, so there is a pre-BabyBoomer Generation who happened to be born
during or shortly before and after WWII, i.e.,
between about 1938 and 1948. And the Yuppies were predominantly the sons
and daughters of this -- let us call it --
Fifties Generation. Born around the time of the war, the Yuppies'
parents had their formative adolescence and young adulthood during the Fifties
and so their beliefs are rooted in the cultural soil of Fifties conservatism,
Elvis Presley, McCarthyism, Eisenhower, traditional religion, belief in the
economic primacy of capitalism and the evil of communism, and the early "schmaltzy"
rock and roll (e.g., "Teen Angel," "Leader of the Pack," etc.).
And it is this worldview that was passed on to their children, the Yuppies.
It is no coincidence that the era of Yuppie influence (mid-Seventies through
the Eighties) saw also a lengthy period of Fifties nostalgia alongside the
caricaturizing and ridiculing of Sixties lifestyles, values, and beliefs.
Manic Irrationality, Voodoo
Economics
The Eighties began, significantly enough, with the death of John
Lennon and the election of Ronald Reagan. Concurrent with the epidemic
of cocaine use was a manic economy, massive military expenditures, and a
tripling-plus of the National Debt. It is relevant to note that the
huge increase in the National Debt was caused by a tax cut for the rich, which
of course benefited those of the World-War-Two Generation who either inherited
or earned, with a lifetime behind them, their wealth, as well as those upwardly
mobile, materialistic Yuppies. The rationale for the tax cut — which
was characterized by some commentators as "Robin Hood in reverse," because
it also coincided with cutbacks in social programs — was a "voodoo economics"
(George Bush’s term) with a "trickle-down" theory of investment and economic
growth.
This economics is based on a belief that a "dollar," metaphorically
speaking, given to a rich person will be more wisely invested, creating more
jobs and wealth for everyone, than will that same "dollar" given to a middle-class
or poor person. This view, however, ignored human psychology, the standard
economics of marginal returns, and the common observation that, simply put,
for a person with a little or a moderate amount of money, that metaphorical
dollar will have more value (because it will represent a much larger increase,
percentage-wise, in their financial situation) than it will for a rich person,
for whom its value is only marginally related to a rather large "purse," so
to speak. Therefore, common sense tells us that "dollar" will be more
conscientiously and thoughtfully spent or invested, creating more jobs and
wealth for all, by the moderate-income person, who of course will attempt
to maximize its benefit to him- or herself so that he or she can also rise
to the ranks of the wealthy. To the moderate income person that "dollar"
represents an opportunity for a rise in economic status; hence it will be
invested, sweated over, and monitored intensely. In general, he or she
will attempt to squeeze every possible ounce of benefit out of it, very often
starting businesses of their own and thereby creating new jobs, opportunity,
and wealth in the process. Whereas for the already wealthy person, that
"dollar" is only a dollar alongside many others, and is only marginally relevant,
reaping only marginal, or minor, returns.
Voodoo economics did not work, of course, as indicated
by the tripling of the National Debt. Another important indication of
the falsity of its premises was the huge expenditures of money, during the
Eighties, on luxury items, like yachts, works of art, expensive cars, and
so on. Art items and artifacts were being bid through the roof and
the prices they were going for were making headlines in newspapers and stimulating
commentaries on the tube. Along with this was the overinvestment in
spurious business transactions, including "junk bonds," soon-to-be-left-unrented
commercial buildings, and unwanted real estate. Much has been said
about how these manic and ill-considered business transactions led to the
lengthy recession of the late Eighties and early Nineties. But there
are two aspects of it that are especially relevant here for a discussion
of drugs and generational cultures. They are the manic quality of the
times — the go, go, go, buy, buy, buy mentality of the investing — and the
obvious proof it gave to marginal returns theory, i.e., the money, given
to the rich, was valued little and was mindlessly blown on trivialities —
it was said that the Eighties was a huge party for the rich.
So rather than creating wealth for the wealthy,
which would "trickle down" to the less well off, Reaganomics, as it
was also called, turned into an unparalleled failure. It was called
the largest shift of wealth in America’s history, taking it from the poor
and middle class and benefiting the richest, top two percent of Americans.
More than that, it led to a debt that will be adversely affecting the well-being,
lifestyles, and financial pictures of several generations to come.
Going into such detail about the intricacies and results of the economic
policy promulgated by the WWII Generation, in alliance with the Yuppies and
their parents, the Fifties Generation, is important because of the hypocrisy
it demonstrates in the charge leveled at the Baby-Boomer Generation of being
a "Me" generation and of being narcissistic. Again, we see the WWII
Generation’s same tendency to denial, projection, and scapegoating.
To continue, however, other elements in the Eighties
cultural arena, existing alongside the epidemic of cocaine use, was the aforementioned
careerism and materialism among the Yuppies (comprised primarily of the
youth in their twenties and early thirties who followed behind the Vietnam-era
Generation), whose mantram was to get rich, get powerful, erect and maintain
"family islands" which they saw as competitive with the rest of society (quite
unlike the communitarianism of the Sixties Generation), and to retire early
. . . social and environmental problems be damned. Other standouts
of the cultural scenery of the time included a rise of mean-spiritedness,
e.g., cutbacks in social programs and charities, which, as it was said, had
one effect of emptying the mental hospitals into the streets. It became
fashionable to sneer at and blame (often scapegoating) the more unfortunate
ones of society — the poor, helpless, mentally ill, children, the powerless.
Generation
"X"
The most recent generation to wander
into the cultural limelight has been termed Generation X. Predominantly
these are not the sons and daughters of the Sixties Generation as the values
of the Vietnam-era Generation included marrying late and having children
late so that their children are mostly younger than and not among Generation
X. This value concerning marrying or having children later in life
tied in with the Sixties folks' belief in personal freedom, but is more closely
related to the hypocrisy they perceived in the marriages of their parents,
those of the WWII Generation. They not only perceived their parents'
marriages as being false and loveless, they perceived themselves as being
the victims of poor parenting, wherein they felt they were not understood
and were not accepted for who they were or supported in what they uniquely
wanted to do with their lives. Furthermore, they saw the social and
global context as a negative and highly dangerous one. For one thing,
having been children during the "drop and roll" and bomb-shelter, nuclear-shadow
era of the Fifties, and having seen the assassination of idealistic values
in the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King during their
teens and young adulthood, they had great doubts about the future of the world.
Though of course the Sixties Generation is noted for its idealism and for
its attempts to fight these perceived dangers and injustices, underneath there
has always been for them an uncertainty that success is possible, so that
bringing a child into this particular dangerous and unjust social context
was seen as possibly not a good thing for the child.
So it is that Generation Xers are
predominantly the sons and daughters of an early segment of the Baby-Boomer
Generation as well as of those less idealistic of the Vietnam-era Generation
that had, more often than not, opted for the traditional route of career,
home, and family and thus had started having children many years earlier
than their more socially conscious counterparts. This Fallow Generation
, let us call it, would conceive the children who would be called Generation
X -- who are noted for their apathy and lack of distinctiveness.
But keep in mind that the Fallow Generation is not a true generation in
the sense that it is composed of two age groups -- the early Baby-Boomers
and those of the Baby-Boomers who opted for a family instead of the social
activism, college education, and establishing a career before raising a
family decisions of their more heralded peers. Hence Generation X's
lack of a unifying cause, value, or characteristic may have to do with their
being children of parents from two different age groups and generations.
At any rate, and understandably
because they are mostly not children of the idealistic Sixties youth, the
drug use of Xers strayed back to the use of alcohol and cigarettes --
the drugs used by their Fallow Generation parents who did not make either
the cultural or drug changes of their peers.
Alongside this "traditional" drug use, Generation Xers are noted for their
pessimism, defeatism, and fascination with death -- as, for example,
in their selection of black clothes, their tendency to ripped jeans, tattoos,
and the insertion of all sorts of pins and studs, as adornments, into virtually
all parts of their bodies, and, in the extreme ones among them, a
fascination with vampirism.
Baby-Boomer Echo Generation
For some reasons that may be obvious by now, little has yet been said
in the media about the daughters and sons of the Sixties Generation.
This generation is currently in school -- mostly high school, though
some have entered college and some are still in grade school. They
have been called an "echo" of the Baby-Boomers in that just as the Baby-Boomers
represented a significant population increase, conceived in the post-WWII
euphoria and stability, they also represent an incoming population wave,
due to the numbers of their parents. There is currently increased school
attendance, and universities are preparing for an incursion of students in
the near future, which is at this moment already beginning.
Just as in every other generation mentioned, this
Echo Generation, let us call it, shares many
of the characteristics and values of their parents; similarly, they mirror
the drug use of their parents. There has been a great to-do in the
press in the last few years about the increase in drug use among the young,
particularly in high school. In typical WWII-Generation style, the
media and Republicans in Congress have attempted to scapegoat Sixties-Generation
President Bill Clinton on this issue. For though the WWII Generation
is in the process of leaving the scene, those of them who are left are at
present conducting a fierce rearguard battle to save what they can of the
culture they knew and created, and in their desperation, are doing it at
whatever cost in terms of outlandish scandals, government costs, and loss
of social progress and governmental effectiveness. Nevertheless, the
truth of the matter is that the increase in drug use among the young --
which significantly enough involves predominantly an increase in the use
of marijuana and, as they say: LSD . . . It's b-a-a-a-a-ck!
-- has to do with the fact that the parents of these young
people are indeed the people of the Sixties who themselves experimented with
these substances.
Lest I be misunderstood, I am in no way saying
that parents, in general, actively teach their children to take drugs
-- whether we are talking about alcohol and cigarette use or today's
marijuana and LSD use -- yet children are influenced by what their
parents do or have done, even if just in the fact that the parents are more
tolerant of such usage, having done it themselves. I say this because
it could be countered that even the Sixties Generation, now parents, are
engaged in the public antidrug campaign. Yet when they do so they are
doing it out of a fear for their children's physical welfare, not from a
severe moral perspective that these drugs are the royal road to hell or from
such other paranoid attitude, as was most often the case in the parents of
the other generations discussed so far.
To return to the point, though little has been
said or written about these "echo" youth, these are some of what has been
noted: Beginning in 1992, with the election of Bill Clinton, the youth
vote has swung back to going for the Democrats. There has been an increase
in activism and idealism among the young, particularly those in high school
and grade school; and polls done on their attitudes have shown a strong increase
in their concern about social and global issues. In fact, the issues
that appear to concern them the most have to do with racism and the environment.
They also have fears that the future may not be very bright or as good as
it was in times before them, particularly in terms of a ruined ecology due
to environmental assault and/or nuclear disaster, yet they, like their parents,
also are more likely to activism and taking up causes in the face of such
dire possibilities.
These values of the Echo Generation are understandable,
not only in that they reflect those of their parents, but also in that currently
the Sixties Generation -- and indeed it would tend to be the more
idealistic of them that would opt for the low pay that teachers currently
get -- predominates as the teachers and administrators in the primary
and secondary schools teaching the Echo Generation.
The same, however, cannot yet be said of the universities
for reasons having to do with cutbacks in educational funds, the lingering
success of the WWII Generation in turning universities into career factories
as opposed to truly educational institutions, and, with the cutbacks in funding,
the lack of job openings for Sixties Generation applicants and the resulting
continued influence, bolstered by the institution of tenureship, of pre-Sixties
professors -- those of the Fifties and Fallow Generations, and a
few remaining, very old now, WWII folks.
Jumping ahead a little, however, we might speculate
that the situation in the universities will change in the near future as the
Echo Generation's numbers swell university attendance, requiring additional
hiring somehow, whatever the funding constraints, and those of the generations
preceding the Sixties Generation pass from the universities into retirement,
or the beyond. The most likely candidates, then, for these upcoming
openings at the university level would not be those of the Fallow Generation,
the Yuppies, or Generation Xers, but would most likely be members of a Sixties
Generation who alone, among the generations mentioned, valued education
over money and careerism and have been waiting a long time, diplomas and
experience in hand, for their chance to return to the universities --
this time as the instructors and administrators -- and eager to change
its course back to true education, as it was when they were students in the
liberal-minded Sixties. Once again, stay tuned.
Drugs and
Different Worlds
This has been a brief overview of salient characteristics
of generational cultures of some past and current generations alongside a
description of that generation's predominant drug use. In the next section
I will talk in more detail about what we know about the effects of these
particular substances on consciousness and attitudes. Lastly I will
discuss the behavior and beliefs that can coincide with the use of these
drugs, as they affect consciousness in different ways, creating different
kinds of consciousnesses, different perspectives, indeed entirely different
and distinct ways of perceiving the self and the world.
(To continue, click on the link: Part Two: Drugs and Consciousnesses
)
Note
1. Just as in the alcohol use, the "positive thinking"
fad continues — both of them much abated, of course, as the World-War-Two
Generation gradually leaves the scene. Astonishingly, even in this
current era, one World-War-Two Generation author admonishes, in huge text
no less, in the title on the cover of his popular book: "You Cannot
Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought"! (yipes!) [
return to text
]
Copyright © 1998 by Michael Derzak Adzema
Comments? E-mail me by clicking on:
mickel@primalspirit.com
Mickel
Adzema
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