The Changing Sixties In The 1960's

The Changing Sixties

To this day, the impact the 1960’s is still felt. It was an era of so many changes politically, musically and culturally. It was a generation divided between hanging on to the safe, conservative

50’s and diving into the changes that the 60’s had to offer. Changes such as the stance on the war, civil rights, psychedelic music and drug use. Bob Dylan summed up the era by writing “The Times

They Are A Changin”.

Did you know that by the end of the 1960s the number of Americans who had sampled marijuana had increased from a few hundred thousand to eight million (History.com Staff)? The sixties were certainly different from the fifties in that drug use was becoming no longer taboo. Along with the hippie movement that swept the nation, came increased drug

Marijuana, hashish, and LSD were the sacrament of a new religion of love and freedom that emerged during the decade. Drugs ran rampant as the number of Americans who had samples marijuana skyrocketed from a few hundred thousand to eight million (This Fabulous Century), and from junior high students to Hollywood movie stars, an estimated six million people had experimented with LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs in the sixties. LSD, with its street name of “acid,” is so powerful that it causes crazy hallucinations. Some users claimed they had seen the universe be created, or God or the devil while on acid. Acid was originally used by the CIA in the 1950s and they gave it to unknowing test subjects. They dosed thousands of people with the drug and spent millions of dollars to determine if it could be used as an agent for brainwashing against enemy spies. The drug was deemed too unpredictable for such purposes, so the government began