An Elusive, Unique Psychedelic Trip

Did you ever have a dream where after you woke up you wish you could fall back asleep and continue the dream? Or the next night you thought about your dream before you went to bed so maybe you could dream it again? Taking acid is a lot like dreaming, sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. Closing your eyes at night is just like slipping acid in your mouth- you don’t know if it will be fun and full of adventure or bad and in a stage of panic. Like dreams, each LSD trip differs from any previous trip and you never know how it will unfold. Dreams are a series of images, sounds, and feelings occurring in the mind during sleep and personal experiences are often incorporated in dreams (Wikipedia 1). The outcome of an LSD trip is usually determined by the person’s state of mind while taking the drug and the setting is the environment around the user at the time (Erowid 1). The Pranksters in The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test written by Tom Wolfe take acid many times throughout the duration of the novel. Wolfe describes some of the images, feelings and sounds the Pranksters have while they are tripping. The novel also tells the stories of the people who had bad trips and of the many different locations where the Pranksters took acid. The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test is proof that psychedelic trips on acid are as unique and varied as the minds of the people who experience them.

Ken Kesey, a young, talented novelist, and group of followers known as the Merry Pranksters participate in wild experiments with LSD at Kesey’s house in La Honda, California. He sets up hi-fi speakers on the roof of the house, hangs nutty mobiles from branches, nailed wild paintings to tree trunks, and set up all sorts of recording apparatuses inside the house (Wolfe 58). This creates a wild psychedelic experience when on LSD and is focused on experiments with light and noise. Sandy’s LSD trip turns particles captured by light into neon dust that you see in the atmosphere and now feel flowing up from the heart into the brain like an electric fountain (Wolfe 59). Some of the Perry Lane people would lie on the floor rapping back and forth while passing the tape-recorder microphone in the air so the voices cut in and out ending with interesting results (Wolfe 58). According to Marc Anderson, “probably the best way to use LSD would be in one’s home with several trusting supportive friends ”(Erowid 1). Kesey’s house back behind the woods with neighbors a mile away is a perfect getaway to have wild experiments in private.

The group of Pranksters got the idea to venture out and take a bus east to New York that they painted to say Furthur. On a test run in the bus, the Pranksters were zonked after taking acid orange juice, when a cop pulls them over and starts going through a traffic-safety inspection (Wolfe 69). Neal Cassady, one of the Pranksters, talks to the cop who only gives them a warning while the rest roll around in grass giggling (Wolfe 70). An experience that could have easily been bad causing a bad trip luckily turned out to be okay in the end. On the second day of the journey Paula Sundsten takes acid orange juice for the first time, runs towards a lake in the Arizona desert thinking the slimy kelp sparkles like a diamond (Wolfe 75). Babbs yells “Gretchin Fetchin the Slime Queen which later turns into Gretch making it Paula’s new nickname. Not all the acid trips while on the bus run smoothly. Hagen’s girl drinks the acid orange juice, sits in the back of the bus with nothing on, and becomes Stark Naked in their movie (Wolfe 83). The bus pulls up to Larry McMurty’s house, McMurty and his son come outside, and Stark Naked yells “Frankie” over and over (Wolfe 86). She runs off the bus, picks up this boy and hugs him thinking it’s her little boy, and gets picked up by the cops where she is taken to a psychiatric ward (Wolfe 87). Unfortunately for Stark Naked she could not stay “on the bus” both physically and spiritually while the others continued their journey.


After heading back to La Honda, the Pranksters continued to take LSD, however their cultural movement was beginning to rise and was drawing in many different crowds of people. They put up a huge sign at Kesey’s place to welcome the Hell’s Angels that was fifteen feet long, three feet high, and in red white and blue (Wolfe 169). The Angels drug of choice was beer so LSD was an unknown substance that made them very peaceful (Wolfe 172). The party went on for two days with everyone having a wonderful time and ended with a marvelous alliance between the two groups. Next was the Pranksters fantasy to go to the Beatles show and invite them back to La Honda with a sign out front welcoming the Beatles (Wolfe 198). The Pranksters take acid gas and hop on the bus to go to the show (Wolfe 201). There was barbed wire fences making it feel like a concentration camp, a crowd of girls are caught in a state of sheer poison mad cancer according to Kesey, and the group all get bad vibrations (Wolfe 207). Even though none of them had a bad trip, the setting was uncomfortable so the Merry Pranksters leave dispirited and not fulfilling their fantasy (Wolfe 209). Later when they start having huge parties of Acid Tests, a girl name Clair Brush freaks out on her first after taking acid spiked Kool-Aid for the first time (Wolfe 274). The Acid tests became a huge success and luckily for Clair she was okay after her trip ended.

Each time you go to bed or slip LSD into your mouth you hope that it’s better than the last dream/trip you had. Dreams unlike LSD, end when you wake up and no matter if it was good or bad and you continue to live your life. An acid trip ends when the effects start to ware off and when the trip ends badly, it can change your life forever. Bad reactions to LSD are almost always dependent on the user (Erowid 4). The psychological effects, or also known as the trip, also depend on previous experiences, state of mind, environment, dose strength, and they also vary from trip to trip (Wikepedia 5). Although there were a few unlucky ones, the Merry Pranksters enjoyed chasing after an elusive good trip on LSD in the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Works Cited:

Anderson, Marc. "Psychoactive Vaults." Erowid. 10 Apr. 2009 .

"Dream -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 10 Apr. 2009 .

"Lysergic acid diethylamide -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 10 Apr. 2009 .

Wolfe, Tom. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. New York: Picador, 1968.

Images:

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