Are you…cool, man?

Psychedelia.  We all know how awesome it is, and how necessary audio and visual input is for the stimulation of the psychedelic experience.  Similarly, the types of input that are the most conducive to the experience are those that somehow represent the psychedelic experience.  Sometimes these representations portray a lost, wandering feeling, or some kind of contact with the sublime, or a picture that evolves and morphs into another.  Alice in Wonderland is an example.  ”Curiouser and Curiouser,” as Alice says.  other examples include the artwork of Alex Grey and the music of countless bands (incl. Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, need I go on…?)These types of artistic expression appeal to me because I recognize a part of my own conscious, or my own experience in them.  I wonder if they appeal to straight people (at all, or if so, how).  How universal is drug experimentation?  I see television shows where characters that appear to be straight, well-adjusted people reference past drug use, or drugs in general.  Has marijuana (or other drugs) become a universal part of American culture?  Is the populace “cool, man?”We (by that I mean I) are growing up as the children of hippies.  Even the people that are squares still grew up during those times, and are far from clueless.  Except maybe the Amish.  They seem to be pretty clueless regardless of what generation they belong to.