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One of the most enduring figures of the ‘60s counterculture is someone who once rode a bus across America and took the country along for what has been one long, strange trip.

Before the embarking on that mind-bending journey, Ken Kesey was a promising young author whose first novel, <em>One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest</em>, was a huge success in 1962. Few in the Pat Boone era knew, however, that Kesey’s depiction of American society as a mental hospital was inspired by his pioneering experiences with psychoactive drugs like mescaline and LSD.

As a graduate student in creative writing at Stanford, Kesey was hard-up for cash. He expected to earn a little pocket change after unwittingly volunteering as a test subject in CIA-run MKULTRA drug experiments. Instead he walked away with a transformed consciousness and some stolen LSD to share with his friends.

Along with writing much of <em>Cuckoo’s Nest’s</em> first draft on hallucinogens, Kesey and his crew (calling themselves The Merry Pranksters) plunged further into the day-glo depths of a new psychedelic enlightenment. These heady explorations culminated in 1964 with their intrepid cross-country trip aboard a multi-colored bus named Furthur, spreading their gospel of LSD to the masses.

Their zonked-out adventures had mixed results, leading to the Grateful Dead and Woodstock as well as Syd Barrett and Altamont. But its legacy also manifests today in hacky sack-playing hippie wannabes still following Kesey’s dictum “to get out and pray to the sky to appreciate the sunshine; otherwise you’re just a lizard standing there with the sun shining on you.”

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