This book is my story as well as the story of our generation: where I went, who I met, what I saw, what I did, and how it has affected my life. It is told in an uncensored and profane manner, sometimes tender, sometimes brutal, just like life.

In the 1960s, young Americans were on a search for more than that which was presented to them by the establishment. Their parents grew up with the privations of the Great Depression to then be presented with World War II.

Born into the booming postwar economy, the counterculture generation was raised in a spiritual wasteland of materialism concocted by Madison Avenue and puked out by the newest form of mass  communication,  television. 

The emergence of rock and roll as a musical art form in the middle 50s was the first crack in the American cultural monolith. A youth culture, something not seen before in America, coalesced around it. In the mid 60s the Beatles widened this cultural gap by making it cool for men to have long hair.

The CIA bought up the world’s supply of LSD in 1952 and tested it on human subjects, essentially releasing it into the general population giving rise to the counterculture. Without the CIA there would have been no hippies.

Rejecting what they saw as the empty materialism of their parents, the 60s generation sought contact with spirit, the essence of God existing in all sentient beings.

Arising from the convergence of rock n' roll, LSD, and the Vietnam War, freak culture lasted for a while and then it disappeared. Bits and pieces of it live on, integrated into the mainstream culture. It was one hell of a ride while it lasted.

I was a good Catholic boy, an altar boy, Boy Scout, and second prize winner of the American Legion Post 138 “Americanism Today and Tomorrow” essay contest in seventh grade. I went from being a working class Pennsylvania kid to a long-haired misfit adrift with my peers in a sea of social, political and spiritual alienation. I defied the government and my father’s wishes when I successfully resisted the Vietnam draft. Embarking on a spiritual journey, I explored altered states of consciousness through psychedelic drugs.

Some of the highlights include the psychologically damaging effects of Catholicism, dropping acid, being involved in an effort to assassinate presidential candidate George Wallace in 1968, and a detailed account of beating the draft on my induction day.

This book is illustrated with clippings from underground publications of the day that help give the reader a view of the 1960s counterculture from the inside.

5.0 out of 5 stars A captivating journey back in time - must read