1960s fashion man picture

Currently there is a phenomenon called "rave parties" that essentially try to bring back the 1960s counterculture in fashion, drug use, and attitudes. I can't understand this, myself. From observing the life of my older brother Charlie (not his real name), who was a teenager in the 1960s, it's unfathomable to me why anyone would wish for the 1960s to come back They were devastating enough the first time around.

When my teenage brother took his first LSD trip, it changed the lives of my family forever. Charlie wrote in a letter to his girlfriend that his experience with the drug was a bummer, that he had felt he was being swarmed and repeatedly stung by bees. What had really stung my brother were the ideas launched in the 1960s by cultural prophets like the Beatles - who instructed him and other American youths, through their music and their own drug-taking habits, to "turn off their minds, relax, and float downstream," visit "strawberry fields where nothing is real," and "picture yourself on a boat on a river" with Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (which, fans noticed, shortens to LSD).

Because of the flashback effects of the drug, my brother gets a free LSD trip for the rest of his life. A man who once had a genius-level IQ, Charlie has been relegated to living on welfare and odd jobs. His experiences with marijuana, amphetamines, and acid have caused him to be hospitalized at the cost of thousands of dollars, first at my parents' expense and now at the government's.

Charlie and other kids read magazine articles in the '60s presenting Dr. Timothy Leary's use of LSD as interesting and experimental. (Until his death in 1996, Leary was active in the new "rave" movement of the '90s.) My brother lapped this up, along with the Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix, and the drug-soaked comedy of Cheech and Chong. Charlie and many others modeled themselves on the musical "Hair," read Rolling Stone and the LA Free Press (no matter where they lived) and were encouraged by all of these sources to indulge in full-blown cultural rebellion.

The great love of my brother's life has been marijuana, and it has taken much more from him than it has given. Along with many brain cells, his motivation and ambition to be a productive member of society have pretty much gone up in smoke. His only act of ambition since becoming a drug user has been to sell the marijuana he is so fond of to other people. Charlie's drug problems and violent episodes once got him committed to a state hospital. Through some of his friends, he was even able to get marijuana inside the hospital, actually selling it to other patients to the point where the hospital did not want him back.

My parents, like many who grew up in the Depression, served in World War II, and then came home to rebuild America and raise families, were in no way prepared to raise the rebellious, self-centered Baby Boomers of the 1960s. Many turned for advice to experts who counseled a permissive attitude toward children. Later these parents were plagued by selfish monsters to whom they had become servants.

My parents wanted to give their children material things and life advantages they had never known themselves while growing up. They didn't count on their generosity coinciding with a cultural upheaval that washed away many of the bulwarks of personal restraint and responsibility. How could they have anticipated that?

Charlie was a middle child in our family. I've heard it said that middle children spend their lives trying to find their identity. If so, the 1960s was a decade filled with middle children. One thing Charlie did know was what he didn't want to be - like my father, who was a solid professional and businessman. Charlie also didn't want to go into the military and fight in Vietnam, yet he was so self-centered that he wouldn't perform government service as a conscientious objector either. When the draft lottery made him vulnerable, he decided to abuse drugs to the point where he would be ineligible for military service.

Drugs like LSD and amphetamines (speed) make people behave in ways that are unpredictable and scary. Once while on speed, Charlie punched and kicked our father to the point where he damaged his ribs. He would also use profanity, slap our mother, and smash her wedding china. He would steal money from my parents. My badly stressed parents got prescriptions for tranquilizers and sleeping pills, and my brother stole those, overdosing on them. My parents eventually had locks placed on all the doors in our house. Living with Charlie was a nightmare. At school I got involved in every extra-curricular activity I could so that I wouldn't have to spend time at home when Charlie was there. Home became a place to escape.

My father finally had to publicly disown Charlie as his son. Charlie became dependent on the government, with medical and accident bills piling up. Occasionally he would hold a job delivering pizzas or cleaning offices, but he was much happier to let the taxpayers take care of his living expenses.

This was a totally different set of values from my parents, who viewed the idea of being on public assistance as a total disgrace. Both of my parents worked long and hard to avoid ever having to rely on the government. True 1930s babies, they worked, saved, and invested as if the next economic depression was just around the corner.

Our family eventually concluded that it was necessary to leave the house my parents had worked for to move to an apartment in another suburb where we wouldn't be victims of Charlie's drug-induced tantrums. When we were able, both my oldest brother and I escaped to different states to be away from Charlie.

Charlie, now 44, had an opportunity to go to college and get a degree, but turned it down in favor of using and selling hallucinogens and living off of federal and state welfare payments for a quarter-century. And so the Great Society programs launched by Lyndon Johnson in the name of a minority underclass allowed a burned-out middle class white kid to continue his "countercultural, alternative" lifestyle. Charlie gets Food Stamps, general assistance, and medical care. Most of his income comes from the Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) program.

Until very recently, it was perfectly acceptable for people on SSDI to have drug habits and still be able to collect their government benefits. Now they have to hide them more carefully. Charlie has been involved in a government vocational/technical "training program" for several years, but still doesn't have an occupation that would enable him to live without government aid. My oldest brother, who works in hotel and restaurant management, has frequently offered to get Charlie restaurant jobs that could lead to a supervisory position, but Charlie has refused these opportunities because he "didn't want to mess up his government benefits." If Charlie gets cancer from the marijuana and cigarettes he has smoked for years, the taxpayers will have another bill to pay for his medical treatment.

There are people in America who believe that cultural icons like musicians, actors and actresses, and writers have no influence on the behavior of people in everyday life. There are people who don't believe that songs, films, or television programs have the power to inspire people to real-life copycat behaviors. But I know how deeply my brother loved and was influenced by, in particular, the Beatles and their songs. After they tried LSD, he tried LSD, because he wanted to be like them.

If the people who make Gatorade find it worth their while to spend millions encouraging kids to "Be like Mike" by drinking their product, they must have discovered that the ads cause their sales to go up. Why is it so hard for people to believe that kids will sometimes engage in bad behavior too because they want to be like their heroes?

Americans need to be careful about the figures they lift up and the behavior they honor. Government leaders need to be careful about the programs they propose. If the 1960s have taught us anything it should be to be skeptical of world-reordering schemes brought forward by cultural idols and politicians. We should also realize that public solutions to behavioral problems will never work unless they stimulate a person's individual desire to make a better life for himself through his own efforts, rather than creating destructive dependencies and enabling people to continue bad habits. We are still suffering in this country from the effects of cultural and political decisions made thirty years ago. I suggest it's time to do what we can to say goodbye to the '60s forever.