1960's In A Nutshell

The Decade of Peace, Love, and Harmony: The 1960's

Many called the 1960's "The decade of reform", but not everyone knows all that happened back in those days. When Kennedy was elected president, everyone finally saw the light and thought things were going to change for good. But, after a couple years, they quickly realized that things weren't looking up like they expected them to. But still to this day, it is believed that America now would not be the same without the events of the 60's. The 1960's were all about the post war baby boom, the drug usage sky rocketing, and most of all, the music and dance.

World War two was a long and very hard time for couples who had a loved one in the war. Many were lost in battle, but the ones that were not lost had come back to be with their loved ones for the first time in a long time. But along with them seeing each other, an extreme amount of affection was shown because of the long periods away from one another. Almost 75 million babies were born from 1946-1964, leaving all these babies to hit their teens by the mid to late 60's (Bradley). Nobody looked at it as a bad thing, everyone was just enjoying having their loved on back. In fact, they enjoyed it a little too much. These so called 'Boomers' were treated with royalty almost all of their childhood. At lunch, they would receive free milk, and other special child catering (House). Along with that, they had to build new schools to support and house all of these new kids in their middle ages. But it got even worse when they got to their teens; They felt invincible. These Boomers knew that they had changed society, and they knew that they were in control. Therefore, they started to rebel. Drugs, recklessness, and whatever else you can imagine, that's how these kids reacted. This only led to worse and worse things as the 60's went on.

Once the teens knew they could do what they wanted, they had switched over to worse and worse things to get through their days. Everyone in the 60's began to get curious about their life, and what they should do with it. This is when Marijuana came in; Helping them "explore" their new lives and find what they should do with it. On average, 1 in every 5 teenagers of this time consumed Marijuana on a regular basis (Bacig). But once these kids stopped getting a good enough buzz off of that, the new drugs like Acid came around. LSD, or acid, is today described as what kept the 60's together and what gave people a new look on life (Bacig). This drug let people look at things in a Psychedelic outlook, instead of just the regular life they had to live. The scientist, Albert Hoffman, who had discovered LSD described his experience in one sentence; "Little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes." (Bacig). When the word about his experience got out, everybody had to try this new found drug and had to experience