rant · moment 20 of 21
Aging Hippies, Drug Culture, and the Search for Enlightenment
from 2017, A Year Of Love And Peace · #76
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
7 minTim and Ray discuss watching burnt-out former hippies now running diners and Airbnbs in Woodstock, reflecting on Tim's own drug past, how substances can become a master you serve, and whether psychedelics or spiritual practice actually deliver lasting enlightenment, tying back to the Wormwood son's hollow realization.
- 57:46Tim on aging hippies living in communes and how some turned out to be psychopaths and murderers.
- 58:18Tim's personal history with drugs and observing a young opener who doesn't understand the culture.
- 58:43Tim describes sitting in rooms with lava lamps and Hendrix posters getting high, years past any real meaning.
- 58:56Aging Woodstock-era diner workers have moved from acid to oxycodone and other harder drugs.
- 59:57Building your life around anything—money, sex, drugs—makes you a servant to an inhuman thing.
- 1:00:36Tim's cocaine, alcohol, pills, and weed once ran his life without his knowing he was taking orders from them.
- 1:00:51People conflate drug use with enlightenment and spiritual truth, but end up somewhere dark they can't return from.
- 1:01:58Story about the Dalai Lama allegedly being unaffected by acid because he was already enlightened.
- 1:02:54At Woodstock, New York, some aging hippies show a kind of darkness when drugs became their whole life.
- 1:03:58Making a room of 300 people laugh on stage brings no lasting happiness or peace—drugs won't find it either.
- 1:04:14Stand-up comedy also won't deliver the deeper peace everybody's actually searching for.