Culture - LSD Renaissance

[Alias: V]

Recently a friend and I were discussing the two topics that I love best, history and drug use; she's a history major and I'm a recent devotee of anything psychoactive. I was explaining to her how I was convinced that LSD is almost solely responsible for many of the ways society has developed over the past half-century. It has left its mark in biology, literature, music, computer programing, philosophy, and you can even see how it has affected areas such as TV advertisements. Its fingerprint in indelible. Because of this, I argued, we are now living in what I would call the beginning of the Psychedelic Renaissance.

That's when she told me about a theory she once heard. Apparently there are some who link the coffee trade inseparably with the Renaissance. Coffee started becoming extremely popular in Europe around the same time that many scientific and artistic advances were being made. For many of the intellectuals of that time, it was very normal to spend days in coffee houses exchanging ideas. I know from experience that caffeine can most definitely increase my internal thought processes.

She doesn't do any drugs outside of maintaining her caffeine addiction, and I thought it was fitting that we were both discussing this over coffee in a coffee shop. But she inspired me to do a little research on the topic, and I found out that coffee was banned by numerous religious institutions when it was first introduced, which sounds kind of familiar...

I just thought this was interesting. It seems to me like a plausible theory, and I'm sure there were more factors contributing to the Renaissance, but I wonder how much the coffee trade really did impact the ideas coming out of that time period, and if we really are on the verge of another similar period of discovery due to LSD and other psychedelics. Thoughts?

Reputation Comments on this post:

	interesting thread
	Fascinating idea and worthy of discussion.