Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test: Are We There Yet?

:Life On the Bus

Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test tells the story of a charismatic leader, Ken Kesey, and the Pranksters who follow him. The story is one of pushing limits, opening new worlds, and creating an entirely new way of life, all of which is made easier by copious drug use. Kesey's mission is to spread this experience to all people. It is no great leap from this to see Kesey as the founder of a new sort of religion. Ken Kesey founded the Acid Head religion, and learned through it that power is only useful when it can be freely given and surrendered.

Kesey first experiences acid, or LSD, in a clinical setting. A friend tells him about a clinic in Menlo Park that is paying volunteers seventy-five dollars a day for testing. During this testing, when Kesey encounters LSD, he says that he was "in a realm of consciousness he had never dreamed of before." (40) Kesey begins then to share this experience with those close to him, and to open their eyes to what has thus far been unattainable to them. He moves to La Honda with select members of his Perry Lane community, among others, and this is the beginning of the Merry Pranksters.

At this stage, before Kesey and his group of followers can be called anything like a movement, the situation is closer to that of a leader and disciples. Kesey, having discovered LSD and thus a new way of seeing the world around him, feels a strong urge to share his discovery. The Pranksters crave his leadership and guidance, and thus, with the help of a synchronicity obtained while tripping, a sort of "informally but closely knit association, bound together by the new experience, whose nature the founder has revealed and interpreted," (128, Wach) is formed.