The history of pop culture and psychedelia!

By Spliff Gachette
Originally uploaded by vitostreet

The word psychedelic is an English term coined from the Greek words for "soul," ψυχή (psyche), and "manifest," δήλος (delos).

A psychedelic experience is characterized by the perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly ordinary fetters.

Psychedelic states are an array of experiences elicited by sensory deprivation as well as by psychedelic substances. Such experiences include hallucinations, changes of perception, synesthesia, altered states of awareness, mystical states, and occasionally states resembling psychosis.

The term was first coined as a noun in 1957 by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond as an alternative descriptor for hallucinogenic drugs in the context of psychedelic psychotherapy. Timothy Leary, who was largely responsible for the popularization of the term "psychedelic",[citation needed] was a well-known proponent of their use, as was Aldous Huxley. Both, however, advanced widely different opinions on the broad use of psychedelics by state and civil society. Leary promulgated the idea of such substances as a panacea, while Huxley suggested that only the cultural and intellectual elite should partake of entheogens systematically.

The use of psychedelic drugs became widespread in the modern West in the mid-1960s.