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In the midst of all this "co-optation," came the onslaught of hard drugs. In the wake of the Government's Operation Intercept, which slowed the flow of marijuana out of Mexico, grass became expensive and hard to get. When rumors linked LSD with chromosomal damage, the counterculture also turned away from that No. 1 mind tripper. In 1969, the culture switched in large numbers to Methedrine or speed, a drug that led many to chaotic, aggressive behavior. Then last year the heroin pushers moved in, and the damage was complete. The drug deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin were symbolic; across the country, thousands were dying of overdoses, needle infections and drug-related accidents. Terrorized by the influx of debilitating drugs, diluted by Woolworth hippies, the movement limped through the past two years a paranoid, fragmented version of its former self. Its political wing, which served mainly as theater, degenerated into bad theater, then the insane violence of the Weatherman. No longer buoyed by hope of a gradual takeover of the System, the culture finally faced up to the fact that General Motors was not going to go away and that some accommodation would have to be made with the larger society.
Now, as the masses of the movement's first generation leave school, they are faced with a grim choice of 1) continuing to exist outside the economy by a combination of panhandling, peddling their handicrafts and occasionally dealing dope; 2) becoming true outlaws and dealing dope on a large scale; 3) taking a straight job.
None of these alternatives is especially palatable for the members of the counterculture. In fact, they represent the end of much of the movement's dream. In that dilemma, some straight jobs have become acceptable. "Driving cabs is the In thing for hippies right now in New York," says the underground cartoonist Mad John Peck. In Berkeley, the freaks have formed their own cab company, and the cabs are psychedelically painted bombs navigated solely by longhairs. Being a letter carrier is also acceptable, and mailmen with Prince Valiant cuts abound. Some straight newspapers like the Boston Globe have allowed invasions of freak reporters, and "a lot of freaks are into cybernetics," according to Peck. But the acceptable straight fields are few, and most of them are near the bottom of the economic ladder.
All this means that the counterculture, the world's first (and probably last) socio-political movement to grow out of the force of electrically amplified music, has reached a grudging, melancholy truce with the straight world it set out to save. Surrounded, ensnared by a modern industrialized economic system, the movement has become fragmented, confused. That immaculate peaceful energy with which it began has been transmuted into a vast, yawning sense of futility, and there seems no way out.