AHC: Straight-edge counterculture in the 1960s

OTL, the various countercultural movements are associated with drug use, especially marijuana and LSD. What sort of PODs are needed to have a countercultural movement that eschews drug use (including tobacco and alcohol)? What effects would such a movement have on American and European society?
 
OTL, the various countercultural movements are associated with drug use, especially marijuana and LSD. What sort of PODs are needed to have a countercultural movement that eschews drug use (including tobacco and alcohol)? What effects would such a movement have on American and European society?

In this scenario, is the envisioned clean-and-sober counterculture the dominant counterculture? Or is it just one among others, some, or even most, of which are still functioning high as a kite?

In addition to what Zachary wrote(which I assume was meant to imply no forbidden-fruit mystique attached to drugs), maybe have a more serious interest in Buddhism and other eastern religions develop. While those religions might not consistently forbid drug use, anyone studying them with close attention would figure out that chemical alterations to the brain are not really seen as neccessary for attaining the kind of enlightenment they were purporting to offer.

Also, maybe find a way to slam the brakes on the LSD Express: either it's never invented in the first place, or the CIA never starts researching it, or Leary decides he'd rather stick with tenure at Harvard than jump into a life of psychedelic crime, or whatever.

As for other psychedelics, again, maybe keep the CIA out of it, or have Aldous Huxley find something else to write about.

I do think that marijuana will always maintain its popularity, given that it has remained in widespread use long after the counterculture ceased to have any hold on the public imagination.
 
The problem with what you're asking is that both the counterculture and straight-edge are reactionary movements (in the literal sense): the counterculture was about casting aside the stodgy and straight-laced 40s and 50s, and straight-edge about pulling back from the wild and excessive 60s and 70s. You can't have an abstinence counterculture emerge without a permissive one to rebel against. Now, I realize you are not literally asking for straight-edge twenty years early, but the point remains that you can't have a cool, subversive counterculture built around rejecting drugs when drugs are still seen as mysterious and taboo.

If the goal is just for an earlier straight-edge-esque culture, then sure: like like @Zachary VIII mentioned, have an early enough POD that essentially quickens cultural developments so earlier decades associated with decadence, and consequently the backlash occurs in TTL's 60s. But if the goal is to have a 60s that roughly resembles ours— anti-establishment, anti-war, civil rights, the sexual revolution and free love— except nobody is getting high… I don't think that can be done.
 
FDR or truman putting in UHC, and thus reducing the incentives to middle class conformism would help with the "permissive" bit.
 
The problem with what you're asking is that both the counterculture and straight-edge are reactionary movements (in the literal sense): the counterculture was about casting aside the stodgy and straight-laced 40s and 50s, and straight-edge about pulling back from the wild and excessive 60s and 70s. ...

Have the counter culture reject the alcohol lubrication of social interactions of the era. ie: Sterling, Draper, Campbell & the other Madmen are baffled by the new generations refusal to 'drink'.
 
It existed (and exists). It's called "the Moonies".

Well, the Moonies are SO square, I'm not sure they really count as counterculture in any recognizable way. I mean, Moon was having cordial meetings with Nixon in the White House, for chrissakes, and the Church is now one of the biggest backers of abstinence education in the USA.

That said, the mass weddings are something that would certainly irk the sensibilities of Middle America, even as Republican suburbanites would otherwise be 100% behind everything else the Moonies claimed to stand for. And supposedly alienating people from their own families probably wouldn't help, either.

Though on that last point, I've known a few western Moonies here in Korea, and while the seemed to have strained relationships with their families, I didn't get the impression that they were totally estranged from them, as you hear about Jehovahs Witnesses and their apostate relatives. They also didn't seem to go out of their way to prosletyze to the unwilling: one of them once recommended to me that I ask a particular woman out, and when I replied that that woman hated the Unification Church, the Moonie replied nonchalantly "Oh, that doesn't matter to me."
 
The problem with what you're asking is that both the counterculture and straight-edge are reactionary movements (in the literal sense): the counterculture was about casting aside the stodgy and straight-laced 40s and 50s, and straight-edge about pulling back from the wild and excessive 60s and 70s. You can't have an abstinence counterculture emerge without a permissive one to rebel against. Now, I realize you are not literally asking for straight-edge twenty years early, but the point remains that you can't have a cool, subversive counterculture built around rejecting drugs when drugs are still seen as mysterious and taboo.

If the goal is just for an earlier straight-edge-esque culture, then sure: like like @Zachary VIII mentioned, have an early enough POD that essentially quickens cultural developments so earlier decades associated with decadence, and consequently the backlash occurs in TTL's 60s. But if the goal is to have a 60s that roughly resembles ours— anti-establishment, anti-war, civil rights, the sexual revolution and free love— except nobody is getting high… I don't think that can be done.

I tend to agree. A straight-edge counterculture would be a reaction to the hippies in addition to the government. The hippies were a reaction to LBJ and the war; a straight-edge movement would be a reaction to Nixon, and that means one thing - distruft of the government.

So in addition to distrusting the government, these people distrust drugs, are probably monogamous, and are likely buttoned-up and serious. I see them as a group that distrusts any major institutions, including churches and corporations - many of them would be self-employed or run employee-owned companies. They would buy local, grow local, eschew air and train travel in favor of cars, eschew hotels in favor of private homes, and likely end up being very hard workers well into their golden years. These people, assuming they come of age in the early 70s, would be in their mid-60s today and probably have no interest in retirement.

Another thing they avoid? Public education. Community schools or homeschooling would be popular. Expect a lot of them to groom their children to go into the family business.

I would expect them to embrace civil rights, equality among the races and sexes, and access to abortion and birth control.
 
When the Summer of Love broke out in Haight-Ashbury in 1967, it was dominated by college students on summer break, living free of dress codes that were quite restrictive. Part of the perception is that reporters born before 1930 quickly dwelled on drugs, alcohol, promiscuity and runaway underage teenagers.

The number of people deep into these exploits was small compared to the supporters who were less reckless but still supported the counterculture positions on war, the draft, birth control, civil rights, lower voting age, music, artwork, and most of all, dress codes. In other words, the campus demeanor of the early seventies was, in effect, a toned down counterculture. I know because I was there. Alcohol abuse was a problem, for some. But, by 1973, the draft ended and so did the protests and demonstrations. The counterculture had gone mainstream with music hair styles and fashion. An example in fiction was in the TV show All in the Family. Mike Stivic was a bleeding heart liberal, shown as more of a hippie in a flashback episode. But he did not do drugs, did not get drunk and was faithful to his wife while maintaining his political stance.
 
When the Summer of Love broke out in Haight-Ashbury in 1967, it was dominated by college students on summer break, living free of dress codes that were quite restrictive. Part of the perception is that reporters born before 1930 quickly dwelled on drugs, alcohol, promiscuity and runaway underage teenagers.

Well, Joan Didion was born in 1934, and "drugs, alcohol, promiscuity and runaway underage teenagers" is pretty much about ALL she dwelled on in covering Haight-Ashbury. (But yeah, she was probably about the same generation and outlook as people born in the late 1920s.)
 
The number of people deep into these exploits was small compared to the supporters who were less reckless but still supported the counterculture positions on war, the draft, birth control, civil rights, lower voting age, music, artwork, and most of all, dress codes. In other words, the campus demeanor of the early seventies was, in effect, a toned down counterculture. I know because I was there. Alcohol abuse was a problem, for some. But, by 1973, the draft ended and so did the protests and demonstrations. The counterculture had gone mainstream with music hair styles and fashion. An example in fiction was in the TV show All in the Family. Mike Stivic was a bleeding heart liberal, shown as more of a hippie in a flashback episode. But he did not do drugs, did not get drunk and was faithful to his wife while maintaining his political stance.

Oddly enough, though, it was in the later, jumped-the-shark era of AITF(the ones where the Bunkers adopted a Puerto Rican foster child, for chrissakes) that Mike started acting like a hippie again. There was an episode where he got arrested for marching naked at a protest, and by the time of the spin-off Gloria, in '82, it is revealed that he had skipped off to a California commune with a younger female student. The latter, I suppose, could be justified as a midlife crisis, albeit of the early-onset variety.
 
Well, Joan Didion was born in 1934, and "drugs, alcohol, promiscuity and runaway underage teenagers" is pretty much about ALL she dwelled on in covering Haight-Ashbury. (But yeah, she was probably about the same generation and outlook as people born in the late 1920s.)
The Silent Generation (1927-1945) breaks into two distinct phases. The first part (1927-1934) consists of Korean War veterans who share much with those from WWII. In 1967, Mark Rudd announced "Don't trust anyone over 30" to identify a generation gap that would forever alienate those born before 1935 from those born after 1939. Of course, those born during WWII were Vietnam eligible, like the first part of the Baby Boom (1946-1964).
 
Oddly enough, though, it was in the later, jumped-the-shark era of AITF(the ones where the Bunkers adopted a Puerto Rican foster child, for chrissakes) that Mike started acting like a hippie again. There was an episode where he got arrested for marching naked at a protest, and by the time of the spin-off Gloria, in '82, it is revealed that he had skipped off to a California commune with a younger female student. The latter, I suppose, could be justified as a midlife crisis, albeit of the early-onset variety.

Norman Lear had to be careful as he deployed All in the Family. He based it on a British sitcom, Till Death Us Do Part. There, the characters were Mike and Alf, Mike the Irish Catholic and Alf the old stubborn Anglican. Lear wanted to copy the ethnic conflict but had concern over opening old wounds of attacks on the Irish. Then Spiro Agnew broke the ice by calling his VP opponent (Ed Muskie, a contraction of Marciszewski) a “Polack,” igniting a Polish joke revival. Polish jokes relate to no European conflict, they originated as immigrants before WW1 (like my grandparents) floundered over the unfamiliarity of the American urban landscape. So it was benign bigotry (for the time) when Archie called Mike “meathead Polack.” Notice that the attacks on Mike eclipsed the attacks on all other minority groups. Mike had to be depicted as a serious, responsible student, unquestionably smarter than Archie.

Cycle ahead to the later series, Mike was re-radicalized.
 
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