A Bad Trip Summary

Bukowski begins the story by explaining how acid and color television grow in popularity simultaneously. He describes how both color television and LSD alter the user's reality. Acid's virtue is its ability to show the user truths that are not evident to others, and not governable by political bodies. On a particular acid trip, Bukowski discovers the charade of the world, of society, and of the people who both conform to it and uphold it.

A Bad Trip Analysis

This piece reads more as a cry for help than as a story. Bukowski writes a diagnosis for all that is wrong in American society. Bukowski feels that citizens today are anesthetized, dulled, and conditioned. He knows that industry is the tool that dulls men's minds. Ironically, he can only express these observations on reality when he is in an...