@xeni recommended this NPR deep-dive: it was amazing.
I can’t find any evidence that spiking Kool-Aid with LSD led to the use of the phrase “don’t drink the Kool-Aid”. Every source I could find traces the origin of the phrase to Jonestown. And it’s indisputable that many of Jones’s followers were forced, some at gunpoint, to drink the cyanide spiked kool-aid. And yes, it was actually Flavour-Aid, but that drink wasn’t sold in the US, so it was described by the US media at the time as kool-aid, which is used as a generic term for commercial fruit flavored punch here.
The phrase IIRC, in the Acid tests was “have you drunk the Kool Aid?”
I understand that is your claim, but I can find no evidence that it is true. Every source I’ve looked at for the origin of that phrase traces it to Jonestown.
Do you have a source for this? That is, that “drinking the Kool Aid” existed as a common expression before the Jim Jones massacre? As an expression related to the Ken Kesey Acid tests it would have a completely different meaning from the Jonestown massacre meaning (to be brainwashed by someone).
I ask because I’ve looked at the etymology of the expression and can’t find it in use before Jonestown, so I’d be interested in seeing some sources.
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