Ken Elton Kesey was born on September 17, 1935 in La Junta, Colorado. Growing up, Kesey was involved in wrestling and football. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Oregon in 1957 and married his high school sweetheart, Norma Faye Haxby, in 1956. He had three sons and a daughter in 1966 with Carolyn Adams. He later won a scholarship to Stanford University's creative writing program to become an author. In 1960, he worked as an aide in the psychiatric department of a hospital and volunteered at the Veterans' Administration Hospital as a paid experimental subject in a study conducted by the U.S. Army in which he was given mind-altering drugs and asked to report on their effects. . Time passed and at the age of 40 and 50 he continued his passion and wrote. In 1984, Kesey's son Jed died in a car accident. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay However, Kesey continued to perform and often appeared on stage at Grateful Dead concerts. At the age of 66, Kesey died in Eugene, Oregon, on November 10, 2001, due to complications following surgery for liver cancer. After many experiences with drugs, Kesey began to believe that drugs had great potential. After writing a few books, he believed that the key to “individual liberation” was psychedelic drugs, and he often wrote under the influence of them. When everyone was focused on the space race, Kesey saw psychoactives as “tools for self-exploration, learning more about ourselves and others, and finding new ways of seeing the world already around us.” During the experiments, Kesey also tried ingesting the drugs to get a sense of other people's perceptions of the world. Kesey became so "addicted" to this experiment, that he even convinced his friends to try electroshock therapy to get his novel accurate. LSD experimentation and associated parties, also known as "Acid Tests", grew in popularity. However, in 1965, Ken was caught for marijuana possession and after faking a suicide and fleeing to Mexico, he returned to face charges. This experiment also introduced Kesey to several people for the characters in his book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which examined the abuses of the system against the individual. The book projects Kesey's interest in altered consciousness. He also used his experience working in the hospital as inspiration for his book, which became an instant success after its publication in 1962. In my honest opinion, I think Kesey is absolutely crazy. I don't understand his point of view and I don't like the fact that he wrote his books under the influence of drugs. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay This shows that Kesey was not in the right state of mind and did not “really” write the book. Yes, he is the author, but mentally I don't think Ken Elton Kesey wrote it. I believe you should have the “right” mind and mindset when writing a book. However, I haven't read the book yet, so I guess I judge a book by its cover.