Unmask Alice Quotes

“For the next twenty years, adults in every corner of America would charge D&D (and its media cousins, heavy metal and horror) with destroying young lives.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“We’re all part of history; only the viewpoint changes.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“When obvious fraud no longer rates attention, let alone rebuke, things get ugly fast, and even good people can believe the very worst.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“That’s the dirty secret. Drugs work. When life hurts, they stop the pain. Who could argue with that?”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“That can work, sometimes, but not because the rain ever stops. Instead, you just learn to live with less sunshine.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“Both had sought psychiatric help, only to discover a paradox: in America, mental health was both undervalued and overpriced.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“As the lunch hour passed, Nixon and Linkletter talked about the drug issue—two wealthy, aging white men squinting through a keyhole.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“In New York, the CIA went the extra mile, launching its own brothel, complete with heroin-addicted prostitutes. In exchange for dosing johns with LSD (usually via tainted booze), the women got their daily fix, immunity from arrest, and a hundred bucks a night. The agents, in turn, got to watch through one-way mirrors as the hapless men went bonkers. They called it “Operation: Midnight Climax.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“You can’t reason with a herd. If you try, it only squeals louder.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“Was it progress or calamity? It all depended on your view, and on your vision of America.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“Those who needed biblical imagery stat could look to the Sahara Desert, where, for the first time in recorded history, it snowed for half an hour.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“It was cancer, said Marcella, and Duchess had been in a lot of pain. Pain that couldn’t be stopped. The vet had put her down. Alden listened. Duchess was dead, and he hadn’t been there for her. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“By 1971, the average American runaway was a white, middle-class, suburban girl who was barely fifteen.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“We project our own paranoia onto the young. They are the dark and confused result of what we have failed to be.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“Across America, more and more people felt a gut-level tension—a sense that the country was coming apart. The Vietnam War was finally over, and Watergate was finished, but there hadn’t been any closure. Nixon had fled to California and was living in splendor, shielded by an executive pardon. North and South Vietnam had become a single Communist power, exactly what the US had spent fifty-eight thousand lives to prevent. The dollar was falling, jobs were scarce, and inflation was nearing double digits. Overseas companies like Honda, Sony, and Volkswagen, from nations the US had bombed into powder, were surging ahead, shaping the future and setting the rules. What did Americans do with this mounting, irresolvable anger? They turned on each other, splitting down the middle over “values,” a catchall way to judge complete strangers. Gay rights, affirmative action, school prayer, pornography—everywhere you looked, the ground was shifting, and the old customs wobbled. Was it progress or calamity? It all depended on your view, and on your vision of America. By decade’s end, a violent populism had spread to the airwaves, where it postured as the voice of God. Overwhelmingly white, male, and southern, the new evangelists harnessed a growing resentment: the sense that families were under assault. “I believe this is the last generation before Jesus comes,” said the Reverend Jerry Falwell, leader of the Moral Majority political-action group. “All this homosexuality, unisex, the women’s movement, pornography on movies and television . . . I see the disintegration of the home.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“We project our own paranoia onto the young. They are the dark and confused result of what we have failed to be. —Art Linkletter, Drugs at My Doorstep, 1973”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“For Latter-day Saints, the problem was definitional. What exactly was witchcraft? Joseph Smith, who’d founded the Church, had communed with spirits, told fortunes, and used magic rocks called “seer stones” to decipher mystical writing. Was that witchcraft? If not, why not?”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“In all reported cases, the clown turned out to be “Cinderbritches,” the local fire department’s mascot, who—accompanied by a uniformed firefighter—visited schools to warn kids about the dangers of fires.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“From the Daily Herald, November 1, 1981: Provo police have asked school officials to warn children not to accept candy or stamps from strangers. The stamps could contain glue laced with LSD. “Timpanogos, Franklin and Grandview elementary schools have reported seeing a male dressed as a clown in the vicinity of the schools,” says Provo Police Chief Swen Nielsen. “At Timpanogos, children said a clown was giving away candy and stamps.” Nielsen says in all instances, Provo police canvassed neighborhoods but could not find evidence that the clown was the same individual or if LSD-laced stamps were involved. “We’ve gotten varying descriptions of the clown,” adds Nielsen. “There’s no doubt a clown has been in the area of elementary schools. But whether it is the same clown, or if he is doing anything illegal, is still a question.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“As educators, they realized that the game could teach without teaching. Basic math, spatial relations, narrative structure, predictive reasoning, and above all, human interaction. Things, in other words, that football or baseball offered, but without the physical boundaries. At the gaming table, you could be blind and missing both legs, but still lead your comrades to glory.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“Things felt dangerous, like an ongoing earthquake.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“This was part of the Church’s “Indian Placement Program,” in which teenagers from regional tribes lived with Mormon families, ostensibly for the chance to attend non-reservation schools. The catch: participants had to be baptized into the Mormon faith. The program ended in the mid-1990s.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“In his role as the destroyer,” says the Church, “Satan can cause illness and death, but only with permission from God. He cannot take people before their time unless they disobey God and thus forfeit their mission.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“Even a whisper that you’d done it (or anything close to it), and your name would be dirt, forever. Hence the young marriages. Hence the high birth rate. Hence the shame and depression and keeping of secrets.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“Sexual purity is youth’s most precious possession,” official Church doctrine declared. “Better dead and clean than alive and unclean.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“In 2020, Pennsylvania made eighteen the minimum age for marriage.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“True, Alden was barely sixteen, and Teresa just a year older, but in Utah, you could marry (with parental approval) at fourteen. At Pleasant Grove High, a few students were already married, and even more were engaged. It was the same across America, with most states allowing marriage at fifteen or younger. Some, like Pennsylvania, had no minimum age; find the right judge in Pittsburgh, and you could marry a third grader.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“Even in Pleasant Grove, the stories floated around. . . . that stuff stays in your system forever . . . . . . in the spinal cord . . . in the fluid . . . . . . little crystals of acid, they lodge there . . . . . . seven years . . . . . . and cause flashbacks . . . Some of the whispers were specific, with the heavy ring of authority: If you’ve taken LSD more than seven times (or maybe nine?), you’re legally insane. No, it’s the number of hits in a month. Take it more than four times in one month, and you’re legally crazy. After that, they won’t even let you testify in court. It was all hogwash, but nobody rushed to correct the rumors. If the kids had a little fear, that was fine. Whatever kept them straight.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“Because unmarried Mormon adults are (in some interpretations) barred from the highest level of heaven (and thus, from reuniting with devout relatives), even nonbelievers can feel compelled to marry young. Nobody wants to ruin a dying mother’s dreams of the afterlife.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

“In Utah County, dating wasn’t just social. The goals were marriage and children, in that order. As a result, young Mormon life could resemble triage, with teens (or their parents) quick to discard non-marriage material.”
― Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries