Abstract
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) by Tom Wolfe is an important account of the Counter-culture, and a seminal work of the New Journalism. Its central concerns are the use of psychedelic drugs within a specific social and sub-cultural setting; and the formal strategies for representing the often ineffable experience of psychedelic drugs in literary non-fiction. In this article I discuss Wolfe’s use of a number of techniques and approaches to the breach between experience and representation, as well as his treatment of the limitations of language to encompass the psychedelic.