Who Needs God When There’s the Grateful Dead?

Larissa Phillips — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 18:48:37 GMT

The kids I knew who were into it, the real ones—not the merely curious or the dilettantes or the false worshippers—gave up almost all of their material possessions. They dropped out of school, took an implicit vow of poverty, and roamed the country. They begged for food and rides and dressed in rags, sewing and patching their clothing in accordance with their anti-worldly views. This was the 1980s, an era of red meat and fancy cars, but they ate simple meals like rice and beans. If they had cars at all, they were beaters or vans that doubled as rough living quarters. They had an earnest and plainspoken manner; they were likely to exclaim with wonder and gratitude over the simplest offerings, like a sunset, a piece of pretty fabric, or a bowl of soup. They hated to cut their hair.

Whenever possible, they gathered in great numbers before their gurus and, often under the influence of drugs, threw themselves into whirling physical ecstasies. Although I was never a true devotee, I went to a few of these events in my teen years. At one of them, I remember watching a girl, skinny and freckled and dressed in a gauzy skirt and primitive leather sandals, sway her arms and twist her body, her eyes closed in what seemed like a meditative trance. Then she threw back her head and wailed the name of the main guru: “Jerrrrryyyyy!”

These were Deadheads, of course, not members of a Christian sect. But it could be hard to tell the difference between the superfans of the Grateful Dead and religious fanatics. In fact, I’m not sure there is much of a difference. I’d always thought the Dead and its culture were holdovers from the counterculture of the ’60s, but lately, as the age of atheism becomes a solid event that we can examine, possibly in the rearview mirror, I’ve begun to think they were holding out on something else, something actually entirely normal to every culture.

Politics Almost Ruined Our Friendship. Here’s How We Saved It.

Larissa Phillips — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 09:01:24 GMT

Late last summer I stood with a small group of women in a Hudson Valley backyard, the last of the afternoon’s sunlight streaming over the hilly tree line. As we sipped our drinks, one friend mentioned a bit of news that caused the others to cheer—maybe it was about Israel; maybe it was transgenderism. Or Donald Trump, or Covid policy, or Black Lives Matter, or any of the other electric issues of the day. Whatever it was, I had an entirely different opinion on the matter than everyone else appeared to have.

This left me with a choice: Do I speak up and risk alienating myself and infuriating everyone there? Or do I say nothing? I chose the latter, as I often do. I smiled woodenly and nodded along as the group happily agreed on a stance I thought was hurting individuals and damaging society, and then I drove home, muttering to myself, saying all the things I would have liked to have said in person, irritated, stewing, and frustrated.

It’s been a few years now since I stopped talking freely among friends and family. I am the daughter of two leftist activists, and spent 15 years of my adult life happily living in uber-progressive Brooklyn. In these environments, I was often just on the edge of expected opinions, but even my most eccentric observations were firmly within the boundaries of the left. I never really seemed to bother any of my family, friends, or co-workers.

But by early 2020, something had changed. I had been rethinking my views, wanting evidence that various progressive policies—many of them new and quite radical—were effective, and finding little or none. At the same time, everyone I knew seemed to be transforming into warriors for the exact ideas I was critiquing. The pressure to conform ratcheted up.

The Free Press: Larissa Phillips

Who Needs God When There’s the Grateful Dead?

Politics Almost Ruined Our Friendship. Here’s How We Saved It.