Rick Emerson > 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

“Whatever lay ahead, leaving Pleasant Grove would be a good start. The whole town felt like Autopia, Disneyland’s car-on-rails exhibit. You could steer left or right, but the wheels only moved a few inches, and sooner or later, everyone made the same slow turns, passed the same markers, and ended up in the same old place.”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“The threat of narcotics among our people is one which properly frightens many Americans. It comes quietly into homes and destroys children, it moves into neighborhoods and breaks the fiber of community which makes neighbors. We must try to better understand the confusion and disillusion and despair that bring people, particularly young people, to the use of narcotics and dangerous drugs.”
― 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

“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

“Do you really believe the Church is true? Why? How do you know? Why can’t Black men join the priesthood? Why can’t women join the priesthood?”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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 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

“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

“LINKLETTER: Another big difference between alcohol and marijuana is that when people smoke marijuana, they smoke it to get high. When most people drink, they drink to be sociable. NIXON: A person does not drink to get drunk. LINKLETTER: That’s right. NIXON: A person drinks to have fun. This being Nixon, the conversation soon turned racist, with Linkletter in parrot mode: NIXON: Asia, the Middle East, portions of Latin America . . . I’ve seen what drugs have done to those countries. Everybody knows what it’s done to the Chinese. The Indians are hopeless anyway. The Burmese— LINKLETTER: That’s right. NIXON: Why are the Communists so hard on drugs? It’s because they love to booze. I mean, the Russians, they drink pretty good. LINKLETTER: That’s right. NIXON: The Swedes drink too much, the Finns drink too, the British have always been heavy boozers, and the Irish, of course, the most, but on the other hand, they survive as strong races. LINKLETTER: That’s right. NIXON: At least with liquor, I don’t lose motivation.”
― 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