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Ken Kesey was born in 1935 in La Junta, Colorado. “After being elected the boy most likely to succeed by his high school, Kesey enrolled in the University of Oregon. He won a fellowship to a creative writing program at Stanford University” (Leeds 3). While he was there, Kesey became a volunteer in a program to test the effects of new drugs at the local Veteran's Administration hospital. During this time, he discovered LSD and became interested in studying alternative methods of perception. He soon took a job in a mental institution, where he spoke extensively to the patients. He began writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which is based on some of his experiences with mental patients. In the conflict between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy, the novel dealt with individuality and rebellion against conformity. The novel was published in 1962 and was an immediate success. “With the money earned from the book, Kesey purchased a farm in California where he and his friends experimented heavily with LSD. He believed that using LSD to achieve altered states of mind could improve society” (Leeds 23). Kesey, a high profile sixties personality and up and coming author, took his beliefs about authority, government and societ