"Drinking the Kool-Aid" is an idiom commonly used in the United States that refers to any person or group who knowingly goes along with a doomed or dangerous idea because of peer pressure. The phrase oftentimes carries a negative connotation when applied to an individual or group. It can also be used ironically or humorously to refer to accepting an idea or changing a preference due to popularity, peer pressure, or persuasion.
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The phrase derives from the November 1978 Jonestown deaths, in which over 900 members of the Peoples Temple, who were followers of Jim Jones, died, many of whom committed suicide by drinking a mixture of a powdered soft drink flavoring agent (Flavor Aid and possibly Kool-Aid) laced with cyanide and prescription drugs Valium, Phenergan, and chloral hydrate, while the rest of the members, including 89 infants and elderly, were killed by forced ingestion of the poison.
Background
On November 18, 1978, Jones ordered that the members of Representative Leo Ryan's party be killed after several defectors chose to leave the party. Residents of the commune later committed mass suicide by drinking a flavored beverage laced with potassium cyanide.
Despite its reputation as a mass suicide, the events of November 18, 1978, were a murder-suicide. Those unable to comply, such as infants, and those unwilling to comply, received involuntary injections ahead of the main group. One survivor reported: "That man (Jones) was killing us. It was just senseless waste." Roughly 918 people died.
Descriptions of the event often refer to the beverage not as Kool-Aid but as Flavor Aid, a less-expensive product reportedly found at the site. Kraft Foods, the maker of Kool-Aid, has stated the same. Implied by this accounting of events is that the reference to the Kool-Aid brand owes exclusively to its being better-known among Americans. Others are less categorical. Both brands are known to have been among the commune's supplies: Film footage shot inside the compound prior to the events of November shows Jones opening a large chest in which boxes of both Flavor Aid and Kool-Aid are visible. Criminal investigators testifying at the Jonestown inquest spoke of finding packets of "cool aid" (sic), and eyewitnesses to the incident are also recorded as speaking of "cool aid" or "Cool Aid." It is unclear whether they intended to refer to the actual Kool-Aid–brand drink or were using the name in a generic sense that might refer to any powdered flavored beverage.
It is most likely that both were used in the mass murder-suicide. Jim Jones had previously had many rehearsals for the event in which the drink contained no poison, which led to cult members believing the drink was harmless on the day that it did contain poison.
Use
In December 1978, Rev. Dr. William Sloane Coffin, told a convention of the American unit of Pax Christi, that American planning for nuclear war and preparations for civil defense was "the Kool-Aid drill without the cyanide."
According to academician Rebecca Moore, early analogies to Jonestown and Kool-Aid were based around death and suicide, not blind obedience. The earliest such example she found, via a Lexis-Nexis search, was a 1982 statement from Lane Kirkland, then head of the AFL-CIO, which described Ronald Reagan's policies as "Jonestown economics," which "administers Kool-Aid to the poor, the deprived and the unemployed."
In 1984, a Reagan administration appointee, Clarence M. Pendleton Jr., chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, was quoted as criticizing civil rights leaders Jesse Jackson, Vernon Jordan Jr., and Benjamin Hooks by making an analogy between allegiance to "the black leadership" and blind obedience to the Jonestown leaders: "We refuse to be led into another political Jonestown as we were led during the Presidential campaign. No more Kool-Aid, Jesse, Vernon and Ben. We want to be free."
In 1989, Jack Solerwitz, a lawyer for many of the air traffic controllers who lost their jobs in the 1981 PATCO strike, explained his dedication to their cause in spite of the substantial personal financial losses he incurred by saying "I was the only lawyer who kept the doors open for them, and I thought I'd get a medal for it... Instead, I was the one who drank the Kool-Aid."
The widespread use of the phrase with its current meaning may have begun in the late 1990s. In some cases it began to take on a neutral or even positive light, implying simply great enthusiasm. In 1998, the dictionary website logophilia.com defined the phrase as "To become a firm believer in something; to accept an argument or philosophy whole-heartedly."
The phrase has been used in the business and technology worlds to mean fervent devotion to a certain company or technology. A 2000 The New York Times article about the end of the dot-com bubble noted, "The saying around San Francisco Web shops these days, as companies run out of money, is 'Just keep drinking the Kool-Aid,' a tasteless reference to the Jonestown massacre."
The phrase or metaphor has also often been used in a political context, usually with a negative implication. In 2002, Arianna Huffington used the phrase "pass the Kool-Aid, pardner" in a column about an economic forum hosted by President George W. Bush. Later, commentators Michelangelo Signorile and Bill O'Reilly have used the term to describe those whom they perceive as following certain ideologies blindly. In a 2009 speech, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham stressed his political independence by saying, "I did not drink the Obama Kool-Aid last year."
In 2011, columnist Meghan Daum wrote that the phrase had become "one of the nation's most popular idiomatic trends," while bemoaning its rise in popularity, calling its usage "grotesque, even offensive." She cited, among others, usages by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who said that he "drank the Kool-Aid as much as anyone else about Obama", and Us Weekly magazine, which reported during the short marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries that "Kris is not drinking the Kardashian Kool-Aid."
In February 2012, "Drinking the Kool-Aid" won first place in an online poll by Forbes Magazine as "the single most annoying example of business jargon".
Acid Tests
Drinking Kool-Aid laced with LSD was a ritual in the Acid Tests, a series of parties held by the author Ken Kesey in the mid-1960s. Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test takes its title from these events.