Regarding Passages, and the cult promoting the "hippie" or "counter-culture" stereotype, I wouldn't rely on that for anything.  It is currently part of the cult's propaganda that the reason the cult was so nutty in the early years was because it was all drug-taking hippies who got involved.

I think we need to define terms and time periods here.  I do think that a lot of "counter-culture" people received knowledge, but most of them did not actually join the cult. Lots and lots of people received knowlege in 1971-1973, but I would say from my experience that those who remained semi-active premies, and certainly ashram premies, were not really hippies, or counter-culture people before they received knowledge.  They tended to be more conformist, willing to join an institution/group.

I just say this from my own experience from having been an ashram premie around the USA for 10 years, and I would say the majority of the premies I encountered had not been hippies, or even "counter-culture," except maybe some of the trappings, before they got involved in the cult.

Now, that varied from place to place.  Probably in Boulder, and in San Francisco, the "counter-culture" types were more prevalent, but places like Washington DC, Boston, Chicago, and Miami, where I also lived, I don't think that was true.

Having said that, like I think Nya said, it was the NORM that people in their late teens and early 20s, in most larger cities in the USA, were trying marijuana and maybe other drugs, and maybe they adopted some of the clothes, music and lingo of the "counter-culture", but really, by the early 70s in the USA, the "counter-culture" was very Madison Avenue, all over the popular culture, and actually more "culture," than "counter-culture."