drink the Kool-Aid

verb (US colloquial) To adopt the dogma of a group or leader without fully understanding its ramifications or implications; to participate in dangerous or lethal activities, or in something destined to fail, due to peer pressure.

The phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” comes from the Jonestown Massacre of 1978, in which hundreds of members of the People’s Temple Agricultural Project in Guyana died after consuming a cyanide-laced powdered soft drink as part of a ritual suicide under the instruction of the cult leader Jim Jones. Many of these deaths are believed to be forced suicide or murder, rather than voluntary.

References in periodicals archive

Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left's Assault on Our Families, Faith, and Freedom contends that the left has embarked on a campaign to create a generation of socialists and, that it's worked.

Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid

She may have derived aspects of her oppositional aesthetics from Marinetti and company, but she possessed far too critical an intelligence to drink the Kool-Aid.

Madame futurist

Rather than drink the Kool-Aid, John reached out and bridged his customers, corporations and the White House.

Are you drinking the Kool-Aid of non-collaboration?

Kings of Leon wants its disciples to drink the Kool-Aid (so to speak) on the gospel-driven, rock 'n' roll sermon, "Radioactive." With the passion and drive of a Bible-waving, Evangelical preacher, Caleb Followill howls, "It's in the water/It's in the story/It's where you came from/The sons and daughters/In all their glory/It's gonna shape them/And when they clash/And come together/And start rising/Just drink the water/Where you came from." This arena-ready opus comes equipped

Kings of Leon: From electric to sluggish

McCaughey that said, "all it takes to see the fallacy of "health-care reform" is to read the various bills and not drink the kool-aid being poured.

Re: health care reform

Which must mean that soon the socalled "Dignitas" Swiss finishing-off school, where sad cases go to drink the Kool-Aid, will be coming to a street like yours.

Hamlet may have been in two minds.. but I'm not

DRINK THE KOOL-AID: Enthusiastically buy the company line

Drink the Kool-Aid: and other workplace phrases you may not know

Hopefully, by the time our three kids are socially conscious adult consumers, gender will be acknowledged as a wide spectrum, and toys will be available in a variety of colors for kids to choose from, without having to buy in to sickly-sweet or testosterone-fueled visions of childhood, or drink the Kool-Aid, to get the toy.

Girl toy or boy toy? One lesbian mom struggles to teach her kids that gender is a spectrum, despite the best efforts of America's toymakers

[At times,] we drink the Kool-Aid."--Internal board presentation delivered by Raymond W.

Credit-rating-agency reforms: as an outgrowth of the meltdown in the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) markets, the Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted new rules to tighten oversight of the credit-rating agencies

Fewer cities seem as interested in being held hostage by team owners, and fewer people drink the Kool-Aid that says a professional team is the answer to the difficulties of a city.

A languid sporting year: it begins to look as if St. Louis fans will keep their team because no one will want to buy it

According to Reuters, some influential Republicans have begun to "drink the Kool-Aid" on global warming.

Republicans warm up to climate change