Did the beat generationa small movement consisting solely of writers (like Kerouac)? Or was there widespread participation in the drug taking/sex/rejection of traditional values ect by the youth of the 50's?
Beatniks were noted enough in culture to be recognizable in cartoons and TV sitcoms (Maynard G. Krebs in Dobie Gillis) and song lyrics ("Sugar Shack"). Still, many people never actually saw one. Hippies (as other-identified) were far more ubiquitous because they melded with fashion of the day. Beats were never fashionable because their clothes were boring.
They were unevenly distributed. If you were a beat in Iowa, you left for one of the places you had heard of, like the communities in San Francisco & NY.
Beats were not just writers. They were in all the arts: modern dance, cool jazz, and lots and lots of painters and sculptors. They might be said to have inventedthe poetry slam in its earliest form.
You will notice in reading about them that they hung out in coffee houses, not bars. This is your cue that they were not relying on alcohol. "Mary Jane" was in common use, and quite a bit of heroin from what I read in autobios.