Drugs on the Road

LSD is one of the most potent chemicals known to science. A regular dose of 100 micrograms is more than enough to send the user into orbit and a single gram contains 10,000 hits.

Like penicillin it was created by accident. In 1943, the Swiss scientist, Albert Hoffman absorbed a tiny piece of crystal through his fingertips – after a couple of hours of watching pretty colours behind his eyelids he decided to investigate further. This time he deliberately dosed himself with just 25mg, an amount he didn’t imagine would produce any effect.

Hoffman got on his bicycle and rode home and arrived in a state of panic. He felt he was losing his grip on sanity and could only think to ask for milk from the neighbours to counter the poisoning. Even his own home seemed threatening to him:

“. Everything in the room spun around, and the familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms…The lady next door, whom I scarcely recognized, brought me milk… She was no longer Mrs. R., but rather a malevolent, insidious witch with a coloured mask.”

Once he calmed down a bit he started to rather enjoy his trip and concluded that it might be of use to modern psychology. His reports much interested the academic community in America and was used in psychological trials throughout the 50’s to combat depression. It was especially effective in treatment for alcoholism – curing around 50% as opposed to the 5% that Alcoholics Anonymous wean off the booze.

The CIA was also much engaged in research as they were currently experimenting in truth serums. Much of the evidence of their trials is now destroyed but reports are wild, ranging from plans to drop large amounts in enemy water supplies to interrogations with dosed subjects.

In the 1960’s two Harvard professors called Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert began extensive self-experimentation and began to advocate the use of LSD as means of self-exploration. As a result they were both ignominiously expelled from the college but continued their way on glorious careers.

Alpert blew his mind in India and reinvented himself as the renunciate, Ram Dass. He explained the links between acid and Enlightenment in his book, “Be Here Now.” (Possibly the best title ever)

Leary on the other hand stayed in America and became the counterculture’s leading light, promoting the use of LSD amongst the young across the States. When acid was made illegal in 1966 Leary was targeted by the American police and convicted for possession of marijuana
. He escaped and continued to spread the Good Word of Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out. “

Whilst Leary got intellectual about LSD and used it for his own celebrity status, on the other side of the US the Merry Pranksters led by Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady were exploring the potential of LSD and counter culture”

LSD went out of fashion thanks in part to the scare-mongering of the authorities; their propaganda suggested the average acid user would regularly walk out of windows in the belief he could fly. Basically it just went out of fashion until the late 80’s when the trance party/rave culture started up and it seemed to fit perfectly with techno music.

It remains highly illegal.

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