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prejudice.
    There is no way of adequately explaining the result of taking LSD other than through the accounts of those who have, and observation of how they have tried to integrate the experience into their lives. All of us are familiar with the effects of at least some drugs, from the lift that can be obtained from strong tea, coffee, cola, alcohol or tobacco, to currently illegal substances such as amphetamines, cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine or heroin. But the reactions to LSD are in a class of their own. To compound matters further, LSD, unlike other drugs, doesnot have a consistently predictable set of physiological or psychological reactions.
    The effects of LSD on the body are minimal. On the mind, however, they are dramatic, complex, and inter-dependent on a variety of factors including purity, expectation, environment and dosage. The drug’s potency is such that doses as small as 50-millionths of a gram (50 μg) can produce powerful effects, and even a significant dose is only 250 μg. How the interplay of dosage, expectation and environment creates different theories and reactions is a theme that runs throughout this book. 3
    Author, Tim Lott whose reaction to his first LSD trip can be found in Chapter 11 , has written one of the most cogent and articulate explanations of what LSD means to him. It is a view shared, to varying degrees, by the majority of those who have taken LSD:
    “I have many times tried to describe how simply taking a drug can change your whole perception of life, but it is rather like trying to explain colour to the blind. There are no terms of reference in ordinary life to help you to understand. And actually, I am torn between evangelising for the drug and warning everyone not to go within a million miles of it. I suppose the most simple and incredible fact about LSD is also the one that is hardest to believe: that what it reveals to you is not, as is popularly supposed, a hallucination, but an awe-inspiring glimpse of reality. Other drugs distort, but LSD gives you a reality far beyond words, or visual representation, or language. It is quite the reverse of seeing something that isn’t there. LSD disables some chemical filter in the brain that, in order to keep the world manageable, limits the amount of reality you can experience with your senses. An LSD trip allows ‘reality’ – and if you have never questioned what that is, you would after taking LSD – to flood in untrammelled. The result may be terrifying and it may be wonderful, but it will be more ‘real’ than anything you experience in everyday life. LSD shows you that ordinary life is the hallucination. Or to put it another way, ordinary life is like listening to a record with fluff on the needle, and LSD removes the fluff. Psychotherapeutically speaking, it releases your subconscious into the conscious mind (or vice versa).”
    Anyone who has not taken LSD might dismiss Lott’s views as hyperbole to explain and justify the effects of a drug that actually mimic a form of temporary madness. But Lott has experienced mental illness, and is clear about the distinction between that and LSD, “... I’ve been mad – or at least severely mentally ill. And taking LSD is as different an experience as you can imagine.” 4
    When LSD was discovered, the drug seemed loaded with potential. The problem was no one knew exactly what to do with it. LSD seemed to be the answer to a question that had not yet been formulated. And, like Tolkien’s ring, LSD exerted a powerful force on individuals and institutions, leading several to assert it was the answer to
their
particular question. Firstly, the intelligence services and military laid claim to it, believing it could be the solution to the problems of interrogation, investigating its potential as, among other options, a “truth drug”. The medical establishment also saw its possibilities for their profession, as a drug capable of unlocking and unblocking the unconscious mind. It was employed