Albion Dreaming Read Free Page B

in experimental psychotherapy to cure obsessions and addictions, heal damaged psyches and to develop human potential. Both of these approaches yielded contradictory results, the experiments being curtailed long before any firm conclusions could be drawn or the way forward charted.
    Inevitably, the secret leaked out and LSD became available to the public, slowly at first, building to a torrent after the mid-Sixties. LSD was legal in the early Sixties, those early psychedelic pioneers were awed, and astonished by the experience it provided. Travellers returned from LSD trips with tales of other dimensions, other ways of seeing, other ways of thinking and, most importantly, other ways of being. Small groups of psychonauts, often maverick professionals such as Timothy Leary, believed that LSD, if taken in the correct circumstances and with an experienced guide, could elevate consciousness to the spiritual heights tantalizingly offered by the world’s major religions and spiritual disciplines. But unlike traditional spiritual practice, which offered no guarantees and demanded years, a lifetime even, of study and devotion, LSD, it was rumoured, could deliver enlightenment in just one dose. Use of LSD required no relianceon deity or scripture and the user was not required to be part of a spiritual hierarchy. The widespread belief was that by taking it an individual could be plugged into the hub of the Universe, to become one with everything, and could experience God directly. LSD soon became known as “the sacrament” and unsurprisingly, one popular badge in the Sixties bore the adage “God is alive in a sugar cube” – LSD soaked sugar cubes being a popular method of ingesting the drug in that decade.
    Ultimately, the Establishment, that web of conservative social, political and religious ideologies, fought back. The idea of young people having access to a drug rumoured to confer instant enlightenment and spiritual freedom was abhorrent. The media, always looking for a new folk devil to exorcise, seized on LSD as the destroyer of youth, focusing only on the small number of personal disasters. Journalists, rather than exploring the success stories emanating from psychotherapists or the genuine and meaningful personality changes brought about by LSD, chose to amplify the possible dangers of a drug they knew little about.
    The knock-on effect of the media offensive against LSD was that parents, with little knowledge of LSD, believed if their children took the drug they would be on the road to addiction or worse. Church leaders found the idea of instant enlightenment shallow and contrary to the ethics of Judeo-Christian religious belief, political administrations saw no purpose in a drug that encouraged people to live and think in a radically different way to that considered normal. The
idea
of LSD had grown out of all proportion to the substance itself and had, for the majority of society, become a demon, a barbarian at the doors of everyday consciousness and normality.
    This intense barrage of ill-informed opinion and prejudice led to LSD being declared illegal in Britain in late 1966. Since then it has remained on the statute books as one of the most dangerous illegal drugs, ranked with heroin, cocaine and morphine. This contentious decision was based, as we will see, on the flimsiest of reasoning. LSD is not addictive and only a handful of deaths have been attributed to it. How the British Establishment has dealt with LSD is a prima face example of asociety’s inability to deal intelligently and consistently with consciousness-changing drugs.
    Society’s relationship with drugs is complex. Humans have used substances that alter consciousness for millennia. In his book
The Long Trip: a prehistory of psychedelia
, Paul Devereux traces the history of intoxicants into distant pre-history. The Sumerians recorded their use of opium as long ago as circa 5000 BC, predating the earliest record of humans’ favourite drug, alcohol,