Psychedelic revival

Acid is back. For the first time since the 1960s there are signs of a rekindling of serious interest in psychedelic drugs — conferences, clinical tests, and a full-blown study is planned, with human subjects. LSD belonged to history — to grizzly-haired hippies and travellers, the ‘counter culture’. Now, an informal alliance of psychiatrists, therapists and psychopharmacologists are seeking to shine a fresh light on to psychedelics, the group which includes LSD and psilocybin (magic mushrooms). MDMA (ecstasy) is also in this category.

There are two main areas of interest: what psychedelics reveal about how the brain works; and their potential as medicines. There is a third, fuzzier angle: the hippies’ conviction that these are quasi-sacred substances, and that they act as a doorway into a mystical experience. In hippy terms, once you’ve passed through that gate, you’re ‘experienced’; you’ve ‘passed the acid test’. It’s a notion going back to Albert Hofmann, the idealistic Swiss chemist who first synthesised LSD, and beyond, to tribal cultures that use plants to induce visions.