Free Albion Dreaming by Andy Roberts Page B

is busy dying.
Bob Dylan 1
     
    O nce LSD became available in Britain, outside the military or psychiatric contexts, it was quickly adopted by a generation of young people as their recreational drug of choice. It is clear from accounts of these early British LSD adventurers that the drug arrived already freighted with concepts about its effects and purpose. These concepts informed and shaped the drug’s course through British society in the Sixties and still resonate within LSD use to the present day.
    Central to these concepts are the insights frequently experienced by LSD users: heightened awareness, experience of the transcendental and the numinous, a reverence for all sentient beings and the vision of a lifestyle antithetical to the rampant consumerism of the twentieth century.
    These insights appear not to have been inherent in the drug itself. If they were an automatic consequence of taking LSD, then everyone who used the drug would have them. For instance, we would expect there to be evidence from the MOD’s LSD trials at Porton Down that soldiers had undergone religious experiences.No such experiences were reported and nor did any of the Porton Down veterans later refer to any such effects in their statements to the Operation Antler investigation. Neither is there any indication from the literature of LSD psychotherapy that patients had similar experiences to those typically enjoyed by the emerging counter culture.
    Set and setting, the mind set prior to taking LSD and the physical setting in which the experience takes place, seem to be the defining factors in how people interpret the LSD experience. The mind set and philosophy at the root of the first wave of serious LSD users in Britain can be traced to the experiences of a few key figures in the early American LSD movement. This group of people comprised a pair of British philosophers, together with a smattering of Americans, all of whom discovered LSD in the Fifties and early Sixties.
    Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley both emigrated to America in 1937. Prior to their move both were well-known in Britain as writers. But it was America that brought out their genius as philosophers of altered states of consciousness. In California, Heard introduced Huxley to the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta, as well as to meditation. Their perennial theme was how to change man and society, both of them believing that humans could – should – pursue the intentional evolution of consciousness. 2
    Even before LSD was synthesised, there was considerable interest in mind-expanding drugs. Mescaline, found in a variety of cacti including the peyote cactus, was first synthesised in 1919. In its cactus form mescaline already had a history of structured religious usage in America which pre-dated the European invasion. Word of mescaline’s effects spread and soon after the end of World War II the drug was used by the US Navy in Project Chatter, an attempt to find a drug to aid interrogation. Shortly afterwards, in 1952, Dr. Humphrey Osmond an English émigré in Canada took an interest in mescaline in his work on schizophrenia.
    A few adventurous individuals had also heard of mescaline and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Captain Alfred M. Hubbard was one of the first individuals to try mescaline outside military or medical experiments. Hubbard worked for the Officeof Strategic Services during World War II, conducting barely legal covert operations such as smuggling American weapons to Britain via Canada, before Pearl Harbour officially brought America into the war. His clandestine activities were approved by President Roosevelt and to all intents and purposes he was an establishment figure, albeit somewhat of a maverick.
    Hubbard entered the world of mind altering drugs when he appeared unannounced at Humphrey Osmond’s hospital, took the doctor out for lunch and asked if he could buy some mescaline. Hubbard took to the mescaline experience like a duck to water and set himself on