Ok, she was young at 12 to be experimenting with psychedelic drugs but that’s what was happening. Sure it would have been better if she had waited a further 14 years – experts in the 21st Century are saying that the adult brain isn’t fully formed til 25 – but you know it would also have been better if Jimi and Janis hadn’t died of Heroin overdoses at 27.

All she wanted back then was an interesting fun experience and to show her mates what a cool chick she really was. Being rotund, working-class and not pretty (in her minds eye) made her feel so rubbish, she simply had to find a way to show the world…. show them what exactly was a bit hazy, but she did! (This is beginning to sound a bit “Rebel with out a clue”) but what the hell, what does anyone know at such a tender age?

By the time she was in her late teens, she had passed 7 O levels and a Maths CSE. She had been a Chambermaid, Newspaper Delivery Girl, Volunteered at a Project for Disabled kids, Kids with Learning Disabilities (LDs) and she was beginning to see injustices, inequality and corruption in some of the Institutions we are supposed to be able to Trust

This is not gonna be a drugalog, though it started like one. No, this is about an adolescent, who discovered the therapeutic affect of a rare substance back in the 1970s, looking back thinking”what was all the fuss about?” Why on Earth was/is LSD25 illegal. One poor blighter took flight off a building and kills herself. Is that a reason to criminalise every curious Human Being for time immemorial? Nope but it must’ve traumatised their significant others, reached the media and made a big splash there. And that was the reason given to justify the criminalisation of medicine, and too many thousands of drug-curious fellow citizens for decades there after.

The Therapeutic Affect

When she says “therapeutic” what exactly does she mean? Going from a self-doubting, asthmatic, chub to a generous, happy and entertaining teen, in a few words. On the Eve of her first political Peace Action, she threw a party. The apartment was full of friends and even one or two family members. She had taken a moderate dose of LSD. Vegetarian food and decent drinks lined the kitchen and the music – Hendrix, Dylan and Melanie blared gently. She flitted from friend to friend, making sure everyone had a pal to be with. She liked herself and this was a rare few hours…

The next morning, waiting in line for the Bus to Greenham Common, she said “you know last night when I was LSD- tripping…” Galfriend replied, “tripping?! We thought you were just happy. Doesn’t LSD make people behave really strangely? We were just saying how normal and happy you seemed Andi for a change: the kindest Host ever.”

When they were telling her how ‘happy’ she seemed, it didn’t occur to her to say, well the drug is medicine. Saying LSD was a medicine and healing in the late 1970s was an elite psychologists monologue; think Timothy Leary. But the truth is something was happening to her 19 year old brain that she loved and actually needed badly. Not often but certainly now and then. IF ONLY she had had the Therapist/Guide that people with MH challenges have now.

Looking at what is evolving , and was first funded by the Beckley Foundation, the Science, the Suits, the academic texts showing clearly the healing that people are experiencing here in 2023… Well it makes her want to join a psychedelic research protocol. Sadly, this maybe impossible at present due to her also having a severe lung illness and a lesser form of Bipolar Affective Disorder, that is to say BAD2. When she experiences the emotional mood swings and roundabout of Bipolar, she never assumes she is someone else: she rarely gets psychotic, but her Psychiatrist does prescribe her an anti-psychotic to help her sleep. A little bit confusing but sleep it gives her, even as she hates the hangover in the morning , making her feel dysfunctional til she’s gulped down 2 cups of caffeinated, sweet black coffee!

Just one gals thoughts and feelings about the “psychedelic renaissance” in the first half of the 21st Century