Today s Tripper

LOVERS MAY leave and pet dogs die, but you can always depend on there being someone who can sort you out with a tab of acid for a fiver.
Although it s been a while since LSD hogged the headlines, there are still thousands of young and not so young Irish people who get their kicks from swallowing brightly coloured bits of cardboard.
Some consider it the gateway to spiritual enlightenment, others just like the fact it gets you ripped for the price of a flagon.
The latest annual figures show the Gardam dealing with just over 100 acid-related cases a tally which doesn t necessarily reflect the numbers that are taking it. In Northern Ireland, for instance, 4% of respondents aged between 16 and 59 say that they ve tried LSD, as opposed to 3% for ecstasy.
It s one of those half-a-dozen times a year drugs, proffers a small-time Belfast dealer, Tim. You take it to get shit-faced, rather than sociable, so it s not such a Friday night essential as coke or E. And unlike cannabis, you re not going to drop a tab to relax after work. It s a serious eight hour commitment.
Then, of course, there are the vagaries of fashion.
You couldn t get it for love nor money during the early 80s, but then the Acid House craze kicked in and it was everywhere, Tim continues. That lasted for 12 months and then Ecstasy took over. There are a few drug connoisseurs who know and appreciate what they re taking, but generally people neck whatever happens to be in .
LSD was discovered in 1938 by research chemist, Albert Hoffman, while he was working on other medicines. Five years later he underwent his first ever trip by mistake when carrying out an experiment in his laboratory.
I was forced to interrupt my work and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness, he recalled in his 1980 autobiography, LSD: My Problem Child. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed, I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with an intense, kaleidoscopic play of colours. After some two hours this faded away.
While Hoffman was a somewhat reluctant counter-culture guru, the likes of Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna championed acid with evangelical zeal during the 60s. Without the Electric Kool-Aiders, it s a moot point as to whether there d ever have been a Summer of Love, or the ensuing anti-war protests.
Turning on, tuning in and dropping out was a lot less fun for the 80 former psychiatric patients who are currently suing the British Health Service.
In the 1950s through to the early 1970s, LSD was administered by the NHS for a wide range of conditions, on the basis that it opened up patients minds more quickly than going through a process of normal therapy, says the solicitor for the claimants, David Harris. Many of those who have come forward allege that they have suffered long-term side effects including flashbacks, and for some the long term effects of LSD have been very traumatic.
Of course, Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-25 is but one of a wide-range of hallucinogens. While peyote-yielding cacti and lickable toads are at something of a premium in Ireland, September finds the whole country awash with magic mushrooms.
For all the talk of cannabis being the main gateway drug, it s actually mushies and solvents that provide most sons and daughters of Erin with their first psychedelic experience.
Much to the chagrin of the nation s golf-course curators, the possession and consumption of mushrooms is not an offence unless they ve been processed or prepared for illicit use. That means no cutting, dicing or putting into a Spanish omelette. The fact that they re legal and haven t brought about the downfall of western civilisation is something that s been seized on by anti-prohibition campaigners. If mushroom use has reached a natural ceiling, the argument goes, why should cocaine, ecstasy or heroin be any different?
After remaining more or less the same for the past 50 years, LSD has recently been given a designer make-over. Currently available in its native Holland for #3 to #5 a go, 2CB combines the tripiness of acid with the euphoria of E. It sounds like a drug-taker s dream come true, but has actually proved to be highly dangerous when combined with alcohol.
The other new pill on the block is DMT, or as it s euphemistically known in the States, The Businessman s Lunch . Kicking in almost immediately, and lasting for an average 15 to 20 minutes, it s very much the Jaap Stam of hallucinogens.
There was a tiny bit of 2CB around before Christmas, but I ve never heard of anybody here buying or selling DMT, Tim resumes. What a lot of people are doing at the moment is candyflipping combining E and acid which is great for clubbing.