From cannabis countess to the first lady of LSD
Alarm as aristocrat backs trial of ‘wonder drug’ for depression
LSD is to be given to treat people with depression in a trial that anti-drug campaigners warn is a dangerous experiment that will ‘play with their minds’.
Leading the research into the benefits of what she calls a ‘wonder drug’ is Amanda Feilding, Countess of Wemyss and March – nicknamed the ‘Cannabis Countess’ for her advocacy of legalisation.
The £300,000 experiment is being conducted by the organisation she founded, the Beckley Foundation, under the supervision of Professor David Nutt, who was sacked from his post as a government adviser in 2009 after claims that he was trivialising the dangers of drugs.
LSD is a hallucinogen that has been linked to suicide and mental health problems and possession of the class-A substance is an imprisonable offence.
However, researchers plan to obtain a medical licence allowing them to administer the drug to 20 volunteers in the study, for which the foundation is raising money through crowdfunding.
It will be the first time in the UK that researchers have investigated whether taking small amounts of LSD regularly – so-called ‘microdosing’ – can alleviate depression.
But David Raynes, spokesman for the National Drug Prevention Alliance, said: ‘Both Professor Nutt and the countess are extreme prodrug campaigners and we should be suspicious of their motives.
‘They have both admitted to taking drugs and seek to normalise use. A lot of people have had severe side effects from LSD and it is playing with people’s minds.’
The volunteers will be given doses and fill in surveys recording whether the drug lifts their mood. They will also play Japanese strategy board game Go to see if the drug improves their performance and MRI scans of their brains will be taken. The results will be compared with how well the volunteers perform after a placebo dose.
The countess said: ‘There are studies that show LSD is a wonder drug for curing all sorts of things. We will not be giving people such large doses that they hallucinate but enough to give them a lift. I took it in the 1960s when it was legal and it improved my wellbeing.’
The 74-year-old, who owns a £100 million art collection as well as 44,000 acres in Scotland with her husband, added: ‘If this trial is successful, we will consider applying to the Government for more funding to run a larger experiment.’
Last year, the Beckley Foundation and Imperial College published the results of a Government-funded study on volunteers using the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms, psilocybin, to explore whether it could cure depression. Researchers said two-thirds of volunteers were cured for a week.
The foundation hopes to start the LSD research next year.