At a handful of sites across the country, after a four-decade hiatus, psychedelic research is undergoing a quiet renaissance, thanks to scientists like Charles Grob who are revisiting the powerful mind-altering drugs of the 1960s in hopes of making them part of our therapeutic arsenal. Hallucinogens such as psilocybin, MDMA (better known as Ecstasy), and the most controversial of them all, LSD, are being tested as treatments for maladies that modern medicine has done little to assuage, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, drug dependency, obsessive-compulsive disorder, cluster headaches, and the emotional suffering of people with a terminal illness.

The khat plant is known by a variety of names, such as ‘qat’ and ‘ghat’ in Yemen, ‘chat’ in Ethiopia, ‘jaad’ in Somalia and ‘miraa’ in Kenya and Tanzania. It has been grown for use as a stimulant for centuries in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. There, chewing khat predates the use of coffee and is used in a similar social context.

It has been known for at least 2,000 years that Marijuana/Cannabis is a psychotropic that affects the brain and central nervous system. The first western references seem to be that it was a euphoric, in other words a central nervous system stimulant not like cocaine or amphetamines but a gentler pleasant stimulant.

The backlash against the recreational use of psychedelic drugs in the 1960s had a negative effect on research into their potential therapeutic benefit. But now attitudes are changing and work in this area is being revitalised, with several early-stage trials underway. Kelly Morris reports. Some 50 years ago, substances called psychedelics were hailed as the new tools of psychiatry.

“It’s not a frivolous pursuit,” said Sting who, like Paul Simon and Tori Amos, sampled ayahuasca in the Amazon jungle. “There’s a certain amount of dread attached to taking it,” he told Rolling Stone. “You have a hallucinogenic trip that deals with death and your mortality so it’s quite an ordeal.”

Sixty-three years ago the first acid trip was taken by an unwitting research chemist, Albert Hofmann, who has died at the age of 102. To its detractors LSD is perhaps the most dangerous drug in the world, but did its advent really change society in Britain and even the way we eat? In 1965 something lurking under the meniscus of British society punctured the surface.