Drugs

Inside the British Psychedelic Revolution

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The UK is experiencing a psychedelic renaissance.

Young people in England and Wales are taking three times more LSD than they did five years ago and scientists at top universities are claiming hallucinogens can revolutionise how we treat mental illness, while the use of magic mushrooms has been increasing by around 40 percent year on year.

In the latest episode of High Society, we visit music festivals awash with recreational trippers, but also see how psychedelics have become a new health craze, at a shamanic magic mushroom ceremony where 50 people trip out in a London warehouse. On the other end of the scale, despite studies showing that psychedelics are some of the safest drugs you can take, we meet one person who spilled a bottle of acid on himself and never stopped hallucinating.

What is making this new generation of drug takers so interested in self-transformation? And as the self-help trend grows, what happens when thousands of people start trying to solve their mental health problems themselves by taking powerful hallucinogens in unregulated settings?