As reported earlier this month, last night saw Channel 4 air part one of Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trials.
Presented by Jon Snow and Dr Christian Jensen, the show will see a collection of volunteers – including Keith Allen, former Lib Dem MP Evan Harris and We Need to Talk About Kevin author Lional Shriver – take either an 83 milligram dose of pharmaceutical grade MDMA, or a placebo sugar pill, with their subsequent brain activity monitored via an MRI scanner.
Somewhat inevitably, part one of the show (part two will be aired tonight) wasn’t particularly enlightening or entertaining; in fact, the best bit of entertainment didn’t come from Drugs Live the television show, but from a blog post that Jon Snow penned about it. In the post, Snow admits that he once drove down the M40, high on LSD after having his strawberry flan spiked:
“I only ever had one acid trip. I think I was about 22, and someone had spiked a delicious strawberry flan with LSD at a party in Oxford. I had two slices.
It wasn’t long before I felt the need to go home. Five of us had driven in a Mini, from London. We got back into the car and set off down the M40.
Almost immediately I seemed to be being assaulted by the white lines, flashing into my head. Then as I approached the first bridge over the road I became convinced that the car was too big to pass through it. I pulled over to the hard shoulder.
The one person, who proved not to have eaten of the flan, took over the driving. By the time we reached my flat above the drug dependents’ day centre where I worked, I was all over the place. We had deliberated on the journey and concluded that we were on a trip in which our tyres did not connect with any road surface.
I poured out glasses of orange juice and put Jaques Loussier on the turntable. The awfulness began to subside into something more pleasurable. When the music stopped the tireless trudge began again .. so the music resumed. The next morning as I descended to work I concluded that I had finally joined the vulnerable young people I was supposed to be counselling.”
Part two of Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trials will be aired at 10pm tonight on Channel 4.
