Television
Mind blowing
Edward Heathcoat Amory
Aa small, somewhat priggish child, I was dressed by my fashionable mother in the height of flower-power fashion: brightly floral shirts and widely flared purple trousers. I am still recovering from this clothes trauma. For many years, I would wear nothing except Viyella shirts and tight, navy blue, corduroy trousers; until my late teens, I claimed to be allergic to denim. So, unlike some of my contemporaries, I have no regrets at having 'missed' the Sixties. In particular, I am sure that magic mush- rooms and other hallucinogens, then popu- lar, would not have suited me. One now respectable art dealer of my acquaintance once spent 24 hours in a field, under the impression that he was a turnip. Although no ill-effects are apparent today, it seemed a dull way of spending a day.
So, despite sympathising with Alan Dun- can MP's commitment to the legalisation of some drugs (now wavering, after his pro- motion to shadow health spokesman), I have stayed away from mind-altering chem- icals, whether naturally occurring or manu- factured in a laboratory. Of course, there are uses for such drugs. Opiates play an important part in medicine, and there now seems to be overwhelming evidence that smoking cannabis can relieve the sufferers of some chronic illnesses, such as multiple sclerosis. But Dr Timothy Leary and his followers, who believed that LSD, in partic- ular, had remarkable medical and spiritual powers, never gathered sufficient evidence to justify their claims, despite a heroic pro- gramme of self-testing. When Leary died earlier this year, it seemed that an entire branch of spurious science had passed away with him.
Such optimism was unjustified. Return- ing from a dinner party this week, I switched on Sacred Weeds (ITV, Monday). Dr Leary would have been proud. This week, the team explored henbane, a hallu- cinogenic herb associated with black magic, to determine whether it could have been the source of the persistent stories of witches flying. Rather than actually taking off, it was argued, they were 'tripping', and merely imagined their aerial experiences. The programme speculated that the end of the broomstick could have been used to apply henbane ointment to their genitals. The resident medic referred to this possi- bility as a `trans-dermal delivery system'.
The documentary was set in one of those mysterious country houses which were often used as the setting for Seventies hor- ror movies. Like that late and little lament- ed cinematic genre, Sacred Weeds intercut discussion with dream sequences, and every so often focused, for reasons uncertain, on either a bat or a toad. The four 'experts' looked somewhat like the character actors who used to join Christopher Lee in such celluloid ventures. Both men — inevitably — sported beards, and both women had an unkempt, wild-eyed look.
Perhaps they had been trying out the henbane, although for the purposes of the programme, two other subjects were found to experiment upon. Sadly, both were men, perhaps to avoid sexist jokes about witches, and cut out any attempts by the director to introduce a broomstick into the proceed- ings. One of the two was a South African, Paul, who was introduced to viewers as one of the few people to have tried henbane before. Later in the programme, it emerged that his extensive research into similar plant life had recently landed him in hospital. The second subject was a news journalist, further proof that my profession is devoid of common sense in pursuit of a story.
The programme proceeded predictably. The two subjects drank some of the evil- looking 'brew', felt dizzy and disorientated, and then fell asleep. Nothing was proved, and nothing learnt. Although it attempts to disguise itself by grafting a spurious layer of academic discussion onto the drug-tak- ing, I suspect that ITV's schedulers hope that Sacred Weeds will appeal to those who would like to know more about the practi- cal effects of taking different drugs, with a view to trying them out themselves. Per- haps the only good thing about this week's programme is that it is clearly possible to have more fun with a glass of whisky and some purple flares, with or without a broomstick, than with a month's supply of henbane.
`Let's face it — you're never going straight.'
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