for instance, and in Taoism too. Perhaps Castaneda was the exception, but
readers tended to find themselves reading exciting tales of power, but with no way to
continue on that path in urban UK at the time.

Anyway, Alex did acid for the first time - and immediately found
himself wanting to break the rules. His first impulse was to examine what was wrong with
science - his background had been scientific so far. Secondly, he wanted to blaspheme, to
exceed. He imagined doing a Black Mass up on the moors He was definitely not playing
the same game as the other acid-heads around him, with their beads and mantras.

All he’d had was a very low dose of acid, as he later realised.
However, it had opened his nervous system to the entry of something itthey were talking about after all. He signed
up for the Void Trip, a la Leary’s Psychedelic Experience. He took on a
mind set of surrendering to that emptiness, letting his self dissolve He had the
opportunity at a free concert in Hyde Park. It was a big event, with the big bands of the
time like Pink Floyd playing free, so there was a lot of acid around. Alex took a yellow
capsule. When it started to come up, he knew something was wrong: the trees looked all
warped and sick, and like a badly-painted backdrop. Something prompted him to triple the
dose, so he took two more, going for some confrontation with the confused ideas in his
mind which pointed at the Void

All the reality bled out of everything, and it all looked distant