hole in the middle of her forehead with an electric drill. (She documented
the procedure in a short but horrifying film called Heartbeat in the
Brain.) Pleased with the results, Feilding went on to stand for election to
Parliament, twice, on a platform of “Trepanation for the National
Health.”
But while Amanda Feilding may be eccentric, she is by no means
feckless. Her work on both drug research and drug policy reform has
been serious, strategic, and productive. In recent years, her focus has
shifted from trepanation to the potential of psychedelics to improve brain
function. In her own life, she has used LSD as a kind of “brain tonic,”
favoring a daily dose that hits “that sweet spot where creativity and
enthusiasm is increased, but control is maintained.” (She told me that
there was a time when she put that tonic dose at 150 micrograms—far
above a microdose and enough to send most people, myself included, on
a full-fledged trip. But because frequent use of LSD can lead to tolerance,
it’s entirely possible that for some people 150 micrograms merely “adds a
certain sparkle to consciousness.”) I found Feilding to be disarmingly
frank about the baggage she brings to the new conversation about
psychedelic science: “I’m a druggie. I live in this big house. And I have a
hole in my head. I guess that disqualifies me.”
So, when an aspiring young scientist named Robin Carhart-Harris
came for lunch at Beckley in 2005, sharing his ambition to combine
research into LSD and Freud, Feilding immediately saw the potential, as
well as an opportunity to put her theories about cerebral blood
circulation to the test. Feilding indicated to Carhart-Harris that her
foundation might be willing to fund such research and suggested that he
contact David Nutt, then a professor at the University of Bristol and an
ally of Feilding’s in the campaign to reform drug policy.
In his own way, David Nutt is as notorious in England as Amanda
Feilding. Nutt, who is a large, jolly fellow in his sixties with a mustache
and a booming laugh, achieved his particular notoriety in 2009. That’s
when the home secretary fired him from the government’s Advisory
Council on the Misuse of Drugs, of which he had been chair. The
committee is charged with advising the government on the classification
of illicit drugs based on their risk to individuals and society. Nutt, who is
an expert on addiction and on the class of drugs called benzodiazepines
(such as Valium), had committed the fatal political error of quantifying
frankie
(Frankie)
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