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27 February 2019updated 24 Jul 2021 2:58am

A trip with the acid countess: Amanda Feilding and the medical case for drugs reform

From self-experimentation in the Sixties to scientific breakthroughs in mental health, the psychedelics pioneer is still pushing the boundaries.

By Anoosh Chakelian

During the third course of lunch with Amanda Feilding, I make a faux pas. I ask if she still takes LSD. “That’s a question one can’t answer!” she retorts, fixing me with stern green eyes as we dine at her family’s Tudor hunting lodge in the Oxfordshire countryside. “It’s so ridiculous.”

I accept it’s not the traditional topic of conversation at the banquet table of a stately home. Yet the psychedelic drug has been central to life at Beckley Park since the 76-year-old Countess of Wemyss and March founded her own research centre there in 1996.

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