What if LSD was discovered and synthesized in Victorian Britian?
Probably not much difference. They were on all kinds of stuff as it was, much of it prescribed by doctors or in over the counter meds. Ideas of narcotic control tend to be a very 20th C thing![]()
Let's go from there. What would you get?...LSD might change the details as the hallucinations are longer, different, and more intense, but not as much as you might think.
I'm sure it would be very popular with the already extensive counter-culture, but hallucinogenic experimentation and the unintended hallucinogenic effects of other drugs had already created a whole batch of "psychedelic" culture. Look at Lewis Carroll (Through the Looking Glass i.e. Alice in Wonderland, Jabberwocky, etc.) and you get the idea. Also, Lord Byron and Mary Shelley were noted drug users.
Let's go from there. What would you get?
But think of those things as they were without LSD, and now think of them ... on acid.
Some guy travels the country selling snake oil that will make people see "worlds unseen"LSD was invented in the 1940s. I don't remember an era of decadent free love in the 1950s. Whether a drug comes to the forefront is much more dependent on independent cultural shifts than whether it is available.
I've never done acid, so going on first-hand accounts and acid-inspired artwork of the hippie years:
More stretched, distorted, and twisted/liquid forms? The Cheshire cat is more elastic in form rather than just transparent/vanishing?
More dark, twisted visions with gaping black holes for eyes and mouths? *Shudder* Imagine Frankenstein's Monster as envisioned by Ralph Steadman.
Gods, assuming he's not butterflied away imagine Lovecraft on acid!![]()
I think acid would have been very good for them. Might have helped to loosen them up a bit. People wore too much clothing then, they must have been very uncomfortable. And they were too hung up on manners and appearance, and on making an impression.
I think acid would have been very good for them. Might have helped to loosen them up a bit. People wore too much clothing then, they must have been very uncomfortable. And they were too hung up on manners and appearance, and on making an impression.
That sound like a coll idea for a story!Some guy travels the country selling snake oil that will make people see "worlds unseen"
I don't know - look at Mardi Gras / Carnival / Faschung. Every other christian culture seemed to evolve wild parties. And the wildest thing our English forebearers could come up with was eating pancakes for supper!They didn't need to loosen up- all those morals were for public show. Remember, this was an era of opium dens, child prostitution, gambling hells. The modern Anglospheric cultures tend to draw a strict line between licit and the illicit vices- the Victorians didn't so long as said illicit vices were indulged discreetly.