poledriver
Bluelighter
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Bert Newton was injected with LSD as part of a bizarre psychiatric treatment in the 1960s
ENTERTAINMENT icon Bert Newton was undergoing treatment for a severe mental breakdown when he was injected with a potent dose of the hallucinogenic drug LSD, a new book reveals.
The terrifying incident is recounted in the new unauthorised biography Bert by Graeme Blundell, and goes into great detail about the star’s emotional collapse.
It was the beginning of 1964 when the television legend was admitted to a psychiatric ward in Melbourne after a severe breakdown, but he quickly returned to work.
After several subsequent relapses, Newton resigned from Channel Nine and sought treatment full time. Some of the methods that his doctors used would be considered barbaric by today’s standards.
“His recovery was set back when a doctor in whose hands he had entrusted his return to health injected him with ... LSD,” Blundell writes in the book.
“Bert had no idea that a drug of that nature was going to be given to him. ‘It was like being thrown into the middle of the Indian Ocean with a lifejacket,’ he said later. ‘You know that for a moment you could float, but you kept wondering for how long you’d be safe.’”
According to Blundell, the potent dosage saw Newton “experience what was known as a ‘bad trip’” and the entertainer later described it as the most “ghastly” experience of his life.
“My vision was distorting ... things took on a grotesque form, the room was misshapen — I don’t know how long it lasted,” the author quotes Newton as saying.
Cont -
http://www.news.com.au/entertainmen...ent-in-the-1960s/story-fna50uae-1227099349937
ENTERTAINMENT icon Bert Newton was undergoing treatment for a severe mental breakdown when he was injected with a potent dose of the hallucinogenic drug LSD, a new book reveals.
The terrifying incident is recounted in the new unauthorised biography Bert by Graeme Blundell, and goes into great detail about the star’s emotional collapse.
It was the beginning of 1964 when the television legend was admitted to a psychiatric ward in Melbourne after a severe breakdown, but he quickly returned to work.
After several subsequent relapses, Newton resigned from Channel Nine and sought treatment full time. Some of the methods that his doctors used would be considered barbaric by today’s standards.
“His recovery was set back when a doctor in whose hands he had entrusted his return to health injected him with ... LSD,” Blundell writes in the book.
“Bert had no idea that a drug of that nature was going to be given to him. ‘It was like being thrown into the middle of the Indian Ocean with a lifejacket,’ he said later. ‘You know that for a moment you could float, but you kept wondering for how long you’d be safe.’”
According to Blundell, the potent dosage saw Newton “experience what was known as a ‘bad trip’” and the entertainer later described it as the most “ghastly” experience of his life.
“My vision was distorting ... things took on a grotesque form, the room was misshapen — I don’t know how long it lasted,” the author quotes Newton as saying.
Cont -
http://www.news.com.au/entertainmen...ent-in-the-1960s/story-fna50uae-1227099349937
