New Cross on Acid

John Hutnyk at Trinketization reviews Russell Brand's autobiography 'My Booky Wook' and uncovers this tale of Brand's initiation into hallucinogenics: "Dean had acquired some acid, sheets of it; I'd heard tell of its qualities, of how it made you hallucinate and readdress your life and I thought, 'My God! This sounds extraordinary'. We went over to the YMCA after school, took some, and went back to his house in New Cross on the Tube. With or without acid, New Cross can be mind-bending, so it's the ideal venue to have something so fundamental as your perception of reality altered, because it just exposes everything - the world as you see it, even your own psyche - as a construction. All the things you believe to be true are thrown into doubt. And what's so ridiculous is the way that you take this extra-ordinarily powerful, potent drug: not in a hospital with someone making you sit down and have a glass of water, but on the way home from school with your daft mate, walking through New Cross all fragile and delicate". Brand was living in Bermondsey Street at the time.