A DRUG-TAKER'S NOTES by Ward, R.H - 1957

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1957. Near fine in very good plus jacket.. First and only printing of this detailed account of the author's six supervised LSD trips, the first publication of its kind. Richard Heron Ward's careful description of his six sessions taking LSD, including notes taken while under the influence and reproduced verbatim. A DRUG-TAKER'S NOTES was the first full book devoted to a first-hand description of these experiences, never reprinted and with no contemporary American equivalent. Ward's doses were administered by a psychiatrist, and produced wildly variable effects and moods, as detailed in each chapter (as one contemporary reviewer concluded: "It is evidently a mistake to take this drug only once.") Though well-read in previous literature on hallucinatory visions and altered states - in his introduction, Ward touches on Blake, Baudelaire, de Quincey, William James, and Huxley each in turn - Ward conscientiously refrained, at the request of "Dr. X.", from priming himself with the most recent published research on the effects of lysergic acid, in order that he might enter an altered state of consciousness without prejudice or preconception. Likewise, the author concludes with a stern warning to curious young people eager to "do a Huxley": critical of Aldous Huxley's "frivolity" vis-a-vis mescaline, Ward insists that there are no short-cuts to enlightenment, that the would-be psychonaut must ascend to real revelation through the "narrow way of discipline"; that hallucinations can be vulgar, and even boring. Yet Ward admits more than once that behind his admonitions lies fear: "Behind LSD there is always the unknown. And that is what terrifies." 8.5'' x 5.25''. Original green cloth, gilt-lettered spine. In original unclipped (16/-) yellow dust jacket. 222 pages. Faint soil and rubbing to jacket with very minor chipping to spine ends; spine sunned. Pages lightly toned.