Bert Newton suffered a "ghastly" LSD trip after the legendary Australian entertainer was injected with the hallucinogenic drug as part of treatment for a mental breakdown, a new book reveals.



In his unauthorised biography, titled Bert, actor and producer-turned author Graeme Blundell details Newton's terrifying experience when his doctors tried out the radical treatment in the 1960s.



In 1964, the then 25-year-old was admitted to a Melbourne psychiatric ward after a severe breakdown. He soon returned to work at Channel Nine, but after several relapses resigned from the network on his doctor's orders.



Newton embarked on full-time treatment, during which he underwent one particularly radical method.



"His recovery was set back when a doctor into whose hands he had entrusted his return to health injected him with something called LSD," Blundell writes in the book.



Blundell writes that Newtown 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 life jacket," Blundell quoted Newton as saying.



"You knew that, for a moment, you could float, but you kept wondering for how long you'd be safe," Newton is quoted as saying.



The book says the potent dosage led Newtown to have a "bad trip", which he described as "the most ghastly experience" of his life.



Noting Newton's distress, the treating doctor was forced to administer another drug to neutralise the effect, which Newton described as "like coming back from Hell".



Newton slowly began to respond to other treatments, and returned to work four months later at radio station 3XY.



The much-loved TV personality was welcomed back to Channel Nine, though had to start at the bottom as an evening booth announcer, before eventually reuniting with his friend Graham Kennedy on In Melbourne Tonight.



The pair went on to become a formidable duo in Australia's entertainment industry.



Newton, now 76, is back at work after recently undergoing a quadruple bypass.



Finishing up his role as Vince Fontaine in the stage production of Grease, Newton will join the Sydney cast of The Rocky Horror Show, to open at the Lyric Theatre in April.





* Bert by Graeme Blundell is published by Hachette Australia, rrp $45.00.