When you think of LSD, a very specific aesthetic probably leaps to mind: the psychedelic pink-and-orange swirls of the 60s; naked people with flowers in their hair; the shimmer of a sitar. After its psychedelic properties were accidentally discovered in the lab by Albert Hofmann in 1943, the drug was banned in the UK in 1966. LSD is still most strongly associated with hippies who embraced its mind-expanding properties.

In fact, the drug’s after-effects have seeped through much of Western culture, from art to literature to, most obviously, music, which was never the same after Bob Dylan, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix dropped acid. Whole genres have since flagged their debt to mind-altering substances: psychedelic rock, psytrance, acid house... the latter hailing from that other spike in psych: 80s and 90s rave culture. Although ecstasy is the drug most associated with the second summer of love, LSD also saw a resurgence in the UK at that time.

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That was 30 years ago. Are we due another psychedelic renaissance? British playwright Leo Butler hopes so. “There was a need – political, socially – for that LSD explosion in the 60s and the ecstasy explosion in the early 90s,” he tells BBC Culture. “You look at the world now and think, god it could really do with a super-strong psychedelic! We need something to bring us together – let’s have a third summer of love.”