A WRITER has revealed that she was warned not to take LSD by Sir Sean Connery – because of his own bad experience taking the drug.
Irish author Edna O’Brien revealed the startling account in her new memoir where the former Bond star recalled his own “freight of terrors”.
The Scot spoke of tripping with pal psychiatrist Ronald David Laing during psychedelic therapy sessions.
RD Laing worked extensively with mental health issues where he used tabs of acid to get patients to open up – he was even described by his own mum as “psychologically peculiar”.
In her new book, Country Girl, O’Brien recalled a conversation with Sir Sean from May 1970 where he warned her to stay away from Laing and his use of the hallucinogenic substance.
O’Brien wrote: “I had learnt from Sean Connery, with whom I had dinner the previous evening, that his own LSD trip with Laing – both being old friends fromScotland– had its own freight of terrors.
“Yet I did not cancel the appointment. It was as if in some way I believed I could go through with it and yet escape a terrible ordeal.”
According to Dianne Cilento, Connery’s first wife, it is understood that Laing encouraged Sir Sean to take the then legal drug.
In her autobiography My Nine Lives, Cilento said Connery needed the chemical release to deal with the stresses of his acting having just starred in Goldfinger in 1964.
She said it was like opening a “Pandora’s Box” as Connery was emotionally transported back to his hard upbringing in working-classEdinburgh.
Cilento wrote: “It was his standard procedure with patients he felt were emotionally blocked.
“No one was privy to what happened over the next six hours but I believe that with his enormous reserve and armouring Sean resisted the drug.
“As a result he had to go to bed for several days to recover. Buried anger, victories or defeats came tumbling out without warning.”
Cilento said that during these sessions Laing demanded “a great deal of money, complete privacy, a limo to transport him to and from the meeting and a bottle of the best single malt scotch at each session.”
In the end O’Brien ignored the actor’s advice and met with Laing where she described him as turning into a rat and her kitchen walls turned into flesh.
She said she felt compelled to meet with the psychiatrist as it would enrich her writing.
Spokespeople for Connery were unavailable for comment.
