In the
Babylon 5 universe, Dust is an
illegal drug that
causes its
user to have the normally dormant "
telepath gene"
temporarily
activated. This allows them to
poke around in other people's
minds
much like normal telepaths. The process is very traumatic for the person
being violated, temporarily resulting in insanity, hallucinations and other
psychotropic effects.
Mundanes usually recover from this experience
within a day or two, but if a telepath is
violated in this
fashion, they
almost never
recover--they stay insane for the rest of their lives (it
is never explained quite why this only occurs to telepaths).
G'Kar used dust to enter
Londo's mind once, in the third season episode
Dust to Dust, and was
incarcerated in the station's
brig for a while
as
punishment. By poking around Londo's head,
G'Kar was able to find
out about Mollari's connection to
the Shadows and his true role in
the corruption of the
Centauri Republic.
Kosh also used
G'Kar's
altered state of mind to give him an artifical revelation concerning his
role in things to come, resulting in G'Kar becoming more spiritual and philosophic
as the series progressed forward.
We also find out that Dust was actually developed by the
Psi Corps to try
to turn mundanes into telepaths, but it
failed miserably and did not produce
one converted telepath of any appreciable strength. The Corps keeps
it on the market in the hopes that it will eventually work on someone.