[THS] Switzerland: Albert Hofmann, 102

[Peter Webster]

Pubdate: Wed, 30 Apr 2008
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2008 Los Angeles Times
Contact: 
http://www.latimes.com/services/site/la-comment-oped,0,5293584.htmlstory
Website: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Note: From the May 1st edition of the Los Angeles Times: "The 
obituary of Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD, in 
Wednesday's California section said he was survived by his wife, 
Anita. She died in December. The story also referred to peyote 
mushrooms. Peyote is a cactus."
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Albert+Hofmann

ALBERT HOFMANN, 102; SWISS CHEMIST DISCOVERED LSD

His Accidental Experience of 'An Extremely Stimulated Imagination'
Caused by the Drug Led to a Lifetime of Experiments and Initiated the
Psychedelic Generation.

Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD and thereby gave
the psychedelic generation the pharmaceutical vehicle to turn on, tune
in and drop out, has died. He was 102.

Hofmann died Tuesday morning at his home in Basel, Switzerland, of a
heart attack, according to Rick Doblin, the head of MAPS, the
Multidisciplinary Assn. for Psychedelic Studies.

Hofmann also identified and synthesized the active ingredients of
peyote mushrooms and a Mexican psychoactive plant called ololiuqui and
developed at least three related, non-psychoactive compounds that
became widely used in medicine.

Those other feats would have been little remembered, however, had he
not accidentally gotten a trace amount of an experimental compound
called lysergic acid diethylamide on his fingertips and taken the
world's first acid trip.

Hofmann was a talented synthetic chemist working in the Basel research
center of Sandoz Laboratories -- now Novartis -- in the 1930s when he
began studying the chemistry of ergot, the common name for a fungus
that grows on rye, barley and certain other plants. Although ergot is
poisonous, midwives had used a crude extract for centuries to induce
labor in women.

Twenty years earlier, researchers had isolated ergotamine, the first
ergot alkaloid isolated in pure form, and the compound had become
widely used for halting bleeding after childbirth and as a treatment
for migraine headaches.

In the early 1930s, American researchers had identified the primary
active ingredient of ergot, a chemical called lysergic acid. Hofmann
devised a technique to make a series of derivatives of lysergic acid
called amides and began systematically looking for medically useful
compounds.

The 25th compound he synthesized, in 1938, was lysergic acid
diethylamide (in German, lyserg-saure-diathylamid), or LSD-25. Because
this compound had a chemical structure similar to an existing drug
called Coramine, Hofmann had hoped that it would be a stimulant for
the respiratory and circulatory systems.

But testing in experimental animals showed no significant activity for
the drug -- although the animals were observed to become restless
after its administration -- and it was abandoned.

During this period, Hofmann synthesized at least three amides that
became drugs: Methergine, used to halt bleeding after birth;
Hydergine, which improves circulation in the limbs and cerebral
function in the elderly; and Dihydergot, used to stabilize circulation
and blood pressure.

Prompted by what Hofmann later described as a "peculiar presentiment"
that LSD-25 might have properties other than those established in the
first investigations, he decided to look at it again.

On Friday afternoon, April 16, 1943, Hofmann had just completed
synthesizing a new batch when, he subsequently wrote to his
supervisor, "I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in
the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a
remarkable restlessness, combined with slight dizziness.

"At home, I lay down and sank into a not-unpleasant intoxicated-like
condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a
dreamlike state I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic
pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of
colors. After some two hours, this condition faded away."

Hofmann suspected that the state had been caused by something in the
lab. In an interview on his 100th birthday, he said, "I didn't know
what caused it, but I knew that it was important."

After breathing the solvents he had used produced no effect, Hofmann
suspected that the synthetic drug was the source. "LSD spoke to me,"
he said. "He came to me and said, 'You must find me.' He told me,
'Don't give me to the pharmacologist, he won't find anything.' "

The next Monday, he took what he considered to be an extremely small
dose of LSD, so small that a similar dose of even the most powerful
toxin known at the time would have had little or no effect. He had
planned to gradually increase the dosage but instead was surprised to
encounter the first bad acid trip.

Feeling bad, he asked his laboratory assistant to accompany him home
on his bicycle, no cars being available because of World War II
restrictions. During the trip, "I had the feeling that I could not
move from the spot. I was cycling, cycling, but the time seemed to
stand still."

By the time they reached his home, its furnishings had transformed
themselves into terrifying objects.

"Everything in the room spun around, and the familiar objects and
pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms," he wrote in
his autobiography, "LSD: My Problem Child." "They were in constant
motion, animated, as if driven by an inner restlessness. The lady next
door [became] a malevolent, insidious witch with a colored mask."

Hofmann thought he was dying and sent for a doctor, but the physician
could find nothing wrong.

After about six hours, the experience began to change into a pleasant
one.

"After some time, with my eyes closed, I began to enjoy this wonderful
play of colors and forms, which it really was a pleasure to observe.
Then I went to sleep and the next day I was fine. I felt quite fresh,
like a newborn."

That day, April 19, has subsequently been celebrated by LSD proponents
as "Bicycle Day."

Hofmann's bosses did not believe the drug could be so powerful,
concluding that he had measured the dosage incorrectly. Two laboratory
assistants subsequently took doses only a fifth of what Hofmann had
consumed, and they too had powerful experiences.

LSD was initially hailed as a wonder drug for use in psychoanalysis,
particularly for gaining insights into schizophrenia; more than 2,000
research papers appeared over the succeeding decade.

The Central Intelligence Agency investigated LSD as a potential agent
for mind control, and the British government studied it as a truth
drug. In both cases, the drug was administered to subjects who were
not informed of its nature, leading to scandals and changes in
regulations about informed consent.

But in the 1960s, largely at the instigation of Harvard University
psychologists Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, LSD began to be seen
first as a pathway to spiritual enlightenment, then as a major
recreational drug.

"Instead of a 'wonder child,' LSD suddenly became my 'problem child,'
" Hofmann said.

In 1966, the United States banned its use, followed by most other
countries. Nonetheless, some still consider it a promising drug, and
research continues on its medical potential.

Meanwhile, Hofmann read that American ethnologist Gordon Wasson had
discovered mushrooms that were used for ritual purposes by Indians and
that produced an LSD-like effect. Other researchers had little success
extracting the active ingredient, and a sample was sent to Basel.

Hofmann's initial tests in animals appeared to show no effect from the
mushrooms. Before discarding them, however, Hofmann decided to sample
them and had what he called "a full-blown LSD experience."

He and his assistants then isolated the active ingredients, using
themselves as guinea pigs. At every purification step, they would
consume the product to make sure it still contained the active agent.

Ultimately, they isolated two active ingredients, which Hofmann named
psilocybin and psilocin because they had been isolated from Psilocybe
mexicana. They turned out to be about 1% as active as LSD.

On a later visit to Mexico, Hofmann gave a bottle of psilocybin
tablets to Maria Sabina, the shaman who had originally given the
mushrooms to Wasson. "When we left, Maria Sabina told us that the
tablets really contained the spirit of the mushrooms," Hofmann said.

On that visit, Hofmann collected a batch of morning glory seeds that
the natives called ololiuqui. Using the same approach as with the
mushrooms, he isolated the active ingredients and found them to be
lysergic acid monoamide and lysergic acid hydroxyethylamide. "They
were derivatives of lysergic acid that I had on my shelf through my
studies with LSD," he said.

Once again, his colleagues didn't believe him because the lysergic
acid derivatives came from a species completely different from ergot.
They assumed that his final products were contaminants introduced in
the laboratory. And once again he was shown to be correct.

By this time, LSD had developed its negative reputation, and Sandoz
decided it no longer wanted anything to do with ergot
derivatives.

But Hofmann's life had already been altered. LSD and the other
psychoactive drugs "changed my life, insofar as they provided me with
a new concept about what reality is," he said. "Before, I had believed
there was only one reality: the reality of everyday life.

"Under LSD, however, I entered into realities which were as real and
even more real than the one of everyday." He also "became aware of the
wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the plant and
animal kingdom. I became very sensitive to what will happen to all
this and all of us."

After dozens of acid trips, Hofmann finally gave up psychedelics. "I
know LSD; I don't need to take it anymore," he said.

Hofmann is survived by his wife, Anita; two daughters; a son;eight
grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. 
_________________________________________________________

Pubdate: Thu, 1 May 2008
Source: Times, The (UK)
Copyright: 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd
Contact: letters at thetimes.co.uk
Website: http://www.the-times.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/454
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Albert+Hofmann

ALBERT HOFMANN

Swiss Chemist Who Discovered the Psychedelic Compound LSD and Remained
Convinced of Its Great Therapeutic Potential

On April 16, 1943, while conducting research at the laboratories of
the pharmaceutical company Sandoz in Basle, the Swiss scientist Albert
Hofmann accidentally ingested some of the substance on which he was
working and became the first person to experience an LSD trip.

The discovery would earn Hofmann the sobriquet of "father of LSD", and
he was a lifelong advocate of the beneficial possibilities of what he
called his "problem child".

Albert Hofmann was born in Baden, near Zurich, in 1906. He studied
chemistry at the University of Zurich, specialising in plant and
animal chemistry -- a subject that had fascinated him from early
childhood. He received a distinction for his doctorate in 1929 on the
chemical structure of chitin, a substance contained in the shells and
skeletal parts of insects and crustaceans, which he found had a
similar function to that of cellulose in plants.

Hofmann joined Sandoz's pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratory
that year, attracted by a research programme undertaken by the
laboratory director, Professor Arthur Stoll, involving the isolation
and purification of the active constituents of medicinal plants.

He soon became interested in ergot alkaloids, substances derived from
the fungus Claviceps purpurea, a parasite of rye and wheat; in human
beings poisoning by such alkaloids causes ergotism, or St Anthony's
fire.

Important drugs were derived from this research, including Methergine,
a preparation for staunching of post-partum haemorrhages; Dihydergot,
a circulatory stabiliser; and Hydergine, a geriatric medicine that
earned Sandoz millions.

Hofmann's discovery of LSD was based on work he had conducted in 1938,
isolating compounds of lysergic acid, a component of ergot. Hoping to
find a respiratory and circulatory stimulant, he produced a series of
compounds and in November of that year synthesised the 25th, lysergic
acid diethylamide, which was given the code LSD-25. Animal testing
proved inconclusive, and the substance was forgotten for five years,
until the spring of 1943, when Hofmann was struck by a "peculiar
presentiment" that the compound could possess useful properties and
decided to synthesize it once more.

During this process he was forced to abandon his work when he was
overcome by a feeling of light-headedness. He returned home, where he
entered a dreamlike state in which he perceived an "uninterrupted
stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense
kaleidoscopic play of colours", lasting two hours.

Intrigued by this strange effect, which he became convinced could only
be attributed to the compound he was working on, Hofmann decided to
self-administer a larger dose and note the effects.

At 4.20pm on April 19, 1943, he cautiously diluted 0.25 milligrams of
LSD-25 in water and drank the solution. Forty minutes later he noted
the following symptoms in his laboratory journal: "Beginning
dizziness, feeling of anxiety, unrest, difficulty in concentration,
visual disturbances, desire to laugh."

Then he scrawled "most severe crisis", and unable to continue writing,
requested that his laboratory technician accompany him home. They set
off on the four-mile journey on their bicycles. He wrote later: "I had
the feeling of not getting ahead, whereas my escort stated that we
were rolling along at a good speed. I lost all count of time. I
noticed with dismay that my environment was undergoing progressive
changes. Space and time became more and more disorganised and I was
overcome by a fear that I was going out of my mind."

Eventually they arrived at Hofmann's home, where the chemist was "just
barely capable of asking my companion to summon our family doctor and
request milk from the neighbours", which he believed might act as an
antidote for his poisoning.

Inside his home the familiar surroundings were transformed in
terrifying ways. Everything was spinning and pieces of furniture
assumed grotesque forms. When the concerned neighbour arrived with the
milk he had requested she was "no longer Mrs R., but rather a
malevolent, insidious witch with a coloured mask".

"A demon had invaded me, had taken possession of my body, mind, and
soul," he wrote later. "I jumped up and screamed, trying to free
myself from him, but then sank down again and lay helpless on the
sofa. The substance, with which I had wanted to experiment, had
vanquished me. It was the demon that scornfully triumphed over my
will. I was seized by the dreadful fear of going insane. I was taken
to another world, another place, another time. My body seemed to be
without sensation, lifeless, strange."

As the evening passed the nightmarish effects subsided, and Hofmann
began to enjoy the synaesthesia of sounds, colours and shapes that
burst forth behind his closed eyes: "Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images .
. . alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in
circles and spirals, exploding in coloured fountains, rearranging and
hybridising themselves in constant flux."

It was particularly remarkable, he noted, "how every acoustic
perception, such as the sound of a door handle or a passing
automobile, became transformed into optical perceptions. Every sound
generated a vividly changing image, with its own consistent form and
colour."

After six hours of similar effects, and an examination by the doctor,
who could find nothing whatsoever wrong with him, the visions subsided
and Hofmann finally fell asleep.

He awoke the next day aware that he had discovered a new and extremely
powerful substance; one that he hoped would be of use in pharmacology,
neurology and especially psychiatry. Ten years of scientific research
followed. Marketing it under the trade name Delysid, Sandoz provided
LSD to scientists free of charge, keen to promote its new wonder drug,
and psychiatrists began to use it on themselves to try to understand
schizophrenic experiences. Through such selfadministration LSD became
popular as a recreational drug among a small group of mental health
professionals.

Several, notably Timothy Leary, then a Harvard psychology professor,
became convinced of LSD's potential as a tool for spiritual growth and
spread use of the substance to the emerging counter-cultural youth
movements of the 1960s. It was taken up with epidemic-like speed.

The last of the Sandoz patents for the production of LSD expired in
1963. As no drug-control laws covered the new substance its
manufacture quickly became widespread. Publicity about the drug
reached its zenith as the drug became increasingly associated with
1960s counter-culture. The wonder child had become a problem child for
Sandoz, and on August 23, 1965, it announced that it would no longer
produce and distribute LSD. It was banned in Britain the following
year, and the US followed suit in 1967, ending all research on its
potential in medicinal and psychological treatment.

"They tossed out the baby with the bathwater," said Hofmann, who had
been disappointed by the course of events -- "Since my self-experiment
had revealed LSD in its terrifying, demonic aspect, the last thing I
could have expected was that this substance could ever find
application as anything approaching a pleasure drug."

He later wrote: "Of course there were tragedies through misuse, but I
have had many letters and contacts with people who say it benefited
them. People who are businessmen, artists, sportsmen, who testify
gratefully that they got valuable help on the way to what I think my
friend Aldous Huxley said is the end and the ultimate purpose of human
life -- enlightenment, beatific vision, love.

"I think all these joyful testimonies of invaluable help by LSD should
be enough to convince the health authorities, finally, of the nonsense
of the prohibition of LSD."

Hofmann became director of the natural products department at Sandoz
and went on studying hallucinogenic substances found in Mexican
mushrooms and other plants, leading to the synthesis of psilocybin,
the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. In 1962 he and his wife
Anita travelled to Mexico in search of other useful plants and
discovered that the mushrooms used by the Mazatec Indians during their
religious ceremonies contained an active compound chemically very
similar to LSD.

He retired from Sandoz in 1971 as director of research for the
department of natural products but remained a believer in the benefits
of LSD, which, he maintained, "should be legalised. It should be
distributed to people who can make good use of it. It should be made
available to the medical profession, like heroin or morphine. LSD
should have the same status."

Hofmann published an account of his discovery, in 1981, LSD: My
Problem Child. In 1988 he toured California to raise money for the
Albert Hofmann Foundation, which defines its aim as to gather
information about the use of "mind-expanding substances to explore
consciousness" and "to further the understanding and responsible
application of psychedelic substances in the investigation of both
individual and collective consciousness".

Hofmann's own use of LSD did not seem to have affected his health
adversely. In 1998 he attended an international conference in
Amsterdam to mark the 50th anniversary of his discovery, after which
the nonagenarian chemist impressed younger clubbers at a party by
dancing energetically to the psychedelic music.

Hofmann remained convinced of LSD's therapeutic potential and was
active in promoting its clinical use. He was sure of the value of his
problem child, despite its double-edged ability to stimulate a change
in consciousness: "It is a very deep experience," he wrote. "It can be
beautiful, it can be terrifying."

Hofmann's wife and two of his sons predeceased him, and he is survived
by a son and a daughter.

Albert Hofmann, chemist, was born on January 11, 1906. He died on
April 29, 2008, aged 102 
_____________________________________________

Pubdate: Fri, 2 May 2008
Source: Birmingham Post (UK)
Copyright: 2008 Trinity Mirror plc
Contact: thepost at mrn.co.uk
Website: http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/post/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3385
Author: Andrew Cowen
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)

SUBSTANCE THAT CHANGED THE FABRIC OF A GENERATION

Join me, if you will, in raising a blotter to mark the passing of 
Albert Hofmann, scientist, alchemist and engineer of our enlightened culture.

Hofmann, in case you didn't know, discovered Lysergic acid 
diethylamide, better known as LSD or acid.

The drug was first synthesized on November 16, 1938 by Dr Hofmann at 
the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. He was looking for a 
cure for alcoholism and respiratory diseases.

What he found was a powerful substance that was to fundamentally 
change the fabric of a generation.

Others may aspire to this ubiquity in pop culture, such as Heinz and 
their 57 varieties, but Lennon and McCartney never wrote Lucy In The 
Soup With Diamonds.

Each generation is defined by the drug of its choice. I'm not saying 
that all our children are wandering around in a state of chemical 
intoxication, but a lot of them certainly are. And any old hippy will 
tell you that the drugs aren't as good as they used to be.

The question today, really, is whether Hofmann inspired or corrupted 
a generation.

Albert, who died at the ripe old age of 102, wasn't a counter-culture 
type. It would take 25 years for his LSD to become a recreational 
sacrament for the San Francisco drop-outs.

No, his mind-warping acid was given to the military for testing as a 
possible chemical weapon of mass distraction.

An enemy that can taste colours and see through their own skin is not 
likely to be able to point a rifle straight.

It was Dr Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, two far-out 
psychotherapists who picked up the drug and ran with it after the 
military decided it was just too weird to work as a mind-control drug.

These two are really the beginning of the modern acid story. Their 
experiments with the drug initially had the intention of unlocking 
the sub-conscious mind and presenting us with ego-death, but to a 
young, post-war generation, brutalised by a war in Vietnam and 
distrustful of an old regime, it became a key to so much more.

Writers such as Aldous Huxley and actors like Cary Grant, Larry 
Hagman and Jack Nicholson became acid evangelists and when the drug 
inevitably made the evolutionary leap from Dr Tim's dinner parties to 
a post-Love Me Do generation of beatniks and students, it became a 
radical force to be reckoned with.

"Turn on, tune in, drop out," was Leary's mantra and thousands took 
him at his word.

Paul and Ringo took it, then John and George and pop music underwent 
a seismic shift.

Without LSD, there would have been no Rubber Soul, Revolver or Sgt Pepper.

Listening today to Tomorrow Never Knows is still an almost 
hallucinatory experience as backwards guitars, tape loops and drones 
implore us to "turn off your minds, relax and float downstream."

It's difficult in this second Victorian age to imagine something so 
revolutionary becoming so enmeshed in the very fabric of the mainstream.

Even though LSD was made illegal in the USA on October 6 1966, hippy 
chemists such as the notorious Owsley Stanley manufactured enough to 
fuel every single Grateful Dead gig, ever . and that's a lot of drugs, man.

You may even have taken it yourself, in which case you'll have an 
opinion as to whether it's a force for good or evil.

One thing's certain, it's not the smash hit that it used to be.

Official figures reveal that we'd much rather be taking cocaine, 
crack, skunk and ecstasy - chemical coshes for a quick-hit society.

It's not the smelly underground who are taking these drugs either. 
It's children's TV presenters, our most famous pop stars, sportsmen, 
politicians and lawyers.

It struck me as a brave and responsible decision when Tony Blair's 
government downgraded the classification of cannabis to "not quite legal".

That's not to condone the behaviour of gangs of skunk-smoking 
pubescent toe-rags hanging around our off-licenses, but to 
acknowledge that the only way to win the so-called war on drugs is to 
change the rules of engagement.

It's a shame that Nanny Gordon now seems hell-bent on making 
criminals again a massive segment of society while failing to try and 
understand why a whole generation has become deradicalised, 
disenfranchisted, disenchanted and dysfunctional. 
______________________________________________________

Pubdate: Thu, 01 May 2008
Source: Independent  (UK)
Copyright: 2008 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd.
Contact: letters at independent.co.uk
Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/209
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Albert+Hofmann

TRIP OF A LIFETIME: HOW LSD ROCKED THE WORLD

It's the psychedelic drug that inspired Hendrix and The Beatles - and
shaped the music, art and literature of a generation. As the world
bids farewell to the bicycling Swiss chemist who created LSD, John
Walsh explores his mind-altering legacy

It was known as acid, blotter acid, window pane, dots, tickets and
mellow yellow. It was sold on the street in capsules and tablets but
most often in liquid form, usually absorbed on to a piece of blotting
paper divided into several squares: one drop, or "dot", per square.
Lysergic acid diethylamide, or C20H25N30 to give it its snappy
chemical formula, derived from lysergic acid, and it introduced you to
a world of cosmic harmony and all-embracing love, or a black schizoid
hell of paranoia and screaming demons.

The letters LSD once denoted English money in pre-decimalisation days:
librae, solidi, denarii, the Latin forms of pounds, shillings and
pence. From the mid-1960s, however, the letters had only one meaning:
they stood for the most powerful mood-altering drug in the world.

Those who experienced the 12-hour "trip" it engendered would report
back with all the fervour and awe of travellers returned from mystic
lands, desperate to relay the sights and sounds of their wild
adventures, but frustrated by the impossibility of making their
listeners see or understand their experiences. Sometimes, they'd been
on a physical journey (usually no further than the garden or local
shops); but mentally, the trip had taken them into a new realm of
consciousness that was a) hard to evoke and b) very boring to listen
to. They talked about the blinding sensory enhancement, and the
synaesthesia of hearing colours and smelling the stars. They saw
profound truths in cracks in the pavement and cosmic harmonies in a
match flame. They tended to mention God, several times. The man who
invented the stuff had a lot to answer for. He was a Swiss chemist
called Albert Hoffman, and he died on Tuesday morning.

The fact that he reached the age of 102 seems a tribute to the
efficacy of his invention. But its importance to the 20th century
isn't as a therapeutic medical treatment. It may have altered some
lives for the better, but its real importance is cultural. For LSD
gave the Sixties a brand-new concept to embrace and apply to every
area of life, especially the arts: psychedelia. The word was spelt
wrongly - it should, strictly, be psychodelia - but its meaning was
clear. It meant the making-visible of the soul: opening up your inner,
half-glimpsed metaphysical self for inspection while in a state of
profound relaxation and pleasure.

The English writer Aldous Huxley had, of course, been there years
before, when he experimented with mescaline in the early 1950s. His
1954 book, The Doors of Perception (the title is taken from William
Blake - "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would
appear to man as it is, infinite") argued that altered-state-inducing
drugs were good for you, if you were sufficiently clever.

"To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for
a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to
an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with
words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and
unconditionally, by the Mind at Large - this is an experience of
inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual," he
said. But LSD was, by 1968, becoming available to all, and seemed, for
a time, a thing that could change the world.

In theory, the entire young "counterculture" of the West, the same
young people who listened to rock'n'roll, smoked dope, rejected the
values of their straight, bourgeois parents and demonstrated against
the Vietnam War, could all drop acid, discover their transcendent
inner being, forsake their redundant ego and refuse to cooperate with
the ordinary forms of society. They could, in the immortal phrase of
Timothy Leary, LSD's greatest fan and most articulate zealot, "Turn
on, tune in and drop out."

They could share with each other soul-perceptions that were denied to
the straights, the military-industrial complex, the politicians and
judges.... It didn't happen. But, for a few years, it felt as if the
doors of perception might budge an inch.

The first acid trip was on 16 April 1943. It was an accident. Dr
Hoffman had been conducting experiments with LSD-25, which he had
synthesised from lysergic acid in 1938 and was trying to make again,
having a "presentiment" that it could possess "properties other than
those established in the first investigations". The doctor got some of
the stuff on his fingers. In the afternoon he felt dizzy, couldn't
work, went home to bed and wrote later that he entered a dream-like
state. Behind his closed eyes, he saw streams of "fantastic pictures,
extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colours" for
a whole two hours.

Three days later, with a Dr Jekyll-like foreboding, he put himself
through a guinea-pig experiment. He took 250mg (a colossal dose by
blotting-paper standards) and went for a bicycle ride. Wherever he
looked, the landscape became distorted as if seen through a funfair
mirror. Though he was moving fast he felt completely stationary, as
though the fields were whizzing by him.

Back home, he experienced the world's first bad trip. He became
convinced that he was possessed by a demon, that his neighbour was a
witch and that his furniture was trying to kill him. The doctor was
summoned, found nothing wrong beyond a dilation of the pupils, and
packed him off to bed. Hoffman's panic subsided and he started to
enjoy the visions and exploding colours, the shifting kaleidoscope of
shapes breaking up and folding into themselves. Every noise from the
street became a visual event.

He woke next day full of beans, refreshed, reborn. His breakfast
tasted delicious. In the garden, looking at birds and smelling the
flowers, he described his senses as "vibrating in a condition of
highest sensitivity, which persisted for the entire day".

"Bicycle Day", 19 April, was later commemorated by acid enthusiasts
because it was the first conscious "trip" and it had had - just about
- a happy ending. But the doors to perception are, for some
truth-seekers, booby-trapped and dangerous. When LSD was co-opted by
medical staff for recreational use, two decades after Hoffman's bike
ride, users learnt the hard way how impossible it was to control the
wild ride once it had started.

At Oxford in the early 1970s, we were frankly intimidated by the
drug's reputation. We all wanted to try it, but were too chicken. The
word in the quad was: if you had any secret hang-ups, mental
instabilities, phobias, sexual inadequacies or social insecurities
(the kind that surface in dreams,) you were wise of steer clear of
acid. We knew when one of us was going to try it. "Tonight," I'd hear
during dinner in hall, "Roger's tripping for the first time. But he'll
have Will and Ollie with him, so he'll be OK."

I've always remembered Roger's first trip (so, I'll bet, has he). We
all knew he'd be fine because he was so perfect: cool, handsome,
easy-going, a hit with the girls, a dead ringer, with his corkscrewy
curls, for Marc Bolan of T. Rex. And he was rich; he owned a Morgan,
which he casually parked in the back quad. We knew Roger would survive
the experience and bang on about it, like he banged on about his Bang
and Olufsen state-of-the-art hi-fi. And anyway, Will and Olly would
look after him.

The evening started well. The three students took a tab each, drank
some wine and waited for results. An hour later, they were happily
tripping on the college lawn, listening to the grass grow and hearing
their voices transforming into harp notes. They went to Olly's room,
smoked, listened to Tubular Bells in a haze of bliss. Then Roger went
the gents. This proved a mistake.

After using the facilities, he washed his hands, dried them and looked
in the mirror. Something caught his eye. He looked closer. Just below
his cherubic lower lip, there was a spot. It's wasn't huge or septic,
but it was unquestionably a skin eruption, a blemish. As he watched,
it grew bigger and bigger until it took on the size and texture of a
Brussels sprout. Roger was transfixed. He looked on in horror, as the
distended spot grew wobblingly larger, and began to pull his features
into its green heart. His nose disappeared, his cheeks and eyes began
to twist down, his Marc Bolan curls hung uselessly over his aghast,
imploding face.

Roger, you see, was indeed a near-perfect human being but he was as
vain as a canary. And discovering a spot on his immaculate physiognomy
played straight into his worst insecurity: that he might secretly be
unattractive. He ended up imagining his whole head was a great blob of
pus; and sat screaming with paranoia for two hours as his friends
dosed him with orange juice (vitamin C is the only known cure for bad
trips). Other occupants of his staircase, alerted by the noise, called
in to discover a scenario straight from the locked unit of Bedlam
hospital, circa 1880.

During the Cold War, both the British and the US governments were keen
to exploit LSD's unique qualities, for "social engineering". They were
convinced it would be useful as a "truth drug" during interrogations -
a rather prosaic understanding of the kind of visionary truth revealed
by communing with one's soul.

In 1953 and 1954, scientists working for MI6 drugged servicemen with
LSD without telling them what to expect; the scientists told them they
were looking for a cure for the common cold. One soldier, aged 19,
reported that he saw "walls melting, cracks appearing in people's
faces... eyes would run down cheeks, Salvador Dali-type faces... a
flower would turn into a slug." Not surprisingly, the experiment
failed; MI6 reported that LSD was of little practical use as a
mind-control drug. It took 50 years for the human guinea-pigs to be
compensated for what they'd been put through.

If LSD was no use in war, what was it good for? At first, the
scientific community thought it could be a wonder drug to use in
psychoanalysis, because it would help patients unblock repressed
subconscious thoughts they couldn't unblock by other therapies; more
than 2,000 research papers were written about the compound's possible
applications.

At Harvard University in the early 1960s, the psychologists Timothy
Leary and Richard Alpert set out to show that it could be used as a
path to spiritual enlightenment, a catalyst to religious experience, a
tool for accessing the divine; they preached their gospel all over
America. As time went by, they seemed less and less like scientists,
and progressively more like visionaries; Leary came on like a hippie,
a guru, a slightly creepy uncle to the teenage students he was seeking
to "turn on". By 1966, just as LSD was becoming established as the
ultimate recreational drug, the US government lost patience with the
mystical bullet, and banned it.

>From that moment, it took off as symbol of the enlightenment that
cops, governments and teachers didn't want you to experience. It was a
holy drug that wasn't allowed near your tongue, no matter how much you
craved communion with the cosmos. Instead of rebelling (that would
come later) the counter-culture embraced the whole idea of LSD, and
celebrated its effects in music, art, film, books, clothing, dance
routines and in the floaty patterns of light-shows on walls.

Becoming stoned, murmuring "Wow, the colours, man..." while weaving
across a roomful of acidheads listening to Pink Floyd's Piper at the
Gates of Dawn - that was the UK version of psychedelia, the diluted
legacy of Albert Hoffman's great discovery. Not that he regretted its
chequered history. His book about the drug that turned the world
inside out was titled LSD: My Problem Child.

The acid effect: LSD's influence on...

Movies

The definitive acid movie is The Trip, scripted by none other than
Jack Nicholson, directed by Roger Corman and starring Easy Rider duo
Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. Because it's wholly in favour of the
acid experience (ad-man Fonda drops a tab and suffers nothing more
than a swirly, psychedelic hallucination on the beach), it was refused
a certificate by the censors. The LSD binge in Easy Rider, in which
the boys celebrate their arrival in New Orleans by tripping with two
hookers, features some verite footage of Fonda enduring a real-life
acid moment in a graveyard, wailing about his dead mother. The clash
of violence and rock'n'roll, and the mingled identities of the lead
characters in Performance, directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas
Roeg, is resolved when Mick Jagger and James Fox get weirded-out
together on acid, and seem to enter each other's heads (shortly before
a bullet enters Fox's.) Ten years later, in Altered States, Ken
Russell attacked the enlightening power! s of acid when he portrayed a
psychedelically grooved-up William Hurt heading for perdition. Three
decades after The Trip, LSD became a transformative magic spell in
Irvine Welsh's 1998 film The Acid House (where a single tab makes a
Hibs hardnut swap personalities with a yuppie infant) and a terrible
means of torture in Dead Man's Shoes, as Paddy Considine feeds
bad-trip acid tablets to the horrible men who made his brother hang
himself.

Music

The combination of flower power and hallucinogenic drugs in
Haight-Ashbury in 1967 was as potent as gunpowder and matches. Rockers
who'd tried the big blotting-paper experience strove to replicate it
in performances that were floaty, spacey, woozy and seemingly without
beginning or end. The result was called acid rock: it was supposed to
suggest the album had been recorded by a band in the grip of LSD, and
was to be listened to by fans similarly stimulated. Lyrics were often
minimal, and the sound often relied on randomly wacky special effects,
complemented, during live shows, by a light show of wiggly patterns
playing against a wall.

The Grateful Dead, from San Francisco's Bay Area, were the key US acid
rock band; their leader, Jerry Garcia, a portly figure with a
prodigious beard, could spin out the solo on "Dark Star" for 25
minutes. Jefferson Airplane also hailed from San Francisco and defined
acid rock in 1967 with their album, Surrealistic Pillow. It featured
"White Rabbit," which sneakily refers to the apparent drug consumption
in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and ends on the line: "Remember
what the Dormouse said: Feed your head, Feed your head." Elsewhere The
Doors drew their name from Aldous Huxley's book, and their leader Jim
Morrison sang "The End" and "Riders on the Storm" in a blurry,
reflective drone, like one intensely drugged.

In the UK, 1967 was the year of The Beatles' masterpiece, Sergeant
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, whose early highlight was an
hallucinogenic vision of tangerine trees and marmalade skies called
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". The capitalised letters seemed a dead
giveaway, but Paul McCartney always denied it was a song about LSD. He
later revealed that he'd tried the hallucinogenic, and is thought to
be the person who first introduced it to Bob Dylan. The pre-eminent UK
acid band was Pink Floyd in the days of Syd Barrett and The Piper at
the Gates of Dawn. Their song titles took their cue from space travel
- "Astronomy Domine", "Interstellar Overdrive" - as did the Rolling
Stones in their single burst of psychedelia, "2000 Light Years From
Home".

Literature

Because of the fundamental difficulty (pace Aldous Huxley) of evoking
an acid trip in any meaningful way, the literature of LSD is limited.
Heroin, cocaine, marijuana and alcohol may inform The Man with the
Golden Arm, Bright Lights, Big City, Junky and The Lost Weekend, but
the acid trip has proved elusive to prose. Perhaps the most notable
literary "trip" was indeed a genuine trip: the journey taken by Ken
Kesey and the Merry Pranksters in 1964 in a psychedelically painted
school bus called "Further". The pranksters included Neal Cassady,
Sandy Lehmann-Haupt, Stewart Brand, Carolyn Adams (the wife of Jerry
Garcia) and two proto-hippies called Wavy Gravy and The Cadaverous
Cowboy. They rolled east to New York, giving out tabs of acid to
strangers, and were immortalised in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid
Acid Test. It was that kinda time - when, in the words of William
Burroughs, "a tiny psychoactive molecule affected almost every aspect
of Western life".

Design

Swirling shapes, paisley patterns, surreally "fat" lettering,
howlingly discordant but vivid colours and lots of strobe effects were
the characteristic of acid art. The acid genre hardly lasted long
enough to establish a niche in art history, but it enjoyed a
considerable vogue in the world of posters. Between 1967 and 1972,
there was hardly a "progressive" rock-gig poster that did not feature
distorted lettering and swirly colours. Much of it was the work of
Karl Ferris, a Hastings-born photographer who worked on the
Psychedelic Happening shows of the mid-1960s, and, through them, met
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Graham Nash, Eric Clapton, T Rex and Pink
Floyd. He brought his fish-eye lens and infrared colour film to
several classic LP covers, including the US versions of Hendrix's
three albums, Donovan's A Gift from a Flower to a Garden and The
Hollies' Evolution.

Elsewhere, the market was dominated by Hipgnosis, a British art design
group made up of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, who were
responsible for the freaky early covers of Pink Floyd and Genesis.
Other artists influenced by psychedelia include Victor Moscoso and
Alan Aldridge.
___________________________________________________________

Pubdate: Fri, 2 May 2008
Source: DrugSense Weekly (DSW)
Section: Feature Article
Webpage: http://www.drugsense.org/current.htm
Website: http://www.drugsense.org
Authors: Dieter A. Hagenbach and Lucius Werthmuller
Note: This piece was originally published at Gaia Media, and is 
available here http://drugsense.org/url/f8M8uc3w

ALBERT HOFMANN, 1906-2008

At the age of 102 years, Albert Hofmann died peacefully last Tuesday 
morning, 29th April, in his home near Basel, Switzerland. Still last 
weekend we talked to him, and he expressed his great joy about the 
blooming plants and the fresh green of the meadows and trees around 
his house.  His vitality and his open mind conducted him until his last breath.

He is reputed to be one of the most important chemists of our times. 
He is the discoverer of LSD, which he considers, up to date, as both 
a "wonder drug" and a "problem child". In addition he did pioneering 
work as a researcher of other psychoactive substances as well as 
active agents of important medicinal plants and mushrooms. Under the 
spell of the consciousness-expanding potential of LSD the scientist 
turned increasingly into a philosopher of nature and a visionary 
critical of contemporary culture.

Until his death Albert Hofmann remained active. He communicated with 
colleagues and experts from all over the world, gave interviews, and 
showed great interest in the world's affairs, although he decided to 
retire from public life already a few years ago. Nevertheless he 
welcomed visitors at his home on the Rittimatte, and opened the door 
for late in the evening.

He managed to keep his almost childlike curiosity for the wonders of 
nature and creation.  In his "paradise," as he would call his home, 
he enjoyed being close to nature, especially to plants. During one of 
our last visits he said to us with luminous eyes: "The Rittimatte is 
my second most important discovery." It was always a unique 
experience to stroll with him over his meadows and to share his 
enjoying the living nature all around. Gratefully and lovingly we 
grieve for an outstanding scientist, an important philosopher, a dear 
and true friend, and our member of the board.

Albert Hofmann was born on January 1906 in the quiet small town of 
Baden, Switzerland, as the eldest one of four children. His father is 
a toolmaker in a factory where he meets Albert's mother-to-be; when 
he falls seriously ill, Albert has to support the family. That's why 
he decides for a commercial apprenticeship. At the same time he 
starts studying Latin and other languages, since he wants to take his 
A-levels, which he succeeds in at a private school, paid for by a godfather.

In 1926, at the age of twenty, Albert Hofmann begins to study 
chemistry at the University of Zurich. Four years later he does his 
doctorate with distinction.  Subsequently he works at the Sandoz 
pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratory in Basel, a company to 
which he proves his loyalty for more than four uninterrupted 
decades.  (In 1996 Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy merged to become Novartis.) 
That's where he mainly works with medicinal plants and mushrooms. 
He's specifically interested in alkaloids (nitrogen compounds) of 
ergot, a cereal fungus.  In 1938 he isolates the basic component of 
all therapeutically essential ergot alkaloids, lysergic acid; he 
mixes it with a series of chemicals. He then tests the effects of the 
thus derived lysergic acid derivatives as circulatory and respiratory 
stimulant among others LSD-25 (Lysergic acid diethylamide). Because 
the effects observed fell short of expectations, however, the 
pharmacologists at Sandoz quickly lose interest in it.

Five years later, following a "peculiar presentiment," Albert Hofmann 
devotes himself again to LSD-25.  On 16 April 1943, while 
synthesizing, he is overcome by unusual sensations "a remarkable 
restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness," which prompt him to 
interrupt his laboratory work.  "At home I lay down and sank into a 
not unpleasant intoxication like condition, characterized by an 
extremely stimulated imagination.  In a dreamlike state, with eyes 
closed (I found the daylight too unpleasantly glaring), I perceived 
an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes 
with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors.  After some two hours 
this condition faded away."

Three days later, on 19 April 1943, Hofmann sets out for the first 
voluntary LSD trip in the history of man. Because he cannot yet judge 
the enormous efficacy of the drug, he takes, at 4:20 pm, with 250 
microgram a relatively high dose - and gets to know the 
hallucinogenic power of the substance with all its intensity. With 
his discovery of LSD Albert Hofmann has caused a snowball effect, 
which turns into an avalanche in no time. It influences the late 
second millennium at least in the Western world - to an extent, 
comparable only to the "pill". Consciousness researchers respectfully 
spoke of an "atom bomb of the mind."

To worldwide setting-in research Albert Hofmann makes essential 
contributions.  So he is, in 1958, the first one to succeed in 
isolating the psychoactive substances psilocybin and psilocin from 
Mexican magic mushrooms (Psilocybe mexicana); in Ololiuqui, the seeds 
of a climbing plant, he finds substances related to LSD. He isolates 
and synthesizes substances of important medicinal plants in order to 
study their effects. His basic research blesses Sandoz with several 
successful remedies: Hydergine, an effective one in geriatrics, 
Dihydergot, a circulation- and blood-pressure stabilizing medicament, 
and Methergine, an active agent applied in gynecology.  Hofmann stays 
with Sandoz until his retirement in 1971, last as head of the 
research department for natural medicines. From then on he devotes 
more and more of his time to writing and lecturing.  He increasingly 
wins recognition for his scientific pioneering ventures: he is given 
honorary doctorates by the ETH Zurich, the Stockholm university, and 
the Berlin Free University; and he is called into the Nobel Prize Committee.

Here, outstanding contributions to research were honored - but Albert 
Hofmann's life's work comprises much more. From the start he took a 
favorable view of efforts by physicians and psychotherapists to 
include LSD into new approaches for the treatment of manifold chronic 
diseases.  But LSD isn't only useful with special diagnoses it's 
Hofmann's firm belief that the "psychedelic" potential of this 
"wonder drug" could be beneficial to all of us. In LSD-induced 
altered states of consciousness its discoverer doesn't only see 
psychotic delusions of a chemically manipulated mind, but windows to 
a higher reality true spiritual experiences during which a normally 
deeply buried potential of our mind, the heavenly element of 
creation, our unity with it reveals itself. "The one-sided belief in 
the scientific view of life is based on a far-reaching 
misunderstanding," Hofmann says in his book Insight Outlook. 
"Certainly, everything it contains is real but this represents just 
one half of reality; only its material, quantifiable part. It lacks 
all those spiritual dimensions which cannot be described in physical 
or chemical terms; and it's exactly these which include the most 
important characteristics of all life."

It's not the single consumer alone who profits from chemicals which 
help to understand these aspects of the world; for Hofmann it could 
help to heal deficits the Western world chronically suffers from: 
"Materialism, estrangement from nature (...), lack of professional 
fulfillment in a mechanized, lifeless world of employment, boredom 
and aimlessness in a rich, saturated society, the missing of a 
sense-making philosophical fundamentalness of life." Starting from 
experiences as LSD conveys them, we could "develop a new awareness of 
reality" which "could become the basis of a spirituality that's not 
founded on the dogmas of existing religions, but on insights into a 
higher and profounder sense" on that we recognize, read, and 
understand "the revelations of the book which God's finger wrote." 
When such insights "become established in our collective 
consciousness, it could arise from that, that scientific research and 
the previous destroyers of nature - technology and industry - will 
serve the purpose of changing back our world into what it formerly 
was: into an earthly Garden of Eden."

With this message the genius chemist turns into a profound 
philosopher of nature and visionary critical of contemporary 
culture.  The critical distance from the LSD euphoria of the hippie- 
and flower power-driven ones Albert Hofmann has never given up, 
however; that he has fathered a "problem child" he already emphasizes 
with the title of one of his most known works. He always underlines 
the risks of an uncontrolled intake. On the other hand he never tires 
of emphasizing what's the basic difference between LSD and most of 
the other drugs: even if used repeatedly, it doesn't make addictive; 
it doesn't reduce one's awareness; taken in a normal dose it's 
absolutely non-toxic. The total demonizing of psychedelics, as 
pursued by the mass media, conservative politicians, and governments 
from the sixties onward, he never could understand; for him, there is 
no reason why mentally stable persons in the right set and setting 
shouldn't enjoy LSD. All the more disappointed Albert Hofmann was 
when, in the late sixties, he had to see it happen that the use of 
LSD was worldwide criminalized and prohibited - even for therapeutic 
and research purposes

The impetus for a change emanating from the impact of the 
international Symposium "LSD - Problem Child and Wonder Drug" in 2006 
in Basel, at the occasion of his 100th birthday, quickened him to say 
that "after this conference my problem child has definitely turned 
into a wonder child," and he regarded this development as his most 
beautiful birthday present.

And after just shortly before his 102nd birthday, he enjoyed taking 
notice that the first LSD study with humans has received the 
permission from the Federal Office of Public Health in Bern, which he 
called the "fulfillment of my heart's desire."

His life has become an ideal for many for how we can reach a great 
age in mental and physical vigor by retaining a childlike curiosity.

Albert Hofmann repeatedly expressed his conviction, that his mystical 
experiences and his trips into other worlds of consciousness, which 
he experienced first spontaneously as a child and later during his 
experiments with psychedelic substances would be the best 
preparations for the last journey which everybody has to go on at the 
end of her or his life. He has retained his curiosity for himself for 
his last journey.
________________________________________________________

Pubdate: Fri, 02 May 2008
Source: National Post (Canada)
Webpage: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=485721
Copyright: 2008 Southam Inc.
Contact: letters at nationalpost.com
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Colby Cosh,  National Post
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Albert+Hofmann

ALBERT HOFMANN'S 'PROBLEM CHILD'

The Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who died on Tuesday at the age of 
102, assembled a remarkable track record as an investigator -- one 
that stretched back to the wild west days of chemistry and pharmacy, 
when ventilated fume hoods were considered an expensive affectation, 
occasional self-experimentation was not only permitted but expected 
and a lone individual was involved in every stage of drug discovery 
from conceptualization to fabricating the pills.

As a graduate student, Hofmann revealed the structure of insect 
chitin; later he would master the complex chemical world found within 
ergot, a cereal fungus with a fantastical range of effects on the 
human nervous system. His ergot-derived "children," as he called 
them, would include drugs that remain in the pharmacopoeia to this 
day: methergine to prevent obstetrical bleeding, the anti-dementia 
vasodilator hydergine, dihydergot for migraines.

But Hofmann, as often happens, reserved the greatest affection for 
what he referred to in a remarkable 1980 memoir as his "problem 
child": lysergic acid diethylamide.

LSD-25, as it was known when Hofmann first synthesized it in 1938, 
was originally just one in a long series of ergot-derived compounds 
that he considered promising. He hoped it would turn out to be an 
effective "circulatory and respiratory stimulant." In animal tests, a 
modest clinical effect was noted, but mostly the subjects just became 
"restless." The batch was discarded. Ergot was expensive, war was 
approaching and Hofmann's employer, Sandoz, was tight-fisted. No one 
could have imagined that humans would ever again synthesize LSD-25.

But Hofmann had felt a "peculiar presentiment," and five years later, 
on April 16, 1943, he made more, hardly knowing what he would do with 
it. The new batch amounted to a speck of a few centigrams. As he was 
finishing up, he was, in the words of the lab report he later 
scribbled, "interrupted" by a feeling of dizziness that obliged him 
to abandon his desk and go home, where he lay down and was regaled 
with "an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary 
shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors."

On recovery, it seemed clear to him that he had accidentally ingested 
a microscopic amount of something toxic -- something with a 
hallucinatory strength per gram far transcending that of any known 
substance. He had been working with LSD, so it was the obvious 
candidate. Clearly, a further experiment, carefully documented as it 
happened, was in order.

On April 19, he deliberately took a quarter-milligram of LSD. 
Generations of acid-heads have gotten a belly laugh out of Hofmann's 
expectation that he could take coherent notes after absorbing such a 
massive hit. The part of his "trip report" written under the 
influence is 13 words long: "Beginning dizziness, feeling of anxiety, 
visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh." Even 
this much was scrawled, he later said, "only with great effort." 
Nursed through a three-hour trip by a bemused neighbour and a country 
doctor, Hofmann was surprised to find that he felt well, even 
refreshed, and that he could remember his experience in fine detail.

 From that day forward, the sober, reserved scientist began to live a 
double life. The psychiatric profession embraced LSD, and in the '50s 
its power to impose the cosmic perspective and distort the ego showed 
promise in treating psychosis. While acting as chief consultant to 
this research program, Hofmann became a confidant and friend to 
non-academic experimenters like Aldous Huxley (whose last words on 
Earth were a request for an intramuscular jab of LSD). In later 
years, he also had to calm freaked-out youths who occasionally turned 
up at his office or his home, explaining to one young American girl 
that her plan to secretly dose president Johnson probably wasn't very 
practical.

Before long, the genie escaped the bottle. This was largely owing to 
Harvard lecturer Timothy Leary, whose experiments with psychedelics 
gradually strayed further and further outside the lab. By 
1963,Hofmann reflected ruefully, "The experiments had turned into LSD 
parties," and Leary had become a messiah of LSD. Meanwhile, amateur 
chemists had mastered the intricacies of its production, and its 
influence outside the controlled setting was proving ambivalent, 
though surely never quite so evil as hysterical newspaper critics made out.

Hofmann and Leary had only one genuine conversation, sharing lunch at 
a train station in Lausanne in 1971 after Leary's escape from a 
California prison. Hofmann lectured the American about his 
publicity-seeking and his dangerous habit of giving LSD to the young. 
Leary replied, with customary asininity, that doing so was perfectly 
safe "because teenagers in the United States, with regard to 
information and life experience, were comparable to adult Europeans." 
Hofmann left the station more confident than ever that Leary was a 
menace -- the man who had led his "problem child" astray. He was to 
die awaiting the day that proper research into its healing potential 
could resume.
_________________________________________________________