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PARIS — Albert Hofmann, the mystical Swiss chemist who gave the world LSD, the most powerful psychotropic substance known, died Tuesday at his hilltop home near Basel, Switzerland. He was 102.
The cause was a heart attack, said Rick Doblin, founder and president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a California-based group that in 2005 republished Dr. Hofmann’s 1979 book “LSD: My Problem Child.”
Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid.
He then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. That perception, of union, which came to Dr. Hofmann as almost a religious epiphany while still a child, directed much of his personal and professional life.
Dr. Hofmann was born in Baden, a spa town in northern Switzerland, on Jan. 11, 1906, the eldest of four children. His father, who had no higher education, was a toolmaker in a local factory, and the family lived in a rented apartment. But Dr. Hofmann spent much of his childhood outdoors.
He would wander the hills above the town and play around the ruins of a Hapsburg castle, the Stein. “It was a real paradise up there,” he said in an interview in 2006. “We had no money, but I had a wonderful childhood.”
It was during one of his ambles that he had his epiphany.
“It happened on a May morning — I have forgotten the year — but I can still point to the exact spot where it occurred, on a forest path on Martinsberg above Baden,” he wrote in “LSD: My Problem Child.” “As I strolled through the freshly greened woods filled with bird song and lit up by the morning sun, all at once everything appeared in an uncommonly clear light.
“It shone with the most beautiful radiance, speaking to the heart, as though it wanted to encompass me in its majesty. I was filled with an indescribable sensation of joy, oneness and blissful security.”
Though Dr. Hofmann’s father was a Roman Catholic and his mother a Protestant, Dr. Hofmann, from an early age, felt that organized religion missed the point. When he was 7 or 8, he recalled, he spoke to a friend about whether Jesus was divine. “I said that I didn’t believe, but that there must be a God because there is the world and someone made the world,” he said. “I had this very deep connection with nature.”
Dr. Hofmann went on to study chemistry at Zurich University because, he said, he wanted to explore the natural world at the level where energy and elements combine to create life. He earned his Ph.D. there in 1929, when he was just 23. He then took a job with Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, attracted by a program there that sought to synthesize pharmacological compounds from medicinally important plants.
It was during his work on the ergot fungus, which grows in rye kernels, that he stumbled on LSD, accidentally ingesting a trace of the compound one Friday afternoon in April 1943. Soon he experienced an altered state of consciousness similar to the one he had experienced as a child.
On the following Monday, he deliberately swallowed a dose of LSD and rode his bicycle home as the effects of the drug overwhelmed him. That day, April 19, later became memorialized by LSD enthusiasts as “bicycle day.”
Dr. Hofmann’s work produced other important drugs, including methergine, used to treat postpartum hemorrhaging, the leading cause of death from childbirth. But it was LSD that shaped both his career and his spiritual quest.
“Through my LSD experience and my new picture of reality, I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom,” Dr. Hofmann told the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof during an interview in 1984. “I became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us.”
Dr. Hofmann became an impassioned advocate for the environment and argued that LSD, besides being a valuable tool for psychiatry, could be used to awaken a deeper awareness of mankind’s place in nature and help curb society’s ultimately self-destructive degradation of the natural world.
But he was also disturbed by the cavalier use of LSD as a drug for entertainment, arguing that it should be treated in the way that primitive societies treat psychoactive sacred plants, which are ingested with care and spiritual intent.
After his discovery of LSD’s properties, Dr. Hofmann spent years researching sacred plants. With his friend R. Gordon Wasson, he participated in psychedelic rituals with Mazatec shamans in southern Mexico. He succeeded in synthesizing the active compounds in the Psilocybe mexicana mushroom, which he named psilocybin and psilocin. He also isolated the active compound in morning glory seeds, which the Mazatec also used as an intoxicant, and found that its chemical structure was close to that of LSD.
During the psychedelic era, Dr. Hofmann struck up friendships with such outsize personalities as Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley, who, nearing death in 1963, asked his wife for an injection of LSD to help him through the final painful throes of throat cancer.
Yet despite his involvement with psychoactive compounds, Dr. Hofmann remained moored in his Swiss chemist identity. He stayed with Sandoz as head of the research department for natural medicines until his retirement in 1971. He wrote more than 100 scientific articles and was the author or co-author of a number of books
He and his wife, Anita, who died recently, reared four children in Basel. A son died of alcoholism at 53. Survivors include several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Though Dr. Hofmann called LSD “medicine for the soul,” by 2006 his hallucinogenic days were long behind him, he said in the interview that year.
“I know LSD; I don’t need to take it anymore,” he said, adding. “Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley.”
But he said LSD had not affected his understanding of death. In death, he said, “I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that’s all.”
LSD comes from ergot a mould that grows on grain. Hoffman may have been the first scientist to isolate it and test it on himself, but peasants in Europe for centuries experienced a similar high after eating bread baked with mouldy bread...exorcisms often followed.
__________________
To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education. (Plato)
A shame. As much as I am pro-legalization and willing to try any drug from marijuana to heroin I am afraid to try LSD, I don't like the idea of being different after having tried it.
__________________
Sometimes things dont end up how they should, a son, a brother, a mentor, a teacher, a cousin, a nephew, a grandson and a god in my eyes.
A shame. As much as I am pro-legalization and willing to try any drug from marijuana to heroin I am afraid to try LSD, I don't like the idea of being different after having tried it.
Don't worry; you get over it and go right back to sleep in no time.
But if you ever do venture to try it, get prepared: be with good friends in a safe setting, soft lights and good music. Nothing worse than tripping in public, so I am told.
Don't worry; you get over it and go right back to sleep in no time.
But if you ever do venture to try it, get prepared: be with good friends in a safe setting, soft lights and good music. Nothing worse than tripping in public, so I am told.
All good advice but being outdoors is fine, as long as it's in a natural area. Woodlands, the beach etc, just avoid anywhere with lots of people as that's what induces paranoia. A clear-headed friend to act as guide is essential. I also wouldn't recommend more than once a year.
__________________
In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
All good advice but being outdoors is fine, as long as it's in a natural area. Woodlands, the beach etc, just avoid anywhere with lots of people as that's what induces paranoia. A clear-headed friend to act as guide is essential. I also wouldn't recommend more than once a year.
Yes, nature is a good setting. Once a year is about right for maximum effect.
According to what one American researcher says the largest dose he ever witnessed being taken was by an guru in India who swallowed a whole bottle, well over 1,000 doses, of pure Sandoz made LSD in order to answer the researcher's question whether the LSD state was similar to any state he had experienced. His conclusion was, "ah, yes, but it is of greater value to reach such a state on one's own." The researcher feared the guru might die from such a massive overdose. He did not and in fact continued receiving visitors as if nothing had happened. Believe it or not.
Yes, nature is a good setting. Once a year is about right for maximum effect.
According to what one American researcher says the largest dose he ever witnessed being taken was by an guru in India who swallowed a whole bottle, well over 1,000 doses, of pure Sandoz made LSD in order to answer the researcher's question whether the LSD state was similar to any state he had experienced. His conclusion was, "ah, yes, but it is of greater value to reach such a state on one's own." The researcher feared the guru might die from such a massive overdose. He did not and in fact continued receiving visitors as if nothing had happened. Believe it or not.
Aye well, If only I had the time to sit around in a cave with other people to bring me food and such like
Had heard it somewhere or other, there was a book a few years back where the author took a couple of years out (mid seventies) to explore the various counter-cultures going on at the time. Everything from sensory deprivation to esp and how to play a better game of tennis.
Adams I think the authors name was but I can't for the life of me find his book on my shelves (some hippie friend probably nicked it) nor remember his first name or the title of his book.
Had heard it somewhere or other, there was a book a few years back where the author took a couple of years out (mid seventies) to explore the various counter-cultures going on at the time. Everything from sensory deprivation to esp and how to play a better game of tennis.
Adams I think the authors name was but I can't for the life of me find his book on my shelves (some hippie friend probably nicked it) nor remember his first name or the title of his book.
You got the first letter right. It was Richard Alpert later known as Ram Das in his book Be Here Now. If you recall he was the other reseacher who along with Timothy Leary was fired by Harvard for conducting LSD research using themselves as subjects, among other things.
Sandoz and Mr. Hoffman may have opened the chem lab's doors of perception but I'll doft my hat to Owsley Stanley, a.k.a. "Bear".
From Wiki-
"Owsley Stanley (b. Augustus Owsley Stanley III, January 19, 1935, also known as Owsley or Bear) was an underground LSD chemist, the first to produce large quantities of pure LSD. His total production is estimated at around half a kilogram of LSD, or roughly 5 million 100-microgram "trips" of normal potency, although accounts vary widely. The widespread and low-cost (often given away free) availability of high-quality Owsley LSD in the San Francisco area in the mid-1960s may well have been indispensable for the emergence of the hippie movement during the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury area, which one historian of that movement, Charles Perry, has described as "one big LSD party" and which has had continuing influence to this day in American society in terms of increasing tolerance for alternative perspectives and lifestyles. Owsley was also an accomplished sound engineer, and the longtime soundman for seminal psychedelic rock band The Grateful Dead; the band's well-known "dancing bear" icon derives from his nickname, as he frequently printed the image on blotter sheets of LSD distributed at Grateful Dead concerts. He designed the massive "Wall of Sound" electrical amplification system used by the Grateful Dead in their live shows, at the time a highly innovative feat of engineering[1], and was involved with the founding of high-end musical instrument maker Alembic Inc."
The Dead's sound system in the seventies was a engineering wonder that took days to set up but, when right, was aural clarity personified. His acid was wondrous too for a bootleg chemist, supposedly.
I was often stunned by the dosages taken at the early "Trips Festivals" put on by the Merry Pranksters. Tom Wolfe's accountings of Kesey's prodigious intakes are stunning. 1000mgs. was commonplace for those guys, and it was supposedly the very real deal.
Dunno. 200mgs. will move worlds. Can't imagine chewing 1000 doses in one shot with no effect. That mind has clearly already experienced maximum expansion.
"If you can just get your mind together-then come on across to me
Well hold hands and then well watch the sunrise
From the bottom of the sea
But first, are you experienced?
Uh-have you ever been experienced-uh? Well, I have
(well) I know, I know, youll probably scream and cry
That your little world wont let you go
But who in your measly little world,
Are you tryin to prove to that you're
Made out of gold and-uh, can't be sold
So, are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?
Well, I have..."
__________________ "This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski
and Owsley's window pane, the tiny, greyish gellatinous squares the size of a chigger...blotter was the preferred method of smuggling acid into prisions...when Leary was in he got Christmas cards with pictures of Christmas trees adorned with lights, etc...each light was a drop of Owsley, so he says in Confessions of Hope Fiend
Quote:
I was often stunned by the dosages taken at the early "Trips Festivals" put on by the Merry Pranksters. Tom Wolfe's accountings of Kesey's prodigious intakes are stunning. 1000mgs. was commonplace for those guys, and it was supposedly the very real deal.
I remember reading that, I think in Wolfe's Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.
A trip was so exhausting I never understood why people wanted to repeat the next day.
05-11-2008, 23:24 PM
) nor remember his first name or the title of his book.
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