Love for Life

Discoverer of LSD dies Age 102!

The Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann creater of LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, died this week of a heart attack at the tender age of 102. He developed the drug by accident while studying the medicinal uses of a crop fungus. He accidentally took in the drug when a small amount of it leaked onto his han while he was working.

Hoffman on first LSD experiment:

"Being a cautious man, I started this experiment with only 0.25 milligrams. As it turned out I had taken a very strong, a very high dosage of a very, very active compound. I got into a strange state of consciousness. Everything in my surroundings changed - the colors, the forms, and also the feeling of my ego had changed. It was very strange! And I became very anxious that I had taken too much and I asked my assistant to accompany me home. At that time we had no car available and we went home by bicycle.

During this trip home on the bicycle - it was about four kilometers - I had the feeling that I could not move from the spot. I was cycling, cycling, but the time seemed to stand still. In my report afterward, I mentioned this trip on the bicycle to show that LSD affected the experience of time, as an example of the distortion of the sense of time. Then the bicycle trip became a characteristic aspect of the LSD discovery. As we arrived home, I was in a very, very bad condition. It was such a strange reality, such a strange new universe which I had entered, that I believed I had now become insane. I asked my assistant to call the doctor. When the doctor arrived, I told him that I was dying. I had the feeling that my body had absolutely no feeling any more. He tested me and shook his head, because everything was OK.

Then, my condition became worse and worse. When I was lying on my couch, I had the feeling that I had already died. I believed, I had a sense that I was out of my body. It was a terrifying experience! The doctor did not give me anything, but I drank a lot of milk, as an unspecific detoxicant. After about six hours, the experience of the outer world started to change. I had the feeling of coming back from a very strange land, home to our everyday reality.

And it was a very, very happy feeling and a very beautiful experience. 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. It was an April day and I went out into the garden. It had been raining during the night. I had the feeling that I saw the earth and the beauty of nature as it had been when it was created, at the first day of creation. It was a beautiful experience! I was reborn, seeing nature in quite a new light."

During World War II, psychedelic researchers began to find the very same death-rebirth themes in their clients. Confrontation with death is just one aspect of the psychedelic experience, causing a profound spiritual transformation - Also reported were feelings of cosmic unity - which is the very same feeling which is described by the mystics of all religions - the unio mystica - as feelings of sacredness and unity with all of existence.

"I later realized that LSD is really just a small chemical modification of a very old sacred drug of Mexico. LSD belongs, therefore, by its chemical structure and by its activity, in the group of the magic plants of Mesoamerica. It does not occur in nature as such, but it represents just a small chemical variation of natural material. Therefore, it belongs to this group as a chemical and also, of course, because of its effect and its spiritual potential.

The use of LSD in the drug scene can thus be a profanation of a sacred substance. And this profanation is the reason that LSD has not had beneficial effects in the drug scene. In many instances, it actually produced terrifying and deleterious effects instead of beneficial effects, because of misuse, because it was a profanation. It should have been subjected to the same taboos and the same reverence the Indians had toward these substances. If that approach had been transferred to LSD, LSD would never have had such a bad reputation."

Many People still today hold the idealist view of the potential value of psychedelics, when used properly, to help "engender ecological sensitivity, reverence for life, and capacity for peaceful cooperation with other people and other species," qualities that are desperately needed in these times of environmental destruction, terrorism and war.

Dr. Hofmann's discovery of LSD generated a powerful wave of interest in brain chemistry. This extraordinarily promising chapter in psychology and psychiatry was drastically interrupted by unsupervised mass self-experimentation and the ensuing repressive administrative, legislative, and political measures, as well as the chromosome scare and the abuse by the military and secret police.

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Albert Hofmann - Research chemist who synthesised LSD and had the world's first 'acid trip' on his bicycle.

1st May 2008

Albert Hofmann, who died on Tuesday aged 102, synthesised lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in 1938 and became the first person in the world to experience a full-blown "acid trip" – that was on April 19 1943, which became known among aficionados as "Bicycle Day" as it was while cycling home from his laboratory that he experienced the most intense symptoms.

Hofmann was working as a research chemist at the laboratory of the Sandoz company in Basel, Switzerland, where he was involved in studying the medicinal properties of plants. This eventually led to the study of the alkaloid compounds of ergot, a fungus which forms on rye.

In the Middle Ages, ergot was implicated in periodic outbreaks of mass poisonings, producing symptoms in two characteristic forms: one gangrenous (ergotismus gangraenosus) and the other convulsive (ergotismus convulsivus). Popular names such as "mal des ardents", "ignis sacer", "heiliges feuer" and "St Anthony's fire" refer to the gangrenous form of the condition.

Hofmann's studies led to many new discoveries, such as Hydergine, a medicament for improving circulation and cerebral function, and Dihydergot, a circulation and blood pressure stabilising medicine. His interest in synthesising LSD initially derived from the hope that it might also be useful as a circulatory and respiratory stimulant.

But when his molecule, known as LSD-25, was tested on animals, no interesting effects were observed, though the research notes recorded that the beasts became "restless" during narcosis. The substance was dismissed as of no interest and dropped from Sandoz's research programme.

But five years later, acting on some intuition, Hofmann decided to resynthesise LSD. In his autobiography, LSD, My Problem Child (1979), he recalled that in the final stage of the synthesis he was interrupted by some unusual sensations.

In a note to the laboratory's director, he reported "a remarkable restlessness, combined with a 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, with eyes closed, I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colours. After some two hours this condition faded away."

Hofmann concluded that he must have accidentally breathed in or ingested some laboratory material and assumed LSD was the cause. To test the theory he waited until the next working day, Monday April 19 1943, and tried again, swallowing 0.25 of a milligram. Forty minutes later, as his laboratory journal recorded, he experienced "dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh". Unable to write any more, he asked his assistant to take him home by bicycle.

"On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror. I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. Nevertheless, my assistant later told me that we had travelled very rapidly."

Back home, when a friendly neighbour brought round some milk, he perceived her as a "malevolent, insidious witch" wearing "a lurid mask". After six hours of highs and lows, the effects subsided.

Sandoz, keen to make a profit from Hofmann's discovery, gave the new substance the trade name Delysid and began sending samples to psychiatric researchers. By 1965 more than 2,000 papers had been published offering hope for a range of conditions from drug and alcohol addiction to mental illnesses of various kinds. But the fact that the chemical was cheap and easy to make left it open to abuse, and from the late 1950s onwards, promoted by Dr Timothy Leary and others, LSD became the recreational drug of choice for western youth.

An outbreak of moral panic, combined with a number of accidents involving people jumping to their deaths off high buildings in the belief that they could fly, led governments around the world to ban LSD. Research also showed that the drug, taken in high doses and in inappropriate settings, often caused panic reactions. For certain individuals, a bad trip could be the trigger for full-blown psychosis.

Hofmann was disappointed when his discovery was removed from commercial distribution. He remained convinced that the drug had the potential to counter the psychological problems induced by "materialism, alienation from nature through industrialisation and increasing urbanisation, lack of satisfaction in professional employment in a mechanised, lifeless working world, ennui and purposelessness in wealthy, saturated society, and lack of a religious, nurturing, and meaningful philosophical foundation of life".

Albert Hofmann was born at Baden, Switzerland, on January 11 1906, the eldest of four children of a factory toolmaker. Having graduated from Zürich University with a degree in Chemistry in 1929, he took a doctorate on the gastro-intestinal juice of the vineyard snail. After leaving university he went to work for Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, where he researched the medicinal properties of the Mediterranean squill (Scilla maritima) before moving on to the study of Claviceps purpurea (ergot).

As a result of the use of LSD as a recreational drug, Sandoz found itself bombarded with demands for information from regulatory bodies, along with demands for statements after accidents, poisonings, criminal acts and so forth from the press.

For scientists unaccustomed to the glare of publicity, it became a headache: "I would rather you hadn't discovered LSD," Hofmann's managing director told him. In the end the decision was taken to stop all further production.

Hofmann laid some of the blame at the door of Dr Timothy Leary. In his autobiography he described meeting Leary in 1971 in the snack bar at Lausanne railway station. Hofmann began by voicing his regret that Leary's experiments had effectively killed off academic research into LSD and took Leary to task for encouraging its recreational use among young people.

Leary was unabashed. "He maintained that I was unjustified in reproaching him for the seduction of immature persons to drug consumption," Hofmann recalled. Leary further insisted that American teenagers "with regard to information and life experience, were comparable to adult Europeans" and were able to make up their own minds.

Hofmann continued to work at Sandoz until 1971, when he retired as director of research for the Department of Natural Products. In addition to his discovery of LSD, he was also the first to synthesise psilocybin (the active constituent of "magic mushrooms") in 1958; and he discovered the hallucinogenic principles of Ololiuqui (Morning Glory), lysergic acid amide and lysergic acid hydroxyethylamide.

In retirement Hofmann served as a member of the Nobel Prize Committee. He was a Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences, and a member of the International Society of Plant Research and of the American Society of Pharmacognosy.

In 1988 the Albert Hofmann Foundation was established "to assemble and maintain an international library and archive devoted to the study of human consciousness and related fields".

Albert Hofmann's wife, Anita, died in December. He was also predeceased by one of his four children.

Link to this article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1912485/Albert-Hofmann,-LSD-i...