I was busy, so I missed the actual birthday, but lets all wish this guy a happy 100.
.
ALBERT HOFMANN
Born on Jan. 11, 1906, in Baden, Switzerland, Albert Hofmann graduated from the University of Zrich with a degree in chemistry and then went to work for Sandoz Pharmaceutical in 1929. Hoping to develop a stimulant for blood circulation, he synthesized lysergic acid from ergot in 1938, which led him to discover lysergic acid diethylamide. It took five years for Hofmann to revisit his LSD-25.
On April 16, 1943, when a minute amount of the chemical entered Hofmanns bloodstream through his skin, the worlds first acid trip was underway. Suddenly, he went into a very strange, dreamlike state. Everything changed, everything had another meaning. Thinking he was ill, he went home to lie down, but the altered state stayed with him. I would think of something, he told HIGH TIMES in 1995, and as soon as I did I could see it. It was wonderful.
Three days later, Hofmann made a solution with water and five milligrams of LSD, then drank a tiny bit of it, enough to dose himself with 250 micrograms of the drug. The experiment was so intense that he asked his lab assistant to take him home. They rode bicycles. It was about six kilometers from my lab to my little village, and throughout it I had the feeling that time was standing still, he recalled. It was a very unusual feeling, one Id never had before. There was a change in the experience of life, of time. I was already deep in the LSD trance, in LSD inebriation, and one of its characteristics, just on this bicycle trip, was of not coming from anyplace or going anyplace. There was absolutely no feeling of time.
At home he had his assistant call a doctor, who sat with him during what he described as a horribly difficult experience that lasted several hours. But as it drew to a close, the difficulty turned to happiness. I saw our world in a new light, he said. Our normal world that we dont normally think of as wonderful, was a wonderful world. It was a rebirth.
Hofmann and several others at Sandoz knew that for so small a dose to have such a profound effect on human consciousnesswhile having almost no effect on the human bodyit must have been working at the very center of the psychic core of the human brain. To see if they were right, shortly thereafter Sandoz began supervised testing on humans in a psychiatric clinic in Zurich. Based on the results from those early tests (which were published in 1947), Sandoz began distributing one gram of crystalline LSD-25 to investigators around the world under the label Delysid. Each gram was capable of producing between 10,000 and 20,000 trips. The psychedelic revolution had begun.
For 20 years, until it was outlawed in 1966, LSD was used in psychiatry, psychotherapy, addiction therapy and as a creativity enhancer.
I owe this guy a lot of the best years of my life, as well as a lot of who I am today.
.
ALBERT HOFMANN
Born on Jan. 11, 1906, in Baden, Switzerland, Albert Hofmann graduated from the University of Zrich with a degree in chemistry and then went to work for Sandoz Pharmaceutical in 1929. Hoping to develop a stimulant for blood circulation, he synthesized lysergic acid from ergot in 1938, which led him to discover lysergic acid diethylamide. It took five years for Hofmann to revisit his LSD-25.
On April 16, 1943, when a minute amount of the chemical entered Hofmanns bloodstream through his skin, the worlds first acid trip was underway. Suddenly, he went into a very strange, dreamlike state. Everything changed, everything had another meaning. Thinking he was ill, he went home to lie down, but the altered state stayed with him. I would think of something, he told HIGH TIMES in 1995, and as soon as I did I could see it. It was wonderful.
Three days later, Hofmann made a solution with water and five milligrams of LSD, then drank a tiny bit of it, enough to dose himself with 250 micrograms of the drug. The experiment was so intense that he asked his lab assistant to take him home. They rode bicycles. It was about six kilometers from my lab to my little village, and throughout it I had the feeling that time was standing still, he recalled. It was a very unusual feeling, one Id never had before. There was a change in the experience of life, of time. I was already deep in the LSD trance, in LSD inebriation, and one of its characteristics, just on this bicycle trip, was of not coming from anyplace or going anyplace. There was absolutely no feeling of time.
At home he had his assistant call a doctor, who sat with him during what he described as a horribly difficult experience that lasted several hours. But as it drew to a close, the difficulty turned to happiness. I saw our world in a new light, he said. Our normal world that we dont normally think of as wonderful, was a wonderful world. It was a rebirth.
Hofmann and several others at Sandoz knew that for so small a dose to have such a profound effect on human consciousnesswhile having almost no effect on the human bodyit must have been working at the very center of the psychic core of the human brain. To see if they were right, shortly thereafter Sandoz began supervised testing on humans in a psychiatric clinic in Zurich. Based on the results from those early tests (which were published in 1947), Sandoz began distributing one gram of crystalline LSD-25 to investigators around the world under the label Delysid. Each gram was capable of producing between 10,000 and 20,000 trips. The psychedelic revolution had begun.
For 20 years, until it was outlawed in 1966, LSD was used in psychiatry, psychotherapy, addiction therapy and as a creativity enhancer.
I owe this guy a lot of the best years of my life, as well as a lot of who I am today.
Hurray for Dr. Hoffman!
(Perhaps the L is for Longevity!)