Pubdate: Sat, 14 Jan 2006
Source: Hamilton Spectator (CN ON)
Copyright: 2006 The Hamilton Spectator
Contact:  http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/181
Author: David Mccandless, The Independent
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hallucinogens.htm (Hallucinogens)

TRIPPING IN A PSYCHEDELIC WORLD

Albert Hofmann remembers very clearly the moment when, on a spring 
afternoon, riding his bicycle, the whole world -- and his life -- changed.

"Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if 
seen in a curved mirror," says the chemist, who celebrated his 100th 
birthday this week.

"I had the feeling that I could not move from the spot. I was 
cycling, cycling, but the time seemed to stand still." It was 1943, 
and Hofmann was experiencing the world's first LSD trip.

By the time the frightened 37-year-old research chemist reached home, 
he was terrified. The room spun. The walls rippled. His worried 
neighbour resembled a malevolent witch. He felt like he was dying. 
After a few hours, the intensity of the experimental drug he'd dosed 
himself with fell and he was able to enjoy the "fantastic and 
impressive" effects. Next day, he felt wonderful: "A sensation of 
well-being and renewed life flowed through me. The world was as if 
newly created."

It all began with a peculiar accident. The doctor, employed by the 
Swiss chemical firm Sandoz, was pursuing respectable but unremarkable 
research into ergot.

This poisonous fungus that grows on rye had been used for centuries 
as a folk remedy to bring on childbirth and ease headaches. The 
doctor believed that ergot could be a storehouse of new medicines, 
and he set about synthesizing new chemicals from it.

In 1938, Hofmann had synthesized the 25th chemical: lysergic acid 
diethylamide. It showed little effect in test animals, bar 
restlessness, and it was shelved.

Five years later, on a hunch -- or a "peculiar presentiment," as 
Hofmann puts it -- he brewed up a fresh batch. In the process, he was 
overcome by dizziness. Sent home, he "sank into a not unpleasant 
intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated 
imagination".

The next day, Hofmann concluded that the sensations could only have 
been caused by accidental exposure to something in his lab, perhaps 
the LSD. To be sure, the cautious doctor gave himself an extremely 
conservative amount of the chemical -- 250 millionths of a gram.

It was, in fact, the equivalent of a megadose of the mind-agent, 
still one of the most powerful known to man.

Alarmed by the strength of the ensuing effects, he clambered on his 
bicycle and tried to make his way home. The rest is history.

Sandoz was keen to find a use for this new compound, and Hofmann 
thought it could have an important role to play in psychiatry. After 
animal tests showed it to be virtually non-toxic, it was made freely 
available to qualified clinical investigators.

"Properties: causes hallucinations, depersonalization, reliving of 
repressed memories and mild neurovegetative symptoms," read the label 
on the bottle.

LSD's effects did not come as much of a revelation to science. Such 
psyche-manifesting agents, or "psychedelics," were already well known.

Mescaline had been discovered in the late 1800s and made famous in 
1954 as the subject of Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception. 
What was extraordinary about LSD was its power. It was about 10,000 
times more powerful than mescaline, and a tiny amount was enough to 
trigger profound alterations in consciousness.

Through the late 1940s and most of the 1950s, LSD caused a revolution 
in psychiatry. Therapists and doctors used it to treat forms of 
mental illness, including neurosis, psychosis and depression. More 
than 40,000 people underwent psychedelic therapy. Respected figures 
considered it a wonder drug and gave their careers over to LSD research.

Some believed it gave a glimpse into the way schizophrenics perceived 
the world. Others used it as a catalyst to accelerate traditional 
psychotherapy -- and even took the drug themselves along with their patients.

By 1965, more than 2,000 papers had been published, many reporting 
extremely positive outcomes in treating anxiety, obsessive compulsive 
disorder and alcoholism. Hofmann's vision of LSD as a "medicine for 
the soul" seemed to be coming to fruition.

But LSD began to leak out into elite society. Artists, painters, 
performers and musicians began to experiment with it in looser, less 
formal contexts. Anais Nin, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg and Huxley all 
explored its creative potential.

Huxley believed such drugs gave normal people the gift of the 
spontaneous visionary experience usually reserved for mystics and 
saints. He would later request an injection of LSD on his deathbed.

In North America, newspapers and magazines began to fill up with 
sensational reports of LSD experiments, miraculous effects, mystical 
rebirths and self-transformations.

In 1959, the film star Cary Grant received the first of 60 
LSD-assisted psychotherapy sessions, and concluded: "I have been born 
again." The public grew more and more curious about this "miracle drug."

Self-experimentation began to increase. In a society facing growing 
industrialization and urbanization, alienation and boredom, everyone 
wanted to be reborn.

Already, a counterculture had sprung up to oppose the wealth-driven 
homogeneity of capitalist America. LSD was rapidly adopted as the 
sacrament for this bohemian "hippie" movement.

In the age of the moon landings and the exploration of space, here 
was a tool that allowed a similar, metaphorical journey, a short cut 
to enlightenment. By the mid-1960s, the drug was booming.

Hofmann remembers the time distinctly. "I had not expected that LSD, 
with its unfathomable, uncanny, profound effects, so unlike the 
character of a recreational drug, would ever find worldwide use as an 
inebriant.

People had the mistaken opinion that it would be sufficient simply to 
take LSD in order to have such miraculous effects." Rampant use led 
inevitably to "bad trips" among recreational users, and Hofmann could 
only watch with a mixture of astonishment and dismay.

"They did not use it in the right way, and they did not have the 
right conditions. So they were not adequately prepared for it," he 
says. "It is such a delicate and deep experience, if used the right way."

He was stricken by doubt and concern that misuse and fear of the drug 
would lead to it being taken out of the hands of responsible 
investigators and psychiatrists. Would LSD -- the drug which, on that 
spring day in 1943, reconnected Hofmann with the "deeply euphoric" 
visionary encounters he'd experienced in nature as a boy -- become a 
blessing for humanity, or a curse?

A curse, the authorities concluded. In 1966, the drug was outlawed 
around the world. Psychiatric treatment continued but was steadily 
throttled by red tape and LSD's reputation as an "insanity drug."

By the 1970s, research had stopped altogether. Today, it languishes 
in near obscurity, banished to the fringes of science and society.

Hofmann saw his discovery slip from psychiatric miracle medicine, to 
psychedelic sacrament of the '60s, to outlawed, feared street drug.

Today, he is saddened but sanguine. "Wrong and inappropriate use has 
caused LSD to become my problem child," he says. "The history of LSD 
to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can 
ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is 
mistaken for a pleasure drug."

Hofmann himself continued his career as a chemist, and developed 
several other medicines. All the time, a steady stream of people 
continued to visit the "father of LSD" in Basel during the 1970s and 1980s.

Many were en route to India and the Far East in search of gurus and a 
context for the LSD-driven mystical experiences. Many stopped off in 
Zurich seeking his counsel -- often trying to score some of Hofmann's 
"secret stash."

Hofmann considered it was his responsibility as inventor of the drug 
to meet as many of these people as possible. "I have tried to help, 
instructing and advising," he says.

Only now, 40 years later, is there renewed interest in the 
therapeutic potential of LSD and other psychedelic drugs. The British 
Journal of Psychiatry last year called for a reappraisal of 
psychedelics "based upon scientific reasoning and not influenced by 
social or political pressures".

An international symposium in Basel this week is discussing LSD 
research. By today's standards, much of the research from the 1950s 
is flawed. Clinical studies are slated to restart at Harvard this 
year, organized by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic 
Study (maps.org), this time looking at LSD as a treatment for cluster 
headaches.

Hofmann hopes research will continue, but he believes LSD should 
remain a controlled substance.

"As long as people fail to truly understand psychedelics and continue 
to use them as pleasure drugs, and fail to appreciate the very deep 
psychic experience they may induce, then their medical use will be held back."

Today, he lives with his wife in a house overlooking the countryside 
around Basel. He is head of a large family, including eight 
grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

He took the drug many times, but now, he says, he has no use for LSD. 
He believes it is just another means to attain extraordinary states 
of consciousness. "Breathing techniques, yoga, fasting, dance, art" 
are, he thinks, equally good.

He takes pleasure in recalling his boyhood experiences in nature that 
he links with psychedelics. "LSD brings about a reduction of 
intellectual powers in favour of an emotional experiencing of the 
world. It can help to refill our consciousness with this feeling of 
wholeness and being one with nature."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom