April 30, 2008
RIP: Father of LSD, Albert Hofmann
Speaking of Santa Cruz, the inventor of LSD, Albert Hofmann, died on Tuesday at his Switzerland home. He was a ripe 102.
The Swiss chemist happened upon lysergic acid diethylamide-25 way back in 1938 "while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains." By accident, or so we're told, Hofmann became LSD's first guinea pig after accidentally dipping his finger into the trippy substance back in 1943. The substance didn't gain worldwide infamy until two decades later when Harvard professor Timothy Leary--after enjoying the drug's fruity bouquet and smooth oaky finish--told young boomers to "turn on, tune in, drop out."
Since the only drug SFist gets high off of is life, we can't tell with any accuracy what the journey of LSD is like. Please, SFist readers, fill us in on your own personal acid-infused trips. We're dying to know.
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First time: Eating morning glory seeds a friend of mine and myself bought at a local organic seed shop. Took forever to kick in, but soon we were riding our bikes in the Stanford hills at 1am laughing our heads off. Everything just seemed amazingly funny. It's like seeing the world with all of your programming removed.
ok, i'll fess up; the first time i tried it was with jnice almost 10 years ago. i couldn't deal with not looking at something shiny, so we went and walked around pacific heights for hours. the chandeliers in the windows were unusually sparkly.
(hi, dad!)
If you've ever experienced it, no explanation is neccessary, If you haven't, no explanation is sufficient.
if tv and film has taught us anything, it's that it CAN be explained within the first few chords of Cream's "Sunshine of Your Life".
Did he also invent that hippie dancing where you wave your arms around in front of you? If so, then good riddance.
the wet noodle? no. that wasn't him.
One bright morning I was sitting on my front porch in Eugene, Oregon, in 1977 reading the Sunday Oregonian. I watched as a friend came up 16th on his bicycle trying to hold onto a couple big take-out coffees.
We settled into our coffee on the porch, smoked a little something, and looked at the Oregonian and the world around us.
My friend took a slip of paper out of his pocket and surprised me somewhat by saying, "here's your ticket to the Dead concert, it starts in an hour. and, Oh...that coffee has about 500 mikes of good acid in it".
one time i took acid and blew a load on my cat
my lawyer has suggested that i not comment here.
Well, I was going to comment, but ribaldry took all the wind out of my sails...
First time I tried LSD was in the Army ( not an experiment just recreational ) me and 2 friends got lost in an open field with our barracks in sight and just couldn't reach them, we kept getting distracted by everything. Then we saw this big orange glow in the sky and thought a nuke went off, turned out it was just a flair someone had shot off in the air. We found our way back to the barracks soon after that. That was when I was 17. After that every 6 months I would do a hit until I was 25. The last time I did it was with a friend in Livermore and when I thought the trip was over I decided to drive home to Modesto ( where I lived at the time ) it was a drizzly night around 3am and I was going over the Altimont Pass when suddenly all the little reflector dots on the road scattered in front of my car. I had to follow the first 3 in front of the car as they were the only ones that weren't scattered. When I got to the bottom of the Altimont I pulled over and listened to Credence for an hour and a half before feeling ok enough to continue home. I had never had a flashback before and decided by the time I got home that was the last time I would touch the stuff.
[glazed expression]
wha?
kidding. the best part of that day was accidentally watching The Story of Us while coming down and trying to figure out what was wrong with Bruce Willis & Michele Pfieffer's necks.
i stuck a full sheet of 100 in my mouth and counted to what i thought was 15 seconds, but was actually 2 minutes and my friend socked my in the jaw so i would spit it out and to be honest with you...shit aint been quite right ever since.
sometimes when i drink gin it tastes like stricknine.
On death, Hofmann said, “I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that’s all.”
On April 19th, 1943, Hofmann created the most powerful psychotropic substance: LSD, and experienced the first LSD “trip”. He was a chemist who valued a drug as a way to understand people’s oneness with nature. For the complete story on Bicycle Day, be sure to watch this amazing documentary Hofmann’s Potion
Coole T-Shirts with Albert Hoffman Motiv
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