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Psychedelia

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« on: March 12, 2015, 11:47:02 am »


from The Telegraph....

Albert Hofmann, LSD inventor, dies

Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who invented the LSD
and became the first person in the world to experience
a full-blown acid trip, has died. He was 102.


By ANDREW McKIE | Tuesday, 29 April 2008

Albert Hofmann. — Photo: EPA.
Albert Hofmann. — Photo: EPA.

HE WAS working as a chemist in Basel, when he synthesised lysergic acid diethylamide. On April 19th, 1943, he took the substance before cycling home.

That day has become known among aficionados as “Bicycle Day” as it was while he was riding home that he experienced the most intense symptoms brought on by the drug.

Rick Doblin, who studied Hofmann’s work as part of his own research and knew Hofmann well, confirmed he died of a heart attack at 9am on Tuesday at his home in Basel.

As well as LSD, Hofmann later became the first person to synthesise psilocybin, the active constituent of “magic mushrooms”.

He also 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.”

He disapproved of the appropriation of LSD by the youth movements of the 1960s, but regretted that its potential uses had not been explored.

Albert Hofmann was married and had three children.


The Albert Hofmann Foundation

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1912499/Albert-Hofmann-LSD-inventor-dies.html



from The Telegraph....

Obituary: Albert Hofmann

Albert Hofmann, who died on April 29th 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 19th 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.


Tuesday, 29 April 2008

ALBERT 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 19th 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 11th 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.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1912485/Obituary-Albert-Hofmann-LSD-inventor.html



from The New York Times....

Albert Hofmann, the Father of LSD, Dies at 102

By CRAIG S. SMITH | Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Albert Hofmann in 2006. — Photo: Patrick Straub/EPA. Dr. Hofmann, date unknown, with a chemical model of LSD. — Photo: Novartis, via AFP/Getty Images.
LEFT: Albert Hofmann in 2006. — Photo: Patrick Straub/EPA.
RIGHT: Dr. Hofmann, date unknown, with a chemical model of LSD.
 — Photo: Novartis, via AFP/Getty Images.


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 January 11th, 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 19th, 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.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/world/europe/30hofmann.html
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