Posted on 01/07/2006 10:29:15 PM PST by nickcarraway
ALBERT Hofmann, the father of LSD, walked slowly across the small corner office of his modernist home on a grassy Alpine hilltop here, hoping to show a visitor the vista that sweeps before him on clear days. But outside there was only a white blanket of fog hanging just beyond the crest of the hill. He picked up a photograph of the view on his desk instead, left there perhaps to convince visitors of what really lies beyond the windowpane.
Mr. Hofmann will turn 100 on Wednesday, a milestone to be marked by a symposium in nearby Basel on the chemical compound that he discovered and that famously unlocked the Blakean doors of perception, altering consciousnesses around the world. As the years accumulate behind him, Mr. Hofmann's conversation turns ever more insistently around one theme: man's oneness with nature and the dangers of an increasing inattention to that fact.
"It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature," he said, listing to the right in a green armchair that looked out over frost-dusted fields and snow-laced trees. A glass pitcher held a bouquet of roses on the coffee table before him. "In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans," he said. "The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature." And, yes, he said, LSD, which he calls his "problem child," could help reconnect people to the universe.
Rounding a century, Mr. Hofmann is physically reduced but mentally clear. He is prone to digressions, ambling with pleasure through memories of his boyhood, but his bright eyes flash with the recollection of a mystical experience he had on a forest path more than 90 years ago in the hills above Baden, Switzerland.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I can't believe Dr. Hoffman is still alive.
Interesting phrase to include in this story.
"Marijuana is the flame, heroin is the fuse, LSD is the bomb." - Joe Friday
BWAHAHA!!! The drug episodes of Dragnet are classic.
I always use that quote when A CA Guy is on the War on Drugs threads. He is a regular Joe Friday.
BTW: You do know that Jack Webb died of lung cancer.
I thought "speed kills"
But Mr. Hofmann calls LSD "medicine for the soul" and is frustrated by the worldwide prohibition that has pushed it underground. "It was used very successfully for 10 years in psychoanalysis," he said, adding that the drug was hijacked by the youth movement of the 1960's and then demonized by the establishment that the movement opposed. He said LSD could be dangerous and called its distribution by Timothy Leary and others "a crime."A rebuke and a call for regulation. Wonder how many on FR would agree with that stance."It should be a controlled substance with the same status as morphine," he said.
BTTT
...and "Cellophane flowers of yellow and green?"
I have to admit, this little nugget floored me as well.
Yep, that phrase struck me as deliberate and a little contrived. The first LSD I ever did was windowpane, and it was the real deal. Most of the crap after that, with rare exception, was mostly an uncomfortable stomach ache. This was in the '72 - '76 era. I have no idea what's been around since then.
It clearly was put in there deliberately.
And now you're a psycho bunny!
For what it's worth, so did the Unabomber - all "valid" under the guise of psychological testing while at Harvard U.
I hear that his flowers grow so incredibly high.
I took acid once about as close to 'by accident' as it typically gets. I was in a club back when I was in college and a vague acquaintance who was a dealer randomly decided to give me three hits when we ran into each other - that I was told were "triple-dipped" orange starburst something or other (or whatever it was - I don't remember really). Anyhow, I popped the first one in and went on my way. After half an hour nothing had happened so I figured it didn't work and went ahead and ate the other two.
So, about half an hour later I saw red spots on everything and within half an hour after that I was off in my own little spectacular world (I was in a late-nite diner at that point). In short order, I was totally divorced from reality completely rapt in hallucination which lasted about four hours or so before anything was 'real' again.
Somehow in the midst of all that I managed to drive 12 miles, in the snow, without either wrecking or getting pulled over. How that happened is an enduring mystery.. It took me about three days to altogether recover. I dunno if "completely worth it" is quite the right description. I never did acid again...
Same here.
Luckily, you didnt kill anyone while you were driving. Not much of a role model in those days I guess.
I took acid once, it had no effect on me whatsoever. Except, I woke up on the INSIDE of a waterbed;^0
I did it once and it scared me good!
Is Stanley Ousley still alive? White Lightning!
Not at all! I certainly had a few years of "nomadic" and "irresponsible youth" with too many "youthful indiscretions"... I shaped up by around 26 though.
The Eleusinian Mystery lives today.
"........and where else was there ever a greater disparity between seeing and hearing....."
Drink the kykeon, become Epoptes!
Though, fwiw, my drug experience is very limited for someone who has any. Quite the contrary, I was quite notorious for always turning down (free) drugs even when everyone around me was high as a kite. Which was fairly regular, since in my early twenties it seemed that everywhere I went I attracted drug dealers and drug addicts like moths to the flame. Dunno why - it's just the way it was.
I would never have taken the acid if I had any idea it'd be like it was for me. In fact, the biggest reason I took it that night is because I didn't like having it on me and that seemed like the most efficient way to get rid of it. LOL
My vice was sex, not drugs.
I am in partial agreement. LSD is too dangerous for everyday use by the careless and uneducated. But regulation never works very well and therapists are often crazier than their patients.
While I never used any illegal drugs, sex was another story totally. :)
Haven't been reading The Golden Bough lately have you?
HA! :~D
If ya look at this long enough, man, it turns into Madeline Albright
The "real" realdeal was LSD 25
L
Having had to take numerous prescription meds for anxiety and depression, I wouldn't touch any of that stuff with a 10-foot pole no matter how good I though it made me feel.
Best to live in and accept the real world with its natural ups and downs and not go looking for artificial highs.
That's just part of the full technical name: "d-lysegic acid diethylamide tartrate 25". I'm not sure on the spelling of all that, but if memory serves, that is what "LSD" is short for.
The "real" world is a matter of perception,
one of the things Dr. Hoffman came to understand
on that long bicycle ride home.
We "see" the same world, but you and I may not interpret
it the same.
They would drop that onto a sugar cube.
No, I've always wanted to read it though.
That reading was from the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The "setting face to face" is spoken into the deceased
ear repeatedly and then periodically for a period of days
after expiration.
I became interested in Buddhism during my time in Vietnam.
Still, using drugs to experience and/or interpret the world differently seems not a good idea for an otherwise healthy person. I wouldn't make the same argument for the mentally ill, but would even for physiological conditions. Only take drugs if you absolutely need them, never recreationally.
Maybe that's just me. I don't mean to start an argument about it. Like everything else, people seem to divide into two camps with shades in between, on any issue under the sun. One would think there would be more absolutes, but it doesn't work that way in real life.
"I became interested in Buddhism during my time in Vietnam."
I studied with Bhurmese monks for five years in Nashville. I like the Yellow Hats better though.
I would agree with you that recreational drugs ARE FOR THE STUPID.
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