Posted on 01/11/2006 4:16:29 AM PST by beyond the sea
http://wjz.com/watercooler/watercooler_story_010144726.html
Father Of LSD Celebrating 100th Birthday
(AP) GENEVA LSD is an unlikely subject for a 100th birthday party. Yet the Swiss chemist who discovered the mind-altering drug and was its first human guinea pig is celebrating his centenary Wednesday — in good health and with plans to attend an international seminar on the hallucinogenic.
"I had wonderful visions," Albert Hofmann said, recalling his first accidental consumption of the drug.
"I sat down at home on the divan and started to dream," he told the Swiss television network SF DRS. "What I was thinking appeared in colors and in pictures. It lasted for a couple of hours and then it disappeared."
Hofmann, who also had bad experiences with the drug, continues to insist it should be legalized for medical treatment, particularly in psychiatric research. But LSD's reputation has been as turbulent as some acid trips.
The drug earned a bad reputation amid fatalities associated with hallucinations and reports of "flashbacks" — the recurrence of hallucinations when not taking the drug.
LSD inspired the 1960s hippy generation and was immortalized in the Beatles' hit "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," although the band denied any connection. But it was also known as Like Swift Dead.
For decades after LSD was banned in the late 1960s, Hofmann defended his invention.
"I produced the substance as a medicine," he said. "It's not my fault if people abused it."
The chemist — who still takes nearly daily walks in the picturesque village where he lives in the Jura mountains with his wife of 70 years, Anita — discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm, now part of Novartis.
(Excerpt) Read more at wjz.com ...
Yes.............. you may be somewhat right.
The most important thing is to know beforehand where LSD may take you.
A drug goes into a vessel (the individual)..........the vessel (the individual) deals with it.
It is real smart to know where you are before you begin!
Real simple!
Do you regularly ask silly questions?
But nobody has ever died of a physiological result of taking acid. Also, the myth from the 1967 March of Dimes conference that LSD damages chromosomes in the brain has since been refuted.
That is too young (jmo).
I did mine after college graduation and afyer three years in the Army Security Agency.
I think of my LSD experiences as my best days of my life.............. except for meeting my wife of 33 years.
;-)
Yes........
One of the drug purveyors at FSU in the late 60's operated under the name Wile E. Peyote.
The "mushrooms" were responsible?
Who said that?
And kids have died from doing stupid things while under the influence of alcohol.
FYI Cockburn is a left-wing moonbat "Blame America First" conspiracy theorist.
How do you know you're worshipping the right God?
This is a serious question, not a provocation.
We had a cool guy visiting at Carnegie Tech/Carnegie Mellon back in the early 70's in Pittsburgh who used to call himself only ............... "The Source"....... I think this good guy's name was really 'Captain Hubbard'.
;-)
What a guy!
A little further along in the article...
But away from the psychedelic trips and flower children, stories emerged of people going on murder sprees or jumping out of windows while hallucinating. Heavy users suffered permanent psychological damage.
My experience is that some people can handle drugs and some can't. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with being sane or not.
I use to see strange stuff just smoking a little spliff. But, I'll never claim to be totally sane.
Count me as one of the doubters in regards to flashbacks. I have never had a flashback, not has anyone I've known.
If they do happen, they are exceedingly rare and most likely the result of a feeble mind fulfilling the widely communicated propagandic prophecies of our misguided government. The power of suggestion alone is what is acting upon those people. If 100 people are served nonalcoholic beer that they think is normal beer, I bet there would be at least 5 or 10 of them acting all drunk and stupid. So my opinion is that LSD causes flashbacks in the same sense that nonalcoholic beer causes drunkenness.
Was it? Doggone, if I had known that a couple of decades ago I might have sired some TigersEyelings. /semi-sarcasm
Actually, among the worst damage I've seen by way of drugs is alcohol (one friend died in his 30s of alcoholism, others with ruined lives or careers), and cocaine (a brother who nearly lost his family and career). Oh, and tobacco: my father recently died of lung cancer and my mom has emphysema (they both quit 25 years ago but were heavy smokers).
I read the snopes link on Art Linkletter's daughter, and it sounded to me like the writer had an ax to grind against Linkletter for allegedly exploiting his daughter's death in order to promote an anti-drug agenda. Hey, if I knew my kid had taken LSD the night before she took a dive from a window, I would suspect a connection, too. In any case, that's the message that was distributed to young people at that time, and it stopped a lot of LSD use among youth.
...no, no, no, no, he's outside, looking in...
There you go! (see #166)
Thanks, I missed it - 166.
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