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 ...
......... 'in search of the lost chord' is so sweet............ sorry for no capital letters ............ the mescaline will not allow it.
;-)
Guys, let me ask you ............... I don't know how old you two are.................. but do you find that one reason you don't do our kind of drugs anymore is because you see all the unfinished things you never accomplished?
Yes, I know that must be true with others, but to us ........ it's just so more obvious,
;-)
Yes indeed.
I hear you (whatever "spliff" is).
Life's tough at times.
I've noticed all my sixty years that if you are with the right people when you are getting "wasted" or whatever............. it's important to be with GOOD PEOPLE.
That nearly always ends up being one decent and meaningful experience.
ok
Actually, that was an attempt at humor!
The universe is one very strange place.
I was flabbergasted by your post.
I am an old man now (sort of), but in 1979 I lived in Lake Tahoe.
My girlfriend and I were huge Pirates fans, and we were watching the series on TV when I had one of those "ideas". Alice (you remember Alice) and I drove to the Reno airport rented an unlimited mileage car and started driving across the country to see the World Series.
We stopped in Colorado where I picked up my ex-girlfriend and a bag of dried shrooms.
We all arrived at Three Rivers Stadium for Game 5 and tickets were easy to get because we were down 3-1.
When the game began I downed the shrooms had a beer and proceeded to enjoy one of the finest 4 hours of my life.
Until your post I thought I was the only person in the world who would drop at the World Series.
It is my pleasure to meet you.
Huck
We are family...
Oh and believe me, there are far more people out there who've tripped at major sporting events than you can ever imagine ;)
I've heard massive doses of LSD can potentially cause convulsions leading to death. Whether there are confirmed cases of this actually happening to people, I don't know. Then there is the possibility of getting tainted acid laced with toxic substances that probably has killed people.
;-)
In my last(and only bad) trip I took too much LSD. I took 4 1/2 hits and later found out they were each 4-way hits, so I had actually taken 18 doses at once.
It was certainly the most powerful trip I had taken with some very strange hallucinations. What made it a "bad" trip was that I tripped for 5 days and peaked for 72 hours. I truly though it would never end. I though I was one of those people who took a trip and never came down.
Needless to say - I was very relieved when it finally wore off. I took the acid on a Sunday night and didn't sleep until the following Saturday.
At one point everyone's face I looked at would slowly change into Alfred E. Neuman's face. That was very disconcerting.
The other effect I found intriguing was that when people would talk to me, I couldn't hear them. I would see a comic-style word balloon appear by their head and I would have to read the words they were saying. (Not to difficult once I got the hang of it.) Except that the words kept re-arranging themselves to spell out the words "BAD TRIP" - now THAT was pretty scary.
After coming down - finally - from that trip, I never wanted to do hallucinogens again - and I never did.
Maybe what I experienced weren't flashbacks per se but there were at least three occasions when my mind spun out of control and my senses played very strange tricks on me.
Only happened shorty after my"psychedelic"experience.
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