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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 ...
;-)
Definitely.
LSD can give a glimpse of the divine, if used with the proper intent and frame of mind. But like every other ecstacy-inducing earthly thing, LSD is ultimately revealed to be a dead end road.
Personal experience? But seriously, what you say may be true. What do you suggest?
By the way, what do you want to do about all those unbalanced and immature drinkers?
My personal experience with LSD and other hallucinagencis is ZERO, so I can only relay what the Army regulations were. Personally, I've never heard of nor seen any "flashback" episodes (other than those on television).
If you would have only stopped after the first sentence .......
;-)
I don't have a lot of time, but that second sentence is just plain silly.
What is an "ecstacy-inducing earthly thing"? Are the lovely colored wild flowers waving in the wind in the meadows "ecstacy-inducing earthly things"? Well, of course they can be to some. So then, are those beautiful flowers "ultimately revealed to be a dead end road"? Well of course they are not.
CASE CLOSED
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False.
People eventually stop using LSD. Why? Because it proves to be a false god. They learn that there are limitations, and those limitations are not only distinct and revealing, but they can be quite destructive.
I should qualify this point with: those people who pursue the divine via LSD will eventually find it to be a false god. As do those who pursue sex, music, money, whatever else as their redeemer. Anyone who uses LSD strictly as a means to enhance the environment and their relation to it, in addition to looking to plumb the depths of mind and universe, can do so with relatively little damage. But those people, eventually, stop doing it. Why? Because, even if they're not disillusioned with the divine thing, realize there are only so many times you can appreciate the flowers and bees and stars and "Revolver." It becomes passe.
Not saying there is much I can do about them! Just making a point.
I know people who have done LSD. I haven't, and don't begrudge those who have. However, in my personal circle of friends, those that used LSD on a habitual basis tended to be those that weren't exactly Mr. Mature and Responsible in the first place.
Check the link on post #10.
my two cents is that unlike every other drug the insights one has on LSD can remain compelling even after the drug has worn off. On pot you think you've seen some brilliant insight and by the next morning you are shaking your head at how trite it really was, but with LSD its different. I trace my entire religious life, and I am a practicing adherent of a major traditional faith, to the insights I first had under the influence of LSD. Far from having been contradicted by the tenets of my faith, my one time taking the drug actually served for the first time in my life to make the underpinning of the faith - i.e. the existence of God - believable to me.
True. Mature, responsible people who are comfortable in their own skin have little use for diversions like an LSD trip.
It is a very risky endeavor to take any type of drug that could have a serious impact on one's mind. The fact that you and your friends still get together and trip once a year is, to me, indicative of the fact that it did, indeed, cause you harm.
Additionally, just because you say they have productive jobs, loving families and so on is meaningless. As my friend's mom used to say, "only the spoon knows what goes on in the sauce." People don't necessarily open up about scary, weird things that are affecting their mind because they are afraid of the consequences.
Frankly, I would not want to be engaged in any type of professional capacity with anyone who occasionally did LSD, even once a year. That means, if I ever found out my pastor, dentist, doctor, hair stylist, you name it was playing with this stuff, that would be the end of the relationship.
Can you describe how under LSD you came to see the existence of God?
I've never done it but I still believe in God. Just curious as I've heard this before. Not trying to flame or anything.
Frankly, I would not want to be engaged in any type of professional capacity with anyone who occasionally did LSD, even once a year. -- Frankly Scarlet............. NO ONE gives a damn about your possible engagements!
****
Btw, you should like "Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign" from your silly screen name ................And the sign said long haired freaky people need not apply So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why He said you look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you'll do So I took off my hat I said imagine that, huh, me working for you..
Yes!
Yoi!!!
;-)
You are one of the nastiest people I've encountered on FR. Maybe you are the center of your universe - good for you. You are nothing but a druggie so your opinions, accounts, anecdotes, etc. mean nothing and are value-less.
As for knowing nothing, I hardly think your LSD use was done in the name of science.
Oh, and one last thing, your little stories about your ecstatic drug experiences really made me want to throw up.
I pray you don't work in any kind of environment where other people's safety is at stake.
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