Obit from The Telegraph

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.

He was working as a chemist in Basel, when he synthesised lysergic acid diethylamide. On April 19, 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.

I saw it on the news this morning.  I read his book "LSD: My Problem Child" when I was first interested in the subject about 20 years ago.  There was a big centennial birthday celebration for him in 2006.  I was surprised he was still alive! 

Hoffmann's own account of his experiences with LSD and later exploration of psychedelics are still a great read.  He claimed it did not occur to him that anyone would use LSD as a recreational drug.  He was frustrated by the abuse of the substance by the counterculture and the subsequent prohibition and demonization of "acid." 

Ironicailly, I'm one of a few people who credits Hoffmann for my personal decision NOT to take the drug. 

I do hope there will be a place for LSD in the fields of psychiatric and spiritual research conducted by responsible professionals. 

I hope it's a great trip for you, Dr. Hoffmann!
:\'(

I hope it's a great trip for you, Dr. Hoffmann!
:\'(


I was waiting for that pun. ;)

RIP for a man who accidentally let loose a genie he could not contain.

I had only read little about Mr. Hofmann before, surprisingly how such a great mind, (compared to the intellectual ability of Timothy Leary, for example who I think was very misguided about acid) differ so much on this mind expanding drug. I wonder if he and Leary ever had a serious discussion on it?

Personally I did try acid a few times in my youth, unlike many others, I cannot share anything great or life changing by its effects. It was "different", and I did not have a "bad" time in trying it. Although I can say I'm not sorry for experimenting. I can only say the drugs effect will vary depending on the user, and don't recommend casual use for anyone, for that reason, ever.
I sure as heck don't want my kids using it, despite my experimenting...

Again, personally, I can't really see that LSD has any real medical benefits in its use. But then again, I would of said the same things about pot 20 years ago. Who knows what unknown uses it may have?

After hearing about both the CIA and US Army's less than humanitarian experiments and uses for it, you'll forgive me if I don't have high (bad pun not intended) expectations for its medical use.  :-\\

I'm sorry Mr. Hofmann is gone, but glad he, and not some less responsible person, stumbled upon LSD.
The world is forever changed for what he brought us...

102, how does he do it? :o

102, what a long, strange trip it's been. (The Dead, sorry it just kinda fit)

RIP Albert, it's a shame people abused your invention.  Smack Timothy Leary upside the head when you get to the afterlife.

RIP for a man who accidentally let loose a genie he could not contain.

I had only read little about Mr. Hofmann before, surprisingly how such a great mind, (compared to the intellectual ability of Timothy Leary, for example who I think was very misguided about acid) differ so much on this mind expanding drug. I wonder if he and Leary ever had a serious discussion on it?

Personally I did try acid a few times in my youth, unlike many others, I cannot share anything great or life changing by its effects. It was "different", and I did not have a "bad" time in trying it. Although I can say I'm not sorry for experimenting. I can only say the drugs effect will vary depending on the user, and don't recommend casual use for anyone, for that reason, ever.
I sure as heck don't want my kids using it, despite my experimenting...

Again, personally, I can't really see that LSD has any real medical benefits in its use. But then again, I would of said the same things about pot 20 years ago. Who knows what unknown uses it may have?

After hearing about both the CIA and US Army's less than humanitarian experiments and uses for it, you'll forgive me if I don't have high (bad pun not intended) expectations for its medical use.  :-\\

I'm sorry Mr. Hofmann is gone, but glad he, and not some less responsible person, stumbled upon LSD.
The world is forever changed for what he brought us...

I believe LSD has significant, though limited, clinical value.  Certainly, it is not for everybody.

The main reason I didn't try it was my lifelong clinical depression.  Secondarily, I don't trust black market drug dealers with a volatile chemical measured in micrograms.  You don't know what you're getting if you buy street acid. 

Hoffmann eventually did befriend Leary, although he had strong objections to Leary's promoting LSD for casual use.  Hoffmann knew the cat was out of the bag and he believed he could do more good by trying to guide Leary rather than condemn him.  Hoffmann remained a strong advocate for the benefits of his discovery until he died.  He just didn't think psychedelics were for recreation.  Any shaman would tell you the same thing.  Unfortunately, Leary and his ilk were rather deaf to Hoffmann's counsel.  Aldous Huxley and Richard Alpert (aka Baba Ram Dass, a colleague of Leary's at Harvard) shared Hoffmann's beliefs about psychedelics, but Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey won the idealogical battle at its peak. 

Anyone ever watch any of Timothy Leary's "work."  This is the most bizarre stuff I have ever seen.  I actully find it to be scary as hell.  Has it worked for anyone?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr28ZqJTmng&feature=related

Anyone ever watch any of Timothy Leary's "work."  This is the most bizarre stuff I have ever seen.


Tim was nuts, but he was always the good kind of nuts.

I had the pleasure of hearing him speak in the mid-90s.  Long story short, by that time he'd largely abandoned chemicals, and had anticipated that computer-generated graphics / virtual realities could do many of the same things that LSD did.  Were he alive today, he'd probably be tinkering with flashing LEDs in eyeglass frames, and/or transcranial magnetic whackjobbery, possibly in conjunction with either psychedelics or legal psychiatric medications.  Maybe with results, maybe not.  The dude was always into experimenting. 

At the time of his talk, his goal was actually to figure out how to pull it off without chemicals -- the brain doesn't necessarily care where the inputs come from, and a sufficiently fast computer with a sufficiently-interesting display device might be able to shovel enough sufficently-interesting data into the brain to emulate any psychedelic experience.  (basically anticipating Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash -- the premise of which was that if you throw the right inputs at a brain and it'll do interesting things, with or without drugs.)

Hoffman basically kicked off the modern era of neuropharmacology.  The brain's a computer made of meat -- how you feel is merely an epiphenomenon of a chemical state -- so if you can change the chemicals in the brain, you can change how the brain's owner feels about life, the universe, and everything.  His research was effectively ended by the banning of his problem child.  40 years on, the drug's out of patent, so even if it were to be legalized, nobody would make much money off it.  Which is a bummer, because he'd hit upon something really interesting -- and without money, there's no lobby for legalization, even for research purposes.  A lot of good science was left undone, and due to the money/legal aspects of the problem, will remain forever undone.

Other than just being a jerk on the Internet, I don't have any deep-seated psychological problems -- but I'd have liked to have had the chance to try Albert's problem child under the supervision of a clinical psychiatrist.  But that's not going to happen for the business reasons I've already cited.  Furthermore, because of the difficulties in synthesis and transport, there's no real profit to be had in even the illegal market -- so anyone claiming to have the drug for sale is lying, because his supplier could make ten times as much money synthesizing (or growing) something that's much easier to work with.

Long story short, I'll stick to alcohol and caffeine.  Cheap, legal, and tasty is still a combination that's pretty hard to beat. 

Goodnight Albert, another long strange trip.  RIP

Setting the wayback machine.  I can see where the exploration, as opposed to the exploitation, of LSD should be way up on the list of drugs.  I can remember when LSD was just that, before it became the diluted, mongrelized, version it became after it was made illegal and controlled by drug dealers.  I dabbled and can say that too this day I think it gave me some wierd insights, but I am old enough to remember when the effects of it changed, along with its chemical make-up.  People who took street LSD after maybe 1971, haven't done LSD.

Oh, there's some "really good sh*t" to be had, you just have to know where to get it.  However, it's not going to replicate the Sandoz acid from the pre-prohibition days. 

FB is right in that acid has a lower profit margin than other black market drugs, but as long as there's demand, there will be supply.  It's much harder to get since the arrest of the bigtime cooks Clyde Apperson and W.L. Pickard in 2003, but it'll be back. 

This chemical really is not a toy, but folks will continue to treat it as such and some of them will be sorry.

http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/hofmann_albert/hofmann_albert.shtml
The Father of LSD is no longer with us! Died at 102
His work was made famous thanks to Canada & Thanks to Humphrey Osmond, the psychiatrist who coined the word "psychedelic" & Aldous Huxley who wrote "The Doors of Perception," from which the rock group the Doors took its name. And Abram Hoffer
In one study, in the late 1950s, when Dr. Osmond gave L. S. D. to
alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous who had failed to quit drinking, about
half had not had a drink after a year. They had a 50% recovery rate & to date AA has done no better than 10%!!?
They were researching in Saskatchewan hospital where they hoped to get a glimpse into the world of schizophrenia>So they collected every known hallucinogen known to man to study! To be sure they used them selves as test subjects before trying it out on others!From that hospital the drug was passed on to various people Like Timmy O'Leary a Harvard professor "tune in turn on".He got the boot from Harvard after giving LSD to students!.Duh.Do Ya think!....
Personally as a man made chemical it was wonderfull substance But with todays backyard tub versions of the drug I wouldn't trust it as internet recipes can be down right lethal!
A Lesser known one is natural "Mescaline" cactus that grows in south America...
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mescaline/mescaline.shtml
This ones "A TRIP & A HALF".Make your own TV show with everyday items!........I can taste the sky!
But well we are supposed to be upright citizens! But if they ever marketed that one!.6 flags would be out of a job!
There is a DOC on this called Psychedelic Pioneers (2005) (TV) Look for that on the "History" channel
Heres an interview with Aldous Huxley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlkqvDYX52U
http://www.zshare.net/audio/121693627a10fcdc/

Or some might prefer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0T8YtIat7o

Lets not forget 'shrooms, of course one has to navigate piles of fresh cow poo to obtain them. Also risk getting a backside full of buckshot from some irate farmer.Or eating the wrong kind and dropping dead from poison.
I have "dropped" acid 6 times in my life all 30+ years ago. I can say it changed my perspective, I saw wonderful. beautiful things and increased my creativity. And quite honestly it was fun,
All of my trips were great except the last one it was a bad trip full of paranoia, strange horrifying images and so forth. That ended my romance with chemically expanding my mind!!!!

Someone once told me two things:

1. Never do acid unless someone is there that is straight (not on drugs)
2. Never do it if you have little demons inside your head that you battle.

Lets not forget 'shrooms, of course one has to navigate piles of fresh cow poo to obtain them. Also risk getting a backside full of buckshot from some irate farmer.Or eating the wrong kind and dropping dead from poison.
I have "dropped" acid 6 times in my life all 30+ years ago. I can say it changed my perspective, I saw wonderful. beautiful things and increased my creativity. And quite honestly it was fun,
All of my trips were great except the last one it was a bad trip full of paranoia, strange horrifying images and so forth. That ended my romance with chemically expanding my mind!!!!

Someone once told me two things:

1. Never do acid unless someone is there that is straight (not on drugs)
2. Never do it if you have little demons inside your head that you battle.


That's one of the reasons I never did it, I had a self-loathing ashamed mind.  I know a spin around the block on the LSD-25 might make me existentially terrified...so I decided never to do it even though I was curious.

The walls just melted! ;D

The walls just melted! ;D



lucky you.. ah I misss those days

A while back, I did a stand-up routine which contained a rant about what the "S" in LSD stands for - Lysergic Acid Diethyamide... why an "S"?

..of course, Hoffman spoke German, and the German for "acid" is Saube... once I'd found that out, I changed the routine.

A while back, I did a stand-up routine which contained a rant about what the "S" in LSD stands for - Lysergic Acid Diethyamide... why an "S"?

..of course, Hoffman spoke German, and the German for "acid" is Saube... once I'd found that out, I changed the routine.

You wanna do some LAD?
:-\\

You wanna do some LAD?
:-\\

It'd sound worse in Yorkshire... "Eeee, LAD"

damn 102??? from LSD  :D nuts

It'd sound worse in Yorkshire... "Eeee, LAD"


Tee Hee giggles behind hand

That's one of the reasons I never did it, I had a self-loathing ashamed mind.  I know a spin around the block on the LSD-25 might make me existentially terrified...so I decided never to do it even though I was curious.



Well you didn't miss much as drugs are nothing more than what sports are.A DISTRACTION.
if you were in that sort of mindset it would have only multiplied the the feelings if you "went on that bent"
1sr time I ever did it it kicked in when I was in an elevator with buddys....Buddy slowly pushed my head into the wall & that was it .I couldn't stop laughing for about 12 hrs.They had to take me back to the aptment so I wouldn't atract attention
The dug itself allows you to see into the unconience mind!
& makes your pupals real big
Its chemically made these days but who is the chemist????
Now a days may be eating rat poison!
"Wow man thats the most acid I ever seen anybody eat in my whole life"
"Hope your not busy for about a month" Chong