Father of LSD takes final trip
April 30, 2008
The father of LSD and the first person to experience an "acid trip", Albert Hoffman, has died aged 102.
Swiss-born Hoffman was renowned by chemists, pharmacists and hippies the world over for stumbling across the world's first synthesised hallucinogen, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), in 1938.
His research, for pharmaceutical company Sandoz, involved trying to find a circulatory and respiratory simulant and initially he abandoned LSD when it failed to show any positive effects on test animals.
But five years later, on April 16, 1943, Hoffman decided to re-examine the drug and three days later he deliberately consumed 250 micrograms before asking his laboratory assistant to help him ride his bike home.
That day, April 19, 1943, became known as "Bicycle Day" to acid aficionados.
In his 1979 autobiography, LSD, My Problem Child, he described the ride.
"On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror.
"I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. Nevertheless, my assistant later told me that we had travelled very rapidly."
When he arrived home he was brought some milk by a neighbour, whom he perceived as a "malevolent, insidious witch" wearing "a lurid mask".
Six hours later the effects subsided but the legendary effects of the hallucinogen were born, and over the next six decades became an important part of Western counter-culture and a highly controversial drug.
Hoffman always expressed his disappointment with LSD eventually being criminalised, saying the drug had the potential to deal with psychological problems caused by "materialism, alienation from nature through industrialisation and increasing urbanisation, lack of satisfaction in professional employment in a mechanised, lifeless working world, ennui and purposelessness in wealthy, saturated society, and lack of a religious, nurturing, and meaningful philosophical foundation of life".
Despite the controversy, Hoffman became a celebrated figure in the scientific community, and in his retirement served as a member of the Nobel Prize Committee as well as being a Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences.
In 1988 the Albert Hoffman Foundation was created "to assemble and maintain an international library and archive devoted to the study of human consciousness and related fields."
The president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Rick Doblin posted a statement on the association's website confirming the death.
"[Albert and I] spoke on the phone the day after [a] conference and he was happy and fulfilled," the statement read.
"He'd seen the renewal of LSD psychotherapy research with his own eyes, as had [his wife] Anita.
"I said that I looked forward to discussing the results of the study with him in about a year and a half and he laughed and said he'd try to help the research however he could, either from this side or 'the other side'."
Hoffman died on Tuesday morning at his home in Basel, Switzerland, from a heart attack.
He was married with three children.
RIP Hoffman...
