Albert Hofmann (RIP)

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Mighty Hiker

Social climber

Vancouver, B.C.

Topic Author's Original Post - Apr 30, 2008 - 12:45am PT

Dr. Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist, has died. He was 102.

He is best known for inventing lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938. Also known as LSD - not to be confused with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. "He then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/world/europe/30hofmann.html?ref=obituaries

Russ Walling

Social climber

Out on the sand.... man.....

Apr 30, 2008 - 12:50am PT

RIP... I wonder if they are going to shoot him out into space like Leary?

Tangent claim to fame: I've seen Timothy Learys shank. True story. Life Drawing class at City College in Pasadena. He was the nude model. WEIRD!

survival

Big Wall climber

A Token of My Extreme

Apr 30, 2008 - 12:50am PT

He will be missed, but his legacy will live on.

Good thing he left the recipe....

Karl Baba

Trad climber

Yosemite, Ca

Apr 30, 2008 - 02:07am PT

It's a good thing LSD is super Illegal, cause I wouldn't want people to look like Albert did, after hundreds of LSD trips at the age of 100

Peace

Karl

Mighty Hiker

Social climber

Vancouver, B.C.

Topic Author's Reply - Apr 30, 2008 - 02:36am PT

Not only that, it looks like the psychiatric/medical establishment, the U.S. and British armies, and the Central 'Intelligence' Agency were mainly responsible for promoting the use of the drug, from the 1940s to the 1960s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_LSD

Darn commies!

Jaybro

Social climber

The West

Apr 30, 2008 - 02:58am PT

http://widefetish.com/misc_stuff/Diethylamide.mp3

Doug Robinson

Trad climber

Santa Cruz

Apr 30, 2008 - 03:39am PT

Pretty amazing chemist.

In 1938 he was taking apart ergot, a fungus that grows on rye. Some of the compounds he teased out became useful for migraine. Made LSD-25, but when it didn't seem to do anything to animals he put it on the shelf. Something made him come back to it a few years later. "A peculiar presentiment," he called it.

On April 14, 1943 he was dissolving a freshly crystalized batch of acid in water and somehow ingested a tiny dose. It would barely take opening the bottle with stuff 200 to 400 times stronger than any psychoactive known. Just a smear against a fingertip.

He felt odd, decided to go home. Rode his bicycle across Basle as he was peaking. Sandoz had a new drug they didn't know what the hell to do with. Albert figured it out though. Took it enough to get the message. Made sure it spread.

"An uninterrupted stream of fantastic images of extraordinary plasticity and vividness," is how he described the world's first acid trip, "and accompnied by an intense kaleidoscopeic play of colors."

A few years back they had an anniversary commemoration here at UC Santa Cruz. Called it Bicycle Day. Albert didn't come, but he sent a video greeting, wearing his suit and his big grin and beaming his healthy wisdom.

He wrote a book called LSD, My Problem Child and Albert Hoffman lived clear through the dark ages of prohibition to see his baby begin to grow up. Just a month ago he greeted in his hometown of Basel the World Psychedelic Symposium, where several of the latest research studies were discussed.

Like one using LSD to lessen end of life anxiety, with a protocol largely approved by the FDA. Like a Johns Hopkins study now accepting cancer patients to be treated for anxiety with psilocybin.

And like another study using Ecstasy + therapy to treat intractable cases of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). That one is the first FDA approved psychedelic research in decades. The last patient goes through this summer, and the results -- not yet published -- are said to be really positive.

So Russ, I doubt they need to shoot Albert into space. He's already been, and came back to show us the way.

Maysho

climber

Truckee, CA

Apr 30, 2008 - 08:55am PT

Farewell and thanks Dr. Hoffman!

Perhaps a memorial/celebration gathering is in order, we could circumnavigate Mt. Hoffman and then try bouldering on the summit thumb while experiencing the plasticity of granite and the grand shimmering view, I'll invite Bridwell.

Interesting info on current studies Doug. Near the end of his psychiatric residency around 1960, my father worked on a study using it in conjunction with therapy with alcoholic women in residential treatment. They found it very effective and he was bummed that all such studies were halted.

Peter

Fish Finder

Social climber

THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART

Apr 30, 2008 - 09:07am PT

RIP Albert Hofmann

What a long strange trip its been!
Thanks for the experience.

Hey Russ, Post up the TLS

happiegrrrl

Trad climber

New York, NY

Apr 30, 2008 - 09:49am PT

Part of the back story in AA is that Bill and Dr. Bob experimented with LSD in the hopes of inducing the spiritual awakening so fundamental to recovery through the program. I believe they worked in tandem with Leary on it.

But issues arose, a clash of personalities for the most part, and they distanced themselves form the thing, Leary in particular. I guess they thought they could find an easier, softer way. But they could not....(puts that excerp of the "How It Works" portion of the book in a new light, doesn't it! hahaha).

goatboy smellz

climber

colorado

Apr 30, 2008 - 09:51am PT

http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/

Where Time Stands Still
(10 mg psilocybin, 6 April 1961, 10:20)

"After 20 minutes, beginning effects: serenity, speechlessness, mild but pleasant dizzy sensation, and "pleasureful deep breathing."

10:50 Strong! dizziness, can no longer concentrate.

10:55 Excited, intensity of colors: everything pink to red.

11:05 The world concentrates itself there on the center of the table. Colors very intense.

11:10 A divided being, unprecedented - how can I describe this sensation of life? Waves, different selves, must control me. Immediately after this note I went outdoors, leaving the breakfast table, where I had eaten with Dr. H. and our wives, and lay down on the lawn.

The inebriation pushed rapidly to its climax. Although I had firmly resolved to make constant notes, it now seemed to me a complete waste of time, the motion of writing infinitely slow, the possibilities of verbal expression unspeakably paltry - measured by the flood of inner experience that inundated me and threatened to burst me. It seemed to me that 100 years would not be sufficient to describe the fullness of experience of a single minute. At the beginning, optical impressions predominated: I saw with delight the boundless succession of rows of trees in the nearby forest. Then the tattered clouds in the sunny sky rapidly piled up with silent and breathtaking majesty to a superimposition of thousands of layers - heaven on heaven - and I waited then expecting that up there in the next moment something completely powerful, unheard of, not yet existing, would appear or happen - would I behold a god? But only the expectation remained, the presentiment, this hovering, "on the threshold of the ultimate feeling." . . . Then I moved farther away (the proximity of others disturbed me) and lay down in a nook of the garden on a sun-warmed wood pile - my fingers stroked this wood with overflowing, animal-like sensual affection. At the same time I was submerged within myself; it was an absolute climax: a sensation of bliss pervaded me, a contented happiness - I found myself behind my closed eyes in a cavity full of brick-red ornaments, and at the same time in the "center of the universe of consummate calm." I knew everything was good - the cause and origins of everything was good. But at the same moment I also understood the suffering and the loathing, the depression and misunderstanding of ordinary life: there one is never "total," but instead divided, cut in pieces, and split up into the tiny fragments of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years: there one is a slave of Moloch time, which devoured one piecemeal; one is condemned to stammering, bungling, and patchwork; one must drag about with oneself the perfection and absolute, the togetherness of all things; the eternal moment of the golden age, this original ground of being - that indeed nevertheless has always endured and will endure forever - there in the weekday of human existence, as a tormenting thorn buried deeply in the soul, as a memorial of a claim never fulfilled, as a fata morgana of a lost and promised paradise; through this feverish dream "present" to a condemned "past" in a clouded "future." I understood. This inebriation was a spaceflight, not of the outer but rather of the inner man, and for a moment I experienced reality from a location that lies somewhere beyond the force of gravity of time."

paganmonkeyboy

climber

mars...it's near nevada...

Apr 30, 2008 - 10:08am PT

goodbye albert, and thank you for sharing !!

...melts in your mind, not in your hand...;-)

Jaybro

Social climber

The West

Apr 30, 2008 - 10:09am PT

"Perhaps a memorial/celebration gathering is in order"
even just witnessing the throbbing streaks of the Tangerine Trip while Peregrines mate in mid air as some climber hauls a suit bag...

Rhodo-Router

Gym climber

Otto, NC

Apr 30, 2008 - 10:16am PT

thanks for the ride.

Maysho

climber

Truckee, CA

Apr 30, 2008 - 10:25am PT

Yeah Jaybro,

How many of us have taken a trip at the base of the Trip! Good location idea, when is the auspicious date?

Peter

captain chaos

climber

Apr 30, 2008 - 10:50am PT

Thanks Albert, you helped many of us touch the void-

AbeFrohman

Trad climber

new york, NY

Apr 30, 2008 - 10:53am PT

On the first trip, he got it 100% right. Truer words, never spoken.

"...and I waited then expecting that up there in the next moment something completely powerful, unheard of, not yet existing, would appear or happen - would I behold a god? But only the expectation remained, the presentiment, this hovering, "on the threshold of the ultimate feeling."