Albert Hofmann, 102 - Creator of LSD
On His Long, Strange Trip
The Swiss chemist discovered the drug by accident in 1938 and raved about its power to generate " wonderful visions, " which he defended after LSD was widely banned for safety reasons in the 1960s. Hofmann died last week at his home in Basel, Switzerland. John Perry Barlow, a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, met Hofmann on a 1990 " pilgrimage " to his home, and he shared these memories with NEWSWEEK's Jessica Bennett:
Albert Hofmann was an accidental prophet. But his casual revelation likely introduced more people to the spiritual dimension than any other discovery of the last 500 years. Around 1966, enough of my generation had taken LSD to just cut loose. We had a sudden feeling of permission: we felt it was OK to look critically at the world, to ask serious questions about the war, about how this country was governed and what to do with our lives. LSD did that. It made authority look funny. There were many things conspiring to make that moment in history a little crazy, but our reaction would have been very different without LSD. It set us free in a way we'd never been before—maybe in a way that nobody had been. Hofmann was, and is, our patron saint.
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Member Comments
Posted By: Samayana @ 07/12/2008 7:21:21 AM
Comment: Two essential things about psychedelics: the first is that one does them, the second is that one stops doing them. Psychedelics show you what's truly out there beyond the grey walls of our dull, socially-sanctioned realities. What's most frustrating about psychedelics is that once you're back from the journey, the walls recongeal - as strong and as impervious as ever. However, once you know what lies on the other side of your dungeon wall, you can then choose to devote the rest of your life to figuring out ways and means of sneaking out. As I write that, there comes to mind a whimsical cartoon I once saw of a prisoner painting a fantastically realistic door on the wall of his prison cell. When he's finished the painting, he grasps his painted door handle, opens his painted door, and steps out of his cell forever. The profound lesson that cartoon has always held for me, is that that after taking psychedelics, the most fruitful route to the 'beyond within' is to be found the realm of art. As Dostoevsky once wrote: 'Beauty will save the world.'
Regrettably modern artists seem to have completely lost sight of that truth - but go back through the centuries of man's artistic endeavours and you will find 'doors in the wall' in abundance. BTW, you can always judge the vitality of any religion by the beauty of the art that it generates - alas, the monotheisms of the West have had nothing visually beautiful to offer us for a very long time.
Posted By: thisthing @ 07/03/2008 1:15:51 PM
Comment: Everybody had ought to trip at least 1 time in their life.