Culture - The first man in inner space

[fnord]

The first man in inner space.
Source:
ICIS Chemical Business (Weekly) 299 (May 19, 2008)(381 words)

Chemists joined hippies in marking the recent death of Dr. Albert Hofmann, the man who called LSD "my problem child"

IN LATE April, worldwide media reported the death of 102-year-old Swiss former Sandoz Laboratories research chemist Albert Hofmann - almost exactly 65 years after the chemical experiment that produced the mother of all lifestyle drugs, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).

Hofmann, whose dissertation dealt with the gastrointestinal juices of the vineyard snail, may not have possessed the scintillating personality of such prominent acid droppers as Harvard professor-turned-fugitive Timothy Leary or Beatle John Lennon. But his discovery led many others to become morecreative.

Life for Hofmann after his psychedelic breakthrough apparently was not dull, either. Later, he said that discovering LSD had filled him with the "joys of fatherhood." He also referred to himself as a "psychonaut."

Like many other drug discoveries, this one was coincidental. Although LSD was first synthesized in 1938 from unstable alkaloids of the ergot fungus as a treatment for circulatory disorders, five years later Hofmann was back in the lab, recrystallizing those ergot alkaloids. As he worked, Hofmann felt dizzy.

In his search for the cause, on April 19, 1943, he experimentally swallowed 0.25 mg of the substance. At first nothing happened. However, his bike ride home that afternoon turned out to be the world's first bad LSD trip. The bike didn't feel like it was moving, Hofmann later recalled. At home, the furniture was "ghoulishly mutating and spinning." A neighbor who tended to him as he writhed on the couch resembled "a witch with a colored mask."

Until 1966, LSD was legal in the US as an experimental psychiatric drug (which is how Leary discovered it). Meanwhile, Hofman continued to ingest this drug and psilocybin, from the Mexican "magic mushroom" (all in the name of science, of course). But seemingly widespread LSD use was beginning to alarm policymakers, and the drug was declared illegal in most of the world by the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances in 1971. Hofmann reportedly blamed Leary's antics for the ban.

Four decades later, LSD and other psychedelics are readying an experimental comeback. Not as a lifestyle drug for the hip, but to reduce anxiety in patients with debilitatingdiseases, like cancer, and even for cluster headaches and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

DEDE WILLIAMS/FRANKFURT

Source Citation:"The first man in inner space.(Endpoint)." ICIS Chemical Business (Weekly) 299 (May 19, 2008):

Reputation Comments on this post:

good new article

[Songcycle67]

Firstly, I'm so happy that Hofmann considered himself a "psychenaut"! That's really freakin cool. Secondly, did anyone see the special on the history channel called "Peyote to LSD"? It was a great new documentary that they put out chronicling the history of psychedelic drugs--mainly based around Schultes' findings.

Anyway it was very good, very well-balanced. Hardly no negative propaganda--if anything they were railing for its use--as they were discussed in the spiritual context for the most part. It really caught my attention, though, because a few years ago a program like that would never be seen on such a credible channel at primetime (it aired at 8PM). They even included a section about the re-emergence of psychedelic research through institutions like Johns Hopkins. I think things are going to get very interesting within the next few years as these drugs gain more and more social acceptance as healing medicines. Fingers crossed.

[Jatelka]

^^^ That documentary would be great to have in the archive, if anyone has it

[mouthwater]

That documentary is currently well-seeded on one of the more notorious torrent trackers (arrrrrgh! [wink]).

The article itself seems to fairly represent the drug. Also, it reads like an obiturary; can I assume it's one?

[Benga]

not that it makes any difference, yet the famous "bike ride trip" is slightly controversial, some discussion on lab protocol at Sandoz indicate that the accidental dosing is unlikely. Might have been some sort of spontaneous mystical experience, something which Hofmann has had before as a child, and he didn't entirely dismiss the theory apparently. which might make sense for someone with mystical inclinations.

b

here's the thing, which i found was a good read :

( EDIT it's already discussed here http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19716)

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MindStates IV LSD Panel: Hypothesis on Albert Hofmann's Famous 1943 "Bicycle Day"
with brief overview of current research
by David Nichols
May 24, 2003

Citation: Nichols, David. "Hypothesis on Albert Hofmann's Famous 1943 'Bicycle Day'" Adapted from a presentation given at Mindstates IV

"The only hypothesis I can come up with that's consistent with all of these facts is that on April 16, 1943, Albert Hofmann did not get LSD in his body at all. He had a spontaneous mystical experience!"

Editor's Introduction
At Mindstates IV, Dr David Nichols, chemist and pharmacologist, professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Purdue University, proposed a novel alternate reading of Albert Hofmann's famous 1943 "Bicycle Day" and a brief overview of his research.


Presentation
I'm here to give you a report from the institutional research division of your community. If you pay taxes to the IRS, you support my research to understand how psychedelics affect brain chemistry; thank you.

Since we're just a slight bit past the 60th anniversary of the discovery of LSD, I thought I would have a little audience participation fun, and give you a little insight into how the scientific process works. Because, often times in this community, "scientist" has somewhat of a pejorative connotation. I want to show you how we're not so different, and do a little experiment.

You know the way science works. We make observations, we develop or formulate a hypothesis that is consistent with those observations, and then we attempt to carry out experiments to test the hypothesis. I don't think we'll be able to carry out the experiments to test the hypothesis, but what I want to do is develop a hypothesis today that I think you'll find very interesting. But the first thing we need to know is what kind of a database we're working with. What I'd like you to do is raise your hand if you have read Albert Hofmann's account of the discovery of LSD.

[nearly everyone in the conference hall raises their hand]

Ah, just as I suspected. So we have a good database, and probably an educated database.


What I want to do now is another experiment. I want you to raise your hand and hold it in the air as long as I am stating things that you hold to be true, and when I say something you believe not to be true, then put your hand down.

So, the first thing I'm going to say, if you believe it to be true, raise your hand, and keep it up there until I say something you disagree with.

On April 16, 1943, when Albert Hofmann accidentally ingested LSD, he ingested at least 25 micrograms. Now keep your hand up until I say something you disagree with.

[most people in the audience raise their hands]

On that same date in 1943, Albert Hofmann ingested at least 50 micrograms of LSD.

[a few people put their hands down]

On that same date in 1943, Albert Hofmann ingested at least 75 micrograms.

[several more people put their hands down]

And then again, on that date in 1943, Albert Hofmann ingested at least 100 micrograms.

[more people put their hands down]

On that same date, Albert Hofmann ingested 150 micrograms.

[only a few people still have their hands still up]

Well I think I've already proved the point. I think there's a consensus that Albert Hofmann must have ingested at least 50 to 75 micrograms, and there are people in here who believe he must have ingested 100 or 150 micrograms. Now we've estimated, with this educated database, approximately how much LSD he must have accidentally gotten inside himself.

Now, we'll do the same thing again. In April 1943, after his accidental ingestion, how many people believe that Albert Hofmann would have experienced the effects of LSD for at least 10 hours, based on that dose?

[Several people put their hands up]

Now if we believe he took LSD, and if we believe he took 50 to 75 micrograms -- that's the context -- how many people believe the effects should have lasted at least 8 hours. [many more hands go up] How many believe the effects would have lasted at least 6 hours? [more hands go up] How believe the effects would have lasted at least four hours? [nearly all hands are up at this point]

Now, how many people believe that the effects of a 50-75 microgram dose of LSD would only have lasted two hours? [nearly all hands go down]

1. We read from his account:
   "I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours (emphasis added) this condition faded away." (Hofmann, 1983).

Well now, that was a conundrum for me. I read that and I thought, "gee I'm a scientist, and this doesn't make sense with what I know." And for most of you, I think, that doesn't make sense either. So, the question: how can we formulate a hypothesis consistent with this observation? We need to consider a few things.

We know that Albert originally synthesized LSD in 1938 as part of an ambitious program to make a number of lysergamides. LSD-25 was only the 25th in the series. I actually don't know how many of those compounds he made, but let's assume he only made 30. So we had up to 30 in the series. He may have made many more actually, but at least say 30. And they were all tested; he sent the pharmacology department LSD-25, 24, 23... and so forth. They then say, "LSD-25: not interesting." The assays of that day really didn't provide much information; they were very unsophisticated. But five years later, Albert has a hunch that the pharmacology department missed something on this 25th in the series.

Now that's kind of peculiar. I'm familiar with the drug industry, and I've actually started a small company myself. Imagine you're a musician, and you've created this musical piece. It's really wonderful; it's one of the best pieces you've ever written; you play it for people, they think it's great. And this one artist comes down. He's very creative but he has no musical talent at all, really tone deaf, he listens to your music and he says, "Man that sucks. You missed something. There's something missing." Now you as a musician are probably going to have some sort of a gut reaction to that. And even though the pharmacologist at Sandoz was probably a friend of Albert's, can you imagine this chemist coming down the hall and saying, "You know, I made this compound five years ago, out of this whole series, and there's this one compound, LSD-25, that you said was uninteresting... but you must have missed something. I just have this 'peculiar presentiment,' this strange hunch that you missed something." You're going to look at Albert and say, "You know, really, I'm an expert in pharmacology Albert. We tested it very well."

The Germans and the Swiss are very precise chemists, and pharmacologists, and scientists. There wouldn't have been any question about this being somehow mis-analyzed the first time.

This is another interesting point. Why the 25th? We know that only the 25th in the series was active. Any other compound that he made -- and I've made many of them, we've tested many of them -- none of the others approach LSD, either in its sophistication or in its potency. Only the 25th. And this is unusual. In pharmacology often you have a regular series. If we think of things like DOB, and DOI, there's a kind of regular progression. They all fit into a kind of subgenus. And LSD doesn't. We don't call the other members of the series Albert made as LSD something or other, but if we had LSD-23, 24 and 26, they would all be one-tenth the activity of LSD-25. Peculiar presentiment indeed!

As I've said, Swiss and German chemists have a reputation -- today and back then -- for being absolutely meticulous. If we had gone into Albert's lab at Sandoz in 1943, we would probably have found everything in its place, organized in an obsessively neat manner. No dirty glassware, no trash on the floor, meticulous. How in the world did a meticulous Swiss chemist get 50 to 75 micrograms or more of LSD into his body? We don't know.

Another fact: I've made LSD in my lab on many occasions for research purposes, possibly in not so meticulous a manner as Albert Hofmann. Nothing ever happened. I had several graduate students who made LSD as an intermediate for projects. No accidental ingestion of LSD ever occurred. A technician in my lab makes it routinely because we use it as a drug to train our rats. He's learned by experience that he never gets high, nothing ever happens. And yesterday I was talking to Nick Sand, and Nick said, "I made a solution of LSD in DMSO…" -- DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) is a chemical that greatly enhances absorption of other chemicals through the skin -- he says, "…I painted it on my skin. Nothing happened." A concentrated solution and nothing happened! How did this very meticulous Swiss chemist get the LSD into his body? I don't know.

The other fact we need to think about is when Albert was a child, he had a spontaneous mystical experience. Now depending on whether you're a psychologist or a psychiatrist or whatever, we could say that Albert had a predisposition to altered states of consciousness.

So what facts do we know? I'm going to formulate a hypothesis. He took a dose that by your consensus should have lasted certainly more than two hours, but it only lasted two hours. He was a meticulous chemist -- a Swiss chemist. Anyone I know who's worked with LSD -- and Nick Sand painted a solution of it on his arm -- didn't get high. This doesn't make sense. And what is this peculiar presentiment? Why the 25th in the series? Inexplicable! And, he was predisposed to altered states of consciousness.

The only hypothesis I can come up with that's consistent with all of these facts is that on April 16, 1943, Albert Hofmann did not get LSD in his body at all. He had a spontaneous mystical experience!

Now if I were working in the lab with a new chemical, and I started having kaleidoscopic visions of wonderful colors and patterns, my first thought wouldn't be that I was having a spontaneous experience. My first thought would be, "What was that new chemical I was working with? I need to tell Sasha about it." [laughter]

I think that's what happened, that's the hypothesis. We can't test that hypothesis, but when I saw Albert in Basel a couple years ago, I presented that particular hypothesis to him and said, "What do you think?" He said, "It's entirely possible." So, that's our little experiment, and I think most of you really didn't think seriously about the discovery of LSD, but it puts a different light on it.

Now one aside to that we could then bring up is this. If the force that caused him to have this peculiar presentiment -- and very peculiar it is -- is the same force that induced him to have this mystical experience, which caused him to focus on this chemical, we can hope it might happen again.



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[Heretic.Ape.]

^ Interesting, I've never heard of this controversy before. Thanks Benga. It seems a little off to me that one would just happen to have a mystical experience while handling a psychedelic drug, which otherwise would not have been thought psychoactive... maybe the gods that bestow these mystical experiences wanted LSD to be "discovered"