Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD and gave the psychedelic generation the pharmaceutical vehicle to turn on, tune in and drop out, has died. He was 102.
Hofmann died yesterday at his home in Basel, Switzerland, of a heart attack.
Hofmann also identified and synthesized the active ingredients of peyote mushrooms and a Mexican psychoactive plant called ololiuqui and developed at least three non-psychoactive compounds that became widely used in medicine.
Those other feats would have been little remembered, however, had he not accidentally gotten a trace amount of an experimental compound called lysergic acid diethylamide on his fingertips and taken the world's first acid trip.
Hofmann was a talented synthetic chemist working for Sandoz Laboratories – now Novartis – in the 1930s when he began studying the chemistry of ergot, the common name for a fungus that grows on rye, barley and certain other plants.
In the early 1930s, U.S. researchers had identified the primary active ingredient of ergot, a chemical called lysergic acid.
In 1938, one of the derivatives of lysergic acid he made was lysergic acid diethylamide, (in German, lyserg-saure-diathylamid), or LSD-25.
Hofmann had hoped it would be a stimulant for the respiratory and circulatory systems but testing in experimental animals showed no significant activity for the drug and it was abandoned.
Prompted by LSD's "peculiar" qualities, Hoffman decided to look at it again. On April 16, 1943, Hofmann had just completed synthesizing a new batch when, he subsequently wrote to his supervisor, "I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with slight dizziness.
"At home, I lay down and sank into a not-unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours, this condition faded away."
The next week, he took what he considered to be an extremely small dose of LSD but instead was surprised to encounter the first bad acid trip.
"Everything in the room spun around, and the familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms," he wrote in his autobiography, LSD: My Problem Child.
LSD was initially hailed as a wonder drug for use in psychoanalysis, particularly for gaining insights into schizophrenia; and more than 2,000 research papers appeared over the succeeding decade.
The Central Intelligence Agency investigated LSD as a potential agent for mind control, and the British government studied it as a truth drug. In both cases, the drug was administered to subjects who were not informed of its nature.
By the 1960s, largely at the instigation of Harvard University psychologists Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, LSD began to be seen first as a pathway to spiritual enlightenment, then as a major recreational drug.
"Instead of a `wonder child,' LSD suddenly became my `problem child,'" Hofmann said.
In 1966, the U.S. banned its use, followed by most other countries.
After dozens of acid trips, Hofmann finally gave up psychedelics. "I know LSD; I don't need to take it anymore," he said.
Hofmann is survived by his wife, Anita; two daughters, a son, eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
