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"In me LSD found it's creator"

I like the way Hoffman imbues LSD with a kind of intent or purpose... It does feel like a 'new' form of intelligence or sentience in a way.
 
Doldrugs said:
Sadly I think it's even simpler than that. A lot of people who use LSD and other psychedelics tend toward empathy, nonviolence, acceptance of unusual or nonstandard thinking, and a whole host of other thought processes that those in power don't understand and find threatening. Or to simplify even further, being open minded undermines authority. It really is that simple. I don't think there's a conspiracy so much as a self replicating machine made out of terrified authority figures who think psychedelics are going to destroy the system they're comfortable in.
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So true! Consumerism is what "they" want! The powers that be want us to be zombies, and have a mindset laid out for us by the mass media.

Oh, and LSD would not help that at all, so of course they don't want it!!!

It's way to mind expanding for it to be legal. If it made us focus on taking out loans, buying bullshit we don't need, and watching E news then maybe they would legalize it( :) )
 
Any of y'all familiar with Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man? In it, he refutes both capitalism and communism both as enslaving people, through either tyranny or consumption of material goods, which leave people "One Dimensional". It was a major work back in the 1960s when shit started hittin the fan and some people started waking up. I think all of y'all who are talking about consumerism being an unstoppable force would appreciate it!
 
240sxLover said:
Any of y'all familiar with Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man? In it, he refutes both capitalism and communism both as enslaving people, through either tyranny or consumption of material goods, which leave people "One Dimensional". It was a major work back in the 1960s when shit started hittin the fan and some people started waking up.
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Haven't heard if it, but it sounds interesting. I'll look into it. Thanks!
 
Perhaps if a hundred other chemists had those mental effects they would've either shrugged them off or disregarded them. Perhaps they awoke something in Hoffman that resonated with his human nature.
 
If you think about it from the "psychedelics as monolith" perspective perhaps the cult of eleusis is was taking ergot compounds ( in kykeon) and it stimulated their brains
in such a way that kind of started the ball rolling in terms of having humans think about the nature of reality and science. eventually that led to scientists discovering chemistry and creating the drug that would stimulated our brains in a similar way more but more efficiently. Then both the DNA structure and RNA polymerase were discovered by LSD users who were scientists. My theory is that the 5ht2a agonism causes your brain to make more mental associations and that can lead to new observations and advancements of scientific theories.

If one were to compare it to 2001: a space odyssey like Dennis McKenna, essentially the kykeon was the first monolith that stimulated our brains in a way that (eventually over the course of human history) allowed us to discover the next monolith (lsd) which by being much purer and cleaner produced even more intuitive associations about science and biology and advancing human civilization
 
There's evidence of psychedelic use from earlier then Greek antiquity and no evidence of the kykeon containing ergoloids.

Apart from that, sweet theory SONN. :D.
 
Ismene said:
Perhaps if a hundred other chemists had those mental effects they would've either shrugged them off or disregarded them. Perhaps they awoke something in Hoffman that resonated with his human nature.
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It's definitely awesome that Hoffman was so chill about what he experienced (not necessarily in the immediate sense, haha). It would have been easy for someone in his position to label what happened as a poisoning that was not to be repeated, and i believe many others may have had that attitude had they been in his position.

Definitely took a certain type of open-mindedness to approach it in the way he did.
 
Everyone always says "there's no evidence that kykeon was psychedelic" but seriously, most of what they drank back then was beer and wines made from lots of different plants that get ergot fungus on them.

and you pretty much can't deny that there's a very good chance some guy made some barleywine that he didn't know ergot was growing on and had a mystical experience and started a religion from it.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claviceps_purpurea

Edit: also the first literature about ergot and its effects is from the 1600s so before then there's a good chance people were drinking all sorts of ergot infused drinks

One might argue that ergotism is far a mystical experience but there are different types of ergot that form depending on things like the region it's forming and the humidity and stuff,

Also I think that there's a pretty good chance that putting ergot through certain brewing process could cause lysergic acid amides to be formed

Hoffman himself wrote a book about how kykeon was more or less mankinds precursor to lsd and speculated the eleusinian priests would even specifically pick the ergot off barley and certain types of grasses.

Also it was so secretive of a cult that they probably wouldn't have wanted to leave evidence of their sacrament especially because they probably didn't want the Christians to have it

the christians probably thought it was some sort of demon potion too so they probably did their best to destroy all of it

Theres this one guy who made a theory that Beowulf came from "barleywolf" implying that he likely drank ergot infused barleywine
 
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^^ For anyone interested, wether kykeon was an ergot containing drug or not, is discussed at length in this thread in dmt-nexus:
https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=8051

Personally I don't believe the hypothesis because I find it unlikely, and regardless of that, there is no hard archeological evidence of it! Until we have that, the hypothesis can't move past that point and all kinds of argumentation and speculation is kind of pointless.

I do appreciate it would be pretty awesome if the ancient greeks drank an ergot containing brew. Just like it would be pretty awesome if the vikings and the celts had used psychedelic mushrooms. Unfortunately there is absolutely no evidence of that either.

The only psychedelic drugs we have archeological evidence of having been known and used in antique Europe are deliriants. Atropa belladonna, henbane and different datura's. The roman ladies used belladona as eyedrops to dilate their pupils to look more beautiful (which is why it's called belladonna = beautiful lady) and as a poison.
And henbane seeds have been found in a purse in a viking seeress' grave, for instance. So, that is hard archeological evidence that the viking seeress' (the Vǫlva) used henbane for divination. Some henbane were also found in 2900 year old pots at Balfarg henge, Scotland. Unfortunately analysis was inconclusive.

Anyway, Kykeon is like Soma - it's very unlikely we will never know what it really contained.

In my opinion, discusions on the historic use of psychedelics, in PD, mostly venture into fantasy and wishfullthinking, aka:

"I'm sure the druids used magic mushrooms, man, how could they not have! they grow all over the UK.....and the druids were like, you know, some kind of feral hippies, it's impossible they didn't use 'em, man.....and celtic artwork is like, so psychedelic...." etc, etc...

And yes, I'm aware there's a 10.000 years old cave painting of something that looks like mushrooms yada yada yaaaa.. :)
 
SONN said:
Everyone always says "there's no evidence that kykeon was psychedelic" but seriously, most of what they drank back then was beer and wines made from lots of different plants that get ergot fungus on them.

and you pretty much can't deny that there's a very good chance some guy made some barleywine that he didn't know ergot was growing on and had a mystical experience and started a religion from it.
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Definitely. I actually said that there's no evidence the kykeon contained ergot chemicals though. I agree that it was probably psychedelic though :)

There's an issue with using ergot though because it is highly fucking toxic. I guess the same could be said of aconitum species and various solanacea too which are documented to be used in witchcraft and tribal medicine. But they have a better safety profile then ergot which has no real antidote and is very difficult to consume safely. I think Hoffman mentioned that a cold water exttraction was possible to remove some of the toxic alkaloids, but this would mean that ancient people somehow gained that knowledge presmably through trial and error/death. Of course, people may have been motivated to do such a thing, but its a bit hard to imagine.

Especially when there were non-toxic mushrooms growing all around them. ;)

I should read more of Hoffman's book on the topic; I read excerpts and found it interesting.

Theres this one guy who made a theory that Beowulf came from "barleywolf" implying that he likely drank ergot infused barleywine
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It might just imply that he drank barley wine though. What makes you think it would be ergot infused just based on his name?

Part of the impact that LSD had on the world was its novelty, its 'newness'. I would love to find out that the ancient ones used something like it, but I think there are more likely, non-toxic candidates. :)
 
neurotic said:
that's an interesting question. i often wonder if the 'prototypical' psychs/empathogen/any drug class are so just because of historical value rather than anything

what if the APB's were discobered before MDMA, and then people found MDMA to be bad because it wasn't so stimulating or because of the horrible comedowns with often weird side effects

humm
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Wicked topic to think about :p
 
This is a great thread!

It's crazy how these psychedelic substances have shaped the evolution of humans. An image comes to mind of a primitive hominid munching down on psilocybin, tripping balls and becoming enlightened! Fast track to today and we are discovering more and more. LSD is definitely my favorite hallucinogen, on it I have had some of the best experiences of my life!
 
Fagott said:
^^ For anyone interested, wether kykeon was an ergot containing drug or not, is discussed at length in this thread in dmt-nexus:
https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=8051

Personally I don't believe the hypothesis because I find it unlikely, and regardless of that, there is no hard archeological evidence of it! Until we have that, the hypothesis can't move past that point and all kinds of argumentation and speculation is kind of pointless.

I do appreciate it would be pretty awesome if the ancient greeks drank an ergot containing brew. Just like it would be pretty awesome if the vikings and the celts had used psychedelic mushrooms. Unfortunately there is absolutely no evidence of that either.

The only psychedelic drugs we have archeological evidence of having been known and used in antique Europe are deliriants. Atropa belladonna, henbane and different datura's. The roman ladies used belladona as eyedrops to dilate their pupils to look more beautiful (which is why it's called belladonna = beautiful lady) and as a poison.
And henbane seeds have been found in a purse in a viking seeress' grave, for instance. So, that is hard archeological evidence that the viking seeress' (the Vǫlva) used henbane for divination. Some henbane were also found in 2900 year old pots at Balfarg henge, Scotland. Unfortunately analysis was inconclusive.

Anyway, Kykeon is like Soma - it's very unlikely we will never know what it really contained.

In my opinion, discusions on the historic use of psychedelics, in PD, mostly venture into fantasy and wishfullthinking, aka:

"I'm sure the druids used magic mushrooms, man, how could they not have! they grow all over the UK.....and the druids were like, you know, some kind of feral hippies, it's impossible they didn't use 'em, man.....and celtic artwork is like, so psychedelic...." etc, etc...

And yes, I'm aware there's a 10.000 years old cave painting of something that looks like mushrooms yada yada yaaaa.. :)
Click to expand...

I think we are pretty certain about what Soma was. Soma is what they took when hard times opened their eyes, when they saw pain in a new way, with high stakes for a few names, racing against sunbeams, and they were losing against their dreams. In their eyes.
 
Somewhere on erowid I once found an talk transcript by Jonathan Ott, wo pointed out that Albert Hofmann had spontaneous mystical experiences in his past, and the he was a Swissman, i.e. belonged to the people who invented the cucoo's clock. Such a man, so he claims, would never ever absorb something possibly highly toxic through his skin accidentally, and so in fact on the 16th of April 1943 he did not get any LSD into his body, but had a spontaneous myisterical experience again. And also Albert Hofmann always claimed during his lifetime that he didn't find LSD, but LSD found him. Pretty crazy story, I know, but IMHO interesting thought food...
 
Okay while I am extremely new to psychedelics, I've taken K a lot (I understand people don't see this as a psychedelic but a dissociative) but only had LSD once and that was somewhat a stunted experience due to having done a lot of coke pre dropping LSD, I find it hard to believe it's discovery anything more than coincidental. Maybe that is a result of never having done a lot of LSD, I don't know.
 
There is probably nothing weird about the discovery of LSD. But it is interesting that Hoffman had spontaneous mystical epxeriences in early childhood. He accidentally ingested a dose which lasted for about 2 hours or so. This is at odds with the care he took in his laboratory, dealing with what he utterly knew were toxic compounds, and the actual duration of LSD effects. He then experimented intentionally, but because of of his childhood experiences, he may have had some framework to contextualise what was ocurring to him. It was certainly fortuitous.

I just always found it odd that his accidental ingestion doesn't sound much like LSD intoxication, but more like a spontaneous mystical experience.
 
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