Happy Bicycle Day 2018 !

[Cheshire_Kat]

I'm about to take my tour on the 75th Anniversary Bicycle Day and wish all my fellow travelers a great trip!

Later all !

 

[perpetualdawn]

Oh yeah it's bicycle day! 75th anniversary? cool!
Nice blotter!

 

[Larimar]

What is bicycle day never heard of it ?

 

[mr peabody]

Bicycle Day is April 19, commemorating April 19, 1943, when Dr. Albert Hofmann first took LSD intentionally. Three days earlier, he had absorbed a small amount of the drug either through his fingertips or by accidentally ingesting it. On Bicycle Day, Hofmann took 250ug of LSD intentionally and, fearing that he had made himself ill, cycled home from his lab. During his bicycle ride he experienced the effects of LSD, making this the date of the first ever acid trip.

During this trip home on the bicycle - it was about four kilometers - I had the feeling that I could not move from the spot. I was cycling, cycling, but the time seemed to stand still. In my report afterward, I mentioned this trip on the bicycle to show that LSD affected the experience of time, as an example of the distortion of the sense of time. Then the bicycle trip became a characteristic aspect of the LSD discovery. As we arrived home, I was in a very, very bad condition. It was such a strange reality, such a strange new universe which I had entered, that I believed I had now become insane. I asked my assistant to call the doctor. When the doctor arrived, I told him that I was dying. I had the feeling that my body had absolutely no feeling any more. He tested me and shook his head, because everything was OK.

Then, my condition became worse and worse. When I was lying on my couch, I had the feeling that I had already died. I believed, I had a sense that I was out
of my body. It was a terrifying experience! The doctor did not give me anything, but I drank a lot of milk, as an unspecific detoxicant. After about six hours, the experience of the outer world started to change. I had the feeling of coming back from a very strange land, home to our everyday reality. And it was a very, very happy feeling and a very beautiful experience. After some time, with my eyes closed, I began to enjoy this wonderful play of colors and forms, which it really was a pleasure to observe. Then I went to sleep and the next day I was fine. I felt quite fresh, like a newborn. It was an April day and I went out into the garden. It had been raining during the night. I had the feeling that I saw the earth and the beauty of nature as it had been when it was created, at the first day of creation. It was a beautiful experience! I was reborn, seeing nature in quite a new light.

More here:

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads...ws-Albert-Hofmann-Part-1-The-Discovery-of-LSD

 

[mr peabody]

Basel in the spotlight: The city that learned to love LSD

‘Bicycle Day’ on 19 April is the 75th anniversary of the day Albert Hofmann accidentally discovered LSD, changing his perceptions – and the city’s future.

Seventy-five years ago today, the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann experienced the world’s first full-blown LSD trip on his way home from his lab in Basel. Hofmann had been researching the
ergot fungus, hoping to develop a drug to treat fatigue. Among the compounds he was analysing was LSD. On Friday 16 April 1943, Hofmann left the lab feeling a little dizzy: “I lay down and had these wonderful dreams – I saw every thought as an image,” he said in an interview for his 100th birthday. The chemist concluded that he had accidentally touched the substance, and was intrigued by its powerful effect.

Three days later, on 19 April, he returned to the lab and swallowed a tiny amount just to see what would happen: “As it later turned out, it was 5 times too much and gave me a horror trip.”
He asked an assistant to take him home by bicycle, and Basel transformed into a panorama of hellish and heavenly visions. The bike seemed to freeze to the spot; a friendly neighbour turned into an evil witch. Hours later, Hofmann felt wonderful. “LSD called me, I didn’t seek it out,” he recalled. “It came to me.”

Loving LSD

Today, Basel wears its psychedelic history with pride. Locals point out that the city has for centuries served as a safe haven for rebels and free thinkers. An exhibition at Basel’s Kunstmuseum celebrates Hofmann’s discovery in the context of the city’s creative history, pairing it with nightmarish, horror trip-like prints by Old Masters such as Bruegel. Thousands of visitors are expected to flock to Basel to celebrate “Bicycle Day”, as 19 April is known among the cognoscenti. And researchers are studying LSD’s medical properties again, shrugging off decades of stigma.

Switzerland’s relatively permissive regulations around researching LSD have helped the renewed effort to understand its medical potential. New methods, including advanced brain scanners, also give unprecedented insights into its effects. One study by the Swiss psychiatrist Peter Gasser has recently shown that LSD can be used to reduce a sense of existential fear. LSD's capacity to induce feelings of deep bliss raise the prospect of therapeutic uses, for example to treat depression.

“LSD is a Baseler product,” said Matthias Liechti, a clinical pharmacologist at University Hospital Basel, who leads a research project on the effects of LSD on the human mind and body. “It’s tied to Basel’s history as a centre of pharmacology and innovation.”

Sandoz, the chemicals company in whose labs Hofmann discovered LSD, has since merged with its rival, Ciba, to create the chemicals giant Novartis. In general the chemicals and pharma business has shaped urban life in Basel, most recently through the Novartis Campus, a $2.3bn research and development centre in the St Johann neighbourhood, with a centrepiece designed by Frank Gehry. The campus has attracted global talent, but some locals warn that an influx of wealthy newcomers is pushing up prices and crowding out poorer locals. “From working-class area to hip chemistry-corner,” wrote local journalist Andreas Schwald about the rapidly changing neighbourhood last year. He points out that while the area offers a bustling, interesting mix of students and expats, cheap housing for poorer families is under threat. Overall, rents in Basel have risen 15% over the past decade, pushing up the general cost of living – which is rising faster than anywhere else in Switzerland.

Basel in numbers

250 micrograms – the amount of LSD Hofmann ingested before his bike trip

200 micrograms – the amount of LSD participants take in the study at University Hospital Basel

19 - percentage of Baselers who “regularly ride bikes”, according to a survey. The Swiss national average is 7-8%.

40 – number of museums in Basel, which has Switzerland’s highest museum density

3 - percentage rise in housing costs (including rent and heating) in Basel over the last two years

35 – percentage of foreigners living in Basel

What’s on for Bicycle Day?

The seriously committed will have already bought their tickets to the special anniversary congress in Basel that features some of the world’s leading LSD researchers – the event is sold out. Basel Art Center offers a special LSD night as part of its psychedelic retrospective of HR Giger, the Swiss artist. Basel Short Stories, an exhibition at the Kunstmuseum, honours Hofmann as
well as other Basel luminaries such as Erasmus and the feminist Iris von Roten. And, more prosaically, there are the many cycling routes in and around the city.

Local papers Basler Zeitung and bz Basel, and Zurich’s Neue Z?rcher Zeitung have run several in-depth features and interviews on the anniversary. In LSD, My Problem Child, Hofmann writes about his life, his discovery of LSD and his research into sacred plants. He warns against “mistaking this substance for a pleasure drug”. But with the right spiritual preparation and under the right medical conditions, he argues, his “problem child could become a wonder child.”

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/apr/19/basel-in-the-spotlight-the-city-that-learned-to-love-lsd-albert-hofmann

 

[pupnik]

a fine legacy

 

[hackedreality]

 

[tacodude]

So who else saw Shpongle? Who else with ALD-52 & harmine... That was epic