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Hoffmans (and the worlds) first acid trip

LSD can produce such a vastly different array of effects for different people, there is no reason to believe that this was not LSD, in my opinion.

I understand why you would question the two-hour comment, but remember that this is an account written by one man, the first (presumably) to have ingested LSD-25 without any previous cultural or anecdotal bias to influence him, and attempts to sum up this part of his experience with LSD in such a concise fashion. Look at some of the reports on Erowid of people's experiences with all manner of psychedelic substances, with almost a century of anecdotal material to look back on; some reports are pages long and meticulously detailed, while others are scant and threadbare, because not everyone tells different stories the same way.

I can certainly attest to having had differing experiences on the same chemical, indeed with LSD I have had trips where hours are lost in thought and wonder. Although one can speculate as to different scenarios that might have happened different to the Hoffman story we know, and spin a web of historical theories, it is ultimately conceited and unfair to deny his testimony and re-write the legacy in which we follow.
 
Once, while handling some freebase AMT, I became mildly intoxicated. The effects only lasted a duration of about 4-5 hours, during which I felt kind of out of it and feverish. Different routes of administration and dosages may precipitate different experiences of different lengths.
 
^But then we are faced with the fact the people such as Nick Sand 'painted' himslef with LSD and DMSO to utterly no effect.

I still think the catch all is the 2 hour point. It doesn't make sense that he wouldn't have been more meticulous with his write-up- he had consumed an unknown ergot derivative, then seen as one of the most physioactive growths on the planet; I would think that, unless he wasn't surprised, he would have been glued to his pad and most likely counting time hopignt he experience would finish. That said, he enjoyed the experience which is odd, as he had no reason to believe he wasn't poisoned by ergot; or did he?

it is ultimately conceited and unfair to deny his testimony and re-write the legacy in which we follow.

I don't follow his legacy. Don't know about you, but this isn't meant to be offensive to Hoffmann, and anyway, he's not a god or anything- plus he FREELY admitted that his initial experience may have been "spontaneous mysticism". Read the thread properly before just diviing in with insults. Theres no conceit in querying something which makes no sense. Its not blasphemy; its simply curiosity. Hoffmann isn't god; hes a dead human.

FWIW, I'd say his stroy is probably accurate, and either way, I doubt he intended to construct facts. He believed thats waht happened to him; my own experiences and reasearch lead me to not believe it, or at least, I am open to the prospects of it being something besides a mild LSD trip. Its kinda sad that we can't challenge someone like Albert Hoffmans wrd, as if its god given. He aditted his own doubts. Simple.

Read the thread.
 
4/16/1943 was bicycle day in which he deliberately ingested 250ug of LSD and the experience lasted about as long as expected and was quite the hellraiser. The comment u are referring I didn't think was from bicycle day but rather the day when he accidentally got some on his skin and was supposedly absorbed through that. However, if we just say it was on his skin it seems pretty reasonable that it could have snuck into a mucous membrane which would allow a small amount to have a decent effect for a short amount of time. Sounds very legit imo
 
hmm i rekon that is a pretty far out there theory- he just happened to have a mystical vision the exact same day he was first playing around with what is now known as one of the strongest known psychedelics :S
 
I'm just guessing here, but could it be that LSD freebase doesn't penetrate skin but LSD tartrate does? Or the other way around?
 
I want to know how this is a thread? The subject being discussed relies completely on a short passage. Here's a hypothetical timeline... he ingested a small amount. An hour later the effects disrupted him too much to continue working. We all know that if you are looking for the effects you can find them, but if you're not sure what is going to happen the come-up might not be as noticeable in that subtle way. So he takes his bike ride home and lies there for a while, but in his altered state... gasp... he does not have a perfect sense of the passage of time!!! EGAD!!! But could that be true? And whats more if it is a low dose then he would be subthreshold more quickly. However, I am aware that no one really knows how acid truly works so it may not be such a straight forward tickling/tickle-blocking receptors like we're used to.

Also bicycle day is not the day he accidentally injested it. He also mentions that his neighbor comes over to feed him milk I believe, the theory being that it will neutralize any poisons, and he sees her as a witch with a grotesque mole. This is all in LSD: My Problem Child which I believe is available in the "Library" section of Erowid.

If ID threads aren't allowed I would think this one would raise more than a single flag. IDing a substance taken by a man 66 years ago? And then to question him using translated passages, a poor understanding of neuroscience, and inaccurately mixing up two completely different days seems to highlight the ridiculousness of this thread. Or is it more of a, "I know more about LSD's baby daddy than you do! I'm Maury Pobitch... beeyatch!" thread.

And the point about Hoffman bringing up his spontaneous wonder as a child in nature. I think that is common. It has little to do with the more obvious objective, but still subjectively interpretted, symptoms of LSD ingestion. If you are a scientist you don't commit to something fully without being completely sure. If Hoffman had said, "Without a doubt I unknowingly ingested LSD." He would been forsaking his entire value set and way of looking at the world. Science is what objective humans use to understand what is already there. With no way of knowing what he actually took of course he has to suggest other possibilities. It doesn't mean that he didn't ingest LSD. It means that he is aware that there is an iota, a nearly infintessimal chance that something else happened that day. I'm open to it, but I know it is stupid to believe it. All the evidence points in the direction of LSD.


Peace,
PL
 
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Also bicycle day is not the day he accidentally injested it. He also mentions that his neighbor comes over to feed him milk I believe, the theory being that it will neutralize any poisons, and he sees her as a witch with a grotesque mole. This is all in LSD: My Problem Child which I believe is available in the "Library" section of Erowid.

That was my point, but since no one said anything i assumed i was apparently mistaken
 
^ again with the people not reading the whole thread. we all know bicycle day wasn't when he ingested it accidentally. most likely because he did it on purpose, and wrote in his journal that he did it on purpose ;)

are we not allowed to wonder and discuss? isn't that what sparked science in the first place? wondering about the world?

As for the LSD freebase/tartrate discussion, I wonder if his original lab notes are available somewhere. i'm positive he had some, especially since he was taking shot 2 at this compound. that would probably tell us at what stage in his synthesis he had this experience. who knows, maybe the notes will reveal that he had it before he had even created any LSD at all! :)
 
i read and i think i became confused when swilow said in the first post "as his bicycle day evidently was" so i thought that was in reference to this experience. My bad, also, i noticed i wrote the date wrong in my first post, idk y cuz i kno that damn date... oh well :\

Still, couldnt absorption through a mucous membrane account for an experience like this? if he didn't know he got it on his skin i think it could've easily gotten into his eyes/nose/mouth...since we're poking around at possible explanations...i dont have any personal experience with using pure lsd crystal so ive never gotten to experiment with such ROAs to compare effects...
 
However, if we just say it was on his skin it seems pretty reasonable that it could have snuck into a mucous membrane which would allow a small amount to have a decent effect for a short amount of time. Sounds very legit imo
sounds legit to me. He could have gotten some LSD on his hands & then had a sandwhich for lunch. Bread would efficiently absorb the lsd on his hand & acted like a carrier much akin to paper blotter.
 
I want to know how this is a thread? The subject being discussed relies completely on a short passage. Here's a hypothetical timeline... he ingested a small amount. An hour later the effects disrupted him too much to continue working. We all know that if you are looking for the effects you can find them, but if you're not sure what is going to happen the come-up might not be as noticeable in that subtle way. So he takes his bike ride home and lies there for a while, but in his altered state... gasp... he does not have a perfect sense of the passage of time!!! EGAD!!! But could that be true? And whats more if it is a low dose then he would be subthreshold more quickly. However, I am aware that no one really knows how acid truly works so it may not be such a straight forward tickling/tickle-blocking receptors like we're used to.

Also bicycle day is not the day he accidentally injested it. He also mentions that his neighbor comes over to feed him milk I believe, the theory being that it will neutralize any poisons, and he sees her as a witch with a grotesque mole. This is all in LSD: My Problem Child which I believe is available in the "Library" section of Erowid.

Once again, READ THE WHOLE THREAD!!! :!:D We are not talking about bicycle day- we are disussing the accidental ingestion. As you might have noticed, had you read this thread, the passage I quoted is from the book :\

Also buy the damn book.

If ID threads aren't allowed I would think this one would raise more than a single flag. IDing a substance taken by a man 66 years ago? And then to question him using translated passages, a poor understanding of neuroscience, and inaccurately mixing up two completely different days seems to highlight the ridiculousness of this thread. Or is it more of a, "I know more about LSD's baby daddy than you do! I'm Maury Pobitch... beeyatch!" thread.

What are you talking about? If you READ THE THREAD you will notice that I have not mixed up the days at all. His first 'LSD' experience occurred accidentally- it lasted 2 hours. He mentions no bike riding. It was April 16th, 1943. Bicycle day, April 19th 1943 was the day he intetionally ingested the drug. Now your confusing your days.

As to this being an ID thread; its not. Thats just facetious to suggest that- its not like Hoffmann himself is asking what he took- I am actually following up a line of theory proposed by David Nichols, an emeinent psychedelic researcher.

Also, what traslated passages? Are you suggesting the two hour thing is a misprint. Wow, thats convenient- kinda like saying God did it.

Why is everyone acting like this is a grieveous insult? Its merely an academic enquiry really; nothing to do with anyones ego, so drop the pathetic insulting, read the thread and understand it properly before commenting.

Peace,
PL

Riiiight.....8) If we can't have a discussion without throwing out cheap shots, why bother? Get your facts staright before responding.

READ THIS:
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]


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.



Overview of current research
I can't tell you all the things I do but let me just quickly give you an overview of what a hard scientist so-to-speak does, a reductionist scientist.

I look at how psychedelics affect brain chemistry. We make molecules. We make modified LSD analogues, we have a computer model of the serotonin receptor that's in the brain that we think is a target of these, computer generated that we discovered. We simulate the docking of these molecules to the receptor. We try to understand what are the amino acids in the receptor that interact with the different parts of the molecule. Then we look further in, we say when the molecule docks to the receptor, changes occur in the intercellular biochemistry. We look at the changes, how do those occur. My son who is a PhD in molecular biology doing neuropharmacology work at Vanderbilt has then looked even further and said what does LSD do to genetic regulation. He uses micro-array analysis to look at the gene expression changes following LSD in rats, and has seen changes in expression of 80 different genes. And then we have rat behavior where the rats tell us, "I think you gave me LSD" or "I don't think you gave me LSD." So we start from the design of the molecule, using computers, we synthesize the molecules, we then dock them in the receptor. We're mutating the receptor to change the amino acids so we can see how the complementary amino acids in the receptor modify the interaction with the drug. Then we look at the signaling in the receptor, what signaling pathways are turned on. And then ultimately to genetic regulation, where do protein expression changes occur.

We're looking at all the basic science -- preclinical stuff. I didn't have an MD degree so I couldn't do clinical research. This was sort of disturbing to me, but to get around it I founded the Heffter Research Institute, and they're doing all the clinical work. We're studying psilocybin -- in Zürich we have a clinical facility over there, with Franz Vollenweider. Most people know about the University of Arizona psilocybin study in OCD. Most people know about Charlie Grob's psilocybin study in terminal patients at UCLA. Those are all projects funded by the Heffter Institute.

So, we've translated everything from the basic science on into the clinical. I don't know if we can do a whole lot more. I'm doing as much as I can. We're not doing research with LSD, but I believe within a framework of 5 to 10 years, if we continue on and are successful with our psilocybin research, it will be possible to get protocols approved in the United States. We might start in Europe first but I think it will be possible to reinitiate clinical studies with LSD.
 
Why is everyone acting like this is a grieveous insult? Its merely an academic enquiry really; nothing to do with anyones ego, so drop the pathetic insulting, read the thread and understand it properly before commenting.

I agree. Didn't know that this kind of reaction would happen.

And again, as for accidental ingestion, or transfer to mucosal membranes, I would still think that he would be more careful than that. I know lab procedure and safety weren't up to the same standard today, but he knew he was working with a very powerful vasoconstrictor, that it was a derivative of a very poisonous fungus that caused St. Anthony's Fire, etc. Not to mention that I am basing part of my opinion off of Nichol's comment that basically said, "he was a very meticulous chemist." When a modern chemist comments on the meticulous status of a chemist from the 1940's, it says to me that the old chemist was careful even by today's standards. Nichols even acknowledges that Hoffman may have been more careful about his synthesis of LSD than Nichols was of his own.

From the only lab notes off Hoffman I could find (didn't search that long though).
The nature and the course of this extraordinary disturbance raised my suspicions that some exogenic intoxication may have been involved and that the Iysergic acid diethylamide with which I had been working that afternoon could have been responsible. I had separated the two isomeric forms that are formed by this synthesis, namely Iysergic diethylamide and isolysergic acid diethylamide and prepared the crystalline water soluble salt of Iysergic acid diethylamide with tartaric acid. However, I could not imagine how this compound could have accidentally found its way into my body in a sufficient quantity to produce such phenomena. Moreover, the nature of the symptoms did not tally with those previously associated with ergot poisoning.

So, he did made the tartrate salt, although there still isn't a timeline for when he felt slightly dizzy and went home. He says that he had been working with it that afternoon, but are we talking about half an hour before, 2 hours, 4? I wish there were better notes somewhere.

He also makes reference to how this did not resemble ergot poisoning, which to me says that he not only knew the symptoms of such (since he was working with ergot compounds, recognizing it early would be vital if he wanted to live), but that he was watching for the symptoms of ergot poisoning. This seems to partially back up the claim that his time estimate of 2 hours for the experience was probably correct, as he would definitely be worried about ergot poisoning and that he would be watching the clock carefully.
 
I think it has more to do with inferred meaning from pretentious word choice. No fault of the author. Let there be peace amongst us. As Leary would have done. If he were good.

I can't actually read so from what my helper tells me the translated passages you questioned are translated from German. He also tells me that he understands that people experience the effects of lsd in highly different ways. I rarely see visuals like the ones he described even at more substantial doses. In my first post I was commenting on people's apparent adamancy that Hofmann had not ingested LSD that first day. My conspiracy theory is that he tripped back when he made the first batch and he couldn't figure out what it was for quite a while and then he had to narrow the field down. Then once he discovered what it was he had to hide the fact that he was a drug fiending Nazi. So his story of bicycle day and the subsequent mythology came bursting forth from his womb and crawled from the afterbirth and became the standard LSD history. But in reality it is all fantasy. Embrace unicycle day. That's the day in 1937 when A-dawg took his unicycle to work. And home. And boy howdy was the way home rough. Took him 5 long years to nail it down. But the world has been ever thankful. Thankfully I've come to invite you to the first true celebration of the day in which set in motion universal social change and growth. The day which changed it all............

November 16

This year's celebration will mark the 71st year of Unicycle Day. The parade will consist of university supplied test subjects filled to the brim with acid. Oh and unicycles of all shapes and sizes to honor the special man that made this all possible.

Moment of silence please.

Peace,
PL
 
Well for a potential method of ingestion, nobody seems to have considered that it could be due to minute airbourne particles of LSD tartrate. I mean smoke is just particles of material (generally bits of ther material burning that hasn't undergone complete combustion and is kept airbourbe due to convection air currents and to a lesser degree, Brownian motion). Now consider dewaling with pure LSD tartrate - it'd be easy for very fine particulate matter to be suspended in the air and for him to either breathe it in or have it land on his mucous membrane and as it requires such a small dose, it's conceivable that it's how he ended up getting enough to cause the effect. After all, that was the delivery system used by the Russian special forces to dose everyone with the fentanyl derivative in the theatre seige a few years ago (airbourne particles suspended in the air from an aerosol)
 
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