On April 19, 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman explored the effects of a compound he had synthesized nearly five years before, lysergic acid diethylamide. Say that five times fast, or don’t and simply refer it to as LSD or acid, like everyone else. Your call, bud. However, you know what you should say? Doctor Hoffman’s discovery has rippled far beyond the confines of what its intended use originally was. Furthermore, I’m going to expand your understanding with research into the origins of Father Hoffman and the compound he synthesized. Grab your bike, hop on the bus, and let’s go.
Albert Hoffman was born Jan 11, 1906, in Baden, Switzerland. Capricorn. He enjoyed a modest upbringing, assuming greater responsibilities as a teenager when his father fell ill. Albert would go on to study medicinal chemistry at the University of Zurich and graduate in 1929 with a doctorate. Sandoz Laboratories, a Basel based drug company, hired Albert to derive chemical compounds from sanative plants.
Now, this is where it starts to get interesting. Let me tell you about ergot. Ergot is a fungal infection that grows on grains like rye and wheat. When ingested, it causes disease and illness in the form of burning and gangrenous appendages, seizures, headaches, and hallucinations. Unidentified until 1695, Ergotism sparingly killed thousands and left those it didn’t, permanently disabled throughout medieval Europe.
Flash forward to 1938, Mr. Hoffman’s bosses need a remedy for these darn headaches. There’s going to be a second world war kicking off the following year (unrelated, likely), and people love nervous system stimulants. It’s the go-to for migraines, baby. Just ask the Germans, they created a little something called Pervitin, which is not at all the same thing. Plus, much of the groundwork for that Deutsche advent is credited to Japan. Actually, that’s a vastly different compound, and a much darker story to be told separately at another time. Maybe. Anyway, Mr. Hoffman is studying ergot to synthesize an amalgam to soothe headaches.
Ergot had previously yielded ergotamine in 1918, an aggregation used to treat migraine pain. While testing the revivifying effect of ergot byproducts, Albert Hoffman discovered LS-25, named for his twenty-fifth ergot offshoot. Early tests yielded unsatisfactory results, thus Albert shelved the substance. Five years later, compelled to return to his research, he began experimenting with the substance again on April 16, 1943. By accident, Albert found that there was indeed something special about the substance; absorbing a shred of the fungal descendant caused him to experience an altered headspace and encouraging further research.
On April 19th, Father Hoffman intentionally ingested 250 micrograms of LS-25, which by today’s standards, is a dose ten times stronger than the thresh hold amount. Science! As a visceral transition occurred, Hoffman set off for home on the infamous bicycle ride which, today, we celebrate. However, for Albert, his condition seemed to be worsening throughout the ride. His vision wavered and distorted, as did his perception of time. Panic set in, he thought he was dying. Call the doctor, does time grow nigh? The doctor arrived and found no signs of lethality or physical anomalies, save for dialated pupils. Many have been there, oversaucing oneself is a prevalent practice within the wook community.
This clean bill of health granted Dr. Hoffman great relief. In his words, “The horror softened and gave way to a feeling of good fortune and gratitude. Now, little by little, I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me.” The day after, Albert awoke rejuvenated, sharp, and optimistic with a renewed fervor for his well-being and the world. “Breakfast tasted delicious and gave me extraordinary pleasure…the world was if newly created.”
Now you have a greater understanding of the man, the myth, the legend, Albert-Freaking-Hoffman, as well the origins of LSD. Here, I’m switching vehicles to share with you some of my thoughts on a different kind of ride, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe. This is a phenomenal book to read once you adjust to the language Tom Wolfe employs. For this portion, I’m merely going to limit myself to introducing you to some of the key concepts contained in its passages. If you find that at the end, you’d like to hear more of my takes on this electrifying piece of literature, let me know in the comments, and I will oblige down the road. Now, let us move from the bicycle onto the bus, as tripping always involves a journey.
LSD didn’t earn widespread adoption until the late 1950s, when its use began to skyrocket thanks to personnel like Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary. Experimentation with chemical compounds like LSD and a whole mess of other psychedelics began occurring at colleges, medical institutions, and various other places across the country. Such was the case at Veterans Hospital in Menlo Park, CA. Amongst the participants in these studies, the eventual author of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test details the journey of Ken Kesey and the group of psychonauts he assembles, The Merry Pranksters, through their own acid trials in the late 1960s. It provides an outstanding viewpoint on how LSD affects individuals, groups, and communities. In a way, LSD is a signal that brings people together, as well as a tool enabling deeper self-discoveries. LSD, like a portal way, provides a glimpse into the veiled mechanics at work beneath the surface and behind the scenes, through which the very fundamentals of life and reality function. LSD may have been discovered, designed, and deployed in laboratory settings, but it was never intended to stay there.
To give you some insight into how LSD spread beyond the research lab, consider this passage analyzing the relationship between researcher and researchee, from page 44. “They were onto a discovery that the Menlo Park clinicians themselves never–mighty fine irony here: the White Smocks were supposedly using them. Instead the White Smocks had handed them the very key itself. And you don’t even know, bub . . . with these drugs your perception is altered enough that you find yourself looking out of completely strange eyeholes. All of us have a great deal of our minds locked shut. We’re shut off from our own world. Aand these drugs seem to be the key to open these locked doors. How many?–maybe two dozen people in the world were on to this incredible secret!” Before long, many more would become privvy to the secret.
One of the reasons LSD spread is how it affects users. It’s almost like it grants the ability to see beyond the confines of one’s senses. After gaining understanding, people want to turn others on to this newly discovered magical knowledge. There’s more to life than you know, and it’s there for you to enjoy! I found this excerpt from page 140 a poignant description. “This side of the LSD experience–the feeling!–tied in with Jung’s theory of synchronicity. Jung tried to explain the meaningful coincidences that occur in life and cannot be explained by cause-and-effect reasoning, such as ESP phenomena. He put forth that the unconscious perceives certain archetypal patterns that elude the conscious mind.” The tiniest fragment is a microcosm of the larger whole. Are we merely reflections of the world about us, or is the world about a reflection of us?
Now, I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t share this description of The Merry Prankster’s bus, pages 67-68. “The original fantasy here, in the spring of 1964, had been that Kesey and four or five others would get a station wagon and drive to New York for the New York World’s Fair. On the way, they could shoot some film, make some tape, freak out the Fair and see what happened. They would also be on hand, in New York, for the publication of Kesey’s second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, early in July. So went the original fantasy.”
“Then somebody–Babbs?–saw a classified ad for a 1939 International Harvester school bus. The bus belonged to a man in Menlo Park. He had a big house and a lot of grounds and a nice set of tweeds and flannels and eleven children. He had rigged out the bus for the children. It had bunks and benches and a refrigerator and a sink for washing dishes and cabinets and shelves and a lot of other nice features for living on the road. Kesey bought it for $1500–in the name of Intrepid Trips, Inc.”
“Kesey gave the word and the Pranksters set upon it one afternoon. They started painting it and wiring it for sound and cutting a hole in the roof so you could sit up there in the open air and play music, even a set of drums and electric guitars and electric bass and so forth, or just ride. Sandy went to work on the wiring and rigged up a system with which they could broadcast from inside the bus, with tapes or over microphones, and it would blast outside over powerful speakers on top of the bus. There were also microphones outside that would pick up sounds along the road and broadcast them inside the bus. There was also a sound system inside the bus so you could broadcast to one another over the roar of the engine and the road. You could also broadcast over a tape mechanism so that you said something, then heard your own voice a second later in variable lag and could rap off of that if you wanted to. Or you could put on the earphones and rap simultaneously off sounds from outside, coming in one ear, and sounds from inside, your own sounds, coming in the other ear.”
“The painting job, meanwhile, with everybody pitching in in a frenzy of primary colors, yellows, oranges, blues, reds, was sloppy as hell, except for the parts Roy Seburn did, which were nice manic mandalas. Well, it was sloppy, but one thing you had to say for it; it was freaking lurid. The manifest, the destination sign in the front, read: “Furthur,” with two u’s.”
Despite this being a story following Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters, and I’ve only scratched the surface, here, it contains so much more. They started as test subjects before donning their own day-glo colored lab coats and adventuring into the world to conduct their own testing. Throughout their adventures, they cross paths with, academics, artists, musicians, and even criminals (Hell’s Angels). The Warlocks became The Grateful Dead after Jerry Garcia crossed paths with Ken Kesey and they started putting on acid tests, together.
“They both, Kesey and Garcia, had been heading into the pudding, from different directions, all that time, and now Garcia was a, yes, beautiful person, quiet, into the pudding, and a great guitar player. Garcia had first named his group The Warlocks, meaning sorcerers or wizards, and they had been eking by playing for the beer drinkers, at jazz joints and the like around Palo Alto. To the Warlocks, the beer drinker music, even when called jazz, was just square hip. They were on to that distinction, too. For Kesey–they could just play, do their thing (pg 236-237).”
Truthfully, a story like this wouldn’t have been possible without Albert Hoffman’s invention. If not for Ken Kesey’s experimentation with LSD, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest likely would have been a vastly different story, if at all. Following suit, the innovations enacted by Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters laid the groundwork for advancements in audio and visual experiences we enjoy through concert and festival landscapes, in this day. Not the only ones, merely one group wading into the pudding. Being able to look back and celebrate the progenitors who walked so we could run, inspires and motivates me to continue to perform my craft. Thus, I hope through my writings, I do the same for you. Walk, jog, run, or ride. Like they say, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. It’s a process.
As I finish this piece celebrating Albert Hoffman’s contributions to the world through psychiatry and psychedelia (he also synthesized psilocybin and psilocin in 1958), I’d like to share one final quote from the doctor. “I did not choose LSD; LSD found and called me.” Such is life. When the call is made, will you answer? Will you ride the bicycle, and are you on the bus? Eventually, we all graduate.
Be well, be successful. Bear Swiftly.
–Electro Scribe–
Sources
All That’s Interesting//American Society For Microbioligy//Britannica//OSU//National Library of Medicine
