TRIPPING IN A PSYCHEDELIC WORLD

Albert Hofmann remembers very clearly the moment when, on a spring
afternoon, riding his bicycle, the whole world -- and his life -- changed.

"Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if
seen in a curved mirror," says the chemist, who celebrated his 100th
birthday this week.

"I had the feeling that I could not move from the spot. I was
cycling, cycling, but the time seemed to stand still." It was 1943,
and Hofmann was experiencing the world's first LSD trip.

By the time the frightened 37-year-old research chemist reached home,
he was terrified. The room spun. The walls rippled. His worried
neighbour resembled a malevolent witch. He felt like he was dying.
After a few hours, the intensity of the experimental drug he'd dosed
himself with fell and he was able to enjoy the "fantastic and
impressive" effects. Next day, he felt wonderful: "A sensation of
well-being and renewed life flowed through me. The world was as if
newly created."

It all began with a peculiar accident. The doctor, employed by the
Swiss chemical firm Sandoz, was pursuing respectable but unremarkable
research into ergot.

This poisonous fungus that grows on rye had been used for centuries
as a folk remedy to bring on childbirth and ease headaches. The
doctor believed that ergot could be a storehouse of new medicines,
and he set about synthesizing new chemicals from it.

In 1938, Hofmann had synthesized the 25th chemical: lysergic acid
diethylamide. It showed little effect in test animals, bar
restlessness, and it was shelved.

Five years later, on a hunch -- or a "peculiar presentiment," as
Hofmann puts it -- he brewed up a fresh batch. In the process, he was
overcome by dizziness. Sent home, he "sank into a not unpleasant
intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated
imagination".

The next day, Hofmann concluded that the sensations could only have
been caused by accidental exposure to something in his lab, perhaps
the LSD. To be sure, the cautious doctor gave himself an extremely
conservative amount of the chemical -- 250 millionths of a gram.

It was, in fact, the equivalent of a megadose of the mind-agent,
still one of the most powerful known to man.

Alarmed by the strength of the ensuing effects, he clambered on his
bicycle and tried to make his way home. The rest is history.

Sandoz was keen to find a use for this new compound, and Hofmann
thought it could have an important role to play in psychiatry. After
animal tests showed it to be virtually non-toxic, it was made freely
available to qualified clinical investigators.

"Properties: causes hallucinations, depersonalization, reliving of
repressed memories and mild neurovegetative symptoms," read the label
on the bottle.

LSD's effects did not come as much of a revelation to science. Such
psyche-manifesting agents, or "psychedelics," were already well known.

Mescaline had been discovered in the late 1800s and made famous in
1954 as the subject of Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception.
What was extraordinary about LSD was its power. It was about 10,000
times more powerful than mescaline, and a tiny amount was enough to
trigger profound alterations in consciousness.

Through the late 1940s and most of the 1950s, LSD caused a revolution
in psychiatry. Therapists and doctors used it to treat forms of
mental illness, including neurosis, psychosis and depression. More
than 40,000 people underwent psychedelic therapy. Respected figures
considered it a wonder drug and gave their careers over to LSD research.

Some believed it gave a glimpse into the way schizophrenics perceived
the world. Others used it as a catalyst to accelerate traditional
psychotherapy -- and even took the drug themselves along with their patients.

By 1965, more than 2,000 papers had been published, many reporting
extremely positive outcomes in treating anxiety, obsessive compulsive
disorder and alcoholism. Hofmann's vision of LSD as a "medicine for
the soul" seemed to be coming to fruition.

But LSD began to leak out into elite society. Artists, painters,
performers and musicians began to experiment with it in looser, less
formal contexts. Anais Nin, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg and Huxley all
explored its creative potential.

Huxley believed such drugs gave normal people the gift of the
spontaneous visionary experience usually reserved for mystics and
saints. He would later request an injection of LSD on his deathbed.

In North America, newspapers and magazines began to fill up with
sensational reports of LSD experiments, miraculous effects, mystical
rebirths and self-transformations.

In 1959, the film star Cary Grant received the first of 60
LSD-assisted psychotherapy sessions, and concluded: "I have been born
again." The public grew more and more curious about this "miracle drug."

Self-experimentation began to increase. In a society facing growing
industrialization and urbanization, alienation and boredom, everyone
wanted to be reborn.

Already, a counterculture had sprung up to oppose the wealth-driven
homogeneity of capitalist America. LSD was rapidly adopted as the
sacrament for this bohemian "hippie" movement.

In the age of the moon landings and the exploration of space, here
was a tool that allowed a similar, metaphorical journey, a short cut
to enlightenment. By the mid-1960s, the drug was booming.

Hofmann remembers the time distinctly. "I had not expected that LSD,
with its unfathomable, uncanny, profound effects, so unlike the
character of a recreational drug, would ever find worldwide use as an
inebriant.

People had the mistaken opinion that it would be sufficient simply to
take LSD in order to have such miraculous effects." Rampant use led
inevitably to "bad trips" among recreational users, and Hofmann could
only watch with a mixture of astonishment and dismay.

"They did not use it in the right way, and they did not have the
right conditions. So they were not adequately prepared for it," he
says. "It is such a delicate and deep experience, if used the right way."

He was stricken by doubt and concern that misuse and fear of the drug
would lead to it being taken out of the hands of responsible
investigators and psychiatrists. Would LSD -- the drug which, on that
spring day in 1943, reconnected Hofmann with the "deeply euphoric"
visionary encounters he'd experienced in nature as a boy -- become a
blessing for humanity, or a curse?

A curse, the authorities concluded. In 1966, the drug was outlawed
around the world. Psychiatric treatment continued but was steadily
throttled by red tape and LSD's reputation as an "insanity drug."

By the 1970s, research had stopped altogether. Today, it languishes
in near obscurity, banished to the fringes of science and society.

Hofmann saw his discovery slip from psychiatric miracle medicine, to
psychedelic sacrament of the '60s, to outlawed, feared street drug.

Today, he is saddened but sanguine. "Wrong and inappropriate use has
caused LSD to become my problem child," he says. "The history of LSD
to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can
ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is
mistaken for a pleasure drug."

Hofmann himself continued his career as a chemist, and developed
several other medicines. All the time, a steady stream of people
continued to visit the "father of LSD" in Basel during the 1970s and 1980s.

Many were en route to India and the Far East in search of gurus and a
context for the LSD-driven mystical experiences. Many stopped off in
Zurich seeking his counsel -- often trying to score some of Hofmann's
"secret stash."

Hofmann considered it was his responsibility as inventor of the drug
to meet as many of these people as possible. "I have tried to help,
instructing and advising," he says.

Only now, 40 years later, is there renewed interest in the
therapeutic potential of LSD and other psychedelic drugs. The British
Journal of Psychiatry last year called for a reappraisal of
psychedelics "based upon scientific reasoning and not influenced by
social or political pressures".

An international symposium in Basel this week is discussing LSD
research. By today's standards, much of the research from the 1950s
is flawed. Clinical studies are slated to restart at Harvard this
year, organized by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Study (maps.org), this time looking at LSD as a treatment for cluster
headaches.

Hofmann hopes research will continue, but he believes LSD should
remain a controlled substance.

"As long as people fail to truly understand psychedelics and continue
to use them as pleasure drugs, and fail to appreciate the very deep
psychic experience they may induce, then their medical use will be held back."

Today, he lives with his wife in a house overlooking the countryside
around Basel. He is head of a large family, including eight
grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

He took the drug many times, but now, he says, he has no use for LSD.
He believes it is just another means to attain extraordinary states
of consciousness. "Breathing techniques, yoga, fasting, dance, art"
are, he thinks, equally good.

He takes pleasure in recalling his boyhood experiences in nature that
he links with psychedelics. "LSD brings about a reduction of
intellectual powers in favour of an emotional experiencing of the
world. It can help to refill our consciousness with this feeling of
wholeness and being one with nature."