On Friday, 16 April 1943, a quiet, cautious but imaginative Swiss was in his research laboratory at the Sandoz pharmaceutical company in Basle. Albert Hofmann, then aged 37, was working, as he had been for years, on synthetic chemicals he had derived from ergot, a poisonous fungus that grows on rye.
Suddenly, in mid-afternoon, he was afflicted by uncontrollable restlessness and a slight dizziness. He went home, lay on a couch, and slipped into a pleasant semi-intoxicated state. Yet his imagination seemed to have been set afire. When he closed his eyes, he saw a stream of fantastic pictures and extraordinary shapes bathed in a kaleidoscopic play of colours.
When, after two hours, this dream-like state faded away, he decided it must have been provoked by the substance he’d been working on. But how had he absorbed it? Because of the known toxicity of ergot, he had always maintained what he called ‘meticulously neat work habits’. Maybe a drop of solution had got onto his skin and been absorbed. If that were so, he was dealing with a chemical of extraordinary potency. The only way to unravel what had happened was to experiment on himself.
Three days later at 4.20 in the afternoon, he swallowed a minute and much diluted dose of the chemical. By five o’clock, he was having feelings of dizziness and anxiety, was suffering visual distortions, and had a strong desire to laugh. He had proved to his own meticulous satisfaction that the chemical had caused the previous Friday’s strange experience: the altered perceptions were much the same, only more intense.
The experiment, however, refused to stop. By six o’clock, he felt so uneasy that he wanted to go home. He had to struggle to speak intelligibly, but was able to ask his laboratory assistant, who knew of the experiment, to escort him. As the pair of them cycled through the sedate streets of Basle, Hofmann’s condition grew vaguely threatening. Everything in his field of vision was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror. Yet he kept cycling and, when he got home, asked his companion to call the family doctor.
He was later able to write a punctilious account of his experience:
The dizziness and sensation of fainting became so strong at times that I could no longer hold myself erect, and had to lie down on a sofa. My surroundings had now transformed themselves in more terrifying ways. Everything in the room spun around, and the familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms. The lady next door, whom I scarcely recognized, was no longer Mrs R, but rather a malevolent, insidious witch with a coloured mask.
Even worse than the transformations of the outer world were the changes that Hofmann perceived within himself.
Every exertion of my will, every attempt to put an end to the disintegration of the outer world and the dissolution of my ego, seemed to be wasted effort. A demon had invaded me, had taken possession of my body, mind, and soul.
He jumped from the sofa and screamed, trying to free himself from his demon, but sank down again and lay there helpless. The chemical, with which he had dared to experiment, had vanquished him. The scornful demon had triumphed over his will. He was seized by a dreadful fear of going insane. Or was he dying? Could this be the transition into death? For a time, he was an observer outside his body, watching the tragedy he had created. He had not taken leave of his wife and their three children, who had gone on a visit to Lucerne.
Would they understand that I had not experimented thoughtlessly, irresponsibly, but rather with the utmost caution, and that such a result was in no way foreseeable?
Not only was a young family losing its father, he was leaving his research unfinished, research that meant so much to him, research about to bear fruit. His bitterness was tinged with irony. He was being driven from the world by a substance he had brought into it.
When the Hofmann family doctor arrived, the laboratory assistant told him about the experiment. The doctor carefully examined his patient but the only abnormalities he found were widely dilated pupils. He stayed by the bed perplexed and awaiting developments. Hofmann remembers the doctor standing there, watching over him as he himself drifted back from a threatening world to reassuring reality. Slowly the horror softened into feelings of good fortune and gratitude. He grew more confident and lost the fear that he was going insane.
Little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colours and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes … Every sound generated a vividly changing image, with its own consistent form and colour.
Late in the evening, Hofmann’s wife returned from Lucerne. She’d been told by telephone that her husband was suffering a mysterious breakdown, but when she arrived, he had recovered sufficiently to tell her what had happened. That night, he felt exhausted and slept soundly. Next morning he awoke refreshed and with a clear head.
A sensation of well-being and renewed life flowed through me. Breakfast tasted delicious and gave me extraordinary pleasure. When I later walked out into the garden, in which the sun shone now after a spring rain, everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. The world was as if newly created.
Hofmann realised that he had created a unique psychoactive substance. No other substance was known to provoke psychic effects of such profundity in such a minute dose. Even more significantly, he could remember the experience in every detail. The conscious recording function of his mind had not been interrupted. Throughout the experience, he’d been aware that he was participating in an experiment yet, despite this insight, could not escape from the fantasy world he’d entered. Another surprising property of the substance was its ability to produce such a far-reaching, powerful state of inebriation without leaving a hangover.
Hofmann had created LSD, and his immediate expectation was that it would prove valuable in psychiatric research and treatment. In 1943, he never contemplated it being used outside medical science. Having experienced LSD’s terrifying, demonic aspect, the last thing he expected was that it could be used as a pleasure drug. Only thirty years later in the era of Timothy Leary and psychedelia did this quiet, cautious and kindly Swiss start referring to LSD as his ‘problem child’.