Media Releases
Media Releases
Consciousness Researchers in Basel
LSD – Problem Child and Wonder Drug
International Symposium on the Occasion of the 100th Birthday of Swiss Chemist Albert Hofmann
Basel. On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, Ph.D., an international symposium will be held at the Convention Center Basel, Switzerland, from 13 to 15 January 2006. The focus of attention will be the most widely known and most controversial discovery of this outstanding scientist: LSD.
LSD – three letters have changed the world. Since 19 April 1943, when Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann discovered this psychoactive substance, millions of people all over the world have experienced a higher reality with profound and psychological insights and spiritual renewal; created innovative social transformation, music, art, and fashion; were healed from addiction and depression; experienced enlightened insights into the human consciousness.
Some 60 years after Dr. Hofmann’s far-reaching discovery more than 80 renowned experts from all over the world will examine the LSD phenomenon from every angle, in an effort to put up facts against prejudice. On Friday, 13 January, the drug’s history is in the foreground of discussions ("From the Plants of the Gods to LSD"). On Saturday, 14 January, a look will be taken at "The Ecstatic Adventure". On Sunday, 15 January, it will be about "New Dimensions of Consciousness". For that, the international consciousness research’s elite will come: from the USA, among others, Rick Doblin, Alexander Shulgin and Ralph Metzner; from Europe Guenter Amendt, Christian Raetsch and Franz Vollenweider. Moreover prominent artists and witnesses of the times like Alex Grey, Ulrich Holbein and Barry Miles will travel to Basel in order to give detailed accounts of their personal experiences with LSD and its influence on the arts and culture.
Of course, Albert Hofmann himself will attend, who will celebrate his 100th birthday on 11 January 2006.
Parallel to the symposium there will be a wide-ranging cultural program with exhibitions, concerts and parties.
The Gaia Media Foundation, which organizes this event, is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting, spreading and networking the knowledge about human consciousness and its altered and expanded states. For that, it organizes lectures, exhitibions and symposiums under the title "The Spirit of Basel".
Information/Registration
Spirit – Kongresse und Events Neuweilerstrasse 15
CH 4054 Basel
Switzerland
Phone +41 61 3021236
Fax +41 61 3839721
info@lsd.info
www.LSD.info
Press Office
Gaia Media Foundation
PO Box 350
CH 4003 Basel
Switzerland
Phone +41 61 2614080
presse@gaiamedia.org
•
Main topic on Friday, 13 January 2006
Main topic on Saturday, 14 January 2006
Main topic on Sunday, 15 January 2006
Main topic on Friday, 13 January
2006
From the Plants of the Gods to LSD
LSD is the closest, the most dense, the most mysterious link between
the material and the spiritual world. A hardly visible trace of LSD
matter is capable of evoking heaven or hell in the spiritual world,
i.e. in human consciousness.1
Albert Hofmann
On 19 April 1943 Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann sets out for the first
voluntary LSD trip of the history of man. At 4.20 pm in his research
laboratory he takes 250 microgram Lysergic acid diethylamide. Around 5
pm "dizziness, feelings of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of
paralysis, desire to laugh" set in. His riding back home by bicycle
goes down in history as "Bicycle Day". While pedaling away his
"condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of
vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror." Having
arrived at home "my surroundings had (...) transformed themselves in
more terrifying ways. Everything in the room spun around, and the
familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening
forms. They were in continuous motion, animated, as if driven by an
inner restlessness. (...) Even worse than these demonic transformations
of the outer world, were the alterations that I perceived within
myself, in my inner being. 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. (...) I was seized by the
dreadful fear of going insane. I was taken to another world, another
place, another time...."
"Was I dying? Was this the transition?"
A called-for doctor cannot detect any abnormal symptoms, apart from
extremely dilated pupils.
"Slowly I came back from a weird, unfamiliar world to reassuring
everyday reality. The horror softened and gave way to a feeling of good
fortune and gratitude, the more normal perceptions and thoughts
returned, and I became more confident that the danger of insanity was
conclusively past.
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, alternating,
variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles, in spirals,
exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves
in constant flux. It was particularly remarkable how every acoustic
perception, such as the sound of a door handle or a passing automobile,
became transformed into optical perceptions. Every sound generated a
vividly changing image (...).
Exhausted I then slept, to awake next morning refreshed, with a clear
head, though still somewhat tired physically. A sensation of well-being
and renewed life flowed through me. (...) When I later walked out into
the garden, in which the sun shone after a spring rain, everything
glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. The world was as if newly
created. All my senses vibrated in a condition of highest sensitivity,
which persisted for the entire day."
It amazes Hofmann that he, meanwhile, never lost consciousness and,
afterwards "could remember the experience of LSD inebration in every
detail." It also surprises him that there is no "hangover".
What Hofmann came across is much more than just another chemical
substance: he has disclosed a secret of the "Plants of the Gods". Many
primitive people believe that God has left his creative power in plants
– and that man could discover and make use of them. Therefore, plants
are being respected and revered in many places. Since time immemorial,
in all cultural areas, the use of hallucinogenic plants - like the
Mexican magic mushrooms of the genus psilocybe, the peyote cacti,
ayahuasca, and hemp – is part of human life. The preparations
extracted thereof played a key role during rituals meant to trigger
spiritual and ecstatic experiences: from ancient Greek mystery plays
via soul travel of South American shamans to the happenings of the
Woodstock generation. What revealed itself on that 19 April in Basel
was the pharmacology of ecstasy.
During the first decade of Hofmann’s discovery LSD was considered to
be a promising medicine first of all, which was being tested as soberly
as any other pharmacologically effective substance. The drug was being
made accessible to numerous scientists who, with it, tested new
approaches of treatment in the fields of psychiatry and psychotherapy.
Within two decades they gathered a notable wealth of experience. So a
number of studies indicated that with the help of LSD alcoholics can
kick their habit, the incurable sick be stabilized, their anxieties,
pains, and other side effects alleviated. Czech psychiatrist Stanislav
Grof praised LSD as a "microscope or telescope of psychiatry"; since it
would bring to light unconscious, suppressed parts of the soul which
otherwise wouldn’t be accessible and would drastically raise the
chances of success of a psychoanalysis. Since the experiments were
always conducted in a controlled setting and the subjects were informed
in advance that LSD triggers extraordinary states of mind, there were
hardly ever any negative effects. Up to the mid-sixties over thousand
articles had been published in reputable journals which described
encouraging results with an all-over 40 000 patients with
schizophrenia, depression, all kinds of addictions, and other
disorders.
With good reason quite a few scientists thought it would be
appropriate to find out about LSD’s potential in experimenting on
themselves. On some of them, the thus experienced had such an
euphoriant effect, however, that they lost the critical distance toward
their object of research and turned into messengers of a better
"psychedelic culture". It was namely Timothy Leary (1920-1996),
professor of psychology at Harvard University on whom opinions were
divided. In the early sixties he had conducted promising clinical
experiments with LSD. When the test series turned into LSD parties,
Leary was dismissed as a faculty member and founded his own
organization, the "International Federation of Internal Freedom", which
propagated, for the first time, LSD as therapeutical aids for the
dissolution of restricting conditionings and deep-rooted dispositions.
Also among artists and intellectuals LSD increasingly gained currency.
The author Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was the first one to experiment
with the drug outside a medicinal application; a number of novels in
which he praised psychedelics as a key to the doors of an extended,
higher perception, reached the greatest publicity. Arthur Koestler and
Allen Ginsberg followed his example, as well as painters and musicians,
from the Beatles to the Grateful Dead to Eric Burdon and Jimi Hendrix.
American actor Cary Grant caused quite a stir when he confessed in an
interview with "Look" magazine, in 1959, what he had experienced under
LSD within the context of a psychotherapy: that only this drug had made
him a new, emotionally stable person who, after three failed marriages,
finally was able to really love and make a woman happy. He described
his LSD experience as one of the most important events in his life, and
recommended all politicians to take it. In 1961 Exploring Inner
Space: Personal Experiences Under LSD-25 became a bestseller in
which nutrition consultant Adelle Davis – under the pen name Jane
Dunlap – enthused about what she had experienced as participant of a
LSD study. Not less successful was My Self and I, a book
published in 1962, in which Constance A Newland described how she,
thanks to LSD, freed herself of her frigidity. Thus it happened that
the substance was spread much faster than the knowing about it; many
people believed that it would be sufficient to just take LSD in order
to bring about wonderful changes within themselves. According to the US
Food and Drug Administration's reckoning, over seven million Americans
already had experienced LSD until the early seventies.
The Hippie movement wasn’t less initiated by LSD experiences as it
was by protests against materialism and capitalism, petty bourgeois
conformism and the Vietnam War. Leary’s slogan "turn on – tune in
– drop out" became their emphatic credo. A group of young people
around writer Ken Kesey who, as a student had participated in Leary’s
series of experiments, drove in a colorful painted "Magic Bus" all over
the USA. Along with the hippie ideals Hofmann's "wonder drug" was
handed out a thousand times. The beginnings of the "New Age" movement,
too, were strongly influenced by LSD; one of their most influential
propagandists Fritjof Capra describes, in his book The Tao of
Physics a psychedelic experience which decisively marked his
worldview.
The new counterculture's call to practise civil disobedience and to
drop out of civilian life was increasingly felt by conservative circles
as a threat – and a powerful countermovement set in. ("The Imperium
Strikes Back" – will be one of the LSD Symposium's topics on Friday,
13 January 2006). More and more often LSD was being demonized in the
media. The case of one Dr. Olsen caused quite a sensation when he –
up to then a calm and well-balanced man - after having been given LSD
without his knowledge in the run of some drug experiment of the US
Navy, committed suicide. There was a rumor going around in the press
that LSD would produce the madness that one could fly, whereupon one
would jump out of the window; or it would make one believe that one was
an orange, whereupon one would want to "peel" and consequently skin
oneself. There were anxieties that LSD could lead to blindness, damage
chromosomes, or cause other fatal disorders. The American Medical
Association stirred up the feelings of panic: the repeated intake of
psychedelics would "cause personality deterioration", and it warned in
a journal: "Only a few of those who experienced more than 50 'trips'
are spared it."
The ensuing hysteria did fit in rather well with the plans of
reactionary politicians. On 16 October 1966 they had attained their
goal in the USA: LSD was classified a "Schedule I" drug which
attributes the highest abuse potential to it, which prohibits any kind
of medicinal use, even under supervision of physicians or
psychiatrists. Ever since all those who are in possession of LSD
without permission run the risk of a prison sentence not under ten
years.
With the ban on LSD large parts of the uncomfortable protest movement
could be criminalized. Under the significant influence of the United
States the UN put the substance and other hallucinogens soon after on
the list of "particularly dangerous drugs". With it a worldwide total
ban on LSD for therapy, science, and private use actually became
effective. Thereupon "the few good producers of LSD were busted," Leary
describes one of the sad consequences. "Following that, the country was
flooded with low-quality LSD. Gullible amateurs teamed up with
unscrupulous gangsters in order to distribute a bad product." So
warnings of administrative bodies became "self-fulfilling
prophecies".
LSD as an object of unconditionally researching curiosity: Thus began,
in 1943, the story of this drug – and it eventually should find back
to this kind of approach.
1 Albert Hofmann in March 2005, in his words of welcome on the occasion
of the opening of the Ludlow Santo Domingo Library in Geneva.
•
Main topic on Saturday, 14 January
2006
The Ecstatic Adventure
"LSD ist the most efficient and probably also most valuable
pharmacological therapeutical aids in the examinations of the human
consciousness, getting off the ground worldwide."1
Albert Hofmann
For almost 2000 years Eleusis, today an inconspicuous industrial town
20 kilometers west of Athens, was the scene of one of the most
important mystery cults of Ancient Greece. This was the place where,
from about 1500 BC up into the 4th century AD, Demeter, the goddess of
agriculture, was paid homage each year. Priests offered those present
Kykeon, a beverage meant to – ecstatically – allow views of higher
realities. It consisted of barley, water, and mint; furthermore it
probably contained traces of ergot. This is a permanent form of the
fungus Claviceps purpurea which befalls different cereals and wild
grasses as they grow, up to this day, quite close to the holy site of
Eleusis, and from which Albert Hofmann isolated the basic substance for
synthesizing LSD.
In secluded areas in Southern Mexico Indian tribes have kept similar
cults up to this day, where there also are priests administering
hallucinogenic preparations in the context of religious ceremonies. In
the exploring of two of these Albert Hofmann was essentially involved:
the Mexican magic mushrooms, from which he isolated the psychoactive
agents psilocybin and psilocin, and Ololiuqui, the seed of a climbing
plant, in which he discovered LSA (Lysergic acid amide) which, in its
chemical structure, is very similar to LSD.
Experiences they trigger are rather similar to those which are being
reported by mystics of all great religions, but also by experienced
meditators: in an "oceanic self-deboundarization" one experiences
oneself as one with others and with the world as a whole. One feels
free from the limitations of space and time, one encounters God. One
feels boundless joy, profound inner freedem, and all-embracing love.
Parts of the familiar environment get a totally new meaning;
imagination, creativity, and the powers of association grow; memories
of specific events become increasingly vivid ("dehabituation"). One
sees things unreal, in the course of which, however, one often is aware
of at the same moment ("pseudohallucinations"). Synaesthesias occur,
i.e. perceptions of different senses overlap: one "hears" colors, one
"sees" sounds.
What kind of extraordinary states of consciousness are these, which
can be triggered by LSD and related active agents? While evaluating
them scientifically, three approaches compete with each other:
- According to the psychotomimetic approach LSD causes a mental state
which imitates a psychosis. Psychiatrists are meant to make use of this
effect, by producing and studying a "model psychosis" under laboratory
conditions. This goes with what Sandoz had printed on their first
package insert for "Delysid", pure LSD: "while self-experimenting it
gives the doctor an insight into the world of ideas of a mentally ill
and makes possible, through short-term model psychosises with normal
test subjects, the study of pathogenetic processes". But are
LSD-induced states of consciousness really psychotic ones –
manifestations of a temporary mental disease? Typically, psychotic
experiences are not being integrated into the day consciousness, into
the personality structure, into the daily routine. On the other hand,
LSD experiences are not being "split off" this way. "I'm convinced,"
Aldous Huxley once said, "that these experiences (...) get their value
(...) above all the moment when we insert them into our view of life
and use them everyday. The effect of mystical experiences upon everyday
life has been seen as a test of its validity everywhere." American
consciousness researcher Terence McKenna remarks ironically: "LSD
causes psychotic behavior in those who have never taken it."
- According to the psycholytic (literally "dissolving the mind")
approach, LSD and related substances change the dynamic relationship
between conscious and subconscious parts of the personality. Thus they
make the remembering of far-away events easier which were such a
strain, even traumatic that they, together with feelings bound to them,
are being suppressed and driven into the unconscious. In order to reach
these, low-dosed hallucinogens – sporadic doses of 30 to 60 microgram
LSD over periods of six months to two years, for instance – have been
used within psychoanalytically structured therapies, in cases of
depression, anxiety and obsessional neuroses. As to the credo of the
psycholytic approach, German writer Ernst Jünger (1895-1998), a friend
of Albert Hofmann’s for many years, has gotten to the heart of it:
"Drugs are keys -, though they won’t open up more than our innermost
conceals. But maybe they lead into depths which otherwise are bolted
fast." On the other hand, advocates of a psychedelic2
approach say that LSD would open a lot more: not just insights into
hidden corners of our inner world, but mystical-religious outlooks into
"higher" realities. At the same time transpersonal and collective
dimensions of consciousness, of the divinity of the own self and of
creation as a whole are supposed to reveal themselves – and from it
humans can grow and mature. But then there is no more reason to limit
the use of hallucinogens only to therapeutical purposes; the extension
of consciousness is good for everyone. LSD neither heals cancer nor
Aids, but LSD experiences help persons affected to gain insights which
reconcile them with their fate. And an altered attitude can absolutely
have an effect on body and soul, since the different aspects of
personality, while constantly interacting with each other, form a
whole, and do not function as isolated units. Responsibly applied,
hallucinogens like LSD can make healthy as well as sick persons more
balanced, optimistic, and anxiety-free, can bring them into line with
themselves and their surroundings. And they satisfy a basic need of
man: the need for transcendence.
Which kind of states of consciousness are conveyed depend, however, on
a number of factors:
1) On the substance used, on its purity and dosage.
2) On the consumer's personality. It's rather persons who usually find
it hard to free themselves of thought and behavioral patterns under
altered conditions, which tend, while being high, to fear their ego
would dissolve.
3) On the set. Previous experiences with extraordinary states of
consciousness, the level of expectations, the actual frame of mind
directly before taking the drug as well as the predominant state of
mind will be crucial as far as the experiences during the high are
concerned.
4) On the setting. Exterior circumstances have an influence on the
experiences’ contents: whether the room is being felt as pleasant
(furniture, background music), how big the group is, how one feels part
of the group etc.
Albert Hofmann never tired of pointing out the meaning of these
factors. "It's dangerous," he warned, "just to take LSD and to think
one then would become a wise person. It needs quite some preparation;
one needs to know what one wants to attain. One needs to know that all
sense organs are stimulated. Light gets lighter, colors become more
intense, all emotional components are being intensified. One gets into
another reality, and this can be quite horrifying. Therefore, a
meditative preparation, the chosing the right environment and
accompanying persons is so important, so that this different kind of
experience can be integrated."3
To a large extent the exploration of these states, their requirements,
and their effects came to a standstill with the worldwide ban on LSD in
the late sixties. To receive research funding became almost impossible
– and even if they had kept on flowing from somewhere, there was
hardly a noted scientist ready to risk his academic reputation dealing
with a demonized substance.
Only recently timid approaches to a more objective, more pragmatic
dealing with the emotive issue LSD can be seen to emerge; in some
places there already is talk of a "revival of psychedelics research".
At a drug clinic in St. Petersburg Russian psychiatrist Evgeny
Krupitsky examines how ketamine might help 300 alcoholics and 200
heroin addicts. (In one of his studies 73 of 111 alcoholics stayed "on
the wagon" afterwards for at least one year, compared to only 24
percent in a control group.) At Harvard University’s McLean Hospital
John Halpern pursues psychedelic medicine since quite a while; in the
context of research projects he administers the empathogenic drug MDMA
(Ecstasy) to terminal cancer patients, to patients with therapy
resistant cluster headaches he gives LSD. In a study with members of
the Native American Church, to whom the US authorities gives the
permission to use the psychedelic peyote by way of exception, Halpern
couldn’t detect any psychic or mental harm whatsoever, even despite
regular use. Since 1986 Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS
(Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) in Sarasota,
Florida, does political lobbying in order to get authorities to handle
drug research projects in a more liberal way. Also the Heffter Research
Institute in Santa Fé, New Mexico, with a branch at the Psychiatric
University Clinic Zurich, funds researchers aspiring to work with
hallucinogens since 1993. Co-founder psychiatrist Charles S. Grob
presently conducts a study on psilocybin to loosen up anxieties of
cancer patients at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles,
California. Since 2001 psychiatrist Francisco Moreno of the University
of Tucson, Arizona, tests psilocybin treating patients with obsessional
neuroses. In Charleston, South Carolina, physician Michael Mithoefer
examines whether MDMA can help patients with PTSD, posttraumatic stress
disorder, one in five is suffering from, who has had traumatic
experiences like victims of violent crimes or natural disasters, war
veterans etc.
In Switzerland five psychiatrists were granted a permission by the
Federal Office of Health, between 1986 and 1993, to use LSD and related
substances for therapeutical purposes. A shift in thinking can be seen
to emerge. "Psychedelic research is back," it recently said in the
noted US magazine New Scientist benevolently, and cited a LSD
researcher: "Now we can show that we've learnt our
lessons."4
1 Albert Hofmann in March 2005, on the occasion of the opening of the
Ludlow Santo Domingo Library in Geneva.
2 The term "psychedelic" (from the Greek "psyche": soul, mind, and
"delos": bringing forth, manifesting) was coined by British
psychiatrist and researcher Humphry Osmond in the late 1950s, in order
to identify a group of drugs which alter the awareness of reality in a
decisive way; among others he included mescaline and LSD.
3 Albert Hofmann in an interview conducted by Lucius Werthmüller in
the fall of 1995; to be looked up at www.gaiamedia.org
4 New Scientist, No. 2488, 26 February 2005, p. 36 ff.
•
Main topic on Sunday, 15 January 2006
New Dimensions of Consciousness
"In the possibility to support meditation directed at mystical
experience from the pharmacological side, I see the actual significance
of LSD. Such a use corresponds completely to the nature and the
characteristic effect of LSD as a sacred drug."1
Albert Hofmann
In a recent interview Albert Hofmann was asked which future
significance LSD could have for the alteration of the human
consciousness.
"At present, we're living in a materialistic age," he said. "Many
people just see the exterior, material part and strive and act in this
area. What's behind it, the spiritual original source, they do not
perceive any more. I see LSD as a catalytic converter. It’s one of
the means which directs our attention, our perception to other parts,
other contents of our human existence, so that we become aware, again,
of the spiritual background. What LSD brings about, is a reduction of
intellectual powers in favor of an emotional experiencing of the
world."
Doesn't LSD, therefore, turn its users sooner or later into
daydreamers floating in transpersonal spheres – and losing all touch
with reality? "By no means," Albert Hofmann says. Of course "one
couldn’t always stay in a state of ecstasy. Our daily routine
consists of two components, the material one and the spiritual one. We
can’t exclusively move in the spiritual world, since in everyday life
we have to deal with the material world: we have to think and act
rationally. What's important is that we never forget the spiritual
background, and to act from it. And LSD serves as a catalytic converter
in order to bring back from a single or repeated experiencing of the
spiritual world new standards for our everyday life."
Seen this way both big protest movements of the late 1960s – the
Flower Power Movement from the American westcoast as well as the
student revolts of Paris and Frankfurt – have disregarded Hofmann’s
concern in the end. Some, the peaceful-minded withdrew into hedonistic
realms, the others, radical-minded took to the streets and also didn't
shrink back from criminal damage. Hofmann's position, on the other
hand, was always a well-balanced one, and related to nature. He neither
pleaded one-sidedly for hedonism, nor for anarchy and chaos; he always
focussed - and still does - his attention on the observation of and the
respect for nature. In harmony with its ever recurring cycles he also
understands other epochs and cultures which ritually used psychedelics
in order to directly gain experiences, to make encounters with
"higher", with divine realities. It's exactly this kind of experiences
which people of today feel to be a loss – especially those in the
Western world.
To speak in the words of Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung
(1875-1961): "Tired of intellectualism, one wants to hear about truth
which doesn't hem in, but extends; which doesn’t obscure, but
illuminates; which isn't like water off a duck's back, but movingly
enters into the bones' marrow." The access to such kind of truth
psychedelics can offer perfectly. Correspondingly, "The Future of
Religion: Dogma of Transcendental Experience" is the provocative title
of one of the topics of the Basel LSD Symposium's last day.
As for the rest, Albert Hofmann understands a substance like LSD as
just another means to attain extraordinary states of consciousness –
"Breathing techniques, yoga, fasting, dance, art," he cites as equally
good.2
But who could think of a justice minister to seriously consider a
making meditation a punishable offence, just because it might alter
one's consciousness?
The way an up to date drug policy would have to be like will be one of
the LSD Symposium's topics of Sunday, 15 January 2006. One essential
prerequisite would be not to demonize psychoactive substances lock,
stock and barrel, but to painstakingly distinguish between them,
especially as to their addictive potential and their effects (see info
text "Drugs – a Classification"). In order to take precautions
against unpleasant side effects it's necessary to inform the public of
the fact that individual personality structures as well as set and
setting have a decisive influence on the quality of the trip. (See
introductory text on the main topic on Saturday, 14 January 2006).
Production, handling, and distribution of psychedelics should be
controlled instead of being suppressed, the only way to lastingly dry
out the black market.
Will there be a way to curb the long-term distribution of psychedelics
by legislative means at all? Russian-born pharmacologist and chemist
Alexander T. Shulgin, who lives near San Francisco and is considered to
be the rediscoverer and father of MDMA (Ecstasy) looks back: "Early in
the 20th century there were only two psychedelic substances known:
cannabis and mescaline. Hardly fifty years later, with LSD, psilocybin,
psilocin, TMA, several compounds based on DMT and other isomerics,
their number was already close to twenty. Around the year 2000 there
already were over 200. The increase obviously happens exponentially. In
2050 it already might be around 2000."3
Future drugs could even be more potent, more secure, and more
psychoactive than LSD and become much more attractive for potential
consumers, the willingness of whom to chemically manipulate their brain
has never been greater than it is today: there’s a booming market for
pharmaceutical mood boosters, tranquilizers, memory improvers,
intelligence intensifiers, and aphrodisiacs. Timothy Leary's prophesied
that: "Recent decades only have slightly stimulated mankind's eternal
hunger for technologies to activate and direct the functions of one's
own brain. The drug movement has begun."4 And it won’t
stop because of government prohibition.
Which kind of society would we head for if the use of hallucinogens
were legal and widespread? For Albert Hofmann it would be one that
rediscovered "the transcendental, the spiritual world" – which, in
that, would free itself. And he goes on that "the evolution of mankind
is in the alteration of its consciousness. LSD can help to refill our
consciousness with this feeling of wholeness and the being one with
nature." It is therefore that it deserves a second chance.
1 In: "gaiamedianews", special edition “60 years LSD”, April
2003,p. 2
2 In an interview conducted by Lucius Werthmüller in the fall of 1995;
also look up www.gaiamedia.org
3 See Drake Bennett, "Dr. Ecstasy", New York Times, 30 January
2005
4 Timothy Leary, "LSD Culture", see www.leary.com
© Gaia Media Foundation • Dr. Harald Wiesendanger • Translation
Udo Breger