Умря бащата на ЛСД-то

Аз ЛСД-не съм взимала, но това което ме впечатли е по-скоро възрастта, на която милият човечец е умрял след като е посветил сравнително голяма част от живота си на друсане с ЛСД. На колко? 102. Та така. Ако някой има впечатления, да каже. Мен друсането не ме влече, предпочитам естественият път към шарените светове, но пък интересните истории са винаги забавни. А ако не-винаги можете да кажете колко лошо нещо са наркотиците :)

За неговорещите английски, статията казва на кратко, че дядото е умрял на 102, от инфаркт. Разказва как е открил ЛСД, като изследвал някаква гъба и "случайно" глътнал част от нея. Като дете бил чувствал някакво сливане с Природата и чувство за единство и погълнатото вещество предизвикало подбно чувства. Затова повторил поглъщането, после и го синтезирал и така.
Друго интересно за мен поне нещо е, че и жена му е умряла на скоро, което само показва колко сладко нещо е, човек да си намери сродната душа и когато тя си тръгне, и той да си тръгне. :) Но това са си мои интерпретации.
А да, и че самият той не одобрявал употребата на ЛСД-то от всякакви пропадналяци и че смятал че тя трябва да бъде като в древните племена-да се почита като свещено растение, водещо до по-високи нива на Съзнанието.

Аlbert Hofmann, the Father of LSD, Dies at 102

Dr. Hofmann went on to study chemistry at Zurich University because, he said, he wanted to explore the natural world at the level where energy and elements combine to create life. He earned his Ph.D. there in 1929, when he was just 23. He then took a job with Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, attracted by a program there that sought to synthesize pharmacological compounds from medicinally important plants.

It was during his work on the ergot fungus, which grows in rye kernels, that he stumbled on LSD, accidentally ingesting a trace of the compound one Friday afternoon in April 1943. Soon he experienced an altered state of consciousness similar to the one he had experienced as a child.

On the following Monday, he deliberately swallowed a dose of LSD and rode his bicycle home as the effects of the drug overwhelmed him. That day, April 19, later became memorialized by LSD enthusiasts as “bicycle day.”

Dr. Hofmann’s work produced other important drugs, including methergine, used to treat postpartum hemorrhaging, the leading cause of death from childbirth. But it was LSD that shaped both his career and his spiritual quest.

“Through my LSD experience and my new picture of reality, I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom,” Dr. Hofmann told the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof during an interview in 1984. “I became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us.”

Dr. Hofmann became an impassioned advocate for the environment and argued that LSD, besides being a valuable tool for psychiatry, could be used to awaken a deeper awareness of mankind’s place in nature and help curb society’s ultimately self-destructive degradation of the natural world.

But he was also disturbed by the cavalier use of LSD as a drug for entertainment, arguing that it should be treated in the way that primitive societies treat psychoactive sacred plants, which are ingested with care and spiritual intent.

After his discovery of LSD’s properties, Dr. Hofmann spent years researching sacred plants. With his friend R. Gordon Wasson, he participated in psychedelic rituals with Mazatec shamans in southern Mexico. He succeeded in synthesizing the active compounds in the Psilocybe mexicana mushroom, which he named psilocybin and psilocin. He also isolated the active compound in morning glory seeds, which the Mazatec also used as an intoxicant, and found that its chemical structure was close to that of LSD.

During the psychedelic era, Dr. Hofmann struck up friendships with such outsize personalities as Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley, who, nearing death in 1963, asked his wife for an injection of LSD to help him through the final painful throes of throat cancer.

Yet despite his involvement with psychoactive compounds, Dr. Hofmann remained moored in his Swiss chemist identity. He stayed with Sandoz as head of the research department for natural medicines until his retirement in 1971. He wrote more than 100 scientific articles and was the author or co-author of a number of books

He and his wife, Anita, who died recently, reared four children in Basel. A son died of alcoholism at 53. Survivors include several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Though Dr. Hofmann called LSD “medicine for the soul,” by 2006 his hallucinogenic days were long behind him, he said in the interview that year.

“I know LSD; I don’t need to take it anymore,” he said, adding. “Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley.”

But he said LSD had not affected his understanding of death. In death, he said, “I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that’s all.”