Doubts about psychedelics from Albert Hofmann, LSD's discoverer

By John Horgan Sep 24, 2010 01:00 PM 6

Albert Hofmann [photo]

Psychedelics are back! As readers of Scientific American know,
scientists have recently reported that psychedelics show promise for treating
disorders such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety in terminal
cancer patients. This weekend, researchers and other enthusiasts are gathering in
New York City for a two-day celebration, "Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics,"
sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, along
with other groups.

Overall, I'm thrilled by the psychedelic revival. I've had good trips, which gave me
first-hand evidence of the drugs' therapeutic potential. But like many other people,
I've also had bad trips, which left me feeling alienated from, rather than blissfully
connected to, the world. In fact, it's worth recalling that the godfather of psychedelic
research—the chemist Albert Hofmann, whom I interviewed before his death in
2008—occasionally harbored doubts about these potent drugs.

In 1943, when war wracked the world, Hofmann was in Basel, Switzerland, working
for the pharmaceutical company Sandoz. On April 16, he was investigating a
compound related to ergot, a toxic extract of a fungus that infects grain-producing
plants. Hofmann hoped that the ergot compound, which he had originally
synthesized five years earlier, might have potential for stimulating blood circulation.

During his experiments, Hofmann was overcome by what he recalled later as
"remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness." He guessed that he had
absorbed the ergot compound through his skin. Three days later, to test his theory,
he dissolved what he thought would be an extremely small dose of the chemical—250
millionths of a gram, or micrograms—in a glass of water and drank it. Within 40
minutes Hofmann felt so disoriented that he rode his bicycle home.

When he arrived at his house he spotted a female neighbor, who looked like a
"malevolent, insidious witch with a colored mask." Inside his house "furniture
assumed grotesque, threatening forms." Hofmann feared he was losing his mind or
even dying. He was tormented by the thought that his wife and three children would
never understand "that I had not experimented thoughtlessly, irresponsibly, but
rather with the utmost caution."

Gradually, "the horror softened and gave way to a feeling of good fortune and
gratitude." This sense of well-being persisted through the following morning. When
Hofmann walked out into his garden after a rainfall, "everything glistened and
sparkled in a fresh new light. The world was as if newly created."

Thus did Hofmann discover the psychotropic properties of lysergic acid diethylamide,
LSD. Hofmann's psychedelic research continued. In the late 1950s he showed that
psilocybin and psilocin are the primary active ingredients of Psilocybe cubensis, a
"magic" mushroom consumed as a sacrament by Indians in Central and South
America.

I met Hofmann in 1999 in Basel at a conference on altered states of
consciousness—including drug-induced states—at which Hofmann received a prize.
We spoke in a lounge of the ultramodern conference center as speakers and guests
milled around us. Then 93, Hofmann was a stooped, white-haired man, in coat and
tie. He spoke in halting, thickly accented English, but he energetically defended his
legacy.

Hofmann blamed Timothy Leary, the renegade Harvard psychologist turned
psychedelic guru, for the backlash against LSD and other psychedelics in the 1960s.
"You should not tell everybody, even the children, 'Take LSD! Take LSD!'" Hofmann
said. Young people "are still in growth, and it is a very dangerous stage."

LSD is "very, very potent," Hofmann acknowledged, "and everything that is potent is
dangerous." If used improperly, LSD "can hurt you, it can disturb you, it can make
you crazy." But Hofmann believed that scientists and psychiatrists should be allowed
to investigate LSD's effects and prescribe it in a safe, controlled fashion. "I don't want
to promote absolute freedom," Hofmann said, "but the medical professions should
have access to it."

Although it can harm people by provoking reckless or suicidal behavior, LSD is neither
toxic nor addictive, Hofmann said; it has never killed anyone by overdose. Used with
respect, it has enormous potential as a tool for investigating human consciousness
and as an adjunct for psychotherapy. Psychedelics can also stimulate the "inborn
faculty of visionary experience" that we all possess as children but lose as we mature.
Hofmann hoped that in the future people would be able to take psychedelic drugs in
"meditation centers" to awaken their religious awe.

Although Hofmann was not conventionally religious, he believed in God. "I am
absolutely convinced," he said, "by feeling and by knowledge—my knowledge as a
natural scientist—that there must be a creative spirit, an intelligence, which is the
reason for what we have." Everything that exists, Hofmann said, pounding the table
between us with his fist, is a manifestation of this plan. "It is impossible to have this
without a plan," he insisted. "Otherwise you have only material, material, material!"

Hofmann had had frightening psychedelic experiences, including the early stages of
his first LSD trip in 1943, but they usually yielded to more positive emotions.
Hofmann's worst trip occurred on a psilocybin trip, when he hallucinated that he was
wandering all alone deep inside Earth. "I had the feeling of absolute loneliness," he
said. "A terrible feeling!" When he emerged from this nightmare and found himself
with his companions again, he felt ecstatic. "I had feeling of being reborn! To see
now again! And see what wonderful life we have here!"

Yet in his memoir LSD: My Problem Child (McGraw-Hill, 1980), Hofmann
acknowledged that some of the young drug-users who had appeared at his doorstep
over the years seemed terribly disturbed. He confessed that he sometimes had
misgivings about having brought LSD into the world and helping to popularize
psilocybin. He compared his discoveries with that of nuclear fission; just as fission
threatens our fundamental physical integrity, so do psychedelics "attack the spiritual
center of the personality, the self." Psychedelics, he feared, might "represent a
forbidden transgression of limits."

Hofmann also worried about psychedelics' metaphysical implications. The fact that
minute amounts of a chemical such as LSD can have such profound effects on our
perceptions, thoughts and beliefs suggests that free will, which supposedly gives us
the power to shape our destiny, might be an illusion; moreover, our deepest spiritual
convictions may be nothing more than fluctuations in brain chemistry. To emphasize
this point, Hofmann quoted from an essay that stated: "God is a substance, a drug!"

In other words, psychedelics can undermine as well as promote spiritual faith, and
they can shatter as well as heal our psyches. We should keep these risks in mind as
the psychedelic renaissance continues.

Uncredited photograph of Albert Hofmann from GEARFUSE