Albert Hofmann’s bike tour and discovery of LSD-25
June 3 is World Bicycle Day. The bicycle is not just a sustainable means of transportation around the world, iIt’s also a symbol of human progress – in more ways than one
On an otherwise common April afternoon in 1943, a chemist ingested 250 micrograms of LSD and rode his bike home. He was unaware that his journey would fundamentally change our understanding of psychedelics and ourselves.
“LSD spoke to me,” reflected the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in the New York Times. “He came to me and said, ‘You have to find me.’ He said to me: ‘Don’t give me to the pharmacologist, he won’t find anything.’ “
The bike tour that changed everything
Photo courtesy of Upsplash
On the bike ride home from the Sandoz laboratory, Albert Hoffman quickly recognized the power of the substance with which he had first come into contact. For the next 8 hours he was convinced that he would not survive the ordeal. “A demon had invaded me, taking possession of my body, mind and soul. … The substance with which I wanted to experiment had defeated me. It was the demon who contemptuously triumphed over my will, ”he recalled in his memoir LSD: My Problem Child.
In his fear, Albert Hoffmann felt transported into another world, away from his body and time itself. The incomprehensible, psychological mise en abyme only subsided when a doctor checked his vital values and found a completely healthy man with “extremely dilated pupils” revealed. Eventually, LSD Hoffman fully revealed itself in an explosion of kaleidoscopic beauty. The experience caused Hofmann to be reborn. He immediately recognized the potential of LSD in the fields of pharmacology and psychiatry, but never imagined that it could be used for “anything close to pleasure”.
Albert Hofmann synthesizes psilocybin
Between the ebb and flow of tide, from early scientific investigation to later prohibition, Albert Hofmann had a complex relationship with LSD. Less than a decade after Bike Day, he was the first to isolate, synthesize, and name the psychedelic compounds in magic mushrooms: psilocybin and psilocin (1).
Albert Hofmann compared his discoveries with nuclear fission. Substances with the power to “attack the spiritual center of personality, the self,” he wrote. But he also believed in their power to reveal the spirits of beautiful things attributed to memories, like the shadows of objects outlined by a nuclear lightning bolt.
Similar to Paul Revere’s monumental midnight ride, Hofmann’s unforgettable bike tour ushered in a new wave of counterculture in the 1960s. Advocated by the likes of Alexander Shulgin and Timothy Leary, Hofmann criticized the latter for ignoring the challenging side of LSD and failing to adequately address the need for harm reduction practices. Until 1985, Thomas B. Roberts, Professor of Educational Psychology at Northern Illinois University, officially remembered April 19 as Bike Day. Bicycle Day continues to be a global celebration of the psychedelic community.
The enduring legacy of World Bicycle Day
For the rest of his life, Hofmann devoted himself to the new field of pharmacology, which he helped on that spring afternoon in Basel. In his later years, he publicly condemned the worldwide ban on LSD. He advocated a clinical trial of the drug as a controlled substance with the same status as morphine. Even today, the psychedelic renaissance of the last few decades urges new investigations into psychedelic medicine. From treating conditions like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder to addictions and beyond.
No matter which journey you invite yourself to on this World Bicycle Day, take the time to appreciate the spiritual aspects of creation and the unexpected journeys that can change our entire life.
On his 100th birthday, two years before his death, thousands of scientists and artists alike gathered in Basel to celebrate the chemist who catalyzed the psychedelic era. Hofmann, all the folds and strands of white hair, remembered his creation one last time: “It gave me an inner joy, an open-mindedness, [a] Gratitude, open eyes and an inner sensitivity for the wonders of creation. … I think that in human evolution it was never more necessary to have this substance, LSD. It’s just a tool to make us what we should be. “
Footnote (s)
1. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/molecule-of-the-week/archive/p/psilocybin.html
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