Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The LSD inventor passes away

Albert Hofmann , the Swiss Chemist who discovered the LSD had 42-20011176 passed away in his country in the age of 108. I think that he did not know how danger the substance he discovered suddenly would be and that it would destroy a whole generation , sorry generations. He used to defend and argue till his last day in Life that LSD is not that bad and it is fine as a treatment for psychological diseases and disorders despite what it causes from psychological diseases and disorders itself.

I think Albert Hofmann was a lucky one because there are many  drugs in the world we do not know who invented them still may be because this man did not intend to invent a destructive drug that would destroy a whole generation just like Alfred Noble , still he did not regret it or was sorry for how his discovery had a bad effect.

I found an American magazine in my grand dad's library which was dated to August 1966 I think , it was called Pageant , Pageantit had many interesting topics regarding the War of Vietnam, the American politics and social life then , its main topic in the issue which made the headline was "I saw God through LSD" , there was a complete interesting report  about a Minister in the Neo-American Church "a psychedelic Church found in 1964, lasted more than other psychedelic churches from 1960s " who considered LSD as a way to come closer to the Lord. The minister name was Rev. Arthur J. Kleps and used to be called the Chief Boo-Hoo ,already he used to call his local ministers Boo-Hoo because they did not take themselves seriously as he said in the report.Kleps and his church did not identify the LSD as drug as they considered it holy divine substance , already I do not want to go in to much details about this neo-American church because it was just 1960s mad cult thing.

{By the way one of my favourite topics I read in my spare time is the cults of 1960s, I love the 1960s in general , it was total madness despite all the fiascos we suffered from in Egypt then}

Strangely when I read to Kleps I found myself remembering the claims of those who want to legalize the cannabis in Egypt saying the Sufi orders used to take it to become more closer to God to the rest of this illusions with my all respect to the Arab weeders , all these drugs destroy God's greatest gift to the human that separate us from animals : The mind

Back to Hofmann many people cursed him but I think to be fair it is not his mistake that many people misused the LSD because they wanted to live in a fantasy , because they were lost and could not find the path they should take, because they were sick people.

Hofmann wrote a book called "LSD: My problem Child" and surely he was successful in choosing the title , it was his problematic child that brought too much for his father .

Very interesting facts about the LSD is something I found in the NY Times archives

- The C.I.A planned to purchase in 1953 10 kilograms of  LSD enough for 100 Millions doses and worth to $240,000, they wanted to study ,test and also use them.

- In 1958 the C.I.A also conducted a LSD experiment on mental patients in a Canadian hospital using a foundation as a cover .

- They even tested it on 142 sexual psychopaths at Michigan during the 1950s in order to see whether the substances would unlock their most secret thoughts in an experiment

Further reading :

Images: Albert Hofmann from Corbis , Pageant cover from Zeinobia's pictorial archives

2 comments:

  1. Brilliant !!
    you don't stop surprising me with your "encyclopedial versatility"

    now you are a critic in social psychology & psychiatric pharmacology

    ReplyDelete
  2. don't judge a book by it's cover.

    ReplyDelete

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