Sublime

new studies with psilocybin, the

In the fall of 1938, Hofmann made the twenty-fifth molecule in this series, naming it lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD-25 for short. Preliminary testing of the compound on animals did not show much promise (they became restless, but that was about it), so the formula for LSD-25 was put on the shelf.

LSD appears to disable such conventionalized, shorthand modes of perception and, by doing so, restores a childlike immediacy, and sense of wonder, to our experience of reality,

When several years ago an NYU colleague mentioned to Ross that LSD had once been used to treat thousands of alcoholics in Canada and the United States (and that Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, had sought to introduce LSD therapy into AA in the 1950s), Ross, who was in his thirties at the time, did some research and was “flabbergas

Who among the first generation of psychedelic researchers would dispute a word of this classic gust of Leary exuberance, circa 1963: “Make no mistake: the effect of consciousness-expanding drugs will be to transform our concepts of human nature, of human potentialities, of existence. The game is about to be changed, ladies and gentlemen. Man is abo

Hofmann foi para casa, deitou num sofá e, “num estado de sonho, de olhos fechados (…) comecei a ver uma série ininterrupta de imagens fantásticas, formas extraordinárias com cores intensas e caleidoscópicas”. Assim aconteceu a primeira viagem de LSD do mundo, numa Suíça neutra durante um dia de um dos períodos mais sombrios da Segunda Guerra Mundia