Inter-vie~ By Michael Horowitz ALBERT HOFMANN At the height of World War II, four months after the rapidly among the United States military and first artificially created nuclear reaction was re­ domestic security interests. By the middle 1950s, leased in a pile of uranium ore in Chicago, an LSD was being researched as a creativity enhancer accidentally absorbed trace of a seminatural rye and learning stimulant; rumors of its ecstatic, fungus product quietly exploded in the brain of a mystic and psychic qualities began to leak out 37-year-old Swiss chemist working at the Sandoz through the writings of Aldous Huxley, Robert research laboratories in Graves and other literary Basel. He reported to his Preliminary Note luminaries. supervisor: "I was forced A large-scale, non­ to stop I was at first not in agreement with the idea of my work in the publishing this interview here. I was surprjsed medical experiment in­ laboratory in the middle and shocked at the existence of such a magazine, volving LSD and other of the afternoon and to go whose text and advertising tended to treat the psychedelic drugs at home, as I was seized by subject of illegal druVS with a casual and non­ responsible attitude. Also, the manner in which Harvard in the early Six­ a peculiar restlessness High Times treats marijuana policy, which ties precipitated a fierce associated with a sensa­ urgently needs a solution, does not correspond to controversy over the lim­ my approach. tion of mild dizziness ... Nevertheless, I came to the deci­ its of sion that my statement's appearing in a magazine academic freedom a kind of drunkenness directed to readers who use currently illegal and focused national at­ which was not unpleas­ drugs might be of special value and could help to tention on the drug now ant and which was char­ diminish the abuse or misuse of the psychedelic known as "acid." Mid­ acterized by extreme ac­ drugs. Michael Horowitz convinced me that an accurate description of the discovery of LSD and way through the tur­ tivity of imagination ... the Mexican magic plants, about which so many bulent decade, one mil­ there surged upon me an misleading versions exist, and my opinion on the lion people had tried uninterrupted stream of various aspects of the drug problem, among other topics, would be useful to a large audience of black-marketLSD,engen­ fantastic images of extra­ Interested persons in the United States. The alms dering a neurological rev­ ordinary plasticity and of this interview are to provide Information about olution the fallout of vividness and accom­ what these kinds of drugs can and cannot do, and which has not what their potential dangers are. yet been panied by an intense, ka­ assessed. In 1966, Con­ leidoscope like play of $;~~ gress outlawed LSD. colors ...." Uf.1i/. Dr. Hofmann now Three days later, on tt' lives in comfortable re- April19, 1943, Dr. Albert - tirement on a hill over­ Hofmann undertook a self-experiment that both looking the Swiss-French border. He granted High confirmed the results of his earlier psychoactive Times this exclusive interview to discuss not only experience and revealed a fascinating new ~iscov­ the implications of his discovery of LSD, but also ery: Here was the first known substance that his less publicized chemical investigations into the produced psychic effects from dosages so tiny they active agents of several sacred Mexican plants. were measurable only in micrograms! Dr. Considering his life's work, Dr. Hofmann seems Hofmann had discovered LSD-25. a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was enthusi­ Not only have his discoveries broadened our astically investigated by the European psychiatric knowledge of psychoactive chemicals and trig­ profession as a possible key to the chemical nature gered the imaginations of thousands of scientists, of mental illness. Its effects were believed to mimic historians and other researchers, but they have had the psychotic state. As soon as LSD was introduced a direct and revolutionary impact on humanity's to American psychiatry in 1950, interest spread ability to understand and help itself. High Times: What work did you do prior the cardiac components, the glycosides, used in the treatm ent of cardiac failure. to your discovery of LSD? of squill, or Scilla maritima. These inves­ From 1935 I worked on the alkaloids of Hofmann : In the early years of my tigations resulted in the elucidation of ergot, resulting in the development of career in the pharmaceutical research the chemical constitution of the common ergonovine, the first synthetic prepara­ laboratory of Sandoz in Basel, I was nucleus of these agents, which provide tion of natural ergot alkaloids; Meth­ occupied mainly with investigations on valuable medicaments that are often ergine. used in obstetrics to stop hemor- Left: Dr. Hofmann with the enlarged plastic LSD molecule at the Sandoz factory in Basel in the mid-1950's. 25 rhage; Hydergine for geriatric complaints. thing, and I was used to working under kalinrausch in 1928, but in the years In 1943 the results of this first period of very clean conditions, because these sub­ following, interest in the hallucinogenic my research in the ergot field were pub­ stances in general are toxic. You have to research faded. lished in a professional journal, Helvetica work very, very cleanly. Probably a trace Not until my discovery of LSD, which Chimica Acta. As a result of my first of the solution of lysergic acid di­ is about 5,000 to 10,000 times more active eight years of ergot research, I syn­ ethylamide I was crystallizing from than mescaline, did this line of research thesized a large number of ergot deriva­ methyl alcohol was absorbed through receive a new impetus. tives: amides of lysergic acid, lysergic the skin of my fingers. High Times: How long were you able to acid being the characteristic nucleus of High Times: How big a dose did you take keep writing lab notes that afternoon·~ natural ergot alkaloids. Among these that first time, and what were the nature Hofmann: Not very. As the effects inten­ ami des of lysergic acid there was also the and intensity of that experience? sified I realized that I did not know what diethylamide of lysergic acid. Hofmann: I don't know-an immeas­ was going to happen, if I'd ever come High Times: Did you have LSD in your urable trace. The first experience was a back. I thought I was dying or going crazy. laboratory as early as 1938? very weak one, consisting of rather small I thought of my wife and two young Hofmann: Yes. At that time a number of changes. It had a pleasant. fairy tale­ children who would never know or un­ pharmacological experiments were car­ magic theater quality. Three days later. on derstand why I could have done this. My ried out in Sandoz's department of phar­ April 19, 1943. I made my first planned first planned self-experiment with LSD macology. Marked excitation was ob­ experiment with 0.25 milligrams. or 250 was a "bum trip;' as one would say served in some of the animals. But these micrograms. nowadays. effects did not seem interesting enough High Times: Did you swallow it? High Times: Why was it four years from to my colleagues in the department. Hofmann: Yes, I prepared a solution of 5 your discovery of the psychic effects of Work on LSD fell into abeyance for a milligrams and took a fraction corre- LSD until your report was published? number of years. As I had a strange Was your information suppressed? feeling that it would be valuable to carry Hofmann: There was no suppression of out more profound studies with this that knowledge. After confirmation of compound, I prepared a fresh quantity of the action of this extraordinary com­ LSD in the spring of 1943. In the course of pound by volunteers of the Sandoz staff, this work, an accidental observation led Professor Arthur Stoll, who was then me to carry out a planned self-experi­ head of the Sandoz pharmaceutical de­ ment with this compound, which then partment, asked me if I would permit his resulted in the discovery of the extraor­ son, Werner A. Stall-who was starting dinary psychic effects of LSD. his career at the psychiatric hospital of High Times: What sort of drug were you the University of Zurich-to submit this trying to make when you synthesized new agent to a fundamental psychiatric LSD? study on normal volunteers .and on psy­ Hofmann: When I synthesized lysergic chiatric patients. This investigation took acid diethylamide, laboratory code name a rather long time, because Dr. Stoll, like LSD-25 or simply LSD, I had planned the "From my LSD myself and most young Swiss people in preparation of an analeptic compound, experiments ... I that period of war, often had to interrupt which means a circulatory and respira­ have received knowledge his work to serve in the army. This tory stimulant. Lysergic acid di­ excellent and comprehensive study was ethylamide is related in chemical struc­ of not only one, but of not published until1947. ture to nicotinic acid diethylamide, an infinite number High Times: Did government agents known to be an effective analeptic. aware of LSD approach you during World High Times: Was the discovery of LSD of realities." Warii? an accident? Hofmann: Before Werner Stoll's psychi­ Hofmann: I would say that LSD was the atric report appeared in 1947, there was outcome of a complex process that had its no general knowledge of LSD. In military beginning in a definite concept ahd was sponding to 250 micrograms, or 25 mil­ circles in the 1950s, however, there was followed by an appropriate synthesis­ lionths of a gram.