‘A kind of dream world appeared’: The ‘bizarre’ story of the world’s first LSD trip

By Greg McKevitt, 3 days ago

Dr Albert Hofmann accidentally discovered the hallucinatory effects of LSD in April 1943. In 1986, he told the BBC about a “terrifying” bicycle ride home from the laboratory – and about how his “problem child” drug changed the world.

“At the end of the synthesis, I got in a very strange psychic situation. A kind of dream world appeared, a feeling of oneness with the world.” Dr Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist, was working on a routine experiment at a pharmaceutical firm in the town of Basel when he made a world-changing chance discovery. His first experience with what would become known as LSD was gentle and intriguing. His decision to take the psychedelic drug three days later resulted in terrifying visions and one of the most unusual bicycle trips ever.

Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of drug use

The story began on Friday 16 April 1943 when Hofmann was preparing a fresh batch of lysergic acid diethylamide, a compound he had first synthesised five years earlier. The 37-year-old was studying medicinal plants by experimenting with ergot, a fungus that grows on corn, to see if a drug derived from it could help midwives prevent post-childbirth bleeding. Owing to its German name, Lysergsäurediethylamid, the compound is now better known as LSD.

‘The room and its objects had a different form, different colour, different meaning’.

Interviewed on the BBC in 1986, Hofmann said that his unexpected first experience with the drug reminded him of “mystical” childhood moments in woods and forests. The sensation of “seeing the true aspects of nature, the beauty” filled him with happiness. Hofmann wondered if this pleasant and dreamy state was in some way connected with the crystals of LSD that he had been purifying. While he hadn’t eaten any of the compound deliberately, he may have got some of it on his fingers. This would imply that the substance was very potent. He decided to find out by experimenting on himself when he was back in work on Monday.

Cautious by nature, he began with what he thought was the smallest dose that could have any effect. “I started with 0.25 milligrams,” he recalled, planning to increase the amount only if nothing happened. “But this very small dose, the first dose of my experiments I planned, was very, very strong,” he said. After taking the drug, Hofmann began to feel unwell, and rode home unsteadily on his bicycle through the streets of Basel. As the journey progressed, things got weird. His vision distorted as if he was looking in a fairground mirror. By the time he made it home, his sense of reality had disintegrated.

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