From La scommessa psichedelica (2020), edited by Francesco di Vita:
A few months before the end of 1938, Albert Hofmann, commissioned by Sandoz—the pharmaceutical company he worked for—to study the chemical composition of certain essences considered promising for producing drugs capable of stimulating circulation, including ergot itself, synthesized, among others, the twenty-fifth molecule in the series derived from Claviceps purpurea, which he named “lysergic acid diethylamide” (Lysergsaurediathylamid), or, according to the usual laboratory abbreviations: LSD-25.
The newly discovered molecule was immediately set aside, as it seemed to produce little more than mild restlessness in the animals on which it was initially tested—nothing promising enough to further explore its potential. At this point, the story could have ended.
However, in 1943, five years after the initial discovery, Albert Hofmann, inspired by a “singular premonition” regarding the active compound synthesized years before—due to the particular elegance of its molecular structure—decided to perform a second examination and requested approval from Sandoz to proceed. Hofmann recounts the story in his book LSD. My Problem Child, which narrates, from his point of view, the history and vicissitudes of the restless substance he had discovered:
“It was rather unusual; experimental substances were normally removed from the research program as soon as they proved to be of no pharmacological interest. In the spring of 1943, I repeated the synthesis of LSD-25. As before, this produced only a few decigrams of compound. In the final stage, during the purification and crystallization of lysergic acid diethylamide in tartarate form (the salt of tartaric acid), I was forced to stop due to unusual sensations [...]. I lay down and sank into a state of intoxication that was by no means unpleasant, marked by particularly vivid imagination [...]. It could be that, during crystallization, traces of LSD came into contact with my fingertips and were absorbed through the skin. If LSD was indeed the cause of this bizarre experience, it had to be a substance of extraordinary potency.”¹The only way to resolve the question was to test LSD on himself. To do so, Hofmann, “with the utmost caution,” ingested what he believed to be a low dose relative to the average known at the time for ergot alkaloids: 250 micrograms—a quantity that would soon prove to be quite high. Thus, in the heart of World War II, in neutral Switzerland, the first LSD trip took place—the only one undertaken without particular expectations. This was the baptism of what, in 2006, at a conference in Basel commemorating Albert Hofmann’s centenary, the Swiss poet and physician Walter Vogt called “the one and only joyous invention of the twentieth century.”
It had been just three days since the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and riding his bicycle home, escorted by an assistant, Hofmann was pedaling toward what would become known as Bicycle Day: April 19. Two days later, retracing the progression of his experience—marked at times by darkly anxious moments until he was examined by a family doctor who reassured him that all his vital signs were normal, dispelling his fear of severe poisoning—Hofmann wrote the first detailed trip report² of a psychedelic LSD experience:
“I asked my laboratory assistant, who was aware of the experiment, to accompany me home. We went by bicycle—there were no cars in sight; during the war, only a few privileged people could afford them. On the way back, I began to feel persecuted. Everything in my visual field floated and was distorted, as if seen in a curved mirror. I also felt as if I were stuck in one place, although my assistant later told me we had pedaled at full speed. Eventually, I arrived home safely; I barely managed to ask my companion to call the family doctor and to get some milk from the neighbors. [...]”
“Now, little by little, I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented games of color and form, tirelessly revealed to my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastical images swirled inside me, alternating, colorful, opening and closing in circles and spirals, exploding in fountains of color. Then they reorganized, intersected, continuously transforming. It was extraordinary how every auditory perception, such as the noise of a door handle or a passing car, was transformed into visual impressions. Every sound created a vividly changing figure, with its compatible colors and shapes. [...] Exhausted, I fell asleep. The following morning I woke refreshed and mentally clear, though still slightly physically tired. I felt a sense of well-being and renewal flowing through me. Breakfast tasted delicious, giving me an unusual pleasure. When I went outside into the garden, where the sun shone after a spring rain, everything gleamed and sparkled with a new light. It seemed as if the world had been newly created. All my senses vibrated in an extreme state of perceptivity, which lasted the entire day.”³
¹ Albert Hofmann, LSD. My Problem Child, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1995, p. 18.
² From that point onward, the practice would be repeated so many times that it eventually became a literary genre, which in this volume finds its first analysis and systematization thanks to Peppe Fiore.
³ A. Hofmann, LSD. My Problem Child, cit., p. 21.