Daily MOS: The First Acid Trip

Scientific breakthroughs have often been purely accidental. A bacterial culture grows mold and the world is introduced to penicillin. A failed heart medication gives you a boner and big pharma rises to the occasion.

Then there was the guy who accidentally invented LSD and, for five long years, thought it was utterly useless. Until he said “eh, fuck it.”

Today’s Moment of Science… Bicycle Day.

A lot of our more amusing substances to imbibe are naturally sourced. Opiates, alcohol, cannabis? Pretty darn natural, and they make babysitting so much fun. But nature delivers our hallucinogens in particular with stunning gusto. Amongst others, the nature provided suite includes psilocybin, salvia, ayahuasca, mescaline, and of course, ergot. A fungus that grows on rye, ergot contains the chemical precursors to LSD, lysergic acid and ergotamine. Consuming rye contaminated with the fungus can lead to a nasty case of poisoning called ergotism. Though you may get some of those fun hallucinations, you also get seizures, paresthesia, and gangrene. So get your trip the old fashioned way and do what Dr. Albert Hofman did: have a teensy lab accident.

Dr. Hofman was a chemist in Switzerland toiling away for Sandoz (now Novartis) in the 1930s. He was investigating compounds derived from medicinal plants. This presented a unique challenge with ergot, because it wasn’t the plant in and of itself that was medicinal; it was fungus, a parasite.

So in order to make any ergot derived compounds, they had to grow a motherfuckload of parasitic rye (which is my band name). They grew thousands of plants, chose a handful of the strains they felt were the best for cultivating ergot, and signed contracts with Swiss rye farmers to grow them up a batch of acid.

But one after another, ergot derivatives failed to show useful pharmacological activity. In 1938, Hofmann landed on LSD-25 (lysergic acid diethylamide, the 25th derivative they’d tested). Like the previous 24, it failed to do much of anything in animal testing.

Of course, they were testing it on sedated animals.

The project was shelved for five years before Hoffman took a poke at it again. This time he accidentally absorbed a little through the skin on his fingertips, and got a hint of the substance’s charm.

On April 19, 1943, it was time to try this mystery stuff on purpose. But not having determined an appropriate human dosage, he decided to take the plunge with what seemed like a safe amount: 250 micrograms. That’s not just a large dose. That’s beyond a heroic dose. That’s a dose you take when you want the purple glitter dragon named Pretzel to come along for the trip.

A dose of LSD can start at just 25 micrograms.

He did this at work and wasn’t fired for it, marking the first good thing to happen in 1940s Europe.

In less than an hour, the drug started taking effect and he asked a lab assistant to accompany him home for a very colorful and somewhat terrifying bike ride. They called Hofmann’s doctor who noted that he was in fine shape other than spectacularly dilated pupils. Feeling comforted by his doctor’s assessment, Hofmann was able to enjoy the world’s first acid trip.

Sandoz continued to manufacture LSD only until 1965, when its reputation for being a fucking delight had overtaken the view that it had potential as a medical treatment. Which is a disappointment, because when used correctly, the medicinal potential for LSD and other hallucinogens for managing some mental illnesses is becoming more apparent. But hey, at least we won the drug war…. right?

Hofmann continued to research and use hallucinogens through his long life, passing away at age 102. And hallucinogen enthusiasts still celebrate a very psychedelic April 19th as Bicycle day.

This has been your daily Moment of Science and your reminder that if you’re going to do drugs that make you think you can fly, try taking off from the ground first.

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