MikeDunnAuthorToday in Labor History, April 16, 1943: Albert Hoffman accidentally discovered the hallucinogenic effects of LSD on this day. And forever after, working-class people could afford to take inexpensive trips without ever leaving their homes. Hoffman, who was a chemist at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, first synthesized LSD in1938. He set the drug aside for five years, before accidentally ingesting some on this date in 1943. Three days later, April 19, he deliberately ingested 250 micrograms of LSD, believing this tiny dosage would be barely, if at all, noticeable. Turns out, this is a pretty strong dose. He watched people morph into weird creatures, office furniture become “alive,” and he felt like he was possessed by otherworldly forces. He tried to ride his bicycle home, to safety, but things just got weirder. April 19 is now known as “Bicycle Day,” in commemoration of the first deliberate LSD trip.
He also named and synthesized the principal psychedelic chemicals psilocybin and psilocin, found in psilocybin mushrooms. And in 1929 he discovered the structure of chitin, the polysaccharide found in the cell walls of fungi, and in the shells of arthropods, like shrimp, crabs, spiders and insects, and in the beaks and radula of mollusks, like snails and octopi. He wrote over 100 scientific articles in his lifetime, and the book: LSD: Mein Sorgenkind (LSD: My Problem Child). In 1962, he traveled to Mexico to obtain samples of Salvia divinorum, but was never able to isolate the psychoactive alkaloids. He also discovered a close relative of LSD in Morning Glory seeds. In an interview just before his 100th birthday, Hofmann called LSD "medicine for the soul." Angered by its worldwide legal bans, he said argued that it had been used successfully for ten years in psychoanalysis prior to its U.S. prohibition. He also criticized its “misuse” by the counterculture of the 1960s.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #LSD #psychedelic #AlbertHoffman #chemistry #mushrooms #psilocybin #sandoz #salvia
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