225 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
225 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
---
|
||
created_at: '2015-01-24T10:57:48.000Z'
|
||
title: 'LSD: The Geek''s Wonder Drug? (2006)'
|
||
url: http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015
|
||
author: pmoriarty
|
||
points: 215
|
||
story_text: ''
|
||
comment_text:
|
||
num_comments: 215
|
||
story_id:
|
||
story_title:
|
||
story_url:
|
||
parent_id:
|
||
created_at_i: 1422097068
|
||
_tags:
|
||
- story
|
||
- author_pmoriarty
|
||
- story_8939333
|
||
objectID: '8939333'
|
||
year: 2006
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
BASEL, Switzerland – When Kevin Herbert has a particularly intractable
|
||
programming problem, or finds himself pondering a big career decision,
|
||
he deploys a powerful mind expanding tool – LSD-25.
|
||
|
||
"It must be changing something about the internal communication in my
|
||
brain. Whatever my inner process is that lets me solve problems, it
|
||
works differently, or maybe different parts of my brain are used, " said
|
||
Herbert, 42, an early employee of Cisco Systems who says he solved his
|
||
toughest technical problems while tripping to drum solos by the Grateful
|
||
Dead – who were among the many artists inspired by LSD.
|
||
|
||
"When I'm on LSD and hearing something that's pure rhythm, it takes me
|
||
to another world and into anther brain state where I've stopped thinking
|
||
and started knowing," said Herbert who intervened to ban drug testing of
|
||
technologists at Cisco Systems.
|
||
|
||
Herbert, who lives in Santa Cruz, California, joined 2,000 researchers,
|
||
scientists, artists and historians gathered here over the weekend to
|
||
celebrate the 100th birthday of Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who
|
||
discovered LSD here in 1938. The centenarian received a congratulatory
|
||
birthday letter from the Swiss president, roses and a spontaneous kiss
|
||
from a young woman in the crowd.
|
||
|
||
In many ways, the conference, LSD: Problem Child and Wonder Drug, an
|
||
International Symposium on the Occasion of the 100th Birthday of Albert
|
||
Hofmann, was a scientific coming-out party for the drug Hofmann
|
||
fathered.
|
||
|
||
"LSD wanted to tell me something," Hofmann told the gathering Friday.
|
||
"It gave me an inner joy, an open mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes
|
||
and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation."
|
||
|
||
Bent with age but still eloquent, Hofmann said he hoped the symposium
|
||
would encourage the renewed therapeutic and spiritual use of LSD in
|
||
supervised settings.
|
||
|
||
Lysergic acid diethylamide, a derivative of lysergic acid found in the
|
||
alkaloids of the ergot grain fungus, has been illegal worldwide since
|
||
the mid-1960s and still generates controversy. The conference was
|
||
picketed Saturday by a splinter group from Scientology opposed to drug
|
||
use.
|
||
|
||
The storied history of LSD as a mind-expanding tool began five years
|
||
after Hofmann discovered LSD-25, and had what he described as a
|
||
"peculiar presentiment" compelling him to resynthesize the drug. Without
|
||
ingesting the substance, Hofmann managed to accidentally absorb enough
|
||
of the chemical to experience its effects. In a second intentional trip,
|
||
Hoffman said he had a frightening experience that gave way to feelings
|
||
of rebirth.
|
||
|
||
During the 1950s and 1960s, LSD was found to be a promising tool for
|
||
psychiatry and psychotherapy and was studied by the CIA as a potential
|
||
interrogation weapon. It was criminalized after it escaped from the lab
|
||
to be widely embraced by the youth culture.
|
||
|
||
Hofmannn said millions of people have taken LSD, but some had bad
|
||
reactions when they took counterfeit drugs. He would like to see a
|
||
modern Eleusis, the ancient Greek site that held the rituals of
|
||
Eleusinian Mysteries which took place for two millennia beginning in
|
||
1500 BC. During the LSD symposium, mythologist Carl P. Ruck and chemist
|
||
Peter Webster presented their research suggesting that an ergot
|
||
preparation was the active ingredient for the Kykeon beverage used
|
||
during the ritual.
|
||
|
||
"When Hofmann synthesized the chemical in LSD, he stumbled upon a
|
||
4,000-year-old secret," said Ruck, author of Road to Eleusis.
|
||
|
||
In 1958, Hofmann was the first to isolate the psychoactive substances of
|
||
psilocybin and psilocin from Mexican magic mushrooms (psilocybe
|
||
mexicana) which were among a variety of sacred plants used around the
|
||
world to invite ecstatic and spiritual experiences.
|
||
|
||
The United States Supreme Court is now considering an appeal brought by
|
||
the New Mexican chapter of the Uniao do Vegetal, or UDV, which uses the
|
||
outlawed ayahauska brew in its ceremonies and cites the Eleusinian
|
||
Mysteries as a precedent for a psychoactive Eucharist.
|
||
|
||
At the symposium, presentations of electronic trance music and
|
||
psychedelic art by painter Alex Grey encouraged meditative and spiritual
|
||
reflection for participants – especially those in altered states of
|
||
consciousness.
|
||
|
||
Participants eager to describe their modern-day spiritual LSD
|
||
experiences were encouraged to contribute to a
|
||
[library](http://www.erowid.org) of drug experiences on the Erowid
|
||
website. Earth and Fire Erowid, who operate the site, presented a
|
||
sampling of comments at the symposium and documented the two to five
|
||
known deaths that have been associated with LSD.
|
||
|
||
Geri Beil of Cologne, Germany, who attended the symposium, recalled his
|
||
own ecstatic LSD experience on an Indian beach on New Year's day, 2000.
|
||
"I was crying from happiness, so thankful to my parents that they
|
||
created me," said Beil. "This experience has not disappeared; it has had
|
||
a lasting effect."
|
||
|
||
Like Herbert, many scientists and engineers also report heightened
|
||
states of creativity while using LSD. During a press conference on
|
||
Friday, Hofmann revealed that he was told by Nobel-prize-winning chemist
|
||
Kary Mullis that LSD had helped him develop the polymerase chain
|
||
reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences.
|
||
|
||
"When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you
|
||
don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist," said Hofmann.
|
||
|
||
In his presentation, artist Alex Grey noted that Nobel-prize-winner
|
||
Francis Crick, discoverer of the double helical structure of DNA, also
|
||
told friends he received inspiration for his ideas from LSD, according
|
||
to [news reports](http://www.mayanmajix.com/art1699.html).
|
||
|
||
The gathering included a discussion of how early computer pioneers used
|
||
LSD for inspiration. Douglas Englebart, the inventor of the mouse, Myron
|
||
Stolaroff, a former Ampex engineer and LSD researcher who was attending
|
||
the symposium, and Apple-cofounder Steve Jobs were among them. In the
|
||
2005 book What the Dormouse Said, New York Times reporter John Markoff
|
||
quotes Jobs describing his LSD experience as "one of the two or three
|
||
most important things he has done in his life."
|
||
|
||
But the symposium wasn't just a census of LSD-using notables. Attendees
|
||
included psychotherapists and psychiatrists who discussed research into
|
||
the therapeutic usefulness of psychedelic drugs.
|
||
|
||
Dr. Michael Mithoefer presented the preliminary findings of his study in
|
||
Charleston, South Carolina, which is investigating whether MDMA is
|
||
effective for treating post-traumatic stress disorder in people
|
||
traumatized by crime or war.
|
||
|
||
Harvard University professor, Dr. John Halpern, discussed his proposed
|
||
study – now awaiting DEA approval – using MDMA to treat anxiety in
|
||
cancer patients.
|
||
|
||
The Florida-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
|
||
(MAPS) is supporting studies and research in Canada investigating the
|
||
use of ibogain to treat drug addiction.
|
||
|
||
And a [study](http://www.canceranxietystudy.org) at the Harbor-UCLA
|
||
Medical Center in Los Angeles, supported by the Heffter Research
|
||
Institute, is investigating whether psilocybin effectively eases the
|
||
anxiety of terminal cancer patients. Psychiatrist Charles Grob says his
|
||
research group has located six of the needed 12 subjects and is looking
|
||
for more participants.
|
||
|
||
While the data has yet to be analyzed, Grob told seminar participants
|
||
that all the participants in the study have shown promising reactions,
|
||
and he applauded the opportunity to share the data in an international
|
||
gathering.
|
||
|
||
"It's very encouraging to see such a large number of people, including
|
||
very knowledgeable people, getting together and sharing a common vision
|
||
that these compounds have tremendous potential to facilitate healing,
|
||
especially in areas that do not respond well to conventional
|
||
treatments," said Grob. "There is global healing in these compounds
|
||
which have been used for millennia by indigenous people that have much
|
||
to teach modern man and modern woman."
|
||
|
||
MAPS founder Rick Doblin says his goal is to make psychedelic medicines
|
||
into prescription drugs, lamenting that LSD is not yet being studied for
|
||
therapeutic purposes. "We have been deeply touched by our experiences
|
||
with psychedelics and it is hard that there is not a single legal study
|
||
with LSD given to humans anywhere in the world," said Doblin. "We need
|
||
to bring what is underground and illegal back into a legal context."
|
||
|
||
But Doblin notes that a group of people who say LSD provides relief from
|
||
their cluster headaches have [organized](http://www.clusterbusters.com)
|
||
online and are pushing for a study at Harvard to explore a possible
|
||
therapy using the drug. If Harvard accepts the MDMA study, Doblin says
|
||
it could pave the way for the symbolically important return of
|
||
psychedelic research at Harvard that halted during the tenure of
|
||
[Timothy Leary](http://www.roninpub.com/TimLea.html). His goal, says
|
||
Doblin, is to secure an LSD study in time for Hofmann's 101st birthday.
|
||
|
||
Dr. Andrew Sewell, a psychiatrist and neurologist from the Harvard
|
||
Medical School who studies alcohol and drug abuse, says most problems
|
||
with LSD occur when users take an unknown dose they don't feel
|
||
comfortable with, in an uncontrolled setting, without supervision to
|
||
shield them from dangerous situations.
|
||
|
||
"LSD flashbacks are well-confirmed phenomenon but they are relatively
|
||
rare and don't seem to cause as much trouble as the media would have you
|
||
believe," said Dr. Sewell at the LSD symposium.
|
||
|
||
Dr. Sewell says people who have underlying mental disorders should not
|
||
take LSD because it could make their symptoms worse. "Like any powerful
|
||
drug, if LSD is used incorrectly it can cause more harm than good," said
|
||
Dr. Sewell. "LSD is a potentially dangerous drug and should be taken
|
||
under medical supervision."
|
||
|
||
"There is no evidence that LSD causes permanent brain damage – and quite
|
||
a lot of evidence that it doesn't," said Sewell. "We are lucky that we
|
||
have over 1,000 papers written in the '50s and '60s when LSD was given
|
||
to thousands and thousands of research subjects so we have a pretty good
|
||
idea at this point what it does and does not do."
|
||
|
||
Asked if the world needs his invention, Hofmann said he hoped that the
|
||
Basel LSD symposium would help create an appropriate place for LSD in
|
||
society.
|
||
|
||
"I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have
|
||
this substance LSD," said Hofmann. "It is just a tool to turn us into
|
||
what we are supposed to be."
|
||
|
||
[See related
|
||
slideshow](https://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2006/01/70015)
|