Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Albert Hoffman died yesterday:

Albert Hofmann, father of the mind-altering drug LSD whose medical discovery grew into a notorious "problem child," died Tuesday. He was 102.

Hofmann died of a heart attack at his home in Basel, Switzerland, according to Rick Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, in a statement posted on the association's Web site.

Hofmann's hallucinogen inspired -- and arguably corrupted -- millions in the 1960's hippie generation. For decades after LSD was banned in the late 1960s, Hofmann defended his invention.

"I produced the substance as a medicine. ... It's not my fault if people abused it," he said.

The Swiss chemist discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm in Basel.

He became the first human guinea pig of the drug when a tiny amount of the substance seeped onto his finger during a repeat of the laboratory experiment April 16, 1943.

"I had to leave work for home because I was suddenly hit by a sudden feeling of unease and mild dizziness," he wrote in a memo to company bosses.

"Everything I saw was distorted as in a warped mirror," he said, describing his bicycle ride home. "I had the impression I was rooted to the spot. But my assistant told me we were actually going very fast."

Three days later, Hofmann experimented with a larger dose. The result was a horror trip.

"The substance which I wanted to experiment with took over me. I was filled with an overwhelming fear that I would go crazy. I was transported to a different world, a different time," Hofmann wrote.

I took plenty of LSD in the Sixties and I don't regret "going where no man has been before." It's not a "drug" in the sense of being an addictive recreational pharmaceutical. It can in fact be overwhelming beautiful or terrifying. LSD is not a drug for those who wish to escape reality. I've written about it before:

One day a friend of mine in London, "Peter," brought some heroine that he had gotten from an American. Peter and I had taken LSD together several time. He did not like LSD as it gave him horrible hallucinations and scared the hell out of him. We took the heroine. Peter was in heaven. He loved the euphoria. Meantime it made me itch and feel nauseous and it gave me horrible hallucinations. I hated it. Peter went on to become a heroine addict and, 40 years later he still is. He was one of the "lucky" ones who could function on heroine. He went on to become a famous dress-designer in spite of being addicted to heroine.

Unlike heroine and the other addictive recreational drugs, LSD is only for adventurers and pioneers. It gave me a good glimpse of both the heaven and hell that are in my own mind and showed me how ineffable the human imagination is. It would take a book to explain and so far very few people who have "tripped on acid" have been able to describe it accurately - except maybe Aldous "Brave New World" Huxley who wrote about his LSD trips in "Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell."

Pic: Hoffmann who doesn't look a day over 70. What a wonderful face. I hope I look as cute as that when I'm a 102.