Bicycle Day!
It's
Bicycle Day today, the day that Albert Hofmann took the first
intentional dose of LSD back in Basel, Switzerland, while he was working
for Sandoz Laboratories. I got a chance to interview Dr. Hofmann for
High Times magazine for the 50th anniversary of LSD issue we did, and
this is a section of the interview I did with him that relates to the
famous bicycle ride he took to go home from his laboratory after
purposefully ingesting the novel compound.
HT: How did you take it?
HOFMANN: I drank it. And within half-an-hour I began to experience similar symptoms to those I’d had three days earlier. But quite quickly they became very strong, very intense, and I became anxious, so I asked my laboratory assistant to accompany me home.
As it was wartime and I had no car, we went home by bicycle, and the bicycle ride was strange. And this bicycle ride, which was only about six kilometers from the lab to my little village, has been so important to the story of LSD. I don’t know why.
HT: Tell us about that ride and that first induced LSD experience.
HOFMANN: I had the feeling that time was standing still. It was a very strange feeling, one I’d never had before. There was a change in the experience of life, of time. But it was the most frustrating thing. I was already deep in the LSD trance, in LSD inebriation, and one of its characteristics, just on this bicycle trip, was of not coming from any place or going anyplace. There was absolutely no feeling of time.
At home I asked my assistant to call for a doctor. And as my wife and children were away for a few days, I also asked him to ask the neighbors for milk. Milk, you know, is known as an antitoxin in general.
HT: Did it help?
HOFMANN: Not at all. I was in a very odd state of consciousness. The outer world had changed. The room seemed to be full of life in the light, and colors were more intense. But I also had the feeling that I was changed, that my ego had changed. And then it became such a strange experience that I was afraid that I had gone insane. And sometime during that experience, at the climax, I had the feeling I was out of my body.
In the meantime the doctor my assistant called arrived and he tested my blood pressure and my head and such and he could not find anything abnormal, with the exception that the pupils of my eyes were enlarged. But nothing else.
HT: Did the doctor’s visit and his assurance that you were alright calm you down?
HOFMANN: No. I had the feeling I was going to die. I had no feeling in my body and thought I’d already left it, was already out of my body, which was something I couldn’t explain to the doctor. I couldn’t really speak rationally to explain that I had made an experiment, either. He wouldn’t have understood that.
So he sat with me through that very difficult experience—horribly difficult—and after about four or five hours the feeling began to change. I felt that I was coming from this very strange other world back to our normal world. And I had the feeling, when I came back from this strange world, that our normal world, which ordinarily we don’t think is wonderful, was a wonderful world. I saw it in a new light. It was a rebirth.
But this happy feeling was only at the end of the experience. And when I came back I closed my eyes and had beautiful, colored visions. It was of course very strange. There was a transformation of every sound in optical figures. Each noise produced a corresponding colored figure, which was very enjoyable.
Finally I went to sleep, and in the morning I was completely fresh. I had the feeling that I was seeing the world as it was on the very first day of creation.
HT: How did you take it?
HOFMANN: I drank it. And within half-an-hour I began to experience similar symptoms to those I’d had three days earlier. But quite quickly they became very strong, very intense, and I became anxious, so I asked my laboratory assistant to accompany me home.
As it was wartime and I had no car, we went home by bicycle, and the bicycle ride was strange. And this bicycle ride, which was only about six kilometers from the lab to my little village, has been so important to the story of LSD. I don’t know why.
HT: Tell us about that ride and that first induced LSD experience.
HOFMANN: I had the feeling that time was standing still. It was a very strange feeling, one I’d never had before. There was a change in the experience of life, of time. But it was the most frustrating thing. I was already deep in the LSD trance, in LSD inebriation, and one of its characteristics, just on this bicycle trip, was of not coming from any place or going anyplace. There was absolutely no feeling of time.
At home I asked my assistant to call for a doctor. And as my wife and children were away for a few days, I also asked him to ask the neighbors for milk. Milk, you know, is known as an antitoxin in general.
HT: Did it help?
HOFMANN: Not at all. I was in a very odd state of consciousness. The outer world had changed. The room seemed to be full of life in the light, and colors were more intense. But I also had the feeling that I was changed, that my ego had changed. And then it became such a strange experience that I was afraid that I had gone insane. And sometime during that experience, at the climax, I had the feeling I was out of my body.
In the meantime the doctor my assistant called arrived and he tested my blood pressure and my head and such and he could not find anything abnormal, with the exception that the pupils of my eyes were enlarged. But nothing else.
HT: Did the doctor’s visit and his assurance that you were alright calm you down?
HOFMANN: No. I had the feeling I was going to die. I had no feeling in my body and thought I’d already left it, was already out of my body, which was something I couldn’t explain to the doctor. I couldn’t really speak rationally to explain that I had made an experiment, either. He wouldn’t have understood that.
So he sat with me through that very difficult experience—horribly difficult—and after about four or five hours the feeling began to change. I felt that I was coming from this very strange other world back to our normal world. And I had the feeling, when I came back from this strange world, that our normal world, which ordinarily we don’t think is wonderful, was a wonderful world. I saw it in a new light. It was a rebirth.
But this happy feeling was only at the end of the experience. And when I came back I closed my eyes and had beautiful, colored visions. It was of course very strange. There was a transformation of every sound in optical figures. Each noise produced a corresponding colored figure, which was very enjoyable.
Finally I went to sleep, and in the morning I was completely fresh. I had the feeling that I was seeing the world as it was on the very first day of creation.
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