LSD: My Problem Child

The father of LSD, Albert Hofmann, recounts the history of his discovery and his career as a research chemist, offering a personal inside story of the birth of the Psychedelic Age. The book argues that LSD, psilocybin, and other hallucinogens create cracks in materialistic rationality that are worth exploring. It also introduces American readers to European writers on hallucinogens such as Rudolf Gelpke, Ernst Junger, and Walter Vogt, and includes chapters originally presented at a 1978 conference.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Numerous accounts of the discovery of have been published in English; none, unfortunately, have been completely accurate. Here, at last, the father of details the history of his problem child and his long and fruitful career as a research chemist. In a real sense, this book is the inside story of the birth of the Psychedelic Age, and it cannot be denied that we have here a highly candid and personal insight into one of the most important scientific discoveries of our time, the signiflcance of which has yet to dawn on mankind. Surpassing its historical value is the immense philosophical import of this work. Never before has a chemist, an expert in the most materialistic of the sciences, advanced a Weltanschauung of such a mystical and transcendental nature. LSD, psilocybin, and the other hallucinogens do indeed, as Albert Hofmann asserts, constitute in the edifice of materialistic rationality, cracks we would do well to explore and perhaps widen. As a writer, it gives me great satisfaction to know that by this book the American reader interested in hallucinogens will be introduced to the work of Rudolf Gelpke, Ernst Junger, and Walter Vogt, writers who are all but unknown here. With the notable exceptions of Huxley and Wasson, English and American writers on the hallucinogenic experience have been far less distinguished and eloquent than they. This translation has been carefully overseen by Albert Hofmann, which made my task both simpler and more enjoyable. I am beholden to R. Gordon Wasson for checking the chapters on LSD's Mexican relatives and on Ska Maria Pastora for accuracy and style. Two chapters of this book—How Originated and LSD Experience and Reality— were presented by Albert Hofmann as a paper before the international conference Hallucinogens, Shamanism and Modern Life in San Francisco on the afternoon of Saturday, September 30, 1978. As a part of the conference proceedings, the first chapter has been published in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, Vol. 11 (1-2), 1979. Jonathan Ott