LSD inventor celebrates 100th birthday in good health, still promoting drug

LSD inventor celebrates 100th birthday in good health, still promoting drug

10/01/2006 4:29:00 PM

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GENEVA (AP) - LSD is an unlikely subject for a 100th birthday party. Yet the Swiss chemist who discovered the mind-altering drug and was its first human guinea pig is celebrating his centenary Wednesday, in good health and with plans to attend an international seminar on the hallucinogenic.

"I had wonderful visions," Albert Hofmann said, recalling his first accidental consumption of the drug.

"I sat down at home on the divan and started to dream," he told the Swiss television network SF DRS. "What I was thinking appeared in colours and in pictures. It lasted for a couple of hours and then it disappeared."

Hofmann, who also had bad experiences with the drug, continues to insist it should be legalized for medical treatment, particularly in psychiatric research. But LSD's reputation has been as turbulent as some acid trips.

The drug earned a bad reputation amid fatalities associated with hallucinations and reports of "flashbacks" - the recurrence of hallucinations when not taking the drug.

LSD inspired the 1960s hippy generation and was immortalized in the Beatles' hit Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, although the band denied any connection. But it was also known as Like Swift Dead.

For decades after LSD was banned in the late 1960s, Hofmann defended his invention.

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

The chemist, who still takes nearly daily walks in the picturesque village where he lives in the Jura mountains with his wife of 70 years, Anita, 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, now part of Novartis.

The company declined to comment for this story.

Hofmann was the first person to test the drug when a tiny amount of the substance seeped on to his finger during a repeat of the laboratory experiment in April 1943.

"Everything I saw was distorted, as in a warped mirror," he wrote of the experience, noting his surprise that LSD was able to produce "such a far-reaching, powerful, inebriated condition without leaving a hangover."

The chemist experimented with a larger dose three days later, but the result this time was a "horror" trip, he wrote. His surroundings turned into threatening images. A neighbour was transformed into a wicked witch.

"I was filled with an overwhelming fear that I would go crazy. I was transported to a different world, a different time," he wrote.

Hofmann and his scientific colleagues hoped LSD would make an important contribution to psychiatric research. The drug exaggerated inner problems and conflicts, and they hoped it might be used to recognize and treat mental illnesses like schizophrenia.

The drug was popularized by Timothy Leary, the one-time Harvard lecturer known as the "high priest of LSD," whose "turn on, tune in, drop out" advice to students in the 1960s glamorized the hallucinogen. The film star Cary Grant and numerous rock musicians extolled its virtues in achieving true self-discovery and enlightenment.

But away from the psychedelic trips and flower children, stories emerged of people going on murder sprees or jumping out of windows while hallucinating. Heavy users suffered permanent psychological damage.

The United States banned LSD in 1966 and other countries followed suit.

Hofmann maintains that was unfair, arguing the drug was not addictive. He has repeatedly said the ban should be lifted so LSD can be used in medical research, and he took the drug himself, purportedly on an occasional basis and out of scientific interest, for several decades.

But he added a note of caution.

"The history of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken for a pleasure drug," he wrote.

10/01/2006 4:29:00 PM

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Nothing Odd About Normal, Illinois

By JAN DENNIS, Associated Press Writer

When he's traveling on city business, Mayor Chris Koos carries around a $50 or $100 bill that he'll hand to anyone who comes up with a joke he hasn't heard about his central Illinois town where "Welcome to Normal" signs are about geography, not a state of mind.

"I still have the money," says Koos, mayor of this growing college town since 2003. "Sometimes when people make the same joke you've heard a thousand times, it gets old, but you try to play along."

Around Normal and in neighboring Bloomington, folks say they've heard all the wisecracks about a city that legend has it once combined with another uniquely named southern Illinois town for a newspaper headline that read "Normal man marries Oblong woman."

Few mind the good-natured jabs, but say most are time-weary standbys that have grown pretty, well, normal over the years.

"What's next to Normal, abnormal?" out-of-towners ask. "Is everything really normal in Normal?" "If you're in Bloomington, is that as close to normal as you can get?"

Still, even city leaders say they aren't above using their hometown for a laugh. For 25 years, retired City Manager David Anderson says he often introduced himself at conferences by saying he was "the only Normal manager here. The rest of you are something other than normal."

In truth, the town's offbeat name has nothing to do with the traditional American definitions of "normal" that have fueled the wave of jokes.

When the town was launched in the early 1860s, it took its name from the local university founded a few years earlier, then called Illinois State Normal University. Derived from the French "ecole normale," or "training college," the label was commonly used into the 1960s to designate U.S. schools that churned out new teachers.

The nation's only other Normal, in Alabama, also took its name from a university that sported the training college label. But Alabama's Normal is only a postal designation for Alabama A&M University, located in Huntsville, and has no local government or city structure, said Jerome Saintjones, a spokesman for the Alabama campus.

Around Illinois' Normal, officials suspect their unique name may have had a hand in three decades of growth, helping to make McLean County downstate's fastest growing county between 1990 and 2000. The population in Normal alone was 45,000.

"I can't point to any one company or organization that located here because of the name, but I think it caught some attention because it's unusual and that did some good," Anderson said.

Mike Humphreys, an ISU marketing professor, said Normal likely earned a second look from companies sifting through a nation loaded with Springfields, Lincolns, Clintons and Bloomingtons.

"We marketers are interested in memory or recall and I do think there's a great memory aid to it. It's a simple name and it's kind of off the wall," Humphreys said.

Mark Peterson, Normal's city manager, said the unique monicker often nets free exposure for the town when the national media tries to check the heartland's pulse on elections and other issues.

"There are far worse names," Peterson said. "I came here from the Kansas City area and lived near Peculiar, Mo. I'm sure they get the same sort of comments, but I'm glad we're called Normal and not Peculiar."

Former Bloomington Mayor Richard Buchanan says jokes about Normal have waned since he headed its twin city from 1977 to 1985. He credits Normal's growth from largely a college town to a city that's now home to Mitsubishi's only U.S. car-building plant and expanded retail and housing developments.

"It's become a really healthy, outstanding community as perceived by others," Buchanan said.

But even locals sometimes shy away from the town's unusual name. Fewer than a half-dozen businesses are listed in the phone book with Normal in their name, compared to dozens in neighboring Bloomington.

"Normal Psychiatry? If I was toying with names for that business I'd chuckle at the notion then move on to something else," Humphreys said.

Even townspeople, known as Normalites, sometimes duck the name, answering "Bloomington" when they're out of town and asked where they live, Peterson said.

"I think people are proud of their community," he said. "Maybe they just feel Bloomington is more recognizable since it's the older and larger of the communities. Or maybe they just don't want to put up with the jokes."