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LSD - My Problem Child
 Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism, and Science

Dr. Albert Hofmann

Pages: 210
Price: Out of Print, HB $300+
Publisher: Humanics New Age
Pub Date: 1989
ISBN: 0893341169

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Table of Contents >
1. How LSD Originated
2. LSD in Animal Experiments and Biological Research
3. Chemical Modifications of LSD
4. Use of LSD in Psychiatry
5. From Remedy to Inebriant
6. The Mexican Relatives of LSD
7. Radiance from Ernst Junger
8. Meeting with Aldous Huxley
9. Correspondence with the Poet-Physician Walter Vogt
10. Various Visitors
11. LSD Experience and Reality
Appendix
 
Description >
Discovery of LSD, LSA's, psilocybin; and people involved. Reactions of scientist to awe and wonder of psychedelic experience Discovery of entheogens in Mexico, isolation and synthesis of active compounds. Translated by Jonathan Ott.   (From Mind Books)
 
Reviews/Excerpts >

From the back cover:

"Now, little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes.  Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux."

    With these words Swiss chemist Doctor Albert Hofmann describes the events of April 19, 1943, the date of the first consciously induced LSD trip.  Since that time, LSD has become one of the most controversial pharmaceuticals ever developed, a substance that changed the life of its discoverer Dr. Hofmann, as well as the lives of tens of millions of others.
    In LSD: My Problem Child we follow Dr. Hofmann on his journey of discovery: the painstaking research, the courageous self-experimentation, the meetings with such notables as Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, mycologist R. Gordon Wasson, and novelist Ernst Junger.
    This little-known story of the birth of the psychedelic age will fascinate anyone who has used LSD and wondered about its origins and the mind and circumstances that created it.  In its interplay of science, history, and mystical speculation, LSD: My Problem Child suggests to the reader both the dilemmas and the prospects of a truly important discovery, the significance of which has yet to be fully understood.

Excerpt from book:

"Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away." (excerpt from report to Professor Stoll, page 15)


"I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing material aid to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive reality. Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character of LSD as a sacred drug. "(closing paragraph, italics in original, page 209)

 

CSP's Entheogen Chrestomathy entry for LSD - My Problem Child

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