
Albert Hofmann's archives shed light on the dawn of the psychedelic era (2018) - apollinaire
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xpmzb/the-worlds-first-ever-acid-trip-actually-kinda-sucked
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pmoriarty
It's a pity that Hofmann never actually experienced a full-on psychedelic,
"cosmic" trip, complete with a sense of unity, love, and perhaps ego
dissolution, but only ever had a bad trip and some relatively minor effects
from a few low dose trips.

I'm sure he was aware of the much more profound effects that were possible on
LSD, given a high enough dose and the right set and setting, but for some
reason he never chose to explore those. I wonder if he'd tried truly
psychedelic doses of any other substances.

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monkeypilot
He’s actually tried out a myriad of psychedelics and had a big role to play in
synthesising psilocybin (I think he named that himself as well). He talks
about all of this in his book which is pleasantly surprising and very well
written. Would recommend.

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turbo_fart_box
The book is LSD my problem child.

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refurb
They should fact check the article...

 _On the morning of April 19, he synthesized 0.5 milliliters of the compound,
dissolved it in 10 cubic centimeters of water, and at 4:20 PM took 250
micrograms—0.000025 of a gram, the smallest dose he thought he might
conceivably notice._

Synthesized 0.5mL? It’s not a liquid.

And 250 ug is 0.00025, they have an extra zero in there.

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desideratum
> Synthesized 0.5mL? It’s not a liquid.

Do you think it's synthesized directly into blotter form?

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swiley
LSD is a solid (I think) so giving a volume probably means a solution which is
a weird thing to talk about since it doesn’t really mean much.

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refurb
Exactly. LSD is a solid.

It’s as if I said I had 0.5 mL of salt. It tells you nothing other than you
have water with salt in it.

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hprotagonist
the state of matter is a function of temperature and pressure.

LSD is a solid, sure -- below 175 F. Then it's a liquid, but it decomposes
into simpler molecules before it boils, so it doesn't really have a gaseous
form at STP.

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swiley
It probably decomposes before it melts, it’s a _very_ fragile molecule.

A more reasonable assumption is that it’s a saturated solution at NTP but
that’s still quite an assumption.

