Tune in, Turn on, Drop Out

Or
Keeping Tabs
Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who saw the natural world as offering countless opportunities to get high and until recently was regarded as the greatest living genius by the 2007 Synectics Survey of Contemporary Living Genius, has died at the age of 102. Hofmann synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide(LSD) in 1938 but didn’t discover how much fun it was until accidentally ingesting it 5 years later. Much like hippies three decades later, Hofmann used the drug as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. And for making cool trails with his fingers. Ironically, he came to disdain the recreational use of LSD championed by Timothy Leary, perhaps because it detracted from his research into Psilocybe mexicana mushrooms. And a bunch of kids took a tab, thought they could fly and jumped off buildings to their deaths, which was a bit of a downer. Late last year, Hofmann realized some vindication as LSD research began with patients with terminal cancer and other deadly diseases.