[H] LSD

[Simon King LCPH MARH]

cont.....
Self-Experiments
4/19/43 16:20: 0.5 cc of 1/2 promil aqueous solution of
diethylamide tartrate orally = 0.25 mg tartrate. Taken diluted with
about 10 cc water. Tasteless.
17:00: Beginning dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions,
symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh.
Supplement of 4/21: Home by bicycle. From 18:00- ca.20:00 most
severe crisis. (See special report.)
Here the notes in my laboratory journal cease. I was able to write
the last words only with great effort. By now it was already clear to me
that LSD had been the cause of the remarkable experience of the previous
Friday, for the altered perceptions were of the same type as before,
only much more intense. I had to struggle to speak intelligibly. I asked
my laboratory assistant, who was informed of the self-experiment, to
escort me home. We went by bicycle, no automobile being available
because of wartime restrictions on their use. On the way home, my
condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of
vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror. I also
had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. Nevertheless,
my assistant later told me that we had traveled very rapidly. Finally,
we arrived at home safe and sound, and I was just barely capable of
asking my companion to summon our family doctor and request milk from
the neighbors.
In spite of my delirious, bewildered condition, I had brief periods
of clear and effective thinking - and chose milk as a nonspecific
antidote for poisoning.
The dizziness and sensation of fainting became so strong at times
that I could no longer hold myself erect, and had to lie down on a sofa.
My surroundings had now transformed themselves in more terrifying ways.
Everything in the room spun around, and the familiar objects and pieces
of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forrns. They were in
continuous motion, animated, as if driven by an inner restlessness. The
lady next door, whom I scarcely recognized, brought me milk - in the
course of the evening I drank more than two liters. She was no longer
Mrs. R., but rather a malevolent, insidious witch with a colored mask.
Even worse than these demonic transformations of the outer world,
were the alterations that I perceived in myself, in my inner being.
Every exertion of my will, every attempt to put an end to the
disintegration of the outer world and the dissolution of my ego, seemed
to be wasted effort. A demon had invaded me, had taken possession of my
body, mind, and soul. I jumped up andscreamed, trying to free myself
from him, but then sank down again and layhelpless on the sofa. The
substance, with which I had wanted to experiment,had vanquished me. It
was the demon that scornfully triumphed over my will. I was seized by
the dreadful fear of going insane. I was taken to another world, another
place, another time. My body seemed to be without sensation, lifeless,
strange. Was I dying? Was this the transition? At times I believed
myself to be outside my body, and then perceived clearly, as an outside
observer, the complete tragedy of my situation. I had not even taken
leave of my family (my wife, with our three children had traveled that
day to visit her parents, in Lucerne). Would they ever understand that I
had not experimented thoughtlessly, irresponsibly, but rather with the
utmost caution, and that such a result was in no way foreseeable? My
fear and despair intensified, not only because a young family should
lose its father, but also because I dreaded leaving my chemical research
work, which meant so much to me, unfinished in the midst of fruitful,
promising development. Another reflection took shape, an idea full of
bitter irony: if I was now forced to leave this world prematurely, it
was because of this Iysergic acid diethylamide that I myself had brought
forth into the world.
By the time the doctor arrived, the climax of my despondent
condition had already passed. My laboratory assistant informed him about
my selfexperiment, as I myself was not yet able to formulate a coherent
sentence. He shook his head in perplexity, after my attempts to describe
the mortal danger that threatened my body. He could detect no abnormal
symptoms other than extremely dilated pupils. Pulse, blood pressure,
breathing were all normal. He saw no reason to prescribe any medication.
Instead he conveyed me to my bed and stood watch over me. Slowly I came
back from a weird, unfamiliar world to reassuring everyday reality. The
horror softened and gave way to a feeling of good fortune and gratitude,
the more normal perceptions and thoughts returned, and I became more
confident that the danger of insanity was conclusively past.
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. It was particularly remarkable how every acoustic
perception, such as the sound of a door handle or a passing automobile,
became transformed into optical perceptions. Every sound generated a
vividly changing image, with its own consistent form and color.
Late in the evening my wife returned from Lucerne. Someone had
informed her by telephone that I was suffering a mysterious breakdown.
She had returned home at once, leaving the children behind with her
parents. By now, I had recovered myself sufficiently to tell her what
had happened.
Exhausted, I then slept, to awake next morning refreshed, with a
clear head, though still somewhat tired physically. A sensation of
well-being and renewed life flowed through me. Breakfast tasted
delicious and gave me extraordinary pleasure. When I later walked out
into the garden, in which the sun shone now after a spring rain,
everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. The world was as if
newly created. All my senses vibrated in a condition of highest
sensitivity, which persisted for the entire day.
This self-experiment showed that LSD-25 behaved as a psychoactive
substance with extraordinary properties and potency. There was to my
knowledge no other known substance that evoked such profound psychic
effects in such extremely low doses, that caused such dramatic changes
in human consciousness and our experience of the inner and outer world.
What seemed even more significant was that I could remember the
experience of LSD inebriation in every detail. This could only mean that
the conscious recording function was not interrupted, even in the climax
of the LSD experience, despite the profound breakdown of the normal
world view. For the entire duration of the experiment, I had even been
aware of participating in an experiment, but despite this recognition of
my condition, I could not, with every exertion of my will, shake off the
LSD world. Everything was experienced as completely real, as alarming
reality; alarming, because the picture of the other, familiar everyday
reality was still fully preserved in the memory for comparison.
Another surprising aspect of LSD was its ability to produce such a
far-reaching, powerful state of inebriation without leaving a hangover.
Quite the contrary, on the day after the LSD experiment I felt myself to
be, as already described, in excellent physical and mental condition.
I was aware that LSD, a new active compound with such properties,
would have to be of use in pharmacology, in neurology, and especially in
psychiatry, and that it would attract the interest of concerned
specialists. But at that time I had no inkling that the new substance
would also come to be used beyond medical science, as an inebriant in
the drug scene. Since my self-experiment had revealed LSD in its
terrifying, demonic aspect, the last thing I could have expected was
that this substance could ever find application as anything approaching
a pleasure drug. I failed, moreover, to recognize the meaningful
connection between LSD inebriation and spontaneous visionary experience
until much later, after further experiments, which were carried out with
far lower doses and under different conditions.
The next day I wrote to Professor Stoll the abovementioned report
about my extraordinary experience with LSD-25 and sent a copy to the
director of the pharmacological department, Professor Rothlin.
As expected, the first reaction was incredulous astonishment.
Instantly a telephone call came from the management; Professor Stoll
asked: "Are you certain you made no mistake in the weighing? Is the
stated dose really correct?" Professor Rothlin also called, asking the
same question. I was certain of this point, for I had executed the
weighing and dosage with my own hands. Yet their doubts were justified
to some extent, for until then no known substance had displayed even the
slightest psychic effect in fractionof-a-milligram doses. An active
compound of such potency seemed almost unbelievable.
Professor Rothlin himself and two of his colleagues were the first
to repeat my experiment, with only one third of the dose I had utilized.
But even at that level, the effects were still extremely impressive, and
quite fantastic. All doubts about the statements in my report were
eliminated.
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