LSD 1

[Simon King LCPH MARH]

In a hurry so this is very rough, there is one bit I'm looking for but
haven't found it yet......
kind regards
Simon King


"reverence for life is a state of mind not a set of rules" Albert
Schweitzer

========
ACUTE LSD POISONING GIVES POINTERS FOR ITS HOMEOPATHIC USE
PSYCHOLOGIC EFFECTS
GENERAL APPEARANCE:
Excitement, hyperactivity, restlessness.
Later (8 hours): depression, slow, preservative thinking; sluggish
responses.
USUAL PHYSICAL EFFECTS
Vertigo, headache
COGNITION:
Disruption of orderly, intentional thinking processes; quality of
hypomania with flight of ideas, or in more severe cases, incoherent
thinking; paranoid ideation; fearfulness, suspicion, or grandiose
behavior.
Slight temperature elevation
PERCEPTION:
Generalized hyperacuity of perception; colorful illusions to
hallucinations; auditory hallucinations in 25%; diminished ability to
screen out irrelevant stimuli; inattentiveness; distractibility;
suggestibility.
Elevation of blood pressure
BODY IMAGE:
Bizarre physical sensations; experiences similar to
depersonalization.
Tachycardia
AFFECT:
Early: euphoria, with lability and abrupt switches from happiness
to sadness.
Late: General depression of mood.
Nausea
GENERAL LEVEL OF AWARENESS:
Dreamlike state; patient can be fairly easily roused to function
alertly but cannot maintain this alertness.
Motor restlessness; fine tremor

1. How LSD Originated
In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to
those who are prepared. (Louis Pasteur)
Time and again I hear or read that LSD was discovered by accident.
This is only partly true. LSD came into being within a systematic
research program, and the "accident" did not occur until much later:
when LSD was already five years old, I happened to experience its
unforeseeable effects in my own body - or rather, in my own mind.
Looking back over my professional career to trace the influential
events and decisions that eventually steered my work toward the
synthesis of LSD, I realize that the most decisive step was my choice
of
employment upon completion of my chemistry studies. If that decision
had been different, then this substance, which has become known the
world over, might never have been created. In order to tell the
story of the origin of LSD, then, I must also touch briefly on my
career as a chemist, since the two developments are inextricably
interreleted.
In the spring of 1929, on concluding my chemistry studies at the
University of Zurich, I joined the Sandoz Company's
pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratory in Basel, as a co-worker
with
Professor Arthur Stoll, founder and director of the pharmaceutical
department. I chose this position because it afforded me the
opportunity to work on natural products, whereas two other job offers
from
chemical firms in Basel had involved work in the field of synthetic
chemistry.
First Chemical Explorations
My doctoral work at Zurich under Professor Paul Karrer had already
given me one chance to pursue my interest in plant and animal
chemistry. Making use of the gastrointestinal juice of the vineyard
snail, I accomplished the enzymatic degradation of chitin, the
structural material of which the shells, wings, and claws of insects,
crustaceans, and other lower animals are composed. I was able to derive
the
chemical structure of chitin from the cleavage product, a
nitrogen-containing sugar, obtained by this degradation. Chitin turned
out to be an analogue of cellulose, the structural material of plants.
This
important result, obtained after only three months of research, led to
a doctoral thesis rated "with distiction."
When I joined the Sandoz firm, the staff of the
pharmaceutical-chemical department was still rather modest in number.
Four chemists with doctoral degrees worked in research, three in
production.
In Stoll's laboratory I found employment that completely agreed
with me as aresearch chemist. The objective that Professor Stoll had
set for his pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratories was to
isolate the active principles (i.e., the effective constituents) of
known medicinal plants to produce pure speciments of these substances.
This is particularly important in the case of medicinal plants whose
active principles are unstable, or whose potency is subject to great
variation, which makes an exact dosage difficult. But if the active
principle is available in pure form, it becomes possible to manufacture
a
stable pharmaceutical preparation, exactly quantifiable by weight. With
this in mind, Professor Stoll had elected to study plant substances of
recognized value such as the substances from foxglove
(Digitalis), Mediterranean squill (Scilla maritima), and ergot of rye
(Claviceps purpurea or Secale cornutum), which, owning to their
instability and uncertain dosage, nevertheless, had been little used in
medicine.
My first years in the Sandoz laboratories were devoted almost
exclusively to studying the active principles of Mediterranean squill.
Dr. Walter Kreis, one of Professor Stoll's earliest associates,
lounched
me in this field of research. The most important constituents of
Mediterranean squill already existed in pure form. Their active agents,
as well as those of woolly foxglove (Digitalis lanata), had been
isolated
and purified, chiefly by Dr. Kreis, with extraordinary skill.
The active principles of Mediterranean squill belong to the group
of cardioactive glycosides (glycoside = sugar-containing substance) and
serve, as do those of foxglove, in the treatment of cardiac
insufficiency. The cardiac glycosides are extremely active substances.
Because the therapeutic and the toxic doses differ so little, it
becomes especially important here to have an exact dosage, based on
pure
compounds.
At the beginning of my investigations, a pharmaceutical
preparation with Scilla glycosides had already been introduced into
therapeutics by Sandoz; however, the chemical structure of these active
compounds, with the exception of the sugar portion, remained largely
unknown.
My main contribution to the Scilla research, in which I
participated with enthusiasm, was to elucidate the chemical structure
of the common nucleus ofScilla glycosides, showing on the one hand
their
differences from the Digitalis glycosides, and on the other hand their
close structural relationship with the toxic principles isolated from
skin glands of toads. In 1935, these studies were temporarily
concluded.
Looking for a new field of research, I asked Professor Stoll to
let me continue the investigations on the alkaloids of ergot, which he
had begun in 1917 and which had led directly to the isolation of
ergotamine in 1918. Ergotamine, discovered by Stoll, was the first
ergot alkaloid obtained in pure chemical form. Although ergotamine
quickly took a significant place in therapeutics (under the trade name
Gynergen) as a hemostatic remedy in obstetrics and as a medicament in
the treatment of migraine, chemical research on ergot in the Sandoz
laboratories was abandoned after the isolation of ergotamine and
the determination of its empirical formula. Meanwhile, at the beginning
of the thirties, English and American laboratories had begun to
determine the chemical structure of ergot alkaloids. They had also
discovered a new, watersoluble ergot alkaloid, which could likewise be
isolated from the mother liquor of ergotamine production. So I thought
it was high time that Sandoz resumed chemical research on
ergot alkaloids, unless we wanted to risk losing our leading role in a
field of medicinal research, which was already becoming so important.
Professor Stoll granted my request, with some misgivings: "I must
warn you of the difficulties you face in working with ergot alkaloids.
These are-exceedingly sensitive, easily decomposed substances,
less stable than any of the compounds you have investigated in the
cardiac glycoside field. But you are welcome to try."
And so the switches were thrown, and I found myself engaged in a
field of study that would become the main theme of my professional
career. I have never forgotten the creative joy, the eager
anticipation I felt in embarking on the study of ergot alkaloids, at
that time a relatively uncharted field of research.
Ergot
It may be helpful here to give some background information about
ergot itself.[For further information on ergot, readers should refer to
the monographs of G. Barger, Ergot and Ergotism (Gurney and
Jackson, London, 1931) and A. Hofmann, Die Mutterkornalkaloide (F. Enke
Verlag, Stuttgart, 1964). The former is a classical presentation of the
history of the drug, while the latter emphasizes the
chemical aspects.] It is produced by a lower fungus (Claviceps
purpurea) that grows parasitically on rye and, to a lesser extent, on
other species of grain and on wild grasses. Kernels infested with this
fungus develop into light-brown to violet-brown curved pegs (sclerotia)
that push forth from the husk in place of normal grains. Ergot is
described botanically as a sclerotium, the form that the ergot fungus
takes in winter. Ergot of rye (Secale cornutum) is the variety used
medicinally.
Ergot, more than any other drug, has a fascinating history, in the
course of which its role and meaning have been reversed: once dreaded
as a poison, in the course of time it has changed to a rich
storehouse of valuable remedies. Ergot first appeared on the stage of
history in the early Middle Ages, as the cause of outbreaks of mass
poisonings affecting thousands of persons at a time. The illness,
whose connection with ergot was for a long time obscure, appeared in
two characteristic forms, one gangrenous (ergotismus gangraenosus) and
the other convulsive (ergotismus convulsivus). Popular
names for ergotism - such as "mal des ardents," "ignis sacer,"
"heiliges Feuer," or "St. Anthony's fire" - refer to the gangrenous
form of the disease. The patron saint of ergotism victims was St.
Anthony,
and it was primarily the Order of St. Anthony that treated these
patients.
Until recent times, epidemic-like outbreaks of ergot poisoning
have been recorded in most European countries including certain areas
of Russia. With progress in agriculture, and since the realization, in
the seventeenth century, that ergot-containing bread was the cause, the
frequency and extent of ergotism epidemics diminished considerably. The
last great epidemic occurred in certain areas of southern
Russia in the years 1926-27. [The mass poisoning in the southern French
city of Pont-St. Esprit in the year 1951, which many writers have
attributed to ergot-containing bread, actually had nothing to do
with ergotism. It rather involved poisoning by an organic mercury
compound that was utilized for disinfecting seed.
The first mention of a medicinal use of ergot, namely as an
ecbolic (a medicament to precipitate childbirth), is found in the
herbal of the Frankfurt city physician Adam Lonitzer (Lonicerus) in the
year
1582. Although ergot, as Lonitzer stated, had been used since olden
times by midwives, it was not until 1808 that this drug gained entry
into academic medicine, on the strength of a work by the American
physician John Stearns entitled Account of the Putvis Parturiens, a
Remedy for Quickening Childbirth. The use of ergot as an ecbolic did
not, however, endure. Practitioners became aware quite early of the
great danger to the child, owing primarily to the uncertainty of
dosage, which when too high led to uterine spasms. From then on, the
use of ergot in obstetrics was confined to stopping postpartum
hemorrhage (bleeding after childbirth).
It was not until ergot's recognition in various pharmacopoeias
during the first half of the nineteenth century that the first steps
were taken toward isolating the active principles of the drug. However,
of all
the researchers who assayed this problem during the first hundred
years, not one succeeded in identifying the actual substances
responsible for the therapeutic activity. In 1907, the Englishmen G.
Barger
and F. H. Carr were the first to isolate an active alkaloidal
preparation, which they named ergotoxine because it produced more of
the toxic than therapeutic properties of ergot. (This preparation was
not
homogeneous, but rather a mixture of several alkaloids, as I was able
to show thirty-five years later.) Nevertheless, the pharmacologist H.
H. Dale discovered that ergotoxine, besides the uterotonic effect,
also had an antagonistic activity on adrenaline in the autonomic
nervous system that could lead to the therapeutic use of ergot
alkaloids. Only with the isolation of ergotamine by A. Stoll (as
mentioned
previously) did an ergot alkaloid find entry and widespread use in
therapeutics.
The early 1930s brought a new era in ergot research, beginning
with the determination of the chemical structure of ergot alkaloids, as
mentioned, in English and American laboratories. By chemical
cleavage, W. A. Jacobs and L. C. Craig of the Rockefeller Institute of
New York succeeded in isolating and characterizing the nucleus common
to all ergot alkaloids. They named it lysergic acid. Then came
a major development, both for chemistry and for medicine: the isolation
of the specifically uterotonic, hemostatic principle of ergot, which
was published simultaneously and quite independently by four
institutions, including the Sandoz laboratories. The substance, an
alkaloid of comparatively simple structure, was named ergobasine (syn.
ergometrine, ergonovine) by A. Stoll and E. Burckhardt. By the
chemical degradation of ergobasine, W. A. Jacobs and L. C. Craig
obtained lysergic acid and the amino alcohol propanolamine as cleavage
products.
I set as my first goal the problem of preparing this alkaloid
synthetically, through chemical linking of the two components of
ergobasine, lysergic acid and propanolamine (see structural formulas in
the
appendix).
The lysergic acid necessary for these studies had to be obtained
by chemical cleavage of some other ergot alkaloid. Since only
ergotamine was available as a pure alkaloid, and was already being
produced
in kilogram quantities in the pharmaceutical production department, I
chose this alkaloid as the starting material for my work. I set about
obtaining 0.5 gm of ergotamine from the ergot production people.
When I sent the internal requisition form to Professor Stoll for his
countersignature, he appeared in my laboratory and reproved me: "If you
want to work with ergot alkaloids, you will have to familiarize
yourself with the techniques of microchemistry. I can't have you
consuming such a large amount of my expensive ergotamine for your
experiments."
The ergot production department, besides using ergot of Swiss
origin to obtain ergotamine, also dealt with Portuguese ergot, which
yielded an amorphous alkaloidal preparation that corresponded to the
aforementioned ergotoxine first produced by Barger and Carr. I decided
to use this less expensive material for the preparation of lysergic
acid. The alkaloid obtained from the production department had to be
purified further, before it would be suitable for cleavage to lysergic
acid. Observations made during the purification process led me to think
that ergotoxine could be a mixture of several alkaloids, rather than
one homogeneous alkaloid. I will speak later of the far-reaching
sequelae of these observations.
Here I must digress briefly to describe the working conditions and
techniques that prevailed in those days. These remarks may be of
interest to the present generation of research chemists in industry,
who are accustomed to far better conditions.
We were very frugal. Individual laboratories were considered a
rare extravagance. During the first six years of my employment with
Sandoz, I shared a laboratory with two colleagues. We three
chemists, plus an assistant each, worked in the same room on three
different fields: Dr. Kreiss on cardiac glycosides; Dr. Wiedemann, who
joined Sandoz around the same time as I, on the leaf pigment
chlorophyll; and I ultimately on ergot alkaloids. The laboratory was
equipped with two fume hoods (compartments supplied with outlets),
providing less than effective ventilation by gas flames. When we
requested that these hoods be equipped with ventilators, our chief
refused on the gound that ventilation by gas flame had sufficed in
Willstatter's laboratory.
During the last years of World War I, Professor Stoll had been an
assistant in Berlin and Munich to the world-famous chemist and Nobel
laureate Professor Richard Willstatter, and with him had
conducted the fundamental investigations on chlorophyll and the
assimilation of carbon dioxide. There was scarcely a scientific
discussion with Professor Stoll in which he did not mention his revered
teacher Professor Willstatter and his work in Willstatter's laboratory.
The working techniques available to chemists in the field of
organic chemistry at that time (the beginning of the thirties) were
essentially the same as those employed by Justus von Liebig a hundred
years
earlier. The most important development achieved since then was the
introduction of microanalysis by B. Pregl, which made it possible to
ascertain the elemental composition of a compound with only a few
milligrams of specimen, whereas earlier a few centigrams were needed.
Of the other physical-chemical techniques at the disposal of the
chemist today - techniques which have changed his way of working,
making it faster and more effective, and created entirely new
possibilities, above all for the elucidation of structure -none yet
existed in those days.
For the investigations of Scilla glycosides and the first studies
in the ergot field, I still used the old separation and purification
techniques from Liebig's day: fractional extraction, fractional
precipitation,
fractional crystallization, and the like. The introduction of column
chromatography, the first important step in modern laboratory
technique, was of great value to me only in later investigations. For
structure
determination, which today can be conducted rapidly and elegantly with
the help of spectroscopic methods (UV, IR, NMR) and X-ray
crystallography, we had to rely, in the first fundamental ergot
studies,
entirely on the old laborious methods of chemical degradation and
derivatization.
Lysergic Acid and Its Derivatives
Lysergic acid proved to be a rather unstable substance, and its
rebonding with basic radicals posed difficulties. In the technique
known as Curtius' Synthesis, I ultimately found a process that proved
useful for combining lysergic acid with amines. With this method I
produced a great number of lysergic acid compounds. By combining
lysergic acid with the amino alcohol propanolamine, I obtained a
compound that was identical to the natural ergot alkaloid ergobasine.
With that, the first synthesis - that is, artificial production - of an
ergot alkaloid was accomplished. This was not only of scientific
interest, as confirmation of the chemical structure of ergobasine, but
also of practical significance, because ergobasine, the specifically
uterotonic, hemostatic principle, is present in ergot only in very
trifling
quantities. With this synthesis, the other alkaloids existing
abundantly in ergot could now be converted to ergobasine, which was
valuable in obstetrics.
After this first success in the ergot field, my investigations
went forward on two fronts. First, I attempted to improve the
pharmacological properties of ergobasine by variations of its amino
alcohol
radical. My colleague Dr. J. Peyer and I developed a process for the
economical production of propanolamine and other amino alcohols.
Indeed, by substitution of the propanolamine contained in ergobasine
with the amino alcohol butanolamine, an active principle was obtained
that even surpassed the natural alkaloid in its therapeutic properties.
This improved ergobasine has found worldwide application as a
dependable uterotonic, hemostatic remedy under the trade name
Methergine, and is today the leading medicament for this indication in
obstetrics.
I further employed my synthetic procedure to produce new lysergic
acid compounds for which uterotonic activity was not prominent, but
from which, on the basis of their chemical structure, other types
of interesting pharmacological properties could be expected. In 1938, I
produced the twenty-fifth substance in this series of lysergic acid
derivatives: lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD-25
(Lyserg-saure-diathylamid) for laboratory usage.
I had planned the synthesis of this compound with the intention of
obtaining a circulatory and respiratory stimulant (an analeptic). Such
stimulating properties could be expected for lysergic acid
diethylamide, because it shows similarity in chemical structure to the
analeptic already known at that time, namely nicotinic acid
diethylamide (Coramine). During the testing of LSD-25 in the
pharmacological department of Sandoz, whose director at the time was
Professor Ernst Rothlin, a strong effect on the uterus was established.
It amounted to some 70 percent of the activity of ergobasine.
The research report also noted, in passing, that the experimental
animals became restless during the narcosis. The new substance,
however, aroused no special interest in our pharmacologists and
physicians;
testing was therefore discontinued.
For the next five years, nothing more was heard of the substance
LSD-25. Meanwhile, my work in the ergot field advanced further in other
areas. Through the purification of ergotoxine, the starting
material for lysergic acid, I obtained, as already mentioned, the
impression that this alkaloidal preparation was not homogeneous, but
was rather a mixture of different substances. This doubt as to the
homogeneity of ergotoxine was reinforced when in its hydrogenation two
distinctly different hydrogenation products were obtained, whereas the
homogeneous alkaloid ergotamine under the same condition
yielded only a single hydrogenation product (hydrogenation =
introduction of hydrogen). Extended, systematic analytical
investigations of the supposed ergotoxine mixture led ultimately to the
separation of
this alkaloidal preparation into three homogeneous components. One of
the three chemically homogeneous ergotoxine alkaloids proved to be
identical with an alkaloid isolated shortly before in the production
department, which A. Stoll and E. Burckhardt had named ergocristine.
The other two alkaloids were both new. The first I named ergocornine;
and for the second, the last to be isolated, which had long
remained hidden in the mother liquor, I chose the name ergokryptine
(kryptos = hidden). Later it was found that ergokryptine occurs in two
isomeric forms, which were differentiated as alfa- and
beta-ergokryptine.
The solution of the ergotoxine problem was not merely
scientifically interesting, but also had great practical significance.
A valuable remedy arose from it. The three hydrogenated ergotoxine
alkaloids
that I produced in the course of these investigations,
dihydroergocristine, dihydroergokryptine, and dihydroergocornine,
displayed medicinally useful properties during testing by Professor
Rothlin in the
pharmacological department. From these three substances, the
pharmaceutical preparation Hydergine was developed, a medicament for
improvement of peripheral circulation and cerebral function in the
control of geriatric disorders. Hydergine has proven to be an effective
remedy in geriatrics for these indications. Today it is Sandoz's most
important pharmaceutical product.
Dihydroergotamine, which I likewise produced in the course of
these investigations, has also found application in therapeutics as a
circulation- and bloodpressure-stabilizing medicament, under the trade
name Dihydergot.
While today research on important projects is almost exclusively
carried out as teamwork, the investigations on ergot alkaloids
described above were conducted by myself alone. Even the further
chemical
steps in the evolution of commercial preparations remained in my hands
- that is, the preparation of larger specimens for the clinical trials,
and finally the perfection of the first procedures for mass
production of Methergine, Hydergine, and Dihydergot. This even included
the analytical controls for the development of the first galenical
forms of these three preparations: the ampules, liquid solutions,
and tablets. My aides at that time included a laboratory assistant, a
laboratory helper, and later in addition a second laboratory assistant
and a chemical technician.
Discovery of the Psyhic Effects of LSD
The solution of the ergotoxine problem had led to fruitful
results, described here only briefly, and had opened up further avenues
of research. And yet I could not forget the relatively uninteresting
LSD-25. A peculiar presentiment - the feeling that this substance could
possess properties other than those established in the first
investigations - induced me, five years after the first synthesis, to
produce
LSD-25 once again so that a sample could be given to the
pharmacological department for further tests. This was quite unusual;
experimental substances, as a rule, were definitely stricken from the
research
program if once found to be lacking in pharmacological interest.
Nevertheless, in the spring of 1943, I repeated the synthesis of
LSD-25. As in the first synthesis, this involved the production of only
a few centigrams of the compound.
In the final step of the synthesis, during the purification and
crystallization of lysergic acid diethylamide in the form of a tartrate
(tartaric acid salt), I was interrupted in my work by unusual
sensations.
The following description of this incident comes from the report that I
sent at the time to Professor Stoll:
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-like 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.
This was, altogether, a remarkable experience - both in its sudden
onset and its extraordinary course. It seemed to have resulted from
some external toxic influence; I surmised a connection with the
substance I had been working with at the time, lysergic acid
diethylamide tartrate. But this led to another question: how had I
managed to absorb this material? Because of the known toxicity of ergot
substances, I always maintained meticulously neat work habits. Possibly
a bit of the LSD solution had contacted my fingertips during
crystallization, and a trace of the substance was absorbed through the
skin. If LSD-25 had indeed been the cause of this bizarre experience,
then it must be a substance of extraordinary potency. There seemed to
be only one way of getting to the bottom of this. I decided on a
self-experiment.
Exercising extreme caution, I began the planned series of
experiments with the smallest quantity that could be expected to
produce some effect, considering the activity of the ergot alkaloids
known at the
time: namely, 0.25 mg (mg = milligram = one thousandth of a gram) of
lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate. Quoted below is the entry for this
experiment in my laboratory journal of April 19, 1943.
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.
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