In case you missed it, Albert Hoffman, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD, died on Tuesday at the age of 102.
Hoffman believed in the therapeutic value of LSD and called it "medicine for the soul."
Wikipedia says: "Hofmann also became interested in the seeds of the Mexican morning glory species Rivea corymbosa, the seeds of which are called Ololiuhqui by the natives. He was surprised to find the active compound of Ololiuhqui, ergine (lysergic acid amide), to be closely related to LSD."
A fraternity brother and I tried morning glory seeds back in the spring of 1967. The Heavenly Blue variety was supposed to have the greatest concentration of the active ingredient. We ran several packages of seeds through a vodka wash to remove the pesticide the seed company put on the seeds. The coating wasn't really needed to protect the seeds from bugs, it was there to foil would-be seed-heads. Once the seeds dried, we ground them up in a pepper mill and painstakingly packed the results into empty gelatin capsules we bought from the neighborhood drugstore.
I did 20 caps one warm spring night with some friends and we walked down to a nearby shopping center. By the time we decided to head back to my apartment, the stuff had kicked in and the vast expanse of the shopping center parking lot looked as immense as the Sahara Desert and the walk home seemed like an impossibly long journey. We got home somehow and spent the rest of the evening listening to records (CDs were still more than 15 years in the future). I remember hallucinating voices as I went to sleep.
That's as close as I ever got to a real LSD trip since my girlfriend, later my first wife, didn't share my curiosity about consciousness expanding chemistry.
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