Undeterred by this alarming experience, he would take LSD several more times over the next few decades to observe its effects. His ride home from the laboratory is commemorated on 19 April every year by people inspired by LSD, either scientifically or creatively. In 1985, Illinois professor Thomas B Roberts coined the name “Bicycle Day” for the anniversary.
Hofmann reported what he had discovered to his boss at the pharmaceutical firm, Sandoz. From the effect that LSD had on him, he calculated that one teaspoon would be enough to affect 50,000 people. He said that he and his colleagues “realised immediately that it was a very important agent which could be useful in psychiatry and in research”. Sandoz began distributing LSD to psychiatric hospitals as an experimental drug called Delysid. Some psychiatrists used it with patients for its effects on the subconscious mind, allowing them to release suppressed memories and mental conflict.
LSD spreads around the world
The effects of this powerful new drug caught the attention of the US military, which began a top-secret research programme known by the code name MK-Ultra. One civilian who was exposed to LSD during this research was Ken Kesey, who would later write One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He told the BBC: “I decided that this was too important a business to leave in the hands of the government.” Awed by the hallucinogenic power of the still-legal drug, Kesey began to distribute it to his friends, and, in 1964, he assembled some like-minded people dubbed the Merry Pranksters and set off across the US in a brightly painted bus. LSD was leaking out of laboratories across the country and fuelling the counterculture experience.
By now, it was well known that users risked experiencing so-called bad trips, terrifying spirals of panic and fear that can cause long-term psychological damage. Still, many people who took LSD were evangelical about its potential to change the world for the better.
One of its keenest promoters was former Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary, whose “turn on, tune in, drop out” catchphrase became a defining slogan of the psychedelic era. Leary had written to the Swiss pharmaceutical company in 1963 to place an order for 100g of LSD, enough doses for two million people. The letter was addressed to Hofmann. Already alarmed by non-medical abuse of his discovery, Hofmann advised Sandoz against supplying Leary. “I immediately realised that it would be dangerous because a substance which has such a deep effect must be used carefully,” he told the BBC.
