Seven Red

Just saw the news that Albert Hofmann died. It’s amazing that Hofmann was 32 when he first synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide while working for the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, Sandoz, and 37 when he became the first human being to ingest LSD-25. Hofmann had been working with various ergot derivatives when he accidentally synthesized a substance that would change the course of history in the 20th century. If you haven’t read LSD: My Problem Child, you should. It is a document of primary importance for the understanding of 20th century scientific development – the flip side and hidden twin of the Manhattan Project in more ways than one.

Just as a side note, Henry Luce, founder of Time Inc. and really the father of modern conservatism much more than Buckley, took LSD-25 often with his wife, playwright and congressional representative Claire Booth Luce. He even pushed (so to speak) stories on the “miracle drug” on his editors at Time and Life. He also took psilocybin mushrooms with R. Gordon Wasson, who first brought them to the United States after trips (so to speak) to Huautla region of Mexico in the early 1950′s. Wasson was an amateur mycologist and an investment banker at JP Morgan; like Luce, he was a staunch anti-communist.

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