LSD — My Problem Child
Albert Hofmann
Translator's Preface
Numerous accounts of the discovery of LSD have been published
in English; none, unfortunately, have been completely accurate. Here, at
last, the father of LSD details the history of his "problem child" and his
long and fruitful career as a research chemist. In a real sense, this book
is the inside story of the birth of the Psychedelic Age, and it cannot be
denied that we have here a highly candid and personal insight into one of
the most important scientific discoveries of our time, the significance
of which has yet to dawn on mankind.
Surpassing its historical value is the immense philosophical
import of this work. Never before has a chemist, an expert in the most materialistic
of the sciences, advanced a Weltanschauung of such a mystical and
transcendental nature. LSD, psilocybin, and the other hallucinogens do indeed,
as Albert Hofmann asserts, constitute "cracks" in the edifice of materialistic
rationality, cracks we would do well to explore and perhaps widen.
As a writer, it gives me great satisfaction to know that by
this book the American reader interested in hallucinogens will be introduced
to the work of Rudolf Gelpke, Ernst Junger, and Walter Vogt, writers who
are all but unknown here. With the notable exceptions of Huxley and Wasson,
English and American writers on the hallucinogenic experience have been
far less distinguished and eloquent than they.
This translation has been carefully overseen by Albert Hofmann,
which made my task both simpler and more enjoyable. I am beholden to R.
Gordon Wasson for checking the chapters on LSD's "Mexican relatives" and
on "Ska Maria Pastora" for accuracy and style.
Two chapters of this book—"How LSD Originated" and "LSD Experience
and Reality"—were presented by Albert Hofmann as a paper before the international
conference "Hallucinogens, Shamanism and Modern Life" in San Francisco on
the afternoon of Saturday, September 30, 1978. As a part of the conference
proceedings, the first chapter has been published in the Journal of Psychedelic
Drugs, Vol. 11 (1-2), 1979.
Jonathan Ott
Vashon Island, Washington |
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