Albert Hofmann - "LSD - My Problem Child". Здесь куски из книги. ОЧЕНЬ много. ОЧЕНЬ, я не шучу.
читать дальше"LSD - My Problem Child" by Albert Hofmann
While the mouse under LSD shows only motor disturbances and alterations in
licking behavior, in the cat we see, besides vegetative symptoms like
bristling of the hair (piloerection) and salivation, indications that point to
the existence of hallucinations. The animals stare anxiously in the air, and
instead of attacking the mouse, the cat leaves it alone or will even stand in
fear before the mouse. One could also conclude that the behavior of dogs that
are under the influence of LSD involves hallucinations. A caged community of
chimpanzees reacts very sensitively if a member of the tribe has received LSD.
Even though no changes appear in this single animal, the whole cage gets in an
uproar because the LSD chimpanzee no longer observes the laws of its finely
coordinated hierarchic tribal order.
Of the remaining animal species on which LSD was tested, only aquarium fish
and spiders need be mentioned here. In the fish, unusual swimming postures
were observed, and in the spiders, alterations in web building were apparently
produced by kSD. At very low optimum doses the webs were even better
proportioned and more exactly built than normally: however, with higher doses,
the webs were badly and rudimentarily made.
Most
animals die from a lethal dose of LSD by respiratory arrest.
To my knowledge, there have not as yet
occurred any casualties that are a direct consequence of LSD poisoning.
Numerous episodes of fatal consequences attributed to LSD ingestion have
indeed been recorded, but these were accidents, even suicides, that may be
attributed to the mentally disoriented condition of LSD intoxication. The
danger of LSD lies not in its toxicity, but rather in the unpredictability of
its psychic effects.
LSD stimulates centers of the sympathetic nervous system in the midbrain,
which leads to pupillary dilatation, increase in body temperature, and rise in
the blood-sugar level. The uterine-constricting activity of LSD has already
been mentioned.
An especially interesting pharmacological property of LSD, discovered by J. H.
Gaddum in England, is its serotonin-blocking effect. Serotonin is a
hormone-like substance, occurring naturally in various organs of warm-blooded
animals. Concentrated in the midbrain, it plays an important role in the
propagation of impulses in certain nerves and therefore in the biochemistry of
psychic functions. The disruption of natural functioning of serotonin by LSD
was for some time regarded as an explanation of its psychic effects. However,
it was soon shown that even certain derivatives of LSD (compounds in which the
chemical structure of LSD is slightly modified) that exhibit no hallucinogenic
properties, inhibit the effects of serotonin just as strongly, or yet more
strongly, than unaltered LSD. The serotonin-blocking effect of LSD thus does
not suffice to explain its hallucinogenic properties.
LSD also influences neurophysiological functions that are connected with
dopamine, which is, like serotonin, a naturally occurring hormone-like
substance. Most of the brain centers receptive to dopamine become activated by
LSD, while the others are depressed.
Afterward the room was darkened (dark experiment); there followed an
unprecedented experience of unimaginable intensity that kept increasing in
strength. It w as characterized by an unbelievable profusion of optical
hallucinations that appeared and vanished with great speed, to make way
for countless new images. I saw a profusion of circles, vortices, sparks,
showers, crosses, and spirals in constant, racing flux.
The images appeared to stream in on me predominantly from the center of
the visual field, or out of the lower left edge. When a picture appeared
in the middle, the remaining field of vision was simultaneously filled up
with a vast number of similar visions. All were colored: bright, luminous
red, yellow, and green predominated.
I never managed to linger on any picture. When the supervisor of the
experiment emphasized my great fantasies, the richness of my statements, I
could only react with a sympathetic smile. I knew, in fact, that I could
not retain, much less describe, more than a fraction of the pictures. I
had to force myself to give a description. Terms such as "fireworks" or
"kaleidoscopic" were poor and inadequate. I felt that I had to immerse
myself more and more deeply into this strange and fascinating world, in
order to allow the exuberance, the unimaginable wealth, to work on me.
At first, the hallucinations were elementary: rays, bundles of rays, rain,
rings, vortices, loops, sprays, clouds, etc. Then more highly organized
visions also appeared: arches, rows of arches, a sea of roofs, desert
landscapes, terraces, flickering fire, starry skies of unbelievable
splendor. The original, more simple images continued in the midst of these
more highly organized hallucinations. I remember the following images in
particular:
A succession of towering, Gothic vaults, an endless choir, of which I
could not see the lower portions.
A landscape of skyscrapers, reminiscent of pictures of the entrance to
New York harbor: house towers staggered behind and beside one another with
innumerable rows of windows. Again the foundation was missing.
A system of masts and ropes, which reminded me of a reproduction of a
painting seen the previous day (the inside of a circus tent).
An evening sky of an unimaginable pale blue over the dark roofs of a
Spanish city. I had a peculiar feeling of anticipation, was full of joy
and decidedly ready for adventure. All at once the stars flared up,
amassed, and turned to a dense rain of stars and sparks that streamed
toward me. City and sky had disappeared.
I was in a garden, saw brilliant red, yellow, and green lights falling
through a dark trelliswork, an indescribably joyous experience.
It was significant that all the images consisted of countless repetitions
of the same elements: many sparks, many circles, many arches, many
windows, many fires, etc. I never saw isolated images, but always
duplications of the same image, endlessly repeated.
My state of mind was consciously euphoric. I enjoyed the condition, was
serene, and took a most active interest in the experience. From time to
time I opened my eyes. The weak red light seemed mysterious, much more
than before. The busily writing research supervisor appeared to me to be
very far away. Often I had peculiar bodily sensations: I believed my hands
to be attached to some distant body, but was not certain whether it was my
own.
After termination of the first dark experiment, I strolled about in the
room a bit, was unsure on my legs, and again felt less well. I became cold
and was thankful that the research supervisor covered me with a blanket. I
felt unkempt, unshaven, and unwashed. The room seemed strange and broad.
Later I squatted on a high stool, thinking all the while that I sat there
like a bird on the roost.
The supervisor emphasized my own wretched appearance. He seemed remarkably
graceful. I myself had small, finely formed hands. As I washed them, it
was happening a long way from me, somewhere down below on the right. It
was questionable, but utterly unimportant, whether they were my own hands.
LSD's unique position among the psychopharmaceuticals is not only due to its
high activity, in a quantitative sense. The substance also has qualitative
significance: it manifests a high specificity, that is, an activity aimed
specifically at the human psyche. It can be assumed, therefore, that LSD
affects the highest control centers of the psychic and intellectual functions.
The administration of very small doses of Delysid
(1/2-2 microg./kg. body weight) results in transitory
disturbances of affect, hallucinations, depersonalization,
reliving of repressed memories, and mild neurovegetative
symptoms. The effect sets in after 30 to 90 minutes and
generally lasts 5 to 12 hours. However, intermittent
disturbances of affect may occasionally persist for several
days.
INDICATIONS AND DOSAGE
a) Analytical psychotherapy, to elicit release of repressed material
and provide mental relaxation, particularly in anxiety states and
obsessional neuroses.
The initial dose is 25 microg. (1/4 of an ampoule or 1 tablet).
This dose is increased at each treatment by 25 microg. until the
optimum dose (usually between 50 and 200 microg.) is found. The
individual treatments are best given at intervals of one week.
b) Experimental studies on the nature of psychoses: By taking Delysid
himself, the psychiatrist is able to gain an insight into the world
of ideas and sensations of mental patients. Delysid can also be
used to induce model psychoses of short duration in normal subjects,
thus facilitating studies on the pathogenesis of mental disease.
In normal subjects, doses of 25 to 75 microg. are generally
sufficient to produce a hallucinatory psychosis (on an average
1 microg./kg. body weight). In certain forms of psychosis and in
chronic alcoholism, higher doses are necessary (2 to 4 microg./kg.
body weight).
PRECAUTIONS
Pathological mental conditions may be intensified by Delysid. Particular
caution is necessary in subjects with a suicidal tendency and in those
cases where a psychotic development appears imminent. The psycho-affective
liability and the tendency to commit impulsive acts may occasionally last
for some days.
Delysid should only be administered under strict medical supervision. The
supervision should not be discontinued until the effects of the drug have
completely orn off.
ANTIDOTE
The mental effects of Delysid can be rapidly reversed by the i.m.
administration of 50 mg. chlorpromazine.
In LSD inebriation the accustomed world view undergoes a deep-seated
transformation and disintegration. Connected with this is a loosening or even
suspension of the I-you barrier. Patients who are bogged down in an egocentric
problem cycle can thereby be helped to release themselves from their fixation
and isolation. The result can be an improved rapport with the doctor and a
greater susceptibility to psychotherapeutic influence. The enhanced
suggestibility under the influence of LSD works toward the same goal.
Another significant, psychotherapeutically valuable characteristic of LSD
inebriation is the tendency of long forgotten or suppressed contents of
experience to appear again in consciousness. Traumatic events, which are
sought in psychoanalysis, may then become accessible to psychotherapeutic
treatment. Numerous case histories tell of experiences from even the earliest
childhood that were vividly recalled during psychoanalysis under the influence
of LSD. This does not involve an ordinary recollection, but rather a true
reliving; not a reminiscence, but rather a reviviscence, as the French
psychiatrist Jean Delay has formulated it.
One medicinal use of LSD that touches on fundamental ethical questions is its
administration to the dying. This practice arose from observations in American
clinics that especially severe painful conditions of cancer patients, which no
longer respond to conventional pain-relieving medication, could be alleviated
or completely abolished by LSD. Of course, this does not involve an analgesic
effect in the true sense. The diminution of pain sensitivity may rather occur
because patients under the influence of LSD are psychologically so dissociated
from their bodies that physical pain no longer penetrates their consciousness.
Artistic productions arising directly from LSD
inebriation, therefore, are mostly rudimentary in character and deserve
consideration not because of their artistic merit, but because they are a type
of psychoprogram, which offers insight into the deepest mental structures of
the artist, activated and made conscious by LSD.
Of the numerous
publications of this type that have made effective lay propaganda for LSD, it
is sufficient to cite just one more example: a large-scale, illustrated
article in Look magazine of September 1959. Entitled "The Curious Story Behind
the New Cary Grant," it must have contributed enormously to the diffusion of
LSD consumption. The famous movie star had received LSD in a respected clinic
in California, in the course of a psychotherapeutic treatment. He informed the
Look reporter that he had sought inner peace his whole life long, but yoga,
hypnosis, and mysticism had not helped him. Only the treatment with LSD had
made a new, selfstrengthened man out of him, so that after three frustrating
marriages he now believed himself really able to love and make a woman happy.
Books also appeared on the U.S. market in which the fantastic effects of LSD
were reported more fully. Here only two of the most important will be
mentioned: Exploring I nner Space by Jane Dunlap (Harcourt Brace and World,
New York, 1961) and My Self and I by Constance A. Newland (N A.L. Signet
Books, New York, 1963). Although in both cases LSD was used within the scope
of a psychiatric treatment, the authors addressed their books, which became
bestsellers, to the broad public. In her book, subtitled "The Intimate and
Completely Frank Record of One Woman's Courageous Experiment with Psychiatry's
Newest Drug, LSD 25," Constance A. Newland described in intimate detail how
she had been cured of frigidity. After such avowals, one can easily imagine
that many people would want to try the wondrous medicine for themselves. The
mistaken opinion created by such reports - that it would be sufficient simply
to take LSD in order to accomplish such miraculous effects and transformations
in oneself - soon led to broad diffusion of self-experimentation with the new
drug.
As LSD experiments were often carried out in ignorance of the uncanny,
unforeseeable, profound effects, and without medical supervision, they
frequently came to a bad end. With increasing LSD consumption in the drug
scene, there came an increase in "horror trips" - LSD experiments that led to
disoriented conditions and panic, often resulting in accidents and even crime.
The publicity about LSD attained its high point in the years 1964 to 1966, not
only with regard to enthusiastic claims about the wondrous effects of LSD by
drug fanatics and hippies, but also to reports of accidents, mental
breakdowns, criminal acts, murders, and suicide under the influence of LSD. A
veritable LSD hysteria reigned.
Dangers of Nomnedicinal LSD Experiments
While professional use of LSD in psychiatry entails hardly any risk, the
ingestion of this substance outside of medical practice, without medical
supervision, is subject to multifarious dangers. These dangers reside, on the
one hand, in external circumstances connected with illegal drug use and, on
the other hand, in the peculiarity of LSD's psychic effects.
The advocates of uncontrolled, free use of LSD and other hallucinogens base
their attitude on two claims: (l) this type of drug produces no addiction, and
(2) until now no danger to health from moderate use of hallucinogens has been
demonstrated. Both are true. Genuine addiction, characterized by the fact that
psychic and often severe physical disturbances appear on withdrawal of the
drug, has not been observed, even in cases in which LSD was taken often and
over a long period of time. No organic injury or death as a direct consequence
of an LSD intoxication has yet been reported. As discussed in greater detail
in the chapter "LSD in Animal Experiments and Biological Research," LSD is
actually a relatively nontoxic substance in proportion to its extraordinarily
high psychic activity.
Like the other hallucinogens, however, LSD is dangerous in an entirely
different sense. While the psychic and physical dangers of the addicting
narcotics, the opiates, amphetamines, and so forth, appear only with chronic
use, the possible danger of LSD exists in every single experiment. This is
because severe disoriented states can appear during any LSD inebriation. It is
true that through careful preparation of the experiment and the experimenter
such episodes can largely be avoided, but they cannot be excluded with
certainty. LSD crises resemble psychotic attacks with a manic or depressive
character.
In the manic, hyperactive condition, the feeling of omnipotence or
invulnerability can lead to serious casualties. Such accidents have occurred
when inebriated persons confused in this way - believing themselves to be
invulnerable - walked in front of a moving automobile or jumped out a window
in the belief that they were able to fly. This type of LSD casualty, however,
is not so common as one might be led to think on the basis of reports that
were sensationally exaggerated by the mass media. Nevertheless, such reports
must serve as serious warnings.
The danger of a psychotic reaction is especially great if LSD is given to
someone without his or her knowledge.
There is a different danger when the LSD-induced disorientation exhibits a
depressive rather than manic character. In the course of such an LSD
experiment, frightening visions, death agony, or the fear of becoming insane
can lead to a threatening psychic breakdown or even to suicide. Here the LSD
trip becomes a "horror trip."
The conditions for the positive outcome of an LSD experiment, with little
possibility of a psychotic derailment, reside on the one hand in the
individual and on the other hand in the external milieu of the experiment. The
internal, personal factors are called set, the external conditions setting.
The beauty of a living room or of an outdoor location is perceived with
particular force because of the highly stimulated sense organs during LSD
inebriation, and such an amenity has a substantial influence on the course of
the experiment. The persons present, their appearance, their traits, are also
part of the setting that determines the experience. The acoustic milieu
isequally significant. Even harmless noises can turn to torment, and
conversely lovely music can develop into a euphoric experience. With LSD
experiments in ugly or noisy surroundings, however, there is greater danger of
a negative outcome, including psychotic crises. The machine- and
appliance-world of today offers much scenery and all types of noise that could
very well trigger panic during enhanced sensibility.
Just as meaningful as the external milieu of the LSD experience, if not even
more important, is the mental condition of the experimenters, their current
state of mind, their attitude to the drug experience, and their expectations
associated with it. Even unconscious feelings of happiness or fear can have an
effect. LSD tends to intensify the actual psychic state. A feeling of
happiness can be heightened to bliss, a depression can deepen to despair. LSD
is thus the most inappropriate means imaginable for curing a depressive state.
It is dangerous to take LSD in a disturbed, unhappy frame of mind, or in a
state of fear. The probability that the experiment will end in a psychic
breakdown is then quite high.
Among persons with unstable personality structures, tending to psychotic
reactions, LSD experimentation ought to be completely avoided. Here an LSD
shock, by releasing a latent psychosis, can produce a lasting mental injury.
Even in healthy, adult persons, even with adherence to all of the preparatory
and protective measures discussed, an LSD experiment can fail, causing
psychotic reactions. Medical supervision is therefore earnestly to be
recommended, even for nonmedicinal LSD experiments. This should include an
examination of the state of health before the experiment. The doctor need not
be present at the session; however, medical help should at all times be
readily available.
Acute LSD psychoses can be cut short and brought under control quickly and
reliably by injection of chlorpromazine or another sedative of this type.
The presence of a familiar person, who can request medical help in the event
of an emergenCy, is also an indispensable psychological assurance. Although
the LSD inebriation is characterized mostly by an immersion in the individual
inner world, a deep need for human contact sometimes arises, especially in
depressive phases.
Nonmedicinal LSD consumption can bring dangers of an entirely different type
than hitherto discussed: for most of the LSD offered in the drug scene is of
unknown origin. LSD preparations from the black market are unreliable when it
comes to both quality and dosage. They rarely contain the declared quantity,
but mostly have less LSD, often none at all, and sometimes even too much. In
many cases other drugs or even poisonous substances are sold as LSD. These
observations were made in our laboratory upon analysis of a great number of
LSD samples from the black market. They coincide with the experiences of
national drug control departments.
The unreliability in the strength of LSD preparations on the illicit drug
market can lead to dangerous overdosage. Overdoses have often proved to be the
cause of failed LSD experiments that led to severe psychic and physical
breakdowns. Reports of alleged fatal LSD poisoning, however, have yet to be
confirmed. Close scrutiny of such cases invariably established other causative
factors.
If most black market LSD preparations contained less than the stated quantity
and often no LSD at all, the reason is either deliberate falsification or the
great instability of this substance. LSD is very sensitive to air and light.
It is oxidatively destroyed by the oxygen in the air and is transformed into
an inactive substance under the influence of light. This must be taken into
account during the synthesis and especially during the production of stable,
storable forms of LSD. Claims that LSD may easily be prepared, or that every
chemistry student in a half-decent laboratory is capable of producing it, are
untrue.
Only in completely oxygen-free ampules protected from light is LSD absolutely
stable. Such ampules, containing 100 ,Lg (= 0.1 mg) LSD-tartrate (tartaric
acid salt of LSD) in 1 cc of aqueous solution, were produced for biological
research and medicinal use by the Sandoz firm. LSD in tablets prepared with
additives that inhibit oxidation, while not absolutely stable, at least keeps
for a longer time. But LSD preparations often found on the black market - LSD
that has been applied in solution onto sugar cubes or blotting paper -
decompose in the course of weeks or a few months.
With such a highly potent substance as LSD, the correct dosage is of paramount
importance. Here the tenet of Paracelsus holds good: the dose determines
whether a substance acts as a remedy or as a poison. A controlled dosage,
however, is not possible with preparations from the black market, whose active
strength is in no way guaranteed. One of the greatest dangers of non-medicinal
LSD experiments lies, therefore, in the use of such preparations of unknown
provenience.
The LSD trip - LSD as a ticket to an adventurous journey into new worlds of
mental and physical experience - became the latest exciting fashion among
academic youth, spreading rapidly from Harvard to other universities. Leary's
doctrine - that LSD not only served to find the divine and to discover the
self, but indeed was the most potent aphrodisiac yet discovered - surely
contributed quite decisively to the rapid propagation of LSD consumption among
the younger generation. Later, in an interview with the monthly magazine
Playboy, Leary said that the intensification of sexual experience and the
potentiation of sexual ecstasy by LSD was one of the chief reasons for the LSD
boom.
LSD trips and the space flights of the
astronauts are comparable in many respects. Both enterprises require very
careful preparations, as far as measures for safety as well as objectives are
concerned, in order to minimize dangers and to derive the most valuable
results possible. The astronauts cannot remain in space nor the LSD
experimenters in transcendental spheres, they have to return to earth and
everyday reality, where the newly acquired experiences must be evaluated.
After I managed to dismiss myself, I strolled farther through the city to
the marketplace. I had no "visions," saw and heard everything as usual,
and yet everything was also altered in an indescribable way;
"imperceptible glassy walls" everywhere. With every step that I took, I
became more and more like an automaton. It especially struck me that I
seemed to lose control over my facial musculature - I was convinced that
my face was grown stiff, completely expressionless, empty, slack and
masklike. The only reason I could still walk and put myself in motion, was
because I remembered that, and how I had "earlier" gone and moved myself.
But the farther back the recollection went, the more uncertain I became. I
remember that my own hands somehow were in my way: I put them in my
pockets, let them dangle, entwined them behind my back . . . as some
burdensome objects, which must be dragged around with us and which no one
knows quite how to stow away. I had the same reaction concerning my whole
body. I no longer knew why it was there, and where I should go with it.
All sense for decisions of that kind had been lost . They could only be
reconstructed laboriously, taking a detour through memories from the past.
It took a struggle of this kind to enable me to cover the short distance
from the marketplace to my home, which I reached at about 15:10.
In no way had I had the feeling of being inebriated. What I experienced
was rather a gradual mental extinction. It was not at all frightening; but
I can imagine that in the transition to certain mental disturbances -
naturally dispersed over a greater interval - a very similarprocess
happens: as long as the recollection of the former individual existence in
the human world is still present, the patient who has become unconnected
can still (to some extent) find his way about in the world: later,
however, when the memories fade and ultimately die out, he completely
loses this ability.
Both the estrangement from the environment and the estrangement from the
individual body, experienced in both of the preceding experiments described by
Gelpke - as well as the feeling of an alien being, a demon, seizing possession
of oneself - are features of LSD inebriation that, in spite of all the other
diversity and variability of the experience, are cited in most research
reports. I have already described the possession by the LSD demon as an
uncanny experience in my first planned self-experiment. Anxiety and terror
then affected me especially strongly, because at that time I had no way of
knowing that the demon would again release his victim.
the progression that they describe - from
terrifying visions to extreme euphoria, a kind of deathrebirth cycle - is
characteristic of many LSD experiments.
The dimensions of the room were changing, now sliding into a fluttering
diamond shape, then straining into an oval shape as if someone were
pumping air into the room, expanding it to the bursting point. I was
having trouble focusing on objects. They would melt into fuzzy masses of
nothing or sail off into space, self-propelled, slow-motion trips that
were of acute interest to me. I tried to check the time on my watch, but I
was unable to focus on the hands. I thought of asking for the time, but
the thought passed. I was too busy seeing and listening. The sounds were
exhilarating, the sights remarkable. I was completely entranced. I have no
idea how long this lasted. I do know the egg came next.
The egg, large, pulsating, and a luminous green, was there before I
actually saw it. I sensed it was there. It hung suspended about halfway
between where I sat and the far wall. I was intrigued by the beauty of the
egg. At the same time I was afraid it would drop to the floor and break. I
didn't want the egg to break. It seemed most important that the egg should
not break. But even as I thought of this, the egg slowly dissolved and
revealed a great multihued flower that was like no flowerI have ever seen.
Its incredibly exquisite petals opened on the room, spraying indescribable
colors in every direction. I felt the colors and heard them as they played
across my body, cool and warm, reedlike and tinkling.
The first tinge of apprehension came later when I saw the center of the
flower slowly eating away at the petals, a black, shiny center that
appeared to be formed by the backs of a thousand ants. It ate away the
petals at an agonizingly slow pace. I wanted to scream for it to stop or
to hurry up. I was pained by the gradual disappearance of the beautiful
petals as if being swallowed by an insidious disease. Then in a flash of
insight I realized to my horror that the black thing was actually
devouring me. I was the flower and this foreign, creeping thing was
eating me!
I shouted or screamed, I really don't remember. I was too full of fear and
loathing. I heard my guide say: "Easy now. Just go with it. Don't fight
it. Go with it." I tried, but the hideous blackness caused such repulsion
that I screamed: "I can't! For God's sake help me! Help me!" The voice was
soothing, reassuring: "Let it come. Everything is all right. Don't worry.
Go with it. Don't fight."
I felt myself dissolving into the terrifying apparition, my body melting
in waves into the core of blackness, my mind stripped of ego and life and,
yes even death. In one great crystal instant I realized that I was
immortal. I asked the question: "Am I dead?" But the question had no
meaning. Meaning was meaningless. Suddenly there was white light and the
shimmering beauty of unity. There was light everywhere, white light with a
clarity beyond description. I was dead and I was born and the exultation
was pure and holy. My lungs were bursting with the joyful song of being.
There was unity and life and the exquisite love that filled my being was
unbounded. My awareness was acute and complete. I saw God and the devil
and all the saints and I knew the truth. I felt myself flowing into the
cosmos, levitated beyond all restraint, liberated to swim in the blissful
radiance of the heavenly visions.
I wanted to shout and sing of miraculous new life and sense and form, of
the joyous beauty and the whole mad ecstasy of loveliness. I knew and
understood all there is to know and understand. I was immortal, wise
beyond wisdom, and capable of love, of all loves. Every atom of my body
and soul had seen and felt God. The world was warmth and goodness. There
was no time, no place, no me. There was only cosmic harmony. It was all
there in the white light. With every fiberof my being I knew it was so.
I embraced the enlightenment with complete abandonment. As the experience
receded I longed to hold onto it and tenaciously fought against the
encroachment of the realities of time and place. For me, the realities of
our limited existence were no longer valid. I had seen the ultimate
realities and there would be no others. As I was slowly transported back
to the tyranny of clocks and schedules and petty hatreds, I tried to talk
of my trip, my enlightenment, the horrors, the beauty, all of it. I must
have been babbling like an idiot. My thoughts swirled at a fantastic rate,
but the words couldn't keep pace. My guide smiled and told me he
understood.
The preceding collection of reports on "travels in the universe of the soul,"
even though they encompass such dissimilar experiences, are still not able to
establish a complete picture of the broad spectrum of all possible reactions
to LSD, which extends from the most sublime spiritual, religious, and mystical
experiences, down to gross psychosomatic disturbances. Cases of LSD sessions
have been described in which the stimulation of fantasy and of visionary
experience, as expressed in the LSD reports assembled here, is completely
absent, and the experimenter was for the whole time in a state of ghastly
physical and mental discomfort, or even felt severely ill.
Reports about the modification of sexual experience under the influence of LSD
are also contradictory. Since stimulation of all sensory perception is an
essential feature of LSD effects, the sensual orgy of sexual intercourse can
undergo unimaginable enhancements. Cases have also been described, however, in
which LSD led not to the anticipated erotic paradise, but rather to a
purgatory or even to the hell of frightful extinction of every perception and
to a lifeless vacuum.
Such a variety and contradiction of reactions to a drug is found only in LSD
and the related hallucinogens. The explanation for this lies in the complexity
and variability of the conscious and subconscious minds of people, which LSD
is able to penetrate and to bring to life as experienced reality.
In the second volume of Mushrooms, Russia and History, in enraptured words,
Wasson describes how the mushroom seized possession of him completely,
although he had tried to struggle against its effects, in order to be able to
remain an objective observer. First he saw geometric, colored patterns, which
then took on architectural characteristics. Next followed visions of splendid
colonnades, palaces of supernatural harmony and magnificence embellished with
precious gems, triumphal cars drawn by fabulous creatures as they are known
only from mythology, and landscapes of fabulous luster. Detached from the
body, the spirit soared timelessly in a realm of fantasy among images of a
higher reality and deeper meaning than those of the ordinary, everyday world.
The essence of life, the ineffable, seemed to be on the verge of being
unlocked, but the ultimate door failed to open.
Thirty minutes after my taking the mushrooms, the exterior world began to
undergo a strange transformation. Everything assumed a Mexican character.
As I was perfectly well aware that my knowledge of the Mexican origin of
the mushroom would lead me to imagine only Mexican scenery, I tried
deliberately to look on my environment as I knew it normally. But all
voluntary efforts to look at things in their customary forms and colors
proved ineffective. Whether my eyes were closed or open, I saw only
Mexican motifs and colors. When the doctor supervising the experiment bent
over me to check my blood pressure, he was transformed into an Aztec
priest and I would not have been astonished if he had drawn an obsidian
knife. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, it amused me to see
how the Germanic face of my colleague had acquired a purely Indian
expression. At the peak of the intoxication, about 1 1/2 hours after
ingestion of the mushrooms, the rush of interior pictures, mostly
abstract motifs rapidly changing in shape and color, reached such an
alarming degree that I feared that I would be torn into this whirlpool of
form and color and would dissolve. After about six hours the dream came to
an end. Subjectively, I had no idea how long this condition had lasted. I
felt my return to everyday reality to be a happy return from a strange,
fantastic but quite real world to an old and familiar home.
Psilocybin and
psilocin belong, like LSD, to the indole compounds, the biologically important
class of substances found in the plant and animal kingdoms. Particular
chemical features common to both the mushroom substances and LSD show that
psilocybin and psilocin are closely related to LSD, not only with regard to
psychic effects but also to their chemical structures. Psilocybin is the
phosphoric acid ester of psilocin and, as such, is the first and hitherto only
phosphoric-acid-containing indole compound discovered in nature. The
phosphoric acid residue does not contribute to the activity, for the
phosphoric-acid-free psilocin is just as active as psilocybin, but it makes
the molecule more stable. While psilocin is readily decomposed by the oxygen
in air, psilocybin is a stable substance.
Psilocybin and psilocin possess a chemical structure very similar to the brain
factor serotonin. As was already mentioned in the chapter on animal
experiments and biological research, serotonin plays an important role in the
chemistry of brain functions. The two mushroom factors, like LSD, block the
effects of serotonin in pharmacological experiments on different organs. Other
pharmacological properties of psilocybin and psilocin are also similar to
those of LSD. The main difference consists in the quantitative activity, in
animal as well as human experimentation. The average active dose of psilocybin
or psilocin in human beings amounts to 10 mg (0.01 g); accordingly, these two
substances are more than 100 times less active than LSD, of which 0.1 mg
constitutes a strong dose. Moreover, the effects of the mushroom factors last
only four to six hours, much shorter than the effects of LSD (eight to twelve
hours).
The mushroom substance had carried all four of us off, not into luminous
heights, rather into deeper regions. It seems that the psilocybin inebriation
is more darkly colored in the majority of cases than the inebriation produced
by LSD. The influence of these two active substances is sure to differ from
one individual to another.
Aldous Huxley made the proposal, as a continuation and complement of the theme
"World Resources" at the Stockholm convention, to address the problem "Human
Resources," the exploration and application of capabilities hidden in humans
yet unused. A human race with more highly developed spiritual capacities, with
expanded consciousness of the depth and the incomprehensible wonder of being,
would also have greater understanding of and better consideration for the
biological and material foundations of life on this earth. Above all, for
Western people with their hypertrophied rationality, the development and
expansion of a direct, emotional experience of reality, unobstructed by words
and concepts, would be of evolutionary significance. Huxley considered
psychedelic drugs to be one means to achieve education in this direction. The
psychiatrist Dr. Humphry Osmond, likewise participating in the congress, who
had created the term psychedelic (mind-expanding), assisted him with a report
about significant possibilities of the use of hallucinogens.
Other meetings were completely different, like the one with the young man from
Toronto. He invited me to lunch at an exclusive restaurant-impressive
appearance, tall, slender, a businessman, proprietor of an important
industrial firm in Canada, brilliant intellect. He thanked me for the creation
of LSD, which had given his life another direction. He had been 100 percent a
businessman, with a purely materialistic world view. LSD had opened his eyes
to the spiritual aspect of life. Now he possessed a sense for art, literature,
and philosophy and was deeply concerned with religious and metaphysical
questions. He now desired to make the LSD experience accessible in a suitable
milieu to his young wife, and hoped for a similarly fortunate transformation
in her.
A young woman sought me out to report on LSD experiences that had been of
great significance to her inner development. As a superficial teenager who
pursued all sorts of entertainments, and quite neglected by her parents, she
had begun to take LSD out of curiosity and love of adventure. For three years
she took frequent LSD trips. They led to an astonishing intensification of her
inner life. She began to seek after the deeper meaning of her existence, which
eventually revealed itself to her. Then, recognizing that LSD had no further
power to help her, without difficulty or exertion of will she was able to
abandon the drug. Thereafter she was in a position to develop herself further
without artificial means. She was now a happy intrinsically secure person-thus
she concluded her report. This young woman had decided to tell me her history,
because she supposed that I was often attacked by narrow-minded persons who
saw only the damage that LSD sometimes caused among youths. The immediate
motive of her testimony was a conversation that she had accidentally overheard
on a railway journey. A man complained about me, finding it disgraceful that I
had spoken on the LSD problem in an interview published in the newspaper. In
his opinion, I ought to denounce LSD as primarily the devil's work and should
publicly admit my guilt in the matter.
Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I attained as a
fundamental understanding from all of my LSD experiments: what one commonly
takes as "the reality," including the reality of one's own individual person,
by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is
ambiguous-that there is not only one, but that there are many realities, each
comprising also a different consciousness of the ego.
Reality is inconceivable without an experiencing subject, without an ego. It
is the product of the exterior world, of the sender and of a receiver, an ego
in whose deepest self the emanations of the exterior world, registered by the
antennae of the sense organs, become conscious. If one of the two is lacking,
no reality happens, no radio music plays, the picture screen remains blank.
The true importance of LSD and related hallucinogens lies in their capacity to
shift the wavelength setting of the receiving "self," and thereby to evoke
alterations in reality consciousness. This ability to allow different, new
pictures of reality to arise, this truly cosmogonic power, makes the cultish
worship of hallucinogenic plants as sacred drugs understandable.
What constitutes the essential, characteristic difference between everyday
reality and the world picture experienced in LSD inebriation? Ego and the
outer world are separated in the normal condition of consciousness, in
everyday reality; one stands face-to-face with the outer world; it has become
an object. In the LSD state the boundaries between the experiencing self and
the outer world more or less disappear, depending on the depth of the
inebriation. Feedback between receiver and sender takes place. A portion of
the self overflows into the outer world, into objects, which begin to live, to
have another, a deeper meaning. This can be perceived as a blessed, or as a
demonic transformation imbued with terror, proceeding to a loss of the trusted
ego. In an auspicious case, the new ego feels blissfully united with the
objects of the outer world and consequently also with its fellow beings. This
experience of deep oneness with the exterior world can even intensify to a
feeling of the self being one with the universe. This condition of cosmic
consciousness, which under favorable conditions can be evoked by LSD or by
another hallucinogen from the group of Mexican sacred drugs, is analogous to
spontaneous religious enlightenment, with the unio mystica. In both
conditions, which often last only for a timeless moment, a reality is
experienced that exposes a gleam of the transcendental reality, in vihich
universe and self, sender and receiver, are one.
As a path to the perception of a deeper, comprehensive reality, in which the
experiencing individual is also sheltered, meditation, in its different forms,
occupies a prominent place today. The essential difference between meditation
and prayer in the usual sense, which is based upon the duality of
creatorcreation, is that meditation aspires to the abolishment of the
I-you-barrier by a fusing of object and subject, of sender and receiver, of
objective reality and self.
The transformation of the objective world view into a deepened and thereby
religious reality consciousness can be accomplished gradually, by continuing
practice of meditation. It can also come about, however, as a sudden
enlightenment; a visionary experience. It is then particularly profound,
blessed, and meaningful. Such a mystical experience may nevertheless "not be
induced even by decade-long meditation," as Balthasar Staehelin writes. Also,
it does not happen to everyone, although the capacity for mystical experience
belongs to the essence of human spirituality.
Nevertheless, at Eleusis, the mystical vision, the healing, comforting
experience, could be arranged in the prescribed place at the appointed time,
for all of the multitudes who were initiated into the holy Mysteries. This
could be accounted for by the fact that an hallucinogenic drug came into use;
this, as already mentioned, is something that religious scholars believe.
The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries
between the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional
experience, makes it possible with their help, and after suitable internal and
external preparation, as it was accomplished in a perfect way at Eleusis, to
evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak.
Meditation is a preparation for the same goal that was aspired to and was
attained in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Accordingly it seems feasible that in
the future, with the help of LSD, the mystical vision, crowning meditation,
could be made accessible to an increasing number of practitioners of
meditation
I see the true importance of LSD in the possibitity ofproviding material aid
to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive
reality. Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character of
LSD as a sacred drug.
Albert Hofmann - "LSD - My Problem Child". Здесь куски из книги. ОЧЕНЬ много. ОЧЕНЬ, я не шучу.
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