Merkaba said:

hapPpY bicycle day. thankyou dr hofmann for turning us all into psychotics!

blame hofmann for sure... -_-

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Silversoul said:

I think they should research LSD's potential for causing immortality.

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tell that to Jerry Garcia...

GoodbyeOrb said:

Hey what the hell is bicycle day?  Thanks.

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Try reading the thread. Thanks.

dshak66 said:

Bicycle Day

The psychedelic effects of LSD were unknown for the next five years. Dr. Hofmann writes in LSD: My Problem Child that a "peculiar presentiment" prompted him to revisit LSD-25. While re-synthesizing the compound for further study, he became dizzy and was forced to stop work:

    Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.

Three days later, on April 19, 1943 (known as Bicycle Day), Dr. Hofmann intentionally ingested 250 µg of LSD, which he hypothesized would be a threshold dose, based on other ergot alkaloids. In reality, this is a fairly substantial dose and the threshold would actually be around 25 µg. Hoffman wrote:

    By now it was already clear to me that LSD had been the cause of the remarkable experience of the previous Friday, for the altered perceptions were of the same type as before, only much more intense. I had to struggle to speak intelligibly. I asked my laboratory assistant, who was informed of the self-experiment, to escort me home. We went by bicycle, no automobile being available because of wartime restrictions on their use. On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror. I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. Nevertheless, my assistant later told me we had traveled very rapidly.

Dr. Hofmann summoned a doctor, who could find no abnormal physical symptoms other than extremely dilated pupils. After spending several hours terrified that his body had been possessed by a demon, that his next door neighbour was a witch, and that his furniture was threatening him, Dr. Hofmann feared he had become completely insane.

    [The doctor] saw no reason to prescribe any medication. Instead he conveyed me to my bed and stood watch over me. Slowly I came back from a weird, unfamiliar world to reassuring everyday reality. The horror softened and gave way to a feeling of good fortune and gratitude, the more normal perceptions and thoughts returned, and I became more confident that the danger of insanity was conclusively past. Now, little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux. It was particularly remarkable how every acoustic perception, such as the sound of a door handle or a passing automobile, became transformed into optical perceptions. Every sound generated a vividly changing image, with its own consistent form and color ... Exhausted, I then slept, to awake next morning refreshed, with a clear head, though still somewhat tired physically. A sensation of well-being and renewed life flowed through me. Breakfast tasted delicious and gave me extraordinary pleasure. When I later walked out into the garden, in which the sun shone now after a spring rain, everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. The world was as if newly created. All my senses vibrated in a condition of highest sensitivity, which then persisted for the entire day. This self-experiment showed that LSD-25 behaved as a psychoactive substance with extraordinary properties and potency. There was to my knowledge no other known substance that evoked such profound psychic effects in such extremely low doses, that caused such dramatic changes in human consciousness and our experience of the inner and outer world.

Interest in the drug was revived after Dr. Hofmann's experiment, and the University of Zurich began conducting systematic human trials on both normal participants and psychiatric patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. In both cases, the predominant reaction was euphoria. Sandoz began producing LSD under the trade name Delysid for research, suggesting that the drug might be useful "to elicit release of repressed material and provide mental relaxation, particularly in anxiety states and obsessional neuroses" and also for self-experimentation by psychiatrists, "to gain an insight into the world of ideas and sensations of mental patients".

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