Hippie Birthday

Sixty years ago today, a Swiss chemist named Albert Hofmann discovered LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide-25. Hofmann was trying to develop circulatory system stimulants when he mixed up a batch of LSD from ergot, a fungus that grows on rye. Three days later, he conducted a direct experiment on himself. "I took what I then thought to be a very small amount, namely 25 mg. Then it all became clear," he said. Although LSD became the drug of choice for a generation of hippies, musicians and writers, Hofmann said it should only be administered by researchers and psychiatrists. "The great danger of LSD is that one cannot come to grips with and integrate the shock of being transported into a different reality," he once recalled.