Albert Hofmann, father of the mind-altering drug LSD, dies

His death was confirmed on Wednesday by Doris Stuker, a clerk in the village of Burg im Leimental where Hofmann moved following his retirement in 1971.

Hofmann’s hallucinogen inspired — and arguably corrupted — millions in the 1960’s hippy generation. For decades after LSD was banned in the late 1960s, Hofmann defended his invention.

“I produced the substance as a medicine … It’s not my fault if people abused it,” he once said.

The Swiss chemist discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm in Basel.

He became the first human guinea pig of the drug when a tiny amount of the substance seeped on to his fingerduring a repeat of the laboratory experiment on April 16, 1943.

“I had to leave work for home because I was suddenly hit by a sudden feeling of unease and mild dizziness,” he subsequently wrote in a memo to company bosses.

“Everything I saw was distorted as in a warped mirror,” he said, describing his bicycle ride home. “I had the impression I was rooted to the spot. But my assistant told me we were actually going very fast.”

Upon reaching home, Hofmann sat down on a divan and began experiencing what he called “vision”.

“What I was thinking appeared in colors and in pictures,” he told Swiss television network SF DRS in a programme marking his 100th birthday two years ago. “It lasted for a couple of hours and then it disappeared.”

Three days later, Hofmann experimented with a larger dose. The result was a horror trip.

“The substance which I wanted to experiment with took over me. I was filled with an overwhelming fear that I would go crazy. I was transported to a different world, a different time,” Hofmann wrote.

There was no answer at Hofmann’s home on Tuesday and a person who answered the phone at Novartis, a former employer, said the company had no knowledge of his death.

Hofmann and his scientific colleagues hoped that LSD would make an important contribution to psychiatric research. The drug exaggerated inner problems and conflicts and thus it was hoped that it might be used to recognise and treat mental illness like schizophrenia.

For a time, Sandoz sold LSD 25 under the name Delysid, encouraging doctors to try it themselves.

LSD was elevated to international fame in the late 1950s and 1960s thanks to Harvard professor Timothy Leary who embraced the drug under the slogan “turn on, tune in, drop out.” The film star Cary Grant and numerous rock musicians extolled its virtues in achieving true self discovery and enlightenment.

But away from the psychedelic trips and flower children, horror stories emerged about people going on murder sprees or jumping out of windows while hallucinating. Heavy users suffered permanent psychological damage.

The US government banned LSD in 1966 and other countries followed suit.

Drug of high life

•John Lennon, singer, guitarist, songwriter (The Beatles)

• Syd Barret, singer (Pink Floyd)

• George H W Bush, former US President and former head of the CIA. The CIA experimented extensively with LSD and many agents took it so that they would know they were not going crazy if it was given to them.

• Jack Carter, son of former President Jimmy Carter, was kicked out of the Navy for using marijuana and LSD

• Lewis Carrol, mathematician, photographer, author of Alice in Wonderland

• Francis Crick, Nobel Prize winner for structure of DNA

• Dock Ellis, baseball player

• Eminem, Rap artist

• Michel Foucault, French historian and philosopher

• Steve Jobs, co-creator of the Apple computer, the NeXt computer and former head of Apple Computers, Inc.

• Bill Gates, chairman Microsoft, reported to have used it a few times in college

•Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Once a Great Notion, sold blotter-paper art

• Marcia Moore, Sheraton Hotel heiress, author of Hypersentience, Journeys into the Bright World

• Jim Morrison, singer (The Doors)

• Dr Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize winning DNA expert, and surfer.

• Angelina Jolie, actress, she’s done Cocaine, E, LSD and heroin.

• Jack Nicholson, actor

• Oliver Stone, director

• The Rolling Stones, rock-and-roll band

• Wozniak, Steve, Apple Computer co-founder