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.” Hofmann then intentionally ingested 250 micrograms of LSD in his lab on the following Monday, which, according to his calculations, was “the smallest quantity that could be expected to produce some effect.” That is actually 12.5 times the upper bound of the threshold amount, which ranges from 10–20 micrograms. At the start of his 250-microgram ‘trip,’ Hofmann recorded his initial feelings of “dizziness, [a] feeling of anxiety, visual distortion, symptoms of paralysis, [and a] desire to laugh.” Feeling ill and struggling “to speak intelligbly,” Hofmann decided to take a bicycle ride home, accompanied by his lab assistant. “Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror.” Once he reached his home, Hofmann recalled his surroundings as having “transformed themselves in more terrifying ways. Everything in the room spun around, and the familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms. They were in continuous motion, animated, as if driven by an inner restlessness.” This is likely a result of LSD temporarily dissolving the neural networks associated with visual processing. Describing his cognitive distortions, Hofmann wrote, “I was taken to another world, another place, another time. My body seemed to be without sensation, lifeless, strange. Was I dying? Was this the transition? At times I believed myself to be outside my body, and then perceived clearly, as an outside observer, the complete tragedy of my situation.” This is perhaps the result of LSD dissolving the DMN. Yet despite his cognitive distortions, Hofmann still “had brief periods of clear and effective thinking,” which made him “just barely capable” of asking his assistant to call a doctor and request milk from his neighbours as a “nonspecific antidote for poisoning.”
When his neighbour arrived to deliver milk, however, Hofmann’s cognitive distortions returned with increased intensity. He failed to recognize her as “Mrs. R., but rather a malevolent, insidious witch with a colored mask,” Hoffman wrote. He then began to spiral. Convinced that he was be dying, he felt “fear and despair” about his wasted life — regrets that “a young family should lose its father,” and that he would leave his “chemical research work, which meant so much to [him], unfinished in the midst of fruitful, promising development.” Once the doctor arrived, he confirmed that Hofmann physically had no “abnormal symptoms other than extremely dilated pupils” and monitored him without prescribing medication. The effects soon faded. “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.” To Hofmann, some of the most positive effects appeared the following day, while sober. The next morning, he woke “refreshed, with a clear head, though still somewhat tired physically. A sensation of well-being and renewed life flowed through me.” Describing his newfound appreciation for life, Hofmann recalled, “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.” But Hofmann’s recollections only documented what he personally experienced; anecdotal stories only record experiences based on an individual, rather than a population. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) largely corroborates Hoffman’s experiences based on studies of populations, reflecting the upand-down nature of LSD trips. On a physical level, LSD “may include numbness, rapid heartbeat, reduced co-ordination, chills, nausea, tremor, weakness and dilated pupils,” according to CAMH’s website. “Sensations of gravity may be altered, ranging from feeling weighted down, to feeling light and floating.” On a perceptual level, colours “become more intense, halos or rainbows may appear around objects, and shapes may become fluid in form,” CAMH reported. “Rapidly changing brightly coloured geometric patterns and other images may be
seen, whether the eyes are open or shut.” On a psychological level, the effects are “unpredictable.” According to CAMH, “Individual reactions to the drug can range from ecstasy to terror, even within a single drug-taking experience. People who have used the drug before, and had a positive experience, may have a negative experience if they take it again.” A wealth of reports of individuals sharing what they’ve felt and experienced while on LSD can be found on an online database called Erowid, whose founders were profiled in The New Yorker in 2015. Analyzing its users’ anecdotes, Erowid published a figure like the one on the next page explaining the duration and intensity of the effects of LSD. The duration aligns with CAMH’s findings: “The effects of LSD come on gradually within an hour of taking the drug, peak at two to four hours and gradually taper off, with the entire trip lasting up to 12 hours. The intensity of the effect depends on the size of the dose.” The sinusoidal wave at the top of the figure refers to how the psychological effects of LSD intensify and de-intensify, peaking and receding for the duration of the most intense parts of the ‘trip.’ This explains how Hofmann was able to call for a doctor and milk, during his “brief periods of clear and effective thinking,” despite feeling the full effects of LSD.
The risks of LSD
LSD can be psychologically addicting. Regular users of LSD “do not experience physical withdrawal symptoms when they stop taking the drug,” according to CAMH. However, “it can be addictive. Some people who use LSD repeatedly feel compelled to take it. The drug takes on an exaggerated importance in their lives, leading to emotional and lifestyle problems.” As an analogy, consider a disturbing scene in the 2010 film Inception. A chemist in Kenya named Yusuf describes to a foreigner named Eames about how 20 people “come every day” to his laboratory, seeking the psychoactive effects of a substance named ‘somnacin,’ which enables them to hallucinate via lucid dreaming upon falling asleep. “They come here every day to sleep?” Eames asks. “No,” replies an elderly man overhearing the conversation. “They come to be woken up. The dream has become their reality. And who are you to say otherwise?”
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