"Professor Ernst Rothlin, head of the Sandoz pharmacological department at the time. Rothlin was dubious about LSD ; he claimed he had a strong will and could suppress the effects of drugs. But after he took 60 micrograms, one quarter of the dose I had taken earlier, he was convinced. I had to laugh as he described his fantastic visions." -- Michael Horowitz interview with Albert Hofmann, 1976.

Twenty-one-year-old Susi Ramstein (the only female apprentice at Sandoz) becomes the first woman in the world to take LSD. She initially took a 100 mics--a higher dose than either Albert's co-worker Ernst Rothlin or his supervisor Arthur Stoll had tried--and she had a good experience. And although everyone working with Albert took acid at least once, Susi tried it two more times in order to help out with establishing some standards for the medical use of LSD. (Susi was Hofmann's lab assistant, and the person who accompanied him from Sandoz to his home via bicycle, on the day that Hofmann took his first intentional dose of LSD.)

Max Rinkel, in Boston, was one of the first two people known to have brought LSD into the United States. Rinkel requested it from Sandoz in 1949 after hearing it mentioned in a talk by a Viennese doctor. Nicholas Bercel, based in California, was given samples by Werner Stoll while visiting Basel, also in 1949.

CIA Director Roscoe Hillenkoetter approves their behavior-control program, project BLUEBIRD (the predecessor to project ARTICHOKE) and authorizes the use of unvouchered funds to pay for its most sensitive areas.

Held at Princeton, NJ. Produced by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. Chaired by Paul H. Hoch, presenters included Harold A. Abramson, Gregory Bateson, Arthur L. Chandler, Sidney Cohen, Jonathan Cole, Keith S. Ditman, Betty Grover Eisner, Frank Fremont-Smith, Mortimer A. Hartman, Mollie P. Hewitt Hewitt, Abram Hoffer, Cecelia E.Jett-Jackson, Solomon Katzenelbogen, G.D. Klee, Humphry Osmond, Charles Savage, H. Lennard, S. Malitz, R.C. Murphy, Gwendolyn J.Neviackas, Cornelius H. van Rhijn, Ronald A. Sandison, Louis Joylon "Jolly" West, J.R.B. Whittlesey, and others.

"The shoddiness of their work as scientists is the result less of incompetence than of a conscious rejection of scientific ways of looking at things. Leary and Alpert fancy themselves 'prophets' of a psychic revolution designed to free Western man from the limitations of consciousness as we know it."

Note: "The Corporation" in the title of the article is Harvard.

Held at South Oaks Hospital, Amityville, NY. Presenters included Harold A. Abramson, Arendsen Hein, Edward F.W. Baker, Antonio Balestrieri, Donald Blair, John Buckman, John Chiasson, Sidney Cohen, Charles Clay Dahlberg, Betty Grover Eisner, Ruth Fox, Daniel X. Freedman, Frank Fremont-Smith, Kenneth Godfrey, Stanislav Grof, William Hausman, Mogens Hertz, Abram Hoffer, Gordon H. Johnsen, James S. Ketchum, Sol Kramer, Leonard W. Krinsky, Albert A. Kurland, Hanscarl Leuner, Jerome Levine, John C. Lilly, Thomas M. Ling, Arnold M. Ludwig, Donald C. MacDonald, J. Ross MacLean, Pauline McCricick, William H. McGlothlin, A. Joyce Martin, Robert E. Mogar, Robert C. Murphy, Humphry Osmond, Walter Pahnke, Andre Rolo, Max Rinkel, Charles Savage, Emilio Servadio, Sanford Unger, Cornelius H. van Rhijn, Jack L. Ward, E.S. Weber, and Mary S. Wicks.

While Acid Dreams by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain reports that Windowpane first appeared in 1972, the BNDD's Microgram publication reports an analysis of 3-6 mm square and .38 mm thick gelatin "flakes" in June 1970.

Original Author Unknown
Maintained and Updated by Erowid

You may have heard about "no-hitter" that Bob Milacki's of the Oakland A's pitched last week. No-hitters are pretty rare and this one made the news everywhere. One of the local TV stations refered to it as Milacki's "no-no," a term that originated with Dock Ellis's no-hitter back on June 12th, 1970 for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Dock pitched that game on acid. Reportedly he wrote about the experience in his authobiography (Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball) published in 1976. Here are some interesting excerpts from an account of the game in the August 1987 issue of High Times magazine and from a Lysergic World article from 1993.


"Dock woke up late. Why shouldn't he? As far as he knew, the team had an off day and he planned to take full advantage of it. Three hits of LSD were ready and waiting in the refrigerator."

"A few minutes later, his girlfriend returned with coffee, donuts, and the morning paper. At noon, they dropped acid. Dock put on a record, while his girlfriend read the paper."

"Dock, it says here you're pitching today!"

"Whaaaa...? said Dock groggily. He snatched the paper, scanned the box scores, and read:

PITTSBURGH AT PADRES
DOUBLEHEADER
(6 P.M.) - Ellis (4-4) vs.
Roberts (3-3)
(LW, 1993)

"That's when it was $9.50 to fly to San Diego. She got me to the airport at 3:30. I got there at 4:30, and the game started at 6:05pm. It was a twi-night doubleheader. (HT, 1987)


He makes it to the game and after having someone help him find his locker, he suits up and enters the game.


"Dave Roberts, the Padres' pitcher, had an easy first inning, ending with Roberto Clemente hitting one back to the box. Dock marched to the mound, wondering if he'd last the inning. (LW, 1993)

"His fingers tingled as he squeezed the ball. He squinted to see catcher Jerry May's hand signals. He nodded his head and went into his windup, falling slightly off balance in the process. The ball hit the ground about two feet in front of the plate and skipped into May's glove.

"May signaled for a fastball outside. Dock wound up and threw a hot one over the the corner of the plate - a swinging strike! In was no ordinary pitch: The ball burst from Dock's hand and left a blazing, cometlike tail that remained visible long after the ball was caught.

"Dock felt wobbly on the mound and his stomach was churning with acid cramps. His concentration, however, was superb. As long as he kept to his fastball, the comets kept burning across the plate. All he had to do was steer the ball down the multicolored path. Dock had a crazed look in his eyes and his lack of control was evident to the batters, many of whom were feeling increasingly vulnerable in the batter's box. Dock easily retired three batters in a row [in the second inning]. (HT, 1987)

I was zeroed in on the (catcher's) glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me." (LW, 1993)
The seventh inning:


"The Pirates were clinging to their 1-0 lead. Dock was staring at the scoreboard when he realized he'd pitched hitless ball for seven innings. He smacked Cash on the arm.

"Hey, look," said Dock, pointing at the scoreboard. "I've got a no-no going!"

Cash gave him a blank look. "A no-no?" asked Cash. He'd never heard the term before. But Cash wanted to keep the pitcher loose and happy, so he smiled and said nothing.

Doc Ellis went on to finished the game without a hit. The Pirates won the game, 2-0, despite Ellis walking eight batters. Dock had a pretty good year in 1970. He went 13-10, and helped the Pirates win their first of three divisional championships

The father of LSD, Albert Hofmann, and LSD's most vocal prophet, Timothy Leary, meet in Lausanne, Switzerland, while Leary was there in exile from the United States, where he was facing a possible ten years in prison for charges related to possession of a small amount of cannabis.

During this experience, he describes having a meaningful vision of a spiraling tunnel which he later painted, a piece he called "Polar Unity Spiral". Soon after this, he changed his name to grey, to merge the opposites of black and white.

"Verified
On May 30, 1975 I had my first LSD experience at a party given by Allyson and we have been together ever since. I had been desperately sad and searching for meaning, for a God I did not believe existed. Sitting with my physical eyes closed, my inner eye moved through a beautiful, spiraling tunnel. The walls of the tunnel seemed like a living mother of pearl, and it felt like a spiritual rebirth canal. I was in the darkness, spiraling towards the light. The curling space going from black to gray to white suggested to me the resolution of all polarities, as the opposites found a way of becoming each other. My artistic rendering of this event was titled the Polar Unity Spiral. Soon after this I changed my name to Grey as a way of bringing the opposites together.

The same evening I met Allyson. She was the only other person who had taken LSD at that party. We have been together ever since that night in 1975. Our love has been the greatest teacher in my life. For me she is the flesh and blood incarnation of God's infinite love. So my challenge to God, my prayer, had been answered."

Santa Cruz, CA. Sponsored by the Psychology Board of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Included Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), Bruce Eisner, Stephen Gaskin, Allen Ginsberg, Willis Harman, Albert Hofmann, Oscar Janiger, Stanley Krippner, Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, William McGlothlin, Claudio Naranjo, and Myron Stolaroff. Approximately 600 attendees filled the lecture hall when Dr. Hofmann spoke, with many more listening from outside.

llinois college professor Thomas B. Roberts invents the meme of celebrating the anniversary of Albert Hofmann’s first intentional personal bioassay of LSD, calling his celebration "Bicycle Day" in honor of Dr. Hofmann's under-the-influence bike ride from Sandoz to his home.

Held at the University of California, Santa Cruz, this event was partially sponsored by the Island Group.

Held in Lugano-Agno, Switzerland and produced by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, proceedings from this event were published as 50 Years of LSD: Current Status and Perspectives of Hallucinogens, edited by A. Pletscher and D. Ladewig.

Held at the Convention Center in Basel, Switzerland, this event was presented by the Gaia Media Foundation as an International Symposium on the occasion of the 100th Birthday of Albert Hofmann.

Erowid participated in this research by working with Clusterbusters.com to publish and solicit responses to a survey about the use of psilocybin to treat cluster headaches. Some of the participants in the later Sewell survey were found through Erowid's earlier online survey.

Swiss inventor of LSD, and discoverer of the active principles of magic mushrooms and morning glory seeds, Albert Hofmann, passes away from heart failure. He was 102 years old.

The "news" was mostly spread via social media sites, but it also hit the "comments" sections of some blogs as the quote below attests:

<<10 Responses to “LSD inventor Albert Hofmann dead at age 102”
This is truly sad news!
rollingwriter said this on May 1, 2013 at 9:52 AM [...]>>

and some people even created fresh blogs for the occasion (click More Info for URL).

Twelve subjects with life-threatening illnesses and anxiety disorder. Some were given LSD at 200 ug, others 20 ug in a supportive, therapeutic context. Those who received 20ug could choose to participate in a full dose session. They then participated in a number of drug-free therapy sessions. The researchers found a reduction in anxiety from the LSD-therapy sessions.