Happy Bicycle Day!

April 19, 2015 5:10 PM

On April 19, 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman took a momentous bicycle ride home. His discovery influenced pop culture, psychotherapy and even the CIA..
posted by sleepy psychonaut (37 comments total)

Today I drove past a meadow, down in a canyon, where a group of Hoffmanized youth were playing a game of naked frisbee, some time ago. I looked down on this from the road, back then, while a county mounty just turned on his siren for a moment, and drove on. He had no precedent for dealing with an event like that, not in 1970. The frisbee players bolted like startled deer.

Happy Bicycle Day, or Hippie Bicycle Day!
posted by Oyéah at 5:27 PM on April 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

Oh, here we go again...
posted by Windopaene at 5:28 PM on April 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

We can boldly go wherever anyone wants to go with this. I just happened to look down on that exact spot today, and described the event to my passenger.
posted by Oyéah at 5:39 PM on April 19, 2015

Pelican Daughters - The Bicycle Ride (from Fifty Years 0f Sunshine)
posted by ovvl at 5:42 PM on April 19, 2015

The Dukes of Stratosphear - Bike Ride to the Moon
posted by NoMich at 6:02 PM on April 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

A bicycle ride isn't for everyone, that's for sure. My firm and fast rule is your emotional state will determine the level of enjoyment the trip brings you. And for god's sake, bike in a place you are comfortable in, with people you trust. Otherwise, do refrain.
posted by triage_lazarus at 6:07 PM on April 19, 2015 [7 favorites]

The fact that a drug given once can have such an effect for so long is an unprecedented finding. We have never had anything like it in the psychiatric field.

Whenever these sorts of stories come around, I am always struck by how little the medical community seems to know about what people experience under the influence of psychedelics. I mean, I get that the government buried data, but, it's not exactly hard to find people who have done them. So why not seek them out, if for no other reason but to interview them?

I mentioned psychedelics to my therapist once. He was pretty quick to defuse that particular topic. Then he mumbled something about Canada. He was, though, pretty fascinated with my tales.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:08 PM on April 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Thanks, bicycle!
posted by uraniumwilly at 6:26 PM on April 19, 2015

Happy bicycle day!
posted by gingerbeer at 6:32 PM on April 19, 2015

wait WAIT!
posted by clavdivs at 6:40 PM on April 19, 2015

Pink Floyd - Bike
posted by theartandsound at 6:52 PM on April 19, 2015 [6 favorites]

So why not seek them out, if for no other reason but to interview them?

Drug research requires standardized doses/formulations and a systematic method of documenting effects. Retrospective interviews do get used occasionally, but are not very useful when the substance and dose are unverifiable.

Research on psychedelic drugs requires a DEA license¹ and an institutional body willing to fund it. The former is hard to obtain, and the latter has been (until recently) even harder. For both cultural and legal reasons, research on Schedule I drugs has traditionally been relegated to studying the harmful effects, and almost exclusively in animals, though that is gradually starting to change.

¹There are a few drugs, such as DOI, which have not been explicitly scheduled under the Controlled Substance Act and are therefore legal to possess and study, but which are banned for recreational use under the Federal Analogue Act. These are often used by researchers in place of the more widely-known Schedule I drugs they resemble, and therefore have a much more thorough representation in the pharmacology literature.
posted by dephlogisticated at 6:54 PM on April 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I enjoyed this Vice video about the underground LSD palace.

Most everything in the Hamilton's Pharmacopeia series has been worth it.
posted by peeedro at 7:18 PM on April 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

LSD could help alcoholics stop drinking, AA founder believed.
posted by clavdivs at 7:33 PM on April 19, 2015

I'm working on a thing in which a character is going to take some psychedelics. I feel like I should explore them a bit for authenticity. No fuckin' clue where to get any though.
posted by kafziel at 7:49 PM on April 19, 2015

Yeah, 250 micrograms of pure LSD. Wow. That is heavy dosage for a first timer. I've done my share of it and more. But that would be over my upper limit. Dude was a fucking champ.
posted by Splunge at 8:07 PM on April 19, 2015

I now credit my first 'bike'ride' at sixteen with saving me from much more dire drugs in the months to come. I had just left home and, for once, was free from abuse and bullying. The trip was safe and cosy; I was the baby at the party, and I sat and held hands for ten hours with a man who was soon to become my first real boyfriend. And I think the whole experience gave me a deep sense of trust and connection with the outside world after my abusive, grief ridden homelife, and that helped me not slide into darkness when I was at my most vulnerable.

Every bike ride changes your life. I haven't wanted that much change in a while but now I would like to go for a bike ride again, over a very measured distance, with a qualified coach alongside who can help keep me on track. I think I could do some very good processing, at this stage in my life, if I had that sort of controlled subconscious access.
posted by Thella at 8:11 PM on April 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

kafziel: "I'm working on a thing in which a character is going to take some psychedelics. I feel like I should explore them a bit for authenticity. No fuckin' clue where to get any though."

While I understand your wish to explore this for your story, some advice that I got from a psycho-pharmacologist when I was in the psych ward at Bellevue hospital in NYC. It was the mid 80s. I had taken some "LSD" in Washington Square Park. Then I went home and cut my wrist.

I quote: "There is no good acid anymore. None. It's all made badly or adulterated. Unless you are a certified chemist and make your own, don't go there. You see what happens." Then he tapped the bandages on my wrist.

Words to live by.
posted by Splunge at 8:14 PM on April 19, 2015

So why not seek them out, if for no other reason but to interview them?

The tide seems to be turning on the therapeutic use of psychedelics, and there is some fairly intense and detailed professional interest in the subjective experiences of users. See, for example, the interviews with study participants posted by the Heffter Research Institute.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:24 PM on April 19, 2015

Oh, here we go again...
posted by Windopaene at 5:28 PM on April 19

Eponystaerical.
posted by univac at 8:45 PM on April 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

Not to be a pedant, but it's Hofmann, not Hoffman.

However, I approve of Bicycle Day observations, so thanks for the post.
posted by talking leaf at 8:57 PM on April 19, 2015

I quote: "There is no good acid anymore. None. It's all made badly or adulterated. Unless you are a certified chemist and make your own, don't go there. You see what happens." Then he tapped the bandages on my wrist.

In the 80s? I'm gonna say bullshit, at least as far as blotter goes. But you can still have a very bad time on good acid if shit lines up the wrong way.

Nowdays there are a number of "research chemicals" in circulation that are active in LSD-tiny doses so you do have to worry about this more. They're not all terrible drugs, even, but they don't come with the guarantee of physical safety that LSD does. Back then though even if such things existed there's no way they were more widespread than real acid. The Shulgin books weren't even out yet.
posted by atoxyl at 9:04 PM on April 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

ⅼ started to read thiℨ post buℸ ⅈ𝄻 ♭æ ɦaʀðʙɛʗᴀᴹᶚ ի჻ໜ whoa yeah it becaሐᕦ 𐌃𐌠𐌅𐌅𐌠𐌂𐌵ⴼ¾¾
אָﬣאַ

שּׁייית מנ פּאַאַאַאַק
posted by not_on_display at 9:24 PM on April 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

I was lucky to hit the last great breakout of acid in the 90s, some really great liquid shit. I think the first real memorable trip on acid was 400 mics, dropped on sugarcube (oh that metallic taste!) Listening to The Interworld and the New Innocence by Praxis, swirling overhead and around me, as I dove into the funky seaweed vibes of Bootsy, kelp all around me as I mentally free floated. And I had a trippy poster with some really sweet details that weren't really there, but man, I saw the evolution of apes to angels in that thing. So amazing. And my roommate who insisted I listen to Tool, and I was like nah... I don't like Tool, and he told me, NO NO you HAVE TO. So I did.

And I FINALLY understood them. And I liked them. Goddamnit, I liked them!

And now there's all these goddamned RCs that are shit and scary. I'm not against RCs in and of themselves, but it just seems so sketchy. We're pumping out so many things just to try something new, and we're not doing it in a very clinical way, so we get the idiots running around snorting mephedrone/mcat, or various alternatives to 2c chems...

Let us have our acid and our psilocybin. And let's not forget Dr. Hofmann was the one to isolate Psilocybin as well. RIP old man, you served us well and thank you for giving us what you did and never being afraid to share your gifts of discovery.
posted by symbioid at 9:45 PM on April 19, 2015 [6 favorites]

Look into the box, you like Tool.
posted by clavdivs at 10:25 PM on April 19, 2015

Is there gas in the car?

No need. (motions to bicycle)
posted by ostranenie at 12:19 AM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

I quote: "There is no good acid anymore. None. It's all made badly or adulterated. Unless you are a certified chemist and make your own, don't go there. You see what happens." Then he tapped the bandages on my wrist.

This may or may not be true, but I'm not sure I'd be taking the say so of a doc on a psych ward after I've cut my wrists as gospel. Cautionary tales tend to be their stock in trade.

The arrest of William Pickard in 2000 seems to have reduced the global supply in a major way though.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 1:07 AM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

is it art?
posted by j_curiouser at 1:32 AM on April 20, 2015

Every bike ride changes your life.

But often only for a little while. And knowing that is the last important change.
posted by Obscure Reference at 4:21 AM on April 20, 2015

... knowing that is the last important change.

"Once you get the message, hang up the phone."
posted by BitterOldPunk at 4:32 AM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

The arrest of William Pickard in 2000 seems to have reduced the global supply in a major way though.

Did Operation Julie quash acid distribution into the 90s? If manufacturers have not stepped up in the last fifteen years to produce (genuine) LSD at 2000 levels I think there are other forces at work here than law enforcement - I'd guess most importantly the proliferation of novel/grey-market substances in those fifteen years but maybe also just changing "fashions" in drug use.
posted by atoxyl at 4:48 AM on April 20, 2015

Actually I think I read there were recently some real LSD analogs/ergoline psychedelics circulating in the RC scene, though I don't follow that stuff like I used to. So on one hand your LSD might be less likely than ever to be LSD, but on the other it might be closer to LSD than the psychedelic amphetamines or David Nichols compounds. You know "Orange Sunshine" was supposedly really a (very close) analog too - or that's the claim the manufacturers had hoped would protect them in court.
posted by atoxyl at 5:01 AM on April 20, 2015

There is no good acid anymore. None. It's all made badly or adulterated.

For the early to mid 80s not at all true. Illegal markets are spotty and unreliable but if you happened in the right place there some very nice acid available.
posted by rdr at 8:31 AM on April 20, 2015

There's no chemical in the world strong enough to convince me that Tool doesn't suck.
posted by goHermGO at 10:03 AM on April 20, 2015

My first exposure to this bicycle was when Grant Morrison used it as a plot device in DOOM PATROL, when the villain Mr Nobody tried to use it for... something. It was less successful than when he used a painting to eat Paris.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:45 AM on April 20, 2015

There was quality product in the '85-'00 period, at least in London - old hippy stories previously.
posted by Devonian at 11:56 AM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

So - get this. Back in the 90s, when I did partake of chemicals, I became friends w/our neighbor who became our pot dealer. He told us he'd recently gotten out of prison for selling acid. He talked about the fact that when they convict you on acid, when you sell blotter, they measure the paper as well, and he talked about how that was bullshit.

Years later, I found he went to jail in the 00s, after we lost touch, for giving some frat guy an opiate and the guy died. They convicted John (the neighbor/dealer) with a Len Bias conviction. So this past year, I wanted to see if I could find more on his case and found out he died. I hazard a guess he offed himself in prison. I could be wrong. But the most interesting thing?

In the 90s when we met, he talked about acid and the blotter paper stuff and how it was bullshit, what he never told us, though...

He had been a plaintiff against the acid/blotter issue, all the way to the US Supreme Court (along with 2 others)
posted by symbioid at 1:30 PM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]